The David Pakman Show - 5/24/23: DeSantis launching campaign, Trump loses it, Tim Scott pathetic

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is launching his 2024 presidential campaign on Twitter, alongside Elon Musk -- Failed Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake does Donald Trump's dirty work and starts the character assassination of Ron DeSantis ahead of his campaign launch -- Donald Trump explodes on Truth Social in reaction to Ron DeSantis' 2024 campaign announcement -- Republican Senator and 2024 presidential candidate Tim Scott brutally fails when asked how he will defeat Donald Trump -- Right wing media starts alluding to Tim Scott possibly being gay as part of their attempt to help Donald Trump -- Failed Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake begs for money after her final election challenge was turned away -- Radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene says that she refused to "wear" the COVID vaccine -- Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert claims that she only had a third child because birth control was expensive -- Donald Trump's criminal trial has been scheduled for March 2024, the middle of the 2024 election -- Confused voicemail caller says there is no such thing as gay children or transgender children -- On the Bonus Show: Target removes LGBT Pride month merchandise after threats, social media driving teen mental health crisis, veterans less likely to support extremism, much more... 🧠 Mindbloom: Use code PAKMAN for $100 off at https://mindbloom.com/pakman 🪒 Henson Shaving: Use code PAKMAN for FREE blades at https://hensonshaving.com/pakman ♨️ Bon Charge Sauna Blanket: Use code PAKMAN for 15% OFF at https://boncharge.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

. Today is the day that Ron DeSantis launches his presidential campaign entering the Republican primary against the presumed and actual. It's funny, presumed he's really the front runner, Donald Trump. And we will soon start to learn. Is there some viable path for Ron DeSantis to the Republican nomination? The details are fascinating and abortive. Ron DeSantis is going to be launching his campaign on Twitter in a Twitter spaces event with Twitter owner Elon Musk. NBC News reports the Florida governor will announce he is running for president on Twitter Wednesday evening in a conversation with Elon Musk. We will be streaming this live on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook. I hope you will join us for that. NBC News explains Musk and DeSantis

will host an event on Twitter spaces, the site's platform for audio chats on Wednesday at six Eastern. It will be moderated by David Sachs, a tech entrepreneur who's a Musk confidant and DeSantis supporter that same evening, meaning tonight the campaign will release a launch video. DeSantis will begin visiting several early states after Memorial Day. The relationship could could is doing a lot of work here. The relationship could be a significant boost for DeSantis by giving him an introduction to and credibility with Musk Musk's massive following, including his 140 million Twitter followers. But it could prove a burden should DeSantis become distracted by the tycoons.

Many controversial comments. Not only that, I mean, listen, let's be honest, Ron DeSantis's entire anti woke thing is not actually very much in line with Elon Musk's Tesla electric vehicles. We're we're not going to go woke with these electric vehicles. You can't even drive. Right. I mean, it doesn't actually make any sense. But also, Musk has started to play coy with Republican elected officials becoming buddy buddy with Greg Abbott in Texas, et cetera. So it's going to be quite a wild event. And I'm as curious as anybody else. You know, one of the things that we have to understand Twitter space is why my understanding is there will be absolutely no pushback or actual journalistic

questions asked on Twitter spaces tonight. And that may be by design. It's not clear DeSantis wants to answer questions tonight, including the most obvious and basic question, which is what is DeSantis is mathematical path to this nomination, because if we look at current polling, here's the real clear politics averages in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. What you see here, the two most important lines on this chart are the purple line at the top, which keeps going up. That's Donald Trump and the green line down the middle, which keeps going down. That's the Santas. And DeSantis continues to see small declines in polling now down to just nineteen point four. Today, Trump's lead over DeSantis in the primary

is, I think, as big as it has ever been. I mean, at one point it reached what looks like thirty two. Yet Trump is now leading DeSantis by 37 in the primary. That's this is arguably the worst it has looked for DeSantis since his name started to be thrown around seriously back in September. And so the question is, how can DeSantis scoop up all of the non-Trump vote, which would get him to forty four, forty three, forty four. And then if and when he does that, how does he take at least six or seven points from Trump to get even with him? I don't know the answer. You know, when we ask the question generically, right, how does a candidate take supporters from another candidate? There's a few ways. One is you explain DeSantis could explain his values in a way that would appeal to the moral

beliefs of Trump supporters, like he could frame his policies on immigration or health care or education or whatever. He could frame it in terms of individual freedom or national security or being anti woke or whatever he thinks will appeal to MAGA people. It doesn't really sound likely. It doesn't sound to me that MAGA voters are there waiting for someone else to appeal to them on the moral values that attracted them to Trump just doesn't seem to really make sense. Second possibility to take support from a candidate that already has support would be, can you gather up enough endorsements from influential enough figures that Trump supporters trust and respect that they say, hey, you know what? It's less about Trump and DeSantis. It's the people that I see

endorsing DeSantis makes me makes me think I should leave Trump and go to DeSantis. It, again, doesn't seem likely because we just looked at this story. More than 100 former Trump officials are supporting DeSantis. We've seen a number of prominent Republicans say we need a different direction than Trump. MAGA genuinely doesn't seem to care. So that doesn't seem like a path for DeSantis to take support from Trump. And then the third way you can take support away from someone who has it is you make a mathematical case, you make an empirical case, you make a polling case and you say, I am the person that is best positioned to beat Joe Biden. You convince MAGA people with Trump, you lose to Biden. With me, you win. I honestly don't even know that that would convince MAGA

voters, even if it's true, because on Friday in the Friday feedback segment, we're going to look at emails from Trump cultists who say, I don't care about anything. I will only vote for Trump and that's it. And so that also doesn't seem to be a convincing argument that DeSantis could make to take support for Trump. And again, remember, the reason this matters is Trump's already polling 56. So to win, DeSantis has to take supporters from Trump. I don't know how he does it. So we're going to look at the event tonight. We'll see what happens. Should be interesting.

