8/14/24: Bonkers GOP platform released, Nikki Haley admits the truth

Speaker A
Hey, everybody. I want to start today with a document released by the Republican Party, the 20 promises that are part of their platform if they were to win in 2024. It's horrifying. It's dystopian. Many of them make no sense. Many of them I don't even think republicans understand. So let's start there today.

Here's the document, the 2024 republican platform, make America great again. And let's just go through these. There's 20 items here, and this will really give us a sense of even when they talk about policy, they don't really talk about policy. So one and two are seal the border and stop the migrant invasion and carry out the largest deportation operation in american history. This is a combination of fear mongering nonsense and Project 2025. Remember when it was, it was a fear mongered about that Barack Obama was going to round people up and put them in camps. It's actually Trump who would round people up and put them in camps. He's admitted it. He says that they would be deportation camps.

And I don't know that this one warrants spending too much time on today, because we've talked about it so much. But it's important to understand that they are lying about the state of immigration, lying about the threat posed by immigrants, both documented and undocumented. And their solution is straight out of Project 2025. Number three is end inflation and make America affordable again. Now, part of it is sort of like, hey, brilliant. Why didn't anybody else think of it? It's kind of like, why didn't Joe Biden just ban Covid? He should have made it illegal for Covid to be in the United States. And then you end the pandemic and then you're fine. Of course, the problem is they put end inflation right after sealing the border and deporting people, which would have an inflationary effect. The tariffs Trump wants to do would have an inflationary effect. Trump's plan, which we talked about on yesterday's bonus show, to erode Federal Reserve independence and be able to decide on interest rates, whatever's convenient for him, that would generate inflation. And also, it's important to consider that when they say, make America affordable again, many of them actually want deflation. I've heard from MAGA Potamians who tell me, David, I won't consider inflation resolved until prices go back to pre pandemic levels. That would be a deflationary spiral, the likes of which would destroy the economy in order to have deflation such that prices go back to 2020. Prices, we would have to go through a period of very high unemployment, zero or even negative wage growth, and potentially putting the country into a recession.

So even what they are asking for would be economically destructive. Number four, they want to make America the dominant energy producer in the world by far.

News for you. We are the most dominant energy producer in the world by far, by their definition, which is oil and gas. We are making more here domestically now than we ever did under Donald Trump. When it comes to oil and gas, we are, I believe, nearly double the next largest producer, and we are producing more than we import. We are as energy independent, by their definition, as we have ever been. So this is one of those where they put it in there. I don't know if anyone knows what it means. And it's certainly untrue that we are not currently already doing what they say should be done. A number five, stop outsourcing and turn the US into a manufacturing superpower. Sure, sounds good. Will be massively inflationary. As I've explained before, we can bring our supply chains back domestically, it will take decades. The idea that Trump will do it next year is pathetic and laughable, and everything will be way more expensive. We can do it. I just don't know that people want things to be more expensive, given number three, which is end inflation. Number six. Large tax cuts for workers, and no tax on tips. You know, the. The devil is in the details of large tax cuts for workers. No tax on tips we've talked about. I'm fine with it. Generally speaking, you need to put some parameters on it to avoid money laundering. Number seven. Defend our constitution, our bill of rights, and our fundamental freedoms, including freedom of speech, religion, and the right to keep and bear arms.

Standard red meat kind of pablum, not super meaningful. Number eight is prevent world War three, restore peace in Europe and the Middle east, and build a great iron dome missile defense shield over the entire country, all made in America. This is just absurd.

The Iron Dome is built primarily for short range ballistic rockets and mortar shells.

Why the US would need that, you know, to stop rocket attacks from Canada and Mexico, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Number nine. And the weaponization of government against the american people, they've not demonstrated that that's taking place. Ten. Is stop the migrant crime epidemic. Demolish foreign drug cartels, crush gang violence, and lock up violent offenders. Yeah, sure. I mean, the migrant crime epidemic essentially doesn't exist insofar as migrants, immigrants, legal and undocumented, are less likely to commit crimes than us born citizens. So it just doesn't make sense. Rebuild our cities, including DC. All right. I mean, how?

With what?

With what spending? And won't that cause inflation by their own standards? Strengthen and modernize, modernize the military, making it the strongest and most powerful in the world. It already is. Keep the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. Well, the US dollar will remain the reserve currency if we fix a lot of the other problems that they have no plans to fix. You can't just say we are keeping the dollar as the reserve currency. It's up to other countries and global financial institutions to decide that. So you kind of can't just do it. 14. Fight for and protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts and no changes to the retirement age. Fine. Trump has said he would consider doing those things, so you've got to talk to him. 15, cancel the electric vehicle mandate and cut costly and burdensome regulations. As always, they don't tell us which regulations are the burdensome ones. Find me a burdensome regulation, and I'll join you in demanding that it be cut. Number 16, cut federal funding for schools. Pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children. As all of you know, what qualifies under those descriptions is very much in the eye of the beholder. They claim to be for free speech, yet I can assure you they will use item 16 there to suppress speech. Number 17. Keep men out of women's sports. Put aside for a second that the issue of gender and sports predates the current transgender panic that exists and also is a far more nuanced and complicated issue than many Republicans make it out to be.

The idea that one of the 20 most pressing issues for the four year rule of the leader of the free world is, quote, men and women's sports. Reminds us of the sad state of american political theater. Number 18. Deport pro Hamas radicals and make college campuses safe and patriotic again. Listen, I'm as against Hamas as anyone else, but if they're american citizens, where would you deport them to? This just doesn't really make any sense. 19, is secure our elections. Of course, they tried to steal the 2020 election and then, number 20, unite the country by bringing it to new and record levels of success, which is typical, meaningless Trump word salad. We've been asking for the platform, we've been asking for the policy promises.

