The David Pakman Show - 4/23/24: Trump attacks trial witnesses as Biden takes lead

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Joseph Stiglitz, economist, Professor at Columbia University, Nobel laureate, and author of the new book "The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society," joins David to discuss markets, rights, freedom, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3JwodtT -- President Joe Biden surpasses Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election betting markets and comes in 9 points ahead of Trump in a new poll -- After the first day of Donald Trump's criminal trial, he loses his mind outside the courtroom, clearly terrified about potentially ending up in prison -- Donald Trump attacks trial witness Michael Cohen, an apparent violation of the gag order imposed on him -- Donald Trump is interviewed about his first criminal trial on Real America's Voice and appears confused and unable to answer even the most basic questions -- Alina Habba, Donald Trump's on-again-off-again lawyer, humiliates herself outside the courtroom of Trump's first criminal trial -- Tucker Carlson tells Joe Rogan that we "don't know" where nuclear technology comes from, which is not true -- Fox News host Jesse Watters says that Donald Trump's body and mind are being "drained" by making him sit in a courtroom -- Voicemail caller asserts (without evidence) that Donald Trump is being sedated during his criminal trial but then given uppers before his public appearances -- On the Bonus Show: California proposes law to allow Arizona doctors to perform abortions, some migrants flown by Ron DeSantis to Martha's Vineyard qualify for victim visas, scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, much more... 🌳 MyHeritage: Try it free for 14 days at https://davidpakman.com/myheritage 📺 Get Curiosity Stream for 25% OFF (code PAKMAN): https://curiositystream.thld.co/pakman_0323 🧻 Reel Paper: Code PAKMAN for 30% OFF + free shipping at https://reelpaper.com/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

. Welcome, everybody. Anybody expecting the presidential race to remain unchanged for it basically to be the same race with the same dynamics and the same texture from last year all the way through to November couldn't have been more wrong. We have rapidly changing dynamics in this presidential election. It of course, to some degree does have to do with the criminal trials of the failed former president, Donald Trump.

But to a great degree, it also has to do with the relative stability and dare I say, boring nature, boring in a good way of the Biden presidency. Let's take it one step at a time. With regard to the betting markets, this is not a poll. This is people betting on who they believe will win. Joe Biden has now opened up the biggest gap ahead of Donald Trump of this entire presidential election. And as you see the numbers on the screen, fifty four cents next to Biden, forty four cents next to Trump. You don't have to understand exactly how these betting markets work to understand that the greater the number next to your name, the more money is behind that individual as the likely eventual winner.

And Biden, 54, Trump, 44, the largest gap that we have seen at any point in this presidential campaign. But what about the polling? Is it only the betting markets, but the polling still looks good for Trump? No, the polling increasingly is shifting towards Joe Biden. Now, I'm going to tell you a reality that we talked about in 2020, even though it did very much seem in the last six months of the 2020 campaign that at least in terms of the popular vote, Joe Biden would easily win.

Corporate media has to play this up as very close no matter what, because otherwise people don't care. And as we talked about yesterday on the world famous and award winning bonus show, more and more people don't care about this presidential election for different reasons and in different senses. Check out our conversation yesterday for more on that. And it is possible that this is not going to be a close election from a popular vote standpoint. More than likely, more than likely, it is still going to come down to under half a million votes in five states in terms of the bulk of making up the electoral margin. But Joe Biden, as Newsweek reports, has opened up a nine point lead among voters in a new

poll. This is among those who voted in 2020 and 2022. Now, understand there are people who voted in 2020 and not in 2022 because fewer people vote in midterms and they were not included in this margin of plus nine. But among those individuals who did vote in the last two elections, Biden is ahead of Trump by nine points. There is much more to who is going to vote than just those who voted in the last two elections. But then we go over to recent polls in general. And it is indeed the case that in more and more recent polls, Joe Biden is leading in the latest morning consult poll released this morning. It is Biden plus one and Biden plus two among two different sets of of of participants in the Marist College poll. This is fascinating.

Fascinating. In the Marist College poll, Biden is plus three when it is head to head. But Biden goes up to plus five when you add the third party candidates in the Marist College poll, which is a good poll, when you add Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Biden's lead grows from three to five, which again goes to reinforce the growing narrative that as voters realize the truth about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he is worse for Trump than he is for Biden. None of this tells us that we don't have to worry that we can rest on our laurels, that we can go and play golf or field hockey or lacrosse or whatever it is we may want to be

playing instead of voting. This is all assuming we vote. These are the sorts of results that we could have. And importantly, even if Biden wins the popular vote by three, he very much could lose the Electoral College. And in fact, 2020 is a great example of this, where Joe Biden had a very strong and robust popular vote victory, but he barely won the Electoral College in the sense that it came down to just one hundred and something thousand votes in three states, had one hundred and thousand something votes in three states gone the other way. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona. Biden still wins the popular vote by like seven million. But Trump would have won the Electoral College. So all of this to say we have a genuine opportunity. What was it that thing that the sanctus would say?

