← The David Pakman Show
The David Pakman Show
10/2/25: Governor urges Trump’s removal as shutdown drama escalates
01:02:41
-- On the Show: -- Donald Trump with Russ Vought cancels billions in climate and transit funding only for blue states, punishing voters who backed Kamala Harris -- Trump embraces the government shutdown because it delays the Epstein files, with...
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A
Hey, welcome everybody. You all know I'm not big on constantly fear mongering about civil wars. There are some content creators whose bread and butter has been predicting Civil War for 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 years. However, I do want to raise the question of whether it is a colloquial civil war for the President to say, we're going to start cutting from blue states, we're going to start hurting the states whose politics at the top level, level are not aligned with my own. Now, before I even tell you what's going on, I know that some of you, because you're so smart and you're so intuitive and you're so astute, most of you anyway, not the ones I hear from in my email daily. But I know that, that you're all out there and make up the vast majority of my audience. You would all say, wait a second. When you hurt a, quote, blue state because you're a Republican in most Blue states, didn't 35, 40, 45, even 48% of the population still vote for the Republican? Aren't you hurting your own voters? And the answer is, of course you are. But Donald Trump doesn't care about that. Here's what's going on. Trump is cutting off federal money, not across the board, not fairly, but to states that voted against him in the presidential election. It is not about saving money. It is not about fiscal conservatism. Any time a MAGA Republican talks about fiscal conservatism as if they care about that, I can't help but laugh. This is just about authoritarian punishment. Donald Trump's budget director, Russ Vogt bragged that nearly $8 billion in green energy projects are gone. Every state that voted for Kamala Harris has been hit. And at the same time, Donald Trump has frozen $18 billion in funding for New York subway and the tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey. Money which, by the way, I believe is very much needed. I don't know how many of you have been on the New York subway or in that tunnel lately. I have, and these projects were already approved by Congress, raising questions as to whether any of this is legal. But legality is just a quaint artifact of times gone by in the Trump era. Trump is blocking them because they are blue states. So here is a tweet, or it's, it's, I guess now because it's X, we call them excretions. Here's an excretion that Russ Vogt put out, quote, nearly $8 billion in green new scam, scam funding to fuel the left's climate agenda is being canceled. More info to come from the Department of Energy. The projects are in the following states. What do these have in common? California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington. Hmm. What do those states have in common? Now, at the same time, the administration is putting the 18 billion on hold, as I mentioned, for the New York infrastructure projects. These were not like little obscure grants. These are major projects congressionally approved by the House of Representatives, which at the end of the day holds the purse strings. People rely on this stuff. And Donald Trump gleefully adding in a truth social post, quote, republicans must use this opportunity of democracy, Democrat forced closure to clear out dead wood, waste and fraud. Billions of dollars can be saved. Make America great again. Now, I do think it's, you know, it's, I feel like that elderly person reminiscing about an irrelevant time in the past when I mentioned this stuff. But like the concept of is this even legal? Oh, David, you're so quaint. That's so old school. Legality. What does legality matter? Oh, you know, when they talk about fraud, fraud's a crime. With all of the supposed fraud that they found, why has nobody been charged? All of the fraud that Doge found, fraud is a crime, but has anybody been charged? No. Oh, so maybe it's not really fraud, is it? Donald Trump then adding, quote, I have a meeting today with Russ Vogt, he of Project 2025 fame. Now Trump is playing up Project 2025 as a credential. He used to not know what it was to determine which of the many Democrat agencies, most of which are a political scam. He recommends to be cut and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can't believe the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people. So maybe this is their way of wanting to quietly and quickly make America great again. President Donald J. Trump. Okay. Grunt added for emphasis. That was, that was me adding that. Now here's the problem and there's a few problems here. First of all, the government being shut down confers no additional powers to Donald Trump, certainly not powers to cut programs that have already been approved by Congress. That's issue number two. It is not up to Trump or any president. Doesn't matter who they are, doesn't matter whether they're a Democrat or a Republican. Congress decides how money gets spent. President doesn't have the power to cancel it because he wants political revenge. It's illegal. It breaks the idea of equal Protection under the law. Taxpayers in California and New York have paid into the system like everybody else. They we are being cut off only because we voted the wrong way. If you are a maga potamian, now look at the bigger picture. If you wanted to bring back Christian nationalism, this is exactly what you would be doing. That ideology, Christian nationalism, says only one group of Americans is real. Everybody else is the enemy. And so when you go and you strip money from blue states, Trump is saying exactly that. It is not merely political theater. These states make up a huge part of America's economy. In fact, we know that America depends on the blue states. Red state America could not survive as a country. Only thanks to the grace of God of the blue states can this country survive. And when you look at where do the patents come from? It's blue states. Where are the most prestigious institutions of higher learning? It's the blue states. Which where do we disproportionately see the GDP generated? It's the blue states. I don't have to go on. Okay? I think you all mostly understand that. And so when you deliberately hurt the blue states, not only are you, of course hurting the blue states, but you're also really hurting the entire country because it is so dependent on blue states. It'll kill jobs, it'll delay transit projects. It's going to waste billions of dollars. So what can the left do? First of all, and I, oh, David, don't get into this pedantic, technocratic stuff. It's, this is what, what can the left do right now, given that we're completely out of power? Sue state attorneys general and cities can file lawsuits immediately to block these cuts. Courts could issue emergency orders and stop the administration while these cases play out. That's