The David Pakman Show - 6/1/23: Pence and Chris Christie running against Trump, Trump tape spells big trouble

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Robert Greene, author of seven international bestsellers including The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, The Laws of Human Nature, and more, joins David to discuss his writing process, the impact of social media on thinking and society, how to find the right media diet, and much more. Get his latest book, The Laws of Human Nature, here: https://amzn.to/3IR5aKO -- Former Vice President Mike Pence is expected to soon announce that he's running for president against his former boss -- Former New Jersey Chris Christie is set to announce his presidential candidacy -- Donald Trump is caught on tape admitting to taking classified documents from the White House when he left office -- Trump lawyer Jim Trusty fails to defend his client over allegations that he broke federal law when he took classified documents from the White House -- Ron DeSantis gives an incredibly boring campaign speech in Iowa -- Donald Trump complains that Ron DeSantis stole his "Great American Comeback" line, even though Trump stole it from Ronald Reagan -- Voicemail caller critiques David's hypothetical Chick-Fil-A order -- On the Bonus Show: The impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, marijuana users in Minnesota cannot own firearms, woman who threatened Nancy Pelosi during Trump riots gets 2 years in prison, much more... 🌱 Ounce of Hope: Get 25% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://www.ounceofhope.com/ 💰 Public.com: Start getting a 5% yield on your cash at https://public.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 📖 Shortform: Try it for free and get 25% off at https://shortform.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep: Get 20% OFF a mattress + 2 free pillows. Go to https://helixsleep.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

. The Republican primary field is very quickly getting much more crowded, including with two very interesting new entrants. Mike Pence expected to announce he will run against his own former president under whom he served. And Chris Christie is going to announce that he is entering this race, which is very, very interesting for other reasons, which I will talk about in a moment. We will start with Mike Pence. Mike Pence reports NPR expected to announce twenty twenty 2024 run for president on on June 7th at an event in

Des Moines, according to a source familiar with the campaign. I am sure that it will be an electric atmosphere when Mike Pence makes this announcement. No, it won't. It will be quite the opposite, but it will be an interesting announcement nonetheless. And we'll talk about why in a moment. NPR writes Pence has been signaling his plans for several months with several stops in early voting states like New Hampshire and Iowa and the announcement of a super PAC supporting his bid. Pence will join at least nine other Republicans attempting to unseat Trump as the front runner

for the Republican nomination. Now, what will Pence's campaign look like? Because if you serve as vice president to Trump and then you run against him, you can't do the thing that Nikki Haley and Tim Scott and others are doing where you don't criticize Trump. Right. If you're saying I disagree so much with the guy I served under that I will run against him. You have to explain what your disagreements are. I think NPR writes in the past several weeks, Pence's previewed a campaign focused on returning the Republican Party to traditional Republican themes like expanding free markets, fiscal

responsibilities, supporting American allies abroad and small government. He has made more pointed attacks on Trump, his former running mate, by invoking his own faith and family values and promising to respect to respect the Constitution. Here is an MSNBC NBC News report of the moment when news of this broke. We have breaking news regarding a new entry into the already crowded Republican race for president. We told you last hour that on Tuesday, Chris Christie was getting in. Now, on Wednesday, former Vice President Mike Pence, NBC's John Allen, has the very latest. He's breaking the story and joins me on the phone.

John, what can you tell us? I can tell you Mike Pence is in. As of a week from today, he will be doing video probably in the morning, and then a launch speech in Des Moines, Iowa. His campaign is very focused on Iowa, as are a lot of campaigns, as a place that they believe is very hospitable to the former vice president, in part because of its strong evangelical Republican base. So he'll be doing

that speech sometime on on the 7th. And then there is going to be a town hall later that night. Speaker 1 OK, so that is the CNN town hall. Last week, we thought that Pence was going in this direction because we knew CNN had scheduled a Republican town hall with Pence. And we said to ourselves, would they be doing that if this guy was not going in the direction of running? So currently, currently, Mike Pence is running in fourth place. We have the latest polling here. As you can see, the big purple line at the top is Trump at 53 percent. The green line sort of in the middle of the screen is the Santas at 22. So Trump 53, DeSantis 22.

Then it's Nikki Haley at about four and a half percent. And after Nikki Haley is Mike Pence at three point eight percent, just ahead of Vivek Ramaswamy. Will the announcement get some new support for Mike Pence? It might a couple of points worth, I would I would expect. But is this going to be a big shakeup to the Republican primary? I don't think so. And part of it has to do with the fact that many of the very people who are not on the MAGA side don't see Pence as the strongest alternative, partially because Pence, even though he may be displeased with some of the way that Donald Trump managed the presidency or whatever, Pence is too close.

