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The David Pakman Show
5/13/25: They’re cutting Medicaid, they’re doing more corruption
01:02:17
-- On the Show: -- Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) joins David to discuss the tariffs, the flouting of the rule of law, potential suspension of habeas corpus by the Trump administration, deportations, and more... — Republicans swore they...
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- [00:08]
David Pakman
Welcome to the show, everybody. Major breaking news on Medicaid and benefits. We are now moving from the of course we would never do that phase to the of course we're doing that. It's what's good for the country phase on exactly the same issue. House Republicans just dropped a plan to slash Medicaid. The Congressional budget office says 13.7 million people would lose health coverage over the next decade if this were to pass. And what's, of course, really infuriating is that we've been understanding the numbers. We've been saying, you can't cut this much money without some people either losing benefits or services. You just can't do it. It's mathematically not possible. And they've been saying, of course we're not going to do that. We're not. For months, they've been swearing up and down that this is not their plan. We're not cutting Medicaid. We want to rein in spending. This won't affect anybody who really needs it. Or don't believe the scare tactics from Democrats. And it turns out that the scare tactics were something we like to call the truth. Because now even Fox News is reporting it. They're admitting out loud this bill would gut Medicaid. If Republicans get it through, there's no more pretending. And their next position will be, of course we're cutting it. We're doing the right thing. The House Energy Committee releasing its portion of the reconciliation legislation late last night.
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Unknown Speaker
The bill cuts from Medicaid and adds work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks.
- [01:44]
David Pakman
Cuts from Medicaid, adds work requirements, adds eligibility checks which cost money. And this will lead, per the CBO, to nearly 14 million people losing coverage. We talked in 2017. I know it feels like a lifetime ago. We spoke in 2017 about the Republican health care plan. And when that plan was scored, it would have led to 24 million, somewhere between 24 and 32 million Americans losing health coverage over a decade if the plan had passed. It didn't because of that reality. And we never heard another plan since. Right. The plan has been two weeks away for five years at this point in time. And here we are seeing the same thing again. This is what the Republican Party has been moving towards all along. It's sort of a slow, quiet sabotage, sabotage of health care for the poor and for the working class. And they're no longer hiding it. Now. It's important to see this not as being about budgets. It's not. This isn't fundamentally a budget issue. It's not fundamentally a fiscal responsibility. Issue? No, many, no matter how many times they say that this is about taking health care away from millions of people so that tax cuts for the ultra wealthy can be protected so that the yachts and the stock buybacks are unaffected, while regular people lose coverage for diabetes care or for prenatal visits or for whatever the case may be. And the cruelty is that this is not some unfortunate consequence of what they really want to do. This is what they really want to do. This is the whole strategy. Cut programs for people that have a very low margin of error in their household budget in order to preserve goodies for people who have a very large margin for error in their household budgets. And they know exactly who it hurts. Families and seniors and people with disabilities. But they don't care. We're talking about Medicaid. That is something that pays for long term care for many people. It keeps NICU babies alive. It helps people afford blood pressure medication or chemo, depending on what they're going through. And this is what will get ripped away if this budget goes through. So if you're sitting there thinking, didn't Republicans say as recently as two, three weeks ago that they're not cutting Medicaid? They did say it and they were lying. They knew that they weren't telling the truth and they knew that this was actually the plan all along. How do we know that? Because when it's not tied to a specific budget, speaking in general terms, they say we've got to look at cutting these programs. We've got to look at entitlements, as they like to call them. And of course, they use the term entitled to mean something you haven't really earned, something you feel entitled to. But the reason we call them entitlements is you've paid into it as a, as a society. We have paid into these programs and, and therefore people are entitled to those benefits. So they're now admitting it. This is happening. Will voters realize why it's happening and will they hold the perpetrators accountable? That's a different story. That's a story that is often a question mark in American politics. So here's the deal. Government spending is way up under Donald Trump. Now, you might be saying, but David Doge, they were cutting everything. They've been talking about cuts for years. And Doge has been running full speed ahead for months. We were getting more efficient. We were draining the swamp. We were finding efficiencies and getting rid of bloat and pork and all of this stuff. Trump's government has already spent 166 billion more dollars than we had spent at this time last year under President Joe Biden. This is with doge. With DOGE slashing federal programs, pushing out workers, cutting services that people rely on. And the deficit has still grown by nearly $200 billion. So a sensible question is to say, what happened? Where's the money going? How could it be that with Doge cutting, cutting, cutting, we somehow have spent even more money? Well, military spending is up $39 billion year over year despite being told, oh, Trump would consider cutting the military. We had people on the right and some on the left saying we, we might see Trump cut military spending. No, we're not. Well, military spending is up $39 million $39 billion year over year. Border and immigration enforcement is up $18 billion. We spent an extra 18 billion bucks this year so far compared to last year at the same point in time. Now there are some who say, well, that's good, we want Trump doing the border stuff. Ok, but he said he was going to cut the deficit. He's actually blown it up. And then Social Security and Medicare are up $70 billion year over year. Why? Because boomers are retiring and boomers are drawing down more benefits, benefits that we can't cut because they're entitled to them. They've paid into them. We, we have a responsibility to provide those benefits. So the math of it is not particularly difficult to understand. Trump is cutting small, tiny, shriveled up programs, you know, a $30,000 DEI thing that they don't, that they don't like. And it's leading to the dumping of money into the deportation machine, into the military. And meanwhile, the programs that really cost the most, when you look at the totality of the budget, Social Security, Medicare, those are going to keep