We've got to put it in the in the dustbin of history. We have the opportunity to put MAGA Trumpism. It could be the dustbin. We could flush it down the toilet 10 to 15 times wherever you want to put it. We have a bona fide opportunity to do it in November, but it depends on voting. A terrified Donald Trump spoke before and after the first real day of his first of four criminal trials. And this guy is terrified. My friends, Trump is terrified about the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison. And he dissembled as he was going into and coming out of court, attacking everyone, including, by the way, violating the gag order, not the gag order where his putrid flatulence is reportedly

making his attorneys gag. I'm talking about the real gag order. Let's look at this piece by piece. Here is Trump saying Letitia James is the worst attorney general in the country. So on the Letitia James case, she's the worst attorney general in the country, by the way, on Letitia. And she keeps a lot of business out of New York and businesses that are here are leaving. And that means jobs and a lot of revenue.

Somebody is going to step in the governor. Somebody has to step in and do something because you might. But on Letitia James, the money was put up. It's one hundred and seventy five million. And I don't think she's complaining about me for the first time ever. She's complaining about the company. But why would she be doing that when I put up the money? So I just want you to know that that's taking. OK, so Trump attacking Letitia James Trump then coming out of court and essentially once again confirming that he did the thing for which he's being tried, talking about what this

is all about. And this sounds like a crime. I mean, again, Trump is insisting he did the thing. It's simply not a crime. But we know what the law says and it pretty clearly does seem to be a crime. But we know what the law says, and it pretty clearly does seem to be a crime. It was just at the last minute they decided to do it. It's a case that if you're looking back, it goes back many, many years, 2015, maybe before that. And it's a case as to bookkeeping, which is a very minor thing in terms of the law, in terms of all the violent

crime that's going on outside as we as we speak right outside, as we speak. This is a case where you pay a lawyer as a lawyer and they call it a legal expense. That's the exact term they use legal expense. Right. In the books. The problem is that was a lie and it was a form of election interference is what the prosecutors are arguing. And another thing that wasn't even said was we never even deducted it as a tax deduction.

So that takes a whole of us here. Most people want to deduct everything. We never even took it as a tax deduction. Most people want to deduct everything. And it is important to mention that the fact that he did not deduct it is not exculpatory. It says nothing about the criminally alleged criminal nature of it. But they call the payment to a lawyer a legal expense in the books. They didn't call it construction. They didn't say you're building a building called a payment to a lawyer because, as you know, Cohn is a lawyer, represented a lot of people over the years.

Now, I'm not the only one. And it wasn't very good in a lot of ways in terms of his representation. This is yet another incriminating statement from Trump. Every time he does this, he confirms many of the facts of the case. His lawyers will argue that there's no crime. It will ultimately be up to the jury to decide. Here's the law. Here's the facts.

Does it overlap with a crime? Trump also insisting that he must be allowed to campaign. And Trump says people come to him in the court and say, sir, I just can't believe it. It's another one of these. They're coming up to me with tears in their eyes, sorts of moments. I can't imagine anyone is coming up to him in court and saying this. Very unfair. The judge is conflicted. As you know, it's very unfair what's going on and I should be allowed to campaign. And whoever heard of this, he had indicted for that. People in the court just said to me, I can't believe it. This is the case.

Yeah, they came up to big, strong guys, court officers. The bailiff came up to me and said, Sir, I've never had to flush. I'm sorry, sir. They've never treated anyone so unfairly as they've treated you. Imaginary conversations that didn't take place. And then lastly, a little bit of the color. As Trump walks away, a number of questions yelled at Trump, one of which is where is Melania, which is a fair question, by the way. Trump, what was it like hearing that?

Are you going to say against you? And where's Melania and Melania wanting nothing to do with this? Nothing whatsoever. Melania is long gone from any of this. They haven't renegotiated the prenup strongly enough for her to show up in court alongside Trump. That's for damn sure. Now let's get to the critical part of this explosion from Trump. Violation of the gag order.

You know, when I say Trump and gag order, it's taken on a different meaning in the context of claims that Donald Trump is smoking out his lawyers with putrid farts during the trial. But I'm talking about the legal gag order here. Trump again attacking not only the judge, saying the judge is very conflicted during this outrageous outburst after day one in court yesterday, but when he came out yesterday from court, Trump attacked Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen is a witness in the criminal trial that is going on. This is very clearly a witness in the criminal trial that is going on. This is very clearly

a violation of the gag order. Speaker 4 Now, what are they going to look at? Comrades are what comrades did because that's bad stuff. And what are they going to look at all the lies that did in the last trial? He got caught lying in the last trial, so he got caught lying, pure lie. And what are they going to look at that? This is apparently and allegedly a clear violation of the gag order that has been placed on Trump. Don't talk about the witnesses in the case. Do not talk about the witnesses in the case. And here is Trump again talking about Michael Cohen.

