← The David Pakman Show
The David Pakman Show
7/2/25: Disaster bill passes, Trump wants to deport citizens, job losses mount
01:05:38
-- On the Show: -- David Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic and New York Times bestselling author, joins David to discuss his new book "The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America" -- The Senate passes Trump’s tax-cut bill by gutting...
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- [00:08]
David Pakman
Ladies and gentlemen, the Senate passed a bill which will strip health insurance from at least 17 million people. And they did it to pay for more tax cuts. Here is vice president J.D. vance brought in to break the 5050 tie in the Senate, casting the tie breaking vote as the Vice President is able to do. Here is the moment, with a little bit of applause. Not that much, to be honest. On this vote, the yeas are 50, the nays are 50. The Senate being evenly divided, the Vice President votes in the affirmative. The bill as amended is passed. Yeah, so this is going to be a tough show, I can tell you right now. Let's break this down. This bill is part of Trump's legislative push to get a massive tax giveaway that Republicans rushed to do before July 4th. But to fund it, they're gutting Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care act. Elements over a trillion dollars in cuts. Medicaid takes the biggest hit. Now, remember that back in Donald Trump's first term in 2017, they had a health care proposal. They didn't do it because it would have led to 24 to 32 million Americans losing health care. And they realized that's very bad for us. We can't do that. Apparently they've decided that 17 million losing health care is an acceptable price to pay. So this is not like a bureaucratic reshuffling, some vague legislation off somewhere in the distance that won't really affect people. This means that there will be disabled people who lose coverage. There will be working poor people, most of them. Most, most poor work, who lose coverage. Seniors in nursing homes who will have limited coverage, low income kids who will lose coverage. If you look at the CBO estimate, nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, 17 million people will be kicked off of health insurance over the next decade as a result of this bill. Half the country doesn't even seem to know that this is going on. Here's how it will happen. If you are on Medicaid, you'll get extra paperwork twice a year. You miss it, you're out. You need help. And states have underfunded offices that you can call for help with limited hours that conflict with your work schedule, you're out. Second, if you are a working adult under age 65, you will need to prove that you're working 80 hours a month or you could lose coverage as well. Even if you're already working, you missed the documentation, you're gone. There's a new $35 copay for some doctor visits for somebody who's scraping by. That's the difference. Between getting care and saying I'm not going to go be seen. And for people who buy insurance on the Affordable Care act marketplaces like me as a self employed person, enrollment windows are going to be shorter. Automatic re enrollment is going away. Subsidies won't kick in until your eligibility is verified. That can take take weeks, if not longer, meaning you will pay full price until the bureaucracy catches up. You can slow down the bureaucracy and make it unaffordable for people, but it gets even worse. The bill will target abortion providers, banning them from even billing Medicaid for non abortion services. Planned Parenthood says a third of its clinics are potentially going to close. Republicans love that. Many of these clinics serve poor women who are coming in for birth control, cancer screenings, not abortions. If you live in a rural area, your hospital could be next. Cuts to Medicaid mean more uninsured patients, less money to keep hospitals running. One estimate says hospitals could lose $750 billion under this bill. Fewer hospitals open means longer ER wait times, even closures. You go to nursing homes, an area that's been ravaged by private equity. By the way. Read the book Plunder if you're interested in learning about how private equity is ravaging nursing homes. 60% of long term care residents rely on Medicaid. You take funding away. Facilities will have to close. Beds stop accepting Medicaid patients entirely. Where will those seniors go? All of this. Hospital closures, coverage losses, paperwork traps. This is the, the, the cost or the price of another Trump tax cut. And remember, Republicans know this. Some of the Republican senators said we're concerned about the Medicaid cuts, but then they voted for the bill anyway. Lisa Murkowski is one of those people. She froze and just stared at a reporter when asked about this yesterday. We'll get to that. So if you're keeping track, 17 million or more will lose coverage. 600 family planning clinics at risk, rural hospitals on the chopping block, seniors in nursing homes potentially displaced. And why? So that billionaires can pay less in taxes. Again, this is cruelty disguised as policy. And it's happening right now. Now, I've said many times before, the 2017 Trump tax cuts were great for me. They created a new business deduction. Exactly. For my type of business, I got a great tax cut. Now, did I go and hire more people because of that? No. Why not? Because it doesn't work that way. I hire more people when there is more demand for the product or service that I am offering. Simply giving my business a tax cut doesn't create more demand for my product or service, in fact, because we're viewer funded, the way that we expand is by my audience having more money so that they can afford memberships or they can afford to buy the products that our advertisers are offering. So I'll take it. Right. As I've said before, me alone, sending in more money is in policy. This is not how we fund a modern, western rich country. But the cruelty here, it's happening right before our very eyes. And a little bit later, I'm going to, I'm going to sort of, I'm going to do a segment in a little bit that I think might upset some people, but it's going to be very real. And so we'll get to that. But first, I want to talk about Lisa Murkowski. Sometimes silence says more than words. And what happened yesterday with Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska is like nothing I have ever seen. Let me set the scene for you as we check out this video. The Senate passes the big ugly bill, the death bill, the beautiful bill, call it what you want. Devastating cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, subsidies, 17 million people at least, projected to lose health care coverage over the next decade. But Lisa Murkowski was on the fence. She might vote for it, she might vote against it, right? But she ends up voting for it. Why? She struck a little side deal. She got a goodie. She got a little bit of funding for rural, rural hospitals in Alaska. A little carve out for her, basically. Ryan Nobles catches Murkowski in the hallway and she asks, she is asked a simple question by Ryan, which is, rand Paul says, you sold out your vote for a little side deal for Alaska. And she stares at Ryan. You are going to hear silence because she's just staring at him. Once she gets past the blank stare, listen to what she says. Senator Paul said that this was, that your vote was a bailout for Alaska at the expense of the rest of the country. That's what Senator Paul said. We've got the. I didn't say it, ma' am.
