The David Pakman Show - 4/6/23: Clarence Thomas in major hot water, Trump says de-fund the police

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Erika Engelhaupt, science journalist and author of the book "Gory Details: Adventures From the Dark Side of Science," joins David to discuss medical myths and misconceptions, the human feeling of disgust, and how the two are related. Get her book: https://amzn.to/3ZLEBfO -- A ProPublica story exposes the apparently criminal history of Clarence Thomas receiving major gifts from billionaire Republican Harlan Crow -- Michigan repeals an extremely retrograde abortion ban that dated back to 1931 under the leadership of Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer -- Radical, repugnant Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene appears on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show to call New York City "disgusting" after she was run out of the city by hecklers -- Failed former President Donald Trump calls for the federal police to be de-funded -- A panel of Fox News viewers turns on Donald Trump, disagreeing unanimously with Trump's recent demand that federal police be de-funded -- Fox News host Steve Doocy again goes off-script, criticizing Donald Trump for targeting the Judge in his case's family, and co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt don't like it -- Donald Trump, in his latest act of desperation, joins a "prayer call" that is also attended by radical former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann -- Voicemail caller complains that the show isn't produced early enough in the day for him to get his news on time -- On the Bonus Show: Bud Light faces boycott over Dylan Mulvaney partnership, NC Democrat becomes a Republican, judge orders Stormy Daniels to pay Donald Trump another $120,000 in legal fees, much more... 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN10 saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 👍 Use code PAKMAN for 10% off the Füm Journey Pack at https://tryfum.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

. We start again today with non Trump stuff. There is lots of news to discuss and a blockbuster story about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas breaking from ProPublica about his acceptance of all sorts of high value goodies from a billionaire Republican, possibly criminal, certainly unethical. And we will discuss it now. We've had our suspicions about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Not only did his tenure on the Supreme Court start under this cloud of allegation of sexual harassment, we also have seen this unbelievable story in which he was presiding

and potentially presiding over cases related to the 2020 election as we knew that his wife, Ginni Thomas, was an activist for the Biden stole it crowd that was all wrapped up and tied wind in with the rioters of January 6th, 2021. So and then, you know, 20 years in between that you can fill in with other red flags and question marks. Well, there has never been anything like this in Supreme Court history in terms of receiving gifts. There's a fantastic ProPublica piece that you can look at. We are going to look at a tweet thread from ProPublica that gives us all of the most important highlights. And it starts for decades. Judge Clarence Thomas Thomas has secretly accepted luxury trips from a major Republican donor.

Newly obtained documents show Thomas has publicly presented presented himself as an everyman with modest tastes in this documentary about him. He waxes nostalgic about his fondness for Walmart parking lots. But and this is one of those great butts. But Thomas's friendship with Dallas based real estate magnate Harlan Crowe has allowed him to repeatedly experience luxuries well beyond his means. He's vacationed on Crowe's hundred and 162 foot super yacht around the globe and flies on Crows Bombardier Global 5000 jet. That's a nice jet. Nice jet.

If you can get one in June of 2019, Thomas boarded Crows private jet to Indonesia for nine days of island hopping on the yacht. Had Thomas chartered the jet and yacht himself could have set him back half a million dollars. It wasn't Thomas's first time on Crow's yacht. The Michael arose. He went on a river day in Savannah, a river day trip in Savannah, Georgia, and an extended cruise in New Zealand about a decade ago while sailing around New Zealand with Crow. He autographed a copy of his memoir as a gift for a crew member.

By the way, that that's quite a narcissistic move. Thank you so much. Here's my book. The justice has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all male retreat and to Crow's sprawling Texas ranch. Every summer, Thomas typically spends about a week at Camp Top Ridge, Crow's private resort in the Adirondacks. Inside the Top Ridge hangs a photorealistic painting of one of Thomas's visits to the property. The painting shows Thomas enjoying a cigar alongside Crow and chatting with conservative power brokers like Leonard Leo. If Leo's name sounds familiar, it's because the longtime

Federalist Society executive is regarded as an architect of the Supreme Court's turn to the right and recently received one point six billion dollars for a new conservative political group. Wow. What brazen cronyism and corruption. This continues and you can read all of it. I think the the important part here is as follows. While Thomas and Crow have a genuine friendship, these vacations put the justice in contact with corporate executives and political activists. During just one July 2017 trip,

Thomas's fellow guests included executives at Verizon PricewaterhouseCoopers, major Republican donors, one of the leaders of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. These trips appear nowhere on Thomas's financial disclosures where justices are required to list most gifts. This is where we start to get into potential criminality. ProPublica looked at flight records, internal documents and interviews with dozens of people to uncover the travel details. The failure to report the flights appears to violate a federal disclosure law passed after Watergate by accepting the trips. Thomas has also broken long standing norms for judges conduct, ethics experts say.

Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge, says it's incomprehensible to me that someone would do this. Virginia Cantor, a former government ethics lawyer who has served in administrations of both parties, says Thomas, quote, seems to have completely disregarded his higher ethical obligations. Thomas did not respond to detailed questions. So without question, this corrupts public trust and justices are supposed to abide by a higher ethical obligation in which not only should you avoid actual bias and partiality, you should avoid even the appearance of it.

And there are a couple of different stories here. One is that Clarence Thomas and his wife have a long history of political entanglements with absolutely no accountability. We've known that for a long time. Secondly, we have another law and order story where my guess is and we'll have to wait and see. My guess is that right wingers will immediately rush with knee jerk reactions to defend Clarence Thomas and say these are paperwork crimes, just like Trump's all paperwork crimes and everybody's all paperwork crimes or whatever the case may be. So there will be no consistency there.

