The David Pakman Show - 9/13/22: Russian Troops Flee, Kushner Crumbles

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

-- On the Show: -- Thom Hartmann, host of the Thom Hartmann Program and author of the new book "The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America and How to Restore Its Greatness," joins David to discuss the history of neoliberalism. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3qSpH8N -- Reports spread that Russian troops are fleeing Ukraine amid a quagmire, raising new questions as to whether Vladimir Putin is doomed -- In a hellish and dystopian turn of events, Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker is now leading incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock in three consecutive polls -- Jared Kushner hilariously falls apart when asked repeatedly during an interview with Kay Burley on Sky News why Donald Trump had all of those documents at his house -- Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity lists Trump's crimes in what Hannity seems to think is a defense of Trump -- A reportedly very paranoid Donald Trump apparently meets with aides and lawyers on the golf course to avoid media scrutiny -- Rudy Giuliani doesn't reject "Dr. Gina's" 9/11 conspiracy theories during a bizarre recent appearance on her program -- Voicemail caller points out that David narrowly avoided serious injury when his microphone fell on him during yesterday's show -- On the Bonus Show: The final round of 2022 primaries, Alabama jailing pregnant marijuana users, credit card companies making it easier to track gun sales, much more... 🌿 Sunset Lake CBD: Get 20% OFF using code PAKMAN at https://sunsetlakecbd.com 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 👍 Code PAKMAN saves you 20% on Munk Pack: https://thld.co/munkpack_pakman_0922 👍 Quit smoking with Fum! Use code PAKMAN for 10% OFF at https://breathefum.com/pakman 🥄 Use code PAKMAN for $5 off Magic Spoon at https://magicspoon.com/pakman 🪒 Henson Shaving: Use code Pakman for FREE blades at https://hensonshaving.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to the Pakman Live YouTube Channel: https://www.davidpakman.com/pakmanlive -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Speaker 1 Let's start today with an update on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because, yeah, there's been less media coverage of this, but that doesn't mean there aren't newsworthy things happening. And it is going so poorly, according to new reports for Russia, that there are renewed questions as to whether Putin is, quote, doomed, which we will get to in a moment. Reuters and others. But we'll look at a Reuters report reporting that Russian troops are fleeing and getting back over the border into Russia. Russia has largely ceded its gains near Kharkiv, writes Reuters, and many of the withdrawing Russian soldiers have exited Ukraine, moving over the border back into Russia. This is per a senior U.S. military official. As it pulls back, the U.S. has seen anecdotal reports of Russian forces abandoning equipment. Again, disorganized command and control is mentioned. That's been

that that's been a hallmark, a staple of Russian activity so far. The remarks to Pentagon reporters followed a weekend of rapid gains for Ukrainian forces. Ukraine's general staff said its soldiers had recaptured more than 20 towns and villages in just the last day as Ukrainian forces swept deeper into territory seized from fleeing Russian troops. Now, the big stories here were, of course, a war of aggression by Russia. That's an accurate and true story. Expectations early that this would be a very easy military win for Russia.

Very quickly, that assumption evaporated. However, there was the belief that although on the one hand, the longer it went, the worse it is for Russia, that eventually if Russia decided to commit the resources, it would overwhelm Ukrainian troops. That's not happening. And in fact, things are going in the opposite direction. The US military official reads the same article was upbeat but cautious when describing the Russian advances. It's clear they're fighting hard. Ukraine said it repelled attempted Russian advances in two important areas of the Donetsk region, the city of Bakhmut and Mayorsk near the coal producing town of Horlivka.

The general staff said in an evening update. But the senior U.S. official said Russia was still focusing its firepower on Bakhmut. So a lot more tactical information that you can read if that is interesting to you. Now, the question becomes, what about the propaganda war and what about the future of Vladimir Putin? There is an interesting article in The Hill, which is worth reading, if not it's worth reading. Let's just put it that way. And it's it's by Alexander Motil, who's an opinion contributor, and it says, like his

soldiers is Putin doomed. Now, the article is somewhat hyperbolic, admittedly, and the article writes Vladimir Putin is kaput. The proof of that is the below letter written by a 26 year old soldier in the Russian army, Vivi Tarasenko. We know nothing about Tarasenko except he was a resident of Putin's brainchild, the so-called Luhansk People's Republic, and that he has a wife, Valeria, and a small son. We also know Tarasenko died in battle during the recent Ukrainian offensive in the Kharkiv province. Ukrainian intel found the letter. The letter was written with little punctuation and

no capital letters. So the letter reads this letter is for the future. If I should die or be taken prisoner or become a vegetable written July 17th, 2022, it's very hard to write. I'm crying, but I must beloved Lara tell our son what kind of dad I was, that we were sent as cannon fodder to Zaliman, a village in Kharkiv province without armor, without ammunition, without normal weapons. This is about our situation. When our son grows up, tell him his dad wanted very much to return home to be the best dad ever. I've been drinking and I'm writing emotionally. I know that this all will be forgotten and that you will be living your own life, that you'll find a new husband, that I'll simply disappear in the war like all the guys. Unfortunately, I didn't have

a normal life. Say that dad was an athlete, didn't smoke, didn't drink. It's terrible that everyone has forgotten me. It's very hard to accept all this, but all people die and this cycle can't be changed. It's bad to die in the summer. If only I were at the seashore. And what is written in this Hill article is that Tarasenko's complaints are not unique. The Russian leadership with Putin at the head has evinced a profoundly cavalier attitude towards lives, not just of innocent Ukrainians, but also of Russian soldiers. And what this article and others go on to say is that there is really no path out of this for Putin that is going to be anything short of a of a failure and doom for Putin. Now, early there were all of these speculations as Putin sick and has a death wish and is determined