We got them, and they are a pathetic joke.

We have a new milestone in polling for the 2024 presidential campaign, and it is that Kamala Harris has now achieved her first full point lead in national polling averages over Donald Trump. This is a very interesting milestone in the real clear politics average of recent national polling. Kamala Harris now leads Trump by 1.1. It is not a massive number. It's not five and it's certainly not ten. But up until now, it has either been Trump leading or Kamala Harris leading by a fraction of a point. The fact that her lead continues to grow is a very bad sign for Donald Trump. If you look at the trend line here, you can see that shortly after we learned that Joe Biden would be stepping aside and Kamala Harris would become the democratic nominee, Kamala Harris's stock started to rise. That's the blue line. And Donald Trump started to fall. It has now been a trendline that has become significant enough that the gap between Harris and Trump is 1.1 percentage points. The question we've been continuing to ask is we can see the trendline. We see it very clearly.

Will it continue with the DNC next week? My guess is that there is a little more juice to squeeze here in terms of Kamala Harris's polling numbers. Once we get to seven to ten days beyond the DNC, then we will be able to say convention bumps are over. It is now about the debate slash debates, if they take place and what happens on the campaign trail. But so far, the trendline, very good for Kamala Harris. And it's part of why Donald Trump has been sent for a loop and is exploding daily on truth Central. Nate Silver's forecast also looking increasingly good for Kamala Harris. In fact, in the Nate silver forecast, it's a 3.1 percentage point lead. 3.1.

Those do start to become very significant numbers. The caveat being or the caveat? Some like. Some say caveat, some say caveat. I really doesn't make a difference to me as long as we know what we're talking about. The caveat there is that because of the makeup of the electoral college, it is a conventional wisdom that to win electorally, the democratic candidate must win the popular vote by 2.5. So if you believe that Harris leads by 1.1, that is by no means a guarantee that she becomes president. If you believe that Harris leads by 3.1, as Nate Silver claims, then it puts it at basically a 50 50 of winning the electoral college. So that's something to keep in mind. Now, anecdotally, there are reports of people checking their voter registration status and finding that they are not registered to vote, despite the fact that they believe they were registered to vote, that they voted in the past. So what I would recommend you do right now, I'm not even alleging foul play. There may be states where if you don't vote for a certain amount of time, you are moved to inactive status. There. I'm not alleging anything other than it would be a really good idea to go to vote.org. it gives you all of the tools that you need. First and foremost, check your registration. You go to vote.org, comma, we have it up on the screen. You click check your registration. It'll take you to your state's registrar. You input your information. It'll tell you you're registered or you're not. And here's how to register.

If you want to vote by mail, you can figure that out@vote.org. if you want to see everything that will be on your particular local ballot, you can do that@vote.org. if you want reminders about when to vote, you can set those up@vote.org. so whether there is or isn't foul play, and we know republicans love using purges of voter rolls and other techniques to try to suppress the vote, go to vote.org and ensure that you are indeed registered. Because if it is the case that Kamala Harris is leading by one or leading by three, we don't want to see the will of the people subverted by these voter suppression tactics. So let's take a very quick break. Make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel@YouTube.com slash the David Pakman show. We are next going to hear from Nikki Haley.

Nikki Haley appeared on Fox News yesterday and admitted that there is a very clear path and a very plausible reality in which Kamala Harris defeats Donald Trump. And what's really funny about hearing Nikki Haley on Fox News is that she kind of wants to play it, play both sides of the game. On the one hand, she endorsed Trump knowing who Trump is, knowing Trump was insulting to her, and knowing that Trump regularly insults female candidates. On the other hand, she says Trump really shouldn't be insulting Kamala Harris because that's not the way to win. Well, you endorse this knowing that it's what he does. Nikki, here she is on Fox News. That's not happening. Now, do you think that this campaign is, is floundering on that point?

Nikki Haley
I want this campaign to win, but the campaign is not going to win. Talking about crowd sizes, it's not going to win. Talking about what race Kamala Harris is, it's not going to win. Talking about whether she's dumb, it's not, you can't win on those things. The american people are smart. Treat them like they're smart.

Speaker A
Yeah. So couple different.

Couple different things there.

The american people may well be smart, but Donald Trump won in 2016 and secured tens of millions of votes in 2020.

Not by respecting the intelligence of his base. He won it by dropping down to their very lowest common denominator level and appealing to the absolute worst and most ignorant instincts of his base. So I would challenge her that the way Trump wins is by recognizing and appealing to the intelligence of the american people. But more importantly, Nikki Haley endorsed Donald Trump, and she's disappointed that Donald Trump is behaving like Donald Trump. She wants Trump, who she endorsed, to behave as though he is someone who he has never demonstrated himself to be. And this is her wanting to have it both ways. On the one hand, she presents herself as the independent thinker. Listen, I'm going to tell you what you need to hear, and what I need. What you need to hear is that Trump will lose using this strategy, this strategy that he has always used and which I knew about when I knowingly endorsed him, even though he insulted me throughout the entire campaign.

How do you even analyze that absurd reality?

