The David Pakman Show - 4/21/25: Easter meltdowns explode as censorship grows, Signalgate returns

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Allison Riggs, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, joins David to discuss the current attempt to steal her recent election from her and what our viewers can do -- A total meltdown is taking place at Pete Hegseth's Pentagon with mass quitting and the belief that Hegseth may not last much longer -- A second Signal chat fiasco, this one involving Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's wife and other family members receiving sensitive information -- Donald Trump's bizarre Easter message stuns and confuses, as usual -- An allegedly pro-Trump MAGA lunatic commits a mass shooting at Florida State University -- A desperate Donald Trump unleashes a series of outrageous Truth Social posts confirming that he knows his tariff policies are failing -- The Navy censors author Ryan Holiday for planning to discuss books banned by the Naval Academy -- David has been warned, as a naturalized US citizen, not to leave the country at this time -- On the Bonus Show: Thousands join anti-Trump protests across the country, White House solicits corporate sponsors for Easter Egg Roll, White House changes COVID.gov webpage to one supporting the lab leak theory, much more... 🤖 Sponsored by Venice: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off a Pro Account at https://venice.ai/pakman 💪 AG1 is offering you a FREE $76 GIFT when you sign up at https://drinkag1.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get 20% OFF sitewide at https://helixsleep.com/pakman 💻 Sponsored by Private Internet Access: 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/Pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow

. welcome to the show. Everybody. We really learned this weekend what happens when you choose your secretary of defense by watching Fox and friends. It's not good. A complete meltdown is happening inside the Pentagon under Donald Trump's secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. And I don't mean policy disagreements here. I mean, full on chaos, leaks, purges, classified information floating around signal group chats. Yes, another signal group chat and Elon Musk in the mix of it all and mass quitting is now taking place. You're not having a stroke.

This is real life in the Department of Defense under Donald Trump's second term secretary of defense. So here's what's going on. First, Hegseth, who was barely confirmed after getting grilled over allegations of sexual assault and showing up to work smelling of alcohol. He has now lost four top aides in a single day. One of them, his own chief of staff, Joe Casper.

The other three were fired under suspicion of leaking classified information, even though they were reportedly about to be cleared. Now they've been fired. What's really going on as usual? We don't know to make it worse. Hegseth's team tried anonymously smearing them in the press. This is like middle school drama with the nuclear codes, which is very risky stuff. These were not small leaks. They were referring to military strike plans, carrier movements, American intelligence operations, briefings on China. And by the way, the briefings on China almost delivered to Elon Musk, who still has massive business interests in China. And it gets even more absurd. Pete Hegseth, the guy who apparently thinks signal is like a secure filing cabinet of

some kind. He shared Yemen strike plans in a group chat that included his wife and his brother. Uh, we will get to that in a little bit. So now classified or supposed to be classified military operations texted to journalists as we know from the Signalgate fiasco number one, Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic, and then also family members over a group chat like it's a weekend barbecue plan. Who's bringing the who's bringing the zucchini?

His response is a nobody was texting war plans denial where we start to wonder what is the definition of war plans itself. So we got the chat log from Jeffrey Goldberg. There were gold. There were indeed war plans there with timelines and everything. And then we now have a second signal chat we're dealing with, which we will talk about in a moment. So right now,

Pentagon insiders are saying what every single one of us is thinking and predicted for a long time, which is these are not competent people. There's a complete meltdown happening here. They simply are not able to do this job. The kicker is that this comes after Hegseth brought his Fox News producer wife into two foreign military meetings where classified information was discussed. Why? We just don't know. And now Donald Trump's inner circle is starting to put the pressure on to dump and flush Pete Hegseth, just like he did with Mark Esper, James Mattis, Rex Tillerson and all of these great patriots who were only patriotic up until the day at which they were unceremoniously axed and Trump's claim to be the best at hiring people went away. Now, Hegseth is incompetent, but the problem really is not only Pete Hegseth. This is what you get when you let a guy govern

by cable news vibes. This is the logical endpoint of a president choosing cabinet officials based on whether they appear loyal on TV and suck up to Trump while sitting on that curved couch on Fox and friends. Trump wanted loyalty and a TV presence. I guess he got it, but he also got with it a Pentagon that leaks like a sieve, a defense secretary under inspector general investigation and military operations texted to civilians, including the secretary of defense's own wife. So this is what the America first strong administration looks like. Of course, this is what I would expect from, you know, a Reddit moderator with

a Napoleon complex, not the American secretary of defense, but that's where we are. And the most dangerous part is that they continue to pretend that this is completely normal. If you're wondering why the Pentagon seems more like a failed reality show than a military institution right now, it's not an accident. This is the cost of turning Fox News costume parties into policy makers and the rest of us, the civilians, and I'm including the service members in this as well. The whole world, we foot the bill, we end up terrified and humiliated. And then why is Pete Hegseth's wife getting plans texted to her?