growing unless you're willing to cut benefits, which they sort of are, but more with Medicaid rather than with Medicare and Social Security, although we will see where that lands. You know, you ask Republicans in Congress, are you willing to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits? They say we're not going to touch benefits, we're going to touch bloat and we're going to touch waste and we're going to touch fraud, which they still have not actually found any. And that's where Doge came in. Doge came in as this flashy new efficiency department supposed to fix everything. And it kind of did a mixture of theater and sabotage. Most of the so called cuts were fake. What I mean by that is some of them were typos, some of them, you know, they were cutting 60 million. And they said we're cutting 60 billion or something like that. So that. That was a lie to some degree. There were Biden era cuts. They were already cut during Biden's presidency, which they included under the list of things that Doge had actually cut. Just another completely dishonest example. So it was sort of like a fiction put together for a press release. But what really got cut are programs like AmeriCorps, science research education Grants, Meals on Wheels, this sort of thing. But here's the real purpose of Doge and this is why, you know, the big story is Doge will cut. And then we see deficit is actually up. So what's the real purpose of all of this? It was never actually about money. The purpose of Doge was to allow Elon Musk and his allies to take over government systems that were to some degree investigating him. They didn't even hide it. That was the point. And once they got what they wanted, they neutralized some regulators, they defunded some watchdogs, they blocked some lawsuits. Elon. Who's even talking about Elon Musk anymore? He said he's stepping back, he's getting back to his businesses. Doge is winding down. He didn't need the title anymore because he'd already gotten what he wanted. He'd done the damage. There is tech sabotage here that is getting very little attention because Doge compromised some key federal computer systems. They installed new hard drives, they restructured platforms, they introduced so called efficiency upgrades into places like the treasury and Medicare and IRS servers. But this was all about access, wasn't really about modernization. Because even now, with Elon Musk supposedly out of the picture, out of the picture in a formal way, we would say those systems will be vulnerable until at least 2029. Think about that. They embedded their people, they grabbed control, and then Elon walks away. And notice what Doge never touched. The Pentagon, Border Patrol, military contractors. They went after NASA, but not after the F35. Why? Because cutting waste wasn't really the goal. Killing oversight and snatching contracts was the goal. And now we are building towards the tax cut scam. While this is all happening, Trump and Republicans are trying to pass something they call their big beautiful bill. It's basically the sequel to Trump's 2017 tax cuts. It's differentiated by them wanting to make them permanent. You might remember that a lot of what was in Trump's 2017 tax bill sunsets or expires this year unless extended. And the idea now is add trillions to the deficit by Making a lot of that tax stuff permanent. They're using accounting tricks to make it look cheaper on paper. Even Trump has floated the idea of raising taxes on people making over $2.5 million just to make the math work. That's how desperate, desperate they are to pass this thing. But big picture, big. Trump came into office claiming, we're going to cut waste, we're going to save money and government's going to run better. Instead, he's spending more money than Biden at this point in the year. He let Elon run completely wild with government infrastructure. He defunded oversight and regulatory agencies. We're going to have Dr. Zach Rubin on the show soon to talk to us about exactly how this affects the everyday person. And they tried to cover all of it up with fake cuts and now they want even more cuts and to make them permanent for the wealthiest. You can't look at this and say it's fiscal responsibility, it's a con job. And when you zoom out, you see it. Every single one of these so called reforms is a cover for someone's greed, a power grab or overt corruption. They call it efficiency. It's not very efficient. They say it's about cutting waste. It's the same story. We're going to cut waste by cutting services for regular people. We're going to funnel money to the powerful and then we'll tell you it'll trickle down and it's going to be very good for the country. And the bill is now coming due. So for anyone surprised by this, for anyone now upset, and I know that there are some Trump supporters, a few of them who are recognizing this and saying, I don't love this. We did a TikTok Live yesterday. I spoke to a couple of these sort of disaffected Trump supporters. This is what happens when you let a con man billionaire and his buddies run the government. You get a stripped down shell of democracy wrapped in gaudy gold trim. The way Trump's penthouse is handed to the highest bidder and Elon Musk was the highest bidder. So that's where we are. We've got to deal with where we are in order to figure out where to go. And I hope that there will be more former Trump voters who will say, this goes too far and we've got to put a stop to it. Let's take a quick break. Make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel, YouTube.com/the David Pakman Show. I love our partnership with Wild Alaskan Company. They do sustainable seafood memberships and bring high quality wild caught Alaskan seafood right to your door. Every filet you get is 100% wild, never farmed, sourced from well managed fisheries in Alaska you get better flavor and texture, but you're also helping to preserve these ecosystems. They freeze everything at the peak of freshness. It gets to you vacuum sealed. I got a box that had everything from crab fish fillets, scallops, salmon burgers which were absolutely delicious. So elevate your meals, support sustainable fishing and enjoy seafood the way it should be. Go to wild alaskan.com/pacman use code PACMAN for $35 off your first box. That's wild alaskan.com/PACMAN use code PACMAN for $35 off the link is in the podcast Notes did you know that countless commercial databases and people search sites are storing your personal information? Anyone from an employer to a former partner can use these platforms to get details about your online presence, your home address, phone number, email, license plate, family members, financial information, even political views. Europe has laws that offer some protection, but in the US the data is widely accessible. Even the FBI will buy this information from companies to spy on people without a search warrant. Our sponsor Incogni provides a solution. It takes just seconds to sign up and Incogni will send removal requests to all of the major data brokers, legally compelling them to get rid of your data. Incogni keeps you informed throughout the process. 