And then lastly, is Clarence Thomas like this desperate to be participating in this sort of stuff that like it almost feels like, you know, a yacht cruise and a trip to some degree. It all seems kind of pathetic as well. But now going from just the suspicion of lack of ethics to what seems like bona fide criminality, the violations of law as as it regards these financial disclosures, will it go anywhere? I don't know. With Clarence, Clarence Thomas has had a sort of Teflon status quo, much like Donald Trump did for many years, although hopefully the latter is ending with this week's arrest. That's the latest really great report from ProPublica. Good news out of Michigan, where under the leadership of Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan

has repealed an insane 1931 abortion ban. This is really wacky stuff. The Detroit Free Press reports Whitmer repeals Michigan's 1931 abortion ban with the stroke of her pen. Governor Gretchen Whitmer repealed an unenforceable Michigan law Wednesday that makes it a felony to administer most abortions, with no exception for rape or incest. Now, unenforceable, unenforceable is a critical word here. And so the reason to do this is less about the idea that that law would start to be enforced

right now, but the idea that it could be enforced depending on what continues to happen at the highest court of the land, the Supreme Court in the United States. And this is a very, very good thing. It is important to understand that this is only the beginning of what is certain to be a much longer, I guess we would call it crusade against abortion that started decades ago with the passage of Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade was about ensuring right to an abortion, but it triggered the battle against

abortion from the American right. They had a major success recently when the Supreme Court did away with Roe v. Wade. And we know that it is only the beginning. Here is Governor Gretchen Whitmer officially signing a repeal of that abortion ban. All right. So most of us understand what it looks like to sign a piece of paper. And here is Gretchen Whitmer actually saying something about this just ahead of the signing. I don't ever want someone from the press to ask me again, should we talk about abortion or the economy?

If you don't think abortions about the economy, you might not have a uterus, right? We know that the decision when and whether or not to bear a child is the most consequential decision economically that a family or a woman will make in her lifetime. The government has no business getting in the way of conversations between women and their doctors. This should not really be controversial, but it did send the American right into a tizzy hurling the term Marxist at Gretchen Whitmer. I don't know why. I don't know why getting rid of an insane law from 1931 makes you a Marxist in 2023.

I don't think they know either. I don't think they know what Marxist even means. But that doesn't matter because what we do see is their passion, if you want to use that word, for making it as difficult as possible to get an abortion under any circumstances and anywhere in the United States. And so this is a small step. Again, at this point, this was an unenforceable 1931 law. But it is still important to get these laws off the books. And many states, particularly red states, have these retrograde ancient laws on the books, even if they aren't being enforced right now. Any one of these that can be taken off the table in terms of possible future enforcement

should be considered a win. And remember, Governor Gretchen Whitmer easily, easily winning reelection in November, despite a challenge from Trump endorsed MAGA candidate Tudor Dixon, who went down in flames. And we can all be very, very happy about that. We'll continue following this fight for just simple medical rights. That's what we're talking about here. We'll take a break. Make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman Show. What a program we have for you today. This one's good enough that we might actually record it. vape oils in your lungs. Zippix toothpicks are a convenient way to curb the nicotine cravings. Zippix toothpicks are super discreet. You can use them anytime, anywhere. Smoking and vaping

aren't allowed, including flights, sporting events in restaurants. They're available in six different flavors with options of two and three milligrams of nicotine. If you're not a nicotine user, Zipix also offers caffeine and B12 infused toothpicks. Zipix has already helped tens of thousands of customers ditch the cigarettes, ditch the vapes. They might be able to help you, too. If you're a smoker or a vapor, give Zipix toothpicks a try. Your lungs will thank you. Go to ZipX toothpicks dot com today. Save 10 percent with the code Pacman 10 at checkout. Just remember, you must be 21 or older to order. That's ZIPPIX toothpicks dot com. Use promo code Pacman 10 at checkout for 10 percent off. That's Pacman 1 0. The info is in The David Pakman show is an audience funded program.

If you appreciate the work that we do, I welcome you to sign up at join Pakman dot com. You can use the coupon code indicted or you can use the coupon code indicated in case you accidentally or deliberately misspell indicted the way Donald Trump did indicated the coupon code will still work. You'll get access to the daily bonus show, commercial free audio and video streams of the show, invitations to member only town halls, as well as access to the soundboard. It mirrors my soundboard that I have here. David Pakman does not have a soul. He doesn't have a soul. Right. That soundboard you have access to as a member as well. You can sign up at join Pakman dot com coupon codes indicted or indicated. Marjorie Taylor Greene did something which had it been done by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,

they would be calling for her head. What did Marjorie Taylor Greene do? Well, she went on Tucker Carlson's Fox News program and just assailed New York City, saying it's disgusting, saying it's dirty, saying it smells bad, that people are dying from drugs on the street. And all of this is because Marjorie Taylor Greene is furious that on Tuesday she went and tried to have a protest in support of Donald Trump in the context of Trump being arrested on Tuesday in New York City. And she was run out of the place, just run out of the place. Whistles. You couldn't even hear what she was saying. Nobody wanted her there. More media than supporters. And so now she says it's disgusting and it's disastrous and it's all horrible. Just imagine

if this was AOC saying it about a city in Marjorie Taylor Greene's district. Here is what she had to say to Tucker Carlson. And it won't shock you that Tucker Carlson looks concerned and confused, which is generally always the look on his face. Really quick, since you were just there. But Mayor Adams described New York as, quote, his home. How did his home look? Pretty neat and tidy. No, his home is disgusting.

