David Pakman (40:40)
Of the list, I guess just the. Now, the truth, of course, is a million dollars doesn't make you the best and it doesn't make you the brightest. It just means you have a million dollars or you work for a company that's got $2 million. You might not even have earned the money yourself. First of all, having a million dollars that you earned yourself doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it also doesn't mean that you earned it yourself. You don't need to have contributed a damn thing to society. You could inherit every dimension. You could do nothing. And Trump will say, you're a model immigrant. You're the best and the brightest, because now you've got the money for the entry fee. Now, meanwhile, and this is the part that, that really tells you everything, ICE recently raided a citizenship oath ceremony. Ok, these are the people who did everything that the system asks of them. They studied, they paid their fees, they waited, they passed their interviews, they followed every single rule. They showed up on the last day to become Americans, and instead of a congratulations, ICE agents show up. Now, of course, the ICE agents might have been there not for those who are becoming US Citizens, but thinking, oh, there might be people attending the ceremony that are of interest to us, doesn't matter, right? The optics of ICE at an immigration, at a, at a citizenship oath ceremony, while you can buy a citizenship for a million bucks, is really making the message very clear. And the message is if you are a regular person following the process, ICE might come after you. If you are rich enough, he'll hand you a gold card and say, you're a national asset, you're one of the best and brightest, and it is Trumpism that's the essence of Trumpism. Principle doesn't exist. Ideology barely matters. Moral center. There's no moral center. It is loyalty and money, Trump's two favorite currencies. And if you have enough of the latter, you can kind of skip the entire immigration system and just buy your way to the end. It's like, you know, the people who play the, the game on their phone for free and they're grinding, but somebody with money can just buy all the right items and tchotchkes. Did I make that analogy correctly? I'm sure the gamers will tell me. And of course, the implications are much broader than just the gold card, because this rewrites the idea of what, what is citizenship even, right? Because for centuries, becoming American meant you belonged here. You've lived Here you've contributed. You played by the rules. You became part of the civic project. Trump is replacing it with a financial transaction. Right. Citizenship is a luxury item. It's a premium upgrade. You turn citizenship into a product and you are turning people into customers or you're turning them into revenue streams rather than model citizens. And so what I think is the darkest downstream effect of this, if I really think about it, is that when a country starts selling its most fundamental rights to the wealthy, it stops seeing the non wealthy as fully human, which I think is probably something that comes very naturally to Donald Trump based on how he was raised. And so when you have rich applicants that can be fast tracked for citizenship, what happens to the refugees, what happens to the students, what happens to families waiting years in the legal pipeline? You don't really matter as much because you don't have the million bucks. And so we have an immigration system that is going to mirror the way Trump sees the world. Wealth is the primary value of people. Loyalty is right up there as well. And the people who go through the hard work are just not going to be able to get as good of a deal. Terrifying. Disgusting. I would argue anti American, but it's what Donald Trump is doing. Donald Trump is yellow, covered in bruises and band aids, and it is long. Now, time to tell the American people what is going on with Donald Trump's health, because at this point, it is obvious that something isn't right. Now, Aaron Rupar, our friend, has a great piece about this on his substack called a band aid on a festering hand wound, where Aaron sort of analogizes the band aids that Trump is doing with policy to the band aids that are literal items on Donald Trump's hands to cover up whatever's going on with his health. Read the piece by Aaron that we are linking to. He pulls together the pictures and the quotes and the timeline and all of the entire thing. I think it's very good and very much worth looking at. But if we zoom out, what is the situation in which we now find ourselves? Well, Trump's physical condition is clearly declining and the White House is doing everything it can to try to hide this. And Aaron Rupar starts with the hand and he explains that going back months now, Trump's right hand is not only often discolored, it's also often bandaged. And he has the pictures of that and he shows them to us. This is clearly not a scrape. It's a recurring issue. Trump has been hiding his hand when he can for months. He covers it with the Other hand in public, he holds papers over it. He tried makeup. Now he's using bandages. And Aaron shows the shots from the Pennsylvania rally earlier this week where the hand looks extremely swollen. It looks gray. It looks like it's rotten and patched together with band aids. And then Aaron points to something that really jumps out here, which is that the hands, because of Trump's face makeup, where he makes himself orange, although sometimes it's looking more yellow than orange, it only reinforces Trump's ashy gray hands. Something is very wrong and they don't want us to know what. Now, the article continues and it says, remember, Trump had the swollen ankles over the summer. He vanished for about a week around Labor