The David Pakman Show - 4/20/23: DeSantis suddenly in trouble, the anatomy of right wing propaganda

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis does an event in South Carolina with his wife, Casey DeSantis, which goes bad very quickly -- Ron DeSantis megadonors are furious with him for going MAGA and are quickly pulling their support for his potential presidential run -- Radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has her speaking privileges revoked during a hearing due to her attacks on the witness and fellow Members of the House -- Exploring the anatomy of right wing propaganda, and the right wing propaganda life cycle -- Robert F Kennedy Jr launches his 2024 Presidential campaign in a rambling 90 minute speech, and then appears on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show to repeat pro-Putin talking points -- Donald Trump, clearly panicking about his existing and potentially forthcoming arrests, claims that Joe Biden is "guilty" in a deranged video -- Donald Trump is now aggressively pounding Ron DeSantis, a strategy that insiders say has the goal of preventing DeSantis from even launching a 2024 campaign -- A live Sean Hannity Fox News audience cheers when Republican Congressman James Comer claims that the "walls are closing in on the Biden family" -- Voicemail caller attacks David for his commentary about Andrew Tate, which he did not actually make 📕 Pick up your copy of “EPP Method” at https://mpcauthor.com/ 👂 MDHearing: Just $149.99 each + free charging case. Use code PAKMAN at https://mdhearing.com ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep: Get 20% OFF a mattress + 2 free pillows. Go to https://helixsleep.com/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David -- On the Bonus Show: Don't Say Gay expanded in Florida, more calls for schools to drop Native American mascots, shootings at mistaken addresses renew focus on "stand your ground" laws, much more... -- 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

. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is not yet even a real campaign campaign might already be collapsing and I have to tell you, I have very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I am enjoying the cringe and the disasters that are plaguing Ron DeSantis daily because it's just so entertaining and it really couldn't happen to a worse guy. On the other hand, I also recognize that Trump's a disaster and DeSantis is failings are good for Trump. And it's hard to get behind things that are good for Trump as well. But let me tell you what's been going on amid flooding in Florida, as well as long gas lines,

which are currently happening as a result of the flooding. Ron DeSantis has been out on a non campaign campaign book related events. And yesterday he was in South Carolina at an event with his wife, which went so cringe so quick that it's actually hard to believe. Let's look at a couple of clips of this. Ron appearing with Casey DeSantis and they tell a very coordinated story. You know, DeSantis is in this war with Disney and Disney World down in Florida. And they tell the story about how they had a Disney wedding or something, but it was all before they fell in love at Disney. But it was all before

Disney went woke and it only gets worse from there. And the coordinated and scripted nature of this, it's so cringy and he's pulling his wife into it. And the mega donors that were thinking about backing DeSantis are already bailing. And the mega donors that were thinking about backing DeSantis are already bailing. And I'm going to tell you about that in a moment. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start with this event. Listen to this heartwarming story of love from the governor. Speaker 4 One day she comes to me and says, you know, I was she comes to me with tears in her eyes and she says, sir, I can to my parents and they were interested in potentially doing the wedding at Walt Disney World. Oh, I remember when this broke in the news, everybody thought it was so scandalous.

Like DeSantis got married at Disney. Like, yeah, it was great back then. But he had one caveat, though, when I because he was very gracious. Casey DeSantis is even using Trump's mannerisms, interestingly enough. And you go do what you want to do. This is your thing. Go. Wonderful.

And we grew up coming from Ohio, going to Disney. We had a lot of fun before they went woke, obviously. But it was one caveat. He said you could do it. However, no Mickey Donald Duck, anybody at the wedding ceremony, they actually have a wedding. It's really nice. And, um, and it, everything worked out. It was traditional. In fact, you look at our wedding pictures, you wouldn't know that it was anything. You will know. Isn't this just a great story guys, anything out of the ordinary. Um, but you know, we're doing that. And then, uh, thinking about, about so this was I mean, this is almost 15 years ago.

And then no one was thinking like that somehow this would end up being something we would be involved with, you know, going toe to toe with them about about gender ideology and kindergarten. Are you kidding me? I mean, it's just absurd. Kindergarten. That's interesting. But that's just the way life works. It's so funny because people would say, oh, did you ever see, you know, that the governor was going to be the governor? I'm like, you know, when we when I first met him, he was a cute guy in the Navy. Like I fell for the white uniform, right? Like it's very handsome. He was like Tom, just like to hold on. Does she actually say Tom Cruise? Right. Like it's

very handsome. He was like Tom Cruise. It was I was going to jokingly say just like Tom Tom Cruise in a top view, a top gun or whatever. A few good men. This is this is not helping DeSantis. That's the really interesting thing. This obsession with Disney. I mean, OK, cringe worthy scripted story. Fine. This is really not helping DeSantis. He's in South Carolina telling Disney stories while Florida is in chaos due to flooding and gas lines. And meanwhile, when he is in Florida, he's just obsessed with Disney World to such a degree that even some Republicans like Larry Kudlow are saying this really isn't looking very good.