- [08:40]
Lisa Murkowski
I'm just asking for your response.
- [08:44]
J.D. Vance
My response is I have an obligation to the people of the state of Alaska and I live up to that every single day. I fight for my state's interests and I make sure that Alaskans are understood. I work hard to take care of a state that has more unique situations, more unique people, and it's just different. And so when people suggest that federal dollars go to one of our 50 states in a, quote, bailout, I find that offensive. I advocated for my state's interests. I will continue to do that and I will make no excuses for doing that. Do I like this bill? Bill, no.
- [09:48]
David Pakman
That's the key part. Okay. Do I like the bill? No.
- [09:50]
J.D. Vance
Try to take care of Alaska's interests. But I know, I know that in many parts of the country there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill. I don't like that. I don't like the fact that we moved through an artificial official deadline.
- [10:14]
David Pakman
So she doesn't like it. But she did what was best for Alaska, which is she got something for her constituents. Now there's two sides to this. Murkowski knows exactly what she did. The bill was going to pass and this is what I'm going to talk about in a moment. This, this bill was going to pass. They were going to offer goody after goody after Goodyear until they get to 50 and then they bring in JP Mandel, JD Vance to be the tie breaking vote. This is as ridiculous and disgusting but as honest an answer as we have heard from any senator. She knows the bill will hurt tens of millions of people. She knows seniors in nursing homes are going to lose beds. She knows people on Medicaid are going to get kicked off. But she voted for it anyway. Why? Because she knew what we've been saying for weeks, which is the bill was going to pass. So she, as she's getting pushed towards it, grabs anything she can off the wall and now even members of her own party are calling her out. So this is where we are in 2025. I don't feel bad for her. She did this to herself. But there is a certain real politic here that relates to what I really want to dig into with you right now. The big beautiful bill passed. Of course it did. Of course it did. We all knew that it would, didn't we? No, we didn't. I was getting emails from people, David, let's call this senator and get him to oppose the bill and let's do this and let's do that. I said it weeks ago, okay? This bill is going to pass. Republicans were always going to pass some version of this damn bill in the Senate. The day it passed the House on the bonus show, I said to Pat, you know what's going to happen, right? You're going to have a handful of Republican senators. They're going to suck up media attention. People are going to go, oh, let's convince this person or that person not to vote for the bill. And then they don't have the 50 that they need apoplectic headlines for days, four or five, six days, people staying up all night. You should see the chat threads. I'm in. Let's call this person's office that they don't have the votes. If you have any idea how this works, you would have known the moment it passed. The House Republicans are going to pass this. And it's just a matter of offering enough goodies. We flipped one vote. Now Murkowski doesn't like the bill, but she got some goodies for Alaska. Now we got 50. In comes JD Vance to pass it, okay? They had to pass this bill that they knew that the marching orders from the top. What the Trump White House demands is, is this bill must pass in some form. And so now we've got the whole same game going on. We can block it in the House. The House is ultimately going to pass some version of this. Okay. And I wasn't pretending otherwise. Now, you might recall that over the last two weeks, I didn't do this whole thing of, you know, this all might come down to Rand Paul, let's call his office. There were, there were a lot of people doing that stuff. Okay? You saw my interviews with senators and such last week, and they would say what we really need to do is kill the bill. And of course, I agree ideologically that's what we need to do, but it wasn't going to happen. And when this filters into the broader discourse, I think that it actually damages the possibility of if we acknowledged somehow they're going to pass it, maybe we could focus on let's get some things in the bill that are good for us, good for the American people. And so I've done this long enough to know how this goes. Now here's the part that's going to be difficult. I think this is going to upset some people in my audience. Sometimes it doesn't seem everybody in my audience wants the truth. Okay. When I say they're going to pass the bill, David, you're being defeatist. David, you're giving up. When I say there is not really a path to stopping this because it's going to be Republicans negotiating with Republicans to get 50 of them because they have more than 50 to go, I'll go for it. And in comes J.D. vance. And sometimes I end up in the position where I think some in my audience want me to sell a feel good story. We can stop this thing if you just make the right phone call. If I go, guys, we're not stopping this. Can we get some things in there? That we think are good. Maybe that's the effort because we're not stopping this. I don't know which story my audience wants to be told. This is not the first time that honesty pissed off some people in my own audience. When I told my audience after the June 27 debate last year that Joe Biden is going to need to drop out of the race, it's unrecoverable. The pressure is going to be too great. He's going to have to drop out. A very loud section of my audience lost it and said, david, what are you talking about? What are you. Biden's not dropping out. You got to be behind him because he's the. It was obvious he was going to have to drop out. And some people in my audience didn't like that when I said in September and in October, guys, Trump is beating Kamala Harris in every damn swing state poll. Every single one of these seven states that are usually swing states. Trump's winning all of them. And I got flooded with messages saying, david, you're spreading defeatism. We need you to stay positive on election night, when at 7:05pm Eastern, the Indiana and the Kentucky numbers came in and Trump was leading by three times what he won those states by in previous elections. And I said, that looks bad. And then by 9pm as we saw the gap in Pennsylvania swing from a Harris lead to a tie, to a teeny tiny Trump lead, to a medium sized Trump lead, to a bigger Trump lead, and I said, guys, those numbers do not look recoverable. There aren't the votes left. There were people saying, david, it's only nine o' clock. You're being defeatist. So what am I supposed to do, okay? Am I supposed to lie to make people feel better? It's just not what I do. My preference is let me say the hard thing and be right rather than say the comforting thing