number one. Number two, you can try to use Congress even if you're not in power. Democrats and any Republicans who care about democracy need hearings and subpoenas. Congress still has subpoena power and bring officials in and force them to explain why they are breaking the law. Show the public that this is political revenge, not budgeting. And then we have to hope that voters this November and next November will understand and recognize who's to blame here and will hold people accountable. And then thirdly, fight in the states. Come on. Governors and mayors should go to the public with the damage. Explain, because Trump cut this. Here's who's getting laid off in your community. Here are the commuters stranded in your community, the small businesses that are left hanging and keep the pressure on and show voters what the human cost is here. And then finally, and this is tough for Democrats, you got to win the messaging war. Do not let Donald Trump call this some form of triage. We're just triaging. No, call it what it is. This is retaliation. It is revenge. It's certainly un American and it appears to be illegal. And repeat the principle. You can't punish half the country because of how they voted. And in fact, it's more than half the country. And this is where, if, if actions had proper consequences when Trump. Well, let's just look up as an example, 2024 Massachusetts election results when Trump cuts off Massachusetts because it's a blue state. 37% of Massachusetts voted for Trump. So even though the idea is Massachusetts blue hurt Massachusetts me big and strong, 37% of the people you're hurting voted for you. And so the left needs to fight really hard to make that a point. Now, if this goes further, right now it's transit and climate projects. That's what they're saying right now. But tomorrow it's schools. The next day it's health care, it's disaster relief. And equal protection under the law is going to be flushed down the toilet. Not America first. This is Trump first. And unless we stop it, winners and losers will be decided based on loyalty to Donald Trump. You want to know why Donald Trump loves the shutdown and is walking around with that smug smile while the government has stopped? Well, if he sounds so casual about millions of Americans facing real consequences. Paychecks are stopping, services are grinding to a halt, and chaos spreads. It is one word that explains it. That word is Epstein. Epstein. It's the E word. You've got to be careful with the E word. It is because the government shutdown is not a problem for Donald Trump, it is a solution. For as long as the government is shut down, the release of the Epstein files won't happen. They are delaying, even swearing in Adelita Grijalva in Arizona. And more than anything else, delaying or preventing the release of the Epstein files is what Donald Trump really cares about. It's not speculation. This lines up perfectly with what is happening in Congress right now. Adelita Grijalva won her race in Arizona. She's supposed to be sworn in. It is believed that she would be the final and deciding vote on moving forward with an up and down vote on releasing the Epstein files. Democrats were chanting, swear her in. Swear her in on the House floor, but MAGA Mike Johnson refuses to do it. Why? It's because of a little thing called numbers. You know my Uncle John Trump went to Wharton, and that means, I understand numbers. And 218 is the vote number that Adelita Grijalva would represent to force the release of the Epstein files. She said openly she would vote to do it. It's the first thing she wants to do. And Donald Trump doesn't want that. And MAGA Mike Johnson is helping him out now, you might say. But, David, presidents ultimately bear the blame for shutdowns. Even Trump said that. And of course, you would be right. Remember when Donald Trump said this about shutdowns under Obama? If there is a shutdown, I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the President of the United States. He's the one that has to get people together. And. And of course, Donald Trump previously making that exact same point. Ultimately, during a shutdown, the buck stops with the president. You know, the interesting thing is in 25 years and 50 years and 100 years from now, when the government is, you know, they talk about the government shutdown, they're going to be talking about the President of the United States, who was the president at that time. They're not going to be talking who the head of the House was, the head of the Senate, who's running things in Washington. They're going to be talking about during the Obama administration disaster. So guys like Boehner, who is in there working hard, and he's got one of the truly hard jobs of the really discussing him, they're going to be discussing one person. So I really think the pressure is on the president personally, in terms of his own. Trump knows it. He said it many times. Shutdowns are on the president. So why is he still okay with it? Because it's really convenient for Donald Trump. He drags the country into a government shutdown, stops the release of the Epstein files. And we know why he's afraid. We know why he's afraid. Two thirds of Americans already believe Trump knew about Epstein's crimes against underage girls. Almost half say he knew a lot. Only 9% of Americans are buying the claim that Trump knew nothing. I had no idea. And Trump did originally say during his campaign he was going to release the files. He's back in office and he's doing everything he can to bury them. So ask yourself, why would Trump be so nonchalant about a government shutdown when he has previously said the buck stops with the president and the president, who gets blamed? Why would he risk the chaos? Why would he risk the blame? Because the shutdown isn't a crisis for Trump. It's protection. It's cover. He's willing to pay whatever price there is to keep the files locked away. I I don't know what ultimately is going to happen with these files. We had kind of a longer conversation about it on yesterday's award winning bonus show. Yesterday's bonus show was so good we actually recorded it rather than immediately deleting it, which is what we normally do when it goes haywire. I believe that the most likely outcome is eventually something that will be called the files will come out, but it will probably not be complete. I wish I had a different prediction right now, but if I had to put money on it, which I'm not, I'm not a betting man by the way. I don't know how many people knew that, but my bet is eventually something called the Epstein files is, quote released. It won't be the full thing, but they'll say we did it, it's over. Let's move on. Let me know what you think will ultimately happen. Leave a comment or send me an email info@david pakman.com you know, it's not that the system is broken. The system is rigged and if you are drowning in debt, that is how they want it. The big banks profit when you're desperate. Creditors win when you lose. But you don't have to play their game. Our sponsor PDS Debt helps you simply take back control. Whether it's a