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The David Pakman Show
5/6/25: China isn’t calling Trump, but the FCC wants to cancel CBS
01:04:15
-- On the Show: -- China is ignoring Donald Trump on making a tariff deal, and we analyze the underlying economic asymmetry causing this -- Former Vice President Mike Pence comes out forcefully against Donald Trump's tariffs in the continued...
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- [00:00]
David Pakman
Forever.
- [00:07]
Scott Bessant
Welcome, everybody. Let's start today talking a little bit about China and really just some of the economic realities and asymmetries that are governing a lot of what we are seeing right now in this kind of alpha jockeying, types of attempts to push other countries to do what this administration wants. Remember when Trump told us that China was begging for a trade deal? We were told that they're calling and they're texting and they're sending telegrams and they're lighting smoke signals in the sky to get back to the negotiating table. They're desperate to make a deal. We were told they're crying. Strong Chinese men sobbing like kids. They're going to cave any day now. A bunch of Trump's allies were swearing to us and we've now learned that this really isn't true. Check out this clip from Scott Bessant and then we'll talk about it. You're heavily involved here. You have said they need to de.
- [01:08]
David Pakman
Escalate and start that process for us.
- [01:10]
Scott Bessant
To get going on trade talks.
- [01:12]
David Pakman
Have they made any effort at this point?
- [01:14]
Scott Bessant
I think, I think we could see substantial progress in the coming weeks. We'll see that as I think it's starting. That which is not sustainable doesn't continue. So 145%, 125% tariff levels are the equivalent of an embargo. And we're reading every day what's happening with factories in China. And from an academic point of view, I can tell you that the history of trade battles. We are the deficit country, the surplus country always has the most to lose. So they need, they need to make more gestures.
- [01:59]
David Pakman
What is it that you're looking for and is that happening? Is there a negotiation about the negotiation?
- [02:04]
Scott Bessant
Yeah, we'll see over, over the coming weeks and we'll see what President Trump wants to accept.
- [02:10]
David Pakman
Right.
- [02:10]
Scott Bessant
I mean, have they offered anything on.
- [02:12]
David Pakman
The fentanyl, for instance, precursor ingredients?
- [02:15]
Scott Bessant
Only what they have said, said publicly. So, and you know, I can tell you so, not a phone call, not a meeting, not a, hey, we've got a new phone. Who's this? None of it. Right. This is the sort of global economic equivalent of ghosting. And Donald Trump, the self proclaimed, you know, master negotiator is standing there holding a dead phone. There's nobody on the other end. And he's screaming into the void about 10% blanket tariffs, 154% blanket tariffs, 254% blanket tariffs which are supposedly going to be so damaging to China that they're going to come running and crawling all at the same time back to us. Except the problem is that when you talk to actual economists, you realize that because of the economic asymmetries in terms of how the American economy is set up versus the Chinese economy, this is going to hurt American consumers and American businesses way more than it's going to hurt anyone in China directly. So we're going to get back to the directly part of it. But the point here is that this really isn't deal making. It's a delusion. And the entire Trump trade strategy is really built on the fantasy that China needs us more than we need them. And therefore, they are going to blink first and the tariffs are going to be some magical lever that will fix everything and bring a new golden era of prosperity to the United States. Now, intuitively, I know most of you know that that's not true, but we're seeing it now. We now have over a month of this. And China simply isn't playing the same game that Donald Trump is playing. If you are China. And by the way, I think it goes without saying that I want the US to do well economically. I don't like any of this. When I tell you now the things that China is doing that set them up to better weather this storm than the United States, these are just facts. I wish it were different. I'm gloating. Are happy about this. China is watching the United States sabotage itself with these inflationary tariffs and the declining investor confidence and the chaotic administration that didn't even get a return call because Trump wanted to play chicken. And China sort of like parked the car and walked away while Trump is still driving on the highway towards what he thinks is China. And it's really driving Donald Trump nuts. China is a much stronger. They're in a much stronger position than the United States right now. And Trump and his base don't want to admit this because it would really go against the framework that they believe to be true. Number one, China has long prepared for exactly this kind of economic standoff that Donald Trump is now pushing. And what China has done, that makes them more robust and resilient in this situation. It's not a perfect economy by any means, but in this situation, with regard to trade with the United States, China has diversified trading, trading partners in a number of industries. They've invested in belt and road infrastructure. They've ramped up domestic production and consumption to be less reliant on exports from the United States. So when Trump rolls out these blanket tariffs, thinking that he has the cards Remember, he told Zelensky, you don't have the cards. Trump believes he has the cards with regard to China. But China can afford to wait it out because they can take the pain for longer. It's just a reality, you know, Trump says, well, there's going to be some short term pain here, but it's going to be long term gain. The American public does not seem willing or able to a great degree to tolerate the pain nearly as long as China is able to tolerate it. And China's system doesn't hinge on short term public approval. This is one of the benefits of a pseudo authoritarian regime. I hate pseudo authoritarian regimes. I'm not an authoritarian. But one of the realities is that when that is the way your country is organized, their leadership isn't up for reelection. Every four years it's a different scenario. Trump has a sort of calendar to beat and China does not. Now, meanwhile, you look at the American economy far more exposed. American companies rely heavily on Chinese manufacturing, on Chinese rare earth minerals supply chains that we can't just onshore overnight. And so the blanket tariff isn't just or really attacks on China. It's a tax on American consumers and businesses where prices will go up. And manufacturing to the extent that it still exists here is going to slow and voters are going to get angry. And so this is why when we go back to 2024 or even 2023, when Trump started kind of waxing poetic about these tariffs, libertarian economists, liberal economists, centrist economists, progressive economists, not for the exact same reasons in every case, but they all were warning, the US Is not positioned. We don't have the cards to win this trade war. By the way, the trade war will hurt everybody. But there's an asymmetry where it's going to hurt the United States more. China knows it. And no matter what Trump to troth central, that doesn't trick China into believing things about the American economy that aren't true. And so they are sitting aside and they're watching the United States tie itself into economic knots. And from their perspective, it's really an incredible opportunity to rise in terms of global superpower economic dominance. So not only is this not good at the micro level, on the short term for the American consumer and business, this actually potentially is going to let other countries realize, including China, hey, we have way more cards to play than we thought. And the United States may actually have fewer cards to play. So this is a much worse situation than is even reflected in the up and downs of the stock market or whatever numbers you want to look at. And Trump is sitting around waiting for a phone call that simply isn't. Isn't coming. She's already found a different date to the promotion is the analogy that I would apply in a moment that would have been unthinkable during the MAGA peak. Former Vice President Mike Pence has called out Donald Trump's tariff policies on national television. This is interesting. Not because it's shocking that Pence doesn't like tariffs. Just about everybody understands, regardless of your view on abortion or gay marriage, just about everybody in the US Understands that the blanket tariff idea is a disaster. But the reaction to Pence is what's interesting. So let's take a look at the clip and then talk about it.
