Money, Morals, Fear And Respect w/ David Pakman | PBD Podcast | Ep. 231
PBD Podcast Episode 231. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by David Pakman and Adam Sosnick. David Pakman is an Argentine-born American progressive talk show host and political commentator. He is the host of the YouTube and Twitch talk radio program The David Pakman Show.
0:00 - Start
4:13 - Who would David Pakman vote for?
11:31 - HEATED Trump vs Biden debate
54:33 - David Pakman In Heated Tax Debate With Patrick Bet-David
1:33:08 - Patrick Bet-David Reacts To David Pakman Calling Him A Elon Musk Fanboy
1:43:15 - David Pakman's Strategy For Ron DeSantis To Beat Trump In 2024
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
You want to hustle on some like a check sweet victory?
I know this life meant for me.
Why would you plan on Goliath when we got pet dated?
Value payment, giving values contagious.
This world of entrepreneurs, we get no value to hated.
How do you run, homie?
Look what I become.
I'm the one.
We'll figure it out.
By the end of the show.
Yeah, I think we'll figure it out by the end of the show.
All right.
So, special podcast today.
We were hoping to do it in March, but we couldn't.
But we're able to make it work today.
And a lot of people online would say, Pat, you got to get him on, Pat.
You got to get him on.
It'd be great.
It'd be a great conversation.
Finally, we made a make it work.
Newly a father of seven months, which is congratulations to you.
Thank you.
It's great to have David Pachman on the podcast.
It's so great to be here.
I'm shocked people wanted me here.
They really did, though.
I mean, you were getting tagged left and right.
I said, I hate this guy.
We were talking on Twitter.
Anyways, we were able to make it work.
So how's everything?
How are you doing?
Everything's good.
Good.
Yeah.
How's it feel being a father?
It's weird.
It's like completely different and kind of everything's the same.
It's weird.
And biggest shock, me like, oh, I didn't expect this.
You know, I thought maybe like two or three diapers would be enough for a few months.
You need way more than two or three.
Rookie moves, bro.
So what's most expensive cost that you're feeling?
Well, the most expensive one was the night nurses at the beginning.
Because as you know, my audience knows my girlfriend ended up back in the hospital after the delivery and it was me at two weeks.
And so I was like, we need night nurses.
And night nurses, you know, are not the cheapest thing.
Wow.
So that was the most, so after that, I'm like, oh, diapers, this is great.
Diapers is cheap, yeah.
Night nurses.
Yeah.
That's pretty epic.
Wait till they turn one and you find out how much eggs are going to cost.
It's going to be catastrophic.
So hang in there.
It's coming.
Well, she's already on eggs, you know.
So it's, yeah.
By the way, public PSA, I'm also looking for some night nurses out there.
I don't have any kids, but if some night nurses just want to come in, you may just bite your tongue if you're saying you're looking for night nurses.
You want to come in and take care of some things throughout the night?
Just his interpretation of night nurses are very different than David.
David is not in the adult entertainment business.
David is not like in, you know, a player.
He's just saying somebody that was helping him with the kids.
These are medical professionals.
Yes, exactly.
That's a better way of putting it.
That's all I'm looking for as well here, gentlemen.
It's a mouth-to-mouth.
All right.
Stopping.
Let's go.
Okay.
So, David, for the people that don't know, if you can take a quick moment and just kind of give them your background.
You got a massive YouTube channel.
You got billions of views online.
You've done great work.
And then maybe share with them what your philosophies are, what you believe in, and we'll get started.
So my 30-second backstory, born in Argentina, family moved to the U.S., immigrant, learned the language, public school, et cetera, et cetera, all of that different stuff.
Interested in media, interested in politics.
In Argentina, politics is like everything.
Everybody's always talking about politics.
I'm sure, you know, in your background, it's similar.
And eventually started this community radio show podcast when I was doing undergrad.
Had the fortune that I could just kind of try making it a job while a lot of my classmates ended up having to get real jobs that were not very good.
And it worked fortunately.
I think it was a combination of timing and the opportunity and the fact that I had a situation where I could just, let's see if this thing works and I can avoid having to get a real job.
And then it combined with when YouTube was blowing up and podcasting and all these things.
So my show is a, it's a left-wing, progressive, call it, you know, whatever you want sort of podcast.
And I'm sure we'll get into my philosophy more specifically.
But we're, we, that's the space I occupy.
And we talk news and politics, do interviews.
I've done over 1,500 interviews on the show.
And that's the thing now.
We're multi-platform, YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, podcasts, et cetera.
So look, my biggest challenge with you is I think you go a little overboard when it comes down to supporting Trump, and I think it's inappropriate.
I know, yeah.
Honestly, like it's a little too much.
I know people who are MAGA people who love him, but you don't have to.
Not like that.
Dude, you fuck your kid.
Yeah.
How did your infatuation with Trump give you a break?
I just think his hair and his physical prowess and strength is so incredible.
His golf game is unbelievable.
And I consider golf a proxy towards basically everything in life.
If you're a good golfer the way Trump is, then you're good at everything, really.
I mean, that's the best.
But by the way, do you miss him?
Be honest.
Do you miss him?
And a crazy question for you.
Just a crazy question for you.
Like for me, you know how CNN ratings just came out and ratings, you know, I don't know what the numbers was.
We'll get into it here in a minute.
Worse in nine years.
I don't know what the numbers were, but if you can pull up the article, worse in nine years, right?
So do you think like you sit there and you say, like for comedy, like comedians?
You know, a great comedian maybe can do, make fun of everybody.
Okay.
Schultz, he can do anybody.
Chappelle can do anybody.
Rogan, these guys can do anybody, right?
You know, but sometimes like the market needs a good president to make fun of.
Yeah.
Right.
So, you know, there's a lot you can do with Biden, but there's a lot more you can do with Trump.
Oh, absolutely.
And he's so funny in spite of himself.
Yeah.
And sometimes it's he'll say one thing, like he'll call, you know, the CEO of Lockheed Marilyn Lockheed, but that's not her name.
Her last name is not the name of the company.
That's funny in the moment.
Tim Apple.
Tim Apple, right?
There's these arcs.
I said Tim Cook.
You pretty much said Tim Apple.
There's this arc, like, for example, where Trump weirdly gets obsessed with toilets during his 2020 campaign.
I don't know if you guys remember this, but he would go to rallies and he would go, and they're turning down the flow on my toilets.
You're going to have to flush toilets 10 to 15 times.
And I'm thinking, what is Trump doing with a toilet where you need 10 flushes, right?
It's weird.
But that's just the first piece.
So then on election night, when he talks about how he really won, you know, which he lost, by the way.
He says there were massive dumps in the middle of the night.
And you're like, 15 flushes, massive dumps.
And then later, later you find out he was flushing documents down the toilet.
So you're like, going back a year, that's the reason the toilet, he was so concerned about toilets.
He's flushing documents himself.
It's a social media.
So how do you handle the whole, you know, but even for yourself, as a content creator, do you miss him?
Like, would you selfishly, forget about politically, of course you don't want him.
You would have probably had Bernie over Biden.
I would assume maybe somebody else who would have been your guy if you had your choice.
Yeah, I mean, I think Bernie is the closest when you look at policy to me, but I've been very critical of the way Bernie runs his campaign.
Bernie talks about he's a socialist.
I'm not a socialist, and I don't actually think Bernie ran on a socialist platform, but we can get to that.
But I've said to my audience, Trump was great for shows like mine.
There's no question about it, right?
Like speaking, if I was voting not for what I think is best for the country, but what's best for me financially, of course Trump was a gold mine.
There's no question about it.
So who did you want?
Like if you were to say, like today, you have your choice on who can be the president, who would you like?
It's the reason I'm going to answer the question, but the reason that it's a hard question to answer in that way is there's policy and there's who could win, who would be good at governing, who understands how to make compromise and sort of how politics is done.
So I think there's a ton of really interesting people that do well in all of these areas.
And I'll give you a few names.
And this is now for my audience because what I'm about to say, they'll say, you're just the insult in my space is you're a lib, meaning I'm not aggressive.
I'm not left enough.
Okay.
I think folks like, it's crazy.
A lib.
Yeah.
I think the people that are striking the right balance right now between policy and rhetoric and ability to actually be good politicians are people like, and this is going to be crazy, okay?
Gavin Newsom.
Pete Budigej, Stacey Abrams, Katie Porter in California.
I think these are really interesting folks who I don't necessarily agree with them on all policy, but I think they bring a few things that are important.
They're younger.
Right now, I think there's a problem where it's sort of like old guy after old guy after old guy on both sides.
We're seeing this to a degree, so I like that.
I think they bring some progressive policies that are interesting without really being brandable as being socialists.
And I think that that's all really important right now for the left.
So what do you like about, so okay, so let's stay with who we currently have right now.
So today Biden.
Yeah.
What's he doing good?
What do you think he's not doing good?
Okay, so if I were to say here are the things that Biden got done that are accomplishments that are important and things that are worth doing.
At a time where I think it was necessary, he did that third COVID stimulus.
Remember, Trump did two of them and Biden did a third one.
I think at the time it made sense and he didn't include as much of this or really any, if I recall, the PPP slush fund, which was so fraudulently used.
And now the IRS is backed up on audits in part because they're doing PPP fraud investigations.
So I like that he didn't include that.
I didn't think that that was necessary.
Inflation Reduction Act does a lot of interesting things.
And whether or not it, quote, reduces inflation, inflation is coming down now several months in a row.
I love the renewable energy stuff that's in there.
I drive an electric car.
I've got the solar panels.
I've got, you know, my gas stove, I'm even going to get rid of.
I'm ready to get rid of this.
I'm being dead serious.
No, yeah, I had to.
You're fully committed.
It's not a commitment.
The induction is unbelievable.
Once you actually learn to use it, it's fantastic.
I was repeating, oh, you get the gas stove.
You can modulate down to the, it's beautiful.
I've now cooked with induction.
It's fantastic.
So I'm fully, I think it's fantastic.
I think encouraging that, we're not banning gas stoves, of course, I'm exaggerating.
I think that that's really great.
I think getting out of Afghanistan, I think, was the absolute right decision.
Many criticisms of the chaos that unfolded when Trump was asked, how would you have done it differently?
He didn't actually have any answer.
It was Trump's plan to get out that Biden did a few months later because Trump never got to it for whatever reason.
I think that was the right decision.
It was going nowhere, 20 years there, et cetera.
On student loan forgiveness, I don't know what's going to happen eventually.
I'm not a forgive all student loans guy.
Some in my audience are like, David, all loans should be forgiven.
It's like, no, I don't think so.
I don't think that makes sense.
But we've had programs like, if you're a doctor and you work in an underserved community long enough, you qualify to get those loans forgiven.
I think certain programs like that make a lot of sense.
So I think that that's a good thing.
And quite frankly, and this is where, you know, the Trump people email me and they get very mad.
If this, not my opinion, if we go by Gallup opinion survey, what other countries think of the U.S., opinion of the U.S. has dramatically improved since Biden replaced Trump.
I think that matters.
I'm not an isolationist.
So I think it's important that other countries respect the office of the presidency.
And under Trump, it was a joke.
Literally laughed at at the UN, goes to India, mispronounces 10 Indian names, and the crowd is just leaving.
It was a humiliation everywhere he went.
So I think that's a great, it's like a soft thing that I think is really good.
So the fact that we're no longer feared is a good thing.
I don't know where you're getting that we are no longer feared.
So you think people fear Biden?
What I'm asking you is what data do you have that we are no longer feared?
Well, that's not it.
What data is not any data to give?
How do you know it is?
Well, no, but during Biden is when Russia felt comfortable bullying Ukraine.
During Biden is, even if you look at Afghanistan on the way we left, people on the left were not happy by the way we left Afghanistan.
Even 82 billion, I can give you a lot of different names.
Like CIA, who's the CIA guy that we had here who was on Philip Mus with a Z. What's his name?
Matt Zeller?
Matt Zeller, CIA agent who was on MSNBC.
called him out.
He was on MSNBC with But that's one person, right?
No, but there's a lot of them, though.
If I actually pull it up and if I do the Google search on it, I'll find plenty of names from their own site.
Let's do it.
That's fine.
But I think one important thing to back up is you first kind of gave me what's not really a very fair question.
You go, are you not worried that the U.S. is no longer feared?
