TRIGGERnometry - David Pakman - A Good Faith Debate with a Progressive

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

David Pakman is a progressive political commentator and host of The David Pakman Show on YouTube. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. - Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:20 What is Social Democracy? 04:47 Tax Reform 08:01 The Democratic Party 09:18 Populism vs Social Democracy 11:39 Biden Administration and Afghanistan Withdrawal 15:45 Biden Presidency vs Trump Presidency 21:42 President Trump: Symptom or Problem 28:04 Globalisation 34:19 Definition of a 'Woman' 36:42 Debate: Transgender Prisoners 47:03 Immigration 58:47 'Defund the Police' vs Police Reform  01:03:39 Electric Vehicles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Restrictions apply. If you have a trans woman that is biologically male and has a penis, but is slight in size and has a very feminine appearance, by all statistical likelihood, they are far less likely. to assault someone in a women's prison, than they are to be assaulted in a men's prison. And so that's a particular case where I would say it makes sense for them to be in a women's prison, yes.

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin. And this is the show for you, if you want honest conversations, with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is the progressive commentator and the host of the David Pacman show right here on YouTube. David Pacman, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me.

It's so great to have you on the show. Listen, we'll get right into it. And I'll say this for our audience, what I've already said to you off camera, which is we're really grateful to you for coming on the show. We want to have a constructive conversation with you. And I really acknowledge you for coming on our show because I think a lot of people who are progressive

might think that, you know, Francis and I are these two right-wing nut jobs, which we're definitely not. And we're really keen, actually, to hear some of your thoughts and why you think what you think. So very much with that in mind, did I describe you correctly as a progressive commentator? Is that a fair way to describe you? That's how I describe myself as a sort of standard progressive in the Northern European mold.

There are people who say I am a communist socialist and I'm definitely not. There are people who say I'm a centrist establishment shill, which I'm definitely not. I'm just uncontroversially sort of like a Northern European social Democrat. Right. So what does that mean exactly? What do you want? So this is a form of capitalism, right? So strictly speaking, if we start with a sort of just black, white, is my view of you that it falls under capitalism, the answer is yes. And social democracy is a well regulated form of capitalism where we say there's lots of good things about capitalism and about markets directing resources in many areas. But there are somewhat, what we would call special cases and these might, depending on who you ask, include health care, they might include education and other what we call public goods. And in those cases, we don't want to let the free market or a supposedly free market,

as is often the case, direct resources. And in order to fund those public goods, we would use taxes. You're still allowed to make a ton of money. You can still become very wealthy. but we would use some of the top wealth to say, let's fund these special areas that we would say are exceptions to free market capitalism. Things like healthcare, for example,

which is pretty much what we do here in Britain. I find that all entirely uncontroversial. I think where some of the controversies might start to come in as the cultural side, what does it mean to be culturally progressive if you are that? Well, I think one of the issues is that, these are not necessarily major issues for folks like me. And so one of the things I try to do is not delve too deeply into opining about positions where defending positions which are not mine.

So I guess what I want to say is there's a lot of what I believe are fabricated culture wars. I can speak to the United States and because that's where my knowledge is. In the United States, there have been in the absence of policy for what I call the American right wing, which includes the Republican Party. But it also includes right wing people who don't really care about the Republican Party. Many Trumpists were never voters before Trump. So it doesn't have to be Republicans. But the American right wing has given up on policy.

They don't really talk about taxes anymore. They don't really talk about immigration reform. They take a cultural approach. Part of that is framing the left as being obsessed with identity politics and all these different things. These things exist on the left. They're not really my cup of tea. And so I don't have a huge interest in defending some of those aspects.

For me, I have cultural views. But they're not the primary sort of element of my politics. Do you mind if I ask you what they are, though? Sure. I mean, give me a question about a particular issue. and I'll give you my opinion. Okay, I've been talking for too long. I'll let Francis ask some questions,

and then we'll come back to the culture side of things. Okay, so let's look at, so we're looking at economics. Let's really delve into the economics of it. So what would you say when it comes to a fair amount to tax an individual? What is your opinion on that? An individual of what income? And so, oh, that's a good question. So, for instance, in the UK, I think over 50,

If you earn over 50,000 a year sterling, you get taxed 40%, which I think is too high, personally. And I think if you're taxed over 100K, then you get 50%, which is a very high taxation rate. And the effect of tax rate is probably even higher. Yeah. So in the United States, there's the federal taxes, and then some states have a state income tax. Some don't. Um, my view, first of all, before we even talk about changing the tax rates is that tax money is dramatically misallocated in the U.S. So I think the U.S. spends way too much on military and defense.

There are guaranteed contracts given where we just replace weapon, unused weapons. They're sort of given like an expiration date and then the government just keeps buying and buying. The tentacles of military bases around the world to me is totally overblown for the safety and security of the United States. So before I've been talking about changing the current tax rates, I think that money that's already coming in should be used in a very different way. And maybe you wouldn't even need to change tax rates at all. Now, if changes were to be made to tax rates, I would like to see some higher brackets created. Right now the top tax bracket in the US starts, I actually don't have the numbers in front of me, but it's around half a million dollars a year in income. To me, the difference between someone making $500,000 a year, five million dollars a year and a billion dollars a year is very different.

And so I think we need more tax rates. And, you know, maybe it would be at $2 million a year. Right now, the top tax rates 37%, just for context, so you guys know. Maybe at $2 million a year, you go to 39%. And maybe at $20 million a year, you go to 42%. I mean, you know, I'm not in the mindset of we need a 90% top tax rate or anything like that. I just think we need some higher brackets because what you have in the U.S. is that the very, very richest, not the 1%, not the 0.5%, but like the 0.1%, pay a lower effective

tax rate than people who earn less. That doesn't seem right. But again, you know, there might be the belief that people like me are talking about 60, 70% tax rates. I'm not talking about that. Okay. And that's a great answer because sometimes I think people on the right mischaracterize the left as, you know, there'll be people on the left who are like this who are just like, all rich people are evil. They need to have all their wealth taken away from them. And obviously that's a mischaracterization.

