The David Pakman Show - 6/7/23: Chris Christie goes hard on Trump as trans ban blocked by judge

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Yet another loss for the so-called anti-woke movement as a judge blocks the Florida law that banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth -- A Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago employee reportedly drained a pool into the surveillance room, destroying surveillance footage related to the Trump classified documents investigation -- 2024 Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie comes out strongly swinging at Donald Trump at his first town hall event -- Donald Trump is wildly triggered by Chris Christie's 2024 presidential town hall, immediately attacking Christie for his weight, despite Trump being obese himself -- Fox News host John Roberts apologizes for making a joke about Chris Christie's weight -- Donald Trump again promises to unveil a great new healthcare plan, something he already promised in 2016, 2017, and 2020 -- Donald Trump re-brands his own followers as "MAGADONIANS" in an erratic Truth Social post -- 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr tells obvious lies during a strange Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk -- Tucker Carlson launches his new Twitter show, "Tucker on Twitter," and it's underwhelmingly bad -- Voicemail caller asks who the most reasonable 2024 Republican presidential candidate is -- On the Bonus Show: George Santos loses attempt to shield donors, Oklahoma okays first religious charter school, Texas sheriff recommends criminal charges over DeSantis migrant flights, much more... 🏠 Watch David’s “Replace Your Mortgage” interview at https://replaceyouruniversity.com/pakman 👍 Use code PAKMAN for 10% off the Füm Journey Pack at https://tryfum.com/PAKMAN ♨️ Bon Charge Sauna Blanket: Use code PAKMAN for 15% OFF at https://boncharge.com/pakman 📖 Shortform: Try it for free and get 25% off at https://shortform.com/pakman 💰 Public.com: Start getting a 5% yield on your cash at https://public.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

. We have to start today with yet another defeat or failure for the so-called anti woke movement. It's really important to understand that all of these folks in the current American right wing who insists that America is embroiled in a culture war around which apparently the survival of the country depends, which I don't believe for a second. One of the things that they will rarely, if ever admit, is that the war is extraordinarily one sided in the sense that it is the retrograde right wing that has chosen to fight these battles. And it has been the left having no choice but to react and say, hey, the things you're

asking for don't make sense. The battles you're choosing to fight are battles that we now have to get involved in, not because we want to, but because you are trying to discriminate and under the law, create multiple tiers of people and so on and so forth. But they are suffering defeat after defeat. I told you earlier this week that the Tennessee anti-drag bill has been blocked. It does appear to violate the First Amendment. We talked about a new Gallup study that finds that support for gay marriage is as high as ever

in the United States. The Utah book ban has backfired and actually led to the Bible being banned. And even the Book of Mormon is now being looked at to say, hey, wait a second, if we're banning sexual and violent content, don't these books also have to be banned? So it has been failure after failure after failure. And we now have yet another defeat. A federal judge has blocked Florida's ban on gender affirming care for minors in a narrow ruling and has stated gender identity is real.

The Associated Press reports saying gender identity is real. A federal judge temporarily blocked portions of a new Florida law that bans trans minors from receiving puberty blockers, ruling Tuesday that the state has no rational basis for denying patients treatment. They have many irrational bases, but no rational basis. This is a preliminary injunction from Judge Robert Hinkle, who says three trans kids can continue receiving treatment. The lawsuit challenges the law that Governor

Ron DeSantis signed the same week he announced a run for president. Hinkle said the elephant in the room should be noted at the outset. Gender identity is real. The record makes this clear. Despite the defense admissions, there are those who believe that cisgender individuals properly adhere to their natal sex and that trans individuals have inappropriately chosen a contrary gender identity, male or female, just as one might choose whether to read Shakespeare or Grisham. This is extraordinarily important. Now I want to we've talked about so many different aspects of this.

And of course, this is only a preliminary injunction or, as Mike Pillow says, a preliminary injunction. Regardless of how you say it, this is only a preliminary injunction, and it's possible that the law may be upheld. I want to talk about the religious component here with many of these issues, because when we talk about the religious component here with many of these issues, because when we talk about the abortion bans, the attempts to ban gay marriage, the attempts to justify discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, often there are religious justifications that are cited. Now, we could talk about how these anti-woke positions aren't actually the most popular positions we could. There's all sorts

of things we could talk about, but because we've done that already, let me briefly address the religious component to this. We often see defenses or justifications for these laws on religious grounds. And when I say religious grounds, I'm talking about Christianity. And when I say Christianity, I'm mostly talking about evangelical Christianity, that those are that's the strong religious movement in this country that is pushing most of this anti woke stuff. I am wondering whether it would be interesting to fight some of these laws on the basis that they vow that they violate the religious beliefs

of others. I'll give you an example. According to Jewish law, human life begins at birth, not at conception. It begins at the first breath. The majority of foundational Jewish texts say a fetus does not attain personhood until birth. So Judaism does not consider that life begins at conception, but rather at the moment of the of delivery. Could I or any other Jewish person sue saying that anti-abortion bills violate their religious beliefs? This has been mentioned before, and it would be an extraordinarily interesting path to approach, uh, to take, to approach fighting some of these laws. Now, similarly, we can look at gender identity in many Jewish belief systems. Uh, it is recognized that there are six distinct genders, including male, female and intersex

identities. Reform Judaism advocates for transgender justice, affirms the value of all people, regardless of gender identity. Now, of course, you could find Orthodox Judaism, which would have a different view. But is there not an argument to be made that these anti trans laws of all kinds, whether it comes to gender affirming care or whether it comes to pronouns or whether it comes to bathrooms or whatever the case may be, violates the religious beliefs and practices of many Jewish movements, groups of Jews, sects, maybe they would be called.