Let's try to figure that out next. Apparently, handing out sensitive military information to your spouse is now normal, at least in Pete Hegseth's Pentagon. We have another signal chat fiasco. The New York Times is now reporting that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a private signal chat, another one to share detailed information about American airstrikes in Yemen. This includes the flight schedules of F-18s with a group that included his wife, his brother and his personal lawyer. None of them have a legitimate interest or a legitimate reason to be looped into real time military operations.

But here we are again. This was not an accidental group chat mix up. This was a second entirely separate signal chat created by Hegseth himself called Defense Team Huddle. Yeah, he used his private phone. Oh, another everything that we accuse them of doing, we are doing ourselves. He used his private phone to run it. It included a dozen or so people from Hegseth's personal circle, not government officials. One of those people is Pete Hegseth's wife, Jennifer, who used to be a producer for Fox News, not a defense department employee, not someone with a legitimate reason to be looped in on this stuff. However, she's been joining him on foreign trips.

She's been attending sensitive meetings and now apparently gets military briefings in group texts like it's a neighborhood carpool update. Who's bringing the Girl Scout cookies? And by the way, here's where the F-18s are going to be. This is not a joke. It's not a policy disagreement. It's not a difference over the vision of America's role in the world. This is a breach of basic security standards and they're doing it again. And they insisted that Hillary couldn't be trusted with stuff and Biden can't be trusted and Kamala couldn't be trusted. But this is where we are and it's not the first time. Of course, last month, Hegseth has Hegseth making those headlines for sharing the Yemen

strike details with the editor of The Atlantic that I want to be clear that was a different signal chat fiasco. That one was created by Trump's national security adviser, Mike Waltz. Also a debacle. At least that one was supposed to be for government use. This one isn't. This is some sort of bizarre private back channel set up before Hegseth was even confirmed, never migrated to a secure official communications tool, even after he became secretary of defense. Now, according to insiders, he was even warned, do not share sensitive information there. He did it anyway. What did the white house say when the story broke? No classified information was shared. This is their fallback defense. It's not a very good one because a lot of this information is supposed to be classified

per the guidelines at the office of the director of national intelligence. They've wrongly not classified some of this stuff and then are saying this is no big deal because it's not classified. A blanket denial that it violates any rules. If you ask former defense officials about what was shared, launch times, aircraft types, target details, it's all supposed to be classified. It's operational. It's dangerous. They say we are the national security people.

We keep everybody safe, but they are creating yet another national security risk here. And you've got a man with no high level government experience before this year running the Pentagon like it's a group project for friends and family. His Fox, former Fox News producer wife, brother is in the chat, personal lawyer. It's not just unprofessional. It's completely reckless. And maybe the most humiliating part globally is that they're not even embarrassed. They're going, no, no, it's fine. Nothing. Nothing classified was shared because we wrongly didn't classify it. Pathetic, almost as humiliating as Donald Trump's Easter messages. No one ever mistook Trump for being a particularly cunning

linguist, but his latest Easter post and video are downright nuts, nuttier than squirrel poop. Here's Donald Trump with you. You can really tell Trump is deeply spiritual as you listen to him deliver this Easter message. Sunday, we celebrate his glorious resurrection and proclaim, as Christians have done for nearly 2,000 years, he is risen. Through the pain and sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, we saw God's boundless love and devotion to all humanity. And in that moment of his resurrection, history was forever changed with the promise of everlasting life. As we approach this joyous Easter Sunday, I want to wish Christians everywhere a happy and beautiful and blessed holiday.

America is a nation of believers. We need God. We want God. And with his help, we will make our nation stronger, safer, greater and more prosperous and much more united than ever before. Thank you to everyone. I have a really happy Easter. You can tell that Trump really means it.

You can tell that he really connects with what he's saying and he is just genuinely a deeply spiritual person. I don't mean any of that. And then we go to the truth social post that he put up truly a blood soaked, grammatically unstable rage manifesto that he put up on his own platform. Troth central. Take a look at this. Happy Easter to all, including the radical left lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring murderers, drug lords, dangerous prisoners, the mentally insane and well-known MS 13 gang members and wife beaters back into our country. Now we're barely a sentence in. He starts accusing his political opponents of conspiring to unleash murderers and gang

members. That is not a policy critique. That's what you would expect as the result of a brain worm. And in case you were wondering, there is no left wing plan to import wife beaters. It's just projection. Trump continuing happy Easter also to the weakened, ineffective judges and law enforcement officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our nation to continue and attack so violent that it will never be forgotten.