Where do you stand on the Democrats and people and that political party? Would you say that you're pro-Democrats or are you one of those people on the left? We've had a lot of them on, like the Aramartes, the Jimmy Dawes, who are very, very distrustful of the Democrats, and actually, in many cases, see them as worse than the Republicans. So if it's, with respect, I will give my views in the absence of a comparison to the individuals you just listed. Is that fair?

Of course. I have never been a registered Democrat. I don't really care about political parties beyond. I will be glad to vote for Democrats if they're the better option in a particular election. So in 2020, the options were Trump and Biden. Biden was the better option. And he happened to be a Democrat and I voted for him. But my view about political parties is they are essentially like a corporation that wants to justify its own existence. part of the way that they justify their own existence is in opposition or in contrast to the other party. Certainly, the politics of the Democratic Party are much closer to mine than the Republican Party,

but I don't really care about the Democratic Party as an institution. And what do you make of populism and the rise of populism? Do you see that as a problem, which I do, and this is, I mean, I don't know where I would identify myself now, but this is my opinion. I think a lot of populism was created by the left, by the more progressive elements of left-wing politics and politicians, essentially turning their back on working-class people and not representing them, certainly in my own country in the UK with the Labour Party. So I completely disagree with that analysis as applied to the United States,

but the problem I have with populism is that populism fundamentally is rhetoric more than it is policy. And so when I talk about social democracy, without explaining policy, there's a pretty well-established set of policies that go along with that, some of which I might agree with, and some of which I might disagree with and what works in Sweden may not work in Denmark or might work in the United States or it might not. The pernicious part for me about populism is that it's fundamentally a rhetoric. And rhetoric, particularly in a country with such educational problems as the United States, such lack of media literacy and critical thinking can be used by bad actors to convince people to support really bad candidates. Trump used a version of populist

rhetoric. He was China screwing us, the working class, I'm going to fix it, et cetera. The problem with populist rhetoric absent a really clear vision of policy is that you put in someone into power based on their rhetoric and all of a sudden the solutions they propose are wacky like for example Tucker carlson is a propagandist on fox news who uh uses populist rhetoric but all of a sudden when you say well what's a solution um well with you've got to prevent antifa from taking your house or brown people from mexico are taking your job and we've got to stop that so a lot of the same rhetoric we hear from the left and right that sounds populist is used in different ways. And so for me, I take more of a policy-oriented approach of social democracy, and I'm not big on populist rhetoric

myself. Okay. Well, before I come to the cultural stuff and maybe the immigration point you make as well, you mentioned that you thought that Joe Biden was the better option at the last election. Yeah. What have you liked about the Biden administration? And are you still of the view that that was the right choice in terms of voting for Biden? The two, from the two options, it was the right choice. I mean, to speak candidly with you, gentlemen, Donald Trump was a humiliating embarrassment. I mean, just the promises he made, none of them were kept.

You know, he was going to build a wall. He didn't build it. He was going to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jared actually was going to solve it. His son-in-law, as you know, it hasn't been solved. I mean, there was a lot of progress. on that. Would you concede that? I don't, well, what progress was there?

Well, the Israeli foreign minister turning up in Saudi Arabia, I mean, all of that stuff and better relations between the countries and the region. Did you not feel that that was some progress? What changed materially, though? Look, but maybe let's not spend too much time on it. So you don't think he made any problem. Let me put it this way. Did anything change materially?

I think it's quite a difficult situation to change materially in the course of a four-year presidency but so that's fair okay we agree it didn't change materially they did do some optics things you know there was a flight like from tel aviv to ua e but i think we're on the same page we can't neither one of us can identify anything that changed materially is that fair um i i what i would say is i think some progress was made in a very difficult situation i don't claim that the situation became dramatically different and we are now like way way towards a solution And also, I think I'd also can see that it's not an issue I know enough about to have a proper discussion with you as well. That's fair. Let's let's, well, we can table it on that on that basis.

No, listen, I mean, as far as Joe Biden, Joe Biden's not exciting to me. You know, I'm a, I'm a progressive social Democrat. So Joe Biden's not exciting. He did some good things. So he did a third COVID stimulus at a time that I think it was necessary. Extended a pause on student loans got a pretty good infrastructure bill passed, got us out of Afghanistan, which I think was a great thing. I think that that was a quagmire. But be, oh, yeah, oh my God. I mean, we were there 21 years. No, no, I agree with it with the quagmire point. But did you feel that the way that was done went well? I think it went as well as it would have gone no matter who did it. Wow. Interesting.

I mean, when asked, Trump was asked, what would you have done differently? And he literally couldn't articulate a single difference. So at least Trump was going to. to do it and he another failed promise. Biden did it. And when Trump was given the opportunity to articulate how he would have handled it differently, he couldn't name a single difference. So let me in a most factual way possible. I've not heard Trump explain what would have gone differently. And therefore, I have no basis on which to assume it would have. Is that fair? I suppose it is. I suppose the question for me is I, I mean, I mean, I struggled to imagine it going any worse. So I kind of feel like there is a possibility that the preparations could have gone better.

Do you think that's unfair? I have a struggle to imagine it could have gone better. So, like, I think where I land is, it went the way I expected, you know, and it was correct, ultimately to get out. Okay. Please carry on. I interrupt you. We're talking about whether you're happy with the Biden presidency.