to be assassinated eventually by operatives from other countries? Or is Putin so drunk on the idea of reassembling some version of the USSR that he's not thinking clearly? And whatever the case may be, I at this point think the ship has sort of sailed on making rational sense out of what Putin was thinking and when he was thinking it and what the end goal is here. But it is clear that if there is going to be a win for Russia. It's going to be a win only with completely revised objectives. And so at this point, when this didn't end in two weeks, we started talking about, well, it's likely going to be more than months at this point. And what is the ultimate goal? Because a complete and total take over takeover of Ukraine seems increasingly unlikely. It seems quite plausible that Putin

and his cronies will revise their military objectives and they will revise them to say our goal is actually to control a lot less territory than we initially planned with those revised objectives. They may be able to come away with something that they would call a win for propaganda purposes. But there's also a fear. The fear is that as Russia and Putin realize, we're not going to be able to continue mounting offensives and really take Ukraine in the way that originally some projected us to do.

There's the fear that an increasingly belligerent Putin will resort to those tactical nuclear weapons. These are sometimes called battlefield nuclear weapons. These are sometimes called battlefield nuclear weapons. It's not like the massive bomb that destroys entire cities, but they are battlefield or tactical nukes and that that would be something that Putin is willing to do to kind of maintain this image of strength. The kind of harebrained caricature of the alpha male that has pervaded the MAGA movement in the United States. Quite frankly, it's sort of a similar dynamic.

That is a fear that an increasingly cornered Putin would go in that direction. So it is unpredictable what is going to happen. But what we know is that it is not going well for Russian troops and there is still an invasion. There is still a war, even if more and more mainstream corporate media isn't talking about it. If you want to see one statistic. That really exposes the United States as a growing dystopian hellscape of anti intellectualism and nonthinking. It is this statistic. In the last three polls, Herschel Walker is leading Raphael Warnock. Now, if you're wondering who these people are, I will remind you, Herschel Walker is the Republican Senate nominee in Georgia. Right now, that seat is held by Raphael Warnock. Raphael Warnock is an intelligent, thinking, nuanced elected official who, whether you agree with him or not on any

individual policy, clearly has the interests of Georgia's residents as his priority and can engage with others in clear and productive ways where you understand what he thinks and you can talk substantively about issues. Herschel Walker is a former football player who can barely speak coherently, can't explain his views about any issue and is. Epitomizing the worst of the non-thinking MAGA movement, and yes, in recent polls, Walker has taken a lead. If we look at the last three polls in that race, the Insider Advantage poll has Walker plus three. The Emerson poll has Walker plus two and the Trafalgar poll has Walker plus one. Those are the last three polls we have, two of them from August and one from September. This is a man who cannot express himself. This is a man who cannot explain why he believes what he believes on any issue. And there are enough people in Georgia

seemingly willing to vote for him that he might actually take out incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock. Many of you have written to me and you said, David, you know, it was bad when Bush beat Gore and it was bad when Trump beat Hillary and it was bad when the country elected Marjorie Taylor Greene and on and on. But there is something I can't put my finger on. If the country elects Walker over Warnock, I'm getting the hell out of here. And I don't know that people are literally meaning that often when people say I'll move to Canada, they don't really mean it.

It's also really difficult to move to Canada. Just as a reminder, this is what we're talking about when we talk about Herschel Walker. Here is Walker asked why he hasn't agreed to debate Warnock. It's a very strange answer. Senator Raphael Warnock wants to debate you. You didn't debate during the primaries where you walked away with 68 percent of the Republican votes. Why won't you commit to a debate? Well, first of all, Senator Warnock has nothing else to talk about. He don't want to talk about the high gas prices.

You don't want to talk about the high groceries. I've told him many times I'm ready to debate him any time, any day. I just want to make it for the fans, not about a political party or about some media and all for the fans. These are elected officials or want to be elected officials. Wow. Here is the same Herschel Walker asked by CNN reporter Manu Raju, should there be new laws in the wake of the latest shooting?

Hey, Roger, CNN. I know. Are you just wearing your gun laws in the wake of this Texas shooting? Do you support the new gun laws in the wake of this Texas shooting? Do you support the new gun laws in the way? What I like to do, what I like to see and in everything I like to see it. I like to see it and everything and stuff. And then famous famously, Herschel Walker weighing in on his plan for dealing with shootings through social media.

See that is a person wielding that weapon, you know, Cain, Abel, you know, and you know, that's the problem that we have. And I said, what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You know, he talked about doing a disinformation. What about getting a department that can look at young men that's looking at women that looking at just social media. What about doing that? Looking at we need a department looking at young men that's looking at women, that's

looking at social media. He is now leading in the three recent polls. This is scary as hell. Scary as hell. Let me know what you think will ultimately happen in that race. Monday, 919 is our next one day membership drive. You've been thinking about getting a membership, but you'd like to get a massive, humiliatingly huge discount.

