5/7/24: Kristi Noem keeps it going, Trump says he's ready for jail

David Pakman
Well, we have a real mystery on our hands, my friends. We simply do not know why republican governor of South Dakota Christy nome can't or won't answer a simple question. Did you meet north korean dictator Kim Jong un? The controversy started over the weekend when Christy Noem was asked about a part of her forthcoming book generating controversy, of course, because she brags about shooting a dog as being evidence that she can make tough decisions. That led to a further review, including a section where she says, I remember when I met with Kim Jong un. There's no record that she met Kim Jong un. It is, of course, a major thing to meet Kim Jong un. When Dennis Rodman, the former basketball player, was hanging out with Kim Jong un, he all of a sudden became the american with the most firsthand knowledge of the reclusive dictator. So it's a really big deal when she's asked about it. Christy nome says, when I found out that was in the book, I had it removed. And I don't talk about my conversations with other world leaders, except she did talk about it in the book until people asked about it. So this is already the setup for this story. Interviews over the weekend. She wouldn't answer the question. She's continuing to simply not answer the question, raising even more questions about why she's answering the question in this way. Here is Christine yesterday on CB's mornings, and she continues to not provide anything approximating a straight answer to what is a very simple question. Did you meet Kim Jong un or didn't you?

And why is it in your book? Let's take a listen person.

Margaret Brennan
Let's talk first.

Jesse Watters
But we don't want to talk about.

Margaret Brennan
A lot of topics that you address in the book. But the book is called no going back. But it sounds like the publisher, Center street, is going back on a couple of the details in the book.

Kristi Noem
I don't believe so.

Margaret Brennan
Specifically, when you write in the book, when I met with north korean dictator Kim Jong un, I'm sure he underestimated me. That, as I understand, is now being removed from the book at your request.

David Pakman
Yes.

Kristi Noem
When I became aware of that, we changed the content and the future editions will be adjusted. And, you know, I appreciate that. I've met with many, many world leaders. I've traveled around the world. I should not have put that anecdote in the book. And at my request, they have.

Larry Kudlow
That didn't happen.

David Pakman
Now, of course, I should not have put the anecdote in the book because of what reason? And that's what we'll get to. And that's what the interviewers are trying to get to here.

Kristi Noem
And at my request, they have.

Larry Kudlow
Something didn't happen.

Kristi Noem
I'm saying that I'm not talking about that meeting. I'm not talking about my meetings with world leaders. But, you know, there's some that are meetings with world leaders, some that are in the book, and then there's some that's not in the book.

Margaret Brennan
Many have actually specific mentions of meeting Kim Jong un and talking about him and a specific memory. I'm sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience. Experience staring down little tyrants. Did you tell your ghost writer to write?

Kristi Noem
I specifically have worked on policy for over 30 years. And over that time, I have traveled around the world.

David Pakman
If you're scratching your head or pounding your head against the wall, saying, why can't we just get an answer to this question?

It is bizarre. This is indicative of either deep dishonesty or some kind of disconnect from reality.

Kristi Noem
And I have met with leaders around the world, and that anecdote, I've asked them to change the content and it will be removed.

Margaret Brennan
It's a simple question. Did you or did you not?

Kristi Noem
That's the answer that I have for you, is that I'm, it will be adjusted. And as soon as I became aware of it, that contact speaker one.

David Pakman
So the most charitable interpretation of this is that Christina met with Kim Jong un. It's not a meeting that is supposed to be public. It relates to some kind of classified or something, whatever. And she's realizing, you know what? I shouldn't have acknowledged that I had this meeting. I met with him. But I very belatedly need to keep it on the down low for reasons of national security or whatever. We have no evidence that that's the case. To be totally clear, I have not a shred of evidence that that's what's going on here. But that would be the most charitable possible interpretation. She was asked about this again a number of different times now, and she continues to just not give a straight answer. Here she is with former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who now has a show on Fox Business. And once again, she says, I wanted it removed from the book. And remember, she voiced the narration, the audiobook to her book.

She voiced meaning not only did it get written into the book at her direction, at the direction of the ghostwriter, we just don't know.

She then went and voiced it over and expressed no concerns. She didn't stop the recording process of the audiobook and say, hey, you know what? This isn't supposed to be in here. She did it, and then only now is she going back and saying it needs to be removed. So again, ask the same question, no answer.

Jesse Watters
And the king, Kim Young un business.

Larry Kudlow
Did you meet him? Did you not meet him?

David Pakman
Did you cross the DMZ?

Jesse Watters
There's some confusion about that.

Larry Kudlow
The Margaret Brennan interview yesterday, a word on that.

Kristi Noem
Oh, I've been in the DMZ. I've traveled all around the world. I've traveled all around the world and met with world leaders.

David Pakman
Remember that? Again, there's no answers to the question here. I went to the DMZ and I've met with world leaders all over the world. The question from Larry Kudlow was, did you meet Kim Jong un or Kim Yong un? As he says, as soon as this.

Kristi Noem
Was brought to my attention, I wanted this removed from the book. And I'm not going to talk about it. I'm not going to talk about meetings that I've had with world leaders. I'm just choosing not to. And so when it came to my attention, I asked for that to be taken out, that name.

David Pakman
Now a great question would be, how did it get into the book in the first place? Christie Governor, how did this end up in the book? Did you tell the story to your ghost writer?