Yeah. I mean, it's like, listen, he's doing exactly. exactly what I expected. You know, I didn't expect him to do anything on cannabis decriminalization and he's not. And I didn't expect any, at least in the first two years, immigration reform and we're not getting it. So, you know, my, I try not to become jaded or cynical, but basically, I've seen from Biden exactly what I expected. Okay. You mentioned Trump being a humiliation. And look, you know, neither Francis or I were pro-Trump. I thought, I was. That's good. I thought he raised some important issues, by the way, in immigration, not being least of those.

We can have a conversation about that maybe later on. But if Trump was a humiliation perhaps in the way that he talked, and you mentioned some of the promises that he didn't deliver on, the optics of the Biden presidency, do they not make you cringe somewhat when he's shaken hands in midair with people who aren't there and forgetting things and all of that? Beautiful. So are you guys open to a good faith conversation about that? Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So let's go piece by piece. Does Joe Biden sometimes lose his train of thought? Absolutely. There's no question about it. And he's close to 80 years old. If you compare Joe Biden today to Joe Biden when he ran circles around Paul Ryan in 2012, it's not the same guy. I have no problem saying that that's absolutely the case. No argument whatsoever. The shaking hands with midair video was a total joke. And I'll tell you the story about it. The weekend that that story, you know, the shaking hands with midair went, I looked at the clip on my phone and it was a very short clip where you just see Biden stops speaking.

He turns to the side and he goes like this. I said, oh my goodness, this is terrible. Biden, he seems worse than Trump when Trump came off of his plane and his car was right in front of him. And Trump wandered off and was brought back by the arm by his. Secret Service agent and they said, here's your car. That's worse than when Trump had Rudy Giuliani sitting right across the table and said, where's Rudy? And maybe I'll ask Rudy to say a few words. Well, thanks, Rudy. Thank you very, very much, Mr. President. First of all, congratulations on what is in fact a historic start of an administration. I've never seen so much done in so short a period of time.

This by that Biden clip looked that. And I was going to report like guys, this something seems wrong with Joe Biden. And then I found like a the actual full V frame instead of the square Twitter video. And you could see what happened after. And Joe Biden had people to his right and to his back right and his back. And he literally finished the speech and turned and said something to the people to the right. And then he turns back and he does the exact same thing. then to the other side and does the exact same thing. So that was a non-story for me. It was a

complete non-story. I hear you. David, I haven't done enough research and I'll admit it readily. I don't know whether that's accurate, but I'm happy for the purpose of this discussion to accept that. Fair. But would you accept that Joe Biden mentally is not at his peak? I think you already have. I already have, yeah. So is that not a humiliation? Well, when I say a humiliation, I go by what is global opinion of the United States. That's my because I'm one guy, right? And so what is, so I want to say, what does the world think? And we know because of global Gallup studies and global Pew studies and others that opinion of the United States as a country, of the U.S.'s ability to lead of the president of the United States.

It was in the toilet to use a phrase Trump likes, you know, to flush 10 or 15 times. Opinion was in the toilet under Trump and it is recovered dramatically under Biden. So I try to take myself out of it and just say, what does the world think? And there's a couple of exceptions. Russia liked Trump better than Biden. Again, this is not rhetorical. It's just the opinion polls. Russia did like Trump better than Biden.

I think Turkey liked Trump better than Biden. And for some, this may be wrong, but I think I have Nigeria in my mind, liked Trump better than Biden. But other than that, empirically, our global reputation has recovered dramatically under Biden. So that's my standard that I use. Hey, Constantine, do you like shopping? No, in Russia, you skin bare with your bare hands and wear it. Obviously, this is for men only. Women and small children are allowed to use knife.

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Plus shipping, returns and exchanges are easily. and free. Stitch Fix does the hard work for you, making shopping for clubs easy and hassle free. Get started today at Stitchfix.co.com.uk forward slash trigger and get 20% off when you keep all five items. Can you order fresh Siberian bearskin from Stitchfix? Uh, possibly. Go to stitchfix.com.com.org. Forward slash Trigger to find out. And do you not think that the problem with Trump, Trump was never the problem, he was a symptom of the problem, which is that a large part of working classes and the Ross Belt in particular felt alienated by the Democrats. They felt they weren't being represented by them. And that's why they voted, which shows that there is a real problem amongst that part of the left, that they can't connect with the working classes because the ones.

working classes don't feel that they have their best interests at heart? So I would say a couple different things. I would say there is absolutely a problem with the Democratic Party that it is not doing enough for the working class. I again, I'm not a Democrat. I don't care about the party. I gladly concede that. What I see as the problem with Trump is more, I agree with the idea that Trump was a symptom rather than the problem. But for me, me the problem was if Trump doesn't have people who fall for his obviously false promises and complete lack of understanding of any issue. If people don't fall for that, Trump's the crazy guy yelling in the New York subway, right?

The danger comes from the fact that in the United States, there are so many people who are either not engaged with politics at all that when a celebrity pops up, they go, that sounds kind of good. I know who Trump is. Or they're so, um, they lack knowledge of issues to such a degree that when they hear Trump say, I'm going to fix trade by putting tariffs on China and nobody, Trump doesn't even understand that it's American companies that pay the tariffs. And all, Trump starts saying, look at how much we charge China. And then his followers go, we charge China so much. And it's like, guys, it's the American companies that pay the tariffs. So when people don't understand stuff, they fall for people like Trump. And that to me is the problem, because without

the cult members, you don't become a cult leader. You need followers to be a cult leader. And so I agree with you that Trump is emblematic as a symptom rather than actually being the problem. But my perspective is a little bit different as to why. David, can I, uh, in the spirit of a very verbal very good faith but honest conversation. Can I feed back to you what it sounds like you just said from where I'm sitting? Yes. Which is Francis was saying to you, there's a large portion of the American public who are so alienated by some of the rhetoric on the left that they went to, they had to resort to voting for Donald

Trump. That's his argument. And what you said is, no, that isn't really the problem. The problem is Americans are ill-educated and quite stupid and fall for Trump's bombastic statements. That's what it sounds like. Did I hear you right? It's a combination of both.