Nikki Haley also talking about why independent voters are leaning towards Kamala Harris. As we talked about earlier this week, independent voters. Plus nine. I'm sorry, plus. Was it plus nine or plus twelve? I think it was plus nine. Plus nine for Kamala Harris. The exact same margin by which Joe Biden won independent voters back in 2020. Here is Nikki Haley weighing in on independence.

Nikki Haley
Don't assume people are gonna bend a knee. That is not that 20%.

Their ideas are still out. What they like about Kamala is that she's being hopeful. She's talking about freedom. She's talking about a way forward. They don't want a former president talking about the past.

Speaker A
On this particular element, Nikki Haley is absolutely correct. You need only compare a recent Trump rally or a recent Vance rally because they seem to mostly not rally together. You need only compare one of those with a Harris Walls rally. And what you see at the Harris Walls rallies is a positive vision about how things are good, but they will get better. Part of it is by virtue of the fact that your guy is currently president of the United states, Joe Biden. So of course you're going to play up that things are good. A vision that is welcoming even to Republicans who say, like the mayor there in Arizona, who we covered recently, he said, listen, I'm a Republican, but I can't vote for this version of Republicanism will come on in, welcomed gleefully to say, let's help defeat Trump. Right? A positive, forward looking vision. And then on the other hand, Trump with his dystopian predictions about how if Kamala Harris wins, we won't have a country anymore. The same prediction he made, by the way, about Joe Biden, which ended up not being true.

If Kamala Harris wins, we will become communist, even though supposedly we already became communist when Joe Biden won that negative vision, they stole it from me. In 2020, grievances and trans people are bad and all of this sort of stuff. Nikki Haley has accurately diagnosed the significant contrast. And the question is, will anyone listen to her? Trump certainly isn't listening to her, but maybe somebody will. Last week, we had former Republican George Conway on the show. A very interesting interview that many of you greatly enjoyed. He appeared on MSNBC yesterday, and this is a funny little clip. George CoNway saying Trump is done and his brain is fried. And that Trump, for George Conway, the real sign that Trump is now out to pasture mentally is that he claimed that the picture of Kamala Harris's crowd was AI manipulated, which we covered yesterday. Here's George Conway speaking to Jen Psako.

George Conway
What we saw with this tweet yesterday is that last final collapse of Donald Trump's mental state. I mean, you think about it, saying that those were like 50, 60, 70,000 people in the aggregate in five rallies in different states.

Jonathan Chate put this, of New York magazine, put it this way today. It's like, that's loopier than saying that the moon landings were staged because there were so, tens of thousands of people were there, and there are hundreds of people, hundreds of people, taking photographs and videos.

To think that is crazy and to try to sell it to people is just as crazy. He's done.

His brain is friede.

Speaker A
Now, listen, I happen to, on a personal level, agree with George Conway, but we need to sort of try to analyze this in the context of how would your average MAGA base voter see it? Reasonable Republicans like Chris Christie and Mitt Romney would hear Trump's claim about the crowd being AI manipulated and say, that's absolutely nuts. Don't pay attention to that. Trump's brain does seem to be fried. However, many of your hardcore MAGA cultists, and we are at the request of many in the audience, we will have a cult expert back on the program soon to talk about the evolution of the Trump cult because it is interesting from, from a psychosocial perspective. The hardcore Trump cultist will hear Trump say the picture was AI manipulated. And then maybe they'll see the video that we played where the camera zooms out and you see there's very clearly no manipulation. There's a huge crowd there, tens of thousands of people, and they will say, hey, you know what? Maybe Trump was right about it being AI manipulated. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe even the video you showed was AI manipulated as well. But the important point is that they would do that. Democrats would do that. They're capable of it. There's nothing morally that would stop them from doing the AI manipulation. And with that, they will be satisfied and they will move on, rather than saying, wait a second, Trump is lying again and again and again.

And I'm falling for the lies again and again and again and the promises he makes he never keeps and the things he says will happen, never happened. 1929 style depression under Biden. Well, now he's predicting it under Kamala Harris. That is not the way that the hardcore MAGA cultist will react. The good news, if there is any, is that in this current situation, we've kind of, you know, we're two and a half months from this election.

We've kind of moved beyond convincing the cultists. Yes. As a matter of curiosity, if you've got one of these cultists and you see them on Labor Day for a cookout or something, maybe you do try to convince them. But that's not how we're trying to win this election. This election is going to be one in two ways, swaying the swayable voters of which there are increasingly few. Right. We talked on the bonus show yesterday about the diminishing number of undecideds, especially now that Kamala Harris is the nominee. And number two, turnout, the MAGA base doesn't really matter anymore. We don't ever write off a constituency long term. And I write, write about this in my forthcoming book. But in the immediate, in the next, what is it?

Eleven weeks? Eight, hold on, 810 weeks, something like that. Ten and a half weeks before the election.

We just need to get turnout going and we need to make sure that the swayable voters, that diminishing group understands the difference and the stakes here between Harris and Trump and the magical cultists be damned for this election. And then we'll try to deprogram them between now and the next election. Let's take a break. We've got something very special cooking for you up next.

It's great to welcome back to the program today two guests who have joined us individually before. We're going to be speaking with Doctor John Gartner. Founder of Duty to Warn, co host of shrinking Trump and former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, and also doctor Liz Landsverk, a dementia Alzheimer's disease expert and author of living in the moment, Overcoming challenges, and finding moments of joy in Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. So, my friends, many things have changed since we last spoke individually.

President Joe Biden had a debate performance on June 27 that ultimately led to him dropping out of the race, combined with a number of other events. Starting with you, Doctor Gartner. Did you see a different Joe Biden at the debate than what you had observed up to that point?

