The David Pakman Show - 6/27/23: Insane Trump audio leak, RFK Jr explains vaccine view

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Joe Berkowitz, a writer whose work has been featured in Vulture, The New Yorker, and Fast Company, joins David to discuss his Daily Beast article, "When Did the 'F*ck Your Feelings' Crowd Get So Triggered?" -- Donald Trump's third, and possibly fourth arrests may be imminently forthcoming, one federal and the other at the state level in Georgia -- CNN obtains audio of Donald Trump talking about knowingly classified documents after his presidency, and the audio is incredibly damning -- Robert F Kennedy Jr is hosting a "health policy" event with absolute lunatics, including Sherri Tenpenny, the disgusting anti-vaxxer who has been discussed on the show previously -- Robert F Kennedy Jr explains his view on vaccines to Bill Maher, and it's arguably even worse than previously thought -- Donald Trump is now scared to debate his Republican challengers and launches an attack on Fox News to lay the groundwork to get out of it -- Donald Trump praises Robert F Kennedy Jr during a ridiculous interview with Newsmax -- Ron DeSantis is performing notably better than Donald Trump in polling matchups against Joe Biden in key swing states -- The Eggman calls in to say that he would rather hang out with homeless San Franciscans than with David -- On the Bonus Show: US Coast Guard investigating submarine implosion, Japan's plan to boost birthrate raises doubt, Supreme Court may preemptively ban federal wealth tax, much more... 🦛 Happy Hippo: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off at https://happyhippo.com/pakman ♨️ Bon Charge Sauna Blanket: Use code PAKMAN for 15% OFF at https://boncharge.com/pakman 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman ✅ Parcil Safety: Get 25% off with code PAKMAN at https://davidpakman.com/safety 👩‍❤️‍👨 Try the Paired App FREE for 7 days and get 25% OFF at https://paired.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

Speaker 1 I'd like to start today with law and order or law and auto, depending on your preference. I know that it feels like just yesterday that the failed former President Donald Trump went from being a once indicted president to a twice indicted former president. But we are now potentially inching up imminently on Donald Trump's third arrest and indictment and potentially even fourth arrest and indictment. There is a very interesting report from NBC News. Five or six Secret Service agents have testified before the January 6th grand jury sources say it is not known what the agent's proximity to Trump was on January 6th

or what information they may have provided to the grand jury. It's important to remember that. And it's hard to keep track of. I admit, if you're busy working, listen, I work in doing this and it's hard to keep track of all of the investigations and potential arrests that are forthcoming involving the failed former president. If you have like a real job, I can only imagine that it is a mess of confusion. What is going on? Donald Trump has been arrested and

indicted at the state level in New York. Donald Trump has been arrested and indicted federally related to the classified documents fiasco. There is a concurrent federal investigation into Donald Trump's role related to the January 6th riots. So while that is going on, we also have to remember what's going on in Georgia with Fannie Willis. So let's go through the possible forthcoming arrests. I don't really know which one we would call the third or the fourth. What I mean by that is we don't exactly know which is likely to happen first or next. But the next federal arrest would be related to the House committee investigation into the January six Trump riots.

Those investigations led to criminal referrals to the Justice Department. Federal charges, remember, and they relate to allegations, belief, the suggestion that Donald Trump attempted to incite an insurrection, participated in a conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstructed official proceedings, conspiracy to make false statements, et cetera. All of that has been referred to the Justice Department for potential federal prosecution. That's what this is all about. The Secret Service agents that testified the subject matter, presumably about which they were asked and testified all relates to a concurrent special counsel investigation by Jack Smith.

Jack Smith is the same special prosecutor involved in Trump's existing federal indictment. This may be a second federal indictment. Spokeswoman for the Secret Service has so far declined to comment. The content of the subpoenas and appearances is not known. Secret Service agents who were close to Trump on January 6th may be able to confirm, deny, or provide more details on that story first told by Cassidy Hutchinson. You, of course, remember her explosive testimony under oath, by the way, under oath. We then get to the potential fourth arrest. The fourth arrest would come out of Fulton County, Georgia. This is the arrest, the investigation rather being

handled by the district attorney Fannie Willis. And this relates to Trump's attempt to overturn the results in Georgia. Remember that Joe Biden won Georgia in the sense that he received more votes than Donald Trump. I know that now and, you know, for all of the attacks from the right about postmodern leftists were words no longer have meaning. What we mean by Trump lost and Biden won is that Biden received more votes in concurrence with the will of the voters of Georgia. It's not super complicated. He won in the sense that he got more votes than Trump. That's where Trump's famous phone call where he said, I need 11000 votes. Give me a break. That entire fiasco is the subject matter of the Georgia investigation from which a fourth

arrest could come. A special grand jury heard evidence in that case for roughly seven months. And there were a dozen or so indictments recommended. It was hinted at by that zany and kooky jury foreperson that Trump may be among those recommended indictments. We will see probably during that session of the grand jury, the grand jury term from July 11th to September 1st. That is the time range during which we would expect that arrest. So as we continue to see that nobody else in the 2024 Republican primary

seems to be able to make any progress. Chris Christie, as we said yesterday, tongue in cheek, Chris Christie's polling has surged one hundred and fifty percent from one percent to two point five percent. But DeSantis Ron DeSantisantimonious, he's flat. Nikki Haley, 4 percent. You know, everybody's flat. And Trump is essentially flat as well. Nobody seems to be able to make any progress against Trump, despite now two arrests. Would a third arrest damage Trump?

