6/24/24: Trump's debate strategy goes public, Kristi Noem back at it

David Pakman
Welcome, everybody. Hope you had a good weekend. We're starting today with what is on the minds of anyone following american politics, and lots of people who haven't been following politics but are about to start. This week, we have the first of what are to be two scheduled presidential debates. And what has come sort of to the forefront of these debates is, is not questions as to which candidate will come forward with some new policy or where will the tax rates desired by each candidate conflict versus overlap? No, no, no. It is overwhelmingly becoming a referendum, essentially on cognitive decline. Now, that aside for a second, Donald Trump has admitted to the disgusting and lurid plan he has for how to attack President Joe Biden at this week's presidential debate. His plan is to highlight individual murders allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants or migrants. Trump has already started this narrative on his truth social feed where he said, quote, we have a new Biden migrant killing. It's only going to get worse, and it's all crooked Joe Biden's fault. He's a disgrace to the office of president. He's a disgrace to America. I look forward to seeing him at the fake debate on Thursday.

Let him explain why he has allowed millions of people to come into our country illegally. So very clearly, what Trump plans to do is to bring up specific cases and say, Joe, you did that. You're responsible for that. Now, the reality, as many of you might suspect, is that this line of attack is misleading. It's not supported by statistics. And in some cases, even the specific incidents that Trump has become obsessed with aren't clearly even related to President Joe Biden. And some are actually Trump's responsibility. I'll explain that in a moment.

In general, I mean, listen, in general, I think it's important to remember that documented immigrants and undocumented immigrants commit crimes of all kinds at lower rates than native born Americans. It kind of makes sense if you have become naturalized in the US or if you know you're here illegally, you feel to a different degree as though you maybe have to be on better behavior, in a sense, because you, if you are undocumented, you don't want law enforcement attention. And if you are a naturalized immigrant, you might still feel to some degree, like, I need to be on better behavior because they might be able to take it away from me, even if that's not true. So it actually makes a lot of sense that natural born citizens in the United States commit crimes at higher rates. But the important thing is to understand the MAGA message. Message. The Trump MAGA message is that undocumented immigrants should be presumed violent and dangerous simply because they are, in the United States, undocumented. And the way that Trump and MAGA try to convince people of that is they use these specific cases, lurid examples, to generalize and to demonize all undocumented immigrants, when, of course, the overwhelming, vast majority are just here working, often in conditions that are not nearly as good as the working conditions for native born american citizens. Trump and MAGA use specific cases to try to make bigger points that don't follow the data. And if we put aside for a second that there were murders done by undocumented immigrants while Trump was president, every president, right, including Trump.

Even some of the specific cases that Donald Trump likes to talk about and will probably talk about during the debate on Thursday are either lacking context or straight up, deceptively recounted in order to be able to blame Joe Biden. So there's one example. Rachel Morin. Rachel Morin, young mother who was horrifically murdered in Maryland, allegedly by a migrant from El Salvador. Trump highlighted her at a recent rally. Now, the important thing to understand is because it sounds like open and shut, oh, my God, it's Biden's fall. One way or another, the buck stops with Biden. It's Biden's fault. The alleged killer in that case is a repeat border crosser. A repeat border crosser like that isn't remotely like the folks that are eligible for a path to citizenship under Joe Biden's new plan, for example, as it relates to spouses. It just has nothing to do with what Joe Biden is doing. And the particular migrant involved in that case had been repeatedly kicked out under the title 42 Covid related health rule, first instituted under President Trump and which Biden temporarily kept until he got rid of it. So understand that Trump's making that case an example of how terrible Biden is. It's under the policy that Trump implemented that the guy got away to begin with.

But they're not going to tell you that. They're just going to blame Joe Biden. And a ton of these stories, similarly, are complicated. Sometimes Trump, at his rallies, will talk about an undocumented migrant who was just convicted for doing something. Sometimes the thing the migrant was convicted for was actually done when Trump was still president. This is less less common now, but at the beginning of Biden's presidency, Trump would go out and say, look at this case where we just convicted such and such. The crime that they were convicted of took place while Donald Trump was president of the United States. So if I were Joe Biden, I would come in ready with something like the stories that Donald is telling. Any story of violence and death is a tragedy. And our goal as a country should be to have no stories like that. But Donald is lying to you as he always does. Crime was going up under Trump. It's now down. And some of the people that he is talking to you about actually came into the United States when he was president of the United States. Something along those lines. I'm not a debate prep expert. I'm just giving you my instinct. I would have something like that ready because Trump is going low. He's going very, very low. And Biden needs to be prepared somehow. South Dakota Republican Governor Christy Noem has been allowed back on television. You might remember that around the release of her book where she included completely made up stories like when she met north korean dictator Kim Jong un.

There's no evidence she ever met north korean dictator Kim Jong un. She went out on tv and started saying, well, when I found out that that was in the book, I had them remove it. Right. But did the meeting happen? She won't say. How did it get into the book? She won't say. And just when you thought her staff realized, we've got to keep her off tv, which is what they did. After a handful or so of those disastrous interviews for Christy nome, they canceled all of her interviews. Somehow she, she ends back on NBC over the weekend, interviewed by Peter Alexander. And Alexander again asks, how did the Kim Jong un story even make it into the book? Just tell us how it got there. And she won't answer. And she won't answer. And she won't answer.