- [09:08]
Mike Pence
That really is part of the American dream. I remember recently the Secretary of the treasury said that cheap goods was not a part of the American dream. Well, I'm somebody who spent almost my entire life in public service. We lived on our paycheck while we raised three kids and put three kids through college. Cheap goods are a big part of it. I think we ought to be candid about that. What I will give the President credit for is conceding the fact that his tariff policies will raise the cost of goods for consumers, whether it be toys or pencils or other products. And I appreciate him being forthright about that. I just think the American people.
- [09:51]
David Pakman
But is he being.
- [09:52]
Mike Pence
Cherish their freedom to. Cherish their freedom to purchase their goods at the lowest possible cost. And that's not to say that at the end of the day, there are key industries that are important to have here. But I think the way we generate manufacturing jobs, I think the way we generate high tech jobs, the way we generate the kind of jobs that will serve America's security and prosperity is by making the Trump Pence tax cuts permanent, rolling back regulation, lowering the cost of energy across the board, and making America the most attractive place in the world to invest and create jobs.
- [10:32]
Scott Bessant
So listen, this is a clean hit, right? Very clear. The tariffs are bad and here's why. And Trump's in favor of them and I'm against them, and I'm his former vice president. But the interesting thing about this is that there's nothing heroic here about what Mike Pence is doing. It's just basic economic sanity. And any kind of Republican who's not in a cult, Libertarian focused Republican, a constitutional conservative, if you're not in a cult, you should be able to muster up a pretty sensible criticism of the blanket tariff policy. Fine. Obviously, Pence has not become A progressive. He's not joining Antifa. He didn't endorse Medicare for all. He just acknowledged that tariffs are taxes. Americans will pay more for basic goods under the blanket tariff plan. That's it. That's sort of like a basic bar that's been set. But what we have to understand if we zoom out, and this is as much about tariffs as it is about the Trump culture, is that Trump has lowered the bar so much that Republican extremists. Mike Pence is a Republican extremist. Republican extremists start to look a little bit reasonable. This is the same Mike Pence who spent four years enabling Donald Trump and spinning, you know, biblical justifications for authoritarian power grabs, backing policies that gutted social programs and reproductive rights. And, you know, when it came to January 6, 2021, Pence didn't help Trump try to steal the 2020 election. Now he admits that tariffs raise prices, and it's a bad idea. Great. But it's being treated like a profile in courage, even though this is obvious basic stuff. And Pence has absolutely nothing to lose. There's no stakes here for Mike Pence. And so this is a symptom of a broader problem, which is that Trump has broken the scale. We're trying to weigh things on a scale that Trump has broken. And that's not a fat joke. I know some people might hear it as a fat joke. It's a just a metaphor. It's so bad and so brazenly corrupt and dishonest and dangerous that even people with horrible records start to seem like voices of reason by comparisons. You know, we kind of dealt with this with George W. Bush. You know, we sometimes, I would say Bush war criminal, legacy of torture, mass surveillance. Going to war with a country that wasn't even involved in the attack used to justify the war. Terrible. But at the same time, Trump is so much louder and more chaotic and more openly fascistic that in some sense, Bush has started to be painted as a kind of kindly grandpa with his paintbrush, doing his pictures in the bathtub or whatever. And Pence, like Bush before him, is benefiting from what we might call Trump relativity. Next to Trump, a lot of things look relatively normal or benign, even if they're not. And the real kicker is that, of course, Mike Pence is right about tariffs. The blanket tariff plan, Trump's dream for, you know, improving the American economy and pretending we don't rely on a global supply chain. It's an economic time bomb, and even Mike Pence recognizes it. So I think the approach here should be not. Wow, it's amazing that Pence has been able to come to the light. No, it's that any sane person, any remotely credible economist, whether you're a libertarian or a socialist economist, these tariffs are disproportionately going to hurt poor and middle class consumers. They raise costs on essential goods, they invite retaliatory trade wars and create these asymmetries where the US Is really not set up to win. So Pence has figured that out. You know, give him a golf clap for saying something that's true. But we really can't erase the role of people like Mike Pence not only in propping up Trump when it counted, but also we can't reframe them as moderates of any kind, because Pence is really the epitome of the religious right wing extremist that has done so much damage in this country and prevented so much progress. So recognize it shows how far off the rails Trump has taken the Republican Party. Acknowledging reality as Mike Pence does feels like some kind of rebellion. But that's what should terrify us. Because if Trump is the standard, we are grading not on a curve, but on a crater. So good for Mike Pence. He said something completely obvious, but these are simply not our political allies.
