The David Pakman Show - 9/15/22: DeSantis Absurd Immigrant Stunt, Labor Union Support Explodes

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

-- On the Show: -- Johnny Teague, Republican candidate running in Texas' 7th District, joins David to discuss his candidacy -- Approval for labor unions reaches a 57-year high according to the latest Gallup poll -- Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flies 50 immigrants to Martha's Vineyard in an absurd political stunt -- A Trumpist wearing a clown wig in possession of guns is arrested at a Dairy Queen after threatening to kill Democrats -- Yet another Vladimir Putin ally has died a suspicious death -- Melania Trump reportedly slammed Donald Trump over his handling of COVID early during the pandemic, according to a new book -- The Mike Lindell search warrant reveals that he is in potentially very serious legal trouble -- Voicemail caller comes out against double-blind placebo-controlled medical trials -- On the Bonus Show: Twitter shareholders vote in favor of Elon Musk's takeover deal, Patagonia founder donates entire company to fight climate change, R. Kelly convicted of child pornography, much more... ❄️ ChiliSleep by SleepMe: Get 25% OFF your bed-cooling system at https://chilisleep.com/pakman 🌿 Sunset Lake CBD: Get 20% OFF using code PAKMAN at https://sunsetlakecbd.com 🔊 Try Blinkist for FREE and get 25% off at http://www.blinkist.com/pakman 🥣 Try Splendid Spoon! Get $120 OFF at https://splendidspoon.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

. We'll often talk on the show about how on so many different issues, the country, meaning the voters are as far left as they have been oftentimes for as long as we've been keeping track of certain metrics. So as an example, we'll often say, well, when you ask people, should abortion be legal in most cases? We have more approval for that. Yes, abortion should be legal in most cases today than at any point during the Roe v.

Wade era, which started decades and decades ago. We talk about gay marriage, for example. We'll talk about, well, should the government provide some basic level of health care to everybody regardless of ability to pay? But another area in which public opinion has shifted towards the left over the last many years that does not get as much attention is support for labor unions. Labor unions in the United States are experiencing based on this brand new Gallup

poll that came out under two weeks ago, which I did not talk about, but I'm talking about today. Approval for labor unions in the United States is at its highest point since 1965. That's 57 years. And when you look at the numbers, you now see that 68 percent of Americans currently approve of labor unions. That's a number that bottomed out at 48 percent in 2009 that got close to 68 percent in the late 90s and early 2000s. But you have actually have to go all the way back to 1965 where you see that support for labor unions was at 71 percent. Now this is data that we have going back a long way because Gallup has measured this support for labor unions going all the way back to 1936. And there was a period in the United States from 36 to 67 roughly where if you're looking at this chart, you see this graph, you see that there was

just generally higher support in that roughly 30 year period. You had an average of 68 percent support for labor unions in the United States that dropped into the mid to high 50s for a while and went even lower around the time of the Great Recession. But those numbers have now recovered. And the interesting question would be why. One part of this is when you break down these numbers by party affiliation, Democrats, Republicans, independents, it won't shock you that support among Democrats is where labor union support is highest. But even among Democrats, labor union support has also hit a 20 year high. Labor union support among Democrats has always been higher in this entire period, but it is particularly

higher right now as well. And to understand what's going on, you need only look at sort of the world around us in the United States. People are increasingly understanding that we need some counterbalancing power or influence against the power of corporations and against the power of employers in the employee employer relationship. This is a reaction to what is correctly being seen out in the world, the gig economy, more and more people realizing how absurd the disconnect between productivity and wages has become. Even if you don't know that technically, even if you don't have the data in front of you, intuitively, there is a sense of that. And it is true that on some of these things, the pendulum sort of switch of swings back and forth.

And there are periods where the country moves away from favoring labor unions to some degree and moves back in favor of labor unions. The key is what can you get done when the pendulum is swinging in your favor? What can you accomplish when support is higher? I think it also should be mentioned that President Joe Biden is arguably more pro-union, vocally so, than any recent president. I mean, certainly in the last 20 or so years. And he talks about it as well. And Joe Biden's background riding the Amtrak train. Amtrak also has been in the news for what appears to be a narrowly averted major work stoppage labor strike. Biden talks about that certainly more than Trump, more than Obama, of course, more than Bush. And I guess you have to go back and think, well, is it sort of like

a Clinton level amount of talking about labor unions? So none of this should shock us. The optimistic thing is we often worry and I talk about this on the show all the time that there's a disconnect between what is happening in the country and public opinion. So for example, you will see the Republican Party swing cartoonishly and absurdly into this MAGA world where there is no more policy. It's authoritarianism and sort of fascistic, dictatorial, wet dreaming in terms of what they would like to see while claiming to be about small government. What it just doesn't make any sense. And we sometimes see that the Republican Party

electorate or just voters in general, they don't see the scope of what is happening within the Republican Party. And this ends up with, you know, Herschel Walker might defeat Raphael Warnock in Georgia. And it's horrible. In other words, we often are concerned that the people are not reacting to the reality of what's going on. The good news here, if we want to find some good news beyond just, oh, it's good that people are more in favor of labor unions, is that this is an accurate and logical reaction to what is happening in terms of the relationships between employer and employee, in terms of the disproportionate power that large corporations have, not only with regard to their employees, but also with regard to taxation and so many other things.

