6/7/24: Bannon told to go to prison, Trump makes major mistake

This episode focuses on the legal and political implications of Steve Bannon's ordered prison reporting and Donald Trump's contentious rally in Arizona.

1. Steve Bannon's legal woes culminate with his imminent prison sentence, signifying a turning point for key figures in the Trump administration.
2. Trump's rally in Arizona is critiqued for its logistical failures and potential health risks to attendees, reflecting poorly on his campaign management.
3. Trump's public speaking issues during the rally are analyzed, suggesting cognitive glitches that undermine his public image.
4. Legal complexities and implications of Bannon's and Trump's situations are discussed, noting the broader implications for Trump's future political ambitions.
5. David Pakman's analysis focuses on the broader socio-political landscape, including potential impacts on upcoming elections and public perception.

1: Introduction to the episode

David Pakman sets the stage for discussing Bannon's legal situation and Trump's recent rally. He provides a brief overview of Bannon being sentenced to prison and Trump's controversial speech in Arizona. David Pakman: "Welcome, my friends. It seems as though we are getting to the end of the road for former Trump propagandist Steve Bannon..."

2: Bannon's Sentence and Appeals

Pakman dives into the details of Bannon's legal troubles, including his contempt of Congress charges and the appeals process. Steve Bannon: "All of this is about one thing. This is about shutting down the MAGA movement..."

3: Trump's Rally in Arizona

Analysis of Trump's rally, focusing on the mismanagement and health risks posed by the extreme heat, alongside Trump's puzzling public statements. David Pakman: "They were dropping like flies. I have video here where people are being taken out on stretchers because of the heat."

4: Trump's Political Statements and Errors

Pakman critiques Trump's speech errors and controversial political statements during the rally, suggesting a decline in his public speaking abilities. Steve Bannon: "When I'm president, I will use title 42 to end the trial..."

1. Stay Informed on Legal Processes: Understand the legal proceedings that influence political figures.
2. Evaluate Political Rhetoric Critically: Analyze speeches and statements critically, especially during elections.
3. Consider Safety in Public Gatherings: Be aware of the health and safety logistics of attending large public events.
4. Scrutinize Media Coverage: Look for unbiased reporting and diverse viewpoints to form well-rounded opinions.
5. Engage in Civic Discussions: Participate in discussions about political and legal issues to foster a more informed community.

-- On the Show:

-- A judge says it's finally time for Steve Bannon to report to prison, and directs him to do so on July 1

-- MAGA voters drop like flies as failed former President and convicted felon Donald Trump holds a rally in 108 degree Phoenix, Arizona

-- A new poll finds that 49% of the country believes Donald Trump should drop out of the presidential race on the basis of his criminal conviction

-- On the basis of being a convicted felon, Donald Trump faces a travel ban in 37 countries

-- Former FBI Director James Comey explains the logistics of how a former president could be "locked up" in a regular prison

-- One in three Republicans now say that Donald Trump is the wrong candidate to be their nominee in 2024

-- Russell Brand finalizes his total conversion to Trump flunky, telling his followers that if one supports democracy, they should vote Trump in November

-- Reader mail and more in Friday Feedback

People

Steve Bannon, Donald Trump

Companies

None

Books

Echo Machine (mentioned as forthcoming by David Pakman)

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

David Pakman
Welcome, my friends. It seems as though we are getting to the end of the road for former Trump propagandist Steve Bannon, who after being sentenced to four months in jail, has been out pending appeal. But it seems as though the party will end on July 1. As Bannon has been told, it is time to report to prison. And it really couldn't happen to a nicer propagandist. NBC News reports.

Judge orders Steve Bannon to report to prison on July 1 for contempt of Congress sentence. The former Trump adviser was sentenced to four months for refusing to comply with the January 6 committee subpoenas, but it had been put on hold while he appealed. Here is Bannon ranting. One might even say raving. More ranting than raving, I would say, but a little bit of both.

And let's just listen to what he had to say. This is really wild legal issues that.

Steve Bannon
Have to be addressed. All of this is about one thing. This is about shutting down the MAGA movement, shutting down grassroots conservatives, shutting down President Trump. Not only are we winning, we are going to prevail. And every number and every poll shows that there's nothing that can shut me up and nothing that will shut me up. Your choose failed. You're going to jail. Is that a prison built or a jail built that will ever shut me up? All victory to maga. We're going to win this.

More importantly, we're going to win on November 5.

David Pakman
So as you can hear an antagonist there screaming in the background.

Steve Bannon
Thank you very much.

Lock him up. Lock them up.

David Pakman
You know, it's, it's not usually a good idea after a judge has made a decision to start screaming this way right outside the courtroom. It's just, it's not usually what's recommended by counsel. And they are trying to make this all about how the judge is biased and the system and all this stuff. I want to remind you that the judge that ordered Steve Bannon to start his prison sentence on July 1 is not some liberal right, left wing extremist. It is a judge appointed by the failed former president and now a convicted felon himself, Donald Trump. So I don't know what to tell you as far as the judge is concerned, but this is the direction that it is going.

