6/11/24: Historic crime drop stuns MAGA, Hannity floats Trump cancelling debate

This episode analyzes the latest crime data showing significant declines during the Biden administration and delves into the political reactions and strategies related to the upcoming presidential debates.

1. Significant Crime Reductions: FBI data shows substantial declines in violent and property crimes.
2. Media Manipulation: Right-wing outlets continue to portray an atmosphere of rising crime, contrary to statistical evidence.
3. Debate Speculation: Discussion on Trump possibly avoiding debates with Biden, with insights into the media’s role in shaping this narrative.
4. Political Strategies: Analysis of how crime data and debate participation are used as political tools.
5. Public Perception and Media Influence: How public perception is shaped by media and the potential impacts on voter behavior.

1: Crime Data Analysis

David Pakman discusses new FBI crime statistics showing a broad decline in crime rates, challenging the fear-inducing narratives prevalent in conservative media. David Pakman: "Reported incidents of violent crime dropped 15%, according to the FBI data."

2: Political Reactions and Strategies

Pakman examines the political implications of the crime data and the strategies used by various media and political figures to spin or dismiss these findings. David Pakman: "They're lying about everything. They're making up the statistics. You can't trust any of it."

3: Debate Dynamics

Focus shifts to the upcoming presidential debates, with speculation around Trump's participation fueled by comments from Sean Hannity. David Pakman: "People around failed former president and convicted felon Donald Trump are starting to float the idea that he shouldn't go to the debate."

1. Stay Informed: Regularly check multiple sources for crime statistics and political news to get a comprehensive view.
2. Critical Analysis: Be skeptical of media narratives that do not align with available data.
3. Engage Politically: Participate in discussions and electoral processes to influence public policy based on factual information.
4. Media Literacy: Educate yourself and others about the tactics used by media to shape perception.
5. Community Involvement: Get involved in community discussions about safety and public policies to ensure a well-informed public consensus.

-- On the Show:

-- Doctor Walter Willett, physician, epidemiologist, and Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard University, joins David to discuss the healthiest diets known to humans, nutrition, and much more

-- A historic drop in crime continues and is met with conspiracy theories and conjecture from right wing media

-- Fox News host Sean Hannity panics after Trump brain melt at his recent Las Vegas rally and starts to float the idea of Donald Trump skipping the upcoming presidential debate

-- Rudy Giuliani finally turns himself in to Arizona authorities after his indictment for his role in the Arizona fake electors scheme

-- A discussion of the role of lying about crowd sizes to authoritarian like Donald Trump

-- Donald Trump delivers a disgusting anti-abortion message to the extremist group The Danbury Institute

-- David tries debating MAGA cultists about inflation and it does not go well

-- On the Bonus Show: Key takeaways from the far right surge in European Parliament, 20% of Latino voters are leaning towards third party candidates, the latest drama with SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito and audio recordings, much more...

People

David Pakman, Sean Hannity, Donald Trump, Joe Biden

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David Pakman
I have new crime data to share with you today, and it may not shock some of you that we continue to see a sustained and pervasive decline in crime, all kinds of crime, in the United States.

The reason it might not be surprising to you, but it would be surprising to the regular consumers of Fox News and other right wing media, is that one of the greatest stories that has been told over the last few years, in the absence of any serious criticisms of the Biden administration, is that it's really dangerous out there. Carjackings and sexual assaults and murder and all categories of crime that, of course, still exist in a country of 340 million people, but continue to decline, much broader decline, by the way, than anything we would just say is thanks to Joe Biden, but continuing to see these declines during the Biden administration. Now, they've already got their talking points. They've already got their rebuttals. We're going to go through them one by one so that you can be prepared and we can really kind of think through whether any of the criticisms of these data are valid. But starting at the top, ABC News reports, FBI's latest data shows historic drop in crime. Reported incidents of violent crime dropped 15%, according to the FBI data. When you read into this further, you see that this applies to really all types of crime. Murder down 26%.

And you can go and read through it, property crime, all sorts of different crime. So why is it that we see this and yet 26% reduction in murder, 25% reduction in rapes, 13% reduction in aggravated assaults, 18% reductions in robberies. And yet this is not going to be convincing to the crowd that insists it's more dangerous than ever out there. And if they can somehow blame undocumented immigrants or documented immigrants, whatever, they'll blame whoever they can if they can get away with it. Why is this the case that we continue to hear these talking points from them? Well, part of it is they don't really have that much else to offer, and so they have to insist that crime is up. But let's talk through some of their rebuttals. One thing that you will see is, you know, David, you said this is based on reported crime. The truth is they will argue crime rates are actually up. But people are so disgusted with the sad state of affairs with regard to crime that they've stopped reporting crimes. There are so many crimes and the police do nothing about it. Everybody's helpless that people have stopped reporting crime, and therefore it looks like there's less crime, but there is actually more. The problem with this argument is that even if it were true that people have stopped reporting crime to police because it's gotten so bad, we have what are called independent victimization surveys. The Bureau of Justice Statistics conducts an important one, and there are others. And that goes and just asks people, a statistically significant sampling of folks, have you been the victim of, and do you know someone who has been the victim of all of these types of crime?