Humiliating to me. Let's be honest. I'll get on my newsletter at David Pakman dot com. Monday morning you'll get an email telling you exactly how to take advantage of this great discount. 919 is the day. code Pacman. Unlike other companies using these cheap synthetic cannabinoids, Sunset Lake CBD extracts natural CBD oil from hemp grown on their family farm outside Burlington, Vermont. Sunset Lake CBD believes this transparent farm to table approach is the best way to spread the benefits of CBD. But don't just take their word for it. A certified third party lab

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For the second day in a row, I have a really good example for you of when an interviewer realizes their guest isn't answering the question and keeps asking the same question. And it makes the guest look really dumb when they don't answer the question. In this case, we're talking about Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner is Donald Trump's son in law. And Jared Kushner was asked here by a K Burley from Sky News. Why did Donald Trump have those documents at his house? Why did Donald Trump have those documents at his house? Why did Trump have the documents at his house? And much like yesterday's example where former Democratic Senator Al Franken kept asking

Alice Stewart, a Republican strategist, when was a Supreme Court nomination just not even acted on because it was the last year before an election? When, when, when, when, when? Jared Kushner doesn't answer the question. And so we're going to take a look at this. And of course, Jared Kushner just wants to talk about his book. And in doing so, he says a lot of things that don't make any sense. This is very common with these folks. Let's take a listen to this. Peace shattered there, very tranquil place for the family. Peace shattered by an FBI raid.

Why did the president take home top secret documents? You have to ask him that question. But, you know, what I will say is if you look at my book, you'll see that he was under constant attack. But he took top secret documents home, potentially risking the security of the United States. Yeah, I think that it's something that, again, this seems like it's an issue of paperwork that should have been. By the way, that's a new talking point that they've settled on. First, it was the documents were planted.

Then it was I declassified them. Then it was I gave them back when they asked me, but I didn't. And there were empty folders. Now it's listen, whatever it is that took place with the documents, it's a paperwork issue. And this is a way to not have to account for by I mean, they already told the lie. So it's a little late. But the idea of it's a paperwork issue, understand the motivations of that. It's basically saying no matter what documents there were, no matter where they were, no

matter who moved them, no matter what their classification status was, it's a minor issue. That's what it means to say it's a paperwork issue. And Kay Burley doesn't let Kushner get away with it. It'll be worked out between DOJ and him. I don't know what he took or what he didn't take. But I think right now we're relying on leaks to the media, which is the same thing. We've seen the photograph, haven't we, where it says top secret. Yeah, but that could have been fake, too, guys. That could have been staged. Yeah. Like I said, I I've seen a lot of allegations made by the media over my four

years that turned out not to be true. So I think that this whole thing is actually elevated. So the fact that we've seen photographs that say top secret document, we should wait and see whether or not they were, even though we're being told by the FBI that they were. Is it the look on Kushner's face right now basically says it all. So the pictures released by the FBI of top secret documents with the FBI confirming that their top secret documents we need to what exactly who's going to tell us, right? If they are not the authority on what the search warrant turned up, who's going to tell us? Yeah. Like I said, I go into my book, the accusations that were made of Trump. I just if you could answer that question. Yeah. I mean, first of all, he was the president.

I say it's the highest clearance in the world. So I don't know if this may be a paperwork issue. This may be. I don't know. Like I said, I haven't been involved in the details of it. He just has no idea. At the end of the day, he has no clue. And again, he floats paperwork issue. And again, understand that every every single one of these lines could really be analyzed and looked at at a deeper level. Kushner there when he mentioned it's like they can't go three words without some kind of liar distortion. When Kushner says he was the president, he had the highest level of clearance in the

world. That's not relevant to the legality of taking boxes of documents to his house. And as we already know, because it's been explored in detail, the classification status of the documents was also not the issue when it comes to many of the criminal statutes which Donald Trump may have violated. So every little detail here, every detail is a distortion or a misunderstanding or a lie. And what I like about this strategy, Al Franken did it yesterday.

Give me an example of when this was done to another Supreme Court justice. Well, listen, I mean, it's just it's precedent. But if it's precedent, tell me when was it done? And Alice Stewart couldn't do it. If you don't know the clip I'm referring to, it's on the YouTube channel. You can find it from yesterday. Same thing here. Why did he have the documents? Why did he have the documents? Are you saying they weren't actually what the picture shows they were? And they crumble. They crumble because they

don't have a defense. Now, is it believable that Kushner simply hasn't talked to Trump about this, despite the fact that we know he's hung out with Trump a bunch of times since the search warrant was executed? It's really not believable, but he would have been better off focusing on that from a PR perspective. If I were advising him instead of saying, well, he has whatever access he wants because he was the president or it's a paperwork issue which minimizes the fact that we're talking about possible crimes. I would have just stuck to I really can't speak to this. I just it's it's not about me.

I can't speak to this. I don't know anything about I would have just stuck with that and that alone. Hey, this is really funny. Sean Hannity last night on his Fox News propaganda program scrolled a list of Trump's crimes and misdeeds on the screen, thinking that it's a great defense of Trump, thinking it's some kind of a exculpation of Trump's misdeeds. And it makes Trump look guiltier than ever. You just have to see this video.

Sean Hannity is a big Trump propagandist. And even though as January 6th riots were unfolding, we know now Hannity was texting and saying he's got this. We've got to stop this. He's got to go out and put a stop to this. This is really, really bad. He has become a default apologist for everything that Donald Trump has done. And one of the stories that Sean Hannity loves to tell is that all these investigations of

Trump were very much unfair. And he quite literally scrolls the investigations on the screen last night. And it actually reminded me that Trump has been involved in way more wrongdoing than I even had present in my mind because there's been so much of it. Take a look at this. This is just unbelievable. There's which on the emoluments clause investigation from the House Oversight Committee, a House Ways and Means investigation into Trump's taxes, another House investigation into Trump's hotel lease, another House investigation into foreign gift disclosures, a D.C. probe into Trump's inauguration fundraising, another similar

investigation from the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of New York and from New Jersey's attorney general, one impeachment investigation into a regular phone call with Ukraine. A second impeachment investigation into, by the way, just one little detail. I hate to interrupt this. I like how Hannity calls it a regular phone call with Ukraine. Trump calls it a perfect phone call. That would have been a bit too much even for Hannity. That would have made Hannity blush.