I compared it to what I called Gotham City. The streets are filthy. They're covered with people basically dying on drugs. They can't even stand up. They're falling over. There's so much crime in the city. I can't I can't comprehend how people live there. It was repulsive. It smells bad. And I just I think it's a terrible place. There's a lot that we could say here. I'm not even going to delve into the reality that there's an opioid epidemic that is in the south of the United States.

There's a meth epidemic. I mean, listen, there's there are addiction problems in all sorts of parts of this country. And Marjorie Taylor Greene's part of the country isn't exempt. But understand that this is her anger because their protests lasted two and a half minutes before she was just run out of there by hecklers because nobody wanted her in New York City. We don't want Marjorie Taylor Greene back in New York. And it sounds like from what she's saying, we shouldn't expect to see her again. But it's really important also to point out that the entire New York City is

disgusting meme is pretty played out. The truth is that New York City has a lower crime rate than many other cities in the United States, including cities run by Republicans like Oklahoma City and even some cities in Marjorie Taylor Greene's never mind Marjorie Taylor Greene's state, Marjorie Taylor Greene's district, which we are going to get to. It's not really groundbreaking news that when there is a high population density, sometimes you see more trash in different places. And this, of course, applies to any place that has that number of people. It's not really groundbreaking. It doesn't really say much about Eric Adams. But just think for a second, if AOC went on MSNBC and said, I went down

to I don't know, I'm not going to pick on I'm not picking on Dalton, Georgia, but Dalton, Georgia is in Marjorie Taylor Greene's district. I went down. Rachel Maddow, AOC, tell us what was it like down in Marjorie Taylor Greene's district? I went down to Dalton, Georgia, and the crime rate is way higher than New York City. It was disgusting. The average income per capita isn't even twenty two thousand dollars. There's no jobs, there's no money. It's filled with these dirty textile polluting industry buildings. Only 70 percent of the population in Dalton even has a high school diploma compared to 85 percent in New York City. It was terrible, disgusting place. Imagine if AOC did that on MSNBC about Dalton, AOC and everyone on the right would

be saying they constantly insult our part of the country. They think that we're stupid. They think this. They think that they think we're backwards. Imagine how the right would be reacting if AOC had done what Marjorie Taylor Greene did about New York City. But there's a difference. The difference is that it's now popular to say this sort of stuff about New York City, even when you're not really breaking any new ground. So the real disgusting aspect to this is Marjorie Taylor Greene. That's what I find truly deplorable. Not Manhattan, which is not exactly a hellscape the way she makes it out to be. Now it is not only Jim Jordan calling for the police to be defunded. It is failed former President Donald Trump.

Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. What am I talking about? Well, I will show you Donald Trump now in the wake of his arrest is calling for the federal police to be defunded. He had the following to say on his platform, Truth Social Quote. This is in all caps, by the way. Republicans in Congress should defund the DOJ and FBI until they come to their senses. The Democrats have

totally weaponized law enforcement in our country and are viciously using this abuse of power to interfere with our already under siege elections. Trump doesn't like the fact that he was arrested, by the way, not by federal prosecutors. And he is now calling for Congress to pull funding from DOJ and FBI. That is that that's police. That's law enforcement. That's federal law enforcement. And of course, laws for the and not for me has always been the Republican way. It's really important to understand that when Trump says when he talks about they should come to their senses, what he means is I should be allowed to do whatever I want with no consequence, but nobody else should. And as I've told you before,

their stated principles mean nothing. Oh, we do. We support the police. No, you don't. You support the police to the extent that don't. You support the police to the extent that it's convenient. When it came to the police officers, Capitol Police on January 6, 2021, all of a sudden they weren't the heroes. The hero was Ashley Babbitt. All of a sudden now it's not about fund the police. It's defund the police. And remember that on Sunday, Jim Jordan said the exact same thing to Maria Bartiromo legislation, write laws and pass legislation. So we'll look at that.

And maybe most importantly, Maria, is we control the power of the purse. And that's we're going to have to look at the appropriations process and limit funds going to some of these agencies, particularly the ones who are engaged in the most egregious behavior. So the DOJ and the FBI. Yeah. And what I'd really like, frankly, legislation, the DOJ and the FBI, it's not just one person anymore. These are the folks who have been slamming the left for years saying you all want to defund the police. And I look around. I

looked I looked under my phone and maybe under my glass of wine. I can't find anybody other than random voices on Twitter who want to defund the police. No serious Democrats want to defund the police. There's no serious movement to defund the police. Do some of us want to reform, restructure? Absolutely. Change training protocol. Hundred percent demilitarized, of course. But there is no big movement to defund the police except. People like Jim Jordan and Donald Trump and all of their acolytes and suck ups are now

saying, oh, DOJ and FBI, we have to defund them. Oh, OK. So when you say they want to defund the police, you really mean you want to defund the police. And what is interesting to see is that at least for now, Republican voters don't seem to be going for it. Let's take a look at that. Steve Doocy on Fox and Friends yesterday morning had a cringy moment in which they brought on a panel of Republicans, I guess these are and asked, you know, Trump now is saying defund the DOJ, defund the FBI. Does anybody here think that that's a good idea?

