The David Pakman Show - 6/19/24: TDPS on Daily Show and MSNBC, Trump's brain stops working
Episode Date: June 19, 2024-- On the Show: -- Dave Farina, science communicator and author best known for his YouTube channel Professor Dave Explains, joins David to discuss the recent explosion of misinformation and disinforma...tion on the Joe Rogan podcast -- David's recent interview with Republican Senate candidate Royce White is featured on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart -- David's recent interview with Republican Senate candidate Royce White is featured on MSNBC's All in with Chris Hayes -- Failed former President Donald Trump holds a rally in Racine, Wisconsin during which his brain stops working, he glitches badly, tells dozen of lies, and stuns the crowd into total silence -- Trump supporters are interviewed at Trump's rally in Racine, Wisconsin, and they turn out to be a scary cross-section of American society -- Author Ramin Setoodeh reveals that Donald Trump was convinced Joan Rivers voted for him in 2016 despite dying in 2014 and that he was still in control of "the Afghanistan" after leaving office -- A devastating new poll finds that 1 in 20 Trump voters from 2020 are planning to vote for President Joe Biden this November -- Voicemail caller thinks he has caught David in an impossible situation, demanding David provide examples of left wing policies that "make things less expensive" -- On the Bonus Show: Half a million immigrants could get US citizenship under new Biden plan, Thailand becomes first South-East Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage, Matt Gaetz investigation looking at sexual misconduct and drug claims, much more... 🖥️ Malwarebytes: Get 50% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://malwarebytes.com/pakman 🪒 Henson Shaving: Use code PAKMAN for FREE blades at https://hensonshaving.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow/ -- Pakman Discord: https://www.davidpakman.com/discord -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave a Voicemail: (219)-2DAVIDP
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome, everybody. We're starting with something a little different today because it's very
exciting. Last night I was featured in both The Daily Show and also on MSNBC. We're going to
check out the clips and then I want to talk a little bit about the origins of all of this or
the oranges, as some like to say, both clips. And we're going to start with with The Daily Show from last night.
Both of these clips are related to my interview with Minnesota Republican Senate candidate Royce
White and the exchange we had about his supposed strip club food, but not strip club strippers
spending. I can only imagine that Royce White is very,
very upset with me at this point because this interview that he did, which he thought would be
great for him in some way, has now led to a number of written articles, The Daily Show and MSNBC
pointing to his explanation for money supposedly spent donor money supposedly spent at a strip club.
And it is getting way more attention than I can imagine he wants. So let's start with the daily
show clip. There's a nice little montage here. This is a couple of minutes. So let's take a look.
Let's kick things off in Minnesota, where Republicans have endorsed Royce White to run
against Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar in November. And he's already turning the race into an episode of Jerry Springer.
White has been mired in controversial revelations, including failure to pay child support,
referring to women as mouthy, and at one time identifying himself as an anti-Semite on social
media. And then there are the questionable campaign expenditures in 2022
when he ran for Congress, including
$1,200 at a Florida strip
club.
I'm not paying child support to mouthy
women because I'm spending it at a strip club?
I mean, talk
about red flag bingo.
He even calls himself an anti-Semite
on social media. Although, to be
fair to him, declaring you an anti-Semite is how you have to log into Twitter now.
That's the new capture.
By the way, if you're wondering about the accusation that Roy spent campaign funds at a strip club,
listen, he has a very clear explanation for this.
It was recently revealed you spent campaign donations at a strip club. Listen, he has a very clear explanation for this. It was recently revealed you spent campaign donations at a strip club.
Is that true?
That's not true.
Okay.
It was a reference to a campaign filing at the FEC that was not done properly.
Your claim is there were filings which said you spent campaign funds at a strip club,
but they were incorrect filings. No, they didn't say that I spent campaign funds at a strip club, but they were incorrect.
No, they didn't say that I spent the funds at a strip club or no, let's say they didn't say that I spent the funds on strippers.
But it was spent at a strip club.
Well, a strip club as they sell food at the strip club, don't they?
So I'm not sure this helps his case.
Minnesota needs a senator who makes good decisions.
So vote for me, the guy who goes to a strip club to eat shrimp.
And, look, hey, I'm sorry for interrupting him, okay?
I mean, you were busy explaining how you don't know anything about strip clubs.
You've spent the money on food at a strip club. Is that more accurate?
You seem to be very unfamiliar with strippers and strip clubs
and drag strip shows, so I'll
inform you, maybe you are informed, that they do
have food at strip clubs. So what you're saying
is the money was spent at a strip club.
Did you know that? I know strip clubs
have... Have you ever been to a strip club?
One time. Did you like the food?
No. You gotta go to a better strip club.
Okay.
Wow. This guy went really quick from not knowing anything about strip clubs to being a strip club expert. I don't know about
that place, but go to the second floor as for tourists. OK, so take you to the champagne room.
And behind that is the real VIP room. Code 2664. Tell them you want the Royce White special.
They'll know what you mean.
All right. So that's that's really good stuff. And that's absolutely fantastic. We actually heard from that. We have there's an employee that works at The Daily Show who was aware that this
was going to air and he let me know. And I really appreciate that. So this is obviously really great
stuff and really great for the show. And it's funny because when we were when we were taping that, I had the instinct
that there was something there was a second layer of humor to the entire thing that was based on
Royce making me sort of the subject of the inquiries. Have I been to strip clubs? Am I
aware that there's food at strip clubs? Do I think the food is good at strip clubs and all this sort of thing?
It did not occur to me that it was going to end up leading to even more scrutiny on the specifics
of spending donor money at strip clubs and ending up on The Daily Show. So that's really great.
Really appreciate everybody at The Daily Show for choosing to feature that. And that's not the only great instance from the last 24 hours of the David Pakman show in other media. It was also on
MSNBC. So let's talk about that next. Chris Hayes, all in with Chris Hayes on MSNBC last night,
did indeed feature part of my interview with Minnesota Republican Senate candidate Royce White.
It was indeed the portion about his alleged spending of donor money at a strip club, not
on strippers, but on food at the strip club, because everybody knows the food at strip
clubs is so good.