Other interesting notes here.

Bannon was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress in July 2022. So it's been almost two years since he's been found guilty. It is time to go to prison, my friend. Let's just do it. Bannon's sentence was on hold pending appeal lawyers made their case in November. Appeals court upheld the conviction. In May, federal prosecutors filed a motion saying it's time to report to prison. Federal prosecutors argued there's no legal basis to continue staying the sentence. It's just like, it's just time to go to prison. That's it. And Bannon's lawyers say, no, no, no, you need to stay this until we go through the full appeals process, maybe even the Supreme Court. And of course, the goal being if Donald Trump gets himself elected president during all of this, Michigan, maybe then Trump is able to keep Bannon out of prison, period.

It doesn't appear, it doesn't appear as though that is going to happen. And that is good news. Donald Trump held a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, yesterday that was an atrocity in many ways. The content was atrocious, all meant to go to Phoenix, a place that is central to the debate about immigration and border crossings and so on, and rile up the most horrifying elements of his base. That was atrocious. But it was 108 degrees in Phoenix, Arizona, yesterday. They had people waiting outside in the heat for hours. They were dropping like flies. I have video here where people are being taken out on stretchers because of the heat. Several people ended up in the hospital. Can you imagine ending up in the hospital because Trump has you out in 108, by some reports, at one point, even 110 degree heat. And why did Trump hold this event at the hottest time of day? 02:00 p.m. i've spent time in Arizona. 02:00 p.m. no, no, no. You get out there first thing in the morning or you wait until the sun sets. But 02:00 p.m. why? The reason is that after the event, Trump had to fly to Silicon Valley, where supposedly the elites never support Trump or any of it, because he was holding an insanely high priced fundraiser hosted by David Sachs. So a disgusting event in every way.

However, Trump's problems were bigger than even this. Trump glitching very badly. Tell me if you can make out what he's trying to say here.

Steve Bannon
When I'm president, I will use title 42 to end the trial and we have to do this.

David Pakman
I will use title 42 to end the trial and we have to do this. That's just one of his straight up malfunctions. He twitches and he just white flags. And.

Steve Bannon
When I'm president, I will use title 42 to end the trial. And we have to do this.

David Pakman
We have to, folks. We just have to do it. There's no way around it. On the topic of the death penalty, Trump using words that I recognize from the english language, but they're not in an order and in a syntax that makes any sense to me.

Steve Bannon
And when I mentioned that, and I do it, I do it purposely, I mentioned the death penalty, and without it, you're never going to solve the problem. If you look at Singapore, if you look at other, the only countries essentially, that don't have a problem are people with either really strong crime prevention or countries with the death penalty.

David Pakman
I think he's arguing for speedy and summary executions of people after kangaroo court trials. Doesn't exactly sound like due process to me. Speaker one.

Steve Bannon
And Singapore is another one. They don't even know what you're talking about. When you said you have a drug problem, do you have a drug problem? No, we don't have a drug. Why would we have a drug problem? We have an unbelievable drug problem. We lost last year, in my opinion, 300,000 people.

David Pakman
Trump has an opinion. I love that. You know, think about that. You know, I have a chapter in my forthcoming book, Echo Machine. I know it used to. This is a whole other story, which I don't even want to bring people into right now. But the book was initially going to be called Echo, then it was going to be called the echo machine, and then it was decided by, by way above my pay grade that we really don't need the. So in my forthcoming book, Echo Machine, I outline in great detail how we got to a point where there isn't even agreement about what are facts. Now, I'm not saying what the facts are. That's a different question. What the facts are means how many people died of drug overdoses last year, right? That's a question of what are the facts.

What are facts is when Trump goes, I have an opinion about the number of people that died of drug overdoses. What are you talking about? That's a factual question. It's not an opinion. Do you like chocolate cake, as Trump likes to call it, or do you like vanilla or coconut? Those are matters of opinion. But Trump goes, I have an opinion about the number of people that died of a drug overdose. I have a. This is, it's an epidemic of non thinking. And it's fascinating that Trump even mentioned that yesterday at his rally. Okay. Trump also calling in Phoenix, Arizona, for mass detention camps from which he plans to conduct mass deportations. If he becomes president again on day.

Steve Bannon
One, I will seal the border, I will stop the invasion, and we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in the history of our country.

David Pakman
Speaker one. And as he said before, the temporary place, as the mass deportations ramp up will be government military run camps. It's funny. They told us it was. What was that guy's name? I never remember what the guy's name was. Speaker one.

Steve Bannon
Obama.

David Pakman
Speaker one ah, yes, Barack Obama, who supposedly was going to stuff everybody into so called FEMA camps. Never happened. Never was a plan for it, never was an inkling of it. But Trump is telling us, oh, we're going to make camps in order to then be able to deport people in an expedited fashion. All right, Trump, again, talking about this whole language thing where there's languages Trump hasn't heard before. And so he says, these are languages no one's ever heard of. Speaker one.