We'll see what role Elon Musk plans to play in the DeSantis campaign more broadly. It seems as though with Musk behind him, Twitter is going to be potentially a strong force supporting DeSantis. But would that be enough? Would that make a difference? We will see. In the meantime, Trump brown nosers and suck ups are starting to do the dirty work for Trump in attacking Ron DeSantis. One of those people is Carrie Lake. Let's talk about that next. One of the things that has been said about Trump's 2024 campaign is that he's going to pick a female running mate. And the names that keep being tossed around primarily are Nikki Haley.

In no particular order, Nikki Haley, Carrie Lake, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kristi Noem. Of those, I genuinely have no idea which is the most likely. One of the craziest is Carrie Lake. And Carrie Lake does seem very desperate to be Donald Trump's vice presidential running mate. And so she is wasting no time. Remember that tonight, Ron DeSantis is going to be announcing his candidacy against Trump in the Republican primary. Carrie Lake getting a jump on the character assassination appearing last night on Newsmax and saying if DeSantis can't even beat Disney, how is he going to beat Donald Trump? Certainly seems to be auditioning for vice president. Let's take a listen. But we can't do it half asked. When you pick a fight with Disney, you need to play to win. And so far, Governor DeSantis has been outworked and outmaneuvered

by Disney. As far as I know, Reedy Creek is still exists. They're still hosting trans events at their park. What is a trans event? Exactly. This indoctrination is continuing and they're actually rubbing it in the faces of American families. You know, if you can't beat Donald Duck, how are you going to beat Donald Trump? Whoa, that's pretty slick as far as a line goes. I think that's the question we have to ask when it comes to Governor DeSantis. And I think he should stay in Florida and continue fighting for the people there and try to finish that fight. I'd rather see President Trump, who's a dealmaker who can

make things happen, take on woke corporations. And I know for a fact he gets results. There you go. So Carrie Lake coming out and saying, I wonder how long it took her to come up with that. If DeSantis, the sanctimonious, if DeSantis can't beat Donald Duck, how is he going to beat Donald Trump? And she seems visibly proud of that one. So Carrie Lake auditioning for VP. And I actually think you're going to see an interesting dynamic where even the people that support Trump, many of them, they're not going to be willing to do the character assassination of Ron DeSantis because big picture, they actually like him.

This idea that you would love Trump but hate DeSantis, they're sort of two sides of the same coin. So a lot of this character assassination of one in favor of the other is quite contrived. The reality is that on issues and positions and culture war and the whole thing, to the extent that they take positions on issues, most people who like one of these clowns would like the other. That's the reality. And so when you see someone like Carrie Lake draw these seemingly insurmountable, obvious, glaring distinctions between Trump and DeSantis. They're quite contrived and they're usually for politically opportunistic reasons. Bonus clip from Carrie Lake. She also said during the same appearance, other people are crazy and

not living in reality, which is quite rich for Carrie Lake to say, who keeps insisting any day she's going to be made governor of Arizona. Speaker 1 The media has lost their collective mind, have they not? Speaker 5 Yeah, they're living on planet crazy. And I don't frankly want to be on that same planet with them because they Speaker 1 Well, you'd better find a flight out, Carrie, because you've been on the planet for you're one of the earliest settlers of that planet Speaker 4 lost their minds. You know, they'll say anything. It shows you how desperate they are. They're just completely desperate right now. Yeah. She seems to be describing herself and her

supporters. She has no no ability to analyze her own situation. The media has lost their collective mind, have they not? Yeah, they're living on planet crazy. And I don't frankly want to be on that same planet with them because they've lost their minds. You know, they'll say anything. It shows you how desperate they are. They're just. All right. So Carrie Lake is likely to be one of the is it is it impolite to say an attack dog because Trump always talks about they treated him like a dog.

She is likely going to be one of the big attackers of Ron DeSantis. This is going to continue and it will be very interesting to see the aftermath tonight. In the meantime, Trump immediately jumping to attacking Ron DeSantis. So tonight, Ron DeSantis will announce his candidacy. He has the audacity to challenge Donald Trump's path to the 2024 Republican nomination. Donald Trump wasting no time and starting to post even engaging caps lock to Truth Social Truth Central Trump posting as news broke of Ron DeSantis is impending candidacy. Quote, Look, Rob DeSanctimonious came to me asking for help.

