← The David Pakman Show
The David Pakman Show
5/30/25: 2-year-old citizen deported, Musk turns on Trump’s tax bill
01:04:15
-- On the Show: — Trump administration illegally deports a 2-year-old American citizen to Brazil, leaving her stateless and without basic rights — Trump ally Peter Navarro calls a judge “rogue” on live TV, only to be reminded that Trump...
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- [00:08]
David Pakman
Welcome to the show. And truly tragic, just disgusting news to start with. Today, the Trump administration has done it again, except this time they deported a two year old American citizen, Manu as she is known. Emanueli Borges Santos, born in Florida. American passport, Social Security number, American citizen, even if people like Ted Cruz don't like that. But none of that stopped Donald Trump's deportation machine. They packed her up along with 94 others, put her on a plane and shipped them to Brazil. This is a two year old who is now stateless, almost like the Tom Hanks movie where he's stuck in an airport terminal after his country goes into some kind of non status, I guess I don't remember the movie exactly. And she is on a tourist visa in a rural town with no access to health care and no access to school. Visa's about to expire. And Brazil, stunned by what happened, is now scrambling to invent a legal category that doesn't exist. Something called temporary citizenship, which would vanish when she turns 18. Clearly a move done out of empathy for her situation, but also not particularly reassuring since it is something that evaporates when she turns 18. Her parents, undocumented, yes, but asylum seekers who were fleeing violence and corruption in Brazil, this is another MAGA would like the law to be different, but the law is the law and they don't like to acknowledge that. If you are seeking asylum and you've done so in the legal process, you have a temporary status in the United States, you don't have permanent status. But this is a distinction that seems lost accidentally or deliberately on so many people. So they were fighting their case in court. The now two year old born in 2022, a judge paused their deportation, but then ICE summons them, hands them forms in a language they don't understand and simply deports them anyway. They say they were never told they had a choice about the fate of their daughter. And meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security now led by cosplaying, whatever we could cosplay Barbie. Kristi Noem is insisting that the entire story is fake news. They claim that the parents always get a choice. You can take the kids or you can leave them here. But the kicker, of course, is her family says it never happened. And if it did, it sounds like there was not appropriate language used in order to communicate this. They were just put on a plane. Now you might say, David, the story sounds a little familiar. And you'd be right, because this isn't the first time that this has happened. Last month, three additional US citizen children, age 2, 4 and 7 were deported to Honduras. One of them had cancer. Deported without even his medication. And Donald Trump's Justice Department is still waiting on a Supreme Court ruling about ending birthright citizenship, something he would love to do. So if they win these stories, which right now are less common, we might call them flukes, although I don't know that Trump and Homan see them that way. If they win in court, these stories are going to become policy. And we should also kind of acknowledge that even the term we're looking for, the terms that apply here. But deportation, it's probably not the right word because you can't deport a US Citizen. What you're talking about is exiling a US Citizen, which is explicitly unconstitutional. Not that we care about the law anymore when it's inconvenient if we're MAGA. But the 8th and 14th amendments protect citizens from being exiled from their own country. Manu's only country is the United States. But Trump and his allies play the word games. They play semantic games. They don't care about the Constitution unless it's the Second Amendment. Then all of a sudden the Constitution matters. And even then, by the way, that might be up for grabs once this administration realizes that it's hard to run a police state when you've got an armed public. So it wouldn't surprise me if the Second Amendment becomes inconvenient to them in their authoritarian goals. So I don't even like the term banana republic, but we are sort of entering territory of the sorts of countries that are sometimes described pejoratively as banana republics, presidents illegally exiling American citizens with no due process. So this is not, oh, I don't know what, like a vehicle efficiency standards should be. I'm not sure if we should go all Electric by 2035. But policy disagreements, these are not gray areas, nor policy disagreements. These are impeachable offenses being done by Donald Trump. And in a fully functioning democracy, which we don't have here, we have at best a flawed democracy. It would have been presidency ending. Just what has happened in these first, what is it, 120something days? We don't have a fully functioning democracy. We have Kristi Noem riding camels in Bahrain while her department ships toddlers across international borders like they're a box of cell phones. And at this rate, maybe, you know, I said, I don't think we're going to reopen Alcatraz when Trump said that. I just don't think it's going to happen. We can't possibly rehab it in the Three and a half months, three and a half years that are left of Trump's term. Maybe we will end up reopening Alcatraz not for immigrants, but for the people who deserve to be there. Those that are carrying out these insane policies now, they are hoping that you stop paying attention. They are hoping that you look away. My suggestion is that you do not. In a spectacular self owned Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro, who's done a little time in jail, right, went on Fox Business to rail against supposedly rogue judges, only to be reminded on air that one of those judges was appointed by Donald Trump himself. This relates to the very quickly reversed decision made by a three judge panel, a Trump appointee, a Reagan appointee and a Bush appointee that Trump's blanket tariffs are illegal. Now, an appeals court quickly stayed and reversed that decision until June 9th. But Peter Navarro says these are rogue judges. Rogue judges, one of whom was appointed by Donald Trump himself. Take a look at this.
- [07:03]
Peter Navarro
And with respect to the legal arguments themselves, these are rogue judges that are basically out of the Donald Trump.
- [07:12]
David Pakman
That's a rogue judge.
