David Pakman (48:46)
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Plus free croissants in every box when you go to wildgrain.com/pacman to start your subscription, free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box go to wild grain.com/pacman the link is in the podcast notes. If you think that Elon Musk, Doge and Donald Trump can't or won't mess with Social Security, it's time to think again. Because for the first time in history, your monthly benefits are at risk of not arriving. Millions of Americans rely on Social Security to survive. Thanks to Trump and his billionaire buddy Elon Musk, there is now a real risk that those payments could be interrupted. Former Social Security commissioner Martin O'Malley, the guy who ran the agency, just put out a dire warning and said that we could see Social Security collapse in the next 30 to 90 days. Not because it'll be out of money, but because Trump let Musk, so called Doge slash funding and gut agency staff. And they've already caused system outages. And if the system goes down no checks, no benefits, no nothing. Now who's going to get hurt? Is it going to be Trump and his friends? No. Retirees will be at risk. Disabled Americans will be at risk. People who have lost a spouse and now get survivor benefits are going to be at risk. If you need to file a new claim, maybe it's for retirement, maybe it's for disability, good luck. Because they may not be enough employees left to process those new claims. The Trump musk cuts are so extreme that the Social Security Administration started paying people to leave, offering early buyouts to workers. This is not about efficiency. This is a backdoor benefit cut. Congressman John Larson from Connecticut put it very bluntly. He said that if you lay off half the workforce and shut down field offices, it will delay, disrupt, or lead to denial of benefits. And the kicker is that the guy Trump just picked to run Social Security isn't even confirmed yet. He's a financial tech CEO, not a government official, not an expert on Social Security. So this is how they'll do it. You have to understand the games that they've been playing. We've recently seen interviews with Republicans who are asked point blank if any bill cuts even a dollar from Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, are you voting no? And they play this game where they say, I will not vote to cut benefits, but if we find waste, fraud and abuse, then of course I'm going to vote to cut that. But if you are paying attention, you understand how this is just a pretext. They still haven't even demonstrated any real fraud. Waste is sort of in the eye of the beholder. Certainly any massive institution, be it government run, nonprofit or for profit. Once you get to a certain size, you're not going to be able to say, every single dollar here is being spent in the perfect, most efficient way. That doesn't mean that there is fraud such that the program should be cut. And so this is all a pretext. This is how they do it. They don't come out and say, we're cutting Social Security. They make it harder to access. They create chaos. They allow the system to fail. They say, oh, in order to continue receiving benefits, you need to reregister in this particular way at this particular place. And if people don't push back, they are going to get away with it. Now, O'Malley, former Social Security administrator, says Americans are about to bring the heat to members of Congress over this, especially if their payments start getting delayed. I hope that that's the case. They should. These are earned benefits. The term entitlement is often used to suggest that someone is entitled in the way that, that Trump is. Right. Like, like a little rich kid is entitled. The reason that it's called an entitlement is you've earned it. You've paid the money in, you held up your end of the bargain, which is on wages, up to the Social Security cap, which goes up index to inflation every year. You've contributed and as such, you are entitled to the benefits. It's not what a spoiled little entitled kid, it's you've earned it and therefore we must uphold our end of the bargain. You paid into the system your whole life and Trump is willing to play games with it and Musk is willing to play games with it. When they do the $880 billion cut from Medicaid and they go, no, no, no, that we're not cutting benefits. This is a pretext to say, look at all the fraud we found. We're going to cut this, we're going to cut that. Oh, you know what? We actually now are struggling financially and we're going to need to delay a payout. There are a bunch of different ways that you can delay or hinder receiving benefits without officially saying we are cutting 10% off of what people are entitled to. And that is exactly what they are doing. The final question, and many of you probably suspect where I'm going with this, if this happens, who will get blamed? Will some of the people whose payments maybe get delayed or whatever, will they realize this is Trump, Musk, Doge and the 20 year olds who have been given the keys to the castle? Or will they find a Democrat to blame? Will they blame Biden? Will they blame, you know, the previous guy, Obama? Yeah, that guy. I don't know. Because if history has told us anything, it's that Republicans are very hesitant to blame Republicans when things go wrong. Hey, did you hear that border crossings are down 96% thanks to Donald Trump? Does that sound a little bit weird? Well, I hope this segment will be useful. Tell me if it is. I'm going to walk you through the architecture of propaganda. Let's discuss this. Donald Trump's press secretary, Caroline Levitt put out a tweet on the former Twitter. We call them excretions. Now. Caroline Levitt put out an excretion on X where she said, remember when Joe Biden and Democrats said they needed a border bill to secure the border? President Trump did this in four weeks. And then she puts up this image which is from Fox News, which claims that in 2022 there were 166,000 encounters on the southern border. In 2023, it was 156,000. In 2024, it was 189,000. And somehow, somehow in February of 2025, only 8,300 encounters on the southern border. Wow. A reduction of almost 96%. That is incredible. How did Trump accomplish such a majestic feat? Well, it turns out that it's all made up, and I do mean all of it. So the first thing of course, is where did these numbers come from? Let's look at the numbers. The data is from Fox News. So the article that this graphic was sourced from is called Trump Reports Illegal Immigrant Encounters at Historic Lows during first Full Month in Office. February's apprehensions are a record setting low number. And if you look at the text of the article, all it says is Trump is claiming this number. It says the data is just. Trump says that this is the number that we are down to. So we're being thoughtful here. We go back another level and we find out that Donald Trump said on troth central, and this is where all of the information came. Troth central, Trump said, quote, the month of February, my first full month in office, had the lowest number of illegal