The David Pakman Show - 5/12/23: The future of CNN post-Trump town hall, Mike Pence's cowardly interview

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

-- On the Show: -- What happens to CNN after its deranged Trump town hall? -- Former Vice President Mike Pence reacts to Trump's sexual assault liability by saying he hasn't personally seen Donald Trump assault anyone -- Caller wonders if Donald Trump could bring an end to the Republican Party -- Caller talks about the right's obsession with trans people -- Caller asks if Donald Trump would try to stay in power for longer than a term -- Caller discusses how Republican leadership will respond to the charges against George Santos -- Caller talks about being against religion -- The Friday Feedback segment 🌱 Ounce of Hope: Get 25% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://www.ounceofhope.com/ 📖 Shortform: Try it for free and get 25% off at https://shortform.com/pakman 👩‍❤️‍👨 Try the Paired App FREE for 7 days and get 25% OFF at https://paired.com/pakman 🥄 Use code PAKMAN for $5 off Magic Spoon at https://magicspoon.com/pakman -- On the Bonus Show: Jordan Neely killer charged with manslaughter, Elon Musk finds replacement Twitter CEO, and much more... -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

. All right. So the big media story over the last 48 hours was Wednesday night's CNN town hall of the failed former President Donald Trump. On yesterday's show, we did an extensive review of what was said. The audience's role and reactions, laughing and cheering at the most depraved, anti-democratic and dishonest moments. Anchor Caitlin Collins is respectable attempt to do some fact checking up against the unfortunate reality that Trump mostly steamrolled right over her, had the crowd on his side for the lies and that the environment

in some total didn't really conform to one where serious fact checking and pinning Trump down could happen in part because of the crowd and because of the format and so many other things. So we then heard again on yesterday's show from people in the media, Joe Scarborough and others, members of the House and Senate. We heard from all sorts of different people about the town hall. And we heard from voters as well. And in a focus group that CNN did of Trump supporters, they were not more impressed or less impressed by Trump based on the town hall. It did nothing one way or the other to influence their opinion of Trump. And then the question becomes, well, what about independent voters? What about Democrats? What

about non Trump Republicans? And it's hard to imagine that they were overly thrilled by what took place. So now there is a media question. What happens with CNN after this insane town hall? We know that based on the new relatively new leadership of CNN by Chris Licht, that there is a change of direction happening. That's already happened. The network has hired a number of republic former Republican officials and so on to be on the network. But Chris Licht did tell Kara Swisher during an interview back in November that CNN is not going to become the Trump News Network.

This was the current head of CNN, Chris Licht, speaking with Kara Swisher. You ended up talking about him for eight hours a day. And we're not going to do that. We're going to be very clear and take everything on a case by case basis about what level of coverage it should be. So meaning that it will not be quite hand. We are not going to be a 24 seven Trump News Network. OK.

Is that what they are sticking to or is it not? And to be clear, Trump is a former president in the completely unprecedented situation where he is under criminal indictment, was recently found liable civilly for sexual assault and defamation, tried to hang on to power despite having lost on and on and on all these different things. So it makes sense that corporate media talks about the guy. It makes sense. But the question is, what is the sort of tone and tenor of that coverage?

Is it sycophantic? Is it what? What exactly is it going to be now? Just as interestingly, in the 48 hours since the Trump town hall during which Chris Licht defended what CNN did, there has been some I guess we could call it light rebellion coming from within within CNN. There's an interesting article on Semaphore. America was served very well by what we did last night.

CNN chairman defends town hall. But there are others who are quoted here. The view from CNN staff is that it may not be particularly the best thing. And they point out that they don't love the fact that the audience was filled with Trump supporters. CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote, It's hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening. And Licht said, I absolutely unequivocally believe America was served well. So there's a couple

different questions here. Question one is what actually happens on CNN as far as Trump coverage goes? Does it become friendlier than maybe what we saw in 2016 and 2020? I don't know. That's certainly one question. The other aspect to this is what about disaffected Fox News viewers? Because that's part of the timing of this entire thing. Trump has increasingly turned against Fox News over the last year. Now, with the firing of Tucker Carlson, there is a significant contingent of MAGA people who they may be watching Fox News now reluctantly or they may have abandoned Fox News and they want a new home. Does Chris Licht want to appeal to those people? And does he want to try to make the new home for those folks, CNN? And can he do that in any way that is even remotely responsible

as far as journalism is concerned? Or can you really only appeal to those people by becoming overtly sycophantic and brown nosing about Donald Trump. A lot of questions in this segment, not a ton of answers. We simply have to wait and see. But it's not looking particularly inspiring. I think that's where we can leave it for today. Failed former vice president Mike Pence, who is as much who basically failed as hard as Trump did, has been asked about the verdict in which a jury found Donald Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation against the E. Jean Carroll. Mike Pence's reaction is, I dare say Kafka esque. He says he never saw Trump sexually assault anyone. Think about that for a second. What do you think about that verdict? Listen, I never saw Trump sexually assault anybody. Wow. Big declaration, Mike.