Peter Alexander
So let's talk about the book, having gone through much of it right now. This week, russian president Vladimir Putin traveled to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong un. In the first release of your book, he wrote, I remember when I met with north korean dictator Kim Jong un, there was no evidence that that meeting happened. So how did it make it into your book?

Kristi Noem
I'm not going to talk about that.

Peter Alexander
You're not going to talk about that.

David Pakman
Now, understand that she deliberately will mix. I'm not going to talk about the meeting or whether I met. Right. She's, she's cagey. She'll go. I don't discuss my meetings with foreign leaders. It doesn't even pass the sniff test because she discussed it in the book until they figured out it was false. But what Peter Alexander is asking is, how did it get in the book? If you don't, if it's not true. Or if it's simply that you don't talk about your meetings with foreign leaders. What we want to know is how did it get in the book? Did someone else write it? What? And she likes to skip and go, I'm not going to talk about it referring to foreign meetings. But the question is, why was it in the book?

Peter Alexander
Did it make it into your book?

John Kruse
Darren?

Kristi Noem
I'm not going to talk about that.

Peter Alexander
You're not going to talk about how.

Kristi Noem
You made it into your book? I took that line out of my book and I'm not going to talk about it.

Peter Alexander
I guess my question is, you wrote the book, though, so why was that line ever in your book if it didn't happen?

Kristi Noem
I wrote the book and I hope people will read it. It's a good book about how the american citizen can get involved in their government.

David Pakman
It's a terrible book. I can't imagine a bigger waste of time than reading this book again and.

Kristi Noem
What they can do and how the most powerful person in government is them. It's the people who show up, who get engaged and the stories of what they can do to take this country back and how Donald Trump's policies work for the american people.

Peter Alexander
And understood then, just to put it to bed once and for all, did you or did you not meet with Kim Jong un?

Kristi Noem
I am not going to talk about this.

Peter Alexander
Wouldn't it be any. Why is that such a difficult one to say publicly?

Kristi Noem
Because I've taken that line out of the book and I'm not going to discuss it.

Peter Alexander
Okay, but I guess the question is, because you wrote it in the book, people just wanted to know whether that was an accurate or inaccurate statement. Let me.

David Pakman
And also, how did it end up in the book? Why is it in the book? When they notified me that it was in the book, I took it out. Well, but you wrote it and then you voiced it over when you recorded the audiobook version. The entire interview was like this. Christine clearly wishing that they ask her instead of about the lies in her book. What about asking her about, like, sharks and batteries and electrocutions and boats that sink, the stuff Trump likes to talk about it rallies. Right. Instead of her lies. And then she was just as incoherent when asked about why Trump should be president again.

Strap in for this one, because this is a doozy.

Kristi Noem
What I have been very clear about is that we don't want to see another January 6 again. Nobody in this country wants to see another day like that again.

David Pakman
And don't make us do another January 6. Peter, please.

Kristi Noem
I believe that Donald Trump, when he comes back to the White House and is in charge of this country, we're going to have incredible opportunities to show that people in this country will be safer, that we'll have law and order back in our streets. If you look at one of the most violent areas of our country, is often Democrat run cities, sanctuary cities with an open border.

David Pakman
Very much untrue.

Peter Alexander
Down 50% since Joe Biden took office. But specifically, just to get back to this topic of the riders, is Donald Trump wrong when he says he would pardon all of those who have been convicted in the January 6 attack?

Kristi Noem
Each of those individuals needs to be looked at separately as far as what their role was and what was happening.

Peter Alexander
And 132 of them who had committed to assaulting law enforcement officers, would you agree that they should not be pardoned?

Kristi Noem
I think that every one of those cases needs to be looked at individually.

Peter Alexander
I would agree that that would be.

Kristi Noem
I think that this is what our judicial system is for. It's supposed to be the scales of justice. And ladies, well, they went through the judicial system.

Peter Alexander
He's offering to pardon them. So I guess the question is, would that be based on if they attack law enforcement?

Kristi Noem
That will be based on his prerogative and his decision when he looks at those cases.

Peter Alexander
Okay.

David Pakman
All right. So as you can see, just, she won't answer any questions. What about those who admitted that they bashed up law enforcement? Every single one of those cases needs to be looked at individually, but we need Trump back. And that's the way to prevent January 6 really inspiring messages from the de facto president of moms against puppies, as I like to refer to Christie Noem. So definitely someone who squandered her possibilities of being Donald Trump's VP running mate, making the exact boneheaded statements when she reappears. And remember, this is the sort of brazen lying that should completely destruct your political career forever in the United States. But South Dakota Republicans really don't care. And they're like, oh, she's getting a raw deal from all of these fake news media people just asking her to defend the things that are in her book. And so she probably, probably would have a pretty unobstructed path towards reelection. Let's take a very quick break.

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I'm going to start with the end of this disastrous rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by convicted felon Donald Trump. It got so bad his brain broke. So obviously that Fox News had to cut away. They just said, cut the feed. Let me show you that moment. Trump ranting about washing machines and plumbing and all of the things that have raised a lot of red flags with mental health and neurology professionals. And Fox News decides, we've got to go, we've got to bail where there's.

Donald Trump
So much water you don't know what to do with it. You know, it's called rain. It rains a lot in certain places, but no, their idea. You know, did you see the other day? They just went, I opened it up and they closed it again. I opened it, they closed it. Washing machines to wash your dishes. There's a problem. They don't want you to have any water.