So Hannity goes with a regular phone call while watching this. I found myself thinking like as as the scroll went up and down the screen, as you can see here, I find also the oh, oh, yeah. Oh, that's right. That other. Oh, I completely forgot about this one. Well, that on that one, he's obviously guilty on that one. Hannity thinks this is some kind of defense of Trump. And what is

basically being said when Hannity scrolls this indignantly is why can't they just let him do whatever the hell he wants to do, whether it's criminal, whether it's moral, whether it's ethical, let him do it in peace. Anything short of that is a complete and total witch hunt. And it's moral, whether it's ethical, let him do it in peace. Anything short of that is a complete and total witch hunt. And it's quite frankly convenient for Hannity to put all of this stuff in one place for us. This is not the defense of Trump that I think Sean Hannity wanted it to be. And it's a really useful clearinghouse for us to remember all of the incredible things that he has done. For frame of reference, one of these things, if it were Obama, would have been an incredible scandal on Fox News that they would not have let Obama live down.

Obama. Exactly. And of course, there's dozens and dozens of these. If you want to, if you're just listening today and you want to see this incredible scroll of Trump's misdeeds from Fox, we'll have the clip up on our Instagram, which you can find at David Pakman show. One of our longtime sponsors is Monk Pack, offering low sugar, plant based, keto friendly bars. I love these. They are the perfect snack for anyone trying to eat better or cutting back on sugar and carbs without sacrificing taste. Monk Pack offers granola bars and nut and seed bars, each with only one gram of sugar or less, two to three net carbs and 150 calories or less. I'm a and a half. and the David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. I've seen several people in my life try to quit smoking or vaping and quitting has so

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Tom Hartman. Tom hosts the Tom Hartman program and is also author of The Hidden History series. The latest book in that series is The Hidden History of Neoliberalism, How Reaganism Gutted America and How to restore its greatness. Tom, always great having you on. Thank you, David. Thanks for inviting me. So one of the interesting things about Reaganism is I don't think this is the first time that

we can say this, but there were sort of certain stories that started to be told which shifted the way that in large part corporate and political media talked about politics. We know about the welfare queen stories. We know about a lot of these different stories that's overtly or sometimes not so overtly were used to shift our focus about how we should think about politics, welfare programs, et cetera. Can you talk a little bit about the circumstances in which this shift from Keynesian ism to neoliberalism took place? And if you want to also define neoliberalism as you use the term in the book, that would be great, too. Sure. Yeah. Neoliberalism was a political and economic philosophy that was originated in Europe in the 1940s in an effort

to come up with a system, a political system that governments could use that would prevent them from ever becoming fascist or communist. This was in the wake of, you know, World War II. And, you know, sadly, neoliberalism, every time it's been applied, it's been applied to a country. One of two things has happened. First of all, it always flips the country into oligarchy, which is a very unstable political system. You and I talked about it when my book on oligarchy came out. It rarely lasts more than a generation or two. It's so unstable. And oligarchy typically either flips into fascism, as it has in Russia, as it did in Iraq. And and over the short term, well, over the short term, actually, what happened in Chile was the the other alternative, which is

that it flips oligarchy flips into democracy, which is what happened when they overthrew, overthrew Pinochet. So the United States now is still in this neoliberal phase, this 40 year neoliberal experiment, and we've got enormous pressures coming out of the Republican Party to turn America to a fascist state and enormous pressure from the Democratic Party to turn America into a democratic state, small d and or you could say a democratic republic. The definition of neoliberalism is pretty straightforward. These guys believed that because there's billions

of decisions being made in the marketplace every second. I mean, right now there's probably a thousand people in this literally as we're speaking, choosing which brand of orange juice to buy. Um, you know, there's just billions of decisions being made in the marketplace and that they saw as a huge collective wisdom. And therefore they said the marketplace should be defining the rules of the marketplace and, and also the rules of governance, which traditionally define the rules of the marketplace. Now, this in and of itself is an insane idea. It's like saying, you know, I mean, the marketplace is nothing more than a game that we play that involves money, just like football is a game that we play that involves this ball made out of pigskin. And, you know, this is like saying, well, what the NFL should do is whichever team has the most money should just

let them write the rules and decide how many men they can have on the field during the game and how many of their competitors must have because they're in charge now. Basically, neoliberalism always leads to the rise of billionaire oligarchs and the massive consolidation of huge corporations at the expense of small communities and small businesses. So number one, low taxes cut because because the billionaires and the big corporations are the major players in the economy they need to be encouraged because they're the Darwinian winners so that's why we have a 3% income tax rate right now for billionaires and 30% for you and me. Number 10 and we've got two men now who control more than half, have more

wealth in the bottom half of America. Number two, so-called free trade. Corporations should be free to go anywhere in the world and find the cheapest labor possible because nations don't matter to hell with nations. Although a nation should keep people within their borders, they shouldn't keep people within their borders, they shouldn't keep corporations within their borders. And there's a bunch of corollaries to that, you know, that kind of derive out of those basic, oh, and that labor is always an interference in

the marketplace. If labor has power, that distorts the marketplace because labor isn't the major player. Labor is just subordinate to management. And therefore, all labor unions should be destroyed. So Reagan adopted this and applied it to the United States, threw us into neoliberalism, took us out of classic Adam Smith economics, what's sometimes referred to as Keynesian economics because John Maynard Keynes had fine- it. But really, it's what particularly in his book, A Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1784 that Adam Smith described in some detail before. Let me pause there. So before we move on into more of the history, now that you've kind of defined it for us, there are some in my audience who are further to the left than I am, certainly, and are truly sort of bona fide

socialists. And I don't use that term pejoratively, who sometimes will write to me and they'll say, you know, David, there's really not that much breathing room between neoliberalism, as you've just defined it and written about, and northern European social democracy. It's all way too far to the right for them. Can you weigh in a little bit on is there really substantive difference between what you just defined and northern European social democracy? Or are they more similar maybe than some of us like to acknowledge? Well, first of all, if you compare, you know, Pinochet's Chile or Russia or Iraq, where Nouriel Maliki has turned himself into basically a dictator.