I think that there is something here and I know it's been mentioned in passing by some rabbis. If they are going to go the religious direction with this, I would like to explore fighting them on the same grounds. It's not going to be me necessarily as a nonreligious person. I consider myself, you know, culturally, and culinarily Jewish, for lack of a better term. But this really should be looked at. And the if we want to find a silver lining in this entire culture war that the right has unleashed upon the country,

it's that they don't actually seem to have the majority of the country on their side and also that they don't seem to have the law on their side when it comes to what they're pushing. You're not going to believe this because it sounds crazy. But it's true. We don't know the reason why. We don't know if it was an accident or if it was deliberate. But the Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage room from which important surveillance footage related to Donald Trump's handling of classified documents that he stole has been flooded because a Trump employee at Mar-a-Lago drained the pool into the surveillance room. It sounds unbelievable.

Best Levin has a piece in Vanity Fair about it called We're Sure There's a Totally Innocent Reason. The Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage room flooded amidst the DOJ's Trump investigation. Here's a report from CNN explaining what happened. Listen to how insane this is. And what I am learning and have confirmed is that one of the things prosecutors are inquiring about is that there was a flood at Mar-a-Lago back October, specifically one of the men, a maintenance worker who was captured on some of this video surveillance tape, helping to move some of the boxes in and out of that storage room. He drained the pool at Mar-a-Lago in October. And when that happened, it flooded a room and

that room had IT equipment in it that had surveillance footage. And so we don't know. Guys, it's, can you believe this? And it's not clear if prosecutors believe that this flood was intentional. It could have been a mistake. Right. But it is one of these things that adds into this constellation of things that just are suspicious to prosecutors have raised questions. And we do know too that prosecutors have received some testimony and some answers about what happened there. And some of the testimony is that the video surveillance system wasn't damaged in this flood.

But all of these questions are going back to did Donald Trump give some sort of direction or did these people who were working for him, this maintenance worker and another man who was captured on tape moving boxes while not his body man. Were they taking steps to inquire about the surveillance footage or want to sort of. All right. You get it. OK, so at this point, we certainly can't say Trump ordered anyone. Hey, listen, how about this? Drain the pool into the surveillance room and let's damage all of the equipment so they can't get the footage. In fact, there was that one assertion made in this report that that was not actually the cause of the surveillance footage going missing. It went missing for whatever reason. We still don't know. But apparently some are claiming that it was not a result of the pool being drained into the

surveillance room. But it certainly doesn't sound good. There's a very good tweet thread from Brian Allen, who says an employee at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence drained the resort's swimming pool last October and ended up flooding a room where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept. Sources familiar with the matter told CNN. While it is unclear if the room was intentionally flooded or if it happened by mistake, the incident occurred amid a series of events that federal prosecutors found suspicious. That's the understatement of the century. At least one witness has been asked by prosecutors about the flooded server room as part of the

federal investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents. According to one of the sources, the incident, which has not been previously reported, came roughly two months after the FBI retrieved hundreds of classified documents from Florida residents and as prosecutors obtained surveillance footage to track how White House records were moved around the resort. Prosecutors have been examining any effort to obstruct the Justice Department's investigation after Trump received a subpoena in May 22 for classified documents. So listen, I want to be really upfront with everybody.

At this point, we cannot say that this was a deliberate act or that it was ordered by Donald Trump. You know, sometimes in situations with multiple levels of people involved, they will keep the boss isolated for plausible deniability. And so it could have been someone else who said, listen, we're not even going to tell Trump we're doing this, but just drain the pool into the surveillance room and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We just it's all speculation right now, but it just has guilt dripping all over it. And there are those who will say, David, this is just too much of a coincidence. It's too much of a coincidence that in the immediate period where Donald Trump clearly lied about what he did with the documents. So then investigators said,

all right, well, you've got security cameras. Let's get a look at the footage. They slow walk providing the footage. And in the meantime, the server room floods. Although, again, in their defense, they're saying that's not the reason why we can't get you the surveillance footage. It always stinks to high heaven. It's yet another one of these incredible coincidences. But we can't say for sure that it was deliberate. And maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was just incompetence. I mean, let's let's be very honest. Trump ran on. I will hire the best people. And then he hired terrible people. And when it blows up in his face, he says, well, they lied to me to get hired or whatever the case may be. We know bottom line. We know Trump doesn't hire

the best people. And maybe that applies to the same person who was both in charge of the pool and moving the documents. I don't know. I don't know why the same person would be involved in both of those things. It's all extraordinarily weird. I want to hear from you. Does this seem suspicious or is it probably nothing? Let me know in a YouTube comment, in an email, in a tweet, wherever. And make sure, of course, that you are subscribed to the YouTube channel. Folks, we're pushing to two million subscribers and I would love for you to be one of the two million. I've mentioned this before. I will mention it again. Last month, we just got very strong numbers from May on the YouTube channel. This is pretty interesting from a data perspective. In May,

almost four million different people watched video clips on YouTube, almost four million, like three point eight million. But we have only one point seven million YouTube subscribers. What this means is that there are two point one million people out there who watched clips but didn't subscribe. Remember, you don't have to get notified of every video just because you've subscribed. But it really helps us direct the YouTube algorithm to direct people to us when you do hit that subscribe button. So please do it. Let's go to two million. Let's take a very quick break. And then we're going to continue. Chris Christie, folks, I have good things to say about Republican Chris Christie. He had a very strong town hall last night after this short break. is replace your mortgage. Mortgages are a really interesting thing in the United States.

