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The David Pakman Show
8/12/25: Inflation highest in 6 months, layoffs highest in 5 years
01:02:52
-- On the Show: -- Inflation rose sharply in July under Trump’s economy, driven by tariffs causing prices to increase above the Fed’s ideal range -- Trump’s firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics head raises questions about the credibility...
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- [00:00]
David Pakman
All right.
- [00:07]
Unknown Co-Host
Welcome to the show, everybody. Today's show almost was very, very late. When I was preparing for the show this morning, I was fed a video of Lara Trump covering, singing Tom Petty's song, Won't Back Down. It was so nauseating and I felt so unwell that the entire show almost had to be pushed back. But miraculously, I am here. We are here. And there is going to be a heavy focus on the economy in today's show because we are now building up a picture of where this economy is going. And it's, it is a political story, but we really just start with the facts. And it's not, oh, everyone's now unemployed and the economy is objectively terrible. But we now have four, five, maybe six important indicators that this economy is going very much in the wrong direction. Inflation is now up. Trump said it would be down. It's up. Layoffs have hit the highest level since COVID times. Manufacturing saw its largest decline in years. And we have an environment that isn't extraordinary economically and it signals potential problems. So let's take each of these issues one at a time, starting with today's inflation report. And then I know a lot of you have been to me saying, David, can we even trust inflation numbers at this point? And I'm going to get to that because that has never been an area of focus for me. We can't trust the cbo, we can't trust the bls. That's not been the case for me during Republican presidents, nor during Democratic presidents. So I want to come back to that. But let's start with inflation. Inflation is up. We got July 2025 numbers today. Tariffs are making things more expensive. This was completely predictable. We have two measures, core inflation and cpi, which is the Consumer Price Index. Core inflation is up 0.3% over the last month. In June, it was up 0.2%. So that 0.3% increase in July is the largest single month inflation increase in six months. This now pushes year over year inflation for the 12 month period ending in July from rather up to 3.1%. The desirable range for inflation is 2 to 3%. I'll explain why in a moment. Core inflation is now up year over year. 3.1. Inflation is elevated by point one, but elevated. We then have CPI, the consumer price index. That is up 2.7% year over year. Not crazy high, but remember Trump said prices were going to come down every day that inflation is greater than zero, prices are going up. Very basic math, arithmetic. The Fed like CPI at 2%. So being at 2.7 when the Fed says we want 2 means that the consumer price index is 35% higher, higher than the number that the Federal Reserve considers ideal. So let's now contextualize this. Tell me if this is useful, by the way, if this isn't, you know, if you just want me to play Stephen Miller gaff reels instead, let me know. But I think that understanding how our economy works is critical. So tell me if you think that understanding these things is an important thing. First of all, stocks opened way up this morning. This inflation news is bad news. It shows that the tariffs are raising prices. Why would, as of this moment the dow be up 400 points? Why would the Nasdaq, as Trump calls it, be up over 100 points? If this is bad news, why are stocks up? Well, I'll explain that. The stock market is a futures market in a sense where traders and investors are making trades based based on their expectation of what's going to come in the future. Their expectation of what's going to come in the future now includes a reduction to the federal funds rate, which juices the stock market. What do I mean by that? Because inflation came in hotter than expected, because prices are increasing when Trump said that he would decrease them, traders and investors believe the Fed will meet and lower interest rates. Because of the expectation that the Fed will lower interest rates, the stock market is up as of this moment. So that's the explanation there. Let's now go to why do we want any inflation at all? And I apologize to those who have heard me explain this before, a lot of people don't understand this. A lot of people say, well, cheaper stuff is better, so why don't we want cheaper prices to go down? Like obviously we get why high inflation is bad, but don't we want deflation? We don't in the traditional understanding of macroeconomics, and you can dispute that understanding. But in that framework, which is at least nominally applied in many economic analyses, 2 to 3% inflation is enough that it would encourage people to buy stuff. Not now, because if you wait, it'll get more expensive. Right? That's the, the whole idea of stimulating economic activity is if you have 2 1/2% inflation, you would be incentivized to buy stuff now, which keeps people employed, which keeps them earning money, which then they go out and spend in the economy. That is where economic growth comes from in a way you can't decouple mild or what we would call reasonable inflation, desirable inflation from economic growth. If you accept standard macroeconomics you recognize that growth is derived from price increases to a degree at 2 to 3% being the ideal amount. Really high inflation, we intuitively, intuitively understand, isn't good because if things get too expensive too quickly, faster than your wage growth, you can't afford stuff. If you can't afford stuff, you don't buy it. The companies that sell that stuff then go, we've got no customers, we've