If you want to go anti Maga, you probably don't go with the Maga vice president as much distance as Pence would like to put between himself and Trump. So the question is going to be for the MAGA group, is there an alternative to Trump? I doubt it would be Pence because many of those MAGA people are mad that Pence, quote, didn't send it back to the states in in 2020 to try to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president in 2020 and 2021, even though he really couldn't do that. And so it's unlikely that they would say, well, we really are MAGA. We want something better. So we'll go with Pence because they see Pence as an enemy, quite frankly, thanks to the rhetoric from Donald Trump. On the other hand, the anti

MAGA people would likely go with someone who was never affiliated with Donald Trump. So I don't exactly see how Mike Pence is going to get anything out of this. Mike Pence is, I believe, in his early in his early 60s, Mike Pence age, a 63. So I don't know if Pence is calculating that if he wants to do this, he'd rather do it at age 63 rather than 67 and maybe closer to when he is more of a household name. Maybe fit thinking by 2028, maybe people will have forgotten about me. I don't know. Again, I don't exactly know what Pence is thinking.

I see the campaign is dead on arrival. But let's now talk about a much more interesting campaign than that of Mike Pence. Let's talk about Chris Christie, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Trump endorser Chris Christie, is going to be running against Donald Trump and the other Republicans in the primary field for the Republican presidential nomination. NBC News is now reporting former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to announce his 2024 presidential bid on Tuesday. It is Christie's second run for the nomination. He will announce at a town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire. Two sources were confirmed.

The article reminds us that Chris Christie stumbled is the word they use to a sixth place finish in 2016 New Hampshire primary. Axios was the first to report the timing of Christie's announcement after he dropped out of the race eight years ago. Christie endorsed Trump days before Super Tuesday, lending a credible name to Trump's momentum. Another interesting aspect to this is that ABC News is immediately suspending its relationship with Chris Christie. Chris Christie has been a analyst contributor sort of person on ABC. ABC has announced that at least for now they are suspending their relationship with Chris Christie because he is indeed becoming an official candidate. So I'm going to be very transparent with everybody here. If you came to me maybe with tears in your eyes and said, David, if you knew that one

of the Republicans currently running would be the next president of the United States, who would you pick? I pick Chris Christie. And when you say to me, OK, well, there's Trump, there's DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy. At this point, I don't even remember who else is running. You've got, I guess, Asa Hutchinson, God forbid. No, listen, I mean, from this group, I go with Chris Christie, Chris Christie as a New Jersey governor, a blue state that sometimes elects Republican governors in the mode of what we've seen happen

in Massachusetts as well over the years. William Weld, Mitt Romney. I can't believe I'm blanking. Charlie Baker. More recently, I would I would be if you said forget about Democrats, it's going to be one of these Republicans. I think I would be if you said forget about Democrats, it's going to be one of these Republicans. I think I go with Christie. I actually think Christie is more intelligent than a lot of the other people he's running

against. I will remind folks that this could be a factor if Christie gets on the debate stage with Trump. Christie is actually pretty good in debates. And remember these moments back from 2016 when Christie really made Marco Rubio look stupid by pointing out that Rubio is in a sort of talking point coma, repeating the same thing over and over and over again. Remember this classic moment? You have not been involved in a consequential decision where you had to be held accountable. You just simply haven't. I want the people at

home to think about this. That's what Washington, D does. The drive by shot at the beginning with incorrect and incomplete information, and then the memorized 25 second speech that is exactly what this is. See, Marco, Marco, the thing is this. When you're president of the United States, when you're governor of a state, the memorized 30-second speech where you talk about how great America is at the end of it doesn't solve one problem for one person. This notion that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing is just not true. There it is. He knows exactly what he's doing. There it is, the memorized 25-second speech.

That's the reason why this campaign is fine. You know what the shame is? You know what the shame is, Marco? The shame is that you would actually criticize somebody for showing up to work, plowing the streets, getting the trains run back on time when you've never been responsible for that in your entire life. All right. So listen, Chris Christie can debate. I would be from an entertainment standpoint. I would be very interested in seeing the approach that Christie would take to Trump from a pragmatic standpoint. If I had to pick from this group of Republicans who is the next president, it would be Chris Christie. And I think probably by a long shot, it is, I think, maybe interesting or important to note there are MAGA people already making fun of Chris Christie

for being obese. Trump's obese. It's stunning to me that the supporters of one obese candidate are making fun of another candidate for also being obese. I mean, yes, Christie seems more obese than Trump. I saw some tweets going around about Chris Christie doesn't need to run for president. He just needs to run, like go out and jog in order to lose weight. If that's the best that the MAGA people can come up with against Christie, I actually am very interested to see whether Chris Christie can get some traction because he is quick. He's got a quicker wit. He's smarter.

He has experience as a prosecutor, a sort of experience that is lacking and in the Republican primary and might actually be interesting if confronted with Trump on a debate stage. So I'm going to be following the Chris Christie candidacy interesting closely and from an interested perspective. If it's Christie versus Biden, I'm voting for Biden. Certainly I agree with Biden much more on policy, but I think that that's the most interesting, you know, Vivek Ramaswamy. So boring. Tim Scott,

dead on arrival. Who cares? Pence. Oh, my goodness. Pence might try to bore the audience into submission. But Chris Christie, I find a little bit interesting. Let me know your thoughts. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. We'll take a quick break and be right back. One of our sponsors today is Ounce of Hope, giving our listeners 20 percent off. Ounce of Hope is an aquaponic cannabis company and a small business that supports the David Pakman show. If you're not familiar with aquaponics, what they do is sustainably raise fish and they use the nutrient rich water. Folks, we're talking about fish poop here to feed the cannabis plants. It's really a cool concept. It's organic. It's symbiotic. And what ounce of

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recording from a meeting in summer of 2021. Remember, this is after Trump left the White House, in which former President Trump acknowledges he held on to a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran. Multiple sources told CNN undercutting his argument that he declassified everything. Remember, Trump said, I declassified everything I took. But in this audio recording, Trump actually says this is classified. I can't show it to you. Therefore, he did not declassify it.