- [07:13]
Peter Navarro
There was one appointed by Donald Trump, career bureaucrat over at ustr. But more importantly, the person who wrote the decision, Rostani, was appointed by Reagan free trader. She's the one who took the lead trying to stop the Section 232 tariffs and got overruled in the appeals court. So there's a lot of stuff going on at the.
- [07:34]
David Pakman
Yeah, you know, more importantly, the talking point about the judges has exploded on him and on live tv. Now, this is actually what happens when your whole worldview is built on the idea that a ruling you don't like must be corrupt or rigged or part of a deep state conspiracy. Even when your guy picked at least one of these judges and the others were picked by Republican presidents too. We have entered the era where any judicial decision we don't like is radical, Marxist, Trump, Reagan judges, a bold new category of enemies in magazine, you know, imaginary war against accountability. They used to shout, we love Trump judges. These are the best people. These are the only judges we can trust. And now it's Trump. Trump judges are rogue. They need to. When they follow the law, they actually should be following the loyalty test, which is do you rubber stamp any damn thing Trump wants, even if it's against the law? So this is part of the broader meltdown inside the MAGA camp. We are going to see court rulings against Trump at least at lower levels, because that's where with less fanfare, I guess you could say the law is simply applied to the facts. What is the law and what are the facts of what Trump did with tariffs? You can't do that. Later we start getting into appeals, district court, even all the way up to Supreme Court. You're going to see much more politics applied. But we're going to see, I assume because they keep trying to do so many things that are against the law, we're going to see more and more of these rulings at lower courts. And as lower courts rule against Trump, it could be tariffs, could be executive overreach, could be criminal exposure. The only play left is to say it's the deep state and hope that nobody remembers who actually picked these judges to begin with. Trump did at least one of them, celebrated them, wanted them, selected them. And now they aren't willing to break the law for Trump. Or at least some of them aren't. So they become traitors in the eye of maga. It is hypocrisy. It is pathetic. But the most important analysis element of this is that it is authoritarianism and it is unraveling in real time in front of us. This is how it happens. And I often say, you know, it doesn't always happen so quickly that you see it. You have to pay attention and see the baby steps. We're beyond baby steps here. It's the rare scenario where you actually see the authoritarian slide in real time without speeding, speeding it up. You don't have to turn it up to 3x to perceive the movement. The slide is very real. So I appreciate everybody who's listening, everybody who's watching the one of the few things we have left are communities like this. And if the clampdown happens, the one place I'll be able to get a hold of you is our substack, because that's the only platform where we own our data other than of course, the membership on our website. So make sure you're on my substack. We are soon going to be rebranding, relaunching and expanding. Expanding it with a whole bunch of other new content. David pakman.substack.com or shoot me an email info@david pakman.com and I will get you right on my newsletter. Very quick break. So much more coming up today.
- [11:11]
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- [12:29]
David Pakman
Things are still expensive in this economy.
- [12:31]
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- [14:03]
David Pakman
The David Pakman show continues to be primarily an audience supported program for folks like you who like the audio podcast which we do every weekday, an hour a day, or like the YouTube clips or the TikTok video. Say hey, you know what? I'm going to support this directly we make it easy, we make it quick, we make it cheap to sign up@join pacman.com and we do an extra show every day for our members called the Bonus Show. On today's bonus show, we discuss the forthcoming video that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino says will put to rest all of the conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein. Somehow I don't think Mag is going to be convinced, but that's on today's Bonus show and more. You can get instant access as well as commercial free audio and video feeds of the show, the full experience by signing up@join pacman.com all right, we, as if you didn't know this already, we now have yet another confirmation that the trade negotiations, especially with China, are going absolutely nowhere. We were told 90 deals in 90 days. We were told China's desperate, desperate. And actually China's not desperate at all. We're not hearing from China. We're waiting around for the invite to the prom and she's got another date already. Here is Scott Besant on the China talks, and I just love this. He describes them as just a little bit stalled. The, the talks with China have stalled just a tip bit. The reality is they were never happening because we need China much more than China needs us. Take a look at this.
- [15:53]
Scott Besant
And what about China? Specifically China. And that obviously started in a different place. How can you characterize those talks now? I would say that they are a bit stalled. I believe that we will be having more talks with them in the next few weeks. And I believe we may at some point have a call between the president and Party Chair Xi. So stalled. There was a time when the president, president thought that it was moving forward pretty significantly. Again, I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require both leaders to weigh in with each other. They have a very good relationship. And I am confident that the Chinese will come to the table when President Trump makes his preferences known. All right, so let me go.
- [16:56]
David Pakman
Yeah. So listen, like I've been saying, we need China more than China needs us. China has more alternatives than the US Has. China has moved forward with other trade deals, meaning with other countries, while Trump has been waiting around looking at his phone, saying, when are they going to call me? I just need them to call. And the administration's solution, apparently, is to cut off student visas for China, hurt our own country and damage our own economy, as if that's really going to show China who's boss. So there is, I guess, no trade deal right around the corner like we were led to believe in another clip. You know what Besant actually admits, forget about China for a moment. We don't have a single trade deal yet. None, understand, none of the countries that have been slammed with the blanket tariffs have come forward and said, sir, we're sobbing because we need to fix this now. We have zero trade deals, not 90 and 90 days. It's zero into 120 days. So here is Besant saying we're getting really close, really close on bunch of these.
