The David Pakman Show - 9/29/23: Republicans see Trump as most religious, bad voter registration takes

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

-- On the Show: -- New polling shows that Republicans see Donald Trump as more of a "person of faith" than even Mitt Romney, whose Mormon identity is the most recognizable thing about him -- Ken Blackwell, a Republican with a history of making it harder to vote, says that automatic voter registration actually takes away people's rights in an unintelligible rant -- Caller worries the term "social democracy" sounds too much like socialism -- Caller asks about Briahna Joy Gray's progressive purity tests -- Caller talks about the health benefits of broccoli -- Caller discusses Republicans' plan to gut public schools -- Caller suspects the existence of aliens would be good for Republicans -- The Friday Feedback segment -- On the Bonus Show: Dianne Feinstein dead at 90, Gavin Newsom trolls Ron DeSantis, and much more... 🔊 Babbel: Get 55% off your subscription at https://babbel.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDPSeptember 20, 2023

Speaker 1 I've spoken to you many times before about the cult of MAGA Trumpism, and I have new polling data that is so mind blowing, unbelievable, so incredibly moronic and stupid that we have to discuss it in a new poll of Republicans. More Republicans see Trump as a person of faith than they do. Mitt Romney and Mike Pence, two Republicans whose overt political identity is characterized by their religious faith. Mitt Romney and his Mormon faith, Mike Pence and some version of evangelicalism, I guess I guess is what his deal is.

But yet Republicans say Trump is more of a person of faith than either Romney or Pence. Take a look at this. More than half. This is from the Deseret News. More than half of Republicans see Trump as a person of faith, putting him ahead of more vocally religious figures like his own former vice president, Mike Pence, according to a new national poll conducted by Harris X for the Deseret News. Registered voters were asked whether they considered a list of political figures, people of faith. Trump was at the top of the list for Republicans while President Joe Biden topped

the list for Democrats. Among independents, Senator Mitt Romney was most likely to be seen as a person, person of faith. Look at these numbers. Among Republicans, 53 percent said Trump was a person of faith ahead of everybody else, although he was statistically tied with Pence at 52. Trump also led several other opponents in the primary. Forty seven percent of Republicans say DeSantis is a person of faith. Thirty one percent say Tim Scott is a person of faith. Thirty one for Nikki Haley.

Thirty four Vivek Ramaswamy and and 22 for Governor Chris Christie. This is so unbelievable. You know, Mitt Romney's religion is quite literally his primary identity. When you think of Mitt Romney, you think of, oh, that's the Mormon Republican. That's that's what he's known for. It was the entire primary identity when he ran against Barack Obama in 2012. And it is, yes, Republican. But once you say, fine, here's a bunch of Republicans. What do you think of when you think of Romney? You think of religion. You think of he's Mormon. Trump is not religious. Trump lies about being religious. He held the Bible upside down. He talked about two Corinthians as if it were two Corinthians walking into a bar.

Every time he's asked, what's your favorite Bible verse? He says, I don't want to talk about that, despite claiming that the Bible is one of his favorite books. Trump found religion. And by found, I don't mean he found faith. I mean, he found religion as a tool to cynically win over Republican voters months before he decided to be to become a candidate for president. And yet Republicans think that he is more of a person of faith than Mitt Romney. At some point, do they simply want to believe lies or what is it that forces them into these implausible and pathetically humiliating beliefs. Is it that people who lack empathy,

like many of these Republicans, just aren't the right people to judge the character of others? Like, is it is it as simple as Republican voters aren't individuals that you're going to get anything valuable from when you say who's a person of faith because they just aren't the right people to make character judgment? That's a possibility. It's fascinating. It's insane. It's terrible because Trump espouses. Take for a second, not the things Trump says. Oh, the Bible is my favorite book alongside the book I wrote. OK, yeah, that's really stupid. I'm a very deeply religious person. I'm against abortion. Yeah, that's really stupid. We don't believe that. But if you look at the things Trump does in his life, he espouses zero of the tenets and ideas that could realistically be ascribed to Christianity and Jesus Christ. The constant lying,

the defrauding of others, the divorces, the cheating, the porn stars, the whatever. And yet he has tricked or bamboozled Republican voters into thinking he's more of a person of faith than Mitt Romney. I do think it's also interesting. I mean, this is not just about Trump. It's about the voters. The Christian right has debased itself such that I mean, listen, we knew it in 2016 when as there was this attrition of Republican candidates and Trump just remained there and

coalesced support. Initially the evangelical voters resisted Trump. They wanted Cruz. They wanted someone else. But eventually they just got in line. They're like, yeah, we hate Hillary Clinton. That's really our driving force. We actually really don't like Hillary. And even though Hillary is likely more religious than Trump, if we're if we're honest

about it, they ended up just voting for Trump anyway. The Christian right has debased itself in an incredible way where they go, yeah, the guy who lies and cheats and sleeps around and lies on his taxes and commits alleged fraud and is a civilly liable rapist. That's the guy that we believe is a person of faith above Mitt Romney. You can say a lot of bad things about Mitt Romney when it comes to policy. But Mitt Romney is a person of faith. He actually is a person of faith. Trump is not.