got to lay off our employees. And it's a sort of economic doom loop. But why is deflation bad? Deflation is bad because if prices are coming down in absolute terms, if eggs are going to cost less next month than they buy, actually, eggs may not be a good example because you could delay purchasing eggs. But the idea is if you can wait to buy stuff because it's going to be cheaper, you wouldn't buy it right now. If you don't buy it right now, that's bad for companies that are selling stuff, and it creates that same deflationary spiral. So that's why we say a little bit of inflation is good. It generates economic growth. The political question, and we're going to get in a moment to numbers that we can trust versus ones that we can't and the other elements of the economy. What is Donald Trump going to do right now? Because certainly the tariff policy is a driver here in increasing prices. And politically there is a really difficult off ramp for Trump just because of his personality. So we're going to get back to that. But what is Donald Trump going to do? All right, can we trust economic data today? Now, before you go, wait a second, David. You're the guy that always says we can trust the data. That's right. That's right. For decades, decades. You didn't have to like the numbers, but you could trust them. Inflation, unemployment, wage growth. The Bureau of Labor Statistics would put out its reports and partizans would fight over what the numbers meant. But nobody credible was saying, the bureau is just making up jobs numbers. You would, you would occasionally hear from Republicans when a Democrat had good numbers, or you would occasionally hear from Republicans when a Republican had bad numbers. But in the sort of serious adult space that we try to occupy, we didn't question the validity of the numbers. When George W. Bush got a good or a bad jobs number, we trusted it. When Obama got a good or bad jobs number, we trusted it. Whether it was Carter or Reagan or Bush 1 or Clinton or whoever. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and some of these other economic reporting agencies and, and others like the Congressional Budget Office, they were boring, they were dependable, they were apolitical. And markets relied on the data and reporting. The Fed relied on it to make decisions. Social Security checks were based on it. The economy ran more smoothly and the data was credible. We have a unique situation, and this is not partisan. This is not about Democrats and Republicans. This is about the Orange Man. President Trump, as he once referred to himself. Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after she put out a jobs report that he just didn't like. It was inconvenient politically. There was no wrongdoing. The numbers weren't flattering to Trump. And Trump has accused the agency of manipulating data. The same claim that the far right will trot out any time a report doesn't go their way. If inflation's too high, those numbers are fake. If jobs are too low, those numbers are fake. And I've always said in the past, wrong. The numbers are reliable because the people producing them are not political hacks. You don't have Stephen Miller, Peter Navarro and Laura Loomer doing these reports. You've got economists, statisticians, and career civil servants. Things are now changing and we have to consider this question of the trustworthiness of the numbers. Trump is trying to turn economic reporting into a partizan loyalty test. The budget cuts are forcing the Bureau of Labor Statistics to collect less data. This is also critically important. We just got this inflation report. It's not a great report. It puts core inflation above 3%, desirable, is between 2 and 3 jobs numbers aren't good, etc. But we have learned that they are no longer gathering all of the inflation data that they once were. Some cities are not now being considered as part of the inflation report. They are relying more on what are called imputed numbers, estimates from other locations that may or may not be similar. What's inflation in Nashville? Well, we might not gather that. We'll just take the number from Dallas and sort of apply it to Nashville. Is that a good idea? Most economists say that it is not. This is not a technical problem. This affects inflation data and this affects jobs data. These are the two most important numbers, in a sense, in the economy. When you are less precise with that data, you have more volatility, more political spin, and policy based on those numbers is inherently less reliable. These numbers also are used to decide Social Security benefits. The cost of living increase of Social Security is based off of these numbers. If these numbers aren't reliable, then we're going to have a problem with our Social Security benefits. The Federal Reserve uses these numbers. To decide are we going to lower interest rates, raise interest rates, or keep them the same? Those decisions can have trillion dollar impacts in global economies. They're the baseline for every serious conversation about the economy. And again, historically, this was not partisan. You could trust the numbers under Reagan, you could trust the numbers under Bush 1, you could trust them under Bush 2, and Clinton and Obama. If you hated the president, you could still believe the numbers. Even in Trump's first term, that was still true. But this is now different because he's firing career officials for producing numbers that he just doesn't like, and he's starving these agencies of resources and he's telling supporters the data is rigged unless it makes me look good. And this is how authoritarians operate. We've seen what they do with regard to media, we've seen what they do with regard to militarization of law enforcement. We're seeing all of these different areas. And another one that authoritarians do is they take neutral statistics reporting