The David Pakman Show - 9/30/22: Hurricane Ian Devastation, Trump Wanted to Sue Congress

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

-- On the Show: -- Hurricane Ian leaves a trail of devastation in Florida with hundreds feared dead and millions without power -- Donald Trump thought he could sue Congress for impeaching him -- The David Pakman Show YouTube channel is inching close to 1.5 million subscribers -- Even the haters like the new Pakman Finance channel -- Caller wonders if right-wing media is moving on from Trump to Ron DeSantis -- Caller asks what the point of conservatism is -- Caller talks about Truth Social -- Caller wants to know how to talk to conspiracy theorists -- Caller asks how Trump compares to previous Republican presidents -- David responds to viewer emails -- On the Bonus Show: Some borrowers excluded from student loan relief, conservative media angry at Lizzo for playing James Madison's flute, rabies treatment legislation, and much more... 👍 Code PAKMAN saves you 20% on Munk Pack: https://thld.co/munkpack_pakman_0922 🍎 Use code PAKMAN50 for 50% OFF your first Little Spoon order: https://littlespoon.com -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Subscribe to Pakman Finance: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanfinance -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

All right. Well, we are starting today with Hurricane Ian in Florida, and they don't call it a disaster for nothing. This is not really a weather show, but there's been a lot of political stuff revolving around the hurricane to get everybody up to speed. Many trapped in Florida as Ian heads towards South Carolina, reported by the Associated Press. There are rescue crews, 2.5 million Florida homes per the Associated Press without power,

2.7 million homes without power, according to other reports. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told a news conference, we've never seen storm surge of this magnitude. It is basically a 500 year flooding event. When it comes to casualties, hundreds are feared dead. Now, it takes a while to officially get those numbers. But we now have heard from multiple political leaders who are saying, listen, we're being told about dozens, if not hundreds, just in our municipality. So you start adding that up. And unless everybody's wrong, you're talking about at least hundreds dead. The Daily Beast reporting that as well as millions more were plunged into darkness

in one of the most powerful storms in American history. And then AFP and Yahoo News reporting floods devastation after Hurricane Ian Hammers, Florida. So there's a couple of different things I think that are important to mention here for a show like ours. First of all, we see a completely different Ron DeSantis that I sort of knew existed in the sense that I've told you all before. DeSantis is not a stupid guy. His incredible violent partisanship, maybe acute partisanship is a better phrase for it, is a sort of a calculated decision. I'm not saying he's not a right winger, but he can get along with everybody when he chooses to. And he has said Joe Biden's been good helping and everybody's getting along. And this is not the time for pettiness. And again, it's just another reminder that

it could be like this all the time if people just wanted to be more reasonable, because that's all that's happening. DeSantis is just being more reasonable, in part because he knows that his reelection could potentially hinge on. Is he seen as handling the hurricane correctly? In addition, you know, when covid started, many of us naively and incorrectly thought this will bring the country together. We're all going to unite against the virus. And then we didn't. Many Republicans essentially taking the side of the virus, ignoring all suggestions and guidelines and recommendations and not getting vaccinated,

all that different stuff. OK, fine. With the hurricane, we're just all going to. Now, you've got people claiming that the hurricane is a hoax. Now, what does it mean? What does it mean that it's a hoax? Some of them say, well, it was a rainstorm, but it wasn't really that bad. And this was just a way to get the hurricane in the media to avoid talking about fill in the blank, right? Whatever it is, this was a distraction. Some claiming that it was a geo engineered weather event of some kind. Again, for whose benefit? It's like never really completely clear. Others fixating on the evacuation orders. And are they legal or not and mandatory and all these different things? Folks, it's a hurricane. OK. Oh, and actually, I should say some also immediately fixating on wanting to blame climate change

for this particular hurricane. And as we've talked about before, climate change is not really about any particular hurricane, but climate change models would predict that we would have more extreme events and that the events themselves would be more extreme. But I you know, we don't need to play the game of this particular hurricane was caused by climate change and human activities on the planet. We don't need to do that. The climate change models don't require that. So I think that that to the extent that people on the left are doing it also doesn't make sense.

The priority is getting power back on. Reducing fatalities as much as possible and starting to get things back together. And we will let you know how things are looking by Monday. Here's just a wild, wild report from Vanity Fair's Bess Levin. Donald Trump thought he could sue Congress for impeaching him. He thought he could sue Congress because as legislators, they impeached him. Now, what's not clear is whether he thought he could sue Congress as an institution or that he could sue the individual members who voted to impeach and later in the Senate to convict. You know, with Trump, it's never really clear what he means.

This entire article is worth reading by Bess Levin. And the key part is actually from Maggie Haberman's forthcoming book, Confidence Man, which says when the House introduced articles of impeachment against Trump for the first time in 2019, Trump reacted with a familiar refrain, according to the book. I'll just sue Congress. They can't do this to me. Best Levin adds it's not clear whether Trump responded similarly after the second impeachment articles, though there's probably a 50 percent chance that he did. Listen, this would not really be a shock to anybody who's been following the I guess we would call them trials and tribulations of Trump.