And the Republican voters don't care. And some of them see him as Christlike and say straight up, I believe he was sent by God. This poll epitomizes where the Republican electorate is today. We're not going to change their minds. We need enough of us to vote that their votes are just crushed. That's the reality. Hey, here's another Republican saying when you automatically register people to vote, you're taking away their rights. Check out this insanity. This is a video of Ken Blackwell. Ken Blackwell has a long history of making it harder for people to vote. And he complained. I guess this is with who this might have been with Tony Perkins.

He complains that if you automatically register people to vote, you're taking away the freedom, I guess, of people who don't want to vote. Listen to this insanity. This administration is attacking citizenship. They in fact are creating like in New York. He has a great voice. I know people sometimes are shocked when they hear him speak. The words he says are disgusting, but he does.

He's got a great voice. I admit it. This administration is attacking citizenship. They, in fact, are creating like in New York and Pennsylvania, automatic voter registration, where, in fact, they take away the freedom of people to make a choice as to whether or not they want to be registered. Now, we encourage people to get registered. But one of the problems that one of the problems with the automatic registration is if someone really doesn't want to vote, but it allows for someone to vote illegally for them. Oh, absolutely. This administration is, of course, there's no evidence that that's actually going on.

They continue to insist on that. And of course, registration doesn't force you to vote. It just makes sure you have a chance if you decide you actually want to go and vote. Now this is a guy who has a long history of this stuff. Some of you may not remember him, but he played a key role in the 2004 presidential election because we when Kenneth Blackwell was Ohio's secretary of state in 2004, he was in charge of overseeing the election in Ohio. And the 2004 presidential election between Bush and Kerry saw a bunch of controversies in Ohio. There were reports of long lines, voting machine shortages in certain areas, concerns over the handling of voter registrations

and provisional ballots. And Blackwell was serving as the secretary of state and running the election. And at the same time, he was the co-chair of President George W. Bush's reelection campaign in Ohio, an obvious conflict of interest. I am not coming up with the election was stolen. John Kerry really won or whatever. There are people who made that case that Ohio actually, by the will of the people, was won by Kerry, not by Bush. That's not what I'm saying.

What I am saying is that this is a guy who opposes such simple, obvious things like automatic registration. And in 2004, he was overseeing the election in what was a critical swing state and was a co-chair of the campaign of one of the two candidates on the ballot. Absolutely horrifying stuff. Now this idea of the freedom not to vote. Tony Perkins says, you know, you people have a right not to be registered or whatever. As I said before, it's so common that countries have either automatic voter registration or just no voter registration.

If you show up, the country knows who is a citizen. They have a list of citizens. They know who's a citizen and who's not. You show up and you go, hey, I'm a citizen. I'd like to vote. OK, the entire process of registering isn't even actually necessary. And this is something that when the right finds something they like, they seize on it. Because earlier this week, Trump came across the same thing, attacking automatic voter

registration. Trump posted to Troth Central. I think this was Monday. We talked about it. Quote, The Democrats are trying to steal Pennsylvania again by doing the automatic voter registration scam. They never stop. Obama and his radical left thugs are pushing this. And the Democrats, including the new liberal

governor, are thrilled if Republican leadership, including the disaster we have in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, together with Kevin M and the RNC, finally don't take action. Now we have to throw everybody out and get people who can stop the scams, cheating and rigging and win. The Pennsylvania Republican Party must energize, get tough and stop the scam. Our country is at stake. And as I said on Monday, think about how scared and deranged you have to be to argue that simply automatically registering people to vote is a scam. It is not a scam. It's so insanely common that it is a shock. We even have to have this conversation. But when you've lost on the issues, when you can't convince people that you're offering something that is actually

good for them and for the country, what you're left with is having to attack process. It's similar to what many lawyers write to me. They say, you know, David, when the facts are on your side, you argue the facts. When the facts are not on your side, you argue process. Here you have a situation where the policy package and the platform is not on the side of Republicans. The country is as progressive as it has ever been. So instead, they try to prevent people from being registered to vote. They reduce the number of places where you can vote.

They reduce the voting hours. They try to make it so that you have to get voter IDs, which themselves might be free, but costly documents that you may not have may be required in order to get the idea in the first place. That's what they're doing. They're doing the the equivalent of when lawyers argue process rather than facts because the facts aren't on their side. Sadly, it may work.

And that's why if voter registration is required in your state, then you should make sure that you've done it. If you have other options, same day registration, whatever, just you have to be informed. Make sure you know what needs to be done so that you can vote, because otherwise the people who say, oh, automatic voter registration is a scam are going to win and then they're going to make it even harder for us to win in the future. So the takeaway is we all must vote. Not a shocking conclusion.

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Let's hear from some people in the audience. I want to know what is on the minds of the people. We do this on the Friday show via discord at David Pakman dot com slash discord. And we're going to start today with Bert in New Jersey. Bert in New Jersey. Welcome to The David Pakman Show. What's going on? What can I do for you? Speaker 2 Hey, Bert, great to talk to you. Likewise. Speaker 1 You know, I've heard you describe yourself as a democratic socialist. I've never done that. Never once in my life. No, I'm a social Democrat. All right. So social Democrat. That's right. I've never reversed. But I think the

problem with that title is that people hear social and they go, oh, he's a socialist, right? You saw this like Patrick Beck David, and then they don't listen to what you say and then they've labeled you as a socialist and then end of conversation, right? Yeah. So, I mean, I think you would argue you actually might be for less socialism. You just want to see it go to the right places, right?