custom plan built for your financial situation or or off the shelf plans. Credit cards, collections, personal loans, medical bills. They will help you stop the bleeding and financially move forward. No minimum credit score required. You fill out a free assessment. They've already helped hundreds of thousands of people. They're A plus rated by the Better Business Bureau. They have thousands of five star reviews across Google and Trustpilot. You're only 30 seconds away from starting the process to getting debt free. Free. Get your free assessment at PDS debt.com/pacman. The link is in the description. If you deal with PDFs a lot, you know that they can be a huge pain. Contracts, E books, research papers and forms. Editing them in Adobe Acrobat just isn't efficient. It's complicated. It can be expensive. And this is why millions of people are switching to updf. This is the next generation AI powered PDF editor. One lifetime plan covers every device, Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android. You can work anywhere seamlessly with upf. Editing PDF files feels just like a word processor. Change text, images, fonts, layouts right inside the PDF's conversion is flawless. Send the PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, without wrecking the formatting. If you're scanning something UPF smart OCR makes it instantly searchable and editable in over 38 languages. And where UPDF really leaves Adobe Acrobat behind is the built in AI. You can summarize, translate, create mind maps, chat with the documents all powered by GPT5 and all of this is part of the lifetime plan that costs less than two months of Acrobat. Simple, affordable and smarter. Try UPDF for free at David pakman.com/ungraded PDF. The link is in the Description the David Pakman show is an audience supported program. We have something called Membership. It comes with an extra show every day called the Bonus show for members only. We also have commercial free audio and video feeds of the show available to members hours before the show is made public. To everybody else, I invite you to sign up at Join Pacman Dotcom if you missed the Membership special earlier this week, there was a technical snafu the day we launched it. So if you still want to avail yourself of that but you missed the code, just email me Info@David pakman.com will send you that code. My new hero is Congresswoman Madeleine Dean. I absolutely love this video. Madeleine Dean confronted MAGA Mike Johnson and said Trump is unwell. He is unhinged. And MAGA Mike Johnson seems to acknowledge it. He seems to admit it. And he goes, well, there's unhinged people on your side too. He, he is not denying that Trump is unwell. Look at this video. Listen to this audio. Inject this right into my veins like bleach. Don't inject bleach. Don't inject bleach.
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The President is unhinged. He is unwell.
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A
What are you doing on your side? Are too.
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I don't control. Oh my God, please. That performance in front of the generals that I didn't see is so dangerous. You know, I serve on foreign affairs and appropriations. It's a collision of those two things. Our allies are looking elsewhere. Our enemies are laughing.
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I just left.
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B
You have a president who president who is unwell.
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This is, this is my new hero, folks. You know, they know it. They all know it. MAGA Mike Johnson knows it. They've known it for a long time. Behind closed doors. They joke about it. They trade stories. We've heard from Democratic members of the House and Senate who have been on this show and they go behind the scenes. Republicans, most of them get what's going on. Yes, there are true believers and in a sense, MAGA Mike Johnson is a true believer. When it comes to, I think, some of the policy. But even MAGA Mike Johnson seems to acknowledge this guy is unwell. We now have governors saying straight up, Trump has dementia, he needs to be removed. We'll get to that later. But in public, they figure out how to manage it. They lie, they go around it, they pretend not to see it, they dodge, they deflect, they talk about something else. We, well, your side has people who are unhinged to your side has people that are unwell also. This is why I think, listen, I don't know, history should hold these people accountable for these atrocities. The country failed an IQ test. The country, when you vote for Trump once. What's that thing George W. Bush said? Hold on, do I even have it here? Oh, no. Can it wait? Where is it? Oh, hold on. Bush. Oh, no, I can't find it. Damn it. All right, okay, we're going to move on. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, you can't get fooled again. Ok? To quote George W. Bush's extremely articulate and incorrect recollection of that aphorism, the country failed an IQ test. And it was a pretty simple IQ test. They voted for Trump in 2016. And then after seeing the resumption of respect and sanity under Biden, they went and voted for Donald Trump again. Now, yes, Harris was a bad candidate and Biden never should have run for reelection. I'm with you on all of that stuff. But when the country fails such a simple IQ test, you've got to look at the voters, but you also have to look at the teachers. And in this case, the proverbial teachers are some of these Republicans who behind closed doors have known that Trump is unhinged, he's unfit, he's unwell. Anybody listening to an interview with Trump from 10 years ago and five and today knows that something is very wrong with the guy. And so they also need to be held accountable for this nightmare. And that's why when I talk about 2026 and some of you will write in or you'll comment, but David, you know Trump's not on the ballot. You're not really voting for or against Trump in 2026. I disagree. Every single Republican in the House and Senate who stood aside or even publicly supported Donald Trump and that has gotten into this mess to begin with, they are responsible and we should hold them responsible. Because you've got an unwell, unhinged president surrounded by people too cowardly or too self serving, putting their own political careers above country. You've got too many of those people supporting Donald Trump as part of the problem that we have. And so they do deserve to lose in November of 2026 and in special elections to the extent that any of them have it. So nice job by Madeleine Dean. Let's. I'm just going to play it once more now with the full context of what this is. This. I just love this.
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The president is unhinged. He is unwell.
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What are you doing on your side? Are too.
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I don't control. Oh, my God. Please, please. That performance in front of the generals that I didn't see it so dangerous.