Okay. Now, here's one thing about... Sorry, David, just to finish this point, isn't that always the case, though? I mean, it's not like the public got massively more stupid and ill-educated in the last four years, right? Or the last six years. So people have always... I don't know about that. I don't know about that.

I mean, I don't know how much you follow American education. But I think... Let me put it this way. It's beyond me to deeply dive into that specific niche of this discussion, but I think there are many who would make the case that actually the American public, on average, has become less educated over time. Okay. Let's, I don't want to argue with that. But wouldn't you accept that these movements, these right-wing populist movements, we also had this here in the UK with Brexit. And it's an issue that probably you, I don't want to assume, but you may know less about it than we do.

And certainly we would say in this country that the same arguments were made, these are stupid, racists, whatever people. But actually, if you speak to a lot of people who voted this way, which we didn't, neither of us did. But if you speak to those people, their concerns were not based around ill education or whatever. But there was some issues that they were raising that were not being reflected in the public. debate that were dismissed and certainly from our perspective it seemed like there were some parallels with the united states so it's not that people got more stupid or less educated it's more that their concerns were being more and more ignored by the left-wing parties and they were desperate for some kind of way out which is why they voted for brexit and which is why they voted for trump that's

absolutely valid and i have no qualms with that that's what took place i think the reason i'm has skeptical accept that the reason for Trump was that Democrats have abandoned the middle class is that more Democrats crossed party lines to vote for John McCain in 2008 than the number that crossed party lines to vote for Trump in 2016. And so I hesitate to say that that was the particular reason because the numbers don't bear it out. No, but I believe it. Okay.

to interrupt, but the thing is you said yourself, what Trump did and what Brexit did is it brought a lot of non-voters out of the shadows, if you like. So what actually happened is these people who stopped voting for the Democrats and for Labor years and years ago because they felt like these parties stopped representing them. We have a Labor Party here in the UK that stopped representing working people they would argue a long, long time ago. And finally, a movement came along that actually represented them. So it's not the... McCain Democrats we're talking about here. We're talking about people who are non-voters for decades, perhaps, who are now back in the fold because they're finally seeing someone represent their views.

That's the argument. So that's an empirical question, which I don't have the data in front of me to say. I've not seen any data that suggests that 20 years inactive Democrats are who came out to vote for Trump. You're making that assertion. I can't deny that that happened. I've just seen no. evidence and unfortunately without the data it's hard to engage with it any further. Okay, so that's fair enough. David, what do you think as a person on the left when it comes to globalization? Because in many ways you could argue that globalization is a positive, you know, we get things goods cheaper, etc., etc., but also as well, it means that we don't produce enough at home.

We've lost our manufacturing basis, you know, and that means that you then have towns which become disenfranchised because they have no factories, manufacturing, etc., etc., and then creates the types of areas that will vote for a right-wing populist, such as Trump. Yeah, I am basically with you 95% of what you just said. The last piece, and it logically leads to people voting for Trump, let's put that aside for now, at least, and maybe we can come back to that. So my view on globalization is as follows.

You know, generally speaking, I am in favor of specialization, you know, at a basic economics, macroeconomic level. I understand the reason why we would have circumstances where one country doesn't just produce everything. You know, there's trade. I believe trade is a net positive. I believe specialization is a net positive. I think the problem I have with a lot of the conversation about domestic versus import when it comes to a number of different product, services, is that there's a sort of naivete where both Republicans and Democrats in the United States love to say, we're going to bring it back home.

It's going to be made in the USA. We're going to bring it here. We're going to be independent, this type of thing. And the truth is that through cumulative economic policy decisions over 30 or even 40 years dating back to, you know, Ronald Reagan, the United States has chosen. And I mean chosen again, not one person didn't decide this. the cumulative effective decisions has been, we would rather get stuff from other countries and be able to buy it for less in the United States rather than manufacturing here. And maybe this would create some jobs, but everything would be a lot more money.

So I often say, you know, cheap chotchkes from China are a really important thing in the American economy. And so when Trump would say, we're going to make it all domestically or when Biden says, we're going to make it all domestically. Number one, these are like multi-decade projects to change supply chains on a lot of these things. And there's not sort of like a just upfront thing. We're like, everything's going to cost more. And most Americans don't want that because, you know, half of Americans can't afford an unexpected $400 expense. So I'm totally fine with the basis. framework that even if you just account for geographical and climate differences, like most countries

can't produce everything. And the honesty that I wish we're part, that's missing, that I wish were part of the discussion is, we can start bringing supply chains back home and isolating, etc. But everything will get way more expensive. And then whoever's in power will get blamed for that, too. Yeah. You're never going to get a simple solution to a very complex problem. But, Don't you think what happened when we're, and look, it depends where you stand on, whether the virus was creating a lab in Wuhan and all of that. And the answer would might be that when you don't agree with that? Well, I'm just saying, do we have any evidence that it was created in a lab right now?

I mean, there are some people who believe that. Very credible. There's people who believe the earth is flat. What I'm saying is, do we have evidence that that is the case? We have a very prominent scientist saying that that's the case. But let's not have this argument. I'm so done with trouble. It's just tough to allow that to be placed as an aside, you know?