So you're saying they don't fear.
But hold on.
Let me finish my response.
You first presented to me, and a lot of conversations go like this.
You present to me, is it not a concern to me that the U.S. is no longer feared?
And I said, well, where are you getting that?
Where's the data?
You go out.
There is no data.
So where let's first start with what I said is it's not the fee.
I didn't say there's no data.
You can't pull data.
Meaning you can't find data on fear.
And how do you know that that's?
Fear is action.
Fear is action.
Did during Trump Russia attack Ukraine?
No, that's not that.
What happened with Palestine and Israel?
What happened?
Yeah, what happened?
They came together after 20-some years.
What?
What are you talking about when you say that?
What are you talking about?
Hold on.
Well, he moved the capital to Jerusalem is what you're saying.
So let's talk about the pressure.
I don't know if there's been peace in the Middle East or anything like that.
Has there been any progress on peace?
Very limited.
It wasn't the capital.
Did moving the embassy.
The embassy.
Correct.
Let me ask the question.
Did moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem get us closer to peace or did it get us further away?
Do either of you guys know?
I don't know if you've studied this issue.
There's arguments on both end, but it has not led to peace and prosperity in Palestine, correct?
Did Trump promise, there's a very critical, clear question.
Did Trump promise that Jared Cushman would solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the first term?
Now, before that's okay.
Just a yes, no.
Did he promise it?
I don't know if he promised it or promises made, promises kept.
He was assigned to that duty.
And did it happen?
What happened?
Did Jared negotiate?
No, but I don't think anybody believed that peace was happening.
So it's okay for him to make promises that are obviously.
But make the argument.
Go back to the argument about the fact that America on all polls today is, would you say, liked?
What was the word you used?
So I think the really important thing when we talk about this is we talk about what we can measure.
So the Gallup polling that has been done.
So you trust polls.
Oh, come on.
But that's where we're going, though.
There are people.
I trust certain polls too, but I'm saying, so you trust polls.
If you say, do I trust a Rasmussen Republican primary poll 18 months before an election, I would say that's not very valuable.
I don't think that's valuable.
The Gallup public opinion sentiment poll that has been done over many, many presidents in the same way, I think that that's a pretty good poll, just to give a sense of how the world feels about the American president.
I have no reason to distrust that.
There are other polls where I would have a specific reason to distrust.
But we're kind of going like 10 tangents here.
I think if we want to talk about, am I upset that the U.S. isn't feared?
Since you brought that question forward, the appropriate thing would be for you to give me the data.
But no, go back to what you said.
You said U.S. is what?
You said you like the fact that U.S. is liked more today under Biden?
No, I didn't use that term.
What was the term you used?
If you don't mind saying it again, on average, countries respect the U.S. more now that Biden is president.
And you value that.
I think it's important because I, and can I tell you why?
Sure.
I think it's important because between trade and globalization and problems we deal with that don't respect the borders of countries, it's important to be, again, it's not about liked, it's not about, it's to be respected globally.
I do think that that actually so why do you think they didn't like or respect Trump?
Let's see what you're going to say with that.
Why do you think?
Tell me.
The guy's a joke.
He is.
Yeah.
Okay.
Tell us why.
And Biden's not a joke.
Well, we can talk about Biden.
Oh, because Biden's like the goat.
No, no, no.
Trump's the joke.
No, no, no.
So why?
Tell us why he's a joke.
But I think it's important to say, are we talking about Trump or are we talking about Biden?
No, no, no.
Talk about them one at a time.
Stay on Trump.
Okay.
Stay on Trump when he says he's a joke.
Tell us why you think he's a joke.
Promises made that were not kept that he told us he was going to achieve for us.
Let's look at some of them.
I'm going to get rid of Obamacare and replace it with his word, a beautiful replacement where everyone will have care and it's going to be affordable.
Okay.
Just flat out didn't happen.
The one proposal that Republicans made would have led to 24 to 32 million people losing health care.
I consider that a failure.
I don't think Obamacare is perfect, but it's better than the think Trump thing Trump said he was going to bring us.
That was just a failure.
Two, build a wall across the entire U.S.-Mexico border, which Mexico is going to pay for.
It's not even worth having a conversation.
I mean, just a joke.
Of course, of course, completely didn't happen.
Solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
No progress made.
In fact, to be honest, and this is, you know, if we want to delve into that, moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem got us further from that because it's seen as a sort of a taunting measure, if you understand the internal politics of what's going on there.
Was going to, you know, made some space travel promises.
I mean, I can't think of promises he made that he did keep other than I guess he was going to do tax reform and he did tax reform.
So as a policy matter, a complete and total failure.
I do think maybe the First STEP Act on criminal justice reform did some good things.
I'm sort of glad to give him credit on that.
But so, you know, on policy, failure.
And then, you know, on rhetoric, we could spend three hours just looking at quotes.
So I'm curious to see exactly how you think now.
If COVID doesn't happen, does he get reelected?
Yes.
Why?
Well, because his followers don't care about policy.
I interview them all the time and I say… His followers don't care about policy.
They don't care about achievements.
They care about Hillary bad, Hillary Marxist, Hillary socialist.
You think Hillary's good?
Did I say that?
No, I'm asking you.
Oh, no.
I don't think Hillary was a good candidate, and she's to my right.
No, I don't think Hillary's good, but I thought she was better than Trump.
She's to your right.
She's to my right.
Yeah, Hillary is a very good idea.
She's a very moderate, conservative Democrat in your world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, give me a left-wing Hillary policy, like a really left-wing Hillary policy.
I couldn't tell you, but I'm not.
There is none.
But it's not the point.
But you're saying you would much rather have a Hillary than a Trump.
I would rather.
Okay, so go back to the police.
Much rather, I don't know.
So go back to he gets reelected.
Why?
Because his voters could care less about policies.
That's what you're saying.
Fine, no problem.
But we both know that it's not the right that elects him, and it's not the left that elects whoever on the left.
It's whoever's in the middle, the 8 to 12% that kind of says, you know what, I'm going to go this side, you know, this time around, or versus more people come out for, you know, their candidate, meaning a lot of people would come out for Obama.
Okay, so explain yourself.
What it actually more depends on is who chooses to go out and vote.
It's less about, you know, there's often this idea in politics, and there's lots of people who are really good on this issue that you could talk to, Rachel Bidakoffer and even Frank Luntz, even though he's partisan, I think he would concede this as well.
He's a part of the pollster, man.
The idea of the swing independent voter that sometimes on presidential elections will vote for a Republican and sometimes a Democrat, very, very small percentage of people.
More common is that a candidate either activates people to vote or those same people just stay home.
In the U.S., we have an embarrassingly low voter turnout.
It's between usually 52 and 60%, I think.
So almost half the electorate isn't even voting.
It's less about people who vote one way and then another way.
It's more about people who say, I'm just going to stay home versus I'm going to go out and vote.
If they vote, it's clear.
So you're saying that the middle voter doesn't matter at all?
No, I didn't say that.
So what are you saying?
I said they matter much less than who who is partisan chooses to vote.
But it's fair to say that, okay, if he continues, so if he continues and there's no COVID, he would get re-elected.
Do you think the people, let's specifically target the middle?
Forget the people on this side that would show up.
Well, but why?
That's that's the question I want to do with you right now.
So if we if we specifically focus on the middle, with the middle, the independent, the libertarians, would they have chosen to stick with Trump or would most have wanted to replace him with somebody else?
It's a polling question.
I don't have the data.
Well, you're the poll guy, so I'm asking you.
I don't have the data information.
Okay, I'd be curious to know.
So you're but you're also correcting me to say that's not true.
That's the middle and the independents that didn't elect him.
You're saying it's who showed up that elected him.
As a general concept, elections swing less based on independents who sometimes vote Republican and Democrat.
That's a small factor.
A bigger factor is: are voters activated by their candidate or are they deactivated where they go, I don't like this person, but I'm definitely not voting for that one.
I'll stay home.
Isn't it a bit of both, though?
It's a bit of both.
Because we all saw what happened in the Russians.
We've seen countless stories about, I voted for Obama.
I'm not racist.
I voted for Obama.
What are you talking about?
I voted for Bush.
Then I voted for Obama.
And then Trump showed up.
He made some promises.
He was in the Midwest.
He was out there.
He was reaching out, touch your hands.
Hillary was too busy in New Mexico and Arizona.
I decided to vote for Trump.
I was sort of done with Trump.
Now I'm back on Biden.
We see so many stories like that from these independents.
That's an anecdote.
And so I think anecdotes are fine.
But one of the things that is important is to zoom out from anecdotes and to look at the broader data.
And the other thing that's important is a lot of that cross-voting, it cancels each other out because you see roughly the same amount from one side versus the other.
And what I mean by that is there was, if you look at the crossover in 2016, the number of Democrats who decided to vote Trump in 2016 was very similar to the number of Democrats who decided to vote McCain in 2008.
So it's a roughly predictable number.
You're talking about Democrats who have switched over.
There's legitimate independents.
I'm giving you just one example of this people who go either way or whatever.
It's relatively stable and predictable.
So it's rarely a difference maker.
That's my only point.
And we can anecdotes all day.
You know, Jim Bob's wife decided to vote Hillary or what, you know, that's totally fine.
But let's do data because you're a data guy.
So if you're a data guy, tell us when you're saying it's not necessarily that the middle would have had Trump.
Yeah.
Would he have needed the middle to get reelected in 2024, in 2020?
He would have needed roughly the same percentage that Republicans tend to need.
Trump suffered because they're here on the COVID thing, would he have gotten re-elected?
It's not only if COVID didn't happen, Trump probably would have gotten reelected.
I think if when COVID started, instead of Trump saying, we have 15 cases, soon going to be zero, do flu vaccines work on COVID?
What about bleach injections?
All that stuff.
If instead of that, Trump said, hey, you know what?
We're the United States.
We're going to deal with this better than anybody else.
We're making MAGA masks.
And by the way, 50 cents on every dollar will go, you know, his normal fundraising scams, right?
Do the scams, but do the MAGA masks.
And if he said, we're going to be absolutely the best on this thing, he wins.
We saw it in New Zealand.
We saw it in other places.
It was a missed opportunity.
Now, I think it was just a miscalculation in the sense that somewhere Trump probably thought it was really going to go away.
I don't know who was around him.
I don't know if he was by Easter of 2020, right?
I mean, OK, so I think Trump, even if he had just done that and because we saw.
Why would he have?
Why would the independents, the ones in the middle who are, let's just say, slightly more reasonable and they're willing to say, you know, I don't like this guy on the left.
I'm going to vote right.
I don't like this guy on the right.
I'm going to vote left.
Why would they have still chosen Trump over Biden?
We're now, I have no idea.
You'd have to talk to them.
I just don't know.
But you're given your arguments.
And so your arguments you're given is you're talking about polls like Biden because America's more respected under Biden than Trump.
So that has nothing to do with American voters.
We're talking about people in other countries.
I totally get it.
But when you say something like that, the voter says, oh, wow, America, the world respects Biden more than they respect Trump.
Sure.
Okay.
Somebody may say, well, maybe because anybody who was an enemy of America hated Trump because Trump would deal more directly with them than Biden would.
Biden, you can't necessarily see him.
He doesn't look like a leader.
He's not an Obama-esque.
He's not a Clinton guy.
Biden doesn't come across as a strong leader.
But you're saying he's more respected than Trump.
Great, no problem.
Okay.
So then I go and I ask you a question and I say, if COVID doesn't happen, does he get re-elected?
Yes.
Why?
You say because more people show up.
This whole narrative about the fact that you need the middle voter to tip down, that's not true.
It's how many people show up and it's his people because his people don't care if he gets anything done.
That's what you said.
That was your narrative.
Right?
That's what you said.
Those were your words.
Some of those words mirror the things that I said, yes.
Okay.
So it activates, which means so Trump's voters, so give me, when you say I speak to a lot of these Trump voters, there's obviously a lot of animosity in you.
You have a lot of resentment or animosity towards them.
I don't know why, but you seem angry and upset towards Trump.
I mean, your comments like, you know, towards Trump is boom, you know, voters are this, voters are that.
Well, I think to you, what?
What problem may be with that?
I have to interrupt that.
But I get that.
So what is the, what is, and you can answer all those questions and I'll give you your time.
I'm not remembering all of them, but I'll try to write it.