Dr. John Gartner
Absolutely. And I think we, when we dissect the debate, I think there was a perfect storm. I think there were a whole bunch of factors that contributed to that disastrous performance.

But I think, I think from the perception of public perception, it unfortunately reinforced all of the negative ideas that the opposition had been saying about him and that he hadn't been disproving because he'd been so out of the public eye. I have since.

I mean, it felt catastrophic at the time. It felt like the floor, actually, to be honest, it felt like the floor had opened up underneath me and that suddenly I was in freefall. Because, as you know, I had made a point of being the one professional who said, I'm going to die on this hill. Defending Joe Biden's cognitive fitness and comparing it to Donald Trump's, who I still believe is showing signs of dementia, which we're hopefully going to get back to. But unfortunately, the press couldn't look at Donald Trump's signs of dementia until Joe Biden dropped out because they were so focused on Biden. But I think one thing is we don't know. When you're diagnosing from a distance, you do know what you do know. You know what you see, you know what you hear, and you have a brain, so you know how to process it. But you don't know what, you don't know if there are things that you're not seeing, you can't evaluate them. And actually what we're now learning from people who are insiders in the Biden campaign, he was showing some kind of, and I don't know what the nature of the deterioration was. It could be aging, could be a lot of things, but there was a change beginning in January or February, and over those six months, he was doing less and less public appearances, in part because there was that change that we were not actually privy to.

Speaker A
Doctor Liz it seemed that what happened on June 27 included some to the layperson like me, some memory issues, some losing train of thought, and something that seemed to go beyond mixing up names and dates. Can you give me your assessment of what you saw June 27?

Dr. Liz Landsverk
Well, he couldn't finish a sentence, so that was something very different than what I had seen. And I've only seen things that have been publicly released, so I don't know any insider details. But then I think what's really important is that he, the next day, had a rally somewhere, and he was performing at baseline. He was doing well.

That's not dementia.

Dementia is a consistent state where your cognitive abilities have declined to the point where you can't take care of your basic issues, like paying your bills and taking your meds and, you know, keeping your appointments and taking care of, you know, the work that you need to do.

What I saw and what I thought was, oh, no, they gave him Tylenol PM.

My knock on President Biden is that he's old. I mean, but I said that before.

He's more frail. He's more vulnerable to the effect of the medications.

So I don't think he's got the dementia that would keep him from doing his job.

I think he needs a geriatrician in the White House. He needs someone to know that you can't give him anticholinergic medications. You have to be very careful about that. I don't think it's that he has to work from ten to four because he got the hostages released with his team from Russia.

He can perform, but he's never been dynamic, and he's never been really inspiring and great with a crowd, in addition to not doing as many public appearances and taking credit for what he's done. So I think it was the combination of that that let them have the narrative that, oh, he's got dementia, and we should invoke the 25th.

Speaker A
Doctor Gartner, do you think at this point, based on everything that you saw, it made political sense for President Biden to say, I'm not running for reelection anymore?

Dr. John Gartner
I honestly think it was life saving. I think we went from 100% chance of losing the election to, I think, like, an 80% chance of winning the election.

It's really extraordinary. But I do want to just go back to the question you're asking Elizabeth, because, first of all, I think her theory about the cold medication is very interesting. We actually had her on and talked about that afterwards. They deny that he was on cold medication.

Speaker A
Right.

Dr. John Gartner
I'll tell you what. The things, the factors, I call it the perfect storm. And I'll tell you the factors that I see. Number one, of course, we've already mentioned that he's old and he's aging, and that explains his, you know, his quiet voice, his slowness, his coughing. It can explain a lot of the symptoms that look decrepit.

The other thing is, he was sick and he was tired. But one of the things that I think has been totally underestimated is the effect of stuttering. We had an expert on our show, Doctor Eric Jackson, who's a stuttering expert and also a stuttering patient, whose research is about the variations in stuttering. And what he's found is that when people age, their ability to control their stutter gets worse, because a stutter is something that involves a lot of cognitive complexity and attention to compensate for and to control.

I think if you look at some of his most disastrous verbal performances, one of them that we looked at in great detail on the show, on shrinking Trump was the one, I beat Medicare.

Speaker A
Right? Because that doesn't seem like a stutter. It seems like a confused statement.

Dr. John Gartner
It seems like a confused statement. Go back.

I wish we could play. Maybe you can splice it into the show if you want to, if you go back and watch it frame by frame. First of all, one of the things I think they screwed up on is the way they prepared him for the debate. Instead of having declarative statements or pointed attacks, they gave him this, you know, policy white paper to memorize, to study before the test. And so he was memorizing all of his 1.10.20, .3 the questions about the deficit, 0.1 was this. .2 he was saying something and he couldn't articulate it.

It seemed like he was confused. But actually, he's tried three different times to say a sentence he couldn't say. And people do this when they stutter, when they realize, I'm really stuck. They jumped to a completely different sentence. And so what he did was jumped, I think, to the bottom of that paragraph of the deficit. And instead of saying, we beat Medicaid spending, which is one of the biggest contributors to the deficit, he said we beat Medicare, which sounded nonsensical and also like a non sequitur. And they cut off his mic, so he couldnt even clarify what he meant by I. So I honestly believe that the stuttering has gotten worse because of the aging. But also, he hasnt been identifying himself as having these problems stutters. So he stutterers tend to want to not bring attention to their disability. And so actually, more and more if you look even at his interviews, you see the stutter. You see the stutter, you see the stutter, but he's not mentioning it, he's not alluding to it. And so what the average person is concluding is this person is having trouble completing a sentence.