Like if you think of the United States, just from quantity, from dollars output, right? We are the most socialist country in the nation. The Department of Defense employs the most amount of people in the country, right? We're the most socialist country in the nation. The Department of Defense employs the most amount of people in the country, right? We're the most socialist country in the nation. When you think of it just from the the dollars being output. Do you mean in the world? Do you mean the most socialist country in the world? I mean, the most volume of socialism, right? We have the most amount of dollars being put

into the socialist programs via the military. Right. The biggest one. OK. Yeah. I mean, whether we call those socialist programs or that the country has decided to socialize certain things. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. These are mostly semantic conversations and it's fine to have semantic conversations. You're not wrong that maybe calling social democracy something like empathetic capitalism is better. You know, here's the here's the problem. Any time you try to force a name change to be more suitable or more advantageous, you also increase the amount of confusion as to whether the new name refers to the same thing. The same thing is the old thing.

So we can have the semantic discussion. I think you're not wrong that some people hear social democracy and think it's a form of socialism when in fact it's a form of capitalism. I think the better path forward is if people simply become educated about, OK, here, what are the policies I want? A lot of people don't even know. Right. What are the policies I want? Which candidates are offering me that and making that connection, I think will go way further than workshopping a new name for social democracy. That's just my opinion. Right. I think you would agree that, you know, you don't think the

trillion dollars we spent in Afghanistan and Iraq were worth it, right? You'd rather see that spent elsewhere. Could have free health for people, right? I agree. So I think when you're talking to someone on the right, like a Patrick Bate David or someone, if you make the point, hey, actually, I want less overall socialism. I just want it in the right place.

They'll be forced to kind of agree with you. They can't say no to that, right? Because you kind of call them on their bluff. They're so, you know, one of the things I've learned over the years of doing this, Bert, is sometimes we on the left feel like if I just say this, they'll have no retort and I'll have them. And then they just scroll or sneak away in one way or the other. So any time you come across something where you say they'll have no choice but to agree, remember that they'll have a choice and they'll find it. That's one thing I've learned. That is true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Just food for thought. Next time in that situation, just laid out. Curious what happens. No, I think it's a good idea that they'll have something, but I still think it's a good idea. Bert from Jersey. I

appreciate it. Thank you, David. All right. There it goes. Bert from New Jersey. We are going next to Michael from Texas. Michael from Texas. Welcome to the David Pakman show. What's on your mind today? Michael from Texas, please welcome. Let's not have things go sideways so quickly here. And last chance for Michael from Texas. Go. Hi, David. I want to get your thoughts on, you know, Brianna Joy Gray. So recently I saw a debate between her and Kyle.

We're just Michael, I'm so sorry to interrupt. It sounds like you're underwater. Is there anything we can do? I heard Brianna Joy Gray had a debate with someone. I know very little about her. I know she has a show, but I I've never seen more than a couple of minutes of it. And it's been at least a year or two. Can we do anything with your audio so we can better understand each other? Sorry, can you hear me now? Oh, that is so much better. What did you just do? Speaker 5 It was just my phone. Oh, I hadn't. So I recently saw a debate with her and

how a few weeks ago they were just debating policy. Sorry, staring a bit. Policy such as, you know, Democrats delivering. This is Brianna Joy Gray, the podcaster and Kyle Kalinsky. Is that right? Yep. OK. So one thing I've noticed is she seems to have like a problem with the actual focusing on policy rather than, you know, just. I don't know, she seems to have like some type of purity test. Where it seems she doesn't actually care about policies. These are like, I'm just trying to understand this, Michael. She has purity tests for what, for who counts as a real progressive. Yeah. In general and policy, like. What's an example? For example, is like recently Biden did some student loan forgiveness. Apparently that's not good enough. Basically, I want to know

these far lefty people, is there any way to get through to them in terms of policy? Or is this just a thing we're going to have to deal with. Speaker 1 Well, listen, Michael, I really know very little about Brianna Joy Gray again, beyond just that she has a podcast that I once saw a few minutes of. But what I could definitely speak to is there are so purity tests in general I find problematic problematic because number one, they often reduce complicated issues to just simple tests. Now, when you say this to the people making the purity test, they'll go, no, these are simple issues. You're lying by saying it's complex. Okay, fine. It reduces issues that some of us believe are complex to a simple test. They divide and fragment the movement, even among people who might agree on