Thank you. Let's listen. In my four and a half years serving alongside that nature. I never personally witnessed Charles Manson encourage those people to go and kill anybody. He must not have done right. A truly spineless response from Mike Pence. We also had Pence weighing in on whether the American people will in any way be influenced by the fact that Trump now is not only has been arrested and indicted and might be arrested and indicted again in a couple of months, but was found liable for sexual assault. He says Pence does. He doesn't think the American people will care. Well, I think that's a question for the American people. But I I really can't comment on a judgment in a civil case. I have no knowledge of those matters. And I'm sure the president will defend himself in that matter. And but it strikes me that we it's it's just one more instance where

at a time when American families are struggling. He's really he's really struggling to figure out what to say about this, to remain palatable to the MAGA crowd in case he does run. When our economy is hurting, when the world seems to become a more dangerous place almost every day that it's it's just one more story focusing on my former running mate that that I know is a great fascination to members of the national media. But I just I just don't think it's where the American people are focused. All right. The American people don't care because of inflation, I guess, or something along those

lines. To me, that sounds like a guy who wants to say whatever he can say to not anger the very MAGA people who may be if Trump gets arrested again and his campaign falls apart for whatever reason, Pence can jump in and say, I'm going to run MAGA people who supported Trump back when I was VP. Come with me to the promised land or whatever the case may be. Maybe one of the most cowardly, spineless and self-serving people in American politics right now would be indeed Mike Pence and the height of absurdity of I never saw him engage in that sort of behavior.

Really does. Do you think he does? Does a serial sexual assaulter habitually do the assaulting in front of other men? I mean, I don't know. There was the allegation about Jeffrey Epstein and Trump doing exactly that, but not the vast majority of the allegations that exist. So Pence, pathetic, as always, polling like three or 4 percent in most polls, six, seven in some and maybe thinking opportunistically. Is this let's leave it with the question that was asked, will that civil liability verdict affect

Trump's standing in either the primary or the general? I actually agree that the answer is no, but for a different reason than Mike Pence says, I think in the primary, it won't affect Trump, at least not negatively, because for as many people in the Republican primary voter electorate that Trump, at least not negatively, because for as many people in the Republican primary voter electorate that would be turned off by Trump being liable for sexual assault, there are those who will be reengaged because they believe Trump is being treated unfairly and that it's all a political witch hunt. So in the primary, it'll probably be flat in the general. I think that the cake is more or less baked and it's basically a turnout thing.

And maybe there are some people who would turn out because they're angry that Trump engaged in this behavior and they want to vote against him. But it's also not clear to me that it's going to shift the numbers in a general election either. I know it's crazy. I know it's crazy, but that's where my head is right now. Let me know what you think. small business that supports the David Pakman show. If you're not familiar with aquaponics, what they do is sustainably raise fish and they use the nutrient rich water. Folks, we're talking about fish poop here to feed the cannabis plants. It's really a cool concept. It's organic. It's symbiotic. And what ounce of hope offers you is a wide range of high quality cannabis products. They have CBD.

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We depend on your support through the membership program. We depend on your support through the membership program. You can avail yourself of membership benefits at join Pacman dot com, which is just an extraordinary place to sign up for membership. It's quite frankly the only place they tell me these days you can use the coupon code indicted or the coupon code indicated, whichever you want. Let's hear from people in the audience on the Friday show. We go to the phones, except we really don't. We actually use discord. You can join the David Pakman show discord absolutely free at David Pakman dot com slash discord. And it's really an extraordinary thing. As a reminder to everybody who's waiting, the format for your nickname, if you want to talk to me, is name and location or location and name. Those are the rules. So, for example, we're going to go to Junie from Florida. Junie from Florida is our first caller

today. Junie, what's going on? Hello, David, do you hear me? Speaker 1 Yes, I do. Speaker 4 Great. Great. My question for you is what everything going on with the current Republican Party, with, you know, banning books, trying to restrict voting. What do you think is the future of the Republican Party, in your opinion? Speaker 4 Well, I don't think it's determined at this point in time. I as I've said for a while now, it looked like the 2022 Maga red wave wasn't going to materialize and it didn't. And the question now is what happens in 2024? There really doesn't seem to be

anything that will stop Trump from being the Republican nominee short of Trump himself. And what I mean by that is one arrest so far, five million dollar sexual assault and defamation verdict against him on Tuesday, potentially another arrest coming out of Georgia in between July and September is roughly what's estimated. Could all of that take him off the campaign trail in such a way that he's just not viable? But the Republican Party for now does seem to still hold Trump as its leader. And I don't know what's going to prevent him from being the nominee. So then the question comes becomes the 2024 general election. Obviously, if Trump is reelected president in 2024, which I don't think is as far fetched

as some do, Trump's actually ahead of Biden in some polling already. If that happens, then I will be ready to say the Republican Party in a more permanent way has jumped the shark, for lack of a better term. However, if Trump ism is again defeated in 2024, assuming Trump's the nominee but loses, I believe at that point, particularly with Trump being an even older guy at that point in time, it will be essentially open season on abandoning MAGA fully by the Republican Party, which may be what saves them at the end of the day. Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah, that sounds I, you know, I, I, I agree with that. And can you, do you mind if I just ask you one more quick question? Sure. Okay, great. Do you think with

the Republican Party going against, you know, the LGBTQ, stigmatizing them in very, very negative ways. Do you think it's fair to maybe call the modern day Republican Party fascistic or proto fascist in a way? Yeah, I think, you know, with a lot of this stuff, these are mostly linguistic conversations than than operational or or policy. But I think there is no question that what you're seeing among the MAGA movement is a sort of neo fascist light authoritarianism of sorts, which would like to be much more hardcore if we didn't have some of the checks and balances we have in the United States.

