6/21/24: It's over for RFK Jr, Trump goes full fascist, Fox terrified

David Pakman
Welcome to the show, everyone. Hope it's a good weekend for those who get a weekend, and I hope that that is most of you. We are probably getting to the end of Robert F. Kennedy Junior s presidential campaign. A number of things have happened over the last 24 to 48 hours, none of them good. And most of his polling is now down from what was at 1.1617, 18% to just three or 4% in most polls. So let's talk about what's happening with RFK Junior. The Daily Beast reporting. Did RFK junior s presidential campaign just flame out? He failed to qualify for next week's presidential debate, is bleeding cash and is on a mere nine state ballots, reducing his chances to essentially nil. There are a few elements to this story.

First and foremost is the unfortunate if you're a supporter of RFK's reality that he is not going to be on the debate stage next week, he failed to meet the requirements established in order to qualify for that debate stage. Those are a threshold of at least 15% in four major national polls of registered or likely voters, as well as getting on the ballot in enough states to actually have the possibility of securing the 270 electoral votes that a candidate needs in order to win in November, he has not been able to do either. Now let's look at some of the recent polling. It's not good. It's, it's very, very much not good. And to be honest, it hasn't been good for a little while.

Here is the economist poll has Kennedy at four.

Not explosive. The Fox News poll has Kennedy at ten. That's his best recent performance.

YouGov has Kennedy at three and then Ipsos, Reuters has him at ten. So needless to say, whether you think that the real level of support for Kennedy because of the fact that he's on almost no ballots, is closer to three or four, or whether you believe that the real support for Kennedy is closer to ten, it's not the 15 that he needs to be on the debate stage. It's not the 16 1718 that he supposedly had in a sprinkling of polls at the beginning of 2024, or even before that.

And without being able to be a recipient of 270 electoral votes, and without being able to be on the debate stage next week, this campaign is effectively over. Now, what else could Robert F. Kennedy Junior do, or hope to do?

Unfortunately, I could spend the next ten minutes talking to you about how well, you know, he's got the nine states that he's in. But if he can then associate himself with a party, with ballot access in these other four states and then maybe push a write in campaign in these other three states.

Maybe we could come up with some hypothetical path to 270 if he somehow won every single one of those states. It's just, I respect you too much to waste the next ten minutes doing that. So I'm going to cut right to the best that Robert F. Kennedy could hope to do.

The best, or arguably the worst that Robert F. Kennedy could hope to do is to get enough support in a critical state, either by writing or however, that he flips that state from Biden to Trump and helps Donald Trump become the next president of the United States. That's the biggest impact that RFK junior should have. Now, you may hear me say this, and your reaction might be, David, I thought you were telling us that RFK actually helps Biden because he pulls more from Trump. That may be the case. It's possible.

And it's, it's both plausible and logical to some degree. Because what Democrat who actually values the agenda of Democrats is going to go and vote for RFK junior? I know it doesn't make sense, but my point is, from our perspective, the perspective that Biden is better than Trump and would be better off as a country with Biden rather than Trump. From that perspective, the biggest impact that RFK could have that we would be worried about isn't that RFK wins. It's that he prevents Biden from winning and helps Trump win by throwing a monkey wrench into one or a couple different states. So, of course, we hope that that doesn't happen. We're going to be watching it. But it does seem as though the path is narrowing for RFK to absolutely no path whatsoever. He's gone from no path to absolutely no. No path whatsoever. And I don't know that he will formally end the campaign between now and November, but he's not going to be on the debate stage. He's polling three or four in most polls. And I really don't know what there is to do. Also, he's spending more money than he's fundraising. So. And I don't even know that, that vice, remember that vice presidential pic that he made?

Where is she?

I saw one interview she did on some tech show where she got, like, confused about abortion and said to the hosts, well, what do you think? As if that's what's at issue, what the hosts think. So the entire thing has gone down in flames. A failed former president, Donald Trump, now a convicted felon, has gone full fascism, demanding firings at Father Fox. News. We have been covering this recent poll from Fox News. It's not great. From for Donald Trump. The new Fox poll, as I told you yesterday, shows a seven point swing in the direction of Joe Biden. We'll get to that later. But Trump is absolutely furious. And this is now unfettered, unrestrained, naked fascism. That is what it is. Donald Trump posting to his platform, truth, social quote, nobody can ever trust Fox News, and I am one of them. With the weak and ineffective rhino, Paul Ryan on its board of directors. He's a total lightweight, a failed and pathetic speaker of the House and a very disloyal person. Romney was bad, but Paul Ryan made him look worse. As a team, they never had a chance. Rupert and Lachlan, referring to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch. Rupert and Lachlan, get that dog off your board. You don't need him. All you need is Trump. Make America great again. So Trump is demanding the firing, the firing of Paul Ryan from the board of directors of either Fox News or News Corp. I don't know which he's on. And this is blatantly, nakedly fascistic. Fascist regimes seek to control media outlets so that they get the coverage that they want and so that they don't get any dissent.