95 percent of what should be done. They limit the size of the tent for who will kind of join this left wing movement. They encourage digging your head in the sand. Like, I think purity tests are almost always a bad idea. Now, if you want to say to me, David, would you be against a purity test? Like, should Jews be killed? If you think the answer is yes, you're just no. OK, now we're getting a little bit crazy, right? I'm not talking about that. There are obviously some basics that we all probably need to agree upon to be able to productively dialogue. But I think that the purity test is a real problem. The other element of this that you're mentioning, which I think is a problem. And again, I have no idea what Breanna Joy Gray thinks about any of this stuff. I'm just kind of going by what

you're saying is there are people who allow the perfect to become an enemy of the good or at least the better and are against accepting incremental change in the right direction because they have more of an acceleration is burn it down mentality. I'm going to have an entire chapter in my forthcoming book on this issue. I believe we have to take the small wins and it's irresponsible not to. So I'm just against the accelerationist perspective on this. But again, these are general ideas. I couldn't tell you one way or the other what Brianna Joy Gray has said or thinks about anything. I just don't watch her, her show, her thing. Thank you, Dave,

for answering my question. My pleasure. Michael from Texas, I hope some of it was was useful, at least to some degree. Why don't we go next to Brittany from Texas, who is also a Web site member. Thank you for being a member at join Pacman dot com. Brittany, welcome to the show. Hi, David, can you hear me? I can hear you loud and clear. OK, great. So last week, I believe it was last week you were talking about Trump pretty much the insanity plea and you were saying

you don't think that he would do it just because of ego and narcissism. Yes, I believe that Trump would not if his lawyers came to Trump. I'm not saying they will, but his lawyers came to Trump and they said, sir, your best shot is for us to basically plead insanity and say you're not fit to stand trial. I think even if it were the right thing to do, which I'm not saying it is, Trump's ego and narcissism would not allow him to let his lawyers do that. Right. I would argue that the same thing can be said for filing for bankruptcy. And so I almost think that in his weird, like twisted, quote unquote, business mind, I almost I almost wonder if he would say kind of like I did it because I'm smart. In other words, the way I used bankruptcy to get out of certain debts and that he used

it strategically, you might be able to convince Trump, sir, we don't really think you're nuts. We just this you're you're being super smart by doing this, that maybe that would work. You know what? Maybe that would work. Maybe if he trusts his lawyers enough, that would work. I don't know. Right. Right.

An interesting idea, I will admit. Speaker 1 00 00 00 00 Speaker 4 00 00 00 Speaker 5 Right. And then my second thing is a food question. Sure. Have you heard of this woman? She's a microbiologist. Her name is Dr. Rhonda Patrick. And yeah, she she's been on the Rogan show, I think, like a couple of years ago during the pandemic. She was on there. Yes, she was speaking. That's where I saw her. She was speaking about broccoli, broccoli sprouts and mustard seeds and like the tests, cognitive, the cognitive benefits of it. And I was just wondering if you had any information about that. I find it so interesting. So she said that the plant, so

broccoli is one plant derived from mustard seed, the mustard plant, along with, I believe, Brussels sprouts and maybe broccolini chard. You know, there's a whole bunch. She was saying that there are cognitive benefits or problems to that. Cognitive benefits such as Parkinson's, dementia, Alzheimer's a it's an incredible study that she did. She did it or she cited it. I I'm pretty. You know what? I don't know. Well, here, let me say this, Brittany, when we get this is a very dicey field to comment on, because you really need to be sure you're understanding whether these studies are really properly done and whether there's enough signal to noise ratio and whether they're statistically significant. Here's the one thing that I would mention. And I just did

a quick search and it looks like there are some broad populational views that some of these cruciferous vegetables from the Brassica family can be protective in some sense. But it's very, very early. The best thing is never operate under the assumption that some single food is going to be a silver bullet at preventing or treating anything. What what seems to be best? And we continue to go back to this is a diet that is relatively diverse, not too much of any of the things that are sort of good to limit, like not too much processed food, not too much sugar, not going crazy with sodium, limiting saturated

fat, not for the cholesterol reasons, which we increasingly seem to understand are mostly genetic predispositions to higher, low cholesterol, but for other reasons, whole foods in general. And in any of these diets that make sense, like, you know, now there's a whole movement that's like vegetables are bad. You know, I'm not talking about that. But if you look at any of the blue zones, places where people live the longest, all these things, cruciferous vegetables and the food, the foods that we get from the brassica plants, which are the ones you're talking about, they seem to be prominent in all of

these diets that the populations that live longer have. So it seems like a good thing. Will it be protective against Alzheimer's or not? I don't know. We may not know for decades, but it seems like a reasonable food to include in your diet, I think, is where I would land. Awesome. Great. Well, thank you, David. Thank you for taking my call. All right. Brittany from Texas. Great to have you on the program today. Let's go next to J.P. Right.

J.D. Mandel. We're going to J.P. from Georgia. J.P., welcome to the program. What's on your mind today? Hi, David. So what's on my mind is I've got a crazy guy. I've actually mentioned him when I've called in before that comes in and to the store that I work and he talks all kinds of crazy right wing nonsense. But recently he came in and when it was very, very, very hot, unseasonably hot and said, oh, my gosh, is this climate change or is this just summer?