Did you, what, how is it that it got into the book? And then, by the way, as is often the case, this devolves into native english speakers just making up words that aren't part of the english language. We'll get to that in, in a moment here. But if anybody else has an explanation for this other than she lied or it's true, but she's realizing it shouldn't be public, which I don't find super compelling, let me know what other explanation there might be. One other quick note on the entire Christie Nome meeting, Kim Jong un situation.

She, she doesn't come off as the most, as the brightest person, necessarily. And it only raises more questions about why this is in the book to begin with. ChrIsTINE Ohm, the republican governor of South Dakota, in this media tour to try to sell books, books riddled with horrible anecdotes and potentially lies. She appeared on Fox News as Jesse Waters show yesterday. Jesse Waters asking her basically the same question everyone's been asking, did you meet Kim Jong un? And she comes up with the word that she had the exert removed.

The exert. Now you might be saying, david, sir, I know about the word exert. Like to exert myself by picking up a heavy log and I know the word excerpt meaning almost like an anecdote or a portion of a text. Uh, but what? She had an excerpt removed. What does that mean? I don't know. Maybe she's referring to a medical procedure. Let's take a look.

Kristi Noem
I understand that they're attacking me for it, Jessie.

Jesse Watters
Yeah, they are.

David Pakman
So they're also attacking you?

Jesse Watters
I guess.

Russell Brand
You said you met Kim Jong un.

Kristi Noem
Mm hmm.

David Pakman
Did you meet him?

Kristi Noem
I've been to the DMZ. I've been to North Korea. You know, people, I don't talk about my conversations with world leaders. And so when I looked at the book and I saw that excerpt, I decided to make a change to the content of the.

David Pakman
She saw the exert, and she had it excised. Now, even in this statement, she's lying. She says, I've been to North Korea. I've been to the DMZ. We still have no evidence whatsoever that she's been to North Korea. The DMZ is a buffer zone, a demilitarized zone between South Korea and North Korea. It is not part of North Korea. We still have no evidence that she has been to North Korea book, and that's been done. So you didn't have a conversation with Kim when you were at the DMV?

Kristi Noem
I don't have conversations about my conversations with world leaders. I've been working on policy for 30 years.

David Pakman
Except she does have conversations about her conversations with world leaders because she includes many such conversations in her book. And now she wants this excerpt, or as she calls it, an excerpt, removed.

She read it for her audio version of the book. What is the explanation here? Is it she's merely a liar? Is it that somehow she had an off the books visit to North Korea and meeting with the north korean dictator that she's now realizing she doesn't want made public? Which, by the way, if that's what it is, it's now public. If she is telling the truth, I still lean towards she's lying and she got caught. But maybe someday we will know the answer. An angry and confused failed former President Donald Trump yelling the names of his friends as he entered court yesterday. The continuing saga of the Trump trial that turns into a sandbox tantrum for a toddler. Effectively speaking, Trump asked, are you going to testify?

And Trump now says he isn't allowed to talk about whether he's going to testify because of the gag order. Now, understand how many layers absurd this is. We have like three layers of absurdity, deep. Let me play the clip first, and then I'll tell you how, how ridiculous this gag order stuff is. Getting.

Jesse Watters
That first question, as you know, they've taken away my constitutional rights, so I'm not allowed to answer that question.

This has never happened in this country.

David Pakman
Before, speaker one, and it's not happening now. Trump says he's under a gag order, or a gag order, as he likes to say, and that because of the gag order, he can't say whether he will testify. That is a lie to last. Let me think here. Last Thursday, Donald Trump said that the gag order prevents him from testifying. That is untrue. On Friday, when he was asked about it, Trump said, no, the gag order does not prevent me from testifying. Monday, Trump is asked, will you testify? And he says, the gag order prevents me from telling you whether I am going to testify.

None of this is true. And Trump appears more and more confused by the day, even about just the basics of how the trial is even working. He's angry about the duration of the trial. He's angry about the gag order. He's angry that the judge is able to impose restrictions on when Trump is supposed to be in court and when Trump can opt not to be in court. And then the sort of height of this, by the way, now, I guess to keep Trump awake, they're giving him papers that he can shuffle through, and the papers are articles from his friends talking about how he's being treated so unfairly. Trump does indeed, as he is arriving at court, just yell the names of his friends who say that this is all very, very unfair.

Jesse Watters
As you know, they've taken away my constitutional rights. So I'm not allowed to answer that question.

This has never happened in this country before. It's a ridiculous thing. It's a ridiculous, ridiculous case. I did nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong. Take a look at Greg Jarrett this morning. He went on, take a look at Andrew McCarthy or Jonathan Jerley or Mark Levin.

It's like they say, there's no case here, and yet the judge has gagged me and I'm not allowed to talk about, I guess, his total conflict. The judge is totally conflict, conflicted. And you ought to take a look at it. And I'm not supposed to be talking about it, but I am allowed to say that the judge has a conflict that, like nobody's ever had before. You ought to take a look at it. He's taken away my constitutional right to speak.

David Pakman
All right, so none of this is true. Trump's limited gag orders do not violate constitutional rights. They are not violations of the First Amendment. The fact that Trump's friends like Jonathan Turley and Greg Jared, or saying this is all very unfair doesn't really mean too, too much in the legal world. And Trump, Trump keeps saying he's reading articles about the trial, but the only people he mentions are legal analysts on Fox News. There are plenty of people writing articles about the trial. They sing a very different tune than what Fox News legal, legal analysts are singing. Trump complaining about the fact that there are witnesses that he doesn't like. There are witnesses he just doesn't feel should be part of the truck.

