← The David Pakman Show
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- [00:00]
David Pakman
Today, we will start with the 2028 madness that is already building, even though we're not even at the 2026 midterms yet. Gavin Newsom is suddenly the Democratic frontrunner, JD Vance leading the Republican side. And somehow Donald Trump, who legally cannot run again, is polling in second place. Young men are becoming a critical group to watch and the early numbers tell an interesting story. We will see MAGA Mike Johnson pretending Republicans have notebooks full of ideas for a health care plan, but he's making an impossible promise. And meanwhile, Donald Trump completely collapsed in an interview that was supposed to be an easy one with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, botches the mortgage question, says prices are way down, and pitches something called Trumpcare. We're also going to look at the president's late night panic attack about the Supreme Court potentially killing his tariffs and Donald Trump's bizarre Oval Office behavior with regard to Marjorie Taylor Greene and and Kevin Hassett melts down when asked about grocery prices. Also, farmers who mostly voted for Trump are now in tears. We are still raising money for Feeding America and have now raised almost $12,000 funding nearly 120,000 meals. You did this. The first payment on any monthly website membership, yearly website membership or substack premium subscription will be donated to Feeding America. It is such a big show today that I've pulled out the turtleneck. Speculation is running rampant about 2028 presidential election. Now, those of you who have been following the show for a while know that I have a long standing of not talking about future elections until the immediate next election is done. We got through 2025 elections, so now we would be talking about 2026. But I think I have no choice but to break my own rule about this this time around because we are in an unprecedented situation. We essentially have soft campaigning for 2028 already starting and some tests of what 2028 might look like happening right now. Now, on the Republican side, much of the discussion is about JD Vance as the sort of obvious heir to Trumpism. And on the Democratic side, we have California Governor Gavin Newsom polling incredibly well, especially after that big win with Proposition 50 last Tuesday, a week ago today in California. Now, at the same time, on the Republican side, there are those who believe, you know, it doesn't really matter how JD Vance is polling today. It's ultimately going to be a Marco Rubio type that represents the real direction that the Republican Party should go in after Trump. On the Democratic side, similarly, there are many people kind of probing around. I've told you about how Both Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Governor Westmore of Maryland both recently invited me to creator roundtables, which I believe were kind of partially to see what's the creator space doing in preparation of the 2028 campaign. Where might there be room for Shapiro or WES Moore, although 2028 was not actually discussed by either of them. And then meanwhile, the American right wing is facing this kind of griper insurgency that we talked about yesterday, where there is a question of whether the party will go more in the direction of, like, a Nick Fuentes type. Not Nick Fuentes specifically. He'd be too young, and he could never win the 2028 Republican primary. But could the soft handling of Fuentes maybe suggest that, like, a Tucker Carlson might run? And I've spoken to people off the record privately who believe that if Tucker ran, he could win. Now, on the left, there is also a group that says, no. You know, the Newsom, Shapiro, Wes Moore direction is the wrong direction. The Democrats need to go for, like an AOC Zoran Mamdani type. Now, Zoran Mamdani, like me, is ineligible to be president because he was born outside the United States. But the idea being skip all of this stuff, go right to aoc. So, bottom line, I do not remember any situation like this. And interestingly, in addition to rampant speculation, we also have very interesting polling. Emerson College polling has California Governor Gavin Newsom in a big lead right now, jumping from just 7% a year ago to 24% today. By far the most support of any potential 2028 candidate. Kamala Harris, the former vice president, isn't second place in polling with 10%. So it's Newsom 24, Harris 10, Harris down from 37 a year ago to 10 today. You've then got former Secretary of Transportation Pete Boot. Edge, edge at nine, AOC at three. 19% want someone else and 35% are undecided. You know, the difference between wanting someone else and being undecided when we are three years out is sort of a question. So it's like 54% aren't sure. These are stunning numbers for Gavin Newsom so far out. But you also have to consider that historically when you look at polling three years out, typically the leader three years out does not actually end up being the nominee. So important to consider. Now we look at the Republican side. Same thing, Emerson polling. The polling is indicative of some mental illness. I'll explain in a second. Second, J.D. vance is in the lead with 54% support. And you know who's in second place? Donald Trump. Donald Trump, who is currently president and cannot run again, is the second place contender in Republican primary polling for 2028 with 7%. Marco Rubio is polling 6. And the sanctimonious polling to think about that the guy who is ineligible to run again is basically polling the same as Marco Rubio. That really tells you something and it is not something good. And then maybe the most interesting detail is how young men are polling. Ok, Young men are becoming a central demographic as they shifted to Trump in 2024. Young men part of a coalition that is struggling in society. Today we have a League of Women's, League of Women's Voters, League of American Workers TIP poll. And among young men, look at this. Gavin Newsom leading J.D. vance 38 to 33. If there is any polling crosstab that tells us something important, it is that in 2024, Donald Trump got 53% of the young mail vote. That was up from 45% in 2020. Trump made historic inroads with young men. And today Gavin Newsom is polling 38 to 33 ahead of JD Vance. Many still undecided there. So my takeaway, we are likely heading to a primary like nothing we have ever seen, especially on the Democratic side. And my view is let everyone in who wants to do it. If you're eligible and you want to dip your toes into the pool, come on in and let voters decide. I believe that the strongest position for the Democratic Party in 2028 will rise from a robust wide primary if Newsom and Shapiro and Wes Moore want to get in. By the way, Wes Moore has said he's not running in 2028, things can change. I don't, I don't, I don't believe that that is so hard and fast. Because if you're a Wes Moore, you can easily say in 2027, hey, you know what, I did not intend to run when I made that announcement in 2025. Circumstances have changed. I believe I'm well suited. So I believe that Wes Moore saying he's not going to run is sort of like, okay, we'll see. But on the one hand, if Newsom and Shapiro and Wes Moore want to get in, let them all get in. I believe that they are competing for a similar slice of the electorate. Let them all get in. On the other hand, if AOC wants to run, Pete Boot, Edge, edge whoever, get everybody in. Let voters decide. That is how we are going to surface. I believe the best choice. But we are quickly ramping up to a Democratic primary, never mind the Republican one, which could be completely whacked out. We, I believe, are heading to a Democratic primary like none we have ever seen before. They want you to think that this is the face of an alpha male. You might be saying, which one of the two people on the screen are you talking about, Larry Kudlow? Or are you talking about MAGA Mike Johnson? I'm talking about MAGA Mike Johnson. They want you to believe that they have a genius health care plan that is just a couple of weeks away. Here is MAGA Mike Johnson being interviewed on Fox Business just hours ago, and he says they've got notebooks full of health care plan ideas. Subsidizing the insurance companies is not the answer because it just drives the cost up even further. So we need to look at the root causes. The Republican Party is the party that is working on, that has been working on it and has more ideas going forward. We've got to bring down the costs, and you can do that in a responsible way that also increases access and quality of care. And we've got, we got notebooks full of ideas on how to do that.
- [10:03]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
We've got to build consensus around it.
- [10:05]
David Pakman
They have notebooks full of ideas. But MAGA Mike Johnson can't tell us what the plan is, and Donald Trump can't tell us what the plan is, and nobody can tell us what the plan is. And at least you've got Marjorie Taylor Greene saying we should tell people what the plan is. Now, as a just very brief aside, notebooks full of ideas immediately reminded me of Mitt Romney's 2012 epic of binders full of women. Remember this one?
- [10:32]
Donald Trump
And, and so we, we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women's.
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David Pakman
Groups and said, can you help us find folks?
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Donald Trump
And they brought us whole binders full of women. I was proud of the fact that.