He's essentially daring the judge to put Trump in jail for violating the gag order. And I don't think the judge is going to do it. I know everybody said everybody, the people on Trump's side are saying the judge is being so unfair. He's treating Trump terribly, saying, stand up, sit down, don't sleep, all of these unfair things. And it's so biased against Trump. I don't think the judge is going to do a damn thing about this violation of the gag order or continued violations of the gag order. I hope I am wrong. I hope I am wrong.

But when we talk about two tier justice system and Trump getting away with things or not, this is Trump getting away with something. Once again, he's been told in such clear, certain terms, do not talk about witnesses here. And he's talking about a key witness, Michael Cohen. Let me know what you think. Is Trump going to have any consequences for the obvious violation of the gag order? Or is it yet another example of Trump being given deferential treatment? Let me know. We'll take a very quick break and then the show will continue. I have been tracking my genealogy for years and the service I've always used to put my family tree together is my heritage, which is why I asked them to be a sponsor. My heritage is the number

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Yesterday the criminal trial began. A very confused Donald Trump appeared with John Fredericks on Real America's Voice, and he was unable or unwilling to answer even the most basic questions to the point that the host was sort of confused and stunned that Trump would answer nothing. Trump was asked, how are your family members holding up during the trial? I laugh because it's like as if Trump knows, as if Trump cares. And Trump's answer doesn't contain any mention of how his family is holding up.

The question was, how's your family holding up? Trump says words. He tries to synthesize thoughts into language, but it doesn't relate to the question that was asked. We know we know each other a very long time. How is your family holding up through all this? Oh, look, it's it's always tough when you can't go to your son's graduation. He's a great student. Now, understand that that's Trump talking about himself, not not not how his family is holding up. Interestingly enough, he's a good boy. And you tell him you can't go to his graduate.

This judge, who is a totally conflicted person, by the way, totally he should not be the judge of this case. He's so that nobody's nobody's ever been as conflicted as him just about ever. But this judge said that you can't get away from the trial. You know, he's rushing the trial like crazy. Nobody's ever seen a thing like this. That's your respect. So fast.

90. Doesn't Trump say at every single one of his speeches now that one of the great things about China is you get a quick trial. Somehow I don't think his own trial is what Trump had in mind. Five percent Democrats. The areas is mostly all Democrat. You think of it as a just a purely Democrat area. It's a very unfair situation that I can tell you. One of the things that is important to mention is that Trump is still lying,

that the judge said he can't go to Barron's graduation. The judge said he is not going to rule on that in April when the graduation isn't until May 17th and that it's going to depend on how the trial is going. And by the way, I assume the judge is going to let Trump go to Barron's graduation. But the judge has not ruled that Trump can't go. Then the topic of MAGA Mike Johnson came up. And as you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to catalyze the MAGA hardcore base to remove Mike Johnson the way they did to Kevin McCarthy. Mike Johnson flying down to Mar-a-Lago last week or the week before to get some face time with Trump and to try to put forward a united front and save his speakership. John Frederick's asking

Trump, what about the MAGA Mike Johnson stuff? And here's what Trump had to say. A couple of them have called for his ouster now. We've got three congressmen calling for him to be replaced in the Republican side. But you're standing with him and you've stood with him firmly. How do you square this divide now between Maggot and Mike Johnson with your support of him and our base? Yeah. Well, look, we have a majority of one. OK, so it's not like he can go and do whatever he wants to do. I think he's a very good person. You know, he stood very strongly with me on the NATO when I said that NATO has to pay up and they have to pay up soon and fast. And he has stood strongly on that.

He agrees with that. He also got some of the money in the form of a loan, quite a bit of the money in the form of a loan. And he felt on that. But it's a tough situation when you have one. I think he's a very good man. I think he's trying very hard. And again, we've got to have a big election. We've got to elect some people in Congress much more than we have right now. And we have to elect some good senators, get rid of some of the ones we have now, like Romney. Speaker 1 So you know what I'm hearing in Trump's equivocation here? He's a good guy.

We've only got one majority of one, a margin of one. I'm hearing Trump essentially concede that he would be far more interested in the Marjorie Taylor Greene opposition to MAGA Mike Johnson if it wasn't control of the House that was hanging in the balance. And it's sort of the abortion question. I don't know, 1864 law, 2024 law for late term or not, or pull total ban five weeks, six weeks, whatever. As long as you vote for me and it doesn't hurt my reelection, I'm kind of up for whatever. That's what I'm hearing there. A couple other strange moments from this interview.

Trump confusedly saying that even people who are against him will be voting for him in November, which I haven't heard. But even people that are against me are going to be voting for me. So I don't know where he's getting that idea. It's a very, very strange idea. And then also Donald Trump declaring that America is a sick country. What is going on with our country? It's a sick country.