So this is good to see. The question now becomes what's going to be done about it. Will there actually be any steps in terms of the democratization of work? Joe Biden has ideas that are going nowhere, naturally, because of what's going on in the Senate right now and not having 60 votes. But we're going to continue talking about it. And the first step in achieving change is public opinion uniting. And we're seeing that to some degree. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has pulled a disgusting political stunt that actually isn't that terrible for some of the people involved. And I'll explain

that in a moment. But the big headline is that Ron DeSantis flew 50 migrants to the swanky island of Martha's Vineyard. And this is really just a sick political stunt. It's meant to trigger and own the libs and on and on and on. But I'm going to argue that this is actually quite the opposite. A Business Insider has a report about this. DeSantis sent 50 migrants to Martha's Vineyard by plane as an anti-liberal stunt, the locals pulled together to help them. Now, I've spent a lot of time on Martha's Vineyard. And as soon as I saw the headlines, my instinct was, I don't know that this is going to work out necessarily the way Ron DeSantis imagines it working out, because Martha's Vineyard is very, very liberal,

extraordinarily liberal. And it only follows logically that you are going to see the people of Martha's Vineyard come together to help these 50 individuals. As the story goes, Governor, this is Business Insider. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida sent plane loads of migrants to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. It was apparently intended to shift some of the burden of migration to a rich liberal area. Locals at the exclusive destination where Barack Obama owns property rallied to help out.

State Senator Julian Sear of Massachusetts told The New York Times about 50 migrants arrived in two planes with no warning. Fox News Digital reported the story and had video of migrants disembarking from planes. All right. You can imagine what it looks like for people to get off of a plane. Yes, Florida can confirm the two planes with illegal immigrants that arrived in Martha's Vineyard today were part of the state's relocation program to transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations. That's Taryn Fenske, the comms director for DeSantis.

And then you just have to look at the reaction from the island of Martha's Vineyard. Dylan Fernandez posting our island jumped into action, putting together 50 beds, giving everyone a good meal, providing a play area for the children, making sure people have the health care and support they need. We are a community that comes together to support immigrants. Another article from CBS, Florida's DeSantis flies dozens of illegal immigrants to Martha's Vineyard, escalating tactic against, quote, sanctuary destinations. Think about how absurd this is. First of all, Florida spends a bunch of money to fly people out.

These folks appear to actually have come from Texas, not even from Florida. So it's like, why is Ron DeSantis even involved? Why is taxpayer money being spent to move people from Texas to Massachusetts? That doesn't even make sense, first and foremost. Secondly, from a fiscal conservatism point of view, I think it would have been cheaper for Florida to set up temporary housing and vocational training for these folks, eventually making them a productive taxpaying component of the Florida economy, rather than just blowing a few million dollars of taxpayer money to fly people from Texas to Massachusetts for a political stunt. And by the way, if these folks eventually want to go back

to Texas, they're going to be able to do it and nothing's going to stop them. And by the way, if these folks eventually want to go back to Texas, they're going to be able to do it and nothing's going to stop them. And Ron DeSantis isn't going to track them down and fly them out again. So it's not only absurd sort of superficially, but it doesn't even make sense in terms of a political stunt with taxpayer money. Now, in the meantime, the migrants are now in Martha's Vineyard rather than Florida or Texas. And statistically, without casting any aspersions or judgment, without making any moral statement, if you look at the HDI, that's the Human Development Index of Massachusetts, Florida and Texas, which is a metric that considers a number of different types of

well-being, the migrants are certainly far better off in Massachusetts than they would be in Florida or Texas. But that's sort of a different story. And then the last kind of absurd or ironic component of this is that when Ron DeSantis pulls these stunts and sends people from red states to blue states or when Abbott, Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, Republican, has also pulled these types of stunts before. Aren't you incentivizing immigration because you're sending the signal to migrants, undocumented immigration? That would be you're

sending the signal to migrants. Hey, listen, even if where you would manage to get is Texas, which I mean, you know, just look at the data. Texas is no it's no beauty when it comes to access to health care, education, quality, all these different things. You get yourself to Texas will get you to a much better state by most metrics. By pulling this stunt, you're arguably incentivizing the very undocumented immigration that you want to disincentivize by saying we'll upgrade you to a state with higher income, more access to health care, better infrastructure and better education. They claim to want to disincentivize that very undocumented immigration.

It's a pathetic stunt. I don't know what this does to public opinion. It's an empirical question. I don't know what this does to public opinion. It's an empirical question. We have to wait and see. But by every metric we can measure, a very stupid stunt. Let me know your thoughts. Maybe I'm missing something. Find me on Twitter at D Pacman.

Also, remember that Monday, 919, just four days away, we are doing our blowout historic membership special. You've been thinking of becoming a member. This is a perfect time to do it. Get on my newsletter at David Pakman dot com. And then Monday morning, you will get a perfect email telling you exactly how to avail yourself of this great membership discount. Listen to this headline. A Trump is with guns wearing a clown wig, was arrested at Dairy Queen for threatening to kill Democrats. That headline, I don't know that it would have necessarily been a believable headline 10 years ago or 15 years ago in the United States.