Jesse Watters
Absolutely no case. It's a political hoax. It's election interference.

Anything they can do, and even the witnesses they want to bring up, they have nothing to do with the case. This is a ridiculous situation.

Not fair.

Not fair. But we will fight. Thank you.

David Pakman
All right. And of course, if there are truly witnesses that would be inappropriate to include in this trial. There are legal processes. And Trump's defense lawyers can say, we object to this witness. We would like to block this witness from testifying. That is something that they are able to do. Do. And then lastly, here is Trump again, referring to his printed paperwork, the papers that they give him to try to keep him awake during trial. It does not seem to be working.

Jesse Watters
Just came out. Columbia just canceled their commencement axios.

David Pakman
He has articles printed from the Internet.

Jesse Watters
Classic Columbia just canceled their commencement. That shouldn't happen. And it also came out that the protesters, many of the protesters are backed by Biden. Stoners.

Okay. Are you listening, Israel? I hope you're listening, Israel.

David Pakman
So Trump just reading off the headlines for articles, by the way, that Politico article about the protesters being backed by Biden's donors. A widely discredited politico had to put out a correction that's like a two paragraph correct. That they had to correct like eight or nine different things. It's one of the craziest corrections I've seen. But that's an aside. Trump just walking around with articles, yelling the headlines of the articles at the reporters. These are wild times we live in. Let's hope that at the conclusion, justice will have been done. Let's hear from a sponsor or two and we'll be right back.

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Jordan Peterson
Oh, the bonus show where you want.

David Pakman
To make money, money.

Jesse Watters
Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves as bad.

David Pakman
Exactly. But my encouragement to you is, let's do it. Let's do it. You can sign up at join pacman.com and you can use the coupon code save democracy 24 if you so please. And that is a great, great thing. All right, so the judge is saying to Trump, shut your mouth or you are going to jail. But is he really? We've seen this story before. CNN is reporting judge finds ex president for violating gag order again, warns of jail time for future infractions. Judge Juan Merchant has again held Trump in contempt of court and fined him another thousand dollars for violating the gag order. Sternly, he did it so sternly this time, sternly warning the former president of the possibility of jail for future violations. He said Trump's statement threatened to interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue. Adding, as much as I don't want to impose a jail sanction, I know, I want you to understand that I will have to if necessary and appropriate. Prosecutors this time accused Trump of four violations of the gag order. The judge only concurred with one. You may recall the judge previously fined Trump $9,000 for nine earlier violations. In posts on troth Central and on his website, prosecutors found that there were ten violations. The judge said there are only nine, and therefore the fine is $1,000 each. You know, for all the talk about the two tier justice system that benefits Trump, I'm sorry, that that doesn't benefit Trump.

That benefits Democrats. We're not seeing any of that. What we are seeing is financially meaningless fines imposed on Trump for violation after violation after violation of gag orders with the constant background threat of we're going to put you in jail. And yet, of course, it never happens. And to be honest, I don't know that the judge is actually serious. Now. If Trump continues violating the gag orders, I hope that the judge is serious and he's ready and willing to put Trump in jail for a few days. Secret Service is taking it seriously. We talked two weeks ago about how Secret Service is making plans for how exactly would they protect a former president if he did have to, have to spend a few nights in jail. But to some degree, I think Trump wants this to happen. I think Trump wants to see himself as a martyr. He wants to present himself as a victim to his supporters and would be supporters. He sees going to jail as the way that that would happen. And that's exactly why I believe, anyway, Trump is saying he is ready to go to jail for the constitution. Let's talk about that next. When Trump exited the courtroom yesterday in his first or four criminal trials, he made the declaration that he would do the sacrifice and go to jail any day.

This is, of course, a reference to the fact that he once again has violated his gag orders. He was fined another $1,000. Yes, I know, $1,000 by the judge for one additional gag order violation. He exited court shortly after 04:00 p.m. Eastern time, and he says that he would do the sacrifice of going to jail any day. Any day. He would do it because the constitution matters. Of course, there is no constitutional violation from a limited gag order on a defendant in a criminal trial. Absolutely nothing whatsoever. Supreme Court has upheld it. But it doesn't matter to Trump, doesn't matter to his followers. And here he is, he's setting up the martyrdom, he's setting up the victimhood. I will do the jail time to support the constitution.

Jesse Watters
And it's a disgrace. And then you have the other thing that maybe is even more disgraceful as the gang order, where I can't, basically, I have to watch everyone. Word, I tell you people, you ask me a question, a simple question, I'd like to give it, but I can't talk about it because this judge is giving me a gag order and said, you'll go to jail if you violate it.

David Pakman
Frankly, you know what?

Jesse Watters
Our constitution is much more important than jail. It's not even close.

David Pakman
Of course, it's a total non sequitur. Totally irrelevant to compare the two.

Jesse Watters
I'll do that sacrifice any day.

But what's happening here is a disgrace of the appellate courts ought to get involved.

New York looks so bad. The New York system of so called justice looks so bad. Between this judge Angora and Kaplan, the triple team with corrupt judges is a disgrace to our nation.