That's what we used to call it. Right. Of course, I can't, you know, I want his business, so I don't want to, you know, drive him away by telling him how wrong he is. Right. But on the progressive commentary shows I see throughout the day, that day I saw Jesse Waters make the exact same joke. And it made me think of in school, you know how somebody cheats and two people have the same wrong answer? Yes. It's obvious that one of them cheated. And it was just a connection I had never made before that you can make these little ties to where they get these bits of wrong information just based on the specific wrongness of it. Very much so. And of course, what this guy is talking about just as an instructive moment is

climate versus weather. And when we talk about weather, it would be like it's hot today and it's summer. We're talking about hours or days, a thunderstorm, a hurricane, a hot day. Climate is about average weather conditions, hurricanes in a year, record hot temperatures over the last decade compared to the previous hundred years, level of variability, et cetera. And, you know, I know you get it, JP, climate versus weather are two different things, but it's really a concept that many of these so-called climate skeptics, which is such a lame term, many of the climate deniers don't seem to understand climate versus weather. Yeah, they they hang on to like one data point. And I forgot what year he said,

but it was about 100 years ago. I said, oh, the hottest day in Georgia was in the 1920s. And it's like, yeah, but can't you read a graph like it's about the average temperature in the actual climate, not just one day in, you know, during the Dust Bowl period or whatever. Hundred percent. Hundred percent. And sometimes it's sort of like an analogy might be better where, like, if you think about your mood, right. And sometimes it's sort of like an analogy might be better where like if you think about

your mood, right, you might have a day where you're happy and a day where you're exhausted and a day where you're tired or whatever. Right. So that would be sort of like weather. But then you have people who it's like, oh, I'm depressed half of the days of the year, whereas someone else goes, oh, I'm exhausted half the days. And so those bigger trends would be what we would focus in more on. Oh, might you be depressed and benefit from therapy or the tired person? Are you getting enough sleep? We have to go by the trend, not one

day. You could be tired or sad or happy on one day. It wouldn't necessarily tell us anything. Of course. Yeah. I know you know this, JP, but I'm just giving ammunition to people for this. Oh, yes, yes, indeed. Keep fighting the good fight down there, OK? Oh, thank you so much. I'll do my best. All right. There goes JP from Georgia. Why don't we take a very quick break? We'll do more calls right after this short break. If you value what we do at The David Pakman Show, remember to support us on Patreon. Go to Patreon dot com slash David Pakman Show, where you can get access to behind the scenes videos, the daily bonus show, the commercial free daily show, as well as special discounts on merch, including hats, hoodies, mugs and T-shirts. You can support the show for as little as two dollars

a month. Check it out at Patreon dot com slash David Pakman show. All right. Let's hear from a few more people in the audience. We do this on the Friday show via discord at David Pakman dot com slash discord. Let's go to Janelle from San Antonio. Janelle from San Antonio. Welcome to the David Pakman show. Welcome back. I should say, really, what's on your mind today? Hi, David. I'm so glad that you called on me today because I'm a little bit more prepared. Oh, good. I was last time. Beautiful. What's going on? I wanted to talk about the school vouchers that the Texas government is about to vote on. I just wanted to talk about how they take away funds from the public schools and give it to private schools who do not need any more money.

Yes. And it leaves kids with disabilities, almost no choice. The families of kids with disabilities to stay in these underfunded public schools. If this does pass because private schools don't have to comply with federal protections for kids with disabilities. So let's say a few things about this.

In general, these voucher programs are mostly a disaster at the very top level. They take money that could go to public schools and they send it to a private school, diverting money that is very needed in public schools and often not so needed in private schools. There is accountability issues because public schools are often held to certain standards that at least are known public and verifiable, even if they don't all meet the standards. Whereas when you divert that money to private schools, you're diverting taxpayer money to schools that aren't even held to the same standards. And then what Janelle is getting to is that this can essentially exacerbate segregation of different kinds, economic segregation, sometimes racial, et cetera, by diverting this money and grouping students in

different ways. And one of the areas that's a real problem is the impact on students with special needs, because two things happen when you use the vouchers and divert money from public schools to private. Number one, the private schools aren't always equipped, nor are they necessarily required to serve special needs students in an appropriate way. And by taking some of that money away from the public schools, you also hurt the funding of the public school and its ability to be equipped for those students. So, Janelle, you're absolutely right. And this is one reason why these voucher programs are a disaster. Yes, exactly. And you hit on the fact about, you know, the other about obstacles it's putting up for people with with less financial means, because these vouchers, they don't even cover the

full price of tuition to these. That's right. Private schools. Yeah. So it leaves the burden on the parents to to pay the difference. It becomes a race to the bottom. It becomes a race to the bottom where the private school is not an option for many of the parents.

It worsens the public schools. And this is a feature for many of the right wingers that do this. They do this because they see it as a way to start worsening the public schools to eventually argue for even broader privatization. They know exactly what they're doing. I know they do. They have this whole plan. And I hope someday to hear you talk about it more as the the project 2025. Yeah, we'll talk about it again. Governor Abbott, he must follow these guys to the letter, because when I hear them talking or I read their. Plan, it's like Governor Abbott wrote it himself, but he must just be following along. All right, Janelle, great to hear from you. I appreciate it.

All right. Thank you, David. Have a good day. You too. There goes Janelle from San Antonio. Let's go next to Luke from Philadelphia. Luke, welcome to The David Pakman Show. What's what's rattling around in your brain today? Hey, David, can you hear me? Yes, I can.