But it is now a very real headline. You have to see the story. There's a very good CBS News article about it. Police armed man wearing clown wig said he wanted to kill all Democrats. This is unbelievable. The story goes, Delmont, Pennsylvania, a West Moreland County man is facing several charges after police said he wanted to, quote, kill all Democrats. This is Jan or maybe it's pronounced Jan Stovi, 61 years old, took a loaded gun into a Delmont Dairy Queen and police said the quick action of an officer saved lives. This was five days ago, Saturday, September 10th, when Delmont police say Stilwovi walked into a Dairy Queen on State Route 66 in a yellow safety vest and rainbow clown wig. Callers told police he had a gun. Within a minute, Officer Gregory Stull was there.

Multiple people were inside the Dairy Queen at the time, and police say a group of people, including several with intellectual disabilities, were heading inside. Officer Stull found Stovi and took him into custody. Well, great. That's all good. But look at some of these details. Police found a loaded 40 caliber handgun and ammo on him. Stovi allegedly told police he was, quote, undercover. And he was, quote, working to restore Trump to president king of the United States. He said he was armed to, quote, kill Democrats and liberals and to protect himself from, quote, drug traffickers. When they started to look at Stavrovi's Facebook page, they found a history of outbursts and threats. In the last two years, the Wobbe had been asked to leave two different congregations

leading up to the arrest. Both congregations sent him letters saying you had outbursts and you were threatening. You can sort of imagine this person's political views. He had photos on social media showing support for Trump and a post saying civil war in 2024. As of the writing of this article, Stavrovi was not yet in jail, but was in custody awaiting a preliminary arrange arraignment. So there's really two different stories here. And every time we read about a story like this, you see this mishmash of reactions thrown at the wall like, OK, the fact that this guy was a Trumpist, this is the defenders will say the fact that this guy was a Trumpist is irrelevant and a mere coincidence.

This is a mentally ill person. This is a mentally ill person fundamentally. And it really has nothing to do with Trumpism. There are three different important reactions to that. First of all, it is true that there are mentally ill people who will eventually become fixated on something. Trumpism is one outlet. But were it not for Trumpism, at least some of these folks, I agree with you, would become fixated on, you know, is it a 9-11 conspiracy? Is it a child pedophilia

conspiracy at a pizza place in D.C.? We've seen it. So some of these folks, the Trump is the Trump is that fascination is incidental and it could be about something else. But. It is also true that Trump ism is attracting more of these folks than just kind of like middle of the road Democratic Party politics. Trump ism is attracting more of these folks than social progressivism. So we can't write that off. Yes, mental illness. Sure. But there's something about Trumpism here that is attracting these folks. Secondly, if you really believe that what's at issue here is mental illness, why isn't more being done by the very right wing that claims this is all about merely mental illness. It's not about Trumpism and it's certainly not about guns. Why aren't they doing more to prevent

mentally ill folks like this guy from being able to have guns? Because the guy had guns and ammo, which as of right now is believed were purchased legally. So the very people who want to do nothing about the guns and say this is about mental illness, they aren't doing anything to get guns out of the hands of mentally ill people. And we know that there were two churches here who had sent him off and said, you can't be here, you're threatening, etc. There should be some mechanism and it should be a requirement for the church if they had a knowledge that this guy owned firearms to report to someone. Here's someone who's unstable. We've kicked them out for these reasons. We believe they have guns.

It should be looked at. Also, last thing, the number of stories related to like fast food and convenience stores recently, Mike Pillow was raided by the FBI at a Hardee's drive through. This guy's at a Dairy Queen. I hope that if Trump ever does get arrested, he'll be found at KFC elbow deep in a bucket of chicken. That would really be the final poetic chapter to this entire thing. The science tells us that one of the best ways to get consistent deep sleep is lowering your core body temperature. When your body stays cooler at night, you're more comfortable and your sleep is better. Our sponsor, Sleep Me, is the home of Chili Sleep, the customizable climate-controlled sleep solutions that can improve your sleep by keeping you cooler at night.

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The info is in the podcast notes. We have news of yet another one of these tragic accidents. The Daily Beast is reporting that another Vladimir Putin ally has been found dead after, quote, suffocating on a business trip from a, quote, stroke. Hmm. Another top ally, reports the Daily Beast, of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has died this week, this time of an alleged stroke while on a business trip in the village of Roschino in Russia's Far East region. Vladimir Sungurkin, 68 years old, was editor in chief of the Russian state newspaper. According to the newspaper, Sungurkin died suddenly after showing signs of suffocation during the trip. All of these terms are in quotes, even in the article, by the way. Quote, It happened absolutely suddenly. Nothing foreshadowed. We were in the village of Roschino.

We were driving. We were already making our way towards Khabarovsk. We planned to get there in the evening and from there to Moscow. All was good, said his colleague who accompanied him on the business trip. According to Zakharov, Sengorkin fell unconscious minutes after suggesting their group find a beautiful place for lunch. Three minutes later, Vladimir began to suffocate. We took him out for fresh air. He was unconscious. Nothing helped. The doctor who did the initial exam said apparently it was a stroke.

But this is only the initial conclusion. Now, some of you may be confused. Wait, why? Why did a Putin ally die? I thought it was Putin antagonists and Putin enemies who kept accidentally dying. Remember two weeks ago I told you about the guy who these are just tragic accidents. He was in the hospital for treatment for a serious illness and he just fell out the window at the hospital.