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A
By the way. Do any of us believe this? MAGA loves doing this. Any time Trump does something completely unhinged and outrageous, they always say they didn't see it. Oh, you know, I'm too busy, I'm too busy. Does anyone in my audience believe that Donald Trump's crazy general speech wasn't watched by maga, Mike Johnson, or at least that he knows what Trump said? I don't believe it. Let me know if you do. The economy is hemorrhaging jobs. We are seeing fewer jobs as the months go by. Weak job growth is kind of bad enough, but this is another story altogether because jobs are being lost. The new ADP Private Payrolls report shows a stunning loss of 3 32,000 jobs in September. This is the worst monthly decline in over two years. It wasn't supposed to happen. Economists said we were going to gain 51000 jobs. Instead, what Donald Trump's economy has produced is the opposite. To make it worse, August's report was quietly revised down. It was originally reported as + 54,000 jobs. It has been flipped. It is a loss of 3,000. So 3,000 jobs lost in August, 32,000 in September. Over the last two months, the U.S. economy has seen a reduction of 35,000 jobs. You compare August 1st to October 1st. 35,000 fewer people are working October 1st than were on August 1st. Here is the report from CNBC indicating this is not good.
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B
And let's just review what we got because as Rick said, very disappointing. It was a weak number. So this is private sector jobs. Total comes in negative 32,000. And that was a surprise because economists were looking for an increase of 51,000. It's the biggest monthly drop since March 2023. Also, the revision was not good. August was revised down sharply. The month now showing, as you can see, or actually can't see, but August goes down to negative 3,000 compared to the initial read of 54,000. There's that there's the August revision. So two week months in a row. If you look, you know, private sector payrolls have now dropped in three of the last four months, according to adp. And if you look beneath the surface, you can see where, where the job losses were, small and medium sized businesses saw bigger declines than large businesses, which actually saw job growth. But guys, if you take the report and you compare it, you know, some people say, oh, it's not really correlated with the government jobs report. Well, the reason I think that people are paying attention to it today is, first of all, we're not going to likely get that government jobs report on Friday. But also look at the correlation. I mean, the direction is in the, it's in the right mode.
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Yeah. So a couple different things here. And there is a lot of important stuff. And by the way, remember that if, if you like these sorts of economic analyses, make sure you've liked the video, make sure you're subscribed on YouTube, and please do share it. One of the things that was a goal of firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was that Donald Trump thought he could suppress jobs numbers. And so now when ADP puts out their report, and presumably tomorrow the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not, they can come and say, oh, you know what? You can't trust the ADP report. You could only trust the BLS report. If we had it, we couldn't trust the most recent ones because it was a bad person running it, but Trump fired her. But now you could trust it, but you can't because she's not there. It's completely like just crazy. What we can turn around and say is, hold on a second. There's a theme which is the ADP report and the BLS report. Even though they might not agree on exactly the number of jobs gained, gained or lost, they track each other pretty damn closely in most cases. Most, mostly they track at least the direction. And so Donald Trump's attempt to suppress the bad jobs numbers by firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics simply doesn't work. Now, there's another layer to this which I think is critical. If we dive deeper into these job losses and say, where are they happening? What industries are they happening? In 19,000, jobs were lost in leisure and hospitality. We're talking restaurants, bars, hotels. There's two reasons this is really important. Number one, restaurants and bars are really good trackers of consumer demand. One of the things, or a couple of the things that the average American does, doesn't mean everybody, but the average American does, is if you've got some disposable income, if you're in a situation where you say, hey, I'm feeling okay enough to do something other than just sit at home, you go to a restaurant, you go to a bar. And the fact that demand is down in those venues such that they are laying people off, is a bad sign. Hotels is relevant because we've known for months now tourism is down in the United States. International tourism in particular. Foreign visitors are increasingly choosing not to come to the United States because of Donald Trump and his policies. It is now corroborated. MAGA can go, that's not true. No, that's not true. Well, it's corroborated not only by travel data, but it's corroborated now by hotel data. Hotels are saying, we have less demand. We're going to lay a bunch of people off, okay? Otherwise, professional business and other services are down 29,000. Construction is down 5,000. Trump said this would be the big construction boom. It is not. And small businesses with fewer than 50 workers, they are down 40,000. Now, where did. That's all down much more than 32,000. The reason is if you look at education and health services, Those are up 33,000. Health care is always hiring and schools have reopened. So the point here is Trump can say tourism is booming. Trump can say the economy is booming. Best economy ever. The GDP is phenomenal and all of this stuff. The job losses are mounting. Job growth isn't just slow, it's negative. We are losing jobs. Wages are barely creeping up. The people that do have jobs and businesses are pulling back, hiring, even. The Fed is watching closely. And markets are betting based on this, we're going to get another interest rate cut because things aren't going well at all. So we were at best economy ever, supposedly now losing jobs in the private sector. Those are the facts. You can try to spin it however you want, but now we've got a shutdown combined with a labor market reversal, downward revisions. This is an economy that is teetering. And for all of the things Trump is doing to make the United States a more hostile place, foreign visitors are saying, no, thanks, and more Americans than ever are leaving. We were told we would win. I'm not seeing much of a win here. A lot of people think identity theft is something that only happens when someone hacks into your account. But the truth is that it usually starts with your personal information being posted online by data brokers where anybody can find it. Our sponsor, Incogni, is a service that helps protect your privacy by forcing the data brokers to delete your information. This includes your name, address, phone number, even sensitive things like property records or your political affiliation. 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And in response to Donald Trump saying again, California rejected water from the Pacific Northwest, Gavin Newsom posted a tweet answering the question, do people with dementia repeat the same falsehoods and crazy conspiracies over and over again? Newsom making it clear he says Trump has dementia. And we now can add to the list Illinois Governor J.B. pritzker. I like this guy calling for Donald Trump's immediate removal under the 25th Amendment. Remember that the 25th Amendment allows for removing a president when they are clearly incapacitated and unfit to serve. Donald Trump is clearly unfit to serve. This first clip is from NBC News into cities thinking that that's some sort of proving ground for war, or that.
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B
Indeed there's some sort of internal war.