Would a fourth arrest damage Trump? Increasingly, my guess is that the answer is no. We may find out about that soon. Let's now talk about an explosive development. Remember, law and order, folks, law and order. You've got to have law. You've got to have order. Explosive development in Trump's existing federal indictment. CNN has obtained the audio of Donald Trump in 2021 talking about classified documents that he has. This audio, which I am going to play for you, contradicts many of Donald Trump's recent claims during interviews about classified documents. It also contradicts Trump's claims that he declassified everything while president.

Remember, this is one of the arguments. Well, I can't possibly get in trouble for what I did with classified documents after leaving office because I declassified all of it. If that were the case, we wouldn't have Trump on an audio recording saying these are classified because he would have declassified them. CNN exclusive CNN obtains the tape of Trump's 2021 conversation about classified documents. Let's just play it. This first aired last night on Anderson Cooper's program. It is extraordinary.

And at the top level, it is notable for two reasons. Number one, it exposes Trump's crimes. Number two, it exposes Trump's lies. And of course, they are in many cases interwoven. Bad sick people. That was yourwoven. Bad, sick people. That was your cue, you know, against you. Well, it started right at the beginning. When Milley's talking about, oh, you were going to try to do it.

They were trying to do that before you even were sworn in. That's right. Trying to overthrow your life. Well, with Milley, let me see that. I'll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn't it amazing? I have a big pile of papers.

This thing just came up. Look, this was him. He presented me. This is off the record. OK, so Trump first says this is off the record. That's not indicative of anything related to the classification status of the documents so far. No issue. Let's continue. They presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some. This was him. This wasn't done pages long. Wait a minute. Let's see here.

I just found, isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like highly confidential. This is secret information. Look at this. You attack and Hillary would print that

out all the time. She'd send it to Anthony Weiner, the pervert. By the way, isn't that incredible? I was just saying, because we were talking about it. And he said, he wanted to attack Iran. He's in the papers. This was done by the military given to me. I think we can probably see.

Yeah, I'll try to see if you're out of his prison. I couldn't be. That is critical. That is critical. I can't. But this is Trump said as president, I could have declassified it. And a staffer says, yeah, and laughs. And then Trump says, now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret.

Why would you say you could have declassified something if you did declassify all the documents there? Whether Trump is now claiming he telepathically declassified, whether Trump is claiming that there was any default declassification that happens when he takes something, it doesn't matter what mechanism he cites for declassification, as bogus as those methods may be. He says right here, this is still secret. I could have declassified it, but now I can't. Let's listen to the last few seconds. You know, but this is how we have a problem. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, it's so cool. So look, we here. And you probably almost didn't believe me, but now you believe me.

It's incredible, right? No, it brings him. I bring some notes in place. So there Trump calls for sodas, calls for cokes to be brought in to sort of celebrate the disclosure of classified documents to people who are not cleared to do that. So this is extraordinarily damning. This is going to be an exhibit for sure in the forthcoming either criminal trial of Trump or something that will be presented by prosecutors at possible plea negotiations to say, look at what we have. We've got you.

You might be better off taking a plea. Now, not only is it abundantly clear that this is part of the criminality, it's also important to understand that Trump, with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever, no qualms, no, no reservations at all, regularly lies about this stuff. Here is Donald Trump in that whacked out interview last week on Fox News with Brett Baier, which was covered while I was away, saying there was nothing to declassify because these were newspaper stories and articles that he had and was showing people. But of course, we know that that is a lie. Here is Trump with a totally straight face, as straight as Trump's face can be lying to

Brett Baier. I couldn't do it. That wasn't a document. Brett, there was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not. But that was not a document. I didn't have a document per se.

There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories. OK, it is abundantly clear, folks. I mean, I know that we on the left have a problem. And the problem is when we see something like this, we say this is it, folks. We've there is nothing that these people can come up with now to explain this away. And then they come up with something. They go, no, Trump misspoke here or he misspoke there. Trump thought the document was classified, but it really wasn't. It was just Trump's mistake.

They will always have some way to try to weasel out of it. But we don't care about that. What we care about is what is going to happen in a court of law, because these are now legal proceedings. These are legal proceedings. Trump says to Brett Baier, I these weren't classified documents in that conversation. Remember, that interview was before the audio leaked. The interview was pre audio leak. Trump says I was showing people newspaper articles in the audio recording released by CNN. Trump is clearly referring to documents from the Department of Defense. He's not saying, look at what they wrote in The New York Times or whatever. He's clearly referring to government documents and he knows that they are classified,

that he didn't declassify them as president, that he can no longer classify them as an ex president, and that it is not something that he should be showing people. This is evidence of exactly the criminality with which Donald Trump has been charged. Make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel. My friends in May, we had more than three million people watch our clips, but not subscribe. If just 10 percent of that three million subscribes right now, we will get to the two million dollar two million subscriber