That's what fascists do. And when you demand the removal from the board of a critic, it is an attempt to silence opposition and dissenting voices. Using threats to influence media organizations demonstrates a tactic of intimidation that is regularly been used over the last hundred years by fascist leaders. Fascists require unwavering loyalty from all sectors, especially media. And there is a very long and ugly history of this. Over the last hundred plus years. The nazi regime. Oh, David, you can't say Trump is Hitler. I'm not, I'm not. What I'm talking to you about is the desire of fascist regimes to control media coverage of themselves. The nazi regime in the Third Reich era took control of newspapers, radio, films, to spread propaganda and to get rid of and suppress the opposition. Stalin's regime controlled the soviet press and used it to propagate the communist party's ideology into suppressed dissent. In Italy, Mussolini's government took control of italian media and used it to promote fascist ideology and censor any criticism or opposition. Franco in Spain controlled the media to suppress dissent, promote his nationalist propaganda. During and after the spanish civil war. Castro in Cuba, these are the people that Trump is like. Castro in Cuba nationalized all media outlets and used them to disseminate government propaganda, silence opposition and push that regime. So we've seen this playbook before. And this is not Trump's first attempt at it. When he took away Jim Acosta's press pass because he didn't like his questions when he said that they're going to do whatever it is he plans to do through regulation and the FCC, it's not even clear.

It's clearly a fascist wet dream. The details always are a little bit nebulous to get Ms. DNC, as he calls it, and others off the air.

All of this is a flavor of what we have seen from these fascistic regimes for 100 years. And Trump is being very clear that he wants to do it. I'm not a fan of Paul Ryan, but certainly if Fox News doesn't want Paul Ryan on their board, it shouldn't be because a republican presidential candidate or if he wins a president says, get Paul Ryan off your board. And remember, they tell us they are for the rule of law, freedom of speech, independence of institutions, freedom of businesses from the oppressive boot of government.

And here they are cheering, no, Paul Ryan is a rhino. He should be fired by Fox News. Yet another example of their principles going down the toilet as soon as they are no longer convenient. Fox News continues to prepare for Trump to go down in flames at next week's debate. Will you join me for live coverage of next week's debate? Coverage will start an hour before the debate at 08:00 p.m. eastern. We will have a correspondent in the spin room at the debate. Whoa. Wow. I'm surprised to even be telling you that.

No, it's going to be a very interesting evening. But it is very clear the angle that Fox News and Fox business are pushing. On Monday, Hannity and Laura Trump said if it looks like Biden did well, it's because he's on drugs on Wednesday and we covered it yesterday. HANNITY again, talking about caffeine pills, stimulants, jacked up juice stuff, all of this stuff. They are setting expectations not low for Biden. They're actually setting them high because they learned setting them low backfires. They're setting them high. But saying only through pharmaceutical intervention, only through pharmacological intervention, will it appear as though Biden does well in the debate. And here it is again. It has spread beyond just Hannity. Here is mornings with Maria where again they are pre spinning the debate by saying they're going to have Biden hopped up. He's going to be on drugs. Just be ready. Speaker one obviously, what did they say? Biden was jazzed up or whatever for.

Speaker B
The state of the Murphy is the chairman of the doctors caucus in the Republican Party, he said he was jacked up.

David Pakman
Speaker one yeah. So I'm assuming they'll probably try to, you know, redo that, but they're going to jack him up, Maria. Juice them. Juice them and jack them.

These people are mirroring. I mean, listen, I don't want to do the same analysis of this as I did of Trump saying fire Paul Ryan from the Fox News board.

But it's another fascist tactic. It's saying, my enemy or my adversary or my political opponent is illegitimate. They cheat. You can't believe your eyes and ears. You might tune to the debate next week and you might see Joe Biden appear to hold it together as he has done in every debate over the last four years. And you might see Donald Trump be as incoherent as he has ever been because his decline seems to be accelerating. And your eyes and your ears might tell you, I was told Biden couldn't handle it, but it seems Trump can't. No, do not trust your eyes. Do not trust your ears because they deceive you. The source of truth is, I guess, Trump and Maria Bartiromo and this guy on the left whose name I don't know.

This is the way that they operate. And they are also, by the way, getting up to some hijinks with this new Fox News poll that doesn't look very good for Donald Trump. Let's talk about that next. The last 48 hours have been like a funeral on Fox News as they report again and again and again on their own election poll. Fox News's own election poll shows that there has been a seven point swing away from Trump and towards Joe Biden over the last four or five months, or three, three months, something like that. And it's like a funeral over there. But I want to propose to you that there may be some strategy here from Fox News. There may be a little dirty trick here in the degree to which they are reporting on this poll because they could hide this poll if they wanted. Sure, Fox News hires a company to do polling and they get results, but they don't have to report them multiple times a day. So let's watch a couple examples from the last, last 24 hours. Here is Griff Jenkins at the front lawn of the White House and again reporting this new Fox News poll which doesn't look good for Trump. Speaker one, a Fox News poll, our.

Speaker C
Latest one has Biden taking the lead over Trump. You see their two points leading nationally, 50 to 48.

David Pakman
All right, so that's Griff Jenkins struggling through a teleprompter. Read here is a bill Hemmer. And I always forget this woman's name, Sandra something I forgot here. They are also acknowledging the results of.

Speaker B
The poll, this new Fox News polling showing President Biden opening a narrow lead over former President Trump. That is within the margin of error. But Biden is up five points now since March. Breaking down the vote, we see men breaking for Donald Trump. Meanwhile, white women with college degrees largely going for Joe Biden.

David Pakman
So there is another report about this poll. Then we go to Donald Trump's own former White House press secretary, Kaley Maganani, who says Trump needs this debate because the polling with independence does not look good. Absolutely.