And not a single hand went up. Take a look at this. I love this stuff. I really do. Apparently today, Donald Trump has called for America to defund the police, particularly the FBI, the Department of Justice, because the Democrats have weaponized law enforcement. Right. All right. Who in this panel? Raise your hand. Who thinks that's a good idea? All right. Nobody. So listen, obviously, six people aren't representative of the entire

Republican Party. This is more about the optics of a total backfire on TV, which, of course, triggers Trump even further. And this has the same vibe as when Fox News hosted a town hall for Bernie Sanders. And the audience applauded a lot of Bernie Sanders ideas. And it really didn't go the way that that Fox wanted it to go from a narrative perspective. So I think there's a couple of different things here. There are multiple passes that we often take at this stuff. Right now, there are plenty of Republican voters who believe we shouldn't defund the police and believe that Democrats want to defund the police and don't believe that Republicans want to defund the

police. And when presented with, hey, Trump's trying to defund the police or he wants to defund federal police, they go, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's bad. This is wave one. But you have to understand that this is a cult. Now, whether these six people are part of the cult or not, we don't actually know. But much of the Trump cult eventually will just change their tune. Why? Well, because this is one of the characteristics of cults. And we'll talk about some of the other characteristics later today. One of the characteristics of cults is consistency doesn't matter. The consistency of the message that you believe from your cult leader doesn't matter. It can change overnight and you simply change your thinking and the cult leader is justified if they move on to, yes, support local police. But federal police has been weaponized as a political tool against Republicans only. So the FBI and the DOJ must be defunded.

They will just adjust their view that the double standard doesn't matter. The about face doesn't matter. And this is one of the characteristics of cults. You hear a from the from the dear leader and you follow it. And the next day the leader says not a and you say, oh, we're following that. And their word is perfect and their word is divine, almost like a pseudo deity. So, yeah, good for these six people, I guess. I mean, they they don't want to defund the police for now, but a large number of Trump supporters have already come around to this side and many more probably will as well. All of the clips that I played for you here, you can find not only on our YouTube channel, but also on our Instagram by searching for David Pakman show and increasingly popular.

More than 30 million views last month on tick tock alone. If you're into the tick tock, you can find us there at David Pakman show. We'll take a quick break and be back with much more. When you're using websites and apps, your device sends out data about you into the open, who you are, where you go, things you like. That data then gets sold around for advertising purposes, which is why every time I connect to the Internet, I use a VPN to hide my IP address. And our sponsor, Private Internet Access, is the most trustworthy VPN on the market.

It's the only VPN that has proven multiple times in court. They don't log your activity. Private Internet access protects you from the prying eyes of hackers, your Internet service provider, tech companies. Private Internet access is also super fast for streaming and for downloads. You can watch your favorite streaming platforms as We'll be right back. 83 percent off. That's 203 a month plus four months free. Go to PIA VPN dot com slash David. The link is in the podcast notes. Today, we're going to be speaking with Erica Engelhaupt, who's a science journalist living in Washington, D.C., and also author of the book Gory Details Adventures from the Dark Side of Science. Erica, really great having you on. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Nice to be here. So, you know, we've spoken over time about everything from, you know, homeopathy to drinking silver, faith healing, old sorts of medical treatments that maybe kind of worked at one point, but there are now better options compared to out and out scams, et cetera. One of the things you talk about in the book is the relation between medical myths, misconceptions and irrational health fears and this sense of disgust that as humans we could say has been developed or has been bred in or however you sort of want to say it. Let's maybe start there. Talk a little bit about the tendency towards disgust and how it might predispose people

to some of these medical misconceptions. Yeah, I think, you know, disgust is one of those kind of overlooked emotions, something that we don't necessarily think about or talk about a lot. But you know, some psychologists would say that it's one of the basic human emotions. It seems to be universal, at least the feeling of disgust. You know, there are certain particular signs of disgust that people around the world give, you know, that kind of squinched up face, you know, kind of expelling something out of your body like, yeah, like 80 percent of the way to gagging, we might say. Exactly. Exactly. And that's something that,

you know, people around the world experience that feeling of disgust. But in terms of what things are considered disgusting, that's really kind of up for grabs culturally. So that is something that we tend to learn as we grow up. So there may be something where humans as a species have evolved the sense of disgust, probably as a protective mechanism, because a lot of the things that disgust us are things that could hurt us, right? Things that could make us sick, for example. So, you know, we learn, we teach most of our children around the world, you know, not to eat their poop. And, you know, maybe as babies, they're not disgusted by poop and they'll stick their hands right in it. But we, you know, we teach our kids to be disgusted by the smell and

appearance of poop. And most of us around the world get that at some point in our lives. But there are a lot of other things that vary from place to place, culture to culture, especially when it comes to things like food. So every culture has some food that it thinks is delicious and that other cultures think is totally disgusting. Yes. So that's so it's relative. So there are things that are pretty universally disgusting. Those tend to be the things that could hurt us or make us sick. And then there are other things that are just, you know, we decide basically that something is disgusting and something is not disgusting. And so then what's the connection from that to the medical myths and misconceptions?

Yeah. So disgust is a really powerful feeling. And so since we have this, you know, strong aversion to certain things, that means that it can really kind of guide our decisions and shape our thinking about things. And a lot of the things that we're disgusted by involve our bodies, you know, a lot of things involving bodily functions, you know, all of our bodily secretions and excretions, blood, sweat, tears, you know, snot. These are things that you don't necessarily, you know, they're very intimate. And they're generally considered disgusting if they're coming from a stranger, right?

