The David Pakman Show - 5/2/24: Kristi Noem defends puppy killing, Trump glitches badly at sick rally

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and author of the new book "Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation," joins David to discuss how to deal with the housing crisis, cost of living, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3JHxzTO -- Jason Miller, advisor to Donald Trump, appears to confirm that Trump is okay with states monitoring the pregnancies of women if that's what states want to do -- Fox News quietly deletes the disastrous Hunter Biden "mock trial" as a lawsuit is forthcoming -- South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem doubles down on killing a 14-month-old dog at her ranch during a bizarre appearance on the Sean Hannity Fox News programs -- A badly glitching Donald Trump delivers a speech in Waukesha, Wisconsin so humiliating that he stuns the crowd into silence and causes Fox News to cut away -- Howard Stern addresses David on his program, clarifying that the White House fed him no questions for his interview with President Joe Biden -- Donald Trump implodes when asked for evidence of his bogus Venezuela claims during a recent interview -- A sweaty and visibly shaking MyPillow CEO and Founder Mike Lindell says that every Democrat he meets will be voting for Donald Trump in November -- Voicemail caller asks why Kristi Noem, who claims to be "pro-life," didn't opt to put her dog up for adoption, instead choosing to kill it -- On the Bonus Show: Arizona lawmakers vote to undo near-total 1864 abortion ban, 26 Republican Attorneys General sue to block Biden gun background check rule, Marjorie Taylor Greene planning a vote to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, much more... 🥄 Use code PAKMAN for $5 off Magic Spoon at https://magicspoon.com/pakman 🪒 Henson Shaving: Use code PAKMAN for FREE blades at https://hensonshaving.com/pakman 🖼️ Aura Frames: Use code PAKMAN for $30 OFF & free shipping at https://auraframes.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

Speaker 1 We hope that we're seeing self-destruction in real time and that the Republican Party seems committed to going down with the ship on this issue of women's reproductive rights and medical freedom and medical privacy. As we are now hearing from Trump adviser Jason Miller, that if states want to, quote, monitor women's pregnancies to determine whether they've had an abortion or maybe it's a miscarriage that a state wants to prosecute or who the hell knows what they plan to do, that if states want to do that, Trump the other day in the Time magazine interview that we discussed said, listen, it's up to the states rather than, of course, we're not going to violate medical

privacy and medical freedom and monitor the pregnancies of women. No, he didn't say that. He said, listen, it's going to be up to states to decide. Jason Miller, Trump's borderline evil henchman, says that it is something that states will have to figure out. We're not going to push nor pull states, he says, and understand that all of this is code for if states are going to do it, we're kind of going to get out of the way. Take a listen to this. But he wouldn't support monitoring pregnancies even if a state decided to do that. Well, he's made it very clear that he's not going to go and weigh in and try to push various states and how they want to go in and set up their particular rules and restrictions.

That's going to be up to the states. But he understand what that means. You because I there are people who follow politics who know the sort of code that is often used as something very strange is going on with my hair today. I apologize. Some of us know how the coded language in American politics works, but not everybody does. There are people who good for them are now starting to follow the political space, some of them because they are concerned about the erosion of women's rights and reproductive freedom and medical privacy that we are seeing thanks to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

And so it's important that you understand it doesn't really sound like there's an answer in there, maybe. But there is an answer in there. Trump wouldn't be supportive. He wouldn't be OK with states monitoring women's pregnancies, would he? Listen, we're not going to push one way or the other. It's going to be up for states to decide. What that means is he would be indifferent if a state says we will monitor women's pregnancies or we will prosecute women who get an abortion.

That is what this fundamentally means. And we have to really understand what's at stake here. If people understand what it is that the Trump campaign is outlining as far as this issue of abortion and you still want to vote for him, good for you. I disagree with you. I think the view is disgusting. I would argue with you endlessly that you are wrong. But if you understand what it is that he's saying and you're OK with it, at least you're voting in concert with what it is that he's proposing. But this kind of shielded encoded language that's been used, the work, this is what everybody

wanted. It's now up to the states. Oh, yeah. But you don't support like jailing women who get an abortion, do you? I'm not taking a position. States now get to decide, which is what everybody wanted all along. That is saying that as president, I will stand aside if states want to imprison women for getting abortions.

I will stand aside if states decide we're going to monitor. What does that even mean? Every ultrasound you get a report and it gets sent to the governor. What what are we talking? I'm going to stand aside if states want to monitor the pregnancies of women. That's what's at stake here. That is the political platform on this issue that Trump and his advisers clearly have decided they're running on. Now, what do they personally believe in the privacy of their own homes with Jason Miller? I have no idea. I believe Trump's clearly pro-choice. He was openly pro-choice until he was 68 years old. He supposedly met a kid whose mom thought about getting an abortion and like the kid and then said, oh, my goodness, I'm against abortion. I don't believe that. Do you believe

that? But it doesn't matter what Trump personally believes in order to try to seize power again, in order to try to curry favor with whoever he thinks is convincible. This is the approach that he is taking. It is sick and it is disgusting. And understand that that's what you're voting for in November or that this is who you're helping in November. If you stay home or you vote for Trump or you write in a third party candidate, it helps this states want to monitor pregnancies. Go ahead. States want to prosecute and jail women for getting an abortion. Go ahead. That's what you're helping come to power in November. If you choose to vote for Trump or to write in Cornel West or to stay home, I want to prevent that. That's my view. Fox News is in trouble. As we told you earlier this week, Hunter Biden is imminently