Speaker B
This debate is huge. It's huge for President Trump because we see in our Fox poll Biden leads among independents by nine speaker one.

David Pakman
So at least she's acknowledging the importance of the independent vote. That's good. And then here is Stuart Varney.

Interviewing I believe this is Caroline Levitt. I always forget every I should really have notes. Who is that? I think that, oh, McGee, McGee white.

I don't know who that is. Okay. Anyway, Stuart Varney saying that the results are a bit turbulent from this polls, national nationwide poll. Biden is now leading. How do you explain that?

Speaker B
It's going to go back and forth a lot between now and November. I'm sure that Trump's conviction has made somewhat of a difference for Biden. But remember, we have this debate next week and that could also change a lot. We could see another flashback to Trump going ahead in the polls himself, depending on how Biden performs.

David Pakman
By the way, what a great analysis. Right now, the polls say one thing, but it might change and then that would be a different scenario. Interesting. Magee thank you.

Speaker B
So I think that a bit of turbulence is to be expected. However, Trump is still making significant gains among demographics that really matter, including women, especially black and hispanic women, young voters like myself. And he's basically reached the point of support among men that he was at back in 2016.

David Pakman
All right, so basically just like, oh, yeah, that's the polling now, but it may change. And then also, Donald Trump weighing in on troth Central with simply saying Fox News polls are always the worst. For me. They have been from the beginning and always will be. So listen, I'm going to give you two scenarios. This is not a show that will sort of craft opinions in order to get people to behave a certain way. I just give it to you straight, right? If I really wanted to sort of spin propaganda here, I would just say this thing is, is leaning slightly Trump. We almost vote. Everybody better vote. There's no way that this goes any other way. It's leaning slightly Trump. The best Joe Biden can hope to do is if we all get out there and vote, it's an emergency, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've been very clear with everybody.

Electorally, it will probably be close and come down to under 500,000 votes in three to five states. That's statistically and historically the most likely outcome. But there is a chance, if you think of the fact that Trump lost 2020 and then incited a riot, was found civilly liable for rape, was indicted four times, was convicted on 34 counts. If you think about all that, how could he possibly win? How can you go from losing 2020 and then all of this humiliating, horrible stuff happens and you're going to win somehow. So it is possible. It is possible that this is going to be a defeat against Donald Trump, the likes of which we haven't seen in decades in a presidential election.

That's not what I would assume, but it is possible.

And what Fox News may be doing here is they may be propagandizing. What Fox News may be doing here is talking endlessly about this new polling from their own polling, which, by the way, Fox News polling is pretty, pretty good. It's not. It's done by, they, they contract a firm, and it's not like the same thing as Hannity's opinions. Fox News polling is legitimate. Legitimate enough.

They may be saying, let's fire up Republicans and MAGA by telling them Trump's losing by two in order to get them to vote. It doesn't mean the poll is wrong. It just is one data point. But the point is how Fox News may be using it. So we don't have to worry about any of that stuff because we know what we're going to do. We're going to go and vote. Whether you vote in California or Michigan or Pennsylvania or Florida or wherever, you don't sit around and go, well, how likely is my vote to really make a difference here? And is this state a crucial state in terms of the path to the number? No, no, we just vote. It's election day. We go and vote, or you vote absentee or early or whatever, we just vote. And then we let the chips fall where they may. If it ends up being a historic and humiliating defeat for Donald Trump, the likes of which we haven't seen in decades, that laughs Trump into political retirement, then we welcome that. If it ends up coming down to 250,000 votes in three states or two states, then even more important that we get out and vote. So I hope you'll be with me for the debate next Thursday. We're going to take a quick break, and much more is coming up after this.

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Request a free membership@davidpakman.com. freemembership or give away a membership by signing up and selecting that. This is a gift box. It's all in the ecosystem of membership and supporting independent media, and we can be very, very happy about that. It gives me great pleasure to start with some great news for you. A Donald Trump's deranged new spokeswoman, Caroline Levitt, went on tv a couple nights ago and said, hey, Trump remembers many things from years ago. Now you might say, David, that's such innocuous news. Why? Why is that good news? It's good news because it means that it's working. The story of Trump's brain failing is going mainstream. It's getting to them, and they are now coming out and having to defend it. For years, we have interviewed mental health professionals, neurology professionals, and they have sounded the alarm about Trump. And we talk about it and some other independent shows talk about it, but it has not made corporate or mainstream media such that the Trump people have felt the need to defend Trump against these allegations. That is now changing. Over the last two weeks, this Trump brain story has been covered by PBS, NPR, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC. It's everywhere. And it is now becoming a conversation. This has been the goal all along, and it is happening here. Is Caroline Levitt saying, no, no, no, Trump's fine. He remembers many things from years ago.

Speaker B
Donald Trump's mental recall that the ability of him to go off script for hours in front of crowds of thousands of people and recall stories from decades ago. I mean, trust me, I work for the man. I am a young woman, and it's hard to keep up with him. He's constantly working around the clock. And Americans see that and that's why they don't feel the same way about Donald Trump's competence as they do about Joe Biden's because they believe their own.