Steve Bannon
The instructors talking English, and they have somebody speaking, in some cases, languages that we've never even heard of.

David Pakman
And by the way, not exactly with the great command of english language himself, Trump talking about people are talking languages. We would, of course, native english speakers, which I am not, would say, people are speaking languages. People are speaking languages. But this is another one of Trump's xenophobic catcalls. These are whacked out languages. No one's ever heard of these language. They make no sense from the standpoint of more generic political lies. Trump also dropped in a few, including this doozy.

Steve Bannon
We, I funded the colleges and black colleges and universities. Nobody else did that. Nobody else even thought of it.

David Pakman
And what would that. That is, of course, a lie.

President Joe Biden. Now, like it or not, some people say, I don't like the concept of a historically black college or university. Okay, well, that's not what's at issue. What's at issue is, is it true that nobody but Trump has funded HBCUs? It is not true. President Biden has invested more in HBCUs than Donald Trump ever did, because Trump is the candidate of law and order. Besides being a 34 count convicted felon, he also brought up on the stage Sheriff Joe Arpaio, himself a convicted criminal pardoned by Donald Trump.

Joe Arpaio, known for racially profiling and even abusing immigrants. And Trump kisses him.

And there it is.

Trump kissing Joe Arpaio.

Convict to convict on the presidential stage. What a year it is to be alive in the United States.

Trump, on the topic of his conviction, talks about how the courts need to be straightened out, which, of course, seems to me like Trump just wants a get out of jail free card from an appellate court.

Steve Bannon
No, it's never been. Nobody's ever seen, because they know it was rigged. They know it's a corrupt system. They know all about it. But with your help, less than five months from now, and we're going, and I'll tell you what, we have to change the system. We have to straighten out what's going on in these courts. We got a rigged deal going. This whole country, country.

And we've got to do it. And those appellate courts have to step up and straighten things out.

David Pakman
So there's two interpretations here, more narrowly. It's the appellate court needs to straighten out my conviction. I need my conviction overturned. Bigger picture, it's we need to sic the courts on my political enemies, which, of course, Trump has admitted and conceded before.

Trump waxing poetic about authoritarian chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Steve Bannon
In China, I was with President Xi, 1.4 billion people, strong guy.

And we get along well, as always.

David Pakman
Trump touting his great relationship with the very strong Xi. A really strange moment. Trump asking if there were venezuelan criminals at his rally, sort of taking a survey, and there may be.

Steve Bannon
Is there any criminal from Venezuela in the room? Please raise your hand.

There probably is. We just don't know about it.

David Pakman
There you go. Sort of a strange, strange moment. And then Trump ending on a positive note where he, where he says, if I don't win, it's the end of the United States of America. Really inspiring the crowd.

Steve Bannon
If we don't win, it's we, it's all of us. It's millions of people. If we don't win, this country is finished. I really believe that. I think it's, I think it's finished.

David Pakman
There you go.

In the reality, by the way. Oh, this is funny, actually, we interviewed this former Trump supporter, Kyle Sweet, sir. Not long ago, he tweeted in reaction to Trump saying this, if Trump loses, America will thrive. However, the unamerica fake conservative MAGA scam will be finished. And that's really what's at stake in 2024. And I want people to understand, it's not just about what Donald Trump will do in the four years between January 25 and January 29, if he lives that long. It's not just about that. It is about, listen, since winning in 2016, they've lost just about everything. 2018 20, 202-022-2023 abortion, referenda. It's been bad.

If we can stave off this Trump in November, it could be the death knell of MAGA Trumpism as we know it now. You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene, she's in a very red district. Maybe she figures out a way to survive politically by kind of not being as Trumpy anymore or something like that. But we have the chance, the opportunity, better said, to really put out to pasture into the dustbin of history, as Ron DeSantis would say, maga Trumpism and we should do it. All right, real quick, before we go to a break, I do want to mention a new poll. I've been meaning to talk about this. It's gotten pushed back. I have a few minutes. Today, a new poll finds that nearly half of Americans believe that Donald Trump should drop out of the race after being convicted. Ok, we're going to link to this. You can check out the details of the poll. It's an ABC News Ipsos poll. And it finds that right at 50%, 49% of Americans believe Trump should end his campaign. Now, there's two ways to interpret these numbers, and this is why these headlines can be. It's not that they're deceptive, but they can be misleading in some way. On the one hand, it's like, of course, Democrats think that Donald Trump should drop out. And then when you consider that roughly half of independents are left leaning, the 50% number becomes not that remarkable. There, there are almost no Republicans who think Trump should drop out. I think it was like 15% or something along those lines.

What would be more remarkable is if 60, 65, 70% of the country believed that Trump should end his campaign, because then mathematically, inevitably, it includes a whole bunch of Republicans. I do also want to remind folks that it is not as though these republican candidates of the last 20 years are popular with the general population. The last Republican to win the popular vote was George W. Bush in 2004 and before that. So that's 20 years ago. Before that, you have to go back to 1988, to his dad, George HW Bush. Republicans don't win the popular vote. Even when they win electorally, they lose the popular vote, as Trump did, by millions. So the numbers would certainly be more remarkable at 60, 65%.