agencies, and they make them political weapons. So now that we have the new CPI report and now that we have the new inflation numbers, they're not great. They're not great, but are they even reliable or is the inflation situation even worse? I am now for the first time ever, and I did this during Bush, and I did this during Trump's first term. I never brought this up. We now have to ask, can we trust these numbers? And if the answer is maybe not, we're sort of in uncharted territory here. The numbers we're getting aren't good. And it's a reasonable question to say, well, are the numbers actually far worse? Let's take a look now at the layoff data. The Trump economy just hit a milestone, and this is not the kind of milestone that you brag about on a campaign trail. This is not the kind of milestone you brag about if you are the President of the United States. In July, layoffs, meaning the number of people whose jobs were eliminated reached their highest level of in five years. Think about that timeline that makes the July layoff numbers the worst since those early days of COVID More than 62,000 people were told in July, thanks for your service. Clean out your desk. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. That is a 29% increase from June. It is 140% higher than the July layoff numbers of last year. We often because there's seasonality to employment, sometimes we like to say, how does this year's number compare to a year ago rather than to last month. 75% higher than at this time last year. 6% higher than the entire layoff total for all of 2024. We've already seen more layoffs in the first seven months of this year than we saw in all of 2024. And the last time that January to July was this bad was when the economy was in a COVID lockdown and layoffs were, you know, in the millions. 1.8 million or something like that over that period. What is the biggest driver of this? Trump's Doge, which has been on this firing spree. 300000 federal jobs have been wiped out this year alone. In addition to that, we are seeing manufacturing jobs decline thanks to Donald Trump's tariffs. And, and these are not the people being fired by the federal government. We're talking about folks who process benefits. We're talking about food inspectors, workplace inspectors for health and safety, people keeping airports running and ensuring functions of government. And so the people that loved Doge are saying, this doesn't matter. We're getting rid of people. Uh, we're getting rid of jobs that never really should have existed in the first place. But the downstream effects are huge. Health care providers are losing funding, nonprofits are losing grants. All of these entities employ people. And so you've got this ripple effect, sort of like if you drop a big stone in the water and then it ripples out very, very far from where you drop the stone, and it'll start hollowing out your economy, it'll start hollowing out sectors. If you look at the private sector, because this is not just about government jobs. Tech and telecom are cutting workers. They see automation, they see cloud infrastructure that requires just fewer people. It's just technological unemployment, in a sense. You've got retail slashing jobs. Prices are going up, so consumers are buying less. This is a result of Trump's tariffs. And then you look just kind of nominally finance transportation, which is one of the biggest employment sectors in the country, business, service firms, these were really growing over recent years. They're reversing. And then I do think it's worth mentioning AI. This doesn't really directly have to do with Trump. 10,000 layoffs last month are believed to be tied to AI. Another 10,000 this year linked more broadly to automation. So this is not just one type of job. Tariffs are making things more expensive. And we are, for now, still seeing unemployment in the fours. But it doesn't take that much to push unemployment to 4.8, then to 5.2. And all of a sudden now you no longer have full employment. So it's always a question of are we going to see the trend reverse? If this trend keeps up, we're going to see the biggest year for job cuts since pandemic shutdowns. And it'll be happening under the guy who said, I'm going to bring back jobs. I understand how to do it, I understand who to tariff. It's all going to be great. It's looking like it could be a bloodbath if things don't reverse. I'm going to keep you updated on it. I hope you'll get my daily free audio podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. We'll take a quick break and be right back. 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Go to harry's.com/pacman. The link is in the description 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. The link is in the description. The David Pakman show is of course an audience supported program. If you enjoy the show, I would love for you to add yourself to the ranks of our supporters. The best and most direct way to do it is get a membership on my website. Join pacman.com you can also support on Substack certainly become a free subscriber. It costs nothing, but it makes Substack more likely to recommend our newsletter to other people. Substack also has a paid option which you can check out@substack.david pakman.com Donald Trump just took one of the most authoritarian swings of his presidency. We talked about it yesterday. Seizing control of Washington, DC's police department, ordering hundreds of National Guard troops into the Capitol. Turns out it's not only up to Nancy Pelosi. As Trump said in 2021, when the National Guard goes to D.C. trump bypassed city elected leaders. He declared it a public safety emergency. He handed control of the police to Attorney General Pam Bondi. And of course, the numbers don't support it. When you look at violent crime in D.C. it was down 35% last year. It's down another 26% this year. Crime