He then did like a more formal event in South Carolina about the Florida blueprint, I guess, trying to portray the idea that South Carolina and other red states should copy the blueprint of Florida, which, quite frankly, is a very, very mediocre state. You all know I love going to Florida. I go down to Miami. I go to the, you know, liberal areas. I'm at hipster cafes and all this stuff. But the truth is that if you zoom out and look at the state in sum total, it's a very mediocre state, not particularly good or bad when it comes to infrastructure, crime education, just like around twenty fifth out of 50 in most categories. Why would you follow that as a blueprint? Well, here he explains part of the blueprint is you got to

get woke out and transgender and all this stuff that's driving donors away. The people also side with us on wanting an economy where businesses focus on their core mission of providing whatever service or whatever they're doing in the economy and not getting mired into woke political activism. And you see it time and time again. Sometimes it's a one off like this ridiculous thing with with Bud Light by trying to push the transgenderism. But what they're doing is do you guys think that anybody has been pushed into transgenderism by seeing or hearing that Dylan Mulvaney drank Bud Light and had some kind of a spot like

this? The very nature of you can push people into being trans is one of the oldest tropes that used to be about. You can push people into being gay. Now, as you can push people into being trans corporations, mostly very wealthy, powerful corporations, they're trying to leverage their economic power to change our country. All right. They're just doing what's profitable. That's really all that's going on. And DeSantis at this point seeming desperately obsessed with Disney and with Bud Light. And just one last clip from this totally deranged event. Here is Ron DeSantis saying woke seven times in 20 seconds. So because the woke represents a war on truth, we have no other recourse but to wage a war on woke.

We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die. Yeah, there you go. So this is not a good idea. DeSantis donors aren't happy with this. And the polling shows, as I told you two weeks ago, most people are on the side of wokeness. But let's now talk about the trouble that DeSantis is creating for himself with this anti woke crusade. One of the difficulties right now of running against Donald Trump in a Republican primary is that if you go completely anti MAGA, there may not be enough Republicans in the party for you to win the primary. But if you go Maga in facing off against Trump, well, why would somebody vote for your Maga when the Maga guy is actually running? And this is the problem that Ron DeSantis is donors are now identifying.

Fascinating article in Business Insider, DeSantis mega donors revolt in private chat, saying if they wanted a MAGA candidate, they would donate to Trump, according to this report. Really, really interesting stuff. A group of wealthy dissent. This donors criticized him in a private chat. Rolling Stone obtained screenshots of the group chat between Republican mega donors. Earlier this week, a wealthy Florida donor publicly said he'd changed his mind about

financially supporting DeSantis. This is the latest indication that the Florida governor's wealthy supporters are starting to revolt with a Republican mega donor recently going public about no longer wanting to support to financially support DeSantis is yet to be announced campaign. The screenshots reveal these wealthy Republican donors questioning the governor's chances of beating former President Donald Trump in a Republican primary. They're correct to be doing that. The polling is an absolute disaster for DeSantis lately.

A series of recent political missteps, including continuing with his out of state publicity tour while massive flooding took place in Fort Lauderdale, appear to have enraged these donors. Rolling Stone reported responding to the Fort Lauderdale appear to have enraged these donors, Rolling Stone reported. Responding to the Fort Lauderdale incident, the media outlet said one donor wrote, What the F is wrong with R.D.? Another donor asked who in the group could reach DeSantis the quickest to complain about it. Several other donors were furious that the governor referred to Russia's invasion of

Ukraine as a, quote, territorial dispute, with one calling on DeSantis to walk back the comment. DeSantis did later go back on the comment after receiving criticism. According to a Rolling Stone source familiar with the communication, the donor who called for the walkback wrote a livid response. The source said, quote, My understanding is that the message was if we wanted an effing MAGA candidate, we would donate to Donald Trump. Other donors wrote they wanted the Santas to hit back harder at Trump, with one describing him as a damn wimp. This is this is just delightful. OK, so there's a couple of different things going on here. Yes, the Santas has obsessed himself with expanding the don't say gay bill, which we will

talk about on today's bonus show, the Disney stuff, the anti woke stuff, etc. He also is alienating Florida mega donors by leaving Florida and selling books in South Carolina and Chicago and wherever else he's been while Florida is having actual problems. Now the issue there's a couple of different issues here to talk about. It could be argued and I believe it could be argued accurately that if you really want to do something different in the Republican Party right now, it's not DeSantis that you need to turn to. Really, it's like Mitt Romney or even further away.

Liz Cheney. Now, I'm not saying that the Republican Party right now has enough people in it who actually want to get away from MAGA and would go for something like Romney or Liz Cheney. I don't know that that's the case. And in fact, it very well may not be. The problem with the Santas is that the Santas is to MAGA. He frames himself as sort of like the reasonable MAGA, the effective MAGA, the MAGA who won't

get himself in trouble because of the lack of decorum that Trump has or whatever the case may be. But that's a really difficult situation for Republicans, because with Trump under indictment and yet still in a commanding lead in the Republican primary, but mostly losing to Biden in hypothetical general election polls, which may still change if you're Ron DeSantis, you're in the situation of, well, I'm going to be like Trump, but better. You can't beat Trump at MAGA. You just can't. Even if it's accurate that DeSantis would be more effective at MAGA because he wouldn't get himself into as many self-inflicted problems as Trump did. You can't out MAGA the MAGA guy. So that's not going to work. If you say I denounce Trump

