6/18/24: Fake Biden videos going viral, MAGA openly rooting for attack

This episode discusses the rampant spread of misleading and doctored videos about Joe Biden and explores the broader implications of digital disinformation campaigns, particularly by MAGA supporters.

1. Fake videos are spreading faster than fact-checks can keep up, manipulating public perception.
2. MAGA supporters are setting low expectations for Trump to manage public anticipation of his debate performances.
3. The use of doctored videos is part of a broader strategy to avoid policy discussions and focus on character attacks.
4. Digital platforms struggle to manage the spread of misinformation, highlighting a need for accountability.
5. The episode underscores the significant impact of digital media on political campaigns and public opinion.

1: The Viral Nature of Misinformation

David Pakman discusses the challenges of debunking rapidly spreading doctored videos of Joe Biden, reflecting on the impact of misinformation in the digital age. He cites an article discussing the viral nature of Republican-created content and the difficulty in countering these narratives.

• David Pakman: "The lie is sprinting the hundred meter dash and the fact check is taking a stroll on the beach."

2: Comparing Public Figures

Pakman suggests viewers watch speeches from both Biden and Trump to spot the differences in coherence, policy understanding, and public interaction, illustrating the misleading aspects of viral videos.

• David Pakman: "If you watch an hour of each of them, the contrast in coherence and engagement with reality is stark."

3: The Role of Digital Platforms

This chapter explores the responsibility of digital platforms in spreading misinformation and the potential measures to mitigate this issue.

• David Pakman: "How do you attach a fact check to a thousand different videos spreading across platforms?"

1. Verify before sharing: Check the authenticity of political videos before sharing them on social media.
2. Educate others: Inform peers about the common tactics used in misleading videos to prevent the spread of misinformation.
3. Support fact-checking organizations: Contribute to or promote groups that work to verify information and provide clear fact-checks.
4. Advocate for platform accountability: Encourage social media platforms to take stricter measures against the spread of false information.
5. Stay informed: Follow a variety of news sources to get a well-rounded view of political news and avoid echo chambers.

-- On the Show:

-- Reece Peck, Associate Professor at the City University of New York and author of the book "Fox Populism: Branding Conservatism as Working Class," joins David to discuss his latest op-ed in the Hill, “Trump, the UFC and the New Conservative Culture War.” Get his book: https://amzn.to/3VNRyqW

-- Bogus videos of President Biden's supposed "dementia" are going viral so quickly, fact-checkers are struggling to keep up

-- The latest conspiracy about who will replace President Biden on the 2024 Democratic ticket shifts from Michelle Obama to Hillary Clinton

-- Donald Trump's memory problems are reportedly so bad that he completely forgot meeting and being interviewed for an hour by author Ramin Setoodeh

-- Republicans are increasingly rooting for a terrorist attack before the election under the belief that it will help Donald Trump defeat Joe Biden

-- Sean Hannity and Lara Trump start to panic about Donald Trump's forthcoming debate performance and start to lower expectations

-- Kari Lake makes a number of unhinged allegations about Hunter Biden in the latest effort to continue to focus on him in the absence of any real Joe Biden scandal

-- On the Bonus Show: Donald Trump calls for ending taxes on tips, US Surgeon General wants social media warning labels, US sues Adobe for "deceiving" subscriptions that are too hard to cancel, much more...

People

Joe Biden, Donald Trump

Content Warnings:

None

David Pakman
Welcome, everybody. I received a lot of positive feedback about yesterday's story showing the viral Biden wanders away video, which was cropped into insanely vertical fashion, and then comparing it to the full video and showing how these doctored and edited videos are going viral very quickly. I want to talk about the broader issue here, which is no matter what I can do to debunk a single video and show you how it's been deceptively edited and it doesn't represent reality, no matter how many times I do it or how quickly I can do it, these videos are going viral so quickly and on so many platforms that it's actually very difficult to keep up. And there's a very good article on MSNBC, on Nbcnews.com, rather, from Alex Siteswald, which talks about this. And the article is called misleading. Republican videos of Biden are going viral. The fact checks, fact checks have trouble keeping up. One democratic strategist said the lie is sprinting the hundred meter dash and the fact check is taking a stroll on the beach. So it's never going to catch up. And of course, this is very similar to the dynamic that exists with corrections, some front page newspaper story, and then three days later, a correction at the back of section b. Way fewer people see the correction at the end of section b than the, than the number that see the erroneous information on the front page story. And this all really comes from desperation from the Republican Party. We're going to see them now starting to set expectations for Donald Trump in next week's debate lower and lower, because obviously some of them are seeing what is going on with Donald Trump.

And so the reason that the Republican Party is resorting to these sort of cheap fakes, you know, what's next, Biden's an alien or something, is that they know that if someone sits down and watches an hour of Biden and an hour of Trump, it becomes very evident who the risk is and who isn't making any sense.

I actually think that that's sort of the challenge, and I would even challenge people to do this if you, you know, we do an hour show roughly, in an hour show. I can't include an hour Biden speech and questions. And a Trump hour speech and questions. Some of Trump's hour speech has turned into 2 hours because he's rambling and sometimes tells the same stories multiple times. But that would be the challenge. Sit down and watch a full Trump speech and a full Biden speech. And what will you see? Well, in the Biden speech, you will see an individual who understands policy, particularly when it comes to the foreign policy discussions that he's been having and sometimes will kind of mumble or stutter, something he's dealt with his entire life. And yes, sometimes he will talk really slowly and quietly, and we wonder, did he just lose his train of thought there for a moment? That's what you will see with Biden when he speaks for an hour, as he did in the State of the Union, much longer. On the other hand, if you watch an hour speech with Trump, first of all, if you turn it on at the time it's scheduled to start, you'll wait an hour before it even starts, because Trump's perennially late to every speech that he gives. But once the speech actually starts and you watch 60 minutes of the Trump speech, you will see a guy who will very often repeat the same nonsensical or imaginary stories.