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Going on in the United States is just frankly inane. And, and, and I'm concerned for his help.
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B
Governor Pritzker going even further, suggesting using.
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A
The 25th amendment to remove Trump from power. There is something genuinely wrong with this man and the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked. And going even further, I have to tell you, I love this shit. Here is JB Pritzker straight up saying I believe Donald Trump has dementia. Let me start by saying it appears that Donald Trump not only has dementia set in, but he's copying tactics of Vladimir Putin sending troops into cities, thinking that that's some sort of proving ground for war. I am genuinely thrilled that people in positions of power are finally just saying it as it is. Of course Trump should be removed of Course, he's unfit, unhinged and unwell. Does he have a dementia diagnosis or would he have properly evaluated? I don't know. But it certainly seems that the number of people in positions of power who believe that to be the case is growing now. The case for impeachment is stronger than ever. Senator Chris Murphy told us that on Monday. Stronger now than ever against Donald Trump, even though Donald Trump was impeached twice during his first term. The case for Donald Trump's removal Under the 25th Amendment, I would argue, is as strong as it has ever been. And Pritzker is saying what a lot of people are thinking. This guy is mentally unable to do the job. He's physically unable to do the job. And of course, he's morally unable to do the job that, that we've known for a long time. He can't even lead his own party. Republicans control all three branches of government and the country still shut down. The government still shut down. We are globally humiliated. Were increasingly excluded from important conversations around the world. We're now losing jobs. And every single time Donald Trump speaks or posts online, it just gets clearer that something is deeply wrong. Good for Gavin Newsom for saying this. Good for JB Pritzker for saying this. And if, if a relative of yours spoke the way Trump spoke to the generals and the admirals at that speech earlier this week, week, you wouldn't shrug it off. You would say, something's wrong with Grandpa. We need to get him evaluated. And again, if you want to go down this dementia path, which J.B. pritzker seems comfortable going down, two important signs are being stuck in the past. Regularly rehashing and repeating stories from the past and getting into these verbal loops where there's no connection whatsoever to reality. Trump checks both boxes. He does it all the time. He can't stay on track. He just cycles back to weird stories from the past that may or may not have ever happened. And what's striking, striking is that if you look at interviews with Trump from two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, as much as he used to ramble, and he always had this inflated ego and this self centeredness and all of it, he was dramatically more coherent than he is right now. You could follow what he was saying. Now his speeches instantly spiral, words slur together. The other day, his eyes were pointing in two different directions as we talked about. He'll sometimes rant for hours with no direction or purpose. It's getting worse every single month. And it's, of course, an indication of the failure of a national IQ test, that Donald Trump was even reelected. But we're beyond that, right? Like we, we've got, we got to move on from that. They reelected him. What can we do? But good for Gavin Newsom, good for JP Pritzker. They're saying what's obvious. And I know there's the pearl clutching and the crocodile tears. Oh, is it appropriate, is it appropriate for JB Pritzker to speak this way? We need to be speaking this way. We need to be speaking clearly and obviously. When Newsom pointed out Trump's DoD, now they call it the DoW, the Department of War. When Trump's DoD gets obsessed about no fat people, Trump's obese, we're not making fun of obesity. We're pointing out the absurd hypocrisy and how the rules from Trump's perspective apply to everybody else, but not him. And how for the cult followers, they excuse Trump from having to adhere to, to the very rules they want to hold apply to others. Good for Newsom and good for Pritzker. Josh Shapiro has been doing some of this as well. I think that this is exactly what we need. If you disagree with me, let me know. We're going to have more on this on our substack. Substack.david pakman dotcom if you think JB Pritzker shouldn't be speaking this way, I want to hear from you. And if you make a good case for it, I will stand corrected. Is Google blocking searches about Donald Trump and dementia? Oh, this is going to be an interesting one. Here's what's going on. Google searches now have this AI mode which I'm going to show you. If you search for does Donald Trump exhibit signs of dementia? You just get links to articles. Some are new, some are old. They that's all you don't get. What's called an AI summary. Now, on the other hand, if you do a Google search for does Joe Biden exhibit signs of dementia? You get this thing at the top. This is called the AI Overview and it talks about how there's much speculation about Biden and dementia and on and on and on. Now there's something else that you can do which is you can switch to what is called AI mode. If you switch to AI mode on Google Search and ask does Joe Biden exhibit signs of dementia? It gives you a whole write up about it and different elements. What, what do medical experts say and what do others say? If, however, you ask the AI mode once again, does Donald Trump exhibit signs of dementia? It does its searches, but. But once again, it does not give you a write up. It just says, hey, here's some web results related to this. No AI summaries. No summaries of any kind. When you ask Google is Trump exhibiting signs of dementia? But you get a huge write up about the controversy and debate over Biden's cognitive state if you ask about Joe Biden. Now, the truth is there has been a lot of coverage of both Trump and Biden's mental acuity. They're to the two oldest presidents in American history. Of course people are going to Google both of those things. Now, AI overviews aren't objectively good. This Google AI overview, powered by Gemini, it can spit out good information or bad information. It might give you a summary that's misleading or accurate or whatever. But why is it that that it gives you a summary when you ask about Biden, but it gives you nothing when you ask about Donald Trump? What it looks like to me is that Google doesn't want to be dealing with Donald Trump blowing up their air or coming after the company if they were to display such a summary. Now remember that just this week Google agreed to pay Donald Trump over $24 million for what was basically a bogus lawsuit over a YouTube ban over January 6th. And when the Verge went to Google and said, why are AI summaries showing up for Biden and not showing up for Donald Trump? They got the most generic answer you can imagine. What Google said was, AI overviews don't show a response for every query. That's the