Speaker A
Doctor Liz, as we shift into talking a little bit about Donald Trump, do you think that from a political standpoint, Democrats have now lost credibility with regard to making an age and cognitive ability case against Trump because of what some say was the deliberate occulting of what was going on with Joe Biden?

Dr. Liz Landsverk
You know, I'm not a political analyst.

I stand by what I said. And I think that it seems like there's a lot of bait and switch with a lot of the discussions around former President Trump.

And that seems like just one more. I mean, if he, well, I see that his ability to address questions and navigate through new situations has really deteriorated in the last few years compared to 1015 years ago. And that's fine if you're running your own business, but if you are running the country, if you are the commander in chief, that's a job description that requires a very high level of functioning. And whether someone didn't describe someone else's symptoms correctly has no bearing on the ability to function for the person who, you know, will be the most powerful person in the world.

Speaker A
I'm curious. You're. Oh, go ahead, doctor. Doctor Gardner.

Dr. John Gartner
Well, actually, I was going to say, David, it's actually been the opposite, because you've seen tons of headlines. Suddenly people are paying attention to Donald Trump's cognitive decline. All of a sudden. I mean, literally, headlines that begin with words like, suddenly, you know, like, these symptoms have been hiding in plain sight for years and years. We wrote op eds about them in 2019, 2017, you know, and it's been deteriorating. But all of a sudden, suddenly the cameras have panned over to Trump and realized, wait, there is someone with cognitive decline in this race? So actually, it's been a complete political, you know, it's like in wrestling, when you start in the one down position, then you flip the guy, and now you're on top. We've done a flip.

Speaker A
Speaker one. Donald Trump recently told a story during a press conference at Mar a Lago about a near fatal helicopter crash involving former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. And when Willie Brown was interviewed, he unequivocally said, this never happened. I've never been in a helicopter with Trump. It simply never happened. And it turns out that, in a sense, Trump got his black guys confused. It turned out that it was actually former Los Angeles city councillor Nate Holden who was in that situation. Now, I want to talk about an incident like that. Maybe we'll start with you, Doctor Liz, where one could say that's not cognitive decline, that's racism in the sense of black men all look alike to Donald Trump. Right. And that might be regrettable, but it's certainly not a cognitive issue necessarily. How would we take a vignette like that if we even can make anything out of a particular vignette and try to kind of unravel what's going on there?

Dr. Liz Landsverk
Well, one thing I see that journalists always try and do is they try and understand one little vignette for Donald Trump. And I think you have to look at it as the big picture.

His superpower is that he has spent a lifetime honing a sales message. He's an excellent salesman. And to the people in his audience that come to his rallies, he's entertaining, so he's effective that way.

His connection with reality, I guess they said in his press conference he had 162 lies in 60 minutes.

Speaker A
Yeah, I saw that.

Dr. Liz Landsverk
You know, he has, he doesn't seem to worry about reality, which is really concerning. I mean, I think that the point that he was using former mayor Brown was to, you know, denigrate Kamala Harris.

Speaker A
That was the point of the whole story.

Dr. Liz Landsverk
Yeah, right. He knew her and he had bad things to say about her. The fact that it never happened or that it was a different person doesn't matter to him. So I think, you know, or for him to be saying, well, you know, you, my beautiful christians, come and vote for me this time. And after that, you'll never have to do it again.

He's weaving these stories, but he's starting to slip. You know, he's saying the quiet parts out loud.

And that is definitely a way to undercut Harris by saying, oh, her friend doesn't like her either.

And he's not as crafted as he was ten or 20 years ago in his sales pitch.

Speaker A
Doctor Gartner, can you talk about some of the other recent things that Trump has done, say, in the last month that are of concern to you?

Dr. John Gartner
Well, I just want to hone in on that one story, because as Doctor Landsberg said, we have to look not at one incident, but at patterns.

That's what doctors do as opposed to pundits. There's been a pattern of Donald Trump not just mixing up names, but mixing up people. I don't think, honestly, I think this is not about race. This is about dementia. If you go to the website of the dementia Care Society, they'll say that mixing up people or combining people is a sign of actually advanced dementia. And it's not the first time he's done it famously. He confused Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi. And it wasn't just that he got the name wrong. It wasn't like he said Willie Brown instead of Jerry Brown. He actually said that the person he was running against in the primary was responsible for security at the Capitol. That's literally combining people. That's like when my uncle, who had dementia, said I was a lawyer, because my father was a lawyer, he confuses his presidents. Eight times he said Obama was president.

In other words, I think in his demented mind, he has big categories, powerful women. I don't like, democratic presidents who are persecuting me, black men who I have known from California. In other words, he creates these combo people, okay? And that's a true sign of cognitive decline. That's not slipping a name. I'm not going to tag anybody for getting a name wrong. I get names wrong, so I can't be the one to throw the first stone. I'm old, I get names wrong. But I don't think that my, if I said to my younger daughter, if I called her by my older daughter's name, that would be normal. If I said to her, how's my little grandson doing? They would call a doctor because she doesn't have a child. My older child does.

Dr. Liz Landsverk
The other one that was pretty significant to me was when he said he didn't know Eugene Carroll, and they had a picture of him with Eugene Carroll and they said, who is this woman? And he thought it was his ex wife, you know?

Speaker A
Yes.

Dr. Liz Landsverk
So that you should know. You should know who your ex wives are.