You would go just for the food.
And I know some people will write to me and they'll go, David, there's this place in Vegas
where the food genuinely is that good. OK, that may be that may be. But it's not an explanation
that made a lot of sense. So Chris Hayes featured this in a segment called Freaks and Geeks.
And actually, the broader point of the segment that Chris Hayes did is a very good one,
which is once again, Republicans are doing the exact same thing, which is nominating absolute and total clowns
in all sorts of parts of the country, setting themselves up for another major humiliating
electoral devastation in November.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
We need to make that a reality.
But here is the segment from Chris Hayes.
And again, you will notice my interview from Royce with Royce White making an appearance
here.
Notably in Minnesota, where to take on incumbent Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, Republicans have nominated Royce
White, a former NBA player turned InfoWars lover, a guy who has advanced conspiracy theories about
everything from Nancy Pelosi's husband and the Federal Reserve, while reportedly managing to owe
over $800,000 in child support, is now having to
answer questions about why his campaign spent $1,200 at a Florida strip club.
And by the way, I love the intro where he's having to answer questions.
In a sense, that's true.
I made him answer the questions.
I like that lead in.
Your claim is there were filings which said you spent campaign funds at a strip club,
but they were incorrect. No, they didn't say that I spent the funds at a strip club, but they were incorrect.
No, they didn't say that I spent the funds at a strip club or no, let's say they didn't say that I spent the funds on strippers.
But it was spent at a strip club.
Well, a strip club has they sell food at the strip club.
So you were having you've spent the money on food at a strip club.
Is that more accurate?
You seem to be very unfamiliar with strippers and strip clubs and drag strip shows. So I'll inform you. Maybe you aren't informed that they
do have food at strip clubs. Delicious. White has also rallied. All right. So so again, also really,
really good stuff there. I think if I want to be picky, MSNBC, instead of just saying the source
for that is YouTube, it's a little weird to be like,
hey, this is an interview from YouTube. Usually you would put YouTube slash the David Pakman
show. All right. But beggars can't be choosers. OK, I'm not saying I'm being treated unfairly.
Really, really great. And a bunch of attention for the show as a result of that membership dumps,
people reaching out saying, David, I saw you on this. I saw you on that. So absolutely great, great stuff.
I have another announcement to make, which I might as well make here because we're just
talking about other things I'm going to be doing.
I will be appearing on C-SPAN, which is, as we know, the most electrifying media outlet
one can be on.
And I'm sort of kidding because even though it is toned down, I actually think that you
can have very good political discussion on C-SPAN. I'm going to be on C-SPAN taking calls from C-SPAN
viewers opposite a conservative. And they actually found I want to be careful, but they found a more
reasonable right winger who is not overtly a bomb thrower. I actually don't remember the guy's name,
but I'm going to be appearing alongside him and we'll be taking questions for an hour on C-SPAN.
It's going to be the week of July 1st, probably on the Tuesday. I will follow up with you and
tell you when that is. So some really good stuff going on with the show as we are building here
towards a climax, which I don't know if it's going to be with the debate next week, if indeed it does or
doesn't happen or the election itself. But we are really building here. We're going to take a very
quick break here from a couple of sponsors. And then the last 24 hours have really been something.
So we will get everybody caught up on everything that's going on. For a long time, when I had a computer problem, I'd go on YouTube and read it and try to figure
it out. And it seemed like the advice that is given 95 percent of the time is download malware
bytes and that'll clean everything up for you. So I have been using malware bytes in real life
for years, long before they became a sponsor, simply because Malwarebytes is way more than just
an antivirus. It catches things other antivirus programs miss. With Malwarebytes, you have
comprehensive real time protection against malware, spyware, other malicious attacks that could
jeopardize your privacy and personal data. It can detect and remove existing malware already on your
devices with its best in class free scan,
which is something traditional antiviruses lack. And now you can get identity theft protection
as part of a bundle to keep your family's personal information safe with live monitoring
alerts, recovery assistance and up to a million dollars in identity theft protection. Malware
Bytes has a special deal they're doing
just for The David Pakman Show. You can get any Malwarebytes subscription for 50 percent off.
That's half off at Malwarebytes dot com slash Pakman. That's Malwarebytes dot com slash Pakman
to get half off your subscription. The link is in the podcast notes. with a two dollar a month membership and Constantine with a three dollar a month membership and
Blanche with a four dollar a month membership or, you know, I don't know how many members
we have named Blanche, but certainly some.
You can become one of these great people by signing up at join Pacman dot com.
As I've said before, we estimate only about half of one percent of our audience supports
us directly.
And if we could grow that level of
support from half of 1% to 1%, that's it. We're financially viable and independent indefinitely,
no matter what YouTube does to our revenue, what Facebook does, which by the way, Facebook has
decimated it quite literally. Facebook has decided we don't really want to promote political content
anymore. Revenue's down 90 percent on Facebook.
We have no recourse other than to say if we replace that support by growing our direct support from half of one percent to one percent, our problems are over overnight.
So consider a membership at join Pacman dot com and you can read about all the great member
benefits that are there.
As Donald Trump continues to make the case that Joe Biden has no idea what's going on and can't think and can't speak and just is
demented, quite frankly, he continues, Trump, that is, to struggle visibly to the point where
it is actually getting a little bit painful to watch. Donald Trump held a rally last night,
if you can call it that, or yesterday afternoon in Racine, Wisconsin, after insulting Milwaukee.
Trump trying to suck up to Wisconsin voters by showing up and telling them how great their state is.
And he couldn't even get the words Joe Biden out while talking about how Joe Biden can't remember anything.
He called him Joe Bride and glitched badly. And
this is getting very difficult to watch. Joe bride, Joe bride. And so you really have to
understand visually what's happening. He says Joe bride. And then he does a very particular
move that happens when the brain fails. Let's listen to the whole thing. Joe Bright, this guy is just
the worst. Joe Biden, the worst president in the history of our country, will be a fading
nightmare. He'll be a fading. I have fading memory, but I think you do mind if I change it?