He was losing badly by thirty one points to popular agriculture commissioner Adam Putnam. He was getting ready to drop out of the race, ran a terrible campaign. Ron told me he had one last chance. My support and endorsement, which Putnam and everyone else wanted. Also, I gave it to Ron and the race was over. In one day, he went from losing badly to winning by a lot. It actually took four months. But OK, who cares about the details?

With three large Trump rallies, he won the general election in an upset, disloyal. This is how Trump sees everything, not just politics. And many Republicans see it this way, although maybe not to the degree that Trump does. I did something for you. And now you should essentially have a loyalty that is almost an indentured servitude to me for the rest of your political career. You should never, ever, ever run against me because I helped you. And and that is the sort of moral foundation to the extent that it is one for Donald Trump. Trump continuing on truth and then engaging caps lock here,ote, Ron DeSantis can't win the general election or get the nomination because he voted to obliterate Social Security, even wanting to raise the minimum age

to 70 or more, voted to badly wound Medicare and fought hard and voted for a 23 percent tax on everything sales tax. He was and is a disciple of horrible rhino Paul Ryan and others too many to mention. Also, he desperately needs a personality transplant. That's true. And to the best of my knowledge, they are not medically available yet. A disloyal person, Trump, then continuing in all capital letters. I built the greatest economy in the history of the world. No inflation, energy independence and soon dominance. The strongest border ever record best employment numbers, biggest tax and regulation cuts rebuilt our military. No wars with Russia, Ukraine or China, Taiwan or anywhere. And the U.S. was respected

all over the world. What else can I say? Almost everything there is a lie. And then one more troth, all caps, short and sweet election interference. So if Trump is this triggered by the news that DeSantis will be announcing his candidacy tonight, just you wait for what Trump is going to do after tonight's announcement. This is going to be one of the ugliest Republican primaries that I've ever covered, certainly. But maybe for an even longer period than that, I would expect videos. I would expect attacks, interviews, furious interviews, hopefully with significant audio trouble. That's always the best. But we will be following all of it. And I hope you'll join me tonight shortly before six p.m. Eastern, three p.m. Pacific. We will be covering the DeSantis announcement with Elon Musk. Trump

will probably attack Elon Musk tonight as well. It's going to be wild. And again, the political objective for me is for the ugliness of the forthcoming Republican primary to be as damaging as possible to whoever eventually becomes the Republican nominee, likely Trump, but maybe not. Also, Monday Memorial Day. This is it, guys. We're we're going to do it Monday Memorial Day. We are launching a one day membership special.

As many of you know, membership is the primary funding source for this program. We are going to discount membership in order to entice people, hopefully you to sign up on Monday. All you need to do to take advantage of this membership special is get on my newsletter. That's really it. You don't need to get anything notarized. You don't need to send any smoke signals or fax anything anywhere. You don't need to build a Lego train or anything like that. You simply get on my newsletter at David Pakman dot com. Monday morning you'll be notified and then everyone will be winning. If you deal with anxiety or depression, you may have tried meditation, exercise, diet changes,

therapy, all of which are important things to try. There is also a new treatment that we've been talking about on the program for years, which for many people has been a game changer, and that is ketamine therapy. The research around ketamine therapy for anxiety and depression looks very promising, which is why I'm thrilled about our new sponsor, Mindbloom. Mindbloom is the leader in at home ketamine therapy, having safely helped thousands of people with anxiety and depression. It's delivered to your door. It's done from the comfort of your home. And unlike

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How is it that you are going to defeat Donald Trump in this primary? What are the differences between you and Donald Trump in this primary? South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott, who announced his candidacy, which is completely dead on arrival earlier this week, he now was asked on Fox News Trump's crushing the polls. How is that exactly? Will you defeat him? And Senator Tim Scott failed or was unwilling to answer the question in any real way.

I'm going to play the clip for you. He uses words I recognize. They're all English words that I can define. I've heard these words before. Yet he's not actually communicating anything. He either has no plan or he doesn't plan to defeat Trump. And maybe he's running for vice president. I don't exactly know the strategy, if there even is a strategy. Here's Tim Scott. And this is not

a winning strategy in the sense that it is not a strategy at all. Have to go back to the former president because his lead is so mighty. How do you take on someone who literally fights to fight? I mean, I know you saw 2016, you saw 2020. Donald Trump is a master at it. What's your game plan? My game plan is a simple one. I'm running for president of the United States and I plan to be the nominee. So the good news is for the American people, you will have a stark contrast between me and the rest of the field. I look forward to being the messenger that actually adds to our party without diluting our conservative values.

OK, was there an answer in there? The answer is no, there was not. Listen, you you how exactly are you going to be doing brain transplant surgery in five years when you're not in medical school? We don't have brain transplant surgery as a procedure that is done. Like how exactly are you going to do it? Well, listen, five years are going to go by and then I'm going to be doing brain transplants. Oh, wow. I guess I never thought about it that way. That's the absurdity of what Tim Scott is saying here. You're losing by 80. The numbers are completely ridiculous. How are you going to defeat Trump here? How are you going to get the support you need? I'm going to be the party's nominee. Wow. Pretty amazing that you plan to do that.

