The David Pakman Show - 5/3/23: CNN town hall promotion goes haywire, Tucker's latest replacement no good

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Bob Zeidman, the software engineer who debunked MyPillow Mike Lindell's election fraud allegations and has claimed the offered $5 million reward, joins David to discuss the entire fiasco -- Right-wing content creator Steven Crowder and right-wingers would like women to have to stay married if they can't point to "fault" for a divorce -- CNN is promoting their forthcoming Donald Trump town hall as if Trump is a normal person who was not arrested and did not incite a riotous insurrection -- Lawrence Jones, Tucker Carlson's latest replacement, continues to humiliate himself -- Donald Trump's recent interview with his own former propagandist Steve Bannon goes horribly wrong -- Donald Trump opens a 36-point lead over Ron DeSantis -- A visibly confused Donald Trump tries pandering to Christians during a religious interview -- Donald Trump reportedly grabbed a reporter's phone during a childish tantrum -- Voicemail caller says he witnessed a crime in New York City -- On the Bonus Show: Late-night TV shows go dark as writers strike, US cigarette smoking rate hits new all-time low, California man guilty of killing 3 after doorbell prank, much more... ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman 📖 Shortform: Try it for free and get 25% off at https://shortform.com/pakman 👍 Use code PAKMAN for 10% off the Füm Journey Pack at https://tryfum.com/PAKMAN -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDPApril 20, 2023

Speaker 1 Well, I woke up this morning and I said to myself, sir, we should really do a show today. There's a lot going on. And so here we are. That's the context in which today's program is being produced. One programming note, dozens of people writing to me breathlessly. You could tell even though it was written text that people were breathless saying, David, when is your Lex Friedman appearance coming out? I don't know the answer, but I like said it would be three or four days from when we filmed

it earlier this week. So I would guess by the end of this week, but I don't know and I don't have any control over it. But I'm as I'm as eager to take a look at it as some of the other folks in the audience are. So we'll know about that very, very soon. All right. Listen, I've been waiting for this and it is now happening. Republicans, right wingers, MAGA types, Steven Crowder and others are now coming after what we call no fault divorce, which essentially translates to they want to force women to have to stay married unless they can give what some consider an acceptable reason for why they should be allowed to get divorced.

What on earth am I talking about? Let's backtrack and let's set it up. I had no plan to talk about right wing content creator Steven Crowder's divorce on the podcast. There's really just no reason to talk about it. I don't know. There's nothing particularly newsworthy about it, except when I watched his brief explanation of the personal trouble that he's having and including this very contentious divorce, he seemed to sort of bemoan the fact that his wife can just say, hey, I want a divorce and it's called no fault divorce.

You don't have to prove that someone cheated or whatever to justify the divorce. You're just allowed to say, I don't want to be in this marriage anymore. And in the video that Stephen Crowder put out about this, he seemed to be sort of suggesting that that's a problem, that that's not OK. His wife maybe should be forced to stay married to him. And he's not the only one who feels this way. Let's take a listen. This is the video from I guess now it's been about a week since this news broke to the extent that it's news. I have been living with a proverbial boot on my neck for going on years now. Since 2021, I've been living through what has increasingly been a horrendous divorce. Now, let me say on the outset, to be clear, there is no infidelity, any kind of

physical abuse at all on either side. And no, this was not my choice. My then wife decided that she didn't want to be married anymore. And in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted. It's it's permitted. It's as crazy as it is. You're just allowed to say, I don't want to be married anymore and I can't control that. So this is now building into a bigger story. And there's a very interesting Rolling Stone article, the next front in the Republicans war on women, no fault divorce. Stephen Crowder is part of a growing right wing chorus calling for an end to modern divorce laws. And the article explains and you can check it out. Stephen Crowder is getting a divorce. He says it's not his choice. He says his wife is just

allowed to do it. And the article says Crowder's emphasis on the state of Texas makes it sound like the Lone Star State is an outlier. But all 50 states in the District of Columbia have no fault divorce laws on the books, laws that allow either party to walk away from an unhappy marriage without having to prove abuse, infidelity or other misconduct. Republicans are now unsure whether this is something that they actually want. And the article goes on to say, like the crusades against abortion and contraception, making it more difficult to leave an unhappy marriage is about control. Crowder's home state could be the first to eliminate it if the Texas Republican Party gets its way.

Last year, the Republican Party of Texas added language to its platform, calling to an end to no fault divorce. This is another way to potentially control women. That's what this is fundamentally about. No fault divorce is a legal process, which basically just means you can end a marriage without having to prove that any spouse is at fault for the breakdown of the marriage. And the history of no fault divorce in the United States goes back to the early 20th century. But it really wasn't until the 1970s that no fault divorce had widespread acceptance. And before you had no fault divorce, I sound like Trump. Many people don't know this.

A lot of people have no reason to think about this. But before there was no fault divorce, divorce laws in the US were based on fault. And what that meant is in order to be granted a divorce, in order to be allowed to get a divorce, one spouse had to prove that the other spouse was at fault for the failure of the marriage. And often it was adultery, cruelty, some kind of abandonment, like they basically left already anyway, sometimes insanity or, you know, what we might call mental illness. And then in the 60s and 70s, states started to rightfully reconsider that and say, hey, you know, maybe people in the same way that they can choose to get married should just

be allowed to choose to no longer be married anymore. And California was the first to pass no fault divorce in 1969. And then by the end of the 1970s, most states had done the same thing. The really important thing to understand here, aside from what I believe to be the obvious logic that you shouldn't have to make a case to be allowed to get divorced, you should just be able to say, I don't want to be married anymore. It's worth mentioning that no fault divorce significantly improve the lives of women as well as children in many situations by giving them greater legal protections and more equitable outcomes in divorce proceedings. Now, there is you'll have the men's rights activists who love to say men routinely and