You know, one of the things that has really changed in the Republican Party, I don't depending on the age of people in the audience, you know, I'm in my 80s, so I remember this when it was going on in the George W. Bush era. You could criticize Bill Clinton or Barack Obama right before after Bush era. You could even criticize that George W. Bush wasn't being right wing enough or there were all sorts of criticisms that were allowed of the president. But you don't attack the country. You don't say the country used to be great. It's not good anymore. You don't say this is a sick country. You don't say that the country

is now bad in the ways that Donald Trump has been saying. It was always something that the so-called conservative right and to what degree they were conservative, we can argue about. You stopped short of saying the country sucks, essentially. But MAGA Trumpism has ushered in an era where up until the day Trump leaves office, the country is great. And they the day that Trump leaves office and Joe Biden takes over, you immediately start saying the country is a joke. We're not great anymore. We've got to make it great again. It's a sick country.

And that is considered acceptable now among MAGA Trumpist wings of the Republican Party. It used to be that you don't go that far in the Romney wing. You say our taxes are too high. We have too much regulation. Our foreign policy has gone astray. But this is still the best country and it's a great country with MAGA Trump. It is such a risk to even acknowledge. We still think the country's great. Really? So even Biden didn't prevent the country from being great.

Maybe Biden's not so bad. That's what they are terrified about. And that's why it is now acceptable to say that the country is bad and that the country is sick and that it's not great anymore. A big change, a big change from 20 years ago in this Republican Party. Alina Haba, Donald Trump's failed on again, off again lawyer, is now doing more press, including outside of the courtroom for Donald Trump's criminal trial. And I have to tell you, she's not doing a great job of making the case for Donald Trump's

innocence here. Here is Alina Haba quite simply saying Trump had a problem with regard to Stormy Daniels and the hush money and the whole thing. He hired a lawyer and the lawyer solved the problem. It's that simple. And now we're here because of something that happened when he was in the White House. That wasn't even wrong. It was not wrong.

You hire lawyers to solve problems or solve those problems. You pay them. That's it. This is a joke. It's an affront to American constitutions, an affront to our judicial system. And it's an affront to every lawyer that cares about their license, that cares about what is right and wrong. That is a completely unhinged series of statements.

It's only 22 seconds, but it's completely unhinged and riddled with lies. First of all, the hush money fiasco involving Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels didn't happen in sum total while Trump was president. The whole point of it was we need to do this because it might otherwise prevent Trump from becoming president. So that's just a factual distortion from Alina Haba. Secondly, when we know that everybody there, what you want to talk about men's Raya and the state of mind and Trump's guilty conscience about this, when Trump is suggesting to Michael Cohen that this be handled in cash, when they are all talking about wanting to prevent a paper trail of any kind.

You know that they know that something stinks here. And the problem with this is just lawyers doing stuff and it's all perfectly legal and great is that Michael Cohen already was convicted and spent time in prison for this. And it was all done in service of Donald Trump and Trump's interests and what Donald Trump wanted. So as usual, Alina Haba, who is arguably better as a TV lawyer than a real lawyer, her representation of Trump as an actual lawyer in court has been pretty self-humiliating. And the TV stuff isn't much better, but I think it's a little bit better. It's leaving a lot to be desired. And this is all they have. As Ellie Honig told us last week, former prosecutor, it's pretty damn clear that Trump committed

the crime that he's accused of. It's pretty damn clear. The question is, how will a jury see it? What sort of defense will they mount? So Alina Haba continuing to self-humiliate after the break, we will get to some totally different things, including an interesting conversation later. We'll do part two of our Rogan Tucker Carlson analysis, which is arguably even worse than what we looked at yesterday. So stay with me. We'll take a very quick break. Make sure

you're subscribed to the YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash The David Pakman Show. Paper towels are one of the biggest contributors to deforestation in the United States. That's why I use bamboo paper towels from our sponsor, Real Paper. Just like all of real products, their paper towels are free of inks, dyes and BPAs and are 100 percent tree free. All the packaging is plastic free, even down to the tape on the box. Before I discovered real paper, I tried a few different sustainable paper towel options over the years. They were either flimsy, had no absorption power. They felt cheap, like something in airport bathrooms. Yet somehow they were still outrageously expensive. Reels paper towels are 50 percent thicker, more absorbent than the leading sustainable

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Our sponsor, Private Internet Access, is a VPN that lets you change your IP address and make it look like your computer is anywhere in the world. So I can set it to Argentina to access the soccer matches. I can set it to the UK to access British Netflix content, much of which is really good. A VPN is useful for many things like preventing your browsing history from being leaked online. But downloading and streaming large files like TV shows and movies is one area where private Internet access really shines. Many VPNs are just too slow for streaming the buffering, the disconnects. It's a nightmare. It is super

easy to use private Internet access. You turn it on with a single click. You're done. Works on your computer, tablet TV, Roku game console, anywhere that you stream and you can use it on all your devices with just one account. Get private Internet access for 83 percent off, the David Pakman show at David Pakman dot com. It's great to welcome to the program today, Joseph Stiglitz, an economist, professor at Columbia University and Nobel Prize laureate. He is author of the brand new book out today, The Road to Freedom, Economics and the Good Society. It's so great to have you on.