- [10:47]
David Pakman
After I yeah, he's got binders full of women. And Mike, MAGA Mike Johnson has notebooks full of ideas. Okay, let's actually dive into what MAGA Mike Johnson is saying. He says, we have a plan. It's a secret plan. It's in a notebook. It's in a moleskin notebook. Okay. We're going to bring costs down, increase access and increase quality. Sounds awesome, right? You really can't do that. Now I'm going to give you examples of how it theoretically could be done. One of the greatest books, I believe, on health care was written by the late Uwe Reinhart and He explains that health care exists sort of in a triangle. Now, you might say, well, but I prefer a hexagon, I prefer a pentagon. Or what about the often insulted parallelogram? No, it's a triangle, okay? And if you imagine the three vertices of the triangle, you've got cost, access and quality. And what Uwe Reinhart explained is that without completely demolishing the system and rebuilding it with complete and total changes, which we'll get to, basically you have to find a point on that triangle. If you go to higher quality, well, that's going to put downward pressure on access and upward pressure on cost, holding everything else equal. If what you really want to do is drive down cost, you're going to put downward pressure on quality, and you're potentially going to put downward pressure on access. The point is here, if you increase two of them, one is probably going to go in the wrong direction. Why? Let me explain number one. Health care is very labor heavy. If you want more access or more quality, you usually need to hire a lot more people, and that raises the cost. Quality is expensive by definition, which is why countries with universal high quality systems spend a lot. Now, interestingly, many of them still spend less than the United States on a per person basis. And we'll explain why that is. But the idea here is if you say we're going to really increase one of these, if you're going to increase access without controls, you are going to get more usage. More usage means more spending unless you ration care or restrict something somewhere else. So the point is, when politicians come to us and they go, we're going to lower costs but make it better and get coverage to everybody, they are ignoring basic economics or pretending that there are no constraints. Now you can move the entire triangle outwards. That's kind of what we're thinking of here, right? When we say cost down, access up, quality up, we're thinking not of finding a point in the triangle, but of making this triangle bigger. You can do that if you make some major structural changes. If you say we're going to get rid of administrative waste, the US Spends two to three times as much as other countries on the administration costs of health care. If you totally rejigger the system to drive out administrative waste, you might be able to actually expand the triangle. If you use monopsony power. Remember, Monopoly is a limited number of sellers. A monopsony is a limited number of buyers. If you bring the government in to say, we will be the buyer of drugs and the primary consumer to set procedure prices like if the government becomes a giant buyer, that can bring down prices. The US Basically refuses to do this. And Republicans don't want to do it. Countries that do that can get costs down while maintaining quality. But Republicans don't want to do that. They've said that's a government takeover of health care. We don't want that. Number three, if you really expand preventative care, we know that catching things earlier is cheaper. It does require increasing access upfront, probably staffing up upfront, but over time that can reduce costs while increasing access or maintaining high access and also quality. But that takes time. And then, of course, regulating prices like utilities or rail systems in some countries. But that requires more government involvement. That's an involvement that most Republicans don't want. So the point here is even the best systems in the world, like you look at Switzerland, you look at Norway, you look at whatever system you like, Japan, there are tradeoffs. Some of them have longer wait times. Some of them limit provider choice. Some of them have a higher tax, tax level on income taxes in order to fund the system. So when you have elected officials like MAGA Mike Johnson, who goes, we've got the secret plan. It's perfect. It's in a notebook. We're going to tell you soon. Trump's been telling us for five years, we're two weeks away from the plan. They say it because it's what voters want to hear. But the only way to really break this triangle of constraints is to radically restructure incentives in a way that most Republicans don't want to do, restructure the financing in a way that most Republicans don't want to do, or completely remove the administrative overhead from the system, which maybe Republicans are up for doing, but is a major task that they actually haven't presented a plan to be able to do. So just a little bit of education on this issue for the average person will really position you to better evaluate the ideas that they are presenting. Meanwhile, they haven't really presented us the ideas, just saying we've got them. There are a couple of weeks away, we've got the concept, soon we're going to tell you. And then they don't. It's pathetic stuff. And MAGA Mike Johnson is not going to be the guy that solves health care in the United States. I'm not a betting man, but that I would bet on. Sometimes the best snacks are the ones that have been around for a long time. 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The David Pakman show is primarily an audience supported program and for the month of November we are doing what we can to feed hungry people through the charity Feeding America. Every single new membership, new substack membership and gift membership In November that first payment will be donated to Feeding America. So far, 275 new memberships, we have raised $11,789. That's almost Trump's 11,780 votes. It's almost exactly where we're at. We've raised 11, 789 and that has supported 117,000 meals for hungry people. So if you've been thinking about getting a membership, this is the month to double your impact. Get yourself the membership that first payment be it monthly or yearly, will be sent to Feeding America. You can sign up@join pacman.com if you've got a membership. You can gift a membership by checking that this is a gift box and Substack Premium subscriptions also count. I will give you an update tomorrow. And of course memberships come with the award winning bonus show. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money.
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Donald Trump
Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad.
- [20:05]
David Pakman
If you thought Alex Jones hated the bonus show before we were donating to Feeding America, he hates it doubly now. Or something like that. Anyway, join pacman.com substack.david pakman.com Donald Trump was interviewed by Laura Ingraham last night on Fox News. This was supposed to be an easy interview, but as we know, even easy interviews are difficult for Donald Trump. At one point he clashed with her where she said, is a 50 year mortgage really a good idea? It's not and we're going to delve into that a little bit later. But there are some themes in this interviews. In these interviews, Trump is asked easy questions but he still screws them up. Trump talks about people being low IQ and they're almost always black or brown women. And that's kind of where we start Trump saying that Jasmine Crockett, very low iq, very low iq.
- [20:57]
Donald Trump
Crockett, this is a very low IQ person. And I look at somebody that comes from Somalia who, where they don't have Somalia anything. They don't have police, they don't have military, they don't have anything. All they have is crime. And she comes in and tells us how to run our country. The Constitution says this, the Constitution, the whole thing is crazy.
- [21:20]
David Pakman
You know, you don't have to agree with everything Ilhan Ilhan Omar says to understand that even foreigners can read and understand the Constitution and can evaluate whether Donald Trump's actions comport with the Constitution. But Trump has no idea what's going on anyway, right? Trump confronted by Laura INGRAHAM about the 50 year mortgage idea. And here Trump acknowledges he doesn't even know what a standard mortgage is. Today going well, you're going from a 40 to a 50 year mortgage. No, no, no. Most long term fixed rate mortgages are 30 years. He has no idea what's going on because he's never needed a consumer mortgage.
- [22:04]
Laura Ingraham
Housing costs are still out of reach. And another thing that your administration is trying to tackle, many Americans, the average age of first time homebuyers are now up to age 40, which is sad. The country you and I Inherited that.
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Donald Trump
Look, you have to understand, right, but.
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Laura Ingraham
Let me get to the question though, because your, your housing director has proposed something that has enraged your MAGA friends, which is this 50 year mortgage idea. So a significant MAGA backlash, calling it a giveaway to the banks and simply prolonging the time it would take for Americans to own a home outright. Is that really a good idea?
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Donald Trump
It's not even a big deal. I mean, you know, you go from 40 to 50 years and what it means is you pay, you pay something less from 30.
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David Pakman
Notice how Laura Ingraham tries to correct and Trump doesn't even people had a.
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Donald Trump
40 and then now they have a 50. All it means is you pay less per month. You pay it over a longer period of time. It's not like a big factor.
- [22:59]
David Pakman
It is, Trump is so wrong. Trump goes, you just pay it off over a longer period of time. If we're going to delve into this later, if you have even the most rudimentary understanding of a mortgage amortization table, you would understand that going from a 30 to a 50 year mortgage doesn't just make your payment a little bit lower, it blows up the amount of interest you pay and it actually drives up housing prices. I'm going to explain why a little bit later, but essentially by a lot of people shop for homes based on the mortgage payment. They go, I can afford 1200 bucks a month. If you all of a sudden are amortizing over 50 years instead of 30, you can now afford, at least in your head, a much more expensive property. This increases competition for properties and drives prices up. But what's a little math to get in the way of another one of these Trumpian delusions? Trump insists when Laura Ingraham brings up the issue of prices that everything's cheap, everything's down. Why are people complaining?
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Laura Ingraham
The economy was listed as a top concern. I know you know this for voters in New Jersey, New York, Virginia, you've been all over the affordable affordability issue today and for the last several months. Eggs, gas, dinner costs for Thanksgiving, way down. But other things, as you noted, have gone up. Beef, coffee, auto repairs. Is this a voter perception issue of the economy or is there more that needs to be done by Republicans on Capitol Hill or done in terms of.