He will glitch and be so unable to even continue speaking that he will physically have a shaking reaction and then go on to something else, sometimes pointing to someone in the crowd that he recognizes. He will sometimes make up words. He will sometimes misstate basic facts and have no idea that he is misstating them. Who the president is, who he defeated, who he ran against, who Obama ran against, basic facts. And he will just continue on because he has no awareness that, oh, I just said something that doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

And sometimes the stories he tell makes such little sense and seem like free association, a sort of verbal inkblot of sorts, that you will see the crowd become visibly confused about what even the general topic is. Was the topic electric vehicles, or sharks, or electrocution, or batteries, or wind farms or obama or Biden? What was the topic here?

So that is what you will observe if you watch an hour of each of them. But the viral videos of Biden often slow down or often cut in ways that are not representative of reality or sometimes cropped so you can't see what it is Biden is looking at. They've done this one many times. There's one time where, remember, Biden turned and stuck, stuck his hand out, sort of like, hey, great to see you, or whatever, and it makes it look like he's looking at nothing. And then you see the wider shot and at a 45 degree angle behind him, there's a group of people that he's talking to, and that's what it is. So the only thing more consistent than the misleading nature of these republican videos is the republican party's desperation to have the lies sprint out there and leave the truth to sort of try to walk up to the finish line while they are completely devoid of any serious policy discussion. The real, the funny thing is there is a program of policy that Republicans have for next year. If Trump wins, it's Project 2025, but they don't really want to publicly talk about it. Bannon will sort of allude to it. Steve Bannon and his programs, some other Republicans will kind of allude to. We got to deal with the administrative state, but the only real policy they have is the disastrous Project 2025, which when people hear about it, they hate it. So they talk about it very, very little. So the republican spin machine is working overtime. They're creating fiction after fiction. And when you can't win on merit, when you can't win on policy, when you can't win because the things you want, like overturning Roe v. Wade, are extraordinarily unpopular, you go to these cheap tricks.

I read somewhere, maybe it was an Alex's article or elsewhere, they're trying to win with pixels instead of policy, for lack of a better term. And these misleading videos are an extraordinarily effective camouflage for the complete lack of platform as a party and for the fact that Donald Trump's brain seems to be melting and turning to tartar sauce. Let's call it tartar sauce. So, um, this is.

I don't have a solution right now. I'm trying to kind of explore the problem with you, but it's hard to fact check because so much of this stuff comes out and it spreads way more quickly. And when it spreads a thousand in a thousand different videos on tick tock and on 250 different right wing shows, how do you attach a fact check to that?

Speaker B
You.

David Pakman
You can't really do it at any, a real, real way. As the technology improves to do deepfakes and other AI based deceptive video, this is going to become even more difficult. And it is a way to exploit fears and to sort of distract. So do we need to focus on holding platforms accountable for spreading falsehoods? I don't know. I don't really know how you do that. I think there's risks to that. But it is a relentless spread of disinformation. They are doing well with it because they are spreading it faster than we can fact check it, and it is going viral faster than the fact checks are going viral. So that's where we are at least. There are articles being written about the fact that this is going on and sort of alongside the viral video disinformation are the conspiracy theories and the new very low expectation setting. And I want to talk about that next. They have a new version of Democrats are going to replace Biden. You might remember that for a while now it's been Michelle Obama. I remember when I was on a trip last summer and I recorded a show remotely and we talked about, why do they keep talking about Michelle Obama is going to replace Biden? Michelle Obama has been very clear that she doesn't want to be president. And that was a year ago. It's been now a year. Joe Biden is the presumptive nominee.

He did extraordinarily well in what was not really even a real primary because there was no serious challenge to Joe Biden and he is going to be crowned the democratic nominee at the DNC in August. So they've stuck with Michelle Obama, but they are also now slowly shifting to a different one, which is Hillary. Yes, Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton, the 2016 democratic presidential candidate who has made absolutely zero indication that she is even considering or thinking about ever running for president again, never mind the idea that she would be swapped in sometime over the next seven weeks between now and the DNC. Here is Jesse waters speaking to Jeanine Pirro yesterday on Fox News. And he goes, now they, they are talking about swapping in Hillary.

Jeanine Pirro
That only fires up the hyper partisans on the left.

David Pakman
I saw a poll the other day.

Jeanine Pirro
The expectations for Joe Biden, half the country judge thinks the man's going to wander the wrong way off the debate stage.

David Pakman
That's how low.

Jeanine Pirro
I shouldn't even say that because it's already too low. But you now have a poll out in Iowa.

Donald Trump is beating Joe Biden by 18 points.

What does that mean for Michigan, Wisconsin? This thing looks bad.

David Pakman
And now they're talking about swapping Hillary.

Jeanine Pirro
In if he bombs in this debate.

Speaker B
Well, you know what, Harold? Nobody wants to see the president fail.

David Pakman
But the whole idea that, you know.

Jeanine Pirro
They'Re out there saying this election is not about age, Joe and the other guy that only fires up the hyperpartis.

David Pakman
So they say they are now talking about swapping in Hillary. No one is talking about swapping in Hillary. It, we haven't heard it anywhere. There is zero conversation happening about swapping in Hillary Clinton for Joe Biden. And of course, it used to be that everybody said it was going to be Michelle Obama. Now they're saying Hillary. Quite frankly, I don't know why it makes a difference. The real story would be Biden being swapped. I don't know why it even matters whether it's Hillary or Michelle Obama. But the reason that now they're floating Hillary is there's a very clear, real underlying intent here, and it's to undermine Biden's candidacy by creating uncertainty. Although in particular, it doesn't really matter whether it would be Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton. The big story would be, oh, the guy who is president said, I'm running for reelection, won all the primaries to the extent that there was a primary, even though there really wasn't. But even when he wasn't on the ballot and there were write ins, he still overwhelmingly won. The idea is shift the baseless rumors, create chaos, create uncertainty, and underlying all of it, wanting to destabilize the current administration, destabilize the political system, take it apart, as they say, we're going to dismantle the administrative state. Underlying all of this is a desire for the president to fail. Jeanine PirRo there said, it's not that, you know, we don't root for the president to fail. That's exactly what they're doing.