Okay, we hear that you disagree with that assertion. Can we hear? Yeah, yeah. So, but what I was saying was the fact that if you have people who you are in Hocktu or produced, for instance, with China, they produce a huge amount of antibiotics, do you not think that it would be better from a situation? security point of view to then have that back in the United States, for example, or to have that with countries who you are allied to? I'm completely sensitive to that logic. In many ways, that's

perfectly logical, yeah. Okay. I think we just also have to be honest about the effect it could have on price. Oh, sure. It's going to cost more, but sometimes you have to pay more for security. I mean, look at Germany and Russian gas right now, and again, don't need to get into that. So David, let's talk about culture. I know that it's not necessarily a big thing for you, but in terms of some of the things we've been putting to you that we are sensitive to, which is how culture affects how people feel about their country,

about the party that they want to vote for, about the direction of travel of their society, I would probably chart three issues on which a lot of people in our space, which is perhaps disaffected lefties or people who are sort of sensitive. like me or people who are right-leaning that have been concerned about and feel are important and are not being discussed honestly in the mainstream space, let's say, right? I think number one, certainly in the UK, you tell me what you think about the United States,

but is number one is immigration, number two is race relations and all the stuff to do with BLM and all of that. And number three, as of late, these sort of big toxic issues is of course the trans issue. Okay, so sure, those are three issues, yes. Yeah, I was going somewhere with that. I just wanted to get confirmation. Those are issues that exist, absolutely. Those are issues that exist. And what I am asserting to you is there are quite a lot of people,

certainly here in the UK, and I know that in America, it's the same in some circles, that feel very strongly about those issues, and they feel that the mainstream conversation about those issues is dishonest. So if we start in reverse order with the trans thing, can I, can I, it's a dick move to ask you this, but can I ask you to define a woman? Is that okay? Yeah, so listen, I mean, I did a whole thing with this right-wing guy named Michael Knowles a little while ago. Okay. We are, you know, we were talking about the definition of a woman and the context was the Katanji Brown Jackson hearings and her refusal to answer. And there, I argued that makes perfect sense because they're asking in a legal context, the question.

is who can bring a discrimination lawsuit on the basis of gender. And I thought she was right not to answer it. And I made the point that depending on where you're asking the question, the answer could actually be different. Now, I'm glad to give my view of this socially, if that's okay. Sure. Yeah, of course. So this is, again, and the problem with this, and I know you guys would never do this

because you seem so honest. The problem is that sometimes this question is then used to put someone in a corner. So I will say in advance that the definition I have will not work in every setting, okay? Like, for example, the definition I have in an OBGYN's office may not work because we recognize biological differences, right? But for me, the broadest way where I think about who am I going to relate to as a woman, it would be somebody who I identify as deliberately trying to exist. in the world as a woman. And so if I see a biological man who, and again, we have to talk about this in candid ways, which some people might not like, but I think it's necessary.

If I see, if I see me with a wig on, it's not going to be apparent to me that that's someone who is necessarily trying to exist in the world as a woman, if they go by the name David and their voices like mine and they dress like me. So I'm just going to make the best faith effort I can where if it's indicated through a number of different cues that someone is trying to exist in the world as a woman, I'll relate to them as a woman. That's fine. It just doesn't bother me. Oh, sure. And in fact, I am kind of where you are in the sense that we've had a shit ton of trans people on the show and we call them by whatever name they have and the pronouns that they've chosen. I've got no issue with that. However, my issue is that in, and again, this is being straight with you, I hope you don't take offense to what I'm saying.

Please. In your refusal to give a definition that is equally applicable in different circumstances, you're kind of avoiding the difficult elements of this, right? Well, the difficult elements are exactly that, which if, okay, sorry, I interrupted. I know you know where I'm going, but let me just give the examples so people know what we're talking about. So we have a number of cases here in the UK, for example, and I know you've had some in the US as well, where a trans woman who still has a male anatomy has been housed in a female prison

and has gone on to commit sexual assault against women in prison, right? We obviously have had trans women in male sports, where they, in my opinion, have an unfair advantage. And there are other situations in which our failure to give a clear, like, universal definition means that women, in particular, in this very instance, are suffering the consequences of our social unwillingness to be quite hard line about it.

Would you agree with that? Well, that's what in a court, they would say that that's a compound question, and we've really got to break down each of those, because whether I agree with everything you said, I don't know. So let's, let's, I'm not even sure where to start. So, okay, I mean, in prison, there was, was a sexual assault by a biological male housed with women. Okay, I don't know the story. We have a country

of 331 million in the United States, so you can find examples sort of of everything. Sexual assault by biological females of other females in American prisons is really common. So for me, what I go to is less about, you know, trans people, I think are one third of one percent of the population in the I may be slightly off about that, but let's use that as a working number. For me, every assault is bad. And the bigger issue is American prisons are terrible at keeping inmates safe. And I apply that to men's prisons and women's prisons. But you're deflecting here, aren't you?

I don't. Well, but no, I don't think. And so, but let me, let me give me the reverse of your argument, right? No, but let, well, I wasn't even done. shooting black people is bad but the real problem is something else and we shouldn't talk about the cops shooting black people no no no that's not the argument i'm making what okay sure go ahead sorry so the the point that i'm making is because that what you're saying it's i guess it depends on what you say the other issue really is that you didn't get to the end of that and so i don't know

that's the right wing argument black on black crime is the real thing forget about cop shooting black people right but those are totally different things what i'm saying is Violence in prison is a major problem, and I don't deny that an added layer of complexity is in which prison should a trans person be. I don't pretend to have the answer in all cases. I don't pretend to have the answer. I'm conceding it's very complicated. Is it complicated? If you have a penis, should you be in a female prison?