Now Trump is attacking judges and law enforcement because they're investigating him, not because crime's out of control, but because Trump is personally, at least theoretically, facing some consequences. And that must mean the system is corrupt. This is not criticism of power. This is a wannabe autocrat demanding loyalty from the people who are supposed to check his power. He then turns his ire to Biden, where he says Sleepy Joe Biden purposefully allowed millions of criminals to enter our country totally unvetted and unchecked through an open borders policy that will go down in history as the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America. He was by far our worst and most incompetent president, a man who had absolutely no idea

what he was doing, but to him and to the person that ran and manipulated the auto pen, perhaps our real president and to all the people who cheated in the 2020 presidential election in order to get this highly destructive moron elected. I wish you with great love, sincerity and affection. A very happy Easter. Just no evidence at all about the claims regarding Biden, just like a string of randomly capitalized words and panic bait, as well as agit trash. And let's not gloss over, of course, that this is how fascist movements talk, not with facts, but with apocalyptic fiction used to justify extreme responses, which is exactly what the Trump administration

is doing. Trump is still, by the way, peddling the big lie, even in his holiday greeting of 2025. Trump is insisting he won an election nearly five years ago, which, of course, he lost. Some saw this and said, Oh, it's Trump being Trump. Once again, I guess what they mean is a lying scapegoating narcissist want to be authoritarian. It's Trump being Trump. That's exactly who he is and what he's brought back to the white house. So I hope that this to Christians as a non-Christian, maybe I can't evaluate this right as a cultural Jew. I see this Easter message and I go,

that seems whacked. It doesn't suggest to me that Trump understands the meaning and teachings of Jesus, but maybe I'm not the right person to say so to the Christians, to the Catholics, to all the folks who celebrate Easter. I want to hear from you. Was this the deeply spiritual message that you wanted from the president? Did he strike the right tone? Did this inspire in some way? Let me know. And by the way, make sure you're on my newsletter. You can email info at David Pakman dot com and say, hey, David, let me know. And by the way, make sure you're on my newsletter. Uh, you can email info at davidpacman.com and say, Hey David, get me on that newsletter. And, or you can go to davidpacman.substack.com. All right. So we all know Alexa listens to us, recommends products

based on our conversations. Meta retargets us based on our browsing and engagement history. Have you wondered what chat GPT and Claude are up to with your conversations? We feed so much of our information to these AI chat bots, thoughts, dreams, sensitive questions, business ideas. They take the information, tie it to your identity, and they can sell that to third parties and governments. Chat GPT has the former director of the NSA on their board right now. That doesn't feel awesome. It took us a long time to truly understand what social media companies were doing with

our data. We don't have to make the same mistake with AI. And that's why I've started using Venice AI, a generative AI platform that is private and permissionless. They don't spy on you. Venice AI won't censor the AI. They have a safe mode which you can turn off for both text and image generation. Messages are encrypted. Your conversation history is only stored on your I'm David Pakman, use code Pacman to get 20% off their pro plan. That's Venice dot AI slash Pacman. Get 20% off with code Pacman. The info is in the podcast notes. An important part of my daily routine every morning is a scoop of AG1 to keep my nutritional basis covered for the day.

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Let's just get it out of the way. Another school shooting, another young man radicalized, apparently by far right extremism and surprise. He was reportedly obsessed with Trump turning point USA and white supremacy. This time it happened at Florida State University. Two people are dead, six injured and the shooter, a 20 year old student who reportedly admired Hitler and was part of Charlie Kirk's turning point USA. But why don't we keep pretending that drag queens and library

books are the real problem, the real radicalizing force in the United States. Here's what we know. Uh, the shooting happened just before noon on April 17th at the student union building at Florida state university. The shooter showed up with three firearms, a handgun, a shotgun, and a third weapon that, uh, at last check is still being identified. He shot and killed two men, Robert Morales, the longtime FSU dining director and assistant football coach and Tiru Chaba, a regional VP for Aramark. Six others were injured, including a grad student who was shot while fleeing. Police responded in four minutes and shot the shooter after he refused to comply. Last report is that the shooter is in the hospital and not speaking.

Here is an interview with an individual who knew the suspect and here's what he had to say. Certainly not an unclear message. The shooter is suspected shooter has been identified by police as an FSU student by the name of Phoenix Eichner. I know it's a big school. Did you happen to know him? So I actually, I, I spent my first two years at Tallahassee, not called Tallahassee State College, but we called it TCC. And I was the president of a political talk group called the Political Roundtable, and he joined the club when I was at TCC. He we are basically our only rule was was no Nazis from colloquially speaking.

And he espoused so much white supremacist rhetoric and far right rhetoric as well to the point where we had to exercise that rule. I also know he was a member of the TCC Turning Point chapter. And since TCC, I have seen him in passing a couple times. Since today, I was talking to a friend who had talked to him yesterday, or two days ago, pardon me, and he was talking about how he wasn't ready for exams. To be clear, Reid, I just want to make sure that folks understand this. So you were a transfer student essentially into FSU, right? So you started the first two years in Tallahassee, and that is where you knew Phoenix Eichner, the suspected shooter here.

And you say that he was essentially, it sounded like, kicked out of a political club that you were in because of his, as you described them, views on white supremacy? Yes, ma'am. So it wasn't necessarily a formal kicking out, but he was asked not to come back and was really what had happened was we had, you know, it was a debate back and forth, back and forth. And after enough times, I mean, he did not feel welcome because he was not welcome with his rhetoric. We allow people of all, you know, beliefs, creeds, whatever. And he somehow found a way to not fit the bill on everyone else.