immigrants trying to enter our country in history. By far, There were only 8,326 immigration apprehensions of illegals by Border Patrol at the US Mexico border, all of whom were quickly ejected from our nation or when necessary, prosecuted. Okay, so this is not data. This is not a report. This is a post from Trump on truth, social. And the key word here is that Trump is talking about apprehensions. Now, you should be critical thinking, right? You should already be saying, wait a second. If we go back to the Fox News post, it said there were 8,326 encounters. Whereas in Trump's post, he says there were 8,326 apprehensions. Encounters, apprehensions, exact same number. But logic and reason should tell you some encounters don't lead to an apprehension. If you as Border Patrol encounter a farmer legally in the US Working on his field near the border, you have had an encounter, but there's no apprehension because there's no crime. Apprehensions are a subset of encounters. Encounters include people who were apprehended, people who were deemed inadmissible at a port of entry, voluntary returns, encounters with documented individuals. All apprehensions are encounters, but not all. And all encounters lead to an apprehension. And yet you have Fox News saying we had 8,326 encounters, and Trump says we had 8,326 apprehensions. Something doesn't sound right. So then we go back further and we go to Customs and Border Patrol and you look at the official data and what we find is that the data includes not only apprehensions, but it also includes people who showed up at a port of entry and said, I would like to come in and were deemed inadmissible. They are legally trying to get in and are told, you can't come in. Nothing. There's no crime, there's no undocumented. It's just someone who showed up and said, I would like to come in. And they were told you can't come in for whatever reason. This should be a bigger number. When you say how many people were actually apprehended versus how many encounters, the encounter number should be much bigger. And what you see is that the numbers that Fox News puts up for past years, like for example, February of 2024, are both apprehensions and inadmissibles. And they are comparing the big number apprehensions and inadmissibles to the supposedly, if you believe Trump, only apprehensions, which is a much smaller number, 8326. Imagine if I came to you and I said, look, in 2022, 100000 cars broke down. In 2023, 100-000-cars broke down. In 2024, 95,000 cars broke down. And in 2025, only 6,000 cars broke down. And then you look at the data and you realize that for 2025, I'm only including cars that broke down due to a tire blowout. I'm giving you all vehicular breakdowns, engine fire and O2 cents or whatever. That would be very unfair. It would be deceptive. In fact, if you really want to compare apples to apples, we don't have the February number yet. It just hasn't been published. You go to Customs and Border Patrol and you look at the data, we do not have the February 2025 number yet. Now that didn't stop Trump from putting this post out on Truth Central. It didn't stop Fox News from then carrying that number as if there's any semblance of reason to think it's true. And it didn't stop Caroline Levitt from then posting about it to Twitter. And then it didn't stop Elon Musk from retweeting what Caroline Levitt posted. And it's nonsense. Now there are two other issues. They are choosing February of 2024 even as the comparison number. However, the last full month that Joe Biden was in office was December, and there were only 47000 in December. So why would we even compare February to last February? Well, you could say there's a seasonality to it, okay? But if the idea is to show the failures of Biden, it would make more sense to look at a more recent number to say, is the drop really that significant from where we've been now? There's one other problem with citing this data, and we've talked about this before. You can argue a low number of apprehensions or. Or a low number of encounters. It doesn't matter. You can point to a low number as a sign of success, or you can point to a high number as a sign of success. Let me explain that and explain to you why this is also so bogus. Imagine that you want to celebrate a low number of encounters and apprehensions. You say my policies have scared people from even trying to come over, and all of a sudden we're not encountering or apprehending people because my policies have been so good at dissuading people from even making the attempt. On the other hand, you could also say the reason that encounters and apprehensions are down is because we are not properly funding border patrol. We don't have enough border patrol agents. It's sort of the if you don't test, you'll have no Covid cases. So you could similarly make the argument if you had a high number of apprehensions, we're doing a hell of a job. Look at how many people we are apprehending and sending back. And so the point here is whether you have a high number or a low number, you can always argue that it's a sign of success. The number is so low because we're doing such a great job of preventing people from even coming over. The number is high because we're doing a great job at actually catching people before they get into the country. Either way, Trump would be claiming success. But in this particular case, the numbers are completely made up and in the sense that we don't have the February data yet. Is this useful? Is breaking this down layer by layer useful in any way to you? Let me know if so. Info@david pakman.com all right, tonight's the State of the Union address. I'll be live at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific, YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook. I hope that you'll join me. We also have a bonus show today. The cryptocurrency of Trump has collapsed, and Trump's supporters have lost $12 billion. Oh, boy. As egg prices are continuing to Soar now, up 33% since Trump took office. U.S. customs and Border Protection is cracking down on egg smuggling. People are smuggling eggs into the United States. And finally, Andrew Cuomo is attempting a political comeback, running for mayor of New York City. And so far, Democrats seem okay with it. We will talk about all of those stories and more when I am joined by producer Pat on the bonus show whose Mexican investigation continues. Remember that in three weeks my first ever nonfiction book, the Echo Machine, will be available. I am doing a bunch of interviews promoting the book, a bunch of trips promoting the book. You can get signed copies at David pakman.com/booksmith. It's really happening. I'll give you an update on preorders tomorrow or the next day. And remember that we are doing what we can to beat back the right wing podcasters. We are making a concerted effort no matter where you watch the show. Help us by subscribing to the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you are so kind as to leave a review, it's even more helpful for us. We are up to 53 in the Apple rankings. Where might we be tomorrow? I have no idea. I'll let you know.