They want no water. And I was with, and you were.

David Pakman
Just listening to former President Trump. And we're going to talk about some.

Kristi Noem
The things he was discussing there.

David Pakman
We'll be right back with final remarks. And just going to a commercial rather than allowing this deranged man to continue ranting. And I have to tell you, this was not a good rally for Trump, first and foremost, despite obviously bragging about crowd size. As you can see in this video, the entire upper tier of the stadium, empty, completely empty. You can find videos of Joe Biden speaking at the same place in Philadelphia. And it was actually full. Despite the fact that they say Biden has no crowds and despite the fact that I don't really care whether Biden has crowds, what I care about is whether he has votes. The place half empty for Trump, despite insisting it's another record breaking crowd or whatever the case may be, Trump is very, very scared about this Thursday's debate against Joe Biden. And so he isn't even mincing words anymore. He says Joe Biden is going to be on drugs. If it appears as though Biden is doing well, it is because of pharmaceuticals.

Donald Trump
Because they want to get him good and strong.

So a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the ass. And that's, they want to strengthen him up.

So he comes out. He'll come out. I, okay.

I say he'll come out all jacked up, right? All jacked up.

David Pakman
And of course, that is something that we are going to discuss much more with regard to Trump very, very soon. Trump realizing he's in a bad situation, and so he panics and he says, hey, you know who's great? Cornel west and Jill Stein. Can you imagine? He doesn't talk about how great RFK junior is anymore because he knows RFK junior probably pulls more voters from Trump than he does from Biden. But all of a sudden, Trump sings the praises of Jill Stein and Cornel west. Can you imagine? This guy is scared.

Donald Trump
So we got this poll last night from Rasmussen and it was very, they also did it, like, with Kennedy and with the other ones in there.

Cornel west, he's one of my favorite candidates. Cornel west oh, yeah.

And I like, I like her also. Jill Stein, I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100% from them.

He takes 100%. Kennedy's probably 50 50, but he's a fake.

He's a fake.

David Pakman
He's being honest.

Votes for Jill Stein and Cornel west. Almost certainly come right out of the votes put that are possible for President Joe Biden, whereas with RFK junior, it's harder to know. He says it's 50 50. There are those who suggest it's actually more like 70 30, that RFK pulls more from Trump than from Biden. Trump asking, can you name a single good thing that President Biden has done?

Donald Trump
Because Joe doesn't do anything that's good.

Named one, named one thing that he's done in three and a half years that's good?

David Pakman
Well, the extended record, low unemployment rate, record job creation, dramatically lower crime levels, lower medicare drug prices, the infrastructure investments, chips and science act, student loan debt forgiveness.

I could go on, right? Better stock market, easier to get toilet paper, zero insurrections at the Capitol. You can really come up with quite a long list, zero suggestions that people should inject bleach. And then Trump now cognizant of the fact that some of his rally rambling is becoming a topic of discussion, he goes, I'm not rambling. This is genius stuff that I do.

Donald Trump
But I'm going to go sleepy Joe just for the rest of this particular wild, this is a wild time in Philadelphia.

Now the fake news will say Trump is rambling. No, it's genius what I'm doing up here. But nobody on this.

David Pakman
It's when Trump rants about Joe Bride and then talks about, you know, shark electrocutions and these things. It's genius. But the news media simply don't understand that. Trump still very confused about tariffs. Interestingly, he acknowledges that a lot of people say he's confused about tariffs, but he insists he really does know how tariffs work. This is fun.

Donald Trump
They're looking for hope.

David Pakman
Funny. By the way, if you don't want to cry about the fact that this guy was president and doesn't understand how tariffs work, they're tired of, they're tired.

Donald Trump
Of being called stupid people all over the world.

Four years ago, we were so respected and now we're being laughed at. I took hundreds of billions of dollars away from China. One of these fakers up there said he didn't take any money from China. Tariffs. I tariffed them for hundreds of billions of dollars. He said the american people paid.

David Pakman
No, no. I actually am increasingly convinced Trump's, Trump's people are watching this show.

Donald Trump
No, China paid and the american people didn't pay for it at all. They didn't pay for it. You know, they always find a reason. They're, they're genius in a certain way, but they're evil genius. Very bad genius. I'm nice genius.

David Pakman
Trump's a nice genius, but he still doesn't understand that when he put tariffs on China, the american companies importing the chinese goods pay the tariffs. It hurt the american companies. And then finally, Trump, ending with an inspiring message that he will fight the scum and he will beat the scum.

Donald Trump
Said, we will fight these, this scum that we have to beat. We will fight them and we will win.

David Pakman
There you go. So Trump ending on a very inspiring and positive note in front of a completely deranged and disoriented crowd. And the topics, Biden being on drugs, oddly specific, with a shot in the ass, talking about how he really does understand tariffs and he really isn't incoherent. It's very clear that those narratives are getting to Trump and they are very much bothering Trump. You might recall last week that author Rameen Satude said that during a meeting with Donald Trump, Trump became convinced that Joan Rivers voted for him in 2016. The problem was that that's only possible if she was one of the so called dead people voting for Trump because Joan Rivers died in 2014. Of course, immediately MAGA reacted by saying, no, no, that's made up. Rameen Satude is making it up. Trump didn't say that Joan Rivers voted for him in 2016 because that would make no sense. She was dead for years. Well, we have audio. Here is MSNBC releasing the audio of Trump insisting, I know for a fact Joan Rivers voted for me.