and sort of systematically get screwed over when it comes to custody in divorce proceedings. And it's unfair and all these different things. I consider that to be a different issue that can be discussed on its merits. But understand that prior to the introduction of no fault divorce, particularly because it was during an era where women were statistically less likely to work or if they work, they were statistically likely to be earning less money than the husband in a heterosexual marriage. They were more likely to be dramatically disadvantaged and controlled by the lack of no fault divorce. And so no, no fault divorce, as obvious as it is to many of us and as standard as it is in so many other Western developed nations, it actually was a really

significant change and and liberating to some degree, providing additional rights to many women as it became more common during the 1970s. So it's not a surprise, given that Republicans love policy that allows women to be controlled. Let's control what women can do with their bodies. Let's control medically, et cetera. Given all of that, it's not a surprise that they found yet another issue on which they want to go back to the 1950s. And again, that's quite literally what we're talking about. This was the law of the land in the 1950s, started changing 69 into the 70s. I had an inkling when I saw the Crowder video,

they're going to go after this no fault divorce. And now that is in and of itself becoming a bigger story, horrifying stuff. But it is the party. It is the movement of going back to the 1950s. All right. I'm not going to talk about this every day, but there is something very interesting happening with this forthcoming CNN town hall with Donald Trump. Yesterday, I told you that CNN has announced they will be holding a town hall with failed former and want to be future President Donald Trump. And I express concerns that they're treating him like he's a normal person. They're treating him like he's just yet another presidential candidate, not a guy who incited a riotous insurrection, not a guy who's

been indicted and arrested once and potentially will be again now getting another 24 hours of time for CNN to promote this event. They're really pretending like he is a normal candidate. Here is a promo from yesterday morning on CNN, including the thoughts of Caitlin Collins, who will be the host or anchor of that forthcoming town hall. So a quick programming note is on top of all of this, as we were watching politics so closely here for President Trump is going to take questions from New Hampshire primary voters and an exclusive seat in town hall. I'm going to moderate that event next Wednesday, May 10th at 9 p.m. Eastern.

So looking forward to seeing that really important for him to take voter questions. He is the front runner right now in the GOP. New overnight, Sam. Yeah. So listen, he's the GOP front runner. It's that simple. It's going to be interesting to hear him answer. Oh, how will you keep in the documented immigrants out? This is not looking particularly good. It looks like this is becoming 2016 part to the normalization

of absolute extremism. Our Argentinian friend who's been a guest on the program, expert on fascism, Federico Finkelstein, tweeted, quote, This is how the normalization of wannabe fascist populism happens. And then here is a little promo on CNN for the event. Former President Donald Trump takes questions live from CNN's Caitlin Collins and New Hampshire GOP primary voters, their issues, their concerns, their votes, a CNN Republican presidential town hall. There you go. So like I said yesterday, I totally understand why CNN is doing this. It couldn't be better timed. You've got millions of people furious with Fox News because of they they fired Tucker and these different things. They've gone woke. They settled the Dominion lawsuit and they're looking for somewhere to go.

And maybe that somewhere is going to be CNN. Now, as I said before, I'm not opposed on principle to having an event with Trump, but it must be handled correctly and responsibly. And it can't just be, hey, New Hampshire voters, ask about what Trump's going to do about woke and trans. You have to make it clear that this is a dishonest, paranoid, narcissistic conspiracy theorist with things in his recent past that have never been seen from the American presidency and that none of this is normal. Can Caitlin Collins do that? Sure. Will she do it? I don't know. My plan is to cover the town hall live. I know people will say, but David, aren't you doing the same thing CNN is doing?

No, this is a media analysis show and an American politics show. And one of the things we do is look at how corporate media covers something like Trump. And we're going to be doing it responsibly. And if they rehabilitate his image and if they don't do the things that they should be doing, we will call it out. So my hope is to cover that live. We might get shut down by CNN, as you know, that's happened to us in the past with these exclusive events. But that'll be next week. We'll take a quick break. Much more to talk about today.

First. use a free email service from a big tech corporation. Your emails are scanned even if you're emailing your spouse or your doctor, which is why I recommend start mail, the email service that never scans or analyzes your email. Our sponsor start mail also lets you create unlimited email address aliases so you don't even have to give out your real email address. This protects you from spam and phishing attacks. Phishing attacks are becoming way more sophisticated with the rise of chat GPT. By the way, start mail lets you encrypt any email you send, even if the recipient isn't using encryption. Unlike the big tech email services who store even your deleted emails. When you delete an email and

start mail, it is gone. Migrating from your current email service to start mail is just a few clicks. So what are you waiting for? Stop letting big tech corporations spy on your email. My audience gets 50% off your first year at start mail dot com slash Pacman. That's S-T-A-R-T-M-A-I-L dot com slash Pacman for 50 percent off. You can find the link in the podcast notes. All right. Now, I promise I'm not going to do this every single day, but it's just too delightful not to briefly talk about it on Tucker Carlson's latest replacement second night filling in for the now fired Tucker Carlson on Fox News. Lawrence Jones again just made a complete and total fool out of himself. Yesterday we talked about it and I said, hey, you know what, guys, this guy may not be

ready for primetime. He just doesn't really seem to have what it takes to put it very likely. He was on again yesterday and it's confused word salad after confused word salad from Lawrence Jones. It's I almost am feeling a little bad for him. Like, isn't it so obvious he's nowhere even remotely close to ready to do this? He had a Democrat. I guess he's usually called Democratic strategist Julian Epstein on. And I mean, he tries to make some point and it's just so confusing. It's it's really a Trumpian word salad. Listen to this.