answer. Now I think that this is very clearly an instance of self censorship. I am not, first of all, I have no reason to believe, nor am I asserting that the Trump administration went to Google and said no AI summaries about Trump dementia. I don't think that happened. But it's important that that's not usually how authoritarianism works. The whole point of authoritarianism is make an example out of some people and then they will self censor. And by the way, Google was made an example out of because Trump sued them and they gave him $24 million. So this is more than likely, if I had to guess, this is Google self censoring and saying we don't want our AI to be tested, we don't want our AI to be attacked as anti Trump or woke or whatever. We're just going to suppress AI summaries about these sorts of questions. Now, just out of curiosity, one of the things I want to look at is, is Donald Trump a convicted felon? Wow, there's no AI summary there either. I just searched. Is Trump a convicted felon? And it doesn't, it doesn't do an AI summary. So it may be that actually a ton of stuff about Trump is merely being suppressed. Suppressed. Isn't this the sort of thing that actual conservatives used to say is bad where they would go, you know, the thing about the government is they don't have to censor everybody because people will, will start to self censor. Isn't this what they said Biden was going to do even though Biden didn't actually ever do it? This is terrifying, terrifying stuff. If there is a differential diagnosis on this. If you have some answer for me as to why Biden gets the AI summaries about dementia but Trump doesn't, I want to hear it. But it certainly seems like there is foul play of some kind here. Donald Trump has already packed his second term cabinet with loyalists. He's threatened deportation as political punishment. He's expanded executive authority in ways we have not seen in modern history. These are real changes that are happening right now. And what's even more alarming is that a lot of the media is either glossing over the worst of it or they're reframing it so it all sounds a little more palatable. And that is why I use Ground News. This is a news comparison tool, doesn't just feed you headlines, it shows you, here's how different outlets, left, right, center, are covering the same story. And this is one of the few tools I know of that can really help you detect the political spin, the bias catch stories that your usual sources might downplay or not cover at all on everything from immigration policy to economic shifts. If you want to get a bigger picture, a broader picture of what's being reported, Ground News is an invaluable source to keep you informed. And Ground News is offering my audience 40% off their top tier vantage plan. You'll only pay five bucks a month. Go to Ground News, slash Pacman or enter the code Pacman in the app to get started. The link is in the description. Donald Trump's White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt, does not like being corrected. She does not like being fact checked. She does not like being told that the administration is doing anything that anybody might see as inappropriate, unethical or immoral. And a lot of that happened in her latest press briefing. You've got to see this. Caroline Levitt was asked a very good question. This is what we call. It's like we're checking the most basic boxes of journalism here. How did the White House believe it would be appropriate for Jared Kushner to work on anything involving Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, or Saudi Arabia, given that those countries have dumped massive amounts of money into his investment firm? How does Caroline Levitt responds? She calls the question despicable. This is how authoritarians operate. How did the White House decide that it is appropriate for Jared Kushner to be working on matters that involve Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, three countries that combined have given him more than $2.5 billion for his investment firm?
- [44:28]
B
I think it's frankly despicable that you're trying to suggest that it's inappropriate for Jared Kushner, who is widely respected around.
- [44:37]
A
The world, he is not widely respected around the world, by the way, and.
- [44:41]
B
Has great trust in relationships with these critical partners in these countries, to strike a 20 point, comprehensive, detailed peace plan that no other administration would ever be able to achieve. And so Jared is donating his energy and his time to our government, to the President of the United States, to secure world peace. And that is a very noble thing. And this is a peace plan that has not just been accepted by Israel, but. But it has been applauded by Muslim and Arab countries around the world. It has been applauded by European leaders around the world. Virtually everyone in the world is supportive of this plan that Jared Kushner offered his time to help put together alongside our special envoy, Witkoff, the vice President, the President of the United States, Secretary Rubio, and the president's entire national security team. We are very proud of that plan, and we hope Hamas will accept it because it will lead to a more peaceful and prosperous Middle East.
- [45:35]
A
If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. This is kind of the same line that they ran with Trump, which was, listen, Trump's donating his presidential salary, so by definition, he wouldn't be doing anything that benefits him, because he's just not taking a salary as president. And of course, then we found out that Donald Trump made $1.6 billion from all of the things going on around him. And the $400,000 a year presidential salary was really an irrelevant drop in the bucket. And similarly, whether or not Jared, you know, there have been fact checks attempted, is Jared Kushner really donating his time? Maybe. I mean, I'll believe that he's not getting directly paid for his involvement, but the point is, is someone who is so in bed with a lot of the Middle east administrations and even calling them administrations, the Middle east theocracies, the Middle, Middle east regimes is someone who is so in the pocket in the sense of doing business with and receiving billions of dollars to his investment firm. That's really the core of the focus. And the hostility to journalism that Caroline Levitt responds with is just terrifying. These people hate the free press. These people hate journalists just being able to ask questions. Now, Caroline Levitt was then asked about the a deep fake that Donald Trump posted. This is the one where he appears to be promoting med beds. These cure all, almost like hyperbaric type chambers. Caroline Levitt was asked about it. Her response is pathetic. You've got to hear this one. First thing I want to ask about this video that the President posted the other day. It was an AI deep fake of himself talking about something called med beds. What was he trying to communicate to the public there and why did he delete it?
- [47:18]
B
I think the President saw the video and posted it and then took it down. And he has the right to do that. It's his social media. He's incredibly transparent, as you all know. You hear from him directly on social media.
- [47:29]
A
He notice that there isn't an answer.