Later, I'm going to have an example of how they are actually rooting for a terror attack as well. Some of these folks, Sean Hannity, Lara Trump, they have calculated if there were to be a terror attack that we could plausibly pin on Biden, we might be able to use that to simply defeat him in November. I actually don't know that that would work. We'll talk about that later. But they do want to see the president fail, and they do want to see the country fail. And by the way, they regularly say that the country sucks now. It's not a great country.

Old Republicans, and by old, I'm only talking about 16, 1820 years ago. And before that, they never went as far as to say the country is bad. The country is not great. The country sucks. They would say this is the best country, period.

We could use better leadership. I have a better vision now. It's different. It's, the country is a disaster. We're not great anymore. This is not a great country under Biden. It would be great again if you voted for me. That's also a change to the republican rhetoric where now they are willing to openly say this country sucks, even though it'll get fixed right away if you elect me. So of course, there is no evidence at all that anyone is talking about Hillary Clinton. If you've seen her recent public appearances, by the way, there is not even a drop of suggestion in her that she is even positioning herself to be considered as someone to replace Joe Biden. And quite literally, unless Biden is completely incapacitated, and which is the same standard, by the way, with Trump. Unless Trump is completely incapacitated. These two are going to be the nominees. So we're going to take a very quick break. After the break, an extraordinary new story that I want to discuss regarding Donald Trump. Completely forgetting an hour interview that he did makes no sense. Extraordinarily concerning. Make sure that you're subscribed to the YouTube channel. We will hear from a sponsor or two and be right back.

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Donald Trump
The bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad.

David Pakman
And for people who don't remember that clip is actually Alex Jones talking about our bonus show. We've not repurposed that from something else in Alex Jones talking. He's talking about the David Pakman show bonus show, which he hates and is furious about as he continues to defame people and have massive multi million dollar judgments. Multi billion, really, uh, against him. So put a little tear in Alex Jones eye. Get yourself a membership at join Pacman.com. all right, we have a new report firsthand. This is not, oh, unnamed sources. Anonymous. No, this is a direct primary source who says Donald Trump's memory is so bad he didn't remember that I interviewed him for an hour. This is, I mean, listen, I know that they are desperate, desperate, desperate, desperate to make Joe Biden seem like the one who doesn't know what's going on, but that is becoming increasingly difficult to do. Author Ramin Satude appeared yesterday on MSNBC and said, I interviewed Trump, sat with him for an hour. He wasn't doing a lot of interviews at that time. And then he had absolutely no memory whatsoever of the fact that I had interviewed him for an hour. Trump is having severe memory issues. Here is the interview from MSNBC yesterday.

Ramin Setoodeh
The thing that I think is really interesting, because I really got to know Donald Trump post presidency, and I got to see what he was like. And over the weekend, he was talking about how Joe Biden needs to take a cognitive test. Joe Biden, you know, isn't all there. Donald Trump had severe memory issues. As the journalist who spent the most time with him, I have to say he couldn't remember things. He couldn't even remember me. We spent an hour together in 2021, in May. And then a few months later, I went back to the White House. I went back to Trump Tower to talk to him about his time in the White House. And he had, I said, you know, he had this vacant look on his face, and I said, do you remember me? And he said, no. He had no recollection of our lengthy interview that we had. And he wasn't doing a lot of interviews at that time. So I think that the american public really needs to see this portrait of Donald Trump, because this shows what he is like and who he is and who he has always been.

David Pakman
I want to mention that one reaction to this was, it's not that Trump doesn't remember because he has a memory problem. It's that Trump doesn't remember because he's a complete and total narcissistic individual. And he just, he'll remember an attractive woman who interviewed him. And reportedly that makes him interested in going to interviews, according to what some of the Nelk boys have said publicly. But he just doesn't remember people because he's a complete and total narcissist. The problem with that story is that people around Trump for a long time have said, no, no, no, he does remember people. He shows up at Trump Tower, and he knows Tom and Steve and Nancy. He knows the janitors, he knows the trash people, the maintenance people, the front desk people. He remembers everybody and asks about their kids and so on and so forth. So it's actually contrary. On the one hand, these right wingers love to say Trump's such a great guy. Everybody who used to work with him when he was really more involved in real estate would say he remembered everybody. He would say, how's the kid? How's their braces? How's that tooth? Or whatever? He had an incredible memory for it. And@the.net. at the same time, now they're saying, well, no, no, no. It's not that Trump's memory is the problem. It's that he's such a narcissist that he doesn't care about remembering anybody else, and that's what's going on. Well, but that's the opposite story that the very same people were telling several years ago.

And the vacant look that Satude describes, that's something we know very well. Trump gets that look during his speeches all the time. And you need look only to last week's rally or over the weekend's rally, where Donald Trump, in a moment of incredible irony, if you want to call it that, was angrily demanding that Joe Biden be cognitively tested while wrongly saying that the doctor who tested him is Ronnie Johnson, when in fact, Trump's doctor who tested him was Ronnie Jackson. So I know there's a lot of people saying, well, then test both of them. I have absolutely no problem with that. I say, go ahead and do it. I would want to know the results. But the idea that it's obvious that Trump is fine, given his frequent lapses for getting names, the vacant looks, uh, the confused statements about what's going on in the world, and the other thing that I think is very important is there's been this narrative that Biden can't do anything without a teleprompter, Trump can't do anything without a teleprompter. And after years of saying, Obama that needs a teleprompter, and Biden needs a teleprompter, when you take Trump's teleprompter, away. When the teleprompter has failed from a technical standpoint during recent speeches, it becomes an unintelligible experience to listen to a Trump speech. And that, to some, highlights the severity of what's going on with Donald Trump, which is that his campaign is really, especially in the evening hours, managing Trump's engagements in a way, to just keep him on the teleprompter.