I was just thinking about sort of like the geopolitical landscape. Are you familiar with like the concept of the end of history? Speaker 1 If by the end of history, you mean the tendency that we have as humans to consider where we are right now, sort of the culmination of the story rather than just an arbitrary point within it? Is that what you mean? Speaker 3 Yeah, more or less so. that was like a big concept in the wake of like the end of the Cold War in the 90s. Yeah. And I was thinking about how China is kind of like taking that place as like the world superpower that the U.S. is kind of like balanced against and I was um I was thinking about like the belt and road initiative and China's play in Africa and stuff like that and contrasted that to the U.S.'s sort of

like reduction on the world stage I'm not sure how to put it exactly, but we've kind of had like decades of U S intervention globally. And it seems like more countries are like leaning towards China rather than the U S like which countries I'm wondering. Um, I know in a lot of Africa, they tend to not really ally themselves with the U.S. I think Nigeria is a pretty big one. But I know even in places like even in places like Canada, I know I've heard stories of like like a lot of housing and real estate is being bought up by like Chinese developers. And that's like they're kind of buying a lot of influence in big like. Yeah, we've talked about that, including in Vancouver. Yeah.

Did you have a question today, Luke? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I was just kind of wondering, like, do you think that this trend will kind of continue where the U.S. kind of becomes more isolationist and China takes. Becomes like the foremost superpower. I don't think it's necessarily about the U.S. becoming isolationist. I think it's that at least as far as the Africa examples are concerned, both China and many African countries are behind where the U.S. is today when it comes to

industrialization that they're at an earlier stage. And so it actually makes some sense that there would be I don't know that I'd call it a natural alliance, but I certainly understand why we might see that trend taking place. The other aspect to this is that because China is in this super fast industrialization and economic growth stage, even if they're lying about their GDP growth, they're still industrializing faster than the US because they're behind where we are. As far as that goes, that requires vast amounts of natural resources, many of which are abundant in Africa.

So it makes sense that they would try to try to strike deals with African countries there in exchange for help building ports, for example, and other infrastructure development. And then, you know, like diplomatically, I don't know. There are African countries that have shifted recognition when it comes to Taiwan to be more in line with China's one China policy, although I don't I don't have examples in my head. I just know that China likes to do business or maybe even requires I maybe don't know enough about this to say for sure. But China prefers and may require that to do the type of business with them that some African countries are doing. You recognize China, not China and Taiwan. And I think African countries are widely

open to doing that. So that's like a diplomatic fit as well. Mm hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. The other thing that I kind of was thinking about between like contrasting China and the U.S. is that China is very, I guess, like authoritarian. Yes. And they're able to move against certain like issues very quickly compared to like the US or other like European countries. That's a feature of authoritarian countries. Yeah. So I wonder like when it comes to something like climate change, do you think that China will like right now, I think they're the biggest polluter or they're definitely like one of the biggest polluters in the world. Yes. I don't know about per capita, but definitely like gross. Yep. Do you think that they will make they'll be able to make a shift or like do you

think they will? They will and would be able to. Here's the thing. And this is not unique to China. Lots of countries that are behind the U.S. when it comes to industrialization are making the case that, hey, yeah, all this climate stuff is great, but it's easy for the U.S. to make all these demands because you've already, quote, fully industrialized and we haven't yet. So we'll do some of this stuff. But first, you've got to let us fully industrialize and grow our economies and whatever. And this is a way to simplify the argument that's being made. India and China and Brazil, to some degree, and other countries, they, I'm sure, would be willing to the extent that it's beneficial from an optics perspective

and economically beneficial to go in the direction of green energy, et cetera. But they also want to have the opportunity to fully industrialize and garner all the economic benefits before they go head first into that. And that's I mean, I don't have an answer to that right now. Are they entitled to we know more now than we did, sort of. But at the same time, I don't know. But that is certainly going to be an impediment for sure. Do you do you think that there's a way to industrialize while staying green?

Probably. I'm not an expert in this, but but I'm guessing that there probably is, although maybe it's more rapid or less profitable. I don't know. But I think it's a really interesting question to research. Yeah. OK, thank you, David. All right.

My friend, Luca Luke. Sorry, Luke from Philadelphia. Great to hear from you. Why don't we go next to Sarah from Montreal, Quebec, Canada? Sarah, welcome to the program. Hi, David. Can you hear me? Yes, I can.

Beautiful. OK, so I'm going to get you to talk about aliens today. I know you don't want to talk about whether or not you think they exist. It's not relevant. But I'm wondering if you thought at all about sort of the weaponization of this fear and uncertainty around the artificial and non-human intelligence coming up with this 2024 election that we have, you have, I guess, not me, in a year, knowing that when populations are fearful, they vote more conservative, right? And you see people like Matt Gaetz really pushing this stuff right now,

whether or not it's true or not, whether or not there are aliens or not. I'm wondering if you've thought about it all or talked about it all, the idea that if there is something something there that we don't understand that then we start getting some disclosure about or if it's just, you know, people like Matt Gates pushing that there is something there, how much that that sort of fear that will be created in the populace in the states could push towards Republicans or towards Trump again. So I kind of understand the general gist of what you're saying, which is it seems that right wing voters are more motivated by fear. Often the fear is of brown people from Mexico, but maybe a substitute fear of intelligent