- [15:09]
Caroline Levitt
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- [17:06]
Scott Bessant
The David Pakman show is an audience supported program and I really appreciate everybody who has entered the ranks of membership over the last several weeks. Membership is our primary source of funding. You can read about it@join pacman.com we do an extra show every day for our members. It's called the Bonus Show. If you like this show reasonably, you will probably like the bonus show. We also make commercial free versions of the show, audio and video, whichever you prefer, available to our members every single day, hours before the show is published. Read about it. Check it out@join pacman.com we have a genuinely chilling moment to talk about an attack on press freedom, an attack on free speech which the party in power claims to value. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr casually suggested revoking CBS's broadcast license as a punishment for what he personally sees as biased reporting. Take a look at this. And over the years the FCC has stepped back from enforcing that public interest obligation. I think the FC should do what Congress wants us to do and enforce those laws. We're going to see where this investigation goes.
- [18:25]
David Pakman
Are you threatening to pull their license?
- [18:27]
Scott Bessant
Wouldn't that be a pretty drastic step? Well, it's not a threat. That's a penalty. That is in the Communications act that if you don't. But when was the last time the.
- [18:33]
David Pakman
FCC pulled a broadcast license?
- [18:35]
Scott Bessant
Yeah, it's been a long time. I think that's part of the issue. If you step back, you know, trust in the national mainstream media is at an absolute low right now. It's not just my view. Jeff Bezos himself did an op ed where he said that. But what's really interesting is that actually local stations, local TV stations have a lot of trust. And so the agenda that I'm trying to run at the FCC is to empower those actual local television stations to serve the public interest. What we've seen is you got national news media, abc, NBC, cbs, and they're exercising more and more control over those local TV stations. And I don't think that's a Good thing for the country. So we're trying to reverse that at the same. This is not normal. This is not a policy debate. This is a veiled threat, and not really that veiled from a government official targeting a major media outlet simply for doing its job, which is reporting on the government. This is straight out of authoritarianism 101. This is straight out of 20th century authoritarian playbook. And if you look at history, many authoritarian regimes have started by discrediting and then silencing the independence of media. Now, I don't mean independent media in the sense of like non corporate media, like the David Pakman Show. I just mean the independence of any media outlet to report whatever they want as they see fit. Mussolini took control of Italy's press and forced newspapers to align with fascist propaganda. Hitler's Nazi regime shut down opposition papers and banned foreign broadcasts and replaced journalistic reporting with government spin through one of the ministries. I forget what it was even called. Stalin turned the Soviet press into this monolithic state mouthpiece using licensing and surveillance and purges to completely wipe out dissent. And then more recently, we saw Erdogan in Turkey, we've seen Orban in Hungary systematically take over, shut down, or squeeze out critical outlets, all while claiming that they defend freedom and they are all about the people's truth. So that's the playbook. We've seen the playbook and now we are watching it unfold. In the United States on primetime cable news, it's been creeping closer and closer to independent media as well, with a sitting FCC commissioner threatening one of the largest news organizations in the country. Now, when you confront them about it, if anyone ever does, they say, this is about transparency, we are transparent. This is about fairness. We are a fair administration. But you can't censor media and say it's transparency. You can't act in a way that narrows the scope of opinion or reporting that's out there and say that you're promoting speech and transparency and fairness. It just doesn't make any sense. It's corruption. It's not free speech. It's the destruction of free speech. And the silence is deafening. Most networks are barely even covering this. And if I had to guess why, it's because they don't want the same sort of attention and threats turned on them. So what we end up with are the people who said there are no greater defenders of the First Amendment than us going after the speech of the free press as government entities, which we would call limiting First Amendment rights or powers. Now let's step back for a Second, one of the things that we were told often during the campaign of 2024, which lasted years, right, when Trump started talking about this stuff in 2022 and 2023, we were told, oh, now you don't need to worry about a lot of this stuff. This stuff would never, could never happen in the United States. We were told there are, there are safeguards and there are laws. But we are seeing it here, right? There's no euphemism here. There's no veil or disguise. It's raw power trying to silence the press. And Trump has said why he's so furious with 60 Minutes and with CBS. So it is not a coincidence that this is happening at a time when Trump and his allies fantasize about this revenge tour that they're on. They want to jail people, firing civil servants in large numbers through doge and otherwise silencing media outlets that they don't like. This is if you are a student of 20th century authoritarianism. I know I've said it before. We just talked about it in the last segment. We've spoken to Ruth Ben Guyot about it. When a party starts treating the press as the enemy, the goal is not better journalism, it's no journalism. It's we want propaganda, our propaganda and talking points repeated by the media. And if they don't do it, we're going to go after them. And they want to take accountability and replace it with loyalty, the most important currency to these authoritarian regimes. Once you cross that line, it rarely stops at one network. I mean, honestly, ask yourself if they succeed in some way with CBS, and arguably they already have. A 60 Minutes executive resigned, said that the show is not operating independently out of fear based on the threats and attacks they've already gotten hit