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The info is in the podcast notes. All right. Many of you wrote in about my coverage yesterday of Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s candidacy. The reactions were all over the map. People saying, David, you're wrong. This is God's gift to politics or David, you're wrong. He's way worse than what you're saying. He actually has no redeeming qualities and you're not being tough enough on Bobby Kennedy Jr. Maybe because you know him. I know him. I sat with him at dinner once. And then people who said, I appreciated you giving some context about Bobby Kennedy Jr. I want to be super clear. The negatives about Bobby Kennedy Jr. are single handedly disqualifying

of him as an even remotely serious presidential candidate. And I'm going to give you examples today. So I'm not going to be wishy washy and act like, well, there's pros and cons and maybe they cancel out. So maybe you vote for the guy. No, what I'm telling you is, although there are some things about him that I like, there are concerns so bad that they are uniquely disqualifying. I'm going to give you one example. OK, tonight, tonight, Bobby Kennedy Jr. is hosting a so-called health policy roundtable. You can RSVP and participate if you want. OK, this health policy roundtable is being held with dangerous vectors of disinformation, many of whom we've

covered on the program already. These are not just, you know, folks with slightly different views about vaccination or whatever. These are dangerous and in some cases, seemingly certifiably insane lunatics. And hosting a health policy roundtable with these people is single handedly disqualifying. Take a look at this. Mr. Kennedy will meet with leading critics of prevailing health policy, including Dr. Joe Mercola, Dr. Sherry Tenpenny, Dr. Pierre Corey, Dr. Patrick Gentempo, Maureen McDonald, Del Bigtree, Mickey Willis and Sayer G. Let's go back to Sherry Tenpenny in a moment. OK, these people,

many of whom we've talked about before, Joseph Mercola is a widely known purveyor of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories fined by the FDA for making false and misleading claims about his products and COVID-19 treatments. Dangerous, not a serious person. OK, Pierre Corey advocates for the use of ivermectin as a COVID treatment or cure, despite the fact that there's no actual randomized controlled trials showing that that works. Patrick Gentempo, chiropractor and entrepreneur who made an anti-vax documentary. That's who Bobby Kennedy is meeting with. Maureen McDonald, holistic health educator who is anti-vax and spreads false information about vaccines.

Every single one of these people, Del Bigtree founded an anti-vax and spreads false information about vaccines. Every single one of these people, Del Bigtree founded an anti-vaccine group, produces propaganda movies. Mickey Willis, activist who also promotes vaccine disinformation, has been denounced by serious medical. OK, so all of these people. And then, of course, Sherry Tenpenny. If the name Sherry Tenpenny rings a bell, it's because we've talked about her before. Here is self-described vaccine expert Sherry Tenpenny explaining that this year, this year, folks, it's almost July and it hasn't happened this year. Every one of us will have five or even 10 people we know dead from the vaccine. Now we're seeing the tsunami of deaths that I've been talking about since the beginning

of 21. Right. Millions of people are going to die. You know, when Judy Mikovits came out on pandemic at the beginning of that and said that that more than 50 million people are going to die. And everybody was like, whoa. And when they started interviewing me and I then asked me, what did I think about that number? I said, it's way too low. It's going to be much more than 50 million people in America. Wow. And we're already starting to see it. We're not. So the tsunami of deaths is coming. It's already here. And I believe that remember, Bobby Kennedy Jr. is having an event tonight with this woman as if she is an expert on health.

What's happening now and is starting to happen now is the tsunami of regret of the people that fell for the lies, your friends and family members and parents and children and all they did to your grandchildren just could not be told otherwise. But now that people are dying like flies, I mean, my business partner has 83 close people in his life that have died. I don't even believe her business partner has 83 close people in his life. Never mind 83 people that have died. Speaker 4 83. It's the beginning.

And I predict that by the end of this year, every person in this room and every person listening behind here is going to know a minimum of five, probably 10 or more close friends and family members that have died from these shots. OK, I still we're almost in July. Now, I understand we've got half of the year left. I don't know a single person that's died of the vaccine. And everybody I know is vaccinated. That's who Bobby Kennedy is having an event with. One more Sherry 10 penny clip just to really drive home how insane this is here.

She says that it's vaccinating kids as a form of child sacrifice. This is happening in America, people. Right. And it's your job to stop everybody, you know, and wake them up and shove it in their face. And if they defund you off of social media, who cares? Now it's about trying to save unborn babies and pregnant women. It's about the they now are actually starting a trial in to give these shots to six month olds. This is child sacrifice. This is the resurgence of child sacrifice from the days of the Babylonian mystery schools. Yeah.

And then she goes into religious nonsense. All right, folks. So listen, I think it's great that Bobby Kennedy wants a higher minimum wage and wants to deal with homelessness and whatever. This event, this event is uniquely disqualifying. Let's dig in now a little more into his view on vaccines. Bobby Kennedy Jr. recently appeared on Bill Maher's podcast, The Clubhouse. We now have the opportunity to hear directly from him. What is his view about vaccines? Bill Maher confronted him. Not really. Bill Maher told him, I basically agree with you about vaccines,

but you're not handling this correctly. You're going to have to defend your position. So we now have video of Bobby Kennedy explaining his views on vaccines. He always says, I'm not anti-vax, I just want safe vaccines. But you will very quickly see in this video that his views are simply not based. In fact, let's get right into it. On the side that shows that autism is caused by vaccines. There's over 100 studies. I, in fact, did a book in which I listed all of those studies and digested in other words, summarize them all and you can go and source them.

