← The David Pakman Show
The David Pakman Show
7/30/25: Trump’s Epstein admission rocks MAGA, trade deal reality sets in
01:15:52
-- On the Show: -- David hosts a Substack Live with Tim MIller -- Donald Trump now claims he cut ties with Jeffrey Epstein for stealing staff from Mar-a-Lago, not for any crimes -- Ghislaine Maxwell offers to testify before Congress in exchange...
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- [00:08]
David Pakman
Well, welcome, everybody. You know, one of the things that I deeply believe is that you mostly aren't stupid. You mostly are not going to fall for very obvious contradictions. If I tell you I've never tried a strawberry, and then the next week I come on the show and I go, I've never liked strawberries as I've tried them over the last 20 years, you would rightly say, David, last week you said you had never tried a strawberry. Now you're telling us you've got 20 years of eating strawberries and you don't like them. You would realize something here doesn't make sense. I must be lying. And that's sort of the place where we now are with Donald Trump and this Epstein stuff. The list doesn't exist, and Trump isn't on the list. And Trump is on the list, but only because Obama, Clinton, and Comey put him on it. Wait a second. Those explanations don't make sense. And another one that we are now getting to is Trump supposedly broke off a connection with Jeffrey Epstein because he's a creep, but now Trump is telling us it's actually because he was hiring people out from under me. And maybe the biggest single bombshell in this entire slow slide into the truth is that now Trump acknowledged on Air Force One that actually the people that Epstein hired out from under Trump in some cases were the very sorts of underaged women, girls that are at the core of the sex trafficking, of. Of the abuse of the entire thing. Here is Trump saying, well, the hiring out from under me was out of my spa. And actually, it seems maybe one of the people was indeed Virginia Giuffre, who tragically took her own life in April and is sort of a key character, victim, I don't know what you would call her in this entire fiasco. Listen to this. Dear God.
- [02:15]
Donald Trump
Mr. President, Epstein has a certain reputation, obviously. Just curious, were some of the workers that were taken from you. Were some of them young women? Were some of them. Were some of them young women? Well, I don't want to say, but everyone knows the people that were taken. And it was. The concept of taking people that work for me is bad. But that story has been pretty well out there. And the answer is, yes, they were. Yes, they were.
- [02:46]
David Pakman
Answer is. Understand Trump's equivocating and sort of speaking back and forth, but what Trump is saying yes to is, yes, some of the people I said Epstein took from me were underage in the spa.
- [02:59]
Donald Trump
Yeah, people that work in the spa, a great spa, one of the best spas in the world in Mar a Lago. And people were taken out of the spa, hired by him. In other words, gone. And other people would come and complain, this guy is taking people from the spa. I didn't know that. And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, listen, we don't want you taking our people. Whether it was spa or not spa, I don't want him taking people. And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again. And I said, out of here.
- [03:32]
Virginia Giuffre
Mr. President, did one of those stolen.
- [03:35]
David Pakman
You know, persons that include Virginia Nephre?
- [03:41]
Donald Trump
I don't know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people he stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know.
- [03:54]
David Pakman
Look at that. Look at that. Look at how quickly. I mean, just even within seconds, Trump goes, I have no idea if it was Virginia Giuffre. I believe it was. She did work at the spa, and that is one of the people he stole. Six seconds ago, you said you have no idea about that. Now, of course, we had a sense of this. This isn't completely new information. The women that he's talking about are many of them. We know their identities. One of them, tragically, indeed, was Virginia Giuffre. She took her own life in April. The death was ruled not suspicious in any way, but her father's initial reaction was, I think there may indeed be foul play here, but there has been nothing found as far as that goes. And here she is saying she was recruited by Epstein from Mar a Lago.
- [04:48]
Virginia Giuffre
I was recruited at a very young age from Mar a Lago and entrapped.
- [04:53]
David Pakman
In a world that I didn't understand. And I've been fighting that very world to this day. And I won't stop fighting. I will never be silenced until these.
- [05:01]
Virginia Giuffre
People are brought to justice. So thank you all very much. Appreciate it.
- [05:05]
David Pakman
There it is. So there are four, five, six different layers to this now. And of course, there's the changing stories as to why Trump and Epstein had a falling out, the different accounts of how close their relationship was. Now the whole thing is he was stealing employees. That's the latest story. It's not because of the criminal charges that Trump and Epstein had a falling out. It's not because of Epstein's penchant for underage girls. It's he was poaching staff. And we all knew. Damn, that's really flimsy. That's really convenient. That seems to leave a lot out. And, of course, now we find out, well, actually one of the individuals is someone who was at the center of the allegations against Jeffrey Epstein. And there is now a direct connection to Donald Trump, to Mar A Lago, to his spa. Also relevant. The timing of all of this doesn't make any sense. Epstein was still a member at Mar A Lago according to membership logs until 2007. That's a year after Epstein was arrested in Florida. So if indeed the falling out, the separation, this wall that came down between Trump and Epstein was a result of Epstein's arrest, it sure took a long time to actually trickle down to Epstein no longer being a member at Mar A Lago. So what does this all really signal? Right, because it's easy to point out inconsistencies, it's easy to point out changing stories from Donald Trump. And we all intuitively, if we have any sense, realize there is an attempt at a cover up here. Trump would rather the truth not get out. What is this really signaling? What this really signals is that Trump all along has known way more than he wants to admit. And even in that Air Force One video you see, Trump asked, was one of the people Virginia Giuffre? And he goes, I don't know. I think she was. She did work at the spa. And yes, she is one of the people that Jeffrey Epstein stole. So I want to be really careful and clear that I am not at this point ready to say, based on evidence, Trump was involved in Epstein's crimes. Of course, it's natural to speculate. Trump has a guilty conscience and that's why he's doing all this. But all we can say right now is there are shifting explanations, there are timeline inconsistencies, and we have a carefully sanitized story that continues to change in this drip, drip, drip world way. And what is seemingly undeniable is that at minimum, Trump had a sense of what was going on and he looked the other way because it was easier to look the other way because speaking up might have made him look bad or might have caused a problem between him and some of his wealthy friends, or it might have cost him something in some way. And the part that rarely gets talked about is, you know, there's all this. Did Trump participate? Was Trump a client? I have no idea. But at minimum now, based on the drip, drip, drip of what Trump knew and when he knew it, at minimum, he participated in a silence that enabled this stuff to continue. So that's an angle that should be discussed up and if and up to the point at which we find out More about Trump's specific involvement. But now the admission. Part of why Trump was mad is Epstein stole, as Trump says it, an underage girl from his spa. This is not good. Ghislaine Maxwell is potentially preparing to drop the hammer on Trump. Trump is scrambling. But if I'm frank, my sort of cynical self believes that this is all going to work out for Donald Trump. So let's back up. The convicted sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, has kind of lit a political stick of dynamite, for lack of a better term, and that is rolling towards Donald Trump. In a letter to House Oversight Chair James Comer, Maxwell now says she's willing to testify. She's eager to testify before Congress about what she knows regarding the Epstein sex trafficking network. This is a red alert emergency moment for Donald Trump. But Ghislaine Maxwell has some conditions. Number one, she wants immunity. Number two, she wants to wait on the testimony until after her appeal has worked its way through the Supreme Court. She is arguing before the Supreme Court that as an associate of Epstein, she should be part of the non prosecution agreement against Epstein, and therefore that her entire prosecution was inappropriate. That's what she's arguing. And then, most brazenly, she wants clemency of her sentence from Donald Trump. Now, notice she wants clemency, not