The David Pakman Show - 9/14/23: Still no evidence against Biden, new 2024 conspiracy is dumbest yet

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Dr Phil Plait, astronomer, science communicator, and author of several books on space and our place in it, joins David to discuss astrology, and why it is patently bogus pseudoscience -- Another Republican can come up with nothing when asked whether they have any evidence at all to support an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, this time Republican Congressman Mike Waltz -- Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi struggles to explain why so many Democrats don't want Joe Biden to run for re-election during an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper -- Failed former President Donald Trump and other Republicans are now claiming that Democrats are "bringing back" COVID in order to "rig" the 2024 election, which makes no sense -- Megyn Kelly interviews the failed former President Donald Trump, and the interview does not go well -- 2024 Republican Presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis gets rare applause from the Fox News crowd when he tells Sean Hannity that his administration would kill people at the US-Mexico border -- Republican Senator Mitt Romney announces he will not run for re-election, and criticizes Donald Trump and the MAGA wing of the party when taking questions about his decision -- 2024 Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie says he plans to find and confront Donald Trump on the campaign trail -- Voicemail caller asks whether David will write a critical thinking book for older folks -- On the Bonus Show: Discussing the deterrent effect of criminal penalties for different crimes, four years why your car insurance may be increasing, a jury awards $100,000 to gay couple denied marriage license in Kentucky by county clerk Kim Davis, much more... 🔊 Babbel: Get 55% off your subscription at https://babbel.com/pakman 💸 Qube Money: Try it for 2 months totally FREE at https://davidpakman.com/money 👍 Use code PAKMAN for 10% off the Füm Journey Pack at https://tryfum.com/PAKMAN 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN10 saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Speaker 1 There is one question that seems to be a sort of kryptonite for Republicans this week, and that question is, do you have any evidence to support an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, never mind an actual impeachment? And the reason that this question is kryptonite to Republicans is that they don't have evidence, but they have allegations and they want to do an impeachment inquiry to try to find the evidence. Rather than saying the evidence will guide us. They are saying the allegations guide us and we'll just go on a fishing expedition for evidence. Regardless, I'm very skeptical they're going to find it. But this is not a question that they like answering.

Here is another example of this. We've seen Nancy Mace asked about this. We've seen Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy asked about this. We've seen other Republicans asked about it. Here is Congressman Mike Waltz, a Republican. Last night, CNN, Caitlin Collins says, Have you seen any evidence that one of the allegations against Joe Biden is true, that he profited from the business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden and Mike Waltz reduced to repeating the same tired talking point. Well, the whole point of the inquiry is to see if there's any evidence of that with these illicit gains. We have a direct evidence that President Biden profit.

We have it. Well, I mean, but Caitlin, the point of the inquiry is to give us greater standing to get the full evidence. If we get full cooperation, if they say we have nothing to give us greater standing to get the full evidence. If we get full cooperation, if they say we have nothing to hide and give it to us and we don't see anything, then that's where the facts lead us. So you're saying. Right. And of course, this is what Nancy Mace initially said.

But when Caitlin called. So the line has been they are apparently hiding information from us, they being the Biden family. I don't know. They're hiding information from us, they being the Biden family. I don't know. They're hiding information from us. So we need to do the impeachment inquiry to give us the subpoena power to get the things we need to see if there's proof. Caitlin Collins said to Nancy Mace earlier this week and we reviewed it. Well, but isn't this more about Republican leadership?

Because you have subpoena power. Have you not used it appropriately? To which Nancy Mace says, no, actually, I have no problem because you have subpoena power? Have you not used it appropriately? To which Nancy May says, no, actually, I have no problem with the way subpoena power has been used by leadership. Oh, so then why aren't you getting what you need? Well, no, we need to do the investigation to see. It's an endless circle. If it's confusing to you, it's because it's confusing.

Now there are Senate Republicans that do seem to get it. And Senate Republicans are much less gung ho about this moronic impeachment inquiry than members of the House. For example, Senator John Thune from South Dakota on Monday said, I really don't know about this. There was the idea floated of linking a bill to avoid a government shutdown to one that launches impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden. And he said, I don't know that this really makes any sense at all. We heard from Senator Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia, who said when she was asked, is there enough evidence here for for doing this? She said, I do not believe that there is even Senator Marco Rubio, who sometimes has instincts that are more

this kind of extreme right part of the Republican Party. He said, as a general matter, the impeachment of a sitting president should be avoided in the interest of the country. And you can rest assured that if they actually had evidence against Joe Biden, Marco Rubio and others would be singing a different tune. So over in the Senate. And remember, part of the reason why the senators may be much more hesitant to say, let's do this thing, is that if they do an impeachment inquiry that leads to an impeachment in the House, then there's a trial and it is senators who vote. And I don't know that people like Marco Rubio and John Thune and Shelley Moore Capito are particularly excited about the idea of having to actually sit through a

trial of Joe Biden, particularly given the lack of evidence and then having to vote on the record, which they would probably have to vote, I think, not to convict given the lack of evidence. So I think Republicans in the Senate are being marginally more logical on this. It is going to be a mess. It is going to be a complete clown show, but we'll be here for it. And in the meantime, we do have the twenty twenty four election, something about which Nancy Pelosi was asked. I want to discuss that next with you.

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, current Democratic congresswoman, appeared on CNN's Anderson Cooper show last night, and she was asked to explain why do so many Democrats not like Joe Biden? The idea of Joe Biden running again. Why is that? And Nancy Pelosi struggled to explain this. And to some degree, there isn't really an explanation of what I mean by that is, yeah, there are people who just don't think Biden should run again.