David Pakman
Eyes very, yeah, it's actually quite, quite a bit more complicated. They believe their own eyes. But the average American isn't watching an entire Trump rally, and the average American who watches Fox News isn't seeing any clips of the Trump rallies gone wrong because Fox News doesn't air any of those. And it's funny that what she says is, no, listen, he's fine. He'll remember things from decades ago, which, by the way, a very common symptom of cognitive decline is that you don't remember who interviewed you two months ago, the way Trump forgot that he was interviewed by Rahman Satude months prior and looked at him vacantly and goes, I have no memory of you talking to me for an hour. A common thing is you don't remember the recent, but you remember things from your childhood, you remember things from earlier adulthood. And that actually doesn't really alleviate any of the concerns. So this is a very interesting development that now Caroline Levitt and others around Trump are having to defend him. By the way, on the day that she said Trump's doing great, Trump referred to the president as Joe Bride.

So it was sort of an unusual day on which she, she would say this. So, listen, I do think that the stakes for next week's debate, because of the cognitive situation, are particularly high. Now. The difference between the way we're handling this and the way that that MAGA has handled Biden is, I'm not suggesting or assuming that Donald Trump is going to have a cognitive breakdown or failure during the debate. I'm very curious to see what the dynamic is because there is so much riding on this. I'm obviously wondering what would the impact be of a serious cognitive failure by either of the candidates. But recall that for years now, MAGA has been setting the bar so low, setting expectations so low about Joe Biden that every time he just shows up and does okay, it actually really hurts the MAGA. Cause they said when it was down to Bernie and Biden in the 2020 democratic primary, Biden, I mean, listen, Biden's just not with it in the way that Bernie is. Bernie's going to crush Biden and it'll be the end of Biden's candidacy. And Biden did fine. It was just like, it wasn't fireworks one way or the other, but he did fine then. It was ok. Now Trump and Biden are debating in 2020 and there's no way Biden's going to be able to survive this. He's going to poop his pants and fall off the stage. Biden did fine. He went on to win the election. They've said it about his state's, state of the union addresses. States of the union, we might call them. Biden can't do it. He can't speak for 30 minutes, never mind 90 minutes.

And then Biden speaks 100 minutes. And it was so good. They go, he could have only done it on some kind of drug. And then we say, oh, what drug would have done it? And they go, I don't know. I'm not really sure. And they list drugs that simply wouldn't work that way. So I am not setting expectations low or high. What I am cognizant of is the fact that this is an extraordinarily consequential debate, not with regard to what tax policy the candidates are going to outline. It's actually become quite secondary here. This is almost a referendum on dementia. It's, it's a. It's just what it is. I'd be lying to you if I pretended it was anything else. And so the performance, rather than the substance, is going to be even more markedly important in next week's debate. I will be watching. We will be live streaming. I hope that you will join me. Mike Pillow, also known as Mike Lindell, the CEO and founder of MyPillow, is really in a tough spot.

I've been wondering, how is pillow going to respond to the fact that Trump and people around him are now saying, hey, vote early, vote by mail, vote absentee, do whatever you need to do to vote. Because much of Mike Pillow's crusade over the last four years has been based on what Trump used to say, mail in voting is corrupt, which isn't true. Absentee voting is corrupt, which isn't true. Early voting is corrupt, which isn't true.

Mike Pillow has waged this battle on the basis that in 2020, Trump was saying, all of that stuff is bad. But Trump and people around him have changed their tune. Trump recently putting out a truth on troth Central, saying, vote, however, is convenient to you. If it's early, if it's by mail, absentee, whatever, just make sure that you vote. Because Trump and people around him realized, hey, some people need the convenience of something other than voting in person on Election day. And so we need to make sure that they know that that's okay. So now Mike Pillow finds himself in the situation of having to explain this. Mike Pillow's agenda has been uprooted by Trump reversing 180 degrees. And so I think that what pillow is saying here is that Trump telling people to vote absentee is part of a plan to catch the fraud. MIKE PIllow, it's, I'll be honest, it's hard to understand what he's talking about. But I believe the way that Mike Pillow is explaining this to himself, if not other people, is that Trump saying vote early, vote absentee, vote by mail, is part of a brilliant strategy to catch the fraudsters. Let's see if we can decipher what pillow is talking about where now anybody.

Speaker C
Can request a mail in ballot with any excuse. You know, you don't even need an excuse. You just, speaker one.

David Pakman
They're not called excuses. It's just justification. You don't need any specific justification other than it's more convenient to me to vote by mail.

Speaker C
Well, we need to get everyone in Missouri to request one. I don't care who you are, request one. You go request one doesn't mean you're going to vote early, but you can certainly, you did one thing and even telling people, let's say this, you know, you talk about getting people to go out and vote.

How hard is it? We're going to make it very easy for the people. We're going to create a website or a webpage or whatever.

David Pakman
Website, web page, whatever.

Speaker C
Every state's going to be on there and we're going to make it very easy for them step by step how they get their mail in ballot. Okay. Just like we did with the cast.

David Pakman
Vote records, which so now pillow, he's starting by saying, oh, we're going to help people figure out how to get mail in ballots. Now, there's already numerous websites that exist, including, I believe it's, is it vote.org? i want to make sure I'm giving people the right information.

Yeah, vote. So you don't need to go to Mike pillow's website. You just go to vote.org. it'll tell you. See what's on the ballot, where you're going to be voting. Check your registration register, vote by mail, get an election reminder. All of these different. So you don't need pillows website. You just go to vote.org. but pillows cooking something up. Let's listen.