altogether, including Trumpism and all of the things that are wrapped up with MAGA right now, at least based on the polling, we're seeing you can't actually beat Trump in a primary right now. So it's really quite a circumstance between a rock and a hard place. You could say that the Republican Party finds itself today. And this is what happens when you choose the rage voters. As I explained yesterday, they created anger, fear, voting, and they blew it up to historic proportions recently. We didn't just find ourselves randomly in a situation where conservative voters are angry and also misinformed. The misinformed anger has been a strategy for the Republican Party once they

realize they can't win on policy anymore. And this goes back a long time. You could go back. I mean, if you read Waves of Rancor, which is a really good book, maybe out of print now, you will learn about how a lot of this started in the early AM radio talk radio era, so on and so forth. And so DeSantis is broader problem is you can't out MAGA MAGA. But if you denounce MAGA, it's not clear you can win. The narrower problem over the last month or two is he just won't move on. He's sticking with don't say gay. He's sticking with trans. He's sticking with Disney and he's sticking with anti woke. Trump would have moved on to the next thing by now. And it's not like Trump's political instincts are necessarily perfect by any means. But Trump would have either by accident or by advice from people around him

or by instinct moved on to something new. DeSantis is sticking with these issues on which he is actually losing not only many of the voters, but also his donors. This is going to be a fascinating campaign. I love the complete crash and burn of it. And I'm also aware that there's a strategic component, which is like, who would we rather Biden face based on the polling we're seeing right now? We'd rather Biden face Trump if indeed Biden is going to run for reelection, which he says he is, but has not actually filed for at this point in time. Let me know your thoughts. Make sure you have subscribed to the YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. What a packed show that I have for you today. Are you tired of using words like very all the time? Very good. Very busy. Very tired.

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Remember that you can sign up for membership with the David Pakman show at join Pacman dot com. All sorts of goodies and perks available, including an extra show every single day. Commercial free audio and video streams of the show. The David Pakman show soundboard on the website, as well as invites to members only town hall events. Sign up at join Pakman dot com coupon code 24 starts now. Always available to you. Radical and repugnant reactionary Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene globally

debased and humiliated herself yesterday during a hearing. This is a hearing during which she attacked the witness, Alejandro Mayorkas, and also accused fellow member of the House, Eric Swalwell, of, I guess, sleeping with a Chinese spy was the language that she used. We're going to look at that in a moment. This was so against not only common sense and decorum, but also the rules of these hearings that Marjorie Taylor Greene was banned from speaking for the rest of the hearing after this completely unhinged rant.

Here she calls Mayorkas a liar. Her words are taken down and then it is noted that she is no longer allowed to speak, no longer allowed to speak, no longer allowed to speak. Outrage, complete outrage, where China is poisoning America's children, poisoning our teenagers, poisoning our young people. How long are you going to let this go on? Congresswoman, let me assure you that we're not letting it go on. We are fighting this. No, I reclaim my time.

You're a liar. You are letting this go on in the numbers. Well, actually, I want you to take the words of the speaker down. So in making a ruling on this, it's pretty clear that the rules state you can't impugn someone's character. Identifying or calling someone a liar is unacceptable in this committee. And I make the ruling that we strike those words. Sorry, just a point of order. It's a legitimate question. You're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Did you move to take the words down or to strike them, Mr. Thompson? Sorry, I just stepped in. Yeah, take them down.

So, yeah. My understanding is if words are taken down, that means that the member can no longer speak in whatever the proceeding is. Oh, boy. Those words were said.

That's Congressman Goldman there. Personal inquiry, point of personal inquiry. That's there's no such thing. That's the best point of personal inquiry, please. That doesn't exist. Marjorie, sorry. House when we strike, it does terminate the time of the individual who is speaking. Yes. So the gentlelady is no longer recognized. The chair now recognizes Mr. Ivey, I believe. Can I make a point of inquiry, Mr. Chairman? You can. So the ruling was that because she used the word liar, that was taken down, which I agree with.

Yes. But accusing... A statement of fact is very similar to the posters that Mr... There's no statement of fact. There's no statement of fact. There's no factual basis for the statement. We're not here to debate this, okay? And the ruling was made by the chair that these previous words were not against the rules of Clause 1 clause four of rule 17. But to tell someone that they

are a liar is. All right. So Marjorie Taylor Greene losing her right to speak. These people are really the worst of the worst of American politics at this point. And I have to say that for me, one of the it's sad enough that there are districts in this country. With a majority of those who choose to vote willing to vote for nonsense like Marjorie Taylor Greene, that's sad in and of itself, that someone like her can even become an elected member of the House of Representatives. But the even sadder part. Is that there are many people in this country,

mega types who will see this and they'll say she was right, he is a liar and she is being silenced because the left perceives her to be such a strong force, a completely delusional, imaginary made up scenario. Bonus clip. She also goes after friend of the show, Congressman Eric Swalwell, a Democrat on the committee. And it's hard to imagine a less less classy moment than this. He was kept up for months after Kanye West said that he was going to declare death con three on the Jews. Mr. Secretary, do you believe that all of us have a responsibility to elevate our rhetoric and to denounce anti-Semitism and anti-police rhetoric in this country so that Jewish Americans and police

officers can be safer? Congressman, I do. Thank you, and I yield back. The gentleman yields, and now I recognize the gentle lady from Georgia, Ms. Green. That was quite entertaining from someone that had a sexual relationship with a Chinese spy. And everyone knows it. I move to take our words down. Completely inappropriate. Yes. Stand by just a second while we research the rule. And as we know how that turned out, ultimately she was banned from speaking. True, truly a disgusting person. And it really shouldn't come as a shock to us that the same person who was stalking David

