David Pakman (26:11)
Well, Maria, I think it's as you said in the last segment, it's all of the above. You know, President Trump was elected with, with a mandate. He's closed the border. So check on that. We so I'm so sorry to have to interrupt. First of all, he's closed the border. The question was why are we doing this? Okay. Secondly, the Trump mandate. Trump got less than 50% of the vote in the November of 2024 election. Now we can argue about hyper partisanship making it difficult to really win any election by that much. Okay, save it. Because we saw the Biden results from 2020. Most of the people who voted in November voted for somebody else. Very difficult to argue that you have a mandate when that's the case. And this doesn't get any better are the doing the very large deportation of people, criminals and people who have overstayed their, their visits, their, their period. So we're in the, they've overstayed their periods. Poor people instead of that. And now President Trump is tackling the trade agenda. And this isn't done in isolation. Oh my goodness. The look on Maria most face right here when Besant can't explain a damn thing about why are we doing this? Tells you just about everything you need to know. What is he even saying? What is the argument that he's trying to make? He's fixed everything, so now they're doing this. The question is why this policy at all, not why this now after doing the border. And it just doesn't make any sense. And the critical part here is that you essentially have two categories of people that are defending this. Number one, those who have calculated that they will personally benefit. And it seems like that group is pretty small, to be perfectly frank. And secondly, people who are trading in the most important currency to Trump that there is, that currency is called loyalty. And to those trading in loyalty, you can see on their faces, they don't think that this is going to work. The real reason Bessant is fumbling. This answer is there is no sensible economic explanation as to why this is happening. So I continue to believe that the most likely off ramp, the off ramp that will most allow Donald Trump to save face is to say they all capitulated. They all came to me with tears in their eyes begging me to get rid of the tariffs and we made a deal. Ok, right, and then he will attempt to save face that way and try to save the economy. That's the most likely outcome in my mind. Not the only, but I think the most likely. Let me know what you think. Remember that my book the Echo Machine is available everywhere books are sold. If you've already bought it, remember to leave a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Goodreads. We'll take a very quick break and be back right after this. I want to introduce you to an amazing tool that has helped a huge number of people reach their health goals. It is called Lumen and it's the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath and on the app it'll tell you are you burning fat or carbs? And give you tailored guidance to improve nutrition, workouts, even stress management. Your metabolism is like the engine of your body, how you turn food into fuel, and because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does, optimal metabolic health can translate to many benefits, including easier weight management and improved energy levels and fitness results. It's a long list. Lumen gives you recommendations to improve metabolic health based on the context of your breath measurement, whether that's first thing in the morning, before and after meals or workouts. And you can get 20% off your lumen by going to lumen.me/pacman that's L U M E N.me/pacman for 20% off. The link is in the podcast Notes One of the things I learned during my recent trip to Europe is that if I am on the wrong mattress, for me it's much harder to sleep well. Helix Sleep, our sponsor, has a two minute quiz that will ask about your height and weight position you like to sleep in, whether you have back pain, whether you tend to feel hot or cold at night, and then you get matched with the mattress best suited for you. I was matched by Helix with their Midnight mattress model. It has cooling features. I tend to get hot at night. I've been sleeping on this mattress for years and it's fantastic. Helix also just came out with these awesome new mattress toppers unlike anything I've seen or felt before. Their new dual comfort Mattress Topper with Glacio Tex, which has a soft side and a firm side for two sleepers with different preferences. This has transformed the comfort of my bed. Every Helix mattress and Mattress topper come with 100 night sleep trial. If you don't love it, you get your money back. It's that simple. Helix will even get rid of your old mattress for you if you want. Helix is giving my audience 20% off site wide at helix sleep.com/pacman that's H E L I X sleep.com/pacman the link is in the podcast Notes I've talked before about how the left sometimes has this instinct to exclude people over relatively small disagreements, while the right, at least when it's time to win elections, tends to really be inclusive in this just vote for us kind of way. Come on in. You can support Trump but hate vaccines, be anti tax but pro Labor. Think the 2020 election was stolen or just had issues, but you're still in their group, at least for the purposes of winning elections, getting power, and then getting to legislate. The right accepts all of it until the election in order to win. But