The David Pakman Show - 8/24/23: 1st GOP debate a farcical disaster, Trump/Tucker counter-programming goes wrong

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Alissa Quart, Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and author of the book "Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream," joins David to discuss the concept of bootstrapping, the American dream, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3R9L7wv -- The first 2024 Republican presidential primary debate takes place, and quickly become a competition for which candidate can prove they are the most extreme and unhinged -- A visibly depressed Donald Trump skips the first GOP debate, instead being interviewed by Tucker Carlson, an interview that did not go well -- Donald Trump Jr and radical Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene are furious that they weren't allowed into the post-debate "spin room" at the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin -- According to Ronan Farrow's latest piece about Elon Musk, associates close to Musk blame drug use for Musk's increasingly erratic behavior -- Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's former attorney, is arrested and booked in Fulton County, Georgia -- Rudy Giuliani makes unhinged and absurd post-arrest statements outside of Fulton County jail -- The Eggman calls into to argue that compared to Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence came off as likeable and charismatic at the first 2024 Republican presidential primary debate -- On the Bonus Show: Vivek Ramaswamy is accused of plagiarizing Barack Obama during GOP debate, MAGA fans think Atlanta jail protest is a set-up, Mars settlement might only need 22 people to start, much more... 🌱 Ounce of Hope: Get 25% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://www.ounceofhope.com/ 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 🌎 Bank with Atmos to fight climate change! Open an account at https://joinatmos.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

. Yesterday was what I am calling the official start to the 2024 presidential campaign. It started with a Republican primary debate on Fox News. There were eight candidates there. One candidate that qualified for the debate chose not to be there. Instead, being interviewed by Tucker Carlson, that candidate was Donald Trump. He was not on the stage. Many questions going into this debate, including will Trump's absence help or hurt him?

Will someone perform so well that it will change the dynamics of the entire primary? Will anyone fail? What are we to expect? OK, rather than starting with clips today, which I will play for you, this was a two hour debate. There's really no way to play all of the clips that tell you what took place. Instead, I'm going to give you my overall sense of this debate. Who did best? Who did worst? Who went directly at Trump versus who did not? And my sense of the debate overall was if the debate had been one hour long instead of two, Vivek Ramaswamy

would have been the clear winner. He came out hot, shot out of a cannon, strength and energy, getting the crowd involved, showing that he is the dynamic next generation candidate, even though, as most of my audience now knows, his views are absolutely bonkers on so many issues. But it doesn't matter because debates are not actually about ideas. They're about presentation. They're about tone. They're about imagery and they are about being articulate and interesting.

However, in the second hour, it didn't go so well for Vivek and Nikki Haley made him look very silly on foreign policy. Uh, probably Vivek's weakest area, Nikki Haley actually having a pretty solid debate at the end of the day. There were three candidates that were essentially nonfactors, uh, Doug Burgum, Asa Hutchinson and Tim Scott, essentially nonfactors. They didn't get to speak much when

they did just, but it was sort of like when they spoke, the audience clearly took a break from paying attention. Chris Christie had some good moments, but underperforming what I expected. I think Chris Christie did not get the questions he hoped to get. One was about aliens quite literally. And, uh, at other moments, I think the questions did not really set up Chris Christie to do well. He seemed a little bit confused at different moments. So I expected Chris Christie to do really well. He did fine, but not as well as I would have guessed. Ron DeSantis was a truly pathetic bobblehead, not only bobbling while answering questions, but sometimes while the questions were being asked, he would just bobble and do his thing, which is like a judgmental bobblehead. A very, very strange DeSantis did

not do well. And if you ask me who overperformed, it's Mike Pence and Mike Pence lacks charisma. There is no doubt about it. But next to DeSantis, Pence seemed charismatic. Mike Pence doesn't really have any business being president of the United States, but he has enough experience and knows how to behave on a debate stage that he did make some of the other candidates look inexperienced and out of their element. This includes Ron DeSantis, who Pence made look not so good. This includes Vivek Ramaswamy. So my sort of final takeaway is Vivek, probably the most energetic performance, but really faltering in the second half. Best overperformance would be Mike Pence, solid performance, Nikki Haley and Chris Christie,

everybody else kind of irrelevant. Now, the question then becomes, does this debate move the needle in some way? I don't know. Did the debate between these eight people with no Trump on the stage remind Republicans, hey, this is what the party could be like without Trump and we like it. It was less ad hominem and it was, you know, whatever. That's a risk for Trump from not being there. The entire party might say, you know, it's not about loving any one of these eight people. It's about I like the atmosphere better without Trump. Maybe that's one takeaway. On the other

hand, it's quite possible that voters saw this and said, you know, nobody here interests me the way Trump does. Yeah. Nikki Haley schooled Vivek and Mike Pence made Ron DeSanctimonious look stupid, but I'd kind of rather Trump. Nobody really impressed me. We don't yet know because it's an empirical question. What will be the impact on polling of this debate? By next week, we will know. We don't know today.