The recording indicates Trump understood that he retained classified material after leaving the White House on the recording. Trump's comments suggest he would like to share the information, but he's aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records. Two of the sources said, if Trump knows I have something here that has not been declassified, that is because he didn't declassify it directly counter to his claim that he declassified everything. Special counsel Jack Smith, who's leading the Justice Department investigation, has focused on the meeting as part of the criminal investigation into Trump's handling of national security secrets.

Sources describe the recording as an important piece of evidence in a possible case against Trump Trump. Prosecutors have asked witnesses about the recording and the document before a federal grand jury. The episode has generated enough interest for investigators to question General Mark Milley about the incident. The July 2021 meeting was held at Trump's golf club in Bedminster, with two people working on the autobiography of Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, as well as aides employed by Trump, including communications specialist Margo Martin. The attendees did not have security clearances that would allow them access to classified information. Meadows wasn't at the meeting. Meadows autobiography includes an account of what happened at the meeting, during which Trump recalls a four page report type typed up by Mark Milley

himself containing the general's plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged Trump to do more than once during his presidency. The document Trump references was not produced by Milley. This is absolutely stunning in a number of different ways. There's another article from Business Insider. Reports of bombshell Trump recordings suggest prosecutors may have grounds to charge Trump under the Espionage Act. There are a number of important issues here. Number one, if the audio recording is as described, Trump is admitting that he has unauthorized possession of a document relating to national defense. Trump's original claim was I declassified everything on the way

out, either de facto or through some kind of telepathy or right. It didn't make sense. But Trump's claim was I declassified all of it. But then Trump is saying in this meeting, when Joe Biden is already president, Trump's out of the White House. He's saying, I have something here that is classified, so I can't show it to you. This shows Trump knew it was a lie to say I declassified everything. Secondly, the meeting took place in Bedminster. This was not the location of the search warrant that was served. You will remember the search warrant was served at Mar-a-Lago.

And we said at the time, if there are documents at Mar-a-Lago. And we said at the time, if there are documents at Mar-a-Lago that Trump isn't supposed to have, there are almost certainly documents at Bedminster. Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, said there are almost certainly documents at Bedminster. And now we have a recording that took place at Bedminster where Trump is there and he has a document that he says is classified, a document he doesn't actually have the right to just take with him. So we now are expanding the circle of criminality involving multiple Trump homes or golf clubs or whatever you want to call them. And then in addition, there are people on the recording who don't actually

have the security clearance anyway and would probably be pretty desperate and pretty incentivized to keep themselves out of jail. And so they could actually become witnesses against Donald Trump here. This is an immense story. And we are now going to listen to an interview with one of Trump's lawyers, who's increasingly a TV lawyer, where he seems to be really struggling to explain this. All right. So let's go to some CNN video. CNN interviewed Trump lawyer Jim Trusty about the leaked audio recording in which Trump is at Bedminster Golf Club, not at Mar-a-Lago.

It's summer of twenty twenty one, long after Trump has left the White House and Biden is president. And Trump on the audio recording says, I have a classified document here that I can't show you, proving that Trump did not declassify all of the documents that he took with him, meaning he took classified documents to which he did not have the right. Then we go to CNN last night. Here's Caitlin Collins asking Trump's lawyer if the documents were declassified, as Trump told us they were. Why is Trump on the recording saying, I can't show you this because it's classified? Very straightforward and simple question. Jim,

trust the unable to answer. Ask about something you just said to Abby, which was you referenced the fact that Trump was still president when he left office. He left Washington, I think he had about an hour left in his presidency. Are you saying that it was in that hour that he declassified the documents that were taken with him? No, your timing is a little bit off. He landed in Mar-a-Lago and was at his residence while still president. It was a little bit after that that Biden was sworn in. So he had the absolute authority to take every one of those documents, any document he wants with him when he left the White House.

What happens throughout history, through modern history. OK, now he's already he's already being deceptive. In some hypothetical sense, if Trump goes through the declassification process while president, he would then be able to make the case that he can take documents. He didn't do that. Things are not de facto declassified because Trump thought about it or because Trump took them. And Trump admits on the recording that these are still classified documents, meaning he did not declassify them. This guy's lying and he's being deceptive.

But if you take documents and archives thinks they're entitled to it, they start negotiating. And that's what he did. He was telling them things like, hey, just ask if you want anything more. He gave them 15 boxes in January of 2022 after some back and forth. But just to be clear, you're making the argument right now that by the time he was on the ground in Florida after he left Washington, that that is when he did and declassified all of these documents that he took with him. No, no, no. I'm saying the documents he brought with him are effectively declassified. Effectively is doing some heavy lifting in this sentence. And the problem is lawyers not working for Trump say that that's not a thing.