and let people walk into surprise, okay? I'm here to tell the truth, even when it's frustrating. This bill passed not because we didn't protest enough, not because we didn't call Rand Paul's office enough times or Lisa Murkowski or whoever. The system is fundamentally rigged and Republicans control everything. Now, I want to say one more thing about this. I still believe in pressure, right? It's not that I think we just let Republicans pass this with no challenge calling their donors. I believe in all of these as tactics. We, we should make everything as hard as possible for Republicans to do. It matters, to make them sweat and to recognize that a lot of this country despises what they're doing. That's part of the long game. But I don't see the value in doing the dog and pony show when we just don't hold the power and going, I think we can defeat the skies if we make enough calls. So there's, there's a conflict, there's a contrast here, a tension between these two things. So I don't think it's time to spiral. I don't think we disengage. We expose the bill, we track the fallout. When it goes back to the house, we see can we get some things in there that are objectively good, even though they're going to pass the damn bill. But I think we need to be a little more honest here. I don't know what my audience wants from me, but my instinct is not to do the were just one vote away from defeating this thing. They were always going to give handouts until they got to 50 and then bring in JD Vance to be the hero. So let me know what you think. Does this anger you? Do you, do you not want to watch or listen to this show anymore? Because that's my attitude, not the, you know, let me sell you some fantasies thing. I want to hear from you. OK. Info@david pakman.com subscribe to the YouTube channel if the perspective I'm outlining, if my attitude makes sense to you and get on my Substack newsletter where I am going to be writing more about this@substack.david pakman.com I'm here. The mustache is here, albeit briefly. We've got a great show for you today. 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If you've never thought much about your underwear, this is the one brand that might make you start. Go to sheath underwear.com/pacman use the code PACMAN for 20% off. That's s h e a t h underwear.com/pacman use code PACMAN for 20% off. The info is in the podcast Notes as an audience supported program, we are really at the mercy of our audience. This show exists at the pleasure of the viewers and the listeners. I encourage you to get a membership at join pacman.com you can become a substack page paid subscriber at substack.david pakman.com or become a Gold member. Trump has his Gold card. Gold members who are subscribed both to the website and to Substack really appreciate everybody. It pains me to tell you this today for the first time in more than two years, private employers cut jobs last month for the prior 26 consecutive months, every month. And employers added jobs, in other words, 26 months in a row. At the end of each of those 26 months, the country ended the month with more private sector jobs than it started with. In June, that number went down. June ended with fewer people working for private employers than there were on June 1st. To make things even worse, the May numbers were revised down. So in May we added just 29,000 jobs. In a sense we are in a net negative of jobs. For two consecutive months we had plus 29,000 followed by minus 33,000. So over the last two months we have a 4,000 private sector job decline. Why did this happen? Employers are reluctant to hire due to fears of what is coming in this economy. And so we aren't seeing mass layoffs, but what we're seeing is that when, when people leave, when workers leave jobs, many are simply not being replaced. Companies say, we're going to eliminate that position. We're not going to hire someone new to fill it. Now there is some good news. We are seeing some wage growth. There's an expectation for two rate cuts this year, which the reason there is that expectation is because things aren't looking so hot. But the rate cuts should help a little bit. And like I said, we are seeing like a trickle out, it's not a layoff wave. Now this is where Donald Trump's tariffs can really start to play a role. Remember that we are now just a week from the deadline July 9th for Trump's 90 deals in 90 days, we could see that completely explode an already slowing job market. If indeed Trump goes, hey, we didn't actually get any deals done. All the tariffs are going into place. We would see higher import costs. This would hit American businesses that rely on foreign parts and materials, meaning they are going to need to either eat the costs or cut jobs to stay afloat. If you are a company that's already hesitant to hire or replace workers, Trump's tariffs going into effect, depending on what happens in a week could tip the balance from we're not going to replace people that quit to we've got to actually start layoffs here. So we are now looking at this self imposed deadline from Trump. Will he follow through with blanket tariffs or won't he? Now, I have to admit that on a personal level, when I look at the stock market, I'm glad that the stock market is stable and is not following what we are seeing right now in the job market. But there is a reasonable question, why isn't the stock market collapsing given the warning signs that we are seeing? Well, one of the things that's going on presumably is investors are saying, ok, things aren't looking so hot in the job market. But now that we expect two rate cuts from the Fed, we can keep buying or at least not sell. But these signs of cooling are potentially a real problem. I hope that that doesn't happen. Now. One of the unfortunate things that's happening if you're a Fox News host is that you're bragging about the economy becomes more difficult when these sorts of job numbers come in. And you've got to see what happened when the job numbers broke on Fox News. Fox News host and Trump brownnoser Maria Bartiromo was live on air, when the disastrous jobs report came in, there was an announcement that in June, the country lost private sector jobs rather than gained them. And Maria Bartiromo goes, we're getting the jobs number. And then when they learn that the country lost jobs in June, she changes the subject so quickly that I'm surprised it didn't give her whiplash. Let's check it out.
- [26:32]
Maria Bartiromo
Course, President Trump is talking about this bill leading to growth in the economy. We are waiting any moment now to get the jobs numbers for the month of May. The expectations call for the ADP numbers to be up 95,000 for the month of June. Rather, it's the June jobs data. And will, of course, right now seeing, seeing the number actually show a decline in jobs, down 33,000 on. On ADP, the bill includes $25 billion for the Golden Dome, the missile defense system. Senator, you introduced a bill supporting.
