YouSaid · the spoken record

David Pakman

lines on the record: 228
first: 2023-05-06
most recent: 2023-05-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I don't think there's anything wrong with suspecting maybe a public figure isn't giving me the full story. Totally reasonable thing to question. I don't think there's anything wrong with exploring a lot of these different things. I think the problem becomes, and I know you've talked about this in so many different ways with other guests, the problem becomes when we lose a shared understanding of how we would assess whether any of these things are true. And then both alleged evidence and an absence of evidence both become supportive of the conspiracy theory because if there's bad evidence you manipulate it and say it's good evidence, if there's no evidence, you say the evidence was obviously hidden by the people who carried out the thing or whatever. So unless we can have a shared understanding of how we would determine what's true, these are common conversations often between atheists and religious folks. How can we deter, like is my faith in something or my desire for something to be true a good way to evaluate whether it is”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bad events in many ways. I could be the victim of one or you could or my family could. That's really scary to a lot of people understandably so. And for some people, it's less scary and more soothing in a way to say there aren't really random events like this. Somebody planned it. And if we had just known who planned it, it just could have been stopped because we would have known exactly when. That's just a psychological level easier to accept for people. And I get that to some degree because listen, it's not the most exciting thing that everything can just be going fine and something absolutely horrible happens and kills who knows, some number of people. So I think that's the biggest attractor to a lot of these conspiracy theories. It doesn't apply to all of them, though.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there have been conspiracies, and by conspiracies, I'm using a colloquial definition, which is basically individuals working together in a clandestine way impact or affect some kind of event or phenomenon very, very broadly. I mean, certainly those things have happened to jump around to some of the things that were in there. I think the reason that conspiracy theories are so compelling is that it's really tough for a lot of people to accept there are random events. Not predictable specifically at a stochastic level, we might be able to predict them, but specifically unpredictable.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hard for me to speak to them because I'm aware that they exist, but I'm not an expert in them because they seem so obviously baseless to the degree that I've researched them a little bit and then I move on. And it's been years since I've looked at this stuff. I know there's the Seth Rich one and there's the Clinton body count one. I think there's one connected to Epstein, if I recall correctly. There's all sorts of these different ones. Without speaking to any of them specifically because I'm not the expert on Clinton conspiracies, it does seem as though this stuff for so long has generated an audience. I mean, I remember in the supermarket when Bill Clinton was president at the checkout seeing the tabloids and there were stuff about Hillary birthed an alien baby and all the, it seems like it's been titillating to people for a very long time.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were so many people demanding that she be imprisoned, if you ask them, what is the crime they don't know? But she should definitely be locked up. That became a very big thing. The email story, as it were, and James Comey doing a second public event about that investigation, even though there wasn't any actual news about it, just doing a second event about it at the last minute, I think hurt her and also generated some hate. And I don't find Hillary Clinton to be particularly likable, although I voted for her. I thought she was the better candidate. And I think that there are others who also didn't find her particularly likable. Those are a lot of impediments to becoming president.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Few different things, and I'm not ranking these. These are just all things that come to mind. One is Hillary Clinton. Had been around in the political space for a long time, from her time as First Lady, through a senator, secretary of state, et cetera. So I think that there was enough time for different groups to develop an antipathy towards her for different reasons. So time. Secondly, Trump's branding of her as crooked was very effective.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On how much billionaires can make. And we've got to reinvest in these social programs. Tucker will say BLM taking your house and a brown person from Mexico taking your job are what we need to deal with. So the populist rhetoric can lend itself to very different policy. And Trump used that very effectively in 2016.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He did a good job on anti-Hillary, but a lot of it was identifying real economic problems, wage depression, lack of jobs in parts of the country. Ohio and Indiana. Trump rightly identified, like we have an issue here. We don't have enough entrepreneurship, et cetera. But there was also a lot of scapegoating that was, you know, China and people coming through the US-Mexico border were popular scapegoats for a lot of those problems. This gets us kind of to populism. Populism is a rhetoric and populism as a rhetoric doesn't necessarily come with particular policies. You can be a populist, a user of populist rhetoric and propose solutions that would be more aligned with Bernie or Tucker Carlson. Populists will often identify the plight of the middle class. The difference would be Bernie will say, we've got to put some restrictions”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, so in 2016, when Trump mobilized them, those weren't really issues the way they are now. So I think at that time it certainly was not a factor.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Civil government. They don't want separation of church and state. Those are traditionally the three Republican groups. The one that Trump introduced was people who just didn't really pay attention to politics, but either followed celebrity or had grievances that they didn't yet have a scapegoat for and were sort of right-leaning culturally, even though they didn't attribute that to republicanism. And Trump was able to bring them into politics often for the first time as voters. They could be part of any of those three groups if they get more into politics or kind of be their own thing, but they're more kind of like cult of personality. I'm here for Trump types.