5/23/24: SCOTUS on the brink of implosion, Nikki Haley kisses Trump's ring

This episode delves into the potential consequences for the U.S. Supreme Court if Donald Trump wins the upcoming election, with a focus on how it could affect the judiciary for decades. Additionally, it discusses Nikki Haley’s surprising endorsement of Trump, despite her previous criticisms.

1. If Trump wins in 2024, he could appoint two more Supreme Court justices, solidifying a far-right majority.
2. A Trump-influenced Supreme Court could dominate U.S. lawmaking until 2050 or beyond.
3. Pakman urges left-leaning voters to recognize the high stakes and avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016.
4. Nikki Haley's endorsement of Trump highlights the current power dynamics within the Republican Party.
5. Trump's actions continue to harm his supporters, many of whom face severe legal and financial consequences.

1: SCOTUS on the Brink

Pakman discusses the potential future of the Supreme Court under a Trump presidency, focusing on the long-term implications of additional MAGA appointments.

• David Pakman: "Trump could pick two more justices, meaning over half the court would be his."
• David Pakman: "The youngest of his current picks, Amy Coney Barrett, is only 52."

2: The Stakes for 2024

Pakman emphasizes the importance of the upcoming election and criticizes those who are indifferent to its outcome.

• David Pakman: "Do you realize what happens if Trump wins? MAGA Supreme Court till 2050."
• David Pakman: "We’d still have Roe v. Wade if Hillary had won in 2016."

3: Nikki Haley’s Endorsement of Trump

Pakman analyzes Nikki Haley’s decision to endorse Trump despite her earlier criticisms, exploring the political motives behind her choice.

• Nikki Haley: "I will be voting for Trump."
• David Pakman: "Haley’s move is about maintaining influence in the Republican Party."

4: Trump’s Legal Troubles and His Supporters

Pakman details the legal and financial fallout for Trump supporters involved in his schemes, highlighting their struggles.

• David Pakman: "Whoever touches Trump turns to stone."
• David Pakman: "These people are now paying the price for their involvement."

5: Trump's Incoherent Public Statements

Pakman reviews recent statements by Trump, pointing out their lack of coherence and the dangers of his rhetoric.

• David Pakman: "Trump’s answer was just word salad."
• David Pakman: "This is classic Trump—confuse and deflect."

1. Vote in the 2024 election: Understand the long-term consequences of not voting or voting third-party.
2. Stay informed: Regularly follow trustworthy news sources to stay updated on political developments.
3. Support progressive causes: Engage in activism that supports judicial reform and other critical issues.
4. Encourage dialogue: Discuss the importance of the Supreme Court with others in your community.
5. Donate wisely: Be cautious about political donations and ensure they go to reputable causes.

-- On the Show:

-- Mike Papantonio, attorney, host of America's Lawyer on Ring of Fire, and author of the new book "Suspicious Activity: A Legal Thriller," joins David to discuss the book, his writing and more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/450YLqA

-- If Donald Trump wins in November, he likely gets two more Supreme Court nominations, which could make it a MAGA Supreme Court until 2050

-- Some of the Republicans charged in the Arizona fake electors scheme cannot afford lawyers

-- Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley kisses the ring and says she will be voting for Donald Trump in November after previously saying he was completely unqualified

-- Did Nikki Haley make a deal to become Donald Trump's Vice Presidential running mate?

-- Donald Trump is confronted on WABC radio about his choice not to testify in his first criminal trial, and he can do no better than to spit out an incoherent word salad in response

-- Donald Trump is now accusing President Joe Biden of having a plan to get Trump killed in the Mar-a-Lago FBI raid, which is an absurd and baseless claim

-- Republican Senator Ted Cruz explodes when challenged about accepting the 2024 election results by CNN's Kaitlan Collins

-- Voicemail caller absolutely loved David's appearance on Fox News' Will Cain show

-- On the Bonus Show: Majority of Americans wrongly believe US in recession and blame Biden, MDMA research plagues with misconduct allegations, White House in race to confirm more judges than Trump, much more...

People

Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito

Companies

None

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

David Pakman
The Samuel Alito flags outside his home stories over the last few days have brought forward a really important question that we need to talk about. Do you realize what happens to the Supreme Court if Donald Trump wins in November? And I know that I'm sort of risking sounding like me from 2016 like this again.

Do I need to ask you, do you realize what happens to the Supreme Court if Donald Trump wins, and thus what happens to this country? Because just like in 2016, I see too many of my brothers and sisters on the left who don't seem to realize what's at stake. So let's go back a little bit. Donald Trump got three Supreme Court nominations, all successfully confirmed to the Supreme Court last time he was president. And it worked to do some disastrous things, just like we predicted. It led to the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which has now thrown the country into bodily autonomy and reproductive chaos, plus a bunch of other disastrous things. This is not the only terrible thing that the Supreme Court did, thanks to becoming a MAGA Supreme Court as a result of Trump being the president. If Trump wins in November, he probably gets two more Supreme Court picks. If Trump wins. And Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito realize, hey, we can retire, we're pretty old, we can retire, and Trump will replace us with young right wingers, which he said he would do. He recently said at a rally, we're going to pick young judges and justices. We know what the plan is. He's telling us what the plan is. Any common sense thinking person realizes what the plan is. If they realize that Thomas and Alito, they will retire.

And that will make it so that Trump will have chosen five of the nine Supreme Court justices. 55.55. Okay, you get it? 56% of the Supreme Court will be chosen by Trump. He will pick young justices for the two that he gets. And then look at the ages of the folks on the court that Trump selected. Amy Covid Barrett is only 52 years old. Neil Gorsuch is only 56 years old. Brett Kavanaugh, the oldest of the three that Trump selected, is 59 years old. So if Trump picks people in their mid to late forties or their early fifties, you will have five Trump picks on the MAGA court, none older than, I guess, at the end of Trump's term. If he wins at the end of Trump's term, Brett Kavanaugh would be 63 or so.