- [24:32]
Donald Trump
Policy more than anything else? It's a con job by the Democrats. They're saying they just have to say, you know, they put out something, say today costs are up. They feed it to the anchors of abc, CBS and NBC and a lot of other and know, CNN, etc and it's like a standard. I'll never forget they had used a word like manufactured. You remember the word manufacture. It's a manufactured economy. Nobody uses that word. Every anchor broke, the manufactured thing.
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David Pakman
He has no idea what he's saying.
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Donald Trump
Do exactly what they say. It's such a rigged system. So are you ready? Costs are way down. Gasoline is going to be hitting $2 pretty soon, or around $2. Gasoline is at 270 now and it was at 450 under Biden.
- [25:17]
David Pakman
Now of course, when Trump took over, gas was about 305 a gallon and right now gas is about 305 a gallon. But Trump is again saying, don't believe the price tags, don't believe your checkbook, don't believe your credit card statement. Believe me. But we have the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that food is up, energy is up, and everything other than food and energy are also up. Everything is up about 3% in the last year. Now that is a reasonable amount of inflation. But Trump promised deflation. Trump promised prices would go down, not that they would keep going up at about the same rate as they were going up under Biden. Trump insisting, oh, the economy is better than ever. And Laura Ingraham goes then why are people so anxious about the economy? And Trump's like, oh, everything's fake.
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Donald Trump
But even with interest rates up, the economy is the strongest it's ever been. You know, you asked me just to go back to the beginning of your question. You talked about prices. We're down on energy, we're down on interest rate. You know, interest rates are down despite the Fed. Now, if the Fed, if we had.
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David Pakman
A normal person now, of course the Fed has reduced interest rates. So I don't know why. Trump says despite the Fed and energy is up, not down, the Fed would.
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Donald Trump
Have really low interest rates. And we will soon have that. We'll have somebody.
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Laura Ingraham
Are people saying they're anxious about the economy? Why are they saying that?
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Donald Trump
I don't know that they are saying. I think polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we've ever had.
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Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
We.
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David Pakman
It's all fake. The polls are fake. Lara. Laura, this is not Laura Ingraham. People aren't falling for this. You know, one thing we learned from the Biden presidency is you can't tell people things are better than they feel that they are. If people feel things aren't good, people feel things aren't good and they're going to presumably vote that way. Trump then floating an idea for Trumpcare for health insurance. If these are the concepts of a plan that he has. Oh, boy.
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Laura Ingraham
On Obamacare, you raised several times during this shutdown debate that it's clear that this was never going to work without these massive substances subsidies. Now, they wanted to continue the COVID subsidies. So given the fact that Obamacare really can't survive, as they thought, without these subsidies, what next?
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Donald Trump
Well, I watched Obama from when this thing came about. As you know, I opposed it very strongly. Unfortunately, we had a couple of negative votes which should never have happened. But I said, it's going to be a disaster. And I was exactly right. The premiums have gone up like rocket ships. And I'm not just talking about recent. I'm talking about for years they've been going up. And he said premiums will go down. Everything will be wonderful. It's horrible. Health insurance at a very high price. And what I want, and probably what you're alluding to is the fact that I want, instead of going to the insurance companies, I want the money to go into an account for people where the people buy their own health insurance. It's so good, the insurance will be better, it'll cost less. Everybody's going to be happy. They're going to feel like entrepreneurs are actually able to go out and negotiate their own health insurance. And they can use it only for that reason. That's only for that purpose. And if we did that, that would be so exciting. Call it Trumpcare, call it whatever you want to call it, but anything but Obamacare. Obamacare is a disaster, just like he was as a president.
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David Pakman
You know, he kind of gives away the game here. Call it Trumpcare. This is all about feeding Trump's ego. Remember when Donald Trump told us, I've come up with an incredible trade deal. It's called usmca. United States, Mexico, Mexico, Canada trade deal. It's replacing nafta. It was basically nafta. There were some different percentages assigned to, like, for example, vehicles where some of the parts are manufactured across Canada, Mexico and the U.S. he basically just redid NAFTA, but said, this is better and it's mine and it's usmca. And he wants to clearly do the same thing here. He doesn't want something called Obamacare. He wants something called Trumpcare. The problem is it doesn't really work because individuals can't negotiate health insurance prices. Insurance companies negotiate with hospitals and providers using giant risk pools. The government could also do it, but Republicans don't want to do that because they say it's a government takeover. A single person calling up Blue Cross to get a better deal has zero leverage. And Trump's idea doesn't make any sense. Finally, Trump has this idea of giving air traffic controllers who didn't take time off during the shutdown a bonus of $10,000. Laura Ingraham has the audacity to ask a quaint little question, where's that money going to come from? And Trump goes, oh, I don't know, I'll find it.
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Donald Trump
Some did it say the ones that say to which there were a lot of them, I'm sending them a $10,000.
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Laura Ingraham
Where's that money coming from?
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Donald Trump
That I don't know. I'll get it from someplace. I'll get it from. I always get the money from someplace. Regardless, it doesn't matter. We did a lot of. I do a lot of bonuses for people because it's really something that.
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David Pakman
There you go. I'll get it from someplace. So two two thoughts on that. Imagine if Biden ever said I'm going to spend some money. Where are you getting it? I don't know. I'll find it somewhere. Imagine if Obama ever did that. That's number one. But secondly, it is up to Congress to allocate and disperse funds, not to Trump. It is once again seemingly Trump's indifference for the fact that you're not just allowed to do that. But he doesn't care. The president also suffered a middle of the night panic over potentially losing the Supreme Court fight on tariffs. He's posting in the middle of the night again the oldest president ever sworn in, not sleeping at 1am but posting to Truth Social about the Supreme Court. He's panicking that the court might strike down his tariffs. This is his signature economic policy and two of the justices essentially laughed it out of the room last week. And so now Trump is on Truth Social trying to bully the court where he posted in the middle of the night, quote, the U.S. supreme Court was given the wrong numbers. The unwind in the event of a negative decision on tariffs would be including investments made to be made and return of funds in excess of $3 trillion. It would not be possible to ever make up for that kind of a drubbing that would truly become an insurmountable national security event and devastating to the future of our country, possibly non sustainable. Trump is telling the Supreme Court, if you rule against me, the country collapses. Here's the part that he doesn't understand. He's making the legal argument worse for himself. Let me explain. Trump Solicitor General went to the Supreme Court last week and participated in oral arguments and said the tariffs are not about revenue. The revenue is irrelevant. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the revenue is incidental. This is foreign policy. Trump is not doing primarily revenue stuff, which he would not be allowed to do. He's doing foreign policy. Sure, it happens that we are collecting revenue, but that's not really what this is about. And they had to say this because if the tariffs are about raising revenue, Trump loses because it's actually outside of the purview of the presidency. Now, by the way, the number he gives, 3 trillion, completely made up, no evidence of it. Like, forget about. It's a detail. But Trump is lying about that. The question here is, did Trump exceed his authority? Because presidents can't just snap their fingers and create giant taxes by calling them something else. And the entire case turns on whether Trump abused the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. That is an act that does let Trump restrict transactions with foreign adversaries during an emergency. It doesn't let a president create new taxes. It doesn't let a president create new tariffs or raise revenue. Congress controls that. Trump's taxes. Trump's tariffs are taxes on American companies. Americans pay the cost. 55% of the tariffs paid by American companies are being passed on to consumers, according to Goldman Sachs. And Trump has been using the tariffs to punish enemies, to reward friends, to raise revenue, as he said. And the legal problem is a structural one, which is presidents simply aren't allowed to do that. So what Trump is trying to do is use the claim of an emergency to, to get around the language emergencies, even if they are real, which little shaky here as far as the tariffs go, even if emergencies are real, they don't give a president infinite and indefinite power. And so Donald Trump is panicking. He doesn't really have other accomplishments to his name this term. And he is trying to save the tariffs as bad as they are for the country by saying to the Supreme Court, if you do this, it'll be terrible for the country. It'll get rid of all the revenue, even though the revenue supposedly wasn't even the reason for doing it. I hope he loses on this. We're going to find out soon. Donald Trump has now turned on Marjorie Taylor Greene. This is a sickening guy, but it is a very interesting turn of events. Now, as many of you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene has started to say a lot of what is happening in Washington doesn't make sense. Why won't they show us the health care plan? Why is the government shut down? And she is increasingly Skeptical of this Republican Party. She's not an ally of progressives, but she's skeptical in some areas. Reports include that she's mad because she wanted to run for Senate in Georgia, but Trump and people around him talked her out of it or said, you wouldn't have our support. Don't do that. Don't get involved that. So CNN's Kaitlan Collins asks Trump, what's your response to Marjorie Taylor Greene saying prices aren't down on groceries? Prices are up on groceries. And Trump attacks Marjorie Taylor Greene.