Dr. John Gartner
You know, like the man who mistook his wife for a hat by Oliver Saxon.

Speaker A
Could the, to play devil's advocate here, could some of these individual, and I know that we want to look at the big picture, which is why I'm glad you keep taking it back to that. But to play devil's advocate, one could say some of these things are ego, where Trump will never admit a mistake.

Others are a sort of self centered, brash nature, which, as you say, he doesn't care to get certain details right. But it doesn't necessarily mean that there's a cognitive issue. Take it all apart, if you can, for us.

Dr. Liz Landsverk
Doctor Liz well, so I've been looking at a lot of tape these days, and I was noticing that he's had interviews, some softball interviews. I think it was with Laura Ingraham where he was asked about immigration, and he's saying the quiet parts out loud. He's saying, well, I couldn't let them have it. That would be good for the other side.

And that's not what he would have done in the past. You know, those are the, that might be the impetus of why you're, you know, lying, but that you wouldn't say that out loud.

Speaker A
Is that a disinhibition of sorts that you're talking about? Where in the past he wouldn't have admitted I stopped the border bill simply for political gain. Now he's saying it right, or, you.

Dr. Liz Landsverk
Know, just vote for me this year and in four years I'll have it fixed. So, well, you won't have to do it.

You know, he's trying to distance himself from the authoritarian project 2025 now something 47.

And he shouldn't be saying that, you know, that is acknowledging that he's doing what his critics have said he was doing.

Speaker A
Doctor Gartner, there seems to be sort of a stubbornness that's visible in Trump. For example, at his recent rally in Bozeman, he continued to poll the crowd about his best way to attack Joe Biden, even though Biden's been out of the race for weeks.

Dr. John Gartner
Yeah.

Speaker A
Does the stubbornness mean anything to you?

Dr. John Gartner
Well, I think we're talking about something that is related to cognitive decline. I mean, the man said that Obama was president eight times on national television.

Speaker A
He says he's doing it on purpose to suggest Obama's actually in charge of.

Dr. John Gartner
But he's lying when he says, okay, fair.

Speaker A
You just don't believe that explanation.

Dr. John Gartner
First of all, he's never said it in a context where the context was suggesting that he's a marionette on stranger things. And the real big boss, he just says it with no irony, with no intonation, like, it's just a fact. Okay? And he's also said he was joking. So was he joking or was he referring to the power behind the throne? It's like one of those lies about, like, you know, hey, you didn't lend me your bucket and was damaged when you gave it to me. I mean, he's, he's telling competing lies about why he's saying Obama is president. But, you know, if you showed up at Bellevue's emergency room and they asked you who the president of the United States was, and you said Obama, they'd admit you for observation.

Speaker A
You think it's that simple?

Dr. John Gartner
Well, there's no other logical explanation. And this is where the press is so dumb, they'll just take, they just, well, the Trump campaign reported, blah, blah, blah, even though it's a blatant lie and doesn't make any sense, it doesn't hold any water. So if we know they're lying, then we have to look at alternate explanations, like, why is he lisping through his interview with Elon Musk on X SV date, the chief White House correspondent for Huffington Post, who's a friend of mine, he addressed them. He said, look, why was he listening? Just asking. Explain it. And the head of the Trump campaign said, you must have problems with your fucking ears. That's the problem. So that's it. It's like the guy who walks in to sees his wife in bed with the golf pro, and the wife says, it's not what you think. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

Speaker A
Doctor Liz, I want to talk a little bit about, you alluded to this when you talked about the Biden 10:10 a.m. to 04:00 p.m. thing and seeming contrasts based on time of day. There have been observations about both of these men, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, that what you get really seems to vary depending on the time of day. And with Trump, we've often observed that, especially with these late night rallies. Rallies. The confusion and what we might call the glitches seem far more frequent than, for example, Trump's NABJ interview, which was abortive politically, but he didn't seem to have any of those glitches. And it was like at 03:00 p.m. in the afternoon. Can you expand a little bit more about the differences you would expect to see base of time based on time of day versus what you wouldn't if what we are observing is a versus bhdem.

Dr. Liz Landsverk
Well, when someone is older and they're tired, I got to say, I don't function as well. I don't do my editing at night. I take care of charts and other things at night.

It could be that I think I heard someone say, it's sundowning. It's not sundowning. That's a cyclic delirium where you get really confused.

What I have seen from him is in his rallies later in the evening, he just kind of reads through something. And he also doesn't veer from five topics.

It's immigration, crime, inflation.

Speaker A
Usually they stole the election.

Dr. Liz Landsverk
Right?

Whatever he's asked, he comes back to those five topics that he knows well. And to me, that's concerning because a, we need a leader that can deal with what's going on with the Ukraine war and is it changing and what's going on with finances, with Europe and those sorts of things. And he's got to be able to make that pivot and talk about things going forward. And one of the big things that I noticed that whether it's during the day or in the evening, is that he can't get beyond his five greatest hits, that everything has to fit into that, no matter what question he's been asked, which is, to me, that's concerning, that really shows me that his cognitive flexibility that he had 1020 years ago has declined.

Speaker A
Anything you want to. Yeah, Doctor Gartner, go ahead.

Dr. John Gartner
Well, I was going to say, just to elaborate on that.

Some of the formal signs of deterioration are when your vocabulary is deteriorating, your capacity to finish sentences ability to stay on topic rather than to be tangential.