And it's for a combination of different reasons. And there's really no way to explain it away. Let's take a look at some of this interview. There's a bunch of interesting things here to talk about. There's obviously look, even among very loyal Democrats, there's a lot of concerns about about the president. Is he the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump, the best candidate to defeat any of the Republicans who are running right now? I think so.

Yes, President President Biden has he has great experience and wisdom. He's been at this for a long time, as you know, as a senator, vice president, and now president. He has a vision for our country that's about fairness and justice and addressing the kitchen table issues of America's working families. He has that vision. He knows why he wants to be president and is president. He has knowledge of the issues and therefore judgment to be respected and wisdom that he brings to the table. So why is there such concern among a lot of Democrats about him? Well, I travel a bit in those circles of Democrats nationally and politically. And while there may be some concerns, everybody's for him. Overwhelmingly, everybody's for him.

Do you think there's any chance he does not continue running? I hope not. So let's address what we've heard so far. It is not true that everybody is for Biden. If you ask them, do you want Joe Biden to run for reelection? But this is a different question from if Joe Biden is on the ballot in November of twenty twenty four, will you vote for him over Trump? Will you vote for him over the Sanctus or Vivek Ramaswamy or whoever? There are really two different discussions happening here. And Nancy Pelosi is right about

one of them. And she is sort of ignoring or sidestepping the other. And this is a conversation we've had on this show. I don't like doing the thing on this show that happens on some shows from what I've read in medical journals that happens now from from what I see anecdotally and from what people tell me, which is that a lot of shows on the left seem. I don't want to say forced, but they seem driven to take either an unabashedly pro Biden view or an unabashedly anti Biden view. But I think reality is a bit more nuanced than that. Is Joe Biden the best person to defeat Trump in 2024, given that he is the incumbent president and that it would be a rematch of the 2020 election is a very different question than if I could just have my pick of Democrats, would I

pick Joe Biden out of the blue and say this is the guy I want to represent the Democratic Party? Those are two different questions. I do believe at this point, barring evidence to the contrary, that if it is Trump on the Republican ticket, that Joe Biden is as well positioned as anyone to defeat Trump again. And this is partially because of the power of the incumbency. This is partially because the economy under Biden has been pretty damn solid and we we don't have to dig into it. There are elements of the economy that aren't working. It is partially

because Joe Biden has done more than any president in history on student loan forgiveness. He's now making moves on cannabis. He's done a bunch of chips at so many different things. So given where we are. Unless you can come to me like if you came to me with tears in your eyes and said, David, if Biden were replaced with Hillary, it would be better. Or if Biden were replaced with Bernie, Bernie would have a better shot at winning. I don't think that there's any evidence to suggest that right now. So is Biden the best person to defeat Trump in 24, given that he's already the president and given everything that's happened? I think the answer is it's quite possible that he is. The second question is, if we just had no precursor, no incumbent, and it's just like, David, who do you pick to be the Democratic nominee?

I'm not choosing Joe Biden out of the blue. I really like the tone and tenor of Gavin Newsom lately, and I think he would have exactly the right. There's a timing aspect. I think a lot of what Gavin Newsom is doing and how he's talking about issues is, quite frankly, perfect for the time in which we find ourselves. And I could list other people. These are two different questions, and it's OK that we might have two different

answers. Let's watch a little more of this. I hope not. I mean, this president, David Ignatius, recently came out saying he thinks the former president should not run. Yeah. So that's one. And he also said he shouldn't run because he allowed me to go to Taiwan. Nobody allows me to do anything. I was Speaker of the House, and the invitation came from the Taiwan government for me to go there. It wasn't up to David Ignatius. Is Vice President Kamala Harris

the best running mate for this president? He thinks so, and that's what matters. And by the way, she's very politically astute. I don't think people give her enough credit. She's, of course, values-based, consistent with the president's values and the rest. And people don't understand, she's politically astute. Why would she be vice president if she were not? But when she was running for attorney general in California, she had 6% in the polls,

6% in the polls. And she politically astutely made her case about why she would be good, did her politics, and became attorney general. So people shouldn't underestimate what Kamala Harris brings to the table. Do you think she is the best running mate, though? She's the vice president of the United States. So when people say to me, well, why isn't she doing this or that? I say, because she's the vice president. That's the job description. So listen again on Kamala Harris, is Kamala Harris the best running mate as of today? Because if you say no, you're talking

about Joe Biden announcing Vice President Harris will not be joining me in my reelection ticket. This generates an atmosphere of conflict. This generates an atmosphere of uncertainty and replacing your vice president for a reelection campaign raises red flags, draws attention to you. If a president were to replace their running mate for the reelection campaign, the person you replace them with has to be so overwhelmingly positive in what they bring to you that it will counteract and overwhelm the negatives of saying, I'm kind of I'm kind of firing this person, quite frankly. That's a different question from.