Sure. So we're not necessarily disgusted so much by our own body fluids and so forth. But we're certainly disgusted by those of strangers. And so when you think about some of the different kinds of medical treatments and products, things that people are trying to sell to us, it's very easy to play into that sense of disgust. For example, there's a huge industry built around the idea of detoxifying our bodies, purifying, cleansing. All of these things are basically meant to make us less disgusting. We all want to be less disgusting, right? We all want to have this idea of being, you know, clean and pure. But when it comes down to it, you know,

a lot of these things are playing on our disgust of our bodies or other people's bodies and really are not selling us something that's real, you know. uh, again, you know, it's easy to play on that disgust and say like, Oh, this is going to detoxify you. Um, and, and that sounds good. And if we see, for example, if you, you know, there are, um, certain kinds of sweat therapy that that people are selling really hard. And the idea is that you can sweat out the toxins. And if people see something coming out of their bodies, it feels like satisfying. Right. You're getting something bad out. Yeah, I've told stories of I don't do it often because I find it painfully awkward, but I've had like professional massages before and the massage goes great. And at the end they say, you know, the massage will loosen a lot of it often because I find it painfully awkward, but I've had like professional massages before

and the massage goes great. And at the end they say, you know, the massage will loosen a lot of the toxins in the body. So you should drink a lot of water. And I'm thinking, wait a second. So the water is processed in the kid. What's the mechanism here that's going on? But it's sort of that same idea where it's just like that sounds it sounds generally good. Yeah. Like I mean that I could kind of go for that. You know, Jonathan Haidt has written about the connections between disgust and political leanings and predispositions. And I'm wondering whether when it comes to medical myths, misconceptions, quack cures and openness and this sort of thing, whether there are other maybe personality traits or

whatever that that we may be able to overlay on, whether it's politics or upbringing or whatever the case may be. Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, definitely people there's a range in how easily disgusted people are. Some people are very sensitive to disgust and are very easily triggered to feel disgusted. Others, not so much. I seem to have a pretty high tolerance for disgust,

for example, because I write about gross things. But a lot of people don't. And there have been some studies, like what you're referencing, that link those traits, how easily disgusted you are to various other kinds of opinions that we form. And so some in general, I don't want to make this any kind of hard and fast rule, but some studies have found a connection between people who are more easily disgusted and people who tend to be more conservative politically. Yes. And it kind of makes sense if you think about the idea of, you know, that a person who is very easily triggered to feel disgust might be kind of

sensitive and afraid of things that could cause that feeling. And so things that are different, things that are outside, you know, may be more triggering to some people than to others. I think the same kind of thing happens, you know, perhaps with these kinds of health beliefs and misconceptions. Some people seem to be just more sensitive and more triggered by the idea of being contaminated by something, by, you know, things that are dirty. And that can also be likewise that can be played back into politically. You know, I one of the interesting things about this that you're making me think of is, you know, there's a lot of I think we can all understand how, if indeed this higher sense of or this more easily triggered disgust aligns with political conservatism, we could see how that might make people against immigration.

Right. We hear stories about I mean, Tucker Carlson once overtly said immigrants make make the country dirtier and poorer. That's literally something that you would be disgusted by the dirt that he said. OK, that that one's super clear. It's been interesting to see with the pandemic. You would think germs around me. You would you would think that with a more easily triggered disgust response, the right would have been more sensitive to the idea of the germs of covid. But for political reasons and for other reasons, it hasn't actually been the case. Right. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point, too. You know, but disgust can cut a lot of different ways. And, you know, we have to remember that it can be disgust can also be weaponized. Right. You know, it can be turned against certain groups of people. Like you were saying, it's often turned against immigrants saying, oh, they're diseased and dirty and they're coming in here and they're contaminating our population in some way. Yes. You know, the same kind of thing can happen with COVID, where there's, you know, marginalizing

of certain groups because they're seen as the cause. You know, so we saw that with Asian Americans earlier in the pandemic and so forth. And so, you know, I think that the disgust can be weaponized in whatever way is convenient for particular, you know, political groups interests. So sometimes you get things that are sort of nonsensical, you know, where it seems like people are really acting against their own best interests. Yeah. Or even their predispositions. But interestingly, there was a sense of disgust about the masks by some of the folks who did not see right the

feeling of the mask. And it's restricting my breathing and I'm rebreathing my own carbon dioxide related to this. Does one's willingness to accept a medical myth treatment, you know, scam treatment or whatever the case may be, relate to how disgusted or put off they are by whatever it is they are trying to treat, if that makes sense. In other words, when you maybe learn more about something, you would be less likely to fall for the misinformation and the quack cures. Speaker 1 I think that's probably true, and I don't think that we have necessarily hard data to demonstrate that, but it's it's pretty logical. And I will cite an example of kind of a more extreme version. Yeah. So, for example, people who are already easily sensitized or disgusted by insects

and afraid of, you know, people, some of us are totally freaked out by insects or spiders. Some of us, you know, not so much. There's a condition called delusions of infestation that I have worked on for several years now. And it's really upsetting. It's where people develop the idea that insects or other small creatures have literally infested their bodies. Right. And it often starts with something real, like an itch. It could be as simple as a skin condition that's causing an itch. But because people, some people, are already kind of worried about insects or just sort of more prone to feel disgust about insects, if they happen to see an insect in the environment, they may make the connection that,

