← The David Pakman Show
The David Pakman Show
BONUS FREEBIE: Epstein victims making their own list, CEO snatches hat from kid at tennis match
00:17:31
-- On the : Epstein victims compiling their own client list, PragerU creates an AI Founding Fathers museum exhibit, CEO snatches a player's hat from a boy at a tennis match, and much more... Become a Member:...
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- [00:00]
A
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B
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C
Included with prime because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is, well, nothing.
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B
Download the Amazon Music app today. Hey everybody. David here. What you're about to hear is an episode of the Bonus show. We do a bonus show every day for our members and for a limited time, we will release one of the week's bonus shows on Saturdays exclusively for our audio podcast listeners. If you'd like to get access to all of the bonus shows, simply sign up@join pacman.com here is that bonus show episode. Welcome to the Bonus Show. We have an interesting new wrinkle in the Epstein story. It's reasonable to think the only way we're going to get the list of the clients is if the documents that the government has are released. But there's another possibility. And as some of you I know saw, because you wrote to me about it yesterday, there was a hearing involving some of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein's trafficking ring. There was, I believe it was on NBC or MSNBC or Ms. Now. Now could be Ms. Now. They did a sort of roundtable with some of the victims and one of the things that came out of that is that the victims themselves are saying, we know the list. We are the victims of the people on the list. And so there is a new possibility here, Pat, that the victims may be able to put together a list. It wouldn't be evidence from hearings in the way that the files would be, but that could open up a serious can of worms. And by the way, one of the victims said Epstein regularly said, trump's my best buddy. So I think that this is an interesting new line of attack.
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C
Yeah, I hope that they follow through with this strategy. If indeed the Trump administration refuses to release the full list and if Congress fails to pass legislation to force them to release the client list. I think it makes all the sense in the world for the victims to release a list of their own. Now, of course, that won't be seen as credible as, say, the government releasing the list. Some would argue. Some would argue that it would actually be more credible. But I think the idea is that victims are always going to make their allegations, but it's not like it's 100% proven. Whereas if you had, like, official documentation, maybe people would be more willing to accept that evidence. However, I'm sure a lot of people would just take whatever the victims say at face value because they seem to have a lot of credibility in this. Certainly more credibility than the government does. Yeah. So I hope that they do follow through with this. I can understand why they would be reluctant to release the names to begin with because maybe that opens them up to some sort of legal liability. They don't want to potentially get sued. They may have NDAs. I'm speculating here that they don't want to break. There could be a whole bunch of emotional turmoil that comes up from doing something like this. But if all else fails, I think that the victims should release the list if that's indeed what they want to do.
- [03:59]
B
The other thing that I, you know, we've mentioned this a couple of times and I want to mention it again. And people have written to me about this, which is, you know, in this entire thing, there's focus on Trump, there's focus on Epstein, there's focus on G. Lane Maxwell, there's focus on who in the Trump administration could release the documents. And hasn't people like Pam Bondi focus on what Cash Patel said, focus on what Dan Bongino said. But there's been very little discussion of the victims. And that really is at the core of this. This is primarily a situation where a whole bunch of women and girls were victimized. And their stories are not a major part of this. I agree with that. I understand why this has become a political story. The political story is about Trump and the people protecting him. So I understand from a media standpoint why we're not hearing much about the victims, but it is also true that we haven't been and putting. Putting them more front and center if they are willing to. Right. We never want to. The victims should do what they want to do. We're not going to out victims. We're not going to put, say, you must come forward and be in front of a camera. But to the extent that they want to be on camera, it will Number one, I think turn even more pressure up to get these documents released. And number two, it's a reminder that this is not a vague political story off in the distance. This is a story with victims. And so to the extent that the victims want to be involved, good for them.
- [05:21]
C
Yeah. And the victims speaking up about what happens can do a lot of good to get them justice. We saw Nancy makes walk away from a meeting with the victims in tears, clearly moved by what they had to say. We're seeing a number of Republicans defects from Trump on this. Thomas Massie, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene, as you discussed on the show today. So these victims speaking out, could that swing just a few more Republicans to vote to release the full documentation? I think that could be effective. And then you won't even have to get to a point of the victims themselves making the allegations themselves releasing the list, because I'm sure they probably worry that that could potentially open them up to some liability.
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B
Yep. So we're going to follow this closely. We were. We will see if such a list is put together. And the other aspect to this is if you think a couple steps ahead, Pat, if the victims put together a list and the list goes public, it's conceivable, it's conceivable that they will start attacking the character of the victims. Right. If they start naming names, which I think will only make the perpetrators even more unsympathetic.