He thought that pulling in a special master after the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was going to be good for him. And it did not work out that way. He looked directly into the sun during that eclipse, even though he was told not to. I mean, like at the micro level and the macro level, he always believes things that aren't true and believes certain things would be good for him that actually are not. What's particularly funny about Trump thinking he can sue Congress is that right now we talked about this yesterday on the bonus show. The argument that Trump's lawyers are making

to get a defamation suit against Trump dismissed is that the defendant should actually be the government and not Trump. And so you have this extraordinary situation where on the end and the point is you can't sue the government for defamation. So it's defamation versus the impeachment. But on the one hand, in court, Trump's lawyers are arguing you can't go after the government for defamation. And really, Eugene. Jean Carroll's gripe is with the government and not with Trump, even though it was Trump who said the things that are allegedly defamatory. And meanwhile, after and during the impeachment, Trump was saying, well, I'll just sue the government as if that's something you can do over a legislative duty that Congress has, which is

to consider whether a president has done something worthy of impeachment. It's all completely scrambled. You all know that. And the other theme to this is the things that are said publicly in the court of public opinion by Trump and even sometimes by his lawyers don't translate to what they actually try to argue in court. These are two different things. And likewise, nobody's going to sue Congress for carrying out an impeachment. And of course, it didn't happen. We will see what ultimately comes of 2024. But Bess Levin sort of raising the alarm here and saying, listen, the election stuff was not the only wacky, dangerous, unhinged stuff that Donald Trump was thinking at that time. All right. I have more to add for you on the quest for one point five million YouTube subscribers.

We are dangerously close. We are now only looks like three thousand one hundred and fifty six subscribers away from one point five million. And we have a bunch of stuff on the calendar. People have been writing in saying, David, if you can get to the 1.5 million sooner, here's what I'm willing to do. And this is just for fun. OK, everybody relax. It's not like a big deal. People are just having a good time. All right. If we get to the 1.5 million by October 4th at sundown, I will do the Yom Kippur fast. I never do the Yom Kippur fast.

I will do it and I will live blog how bad it is to do the sunset to sunset fast for Yom Kippur. OK, if we get to the one point five million by October 5th, I will obtain a unicycle and post a video of me trying to ride a unicycle down the street. I've never done it. This was suggested by Ann from Utah. And now I have other things to add. If we can get to the one point five million by October 10th, Bo will get a bag of mangoes tattooed with some kind of tagline from the show. Bo says his wife is a tattoo artist in New York City and he already has a bunch of tattoos and he's willing to get a mango David Pakman show

related tattoo if we make it to one point five million subscribers by October 10th. October 12th. Chris is a muralist in Atlanta, meaning that he paints murals. And he says if we get to one point five million by October 12th, which is his birthday, he will paint a David Pakman show mural in Atlanta, photograph it and send it to us. I think that that would be absolutely awesome. Kurt says that if we get to the one point five million by October 21, he will get a Mount Rushmore tattoo on his back, except it'll be Biden, Obama, Clinton, FDR and me, which kind of scares me. But it sounds interesting. And then Kelsey says that if we make it by November 4th, which we really should, she

will bake and decorate a custom vegan David Pakman show cupcake and send pictures and one will say Obama and another will be Alex Jones or whatever. OK, so she's going to do custom show related cupcakes if we make it by November 4th. So two things. One, if you're not subscribed, please subscribe. YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. The earlier we get to the one point five, the more of these hijinks that we will be able to engage in. And then secondly, if you have something to add to the calendar, like if you want to say, you know, David, if you make it by October 6th, I will. Something you can email info at David Pakman dot com. All right. One really funny other thing related to YouTube channels. And then we're going to move on to a bunch of other things.

You may or may not know that we launched a second or really a third YouTube channel recently, and it is called Pakman Finance. OK, this is not a political channel. This is a channel in which we do personal finance and a little light economics. So how to put together an asset allocation. Why is some inflation good? Why you shouldn't try to time the market? All these things. So funny. Initially, when we launched the channel, a bunch of right wingers were like, dude, you're a socialist. Why are you going to give financial advice? And some of them have made a 180 and turned around. I love this.

This guy, Tommy Boy, OK, after we posted our first video, he wrote, this is comical, a complete socialist talking about asset allocation, laughable hypocrisy. Now, of course, I'm not a socialist, but he was entitled to his opinion. The second video we posted, Tommy Boy shows up and he says, dude, you really going to keep talking out of both sides of your mouth on two channels, be a capitalist or be a socialist. Stop trying to pretend you can be both. Now, having a budget doesn't exactly make you one or the other. But anyway, Tommy Boy is entitled to his opinion. And then just yesterday, Tommy Boy shows up after like our sixth video and says,

Pacman gives sound conservative financial advice on this channel. Ignore his utter nonsense political advice on the other channel and just watch this channel. Tommy boy has been turned around 180 degrees by the sensible and sound information. Remember, I'm not giving any individual financial advice, but the information on the Pacman finance channel. I invite you to check it out. YouTube dot com slash Pacman Finance. We've got clips going up about all sorts of different topics. And if you have a finance topic you would like me to address, not politics, folks, different channel, not politics. You can email info at David Pacman dot com. And I will do my very best to address that. And soon we'll be taking some personal

finance questions for the channel. Lots of exciting things coming up. All right. We have a fantastic show tonight. It is Beto versus Abbott debate for Texas governor. I will be live on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook for that debate. I hope you will join me. I don't know exactly what time it is. Must be sometime around 7 p.m. I don't know. And I hope to see everybody then. Thank you so much, David. The David Pakman Show is a viewer and listener supported program. It's the audience that funds the work that we do primarily through the bonus show and full show made available through the membership program. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad.