Very, very tragic accident. Now that was an antagonist of Putin. So here's what you have to understand. There is a bit of both going on. The way that this is believed to function is the Putin antagonists are sometimes killed, but also Putin allies that are suspected of jumping ship or are suspected of moving in a disloyal way. They also sometimes have to be taken out. And Wikipedia actually maintains an article called 2022 Russian businessman mystery deaths. And you can just look through this and see the list. And it is wild,

wild, wild, wild. And the list is quite long. You might remember Reveal Maganov. He's the guy I told you about who was reportedly hospitalized for heart problems and depression and then, quote, fell out of a window and was a big Putin critic. So as we've talked about before, many of you, when we do these stories, will react and say, David, this stuff is so obvious, like no one believes that these are accidents or deaths from illness. Why isn't Putin slicker in how he does it? That's exactly the point. As I've told you before, the whole point here is. It's important that it be known that these stupid explanations are just untrue, stupid explanations. That's the idea. That's how you so fear if it was really believed that this was a

stroke and the other guy fell out the window or whatever, then it wouldn't have the chilling effect that it's meant to have. And so we're going to continue tracking these. It's about, I believe, 20 or 22 various oligarchs, allies and antagonists who have died in just tragic accidents, supposedly, is what we're supposed to believe. We're going to continue following that list. And you can check out that list on the wiki page, which we will link to. There is a little bit of a rehabilitation of Melania Trump that's happening. And the latest attempt at this is the claim from a forthcoming book that Melania slammed Trump for his dealing with covid early in the pandemic when Trump was still president. You're blowing. This is the quote that is in this new book. There's a CNN article about this by Kevin Liptak, which you can read in a couple of minutes. Trump's top general feared he would authorize a strike on Iran as his presidency ended.

His intelligence chief wondered what Russia had on him. A billionaire friend convinced him to try buying Greenland. A half dozen top officials considered resigning en masse. Even his wife, First Lady Melania, was, quote, rattled by the coronavirus and convinced that Trump was screwing up, according to a forthcoming book from The New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser, set to publish next Tuesday. In a phone call with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Melania Trump sought help convincing her husband to take the pandemic more seriously. You're blowing this, she recalled, telling her husband, the author's right. This is serious.

It's going to be really bad and you need to take it more seriously than you're taking it. He had just dismissed her. You worry too much. She remembered him saying, forget it. So this really does very little positive for Melania Trump's image. And what I mean by that is everyone at the time knew that Trump was blowing it. Everybody knew that Trump was blowing it. It was it was absurd.

Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic was pathetic. Remember saying 15 cases will soon be zero. Would a flu shot prevent covid? All of it. OK, he completely blew it and everybody knew it. And it was clear at the time. Melania Trump didn't come out and publicly say a word about this. This doesn't absolve her of anything. Now, I understand it. Is it reasonable to expect the first lady to come out and publicly say my husband is blowing this? No. But the point is, it's no great feat that we now find out that she thought he was blowing it at the time. Everybody thought that Trump was blowing it at the time. And you could actually argue it's worse. She knew how bad it was and nothing was done.

Trump's handling of covid. And I think this is the most important takeaway now in retrospect was a failure, not just medically. Obviously, it was a failure medically. It was arguably one of Trump's biggest political failures. Trump could have easily sailed to reelection if from the start of the pandemic he said, we are going to beat this back better than any other country. We're going to wear MAGA masks. He could have monetized the MAGA medical masks. We are the ultimate patriots with our MAGA masks stopping covid. We're going to listen to doctors and we are going to be the best at this. Let's do it. And then he would have sailed to reelection. And we know that it would have worked because it worked in other countries. There are a number of other world

leaders who had reelection campaigns during the pandemic in the earlier phase of the pandemic. They did handle it properly. The country rallied around them and they easily won reelection and Trump could have. So for all of the blaming that now is done in retrospect, oh, the it was the problem was they they stole it with mail in ballots and massive dumps in the middle of the night and all of this stuff. Trump could have easily won reelection simply by taking the we are the patriots of all patriots by dealing with this as seriously as other countries. And Trump would be president right now. So great. Melania knew what everybody knew. Trump was completely blowing covid. We're not going to give her a cookie. Now,

more on these stories on our Instagram, which you can find at David Pakman show. We'll take a quick break and be right back. The David Pakman show's longest running sponsor is Blinkist, the app that takes thousands of nonfiction books, boils each of them down into an explainer you can read or listen to in 15 minutes. Blinkist also condenses episodes of popular podcasts into 15 minute explainers. I've been using Blinkist for years to supplement the books I read. I love reading. I read all the time, but there's even more books I don't have time to read. And you can often find those nonfiction books on Blinkist and consume the

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You can try Blinkist free for seven days and get 25 percent off a premium subscription at Blinkist dot com slash David Pakman. That's B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T dot com slash David Pakman to get Blinkist free for seven days and 25 percent off a subscription. The link is in the podcast notes. So continuing our candidate interviews today, we're going to be speaking with Johnny Teague, who's a Republican running in Texas's seventh congressional district. That includes some of the swanky parts of Houston, Texas, if I understand correctly. A great, great having you on. I appreciate it. It's an honor to be with you. Thank you and your audience for having me. So there's a number of different ways we could start this interview.