He will be a fading nightmare. He's been a nightmare for this country.
So when Trump starts to repeat words over and
over again, it's because he's confused about what's on the teleprompter. As we know, Donald
Trump is not illiterate. He obviously can read, but his functional literacy is certainly quite
limited. And it is tough for him to get a lot of this granting mass. Think of now, if you hear me say that
and you go, David, those those seem like random words, not in any kind of syntax that I recognize
as part of the English language. Joe Biden is forming granting mass. Think of that doesn't
make any sense. And you would be right. It doesn't make any sense. Joe Biden's forming, granting mass.
He's going to formally grant. It's so bad to laugh, but there's something
it's like an uncomfortable laughter. These aren't sentences that make sense. Joe Biden is forming, granting mass. Think of. How can I even analyze that? Something is very
wrong. Trump getting distracted in the middle of one of his rants by a lake. And then he talked
about sharks. It sounds like the conversations I have with my two-year-old daughter.
And I have to tell you, it's much clearer to me what she means,
even if I can't always understand what she says.
My life could have been so simple.
I could have had 200 lawyers less. My life could have been.
That's 200 fewer lawyers. Please, please.
So simple. I would have had a beautiful life,
but this is a beautiful life. This is far more beautiful. I mean, what's better?
Being with you right now. Look at that beautiful lake.
So now a shiny object went by. He's distracted.
Beautiful, right? What's better, this or sitting on the Pacific or the Atlantic,
which has sharks? You don't have sharks. See, that's that's a big advantage.
I'll take the one without the sharks. So I guess Trump extolling the virtues of Wisconsin after having insulted Milwaukee by saying, hey, listen, Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, forget about it.
This is what we want right here because there aren't sharks, I guess.
Trump then doing his rant where he says that a real red flag about some of the immigrants that are coming to the United States is that they speak languages no one has ever heard of it.
You have people that come in illegally no one has ever heard of.
You have people that come in illegally that don't speak the language.
We don't even know the country.
These are countries where we have nobody in our country that even understands the language.
So this is, of course, a reminder that no matter how much money you have, you really
can't buy class.
It's it's not something that you can do.
It's also kind of ironic that Trump's talking about people who come here and we can't buy class. It's it's not something that you can do. It's also kind of ironic that
Trump's talking about people who come here and we can't understand them because half the time
it's very difficult to understand Donald Trump. Like when he says Joe Biden is forming, granting
mass, think of, I don't know what that means. And yet Trump's allowed to be here. So that's
all kind of strange. Uh, going back to lying about the size of Trump's crowds, which he's very self-conscious about,
he falsely claims that at his New Jersey rally, now the number is up to one hundred and seven
thousand people.
It started at sixty thousand, then it was 80 and then it was one hundred thousand.
Trump now saying there were one hundred and seven thousand people at his rally in Jersey.
It was the greatest. I had one hundred and seven thousand people at his rally in Jersey.
It was the greatest.
I had one hundred and seven thousand people show up in New Jersey.
Now it's hard to believe that that's true because that's more than the total number
of people that were in that city, Wildwood, New Jersey, on that particular day.
So it's one of these like, how is that even mathematically possible?
And then maybe most interestingly, psychologically, from yesterday's rally, Trump talking about
next week's debate, he seems very nervous about it.
And he is trying to set expectations low by saying Biden's going to be on drugs.
He's going to be pumped up.
They found cocaine at the White House.
And he's really trying to set the stage for people to say,
if it seems like Biden did OK and Trump didn't, it must have been because of performance enhancing
drugs, which, of course, drugs that make you be a really good debater. We haven't really
tracked down. He doesn't have a clue. Now we're going to watch. He's going to be so pumped up. He's going to be pumped up.
You know, all that stuff that was missing about a month ago from the White House.
What happened? Who left it? Somebody left it. I wonder, let's see, somebody left a laptop in a
an office of. By the way, the cocaine was found in 2023. So as usual, Trump's sense of
time a little bit off. A gentleman was supposed to fix the laptop from hell. He never picked it
up and somebody didn't pick up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine. I wonder
who that could have been. So, of course, the suggestion here is Biden will be a good debater
because he's on cocaine and the cocaine found at the White House is actually Joe Biden's.
Why he would keep it in an area accessible to White House guests.
I have no idea.
Seems very, very stupid on economic matters.
Donald Trump did weigh in and he said he doesn't care what all of the economic indicators say.
He believes inflation is between 40 and 50 percent.
All right. I mean, listen,
just make, say it's a hundred percent. If you're going to lie, take a look at our inflation,
our real inflation. Uh, they said it was 10 for the last couple of years. Cumulatively,
you take a look at inflation. I like that. And if you add different categories, which they don't,
I think our inflation is between 40 and 50 percent. They say it's a 22 percent.
Twenty two percent's a lot.
That's record setting.
But I think you could double it.
Let them add the cost of interest.
Let them add the cost of trying to buy.
If you add up different things and the cost of interest, then inflation is between 40
and 50 percent.
A really interesting and precise assessment on the economy from Trump on the topic of vaccines. Donald Trump has a message for any school that has a vaccine mandate.
I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask.
The crowd cheering. There's one little problem. Every public school has a vaccine mandate, every single one. So that
means, hey, and by the way, this is, of course, what Trump wants. This means no money for any
public schools. If you believe Donald Trump, which why would you? The guy lies all the time.
And then lastly, Trump talking about conquering and wars and seems very confused by the words on his teleprompter.
We stand on the shoulders of the American giants who crossed the oceans, explored the
cotton, settled in Great Plains, won the Wild West, laid down the railroads, raised up those
great big, beautiful skyscrapers.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Conquered the skies for two world wars and won and we didn't have to change the name of the forts, by the way. Does anybody
know what I mean by that? Nobody has any idea what the guy means. So a completely delusional
rally at which Donald Trump's feebleness or is it feeble? I'm kidding. It's not feeble
Lillie really came through and there
are continued and growing rumors that this guy's going to bail on next week's debate.