And personalized under the Presidential Record Act. We're talking about constitutional authority under the Constitution to declassify. If he wants to take stuff with them and say anything I take with me is declassified. If he wants to take stuff and say anything I read at night is declassified. That was absolutely his right as president. Even if that were the case, he didn't do it and admits the document is classified in the summer of 2021. And the personal, the presidential records act makes it clear that we don't even care about classified information. It is a statutory scheme that deals with presidential or personal only. Jim, if this was declassified, then why are we told that he's on this tape basically telling the people in the room that he can't

share it with them? You are told by DOJ or FBI or whoever filtered that to you, anything they can think of to justify. All right. So it's all unfair. It's all a witch hunt to justify indicting Trump. Here's one more clip. Here's Abby Phillip interviewing the same guy, Jim trustee. And it doesn't really go any better.

These tapes would indicate that former President Trump knew that the documents that he had were classified. Yes. Does that not make his statements about blanket declassification and some statements by his representatives? Wouldn't that make those lies? I'm not going to dignify the DOJ leak. What I will tell you is when you are because it's extremely inconvenient to my client. This is addressing you don't want to address the substance. Well, it also be nice if you let me answer. So let me just try to answer because he's not actually trying to answer. That's the thing. I am trying to be responsive, but I'm not going to bite on a leak campaign and try the case in the media. What I will tell you

is there is no doubt that as commander in chief and when the president left Washington, D.C., from Mar-a-Lago, he was actually still president when he left for Mar-a-Lago with boxes of documents that other people packed for him that he brought. At least now he's admitting there were boxes. He was the commander in chief. There is no doubt that he has the constitutional authority as commander in chief to declassify. It does not have to go through some sort of bureaucratic process to be declassified. But wouldn't it be very easy to simply prove that he just declassified them? Because even though he doesn't have to go through a process, he does have to decide that it's been done. Did he tell anyone?

Yes. And can you prove it? Sure. But we're not going to try to declassify this document that we're referring to. We're not going to try that. All right. So as you can see, this is a very poor appearance for Jim trustee. One lawyer wrote to me and said, you know, these might be TV lawyer arguments, David, to avoid answering the question and to obfuscate. These are not arguments any sensible lawyer would ever make in court. So Trump's going to need something better than Jim David, to avoid answering the question and to obfuscate. These are not arguments any sensible lawyer would ever make in court. So Trump's going to need something better than Jim. Trust these arguments if he hopes to to to somehow explain this recording, if this actually is something that leads to charges. So, again, espionage being discussed as a possible situation for Trump.

We're going to follow it super closely. People often ask me about my daily routine. You know, I'm interviewed about the David Pakman show. How did you do it? How do you do this? And like daily routine just often comes up. And how do you stay healthy? And of course, I talk about exercise and I talk about eating the right diet. But one of the things that can happen if you are not eating the right diet or you're traveling or life gets in the way is you end up with some kind of vitamin deficiency. A daily scoop of AG1 from our sponsor, Athletic Greens, makes this super easy to take off of your list of things to worry about. One scoop of AG1, you get the entire day's worth of 75 high quality vitamins and minerals from whole food sourced ingredients. AG1 is cheaper than dealing with a bunch of different supplements. It's infinitely more convenient. You just take a scoop before you

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for a free trial and 25 percent off. The link is in the podcast notes. Today, we are welcoming author Robert Green to the program, who's written seven international bestsellers, including The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The Laws of Human Nature and others, most of which I've read. Robert, really appreciate your time today. Thanks for having me, David. My pleasure. So one of the things maybe we could start with is I've read a little bit about your process when you write a book and the wealth of material that

you will read and then how you will sort of catalog and have a repository of the things you've read in preparation for the books that you write. One of the things that I struggle with personally and I know many in our audience do also is how to have a system to determine what is worth reading, studying or paying attention to today. And of course, with social media and endless streaming content and sports and history and economics and all of the different things that people could spend time reading and learning about,

what's your process for even at the top level determining what is worthy of our attention in 2023? Well, I'm very aware of the dangers of trying to digest too much information and overloading the brain. So when I write a book, I try and make it as focused and concentrated as possible. Excuse me. I cut out as many distractions as humanly possible. And so in the beginning, I choose a subject that can be rather wide ranging, like power or my fifth book mastery and and then I read I try and

find all of the books that deal with that subject that I think are going to be direct and realistic and practical my method is I'm trying to really change the way you look at the world change the way you think from the inside out and the only way to do that is to actually have a really solid basis in research in reality so I can make the book as practical as possible. So I sort of start by casting a wide net. And I read all the great books out there on, excuse me, for instance, on power. And then slowly, I start narrowing it down to things that are a little bit more specific. And it's kind of a fun process. So if I just kept it too narrow,

and I just focused on very small, little width of books about power, it wouldn't be fun for me. Part of the excitement, because if I'm excited, I think the book tends to have be exciting to the reader. Part of the excitement is finding things that I never expected to find. So I go from one book and then I look at the bibliography. It references another book that excites me on and on and on. By the end of the process, I've read two, three hundred books to be able to write one book. And so I'm you know, I'm reading an awful lot, but I have to kind of organize the material. And where a lot of books, I think, fail and then I put all of the material on cards and I organize it by subject, by category. And then I could show you if you ever wanted my system of cards.