I welcome you and invite you with peace and love to sign up at join Pacman dot com and We'll be right back. slash discord. Extremely, extremely important stuff to do. Why don't we go first to Jason from Toronto, Canada? Jason, welcome. What's on your mind today, my friend? Hey, David, how are you? I'm doing well. Thank you. Just actually got I have a couple of questions for you. One politics related. Do you feel that as major news networks are starting to distance themselves from Trump and all the legal issues he's currently in, are we seeing the slow demise of him potentially in his movement? Or do you feel that that's still a little bit away as far as as seeing kind of the MAG movement kind of dwindle down. I think we've got a long way to go right now. It's not so much that the TV networks like Fox

News, for example, are stepping away from Trump, but they're giving themselves other options. In other words, they're starting to say, hey, a lot of people seem to like DeSantis. They're kind of building the escape hatch, so to speak, but they haven't yet pulled the eject button, if that makes sense. That's the analogy I would say. However, I think depending on what happens in 20 in November of 22 in the midterms and depending on what happens in terms of the indictments and public opinion around Trump's indictments, if indeed he gets indicted, then you may start to see things change. One interesting thing is if you looked at predicted, which is betting markets, DeSantis

is now in the lead as who is expected to get the 2024 Republican domination nomination based on the betting numbers. If those numbers continue to go against Trump's favor, you might see an acceleration. But right now, nobody's really abandoned Trump. They're just giving themselves other options. Yeah, that makes sense. And just the other question I have for you as a new father, what are you enjoying most about your experience? I'd say like that, you know, essentially day to day development and just seeing how things change so much from day to day. And, you know, she's able to do new things and attention span goes up and ability to just like kind of hang out without flipping out increases. And it really is. I mean, certainly

from week to week, it gets very different. Speaker 1 It's awesome. Good to hear. All right. Things are getting better. Speaker 3 Yeah, things are good. The good temperature here is certain to drop as fall comes in. But otherwise, things are all right. Speaker 1 You I mean, I can't I apologize for this question, but there is no way you can get a good bagel in Toronto, right? That's a Montreal thing. Speaker 4 I mean, you can get a good bagel in Toronto. Speaker 1 You can. Speaker 1

It's less it's less known. But yeah, there's a couple of bagel shops here in the city. They're pretty good. Speaker 1 Wow. Speaker 1 Montreal is known for it. Yeah. Yeah. There's some pretty good places here. Speaker 1 And smoked salmon and everything's available. Yeah. Yeah. There's some pretty good places here and smoked salmon and everything's available. Yeah. Incredible. Sure.

Incredible. And you guys have the Internet and running water and everything. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. We just got cars a couple of months ago. It's awesome. Very good.

All right, my friend. Thank you for the call. That was a joke, by the way. Obviously, we love Toronto. Thank you. No offense to that. Those are just jokes. Everybody relax.

All right. Let's go to John from Kentucky. John, what's going on? Speaker 4 Hi there, David. Can you hear me? Speaker 1 I can. It quite literally sounds like you're underwater. You're not underwater, are you? I'm not right.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy. Did you say you're not underwater right now? I'm not underwater right this moment. Oh, now it sounds all it sounds so much better. What did you just change? Speaker 3 I just went off of my car Bluetooth to my handset. Speaker 1 Beautifully done. Beautifully done.

Well, what's on your mind today? Speaker 3 Yeah, I just had a I had a question. I've been I'm an Uber driver and I talk a lot of politics in the car, which is a mistake, I got to say. Yeah. But a question that's kind of popping up as a 25 year old leftist is just I just what's the point in conservatism? Speaker 1 I mean, I'm not going to I can't answer that for you. That's interesting. So

like, let me see if I can understand the situation. You drive Uber in Kentucky. Yeah. And so are most of your passengers right wingers? Well, I actually live in Louisville, Kentucky, so we're a blue dot in the red state. So I get a good mix of people. So I have a lot of leftists in the car. I have a lot of liberals. And then a lot of the people that I get are Republican. Yeah.

And I just simply like one of the things that I've been saying recently, I don't know if you've ever watched Adventure Time. No, I don't even know what it is. OK. Adventure Time is a kid's show. It was really, really good, though. There's this there is this vampire lady named Marceline. And in one of the episodes, she's fighting this other guy who's the vampire king and they break apart. And the vampire king is like, hey, Marcel this other guy who's the vampire king and they break apart. And the vampire king is like, hey, Marceline, you've lived over a thousand years. What have you learned?

And she says something to the effect of, you know, everybody keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. And I guess nobody lives long enough to see the pattern. Right. And we'll listen. My thought on that is as follows. And I don't want to interrupt the retelling of Adventure Time episodes, but here's my thought.

There's two things going on with conservatism. One is the idea of let's keep doing things the way we've done them before, just for the sake of continuing to do them the same way we've done them before, which for me isn't a very good argument necessarily. Right. them before, which for me isn't a very good argument necessarily. And then also there is a sort of contrarianism to conservatism when people from typically from the left say, hey, here's an advancement that we have which will improve things. There's like a reflexive contrarianism where it's just like, no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to do that just because you want to. We're not going to do it. So I think that those are two important elements of it.