Speaker C
Was set up my job where he set it up, you know, step one, two, three. To get your cascaw record. Every state will be a little different for getting your mail in ballot. But when you can go to a friend or somebody that, you know, might not even be able to vote. He can certainly request his mail in ballot, you know, and so by doing that, we're actually pulling his name down, that evil doesn't know if he's going to vote or not. They're going to, it'll be a crapshoot for them of who they're going to pick because they're going to have to pick names to vote and to vote and use their names.

David Pakman
Is anybody understanding this? I'm going to be honest, I'm not joking. I have no clue what he's talking about.

Speaker C
And so this, anyway, that's kind of it in a nutshell. Everybody with this is the biggest, I believe is the biggest trap. It's a trap that we can get them on, but it's also something we very much need when this election ends, when it ends on November 5. And we know either way, we have to have this data. We have.

David Pakman
So I think what Prillo is saying is it's great if you legitimately want to vote early, but also it's a great way to trap people illegitimately voting early. Now, how you can illegitimately vote early is still sort of a mystery to me, but I guess what he's saying is this will provide data or a paper trail of some kind. Now, remember that Mike Pillow has been found to owe people, including a guy we interviewed whose name is escaping me right now. And I know people will, will remind me what his name is, who he challenged to say debunk my information, proving it was all stolen and fraudulent in 2020. So understand that he owe, pillow owes money to people on the basis of his claims about elections being bogus. And I would categorize these in exactly the same way, but it has been very interesting to see the conflict between an entire crusade of four years based on what they claim is the objective, fraudulent nature of voting by mail and absenteeism. Now, with Trump realizing any dissuading of people from voting, I do at my own peril, because you need to make it convenient for people to vote. The way you get out the vote is by making it convenient for people to vote, as if you needed more information to realize that. So we'll see what the official line becomes from those who have been arguing that, like Trump says, these are fraudulent methods of voting. Now that Trump is saying, no, please vote for me however you can. I don't know if Mike Pillow will or won't be a big part of that, but we will watch it.

Let's take a very quick break. We'll be back right after this don't forget that the best way to support the David Pakman show is by becoming a member, which gives you access to the daily bonus show, the regular show with no commercials. You also get access to our entire archive of every episode dating back a really long time, and plenty of other awesome membership perks. Go to join Pacman.com join pacman.com there are a number of new reports about the possibility of mandatory military service if Donald Trump were to win in November and return to the Oval Office. Now, officially, Donald Trump has denied this. But the growing number of people around Trump who like the idea, at least in theory, as well as the sort of authoritarian and militarized reality of the project 2025 infrastructure and framework that Donald Trump would implement if he were to become president, raise some serious questions here. Now, in addition to this, if you remember, if you are a member, you might remember that earlier this week, we talked about this republican bill to automatically register men 18 to 26 in selective service, a process that previously was manual, that they want to make completely automated. And of course, when you combine that, even though in practice it doesn't really change too much, other than the automatic nature of it, we still don't have a draft, despite selective service registration. With the growing number of people around Trump who like this idea, it starts to paint a picture that is concerning in many ways.

Mother Jones has an article, Trump World reportedly flirts with a return to mandatory military service. And the article explains that even though Trump was a draft dodger in his youth, remember, he got a very strong letter on the ankles, the bone spurs that he had, um, the former president acolytes are reportedly flirting with a return to requiring mandatory military service if he's reelected. Christopher Miller, former acting defense secretary during the last two months of Trump term and possibly the next leader of the Pentagon, said to the Washington Post, it should be, quote, strongly considered and referred to mandatory military service as a, quote, rite of passage that would create, would create a sense of, quote, shared sacrifice, saying, it reinforces the bonds of civility. Why wouldn't we give it a try? The Mother Jones article talks about Miller previously floating this idea. What about making public school students take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude battery, which is a test that the DoD developed to match students with particular roles in the us military? Trump calls the reporting completely untrue. Says, I never even thought of that idea. But of course, the problem is that with Trump, it's something he hasn't thought of until someone gets up and whispers into his ear, here's something to think about. And then he thinks about it. And the article does mention other people around Trump, including rumored vice presidential pick JD Vance, who likes the idea of national service.

And I'm not talking about in wartime. He's talking about just mandatory service, no matter what. And Lindsey Graham said he would take no option off the table in terms of addressing shortages in the military.

Very, very unpopular. The article notes that a Gallup poll finds that a majority of those who would be affected by a draft are against the idea, but maybe not by the margins that you might expect. So there's a couple of different stories here, as always. Number one, there's the malleability of Trump with regard to ideas. How many times have Trump, has Trump said, no, that's not something I'm thinking over doing. And then, of course, a couple people get together, they go, sir, this is really something you should do. And then he does it. We saw it during COVID We saw it a bunch of different times. Number two, it would be the obvious hypocrisy of Trump with his draft dodging history personally, then looking at something that would even approximate any kind of mandatory military service, which wasn't right for him. But if these people around him convinced him, I guess he would say, maybe is right for the modern youth of America. But the real story for me here is the ease with which the modern MAGA movement, the modern republican party, or we could say MAGA Trumpism, the ease with which they demand sacrifice from others in so many different ways.