So what went through your mind, reed when you heard that police had identified the suspected shooter in this instance as this individual who you had known for a couple of years uh initially pure unadulterated anger um to to think that someone i knew had had essentially made me a statistic um to to think that you know knew had had essentially made me a statistic. To think that, you know, I had had conversations with him at a normal level and, you know, person to person. And for it to turn into this, I don't know why he would have done something like this. I don't know where it would have come from, but I'd sure like to find out. The guy's background seems to read like a walking MAGA manifesto known on campus for pushing far right white supremacist views kicked out of the student group, as was mentioned there.

His stepmother, a Leon County sheriff's deputy, gave him access to the guns that he used and also a fan of Turning Point USA, which is, of course, this overtly Trump aligned student group run by Charlie Kirk. Trump was asked about this. Here's what he had to say to deceased following that shooting at Florida State University following and amid that, is there any changes that you want to see to gun legislation? Anything you see broken with gun laws? Well, I'm going to have to look, I'm a big advocate of the second amendment.

I have been from the beginning up. Important thing to clarify after mass shootings. Protected it. And these things are terrible. But the gun doesn't do the shooting. The people do. It's, you know, a phrase that's used probably too often. I agree. It's used too often. He's right. I will tell you that it's a shame. I'm just hearing about it now. I just hear about it. I know the area very well. I know the school very well. I know everything about it. It's Florida. And we'll have more to say about it later. And of course the only, the only wealthy country in the world that has this seemingly inevitable problem.

This wasn't random. This was radicalization enabled by a political movement that doesn't just tolerate extremism. It thrives on it. We'll see once Trump knows more about it, what sort of thing he comes up with to say. The economic situation is causing panic at the White House. We have circumstances right now where Donald Trump is trying to figure out how do I get myself out of this impossible economic situation? As I am recording this segment right now, the Dow Jones industrial average is down yet another 800 points. How long can this continue? Well, Trump's getting very desperate. And Trump took to truth central, central, very important platform, of course, and started laying out his frustrations. He builds to

the economic stuff, but he starts by talking about the recently deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Let's start there. Trump quote, radical lunatic Democrats and their comrades in the fake news media are falsely making Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia out to be a very sweet and innocent person, which is a total blatant and dangerous lie. Garcia has been found by two separate courts to be a member of the violent killer gang. MS 13 was in our country illegally and is under a deportation order. It is despicable and un-American for liberals and the mainstream media to hate our country so much and be obsessed with protecting criminals instead of working to keep our border streets and families safe. Those lying to the American people on behalf of violent criminals have to be held responsible by

the agencies and the courts make America great again. So this is Trump's go to move when his administration is under pressure. Find an immigrant accused of a crime, link them to MS 13, pretend Democrats are holding parades in their honor. Nevermind that nobody, nobody is saying very sweet and innocent. What we're saying is that even the accused deserve due process. And Trump hates that because due process gets in the way of his political theater. Now he also calls journalists to be held responsible by agencies

and courts for supposedly lying about a deportation case. Understand that that's not law and order. That's authoritarianism. It's punished the press when they say things I don't like criminalized speech, criminalized dissent. All right. So then Trump continues into the panicked economic stuff. Quote, since our announcement of liberation day, many world leaders and business executives have come to me asking for relief from tariffs. It's good to see that the world knows we are serious because we are. They must right the wrongs of decades of abuse, but it won't be easy for them. We must rebuild the wealth of our great country and create true reciprocity. But for those who want the easiest path, come to America, build in America. The even calling April 2nd Liberation day at this point is a vomitous.

Okay. Especially when we've seen the destruction economically that it has wrought. It's the kind of phrase you slap on a fake holiday, um, in a dystopian novel. He claims world leaders are begging him to lift tariffs, but that's not diplomacy. It's economic hostage taking. Even if Trump is telling the truth, the fact that people are coming and saying this is terrible, we've got to do something here. That's not the way you deal with issues diplomatically. It's simply economic hostage taking. He wants tribute. That's what he means by reciprocity in Trump speak. You lose and I win. And somehow, I guess Trump believes tariffs make the country richer, even though every

credible economist has debunked this. The tariffs are an import tax on us. Consumers pay it. Business owners pay it. Farmers pay it. But Trump seems to think he's teaching the world a lesson. But we're the ones paying the price. All right. And then Trump continuing with a list of non-tariff cheating that he says other countries do. He says other countries do currency manipulation. They use value added taxes which act as tariffs dumping below cost export subsidies and government subsidies, protective agricultural standards, protective technical standards like Japan's bowling ball test,

counterfeiting, piracy and IP theft and trans shipping to evade tariffs. Now, some of these points are legitimate. There has been intellectual property theft. Using trans shipping to avoid tariffs is a technique that is sometimes used. but lumping all of this stuff together and saying that tariffs are the answer is like getting trade advice from, you know, YouTube conspiracy theorists. He's not wrong that international trade isn't always fair, but Trump solutions really solution unilateral blanket tariffs with no strategy and no on-ramp combined with public tantrums and isolationism, it's not going to fix any of it. It will alienate allies. It will raise prices