Again, starting from zero is Kamala Harris, who I would say I believe this is the best vice president we could get. Her approval rating is not great, but it's actually not that bad. It's about thirty nine percent in the modern political area era. Thirty nine percent approval for a vice president is pretty typical. But more importantly, vice presidential approval ratings don't determine who people vote for president. I can't think of any scenario where someone is considering Trump or Biden and is going to say, you know, I would vote for Biden were it not that I don't love what Kamala Harris was when has been doing. So I will risk democracy at its core by voting for Trump instead. Maybe those voters exist anecdotally,

but that is not a significant portion of the electorate. So Nancy Pelosi understandably struggling to sort of understand these to answer these questions, not because she doesn't have answers, I think, but because as an elected official of the Democratic Party, it would look bad if she were to say, listen, neither of these people would be my first choices, but we are where we are and the power of incumbency is strong. That's really where we are. I can say it because as someone who's just in the media and I'm not even a Democrat, there's no downside for me to tell you. Listen, I do think that this is the ticket that's most likely to defeat Trump based on everything I know today. But these are not my favorite Democrats. These are not the people I would

pull out of a hat if I were just given the carte blanche to say, pick a ticket and put it up there. So Nancy Pelosi struggling a little bit to dance around and sort of answer these questions. She may genuinely think Joe Biden is God's gift to politics. I don't know. But the reality right now is who would we choose out of the blue is a different question than is this the most logical way to try to prevent a Trump or DeSantis victory in November of 24? until I see evidence to the contrary. I believe the answer is it probably is the best ticket to defeat Trump. I may end up eating my microphone depending on what happens in November of twenty twenty four. Let me know

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There is a new covid conspiracy and the brain dead former President Donald Trump is pushing it. The conspiracy goes like this. Democrats are bringing back covid to, quote, rig. What to rig the 2024 election. Does this make any sense? Well, let's dive into it for context. This is something that Trump has been pushing for a little while. Here was one of his direct to camera video blogs on Truth Central where he said they will not comply with the covid tyrants wanting to take away our freedom with lockdowns. If this sounds insane to you, it's because it is. But here's a reminder of Trump's video. We looked at this several weeks ago at this point. I think it was.

The left wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates with all of their sudden fear mongering about the new variants that are coming. Gee whiz, you know what else is coming? An election. They want to restart the COVID hysteria so they can justify more lockdowns, more censorship, more illegal drop boxes, more mail-in ballots, and trillions of dollars in payoffs to their political allies heading into the 2024 election. Does that sound familiar? These are bad people. These are sick people we're dealing

with. But to every COVID tyrant who wants to take away our freedom, hear these words, we will not comply. So don't even think about it. We will not shut down our schools. We will not accept your lockdowns. We will not abide by your mask mandates. And we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates. They rigged the 2020 election, and now they're trying to do the same thing all over again by rigging the most important election in the history of our country, the 2024 election, even if it means trying to bring back COVID. But they will fail because we will not let it happen.

When I'm back in the White House, I will use every available authority to cut federal funding to any school, college, airline, or public transportation system that imposes a mask mandate or a vaccine mandate. Thank you very much. So as a reminder, to the extent that we had lockdowns in the United States, which we really didn't, but OK, to the extent that we had policies that some characterize as lockdowns, we had them under Donald Trump, and it's quite rich that now Trump is warning us about forthcoming lockdowns under Democrats

when it was Trump who locked down and it was Biden who unlocked part of it as a result of timing, certainly. But that there's a little bit of absurdity to Trump warning us about the very thing that he is the one who actually did fine. So he did it in his vlog. Trump then repeats this general idea during his South Dakota rally over the weekend, which we covered. Take a look at this. Congressional Republicans should also stop the Biden administration from bringing back

COVID mandates, lockdowns or restrictions of any kind by cutting off the money. And in your state, because of your governor, you're not going to have that problem. But a lot of states do. The radical Democrats are trying hard to restart COVID hysteria. I wonder why. Is there an election coming up by any chance? You know, I saw just the other day for the first time, we're thinking about masks again with I said, what's going on? Oh, that's right. There's an election coming up.

Now, these guys, they'll do anything. But we can't comply because it's bad. And just follow your governor, follow your governor. So there's the same idea. And this is now gone beyond Trump. This is now something that many Republicans are adopting. It's the part of the fear mongering status quo that they love on Fox and Friends. Pete Hegseth was arguing that Kamala Harris is sending messages about how Biden Harris will win in 2024

because they're going to use covid tricks. COVID tricks. Look at this. Win the election. There is too much at stake and the American people know it. That's good philosophy. You can read it one of two ways, right? It's like a quarterback at a pregame press conference

saying we got this, you know, like confident about it. Or you can read it more ominously the ways that others have spoken, which is, you know, there is too much. It's been cast. People know it. The die has been cast. We will win reelection. Too much is at stake. Every and that's I think this creeping sense that so many Republicans have through these indictments and everything else is COVID 2.0, 3.0. What what tricks will they pull out of their bag to make sure we save democracy?

When y'all watch the interview, what comes to mind? I mean, I noticed I noticed that she seemed a little bit calmer. She wasn't the cackling, the laughing. She was it just seemed like she was more just like milk toast. And then Michael Knowles from the right wing Daily Wire also jumping on this bandwagon says that there is a ruling elite that are preparing to rig the election by doing covid again. We're going to do covid again. What exactly does that mean? It's always a mystery. But let's take a look at what he had to say. While the ruling party is arresting and imprisoning the political dissidents with these huge sentences for meandering around the Capitol on January 6th, often being let in by police officers,

sometimes not even being in the city on January 6th. Well, that's going on. That same ruling elite is also preparing to rig the election by doing COVID again, the exact same thing that they did last time. Only here, there's a little twist. While Lionsgate is leading Hollywood in bringing the masks back, while Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Rutgers University, while they're beginning to bring the masks back, you're hearing some talk of more vaccines, more masks. Dr. Fauci goes on CNN and shockingly is grilled by the CNN host over the failures of his predictions and the inadequacy of the public health measures that he was peddling for four years during covid. All right.