- [35:12]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Earlier today, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is a big ally of yours, said that she would rather see you focused on nonstop domestic policy meetings here at the White House instead of nonstop foreign policy meetings. What's your response to her saying that and also saying that grocery prices are up and not down, as you said?
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Donald Trump
Yeah. So I don't know what happened to Marjorie. She's a nice woman, but I don't know what happened. She's lost away, I think. But I have to view the presidency as a worldwide situation, not locally. I mean, we could have a world that's on fire, where wars come to our shores very easily. If you had a bad president, we had a horrible president.
- [35:49]
David Pakman
Trump will turn on anyone as soon as their loyalty goes from 100% to 97%. And he continued going after Marjorie Taylor Greene.
- [36:00]
Donald Trump
But with all of that, I passed a great big beautiful bill, which is the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country. So when somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's now catering to the other side, I don't know what, you know, I guess she's, you know, got some kind of an act going, but I'm surprised at her. But when somebody like Marjorie goes over and. And starts making statements like that, it shows she doesn't know.
- [36:21]
David Pakman
Right. You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene has made a mistake. Now, I'm not saying it's like a political mistake necessarily or that she's wrong about the things she's saying. You are supposed to just praise Trump. And there were people in the room yesterday who knew how to do it. Here is Jeanine Pirro. This is what Trump expects. This is what he wants Marjorie Taylor Greene doing.
- [36:43]
Donald Trump
I know. And, Mr. President, there is in this room a group of people who love you, who believe in you, and who.
- [36:52]
David Pakman
Are so proud to be in this Oval Office and to be part of this amazing day, because you have changed the course of America.
- [37:01]
Donald Trump
You. And thank you, Sergio, for what you've done.
- [37:04]
David Pakman
God bless you both. There you go. That's how you're supposed to do it. That's how Trump expects to be treated. Another example, here's Marco Rubio taking his turn kissing Trump's hands. Just to echo What Sergio said, Mr. President, you've done a lot for this country, more than any other president has in such a short period of time. Right. And, and part of that is putting together a phenomenal team.
- [37:26]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
And I know Sergio was instrumental in.
- [37:28]
David Pakman
Helping you achieve that. And so we're, we think he'll do a great job. This is a very impressive collection of people. There are almost 1.5 billion people in the Oval Office right now. There you go. So Rubio and Jeanine Pirro, they know this is supposed to be a glaze fest of Trump. That is it. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is out. Trump then took an opportunity to attack Pete Boot Edge Edge guarantee to Americans.
- [37:53]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
That travel is going to go back to normal once the government travel that travel, all the air travel better than normal.
- [37:58]
Donald Trump
You know why?
- [37:59]
David Pakman
When the government reopens, yeah, sure, it'll.
- [38:01]
Donald Trump
Be much better than normal because we're buying the most sophisticated avionics and, you know, technology for our control towers. And we didn't have that. We had a guy named Buttigieg. Boot Edge Edge is the best way. Just say two edges, like off the edge of a cliff, which is where they were taking us, by the way. Boot Edge Edge was the Secretary of Transportation and he spent billions of dollars trying to patch together our air control art air traffic control system.
- [38:33]
David Pakman
So the problem isn't the shutdown that's taking place under Trump's watch or the fact that he's got a reality TV show participant in Sean Duffy running the Department of Transportation. The problem is Pete Booted judge. Ladies and gentlemen, a surreal moment as Donald Trump calls over Erica Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk calls her over for a kiss.
- [38:55]
Donald Trump
Where's Erica? Just show you.
- [39:03]
David Pakman
A beautiful kiss for Erica Kirk. And then finally, Donald Trump predicting two dollar gasoline and then says we're going to have it. And we already have it. Wait, so which is oil?
- [39:14]
Donald Trump
The electric. But we, I think you're going to see two dollar gasoline or something very close to that. In fact, we're already in the twos. But I think you're going to be seeing very soon two dollar gasoline.
- [39:25]
David Pakman
Yep, soon we're going to have two dollar gas. We already have two dollars gas. Soon you're going to be soon seeing two dollars gas. What's the takeaway here? Even though he has no idea what's going on, even though he has no ability to truly empathize with anyone who's struggling just because they're missing $177 of food stamps. No ability whatsoever. If you dare question anything he says or does, you will get treated the way he is now treating Marjorie Taylor Greene. On the other hand, if you just praise him endlessly, delusionally, like Marco Rubio and Jeanine Pirro, you get to stand in the Oval Office. That is the important takeaway and lesson 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 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. I spoke with podcaster Joe Carducci on my Substack Live. It was an excellent conversation. We talked about the shutdown. We talked about where and how Democrats should be positioning themselves. We talked about infighting within the right and infighting within the left. I think it's an excellent conversation. Make sure you're following me on Substack to get these conversations live when they happen. Here's Joe Carducci.
- [41:47]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
It is great to be with Joe Carducci once again. You know, Joe, I was recently in New Jersey of all places. I was driving through the state and I got a very powerful recommendation to stop in Morristown for lunch. And I have to tell you, it was very nice. I had a very nice lunch in Morristown.
- [42:08]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
No way. Well, first of all, Jersey is spectacular. I want to know what you're doing here and just passing through or if it was. Yeah, but also I was Born in Morristown. My kids were born in Morristown. My ex husband was born in Morristown. I used to live not terribly far from Morristown. Still not very far from me, but it's a lovely, very historic town. By the way, where did you have lunch? Do you remember the name?
- [42:29]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
I was just passing through on the way to Harrisburg actually, and I had lunch at a place called Local L O K L, which was very highly recommended.
- [42:39]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Oh, okay. That's awesome. Yes. A friend of mine has a restaurant. I can't think of the name now there in Morristown, but it is, it's a beautiful little town. Jersey's a very surprising little state. If you don't, if you don't know, you don't know. But if you know, you know, you know what I mean? Like where I am, it's very rural and bucolic and there's lots of horses and farms and I have an animal auction about a block and a half from my house in Jersey. So, you know, it's one of those things. The Garden State is very versatile. It's not just the turnpike.
- [43:07]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Oh yeah, no, I'm learning, I'm learning.
- [43:08]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Yeah.
- [43:09]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Listen, the shutdown, I mean, listen, I.
- [43:12]
David Pakman
I, I want to hear what you.
- [43:14]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Think about these eight senators who said enough is enough. I'm trying to kind of hold two things as true at the same time, which is on the one hand, the pain that has been inflicted on everybody from food stamp recipients to just travelers. Different levels of pain, obviously, for different people. It had to end. It makes sense to act to end it. And so I understand that. On the other hand, the outcome is so unsurprising because we knew that Republicans were not going to negotiate on Obamacare subsidies. Now it's like there, I guess will be a vote in December maybe, where in my head I'm sort of like, why even do this in the first place? And go through the whole routine of saying we're going to be strong and we're going to persevere and, and then settle for nothing. Like I would have understood if at the beginning of this Democrats said the most important thing is we don't want people to lose food stamp benefits, we don't want the pain, we don't have the numbers right now and we're going to keep government functioning. I wouldn't have faulted them for that. I think this is a bad outcome.