So I should be out there campaigning and they said, too. And the way I look at it, they're really talking about the three weeks more.

And by the way, they didn't even have enough to fill out the time. You know, we got out early today because they didn't have another witness.

David Pakman
Yeah. Trump really, really upset with the sketch scheduling process here.

Listen, on being ready to go to jail, don't threaten us with a good time, sir. And then Trump wrapping this up just moments later goes on an unhinged rant about the judge and then out of nowhere says, God bless the USA, and then walks away ignoring a question about Stormy Daniels.

Jesse Watters
This judge is a disaster between the gang orders and the hatred he's got for me.

And everybody sees it, okay? And you see it. You see it better than anybody.

God bless the USA.

David Pakman
All right.

Larry Kudlow
I always wait, thinking that he might add something and sometimes he, he does.

Johann Hari
All right.

David Pakman
Trump adding nothing there, spitting out God bless the USA and walking away. So he is not happy threatening us with a good time, saying he's willing to go to jail. We'll follow it. We'll see if that's where he ends up. I tend to doubt it. Donald Trump is now going after President Joe Biden with a new attack, an attack that feels more like a confession than anything else. Donald Trump now says that President Joe Biden cannot read. Now this is a particularly interesting allegations or confessions moment, because as we've studied before, it's not clear Trump really is able to read comfortably. So we're going to get to that in a moment. Here is Donald Trump and video from Mar a Lago saying Joe Biden cannot read. This is the latest Biden dementia story. As you, as you know, Biden doesn't know what day it is. He doesn't know that he's president. He doesn't know his wife's name. He doesn't know his name. He can't walk. He can't speak. Now he can't read either.

Jesse Watters
We have a guy who's mentally incompetent. He can't read.

Ok, look, see these stairs? They're big, right?

David Pakman
Right. These stairs are very big. So the new one, of course, now is that Joe Biden cannot read. Now, this is particularly interesting with Trump because so many of his attacks on Joe Biden reek of Trump's own insecurities. You might remember that back in 2017, we did a viral video called uh oh, does Donald Trump know how to read? And it looked at the combined circumstantial and witness evidence that Trump really can barely read and that his lack of reading ability is the source of many of his struggles. It doesn't mean he is literally illiterate. It just means he has limited reading capacity. Remember, of course, that is co author from the book the Art of the Deal. Tony Schwartz once said, quote, that's why he so prefers tv. As his first news source, information comes in easily digestible sound bites. I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life. Indeed, Trump has never really mentioned reading a book in his adult life. And we have, this is now eight years old already. We have deposition video of Trump where he does seem to be doing everything he can to avoid having to read from transcripts. And it's very strange. First, he says that he doesn't read leases as a general concept.

Margaret Brennan
Did you review the lease at all before you signed it?

Johann Hari
No.

Margaret Brennan
How many leases like this have you reviewed in your career?

I
Signed or reviewed?

Margaret Brennan
Reviewed.

I
Not too many. I signed hundreds.

David Pakman
So Trump does admit in testimony that he doesn't actually read the documents that are relevant to his business. Later, in the same deposition, he's asked to read a portion, and his lawyer objects. His lawyer doesn't want him reading anything or trying to read anything?

I
Yeah.

Margaret Brennan
You did not review this section of the lease, monetary damages. This is the. In the remedies section.

I
I did not know.

Margaret Brennan
Would you be able to read this section and tell us what your understanding of it is?

Kristi Noem
Objection.

Mister Trump isn't a lawyer.

I
I mean, do you want me to read it?

Jesse Watters
Uh, it's long.

Margaret Brennan
It is long.

I
It's very long.

Margaret Brennan
It is long.

David Pakman
Now, this is, again, resistance to reading. And then Trump suddenly says he needs his glasses in order to do it, something that we're not actually aware of Trump needing. And his lawyer seems increasingly nervous about Trump trying to read stuff out loud.

Margaret Brennan
I would.

I would like you to read just the monetary damages section, starting at the number one in the middle of the page just there, the rest of that, and to the end of that, it continues on the next page. And tell me what you think reading that you, as the landlord, are entitled to get from the tenant in the event of a tenant breach in the way of damages.

I
I don't have my glasses. I mean, I am at a disadvantage because I didn't bring my glasses. This is such small writing.

David Pakman
All right, well, Helen, if the witness.

Kristi Noem
Can'T actually physically read the language, I.

I
Mean, it's very small writing.

David Pakman
I can make it out.

I
Do you want me to try?

Margaret Brennan
Well, we can have, you know what we can do? We can have a bigger copy made of these pages.

I
Let me try. Let me just do it.

Kristi Noem
I have to place on the record a hearty objection.

David Pakman
Oh, boy.

I
You know, it's all damages that the landlord may sustain, including all legal fees and everything else involved. Looks like everything in the kitchen sink to me, speaker one. All right, and you have.