What is the DNA of a typical MAGA voter in your eyes?
There's not any typical DNA.
I think there's basically three primary categories of people that vote for Republicans and Trump introduced a fourth.
Fair to introduce these four categories?
Break it down for us, for us that we don't have your intelligence.
Well, it's not about intelligence.
And I don't know if you're being sarcastic.
It's not about intelligence.
No, just about have you researched it.
This is your world.
So this is your world.
So, you know, tell us what you think about the three and the fourth.
With your intelligence, imagine what you could do if you looked up the things I look up.
That's really the incredible.
Okay, no.
So in all seriousness, four basic groups.
Pre-Trump, you had three groups.
You had sort of pro-business, low-tax right-wingers, people like Mitt Romney, basically.
They are, I mean, Romney maybe isn't a little bit of an exception because as a Mormon, he has some socially conservative views, but you've got like your Romney type who's concerned with let's not over-regulate businesses, let's not have taxes that are too high, let's create a good business environment.
As governor of Massachusetts, that was sort of his idea, and that's a very blue state, and he did well.
So you've got like your Romney type.
Traditional, low-tax, limited government.
Yeah.
Not extreme.
Millionaire.
Not extreme right on social issues.
Not particularly homophobic, for example.
Okay.
Then you've got your more libertarian-minded people.
I found it interesting when you said you're independent and libertarians.
In the U.S., libertarians are mostly right-wing, and they mostly vote for Republicans.
So then you've got your very libertarian-minded people whose focus is that.
We want just as much freedom to do as much stuff as possible.
It often includes freedom to discriminate if I don't want to do a gay wedding cake.
You've got that group.
You then have evangelical and religious voters whose primary things are less economic.
So what was your second one?
Second one is libertarian.
Third, you've got your evangelical religious vote.
The Mike Pence vote, if you will.
More than Mike Pence vote, people for whom abortion and gay marriage and more recently, you know, trans stuff, that's really the most important.
They'll go with the economic stuff, even though it's actually often not good for them.
And you started to see this under Reagan a lot, where these religious voters, they went with Reagan, even though economically it wasn't the best thing for them.
Those are typically the three groups.
You hear the common term, they're voting against their interests because they have social ideologies that they gravitate towards.
So you've got those three groups.
Trump had all of that.
The early Ted Cruz support in 2016 is that third group, that evangelical.
That eventually went to Trump.
Trump coalesced these groups because they really weren't going to vote for Hillary.
The fourth group, which Trump kind of created, is people who were not at all engaged with politics before.
They didn't pay attention.
They knew Trump is a celebrity.
They didn't really have a political identity.
They were disaffected.
They weren't really participating before.
So four is his personality is what you're saying?
Or?
Yeah.
They got brought in specifically.
He introduced that.
That's been around for a while, though.
He introduced what?
You're saying Trump introduced a fourth.
You said typically it's three.
Oh, yeah.
But Trump introduced a fourth or Trump has the fourth.
Trump activated this fourth group, which was people who were not in any of those three categories I mentioned and got engaged in politics for the first time because they heard Trump say something that they liked.
Give some examples of those.
You're talking about West Virginia coal miners or people in the deep red south.
They were from all over, but it was people who liked that Trump was going to fix trade with China.
A lot of them didn't really know what that meant, but it sounded pretty good.
Maybe the person had lost a job.
They came to believe it's because of China that I lost my job.
That sounds good.
Or people who are on immigration, they're like, the wall?
Of course, you and I know you're never building a wall.
Never mind.
Mexico is going to pay for it.
But there were people who liked the idea, never were in politics.
Like, no, sounds good.
I'm voting for Trump.
So he brought in this fourth group.
Okay.
So the fourth group, to be exact, it's his personality that people were turned on by the way he was.
Could be personality, but it could be that there was one thing he said that could really be.
So let me ask you a question.
Is there something wrong with that?
I'm curious.
Are you going to a place where there's something wrong with that?
No, it's not about right or wrong.
It's a question of whether any of us think that the policy motivations for any of those groups align with ours.
Somebody may say there's a lot of people that showed up for Obama just because he was black.
Sure, they can say that.
I don't know.
I mean, I don't know.
You don't think it's true?
Of course, in a country of 330 million people, there are going to be some.
But you said you don't know if it's true.
I was like, what do you mean you don't know if it's true?
I don't know.
I don't have any.
You don't have any data?
You want to get data to say people showed up that they, just because they're black?
There's exit polling on most of these issues.
You might be able to find it right now.
No, it's, you know, I cannot even tell you how many people, I knew Republicans who were voting for Obama in the insurance industry just because, like, listen, man, the first time this guy talks like MLK, you know, he sounds reasonable.
I'm going to vote for the guy.
There's a lot of people that came out with him.
So somebody may say, well, you know, the reason why Obama got elected, because he's got the three difficult things when he talks to the Democrat, da-da-da.
But the fourth thing is he was black.
Okay.
And are you going to say what?
I would say, yeah, I'm sure that there's a good portion of people who vote basically.
So you're saying the DNA of a Trump MAGA voter who looks past policies.
So you're saying on the three policies, he didn't check off the three policies here, the three points.
You're saying that.
I'm saying he didn't build the wall or I'm not sure.
Let me take a step back with you.
So I'm asking a question and I said, so tell me if you're saying he's going to get reelected without COVID.
You're saying he would have gotten reelected.
I think he would have.
Perfect.
And then you said your words.
You said something in the context of, you know, because I think the MAGA voter is not about policies.
That's what you said.
A lot of that fourth group is not about overarching accomplishments.
Like I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about, and maybe it'll help to distill it.
I got a call at some point during the first term of Trump from a guy who said, I'm voting for this guy.
This guy is just the best.
And I said, oh, okay.
What do you care about?
How are you evaluating his performance to decide if you're going to vote for him in 2020?
Like, how do you, I'm curious, how do you decide?
He said, well, I care about the wall.
So he's got to build that wall.
And I said, perfect.
If he doesn't build the wall, are you still going to vote for him?
And he says, well, yeah, I'm not going to vote for a Democrat.
So I said, oh, so it doesn't actually matter if he builds the wall.
Same with you as well, though.
There's no way you're voting for a Republican either.
Would you vote for a Republican?
Sure.
Yeah.
Who would have?
Have you ever voted for a Republican president?
No, I mean, I've only voted for two elections.
Yeah, but hold on a second.
But you're 40 years old.
You're 1984, so it's the difference.
I'm 38, please.
84, 38 years old.
38 is still you've had plenty of elections.
Let's back up for a second.
There's two questions.
Would I and have I?
I've only voted in a few presidential elections.
You've had plenty of chances.
Well, but who would I voted for?
I was going to vote for George W. Bush in 2004?
No.
But it doesn't matter.
The point is, when you're calling that guy out, you're the same as that guy.
No, I'm not.
Okay, so tell me a Republican you'd vote for.
I think you're missing the picture.
What is it then?
The point is, he made a claim that he was going to make a vote depending on policy.
And when I then said, so if the policy fails, you'll vote for someone else.
And he said, no, actually, the policy doesn't matter.
That's the difference.
I'm not making that claim.
Okay, it's a completely different thing.
I mean, the same can be said.
To take one example of a story of a person who sounds like an idiot to say that and then categorize everybody in Trump in a selective hearing, to say that.
That's selective.
Well, you are kind of doing that.
You're saying, here's a Republican voter who you ask, why are you thinking about voting for Trump?
Oh, because he's building the wall.
Then you said, if he doesn't build the wall, well, I would never vote for a Democrat.
Well, do you care if the wall never gets built?
No, I don't care.
I'm going to vote for him anyways.
Well, that doesn't sound like a reasonable voter to me, though.
That's right.
He's not a reasonable voter.
Well, the reasonable voters to me was also if you were to ask the average person who voted for Biden.
Sure.
They didn't vote for Biden.
Okay.
They voted against Trump.
Okay.
Do you disagree?
I'd have to look at exit polls.
Okay, true.
So is that where you go to?
For something like that.
For a guy who, if this is your space, what's your podcast about?
What is it about?
What's your show about?
News and politics?
You should know this stuff.
You're the expert.
I brought you up.
You don't remember that offhand.
How do you find it right now?
But this is your world.
Like if you ask me questions on business, I'm going to say, let me give you my feedback on what I think about business.
You invite me on your podcast.
Hey, Pat, I want to talk about business.
Let's do that.
I have no problem with it to do that part.
But what I'm saying to you is if you're coming here saying what you're saying.
Sure.
And then I ask you a simple question of, so the same thing can be said about people that voted for Biden.
Yeah.
Dude, I'm going to vote for anybody.
Dude, nobody would show up when Biden would speak.
Did you not see his tour when he was going campaigning?
Patrick, you're not really doing this, are you?
Tell me.
You're doing this?
I'm actually curious where you're going to go now.
Biden wasn't even doing events.
I mean, this is the Biden one from the basement thing.
I have a counter to this entire.
And I want to just be really clear.
I don't really care about defending Biden in any particular sense.
I just think he was the better option than Trump.
I feel like I'm being framed as this Biden lover who's going to defend everything.
I'm not doing that.
You may be thinking I'm not doing that to you.
But I'm asking.
What I want to say about this is this.
Can you pull up Biden's rallies when he was running for president?
Go ahead.
Let's see the pictures, but go ahead.
Biden didn't do a campaign the way Trump did it.
And the funniest thing to me about.
Neither has anybody done it like the way Biden's done it.
He hid.
But hold the guys.
This was during COVID, though.
Yes.
Let's back up for a second.
Look how beautiful that is.
Well, that's because of COVID.
Patrick, you've got to be able to do that.
Can I tell you something?
This is really the same thing.
You're telling me that.
So here's what I'm willing to do.
Here's what I'm willing to do.
Please.
I'm willing to give him a million dollars of my own money right now to go try to fill up an arena.
For what?
What's the point?
Oh, no.
To show that nobody is inspired by this guy.
This is so silly.
No, no, no.
But what's silly is what's silly is for you to assume people voted for Biden.
They voted against Trump is what they did now.
Many did, yeah, but what you just said.
I said I don't know what the percentages are.
But all I'm saying is I don't know.
But it's your world, though.
This is like, if you're going to sit here and sell, you know, talk about how bad the Trump voter is, and let me tell you, you know, these people, all they care about is his personality force outside of the taxes and all this other stuff.
And then I ask you a question and I say, so why do people vote for Biden?
Many of them voted on him because they just didn't want Trump.
Yeah, I don't know the numbers on that.
Okay, you should know those numbers.
I just don't know that offhand.
I mean, we can look it up.
Why do I need to memorize it?
Can I make a quick point?
Can I just get, there's just one thing I want to say here.
Yeah, go ahead.
This entire Biden hid stuff, it's so, it's such a self-hid in his basement.
Because when you talk about the hid a lot of times, but can I get a statement out?
Okay.
If I were on the right, I would stop saying that because it's embarrassing to Trump that he lost to a guy who hid in his basement.
It's not.
That's the crazy thing.
Dude, your president, your guy, Joe Biden, is the greatest hide-and-go-seek champion of all time.
Wait, hold on a sec.
He's not your president?
He's my president.
Oh, okay.
He's our president.
But he's your guy.
He's the guy you're defending.
You're defending him right now to say.
Only that he's better than Trump because you're making him do that.
The only reason that there's no way in a even the liberals today are not saying he's better than Trump in executing or taking action or doing anything.
Let's find out.
The only credit, well, at this point, you've lost credibility to talk about polls because you don't even know what you're talking about when you're saying, well, I don't know.
I don't know if the people were voting against Trump.
Let's find a poll.
So if you can't agree to that.
You don't know how many.
Of course they would.
It's not just how many.
It's if you go on, look at any of these people who were doing, what do you call it, street, when they're going talking to people?
Street interviews?
Yeah.
It's like, hey, so tell me, who would you vote here?
Trump's the worst.
I would never vote for him.
People didn't want to vote for this guy because 99% of the media, everybody was sitting there bashing him non-stop.
By the way, same thing's going to happen with DeSantis.
Same thing happened with Bush.
The only Republicans Democrats like is ex-presidents who are now painters.
That's the only Republicans Democrats like because they're no longer a threat.
Trump's a big threat.
So for you to say, well, we now have respect around the world.
Yeah.
I don't even know if I want that.