what we see on the left often is that if you disagree on one issue even slightly, you'll sometimes end up being treated like you're not really part of the movement at all. You're other ized and it's what Sigmund Freud called the narcissism of small differences. We save sometimes our harshest energy for people who are mostly like us, just not quite enough. And this isn't some theory. This is really everywhere. Think about the Bernie vs. Warren feud from 2020 and how it got so vicious that supporters who agreed on 90% of policy, maybe 95% of policy, started treating each other like they were enemies. And the reality is that there was very little daylight between Bernie and Warren. In fact, they were assessed at the time as the two most left senators in the Senate. But from how their supporters were fighting with each other, you would have thought it was like, you know, Marx versus Milton Friedman or something like that. I even got sucked into it a little bit when I said in 2020 I prefer Bernie, but I'd be happy with Elizabeth Warren. These are the two most left wing senators in the Senate. I got furious emails. How dare you, you right winger. We knew you were a neolib this entire time. So that was Bernie Warren in 2020. Another example. Defund the police. For some, defund the police became a line in the sand where anyone like me who wanted reform but didn't like the slogan and maybe thought that actually just flat out defunding isn't really the solution, we were written off as compromised. Oh, you've been a big law enforcement is paying you the DNC has given you money so that you don't support Defund. Now, I mean, I laid out a 10 point plan which included reform response by non armed individuals to certain types of calls, training, ending low effort, policing, all this stuff. But I just didn't think that defund made sense as a slogan or as a practice. I was brutally attacked for that. I'm on the right, all this stuff. Another example, there are people on the left who have, maybe we'd call them more nuanced views on trans athletes in sports. Everybody would be pro trans rights in just about every way. We agree about dignity and all this different stuff. But there are some people who say, hey, you know what? There are some sports in which I think there's an issue of fairness here. Some of them get branded as bigots and told you're not part of the same movement they that I'm part of. Wow. And then even when people agree with the general direction of the left, the second they use the slightly wrong language or they're not loud enough at the right moment, they get accused of being only performative allies or whatever. As if being imperfect disqualifies you completely. This is personal too, by the way. I've spoken out strongly in favor of an independent Palestinian state against Israeli settlements, against Benjamin Netanyahu. But I've also said I don't support the BDS movement. I don't support calling for the elimination of Israel. I don't support those things. But I support all the other stuff I just mentioned. You all know I've had people say I'm not part of the real left. I, I'm actually a right winger with my beliefs. I've been excluded by people whose views I mostly share because I only signed off on 92%, not 100% of what they believe. So why does this happen? This is the critical part. I just finished reading the book the Status Game by Will Storr. And in the book he explains that a lot of this behavior is about how people try, try to gain status in their communities. And in many left wing spaces, the way to earn status is by being morally pure. This is where the phrase purity test comes from. By proving you're the most principled, you're the most correct, you're the most uncompromising, you're the most left wing. And Storr leans on the work of Jason Manning and Bradley Campbell, who describe a shift in what they call a victimhood culture. In that culture, status comes from being seen as a victim or defending victims more strongly than anybody else does. And when that's the game, what you end up with is people constantly calling each other out, not just to make things better, but to prove their own virtue, to win points because they are the ones doing the calling out. So what ends up is that instead of building coalitions, the left ends up policing its own ranks. The right rewards loyalty and the left often rewards purity. And that difference is showing up at the ballot box. If we want to win, we have to stop turning minor disagreements into disqualifications because then we'll just keep losing. If you don't build the tent, grow the tent, you shrink it, and then you lose power. And there's this idea that if you let more people in who aren't pure, you actually shrink the tent when in reality you're growing it. So I would like to see it go differently the next couple of election cycles. And let's see if it makes a difference. All right, it's happening. Russell Brand has been officially charged with rape, oral rape, and multiple counts of sexual assault. An indecent assault involving four women in incidents occurring between 1999 and 2005. He's due in court May 2. And right on cue, the right wing defense machine is in motion. If we think back to Russell Brand's sort of trajectory, you had the period during which he was in movies and in tabloids, he then had this sort of political awakening. He started critiquing capitalism, he was flirting with left wing populism, briefly dropped off the radar, and then he has reinvented himself like