- [47:31]
B
Here, likes to share memes, he likes to share videos, he likes to repost things that he sees other people post on social media as well. And I think it's quite refreshing that we have a president who is so open and honest directly himself. Many a times on truth you are hearing directly from the president, United States.
- [47:46]
A
How is it an answer to what was the president trying to achieve by posting that? And then of course he deleted it. And she goes, oh, it's refreshing to hear directly from the president. And by the way, he has every right to post it and he has every right to take it down. Nobody's questioning his rights. This is a classic from propagandists. You answer a question that wasn't asked, hey, was it a good idea to start yelling racial slurs in public at black and Asian people or was that a bad idea? Listen, we have free speech in this country and he had every right to yell those words. We're not asking about the rights. We know that there was a right. The question is, was it a good idea? And it's the same thing here. What was Trump trying to communicate with that he has every right to post it and he has every right to delete stuff. It's his social media after all. Yeah, we know, but that's not answering the question. But this is how Caroline Levitt operates. Now. Then she was asked, there are actually some good questions here. Caroline Levitt was Asked about what I call MAGA communism, you might call it state capitalism. There's a bunch of different ways to say it, but it's about the Trump administration having the government take ownership stakes of private companies. Caroline Levitt was asked about it, and as usual, she does not provide a substantive answer. Today, your administration took a 5% stake in lithium Americas and a stake in the mine that they're working on. And you're, you've taken stakes in other companies and revenue streams from other companies. Can you articulate the broader principle here? When does the administration see it as appropriate to demand equity stakes or revenue streams from American companies? And what other companies are you going to be demanding those from?
- [49:30]
B
Well, look, this is a creative solution by the President of the United States to tackle our nation's crippling debt crisis. As I said earlier, we are $37 trillion trillion with a T in debt. And not only is the president effectively utilizing tariffs to bring in massive amounts of revenue, and there's billions of dollars coming in every month. I know you know that even because you cover it on CNBC quite well. So the president is focused on how can the United States government make more money? How can we make our country wealthy and rich again? And cutting some of these unique, creative deals with companies around the world and here at home is just one way the president is seeking to do that.
- [50:08]
A
And I know, did you see what she did there? She says, why wouldn't the president find ways for the government to make more money now? And I hit my microphone and I apologize. I'm getting wound up. I'm getting wound up because this is so stupid. Of course, there's the question of, was that actually what she was asked? And the answer is no. But the concept of the government making more money, I thought was antithetical to the worldview of Donald Trump. What do I mean by that? When they talk about let's cut taxes on the rich, when they talk about let's shrink government, what they say they want is a smaller government. They don't want as much money flowing through the government. They used to claim fiscal conservatives, right wingers, Republicans, they used to say, we want the government taking in less money, putting out less money, fewer programs, less administration, reduce the size of bureaucracy. They used to argue it's better when the government is doing less. And now Caroline Levitt, Levitt is indignantly saying, we're trying to make more money for the government. The, the right used to be against that. They used to say, we don't want the government taking in More money. If the point is for the government to take in more money, we have decades of studies as to what the tax rates should be to generate the largest possible revenue for the government. They're against that. They've always been against that. But now when we say, does it really make sense to do this MAGA communism, state capitalism, where the government is buying pieces of companies and, and in some cases, sort of strong, strong army arming them into those deals, she goes, listen, Trump's doing great. He's making more money for the government. I thought the government making more money was bad, but of course, things are only bad when someone else does it. If Trump does it, it's a very good thing. There was the issue of the shutdown and the Affordable Care act tax credits brought up. Dasha Burns rightly brings up the reality that premiums are going to go up for people, and a lot of people relying on health care in states that Trump won are going to lose their coverage. How does Caroline Levitt deal with it? Not well.
- [52:26]
B
Caroline, we've been talking about the Affordable Care act enhanced premium tax credits and sort of the politics of it, all, right? But this is a very real, tangible impact that American people will feel. The Kaiser Family foundation says that with the ACA enhanced premium tax tax credits, without them, premiums will go up 114%. On average, 19 million of the 24 million people who rely on the coverage are in states that President Trump won. Is he concerned what will happen to those families if this tax credit expires? And aside from the shutdown, is there a plan to keep those premiums down? Ms. Look, as the vice President just said, we are more than happy to have this conversation. The president and the vice president and this team are more than happy to have that conversation with Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, but it cannot happen right now. Right now, we need to reopen the United States federal government.
- [53:22]
A
They do not want to substantively deal with any of the serious issues that they are causing. They just don't want to deal with it. And they will either lie, answer questions you didn't actually ask, or just stop holding briefings the way Caroline Levitt did for three weeks in September. The latest statement from Pope Leo was brought up, which is, if you are against abortion but have no problem with the way that migrants are being treated inhumanely, how is that really pro life? And Caroline Levitt handles it by saying, no one is being treated inhumanely. Has she seen the videos? I thought lying was a sin in the religion. Caroline Levitt claims to subscribe to and second question is a comment that's gotten a lot of global attention. Senator Dick Durbin. He was set to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Catholic Church. He since declined accepting it because there has been some controversy. Pope Leo commented on this and he said that someone who says, I'm against abortion, but I'm in agreement with the inhumane treatment of immigrants in the United States. I don't know if that's pro life. You've been very open about your Catholic faith. How do you respond to that?
- [54:41]
B
I would reject there is inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants in the United States under this administration. There was, however, significant inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants in the previous administration as they were being trafficked and raped and beaten and in many cases killed over our United States southern border. You also look at the inhumane treatment at the hands of some of these illegal immigrants that took place under the previous administration as well. Lake and Riley comes to mind, a beautiful American citizen who was killed at the hands of an illegal.