Hey, 100 percent. And like, you know, one of the things I've been saying a lot in the car is respectfully, I don't have to have lived a thousand years to see that the story of human history has always been conservatives or their historical contemporaries fighting against progress. Yeah. And then leftists or their historical contemporaries fighting against progress and then leftists or their historical contemporaries dragging them, kicking and screaming into that progress. So yeah, I just don't see the, yeah, it's just frustrating living in a red state right now. What can I say?

John, what's the wackiest Uber driving situation you've experienced? Oh, um, uh, honestly I haven't had too many bad right i did have one lady get in the car with the maga hat and the flags and the the pins and stuff and we're about two minutes into the ride and she just casually says you know i just can't stand the way the media treats true patriot right and so i kind of give it a second i'm OK, I'll bite who are true patriots. And she says, well, Matt Gates, Alex Jones, just to name a couple. I'm like, oh, OK, well, I don't have to say Alex Jones is full of crap. You know, he says that in depositions and stuff. But Matt Gates, the guy who's currently under investigation from the DOJ for child sex trafficking, like this is the guy who's a true patriot to you.

Really? Have you ever had to kick anyone out of the car? I have not. But I think that's mostly because my demeanor in the car is very much if you don't like it, you can walk. So I think that more kind of like that keeps people in line a lot of the time. So, yeah. Well, John, I appreciate the call. Stay safe out there.

I'll try. Really? Thank you. All right. Congratulations on the new child. Speaker 1 Thank you. There's John from Kentucky with some powerful, powerful declarations. As a reminder, if you want the opportunity to get on to chat with me and you are currently in the discord waiting lobby, your nickname must be name and where you're calling from.

It doesn't even have to be real. Like I don't know where you really are, but it has to be in that format. So people who just have like single word nicknames and stuff like that, you're not going to get called on just as a heads up. So everybody knows and is on the same page. Let's go to Alex from Seattle. Alex, welcome. Speaker 4 Morning, David. I wanted to ask you about a book written by a guest you had on a few months ago, Bobby Azarian. It was called The Romance of. Yeah. Did you, did you read the book? I read part of it. Yeah. For that one, I read a, like I often do introduction,

table of contents, first chapter, last chapter, and some stuff in between. Okay. Interesting. I found it to be, I want to, first off, I wanted to thank you for having that guest on and having that book. I've in the process of reading it and I've, I'm reading it slowly because it's a very dense book. I'm sure if you read a couple of chapters, you probably like it's, it's very, it's explaining each piece as it goes, building its case for, you know, you know, why, why, why do we exist? What is life for? I just wanted to know if you you if in the brief parts that you read, if there was anything you found to be either disagreeable or if it changed anything about how you thought about concepts like free will determinism, because it goes rare at this point that I read something and it completely upends my view. It's just sort of like it now averages in to my views overall and just like can slightly tweak things. So I don't know that I can say that there was any kind of like big 180 that I did as a result of the parts of the book that I read.

But it certainly presented and so did the interview. You know, I think my view tends to be there is really no one source that describes reality as far as I'm concerned. What I'm looking for are thoughtful ideas to integrate into my understanding. So, no, I can't say I had any real one eighties. Okay. Did you, I mean, is there something you read in the book that made you say, wow, I was, yeah, I mean, I, prior to reading the book, I mean, I, um, I really kind of believed in the concept of determinism. It seemed to make the most sense to me, you know, ball rolling down a Hill, add more complexity, you know, start to finish. I feel like that kind of worked. And especially with like more progressive politics, you can use that lens and you can look at the way people's lives exist and the problems they run into and you can use that. And the way the book presents it is kind of, you know, it basically takes things like life and it says instead of it being a thing that just kind of magically happened and it's like a miracle, it frames it as like it as an inevitability based on fundamental laws of science. And it continues to build from there. And so I found that it,

it really made me rethink it being believe in free will again, if that kind of makes sense because it frames it as, as you know, the concept of free will is the ability to imagine possible realities and then steer yourself there. And anyway, I just, I found it to be a fascinating

book. I recommend it highly that I, as someone who does not consider themselves religious, I found it to be a thing that explained the universe in a way that kind of gave it a purpose that kind of made sense. And I was just, I was very surprised at that because I'm highly skeptical, you know, similar to your, your perspective around a lot of things. I was surprised at how much I connected with the book and found it to be interesting. Well, I appreciate the feedback, Alex. Thank you. I would love to have more authors like that on your show. We will make it happen. All right. All right. Thanks, Alex. Take care. Very always great to hear that people are getting value from from the guests on the show. That's fantastic. Let's go to Willie from Oregon. Willie, welcome to the show. What's on your mind today? Hey, I was just curious if you have

paid any attention to the truth. Social ads started popping up. No, we just did a story earlier this week about how a company that was going to invest 140 million to merge with Truth Social, They're just completely bailing and Truth Social is likely going to fail soon. But what where are they running ads? Speaker 3 Well, there was an update to the app, and so I did that and all of a sudden noticed these ads started popping up like. And. Speaker 1 It looks like Trump's the only one paying for ads, just anti Biden. OK, there was one for, you know, twenty five hundred free knives and reading through that was like arm yourselves.

Oh, my goodness. All this stuff is pretty dark. Are you on when you're on the app? Do you just look to see the wacky stuff that gets posted? Are you on there to kind of like argue with people or to troll? Like what's your what do you do on the app? Oh, could we cuss on this or no? No, please don't. OK, just messing with Trump and following the cuckoo there. I see. Have you had anybody like directly attack you because of the things you post?