here in the United States. And the reason that Trump is doing this is because he's spiraling, bouncing from immigrant fear mongering to economic bravado to technical jargon that he doesn't even understand. This is not a vision. This is panic and desperation because even just as we were talking, the debt Dow dropped another 50 points. Trump's desperate. His billionaire buddies are coming to him saying, sir, with tears in my eyes, I can't have my stock portfolio drop two to

three percent a day. This isn't sustainable. And Trump doesn't know how to save face and how to get an off ramp from this. That isn't completely humiliating, but he's got to try to stop the bleeding. So what does he do? He goes on truth and he starts saying everybody's coming to me, begging me for stuff. Let's see where we are another week from now, because the last week has certainly not been good. One of the things I learned during my recent trip to Europe is that if I am on the wrong mattress for me, it's much harder to sleep. Well, Helix sleep, our sponsor has a two minute quiz that will ask about your height and weight position you like to sleep in, whether you have back pain, whether you tend to feel hot or cold at night, and then you get

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Helix will even get rid of your old mattress for you. If you want Helix is giving my audience 20% off site-wide at helixsleep.com slash Pacman. That's H E L I X sleep.com slash Pacman. That's H E L I X sleep.com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. It's great to welcome to the program today, associate justice of the Supreme court of North Carolina, Alison Riggs, who is in the middle of to call it a, um, uh, an interesting situation would be such an understatement. So I'm glad to talk about it. Welcome to the program. Really appreciate your time. Thank you for having me, David. So to kind of set the stage at the 40,000 foot level, eight year terms on the state Supreme Court in North Carolina, you sort of recently, although not so recently, even though we are still actually waiting to get to the end of this story, you recently won reelection by 734 votes. This roughly works out to 50.01%

to 49.99% an admittedly small margin of victory in terms of the number of votes and in terms of the percentage. There was a period, and this is where I'm going to bring you in to help me explain exactly what's going on. There was a period during which it seemed as though your opponent was challenging about 60,000 votes. That's the biggest number that I found. And subsequently through a number of processes, which you'll tell us about, the number of votes in question

has been reduced, reduced and reduced. And right now there are actually some specific voters in this election whose ballots need to be cured or to put it a different way, re verified that it was indeed they who intended to vote the way they voted. Give us like the overview of how the situation came to be as it is right now. Right. Well, starting at 30,000 foot, like you mentioned, I won this race by 734 votes, two independent recounts confirmed my win, one confirming the actual margin. And rather than concede my election, concede his loss in my election, my opponent decided to challenge voters and try and get

ballots tossed. The number he reached was actually as high as 68,000, 68,000 North Carolinians whose votes he wanted to toss rather than concede his loss. We have been fighting for it. We're approaching the six month mark. For six months, we have been fighting for every eligible North Carolinians lawful votes to be counted. And I want to be crystal clear that the voters that he is challenging, they fall into different buckets. That's kind of why the scope is narrowed. But these are voters who did nothing wrong. They followed all the rules as they were on the books on election day. Their votes were valid on election day. And it is only because my opponent wants to change the rules of a game after the game has been played and he lost, which most kindergartners understand

is fundamentally unfair, that these voters are at risk. Now, the biggest bucket ever was the 60,000 voters, but there was another 8,000 on top of that. My parents fell in the 60,000. So they registered with their military IDs. And my opponent alleged there was some information missing from their voter registrations, which was not the case. And he's lost on that. Then he's been challenging the votes of military and overseas voters who use a federal voting mechanism to vote. So it's a portal. It's an

online portal. It was specifically designed by Congress because deployed military or activated military folks who are away from their homes and their families have trouble voting. And you can understand why that's the case, right? You're on the battlefront, like every worry, every stressor, every little bit of minutiae you have to deal with is something that distracts you from life or death. And it can mean life or death for these people who raised their hand to serve us. So I've been fighting for those voters that the military and overseas voters has shrunk a little bit too. It's not settled. So I don't want your viewers to think that, oh, well, we're down to 1600 votes. That's being disputed. My opponent wants to disenfranchise more military and overseas voters. He's not content with just 1,600. So it is somewhere

between 1,600 and 7,000 or 8,000. But these are largely people who raised their hands to serve us and they deserve someone to defend them the way they defend us. And I am that person. I will not give an inch, whether it's 68,000, 8,000 or one voters. This is the fundamental right to vote. Every vote is precious and not one being tossed is acceptable. And so I will not give an inch in this legal fight. But I'm happy also to talk to you about the chasing cure process. If you. Yeah. So let's get I want to get to that in a moment, because there are potentially action items

here about if you believe that someone, you know, maybe in exactly the situation of having to cure. I want to talk about that. Now, if we zoom out a little bit, it seems reasonable to me that no matter which side of a 730 vote, 734 vote margin of victory or loss one is on to seek some kind of verification. It sounds to me, having studied and read this from the outside, that the processes that had already taken place before the attempt to get rid of this group of again, 1600 to 68,000 votes. It seems as though it would be reasonable to say, let's look at what those recounts