Well, but not everybody who's a trans woman has a penis. But these people did, and they were in female prisons, both in your country. in an hour. I just don't know the case. I don't know. I don't know the answer. Should a person with a penis, though, be in a in a female prison? It's it's I would have to know more about how these decisions are being made. I don't know enough about how the decisions are made to be able to say. So you, I mean, listen, let me put it, let me put it a different way. Let me put it a different way. And I, I, I, I don't know if the, if anecdotes, we're, we're both being so anecdotal that I don't know if this is even useful. But there are, there are, there are,

many instances where I could show you a picture of someone and describe their height and weight to you. And it would be very hard to argue that they should be in a men's prison for their own safety. I'm not arguing for that. We've had trans people on the show who say we need to make provisions so that trans people are in a separate facility where they're going to be safe from males who otherwise would potentially be a danger to them, right? So trans people, there's a third prison for trans people. That's what some people have argued on our shows. I'm not saying you take someone who identifies as a trans woman

and you stick them with men because I don't think it would end well for them. So I don't lack compassion. What I'm trying to get out with you is, do you envisage circumstances under which it is right to put a person with a penis in a female prison? I can envisage theoretical circumstances where it's the best of the options that are available. Yeah. I mean, right now there are no third prisons

for trans people. And so if you say to me, what is more like, I mean, like, listen, let's just be very up front. If you have, if you have a trans woman that is biologically male and has a penis, but is slight in size and has a very feminine appearance, by all statistical likelihood, they are far less likely to assault someone in a women's prison than they are to be assaulted in a men's prison. And so that's a particular case where I would say it makes sense for them to be in a women's prison, yes. Okay. We could go we could go around for hours.

But look, before we move on, in the situation I outlined, do you concede that it makes more sense for them to be in the, if the only two options are a men's or women's prison, would a five three biological male with a penis? who is outwardly feminine and is seen by the average person as a woman, you're not going to put them in the men's prison, are you? I think it would be very dangerous to do so. Fair. So we agree on that.

That's fair. Well, we don't agree on that because I don't think either of those options is acceptable and we should look for a solution rather than going. I would love another solution. But it seems like we agree that given the two current options, we are on the same page. No, I just think both of those options are completely. completely unacceptable to me and I think we need a third solution and that's why I feel strongly about it. Do you see what I'm saying? I see what you're saying. But it sounds like before you realized

it might not look great to concede it that you agreed in the two options we have now, the female prison makes more sense. I think this is where I'm going to do at David Packman and go. I think it depends on the individual circumstances. Beautiful. That's what I'm saying. If this person is in prison because of sexual assault against women, I don't know that that is the right. choice personally. Okay. I mean, maybe in that case they would be, we're now getting so in the weeds, but that's a case where they might be in solitary confinement anyway in that situation as a side.

I mean, now we're really getting too narrow, I think. Sure. Yeah. Hey, KK, do you believe in spring cleaning? Yes, but only when my wife does it. In Russia, men who clean are executed for not being real men, which is correct. Well, for those men who are living in the 21st century, entry, Manscaped has an incredible offer for you.

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That's 20% off and free shipping with the code trigger 20 at manscape.com. It's time to throw out all your old hygiene habits and upgrade your life. Can I just say, David, I'm really enjoying this conversation. Yeah, because I'm doing all the hard questioning. That's why you're fucking enjoying it. But let's go on to a very thorny issue. My girlfriend is a left-wing progressive, you know, woman of color and all the rest of it.

And her and I have regular ding-dongs about this at least twice a week, which is the thorny topic of immigration. And I am pro-limiting immigration, because my argument comes from actually a very left-wing perspective, which is demand and supply. So, for instance, I remember one of my flatmates when I was in my late 20s, was a mixed-race guy called Daniel, and Daniel used to vote UKIP,

which was a populist right wing of the conservatives, essentially. And I said to him, Dan, like, you're a mixed race. Why are you voting for UKIP? And he said, Francis, because I'm an electrician, right? And ever since freedom of movement in the European Union, I've seen my wages frozen, because people come from all over the European Union to come and work in London. Now, I've got nothing against those people.

And in fact, if I was in their position, I would do exactly the same. But the effect for me is that my wages haven't risen in real time because there's so much competition, because London is the place they all come to. So by limiting immigration, limiting the amount of people who can come and work in my field, my wages will therefore rise as a result.

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And your question to me is. And my question to you is, you know, where do you stand on immigration? And do you have sympathy for that position? Because a lot of people on the left, and I'm not saying that you think this would go, oh, you know, and they mischaracterize it as foreigners coming over here and taking our jobs, when I think we can both agree, it's more complex. It's more complex. So, again, I can speak to the United States.

I've studied immigration pretty deeply here. So the first thing is, in order to really talk about this, we have to know the reality about some of these issues like, well, how many people really want to come to the U.S., and what is the effect of the immigrant labor market on wages, and do we need more workers, all these different things? Okay. Okay. So in Argentina, where I was born, basically the concept of illegal immigration is it's not

really an issue. It's just like if you go and you can find a job or enroll in school, there's like a path to citizenship for everybody. Now, why doesn't Argentina get overloaded? Because the economy is a disaster and not that many people want to go to Argentina. Okay. The United States is a much better economy than Argentina for the average person. So we often assume everybody wants to come and move to the United States. And if we just open the floodgates, everybody would. The truth is when you survey people around the world, not that many people want to move to the United States. Sure, many do. But most people want to be in the country where they live and where their family is and when they speak their language and we're okay.

So the first thing is even if we open the floodgates completely, yes, many people would come to the U.S., but it's not the world is going to come rushing to the U.S. So the first thing we would have to realize is how many people really want to come here, fine. And how many would that be do you think if you just open borders? I don't remember. I'm not an advocate of open borders anyway, but I don't remember what the numbers are. It's been a year since I looked at this data. But when you look at many countries and it'll be like 10% of a country might want to come to the U.S., maybe a country with 5 million people, so that's like half a million.