In general, the vast majority of the country doesn't vote for these republican candidates. But Trump appears to be staying in. Doesn't seem as though he's going to drop out. And so we've got to defeat him in November. It's the only way. All right, let's take a quick break, hear from a sponsor or two, and then we'll be back with more.

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That's Betterhelp help.com pacman show. The link is in the podcast. Notes if you live in the US, did you know that anyone can access your most private information using those people search sites? These sites are populated with information from data brokers, which have access to your Social Security number, login credentials, addresses, location history, even your online activity. But our sponsor, Incogni, is the service that will put your mind at ease. You just create an account, grant them the right to go to work for you, and then you sit back. While Incogni has data broker sites remove your personal data from their databases and incogni keeps you updated on the status of everything, and they will handle any objections from those data brokers. This is often the reason people get robocalls, because their info is on one of these sites that incogni will take you off of scammers. Use that information to commit fraud against you. Go to incogni.com pacman and use the code Pacman to get 60% off an annual plan.

That's Inc. Ogni.com pacman for 60% off. The link is in the podcast. Notes the David Pakman show does primarily depend on you to fund the show every day. The studio, staff, salaries, benefits, connectivity, all of it is primarily funded by people who say, hey, I kind of like what you're doing. I think it's valuable enough that I want to see it continue. I understand that sometimes YouTube takes away your revenue, Facebook takes away your revenue. Snapchat and tic tac take away your revenue. I'm going to fund you directly. And that's what it means to get a membership at join pacman.com dot. I would love for you to do it, and you can use the coupon code savedemocracy 24 to get a sizable, a tidy little discount off of the cost of a membership. Here's a really interesting sort of consequence to the conviction of Donald Trump as a felon that I haven't had the opportunity to talk about so far this week. Donald Trump is facing a travel ban to 37, or potentially even 38 countries, depending on our latest interpretation of this. The reality is that even though it is Donald Trump who has favored and talked about banning this, that and the other person based on their country of origin or one characteristic, or are they coming from a supposed mental institution for all sorts of different reasons, Donald Trump wants to ban people from coming to the United States. Newsweek now reports that former President Donald Trump, now a convicted felon, could face significant travel restrictions as many countries around the world enforce strict immigration policies against individuals with criminals records.

And the article goes on to explain that based on a review on data from the World Population Review, the following countries don't allow convicted felons to enter. They are Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Cuba, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Macau, New Zealand, South Africa, Taiwan, the UK, and yes, also the United States. There are further countries that Trump may now be denied entry to. Not all countries check criminal records, but if they discover, hey, we are aware of a convicted felon at our border, they could implement a rejection. And it is quite a list, including Brazil, Cambodia, Chile.

You can check out the entire list going down to Turkey, Ukraine, and the United, United Arab Emirates. So couple different things here. You know, I, it is, in a sense, we continue to deal with the endless irony of everything that Trump stands for with regard to his personal life, with regard to his legal problems, with regard to the hypocrisies and double standards of the policies he claims to stand by and the principles he claims to abide by, all of these different things, there is an irony there, of course. Trump had a travel ban. He may now be restricted from accessing other countries because of a travel ban. And, you know, maybe he's not going to find Obama's birth certificate in Kenya, since it's possible Kenya won't let the guy in or. Ok, so we understand the ironic sort of part of it. There is another aspect to this, which is, on the one hand, if Trump is president and he's really not allowed into some of these countries, it does make it much more difficult to carry out the job of president. Now, does he need to go to all of these countries? Does Trump need to go to. I don't know.

Is Trump going to go to Iran as president? Probably not. But there are countries here, including the UK, of course, that are relatively close allies. And if we believe that those countries would reject Trump from entering, it is yet another reason why, hey, maybe we don't want to have a convicted felon as president of the United States. But there's another story to this here, and it is the story about the two tiered justice system, which is not about Democrats and Republicans. It's really primarily about what is it about the elites and the rich that allows them to get around the letter of the law in so many cases? And if I'm honest in my prediction, I think the most likely outcome is that these countries just let Trump in anyway. If he is president of the United States, or honestly, to some degree, even without being president of the United States, I think they might just let Trump in any way. So it's certainly one of these stories that makes for an interesting headline, and it is fascinating to think about, and it is ironic. And there's this incredible contrast between Trump wanting to prevent everybody else from coming here when they are either from an asshole country or from countries he associates with terrorism or whatever, and then now he's on the other side of that. But at the end of the day, we have to make a decision. Is this enough trouble to have a convicted felon as president that we just need to decide as a country, we're just not going to do it. And even Republicans saying, you know what, I'm going right back to voting for Republicans in 2028 once we get a reasonable candidate.

But I can't vote for Trump this time. Hopefully, Republicans will make that decision.