And what we find is that the independent crime victimization surveys track the official crime data in parallel. So they have not presented any evidence that people no longer report crime. And we have evidence that the reported crime rates mirror those of independent victimization surveys. So that's not a very good argument for them. Second argument that they will make is that the data the FBI has simply is inaccurate because many police departments no longer trust the FBI, or for whatever reason, police departments aren't reporting their crime data to the FBI. The reality is, is that we have long debunked this. Number one, most police departments, if they want to maintain federal funding, are required by law to report crime data to state and federal agencies. If they aren't compliant, compliant, they can be penalized and lose federal funding. So it's just not true that willy nilly, police departments are sick of wokeness or something, and they're no longer reporting crime statistics to the FBI. There is absolutely no evidence of that. And secondly, it is always the case that some departments don't report either because their data is late, incomplete. They have exemptions or whatever the case may be. But we have had that going on for decades. It is not a new thing that some police departments don't report their data. There certainly is no swelling of that number of police departments. So that's not a good argument. Argument number three that we will hear is that while overall crime rates maybe are down, certain areas or certain specific types of crime in certain areas will have increased.

Well, it's certainly true that you can have a broader trend going one way and you can find locations where maybe it's going the opposite way. I mean, listen, Oklahoma City now has a higher crime rate than New York City. Oklahoma as a state now has a higher crime rate than New York as a state. Oklahoma is having a problem.

But that doesn't change the fact that overall the crime rates are going down, and it simply shifts the areas where we should be focusing. And then number four is sort of like a catch all. When they've gone through number one, two, and three, and we've debunked it, they will go to crime is up because Democrats defunded the police.

They're lying about everything. They're making up the statistics. You can't trust any of it. That's a really hard one to argue with because they didn't reason their way into that belief. So we're not going to be able to reason them out of it. It is important to mention police have not been defunded, certainly not by the federal government. Joe Biden has certainly not defunded any police. What we have seen is that while most police departments have not seen significant cuts, there are some police departments that have implemented reforms. Like for example, we don't always need someone with a gun going out to certain calls. We could maybe send out a social worker. And in general, outcomes are actually better when that's what police are doing. So extraordinary data here. As far as crimes go, there are three or maybe four common refrains that we will hear from the right to insist that you can't trust this data, but they aren't able to bring any actual counterfactuals to the table. It's only hyperbole, speculation and conspiracy theories. Right on schedule. People around failed former president and convicted felon Donald Trump are starting to float the idea that he shouldn't go to the debate with Joe Biden that is scheduled for just two and a half weeks from now. We are 16 days away from the first presidential debate June 27 between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And Sean Hannity is now floating the idea, you know, maybe Donald Trump shouldn't go. And I can assure you Hannity wouldn't be doing this unless this is something someone floated to him and probably someone close to Trump.

So we'll read into it in a moment. Take a listen from last night. Speaker one. Now there are some even saying, Mark.

Sean Hannity
That Donald Trump might be wise to just pass on the first debate.

David Pakman
Wait till he's nominated, then debate him.

Sean Hannity
What would you say to that?

David Pakman
So do not be confused here. There are some people saying is code for this has been fed to me with Trump's approval. Hannity wouldn't randomly start talking on Fox News, which is a agenda set for the right. Fox News is an agenda setting network and Hannity is, has an ascend agenda setting show. He would not be saying it unless this was the message they were starting to push. And by the way, in a way it makes sense that maybe Trump doesn't want to show up in debate. Did you see his rant over the weekend about sharks and batteries and MIT?

If you saw this and ask yourself how is this guy going to hold it together for a debate with Joe Biden? I agree with why Sean Hannity is saying this. This clip I'm going to play for you here epitomizes why it makes sense for Trump to be rethinking this whole debating Biden very short period of time.

Sean Hannity
So I said, let me ask you a question. And he said, nobody ever asked this question, and it must because of MIT, my relationship to MIT. Very smart. He goes, I say, what would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you're in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery? And the battery is now underwater and there's a shark that's approximately ten yards over there. By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot of sharks. I watched some guys justifying it today. Well, they weren't really that angry. They bit off the young lady's leg because of the fact that they were, they were not hungry, but they misunderstood who she was. These people are crazy. He said, there's no problem with sharks. They just didn't really understand a young woman swimming. Now it really got decimated and other people to a lot of shark attacks.

So there's a shark ten yards away from the boat. Ten yards or here. Do I get electrocuted? If the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery. The boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted? Or do I jump over by the shock and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you, he didn't know the answer. He said, you know, nobody's ever asked me that question.

I said, I think it's a good question. I think there's a lot of electric current coming through that water. But you know what I'd do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I'll take electrocution every single time.

David Pakman
Those 85 seconds of sheer confusion and terror are enough to make anybody think twice about sending that man to debate the president of the United States. So they are starting to lay the groundwork for Trump to back out if he decides that he has to with just 16 days to go. Hannity's mentioning it because it is an approved message. Now, will Trump back out or will he debate? I want to hear from you. Email me info at david pakman.com and let me know. Will Trump ultimately debate or will he back out? And by the way, if you think it's Biden who's going to back out, let me know. The mAGA, right, is insisting that Biden is going to have some kind of epiphany, some awakening in the next 16 days, or his staffers will say he's demented, we can't have him debate, and that it is Biden who will back out. If you believe Biden will back out of the debate, by all means let me know. Info at david pakman.com. we'll see what's on people's minds as far as this goes and follow up on it tomorrow or Thursday. Very quick break. We'll hear from a sponsor or two and then the show will continue.