People who are having cognitive decline tend to repeat the same simple and superlative words over and over again. And so what Elizabeth is saying is, yes, he gets back to his original topics, but even there, he really has just sort of blocks of thought. You know what I mean? Like, it's bad, they're coming, we've got to stop them. You know what I mean? It's not any more complex. Like when he was talking recently with one of those press conferences, what, Timothy walls? And he's going, you know, he's in the transgender space. He's in a lot of spaces.

Things having to do with safety. So he's trying to make some anti transgender prejudiced red meat statement, but he's just sort of vaguely saying he's in a transgender space. He's in a lot of spaces. In other words, it's vague. And so if you look, for example, at his. We talked about this with his Gettysburg speech.

People who are showing cognitive decline rely on superlatives. And he said, gettysburg. Wow. I mean, it's so great. It's so amazing. It's so terrible and wonderful. In a way, he was just using emotional words. I really don't think he knew what Gettysburg was.

And he then starts to confabulate and makes up this story about Robert E. Lee speaking in an irish accent, saying, don't fight uphill because he's looking at a hill.

The thing about the, that's where he was. He was literally just riffing on what he was seeing in front of him.

And he's very good at that. So he can hide his cognitive. Whatever he comes up with, it's like he's doing improv with himself. He says yes to whatever crazy thing comes out of his mouth and he just runs with it. But the thing is that sometimes people say, well, maybe he's just lying. Maybe he's just lying. Is it confabulation or is it lying? Sometimes. Most of the time it's actually hard to tell. Right. When is he lying? When is he convinced himself of something delusional and when is he just really not? Is his head empty and he's just confabulating, making stuff up? I think one of the ways you can tell is when the story is bizarre and it doesn't make any sense and it doesn't benefit him politically, you know what I mean?

Speaker A
That fighting like the shark electrocution, that makes no sense, right?

Dr. John Gartner
And the late, great Hannibal Lecter, I mean, there's no Hannibal Lecter lobby, you know, that's going to go, yay, he's bringing back animal Lecter.

Speaker A
Ok, as we start to wind down, I want to go first to Doctor Liz and then get your thoughts, Doctor Gartner, to be thorough when it comes to Kamala Harris, have you seen anything of any kind that is a concern cognitively?

Dr. Liz Landsverk
No. I think, you know, she is on point.

And actually the thing that struck me was when the Gaza protesters came to one rally and she kind of shut them down, saying, I'm speaking now. And then she realized, well, no, that wasn't great. So the next rally when they were there, she said, I hear you. It's time to have a ceasefire and bring the hostages home.

And so she learned, I think that's really critical for any leader, for them to, they present their speech as they see fit and then they learn from the reactions or new information. So being able to take in new information and course correct is critical for leadership.

Speaker A
Doctor Gartner, anything you've seen with Kamala Harris that you would want to raise today?

Dr. John Gartner
The brief answer is absolutely no. Slightly longer answers, it's much the opposite. I don't think she said put 1ft wrong. It's unbelievable how on point she and her campaign has been and how quickly they've reacted to Trump's stumbles, all the things we were begging Biden to do, attack and point out his weaknesses and his stumbles, point out his personality disorder, how dangerous is, but also his cognitive stumbles. And they're doing it. They're doing it. So I would say it's a, they're pitch perfect right now.

Speaker A
I really appreciate both of your time and your insights and we will do it again. I'm sure. Thank you so much. Good.

Dr. John Gartner
Thanks for having us.

Dr. Liz Landsverk
Thank you.

Speaker A
I want to take a look at a particular segment of the electorate to show you how the circumstances of this forthcoming election have shifted over time. You know, we do a lot of looking at the national polls at the top of the show or earlier in the show. We looked at how Kamala Harris has her and first full point lead over Trump nationally among all voters. We've looked at individual states, although we haven't looked at Florida. So what I want to do here is, in a moment, we're going to talk about Florida. But first, I want to talk about a particular group of voters, non college educated white voters. Non college educated white voters. There is a report from yesterday from CNN, from Harry Entinhe, and it is about exactly that group. This is really interesting. Let's take a look.

Speaker F
So, Harry, you know, we know, obviously, you look at the overall polls, you see these swing state polls, the ones over the weekend from Sienna did stand out. We'll see if that's really where this goes. But you found something very interesting in terms of one group that stands out.

Speaker G
White working class voters, white voters without a college degree. That is Donald Trump's core group. That was the reason why he was able to break down that giant blue wall. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, in the Great Lakes. And look at their support now versus where we were a few months ago when the matchup was between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Speaker A
Look, okay, so let me just make sure, because I want to make sure people who are listening understand what we're looking at. In May, Trump led non college educated white voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by 25. Trump had a 25 point lead among that group in May.

That lead now has shrunk to only 14 points. To put it another way, Trump has experienced eleven points of shrinkage since May among non college educated white voters. That is a massive shift.

Speaker G
Donald Trump still leads, but look at that margin. It has shrunk significantly. It was 25 points back in May. It is now now 14 points now here in August, nearly been sliced by half. Those numbers that Harris is putting up amongst that group right now are actually slightly better than Joe Biden did four years ago amongst those voters in those key states. Those are the types of numbers that Kamala Harris needs to put up in order to win. And of course, Joe Biden was like, I don't want to drop out of the race because I'm not sure that Kamala Harris can break in with this group, but it turns out she absolutely.

Speaker F
Can, which is fascinating because originally when they started, right. It was an immediate mapping expansion. They started looking at Georgia, North Carolina, even not giving up. But it seemed like sort of accepting that conventional wisdom. And now it's fascinating. That may not be the case. So also the economy, when we look at that, we just were talking about that. That's an issue Trump has been extremely strong on. Is that changing?