David Pakman
So in any case, in some literal sense, of course, Trump is able to read to some degree. He's reading every one of his speeches off of a teleprompter, but Biden can certainly read as well. And for Trump to be saying Biden can't, Trump is probably the last guy who should be talking about anybody else's reading. So he's throwing everything at Joe Biden that he can. I hope that this is not going to be enough to put him back in the Oval Office, but at this point, only time will tell if you're looking for the perfect gift to celebrate the moms in your life. An aura frame is a beautiful Wi Fi connected digital picture frame that lets you share and display unlimited photos. I just got one for my mom. Super easy to upload and share photos via the Aura app. If you're giving an aura as a gift, you can personalize the frame with preloaded photos and memories. I did this for my mom. I actually have now given both of my parents these as a gift, loaded it with pictures of the baby which they loved, and now either I or my parents can add or remove photos from the frame with the app. From grandmothers to new moms, aunts, even friends in your life, everybody loves an aura frame. It is the best digital photo frame according to Wirecutter. It was one of Oprah's favorite things. Aura frames are guaranteed to bring joy to moms of all ages, and right now, Aura has a great deal for Mother's Day. Go to aura frames.com Pacman and use code Pacman to get dollar 30 off and free shipping on their best selling frame.

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That's wildhealth.com pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. It's great to welcome back to the program today Johann Hari, who is the author of multiple New York Times bestselling books. The new book is Magic Pill. The extraordinary benefits and disturbing risks of the new weight loss drugs. The book is out today. Johan, it's so good to have you back on.

Johann Hari
Oh, David, I'm so happy to be with you. Cheers.

David Pakman
So let's start with. I mean, what's interesting about this book is it also relates to your personal experience. You started to use. I want to make sure I'm pronouncing it right. Is it ozempic or ozempic? What's the correct pronunciation?

Johann Hari
The correct pronunciation is O. O. Zempic. You don't know? That's the extremely annoying jingle in the adverts. It's ozempic.

David Pakman
Yeah, Ozempic. So you started using this concurrent with your research and writing of this book. Talk to us about your path. You started using it. Why? What were the side effects? What were the results?

Johann Hari
I'll never forget the moment I learned about the existence of these drugs, because from the moment I learned about them, I felt so conflicted. It was the winter of 2000. Sorry, say again? It was the winter of 2022, and it was that moment when the world was opening up again. And I got invited to a party for the first time in ages, and I decided to go in the Uber. On the way there, I felt a bit kind of self conscious because I gained quite a lot of weight during COVID I was quite fat at the start, and this party was being thrown by an Oscar winning actor, and I felt like it would be a bit awkward. And then I suddenly realized, oh, loads of people I know gained loads of weight during lockdown. In fact, most people, maybe they're all going to gain weight. It's going to be fascinating to see these Hollywood actors with a bit of chub on them. So when I arrived, it was really weird.

It's not just they hadn't gained weight. Everyone was gaunt. Everyone was visibly thinner. Everyone looked like their own Snapchat filter, you know, like cleaner and clearer and sharper. And I was stumbling around in a bit of a daze, and I bumped into a friend of mine on the edge of the dance floor, and I said, huh? Looks like everyone really did take up pilates during lockdown, right? And she laughed, and I didn't know why she was laughing.

And she pulled up on her phone, an image of an ozempic pen, and she said, well, it ain't. It ain't pilates, right?

And I didn't know at the time what it was. I didn't know that we now had a new kind of weight loss drug, which works in a completely new way, which causes the average person who uses it to lose 15% of their body weight. And in fact, the next in this class of drugs, which will be available next year, probably causes the average user to lose 24% of their body weight.

And I immediately felt really conflicted because, look, I'm older now than my grandfather ever got to be. He died when he was 44 of a massive heart attack. Loads of the men in my family get heart disease. I knew that being obese as I was makes it much more likely you'll get heart problems, and in fact, makes over 200 known diseases and complications more likely. So I could immediately see, wow, if there is a drug that really reverses or massively reduces obesity, there's potentially huge positive health benefits there.

But I also thought, wait a minute, we've seen this story before.

You know, every 20 years or so, a new miracle diet drug is announced. We're told it's going to change the world, you know, save us all.

There's always a stampede to take it, and they always discover it causes some kind of horrendous side effect. That means it needs to be pulled from the market. I thought, well, is that likely to happen again? So, really, to understand this, I went on this big journey all over the world, like you say, I took the drug to write about it, and I went on this huge journey from Iceland to Minneapolis to Okinawa in the south of Japan, to interview the leading experts on these drugs, the biggest defenders, the people who created it, the biggest critics of these drugs. And it's kind of weird. I'm sure this will emerge in our conversation, David.

At the end of it, I know much more about the extraordinary benefits and the twelve disturbing risks, much more about what it's going to do for the culture. But to totally level with you, I'm still pretty conflicted. The truth about these drugs is genuinely complicated.

David Pakman
So you start taking it the first time, and it's a self injectable for people who may or may not know what happens the first time.

Johann Hari
It's the weirdest feeling.

I woke up two days after I first taken it, and I was lying there in bed and I thought, oh, I feel something really weird. What is it? And I couldn't locate in my body what it was.

And then I realized I had woken up and I wasn't hungry.

I don't remember that ever happening to me before.

And I went to. There's a diner near where I live, and I went up there and I went in and I ordered what I used to order for breakfast every morning. It was a big brown roll with loads of chicken and loads of mayo in it.

And I had, like, three or four mouthfuls and I just wasn't hungry anymore. I was full, and that just kept happening every time I ate, I just got full really quickly. It's like kind of shutters come down on your appetite. And obviously, around that time, I was interviewing the leading scientists about what is happening inside me. And one of the things that's very disconcerting about these drugs is we actually don't know quite what they're doing to people. There's a few things we do know.