with from the Trump administration. They are already self censoring. So no matter what happens legally, no matter what the FCC does, as far as the broadcast license, they're already self censoring. This is how the authoritarianism doesn't arrive all at once, but its pieces delegitimize the press and get a lot of people thinking, oh, it's all fake news media. Trump did that during term number one, threatened to bring down state power against them. We're seeing that use now more in term number two. And then all of a sudden you get this vacuum that conveniently gets filled with propaganda right from the horse's mouth. Trump or Caroline Levitt. And I'm not saying she's horse faced. I know people are going to interpret that. It's a metaphor. Okay, we've seen it before. So the question now is, will the press and the public fight back before it's too late? If you care about press freedom and media independence, this should be like a five alarm fire. I don't know that independent media won't be in the crosshairs. We've already started to be. The Trump rapid response Twitter account has been putting out excretions about things that happen on the David Pakman show. So listen, 60 Minutes has a lot of money. CBS has a lot of money. Make sure you're subscribed to the independent shows that you like, subscribe on YouTube or subscribe to our podcast. All this stuff is free. And the more consensus we can build around independent shows being valuable, we don't know what's coming down. We just don't know. But certainly having a larger base of support is going to better position everybody to kind of beat off and beat back. What are these inevitable attacks? A Donald Trump is unraveling increasingly quickly and we have to have a tough conversation. There is no pretending otherwise. Trump is increasingly unable to respond coherently to basic, straightforward questions. How did you decide? Or why do you want to reopen Alcatraz as an island prison? We talked about this on the bonus show yesterday and then Trump was asked about it. He didn't answer. We're going to look at the clip. Trump asked a really simple question. Why do you want to reopen Alcatraz? And Trump launches into an unhinged story about being a supposed movie maker and how someone almost escaped Alcatraz but got ripped up by sharks. This is the president of the United States. Take a listen to this. How did you decide to reopen Alcatraz?
- [26:27]
Donald Trump
Can you walk us through that decision?
- [26:28]
Scott Bessant
Did I say what to reopen Alcatraz?
- [26:31]
David Pakman
How will you use it?
- [26:32]
Scott Bessant
How did you come up with the idea?
- [26:33]
Donald Trump
Well, I guess I was supposed to be a movie maker. We're talking, we started with the movie making. It will end. I mean, it represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order. Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is, I would say, the ultimate right. Alcatraz, Sing Sing and Alcatraz, the movies. But it's right now a museum, believe it or not. A lot of people go there. It housed the most violent criminals in the world and nobody ever escaped. One person almost got there, but they, as you know the story, they found his clothing rather badly ripped up. And it was a lot of shark bites. A lot of, lot of problems. Nobody's ever escaped from Alcatraz and Just represented something strong having to do with law and order. We need law and order in this country. And so we're going to look at it. Some of the people up here are going to be working very hard on that. And we had a little conversation. I think it's going to be very interesting. We'll see if we can bring it back in large form, add a lot, but I think it represents something. Right now, it's a big hulk that's sitting there rusting and rotting. Very. You look at it, it's sort of an. I mean, you saw that picture that was put out. It's sort of amazing, but it sort of represents something that's both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak. It's got a lot of. It's got a lot of qualities that are interesting. And I think they. They make a point. Okay, are you.
- [28:10]
Scott Bessant
These are truly the confused ramblings and rantings of someone who does not know what is going on. What does that even mean? That is not a policy explanation. It is not even a coherent anecdote. These are disconnected, random words coming out of the mouth of someone who has no grip on what is actually happening. This is the man that millions, tens of millions of Americans, one in charge of the nuclear codes. And it only gets worse. After New York Catholic cardinals condemned a Trump meme portraying himself as the Pope, Trump lashed out. Take a look at this. Some Catholics were not so happy about.
- [28:57]
Donald Trump
The image of you looking like the Pope. Oh, I see. You mean they can't take a joke. You don't mean the Catholics. You mean the fake news media. Not the Catholics. Loved it. I had nothing to do with it. Somebody made up a picture of me dressed like the Pope and they put it out on the Internet. That's not me that did it. I have no idea where it came from. Maybe it was AI, but I know nothing about it. I just saw it last evening, actually. My wife thought it was cute. She said, isn't that nice? My question about, actually, I would not be able to be married, though that would be a lot. I'd have. To the best of my knowledge, Popes aren't big on getting married, are they? Not that we know of, no. No. I think it's a fake news media that, you know, they. They're fakers. My question.
- [29:45]
Scott Bessant
So Trump, who obviously did post the image, now says, maybe I did it, or maybe he didn't do it, or maybe it was a joke that wasn't his. He's contradicting himself sentence to sentence, and it is the rhetorical equivalent of shaking a Magic 8 ball and reading whatever floats to the top and then asking it the same question and then you get a different answer and none of it is coherent. Trump then bemoaning and this is terrifying. Trump be moaning out of nowhere that suddenly the courts are saying people deserve due process. How did this happen? How did courts suddenly, on a whim, say, oh, due process needs to happen. Take a look the courts.
- [30:33]
Donald Trump
Because the courts have all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they said, maybe you have to have trials. Trials. We're going to have 5 million trials. Doesn't work. Doesn't work. You wouldn't have a country left, but hopefully the Supreme Court will save it. But what they've done is a very, very serious thing.