They'd likely succeed in becoming much more of that. But I do think that want to be fascist is probably as good a term as any. Speaker 4 Yeah, I agree with that. Well, OK, David, that's really all the questions I've had and I don't want to hold up. So, you know, I'll just let you get to more callers. Speaker 1 Well, one question for you is Juni short for something. It's not a name I'm super familiar with. Oh, no, that's OK. It's it's a nickname I go by because my full name is Leroy McGraw, Jr.. And so Juni just comes from Junior.

Got it. OK, very good. That makes that actually makes a lot of sense. All right. Thank you for the call. I appreciate it. No problem. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

So you do. There goes Juni from Florida. Let's go next to Daisy from is it from reading or from reading, reading and it's spelled reading. But I know that it's pronounced different ways, depending on where in the world we are talking about. Speaker 3 Yeah, it's it's reading, actually. Are you doing David? Can you hear me? Speaker 1 I'm doing well. We have significantly degraded audio quality where it's the sort of like robot voice thing that's happening.

But let's see if you can get your question in, if nothing else. Speaker 5 Oh, boy. Speaker 6 OK, David, can you hear me better? that with trans people, they are making changes to their bodies with, like, you know, whatever their doctors recommend, right? And the Republican Party is attacking this in a way that they haven't attacked the LGBT community in the past, like with the gay community, for example. And I'm just wondering your thoughts about whether they will ever let up on the trans community, like give us a break, kind of. Yeah, I think so. I mean, as I've said before, for a while it was like, when will they stop obsessing about

gay men and gay sex? And the answer, unfortunately, for the trans community was when they moved on to being obsessed with the trans community. I do believe eventually Republicans will move on. The problem is they'll scapegoat some other group. So someone else has it coming to them, if they if you know what I mean. Yeah, I understand that. I just I'm hoping for something

to change. I see a lot of change happening and I think it's Montana with the. Who is silenced by the I think the the Republican Legislature, Daisy, you cut out when you said who was silenced. But let me look into what's happening in Montana. I'm going to let you go just because the connection is really an uphill battle for us. But I do appreciate your question and hearing from you about what is a very important issue. I do believe they will move on from trans people, but someone else is going to then be in their crosshairs, which is a scary thing.

Let's go next to Jeremy from Chicago. Jeremy also a member at David Pakman dot com. Jeremy, I very much appreciate that. Jeremy, you've muted yourself for some reason. I would love for you to unmute yourself. Then you'll be able to talk to me. Oh, hi. Can you hear me? I can hear you. Yes. Nice. Awesome. Cool.

So, yeah, I I'm a member of your show. And one of the reasons for that, besides the award winning bonus show, which you make so much money off of, is the soundboard. And the soundboard is so freaking hilarious. And I really appreciate it. Thank you. I appreciate that. My question about the soundboard is besides Obama and 12th Central, right? What are your sounds in the soundboard? The the technical glitches when Trump does speeches and the audio goes haywire and it

frustrates Trump or probably some of my favorite ones. Also Trump trying and failing to pronounce Indian names while he was in India at a speech. Those have got to be pretty near the top for me. That's for sure, because I think I emailed you about adding more sounds to the sound board. Yes, and we will do that. We're continuing to expand it.

Awesome. Awesome. One more question. Please. Trump in 2024, assuming that he wins the 2024 election, do you think that he will find a way to extend his presidential life? No. To like not even twenty twenty eight. No. Like I'm just trying to like ask this question in terms of like is that I don't see him like. I think I know where you're going with this. It's hard to imagine him leaving calmly and quietly if Trump wins in twenty twenty four, he'll be inaugurated in January 2025 and he will leave in January 2029. I do not believe that he is going to do anything to try to get himself a third term. So about that, like, do you think he will like this?

Sounds this sounds so crazy, but like like trying to over rule or repeal the 22nd amendment no because i don't think so that's all i have yeah no i don't think he's gonna do that i think he'll do his uh his his years five through eight and then he'll leave okay no i i just was curious because like you know he is leaning into dictators like Poon and President Xi from China. And so like, I don't know, that's my assumptions. He wants to stay president for as long as he wants. Yep. No, I think he's dangerous in a lot of ways.

He tried to steal the election in 2020, but I think four more years at the most is what we will have from Trump. All right. Jeremy from Chicago. Great to hear from you. Very much appreciate it. Let's go next to Andrew from Massachusetts. Andrew from Massachusetts. Great to hear from you. Very much appreciate it. Let's go next to Andrew from Massachusetts. Andrew from Massachusetts.

Welcome to the program. What's going on? David, can you hear me? Yes. So my question is related to the podcast, and I'm actually halfway through the Lex Friedman interview. OK. And what's about something that

Lex said about your appearance on the PBD podcast? Sure. So Lex suggested that while you and Patrick probably have some disagreements that many of Patrick's arguments with you during that podcast were kind of just in service of playing devil's advocate to bring out the best in you. Do you recall him saying that? I recall him saying that. Yeah. OK, so I think that's a pretty charitable take. Yeah, I do, too. Yeah. So I'm wondering what you think about that, especially given that I don't know if you've heard that Patrick made a 100 million dollar offer to Tucker.