Let's look at some of the moments here. Here is what I think was maybe Chris Christie's best moment going after Vivek Ramaswamy saying he sounds like chat GPT and Chris Christie is sick of it. Add climate change policies. Then they are of actual climate change. Governor Haley, are you bought the paper? Hold on, hold on. Listen, listen, listen. Hold on, hold on. I've had enough. I've had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like chat GPT

standing up here. And the last person in one of these debates, Brett, who stood in the middle of the stage and said, what's a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here was Barack Obama. And I'm afraid we're dealing with the same type of amateur standing stage tonight. Give me a hug. Just like you did. So listen, it is apparently true that the vague Rama Swami very close to plagiarize that, that line

about being a skinny kid with a weird last name or something from Barack Obama. We'll look at that on the bonus show, but that was not a particularly great moment for Vivek Rama Swami. Um, Mike Pence calling him a rookie and getting jeered. Speaker 2 is not the time for on the job training. We don't need to bring in a rookie. We don't need to bring in people without experience. Now I do want to say something. On the one hand, Vivek Ramaswamy took a lot of heat. However, there is a world, particularly among those who like Vivek and again, they like

him already. So does it move the needle? But there is a sense you could argue that if all of these establishment politicians are going after Vivek, they must see him as a threat. And that may actually raise his cachet and interest Republican voters in him. Mike Pence did crush Ramasw Swami on the issue of Putin, but so did Nikki Haley. And arguably Nikki Haley's best moment was during a tense exchange with the vague Rama Swami, where she really exposed him as totally in above his head. They need to know the difference between right and wrong. They need to know the difference between good and evil. When you look at the situation with Russia and Ukraine, here you have a pro-American country that was invaded by a thug. So when you want to talk about what has

been given to Ukraine, less than three and a half percent of our defense budget has been given to Ukraine. If you look at the percentages per GDP, 11 of the European countries have given more than the U.S. But what's really important is go back to when China and Russia held hands, shook hands before the Olympics and named themselves unlimited partners. A win for Russia is a win for China. We have to know that Ukraine is the first line of defense for us. And the problem that Vivek doesn't understand is he wants to hand Ukraine to Russia. He wants to let China eat Taiwan.

He wants to go and stop funding Israel. You don't do that to friends. What you do instead is you have the backs of your friends. Ukraine is the front line of defense. Putin has said if Russia once Russia takes Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next. That's a world war. We're trying to prevent war. Look at what Putin did today. He killed Pergozan. When I was at the U.N., the Russian ambassador suddenly died.

This guy is a murderer and you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country. This is super strong by Nikki Haley and Vivek doesn't help himself with his response. First of all, first of all, Mr. Ramos, you have 30 seconds, Mr. DeSantis. I wish you well in your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon. But the fact of the matter, Raytheon and you know, you came off of it, but you've been pushing this lie. You've been pushing this lie all week. You go and defund Israel.

You want to get. Let me address that. I'm glad you brought that up. I want to address each of those. Speaker 2 So the reality is America, let's say you have no foreign policy experience and it's show. Speaker 1 And You know what? So listen, I know that there is a world in which you can just say, and this is kind of a wash. They were yelling over each other,

but Vivek really did not have any substantive response to Nikki Haley's criticisms to the extent that this is the bar that's been set for these debates, which, believe me, is quite low. And that was arguably Nikki Haley's best moment and one of Vivek Ramaswamy's worst. As far as Ron DeSantis goes, DeSantis, you know, even stealing Trump's catchphrases, somebody like Fauci and coddle him. You bring Fauci in, you sit him down and you say, Anthony, you are fired. Yeah, I mean, again, I don't the Trump lines to try to get yourself to defeat Trump is all very, very weird.

Here's Vivek Ramaswamy getting a big applause line going after the others for being sort of enamored with Zelensky. I would have support in China to be able to take to be able to take China and do what we need to do with China. Mr. Ramaswamy, you would not support an increase of funding to Ukraine? I would not. And I think that this is disastrous, that we are protected against an invasion across somebody else's border

when we should use those same military resources to prevent across the invasion of our own southern border here in the United States of America. We are driving Russia further into China's hands. The Russia-China alliance is the single greatest threat we face. And I find it offensive that we have professional politicians on the stage that will make a pilgrimage to Kiev, to their Pope, Zelensky, without doing the same thing for people in Maui or the south side of Chicago or Kensington. I think that we have to put the interests of Americans first.

He was secure our own border instead of somebody else's. He was referring. And the reality is this is also how we project strength and by making America strong. All right. So, you know, Vivek, I believe, is completely wrong on his foreign policy views, but he was at least forthright and strong as far as that's concerned. Ron DeSantis continuing to struggle. Total word salad about China that just everybody in the room seemed perplexed by. The U.S. has committed nearly 77 billion dollars in aid to the Ukraine war. The administration is now asking Congress for 24 billion dollars more. Regardless of the specifics of that plan, is there anyone on stage

who would not support the increase of more funding to Ukraine? I would not support it. Europe needs to step up. I mean, I would have Europe step up and do their job. Mr. Ramaswamy, but you're saying you would not to Governor DeSantis.

