David Pakman (49:58)
All right, so listen, first, before we even get into this, Bernie's making it clear he's not running for president, okay? He says, I'm 83 years of age. He would be nearly 90 years old at the time that the next president would be sworn in January of 2029. Just as, like, a factual aside and in. I'm not thinking of it now, but as we start to think about this, I think it would be good to just understand that Bernie's making it clear he's not running again. And it's not. Oh, we. We don't like Bernie. No, we like. We like Bernie. I supported him twice already. But the point is he's. He's making it clear he's not running, okay? He's tired. He's old. He says he's not going to be running. So here's what's going on. We are in March of 2025, billionaire billionaires are dismantling the federal government, Authoritarians are rewriting the rules of democracy. And ABC News is asking Bernie, who would be close to 90 on Inauguration Day, if he's planning another run and trying to generate inside the Beltway drama about AOC switching from the House to the Senate, which I can assure you voters do not care about, outside of what is she going to do as a lawmaker? Now, if you sat people down and said, you know, let's talk about the differences between what you do in the House and the Senate, I'm sure you could get people to go, yeah, sure, sounds good. Senate, maybe, but this is really Beltway stuff. I'm sure Jonathan Karl is a nice guy, or I assume he is, because I assume most people are. But he is part of a system, and I talk about this in my book. It is a system that is going to output certain things when its inputs and its structure are what they are. This is what corporate media does. It ignores actual policy and actual stakes and serves up horse race theater. Remember the 2024 campaign where reporters asked Trump 5,000 times who his VP pick would be and then he would play coy and it would just become story after story when, like, we're going to know. The question is, what are the policies he's advocating here? And he was rarely asked about his plan to gut the Department of Education, which he's now trying to do. He was rarely seriously challenged about his plan to abandon Naito, which he seems determined to be doing. So, Jonathan, Karl's not incompetent. ABC News is doing its job, which is distract, sanitize, entertain, in order to point to the next thing way down the road, rather than, hey, wait a second, what does happen if Trump simply ignores legal court orders? And what recourse do we have to try to crawl back into a system where the judiciary is respected and has power and teeth? And when Bernie doesn't play along, he gets treated like the problem. Oh, Bernie's so difficult. He's so. He's obstinate. And so it's not just that the questions are vapid and shallow, it's that they're designed to be. These interviews are not meant to inform voters about policy. They want Bernie, who got a crowd with AOC in a bunch of cities over the weekend, as we talked about. They want Bernie to create drama by saying, oh, the Senate is way more valuable and AOC should be there, or I am. I'm not ruling out running in 2028. What Bernie has to say about poverty or Medicare or the creeping rise of global authoritarianism. It's just not that interesting. And that's where we land. When Democrats are asked about hypothetical elections that are years away and then they don't want to answer, they are considered to be the problem. And then, on the other hand, when Republicans lie about elections that already happened, like Trump claiming he won 2020, those lies are treated with soft gloves and false equivalency here. You know, some people say it was stolen, while others disagree. That's. That's a classic line from corporate media. Some say humans are having an impact on the planet's climate, while others disagree. Oh, wow. Thank you so much for being neutral when neutrality couldn't possibly be less objective. So this is like empty calories, right, for a public that is really starving for a deeper analysis. So I'm going to keep trying to do the best I can to both grow the pie of independent media, right? So we got to play the games. In some places, I can use really boring titles on YouTube and then no one will pay attention. So we're going to play the games as necessary on each platform, but we're going to talk about, hey, here are the historical equivalents for what we are seeing right now with regard to ignoring the judiciary. Here are five ways to organize health care, all of which would be better than what we have. And here are the five countries that have chosen these systems. Maybe he's a nice guy. He probably is. But this is. This is not good. And Bernie Sanders realized it right away. Donald Trump's enablers are quietly preparing exit strategies as the Trump era eventually is going to sunset, for lack of a better term. And how it happens could have a massive impact on what comes next in the United States. So let's kind of lay out the way it's going right now. And this has major policy implications. If you look publicly, if you just step back and say, what am I seeing out there on corporate media? Republicans are publicly lined up behind Donald Trump like it's, you know, November of 2016. But behind closed doors, it's a very different story. Every member of Congress that I've interviewed tells me the same thing behind the scenes. Plenty of Republicans in the House and in the Senate think Trump is unfit for office, that what he's doing economically makes no sense, that this is all a really bad