say. But that was done. You're, you're not advocating here to say do nothing. It's just that there have been things done already. And I'm a, I'm a former voting rights attorney. I've litigated election law cases. I know how important faith in election administration is. So if you look back at my emails and my social media through November and December, I was

saying loudly, recounts are good. We want recounts. We want people to see transparently how our system works. And so, yes, it was very important to me that people understood that I fully supported those that recount process. OK, so let's now get to what is at stake here. I don't know for sure the political leanings of members of the military in your state. My instinct is that this is not a play necessarily on the vote share of military members that supported you versus your opponent, but it's more about a population that may be hard to reach right now and for whom it would be logistically difficult to even necessarily know that now there is a process

they have to go through. Give me your assessment of is is it because this is the group that used the system you described? Is it because it will be difficult to actually get a hold of them? What do you think the strategy is? Right. And thank you for that question. It lets me tell your your followers followers an important point. So 32,000 North Carolinians used this federal mechanism of voting across North Carolina has 100 counties.

My opponent wasn't challenging all military and overseas voters. He was challenging those voters from the four most Democratic counties in the state. So the, you know, 6,000, 7,000, that wasn't statewide. So he, in fact, is saying, if you are a military, if you are a service member in Guilford County, that's where Greensboro, North Carolina is. And you used this federal mechanism because you were deployed out West to do Helene cleanup in October and November. So you were out West. Your vote should not count. But if you were a military voter who is based out of Onslow County where Camp Lejeune is, he's fine with your vote counting. Those voters voted the exact same way.

And so it's cherry picking which voters are in and which voters are out. And it really gets us to the big problem, the big threat to democracy here. And I need people to understand that what's a North Carolina problem today is a Michigan and an Arizona and a California and a Georgia problem tomorrow. So this is this is not just us. If someone doesn't like the outcome of an election like what we saw in 2020, Trump Biden, if someone doesn't like the outcome of an election, a democracy cannot exist in a world where the disappointed losers can change the election laws after the election, decide to selectively toss some ballots that they think were against them and call that a day. I mean, just democracy cannot exist in those conditions. And so we know that this is an existential fight for democracy. If even one vote gets tossed, it's opening Pandora's box. We will not be able to contain

the spread. And we're fighting as if I'm fighting, as if it's not about me. It's not even about all the voters in North Carolina that I'm trying so desperately to protect, including people. I come from a proud military family. My dad and my brother served. Both were deployed in war. This is personal for me, and I'm fighting for North Carolina's military families. But there is a national implication to this that I am fully cognizant of. And it's why I am fighting tooth and nail to make sure that we don't backslide from democracy into something where it's just unimaginable. Yeah, the strategy seems analogous to we should close down some polling places, but only in areas where we've calculated that making it more difficult to vote would be advantageous for us. The cherry picking that, that you're

talking about now in practical terms, if people are hearing this, who exactly should be hearing what is going on right now and trying to get in touch potentially with folks that meet? Is it people deployed from certain counties specifically should double check whether they are now being expected to cure? Speaker 4 Yes. So let me step back and say that we are we're dual tracking this problem. So I am fighting every day in federal court. I am in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals this week, fighting for a stay to keep this quote unquote cure process from going into effect. It's because I know that it's a terrible precedent and these voters did nothing wrong. There's nothing to cure.

But we're also preparing for if we do need to cure, these are going to be some of the hardest voters you could ever imagine to get in touch with. They're away from home. Imagine being a submariner deployed for three, four months at a time. goes out to these voters, there will be 30 days from when that notice goes out for them to get information back to North Carolina, back to their county boards. So we're going to need right now, it is largely Guilford County voters who have the target painted on their back. But as I said, my opponent wants more counties, more voters in the crosshairs. And so I don't feel confident telling people, oh, you're safe outside of Guilford County, because that could change. What I need people outside of North Carolina to do is to visit my website, rigsforourcourts.com. There's a tab at the top that says the Griffin list. This is going to be,

it would be funny if it weren't about the very soul of democracy, but it's a game of six degrees of Kevin Bacon. I need you to look through your contact lists. I need you to look through the lists of challenged voters. And if you know one of them, reach out to them and see if they know that they're on the list, because these could have been students studying abroad, military members and their families deployed. We've heard stories of family, military families moving from base to base who who literally don't even have a place where they can get notice from the Board of Elections right now. They could be people in the Foreign Service. If you know anyone on that list, whether it's in your phone book, whether it's on your social media friends list, followers list, reach out to them because that person-to-person connection

is going to be much more powerful than cold calling or trying to email people out of the blue and say, look, you may have a little more than 30 days to make sure that your vote counted in the November election. Reach out to Justice Rigg's campaign to make sure we we help you get in the information that you need to make sure your vote gets counted. So this is Riggs for our courts dot com. The Griffin list is the list of folks. Now, I want to make sure people in the audience understand, even if you don't live in North Carolina, if you have any connection to the military, for example, you might know someone from when you were in California, for example, or it really is worth looking through this because it's not, oh, we need a hundred thousand. We're talking here about a margin of victory. That's seven thirty four.

