Transcript
Unknown Speaker (0:00)
Foreign.
David Pakman (0:07)
Welcome to the show, everybody. Global war is escalating under supposedly anti war Donald Trump. That's right. Anti war Donald Trump, who we were told would end all wars immediately, get us into no new ones, and peace would reign supreme globally, has presided now over more bombing than ever in Gaza. Launched new attacks in Yemen, didn't end the Russia, Ukraine war on day one like he promised, and is threatening to annex Greenland, Panama and Canada while threatening Iran. Does that sound opposed to global conflict to you? You know, for a guy who swore that he was the peace president, Donald Trump is sure racking up quite a body count here. So here's what's going on. Gaza bombing resumed. Yemen more airstrikes than ever. And Ukraine not even close to peace. The man who promised to end wars on day one is now knee deep in conflicts. He's dropping bombs left and right, all while pretending that he is still somehow this anti war hero. Remember when Donald Trump promised to stop the bloodshed? Israel just launched its most intense assault on Gaza since January, killing over 400 people. The reason, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there was not enough progress in durable cease fire talks. So they are bombing their way out of the stalemate. Trump, the supposed neutral broker, has been missing. He's been golfing, posting to Truth Social, and cheering about winning tournaments that he organizes at Mar a Lago. And instead of peace, Palestinians are being ordered to evacuate. And we once again are wondering, is a full scale ground invasion coming? Trump's love affair with bombing Middle Eastern countries continues, this time with a new wave of airstrikes in Yemen. We talked about this yesterday. Over the weekend, US forces killed at least 53 people in a relentless campaign against the Houthis, with more strikes coming in the following days expected. And Donald Trump isn't even pretending that this is about defensive action. He has opened up the door to a full scale offensive strike and has given authority to manage that to U.S. central Command. And then we look at Iran. Donald Trump is now escalating rhetoric against Iran, saying they are sinister mobsters and thugs and threatening them with, quote, great force. This is the guy who campaigned on ending all wars and doing everything possible to avoid starting any new ones. And this is very different than what we are seeing today. Donald Trump also spent his entire campaign bragging about how he would end the Russia, Ukraine war insanity. First he was going to end it within a day of becoming President elect. Then he was going to end it with it within a day of being sworn in. Most recently, we are told it might take 100 days. And even that seems pretty optimistic because the latest is that Trump held the call with Vladimir Putin, reportedly through Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky under the bus, floated a peace plan that sounds suspiciously like carving up Ukraine to appease Russia. But meanwhile, Russian forces continue their assault and the Trump administration is restricting intelligence sharing with Ukraine, although Trump recently said, we've sort of restarted sharing intelligence. But did they? We don't know. The point is that war seems nowhere close to ending. And Trump's big deal doesn't seem to be peace. It seems to be war and submission to authoritarians. We will be lucky if, on top of all of this, he doesn't invade Greenland, airstrike Mexico, try to annex Canada. And what this is fundamentally about is not the fact that he's not able to end every war. We all knew he wasn't going to do it. It's that he sold himself as the guy who would bring the troops home, stop the endless wars, make the United States of America a neutral player in global conflicts rather than an aggravating factor. And just look at what we're seeing under Trump's leadership, or lack thereof. We are seeing mass bombings in Gaza resume, an escalating war in Yemen, a Ukraine conflict that's not ending anytime soon. This is not peace. This is chaos. This is failure. And one of the growing sort of narratives or discussions that we're finding ourselves hearing quite a bit is which thing is Trump doing to distract from which other? And what I mean by that is, is Trump escalating global war to distract from what he's doing with the tariffs? Are the tariffs meant to distract from the growing constitutional crisis over deportations, which we will talk about in a moment? Or is ignoring the court order on the deportations meant to distract from the fact that he is not executing an anti war presidency? We don't know. And that this even may give him too much credit? Trump may be getting too much credit in the idea that he's deliberately trying to distract from A by doing B or C. But the next thing we must talk about is the constitutional crisis. It is happening. The constitutional crisis legal experts have been warning about is happening right now. It's unfolding in real time as we see the Trump administration outright ignore a federal court order and is daring the judiciary to stop them. We talked about this on the award winning bonus show yesterday. All awards we give out, I admit it. But many awards have been won over the weekend. Two planeloads of Venezuelans were deported under Donald Trump's immigration crackdown and a judge explicitly