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. So you've got your pro business low tax Republicans. These are mostly people like Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney has a bit of the social conservatism as well. He's Mormon, and that's there. But Mitt Romney primarily, particularly as a Northeast sort of Republican, I mean, I know Utah, but Governor of Massachusetts, he is like a low-tax pro-business type guy. You've got your libertarian type Republicans who are primarily about freedom and liberty. Often they are actually more socially liberal where they go, I don't care about gay marriage. I don't care so much about abortion. And that overlapped a little bit with the Tea Party movement in 2010, although Tea Party did have a religious component, but sort of like the libertarian freedom-minded folks, and then the religious conservatives, people that support candidates like Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz, et cetera, were their big thing, our social issues. Often they actually want Christianity being...”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can always say it's early, his polling doesn't really mean anything could happen. Something major would have to happen for Trump to lose that lead if he was arrested two more times and had more indictments and it just became like this guy can't even campaign because he's so busy going from court to court. Maybe that would make a difference. It's really tough to imagine.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very tough right now. I mean, there are other people running. There's this guy Vivek Ramaswamy who's running, Nikki Haley is running her campaign basically dead on arrival. Trump actually does better in polls the more people run. When it's just him and DeSantis, that's the best scenario for DeSantis. It's not great for DeSantis, but it's certainly better. But I think the difficulty is this is a question for Republicans to figure out. The people who rightly recognized in 2016 that this guy is not good for their party still believe this guy is not good for their party, but many of them recognize that most of the voters are still behind him.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Possible. The problem is if the first debate is in August, so that's only a few months away, and the decision is going to be made pretty soon. And unless he can get a new momentum going, I just don't know how he gets what he needs in order to really have a shot.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Criticisms of Trump. The guy gets you on a debate stage, he can make you look pretty silly. He was recently asked about his role at Guantanamo Bay when he was an officer in, I forget which branch of the armed forces. And he just sort of attacked the journalist asking the question. And it just looked very bad. And there are increasingly big Republican donors who are not fans of Trump and were sort of hoping to put their eggs in the Rhonda Santis basket who are saying, this guy just doesn't have what it takes. I don't think he can do it. So I don't know if DeSantis will be able to get away. Once you're polling 20 something like he is and you haven't even announced, it's very attractive. And he probably to somebody is thinking, if I wait till 2028, I might not have this opportunity again. But Trump's polling 5253, which means even if DeSantis gets all of the current non-Trump vote, he has to figure out how to take something more from Trump. I just don't.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think in the couple of weeks before our discussion today, his campaign, which hasn't even started, has sort of started to implode. And this was something that I started thinking about in September, October. He really doesn't seem ready for prime time in the sense that just being confronted and confronted is not even the right word. Just being asked about some topics he didn't really seem to want to talk about. He responded in such a sort of disproportionate unhinged way during his recent trip to Asia. He was asked about why aren't you or why are you responding but in this weird way to Trump's attacks on you? And he went into this weird bobblehead thing with a weird smile and something came out that didn't make any sense and he sort of got mad at the reporter. And it was just like, if you can't handle that, you can't be on a debate stage with Donald Trump. And again, for all.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Spent on political hobbyism, they moved somewhere else, which might put me out of a job. That's okay. I'm willing to lose my job because I think it would be so beneficial. Then our communities would just be that much better because you can actually affect change in a much more tangible way locally, whether it's people talk about potholes, but other things as well.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The sad thing is this is written about a lot, which is there's this thing called political hobbyism. And I think there's a good chance that some of the people in my audience are political hobbyists in the sense that they follow this stuff as entertainment to some degree. And I've written a lot about how I've read a lot and talked a lot about how, okay, we vote every two years or every four years in our local elections, et cetera. And then we think about politics all the time. Neil Postman wrote about this in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. But what are you actually going to do about the kids starving in this country and the nuclear buildup in that country? It's okay. If everybody refocused their attention on their immediate communities, and that could mean any number, it could mean the town or city you live in, or it might mean an athletic club or whatever. If everybody this time.