If you ate something now, David, your pancreas would, after a little while, produce a hormone called GLP one. And GLP one is basically part of your body's natural signals just going, hey, David, you've had enough. Stop eating breaks, basically. But natural GLP one only stays in your system for a few minutes, and then it's washed away. What these drugs do is they inject you with an artificial copy of GLP one that stays in your system not for a few minutes, but for a whole week, which is why you feel so full so quickly. But initially, it was thought this was an effect primarily on your gut. It's a hormone created in the gut, but we now know you have GLP one receptors, not just in your gut, but in your brain. And that from interviewing the leading neuroscientists and doing a deep dive into their work, it's increasingly clear these drugs actually work by changing your brain. There's a huge debate about how and why, which brings with it a whole other set of benefits and risks. But it makes you realize it's a much more intimate transformation than it might seem at first.

David Pakman
Fundamentally, it seems as though what we're talking about is appetite suppression. Right? I mean, whether it's happening in the gut or the brain or in both, and in what's happening physiologically, we're basically talking about making people not hungry.

Johann Hari
Yeah. Actually, most of the experts I spoke to said appetite suppression is not the right way to frame it, which surprised me, because I would have thought of it exactly the way you just did. It's more that it boosts satiety. So satiety is a word we don't use that often in English, but we all know basically what being sated is. It's when you've just had enough and you don't want any more. We all feel sated sometimes, whether it's sex or food or whatever it is. And turn out this is a core concept for understanding two really important things, because at the start, I wanted to understand both the drugs and how we got here, right?

Because we're in this bizarre and unprecedented situation. You're slightly younger than me, David, but when I was born in 19, I'd really urge everyone to just stop for a moment and Google photographs of beaches in the United States in 1979 and just look at them for a minute. When we look at them, they seem really strange, because everyone in them looks to us to be skinny or jacked, right? And you look at it and go, well, where was everyone else that day? What's going on? And then you look at the population figures. For the United States, obesity was extraordinarily low in 1979. Then between the year I was born and the year I turned 21, obesity doubled. And then in the next 20 years, severe obesity doubled again, right? This has never happened before in the entire history of the human species. You have 300,000 years where obesity is exceptionally rare. And then, literally in my lifetime, this explosion, to the point where now 42.5% of Americans are obese. Why? What happened? And the answer lies with this concept of satiety and with a very specific change.

We eat completely differently to how human beings ate before us.

If you think about people like my father, who grew up in Switzerland, this change, this huge explosion in obesity, happens in every country that makes one change. It's not where people suddenly become lazy or greedy or lack willpower or all these other stigmatizing things we say. It's where people move from eating a diet that consists mostly of fresh, whole foods that were prepared on the day, to eating a diet that mostly consists of processed and ultra processed foods, which are built out of chemicals in factories and a process that isn't even called cooking. It's called manufacturing. And it turns out this new kind of food affects us in a completely different way. And to understand it, there's an experiment that was done just up the street from where I am right now in New York that really explained it to me. It's done by a brilliant scientist called Professor Paul Kenny, who's the head of neuroscience at Mount Sinai here. And it's a very simple experiment. He got a load of rats, and he raised them in a cage, and they had nothing to eat but the kind of healthy, natural foods that rats evolved to eat over thousands of years. And when that's the only food they've got, rats will eat when they're hungry, and then they'll just stop.

They never made themselves fat or overweight. They had some kind of natural nutritional wisdom. That said, hey, guys, you had enough?

Then Professor Kenny introduced them to the american diet. He fried up some bacon, he bought a load of snickers bars. Crucially, he bought some cheesecake, and he put it in the cage alongside the healthy food. And the rats went crazy for the american food. They would literally dive into the cheesecake and eat their way out and just emerge just completely slicked with it.

And they ate and ate and ate and ate, and all that natural nutritional wisdom they've had with the kind of food they evolved for just vanished. The way Professor Kenny put it to me is, within a couple of days, they were different animals, and they all became quite seriously overweight. Then Professor Kenny tweaked the experiment again in a way that feels a bit cruel to me. As a former junk food addict, he took away all the american food and left them with nothing but the healthy food, and he thought he knew what would happen, that they would eat more of the healthy food than they had in the past, and that would prove that this kind of food expands the number of calories you eat. That is not what happened. Something much weirder happened once they'd had the american diet and they were given the healthy food back, and that's all they had, they refused to eat it. It was like they no longer recognized healthy food as food. It was only when they were literally starving that they went back to eating it. Now, this is happening to us. I call this experiment cheesecake park. And we all live in Cheesecake park now, right? We're eating a diet that undermines our ability to ever feel full. And what these drugs do is they give you back your sense of fullness, but they bring with them a different set of risks.

David Pakman
Is the general use of these among those you know, and maybe yourself, that once one reaches their target weight, you stop using the medication. Or is it thought of as a maintenance, ongoing medication?

Johann Hari
It's a maintenance medication. Now, this is contested for reasons I'll explain, but, no, at the moment, the advice is if you stop taking the drugs, you go back to how you were before. So it's more like, say, blood pressure medication. It's not a cure for the problem, it's a treatment for it. Now, there do seem to be some people, anecdotally, who are taking the drugs, radically changing their habits and behaviors and then coming off and maintaining a lower weight. But they do seem to be a minority. The only studies we have of that at the moment are by the drug companies, who obviously have a vested interest in you taking the drugs forever. So we've got to be a little bit skeptical about that. But it does seem most people regain the weight when they stop.