oh, I think that's what's going on here. I think that I've got these insects attacking me. Right. And so I think that's kind of an extreme example of where someone who maybe is already kind of predisposed to a certain kind of disgust or feeling about insects, you know, may be more likely to develop this extreme delusion, which can be, you know, completely devastating, where it takes over people's lives can be, you know, completely devastating where it takes over people's lives and, you know, their lives really become about trying to prove to everyone else that this infestation is real. Yeah. My dad's a psychiatrist and he's he's dealt with that and talk to me about it. Sometimes that that does respond quite well to medication, interestingly

enough. Now, the interesting thing is that relates to something else I've said before, which is, you know, we've talked a lot about conspiracy theories on the show. Yeah. And we'll sometimes say, you know, how does someone fall into it? Is it flat earth or is it, you know, more recently with relation to covid stuff about vaccines? How is it they end up with that as opposed to something else? And very often it's sort of environmental and circumstance circumstantial. It's listen, because of the media environment and the people that they're around and where they live, they're into does injecting bleach cure covid as opposed to something about the Bilderberg's or flatter. So there's like an environment, but they are predisposed generally to this type of thinking.

It seems that with some of the things you're talking about, there might also be a similar idea where it's not. I mean, I don't know. It seems that someone who falls into what you just described about the insects would be predisposed to something else if it was environmental or around them culturally. Right, exactly. And, you know, we have to keep in mind, too, that all of us experience some kind of what psychologists call magical thinking. Yes.

You know, we none of us are perfectly logical beings. And so we all have these kinds of beliefs and misconceptions going on all the time about something, about something. And, you know, magical thinking, it can be, you know, psychologists talk about the law of similarity and the law of contagion, which relate to disgust because, you know, the law of similarity says the image is the object. And so that's the kind of thinking that makes, for example, burning an effigy a very powerful statement. Because in our minds, deep in our lizard brain somewhere, it really feels like when you burn the symbol of the person, you're harming the person. It's what makes voodoo dolls satisfying to stab. And it's also

related to disgust. It's what makes poop shaped chocolates, not a big hitch, right? Right. Because we associate the, the disgusting thing of poop with the chocolate, even though the chocolate is perfectly fine to eat. Um, and so, you know, those kinds, that kind of thinking can come into basically our beliefs about health and wellness and all of these things as well. And certainly, I think that that indicates something about our belief systems more broadly. And so, certainly, I think it makes sense to me that, you know, there there are these kind of deeper reasons in our thinking that we're all vulnerable to why we might be susceptible to certain myths and misconceptions. And then our environments and our society, you know, our culture, the people that we're around shape the details of those things.

The book is gory details, adventures from the dark side of science. We've been speaking with the book's author, Erica Engelhaupt, who's a journalist living in Washington, D.C. Erica, really appreciate your time and insights today. Thank you so much. Great to be on. One of our sponsors today is fume. Not everything in a bad habit is wrong. So instead of a drastic, uncomfortable change, why not just remove the bad part from

your habit? Fume is an innovative, award winning device that does exactly that. Fume is not electronic. There's no vapor or harmful chemicals. Fume is just a delicious flavored air. The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. fidgeting, which can be great for people breaking bad habits. Look at what people online are saying. They weren't sure what to expect, but ended up loving the taste and the feel. Stopping is something lots of people put off because it's difficult to do. But switching to fume is easy and enjoyable. There's no reason that you can't be the next fume success story. Head on over to try fume dot com and use the code Pacman to save 10 percent when you get the journey pack, which comes with the device and three flavors. That's try f u m dot com code Pacman saves you 10 percent on the journey pack. The info is in the podcast

notes. I want to talk a little bit more about Steve Doocy. Steve Doocy is one of the three hosts of the Fox News morning show Fox and Friends alongside alongside Ainsley Earhart and Brian Kilmeade. And Steve Doocy over the last couple of weeks has had a few sort of off script sane moments where he will interject some reality into the propaganda that is Fox and Friends. And his co-hosts don't really seem to like it. Earlier this week, I played for you a clip of Steve Doocy trying to explain to his co-hosts, hey, you know, there is this thing called the the crime fraud exception in the law. And if you understand it, you understand a lot of what's going on with these 34 felony counts against Donald Trump and his his co-hosts did not like it. Steve Doocy went off script again when he pointed out Trump really shouldn't be talking

about the judge's family and the prosecutor or the judge on social media. It's really not appropriate to be doing that. And Brian Kilmeade again just kind of rolls his eyes and says, oh, Trump, it was a really great speech that Trump gave. Something is up with Steve Doocy and he seems to be trying. God bless him. Take a look at this. And one of the last speak and one of the point before we go, one of the last things that Lucas reported on this morning is prosecutors yesterday during the indictment brought up to Trump and his team the threatening post that Donald Trump made. He posted on Truth Social

there would be death and destruction would follow if he were charged. And the judge warned him and his attorneys make sure that doesn't happen. Six hours later, at Mar-a-Lago, the judge was attacked, the judge's wife and the judge's daughter. The judge's daughter wound up on Truth Social

and a bunch of social media sites yesterday the judge's wife and the judge's daughter. The judge's daughter wound up on true social and a bunch of social media sites yesterday because she works for a consulting firm that did work for Hunter rather than Hunter Biden for the Biden. He's trying. He's struggling with a cough. He's struggling to read his notes. He's mixing up names, but he's trying. He's saying Trump was told, don't go after you. Don't don't do these inflammatory posts. And then he's attacking the judge, the judge's family and the prosecutor. And and Brian Kilmeade is not pleased with this campaign. A lot of if you go on their website, we were scrolling through it yesterday.