- [18:17]
Scott Besant
You know, you're in the middle of very complex negotiations. We've talked to a number of people about how complex. It's like three dimensional chess.
- [18:26]
Peter Navarro
And some of these trade deals with different countries.
- [18:28]
Scott Besant
Does the, do these court rulings affect that ongoing back and forth? Brett, you know, we have not seen any of that in terms of our trading partners. The they are coming to us in good faith faith and trying to complete the deals before the 90 day pause ends. So we've seen no change in their attitude in the past 48 hours. As a matter of fact, I have a very large Japanese delegation coming to my office first thing tomorrow morning. You know, Peter reported that he's hearing there are three deals kind of ready to pop, maybe even this week, next week. What is, can you confirm that? Is it close on, on a number of deals? There are a couple of very large deals that are close. A couple of them are more complicated. And as we saw with the president's threat of 50% tariffs last Friday, the EU came to the table very quickly over the weekend. So now we've got the EU in motion also.
- [19:36]
David Pakman
You know, it's so funny, when I used to work in startups, startup, you know, tech startups, there would often be this thing that would happen where when I would review pending deals with like business development people or salespeople or whatever, they would always do the same thing. Most of them, they would list a lot of deals that are like maybes to see, make it seem like there's a lot of activity. Oh, you know, ABC Company, we're in the process of scheduling a presentation and then we've got so much activity because Def company is currently out with our proposal and the executive team is meeting about it. And then I would sit back and I would go, okay, so none of those are deals, right? And they go, yeah, no, we're working. Those are pending deals. And Scott Bessant at the absolute top level of government, at the top echelons of these sorts of deals is doing the same thing. He's going, listen, we We've got a lot of deals that are really close, big deals, and we've taken so many phone calls. And so you have zero deals, right, since all of this started? Yeah, we, we do have zero deals now. Extra kind of double bonus clip here. Here is Liz Klayman really doing a good job of saying, why are you even doing a lot of this stuff? Why are you going after Wayfair Furniture? Why are you going after Lululemon yoga pants? It's going to be kind of hard to explain in court that over an emergency, we're tariffing Lulu's. And Navarro just doesn't want to talk about it. He tries to change the topic, and Liz Clayman tries not to let him. But could you explain the administration's justification quickly, if you could? And the legality of economic emergency invocation here on Bratz Dolls and Wayfair Furniture and Lululemon yoga Pants, that's going to be a hard sell to a court that those are economic emergencies that deserve tariffs.
- [21:40]
Peter Navarro
Okay, so let's take the fentanyl issue.
- [21:44]
David Pakman
I said Lululemon and Wayfair.
- [21:45]
Peter Navarro
You want to do the reciprocal tariffs?
- [21:47]
David Pakman
Yes. Yes.
- [21:48]
Peter Navarro
Yeah. Well, look, look. They're.
- [21:50]
David Pakman
They're.
- [21:51]
Peter Navarro
They're specks in grains of sand in a sea of a $1.3 trillion trade deficit. And they are retail outlets that go to China and benefit from their seven deadly sins of job destruction, whether it's the currency manipulation, the counterfeiting, the piracy, the subsidies, and every. Everything on in between. And the emergency is $1.3 trillion a year going abroad. $18 trillion of American wealth so far transferred into foreign hands and millions of jobs lost. Hundreds of thousands of factories gone. That's the emergency. And the American people understand this. Main street understands this. Wall street is in denial about this. And this rogue court apparently doesn't think that having Main Street America dying from fentanyl and not having jobs is an emergency. We think it is, and it damn well is. Peter, thank you very much.
- [22:54]
David Pakman
So listen, as far as Fox News interviews are concerned, this isn't terrible, and it really does expose. There's not actually anything here. There's. There's nothing here for us to say. Here is the tangible gain of what we got from this entire fiasco. Now, meanwhile, there's the entire legal issue. A court two days ago saying no more tariffs. An appeals court yesterday saying, yes, the tariffs can stay until June 9th pending some broader decision. But put aside all of the legal issues with the tariffs. Countries aren't coming to the table. Countries aren't as terrified of what Donald Trump is attempting to impose as Donald Trump was counting on them being terrified. So I don't know exactly where we will be on this a month from now, but so far it's not really working out. Certainly it's working out exactly as serious economists predicted. It is not working out at all the way Donald Trump and people around him told us this was all going to fall into place for us. Elon Musk, the first buddy of Donald Trump, tech bro in chief, Doge Overlord, who is leaving the White House I believe today, is turning on Trump in a much more substantive way now, making it clear that Elon is against this huge tax and spend bill, the one big beautiful bill, the Republican tax cut bill. And Elon is not happy because exactly as I said two weeks ago, Elon realizes the Trump tax bill undermines Doge. He calls it a betrayal. Elon says he and his team were treated like whipping boys, but this was always coming. Musk and Trump were never actually aligned. Musk wants to slash government, privatize everything and build a future on Mars. Trump wants attention, chaos and power. And it was inevitable that this was going to blow up. One of them was going to blow it up and it just happened to be Donald Trump. So here's what's going on. Right before launching a SpaceX Starship, Elon unloaded on Trump's big beautiful bill. He said, it undermines the work Doge is doing. It increases the deficit, not decreases. All true, by the way, and this is Elon realizing he got played. The bill adds almost $4 trillion to the national debt. It repeals clean energy credits, which directly hit Elon Musk's businesses. And it has all