a pardon. I don't believe that that's an accident. The lawyers I've spoken to have explained to me that a pardon would wipe out her conviction, but it would also eliminate her ability to plead the Fifth on any elements she wants to plead the Fifth about. If I understand correctly, from what I'm being told, with clemency, she keeps the conviction on paper, but she also keeps her right to stay silent when it matters. And that is a significant amount of leverage. If you're in Ghislaine Maxwell's position, it's control and it's strategic. She knows the value of what she has. She knows how much is riding on this. It goes all the way up to the Oval Office. But why would she volunteer to say more unless she's getting something in return? Because she's already been convicted. She's already in prison. There's one reason to step back into the spotlight, and that would be someone made it worthwhile for her. And that's where my cynical self kicks in. And I think that many in the audience, based on the emails you've sent me, kind of share this cynicism, which is that it's starting to feel like this is being set up really for Maxwell. To say nothing bad about Trump. Name some names, appear to be forthcoming and walk away with a deal that gets her out of prison. Yes, she will testify if and when the conditions she wants are met. Only with questions in advance, by the way, is another detail. Only once the legal threats to her future are minimized. And maybe after there's some back channel assurances that if she downplays Donald Trump's role in all of this, that Trump is going to take care of her and she's going to get out of prison. And what makes all of this so frustrating is that it's extraordinarily transparent. She's a convicted child sex trafficker holding a political grenade in her hand, and everyone's walking around like, this is fine. There's limited outrage, there's limited urgency, and it actually might work for her. And if you look at the way Trump's been dealing with this, this is not an exaggeration. The timeline we're in includes Trump being asked, are you considering pardoning her? And he doesn't go, oh, her crimes are so serious, I would never do that. No. Trump goes, well, I have the right to pardon her. I haven't thought about it yet, but I have the right to pardon her. And any reasonable cynic, skeptic would say, we see where this is all sort of pointing to. Now, Trump is doing everything he can to do damage control. He's suing the Wall Street Journal for the story that he wrote Epstein this birthday letter and drew an image on the birthday card. He's lashing out at his own supporters, saying that if you buy into this stuff, you're a weakling, you've been duped, and all of this sort of stuff. So then we get to Ghislaine Maxwell, gets her deal, she shows up and she's going to talk. What could she say? Well, she could explain who Trump introduced to Epstein. Did Trump introduce victims, eventual victims, to Epstein? And of course, that's where this entire Virginia Giuffre thing comes into play, which is Trump says Epstein stole the underage girl from his spa. But what if that's not exactly the truth? What if she ended up working or going to Epstein? I don't even know that you can call it working based on a deliberate introduction. What did Trump know about Epstein's behavior? Did Trump visit properties where abuse was taking place? Or what did Donald Trump's name come up in. In private, Epstein documents that Maxwell still has access to. Now, even if none of this leads to charges, which it almost certainly won't, the Political fallout could be huge because the optics Maxwell testifying under oath during Trump's presidency and saying Trump did this, Trump did that on just incredible level of explosiveness. But I am worried, increasingly convinced that there is a sort of carefully corporate choreographed performance here where Maxwell testifies names, some names, but shields Trump from the serious stuff in exchange for clemency. And then once again, how many times is this going to happen? The most vile people get away clean because they're wealthy, they're connected, and they're corrupt enough to back channel and set up a sanitized version of this entire thing. So Maxwell in theory preparing to drop the hammer, Trump scrambling to make sure that it happens in a way that doesn't drag him down. But if I'm really honest with you, I think they're setting this up not to implicate Donald Trump and for Ghislaine Maxwell to end up outside of prison rather than in it. Let me know what you think. We'll have more of this on our YouTube channel. YouTube.com/the David Pakman Show A pending Supreme Court case could strip our fourth Amendment rights and allow immigration agents to come into our homes for any reason. No probable cause needed. All while Republicans try to twist things so that you think this is all great for America. This should be the biggest story in the US Right now, but it's almost impossible to keep up with the millions of moves that Trump is making every single day. That's why Ground News exists. Ground News is an app and website that exposes the blind spots and spin before it takes control of our opinions. Ground News is the smarter, more reliable way to stay informed when MAGA is banking on us getting distracted. I'm partnering up with Ground News to give you 40% off the same vantage plan that I use, so you'll pay only five bucks a month for all of their premium features. And just go to Ground News, slash Pacman or use the code pacman in the app. When you sign up, the link is in the description or scan the QR code. There was a time when public education meant learning math, science, history. But now we are seeing Bible verses in biology class, we're seeing 10 commandments on the wall, religious chaplains taking the place of trained counselors, and it's all funded by taxpayer money through voucher programs that are sending public dollars to private religious schools. This is part of a broader effort to inject religion into public education. I'm against that and it often is coming at the expense of real academic standards and the well being of the students. Now our sponsor, the Freedom from Religion foundation, is fighting back. FFRF defends constitutional principles, takes legal action when schools cross the line, and protects students from religious coercion in public classrooms. If you believe in facts in protecting education and keeping religion out of public schools, I can tell you this is an organization very much worth supporting. To get involved, go to ffrf.org school or text David to 511-511- Message and data rates may apply. That's ffrf.org school, or text David to 511511. The info is in the podcast notes. The David Pakman show is an audience supported program. Our primary funding sources are our audience. Yes. The good thing is I don't have what Stephen Colbert had where executives or producers or whoever would be able to say the show is over. But as a collective, the audience can certainly do that. And the extent to which we continue depends on the extent to which the audience wants that to make it happen. Two great direct ways to support the work we do. Number one, get a membership at join pacman.com number two, get a substack paid subscription at substack.david pakman.com and remember that if you would like a free membership, we do have some free memberships available for folks for whom the financial aspect is a barrier. You can put your name on the free membership list at David pakman.com/free membership. Have Donald Trump's trade deals actually been signed? And if they're not, are they really trade deals? You know, if I'm reminded of the, of the question, if a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, did it make a sound? If a trade deal has been stated to exist by Donald Trump but nobody has signed anything and there's no date on which it goes into effect and there's no signatures down on paper, is it really a trade deal? And this is sort of like, are you kidding me? This is where we are right now. Scott Bessant was interviewed on cnbc and it's just how do we end up in these situations? As many of you know, the Vietnam deal was one of the first ones announced. As Donald Trump was failing to do 90 deals in 90 days, he said, well, we've got a Vietnam deal. This was weeks ago. CNBC asks Scott Bessen, the Vietnam deal? Vietnam hasn't confirmed that. That's a real thing. Is it signed? Is, is there an actual deal on paper? And Besant goes, I assume there is. Dear God, these deals have been coming pretty fast and furious at times. It gets hard to track the details of them. The Vietnam deal that the President announced earlier in July, I don't think we've seen confirmation, or at least I haven't, as I sit here now, from. From the Vietnamese government of that deal. Did we get confirmation from the Vietnamese government? Do we have an agreement with them?
- [19:37]
Virginia Giuffre
On paper, I didn't work on that deal, but I assume that we do because we've also done Indonesia and Philippines. So I would imagine that.
- [19:49]
David Pakman
But you haven't seen that paperwork.
- [19:51]
Virginia Giuffre
But that's Ambassador Greer, who is a seasoned veteran and with an encyclopedic memory and knowledge of all this, keeps all that.