I will have Europe pull their weight right now. They're not doing it. I think our support should be contingent on them doing it. And I would have support in China to be able to take to be able to take China and do what we need to do with China. I would have support in China to be able to take and be able to do what we need to do with China. I would have support in China to be able to take and be able to do what we need to do with China. Not exactly a coherent vision. Here is Chris Christie getting booed for saying we ought to stand up to Putin. Tells you where the Republican Party is right now. Those homes and raped the daughters and the wives who were left as widows and orphans. This is this is

the Vladimir Putin. This is the Vladimir Putin who Donald Trump called brilliant and a genius. If we don't stand up against this type of autocratic killing in the world. Getting jeered for suggesting Putin may not be a great guy. Here is Mike Pence making clear. Donald Trump asked me to choose him over the Constitution, and I didn't do it. But no one's above the law. And President Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence that every American is entitled to. And we will make sure and extend that to him. But the American people deserve to know that the president asked me in his request that I reject or return votes unilaterally,

power that no vice president in American history had ever exercised or taken. He asked me to put him over the Constitution. And I chose the Constitution. And I always will. I had no right to overturn the election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024. So listen, it is a very low bar. But given that low bar, I think Pence overperformed, particularly relative to some of the other sort of clowns on the stage. Last clip here, Vivek Ramaswamy, maybe the strongest Trump defender on the stage, calling out those like Chris Christie who criticized Trump.

President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the 21st century. It's a fact. And Chris Christie, honest to God, your claim that Donald Trump is motivated by vengeance and grievance would be a lot more credible if your entire campaign were not based on vengeance and grievance against one man. And if people at home want to see a bunch of people blindly bashing Donald Trump without an iota of vision for this country. They could just change the channel to MSNBC right now. But I'm not running for president of MSNBC.

I am running for president of the United States. So strong moment that was in the first half for Vivek and then it went downhill. Bottom line, as I said at the top of the of the segment, it's unclear this changes anything but some interesting performances, some non performances. And the way I would sum this up is mostly a contest to see who is the craziest candidate. That was the real competition. Donald Trump was not at the first Republican debate. Instead, he participated in a prerecorded interview with Tucker Carlson, which was published

to the platform formerly known as Twitter at the exact same time that the debate started 9 p.m. Eastern time last night. It was a farcical interview with a depressed seeming Donald Trump clearly feeling the pressure from the multiple indictments. He will be arrested today in Fulton County, Georgia. And this I know it sounds like a joke. It sounds like a joke. But Trump brought up the issue of water pressure and plumbing with Tucker Carlson.

Have you ever seen a president so obsessed with toilets and shower heads and water pressure? And Tucker almost seems a little bit confused by it. Wait, they have sinks where no water comes out? Sure, you have restrictors. When I say no water, very little water. You want to wash your hands, right? Yeah. And you've seen this. And you turn on the sink and it's very little. Or you want to wash your beautiful hair, right? And you're standing under a shower. Then the suds never go. The water comes out very slowly.

I'm sure you've seen this. It usually takes place in new hotels and new homes. Yeah, you take a drill and take the limiter out. Well, you can, but now they make it so you can't do that. So they have a restrictor. It's called a restrictor. And it restricts the water from coming out. So I ended all of that. And you have to see these.

They let the water come out. There you go. Trump is very much against restricting water pressure and everything about this is indistinguishable from parody. Trump obsessed with water heads, water flow and all this stuff. Tucker doing his confused face like, wait, there's sinks with no water. What do you mean, sir? And this really set the tone for the entire interview. Tucker Carlson asking Trump, do you think Jeffrey Epstein actually killed himself? And here is Trump weighing in, but also not really weighing in. Do you think Epstein killed himself sincerely? I don't know. I will say that, you know, he was a fixture in Palm Beach. Yeah. I don't know what Barr said about it either.

I have no idea what he said. What did he say? He killed himself, probably? He said he killed himself and that they were going to do this investigation. They never did the investigation. It's never been public. And they hid it. And why are they doing that?

And clearly, Barr knew. But why would Bill Barr be covering up the death of Jeffrey Epstein? Bill Barr didn't do an investigation on the election fraud either. He said he did. And he pretended he did. Bill Barr didn't do an investigation on the election fraud either. OK, he said he did and he pretended he did, but he didn't. McSwain, the U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, said Barr just wouldn't let him do it. It was crazy. So as you can see, really hitting all of the important issues with this low energy, low

mood, depressed Trump, water pressure and Jeffrey Epstein. And this actually came up again with Tucker saying, do you think it's possible that Jeffrey Epstein was killed and did not take his own life? Do you think it's possible that Epstein was killed? Oh, sure. It's possible. I mean, I don't really believe I think he probably committed suicide. He had a life with, you know, beautiful homes and beautiful everything.

And he all of a sudden he's incarcerated and not doing very well. I would say that he did. But there are those people. There are many people. I think you're one of them. Right. But a lot of people think that he he was killed. He knew a lot on a lot of people.

He was killed. I think the more the closer you look, I'm not a conspiracy person at all. I believe he's only promoted like 12 different conspiracy theories in the last year. I mean, he's not a conspiracy person at all. Eventually moving on to something marginally more substantive. Tucker Carlson asks Trump whether he thinks we're moving towards civil war. I'm trying to parse Trump's answer here. He definitely doesn't say no. Do you think we're moving towards civil war? There's tremendous passion and there's tremendous love. You know, January 6th was a very interesting day because they don't report it properly. I believe it was the largest crowd I've ever spoken before.