The immigration policy, the Democrats say that that this is a race issue when I just can't help but look at history when it came for black Americans that came across the border unwillingly. It's a three constitutional amendment and an entire war to get black Americans the right of average day American citizens. So why do the Democrats have a different application of the law here? I just have no clue what he's talking about. It's something about brown people from Mexico being treated differently. He seems to be saying we needed civil war to end slavery of black people. But Democrats want to treat brown people from Mexico different.

I just don't even know what he's talking about. And this is the reaction from people who are still watching this, which is not that many people. I have to tell you, he's just not very good at this. There was another segment where he had Lee Fang Lee Fong on who's been a guest on the program. And I guess he's trying to Lawrence Jones is trying to explain the first Republic Bank failure, which we talked about yesterday on the award winning globally famous bonus show.

And I don't know. He says something about diversity and I don't even know what he's talking about. Yeah. So they recruited all these minorities and their banks still filled. So all the minorities that banked at that there, they're screwed. The government government is saying they're going to help them. But it just doesn't seem like they solved the problem. Lee, thanks so much for joining the program.

OK, I don't know what he means by they're screwed. I mean, JP Morgan Chase bought the bank. There's FDIC insurance. It's not the government's going to do something special to bail bail them out. They were just there is FDIC insurance. And so their deposits are are insured, visibly confused throughout the entire hour. I don't think Lawrence Jones is going to be the eventual replacement to Tucker Carlson. But listen, I could be wrong.

We will have to wait and see. This almost slipped by me. But one of our viewers, Alan, wrote to me about it. And we have to look at it. Former Trump propagandist Stephen Bannon actually sat down and did a long form interview with the failed former President Donald Trump. And it's fascinating because this is this is sort of like a vicious circle that we're going to look at here.

Trump tells many of the lies during this interview with Steve Bannon that arguably Steve Bannon created or at least Bannon created the sort of approach to politics that leads to Trump being so comfortable telling these lies. It's really interesting to see. I guess you could say the chef eating his protege's food. I don't know exactly what metaphor or analogy makes sense. So let's look at some of this. The formatting. This is from America's Real America's Voice War Room with Steve Bannon and their video player is a mess. And technologically, it's all a mess. So I'm going to have to kind of scrub through the video to moments that my colleague John flagged for me. The first thing here is after years of the whole crooked Hillary thing, which Trump recently reassigned to crooked Joe Biden,

Trump now is saying he never actually thought crooked Hillary was that great of a nickname, which is weird because he used it for half a decade. An old problem. But I think they like to say that for other reasons, you know, like to say. He's got a big problem now because you've given him a nickname. Well, yesterday was a big day. I changed. I decided that I've decided that Hillary's cooked. We can't do too much better. You know, I always felt I never felt the Crooked Hillary was a great name. I thought it was accurate, but it never flowed like some of the other half letters in here from Bill Clinton.

You talk about. So let's be really frank, OK? Do you think when Bannon says that this this interview was clearly done the day after the rally at which Trump announced I'm changing crooked Hillary to crooked Joe Biden, do you think Bannon really thinks that it's a big deal for Trump to change the nicknames or is Bannon just playing the sycophant suck up that people around Trump are expected to play? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. All right. Let's now go and bear with me here. This is just the way we're going to have to do it next. Trump says that Rudy Giuliani was the best mayor of New York ever and that New York has now collapsed, which is news to everybody in New York. Yeah. Went away from his policy of guns. You know what he was doing with

the gun stuff, which basically was started by Rudy. Look, Rudy was the greatest mayor in the history of New York and the crime. I mean, I don't know how you- You were there when the city started to collapse. I saw it all. I saw it collapse. I saw it come back. Rudy saw it- And you've seen it collapse again. Now it's collapsing again.

Now it's at a level. And the one thing that's different, we had a very powerful police force that wasn't being utilized. Now many of those great policemen and women have left and gone to Texas. It's mostly not true. And NYPD is actually doing fine. But remember that there's actually some interesting political history here, which is that Rudy

Giuliani benefited dramatically. And it's crazy to say it because it was such a tragic event. Rudy Giuliani benefited dramatically in the way that George W. Bush did from 9-11. Right. George W. Bush saw 80 plus percent approval in the immediate wake of 9-11, squandered it with the Iraq war. And Rudy Giuliani also became mayor 9-11. And ultimately it became all he talked about for about a decade. But that is certainly a claim that New York is collapsing, which is hard to find anywhere as far as data or facts are concerned. Trump pulling out the idea that America has gone communist. And what's really interesting to me about this is you'll say, well, but David Trump's

been saying America's communist for, you know, since Joe Biden, the day Joe Biden was inaugurated. What's interesting is to see Bannon in the context of having to react to it. One of the greatest. And I think if we win in 24, I think it's going to be when we win at 24. Yeah, the country, the country can't take. I don't think it can take it. And I don't think I don't think we're going to have a country. You know, this is a businessman.

Yeah, I don't think. Well, even as a politician, they've weaponized. You would know this very well. They've weaponized the Justice Department. They've weaponized the FBI. They're doing things that a communist country would do. A Marxist country would do. It's a very.

Did you ever think this country would get to that? I never thought it would be that bad. And you dealt with some tough people. Now here is where I know Bannon is just doing the sycophant suck up stuff. Bannon Trump may not be smart enough to know that there's nothing Marxist going on in the United States. Bannon is smart enough to know that there's nothing Marxist happening in the United States. And so that's where I start to see this and say Bannon is absolutely playing a character here. He's playing the sycophant suck up character.

Here's Trump with his covid conspiracies, for lack of a better term, talking about talking about Hunter Biden and saying it was Russian to serve. I always think what do you think Putin is saying when every week they came up with another thing? Russia, Russia, Russia. They never blamed anything in China because they were all getting rich from China. The one way you can tell he's illegitimate is the lack of respect that they have for him throughout the world. Now, that's factually untrue. If you actually survey people around the world, respect for the American presidency and the country has recovered dramatically since Joe Biden became president.