- [20:01]
David Pakman
How do you. The dog ate the paperwork. So this led me to zoom out and say, have any of the announced deals actually been signed? Like, are they. What is a deal? Has it been signed? And I looked at some reporting on this, what it seems to be right now. And this is even. This is what the White House is saying. So understand that this is the most optimistic understanding of it. The framework with the uk, which is not a deal. Remember, it's not a trade deal. It's a framework that was signed at the G7 in Canada last month. But that's not a deal. That's a framework. So they've signed a framework which just says, we're going to work towards a deal. So there's no deal there. They've signed a framework. Number two, Indonesia, signed onto a statement of intent, not a deal. You could also say, that's just a framework. A lot in business, there's this term called the letter of intent. You know, imagine that I'm a. I'm a real estate investor, for example, and I start calling some real estate owners and I say, hey, I'd like to look at some of your properties and maybe buy them. And they go, I need to make sure that you're serious. And so I would draw up a letter of intent and I would sign it, but it's not a deal. I have. I've bought no real estate. I haven't even committed to buy real estate. I've just signed something that says, I would like to be in business with you. I would like to take a look at some of your properties. These frameworks are essentially letters of intent. And so with the uk, we have a framework, not a deal. With Indonesia, we have a statement, a joint statement, that we are going to be doing a deal. We have no deal. We then have no real answer about Vietnam. Scott Besant was asked, has a deal been signed? And he says, I Assume that a deal is with. Signed. Has been signed right now. Right. So as I sit here today recording this, I can't say that we really have certainty that any of these, these deals are deals or have been signed. This is the way the Trump administration operates. And the most kind of pernicious thing about all this, of course, there's propaganda value. And I'm sorry, I just hit my mic. I'm getting very agitated by this. Of course, there's like a propagandistic value to announcing a deal that doesn't exist, but this stuff moves, moves markets. And just like as an example, as I'm recording this today, there is news about, it's all about India and what's happening with Indian tariffs, but it's all based on just claims. None of this stuff has been put to paper, at least not as of this recording. And so it's having a significant stock market impact, which impacts businesses, which impacts employment. But a lot of this appears to be just bluster. Has Scott Bessant, is he sure that some of these deals are actually deals that have been signed? He's not. He can't tell us that that's the case. Donald Trump appeared not to realize that he was making no sense. Above aboard Air Force One, at the top of the show, we looked at like the big blockbuster, which was, oh, Epstein took an underage girl from my spa. That was one of the big things that came from Donald Trump speaking to reporters on Air Force One just hours ago. But there are some other moments that I want to review with you. One in which a reporter asks Trump, you know, you told us that your fallout with Jeffrey Epstein was because he took workers, but previously your administration said it was because he was a creep. This is one of those inconsistencies that I brought up at the top of the show. The list doesn't exist. But also Trump's sure he's not on the list, but also he is on the list, but only because the list is fabricated by Comey and Clinton and Obama. How can all of these things be true? And so Trump's new position, that it was because Epstein stole employees, that is at odds with what his administration said, which was Trump realized Epstein was a creep. Here's how Trump dealt with that.
- [24:01]
Virginia Giuffre
Yesterday, you're falling out with Jeffrey Epstein was over him taking some of the workers from your business. But your administration in the past said that you threw him out because he was a creep. So can you explain that discrepancy?
- [24:12]
Donald Trump
The same thing, you know, sort of a little bit of the same thing. But no, he took people that work for me and I told him don't do it anymore and he did it. And I, I said stay the hell out of here.
- [24:25]
Virginia Giuffre
So is that what you, what was meant by being a cre?
- [24:28]
David Pakman
Me?
- [24:29]
Virginia Giuffre
I'm with, I'm the travel pool, but I'm with NBC News.
- [24:32]
Donald Trump
NBC. NBC Fake News. NBC is one of the worst. What else?
- [24:40]
David Pakman
Who are you with? Who are you with? So you know, it's always cleanup duty. Now they're trying to say no. Trump was creeped out by Epstein stealing employees. It doesn't really make sense. The only thing that. So there's two possibilities. They're lying. Epstein was kicked out because he's a creep, meaning the stuff that's going on with underage girls. Epstein was kicked out because he was stealing employees. The only way that those could be the same thing would be if the creepy things Epstein was doing were with the underage girls that he was stealing from Trump's spa. And of course that is not what Donald Trump's claiming. At this point in time, the topic of the lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal came out. Remember that Donald Trump, after the Wall Street Journal put out this story, not this Friday, but the previous Friday that Donald Trump wrote Epstein a Christmas card in which Trump's signature was the pubic hair on a woman. It's you know, salacious and titillating stuff. Trump says it's fake and that he is suing. Trump addressed whether he believes that Rupert Murdoch is in control of what is going on over there.
- [25:46]
Donald Trump
Street Journal case lawyers are and I'm.
- [25:48]
David Pakman
Sorry, I guess I should explain. Wall Street Journal is part of News Corporation. News Corporation is Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
- [25:55]
Donald Trump
Seeking to depose Robert Rupert Murdoch. Pardon me, can you say what the lawyers hope to get out of that? We're going to see the lawyer. It's in the lawyers hands. I've been treated very unfairly by the Wall Street Journal and everything. I mean, I don't know. They even hired people from the Washington Post. Third rate reporters, gossip type reporters. It's all gossip. And you know, I've been treated badly by the Wall Street Journal. I would have assumed that Rupert Murdoch controls it but you know, maybe does, maybe doesn't. They are talking to us about doing something but we'll see what happens. Maybe they would like us to drop that. So we'll see. Yeah, they're having, they want to settle it. He's treated as wrong. But you know, when, when I get treated unfairly, I do things about it.
- [26:45]
David Pakman
I've got to hand it to Trump. The chilling effect that his successful lawsuits have had is extraordinarily impactful on the media environment in the United States. And it's an authoritarian classic. You use any means necessary to make media outlets question any adversarial reporting. Is he. Are they. You know, in some countries it's, am I going to accidentally stab myself in the back six times if I publish this story? That's sort of like the Putin style here. It's more, am I going to get sued? Am I going to get sued? And even if I believe that I had every right and correctly vetted and sourced my reporting, is the lawsuit itself going to become so disruptive and potentially costly even if I win, that I'm going to throw six or even $16 million at Donald Trump? So it's kind of working. It's kind of working. And the self censorship at least appears to be something that more and more media outlets are considering. Finally, you know, Trump completely out of energy as he's talking to reporters on Air Force One, and he was asked, you go into the G20 this year? And Trump goes, I don't think so. I'll probably send somebody else. And of course, this is Trump trying to flex his superiority, but this is actually a much bigger geopolitical story. I'll explain in a moment.
- [28:02]
Donald Trump
Do you plan to attend the G20 summit this year? I don't think so, no. I think maybe I'll send somebody else because I've had a lot of problems with South Africa and they have some very bad policies. Very, very bad policies, like policies where people are being killed. A lot of people are being killed. So I think I probably will. I'd like to, but I don't think any.