Day. There was no explanation. He's regularly falling asleep in public five or six times over the last 10 days, including during a Cabinet meeting. This is, it's not metaphorical that Trump's asleep at the wheel. He is asleep while people are talking about policy. And the White House's spin only raises more questions. You've got Caroline Levitt saying the ankle swelling is chronic venous incidents efficiency. All right, well, what about the bruised, discolored, bandaged hands? Well, it's from shaking hands with people. And it's a laughable, laughable explanation. And it sounds like they're trying to come up with this stuff in real time and often two weeks late. Then we've got the mri. Trump admitted, yes, I got an MRI during one of my two annual physicals. Make sense of that now. He says, well, I don't even know why doctors ordered it. If your uncle said, after getting an mri, I don't know why I got an mri, the family would be saying, what's going on with, with our uncle. Right. It wouldn't make any sense. In his article, Aaron Rupar also includes Donald Trump's unhinged attacks covering attacks on the New York Times for covering his decline. We talked about that yesterday or the day before. And Trump said, oh, it's seditious to talk about my allegedly failing health. It might even be treason, suggesting that maybe it's criminally actionable if you talk about Donald Trump's health. And so what we really have to do here, I believe, is zoom out and see this for the bigger picture that it is. And Aaron does a really good job in the piece, which is the health issues with Trump, the erratic reaction and the COVID up attempts, they match Trump's escalating erratic behavior. Okay. And a lot of these issues we've talked about Quiet, Piggy. And the other outbursts Particularly at female reporters. The xenophobic and racist rants about Somalis, the weird comments about women, including talking just two days ago about how attractive Caroline Levitt is and how her lips go bop, bop, bop like a machine gun. Threats to foreign leaders, now saying to the leader of Colombia, you'd better watch out or you're going to get the Venezuela treatment. Wise up or you will be next. And so you put it all together. Physical decline, media secrecy, cognitive testing, naps during meetings, angry outbursts. This is not a stable man. This is not a stable person. And the inner circle around him is working overtime to try to hide it. Now, at the end of his piece, Aaron points out, there is undeniable evidence that something is wrong here, and we don't exactly know what that is. And if there weren't something wrong, we wouldn't be seeing the attacks on reporters. Trump wouldn't be hiding his hand in increasingly conspicuous ways. They wouldn't be giving us ridiculous explanations like Trump's bruised up from shaking hands. So the bottom line, as we are about to enter 2026 and really be in the midterm cycle, is that Trump's health is a serious issue. It seems to be affecting his judgment, it seems to be affecting his behavior. And the White House is only fueling that belief by being very opaque about what's going on. We've got pictures, we have statements. We have Trump sleeping six times in public in the last 10 days. The American people deserve the truth. They always deserve the truth about the health of the President. We are not getting it right now. A lot of guys go years without ever thinking about their underwear. You just keep buying the same kind, dealing with the same discomfort, the sticking, the chafing, the readjusting. Once you try sheath underwear, you are going to realize you don't have to put up with that. Our sponsor, sheath underwear, is lightweight, breathable, comes with two separate pouches in the front. That keeps everything comfortably in its own place. Airflow happens, you stay dry and cool all day. You put them on once and you will immediately get it. The fit, the quality, the design, it just feels better. I've been wearing sheath underwear for years. It's a level of comfort I didn't even know was possible. I would recommend them to anyone. And with the holidays here, sheath also makes a great gift for yourself or for someone else. They've got tons of styles and colors for both men and women. Go to sheath underwear.com/pacman and get 20% off with code Pacman. The link is in the description the construction, or lack thereof, really, of this new White House ballroom is quickly becoming not only a global humiliation, but it's also becoming a financial disaster. And it's becoming embarrassing for Americans who now look at Washington, D.C. and see a demolished part of the White House and a stalled construction. So let me tell you what is going on. We've been covering over the last six months, really, in Trump's second term, how Trump is increasingly obsessed with legacy. How is he going to be seen? What is. What sort of permanent marks can he make on the country, on Washington, D.C. they might be metaphorical marks, they might be legislative or political marks, and they might quite literally be construction. Like, how do I change the White House? Trump has turned the White House into a construction disaster zone and is struggling to find an architect willing to finish the job. Now, I told you that there was a stall in the project. The entire thing started when Trump demolished the East Wing with no real plan, no public review, no respect for the fact that this is one of the most historically significant buildings in the country. And the relevance and the timing of all of this is that the total demolition has happened and the project now appears to be at a standstill. We have images of what's going on at the White House at this point in time. Trump has been insisting on building this 90,000 square foot ballroom that would be so big that it