This was obviously before he announced he was going to Twitter. Yeah. But I mean, if you've heard about the one hundred million dollar offer and then I did what you. So here's the thing. Here's the thing, Andrew. Patrick Bet David is a Trump guy. OK, I don't know how much I don't watch all of his episodes by any means, but it's very clear he's a Trump guy.

You know, we talked a little bit behind the scenes like he's a Trump guy. And that's totally fine. He's not like he doesn't seem like an unhinged social conservative, although he sort of seems to be delving into the trans stuff a little bit. But I think mostly for economic reasons, he kind of likes the Trump stuff. So when Lex Friedman said that he thought a lot of what Patrick was doing was just playing devil's advocate, I didn't agree. But the thing, especially in a three and a half hour interview, like when I was on the Lex Friedman show, is I can't argue about everything I disagree with.

And the call I made as the interview was going on was it doesn't make sense to kind of stop the flow to argue about whether PBD was playing devil's advocate because Lex wasn't actually there. He watched it. And it's based on my recollection. It wouldn't have been an interesting place to kind of like get into it, if that makes sense. So that's why sometimes you just kind of have to let things go in order to get to something that you think might be more interesting or substantive. Right. Thanks for the clarification. And that's that's all I really had today.

All right. Thanks. There's Andrew from Massachusetts with a question about my discussion with Lex Friedman about my appearance with Patrick Bet David, both of either of which I would be glad to do again. Let's go to Samantha from Philly. Samantha from Philly. Welcome to The David Pakman Show. What's on your mind today?

Hey, David, thanks for taking my call. My pleasure. I really enjoy the show and I enjoy when you talk about polling. OK. And my question was, how does polling take into consideration specifically voting, voting on issues, I guess, and voting just politically biased? What do you mean? So I guess what I'm getting to is how does how does polling take into consideration new population trends that haven't emerged yet as voters per se, but they will.

So you might. So like an example would be if right now in May of 2023, you're doing a poll of Texas voters about how they plan to vote and you are normalizing the sample based on the twenty twenty two data, for example, about gender and race and age and all these different things. But it turns out, for example, that like by twenty twenty four is election, there will be more Latino voters. And so you actually need to account for that in your methodology. Is that sort of what you're asking? Speaker 4 That's exactly right. It could be any sort of demographic that explodes in the next election,

but hasn't yet. Speaker 1 The answer is basically there's two versions of the answer, and both are kind of right. One is different polls account for that in different ways. And if you read the methodology page, they will usually tell you how they are, how they are picking their sample and adjusting their sample. And then you can look and say, oh, this poll is adjusting the sample in a way that does make sense. And this one is doing it in a way that doesn't. The other perspective will be there's rarely polling done so far in advance that the demographic changes will be so big that they'll make more than like a point of difference.

And so, like, I actually think in many cases, I don't know offhand whether my my example was the Latino population in Texas will grow and Latino voters tend to vote other than Cubans. They tend to vote more for Democrats than Republicans. My guess is even without accounting for what the Latino population will be in November of 24, that the difference between now and then isn't going isn't so significant that you that you are going to be way off if you don't account for the change and use today's numbers. That would be my statistical guess. Speaker 4

Do you feel that the polling was accurate before the that you've seen for the midterms? Speaker 1 I think it was. Well, you know, it's a good question. I think the problem with that polling, you know, I'd have to review it. I don't remember the polling generally said the most likely scenario was Democrats keep the Senate and lose the House. And that did happen. So in that sense, it was accurate. Yeah. Yeah, it was accurate in that sense. But, you know, I don't know if the reporting is just sensationalized, but, you know, everyone said it's historical. The numbers are historical. We didn't see this coming. You mean the red wave that they predicted would have been historic or that what actually happened is historic. What happened was historic. It's unusual, certainly.

I mean, Democrats should have done way worse than they did, but particularly in the two months before the midterms, the polling did pretty closely reflect what ultimately happened. OK, well, I agree. That was my question. All right. Samantha from Philly, thank you very much. Let's take just the quickest of breaks. We're going to keep talking to people who are waiting. So so hang on if you're waiting to

talk to me. We'll take a very quick break and then be right back. Sometimes it can be tough to maintain an emotional connection with your significant other. You might work in different places at different times. There might be a kid in the way. It can be hard to find time for date nights, especially because kids demand so much attention, which is why I love our sponsor paired, which is the app for couples. The app will prompt you with a daily question or a game or a guided conversation, all designed by leading psychologists. And the point is to just have a deeper connection with your partner, boost intimacy, build a deeper knowledge of one another. My girlfriend and I will use the prompts on paired throughout the day to stay connected.