Oh yeah. I did that for a little bit. Um, you know, I, there's not much common sense on there, so it's kind of pointless to, uh, do anything, but just like to keep an eye on what that guy's, uh, up to and talking and like, you know, last night it looked like he, he just reposts the craziest stuff and uh it's pretty scary yeah i like to keep an eye on him see what he's up to but the that you should look at some of the ads that have been popping up on there they're very strange i'll check that out very i'll check that out thanks for bringing it to my attention yeah yeah i think it's worth looking into and talking about a little bit. Speaker 1 All right. Willie from Oregon.

You're very much appreciate it. Thank you very, very much. Really, really important stuff happening on truth and it soon should fail completely. All right. OK, let's take a very quick break. If you're holding to talk to me, keep holding because we're going right back to the phones in a moment. One of our sponsors is Little Spoon, your one stop shop for healthy, easy meals and

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smoothies are perfect when you need something quick and easy. And the best part is kids meals under six dollars and baby food and smoothies under three dollars each. Plus, you'll get 50 percent off your first order when you go to little spoon dot com and use the coupon code Pacman 50. That's coupon code Pacman five zero to get 50 percent off your first order. The info is in the podcast notes. Let's stick with the phones, by which I mean discord David Pacman dot com slash discord. Extraordinarily powerful phone calls happening today, and we don't want to miss a minute of it. Let's go to Bobby from Jersey. Bobby from Jersey. Jersey, welcome. What's going on? Bobby from Jersey, you got to unmute yourself. Hello, David, can you hear me? Yes, I can. All right. Is there a specific way that you go about engaging with conspiracy?

Depends on the specifics, I would say. I mean, depends on where and with whom. Sort of like, well, I say far right conspiracies like QAnon and like the election results or whatnot. Yeah. Like, is there really a way you can debunk that or. I mean, the problem is that a lot of the people that believe this stuff aren't actually open to thinking of thinking critically about it.

And so if you show them contradictory evidence, they say that evidence is not reliable or has been planted. If you show them the absence of evidence for what they say, they go right because they're covering up the evidence for what I believe. So unfortunately, with a lot of them, there's really no way to talk them out of it or even get them to reconsider. Yeah, that's what I've noticed, too. All right, David, thank you. All right. Thank you very much. There's Bobby from Jersey. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, it's it's depressing is the reality.

It's depressing. Let's go to Rahman from Minneapolis. Welcome back to the program. What's going on? Thank you, David. How's your day going today? It's going well. Yeah.

My first question is, how would you compare Donald Trump to past Republican leaders like Richard Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and how and how they conducted business in this country and their scandals? Speaker 1 Well, I think that Trump has done I mean, listen, compared to most of the people you listed, all of them, Trump has had way more wrongdoing that he's engaged in than any of them. I think the difference is Trump has had the benefits of the right wing media machine, including Fox News and Newsmax and right wing media and and defenders to the death on social media and on and on and on.

But I think that look at the list of all the things that Donald Trump has done. Look, just look at all the criminal investigations that he's under right now. So I think that Trump is worse in terms of misdeeds. I think Trump's dumber than most of them. I mean, Nixon was a horrible person, but he was quite smart. Reagan, you know, was no genius, but he was he was relatively smart. Bush was kind of like when when it started with the whole kind of dim thing. But again, Bush seems like a Mensa member compared to Trump.

So I think that Trump is also particularly just dumb in a very superficial way. Yeah. Like what I believe is like if with Nixon, he didn't have the right wing media back then. If he did, I don't think he would have been impeached. Right. Right. And with Reagan, I feel like with Donald Trump, he's essentially taken every he's taken every bad part of each of each of those presidents, like with Reagan, he had the Iran Contra scandal with Nixon was Watergate and with Bush. It was it was about lying about WMDs and and torturing people.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think you're spot on that had Nixon had the benefit of this right wing media machine that was defending everything he said all the time, constantly, it is quite possible that public opinion among Republicans would not have shifted. Republicans would not have gone to Nixon and said, listen, if you don't resign, we're going to have to impeach you and that that it could have actually saved Nixon. And so the really scary thing there is more about Trump did enough horrible things that were it not for were it not for the right wing media apparatus, Trump might have had to resign.

Trump in the 70s might have had to resign. And that really puts a big spotlight for the horrible, destructive nature of right wing media. And we should not forget that. Yeah. Second, second question for I go, this is very quick. With with a lot of people, with a lot of people going against progressives, I'm like progressives, all they want to do is make people's lives better, like versus centrist versus right wing versus people in the right wing left progress. All they really want to do is make people's lives better. So why are so many people going against them, even though the only thing that they care about is making everybody have the same equal footing

in this country? Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I, I completely agree with your perspective. And the counterpoint is the right would say, no, no, no. Listen. As the government, what we want the government doing is not making people lives better. It's letting people live the life they want to live. And if some people don't want a better life, then we should allow them to do it. It's a nanny state that forces themselves upon you. That's the way that the right would approach it. Yeah. But when Republicans talk about small government and staying out of people's lives,

yeah, they're actually lying to people with progressives. Of course, they they actually they actually want to stay out of people's lives and make people's lives better. That's all they really want to do. I agree with you. I agree with you completely. But good luck convincing a Republican of that. All right. All right. Rock on from Minneapolis. Great to hear from you again. Very much appreciate it. Let's go to Alex from Baltimore. Alex, welcome back to the program.