Using words I recognize that don't mean anything. Now, I got a couple of emails from people saying what he means is I plan to be Trump's vice president. I don't actually plan to win. I'm really running for vice president. And the way I'm going to do that is similar to the Nikki Haley technique, which is present myself as an alternative, but don't really attack Trump. Make it this kind of mild like, well, my identity is different and then be there when it's time for Donald Trump to choose his vice president. Very low energy stuff. A couple other clips from Tim Scott yesterday on Fox News. Here he is asked about contrast to other candidates. He says he's not going to talk about other candidates. It's going to make it tough to win, my friend. I'm not going to focus

on the other candidates in this race. I'm going to focus on where we should keep the focus. It's on the American people. Too many of us spend too much time talking about ourselves. One. There you go. He's not going to talk about himself or the other candidates. That's going to make it really hard to win. I mean, I don't I don't know how else to say it. It will be an extraordinarily difficult task to convince more than 50 percent of Republican primary voters to choose you over the other candidates when you're polling one percent by not talking about yourself nor the other candidates. That's really, really, really strange. And then he says the left is quaking in their

boots. He keeps repeating this. I haven't heard one person on the left say they're afraid of Tim Scott. Here's what we're seeing. The radical left is quaking in their boots because when an African-American conservative who believes in the future of this nation stands up to be counted, they push back. That's a good sign. We're on the right message. So I guess he's saying the left is scared of him because he's black, which is a really strange thing to say. Now, that being said, is he going to run an identity campaign? And what I mean by that is Nikki Haley. The only things she really was willing to draw a distinction with Trump on seem to be that she's a woman and she's younger and she's a person of color.

Maybe Tim Scott's plan is the same, which is I'm younger and I'm black. I don't know. The problem is there is no evidence that the MAGA Republican Party is looking for a black candidate. And I've already explained to you why that is. And that's gone back for a while. So not exactly a winning proposition. And in the meantime, right wing media and some right wing elected officials are starting to do the mildly homophobic attacks on Tim Scott. And you might

be saying, I didn't even know Tim Scott was gay. I don't know that he is. But let's talk about that next. I'm going to play a clip for you here of Ted Cruz being interviewed on Newsmax. And you're going to hear the Newsmax host say something that is becoming a story about Tim Scott. And it's a similar story as it is with Lindsey Graham, the other Republican senator from South Carolina. And the way that Newsmax frames it is that there are questions about Tim Scott's personal life. Now, you might be saying, what do you mean? Questions about his personal life. I need to be crystal clear with you about what they mean here. They are starting to allude to the possibility

that Tim Scott is gay. They always dance around it. I'll explain it in a moment. Take a listen to this. And I'm and what if you're watching, watch Ted Cruz when this comes up. Lad for for Tim's voice, I think he's a very important voice in the Senate, and I'm sure he will add a lot to this race. Yeah. So amazing life story, personal story. But we don't know a lot about his personal life. And at some point, those questions will be asked as we make our way closer to especially August, the debate stage in Milwaukee.

You have a comment on that? Oh, look, I'm sure that there will be nasty political attacks between the different candidates in the primary. Ted Cruz is like, I know there are going to be nasty political attacks because I'm planning some particularly disgusting ones myself that we can expect.

We've already seen some of that. And it's a rough and tumble business. That's that. That's how it operates. OK, so what are they alluding to here? I'll give you the back story. And understandably, a lot of people just haven't heard about this yet. The idea here is Tim Scott could be gay.

He might be gay. And the right is speculating. And there are these articles, you know, 57 year old Tim Scott has be gay. He might be gay. And the right is speculating. And there are these articles, you know, 57 year old Tim Scott has never been married. He's a sort of perpetual bachelor, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When he entered politics at age 30, he talked about being a virgin. He attributed it to his Christian faith or something. But it actually might be that he's a gay man who is not was not comfortable saying that publicly still isn't comfortable saying that publicly. Now, I have absolutely no idea whether Tim Scott is gay. There are reports

he's brought women to events at times before. It doesn't really mean anything one way or the other. I don't actually care whether Tim Scott is gay. But the fascinating part is that the right is setting up the homophobic line. And with Lindsey Graham, it's sort of the same thing. But I actually it's not exactly the same. I don't know where it stands right now. But with Lindsey Graham, it's considered more of one of these open secrets. Also, a perpetual bachelor, Lindsey Graham and speculation or discussions that he's actually a gay man. Why this wouldn't just be something you say? Well, I think part of it has to do with you're a senator in a Republican Party that is still

extraordinarily homophobic. And that tells you a lot about why. So as far as Tim Scott goes, they are starting to prepare that line of attack. You will not see it brought out by candidates. Trump and DeSantis aren't going to on a debate stage. If Tim Scott makes it to a debate stage, attack him for being gay. It's just not going to happen. But the PACs and the dark money, et cetera. If for whatever reason, Tim Scott actually started getting some traction in this primary, which he almost certainly will not, they can start doing the there are questions about

his personal life thing. It's been done to other candidates before. That's what's being alluded to here. It's a horrible thing. It's probably even more horrible that it has the potential to impact voters within a Republican primary. We will follow it. And that's what they're teeing up. All of these clips that I've been playing, the Newsmax Ted Cruz clip about Tim Scott or the earlier clips with Tim Scott on Fox, all of these clips, we make these available on our Instagram, which you can find by searching Instagram for David Pakman show. We also post them to our tick tock, which you can find by searching tick tock for David Pakman show. And of course, we make them available on our YouTube channel, which you can find at YouTube dot com forward slash not backslash forward slash the David Pakman show. We're going to