Speaker 1 OK, this is a classic anti-vax line. There's 100 studies that find a link between vaccines and autism. There's 100 studies and people accept it uncritically. The folks that have fallen for this, who, by the way, are mostly right wing folks. It's a whole interesting thing. Trump is now praising Bobby Kennedy Jr.. His constituency is heavily made up of MAGA people. He should probably be running as a Republican, quite frankly. But let's not deal with someone like Bobby goes 100 studies, link vaccines to autism, and then someone hears it and repeats it, you can actually investigate that. OK, there is not any scientific evidence that links vaccines to autism. And in fact,

on the contrary, many studies have found no link whatsoever. The foremost such, quote, study by now disbarred doctor revoked medical license. Andrew Wakefield was retracted. It's a bogus study. Most of the data that many people cite comes from that. But let's talk about this 100 studies thing. The claim that more than 100 studies link vaccines to autism is based on a list of papers that was compiled by an anti-vax website. They have a horse in the game in the race, so to speak. And the list has been widely debunked by experts. Now, don't take my word for it. Do what Bobby says. Go and look at the list. But don't just look at the summaries that he makes. Look at the actual citations. OK, many of the papers on the list aren't actually about vaccines and autism at all.

They might be about one or the other. Some have been retracted. Some have methodological flaws and some simply theorize about what could cause autism. If you look at those hundred papers, you will find papers that, for example, say when we think about why there may be rising rates of autism, one reason could be that we are better at diagnosing it. So we're actually just identifying more cases of autism. Another reason could be vaccines. Another reason could be, you know, whatever, Wi-Fi. Right. Just because you put vaccines on a list of things that

hypothetically could be related doesn't mean that it's a study that shows it. This is the sort of stuff he's citing. Tons of examples. There's one paper called A Positive Association Found Between Autism Prevalence and Childhood Vaccination. And it claims to show that there's a correlation between vaccination rates and autism in different states. The idea being states with more vaccination also have more autism. The problem is it doesn't establish any causal link. It's not science. It doesn't account for the fact that autism diagnosis is likely better in the very same states that have more vaccination. I'll give you an example, and I don't want to beat a dead horse here. I apologize for the violent term beating a dead horse. But it's it's really important to understand this. Think about the states that have higher rates of vaccination.

OK, think about the states that have better health infrastructure. OK, if you think about those states, California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, states that have better health infrastructure are going to find and diagnose more autism because they actually have protocols for when teachers observe certain behaviors, you would actually say, hey, this is someone who maybe should be screened for autism, etc. Those are the same states that have higher vaccination rates due to better health infrastructure and better education. So this is just one example. And you can go through and you can find it. It's a bogus list on the also important to note the very pediatrician that Bobby Kennedy

cites for much of his anti-vaccine views has disavowed Bobby Kennedy and says he interviewed me once and then completely misstated all the stuff I said. So that's another classic. On the other hand, we have the work of the CDC, National Academy of Medicine, all these groups that say we've looked at it. We find absolutely no link between vaccines and autism. OK, it gets crazier from there. Let's continue. Remember, this is Bobby Kennedy in his own words, giving us his view about vaccines, says 100 studies find a link. That's a debunked list. Many of the studies don't even actually deal with that issue. Let's continue over 450 citations, 450 studies summarized. And I have 1,400 citations.

The question for your campaign is... I'm not talking about this stuff in my campaign. I'm just talking between you and me. That's a ridiculous assumption. Of course you're going to have to talk about it. If somebody asks me, I'm going to. They're all going to ask you. Are you serious? This is all they're going to ask you about.

You think they're your friends who want to help you? No, they don't want to hear it. This is all they're going to ask you about. You think they're your friends who want to help you? No, they don't want to hear it. They want to go to the most vulnerable point, which is your accoutrements, because you don't believe in vaccines. That's not me talking. I don't believe that. But that's what they will- But do you believe I don't believe in vaccines?

I believe you are more- I just believe in science. I understand, but... Show me the science. Yeah, but let's not talk about, again, the science. That's the mistake they made. I believe in science, too. Listen, Bill, here's what I mean.

Let me just say this. We have different... Every medicine is required to do placebo-controlled trials. That's what science is. You give a group of people, a cohort of people, the medicine, and then you give a similarly situated cohort of people the placebo. And then you look at health outcomes over a four or five year period because many of the impact of the outcomes are going to have long diagnostic horizons along the incubation period.

So you won't see them immediately. You need to do it. Anthony Fauci has said eight years for vaccine. You need to watch them for a while. Those studies that the only medicine that never gets tested are vaccines. Speaker 1 OK, so let's talk about that. This they believe that this is their sort of trump card, right? This is irrefutable. He says we need these placebo controlled vaccine trials. This is a common ruse with these folks. OK, it is true that the specific autism vaccine link has not been extensively explored with regard to child vaccinations through that particular type of type of trial. But why not? The why not is extraordinarily important to understand.