I really appreciate your time today. Nice to be here. Well, one of the most interesting things, there are many interesting things in the new book, but one of the interesting things are the perspectives you present about how the concepts of freedom and liberty, particularly in an economic context, can be interpreted. And there is an ideological right wing around the world and in the United States that interprets freedom in the context of cut my taxes. So I have the freedom to decide for myself how my money is spent or cut regulations so that as a business we can do whatever we want and allow only the market to assign consequences,

for example. Can you talk a little bit about how that framework of freedom actually represents a limitation on freedom for other participants in society. So let's begin with the basic concept of what we mean by freedom. It's really freedom to do what you can do. Your opportunity set, as we would put it more formally. Yes. Somebody at the point of starvation has no freedom. He does what he has to do to

survive. He doesn't have much choice. Somebody with a lot of income has a lot of choice, a lot of freedom. So that's the basic framework. Then I make two further observations. One is that your freedom, what you can do may contract, may have an effect on others. So your freedom may result in the unfreedom of others. As Isaac Berlin, who was a great philosopher at Oxford, said, freedom from the worst may be death for the sheep. And we see that over and over again, freedom of the exploiter is bad for the exploited. Freedom to pollute means those who have asthma may die,

a really more fundamental right than anything else, the right to live, or may have to spend more money and time in the hospital. You can see all the negative consequences. So one in our urban, modern 21st century world, so many of the things that each of us does has effects on others. And the second idea that's, I think, also important is to realize that a little coercion can actually expand freedom. It sounds like a contradiction, but just think of stoplights. A stoplight is a form of coercion.

You can't cross the street without getting across the intersection when there's a red light without getting a fine. But without those stoplights, there would be gridlock, especially in my city, New York. So no one can move. So a stoplight is a little regulation that expands what all of us can do. Now, you take that same idea to the question of, you know, in a modern 21st century society, we need public investments for roads, for infrastructure, more generally for education, health, and basic research. If government had not done the basic research for MRNA, we might not be here. We would have been still suffering from the COVID-19. But if your government is going to do that,

you're going to have to pay taxes. And the nature of this is that there are going to be free riders who aren't just going to voluntarily contribute. So it has to be a form of compulsion. So a little compulsion can make us all freer in a fundamental sense. If we zoom out a little bit just to frame the conversation, my view in studying economics and in looking at different models is that the best we've come up with for modern societies right now is a model sort of of social democracy, northern European type capitalism. And it is capitalism. And the idea here is we're setting a floor so no one's standard of living goes below a certain level. And as you have more and more money, increasingly those top, top, top earners

are taxed such that we ensure that we put this floor in place. That's the system I've seen that leads to the most what I might call just outcomes and maximal freedom for everybody on average. Where do you fall in terms of economic systems? I agree with you. And the book calls for what I call a rejuvenated social democracy. I refer sometimes to progressive capitalism. What I do is I emphasize a little bit more trying to create a diversity of institutional arrangements, co-ops, not-for-profits. You know, we're moving more and more to a caring economy where you have older people like me. You have a lot of children, sick people, a lot of people needing care in one form or another. And what we've learned is that too often the for-profit model doesn't work very well for the caring economy. You can too easily exploit older people, people with dementia. You can just take advantage of them and maximizing profits, which means maximizing,

taking advantage of them is not the way we want our society to function. So part of my idea is you have to have to have this kind of rich ecology, diversity of institutional arrangement and encourage that. I'm curious about your view if you follow it and if you're not following this, totally fine. I'm curious about your view about the degree to which on the progressive and economic left, the predominant model is what you and I are sort of saying we're behind and what you lay out in the book.

Or if you're at all concerned that maybe some of the economic models that are being loudly championed and I say loudly because I don't know that they're actually the most predominant. I just think there may be championed by some loud individuals that are much further left that that are actual not used as a slur, but actual socialism or state communism. Do you think that there is too much of a push for that? Do you think it's healthy for there to be a push for that to some degree, even if it's not your end goal? How do you contextualize the conversation on the left right now? Well, we've had some experiments with that, you might say, extreme position.