Yeah, there's some significant differences between those countries in any country in Europe. That said, Margaret Thatcher was the you know, I mean, neoliberalism was invented in the 40s. These guys pitched it aggressively through the 50s and 60s and largely were considered crackpots. And then we got the inflation of the 70s as a result of the Arab oil embargo in 73 and the fall of the Shah in 79.

And that inflation was the perfect tool or opportunity that Milton Friedman used here in the United States to pitch neoliberalism, not just here, but all around the world. He said neoliberalism will fix inflation, which hadn't even been part of the original sales pitch. But hey, you know, take opportunity. This is Naomi Klein's shock doctrine, right? You got a problem, we got a solution. And so Margaret Thatcher was actually the first to buy it and, the coal union, which was the strongest union in all of the United Kingdom. Nobody thought it was even possible in her first months in office and then privatized the railroad and did a whole bunch of other neoliberal reforms. So the UK is not that far behind the United States in terms of neoliberalism.

We're only farther ahead because we were more neoliberal to begin with. We didn't have a national health service. We didn't have free college. You know, we didn't have the basic stuff that England has a strong, a strong, really strong welfare state. So, you know, yeah, neoliberalism has infected Europe and some so-called neoliberal reforms, most of them being pushed by the IMF, by the way, and being trumpeted at Davos every year by all the billionaires who show up, have crept into many of the European countries,

in particular France and the United Kingdom, as I just mentioned. And there's even a debate about neoliberalism in Sweden right now. But but to say that it's the same thing now, that's that's just not right. You know, one of the interesting things about the replacement of Keynesian ism by neoliberalism relates to this idea that Keynes had in the 30s. And if you've read anything about leisure economics or

this, this always comes up. Keynes had this idea that soon we would all be working only 15 hours a week and people would have all of this leisure time because of technology and productivity, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, we know it didn't happen. We know that actually the work we continue to get longer and longer. Would Keynes maybe have been right? Were it not for neoliberalism? Because it's so it's so discussed. That was Keynes's prediction. We know it didn't happen. There's 50 different explanations as to why is neoliberalism a part of that? Speaker 3 To an extent? Yeah. I mean, you know, look at France when when they adopted, fully adopted essentially what you're calling Keynesianism after World War Two.

You know, they they were able to get legally get down to a maximum 30 hour or maybe it was 32 hour work week, as you'll recall. I mean, that was a big deal. Italy adopted that, although they didn't make it law. It was widespread across Europe, you know, four day weeks or shorter work days or longer lunches. These are these are not uncommon, although the last decade has seen a rollback of a lot of that as as neoliberalism has been pushing hard on Europe. And I'm hopeful that this book, you know, several of my books have been translated into into I mean, Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight in 17 languages. I'm hopeful that this book can get an audience in Europe as well, because, you know, neoliberalism is knocking on their door pretty aggressively right now.

What's the path to reversing this in the United States? Is it as simple as electing certain candidates based on their pursuit of particular policies? Or is it is it really bigger than that? No, that's that's it, David. It's you know, we need to reempower labor. Elizabeth Warren has legislation right now to do this. The National Right to Unionize Act, you know, basically undoing Taft Hartley and a whole series of neoliberal Supreme Court decisions. Number one, we need to raise taxes on the rich, on the morbidly rich. You know, like I said before, the average billionaire in America is paying three percent income tax. That's wrong. And that's why you've got, you know, three men owning more wealth than the bottom half of America. And that wealth, by the way, is generally not engaged productively in the economy.

They're not spending it. You know, I had a billionaire on my show and he said, you know, I probably own the same number of blue jeans as you do. I mean, you know, I'm 100,000 times richer than you, but I'm not going to buy 50 pairs of blue jeans. And, you know, so I'm not helping the economy. You know, so that money really should be in the economy more broadly. So we need to go back to tax rates that are above 50 percent for people making more than

three or three million dollars a year is where basically FDR had it in today's dollars. And we need to undo so-called free trade. We need to stop corporations from the arbitrage of labor. We need to say labor, you know, products sold in the United States should be made in the United States. And there's a variety of ways to do that that were laid out by Alexander Hamilton in 1793. The Congress adopted and that were U.S. policy. We had an industrial policy literally from the George Washington administration to the