idea. They won't say it publicly, most of them, because the base still loves him. They are too afraid of getting primaried. They are afraid of losing fundraising. And if this sounds familiar, it should, because you think back to January 6, 2021, Mitch McConnell stood on the Senate floor. We covered it live, I remember, and called Trump morally responsible for the insurrection. And Lindsey Graham said, count me out from the movement that did that. On January 6, Kevin McCarthy said Trump bore responsibility for the Capitol attack, but then they crawled back into the movement as it became politically inconvenient to think for yourself and have a spine in the Republican Party. So now we're in Trump's second term. 2025, shaky economic indicators. Not a recession at this point, but things are shaky. The administration is more chaotic than ever. And there is this shift that is happening. And part of it is Trump is done in 2028, no matter what Steve Bannon tells you, Trump's done. Republican operatives, lawmakers, 2028 hopefuls, they are keeping a very close eye on the volatility of Trump's decision making and the eroding approval ratings. And they're sort of like vultures circling a limping animal. They are not challenging him outright for now, but they are laying the groundwork behind the scenes to move the second that it becomes politically safe to do so. So you're going to hear the soft rollout with phrases like, we are approaching our next generation of leadership in the Republican Party. We want fresh voices for 2028. So it's, it's not just political fluff. It's a message with a target. And the target is Trump. Everybody from Ron Desanctimonious to Nikki Haley to Glenn Youngkin, they are quietly building their infrastructure. It's not for right now. It's for what comes next. And the calculation is super easy. If Trump ism collapses under the weight of Trump or under legal baggage or whatever, there's a bunch of people who want to be first in line. Even if it doesn't come until late in this term, the end of 2027 or even later, Republicans are quietly gaming out the scenarios. What happens if Trump is legally sanctioned or incapacitated? What if public opinion turns way against him 80, 20? What if there is an unavoidable cognitive fitness incapacitation? So the point here is they aren't betting on Trump's strength, maintaining to where it is Trump's blessing that they will need in 2028. They are preparing for Trump's failure and abandoning getting off the train at just the right time. There's also the Trump fatigue factor. Political staffers are burning out, high level staffers are cycling through really quickly. And the MAGA loyalty tests are starting to wear thin. So the seasoned strategists don't really want to deal with the Trump world chaos. And then you've got right wing media, the right wing media's aspect of this, where right wing outlets are sending signals, if you know where to look. Fox, of course, covers Trump, but not with the same zeal. And we've even heard anecdotally just in the last 10 days, Peter Doocy and Maria Bartiromo and others starting to give air time to some of the obvious questions that people are asking about the tariff policy or other policies. The Wall Street Journal editorial board will periodically remind readers of the instability of some of the economic ideas of Trump. You even hear from some of the new right talking about post Trump conservatism, which when I hear it, I hear a desire from them to go back to something like a Mitt Romney or a John McCain. And then finally, even some of the MAGA influencers are kind of hedging and they're talking about we need discipline in our movement and using these sort of code words. So it is subtle for now, but the, the, the sort of moment that everyone is waiting for is when the risk flips. Right now it's dangerous to oppose Trump. It may become dangerous not to, depending on how the next three and a half years go. When that moment comes, many of the same Republicans who cheered the return of Trump in 24 are going to pretend. I was always skeptical of this. I was never really on board. I was trying to move the party forward. So we're watching it, pay attention to it, be ready for it. Folks, my book comes out tomorrow. I've got a whole shelf of them here. Let me grab one. The Echo Machine comes out tomorrow. Dozens of people have already received it. It started shipping out last week. I have two requests and only two requests for you. Number one, I would love it if you bought this book. I don't yet know where it is going to land in terms of all of the nonfiction books that are coming out right now. We're doing everything we can to make it a success. Whether you like to read, listen to audiobooks, Kindle. It's available everywhere at this point. You could get it as soon as tomorrow if you order it right now. The final signed copies are available at. David pakman.com/books booksmith sorry, let me say that once more. David pakman.com/booksmith and finally, please review the book. I'm not telling people who didn't read the book to review it. All I'm telling you is there are three really important places to review the book. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads. The reviews alone could push this book into a successful first month rather than a first week. We will be featuring reviews also, by the way, on our social media and in other places. So that's where we are. We've got a great bonus show for you today. You can sign up@join pacman.com the book is out tomorrow. A lot going on. Glad to have you with us today.