And for the most part, they haven't worked out very well. I have a discussion in the book about this notion, evolution versus revolution. And revolutions, unfortunately, destroy the fiber of society, and it's very hard to recreate it. So what I call for is the maximum speed of evolution that we can get. So I'm very sympathetic with the view that it's not going to be a little tweak of the system that's going to repair it. It's not a little bit more education here, a little bit more green bonds in the financial market there that are going to repair our broken system. So you need a lot. But I do worry that if you destroy the fiber of the economy, you wind up with what is happening so often, and you actually don't succeed in creating the kind of

just and prosperous society. One of the things I was going to add to your comment about the social democracies, what I've called rejuvenating social democracies, is not only do they have a high level of prosperity, they have a high level of wellbeing. Yes. So it goes beyond material prosperity and shared prosperity. It's a sense of security, a sense of being able to flourish and being creative. And they've been very successful in the kind of aspiration of the good society that should be our objective. You know, it's not more goods for its higher living standards,

which means enabling people to live up to their potential. In your model, in your view, what are the areas of society that you think should be taken out of for profit markets? I mean, often health care and health insurance is one that's often stated public education. Most people agree with having one military run by the government, people on the left and the right. What are the sorts of areas that in your model you would take out of markets? Speaker 3 Well, you've you've named three of them. Obviously, I mentioned before the care of the elderly, the broader sense of the care economy. I think that one of the things that I emphasize that to make society work, you need checks and balances. And systems

of checks and balances require an active fourth estate, an active diverse media. So here's an area where in the United States I think we need more. I think we need to have an independent

public broadcasting in the form of BBC or the Swedish system, where they've actually succeeded in getting an independent media, I think it's a little bit worrisome, and I spent some time in the book talking about this, to have so much of our media controlled by very wealthy people. They're setting what I call the meta-narrative, the way we see the world, the neoliberalism that dominated for four decades. And we need to have some check against that and somebody, a check against abuses, not only in government, but by major corporations. And we need a meet it and say where there are gaps in our society,

holes that need to be filled by someone by. So so that's an area where I think we need more active government involvement than it's been in the United States. But it has to be done well. When you talk about evolution rather than revolution, certainly you're talking about not being an accelerationist in terms of break it all down to build it back up. Lots of my audience will agree with you on that. But where they may have a question is, do you believe that the level of evolution that's needed could possibly be ushered in by the Democratic Party of the United States? Or is it going to take something outside of that? Is the Democratic Party a good enough

steward of the vision that you outline? Speaker 4 Speaker 5 It is, you know, if we had a different structure of our government, if we had a kind of parliamentary system that many European countries have, one could argue, let's create another party. And that party would be part of a coalition and would pull the coalition more in the direction that I'm advocating, but the structure of our government, result of our constitution, is a two-party system. Very hard to have a third party break in. Never, only been one or two instances where it's had a significant effect. So that means that we are probably constrained to work within the Democratic Party, and right now we're lucky. I think a majority of the people within the middle, in the right side of the Democratic Party, they're beginning to understand the progressive vision. They're beginning to understand that neoliberalism failed, and many of them were advocates of a variety of neoliberalism.

Looking back in history, Clinton looks like, some people say, the high point of neoliberalism. Right. But it certainly moved in that direction with financial market deregulation. We all know that that was a mistake, and the Democratic Party has fixed that. It accelerated trade liberalization without the necessary support. I think Biden now recognizes and the center of the Democratic Party now recognize that was a mistake. So I think the party has recognized that its embrace of neoliberalism has led to or contributed to the state of our economy society where we are, which is not a happy one. And so we need more than just a little tweak. Now, you were making a comment about a lot

of noise on the far left. There's also a lot of noise of some people in the center of the Democratic Party that is unhappy about the progressive moves. They were unhappy when I was in the Clinton administration and Bob Reich and I were articulating our concerns about inequality. But I think they've been marginalized. And the result of their marginalization is that they're raising the decibels higher because that's the only way they think that they'll be heard. That's an that's an interesting observation and one that I think is no doubt true. If you if you pay attention to the texture of the discussions that's happening, for sure.

The book is The Road to Freedom, Economics and the Good Society. We've been speaking with the book's author, Professor Joseph Stiglitz. Really appreciate your time today and congratulations on the book. Well, thank you so much. The weather is starting to warm up, which I love. But the downside of the warmer weather, as many of the guys know, is the sweating and the sticking that comes with traditional underwear. It's not pleasant.

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felt before. Give sheath a try. Go to sheath underwear dot com slash Pacman and get 20 percent off with the code Pacman. That's S.H.E.A.T.H. Underwear dot com slash Pacman. Use code Pacman to save 20 percent. The info is in the podcast notes. All right. Continuing our analysis of Tucker Carlson's recent appearance with Joe Rogan yesterday, we looked at Tucker Carlson trying to tell Joe Rogan that Darwinian evolution

by natural selection has been debunked. It's no longer true or it never was. It's not believed it's been totally debunked. That was a lie. Today, we go to the wild claim from Tucker that we just don't know where nuclear technology comes from. And what's very interesting about this is it seems to be another example of because I don't know, it must not be known or because I don't understand it, nobody must understand it. It is fascinating to see. I continue to wonder, is Tucker just saying this stuff because he's identified an audience he's trying to appeal to now that he's been fired from Fox News and he needs to say this stuff in order to appeal to them?

Or is Tucker Carlson saying this stuff because he believes it? Let's take a listen. Then we'll discuss in years more advanced than us. How much would we be able to detect? Well, so I think we're pointing to the same question. I mean, I have no doubt that the US government has technology that we don't know the details of. That makes sense.