And you know some of the crowds I've spoken before. And like July 4th on the mall, I think they had a million people there. They did not. But I think that the biggest crowd I've ever spoken before was on January 6th. And people that were in that crowd, a very, very small group of people. And we said, patriotically and peacefully, peacefully and patriotically, right? Nobody ever says that. Go peacefully and patriotically. But people that were in that crowd that day, very small group of people went down there and then there are a lot of scenarios that we can talk about. But people in that crowd said it was the most beautiful day they've ever experienced.

There was love in that. There was love and unity. I have never seen such spirit and such passion and such love. And I've also never seen simultaneously and from the same people such hatred. Right. Of what they've done to our country. So I guess bottom line, he's not saying we aren't moving towards civil war, although it's a weird way of saying it. Trump not pleased with the way Joe Biden looks when he goes to the beach. They love pictures of him on the beach. I think he looks terrible on the beach. Looks terrible on the beach. Skinny legs. Well, he can't walk through the sand. You know, sand is not that easy to walk. There you go. Sand is tough. Sand will get you every single time. And then lastly, talking about Hillary Clinton's voice. And Tucker has no idea what Trump even means here.

But you've been around long enough now. You've seen many elections criticized. I mean, Hillary Clinton goes crazy every time she talks. She says, he's not the president, Jimmy Carter said. He's not the president. Well, I am the president. Hillary Clinton called me, by the way, three or two in the morning to congratulate me the night of the election. Did her voice crack? Well, her voice was, it's very different. I will say I won't get into that, but what do you mean? Her voice was very different. Tucker's like, what the hell are you talking about? Her voice was different in what way? So as you can see, uh, very much looking forward to getting past the 2016 election and we're still not past 2020 either.

It's just living in the past. This was Trump's big blockbuster interview. That's what he did instead of debating. Is this the right strategy? I don't know. Let me know in the comments. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube and we will be back right after this. To the cannabis fans in the audience, did you know that you can have

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You don't type it out, but the number four, four years for indictments, both coupon codes will save you bigly at join pacman dot com. Donald Trump Jr., his fiance, Kimberly Guilfoyle and radical reactionary retrograde repugnant Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene were all furious yesterday that they were not allowed into the so-called spin room at the Republican debate. Why were they not allowed in? Because Fox News said we're only going to allow people in associated with candidates

that are participating. Trump said, I'm not participating. So we're not going to let all of your flunkies in to benefit you. If you want to have the people in the spin room, you've got to participate in the debate. It's very simple. Here is Don Jr. with Kimberly Guilfoyle in the background, bemoaning and complaining and saying they're being censored and so many other things right now, trying to ban people from actually having discourse about politics. Discourse probably probably shouldn't surprise any of us. But that's what it is. I've been told

by others that I would be able to go in. So they said we were able to go in and they said they were. And now that we're here and the candidate that said you can't go in the spinner, they're telling me right now, let me into the spin room. They're telling him he works for security here, but they're telling him that I'm not allowed to go in there because the candidates that they've been boosting while simultaneously trying to cut down Trump. Remember, it's not about boosting or cutting down Trump. Trump's not participating in the debate. The point of the spin room is to have people there arguing that the performance of the person they support was good and Trump didn't perform. He wasn't there. So why would

the spin room people be in? It doesn't make any sense. And then Marjorie Taylor Greene as well, saying that it is an issue of censorship. Listen to this. Go ahead and let you know. And for the audience listening, they just blocked us out. They would not allow myself, Matt Gates, any other Trump surrogates to go into the spin room. We argued with them, talked to them. We showed the correct credentials. We had spin room credentials and they would not let us in. So this is censorship from Fox News. This is censorship not allowing surrogates for President Trump to get.

Listen, the spin room is for the candidates who participated. It's so simple. And this is also so satisfying to watch. I have to admit, if I'm honest with you and with myself, I find this extremely satisfying. Not that anybody's being censored, but just that if you don't participate, then you really don't participate. Your acolytes don't get into the spin room, period. That is it. They always want their cake and they want to eat it, too. Or maybe, you know, McDonald's or KFC applies better since we're talking here about Donald Trump.

You didn't go. So your flunkies don't get in. Maybe Trump will show up to the next debate. We will see. I want to briefly address a really good article written by Ronan Farrow about new, relatively new Twitter owner now called X Elon Musk. One of the things that we've been wondering about more and more is what exactly is happening with Elon Musk. The decisions he's making seems so boneheaded. He's going to ban the ability to block people on Twitter. The entire Twitter blue fiasco at all of these decisions seems so harebrained that we're

left to wonder, is he deliberately trying to tank it for some reason? Is he having some kind of mental health crisis? Is there someone else who's actually making these decisions like the decisions made by Musk about the former Twitter makes such little sense that we wonder what is the explanation? Well, according to Ronan Farrow's reporting, Elon Musk's erratic behavior may be caused by escalating drug use. If we actually go to the original reporting of Ronan Farrow, there is this critical paragraph towards the bottom, which I will read to you. In 2018, The Times reported that members of the Tesla board had grown concerned

about Musk's use of the prescription sleep aid Ambien, which can cause hallucinations. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that he uses ketamine, which has gained popularity as a depression treatment and as a party drug. And several people familiar with his habits have confirmed this. Musk, who smoked pot on Rogan's podcast, prompting a NASA safety review of SpaceX, has perhaps understandably declined to comment on the reporting about ketamine, but he has not disputed it. He tweeted once zombifying people with SSRIs for sure happens too much. From what I've seen with friends, ketamine taken occasionally is a better option. Associates suggested Musk's use

has escalated in recent years and that the drug alongside his isolation and increasingly embattled relationship with the press might contribute to his tendency to make chaotic and impulsive statements and decisions. Amit Anand, a leading ketamine researcher, said to Ronan Farrow that it can contribute to unpredictable behavior. Little bit of ketamine is similar to alcohol, causes disinhibition. At higher doses, it can cause dissociation. You feel detached from your body and surroundings. You can feel grandiose like you have special powers or talents. People do impulsive things, inadvisable things at work.