of these short term tax breaks to buy loyalty through the end of Donald Trump's presidency, which completely makes a mockery of the premise of Doge, which is we're going to fix government by gutting it. We're not going to add more goodies. We're going to fix by elimination. Don't forget also that Elon Musk, through Doge, shut down a bunch of different programs, fired endless numbers of workers, walked into cabinet meetings wearing a tech support shirt, sort of putting his, putting himself at the center of all of this. He thought he was in charge. He was bringing his kid, very poorly behaved kid, to a bunch of these meetings and the kid was wreaking havoc and, and now he's whining that Doge is getting blamed for everything, even when it's not involved in everything. And that's what happens. When you turn your brand over to chaos and expect loyalty in return, it's betrayal, it's humiliation. And Trump's tax bill isn't just a policy shift. It's a total reversal of what Musk wanted. So the debt that Musk claimed he was shrinking, Trump blows it up with the tax bill. The clean energy incentives that were helping Tesla get rid of those Medicaid cuts delayed until Trump's out of office. So he doesn't take the heat. Probably, although we're not really sure. And meanwhile, what Elon has to show for all of this is a collapsed public image, Tesla showrooms under attack, Tesla's market share declining dramatically, and a stock price that has been unstable, to say the least. Elon now admits it. He says, I probably spent too much time on politics. He says he's not going to be spending nearly as much money in the future. And Trump mostly got what he wanted. He got headlines, he got hype, he got another billionaire to parade around who he can say, look, here's another billionaire who thinks everything I'm doing is awesome. And meanwhile, Elon's dealing with lawsuits and bad press and global protests, and Doge is essentially irrelevant. So the story here, there's a bunch of stories. One story is there is no serious example of cutting your way to prosperity. You really need economic growth for prosperity and just cutting and firing people. It doesn't get you to prosperity. At least we don't have examples we can point to. But this is also a case study in how MAGA populism keeps imploding. Because it was never about governance, it was about spectacle. Trump pretends to be anti elite, but surrounds himself with billionaires who flatter him. Musk thought he was an exception, the genius Trump would actually listen to. But Trump doesn't care about Mars. He wants it. Certainly doesn't care about clean energy. He cares about Trump. And so now Elon has realized he was disposable all along. You can't drain the swamp with a guy who wants to build luxury launch pads on government land. And you can't claim to fight the debt and then add nearly $4 trillion to it. So this is where we are. Elon is sulking. Trump's pretending nothing happened, and we're just giving Elon Musk a great send off. And we are going to be left with the bill. It might be the big beautiful bill, it might not be, but the cost. In that sense, we are left with the bill. So Trump's loyalty ends when you stop being useful. Elon is very Quickly learning that and we'll talk more about on the bonus show about the repercussions now for what is going to be left of Doge. In a jaw dropping press briefing, Trump White House press Secretary Caroline Levitt threw the Constitution in the shredder declaring America cannot function if President Trump has to deal with, deal with co equal branches of government having the ability to check his power. This is not a gaffe. This is the truth as she sees it. Take a look at this.
- [29:34]
Caroline Levitt
Tariffs. The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision making process. America cannot function if President Trump or any other president for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges. President Trump is in the process of rebalancing America's trading agreements with the entire world, bringing tens of billions of dollars in tariff revenues to our country and finally ending the United States of America from being ripped off. These judges are threatening to undermine the credibility of the United States on the world stage. The administration has already filed an emergency motion for a stay pending appeal and an immediate administrative stay to strike down this egregious decision. But ultimately the Supreme Court must put an end to this for the sake of our Constitution and our country.
- [30:26]
David Pakman
Yes. So that's not a misstatement. This is the official spokesperson for the President of the United States openly saying the government can't work. Right. If Trump is held accountable. If Donald Trump is in any way constrained by what he's allowed to do, nothing will work. Right. This is, it's not just authoritarianism. It's illiteracy. It's the opposite of how the United States government was designed to function. And it's the reason that we even have a constitution to prevent the president from becoming a king. And the entire reason that we have these branches is to keep any one of them, the legislature, the courts, the executive from steamrolling the country. But Caroline Levitt has a different view. It's all just getting in the way. The only real path forward is that Trump gets to do whatever he wants. Checks and balances to Trump are now a threat. Any kind of oversight is a deep state plot. Constitutional limits are optional. If I don't want them, I just turn them off. And it gets even worse because in the same briefing, Caroline Levitt was asked about it. This is, it's so humiliating. There was this maha report. Now you might be saying, David, what do you. Isn't it maga? No, this is a Maha make America Healthy Again report that RFK and others have been citing. It's a mess. It cites studies that don't exist. It goes, hey, here's one idea that's good based on these studies. You go, you check the footnotes. The studies do not exist. We don't know if it's chat GPT. We don't know what Caroline Levitt was asked about it and she goes, oh, no, no, no. Trump has total confidence. These were just formatting issues. Take a listen.
- [32:11]
Caroline Levitt
Investigation found that the hallmark MAHA Commission.
- [32:13]
David Pakman
Report that was released last week cites studies that appear to not exist.