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The info is in the podcast notes the David Pakman show does offer a full experience for our members. You can sign up at join Pacman.com dot. If you're hearing this message, you're not getting the full experience. And you could be. You really could be. We offer a daily extra show called the bonus show for our members, as well as commercial free audio and video streams of the show. Check it out at join pacman.com dot. Well, finally, Rudy Giuliani has showed up in Arizona, turned himself in, has been arrested and mugshotted, and what he said on his way out of court may stun you. Let's start with the facts. NBC News reporting Rudy Giuliani's mugshot released an Arizona fake elector's case Giuliani appeared for booking in Phoenix on Monday after he was served notice of his indictment during a celebration in Palm Beach, Florida, last month honoring his 80th birthday. Really couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Local officials have indeed put out the mug shot, and it is quite a mug shot. Rudy certainly seems very, very tickled by all of this. He posted a $10,000 bond in cash. This is all, I will remind you, in connection with this fake elector scheme. The idea was, what if we try to steal a Arizona from Joe Biden even though Biden won and Trump lost? Let's just sign up a bunch of random people to claim we are the electors and we are here to cast our electoral votes for the failed former president, then soon to be failed former President Donald Trump. It didn't work. It turns out that it was allegedly criminal.

Now here is the wild thing. On his way out of court, Rudy Giuliani was asked, any regrets with getting involved in this entire thing? And listen to what Rudy says.

Do you have any regrets about what.

Walter Willett
You did in Arizona after the election?

David Pakman
Oh, my goodness, no.

Sean Hannity
Why not?

David Pakman
I'm very, very proud of it. There was a substantial amount of vote.

Sean Hannity
Fraud that went on here that was covered up.

Probably one of the biggest conspiracies in american history.

David Pakman
There continues to be zero evidence of any vote fraud, election fraud, bamboo fibers on ballots, fraud.

Sandwiches in the bags that should have contained ballots, fraud. Ballots in the sandwiches that should, in the bags that should have contained sandwiches, fraud. Any combination of bags and sandwiches. There is simply no evidence of any of this. And when Rudy Giuliani says that it's something that he's proud to have been involved in, it is something that is potentially relevant towards sentencing. Something about absolutely zero remorse. No remorse whatsoever, period. So things continue to decline for Rudy Giuliani. As I've said before, there is a sort of greek tragedy element to this entire thing. And it's not about, oh, I feel so bad for Rudy because he's 80 and he's losing all his money and he may go to prison and he's lost his friends and he's, it's, it's not, I mean, listen, I don't, I don't personally have any issue with any of these people. I don't know any of these people. I don't wish people harm. But what, whatever it is, truly, as a political figure, a guy who has self destructed, and it's all due to his own doing, I wasn't a fan of Giuliani as New York City mayor, but there's no denying that his approval rating was high. He was seen as America's mayor, particularly in the aftermath of 911. And then he, uh, lost and squandered that public opinion, getting himself involved with Donald Trump, remaining involved with Donald Trump, where some other Republicans realized, hey, it's time to bail here, because this is getting completely ridiculous. Continuing to get involved with Donald Trump from a legal standpoint in the aftermath of an election that Trump simply lost, going around these different hearings and different courtrooms, and then ultimately getting involved in alleged crimes.

So, you know, sometimes I jokingly say it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. It's not about Rudy Giuliani being nice, but this is all completely of his own making. He could have avoided all of this even if he was a Trump guy at the beginning by saying, listen, this is as far as we've got. We've come. I'm not going to start traveling the country arguing these esoteric and completely unbelievable and baseless conspiracy theories about what happened. This is as far as it goes. I'm 77 now, or however. However old he was at the time, but he chose not to do that. And now he could end up with no money and he could end up rotting in prison, and he really has only himself to blame. I want to talk about the philosophical significance of lying for years, about the size of one's crowds. And I'm going to use a couple new examples here to show how one repeats lies that are unbelievable in order to show devotion to the cult leader. And then I also want to look at some historical examples of how lying about something is seen, seemingly innocuous, as the size of one's crowd actually connects to some pretty horrible movements over time. So let's start with a couple of new examples. This goes back to Trump at the beginning of his presidency, immediately started lying about the size of crowds, specifically his inauguration crowd. And when his then spokesperson, a White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, did his first press briefing, Sean Spicer showed that in order to pledge allegiance to the cult leader.

You repeat the lies. You repeat the lies, even if they are obviously not believable. And Spicer came out and angrily said, this was the biggest crowd to ever witness an inauguration. And.

And we all knew it was a lie, and we all knew, whoa, this is going to be a lot worse than maybe we imagined. We have continued examples of this with Donald Trump's recent New Jersey rally, a rally which had, at the very most generous, 20,000 people there and that's like, if you include people who were just going to the beach that day and weren't even there for the Trump rally. So on to Fox News goes Michael Whatley, the Republican National Committee chairman, and he talks about there were over 100,000 people at that New Jersey route.

Sean Hannity
Speaker one, the other thing that we're seeing is that he is going into places like San Francisco and having very, very positive events. We were in Orange county. We were in Los Angeles over the weekend and had very great events down there as well. You talk about the Bronx event. You talk about going into New Jersey and having a rally with over 100,000 people. You know, President Trump.

David Pakman
Speaker one, there was no hundred thousand people. Now, their original lie was that there were 80,000 people.