going to drop a bomb of a lawsuit, massive dumps of legal action, one might say, onto Fox News for the hundreds of stories that Fox News has done over the last few years, based in part on partially and now indicted supposed whistleblower and bogus conspiracy theories and all of it. So we learned earlier this week Hunter Biden's going to sue Fox News and it could get very ugly. Now, what is Fox News done? Well, they have very quietly deleted Hunter Biden's mock trial special. This is I actually can't believe Fox did this. Fox News made a special that looks like the trial of Hunter Biden. But there, of course, is no such trial. There are people who thought it was the real trial. It's absolutely stunning what's going on here. And Fox has deleted this six part mock trial miniseries, which Hunter Biden's attorneys

have already signaled. This is one of the reasons that we are suing. It's a form of revenge porn. It violates revenge porn laws. So the lawsuit is forthcoming. And now Fox News is starting to take what they believe to be protective action. Fox News putting out a statement. This program was produced in and has been available since 2022. We are reviewing the concerns that have just been raised and out of an abundance of caution in the interim have taken it down. That's according to a Fox News spokesperson about the Hunter Biden series. So you don't have to believe that Hunter Biden is a great person. You don't have to believe that Hunter Biden is the most qualified person in the world to sit on the boards of corporations.

What you can you can say, hey, you know what? Here's a guy out of eight billion people. And some of the things this guy has done, I don't necessarily like or I don't understand or I would have done them differently or whatever. You can believe all that and still understand that what Fox News and others have done over the last several years may well be defamatory, even considering the relatively public nature of Hunter Biden. Remember that the there is a larger there are more hurdles. There's a bigger hill to climb. You have to overcome more to prove defamation legally against the public person. Now, Hunter Biden is not Joe Biden. And to a degree, Hunter Biden became a public person because of the right wing conspiracy theories.

Now, listen, if you're the son of a vice president, now son of a president, you are a public person to a degree. But I mean, take someone like, for example, Tiffany Trump, Tiffany Trump. Some of you are probably like, who's that? I don't even know who that is. Trump has a daughter named Tiffany. I don't know how well she gets along with her dad. She's not very much in the public eye. Is she a public person? Yeah, she's a public person to a degree, but she's not a public person to the degree that Don Jr. is. And so therefore, if there were to be 300 conspiracy theory stories done about Tiffany and they were false and misleading, she may have a defamation case that would be far stronger than what, for example, Don Jr. would have. That's kind of the point that we're getting at here. So when the lawsuit comes forward,

we will see where it goes. But Fox News clearly, at least to some degree, at least to some degree, is realizing we may have gone too far. It may be time to start taking some protective action. So I look forward to seeing the content of the lawsuit. We will see where it goes. Let's take a very quick break. We are going to follow up about the Kristi Noem puppy killing fiasco. She's doubling down. It's actually stunning. An extraordinarily glitchy Trump tried to give a rally speech yesterday. Didn't go well. We will talk about that and so much more, including housing. Yes, we are doing a deep, deep dive into solving the housing crisis today with Brian Kaplan, all coming up a little bit later. Magic Spoon has been sponsoring the David

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Spoon cereal and treats for yourself. Get five dollars off with the code Pacman. The info is in the podcast notes. We're heading towards a critical presidential election. I don't blow smoke here, OK? I never said that the 2012 presidential election was the most important presidential election of my life and that democracy depended on the outcome of that election. Mitt Romney would have governed in a different way than Barack Obama.

We would have survived. Things would have been OK. The rich would have had slightly lower taxes. Foreign policy would have been different than what I would have wanted. But the point here is I don't go around saying every election is the most important election of our time. 2024 has a lot riding on it. And quite literally, the future of democracy, not that the country will end, but the state of our democracy is on the ballot in November. And so if you value the perspective of this show

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Kristi Noem is doubling down on the puppy killing. What do you do when it seems as though the PR losses are stacking up? You put on your pantsuit, I guess, or your suit and you go on the Sean Hannity program and you allow him to give you a softball interview about the time you killed a dog. Kristi Noem, as we earlier discussed this week, included in her forthcoming memoir the story of when she made the tough decisions and killed a 14 month old dog because the dog was rambunctious and bit someone. And she included that in her memoir because she thought it made her look presidential in the sense that she can make tough decisions and make them correctly. I guess this has not gone well.

This has backfired. She probably has short circuited her shot at being Trump's VP. Not that Trump cares about dogs. They they took him out like a dog. But because Trump probably sees that this is bad, bad optics, that she's made a mess for herself. So here is Kristi Noem last night on the Sean Hannity program really just doubling down and saying, listen, I made a tough decision. This is the way we do it on the farm. In your words, why it came to that decision. I mean, unfortunately, dogs that are

violent sometimes have to be put down. But I guess people because you shot when you're on The Hannity Show justifying dog killing, something has gone wrong in your in your strategy. The dog said, is there a difference which way you put a dog down? I'm not really sure, but I don't know. I don't think people understood it. I want to give you a chance to explain. Please explain. Well, Sean, you know how the fake news works. They leave out some or most of the facts of a story. They put the worst spin on it. Yeah. Blame the

media. All right. So it's the Trumpian playbook playbook so far. And that's what's happened in this case. I hope people really do buy this book and they find out the truth of this story, because the truth of the story is that this was a working dog and it was not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous. It had come to us from a family who had found her way too aggressive. We were her second chance. And she was the day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock that were part of our neighbors. She attacked me and it was a day that she massacred livestock that were part of our neighbors. She attacked me