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That may be going a little too far. We don't know the stories of every single one of these individuals and but we spoke about this extensively on the bonus show yesterday. And now that the eagle has landed in the United States, I do think we need to talk about this and Trump's new focus on resettling white South Africans as refugees in the United States. I'm going to be completely upfront with you. If you demonstrated to me that on the basis of race, white South Africans were being persecuted, if this were a group of people in danger, I would say bring them in. We are a country that does that in the United States. That is what refugee protections are for. How would I possibly say I'm against helping people who are genuinely at risk? Except the more I research this, the more I realize that's simply not what's happening here. This group of people, these are Afrikaners. These are the descendants of, of Dutch colonists South Africa. They still hold most of the wealth and most of the land in South Africa. We are talking about a group that owns around 75% of private land in South Africa. White South Africans have an unemployment rate under 10%. Black South Africans have an unemployment rate of more than 33%. So it's difficult to argue that white South Africans are a marginalized, persecuted population that should be getting treated as refugees here. They are still the most economically privileged group in all of South Africa. But because some people don't like South Africa's land reform policies or they feel uncomfortable about democratic demographic shifts, Trump decided that that is reason enough to say that these are discriminated against racial refugees who need to come to the United States. Now, compare this to Trump shutting the door on many others. Asylum seekers from Haiti, from Central America, from Gaza, from Sudan. But when 49 white South Africans say we're uncomfortable with some of the policy changes, despite still owning the lion's share of the land and having an unemployment rate less than one third that of our black country people, suddenly the gates swing wide open when Donald Trump is in charge. So the bigger picture here, of course, is that this is not a random immigration policy. Well, we'll randomly accept some white South Africans will say no to asylum requests from Central America. This is part of a larger narrative, and it's actually not haphazard. Trump and his allies for years have been pushing the idea that white people around the world are under attack, that Christians are under attack. It's a talking point that you hear in right wing spaces online, and it is now. The calls are coming from inside the house. It's shaping refuge refugee decisions that are being made by the administration. I'm going to repeat it. If these folks were in real Danger and this were about protecting lives, it would be a different conversation. I would be saying, of course we welcome them as refugees, but it's not what it is. This is about who gets to be seen as deserving of safety. And under Trump, it's clearer than ever. If you're white, you get a plane ticket. If you're not, then good luck. So that is what this is really about. And I think that we need to dig into that. So let's do it. Here's something that would have sounded like a conspiracy theory a few years ago, but now they're saying it out loud. A Trump official was asked a pretty straightforward question. Why are the white South African immigrants, the. The Dutch descended Afrikaners? Why are they being prioritized as refugees despite owning almost all the land in South Africa, despite having an unemployment rate less than one third that of black South Africans? Why is that group now being treated as refugees who need to protected when other groups like Afghans fleeing actual war and Taliban rule are being turned away or Central American asylum seekers are being turned away? And the answer we got from deputy deputy, from the Deputy Secretary of State who said one of the criteria is we want those coming here to be easily assimilated into our country. What does that mean? What is that code for? It's not about language, it's not about skills, it's about being white. That's what they're referring to. Listen to this.
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Unknown Speaker
Thank you very much. I just wanted to know.
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There were many.
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Sorry, from the BBC. There are many people who are, who fit the criteria of seeking help, who are fleeing persecution. Afghans, for example, mean they live in a country run by the Taliban, but they're being denied refugee status. So I'm wondering, why is such an exception been made for the Afrikaans, especially when the South African government says they're not in danger? And are you going to open up the refugee settlement program for others?
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Thank you for that question. I think you may recall that on the President's first day in office on January 20th of this year, issued an executive order that paused US refugee programs that had been going at record levels under the prior administration and had brought in people that we were not sure had been carefully vetted for national security issues and put a pause on the refugee admission program in general. That pause, of course, was subject from the very beginning to exceptions where it was determined that this would be in the interest of the United States. One of some of the criteria are making sure that refugees did not pose any challenge to our national security and that they could be assimilated easily into our country. So The President on February 7 issued an executive order about the egregious conditions in South Africa.
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David Pakman
Yeah, so you get the picture. You can see what this is really about. You know, Afghans who fought alongside US Troops were promised refuge. Now they're sitting in visa limbo, many denied, many deported. And meanwhile, the Africana is a group that still holds most of the wealth and land in post apartheid South Africa. They are being flown into the United States on chartered US funded flights because they fit in a little bit better. This is not subtle. Here is Donald Trump saying he will indeed fast track immigration for the white South Africans. Listen to what he had to say.
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Ruben Gallego
Discrimination in their home country are heading to the United States where your administration is going to welcome them as refugees. Now, this comes as you've halted virtually all refugee admissions for people fleeing famine and war through countries like Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Why are you creating an expedited path into the country for Congress, but not others?
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Unknown Speaker
Because they're being killed and we don't want to see people be killed. Now South Africa leadership is coming to see me. I understand. Sometime next week. And you know, we're supposed to have a, I guess a G20 meeting there or something, but we're having a G20 meeting. I don't know how we can go unless that situation's taken care of. But it's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about, but it's a terrible thing that's taking place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they're white or black makes no difference to me, but.