And this might be a weird thing, but just as a sort of gut check, I've been asking a lot of the different Republican candidates we talked to this question and I forgive me for such a silly question. But who is the current president of the United States? Current president, United States is a fellow named Joe Biden. OK. All right. That's a start. Is he a legitimate president in the sense that his election, his presence presidency

represents the will of the voters? I think I always answer this. I don't want to be dodgy, but I believe there's always question in every election going back. Benjamin Harrison's election. There's always whoever loses is never fully contented with the election. But following the Toro votes and all those other things, President Biden is our president, just like President Trump was elected in 2016 or George Bush in 2000. So and if the baseline is that the loser always has some questions, is there anything different in 2020 than just the norm of the loser never really being fully

satisfied, as you say? I don't I don't think so. I think. Well, I will say there are some differences. One difference was because of covid, we had drive in or drive up voting, which we never had that before. So, yeah, there there were some differences with voting this time. OK, but but big picture, you're not saying it's a dramatically different situation in terms of the loser being dissatisfied that they really lost. Speaker 5 No, I mean, 1960 was a was a crazy election. Great questions about it. Every every election that Hillary Clinton greatly questioned the 2016. So yeah, I think you're right.

Speaker 1 All right. About as reasonable an answer as we've heard, I guess, all considered. So OK, in terms of your platform, you know, one of the things I noticed is that a lot of your background is heavily religiously oriented. I mean, you know, you're a pastor, you have a master of divinity and your religious credentials are certainly very present when one reads about your background in terms of the relationship between religion and civil government. Do you believe that there should be separation there? I believe that there has to be separation the way our founders intended and the way

the founders intended was that government never, ever interfered with religion, didn't sponsor religion. It didn't favor one religion over another. That was our founders intent. But as far as me being a Christian running for Congress or a pastor, you know, I pay taxes just like an electrician does, just like a rancher does. And I'm a rancher. And when our, when our founders said it's to be a government or really coming back to Lincoln, a government of the people, for the people, by the people. I'm part of the people. And as I pay taxes, as I'm able to vote, a pastor ought to be able to run for office just like electrician or a publisher or a lawyer. Speaker 1 Absolutely. Now, when you think about your views on any particular issue,

and this is really a very broad philosophical question, you, of course, can't separate your religion from your opinions. And so for many folks, their opinion about something like abortion personally is informed by their religion, which is part of their moral code without question that that I think is the case for everybody. Do you believe that those religious views alone are enough to determine what should be law in the United States? Let me come back. You use the term religion.

Let me use a different term worldview. Not everybody has a religion. There are some who are anti religion. There are some who just are agnostic. Yeah, you could be has a religion. There are some who are anti-religion. There are some who just are agnostic. Yeah. You could be absent to religion. Yeah. So worldview is what we're talking about, not religion. My worldview is shaped by my faith, no doubt. But just like someone else's worldview is shaped by their lack of faith. We all have backgrounds and experiences. But yeah, I mean, my sense, my belief for right and wrong is based on two things, God's word and the Constitution. No different from John Adams, who said our form of government is only

for moral and religious people. It's not adequate for any other. So I kind of hold that same view that John Adams. Yeah, your your Twitter account is really interesting. Now I guess I should say, but do you do you run your own Twitter account or someone else? No, I don't. That Twitter thing, I guess I guess President Trump was a big Twitter fella. I'm not a Twitter guy. I have a little lady that puts things out there who volunteers for the campaign. And so I really tried to rein that in because it's so quick. Whoever runs your Twitter account, they almost take on the personality of the candidate when

they're not the candidate. The reason I'm glad you're telling me that because I don't even know if you know this, but on your Twitter account, there's a lot of QAnon stuff now, just like as a as do you are. Have you ever heard the term QAnon before? I have. And when you say there's a lot of QAnon, I know in 2020, the lady who did my Twitter thing put out a QAnon. There was something that QAnon put out that she liked and shared it. I guess that's what you do with Twitter. And man, I started getting

all kinds of calls. Are you with QAnon? Do you support QAnon? And I'm like, no, I don't. At that time, I didn't even know who they were. And so I'm praying that you've only seen one thing on Q and nine. If you've seen four, you know, so so I mean, just glancing through, I saw a retweet of three women taking what's called the Q and on oath. I saw a retweeted video with a JFK Jr. conspiracy theory, which is a big QAnon thing. I saw. What was that, brother? I'm sorry. Do you remember the dating on those? It says June, although I admit it's not clear whether it's June of this year or last year. Well, I tell you what, and I'm not trying to be base of any means. You can look at my post

on Facebook. You can look at my post on my website. You'll never see a dog thing on QAnon. But if what you're saying is correct and when we finish, I will make sure to check that there that will I'll shut the Twitter account down. OK, but so you seem to be clear like you. You have nothing positive to say about QAnon and you're not associated in any way with that? I'm not associated at all. And I thought we would take care of this in 2020. We have a sweet lady named Miss Eileen. And Miss Eileen, you know, I'm a guy just running. I have about 300 volunteers that work with me. Nobody's paid. And so just like I pastor my church, I trust people to do what I expect them to do.