Hogg would behave in this way at a hearing. And this gets us to what I really want to introduce to you today. The anatomy of the right wing propaganda cycle. Let's see if we can figure out what mechanism is at play underlying a lot of these conspiracy theories. We're going to talk now about the right wing media propaganda cycle. This is not dissimilar to money laundering in a sense where the money starts dirty and ends up clean. Maybe not a perfect analogy, but let's think through the cycle. How does the right force nonsense and imaginary issues into what we might call the mainstream of the political

media discussion? The first step is get some coverage of your crazy idea or claim somewhere, even if it is not reporting it as if it's true, but reporting that you said it either way is good and it starts the propaganda cycle. So it might start, for example, in a small local news outlet of some kind. Maybe you'll have a local reporter tweeting about it. And often it will come from some kind of small time news agency, often understaffed. They don't have the resources to fact check every story. They've got tight deadlines and pressure from editors, so they've got to pump stuff out. So if you can plant a rumor on one of those platforms, you're already well on

your way to starting this cycle of right wing propaganda. And this could be, you know, there are cat litter boxes in the bathrooms at some schools for the students who identify as cats. That's that's one possibility. Get something written about it somewhere. Get tweets from reporters, even if it's just it is being claimed that this is going on. The second step is you take those tweets or local news articles or whatever the case may be, and you then use social media to amplify it based on those initial bits of reporting. You use that to generate more attention about it, because as we know, there are so many people on Twitter that if they see Marjorie Taylor Greene or whoever retweet something that says they've got cat litter boxes in schools for students who identify as cats, 95 percent of the people who see it and

retweet it won't check. What is the original source? My I always tell you, critically analyze primary sources to try to understand what you're being fed. You can use that initial thing to then amplify it on social media and then it'll take on a life of its own. Social media becomes a great breeding ground for amplifying rumor and conspiracy theory. Even better, if you know how to use bots and trolls, you can get the rumors to spread like wildfire. And before you know it, they've gone viral on Twitter, on Reddit, wherever the case may be. Step three is you want to upgrade the credibility of the propaganda through an outlet like maybe an OAN or a Newsmax with the goal of eventually getting it onto Fox News, where the likes of Tucker Carlson can bring it up, not yet reporting

on it, but asking questions. Right. And this is a classic propaganda technique starts with some local news story based on conjecture amplified on social media by Republicans. And then Tucker says, listen, we need to be allowed to ask questions about cat, cat litter boxes in school bathrooms. The American people have a right to know about cat litter boxes in bathrooms and the left doesn't want to talk about it. Well, maybe the left doesn't want to talk about it because there's no evidence. That's the third step in the cycle where we need to be allowed to talk about this. And if you can argue that someone is trying to stop you from talking about it even better,

then you get to the fourth step, which is sort of what we saw yesterday in the hearing from which we saw clips earlier in the show with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Politicians need to start demanding answers and maybe they'll hold a hearing. And instead of actually asking questions, they just rant and rant and rant. And it's all because the public has a right to know. And this is where these propaganda stories can really gain momentum. Once politicians get involved in a formal way, the rumor is now a story, even if it was always based on nothing and the media can't ignore it. In this case, it's about, you know, Mallorca slide and all these different things. The last step is you cement the rumor for an election cycle by just sort of keeping it going long enough. And that's when it becomes fact in the minds of many people. The longer you can keep

it in the news cycle, the more that a large portion of the electorate will believe that it is true. It starts to be referred to as truth and then it can last an entire election cycle or longer. There are so many causes of this propaganda cycle. But Marjorie Taylor Greene has added this new layer, which is you just yell the conspiracy theories at a witness to whom you're supposed to be asking questions. That is now the epitome of this. So what should we do? What can we do?

The most important thing is to understand the cycle. And remember, if everybody understood critically, analyze primary sources before you retweet, before you fall for it, before you start talking about it as if it's true, that if everybody understood that if we were vigilant, if we actually tried to understand where we are getting these claims from, we would be able to short circuit these propaganda cycles getting going in the first place, of course, due to a lack of media literacy, hyper partisanship and lack of education and so much ignorance that we see. It's very hard to short circuit it. But this is the anatomy of that cycle. And Marjorie

Taylor Greene sort of knows how to take advantage of it. That's for sure. We'll have all of the clips I played today on our Instagram, which you can find at David Pakman show. And of course, on our YouTube channel, make sure you are subscribed to the YouTube channel, YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. By now, all of us know how creepy it is to talk to a friend about something and then get ads that are related. When you use a free email service from a big tech corporation, your emails are scanned, even if you're emailing your spouse or your doctor, which is why I recommend start mail, the email service that never scans or analyzes your email.