How would we lock up Donald Trump. If Judge Juan Marshawn decides that is going to be Donald Trump's sentence on July 11, many people have been saying there's no real way to make Trump serve time in a penitentiary. Practically speaking, you can't do it. Well, here's an interesting perspective. Former FBI director James Comey, who Trump fired, recently, appeared on Jen Psaki's show on MSNBC, and he said it's not all that complicated. He says it is doable to imprison Donald Trump or any former president. Listen to what he had to say. So a lot of people have suggested that there are a range of factors that would make it difficult to put a former. There's not, the system has not been tested in this way. Do you agree with that, that it would be difficult or nearly impossible for the law enforcement institutions to put him in actual jail? No, they would just put him in a double wide somewhere out near the fence, out in the grass, and he would eat there, he'd shower there, he'd exercise there. Trump doesn't exercise. Be away, as Donya Perry said, from general population. But it's obviously doable. Speaker one. Speaker one. So the idea here is this is actually much simpler. You don't need to build a facility just for Trump, as people were suggesting. You don't need to do home confinement. You don't have to do, you know, just serve your sentence non concurrently, non consecutively by just doing weekends in some facility, low, low security facility. No, it's very simple. You identify where it is that he should be held, and then you very easily bring some trailers there.

James Comey, referring to a double wide, which means a trailer of some kind. You can set up trailers for Secret Service, you can set up a little perimeter or whatever, but he is within the walls, within the confines of the penitentiary, the jail, the prison that he is assigned to. It's a pretty straightforward solution for me. It's less about, you know, the reason I continue to say I don't think Trump is really going to see a day inside the walls of any kind of penitentiary is that there are so many steps that would need to first get through to even really consider that. First and foremost is, is such a sentence something that Juan Marshawn would impose in, from what I'm reading, 60, 70% of falsifying business records, convictions in New York, 60 70%. There is no jail time handed down. It's just probation and or fines. So right off the bat, we have the chance that there's not even anything imposed. Then we go to. Okay, what if we're in that other 30%?

Trump hasn't shown remorse. Trump has not. Trump has 34 instances of falsifying business records, not just one. Maybe the judge says, I am going to impose a prison sentence. Sometimes it is imposed, but it is suspended, assuming Donald Trump is not convicted of or arrested or gets into other trouble. So you could get a sentence that is a suspended sentence, or you could get a sentence that is indeed served in home confinement, or whatever the case may be. Or you could get a sentence that is then suspended pending appeal, as Donald Trump intends to do, and later thrown out, either because the sentence is deemed inappropriate or the appeal succeeds, or you have a sentence that is temporarily held during appeal, and then Trump becomes president. And as a practical matter, it is determined. And again, this is where it starts to get like, well, how is this going to happen? It's determined you can't have a sitting president behind bars. And then it's pushed off until the end of Trump's term, at which time Trump would be in his eighties. And then, who knows? So I don't think James Comey is wrong here, but I do still believe that the most likely outcome is whatever the sentence ultimately is in terms of Trump actually spending days and nights within the perimeter of a penitentiary, I'm still betting against it. I want to hear from you. What do you expect? What do you think? What do you think of what James Comey is saying here?

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Is there a sea change of sorts happening within the republican party? Have the Republicans finally grown up enough to realize this entire Trump thing was a disaster? You know, I was recently on the Piers Morgan program, and they had this right wing guy on Benny Johnson, and he just comes out shot out of a cannon. He's attacking this and attacking that and calling me a Stalinist. And he, he's furious. And much of what these guys are furious about is that they've lost everything since 2016. 2018 was a disaster. 20 202-022-2023 abortion related referenda it's all been a disaster. And so they don't know what they can do in order to win again. Some Republicans are coming around to the idea that the problem is that they keep supporting Donald Trump and Trump like candidates and MAGA people. And maybe it's turning around. There is new polling which finds that one in three Republicans now think Donald Trump was the wrong candidate choice. This is post conviction, mind you. Apparently the indictments alone weren't enough for them to think Trump's the wrong choice. But something about the conviction seems to have convinced them. The article reads, one in three republican voters say they would have preferred a different candidate to Trump. The former president won enough primary races already to secure the republican nomination. But according to a survey of 1003 Americans trying, Trump does not command the full support of his base, and 33% of this demographic would have preferred another politician.

Meanwhile, this proportion is higher, 47% among republican voters age 18 to 34. The margin of error is plus or -3.09% and I apologize. This was pre conviction. Pre conviction, post conviction, the numbers may have gotten even worse. I have to tell you that there's two things that can be true at the same time, and this is a classic corporate media headline. One in three says Trump was the wrong candidate choice. You can interpret this however you want. On the one hand, we would say that's not news. Almost 40% of republican voters in the primary voted for someone other than Trump. We don't need a new poll to tell us about a third of republicans don't want Trump.