I think if there's an element of competition, because I think if China has to choose between Trump or Biden, and China would rather have Biden, that's probably not a good sign for me.
Is it a good sign if Russia wants Trump?
I mean, this is kind of a silly game, right?
No, but Russia is not our number one enemy.
Russia doesn't control 80% of chips.
Russia is not as powerful as people think they are.
They have a lot of nukes.
They lead the world.
Totally get it.
But we're seeing right now what's happening to Russia.
Russia is more, they're powerful.
You got to put them up there.
They're strong.
But China is really, really strong in experience.
China hates America.
China doesn't, they've publicly announced what they're going to be doing.
There's a very big difference between China and Russia.
And by the way, I'm not sitting here telling you we got to be best friends with Russia.
But if China likes a president over another one, that is a red flag for me.
Yeah, it's not rare as a view on the American right that is generally, who cares what other countries think?
I would almost rather they hate us.
That's really common.
I didn't say that.
No, no, I'm not saying that.
That's what you're saying.
I want to see a poll on that.
Do you have a poll on that?
Not offhand.
Then how could you say?
Do you have a poll?
Give me a poll.
Patrick.
But no, give me a poll because that's an anecdote now.
We can use this.
But stop any conversation.
But you're doing that.
But that's what you're doing, though.
You just did it with the polls about liberal experience.
You're the expert.
You're the political expert.
I'm not.
Come on.
You're the political expert.
No, you're being silly.
So I'm giving you exactly what you've been doing for the first 30 minutes.
Now it officially bothers you.
No, no, it doesn't bother me.
I think it's silly.
I think we don't get anywhere.
But wait a minute.
But what you're saying is that if the argument you give us said, show me a poll, show it to me.
You can't do it.
There's a difference between saying that there's a specific opinion among voters that they were motivated by a particular reason.
You have polling on that.
We just have to find it.
You like to use that, but not when it works against you.
Yeah, I didn't say hate.
I'm not a hate guy.
If I was a hate guy, you wouldn't be here today.
I didn't say that.
No, you said most Republicans would prefer if other countries hated us.
You're putting, you're assuming.
I didn't say most.
Run it back.
Wait, you didn't say what?
I didn't say most.
I said there is a contingent on the right that actually is emboldened by if they hate.
How small of a community is that?
Don't know.
So you're going to take the exception.
Are you going to make that argument?
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Patrick, I'm for clamped.
You and I both.
You and Linda Richmond.
We're going tangent, tangent, tangent where we can't really drill down on any one issue.
I'm saying to you, hate is not, if I had hate, I would have not had you on.
I didn't ascribe that word to you.
You said, I said fear.
I said fear is.
Earlier in the show.
No, no.
What I mean is if China prefers any president.
Yeah.
For example, if McConnell is going to be president and China wants McConnell over, let's pick a, I don't know, over Tulsi.
Okay.
I'm not McConnell.
Okay.
If China wants pick a, what is her name?
Liz Cheney.
If China was Liz Cheney over Pete Butichic, I would be hesitant there.
Okay.
Because who is the number one enemy?
Who is the number one enemy?
I'm actually curious what you're going to think about that.
I don't know.
This is a part that I'm not asking polls.
I don't know about the term enemy.
I mean, I think in terms of adversary, I think it's Russia and China differently in different ways, as you talked about.
We depend way more on China for goods that we enjoy being cheap because they're made in China rather than here.
I agree.
That confers huge economic power to China.
Russia, in a different way, yes, it's the nukes.
Yes, it's the more unstable leader.
It's also alliances with countries where Russia's involvement can goad or pull the United States in in ways that are both resource-intensive and politically disadvantageous.
So I think those are the two – Such as which countries?
Excuse me.
I mean, there's the Afghanistan situation.
You could argue Russia.
I mean, with Venezuela, there's issues there that are more economic relating to oil, which we've talked about.
It's less about products and it's less about supply chain with Russia, although with energy, Russia is a factor.
But I think those are our two biggest adversaries.
I don't know if the right term is enemy.
I'm open to exploring whether that's the right term.
Certainly adversary is the right term.
I think I'm on the same page with you on whether it's adversary or enemy.
You know, keep in mind, I've never taken anything past ESL in my English.
So the word enemy and adversary may have the same meaning to me, maybe a different meaning for you.
Fair.
It's opposition is how I see it.
But I agree.
But the part for me is if a country is overly comfortable with one and is afraid of imposing pain on them and kind of backs off a little bit, I want to know a little bit more.
Do you apply that to every country or only the countries you're concerned about, like China?
And what I mean by that is I'll give you a question.
I know what you're going to do.
You're going to go to Russia or Trump.
No, no, no, no, forget about that.
I'm just saying, if Denmark prefers Liz Cheney over Pete Butige, does that influence your thinking?
Not necessarily.
Okay, fair.
So what I'm getting at is you're concerned not in general with the opinion.
No, I'm concerned.
I'm saying my domain is main enemies.
Denmark is not somebody we don't wake up in the morning worry about what Denmark is.
That's why I asked the question.
Yeah, and Denmark has never publicly said by 2025, we're going to be bigger than America and we're going to do this.
They've never said that.
There's only a few countries that I've said that.
Denmark's not one of them.
So it would be fair then just to say your concern is not gener.
So when I say, hey, you know what?
Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, UK, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, you know, I give you this.
They respect Biden more than Trump.
That would not be a concern to you because they aren't the adversaries you're concerned about.
No.
I'm curious where you're going with this.
No, nowhere.
I have no hidden agenda.
All I'm saying is this.
Here's what I'm saying.
Let's just say, for example, let's say, I don't know.
A SPF, Sam Bankman-Fried.
If he got up on the pulpit and for 30 minutes said great things about you, and then you got up and said 30 minutes good things about him, I'm a little worried about you.
Okay.
So I sit there and I'm saying, interesting.
I get the concept.
Yeah.
That's all I'm saying to you.
But it only applies because it's Sam Bankman-Fried, right?
Of course.
If, you know, Kelly, who brought me in here, said great things about me, that you would have different opinions.
She's not an enemy.
She's not an adversary.
Correct.
No.
Okay.
That's fair.
So really, there's this small list of countries where you would say their opinion is a concern to you.
I'm actually really curious where you're going, though.
Just to say it's not, you acted as though the general reality.
No, no, no, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not sitting here putting everybody, I'm telling you, top enemies.
Okay, so who's the third?
Who concerns you the most at third spot?
I'm not sure.
I mean, you could make the case that, you know, there's a view that it would be one of the so-called socialist communist nations like North Korea.
People talk about, you know, among the American right, there's big concern about Cuba and Venezuela.
I don't really share that concern.
I'm not a supporter of either of those regimes, to be clear, and I'm glad to talk about that, but I don't really share that concern.
I think third actually is more difficult to say.
Iran.
Yeah.
Iran is a concern, not economically, but it's basically all focused around nuclear weapons and the possibility of seeding terror.
So that's a very different situation than Russia and very different situation than China.
With third, it really depends on the politics of the person that you ask.
And I kind of keep an open mind on that.
David, why are you not a socialist?
Why am I not a socialist?
You say you're not a socialist.
Unless if you are.
No, no, no, no, no.
Okay, so tell us, why are you not a socialist?
I'm not a socialist because I believe...
You grew up in Argentina, right?
Okay.
Well, I was five when I moved to the U.S.
But I mean, like some of your family, they're supporters of socialists.
Like who?
Your mom is not a, your mom supports socialism or no?
No.
Where did I get that?
There's an article that says about your mom supports socialism.
Oh, oh, that may, so okay.
In Argentina, in the 60s, when my mom, when my parents were kids, among the Jewish community, there were lefty socialist Jewish groups.
They were sort of like nominally socialist and they were cultural and et cetera.
And my mom certainly was part of that when she was 12 and 14.
But no, my parents aren't socialists.
That doesn't mean anything.
Because my mom's a communist.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I'm sorry.
I'm just curious of where that came from.
Why are you not a socialist?
I think that the market is a fine way to direct resources in the vast majority of areas, whether it's sneakers or automobiles or cell phones.
I think that that's absolutely a fine way to direct resources.
I see it as an authoritarian imposition for a government to come to a business owner like you or like me and say, you must socialize the ownership of this company.
And I'm against that.
I don't see any reason for that.
I don't see a legal basis and I don't see a moral basis for it.
What I am okay with as a capitalist, right?
And I know I saw your conversation with my friend Kyle Kalinsky and it seemed like you guys were talking past each other a little bit on social democracy versus socialism or whatever.
I consider myself a social democrat, sort of in the mold of Denmark, Sweden, et cetera.
Those are capitalist countries that have decided to socialize a couple more things than we've socialized in the United States.
That's really the difference.
And it's capitalism.
It's a form of capitalism.
Capitalism to make the money, socialism to spend the money in a lot of these countries.
No, I mean, I think that's a common talking point, but maybe to distill it in a way, are we all okay with socializing the military?
Are you cool with that?
Like, in other words, we use taxes.
So then let me ask the question a different way.
So it's funny to me, just the way a lot of people on the other side are funny to you, when somebody says, I'm not a socialist, but then they defend socialism and go straight to military on how much it costs and how much money is spent.
That's not the direction.
I'm just saying.
No, but it's not fair to interrupt something with rebuttal for what I'm not doing.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Are you okay socializing the military in the sense that we have one military run by the government, our taxes pay into it, and it's centralized, and that's the military.
There aren't a bunch of different, there's not, you know, Patrick's military, and if you want to pay taxes there, and that military might have different goals than the military in Texas.
That would be crazy, right?
We socialize the military.
We have everybody pays their taxes.
We have a federal military.
Fair?
Keep going.
Do we have that?
Keep going.
We can't make progress unless we establish where we're going.
But I'm curious to know where you're going with this.
Because you said that's not the argument you're making, so I'm curious to know where you're going with it.
The argument I was going to make was not that we spend too much on the military.
Okay, so I'm curious what you're going to say.
Are you okay with the military being organized the way it is?
We pay taxes, and then the military has centralized command, and that's the way it's organized.
Is that okay with you at the federal level?
That's the current system that we have here.
And does it bother you or is that okay?
Does it bother me that we have a, I don't even think we have at this point, but we can have a strong military that prevents future wars for somebody who lived in Iran and went through war for 10 years with Iraq and experienced all that?
Yeah, I'd like us to have a strong military.
Okay, and you're okay with it being run the way it's run?
We pay taxes.
I don't think we're running it well right now, so I don't know what you mean by that, but I'm not happy with the way we run it today.
These aren't trick questions.
Let me give a different example.
Are you okay with the fact that the fire department is socialized, usually at the municipality level?
You're okay with that.
Okay.
Are you okay?
Just because it's community, because it's where you live.
Yes.
Are you okay with the FAA being socialized in the sense that the air traffic control is run by the FAA?
There aren't all these different air traffic controls where here's a couple airlines that use one, and then here's a couple airlines that use another.
We have the FAA.
They run ATC.
This is what keeps planes from running into each other.
Our taxes go into it.
It's socialized.
Is that okay with you?
Socialized means we are distributing the cost among the people and giving centralized control to that entity.
Is it okay?
Am I willing to spend a portion of my taxes for that?
Yes.
Okay.
The difference between where I think you are politically and someone like me is I'm okay socializing a couple more things.
Okay.
So it's really where these conversations go off the rail with allegations of socialism and whatever.
You've just said you're okay socializing a number of things I mentioned, and there's more, right?
We could say, are you okay with like the VA?
That's a socialized medicine.
I don't know if you're okay with the VA.
Maybe you are, maybe you're not.
You and I agree on socializing a whole bunch of stuff.
I want to socialize a couple more and otherwise everything's the same.
I don't know that that makes me a socialist.
Let me ask you a question, David.
So out of every dollar you make, what are you comfortable being taxed on?
Like being taken away?
It depends what I get for that.
Can I give an example?
Sure.
Okay.
My willingness to be taxed would be greater if, for example, my or my daughter's college education were paid for by those taxes.
So in a vacuum, it's really hard to answer that question because it depends what we get.
Okay, so let me continue with these questions, please.
So who do you think makes better decision for your daughter, you or the government?
What kinds of decisions?
School.
School.
Let's just say if you pay me, I'm the government, but I'll choose which school she can go to versus you don't pay me the government.
You take that responsibility and you get to choose to send your daughter to what school she wants to go to.