Depends on the kind of work for a librarian. There's less risk. You're a pilot. It can cause big problems. So listen, this is this is one bit of reporting. Is it true or is it not? We don't know. What I can tell you is that

this is the most sensible and believable explanation for Elon Musk's behavior that I've heard so far. Whether it's true, I don't know. But the point here is there really isn't any other explanation for why he has been seemingly running Twitter into the ground and making decision after decision that just drives people off of the platform and also hurts Twitter's market value, which has by most reports dropped at least 50, if not 60, 70 or even 80 percent since Elon Musk purchased it. If you say to me, what's the most sensible and relatively understandable explanation? It would be, oh, he's abusing drugs and combinations of drugs and making decisions while on those drugs.

I would go, oh, OK, that actually explains all of it. Whereas if you have to search for a different explanation, it's actually significantly more difficult to find one that really explains all of the behavior. At some point, maybe we will learn more about it. today, Twitter or X, as it is now known, increasingly desolate, increasingly pointless to the point where we at the show and so many of our viewers who contact me say, I'm just kind of off of it. I didn't leave. I didn't cancel my account. I just I don't see anything interesting on it.

And I have no interest in trying to be interesting on the platform. Where will Twitter be in another year? I don't know. Let me know what you think in the comments. Staying properly nourished is just so important to feeling your best every day. Our sponsor AG one makes it so simple. Just a single scoop of AG one a day. You get 75 high quality vitamins and probiotics from whole food sources. You're covered for the day. Half of Americans are deficient in vitamins A and C and magnesium. Not everybody has time to perfectly plan every meal. And I don't know that any of us want to be spending a whole bunch of money on endless different vitamins and supplements. AG1 just simplifies it and it's more cost effective.

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this idea of bootstrapping, pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. The idea is while it may be an impossibility, according to mechanical physics to pull oneself up by their own bootstraps, it's the idea of taking responsibility for your situation. The idea of deciding that you're going to improve your circumstances for yourself. And it can be very motivating in some sense, but it also has been used to sort of blame the poor for their circumstances, to blame those in less than ideal circumstances for the circumstances in which they find themselves. Can you talk to us a little bit about where this concept came from and originated? Yeah, it's so funny that we're talking today and it's right after the Republican, the first Republican debate. And it was just teeming with mentions of, you know, I did this myself.

Tim Scott, what's his name? You know, the new salvation of Ramaswamy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who is really arguably did not have anything to do with bootstraps. No. Born on third base, etc. But they kept kind of hearkening back to this mythos as a way to pop themselves up and make themselves into the deserving candidate. And it's because it worked for Donald Trump in part, again, another false bootstrapping narrative. But yeah, the secret of the bootstrap idiom is that it didn't mean that at all. It started out as an absurdity. They described a farmer trying to pull himself up by his bootstraps. He was like the town fool. And they described it, this is like in the 19th century, and they described an inventor who was kind of quixotic and in the Midwest. and again he was uh completely um it was so pulling himself up by his boot it's like tilting in windmills and then over time this idea that somehow you could pull out

your boots on and then pull yourself up which is the paradox that's actually being asked of us right an impossible paradox in this country um becomes normalized and becomes something that we aspire to and what's interesting you know because i looked at a lot of these figures of speech, Horatio Alge's story, pulling yourself up by your bootstrap, meritocracy also did not mean what we think it means, coined in 1958, was actually seen as, you know, another kind of almost impossible dream, you know, it wasn't seen as a goal.

And it just sort of interested me that we of course, these American idioms begin as jokes without a doubt. And one of the other narratives that I think is important here is how this ties into perception of and support or opposition to a variety of social programs. I mean, these ideas, whether they start as a joke or not, they become very useful often to a particular sort of politics that seeks to either justify or attack social spending programs, programs that seek to help people.