would dwarf the actual executive residence. Residence. And the architect that he had chosen, James McCrary the second, said, this doesn't work. This doesn't work. In addition to the obvious, you know, an addition is not supposed to overshadow the building that it's attached to. Trump didn't like hearing that, as he doesn't when somebody tells him no. And he said to McCrary, Bye, bye, you are gone. So the project is now frozen. The East Wing has already been torn down. There is a construction pit next to the White House. Costs have gone from what was going to be 200 million to 5300 million. Now there's even talk of 325 or 350 million. And there is still, as of today, not a functioning approved design for what they want to do. They tried to scramble to bring in a new architect from Washington, D.C. doesn't fix the underlying problem, which is that Trump is demanding something that is physically unrealistic. He ignored every warning. He fired the one person who tried to stop this from becoming a disaster. And if the story sounds familiar, this is Trump's business history. You know, I was thinking back to when Mitt Romney was the Republican nominee for president. Back in 2012, Barack Obama was easily reelected. Romney was, to be frank, he was not anywhere near the worst Republican candidate that, that they've put up there. But he didn't really make the case for kicking Obama out, given that things were going pretty fine. One of the arguments that was made with Romney from supporters of his was, we really need a businessman president. We need someone who thinks like a businessperson and who will run the country like a business. And one of the things that was often argued about was, is Mitt Romney a good businessperson? Because part of what he did was take companies apart. And, okay, but let's step back from that for a second. A lot of us were saying, what proof do we have that good business people make good presidents? Running a business and running a country are two different things. And of course, we don't really have good evidence that business people make good presidents. And that is yet another thing we are reminded of with Donald Trump. But Trump was a particularly bad business person and he'd have more money today if he had simply invested his inheritance in an index fund rather than done anything with it. And then we get into the details. Trump says, oh, I'm a great builder. I'm a great dealmaker. Project after project of Trump's blows past budgets, ends in lawsuits, collapses under mismanagement. And that's what's happening with him as president. Trump loves big announcements. I'm making a major promise and getting a lot of attention. The spectacle, the cameras, then the work starts. The competence now is required, and it all falls apart. He leases his name out to buildings he doesn't run and blames other people when it fails. He walks away from incomplete projects. He leaves investors and contractors and workers holding the bag. And he's doing the same damn thing with the White House. Now, there were people defending this when he started it, saying, we need a refresh. It's going to be great, it's going to look good. And a lot of those people are now saying, this isn't seeming like a great idea. And what Trump has now saddled the country with putting aside for a moment, the disastrous tariff policy, the disastrous immigration policy, the failed foreign policy, put all of it aside. Just with the White House demolition, we have a half demolished presidential complex. Because Trump was obsessed with a gigantic ballroom, he couldn't be bothered to go through the process of evaluating the project, keeping it to historical standards. Architectural, actual evaluation and planning tears it down. They have no final blueprint. The architect says, this won't work, Fires them. And now we've got no architect, no clear path forward, and a crater worth, I guess, $300 million in the sense of what it'll cost to replace it. That's the builder at work who would run the country like a businessman and fix everything. Destruction, no preparation, complete chaos. This is why we don't need someone like a Trump in the White House to begin with. All right, I want to talk about such an important question that a couple of you wrote to me and asked, does Trump's lack of popularity matter if he is governing as an authoritarian? And I believe that this is a phenomenal question. We've covered that. Donald Trump's approval rating is tanking. Rating Trump is down in Nixon era approval rating. Trump's own approval rating has only been worse in the two weeks of his first term. That came after the January 6th riot. So it's a complete and total disaster. Some of Trump's allies are bailing. If you look at the polls, you would say, well, the story is going to end because voters will step in and they're going to fix everything. They're going to take the House and Senate from Republicans next November, and Trump will be left at blah, blah, blah. I believe that that is a mistake. Popularity is only a problem in a functioning democracy. And the whole point of an authoritarian project like Trump is to make popularity irrelevant on a personal level. Trump cares so much about being liked and being popular. But the part that Americans may not want to hear is that we often will treat a political crisis like it's going to be solved by the next election. And sometimes we can solve problems with elections, and elections are always important. But the danger isn't Trump or Republicans losing an election. The danger is Trump changing the system, where the outcome of elections no longer matters. And there is a long history here to look at. If you look at authoritarian movements and how they start, they almost always start the same way, which is they do win at the beginning. The