They just they love telling this lie. He goes, you went to we went to Saudi Arabia. I mean, sorry, the military's out the thing. They go. He's in an SUV with a fist bump. The mullahs don't respect him. The KGB in Moscow doesn't affect this. She who is right here for the historic summit.

No respect for him. Spend three days here. We had a great we developed a great relationship. Now, once COVID came, it was like, you know, that was a step too far. I mean, that cost the world millions of lives and about $60 trillion. So nobody can ever pay for that, the lives and $60 trillion. But they'll pay something. They'll pay something.

Would you demand reparations from China in some form? You can't. There's no such thing as 60 trillion dollars. You could add 20 China's. OK, you can't. But they cost the world. I figured it cost 60 trillion dollars worldwide and, you know, millions and millions of lives. What came out of the wall?

How have you remember? I was the first one to say I said it came from the wall. It came right out of wall hand. So Trump, you know, kind of reviving that one. Then there's a moment which I can't play in its entirety because I don't want anybody to, you know, have a medical event from watching five minutes of this. But he he starts lying about immigration for five straight minutes. And it's really crazy. Take care of American citizens. People don't realize you also use tariffs to help secure the border. 100%.

Mexico started getting, you know. Well, they would have never done it. I said to the president of Mexico, who I really like, I have to tell you, he's great. You know, he wouldn't, I don't think to this day he's even acknowledged. He said that election was a rigged election. He said it happened to him 10 years before. And he's a socialist. But you know what?

He's a terrific guy. But I said, listen, we're building a wall. And we built, I built hundreds of miles of wall. That was my first hint that what they wanted to do is let people pour into our country. From prisons, from mental institutions. There you go. What they have allowed. Only the best.

Only the best. Only the best. Insane asylum. You know, insane asylum. That's silence of the lamb type. Okay. And I don't know why nobody goes, sir, it's silence of the lambs, not silence of the lambs. So continuing to tell those very same lies about the border, none of that is happening. And then he moved on to a new favorite target where he lies about electric vehicles and the electric vehicle lies are interesting to me because it's such a silly

scapegoat. And it's so obvious that this is the way that vehicle technology is going. It just seems like one of these fights. That's a very dumb fight to pick. It'll only work for a little while. Everything's the opposite of what it should be. We don't want to be energy independent. We want to spend instead of a dollar, 87 a gallon, we want to spend nine dollars a gallon.

We want to go to all electric cars that go for two hours and then you get stuck in the middle of a road and there's nobody. You might as well forget the car. How do you get it? Doesn't have I mean, quite literally doesn't happen. You know, my electric cars range is three hundred and thirty miles. Went New York City to Montreal with, you know, one stop, which was an optional stop. But for a diaper change, not for me, but for the baby. Why are they attacking electric cars? Because they've generated an environment in which people like to hear it and like to see it without really apparently understanding the truth of it. Now, no Trump interview is complete without big dumps. We can have to fight. I'll give you an example.

You think we have enough to get this done? I don't know. The one thing, the Democrats have horrible policy, but they stick together and they cheat. The Republicans don't want to cheat. I said to a man in Pennsylvania, I love Pennsylvania. I did great. I was up by almost 900,000 votes. All of a sudden, I was even. I said, what happened? And you see the chart?

And then there was a dump, big dump. I mean, it was amazing. Yeah. Trump was amazed by the size of the Pennsylvania dump. He did attack Alvin Bragg. I'm going to skip over that, even though I have it in my notes. He did attack Ron DeSantis. And that's another interesting moment here.

And it's curious to see Steve Bannon's reaction to that. We're going to take a look at the DeSantis attacks. And again, remember, Trump obsessed with DeSantis, despite the fact that he's still not announced anything. Because this is the Donald Trump that America first met. And now you're under assault from everywhere. Total assault. Total assault. Because we're winning in the polls. If I wasn't up 40, 50. The polls are 62-16. Well, DeSantis is failing badly. Ron DeSantimonious. I mean, you know, it's always bad.

You endorse somebody, he's dead. He's over his political career. He's going to be looking for a job. He'll be lucky to get a job. Comes to me, begs me for an endorsement. I give it to him. He ends up winning the election, winning the nomination, winning the election by numbers that you wouldn't believe. I mean, he was so far down, he was gone.

And then they shout to him a couple of years later, will you run against the president? I have no comment. No comment means the answer is yes. Now, that is what this is all about. That is the the most honest thing Trump has said in a long time. This is the narcissism full fledged. How dare DeSantis not simply say, I will not challenge our great orange leader, Donald Trump. That's what Trump expects. That's what Trump considers to be loyalty. All right. Last thing, continuing to make these silly promises about how quickly he will solve the situation in Ukraine. He would have never gone into vice president in a million years. And even the Democrats, they did a poll the other day. Ninety four percent say if Trump was president, you wouldn't have that horrible catastrophe. And

so many people are being killed, many more than they report when they blow up a city, Steve. And you see all those big buildings. And then they say two people were injured. It's much worse than anybody understands. I would have that settled in 24 hours. Yep. And of course, and this came up in my interview with Lex Friedman, the insistence on Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine had I been president. It's not really the big gotcha that some of them believe it to be because it's completely plausible that Putin would have seen other ways to grow his power if Trump were president rather than Joe Biden. So a bizarre interview with Stephen Bannon. But where Trump is right and at the end of the day, when the rubber meets the road, it's the numbers that