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David Pakman
Except it does. Because the idea that these farm attacks in South Africa are specifically or disproportionately targeting white farmers is part of a well known white nationalist conspiracy theory. Now, it's important to consider to the extent that the whites own most of the land in South Africa, there is an expectation statistically that if most of the landowners are white and land landowners are being targeted, that you might see more of the white landowners affected by this. But beyond that, there is nothing to the idea that it is white people that are being targeted. But you can certainly find a lot of white nationalist websites spreading exactly that. And so what this is really about, we know assimilate happens to be a polite version of saying white people, white people. And the thing is that nobody is saying South Africans shouldn't be allowed to immigrate if they qualify like anybody else. But when the standard shifts Depending on the color of your skin. That is not national security. It's certainly not humanitarianism. It is white nationalist policy at the federal level. And they're not even pretending anymore here. So this is immigration under Trump. Look at what's happening to the Afghans. Look at. Or Afghanis. Look at what's happening in Central America. Look at what's happening in other parts of the world and you start to see these trends. And when you look in and say, well, why is this exception being made? Well, because they are being targeted in South Africa for being white. No, they're not. The farm attacks have affected both white white and black South Africans. It just so happens that the white South Africans own 75% of the land in the country. So predictable. Yes. Pathetic, of course. Completely brazen and transparent. Absolutely. Is anyone going to do anything about it? Sadly, it doesn't seem like it. So I learned a while ago that I was clenching and grinding my teeth at night. Not on purpose, not because I was necessarily stressed out by something obvious, but grinding and clenching without even knowing it. And when I talked to my dentist about it, about getting a night guard, it was a whole thing. Appointment, mold, waiting, a bill that seemed very high. And ultimately I found Remy, and Remy is our sponsor. Today, Remy sends a kit right to your door to take an impression of your teeth with super clear step by step instructions. You send it back to them and they will custom make your night guard right here in the United States, in Las Vegas specifically. No waiting rooms, no overpriced bills. Just a better way to protect your teeth while you sleep. Try Remy Risk free at shop Remy.com/Pacman and use the code PACMAN to get 50% off your night guard at checkout. That's shop R E M I.com/Pacman. Use code PACMAN for 50% off. The link is in the podcast notes. It is great to have back on the program Senator Ruben Gallego, or as we say in Argentina, Gashego, which is a less traditional pronunciation. Senator, it's so great to have you on. You know, I want to talk about the rule of law, I want to talk about habeas corpus. But maybe we could start a little bit with immigration because it's been such a topic and you're working so actively on it. Do you think there's an area in which Democrats in general are not striking the right tone on immigration insofar as connecting with voters where the Democratic Party could be doing better?
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Ruben Gallego
Yeah. So I think your basic Democratic voter is actually more in line with Your average American voter when it comes to immigration. But the one area that we don't actually talk about is border security. And if you talk to kind of your non political Democrat, which they exist, they will tell you like, oh yeah, I really think we should have good border security where we're trying to limit the amount as close to zero as possible, the amount of illegal entries. Right. And if you talk to most Americans, they all agree with that. Where there's a disagreement is that we also believe that we need to fix the problem. People that have been here for many years in the shadows. And you know, this is where we're actually more in line with where the American public is, because our position is, listen, if you are a dreamer, you should be a citizen. If you're the spouse of an American citizen, you should have an opportunity, become a citizen. If you're here, maybe we should and came here illegally, you should pay a fine and then give you a visa or a work permit. And so that way you're not deportable. But largely that because you have such a presence in your community, within your families. And if you look at where the Republicans are, they're trusted on border security, but they're not trusted on the immigration reform side. Right. So what Democrats need to do is really capture the whole narrative and win the issue by making sure people understand we are just as good when it comes to border security as Republicans. But our position when it comes to actual humans and those that are stuck here in the shadows is more in line with what common sense Americans want to can.
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David Pakman
I want to talk a little bit about asylum and the asylum process. The current president, I genuinely think is confused between requesting asylum and insane asylums. Also psychiatric facilities for people who understand what we're talking about when we talk about asylum in the sense of people come to the border or in the United States. Do you think it should be easier or more difficult to qualify for asylum based on who we say should fit versus should not fit those claims?
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Ruben Gallego
So it's two things. Number one, I do think we need to change it to make it more difficult. Because what we saw, and especially in Arizona, is that people were abusing the system to be able to come here, ask for asylum, and then because of a broken system, they're here for seven to nine years before they even have an asylum case. And that's actually what encourages a lot of migration. And not just, by the way, the stereotype is just from, you know, Mexico and Latin America. Now it's from all over the world.
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David Pakman
Yeah.
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Ruben Gallego
And so you actually had tourist agencies in foreign countries that were advertising to get to the United States and explaining to these refugees how to basically abuse our system. So some of it is to make it more, tighten it up so people that are in fear and danger of their lives have an opportunity to be to, to request asylum, make it easier for people to request asylum in other ways besides going to the borders. Because when that happens, it is very chaotic. You've seen what it actually looks like on tv. It's also very, very disturbing to the local economies in these border areas. So this is what you have to kind of think about when we're thinking about that. And so what does a good asylum system look like? You should be able to request for asylum in third party countries. You should be able to request asylum online. We should have more Assam judges that could actually be more helpful in terms of making decisions faster. Now the other thing I think that's very key and I could get a little nerdy this. The reason why we also had explosion in Assam seekers is because our actual worker visa program system is screwed up, right? And so when we could potentially be bringing in legally a lot of these workers where they would probably pay a fee to come work this country, go through a background check, work for a couple of years and things of that nature, instead of going through that route, they're going to the San route because that is the only route. There is no guest worker program that can really meet the demand of what our economy needs. And so if you actually have a good guest worker program with a more sane asylum process, you'd see a lot of less people actually using that system.
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David Pakman
It seems that there's a lot of inherent contradictions in some of what we're hearing right now on a lot of these issues. As you point out, when it comes to asylum and workers, etc. You know, when we hear this, let's bring manufacturing back to the United States. And the reality is there's 50000 unfilled manufacturing jobs right now in the United States. What are, are these contradictions? Things that privately your Republican colleagues will kind of acknowledge to you, or is it not something that they seem to be aware of?