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The link is in the podcast notes. Just when you think the entire Arizona gubernatorial fiasco involving Carrie Lake can't get any more embarrassing. Carrie Lake yesterday was begging for money, desperate, desperate, claiming that she's going to fight on despite the fact that a judge has dismissed her final challenge in her election loss for Arizona governor back in November. Now, understand that it has now been seven months almost since she lost. And when I say she lost, it's always important to clarify. What I mean is her opponent, Katie Hobbs, received more votes. Judge. This is a PBS

report from the Associated Press. Judge dismisses Carrie Lake's last challenge in election loss for Arizona governor. A judge on Monday dismissed the only remaining legal claim and Republican Carrie Lake's challenge of her loss last year to Katie Hobbs. Maricopa County Superior Judge Peter Thompson said Lake failed to prove her claim that Maricopa County did not verify signatures on mail ballots as required by law. This was the final challenge. So what is Carrie Lake do yesterday? She holds another one of these delusional press conferences where she comes up with

reams of paper and there's people standing behind her. We never know who the hell these people are or what role they have in any of this. And then she begs for money. She begs for money. She begs for money. Here's one. Here's one. Dear Carrie, my humble twenty dollar donation for your continued fights against the evils at the Arizona and D.C. cartels. Wow. This is a twenty dollar check. This came from Sun City West. Wow. I mean, guys, I could go through this whole thing. These letters move me to tears.

Yeah. The real reason she's crying is no, no, no judges are buying her BS. What's going on in our elections and the people are the ones who are helping us. They want they want our case to go forward. They want to keep sending money to fight this because they know if we don't fight this now, we're losing our country. It's not fun. I have been offered bribes to get out of politics. There's that story where which was never verified and no details were ever provided. We have such a huge movement. They're afraid

of this movement being back on the ballot. It's true, Bram. They're afraid of this movement being back on the ballot. I've actually had someone show up at my door, pretty powerful person, offer me money to not run for office again. They don't want my name on the ballot. They're that scared of her. Offered me whatever I wanted to put our movement on ice for two years. We are going to continue to take donations if people can. It seems as though you have quite literally no more legal recourse. Are you still going to collect donations? Absolutely. I'm not here begging for donations, guys. That's actually exact. That's quite

literally what she's doing. It's difficult putting food on the table right now in Joe Biden's economy. It's very difficult. So I'm not. So let me put aside as she says this, she puts aside. She realizes I should stop begging for donations by taking envelopes out of this bag of donate box of donations I have. So she puts it to the side as she says, I'm not here begging for donations. Well, I guess not in the next 10 seconds asking for donations. I want you to all know that I am asking for people to get involved. Marissa is going to help. We're going to get people motivated. Excuse me. Excuse me. Just a minute. The people who do make donations is going toward paying for a legal fund. So you'll take them and you have a use for them. That's great. How would I want to meet the person

donating to Carrie Lake at this point in time? What on earth could be going through your mind, if anything, for you to at this point say, hey, you know what? I think I'm going to send Carrie Lake money. I'm going to send her money at this point in time. I'm not here begging for donations. I'm merely talking about how great the people sending money are and reminding people we will continue accepting donations. But I'm not begging for them now, I guess, in order to provide some cover plot, even ostensibly for accepting donations. Carrie Lake now says she wants to take this to the Supreme Court, where even this delusional right wing Supreme Court, I don't think is going to hear this case. Newsweek reports former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Carrie Lake on Tuesday announced her intention to keep pushing her election case towards the Supreme Court

after suffering a major loss in court. She made the announcement after a judge ruled that her legal team did not have sufficient evidence to prove ballot workers didn't conduct the signature matching. Her challenges were consistently dismissed in court, including Mondays, but she pledged to continue fighting. She will try to prove her argument before the Supreme Court. She also she often makes this vague claim. We proved our elections are a mess. We proved signature verification is a joke. She said she wasn't surprised by the judge's decision.

Lake also announced a new ballot chasing initiative, which he says was the largest in Arizona. This involves reaching out to registered voters and assuring they submit the ballots on time, all this sort of stuff. So listen, bottom line, this is going nowhere. This is a complete and total humiliation. But at the end of the day, the only reason that these things last as long as they do, the only reason Carrie Lake is still doing this stuff after seven months is because someone is donating money to her. Let me give you a counter. Imagine a different scenario. Imagine that on November 15th or whenever it was that Kerry Lake first announced that this was going to continue for so long. Imagine no one donated money to her. She wouldn't continue doing this for seven months. The reason that this continues

is that people continue to donate money. Some people, clearly people who don't understand anything. And my guess is that many of the people sending her money can't actually afford to do so, which is probably the saddest part of this entire thing. So is it finally over? Yes. And also now she's pushing for the Supreme Court. Let's hope that doesn't happen. Radical and repugnant Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene now has made the very brave declaration that she refused to wear the covid vaccine. I don't know what on earth that means either. She filmed this video alongside her new partner, Brian Glenn. That's the dude who always looks sunburned and stoned during the Trump rallies on right side broadcasting network and interviews people.