Let's hope it doesn't happen because I really do want to see it. We may have found the most
disconnected from reality. Trump supporter in history. He was interviewed yesterday outside
Trump's rally in Racine, Wisconsin. And I know that when I play this, I'm going to get emails from people saying, David, this
is an obviously mentally ill person.
They're being exploited.
Nobody should be interviewing them.
It is unfair.
It is it is really mean.
And the problem we have is that so often when Trump supporters are interviewed at Trump
rallies, it does seem like they are suffering with some kind of issue. And I don't know if that means we can't ever air interviews with Trump supporters are interviewed at Trump rallies, it does seem like they are suffering with some kind of issue.
And I don't know if that means we can't ever air interviews with Trump supporters.
It's actually a really tough thing for media.
So take a listen to this.
He explains why he likes Donald Trump.
I think it shows that Trump is like built different and like he he's not doing this
for the benefit, like like he was already a billionaire before.
Nice properties around the world like he's doing it because he cares about people and i think like you said all
this stuff he's going through shows it because like if i just wanted the power if i just wanted
the money or fame like i you know any other politician would have dropped out like criminal
cases you know all that but I think it shows that he's
in it for the people. And that's why he wants to continue. So listen, obviously delusional. I can't
think of any president who has ever been in it less for the people and more for himself than Trump.
But you look at the comments to this interview and you see the usual things. This is unfair.
This is exploiting someone who's clearly mentally ill, maybe severely. I don't know what to tell you guys. I mean,
every time we feature interviews with Trump supporters that we aren't doing, these are
interviews being done by other media outlets. I get emails from people saying, David, you really
shouldn't exploit people who are very clearly mentally ill. I mean, is that guy mentally ill?
I don't know. Is supporting Trump at this point in general a sign that something isn't, you know, the wheel is spinning,
but the hamster is dead, for lack of a better metaphor. I just don't know. I just don't
know. Another cult supporter said that Trump can last all morning, day and night, which
was an interesting moment. I really wonder how Biden is going to be able to fair considering President Trump can last
all morning, all day, all night.
He goes with energy like no other.
So it will be interesting to see how Biden no performance enhancing drugs or anything,
at least as far as that woman is concerned. Another gentleman was
interviewed and he says his main issue that he wants Trump to deal with is the fall of
religion and Christianity in America. Talking to your friends. What is one of the most what's
the main concern for you when you look at the Biden administration, what's going on in our country?
Man, it's hard to pinpoint on one thing.
There's many things.
I like what you were talking about.
Or what they both were talking about,
about how Christianity has basically fallen in many ways.
And now the biggest fall for me, in my opinion,
is the fall in religion.
There you go. So that guy's very concerned is the fall in religion. And you're talking to you.
There you go.
So that guy is very concerned about declining religion in America.
Yikes.
Then they interview another guy who says that what he wants to hear from Trump at the rally
is about the corruption of Biden.
OK, so what is it that you're looking forward to the most today to hear from President Trump?
Put Biden in the shame and just expose all the corruption.
There you go.
Expose hoping for an expose, as the term may be, of all of Joe Biden's corruption.
If you the Republican committee investigating Biden corruption has spent years
looking into it and still has no evidence of it. So I don't think that you are going to hear it
from Trump. And then lastly, there is this guy who I think describes himself as a MAGA rapper.
He has a very unique look. And I believe this is the guy who goes by the name for Giotto blow,
which is an unusual
name and he just says that Trump is a rockstar essentially.
Never seen support for any president like this ever.
Right?
Donald Trump was the most supportive to anybody.
I mean, Donald Trump is almost bigger than, you know, the Philadelphia Eagles.
It's him.
They Buccaneers.
I mean his brain, actually, I don't know whether, whether this is for G auto blow or another
guy named Jimmy Levy.
No, that is for Giotto blow or another guy named Jimmy Levy. No, that is for Giotto blow.
Okay. So all of the luminaries coming out to support Donald Trump in Wisconsin, as you can see,
it's not clear who's more delusional. Is it Trump or his supporters? And we end up with a situation
that tragically and sadly is the blind leading the blind. I don't like to see it, but it's where we
are, but we can vote to at least
take it out of power. That's my plan for November. I've had such trouble finding a great razor where
I am not cutting myself or getting those nicks on my skin, which are so common with the cheap
disposable razors. You have to meet our sponsor, Henson Shaving. Henson actually
manufactures parts for the International Space Station and the Mars Rover, and they are bringing
that exact same precision engineering to the shaving experience. It hurts when you shave
because blades extend too far and thus they wobble slightly. But with their aerospace grade CNC machines,
Henson is able to make metal razors that extend just 0.0013 inches. That's less than the thickness
of a human hair, which means a secure, stable blade with a vibration free shave. It also has
built in channels to evacuate the hair and the cream.
No more clogs, no more rubbing your thumb on the razor to get the hair out. I use Henson at home.
Shaving is a great experience. Now, Henson wants to be the best razor, not the best razor business,
which means you only need to buy it once. And it's awesome. Go to Henson shaving dot com slash
Pacman. Add a razor and a hundred pack of blades to your cart. Then enter the code Pacman to get
the hundred blades for free. That is a three year supply. That's H.E.N. S.O.N. shaving dot com
slash Pacman. Use code Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes.
It's great to have Dave Farina back on the program, a science communicator and author
best known for his YouTube channel, Professor Dave Explains.
Dave, it's great to have you on again.
Yeah, it's great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
So let's see how we can kind of enter this conversation. I've been appalled, but not necessarily completely surprised by the speed with which ideas that
have no basis, in fact, that I can find become very popular among large swaths of the population.
And you and I both recently watched Terrence Howard's appearance on Joe Rogan. And this is the
appearance during which he talks about how the tone of some elements can be bisexual,
which was not language I ever saw applied to the periodic table of elements. And one times one is
two and all these different things. And I saw it. It seemed crazy to me to use a colloquial term. I showed the video to some
mental health professionals. They all said, listen, we would probably medicate this. If
someone presented in my office talking in this way, it seems like something we have medical
interventions we could try to do. And yet when I covered it, I got dozens of emails and there
were hundreds of comments from people saying, David, this guy's brilliant. You just don't understand him. It's so on
and so forth. Generally, what's your view about the way in which some of these ideas,
for lack of a better term, are spreading and people get entranced and enamored with it?