Sure. But like, where did it come from? Right. I'm not even sure. This is a separate question, but related. I'm not even sure we really know where nuclear technology came from actually when you really yes like the manhattan project yeah like we know the manhattan and we

know something about the manhattan project but like where exactly did that you know came from germany german scientists were working on okay yeah um the one part yeah it's a separate conversation but the one person i know who's really pushed others writing a book on it, who's a trustworthy person and a friend of mine, I know you know him, said to me, actually, I've spent a year working on this. And the closer I got to like, OK, but what's the genesis? Like, where did this? What was the Isaac Newton apple on the head, oh, gravity's real moment for fission? Not clear.

Weird. I don't know the answer. But here's the. Weird. I don't know the answer, but here's what. So he doesn't know the answer. So again, none of this is true. So here's how it all happened. Research into nuclear physics started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It included scientists like Henry Becquerel, who discovered radioactivity. Then Marie and Pierre Curie studied radioactive materials.

And with that, we generally understood the process that underlies nuclear technology. We then got to the breakthrough in nuclear fission. Tucker brings up fission. We just don't know. It's well documented, typically attributed to Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman in Germany in 1938. We have that information. Lisa Meitner, a colleague of Hahn and Strassman, then was able to expand understanding the mechanism behind nuclear fission. And then she, along with her nephew, Otto Frisch, described how the uranium nucleus could split. It releases a ton of energy. And then that's the basis for this technology that we now can use for weapons or for energy generation. It's an extraordinarily well-documented history in scientific and other journals and lab notes and personal accounts. So as usual, it's sort of like what on earth is Tucker Carlson

talking about? And I as people know, I'm an open book on Rogan. Rogan and I have corresponded privately dating back a long time. I've been on his show twice. I've lately been critical of a lot of his stances when it comes to primarily medical stuff, I guess I would say. But it's not personal in any way. And in this case, Rogan skepticism when Tucker says evolution's been debunked and Rogan goes, what are you talking about? What do you mean has been debunked?

I haven't heard that at all. And that's the right reaction. The right reaction is, Tucker, what the hell are you talking about? How is it that you this is what you're now espousing since you've been fired from Fox News and are trying to build the Tucker Carlson media network on X or whatever it is that he's doing. So the same question we ended with yesterday is the question I end with today. Does Tucker Carlson really believe the things he's saying here, or is he saying it because he thinks it's going to help his business? I I have a lot of negative

things to say about Tucker, but I didn't think he was so uninformed and ignorant that he would really believe that evolution's been debunked or that we just don't know where nuclear technology came from. At the same time, who is he really even trying to appeal to by claiming we don't know where the technology came from? Is it vaguely conspiratorial to appeal to the sort of deep staters about how the government's hiding the true origins? I genuinely have no idea, but it is bizarre. And I'm curious what you think. Jesse Waters has become one of the foremost

brown nosers of the failed former President Donald Trump on Fox News. I guess he's fighting with Maria Bartiromo over who can suck up to Trump the most. And yesterday was a special day for Jesse Waters, really reaching new levels of brown nosing. It was, of course, the first day of Donald Trump's first of four criminal trials. Jury selection was last week, as we talked about earlier. The trial started yesterday. And here is Jesse saying it's just so unfair. It's so unfair what they're doing to Trump, making him sit. In a courtroom, Donald Trump

been on the move his whole life, golf rallies, movement, action, sunlight, fresh air, freedom. This isn't lawfare, it's torture. They're making a 77 year old man sit inside a dingy room for eight hours straight, four days a week. And if he moves or talks jail. Right. A bit of an exaggeration. He's allowed to move and he's certainly allowed to talk quietly with his lawyers. What he's not allowed to do is make loud declarations about jurors or stand up and leave before court is actually adjourned. The exact same thing everyone in court is subjected to. And this stuff continued. And he even went into sort of conspiracy mode where he says he believes the point of making him sit in the in the court is to drain his body and his brain. Remember when we

were going to hit the body with an expect a very hot light to kill the virus, that whole thing. Instead of hitting the body with light, they are draining the body so that I guess it's going to be bad for Trump's presidential campaign. They're draining his brain and his body. Now I don't like to sit. They say sitting is the new smoking, right? You're going to take a man who's usually golfing or inaction and you're going to sit him in a chair and freezing temperatures and just let people rip you and you can't say anything

four days a week. By the way, the lower third on the screen now says Trump is trapped in a cold courtroom. Is the courtroom cold? I mean, I haven't even seen any reporting about that. Eight hours a day. That takes a toll. It does take a toll. I think that President Trump will withstand that toll because he's an extraordinarily

resilient individual. Yeah. So Trump can handle the cool temperatures, I guess. I don't know. And then here is a Jesse Waters again sort of restating the facts of the case. And I genuinely don't think they understand that. First of all, they're all telling different versions of what took place, which makes me wonder, do they even really know legally what is at stake here?