Ronald Reagan administration. And Reagan blew all that up and Clinton doubled down on it. One of the kind of pillars of support for neoliberal policies, even if people don't necessarily know the term neoliberalism, you can talk to them about policies like lower taxes for businesses, for example, and they support these things. A lot of this is based on fundamental misunderstandings of sort of like how things work. And I'll give one example of that. You often hear repeated, oh, we need to lower taxes to encourage businesses to make investments. Well, business expenses are

tax deductible. So actually, a higher tax rate is more of an incentive to reinvest because you are avoiding a higher tax rate by making tax deductible investments in your business. It's just a basic thing about how taxes work. Brilliantly pointed out. What do you make of the fact that these fundamental realities are turned completely around to gain support of these policies? Is it as simple as educating people? I think so. I really do. I, you know, and and that's why I wrote the book. You know. I'm hoping it's going to be a fascinating starting point for a lot of people's conversations, because neoliberalism has guided America. When Ronald Reagan came into office, 65 percent of America was in the middle class. Now it's down to 45 percent. And of that 45 percent, it's no longer possible to stay in

the middle class with a single wage earner in the family. And it's no longer possible to stay in the middle class with a single wage earner in the family. You know, and it's no longer possible to stay out of debt for for at least half of that forty five percent. They're living on credit card debt, mortgage debt, student debt. You know, America has more personal debt than we've ever had in the history of this country, more corporate debt than we've ever had, and obviously more government debt. None of those are healthy things for an economy. All of those are the direct products of neoliberalism. What do you see as the role of technology in what may or may not be a shift away from neoliberalism? Kind of in the context of not too long ago, I read Neil Postman's

book, Technopoly, written in the early 90s, where he's not taking an agnostic view about technology, but he's essentially saying in terms of how it affects economies, culture, et cetera, you're going to get the pros and the cons. And it's really about management and regulation and not about suppressing a technology which he argued is more or less inevitable. How does modern technology, social media, et cetera, impact the culture around our economic systems and things like the future of neoliberalism? Well, technology itself, I mean, this this is not an area where the Luddites would jump

in and say, hooray, this is our cause. Technology itself is kind of agnostic with regard to neoliberalism and vice versa. However, social media, you know, I mean, more than half of Americans now get their news primarily from Facebook. Yeah. Pretty damn shocking. Social media is a relatively cheap place to spread a message. And neoliberalism has made a small number of people and a small number of corporations mind bogglingly rich. I mean, richer than the pharaohs, richer than any king or kingdom in the history of the world.

The British royal family, you know, being worth $14 billion are pikers. They're a joke compared to some of the billionaires in the United States. So these guys pouring millions of dollars into ads and trolls and professional bloggers, as it were, on social media, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, on, I mean, you name it, TikTok. This has been going on for some time and will continue to go on. They may not have hired these people to say, hey, you're going to promote neoliberalism. It tends to be more focused. You're going to be the guy who's, you know, the Grover Norquist is going to talk about never raising taxes on billionaires. You're going to be the guy who's, you know, the Grover Norquist is going to talk about never raising taxes on billionaires. You're going to be the guy who talks about how evil unions are and blah, blah, blah. And you're going to be the guy who talks about how we've got to have free

trade or, you know, else the world is going to collapse or et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, to the extent that technology plays a role in this, it's largely limited to the role of propaganda. Is neoliberal neoliberalism self reinforcing in the sense that by its very nature, it puts many people in a position of not being able to take a day off from work because they can't afford to lose the wages, their health insurance is at risk in order to protest the very system that created those conditions. And that in that sense, it reinforces itself. Yeah. And not only that, it follows on the the opinions and goals of the early advocates of neoliberalism, particularly Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley. Back in 1951, Russell Kirk wrote this book,

The Conservative Mind. I write about this in my book on oligarchy. And he suggested that the American middle class was growing too fast. In 1951, our middle class was larger than any in the world. It was growing really, really rapidly. It was still only 20, 30 percent of Americans, but it was growing. It was growing faster than rich people were getting rich. And he wrote that at a certain point, the middle class is going to be large enough and people are going to be no longer afraid of poverty enough that you're going to see three consequences. Young people are going to start to find their elders, which will produce social chaos. Women are going to forget that their primary place is in the kitchen and the bedroom,

which is going to create social chaos. And minorities are going to forget that they have a place in society at the bottom. They're supposed to be the maids and the janitors, and that's going to cause social chaos when they start demanding access to the boardroom and media and things. He didn't explicitly lay it out quite like that. Many of his followers did, but he established the frame in that book. And, you know, at the time in 51, when he proposed this, everybody thought he was a crackpot except for Buckley and Goldwater. But by the time, you know, 1967 rolled around and, you know, young people like me at that time were burning our draft cards. Women were burning their bras. And this went, you know, doubled down in 72 when the Supreme Court legalized birth control and 73 when they legalized abortion, women demanding access to the workplace. And of course, the civil rights movement was really, you know, roaring in the 60s and 70s. And at that point, Republicans

started looking around going, holy crap, Russell Kirk was right. And so part of Reagan's mandate when he came into office, when the middle class was 65% of America and was defying the power, openly defined the power structures of this country, was to cut the middle class down to size. And neoliberalism was the perfect tool to do that. And that's exactly what happened. As I mentioned, you know, our middle class is no longer the middle. It's, you know, it's no longer 65% of America. It's 45 percent of America. And it's in debt as it is. So those students have shut up because they're in debt. The women are, you know, right now in a pitched battle over abortion specifically, but over women's rights more generally. And the civil rights movement rolls on,

too. And we're seeing all the pushback against that in right wing channels like Fox News. We've been speaking about Tom Hartman's latest book, The Hidden History of Neoliberalism, How Reaganism Gutted America and How to Restore Its Greatness. Tom, always appreciate your time and your insights. Thank you, David. It's such a pleasure and an honor to be on your program. I really appreciate your inviting me. Thank you, David. It's such a pleasure and an honor to be on your program. I really appreciate your inviting me. Thank you. Who doesn't love a good cereal? The crunchiness, the sweetness, it satisfies in a serious manner.