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Pacman to save 10 percent when you get the journey pack, which comes with the device and three flavors. That's try FUM dot com code Pacman saves you 10 percent on the journey pack. The info is in the podcast notes. It is so obvious that former Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is by far the best Republican candidate running for president this year. He is at least for now not doing the anti woke stuff. He's willing to go after failed, twice impeached, once indicted former President Donald Trump. He sounds like a normal person, although we obviously have policy disagreements and the MAGA people don't want

him. We are going to look at clips of Chris Christie's town hall that he did yesterday announcing his candidacy running against Trump. And it's after watching this town hall, it's clearer than ever to me. If I were voting in the Republican primary, if I knew a Republican would be president, it would be Chris Christie that I would support. And this is not about glorifying or glamorizing the guy, but he's willing to tell what should be pretty uncontroversial truths.

He doesn't equivocate when he's asked about Trump and say, well, I'm not talking. I'm here focused on me, not on Trump. No, he understands you've got to go against Trump. And this was a very solid town hall. If more Republicans were like Chris Christie, we would have a much better country than we do with people like Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and these sorts of lunatics. Here's Chris Christie going right after Trump. He's not afraid. A lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog is not a leader. Well, let me be clear in case I have not been already.

The person I am talking about who is obsessed with the mirror, who never admits a mistake, who never admits a fault and who always finds someone else and something else to blame for whatever goes wrong, but finds every reason to take credit for anything that goes right is Donald Trump. And if we don't have that conversation with you, we don't deserve to ask for your vote. I completely agree. Nikki Haley won't even say anything other than, well, I'm a woman and I'm younger and I'm a person of color. And Tim Scott says there's going to be a contrast, but I'm not

making this about other candidates. Now, an audience member during this town hall asked Chris Christie, if Trump's indicted and your president, will you pardon him? When DeSantis was asked about this, he basically said yes. Chris Christie, on the other hand, is saying almost certainly not with a little bit of equivocation, but almost certainly not. If Donald Trump is indicted and you become president, will you pardon him? Well, I have to tell you the truth. I can't completely answer that until I know what he was charged with and convicted of. But I'm not going to dodge the answer. But I will tell you as a prosecutor, if I believe someone has gotten a full and fair trial in front of a jury of their peers.

And especially someone in public life who committed those crimes when they held a public trust. I can't imagine pardoning them. OK, so I'm hearing that is almost certainly not not a perfect answer, but a thousand times better than the answer given by Ron DeSantis. Chris Christie did head on face what he considers the biggest mistake of his political career, which was that some of the people working for him had that insane situation where they diverted traffic off the George

Washington Bridge as political punishment. I believe it was to the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, although I don't now remember 100 percent. Obviously, Chris Christie is going to minimize the degree to which he was the one at fault, but he's taking responsibility. I just wish more Republicans talked to this directly because they do. You can't get a straight answer out of almost any of these clowns. The biggest mistake I made in public life was that I put a few people into a position of authority at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who went on a frolicking detour to divert traffic off the George Washington Bridge. Without telling me, without me knowing anything about it, they used my power and my authority

to play a fraternity prank. And it cost me a lot. It cost me credibility. It humiliated me publicly. And I should have never put those people in that position. The biggest mistake I made. There you go. Biggest mistake.

Chris Christie also addressing the claim by Donald Trump that if he were president, he would end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. Chris Christie pointing out the way he would end it is by giving everything to Russia. And now I heard him say, if we made a president again, he would settle the Ukraine war in 24 hours. Did you hear that one? That's a beauty. That's really in a career of complete falsehoods. That makes the top five. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Let's say Donald Trump could settle it in 24 hours. Let me tell you how he would. He'd give Ukraine to Russia. And he said it. He said it on television.

He said it at CNN. He said, look, Russia's going to wind up with Ukraine anyway. So what's the difference? That's how he settled in 24 hours. He calls Zelensky and say, hey, guess what? Time to raise the Russian flag up on the pole. We're out of here. There are no other Republican candidates willing to say this. They just aren't willing to do it. Whether they believe it or not, I don't know. But Chris Christie is at least willing to say this stuff. And it is abundantly clear to me that there is going to be one guy on the stage with Trump if they get that far, who is not going to be pulling punches. Everybody else is pulling punches. Chris Christie is not pulling punches. Here is Chris Christie breaking out the Trump impression on day one of his campaign.