63 is the oldest of the five MAGA picks at the end of Trump's next term.

That is Trump control of the Supreme Court for decades, for decades in the following term. So we'll have the 2028 election during that term. None of these MAGA folks are likely to retire from the court in the term after that. So now we're talking about the 2032 election, which means you're president from 33 to 37. So we're up to 2037. Now, Kavanaugh, at that point, at the end of the 2032 term, which is 2037, Kavanaugh would only be 72 years old then.

Clarence Thomas is in his eighties. Okay, so the oldest of the current Trump picks could be around through the 2028 election. Through the 2032 election. 2036, 2040, he will finally be 75. In 2044, he will be 79. And this is only the oldest one. And even in 2044, he would still be younger than Clarence Thomas is now. That's the oldest of the five picks that Trump will have made at that point. Trump will be long gone. In heaven, Baruch Hashem, depending on what you think, where you think Trump is going, statistically, Trump will be long gone, and the court will still be maga.

So this is not theoretical. And for those who say, yeah, but, David, when. When is that? When did we see something? We saw it in 2016.

I told you there are dangerous.

I wasn't using the term false prophets because I'm not religious, but those who are more religious might say there were false prophets. There were some dangerous false prophets claiming to be on the left. Whether they were really on the left, I don't know. Saying Hillary and Trump are two sides of the same coin. We'd have Roe v. Wade right now if Hillary had won in 2016. It. We don't. We don't even need to go beyond that. We would have Roe v. Wade right now if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016. So for everyone who's thinking about toying around with a third party, maybe I'll stay home. Oh, I like Jill Stein, who hangs out with Putin. Or, oh, I like RFK maga. Supreme Court till 2050 is what you need to be thinking about now. Am I shaming anyone? No, this is. I know the. Scroll down. If you're on YouTube, I know the comments will say, david, shaming people into voting is never going to work. I'm not shaming anyone. I'm saying, just understand the stakes. Okay? Is Joe Biden the perfect candidate? No. If you said to me, hey, David, do you want an 82 year old guy who's been around for 50 years running as the nominee, in a vacuum, I would say, no, that's not what I want.

But do I recognize what's at stake here? And do I feel comfortable taking an action. It could be the action of staying home. It could be the action of writing in whoever, it could be the action of voting for Trump to really show them how upset. Am I morally comfortable taking an action that could lead to a MAGA supreme court till 2050? I'm not. Now, that's my morality and my ethics. It would be wrong to impose it on you. So I'm not. What I'm telling you is we shouldn't delude ourselves about what's at stake here. We said it about Supreme Court 2016.

Hillary lost and this is where we are. Three picks for Trump.

It, it's just math. Ok? Alito and Thomas likely to retire. Trump will have picked five ninths of the Supreme Court. If you're comfortable with that because you feel Joe Biden isn't progressive enough, despite being on paper the most progressive presidency, certainly in my lifetime, probably in 100 years, well, then you do you, and you say, yeah, I am comfortable with that. I'm comfortable putting Trump back in because I don't think Biden is progressive enough or I don't like how Biden has handled Israel Gaza because I don't think he is concerned enough with the lives of Palestinians. Well, if you've heard what Trump has said, then Trump would be even less concerned. The harm reduction choice is Biden. Well, what about RFK? Have you heard what RFK has said about the israeli Gaza conflict? RFK is also not going to be your guy if that's your main issue. So however you slice and dice it, everybody should do whatever they want. I'm not going to shame anybody, but if you call me on the day where Trump gets his fifth Supreme Court pick confirmed, I'm going to ask you, do you feel good about how you voted, given how it worked out? And then people will have to decide for themselves how they feel about their actions. So maga Supreme Court 2050, that's what I would keep in mind. Some of the Republicans charged in the Trump fake elector scheme in Arizona can't even afford lawyers. And this is not about shaming people who don't have enough money for a lawyer. This is about realizing that, you know that phrase, whatever they touch turns to gold.

Whoever touches Trump turns to stone is the way that I would say it. KPN X reports that some of the Republicans charged in this insane, illegal Arizona fake elector scheme aren't able to afford lawyers and they have court appearances coming up. And this is a real moment where you have to see how being sucked in by Trump either as a voter or as an accomplice to crime is very risky for your own well being, especially when Trump will turn around. Once it's no longer use, once you are no longer useful to Trump, Trump turns around and disappears into the ether. Here is a Twitter post from Bram Resnick, who covers politics at KPN X in Phoenix. And he wrote, quote, former Arizona Republican executive director Greg Saf. Greg Safston tells the judge he can't afford a lawyer, is declared indigent, and gets a public defender. Emails show Safston was in contact with the fake elector's architect. Ken cheese, bro. This is not about laughing at people with no money. They deserve a defense. They will get public defenders. They are entitled to due process. See how we support law and order and due process on this show. Even despicable clowns who tried to steal an election deserve a lawyer because that's the system we have. But this is about the reality that Trump cares only about himself. It's all about him. Other people be damned. And there are normal, everyday people who just can't afford a lawyer, who are hurt all the time by Donald Trump, the people who donated to Trump to get him elected. And in the fine print, it says, oh, your money, but donate to me to overturn these fraudulent results.

And in the fine print, it says, actually, I may use this money to pay off campaign debt at $0.50 on the dollar. And then they donate, and now they have trouble making their car payment, or they fall behind on their credit cards, or they need to opt for the inferior groceries because they donated to Trump. And then Trump took the money and paid off his, let his campaign debt, the people who got sucked into the criminal scheme to make Trump the president, even though he lost and now are indicted and can't afford lawyers. Now, there's one other note to this, which is public defenders don't sound very small government of them, which they claim to care about, right? Oh, now we're, we're using taxpayer money to pay for lawyers for people? That doesn't sound right. That's not small government. I believe that everyone is entitled to a defense, but their own small government principles are to some degree violated by the very public defenders that will now represent them because they don't have money. So what's the takeaway here? Takeaway is that the prism through which all of Trump's actions must be analyzed at this point, and it's been the case for eight years at this .9 years, is what's good for Trump. Trump, in the sense that most people have friends, doesn't really have friends. By all accounts. He has people he's on good terms with to the extent that they are useful to him or entertaining to have around, for lack of a better term. And once they're no longer useful, once they say, hey, I agree with nine things Trump said, but this one thing's not so good.