Ramin Setoodeh
Joan said she was a Republican. Did you know that?

Donald Trump
I thought she might have been a Republican. Yeah, I know one thing. She voted for me. According to what she said.

David Pakman
According to what she said. I know that Joan Rivers, who was dead at the time of the 2016 election, voted for me.

What do we do with that?

We know that the people around Trump will just chalk it up to, oh, you know, he thought it was a different person or he just forgot or whatever. But understand that they initially denied he said it. The first reaction when Ramin Satude said on tv, hey, he insisted Joan Rivers voted for him. They denied it. They go, of course he didn't. Well, now we have audio. Now it's, well, it was either joking or it's like an irrelevant confusion, or he just thought they meant Joan Riverton rather than Joan Rivers. Or who knows? Remember that this was the original clip in which we learned about this and this was what they reacted to and said, it's fake news. CNN. You can't trust any of it.

Caitlin Huey-Burns
Can we just first start off about your sit downs with Trump six times after he left the White House, which, you know, is such a different period. Thinking about what's happening in Virginia tonight and seeing his grip on the Republican Party. I mean, what was he like? What did you observe from him when you sat down with him?

Ramin Setoodeh
So I interviewed Donald Trump more than any other journalist since he's left the White House. We started in May 2021. And that report you just talked about, about meandering and confusing is right. He goes from one story to the next. He struggles with the chronology of events. He seems very upset that he wasn't respected by certain celebrities in the White House, and then he'd go to a story about the apprentice. So, as you know, Caitlin, it's very challenging to interview Donald Trump and to go toe to toe with him, but there was some cognitive questions about where he was and what he was thinking, and he would, he would from time to time become confused.

Caitlin Huey-Burns
Because you wrote at one point about Joan Rivers, him telling you that she voted for him in 2016, I believe.

Ramin Setoodeh
Even though told me, and declared that Joan Rivers voted for him when he ran for president. And Joan Rivers died in 2014. Joan Rivers died in 2014, so she would not have been able to vote for Donald Trump.

David Pakman
Speaker one, they insisted that Ramin was just straight up making this up. It's all lies. It's a lie to sell a book. It's a lie for whatever reason. Well, we've got the audio. So now they go, well, it goes from it's not true to if it's true, it's irrelevant, or if it's true, it's not what he meant, or if it's true, whatever.

This is really serious stuff and it's not getting any better. Speaking of really serious and sad stuff, a number of you wrote to me about Roseanne Barr's interview with Piers Morgan.

And again, there's this question of, we have someone who is very obviously mentally ill, and she is being put in a position to weigh in on political issues and give opinions.

And is it, is Piers Morgan doing something wrong by exploiting, in a sense, Roseanne Barr's very obvious mental illness? I don't know the answer. I don't know the answer. Take a listen to this. Piers Morgan invites Roseanne Barr on the show, presumably would give her an opportunity. You know, she said that her Holocaust denial statements were a joke and she was offered the opportunity to kind of follow up on that, and it goes really poorly. Take a look at this.

Piers Morgan
I'm curious why you don't think the election will actually happen. I mean, it's, it's going to happen, isn't it?

Roseanne Barr
I don't think it will happen. I think that America is on the verge of something because it's just too divided. And they keep trying to amp up the, trying to demonize half the population through the media. And I think they're doing that for a reason, because maybe, and I think they're bringing in all these millions of people to vote because the american people ain't gonna vote for Biden.

David Pakman
Obviously, it's not happening that millions of people are being brought in to vote. Anyone you bring in wouldn't be a citizen. They wouldn't be able to vote even if they wanted to, even if that plan was happening, which it's not.

Roseanne Barr
So they gotta bring in voters from all over the world and they're recruiting them. You know, they're actually flying them from other countries. America, if you like, google it, you'll find out they're recruiting them in countries south of the border and flying them from there to here to certain districts. And then I think they're going to try to give mass amnesty to them so they can vote for Biden. You know, they're on the payroll.

David Pakman
You understand that even if you get amnesty for being in the United States undocumented, that still isn't citizenship. You still don't get to vote. You can't register to vote. This is just a slightly more deranged version of what Trump and MAgA Mike Johnson were recently saying.

Piers Morgan
And I mean, what I would say about that.

You're saying, well, I would say this. You're saying a lot of things which are not substantiated. I know these are theories that people are putting out there. The one thing I would say about it is that Trump's popularity with his.

Roseanne Barr
I just heard them say, substantiated by four sources.

Piers Morgan
Okay.

Donald Trump
No, no.

Roseanne Barr
Yesterday, last night, I stayed up all night.

Piers Morgan
I'm about to make a point there.

David Pakman
She was up all night googling guys.

Roseanne Barr
Substantiated.

Piers Morgan
Okay.

Roseanne Barr
I'm about to make part of the questioning of.

Piers Morgan
I'm about to make a wider point.

Trump's support with Hispanics and with black Americans is rising sharply. He doesn't need this.

Roseanne Barr
Thank God.

Piers Morgan
Yeah, but they don't need, you know.

Roseanne Barr
No, they're not here to vote for Trump. They're here to vote for Biden.