For instance, we answered a prompt about what we remember most from the early days of the relationship. It really helps us learn new things. And there can be funny moments as well. An independent study found that couples using paired saw 36% increase in the quality of their relationship and giving a paired subscription as a gift is also a really great idea. You can try it free for seven days and get 25 percent off a subscription. Go to paired dot com slash Pacman. That's P.A.R.E.D. Dot com slash Pacman for a free trial and 25 percent off. The link is in the podcast notes. Let's hear from a few more people. We do calls on The Friday Show via discord, which you can find at David Pakman dot com

slash discord. I want to go next to George from Virginia. George from Virginia. Welcome to the program. What's on your mind today? George, you're on the air. George, you probably have the wrong audio device selected. If you can fix that, we will then be able to hear you. All right, George, well, unfortunately, the technical issues plaguing George, let's go to Dustin from Hamilton. Now, Hamilton could be I don't know how many states have a Hamilton. I think there's even a Hamilton. There's just probably Hamilton in Canada as well. So Dustin from Hamilton, I don't know where you're really calling from. Maybe you can tell us what's on

your mind today. OK, Dustin from Hamilton, are you there? Dustin, you've now muted yourself. Please unmute yourself. All right. Two in a row, folks. This is not common. Let's go to Freddie from the Bay Area, California. I will soon be in the Bay Area in California. It's going to be a beautiful thing. Freddie, what's going on? All right. Hey, thanks for taking my call. I was I don't know if you talked about this already. I kind of joined in a little late.

OK, but I was just wondering your thoughts on the George Santos indictments. Oh, yeah. On the Wednesday show, we talked about it pretty extensively. I have to tell you, I am not the type of person to take pleasure in the failings of others, but I am delighted by the arrest of George Santos because not because I go around saying I don't like your politics and you lied. So you should get arrested. Not because of that, but because there's so much evidence against the guy. Exactly. His actions warrant criminal charges. And now he's going to have to deal with it.

And maybe he'll end up getting kicked out of Congress. Who knows? Right. That's what I'm thinking. Like, what do you think is going to happen? I mean, hopefully he actually, you know, gets in trouble for this and doesn't actually be able to stay in Congress. Absolutely. And, you know, the truth is with this guy, people are already talking about prison time. I don't even care about that. I just want him out of the House of Representatives. It seems like it would be a moral wrong for him to have gotten away with what he got away with and to serve out his full two years. I want him to suffer the humiliation of being kicked out of Congress early. And by the way, I don't have in front of me what the rules

are about how you qualify for like the retirement packages from Congress, which are fantastic. My thought is if he doesn't make it a full term, he doesn't get any of them, which would also be a really great thing. Speaker 5 Right. Yeah, he doesn't deserve any of that. It's just the way that he flaunts around. It's almost like he likes the attention and it's going out, going to parties and stuff. It's just like, come on, he doesn't deserve any of that. Speaker 1 The guy's pathetic. He adds nothing. He adds. Yeah, he really is. Speaker 3 Freddie, can I ask you a Bay Area question and get your advice?

Sure. So when I'm going to be out there, I am going to basically have commitments partially in San Francisco and partially in Santa Cruz. So my idea was to stay somewhere roughly in between. And so I only have to drive half the distance when I go to one or the other. People have said to me, maybe look at Palo Alto or Mountain View or whatever. That seems to be a little closer to San Francisco than Santa Cruz. But my question to you is where you mean Santa Cruz, where would be a comfy, convenient place to stay with a nice walkable downtown with some hipster coffee shops and the whole thing that would be relatively convenient to both cities?

What do you recommend? OK, so Palo Alto. Yes, that area. And there's a town called Saratoga. Okay. Right. When you open over the Santa Cruz mountains, yes, you're closer to Santa Cruz, but you want to be closer to Santa Cruz right now, everywhere closer to San Francisco. Uh, no Saratoga. I used to have to stay there. I was bringing my dog to a bed up there actually. But, uh, talking about little hipster places, coffee, good little places to eat, small,

quaint, very nice, good little hotels. That's a great place, little parks to go walk in. I have I have an 18 month old little girl and she was probably eight months old at the time. And we're bringing her in the stroller in these little parks and stuff. Fantastic place, Saratoga. I'm down in Monterey right now. So I'm going to look into that, Freddie.

That sounds good. That sounds very good. I'm going to check into that, Freddie. That sounds good. That sounds very good. I'm going to check into that. I appreciate the advice. Yeah, no problem at all. All right. There's my credit from the Bay Area. Beautiful phone call, folks, I have to say.

Absolutely fantastic. Let's go next to Nelson from Bethlehem. Nelson from Bethlehem. Bethlehem. Welcome. Hey there, David. Great show so far this week. Thank you.

You've been killed, like usual. Appreciate that very much. I don't think anybody's touched on this yet today, so I wanted to get your opinion on it. I don't think I've seen it on your show. Are you familiar with Daniel Ortega down there in Nicaragua and the Sandinistas? Only superficially. I don't have deep knowledge. Yeah, they're one of those groups that you hear about a lot in the news, but never nobody ever really talks about them.

So back in September, Daniel Ortega, for anybody that doesn't know, he is like the one real communist leader down there trying to bring socialism to South America, again, against the wishes of the United States. In September, he outlawed public displays of Christianity. And about a month ago on Easter, he went and rounded up a bunch of journalists and clergy members and arrested a bunch of people attending Catholic mass. Now, I'm an anti-theist. I think that all religion is bad and all of it needs to be outlawed. I just think he's being a little heavy handed with it. I was having a discussion with some of the chat members and a lot of them are in favor. I was just wondering, do you think that we should like when it comes to it in the United States, do you think that people like that it should be a little bit more heavy handed against the Catholic Church and Christian religion or.