- [30:52]
Scott Bessant
You know, suddenly this is the foundation of the American legal system. This is not new. This didn't just happen. But Trump sounds genuinely confused by the idea, as if due process is some annoying new policy trend invented to bother him personally. And when Trump was asked what he expects from a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, here's what Trump had to say. What's your expectation for your meeting with the Canadian Prime Minister tomorrow?
- [31:23]
Donald Trump
I don't know. He's coming to see me. I'm not sure what he wants to see me about, but I guess he wants to make a deal. Everybody does. They all want to make a deal. Because we have something that they all want. We have something that they all want. China wants to make a deal very badly. You see what's happening to China. China is being decimated, and I don't want that to happen.
- [31:42]
Scott Bessant
That is not what Carney wants to meet about. In fact, Carney has been critical of Trump's erratic economic policies and his authoritarian tendencies and the idea that Carney's desperate to make a deal. Trump has no idea what's going on. He. This is painting a disturbing picture. We know that Trump is ideologically dangerous, and his love affair with authoritarian strong men as the people he wants to replicate, that's all horrible and dangerous. This guy's cognitively unfit. These are not quirks. These are not unfiltered raw moments. These are just the signs of a guy who's confused, he's incoherent, he's out of his depth, and he's not improving. He's getting worse. You know, we were talking about this in 2023, but go back to a Trump interview from 2023. He was far more coherent then than he even is Now. Never mind 2021, where he had already declined significantly from 2018. So if this were your neighbor, you'd say, something's going on here. If this were your pilot, you would refuse to board the plane. But this is the president who is now saying, I'm doing everything and I know all the answers. But he can't even coherently answer the most basic of basic questions. Later in the show, we're going to address why is Trump so obsessed with dementia tests? And there's something in his family history that I believe explains it. Make sure you're getting our daily Substack newsletter. Go to David pakman.substack.com to sign up. We'll take a very quick break and be right back.
- [33:26]
Caroline Levitt
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.
- [34:14]
Scott Bessant
Teeth while you sleep.
- [34:16]
Caroline Levitt
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. We've covered on the show extensively how more and more people are stepping away from organized religion. For some, it's just the realization I don't have to participate in that. And all of a sudden we have seen a serious shift. But not everybody is okay with that shift. Christian nationalism is on the rise. They are working overtime to put their beliefs into the law, into our schools, even into our personal lives. It's sort of like, hey, I respect your right to believe whatever you want, but just don't make me live by it. And that is where the Freedom From Religion foundation comes in. Our sponsor, the Freedom From Religion foundation, fights to keep church and state separate. This is what the founders intended. So whether you've always been secular or you've left religion behind or you have.
- [35:31]
Scott Bessant
Beliefs that you don't think should be.
- [35:33]
Caroline Levitt
Part of our government, FFRF has your back. Join the David Pakman show in helping FFRF. Go to FFRF.us,/freedom or text David to 511511 and become a member today. That's FFRF.us,/Freedom or text David to 511 five 11 to join the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The info is in the podcast notes. Text fees may apply.
- [36:08]
Scott Bessant
Well, Fox News is panicking right now and it is a fascinating situation to look at. Here's what's going on. President Trump's approval ratings are collapsing and even Fox News, his own polls, can't hide that reality anymore. The new numbers are very grim. This story really isn't about the numbers. It's about this kind of interplay between right wing media and the Trump administration. But there's a Washington Post poll that says Trump's got 39% approval, 55% disapproval, terrible number. New York Times and Marist College have him barely above 40. Trump's support among rural voters, which is normally his strongest group, are now split 46, 44. And of course, last week, even Fox News polls had Trump in the toilet, which made Trump advisor Stephen Miller say to a Fox host, you've got to fire your pollster. But the truth is that Fox polls, which are of course, as is often the case done by outside pollsters, it's not Sean Hannity calling people and asking his friends, do you like Trump? Fox News polls are also a problem. This is a problem for Trump's presidency, but Fox News is also scrambling and resorting to spin tactics of all kinds. For example, Laura Ingram dismissed the polls as fake. Said pollsters aren't sampling enough Trump supporters. Of course, the reality is sampling is something that pollsters very well understand and they know how to get a sample or adjust the sample to be representative of the population at large. This isn't a new thing. They think they've stumbled across some big gotcha. But like this is polling 101. Brian Kilmeade, on the other hand, has sort of tried to downplay the significance of the polling. He says, you know, you can't judge Trump's presidency by only a hundred days. The reality is, historically, this is exactly how you judge presidents. You check their polling at any particular time. And one of the things we know is that polling in the modern era tends to decline over time. Only 9, 11 type events will have a significant boosting effect on approval. So the fact that Trump's approval is this low at a hundred days actually is really significant, significant historically. We then saw Maria Bartiromo, who took the denial to a new level and labeled Trump's presidency a huge success, which is of course completely disconnected from reality. And then we had Ari Fleischer, a former Bush official, say that the MAGA base is solid, even though we are starting to see evidence that there is real economic pain from Donald Trump's aggressive tariff policies building. And what this has led to is that even hardcore Trump supporters are starting to call into right wing shows like Sean Hannity's and voice frustration over the tariffs hurting their businesses. They've not turned on Trump. They're not saying, I would have rather Kamala. That's not where they're at. But there is palpable economic anxiety. And when they call into the right wing shows, when Fox News sees the writing