matter. The polling Donald Trump has opened a 36 point lead over Ron DeSantis in a new poll. These are stunning numbers, 58 to 22, 58 to 22. Trump is leading DeSantis in a new poll, an even bigger lead than what we have seen recently. CBS News YouGov poll of twenty three hundred voters. I am continuing to tell you that we can look at all aspects of this, but unless something seriously changes, unless something really changes, I don't see a path for anyone other than Trump to win that Republican nomination, including DeSantis, DeSantis, DeSantis, demonious, whatever you want to call the guy. He doesn't have a path to the 50 percent he needs unless he can take support from Donald Trump. When you're at 58 percent, as Trump

is, you don't need any more voters. You've already got what you need. Now, of course, if you only have it in certain states and not others and the timing of the primaries, OK, there's this these narrow, narrow, narrow scenarios. But much like I was honest with you in the 2020 Democratic primary, when I saw that it wasn't looking like Bernie had a path and many people got mad at me, it's not looking mathematically like DeSantis has a path unless something happens with Trump, either some self-inflicted error, multiple arrests that take him off the campaign trail indefinitely, something like that. Trump already has enough Republican support to win the nomination without convincing a single additional voter.

So we will see where things look in a month as we will be closer to when I guess DeSantis would be announcing if he plans to. But as of right now, it's hard to imagine what's going to get in Trump's way of being Thank you. to what you've read to retain more. The guide to each book also includes intellectual insights, comparing and contrasting the book to other prominent books about the same topic so that you can contextualize the book and understand the controversies and the disagreements. They also have books across every nonfiction genre from economics and politics to science and health. I was recently checking out James Clear's Atomic Habits on short form. Of course, Thank you so much, David. and a lot more than just a summary of the book. There are new guides and articles released every week. And short form is giving my audience a free trial plus 25 percent off a subscription,

which is a 50 dollar value. So for the price of a book per month, you get access to thousands. Go to short form dot com slash Pacman. You can find the link in the podcast notes. Today, we're going to be speaking with Bob Ziedman, who's the creator of the field of software forensics, the founder of several high tech firms, author of textbooks and screenplays, novels, a high stakes poker poker player in Vegas, and also the guy we mentioned who I guess we could say won the prove Mike wrong challenge, which was the challenge from my pillow CEO, Mike Lindell, known to many of us simply as pillow, almost like Madonna, where he offered up five million dollars to anyone that could

prove that the data he claimed showed China interfered with the 2020 presidential election was not proving that. Bob, you you prove that essentially. And now you are in the process of, if I understand, attempting to collect this five million dollar prize, which a court has said is due to you. If that's the latest I've read. Yes, David, thanks for having me on the show. And that's correct. Technically, it was an arbitration, but it was binding arbitration. Three arbitrators made that decision. You know, and one thing I think sometimes it isn't always clear.

I'll just say this is that, you know, the contest was not to prove that there was no fraud, but it was actually broader than that, that the data didn't even have anything to do with the 2020 election. And you know, I've interviewed Mike Pillow a number of times and he always says, listen, I'll send you the data and then you and of course, I don't know what I would do with it because I'm not a cyber guy, as he says, but he never sends the data. First question is, where did you actually get the data that was meant to be analyzed? So he provided it indirectly.

He had a team of people who gave it to a bunch of experts. He invited a bunch of experts. Supposedly we were all vetted, so we couldn't come to this symposium that he held about almost two years ago in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. You couldn't come unless you were vetted as an expert. And then he he gave us the data. But at the arbitration, there were a lot of excuses for why I, well, why it wasn't evident that this was election data. Let me put it that way. lot of excuses that he didn't give us the whole data because of national security issues,

because he was afraid of hacking, because he thought that China or somebody was threatening him, that it was encrypted, decoded, modified. So these these these claims, as silly as they are, they do seem to go to Lindell really does believe this stuff. This isn't a joke for him because this is something people often ask me since I've spoken to him a couple of times. Do I think he's kidding or do I think he believes this stuff? He does seem to believe this stuff. Yeah. So that was a big question. All the experts had that question. I can say we as far as I know, unanimously decided this was not election data. I was the one person who figured

out what it actually was and wrote up a detailed report and submitted it. But, you know, the question was, was Mike bamboozled or was he bamboozling people? Yes. But he seems to be a true believer. But the only thing is, any rational person at this point would know the data is fake. But Mike has basically fired or insulted or ostracized anyone who's come to him, including people in his team who've said that it's fake data. So the data that was provided, what was it? What was it data about? What was the general area that it pointed to? Well, there were a number of files that we got. I got five files the first day and or seven files the first day. I forget now. And four files the second day. It wasn't a whole lot of files, but one of, you know, some were PDFs showing generic voting

machine processes. But the, the more interesting ones is we've got a bunch of files that contained what are called hex data, but it was viewable hex data. And so I translated it. I got the idea to translate it to actual binary data. And the way I would describe that is if you got a bunch of files that had written out in English language words, 1,200, 54, 61, and then you translated those to the actual numbers. You know, that's equivalent to what I did. Then I took those files and I noticed that they were old fashioned, because I've been in this business for a while, old fashioned word processing documents. So I put them in a word processor, Microsoft Word. And lo and behold, what came up were one file was a table, thousands of numbers that were

just numbers. I mean, just a table of numbers that didn't mean anything. And the other files were thousands of pages, in one case of gibberish, as if someone had just sat there for hours typing, typing, typing, then reverse the process I just did to make it look like sophisticated computer data. So some of that there's not even really a reason to think it relates to elections at all. Never mind an American election.