aliens from another galaxy would be a suitable fear that would also get voters to vote Republican. I like the way you're thinking. I don't know the extent to which it would successfully help Republicans. I mean, if so, I'll say a couple of things. If talking about aliens can create an environment of othering, cultural othering, racial othering, national othering by analogy to aliens. Maybe it would be useful to Republican policy. Could talking about aliens serve as a diversion for Republicans in that they don't really

have any policy and so they can talk about aliens instead and it'll just kind of be a distraction from the fact that they have no policy, maybe. But I don't know. I think it's an interesting idea, but I don't know that there's a real opportunity for it to play a major role in the next election. Yes, I'm thinking about kind of the people that like maybe would shift away from Trump. But, you know, when you make them afraid, when you say, you know, we might be these little guys, they could just completely get rid of us.

But, hey, I am Trump and I'm alone can fix this. And right. I will nuke them out of the sky that like for those people, you know, they might end up being pushed more into the conservative camp through that kind of fear. Yeah. I thought that that could be part of what's happening because I don't really think Matt Gaetz is somebody that would be super like, oh, yeah, we got to go science and understand what's going on. Like, you know, you're right to be skeptical of Gaetz's intentions for sure. But I don't know. I'll have to devote more thought to it.

It's not obvious to me that that's what's going on. And then if we do come out with there being because I mean, even NASA is like, I don't really know some of what's going on up there or they're not disclosing it. If we do end up in the situation where there is maybe some real disclosure about things that we don't know, will there be some sort of ontological shock that might actually push a lot of people into more of this fearful kind of conservative camp of voting? So it's just something that I was thinking about as it's coming up and we have one of the most important elections, maybe the most important one if Trump's on the ticket.

So all very good questions. I don't have clear answers, but I appreciate you putting it on my radar. Cool. All right. Thank you so much for the call. Very much appreciated. And on that note, with aliens, we will end for today. I'll take calls again.

I really will. Just not today. Follow us on social media. Interact with the David Pakman show community. See exclusive content. See when we're taking calls live and stay up to date on other big show announcements we post daily. Find us on Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Discord and Tick Tock. It is the time of the week called Friday feedback. Let's see what has been on

the minds of some of the people in the audience. You can always email info at David Pakman dot com if there's something you'd like to say. Naturally, comments left on YouTube or Tik Tok or Facebook may be featured in the Friday feedback segment. Let's get right to it. Viewer Austin Hearst left a major attack on the channel channel saying, quote, This channel should be called misinformation. I have personally proved this person wrong time and time again.

And it's just sad at this point. I hope most of these accounts making the comments are bots. If not, not. I'm genuinely lost for words. Well, Austin, I have bad news for you. Most of the comments are real people. Yes. Some of the right wing comments supportive of Russia or Trump or whatever, probably our bots. We all are dealing with it when you're at the size and scale where we are. You're going to have to deal with some right wing bots when you're a progressive YouTube channel.

But it is absolutely the case that there are real people who actually value the discussions we have here and they are reflected in the comments and on Friday feedback. Margaret Wheat wrote in to say, I guess I'm a deplorable cultists and proud love President Trump. You know, Margaret, I think you're absolutely right. You said it so well. I couldn't possibly do any better. So I'll be leaving your comment without any further comments since it's just so perfect and so absolutely on the nose. Reddit user Charlie no surf posted. What happened to the Spanish show? Is this a Mandela effect moment?

David has this second channel where he posts dubs of the regular show in Espanol. However, when I look at it now, it seems a lot of the videos have been removed. There hasn't been a post in over a month, but I swear they used to have full episodes here. Any idea what happened? So nothing's been removed from the Spanish channel. We've essentially shut it down. And I know some people are upset with me, but let me explain it to you. Some time ago, we decided, hey, we should do something in Spanish. Since I speak Spanish, the first idea was I should just redo all of the content in Spanish. I very quickly realized I can't do that. There's not enough hours in the day. It's just not possible. I can't redo

all the show, do it in English and then do it in Spanish. Can't do it. So then we decided to dub the content to have a voice actor of sorts dub the content. Of course, we decided to dub the content, to have a voice actor of sorts, dub the content. Of course, we have to pay for the dubbing and it's not cheap. It's not cheap. I think for the amount that we were, we actually got one quote from the Mr. Beast people to do the dubbing. They wanted 10 or $12,000 a month. We ended up finding a company to do it for a fraction of that.

And we said, let's give it six months and see if we can even break even, not even like break even on what we've spent, just like break even for a single month. And it wasn't coming even close. I think we were paying. It might have been twenty five hundred bucks a month for the dubbing. And the YouTube channel was making like twenty dollars. OK. And so we had to make the decision to shut it down. And some people wrote to me and said, David, is it all about money for you or what's going on? It's not all about money. But here's the reality. One of the things that I value is focusing on what's essential and our core competencies. We overestimated the possible size of the population that wanted commentary mostly about American politics in Spanish. I thought, I don't know, maybe people