a phoenix rising over the horizon as a free thinker on YouTube. He's skeptical of vaccines and he did his anti lockdown rants and his conspiracies. And then ultimately he went full maga. Right wing shows, speaking at right wing events, cozy with Tucker, cozy with other right wingers. He has now become a folk hero for the anti woke crowd. And that's exactly why the charges are not being really looked at seriously by the right wing, that he's actually getting more support as a result of these charges. Now, of course, Russell Brand denies everything he gets his day in court. He says, yes, he was promiscuous at this time, but never did anything non consensual. He says the law is being used as a weapon against him. Who's been talking about the weaponization of the law? Lawfare as they call it. And his followers are saying he is actually the victim here, not the perpetrator. If it sounds familiar, it's the MAGA playbook. It's the Andrew Taint playbook. Serious Charges come down, you deny, you deflect, you say I'm being persecuted for my political beliefs and then your fan base turns you into a martyr for masculinity and everything that is good. This is not about free speech, okay? Russell Brand is not being charged for what he said. He's being charged for what he allegedly did. And he still says, and they still say that it's censorship and its cancel culture and it drowns out the women that say they were his victims. What does it say about MAGA culture that the default response to rape charges has been has become reflexive loyalty? Being anti woke is now enough to buy you full scale defense even when the accusations are extraordinarily serious. Now, another key factor driving the response to Russell Brand's allegations, our support for Donald Trump is support for Donald Trump. Trump is now the poster child for they tried to destroy me, but I won anyway. He was convicted of felonies and then he went on to win the presidency. And that outcome has rewired the brains of how the right wing now sees criminal charges. In their view, any charge against one of their own is proof that that they are the target for no reason. That is fair. It's not a legal issue. It's a badge of honor. They're now coming after me. I have all the right beliefs. And Brand supporters are using the exact same logic. If they're charging him, Russell Brand must be telling the truth about ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. This is the post Trump effect. MAGA doesn't just tolerate these sorts of scandals anymore. They celebrate them. They say, look at how great this person is. They've now been charged with rape. And the worse the allegations, the more confident they are that their guy is being unfairly prosecuted. Brand isn't the exception. He's really the blueprint at this point in time. So when he says this is a political hit job, they believe it because that's what they were trained to believe. The Trumpian formula is guilt doesn't matter. Loyalty matters. Now, Russell Brand could face years in prison, but in the MAGA universe, he would be even more trustworthy. Rest assured that if he does get convicted and sentenced in accordance with the law, he will only become more innocent in the minds of the MAGA people and they will even more strongly defend him. How backwards things have really gotten. Every romantic relationship has periods where people get busy, struggle to find time to connect or find new ways to connect. And that's why our sponsor, Parrot, has been such a valuable tool for so many people. It's the app for couples who want to strengthen their relationship. Every day, Paired gives you personalized questions or quizzes or games to stay connected, deepen your conversations and have fun. The best part is you can't see your partner's answer until you answer, so it's a safe space to have an open and honest discussion about the relationship. No faking it or pretending, just genuine connection to keep the spark alive. My girlfriend and I have used Paired. Even if you've known your partner for years like I have, I still feel like Paired helps me learn new things and stay connected. Whether you're just a few dates in or you've been together a long time like me, find the time to connect with your partner. Nourish the relationship. Head to pear.com/pacman to get a seven day free trial and 25% off if you sign up for a subscription. That's P A I r e d.com/pacman for a seven day free trial and 25% off a subscription. The link is in the podcast Notes We've covered on the show extensively how more and more people are stepping away from organized religion. For some, it's just the realization I don't have to participate in that. And all of a sudden we have seen a serious shift. But not everybody is OK with that shift. Christian nationalism is on the rise. They are working overtime to put their beliefs into the law, into our schools, even into our personal lives. It's sort of like, hey, I respect your right to believe whatever you want, but just don't make me live by it. And that is where the Freedom From Religion foundation comes in. Our sponsor, the Freedom From Religion foundation, fights to keep church and state separate. This is what the founders intended. So whether you've always been secular or you've left religion behind or you have beliefs that you don't think should be part of our government, FFRF has your back. Join the David Pakman show in helping FFRF go to FFRF US/Freedom or text David to 511511 and become a member today. That's FFRF.us/freedom