So here's the thing, OK, there's two different layers to this from the little let's talk about the situation in Nicaragua first and then we'll talk more generally. It seems as though it's the goal really is to actually go after political opponents of Ortega under the guise of this anti religion stuff. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that to some degree they're not just randomly going for the most part. It doesn't seem like they're randomly going after Catholics. But the idea is targeting opponents of Ortega. Is that your understanding as well?

I would say 90 percent. That is it. But they're also going after the normal people that are like out blocking traffic with Easter parades and stuff. They're going after it's out when that stuff is fair. So it's an important clarification. My view is there should be total separation of church and state. I don't ever want to hear scripture cited by an elected official during a debate about

what the law should be, the way it's cited in the United States about abortion, about trans issues, about LGBT issues of all. I never want to hear that stuff. I don't want to see Ten Commandments displays at a court. How I want separation of church and state. But I also want freedom of religion, which includes freedom to follow any religion or not and not to be persecuted. So to the extent that the Catholic Church has been involved in child abuse coverups, they should receive absolutely no special help whatsoever. But to the extent that, you know,

being heavy handed with just people who go to church and worship just because I don't do that doesn't mean that I want the government going after them. So I cannot in good conscience support anything like that. OK, well, it's good to hear your opinion on that. And I would like to say, as another thing of clarification, it is mostly political and a lot of it has to go down to like racial lines because a lot of the indigenous community down there is not Catholic. And, you know, it kind of bounces heads up against it. But thank you for giving your opinion on that, David. I was just curious. And once again, my brother, Soft Gentleman, is listening in the call in show.

You can't call in, but love you out there, Softie. And love you so much, David. Thank you for doing what you do. Speaker 1 Does that mean is that like soft serve? What does that mean? Speaker 2 No, it's a nickname going back to when we were in high school. It's just the thing that he did in theater class.

Soft Gentleman. It's a long story. Oh, boy. I hope it's appropriate for a PG audience. Geez, Nelson, thank you very much for the call. It is OK. Good. Thank you very much for the call.

And all right, let's continue. Let's go next to Ricardo from one of my favorite cities, I guess, in North America, Montreal. Ricardo, welcome to the program. What's on your mind today? Hello, David, how are you? I'm doing well. Good to hear. Hey, I know that before I ask any questions, I know this is something that probably many

in your audience have asked, have asked you time and time again. But it's actually more of a comment. But I think it would be great to see a debate between you and Ben Shapiro sometime. Yeah, I'll do it any time. We've invited him on the program and he doesn't respond. So he may be too big for us now, but he's welcome any time. I'm glad to do that. But it's he he's the one you've got to convince, not me.

Mm hmm. Yeah, of to do that. But it's he he's the one you've got to convince. Not me. Mm hmm. Yeah, of course. Yeah. But yeah, I remember some years back, I think maybe about 2019. I think I watched the debate between you and Ben Bench. We are not sure if there's any been any other debates. I think it was in 2013.

You and Ben had the debate. But yeah, I think that was a good debate and I think yeah in a way you you kind of like unraveled his arguments especially about uh gun gun control and all that um but uh tell you the truth I I know that um uh when during the pandemic I think the early stages pandemic when the the whole George Floyd uh riots were happening That's when I really started like listening to you and Ben Shapiro. And there was actually a period of time when I was listening to you, both you and Ben Shapiro, just to sort of get like the left perspective and the right perspective on different things. But I do notice that over time, it seems that his views on things got more and more like extreme. It seems that his views kind of got more to the right. And if you notice that, you know, I don't follow Shapiro super closely, but it does

strike me that that entire group, Shapiro, former actor Michael Knowles, Candace Owens, they all seem to have become dramatically more extreme. And I don't know if it's that they found out that it's more profitable or interesting or if they genuinely have become more. I don't really know what the reason is for it. You know, one of the things that I've noticed is that my political views have really not dramatically changed over the last decade. And there's nothing right or wrong with views changing.

If you get new information, you revise your views. I think that that's a really great thing. But it does strike me as odd, particularly based on their age. You know, Dave Rubin's another one who it's just weird when at a certain age you have such differing, just such changing views because it suggests that your views as an adult were already not super well informed if they can change so radically. So it is kind of a weird thing. Yeah, I agree 100 percent. And I know that in the past you have also talked about how Dave Rubin, probably like when he was in his 30s or 40s, he suddenly went from being liberal or on the left to on the right.

And in some ways, he's even kind of like on the radical right. Though I think like there was a time I was actually listening, just out of curiosity's sake, I was listening to an interview he was doing with, I think it was Michael Knowles. And there are some things that Dave Rubin still had views on the left of like abortion. He still I think he still agree that abortion should be accessible to all women. And he just said that he wasn't he wasn't ready yet to abandon that abortion should

be accessible. So I thought that was interesting. Speaker 1 Yeah. You know, the Dave Rubin thing is really perplexing to me because he's 46 years old now. And so he had this complete political 180 at like age 38. Let's call it. That's like I mean, think think for a second, Ricardo, how crazy it would be if right now, right at my me current at my current age, at this point in my career, I became a right wing extremist like that would be. Would you even believe that or would you assume I'm doing it because I can do it profitably? Like, is it even viable that I would completely 180 my

views right now? It seems so insane. Speaker 4 Yeah, I guess if you were to do that theoretically, that would be that would strike me as like, oh, what's going on here? Was he did he even have left wing views in the first place? Right. Or was I or were my views so poorly grounded in reality that I didn't even know what I believe? I mean, it would be very weird when I think about it that way. Now that I'm roughly the age that he was when he did his thing. It's really strange. It's really weird to imagine. I agree. It reminds me a bit of like how, you know, when Trump was 60 and he says, oh, yeah, I saw a kid and and and you know what? I think I'm going to be against abortion. Yes. And honestly, I think he was like 66 at that point.