The reason is similar to why we don't do randomized controlled trials about smoking while pregnant. Right. You could say, listen, I don't know that smoking while pregnant is actually bad. In order to say smoking while pregnant is bad, we should take a thousand women. We should have 100 not smoke at all. We should have 100 smoke a pack a day and 100 smoke two packs a day. OK. And then we spend 20 years seeing what is the impact on those

kids. OK, that would be horribly unethical because of what we do know. It is generally considered unethical to withhold potentially lifesaving vaccines from individuals if they are available and proven to be effective. The vaccines that he has been against for a long time for kids are so effective at preventing serious illness that how would you do such a test? Do you say, hey, let's volunteer a bunch of kids to go through adolescence with no vaccines and see what happens to them? It would be insanely unethical because of the risk that you would expose them to. You have to balance risks and benefits. And with the serious, actual validated studies that

have looked into this issue, not by doing it the way he wants, because it would be hugely unethical, but by looking at it in the ways that the CDC and others do, there has been no link established between vaccination and autism. And this is his view. So now we've got it. It's not people misstating it. It's Bobby Kennedy Jr. in his own words. And it's horrifying. The weather is about to start warming up, and that often means sweating and chafing and sticking. Sheath is the men's underwear that once and for all puts an end to all of that nonsense. Our sponsor, Sheath Underwear, has designed unique boxer briefs with an ergonomic compartment built to keep everything separate and dry and cool and comfortable by allowing air to

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When did the F your feelings crowd get so triggered? Joe, really great having you on. I appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. So, I mean, maybe to start, you know, it's it's increasingly as the American right wing and Republican Party has gotten away from serious policy discussions, there has been more and more of a focus on this idea of owning the libs, triggering the snowflakes, et cetera, almost as a stand in for policy where they they almost seem to see it as virtuous for its own sake.

If if liberals are angry, then we must be doing something right. At the same time, they have this phrase, facts don't care about your feelings, which often comes up in right wing media, et cetera. Did this all start because they started losing American public opinion on policy or what are the origins of this shift that we've seen? I think there is a resentment about not having more standing in culture. I think just seeing how kind of the liberal bias of entertainment, I think it's calmed down a little bit at least, but looking back at 2016, it was pretty rampant. If you look at the Clinton campaign, you know, leaning on people like Lena Dunham

and things like that, it was just, I look back now and I can sort of see where some of the resentment may have come from, but I do feel there is resentment of, uh, from conservatives about feeling like they didn't have a place in culture. Uh, and that, uh, kind of led, in my opinion, to the trolling as politics and which, you know, saw its apotheosis in in the ascent of Donald Trump in 2016. One of the interesting hypocrisies is that while on the one hand there is this F your feelings sort of idea from the right, it's that they also engage in much of that same. Well, this just feels wrong sort of argumentation. Just to pick one example, and there's so many right. The entire drag show stuff where children are being

recruited and forced and bubba bubba bubba and groomed. And it's, you know, for the most part, kids are showing up at any kind of drag event if their parents have made the choice to bring them there. Nobody's being recruited. Nobody's being forced. But they just feel as though it's very much wrong. And we could talk about a lot of these different arguments. Talk a little bit about that and the idea that it is also an instance sort of of a projection that they say, we don't care about your feelings. We care about facts. And yet so many of the arguments they do make are based simply on their feelings. Yeah. A lot of what we're seeing now, uh, is all feelings based, uh, backlash. And I think, um, it's, it's probably, um, best, uh, exemplified by, you know, the backlash to the Bud Light campaign and Target and things like that. I saw a tweet after my article came out, and it was Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA.

Yeah. Surprisingly, a lot of clout, I guess. Yeah, shockingly. With old people, even though it's sort of youth-centered, but it seems like only old people seem to listen to it. But anyway, Charlie Kirk tweeted that, I opened my fridge the other day, and I didn't know whether my ketchup was woke or my mustard was woke. And it sounds like a parody. Yeah.

But he was being 100% serious. And I think, I'm not sure if I put this in the article or not, but like somebody was saying, I heard that Chick-fil-A got a DEI vice president or just a high up person, just strictly for DEI. He's like, does that mean I have to boycott Chick-fil-A? I like Chick-fil-A. And so it's this feeling like we have to, uh, push back against these things, even though they're not, I mean, there's no effect on your life if Bud Light sends a beer to a trans influencer. I really I've racked my brain and I can't see how that affects anyone in any ways.

But there is livid outrage. There is Kid Rock taking an automatic weapon and shooting a bunch of Bud Light, which I suppose is supposed to exemplify, is supposed to show strength. I don't know how that shows strength. But anyway, and yeah, so these are all feelings. This isn't a policy that they have a logical rebuttal to. This is just I know that in my heart that it is bad for LGBTQ representation to be to appear in the corporate world doesn't need to have a corporate sanction. That is against what I stand for. And I am furious about it in my heart. One of the themes with a lot of these culture issues is using kids as a sort of shield in a way or not even a shield.