A third or more already voted for someone different, mostly Nikki Haley, in the republican primary. So that's not a big deal. It doesn't really change anything. On the other hand in an election that's expected to come down to under half a million votes in three to five states, if one third of the voters of one of the two major political parties sending a candidate to the general election ballot, if almost one third of the voters for one of those parties says, I didn't want this guy, I don't want this guy, and ten or 15% of that third says, I'm either going to stay home or vote for Biden or vote for someone else. These elections are so, so close from an electoral standpoint that that's enough to flip the election and to make it so that Joe Biden wins. Now, there's a broader question that I want to deal with, which is what's been happening with the polling in general since Donald Trump was convicted? The answer is not very much. There is a slight, slight downtick here where if you go back to May 31, Trump was plus 1.4 and he's now plus 1.3, that is essentially no change.

So far in the polling we have, there has been essentially no change to the national popular vote polling as a result of the conviction. Now, let me give you both sides of this to really be as thorough as possible. On the one hand, Trump gets convicted. First time a former president has ever been criminally convicted, and the polling doesn't move, that must mean that the conviction will have no effect.

I think it's risky to make that assumption, because this is an unprecedented event, such that the waiting and the methodology applied to these polls probably needs to be modified to account for such an unprecedented event. So I continue to think this is either candidates race to win or to lose.

There's this new report out from the Wall Street Journal talking about Biden's supposed confusion behind closed doors, it's conceivable that that's going to become a bigger story. And this really could go either way. So all we have left, all we really have that we can do is we can go out and vote, and we can talk to people we know and say, hey, you really need to go out and vote as well. There's really no other way around this. At this point in time, I don't know if the convictions are really going to have any effect. I don't know what's going to happen with the narrative around Joe Biden behind the scenes and cognition based on that Wall Street Journal article. I just don't know. And so, as I said on the Piers Morgan show, if you give me two candidates who are cognitively struggling, which is what some people believe we have. I want the people that Biden would put around him running the country, rather than the people that Trump would put around him. On both sides, there are people talking about replacing their candidates. At this point, I do believe that it is too late. It's not too late in a literal sense. We haven't had the conventions yet, but I do believe that it is too late and that whichever party replaces their candidate is conceding it's total chaos. We have no idea what we're doing. And that would be an extraordinarily, extraordinarily damaging concession. So I believe that these are the candidates that the parties are going to have all the way through to November. And it's now a question of where in the balance are those quarter million to half a million votes in three to five states going to shake out such that one or the other gets to the 270 electoral votes.

Now, in the meantime, arbiter of ideas and free thinker, Russell Brand is making a very definitive choice about the forthcoming election. Let's talk about that next. Russell Brand bills himself as a critical thinker who will always tell us the real, unvarnished truth. He is not a left winger. He is not a right winger. He just follows empiricism and facts, and those processes he now wants us to believe have led him to getting himself baptized as a, I think, 40 something year old guy. Okay. And to voting for Donald Trump, if you believe in democracy. In his latest direct to camera video, former actor Russell Brand, now podcast host, maybe sometimes comedian, I'm not sure. He says that if you really care about democracy, Trump is the person you would support. And of course, the fact that he tried to become president despite losing would seemingly directly contradict that claim. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here's what Russell Brand has as a message to the voting public of the United States of America.

C
What I feel now is that if you really care about democracy, you'd be better off supporting Trump, the neoliberal establishment, because I think they have much deeper, far more insidious ties to globalism, to the war machine, to authoritarian and manipulative media, are more likely to deploy the judiciary even than their arch nemeses, Donald Trump. But it's not up to me to decide, is it? I'm an english person. I don't vote in your country. It's up to you to decide. It's up to you to like and to subscribe and to support our channel.

David Pakman
So that we can continue to tell.

C
You the, the truth as best as we understand it. So the Donald Trump verdict, guilty. It's a greater indictment on the american judiciary than on the man himself, because we know that were it a different person, there would have been a different result. And we know that the primary motivation, and this is clear even from the celebrations of his detractors and opponents, is not about bringing about justice, is about bringing down a political opponent.

David Pakman
The guy who says that he will tell us the unvarnished truth says that if you support democracy, it is Trump you should vote for, because Biden is weaponizing the justice system against him. Now, I'm actually surprised that they're continuing to go with this line of how Biden is weaponizing the DOJ, because, yes, the DOJ has made the independent decision to indict and prosecute Donald Trump, but it has also made the independent decision to prosecute Hunter Biden and to prosecute democratic Senator Bob Menendez and to investigate Corey Bush for campaign finance something or other, and to go after democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar. So if the point of the Biden DOJ is that Biden is directing it to go and to say, go after this person and that person, because they're my political enemies, it seems that mostly they are going after his political allies and Joe Biden's own family. So that argument is undercut very significantly. But there's a bit of don't believe what your eyes tell you, don't believe what your ears are hearing going on here with the. The candidate that supports democracy is Trump. Trump has been hostile to a free and independent press since he even announced he was running in the 2016 election. Back in 2015, he doesn't like real hard interviews with serious questions. He talks about shutting down media outlets that he doesn't like. They took Jim Acosta's press pass for a while because he didn't like Jim Acosta's questions. There's all these other ways, smaller ways, in which Trump has been hostile to democracy.