So, you know, I could give you a ton of these truly. And the there's sort of a multilayered analysis that is important here, aside from being obviously untrue, that there is a concerted effort from Democrats to lock down the country in general. And so if you look at mask mandates returning, covid guidelines returning, all sorts of stuff like like that, you find that there is a handful of places, including in particular hospitals that are filled with sick people that are saying we are either now recommending or we're going to a policy of masks in the hospital. I'll be honest, that seems pretty damn reasonable. In fact, I have my daughter's

pediatrician appointment coming up. I'm not wearing masks anywhere at this point. I plan to wear a mask when I go to the pediatrician because there are sick people everywhere. And I, you know, as the pediatrician comes in from doing a strep swab next door and a covid test in the next room over, I think I'm going to wear a mask for the 15 minutes I'm in there. The hospital thing seems logical. But beyond that, there's no big wave of lockdowns coming. But the most important thing is that bringing back covid restrictions wouldn't help Joe Biden. It would hurt Joe Biden. So at its core, the conspiracy theory makes no sense. If you bring back so-called covid lockdowns, it would hurt the economy. It would anger people. It would make people say, oh, Biden's president

and it's all coming back. Biden must be doing something wrong. Why on earth would you do it? Now, if you press a lot of the right wingers on this, what they'll say is that the useful part to Democrats is if you bring back all the lockdowns, then you use it to justify vote by mail, which is how Biden rigged it in 2020. The problem is, for the most part, there is still vote by mail and absentee ballots already. And if you were determined to use those mechanisms to rig the election for which there's no evidence, you already have the ability to do it. Obviously, I don't think you'd get away with it because when people try to do this stuff,

they actually get caught. But you don't actually need to bring back any restrictions if that's your plan anyway. So at every level, it doesn't make sense. And then lastly, bringing back covid lockdowns could suppress turnout just by making people depressed and demoralized. It just doesn't make sense. It's not a winning strategy. None of it is good. You can lastly make the case that one of the big reasons Trump lost in 2020 is that he did not control covid. His covid handling is seen as a failure, widely speaking. And the fact that Joe Biden could do the same thing to win makes no sense.

Trump was seen as a failure on COVID and it helped him lose. But Biden is going to, in a sense, admit failure by saying we need new restrictions. But for Biden, it'll help him win. It doesn't make any sense. They're grasping, grasping at straws. They have nothing. But this is what they're doing. Donald Trump was interviewed by Megyn Kelly and it went bad quick. These are some almost surreal moments. The topic of Dr. Anthony Fauci was brought up by Megyn Kelly to Donald Trump. And Trump starts playing completely dumb about Fauci. This is so weird to see. Check this out. One of the stranger interviews I've seen Trump do. I'm quoting your words. Then for the first time in May,

I also said I didn't listen to him too much. I'm getting there. But then in May, you started saying, well, he's a civil servant. So I couldn't technically. The truth is, though, not only did you not fire Fauci, who is loathed by many, many millions of Republicans in particular, but also some Democrats. By the way. You made him a star. You made him a star. This is the criticism of you, that you made him the face of the White House coronavirus task force. You think so? That he was out at every presser, that he was running herd for the administration on COVID, and that you actually gave him a presidential commendation before he left office.

Wouldn't you like a do-over on that? I don't know who gave him the commendation.? I don't know who gave him the commendation. I really don't know who gave him the commendation. One went out to mark somebody. He got a presidential commendation while Trump was president. I don't know where that came from, Megan. So you know, I'm going to admit this is one of Trump's less idiotic answers, even though he's obviously lying and playing

dumb with it. He got a commendation. I don't know anything about it. Who gave him that? Trump really can't win either way on this one, right? If Trump goes after Fauci, well, you know, it's a doctor who is trying to do the right thing. If Trump defends Fauci, his base will be angry.

So Trump just goes, listen, I don't know anything about it. People list like them. I don't know. I don't know who gave him the commendation, but it's always a lie from Trump one way or the other. They stayed on the topic of Fauci for a little bit. And Trump went after DeSantis for shutting down Florida when Megyn Kelly tried to make the point, listen, it wasn't mandatory to listen to Fauci. DeSantis didn't listen to Fauci. And to make the point, listen, it wasn't mandatory to listen to Fauci. DeSantis didn't listen to Fauci. And Trump says, no, no, no.

DeSantis did terribly. We're not good people. But I wasn't I was not a big fan of Fauci. If you look at Ron DeSantamonious, he was this guy said the greatest things I can give you articles that Fauci is great. He's wonderful. We love him. We don't do articles that Fauci is great. He's wonderful. We love him. We don't do anything without Fauci.

This went on for months. He didn't listen to Fauci. He did 100%. Look, I will give you, he shut down Florida. For a month. Oh, he shut it down for a lot of long. He shut down the beaches. He shut down the roads.

He shut down a hospital. He was shutting down everything. He also had long lines of people getting the jab, as he called it. Let's all go get the job. The guy tried to change history in Florida. Now, eventually, Florida was open. But a lot of these other. So this is this is super interesting because Trump really is between a rock and a hard

place on the covid stuff. Trump wants to warn about forthcoming lockdowns. He won't do except the lockdowns that we had to the extent we had them took place under Trump. Trump wants to frame himself as the freedom guy, except it is true that there are Republican governors that, quote, open states while Trump was still saying shut stuff down. Trump wants to take credit for the vaccines that he claims he helped develop, even though he really didn't. He just said, hey, we'll buy vaccines and we'll give you some of the money up front, which is totally normal. Most countries did it if they could afford to do it. Trump wants to take credit for the vaccines, but much of his following base hates

the vaccines. So Trump is in a tough spot on covid, mostly because of the monster that he created. And it's very interesting to see Trump then randomly bringing up Caitlyn Jenner and saying, I knew Caitlyn as Bruce, who was very handsome as Bruce. And all of a sudden it's Caitlin. Who the hell knows? The bizarre moment from the interview. I knew Caitlin as Bruce. I knew Bruce and you know, Bruce was a great athlete and a very handsome person, very handsome guy.