All of a sudden he turns on them. And much the same way these cult members get sucked in, either to voting, donating, or participating in a fake elector scheme. And now the rubber has hit the road and they don't even have the money for lawyers. So do I feel bad for them? I mean, listen, these are adults, right?

They made decisions about whether they wanted to participate in this or not, and they are going to have to be held accountable. So it certainly doesn't excuse what they did. These are, you know, unless the, unless they want to argue in a, in a legal sense, they are not fit to stand trial and quite literally could not even understand what they were doing, which there's no evidence that applies to any of these people.

They are responsible for their actions. It's the broader bamboozling of the american people that is at issue here. And it happened at every layer. It happened with the people that participated in the elector scheme, it happened with the people who donated, and it happened with the people who voted, who voted because, hey, you know what? Trump seems to understand trade and I need him to fix that. Turns out Trump didn't understand trade and he didn't fix it. And people are worse off than they were when Trump's term ends. So they all got bamboozled. The ones who donated, they're out of the money. The ones who counted on Trump fixing trade, it didn't happen. The ones who counted on Trump replacing Obamacare with a big, beautiful health care plan, it didn't happen. And the ones who signed their name to be fake electors, now they're indicted. Now they're going to have public defenders and bless the public defenders. I don't know that I'm saying something controversial when I say the overloaded, average public defender is probably not as able to deliver the strongest defense as a high priced private attorney. Not because they're bad people or because they didn't go to law school, but they are overloaded and handling such dramatically disparate cases every day that anybody would struggle to put on the best possible defense. So now they are going to suffer. It's where we are. Don't fall into the cult. That's the takeaway. Monday's Memorial Day will be off, but we will be doing a one day membership drive with a drastically reduced membership discount.

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You can get it all at join pacman.com. and of course, you can use the coupon code SaveDemocracy 24 to save big about 50% off of the cost of a membership. Well, we wondered, who would Nikki Haley vote for in November? She said Trump is completely unqualified to be president, so she probably won't vote for Trump, right?

Wrong. Nikki Haley has kissed the ring. And despite saying just a few months ago that Donald Trump is completely unfit to be president of the United States, she said yesterday at a Hudson Institute event, I will be voting for Donald Trump.

Not exactly a profile in courage, but informed certainly by a desire to maintain influence in the Republican Party. And for now, influence in the Republican Party goes through failed former President Donald Trump. Here's Nikki Haley explaining, I don't know if explaining or excusing her decision to support Trump. Take a listen. You opened with some comments on the administration and the Democratic Party. You then talked a little bit about some of the shortcomings or worries you have about the Republican Party. And I couldn't help but think of two names when I heard you deliver that speech, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. So on these issues, these national security critical issues that you've described today. Who do you think would do a better job in the White House? Joe Biden or Donald Trump?

Nikki Haley
As a voter, I put my priorities on a president who's going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account.

David Pakman
Now, already that disqualifies Trump.

They're like, just that one line disqualifies Trump.

It's Joe Biden who respects alliances, and it's Trump who ruined them. It's Joe Biden who is skeptical of authoritarian autocrats around the world. And it is Trump who's enamored with Kim Jong un, to whom he wrote beautiful love letters. Putin, Duterte Xi. Right. So just, we're all, we've already disqualified Trump, but she's voting Trump who would secure the border.

Nikki Haley
No more excuses.

A president who would support capitalism and freedom.

A president who understands we need less debt, not more debt.

David Pakman
Remember that? Trump blew up the debt.

Nikki Haley
Trump has not been perfect on these policies. I've made that clear many, many times.

But Biden has been a catastrophe.

So I will be voting for Trump.

Having said that, I stand by what I said in my suspension speech.

Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they're just gonna be with him. And I genuinely hope he does that.

David Pakman
What a courageous Nikki Haley. Right, so listen, the desire to maintain influence in the republican party, which at least now goes through Trump, led her to this. There's no real way to stay in the dialogue and to get power right now in the republican party. I mean, look at Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney is, for all of his faults, extraordinarily experienced, far more sane and rational than these MAGA people.

And yes, he's retiring, and that's, I guess, by his own choice. Although maybe it's one of these if the party is MAGA, I don't want anything to do with it sort of things. He's in his mid seventies, but no one cares what Mitt Romney thinks within the Republican Party. We think he's kind of interesting from the outside because he's willing to depart from MAGA to a degree. So Nikki Haley wants to remain in the public eye and wants to remain with some access to power. Now, her statement also underscores that there is not unified support for Trump.

She correctly points out there are millions who supported me rather than him, and he should reach out to us. And there's this struggle within the Republican Party to consolidate around a single candidate. And you know, 40% of the primary vote going to someone other than Trump doesn't really speak to extraordinary satisfaction with Trump, but this allows her, at the end of the day, to align with the front runner. She still is retaining her own political identity by saying, there are these millions of voters who voted for me, and she's positioning himself maybe to be a power broker within the Republican Party.

The second part of this, which led to a lot of speculation, is, is this part of setting herself up to be vp, or has that already been determined? And that's what I want to talk about next. The natural question that now is coming up after Nikki Haley said Trump's unfit.

Trump can't be a disastrous president. Oh, by the way, I'm voting Trump. Nikki Haley announcing yesterday she is going to vote for Trump. At the end of the day, the natural question is, did Trump see the numbers and realize, hey, the Nikki Haley voters from the primary are way more gettable for me than moderates or Democrats or people on the left.

Let's go and make a deal with Nikki to be my vp.