He should be able to control the justice system. He should be immune and blah, blah, blah.

But how can you say that the guy who lost but still thought he should be president is the guy that is the pro democracy candidate? How can you say that the guy that waxes poetic about global dictators like Kim Jong un and Putin and Duterte and Xi and Assad and actually, maybe Assad. Maybe it's not Assad. I don't actually don't remember whether he's talked positively about Assad, but Orban and others, how can that be the guy who is for democracy while he alienated many of our actual western democratic allies while he was president. So this is another case of Russell Brand going with the the opposite is true. I'm going to tell you the opposite, and you have to believe it and you have to like it. Don't fall for it. And by the way, I don't know why anyone's listening to Russell Brand anyway, given his locked, long track record of pseudoscience and lies and deception or whatever. But if you saw past all that and you believe he's telling you some kind of unvarnished truth, at least with regard to politics, it is nonsense that the pro democracy candidate here is Trump. You might vote for Trump because you don't care about democracy, right? Just be upfront about that. There are Trump supporters who have said, I would rather dictator Trump than a democratically elected Biden. All right? I think that they're horribly misguided, but at least they're being honest. Be honest with yourselves. Maybe you don't really want democracy, you just want Trump instead. It's a possibility.

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All right, let's get to Friday feedback for the week. You write to me. I read some of your emails, messages, comments, YouTube replies, whatever. Respond and then we discuss. You can always email infoavidpackman.com if you have something to say. But comments on any of the platforms where we publish our videos might end up on Friday. Feedback we start today with Ryan Carson, who said, Trump 2024. Let's go. Are you going to move out of the country after he Trump wins? Lol. You people are crazy. You know, the entire, like, why are you going to move out, people?

It always has struck me as kind of interesting because first of all, you often hear these right wingers, number one, laugh about left wingers who say, oh, this makes me want to leave the country. But also sometimes they themselves will say, I'm going to leave the country if my candidate doesn't win without acknowledging, number one, that most of the places they probably want to go to, it's not that easy to move to. And secondly, the places they would need to go to to find the true right wing authoritarian government they want are not the sorts of countries they would likely want to live in. And many of them are overtly islamic countries that I can't imagine they would actually enjoy living in to find the equivalent of what they want in these authoritarian, theocratic type regimes. So listen, the reality is people in the bluest of blue states states have a standard of living that is similar to countries in northern Europe. If you look at the HDI human Development Index by state, what you find is that states like Maryland, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, liberal states, they have standards of living that are similar to Norway and Denmark and Sweden, et cetera. So the sick reality is that it's the people in the red states that will really be heard more. I don't want to diminish what happens in blue states, but it's the red staters that are really going to suffer if there is a Trump presidency. Ghost wrote, Democrats think they are entitled to our vote. They think they can sit there and do whatever they want, and we are supposed to vote blue no matter who.

That's just insane. And it's why we're in this situation in the first place. They've done nothing to earn anyone's vote. Democrats will lose and they will have no one to blame but themselves. Yeah, you know, this, there's this thing where, like, Trump recently blamed republican voters for something, and there's this back and forth, like, do, should elected officials blame themselves or should they blame voters or should they blame the opposition voters? Who is to blame? I reject the notion of anybody, at least on this show, doing vote blue no matter who.

I don't think that that's something I have ever even alluded to. Every election I evaluate the choices.

And when I look at Trump and Biden RFK, I don't even remember whether Marianne Williamson's running at this point. Jill stein, Cornel west. If I just zoom out and go, okay, who do I think here has the experience that's necessary?

The positions I like, the shot at winning, consensus building ability. What if I just look at everything together?

Biden's my preference along those lines. And so I'm going to vote Biden. Where is the vote blue, no matter who? And then for people who are writing to me saying, hey, I'm unsure how I'm going to vote, I say to them, well, what matters to you? What are your principles? Which candidate is closest to that? What is the effect of your vote for one or the other or the other?

I'm not hearing any vote blue, no matter who stuff. I'm just not hearing it. If you are, then by all means, let me know, because I want to see examples of that.

Okay, here's another idea from the subreddit for Joe Biden from bossy 81, who says next move politically, psychedelics. David has at was asked what Biden's next move will be. I believe Biden should start to make a lot of noise regarding healing veterans through guided psychedelic therapy. It's a bipartisan issue, but in rural USA is where one finds the most veterans that need help. These therapies are being developed by companies like and name some companies. Not only do these treatments assist in PTSD, they are also evidence to be helpful in treating addiction, anxiety and such. So two reasons why I don't believe Biden is going to go after this. Number one, it is not nearly as popular compared to cannabis decriminalization, legalization. And number two, there is a bit of a scandal right now within the psychedelics for treatment world where there are allegations that some of the clinical trial results were falsified, and we covered it on the bonus show. It is still being investigated. It is still being explored. I can't imagine that it makes sense for Joe Biden to stick his finger into this at a time when, again, allegedly, it's still being investigated. When allegedly, there were falsifications that took place with regard to some of the efficacy of some of those interventions. So need more information.