And yet a lot of the media discussion about this is just fixated and obsessed with President Joe Biden. So the campaign is going to at least presumably put these two men more and more in situations where they won't have the safety net of a teleprompter. The debate next week is going to be one of those moments. And I'll tell you part of the reason I'm, I'm not looking forward to the debate, to hear the tax plans of Biden and Trump. I know what they're going to be. Biden wants a tax on billionaires. Trump's talking about. What about just going with a flat tax or let's lower taxes? Or you know what we, I know what that is. What I want to see is do they look, as doctors like to say, oriented to time and place?

Do they relate to each other in anything approximating a normal sort of social disposition?

Does Biden wander off stage confusedly, or is it Trump who seems confused? I mean, a lot of what we're going to look at here, especially as the stakes are so high, and part of it is Project 2025, and we'll release our white paper explaining what those stakes are. Really soon, the american people are going to be looking very closely at what they can glean about mental fitness of their leaders. That's okay. That makes sense when they're both around 80 years old. What doesn't make sense is that on the one hand, we have these five alarm fires within a couple of months. He forgot that I was one of the only long form interviewers who went to Mar a Lago to interview him, says Rahman Satuta Day. And meanwhile, they're releasing these toothpick thin videos of Joe Biden appearing to be talking to no one, when in reality he's talking to people, which you can see in the original video. So a lot of this is media irresponsibility.

I'm glad that it is becoming more of a corporate media story, and we've been talking about that. And we will mean listen, depending on what happens at the debate next week, this could be in very, very sharp relief. They are now openly rooting for a terror attack before the election because they believe that it will help Joe Biden be defeated by Donald Trump. Who is they? The usual suspects. It's Hannity, it's Lindsey Graham, it's others. This isn't the only example. We, they often couch it as concern trolling predictions. You know, I'm really worried that with the way things are going with Biden and how no one respects Biden, that our adversaries are going to see this as an opportunity to attack us on american soil. And of course, the more you talk to them about it, you realize it's actually a wet dream about what they see as a path for Donald Trump to defeat Joe Biden in November. Terrorist attack that they can blame somehow on Biden hurts Biden and lets Trump win. Here is Sean Hannity again.

It's, something really bad is coming. It's going to be 911 or worse. They've been saying this since Biden became president. It's almost like they want it to happen.

Jeanine Pirro
Speaker one when you have all of these people coming from our top geopolitical foes with ties to radical islamic terrorism, that there are terror cells in this country and 911 or worse is coming now, it's not a matter of if. To me it's almost a guarantee.

I hope and pray to God I'm wrong. I think I'm wrong. I've been saying it over and over again when you have all.

David Pakman
So he is saying this because they are increasingly of the belief that something major needs to happen for Biden to lose.

And they aren't wrong.

Obviously hoping and praying, as Hannity says, for Biden to be completely incapacitated at next week's debate, that would help them. I'll be honest, if Biden really just can't even orient himself to what's going on at the debate, it will be bad for Biden. I don't expect that to happen. I think it's as likely or more likely it happens to Trump. But the other possibility is that there's an attack they can blame on Biden and say this is why we need the strength of Donald Trump. Now, as far as the implied notion that the individuals who would commit these attacks would come over the US Mexico border, if only we had a bipartisan plan to enhance security at the border. Oh, right, we did. And Trump said kill it because Trump wants to keep this as an issue to run on. If they fix the border issue, then Trump can't run on fixing the border issue anymore, which, of course proves that they're not really serious about protecting the country from what they claim are the threats. All they really care about is winning elections here. And it needs to be made very clear that they see one of their best paths to winning as having an attack take place where there is loss of life that they can blame on Joe Biden. And it's disgusting. And this rhetoric really highlights how desperate they are. They have a, I'm using a charitable word here, Trump is a lackluster candidate. They have a lackluster candidate at the top of their ticket who's increasingly losing his mind, who can't remember anything, who's been convicted on 34 felony counts, has three more criminal cases against him, has been found civilly liable for sexual assault with a judge, which a judge said meets the New York definition for rape.

And they want to replicate Rudy Giuliani's surge in popularity after 911. There is a risk, though, and you might know what that risk is. Bush and Giuliani were in office at the time of 911, and their surge in popularity came from Americans rallying around those who were our leaders at the time.

Obviously, the risk to an attack, other than the fact that it's disgusting to hope for an attack. Right? I'm putting that aside for a second. There's a political risk to hoping for an attack while Joe Biden is president. And the risk is that instead of saying, oh, an attack happened under Biden, we have to now vote Trump. The risk is that the country actually rallies around Joe Biden. They are counting on the fact that if there is an attack, they will be so able to successfully pin it on Biden, I guess because they're assuming it'll be someone who came over the border and Biden didn't secure the border, and we can blame him for it. But there's a risk. And the risk is if such an attack happens, obviously, this close to an election, it's hard to predict, but that if such an attack happens, the conventional wisdom used to be war or terror attacks help the incumbent, no matter who that incumbent is. So I don't even know if it would work. But these people are desperate. Their priority is not the safety of the american people. Their priority is not what's best for the country. It's what's best for their party. And Hannity has always been a what's best for my party type of guy. It's disgusting. It's completely disgusting.

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Let's say you want to figure out if Trump did use a nazi slogan in a campaign video or if it's just a misunderstanding. Ground News is an app and website that gathers news stories from across the world and political spectrum, so you can decide for yourself. It's a great tool. I'm happy to be partnering with them for this video. Yes, Trump did in fact use a nazi slogan in a campaign video he posted and then he deleted it. On ground news, I can access almost 200 articles covering the story and see that only 17% of those are right leaning. No surprise there. Comparing coverage is interesting. Some sources on the left references language comparing him to Hitler, while on the right, RT highlights his explanation of the video and Israel's Arut Sheva highlights that he deleted it. The ground news blind spots feature will highlight stories like this that are disproportionately covered by either political side, so you are guaranteed to see the full picture. Sign up through my link for 40% off their vantage subscription, which gives you access to all of their features. Go to Ground News Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes it's great to welcome to the program Rees Peck, associate professor at the City University of New York, also author of the book Fox branding Conservatism as Working Class. He recently published a very interesting op ed in the Hill called Trump, the UFC and the new conservative Culture war. You know, Reese, I'm really interested in talking about this because these UFC events that Donald Trump attends alongside UFC owner Dana White, and the crowd seems to go crazy for Trump.