And when they don't, I have to take some pretty strong action. There you go. So I will shut that puppy down. I find any Q&A and stuff and you can check me in two hours. Beautiful. If there's anything there, it will be gone or the Twitter account will be closed. OK, fair. Let's let's dig into something policy oriented just to give our audience a sense of where

you are. Taxes, OK, to pick something that is often a hot button issue right now in terms of the federal income tax brackets and rates that we have. What's your opinion? Too high, too low, just right. Not enough brackets, too many brackets. Well, I think we're probably OK right now with the tax structure. I don't like that. We're thirty three trillion, thirty two trillion dollars in debt. I know that we've just hired or we've set the bill for 87,000 new IRS agents.

What I'm finding is we are spending way too much in government. And when you spend way too much in government, you've got to try to pay for that somehow. So what we do is raise taxes. And I believe our government's got to spend less and tax less, especially when I look at, you know, everybody should pay their fair share and everybody ought to pay their taxes without cheating. And I believe that we, you know, I drive on those roads that the taxes pay for. I take advantage of the police department and their protection that those taxes pay for. So as a Christian, as a pastor, as a citizen of the United States, I believe we pay what our taxes

are and we don't look for a way out of it. And that's a problem with people in Congress, I'm afraid. And that's why I'm for term limits. Eight years, get the heck out. Serve the people and don't be financially rewarded for the time you serve because then that removes the whole word of service. But we find a lot of people in Congress, the very ones who are raising taxes and hiring IRS agents are the ones who pay so few taxes. And so I honestly think every tax return ought to be made public. If you're in public office, if you're elected, that way you see people are living under the very laws they're making everybody else. But a short answer to your question, forgive me for going long, short answer to your question. I think it's probably okay the way it's set up,

as long as taxes aren't continually being raised, as long as we're not finding other ways to raise more money to cover overspending. So to just go back to the IRS agents thing, I couldn't tell from when you mentioned the hiring of additional IRS agents, whether you see that as a good thing or a bad thing, because it seems as though being so short staffed, those additional IRS agents will actually bring in more money by by finding people who are cheating than what they cost from the analysis I've seen. So are you are you in favor or against the additional? I'm against it. Oh, you're against it. And I think when you look at what we're paying for, eighty seven thousand.

I'm not saying we're not short staffed. You know, we need to make sure that we're well staffed. But eighty seven thousand agents, you look at the cost for those eighty seven thousand agents and then you got to do the math and figure out, will they really pay for themselves? And if they just pay for themselves, that's not a benefit at all. No, that's true. But I guess I would question like the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan does scoring of all of these proposals. They found that it actually would bring in more revenue than than than it would cost. Do you have something to contradict that? Well, no, I don't. Because, again, I'm not in Congress, so I don't get special insights into how they formulated their. Speaker 1

No, neither am I. But I'm just saying, is there anything we both have access to all the same things? Do you have anything that would point in a different direction? Speaker 3 I don't. I mean, I'm a mathematician through training, but I'd have to look at it. But I honestly believe that we don't need 87,000 IRS agents. And I honestly believe that we can be a lot more frugal in what we do. And again, we should never cheat on our taxes. We should pay our taxes in full. In the same light, though, we need to not spend beyond what we have. Our national debt has eclipsed our GDP. That's just not right. You know, Johnny Teague, in my world, I don't make a lot of money, but I can't spend more than I make. And we have got to apply that. I think government should spend less, so we tax less. I think we should not give out as much money, but ask people to earn their living. And so I just really believe, and I'll give you an example. We just spent, I think, $11 million here in Houston to beautify our bus stops.

Now, I just think it's great to beautify our bus stops. Sure. But $11 million. And let me give you a quick example. My people were campaigning for me. They put out my cards throughout the community. One guy, which I hate, I tell him, don't put these cards on a car. That irritates people. It hacks them off. Don't put it on the car.

But one guy put in a lady's windshield. Well, it rained here in Houston, and that lady tried to pull it off her windshield after the rain, and the paper stuck to the windshield. So she called me, and she said, Johnny, I'm going to vote for you. You have said in your statements you think we ought to love, care for others, and do right. I'm going to see if you're going to back that up. My windshield, I can't get the paper off my windshield. I want you to come to my house this afternoon to wash my car. I said, ma'am, I'm so sorry about the happening. If I was free, I'd come wash it. But I'll tell you what, please go get it washed and I'll pay for the watch. I

promise. So she called me yesterday and says, Johnny, I got my car washed. It looks wonderful. I go, great. She goes, now I got to tell you, I'm not able really to drive. It was actually in her front yard. She goes, so I had to order one of those mobile car wash companies to come to my house and wash my car. And I said, well, I know those are kind of expensive. How much did it cost? She said it was two hundred and ten dollars. Yeah. So Johnny had to pay two hundred and ten dollars to get a little paper off the windshield. And I ask you the question, why do you think she was willing to pay two hundred and ten dollars? Well, because it was Johnny Teague's money. No, I understand. But some of these analogies, I mean, you know, you analogized to you can't

spend more than you have. So so but countries regularly deficit spend. I don't think deficit spending is necessarily the issue. I mean, give me a sense of what would you cut? What do you cut from the federal budget? Well, honestly, I'd cut I cut some of the departments. I would cut some of the excessive things that we do with which which one we which ones. Which what which departments and which excessive things that we do, which departments I honestly would probably cut the Department of Education. Not surprised I would cut the Environmental Protection Agency. I would probably cut the Federal Reserve. And again, I'm coming to you, again, as an outsider. So please know, I don't have full knowledge of anything.