Billionaire Trump asking, begging for money for his legal bills and for reelection and for campaign debts, it's all what benefits him. With no regard whatsoever for how the average person is affected, you should sacrifice to put this super wealthy guy in the Oval Office, despite the fact that he said he would self fund his campaign and the concept of the rite of passage to create shared sacrifice and civility. You really have to understand how that is all code. That is code that connects to Project 2025. We will discuss this in our forthcoming white paper. Project 2025 wants a more militarized american youth, wants to enhance military recruitment with this mandatory testing in public schools. A lot of this stuff is straight out of Project 2025 and its broader goals that it has. And, of course, if you are not just a progressive, but if you're someone who wants not only separation between church and state, but also wants separation between any kind of military involvement forced upon people, like, for example, with recruitment at public schools, you're looking at imposing a military agenda on students. You're looking at trying to redirect them into the military, regardless of whether that's actually what's best for them. You're looking to narrow their career choices by saying you can do absolutely anything you want in the way that we do it in the military and within the scope of how the military looks at a lot of these professions. And so the claim that it would foster civility and unite and whatever, ignores all of the ways in which students can do that outside, outside of the military, but also ignores the radicalizing status quo that we've been dealing with in the military, extremism in the military.

We've reported on it extensively. So this entire thing is very much misguided. It's imposing a one dimensional view, which is very well represented in Project 2025 in order to control and to manipulate the next generation, all under the guise of shared sacrifice and patriotism and bringing back bravery and the values of when we. Whatever. I don't know what. I guess it's the 1950s that they liked the values that were represented. So understand that all of this is part of a bigger plan. The plan is mostly driven by Project 2025 and kind of intermeshed with agenda 47, which is more specific to Trump. But Trump's the nominee, so it'll be Project 2025 if he wins, and if Biden wins, it won't be. This all is part of this package of how we should view the country and the military that I believe to be completely antithetical to the way that society will progress and advance and improve. So a number of people around Trump concerningly interested in the idea of mandatory military service, as usual. There's one way we prevent all of this stuff. There's one way to prevent Project 2025, one way to prevent anybody even flirting with any kind of mandatory military service. And you all know what it is. It's making sure Trump doesn't step foot in the Oval Office ever, ever again. A beauty filtered to infinity. Carrie Lake made a prediction. She believes that not only is Donald Trump going to be exonerated at the end of the day, I don't even know what she means by that. Does she mean that he's going to have his 34 convictions overturned on appeal, exonerated in the court of public opinion, charges dropped in the other three criminal trials?

I don't know what she means. But also, we are going to find out the truth about all of the dark things. Not that Joe Biden did. Biden, yes. But Obama, Carrie Lake believes that we have not yet been told the real story about Obama. Speaker one Obama.

Exactly. Let's listen to what she had to say.

So conspiratorial, so ominous on Newsmax. Take a listen. Unreal.

Carrie Lake
It is unreal. I mean, the hypocrisy of it all. And then you think about what they did before President Trump ever got inaugurated, how they were spying on his campaign. You think of the Russia gate. I mean, the things they've actually done is just unbelievable. Instead, we're having this witch hunt play out. I believe President Trump will be exonerated at the end of the day. And I think more and more bad news will come out on, I think, Obama actually, as well as Joe Biden. The question is, will we ever see justice?

David Pakman
Where do they come up with this stuff? I mean, there's, there's a couple of different things here. One of them is this obsession, this fixation with the Obamas. They're fixated on Hillary's emails. Yes. They're continued to, continuing to talk about that. It seems like a never ending story for them. Hillary's emails. Hillary's emails, endlessly. But now that the Obamas and the Michelle Obama is going to actually replace Joe Biden, we're going to learn all of the truth about what was going on under Barack Obama. And there's a couple of things that this connects to. I do think that on some level, and I am, you all know I am very careful here about painting with a, with a racist brush, especially when, when it seems like a stretch. So I'm not going to say anyone is racist. You can, I know many of you will say that, but there is something here about the Obama family background that Obama's half black and Michelle Obama's black. There's something about their race that makes them more interesting targets of the endless theorizing. We'll find out the reality about it. Obama might have killed a guy off the, off the coast of Martha's vineyard. Remember, there was some kind of employee involved with President Obama's house in Martha's Vineyard who I guess drowned. And immediately it was like, this is like the Clinton body count. It's now Obama. They're going around killing people. I do without saying that it is overt racism, necessarily, because I just don't know that I can back that up, so I won't say it.

There seems to be something about the Obamas being black that continues to make them an interesting foil or main character in many of these hypotheses. Now, big picture, Carrie Lake here is resorting to theatrics in the literal sense, with these incredible blur filters that she uses, it's theatrical with regard to her appearance, but also with the content of what she says. And she's just trying to shift the spotlight from Trump's issues. That's all it is. She has no credibility.