I have thousands of cards for one book. So I try and keep my attention very focused on the things that are incredibly important and practical to give my book a kind of this grounding in reality. And then I organize the material in a very almost fetishistic way so that I can make it so that the reader doesn't feel like I'm overloading them with information, even though I myself have consumed vast amounts of literature on the subject. Do you have any overarching approach to as a consumer of media in which I would include books and all of the other forms of media that are out there? If people in our audience have at their disposal books of all sorts of different genres, as well as audio visual content, music, all of the different things, playing video games,

et cetera. What is an approach to figuring out what is, quote, worth spending time on versus not worth it, which certainly would vary from person to person? Is it objective based in terms of what it is you are looking to achieve over a period of time and which forms of information consumption will get you closer? Or how should the average person think about this? You know, reading your books versus novels, watching sports, reading narrative nonfiction about Teddy Roosevelt or whatever. Is there an approach that you could suggest?

Well, it depends on the individual. And so one thing that I think is really important is that you have a very firm understanding of who you are and what your life is about and your objectives in life and what makes you different from other people. So, so many people don't have that deep connection to what, to what, to what their vocation is in life, their calling. And so they'll read anything because they don't have a filter. So I think it's very, very important. And I talk a lot about this in my book mastery, that you have a very, very firm sense of this is where I want to go in life. This is what connects to me. This is what excites me. So without that kind of filter, without that kind of focus, then you're kind of lost at sea and you're reading all kinds of things

that aren't going to help you in the end. I mean, at some point, I myself like to waste time, you know, like anybody else. So I will get on and I'll look at YouTube videos or podcasts or read material that isn't directly related to my work. And I think it's important to sometimes relax and not be so rigid about this. But I think you have to have a sense of who you are, what you like, what's important to you, what matters, where your career is going. And then from there, you determine what's important for you to read. Because the problem we're facing today, quite frankly, is we're just inundated with too much information, with trivia that just clogs the brain up. It makes it very, very hard for you to

focus. It makes it very hard for you to actually think about your own priorities in life. So you can't find an app or some teacher that's going to help you do that. It has to come from within. You have to have a sense of who you are, what makes you different, what's important to you, what your values are. And from there, you can then filter out the information that's completely useless or that's more important for you. Do you think that at this point in time, it is still the case that there might be some core curriculum of sorts, the idea of some kind of, you know, at one point it was the classical

education where there were certain works that no matter what your vocation or interests were, maybe worthy or almost like a required reading of sorts. Does that idea still ring in any way true to you today? Or has sort of human life on Earth in 2023 become so diverse that that very idea maybe is no longer relevant? Well, when I was going to school, it was like these classics from, I believe it was, I forget the name of the schools, like Johns Hopkins. They had a list of all the great classics. I come from a humanities background.

And so there were books that I read that are sort dominating our schools, etc., our way of thinking. And the humanities have kind of faded and are actually being kind of closed off in many universities. People aren't interested in them anymore. But I think it's very important to be able to ground yourself in our history, in our culture, in our civilization. And some of these classics, I think, are still extremely relevant and very, very important to read. The reason is, is it's not just important what you read, but it's important how you read. Right. So my background in classics, because I studied ancient Greek and Latin, which is probably the most irrelevant subject you could study in university, but I think

helped me very, very much in my ability to organize my thoughts and organize material. So a lot of these books, they kind of train you how to think, how to interpret, how to read subtext, how to get inside of a book and take it apart and see what somebody's really saying, the ideas behind the ideas, et cetera, et cetera. I find that a lot of that is missing nowadays. And people's thinking is getting thinner and thinner and thinner, where they're not really analyzing. They're not going into any kind of depth on the subject because they're so distracted and they're not really analyzing, they're not going into any kind of depth on the subject because they're so distracted and they're going from subject to subject to subject.

They're scrolling, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. When you read a dense text like I had to read, like Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, it makes you focus on just one paragraph. What is he trying to say there? What's the meaning behind it? It gives your brain focus and discipline, right? So I think reading, going back to some of that is extremely important, even here in the 21st century. And I don't regret at all studying perhaps the, as I said, the most irrelevant subject of all, because I think it gave me a discipline of mind that I

would not have had elsewhere. But that said, I think it's important to have a wide ranging interest. I like to read a lot about science, for instance. I don't have a science background, but I'm reading a lot of that for the books that I'm currently writing. And it kind of opens my mind up to different ways of thinking. It kind of has a different logic to it than literature or biography or history has. Every kind of subject has its own logic, its own way of thinking, its own way of exploring reality. And the more you open yourself up to these various different ways of looking at the world, you enrich your mind, but you also not just in the content, but in how you think. So bringing a kind of scientific

mentality to my material has been very important for my thought processes. So I would throw a wide net out there and read in many different disciplines, but kind of ground yourself in a way of analyzing information instead of just digesting information, having being able to be critical and analyzing, I think it's very important. Along those lines in the books that you write, there is such a broad range of both sorts of folks that you write about and subject matter that you've read about. And you draw connections and parallels between different eras in history, as well as between different disciplines in all of that. Is there anything