- [27:06]
David Pakman
Back to the bill. Golden Dome. This is what happens when your job isn't journalism, it's cheerleading. And you look at the scoreboard and it shows the wrong score. Your team's losing. You pretend you didn't see it. We've been, oh, here's the score. We lost. You know, I've been watching our practices. We're just killing it during practice. The problem is that other people did see this coming. So Maria Bartiromo scramble is really emblematic of a deeper issue. There is a cognitive dissonance required to defend Donald Trump's economic claims in the face of hard data. Because for months, Trump has been saying, we're going to have so much growth because everything's going so well. We had Q1 GDP decline. Oh, we don't want to talk about that. But we were told, don't worry, jobs are going to be supercharged and the numbers are going to be great. But we've got looming tariffs and market volatility, even though the market has recovered. What, What? It lost some companies instituting hiring freezes. The first private sector job loss in 26 months. So all of a sudden, reality contradicts political identity. And if you're Maria Bartiromo, you go, I'm bailing out mid sentence. I just got a bad number. I don't want to talk about that. And so the commitment to Trump, as often is the case, when you commit to cult leaders, it becomes a trap. The deeper you go, the more ensnared you are. With the cult leader, it becomes more and more difficult, sometimes impossible to acknowledge when the leader has failed. And this is the nature of cults of personality. Loyalty is the currency. Critical thinking is not. Thinking for yourself is not objective. Analysis of the facts is not valued. Loyalty is valued. Sometimes reality doesn't cooperate with loyalty. We were told the economy would soar. It's kind of sagging. We saw job decline. And you end up looking ridiculous. You end up on live TV going, where can I look? What else can I talk about? This is a much bigger moment than Maria Bartiromo. When your political credibility is built on unwavering faith in one man, even if he's orange, right? It's an orange man, but it's a man nonetheless. When you're, you're, your vision is based on, based on loyalty to Trump rather than the facts, you're no longer doing an analysis. You're doing damage control. And viewers will start to notice these jobs numbers are people's lives. 33,000 more people than at the beginning of June now don't have a job. And they have to figure out, how do I pay for my life? And so pretending everything's fine. And the golden dome provisions in the bill are so cool when people are losing their jobs, it's dishonest, it's dangerous. I think people are going to see through it. In today's episode of if Joe Biden had done this, Donald Trump suffering another brutal cognitive crash. Trump was asked during a press conference down in Florida where they are launching this prison camp, Alligator Alcatraz. How much time do you believe detainees will spend in this prison camp? And Trump goes, I'm going to be down here a lot. I live in Florida. If Biden had done this once, they'd be demanding his immediate removal. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Go straight to a mental institution, as Trump likes to call them. Here is Trump.
- [30:42]
J.D. Vance
Dana Marie McNichol, Fox News Channel. Mr. President, is there an expected time frame that detainees will spend here? Days, week, months? And does that have anything do to. To do with the immigration judges? You just spoke about being trained and staffed here.
- [30:56]
Donald Trump
When you say, what was the first part of your question?
- [30:58]
J.D. Vance
Who. Is there a specific time frame you expect the detainees to spend here? Days, weeks, months?
- [31:05]
Donald Trump
In Florida?
- [31:05]
J.D. Vance
Yes. Here I'm going to spend a lot.
- [31:07]
Donald Trump
Look, this is my home state. I love it. I love your government. I love all the people around. These are all friends of mine. They know them very well. I mean, I'm not surprised that they do so well. They're great people. Ron has been a friend of mine for a long time. I feel very.
- [31:22]
David Pakman
This answer is completely nonresponsive to the subject matter. Trump not only clarified the question and still is saying, I'm going to be down. He was asked twice, how long are detainees going to be here? I love Florida. I'm going to be down here a long time. If this were Biden, it would be a week of Fox News.
- [31:45]
Donald Trump
Comfortable in the state. I'll spend a lot of time here.
- [31:48]
David Pakman
Going to spend a lot of time in Florida. Question was, how long will detainees be held here? Trump then slurring his way through an impenetrable word salad about washing machines. This, if Biden had done it once, would have been all you hear about.
- [32:06]
Donald Trump
I know how good we were. But others was getting rid of rules, regulations and all of the things that I got rid of already. I signed more executive orders than anybody in history. Times like three or four. And I got rid of just one. I got rid of the other night. You buy a house, they have a faucet in the house, Joe, and the faucet, the water doesn't come out. They have a restrictor. You can. In areas where you have so much water, they don't know what to do with it. You have a shower head. The shower doesn't. The shower does. You think it's not working? It is working.
- [32:36]
David Pakman
The water I just can't get clean, is dripping out.
- [32:40]
Donald Trump
And that's so good for me. I like this hair lacing. I like that hair nice and wet. Thanks. You have to stand in the shower for 20 minutes before you get the soap out of your hair. And I put a thing in and it sounds funny, but it's really not. It's horrible. And when you wash your hands, you turn on the faucet, no water comes out. You're washing water barely comes out. This was done by crazy people. And I wrote it all off and got it approved in Congress so that they can't just change it because I did it in my first term. Everyone was so happy. And then one of the first things that Biden did when he came back is he put the restriction on showers, toilets and sinks.
- [33:19]
David Pakman
But old man ranting about water pressure. Ok, we're back to it. We're back to it. And then finally, again, this was. The entire thing was. Was just so hot, you know, Trump was just tired. That's all that's going on here. Trump continuing, do you have problems with water?
- [33:35]
Donald Trump
And the people came to me from Whirlpool. They said, we can't make a machine that's competitive. We can't make a machine. Which doesn't work. Why they don't let us use water. Do you have any problems with water? No. We have so much, we don't know what to do with it. You know, it comes down from heaven, right? And I, I approved all of that, the washing machines, the whole thing.