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I really hate to do this because he's a super nice guy who I've actually had dinner with in a group and we have a lot of contacts and friends in common. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Bobby Kennedy Jr. has launched a completely off the rails presidential campaign based on anti-vax opportunism and pro-Putin talking points. And it's really, really sad that this is going on. As I've mentioned before on the show, Bobby Kennedy Jr. is sort of like linked to other folks that are in progressive media. And I once had dinner with him in Las Vegas and he was super nice and engaging, told interesting stories, extraordinarily polite

and just a nice guy to be around. And then the pandemic hit. And what has what was before sort of a more casual skepticism of vaccines became going fully anti-vax recently pictured with Michael Flynn, just completely embraced by the most extreme anti-vaccine elements. And earlier this month, Bobby Kennedy filed his candidacy, making him the fourth member of his family to seek the presidency of the United States. He had an event yesterday in Boston in which he, quite frankly, ranted for 90 minutes to the point where even people behind him were starting to become visibly uncomfortable. Here is Bobby Kennedy Jr. praising Donald Trump's

instincts not to close the country down during covid. Take a listen. President Trump said, well, these bureaucrats came at him from every side and they were all telling him he had to do that. He had the right instincts. He knew that he shouldn't close down the country, but he did it. He got rolled by his bureaucracy. And I'm going to tell you a quick story during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yeah, there were a lot of those side stories, which is why this thing ended up lasting an hour and a half. It is important to mention that there is wide reporting that many members of the Kennedy family are supporting Joe Biden over Bobby Kennedy Jr. in the primary. And I guess I should mention Bobby Kennedy Jr. running as a Democrat, although I don't really know at this point sort of like what policies line him up with the Democratic

Party. Here is a clip sort of in the middle of this extremely long 90 minute rant. And as you can see, the folks in the background, their expressions have changed pretty dramatically. And it was it was quite painful, I will say. I'm in a lawsuit involving Amazon for censoring one of my books. So they were censoring people who criticize the lockdowns while they were raking in the money from the law. And it's hard not to laugh because the crowd he lost the crowd the way Trump loses a crowd just going on and on. And yes, he talks about he's being censored and now he's going to fight back.

What censoring? What on earth is going on here? This is what this is what happens when you censor somebody for 18 years. I got a lot to talk about. They should have shut me up that long. Now I'm going to really let loose on the next 18 months. They're going to hear a lot from me. So listen, I support anybody who wants to challenge Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination. Absolutely do it. Here's just a guy who I can't say is a better alternative to me in absolutely any way.

He of course got the hero's welcome on Tucker Carlson's program last night after this very brave launching of an anti-vax campaign for president. And what he did was he showed up on Tucker Carlson's show and he repeated pro-Putin propaganda about death rates in the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Nobody talks about this. There's 14000 Ukrainian civilians who have died, but 300000 troops. Russians are killing Ukrainians at a seven to one to eight to one ratio. They cannot sustain this. What we're being told about this war is just not true.

No, it's not true. There you go. So finding common ground with the pro Putin people and with Tucker Carlson, this is a claim based on a fake doctored report of Russian propaganda put out that has been conclusively debunked and it is still being repeated by Bobby Kennedy Jr. to Tucker Carlson. So essentially an anti-vax pro-Putin campaign, I guess it is truly sad to see this Bobby Kennedy Jr., not only a really nice guy, but a long history of powerful work defending the environment, protecting the planet, dealing with climate change, Riverkeeper Alliance attorney working on these issues. It's genuinely depressing to see what has happened with Bobby Kennedy Jr.

And also, I guess now at his rally, his wife, the actress from Curb Your Enthusiasm and other shows, Cheryl Hines, was there and introduced him and seemed to be behind the whole thing. There was quite a bit of drama involving her during the the heart of the pandemic, wherein while Bobby Kennedy Jr. was out rallying, railing against vaccines, Cheryl required everyone who went to their holiday party to be vaccinated and sort of it seemed as though maybe she wasn't on board with the entire thing. But apparently now she is. So this is not a candidate I will be supporting. I don't yet know who I will be supporting in the Democratic primary because I don't yet know who all the candidates are going to be. Joe Biden has not even announced that he is running for reelection.

So when I know who I will be supporting, I will let you know. The first step would be let's figure out if Joe Biden is actually running for reelection. Donald Trump is now visibly panicking about not only the existing arrest that already took place, but about possible forthcoming arrests. And he has declared that Joe Biden is guilty in another one of these sick orange swollen videos with the bizarre lighting in this clip. Donald Trump attacks the special prosecutor, Jack Smith, as a lunatic and says that Biden is guilty. Not exactly law and order, is it to say someone who hasn't even been in charge or there's no evidence

that Biden's guilty of anything? He's no, he he's guilty. Trump hating prosecutor Jack Smith, a lunatic, should go get Biden for what he did. He's very guilty. Very. Biden is not just guilty. He's very, very guilty. And this is, of course, another example of what I spoke to you about on geez, was it Tuesday or Wednesday? The abandonment of their own stated principles by Republicans. We're about law and order and due process. Are you, though? Because you want the January 6th rioters to get special treatment. You want Hillary and you want Biden and you want Obama locked up, even though they haven't even been charged with any crimes. And you're now declaring people guilty, of course, without ever explaining what crimes you even think they committed. When people ask Trump, what what is Obamagate anyway? He says, you know what it is. It's the biggest political

crime of the century. Oh, yeah. But like what laws were violated? No says, you know what it is. It's the biggest political crime of the century. Oh, yeah. But like what laws were violated? No, that's that's fake news. That question is fake news. This entire thing continuing with Donald Trump going through his typical grievances, including that every investigation of him is a scam. 80 percent of the public think that your former president, Donald J. Trump, me, is being treated very unfairly for political reasons and due to the fact that he is leading in all of the polls. I love this third person stuff.