Hello. This is a Democrat party operation.

David Pakman
So as you can see, she's totally confused. I mean, it doesn't matter what you say, this is an extraordinarily confused, confused individual and a number of people saying there's something here that is just not really working. Right. Here's another moment where she insisted that Jill Biden was Joe Biden's babysitter or something. I guess this is some other conspiracy theory they have. Is a very sick woman.

Piers Morgan
Do you think Jill Biden should be doing more to protect him?

Roseanne Barr
Yeah, she's oblivious.

She is.

You know what you get when you get a trophy wife? When, you know, you meet her when she's your 15 year old babysitter? You're gonna probably say, that's not correct to knowing you, but it is true. And you can google everything I say. Cause I don't lie. I get four sources.

Piers Morgan
Well, you may have four sources, but what you just said is actually not true.

Roseanne Barr
That Jill Biden was the. Was Biden's babysitter when she was 15.

Piers Morgan
Yeah. That is not true.

Roseanne Barr
You're saying that ain't true.

Piers Morgan
Not true.

Roseanne Barr
Okay, get on Google and let Roseanne.

Piers Morgan
You cannot believe everything you read on Google.

Roseanne Barr
Okay, people, let piers know.

Send him the google.

David Pakman
All right, you guys get it this.

So let me know what you think. Is Piers Morgan doing something ethically or morally wrong by giving Roseanne Barr airtime when she is clearly in such a compromised state? I guess is the way that I would ask it. Let me know what you think info at david pakman.com. and this applies to some people we've interviewed as well. It's hard to know where you draw the line when they want to be interviewed and claim to have things to say.

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John has been working with adults with ADHD for over 30 years now. John, you and I communicated a little bit offline, and you told me that you believe there is direct evidence that Donald Trump has used stimulant medications during a debate against Hillary Clinton, during State of the union speeches, and a handful of other times. Now I. Before you talk to me more specifically about that, the context here, of course, is that Donald Trump is now regularly saying that Biden does the same and predicting that Biden will be on some kind of drugs. At the debate coming this Thursday, you felt it necessary to say, hey, there's another side to this story about drug use. So let me turn it over to you and tell me what you believe and why you believe it.

John Kruse
So jump us back eight years to the debate with Hillary Clinton. And at that time, Clinton had been leading Trump in the polls by six to 8% for almost all summer. All fall, they had had two debates. And the critics and I think the general population, saw Trump wandering around the stage, wandering around in a speech, unfocused, unprepared. He had publicly said he wasn't going to do any preparation work. And people were saying, unless he gets his act together for the third debate, he's not even plausible as a candidate.

Lo and behold, October 19, the third debate comes across, comes, and whether or not you like the content of his speech, whether you agree with his thoughts, most observers said, ah, he's sort of staying in one place, he's more or less answering some of the questions. His sentences, one flow from another. He looks more presidential. And if you look at the polling, and I'm looking at the 538 collective polling numbers from October 19 and the three weeks till the election, Trump's polling numbers go up 3%, Hillary stay pretty much flat. There's a tiny dip, much less than 1% after the comey verdict. So we can say that his performance in that debate may be well responsible for why he got elected. So as someone who is already aware that he has ADHD, and I can get into that whole discussion, I was thinking, what could be going on that could make someone who, what was actually going on in the presentation, and why did he look more presidential? So I began by looking at just physical gestures, and I measured any movement that was more than 10 cm. So it could be hand gestures, it could be body gestures, it could be moving around. And in the first two debates, he's making 42 of these gestures a minute. 42.

He's never still, the third debate, it drops down to 13 a minute. That's a dramatically. He's sitting there calmly now, someone with ADD, if they're really focusing on their behavior, even if they're holding themselves, they might be able to control that. So that doesn't in itself prove anything, but stimulants are one of the things that we know that makes someone with ADHD less hyperactive. So then I looked, and this is a somewhat squishier measure on what I called coherence of a speech. And that's just, does one sentence have any logical connection to the sentence before it? Again, not whether it's true, not whether it's or stupid, but just does it follow? You'll see. Throwing in a comment about Rosie O'Donnell. And in his first two debates, his rate of coherence, by my measure, is about 64%. That shoots up to 85%.

Most of us are more coherent than that anyway, but that's still a market improvement. And what's more compelling about these two together, that's simultaneously happening while his gestures are getting less hyperactive. Now, someone with ADHD, if they're really wanting to appear more coherent, may focus on their speech, but if you're focusing on your speech, your body is going to be more out of control. So to have his body in more control and his speech more in control is highly suggestive, but still circumstantial evidence that he was taking stimulus. But the real kicker is, if you look at what happens to his pupils here, I compared his to Hillary, because they're under the similar lighting conditions. The first two debates, their pupils are about ten to 15% covering their iris, pretty small, they're under bright lights. In the third debate, Hillary's are the same. They're still about ten to 15% covering her surface. His blow up to 40% to 50%.

So a huge dilation of his pupils, and that is one of the things that stimulant medications do, is they dilate your pupils. There's a few other classes of medicines, and a few other things can be lighting issues, but again, clearly it's not a lighting issue.

So to have these three things simultaneously happening, pupilation, reduced hyperactivity, is compelling. It's physiologic evidence. So, as one emergency room physician I was talking to about this said, if you saw Donald Trump put Adderall in his mouth, that's not as good evidence as we have right here that he was taking stimulants, because people can cheat medicine, they cannot swallow it. But here we have direct, compelling evidence that his body is responding to something.