The 80,000 included people there for the rally and people who simply went to Wildwood that day because Wildwood is a beach destination and were even in the outskirts and didn't have anything to do with the rally. They were just like, how many people normally come to Wildwood on a weekend to go to the beach? That's it. And this is a lie that it went from 80,000 to 100,000 to more than 100,000. And then republican congressman Jeff Van Drew appeared on Newsmax and said, you know, it may have even been 120 or even 130,000 people there.

Walter Willett
You know what, just speaking about New Jersey for a second, it was the biggest political rally in the history of the state of New Jersey. Well over 100,000 people all over the board. Look all over the beach. You see the size of the crowds. Nobody can deny it. I mean, we don't even know the total, 120,130, but it was huge.

David Pakman
120,130. It was huge. So listen just once more to get the numbers on the record. At most, 20,000 people went, but that includes people who were just like on the beach behind the event. Some of them were, as you can see here, there seemed to be sort of like rides and some kind of amusement park of some sorts there. Many of those 20,000 weren't even there for the speech. Now, lying about crowd size, for a politician might seem trivial, right? What about, did they, you know, do, do horrible things? Did they give away classified information to our enemies? Did they, whatever? Lying about crowd size comparatively could be trivial. But if you look at history, lying about the size of crowds is deeply connected to the tactics that have been used by authoritarian and fascist regimes dating back certainly 100 years, if not more. And when you lie about crowd, crowd size, you are employing a number of functions that are used to consolidate power, to undermine democratic institutions, to get people believing you rather than what their own eyes even tell them. And Trump has been doing this since day one of his presidency. When you undermine objective reality, because at the end of the day, we all see it, right? There's not a hundred thousand people there on screen right now. There's a few thousand. Even the 20,000 number is a stretch. We all see it. But when Trump and Jeff van Drew and these guys, when they come in and they undermine objective reality, what we can all see with our eyes, this is something authoritarian leaders often do do.

They will lie about a verifiable fact in order to create a sense of confusion and distrust. They will insist the smaller crowd is actually 100, 2130 thousand people. And when they do this, they challenge the public's ability to discern truth from falsehood. And this erosion of objective reality is a tool that they then later use as part of their regime to craft narrative, regardless of factual accuracy. I'll just draw, you're, you're seeing something on the Weather Channel.

I'll just draw the, on the hurricane map with my Sharpie, for example. It's a tool they use to later be able to lie to you about bigger things. And you'll go, well, you know, I kind of had the wrong impression about the crowd size, and I had the wrong impression about the hurricane map. Maybe Trump is right. The second way that lying about crowds is useful to authoritarians is that it allows them to establish control over information.

They make themselves the source of truth to get people in line. And Trump has been overt about this. He has said, I tell you the truth, don't believe what you are seeing and what you are hearing. And as sort of a third part to this, it also discredits media. So it's, number one or two, it makes Trump the source of truth about facts, but it also discredits media and makes people skeptical about the messages that they get from media. And, of course, being skeptical, healthily skeptical of media messages, is a critical part of critical thinking. But the sort of unending skepticism and the assumption that you can't believe anything you hear in the news is something that Trump has been trying to seed and has benefited from. And then, number four, when you start lying about seemingly trivial things, you normalize bigger and bigger lies. And we have many analogies to this.

If you go to Nazi Germany, oh, David, sir, how can you. The nazi regime was notorious for its propaganda, and it included lies about how popular was Hitler and how unanimous was public support of Hitler. And Hitler's minister of propaganda really mastered the art of repeating trivial lies to get them accepted as truth, and then sell bigger and bigger lies to the german people. Soviet Union is another example. Under Stalin, the soviet regime would often falsify the participation numbers at political events. It's exactly what Trump has been doing for seven years now, or however long it's been, the idea being make it appear as though there is far more support for the Communist Party than there actually is. And then example number three is North Korea. The north korean regime regularly inflates figures about how many people went to state events. They inflate figures about the internal popularity of the Kim family. And the whole point here is create an illusion of total control and adoration. Make yourself the source of objective truth and exaggerate in order to be able to get away with bigger and bigger lies. So lying about crowd sizes is not this benign political fib. This is a strategic move. It aligns with historical tactics of these authoritarian and fascist regimes. It distorts reality, it builds a cult of personality around the individual, and it also normalizes dishonesty, because when he does get caught lying, and he does very often, his. His supporters and his followers also don't care about when he gets caught lying.

So it's not this innocuous thing. We all need to understand it. And they continue to be on the same page about many of these lies.

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Walter Willett
Pleasure.

David Pakman
So I want to talk a little bit about diet and the concept of a healthy diet. You know, there's been so much disagreement for so long about what constitutes a healthy diet. We've got food pyramids. We now have influencers on social media platforms saying you should eat no meat, you should eat all meat. Saturated fat is the problem. It's actually carbs, it's sugar. It's refined sugar, but sugar and fruit is fine. We've gone back and forth about the health effects of eggs. We've gone back and forth about the health effects of coffee. I'm going because there's so much here. Let me first just start with is there any particular diet right now that has been studied to your satisfaction that we can say this is generally the healthiest way for most humans to eat?

Walter Willett
I think we can come pretty close to that.