He, Trump, is leading. Eighty percent of the people agree with that. I say these prosecutorial scams and hoaxes are all about election interference and Republican leadership must get tough and must be smart. But we're not going to have a country left. Yep. There will be no country left if Trump is held accountable for the things he allegedly did. Trump then Trump furious, I guess now with Republicans who don't like him continuing to be furious. He actually tells people if you turn on the TV, even if you're watching Fox News, if you see Karl Rove there or Bill Barr or Paul Ryan, you got to turn that TV off.

You see rhinos, Karl Rove, Bill Barr or Paul Ryan on your television screen. Just turn to a different station or turn it off. Turn off that set as fast as you can. You're frankly better off watching Democrats. They are the worst. Yep. So this is basically I don't want you to hear any of the things that some Republicans are saying about me because not every Republican likes me. So just turn the TV off, kind of treating his followers like little children. Just don't even let them watch it. Don't let them think for themselves. Trump then going back to his obsession about Chinese restaurants and Chinatown when it comes to documents. When will they be

looking at the Biden documents, many of which were brought in from Chinatown and then sent to Boston? Is this why China paid him and Hunter millions and millions of dollars? Speaker 1 Now, many of you are wondering what the hell is Trump talking about Chinatown? Trump seized on some story whose details I previously researched and sort of escaped me now, where there was a period during which the during which NARA, the National Archives, was temporarily storing some documents, I believe, for a presidential library in a building that previously housed a laundry and also a Chinese restaurant, if I recall correctly. And now it's about Chinatown. And it's it's it's just insanity that this is still something Trump is focusing on.

And then, of course, lastly, this is a common way that Trump wraps speeches, declaring himself the most honest person ever anywhere, not just among American presidents, but just anywhere. After eight years of various politically motivated investigations, hoaxes, scams and witch hunts. This must make me the most honest and honorable man anywhere in the world. Must. Nobody in history has ever been through the scrutiny that I have. We're going to make America great again. We are going to get rid of these lunatics. There you go. Well, I am all for getting rid of lunatics. That is absolutely the case. So what is causing Trump to be triggered in this way? It's actually not completely clear.

So let's go through it. If you look at polling, the polling is like not great for Trump in the general, but it's very good in the primary. We look at recent general election polls. We've got a YouGov economist poll, a B plus rated poll which was released two days ago. Biden versus Trump. This one has Trump up one among registered voters and it has Trump up for among what is the and I actually don't remember what the A stands for.

Is this all voters will be registered? I'm not sure what that is. A OK, there is an earlier YouGov poll sponsored by Yahoo News, which has Trump up to over Joe Biden, but with only something like 70 percent of respondents choosing one or the other Biden versus Trump in a morning consult poll. It's Biden plus three. OK, so like it's roughly even with Biden, you could say. If you then look at Republican primary polls, Trump is just crushing. I mean, again, as I said before, unless something really changes, unless DeSantis enters this race with some kind of blockbuster and something terrible happens to Donald Trump,

I don't see how DeSantis is going to be the guy to beat him in a new YouGov poll. Trump is ahead of DeSantis by 22 in a Yahoo News YouGov poll. Trump is ahead of DeSantis by 24 University of New Hampshire poll for the New Hampshire primary. Trump leads by 20. It's really very strong for Donald Trump. So is the polling the reason that Trump is flipping out? Doesn't seem to be. Is it that Donald Trump is catching wind that actually being under indictment in New York already and potentially more forthcoming indictments are really going to get in the way of him being able to run the campaign. He wants to run it when he wants to do more rallies and the entire thing that could be. And in fact, there have been rumors that by the end of this month, April, although at

this point it doesn't it's not clear it's going to happen. There were rumors that Trump's second arrest was going to take place in the last week of April. Maybe Trump has caught wind of that. It's not really clear. And then thirdly, is there something going on in terms of fundraising and big donors where Trump is quietly hearing that there are big donors he would like to have in his corner who are going to either wait or go to Santas or someone else? It's a total hypothetical. And again, we are not seeing evidence of that. In fact, at the top of the show today, I told you about the reality that many DeSantis would

be mega donors are furious with him and saying, what the hell is he doing leaving Florida when there's flooding and gas lines? I'm not going to donate to DeSantis. So that also doesn't seem to be the reason that Trump would be so triggered. We don't actually know the answer. And I think one of the things we have to come to terms with is that with Donald Trump, there is often no obvious explanation for his erratic behavior. After the break, I am briefly going to talk to you about a more specific sort of kerfuffle

that came out of this video, which is Trump's much more direct focus on Ron DeSantis, which has a lot of interesting things underlying it. We'll get to that after the break. When you're using websites and apps, your device sends out data about you into the open, who you are, where you go, things you like that data then gets sold around for advertising purposes, which is why every time I connect to the Internet, I use a VPN to hide my IP address.