I'm very interested in how UFC has become this sort of cultural flashpoint for the american right wing, because I'll be honest, like, I grew up in a liberal area, so I had friends that like UFC, they're all liberal. So it's not the case that UFC is objectively only appealing to right wing people. And yet the events and the embracing of Trump and even by the fighters, to some degree, seem to be doing something culturally that I want to talk more about with you. So, like, give us an overview of what you think is going on here with UFC and Trump and MAGA.

Speaker one.

Speaker B
Yeah, I'll start by saying I'm a lifelong UFC fan. I wrestled in high school. You know, I watched it back in the blockbuster video days when you couldn't even get it on pay per view.

And you're right that it isn't. It wasn't historically just, like, coded as republican partisan, you know, sport.

Jeanine Pirro
It.

Speaker B
It had. It celebrated its diversity because it's a global sport. It celebrated that it has women fighters, right. And many of them are LGBTQ members of the LGBTQ community.

So it really wasn't until 2016 where it became explicitly coded as kind of republican align when Dana White spoke at the Republican National Convention. Right. Supporting Trump. And it just kind of. It's been off to the races in terms of partisan politics since that moment. That was really, like, the juncture where it shifted and became kind of explicitly conservative.

David Pakman
And why is it that that has worked when, you know, you look at Major League Baseball and there's sort of this America's pastime and connections to a lot of different cultural events in history that don't necessarily code as liberal. Like, you could make the case that maybe Major League Baseball should be more visibly conservative, or college football is a tradition that is bigger in parts of the country that vote way more for republicans than they do democrats in general, on average down in the south? Like, what? Why is it that it has started to lean this way with regard to the public facing UFC audience and their reception of Trump?

Speaker one.

Speaker B
It's a tricky question to answer.

I think that those sports that you mentioned, they have kind of like a throwback to the network era of television where they're still trying to appeal to a mass audience. They don't want to alienate one group or the other. So it's really. I mean, we live in a world of niche tv markets and niche online video markets. Right? That's really where you have hardcore fans, they're small, but they're loyal, and you can make money off them because they're fanatic, they're into the brand. And I think the UFC really came of age in the social media era, right, because it was seen deviant and it was outlawed in a lot of states, right? John McCain famously called it a human cockfighting sport, and it was banned. So it really was not getting any love from network or cable television. So it had to lean into social media much more to circumvent the kind of gatekeepers. And it's always had a kind of countercultural like vibe to it because it has seen cage fighting and it's. It's kind of beyond the pale. It's outside of the realm of legitimate sports.

And it's gradually kind of tried to dance, do this tightrope of becoming mainstream, getting contracts with ESPN, right, enjoying the benefits of mainstream broadcasting and mainstream sports and branding. But at the same time, it's. It's. It hasn't escaped that early origin as a countercultural, kind of deviant extreme sport that a special fan base likes. So I think it's, that's already kind of baked in. And then you add partisan politics to it, and it just add, it adds another kind of layer of that niche branding.

David Pakman
It seems that there is definitely some overlap in terms of some of the fan base of UFC and those who like characters from the so called manosphere, manosphere influencers, the Tate brothers and others. I mean, Andrew Tate was a kickboxer. I don't know that he was ever in UFC specifically, but he was a kickboxer at one point. So it seems that there is, if we want to draw an analogy to what pseudo political movement does UFC most connect to, other than the presence of Dana white and Trump as individuals? There does, is there some overlap with the manosphere appeal?

Speaker B
Absolutely. I mean, we really need to pause and think about what does it mean that one of the most googled people in, you know, the last two years, Andrew Tate, started his career in kickboxing. Right. And what that says to you is that it has social currency to be in combat sports for young men particularly. Right. And that that is an apolitical thing that can lead to ideological conclusions. Right. It starts out as that's why you like him, but then he's starting to engage in political commentary about society, about gender, about the sexual marketplace. Right. And so it's one thing for a professor like me to speak to young men. They're like, ah, don't listen to this guy. Right? I'm not. I don't really respect that type of culture and that type of authority, but I do respect a guy that has this courage to go into a cage and fight another man. And it really does speak to in another way.

You know, we live in a world of hyper media saturation, where we think everything's fake, everything's a simulation, and there's nothing more real and authentic than a fight. Right? So there's something about fighting, particularly, that speaks to our kind of postmodern existence, where we kind of believe we see everything as, like, smoke and mirrors. We see everything as fake and staged and, you know, and so that we latch onto the things that are real and people like Tate, people. Joe Rogan, right, has a background in mixed martial arts, the other most popular, kind of one of the most popular online personalities in the world. So I really think, you know, progressives have to particularly have to think about that. Like, where are progressives gaining their cultural currency in politics?

And the right has definitely latched onto this idea. Tate once called himself an action hero, right? So he really lives up to this idea of a courageous fighter, a guy that's a manly man, alpha male.

David Pakman
Trump and some of the manosphere influencers will often try to portray themselves as really powerful and alpha, but also victims of just about everything. You know, we've talked about Trump before, and Trump's the victim of a rigged election system and of a weaponized justice system, and the media treats him unfairly, and regulators treat him unfairly. And culture, social media and cultural, you know, Hollywood treats him unfairly. The manosphere influencers, including the Tates, but also many, many others, you know, the platforms are limiting our speech, and then they're going after us in Romania on trumped up charges. As far as the Tates go, it's. It's simultaneously, we are victimized by everyone, but we're also Alpha and really powerful. Is that. Is that appealing to their followers in some way? Because you would think that if everyone can so easily make. Turn them into victims, it runs counter to being Alpha in some way.