- [32:18]
Caroline Levitt
We know that because in part, we reached out to some of the listed authors who said that they didn't write the studies cited. So I want to ask, does the White House have confidence that the information comes coming from HHS can be trusted? Ms. Yes, we have complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at hhs. I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed and the report will be updated, but it does not negate the substance of the report, which, as you know, is one of the most transformative health reports that has ever been released by the federal government and is backed on good science that has never been recognized by the federal government.
- [32:54]
David Pakman
And a quick follow up, can you.
- [32:55]
Caroline Levitt
Talk about what tools or research goes into production of these kinds of reports? For instance, is it AI that's used.
- [33:02]
David Pakman
To put together these reports?
- [33:03]
Caroline Levitt
Now, I can't speak to that. I would defer you to the Department of Health and Human Services. What I know is just what I told you.
- [33:11]
David Pakman
You know, I've had formatting issues. Formatting issues are like the bullet points are misaligned. You've got like the black solid bullet point and then like one of the open white ones, but they're both supposed to be black. That's a formatting issue. Okay, a one inch gutter when you wanted an inch and a quarter gutter at the bottom of the page, that's a formatting issue. The wrong font using that childish Comic Sans when you wanted a serious font, that's a formatting issue. When the studies you cite were never published, never peer reviewed or not even real. That's not a formatting issue. This is press secretary spin. It's really gaslighting. You're being told to believe Trump shouldn't be constrained by Congress or the courts. You're being told to believe in a debunked report filled with made up science. You're being told that reality has to blend with the whims of one guy. And if anybody stands in the way, government can't function all of a sudden. So Caroline is doing, I guess what she's paid almost 200 grand a year to do is say, without Trump and Trump alone with unchecked power, fabricating science policy and surrounding himself with loyalists who don't even understand what they're there to uphold the Constitution. That is the only way government can function. And that is what an authoritarian collapse looks like. Not tanks in the street, press secretaries who think the Constitution is merely a speed bump. We should be terrified at this point in time.
- [34:50]
Sponsor Voice
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- [36:03]
David Pakman
In a moment so bizarre that it kind of felt like satire, former Secret Service agent, former podcaster, current FBI Deputy director Dan Bongino had a public emotional collapse on Fox News because he has to go to work. Do you realize that he has to go to work in the morning and sometimes work late? And listened to Kash Patel flushing the toilet in his office or running the sink in his office. He whined on TV about the emotional strain of being divorced from his wife. He later met physically separated. Not that they've gotten a divorce, but maybe a little something Freudian in there. Uh, and it's, you know, it's really difficult to have to clock into an office. Who knew? Take a listen to Bongino here.
- [36:54]
Peter Navarro
I mean, I gave up everything for this. I mean, you know, my wife is struggling. I'm not a victim. I'm not Jim Comey. It's fine. I did this. And I'm proud I did it. But if you think we're there for tea and crumpets, well, I mean, cash is there all day. We share, our offices are linked. He turns on the faucet. I hear it, he's there. He gets in like 6 o' clock in the morning. He doesn't leave till 7 at night. You know, I'm in there at 7:30 in the morning. You know, he uses the gym. I work out my apartment, but I stare at these four walls all day in D.C. you know, by myself. Divorced from my wife. Not divorced, but I mean, separated divorce. And it's hard. I mean, you know, we love each other and it's hard to be apart.
- [37:34]
David Pakman
But you're doing some great work. You're straight now, the FBI, you move in buildings, there's a lot of change.
- [37:38]
Peter Navarro
I just one more thing.
- [37:39]
David Pakman
Can you imagine being in a position of national law enforcement leadership? You're one of the most important law enforcement officials in the country, and you're interviewed and you whine about it actually being a real job. Who could have guessed? Tens of millions of Americans wake up every single day. They get their kids to school, they deal with life. They still make it to their jobs without a motorcade, without Fox News therapy sessions, without pretending to be the victims of the grind. While, by the way, I can only assume he's still raking in money from book deals. And I don't know what the deal is with his podcast at this point in time, but certainly quite a cushion. Most people do what he's talking about without any of that support. But what's even more revealing is that these are supposedly the alphas. These are the strongest people. But the MAGA ecosystem has become so coddled in every way. They mock liberals for being snowfl and being soft and they're not real men and they can't handle anything. And here is Trump's own FBI deputy director breaking down because did you know he's got to go to an office and Cash Patel's over there doing who the hell knows what. Their offices are right up against each other. So the other double standard. So that's one double standard, the other double standard, and I think this is illuminating. Imagine if a female FBI official made the same comments, right? Starting to well up on national tv. Personal drama. My wife. I'm not seeing my wife front and center claiming that coming into the office was too much. She would get destroyed. They would be. You would hear from people like Hegseth. This is why there's a difference in what women and men should be doing. This is why we shouldn't have women in these positions. Fox News would be running 247 loops of the meltdown. Conservatives would be saying, she's not fit for duty, she's emotionally unstable. Is she really committed to the country? Laura Ingraham would be calling for a resignation. Right. But when it's a man, Dan Bongino, he gets sympathy, maybe he gets another assistant to help him out. So this is not about toxic sensitivity or toxic masculinity or anything. It's about hypocrisy, entitlement, and this absurd idea that holding a powerful position should come with no accountability, no expectations, and just praise for doing the bare minimum. I guess Bongino thinks he should just be able to sit at home and stop by the office from 1 to 2, have a meeting, sign a couple pieces of paper, and that's it. So, you know, if you're showing up to your job and it's that overwhelming, you have options. You can resign, you can go back to podcasting, you can go rage bait on Rumble and Troth Central. Nobody's stopping him from doing that. But what he's choosing to do is to have the job, but then to go on Fox News and cry about it because it's too emotionally taxing and tiring. And it's a real job. I'm working out at home and then going in. But cash use, uses the. The FBI gym or whatever. Pathetic. And when they want you to believe that they are the epitome of the strong alpha men or whatever, then you see stuff like this, it sort of calls it into question. Vice President J.D. vance may have just delivered the most unintentionally honest defense of Nazi collaboration that we have seen in mainstream American politics in a long time. And that says a lot. J.D. vance was interviewed yesterday and he tried to defend the sweeping deportation scheme of Trump by saying, look, I'm hearing people complain about a brain drain, but if you look at the 50s and 60s, the American space program, it was built by American citizens with some German scientists and some Jewish scientists who came over during World War II. The German scientists he's talking about were literal Nazis. Take a look at this. So the, the war, I don't call it a war. But obviously, President Trump, you have concerns about elite education in America. Harvard University. And I do too, and it's great, and college is too expensive. But are we getting closer to the point where we might have something of a brain drain? I haven't heard that phrase in a while. But I'm hearing that, you know, people at Johns Hopkins are getting nervous and.