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because of what you need to do to become president. And it includes all but completely abandoning your existing day-to-day life job, which you may depend on, and family to some degree. It's horribly negative, as we already talked about. And at the end of all of that, you either lose and then have to rebuild. And maybe you're not in a position to be able to do that, or you win, and then now you've got four years of being one of the most hated people no matter how good a job you do. So I think by its nature, it turns off a lot of people that would otherwise be good. I also think that there's a lot of posturing from within the parties about, well, you might be good, but it's not your time yet, so you should wait, and then let's talk about maybe a Senate seat here and there. So it's like, it's like a company, essentially, and they're figuring out where they want to place people. I think all of these things make it so we end up with candidates, most people.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you have an understanding? There's a lot of different answers to this. One aspect to this, which I think is more of a sociocultural thing, which I've recently read about to some degree, is the job actually turns off the people who would be best at it.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what I mean by contested is so there's two parts to what we mean by contested. Will the DNC organize debates? And we'll get to that in a second, but should anybody who's on the left get out of the way because Joe Biden is president and he's running for re-election? Absolutely not. The question about should there be debates, I would like there to be debates. The DNC pretty clearly isn't going to organize them. I think if you did them, you would have to say at what polling level do you qualify? And I don't know exactly where you put that number, but I think it would be a great thing to put Joe Biden on a stage with if you can get, what, 6%, 8%? I'm not really sure what the number would be. I'm totally all for that.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if I'm more bothered by the things she first said or by the fact that she wanted to impress Russell Brand, but it's just like. It's just really not for me. And I agree with her on we need to take the climate more seriously, we need to expand access to health. I'm with all of that stuff. Now, I want to say one other thing about this. Anybody who wants to run should run. I am not suggesting there should be an uncontested primary for Joe Biden. Absolutely.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a bit off putting to me. I understand that someone with literal Christian Bible beliefs that also I don't like, maybe I'm more willing to accept as most of our presidents, of course, have had those views because they're otherwise more qualified. But some of the things that she says just strike me as I just don't know. I'll give you an example. When she was on with Russell Brand, she said, there's no such thing as clinical depression. It just means someone in a clinic told you you have depression. I don't believe that to be the case. I think we have an understanding. There's two types of depression. There's like a genetic predisposition depression. There's like acute something's happening in my life, temporary depression. Okay, you know, when she was asked about it recently, she said, I didn't mean it. I was just trying to impress Russell Brand.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is another area where many in my audience really are angry with me. I don't find her candidacy super interesting. I'll tell you the pros and the cons as I see them. I do think that we have elected officials in the US, particularly presidents, from a really narrow range of backgrounds. So it's lawyers and sometimes business people, very, very often lawyers. I think we would benefit from a much greater diversity of backgrounds. And I once said, and that would include people from education, people from the science world, people with backgrounds maybe running nonprofits, et cetera. Now, Mary Ann Williamson did, I guess, at one point run some kind of small nonprofit. And some in my audience thought that credential alone would make me fall head over heels in love with the idea of a Marianne candidacy. I've interviewed for her. It's just not for me is the way I like to say it. The background of the woo-woo type stuff.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They didn't quite care. No, one of the things I read a ton, I don't read any modern political books, so I don't read the memoirs of elected officials. I don't read any, I just feel like I get enough of it in my job. So my reading list is just other things. It's history. It's narrative nonfiction, economics, et cetera. And that's my bias because I'm so overloaded with a lot of the stuff you're talking about. I haven't read any of Obama's books. I didn't read John Bolton's book. I don't read any of that stuff, although I'm sure there is value to be gleaned from it.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's interesting to me that you wouldn't wait longer before delving into those books to have maybe a more clear hindsight.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've met him. We once had dinner and we have a number of friends in common, which is what makes this a little more awkward. But I think his campaign is basically sort of like a chaos candidacy to raise awareness and maybe raise money either for his book or his anti-vaccine organization. I think there's some reporting that Steve Bannon really liked the idea of him running as a Democrat, again, to just generate chaos. I don't find it super interesting. I don't find it worthy of that much discussion. Smart guy, nice guy, has been doing anti-vaccine work that I don't find particularly inspiring”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then it's January 30th, the inauguration's over, the debate is about the debt ceiling, and nothing's going on, and I go, nobody's watching my content. I must have forgotten to upload a, like something must be wrong. Completely beyond my control. So I just think part of what you're saying is I try to focus on the things I can control and understand those that I really have no control over whatsoever and try not to worry about them.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is tough stuff. I mean, yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. And part of it is. I mean, it starts in my, you have a little bit of a different situation than me because you're doing long form conversations with people and the prep is a little bit different. One of the things in my space, because I'm reacting mostly to what's going on in the news and then also picking topics to dive into it a little bit more deeply, is I have very little control over the news cycle. And there is a metametric or a macro metric that affects me that will quadruple my audience and then take 75% of it away, which is the seasonality of election cycles. And the first few election cycles, it's very tough because I go, it's October. I'm like, at this rate, we're going to have 20 million subscribers by next. These numbers are unbelievable.