- [33:53]
David Pakman
And be honest, why won't they talk about it? Why forget about Fox for a second. Why will corporate media, non Fox corporate media. Why won't they talk about a guy who is clearly unintelligible in terms of translating whatever is going on in his big brain into speech? Terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. People in my audience know I am a bit of a pastry connoisseur and our sponsor Wild Grain is the first bake from frozen subscription box for artisanal breads, pastries and pastas. Wild Grains boxes are customizable depending on what you like and prefer. They've got their classic variety box, they've launched the new gluten free box. They have a plant based box that's 100% vegan. And it just takes the hassle out of baking because all items baked from frozen in 25 minutes or less, nothing to clean up. My experience has been awesome. I love the croissants. I was having people over last week, half an hour before preheat and throw them in the oven and people love it. Definitely. The croissants are my favorite. The quality and the freshness of the items is extraordinary and, and it is just so convenient. Go to wildgrain.com/pacman to start your subscription and get $30 off your first box, plus free croissants in every box every month. That's wildgrain.com/pacman the link is in the podcast notes. Go Google your name right now and you'll probably be shocked by how many sketchy websites have your address, phone number, even about your family. Our sponsor Incogni is the solution. It is a service that will force data brokers and people search sites to delete your personal information so scammers, spammers and snoops can't get their hand on it. It's also now part of their unlimited plan that you can do custom removals. You're no longer limited to just the 250 plus sites in their automated system. You can submit any link where your personal info is exposed and Incogni's privacy experts will get it taken down. Even if the site's not in their database. Whether it is whitepages.com, trellis.law, dNB or anybody else quietly publishing your information, Incogni will wipe the footprint clean. You paste the link and they do the rest. If you're tired of being tracked, profile targeted, this is how you push back. For instance, these sites are where scammers and spammers can get your information to then target you. Using Incogni can cut way down on the spam calls and the messages that you get. Try it risk free for 30 days and get 60% off an annual plan. When you go to incogni.com/pacman that's incogni.com/pacMan for 60% off the link is in the podcast Notes. Today we're going to be speaking with David Graham, who's a staff writer at the Atlantic and also author of the New York Times bestselling book the project how Project 2025 is reshaping America. David, so, so good to have you on. You know, we're at this moment right now, we're a few months into the second Trump term. We're in the middle of this budget negotiation. Which is it going to ultimately be, the Senate or the House that decides what happens, who might kill the bill, who will pass the bill? DOGE is sort of on its way out, although it's really Elon who's out, and DOGE is nominally still going. It might be a good place to start. In terms of based on what we knew about Project 2025 from the documents prior to the inauguration of Trump, how relevant have its goals been during these first few months? What has been done to achieve its goals?
- [38:10]
Lisa Murkowski
I think in the first hundred days or so, what we saw and where they've been very successful is in what Project 2025 laid out as a plan to seize control of the executive branch, take powers from Congress, take powers from independent agencies, lay off civil servants, cut government departments. So we saw all of these things happening very effectively, and those things are essential to what they view as in a policy platform. And I think we see more recently some of the attempts on the policy platform. So when I look at the, at the bill in Congress, I see Project 2025 priorities all over it. And that needed, to some extent, the.
- [38:47]
David Pakman
Groundwork they've laid when it comes to doge. It seems the primary overlap is DOGE as the tool to fire a lot of those civil servants. But, but is there more to the overlap between Project 2025 and what Doge has done?
- [39:03]
Lisa Murkowski
I think that's the big one. I mean, you know, you see things like closing the Department of Education, which is something laid out in Project 2025. But, you know, DOGE claims to be about efficiency, but it's obviously mostly about cutting government. And Elon Musk came into the government without really understanding a lot about how the federal government worked, as we saw. And so for Project 2025, that was for the authors, it was very helpful. They had somebody who was willing to sort of go in with a wrecking ball and had Trump's ear and would do all of these things that they wanted to do while dispensing with some.
- [39:32]
David Pakman
Of the legal niceties, ignoring court orders. As an example, we saw it in terms of the denial of due process to people who have been deported. We've seen that in a bunch of different places. Is that either philosophically or logistically part. Part of Project 2025?
- [39:52]
Lisa Murkowski
I think it's especially philosophically part of it. And it's not so much that they are opposed to the courts per se. It's that they have this almost religious faith that the Supreme Court will back them up. And if they can challenge things to the Supreme Court, they will win. And they say over and over, you know, these. Where there are these laws, we understand that we are violating the laws, but we believe those laws are unconstitutional. And what we've seen over and over is the Supreme Court, once they get those cases, no matter what lower courts have done, is saying, yeah, you're right. You can go ahead and do this. You know, you can go ahead and fire the heads of independent agencies. And so they're having a lot of success in that approach.
- [40:29]
David Pakman
When it comes to something like Christian nationalism, you know, there's this wacky video. I don't know if you saw it. I think it's a wacky video from about 10 days ago of the faith Office of the president with people speaking in tongues at a spot I've stood at. And when I stood at that spot outside the White House, there was nothing like this going on. We had a different president at the time, but all of a sudden, you had people speaking in tongues just outside the White House. What is the role of religion generally, and maybe Christian nationalism more specifically in Project 2025?
- [41:02]
Lisa Murkowski
I mean, I think that's the most important thing about all of this. It's very important to look at the policies. It's important to look at how they're taking over the executive branch. But all of this is in the service of a Christian nationalist vision of American society. And that's something that, you know, that's a term that a lot of people on the right resist. But it's something that Russell Vogt, who's one of the lead authors of Project 2025. And obviously now the head of the Office of Management and Budget, he embraces that term. And so what they want to do with all these things is they want to reorient American society around that Christian nationalist version vision. And they want to have, you know, religious organizations taking care of social programs. They want American society oriented to, say, around a biblically based vision of the family. They want strict gender role, gender roles. They want religion in schools. So I think that's very much at the heart of all of this.