I mean, it's hard to approach this one because you got to understand,
I'm no stranger to reality denial. I deal with flat earthers. I deal with people who
are in complete denial of so many things that are well understood. But I always thought that
we could all agree, even flat earthers on basic arithmetic, you know, two plus two equals four and things like that. So with the Terry episode, I like you, I just thought, OK, we're all kind of having a laugh
about this. And I was shocked when I put out a reaction video to that interview. How many
thousands of people because that video went a little bit more viral than than most of my content
does and the level of vitriol and accusations
of racism, you don't understand what he's saying. It's like, the guy can't do second grade math.
Like, can we at least all agree on basic math, please? So I really don't know. Like, I feel like
reality denial is just getting worse and worse over time. It's hard to know where to go from here,
honestly. getting worse and worse over time. It's it's hard to know where to go from here. Honestly,
how do you what approach is there? I don't know if this would be if you were talking to Terrence Howard or if you were talking to one of the people that thinks the stuff he was saying is brilliant.
You can interpret it either way. What sorts of approaches would you suggest in attempting to
reason with such claims if one wanted to? Because, you know, with a lot of political beliefs, I will use like a Socratic method of questioning, you know, oh, the zero tax
rate would be the best.
And I say, OK, how did you come up with that idea?
Where'd you get that?
What examples do we have of what happens when you have a zero tax rate?
And sometimes that method can make some kind of progress.
But when you apply like the one times one equals two thing seems like applying linguistic
analysis to math.
And it's sort of like I can very clearly say, no, what you have one times one means one
instance of one thing.
If I have one instance of one banana, that's one.
That's how one times one equals one.
Right.
How do you even try to reason with some of this stuff?
I mean, just using those kinds of examples,
it's very different from political beliefs and things like that, where even if you disagree
strongly, you can at least attempt some kind of a good faith conversation, see if you can find
middle ground. There is no middle ground on arithmetic. One times one equals one. If you
don't agree with that, you're wrong. So for me, the challenge, I'm not really the best with the sociological aspect. What my skill set lies in is more just breaking these concepts down in ways that are absolutely
undeniable.
So with arithmetic, in my video, I just went back and explained basic arithmetic and what
the operation of multiplication is in the sense of repeated addition and showed pictures
and examples.
And it's a little embarrassing to have to do that, but I do that. And then the same thing with the periodic table, you know, saying things
are frequencies and this and that, and hydrogen is only the first element that we can, that we
can perceive. And that there's ones before that it's like, no, hydrogen is the first element
because there's one proton, one proton, two proton, three, right. Things that everyone was supposed to
learn in 10th grade chemistry. So that's really just my approach is just laying all the facts out in a way that is
as simple and succinct as possible and just hope that people watch it. And obviously many of them
don't. And so there's that, but you know, what can you do? There's this other guy, Billy Carson,
who was just before our interview, I was watching him on the Patrick David podcast on which I've appeared.
And then he was with Rogan.
And if I understand correctly and a lot of this is the the followers of these folks will
then write in and go, you're just not understanding what he's really saying is, OK, if I understand
correctly, he has beliefs about ancient civilizations that involve gold mining and the Anunnaki. And he thinks there
was someone named Thoth or I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. This stuff,
you know, he's able to name check MIT and Harvard. I don't know exactly what he got there. Some kind
of sort of certificate. I don't even really know. Just online courses that anybody can take. He's
just OK. It doesn't mean anything.
OK, good.
So it's of any kind.
He's not a scholar of anything.
That's that's good information.
So what what what do you think is going on here with why this stuff is so appealing?
And one thing I notice is the more specific these guys can be, it's often guys, although
not always the more appealing it seems
to be. There was this guy, Riley Martin, who used to appear on the Howard Stern show, which by the
way, I found to be one of the most entertaining people ever to talk to Howard, who was super
specific about when he was abducted by aliens and the types of aliens and the targicians and how
they use different technology. It's riveting in its specificity, but sometimes the specificity seems to also be what lulls people
into thinking this must be true. Sure. Yeah. And in fact, it's not a new script. He's regurgitating
these similar kinds of ancient alien scripts that other people have been doing it. I mean,
if I'm being honest, he's sort of repackaging it for like a, like an urban audience. You know what
I mean? He's kind of capturing that demographic and
mixing it with like his style of success porn and how to be a millionaire and all of these things.
It's in my video on him. I said it's Gaia meets Andrew Tate in sort of a way.
So what are the red flags? In other words, articulate and charismatic often is the case
with a lot of these folks. Super specific stories where some people would go,
they couldn't possibly making it up because it's so specific. Give us some of the red flags that
you can find between the lines of that charisma and specificity. I mean, the main one would be
techno babble. I mean, they just spew out jargon that they, they know that the majority of their
viewers have no idea what they're saying. And if they use enough technical terminology, they'll confidently, people will think that they
know what they're saying. They're absolutely not. I mean, with the Billy Carson one, he's spewing
all this stuff about, you know, fusion in the pyramids. And then this just like, he's just,
he's using scientific terminology that doesn't go together and is absolutely, you know,
electrolysis and all these things. It's just, he has absolutely no idea what he's saying. He just says it very confidently.
And it seems that that's a big difference with actual academics and scientists who seem to often
use language like based on what we've been able to get our hands on so far, here's our best
assessment. And they sort of seem to leave room for the fact that
we may revise our conclusions as evidence changes. That humility sometimes is missing
from these guys. Yeah. Well, they'll also they'll also take
advantage of that humility and and project greater certainty, of course, regarding utter
falsehoods. It's a script of lies. uh yeah i think some people love a confident fraud more than a humble scientist or truth teller you know um it can be very uh intoxicating i think but
in the end these are stories that people want to be true they want these stories about aliens coming
down and genetically engineering us to mine gold for them why would that be the case they could
it's kind of rare here i don't know if people were aware they could go mine asteroids instead and get them. But they're fun stories. I love the
movie Stargate. It's a fun movie, but it's a movie. And I don't know, this penchant for fantasy
mixed with, I've said this before and probably to you as well, just this increasing anti-establishment bias.