Yeah. But just like you may not have full knowledge on how I raised my black Angus cattle. You probably don't know what I have to do to have my coastal grow my hayfields. I don't think a lot of the congressmen would know that because I do that every day. Yeah. So I'm going to come at you not being the know it all. That's good. I'm actually here to learn from you, brother. Well, I would propose, Johnny, that on Department of Education, eliminating Department of Education has become a popular right wing idea to damage public schools under the premise that they are liberal indoctrination to instead support religious and so-called patriotic education.

I don't like it. I think I think it's a Trojan horse. And the truth is that if you eliminate the department of the EPA, this idea that every business is incentivized to police itself when it comes to pollution, it's been proven false. And without the EPA pollution and as a result, all sorts of disease and cancer as a result of that pollution would explode. Those are the perspectives I would encourage you to consider.

Well, and I actually disagree with you and I'm not surprised that I mean, I mean, we can go with what you say or if you want me to share, I'll be happy to. No, I mean, it's I'm just suggesting you consider those perspectives. Yeah, absolutely. And may I may I say, I don't believe that wanting to change our Department of Education or remove it isn't some right-wing Christian or biblical pounding thing. You look at how kids are doing right now in math, for instance, and I taught college algebra. They're doing terrible in math. Look at how they're achieving on these different metrics, whether it be science or English. Heck, they can't even write cursive anymore, where we have

seen that writing cursive forms a connection in the brain and the memory better than just printing. So, I mean, these are just basic things. I think we're teaching kids the fringe things, which I think are fine, but I think we got to get back to the basics. And so I believe we need to spend more time teaching math, science, English, things that are really going to help kids function in life and get a job after they get out of school. Now, with the EPA, I believe firmly, you're right. I think that there have been great errors in the past, great crimes against humanity at times that have really harmed people. We see it even here in Houston where companies sometimes are more worried about the bottom line than anything. But today, in a social But today in a social conscious, in a social media, in a moment by moment news cycle, I believe there's greater policing. I mean,

there's a reason oil and gas companies are looking at wind and solar, and they're looking at cleaning the environment. You see BlackRock and these other investors that are really pressing them. And I'm not a BlackRock fan, but they're pressing these companies to be more socially responsible. So you look at oil and gas right now, people are complaining about the price of gas, and I'm one of them, you look at what our government has said, and again, you're going to disagree. But I believe that our government has cut drilling. I believe our government has cut pipelines. I believe our government has made it hard to have a refinery. And even I talked to an oil executive the other day, and I was an accountant for Shell. So I do

have some oil and gas experience. You may say it's jaded. But an oil and gas guy said, Johnny, it's more risky or it's as risky. Let me be accurate. It's as risky for us to drill in the United States as it is Venezuela and Nigeria. And that's because they spend all this money on R&D. They get a well ready to come, and then the government yanks that license or that permit. And sometimes the guys are protecting some species, and yet you look at wind and solar and the damage it does to species as well. I think we've got to care for our environment. But anyway, I think that regulations are raising prices. I think they're harmonious. I'm a farmer.

Hey, fertilizer is three times more this year than it was last year. And I know part of that's the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But we're also being told what fertilizer we can use, what we shouldn't use. And now we're telling food shortages are going to occur. So I just think that we've got government does a good job, but sometimes overreach, just like I did. Well, if I may, Johnny, that was the equivalent of an inkblot of different things going between fertilizer prices, wind power species. And I don't think it will shock you that I disagree with basically everything you just said. But that's going to have to be for a different conversation since we have we our time

today has elapsed. It's an interesting race that you're running in the seventh congressional district. We've been speaking with Republican Johnny Teague. Let's see how things go in November and then we'll we'll reconvene from there. And let me say one thing. I'm thankful for you and I'm thankful that we disagree. Thank you. And I do want to listen and David, I'm not always right. In fact, I'm often wrong, true, but I do want to learn. And thank you for being so gracious to me, regardless of where you stand on the issues. I'm thankful we live in a country where we can be free and we can still be brothers and Americans and have vast differences single day. I don't. And that's why I turn to Splendid Spoon, our sponsor. Splendid Spoon delivers delicious, ready to eat plant

based meals right to my door. I'm not vegan, but I like increasing my plant intake and Splendid Spoon is the perfect way to do it. So many different reasons why an increasingly plant based diet is a great thing. You can choose from over 50 meals from breakfast smoothies and lunch bowls to noodle dinners and light soups. So much variety, vegetables, legumes, healthy fats, whole grains, spices from all over the world. One of my absolute favorites are the green smoothies. So much great stuff in them. Get started today and get one hundred and twenty dollars off your first three boxes at Splendid Spoon dot com slash Pacman. That's S.P.L.E.N.D.I.D. Spoon dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. So yesterday we learned about this