They represent a lot of Democrats, a lot of progressive Democrats. I would say that is a very bad look to attack the family. He said these he just mentioned that they are attack. Alvin Bragg's attacking him. His wife posted something negative about him. And the daughter works for Democrats. So see, Brian Kilmeade says it's fine. Oh, there seems to be an agenda.

He didn't say attack the family. He mentioned them in a speech. I thought his speech was tight last night. We all watched that speech live. It was a tight speech. Trump rambled incoherently about his normal list of grievances and seemed to be focused rather than on the crimes that he has been formally accused of on his other potential crimes for which he's not yet been accused and then abruptly wrapped it up by saying,

make America great again, even though the country's under a dark cloud. Not exactly a tight speech. Believe how tight he was to the problem. A lot of support. It seems like, boom, boom, boom. This one doing this. We're going. Here's the problem with our country.

Got to run. And I like that he did it in Florida. He's like, I'm getting the heck out of New York. Yeah. Yep. They're sitting in New York, by the way, as they say. Good thing he got the hell out of here. This place sucks.

So listen, I don't I don't know what's going on with Steve Doocy. It really is. I'm not speculating that, oh, he has seen the light or he hasn't, but he's pretending because of this reason or that reason or someone's in his ear. I don't have any speculation as to what's going on. What I can tell you is what I see three or four times over the last several weeks and twice this week. Steve Doocy has tried to introduce some reality, some cogent analysis of the real world to his co-hosts, and they just basically steamroll right over it and say everything's fine. Trump's speech was tight. He wasn't really threatening. He was just mentioning, oh, all these people who are

against me are biased and on and on. There might be some story here. You'll remember with Shepard Smith at Fox News, you started to see little bits and pieces of this inkling that something was not there was trouble in paradise, so to speak. And next thing you knew, Shep was gone from Fox News. I don't know what's up with Steve Doocy. His son also works, Peter Doocy, for Fox News. But it is certainly interesting to see.

Let's go now from Steve Doocy to Harris Faulkner. Harris Faulkner has become an interesting character on Fox News. Harris Faulkner has become one of the greatest Trump brown nosers and defenders on Fox News. And that's why it's particularly interesting that her review of Trump's speech Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago was not exactly glowing. Now, she does sort of try. By the way, this is not an image of Harris Faulkner. This is this is a this is a guy. Harris Faulkner is a black woman. And this is this is a man here. You'll see her in a moment. She can't effusively praise the speech, but she's kind of trying to defend it. And the point here is when even Harris Faulkner is this lukewarm, you know that it's not very

good. Imposes a weird day. Never thought I'd see it. But here we are. What I pick up on with what you're saying is right where Trump went from Mar-a-Lago last night. And that is, you know, he didn't call it a whiff. I'm going to call it one. Oh, she is calling it. OK, interesting. Alvin Bragg. And did you see how someone's pointing? That's very, very strange. Someone's pointing almost like they want the camera only on Harris Faulkner during this

speech. That's very interesting. Those are those hands that pop up with. I'm going to call it one. When we see Alvin Bragg there before all the reporters and they're pressing, why now? And what new evidence? And he's dodging and we even his interests were terrible. They were terrible.

But he kept talking. So I mean, it was just like it was like nothingness coming out of his mouth. When you see that Trump didn't stop there, it didn't pick up there where he went was. But they'll they'll still be coming for me. So let me tell you what's coming. I guess he's saying the Bragg press conference was a whiff. It's so hard to know what she's talking about. Pike.

And I always find it interesting. And I did last night for somebody to lay out a case before you of how your enemies are coming to get you, to lay out the other cases, get ready, they're going to keep coming, and here are the holes in the next one. That telegraphs that he's not so worried about this one. Not getting too far ahead of it. They still have to make motions by August. There's a date in August. And of course, they want to push this to December 4th. But maybe it won't ever happen. Maybe we won't ever get to trial or court or anywhere else with this case.

But what we do know is he's playing, again, the role of someone who wants to solve the problems of the country. OK, actually, so this is this is actually much more delusional than I thought. Talked about that. He he mentioned the things that Americans are going through and at the same time, don't think that they're not going to come get me again and again and again, as they always do, as they did today, because I'm trying to save the country. It was interesting.

It was short. He read the prompter. He left from a political messaging standpoint, though. All right. Well, I guess I mean, I don't know. It's the first of all, wasn't reading from a teleprompter bad. He showed up. He read the prom during. He left. Trump spent years saying that Obama reading from a teleprompter was some form of cheating and

dishonesty. And Fox News spent years agreeing that Obama reading from a teleprompter is dishonesty. Then Trump used a teleprompter his entire four years and then used one on Tuesday night. And now, listen, he showed up, he did what he had to do. He read off of his prompter and he left. The real point here, though, is the idea that Trump described to Americans the things that Americans are going through. Trump talked about the National Archives classified documents, hush money payoffs, a perfect phone call.