- [06:29]
C
Right. Well, yeah. We could get to a point where Republicans, in an effort to defend Trump, are going back to the same talking points that they used to make during the MeToo era, which is that, oh, well, you know, allegations aren't 100% proof, which of course is true. But they only say that when it's convenient for them. They'll maybe act like they're trying to cancel Trump and the other people on the list. They'll go back to their old playbook. But I just don't think it's going to work because this story has taken on a life of its own and people are genuinely interested in what happened here.
- [06:59]
B
There's a new history exhibit commissioned by the Trump administration, which is a Little Strange. It's 82 paintings, including portraits of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence that are what that make up what's called the Founders Museum. This is steps from the White House inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. This is a partnership between the administration's White House Task Force 250 and the right wing nonprofit PragerU. Two days in a row, we talk about Prageru, yesterday we talked about their new test for teachers going to Oklahoma from California and sorry, what was the other state they were from California, New York. Now they are involved in this exhibit. This. In addition to the paintings, there are 40 AI generated short videos of these historical figures bringing them to life. Now listen, Pat, if we had, I don't even know how to say this, if I had more confidence in the intelligence of our country, if our educational system could be relied upon, if we didn't have hyper partisan insanity, I think that this would actually be a pretty cool thing. We have the technology now to map the faces of the founders onto AI video and appear to bring to life these individuals who of course existed before there was widespread videography. I'm concerned that this is going to lead to 10 years from now whenever people going, no, I saw video of George Washington. I saw video at the. You understand what I'm saying, right?
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C
And I think people will believe that that was actually George Washington, that the.
- [08:48]
B
Videos are real videos of these people. I think it is a real concern.
- [08:53]
C
Oh really? I, I hope that people are able to see through it. I mean, I suppose that could happen if the AI is convincing enough. You think that it was common sense that we didn't have video cameras in the 1700s, early 1800s, but I suppose people could be tricked into thinking that this was the real thing, especially with AI technology getting better and better every day.
- [09:16]
B
The bigger concern, I guess is these AI videos have founders saying things like, for example, facts don't care about your feelings, which I believe is a phrase. The right loves it, but I believe it was popularized by Ben Shapiro. And you know, there are concerns from a historicity standpoint about blending together apparent video of founders with things they definitely didn't say. I can assure you that Andrew Jackson or whoever did not say facts don't care about your feelings. And so that's another layer of concern here which is legitimate because it all has a right wing tinge to it.
- [09:54]
C
Absolutely. I think that's the chief concern here because we already have cartoons of the founding fathers and other historical figures and of course we pretend what they would sound like and the types of things that they would say. Maybe sometimes we include actual quotes from them, but we're for the most part just riffing and it's generally not a problem. You want to teach kids about these historical figures in an engaging way. And so the way you go about doing that is maybe have actors or animation take on the Persona of the historical figure. So I think that just because we're using AI to do it. It's not that concerning in and of itself, but it's all about what they're saying. And so if you have John Adams, for example, saying facts don't care about your feelings, rather than things that Adams actually said or the types of things that Adams actually would say, then all of a sudden we have a real problem here.
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B
Yeah, without a doubt. And this is part of, you know, Prageru, I have to hand it to them. They have really made an effort over the last probably close to 10 years to be seen as an educational institution, as a historical institution, and to the people that don't already know who and what they are, make themselves seem like an unbiased arbiter or purveyor of educational or historical information. They, of course, are not, but they've done a damn good job of running propaganda campaigns to make themselves seem that way.
- [11:18]
C
I got to be honest, I didn't know that Prageru was active nowadays. A few years ago, of course, they were big. They would produce those videos of right wingers talking about how bad the left is, and those would go somewhat viral. People learned about Prageru through that, and I know they started making animated content, but it seems like there was a period of time where there weren't so much in the, in the news. And now here we are covering them back to back days.
- [11:42]
B
Yeah. And I think a lot of it is they are working increasingly in a behind the scenes way and they're working with legislators, they're working in a. In addition to their Prageru website presence, they're doing a lot of this behind the scenes stuff, which I hate. Everything they're doing and they've. I have to hand it to them, they've carried it out in a way that, that has worked for them.
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C
If you had to get a degree, degree in quotation marks from either Prageru or Trump U, which one would you go with?
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B
I. Well, you know, that's tough. Prageru, I don't think, even purports to give degrees. Whereas Trump, you, I guess, gave you a certificate. So I guess I would get that on the. On the premise that it might be worth marginally more perhaps.
- [12:20]
C
But I'd have to imagine that you would pay a whole lot of money for that Trump you certificate, perhaps more than even the Prageru one.