What do you mean the government chooses?
But I'm giving you those options.
So meaning the government says these are the schools that will pay the tuition for, okay?
You're talking college and university?
I'm talking college and I'm assuming that's what you're talking about.
You're talking public schools.
I didn't know which direction you were going.
But go back to when I asked you the question, I asked the question.
I said, so what percentage of your dollar are you willing to be taxed on?
Not taxed on, just taxed.
And you said it depends on what happens with what I'm paying for, right?
Kind of what you said.
Okay.
So do you think.
I mean, is that logical?
Do you agree with that at least in principle?
Do you, well, I think you have a good brain and a good mind to make better decisions on what to do with your money than the government can.
No, but before we go into the specific education, because I'm trying to find points of agreement here, because I actually don't think we're really that far apart on a lot of these issues.
Are you of the mindset that just hypothetically, are you OK paying more in taxes if the taxes include fire, police, roads, bridges?
Are you generally just have you have you ever lend anybody money?
Yeah.
Yes, but you're not answering my question.
But I'm going to answer to you.
This is my way of answering.
You have your way of answering.
I'm going to answer you the way I'm answering.
So have you ever lent the same person?
Have you ever lent money to somebody a good amount and they never paid you back?
Fortunately not.
Okay.
Yeah.
Cool.
Well, guess what?
Yeah.
I feel the same way you do about giving money to the government because they haven't had a good track record of doing right things with my money.
It sounds like you're saying the opposite.
I'm saying I have not had an experience.
Well, you're wiser.
Good for you that you haven't had that experience because it sucks.
But here's the part.
Have you ever lent your car to somebody and it didn't work out for you?
No.
Never happened to you.
No.
I have leases and I just tell them, listen, I'm the only person who can drive.
I don't even know if that's true.
I just say my insurance.
Have you ever allowed somebody to borrow anything from you?
Yeah.
Have you?
Yes.
Okay, give me an idea.
Something.
Anything.
Something like that they broke or something like that?
Whatever you lent somebody.
Oh, I'm trying to remember.
And people don't really ask me for stuff very often.
This is a serious question here, man.
Like, the world is relying on you giving the right answer.
What have I, I mean, maybe when I was like 14, I lent somebody a discman and they did.
Are you a video game guy?
Are you a gamer?
Not really.
So what do you do for fun?
Bike, read, travel.
You ever lent a bike to somebody?
God, no.
So you may not be.
No, I've lent a bike.
No, I've lent a bike to bite.
So have you ever lent a bike to somebody?
Yes.
And they jacked it up.
No.
You've never had that happen?
No.
Then you're living in a freaking utopia.
That's why you don't understand economy yet, maybe.
I have undergraduated graduate students.
I know that part, but that's concerning as well.
That probably means I know less.
Well, no, not necessarily.
That just means you programmed.
It's a different story to think in one way because that disagree with you.
But that part is true.
A lot of it would currently be.
I was programmed and then deprogrammed.
Well, when you got 13 to 1, that's a true monopoly of professors on the left to the right.
That's a pure monopoly.
But let me go back to the question of what I'm asking.
You asked me the question, are you comfortable, you know, as long as what they do with the money?
That wasn't my question.
What was your question?
My question was, as a general principle, are you okay paying a little more if you get more?
Per same question.
In my eyes, it's the same thing.
Here's why the answer is no.
Oh.
Okay.
The reason why the answer is, no, I love your sarcasm.
The reason why the answer is no is because if I give somebody a relative $1,000, it's the last $1,000 going to give me.
I'm telling you, bro, I'm going to pay you back $1,500 in two years.
Never get it back.
Two years later, you come back to me.
Hey, this time, give me $5,000, but I promise you I'm going to fix, I'm going to give it back 10 grand.
Yeah.
Okay, no problem.
Here you go.
Two years later, he comes back up.
Dude, this time I'm asking for 10, but I'm changed.
Right.
I'm good, bro.
Trust me.
Give me the money.
I'm going to fix it.
If you give it the third time, you're an idiot in my eyes.
We keep giving money to people with zero accountability, and we just keep saying, here, here goes on this.
What money are you talking about?
$1.9 trillion.
But money for what programs?
Any programs.
Any programs that we're giving money to that there's no accountability for is being wasted.
Any one of them.
But namely.
Include military.
Include any of the entitlement programs that we have.
Like which one?
Include welfare.
Include food stamps.
Include any one of them.
We can pull it up, and I'll tell you right now, any one of them.
But what I don't understand is what do you mean by there's no accountability.
Can I give an example, please?
Because I think what you're trying to say that you don't know where I'm going with this is an issue.
So what you're saying is you know exactly what happens with the money when you give it to when you pay taxes?
No, I just don't understand what you're talking about.
You really don't know what I'm talking about.
Let me give you some examples.
Can I just give one example and then we can open this up and you guys can have fun doing what you're doing?
What I think you are saying is, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
And I think what Patrick is alluding to is the fact that we are now at $30 trillion in debt.
And the fact that we keep piling on this issue of like, I get it.
We all need military.
We need the police.
We need the firemen.
We need all these social systems.
We need a social safety net.
We need welfare.
We need Medicaid.
We need Medicare.
I think what his point is, is like, at what point is enough enough?
Now we want to pile more stuff into our storage unit that is already filled to the brim and we're going to keep piling and piling and piling more.
And at what point is he saying, can we stop funding the government this way?
Because it's not a good look for us because we're at 31, 32, 35 trillion.
And what he's saying, I think, is like we're going to have to make some cuts and make some adjustments.
And you're saying, let's double down.
Let's keep adding some to this stuff.
I didn't say that.
No, I'm just saying, I'm like, you want to add more systems, you said.
You said I want one or two more.
No, but wait a minute.
You really didn't understand what I just said.
Did he not understand it or did I not?
I'm asking you.
I want to get to just a very specific example of a specific program that you're displeased with.
Buddy, anything.
So you're against all government programs.
I didn't tell you all government programs.
So which ones are you against?
If you give money into programs that you're coming out saying, hey, we're going to spend $88 million for this.
If you want me to pull it up and we can go through expenses and tell you which ones works and which one doesn't, we can do that as well if that's what you want to do.
But if you constantly come to me for more money, let me just put it to you this way.
What does it mean when a company or an individual is in debt, $200,000?
When a company or an individual is in debt.
Okay, let's just say I'm in debt, $200,000.
Okay.
And it was $100,000 five years ago.
It was $50,000 10 years ago.
It was $10,000 15 years ago.
I come to you for another $50,000.
Should you lend it to me?
Probably not, no.
What are we doing?
What are we doing?
We're lending our tax.
It sounds like you're analogous.
But we're lending our taxpayer money, and we keep getting into more and more and more and more in debt.
If the government was an individual or a corporation, I don't understand why investors keep giving this government more money when they have no cash.
The critical answer is the government and countries are not like households or companies.
That's the difference.
It's just, it's not analogous.
That's not true.
It's not analogous.
That's not true, though.
So meaning it's okay for us to keep going into debt.
That's okay.
That's not what I'm saying.
But I think it's important to have a balanced view that when it comes to – and what's crazy about this is I'm not advocating for getting more and more into debt, right?
Trump did a great job of blowing up the deficit.
The deficit, we still have a positive deficit.
It's slightly less.
I don't say Republican or Democrat.
I'm telling you, I'm not supportive of a period.
Presidents, generally speaking, increase the debt.
First, make the argument on how different it is to give the analogy of personal household that it's okay for the government to increase its debt, but not on the personal side.
It's not a question.
It's okay.
It's not the same.
And what I'm struggling with, Patrick, is that everything I'm saying is just being relayed to me, usually interrupting me incorrectly.
So now I'm having to clean up what you think I said to then answer the original thing.
My point is.
Those three are different things.
They are different things.
Explain why.
They are different things.
Explain.
With a household or corporate budget or debt, you at some point at the end of the day don't have any more recourse to carry the debt.
And you either have to declare bankruptcy or you have to all the things that you know.
With a country, of course, if the economic growth becomes decoupled from the growth in the national debt, that is a problem.
We've seen it in many, many countries.
But in the United States, and again, I'm not saying who cares about the debt or the deficit, but I think we have to appreciate that there's a difference.
If your economy keeps growing, if that national debt grows more or less in parallel with the growth of the economy and it continues to be backed, you don't get to that day where there is the you're now being evicted crisis that an individual has.
That doesn't mean, I want to, let me say this one more time.
I'm not saying that debt doesn't matter.
There are people who say it literally does not matter.
I'm not saying.
Here's a question.
Okay, so but let me let me kind of try to give the point of the example I want to give to you.
Yeah.
So what is a sign when an institution keeps increasing its debt?
What sign is there?
So if I keep getting fatter, is it because I'm a big bone person or it's because I may have a bad diet and not exercising?
What do you think?
I guess it I need polls.
I forgot.
You personally, I guess I'd have to ask your doctor.
If you, you're a small bone guy.
You don't seem like you're you were big when you were.
Have you ever been 200 pounds?
No.
Okay.
Now.
So if you all of a sudden, next time you come on the podcast, you're 250 pounds.
You shouldn't be.
I'm not worried about me.
You should be concerned.
So can you accidentally become 250 pounds?
Accidentally.
It would be a number of accidents in a row.
Exactly.
Which, by the way, you probably enjoyed your dinner.
You probably enjoyed your food.
Right.
But if you came back 250 pounds as a friend or even somebody that's in the similar space that we're creating content, should I off-camera say, hey, bro, what's up?
I would appreciate it if you did.
Okay.
I should do.
You're a father.
You got a kid.
I'd like you to be around for your daughter.
And statistically, we're a better society when we are.
Okay.
So if you come to me and I'm smelling bad, I'm not shaving.
I look like crown.
I have nothing.
And I'm getting worse week after week after week.
Should you question and say, Pat, is everything okay?
I think so.
I think it's a good idea.
These are fun examples.
I'm trying to have fun with you.
But no, it's not talking about if a country keeps increasing its debt year after year after year after year after year.
Right.
Should we not be concerned?
We should be concerned about whether we're spending money in the right ways.
We should be concerned about whether we're going to be able to do it.
But let's give them another $1.9 trillion.
I'm not saying that.
That's the thing.
You know, I don't.
But you are saying that because you said the only difference when you went to your example of military and you wanted me to say yes.
And you said, look, I'm not a socialist because I think this.
And he said, the only difference is I just want two or three more programs.
And what I'm saying is we can't afford it today.
Okay.
Maybe in 20 years.
But do you are and I worry that I don't know if you think I'm talking in bad faith or if you maybe don't understand my political views, but I think differences that are actually much more subtle than you think they are are being blown up as if there's this crazy difference here about what's going on.
We're definitely using different rhetoric in this conversation, but I don't know whether we're actually understanding each other really that well because I'm with you.
If there are programs that are wasteful, how do we define wasteful, right?
That's the difficulty.
But if there are programs that are wasteful, if there are programs that are not economically stimulative, if there are programs that are being used for fraudulent reasons or whatever the case, I'm going to be right there with you saying we need to do something about this.
The things I'm looking at, when they are done in other countries, the country doesn't become socialist.
You can still own your business.
They don't socialize your business.
They don't communize your business.
None of those things happen.
Many of these countries have really good business environments, but they're just saying, hey, we have enough riches here that this capitalist system has created, which I'm in favor of, where we can do a couple more things.
That's all I'm saying.
What I'm saying to you is that no, it's not what I'm saying to you that I don't want it.
Yeah.
We can't afford it.
If you can stop interrupting this entire damn show, that is freaking, you know.
It's not fun, is it?
No, no, I'm used.
I'm good with it.
It's part of having conversations with people.
It doesn't offend me.
But if I sit there and I say, David, we can't afford it right now.
Okay.
I would say, what do you mean?
I would tell you it's called $31 trillion.
Okay.
Is what it's called.
We're in debt, a lot of debt.
Okay.
And you may not have to pay it back.
Somebody has to pay it back.
Your seven-year-old is going to have to pay it back, but that money's not going to print it out.
Seven-month-old is going to have to pay back.
Someone's going to pay it back.
That $31 trillion, you're not just one day going to say, guys, let's just write this thing off.
You guys okay, China?
Hey, Japan, you cool?
Let's just write this thing off and just forget about it.
And let's start again.
How cool would that be?