I don't know that that's what Trump did. I don't know that that's why Nikki Haley now comes out and says, I'm going to be voting for Donald Trump. But there is certainly a degree to which it would mathematically make sense. Although there are. There's a small slice of Democrats and historically left leaning voters that are saying we're not happy with Biden. I don't think it's likely they will vote Trump. I think it's more likely they'll vote third party or stay home. So that's not really a good target for Donald Trump. The better target for Trump is that if you look at the primary, Nikki non Trump candidates got almost 40% of the republican primary vote, and Nikki Haley, the lion's share of that. Those are the folks that Trump should be targeting. And if that's what Trump wants to target, it's not crazy to go and look at making Nikki Haley your vice president. And the first step of that is she's got to say she's voting for me. That's the first part. The problem Trump may run into is that there are lots of people like these Nikki Haley supporters who will vote Biden if Nikki Haley isn't the nominee and supports Trump. Remember these folks?

Kaitlan Collins
Anything but Trump.

That was your priority?

Ted Cruz
That's my priority.

Kaitlan Collins
Is that the biggest reason you supported Nikki Haley? Yeah, I'd say because of Donald Trump? Yes.

David Pakman
Yeah, I would vote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump than a heart republican?

Ted Cruz
I am.

Kaitlan Collins
What do you do when that event.

Ted Cruz
If he is the nominee and it's he and Joe Biden, what do you do?

David Pakman
I vote for Joe Biden.

Kaitlan Collins
I'm Nikki Haley.

David Pakman
I think Donald Trump is a threat to the well being of our country. She drops out. Would you be disappointed if she endorsed Trump?

Kaitlan Collins
She does. I'll vote Democrat. No, that's all there is to it.

Ted Cruz
It's important to me to keep Trump out of office again.

Project 2025, I've read it. I've studied it. It's scary. It's frightening. I've lived in a constitutional democracy all my life. I want to remain that way, and I want my grandchildren to grow up in one, not a dictatorship.

David Pakman
And I'm curious, over the last two elections, have you voted Trump in the past? Was it something where you voted for him, you trusted him, and you were disappointed?

Ted Cruz
Yes, I voted for him in 2016. I am a registered Republican, and I. I regretted that vote almost immediately.

David Pakman
Speaker one. All right, so that is potentially a problem for Donald Trump in the idea of courting Nikki Haley supporters. Now, the upside for Trump is you might recall he previously said he doesn't need Nikki's Haley's voters, which I think, mathematically is wrong.

You've talked about.

Kaitlan Collins
You've talked about.

David Pakman
You've talked about trying to unify the party. How do you bring these Mickey Haley voters, some of whom voted for you.

Kaitlan Collins
In 2020 but say they don't want to now?

David Pakman
How do you bring them back into the town?

Ted Cruz
They're gonna all vote for me again. They're gonna all vote for me again. Everybody. And I'm not sure we need too many.

David Pakman
He's not sure he needs Nikki Haley's supporters. And incredibly, Nikki Haley is voting for Trump after Trump made fun of her husband because he wasn't with her at her rallies. Of course her husband was deployed in the military, something. Trump got a doctor's note in order to avoid.

Ted Cruz
Nobody see me at Mar a Lago, sir. I will never run against you. She brought her husband. Where's her husband? Oh, he's away. He's away. What happened to her husband?

What happened to her husband?

David Pakman
Well, what happened to her husband is that he was deployed with the National Guard overseas. So putting all this aside, putting up aside the absurdity of the fact that these Republicans that are regularly insulted by Trump end up supporting him, there are some potential strategic, strategic benefits to Trump in selecting Nikki Haley as his vice presidential candidate. It could be, to a degree, a unification of the Republican Party, even though there are certainly Nikki Haley supporter supporters who are saying, absolutely not. And Nikki Haley, for now, has said, I am voting Trump, but we still have differences which may set her up to have some bargaining power with Trump. Although I really don't know if Trump is willing to negotiate with anybody at this point. He thinks he doesn't need to. Has the deal already been made for Nikki Haley to be Trump's VPN? I don't know. Let me know. In a comment, Donald Trump was finally confronted. Why didn't you testify? Why didn't you testify? After saying again and again and again that you would testify in your criminal trial? And Trump answered the question with a word salad. I recognize all the words as english words, but they don't make any sense. The guys over at the Midas touch network assembled these clips. They are from a WABC interview. Trump is asked, why didn't you testify? See if you can unravel this answer.

Ted Cruz
Mister president. You know, in the New York City trial, your defense rested its case without you taking the stand. You know, you said you would absolutely testify. Why did you decide ultimately not to take the stand? Was that a hard decision for you? Yeah, because he made rulings that makes it very difficult to testify.

Anything I did, anything I did in the past, I can bring everything up then. You know what, I've had a great past, but anything. But the other thing is, and the main reason, and I don't even mind that, in fact, I like talking about it, because we had rigged cases.

David Pakman
If you're confused, if you're wondering if these are sentence fragments from different paragraphs edited together, you're right to be confused. This answer doesn't make any sense.

Ted Cruz
New York is out of control. And they can solve it with a good appellate. You know, we won in the end. Goren case, he doesn't know anything about what he's doing and he's totally corrupt. That's a different case. We had that overturned. We had.

David Pakman
So. So why didn't you testify? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. It's incoherent gibberish and it's a classic Trump dodge. He doesn't want accountability. He always does this when you, you just spit out words, as long as they are more or less english words, although they aren't always.

Ted Cruz
Saudi Arabia and Russia will repeat your.

David Pakman
Will reap beat do ah. Anyway, as long as they're mostly english words, his followers will fill in the blanks. They'll interpret it in the most charitable way possible. Trump didn't testify, despite endlessly saying he would because they're all just so unfair and whatever Trump insists during the same completely bonkers w ABC interview, he didn't commit a crime because his friends said so. His friends on Fox News said he didn't commit a crime.