Speaker B
Yeah, I mean, I've kind of grappled with this contradiction. You know, I think maybe this is an overly simplistic answer, but I think it really boils down to underdog stories that we. That in our kind of pop culture, in politics, populist candidates will use this underdog story where on one hand, they are courageous and Alpha, but on the other hand, they have to be under siege. There has to be some sort of villain, like a superhero movie, right? It's only as good as the villain, right? So they're always saying there's this idea of a power block and establishment, right, that is suppressing regular people. And then Trump and the Tates of the world are, like, the proxies. They're the avatars for, like, what the regular guy is going through, right. And they're. They're kind of guiding them out and taking on this heroic crusade against the powerful.

But it is, it is ironic because you could flip it as well, where they say liberals are the weakest people, and yet they're also the people dominating them. And, you know, the same contradiction works on the backside of the coin.

David Pakman
It seems. One of the other aspects to the, the manosphere in general is economic struggles, and more complicated dynamics are often supplanted with explanations like feminism, woke culture, dei, et cetera, as explanations for why things maybe aren't going as well as some would hope. Do you think that that's an effective strategy in terms of activating people or. Or not?

Speaker B
Yeah, this is one thing I try to get at in the piece that I really don't want. I think there's a typical way to approach the manosphere and Trump's kind of hyper masculinity, which is to simply say, look how vulgar it is. Look how reductive and reactionary and despicable it is. But people, that's like a surface level analysis of their rhetoric. When you dig deeper into it, you find out they're talking a lot about the economy. They're talking a lot about the struggles of the labor market, about what it is to have dignity today. If you can't get a good job and that you're not attractive as a marriage partner, you work at a service industry job, you can't buy a home. So they interweave the realities, the hard realities of our economy and how it's hard to find status and dignity in the economy. So I don't want people, people look at the incels or the people that like this content, and they just dismiss them as bigots and gross reactionaries, but they don't really have any other empathetic, like a more empathetic lens or approach to them that could see why people are lonely, could see why people are lacking meaning in their life and struggling. And what the manosphere does is say, yes, I see you. I see that you're struggling in the sexual marketplace to find, you know, a marriage partner. I see that you're finding a good job. But then they redirect and say, it's women, right? The problem is that women have too much power. Right. It's with their high credentials and this new pop culture that platforms them and centers their voices the most.

They're the enemy. Right. Not these deeper economic forces at play that are really the core of your hardship.

David Pakman
Right.

Speaker B
And so it's that maneuver that they do. It's that redirection that I'm interested in.

David Pakman
So if we loop this back to the, to the UFC stuff, is there some way in which some of the folks in that group you just mentioned with the struggles you just mentioned, where being part in some way as an audience member, especially if you can afford to go in person, scratches that itch that you're describing and connects to it in some kind of relevant way psychologically?

Speaker B
Yeah, I think so. It's like, if you feel like all these systems around you are out of your control, one thing you can control is your fitness. Right. You can control, like training in jiu jitsu or fighting. Like, these are things that are immediately attainable, that you see transformation.

And I don't necessarily think those things are toxic. It's the way the kind of. Right. Weaponizes them that lead them to toxic kind of conclusions. Right. It's like, I have to be a dominating man, ultra aggressive guy, and they narrowly define what it means to be a man, or they narrowly define what masculinity is. That's the problem, not masculinity, per se. It's their kind of warped version of it and reductive version of it. And so that's what I think it does scratch an itch, but it's like, where, how are you scratching that itch? And what's the political significance? And how is that an entry point into either, I would say, good politics and good ideas and good solutions, or more reactionary, unhelpful, toxic kind of directions?

David Pakman
Speaker one. When it comes to the November election, obviously it's very hard to say when an election will come down to probably under half a million votes in three to five states.

There's no one thing ultimately that is going to be definitively pointed to as a difference maker. But is UFC and the environment that's being built around Trump?

Is it even conceivably significant enough, if we include all of these other outcroppings of it, to influence the election results in maybe even a single state? Or is this really an artifact of social media, that in the same way that in 2020, if you looked at Reddit, you would have thought Bernie would easily be the nominee, and it turns out it didn't really represent the majority of the Democratic Party. Is it similarly deceptive to see what's going on in social media with Trump and UFC and think this is where the culture is right now?

Speaker B
I mean, it's a great question. And again, I struggle with prognostication. I like diagnosis better. But I'll just say this. I'm alarmed.

I'm surprised by the fact that more progressives are not waking up to this or they're not seeing how important this is. I mean, George Wallace, the Alabama governor, was very smart at using country music, radio, demographics and markets, and then planned his campaigns around those. You convert these entertainment markets into powerful political constituencies. This is what Trump is doing. And it's very, and people used to look down on country music as a joke when Bush was using it. Right. The liberal Hollywood set were like, oh, who listens to Brooks and Dunn? Guess what? A lot of people listen to Brooks and Dunn, and a lot of people like UFC. My own son is obsessed with it. Right. So, so I think, I can't say for sure. Obviously, this is going to be the deciding factor. But what I am kind of concerned about is that it seems like everyone is sleeping on this. Everyone is just, like, not realizing. He has been at six events. It's unprecedented. Since April 23 to now, he's been at six separate pay per view events. I mean, I can't think. I tried to kind of do research before this where there's ever been a president that's attended this many sporting events, and I couldn't find a parallel. Obama sometimes college basketball, you know, but, but it's really un. So it's like, we don't really have a case, a previous case to test how effective this is going to be. We can look at music with George Wallace and other kind of ways in which politicians have used popular culture and entertainment to build their constituencies.

But I'm just kind of concerned about it, and I'm wondering why everyone is kind of missing this story.

David Pakman
That's a good question and one we're going to keep talking about. We've been speaking with Professor Rhys Peck, associate professor at the City University of New York. We're linking to his book as well as the article. Reese, really appreciate your time and insights.

Speaker B
Yeah. Thank you, David.