Right. No, it definitely didn't. Although, again, at arbitration with what was fascinating is different members of either Lindell and different members of Lindell's team would come up with excuses like the gibberish was really encrypted data that they had purposely encrypted or China had encrypted or, you know, depending on who was talking that I wasn't smart enough to see it. But the problem was they never they never demonstrated what it really was. They said, oh, it's just sophisticated, encrypted data. And their excuse was, well, we don't have to tell you what it is because Zeidman, it was his job to do it if if

he wanted to claim the five million dollars and the arbitrators, basically, if you read their decision, they said even Lindell's team couldn't demonstrate what this was other than gibberish. I'm curious whether as as news broke of your involvement in this and the arbitration decision about the five million, did did you start getting threats from people or angry messages? Because it seems hard to do anything these days without someone being absolutely furious. Did the did any of the believers try to contact you or threaten you? So that's an interesting question. So first of all, you know, I'm a I'm a Republican conservative. I've seen people who were not so happy with me in the past couple of years.

They do a lot of writing on political and social issues. Suddenly were friendly and telling me what a great job I did. But I have to say, even the conservatives, the vast majority of them were thankful. Some of them believe that Lindell is hurting Trump and hurting the Republicans. And I can tell you about that in a minute if you want. But the other thing I'll say is I've gotten like two or three threatening emails or Twitter messages, nothing that I take seriously. Mostly people say they hate me. I'm a traitor. Sure. But but I went to a conservative conference with some very, you know, strong conservatives and even people who advise Trump. And at first I didn't

want to mention what I'd done, but it came out and the vast majority of them shook my hand and thanked me for what I'd done. And a few of them started questioning, why did you do this? And I read this and I heard Lindell. And when I talked to them by the end of the conference, without exception, all of them thanked me. Interesting. Now, you you mentioned that you're you're conservative. You voted for Trump twice, right? Yeah. Yeah, I did. I can tell you that the first time I, you know, I don't without going into detail, I did not like Trump. I've followed his business practices and I've had some problems. I, you know, on a very, very tiny scale, I've done business with his businesses and I didn't didn't find his practices ethical. But I thought it was.

But I really didn't trust Hillary Clinton. And I thought the Republicans would keep an eye on Trump and the Democrats would not keep tabs on Hillary. Did you find that that's the way it played out? You know, it's it's difficult to say so because when Trump ran, there was a lot of Republican opposition to him. Yeah. And of course, there were the never Trumpers. But with Hillary, the Democratic Party really universally supported her is what I saw.

Now, you know, Trump has basically made this effort to take control of the Republican Party, which I don't like, because I think it's all about him and not about ideology anymore. So I voted for him again reluctantly the second time, but I'm hoping to have a third option, neither Republican or Democrat. If it's Trump v Biden, I really don't like either candidate. So I'm hoping there'll be a third option. That's interesting. So would you say that you've suffered under the first two years of Biden in a way that makes you think I've really got to get someone else in there? You know, I do. I think that Biden, you know, Biden was always a middle of the road person, you know, politically until he ran for president this time.

And it just seems like a lot of far left policies are being implemented or at least being given, you know, the OK from the White House. Really? Now, that's interesting to me. This is super because I would love for Biden to be far left. I don't see him as being that way. I'm curious, what would be a policy that you see as far left that was implemented? What I mostly see is that, well, first of all, I don't like the spending bills that

he's implemented. So I'm a member of an organization called No Labels, which brings together Republicans and Democrats. I'm familiar with it. OK. And so the Problem Solvers Caucus of No Labels in Congress helped pass the first budget bill, which was in December of 2022, I believe. And then but then Biden passed his other one, which was a lot more spending

on programs. I don't like you. Are you talking about the Inflation Reduction Act here? Yes. Yes. OK. So, I mean, I don't like that. I think we're we're really you know, we've gone way over budget. You know, we're going to break the debt ceiling, obviously. I really don't like all that government spending. But also, although, you know, you know, well, first of all, I think there are a lot of things. I think the pullout in Afghanistan was horrific. We lost more people in that pullout than we had, I think, in the past year in Afghanistan. I don't like enabling the Taliban in Afghanistan. I don't like the border policy. We've had more illegal immigration than we've had, I think, in American history.

How do you know that? You know, I can't quote sources offhand, but I have researched it. So one thing I do is I really try to look into I publish articles and I really try to do the research to find these numbers before I talk about them. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I'm not trying to play gotcha. And really, I mean, this is just interesting to me. Really you're here to talk about the Mike Pillow stuff. But what's interesting to me is clearly you're a smart guy and you're technologically inclined

and you sort of understand how we figure out whether something is true. But like when you say the Biden spending, the rate at which the debt has grown slowed down under Biden, it's still growing. Right. We're talking about the difference between death and deficit. Of course, the debt is still growing under Biden, but a little more slowly than under Trump. You'd think a guy like you who clearly is so fact oriented would say, hey, you know what? I don't like it, but it is better than what we were seeing under Trump. Is that fair? Speaker 3 Well, you know, I've I've heard those arguments before, and the problem is even Republicans have have been bad on spending. Sure. That's an issue for me. And I think that

politicians in general, the best they can they've ever done is reduce the increase in the deficit, but it's still a dangerously increasing deficit in my mind. I'd love to see politicians get in, in Congress and in the presidency, that could actually cut programs. I'm a Republican who's willing to cut spending on the military because although I think our military needs to be strong, it also needs to spend efficiently and just throwing more money at it. And this is a problem that I see. I'll criticize the Republicans here. The Republicans have to go into an election if they want to win saying, we're going to spend more money on the military. But in reality, I'd love to see them say, we're going to spend less money on the military. But in reality, I'd love to see them say we're going to spend less money on the military for more efficient operations.

I mean, and by the way, I could I could have another show. I sued the US government for fraud because I uncovered fraud. It's a longer story, but it was. But that's I mean, that's interesting. Without getting into that, your view on the military is not one I expect to hear from any presidential Republican candidate, even if they believe it, because it wouldn't be politically viable to say it. Question for you.

Are you sort of a little bit concerned about the degree to which the quote anti woke platform is taking over the Republican Party? Or do you like that? Speaker 3 Well, I like that. Oh, you do. I know. I know we disagree on that. But, you know, something I can tell you, I've written about this.