and it was a hard decision. And the reason it's in the book is because this book is filled with tough, challenging decisions that I have to make throughout my life. There you go. So to me, the big story here is the judgment of including this and then also bragging about it as if it shows that you could be vice president and you can make correct tough decisions. It is not untrue that sometimes violent dogs are put down. It is not an untrue that if you're on a remote farm, you might not call out the vet to euthanize the dog with some intravenous medication. You might shoot the dog. I mean, individually, all of these things are true. They're not scandals by themselves. But the thing here that is the big story is the judgment to

think I'm going to include this in the book as an example of a when of when I made I was faced with a difficult decision. I made the tough decision. I'm tough. I'm vice presidential. I can be right there alongside Donald Trump, which is what's implicit in this book, of course, as Noam continues to quietly campaign to be Trump's VP. That's the wild thing. And also the lack of foresight that a lot of people will find this disgusting, even if it is true that sometimes dogs that bite are put down, even if it is true that dogs that go after livestock on farms are it's a known issue that some people deal with and you can deal with it different ways. Maybe she could have adopted the dog out. I don't know. But the

lack of vision that this is going to be seen as a ridiculous hook to hang your coat on as look at how great I am at making tough decisions. It's a total lack of foresight, vision and judgment. And it's gotten to the point where it's so bad. She's so desperate to try to fix this that she's running to Sean Hannity to do his trademarked Republican softball interview thing about how great of a person you are and how everybody's going after you. And it's so unfair. And of course, naturally, Christine Ohm is following the Trump playbook, which we know at this point, which is blame the media. They're not giving you the full story. They did give you the full story as I reported it to you that the dog was rambunctious and it bit. I would even say I

went further than what she said. I think it bit a person as well as going after livestock. And OK, I don't think that there's been a lack of detail or context in the story. The the big failure here is Christine Ohm's failure to realize that this doesn't really bolster your credentials of being a decision maker that can be put in difficult decision, difficult situations and make the right choices. It's actually the completely boneheaded decision to include a dog killing story in your novel. That's a Freudian slip in your memoir, assuming that it is a memoir and not a novel as something that people are going to say, wow, you know what?

This is who we need. One heartbeat away from the presidency. Not for me, folks. Not for me. Donald Trump attempted to do a rally yesterday on his day off from his criminal trial in Waukesha, Wisconsin. I think I got it right this time. I used to say Waukesha and people wrote in. They said, sir, no, it's it's Waukesha. I believe it's Waukesha. I hope I'm getting it right. And Trump was glitching so badly, looking bloated and haggard, sweaty and disoriented,

gripping the lectern like his life depended on it. And right off the bat, another one of these trademark short circuiting's when the when it came to the word infrastructure worked out too well, one point two trillion dollars for their fake infrastructure. Share power. He worked in infrastructure. Para eat infrastructure. Para eat. It's actually hard to say some of these. I think I have Saudi Arabia and Russia. Will we do? Will we do? Oh, it's almost like he turns English into a tonal language. You know, there are certain languages where the tone, whether it's an up or down tone or flat, changes the meaning. And Trump, I think I mean, linguistically, it's fascinating what he's doing. He's trying to turn English into a tonal language. Trump, again, issuing some of the same threats he's made before. If he

doesn't win, the country will not survive. We also have to run our country. It's nice to be nice. It's nice to be good. We got to run our country. Our country is in trouble. Our country might not survive. I'll tell you what, if we don't win this election, I don't think our country is going to survive. I will say it. And I've never said that publicly. I don't think he has said it publicly. He said it in 2020. In 2020, he said, oh, a few dozen times.

If Biden wins, we're not going to have a country. If Biden wins, the stock market will crash like 1929. If Biden wins, you're not going to have heating and cooling. If Biden wins, you're going to have to flush your toilet 10 to 15 times. If Biden none of it happened. I'm flushing six times, not 10 to 15. So he was very much wrong. He makes these threats every single time and he's threatening you. He's trying to threaten you, the voter, into compliance. But he makes these threats every single time and it never happens. Trump sort of confusedly saying three years ago, we were a great nation.

Do you remember who was president three years ago? It wasn't Trump. But we are not going to allow this horror to continue. Three years ago, we were a great nation and we will soon be a great nation again. Joe Biden was president three years ago. Now, Trump can't say four years ago because four years ago we were in the throes of Trump's mishandling of the covid pandemic. So you can't say four years ago, three years ago, Biden was president. I guess things were pretty good three years ago. And if you want to go back to that or I guess stick with it,

you would stick with Joe Biden. Trump, again, glitching and confused, says that GOP growth is plunging. I guess he means GDP economy is crashing with the GOP growth, plunging by more than 50 percent. GOP growth has decreased dramatically. I guess he means GDP, which, by the way, is very much not plunging. It's not plunging. Trump pulling out this now new favorite line. All of my friends say I'm totally innocent and that there's no crimes here over the last period of time. You know, it's funny. I wouldn't have said that. Right. But then something happened that was really horrible. Horrible. I got indicted. I'm a president of the United States.

I did everything right and they indicted me. Right. And I got indicted. Don't think of it. For nothing. In fact, if you read Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Turley, the great Mark Levin, you read Greg Jarrett today, he did an incredible piece. You read any of these Alan Dershowitz. They all said and these are not fans of mine necessarily. They're not.

They all said there's no crime. He didn't do anything wrong. All my friends are saying I'm completely innocent. What else do you need? Knowing no bounds of satire or parody, Trump asks the crowd whether they prefer crooked Joe or sleepy Joe, missing the reality that Trump is falling asleep every single day in court. His lawyers are trying anything they can think of to keep him awake. And he's still laughing about Sleepy Joe. The nicknames are good. What do you like better, Crooked Joe or Sleepy Joe? They're both accurate. What do you like better? Anyway, Sleepy Joe are two words that should never come out of his mouth ever again after

he is literally sleeping through his criminal trial. Trump then makes up a completely bizarre revisionist history of what happened on January 6th. It's almost science fiction. What Trump is describing here have been, I mean, higher than they've ever been. But. No higher than they've ever been. But. No, higher than they've ever been. But when that happened, you know, I was not that tough on Biden.