- [44:24]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
This is a terrible outcome. It does feel as though it was for nothing. Sorry, my phone has decided to alarm. I'm having one of those technology days by the way, but it feels like it was an exercise in futility and it doesn't make sense because what we did have in terms of the high ground here, in terms of the Republicans literally going to the Supreme Court to make sure that human beings, children, 16 million of them, could not get nutrition assistance in this country like as terrible and awful and that you don't need to couch or had caveats to any of that as that was. Republicans were saying out loud that they were using their starvation, their suffering as a political tool. So, so now not only have we rewarded them for that which as a parent, you know, I'm a mom like you, you, you, if your kids do something bad, you try not to reinforce bad behavior with a reward, but now the Republicans have seen that literally starving their own people nets them what they want. So you're right. I think if we have known and we probably should have been able to forecast that this was going to be the outcome, the Democrats should have figured something else out. The Republicans should have come to the table. That's how democracy works. They are supposed to work across the aisle. They are so dug in now that they don't do that. That's become the way things go. They were not handed a mandate in the Senate. So I mean we have a lot of, a lot of hand wringing going on here. But it is strange to me and the timing in particular, David, like on the heels of the drubbing that Republicans got on Tuesday when it seemed as though the American people were saying we reject that and the momentum was in the Democrats court for that to be the moment when they chose to capitulate to Republicans. It just doesn't make any sense. It feels feckless and it feels cowardly and it feels like a betrayal. And all of those people suffered to what end to reward the Republicans. It makes no sense. It's maddening. And last thing I want to say, to have it be eight individuals who are very, very safe, two of whom are retiring, the other six of whom are in no political peril, that seems so calculated and strategic that it feels even more hollow. Do you know what I mean? It's not as if anyone was standing on their integrity or standing on their convictions. They were like, who are the eight safest people that we can put in this position to be the shields for the other f. I would rather have a real earnest debate about this and hear what their convictions actually are. And so it just seems completely meaningless. And that's a bad spot to be in.
- [47:05]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Yeah, I appreciate a lot of different perspectives on this and can sort of be swayed within a normal spectrum as to the origins of this and the outcome. The one that is ringing very hollow to me is that these eight senators are heroes for putting an end to the suffering. Because if that was lonely point, you.
- [47:28]
David Pakman
Didn'T have to do this to begin with.
- [47:30]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
And if you were going to do this coming away with nothing, it seems like the worst possible outcome. It's suffering for no reason whatsoever. So I can kind of. I can deal with reasonable people who say, oh, you know, there's a lot of gray area here. You understand it, okay, but this is a heroic move by these eight Democrats. If this is heroic, you could have never shut it down in the first place and just kind of given Republicans what they wanted.
- [47:55]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Right. And what it does, too, is it sort of undermines the argument that this was a Republican shutdown, because that was one of those messaging wars we were in, because Republicans have the House and the Senate and the Oval, and Republicans were. They had gone, left town in the House. They were not been there for eight weeks. And so that narrative war of them saying, is Schumer shut down? And the Democrats saying, this is your shutdown. You're not coming up with legislation that will compromise with that is your job. It's incumbent upon you to do that. And you are not doing that in good faith. Now, like to the thing you just said, very astutely, that now it looks like, well, it was the Democrats all along, and then for them to just cave, then people not only hang the shutdown on them, but the suffering that accompanied the shutdown on them, which seems gratuitous and completely unnecessary. So it's like from every angle, they've lost. And that, again, I just question, you know, what is the strategy here? Is there a strategy here? And if so, who's responsible for it? Chuck Schumer, who doesn't. Doesn't want his fingerprints on this when they're very clearly all over it. You know, I just going into the holidays, when people are suffering and suffering to the extent that they did, they came out in droves on Tuesday, historic swing the other direction. And on the heels of that, to say, I. I can't hear you, I just. I don't understand it.
- [49:20]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
No, I don't totally understand it either. And, you know, the margin by which there was a talking point, which was true, but like, oftentimes something is technically true, but the context is what matters. There was a talking point that Americans knew this was a Republican shutdown.
- [49:35]
David Pakman
Cool.
- [49:35]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
What was that based on it was based on polling that was like 5,545Americans think this is a Republican shutdown rather.
- [49:42]
David Pakman
Than a Democratic shutdown. It is true. That's a majority.
- [49:46]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
5545 is not super strong. And I can only imagine that now as a result of this that small margin will evaporate and this may even end up being a net problem for Democrats. Now it may be far enough out before the midterms that it won't end up mattering and it'll depend on what happens over the next 12 months. But I still think that it's just a net loss all around.
- [50:07]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
I agree with you. And another thing too is that for, for a while, for quite a while and it's still happening. Republicans have been the party that has been fractured that Marjorie Taylor Greene's out there saying her own thing. They are, they have their own opinions on the Nick Fuentes is of the world. They have own opinions on the Epstein files of the world. It was easy to find the fissures in what was happening with maga and the Democrats for the most part, well up until yesterday really seemed to be marching more in lockstep, which is a critically important thing to do and to signal to the American people, especially on the heels of an election like we had this week. So now just in an instant, it's completely inverted. So the Democrats look like the party in disarray. They are fighting amongst themselves because this small carve out which I would argue represents a larger number that did not want to come forward and got together and decided which eight were going to be the eight to shield the rest of them. We have vulnerable people like John Ossoff, et cetera. Now the Democrats look like they are the fractured party and it's very easy for the Republicans. They do it when there are no fractures and fissures to get into those cracks and bust them even more wide open. And that's a disadvantage when we are fighting what we are fighting and a party that is not beholden to facts, facts or truth or the law or the Constitution for that matter.
- [51:28]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
No, I agree and I covered on my show today this groipe. I I'm calling it the Griper Fissure.
- [51:33]
David Pakman
I love that.
- [51:34]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
It's not clear whether this is a political problem or one that would be reserved for a gastroenteroenterologist. But the groiper fissure or it's a.
- [51:44]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Geological like fault line or is it a geologist?
- [51:48]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Exactly. You know, I think that it's, it's a very interesting thing when we see Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson increasingly at odds, Tucker Carlson and Mark Levin, etc. And it should be sort of a reminder that when that happens on the left, it also looks very bad. Now, this is not me saying there can't be a big tent with disagreement on certain issues. Of course there can. This is not me saying that you've got to stop all internal disagreements as you get closer to elections, because it's.
- [52:23]
David Pakman
None of that stuff.
- [52:23]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Like, I think the debate is good and a big tent is good, and there's going to be diversity of opinion. But the appearance of this unhinged disarray that we see. Trump started attacking Marjorie Taylor Greene today after Marjorie Taylor Greene.
- [52:36]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
I didn't see that.
- [52:36]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
I don't know if you saw that. Yeah, he did one of these unhinged orange rants in the Oval Office, and he said, I don't know what's going on with her. She's placating the other side sort of stuff. He didn't use the word placating. I don't think he knows that word.
- [52:48]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
But, no, he probably thinks that's a dental term, but yeah, yes, exactly.
- [52:54]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
There is this. I think it's important to have just an awareness on the left that for the purposes of winning elections and getting power, in order to have the opportunity to do pass bills and put policy in place, it's good to recognize what sorts of public disagreements are productive. Like, for example, a robust primary where someone comes out the winner.
- [53:17]
David Pakman
I think that that's productive.
- [53:19]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Public disagreement. That's a great thing.
- [53:21]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Yeah.
- [53:22]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Misting and. And, you know, purity beatings, I think, are less productive.
- [53:28]
David Pakman
And so I think it's just like.
- [53:29]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Something to keep in mind.