They are now together. Much speculation about whether Glenn is responsible for the breakup of Marjorie Taylor Greene's marriage. Don't know. Don't really care. But they both now are talking about masks and vaccines. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she never wore the vaccine and her boyfriend actually seems to dodge the vaccine question when she says, you know, you're not vaccinated. He seems to skip over that and only talk about masks, which is kind of interesting. Take a look at this one. I'll be upfront and honest with you. I'm not vaccinated. I always refuse to wear the vaccine. And I wore mask a little bit some of the time, but it got to a certain point where I refused the mask as well. Brian, you're not vaccinated. You're not you. I didn't want to wear the mask at all. And a lot of times in the airport,

I was asked to put it on and I would for a second and I would take it off. Yes, there you go. Very, very proud and powerful act of defiance. So anyway, he just skips over whether or not he's vaccinated. But she says she won't wear the vaccine tinfoil hats. She'll gladly wear. But the vaccine, she's not willing to strap on to herself. So what I think is the most important, you know, we as we continue to just learn and get more information about

everything that went on in the covid era, there's learning for everybody to do. You know, the the original vaccine, very effective at preventing transmission. The more recent versions of the vaccine against the more recent variants, almost completely ineffective at preventing transmission, still very good at preventing illness or death and reducing the odds that you end up in the hospital. OK, so we're learning about that. One of the things that we're also learning about is the hypocrisy that knows no bounds from members of the Republican Party and people like Marjorie Taylor Greene. They cry about masks and how mask requirements are discriminatory and they're potentially illegal. They love to say,

et cetera, et cetera. But they are completely on board with this systematic push for laws that discriminate against LGBT people and folks who aren't Christian and women telling them you don't have any right to decide for yourself with medical professionals. What is right for you and your family? We're going to tell you no abortion. It's going to be against the law. And we might even prosecute you or the doctor or whoever, if you try to procure an abortion, that this idea of discrimination, you're discriminating against me by saying I have to wear a mask or to the extent that there were vaccine requirements at certain points in time, the businesses are the ones now discriminating. Wait a second. You have been pushing a politics for decades of letting businesses do whatever they want. You don't

even want many of these folks don't even want protected classes of people. They always say, listen, a business should be allowed to say we don't serve black people or gay people. And then customers can choose not to patronize that business if they don't like that policy. For decades, they've been saying, don't restrict what businesses can do. All of a sudden, businesses say, well, some of us are going to require a vaccine or some of us are going to require. Oh, that's that should be illegal. You're discriminating against people who don't want to wear a mask or shouldn't wear a mask because of carbon dioxide conspiracies or whatever the case

may be. The hypocrisy knows no bounds, even on serious issues that they claim to be at the top of the policy questions that they believe our government should be dealing with. So they are hypocrites. Many of them are also liars. You know that I go back to the Tucker Carlson ranting against the vaccines for so long. He and his family almost certainly vaccinated. Fox News had that policy in place where if you weren't vaccinated, they really made your your your day to day pretty tough. And he never mentioned he was being subjected to it. So they often lie. They are hypocrites. But the real victims are the people who don't really know any better. And they follow them and they believe the things they say and they make decisions

that are disastrous for their own families. And I'm not talking about necessarily even medical decisions. I'm talking about economic decisions, employment, all sorts of decisions. The people spouting the nonsense don't suffer. But those who have Fox News and Marjorie Taylor Greene's podcast and Real America's Voice as their primary news sources, those are the folks that suffer at the end of the day. achy joints and muscles. It's relaxing. It's just a great way to remove a little stress. Bond charges the creator of the infrared sauna blanket, which you can enjoy from home. Super easy to set up. Heats up fast. You don't have to have your head inside like at a traditional

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And she declared during this hearing that the reason she had a third child is because birth control was too expensive. So she opted to leave the pharmacy without paying for the prescription, I guess, having unprotected sex leading to this third child that she ultimately had. Now, there are factual inaccuracies here. There are moral conundrums here. Let's listen to the clip first and then we're going to discuss it. Speaker 4 But do you see that patients leave their prescriptions at pharmacies because they can no longer pay for it? They absolutely do in my pharmacy. Yes, that happens more than should make anyone comfortable. I actually have a fun little story. My staff is probably going to talk

to me about this later, but I left a prescription at a pharmacy once. I went to get birth control. And I was there at the counter and went to pay for it. And the price was very, very high. I said, wow, is this a three, six-month prescription? No, ma'am, this is one month. And I said, it's cheaper to have a kid. Wow. And I left it there.

And now I have my third son, Caden Boebert. And so actually, it turned out to be a really great thing. But I personally experienced that when times were tough. But thank you so much for your indulgence there. And talk to the team about that comment later. Oh, my team's going to get me in trouble because I told an insane story. So there's a lot here. There's there is a lot here. There is Lauren Boebert's legislative hypocrisy.