It was a mistake in 2016 not to confront Donald Trump early. True. Because I knew that so much of what he said was complete baloney. Like I knew it. I'm going to build the greatest, most wonderful wall across the entire Mexico border and Mexico is going to pay for it. Well, like I knew as someone who had governed that that was complete bull, but I was like, eh, people aren't going to believe that they're not going to believe that mistake.

It was a mistake. And, uh, he's completely correct. And he points out other bogus claims that Trump has made. He talks about debt and deficit here. And again, this isn't the Chris Christie cheerleading segment. It's there is something notably different about Chris Christie compared to all the other candidates and how they are relating to the issues. Notice that there isn't any anti woke stuff here. At least he's talking about moderately real issues. Here he is about national debt and pointing out Trump's lies there as well. Reason this is going to be different this time, sir, is because at least one of us is going to call him on the fact that eight years ago he stood on the stage in New Hampshire

and said he was going to balance the budget in four years and he left with the biggest deficit of any president in American history. He said he was going to eliminate the national debt in eight years. Trump did say that he added three trillion dollars to the national debt in four years. So a very, very strong town hall overall. It'll be interesting to see whether this moves the needle at all in terms of polling, which right now is not great for Chris Christie. One last. Clip from this, Chris Christie made the claim during the town hall that if Biden had been running against someone different in 2020, Biden would have

lost that. Biden was a poor candidate, but won because so many people so acutely dislike Donald Trump. And it's certainly possible that that is true. It's possible. Let me be very clear. I am going out there to take out Donald Trump. But here's why. I want to win and I don't want him to win and guess what if you put DeSantis and Haley and Pence and Tim Scott that's it I'll stop there on true

serum they tell you the same thing. Here's the difference. Here's the difference. You don't have to put me on truth serum to tell you. Okay? So that's why. There are not multiple lanes to the Republican nomination. That is a political science professor's dream. There is one lane. Yep.

To the Republican nomination. And he's in front of it. And if you want to win, you better go right through him because let me guarantee you something from knowing him for 22 years, everybody, he got to go through me and he's going to try to go through Ron and Nikki and Tim and anybody else who stands in his way. All right. So Chris Christie gets it. Chris Christie understands what's going on.

Trump's not a good candidate, but Trump is leading the Republican nomination. The path to the nomination is through Trump. It's not taking your two percent like Nikki Haley or sorry, four percent like Nikki Haley or two percent like Tim Scott and just talking about how you're going to be positive and whatever. The path is through Trump. And the question is whether Chris Christie will be able to do it. I don't know.

I'm curious to see what polling looks like in two weeks. In the meantime, all sorts of people reacting to Chris Christie's candidacy just by talking about his weight. Donald Trump was so triggered by Chris Christie's town hall during which Chris Christie attacked Trump on issues, on facts, on deficit, on Ukraine, right? Like not doing the anti woke stuff. Trump was so triggered that he went after Chris Christie because Chris Christie is obese. But Trump is obese. And this is quite a double standard that I want to talk about. Donald Trump posting to his platform, Truth Social Central, quote, How many times did Chris Christie use the word small? Does he have a psychological problem with size? Actually, his speech was small and not very good.

It rambled all over the place and nobody had a clue of what he was talking about. Hard to watch. Boring. But that's what you get from a failed governor, New Jersey, who left office with a 7 percent approval rating and then got run out of New Hampshire. This time it won't be any different. Trump then posting a photoshopped picture of Chris Christie from yesterday's town hall, photoshopped to put Chris Christie at a buffet with all sorts of different foods in front

of him. Look, I can't even identify what these foods are. Looks like maybe some kind of Italian American food or something like that. Hard to hard to actually see. So Trump just basically using fat jokes against Chris Christie. I continue to not understand how it is that Trump isn't being called out for the fact that he makes fun of other people's weight. But Trump is obese. Trump is obese. Yes, he has figured out ways to disguise it. And yes, Chris Christie is more obese than Donald Trump. But remember, there's this whole story where Trump claims to be six foot three and two hundred and thirty nine pounds, which quite literally puts him one pound away from technically being obese, according to BMI. BMI is not a perfect measure

by any means, but it gives us some some idea. But we know that that's not true. We know that Trump isn't as tall as he says. And it's very obvious that Trump is much heavier than he claims to be. And if you even adjust his height by an inch or his weight by a pound, he becomes obese. If you look at pictures of Trump next to Obama, they look to be roughly the same height. We know Obama's only six one, not six three at two thirty nine. That makes Trump obese. We know that there are pictures of Trump with former baseball player Alex Rodriguez. We know a rod is six three and he looks way taller than Trump. And so if we assume Trump is actually six one instead of six three, unless Trump is 200 pounds or under, he's obese. And you look at Trump and it's very obvious that he's not 40 pounds lighter than he

claims to be. He's somewhere between 10 and 30 pounds heavier than he claims to be. So I say all of this to remind you that Trump is obese, but he makes fun of Chris Christie's weight. And part of this comes from the magical thinking that is not based in reality that his followers fall for. Yeah, Trump is right. Chris Christie's fat, so he would be a bad president. But the guy you support is also fat. Yeah, but that's different. That's totally different. Or he's not actually fat. He's not obese or they're lying about this or they're lying about that. How does an obese guy get away with making fun of everybody else's weight? I don't understand it. And I'm going to have one more clip about this because there's actually another element to this story. Fox News reporter John Roberts also made a fat joke about Chris Christie. And then he ended up apologizing about the joke.