that seems particularly different about the current time that we're living through that seems to be an outlier based on the patterns and connections that you've studied so deeply in preparing all of the books that you've studied so deeply in preparing all of the books that you've written? When you consume so much material on history, it kind of changes how you think. And so a lot of people nowadays who don't read a lot of history, quite frankly, have this idea that everything that's going on now is new and different and modern. It's never happened before. There's the old cliche in financial bubbles that this time it's different, you know, like in 2008 with the new way of doing real estate equities. This

time it's different, you know, with AI. This time it's different. It's never different. It's the same patterns repeating over and over and over again throughout history. I'm reading a book right now about 12th century France. I'm writing about a couple of characters in that period. It is incredibly modern. The ideas, the ways people are thinking about love, about philosophy, about ancient history, they're like characters that I see right now in here in Los Angeles. There's hipsters, there's guys with long hair, there's people discussing love and freedom, etc. So it's like they're like hippies. Wow, this is this is incredibly similar to our times. We have this illusion that things are different. The only thing that's different is things get more intense. So

what social media has done is it's taken qualities that are inherent in human nature that have existed for 5,000, 10,000, for 100,000 years, like our propensity for envy, our need to constantly compare ourselves, like our self-absorption, like our aggressive impulses. And it simply gives them a way to accentuate them. It gives them like a megaphone, for instance. So our kind of passive aggressive tendencies or our hostility on the internet and social media, it's like, it's just exacerbated. So it's not like things are just not like we've rewired ourselves. It's not like we've become different people. Social media is having an effect on our brains. It's changing certain things. It's making things worse. It's just that we have tools now that we're not really capable of handling in a rational way. Our minds were developed for a certain way of life

that's completely different than the 21st century. So we have these tools that are so powerful, but our minds aren't really adapted, aren't really made for being able to handle them on a very realistic way. But I don't think the more I read about history, the more I have the sense that human life, civilizations and cultures go in these cycles that just keep repeating over and over and over again. So along those lines, since you brought up social media, a couple of different things in his two books, Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoli, which predated social media. Neil Postman has an

analysis which, if applied to social media or a critique, would be the question of whether social media is a net good is a less important question than how can we maximize the good and try to limit the bad. Cal Newport on his podcast not long ago had a piece about the effect of what he calls unrestricted social media use for young kids, particularly girls, but both boys and girls. And he asserted that if the early data ends up being what it appears to be in something like 10 years, the idea of giving kids unrestricted access to social media would be sort of like giving kids cigarettes, that it would be like, wow, how did we ever not realize that that was a really bad idea? So sort of a two two part question. How interesting do you think the question is

of is social media a net good? And two, what is your sense of how the relationship to social media might change as the as it matures and we know more about its impacts? Well, you know, things that technology and things that we create aren't necessarily a net good or a net evil. They're just simply instruments that we can use that are at our disposal that can help us. You know, so I remember in the early days of the internet as a writer, the incredible power that it gave me for researching, giving me access to documents, to academic things, to books that I could normally never get or find. It was amazing. So it can be an extremely valuable tool for gathering

information, for finding things out. You have a simple question about how to fix something in your house. Three seconds later, you have it. It's also an amazing tool for connection, for communication, where I can communicate to people who have similar interests like I do around the world, it could be fascinating. It could be a wonderful tool. But it isn't like that. It's turned into something rather dark and rather ugly. And it's kind of decaying our minds like too much sugar would on our teeth.

And the reason is, and I said it in my book, The Laws of Human Nature, is that this is what human nature is. We create something and we slowly, slowly kind of degrade more and more and more down to the lowest common denominator. It happened with television and people are going, whoa, television, we're going to be able to use it now to educate our children. They're going to be educated on this incredibly new level. People were that naive in the 40s and 50s. And then slowly we go, oh, no, it's not like that at all. So it's not the instrument itself that's potentially good or bad.

It's our minds. It's how we use them, how we bring human nature, how we have no discipline, how we just simply use things without thinking about them. So the other thing that happens is something like the internet becomes a tool for making money instead of for information, for connecting, for communicating. And how do we control that? We can't really control that because we live in a capitalistic society. And that's the nature of these things. But we create these tools and we don't ever think about how they're going to be applied or the negative consequences for them until it's almost too late. And so when I read now about AI and all the people throwing their arms up about, oh, how dangerous it is, even Sam Altman,

who's the person developing this, is warning us about the dangers of it. I think it's rather ridiculous and absurd for these people to be doing that. They're the ones creating it. They're the ones thrusting it upon us. Why aren't they thinking about that before they create it? Why isn't someone like Steve Jobs imagining the incredible deleterious effects that an iPhone could have on our brains? It's like it to me, it all comes back to human nature. If we think about the fact that we are very short-sighted, that we tend to be locked in the present, we don't have the instinct of thinking ahead and going, what are the consequences for this particular action, for this particular technology? We're going to be falling again and again and again and again

into this trap. So I think one thing that could happen as far as to answer the second part of your question is that there is something in us that is very real that cannot endure so much of this virtuality in our lives. We know that we're ruining our brains. We know that it's distracting us to death, to quote Neil Postman, that it's having a net negative effect on our ability to focus. And my hope is that people who are younger, who are in their early 20s, Gen Z, et cetera, they start rebelling against this. Like when I, my age, I was rebelling against the world of my parents and sort of the rigid and conventionality of it. The people go, we want something more real. We don't like this relationship that it's creating of, of so that we're less and less social and we're more and more virtual. And there's a real rebellion and people realize this is what matters. These are our priorities.