We can't do that.
We have that debt.
We can't afford it right now.
One of the things about a lot of these issues is, first of all, they're way bigger than any conversation where we just like list the programs and say we cut.
If you look historically, countries don't cut their way to economic prosperity.
Countries tend to grow their way to economic prosperity.
You with me so far?
Yes.
Countries grow their way out of economic prosperity.
No, that's the opposite of what I said.
Countries grow their way into economic prosperity.
They grow by one too many times.
So let's keep getting into debt, is what you're saying.
No, that's not what I'm saying.
So what are you saying?
What I'm saying is, over the long term, if the government spending is economically stimulative, it will help to grow the economy.
It's fundamental demand side economics.
So like as an example, there are certain government programs that are highly are these cigars, by the way?
I just noticed this over here.
You can take it.
If countries spend money on, I don't know.
You seem to be looking something up.
I don't know if you're paying attention.
I'm listening to you.
I am listening to you.
Go ahead.
If countries spend money on economically stimulative programs with a high economic multiplier, they can create growth.
If countries spend money in ways that are not economically stimulative, then it increases the debt.
So for example, just to pick two different programs, I don't have any emotional attachment to these two programs.
I'm just going to list two programs.
Food stamps and what is happening in here, by the way?
Are those gummies?
Yeah, taking vitamins.
Man, this is healthy for you.
I don't want to be a 400-pound guy.
Food stamps have a high economic multiplier.
Tax cuts for the very rich have a low economic multiplier.
I'm not passing any judgment in any way.
I'm just telling you there are ways that the government can spend money that is good for the economy and ways that is not so good.
That's my only point.
What were the two programs you said you wanted to add on?
I think we should have some kind of minimum level health care system for everybody.
And it would actually be cheaper than what we have.
What we have includes people that go to the emergency room as primary care, which is insanely expensive.
Sometimes they don't pay their bills and that leads to everybody who does have health insurance is just absorbing that cost.
It would just be cheaper if we provided everybody some basic level of care.
There are states that have done it.
I think that's just a basic thing.
And secondly, I would like to socialize some aspect of paid family leave, parental and maternal.
Not hugely expensive.
It's economically stimulative in the sense that when other countries have done it, they find that productivity ends up being higher when parents return to work.
And it's been widely studied.
These are just like two things.
We're already paying for most of them, either in terms of productivity losses or through the health care that we pay for to absorb people who don't pay and use the emergency room.
It can be done revenue neutral.
What percentage, like if going back to it, with what we have right now, the way it is today, what percentage of your dollar are you comfortable paying in taxes?
1%.
Really?
Less than Abe Lincoln imposed.
No, listen.
By the way, I'm not going, this has nothing to do with what I'm telling you.
Yeah, no, I pulled up a different story.
I'm not going to this.
But what percent are you willing to pay today?
I am not a high-tax guy.
What's high tax?
High tax.
I mean, listen.
I don't want to get too much into my personal finances, but I don't like that close to half of my income is going to taxes.
You don't like that?
I think it's too high.
So what do you thinkable?
Oh, man.
Does it include health care and college or not?
I don't know.
Just give a number, though.
Say it doesn't.
Say it doesn't.
No health care, no college.
No health care, no college.
What do we have today?
I would love to be in the 31 total.
Just so you know, we're on the same page there.
So for me, the difference is the following.
One time I'm doing a podcast.
I don't know who I'm doing a podcast with.
Anyways, this was like a year and a half ago.
Sounds explosive.
And then, no, it wasn't explosive.
You know what I like about podcasts like this?
It makes me go research a topic.
So one time we did a podcast about taxes and how taxes at one point, 90%, it was 90% taxes and it was like for a long time.
You wouldn't do all more.
You know what I mean?
Hollywood was.
This is what they're doing.
This is what it was like.
So you're talking about a 90% marginal on the very top incomes under ICE.
Correct.
Can I make my point without you freaking intellect with degrees to interrupt freaking high school graduate?
That's ad hominem.
Okay.
All right.
So let me go back to this with these two Jews bullying me right now.
So we're talking about taxes.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I said, let me go find out what's going on with taxes here and the history of it.
Okay.
So we send our research team and I said, send me anything you can on taxes.
You can assume this was like a very exciting two weeks of my life just studying taxes.
It was awesome.
It was a great experience.
I can only imagine what it's like to want to be an accountant.
It's got to be like a fascinating experience.
High suicide among accountants.
Do you know what happened?
The one data that came about on when taxes got started, the history of tax, you know the whole story, but here it is all this.
I'm not going through that part.
But I wanted to find out because a lot of people on the left say you can't compare governments to companies to families.
You can.
It just might not be useful.
But meaning it's not the same thing.
You can't do that financially, all this other stuff.
So you see the Lincoln thing that a story pops up where back in 1861, this guy goes up and says, hey, U.S., we kind of need some money.
This war was so expensive for us.
We're going to have to tax everybody 6%.
But I promise you, when we pay it off, we'll stop taxes.
Do you know what happened?
Well, after they paid it off?
The taxes didn't end.
No, it ended.
Oh, they did end.
Let me read it.
Are you talking about it?
Was it the 3% or the 6%?
So watch this year.
On August 5th, 1861, Lincoln imposed the first federal income tax by signing the Revenue Act Strapped for Cash, Strapped for Cash, which the government is kind of like they don't have cash at their debt.
So they need cash just like a corporation or family.
We don't have cash, so we need some debt.
With which to pursue the Civil War, Lincoln and Congress agreed to impose a 3% tax on annual incomes over $800.
As early as 1861, Lincoln had began to take stock of the federal government's ability to wage war against the South.
He sent letters to cabinet members Edward Bates, Gideon Wells, and Salmon Chase requesting their opinions as to whether or not the president had the constitutional authority to collect duties.
According to documents housed and interpreted by Library of Congress, Lincoln was particularly concerned about maintaining federal authority over collecting revenue from ports along the southeastern seaboard, which he worried might fall under the control of Confederacy, the Revenue Act language, da-da-da-da-da.
Okay.
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the comparable minimum tax income in 2003, after adjustment for inflation, would have been around $16,000.
Congress repealed Lincoln's tax law in 1871, which means there was no more taxes.
But it came back up, obviously, in 1909.
So this is an example of a story where we need some money.
Let's go to the people.
The people say, listen, here's some money, but I hope this stops.
It's going to stop.
So the moment we allow the government to use this power too much, they've abused it.
And for me, my only argument is if I have to choose between giving you a million bucks, that's going to sound crazy.
Okay.
I hope this doesn't get your head too big and you get too confident here.
Please.
If I give you a million bucks or if I give a million bucks to the government, I'm willing to bet you're probably going to create a better climate with a million dollars than the government would.
And if I have the choice to give a million dollars or a billion dollars to creators, job creators, small business owners on what they can do as a source of investment versus giving that money to the government, government, if there was a FICA score, if there was a FICA score, I don't know what your FICA score is, but you know the range.
400.
Extremely high.
400 to 820, give or take.
That's the number where it's at.
If we had to give a FICA score to the U.S. government, what do you think their FICA score would be today?
Yeah, but he needs polls.
Give me the polling on that.
No, listen.
I mean, what you're saying is super interesting.
You know the point I'm making now.
I don't want to be aware of that.
No, it's a good point.
And here's one of the things that I think I'm guessing we would probably agree on, which is when you think about the way that we organize society, this isn't politics.
This is just like sociology, philosophy, kind of like reality.
Once you get a group of people bigger than about 150, 150 people, okay?
If you want that to be run in some way that works, what we might define as works, you have to start introducing some level, some level of centralization.
That doesn't mean with 150 people, you need the tax system and everything that we have right now.
But it's just kind of like a reality of organizing societies that as societies grow from 150 people and think about it, 330 million people now in the U.S., 8 billion people in the country.
The idea that you have, which is, I'll just pick some people to give a million bucks to instead of the government.
It just doesn't work.
That's it.
Some things have to be settled.
I'm having fun with you, buddy, when I'm telling you that.
But the point I'm trying to make is that you're not going to be able to do it.
But the idea is an interesting one.
No, but the point.
No, it isn't interesting.
The point I'm trying to make to you is that's how the U.S. government was ran.
Yeah.
The country you and I are living in, it was ran that way.
Guys, we don't have money.
We go to the people.
I promise you, once we pay this off, we're going to stop taxing you.
And we accepted it.
You know, no taxation.
So we accept, we're like totally fine with this.
We're game with this.
And then now it's pure abuse.
We don't have a choice now like we did back then.
It was ran like a company.
It was ran like a family having their finances in order.
Today, America's FICA score is in the 400s.
You know, in the 400s, what you should be able to finance?
Nothing.
I don't know.
60% down, 30% for 400.
It should be 100% down.
But so what would you want?
So you said you were with me on like low 30s for taxes.
I am.
Okay, yeah.
So really, it sounds like the issue is more.
I would want a flat tax.
And what I'm saying, I would want a flat tax, meaning I'd like to go somewhere between 10 and 15 to 33 and a time to go to 30.
It's not flat, is it?
I get that.
But what I'm saying is if America, like right now, we need to pay off debt, guess what?
Tax me 33.
But let's gradually pay some of the stuff off.
I would like for them to say, we're going to go off a budget of 25% or 20%.
The 13%, every year we're going to pay off the debt.
Okay.
But here's a problem.
Yes.
You know why they'll never happen?
Well, there's a lot of reasons.
I mean, I don't know.
I'll give you my reason why.
Congressman people will never win on the agenda.
If we have no term limits, these guys are going to play whatever games to you're for term limits.
Are you kidding me?
Oh, me too.
Absolutely.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah.
Guys, we just found some common ground with David Pakman and Patrick.
David, term limits on the agenda.
My challenge isn't a, you know, my challenge is we're giving money to people that have proven to have no clue what to do with it and the debt keeps climbing.
Now, when it comes to like social safety net, right?
Can I tell you my view on this stuff?
And you tell me if you agree, right?
I moved to the U.S. as an immigrant.
Okay.
I had the benefit.
If my parents had to pay for my initial schooling, like if they had to pay out of pocket for elementary school or whatever the case may be, you know, my mom wasn't working at the time.
My dad was just starting a job where he didn't make a lot of money.
They couldn't have afforded if that public school said, we're going to charge you, right?
So I immediately got the benefit of that.
Follow along, right?
I got the benefit of police protection and then eventually all these different things, contracts.
So when I started my show, Intellectual Property.
So the way I see it is I've been extraordinarily fortunate to be able to build my business and get to where I am, thanks to a whole bunch of things that everybody paid for through taxes.
So my view now is I'm all, but let me finish up.
I'm also okay.
Like I recognize, you know, I've got these great employees.
Many of them had public school educations and they have certain protections when it comes to safety in the work.
All these different things.
You should be able to do all that with no more than 30%.
No, I'm not even getting to 30%.
But so I feel it's almost like a patriotic thing where if taxes are properly set and being spent on the right things, I think now my success, which only exists because of previous taxpayers through all those programs I mentioned, it should go to help other people who don't have that.
That's the wrong mindset, in my opinion.
Okay.
And let me tell you why I think it's the wrong mindset.
Because, okay.
You ever had a job?
Have I ever had a job?
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
No, you don't have a job right now.
You're a business owner.
Have you had a job?
Oh, yeah.
You working for a corporation.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Were you there for five years?
Like, did you work for a company for five years?
Yeah, I mean, this is kind of funny, but I worked for the now defunct retailer, Circuit City, for five years.
Really?
Yeah, selling extended services.
They pay very well, but I don't know when you work very well in the commission.
I got laid off when they went from commission to hourly.
The people who were making too many commissions, they didn't want to pay us hourly.
They laid us off.
Check this out.
Okay, so let me see if what year was it you were working at Circuit City?
It ended in 2003.
That's the era.
By the way, can you tell everybody how much a good salesperson at Circuit City was making?
Well, if you remember, because I'm willing to say this.
I worked part-time because I was like starting college 30 hours a week and I was making $75,000.
That's insane at Circuit City.
They realized it was insane.
And they're like, we're not paying these people.
But that's bullshit, though.
That's bullshit, though, because that's why they went out of business.
Right.
The model was working.
Guys were doing your part and then best buys paid seven bucks an hour, but you're.
You're about to validate my point, so check this out.
This is a perfect example here.
The perfect example is here.