And so this is really like a very specific and tangible ask. That's right. It's it is such an accomplishable task. Everyone, I think, knows someone, someone they went to high school with, someone they went to college with, someone who has a kid that goes to school in North Carolina. It costs nothing to say, hey, John, I know your kid went to school in North Carolina, just checking that they weren't impacted by this. It costs nothing, but it is going to, we essentially have to get this work viral to make sure that we find these voters. And it's going to be through a friend of a friend. Also, if folks have $5 to chip in, the legal bills are

incredible, the chase and cure efforts, like we're going to be trying mail, digital outreach, you know, purchasing data to try and find contact information for these voters, because we're not going to leave one voter behind. You know, when my dad went into war, he had a battle buddy who looked me in the eye before he deployed and he said, I won't leave your dad behind, I promise you. And this is my chance to return the favor to service members and their families who've gone through what we went through and to say, I will not leave one voter behind and whatever it costs, whatever it takes, I'm going to make sure these voters get heard and their votes get counted.

All right. It's a very narrow, specific ask here, which I know my audience can help with. We've been speaking with associate justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, Alison Riggs. We're going to be following it. And I really appreciate your time and telling us what's going on today. Thank you so much. Really appreciate everyone listening and caring about this fight. Log your internet activity so they can sell it or give it to law enforcement. And these VPNs are just out to make a buck without really protecting your privacy. The only VPN I trust enough to have as a sponsor is private internet access. Our sponsor, private internet access, is the only VPN who has proven multiple times in legal proceedings they don't keep logs of your activity. The judge ordered

that PIA show user activity history each time they demonstrated they don't have the records. That no log policy is also independently audited by Deloitte and PIA is also open source. So you can also see in the code that none of your activity is being logged and you can protect unlimited devices with just a single account. Private internet access is giving my audience 83% off, which is just two Oh three a month plus four extra months for free. Go to PIA VPN.com slash David. The link is in the podcast notes. Well, this is both disturbing and quite frankly, pathetic. The U.S. Naval Academy, which exists to train future officers to uphold the Constitution,

has canceled a lecture about wisdom because the speaker refused to remove a reference to books that are banned on their own campus. Author Ryan Holiday was scheduled to speak at the Naval Academy, something he's done for years about stoicism, about virtue, about courage, about wisdom. But shortly before the talk, he gets a call and he is asked, can you take out the slide mentioning the nearly 400 books that have been removed from the Naval Academy's Nimitz library? Among those books, Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a history of black soldiers in World War Two, a reimagining of a Kafka book, a book on how women killed in the Holocaust are remembered. Now, the Navy didn't deny it.

In fact, a spokesperson told The New York Times the Naval Academy is an apolitical institution. But aren't the book bands themselves extraordinarily politically driven at their core? And then the second order effect is that they're censoring a lecture on wisdom because it references banned books which were pulled explicitly to comply with Donald Trump's executive order 14, one 51. apply with Donald Trump's executive order 14151. That's the one that guts diversity and equity programs and orders government institutions to stop, quote, wasting money on, quote, radical leftist ideology.

So this really wasn't about Ryan Holiday getting political. This was about the institution's cowardice. The leadership chose obedience to Donald Trump's culture war over academic freedom, over intellectual integrity and over the actual pursuit of wisdom, which was going to be the subject of Ryan's talk at the Naval Academy. I would think that you want midshipmen to one day command nuclear submarines and to be capable of discerning different ideas and texts for themselves and able to evaluate what actually is the correct action here. But we can't trust them to hear about Maya Angelou. So this is part of a much bigger trend.

Uh, book bands at schools and libraries across the country obviously is a part of it. The defunding of DEI programs at universities and government agencies, professors fired or silenced for teaching history that some find quote uncomfortable. And all of this is the exact opposite of what higher education, especially at a military academy should be all about. Even if you don't like the content, the U S military used to believe that we need to understand opposing ideas in order to counter them more effectively. Even if you believe all of the stuff that was banned is because it was bad.

Well, isn't it better to have it and to intelligently be able to synthesize? And if the conclusion is I'm going to oppose some of this stuff, well then that's your conclusion. Remember when a general Mark Milley talked about how, why wouldn't we want to know what critical race theory is? This was when they were going after Millie when Trump was still president for being Trump was president the first time for being a woke general. And are you really studying CRT in the military?

Well, hold on a second. If this is subject matter that is prevalent in society, if this is a framework that some people are using to, uh, analyze or think about how the world works at minimum. Shouldn't we understand it even if it is so that we can oppose it? No, not allowed. The bigger picture when you zoom out here and you say Mark Milley shouldn't be studying CRT. Ryan Holiday shouldn't mention the nearly 400 banned books. You look weak. You look weak when you censor instead of challenge. If the ideas in the nearly 400 books are truly radical or misguided, why not confront them head on and show the students at the Naval Academy?