- [42:24]
J.D. Vance
They, you know, they're going to Finland.
- [42:26]
David Pakman
They'Re, they're leaving, and they're concerned about the long term. They do kind of. And do some important work. These, these schools.
- [42:32]
J.D. Vance
Look, they do do important work. But I make a couple of points about this. First of all, I've heard a lot of the criticisms, the fear that we're going to have a brain drain. If you go back to the 50s and 60s, the American space program, the program that was the first to put a human being on the surface of the moon, was built by American citizens, some German and Jewish scientists who had come over during World War II, but mostly by American citizens who had built an incredible space program with American talent. This idea that American citizens don't have the talent to do great things, you have to import a foreign class of servants and professors to do these things. I just reject that. I actually think we invest in our own people. We can do a lot of good. You've heard that criticism in particular as the President has talked about cracking down on foreign student visas and their abuses. But I think that's actually an opportunity for American citizens to really flourish. And here's the second and maybe the most fundamental point, Greg. These institutions do an important job. But if you back up and look at American higher education over the past 20 or 30 years, there are a few incontrovertible facts. Number one, the hard sciences, particular biology, we have a terrible, what's called a reproducibility crisis, meaning most of the papers that are published in biology, they don't replicate. They're not good science. So even our elite universities are not often doing good science. Second important point, these institutions sometimes, by their own admission, are engaging in explicit racial discrimination, often against whites and Asians, in explicit violation of the Civil Rights Act. If the people's government can't come in, given those problems, and say, look, we got to have some accountability here. You can't violate the Civil Rights Act Act. We got to make sure that if we're funding science with federal money, you're actually doing good science. That's called accountability. That's not going to war on these institutions. And let me just make one final point about this, because I care a lot about this. I want these universities to reform and to accept that they are part of an American body politic, that if the American taxpayer is frustrated with these universities, they've got a reform. What they're doing instead, what too many of them are doing is Saying, oh, the Trump administration, this is dictatorial, this is fascism. No, this is democratic accountability. And I think the universities ought to see it as an opportunity. If they do that, they're going to get better and the American people will be better off because of it.
- [44:50]
David Pakman
You're back from. These guys are trying to rewrite every bit of history that they can. This is not like an obscure footnote. This is Operation Paperclip that. He's referring to the US government's secret program to import more than 1500 Nazi scientists after World War II, including SS officers and war criminals, to work on weapons, rockets and intelligence. These were not just German scientists. These were men who had built weapons for Hitler, many of whom used slave labor to do it. And Vance is bragging about it as a success story. Now, the most famous of them is one that is very much liked by Elon Musk's dad. The most famous such German scientist was Werner von Braun, Hitler's top rocket guy, who developed rockets that killed thousands of civilians across Europe. Von Braun later became the architect of the Apollo program and a guest on Disney tv, completely sanitized into an all American hero. But this wasn't like a science over ideology thing. It was ideology in disguise. These were men who committed atrocities. We brought them here, we gave them passports, we whitewashed their past, and then we handed them the keys to NASA. And J.D. vance goes, look at this great story. When we turned Nazis into national assets, that's how we should be treating American immigration policy. You can't make this crap up. And what makes it even worse is that Vance is doing this to defend equally backwards policy. What I mean equal, I don't mean equal to the Nazis. But just as absurd as Vance's defense is the policy that he is trying to defend. Mass deportation, xenophobic, fear mongering, and all of it. And he's trying to tell you, don't worry if we throw out a bunch of immigrants because we once built rocket with Nazis, we're able to bring the people that we need to be successful, successful. So of course it's historically tone deaf. It's sort of a confession or an admission that their vision of America is one where authoritarianism and brutality and white supremacist ideology are fine as long as you get results. If we can get the rocket, if we can get whatever we want to do, doesn't matter if we're importing Nazis to help us. And then I think it also would be worth mentioning, JD Mentioned Jewish scientists as well. The Jewish scientists weren't quietly assimilated into a top defense program. They were fleeing genocide and begging to be let in. Many were not let in. They were turned away. Others warned the US about Nazi Germany and were later smeared by the right for being too radical. So the rewriting of history here is completely deliberate. They want you to forget who these men were. They want you to forget what these men did and what we overlooked as a country to say, come on in. Why? Because if we forget that or we successfully overlook it, it gets easier to do it again. So yes, J.D. vance is right in one very twisted way. Our government once partnered with Nazis to build stuff. Whether that is the biggest calming statement in the context of what Trump's immigration policy is now, I struggle to believe.