Hello. Hey, David, can you hear me? Yes, I can. All right. Real quick, I wanted to say congrats on the baby. It's been a little while. How much has your espresso budget increased since then? You know, it really hasn't changed dramatically, I have to tell you, because, you know, one

of the things this I hate to admit this, but with my particular espresso machine, I am much better at getting a double shot just right than a single. So often what I do and I know it's wasteful, but at the end of the day, it's just water. Even if I only want a single shot, I'm usually making a double and then just dumping the second shot that I don't want. So all that I've really been doing sometimes is just having the second shot. So it hasn't really changed the budget. Well, lucky you. Yeah. Now, why is that surprising? Speaker 3 Well, just what with our child, it was a lot rough goings the first few months with sleep.

So I definitely had lots of red eyes and extra coffee. Speaker 1 That's done. Listen, it's rough, but it's like, how much coffee am I really going to have? You know, that's fair. I was just playing around. All right. I mean, I guess a lot is the answer. Who knows?

Speaker 3 Yeah, fair enough. Real question. playing around all right i mean i guess a lot is the answer who knows yeah fair enough uh real question yeah so i had i had something about um uh eliminating the filibuster so i'm not against it in principle or anything okay but i but i do wonder like have we just got rid of it period like for example trump's first two years in office wouldn't they have just been able to just pass all sorts of crazy, horrible stuff? And how would we stop that without the filibuster? And or is that just a risk we have to take to get stuff done now? Yeah, unfortunately, listen, the retrospective stuff, I think, is fine. It's like, well, listen, if we only needed 51 instead of 60 on this, then it might have

passed or whatever. The problem is that usually when people talk about that, you're going backwards only a very narrow amount of time. And also so what you have to think about is imagine that the filibuster had been previously done away with and then think about all the things Republicans would have been able to pass when they had the opportunity. And also, if Democrats did away with the filibuster now, think about what that would mean for Republicans and what they're willing to do at some future point. So I think that's all fine. I really do think the right way to think

about the filibuster is less about what could we have done during this narrow window, but what might they do? It should just be. Listen. At its core. Are there certain things where there should be 60 votes in favor or should everything just be 51? I actually think we need to just be honest about how it needs to be organized. Are there things where we should have even more support than that because they are so significant and impactful to American life? I don't pretend to know the answer, but I think the best way to think about this is less about we could have done this if we had gotten rid of the filibuster in

January of 2020. I don't I don't know. I mean, yes, we can play that game, but it really is about does it make sense that in this country you need a simple majority or are there certain things where you actually should have a 60 percent majority or even greater? And to start with that rather than just the politics of it, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, I get that. I would just personally, I would say split the difference and make it 55. That's just my personal take. Take it or leave it. Yeah. I mean, listen, it's it's a matter. There's no right answer. It's like you could have someone who says, you know, I think anything that has to do with taxes should have 57 votes and anything with

health care should have 55 and anything with budget should be you. Everybody will have a different opinion. And I don't know that there's any right or wrong necessarily, but fundamentally, that's the philosophical question that this is all about. Right. I just want to hear your take. I appreciate it. All right. Alex from Baltimore. Thank you very much. Let's go next to Jojo from California. Jojo, welcome to the show. What's on your mind? Jojo from California, what's on your mind? Jojo from California, your turn to speak. You're unmuted, you're on, you can speak now. All right, Joe, Joe from California, clearly having apparently some kind of technical issues of various kinds.

Joe, Joe, I I'm sorry that we are not going to be able to speak, but there is some kind of technical problem. Jojo, you're muted yourself. Jojo, are you back now? No. All right. Well, Jojo's gone. Let's go to Chris. Chris, welcome to the program. What's on your mind? I think this is another Chris here on the program. What's going on? So you're live right now. Is that when I. Chris, you're live.

This is David Pakman. Welcome. I had to go. Chris, you're on the air right now and we can hear you going, my friend. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sitting here listening. I'm at work right now. My my guy. Yeah, I'm talking to you, Chris. Yeah, I'm saying I'm at work right now. I can't talk. I was listening in. Oh, all right. OK. What works going OK for you?

Yeah, I apologize. No, no, no. I apologize. What kind of work do you do? I'm a manager at a beer distributor. Really? Yeah. What's going on with the beer world these days? Speaker 2 It's hectic. There's a lot of ideas coming out. Speaker 1 Is it is it just an IPA fiasco these days? Speaker 2 Yeah. Like right now, I got a case in here that's worth one hundred and twenty dollars for twenty four beers. Speaker 1 Oh, my goodness. What country is that from? Speaker 2 No, it's a local bear. I mean, I'm right outside of Philadelphia. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Sorry, what was that, Billy? Speaker 2 I said, how's my boy Jimmy from Philly doing? Speaker 1 I have no idea. Speaker 4 Yeah, you haven't been playing any of his boys lately. Speaker 1 We haven't been getting any. Speaker 2 Wow. Yeah. Speaker 1 Concerned. Speaker 1 But Chris, listen, take care of this.

A pleasure having you on. All right, my friend. Speaker 1 Thank you, my guy. Speaker 2 All right. There is Chris from Pennsylvania. And I think we got to call it quits when we're ahead, folks. So we are going to do it for calls for the week. We will speak to more people next week.