I felt he was a grossly incompetent person. I felt he was a very corrupt person. But I wouldn't go around and say what I say now. Once I got indicted the first time, I got indicted four times. Think of it. Four times for nothing. Jace. they say J six, J six, Nancy Pelosi didn't call in the police. Wasn't up to her. I said, I will send you 10,000 soldiers. She didn't want them. That's a lie. It never happened. And the mayor of Washington in writing didn't want them.

And by the way, the hoax committee that they set up, I call it the unselect committee. It's an unsight. I always like that term. All right. So I think you get it. Trump rants with a completely fabricated version of events from January 6th. And then lastly, and this is just complete and total confusion. You know, the company master lock, they make different kinds of locks and deadbolts and, you know, at the gym, depending on what kind of gym you, I don't know what kind of gym you go to, but the gyms I go to, you need to bring your own lock and they make those types of locks. Trump seems to think that Master Lock is some kind of a toy that he used to play with. And then it gets so bad that even Fox News cuts away.

Master Lock closed down. I used to use Master Lock all the time when I was a little child. I take Master Lock at Gumpin. Nice. Lots of nice little puzzles. You put them. All right. Keep an eye on this campaign event in Waukesha, Wisconsin this afternoon. Well, abort. Get us out of here. What is Trump talking about? All right. So Trump reminiscing. It's like Lego. He seems to think of it. A very, very strange rally. I don't know if these rallies are convincing anybody to vote for him. It seems to me they either are neutral or actually hurt his cause, as the audience is sometimes stunned into silence by the things Trump is saying.

So rallying occasionally claims he should be on the campaign trail, but he's stuck in court, mostly playing golf when he's not in court. But he did a couple of rallies. We'll look at the other one tomorrow. But he did a couple of rallies. We'll look at the other one tomorrow. Let's take a very quick break. We will discuss housing when we get back. Hey, make sure you're signed up for the new for the David Pakman show YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. It's free. It's free. And we're going to two point five million subscribers. So let's do it. We'll take a break and be right back. our sponsor, Henson Shaving. Henson actually manufactures parts for the International Space

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It's great to welcome back to the program, Brian Kaplan, professor of economics at George Mason University and also author of the new book, Build Baby Build the Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation. This is a great topic and one we've been talking about recently, Brian. So I really appreciate you coming on today. I really appreciate you having me back. So just to start with, let's start with the question so many people ask. Why has housing become so expensive and seemingly decoupled from wages?

The quick answer, which is true but misleading, is supply and demand. We got low supply, high demand. The main mistake to avoid is thinking, well, this means that it's just like any other market. It's not. There's a special reason why supply is so low, which is government is really strangling what would otherwise be a flourishing and progressive industry. As I explain in the book, we've got a pile of regulations that make it really hard to use the technology that we've been developing in the last 100 years. And actually, a lot of it makes it hard to use the technology we've had since the dawn of time. In terms of regulations against using technologies for the last 100 years, it's really hard to build tall buildings. Not physically hard. That's been done for over a century. What's hard is getting all the permissions, all the paperwork.

There's just many cities where putting up a new skyscraper is next to impossible. Same thing goes for multifamily housing in general. This is something where governments really treat you almost like a criminal if you want to build an apartment. Most of the US, something like 80% of residential land is set aside only for single family homes. And that's where the craziest thing though, is that with single family homes, it's very normal now for government to say that you've got to have a pile of land for every home, like an acre, sometimes more than an acre. This would have never occurred to people in earlier times. Wait, we can't put four homes on an acre. Why not? And the answer is regulators say, well, we just don't think that's

the right kind of neighborhood to have. We don't want to have one where people can see their neighbors. So you can't do it. And that means we wind up wasting most of our land thanks to the draconian policies of the government. And the result is that we have very low housing supply. So let's dig into a few different elements of this now. Just for context, I don't think it will necessarily shock the audience or you to hear that you're more generally hostile to regulation than I am as a general principle. While at the same time on this issue, I do think regulation is part of the issue, but I think it comes from both sides politically. There's also a moral aspect, which is that for much of the so-called American conservative movement, the single family home is more than just a housing unit, but it relates to cultural

issues, social issues. There are other reasons why the single family home and the regulations around it have been supported by some on the right. But let me zoom out a bit and then give you an opportunity to kind of weigh back in when I know nothing. Right. I just I research stuff and I try to figure out what's going on. I found eight or 10 different areas that I think would be relevant to look at when it comes to fixing housing. Building more housing is part of it. I think tax incentives for affordable housing development in some places is part of it. Streamlining the regulatory elements is part of it. Prefab and modular housing.

So like the technology element, I think would be important. Maybe land value taxation for empty lots, so to speak, in some places. Maybe rent control policy would be part of it. Zoning laws. My old neighborhood in Brooklyn, if you look at Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, north of Atlantic Avenue, you've got skyscrapers south of Atlantic Avenue. I think you have nothing taller than three or four stories. And it's a zoning decision that's been made. Maybe it's good for some reasons. Maybe it's bad for some reasons.