I think it would be a little bit presumptuous to say, this is absolutely the healthiest possible way to eat. But we actually have a lot of evidence. And, of course, what we need, where there's so much disagreement and discussion, we need data, we need evidence, and we now have much more evidence than we did several decades ago. We have large cohort studies, like we've been conducting now for 40 years. Other cohort studies have been started around the world. We have lots of randomized intervention trials looking at shorter term effects. So when we put that evidence together, we have a lot more confidence in what can be a healthy dietary pattern. And there's more than one way of eating in a healthy way. There's lots of ways to eat badly, though. So, yes, we know quite a bit, and we can see very clearly who follow one of these general healthy dietary patterns, live longer, have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, cancer, many other adverse outcomes. So we have strong evidence that can point us in the right direction.

David Pakman
What direction is that? What diet is that?

Walter Willett
Right.

I think at this point in time, we have the best, the strongest evidence for something we might call a traditional mediterranean diet.

Partly some of the evidence comes from thousands of years of people following this kind of diet. And then more recently, we've studied this formally. And when people were consuming that kind of diet, say, in Greece in the 1960s, they were living men four years longer than Americans were, despite a very simple health care system. And a lot of things that we would say are necessary for a healthy life. Many were smoking at high rates at that point in time. Now, we've looked at that healthy mediterranean dietary pattern in our own studies. Other people have done so in various countries around the world, and very consistently, people are very healthy in many respects following that general dietary pattern within that.

David Pakman
Framework, which is a framework that I know a bunch of cardiologists, they all tell me the same thing. It's generally the diet that I sort of try to follow. Even within it, there are details that seem sort of nebulous to me. So I'll give you an example. Generically, I understand that the mediterranean diet limits red meat as an example. When I try to investigate, well, what does that really mean? Sometimes I will find that it can include up to 4oz of red meat per day, which seems like a lot to me, that, that, you know, I eat red meat probably two or three times a month.

Talk to us a little bit more about the details, like how much red meat would still be a mediterranean diet whose health effects, we would say, are not a concern.

Walter Willett
One of the key issues here that is underlying principle in nutrition, where in general, we live within a quite tight range for our total caloric intake, the issue is substitution. And if we're not going to eat so much red meat, then what do we eat instead? And that instead is very important, because if we replace red meat with potatoes or refined starches of other source, that won't necessarily be a good trade.

It could even be worse under some circumstances. But if we replace red meat with healthy protein sources like nuts, soy products, legumes, then we can see in our own studies and in randomized trials looking at blood cholesterol levels, that is a good replacement. It doesn't have to be 100% replacement of red meat, but generally, like you say, a few times a month or about once a week is what we've used as a target.

It's hard to say exactly what amount is best, because when we look at, say, risk of diabetes, type two diabetes, we see basically a linear relationship with more red meat, higher risk. So where do you draw the line? And that's a common question. Medicine like for blood pressure, blood cholesterol levels. Where do we draw the line when we have a pretty continuous, increasing risk? And we've looked, and the risk, we can say, is really quite low, with about one serving, three to four ounce serving a week.

David Pakman
A week, not a day. So that's critical once a week for three to four ounce serving.

Walter Willett
Right. And I think that's a very good target. It is about what people were consuming, red meat plus poultry, actually, in the traditional mediterranean diet back in the 1960s. So it may be a little bit more, a little bit less, but that's a ballpark right now. I think a good number to aim.

David Pakman
For just to stick with red meat for a moment. And if we get to things where your view is, you know, that that actually doesn't really matter, you're getting too, too nitty gritty. There is now a movement which you can find among these various influencers of questionable reputation and qualifications, to be perfectly honest, who argue the problem is not really the red meat per se.

It's two things. It's, number one, those who have diets very high in red meat often also are eating high levels of processed foods. And those are really the problem. And or number two, fiber has a protective effect to counteract whatever problems red meat may bring. And often those who eat a lot of red meat don't get the right amount of fiber. Are either of those possible valid defenses of red meat in your mind, or do they not really ring true?

Walter Willett
Well, it's not one or the other. Again, we can have too much processed food and poorly processed food.

Basically the main issues are refinement of sugar cane to make sugar and then consuming it as sugar sweetened beverages. The amounts of sugar are just so huge when we drink a soda or just refined starch itself, most of the nutritional value from the grain is stripped away in refining grains to make white flour, adding too much salt. Those are all refining or processing kind of steps, but they aren't necessarily independent.

It's not one or the other of red meat.

So there's something to consuming too much processed food. But the best is where we keep processed food low and keep red meat relatively low as well. And again, instead of red meat eating whole foods that are healthy plant sources of foods.

David Pakman
The latest research I found to prepare for our conversation today on eggs and coffee, just because again, they seem to be these sort of food footballs that are thrown back and forth over periods of time are, I'll give you my view as I understand it. Tell me what I, what I'm understanding correctly or not, with regard to eggs. Dietary cholesterol does not seem linked to your lipid panel saying high cholesterol, but saturated fat does seem to be connected. And so eggs as a total protein, maybe one a day over the course of a week, are probably fine and maybe even a healthy thing. But excessive saturated fat, particularly through processed food, is what you want to avoid. So that's my current understanding of eggs. On coffee. It seems generally no more than two or three cups of a day, at minimum, benign, maybe some mild health benefits, but not totally clear. What's your view on eggs and coffee right now?

Walter Willett
Those topics have flipped back and forth over decades. I think in the case of eggs, the fact that they seem to go one way or the other means that they're not the worst and they're not the best. They're somewhere in the middle. That's the kind of finding you'd expect to see. If something was not real bad or not real good, it would be a little bit ambiguous, and the associations might oscillate across different studies.