Ted Cruz
If you look at Jonathan Turley, if you look at Andy McCarthy, I mean, any of them, Greg, Jared, incredible people. These are all incredible people. Dershowitz. Dershowitz. Incredible people. Every one of them said, this is a sham case. There's no crime.

David Pakman
Trump's friends don't think he's guilty. So that certainly should carry some weight, I guess. I don't know with who. Uh, and lastly, during this bonkers interview, Trump says immigrants are coming to the United States with contagious diseases. Uh, and it's funny because I don't remember Trump ever caring about contagious disease.

Ted Cruz
Speaker one and now if you look, and I say it all the time, they're coming in from prisons and jails. They're coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums, which is a step above. They're coming in as terrorists. Many, many terrorists are coming in, right? And people are coming in with very contagious disease. You know, it's all of a sudden, you see there's a run on tuberculosis, there's a run on things that we haven't talked about for years in this country. And, you know, it's a very horrible thing they're doing to our country. And they're coming in totally unvetted, unchecked. And they're not just coming from South America, they're coming from Africa.

The Congo is sending a lot of people. The Congo sending a lot of people. But they're coming in from Africa, they're coming in from Asia.

They're coming in from all over.

David Pakman
This is a wild, xenophobic rant.

Ted Cruz
Coming in from the Middle East. Yemen, a lot of Yemen. They're coming in, as you know, from China, but they're just pouring in. We have no idea who they are, where they come from. We have no idea. They speak languages we don't even know about.

We have people with languages that we know nothing about. It's crazy.

David Pakman
I don't know why when Trump's xenophobic ranting on this devolves into, they speak languages we don't even know anything about.

How stupid is that? I mean, that is just bottom, bottom of the barrel. And again, since when does Trump care about contagious disease? Now all of a sudden, it's, oh, there's contagious disease coming in.

When Trump tells you who he is, believe him. This is who he is, and it's very, very ugly stuff. Let's take a very quick break. We'll hear from a sponsor or two, and I'll be right back with more.

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It's great to welcome back to the program attorney Mike Papantonio, host of America's lawyer on Ring of Fire. The new book is suspicious activity, a legal thriller. You know, pap, I love the genre. I love legal thrillers. I love the books in general.

With yours, it's obviously fiction in the literal sense, but you're touching on topics that are real issues. And in this book, one of the topics is banks and the requirements, or lack thereof, on banks to know who they're dealing with when it comes to what sorts of violence or terrorism they could be funding around the world. So can you just talk a little bit about the background of this as a real world concern and what banks get up to?

Kaitlan Collins
Yeah, as David most. Well, all of my books are based on six books, seven books written about cases that we're actually handling. But I take those cases and I put them into a fiction setting, as you know. But in this case, this is the HSBC case. That's the kind of the center notion of it. HSBC was caught washing billions, billions of dollars for.

For terrorist organizations and drug cartels.

The Obama administration caught him. Eric Holder clearly caught him, made them sign a 16 page document. Yes, we washed money. Yes, we made billions of dollars. Yes, we knew what we were doing. It was going to result in the death of human beings, but we did it anyway. Now, they were made out of the billions, tens of billions of dollars they made.

They were required to pay $1.6 billion fine. Nobody went to jail. Very typical of the white collar industry. Nobody goes to jail. They don't. I guess they got a Harvard education, Armani suits, mbas, you name it, and they don't look like criminals, so we don't throw them in prison.

That got my attention.

We handled thousands of cases for people who have been the victim of that.

There's several organizations that have bound together to say, look, we need to kind of stick together in all this, and we need to make the government do what they're supposed to do, which is go after the terrorists, go after Hamas, because they are the number one terrorist organization in the world, by the way, and we need to be able to say that we can trace their money from the bank that washed it for them all the way down to the roadside bomb. So the facts in that book are 100% accurate. They're 100% true. And all I've done is taken those facts and put them into a fiction. But the truth is, the banking industry has no regulations. I mean, we think they do.

You've got folks that one day they're working in the business of regulating, and the next day they're looking for their next big job. So they don't really regulate. They pay lip service to it.

They're told, look, Joe, I know you're making $200,000 a year, but if you can give us a break on this, how would you like to make half a million dollars a year? So it is that revolving door. It's useless.

Media doesn't touch it. Media barely touch the HSBC story. They have barely touched the terrorism story in the United States with banks watching terrorism because. Because banks and their affiliates advertise big time in the media. MSNBC, CNN, ABC, they're not gonna do these stories.

They're gonna kill the story before it ever gets on the network.

So if we don't do something as lawyers, nothing happens. Fortunately, we're getting really good results for these people that have lost arms. They've lost loved ones, they've lost their eyesight in roadside bombs. We're getting results for them.

It's a slow process.

And this book talks about how the government is actually interfering with that process, how the DoD is actually making it more difficult for the very people that fought for this country to even be paid money. So there's a lot of parts to this book. Suspicious activity, the stories told on many different levels.

David Pakman
Yeah. And the regulatory capture you describe. I mean, anyone who's followed the Sackler fiasco knows about the FDA employee who was involved in the approval of OxyContin, who subsequently went, and a couple of years later ended up working for the Sacklers or Purdue Farmer and affiliated company.

The other story here that you mentioned, to go back to the regulation part of it, it seems like, as is the case in many areas, there's a disproportionate focus on small players at the exclusion of some of these big, bad actors. An example with banking would be, you know, you deposit over $10,000 and you, you get on a list. There's suspicious activity reports. If you go in and deposit $9,000 a few times, you might be structuring deposits to deliberately circumvent the ten grand thing. You're talking about billions here. What are the regulation? What, what requirements do banks have now to understand the provenance of the deposits that they accept?

Kaitlan Collins
Well, there's, it's. It's very clear. I mean, whether you're HSBC or Wells Fargo, local bank, you have a duty.