But pricing is completely out of control. So my point is, I want to look at all of these different areas. Do you agree that we need a sort of all of the above approach here? No, not all of the above. So the rent control one is, I think, terrible. So that's the one where I do have a specific discussion of why rent control is a bad approach. And really, it's really like there is just the classic basic economics. What does rent control do? It means that if you're really lucky and you happen to get a rent control department good for you, at the same time, you are really reducing not only incentives to build new stuff, you're also reducing incentives just to maintain stuff. There is this famous line from

economist Asar Lindbeck, where he roughly says that rent control is the best way to destroy a city after bombing it. Yeah. And to be clear, just as a note, I don't see rent control as a long term solution. I see it as in certain cases, like I would call it five percent of the hundred percent in some targeted situations. You can provide immediate relief while you do other things. Yeah. I mean, I would just say that once you put that in place, your odds of getting rid of it, it's just really hard. Okay. Just messing, messing things up.

So that's the one that I would vehemently be against. And I think almost all economists just think that's a bad idea. Okay. I mean, it's one, I mean, like I would just say, it's like at the level of bleaching or something like that, where there's a problem and then this is something, let's do it. But it is going and just creating a bunch of other problems without really addressing the key points. Again, of course, every now and then someone gets lucky with rent control, but it's just a, it is bad news. Going through your

other list, a bunch of those, I would say, I would just put them all under the package, all under the heading of regulation. The one on regulation of prefab homes, this is one where I'm very sympathetic. I'm just not convinced that it's actually a quantitatively important issue. I mean, I have found, there's one notable economist, I always forget his name, who has a whole paper saying this is a huge issue, but I can't find anyone else that backs up a story. And I'm just like, oh, like, how come nobody else seems to even be paying attention to you? It may be that the guy is right. And he does have a couple of regulations on like how government is making the industry. I mean, it's just making it harder in the industry.

But his story about the magnitude of the gains compared to the details of what regulations there actually are, make me doubt that it's a big deal. But like any case like that, where someone says, hey, there's some regulations that are dumb and they're preventing big gains. And I'm like, okay, you're right. They're dumb. I don't know if they're preventing big gains, but sure. Why not? Let's do it and just see what happens. Like, I'm all for that. Well, can you quantify then on average deregulation? Right. I mean, which which can sound scary. Sometimes we need regulation. So but the sorts of things you're pointing to, what sort of effect could they have on home prices? Right. So this is the main question that economists have been focused on. So I'd say this is the one where I've got the best answer. The kind of regulations that I'm talking about, basically whether or not

you're allowed to build at all or whether you're allowed to build certain kinds of stuff like skyscrapers, multifamily. So your usual estimate is that has roughly doubled the average price of housing in the US for the entire country. It's done a lot more in some places than others. So that's an average for the whole country. That's including, say, San Francisco, where maybe regulation has multiplied the cost of housing by a factor of 10. It's not even crazy to think that versus some other areas in rural places where maybe it's barely changed it at all. But that rough average of if we just got rid of the regulations i'm talking about then the in the long run price was will fall by about half i think that's very fair

um in turn yeah so normally this research doesn't consider things like or is right how much is regulation just raising construction costs per se so you know normally what the research is doing is it's saying all right look what is the value of land where you don't have permission to build stuff on it? And that's usually real low for obvious reasons. You could go and play a game of volleyball on this land where you can't build stuff. Great. That sounds wonderful. What will you pay for that? Not much. And then you go and combine this value of land where you don't have permission to build with just a standard manual from the estimate for the construction costs, you know, estimate for the construction costs manual, which does include some regulations, of course.

And then you go and compare that those two costs, the official construction costs with the raw land price without the paperwork to build attached and compare that to market price. And that's normally how economists measure the effect of regulation. Obviously, that does ignore things like, well, what if government is doing things that raise the cost of construction directly? So and so that's why I'd say that my estimate is actually pretty conservative. Now, there are some maybe every homeowner, I don't know, 90 percent of homeowners who might say, wait a second, hold on, hold on. If you do this and all of a sudden the price per square foot declines by 50 percent, I'm now underwater on my home.

What would is there a natural incentive for every existing homeowner to be against what you're proposing? Speaker 2 Yeah, I'd say that it's just much more complicated. First thing is no sane person would think the price would fall by 50% in a week or a year or five years even. We are just so behind in construction, it would take 10, 20 years to get back to where we ought to be, maybe 30 years for God's sake, because it's just the regulation is so crazy. If just starting today, you could go and start knocking down historic homes in San Francisco and building skyscrapers. I think skyscrapers construction would start pretty quickly, but there just aren't enough firms

that know how to do it to go and actually build all the skyscrapers that it would take to get housing prices down in even a few years. You'd have to be moving almost, basically like every firm that builds skyscrapers in Dubai would need to be moving to San Francisco to do it. So it's going to take a while, which honestly does actually alleviate what I consider more serious worry, which is just that there could be

major mortgage crisis problems like there were in 2008 if prices fell 50% overnight. Stretched out over decades, I think the financial system can totally handle it. But anyway, that aside, most people do think that the whole problem does come down to selfish homeowners who just don't want to see their housing price go down. What I say there is two things. First of all, we've got a lot of public opinion evidence saying that it's not just homeowners that are pro-regulation. Almost all humans are pro-regulation, whether they're owners or tenants. And what's going on? Honestly, I think that the right story is basically the same one for almost

all government policies, which is that policies exist because most people think they're good for society. My first book is called The Myth of the Rational Voter. One of the best known facts about public opinion is that it has almost nothing to do with objective self-interest and almost everything to do with philosophy. Usually it's half-baked philosophy, poorly thought out philosophy, often with piles of misconceptions thrown in. But it's not that people look at the world and say, what's in it for me? No, I've done the math. This is bad. All right. Now, that doesn't mean that deregulation would be good for homeowners. But actually, when you calm down a bit and think about it, it's actually a mixed bag even for homeowners. Why? Well, for one thing, regulation