- [28:28]
David Pakman
So there it is. Donald Trump says, I'd like to go, but I just kind of don't think so. Trump wants to frame this as the G20 might be beneath me. I don't know that I need to go. I might send a delegate. I don't even know that it's worthy of the President of the United States going. But this is a theme that is persisting from Donald Trump's first term, which is that with Trump at the helm of the United States, the United States is a diminished player in a lot of global discussions. And you can frame it however you want. And I know that the Trump's, the alpha male MAGA types are going to say, trump's so busy, Trump's so powerful, Trump's doing so many serious things. Why would he waste his time at the G20, it's just completely beneath him. But the reality is that when the other 19 countries have their actual leaders there and Trump sends a delegate, it just weakens the United States is negotiating position and it weakens global perception of the United States. And this is what we saw on discussions of climate, this is on what we, what we saw during Trump's first term, on discussions of pandemic preparedness and dealing with COVID and in so many other areas. And so the MAGA people can just repeat all. They can scream into the wind as many times as they want. We are actually above all of these other countries hierarchically because Trump's like, I'm just, I'm bigger than all of this stuff. But the reality is that Trump diminishes the United States when he pulls us out or doesn't participate in these things. And other countries go, I guess we're moving ahead without the United States. It's bad for you and it's bad for me. And Trump has brainwashed the MAGA people into thinking it's because he's such a big boy and strong man that he's able to do this stuff. So it's completely plausible that Trump's just bloviating here and he is going to go to the G20, we're going to follow it, and we will see. Make sure that you are getting my substack newsletter, substack.david pakman.com where we will delve into these and other stories in more detail. I've been researching my family tree for years, and the tool that I keep coming back to is myheritage. I started using it long before they ever became a sponsor. And what I love about myheritage, what really makes it powerful, are the features that simplify building the family tree. The other day, I used Instant Discoveries to uncover an entire new branch of my family I didn't even know existed with just a single click. I also found an old black and white photo of a relative. And I used myheritage's photo colorizer tool to really bring it to life. It's amazing what you can uncover. Immigration papers, census scans, records from over 33 billion historical documents. Like if you're watching this on YouTube, I'm showing a scan of an immigration document from when a relative of my mom arrived at Ellis island, which I found on myheritage, which just makes it easy and fun. Maybe you're just getting started with your family tree. Maybe you're picking up where a family member Left off, it's a great time to dive in. And you can try it totally free for 14 days by going to David pakman.com/myheritage. The link is in the description. We have talked before on the show about how the vitamin and supplement industry is barely regulated. The products are often mislabeled, they're expired, they're contaminated. And that's why I'm really excited to have as a new sponsor Quantum Nutrition Labs, which is a brand that does supplements the right way. Q and L was founded by two doctors who saw that the supplement industry has become dangerous. And the whole point is let's skip the shortcuts. Let's not do the junk. And for over 20 years, Q& L has really earned the trust of consumers and health professionals because their big thing is purity. Every product is made in certified facilities, third party tested to verify identity, potency and potential contaminants, and never any artificial additives. So whatever it is you want in the vitamin and supplement space, they've got it rooted in this commitment to clean sourcing, rigorous testing and transparency. If you're ready for supplements that match what's on the Label, go to Q N labs.com and use the code PACMAN for an additional 10% off, which you can use in combination with other promotions on the website. That's QN labs.com use code PACMAN for an additional 10% off. The info is in the podcast notes. All right. And we are live with Tim Miller from the Bulwark. Tim, there's so many things I want to talk to you about. I want to talk about the Bulwark and what you guys are doing. I want to talk about the Epstein stuff. Maybe just to start, I recently sort of recently interviewed both Jake Tapper and Jonathan Allen about their respective books, Original Sin.
- [33:31]
Virginia Giuffre
Good for you. Good for you. I put a ban on those books on the Bulwark podcast. Nothing against any of the authors. I was just like, the last thing I want to do and my audience wants to hear is reliving 2024. So good for you for doing that because it's important. I just don't want to do it. I'm just taking a break.
- [33:46]
David Pakman
That's why I want to talk to you. You know, my thought was there are a lot of things that I could say about the motivation for writing these books, the timing of their release. Right. I could. A long list of stuff. But in reading them and seeing how they're sourced, and my takeaway is sort of like if even 10% of the of the subject matter is true. The Democratic Party's got some real problems to figure out here. And I'm curious your take as someone who you know, advised Republicans and now I don't even know where you consider that you occupy right now, but sort of I consider you like a centrist guy generically. You know what, what's your take on the kind of state of play right now?
- [34:31]
Virginia Giuffre
Yeah, well, welcome to Substack. I'm glad we're doing this little, you know, we're off our natural platform of YouTube and I've already seen Tom Joselyn, our man down there did a great interview with Bill Kristol on Sunday in our substack. So this is fun to do it, man. I think that the Democratic Party like if you look at these books and look back at 2024, like has a couple of different problems and some of them persist and some of them were kind of unique to 2024. You know, the Biden part was pretty unique to 2024. I think that Biden himself put the party in a pretty bad place. I just regardless of what you think about it, you know, he just his decision to run again, his decision to kind of not be very public and then you know, to have so many eggs in the basket of this debate and then give the worst debate performance in history, like none of that stuff's going to happen again in 2028. Like presumably the Democrats will not have a 80 year old candidate running and who, you know, who is who struggles to enunciate points on the debate stage. So we could talk about that more. But I think that was like a real issue that the party had that was pretty unique to 24. I think that there are, if you, you know, there's some subplots in those books, you know that you can see some of the other issues. I think that the party itself and part of the, part of this is Trump kind of, I'm sympathetic to it because Trump kind of put the Democrats in this position of being the party of like defending institutions, of being the responsible ones, of being, you know, of defending the status quo from this monster that want to tear down democracy. And while all that is true and right, I think it got them misaligned from where the public is and the public is pretty mad about stuff, particularly working class people. And I think that upper middle class people have their complaints, but Democrats did pretty well with that crowd. Working class folks are pretty pissed and they're pissed about a number of things in 24, most acutely inflation. But Also just kind of a feeling that the system is failing them. And I think that the Democrats basically, for three straight cycles, put up presidential candidates that were like, you know, we want to help you, but, like, within this, within the confines of the system. Right. And the Republicans are putting up somebody that's like, I want to burn everything down and I care, and we're going to go after the people you hate. And obviously it's all phony and fake, but, like, you can see why it resonated. Right. And I think if you look back at the 2024 books and, like, a lot of the problems that Kamala faced when she got in were either generated by Biden himself and his poor actions or by this, like, feeling of the need to kind of defend, you know, to be. To be the responsible one, to defend the institutions, to defend the Biden leg. To defend. Right. And I just think that in 2024 and going ahead to 2028, people want outsiders. People want folks that are. Shake things up. People want folks that are going to let it rip. They don't want conventional and cautious. And Kamala, for all of her great traits, is kind of conventional and cautious. So I don't know. That would be my quick summary of what I. What my lessons are from 24. I think there are some ideological stuff, some issues we could talk about too, but, like, from a brand positioning standpoint, I think that that'd be my takeaway. What about you? You were the one that interviewed them.
- [37:37]
David Pakman
Well, I mean, you know, it's so hard because my audience was really split and I got a bunch of angry emails from people saying, how dare you even have these people on? And it's like, well, what I do is I talk to people and then I try to evaluate the substance of what they say and their motivations, and it's sort of what I do. I've never agreed with the. Don't have them on unless I just personally don't want to do it. It sounds like you didn't want to do it, which I totally respect on a personal level.
- [38:01]
Virginia Giuffre
Yeah. And nothing against any, like, against Jake or anything, but, yeah, I just was like, I don't want to. I just don't want to, like, rehash it. Like, well, like, had the news been more boring, maybe I'd do it. Right. But there's a lot happening in the news. So I. I hear. I hear you, though. But yeah, I'm. I would. I'm not saying you shouldn't have platformed them or anything. I understand. Like, I think that's kind of a silly complaint.