- [48:16]
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- [49:45]
David Pakman
All right, let's get into Friday feedback for the week. You can always email info@david pakman.com if you have something to say. Positive, negative, constructive criticism, trolling. Try to keep to a minimum. But we will also feature YouTube comments, substack comments, Spotify replies, TikTok. You never know what will show up. We start with YouTube where Danny Baker wrote trump says only a stupid person would turn down a free jet, while the rest of the world says only a stupid person thinks that it's free. This is a perfect example of the messaging disconnect that we've been talking about. Danny's making a joke about, you know, Trump's only. Trump thinks only stupid people would turn down free jets. But the audience immediately understands nothing's really free when it comes to these political favors or gifts from billionaires. The pushback isn't about, oh, we're ungrateful for the generosity. It's not about that. It's that it is not merely generosity. It's that there are always strings attached. The real stupidity would be you don't recognize that every free ride comes with an expectation of reciprocity in politics. And if you think a free plane from Qatar doesn't come with that, who's really the short sighted one? Trump insists anyone would be dumb not to accept the plane. We all insist Trump's very dumb to think that the plane is actually free. And, and I'm glad that the people in my audience have figured that out and figured it out very quickly. Dan Capien on Facebook wrote in and said about my book, the Echo Machine, David Zeco Chamber would have been a better title for your book. How much did you pay for the bestseller label? But seriously though, I am grateful for the fact you really don't have a clue what's going on. And it's delicious. You know what's really funny? Dan brings up. I'll get to the book in a moment. Dan brings up an interesting point about echo chambers, though I think he's missing, like, the crucial aspect of this. The suggestion that my audience doesn't have a clue what's going on is backwards. Our audience, when we do viewer surveys, our audience is consistently more informed about policy details, polling data and political developments than the average cable news viewer. Now, do we have audience members who already lean left? Absolutely. But the echo chamber criticism falls apart when you look at how often we discuss, number one, uncomfortable truths about Democratic failures and number two, engage with right wingers all the time. I debated 20 of them on TikTok the other day who have every opportunity to show me how wrong I am and they failed to do so. So, you know, actual echo chambers wouldn't engage with that. Now, about the book. When we were in the pre order phase of the book and I would say, hey, we've gotten to 3,000 preorders. We have 6,000 pre orders, we have 8,000 pre orders, I would get messages like this one from Dan which would say, oh, what does it feel like to buy your own book? And as I explained previously, it's pointless to buy your own book. In bulk because all of the algorithms, including the New York Times Bestseller 1, are designed to exclude perceived bulk purchases of the book by the author. I know it's really hard for people who dislike me to understand this. My book was genuinely an instant New York Times bestseller. I'm so sorry that that's triggering to you. But it got to a level that only 0.15% of all books get, which is New York Times bestseller status. So the claims are I'm the one who ordered all of the books. I paid someone to get on the list. Give me a break, guys. Give me a break. But you know, it's kind of interesting that I'm living rent free in your head. That's an interesting development. All right, let's go to Reddit. Righty RIP asks Does Trump Last his Term? I've been thinking lately, as all the news comes out about Joe Biden's decline in his last two years of his term, Donald Trump's decline is already beginning to manifest. From Tesla to having things constantly repeated to him, it seems to me we might get a repeat. Additionally, he's very unpopular and an authoritarian, so I wonder what people put the odds of him finishing a term and whether or not he dies in office or gets removed. So the Reddit post raises a legitimate analytical question. This is not like a wishful thinking thing. The poster mentions Trump's age, Trump's decline. We've documented endless of these concerning incidents. I don't want to do like speculative health analysis, which can be problematic. What we can analyze is objectively, language analyses of Trump show significant decline even over the last two years. Never, never mind the last eight to 10. Number two, Trump's almost 80, obese, doesn't exercise, and eats a terrible diet. Statistically. Statistically it is not. It wouldn't be a major shock if Trump died in office. At the same time, there's the concept of a super ager. People who once they get to a certain age, they stay relatively healthy well into their 80s. That could also be Trump now on the does Trump get replaced? Thing. No, Trump does not get replaced. The Republican Party, once it looks like Trump has crested the horizon and is going over to greener pastures, be that as a lame duck. After the 26 midterm, for example, you will see Republicans strategically start to disengage from Trump, but they're not going to remove Trump. Over on YouTube, Walter Ashmore says he suspends habeas corpus, people get violent in the streets. Then he declares martial law because of all the violence, fascism, playbook this is exactly correct. Walter, knowingly or not, is describing a classic authoritarian escalation pattern. And that's exactly the kind of institutional stress testing that we should be monitoring. The suspension of habeas corpus followed by a martial law declaration is exactly the authoritarian playbook. We've seen a variation of it in Hungary, we've seen it in Poland in periods of time. Historically, we've seen it in Chile. So the key insight here is you often get a manufactured crisis or the exploitation of existing unrest, and then the reaction to that is used to justify a further clampdown. So absolutely correct analysis from Walter, and we need to pay very close attention to where that leads. Michael Shermer on Facebook says, I'm the David Pakman show and I'm a pathetic propagandist hack journalist and have run out of content. So I keep saying Trump has dementia and Caroline Levitt is stupid. I have zero political substance in my contact, so I'm just name calling and reaching for any views as I live in my own echo chamber. You know, Michael's comment is probably the most honest thing I've read in weeks. He's essentially admitting that he is tuning in for confirmation bias rather than information. Anything that conflicts with his existing worldview he dismisses. And you know what, at least he's self aware about it. But it does raise a pretty disturbing question about media consumption in 2025. And I'm sort of starting to research this more deeply for my, for my next book. What is the difference between giving people what they want to hear versus giving people what they need to hear? Now I try to do both. Okay, when I believed that Biden, despite having age related decline, was still the most likely to win, I told you that. And then when my view on that changed after the June 27 debate and I no longer believed Biden fit that bill, I told you that there were people in the audience who didn't like when I changed my mind based on the facts. And that is, if anything, one of the bigger conflicts that I sometimes have with the audience, which is we don't want to hear that Harris is losing in the polls.