But then how many actually would do it? Well, it's a fraction of that and how many would stay and it's a fraction of that. But so the first thing is- 10% of most countries in the world, there's quite a lot of people, right? I'm making the number up. Okay. Okay, okay, doesn't matter. I'm not advocating we open the floodgates anyway.

There should be an immigration policy. There should be a process. That's very right wing, David. Welcome to the far right. The second part of it would be, well, what is the effect of immigrant, documented immigrant, and undocumented immigrant labor on wages? Because there's this economic concept where if you suddenly flood with tons of supply for something, the price demanded will go down and wages will go down.

Well, remember, we have a minimum wage in the United States. There's ways around it with under the table work, I would concede. But there is a minimum wage, which is a different argument that some people are also against. But that is a lower limit on wages. But the truth is that the studies that have been done show that immigrant labor documented and undocumented in the aggregate has essentially no statistical effect on wages. Now, I know it's counterintuitive because it's like, well, if I can be able to be, you find an undocumented immigrant to work for two bucks an hour, which in theory you can.

And it should depress wages. But in a country of 331 million with the number of immigrants documented and undocumented that we have and the fields in which they work and on it on, it has a negligible effect on wages. Much more of an effect on wages is seen from lack of regulation on the corporations that are doing the hiring. and in some industries actually colluding to hold wages down. So it's like, okay, well, that's a piece. Wages will collapse. Actually, they won't.

So I'm glad to kind of see where you want to kind of steer this from here. But I think one of the things that we have to understand is a lot of the sort of common sense about immigration. When you look at it, you know, immigrants commit more crime. Actually, immigrants commit less crime, even undocumented immigrants. Why? Because they know they're in the country illegally. they go out of their way to stay off the radar of law enforcement. Makes perfect sense.

Once you break all these things down, you know, hopefully you can get to a better place to really talk about this stuff. So what you were saying is essentially it's control of greater regulations of corporations that will ensure better conditions for workers and better pay. That's not what I said. What I said is more responsible for stagnant wages

than immigrant labor, is the way in which corporations can work in a whole bunch of different ways to avoid paying more. And this includes that their employees are subsidized by government programs. This includes using third parties and contractors rather than employees. We're again getting into very specific issues. But all of those things are far more responsible for stagnant wages than immigrant labor. Okay. Can I go to the cultural side of the immigration conversation then, which is this won't really apply to the U.S., but I'll put it on the table just for our viewers, because you guys, you're a nation of immigrants, melting pot, all of that.

So, you know, you have a different view of immigration generally, but particularly what you call undocumented immigration, what we call illegal immigration in this country, which is people coming into the country without following the immigration rules, right? Is there not a moral argument that that is just wrong, that allowing people to come to circumvent the queue? Because I'm a legal immigrant in the UK, right? I had to follow a pretty expensive and pretty thorough process for this country to make sure that I meet the requirements that the people of this country voted to have in place for who can come and live here.

And there are other people who are getting in a boat and crossing the English Channel, or in your case, crossing the Rio Grande, by paying somebody $2,000 or whatever it is, to come into the country. This isn't what we as the people of the United States or we as the people of the United Kingdom voted for, and people who do this should not be allowed to come. And if they do come, they should be sent back and forced to join the legal process, which we all voted for.

Yeah, I mean, listen, my family came to the United States legally. It was a lottery system. and we wouldn't have come if we hadn't gotten it. I think the, you know, countries are allowed to, it's not immoral to have a border. It's not immoral to enforce the border. Deportation in and of itself is not something I advocate should end. I think the areas where I have a problem include, one, those who came to the United States when they were not adults because they were brought by parents.

And their lives are here. I don't think it's fair to send them back to a country that they may have quite literally no connection in. That doesn't make sense to me. I think if you want to enforce the border and it's you have to understand that two-thirds of it is not literally the border. It's people just coming in and overstaying visas, for example. And I also think that you have to concede.

David, I'm sorry to interrupt. This isn't to trip you up at all. I really want to hear the rest. of your answer, but just on those people, can I ask you, if someone has overstayed the visa, should they be deported? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I'm open to, we have courts that adjudicate this, okay?

And there are a number of circumstances where I would say individuals should be allowed to stay. If they've, you know, if you have someone who's been here some period of time and they've committed no crimes and they are productive members of society. And I'm totally open to immigration judges saying you get to stay. But I am not the country has a right to enforce immigration law. That's what it is. We have to change the law if we don't want that. Yeah.

Sorry for interrupting. I just wanted to clear that particular point up. Yeah. No, I don't mean, I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm, you know, if you really want to deal with this issue, it's not about a wall on the southern border would be my point. And you also do yourself, if you're better able to understand how people are coming in, you can make unnecessary so much other infrastructure that's currently in place.

So when you say that there are other ways to solve the problem, what is that? Well, again, the majority of people are not coming over the border. Yeah, so you need to deport them. We've got that, right? Deport which. So the people who are overstaying the visas, unless they've been in the country for a really long time and the immigration judge looks at their case and goes, you get to stay because you're the kind of person we want here. Everybody else gets sent back, right? Yeah, I mean, practically speaking, it's not going to happen because it's just there's not information about every single person who's in that case, practically speaking.

But theoretically, there's no legal case to argue that all those people get to stay. I think that if you, I'm open to a path to amnesty with certain requirements. And I think that what that would be is up for debate. If someone came to me and said, okay, listen, if you've committed no crime other than being here illegally and you have employment and whatever other mechanisms are met, you're put on a seven year path to citizenship, I'm totally open to things like that. But I think it's a tough argument for being a man. that the current law should just be ignored.