People that just are so desperate for any kind of prevailing wisdom to be false, whether I don't know where that stems from exactly.
Disillusionment with authority or just wanting to feel smarter than people who actually study things.
I don't know what it is, but that's sort of behind most of the science denial that you
see today is this anti-establishment bias.
What's your sense of the degree to which Rogan does an acceptable job of handling these sorts
of guests?
Like I've spoken to my audience about how when I interview an extremist or kind
of wacky guest who I know is going to make either really, uh, disgusting claims about people based
on race or sexual orientation, or is going to tout conspiracies about the election. Like that guy,
Mike pillow, Mike Lindell, as some people know him, I try to be prepared so that I can put up a wall or create an environment in which their
views will be exposed as out of the mainstream, indefensible or whatever the case may be.
Rogan's just historically is sort of like he's curious and wants to hear from people,
which is fine.
But when there's this sort of nonsense, I start to question the responsibility of it.
Like how do you assess Rogan's relationship to these guests?
It's tough because in the past I had somewhat defended Rogan.
I'm not an avid Rogan viewer.
Obviously, I know of the show and I had seen clips of him pushing back on various guests to the best of his ability.
It's totally fine that he's not particularly educated in any field.
And it's totally fine that he wants to have conversations because he's curious.
And also in the past, I had seen kind of more balance on the roster, having different kinds of people.
So, yes, you got one fringe right-wing lunatic, but then you have this scientist come on, and then he explains things.
So I was like, okay, I kind of to an extent had defended Joe in the past because we don't really have anything these days.
We have so many echo chambers, and's no like Dick Cavett show where
everybody comes on and talk. So I was like, okay, Rogan is fine.
But just the way that his roster is skewed lately and just so many,
it's just disproportionately filled with these blatant charlatans.
Billy Carson is a grifter and a charlatan.
Terrence Howard is it's a little more defensible.
Cause I think he is actually genuinely extremely mentally ill. But everything he's saying, I mean, it's like,
not only is there no pushback, and I had comments telling me in my video, no, Joe's just, you know,
coaxing the crazy out of him because he knows it's good content. No, in the Billy Carson interview,
he goes, how is Terry so smart? He's brilliant talking about the theory that stars
poop out planets. I mean, literally, he said defecate. He said they defecate planets. It's
like, dude, learn literally anything about astronomy here. It's very damaging to society
because not only does he give them the platform to run their grift, But with his credulity, it sort of amplifies the grift that they're spreading.
And his viewership is so enormous that it does actual quantitative calculable harm to the social
discourse. It really does. And I would relish the opportunity to tell Joe this to his face,
but, you know, because I don't hate the guy and I think he's a good dude. But, you know, because I don't I don't hate the guy. And I think he's I think he's
a good dude. But just man, he just he needs a better bullshit detector and and just a little,
you know, a little bit more selectivity in who he brings on his platform. He needs more
responsibility in that regard, I think. You sort of started to talk about this a little bit. I was
going to ask you what your opinion is as to with these different characters, do they believe the stuff they say, or is it something that
they're doing because they think they can convince other people to follow them or for
monetary reasons or whatever you sort of alluded to. Billy Carson probably knows the stuff's not
true. Terrence seems to have some issues where maybe he does believe it. I was also going
to bring up Tucker Carlson, who recently went on and confidently said that scientists have
abandoned the theory of Darwinian evolution. My reaction to that was I'm pretty sure Tucker does
know 100 percent that that's not true, but it's just he's increasingly trying to appeal to a
certain audience. How do you assess their belief of this stuff? I mean, you you have a track record
of everything they've ever said, especially Tucker as a pundit. I mean, you have a track record of everything they've ever said,
especially Tucker as a pundit. I mean, pundits, I feel, are notoriously pandering to a base.
And as Tucker got pushed out of the major media outlets and is just desperately searching for an
audience, I think he's going to say whatever he needs to say to, you know, it's like, you know,
it's the same thing Russell Brand is doing. He's just completely insane. And it's now like, how, what do I need to say to get millions of people to
follow me? Okay, then that's what I say. I'll start a cult if I have to. So Tucker is like that.
I mean, he's just absolutely shameless in what he says. Billy is just a run of the mill snake
oil salesman and grifter. Terry is insane, but he's also a liar. I mean,
he goes on there and confidently says, I have 97 patents for all. He doesn't have patents. Like
what? He's just lying. Like he's just lying. I think he knows he doesn't have the patent.
Like in other words, some of this stuff might be mental illness, but with the patents,
you think he just knows he doesn't really have any patents. I mean, I'm not an expert on mental
illness, so maybe he's somewhere in the recesses of his mind.
He's convinced himself he does.
I don't know.
I'll leave that to a mental health professional.
But he is definitely obviously not just saying things that are scientific nonsense, but flat out lies.
So I don't really care.
I just I want everyone to know what's right and what's wrong.
Yes.
The rest can be sorted out by society.
But yeah, that's my job here.
So we've been speaking with Dave Farina.
Please check out the YouTube channel.
Professor Dave explains filled with great media content.
Dave, always great talking to you.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks very much for having me.
If you live in the US, did you know that anyone can access your most private information using
those people search sites? These sites are populated with information from data brokers,
which have access to your social security number, login credentials, addresses, location history,
even your online activity. But our sponsor, Incogni, is the service that will put your mind
at ease.
You just create an account, grant them the right to go to work for you, and then you sit back while
Incogni has data broker sites, remove your personal data from their databases. And Incogni
keeps you updated on the status of everything and they will handle any objections from those data
brokers. This is often the reason people get robocalls, because their info is on one of these Well, we may have finally found the supposed N.C.O.G.N.I.com slash Pacman for 60 percent off.
The link is in the podcast notes.
Well, we may have finally found the supposed dead voters that were voting.
Trump thinks one of them voted for him. Trump even more confused and struggling cognitively than we thought.