There are the factual inaccuracies as well. So first and foremost, Lauren Boebert has been a staunch opponent of abortion and reproductive rights. She's voted against expanding access to contraception for millions of Americans who need it and potentially are in the position she was once in where paying for the birth control is expensive. So she has been someone who, if this story is true, she understands how difficult it can be.

And she has voted against making it easier to access birth control for millions of Americans. She also seems completely oblivious to the fact that raising a kid is way more expensive than paying completely out of pocket for the birth control pills, which with most insurance plans now are actually free anyway. But forget about that for a second. The research I've done suggests that out of pocket birth control is about 50 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month. The estimated cost of raising a child to age 18 most recently was two hundred and thirty three thousand dollars. Now, that's a six year old number. Inflation might make it even higher at this point in time. That depends on a lot of different things, including the standard of living and geographical

location, all these different things. If you pay the 50 bucks a month or six hundred dollars per year for birth control out of pocket, even over 18 years, if you were on out of pocket birth control for 18 years, that's ten grand compared to at least two hundred and thirty three thousand dollars to raise a kid. So what she's saying is also very stupid. And it actually makes me wonder, did she really believe that? Is Lauren Boebert so bad at either math or reality that when she saw,

wow, it's going to be 50 bucks for these birth control pills. Did she really do some math that came out with her thinking it's cheaper to have a kid and to pay the costs of having a kid for 18 years. I don't know. It's a level of stupidity that really is shocking. And then there's the moral aspect here as well. She's essentially saying, I didn't even want this third kid, but I ended up having this third kid because I had unprotected sex because I couldn't afford the birth control. And therefore, I didn't even actually want this kid, although she's saying he's a good kid. I like the kid. It reminds me of producer Lewis, who once said, if I accidentally had a kid, I'd probably love the kid. It seems like she ends up loving her kid. But she's saying essentially that she didn't want that kid either, which I know is not there. There are many parents who would have

stories like this. But the funny little story that Lauren Boebert told is an extraordinarily disturbing example of how out of touch she is with the reality of what it costs to raise a kid, what it costs to pay for birth control, completely seemingly morally disconnected from what I would call a responsibility that she has as a member of Congress to, OK, you know of a problem that you experienced. You could vote to prevent other people from having that very same problem. But she doesn't. Instead, she votes to make it more difficult to access that very same thing. Truly and absolutely disgusting and also seemingly a clueless person. We have now learned that Donald Trump's first criminal trial. We don't know if there will be more than one. We will see. Trump's first criminal trial

has been set for March of twenty twenty four. And this is going to be taking place right in the middle of the twenty twenty four presidential election, right when the Republican electorate may be choosing or close to choosing their nominee for 2024. And this could be absolute and total chaos. This Republican primary is already going to be, I believe, the most insane I will have ever covered with Ron DeSantis announcing tonight that he is entering the race. Trump already massively triggered by that news. I believe that this is going to be a completely bonkers primary. It could become even crazier by what we learned from CNN yesterday. A New York judge has set a trial date of March 25, 2024 for the criminal case against former President Donald Trump, potentially setting

up a media spectacle in the middle of the Republican primary. Yeah, I think it's more than just the potential to create a spectacle. The trial date was set during a brief hearing Tuesday in which the judge read Trump an order on what he can and cannot say publicly about the case. I'm sure Trump is going to abide by that, right? Trump appeared remotely via video feed so the judge could communicate with him in open court. Remember that Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony counts. We talked about that. We covered it live during the hearing. Trump could be seen speaking and gesturing to his attorney, Todd Blanch, seating next

to him. But audio was not audible. At times he sat back with his arms crossed. The former president only spoke to confirm he had a copy of the protective order. Yes, I do. He said Trump's attorney said that the former president remains concerned that the order infringes on his First Amendment rights. Quote, He understands he has to comply with the order, and if he doesn't do so, he's violating your order.

Merchan reiterated that's the judge, that there is not a gag order in place. Trump can publicly defend himself against the allegations, saying it is certainly not my intention to impede Trump's ability to campaign for president. He's free to defend himself. He's free to campaign. He is free to do just about anything that does not violate the specific terms of the protective order and said if he does violate that order, he could end up being sanctioned. This is going to be completely bonkers.

The next hearing is January. So the timeline is as follows. Defense motions are due a couple of days before the end of August. Prosecutors must respond by the 10th of October. The next hearing is January 4th, 2024, which might be the first court date of 2024. January 4th. No, that's a Thursday. And then this is all going to move forward to trial reportedly in March. Now, there is one motion filed by Trump's lawyers, which could completely upend this Trump's lawyer. This is from the same CNN article. Trump's lawyers

have filed a motion to move the criminal case to federal court, arguing that these crimes are tied to Trump's duties as president. The defense request to move the case to federal court doesn't pause the state court schedule. A hearing in federal court is scheduled for next month. So this there are so many ifs, ands and buts about when and how this is actually going to go forward. If it does get moved to federal court, it's going to be a completely different situation that then we will have to potentially have a new schedule from the ground up. If this schedule remains, this could end up all leading to a trial of former President Donald Trump, a criminal trial on 34 felony counts.