Legally, I'm for it.

Medically, we're still gathering data. This is. This is a depressing one.

Someone canceled their membership to the show, which is fine. Okay. I mean, listen, that's how we make. Oh, you want to make money? That's how we make money.

But it's fine for people to cancel. But the reason here doesn't make sense. This is attack 5220 on the subreddit. I am canceling my subscription to the David Pakman show. The refusal of people on this subreddit to call out left wing shows for their obvious biased coverage of Russia, seeking ways to blame Ukraine for this war taking place and siding with the GOP preventing Ukraine from getting military aid has me disgusted. I made a post here calling out the Young Turks on their garbage coverage of Russia, Ukraine, and my post got deleted because I couldn't find a recording of a snippet from a stream in 2022. This was honestly enough to tell me what I need to know about the type of people and community I am supporting. I was then attacked here for playing League of Legends. No idea how the person knew I was a League of Legends player, and some progressive referred to all 300 million league players as incels. This was upvoted and the moderator had no issue. I don't want to be part of this toxic community. I do like David Pakman. I think he is the last and only genuinely non biased, neutral person willing to call it as it is. But I simply cannot be giving my money to support the community he attracts. I've canceled my subscription to Sam Cedar already due to his coverage of the Ukraine war. It pains me to do this to David, but the thought that I'm supporting this type of community horrifies me. Listen, it's. It's Reddit, okay? This would be like saying, hey, I'm not going to in 2020.

Do you remember all the crazy stuff happening on Twitter related to Bernie?

And it would be like, hold on. Okay? I like Bernie. I like his policies. I'm going to donate to Bernie. No, I'm not going to donate to Bernie because of what's being said by random people on Twitter and on Reddit about Bernie. It doesn't make any sense. So listen, it bums me out. I hate to see it. I wish people wouldn't cancel because of what random people on the subreddit are saying.

But it is what it is. It is what it is. You go to air with the audience you have, and that's. That's what we're doing today. Okay, fun comparison. Asks, is anyone else worried about the street flooding from all the MAGA tears? I think we're going to need an umbrella to overcome the MAGA tears being made from them today after dear leader became a convicted felon. Yeah, you know, um, they already seem to be over. The MAGA people that were sobbing about Trump's conviction, they've already moved on to, it was rigged. It's meaningless. I'm voting for him anyway. It was Biden who went after him. They already seem to have gotten over it, and they are, they are no longer, they are no longer crying. We put a poll up on our community tab on the YouTube channel, asking what you believe the effect of the presidential debates will be.

129,000 of you voted.

52% of you believe that the debates will help Biden and hurt Trump.

That's a majority.

15% believe that the debate will debates will help Trump and hurt Biden. 18% believe that it will hurt both candidates by depressing turnout, I guess by just making people depressed about who the candidates are. And 15% of you believe that the debates will have no effect whatsoever.

Very interesting numbers, I must say. And we got an, there was a post about the debate on the subreddit from Tripwire who says, is the microphone thing really meaningful? In a. And what they're referring to is that when the candidate's time is up during the debates, their mic will be muted and they go on to write in a broadcast context. The function of mics is to deliver audio to the electronic audience. They're not used for in studio amplification. Trump's game of interrupting and keeping his opponent off balance may not be much changed by the mic cut rule. So as long as he and Biden are in the same physical space, the mic cut assures only that Trump won't be well heard by the audience. His shouting will be heard by Biden, and his voice might get into Biden's mic. Yeah, you know, I'm mixed about the cutting of mics automatically when the time is up for the speakers during the debates. And part of it has to do with how far apart they are on the stage.

This, this person is absolutely correct that if they're standing close to each other, if you cut Trump's mic and he keeps yelling, Biden's mic might actually pick it up and it will distract Biden. And so Biden could end up distracted. You'll kind of still hear Trump talking, but you might not clearly be able to say the triggered things that he is saying in that context. I'd rather hear Trump. I'd rather just hear what he says and say, hey, this guy won't stop interrupting. That might hurt him.

On the other hand, if by muting his mic they are far enough apart that it won't be distracting to Biden, that it won't be picked up by Biden's microphone and Biden can just address the camera, the moderator, and it angers Trump, then maybe it is a good tool. So I don't know. I'm mixed about, to be totally honest, I'm mixed about the cutting of mics. All right. And then Richard Lowther says, anybody voting blue is in a cult.

How else can you explain wanting high crime, taxes, inflation, transgender gone crazy? No thanks. I'll stay with Trump.

Classic example.

This is bonkers stuff.

You can't talk this person out of these beliefs. I don't believe we, the way we fight people like Richard Lowther is we just have to find two people who already agree with us and make sure that they decide to vote. That's the way forward. I don't think, at least not in the months between now and the election, I don't think we change this guy's mind. If you're this far gone, if you disagree with me, let me know. Info at david pakman.com. let me know your thoughts on anything covered in the show or not covered that you want covered. We've got a great bonus show coming up for you today. Sign up@joinpakman.com to get instant access.