Author Ramin Satude explained last night on CNN that years ago he already had questions
about what was happening with Donald Trump's brain.
For example, he says Donald Trump was regularly confused during their interviews.
And one example he gave was that Trump insisted confidently that the late Joan Rivers voted
for him for president in 2016.
There's only one problem with that, which is that Joan Rivers passed away in 2014.
And yet this did not stop confused Trump from insisting, no, no, no.
She voted for me.
She did listen to remain Satu day.
Explain it to CNN's Caitlin Collins.
This is genuinely serious and scary stuff.
We just first start off about your sit down with Trump?
Six times after he left the White House,
which, you know, is such a different period
thinking about what's happening in Virginia tonight
and seeing his grip on the Republican Party.
I mean, what was he like?
What did you observe from him when you sat down with him?
So I interviewed Donald Trump more than any other journalist
since he's left the White House.
We started in May 2021.
And that report you just talked about,
about meandering and confusing, is right.
He goes from one story to the next.
He struggles with the chronology of events.
He seems very upset that he wasn't respected by certain celebrities in the White House,
and then he'd go to a story about The Apprentice.
So as you know, Caitlin, it's very challenging to interview Donald Trump
and to go toe-to-toe with him. But there was some cognitive questions about where he was and what he was thinking.
And he would he would from time to time become confused.
Because you wrote at one point about Joan Rivers, him telling you that she voted for him in 2016, I believe, even though.
He confidently told me and declared that Joan Rivers voted for him when he ran for president.
And Joan Rivers died in 2014. Joan Rivers died in 2014. So she would not have been able to vote for Donald Trump. Yeah. And you, cause you talked
about his memory. You wrote that, you know, on some days I have the feeling he has no idea who
he's even talking to that he actually forgot or didn't remember that the two of you had spoken
at your first sit down interview. Right. So my first sit down was in May. He wasn't doing a lot
of interviews. And then we sat down again towards the end of the summer. And when I sat down, I, you know,
there was a very blank expression on his face. So I asked, do you remember when we spoke recently?
And he said, no, I have no memory of that. And he couldn't recall. He said it was a long time ago.
And then we had to start from scratch. So the interview started from square one,
where he was started telling me the same exact stories that we that I heard in our first interview.
Now I know that there are people who are going to let's get back to the Joan Rivers thing
in a second.
There are people who will hear this and they'll say, Trump's such a busy guy.
He's a narcissist.
It's not a big deal that he didn't remember ever having met remains to today or having
done an hour interview with him.
That doesn't really make any sense. And even as someone as narcissistic and high profile as Trump,
if you're doing a series of six extensive sit down interviews in your home with the same journalist,
there is not really a reasonable explanation for why you would forget about that from May to August, for example. It just doesn't make sense now on insisting that Joan Rivers voted for him, despite the fact that she was dead at the time of the 2016 election. That's very,
very concerning. And unfortunately, and this isn't funny, we just can't really have someone in power
who is compromised in this way. At another point, this it's it's so sad. Trump said to Satu Day,
I've got to go upstairs and deal with Afghanistan. He wasn't president at the time,
and he actually referred to it as the Afghanistan. Incredible.
Your biggest takeaways from sitting down with him, you know, right after I left the White House,
when his political power is probably the lowest it's been since 2015, and how he reflected on when he was hosting The Apprentice. And,
you know, the ratings were soaring in that first season and just kind of what that looked like for
him. He was very deflated. He was conflicted. He was angry about the way in which the press
had treated him. He still believed that he won the election. And he was happiest when he talked to me about hosting The Apprentice.
It was the thing that brought him the most joy.
We watched clips of the show together. We watched the theme song.
And he really lit up. He watched his firing of Omarosa.
And then he would talk about what he did at the White House,
and he would become gloomy and resentful and unhappy and refer to Afghanistan and Joe Biden.
But he also seemed to think that he still had some foreign policy powers.
And there was one day where he told me he needed to go upstairs to deal with Afghanistan,
even though he clearly didn't.
He told you that he while you were interviewing him at Trump Tower,
he told you he needed to go upstairs to deal with Afghanistan with the quote,
the Afghanistan is how he referred to it.
I mean, it's a remarkable experience.
It's a remarkable book.
Do people realize how serious this is?
Can you imagine?
I've got to go deal with the Afghanistan upstairs, sir.
You're not president now.
I've got to go deal with it.
And here's the saddest thing about this.
I know some of you are thinking right now about Trump's father.
I know that if I didn't say what I'm about to say,
many of you would email me and they'd say, David, what remains to today is talking about
is verbatim what was going on with Trump's father. Trump's father had dementia, Alzheimer's.
And one of the things that was set up for Trump's father was he would go to his office.
He would have a secretary, an assistant of some kind.
He would have a phone and papers at his desk, and it was set up for him to think that he
was still working.
He would pick up the phone.
He would talk to the secretary.
He would shuffle the papers around.
It was nonsense.
He wasn't running the company at that point.
He didn't have the capacity to run the company at that point. Trump thinking I'm going upstairs to deal with Afghanistan
is strikingly similar, strikingly similar, similar to what was going on with Fred Trump
later on in his life. So listen, this is extraordinarily serious stuff so far other
than just blanket general denials. there isn't any serious refutation
of what remains to today is saying.
Not only that, these are such specific claims that I can't imagine him making them up in
the way that some MAGA defenders are saying.
So this all is very, very bad.
If Trump does become president, it's also bad for in terms of what it says about Trump's
health. But if there is any kind of glimmer of positivity or hope here, it's some new polling that looks
very good for President Joe Biden. Let's talk about that next. There is a politically deadly
new poll out, if true, that would essentially mean Trump cannot win. Now, I'm going to couch this as no one poll tells us everything we need to know.
But there is a new poll by Redfield and Wilton Strategies, which finds that five percent,
one out of 20 Donald Trump voters from 2020 are switching to Joe Biden.
With how close this election is expected to
be. If one out of 20 Trump voters switches to Joe Biden uniformly across the country, right? So
roughly by the same margin in blue states, red states and competitive states, Trump could not
win. Let's take a look at the article and then we will discuss about one in 20 people who voted for Trump in 2020 plan to vote for Biden, according to a new poll.