in Central and South America would be interested. We can consider those populations. It turns out the market size is way, way, way smaller. And it was reaching almost no one, costing a bunch of money and not moving the needle. And so we decided to shut it down. Yes, we could have kept it going for the tiny audience it had, but we don't want to spread ourselves too thin. We want to do what is moving the needle and what is essential. It simply is not essential. Is it an idea for someone else to pursue? Sure. Should someone just do the show we do, but in Spanish? Great idea for us. It just didn't make sense. And so we decided to pull the plug. I know some people don't like that,

but it's what we had to do. All right. On YouTube, Adnan Su says, how long till Chris Christie endorses Trump again? I know where the sentiment is coming from. OK, here's my prediction as a non betting man. I would bet that no matter how Chris Christie does in the Republican primary and it doesn't look like he's going to do well. My bet is Chris Christie does not endorse Trump in twenty twenty four period. And there are enough Republicans who are not endorsing Trump now. Mitt Romney, others that it's going to be absolutely fine for Chris Christie at his current level of notoriety and his current stage of his career to not endorse Trump.

My bet is, although I understand why you're saying it, that Chris Christie does not endorse Donald Trump. Drug money asks David, why didn't you cover the 9-11 anniversary? You know, I've talked about this before. It's now been 22 years since 9-11. And obviously on the let's see when based on when the show started on the 15th anniversary of no on. Yes. On the 15th anniversary of 9-11. Now, the fifth anniversary. What am I talking about? When did the show start? Now, I don't even know. Listen, during past anniversaries. We've covered it. I told the story of where I was on 9-11. We talked about how 9-11 shaped

American foreign policy and where American foreign policy stood on the basis of 9-11. We did it. And after several years, the discussions became essentially the same. I opened it up to the audience and said, for how long should we be doing 9-11 anniversary shows or discussions? And the overwhelming majority of the audience said, you don't really have to do it anymore. It doesn't really seem like there's anything to add. And so for many years, we've not covered the 9-11 anniversary. The 20, you know, 22nd anniversary did not seem particularly relevant and we didn't cover it.

I don't have anything new to say about it, quite frankly. And if people in the audience believe it should be covered again, tell me what it is that that we would say or that I would be able to add. And then I will absolutely reconsider it. David Barton wrote in and said to all you Dems, just look at Republican run states and look at the Dem run states. That speaks for it self. You know, it's true.

However, I think the point that this viewer is trying to make is the opposite of reality. If you look at democratically run states and Republican run states on the basis of gubernatorial party and state legislature, on average, over time, what you find is that the democratically run states are more likely to have smaller budget deficits or no budget deficit. You find that they have far more diverse economies in the blue states. You find that a larger share of the population has health insurance. You find that education is better. You find that incomes are higher. You find that they are better positioned when it comes to paying into rather than sucking off the teat of the government dole from federal taxes.

It is true that when you look at blue states and red states, the numbers speak for themselves. But I think it's the opposite of what this person suggests. It is user. I just want to find votes on YouTube, says I'm old enough to remember when Republicans didn't have a fetish for the likes of Putin, Kim Jong Un, Bolsonaro and Victor or Bon. Yeah, I remember that as well. I remember that because it actually wasn't that long ago that that was the case. But times have very much changed. And, you know, it's there's this

incredible contrast where on the one hand, Trump and other right wingers, MAGA Trump is still regularly talk about how the left is fascistic. And yet they are enamored with the world's fascistic dictators. Duterte is another one. Sometimes Bashar al-Assad, Erdogan. They are enamored with wannabe fascists. They become wannabe fascists themselves. And yet they say that the left is made up of fascists and Marxists, which is quite an interesting combination. But no, I'm old enough to remember that as well. Here's Keith Mason. This is this is delightful. Keith Mason says, how about the economy? Border security border is, of course, misspelled. It's the wrong border. How about the economy, border security and foreign policy, Biden? Or should I say Obama

sucks at all this? We Americans have rights. And I think that if you don't appreciate that, you don't like that. You don't like seeing that whoever these people are should leave the country, go to Russia, go to Cuba, go to China, go to North Korea, then talk to those people that have escaped those regimes. No punctuation there. That was all one sentence. I have only one aspect of this that I want to address this whole like, if you don't like it here, go to Cuba. If you don't like it here, go to Venezuela, go to North Korea, whatever. I have never on this program presented with rose colored glasses or in a positive utopian light the regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, China or Russia. And so this whole idea that we leftists want the United States to look like those countries is laughable on its face. But just as

importantly, going back to the previous message, it's the right wingers who are enamored with the leaders of those countries. It's the right wingers, including MAGA Trumpets, who talk about how smart she is or Kim Jong Un or Putin and how clever quick trials and no due process and the entire thing. If anybody would be better suited to live in those authoritarian regimes than in the United States, it's increasingly the MAGA Trump ists, not the center left Democrats and social Democrats that make up certainly our audience. If you have something to say, say it politely. Ideally, you can write to info at David Pakman dot com.

We'll be waiting. We'll be waiting. But say it politely. Why not? We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. You can sign up at join Pakman dot com. Do it before the prices go up, folks. We are getting dangerously close to the launch of the new website. When the new website launches, membership prices will go up for the first time in a decade. You can insulate yourself from that because once you've locked in a price, that's your price for as long as you want it. So sign up at join pacman.com bonus show is coming up and we'll be back with a new show on Monday.