And this could be anything from food stamps throughout the pandemic. It was there were a number of different programs that were relevant to this idea of helping businesses or not helping individuals or not. Part of this seems to be also the implicit criticism that if you've received help, that is a less valid way of achieving. Is that also an element to this? Oh, absolutely. It's a very punitive framework. And I'm glad you brought up the pandemic error programs because things like the child tax credit or like the PPP loans or, you know, the Rescue Act and the relaxed

so-called standards for Medicaid and food stamps, which allowed people to stay on the rolls, allowed people to get food stamps when they needed them. They had an amplified budget during the pandemic. They've now been kind of cruelly cut back. I actually was just talking to someone in San Francisco who is starving because they can no longer get enough food stamps and they're disabled as well. And that is the kind of punishment that comes with this expectation that we're supposed to do this on our own. And those brief moments like the pandemic, like the 1930s, you know, WPA and other social programs of the New Deal that gave people

what they needed without guilt and shame. You know, to me, those, I know that we can't always sustain them economically, but I think the spirit of generosity and the general impetus, including things like UBI, which the technology crowd likes, that should be a focus. You know, that should be a focus for keeping people whole, especially as we now we're going to see, you know, AI and robots supplanting a lot of us. You know, we really need to think about how do we keep a baseline. But first, we have to get rid of some of these ideological carapace where we humiliate people around not doing it themselves. I mean, the truth of the matter is none of us really do it ourselves. And I can get into that.

I mean, from, you know, infancy on, we are dependent on others. Yeah, I talk about that a lot. You know, the idea that sometimes I'll even be interviewed about my show and people say, wow, it's incredible how you've like really built this thing completely by yourself sort of thing. And I'll think to myself like, yeah, you know, there was like a combination of initiative as well as timing and sort of like odds. But there's also the fact that I had a couple of years, thanks to living at home

and parents who were stable to just kind of try this out before I had to get a real job. That's a circumstance beyond my control where if I had had to get a full time job right out of grad school or even just skipped grad school and gotten a full time job right out of undergrad, I wouldn't have been able to do this. The fact that YouTube developed and existed and provided a place to host video files, which previously would have cost an insane amount of money. But even beyond that, employees who went to public universities who now work for me, whose educations were subsidized by taxpayers, all of these different things. It's so hard to even it seems silly almost to feel like you've bootstrapped or done it

all yourself when you really think it through. Yeah. And if you see people like Elon Musk, who, you know, the federal government for Tesla and other products gave them, you know, research and development grants, you know, state of California gave them tax breaks. You know, it just, that's just at the top. But there's so many of us, yeah, who walk on city streets and drink clean water and are dependent on, as you said, schooling, who, you know, dependent on, you know, people fixing the motorways, you know, depending on a range of services that, and also just dependent on the people in our social milieu, you know, that we, even

people who imagine they're doing it on their own are like dependent on their wives or their partner's daycare for their kids and daycare providers if they're if they're paying for that and you know i think there's a lot of um hidden and invisible labor that gets um kind of deleted as somebody put it at one of my sources invisibilized which i sort of love the rawness invisibilized by um some of these story lines that we're telling ourselves in this country and it deletes it deletes people it deletes what they call in business also externalities right which is like all the all the things you know including things like uh you know infrastructure tax breaks that have allowed some of these uh people who claim

to do it on their own to thrive and also their workers let's put it that way i mean i'll never forget michael bloomberg when he was on this was another democratic debate with uh bernie sanders you know, I did this, you know, I built this company by myself. And Bernie said, I think your employees would be very surprised. Right. That's like a great, you know, just like those kind of constant reminders to people that, yeah, there's a lot of people, as you just said, you have people. I got an email from one of them telling me, you know, what's your schedule today, you know, for your show? Right, right. What importance do you place on the personal hypocrisies of folks that are involved with these stories?

I mean, just to give a couple of examples, you talked about Trump, who started his business with a small loan of a million dollars from his dad, as he famously said. But like Ayn Rand, for example, who received benefits from many of these programs while advocating for self-sufficiency and against them and self-reliance, et cetera, and, you know, fill that in with a thousand other stories in between. What level of importance or significance do you place on the personal hypocrisies of some of those who advocate for these types of thinking? Oh, yeah. I mean, I I I sort of so there's something in in literature. I was a grad school drawback, the biographical fallacy. Like we weren't supposed to look at the actual human biographies of the people doing the writing. You know, we're supposed to just look at the

writing. It's like a short. But you can't help it when you have someone like anrand or rachel alger uh uh who are these architects uh so part and obviously i mean uh political speeches people like donald trump or herbert hoover who who whose personal biography does not match at all with their with what they're arguing for even what they're saying about themselves yeah but someone like anrand um was dependent on medicare and social security at the end of her life right they try to justify this the anrandians when you know they they some of them have sent me letters you know oh it's because she she had to pay taxes so because she you know the the cruelty of having to be a taxpayer justified the fact that she got Social Security and Medicare. But it's pretty obvious that that flies in the face of

her ideology of utter self-sufficiency and dominance and power and will. But the truth is, none of us have a will and dominance to victor over old age and death. And part of this is a sort of post-human sensibility, I think, where, you know, you don't have a body, you don't have a, you're not dependent on others profoundly when you're born. I mean, my line here is, if you think you're self-made, call your mother. You know, we come from people yeah so yeah so in other words andran's biography is very pertinent and this idea you know she came from russia she was um uh you know immigrant russian jewish uh striver who uh you know really reacted badly i think it was to the the first um, the first communist revolution when

her family left, and then became, you know, this very strident and extreme capitalist. And the fact that she was allowed to immigrate as a white immigrant in the 20th century is sort of, again, one of those externalities like, well, that that happened. You came to a country that permitted you to become yourself. And yet that so that's a form of care, right, that we have to acknowledge as well. When it comes to making the empirical case against some of these ideas, one sort of package of of statistics that's often cited is about mobility and that those who are born into poverty are statistically very unlikely to leave it.