So for me, you know how you go to a funeral and everybody's mourning, and maybe you don't know the person, but you're going because it's somebody.
You don't have a relay like it's in-law or somebody like that sure, but just to paint on everybody's face you feel it right.
So, for me, when I hear a company going out of business, right breaks my heart, especially company that's been on for a long time.
Yep, because to start a company, it's a very hard very, very hard to start a company, to make it last five past five years super hard right 10 20, 30 years, and then create hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs not easy to do.
Somebody and a group of people had to sacrifice a lot right, okay?
So what you're saying is the following hear me out, okay.
So the people who started Circuit CITY?
Yep okay, those who started Circuit CITY, those who paved the way before you and they came and they crushed it, and now there's new management and now, because the people before you paved the way, you should accept lower salary to give back to the people that paved the way before.
But it's not the people before that paved the way, it's the people today that are running Circuit City.
You're actually not giving back to the people that paved the way, you're giving it to the idiots that are running Circuit City today.
That's what's going on in America today, meaning you and I.
I love America.
I love.
I lived in Iran 10 years.
I lived in Germany two years, I was in the military and I come from a family politically on complete opposite sides, but I love this place.
It's an amazing country.
My responsibility on how I can contribute to society isn't through paying taxes, it's through creating jobs.
It's through, you know, when I pay my taxes.
I pay a lot of taxes this year, a lot of taxes this year.
Last year was a lot of taxes.
I've been paying a lot of taxes, period.
So but for me, when I pay the taxes and I ask, where did that thing go to?
Okay, what happened with that?
What are they doing with that?
If they're doing such a great job with it, why does the debt keep going higher?
Why are we, you know keep uh, not seeing any kind of return?
Things are still same thing.
Both of them are now asking to raise more money.
Oh, it's only the left.
You know the Democrats that just want to go.
No, that's not, it's, it's both of these sides who are part of the same camp.
Another 1.9 trillion, another 2 trillion, another 2.7 trillion.
I'm not for it okay, so all i'm saying to you is, the same way.
The Circuit CITY folks ruined a great job.
You had making 75 grand.
You're working 30 hours a week.
Yep, they came.
The new management decided to change the compensation compensation structure that was working.
That's the perfect example of how Circuit CITY went out of business, same thing that a lot of politicians are doing today.
Yeah, it doesn't seem at all analogous to me, but I love talking about selling extended service plans, so we can stay on Circuit City if you want, but in all seriousness, it doesn't seem analogous to you.
It doesn't really seem analogous to let me ask you a question, why did Circuit CITY go out of business?
Well, let's see.
Um, i'm thinking back now.
They went out of business because, when they switched people from commission to hourly okay, they got rid of the people that were doing really well, because they didn't want to pay us the hourly equivalent.
Wow, so they got rid of the entrepreneurs, they got rid of the no so so it's not analogous at all.
They got rid of the people that are self-motivated.
People got it so that that that is actually the perfect example, because they changed the comp plan, they increased taxes for the people that were working.
That's not at all analogous.
They didn't increase taxes, they just laid me off.
Did the 75 000 people make 75 000 again after they changed the company, at a different job?
Not at Circuit City, not at Circuit City.
You're laughing because you see the point.
They left to a different place here's, but then you got a new job and started making more money.
But the point is people.
This is why people leave California.
I was just gonna say, isn't that exactly analogy, York and California?
That's all of high-tax states to come to low-tax states.
So, I mean, we can talk about high and low-tax states.
The effective tax rate, especially if you own cars and homes in a lot of places, ends up being very close.
Stay off Circuit City.
Let's get off of Circuit City.
No, I don't want to get off of Circuit City.
Stay on this point because that is the point, though.
David, that's the point.
But I'm trying to have a different question conversation.
I'm sure you are.
I'm trying to say that.
Not because it's a more advantageous conversation.
Because you're saying it's not analogous.
What I just want to know from you is, I get it with the company.
Circuit City deserved to go out of business and it was allowed to go out of business.
And that was great.
I'm with you because they made a terrible business decision.
I'm completely with you.
What I'm asking you is, on a human level, in a country as rich as the United States, 330 million people, all these different things.
I'm not saying no one should be rich.
I'm not saying taxes should be 60%.
I'm not saying anything.
I'm just saying for the little comparatively that it would take, just to make sure that there's no hungry kids, for example, the little, little thing.
You don't have to go to the ER when you have a problem.
Isn't that going to isolate this?
We can go to that.
Stay on this issue.
Don't digress.
Stay on this issue.
By the way, just out of curiosity, who's your guy?
Like when you were, who do you look up to?
What comedian guy, your style, do you look up to?
I just wrote a name down because you remind me of him.
I don't know.
You sure?
You don't have heroes?
You don't have comedians you like?
No.
David, you got someone you like.
I'm just this guy doesn't lend money to people.
He doesn't lend people their cars and he doesn't have anybody.
You don't have a celebrity.
You don't have anybody in a political person.
You didn't have anybody you watch, like a Bill Maher, guys like that that you say, I like this guy.
Like I'm a big Bill Maher guy.
I love Chappelle.
Nope, none of that.
I mean, I casually would watch Bill Maher, but I mean, are you a Jon Stewart guy?
Are you a, you know, I would watch Jon Stewart a little bit.
So let's go back to Circuit City.
Okay.
Forget I digress.
That's my fault.
I want to know about your technique.
He was my technique for selling the service plan.
Yeah.
Do you want to know that?
No.
You're staying on service, Circuit City.
I'm just digressing.
We can stay on circuit.
But do you know why I'm staying on this topic?
No.
Okay.
Let me, let me, this, this is, this is.
There's a metaphor here.
I promise you.
In the business world, okay.
When a guy or person leaves a company, they leave for a reason.
In the sales industry, many times they leave because comp changed.
Okay.
Yep.
So what happens with comp?
This is what typically happens with comp to our salespeople.
A guy sits there.
This is 2003, you said?
That's what 20?
I can't believe so.
Holy shit, you're making 75 out of 18.
Yeah.
Okay, so check this out.
I got in this.
You want to really know a crazy story.
I was.
That's why I love Circuit City stories.
I was audited because it wasn't plausible that I was making that much.
And so a guy showed up, an investigator, with a recorder.
And they're like, so where exactly did you make this?
It was a crazy thing.
My mom sat with me.
My mom sat.
I was like, mom, I don't know what's going on.
Dude, I know a lot about the Circuit City folks because I recruit a lot of Circuit City folks after that happened to the insurance industry.
I remember that.
But this is why.
But here's the part, though, because you guys were sick.
Circuit City sales training was awesome.
Same was Bally Total Fitness.
By the way, I'm a Bally's guy.
So Circuit City is sitting there and they're saying, who the hell is this Pac-Man guy?
We're paying $75,000 a year, working 30 hours a week and he's 18.
Right.
He shouldn't get paid that.
Correct.
We should only pay him six bucks an hour.
Yes.
There's no way this guy's worth it.
We're overpaying him.
Some idiot at the top said what?
We're overpaying him.
Yeah.
Okay.
So they came up with this idea that let's fire these guys that have charm, charisma, sarcastic, witty.
People like them.
They're selling.
Awesome.
Who cares if he makes 75?
They flipped it on him.
Yep.
That happened to me when I was at your, when I was 21.
I just got out of military.
So people at Bally's at one point were making $180,020 a year.
In the 80s, in the 90s, salespeople, by the way, Circuit City was paying $180,200 a year to salespeople.
Circuit City was killing.
It was like one guy making that much.
Well, one guy per place.
In Connecticut.
No, no, no, no.
There was no one in our store making that much.
Well, maybe not your store, but there's a lot of guys that were making money at Circus.
If you're 30 years old making 75, there were plenty of guys that were making money.
18 years old.
I'm sorry, 18 years old making 75.
A lot of people were making money at Circuit City doing sales.
So here's the point.
Please.
Guy changes to come.
Yep.
He lost you.
Okay.
You get fired.
You go elsewhere.
You do other things.
Yep.
Did a lot of other people leave?
Well, anybody making under 10 an hour in commissions was too bad of a salesperson.
They got rid of them.
Anybody making over 20 an hour, there were two people in our store.
I was one of them.
They got rid of us.
So they only kept those 10 to 20.
So they kept average socialism doesn't work.
Well, no, socialism would have been a lot of fun.
White socialism doesn't work.
Socialism would have been a lot of fun.
Oh, now you want to flip it, don't you?
No, no, no.
You're shooting.
So think about that.
Socialism would have been, you've got to keep the ones that are not going to be available.
No, actually, it's not.
Socialism is socially average.
That's insane.
This is crazy.
This is a great conversation about things completely disconnected from 100% connected.
But I love the conversation.
They're 100% connected is what they are.
They're 100% connected.
Because it's like saying, if you tax people less, hey, wait a minute.
Elon's making too much money.
These billionaires are getting too rich.
These millionaires are getting too rich.
This is not good.
We need wealth tax.
We need this.
We need that.
No way we should be doing this.
Hey, you know, Elon's saying something in whatever was in California, and the mayor responded back.
And he says, okay, noted.
Boom.
I don't know if you remember this.
Do you remember when the mayor or the councilman responded?
San Francisco or Silicon Valley, we should do away with him.
He's like, all right, guys.
We should do away with Tesla and they're this and Elon is this.
And he just tweets back and says, noted.
Noted.
Moves to Austin.
Great.
Guess what?
Austin got Elon.
A lot of people, Florida got a lot of great talent.
Texas got a lot of talent.
People leave when you change comp plans.
I'm sitting here giving you the example of where taxes are good.
33.
We're on the same page.
Okay.
I'm willing to go 33.
You're saying 30, 31, which you're a little greedy.
I got to tell you.
Well, I'm going to go.
You're a greedy socialist.
This is so, this is so, first of all, come on.
Okay.
But are you an Elon fanboy?
Not as much as you're a Joe Biden boy fanboy.
You're a diehard Biden.
I would be interested actually.
If I would have known I would have gotten Joe Biden, you'd have a lot of diehard Biden fanboy.
Oh, it's obvious.
You love.
Seriously?
No, now it's on your podcast said, why do you have a painting of Biden in the back?
Oh, okay.
So, all right.
Okay, go ahead.
What is your thought?
Because I was a relatively early Tesla investor, and I still drive a Tesla.
I think it's going to be my last one.
I've sold the shares.
Where are you on Elon?
Because a couple people wrote to me.
They're like, oh, Patrick's a fanboy on Elon.
Or on Tesla.
Either.
Okay.
So can I take a sip?
Yeah.
Is that an energy drink now?
It is owned by Tesla, by the way.
It's Elon's drink.
No, it's not.
I don't.
By the way, while he's drinking this, why are you done with Tesla?
Why is this your last Tesla?
And are you a not Elon Musk fanboy?
Are you anti-Elon Musk?
I have no emotional thought whatever about Elon.
So here was my thought.
Okay.
When I got the Tesla shares in 2015, I thought electric's coming, early mover, range and charging network are the things that matter.
This is going to set them up.
It's going to be crazy.
So I bought the shares.
Eventually, I got one of the cars.
I was like, this is fantastic.
When'd you buy shares?
When?
When?
2015.
February 2016, I think it was.
So I get the car.
I'm like, unbelievable range, fantastic.
The charging network, all this stuff.
The build quality kind of sucks.
Everything's rattling.
There's things that are held together.
It seems to be by tape.
But that's okay.
I like, I get it.
They haven't been building cars very long.
It's going to improve.
It's going to improve.
Got the second Tesla.
Better build quality.
Still, it's the same issue four times now, every time.
It's literally something that has to be ratcheted, has to be taken apart.
Now, the other companies that, let's be honest, Audi builds better cars than Tesla.
They've been doing it for 100 years.
They don't rattle, et cetera.
They're losing the charging network advantage slowly, partially thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act and the high-speed transition.
Here we go.
Spokesperson for Biden, go ahead, keep going.
And also, the range, there's more and more cars now that are matching the range.
So I think the time, that first mover advantage is diminishing drastically.
So, David, if somebody didn't know either one of us and they had to poll to say who's a Elon fanboy, it would be you.
Why?
Here's why.
You're against all of it.
Can I answer?
Why are you such a bully?
Let me answer, man.
One, I've never owned the Tesla.
Okay.
Two, I don't own Tesla stock.
I've never bought Tesla stock.