We'll take a quick break and then get to your emails and many more things. Quick break and back after this. Don't forget that the best way to support The David Pakman Show is by becoming a member, which gives you access to The Daily Bonus Show, the regular show with no commercials. You also get access to our entire archive of every episode dating back a really long time and plenty of other awesome membership perks. Go to join Pacman dot com and use the coupon code better. Twenty one for a huge discount. Join Pacman dot com. All right. Let's get into the Friday mailbag. Anybody can be on the mailbag. You simply have

to write into info at David Pakman dot com. We have a whole bunch of different types of emails that we get. We get policy, deep policy, wonk type emails. We get superficial criticisms. We get praise and we also get trolling. And today we're going to start with just a little bit of trolling. It's always good just to get a sense of the types of things I get. Peter wrote in and Peter says, you're a political hack, empty vessel. Are you ever going to take that war criminals phallus out of your mouth? And yours, why are you apostrophe re out of you are mouth you pro imperialist, progressive bootlicking peasant brain loser. No wonder you have a for profit opinion show, not a new non for profit newscast. You don't do news. You preach one sided B.S.. What's very interesting is this is from a left winger. This is left wing hate mail. They believe I am an imperialist and not really a progressive

and that I just love Joe Biden, the supposed imperial imperialist war criminal, and that the fact that this is not a nonprofit show is part of the problem. Now, what's funny is he kind of agrees with Alex Jones in a sense. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. Yeah. So, yes, my show, like basically every other YouTube podcast show is not a nonprofit. A lot of people might not even realize to have a nonprofit. You need a board. I mean, it's it's actually quite complicated to be a nonprofit and it doesn't really make sense for a whole bunch of different reasons. We considered it at one point.

These are folks who are in the you can never be progressive enough category. And that's why I flagged this one. We get a lot of right wing hate mail, but the left wing hate mail is also interesting because in theory, Peter is someone with whom I probably agree 95 percent of the time, maybe even 98 percent of the time. But this is exactly the type of stuff that hurts the left. And you really hate to see it. But I can't control it. It is what it is. Vincent wrote in Vincent. Now, this is right wing hate. Vincent is a very anti-Semitic. Vincent says Pacman. Why is the left woke crowd so dominated by Jews without Jews support? The

left would die on the vine. Same is true for woke ism. Only the financial and intellectual support from Jews allows woke ism and left ism to continue their evil existence. Why do most Jews support such evil? Yikes. So remember, you know, a bunch of different things. Jewish Americans, much like black Americans, are a very left wing voting bloc, one of the most left wing voting blocs in the country. When it comes to woke ism, as defined, I guess, by Vincent, it's a relatively

small part of what there is on the left. I think it's extremely overrepresented in social media and extremely overrepresented by right wing media. But sometimes when they say woke ism, you know, I've talked about where there can be excesses sometimes on the left. And I say, sure, I can talk about this, but these aren't like huge deals on the left. Sometimes what the right means by woke ism is we're against treating people terribly because of their identity. That's considered woke ism. Earlier in the week, we had this clip of this Republican mom saying, I don't like all this Marxist stuff like anti bullying. Sometimes that's what they mean. They're just really angry that it's not OK to

criticize people who don't look or sound like you anymore. So anyway, pathetic stuff, anti-Semitic stuff for sure, but very, very common out there. Oh, here's a nice, nice voicemail about my recent interview with Adam Steen. My compliments. I was quite impressed with your interview of Adam Steen of Wisconsin. I really don't know how many interviewers could keep such an even keel when faced with some of the responses Adam had. My compliments to you, sir. Yeah, I get this question a lot, like in my personal life as well. How do you remain so cool with these people? There's two parts of it. One is just the experience of doing it. The second part, sadly, is a little bit of desensitization. When you've

heard this crazy stuff for a decade and a half, you do become somewhat desensitized to the level of depravity that is exhibited by many of these folks. And I don't know that that's a particularly good thing because I'm sort of suffering from a normalization in a sense. I'm still against the things they say, but I'm used to hearing them when they are very much not normal. So something to think about. Ryan wrote in about preventing life.

Also the notion from the Adam Steen interview. And Ryan says, Hey, David, the notion of preventing life is completely absurd. You're possibly preventing life with nearly every action you take. For example, I didn't get my morning coffee today because I was running late. Therefore, I didn't happen to run into my future wife. Therefore, we didn't go on to have children, thereby preventing a life. Any action can be seen as preventing a life. Thanks, David. Ryan from Milwaukee. Yeah, it's sort of like a. It's like a chaos theory on right wing brain worms. Adam Steen was saying not only is he against

birth control, I'm sorry, not only is he against abortion, he's against birth control as well because you're preventing life. Very, very weird argument. And it didn't make it. He even seemed confused by it, quite frankly. Carl wrote in. Carl says, are you streaming any debates? I'm in Pittsburgh and would love to see you do a stream of Fetterman versus Oz or Shapiro versus Mastriano. Oh, and a silly name suggestion for the financial show, Pacman, the financial fact man. OK, yeah. So I have a whole bunch of different streams that are scheduled when it comes to debates. Tonight, we've got Abbott versus Beto. Next week, we have J.D. Vance versus Tim Ryan.