It's not a scapegoat. It's sort of like saying kids are the victims. And if you go back 10 years when I was covering the fight for for marriage equality, you would hear about no gay gay men are grooming kids and they are pedophiles and so on and so so forth. Now you're seeing it with trans people. Now you're seeing it with the drag shows. When it came to masks and vaccines, it was the kids. The kids can't breathe and the vaccines aren't safe for the kids and the kids aren't getting a say. And then it's well for when it comes to don't say gay and the AP history class in Florida, it's kids are being taught to hate America or whatever the case may be.

This is this is a theme, right? I mean, at this point, the use of kids as the victims who we have to protect seems like a clear cut strategy. Yeah. You know, with the Don't Say Gay initiative, they promised it was just to protect children. And then, of course, they did start doing it for middle school and I believe high school students. But they did start raising the age.

Yeah. And it's pretty clear they just wanted to get it out of school. And I do believe they want to protect children, but I think they're lying about who they want to protect them from. They say they want to protect them from predators, but what I think they want to protect them from is the possibility that they'll think it's okay to be gay, that they'll learn that if they feel as though they were born in the wrong body, that there are possibilities to explore that. They don't they want to protect them from even a chance of that. They would rather have them, you know, be suppressed, suppressed and go back to before that was sanctioned culturally at all.

So they want to protect them from reality. And then it's even more egregious with the black history stuff. I use as an example in the piece, the idea of protecting children from learning how Jackie Robinson was treated when he became the first black major baseball player. But that may be a slightly exaggerated example. I don't even think so. I mean, just the kinds of things that they want to protect children

from feeling weird or guilty about. It's it's ludicrous, especially after all the talk about six years ago when Trump was first, you know, becoming president about safe spaces. Yeah, you they're just ill preparing children from finding out hard truths later on if they just want to paint a whitewashed portrait of history for them now. What do you think or do you have an opinion when it comes to the strategy that the left should adopt? Because when it comes to a lot of these cultural issues, you can find arguments all over the

map. You can find arguments that say the left should completely ignore every single one of these issues, you know, androgynous M&Ms that Tucker Carlson is no longer attracted to. It's like just don't just don't even weigh in. Don't even acknowledge that they are doing these things. Another view is fight them on each of the issues on the merits. Make the case about the M&Ms. Make the case about AP history.

But like fight it on the merits for each one. Third option, expose the hypocrisy. As you were talking about, they claim to be about again, safe spaces, but they're essentially creating them through some of these policies. They claim to be against feelings based policy proposals, but it's exactly what they're doing. Right. So that would be like a third option. Focus on the hypocrisy.

Do you have an opinion as to what the best approach would be for the left on this. I remember right when Biden right after the inauguration, he was just or at least his administration anyway, was coming out with fulfilling campaign promises left and right. They were just kind of heads down getting the work done. And if you look back at the articles at that time, that was when M&Ms are woke. And what was it? Oh, yeah. The Dr. Seuss books. That was just those were the major issues and they were ignored in favor of passing legislation. There was just no messaging on the left really about it. And that seemed to work. But that's not an election. That's just getting stuff done. I think last year, the midterms, they were set what we've learned is that a lot of people who aren't on Twitter for the entirety of the day or listening to whatever is to the right of Fox News, bigger concerns, you know, like inflation seemed to be abandoned for trans athletes in a lot of these campaigns.

So I do think that a good strategy, I've seen a couple politicians do this, is just kind of point out how weird this stuff is like uh i forget which state i should have prepared a little bit but uh either tennessee or just some one state wanted to have genital inspections uh yeah student athletes to make sure that they're the gender they were assigned at birth. And that's pretty creepy, especially from the people who are constantly pointing out, like, beware of creepy people. uh trying to debate that might be a losing issue because you're not going to dissuade someone from from uh their claims that that trans people shouldn't have rights or uh black history shouldn't be taught in schools you can't dissuade someone about that you can't defeat them doesn't matter if you have the facts uh people you're not going to convince someone whose livelihood depends on on being confidently wrong.

So just point out how weird it is and move on. That seems to be a winning strategy for some politicians I've seen. I certainly agree with that, at least from what I've seen so far. We've been speaking with Joe Berkowitz about his article. When did the F your feelings crowd get so triggered? We're going to be linking to the article. Joe, I really appreciate your time and insights today. Well, thanks for having me on, David.

It was a pleasure. Sometimes it can be tough to maintain an emotional connection with your significant other. You might work in different places at different times. There might be a kid in the way. It can be hard to find time for date nights, especially because kids demand so much attention, which is why I love our sponsor paired, which is the app for couples. The app will prompt you with a daily question or a game or a guided conversation, all designed by leading psychologists. And the point is to just have a deeper connection with your partner, boost intimacy, build a deeper knowledge of one another. My girlfriend and I will use the prompts on paired throughout the day to stay connected.