It's even it's even harder to believe. Yeah, I think it's all very weird. And I do think that they've moved further to the right, Ricardo. Speaker 4 I agree. Yeah. And even even Jordan Peterson, I was sometimes it happens that I'll listen to some of his like podcasts and some I don't really listen as much as I used to, but I think I feel like even he's become more radical, like, oh, yeah, I think he had somebody he said he had somebody on his show and he was using the term globalist. I'm like, oh, shoot. Oh, yes, that's really crazy. No, he's lost his mind. It's really crazy what's going on. And unfortunately, it's been normalized to where they're seen as kind of like not that extreme. But these are really extreme people. Ricardo, I got a rap, but I really appreciate you bringing

bringing this up. Yeah, no problem. And by the way, before I go, just one question. Is there any right wing people you'd like to have a debate with next? Not really. I mean, I'll talk to I'll talk to whoever, but I'm not like pining to debate them. You know, they're pretty bad faith actors in general. Yeah, I agree. Well, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. All right. Ricardo from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Great to see you. Great to hear you. Rather, that's going to do it for today. I'm sorry I couldn't speak to everyone, but we will take calls again. Have a great weekend unless you've got access to the bonus show, in which case we'll see you in a moment.

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when the mood strikes, go for something with plenty of protein without all the sugar. If you don't love magic spoon as much as I do and our team does, magic spoon will refund all of your money. No questions asked. Go to magic spoon dot com slash Pacman. Create a custom bundle. Use the code Pacman for five dollars off. That's Magic Spoon dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. All right. It's time for Friday feedback. The mailbag, the Friday feed bag. Someone actually wrote to me saying it should really be called Friday Apple bags, which relates to a whole other thing from the vaccine era. Anyway, we don't even need to get into that. That's probably outside the scope of today's conversation. If you have something to say,

and many of you do, you can email info at David Pakman dot com. Please keep them polite. Not everyone we look at today will be polite. Be aware that as you are furiously typing comments on YouTube, they might be selected and end up in the Friday feedback. You never know. And Reddit posts and so on and so forth. It all might end up there. All right.

Let's start with today's first one from YouTube user John Cherokee, who says, Yeah, Tucker Carlson was an American hero, and I hope he will get his own show where they can't fire him because his message is very important. In addition to that, Taylor Greene is an American hero. She's basically standing virtually alone, basically virtually alone in Congress defending the rights of the American people. This is a big fan not only of Tucker Carlson, but of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Not a single punctuation element in this entire message, unless you count the apostrophe on

she's but certainly no sentences. Listen, this is one of those things where we all have to pick our battles and the battles I pick on a podcast and YouTube channel and the battles you pick at the Thanksgiving table and that your sibling picks at the Memorial Day barbecue, which is upcoming, right? Whatever battles we all pick might be different. And for me, I am not now going to choose the battle of trying to convince someone who believes that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson are the height of American patriotism, that they are wrong. That is not a battle that I am going to pick right now. So we're going to move on. But these folks exist. And that's always important to remember. Didi 2023 Didi says, hello, well, I can't believe you all are applauding high taxes

for everyone in some obscure version of fairness that doesn't help you at all. In fact, it damages you when the company you work for moves to a different country to operate or cuts costs by changing your health care benefits to a cheaper one or flat out lays you off because you aren't very efficient. So dumb. You know, I understand and am in agreement with the reality that if any tax gets too high, it starts to have an impact that is usually not ideal. And with most policy, this isn't unique to taxes in general, with policy in general, with life. When you think about the

extreme tales of normal distribution, you start to see distortions. Take, for example, like exercise. If you are completely sedentary and sit all day at a desk and then at home and then in your car and then watching TV, you know, physical exercise, you're on one tail end of physical exercise and that's bad for you. On the other hand, if you become completely obsessed with exercise to the point that you can't hold the job and you're you're destroying your body by working out 18 hours a day and sleeping for six or whatever, right at the extremes of these bell curves, there are problems. And so zero percent taxes would be a problem because we can't have functioning infrastructure and then 100 percent taxes as well.

And so we're all kind of operating in the gray area. But what is missed by lots of these people who write stuff like this are they don't get that most corporations are pass through entities like S corporations, LLCs and others, and that the so-called business tax rate from which there are endless loopholes applies to C corporations. But again, I'm sort of like trying to explain this to somebody who's not willing to listen anyway. But I am in agreement that taxes shouldn't be too high. And how we define that probably differs between us. Rocky Road said, look, for real, as a 100 percent diehard Trump supporter, I'd like one of David Pakman's audience to explain this to me. How has Biden's first term been

anything other than a complete disaster? I'm not trying to troll. I'm not looking to insult. I'm just 100 percent puzzled by this. Well, I like to apply something called the burden of proof in these situations. I would love to hear from Rocky Road what elements of Joe Biden's presidency make it a disaster. Inflation Reduction Act, reasonably sized, does some good things. Changes to student lending, small changes to health care access. Stock market is doing fine. Unemployment lowest since 1969. student lending, small changes to health care access. Stock market is doing fine. Unemployment lowest since 1969. Inflation coming down.