Okay.
Okay.
Because I thought it was always overpriced.
Wow.
Okay.
But here's what I will tell you.
Please.
As a jockey, I'm a fan of the jockey, him being the jockey.
The business, I thought Tesla, too many people who were fanboys who thought that it's just because it's him, it's going to kill it.
It's down 85% for the year.
By the way, but the point is, it's at the right number right now.
It's around the number.
It should be give or take.
Maybe it's still not at the number it needs to be.
But long, if it's a long investment, I think it's a good long investment.
I think a lot of people got killed last year.
By the way, a lot of people made money last year as well.
Citadel Ken Griffin made $16 billion last year.
You don't make $16 billion during a flat economy or even slightly down.
You make it because you were shorting certain stocks.
And some of the famous stocks to short last year.
Hence, the company and the boy you love the most, your guy, Elon Musk.
He's not my guy.
But listen, listen, but on paper, you're a fanboy.
I'm out of the stock and I'm getting out of the car.
So you're an ex-fanboy is what you are.
It's okay.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with that.
The product had a specific advantage.
I've never been a fan of the product.
I've never been a fan of the product.
I've never been one that has gone.
And by the way, one of my best friends, every time.
He named his son Elon.
That's qualified.
Okay.
He owns Teslas, stocks, all of it.
Total fan of that stuff.
I'm not that camp.
What I do like is the following.
Just so you know, when you leave this place, you best say thank you to Elon.
Okay.
You owe him a thanks.
Okay.
A big thanks.
Have you enjoyed the session we've had today together?
Yeah.
Is this a good day for you?
Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't know that I think we talked past each other a lot.
Okay.
And things that are not actually disagreements were zoomed in on.
And I think we would actually get along on 80% of stuff if the conversation was not for television, potentially.
Did you watch Kyle's show when Kyle and I were together or no?
I watched some of it.
Okay, you know how much fun I had with Kyle?
Just the same way I had a lot of fun with you.
I have no idea how much fun.
By the way, if you told me you are willing to come back next month, you're on next month.
I enjoy this all.
So you don't, one thing you need to know with me, I don't look at comments anymore.
The comments on this from your audience are going to be brutal.
I'm going to need a new therapist.
I'm going to need a new therapist.
I actually think they like you a lot as well.
Trust me.
And here's why with our audience.
The reason with our audience is because we like people like that to come.
We don't want, like, by the way, you know who's going to be on Thursday?
You ready for this one?
I don't know.
Like the complete opposite of this.
Let me guess.
It's going to be Ben Shapiro.
Is it?
Worse.
James O'Keefe is going to be on Thursday from Veritas.
Project Veritas.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, so he's going to be on.
I'm sure you guys would like to have lunch together and have a good time together.
I'll still be here.
I'll swing by.
But here's the point.
Maybe he said something.
The point I want to make to you is on the topic of differences and all.
You said he was going to have to thank Elon for something.
Yeah, because without Elon, you and I wouldn't have tweeted each other.
He's running Twitter right now.
What are you talking about?
We tweeted each other last year.
I know we did.
You know, again, from.
What does that have to do with Elon?
It's a connection we have through Twitter that he's running now.
There's a CEO of Twitter a year ago.
It had nothing to do with it.
It doesn't even matter, man.
I'm giving this guy credit because you want to.
It's fanboy to find a reason to thank Elon for some time.
I'm looking.
Listen, I have a thankful attitude.
I'd like to find reasons to be thankful for people.
Rob, do a poll right now.
Who is a bigger Elon Musk fanboy?
There is no way.
Or Patty.
But if you want to say, like, in an area that I believe in what he's going to do as a jockey, yeah, I believe in him as a jockey.
So if I'm on a long anything, I'm going to long what he's going to be doing in Vest Mon.
By the way, I really appreciate the metaphor that you're using right now of the horse versus the jockey.
The horse in this instance is the job of Tesla.
I'm a believer.
He's an analogy, I agree with.
That's an accurate.
Guys, we are finding copycraft here in PBD Public.
No, the other analogy Circuit City you didn't believe in is the Circuit City did have a little analogous metaphor superficial level.
I think if we dove deeper, it's false.
Come on, bro.
That's like there was social media.
You dropped like it's as if I wanted to say it, but you said it.
They got rid of the top guys and the bottom guys to make the middle guys happy.
That's socialism.
It's not.
It's socialism.
They do.
Socialism does something for the bottom.
An hour and a half later, saying he's not a socialist, folks, he's defending socialism.
Okay.
The reality is Circuit City did shut down.
You know what would be a cool shirt?
Here would be a cool shirt.
Here's what would be a cool shirt.
Oh, wait for it.
Can you pull up this book called First Rate Madness?
Pull up the book to cover.
I have an idea.
I have an idea for our friend here.
I've got a book that I'm working on, so maybe I could take this and this will be the cover.
Let's see.
I don't know if you want to use this cover, but it's a so pull up.
You see that cover right there?
First rate madness?
Yeah.
Part of it is Kennedy.
Okay.
Part of it is Lincoln.
And the other one is, I don't know who the bottom left one is.
Could be Jackson because they talk about him a lot.
It's not Sinatra.
Are you being sarcastic?
No, I'm kidding.
Yeah.
Okay.
No, I think we should get a picture like that made.
And I'll tweet it out today just because I like you.
I think it should be half the face should be Biden.
Okay.
The other quarter should be Bernie.
And the last quarter should be Elon Musk as a fanboy for him.
And I'm going to say, David, this art was created.
By the way, can you tell our graphic design?
I'm sure he's going to talk shit all day today.
We're going to have a good time.
That's a gift from me to you.
I don't know what we're talking about, but it sounds interesting.
Yeah.
What was the name you wrote down describing David?
No, he's John Stewart.
This guy's talented.
I like it.
I like you.
You kind of do look like Jon Stewart.
You never heard of him.
Well, people say you and John.
When we're talking about Jews who are 5'8, and you are talking about politics.
No, I'm actually not going there at all.
I'm going purely talent.
Okay.
You're the witty, the poking, the sarcasm.
You have it.
You have that talent.
You can't teach that.
You either have it or you don't have it.
You have it.
I appreciate it.
You really are very.
Pull up a picture of Jon Stewart, by the way.
There is sort of an uncanny.
I think we had a Joseph Stewart Leviticus.
All right, let's.
I mean, come on.
Oh, my God.
Young Jon Stewart here.
Is that a new picture?
Oh, that's new.
That's a much better question.
Can I get a young?
Young John's.
Why would they put that picture on his Wikipedia?
He's got to have better pictures than John.
No, when he was young, he was way harder than that.
No, when he was young, he was way harder than he was.
Oh, look at that.
Dave, I'm sorry.
There you go.
You're of a blonder version of him.
You have better hair, I think, but you have good hair too.
Okay, last, we got eight minutes here.
Wait, but so you're not that Joseph Johnson could be a Jewish last name.
Assyrian.
Okay.
So Assyrian bet.
Like Ben Bet.
Beta is house.
Bet David.
Got it.
Ben is son of.
Yes.
I speak Arabic as well.
Fluent.
Really?
Yeah.
No, you're way more of a young Jon Stewart.
It's hard to believe.
Joseph Gordon.
Hard to believe.
So, for example, when I watch Passion the Christ, I actually cannot understand what they're saying to each other.
Literally, I didn't watch it.
And even if I watched it, I assure you, I would not have understood it.
Yeah.
Okay, so last thoughts here before we wrap up.
We got seven minutes.
You pick your topic.
What do you want to do?
If you don't, I have a topic for you.
Okay, you're in trouble.
So, DeSantis, what's going to happen here?
What are your thoughts?
Do you think it's going to be ugly?
Are you from the school of thought that there's going to be a civil war?
It's already starting.
You heard what Trump said yesterday, loyalty.
I'm about loyalty.
So, okay, give us your thoughts.
I do think so.
I think Trump is furious.
There have been reports for six, seven months that DeSantis should have said, I would consider it if Trump doesn't run.
And DeSantis has not said that.
And you're supposed to say that.
That's the loyalty test.
I do.
So selfishly, in two ways, I hope it's an absolute disaster.
One, I think it'll make it less likely either of them win if they have a year during which they're just going crazy at each other.
And number two, I think it would be hilarious because honestly, either one could end up on top.
I know that there's this idea among some of my colleagues that DeSantis is similar to Trump, but smarter, better spoken, less gaffe-prone, all these things.
Trump is really good with the nicknames and the making fun of people and stuff.
If DeSantis declares and they're actually running a national campaign, not Florida, but a national campaign, I would not understate the possibility of Trump really doing to DeSantis what he did to Little Marco, you know, calling Ted Cruz's wife ugly, this sort of stuff.
It can get ugly, and it's not clear DeSantis will get the best of it.
Yeah, I don't know if I disagree.
It's a okay.
So here's a question for you.
You're on the inside strategy team for Trump.
You're on the inside strategy team for DeSantis.
What do you tell him?
I know you're going to say Trump's not going to do anything you say anyway.
But what are you saying?
What would you say is a strategy for if you're like, hey, to win, we got to do XYZ.
What would you say?
I think I am terrible on political strategy.
But one of the, if I, if I had been advising Trump, I would have said, don't announce in November, five days after a midterm election.
I would not have done that.
If I'm DeSantis' team, I would say, listen, you're not even running.
And in some polls, you're defeating Trump.
I would wait.
Continue to allow Trump to be furious.
Continue to allow Trump to, he had this low energy rally in South Carolina.
Nobody went.
He was sweating and it was bright orange.
It was just horrible.
Keep letting Trump do this stuff where he just looks silly.
And then when you finally do announce, really think about it and do it in a way where you actually launch a formidable campaign.
Instead of jumping in now and getting involved in this stuff, I wouldn't do it.
Very interesting feedback.
Okay.
Question.
Do you have a book you're promoting?
Is there anything you're promoting?
It's being written still.
So I don't have it to promote.
So what would you like us to drive to?
Your YouTube channel or Twitter?
I would love it if people Twitter.
Oh, God.
No.
I would love it if people went to my YouTube channel and subscribed.
That would be a good question.
Can we put the link in?
Put the link in chat description, all of it.
And David, you have to know.
I can't wait to have you the next time around.
Because I think the next one's going to be better than this one because now we kind of have an idea.
Now we know each other and I can come prepared.
We can talk energy drinks, cigars, and supplements.
Yesterday we're like, so what are we going to talk about tomorrow?
I said, listen, this guy's an expert on private equity.
We're going to talk venture capital.
And we're talking GPT.
It's what we're going to talk about with him.
It's like, what are you talking about?
This guy's not that guy.
All the other David Pacman.
No, no, I'm talking about you.
We're joking about it yesterday.
Because there is a Devonian.
Is there another David Capital?
Yeah, I know there is.
I know there is.
Well, we must take him down.
Did you think he was throwing up to December?
No, no, no, no.
You're kidding me.
I know it's you.
I've been invited.
I've been invited to Bitcoin conferences, and I'm like, I know you're looking for that guy.
I didn't accept this.
You should have accepted a constituency.
Let me tell you about your fanboy Elon Musk.
I just call it a lot of people.
I told Pat, I don't know if you're joking right now, but we're going to spend two hours talking about politics, Trump, socialism, Bernie, Biden.
And I was proven correct.
Yes, you were.
By the way, shout out to Circuit City for making you the man you are today.
Thank you.
Yeah.
No, in all seriousness, I talk with my Circuit City colleagues.
It threw me at age 16 when I started 15 into a situation where people would come in, all sorts of different types of people.
I immediately have to build rapport.
I immediately have to figure out how to build a relationship, get them to trust me, et cetera, how to talk, think on my feet.
It was invaluable, even in what I'm doing today.
It was just an unbelievable thing.
And it ended sadly with, as we know, they fired the top people.
Well, gang, if you enjoyed today's podcast and you want us to bring our buddy here back, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel and share this.
I think the audience wins today.
Then when there's banter, there's disagreements, there's arguments, you know, you sit there and you're like, I like what he said.
I agree with him.
Pat got this wrong.
He got this wrong.
Whatever.
You win.
You got the argument.
We just had a conversation together.
We're all winners.
Have a great day, everybody.
We'll do this again on Thursday.
You're all winners, like he said.
All winners.
Whether you're at the bottom, the top, or the middle, you're all winners.