or text David to 515511 to join the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The info is in the podcast notes Text fees may apply. All right, it's Friday time for Friday Feedback. If you have anything you want to communicate to me, you can write to info@david pakman.com try to keep it polite. Many people don't. Will also sometimes feature YouTube comments or TikTok replies. Or sometimes we'll hear from someone on blue ski or substack, who the hell knows? It's all fair game. We start today with Gus Doohan, who says, whoever this guy is, he's just spreading more radical left bullshit. Not really an argument, sir. I would rather you tell me. Here are the facts that you get wrong, and therefore, here are the conclusions that you are incorrectly coming to. I would appreciate that much more, much, much more than this sort of nonsense, but we do get this sort of stuff. Ron Price wrote in and said, dude, it's April. Maybe lose the turtleneck sweater. You know, Ron, I don't know where you live, but the Northeast has remained chilly. Very, very chilly. And when it's chilly, my neck gets cold, and therefore I need the turtleneck. It's actually all joking aside, just for a second. Most joking aside, Most joking aside, it's actually shocking how many people are triggered by me wearing a turtleneck. Like, what's the big deal? What? What is the big deal with a turtleneck? I just don't get it. But the turtlenecks will continue until the morale improves, I think is the way that I would say it. All right, here's Greg Black with something marginally more substantive. Greg says, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember you telling everyone that Kamala Toe Harris, so clever, so adult. Kamala Tow Harris was going to mop the floor with Trump. I sure hope you believe your own bullshit, little pack punk, because nobody else does. Greg, I don't know if you've ever seen this show before, but I want to call your attention back to the couple of months leading up to the election. My own audience was getting angry with me. Some people in the audience, of course, not everybody. There were people in my own audience getting mad at me because I was saying, guys, Trump looks like he's going to win this thing. When I came to my audience and said, okay, when Biden got out, Harris's campaign started strong. The polling looked good. It's not looking good right now. I have polling that shows Trump winning all seven key swing states. This is very bad. People wrote to me and said stuff like, david, we don't need negativity right now. We need positivity. Which I have to tell you, I think is just like the dumbest approach to winning elections. We need to be realistic about where we are. How is me saying, it looks awesome, guys? How is that going to get more people to vote? So, no, I don't know if you're referring to a different show. On this show, I was sounding the alarm, and many in the Audience were furious when I was not surprised by the results. On election night, November 5, 2024, there were people in my audience saying, how could we, how is this such a surprise? To which I was saying, guys, I've been telling you this for months and now it's happening. So maybe this is a criticism that applies to some other show, but sounds misguided here. Terry Schuck says people are getting paid to hate Elon and Tesla. Damn. All this time I've been doing it for free. Where do I sign up for a check? Easiest money I will ever earn. Yeah, this is tongue in cheek, but it does raise a good point, which is why would you need to pay people to go out and protest Tesla and Elon? Just look at all of the public survey data. Tens of millions of Americans hate Elon and by extension now want nothing to do with Tesla. Why would you need to pay them to just get them to go out and hold a sign for an hour? It just doesn't. Doesn't make any sense. People really do want to express their distaste. And there are people who are trying to destroy Tesla. Now you can look at that and take the Elon approach, which is, they're being so mean and Tim Walls is such a jerk. He's such a jerk. Or you can say this is people voting with their dollars and they're saying this is a bad company to support and it's free speech and it's what happens under capitalism. But of course, no evidence has been presented that anybody, anybody is getting paid to go and protest Tesla. And when Elon Musk talks about, oh, George Soros is funding it, we're going to find out who's really orchestrating this stuff. It's just Americans, Elon. That's all it is. It's Americans being activists. Martin Snow asks, hey, David, considering how well the Echo Machine is doing, are there any plans to publish it in other languages? It's a good question. So, first of all, I have no control over that. My publisher is fully deputized to explore translation opportunities. I know that right now Germany is a place where there is interest in the book. At a general level, the book is mostly about the situation politically in the United States. Now, that doesn't mean it's only interesting to Americans. People around the world do care about what's happening in the United States. Maybe less than some Americans thing, but they do care. English covers all of the countries in which we have the biggest audiences. So that. So Canada, uk, Australia. In a lot of countries where we have larger audiences. You have a large portion of the population that also speaks English. So Germany does seem to be kind of the natural next one, but we will see. It's