ordered those flights to turn around midair. The administration refused. They didn't do it. They said the ruling doesn't apply because the planes have already left US Airspace. They are not subject to recall. Now, some are thinking about this as an immigration issue. This is not just an immigration issue. This is the President of the United States openly defying the judicial branch and sending the message, court rulings don't apply to me. This is not the first time that Donald Trump has challenged judicial authority. Remember that his administration aggressively fought against court rulings on the mass firings of federal workers, on. On freezing federal funds, on blocking asylum claims, on revoking automatic birthright citizenship. We are at a tipping point, and I try to avoid being hyperbolic on this show, but I also try to avoid understating a crisis. And it is critical to understand why this is a crisis. When we say threat to democracy, it is not a vague, nebulous thing. When the White House ignores and disregards specific, concrete court orders, you must do X and they ignore it. We have to look at this as what it is. There are serious legal questions surrounding the deportations that go even above and beyond just ignoring the court order, which themselves are arguably a crisis. There are really four additional legal issues here. Number one, the legal basis that the Trump administration is using for these immediate mass deportations is something called the Alien Enemies Act. Legal experts say completely improper usage simply doesn't apply here. Gangs are not foreign governments, making the legal justification very shaky. We have not declared war on these countries. The legal justification just doesn't apply. Secondly, did the administration violate a federal court order? Because if so, officials could face sanctions or even be ordered to reverse the deportations. Number three, what about due process? Many of those deported were not given proper hearings. They were not given access to an asylum claim, and there are civil and human rights concerns there. And then fourthly, what about international law? Trump laughs at international law. The US Appears to have deported individuals to El Salvador without clear consent, and that is also potentially a breach. Now it gets to the sort of nitty gritty. If courts rule against the Trump administration, they might say, you've got to bring back the deportees. However, how on earth do you enforce such a ruling? Especially now that the deportees are in El Salvador? And Salvadorian President Naive Bukele has said, we're not sending them back, so understand that this is not normal. Previous presidents, Democrats, Republicans, they have battled court rulings. Sometimes we agree with the administration when these battles take place, and sometimes we don't. But ultimately, prior Administrations have complied with court orders. Trump is pushing the limits further. And why wouldn't he? Because he's gotten away with everything so far. And if Trump can get away with ignoring court rulings on immigration, what would stop him from doing the same thing on elections, on congressional subpoenas, on constitutional rights? So we are at a real stress test for democracy here. If courts cannot enforce rulings, checks and balances collapse. And that is the real crisis here. Trump is betting nothing will stop him. And you know what? I think he's probably right, because nothing has stopped him for years. When we talk about the framers of the Constitution establishing checks and balances, we also acknowledge they never thought that the American people would vote in a charlatan like Trump who would flout every norm, law and regulation. Plato knew it. Plato was worried about democracy, which he believed ultimately would lead to the most ignorant and uninformed buffoons. My word. Buffoon. Not his. Ignorant, uninformed buffoons. Electing a president and then that president would be a fiasco. Plato predicted it a long time ago. Framers of the Constitution didn't think the American people would ever do it. Well, they have. And now what we are up against as we signed term number one, and we are seeing now is that the constitutional checks and balances, the systems that we have in place, even the judiciary, seems unsuited in terms of really having the teeth to make Trump do what they declare and what should be done. So what is next? You really can't blame Trump, because if you get away with nine things, wouldn't you also try to get away with a tenth? It's also finally really important to understand that Trump is really the kind of final manifestation of the direction that things started going since the civil rights era. I write about that specifically in my book the Echo Machine, which will be out in a week. We are down to the final seven days before the book is out. I worked very hard on this book. I think it's critical to understand how we got to where we are. And that's part of what the book does. I would love for you to order it available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon. Any local bookstore can get it for you. The latest is that there are 1100 signed copies. Spoken for at Brookline Booksmith. They're having me sign 200 more. Those final 200 signed copies you can claim at David pakman.com/booksmith. We will take a break. Massive dumps after the break. No, no, no. It's not what you think. Did you know that 80% of New.