And all of a sudden Bruce's Caitlin. I said, what's this all about? This is very confusing. I knew Bruce was a brand new subject. Yeah, it's all brand new to Trump. I knew Bruce and all of a sudden it's Caitlin. But Bruce was handsome as well. Bizarre, bizarre. And then the last moment of this interview that was previewed because the full thing actually is going to be published tonight and we'll look at it again if there's anything else notable. The topic of the 2016 debate came up.

You may remember that the 20 there was this 2016 Republican debate which Megyn Kelly actually anchored and Megyn Kelly confronted Trump about some of the things he had said about women. Trump thought it was an unfair question. Trump responded by attacking Rosie O'Donnell, by the way, which I asked Rosie about in my interview with her. Here is a reminder of that moment from 2016. Then we will look at their discussion about this yesterday. Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use

a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular when it comes to women. You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals. Your Twitter account only Rosie O'Donnell. No, it wasn't. Your Twitter account. All right. And so it went on from there and it was sort of one of those viral moments. The topic of that came up. Trump said the question was nasty. Me a question when you were moderating the debate for Fox that frankly, if I didn't come up with the answer, only Rosie O'Donnell, I would have had a problem with that.

That was a bad question. It was a great question. That was a nasty question. You know, there are questions that are it's not that they're not answerable, but no matter if you're Winston Churchill, he was very good at you. Handled it well. Your poll numbers went up. I'm not saying that. I got a little bit lucky. I came up with a good. So Trump basically says the question was nasty when you confronted me with my words verbatim to women. Disgusting words. It was a nasty question and there's really no way to answer it.

You know, I think in retrospect, is there some better way that Trump could answer something like that? He did get a bunch of applause for saying Rosie O'Donnell. And even though it was a disgusting thing to do and say, a lot of the right wing crowd actually liked it. It is true. It helped Trump the way he answered it. There is a way to answer that.

You know, it's sort of like, when did you stop beating your wife? It's it's often framed as the epitome of the unanswerable question. Trump could have said something along the lines of, listen, I don't. I am not going to be controlled in terms of the way I talk about people by political correctness and left wing ideologues who want to police my speech. Yeah, sometimes I use harsh words, but everybody knows with me where they stand. I'll tell you what I think about you. I'll tell you what I think. And that's how I will be president. I'm not going to equivocate. I'm going to be you could come up with something like that if you're confronted with vile words you've

said about women before. So I disagree with Trump that it was unanswerable. But Megyn Kelly is right. He came up with an answer that for their audience actually worked really well. Bonkers interview with Megyn Kelly. We'll look at more clips from it when they're released. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube. We'll have some of these clips on Tick Tock. We'll take the quickest of quick breaks and then continue. helps you do. Fume is not a vape. I don't advertise vape stuff. There's no nicotine.

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Pacman for 10 percent off the journey pack. The info is in the podcast notes. Today we'll be speaking with Dr. Phil Plait, who's an astronomer, science communicator, author of several books on space and our place in it, the writer and host of Crash Course Astronomy, a video series with over 70 million views on YouTube. And we are going to talk about astrology. You know, Phil, I've had so many people want me to interview someone about this. And I don't know what it is about astrology that, you know, there's lots of pseudoscience and healing sort of stuff that could be covered in detail. But something about astrology seems of particular interest to my audience. Let's kind of start at the beginning. What is astrology and did it at one point

split off from astronomy? Trying to define astrology is actually a little bit tough because it's like, it's like saying, how do you define medicine? There's a lot of different things, right? And astrology has its roots going back thousands and thousands of years to a bunch of different cultures. Uh, but the bottom line I'll be really sort of generalizing here is to say that the stars and the planets 12 zodiac constellations, and depending where they are in the sky and what planets are in them, this affects your life. And it all is kind of rooted in the time of year you were born. And the bottom line, the bottom, bottom line is that it's all nonsense, is that none of it works. It doesn't make any sense. There's no guiding principle to any of this. If you talk to five astrologers, you'll get 10 different opinions. And so that's where I'm coming from. If you're a deep believer in astrology, you're probably not going to

be happy about what I'm going to be talking about here. So it seems like there is both the idea that the positions of stars, planets and celestial bodies when we were born impacts our predispositions and personalities, et cetera. And also that the day to day positioning based on the month of the year we were born also can affect it in the by virtue of like the horoscope can affect our immediate future. So there's sort of like a backwards looking determinative thing about personality based on what it was like when we were born and then also the day to day going forward. Pretty much. Yeah. And most astrological styles, whether it's, you know,

Eastern or Western or whatever, whatever culture you're you're you're gleaning this from. Yeah, that's pretty much the basis of all of it. Yeah. There are a number of different contradictory arguments made that claim to explain why astrology can't possibly work in the way that it's described. This includes lack of accuracy about our understanding of the positions at different points in time. It includes physical realities about some of these bodies are so far that there would be essentially a close to zero measurable impact, whether it's gravitational or whatever. So in that sense, on a physical level, it can't possibly work. Talk a little bit about what you see as the biggest scientific impossibilities of astrology. Well, I think that, I think you pretty much nailed it there. The biggest problem with it is that

there's just no underlying force cause physical reason for this to make sense. Why would, for example, in the most popular kind of astrology, at least in the United States, the sun sign astrology, why would it make any sense that everybody born in, you know, April or late April or just even a given day, April 15th? Yeah. Why would they have any sort of guiding overlying physical effect that would, that would run their lives? Or at least, you know, astrologers like to say the stars impel, they don't compel or something like that. These are just sort of vague forces out there that can kind of guide you a little bit, but they're not forcing you into a thing.