And our sponsor, Private Internet Access, is the most trustworthy VPN on the market. It's the only VPN that has proven multiple times in court. They don't log your activity. Private Internet Access protects you from the prying eyes of hackers, your Internet service provider, tech companies. Private Internet access is also super fast for streaming and for downloads. You can watch your favorite streaming platforms as if you're in another country like the UK to access cool new content. And with just one account, you can protect unlimited devices all

at the same time. This is really a game changer. Private Internet access is giving my audience 83 percent off. That's 203 a month plus four months free. Go to PIA VPN dot com slash David. The link is in the podcast notes. All right. I deliberately separated out this particular portion of Donald Trump's latest unhinged speech that he gave or statement to the camera. Not really a speech, kind of more just a video. I don't even know what to call it at this point. It's how he's communicating with his so-called followers. I wanted to separate it out because there's a much bigger story behind it that's building

among the Republican Party. At the top of the show, I told you that there are many DeSantis potential mega donors who are furious with DeSantis and getting away from him. But there's another movement that's going on. There's a movement that's going on from within the Trump camp to pound and crush DeSantis so badly now before he even announces with the goal of getting DeSantis to not even try. Wait till 2028 or forget about it altogether is sort of the idea. The right wing Washington Times reports DeSantis has Trump campaigns foot on his throat, seen as true threat to ex-presidents 2024 hopes. And the idea of what's going on here is that Trump on some level does worry that if

DeSantis did get into the race, doesn't mean DeSantis would win, but it would be a fight that maybe Donald Trump doesn't want to have. And so the idea is maybe Trump can get DeSantis to not even get involved in this race altogether. And this brings us to this particular moment from the speech, from the video. I don't know. I keep calling it a speech from the video that Donald Trump published yesterday where he just ranted and raved about the Santas, his poll numbers. And this is considered part of the effort to prevent the contested primary Trump still

winning by 20 in most polls, but what would be a contested primary and instead open the door for Trump to face off against twos, threes and fours, as we call them, people polling two, three and 4% and have a much easier path to the Republican nomination. Take a listen to this. Speaker 3 getting lots of job requests from people currently working for the Social Security, Medicare cutting, the sanctimonious campaign. Ron's poll numbers are dropping so fast and furious that many people are speculating he's not going to run. He just hired Kiss of Death Jeffro.

He's a kiss of death. I can tell you a lot of the people that we defeated who were represented by Jeffro, Kiss of Death, who dropped young Kim. You know who young Kim is to see if he can help. And he's going to help Ron, but I don't think he's going to help him much because I'm leading in Texas by 42 points, Iowa and New Hampshire by a lot overall by close to 40 and by 10 against the scammer Joe Biden.

OK, so Trump is not wrong. Trump is genuinely polling really, really well in the Republican primary. And if you look at just the trends, this is real clear politics is a chart of the trends. I'll describe to you what's going on. You see a purple line, which is Trump, and you see a green line, which is DeSantis. And you do indeed see that starting around March 11th and accelerating dramatically around March 27th, Donald Trump has gained significantly in the Republican primary polls. And Ron DeSantis has started to decline significantly and the decline

doesn't seem to be stopping right now. I already spoke with you earlier in the show. There's a number of different reasons that this is going on. There's a Washington Post article after high flying start. DeSantis hit stumbling blocks on the road to twenty twenty four. This article does mention the Republican mega donors that are moving away from Ron DeSantis. This mentions that many Republicans aren't thrilled with the six week abortion ban. Again, it's potential mega donors, maybe not because they personally are pro choice, but they recognize the direction that the country is and continues to has been moving and continues to move on that issue. They believe that DeSantis is making unforced errors, which include not only

signing that abortion ban, but having to clarify the comments on Ukraine being a territorial dispute. As I mentioned, he's striking Republicans as distant in personal interactions and on and on and on. But he's still in second place. So there is now sort of this overt. It's no longer it's no longer a secret. I don't know that it ever was, but it's no longer a secret that Trump would like to knock out DeSantis and get him not to even run. Is that likely to happen? There's two different perspectives on this perspective. Number one is even if you're only polling 30 percent or what was it exactly in that real clear politics, DeSantis is polling on average 24 percent right now. Even if you're only polling 24 percent, it's difficult to get away from running when it will put you on the national stage up against

Trump, which is a great opportunity to get attention, which can backfire if Trump makes fun of you in a way that's effective, but gives you a ton of national attention. And you probably to some degree think to yourself, I mean, listen, Nikki Haley announced and she's polling. What is she polling? She's polling three percent. And, you know, Ramaswamy announced that he's polling one percent. I haven't announced anything yet. And I'm polling 24 percent. I'm sure I can build that number if I actually announce and run. So on the one hand, that would be the argument that makes it very difficult for you to say I'm not

going to run. On the other hand, if you're patient, it does seem logical to me to think, you know, I'm pulling 24 percent, but what's my ceiling is is most of the, you know, Haley, Pompeo, Cheney is is all of that just going to go to Trump who's already over 50 percent. Do I really have a shot here or do I have a better shot at waiting until 2028? What might interfere with that is that there is uncertainty. You don't know what will happen to your political career between now and 2028. And so so maybe it is difficult for DeSantis to get away with it from it. I don't think that it is 100 percent that DeSantis runs, but I think it is the most likely outcome at this time. And from the people I've spoken to in Florida who are sort of like

tangentially surrounding the DeSantis camp, there is a lot of confidence that the decision has already been made by DeSantis, that he's not going back and that no polling collapse short of going to zero is going to zero is going to dissuade him from running. We'll watch it and we'll follow it very closely. All right. I don't know why I find this next clip so damn funny, but I was laughing hysterically this morning watching this. There's this kooky Republican Congressman James Comer. James Comer is obsessed with talking about how they're going to go after Joe Biden. They're going to investigate this. They're going to get him. They're going to get Biden's family.