Speaker G
It is. I mean, again, look, we're still looking at Trump having a clear advantage amongst white working class voters and, you know, the Great Lake battleground states. But again, the margin issue shrinking and elections are all about margins. You see it shrinking at a 36 point advantage. It's now down to 24 points here in August. These are the types of numbers that Kamala Harris needs to put up. And more than that, you know, it's about the economy. This is also a change election and it's also about changes.

Speaker A
Speaker one. Ok, and then let's pause here and I'll describe this one for you. What this one shows is that, and we've talked, we talked about this as well.

There is a real big change to the conventional wisdom that Republicans are always better on the economy. We know that the statistics point to, actually they're not. But it's believed by voters that Republicans are better stewards of the economy.

In this polling scenario, non college educated white voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Trump had a 36 point lead on who's better for the economy.

That lead has dropped by a third to 24, from 36 to 24. At the end of the day, all of these are just signals about what might happen in November.

But if you're looking at the trends, it's hard to feel like these aren't trends that are very, very favorable to Kamala Harris. So that's that. Let's now talk a little bit about Florida. If you said to me today, David, sir, take a bet, will Trump win Florida or will Kamala Harris win Florida in November? I am still betting that Trump wins Florida.

There is no new polling that suggests Trump's going to have to fight for it, and he may have a much tougher time in Florida than in times past. Florida is in play and it's even to a greater degree in play because abortion is on the ballot in Florida. A report from the Hill Harris in striking distance of Trump in Florida. Pollster says USA TODay's Suffolk University poll finds Harris is only losing to Trump by 547 to 42.

The margin of error is 4.4, by the way. Now you might see that and say that's not very good. I mean that that makes it pretty damn clear that Trump's going to win Florida. And I believe Trump almost certainly will win Florida. But there's a couple of x factors here. If you compare that five point spread to run de sanctimonious victory by 19 when he was reelected for governor, it is clear that relative to the governorship, there is significant discontent with Trump as the republican nominee in Florida. In addition to this, and this is maybe the most interesting aspect of this, there is abortion on the ballot in Florida in November. This is something called Florida amendment for the right to abortion initiative. A yes vote supports establishing a constitutional right to abortion in Florida. It's sort of like a Florida Roe v. Wade. We know that many Florida voters who are nominally Republicans are disgusted with Ron DeSantis move in the direction against abortion, despite Floridians believing it should mostly be legal in most circumstances. So that five point spread where Trump is winning by five in Florida, not only is it far smaller than Ron DeSantis is margin of victory when he ran for reelection, it doesn't account for the fact that you may have a lot of extra people voting in Florida because of amendment four. Now, I still. Well, just again, I'm not blowing smoke. I don't think Kamala Harris is likely to win Florida. The scenario where Harris wins Florida is there is a landslide election so overwhelming that she wins all the swing states.

And in that case, Florida doesn't even matter. Remember, she doesn't even need Florida to replicate Joe Biden's 2020 win. But the fact that Florida's amendment four about abortion is on the ballot could very much bring out additional voters. And the most important thing is make them play defense sense and go out. You vote for Harris, you vote to establish a constitutional right to abortion, and you vote, by the way, for Debbie McCarsel Powell, who's the democratic candidate for Senate. They're running against vile Republican Senator Rick Scott. And all of a sudden, things start to look a lot different in Florida and a lot scarier for whoever is next going to run for governor. So that's Florida in play, not likely to go Harris, but very much in play. And let's make them spend resources in Florida. Florida. We have a voicemail number. That number is 2192. David P. Here is a caller with an idea about why Donald Trump is not holding many rallies lately.

Speaker H
Speaker one David, I was wondering why nobody is mentioning the fact that if that assassination attempt was a true assassination attempt, Donald Trump should really be scared right now and the reason why he might not be doing the rallies is because he's afraid to go out in public and be shot.

And nobody's even mentioning that fact.

And I was wondering why that's not being mentioned anywhere in the news. You know.

Speaker A
Well, we have discussed it. There was a statement put out that Trump would not be doing any more outdoor rallies because of the assassination attempt. And indeed, the Bozeman, Montana rally was an indoor rally. Let me see, as far as the ones he has coming up, the one he has coming up, he'll be in Asheville, North Carolina, later today. Doesn't say whether it's indoors or outside. No, it looks like it's indoors. Yeah. Harrah's Cherokee center. And then he's doing one in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania over the weekend. This will be at the Mohegan Sun arena. So I think what the caller is pointing out is absolutely responsible for the reason why Trump is now doing indoor rallies.

But I don't think it explains why Trump is doing one, some, one event a week or three events every two weeks. That remains a mystery. We've got a great bonus show for you today. We'll talk about the latest charges from the UAW against Trump and Elon Musk. We will talk about the cyberbullying lawsuit against JK Rowling or Rowling. Everybody always says, David, you're pronouncing it wrong. And Elon Musk related to algerian boxer Imani Khalif. And we will also talk about the squad having a good result after a bunch of losses with Ilhan Omar winning her primary. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up@joinpakman.com become a member. Make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel YouTube.com, the David Pakman show. Join me on the bonus show, but I'll be back tomorrow, too.

8/14/24: Bonkers GOP platform released, Nikki Haley admits the truth

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1: GOP Platform Analysis

2: Political Polling Insights

3: Nikki Haley’s Concession

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