And the classic spin is that, and stories of Trump using stimulants have trailed him, not just on the set of that apprentice, where there's at least two actors who have testified publicly they saw him snorting at all.

But the decade before that, he was taking phentermine, he attributed, it's a stimulant.

It was used for diet control, but it's also something that addresses and treats ADHD. So there's been a long history of his association with these substances.

And most of the criticism or talk about it, is that these substances, the stimulants, explain why he's so hyperactive, they explain why he's so jittery and off track and tangential.

I think it's just the opposite. I think he compellingly meets the full criteria for ADHD.

And with someone with ADHD, these are actually helpful medications. Again, they made him look more presidential. And this is kind of off maybe not appropriate for a doctor to be phrasing it this way, but I said in one of my writing that rather than riffing on his sniffing, we should actually be supporting his snorting. When he was president, you should have wanted Donald Trump to be using stimulants every day because he's more aware of what's going on around him. He's more able to prepare and plan. He's more able to be coherent. He's less impulsive. He's better emotionally regulated.

Speaker one.

David Pakman
So let's talk about a couple of these different things. So when it comes to Joe Biden, the generic path of the conversation seems to be Biden's using something to get through 100 minutes speech.

In general, people like me will say, well, what is he on? And either they, whoever makes the claim has no idea, or they will suggest something that would not really work in the way that they claim it would work to cover the dementia they claim Biden is experiencing, or whatever the case may be here, you're making a very different case, which is we actually have an idea of what it is that Trump would take, and it would work in exactly the way you're describing. As you said, it doesn't make his statements anymore true. It doesn't make his attitude towards his opponents any less authoritarian. It's simply, it makes him be able to regulate the physical movements and to focus in on at least speaking in sequential sentences, if nothing else.

Exactly what do you believe are the signs that Trump has? ADHD.

John Kruse
So ADHD, our official definition is 18 symptoms, nine of them inattentive symptoms, nine of them hyperactive and impulsive symptoms. It's our only major mental health condition where the definition is completely dependent on observable behaviors. So it doesn't matter what he's feeling, it doesn't matter what's motivating him. It's, is he blurting things out inappropriately? Is he walking around when he's supposed to be sitting down? Is he fidgeting uncontrollably? Is he making careless mistakes because he's not paying attention? Is he failing to start or initiate projects because they are too complex or challenging so unequivocally, objectively? And these are, you have to do these in more than one situation. You can't just. And you have to be doing them pervasively and to an extent greater than your peers.

Any objective.

Looking at his behavior, and from the video data, we have way more data. And, you know, looking at Trump in over time, looking at him in different situations, corroborated by huge numbers of individuals.

The amount of information we have from the video available that's publicly is way more extensive than you would ever get in a one to one discussion, evaluation in your office.

And so he displays inattentiveness, he displays impulsivity, he displays hyperactivity to extent that's in excess for his peer group, people his age, people his generation, and it's not the least bit subtle. What's sort of frustrating was that for the first and even to this date, people say he's hyperactive, he's tangential, he's off track, he's doing this, he's a narcissist. And I'm thinking none of those actually have anything to do with narcissism. They are all classic ADHD symptoms.

David Pakman
Let me ask you then, a broader question.

If we consider the ADHD as you describe it, increasingly there is a story that has been breaking into corporate media that something else is going on with Trump. And this refers to the phonemic paraphrasias, the inability to recognize when he said something that he knows to be factually wrong, like he gets the president wrong, or the candidates in the 2012 election wrong, or whatever the case may be. Or he says that Nikki Haley was in charge of capital security.

He refers to Joe Biden as Joe Bride and doesn't seem to recognize it and go back all those sorts of things which Doctor John Gartner, who we interviewed some time ago, outlined. That's all separate from the ADHD, right?

John Kruse
They're separate processes. And again, as you're highlighting, there can be a lot of overlap between symptomatology. We sort of classify dementia as a memory issue and ADHD as an attention issue. But if you're not paying attention, then you're not encoding information properly. So there's much more overlap in actual symptomatology and presentation. And, yeah, so, I mean, the difficult thing is for dementia, we need formal testing or measures of deterioration and functioning. And for identifying Alzheimer's still, we need, classically, we need brain samples of biopsy, which no one's going to do. We're getting closer to having blood tests and PET scans, which may be definitive and helping form a diagnosis, but we're not quite there yet.

So I think, yes, there seems to be another process that seems to be enhancing, exacerbating, worsening his ADHD symptomatology. That because normally, by the time you're an adult, the degree of ADHD you have is fairly stable. You may have a bad day if you sleep poorly. There can be factors that affect it on a day to day basis. But there is clearly most people are seeing a significant trend in his performance.

David Pakman
Doctor Harry Siegel, a psychologist who I interviewed some time ago, said that he notices that Trump's evening events seem particularly more problematic with regard to a lot of these symptoms, as is daytime events. With Adderall use aside, as far as the ADHD part, is there typically a time of day difference there, or if, or would anything that we're noticing as far as time of day be a separate process than the ADHD?

John Kruse
Well, with ADHD, there is a lot of individual variation, but there's a strong genetic bias towards what we call late, which means most ADhd people are lousy in the morning and stay up all hours of the night. And we saw this, he's tweeting at.