But again, the cholesterol from eggs and other aspects of diet does elevate ldl cholesterol a little bit. Saturated fat is the worst. Again, it's not all or nothing, but eggs contribute a little bit. So I still think if you're considering what to have for breakfast, I'm going to go with my steel cut oats, nuts, some fruit and some yogurt and have eggs sort of occasionally. I think, again, that combination of whole healthy foods on a daily basis is likely to be still a little bit better than having one egg a day. So eggs don't need to be eliminated. But I think keeping them more toward a few times a week is probably better. But again, there's not big differences there. So for some subgroups, you might get findings that are a little bit different. Coffee is easier though that there.

When I started off this work 45 years ago, coffee was a villain. It just seemed like it was too good. It had to be good for you. People liked it and there was something sort of dark and evil about it. But as the data have come in, it's really been, if you look at the good studies, very consistent that coffee is not associated with risk of pretty much anything that we subtype of glaucoma. That's quite rare, where we found a little increased risk, but we've looked under lots of stones and that's the most we found. On the other hand, the data are really consistent, showing lower risk of type two diabetes with coffee and lower risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality.

It seems even up to four or five cups a day, we see that reduction and risk with coffee consumption. So it doesn't have to be necessarily limited at two or three cups a day, but the caffeine in coffee does. Great insomnia and sleep difficulties for many people. I'd love to drink that much coffee. It's good, but I wouldn't sleep very well. So some people sort of forget that and having sleep troubles and don't put two and two together there. That that could be coming from too much coffee also, right.

David Pakman
Just because it lowers cardiovascular risk doesn't mean you necessarily want to have it after 02:00 p.m. that's right, yes.

Walter Willett
And there's lots of other ways to reduce cardiovascular risk, but you don't have to drink that coffee. You can get your school with other, other strategies as well.

David Pakman
You're. You're hitting a lot of the things I want to talk about. You mentioned yogurt. Okay, the next debate comes over full fat dairy versus not. On the one hand, one can reduce saturated fat with low or skim low fat or skim milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, et cetera. The counterpoint that I've read is that there's something about the full fat dairy that does something I don't totally understand. There's something special, there's something unique about it where in consumed in the full fat whole form, it does not bring with it necessarily the generic risks of high saturated fat. Where is the science on full fat dairy versus not.

Walter Willett
I think the science is actually quite strong, indicating that a large amount of full fat dairy is not good for cardiovascular disease. It will increase the risk.

It's very clear. And again, it's partly the substitution issue. I keep hearing back to that.

There have been careful randomized studies showing that dairy fat from either regular full fat milk or from cheese raises LDl substantially. If you compare it to plant sources of fat like olive oil, soybean oil and others, if you compare it to just refined starch, again, the dairy fat isn't necessarily that much worse than another unhealthy source of calories. And then we've looked in our long term studies at dairy fat compared to other sources of fat, and in over decades, we see higher risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality with higher dairy fat intake, again, compared to healthy plant sources of fat. So a diet or a food system that's producing a lot of dairy fat is not going to be optimally healthy.

David Pakman
So when it comes to something like whole milk yogurt versus nonfat yogurt, there's no downside to the non fat. And it's probably a good thing.

Walter Willett
Yes, although this gets into some bigger complicated issues about planetary health. And there I think we have. Dairy is a really important part of the picture there because producing dairy produces a lot of greenhouse gas emissions.

We did a very comprehensive look at a heat lancet commission report I co chaired a couple of years ago. But we found that basically we could not have a sustainable dietary, sustainable food system, basically a sustainable planet. If everyone went to three servings of dairy, or even two servings of dairy a day, we could do with about one serving a day. And if it's just one serving a day, then the fat content doesn't matter too much.

David Pakman
I gotcha.

Walter Willett
Also, it's probably better, not definitively so, to have that dairy as yogurt or cheese. There's some suggestion that that may be a better form to have dairy.

So I think we have to look at the big picture here because we're not going to have healthy people without a healthy planet. And high dairy consumption makes that healthy planet basically not the realistic possibility.

David Pakman
Another one of the popular talking points right now among nutritional influencers is that seed oils are inflammatory. And we can talk about whether that is something we even understand the meaning of. But generically, the idea is that canola oil, soy oil and other seed oils are not good for humans. I believe it's based on insanely high dose tests on rodents. And that not has not been demonstrated in humans. But you'll tell us in a moment, and those individuals argue, you want olive oil is okay, but really even better would be beef tallow butter and other things extraordinarily high in saturated fat. Is there anything to the seed oils or bad movement that rings true to you?

Walter Willett
This is nuts.

People should be eating nuts instead, actually. But, yeah, I just, it's hard to know where these people get this information. And it's just interesting sort of sociologic phenomena, how it just gets propagated information.

People are making money on it. It seems they figured out a way to see and so disinformation and make a living off of it. But we've known for decades that oils from seeds or seeds themselves, which are highly unsaturated, they do contain both omega six and omega three fatty acids, but both of those reduce ldl blood cholesterol levels. So you do get lower ldl, which would predict lower risk of heart disease with these seed oils. And then we've looked in our long term study over decades, and we actually see substantially lower risks of cardiovascular disease and total mortality with people who consume more omega six fatty acids.