- [53:30]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
No, I agree with you 100%. And again, like, that's what we saw in New York City, right? A robust political process where the people got to be able to have their voices heard in the way that it's designed to go. And. And I think that's when you see people engaging, that's when you see them trusting the process. Right. And wanting and getting excited about being able to shape their own realities, their own futures, their own tomorrows. And I think. I think for too long, for far too long, our party and I don't, you know, want to do the autopsy, et cetera, et cetera, but our party has suffered from what I call Ruka salt syndrome. You know, they're very precious about everything, has to be exactly what they want all the time. But they've also been sort of elitist, and they've managed to cut out a lot of people who feel like they're not being seen or heard or read, represented, and then they don't want to partake in the process. And then when you have, like, these kinds of. These kinds of fissures and cracks where you're like these six, eight people, I don't even know who they are, and I don't understand what has happened, but they certainly don't look like they represent me. So I don't want to engage in any of this now, even more so than before. And again, what. What Tuesday showed us on so many levels was that people were fired up and excited. They wanted to participate coming out of no Kings, that they wanted to have a voice that they were. They were charged up and energized and being able to, you know, actually make a change. And. And then to see, like, all of that work and that energy and that effort and that excitement fall to the wayside in the hands of eight individuals who don't live the. The reality, the shared reality that most of us live. They're not worried about healthcare. We don't have a private elevator. You know what I mean? So to see that, it, It. It's. It's very disheartening and it can be very disillusioning. And what I'm worried about, again, to that net negative that you're talking about, what I'm worried about is that that kind of stuff will settle in and people will say, I've seen people, maybe you have too, in my DMs and stuff. Like, it really makes it hard to want to get out there and fight when what I do is basically thrown away. And I can't fault anybody for feeling like that. But I would argue that that means that this is a moment all the more that we, the people have to make ourselves heard. I don't think that it was ever gonna be anybody from this class of established Democrat that was gonna come to the rescue. It has to be driven by us. And that if I'm taking anything out of this moment, it is that. That we have to. We have to continue to galvanize and we have to continue to coalesce, and we cannot rely on the status quo.
- [56:07]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
I was sort of chuckling to myself, but on the edge of crying. Like, I was laughing to avoid crying. I. It was this press conference last night that these senators who were voting to reopen gave. I don't remember whether it was Gene Shaheen or Maggie Hassan. It was one of the two. And basically the question that was asked was, if you don't get this health care vote in December, might you vote to shut down the government in January? And the answer? It wasn't. It was sort of like, like, that's a possibility we're going to have to see. And I'm thinking to myself, with what leverage in order to achieve what we just. The big threat is if you don't give us the health care vote, we'll do the same thing again where we got nothing and a bunch of people got denied SNAP benefits and 50% of flights were delayed or canceled. Like, I just don't understand the game.
- [56:55]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
I don't think they do either. That's the thing where I don't think that sometimes, you know, I joke that it's the Republicans that are, you know, playing checkers to the Democrats playing chess. But when you look at this, it's like the Republicans just left the game and let the Democrats defeat themselves. Like, I don't even understand again, what is your position here? Because if you, if you cracked, especially again, I know I sound like a broken record, but if you cracked in the wake of the American people loudly rejecting Trumpism and MAGA and Republicans and everything that they're doing. And while we still had them, even though it wasn't a wide swath, we still had them responsible for what was happening. We still had the moral high ground. We still had Donald Trump bulldozing the White House and building a ballroom while fighting in the Supreme Court to make sure that his own voters among the 42 million couldn't eat, that he was. We still had the optics of a Gatsby party versus the starvation of the American people. And we took that opportunity. And that's a screwed up word to use here because this is terrible stuff. This is suffering on a level people can't. I mean, unless you have been there to be hungry, to be in a grocery store and wondering if you can buy a jar of pasta sauce or if you could keep your lights on, you know what I mean? Like, this is real trauma. This country's been inflicted. A great deal of trauma has been inflicted on this country as of late, from the deportations and disappearances to starvation to the White House, et cetera, et cetera. And again, like you said, so they're going to go back in January and we're going to redo all of this. Like, like no one's going to tap in. No one's going to trust. Why would we, you know, and so it's like, I wish, you know, it's, it's sound and fury and I wish I had a silver lining to approach their strategy here. But honestly, I just think we need fundamental change. And I know that there's a chorus of people out there saying that Chuck Schumer should not be in leadership anymore. And I would agree. I mean, I would agree. I don't know the mechanism, how easy it is to do that. I admittedly don't know. I think there are plenty of able bodied human beings. I know Van Hollen, there has been talk about him. But I think that that is one thing that might be worth exploring. I think the Democrats need an infusion of a perspective that is more tapped in and in touch with the actual American people. And I don't think that the leadership on the Senate side in particular at this moment is that.
- [59:22]
David Pakman
Yeah.
- [59:22]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
I interviewed Seth Moulton today, the congressman who's primaring Senator Ed Markey. And he, he would if he was, if he got a vote, if he became senator and got a vote, he would not vote for, for Schumer to be in leadership. You know, I had this incredibly dystopian experience. I was in D.C. over the weekend for Crooked Con and I sort of, I put out a tweet about this, but I didn't tell the full story. I went to dinner with a friend at some like a rooftop restaurant very close to the White House. And there was this, this is not an exaggeration. As we were having dinner, there's bright lights and cranes and I look over and I'm like, what is that right there? And she goes, oh, that's the, that's Trump's construction at the White House. And I'm like it's, it's 10pm What? He's like, oh, it's, it's just, it's going and going so government, this government was shut down at the time. People were lacking food stamps. 50% of flights were delayed and canceled. And literally at 10pm I'm dining as the construction that, you know, the, the, the cranes and everything is, is destroying parts of the White House. 300 million, 325 million. I don't even know what the price is at this point. The only like if I have to find some silver lining here and it's extraordinarily difficult. It's, I wonder if there are people who, aside from who they blame for the shutdown which is essentially 50, 50 like it's this 55, 45 thing. But I think that kind of been squandered.
- [60:47]
David Pakman
Maybe there will be the, the food.
- [60:50]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Stamp recipients will know, Trump didn't care, and Republicans didn't care about us being hungry. Whoever's responsible for the shutdown, There was money that was there which could have.
- [61:00]
David Pakman
Been used, and it wasn't used.
- [61:03]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
He clearly doesn't actually care as he was flying around on Air Force One and building the. Maybe there. There's something there. I don't know, but it's a very low bar I'm looking for.
- [61:12]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
I would say, yes, there is. I. I put out a video maybe last week, a couple days ago. So it just occurred to me, to your point, that here is something that people. I don't care how you vote, you can understand this. You can understand when. And a lot of Trump voters are SNAP recipients. In the state of Oklahoma, which overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, it's like 600,000 people. It's one out of every eight Americans, period. So you know that there are a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump that had been swept up into that. And Bessett was on msnbc, or maybe it was Meet the Press, I forget. And he was asked, he was asked before they appealed, when the courts weighed in and said, you have to. You have to feed people. You have to, you know, reinstate these SNAP benefits. And then Bessant was asked, he won't appeal this. Right. And he said, oh, no, no, no, never. Because optics.
- [62:03]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Right.
- [62:03]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
And so you shouldn't believe Bessant. But what did he do? Yeah, he appealed that. And that was so on the nose and coupled with that gassy party and, you know, people said, that's a distraction. He's trying to make you look at the shiny object over there. But we're very visual creatures. Human beings are very visual creatures. And there is a tie between Trump's unfavorability and those images, those first images of the White House being flattened that all of a sudden, in correlation with that causation, correlation. I'm not even sure specifically that it's exactly this, but there was a spike and it continued to go up because I think these physical visual manifestations, embodiment of what they are doing, they resonate with people. They cross party lines. I can't think of the most MAGA East MAGA person in the world waking up on a Thursday morning going, you know what I hope happens today? I hope they tear down the East Wing of the White House. I don't want them to mention it to us. I don't want them to ask us about it. I just want them to do it. And then I want them to talk about building A ballroom while my SNAP benefits are gone. So, like, like, I think that those connections, like you said, I think also that's how we got some of those Republicans and some maga even. I had Tom Malinowski on. He's running now for Mikey Sherrill seat, New Jersey 11. He's great. And he was saying in New Jersey in particular, quite a few people who voted for Donald Trump flipped around. They completely went the other direction. And I think a lot of it is that you can tell someone that things are worse than they actually are, a la Biden, Biden's economy, et cetera, et cetera, but you can't make them feel like things are better when they're really struggling and when they're looking at the person at the top telling them, I don't care about you, I'm not going to feed you, I'm going to fight to starve you. You just, you can't, I don't think you can message or spin your way out of that.