David Pakman
I mean, it seems the problem is that the caloric deficit that's caused by the feeling of fullness will get you to lose weight, certainly. But over the long term, is it going to see you consuming a number of calories that is not actually the right number of calories for one size? And what will it do to nutritional requirements? I mean, it seems like that may be a concern from long term use.

Johann Hari
Yeah, there's twelve big risks of these drugs that I go through in the book. One is exactly what you allude to, malnutrition. Right. Some people take, some people take too high a dose, don't get enough calories, and get malnutrition. And that's really a serious problem. And I thought someone in my family was in that position. She just was taking it and was just literally barely eating. That's quite separate from the issue around eating disorders, which is probably my of all the twelve concerns, the thing I'm most worried about.

So, yeah, there's a huge array of risks, along with extraordinary benefits to drugs. It's one of the things that's so complicated about this.

David Pakman
The full interview with Johann Hari about his new book, Magic Pill will be on our YouTube channel, YouTube.com comma slash the David Pakman show. We'll take a very quick break and be right back.

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Rules and restrictions may apply. The link is in the podcast notes. All right, this is funny. I think you like this. It takes a lot to make Jordan Peterson say, whoa, this is some really weird stuff. This is too much, even for me. But that's exactly what Russell Brand did. Now, we've already done deep dives before into the, whatever you might want to call it, metamorphosis of Russell Brand into a strange sort of conspiracy theory supporting, almost guru type figure that seems to have sucked in people from left and right into thinking that he is truly the holder of so much unique and important knowledge. RusseLl Brand, in the clip I'm about to play for you, is interviewing Jordan Peterson. Or maybe Jordan Peterson is interviewing Russell Brand. Better said, it does. You know, with these things, it's often hard to tell because they're often just rants that pass each other like two ships in the night. Russell Brand manages to confuse Jordan Peterson with a taste of his own medicine. I'm going to play for you Russell Brand's rant, which would be exactly the sort of thing that you would expect Jordan Peterson to do. Now, if you're not watching this, if you're only listening, it is true that part of this is visual. The looks on Peterson's face as he is listening to this bizarre rant.

And by the way, we, we see the word kafkaesque appear. Russell Brand uses the word kafkaesque. What I would argue is Kafka esque is this rant itself. Okay? So strap yourselves in. If you're only listening, imagine a bewildered and perplexed look on the face of Jordan B. Peterson.

Russell Brand
It's difficult to avoid, I feel. Jordan, is the sense that not only is there this, you know, and you, it's something you touched upon earlier. You said, no, it's not only force, you know, and I sort of offered you that perhaps the benevolence that this force has issued, but could be, and this is, of course, reductive, an inadvertent side effect of tyranny. And please be aware that I am apprised of the fact that the forms of tyranny that are emerging now, apparently in opposition to these old school, not to be repeated, let's face it, militaristic, demagogic, populist, strongman forms of tyranny that we're being continually warned of are far more terrifying. The kafkaesque, bureaucratic, banner lized, invisible, dreadful. We're here to help. I'm afraid your inquiry can't be heard. This is diabolical. Huxley's hell terrifies me even more than Orwell's, although plainly we're in some amalgam with beautiful gilding from Kafka in the sort of unknowable quality, where is the judge? What is the trial? Who's doing all this stuff? And it seems to me that there must be. Even if we are to say it's about power, even if we are asking, who is it an internal struggle? Is it my power over my instincts? And the expression of those instincts in conjunction with culture that I might call self over time, there seems to be some other agent. There does indeed seem to be a serpent. There do indeed appear to be fallen angels. There do indeed appear to be ulterior forces at work. For I am struck that when I was an emblem of this culture, in my hedonism, I was gloried and made much of.

David Pakman
All right, I'm going to stop it. Brand comes off as a narcissist with a persecution complex, increasingly focused on generating these elaborate expressions of his thoughts without communicating any substantive idea. Now, there's another similarity. When we talk about these sort of guru like figures that are often followed not because their opinions are so clear, but because their opinions are completely the opposite of clear, one of the things we're seeing is a similarity in the rantings of Jordan Peterson and Russell brand. That's similarity number one.

Similarity number two is that their most devoted followers, at least until they realize that none of this stuff makes any sense, when someone like me says, this is not communicating substantive and concrete ideas or giving you anything to achieve a meaningful result, this is just, these are deliberately ornate and elaborate musings of absolutely no meaning or value.

The followers of these guys will come to me and they'll say, David, you're not smart enough, you're not knowledgeable enough, you're not intelligent enough to understand what it is that they are saying. That's a classic when you get into this guru cult world. And increasingly, Russell Brand is sort of a guru cult type leader, sort of a hybrid between like a Trump and a Tulsi Gabbard, where some people remember they saw Tulsi Gabbard. And this is the real leftist. This is the real, this is who really knows what we need in this country.

And so a lot of the defenders will say, David, you're just not smart enough to understand the concrete and substantive ideas that Russell Brand is communicating in this rant. Well, tell me what they are then. I would love to know what they are. Because he's doing something that is really common of these cult leaders and guru like figures. He's using elaborate and verbose speech to sort of mask the fact that there is extraordinarily little substance here. Now, people wrote to me and said, David, this reeks of stimulant use as well. I have absolutely no comment on that whatsoever. I'm just not familiar enough to Russell, with Russell Brandon know whether that's a thing.