Here's what, here's what these texts say and here's why it's wrong or it's misguided or it's not good. Why not trust the future leaders at the Naval Academy that you are educating to think critically and to engage in debate instead of banning nearly 400 books? Silencing dissent doesn't show strength. It shows fear and it sends a message to the cadets. When you were faced with uncomfortable truths or texts that might contradict something you believe.

By the way, I don't know that they even really would. Right. I mean, learning about black World War two soldiers. Why is that such a challenge to your beliefs? But if what you believe is that is a challenge to your beliefs, what you are teaching the cadets by banning the books is that when you are faced with uncomfortable or contradictory information to your beliefs, you shut it down instead of saying, let's analyze it. Let's discuss it. This is not the lesson that we should be teaching the people that are going to be involved in anything related to

what the Navy does, potentially even approaching aspects of, uh, war weaponry, et cetera. It's pathetic stuff. And we will see if there's any more follow up from it. I am going to tell you something today that I never thought I would say on this show. I have now been warned multiple times by immigration lawyers that I should not leave the country at this time. Let me explain. I'm a naturalized U S citizen. Many people maybe don't know that I've been a citizen of the United States since I was, um, I think 16 or so years old. So went through the entire process legally. My family moved to the United States, legally obtained permanent residency. Ultimately, my parents got citizenship as a, an under 18 son of naturalized citizens.

I was able to get citizenship by going to the post office and filling out a passport application. And then that was decades ago. And here I am in 2025 being told that even with my citizenship, it might be risky to travel internationally under this second Trump administration because of what might happen when I get back. Now I not, I'm not going to pretend, oh, you know, I might be deported. They're going to rip up my passport. It's not about that. But the idea is that coming back might be unpredictably uncomfortable or uncomfortably unpredictable because we've already seen reports of U.S.

citizens detained at the border. We've seen U.S. citizens held and questioned for hours without even being told why. We've seen a spike in the stories from folks who are dual nationals or have names that look or sound foreign or maybe they speak with an accent. Stories of those folks being pulled aside, treated like suspects at their own country's border. And what immigration attorneys are telling me, the ones that are paying attention, is that naturalized citizens, people like me in Trump's second term with the return of these Stephen Miller style policies, we just need to be careful. Some are saying, if you leave, have legal representation lined up, know exactly

which immigration lawyer you will call and that they will be available to take your call in case you end up in one of these situations. Think of it, legal representation to reenter a country you are a citizen of. Now, what is the goal here? I don't believe that it is to actually deport U.S. citizens. Not yet. Anyway, even though Trump is talking about it, what they want is fear. Intimidation is the goal. Give these folks, people like me, the feeling that we don't quite belong, even if we've done everything right. It's about making us feel like a problem, like foreigners, like we're on probation in a country that we call home. This is a hallmark of authoritarian systems. This is how they behave. You don't need to prosecute everybody.

You need just enough horror stories that people start to self censor and self isolate and start to say things like, maybe I shouldn't go to that protest. Maybe I won't apply for this job or that government benefit. Maybe I won't leave the country for a while. And if you think I'm exaggerating, ask yourself, would you have believed if I had told you in 2015 that a US president would start floating the idea of deporting citizens or stripping citizenship from naturalized folks, depending on how they obtain that citizenship. I think 10 years ago you would have said, David, that's crazy. It's never going to happen

because Trump has said exactly that his administration has tried launching a task force to re-examine the naturalization records of some to see if they're eligible for citizenship, citizenship revocation. If they can find some technical inaccuracy in any of the paperwork originally submitted, they floated ideas like mass deportations and they're starting to actually do it. They've gone after asylum seekers. They've gone after green card card holders, student visas, legal residents. And even we now are seeing the detention of naturalized citizens. Now one other note about this, think about this absurd, uh, contrast during COVID the Trump aligned Maga right wing lost their minds over basic reentry requirements. Remember they would say you can't deny a us citizen entry no matter what.

You can't require a PCR test. Even if the test is positive, you still can't deny a U.S. citizen entry no matter what. You can't require a PCR test. Even if the test is positive, you still can't deny reentry. You can't deny reentry over quarantine reasons for anything. They said this is tyranny. They even said asking for proof of vaccination was unconstitutional. And now those same people are dead silent while naturalized citizens are being flagged, delayed, interrogated, and sometimes even separated from families at the border for hours just for coming back to a country where they have citizenship. So apparently it's only tyranny when it applies to them. Another hallmark of authoritarian regimes

on today's bonus show. Thousands participated in anti-Trump, anti-Musk protests over the weekend. We will discuss it. The White House wants wanted corporate sponsors for its Easter egg roll event. And the covid.gov government website now supports the lab leak theory. Where does that stand today? Remember that you can get my book, The Echo Machine, a New York Times bestseller everywhere that books are sold. If you've bought the book, please remember to review it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads. We are so close to a thousand reviews on Amazon, which is just phenomenal. And remember that to get today's bonus show, the bonus show where you want to make money, everybody else that makes money to find themselves is bad to get the bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. I'll see you then.

We'll be back tomorrow.