Ukraine. These are the issues that Americans are going through. That's an extraordinarily who hasn't been indicted for 34 felonies. Let's all come together as Americans. So listen, I think Harris Faulkner knows it wasn't exactly a titillating performance that people were expecting Trump with fire. He's sort of low energy while very sweaty and visibly confused. Read his speech off the prompter. It was the standard set of grievances we've been hearing

at every rally, and nobody was particularly impressed with it outside of the Fox News bubble. One guy who was clearly desperate that night, seemingly knowing how poorly it went, was Trump himself, because he ended up doing something he doesn't often do. Trump turned to God. Donald Trump joined an emergency prayer call after his Mar-a-Lago speech, which came after his arrest. He was joined by Michelle Bachmann and referred to our beautiful Christianity, which he says, I guess,

is under attack. Folks, if Trump is turning to prayer and to God, you know that he's scared. And that is indeed the vibe I get here. The audio quality is, of course, terrible. Trump says we are losing our religion. He says, that's me in the corner. No. OK, we're losing our religion. And he's desperate, I guess, for donations, money and prayer. Take a listen. We're being discriminated against as a religion. We're being just. By the way, I have not doctored the audio to make it worse. It's genuinely this bad. Against us of faith. And we can't let that continue. I'm fighting very hard for the people of our country, but I'm very fighting very hard for people of religion, people that believe in God,

people that believe in faith. And it's an honor to have somebody. And that was a cough. Coughing is really common on these prayer calls. My friends on the call, as you know, we're going through a fake investigation. That's what it is, by radical left people that I believe actually have to hate our country. But we're winning. We had a great day today, actually, because it turned out to be the sham. And it's turning out to be that. And we have others down the line. But we've been winning them for eight years now, ever since we came down the golden escalator,

as they call it at Trump Tower. But one thing that I've always remained solid on, that is our faith, our religion, our Christianity, our beautiful Christianity. And all two or maybe it was three of the Corinthians that Trump knows. The thing I've remained loyal and they've remained loyal to me are the people on this line. Incredible people, the most respected people I know. There can be no greater calling than what you do.

And one of the people on the line was Paula White, the woman who was in that insane viral religious video where she's going and strike and strike and strike and strike and strike. And then she starts speaking in tongues. She says, who, but ABA, ATA or something like that. That's one of the great people on the call that Trump very much respects. Honestly, he sounds more desperate for donations and money than he does for prayer. And of course, maybe the country wouldn't be less and less religious over time if it weren't for the fact that the people most loudly demanding the return of public religion are absolute lunatics wanting to completely break down any kind of separation

between church and state. This wasn't even as bad as it got. Michelle Bachmann, the former Minnesota congresswoman, was on the emergency prayer call and she wants to beseech God or way or to beseech. I never know who they want to beseech. But anyway, here she she weighed in as well. Oh, God, would you declare Donald Trump innocent? Oh, father, would you free Donald Trump from his trouble?

And our troubles here in America? Oh, Lord, would you have mercy prayer tonight from your people? Oh, God, will you people want John Donald Trump's reputation? Right. How long will you make this accusation? How long will you continue your life? OK. OK. All right. And she just went on from there.

This is nuts, folks. This is totally nuts. And this I don't know how many donations this is going to generate for Trump, but maybe it will generate some prayers and we'll see sort of how effective those are. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here's a caller complaining about the time that we do the show each day. Speaker 4 Hey, David, I'd like to know why you can't do your show same day in the afternoon so that it's more up to date and you're not reporting yesterday's news, period. Yeah, listen, we no matter what time we do the show, someone has a problem with it. We actually used to do the show later in the day. We used to film more like three or four o'clock and then it would go out by like seven or

so. And what that led to is that many of our affiliate stations couldn't air it until the next day. And the first YouTube clips would publish around seven or eight. But then more of the clips wouldn't publish until the next day with the podcast. People who go to the gym in the morning or after in the afternoon, more likely they would write and they say, you know, David, I go to the gym at three, four, five, six. The podcast isn't out till seven or eight, so I'm not hearing it until a full 24 hours later. People didn't like that. There's always some issue. But the bottom line is as follows. Think of all the platforms we're producing for and genuinely to get the show out the fastest. What we found is

we record in the very early afternoon, late morning, early afternoon. The audio podcast is out by two thirty p.m. Eastern. Usually that's still eleven thirty a.m. in the West. And that really feels pretty good without dealing with this, like starting to bleed over into the next day thing. Remember also that as a member, you can get the full commercial free audio or video feeds usually by like 3 p.m. Eastern. That's noon on the West Coast. So that's the schedule.

I get it's not a perfect schedule for everybody. We have some stations that say we'd like to run it at two, but you don't get it to us till three. OK, so those stations have to run the show the next day. We're doing the best we can, given that we have an audience across so many different time zones. Usually it's a combination of stories from the later half of the previous day and that morning. I mean, on today's show, there's stuff that happened this morning that is on the show. So I don't even agree with the idea that we're like a

day behind. But certainly when Trump's Mar-a-Lago speech is at 830 p.m., that's going to be on the next day's show. It's sort of inevitable when Trump doesn't get out of his arraignment until almost 4 p.m. It's very tough to have that on that day's show. We review it the next day. And one other thing I'll say, it's not the end of the world to give a little bit of space, particularly with stories where you want to get as many of the details included and correct in the show. So I feel pretty OK with the schedule right now. Always open to hearing thoughts from others.

We've got a great bonus show for you today. We'll talk about the Bud Light boycott from the right wing. It's a wild, wild one. We will talk about a new North Carolina lawmaker switching parties and we will talk about a judge ordering Stormy Daniels to pay Trump another 120 grand in legal fees. What is that about? Does it have anything to do with the arrest from this week? No, it doesn't. But we will talk about it on the bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com to get instant access.