Right, okay. And then what about in terms of people who do come in illegally over the border, let's say? What should happen to them in your, in an ideal world? We, we already, it's already happening. I mean, they're here illegally, so they're subject to deportation. I mean, that's, that's just how it is. Cool. That seems like a pretty sensible approach, that part of it to me,

which I think we could probably agree on. And the last element, because we've got about five minutes, and then we need to do questions for our long, for our local supporters and we don't want to take up any more of your time, David, is, what do we do with the people on the left who are very loud? And for people like me, just to let you know, I'm a former teacher, I taught in the public school system that for many years, and I see people on the left saying, you know, we need to defund the police, we need to abolish capitalism.

And coming from a country like Venezuela, I've seen what happens when you're abolish capitalism, it doesn't end well. What do we do? And obviously, those people should be allowed their views. But how do we make the left more palatable to the ordinary person and distance itself from those types of people? Because to me, most people aren't going to vote for that. Yeah, defunding the police doesn't poll well among the Democratic Party. The people who support it on Twitter are very loud. But we have polling data. Just defunding the police isn't super popular. performing the police and I put out, you know, a 10-point plan of how I would do it is very popular. So that was one thing. The other thing is most Democrats aren't socialists. So I think the important

thing for me is I'm not interested in kind of arguing with straw men. And sure, there are real socialists and there are people who say get rid of the police altogether. These are tiny groups. They're not super interesting to me. I'm more interested in articulating my ideas. Okay. So let's talk about police reform the police in America. Yeah. So we, I mean, it depends on which police department we're talking about. There's a big difference between rural and urban police departments in the United States. But I think establishing a system for at minimum required social work type training for officers should be a minimum requirement. I would love to also have social workers and mental health professionals who are the first line of response to certain. types of calls if someone calls because there's a homeless person panhandling who maybe is overdosing. I don't know that you need a police officer with a gun to be the first line of response there or maybe you send a police officer and a social worker. I think that that would be a great thing.

I think that there should be a national database of bad actors. So when you've been discharged from your role as an officer for bad acts, it should be easy if you go to a different state and a for the place you're applying to look up whether you've been whether you've lost a police job because of bad acts. Police unions resist that very aggressive. The police unions resist that? Yes. Yes. They don't want, they don't want such a national database in the United States. That's, I think, something that would be important. I like mandatory body cameras, as we've seen. A lot of the devil is in the details. They end up not working at key moments or the file

gets deleted when you want to find it. So I like the idea of police body cameras. You know, I don't remember all of my 10 points. I did this about a couple years ago on my show. But you know, these are some of the ideas. Now, I think it's really important to say some of the stuff I'm talking about costs money. And so in some places, the problem is police is underfunded. And so they resort to low energy policing, which is terrible rather than really preventing

crime or dealing with, you know, there's too much of a focus on street crime in the U.S. rather than white collar and corporate crime. Some of this stuff will need more money for police, which is why I think defund as a catch-all doesn't work. David, can I just, before we go to our final question and then the questions from our supporters, first of all, again, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate Donna's conversation. We've had, obviously, there's areas of agreement, disagreement, whatever, but I think this is

great. Please. But I think we kind of, we got over France's point. a little bit, which I do think is important because I hear what you say, because I'm the same, like I have right of center views and left of center views, and I fire myself embroiled with arguing with extremists on the right and the left about stupid shit, and I probably shouldn't. And you're smart not to do that with the extremist on your side. The problem I would say to you, though, is some of their slogans, while not being popular in terms of how they poll, have filtered

through into mainstream debate and even policy. I mean, look at defunding the police, we have seen some cities adopting policies in America of this type and resulting in spikes and crime. Is that fair to say? I'm not so sure about that. Who has defunded the police? Yeah, I don't remember, I remember reading articles showing spikes in crime in some cities which have taken a more sort of let's reduce their amount of policing we do. But I couldn't give you a specific example of the top. Are you saying that's not happened in any city and any major city? I'm not aware of any place that has just flatly defunded police, eliminated officers with guns and done whatever it is that they're calling for. But reduce their involvement, reduced amount of funding.

You know, I have read articles again about places where the sort of the environment for police officers is such that a lot of people take early retirement or move to another state, et cetera. Are you not aware of anything of that kind? I mean, listen, there's 331 million people in the U.S. I'm sure there are some police departments who have seen a decline in funding and we'd have to look at the reasons and the purpose. I just, without examples, it's hard to speak to it. But to get to you what I think is your main question about how to address these people, the way I address it is, again, if they want to call into my show and argue with me, I gladly

will. If they run for office on some of these things I don't agree with, I don't vote for them. and I tell my audience not to vote for them, the same way I do with any candidate that I don't agree with. And I try to keep, I can't control corporate media, but on my program, which I can control, I keep the narrative about what I think are good ideas. Brilliant.

That's good answer. David, with that, thank you so much for coming on. As I say, we're going to ask you a couple of questions from our supporters, for our supporters in a second. But as always, our final question is, what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that you think would really should be? I think that we could very quickly get completely off of fossil fuels for transportation if we really decided as countries, as governments, that we're going to do it.

And I would like to see that done. I've switched over to an electric vehicle. I've got solar panels on and on and on. And I think that it would be great economically, climate and culturally. It would be a fantastic thing. I would love to see it talked about more. David, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

If people want to find you online, where is the best place to do that? Davidpackman.com. And you, of course, host a very popular show here on YouTube. Thank you so much for coming on, David. Please don't go anywhere because we're going to ask you a couple of questions. But with that, thank you for being on the show. Thank you guys for watching and listening. We'll see you very soon.

Another brilliant episode like this one or Raw Show. All of them go out at 7 p.m. UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. What is the most persuasive way of convincing people who are conservative at the moment who lean conservative to your side of the argument?