But until we have a sense of what our values are, of what's important, and to me what is important is that we're a social animal and that we're able to interact with people on a deep and a profound level, that we're an animal that creates and builds things. In order to build things, you have to master a subject. You have to understand it deeply. You order to build things, you have to master a subject, you have to understand it deeply, you have to be able to be patient and disciplined. These are things that I find as high, high alt mega values, meta values that we must have, discipline, mastery, social interaction, creativity. And if you have that kind of scale of values, then when you create something new and you create something like social media and you go,

well, how does that help us in these things? Is this going to have a negative effect? But if you live in a time where there are no more values, where it's kind of nihilism, where there's nothing kind of grounding us of what's matter. What matters are important. Nothing will ever change.

We'll never get a grasp of how to use these things properly. We've been speaking with author Robert Greene. We'll be linking to a number of his books. Robert, really appreciate your time. I know you're busy and your your time and insights are very much appreciated. Thank you, David. Thank you very much for having me. If you've been thinking about getting a new mattress, Helix Sleep is where I would start. I've been sleeping on Helix mattresses for years now. I recommend Helix to everyone,

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getting hot while I sleep. Shipping is always free. You get 100 nights to decide whether you like it. My audience gets a huge 20 percent discount off of all orders, plus two free pillows. Go to Helix Sleep dot com slash Pacman. That's H.E.L.I.X. Sleep dot com slash Pacman for 20 percent off and two free pillows. The link is in the podcast notes. All right. Politics doesn't have to be entertaining. It doesn't have to be entertaining in the way that a TV show or a movie has to be entertaining. In fact, it's a problem that in many ways, our politics in the United States has become one of the sideshow, like an action movie or whatever the case may be, rather than serious policy discussions.

At the same time, there's a difference between entertainment and being a completely uninspiring and a pedantic bore in the context of explaining to people what you're going to do for them that would say, hey, I think I'm going to vote for you. So when I'm going to play some clips now for you of Ron DeSantis, his speech yesterday in Iowa and tell you that he seemed to be trying to bore the crowd to death. It's not that I mean DeSantis needs to be doing the insults that Trump has become known for or the nicknaming or any of that. That's not what I'm saying.

What I am saying is that he is boring the crowd to death with meaningless slogans and bullet points that even he doesn't understand and certainly don't connect to any important policy that would help people. Here is the Santas, for example, talking about the debt deal that is being worked on. And it seems that that has been reached. They now have a debt deal, which they're acting like is going to change things. We were careening towards bankruptcy before this debt deal, and the country is still careening towards bankruptcy after this debt deal. We need big reform to be able to get our nation back on fiscal solid fiscal ground.

What reform? How does that relate specifically to the economic situations of the people in the crowd? The problem with this sort of speech is that not only is it retreading the same tired lines that Republicans have tried for a while, it's been years since this sort of Republicanism was even at the center of the Republican Party. And this is not in any way connecting with the average voter about what the Santas is going to do. Then DeSantis just shifts to woke and he talks about competing in the woke Olympics. He just can't get away from talking about woke, woke, woke. You should not have to compete in the woke Olympics just to qualify for employment or

to get into a college. Merit must Trump identity politics. This is essentially his campaign and it couldn't be I mean, he it couldn't be less inspiring. Thank you for being here today. Today, we'll talk about how the history of the paperclip has completely gone woke at this point in time. You know, paper clips are these small metal devices. They used to hold sheets of paper together, but now they represent woke ideology. And some people even bend them into LGBT shapes. I saw a paper clip painted in the pride flag colors. And we're not going to do that in Florida. And if I'm president, we're not doing that

anywhere. OK, they're going to paper. You realize teachers who want to talk about gender affirming care are using colored paperclips. We're not going to allow it in Florida and we're going to make the entire country floor. It's meaningless stuff. It just it doesn't do anything. It doesn't connect with anyone. Here's one more clip of DeSantis talking about a Fauci and dystopia under covid. In Florida, we made the choice to choose facts over fear. We chose education over indoctrination. Right. And we chose to stand for law and order over rioting and disorder. Sure. We held the line when freedom itself hung in the balance. I was not going to let the state of Florida descend into some type of Faucian dystopia where people's freedoms were curtailed and

their livelihoods were destroyed. No, we stood up for people's rights. We protected people's jobs and small businesses and guaranteed, like your governor did, that kids had a right to be in school and get an education in person five days a week. In short, Florida, we chose freedom over Fauci ism and we are better off for having done that. It seems like these speeches were written by some kind of poor like by chat GPT one. You know, it's not even like the stuff that three or four can write for him. And it just does not have winner written anywhere all over it. By the way, for all of his bragging about covid, Florida with the 10th highest per capita covid

death rate, 10th highest per capita covid death rate. So not exactly something to brag about. Donald Trump is now furious that Ron DeSantis stole one of his lines. But the truth is that Trump stole the line from Reagan. They're just stealing the same stuff from each other back and forth. OK, Talking Points memo article. Trump attacks DeSantis for blatantly plagiarizing a speech line that Trump actually took from Reagan. Trump actually took from Reagan. The line is the great American comeback. So Team Trump published this video of Trump using the line in 2020 and then DeSantis using it now, meaning to prove that DeSantis stole it from Trump. Three years ago, we launched the great American comeback. Right.