prevents homeowners from going and profiting from doing things like subdividing or selling out to a developer. So often actually the current homeowner would benefit, would profit from deregulation because they can make a pile of money and move somewhere else. And if someone says, well, I don't want to move. All right. Well, a lot of people do, or do you want to move ever? Do you want to die in this place? And, uh, and then it's like, well, what about your kids? Do you want them to be able to make a pile of money when you die? And if someone just says, never want to move, don't have any kids, don't care what happens after I die. It's all right. Well then I guess you are one of the losers. You are one of the, yeah. So in terms of- But all the other people now, but here is what I consider to be the really big,

so two other really big things. What if you want to upgrade? What if you're a current homeowner, but you want to move to a better place? Right. All right. Well, in that case, you may say, well, on the one hand,

I want housing prices to be high so I can sell at a high price. On the other hand, I want them to be low so I can buy a new place at a low price. What do I want? And the answer is it's complicated. Right. Which means the deregulation might be good for you.

And then the last one, which I think should appeal to almost any homeowner with kids is, do you want your kids to be able to afford to live within 100 miles of you? Well, in that case, you don't really want housing prices to be sky high if you have to go and borrow all of your home equity to give it to your kid as a down payments they can afford a house maybe it would have been better to just not have had that regulation now none of this means that there are zero homeowner homeowners who ever lose from deregulation they would but it's just a lot more complicated than people think which is good news in terms of like, is it really like, is there like, will they just be totally opposed to it? Although actually, like I said, like it is

just like a wrong view of political psychology to think that the main barrier is hardheaded self-interest. Just think about all of the wealthy Democrats who totally favor higher income taxation. They're really common. And people say, well, it's obvious to you. They're a statistically small part of the population. Well, it depends upon how high you cut the threshold for being rich. If it's like top quintile, Democrats are at this point actually probably outnumber Republicans, the top quintile of the income distribution. And there are people say,

well, housing, it's so obvious that you lose from deregulation. Is that more obvious than that people in the top quintile of income lose from higher income taxation? It's just not on that note. I mean, I think it's important to distinguish one type of deregulation would be, hey, instead of being able to build four stories, you can build 10 and it costs way less to get an approval. That seems different than another type of regulation in housing, which comes to the specifics of inspections and requirements for the actual building, which I think most people on the political left anyway believe are there to protect people so they don't have to end up in a house that 10 years down the line crumbles or whatever the case may

be. You distinguish between these two types of regulations. Speaker 1 Like, like, like, honestly, so what I'll say is that there's barely any research on how much those costs, you know, things like inspections are adding. I think it I think it is modest. I think so. Yes. Like, I don't know now. Like, I will say, like, I think that it's crazy to think that someone's going to go and build a skyscraper that's going to collapse and like well it happened in uh surfside florida not that long ago right i mean it does happen yeah yeah so like if it's the standard of zero percent probability like i'm almost sure that building that collapsed was inspected yeah i don't know the story but

um you know i mean like you know there is the point of getting risk down to zero is pretty much impossible. Yes. And the way that our media is set up is that the worst thing that happens on Earth is shown to all 8 billion people. And you make people feel like this is a serious risk that we should do a lot about. This is my general view about safety regulation. But anyway, I barely talk about that in the book. It is not a big issue one way or the other. Absolutely. We've been speaking about the book Build Baby Build, the science and ethics of

housing regulation. We've been speaking with the book's author, Professor Brian Kaplan. Brian, always interesting to talk to you and a super important topic right now to be discussing. Fantastic. Right. And just so you know, of course, you can get the book in almost anywhere, but Amazon's the easiest that I know of. So I'd start there. Speaker 1 Speaker 2 Speaker 3 Speaker 4 Speaker 5 Speaker 6 Speaker 7 Speaker 8 Speaker 9 Speaker 10 Speaker 11 Speaker 12 Speaker 13 Speaker 14 Speaker 15 Speaker 16 Speaker 17

Speaker 18 Speaker 21 Speaker 22 Speaker 23 Speaker 24 Speaker 25 Speaker 26 Speaker 27 Speaker 28 Speaker 31 Speaker 32 Speaker 33 Speaker 34 Speaker 35 Speaker 34 Speaker

35 Speaker 36 Speaker 36 Speaker 37 Speaker 38 Speaker 39 Speaker 40 Speaker 41 Speaker 42 Speaker 43 Speaker 44 Speaker 45 Speaker 46 Speaker 47 Speaker and boring, which is why an aura frame is the perfect gift to mix things up this year. Name the best digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames are guaranteed to bring joy

to moms of all ages. I don't live super close to my parents, so giving them an aura frame with pictures of the baby was a perfect gift. Both I and they can add pictures to the frame using the app. No USB, just infinite cloud photo storage where it all happens seamlessly over Wi-Fi. Super easy. Not only will she be grateful, it's not another sweater. She'll also love that an aura frame gets. She means to see more of you right now. Aura has a great deal for Mother's Day. Go to or a frames dot com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman for thirty dollars off plus free shipping on their best selling frame. The link is in the description. Terms and conditions apply. Well, check this out. This is this is very exciting. The other day I did a sort of review of Howard Stern's interview of President Joe Biden, which was,

I thought, excellent. And it really portrayed Biden in a very positive light. Seventy five minutes with Howard talking about all sorts of different things. He clearly knows what day it is. He knows what time it is. He knows he's the president really kind of just pushing back against all these false notions that you're hearing from right wingers who ignore the fact that Trump can't can barely give a speech after 6 p.m., but insists Biden doesn't even know what day it is.