Fine, whatever, but still, what is it that somebody born on a certain date when the planets and the moon and the sun and the earth were all in a certain configuration why would that have any effect on your life now we know about a lot of forces that are out there and the biggest ones in the solar system would be gravity right the an object has mass and it pulls you toward it so the earth is overwhelmingly the largest gravitational force in our day-to-day lives. But the sun and the moon also have a small, much smaller effect, but it's there. That affects the tides, for example. And the planets also have an effect as well. It's really, really small. The largest gravitational effect besides the sun and the moon would be Jupiter. And it dominates all the other planets.

And if you're talking about tides, which is related to gravity, but in a more complicated way, Venus completely overwhelms the other planets. And so when they talk about, you know, Neptune is an Aquarius and that means this and this, and it's like Neptune has zero effect compared to the moon. The moon is like standing in the middle of a rock concert

and they're talking about a mosquito flapping its wings 100 yards away. It doesn't make sense that that mosquito would have any effect on you compared to the raucous noise all around you. And so this is the basic problem I have with astrology. And also that if you talk to different astrologers, they have different ways of talking about all this stuff, and they don't agree. They don't agree on specific horoscopes that they cast. They say, this is what's going to happen in your life. They make very vague generalities, which I'd like to talk to you about in a second as well.

But they don't agree. And when you talk to scientists, we may disagree about certain very specific things. But no medical researcher is going to deny germ theory. No astronomer denies gravity. You know, we may argue about the effects of gravity and how it works when, you know, you have a trillion stars all orbiting each other, but the basic effects of it, we, we understand fairly well. And with astrology, despite, you know, thousands of years of working on this, there's still no real convergence on what it all means. It also seems that when astrologers are sometimes presented with questions like, why does your framework not consider the electromagnetic influence of the sun or asteroids, for example,

or whatever? They tend to go back to an equivalent of God works in mysterious ways, sort of the idea of there's some intangible here that is beyond explaining it to you, whether they know it or not. They're either keeping it to themselves or they don't know it themselves either. It seems that there's a pseudo religious element to that where there's some unknown force where we don't have to explain why we're ignoring a whole bunch of things. And also, we don't have to explain what kind of holds this whole thing together. Oh, no, that's absolutely right. This is precisely what a lot of astrologers say, you know, you're, you're trying to, uh, ascribe a scientific overview to the, some, some underlying cause.

And we're saying that it's beyond that there's something out there that we don't know about that we don't understand. And to me, that's an admission from astrologers that they have no idea what they're talking about. Um, because if there were some of this force out there, then they would all at least agree on how this stuff works and the different kinds of astrology do not. Uh, and so again, it doesn't make any sense. Um, and if, if there's some force out there that they don't understand, but they can predict how it works and say, well, you know, we know that Neptune does this and this and this, whether, you know, how it does that, we don't know. Then my question is, why don't they ever predict the existence of these objects? No astrologer predicted the existence of Pluto,

which was discovered in 1930. And Neptune's actually a good example. Neptune was found by math. Its gravity was pulling on the planet Uranus, and Uranus was never quite in the right spot. Astronomers were predicting saying it should be, you know, precisely right here at this date, and it never was. And they said, well, something's wrong. We're missing something. And it turns out, yeah, we're missing Neptune. And the mass of Neptune is pulling on Uranus and moving it around a little tiny bit. And so that the existence of that planet was predicted correctly by astronomy. So, you know, where are these predictions? And I see astrologers sometimes taking into account asteroids. And this cracks me up because asteroids weren't discovered until

the 1800s. And there are literally millions and millions of them in the solar system. So if there's some force that doesn't seem to depend on distance and doesn't seem to depend on the size of the object, the asteroids should completely overwhelm everything else. And yet they don't. And I've also seen astrologers ascribe feminine qualities to asteroids, which I find fascinating because a lot of the asteroids are named after female gods. This is just how they got named, Ceres and Vesta, the two largest ones, and a lot of the other ones. And it became tradition for astronomers to name them after female deities. And so that's just a coincidence. That's not anything real. So to ascribe feminine attributes to asteroids, whatever even feminine attributes means, is is ridiculous. And so, again, this all shows me that astrologers are just making this up as they go along. And there's no underlying force behind any of this. You talked about wanting to go back to vagueness. I think many of us have read

about experiments where the same horoscope is given to everybody, regardless of birth date. And everybody says, yeah, it sort of does describe me or whatever the case may be. Talk a little bit about that. Let's go back to what you wanted to say on vagueness. Right. And this is a this is a big deal. Now, if you talk about newspaper horoscopes, even astrologers, professional astronomers tend to poo poo those because they say, Oh, that's just written by somebody they've hired to make stuff up. Um, so, so, you know, even they will say no, so we can safely ignore that. But if you go and talk about, uh, a specifically cast horoscope for a person, they tend to be vague. You know,

water will play a part in your life today. Well, of course, water always, you know, I'm thirsty. Look, water's playing a part in my life. Beautifully done. But it's, you know, money will play an important role in the next month. Well, of course it will. We live in a capitalist society. Money plays a part of my life every minute of every day. So you can say these vague generalities. And even if I say water will play a role, money will play a role, you'll be hit by lightning, cars will take a dominant role, and you'll read that and go, wow, lightning, gosh. And then a month passes and you're not hit by lightning. You're going to forget that prediction and say, oh my gosh, that car.