- [33:09]
Ruben Gallego
Certainly some of them do, but who cares if they acknowledge it privately or not? It means like what do you, what are you doing if you're not putting pen to pa? You know, that is a real thing. You know, this president is trying to bring manufacturing back by raising tariffs on countries that you know are sending us their goods. Even if we bring those jobs back we'd have to import a lot of the workers from the countries that we just cut probably tariff deals with because, you know, fact is, like, we don't have that manpower. You know, if you look back during the campaign, we heard about these Haitian refugees and asylum Haitian residents at this point that had moved to Ohio. That's where, remember when they were eating the dogs and cats supposedly, or that's a lie that the president said the reason they moved to Hamilton, Ohio is because manufacturing had picked up and the local economy and the local labor force was not able to meet that demand. And so a lot of Haitians had heard from both recruiters and even their families that they could move to, I think it's called Hamilton, Ohio, start a job, live a good, decent life in a very nice, safe part of the state. And that there was demand for their work because the local workforce was not meeting the demand. So that is going to happen on a national level. And in some regards, that's not a bad thing. You know, that's how you grow the economy. If you want to talk about, you know, the future workforce, you know, Americans just aren't having enough kids. Right. So there's a lot of things we could do to help that. But in the short term, bringing in good qualified labor in certain sectors to make sure we don't undercut our US labor could actually be very beneficial for this economy to grow.
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David Pakman
If we zoom out a little bit and think about what happened in November 24th in general and now looking at the midterms of 26 and further down the line in 28, there are two conflicting views to a degree in the political left. There's the view that trying to appease swing voters with watered down Republican light policies didn't work in 24. It's going to fail again. On the other hand, there's the view that the perception of the Democratic Party was too left to woke, too progressive, sort of whatever touch, I would say.
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Ruben Gallego
More than anything else, or out of touch.
- [35:20]
David Pakman
Well, let me frame up the question as it pertains to you because some folks wrote to me and they said, you know, David, when Senator Gallego was on the show as congressman versus the way we see him operating now, voted for 10 of Trump's cabinet picks more than his colleagues in the Democratic Party talking about making it a little harder to qualify for asylum, is he making the mistake, maybe a former senator cinema, of drifting to the middle in a way that doesn't serve the party. Give us your assessment kind of of where you are and where the Party should be.
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Ruben Gallego
Well, there's a lot of difference between me and. So, number one, like, I actually literally have town halls once a month. You know, I'm not hiding from my constituents.
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David Pakman
That's a key difference.
- [36:02]
Ruben Gallego
Party. Yeah. So when I'm out there, you know, like, when, when I'm out there and I put myself out there and you see me take these votes, like, I hold myself accountable, you know, and like, I think you have to look at it in a couple ways. Number one, when people are saying, like, oh, you voted separately from all these other Democrats. Arizona is not the same as, you know, an east coast or West, a lot of west coast states. Let me give you an example. Actually, before we got on, we were talking about the Navajo Nation, right. I was just in Pennsylvania a couple days ago. 2% of the Pennsylvania land is owned and governed by the federal government. They have.00 federally recognized tribes. Arizona has 22 federally recognized tribes, and 65 of our land is federal land. We're entirely dependent on the federal government making decisions about water coming down the Colorado river and what's going to happen to us in the future. In addition to, you know, if you are someone who cares about, you know, minority communities, especially tribal nations, you need to make sure you have good relationships with the federal government for them, because if you don't have a responsive federal government, you'll see bad things happen on these tribal lands. So if you see a lot of what I vote for is because I need to take care of these very core Arizona issues. So if you're, you know, a congressman from a New England state, you could really care less who the, the, you know, Secretary of Interior is, because you will never call that person. I need to call the Department of Interior to help one of these tribal nations out to make sure that we're getting our water from the Colorado River. And so, yes, I have an answer to the Democratic Party, but first I have to answer to who voted for me, which is the citizens of Arizona. Secondly, we also have to recognize as Democrats that things change. What has happened at the border is entirely different. What happened to two years, five years, 10 years ago? The migrations that came are totally different. And when we as Democrats don't look like we are, we understand that things have changed and we're going to try to find solutions. We look like we're out of touch. Right. So the asylum seekers that have been coming here for the last four years are entirely from the Islam seekers. That. That was designed under the current law. Right. If we can't, as A party admit that, you know, millions of people coming to the border, shutting down ports of entries, you know, which causes a lot of business to decline on the border, which is entire. They're entirely dependent on that type of business. And just the views of hundreds of thousands of people irregularly coming to United States is going to impact us. Now, we could deny it to ourselves and we could just keep doing the same thing over and over again and then surprise, we keep on losing some of these states or we could understand that, you know what, there's a better way to do this. The American public and even the main baseline Democrat agrees that this needs to be done. And at the end of the day we could actually win races or if not, we're going to be stuck in the same situation. And you know, there's a reason why I won Arizona and Trump won Arizona. We were both more in line with where the base voter was than the national party at that point. And I'll give you a good example. You know, Carrie Lake and I, when they, they polled us at the end, people trusted me more on border security immigration issues than Kerry Lake, but they trusted Donald Trump more on border security issues than Kama Harris. And why is that? Because Kerry Lake's position was so extreme that, that even Donald Trump wasn't taking those positions. So we have to figure out a way to make this, you know, something that we are trusted for or else we're just going to keep losing elections. If you want to keep losing elections, we can, but that has consequences.
- [39:39]
David Pakman
As we're seeing now, when President Trump says I'm doing so well on the border crossings are down 99% or he said, I think at one point he said three people CR Cross, which seems like an implausible number. Number one, do you believe those numbers or what numbers are you seeing? And number two, does Trump get credit for a reduction if indeed a reduction has taken place?