And then we have Mark Kelly versus Blake Masters. The week after that, we've got DeSantis versus Crist Whitmer versus Tudor Dixon. And if it happens, the Raphael Warnock versus Herschel Walker debate, although who the hell knows whether any of those debates are going to happen week after that, we've got Rubio versus Val Demings. If it gets confirmed, Oz versus Fetterman. And then the week after that, nothing scheduled yet. So there's there's actually close to like a dozen different debates that I plan on covering. And I hope you'll join me for those. Dan wrote in David, sir, why doesn't Fetterman just take the Montreal cognitive assessment

exam? I would love to see Republicans make light of the very exam Trump has been bragging about for years. Yeah, we had a voicemail caller last week with a similar idea, which was basically Trump took a dementia stroke brain injury test and brags about it like it gets him into Mensa. If Fetterman took it, who Fetterman had a stroke and now there's people saying, oh, we can't think whatever. If Fetterman took it and passed it, would Republicans then be satisfied? And the answer is, of course not.

They would all of a sudden say it's not sufficient. We it's I know that Hannity and Trump and everybody brags about this test like it's the be all end all of intelligence and cognition. But if it was what Fetterman said and by the way, I got an email from a neurologist in our audience who said, you know, David, it's not a what if. Almost certainly Fetterman was given that know, David, it's not a what if. Almost certainly Fetterman was given that test, that assessment, because he had a stroke. And it's typical that that's what you do. It's not used for what Trump used it for. It's stunning, stunning stuff.

Then a different Dan wrote in about our YouTube thumbnails. Now, this I want to address in some serious some depth. Dan says those YouTube thumbnails that involve a ridiculous facial expression. Dude, please don't do that anymore. Your content is remarkable and consistent and on point. You don't need that cringy kind of gimmickry. Much love, Dan. Listen, guys, they're just YouTube thumbnails. OK, I get it. There's things that there are trends on YouTube and other platforms that are kind of gimmicky. OK, sometimes they're even a little cringy. But one of the things we do is we adapt. If we did our titles today are dramatically different than what they were a decade ago. OK, the conventions and what does well on our different platforms change over time.

Titles have changed. Our set has changed. The audio equipment has changed. How the show is produced has changed. And yes, thumbnails change. And sometimes we test thumbnails where I have a goofy look on my face. OK, if that alone makes you not want to watch or listen to the show anymore, then I'm sorry, because really the content is what I would hope would be most important. But we're rolling with the changes. If you don't adapt, you die in our space. So listen, if those funny faces don't do well, we'll stop using them. If they go out of style, we'll stop using them.

If they hurt us, we'll stop using them. But we're just testing different things. That's all. All right. Please, folks, with peace and love. Barney wrote in about something that is really, really important. Barney wrote to me and said, America is a food desert. David Englishman traveling through the USA here currently in Chicago. I speak to a lot of Europeans on my travels, and we are shocked that much of the US is a food desert and that we are all completely undernourished and cannot follow a typically healthy diet we might adhere to in Europe. It's impossible to find cheap, healthy food literally anywhere, writes Barney. It costs seven dollars for a salad, 13 dollars for a footlong subway, for example.

I even found it's more expensive to buy Florida oranges in Florida than it is for me to get Spanish oranges in England. Yes, I understand inflation is a factor, but this is happening everywhere. And despite this growth, the reason groceries and healthy foods in particular are obscenely expensive. I think the reason is you have one national supermarket, so there's no competition and there are a general lack of supermarkets compared to the UK. So this part, I don't know. We have more than don't we have. I mean, there's Trader Joe's. There's Whole Foods. There's. Well, that's actually interesting. Is Wegmans national? I'm not even sure.

Maybe Barney's onto something. Maybe we only have like two national supermarket chains. Like I know stop and shop is just a northeast thing, I believe. Yeah, that that may be a problem. Listen, Barney is completely correct. And a lot of people, you know, when I've traveled through the Midwest, small towns in the Northeast typically have great food and plenty of supermarkets, you know, upstate New York and Vermont and, you know, Maine, these places, there's typically no issue. But when I've been in like Wisconsin, when I've been in northern Indiana, when I've been in even Kansas City, Missouri is like, OK, right in the city. But then it gets a little bit rough.

It is a major problem and there's multiple problems. There's the the pricing issue, of course, the food desert issue where there are I mean, even even in New York and Boston, there are poorer neighborhoods with a dearth of options other than chain restaurants. And there's also a lack of education, sadly, as to what constitutes a healthy diet. What does it mean to eat a healthy diet? Well, I don't know. I eat I eat chicken and vegetables.

Well, what do you mean? Well, yeah, I mean, it's wings that I fried as well as, you know, mashed potatoes, right? They're fries, whatever. There are definitely misunderstandings about how a diet should be established. And honestly, part of the problem is that that old school food pyramid also was somewhat inaccurate and confusing. So, Barney, you have correctly pointed out that there's a lot of problems with food here in the United States. And it's really like trying to you're kind of like trying to dig yourself out. But as you do it, you're digging another hole.

I don't know if it's the right metaphor. Get your emails into me. Info at David Pakman dot com. Tell me your stories of food deserts, probably worthy of a clip coming up soon. And we will see everybody on today's bonus show, which you can sign up for at join Pacman dot com coupon code indict. That's the coupon code. Everybody knows why the coupon code is currently indict. We need some indictments. The evidence is there. It's time. See you on the bonus show or otherwise back here on Monday.