The term suspicious activity, it's called suspicious activity. Reporting SARS, very common term you see in the banking industry. But what the bankers do is hustle all of that. They make it so subjective that there really is no, no real control over what's really being reported. In other words, a banker may say, somebody at ground level may say, you know, this doesn't look right. I don't know why all this copper, copper wire is being sent to this charitable organization. Doesn't make any sense to me. And then the guy above them says, ah, no, we're not going to report that, because if we report that, the regulators are going to come down on us more often. So, I mean, it's just a hustle. And you mentioned the fact, why do we see the small banks being victimized and big banks get away with it? It's because this year the Department of Justice made this wonderful proclamation about how many white collar criminals they're prosecuting. It has never been lower. This administration has, has, has prosecuted fewer white collar criminals than have ever been prosecuted in the last ten years. And they're declaring a victory because they go after mom and pop organizations rather than going after the big organizations like HSBC. Or as you point out in the opioid case, which as you may know, I handled that case, they didn't go after, they didn't, they didn't go after the Amerisource Bergens and the McKesson folks. They went after the small players and even the Department of Justice in that case, just to point out, to make a point here, in that case, David, the Department of justice had everything they needed to prosecute these folks, top to bottom, 150 people a day dying.

They had everything they needed and they decided, no, let's not do it. Not one person was prosecuted. Not one person went to jail. Same thing with this case that we're talking about here with the banking industry. Nobody gets prosecuted, nobody goes to jail. And so in this case, with the book suspicious activity, you'll actually see the underpinnings of how the government is actually working against the best interest of these claimants who are saying, look, I lost both legs on a roadside bomb. We know Hamas was responsible. We can trace the money right down the line from HSBC.

David Pakman
The broader conversation about how corporate entities provide legal protection for those that are involved is a very long lasting and big discussion. I mean, we talk about the 2008 crisis and the avoidance of prison for essentially everybody involved. We've talked about it in opioids. We're talking about it here.

This is kind of the point. I mean, let me see how I can frame this question to get your thoughts on it. One of the big advantages if I go to a lawyer and I say, hey, let's please create an llc for me. Create a C corporation. One of the first things lawyers will say is, this will give you protection from ABCD. If someone wants to come to you, they have to pierce the corporate veil first. So this is like a selling point for these corporate entities. And one could argue on some basic level, it makes sense that for certain types of disputes through a business, they shouldn't be able to come and take your house. Okay, we can probably all generically agree with that to some degree.

On the far side of the coin is what you're talking about and what you include in the semi fictionalized version in suspicious activity, et cetera. Whereas people, we all look and we say, has this gone too far? Has the ability of corporate entities to protect people from personal liability gone too far? How do we square or balance these two?

Kaitlan Collins
Yeah, yeah. Let's not miss the fact that the Supreme Court in Citizens United basically demanded that we treat a corporation as a person. Okay? If most of the cases that I work on, David, no exaggeration, I'm sitting across the table from a CEO who is an absolute psychopath, at least, at the very least, a sociopath. And if I had a DSM four five with me right now, I could be checking off all the qualities of a sociopath. All right?

That person is allowed to operate in this thing that we've created, this corporate protection that we've created, and we say, well, we can't put a corporation in jail. Well, Bull.

We can put the people who made the decisions in jail. I can name the eight people that were most responsible for the opioid crisis, and I can show you the documents that lead to them being responsible and to where a good prosecutor could easily put him in prison. Same way with this, same way with the money washing, same way that we saw with the PFAS case or human trafficking. All these stories that I've written about over the years, I can point to exactly who made the decision. But there's this legal fiction that it's a corporation. And even though we want to call them a person, if they're psychopathic, if they're psychopath corporation, we treat them differently. If they're a psychopath capable of murder, like we saw in the opioid crisis, we give them a pass because of this legal fiction that you're talking about, the llcs, the protections that they have. But it's laziness, David. It's laziness by the prosecutors. If the prosecutors wanted to do their job, they could. In the Department of Justice, you have two things happening. You've got the. You've got the career prosecutors who don't really care.

They're going to get paid whether they go after the big case or not.

David Pakman
And they want a high win rate, I assume.

Kaitlan Collins
That's right.

They won't take any chances.

Every case I just talked about, opioids, PFAS, the human trafficking problem, this issue that we're talking about with bank washing every one of them, a good trial lawyer could go after the people at top and put them in prison. Okay? But in the Department of Justice, you have this, this, this. These folks that. They're there for life. Why worry about it? Or you have the folks that are looking for their next job. You follow me?

David Pakman
Yeah.

Kaitlan Collins
Why. Why would I prosecute a corporate polluter? Isn't it easier for me to say, you know, well, Mister Dupont, listen, if. If I give you a break, just remember that, because I'm going to be looking at a job five years from now. So the system is broken. And I would love to say that there's a quick fix to it, but there's not. And I'd love to say that I could lay out a path that would change things. One thing that would change things. To have an attorney general that has some damn guts, right? An attorney general, unlike Garland, who has enough sense to understand that it all starts at the top. If you don't perp walk these people, like in this book, suspicious activity that we're talking about here. I say again and again, here's how you do this. You perp walk them. And then the next generation of folks at NBA in Harvard, they say, you know, we better not take any risks like we're doing here with this banking scam that we're running, because we might go to prison. But until you perp walk them, David, nothing changes. And until we have an attorney general that will do something, and we haven't had one for as long as I can remember, to be very honest with you. An attorney general that has enough courage to do their damn job and make sure the Department of Justice does what they're supposed to do, the FBI does what they're supposed to do, and all these government agencies coalesce to go after the folks that are destroying the justice system in this country.

David Pakman
The book is suspicious activity, a legal thriller. We've been speaking with attorney Mike Papantonio. Pap, always appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on.

Kaitlan Collins
Thank you, David.