- [41:48]
David Pakman
One of the things that I remember talking about in 2024 related to Project 2025, or maybe this actually applies more in 2023, is that the architects of Project 2025 saw it as a vision that could be implemented by any president, at least in theory, and that would outlive whoever had four years in the Oval Office. Now, it pretty quickly became clear that there wasn't an appetite among Republican primary voters to choose someone other than Trump. So Trump became sort of like the de facto guy who was going to oversee it, but that really the ideas could have been carried out by anybody and also that they will kind of outlive the next presidency. In terms of the outliving the current presidency, what would you say has been done so far that is going to go beyond Trump? And maybe it's reversible by the next president, or maybe it isn't. But, like, where are we in terms of the legacy of this after Trump leaves office?
- [42:50]
Lisa Murkowski
I think these changes to the executive branch are very important, and they're going to be durable. A lot of these things are done by executive order, and so they look like they're going to be fragile. But if you think about, you know, laying off thousands of federal workers, closing up research shops that have existed for many years, cutting off big projects, cutting off, you know, major regulations, these things are hard to spring back up quickly. And so I think that we're going to have a really permanent impact, even if courts overrule some of these things. And no matter who the president next president is, and generally what we're seeing is, you know, disempowerment of these independent agencies, disempowerment of Congress. And so that's going to encourage a stronger president and a president who can defy checks and balances, I think, for the foreseeable future.
- [43:31]
David Pakman
Do you have a sense of how much the vision of the. Of Project 2025 really reflects Trump's sincere beliefs to the extent that he has any, and how much of it is like he's really just a vessel. And this is a useful thing for him to allow, but that it's not really reflective of his political philosophy. And again, it's sort of a tough question because I don't know that he really has a political philosophy other than, like, what can help me win.
- [43:57]
Lisa Murkowski
Right. I think what the authors realized is that Trump has a few things he cares about a lot. He cares about immigration, he cares about tariffs, he cares about retribution. And they found ways to work around that. So, you know, many of them come from the more free trade side of the Republican Party historically, and they understood they weren't going to win that fight, and so they basically surrendered on tariffs. They care about immigration. They're happy to go with that. They care about things like seizing control of the Justice Department for reasons of political philosophy. He cares about it because he wants to use it to punish his opponents and then everything else. They realize that, you know, by providing a strong set of employees, people who are going to be loyal, they can get what he wants done and what they want done. So I think it's really a sort of symbiotic relationship and he is a vessel for them.
- [44:40]
David Pakman
In terms of what's going on in the Department of Health and Human Services with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I don't remember looking as deeply in the pre November 2024 era at the degree to which Project 2025 is what we might nominally call like anti science or conspiratorial when it comes to some of these medical and science institutions. Can you kind of like lay that out? Is what we're seeing as the approach from RFK Jr related to Project 2025, or is it sort of its own outcropping?
- [45:17]
Lisa Murkowski
I think there's some overlap. They're not exactly the same. I mean, what Project 2025 sees for health and Human Services, I think is many of the most Christian nationalist views. They're really traumatized by churches being closed for Easter 2020, for example, by public health authorities. So they're very skeptical of public health authorities for that reason. They're skeptical of vaccines for pro life reasons. They believe that vaccines are a violation of the pro life principles. They want to ban abortion. They also have a skepticism of pharma companies and regulators as a sort of revolving door, which is something that I think we've seen very much from Robert F. Kennedy, obviously. So there are places of overlap, but I think it's a place where maybe some of their priorities have been eclipsed a little bit by Kennedy's.
- [46:01]
David Pakman
One of the things That I find interesting in a kind of dystopian and terrifying way is that for a while it seemed as though the kind of prevailing narrative within MAGA, let's say, not necessarily Project 2025, not necessarily Republics, but within MAGA, was extremely skeptical of government surveillance, Extremely skeptical. Skeptical of anything that puts our data in the cloud, skeptical of ceding any kind of power to big tech. And I think you can see where I'm going with this. We now have, on the other hand, ideas, including from RFK Jr. And others, you know, just a couple of weeks ago or last week, he said he wants everyone with a wearable so that then, you know, rather than making sure no kid goes hungry, get everybody a wearable and then something happens with the data. And it's interesting because in the past, I think some of these folks would have said, wait a second, insurance companies could get that stuff and say, your resting heart rate is high. We think you're a risk. We're going to charge you more money, or you're only getting five hours of sleep a night, and so we don't want to insure you. They there would have been like a skepticism about some of these ideas. What does Project 2025 say about data tracking, surveillance, this sort of stuff?
- [47:15]
Lisa Murkowski
So I would divide it a little bit. On the one hand, there is a real skepticism of big tech inside Project 2025, and it's written before Elon was inside the Trump tent. And they're concerned about data. They're concerned about controlled speech by tech companies where they would rather grab that control, I think, for the government. They're concerned about the effect of technology and social media on children. But in a broader sense, and this is where I think one of the more radical things about Project 2025, I think there is a willingness to embrace real coercive government power, things that the right, at least in, you know, Lib Service, has said or has criticized in the past. They worried about too much government control, and they've worried about an overweening federal government. And what you see in all sorts of areas, including data, is a willingness to use the federal government to their ends to force states, to force individuals, to sort of to trample, I think, on a lot of civil liberties in order to achieve what they want to do.
- [48:10]
David Pakman
When it comes to the civil liberties stuff, when it comes to, as some examples, sending in national troops to states, as we saw in California, or, you know, take your pick, so to speak, where is Project 2025 philosophically on that? Because on the one hand, Certainly blowing up and increasing the power power of the executive branch, firing people, shrinking these departments. There is an authoritarianism in that, but it does seem distinct from we're straight up sending in the troops to California for, for example, is that under the Project 2025 umbrella?