- [38:22]
David Pakman
One of my reactions, if I'm fr. There was recognition. You know, I went to the White house twice in 2024. I went in March when Kamala Harris was not yet the nominee and had like a creator sort of thing that she talked to us for 45 minutes. And then I went in December, and it was basically Biden comms people. And then Biden came in for like 15 minutes, essentially. And one of the. One. It's so hard to say it any other way. The stuff that was described in the books about how his schedule was managed, about how he was protected, I saw it firsthand. It was exactly the way it was, where it was like the staff was keeping him cloistered. They really limited the scope of our interactions. And there was a risk aversion that went above and beyond anything I've experienced, like, with a senator. And so my takeaway was kind of like, man, until June 27th, I believed that, on balance, Biden was probably the most likely to defeat Trump. In other words, I had calculated on June 26, if he just drops out today, I think Trump obviously wins on June 27th. By about 9:15pm Eastern Time, my view had changed. But a lot of it was the recognition that this. That was probably the state of play before that debate. And I recognize the techniques that were used to prevent us from knowing that. So there was anger, in a sense.
- [39:53]
Virginia Giuffre
I have a lot of anger about it. It's another reason why I don't, like, I have a. I have anger towards Trump and I try to channel it towards that. And the Biden stuff comes up. I went off on Hunter last week on the pod. I. I just. A lot of. I get pushback from this, from people who, like, really respect and like Joe Biden. And he obviously, you know, had a lot of tragedy in his life and gave to public service a lot. He also was just unbelievably selfish in the last year and a very important year. And like, the amount of time that was spent caring and talking about his legacy, his ego and protecting him and what, you know, defending the record and making sure that, you know, we had to talk about. He's the greatest. I just think all. And then deciding to stay in the race was very hubristic. I just think that there was an insane amount of hubris and ego that went that. That led you to thinking that. That all of these sort of machinations were worth it because he is, you know, he deserves it or because in some cases, they thought that he was Best positioned to win. It's like that is the more reasonable, I guess, defense. And you still see this from people. I have people in my mentions up till today being like, if Biden would have won. And I think that is objectively wrong based on every metric that we have. We'll never know. You don't get of race. And I think every qualitative and quantitative and anecdotive and anecdote data that I have is that Biden would have gotten his just absolutely annihilated, who knows. But I just think that the behavior was not putting first the protection of the country and service to the country and the protection against Donald Trump and instead putting first like his parochial interests. And I think that's really sad and it makes, it does make me mad.
- [41:47]
David Pakman
If we now kind of think forward and talk a little bit about Epstein. And in a sense I'm so sick of the topic. But also I think in the last.
- [41:56]
Virginia Giuffre
Six hours, this is the difference between our shows. I am not sick of this topic at all. We could do the next 45 minutes on Epstein if you want.
- [42:03]
David Pakman
Well, what's interesting is I recently did a live with Heather Cox Richardson.
- [42:08]
Virginia Giuffre
Okay.
- [42:08]
David Pakman
Who I did not expect to come in and go, oh, this Epstein thing is huge. As a historian, I believe that this Epstein thing is huge. And that's exactly what she said. And there were a couple reasons, but one of the big ones was that this seems to be having a divisive effect within maga. That voting for the anti war president who bombed Iran hasn't really done it. Voting for the guy who would build the wall Mexico would pay for. And of course he didn't do it. None of those things got the sort of purchase to get MAGA divided in the way that it seems to have divided them so far. What, what's your like in two months, will this still be a story? In three months, will it be a story? What do you think?
- [42:45]
Virginia Giuffre
I think because of the way that they've managed it, this is going to be a story until 2027. Because I think if the Democrats take back the House, they're going to have hearings about it. And, and I think that they should and they should model, you know, whatever you think about the merits of the Benghazi hearings, I think probably the first one did have merits. The next 38 probably were unmerited. Right. But it did have a positive political effect for good. You know, and that, and I think the Democrats should look to that. I think they're legitimate things to look into. This is A cover. Like to me, what has changed about this story? And some people are like, you know, they ask me like, why you weren't talking about this two months ago or Biden wasn't dealing with it three years ago. And my response to that is the Epstein story itself is a massive story and a tragedy and it had a lot of coverage. And just because, you know that lets. That you watch or that might. May not have been covering it. It was very. There was. Got a lot of attention, a lot of quarters. Yeah. In conspiracy quarters, but also in more casual, you know, kind of podcast, you know, news adjacent quarters. But it became a massive political story because of how they handled it. Like they are participating in a cover up. Like what are they covering up? I don't know, like, are they covering up that there is really damaging stuff about Trump in there? Maybe I'm a little bit skeptical of that. Right. You'd think that would be leaked out by now. Is it just kind of damaging stuff about Trump in there? Almost certainly. Right. Is it damaging stuff about friends of his, donors of his? Maybe. Probably. Right. And so they are engaging in a cover up on behalf of people that were at some level involved with a child sex trafficker and, and they're doing it for political ends. And I think this puts him in a very political box. Right. Like he's now just. It's kind of like Nixon. Right. It's kind of like any of the COVID it's Iran Contra, it's Lewinsky. Right. Like it's, it's more of a traditional like political scandal. And he is no longer kind of like the outsider. He is just like a politician, a slimy politician trying to, trying to protect powerful people. And I think that really cuts against his brand in a way that a lot of this other stuff that we all were outraged about didn't. Right. You know what I mean? Like, yeah.
- [45:02]
David Pakman
You know, the sense I'm getting, it's funny how fast this stuff moves, but like the sense I'm getting over the last eight hours of video of Trump as he sort of started to say, I stopped talking to Epstein because he took some employees from me. And then he was asked were any of those employees or were any of these people under 18? And he goes, yeah, I think they might have been. The sense that I'm getting is that Trump is probably aware that he knew of a lot of stuff he stayed silent on. And I have no as like you're saying, I don't think necessarily that he was a client in the sense of having committed Crimes or whatever. Maybe he was, but I haven't seen any evidence. But the way he's sort of like, explaining why they had this falling out to me, speaks to. He's aware that he said nothing about a lot of stuff he knew about, and maybe that's what he's afraid of coming out. I don't know.
- [45:55]
Virginia Giuffre
Yeah, I don't. Well, he's also lying about that. Right. I think that's it. Like, this is just happening in this last couple hours. But they. He was, you know, talking about. I don't want to butcher her last name, but Virginia, the staffer at Mar A Lago, Frey. Yeah, yeah. Giuffre, I think. Giuffre.
- [46:10]
David Pakman
Yeah.
- [46:11]
Virginia Giuffre
I'm not sure. Yeah. So Virginia worked at Mar A Lago and then was. Then Epstein hired her way. And she was part of a really kind of gruesome sort of sex trafficking part of the. And, you know, where a lot of people are complicit in really bad behavior towards her, which is just. Which is horrible. And. But Trump's story, like, is like, okay, well, Epstein was taking people from me, and that's why I got mad at him. Which, by the way, is different from the White House original story, which is that Trump said Epstein was a creep, and so he said he couldn't come to Mar A Lago. So they'd already changed the story once. And then today reporters are like, are you talking about Virginia when you say that Epstein stole staff from you? And he says yes. And by the way, he shows no empathy or sympathy to what she went through and answering yes. But it also turns out that that is like, well, it's not a lie that he took her from Mar A Lago. But the timing doesn't work. That happened in 2000. Epstein was banned from Mar Lago four years later. So it wasn't that. So, like, whatever the truth is of why him and Joshua had a falling out, it wasn't this. So what is it? And so I just think that Trump is handling of this has also just been like, his usual tricks aren't working. You know, like the usual tricks of, oh, it was just locker room talk, you know, or, oh, like what? You know, look at, you know, the. I'm gonna change the subject because, like, they've mismanaged the disbursement of information on a topic that his own media allies, who usually run cover for him on this stuff, actually care about or actually have covered enough that they have to protect their credibility on. So I don't know what exactly they're covering up, I don't know, but it's not pretty. And we know that they're covering up something because we know that they have searched through the files for mentions of Trump and flagged them.