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First day it'll get 12,000 and I'll go, I don't care. That's that's fine. There's a group of people in my audience that values this stuff and I want to keep doing this stuff. I'll end up surprised sometime. And two weeks later has $150,000 because it started being shared great. But I don't go into it thinking these all need to be home runs by that metric. I always go in saying, I want to put out a diversity of content, including stuff that is less titillating and salacious, but is important to do. It's more researched, et cetera. And so that's the way I try to resist exactly what you're talking about.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things that I include in my overall approach is I don't think about any one clip. I think about an entire show or a week of shows or a month of shows. And so it's less about does anyone clip you well? My view going in is I'm going to do stuff that won't do that well, but I think it's really important to do. And I want to make it part of my show. And so when I did a clip with 10 ideas for reducing gun violence, I know that that's not going to get 500,000 or a million views. I know it's just not going to.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Saying I'm deliberately picking titles that will garner a larger audience. And they said, yeah, that's kind of what I mean. And I said, isn't that kind of what we're all doing? The alternative would be choosing titles to generate a smaller audience, which seems like a real kind of waste of time. So I'm trying to navigate and play the game in a way that's comfortable, but use the metrics more as a tool than as something to obsess over.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it is true that there are algorithmic changes that can take place. Something happened in early January that affected us on YouTube or there are periods on TikTok where you can tell we're doing all the same things. Something has happened and then you never usually figure out what it is. So for me, it's sort of just like a general tool to see what is the level of interest in what I'm doing and are the numbers so out of whack with what I would expect that I should look into whether something deeper is happening. Has there been some change to an algorithm or whatever the case may be? I had a debate once with someone who accused me of using clickbait to generate views. And we had a really interesting conversation where I said, tell me really what you mean by that. Is your argument that I'm using titles that don't actually represent what's in the video? No, what's in the title is in the video? I go, okay, so it's not that the title is dishonest. Are you same?”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in my world, I guess I would say, the number of views that any platform generates is a metric that I can choose how to interpret. I can choose to interpret it as I've created content that's interesting to people, or I've created content that's really angering people, and that's why they're showing up. They don't actually like it. It's because they're angry or whatever else the case may be.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm glad to mix it up. Now, the truth is, Candace Owens has had me blocked for years up until this incident. She unblocked you. She unblocked me just to tweet about what I tweeted about. I don't know the backstory of that genuinely. I have no idea. So I don't have a sense that she's super interested in engaging with me on that. But all of these people, I mean, Candace Owens is welcome on my show anytime. Don Jr. is welcome. It's been a decade since I had Ben Shapiro on. He's welcome at any time. I'm glad to have these conversations, and I think it's an important thing. And also, I wish that everybody was willing to have the conversations in good faith rather than as performance. It's not even really performance art, rather than being simply performative for an audience that you have.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm fine with it in the sense of personally I tolerate it well until it crosses the line and people pull my family in. So that's the part”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't regret it in the sense that it's a calculated part or tool that I use in addition to figuring out how to simplify complicated concepts and choosing stories that I think are underrepresented. It's all part of like the package of what I'm doing. I recognize that my show is not the audio visual version of a peer-reviewed randomized controlled trial about views on abortion or whatever the case. I'm very much aware of that, but I don't regret including it as a tool that I've used to build the community in some total that I've built over the last more than 10 years.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Online, that's not the case. And it leads to the mess that we get ourselves in. But I think that it's a feature of a lot of the systems that are being used to disseminate information”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You mentioned the online part. I think you mentioned it earlier perfectly, which is you take contentious political issues, you create a platform that rewards controversy and disagreement and limits the number of characters you can use to express yourself. You kind of throw it into a baking dish and mix the entire thing up. It's complete and total chaos. And one of the things that I've talked before about all the angry emails and threats and stuff that I get, I'm acutely aware that if I had in-person conversations with most of these people, the conversations would basically be like, oh, we have different views about how to solve some of the problems we're facing. We probably agree about what the problem is. And we probably share many values. But on these particular four issues, we may have very different views. But that's okay.