Why don't they ever joke about Trump's weight on Fox? Trump is obese. Here is the joke. I guess it's a joke. I don't know. From John Roberts to use a modification of a metaphor that we were using in the panel earlier today. It's like you have two milkshakes, right? The Republican Party is two milkshakes. And this The Republican Party used two milkshakes. And this one representing almost half the party, because that's what the polling shows, has got one straw in it, and that's Donald Trump's straw. Whoa.

Right? And the other milkshake, which represents the non-Donald Trump part of the Republican Party, has how many straws in it now? And now we're going to have Chris Christie's straw there. And judging by Chris Christie's physical stature, he could drink a lot of that milkshake if he wanted to. Oh, boy.

So, OK, so standard Chris Christie fat joke. And then John Roberts later apologizing and saying as soon as it came out of his mouth, he knew it was a mistake. Hey, before we go on, I just want to take a moment to address that because I really do feel terrible about it. This is now a very serious and somber John Roberts. Earlier on the show, I was making an analogy to describe the Republican voter pool. Right.

And I made a comment that I meant to be lighthearted, but immediately realized was hurtful toward Governor Chris Christie. I should not have said what I said. I deeply regret it. And I sincerely apologize to the governor. There you go. A very sincere and you can tell he means it because he used his sincere anchorman voice as opposed to the normal voice

that he uses. So listen, the fat jokes are in poor taste, but I just want someone to explain the hypocrisy. Why does Trump get a pass on his obesity? Trump has been obese for as long as he's been in political life. Fox News never brings it up. Chris Christie announces yesterday and there are already fat jokes on Fox News. And there's sort of this irony where John Roberts apologizes for making a fat joke about Chris Christie when this has actually been something they've been doing on the network for a while, and Trump has been doing to Chris Christie for a while as well. I don't know. I'm curious to hear from folks in the audience. What is the explanation for this? Is it that his loyal, loyal followers truly are the cult members we believe them to be? And so it doesn't matter.

They're sort of blinded by their cult following of Trump. Is it because they don't actually even care about obesity? It's just what can we use as a weapon against our opponents? If our opponents overweight, we'll use that. But if the guy we like is overweight, we don't actually care. This is the hypocrisy of the right wing. This is the nasty scapegoating nature of the right wing. They can dish it out. They often can't take it. And of course, of course, of course, of course, they are hypocrites. Period. End of story. All of these stories will be on our Instagram, which you can find by searching Instagram for David Pakman show. is Bonn charge. I have always enjoyed dry saunas. You get in there, your heart rate is up, dilates the blood vessels, can soothe achy joints and muscles. It's relaxing. It's just a great way

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videos. Of course, he didn't really lay out policy ideas. He basically ranted, claimed he will do things he almost certainly won't do and continued to tell the exact same lies that he's been telling for years. We're going to look at Donald Trump now announcing a new health care plan. And I know that many of you will say, well, but David Trump announced that his new health care plan was coming out two weeks later than August of 2020. Don't you remember when Trump said in Twitter, I do remember that. I do remember that. We'll look at that clip in a moment. Here is Trump now, as if he hasn't ever commented on this for the last six years and we don't remember or how many years now, eight years as if we don't remember the fact that he's

made these promises many times. Trump says he's going to come up with a new health care plan. I know. I know, guys. I know when I'm back in the White House, I will establish a special presidential commission really of independent minds who are not bought and paid for by Big Pharma. And I will charge them with investigating what is causing the decades long increase in chronic illnesses. I understand Big Pharma, I believe, better than anybody else.

Right. I know where they're coming from. And then I will ask them to publish recommendations for how every American child can have a safe and healthy childhood. There you go. So it's going to be another new idea of what we need to do on health care. Now, you might remember that when Trump was running in 2015 and 2016, he famously said he was going to have a beautiful health care plan to replace Obamacare. The only thing that Republicans proposed in 2017 would have led to 24 to 32 million people losing health care. So that didn't go anywhere. And then there was this classic famous moment during the Chris Wallace interview in 2020,

where Trump said it was only two weeks away from a new health care plan. Three and a half years. You don't have a plan. We haven't had. Excuse me. You heard me yesterday. We're signing a health care plan within two weeks. Right. A full and complete health care plan. Yep. That the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do. So we're going to solve we're going to sign an immigration plan, a health care plan and various other plans.

We will be doing various plans within the next two weeks. None of it ever happened. And Trump is telling the same lie again. And this really starts to get to insanity. How many times can you fall for the same lie? What was that thing? George W. Bush said, shame on you. Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. You can't get fooled again. Something along those lines was what George W. Bush said. And honestly, folks, this is just nonsense, nonsense stuff. At this point, if you believe, OK, now Trump really is going to get the health care plan

done. If you really believe that at this point, it's sort of like I've got a Brooklyn Bridge to sell you for a dollar that that's the level on which we're operating. Speaking of Trump's followers, Trump has rebranded his followers Magadonians in an all caps, erratic truth, social posts, Trump central. Yeah. Trump posting, quote, We are Magadonians. We are very smart. We stick together as one. We follow truth, social, central. We put America first and we will make America great again. Posting this apropos of nothing, just out there randomly turning on caps lock and posting this nonsense.