incredible situation in which my pillow founder, Mike Lindell, also known as Mike Pillow or just pillow. We're doing a class action lawsuit against all machines. That guy. Yeah. He had his phone seized by the FBI while at a Hardee's drive through. We now have the search warrant that was presented to Pillow and the search warrant exposes that this guy is potentially in extremely serious trouble. Newsweek has it in an article called Read FBI's Mike Lindell search warrant items to be seized. And if you scroll down the article, you get to a section which is the list of everything to be seized. Check this out. So, of course, it says the physical cellular telephone assigned to pillow, which they got all records and information on the Lindell cell phone that constitute fruits, evidence or instrumentalities of violations

of identity theft, intentional damage to a protected computer conspiracy to cufflink identity theft and on and on and on. And it lists a number of different people. But that is where it really gets very interesting when you look at the specifics. So it's a seizure of records and information relating to damage to Dominion voting systems. There may be crimes here in having damaged voting machines. The guy saying he's investigating the voting machines may have damaged voting machines, records and information relating to bios on a Dominion voting system machine records and information relating to the attachment of any peripheral

to a Dominion voting system machine records and information relating to any optical describes a lot of Dominion voting machine stuff. OK, you then go further and you start to see all records and information relating to Conan James Hayes, Conan James Hayes use of another person's name, photograph, credentials or identifying information or documents. Who is Conan James Hayes? This is one of these guys who has spearheaded election disinformation, was involved in the Arizona so-called audit and seems to be wrapped up in the pillow stuff with the machines. And it all stinks to high heaven. And there's possible identity theft here as well.

Another really interesting item is item M evidence of who used, owned or controlled the Lindell cell phone at the time things described in the warrant were created, edited or deleted. So this now it's very clear that the FBI is also concerned with destruction of evidence potentially here, evidence of software that would allow others to control the Lindell cell phone. Evidence of the attachment to the Lindell cell phone of other storage devices and on and on and on. This is extraordinarily detailed. And I know many people will say any time the FBI seizes a phone, they have a whole bunch of these different things. They're

fair. But these are very specific provisions and items, elements, for lack of a better term, that relate to what Mike Pillow was up to. And so there's clearly a concern about deleted evidence. The subpoena includes that. And just think if Trump and Pillow had just stuck with, you know, their respective bailiwicks, which for Trump was, you know, I don't know, real estate stuff and for Pillow was selling pillows, they would both probably be better off right now, certainly legally. And the United States of America would be dramatically better off. We will see what happens next. And by the way, this seizure has completely triggered Mike Pillow. But we'll talk about that more on tomorrow's program. Guys in trouble, though, guys, it seems to be in serious trouble. We have a voicemail

number. That number is two one nine two. David P. Here is our caller who calls in regularly one who he seems to be taking issue with double blind placebo controlled trials. Listen to this. Speaker 4 Hey, David, it's Juan here. I want to present a case against double blind placebo controlled and systematically review trials. So I don't know much about this, but I am. Speaker 1 OK, so that would be the first red flag. I don't know much about this, but I am. OK, so that would be the first red flag. I don't know much about this, but let's listen anyway. So if they conduct a trial and. Only 10 percent of the subjects in the trial benefit from the treatment, whatever they're going to consider. The trial to not really be any good. I mean, so that's not necessarily true. What when you're assessing the success,

the effectiveness, the efficacy of a treatment or drug, you want to compare the effectiveness to the best available treatment and also have a placebo arm. So and it should be double blind. So what you're looking to do is as follows. Imagine that you have some condition. Let's call it, you know, Trump syndrome, for lack of a better term. You've got Trump syndrome and you have a pill that improves symptoms in 10 percent of people. Great. That's the best treatment we have. So you design a test in which you take some people and you give them the pill that's already on the market and you take some people and you give them a placebo and you take some people and you give them the new pill. Now, some would argue you don't even in this case, you don't even really need the placebo because the whole point is to compare to the approved

treatment. But you could you could do it this way. The people shouldn't know who's getting what the patient shouldn't know. Am I getting the approved pill, a new pill or the placebo? Because knowledge of what they're getting could affect the results. The people treating them shouldn't know what they're getting either so that that would not influence the results. And then you compare. Now, imagine if the approved pill works 10 percent of the time and the placebo works 10 percent of the time and the new pill works 40 percent of the time, that now becomes significant. So there's no hard and fast numbers, really, the way one is saying here. Efficacy, you know, pretty bad.

You normally want more than that, right? You want at least greater than 50%. Well, the reason I think that that's a bad logic is as follows. If you were to run that experiment for every person in the United States and 10% of the population benefited. That is about. A hundred and thirty four. Thousand people. Is my math right there?

OK, the math is the math is way off. So there's three hundred and thirty million people in the US. So 10 percent would be thirty million out 134000. But that's also pretty, pretty irrelevant because. We're not dealing with most conditions, we're not dealing with a population base that is the entire country, so this is very confused here, one, I would do a rethink on this, OK? There is a reason that the double blind placebo controlled trial is the gold standard. And I would rethink this. All right. On the bonus show today, we will talk about the vote from Twitter shareholders on the Elon Musk Twitter takeout takeover.

We will talk about the founder of Patagonia donating the entire company to fight climate change. And yes, we will talk about the latest R. Kelly conviction. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at Join Pakman dot com.