And I mentioned during that review, hey, when Howard asked X question, it sounds like the sort of question the White House would say, we really want you to talk about this, about airline regulation. And I generally generically said, in my experience, when you do these high profile interviews, the handlers always have stuff they want you to talk about. That's it. Not the interview was scripted or anything like that. Howard saw my review and said the whole thing wasn't scripted.

They didn't give me anything to ask, which, of course, is absolutely fine and doesn't conflict with what I said. But let's listen to what Howard Stern said on his show yesterday. By the way, I'm watching on I watched the David Pakman show on on YouTube. He said he's a political guy. He thinks like I do politically. So I like watching. I like watching him. But anyway, he did a segment on my interview with Joe Biden. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And he was like. He was saying it was it was upsetting me. I'm addressing it now. He was saying. When Howard interviewed Joe Biden. He he he said up front a question to Joe Biden that was clear, like he's speculating, he's not saying for sure, but he goes, there's no way Howard would have asked this or. Yeah, my instinct was I don't know that refunds on canceled flights is like super interesting to Howard. And I know the White House was pushing it.

They had Pete Buttigieg on TV talking about it. So I said it sounds like the sort of thing the White House would say, please talk about this. It's not that the interview is scripted, of course, asked about it. So I said, it sounds like the sort of thing the White House would say, please talk about this. It's not that the interview is scripted, of course, asked about it. It's clear that the White House set him up to do this. It was something set up. And I want to tell you something. It got me thinking. I went, oh, my goodness, I've heard a lot of this from people who say, oh, the White House wouldn't have agreed to do the interview if they hadn't written the questions or this kind of thing. Which was not my claim, to be very clear.

These are other people. Now, I don't know what anybody's saying, but here's what happened. So when Joe Biden came in the day before, John Hein and I were talking about some of the accomplishments that we admire that have gone on in the past four years. And John says to me, hey, Howard, did you hear what Joe Biden did with the airlines? I go, what do you do? And he starts explaining to me that now if the airline for any reason bumps you the way it always was, you got a credit. You couldn't get your money back. And it was really bullshit. You're like, oh, but what if I don't travel again for two years?

What do you mean? A credit. I don't want a credit. I want my money back. True. So the Biden administration passed a law that the airlines have to refund your money. And John was explaining this to me and I said, you know what? I bet a lot of people don't know about that.

I didn't know about it. So I stand corrected. I stand corrected. It was not fed by the White House. And again, this isn't about they scripted the interview. It's whenever I've done one of these interviews and I'm not nearly as high profile as Howard and I've never interviewed someone as high profile as the president. They always come to you with like, we'd really like to focus on this.

And often this is something, quite frankly, kind of boring. But that's not what happened. And that's fine. But the guy sounded so connected on that interview. It's so emotional, so human that I wanted that to come across. That was it. That was the agenda. That's the only a prearranged sort of conversation I had with the White House.

If they were scripting the questions, wouldn't that have been a lot different? And of course, this is now going beyond scripting questions is very different than when I get the little notes. Hey, the publicist wants you to ask about X. Oh, yeah. But but as far as this statement about the airline. I that because David Pakman, who I'm a fan of, said, gee, that doesn't sound like something that that's obviously the White House feeding him this information. Well, cut the conspiracy theory. No conspiracy. Just Mike. And hey, here's the deal. something that that's obviously the White House feeding him this information. Well, cut the conspiracy theory. No conspiracy. Just Mike. And hey, here's the deal. I don't have the clout that Howard has. I'm sure with him, it's a different scenario than with me, where when we

interview Pete Buttigieg and it's like, hey, what are you going to what do you want to talk about? Here's the three initiatives we want to focus on. And then we have to navigate that and say, listen, we're going to do the interview the way the way we want to do it. But obviously we want to we're going to we're not going to sandbag anyone with some extraneous thing from 10 years ago unless we say this will be a topic. We never give questions, but we agree on what the subject matter is going to be. But this is I have to tell you, it's very cool that Howard is checking this out. And obviously any any time he wants to talk about my show, I'm glad to talk to him on his show anytime. In fact, when people wrote to me and said, David Howard's talking about you right now,

I I tried calling in to get on and say, hey, this is what I meant. All right. Let's listen to just a little bit more of this because I was a little shocked when I saw you. So the White House fed him that question. I don't know any misconstrued statements happening. No, no, no. And he wasn't accusing me. Because that will become the truth. People will start saying it. Then it will be a fact.

No, no. He was speculating how this whole thing might have gone down. And quite frankly, it wasn't like that. No, I stand corrected. And then lastly, they did bring on fake Alex Jones. You guys know how real Alex Jones really doesn't like me. That is a frickin predator right there. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that

makes money to fund themselves is bad. Thank your lucky stars every day. You're not Dave Packman. That's the real Alex Jones attacking me. They brought on fake Alex Jones to attack me on the Howard Stern show. Hold on. Oh, my God. It's a right wing commentator, Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist. Yes, Alex. Infowars.com. Howard, do not listen to the haters. Do not listen to Pac-Man. I want to come here. I want to congratulate you. Your interview with hologram Biden was fantastic. I mean, I don't know who's controlling him, Klaus Schwab. I don't know if it was Bill Gates in the other room. All right. So and you get it.