Yeah, I bought a new car or I was almost hit by a car. Well, you know, when you say a car will play a role in your life, well, what does that mean? Are you going to use a car? Are you going to buy a car? Are you going to see an accident? When you start thinking about cars in general in this way, pardon me, there's a huge amount of things that it can do to be a part of your life. So that vague generality means they're going to get a hit by saying something that vague. And if they do say something specific and it doesn't happen, you forget. And you can talk to any stage magician, any stage mentalist, the kind of person who like tries to read people's minds in the audience and that sort of thing.

They will sometimes throw out a very specific thing just to see if somebody gets a hit. And if they don't, the audience forgets by the time they leave. They'll say, yeah, nobody will say, oh, do you remember when he said somebody in the audience was hit by lightning and nobody was? That was weird. They forget about that completely. And it's often also very slickly couched as I'm seeing either getting hit by lightning or something related to a storm.

Could be water, could be wind. So now it's like or electricity. Now it's anything, you know. Hey, last thing I want to ask you about in the limited time we have when I've spoken to experts on cults, experts on conspiracy theories, etc., we will often start with something relatively benign, like, oh, I believe in flat earth. And I'll ask the question, is this isolated and relatively benign? Or are people who believe in that also likely to believe anti-Semitic conspiracy theories or whatever? Are these things siloed or not? And usually it's sometimes it's siloed, but often it is not the Q

and on people and the, you know, anti-Semitic people and the covid people. It's all there's overlap there. What about when it comes to astrology? Is it sometimes just an isolated hobby or is it more likely that those who believe in astrology believe some of these other things? Well, I'm not a psychologist and I haven't studied astrology specifically in the way you're saying. So I can't say, you know, somebody who's in a, who reads their horoscope in the newspaper is also likely to be, you know, a COVID denier or an anti-vaxxer or anti-Semite. That seems to be a fairly big leap. And I would never say something like that. What I would say, and it's funny you would bring this up because I literally just wrote about this.

It's going to be published in Scientific American very soon. That a lot of these types of beliefs have things in common that can make it easier for you to believe in worse things. evidence, a belief in a conclusion without evidence such that when evidence comes along that contradicts what you believe, you'll tend to push it aside and say, well, that's silly. Right. You know, this works for me or or, you know, that this is the experts are lying to you. The government is lying to you, whatever that sort of denial of expertise, denial of evidence, all of these conspiracy theories, whether it's flat earth or Apollo moon landing deniers, which are still out there, uh, QAnon fossil fuel companies, uh, downplaying climate science, anti-vaxxers, QAnon on and on and on and on. They all have

these same sort of things going on underneath the surface. So, you know, the belief in astrology, relatively harmless, but it does sort of put into this idea of anti-science, anti-expertise that a lot of these other things use. And so if you believe in, say, anti-vax rhetoric, it might be easier for you to buy into other conspiracy theories. And that is a path you do not want to walk down. And that is one of the reasons why I treat belief in astrology seriously. I treat belief in, in people deny the moon landing seriously. Um, these, these are, I hate to use the word gateway because that has bad implications, but these can lead to worse and worse kinds of thinking. And that way, chaos lies.

That is absolutely the case. So we've been speaking with astronomer Dr. Phil plate. Really appreciate your time. We'll link out to your video series. And so great to talk to you. Keep up the great work. Thank you very much for having me on. that people can see. I've seen that around. This is an easier and less messy way to curb the cravings. And you can use Zypix just about anywhere. Zypix is available in six flavors with

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Get 10 percent off with the code Pacman 10 at checkout. That's ZIPPX dot com. Use code Pacman one zero for 10 percent off. The info is in the podcast notes. As if we needed another reminder of how bloodthirsty the modern Republican Party voter is. On average, we got it last night. Ron DeSantis, with his truly failing Republican presidential primary campaign, appeared on the Sean Hannity propaganda show on Fox News.

And it was very rare applause, a lot of forced applause. But the one moment where the crowd genuinely seemed to like what the sanctus was saying was when DeSantis promised that people would be extra judicially shot dead at the US Mexico border that they loved. Take a look at this. We're using lethal force against the cartels. If they're bringing fentanyl in breaking into our country, we're going to leave them stone cold dead at the border.

Trust me, they will get the message. The crowd genuinely liking that. Remember Hope and Change or whatever? It's now let's deny people due process law and order and do something as a moral as you might be able to imagine. I mean, it is really, truly bonkers, bonkers stuff. And listen, you never count someone out forever like it's possible somehow DeSantis will turn this around or who knows. It's not looking good. And the problem with DeSantis isn't that he's offering too much of this sort of thing. It's

that he's not offering enough. Quite frankly, he would probably be pulling a little better if he offered more of this stuff. One other moment, dare I say Kafka esque from this appearance, Sean Hannity trying to go to break, struggling to read the teleprompter as Ron DeSantis tosses footballs into the crowd, I guess showing us his athletic bona fides. I don't know. Take a look at this. If you're only listening, you won't get the full effect, but it's only 10 seconds. Up next, a bizarre story from a Virginia statehouse race involving a Democratic candidate.

Live sex acts on a porn site. Biden. Anyway, Tulsi Gabbard is next. Obviously, Tulsi Gabbard coming up next. All right. So another appearance from DeSantis, smatterings of applause when he says really brutal things. And remember the brutality and the inhumanity of these proposals shoot people dead at the border, deny them the due process that we claim to value and whatever.