- [64:02]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Can we briefly talk about Trump's 50 year mortgage idea? Because I've been, I've been wanting to talk about this. This is one of the, it's, it's truly unbelievable. You know, if the idea is housing's too expensive, let's figure out a way to make housing more affordable. A 50 year mortgage is a terrible idea and I'm going to do a bigger deep dive on this tomorrow with my audience. But, but fundamentally it's going to raise prices because what, what people have to remember is imagine that you could just pick a number. Imagine you can afford $1,000 a month mortgage. Right? I'm just making these numbers up. If it's a 30 year mortgage that would allow you to get, for example, a $300,000 house, if all of a sudden it's a 50 year mortgage, that thousand dollars payment, which is what you can afford now, makes it so you could bid on a 400 or $500,000 house. So what does it do? It makes more people able to afford.
- [65:06]
David Pakman
And I'm using the term afford very.
- [65:08]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Loosely here, makes more people able to afford a more expensive home, meaning more bidders enter the market for homes that are more expensive, which drives the price up. And meanwhile, because of how mortgages amortize, you're building up equity even more slowly. Like it's quite literally a way for banks to make money while pushing real real estate prices up. You're doing nothing about supply, which is.
- [65:34]
David Pakman
Fundamentally what we need to do.
- [65:35]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
It's, it's hard to think of A worse idea for affordability than saying 50 year mortgages.
- [65:43]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
It's, it's, it's almost as if. It's almost as if the guy who bankrupted casinos, who failed at everything from water to stakes to airlines to board games, the guy who is banned from having a charity in New York, it's almost as if the guy who's been bankrupt, I don't know what six Is that right? It's almost as if the guy who left with the largest amount of debt relative to the size of our economy in our history, the second worst jobs president next to Herbert Hoover in our history, the guy who, without Covid even it was everything he inherited from Obama, was moving the wrong direction. It's almost as if he is not the right person to handle the United States economy. I mean, I know that's crazy, but like, it's almost as if we are all Trump, Taj Mahal. And yet, and yet somehow there was this collective amnesia. I think of it like my C section. Like I had my son, it was a C section. It was the most horrible pain in recovery I'd ever known in my life. But by the time I got home from the hospital, I was like, I want another one. Cuz you just forget. And our country went through some kind of weird collective amnesia when it came to Donald Trump and his performance on the economy. But to Your point, this $2,000 stimulus ch is exactly the same thing. It is inflationary at best. It's going to drive prices up because people are going to want to buy things and there's not going to be the supply for them to buy things. So the demand and the supply are not going to meet. So.
- [67:12]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Well, not only that, I mean, not only that, but did you hear what Besson said about what it would actually be?
- [67:17]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Yes, it was the tax cuts they've already instituted.
- [67:20]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Right. It wouldn't really. We're giving everybody $2,000, but we're not actually sending you any money. We're going to do it through tax policy, which is like, no, you're not doing that anything.
- [67:30]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
The tax policy, by the way, which benefits the richest of the rich and never trickles down. Never, ever trickles down. Just take a look at those gaps between CEOs and employees. Like, it never trickles down. It's never intended to trickle down. And the irony of ironies is that they went to the Supreme Court to make sure that starving children in this country couldn't get the $7 a day that they needed to eat, but they made those tax cuts for the Ultra rich, permanent. They found the money to do that. And the money to give ICE $50,000 signing bonuses and the chef's kiss on all of this college debt forgiveness. This is the kicker. I am old enough to remember when every Republican lost their minds because Biden did that. And now they're like, oh, yeah, let's give it to these masc who are putting kids in cars with long guns. Yeah, that's a good idea. Oh, we're not gonna fund Snap. We're gonna fight that all the way to the Supreme Court. Sure. But let's fund ice I mean, it's just insane. We have money. We have money for days. We have money to send to Argentina $40 billion. We have money for Kristi Noem to fly around with her boy toy on two private jets so she can ride horses in freaking Nicaragua or Ecuador or wherever the hell they were cosplaying cowboys. Like, we have the money. It's just that they want us fighting with each other. They want the middle class fighting with the people who are lower than the middle class in terms of poverty level. They want us fighting while they run away with everything at the top.
- [68:55]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Listen, Joe, you've really said it all. I don't think I could possibly add anything to what you've said. I want to, as always, thank you for talking to me. If you're one of my viewers watching today, make sure you're subscribed to Joe's substack. And if you're one of Joe's viewers, I would be humbled if you also subscribe to mine. Let's do it again soon.
- [69:15]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Yes, please. Thank you so much, David. It's always a pleasure to talk to you and thank you to everybody. And again, like David said, please, if you're. If you're following me, please go and subscribe to him. He's an amazing guy. And. And a new father to. So not a new father.
- [69:27]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
First time on the. On the C section thing. When we got home from the hospital three months ago, we said we are never doing that again. And we.
- [69:34]
David Pakman
It is never happening again. That we've decided.
- [69:37]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, take care. It's good to see you.
- [69:40]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
All right, take care. We'll talk to you later. Bye.
- [69:43]
David Pakman
Bye. When I was preparing for my last trip to Italy, I didn't want to spend weeks and weeks trying to learn Italian with the typical apps where you get that, you know, flashcards and games, and it doesn't really translate to talking to people. And this is why I turned to our sponsor, BABBLE this is a method that works and it works quickly. And what really stood out to me was just how personalized Babel feels. The app was instantly adjusted to my level. I wasn't wasting time on things I already knew. And the review system is really good at making sure that things stick. Babble's lessons come in 10 to 15 minute chunks of I fit that easily into my schedule. I saw the progress. Before I knew it, I was ordering a cappuccino and their version of a croissant. It's a cornetto. Anyway, I was impressing everybody. People loved it. Babble is not just about memorization. It uses interactive dialog, spaced repetition tips that make the learning feel way more natural. And my audience can get up to 55% off at babel.com/pacman the link is in the description. If a tree falls in the woods and you know that whole thing, if everybody in Washington is telling you prices are down but you know that they're up, does it really matter what they're telling you? You know, Kevin Hassett spoke to Kaitlan Collins outside the White House and Kaitlan Collins said, and you know, where is the data on prices being down? You're saying they're down, Trump saying they're down, but we don't see that anywhere. And Hassett tries to play a little bit of a mathematical game, which unfortunately, and I don't fault people, but people are busy living their lives, trying to put food on their families, as George W. Bush once famously said, and they don't necessarily know the rhetorical and statistical games that are being played here. Let's play it it and see if you notice what he does.
- [71:40]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Grocery prices are down. What numbers is he basing that off? Given that's not true and even Marjorie Taylor Greene is acknowledged, that's not accurate, right?
- [71:48]
Kevin Hassett
Well, I guess the question inflation is down. It's one of those things that very often when people talk about economics, they slip derivatives, as we say. And so the point is that inflation is way down. It averaged 5% under Joe Biden. It's about running at about 2.5% right now. And the thing though is that people's purchasing power dropped by more than $3,000 because of the inflation in the last four years. It's up by about $1200 this year. And so purchasing power is improving, but we haven't closed the entire gap. And that's why people still feel the pain of the higher prices.
- [72:19]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Grocery prices are up.
- [72:20]
Kevin Hassett
Well, not everything. I mean, egg prices are down. We used to talk a lot about those. In fact, it was your first question here in the White House. Wait, why haven't you covered the lower egg prices also?
- [72:29]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Prices? We certainly, certainly have covered that energy as well. But grocery prices are up about 1.4% since Trump took.
- [72:34]
Kevin Hassett
Right. Which is a big decline. A big decline, yeah.
- [72:36]
David Pakman
Actually grocery prices are up about 3%. But there's two rhetorical games that are being played here. First of all, inflation is down. Remember what was the promise and what's the outcome? The promise was prices will come down. That means deflation. What Kevin Hassett says is, well, on average during Biden's presidency, inflation was 5% and on average during Trump's so far it's 2.42 deceptive things there. One, Biden's term included Covid related high inflation numbers that don't have much to do with Biden nor Trump. I mean, they didn't have to do with Trump either. What Biden did oversee is a faster decline in inflation than our western wealthy counterpart nations. So one of the deceptions is including Covid era numbers that don't really have anything to do with Biden in that now inflation has been about 3, 3.1% under Trump. But we have to evaluate them based on what they promised, which was that prices would come down. They're still going up simply more slowly according to Kevin Hassett, although really the same as the last couple years of Joe Biden, Biden's presidency. So that's the takeaway during the last couple of years of Biden's presidency and during the first 10 months of Trump's inflation has been about 3%. Trump has not improved upon the Biden inflation numbers of those last two years at all. Follow up, this is, this is now from a Fox News interview with Kevin Hassett where he talks about the 50 year mortgage. And I just, I love this shit because these guys are so unhappy.