not totally up to me, but I would love to see the echo machine in other languages. All right. On the topic of how long will the MAGA cultists stand by Trump, Scheffberg commented on substack. My thought is that as the pain spreads from his policies that some of his cult will peel off. There is a reason many Republican congressmen are asking for specific relief from these sanctions. They know the pain will have an effect on how some people view the president. Sadly, the damages to our markets and businesses will be long lasting. Does anyone think that Canadians are going to replenish their liquor stores with Kentucky bourbon? This is an excellent point. We sort of talked about this on the award winning bonus show on Monday. Even if Trump were to say no more tariffs, we're going back to the beginning of my second term. Tariffs are done. You can't undo the reputational damage that comes when you appear to be erratic and when you behave in this sort of bipolar way. And I use the term bipolar not as the mental illnesses, but with two polls, right, where it's one thing and then it's the opposite of that thing. We cannot undo that. That is now going to be the perception of Donald Trump. And in fact, Trump just canceling everything only furthers that. So I think Sheffberg is on to a couple of things. Number one, we actually would just seem extraordinarily erratic no matter what Trump does at this point in time. And number two, if all of a sudden the tariffs go away, if the US And Canada fix their tariff, the trade war, culturally, are Canadians going to say, bring back all of the Kentucky bourbon, let's go right back to the way we were? I don't think so, number one, because a lot of these Canadians are understandably disgusted with what Donald Trump has done and aren't just going to go, okay, great, we're just back, we're back fully. But in addition to that, because they would be right to be wondering, is the same thing just going to happen in another month, in six months or next year? So I think the, the, the sort of core of this is that irreversible damage has been done and to a great degree, irreversible damage has been done. Mark W. Says, dude, Greg Cassar, this guy has definitely joined the list of certain progressives that can message so, so well and doesn't get rattled. He doesn't circuitously Talk around a point and never answer the question like the right does and lands a reasonable stance to your average voter every time the Dems need to be plugging this guy everywhere. Great interview again. I think Congressman Greg Cassar is great. He's doing the town halls with the right tone and tenor. He's appearing on shows like this one and talking, clearly answering questions. When I ask him, how should we talk about, quote, men and women's sports as defined by the right, he gives me an answer. This is how we should talk about it. I found it very refreshing and I would include Greg Cassar on the list of folks that are setting the right. It's not just a question of tone. They're sort of combining messaging and optics with policy understanding and being able to engage and connect with people. Not the most common thing. Right. Even among some of the folks we've had on this show where, oh, they're really good on policy, but they're just kind of. They communicate awkwardly or they communicate really well, but they don't really directly answer questions in a way that there's an appetite for. Right now, I think Greg Cassar is doing some really great stuff and glad people in the audience are noticing it. Laurian said the books on David's Bookshelf, obviously the Echo Machine is there, but has anyone identified the other books? Well, there are dozens and dozens of books here. I've got a bunch of my copies of the Echo Machine on the bottom, but there are so many different books. Some may have noticed the tip here of some Hunter S. Thompson books in the top shelf. What else is interesting or relevant here? Some of these books I've also recommended Lawrence Wright's Going Clear. You know, you want to know the truth? My books are organized alphabetically by author's last name. This is the nonfiction section. This is just the end of it. So what you see here is it starts basically with last names, starting in S. And it goes down to Sergey Young's book. He's been on the show. So this is just like the tip. It's just the tip of the back tip. I guess you would call it my nonfiction library. Anything else interesting? Oh, here. Jeffrey West. This orange book here is Scale by Jeffrey West. We had him on the program to talk about that book. Charles Whelan's books, Naked Economics and Naked Money. He's been on the show. Those are there. Yeah, it's a. It's a mix of stuff. It's a mix of stuff. All right, but enough about that. We've got a great bonus show for you today. We have a great week of shows coming up next week. In fact, as far as interviews go, let me just pull up the schedule next week. We've got. Oh, everything is tentative next week, so let me not actually tease it. I don't want to tease stuff that doesn't happen. Thanks to everybody who bought my book and made it a bestseller. Please remember to review the book if you haven't yet. And remember that if the clampdown happens, the only way you can stay in touch with me is the one place we own our data, which is the substack newsletter. So please make sure to get on the newsletter David pakman.substack.com or just email info@david pakman.com will get you on the newsletter. See you on the bonus show.