authoritarians often win, although not in every case. But in most cases, they win a real election. Sometimes they win a real election by a lot. There's economic anger, there's cultural resentment. There's a promise that somebody is going to come in and restore order and they find someone to scapegoat and they go, I will finally deal with this. And so often authoritarians start with a win. Hitler didn't seize power with 10% approval. He was the most popular politician in Germany. Viktor Orban was legitimately elected. Putin, you know, Putin's had some sketchy elections, but Putin Was by most measures very popular in the early 2000s, which is now over 20 years ago. We see this often. Once they get in, the project changes and the goal shifts from I want broad support to I am going to take broad control over institutions, over systems. The legislature becomes just a rubber stamp. The courts are either packed or ignored. The press is intimidated and co opted or labeled an enemy. Does that sound familiar? Universities are seen as ideological threats. Elections, we have them, but they're kind of more symbolic. You know, we'll go through the ritual of the election, but only if it confirms the regime, not if it restrains it. And what happens over time is that the system starts to rely less on votes and more on fear, propaganda and bureaucracy and the slow erosion of every check and balance which used to make a difference. And the darkest irony of this is that these leaders tend to become less popular as they become more powerful. Russia by and large has a huge portion of the population that doesn't like Putin, but they're terrified to actually make that, make their voices heard. Hungary is arguably exhausted with Orban. Germans were terrified of Hitler long before the end. But by the time that the mass dissatisfaction becomes impossible to deny, there's no exit ramp. You can't get off the train. Elections don't fix it. Laws don't restrain it. Courts don't do anything. And so people can no longer vote their way out. So when folks say don't worry, you know, Trump is Trump is losing support. I always think losing support is not the most important part of the story. Is Trump losing power? And the answer is I don't think so. There are some Republicans starting to doubt Trump and that's important. But the truth is Trump doesn't really need a big coalition. He needs loyalists in the courts. He needs them in federal law enforcement, in the military, chain of command, in state legislatures if they're willing to bend election rules. And if it gets that stuff, the polls kind of don't matter anymore. And this is exactly how democracies will slide into something different. You know, you got a leader starts weakening parts of government that they can't control, strengthening the parts of government that they can control. You don't have to ban the election, make it irrelevant. It's much easier. Don't jail every critic, show that there is a cost to dissent and they will self censor. And just look at our timeline. Trump has purged inspectors general, he's tried after 2020, tried to strong arm a Secretary of state into finding votes, asked the DOJ to declare the election corrupt. And leave the rest to me. He's demanded in the second term, personal loyalty from federal officials. He tried to undo an election he lost. And that was all, arguably, the rehearsal. So now he's here. He's openly preaching about and seeking revenge. He's doing purges. There's military crackdowns. And none of it has any subtlety. It's the authoritarian playbook. It's been around a long time. Use democracy to gain power. Dismantle democracy so that you don't need it anymore. So Trump is historically unpopular, but unpopularity only matters in a system that reflects the public will. And Trump is trying to destroy the system that reflects the will of the people. So I believe that the bigger you could say a strong authoritarian is a danger, and you would be right. But a weak authoritarian is arguably even more of a danger, because the weak authoritarian no longer tries to win anybody over. They try to make the will of the people not matter. That's what we're up against. So Trump's approval rating is highly relevant to understanding what's going on. It's important in thinking about voters turning on Trump. It's important in thinking about other Republicans saying, I don't know that this is the horse we want to write into 2026 on all of that matters. But as far as, like, oh, Trump will no longer yell at the media and show a total lack of respect for courts if people don't like him. No, no, no, no, no. Trump will double down on those actions the less that people like him. And that should terrify every single one of us. We have a phenomenal bonus show today. We will talk about health care proposals. We will talk about this Warner Brothers Netflix flicks whole thing and what role the administration might play in that. And we will also talk about a new proposal by the administration to review five years of social media history before letting someone visit the country as a tourist. Is this what we need when tourism is down 15%? I would say no, but we will talk about it on today's bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman Dotcom. Also, make sure you're getting my daily newsletter on Substack. It is free@substack.davidpakman.com does your child dread going to school every day? It's time to try Oregon Charter Academy. Our online school offers interactive learning in a safe environment with a dynamic and responsive curriculum. Providing your student with support to thrive will bring you relief knowing you found just what you your child needs. Don't wait. Enroll today@oregon charter.org and see the difference it makes for your child. Oregon Charter Academy what learning should be.