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dot com slash Pacman for a free trial and 25% off. The link is in the podcast notes. 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, which is why I wanted them as a sponsor. If you don't want to take my word for it, Helix has been awarded number one mattress by both GQ and Wired magazine. And one of the things that makes Helix unique is their sleep quiz. I didn't really know what kind of mattress would be best for me. But you do this short sleep quiz. You answer questions about your body type and your preferences, what position you

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Republican challengers in the twenty twenty four Republican presidential primary. He is now using the cover of saying Fox News is no longer a fair place for him to have a debate as part of the story he is telling about why he will likely not participate, at least in the first Republican primary debate scheduled for August 23rd on Fox News. Let's be super clear and just call this for what it is. Trump doesn't believe that debating will be good for him. And I have to tell you, I don't know that he is wrong.

He is leading the Republican primary by quite a bit. And we're going to look at that polling in a little bit. If the debates go well. He would still simply be leading the Republican primary, maybe by a little more, but he's already winning by enough to win the Republican primary. On the other hand, if the debates don't go well, either because he stumbles or everybody else gangs up on him, make him look stupid or they treat him unfairly, whatever, it can only hurt him. And so Donald Trump is aware of the fact that the debates may be a risk to him, given where the polling is right now.

And now Donald Trump is making this abundantly clear. He went on Newsmax yesterday. He says he doesn't know that he wants to do any primary debates, but specifically he says Fox News, Fox News is now hostile to him and he just may not do it. Take a listen. And you have a hostile network like Fox. Like when I did the bread, the the interview with Brett, I thought it was fine. I thought it was OK, but there was nothing friendly about it. You know, it was nasty. And I thought I did a good job. I've been given credit for doing a good job. But I've also people said, why would you do it? Because it was really, you know, everything was like an unfriendly. It was always everything was unfriendly. No smiling. No, let's have fun. Let's make America great again. Everything was like a hit. So, you know, you have a hostile network and you have people that are obviously the candidates are against you and they therefore are being hostile.

If you're leading by the way, isn't that amazing? He's like, also, the candidates would be against me. It's like, well, yeah, they're running against you. Of course, the candidates are going to be what he wants the candidates to be for Trump on the debate. Thirty, 40 or 50 points. What's the purpose of really doing it? OK, so I mean, listen, reading between the lines, you don't have to read between the

lines very much. Trump is saying, I'm winning now. I don't really get the point. It can really only hurt me and it might actually hurt me. That is something that actually might happen. Trump then going on Truth Social Central and continuing the attack, saying, quote, So Fox News, which is down 37 percent of the capital, our ratings doesn't cover my getting the man of the decade award because of my great trade policies in Michigan or my keynote speech for faith and freedom

in D.C. and then wants me to show up and get them ratings for their, quote, presidential debate, where I'm leading the field by 40 points. All they do is promote against all hope. Ron DeSantimonious and he's dropping like a rock. Sorry, Fox News. Life doesn't work that way. How bizarre has the American political scene gotten? Trump then continuing to troth apoplectic Lee quote Fox News just covered from beginning to the end. The Ron DeSanctimonious very boring news conference at the capital B border, but didn't cover one minute of my two big speeches on Saturday and Sunday night, one for faith and freedom

in D.C., the other about trade in Michigan, where I was presented with the man of the decade award. The dissent this speech was just a rehash of all the things I did to have the safest and strongest border in U.S. history. Also, I'm up on him by 40 point points and also up big on Biden. Bottom line, folks, Trump is afraid to debate and it seems as though he is not going to participate. The first debate scheduled for let's see what we have here. Politico has a guide to the first presidential debate in the primary. The highly anticipated debate is going to take place August 23rd at Fizer Fizer Forum in Milwaukee, where the RNC is going to be held in 2024.

Fox News will host the event. Outline specifics on Tuesday. Brett Baier and Martha McCallum will be moderating. And, you know, it's going to be on Fox News and we'll have more information as we get closer. Trump indeed may not debate. And if that is the case, I can only imagine that his supporters will say it is the only correct decision that could possibly be made. All right. Donald Trump, during a deranged interview on Newsmax, praised

Bobby Kennedy Jr. saying he respects him very much, very strongly respecting him. They show B roll of Bobby Kennedy doing push ups while while Trump says this. I want to talk about this. Take a listen. I will say RFK Junior, who I've known not very well, but I've known for a while and I respect him. A lot of people respect him. He's got some some very important points to be made. No, he's a respected person.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The least surprising thing I would expect to hear from Donald Trump. And of course, because Bobby Kennedy Jr. is running as a Democrat, it's to Trump's advantage. It's the Trump's advantage to prop up someone that could damage Joe Biden. Now, let's talk about logical fallacies. OK, remember that with logical fallacies, we can interpret them strictly, but sometimes we interpret them colloquially or a little more informally. Strictly speaking, if we say I'm skeptical of Bobby Kennedy Jr. because Trump's a moron and if Trump likes him, then there must be something wrong with Bobby Kennedy Jr. Like technically speaking, that is the logical fallacy of guilt by association. But we have to be able to distinguish guilt by association.