- [48:03]
David Pakman
What is, you know, at this point, I don't know if you agree, but to set up this next question, are we on the same page that essentially, no matter what comes out, it's not going to end Trump's presidency a day short of when it's scheduled to end? Are you. Do we agree on that?
- [48:19]
Virginia Giuffre
We agree on that. And there's a funny conspiracy view that J.D. vance and, and, you know, Peter Thiel and the tech bros are not hating this, you know, and wouldn't mind a scandal that would push Trump to the side and let them kind of consolidate power. I don't really believe that theory. It's kind of funny and juicy and something to think about. Stuff's coming from somewhere. I don't think it's actually J.D. vance. I think it's. And I don't actually even think it's like Elon. I just think that having been in a lot of these stories, sorts of stories back when I was a PR guy for candidates, this stuff has a life of its own. You know, if you get caught up in something, then people start to pay, start to look and pay attention to things that they weren't before. You know, and I think that that is really what is. Is driving this is just kind of like a traditional feeding frenzy. But no, anyway, no matter what happens, I think Trump is. We're stuck with him.
- [49:12]
David Pakman
So given that, what is the potential impact of what we might learn? Is it. It'll hurt Republicans in 26 and 28. Is it like what, what is. Is it Trump's legacy?
- [49:24]
Virginia Giuffre
Yeah, well, I mean, I think that just in the actual substance of what we might learn, I don't know, there might be legal consequences for people, probably not Trump. But I do think it's preposterous to think that Jeffrey Epstein and Jolene Maxwell were the only people that were involved in this effort. So there could be actual consequences for evil, politically speaking. I think the potential consequences of fragmenting of maga, and I don't mean. And I mean it in the broadest sense, let me rephrase that. A fragmenting of the Republican of the Trump coalition, because I think that MAGA eventually comes back around to everything. He was right when he said Fifth Avenue back in 2016. And it's like essentially a cult. And some people leave cults. But the preponderance of people stay right. And so I think that the core mega base will be resilient in the face of this. But the broader coalition, I think has real potential for fragmenting. And if you think about the newest people that came in, the kind of lefty horseshoe people, you know, the RFK Tulsi crowd, they cared about Epstein and they also wanted Trump to be a peacenik on foreign policy. He's failing them on both. And you could see them kind of reverting back either, I don't know, to the Democrats or just no longer being part of a Republican coalition in the future. And then you have an even bigger group which is more of the younger, non ideological men who for shorthand will call the manosphere type people who went with Trump across races, black, brown, white, and who also are just looking at Trump and seeing him do this cover up and be like, this guy's a fucking politician like everybody else. Like, I didn't like him because I'm a conservative or I'm a MAGA nationalist. Like, I liked him because he seemed like he was not a politician. He was going to go in there and cause problems. And you can just already see the disillusionment. I know, like, you can see it in Rogan and the Ovan and, and Andrew Schultz, like, I don't like and, and that, that is a significant part of his, his coalition. So I think that is like the political ramification of this. I don't know. What do you think?
- [51:29]
David Pakman
Yeah, no, I, I agree with that. And one of the things I've been interested in, in looking at, and I kind of want to hear from you, as someone who worked in the PR and the messaging side is from reading a lot of political books, it seems as though it's common that when there's some crisis, when the messaging, comms and PR people get together, it's tell me if I'm wrong. It seems like it's common to game out every possibility. What if we went with this story? What if we went with that story? And so, like some of the anecdotes we've learned about Harris's staff when Biden was in this period of is he going to run? Is he going to not was like, okay, let's have a plan for if he drops out and endorses you. Let's have a plan for if he drops out and doesn't. Let's have a plan for if he dies here. What you see, they had all these plans. Can you talk a little bit about, like when you were Doing this stuff. Did you game out even ridiculous ideas just to go, let's thought. Let's game it out to see what would we say. And then people go, okay, that's crazy. We're not going to do that. But we've thought about it.
- [52:23]
Virginia Giuffre
Yeah, not really. To be would be the honest answer to that. I mean, we definitely like a version of this, like in a campaign setting, which is not a PR issue like this, but is more like we gained out a lot of different ways to deal with Trump, you know, in 2016, as in the Jeb campaign, and like, kind of crazy. Like, what if he does, you know, what if he says this crazy thing on stage, right? Because like, Trump himself is very unpredictable. But like most of these types of stories, like, there aren't that many types of options. You know, you got door A, which is you rip the band aid off and tell every, you know, do sunlight and tell the truth and say, guys, here it is. Whatever. Right? There's door B, you know, which is like, we're going to stonewall and try to ride this thing out and eventually people will stop caring and they'll care about something else. Or we'll do give door C where we like, give an excuse or an explanation that we hope. Right? Like, that's kind of it. Like, those are the options. Like, this is a very unique case where it's like you don't even know what's in there. You know what I mean? Like, I think back to Jeb and like, there were. He had like, one example. This is kind of similar, is Florida has very open sunshine laws, and Jeb is a big emailer. So he emailed like, you know, for eight, like, there's 10 years of emails and we're like, who the fuck knows what's in there, right? And so, like, there was like a planning of, like, what if he sent an email? You know what I mean? So that is, I guess, a more similar version to this. And. But I don't even know if they can do that because this is all being driven by Trump. Yeah, right. Like, there's no way that this, that the strategy they've put forth would be the strategy that Susie Wiles and Chris Lacivita like, have come come up with or the strategists or whatever.
- [53:58]
David Pakman
Like, they're reacting to what Trump simultaneously. The files don't exist and my name's in them. But only because Comey put it in there. Yeah, I can't imagine that. Susie Wiles.
- [54:12]
Virginia Giuffre
Yeah, no, no, I think this is all Trump and They're just kind of live reacting to the principal. So it's. So luckily, I mean, they've been to the White House, so I guess not luckily for me, but luckily I never had any candidates that were just like randomly posting crazy shifts and I just had to figure out how to deal with it. So I think it's a unique situation.
- [54:31]
David Pakman
I want to talk a little bit in the time we have left, just about like what you all are doing at the Bulwark, how you're growing substack. I mean, the success you all are having. I see that you're doing the live events. I don't even know what size team there is at this point. But, like, what, what's the, what would you say is the key thing that you've done that has allowed you to grow so quickly?