- [74:16]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Not yet.
- [74:17]
Laura Ingraham
Okay, quick question on this 50 year mortgage, you know, I've heard, I just was watching a panel on the previous hour basically saying, you know, this is, they didn't think it was a great idea because it doesn't. You don't build equity and you pay more over a long period of time. Do you approve of, do you think this is a good plan? Are you, is Kevin Hassett a supporter of a 50 year mortgage plan?
- [74:40]
Kevin Hassett
Right. The president mentioned and yes, I support the president's idea this, that what it does is it reduces the monthly payment quite a bit for a typical home for middle America and it's by a few Hundred dollars a month. And we need to help people get back into homes. As you notice, the first time home buyers are now like over 40 years old. As we really are focusing, we are focusing on that problem. And the bottom line is though, that the problem really again came to because interest rates under Biden inflation went up by 4% and that about doubled the typical monthly mortgage payment. And we're really studying everything we can. We're about to have a bunch of White House.
- [75:19]
Laura Ingraham
There's not enough houses, there's not enough housing to purchase. So there's, there's a limited supply and that doesn't really address demand.
- [75:27]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
You're right.
- [75:28]
Kevin Hassett
We're addressing both supply and demand as we, as we study this.
- [75:31]
David Pakman
You know, it's, Martha MacCallum is actually correct. And it's wild that they think the problem to housing that's unaffordable is to put people in more years of debt, paying more interest in a way that is going to drive up housing prices. Now let me explain to you why Trump's 50 year mortgage idea is terrible. It blows up the total amount of interest paid and it will drive prices up by making houses appear more affordable, by lowering monthly payments without creating any more supply. It's a disaster. So think, think about how this will work, work. A lot of people shop based on monthly payments. So they go, I can afford $1,000 a month. Cool. So with a 30 year mortgage and a house of a certain price, there is a certain portion of the population that can afford the monthly payment. If you allow stretching the payment from 30 years to 50 years, you've just brought in way more potential buyers that can now afford the house. When you have way more people that want to buy something, what happens, happens, drives the price up. You pay way more interest over the life of the loan. You build equity even more slowly. You stay in debt decades longer. When you increase people's ability to borrow, prices just go up. So a 50 year mortgage isn't going to create more houses. It'll let buyers bid more for the houses that are there. Developers don't go in lower prices because people can take out longer loans. They raise prices because they're like, hey, by getting a 50 year loan now, the pool of potential buyers for the house I'm selling has just gone up. So this is a crisis that comes from not enough housing supply, especially affordable units. They don't have any plan to deal with that. Zoning restrictions, they don't have a plan to deal with that. In the defense of the Trump administration, zoning is mostly A municipal and state thing. Certainly the federal government could say, hey, hey, we're going to provide some money for municipalities that do zoning changes. But, ok, it's not normally something under the purview of the federal government. High land costs, a shortage of multifamily housing, and also construction bottlenecks, none of that is even remotely addressed with getting people the ability to add 20 years to their loans. It's a disastrous idea. They're pitching it as a solution. It really isn't. You know, they voted for Trump and now they're in tears. I'm talking about farmers and cattle ranchers. Now, I am not naive. I know that not every single farmer and every single rancher voted for Trump, but a lot of them did, and they voted for Trump. Trump, presumably, despite knowing what he did to them in his first term. They needed to be bailed out during Trump's first term, and they mostly voted for him anyway. Now it's happening again. Now that. That being said, I still feel bad for them. I think there's a question as to whether, you know, you fool me once, shame on you. You fool me twice, shame on me. Do they. Do they deserve to get bailed out again after this predictable situation? But Here is a 60 Minutes report. The farmers are understandably upset.
- [78:43]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Nearly 80% of voters in what are called Farming dependent Counties voted for President Trump in the last election.
- [78:50]
Donald Trump
I feel like a lot of American farmers, cattle people, it's a lot. A lot of people probably feel let down currently. Now, maybe there's a method to the madness, you know, that's still to be seen.
- [79:05]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Many are now taking their frustration directly to Republican lawmakers at town halls across the country.
- [79:12]
David Pakman
I'm about ready to lose my farm.
- [79:14]
Donald Trump
I am pissed. And I'm pissed at you.
- [79:18]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Nearly 80%.
- [79:20]
David Pakman
One more clip and then I want to talk about this.
- [79:23]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
You think you can make it another year?
- [79:24]
Donald Trump
I don't know. I don't know. Do you just keep going, rolling the dice, hoping things will turn?
- [79:35]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
I mean.
- [79:37]
Donald Trump
It'S not looking good.
- [79:39]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
President Trump has promised a new bailout for American farmers, as much as $13 billion that he said would be paid for by the tariffs.
- [79:49]
Donald Trump
We're going to take some of that tariff money that we made. We're going to give it to our farmers, who are, for a little while, going to be hurt until it kicks in. The tariffs kick into their benefit.
- [80:00]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Like most farmers we spoke to, Daniels and Carmax say they'd rather work their fields than rely on taxpayer money.
- [80:08]
David Pakman
It will help pay some bills, but that's not fixing the problem. Band aid when we need stitches.
- [80:14]
Guest 1 (likely a female political commentator or journalist)
Can you wait? Can you wait this out?
- [80:16]
Donald Trump
Farm families can't wait.
- [80:18]
David Pakman
Listen, on the one hand, you voted for the tariff guy, the tariff guy did the tariffs, and now all of a sudden you're shocked that the tariff guy is tariffing you into insolvency. It's not really a betrayal because Trump's doing what he promised to do. He's hurting a lot of the people that supported him the most. Now, some of these folks are in an abusive political relationship. You know, Trump hurts them, they run back, he hurts them again. And on the fourth punch they go, wait a second, you're hurting me. Now, this is like a sort of, of tragic comedy of sorts, because imagine watching Trump's first term seeing the trade war torch the livelihood of yourself as a farmer or as a rancher, and then going, give me another one of these. And the pain was the point. He said, the pain is coming. He said, it's going to be worth it. And we now have this situation in which we find ourselves. Now there's also a class war war situation here, which I think is highly relevant and salient. The billionaire tax dodger from Manhattan and Queens is wiping out a group that still believed he cared about them, even though we've been saying this guy doesn't give a damn about you. And rural small business owners are suffering, and he does it with a straight face and he goes, it's going to be a little challenging, it's going to be tough, but we're going to win over the long term.
- [81:44]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
So.
- [81:44]
David Pakman
So I don't know what the answer is in terms of. I mean, listen, I'm a, I'm a naturally empathetic person. I think it's probably genetic, right? It's inbuilt to me. Even though it's like we knew this was going to happen and it's happening and they voted for it, I still feel bad for these folks. And also there's the importance of farmers and ranchers to the American economy and to the American food system. But there's a reason that Democrats are struggling with these voters, which is you can't really out out promise Trump's fantasy economics. You can't outlie a guy who says money grows on tariffs. Forget about what you saw last term. I'm going to fix everything. And some people fall for it. So I don't have the answer as to whether we endlessly need to bail people out. That Trump says he's going to hurt and then he does it and then they cry and are worried. I feel terribly for them, but I don't really know how often we can just repeat the same thing over and over again. So let me know what you think.
- [82:41]
Guest 2 (likely a male political commentator or journalist)
Think.
- [82:42]
David Pakman
Now on the bonus show today, Trump's going after air traffic controllers. Canada is losing its measles elimination status. And the United States might be next. And now, going from basketball to baseball, we have two pitchers charged with taking bribes to rig pitches. How widespread is this in major American professional sports? All of those stories on today's bonus show, don't miss it.