Trump giving advice to Fox News as well. Quote This is in all caps. Fox should embrace Maga. Their primetime viewership is down 37 percent from just a year ago, all because the very smart, even brilliant Maga Donians know that despite all the fake lip service, Fox News is pushing Ron DeSantis or anyone else for that matter, because they hate the greatest America first president to ever put on a suit and tie me. They are all globalists and globalists will never make America great again. So going conspiratorial, completely unhinged, completely

off the rails. And these are the sorts of claims that I guess his followers are still desperate for. All of that has been in capital letters, continuing in capital letters, attacking Alvin Bragg, prosecutor in New York, saying, quote, Wow, legal experts are saying that D.A. Alvin Bragg will be immediately forced to drop his week in disparaged case against, quote, Trump because his top investigator, Jeremy Rosenberg, corruptly colluded with a disgraced, disbarred and convicted felon and perjurer in attempting to frame me with a crime that doesn't even exist. They apparently became close friends with lifestyle money spent a crime. This on top of Clinton lawyer turned prosecutor Mark Pomerantz illegally writing a book on the case.

This is a former president of the United States. This is a man who says, elect me again, give me another four years and I will solve all of your problems. The very problems I didn't solve when I was president the first time. And he wants to do it while claiming everybody has turned against him. He's the biggest victim in the world and that he actually won the 2020 election at a certain point. Folks, you know, I said it earlier. Chris Christie is so obviously the best Republican candidate running right now. But the MAGA people don't want him. If the MAGA people in twenty twenty three.

Look at who's running and they say, oh, I want Trump. Trump is what makes sense. I believe Trump. I believe Trump will do the things he sense. I believe Trump. I believe Trump will do the things he's saying if that's what they believe they deserve to get Trump as their nominee and to lose badly, really badly. The problem is we can't just look away and assume that Trump will lose because it's not at all obvious that Trump will lose. And that's maybe the scariest part of all of this. After the break, we will talk about what's going on on the Democratic

primary side. You might be saying what Democratic primary? We will talk about that after the break. Are you tired of getting crushed in the market or the volatility? There is some good news, which is that Treasury yields are surging. You can now get a whopping five percent yield on Treasury bills. That is higher than any high yield savings account that I have seen. But buying U.S. Treasuries can be a complicated process. At least it used to be. That's where our sponsor, Public public dot com comes in with public. You can buy Treasury bills in seconds right from your phone. Couldn't be easier. Plus,

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It hasn't been my goal to talk very much about Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. We did talk about his campaign launch. We talked about polling. We talked about the undeniable reality that the DNC is simply not going to hold debates as they never do when they have an incumbent president running for reelection. But Bobby Kennedy Jr. has really been scaling up the nuttiness. He did a Twitter spaces with Twitter owner Elon Musk. And while there were fewer technical glitches, there were there was certainly no shortage of lies. And the

things that Bobby Kennedy Jr. is saying don't make any sense. They don't make any sense. And it's it's it's almost getting concerning to a degree. As I told you before, I had dinner once with Bobby Kennedy, with a small group, charming, smart, able to talk logically about so many different issues, anything, so many different things, knowing that he had some odd views about vaccines at the time. But now it's just building, building, building. He's become the darling of Newsmax and other right wingers. And we have to look at some of the claims he's making because they are so wrong and so dangerous.

Business Insider summarizing the recent Twitter spaces with Elon Musk says Robert F. Kennedy Jr. compares Elon Musk to the patriots who died fighting in the American Revolution. What on earth? And blames antidepressants for mass shootings. Elon Musk hosted RFK Jr. in a bizarre Twitter space. Bizarre is right in a bizarre Twitter spaces conversation littered with falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Kennedy compared Musk to patriots who died in the Revolutionary War.

He also claimed prior to the introduction of Prozac, there were no mass shootings in the United States. News to historians. Let's go through this in pieces. Kennedy said, thank you for your service to our country, Elon. We lost between twenty five thousand and seventy thousand people during the revolution who died to give us our constitution. And those people also put their livelihoods on the line. They put their property on the line.

They put their financial status and their social status on the line for principles. I've watched you do the same thing, folks. He can't. He's too smart to believe that. Right. He's just paying, obviously, bogus lip service to Elon Musk. I hope. Right. I hope Elon Musk. Elon Musk is a billionaire who owns a bunch of companies, has a net worth around or over 200 billion, although maybe it's less now because of the decline in Tesla stock. I don't know. The patriots who fought in the American Revolution, as Bobby Kennedy says, were mostly farmers, artisans, merchants and laborers who quite literally risk their lives and livelihoods for the cause of liberty and independence from England.