- [54:54]
Virginia Giuffre
I appreciate that, man. I think that like the key things were one, that the fact that now we've kind of expanded beyond this and we have people, well, from a lot of different backgrounds, like ideologically and experience wise. But like the original core group were never Trumpers or people who are kind of cast out of the party or cast out of their magazine, in the case the Weekly Standard. And I think that, that because we were cast out of the party because we didn't really have a realistic hope of getting back in and because we didn't really think that the Democrats. It wasn't like a hope that I was going to be comms director for Hillary Clinton or whatever in 2016. So when this all started, it was like we might be able to say what we really think. Like, we might as well just be honest and we might as well just be candid and like, you know, we'll see and maybe this will turn into something maybe it won't. Like, when we started, it was kind of a flyer. It was like a side project for a lot of people that were involved. And I just, I think that worked, right? Like, it just worked. It's what people want, like, is authentic, you know, is authenticity or whatever. That's a little eye rolling cliche. But people want, you know, right now they're craving people that are just telling them they really think, showing their real feelings. And so I think that ethos worked. And then as we've expanded, we're really only bringing in people who are committed to that. Right. We've tried to expand to do more journalism and we have good traditional journalists alongside kind of whatever, our podcast commentary folks who are focusing on Substack and Lauren Egan's writing about the Democrats John Cones writing about healthcare, et cetera. But there's some reporters that wanted to come that just aren't a fit because they don't want to do that. They don't want to say what they, you know what I mean? They want to be reporters neutral, you know, and that isn't what we do. So I think that is like, that ethos has really worked. And the YouTube stuff, look, man, you were ahead of the game on all this. So while we're confident each other, you were there first. I think there's a big demand out there in the space for kind of middle center left, anti Trump. I think YouTube was really dominated by MAGA and then secondarily by left left folks. And like there wasn't a lot of other stuff out there. A lot of people were cutting the cord. There's this huge engagement in politics and interest because of all the crazy stuff that's happening with Biden's age and the assassination attempt and Trump's back. And so I think that we got kind of in that part, I think is lucky. Like, I think we got on and decided to commit to YouTube and try it at a time where there was a spot in the marketplace for it. And so that. And then also the thing that you do well is we just post a lot of stuff.
- [57:23]
David Pakman
Well, you know what's funny?
- [57:23]
Virginia Giuffre
There's a lot of content. Yeah, I've.
- [57:26]
David Pakman
I'm always sort of like loosely mentoring a few people that are trying to get into this. And the number one piece of advice I give, which they almost never follow, is forget about what lights you buy. Don't worry about getting a PR person. It doesn't really matter what camera you get. Like you, if you're doing five hours a week of content or one hour a week or whatever, you've got to commit to that and you've got to do it and post it everywhere. All of the other stuff flows downhill from that. And so when people come to me and they're like overly focused on how do you do ad sales or do I need a stream deck or what about this? I'm like, it's just the con. You just got to commit to the content. And I think that that's kind of what you're picking up on.
- [58:04]
Virginia Giuffre
Yeah, volume and being with people want, you know, people get in a relationship with you if you're being real with them. And so they want your reaction to stuff. And I want to hear from what the audience thinks about stuff. Right. There's a little bit of a two way street like, the piece of advice I got, which is very similar to that when I was being mentored by a couple of buddies who are in sports podcasting, I was like, what? Like, I'm taking up this podcast. What's the daily podcast? What's your advice? Their main advice was like, you got to do it every day. You don't, you know, and you also got to do it when big stuff is happening. Like, people want to hear from you immediately. And, like, the example one of the guys gave that I just won't forget is he's like, I'd like to get drunk on Thanksgiving with my family and then eat a bunch of turkey and, like, hang out. He's like, but I do NFL podcasting, so I don't do that. I'm sober on Thanksgiving and I'm with my family, but I'm watching the games. And then as soon as the games are over, I'm taping, you know, because people want to hear my thoughts about what happened that day. That's kind of silly compared to politics, but, like, the principle is the same, you know, like. And so I think that is. That's. That's been working for us, which I. And I appreciate everybody's kind of effort on that.
- [59:05]
David Pakman
Well, listen, if you're here because you follow me on Substack, make sure you're following Tim and the Bulwark. If I'm the new guy here because you follow Tim, I'd be honored if you also follow me. And we're going to keep in touch. There's so much going on. I do feel that this is a critical time with at least two or three important inflection points. And it's always good to talk to.
- [59:26]
Virginia Giuffre
You, Tim, man, I appreciate very much. I'm glad we're able to do this. Let's do it again soon. All right, take care, everybody.
- [59:33]
David Pakman
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These days, sadly, it's less a question of if your personal information will be leaked, it's more a question of when will it happen. And this is why I use Aura, our sponsor. Aura monitors the dark web, your financial accounts, your credit and will let you know with real time alerts if any of your personal information has been exposed or if someone tries to use it it to steal your identity. Could be your social, could be bank logins, your credit file. Aura keeps an eye on all of it 247 so you're not blindsided by fraud. It's like having a digital bodyguard with Aura that never sleeps, scanning for threats, able to warn you before real damage is done. Aura also includes award winning antivirus software to protect your devices from malware, phishing and ransomware. And Aura also gives you a Secure password manager, US based support that's always available and up to $5 million in identity theft insurance if the worst were to happen. One app does the work of several and for me it's worth it for the peace of mind, for my family and for myself. You can try Aura for free for 14 days at aura.com/pacman. That's a ura.com/pacman to try it free for 14 days. The link is in the description. Let's talk about the disaster of the Electoral College. Why today? Well, it doesn't really make sense to wait until October of election years to talk about this sort of stuff. And it's a really important issue I think, to bring up, particularly when we see so many aspects of our democracy become increasingly less democratic. So let me just dive right into this. The Electoral College for a lot of people is this kind of mysterious, frustrating thing that somehow decides who becomes president, even if that person didn't get the most votes. And that fundamentally doesn't make sense to millions of Americans, which makes a lot of sense to me, that it doesn't make sense. Every four years, millions of voters are reminded in the United States, winning the popular vote doesn't guarantee you the presidency. Where did this system come from and why are we still using it? Well, it came from the 1700s and it was a political compromise. And the idea was there are fears and there are power struggles and there are Some unjust realities. What can we do to fix them? And so here's why the Electoral College was created. Number one, big states wanted the popular vote. Small states were terrified of being overpowered and sort of marginalized. And so the compromise was states get electors equal to their House Representatives plus two senators. And so that gives small states an automatic boost because every state has two senators regardless of population. Which by the way, the Senate is also not Democratic, but that's a story for a different day. Number two, fear of dumb voters. Many of the founders didn't trust the average citizen to choose the President directly. And they thought, but electors should make the real decision. So part of the Electoral Colleges, the states vote for electors to represent them. The electors vote for the President. And then slavery was also a factor. Southern states had enslaved populations. Slaves couldn't vote, but because of the three fifths compromise, they still counted towards population totals. And that gave slaveholding states more electoral power. And so it was sort of a built in political weapon for white supremacy. None of those reasons apply anymore. Number one, we live in an era of mass literacy, of Internet access, of 24,7 news and media. And so the idea that voters aren't well enough informed, I mean, like, let's be honest, millions of people voted for Donald Trump three times. If the Electoral College was supposed to protect us from people making uninformed choices, it's clearly failing spectacularly. So that that doesn't really apply anymore. Number two, you know, this idea of marginalized small states, I mean, the election is really run through the media at this point. Most people don't go to see the candidates speak. And so that's not really relevant. And then number three, slavery is no longer legal. There is still a distribution of power from the Electoral College that is based on an original imbalance because of slavery, that's no longer relevant. And then we get to the sort of math, which is really the infuriating part. We have had multiple elections where the person