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The whole team does. But if you don't, you'll get a full refund. But I know it's about to become your new favorite cereal. You'll get five dollars off when you go to Magic Spoon dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. I've had such trouble finding a great razor where I am not cutting myself or getting those nicks on my skin, which are so common with the cheap disposable razors. You have to meet our sponsor, Henson Shaving. Henson actually manufactures parts for the International Space Station and the Mars Rover, and they are bringing that exact same precision engineering to the shaving

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cart. Then enter the code Pacman and you will get the razors for free. That is a three year supply, my friends. That's H E N S O N shaving dot com slash Pacman. Use the code Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. All right. We may have gotten some information about this very strange, unexplained trip to Washington, D.C., that Donald Trump made Sunday night. Yesterday, we reported on some of the speculation that this may be because Trump is getting arrested or maybe Trump is having some kind of medical appointment in Washington, D.C. or whatnot. The new I don't know that it's necessarily the consensus, but the way things are pointing is that Donald Trump flew up to D.C. to go to his Virginia golf club to meet

with lawyers and aides on the golf course to avoid the potential surveillance and media scrutiny that could take place if such a meeting actually happened at a lawyer's office. And of course, the lawyers that he is currently meeting with believed to be believed to be related to criminal defense that Donald Trump may need if indeed he is indicted. So let's go through what we know at this point. Business Insider reporting Trump spotted at his Virginia golf course after video of him on a flight to the D.C. area sparked a firestorm of speculation. Now, the big component about this is that Donald Trump was on the golf course and we have a video of it with no golf clubs, clearly not playing golf. And so this was the start of, well, what what is the

point of this? What's going on here? Is this sort of a mobster like meeting where Donald Trump is getting away from media and possible surveillance or whatever else the case may be. And you see Trump driving around in a golf cart. He's not golfing. There's no golf clubs whatsoever. And a number of people who know Trump, by the way, just Trump going around in a golf cart. There's something just kind of funny and absurd about it. This video was shot at quite a distance, by the way. So all sorts of different speculation and questions as to what this is about. Michael Cohen, friend of the David Pakman show and former Trump lawyer who knows Trump very, very well, has a very good tweet thread about this, where he says many are asking me why Mr.

Mushroom Putter was at his D.C. golf course, which is really in Virginia. He says to play golf. My sources say he was meeting with two lawyers in secrecy and didn't trust being at their offices. Notice there are no clubs on the cart, no golf clubs on the cart. Glad that Drudge found this tweet both newsworthy and humorous for his readers to enjoy. Yeah. So that's Michael Cohen's perspective. And indeed, when you look, there are no golf clubs there. We then have a hold on. There was another one which I have. No, there wasn't. That is the one. So this seems to basically be the most logical explanation at this point in time. If Donald Trump did it,

media follows and covers Trump to the degree that they are able to and informed and know where he's going. So we know the trip to D.C. was unannounced. That doesn't mean it was necessarily unplanned. It might have been planned at the last minute and media were not told about it. If Donald Trump had ended up at Walter Reed or at some kind of medical center, it would be known it would have become news. And so this now is the most likely explanation, which is Trump, paranoid Trump, surveillance concerned Trump or whatever it is you want to say, wanted to meet with people outside of the range of whatever it was that he was paranoid about. And it all is believed to be related to Donald Trump's need for criminal lawyers as we potentially

get closer and closer to an indictment. Now let's talk a little bit about the indictment, as is often the case. We saw this with Matt Gaetz and this is ongoing with Matt Gaetz. There is a search warrant. There is news of an investigation and then there is no indictment immediately or whatever. And people start emailing me and asking questions about, well, when is the indictment coming? And when it comes to the Trump indictment, it is completely plausible that we are still months from such an indictment if one is coming. It takes a long time to complete this and these investigations. And again, there's still an if as to whether Trump is going to get indicted.

I can only assume based on the amount of seriousness and planning with which the search warrant was approved on Trump, FBI approval, attorney general approval, a judge signature, all of the things that must be done that have to be done when you are doing something like this with a former president. I can only imagine that it's going to take more than the few weeks that remain between now and the midterm election for final decisions to be made about charging or not charging Trump. What would be in that indictment. And there is also a there are some reports that the charges would not be made before the election to avoid the appearance of of trying to have political influence. I actually think that it's less likely that that's

the explanation and it's more likely that it just takes time to put charges like this together. We will follow it. Rudy Giuliani, who was at one point known as Mayor 9-11, who presided over the city of New York as its mayor during and in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, appeared on Real America's Voice with Dr. Gina. Now, we'll get to this Dr. Gina thing in a second. Why? Why is she Dr. Gina? And why are what kind of a doctor is she? Pay really close attention to this Dr. Gina thing in a second. Why? Why is she Dr. Gina? And why? What kind of a doctor is she? Pay really close attention to this clip. Rudy Giuliani does not reject 9-11 conspiracies in this interview when the host floats. Listen, I'm not that conspiratorial,

but I'm starting to wonder about some of these conspiracy theories about 9-11 myself and Rudy, rather than rejecting out of hand those conspiracy theories which relate to an event that happened in New York while he was governor. I'm sorry, mayor of New York City. He sort of says, yeah, there's lots of stuff that I didn't believe, which turned out to be true. Check this out and pay really close attention to the language being used here. And Mayor, I guess I just I have to ask you this because it struck me yesterday as I as I looked through the post, you know, you always see all the posts on social media on September 11th and rightly so. We should absolutely remember and never forget. But I noticed a sincere, strong uptick in the number of folks asking about things that have traditionally been painted conspiracy theories regarding September 11th.