And, and the other interesting aspect to this is that Jordan Peterson, in his more psychological issue commentary, will often talk about personality disorders. There are all sorts of Jordan Peterson lectures floating around where he talks about personality disorders. And he so often ends up finding himself wrapped up in conversation with people who seem to have many of those very same disorders, narcissistic traits.

Russell Brand, and I won't list others, but you could probably guess who they are. And in those cases, he's relegated to acting as though they're presenting novel and fascinating ideas with which they can grapple substantively. So it's really wild stuff. This entry, entire kind of guru sort of space is, is fascinating. And it's fascinating in part because the followers that they build up, and it could be Trump, could be Jordan Peterson, could be Russell Brand, or could be others. The followers seem particularly susceptible to this type of cultish thinking and defense of their glorious leaders until such time that they become disaffected by them. Hey, I want to play a clip from a Tucker Carlson interview with Joe Rogan that we did not previously get to. And I do think it is interesting, and it's sort of like a full circle moment in terms of what these sort of pseudo populist figures like Tucker Carlson have become. I'm going to play a clip for you where Tucker Carlson says to Joe Rogan that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones seems to be some kind of a prophet with a supernatural ability to see the future.

How are these serious people?

Take a listen to this. How'd that happen?

Johann Hari
Right?

Jesse Watters
How did he do that?

Jordan Peterson
No, he's channeling something that's super. Yeah, of course.

Johann Hari
Yeah.

Jordan Peterson
There's like no other.

Russell Brand
I mean, tell me how he did it.

Jordan Peterson
Otherwise, I've asked him about it. How did you do that?

David Pakman
At length.

Jordan Peterson
He had dinner on my barn recently. We're talking about this. How'd you do that? I don't know. It just came to me.

And that's real? That is real. The supernatural is real. And I don't know why it's hard for the modern mind guess, because it's a materialist mind to accept that. But what you see, and that's not a new phenomenon. It's happened throughout history. There are people called prophets, and there are people who were prophets who weren't called prophets, but there are people who have information, or parts of information, bits of information, visions of information come to them.

David Pakman
And, yep, there you go. It is true, Tucker is right, that in the materialist framework, there is a resistance to accepting that Alex Jones grand ideas may be coming to him supernaturally as a prophet. That's true. But it's not limited just to the materialist world, where that would be something we're skeptical of in the world of common sense.

We would also be skeptical of that in the world of actually thinking about the insanity of the things that Alex Jones says and then saying, wait a second, those sound like the rantings of a lunatic, not the prophecy of a supernatural being connected with something that is unable for us to see, hear, or touch. So I think it's very, very important when people get sucked into, well, you know, I don't have to agree with everything Tucker says, but to some degree, he is a voice of reason. He's a voice for the average person. He is communicating what so many people think, or whatever the case may be, understand that he is asserting. And whether he believes it or not, I don't know. I know some people say Tucker doesn't believe this stuff. He just knows where his bread is buttered. And this is now the sort of stuff he has to say. If those are your views about Tucker Carlson and his connection to rationalism. And then he says Alex Jones is developing prophecy by some supernatural power that he has.

I would say let's stop a little bit short. A little bit short of crowning Tucker CarlSon as someone we might disagree with, but who has really great ideas.

That is not a really great idea, that I can tell you. We have a voicemail number. That number is 2192. David P. Here's a caller who's coming to me reporting that people are stealing the bonus show. They are stealing the bonus show. What? Listen to this.

Larry Kudlow
Hey, Dave, listen to your podcast every day. A website member. So I get the bonus show. You know, where you want to make money, but everybody else that tries to make money to fund themselves is bad.

David Pakman
Yeah.

Larry Kudlow
Now, I notice that other political commentators are also doing bonus shows.

Jesse and Brittany are doing bonus shows when I do doubt it. And Luke Beasley's got a bonus show. So, hey, your good ideas are spreading.

Also.

I thought I would just tell you that your show or you keep me centered. I listen to other political podcasts and they get a bit fiery and they're throwing out their opinions that so and so belongs in jail. You know, Trump or any old Rudy who got indicted, you know, put them in jail, lock him up or whatever. But you stay centered. You believe in law and order and due process. I mean, I'm not saying that maybe you don't think in the back of your head that maybe they should be in jail, but you at least let the legal process play out.

David Pakman
Listen, I am trying to make it clear that my principles hold true no matter whether we're talking about a Democrat or a Republican. Okay? Whether it's a Democrat as democratic congressman or senator, or whether it's Trump or some other Republican, we need to follow, we, we actually must support law and order. Now, as far as people stealing the bonus show, listen, the most imitation, what's that phrase? Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

That's where I will leave it. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. We are going to talk about the latest with bird flu. What is going on? It's getting ugly already on the dating app. Bumble women no longer have to make the first move.

There are significant controversies about this wrapped up with feminism and rights and all these different things. We will talk about it. And Senator Bernie Sanders says he is running for reelection. He would be 89 at the completion of his next term should he win. There are mixed feelings about this, even from the democratic side. We will discuss all of it and more on the bonus show. Get instant access by signing up@joinpackman.com.

5/7/24: Kristi Noem keeps it going, Trump says he's ready for jail

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