No new wars, as they always like to say. You might say, well, but Russia invaded Ukraine. OK, yeah, but Biden did start that war. OK, you make the case, make the case for the Biden disaster, because I look around and I see wages up four point four percent over the last year. Inflation down, stocks, OK, new jobs. Things seem like sort of all right. Nothing's perfect. We haven't solved a whole bunch of systemic and structural issues, but sort of like seems like things are going OK. This was a meme posted to our subreddit. I don't know how many of you have been following

the Steven Crowder situation where Steven Crowder, he's a right wing talker and he's getting a divorce and surveillance of security camera footage was released in which he's berating his wife. And it's OK. Here is conservatives struggling with conflicting notions. The Steven Crowder video is an invasion of his privacy and shouldn't be blocked and should be blocked rather versus arguing that Hunter Biden's penis pictures should be publicly available. Yeah, they've really gotten themselves into. Now, of course, you know what they will say, right? Sometimes on the left, we think we really got him now. We really got into. Now, of course, you know what they will say, right? Sometimes on the left, we think we really got him now. We really got him.

They will simply say that Hunter, the Hunter Biden laptop story, which included the penis pictures, is more politically relevant. To American politics than what Steven Crowder has to say, because Hunter is Joe Biden's son or whatever. We've already debunked it in the sense that Hunter Biden has nothing to do with the Biden administration. And Steven Crowder also has nothing to do with the Biden administration. So, you know, a little something for everyone there. Descartes walks into a pub. Says who could have predicted stripping away rights and banning books would drive away voters? Yeah, this is tongue in cheek.

But it really didn't seem that Florida Republicans and other Republicans understood. That the anti woke crusade that they are waging isn't super popular with much, much of America, that much of a majority of America is coming down on the side of Disney, on the side of drag shows existing. And you can choose whether you bring your kid or not dealing with structural problems that affect trans people. Most of the country is on the so-called woke side. And so, as I've said before, a lot of these are good ways to raise some money in primaries, in local races.

But as far as national campaigns, it's not at all evident to me that this anti woke approach, book banning, canceling all the stuff the right is doing is going to work well. But we will see. We have an election coming up from YouTube. Twenty three mistakes, as perhaps telling half the voters that they no longer make decisions about their own bodies has something to do with falling poll numbers. Same idea. You look at abortion, you look at polling on Roe v. Wade, and you see that since Roe v. Wade, the Roe v. Wade era started started 50 years ago, support for abortion being legal in most cases has only gone up and it reached its highest point

right around the time that the Supreme Court did away with Roe v. Wade. And it did play a role in the November of 2022 midterms, maybe not as big a role as it would have played if it had been closer in time to the election. It was, you know, some months. But. You look at the polling and you look at opinion surveys about what Americans want and you see most Americans do believe abortion should be legal most of the time. So then why would you have an entire political movement, social conservatism based around ending and banning abortion? Doesn't seem to make sense. We will see if they suffer even more as a result of that in 2024. And of course, I hope that they do.

Consequences for actions. It's a beautiful thing. Lastly, Pam Hall says very disappointed in Pacman, who had endorsed Williamson on another of his podcasts. Why he is throwing her under the bus now over a gaff is the real question. Please, please, please criticize me for things I said. I never endorsed Marianne Williamson. My position on Marianne Williamson has not changed since I learned about her, since I

became woke to Marianne Williamson. Very nice person, has great empathy and shares many of my broader ideals and is not interesting to me as a presidential candidate for many reasons that I've gone over, including lack of of relevant experience in a number of different areas. Previous statements that I find completely antithetical to my worldview about everything from depression to other things. I don't know. You know, the problem is. I simplify, simplify, simplify to try to be to make it impossible to be misunderstood, but then I don't provide enough context. So that causes a problem. And then when I go nuance, expand, nuance, context, people don't listen to the whole thing.

And then they go, you endorsed her on another podcast. Why? What are you talking about? What do you what? What on earth are you talking about? Endorsed in what sense? What does that even mean? So listen, Marianne Williamson should run. She is running. It's not up to me. Anybody who wants to run should run. I would like I would prefer the DNC have debates. They're not going to. It has nothing to do with me. The DNC is not going to have debates because why would you do something that could jeopardize

the campaign of whoever is sort of like the de facto nominee? Doesn't matter who it is. They're not going to have debates. I would like to see debates. And you would just have to figure out what polling threshold would be required to make it into the Democratic debate. Would it be four percent, six percent, eight percent in the polling? I don't know. But you'd have to find some threshold. And I would love to see a debate with Joe Biden, Marianne Williamson, you know, Bobby Kennedy Jr., to the extent that he's a Democrat and he's

running and has polling support, which he does in some polls, put him on a stage. That's great. I think it's fantastic. I supporting Marianne Williamson for president. No, I'm not. But that doesn't mean I don't think she should run or that she should be silenced or whatever the case may be. Criticize me if you disagree with what I actually believe.

Not random musings that are about things I've never said. Info at David Pakman dot com. You might be featured in next week's Friday feedback, feedback, Friday, etc. We've got a great bonus show for you today. Sign up at Join Pakman dot com. We will see you then or Monday.