- [48:52]
Lisa Murkowski
You know, they talk about using troops within the US for immigration enforcement and using them in a role that has not been contemplated by any president in the past, not even Trump in his first term. They don't talk about the same deployment of troops to the streets, but they, you know, I think they're opening the door to uses of troops domestically in a way that connects very closely to what Trump is doing now.
- [49:13]
David Pakman
And as far as the people around Trump, who are the individuals who, who you would say are the most closely linked to Project 2025 that have made it into Trump's inner circle, the most.
- [49:26]
Lisa Murkowski
Important one I'd say is Russell Vogt, who's at office, the Office of Management and Budget, and who, who grasped how he could use OMB as a kind of control center to force a lot of these priorities on departments. So he's a very important one. Another one is Peter Navarro, who's an influential trade advisor who wrote a chapter in favor of protectionism. I think a third one is Brendan Carr, who is the head of the Federal Communications Commission and has spearheaded, you know, ideas to defund PBS and NPR or to try to revoke broadcast licenses from broadcasters who criticize Trump. There's a, you know, very people, John Radcliffe, the head of the CIA, is involved. You can sort of run down the list. I think those three are the ones who have been most influential so far in this administration.
- [50:11]
David Pakman
I want to briefly just shift gears in our last few minutes here. I saw that about 10 days ago or closer to two weeks, you wrote a piece for the Atlantic, Trump's Trouble with Tulsi. And I found that article really interesting because I've been following the Tulsi Gabbard thing ever since. She was the last true liberal and the only actual anti war candidate back during the Democratic primary of. It was 2020. Right?
- [50:36]
Lisa Murkowski
Right.
- [50:36]
David Pakman
Yeah. And I personally never fell for what I thought was the sham. And this very interesting thing kind of came to a head where she presented a report that actually did seem to reflect what the intelligence community believed about Iran's proximity to nuclear weapons in, in March, which Trump just dismissed multiple times as. I don't care. I believe that, that they've almost got it. What, what do you think? On the one hand, we were hearing she's going to get fired. This is just. Is completely untenable. On the other hand, because of everything else going on, the Tulsi fired stuff has kind of died down. And even though she's publicly kind of missing, maybe she's not as front and center in Trump's mind right now. Give us your overall assessment of what you believe her future is within this administration.
- [51:24]
Lisa Murkowski
You know, she's in a very difficult position anyway. The Director of National Intelligence is this spot where, you know, you're. They're supposed to have a sort of oversight role of all the intelligence agencies. They don't really have a lot of control over people like the CIA director, especially if the CIA director like John Radcliffe has an existing relationship with Trump. And there's a, you know, desire to crack down on intelligence agencies from Trump, who's been skeptical of them, really, since his first inauguration. And I think she, you know, her connection with Trump was that she was also skeptical of the intelligence agencies, but she wasn't skeptical of them because of agendas they were pushing, not sort of per se. You know, I don't know how she finds a way out of this. I think she. She clearly opposes American intervention, and she maybe believed that Trump did, but he, you know, that's not really where he's coming from. He's happy to intervene in a limited way. So I think, you know, she was in an untenable position. Probably from the beginning, it has become more untenable. But Trump is so reluctant to fire anybody this term. You can imagine her hanging around an administration as a sort of sidelined concern for a good long time.
- [52:29]
David Pakman
Is she maybe kind of like a loyalty type? Pick where it's. There was a group of people that were advantageous to Trump's campaign. Her leaving the Democratic Party and then becoming MAGA was just sort of useful, and he ended up kind of feeling like he just had to find something for her to do.
- [52:47]
Lisa Murkowski
I think that's a good way to think about it. And it's interesting to compare her to somebody like RFK who, you know, early on appeared like he might be one of those, but has since emerged as a real power center in the administration.
- [52:57]
David Pakman
Yeah.
- [52:58]
Lisa Murkowski
And, you know, he's. It seems like that's a place where his priorities don't conflict with Trump's, whereas her. Her priors maybe do. And so that's creating this conflict.
- [53:07]
David Pakman
Well, we're going to follow it. We've been speaking with the Atlantic's David Graham, also author of the New York Times bestseller the project how Project 2025 is reshaping America. David, thanks so much for being on today.
- [53:22]
Lisa Murkowski
Oh thank you.
- [53:24]
David Pakman
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- [56:54]
Donald Trump
Like to say, you know, a little controversial, but I couldn't care less. We have a lot of bad criminals that came into the, into the this country and they came in stupidly. It was an unforced error. It was an incompetent president that allowed it to happen. It was an auto pen maybe that allowed it to happen and it did happen. But we also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time time. People that whack people over the head with a baseball bat from behind when they're not looking and killing people that knife you when you're walking down the street. They're not, they're not new to our country, they're old to our country. Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too. You want to know the truth? So maybe that'll be the next job that we'll work on together.