- [55:12]
A
So now she goes into the lurid anecdotes. But the question is a good one. How on earth can a supposed honest, Jesus belief believing person lie with such conviction? No inhumane treatment of migrants. Forget about the fact that I don't even know if we've found all of the Alligator Alcatraz detainees. There were reports that some are missing. We have no clue where they even are. What's humane about that? Forget about that for a second. While they were at Alligator Alcatraz, there were reports of just people getting swarmed by clouds of mosquitoes. No protection, no proper sanitation, food that was riddled with I don't even want to say what stuff, because I think people sometimes eat when they're listening to the show. That's just one location. How on earth can you argue that there is no inhumane treatment of migrants going on? You could only argue that if you don't give a damn about migrants. Finally, finally, the plan that Trump has to fire people while there are furloughs due to the government being closed. Caroline Levitt was asked about it. She says it wouldn't be happening if the Democrats hadn't shut down the government. I'm just wondering how soon you could.
- [56:37]
B
See cuts to the federal workplace and if there's a small specific agency that will experience those cuts or people focus. Unfortunately, because the Democrats shut down the government, the president has directed his cabinet and the Office of Management and Budget is working with agencies across the board to identify where cuts can be made. And we believe that Layoffs are imminent. They are unfortunately a consequence of this.
- [57:00]
A
Government shutdown, yet they're kind of not. But the proper follow up here is why, why, why is it that because the government shut down, it follows that Trump now fires people and just starts gutting agencies? Like what? Even put aside for a second that legal experts say that the president has no additional authority to do that when the government is shut down. If anything, the president has less authority to do that when the government is shut down. Why does nobody say, but how do the two go together, Caroline? What sense does it make when there's a government shutdown to start firing people that has nothing? These are two completely unrelated things. That question was not asked. And if you thought this was bad, you should see what happened when J.D. vance got up there. Vice President J.D. vance joined Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, during the latest press briefing. His participation was not particularly good. One of the things JD Vance said was Donald Trump's horrible a video post wherein Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, is pictured in a deep fake wearing a Mexican style sombrero and a waxed mustache with Chuck Schumer saying things that he didn't actually say. Vance said, it's funny. The president's joking. He's having a good time. Why are you all so stiff? The president's been posting some images of Leader Jeffries and Senator Schumer. I saw recently you've said that you're interested in good faith negotiations with these leaders, but you know, what message does that send? Is it helpful to post pictures of Leader Jeffries in a sombrero if you're trying to have good faith talks with him? Oh, I think it's funny. The president's joking and we're having a good time. You can negotiate in good faith while also poking a little bit of fun at some of the absurdities of the Democrats positions and even, you know, poking some fun at the absurdity of the Democrats themselves. I mean, I'll you tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make this solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop. And I've talked to the President of the United Isn't that so funny? While we're negotiating in good faith with Democrats, why not have a little fun? Except the White House was not negotiating in good faith with Democrats. They wanted government to be shut down. They want to take a chance on Democrats getting the blame. Trump loves that government is shut down because it prevents the Epstein files from being released. Adelita Grijalva, despite winning her election, has not been sworn in as of the moment that I'm recording this. So they are not in good faith doing some jokes, but then trying to solve the problem. They're neither trying to solve the problem and putting out, you know, sort of like, xenophobic tropes and this sort of thing. Now, Vance was asked again about the sombrero thing. He says some people said it was racist. It's not racist. I think Pete's trying to reimplement high standards, and that's a very good thing. On the Sobrera thing, I mean, Hakeem Jeffries said it was racist, and I know that he said that, and I honestly don't even know what that means. Like, is. Is he a Mexican American that is offended by having a sombrero meme? I mean, I saw one of the major TV stations put the meme up and then say, this is AI generated. And he had, like, the curly animated mustache, too. It's like, do the American people. Do you really not realize the American people recognize that he did not actually come to the White House wearing a sombrero and a black curly animation mustache? Like, give the country a little bit of credit. We're all trying to do a very important job for the American people. The. Yeah. And they're not doing it. And you know, the funny thing about. We've been delving much deeper into this AI and deep fake issue on the bonus show, and I also have been researching the issue extensively because my forthcoming book is going to. The last part of my forthcoming book is going to deal with that to a degree. The idea that we can evaluate whether posting a deep fake is okay based on how obvious any particular person thinks it is, that it's a deep fake is a terrible barometer. It's a terrible barometer. And by the way, even though to some of us, the video Trump posted of the med beds was obviously a deep fake, a lot of people didn't think it was. And so this idea that it's. When it's obvious it's a deep fake, you don't have to worry. That is a terrible way to determine what's acceptable and what isn't in particular, because, I mean, listen, the IQ tests this country has been given have not been passed with flying colors. Any country that elects Trump twice, we can't assume, is going to correctly identify deepfakes and AI video. So Vance, as usual, dilapidated, depraved, and disgusting. Now, on the bonus show today, we are going to talk about what's happening with Trump, big pharma and drug prices. We will delve more deeply into recent comments from Pope Leo about abortion and the death penalty and the treatment of migrants. And finally, John Fetterman, the senator has a higher approval rating in Pennsylvania. I sorry, I should say it the way Trump says it. Pennsylvania higher approval rating with Pennsylvania Republicans than Pennsylvania Democrats. Anybody surprised? All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Remember, we are doing more than building a show here. We are trying to build a pro democracy movement. I would be humbled and flattered to have your support as a member. You can sign up at join pacman. Com, make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel where we are barreling towards 3.5 million subscribers.