Right. If I say Hitler breathed oxygen, so oxygen must be bad. That makes no sense. That's idiotic. Right. It would be Alex Jones level for me to say something like that on the show. I would never do it if I were to say to you, Hitler had a doctor. So therefore, doctors in general shouldn't

be trusted. That's silly. That doesn't make any sense. You would rightly cancel your paid subscription to this show if you had one, which you probably don't. But if I were to say Hitler supported Mussolini and Franco in Italy and Spain, that makes me skeptical of Mussolini and Franco. That does make sense. I would then look into Mussolini and Franco and said, oh, my instincts were right. Hitler's support was a red flag here. When we look into Bobby Kennedy Jr. and we find his questionable takes about vaccines and Russia, foreign policy, the 2020 election, all of it, then we say, all right, the fact that Trump respects him and is saying positive things about him was a red flag because

it is then borne out by the facts that we were able to find. Not surprising that Trump is saying positive things about Bobby Kennedy Jr. One other clip from this Newsmax interview, Trump attacking Fox for saying they are backing loser DeSantis. This is getting really wild. What their problem is, but they don't cover a lot of the things that they should be covering. They backed a loser. They backed a guy that can't win.

Ron DeSanctimonious, I call him. He's losing by 40 points. Some people say 51 points. He's losing by that. And they give him so much time. I watched today. They gave him a live, a live presentation down at the border, which was very boring. And all he did is say, I would use various policies and those were all my policies.

So, uh, he boringly said he would do all the same stuff I already succeeded with. That's quite, it's quite a criticism. If that criticism were true, it would actually be quite damning. And yet I got the man of the decade award last night in Michigan and I we had faith in freedom on Saturday night and they purposely didn't cover that speech or what. All right. So there is Trump going after DeSantis, going after Fox. Everybody's bad. Everybody's so unfair where I want to direct us now. The final point for this part of the show is going to be that it actually seems that against Joe Biden, it's becoming clear that DeSantis is the better choice.

Let's talk about that. We have new swing state polling, and I want to be really clear about this. This is general election swing state polling, which finds that Ron DeSantis would do better against Joe Biden than would Donald Trump. This does not mean the Republican maggots are going to choose someone other than Trump to be their nominee. This doesn't mean any of that. Trump is still the most likely Republican nominee. It just means that Trump's claim that he would beat Biden where DeSantis would lose is not borne out by the facts. Why do we care about swing states? We care about swing states because whether it's DeSantis or Trump, Joe Biden's going to win California, whether it's DeSantis or Trump, DeSantis or Trump are going to win

Wyoming. OK, the election is going to come down to a group of swing states in those swing states. We are increasingly getting data that Ron DeSantis would do better against Joe Biden than would Donald Trump. I'm not giving advice to Republicans. I'm just telling you this is what the data shows. If you look at a new poll out of Pennsylvania, you find that Biden leads Trump, but DeSantis leads Biden. Remember, these are hypothetical matchups where you say to people, if it were Trump versus Biden, who do you vote for? If it were

DeSantis versus Biden, who do you vote for? And people respond in Georgia of an important state that Joe Biden won in 2020. Unusually so for Democrats in recent years in Georgia, Biden leads Trump, but DeSantis leads Biden in Arizona, another really important state. Biden leads Trump, but DeSantis leads Biden. Let's see what else we have from swing states. That may be it for recent ones. Oh, Michigan in Michigan, Biden and Trump are tied. DeSantis leads Biden. Very small margin is statistically probably a dead heat. So the important takeaway here is that the Republican electorate right now, it's June 27th, right? This could change. Trump gets arrested a third or fourth time. DeSantis comes up with

some free pony plan that everybody loves all of a sudden or free zebras. Who knows? It could change. The point right now is in these very important contested states, swing states, DeSantis is polling better than Trump against the most likely Democratic nominee, Joe Biden. So it might be the logical thing for Republicans to select someone with a better shot at winning, but they seem determined to select Donald Trump. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. On the bonus show yesterday, I told stories about my flights out and back from California. I also talked about the homeless problem in San Francisco. In fact, I didn't criticize the homeless people. I said San Francisco didn't cause homelessness.

The egg man apparently didn't like what I had to say. Listen to this. Hey, Dave, I'm just a little bit disappointed in how you describe the homeless people. Sorry, these and the camps and stuff that you saw while out visiting San Francisco. Personally, when I see stuff like that, I go over and interact with people. I meet them. I talk to them. Speaker 1 00,00,00 Speaker 3,00,00 I drove by the encampments on the way to an event. I'm sorry, Eggman. I didn't stop to talk to people

at the encampment. I'm sorry I didn't do it. You're right. Speaker 4 00,00,00 Speaker 3,00,00 Get high with them. I buy them some food. I hang out. Maybe they buy me some food. Maybe they get me high. So those are just people that I want to meet and talk to a lot more than people on an airplane stuffing 50 bags in an overhead. I was not stuffing 50 bags in overhead.

I brought on a roller board and a personal item. My girlfriend brought on a roller board and a personal item. My girlfriend brought on a roller board and a personal item. And then we had the foldable baby stroller, which folds right into the overhead. And then we had a diaper bag. OK, there was nothing crazy going on. Dragging a kid around. I mean, look, I would love to hang out with you, but I would much more like to hang out with somebody living in an RV in San Francisco. All right. Well, I'm sorry, Eggman. Go and drive to San Francisco and hang out at the RV. I'm sorry I failed the Eggman when it came to the encampments. All right.

We've got a great bonus show for you today. I won't even tell you what's on it because I'm running so behind, but it's a great bonus show. I encourage you to check it out.