- [57:34]
David Pakman
But one of the tragedies that has happened because Trump has the media so well trained, he can basically say anything at this point, no matter how unhinged, no matter how illegal. And everybody's just like, it's Trump doing a shtick. I just looked as the clip was playing, CNN's headline Diddy acquitted Nothing about Trump saying let's deport natural born citizens. Washington Post. Diddy acquitted Nothing. About, you know, smaller article about the bill that passed yesterday. Elon Musk wants a third party. The President is saying let's deport natural born citizens. New York Times, a map of AI ratings for Manhattan restaurants. Diddy acquitted and then divided. GOP will decide what happens with Trump's bill. This is, this is where we find ourselves as unhinged and crazy as it is that the President is saying let's deport any citizens. Also now focusing in on natural born citizens. It's not even really showing up in corporate media and if you press some of them, they'll go, you know, Trump says crazy stuff all the time, a lot of it he doesn't really do. So we don't have to worry. Absolutely terrifying situation. Not only is Donald Trump talking about deporting naturalized and natural born American citizens, Trump said yesterday during a brief conversation down at Alligator Alcatraz, this prison camp facility in Florida, Trump said, we may really need to criminally prosecute employees of cnn. And one of the most notable elements of this video is that a Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noemi, is nodding along. They're not even pretending anymore to be anything but authoritarian wannabe dictators. Listen to this. And the damn secretary. CNN yesterday pushed an app that lets you track where ICE agents are. Tom Homan was saying that perhaps CNN should be prosecuted for that enforcement. Your response?
- [59:54]
Lisa Murkowski
Yeah, we're working with the Department of.
- [59:55]
David Pakman
Justice to see if we can prosecute them for that because what they're doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities, operations. And we're going to actually go after them and prosecute them with the partnership of Pam if we can, because what they're doing, we believe is illegal.
- [60:12]
Donald Trump
And they may be prosecuted also for having given false reports on the attack in Iran. They were given totally false reports. It was totally obliterated. And our people have to be celebrated, not come home and say, what do you mean we didn't hit the target? You know, the pilots came home, they said we hit the target. So they may be very well prosecuted for that. What they did there, we think is totally illegal.
- [60:38]
David Pakman
This is IDI Amin style stuff, okay? During IDI Amin's brutal rule, the regime would crack down on press freedom, censorship and shutdown state control, harassment and violence, expelling foreign media, bogus charges against the press. That's where we are right now in 2025. And it got worse. Trump asked, what's your message to Communist Zoran Mamdani? Trump goes, well, we might have to arrest him. Your beloved New York City may well be led by a communist soon. Zorhan Mandami, who. Who in his nomination speech said he will defy ICE and will not allow ICE to arrest criminal aliens in New York City. Your message to Communist Zorhan Mandami.
- [61:29]
Donald Trump
Well, then we'll have to arrest him.
- [61:31]
David Pakman
Look, we just casual. We'll just have to arrest him. We'll have to arrest him. Even more dystopian Ron Desanctimonious, the Florida governor who now he's friends with Trump again. Now they're on good terms and I guess saying, hey, you know what? This one prison camp down here in Florida, we want to see these all over the country. We might even make a system of prison camps.
- [61:59]
Donald Trump
Was when I first came in, you know, we lowered the cost of groceries. A simple word like that, groceries.
- [62:04]
David Pakman
Sorry, this is the wrong clip. I actually don't think I have the. Dear God. Okay, I don't have the Desantis clip. Or do I have it? Let me just take a look here. I have this. This normally doesn't happen on the show. Normally everything is just perfectly fine tuned. Ah, here it is. Here is Desanctis talking about a system of these camps. And given the likelihood of the one big beautiful bill passing, and we look forward to the success of this facility here. How many more facilities like this, this do you feel that the country needs in order to enact your agenda of mass deportations?
- [62:43]
Donald Trump
Well, I think we'd like to see them in many states. Really many states. This one, I know Ron's doing a second one. At least a second one and probably a couple of more. And, you know, at some point they might morph into a system where you're going to keep it for a long time. You know, it's a. It's not that far away from jails that take years to build and.
- [63:04]
David Pakman
All right, so I actually got it confused. It's Trump talking about Desantis plan, not Desantis saying it. But the point here is a system of prison camps with terrible conditions. United States 20, 25, not whatever country in whatever year you would imagine we would hear that. And then finally, Trump capping off this completely abortive attempt at a press conference by just telling a bunch of lies back to back to back to back.
- [63:29]
Donald Trump
In his bad spending is what caused inflation. So now we have no inflation. Gasoline just hit 199 today in five states.
- [63:39]
David Pakman
Gasoline did not hit 199 in five states and we have inflation 199.
- [63:45]
Donald Trump
Isn't that a nice sound? It was up to four, four dollars and going up to five, six and seven in California was $7.70. But we just hit in five, five states 199, 198. And it's coming down to that level. So that'll be a big thing. And one of the reasons the prices and costs are going down when you go to the supermarket, because I said I was going to get costs down. We're getting the cost down. Food is coming down when I.
- [64:10]
David Pakman
None of that is true. The rate at which prices are increasing is relatively stable and equivalent to what it was under Joe Biden. The state in which gasoline is currently the cheapest is Mississippi. And it's 269 per gallon. Even in California, where Trump likes to say it's expensive, it's only 450 per gallon. Everything he is saying isn't true. But these are loyalty tests. Are you loyal enough to him to keep repeating this stuff? Unfortunately, many Americans do fall for these sorts of things. However, more than half of Americans say ICE has gone too far in arresting migrants, and we're going to talk about that on today's bonus show. Speaking of polling, pride in America has slipped to a new low. Is that something we should care about? And finally, we are going to look at the details of paramount settling Trump's 60 Minutes lawsuit with a $16 million payout. But no apology. Does that trigger Trump? We'll talk about all of it on the bonus show. Get instant access to the bonus show by signing up at Join Pakman Dotcom get on my daily newsletter at substack.david pakman.com I appreciate you. I'll see you on the bonus show. I'll see you back here tomorrow.
- [65:38]
Ben
Ben hadn't had a decent night's sleep in a month, so during one of his restless nights, he booked a package trip abroad on Expedia. When he arrived at his beachside hotel, he discovered a miraculous bed slung between two trees and fell into the best sleep of his life. You were made to be rechargeable. We were made to package flights and hotels and hammocks for less. Expedia made to travel.
- [66:08]
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