- [40:01]
Ruben Gallego
So I'm not sure like the three, but the crossing is at an all time low. It started though with Biden and when, with Biden, by the way, when Biden tightened up the asylum restrictions and who can request a sum and quicker decisions. Yes, we saw a, the which everyone was very supportive of. All Democrats were very supportive when he did it. We saw those numbers started to dive quickly. The president came in and added more manpower at the, at the, at the border and continued it. So I think they both deserve credit and I think illegal, you know, legal crossings are what we should try to, to minimize. Again, if you ask a normal American or just A normal Democrat, not one that goes to meetings, but someone that actually is just someone down the street and asks them like, should we try to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country? The answer would likely be yes. Now we could always have debate about how we do it. Here's the problem with where the President is doing it. He is bankrupting, bankrupting the whole system in the process of doing it. The DHS is spending and burning through money and then using it in a dumb way. You know, they spent, they sent about 380 people to Guantanamo and had to bring most of them back. And that cost us alone $21 million. Right. You're using the military to be on the border, which number one, I think is just not what, what we as a country want to see. We want to see civilian policing. That's what we, we have always believed. So hiring more border patrol and they're less expensive than the military. But you have these, these men and women at the border that are now not getting trained. They're not, they're not in their Moses, are not getting the technical school technical trainings are supposed to.
- [41:41]
David Pakman
Right.
- [41:42]
Ruben Gallego
And again, it's all not sustainable in the long run if you keep doing it this way. So there is some credit to be given to the President, but this is not the way to do it because it's just not sustainable in the long run.
- [41:53]
David Pakman
Senator, last thing I want to ask you about. I know you've got to run on this issue of suspending habeas corpus. We've heard from Stephen Miller, adviser to the President, that this is something they are looking at on the basis that the immigration situation is an emergency and therefore it would be legally justified to suspend habeas corpus. Your colleague Senator Barrasso three times was asked over the weekend by Kirsten Welker, is that something that you think should happen? And he basically flat white flagged by saying I don't believe it's going to come to a vote. Which some legal experts said. That's even more terrifying because it suggests that it's not even actually going to go through the proper channel powers to one man.
- [42:35]
Ruben Gallego
It's exactly. Absolutely terrible. Terrifying.
- [42:36]
David Pakman
What, what are you thinking on this? What, what is the Democratic Party and Senate Democrats thinking about this?
- [42:44]
Ruben Gallego
Well, there's. So how could you think about this? How to be bragging about having the lowest crossings ever and then say, well, we also now have to suspend, you know, habeas corpus.
- [42:55]
David Pakman
Right.
- [42:56]
Ruben Gallego
So, so it's not an invasion if you actually have control of the borders.
- [42:59]
David Pakman
Right.
- [42:59]
Ruben Gallego
So, and Number two, we have to make sure this endangers everybody. Everybody. You're giving the power to one person to be able to say whether you're in this country here illegally or not, or that you're. You can just be accused of a crime and you're not going before a judge. There will be no warrants. This is a reason why, by the way, this was actually put in the Constitution, United States, because we saw our founding father saw the abuse of this occurring, you know, during the time of the American Revolution. So it is very dangerous. We are not going to just take this lightly at all. I think we're. We're hoping that there is a public announcement that's not going to happen. But when it happens and should it happen, I think it's important that we are very much ready to, you know, I think do what we can to push back as hard as we can, both here on the Senate side. Anything internally we're going to be doing and we'll look at every possible scenario, but also people going to the streets and protesting and for, you know, constitutional rights. And I think we have to be very clear that this has nothing to do with illegal immigrants. It has nothing to do with, you know, whatever the President claiming is the threat. This has to do with protecting the country, United States, and people's individual rights.
- [44:15]
David Pakman
We've been speaking with Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego. Always a pleasure having you on. Really appreciate it.
- [44:21]
Ruben Gallego
Thank you. When I was Buenos.
- [44:24]
David Pakman
All right, so we all know Alexa listens to us, recommends products based on our conversations. Metta retargets us based on our browsing and engagement history. Have you wondered what Chat GPT and Claude are up to with your conversations? We feed so much of our information to these AI chat bots. Thoughts, dreams, sensitive questions, business ideas. They take the information, tie it to your identity, and they can sell that to third parties and governments. Chat GPT has the former director of the NSA on their board right now. That doesn't feel awesome. It took us a long time to truly understand what social media companies were doing with our data. We don't have to make the same mistake with AI. And that's why I've started using Venice AI, a generative AI platform that is private and permissionless. They don't spy on you, Venice. I won't censor the AI. They have a safe mode which you can turn off for both text and image generation. Messages are encrypted. Your conversation history is only stored on your browser. I love the pro plan because I get upgraded features like Uploading files. Unlimited text prompts. Check it out. If you want to use AI without censorship or fear of handing over your most intimate thoughts to a corporation or the government, go to Venice AI/pacman and use code PACMAN to get 20% off their pro plan. That's Venice dot I slash pacman get 20% off with code Pacman. The info is in the podcast notes. In a completely deranged and some are arguing senile moment, Donald Trump said that he invented the word equalize. He tries to take credit for the word equalize. How? I mean I don't just listen.
- [46:26]
Unknown Speaker
The rest of the world's going to have to pay a little bit more and America is going to pay a lot less again because we, it's a much smaller population than when you think of the whole world. So basically what we're doing is equalizing. There's a new word that I came up with which I think is probably the best word. We're going to equalize.
- [46:45]
David Pakman
Equalize. A new word and probably the best word says Donald Trump. Feeble folks.
- [46:54]
Unknown Speaker
Where we're all going to pay the same. We're going to pay what Europe's going to pay. We're going to all pay. Now there may be some countries in dire need and I would be willing to sacrifice that but. And help them. But it's called most favored nation. We are going to pay the lowest price there is in the world.
- [47:12]
David Pakman
So there it is. Donald Trump created the word equalize and it is one of the best words. How is this going? Completely ignored by the Biden dementia truthers. How? Tell me what the difference is other than an R next to this guy's name rather than a D. Trump then asked about that free luxury 747 that he's getting from Qatar. And Trump says what? We all know he's not the sort of person to turn down such a great gift. To which my reaction was, yeah, I know, I know. Donny Boyd.