David Pakman
02:00 a.m. right, not getting down to the Oval Office until ten or eleven.

John Kruse
Tweeting his pajamas, watching Fox News for several hours in the morning. So it's the more classic pattern, but again, there's a lot of individual variations. So I would say for poor performance in the evening is more fitting with the dementia picture, where what's called sundowning is classic, that people get more confused, disoriented towards the end of the day.

David Pakman
Do you think in, as we prepare for this debate Thursday and the idea of drug testing the candidates has been floated mostly by Republicans, Trump wants it. His former doctor, Ronnie Jackson, who Trump referred to as Ronnie Johnson, recently said that he wants it, et cetera. Do you think that, I mean, would there be any value to that, given what you've observed from both of these individuals? Is it just like it's not typically done, but sure, why not? Or does it seem kind of like a waste of time?

John Kruse
I mean, to me, it seems gratuitous. If we're not demanding a more thorough sort of physical mental examination, which I think we should be doing? Yes, it's intrusive, but we're giving, I mean, the irony, these people, the president is a commander in chief of our military. There are very strict physical, mental testing that a raw recruit, a private, has to undergo to be in our military. But to lead the whole thing, absolutely nothing. And interestingly, ADHD itself is not a disqualification from the us military. But actually, taking medication to control your ADHD is an automatic discharge, which almost has it backwards. Maybe it's saying we can't or we shouldn't be treating these people who have it. So again, I would frame treatment as probably a positive thing, that we shouldn't be stigmatizing someone for. But then we should be open and transparent about what they're using it for and when they're using it. And again, in Trump's case, I think he and the country would have been better off taking it every day, which he clearly wasn't.

David Pakman
So in other words, there's no real problem with drug tests. But if the drug tests turn something up, the understanding of what, if any, condition is being treated would really be the critical part.

John Kruse
Yep.

David Pakman
Fascinating. Fascinating. We've been speaking with Doctor John Cruz. We will be watching on Thursday. And I really do appreciate your time and insights today.

John Kruse
Thanks. Im glad to be able to talk with your audience.

David Pakman
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Problems, I guess we would call them, continue.

And even though it appeared as though that initial investigation that launched years ago wasn't going to go anywhere, but there's an ethics probe, there are real problems for this guy. Whether he's ultimately going to have any consequences, I couldn't tell you. Salon reports woman tells investigators that Florida Republican Matt Gaetz paid her for sex. Now, immediately there are Republicans saying even if this is true, this isn't really a big deal. Now, in most jurisdictions, it is illegal to pay people for sex. So actually it is a problem. But bigger picture, we have a growing situation in which it becomes more and more difficult to believe that the various allegations that have been dogging gates for years now aren't true. It's almost certainly the case that they are true. That doesn't mean lock them up and it means guilt in a court of law. This isn't a court of law. This is a court of public opinion. And when there is this much smoke, there almost certainly is some fire. The article says a woman interviewed by congressional investigators said she received money from Matt Gaetz in exchange for sex. Sources familiar with the testimony told ABC News. Gates also allegedly paid others to attend parties were people engaged in sex and drugs. Witnesses who spoke with the House ethics committee staff previously spoke to federal investigators as part of that probe.

According to the sources, witnesses were shown evidence of venmo payments that they allegedly received from Gates and were asked whether those were for sex. They interviewed half a dozen women who claimed they were paid to attend those parties by Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector. In 2022, you may recall, Greenberg pled guilty to underage sex trafficking, wire fraud, identity theft, stalking, producing a fake id card, and conspiring to defraud the us government, and was sentenced to eleven years in federal prison. This is the, the Matt Gaetz sort of compatriot in a whole bunch of this staff. Last April, the Atlantic published an article that features a former Gates staffer claiming he liked to show off his sexual conquests and brag about his use of erectile dysfunction pills to staffers and other members of Congress.

On Tuesday, the House ethics committee revealed that after the interviews and 25 subpoenas, they are continuing to review allegations that he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct. So listen, morally and ethically, you can think whatever you want about paying for sex, there's lots of people who say, no, it should be legal, fine. This isn't about that. This is about not only the fact that it is a crime in many jurisdictions to participate in prostitution in any way, the buying or the selling, and also, and also that that combined with the illicit drug use runs completely and totally counter to his stated worldview when it comes to ethics and morals and this kind of like strict father morality that he espouses. And in addition to that, if he's seeking to obstruct the investigations that are taking place, then we are talking about additional criminality. And all I want is for him to be held to the same standard as Hunter Biden, right? I mean, listen, if they're going to do to Hunter Biden and Biden's not. Hunter Biden is not even involved in government. At minimum. At minimum, hold Matt Gaetz to that exact same standard. That's what would make sense to me. And we have a bunch of friends down in the Pensacola area who are much more intimately familiar with Matt Gaetz. And every time I talk to them about it, they go, all of this stuff is true. Everyone in the district knows about it. It's a question of whether they can actually get him on any crime, whether he can interfere with the investigations effectively enough to prevent it from going further.