She is now running for Senate. She was previously governor of running for governor. She was not governor. She was running for governor. And she's desperate to continue the self aggrandizement and pushing herself to the forefront of the political world. And reports are that Trump has been, been a little displeased lately with her hanging around Mar a Lago and has quietly suggested to some, hey, maybe Carrie Lake can hang out here a little bit less. And we know Trump doesn't like losers. Now, he has argued she actually won her election for the governorship. She didn't. She lost it. But at a certain point, losers seem to drop out of Trump's orbit. And Carrie Lake may be the next one. So the obsession continues. It's the Biden's, it's the Obama's. We'll find out all of their crimes. And meanwhile, she wants you to believe she actually won an election, that she lost. These people are pathetic, but they can win. And Carrie Lake can become senator in Arizona. Think about how scary that would be. If you value what we do at the David Pakman show, remember to support us on Patreon, go to patreon.com David Pakman show, where you can get access to behind the scenes videos, the daily bonus show, the commercial free daily show. You can support the show for as little as $2 a month. Check it out@patreon.com. david Pakman show all right, let's jump into Friday. Feedback. If you have something you'd like to communicate to me, you can email info at David Pakman.com or post on the subreddit or leave a comment on YouTube or leave a comment on Tick tock.

Or leave a comment on Facebook or not really looking at Twitter these days, but you could try, I guess, responding to me on Twitter, although it probably isn't, isn't going to get too far at this point. All right, we start today with a post from reflex point on the subreddit. And reflex point asks, are the Obamas ever going to get involved? Given how popular they are? They have been very quiet. I don't know if they're just waiting for the optimal timing right before the election to get involved, but I feel like Barack and Michelle need to be more vocal about what's at stake. And this is especially important for the minority vote. While Biden may be losing minorities. Obama was still popular with minority voters. He may be able to rally their support to Biden. I'm sure Obama will give a great speech at the convention, but that's not enough. Well, over the weekend, Barack Obama did get involved and Barack Obama showed up at a big fundraiser. Bomb. Yeah, Barack Obama, he showed up at a big fundraiser for Joe Biden in Los Angeles. Of course, the right saying, oh, they're the elites and they've got all the wealthy people and all this different stuff. Ignoring that, Trump just did a fundraiser at Silicon Valley. But put that aside for a moment. I think that they are getting involved at probably the right time. If Barack Obama gets involved too much earlier than now, think about it. Where the conventions, starting with the RNC, start in about a month.

If Obama gets involved too early, it starts to become less newsworthy that he's involved. And I think you lose some of the impact of that. And so right now, lately, Obama has been starting to get involved at these private fundraisers, helping Joe Biden to build the war chest, which I hate that this is the way we do politics in the US, but to the extent that we do, you need money.

And I fully expect it's abundantly clear that as we get to and beyond the conventions and that final couple months of campaigning really gets going, I can only imagine that Barack Obama is going to be very much front and center. Michelle, I don't know. I know that there's right wingers convinced that Michelle Obama is about to be injected like bleach into the democratic nomination process. When, when Democrats pull Joe Biden, Michelle Obama will be taking his place. Of course that's not going to happen. She's made it clear she has no interest in running for president. I don't know how anyone could force her to do it, despite what Vivek Ramaswamy said to me. So she may end up on the campaign trail as well. But I think Obama has made it clear he wants to be involved and I think he's. He's going to be involved. Ok. Interview asks on the subreddit, what is doctor Phil trying to gain from kissing Trump's huge ass? Is Phil auditioning for Trump's VP or cabinet position? Is it the usual greed for the tremendous tax cut? Or was he condescending to Trump, thinking he could shrink him and make himself look like a hero, diagnosing him, but then doing nothing about it? Or is it something more insidious? No, I don't think it's any of these things. Doctor Phil interviewed Trump for the same reason almost anyone with a show would interview a current or former president. Trump's welcome here anytime. Joe Biden's welcome here anytime. So, because first of all, interviewing big name people brings credibility and attention with it.

So first and foremost, whether you like Trump or not, the reasons why you would interview him are pretty obvious. And then, as far as, you know, kissing up to Trump, that I think just came naturally. And Phil is very clear. I mean, look at my interview with Doctor Phil, where he came in saying, no, I'm not political. I look at things through a psychosocial cultural lens. And, you know, it was nonsense. He's a right winger. And because Doctor Phil is a right winger, and they love to talk about the vague degradation and crumbling of values and all these weird, it's like, okay, tell me about the policy you want, dude. He uses the exact same language that people who support Trump use, which is, I don't really know or understand anything about policy. So I'm going to talk about values and being tough on China or whatever. So that's why Doctor Phil sucked up to him. Quite simply, he interviewed him because anybody would who has a show, and he sucked up to him because that's the way he feels and he's a right winger. At the end of the day, revolutionary ad wrote about my banging of the desk, saying, I love the show and listen daily on my commute. It is common knowledge. The audio volume for the show is a little lower than others, and this leads to listening at higher volumes. So I come to you with tears in my eyes due to many. Due to the many times I've been scared from David banging his desk or mike. My car has its factory sound system, unlike what David used to sell at Best Buy. I worked at Circuit City, not best buy.

The sound peaks loud, unexpected bang while driving sucks. Sir, please be more careful. My ears will never be, will, will be ever so grateful. So listen. As far as a couple people have complained that the audio podcast is a low audio level.

We have a new process where we are normalizing the audio to -1 DB, which I have been told by experts in the industry is where it's totally standard, normalized to minus one. We're doing that. If the show is still quieter than other shows you're listening to, let me know. I want to know about that info at David Pakman.com, but I think we've sort of dealt with that. As far as hitting the microphone, I will continue to do the best I can not to hit the microphone. Sometimes I get agitated.

I gesticulate it's there and it is what it is. I'm going to try to avoid it. Tons of messages about the forthcoming changes to the show overwhelmingly positive.