David Pakman
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The latest completely bogus conspiracy theory coming out of MAgA world is that Joe Biden planned to have Trump assassinated through the FBI's serving of a search warrant at Mar a Lago back in the classified documents search warrant situation, the idea being that the FBI had a directive and a plan to use force, deadly force, against Trump during the so called raid. Of course, this makes no sense whatsoever, and it goes simply to what is the FBI's official use of force policy when serving any search warrant. But that doesn't matter, because Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Trump suck ups, brown nosers and dilettantes are eagerly accepting the conspiracy theory that Biden planned to have Trump killed. You'll see how quickly this one falls apart. The Washington Post reports Trump email falsely said Biden was locked and loaded to take me out in a Mar a Lago search. Trump sent out a fundraising email in which he said this. He said Biden was locked and loaded and they were ready to kill me. Now, what this all relates to, all of this, you know, with all of these things, we, we often want to know what, what's the catalyst. Where did this come from?

There's a one page document as part of the entire search warrant package that is a policy statement on the use of deadly force when these search warrants are served. And it says officers may resort to deadly force only when the subject of such force poses an imminent danger or death or threat of physical injury. Serious physical injury. And so that's attached to the search warrant package with Trump.

It's also part of the search warrant package for when they went and looked for documents at Joe Biden's home. So you would have to believe that Joe Biden also had a secret plan to get himself assassinated. Now, of course, the truth here is the FBI knew Trump wasn't even at Mar a Lago on the day that they served the search warrant. They knew he would be out of town. They coordinated with Secret Service and said, we're going to be here. We want to do this on a day when Trump's not even there. If the plan is to kill Trump during the search warrant, why would you deliberately go on a day that Trump isn't even there? And that's it, okay? That's the end of the story.

But of course it's not, because Donald Trump followed up this conspiracy theory with a post on troth Central where he said, wow, I just came out of the Biden witch hunt trial in Manhattan, the icebox, and was shown reports that that crooked Joe Biden's DOJ in their illegal and unconstitutional raid of Mar a Lago authorized the FBI to use deadly lethal force. Now we know for sure that Joe Biden is a serious threat to democracy. He is mentally unfit to hold office. 25th Amendment, Marjorie Trader Green taking the bait and the opportunity to suck up to Trump by tweeting, quote, I made sure that he knew the FB, the Biden, DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate President Trump and gave the green light. Does everyone get it yet? What are Republicans going to do about it? I tried to oust our speaker who funded Biden's DOJ and FBI, but Democrats stopped it. And she goes on to say, this is grounds for impeachment of Ray and Garland. Trump and team was cooperating with the entire, the entire time with the FBI. Was deadly force force authorized against Biden for his documents? The answer is, yeah, the same statement was there. Were they going to shoot ss then President Trump, Melania and Barron to speaker Mike? Okay, it's just, it's trash. We don't even need to read the rest. It's all bogus, okay? I mean, it's fabricated out of thin air. It's standard FBI policy on the use of deadly force. Every search warrant has the provision that officers can resort to lethal force if necessary, but it is only deemed necessary when the subject of the force is posing an immediate danger of death or serious physical injury.

Trump wasn't at his home on that day. The FBI knew that. They went in on a day that the Secret Service said, Trump won't be here. That's it. That's it. And to believe this, you have to believe that there was also a conspiracy to kill Biden because it had the exact same policy on the use of deadly force. I don't know of any time in american history that a presidential nominee, never mind a former president, that a presidential nominee has accused his opponent of plotting to assassinate him. I looked, I could find no recorded example. And the Maga people, the Magadonians, the Maga Potamians. I'm told I'm not supposed to say the maggots anymore. It's inappropriate, so I won't.

They are. They are just eating this up. And they're eating it up partially because people like Marjorie Taylor Greene are pushing it. Ted Cruz exploded when he was asked on CNN by Caitlin Collins, do you commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election? Now, this goes really, really poorly for Ted Cruz, but I do think Caitlin Collins makes a bit of a mistake in the framing of the question. I'm going to tell you what that is in a moment, but let's take a look at the beginning of this.

Caitlin Collins
Donald Trump basically gets, in his own way. But I do want to ask you, at the election, you were the first senator to object to the, to the votes in 2024. Will you certify the election results? Do you plan to object, or will you accept the results regardless of who wins the election?

Ted Cruz
So, Caitlin, I gotta say, I think that's actually a ridiculous question.

David Pakman
Now, the reason that Ted Cruz says it's ridiculous is because the election hasn't happened yet. But this continues to get worse for him.

Ted Cruz
Senators joined me.

Caitlin Collins
Senator, with all due respect, after it had been thrown out of many courts, after the attorney general Bill Barr, because there was no basis for those court cases.

Ted Cruz
That's actually not.

Caitlin Collins
With all due respect, you asked me a question.

Ted Cruz
Do you want me to answer it?

Caitlin Collins
And you didn't answer the question. Yes, I did.

Ted Cruz
Hold on a second.

Caitlin Collins
I said there was no widespread fraud. You're not clearly answering the question.

Ted Cruz
What question am I not? I'm answering every question.

I think the country would have been a lot better off with a determination of what evidence of voter fraud occurred, and instead, the media didn't want to hear it and insist voter fraud never occurs. You ought to go back and look.

Caitlin Collins
At the court maker commission, the attorney general. And my question was, it was the.

Ted Cruz
Media, it was CNN that relentlessly pushed, relentlessly pushed that propaganda. And by the way, never propaganda.

Caitlin Collins
There was no widespread fraud in the election.

Ted Cruz
That voter fraud doesn't exist. And anyone who says it does is wearing a tinfoil hat.

David Pakman
Now, remember the fact that in a country of 340 million people, the serious investigators were able to find, you know, a few dozen examples of a junior voted as a senior, someone who submitted an absentee ballot later died, someone who was registered in two places, actually voted in two places. You know, we're talking about dozens of examples that were able to be determinatively found.

The point here is, was there any fraud anywhere that would even come close to affecting 1% of the margin of victory? And the answer is no. And it gets testier and testier during this interview.