- [58:33]
Peter Navarro
We don't want to.
- [58:33]
David Pakman
We don't want to hear that Biden maybe shouldn't be running. And so my primary goal here is always to tell you how I see it without dressing it up in a calculated way. And then beyond that, the analysis and the conclusions we come to are obviously open. Open for discussion. Over on Spotify, I got the following message. Hey David, huge fan of the show. I've been listening for almost a year now. My question is how, how come reporters have to sit there and take verbal abuse from Trump? Obviously it's decorum and proper not to talk back to a president, but nothing about how he talks to reporters is proper or respectful. Hopefully you get to this on a Friday episode. This is an extraordinarily good point. Okay. We have seen presidential hostility by Trump to the press normalized. The idea that reporters should just sit there and take it because of decorum is exactly how authoritarian behavior gets normalized. Respect is earned through respect. When a president consistently attacks, mocks and undermines journalists doing their jobs, I don't believe the appropriate response is silence, acceptance. The press is supposed to be a check on power. Now if, when Trump attacks Kaitlan Collins from cnn, if she starts insulting him, I don't think that that's the right response. It would just get her kicked out of the press briefing room. It would then, okay, she gets attention. But I think the right response would be, sir, I believe that's an inappropriate way to speak to a reporter. I think that approach and then saying, and sir, you just said something that is factually untrue. So I would like to see a little more spark when Trump goes after reporters in this way. I don't need them hurling insults, but they also shouldn't ignore it completely. That's where I'm at on it. Let me know what you think. Jesse says, bro, enough commentary. Just play the clip. Sorry, but you said cognitive collapse or something akin to it at the beginning of every video for weeks. To which Lurch replied, he did play the clip. And Jesse says, be a facts based new reporter, not an opinion based one. So I have two. This. These could be difficult truths for you, Jesse. Number one, this is an opinion show. Okay? This isn't. The whole show is based around what do I think about stuff. I don't claim to be a journalist or a reporter. I'm a commentator. If you don't want to hear my opinion, this is just the wrong show. And we've had many times where we have this conflict with people who go, I don't want to hear what you're saying, just play the clip. Well, this is the wrong show. This is an opinion show. Finally, you know, we've gone back and forth about I play the clip right away and then comment on it or I introduce the clip we've landed on. I introduce the clip again if you don't like it. If you're watching on YouTube, you can skip right to where the clip starts. Do whatever you want, but this is my show. At the end of the day, I will give my opinion and the the opinions will continue until the morale improves. Tater Tot Tushy wrote on TikTok, you guys are looking at this the wrong way. It's a numbers game. At the end of Trump's term, they're going to go, wow, look at all these people off of SNAP benefits. The economy is booming. This comment shows sophisticated political thinking. Congratulations, Tater Tot Tushy, a very sophisticated username. Tater Tot is recognizing that SNAP benefit usage is going to be weaponized for political messaging. That is a form of strategic analysis. We see it and we go, look, he didn't improve this metric. He didn't improve this metric. GDP is down, all these different things. And we say there's no case to be made that he's done a good job. But Tater Tot is recognizing, you can go, hey, we got 75,000 people off of food stamps. That's a win. It doesn't matter if food stamps are the most economically stimulative form of government spending. They are. It doesn't matter if now people are struggling to find food, which they will. You can just go, we got 75,000 people off of food stamps. That's a win. You didn't get them off food stamps by getting their income up high enough that they no longer qualify. You just change the rules of the program or strip them or whatever. So this numbers game observation is very astute because it recognizes something that we sometimes miss when which is political messaging often matters way more than outcomes in electoral politics. We saw that in November. Very good comment on the bonus show today. What happens to Doge now that Elon departs today? I believe the White House is getting sued over getting rid of sign language interpreters. Interpreters. And the FBI says it's going to show us a video that will definitively prove Jeffrey Epstein took his own life. He was not killed. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up@join pacman.com it takes a minute. And remember to get on my newsletter on Substack, which will soon be relaunched, expanded and rebranded. You can sign up@david pakman.substack.com have a great weekend. I'll see you on Monday.