Where in the world 89 wrote these changes sound pretty good to me. I'm just wondering why they've taken so long to be considered. People have been complaining about the Collins for so long. It's surprising it's taken this long. I never knew the radio and tv version of the show was hindering things so much. Should be interesting to see how things change now. The reason that these changes take a long time is there are a lot of moving parts that go into a production week, including many moving parts that involve parties outside of our show, including parties that move very slowly.

Change. Change is sometimes slower than we would like it to be, but hopefully in the right direction. Not everybody believes that, Coneskater wrote, sad to hear that David is ending the radio tv show. I mean, I understand it 100% and don't disagree from a business standpoint, but I've always thought that the left forfeiting the AM radio space was a turning point in truly losing middle America to the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the world. Not sure if it's even a relevant medium anymore, but I was surprised to hear what a difference Rush Limbaugh made on the radio. Yeah, a couple things. Number one, we're mostly not on AM radio. We're mostly on low power FM stations. Now, I know that people will say, but David, you are on some larger power AM radio stations. We are.

I believe the audiences are negligible. We don't hear, we don't get a single email from any of those stations, people listening on those stations. So I think the audience is very, very small. But more importantly, is the second part here as a medium for communication of this kind, a 38 minutes hour with 22 minutes of commercials, which is what most commercial radio is, is simply not the right format for the sorts of conversations I want to have and which are both most beneficial to the political discourse. So I think that this is a really positive change with some hiccups that we will, uh, weather, no doubt. Alex Jones, Coke nose says, now that David is transitioning exclusively to digital media, will David start dropping f bombs, s bombs, and c bombs? I personally enjoy David's calm and articulate commentary. That said, I've never heard David drop the f bomb. I'd love to hear it at least once. Well, sometimes I will drop an f bomb on live streams that are only online, but there is no plan for me to start interjecting profanity into the show. The difference is going to be the following.

If I get, once we're off radio and tv, if I get a voicemail where the caller swears I don't have to bleep it, I can just play it for you and you'll get the full atmospherics of what that was like. I don't have to censor it in any way. When we play a clip where Trump at a rally gets everybody titillated by using the word b's, oh, what a big strong guy. He's using the word b's, we can just play Trump saying it. There's no reason that we have to then go, okay, here we've got to put a bleep in because if not, we're going to get an email from a station, they're going to be mad. So I'm not going to start using profanity on the show. I know that a lot of people listen to the show with, I don't want to say little kids, but they listen with, with children, and I don't know if they want me dropping f bombs all the time. And so, no, you don't have to worry about that. Tara wrote in on Facebook and says, I think every person who wants to vote Trump must go sit and listen to an entire Trump rally without touching their phone and entertaining themselves any other way than listening to Trump. Then ask them, do you want that person to drive your car with your children or grandchildren in it? If not, then why would you vote for him? Yeah, I mean, listen, a lot of the people that are still going to the Trump cult rallies are in the cult so deeply that it doesn't matter what happens there. I do think there are some reachable voters who, if they went and sat through a Trump rally and saw how he's 2 hours late and lacks complete and total respect for the people that go and then rants about unintelligible things, glitches constantly, and goes, oh, Saturday, I think a lot of those folks would be dissuaded and they would go, this guy shouldn't even be whatever.

He certainly shouldn't be president of the United States would be a nice little assignment. Thinking of voting Trump, I challenge you sit through an entire rally and actually show up at the time it's scheduled to start and stay to when it actually ends. Charmaine says about Trump and cognitive decline.

Until Fox talks about it, it is nothing. I have a friend who plays only Fox on his tv. It's on all day. He never changes the channel. He does not hear anything other than Fox and will not believe anything others tell him are happening in the world. There is no reaching him and I suspect there are many, many more like him.

Charmaine is of course correct. And so for me, the reason I think it's a good thing that we are starting to see PBS, NPR, Washington Post, MSNBC and others talk about Trump's cognitive decline and is melting mayonnaise brain. The reason it's good is if Fox won't talk about it in the way everybody else's, Fox may end up in a position to have to defend it.

And even defending it and going, no, all of the liberal media, supposed liberal media is wrong. Trump's brain is fine.

They will be putting the story into the ether. And I still think that that's a good thing. So I think it is good, period, that more and more corporate media outlets are talking about Trump cognitive decline. And I hope we continue to see more of it. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. You can sign up at join Pacman.com. don't miss the bonus show. It's an enjoyable, pleasurable thing to listen to world famous award winning awards we give out. I will admit that we give out the awards, but it's still an award winning bonus show. And you can, of course, get a sizable discount using the coupon code saved Democracy 24. Also, remember, if you prefer written rather than audio visual content, we have the Substack premium newsletter subscription.

Every weekday we send out our Substack newsletter. On the weekend we do. It's like a, like an opinion piece, a written version of some topic from the show. And if you want to support our written content, this is totally separate. So if you get one, you don't have direct access to the other. They're separate things. But you can also support the work we do and encourage us to do more of the written content by getting a David Pakman Show Substack Premium Newsletter subscription. We will see you on the bonus show. Hope everybody has a great weekend.

6/21/24: It's over for RFK Jr, Trump goes full fascist, Fox terrified

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Episode Chapters

1. The Fall of RFK Jr.

2. Trump's Authoritarian Tendencies

3. Historical Parallels

4. Implications for Democracy

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