And you know, you often hear stories of celebrity and athletic performance. But like when you talk about big picture, it is true that you are far more likely to live and remain in poverty if you were born into a poor family. And conversely, that you're quite likely to stay wealthy if you're born to a wealthy family. And that would seem to be a relatively open and shut case, but it's not accepted as such. Can by all. Can you talk a little bit more about making the empirical case for this self-made ideology sort of not matching reality? Yeah, I mean, I think I actually think it

matched more in the earlier part of the century. So, I mean, one of the reasons why people like Enron might have had traction then wasn't just that people were pitiless, but that there were immigrants who were making it more easily. And there's a famous study by Raj Chetty and other scholars, I think they were all Harvard affiliated, that people born in 1940 had a 92 or 93% chance of excelling beyond their parents. And people born in the 80s had a 50% chance. So that's like a pretty striking shift in mobility numbers. And there's loads more, you know, what, you know, mobility, if you're a parent, mobility, if you know, if you're an American of color, a woman of color, you know, all this is not what we've been promised and what the story would describe. There are a lot of blocks on

things like mobility, which is an opportunity, which isn't to say that talent doesn't matter. So I feel like that's often the pushback to this, like, oh, but, you know, there are people who are objectively gifted and they work really hard and they put their butt in the chair and they achieve these things. I'm like, yeah, that's great. But I do think we need to think about the obstacles for many people from having that, even that possibility, right? And celebrating when people can achieve this, you know, my organization, HRP, Economic Hardship Reporting Project, we had a series of articles about people who, I think it was called like the person who said yes, like people who had, one guy was formerly homeless, and he's a fellow at EHRP, he's a wonderful writer and a journalist, and he

found a mentor who said yes, who helped him. And that was talent, and that meant, that was opportunity. That was actually also like a university that gave him, you know, a safe haven. Right. So that talk about externalities, that was an externality there. Right. That actually did make a difference. So I think, you know, that we can victor over some of these limits, but it's very hard for a lot of people and we, we should be talking about that openly. The book is bootstrapped, liberating ourselves from the American dream. And we've been speaking with the book's author, Alyssa court.

Really appreciate your time today and your insights. Oh, thank you again, David. Lovely to be you. Donald Trump is expected to turn himself in for arrest and booking at Fulton County Jail in Georgia today, sometime between the six and eight p.m. Eastern time hours. He will be reportedly flying down to Atlanta, leaving New Jersey around four p.m. Eastern yesterday. Co-defendant Rudy Giuliani went down to Georgia.

The devil went down to Georgia. Is that the way the song goes? Turned himself in. So did Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell whacked Trump lawyers. And you know what? They effed around and they found out. That is for sure. The mugshots are absolutely stunning. We have the images here. This is Rudy Giuliani's criminal mugshot from the Fulton County Sheriff's Office. If you are listening today and not watching, you can easily find the mugshot. It is really, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words. And seeing former popular New York City mayor, Mr. 9-11, America's mayor, whatever he was, a prosecutor himself prosecuting mobsters now being prosecuted himself under very similar RICO statutes to those which he used against mobsters. It is really a fall from grace and he has only himself to blame. We also have the mugshot from Jenna Ellis.

This is the former Trump sort of attorney, although it's never really clear. Was it official? Was it not? She was the one traveling around with Rudy Giuliani doing the presentations and hearings. She it's believed that she got covid from Rudy Giuliani. It's jokingly said that he passed it to her through flatulence after farting a bunch of times in Michigan. But that's sort of a joke. It does appear that Jenna Ellis got covid from Giuliani. She smiling from ear to ear in her booking photo. And then maybe the most ominous

and disturbing image here is Kraken lawyer Sidney Powell, who lost her mind if she ever had it, really just a cursed image of Sidney Powell's face when booked at Fulton County Jail. This is only the beginning of this entire Georgia situation, I guess we would call it. And this for a while, we have been saying, if you want to say what, where is the biggest risk to the most prominent people to actually ending up doing some some prison time or jail time? I continue to believe it's most likely Georgia. The second federal indictment certainly brings with it serious charges and the possibility of of jail time. Giuliani not indicted there. Ellis not indicted there.

Powell not indicted there. And this is yet another reminder that for all the times that these lawyers want to say these indictments prove that our First Amendment rights have been taken away. Attorney client privilege has been violated and thrown in the trash or whatever the case may be. This is about participating in criminal conspiracies with your client that is not protected by attorney client privilege. It is not a First Amendment issue, period.