Tonight, I stand before you to share the incredible results. I'm Ron DeSantis and I'm running for president to lead our great American comeback. So this is like the perfect microcosm of what I expect the 2024 Republican primary to be. Trump attacks DeSantis for stealing the phrase great American comeback. In reality, Trump took the term from Ronald Reagan. Trump didn't invent it. By the way, he also didn't accomplish the great American comeback. But that's a different thing.

If you do a Lexus Nexus search for that term, you have hundreds of pages of results. OK, that the phrase great American comeback has been used in speeches for so long. But you go back to Reagan's State of the Union speech in I believe it's 86. And there it was that the in that particular speech, Reagan bragged about 37 straight months of economic growth and falling interest rates. And he said it's because of conservative values. And he talked about the great American comeback. So Trump didn't invent it. If you want to argue that anybody has like a claim to these phrases, it would be Reagan. Also important. Trump didn't make up make America great again. Reagan used a slightly different version of it back in 1980, where he

said, let's make America great again. Let's make America great again. So my view is these are not such unique phrases that anybody really holds a right or not. Obviously, it's not a legal right, but even sort of like a moral right to them. These are very general phrases in many ways. But to the extent that the idea is that these are unique messages from Republican candidates, they're not. And Trump yelling at someone for stealing something from him that he already stole from someone else is pretty damn funny. I expect this to be exactly the type of issue that these Republicans argue about during the during this campaign. Now, one other just like kind of funny thing you might have noticed that in that ad, Ron DeSantis pronounced his name DeSantis. This is like a kind of funny thing.

Ron DeSantis in older videos used to pronounce his last name DeSantis. And then more recently, while he's been governor, it's been DeSantis. And then in that video, he went back to DeSantis. And it's all kind of weird. Trump posted about this himself to his platform, Truth Social, Truth Central, where he put, have you heard that Rob DeSanctimonious wants to change his name again? He's demanding that people call him DeSantis rather than DeSantis. Actually, I like better a nicer flow, so I'm happy he's changing it. He gets very upset when people, including reporters, don't pronounce it correctly. Therefore, he shouldn't mind the sanctimonious. This is going to be the dumbest but possibly the most corrosive Republican primary I will

have ever covered. That's that's what I'm expecting. And that's what I'm preparing for. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. I've been talking about in the midst of the Chick-fil-A fiasco. I've never been to a Chick-fil-A. And I said, maybe I'll go to one this weekend when I'm going to be out in Long Island. They have a bunch of Chick-fil-A's there. But when I looked at like their breaded chicken sandwich, the ingredients looked so toxic that maybe I'd go with like the grilled and a bunch of people wrote to me. And here's a voicemail saying, David, don't get don't get that. That's not the right item to get.

David, it's Alan from Jersey. I hear you're thinking of going to Chick-fil-A. Yeah. And you say you want to get the grilled chicken david no like restaurants have certain items on their menu just for people like you like when you go to a steakhouse they have salads but the salads aren't any good it's just for people that are in the group that don't that don't eat meat or don't want a steak but the salad's no good just like you go to a seafood restaurant they have meatballs on the menu, but you don't get meatballs at a seafood place. True. It's just on the menu for people that don't like seafood. True.

So it's like, why are you at a seafood place? So don't go to Chick-fil-A and get the grilled chicken, David. You have to get the Chick-fil-A original chicken sandwich. I recommend no pickles because they're these cheap little, they're not- Well, other people said definitely get the pickles. sandwich. I recommend no pickles because they're these cheap little they're they're not. Well, other people said definitely get the pickles, real quality pickles. So you can get no pickles, add lettuce and tomato and you got to get the waffle fries, David, because waffle fries have more surface area. So really. All right. I get the point. Listen, I, I, I tend to agree. Like I get the sandwich Chick-fil-A

is known for is the breaded chicken sandwich. The thing about it is you look at I just was cruising the website. You look at the ingredients. It's like rib meat injected with water. I don't even really know what part of the chicken the rib meat is. I had to look it up and it's like some connective tissue between something. And it's not even a part of the chicken I was familiar with. It sounds really toxic. It really does. But I do agree that if I'm going to do the Chick-fil-A thing, I should probably just get the classic the classic sandwich. So I don't know if it'll end up happening. I will report back if it does. And we'll kind of go from there. On today's bonus show,

we will talk about Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, being impeached. We will talk about how in Minnesota cannabis users can't own firearms despite a new law. And we will talk about the two year prison sentence given to the woman who threatened Nancy Pelosi with hanging during the Trump riots. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Don't miss the bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. It will be a fantastic day for everyone. Otherwise, we'll see you back here tomorrow.