- [47:51]
Unknown Speaker
If we can get a 747 as a contribution to our Defense Department to use during a couple of years while they're building the other ones, I think that was a very nice gesture. Now I could be a stupid person to say, oh no, we don't want a free plane. We give free things that we'll take one too.
- [48:11]
David Pakman
Trump will take it.
- [48:12]
Unknown Speaker
And it helps us out because again, we're talking about we have 40 year old aircraft. The money we spend, the maintenance we spend on those planes to keep them tippy top is astronomical. You wouldn't even believe it. So I think it's a great gesture from Qatar. I appreciate it very much. I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer. I mean, I could be a stupid person, say, no, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane. But it was, I thought it was a great gesture.
- [48:43]
David Pakman
Yeah. Why, why on earth would Donald Trump turn down such a gift? Now, of course, a little bit later, we're going to look at what Donald Trump used to say about the Qataris. And the content of Trump's own previous claims are more than enough to explain why he would turn down such a gift. Trump continuing to tell the same damn lies he's told 100 times now. Big announcement. Trump says there's 11 new car factories coming to the United States. They're being built now. I hate to pop the balloon, burst the bubble. This is not happening. Trump also promised the very same thing during his first term.
- [49:27]
Unknown Speaker
We have at least 11 committed massive car factories that are going to be built, that are going to be, that are in the process of being built. And some are going through, some have actually started. We also have renovations of existing factories where they weren't utilizing the full factory from years gone by.
- [49:49]
David Pakman
Right.
- [49:49]
Unknown Speaker
And now they're under full renovation. They'll be opening up full factories in a very short period of time. Our car industry is, I think we're going to have the number one industry. You know, if you look at Japan and these others, they, they do tremendously with cars. And, and they can do that, too. They, but, you know, when they, if they want to sell cars in the United States, they're going to have to build factories in the United States.
- [50:09]
David Pakman
Okay? We do not have any reason to believe nor any reporting nor confirmation that 11 automobile factories are coming to the United States. And you know, how many of these promises does, does he have to, how many times does he have to make the same promises without them coming to fruition before no one believes it? We, yesterday on the show, by the way, we talked about how they, they started claiming, the Trump administration started claiming, we've got a deal, we've got a trade deal with China. And of course, I was very careful to tell you there is no deal here. This is just, they've postponed implementing the tariffs and retaliatory tariffs for 90 days. There's no deal here. But some of these people are probably going to fall for it. Yesterday I did a TikTok live spoke to Trump supporters, and I got a guy called in and go, Trump just signed a deal with China. They just did we got it. We have a trade deal with China. And I said, oh, what's, what's in the deal? He said, well, I don't know. I said, who signed it? I said, what is a trade deal? And the guy didn't want to answer. We'll be posting the clip. The point here is you and I hear 11 factories building, cars coming to the United States. We remember the same promise from the first term. We remember that it didn't happen. We remember that there was no public reporting about it at the time because it didn't exist. The same damn thing is going on now. And yet I assume, I assume there are people falling for this. Trump then took on the subject of the prescription drug prices. And in this is wild, in talking about how, by executive order, he's reducing all prescription drug prices, which, like, is not a thing. He started talking, talking about, I guess, Ozempic, and he referred to it as the fat shot drug. And he doesn't like that people are paying more for the fat shot drug in the United States. Listen to this. It is reminiscent of the sort of ranting and raving you often hear from people hanging out on the subway platform near Union Square in Manhattan.
- [52:04]
Unknown Speaker
I'll tell you a story. Friend of mine who's a businessman, very, very, very business, top guy. Most of you would have heard of him, highly neurotic, brilliant businessman, seriously overweight. And he takes the fat, the fat shot drug.
- [52:22]
David Pakman
He takes the fat shot and he.
- [52:25]
Unknown Speaker
Called me up and he said, president. He calls me, he used to call me Donald, now he calls me president. So that's nice, respect. But he's a rough guy, smart guy, very successful, very rich. I wouldn't even know how we would know this, but because he's got comments. President, could I ask you a question? Question? What? I'm in London and I just paid for this damn fat drug I take. I said, it's not working. He said, he said, I just paid $88, and in New York, I pay $1,300. What the hell is going on? He said, so I checked and it's the same box, made in the same plant by the same company. It's the identical pill that I buy in New York. And here I'm paying $88 in London, in New York, I'm paying $1,300. Now this is a great businessman, so. But he's not familiar with this crazy situation that we have. But he was stunned. But it was just one of those stories. And I brought it up with the drug companies representing by Somebody who's very, very smart. Good person, too. All right.
- [53:37]
David Pakman
Anyway, I'm not going to subject you to this entire thing. Yes, the issue of different countries paying different amount for different amounts for drugs is a major issue. It's an issue I've been talking about for more than a decade. It's an issue that Trump only cares about in the context of looking strong and appearing to bully people and push people around. It's not because of any understanding or connection to what it actually means for people with normal family budgets to afford certain drugs. It's not about that. And of course, the approach that Trump has to fixing it is not to change the market dynamics. It's not to change the regulatory infrastructure. It's not to change the for profit incentives that exist and shape pharmaceuticals and the health care industry. It's not any of that. It's I'm going to sign an executive order, get confused about whether this counts as legislation and say that I'm just unilaterally fixing it. Call me naive or call me cynical, but I don't believe that this executive order is going to do a damn thing. Now, Donald Trump is also speaking, speaking of the same lies. He's back to we're going to do something better than Obamacare. This is a 2015 promise. Go back to Trump's interviews in 2015 prior to getting elected in 2016. He was saying then, we're going to do a better Obamacare for less money. It didn't happen then, nor in 2017. He never gave us the plan in 2020. Last year he had concepts of a plan. It's the same lie and he's still using it 10 years on to cut.