So and I'll put it in my personal perspective. I'm Jewish and I even criticize Jewish groups that are just I understand them. They want they want to eliminate anti-Semitism, which is a great cause. But in doing so, there's this race to be the world's greatest or the country's greatest victim. And I think this victimhood mentality is increasing the racial conflict in the country. And I don't know how to get away from it because each group, I think, looks at another group and says, well, that group is getting money and they're getting publicity. And so we need to outspend them and outdo them, get more attention so that we get more, you know, attention for our issues.

So if the victimhood stuff isn't appealing when Trump says he was treated more unfairly than Lincoln, who was shot dead in the head, you're not huge on that, I'm guessing. No, look, Trump says, you know, and I'm going to I have some friends who I have one in particular is probably not going to speak to me anymore. But Trump's is incredibly childish stuff. Yeah, I really you know, it's scary because I'll tell you, in the four years he was in office, I generally liked his policies. But but the problem is he doesn't know how to run a country and bring us together. True. And he's very, very divisive. He's very childish.

And the other thing is, you know, I hope you can appreciate this. He he likes Gavin Newsom, who is ideologically should be on the opposite end of the political spectrum. But I think that's an issue. Trump likes people not and dislikes people not based on their ideology or principles, but based on whether they treat him nicely. Absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. Bob, last thing in the in the few moments we have on the five million bucks, do you expect to collect it?

No, I'm pretty sure that Lindell is going to lose his cases with Dominion and Smartmatic. And I think he's going to be bankrupt. And, you know, if I see anything, it'll be pennies on the dollar. All right. All right. We've been speaking with Bob Ziedman, who he he fought pillow and he won. But we will see where the money lands. Bob, I really appreciate your time today. OK, thanks, David. One of our sponsors today is fume. Not everything in a bad habit is wrong. So instead of a drastic, uncomfortable change, why not just remove the bad part from your habit?

Fume is an innovative, award winning device that does exactly that. Fume is not electronic. There's no vapor or harmful chemicals. Fume is just a delicious flavored air that makes replacing your bad habit easy. Your fume comes with an adjustable airflow dial and is designed with movable parts, which is great for fidgeting, which can be great for people breaking bad habits. Look at what people online are saying. They weren't sure what to expect, but ended up loving the taste and the feel.

Stopping is something lots of people put off because it's difficult to do. But switching to fume is easy and enjoyable. There's no reason that you can't be the next fume success story. Head on over to try fume dot com and use the code Pacman to save 10 percent when you get the journey pack, which comes with the device and three flavors. That's try f u m dot com code Pacman saves you 10 percent on the journey pack. The info is in the podcast notes. All right, let's look at what it looks like when a nonreligious person who is a Republican tries to pander

to religious voters. It's actually quite depressing. Donald Trump appeared on the I never fully understand what show this is. The Flashpoint victory show. It's a religious Christian thing. And it's actually hilarious what happens. One of the questions is framed about how important Trump's faith is to him. And it's really funny because obviously it's not true.

Trump has never been religious, but he started to pretend to be religious because he ran as a Republican. This just gets like really awkward. And Trump spits out a word salad about religion. Your faith is very important to you. You've said that publicly. Your faith is important. Trump has said a lot of things that aren't true. But what does that mean to the man, Donald Trump? Well, I think it means a lot of things, but more to perhaps your listeners

and the people that will watch this show. And that's a very large group of people. For instance, I was the only president ever go to go to the big rally they had in Washington, which they have on a yearly basis. I guess he means the March for Life, I guess. The only one ever to go as a president, sitting president for life. And people were shocked, but even Ronald Reagan didn't want to take that step. And it was very close, always very close, as you know, to the White House. It's almost like walking distance. But I went and I was proud of that. I think we've been given

credit for doing that. But you can tell Trump is deeply religious, deeply spiritual from this answer. People would say that was a courageous thing to do. I didn't view it as courageous. I viewed it as the right thing to do. But I was born into a family where my father was religious. My mother was religious. I wouldn't say they were, you know, going to church every single day. They were, you know, they were believers. They were very privately religious, such that no one knew it, even me. And strong believers. I went to Sunday school, which was good and which was expected. It's like you everybody goes to school. Right. And when you think about it, the world is so different now. Speaker 1

anyway. So, you know, you get them just they slammed Hillary Clinton for adopting a sort of Southern drawl when she would speak in front of some Southern crowds. In my mind, that's nothing compared to pretending to be devoutly religious and against abortion when clearly you you aren't and you haven't been your entire life. Trump, of course, there's no you never waste the opportunity to claim that the left is simply against religion. They're against religion. They're totally against religion. How do you get elected on these things? They get elected by cheating. Right.

Of course, the truth is what my listen, you can ask different people on the left. You'll get different answers. I'm against religion playing a role in civil government. I love freedom of religion, freedom to follow any religious doctrine that speaks to you or not to follow any and to have none of that impact public policy, nor how you were treated under the law. That's what I'm for as a member of the left. I'm not against religion. Trump then said he's the only person who can stop Israel from getting nuked by Iran, which is interesting.