And I noticed a lot of people saying things like that it's disrespectful to those who've died and those who've suffered to ask any questions about it. But I also know, Mayor, not only did you live through 9-11, you've been a target of the federal government. You've been one of those people who has been persecuted, one of the 50 or more we know at this point, persecuted basically for doing your job and being friends with the president. So I just. So understand the connection that's being drawn here. OK, Dr. Gina says, listen, I'm not big on these 9-11 conspiracy theories, but. I'm now starting to be a little more sympathetic to the 9-11 conspiracy theory people, because similarly, there are people who said things about you, Mr. Mayor, that turned out to be untrue as well.

And so if those those things were wrong, maybe the conspiracy theorists about 9-11 are right. That's what Dr. Gina is saying. Now, by the way, let's talk and we're going to continue with the clip. Dr. Gina, this is Gina Loudon. She's known as Dr. Gina. She's just a right wing media personality. Now you might remember when it was Dr. Jill Biden, all of these right wingers were saying that's not a medical doctor. Why are they calling

her Dr. Jill Biden? That's absolutely crazy. She's a doctor of education. Dr. Gina has a Ph.D. in human and organization systems from Fielding Graduate University, which is an online school. Now there's nothing wrong with online school or any of it, but that doctorate is completely irrelevant to her role as the host of the Dr. Gina show. Just so many people might not even know this. Rachel Maddow was a Rhodes scholar and has a doctorate of philosophy in politics from the University of Oxford. OK, it would still be a bit much to say Dr. Rachel Maddow, the Dr. Rachel Maddow show, although I would argue that her defill in politics from Oxford is more relevant and more impressive than what makes Gina Loudon

a doctor. But where were they when it was Dr. Jill Biden's degree shouldn't be mentioned. But yet now it's the Dr. Gina show. It's absurd. And you'll actually hear Rudy refer to her as doctor, which is just like the cherry on top. I guess I kind of was thinking yesterday. I I don't believe the things that I've read about that. But I I don't fault people anymore for asking questions that may sound outlandish when our government is a proven enemy of some people. Oh, Mary, I wanted to give you a chance to speak to this. Yeah. Well, you know, doctor, that's really. Why does it feel absurd for him or to refer to her as doctor in this context? I find myself now saying things and realizing they're true, that if I had said them five

years ago, I would have thought I was crazy. Right. I mean, I would have. Well, we think you're crazy now for saying, but let's take Russian collusion that a political party would spend a couple of million dollars to make up a charge to frame a candidate for president, then to try to frame a president and remove him on a charge that was purchased and is a complete lie. Carry it on for four or five years and have the support of the American press. I would have said that's crazy.

That can't happen. That can't possibly happen. The press will be outraged. They'll go nuts. And once they found out that it was a complete fraud, they just go on to the next fraud. The whole thing was the Ukraine, which turned out to be another fraud. And then they go on to suppress the the hard drive, which contains. So basically what Rudy is saying is instead of Dr. Gina, let me be very clear, doctor, Dr. Gina, did I mention doctor?

I was mayor of 9-11 when that happened. And what took place on that day is that more than a dozen men, mostly Saudis, attacked us and they flew two planes and then another one crashed in Pennsylvania. You know, then the three. But fine. He doesn't do that. He instead says, hey, listen, I know what you're saying about maybe these conspiracy theories are right.

There was the Russia thing and then there was the Ukraine thing, as he says it, and on and on and on. He is not rejecting the idea that the 9-11 conspiracy theories may be true. He was mayor of New York during 9-11 and he now and again, I don't actually think Rudy believes any of the conspiracy theories. I think Rudy knows exactly what happened on 9-11 the way the way we've all gotten to the bottom of it. As Donald Trump says, we have not. But he has been so sucked in by this just vile right wing movement, nonthinking movement, that this is the answer that he has to give.

It's a sad state of affairs. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Now, yesterday during the show, my microphone fell. It fell on me and it actually smacked me in the face. And if you were listening to yesterday's show, you might have heard me say, oh, I just lost my microphone and heard a gunk, for lack of a better term. The video of the microphone falling on me is on my Instagram, which you can find at David Pakman.

This listener, this viewer rather called in about how close of a call I had with the microphone yesterday. Listen to this. Hi, David, you need to go back and rewatch your show when your microphone fell, because if you had not looked over to, I guess it would have been your left, I think that thing would have gotten you right in the eye. Oh, my gosh. I think you're very lucky that it hit the side of your face and not your eye. Oh, my gosh. I'm glad it did not get you in the eye. OK, well, I'm one of your avid fans and a member, so I appreciate your show. I enjoy listening to it every day and have a nice day. Well, thank you for that. Yeah, no, I did go back and I watched it slowly, sort of like the Zapruder film frame by frame. And I did take a little bit of a hit on the right side of my face from the microphone falling. Had I been looking in a different direction as the mic fell, it could have gotten me in

the eye. And I am not a medical doctor, to be very clear. But I think that that would have been bad. I think it might have. I don't know that I would be here hosting necessarily today had that taken place. So if you're curious what that looked like, there is video of it on my Instagram, which you can find at David Pakman. We have a great bonus show for you today. We're down to the final primaries of 2022. We'll tell you what they are and what to watch and how things are looking. Number two, Alabama is jailing

pregnant cannabis users to protect, quote, protect the fetuses. What? Yes. And major credit card companies are making it easier to track gun sales. And the gun people are furious. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. Well, we do fund ourselves. Yes, there is money exchanged with the bonus show. You can sign up at join Pacman dot com. You will get instant access to the bonus show. And I look forward to seeing you then.