Caitlin Collins
Gotta go.

Ted Cruz
So, but hold on.

What did Congress do in 1876?

Caitlin Collins
Senator, I'm asking a question to this question.

Ted Cruz
I'm asking a question. What did Congress do in 1876?

Caitlin Collins
You can't answer yes or no to this question.

Ted Cruz
And can you answer my question? Why are you refusing to answer my question?

Caitlin Collins
I'm conducting the interview. With all due respect.

Ted Cruz
But I.

Caitlin Collins
But, and let me ask you, it's. Republicans have twisted themselves and knots.

David Pakman
So listen, I think that Ted Cruz is an absolute weasel, but I think that there is a better way to frame this question, because everything that started this was Caitlin Collins saying, do you commit to certify the 2024 election, regardless of who wins? I'm going to get to the way I would handle this, but let's look at. I mean, just, it devolves and devolves and devolves.

Ted Cruz
One of them, with all due said, the Republicans who won were illegitimate.

Caitlin Collins
I haven't had any of them on my show. We'll talk to them. But I don't remember there being a president who was refusing to turn over the transition of power and facilitate didn't.

Ted Cruz
And Trump didn't either.

Caitlin Collins
Joe Biden was on 2024. You did not answer.

Ted Cruz
Let me say a final. Let me say a final question.

Caitlin Collins
Thank you very much.

Ted Cruz
Hasn't either. He ought to come to your show.

David Pakman
Okay, so listen, hey, at least Ted Cruz is acknowledging that he has an opponent. So here's my thought. Okay.

It is true that when you say, do you commit to certifying as a senator, the 2024 election, it allows Ted Cruz to say, how can I commit to certifying an election that hasn't happened yet if I don't yet know if there will be fraud? And in a sense, it is a relatively acceptable retort. I think a better way of framing this would be, listen, despite the fact that you objected, in 2020, with no evidence whatsoever that democracy had been subverted or the will of the people had been neglected, or that there was any substantive fraud and even a single state that would have been materially significant and you still objected, will you commit to not do that this time around, if it is a similar circumstance? I think that's more specific because it's too easy for Ted Cruz to say, we haven't even voted. Imagine if x happens in November. Of course, I won't commit to accept those results. So I do think that it's a little tricky because we all know what she means. What she means is you participated in the fraud on the american people to try to trick them into thinking Trump had really won and there was no basis for it. Will you promise not to do that again this time around? We all understand that that's what she means. But when you say, well, you commit to accept the results no matter who wins. Ted Cruz has this out. Where he goes, the election hasn't happened. If there is horrible misconduct, of course I won't. Or another way to ask it would be if the 2024 election goes like the last one. No proven voter fraud, no theft, no rigging, and you still interfered.

Will you do it again? Or will you commit here not to interfere? If we have the same lack of proof next time that we had last time, he'll still find some way to weasel out of it. But you're at least getting more to the heart of it, rather than will you blindly commit to certify an election that hasn't taken place yet. Just a thought, okay. About the way that. That this might be better, better handled, I guess, is the way, I would say one other funny thing she brings, she being Caitlin Collins, she brings up that Trump went after his wife and his family, and despite all of that, he is still planning to vote for Trump. And this is pretty funny stuff because this guy is such a weasel.

Caitlin Collins
But this moment, what you said there, you know, you talked about your family. They targeted not just your dad, but also your wife.

And I think a lot of people sitting at home would say, well, that's pretty cynical. I mean, this is someone who attacked your own members of your family. And what we learned from this testimony is that not only did Donald Trump know about it, he coordinated it.

Ted Cruz
Look, I understand, but I knew then it was lies. It was lies.

Caitlin Collins
Then you didn't know Donald Trump himself was.

Ted Cruz
Of course I did. I said he did. It was obvious.

David Pakman
So just like Nikki Haley. Hey, Nikki, where's your husband? Oh, he's actually serving in the military. I'm voting for Trump. We learned yesterday from Nikki Haley, Trump spreading conspiracy theories about Ted Cruz's dad, spreading the idea that Ted Cruz's wife is ugly, et cetera. And Ted Cruz ultimately still kisses the ring and votes for the guy, and he's doing it again. That's where we are. But nicely done in general by Caitlin Collins. Ted Cruz doesn't want to have to account for what he did in 2020. We have a voicemail number. That number is 2192. David P. Here's a call about my appearance on Fox News earlier this week. If you didn't see it, I was interviewed by Fox News will cain. It's very interesting. It's on my YouTube channel. Here's what one caller had to say about it.

Ted Cruz
Hi, David.

Just calling to thank you. You have made my week. I have just completed the, watching the conversation that you had with Will Cain and just was absolutely glorious to sit there and watch you absolutely smack that stupid piece of to the ground.

He was just completely out of his depth talking to you. And like any Fox News commentator who puts out ideas that are completely unsubstantiated and are just crap, you just, you just absolutely obliterated him with facts. And I particularly love the part where he accused you of being too specific. I mean, that said it all.

David Pakman
Yeah. If you haven't seen the interview, check it out. It's on my YouTube channel.

Will Cain is the guy's name. Cain. And yes, at one point he said, david, you're being, you're being too specific here. And I said, you know, guilty is charged. I am being really specific here. That's true. It came to the supposed drug use of Joe Biden. Check that out. We've got a great bonus show for you today. We will talk about the false belief most Americans have that we are currently in a recession. We have a definition of a recession. We're not in one. A majority of Americans think we are. We will talk about the plaguing of very interesting MDMA research with allegations of misconduct and so much more. Get the bonus show today by signing up at join Pacman.com or get on my newsletter today at david Pakman.com and then take advantage of Monday's Memorial Day membership special, which will allow you to get a membership at a dramatic discount. We're doing it once this year so far.

Get on my newsletter at david Pakman.com and you'll be notified about that Monday morning. I'll see you on the bonus show. I'll be back tomorrow with a new show.