on the wall, it starts to challenge Fox's narrative that everything is going great and Trump's doing a phenomenal job. Now, this is not the first time we've seen Fox News in this position. After the 2020 election, Trump's anger at Fox sparked a bunch of internal panic. And of course, the reason they were panicking is they didn't want to lose action access to Trump. That's the, the, that's the, the sort of core of access journalism. And Fox News had to figure out what to do. Trump is now attacking Fox again. This time he's targeting their pollster. And it is another sort of signal to. It's a hand wave at his authoritarian instincts. Trump's latest federal budget proposal calls for massive cuts to education and the environment and, and all of it. And this is only going to worsen the crisis for many aspects of the economy. Republican lawmakers recognize the budget is politically toxic. And what does Fox News do? They end up in this corner. If Fox News goes on air and admits to Trump's failures, it could lose them significant portions of their MAGA audience. If they ignore reality, they are going to have a growing base that turns it on and goes. What they're talking about is simply not what's happening in the real world here. And so where does Fox go with it? They can double down on culture war distractions. That's always a safe bet. Avoid the discussions of everything that's going wrong with the tariffs and economically ignore the economic impacts and just do the contrived culture war issues. But there's a limit to that. Fox viewers are feeling the pain personally, and that is forcing a confrontation between reality and Fox News is propaganda. So Trump's collapsing poll numbers are a political problem for Trump, but they're a media problem for Trump. Friendly media and it will develop these cracks in the ecosystem. Will Fox have to face the truth? I don't know. But just doing the contrived culture war stuff, I don't know that it's really going to work. Donald Trump is terrified of dementia. And there is a fascinating report that explains why he might be so obsessed with these supposed cognitive tests that he claims to ace every single time. Now, I want to be really clear and deal with this with tact and empathy. This is serious stuff and I understand being terrified. If I were Trump, I would be terrified too. Let me explain. It's very clear that Trump lives in fear of developing dementia, just like his father, Fred Trump, who died after years of serious cognitive decline from Alzheimer's. That is an understandable fear and it's an absolutely terrifying thing. MSNBC guest Timothy O'Brien, who has covered Donald Trump for decades, says Trump on a day to day basis is terrified of cognitive decline like his dad's. And if you watch Trump lately, you know, the slurred speech, the blank stares, the rambling word salads, the completely incoherent answers when asked simple questions like why do you want to open up Alcatraz, for example, it's not hard to to see why Trump is terrified. It is not speculation. Trump's own nephew, Fred Trump the third, said last year that he sees the same signs of decline in Donald that he saw in Fred Senior, saying, quote, if anyone wants to believe dementia doesn't run in the Trump family, it's just not true. So that brings us to Trump's strange obsession with the cognitive tests. Remember him bragging about acing the person, woman, man, camera, TV test. It was never about proving that he was sharp. It's that Trump has a need to convince himself that he's not falling apart. We've seen this with other people. Let me remind you about this guy, Christopher Key, that's the anti vaccine urine drinker who I interviewed on the show a couple of years ago. In talking to Christopher, he revealed that his son has a urine related medical condition, phenylketonuria or something like that. And suddenly in that interview, go back and check it out if you haven't seen it, suddenly that the urine drinker's obsession with urine made sense. It's a personal situation that turned into he drinks his own urine him. Okay. There's a similar analogy here with Donald Trump. He is obsessed with these cognitive tests and proving how with it he is because he's terrified that the same thing might be coming that hit his father years ago. And that's what sort of makes this so dangerous. A man who's worried that he may decline cognitively, who maybe already is, is holding the most powerful office in the world. He's proposing reckless budgets. He's attacking his own government. He's demanding third terms. He's slurring through speeches while Fox News pretends his normal. The clip recently of Trump confidently saying abrego Garcia had MS.13 tattooed on his knuckles when MS.13 was photoshopped onto that picture. That confidence is eerily familiar to people who have watched cognitive decline up close. It's the sort of mix of certainty and confusion where Trump goes, what? What are you talking about? No, he's got MS.13 on his. What do you mean, Photoshop? Huh? The stories get more bizarre, but the delivery stays forceful and confident. It's classic. It's classic. And what really makes it bad is the circle of enablers around him pretending nothing's wrong. There were legitimate criticisms after Biden dropped out that there was a circle of enablers around Biden. We've heard that significantly with covering up Ronald Reagan's cognitive decline. And we're seeing it with Trump. They smile and they nod and they cheer, even as the signs become really difficult to miss. You don't need to be in the room. Trump has always projected his deepest insecurities onto others. You know, he's been calling Biden senile for years, but look at Trump's own clips lately. He mocked John Fetterman for slurred speech after a stroke. Even though Trump was actively slurring his way through every single rally, he's not randomly accusing others. Trump is showing what he fears becoming. And so this is not about mockery. This is about risk. And Trump's refusal to acknowledge what might be happening is exactly what makes him more volatile and dangerous. The more afraid Trump is, the more he lashes out, the more he needs the stage to remain in power and to keep himself afloat. So I don't blame the guy. I would be afraid, too. Ego is a part of it, sure. Survival is a part of it, sure. But as President of the United States, we're all stuck with the fallout. And it all seems to be driven by one of Trump's greatest insecurities. Who's ever talked this much about passing a brain injury test? Well, folks who are obsessed. Obsessed with what might or could be happening to them. What do you think? Seems like a very reasonable explanation.
- [47:15]
Caroline Levitt
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- [48:25]
Scott Bessant
Did you.