- [55:14]
Unknown Speaker
Drug prices by 80 or 90%. So we're going to maybe come up with something. I think this gives the Republicans a chance to get actually do a health care that's much better than Obamacare and for less money, which, if you guys would work on that along with Congress. But I do want to cut two weeks away.
- [55:31]
David Pakman
Right? How many times is he going to tell the same lie? But maybe more importantly, how many times are his followers going to believe it? Call me crazy. I don't make predictions. I don't bet. I'm not a betting man. Some people might listen. They think David sounds like a betting man. I'm not. I do not believe that Trump is ever going to pass a health care plan. I just don't think it's going to happen. Call me nuts. And then finally, almost a requirement of these events. This whole thing was for Trump to sign an executive order. That was the whole point of this event. Trump, of course, forgets to sign the executive order, starts walking away, and then he's reminded, you've got to sign it.
- [56:09]
Unknown Speaker
There's never been anything like, it's a very exciting time in America. Thank you very much, everybody who's in.
- [56:16]
David Pakman
Charge of the budget. And of course, this is like every single time Trump does this, you heard someone there go, oh, you should sign it. And Trump goes, yes, I will sign it. Of course. Completely forgetting that. That's the whole point of this. Is there anyone in my audience now that believes Trump has a health care plan ready to go, that believes Trump is going to bring 11 new automobile factories to the United States? Is there anyone in my audience who is falling for this thing? I want to hear from you. Donald Trump melted down when asked if he's going to keep the $400 million luxury 747 that is being gifted to him by Qatar. Trump's immediate reaction. You are fake news. Classic Trump. He gets caught. He lashes out. He hopes you won't notice that he's the one behaving horribly. Check this out.
- [57:15]
Unknown Speaker
What do you say to people who view that luxury jet as a personal gift to you? Why not leave it?
- [57:20]
You're ABC Fake News, right? Only. Only abc. Well, a few of you would, let me tell you, you should be embarrassed asking that question. They're giving us a free jet. I could say, no, no, no, don't give us, I want to pay you a billion or 400 million or whatever it is. Or I could say, thank you very much.
- [57:40]
David Pakman
You know, by the way, the smirks on the faces behind Trump from Dr. Oz and Bobby Kennedy Jr. And a couple doctors. Yikes.
- [57:51]
Unknown Speaker
There was an old golfer named Sam Sneed. Did you ever HEAR he won 82 tournaments? He was a great golfer. And he had a motto. When they give you a putt, you say, thank you very much. You pick up your ball and you walk to the next hole. A lot of people are stupid. They say, no, no, I insist on putting it. That they put it and they miss it.
- [58:09]
David Pakman
And their partner gets what an analogy.
- [58:11]
Unknown Speaker
Angry at him. You know what? Remember that, Sam Snead? When they give you a putt, you pick it up and you walk to the next hole and you say, thank you very much.
- [58:20]
David Pakman
Respect.
- [58:24]
Unknown Speaker
And say, have you ever been given a gift worth millions of dollars and then not receive.
- [58:28]
Not a gift to me. It's a gift to the Department of Defense. And you should know better because, well.
- [58:34]
David Pakman
The reporter does know better. The reporter does know that it will temporarily be a gift to the Department of Defense, a gift that Donald Trump then gets to keep. Although I suspect that if Donald Trump has to start paying for gas himself for jet fuel himself, after no longer being president for the 747, all of a sudden he's not going to be too into it. Now, unfortunately for our country, this is who Trump is. Trump is a grifter, con man, robber baron, and also narcissistic with delusions of grandeur. And of course, he's accepted a $400 million plane from Qatar. No ifs, ands, or buts. And it might be interesting just to review what Donald Trump was saying about Qatar before they decided to give him a plane. This was when Donald Trump was in office the first time.
- [59:24]
Unknown Speaker
The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level. And in the wake of that, conference nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior.
- [59:45]
David Pakman
What a big boy.
- [59:47]
Unknown Speaker
So we had a decision to make. Do we take the easy road, or do we finally take a hard but necessary action? We have to stop the funding of terrorism.
- [60:00]
David Pakman
We must stop funding terrorism. And Qatar is such a funder. But cut to 2025. Oh, they're giving me a plane. Well, that's. Of course I'm going to accept it. Who wouldn't accept a plane in exchange for something? No, it's just a gift out of the goodness of their hearts. We're in trouble, my friends. We are in serious trouble. On the bonus show today, we're going to try to answer a relatively simple question. Trump talks about bringing manufacturing back. We currently have open manufacturing jobs in the United States that companies are struggling to fill. Why? And what does it tell us more broadly about the idea of bringing more manufacturing to the United States? Secondly, we're going to dig deep into the executive order to reduce drug prices. How would it actually work? Could it actually work? What is the mechanism? And thirdly, streamer. Hassan Piker has been detained by the Border Customs and Border Patrol. When coming back to the United States, I have my fair share of disagreements with Hasan, but I predicted that this would happen, and it is now starting to happen to content creators with political views adversarial to the Trump administration. So we are going to delve into that in detail on today's bonus show. Get instant access to the bonus show. It's an extra show we do every day, the bonus show, where you want to make money.
- [61:33]
Unknown Speaker
Everybody else that makes money to fund.
- [61:35]
David Pakman
Themselves is bad people sometimes say. David, that's obviously an impression of Alex Jones, right? No, that is Alex Jones flipping out about our bonus show. He hates it. We do an extra show every day for our members. You can sign up@join pacman.com and remember, if you have purchased my book, the Echo Machine, review it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads. Let's see. In fact, where are we on reviews? I haven't looked in a while. 1100. Beautiful. The reviews really help the book continue to be offered by Amazon and other platforms. We will see you on the bonus show. And I'll be back with a new show tomorrow.