who got fewer votes nationally became president. And that's kind of the design of it. In the year 2000, Al Gore defeated George Bush by half a million votes. But Bush became president in 2016 even though Trump still won't admit it. Hillary Clinton got nearly 3 million more votes than Donald Trump and lost because the system gave more weight to voters in less populated areas. And that gets us to vote power. If you live in Wyoming, your vote carries way more weight than someone in California. What's the math of it? Every state gets at least three electoral votes, even if it has the Population of a suburb that is not balanced. That's disproportionate power based on geography. So if you believe in the principle of one person, one vote, why should you have more power with your one vote in Wyoming than when with your one vote in California? It doesn't really make sense. Now there's another really weird side effect of the Electoral College. Presidential campaigns only care about swing states. So consider that one of the reasons to put in place the Electoral College was there was a fear that without it, elections would be just the biggest population centers being paid attention to. That's where the candidates would go. That's the, the people there would get the most information. This is of course, before 247 media, but look at what we have right now. We have a system where, you know, it's often five to seven states that are where the campaign happens. California doesn't matter. They're obviously going to vote for a Democrat. Alabama doesn't matter. They're obviously going to vote for the Republicans. So it becomes about Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin. Pennsylvania has been important. Billions of dollars, hundreds, thousands of campaign stops funneled into this tiny sliver of the country. It's just another version of what they feared when they put in the Electoral College. So if you live in New York or Texas, you don't really matter in that sense. So we still don't have a national campaign. It's like a glorified game of the board game risk. So what are the ways to fix this? Number one is the constitutional amendment. Amendment. Good luck. I know there are people who talk about this. You need 2/3 of Congress, you need 38 states. It's just not going to happen anytime soon. Now the more plausible path forward I've spoken about before is called the npvic. NPVIC stands for National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. This is real. This is the most plausible path to a national popular vote vote. States essentially agree we will give our electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote. So imagine that you are Michigan right now. The candidate who gets more votes in Michigan gets all of Michigan's electoral votes under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Michigan would say no matter who gets more votes in Michigan, we will have our electors vote for whoever wins the national popular vote. If enough states sign on to that compact such that their electoral votes are 270 or more, we have a national popular vote de facto. Right now there are 209 electoral votes that have joined. So those last 61 are more difficult. But it's a plausible idea. And then there is Also the idea of proportional allocation, although there are some issues with it. So. So if you look at Maine and Nebraska, Maine and Nebraska already split their votes by district. And more states could do it. It would not fix everything, but it would make it slightly less broken than if you win Michigan by one vote, you get 100% of the electoral votes. So bottom line here, the Electoral College was built for a country that really doesn't exist anymore. Communication used to be slow, slavery was legal. We have a very different scenario. And right now, what the Electoral College has in practice done is undermine the will of the people in multiple elections. And by the way, it's been really good for Republicans. So it makes some votes count more than others. It makes it so that for millions of Americans, really tens of millions of Americans, their votes effectively don't matter. So if we care about democracy, and I do, we need to stop pretending the Electoral College is this sacred thing. It's broken. It's not sacred. There are ways to fix it. So let me know what you think. Are you on the side of we got to get rid of this thing and go to a national popular vote, or are you on the side of the Electoral College serves a purpose in 2025? Let me know in the comments or you can email info at David Pakman Dotcom. We have a new full blown authoritarian manifesto from Donald Trump. Where do you think that it happened?
- [70:08]
Donald Trump
Truth Central?
- [70:10]
David Pakman
Of course it happened on Truth Social. And we really need to look at these as what they are, which is attacks on freedom of speech, attacks on the rule of law. Here's the first post from Trump that's so disturbing. Quote, everybody is saying that I was solely responsible for the firing of Stephen Colbert from CBS Late Night. That is not true. The reason he was fired was a pure lack of talent. Talent and the fact that this deficiency was costing CBS $50 million a year in losses. And it was only going to get worse. Here's the critical part. Next up will be an even less talented Jimmy Kimmel. And then a weak and very insecure Jimmy Fallon. The only real question is, who will go first? Showbiz and television are very simple businesses. If you get ratings, you can say or do anything. If you don't, you always become a victim. Colbert became a victim to himself. The other two will follow. That is what this is all about. The real issue here is there are comedians who make fun of Trump. That's the crime that they have committed. And the message that Trump is sending is, you criticize me, I'm going to try to get you fired. I'm going to try to get you ruined. Or maybe even worse. Maybe there's going to be legal implications. And this is the President of the United States. It's not an angry podcast host. This is the president with an authoritarian meltdown. That's how these regimes work. There's a long history of it in the 20th century. There's another post in which Trump goes after Chuck Grassley. Check this out. Quote, chuck Grassley, who I got elected to the US Senate when he was down by a lot in the great state of Iowa, could solve the blue slip problem we are having with respect to the appointment of highly qualified judges and US Attorneys With a mere flick of the pen, Democrats like Schumer, Warner, Kaine, Booker, Schiff and others sleazebags all have an ironclad stoppage of great Republican candidates. Put simply, the President of the United States will never be permitted to appoint the person of his choice because of an ancient and probably unconstitutional custom that if you have even one person in the opposite party serving in the US Senate, they must give consent, thereby completely stopping the opposite party's nomination. The only way to beat this hoax, to appoint a Democrat, Democrat or a weak and ineffective Republican. Therefore, I would never be able to appoint great judges or U.S. attorneys in California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Virginia, and other places where there is, coincidentally, the highest level of crime and corruption. So, ok, he's going after Chuck Grassley here. That, that's the whole point. He wants political loyalty. He doesn't want public service. And Trump says nothing about the independence of the judiciary or the qualifications. Trump wants to rubber stamp judges and US Attorneys in blue states. And because the Senate still observes this norm called the blue slip, which lets home state senators weigh in. And so if there's a nomination for a New Jersey, if there's a New Jersey nominee and a New Jersey senator says, this isn't good for my state, they can sort of veto it, in a sense. And by the way both parties have abused it. Trump's not calling for reform, though. He's just calling for obedience. What Trump cares about is not allowing Democrats to interfere with his judicial choices in blue states. If the shoe were on the other foot, Trump would say no. Of course, we need to let Ted Cruz say no to a Democratic president when they nominate someone to be a judge in Texas, for example. So the, the sort of workflow here is being laid out in the open. Loyalty to Trump overrides loyalty to your constituents. Of course, that's a classic with authoritarians. Free speech is a thing if it flatters Trump, if it criticizes Trump, well, then it's Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon will soon be losing their jobs. And then if there's a legal norm that stands in Trump's way or there is a constitutional tradition, it should be shredded if it interferes with what Donald Trump wants. So he's testing the boundaries. And these posts to truth social media, these are really messages to the allies. You either get in line and do what I say or I will work to destroy you. You might be a senator, you might be a late night talk host. And it's a message to us that we've just got to shut up and take it. We will know in 15 months, for 15, 14 months, 16 months in the midterms, does Trump get what he wants with regard to that subservience and loyalty, or are we going to do something, something about it? Now on the bonus show today, we have a phenomenal, phenomenal show. We will talk about the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle backlash. Another one of these cultural clashes. Josh Hawley's stock trading ban is creating a little bit of panic in the White House. And we'll also get an update on that infamous missing minute from the FBI version of the Epstein prison tape. Tape. All of those stories and more are on today's bonus show.
- [75:36]
Virginia Giuffre
Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money.
- [75:38]
David Pakman
Yes.
- [75:38]
Donald Trump
Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad.
- [75:41]
David Pakman
That's right. Sign up at join pacman.com every time you do, Alex Jones sheds one more tear. I'll see you then. I'll be back tomorrow.