- [48:26]
Caroline Levitt
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- [49:54]
Scott Bessant
Caroline Levitt is the White House press secretary. She is increasingly panicked and desperate because of what we're seeing in the polls, because of what we're seeing in the economy. And she went on Fox News last night and delivered one of the most desperate sales pitches that we've seen. And it was rough. It's sort of like desperate to Sell a product everybody knows doesn't work. Levitt made the claim that the trade deals are all moving along in a positive and productive direction. Everything's great and now things are going to be extra good because Trump is putting new tariffs on the film industry. We talked about this on yesterday's bonus show. It makes no sense whatsoever. Intuitively, it makes no sense. Here's what she had to say to try to defend yet another disastrous idea.
- [50:45]
David Pakman
The trade deals are continuing to move along in a positive and productive direction. The Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of Commerce, the President himself, continue to be engaged on this every single day, keeping in mind the American worker and reshoring jobs here at home. You had a new announcement from the president yesterday. Tariffs on the film industry. We're going to make Hollywood great again. And it's just one of the many great proposals the president has had to make our country boom again and to bring jobs back here to home.
- [51:16]
Mike Pence
All right, our White House briefing with Caroline Levitt. Caroline, always good to have you. Thank you.
- [51:21]
Scott Bessant
So let's break this down. Trump wants to slap tariffs on Hollywood, on movies, as if punishing the film industry is going to revive the economy. You know, the other tariff ideas were bad enough, but this is acutely ridiculous, acutely ridiculous. As if the issue with American manufacturing is Pixar movies are too inexpensive to produce or it's completely incoherent. And the takeaway is that this is really unserious policy. Most anyone can tell you that you don't grow an economy by putting an import tax on film production, production. It's just, you know, you can make a case for tariffing semiconductors from other countries to onshore them. You can make the case on steel. You could make the case on certain raw materials or even on some finished products. But the film industry, it just doesn't even plausibly make sense. What you need to do is invest in infrastructure and invest in labor and innovation. You don't pick fights with Hollywood. It just doesn't make any sense. Now, one of the, I don't feel bad for her, but it's because she's doing this willingly. But it is interesting to see how there is no idea too dumb for Caroline Levitt to defend on tv. And I get it. It's her job, right? She, Trump says, let's open Alcatraz. She's not going to go on TV and go, it's a terrible idea. But hearing her defend it is what's very interesting. And the topic of reopening Alcatraz came up. We talked about this on the bonus show yesterday, talked about it at the top of today's show. Here is Caroline Levitt explaining why this makes such great sense.
- [53:07]
David Pakman
Great to see you, Sean. Thank you so much. And this is a phenomenal idea by President Trump that will be executed upon. In fact, I can confirm for you that the White House has already administered calls with the Bureau of Prisons out counterparts at the Department of Justice and our counterparts at the Department of Interior, because Alcatraz is now run by the National Park Service, and we know our great Secretary of Interior, Doug Burgum is in charge of that. So the Bureau of Prisons has already confirmed that they are assessing next steps to reopen this notorious prison. And the reason for it is because President Trump is leaving no stone unturned to restore law and order to our country and to make it very clear to criminals, repeat offenders, not just illegal immigrant criminals, but also American citizens who have refused to comply with our nation's laws. If you have been repeatedly breaking the law, if you are in and out of prison, that is ending under this administration. President Trump's team is going to enforce our laws and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. So we are absolutely looking into this, assessing next steps. And it's a part of the President's big picture law and order agenda, which is obviously working, especially when you look at the illegal border crossings at our southern border. The border is secure, mass deportations are underway, and law and order is back in America, thanks to President Trump.
- [54:29]
Scott Bessant
So this is not a plan. This is a movie plot. Alcatraz has been closed for like 60 or 70 years. It's a historic landmark on an island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. I visited multiple times. The only staff there is sort of like park staff. It's a, it's a monument, it's a, it's a park. At this point in time, there's no prison staff, obviously, because it's not a prison. There's no infrastructure. There's really no reason to revive it, especially when the federal prison population is actually down 25% and existing facilities have excess capacity. You have empty space at existing prisons, not on islands that don't require boats to get to. Why would you spend the years you would need to spend to get Alcatraz ready to be functional again? When you have empty space at on land federal prisons, you know, it's isolated, it's not remotely equipped to house prisoners again without years of renovations and millions of dollars in taxpayer money. And they want to pretend that it's an efficient place to completely rehabilitate and reopen. Even if you don't care about humane conditions for inmates, think of the logistics for guards and staff. If you visited Alcatraz, you know that guards and staff used to live on the island. Are we really going to build a new ferry system? There's a ferry system, but it's for tourists. If you're really going to be transporting prisoners and then also workers back and forth all the time, you're really going to build that. Even though we have empty space in federal prisons. And the takeaway is that none of this is about policy. It's performance politics. It's designed to distract from the failing economic agenda. It's supposed to stir up, I don't even know, nostalgia and fear and Hollywood vengeance fantasies. But seeing Caroline Levitt in a totally desperate state defend every last failed notion from Trump, it is really something else. I don't feel bad because this was her choice, but it's certainly pathetic. In what might be one of the most telling interviews of Elon Musk's unraveling, he started, he did an interview with Jesse Waters on Fox News. I can't say I encourage you to watch all of it. I've got sort of like the relevant parts here to show you. He offers some now pretty familiar justifications for his obsession with Mars. It's sort of the stuff 9 year olds think about when they first hear about Mars. And a lot of it doesn't really make any sense. Take a listen to what Elon had to say. This is a backup plan in case something bad happens here. Going to Mars.