We have said this time and again, and that is indeed where we are today. Now, let's talk a little bit more specifically about Rudy Giuliani's appearance down in Georgia. We're going to look at a little bit of video here of Rudy Giuliani turning himself in down in Georgia yesterday in advance of Donald Trump surrendering today. It really did become one of these media sideshows tracking Giuliani out of his car and at the at the jail and trying to interview him and so on and so forth. Rudy Giuliani taking a page out of Trump's notebook and attacking prosecutor Fannie Willis, saying really the wrongdoing here. It's not any of the co-defendants against whom there's evidence. The real wrongdoing

was the prosecutor, Fannie Willis. Here's Rudy Giuliani speaking after his surrender yesterday. Fannie Willis will go down in American history as having conducted one of the worst attacks on the American Constitution. And as you can see, Rudy almost in tears when this case is dismissed. She has violated people's First Amendment right to advocate the government, to petition the government for grievances like an election they believe was poorly conducted or falsely conducted. People have a right to believe that in America, Biden and the Biden state doesn't have a right to tell you what the truth is. And number two, number two, and I will, I will, I will tell you if you need to know what this is all about, the

FBI stole my iCloud account. This is really about iCloud. I went and stole it the day that I began representing Donald Trump three years ago. They gave it back the day after I represented Donald Trump. So for all that time, the federal government was spying on Donald Trump and his lawyer. I am being indicted because I'm a lawyer, as is Professor and everyone else. Mr. Mayor, last month... Mr. Mayor, will month... Why do we... Mr. Mayor, are you effectively...

Mayor, will you be here tomorrow? By the way, you're wrong. I didn't do that. I entered into a stipulation for the purposes of that case to move on. It specifically says I do not in any way admit the truth of those allegations. Those allegations are totally false. You did not... You still believe the election was rigged, Mr. Giuliani? That is absolutely wrong. And you're lying, as you often do. If you read it, it says it was only for the purpose of that case and it was not an admission. I still believe that the election was

rigged. Mr. Giuliani, do you still believe that the election was rigged? Opting not to answer that question, do you still believe the election was rigged? Once again, the Rudy Giuliani mugshot, truly a historic image. I mean, if if we talk about stories of falls from grace, self inflicted falls from grace, the Rudy Giuliani mugshot, which we have up on the screen, it has to be near the top of that list for major political figures in the United States. It's hard to imagine a more precipitous fall from grace from Time magazine's person of the year to arrested, mug shotted and soon to be prosecuted until some some of the same

statutes he used against mobsters during his work as a prosecutor decades ago. Giuliani also adding that he is honored to be involved in this case, which, you know, most people who get arrested aren't honored. Usually you're not for your jet down here, Mr. Giuliani. Do you regret attaching your name to the former president? By the way, I'm going to play that again. Who paid for your jet down here? And Rudy says no comment for your jet down here, Mr. Giuliani. Do you regret attaching your name to the former president? Do I what you regret attaching your name to the former president? I am very, very honored to be involved in this case because it's been an honor to be arrested along alongside you, sir. This case is a fight for our way of life.

This this and this indictment is a travesty. It's an attack on not just me, not just President Trump, not just the people in this indictment. Some of them I don't even know. This is an attack on the American people. This could happen to me. Who is probably the most prolific prosecutor maybe in American history and the most prolific prosecutor in American history. If they can do it to him, they can do it to you.

And then it's always like we know they can do it to you. They do it to you and me and just random people who aren't elites all the time. The the refreshing thing here is Rudy's not above the law. Trump is not above the law. All right. So we are going to be live today starting at 615 p.m. Eastern time with Donald Trump's fourth arrest. He will be booked at Fulton County Jail in Georgia. I hope some of our new viewers who found us last night will be joining me and we will see you then. But this is this is the beginning of a long saga and we have not heard nearly the end of any of these stories.

We have a voicemail number. Leave me a voicemail if you have something to say. The Eggman called in with a pretty astute observation about last night's Republican presidential debate. Listen to this. Hey, Dave, just an observation here. I think Mike Pence has a million times better personality and is way more likable than DeSantis. How messed up is that?

Hello. Yeah, the Eggman is absolutely correct. You know, one of the big takeaways I had yesterday was even with all of the debate prep, DeSantis still couldn't behave like an even seemingly normal person. On the other hand, and very interestingly, Mike Pence did better than I expected. I didn't like, obviously, the things that he said. I found it kind of vile when he regularly invoked God in justifying policies and religious tax.

I'm not into any of that. But Pence didn't do his best. The guy's kind of a wet blanket, but he did seem more dynamic, charismatic and connected to the subject matter than DeSantis, who just seemed to be basically reciting canned speeches and not doing so in a particularly engaging or articulate way. So I agree with the Eggman. DeSantis made Pence look charismatic and likable, which is a really difficult thing to do. We have such a great bonus show for you today. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to

fund themselves is bad. Scientists now say that a Mars settlement of humans could be started with just 22 people. The United States will be the first nation to land an astronaut on Mars. Yeah, no, Mars, not NARS. Why 22? It's super interesting. We're going to talk about that on the bonus show. I will discuss the allegation that Vivek Ramaswamy plagiarized from Barack Obama yesterday during the debate when he talked about a skinny

young guy with a weird last name or something like that. We're going to talk about it. What did Obama actually say in his speech? How does it compare? And lastly, this is very interesting. Maga people are hesitant. Some mega people are hesitant to go to Trump's arrest tonight because they believe it is a setup. They believe that authorities are setting up to entrap them. And I don't know what else.

Where are they getting this idea? And needless to say, is it smart of them to stay the hell away from the jail? All of those stories and more. I will talk to you about on today's bonus show. Get the bonus show by becoming a member. Get the full membership experience and know that you're supporting independent media. Join Pacman dot com is the place to sign up. You can use the coupon code Tetra Dyed or four years for indictment. Both new coupon codes referencing Trump's fourth arrest. I will see you then.