Elon Musk hasn't sacrificed his life nor his fortune. Yes, he's lost a few billion. What's a few billion to a guy who's as rich as he is? He's benefited from government subsidies, government contracts, tax breaks for his businesses. The patriots who fought in the American Revolution pledged their lives, fortunes and quite frankly, put so much more at risk than Elon Musk has even thought of risking. Elon Musk hasn't even consistently shown support for democracy or human rights in some situations. He has done some praising of authoritarian regimes. He's criticized some democratically elected leaders. He spread misinformation about covid. I mean, listen, I am not one of these people who says Elon Musk is

a uniquely bad guy. Check out my appearance on the Lex Friedman podcast where I say I think the focus on Elon Musk is just overblown. What he has done to advance electric vehicle technology and battery technology. It's fantastic. It really is. SpaceX, super interesting. He's done a lot of great things, but he's also done things that I think are terrible. And we're now saying he's like the American patriots who fought for independence in the American Revolution. It's just a crazy thing for Bobby Kennedy to say. He also talked about the SSRI violence connection. And he said that, as the article here points out, he laid the blame for the massive increase in mass shootings, not on guns, but on pharmaceutical companies for marketing

antidepressants. Quote, Prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost none of these events in our country. Now, of course, that's not true. Prozac was introduced in the United States in 1987, approved by the FDA. There were endless mass shootings before that, certainly fewer. The population was smaller. And I'll tell you what the real reasons were. But if you look on Wikipedia at a list of mass shootings, you see a bunch of mass shootings in the 20s when the American population was much smaller, not so many in the 30s and 40s and 50s. But then they start to increase in the 1960s. We saw mass shootings in the 1970s. We saw way more mass shootings in the 1980s before the introduction of Prozac. We saw even more.

So what you actually see is that the number of mass shootings scaled with not only the American population, but the widespread availability of firearms as well as lax gun laws. When you look at a general now, OK, let's then. So we've seen that it's not true that there were almost no mass shootings before Prozac. Just not true. What about a general link between SSRIs, Prozac being one type of SSRI medication and violence more generally. And this has been asserted before the claim that SSRIs cause violence. It's sort of like blaming the fire extinguisher for the fire. There's a fire in these all there's all these fire extinguishers there all of a sudden. SSRIs are prescribed for a number of different reasons, including depression, anxiety or personality disorders.

Most people with depression, anxiety and personality disorders aren't prone to violence, but some are. And if you believe, as some do, that compared to the general population, particularly certain personality disorders, might predispose someone to violence. You might be able to might might you might be able to find a correlation between those taking SSRIs and violence. But that would not be proof that the violence is caused by the SSRIs. It would be the classic confounding factor. This is like basic, you know, first level college research methods and stats sort of stuff. In other words, it would be the underlying mental

disorder rather than the medication that might be the cause of the violence. But it's really important also to mention that most people who are, quote, mentally ill are not violent. It's also really important to mention that if you also look at the studies that look at SSRIs and violence, there are often significant methodological limitations, small sample size, lack of control groups, failure to account for other factors that might influence violence like substance use or abuse, history of aggression, psychosocial stressors, economic issues, et cetera. So right now, the causal link

between SSRIs and violence is extraordinarily weak. Now, I'll give you another side to this discussion. There are studies that suggest SSRIs properly administered can reduce violence by improving mood and impulse control for those who are taking them. So not only is it unfair and misleading to blame the SSRIs for violence based on what we currently know, it actually could be the opposite. This is getting to be pretty dangerous stuff. And I don't really know what the end game is here for Bobby Kennedy Jr. As you all know, he's not going to be the nominee. There aren't going to be debates. I would love to see debates. And I think everyone who wants to run should run. But when you see the right wingers increasingly

excited and titillated by Bobby Kennedy's campaign, that really tells you a lot about the sort of campaign that is being run here. And it's not a particularly exciting campaign to me. I know that there's a handful of people in the audience who seem to like it, but I think that it is essentially a ruse, sort of like Tulsi Gabbard was a ruse. If I'm wrong, I will correct the statement in the future. I almost wasn't going to talk about this, but Tucker Carlson's new Twitter show is really, really, really bad. And it is an interesting media story to follow. So we're going to look at a couple minutes of this.

Tucker released episode one, episode couple of minutes of this. Tucker released episode one, episode one of Tucker on Twitter. It is ten and a half minutes long. It has been viewed over 70 million times since posted yesterday at 6 p.m.. What I came away with is that when you strip away the multimillion dollar production of Fox News, the expensive set, someone controlling the teleprompter for Tucker, now he controls it himself with a sort of a mouse wheel of sorts, a team of producers and the graphics. When you strip it all away to its bare core, for lack of a better term, it turns out that Tucker

is actually pretty lame, like lamer than the average YouTuber, I have to say. Let's take a look at Episode one. Tell me if you find this compelling. Hey, it's Tucker Carlson. This morning, it looks like somebody blew up the Kukovka Dam in southern Ukraine. The rushing wall of water wiped out entire villages, destroyed a critical hydropower KAKOVKA DAM IN SOUTHERN UKRAINE. THE RUSHING WALL OF WATER WIPED OUT ENTIRE VILLAGES, DESTROYED A CRITICAL HYDROPOWER PLANT AND AS OF TONIGHT PUTS THE LARGEST NUCLEAR REACTOR IN EUROPE IN DANGER OF MELTING

DOWN. SO, IF THIS WAS INTENTIONAL, IT WAS NOT A MILITARY TACTIC, IT WAS AN ACT OF TERRORISM. THE QUESTION IS, WHO DID IT? WELL, LET'S SEE. THE KAKOVKA DAM WAS EFFECTIVELY RUSSIAN. The question is, who did it? Well, let's see. The Kakovka Dam was effectively Russian. It was built by the Russian government. It currently sits in Russian controlled territory. The dam's reservoir supplies. It's sort of like at this point, we're 37 seconds in. It's already obvious, like, OK, if I watch another couple minutes, he'll probably just blame Ukraine.