David Pakman
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One of the biggest signs that the MAGA crowd is worried about what's going to happen at next week's presidential debate is that they're starting to downplay expectations and to set a low bar for Donald Trump. Why are they doing this? The answer is so simple. When they set the expectations really low for Biden, he blows them out of the water, not with anything insanely spectacular. But when you set the expectations that Biden's not going to know his way on or off the stage, he won't be able to speak, he won't be able to give a state of the union. He won't be able to debate Bernie in 2020 or Trump in 2020 or any of it. And then he does it. It hurts their cause by setting expectations so low. So now they're trying something different.

Last night, Lara Trump, Lara Laura appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News propaganda show. And the new thing is they're doing is they're setting expectations high for Biden because he'll be on drugs. Like, they're not doing it because they think, oh, Biden's, Biden's a very, you know, admirable and serious debate opponent. No, no, no, no. They're saying Biden will probably be on the same drugs he was on at the State of the union. And in so doing, they are setting it up so that if it appears as though Trump didn't do that, well, obviously it's because Biden is on some kind of drug. Think about how insane this is. And Trump is not, because Trump doesn't do drugs. So here is Biden talking about Biden. Here is a Hannity talking about Biden being jacked up, hopped up, you know, all code words to say Biden will be on drugs and people should be prepared for that.

Jeanine Pirro
The former president, you know, took on the challenge. I don't think he'll regret it. However, the Joe Biden that we're talking about tonight, I don't think will be the Joe Biden we're going to see on debate night. I think the Joe Biden we see on debate night is going to be the guy that we saw at the State of the union.

He's going to be all hyped up, hyper caffeinated, whatever it is.

David Pakman
Whatever it is.

Jeanine Pirro
It's interesting that 70% of the country does like the idea of drug testing. I like the idea they do it to athletes. They do it to horses and horse racing.

David Pakman
Right.

Jeanine Pirro
Not do it to presidential candidates. I like the idea.

David Pakman
Let's even find more things we do to horses to do to presidential candidates while we're at it.

Jeanine Pirro
Right, Sean, 70% of Americans apparently agree with me. However, what do you expect for the debate?

David Pakman
Yeah, well, this is nothing new, of course.

Ramin Setoodeh
The cards have always been stacked against Donald Trump since the day he came down the escalator.

David Pakman
Okay. Anyway, so she goes into the escalator rant. They are pre spinning what is potentially going to be a debate disaster for Trump. Now, I'm going to be careful here. I'm not predicting necessarily disaster for either candidate. I think the most likely outcome, I know this is so boring, I should be hyping it up and lying to everybody. The, the most probable outcome is that Biden goes and does his thing and is generally coherent when it comes to policy, but has moments where he speaks quietly or stutters, which we know he has been dealing with. I think Trump hurls wild allegations while making no serious policy discussions of any kind. Both claim victory after the fact, and it doesn't really move the needle very much. I'm so sorry. That's like the most realistic and quite frankly, very tedious prediction.

But the MAGA world is increasingly worried that this will be a disaster for Trump. Now, just Biden doing okay would be a disaster because they've set the bar so low for months. And so accusing Biden of drug use is a classic example of poisoning the well, they suggest it's sort of like with 20 twenty's election.

If it looks like Biden won, it must be fraud because Biden couldn't possibly really win. If it appears in next week's debate that Joe Biden did ok, it's because he's on drugs. That's the only way that Biden's performance would look better than Trump's. It would be because Biden is on drugs. And that's why the framing of your opponent in this way, which, by the way, classic, classic characteristic of fascist rhetoric, you frame your opponent in these completely imaginary terms in order to make it so that if it appears as though you lost, you didn't really lose. It's the way that fascists and authoritarians deny reality. They lie about the size of their crowd or other things.

They lie about their opponents. They lie and make themselves the arbiters and source of truth. And fascism really thrives on the idea that you have an illegitimate enemy. They can't win fairly and therefore any means that you can use to achieve a defeat of your enemy are valid, and that's a big part of it as well. If your enemy cheats and is on drugs and steals votes and is illegitimate, well, of course you should allow me to take the presidency by force, by inspiring a riotous insurrection because my opponent is illegitimate. If my opponent were legitimate, there would be no one who would support that, right? Well, maybe some in the United States would, but certainly far fewer. And so when you argue that your opponent is incapable of winning fairly, you manufacture consent to allow society to let you do whatever the hell you want. Very dangerous. Very, very, very dangerous. And of course, the entire system is rigged against me as part of this. And so when you see these tactics, it's a sign of weakness. If you actually are coming from a place of strength, think back to Barack Obama's rhetoric during the 2012 election against Mitt Romney.

It was, hey, I have a record to run on. I have better ideas than my opponent. People are going to come out and vote, and that's it. And had he lost, of course, I'm sure that he would have, would have accepted that with Grace that Trump can only imagine. So they're laying the groundwork to dismiss a Biden performance next week. That's fine, because they've set the bar so low. And of course, that's part of the bigger groundwork that they're laying to argue that they won an election, that they lost, if indeed they lose. And fascism at its core is for those who can't engage in fair debate and ultimately resort to lies and manipulation to try to maintain, or in this case, seize back power. Hannity knows it might not go so well. Lara Trump knows it might not go so well, and that's why they're doing it. And by the way, they're also not only poisoning the well this way, they're trying to poison the well with Hunter Biden. And I want to talk about that next. Seemingly not satisfied with the conviction of Hunter Biden, Carrie Lake's latest tirade, where she is, by the way, using a blur filter to high heaven. I've never seen anyone who uses blur filters the way Carrie Lake does. Carrie Lake now is saying that there is probably way more crime to go after Hunter Biden, for she wants him prosecuted over his laptop. She makes baseless accusations about supposedly illegal behavior with potentially underage people, and it's all completely made up out of thin air. And pay attention to the exact language she uses because she understands the risky nature of some of the allegations that she's dancing with here.

So listen, to this morning about Hunter. We knew this. He is now seeking a new federal gun trial after conviction, of course, because apparently rules don't apply for your last name's Biden. And by the way, seeking a new trial, appealing, Trump's doing all the same stuff. Defendants often try to get a new trial or seek to appeal. Trump's doing it. Hunter Biden's doing it. The real question is, why is she only talking about Hunter Biden doing it? But that's not the focus here. Let's hear. Kerry Lake.