Like what is it? What is the crime Trump's accused of? But again, here is Jesse Watters defending this as, hey, listen, it's just sort of moving around of some money. That's all it is. His lawyer paid Stormy and after the campaign was over, the money was reimbursed and booked as a legal expense. Right. You can't use campaign funds for personal matters and now you can't use personal funds

for personal matters during a campaign. So I guess the real crime is that Trump ran for president. No, the real crime is that these were a campaign expenses that were meant to save Trump from the believed negative repercussions that would happen. And Stormy Daniels was strong armed with money wrongly booked as a legal expense when it was not a legal expense means Michael Cohen bills you for 50 hours that he worked and then you pay him the legal expense. This is something very different. This was an expenditure that was deliberately hidden as a legal expense when it

was not. And again, I don't know if they don't get it. By the way, the argument that Trump's lawyers are making in court is a different one than the one that Jesse Waters is making. So this is a real level of extraordinary desperation to defend Trump in this way. Here's one more Jesse Waters clip. This one's from the five. And now he says that Trump is being treated worse than Guantanamo Bay prisoners. I call it pure evil. So they've taken away his freedom of speech.

And now they've taken away his freedom of movement. So he has to sit there all week for six weeks. And if he says anything, they'll throw him in jail. If he leaves, they throw him in jail. That's crazy. I mean, they had more allowances for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I think they bought a million-dollar soccer field for the people in Gitmo. I don't know if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was able to visit his son for his high school graduation, but it's similar. They're freezing him to death. They're putting him in a meat locker. He says it's like forty five degrees in there. Yeah.

And they're putting his life in danger and they're telling the entire world all the wackos, by the way, fifty four degrees or forty five. It's not freezing. And there is no evidence that the court is that cold. This is where the former president is going to be at this date, at this time, surrounded by high rise buildings. And then they're seizing his bank accounts with these unconstitutional fines. Unreasonable bond asks.

They're talking about him like he's a little kid. He needs sunshine. He needs to be allowed to run around and the whole thing. It is bizarre. I mean, truly bizarre stuff. So Jesse Watters competing with Maria Bartiromo to be the number one Trump brown noser. We'll see where that gets him in the Fox News hierarchy. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here is one caller with her opinion about the Trump drug stuff

that's come up time and time again. He's falling asleep in court. He's supposedly leaking flatulence the entire time. He seems sedated. But then he comes out of court and he seems hopped up on an upper. Here's just one opinion. And that's all it is about what's going on. David, it's Janelle from San Antonio. Yes. I just wanted to talk to you about my theory of why Trump's falling asleep

during court and then being hopped up or ready to go as soon as court's over they take him back he can snort a couple of lines of his favorite allergy medicine that's not legal in this country right that was legal in another country which you shared a picture of him with all these boxes of it on him in a drawer. So I get it. He's being sedated and then given uppers. Here's why I just don't think so. Most of the downers that you would and I made this case yesterday and many the doctors agree

with me. Most of the downers that you would have access to outside of like a medical setting with an I.V., which would be insanely sedating, take a little while to come on. And the uppers, I mean, listen, snorting, OK, that functions quickly. But the speeches Trump is giving outside of court, he's not going anywhere. He's walking out of court and speaking. So there's no there's no we would see if he was snorting an upper in that 15 seconds it takes him to get to where he speaks from the courtroom. The timing and the half life and the time to come on for these medications, it just doesn't really make

sense. So I don't have an answer. It is very strange that Trump would be so relaxed that he would fall asleep or leak flatulence. It's also he seems pretty hopped up when he's speaking. So I just it doesn't correspond to any understanding of uppers and downers that I have. And if a medical professional wants to weigh in, I invite you to do it. I would love to hear from you. All right. We've got a fantastic bonus show for you today. California is proposing a law to allow Arizona doctors to perform abortions in California as the abortion ban of 1864 proceeds

in Arizona. Very interesting. Number two, remember the migrants flown by Ron DeSantis up to Martha's Vineyard, some of them have been determined to qualify for victim visas as a result of what the scientists did. Insane, logical, insane that the scientists would do something so stupid. And number three, scientists are pushing a new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying under some rubrics, even insects might be sentient, depending on your definition of sentience. We will talk about all of those stories and more on today's bonus show.

I encourage you become a member and get instant access to the bonus show at join Pacman dot com. And also remember that the trilogy I have them here, the trilogy of children's books is available at David Pakman dot com slash book. We have think like a detective, a kid's book about critical thinking. We have think like a scientist, a kid's book to learn a little bit about the scientific method. And we have think like a voter. This is the newest one explaining how voting works and the importance of voting in a very nonpolitical way. David Pakman dot com slash book. You can get any or all of these. And please remember to leave a review. People say,

oh, David, reviews. The reviews are critical to the success of the book. I'll see you on the bonus show. I'll be back tomorrow. What a day.