Now, you all know that that's ridiculous. But James Comer appeared last night on the Hannity Fox News program. I guess the Hannity Fox News program now is shot with a live audience. And despite there being no evidence of crimes committed by the Biden family, Comer is claiming to be super confident that they are closing in. The walls are closing in on the Biden family. So this is this is a silly, nonsensical thing. But Hannity's crowd starts cheering when he says it. They just cheer.

Do they not realize that the walls aren't closing in on the Biden family? I don't know. But there's a little detail that I don't know. But there's a little detail that I don't know why this is so funny when the crowd starts cheering. And this is very visual. So I'll describe it to people who are listening. When Comer says this, the crowd starts cheering. The camera pans to the live audience for Hannity's show. And you see two people. I don't know if they're a couple or if they just happen to be sitting next to each other and they are clapping and chewing gum so aggressively. Why are you

chewing gum at a live taping of a TV show? Like, I don't know why I find it so weird, but I could not stop laughing when I saw this this morning. Check this out. It's all ridiculous. The the walls are closing in. No, they're not the crowd cheering. What do you guys do? You guys believe this? But the gum chewing is just too much for me. It all points back to Joe Biden. And we're going to continue until we get the truth to the American people. But I can say this shot. The walls are closing in on the Biden family. We appreciate you being with us. Thank you. The people chewing gum, they look like ruminants chewing their cud. What the guy on screen left, the gum is sticking out of his mouth. Why?

Why is there so much gum chewing happening during this show? And of course, the truth is the walls are not closing in on Joe Biden's family. If they're closing in, they're closing in at what we might call a glacial pace. Well, we might have the next we might have the next ice age or Trump's health care plan before the Bidens actually end up indicted. So people very excited on the Hannity program for something they're being told is happening, which simply is not happening. I'm not a betting man, but that's something I'm willing to bet on now. Of course, remember, I'm for law and order. So I say

if there is evidence of criminality. Against anyone, whether it's a Democratic president, a Republican president, a speaker of the House of Vice President, if there's evidence that someone committed a crime, investigate it. If you find that indeed it looks like they did commit a crime, charge them, try them. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying I don't believe that there is going to be any evidence that the Biden family committed any crimes. All right, let's move on. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. You know, I've said it many times before. Criticize me for things I said. If you don't like them, if I got it wrong. But don't criticize me for things I haven't talked about.

Here is a caller who is furious with what I said about Manosphere darling Andrew Tate. Except I don't know what this guy's talking about. I didn't ever say any of this stuff. Listen to this. David Liptar Pacman, what are you in my own cook? My low cuck. Linsky, what does that even mean? I come out and apologize for for for for coming to the conclusion that Andrew Tate is automatically guilty after being arrested. I find it funny that you guys had never talked about it once. I mean, pretty much at all. And then all of a sudden when you get arrested, you guys you guys make videos about him.

What? What? Getting arrested or the videos coming out talking about how he was released. And why don't you guys apologize? Apologize for what? What you said, you guys were all convinced that he was pretty much guilty by all accounts of sex trafficking and whatnot. And now he's been let go after four months.

It's crazy to think that once upon a time, the liberals were for or against the government and all of their shenanigans. And now it's the Trump supporters. And now you guys are for government everything. Once upon a time, the liberals were for or against the government and all of their shenanigans. And now it's the Trump supporters. And now you guys are for government. Everything you guys are not questioning, questioning anything government related. Dude, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. So Milo Kuklinski, I don't know what that's about.

As far as I'm concerned, there are two claims made about me. One, that when Andrew Tate was arrested, I said he's pretty much guilty. And two, that I had never spoken about Andrew Tate prior to that. Both statements are false. First and foremost, I've spoken about Andrew Tate in a segment about the Manosphere, in which I talked also about Liver King and Jordan Peterson. So I have spoken about Andrew Tait once before. Secondly, I haven't weighed in at all about the Andrew Tait arrest. And in fact, during a live stream, someone said, David, what do you think about Andrew Tait being arrested? And I said, I don't think anything I don't have anything to say. It's just it's not really a topic on this

show. I don't know. He's accused of crimes. I don't know. I just I just have no idea. So listen, I'm glad to defend the things I've said on this show, and I'm glad to correct things I've said on this show if they are wrong. But don't call me about things I haven't said. Call someone who's actually said it, but you're wasting everybody's time. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. Florida has expanded its don't say gay rules to include up to and including 12th grade. And this is part of why Republican mega donors are not happy with Rhonda Sanctus. We'll talk about it on the bonus show. Secondly, there are more calls for schools to drop Native American mascots and some schools could end up losing

state money over this. Very interesting what's going on. And lastly, we now have two shootings that have taken place stemming from a mistaken address. And this is putting the spotlight back on stand your ground laws the way we really haven't seen since stand your ground laws were at the heart of the George Zimmerman Trayvon Martin killing years and years ago. So we're going to talk about stand your ground when producer Pat joins me on the bonus show. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money, sir. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. That's exactly right. We're going to be making some money on the bonus show. You can sign up at join Pacman dot com. You can get instant access to the bonus show, the commercial free audio and video streams

of the show, the members only soundboard Obama, as well as getting invited to the member only town halls, the next of which will be announced very soon. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. Use the coupon code indicted or indicated. Both work. Both get you a discount. I'll see you then.