So we all have cleared the air. Everything's cool. The interview was, I thought, excellent and fascinating. And Biden came off really well at the end of the day. Do you know what happens when Trump tells some obvious lie and you say, where'd you get that information? Well, it doesn't often take place because Trump often is ranting with no pushback in front of microphones or in front of a rally crowd. Well, Trump did an interview the other day with a local Fox station, and he made this

completely ridiculous claim that Venezuela is exporting crime to the United States. And Trump was asked, where did you hear that? And he just falls apart. I mean, it's it's really this simple, folks. You just say, where'd you hear that? And it's over. Listen to this. One stat before we go. Venezuela was very crime ridden. They announced the other day 72% reduction in crime in the last year. You know why? They moved all their criminals from Venezuela right into the good old USA and Biden let them do it. It's a disgrace. But sir, where are those numbers coming from? I guess I get them from the papers in this case. I think it's a federal statement or well, they're coming actually from Venezuela.

They're coming from Venezuela. Oh, that is the best. This is what Venezuela is doing. Obviously, they're not. Where are you getting that information? Well, I don't know the papers. And actually, I'm getting it from they're coming from Venezuela. Wait, the people are coming from Venezuela or the information is coming from.

But what do you even talk? That's it. It's over. You ask once. Let's look at that one more time. He has nothing. I didn't let him do it. It's a disgrace.

But sir, where are those numbers coming from? I guess I get them from the papers. In this case, I think it's a federal statement or well, they're coming actually from Venezuela. They're coming from Venezuela. That is the best. That is just the. And Trump famously reads. He's just such a big.

He's reading all of these things from Venezuela all the time. The newspapers he's reading, he's reading books, statements from the Venezuelan government, which, by the way, now you trust the Venezuelan government, the same Venezuelan government that he spent four years saying you can't believe a word they say. Now he believes the same Venezuelan government about what they are supposedly doing. It's whacked. Just do this every time. Where are you getting that information? Where are you getting that information? He has no answer. A sweaty and shaking Mike Pillow spoke yesterday at the Trump rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and it's completely whacked, completely and totally whacked, sweating profusely. Here is Pillow saying that he gets his energy from God and from watching Donald Trump.

This guy is really not doing well. This has been a battle of biblical proportions between good and evil. And one of the things that's going on is that you have this bucket of common sense. That is our real president, Donald Trump. Massive dumps of common sense in the bucket. Right? And people are pouring in from both sides as he gets attacked viciously, something that's an anomaly in history. It's being watched from around the world. Right.

And as they attack him, he's able to get the word out that, hey, I'm standing firm. He's the most courageous person I've ever met in my life, by the way. Ever. Ever. You know, people ask me where I get my energy. I get it from God, but I also get it. He's a perfect example of what courage should be. And I watch that every day. So listen, I see the shaking. I'm not going to make any medical speculations or speculations about drug use. We know that Mike Pillow has a long history, a long, quite, quite a history with substance abuse. I'm not going to make any medical speculations or speculations about drug use. We know that Mike Pillow has a long history, a long, quite, quite a history with substance abuse. I'm not making any speculations. All I know is he's sweating profusely. He's shaking. And the things he's saying don't make any sense whatsoever. He also made the claim that every Democrat he talks

to plans to vote for Trump in November, which is that's going to be a downer when you see what what Democrats actually do in November. And one of the things I've been doing is going and talking to Democrats. You'd be surprised all the ones that I've talked to that voted for Biden are voting for Donald Trump. So I know I would be extraordinarily surprised, extraordinarily surprised, as Mike Pillow says. So there is Pill pillow not doing well.

He did a really wild interview with Dr. Drew the other day. We're going to look at pulling some clips deeply, deeply paranoid at this point. And something not so good seems to be going on. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. That's the number two two one nine two. David P. Here's a caller who says if Kristi Noem is as pro-life as she says she is, why kill the dog? Why not give the dog up for adoption?

Hey, David, it's Charles in Nashville. I was thinking if Kristi Noem is pro-life, should she have not given that dog up for adoption? I mean, does she forget that she had options? You know, it's a very good point. You don't have to shoot the dog dead. You could bring it to a no kill shelter. You could see if someone wants to adopt a problematic dog when it comes to biting or whatever. But as I said before.

The the biggest problem is not any one detail about she shot the dog or the dog was already on its second home and it was violent or it's not about any one thing. It's the poor judgment that this is a story that makes you look like you're thinking clearly and that this makes you look presidential and like you can make correct, tough decisions. It doesn't. It makes you seem like a very strange person to say this is the vignette of my life that I'm going to include in my book to make myself look good. On the bonus show today, Arizona lawmakers have voted to undo

a near total abortion ban from 1864, and the governor, Katie Hobbs, is expected to sign it. This is good. Twenty six Republican attorneys general have sued to block a Biden rule that requires background checks when you're buying a gun at a gun show. They don't like it. They say no background checks at gun shows. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is planning a vote next week to try to remove Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson. Democrats have already said they will join Republicans in not ousting MAGA Mike Johnson. I guess the idea is we're so close to the end of the term. We need to get some things done. We can't have the house in chaos again. We have some responsibility to the American people who voted us here and are paying our salaries that Democrats are saying, listen, enough is enough with this nonsense.

So let's discuss all of those stories and more when producer Pat joins me on the bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. Remember that if you want to support the audio visual content that we do, the website memberships are the way to do it. If you want to support the written content that we do, we now are doing an op ed. I guess that's the right term. An opinion piece every weekend written in the Substack premium newsletter. So just Google David Pakman substack. You can support us there as well. And remember that you can get my latest children's book. And honestly, adults should read this, too. A lot of adults don't understand why. Why should I vote? Hopefully the book is written in simple enough language for our adult audience as well. Think like a voter. You can get it at David Pakman dot com slash book.

Donate a few hundred to your local library if you so please. All right. We'll see you on the bonus show. I'll be back tomorrow with the Friday show.