And people have also done, and we've looked at this, how omega six fatty acids relate to inflammatory factors, and they don't increase inflammatory factors in the blood. About half the studies show a reduction in inflammatory factors in the blood. You want to have both adequate amounts of omega six and omega three fatty acids there. That may be too technical, too much detail for some people, but basically, seed oils are healthy. Now, with a little caveat. If you have all of your seed oils from plants that have almost no omega three fatty acids, then that could be a problem because you need both.

Canola oil and soybean oil are good sources of omega three fatty acids. So they in themselves would be okay.

Corn oil, sunflower oil have almost no omega three fatty acids. And if you have that as your only source of oil, and there's some parts of the world, eastern Europe has almost all their fat as sunflower oil or safflower oil. And that's actually not a good picture. They need a mix of oils would be much better.

David Pakman
So you've talked about Mediterranean. There are a whole bunch of other diets. We're not going to go through each of them. But there's paleo and keto, which are popular right now. There's vegan, which is popular in some circles, not always for the same reasons. There's the carnivore folks or the animal products only folks. There's gluten free, even for those who don't have celiac disease. Are any of these other diets generally speaking, and I don't have to, you know, if someone listens to this and says, hey, I switched to x and I feel great, I want to deal less with the anecdotal and more with the epidemiological. Is there anything interesting about any of these other diets to you at a public health level?

Walter Willett
Well, that doesn't get a simple answer, unfortunately, because most of these could be relatively healthy diets if in a certain way, like a vegan diet actually can be really healthy if it's primarily whole plant foods. But there's a lot of vegan diets that are full of refined starch and sugar. Yes, they're vegan, but they're nutritionally very unhealthy. And as a caveat, anybody following a vegan diet needs to get some vitamin B. Twelve and probably some other B vitamins or there will be serious neurologic damage. So I think anybody following a vegan diet should. This easiest thing is just to take a multivitamin, multi mineral, cost less than ten cents a day. You'll make sure you're getting enough of the B vitamins that way. And so the paleo diet also would be a healthy diet if it was largely plant based and it had healthy forms of protein and modest amounts of animal sources of protein, it could be quite a healthy diet that way. Basically taking grains out of the picture, which are not essential. And if you get your fiber from fruits and vegetables and nuts and legumes, yeah, that can be a relatively healthy pattern, but it doesn't. We don't have to. We can't have modest amounts, moderate amount of grains in our diet and still be healthy if it's primarily whole grains. But there are some diets that are just way too high in grains, mostly poverty diets. And around the world, that is a big picture. I would like to introduce one other diet.

Make your list a little bit longer. And that's what we call the planetary health diet.

It was the result of this international review we did a few years ago in the Eat Lancet commission.

And we went through, step by step, all the major food groups looking at what would be optimal amounts of grains, fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy oils, added sugar and put it all together.

It came out to be, when we put all the pieces together, something that was very consistent with a traditional mediterranean diet. We weren't used with that in the end, but that's where we ended up. And it's I think reassuring when we look at all the pieces and add them up, and then when we look at the whole package, we end up in the same place. But we took another step with the planetary health diet, where there was, it was omnivore, but might be called flexitarian and allowed some modest amounts of one serving a dairy a day and again, about one serving of red meat a week.

And we found that we actually could have a sustainable diet that would allow us to stay within greenhouse gas emissions and disastrous climate change, which, again, is an overriding issue. We have to look at everything we do and make sure we stay within planetary boundaries and not destroy our planet while we're feeding people.

David Pakman
Doctor Walter Willett, you've really answered most of my questions. Anyway, we could. We could go on. But I really do appreciate your time here today, and I know it'll be useful to the audience as well. Thanks so much.

Walter Willett
You're welcome. Glad to be with you.

David Pakman
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Failed former president and convicted felon Donald Trump delivered a disgusting anti choice message to the cult anti choice group called the Danbury Institute. If you've not heard of the Danbury Institute, this is a DC based group that focuses on trying to inject a christian worldview into civil society. We'll talk about exactly what their major points or issues are in a moment. Trump, delivering a virtual message to them during which he told corrosive and disgusting lies about abortion, said he wants to eradicate it entirely, and pledged his support to this completely disgusting group. Take a listen to this.

Sean Hannity
Speaker one, hello to everyone at the Danbury Institute and to all of the wonderful pastors and faith leaders, very respected people, gathered for the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting. That's a big deal. I want to thank each and every one of you for your tremendous devotion to God and to country and your tremendous support of me. And I hope I've earned it, because we've done things that nobody thought were possible to have gotten done. These are difficult times for our nation, and your work is so important, we can't afford to have anyone sit on the sidelines. Now is the time for us to all pull together.

David Pakman
And speaker one, as you can see, of course, the delivery is always strange. Trump is sort of swiveling as he reads and just running right through periods and sort of a little confused by what's on the teleprompter, which, of course is terrible when Obama or Biden use a teleprompter, but without when Trump is useless. But let's listen to now we get into the critical parts of this stand.

Sean Hannity
Up for our values and for our freedoms, and you just can't vote Democrat. They're against religion. They're against your religion in particular.

You cannot vote for Democrats, and you have to get out and vote.

David Pakman
And of course, Democrats are not against religion. They're against religion in general or any one religion being used as a determinant for how to organize civil society and how civil government should be run, which, by the way, happens to be what's in the constitution.