You know, it's like, do you do we even really need to watch this? Then we'll skip ahead. This is sort of like closer to the middle. Just to give you a little more of a sense of this. Russians are dying. It's the best money we've ever spent. Graham says a smile spreads across his thin, quivering lips as he forms the words. He looks like a starving man contemplating a breakfast buffet.

Sounds like he's reading fan fiction now. The aroma of death has aroused Lindsey Graham. Thanks so much, replies Zelensky. He feels the same way. See, there's nothing dark here. Just two middle-aged guys celebrating the killing of a population. They don't seem like the kind of people who'd enjoy flooding villages or starting a famine. And in any case, who cares if they are? It's really not your business. Your job is to support Ukraine. Watch Nikki Haley, a Republican candidate for president, explain this principle

on CNN. A win for Ukraine? All right, so then he plays a clip of Nikki Haley and then we'll look at sort of the end and how he wraps this whole thing. Or will we now it's glitching badly. Let me see if we can get back to the wrap up here. Here we go. US government has managed to classify more than a billion so-called public documents. So at this point we can't possibly know what our leaders are doing. We're not allowed to know by definition that is not a democracy. Yet it's fine with the media. Secrecy is a powerful tool of control. Stop asking how we got so rich. Here's another story about racism. Go eat each other. That's the program. That's how most of us now live here in the United States. Manipulated by lies, silenced by taboos. It is unhealthy and it's dehumanizing, and we're

tired of it. As of today, we've come to Twitter, which we hope will be the shortwave radio under the blankets. Right. We're told there are no gatekeepers here. If that turns out to be false, we'll leave. But in the meantime, we are grateful to be here. We'll be back with much more very soon. There you go, folks. And there is a little outro with Tucker, I guess, fishing or something like that. Yeah. You know, it's it is very interesting when you see him stripped of the accoutrements of corporate media. It's extraordinarily mediocre.

The pace if you want to watch the full 11 minutes, I encourage you to do it. The pacing is very so-so. There's too much time spent belaboring certain points. It just isn't very good. And that's what's really interesting. When we look, you know, the real media, there's a couple of media stories here. What happens to Tucker's platform once he's just posting videos to Twitter? One of the things, you know, I am not saying this

to pat myself on the back, but one of the things that is notable about people who slowly build online platforms like we've done on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, podcast, et cetera, is you don't get a big audience you can bring with you. Like Tucker got 70 million views on this video because of things he has done previously with multimillion dollar production. And that's great. That's a fantastic thing. And who would turn that down? Right.

That's a that's a beautiful thing. But one of the things that's unclear is would he be able to build it in the same way if he hadn't been handed those things from these major corporate media outlets? And we don't know the answer. We'll never know because he was able to bring this large audience with him. But to all the small YouTubers and podcasters where we go, you know, we I think back to the start of the show, we got 100 downloads on a podcast and then now we're approaching

a million downloads a month and 75 million views a month on video across all of our different platforms. When we those numbers were built slowly over time. And there's a real question as to what is this stripped down Tucker going to be able to retain from that original audience? I'm as curious as anybody else. I'm also curious as far as a media story. Is this a viable business of some kind?

And if so, how is it going to be monetized? We will see. We will see. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here's a call, a very concise and pithy question. Hey, David, I'm going to grab Republican candidates. Who is the most reasonable candidate in your opinion? Thanks for all you do, man. It's Chris Christie. As we talked about earlier, it's so obvious who is the most reasonable Republican candidate. It is Chris Christie, a relatively moderate former governor from New Jersey who understands the reality that to get the Republican nomination, you have to go through Trump. Yes, he is a self aggrandizing sort of guy, but he's at least willing to admit some mistakes

as he did during yesterday's town hall event. He understands even if I disagree with him on the solutions, he understands issues in a far deeper way than many of these other people that are running. And that is probably why he's pulling one percent, at least right now. He just announced we don't have any announced any polling from after Christie's announcement. It'll be interesting to see in 10 to 14 days whether the polling moves at all. He's pulling one percent right now. If you came to me and you said, David, the next president will be one of these Republicans.

It won't be Joe Biden. It'll be one of these Republicans. Who do you want to see as president? It is obviously and undoubtedly Chris Christie from the current slate of Republicans. If you disagree with me, please let me know. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. Lying Congressman George Anthony DeVolder Santos has lost his attempt to shield the people who gave him his bail money.

He is no longer going to be able to keep them secret. That is fascinating. Who might they be? We will discuss. Oklahoma has okayed its first religious charter school, and this immediately is setting up a war over separation of church and state because taxpayer money is used for that charter school. And this immediately is setting up a war over separation of church and state because taxpayer money is used for that charter school. And a Texas sheriff is recommending criminal charges over the Ron DeSantis migrant flight stunt. Who would be charged and when and

for what crimes? We will tell you on the bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. It is the world famous and award winning bonus show. Admittedly, they are all awards we give out, but they are still great. I'll see you then or back on the program.