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B
All right, listen to this. There was this video I saw over the weekend. It was a video from the US Open. And a tennis player signs a hat, sort of hands it to a Kid and then a full grown adult snatches the hat from the kid's hand and walks away. It enraged millions and millions of people. We have now identified that the individual is Peter Cesarek, or Cesarek, a Polish chief executive of a paving firm. He has said he made a mistake. He said he was convinced that the tennis player Camille Matrazak was handing him the hat, not the kid, and that his intention was not to hurt a little boy. But he did. And now he apologizes to the boy, the family, the fans and the player. He says he's given the hat back. He hopes it partially repairs his image. And it was all a big mistake. The player was asked about it and the player said he felt there was some confusion. He said he had a lot going on, he was excited to have won, he was just signing stuff that he didn't realize what had happened. And everybody is chalking this up to a misunderstanding. What do you think, Pat?
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C
I don't know if I'm buying it. I could see the player not realizing what was going on because there was a lot going on in that moment for him and he's moving on to signing different autographs. It also looked like from the video, he wasn't looking directly at the man who took the hat. So I think that we can say that the player is exonerated in all of this. The guy, even if he thought the player was giving him the hat, the second you see that some little kid is there who clearly wants it, you do the right thing and you give the hat to the kid. So of course it's an extra step further to snatch the hat away from the kid. That's even extra evil. But even if the player handed it to the guy, it would be evil in a sense to not give it to the kid who clearly wants it also.
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B
Yeah, no, I. Listen, my instinct is I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt unless I have real reasons not to. I've never heard of this guy before, the executive who swiped the hat. I don't know a thing about him. Just looking at the video, on the one hand, it seems really hard to imagine he had no idea there was a kid there and that the hat was being handed in the direction of the kid. On the other hand, is it possible that in the heat of the moment he was just so excited and just so overwhelmed with emotion that he didn't realize? I mean, maybe, maybe, but in looking at the video, I struggle to believe it. It does seem like sort of a damage control attempt, really.
- [15:11]
C
I just don't understand why adults want these sorts of things anyway, like the ball at a baseball game. I can understand if you're a kid, like, that's super exciting. But as a grown adult, why do you care? Or some hat that someone else weared or some autograph, like, why are you going around and trying to obtain these things for yourself? Especially if there are kids there who clearly wanted a lot more.
- [15:33]
B
Yeah, I don't really know at what age you, like, stop bringing a glove to the baseball games sort of thing. When I go to baseball games, I still see older folks bringing the glove. But my thought is, the idea is it would be cool to catch a ball, but then you still hand it to some kid. And you do see that happen on video as well.
- [15:54]
C
Yes, of course. And I have actually done that myself because I'm just such a great human being. I once caught a ball at a baseball game, gave it to a child. So I did a lot better in that instance than this Polish chief executive did.
- [16:07]
B
So, listen, I don't know. I don't hate the guy. It's not the biggest story, but the video went. Went viral. You know, I read a book. Oh, let me see. I want to actually find the exact name John Book. The book is called so you've been publicly shamed. It's by Jon Ronson. And it's about these situations that happen. And he describes this famous one where I'm paraphrasing here, but I think you'll remember the story. A woman is about to get on a plane either to Africa or from Africa or something like that, and she says something like, hope I don't get hiv. Just kidding, I'm white. Something like, oh, right, yep. Remember this one? And then she gets on the plane. There was no WI fi on the planes at the time, or at least she wasn't on it. And by the time she lands, it's gone completely viral. I think she eventually lost her job, although I don't. I'm. The book is 10 years old. Right. So I'm kind of forgetting the details, but it's one of these things, and it's kind of interesting to hear the different stories where sometimes these things do involve genuinely despicable people. Sometimes it's jokes that are. That don't land. Sometimes it's misunderstanding, sometimes it's smear campaigns. It's. It's like an all of the above kind of thing.
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C
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that seems pretty egregious. Like, we can say it was just a joke, but, you know, she was clearly offending a whole bunch of people. And I understand why there would be consequences for her and doing what she did. Yeah, with this guy, it really depends on what his intention was like. If he genuinely didn't see the kid there, if he genuinely thought the hat was for him and he didn't do anything wrong, then it would be bad for people to assail his character. And that makes me want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But it's hard to not believe your eyes when you see it, right? When you take a look at the video and you see what's going on. So there is a chance. I'm willing to hold out hope that there was some possibility that he didn't know what he was doing here. But the video looks pretty conclusive in my eyes.
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B
The video doesn't look great. The video doesn't look great. Check it out. Let me know what you think. I want to hear from you. We'll be back tomorrow. New show, new bonus show.
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D
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