As mathematically, Trump is locking up the Republican nomination or maybe not. Right. The question is, if Trump does get arrested again sometime between July and September by Fannie Willis and maybe there will be more charges coming from the Mar-a-Lago documents fiasco on and on. This may this may destroy Trump's chances even beforehand. But imagine that things stay as they look right now. Trump with an easy lead over Ron DeSantis. But Ron DeSantis stays in, maybe even wins a couple of primaries. Maybe DeSantis wins the Florida Republican primary and a couple others in March, March into April, when this trial may be happening. The guy who is on trial for 34 criminal counts

could at that exact same time be securing the Republican nomination. What will that be like? I don't know. Completely unprecedented. And at this point, we will wait and see whether the trial is moved to federal court. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. We got a voicemail from our old friend Eric from Mass, and he is moving on from anti-vax to anti-trans. And he makes some claims that don't make any sense that I actually want to spend some time talking about. Listen to this. They're about trans kids and gay kids. Hey, David, from that, that was a funny video. Gay children, trans children, there's no such thing. Yeah. Think back when you were a kid. He no such thing as gay children, trans children. What do you mean? That's an adult-themed thing.

Maybe 16. When you're running around, you're gay. When you're running around sleeping with kids when you were 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. I mean, or girls. Maybe if you tried that once or twice. Doubt it. No such thing as gay children or trans children. It's ridiculous. You will move the goalposts.

Next, it'll be they're trying to do gay babies now. I mean, trans babies, three year old transition. OK, so I happen I happen to be heterosexual. I happen not to be gay, but I knew that at quite an early age. My gay friends who I've talked to about this say, oh, no, I I knew that I was gay when I was very young. Most of them say five or six. And I think that that I mean, as I think back, I think I knew I was heterosexual at age five or six. At least that's as far back as I can remember.

Eric from Mass seems to think that the sort of default status for everyone is heterosexuality and at age and and cisgender gender identity, meaning that your gender identity just it aligns with your biological sex at birth until age 16. And suddenly 16th birthday, you go, oh, you know what? Actually, I'm gay. Actually, I'm trans. And of course, this is ridiculous. Now, there is a separate question, which is a legitimate question about what age limits should there be on certain aspects to transition when we're talking about medication versus surgical versus. There are all sorts of realistic and practical good faith questions that should be explored by the medical community about that. Much like, as I say many times, I don't think I have the answers when it comes to trans sports on every sport and any situation. I don't I'm not pretending to have the answer. But what I do know is that the bathroom fear mongering is actually

nonsense. What I do know is that everyone should be treated with respect. What I do know is that everyone should be treated with respect. What I do know is that calling somebody by a different name that they want to be called or using different pronouns is really no big deal one way or the other. And it almost is boring to me. And what I mean by that is when I say it's boring, sometimes people misunderstand what I say. I don't mean that I don't care about the plight of folks whose identity isn't being respected or recognized by society. That's not what I mean. What I mean is there are so many other issues that I actively believe we need to work on

inequality, wages, climate change, education, et cetera, that having to talk about what pronouns someone wants to go by or whether they're going to wear a dress or whatever, it's just such a distraction. It's not a distraction to advocate for people to be treated properly. And so I want to make clear that I'm making a distinction there. But this unfortunately, this view that Eric presents here, when it is believed it leads to unfortunate treatment of people. And this was an issue. You know, I remember back in the days, you know, when I would interview the Westboro

Baptist Church people, this is like over 10 years ago now. And gay marriage was like the big battle line on issues of sexual orientation and gender. You had this argument. People are either born gay or it is a choice. That was often the dichotomy. And what underlied that argument was often that some folks asserted if it's a choice, we should be able to treat LGBT people like crap because they're merely choosing that sort of like you might choose to be goth or whatever the case may be. And what was often lost there was. Even if it were a choice of which for which there is no evidence, but even if it were

if even if any of these things are choices, why would we treat anyone like crap? Why would we discriminate against anybody as a society? It still doesn't make any sense. And that's much of what underlies this sort of thing with people like Eric from Mass and and others, which is if they they think if they can convince society that all of these identities are merely things that people choose in their teens, either for attention or because they believe it's mental illness or whatever, then as a society, we would be free to treat these folks terribly. And that's maybe the saddest part of it all, because we shouldn't be treating anybody like crap, I think is the takeaway that I want to go to. So another disturbing voicemail from Eric from Mass

that serves as an insight into what is malfunctioning in the brains of many of these anti-trans people. We've got a great bonus show for you today. I can't wait for it. Target has decided to remove some of their Pride Month merchandise after receiving threats. Yeah, they seem to be capitulating. Secondly, social media is driving the teen mental health crisis. The surgeon general is warning as if we didn't already know that. But we have even more data now that we're going to look at. I'm actually going to tell people about now having a baby, even though we're nowhere near this phase. I have been thinking a lot about what is my policy going to be on social media and smartphone use?

And Cal Newport has an interesting episode about this on his podcast recently. Jonathan Haidt has talked about it a lot to talk about. And lastly, there is a new survey whose results are surprising to some, which finds that veterans are less likely to support extremist movements of any kind. There's often the assumption that military vets are more extreme politically, but the survey suggests something different. We're going to look at it. Of course, it looks at averages. All of those stories and more are on today's bonus show, which I invite you to access are the same.