The presumptive Republican nominee will face Biden in November.
Polls have shown it's going to be a tight election with a statistical tie or only marginal leads.
Some polls, however, point to a number of voters flipping from their 2020 ballot. According to
research by Redfield and Wilton Strategies, 5% of Trump 2020 voters now say they plan to vote for
Biden. This is more than the 3% of people who voted Biden 2020 and say they plan to vote for
Trump. That is a net 2% swing towards Biden. If this is a major if. If the poll reflects reality and if Biden does get a net two
percentage point boost uniformly distributed across the country, Trump cannot win. Now,
I am not suggesting that that is exactly what is going to happen. The best case scenario,
of course, would be very high turnout, which makes
that two percent as significant as possible. Uncommitted voters, to the extent that they
exist. And part of me is like, how could you possibly be uncommitted at this point? But
they exist. Uncommitted voters realize Trump's not the better choice. And we do get that five
percent of Trump voters that flips to Biden with
a two percent net gain, given the three percent that are going Biden Trump, supposedly Trump will
lose. Trump will completely lose his mind. And then maybe it opens the door to future convictions,
if there are any, leading to actually putting Donald Trump in prison once and for all. Now,
that is of an extraordinarily rosy scenario.
And if I'm completely honest with you, I'm not going to I don't do the thing on this show
where I artificially raise the alarm. I just tell it to you the way I see it,
which is it'll probably be close. But there is a real chance that polling is underestimating how
terribly Trump is positioned right now. It's not a guarantee.
It's not a reason to stay home. But if you zoom out and you see numbers like one out of 20 Trump
voters are planning to vote Biden, Trump already lost in 2020. That was before he incited a riot.
It was before he was indicted four times. It was before he was found civilly liable for sexual assault
and defamation. It was before his 34 felony convictions. That's really the bottom line.
Nothing has changed in Trump's favor. And I know that Trump and MAGA insist the indictments helped
Trump didn't really seem to help him in fundraising. And now they're saying the
conviction helped Trump. Joe Biden still fundraising, blowing him out of the water.
He conclusively lost in 2020 by one hundred and fifteen thousand votes in three states.
But everything has gotten worse for him since then.
So there is the possibility that this is going to be an historic defeat against Donald Trump.
There's the possibility that it will be very,
very close. We now ignore the polls and we go and vote because the caveat that stops us short from
saying this thing is over is that this is a very sick country in many ways. It's a country that
elected Trump in 2016. It's a country that still has at minimum tens of millions of people that are planning to
vote for Donald Trump. And so whether it's 60, 70, 80 or 90 million, it's still a sickness that
we have in this country. And so we can't stay home. We have to go and vote with the awareness,
with the awareness that there is a case to be made that this could be a disaster, not just for Trump, but for the Republican Party
more broadly, a disaster from which they may not recover for a while. It's up to us to make it so.
And that's the reason I'll be voting in November. We have a voicemail number. That number is 219
to David P. Here is a caller who really thinks he's got me with this one. He really does.
Take a listen to this. Can you name for me any proposal of the left that makes things less
expensive? Not free. I'm free is not considered less expensive. Free has another purpose. I can give you at least three things that the left promotes and makes things
more expensive. Taxation makes everything more expensive. And now this new EPA requirement makes HVAC more expensive.
Those are three things, three proposals, three policies of the left that make things more expensive.
Oh, I forgot. You know, well,
anyway, food. OK, so first and foremost, I don't know why he's allowed to set the guidelines and
say, David, give me examples of things the left proposed that would make something less expensive,
not free, but less expensive. Why? Like, I don't
why does he get to set the terms? But that's OK. I'll still answer it. A public option for health
insurance. It doesn't make anything free, but the idea is it makes it less expensive. And indeed,
the public option through Obamacare did put downward pressure on prices. Now, the problem is because health
insurance gets more expensive every year anyway, what it did in practice is slow down the growth
rate. OK, but the health insurance marketplace, not everybody calls it a public option. Public
option may be something a little different. But the whole point was it makes things less expensive,
but not free negotiating prescription drug prices and bringing
big pharma to the table. It doesn't make drugs free, but it makes them less expensive. There's
another example, subsidizing, uh, childcare and early education. It doesn't make it free.
It makes it less expensive. Again, I don't know why we're bound to less expensive, but not free. But I'm playing along with what the caller says. Affordable housing initiatives.
They don't make housing free. They make it less expensive. Subsidizing and investing in public
transit. It doesn't make it free. It makes it less expensive. Capping the cost of higher education. It doesn't make it free.
It just makes it less expensive.
And then utility rate regulation.
It doesn't make it free.
It makes it less expensive.
So it's one of these things where it's like, all right, you're setting arbitrary guidelines
for a debate.
I've given you six examples, but what have we proven?
What have we actually proven about the broader worldview
and approach to governance and what's better for the individual? I don't think we've proven
anything, but at least as far as refuting this arbitrarily and abstract narrowing of the debate,
there are six examples of proposals that seek not to make things free,
but to make them more affordable.
Tell me where we go now. All right. We have a great bonus show for you today.
Half a million immigrants could be put on a path to U.S. citizenship under a new plan from the
Biden administration. It's actually it doesn't fix DACA. It deals with a different aspect,
but it's very, very interesting. Thailand becomes the first Southeast Asian country to legalize same sex marriage.
And Matt Gaetz is now being investigated for sexual misconduct and for drug claims.
Will this finally be the one that takes down Gaetz?
Honestly, probably not.
But I'll tell you what's being investigated, where the evidence points and much more.
Don't miss today's bonus show.
One of many member benefits for those who sign up at join Pacman dot com.
The bonus show where you want to make money.
Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad.
Exactly.
You can sign up at join Pacman dot com.
You can use the coupon code.
Save democracy 24. I hope to see at join Pacman dot com. You can use the coupon code. Save democracy 24.
I hope to see you on today's bonus show. Otherwise, I'll see you back here tomorrow.