But all of this stuff is true. And again, oh, David, you're not for due process. How can you say that it's true if he hasn't been charged? I'm not talking about guilt under the law. I don't know if they're going to have the evidence to convince a jury. I don't know if they're going to have the evidence to even get an indictment. I don't know if the statute of limitations will have or now. I'm not talking about Gil. Of course he gets the same due process as anybody else. What I am telling you is that due to the number of the allegations, the number of witnesses to the allegations that go, of course that's what was going on. And people who are much closer to this guy geographically and personally than I am, it seems obvious that he's involved in this behavior. Whether it meets the standards of criminality and whether you could get a conviction is a different thing. But we're operating here on this show. This is a court of public opinion, not a court of law. Donald Trump is admitting that he will try to incite another riot and will try to steal the election again if it does not go his way. Donald Trump appeared on the Sean Spicer show. I apologize for the absolutely disastrous audio. I don't know if Antrifa is running the audio on Sean Spicer show. It's completely overblown. But here is Trump saying he'll try to stop it again if the same thing happens in 2024, I have 63 million.

Donald Trump
I was told if I get 63 million, we win easily, that there's no way. John McLaughlin told me, a lot of people told me that.

But when they rig it or cheat, you know, there's not a lot you're going to do about that other than you have to stop it now we have to stop it second time.

David Pakman
We're going to have to try to stop it once again, invoking January 6, saying, listen, if they cheat like they did, you really have to read between the lines a little bit to understand what he's saying, but you kind of don't if you've been paying attention, if they rig it like they did in 2020, after which I found it appropriate to incite a riot, meaning, I, quote, tried to stop it, we will have to, quote, try to stop it again in 2024. It's sounding like a confession to me from Donald Trump about what he plans to do. And it's not just Trump who's admitting it. Roger Stone admitted on one of those surreptitious recordings, they have a plan to cheat. They have the phone numbers of judges. They have technology in place. They have people in place. They've, they're admitting it already.

The hope is that authorities are aware and that authorities are watching this thing. Trump again, ranting about airports, and this is, of course, something he would know very little about. And also he has to exaggerate everything. And Sean Spicer just nods along like a bobblehead.

Donald Trump
You look at our airports where flights are being delayed four days, where people are pitching tents at an airport because their flight is so, you know, it's never going to even happen. We've never had problems like this. What you're seeing in the last two years, we've never seen anything like it. And we become like, you know, we are a failing nation. We've become a third world nation in many ways. Our elections are third world, in my opinion. Our airports are being run so badly. It's so badly, it's not even conceivable. People go, the other night, I had somebody going to the airport, and they called up two days later to tell me that they've never gotten out. I said, but where are you? Still at the airport. And it was like two days before.

David Pakman
It was two days before or two days after. As usual, Donald Trump's story is laced with lies and confusion. And you can see this is Spicer's. I'm sort of confused, but I think if I speak, it will actually be even worse face. So he just kind of stays quiet. And as a matter of fact, checking, I guess we would call it 2023, was the busiest year for air travel ever, the busiest air travel ever. And there was a cancellation rate under 1.2%, which was the lowest cancellation rate for flights in a decade. So it's not that flight cancellations are the foremost issue of american politics and society, but to the extent that Trump's talking about it, he's still lying about it. Lastly, Trump, continuing his delusions, says that when he goes to a rally and gives a speech for the audience. It's like seeing the Mona Lisa, which was not exactly what came to mind when I watched the last Trump rally.

Donald Trump
Somebody explained it. When there is a certain something that's great or that they want to hear, you know, you have people that follow the rock bands and they listen to the same songs over and over and over, and they like them more five years later than they did before. You have people that go to the Mona Lisa, they want it. They love the Mona Lisa, and they'll see it hundreds and hundreds of times. And it gets better every time. A Broadway play where they'll see it 20 times. I mean, it's sort of an interesting thing. And it's basically the same 20 subjects that you're talking about.

David Pakman
So Trump is defending that he gives the same stupid speech every time by saying, some people like hearing the same songs multiple times or looking at the Mona Lisa. So I've been to see the Mona Lisa. The one thing about a Trump speech that is similar to going to see the Mona Lisa is that when I went to the Mona Lisa, people were so triggered trying to take pictures on their cell phones of the Mona Lisa. It's behind thick glass. The pictures come out terrible. It's all reflective. People are pushing and shoving at the Mona Lisa. I was more interested in observing the behavior of others. And likewise, if I ever went to a Trump rally, which I hope never to do, my instinct is that I would be much more interested in looking at the people that are at the Trump rally and their behavior. That's, that's the similarity that I can think of between going to see the Mona Lisa and going to see a Trump rally. But Trump delusional as always, delusions of grandeur. Let's hope that they are slapped down a little bit, at least on Thursday night at the debate against Joe Biden. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. We are going to talk about a record death toll at the Hodge pilgrimage because of extreme temperatures. There's a Florida family suing NASA after a piece of space debris crashed through their home. And we will talk about Colorado's new AI law and what it seeks to do, whether it could be a model for other states, whether it will have absolutely no teeth at all.

All of those stories and more on today's world famous award winning bonus show. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money.

Donald Trump
Everybody else that makes money to find.

David Pakman
Themselves as bad, sign up@joinpacman.com. alex Jones cries one tear of sadness for every new member that signs up@joinpackman.com. dot I'll see you then and I'll be back tomorrow.

6/24/24: Trump's debate strategy goes public, Kristi Noem back at it

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1. Trump’s Debate Strategy

2. Analyzing Kristi Noem’s Media Mishaps

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