- [57:15]
Elon Musk
That's one of the benefits of Mars is, is life insurance for life, life collectively. So eventually all life on Earth will be destroyed by the sun. The sun is gradually expanding and so we do at some point need to be a multi planet civilization because Earth will be incinerated.
- [57:36]
Scott Bessant
I'm hearing this for the first time. No one's ever told me the sun is going to burn. I'm not disagreeing with it. I'm just saying I didn't know this was our destiny to get, get roasted by the sun.
- [57:48]
Elon Musk
Yes. And I don't think there's anyone who would disagree with that.
- [57:50]
Scott Bessant
So we have to set up plans to leave and spread out.
- [57:54]
Elon Musk
I mean, we have several hundred million years. So it's not like you don't hold, don't hold your breath, it'll be okay. But if Earth has been around for four and a half billion years, which is what the fossil record suggests, then Earth only has about 10% more life in it before it is, before it gets so hot that life is impossible.
- [58:16]
Scott Bessant
And you're going to be the guy to put us closer to where we need to be to get to Mars.
- [58:23]
Elon Musk
We're headed there. Yeah, we have a long way to go. Because it's not about just landing on Mars and doing flags and footprints. It's about creating a self sustaining city on Mars. With the, the fundamental fork in the road of destiny being that Mars is sufficiently self sustaining and can grow by itself. If the resupply ships from Earth stop coming for any reason, whether that is because civilization died with a bang or a whimper. But if, if the resupply ships are necessary for Mars to survive, then we have not created life insurance, we've not created life insurance for life claim collectively. So that's, that's the key point in the future. Where destiny of life as we know it will forever be affected is when Mars becomes self sustaining.
- [59:16]
Scott Bessant
You know it is true, right? I mean the sun will eventually expand and consume the Earth in several billion years. Mars is going to become uninhabitable before that. And based on current science, this whole terraforming idea to make Mars habitable outside of forcing humans to live underground or in bubbles, that would take centuries realistically until humans have the technology to make that transformation possible. And it's, that's a lot of what this whole Mars idea is based on. But then Elon goes even further and shifts into sort of like a sci fi pluralism. Take a look at this. Why are we going to Mars?
- [60:01]
Elon Musk
Well, we're definitely, you know, this is a change of subject, but we're going. It's not about going to Mars to visit once, but it is to make life multi planetary so that we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness to better understand the nature of the universe and to ensure the longest term survival of civilization in the hopefully unlikely event that something terrible happens to Earth, that there is a continuance of consciousness on Mars.
- [60:32]
Scott Bessant
You know, there are people in my audience who think the entire Mars thing is just a terrible idea. I'm all for going to Mars. I'm all for space exploration. I think it's natural for humans to do it. I know there are people on the left and right who for different reasons think it's not worth it, that it's stupid, that it's pointless. I think it's all great. But we do have to understand what Mars will and won't do for us and the scale on which it will and won't do it. There are numerous good books about this, which I've read, and there's this kind of metaphysical techno jargon that plays well in some circles or like a Doge meme, but it's really a distraction from real priorities. And that's the problem with a lot of the Mars talk. You know, expanding the scope of consciousness and all of this stuff sounds great, but Mars can't grow food. Mars can't sustain breathable air. It can't replace Earth's complex biosphere. And the ideas about how to get Mars to that point seem to be on the order of hundreds of years away, if not longer. And so the problem with the Mars talk is when it becomes a sort of we don't have to worry about climate change on Earth, we don't have to worry about depleting Earth's resources or depleting the atmosphere, because Mars is a suitable replacement. It's not going to work on the timescale we would need it to work in now in terms of the sort of, like, financial utopia that Musk was supposedly building with Doge that's also collapsing. And I think that there's an analogy between the completely unrealistic claims about how quickly and how impactful Doge would be with the completely unrealistic claims about how quickly and impactful sending humans to Mars is going to be. I think that there is an analogy here. And if you look at, you know, the speculative hype that drove Dogecoin to the Moon and then it came back to Earth, if you look at the speculative hype about how many trillions Doge as an agency was going to cut, and then they cut a fraction of it by claim. And then when we dig deeper, we find that a lot of those cuts weren't really cuts, and a lot of it was actually done under Biden. It's all very similar magical thinking from Elon Musk. Now, I'm interested in the Mars topic. If you want to read more about the limitations of Mars, there's a really good book by Robert Zubrin, the Case Against Mars. I've interviewed him about it. There's another great book, the Planet Remade the End of Astronauts. All these books really talk about the limitations of Mars and they make one point really clear. You can't swap Mars for Earth. I'm all for all of it, up until people start saying we don't have to worry about XYZ on Earth because of the Mars project. And unfortunately, a lot of people have fallen for it. Let me know what you think. Are you into the Mars idea or not. I assume most people in my audience understand it's not a suitable replacement for Earth at really at any time, first of all because of the amount of time it would take to make it habitable and then long term on the scale of billions of years because it's not going to be habitable anyway when the when the sun starts to expand. So let me know your thoughts on Mars. We've got a great bonus show for you today. We're going to talk about Australia's elections. We're going to talk about how despite getting more powerful, AI Is still hallucinating, but it's getting better at convincing you that its hallucinations are real. And we will also talk about a woman who appears to hurl a racist slur at a kid has raised over $600,000 in donations for herself. What is going on? All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up@join pacman.com.