Kari Lake
Well, it'd be nice if he got a trial for some of the other things found on his laptop. I saw some very illegal activity happening on that laptop. And so maybe, you know, he's just desperate searching for a different court. But I think that we didn't even try him for all that he should have been tried for. Hunter Biden is a common criminal. When you see what happened on that laptop and you see some of the debauchery and frankly, really inappropriate and most likely illegal behavior involving possibly underage kids. That's right, children, women, it's frightening.

David Pakman
It is. And David, so you might notice there most likely illegal behavior involving possibly underage kids. And let me say it a different way.

I have no evidence of the illegal behavior and I have no evidence of underage kids.

That's it. That's all she has. She has nothing else. And by the way, I do think it's important to mention when we're talking about Hunter Biden and his laptop, private citizen, private laptop. The DOJ found no evidence of such crimes, even though Carrie Lake insists it's most likely illegal. And very importantly for people who now write in and go, David, do you have a reaction to the fact that the laptop's chain of custody, who do I sound like? The laptop's chain of custody is compromised.

It makes anything you find on it unreliable. And multiple individuals have handled the laptop. It raises questions about the authenticity of things that you find on the laptop. Doesn't mean anything there is necessarily staged, but in particular, since there isn't evidence of crimes and we have no chain of custody on the laptop, the obsession about the laptop is seeming like a little bit of this too little, too late stuff. But there's a bigger picture here, and you all know what it is. I jokingly said when Hunter Biden was convicted last week or the week before, now, I don't, I think it was last week.

I said, well, that does it. I'm definitely not voting for Hunter Biden. And of course, that's what they're trying to do here, they are trying to poison the well when it comes to President Joe Biden. With Hunter Biden, it's a smear campaign. And as I've said before, Joe Biden shouldn't interfere in Trump's prosecutions, nor in Hunter Biden's prosecutions. I'm pleased that Joe Biden has said, I'm not going to pardon, I'm not going to commute a sentence, I'm not going to get involved in any way. That's the right action for Joe Biden to do. But the entire obsession about Hunter Biden's private life and even potential crimes, I mean, listen, he's been convicted. He committed some crimes. He has now been convicted. He will now have to be sentenced in accordance with the law for that. But they have nothing left. And so they are trying to hurt Joe Biden through Hunter Biden. If you push them, they'll go. Well, they were involved in crimes together. They were involved in criminal money laundering or bribery. They've still presented no evidence. And by the way, notice how little you hear about that. Every once in a while, James Comer will say, well, we're looking at some criminal referrals. You are barely hearing anything about the criminal bribery that they talked about for years because there is no evidence of it. I mentioned yesterday that it was Father's Day. And I said, you know, to everybody who celebrated Father's Day, I hope it was good.

I want to play. Here's a little palate cleanser, a reverse palate cleanser. It's more of a gagger. I would cut. This will make you gag.

Donald Trump on Father's Day was interviewed by Brian Glenn and he was asked about what's the best part about being a dad. He has no answer. And if anything, what the answer that he spits out does reconfirm for us is the total lack of genuine connection to being a dad. Speaker two question on this Father's Day.

Donald Trump
What is the best thing about being a father?

Speaker B
What's the best part about being a dad?

David Pakman
And your, and your son is on.

Donald Trump
Stage, by the way, loving the reception he's getting. Don is getting some reception. And I have one wonderful children. They're great. They're loving.

They're, they're really good people. They're good people. And having them around is just, for me, is a very good thing. Very good thing. And we love our children and it's Father's Day and it's a good time to have good children.

David Pakman
Isn't that right? What is the most.

It's almost a joke. What is the best part about being a dad? Well, my kids are really good. And it's good to have good children around. No, well, it's just the experience of seeing them grow up and go from being babies to toddlers to pre teens to teenagers to adults with desires and an impact on the world. And. No, nothing. Nothing. It just, oh, these are good kids. It's good to have good kids around.

Complete, complete and total lack of connection to parenting. And this isn't the first time you might remember this really wacky video where he was interviewed by moms for America, who are very much, by the way, not in favor of what's good for America. And he was asked about Barron and he said, well, Barron is very tall and he's doing a good job. A job at what?

Donald Trump
He's a good tall guy, too. Very tall.

David Pakman
How tall is he now?

Donald Trump
I'd say six'eight.

Speaker B
Oh, my goodness.

Donald Trump
So he's up there, right? Yeah, but he's a great, he's a great young man and he's a very good student.

And I think he's doing a good job. Baron. I think he's doing a very good job.

David Pakman
He's 17 now, Barron, right? Yes, he's doing a very, very good job. And as usual, Trump's, when Trump is asked about family or friends, what he says, and often what he doesn't say reveals so much about his shallow Persona and his inability to really connect with people in a serious way. And we've talked about this before, we don't need to belabor it, but an incredibly not so inspiring Father's Day message from the failed former president. All right, we've got a fantastic, fantastic bonus show for you today. Thank your lucky stars. Every day you're not Dave Pakman. Exactly. We are going to talk about the idea of warning labels on social media. Is that crazy? Is that a nanny state? Well, the us surgeon general believes that there should be warning labels on social media. Also, we will be talking about the us lawsuit against Adobe for making subscriptions deceptive and too difficult to cancel. And I have some anecdotes actually to share about this. And also, what about the Republican and Trump plan to end taxes on tips? Not even all Republicans are in favor of this. I have thoughts I'm going to want to hear from you on it.

But what about ending taxes on tips? What does this do with regard to those tablets that ask you to tip 40% when you buy, you know, something for $5?

We will discuss all of that and more on today's bonus show. Get instant access by signing up@joinpakman.com. dot I will see you there, and I'll also be back tomorrow with a brand new show. Make sure you're subscribed either to the audio podcast on Spotify or wherever you prefer to get your podcasts, or to the YouTube channel, which you can find@YouTube.com.

the David Pakman show see you tomorrow or on the bonus show.