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I just kind of, you know, I said, oh, all right, let's see what happens. And then there was another moment where the guy ended up standing next to me for maybe longer than he thought. And I could tell this guy's getting so awkward because it was an utterance he thought that would just be on the fly and he'd be gone. But now we're standing next to each other waiting for our sandwiches. It's like no big deal. You know, it's just, oh, okay, you like Bobby Kennedy Jr. I don't plan to vote for it. It's fine, you know. And that's like a sociocultural thing. I think there's lots of other countries I've spent time in Italy. I have relatives in Israel. We're like shouting at each other is sort of like normal. And then you just go back and finish the, it sounds like shouting. I'm sort of exaggerating, but very animated what seem like big disagreements. And then everybody's cool.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've become, and by we I mean people in the United States to some degree who talk about this stuff, we've become uncomfortable when there is disagreement and it bleeds over into now we can't have a normal interpersonal relationship anymore. I'm from Argentina and in Argentina it's really common even in my family there are incredibly heated political debates at the start, the middle, the end of some kind of gathering. But then everybody just goes back to like, okay, we disagree on some things but that's okay and we can now go and finish cooking the beef or whatever it is that we're doing. And I experienced the civic even with people who come up to me on the street and they go just earlier today, a guy came up to me and he said RFK all the way, baby. Talking about Bobby Kennedy Jr.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it has to be that way, but to unwind it, so many things would have to change. I think our election system is part of why politics is the way it is, where you have two choices and it's first past the post, and we have this electoral college so that depending on which state you voted in, the kind of meaning and significance of your vote is different. If you vote in Montana, it's the Republican candidate it's going to win and that changes the dynamics. I think that's part of it. I think that at a personal level, I've experienced this in my life a lot.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there's a couple different things. There's this dynamic, which is really unfortunate, which is you ask people, do you approve of the job a particular president is doing? And very often, if at any point while they were in office, they did something you don't like, people will say, I don't approve. And so by its nature, what that means is just like the longer you're in office, the lower your approval rating is going to be. And very often that's the way it works. I mean, there's major events like 9-11 spike George W. Bush's approval to an incredible level. Then it came back down with the Iraq war. But there's this unfortunate thing that when people are just asked, you think Biden's doing a good job? If four months ago, Biden did something on healthcare that somebody didn't like, even if you like most of it, a lot of people from that point forward will say, I don't approve. They might still vote for him because they like him better than the alternative or whatever. It's just the dynamic of politics. And I agree. It's very”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Aside from his view on cannabis or whatever, his background and the incredible unimaginable family tragedy that he had in his first wife and multiple kids dying. I mean, it's just incredible, you know, and with Trump, I think also you could have an interesting conversation. Yeah.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think with either of them, I mean, the political differences wouldn't be an impediment to having a good conversation with either of them. I think one of the things that's really tough in my experience when talking to elected officials is they could be super interesting about 100 different topics, but handlers decide or try to get you to talk about something you don't really care about and something really narrow which doesn't bring out your best nor their best. And that's a frustration. But I think that given an unstructured three-hour conversation, I think it would be interesting to talk to both. I mean, listen, with Biden.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They take on a life of their own. And it's interesting to sometimes try to dig down and figure out was there any policy connected to that or is that just a story?”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not what I was referring to. You weren't referring to that. Trump's hilarious with these stories that he tells. And one of the stories, and you get to know them if you follow him at all, he tells the story, you know, when I came into office, the generals came to me and they said, sir, the cupboards are bare. We have no bullets. And so I rebuilt the military. You know, the cupboards were bare when Obama left it. And it was just terrible. But I rebuilt it. And the generals, I've got the best generals, they said, sir, it's incredible what you were able to do. You look into it and it's like, yeah, that's not really true. Like it is true that there are armaments that just like on a schedule do get replaced and that's part of the military industrial complex. But there's nothing like special Trump really did. But these stories become...”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'd be curious what you're thinking of. I mean, I know one of the big things under Trump was we're going to get trans people out of the military.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is okay. I see what you did there. He went to Puerto Rico and he gave out paper towels after a hurricane. Now he was shooting them like free throws, which didn't look very good. So he will get involved in the micro when it's advantageous. You know what I mean? But I do agree with you that he wants to just kind of make it so build the wall. I don't know. Just build it. Figure it out. Get it done.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a good question. Kim Jong-un's another one, by the way. You know, there's videos of him examining a pottery, you know, a factory where they make plates. And making very specific comments about how the plates should be made. I think that in that case, there's a lot of propaganda value to it. With Trump, I think you're probably right. He did get involved in the minutiae of things. I mean, once he pulled out a weather map and with a Sharpie drew a different hurricane path that was more politically convenient to him. That's pretty micro, you know, saying the weather channel's wrong.”
2023-05-06 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #375 – David Pakman: Politics of Trump, Biden, Bernie, AOC, Socialism & Wokeism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source