And there's a lot to say about this under the Democrats. Israel will be destroyed because Iran will have a nuclear weapon and they'll destroy Israel. They will use it, too. So when you say I fight, I fight because we have no choice. We have no choice. And there's nobody else I don't believe that knows how to do this. Right. So it's really important to understand that the way in which Trump supporters are,

quote, pro Israel is a very specific thing from the evangelical Christian community. The viewers of this show. OK, the viewers of this show support Israel, not because of any concern about anti-Semitism or Jews. It's because they believe that supporting Israel will precipitate the second coming of Christ, after which most or all of the Jews die, depending on which belief system you adhere to. That's why they are, quote, supporters of Israel. And that's what Trump is paying lip service to. And then lastly, Trump saying the Johnson Amendment is a terrible thing. If you don't know what that is, I'll tell you in a moment. I'm asking, why don't you use your power so that you can be treated better? And then one person said, well, we have the Johnson Amendment,

which basically would take our tax exemption and our tax basis away from us, which is unbelievably severe and put put you out of business. I said so that actually the people and I was at the top of Trump Tower way up high and I looked down at the sidewalk and you see all the people I said. So anybody off the street then you're saying has more power than the people in this room because. OK, so let me explain to you what Trump is saying here. The Johnson Amendment is a tax code provision from 1954. When we say nonprofit churches aren't allowed to do politics or they jeopardize their tax exempt status, What we're talking about partially comes from the Johnson Amendment. The Johnson Amendment said if you're a 501 C three nonprofit organization,

you can't endorse or oppose political candidates. And of course, as we know, dozens and dozens, hundreds, thousands of churches, particularly evangelical churches and other forms of Christianity, Protestantism regularly do politics and often overtly endorse or oppose candidates. They should lose their tax exempt status. Trump is saying, no, it's too harsh because then it actually makes them impotent in some way relative to random people. Well, the whole point is we will give you something special, something privileged under the tax code, which is nonprofit status. But you can't engage in politics because that's a way to circumvent all of the campaign finance infrastructure that is there for a particular reason. So Trump doesn't like that. Trump wants to get rid of that.

This is the height or the bottom of the barrel, depending on your view of pandering to a group of voters that, yes, Trump does need. He rightly assesses that he needs them in the most pathetic way possible. All right. One more quick story. There's a new report from Vanity Fair that Donald Trump snatched a reporter's phone during a tantrum that took place during an interview. And again, you know, it's like this is like the Secret Service story told by Cassidy Hutchinson about Trump lunging for a Secret Service guy. You were always, though, it's so out of character for Trump. He would never do that.

That would never happen. Oh, it's just it's obviously a lie. And yet we get more and more and more of these stories of Trump lashing out physically in some way when he throws a tantrum. So here's the Vanity Fair report from Charlotte Klein. Get him out of here. Donald Trump tossed NBC reporters phones during a tirade above his campaign plane. In a recording obtained by Vanity Fair, the former president lashed out at Von Hilliard over his questions related to the Manhattan D.A.'s case, demonstrating the ex-president's hostile attitude towards the press remains unchanged

going into 2024. It was March. Trump was aboard his plane with a gaggle of reporters after the Waco, Texas rally. He started off in good spirits, reads the article. But then a line of questioning from NBC News reporter Von Hilliard, who suggested Trump had in recent days seemed frustrated by Alvin Bragg's investigation, began irritating Trump. Don't ask me any more questions, Trump said. Ten minutes later, as Hilliard continued asking about the investigation, Trump snapped, grabbed the reporter's two phones, chucked them to the side, according to a source familiar with the matter. Get him out of here, Trump told his aides, according to a recording obtained by Vanity Fair.

This happened a few days before the indictment. So listen, is this a major story? No. But any time we get more detail and more texture, as some may call it, about Trump's temper, it becomes increasingly clear that it's completely plausible that what Cassidy Hutchinson said about Trump lunging at a Secret Service agent on that day is absolutely plausible. Now, whether it's true is a different question, but people know that lying under oath is a crime and the reflexive. Of course, they're making this stuff up out of thin air. Here is an example of Trump exhibiting the exact same sort of tantrum behavior. And this one includes a recording that was obtained by Vanity Fair, making it much more clear that this is exactly how Trump behaves. So we don't have to spend a ton of time on this.

As I've said before, it's we're just building up a picture of how many of the things that Trump supporters immediately say are obvious lies turn out to be almost certainly true. Trump lashing out and snatching two phones from an NBC News reporter. We have a voicemail number, which is two one nine two. David P. You know, I mentioned that it's interesting that when all of those MAGA people came into the city, into New York City, sorry, for Trump's arrest a few weeks ago, despite all of them claiming all the time, New York City is so dangerous, it's dangerous,

it's crazy in New York City. We didn't hear about any of those people that came into the city for Trump's arrest, even witnessing a single crime, never mind being victimized by it. Here's a caller who says he did see a crime when he was in New York City. Listen to this. David, I heard you say how you haven't really witnessed crime in New York City, and I think you're being a little disingenuous. For example, a few weeks ago, I was in New York with some friends and we witnessed a man in broad daylight being held up and robbed right across the street. And we marveled at it. And then what's really shocking is we were all arrested for breaking the good Samaritan law

because we didn't help him. Have you ever heard of anything like this before? I mean, I have. This is a Seinfeld episode. Sounds crazy to me. My lawyer said it was preposterous, ludicrous, outrageous. I'm still waiting to, you know, to get bailed out here. So, yeah, so that's I'm sure that was attorney Jackie Childs who said that. No, listen, I mean, all over New York City, not really Staten Island.

I don't I've only been there once. I just took the ferry, got off and got right back on. But Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, where I've been to some Yankees games when the Sox are in town, I have never witnessed a single crime. Now, have I seen mental illness that sometimes becomes aggressive? I have. Yeah, that's true. Have I seen bodily fluids on the subway? Yes, I have. But when we're talking about, you know, the sort of rampant criminality that the right loves to say is just everywhere in New York City. I've never seen it. Do I know? I mean, I guess I know. I know probably someone who's been pickpocketed or something like that. The point is not to pretend there's no murder and violent crime in New York City. But the point is when you look at crime rates, there's cities in Ohio with higher crime rates. We know about

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, with higher crime rates, et cetera. That's the point. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. I won't even waste time by telling you what's on it other than to say we are going to talk about the writers strike, the late night comedy writers strike and many other time.