Sean Hannity
We have to defend religious liberty, free speech, innocent life, and the heritage and tradition that built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world. But now we are, as you know, a declining nation. And I might add, we are a seriously declining nation. Seriously. Seriously. And so sad. I know that each of you is protecting those values every day. And I hope we'll be defending themselves side by side for your next four years. These are going to be your years because you're going to make a comeback like just about no other group. I know what's happening. I know where you're coming from and where you're going, and I'll be with you side by side. So again, thank you once again for everything you do. And you have to get out and vote. Our religious leaders have to get their incredible people that love them so much and respect them so much, have to get them out to vote.

David Pakman
And understand, of course, that Trump is asking religious leaders to do political stuff in their tax exempt churches, which happens to be against what they are allowed to do in order to be nonprofits. But one of the, what you really have to understand here is this group, the Danbury Institute. It is an overtly socially extreme group. One of their major initiatives is to, quote, affirm the sanctity of human life. That's code for just banning abortion outright, completely and totally. And Trump is sucking up to these people because he needs their vote. Another priority for the Danbury Institute is affirming a biblical, biologically accurate view of sexuality and gender. In other words, being anti trans and making institutions also anti trans. So I think you get what sort of group this is, and Trump is aligning himself with them. Now. I think it bears repeating just once more.

I don't think Trump really cares that much about these issues. I think Trump is only seeing it through the prism of what's good for me. And Trump thinks it would be good for him to align with these groups so that then they will come and vote for him because he, I guess he assumes that the non religious aren't necessarily going for him, even though that's probably Trump's actual personal identity. So the Danbury Institute, if you haven't heard of it, a very troubling group to have involved in government in any way at all. I told you yesterday that I tried debating some magazine Twitter about inflation. Well, it went horribly wrong. So as a reminder, yesterday I tweeted out seeking feedback and dialogue. I said, for the people voting Trump because of Biden's inflation, can you account for, number one, why us inflation post pandemic is lowest among western rich countries to what Trump's plan is to lower inflation? And three, how low you want it since, since it's already at the economically desirable 3%? The whole point here is all these people saying, I'm not voting for Joe because inflation's out of control.

Answer these specific questions. I got three responses that were not just insults. Okay? And let's take a look at them. And I think you will see that the people saying Biden's inflation is out of control don't really know anything? Nikolai wrote back to me, inflation might be low, but things are insanely expensive and Biden has done nothing, as you can see, not answering any of my questions. What is Trump's plan? How do you account for inflation actually being lower than elsewhere? What is it that you would like to see the inflation rate be? So I wrote back. So no answer. Got it. And Nikolai wrote back again, I'm very left, but Biden is going to lose. He'd been awful for the economy. That is an answer. And of course, no explanation as to why. Nothing that I'm asking is being explained. So I followed up and I said, well, which metric are you looking at as evidence that Biden has been awful for the economy? On which date did the data suggest Biden ruined Trump's economy? What I want to know is for the people who say Biden ruined the economy, if it was great under Trump, Biden becomes president. When did the economy get bad? Was it on Biden's first day in office, his second? When? And Nikolai simply writes back, people's lives, then why are people upset? It's a talking point I like you to debunk. So nothing that we can work with here at all. Then we go to Bugenot, who wrote back to me and said, inflation rate is not inflation. When prices start to fall back to pre Covid levels, I will consider the economy recovered, which confirms that this person also has no idea what's going on.

I wrote back and I said, for prices to go to pre Covid levels, which is now almost five years ago, it would require a deflationary spiral that would be deadly to the economy. This response proves my point. The people saying this stuff have no clue why things, how things work. And Bu wrote back, your problem is that your party messed up the economy and now people want you to fix it. You say, oh, it can't be done. The Democratic Party is economically illiterate. It's why the called an inflation bill anti Inflation act. Money printer, go vroom is your only solution. So I tried to keep the conversation going. I said, oh, say more. On which date did the economy enter messed up territory? Presumably during Biden's presidency, which metrics indicated we switched from great economy under Trump to messed up under Biden. I'll wait. And then Bu says, the metrics of my life got harder even as I made more. The only metric that matters. So again, we got nothing here either. And then lastly, I got a response from a guy, Matthew Mastronardi, who said, number one, other countries are still poorer and are buying dollars and it lessens the hit by a little. But stakes here still cost $25. Not really an explanation. Number two, stop sending hundreds of billions of new printed money to fund wars. Again, not an answer to anything I asked. And three, I want inflation at zero.

And that's what I get because I buy bitcoin literally just effortlessly dismantled any point you thought you were going to make. And I responded, you realize zero inflation destroys the economy, right? Do you know anything about economics? And Matthew responds, haha. I wonder if you do. You're literally defending government with the right to steal time and labor away from people. That is gross. I think that Matthew is saying taxes are theft or some other wild libertarian argument. So listen folks, I tried it. I tried engaging, I tried saying, okay, you say inflation is too high. Where do you want it? Two people said they wanted at zero or one. One person said they want a deflationary spiral which would be terrible for the economy, reminding us the people you see saying this stuff don't really know much of anything. We have a great bonus show for you today. We're going to talk about takeaways from the far right surge in european parliament. We will talk about an advocacy group that finds a fifth of latino voters are leaning towards third party candidates. And we'll give you the latest on Samuel Alito and his wife. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show.

Sean Hannity
Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money defund themselves as bad.

David Pakman
Let's make a little money on the bonus show. Sign up@joinpacman.com you'll get instant access. I'll see you then. And we'll be back tomorrow with a new show.