It's a feature, not a bug. Let's now talk, I dare say, about a more ethical Republican. His name is Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney announced he is not going to seek reelection in the United States Senate. Now, when I call Mitt Romney a more ethical Republican, I don't mean that I loved it when he strapped his dog to the roof of his car. I don't mean that I loved it when Mitt Romney used his Mormon faith to justify anti-gay policies when he ran against Barack Obama in 2012. I'm not saying any of those things. What I am saying is that on some basic human level, Romney strikes me as a generally decent pro-social guy whose social conservatism I disagree with. Very different than the people

that are now at the helm of the Republican Party, whether it's Trump or DeSantis or whoever. Mitt Romney has announced that he is retiring. I get it. Mitt Romney, 76, and he says it's time for the next generation. I'd be in my mid 80s by the time I finished my next term if I were to run and win. So I get it. But we continue to see a situation where the modern MAGA Republican Party is so extreme and so disgusting that for one reason or another, the more reasonable people are either being pushed out or opting out themselves. Here is Mitt Romney explaining it is time for the next generation. You know, I considered my age and the fact that at the end of a second term, I would be in my mid 80s.

And I think it's time for guys like me to get out of the way and have people in the next generation step forward because they're going to be shaping the world they're going to be living in. And over the last couple of decades, people of my age, the boomers have done pretty well for ourselves. We voted for all sorts of benefits and programs for us and we haven't paid for them. And I think some of the people that are coming along next want to have a say in how we we leave the earth and how they prepare for the future they're going to live in. This is so rare in the Republican Party, not a party I support, not a party I'm a fan of, but this is so rare in the Republican Party, not a party I support, not a party I'm a fan of,

but this is so rare in the Republican Party to even hear this kind of thinking that it sounds almost like this guy is probably a Democrat, but he's not. Trump weighed in. I'm sorry, Romney weighed in on the Trump wing of the Republican Party, and he says there's no policy. There's just there's no policy from them. And unfortunately, that's what we're hearing. And again, on the Trump wing of the party, I haven't heard policy other than saying we're going to build a wall. And by the way,

he was president. He was president for four years. He built 50 miles. Why did he get done? I said, well, how about the tax change? Well, the tax that was Paul Ryan, that that wasn't the Biden plan. He did. Of course, he had a health care plan. Remember that that was going to everybody's going to have low cost health insurance. It was fabulous. Never proposed. Never saw. He was in four years. So it's not a policy centric approach. And if you don't have policy to match your rhetoric, ultimately it's not going to be successful. What about that health care plan that was coming out two weeks later in August of 2020? Mitt Romney is right. Mitt Romney is right. And he's an increasingly rare, marginalized voice in

the Republican Party. This is another example of the reasonable people comparatively self-selecting out of the insane Republican Party. He's a Republican with whom I disagree on many policies, but he's not in a cult. He's not a cult member. Now, one interesting thing will be what does Mitt Romney do during the remainder of his term to ensure Trump doesn't get reelected? Will he do something? I'm curious to see. Mitt Romney weighed in yesterday on other Republicans who said the 2020 election was stolen. Romney believes they know that they're not telling the truth when they say that he says it's just performance. What about Cruz and Holly? Because you said they were disingenuous. Oh, I look, I yeah, I really do believe that that

that the many of the people in leadership, meaning elected officials who claim that 2020 was a stolen election, that we need to recount the ballots or whatever, other than through the normal judicial process, I think they do better. And I have expressed that numerous times. That's not a surprise. Look, democracy requires belief and credibility in elections. And so people who are casting aspersions on our election process are threatening one of the bases of our very, very foundation. So, yeah,

I was critical that continue to be. And I'm sure they wouldn't be surprised to hear it again. I think Mitt Romney is probably right. I don't really think Ted Cruz thought the election was stolen. Does Mike Pillow think the election was really stolen? Yeah, probably. But I don't think Ted Cruz actually thinks that last clip here of Mitt Romney after he announces he will not seek reelection on the possibility of a Biden impeachment. He says, I haven't heard anything that would be worthy of that level. I just don't see it.

I haven't heard any allegation of something that would rise to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor. I think it would be very unusual to actually see a referral of impeachment. I don't expect that to happen. They can inquire and see if there's evidence that shows something else. I don't think they'll find that. I don't know. But there's been no allegation of that.

And any any hint of that has been denied by the president. So I'm not expecting that to occur. Now Romney could also have gone further and said, listen, we they're going on a fishing expedition. There's just we don't have any reason to even start the inquiry. He's stopping short of that. He's saying, you know, inquire. But I don't believe it will go any further.

There are insider reports that there are other Republicans worried that in his book, Mitt Romney will reveal private conversations about Donald Trump and that we will actually learn the degree to which a lot of these Trump suck ups who were performing for an audience of an orange one actually were being we're just being cynical and doing it for access to power and proximity to the presidency. There is a report from Business Insider that there are Republicans worried about what Romney will say. I welcome it. Let's put it there. We have a voicemail number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here's a caller saying, OK, David, you wrote a critical thinking book for little kids. What about a critical thinking book for the adults who need it? David, sir,

welcome back from vacation, ma'am. I will be purchasing your book. Think like a detective or my great nephews and niece. So thank you for that. And I have a question. Will you be making writing a new book for our senior citizens called Think Like Matlock? I'm wondering, I think they could use a book as well. Yeah, I really should write a version, you know, think like MacGyver or something like that and think think like the Golden Girls. I don't know.

Give it to Luke Beasley and have him hand it out at Trump rallies. But honestly, the critical thinking book for kids is at a level that it's probably appropriate for a lot of these MAGA adults that we interview at the Trump rally. So I don't even think I need to write a separate book. We have such a good bonus show for you today that I won't even tell you what's on it. Let's make it a surprise. OK, sign up at join Pacman dot com, get instant access. And what's on the bonus show today will shock and appall you that I can tell you.