for decades has overall been coming down. There have been blips, there have been spikes in certain types of crime at periods of time, in certain locations at periods of time. But the big picture is that crime continues to decline. It declines under Democrats, it declines under Republicans, presidents. That is because a lot of it doesn't have anything to do with them. But the city's attorney general is saying what Trump is doing is against the law. Under the D.C. home Rule Act, Trump has something that he doesn't have in most states, which is the authority over the D.C. national Guard. There's no governor of D.C. therefore, the authority falls to the President Donald Trump. He can deploy troops without gubernatorial approval, like he did, by the way, in California, without Gavin Newsom's approval. But that is where the word revolt now comes in. The Guard is not a MAGA army. Many serve in overwhelmingly blue states, and of course, D.C. itself is overwhelmingly Democratic voting. Most National Guard are trained for disaster relief, humanitarian aid. They are not trained primarily in patrolling American streets on presidential orders. And in fact, it's a really big deal to deploy troops to do domestic Law enforcement, you're not supposed to do it. It's against the law based on the Posse Comitatus Act. So the question now is whether National Guards. Because remember, we're talking about states. The question is whether state National Guards are going to revolt against Donald Trump. Because rumors are that a lot of National Guards men and women are not happy with what is going on. They correctly don't believe that they are being utilized in the way that they are supposed to be. And so a revolt wouldn't really look like armed defiance. I'm not talking about National Guard troops saying, here's my rifle and I'm pointing it at Trump, proverbially right at the Trump administration and saying, I'm not going to do it. The way it would look is units dragging their feet to do what Donald Trump directs them to do, or dragging their feet in general just to make a point. Commanders sort of quietly shifting troops into non law enforcement roles. Whistleblowers leaking that there is dissent in the ranks and that morale is low. And the idea here, of course, is if Donald Trump tries to apply the L. A and now DC Method or tactic to Chicago. He talked about other cities of Philadelphia, New York. I don't even remember the full list Trump gave me gave yesterday. The pushback has the potential to become a national revolt of the National Guard. Now, meanwhile, the streets of D.C. have erupted. Protests broke out yesterday. Within hours of the announcement, there were hundreds of people rallying outside of the White House. And the mood from what we've heard, including from people like Samantha Davis of Free DC Is that nobody, the protesters and even many in the Guard don't believe that what Trump is doing has anything to do with crime. And in fact, you look at the data, crime is down, crimes down in D.C. crimes down nationally. This is about control and this is about power. Authoritarians aren't super concerned with crime and public safety. Authoritarians are very concerned with control and power. And the optics of deploying these armored vehicles near the Capitol and homeless encampments are going to be bulldozed. And it's a crime emergency, we are told. Of course, the emergency doesn't exist. This is how authoritarians operate. Now, we've talked about some of the parallels. In 1968 at the DNC in Chicago, National Guard and police cracked down hard on protesters. And there was a political firestorm over it. In 1970 in Kent, state Guard troops were deployed under political pressure and they killed four for unarmed students. And it really was a turning point in public opinion. And then there were repeated Domestic deployments by Nixon against anti war protesters that also had some of the same sort of like turning them against our own citizens kind of optics. So what's the lesson from history? The lesson is when you turn the Guard into a political force, you erode the nonpartisan image that the National Guard is supposed to have, and you can trigger a legitimacy crisis that could last much, much longer than the presidency. But there's also a political risk analysis that needs to be done, because Trump's second term playbook is about just raw executive power and saying to courts, I dare you to stop me, and saying to governors, I dare you to stop me. And saying to media, I dare you to stop me from, you know, banning whoever or whatever the case may be. We are going to have to see if Guard members resist or if protests escalate and the narrative flips. Does Trump lose control? Does he lose control of the streets? But then does he lose control of the troops that he wants to bring in to try to control the streets? And the danger is, you know, in a sense, the National Guard is a trusted institution. It's not about rah, rah military, but it's when you understand the point of the National Guard and what they do and the fact that a lot of these folks are folks. I forget if it's one weekend a month and two weeks a year or whatever it is. These are people who are, who are actually saying, I have a job, I have families. In many cases, I have my main thing, but I want to do something extra and I want to be ready if we do have a humanitarian situation, natural disaster, etc. If Trump politicizes that, obviously he's going to alienate the left, but I believe he will alienate almost all moderates and even some Republicans, even parts of the military establishment are going to say, this goes too far. And so Trump squeezing as hard as he can, and it looks like the Guard may slip from his grasp. Remember, authoritarians love doing things to generate protests to then justify deploying military. If the military you're trying to deploy goes, we're not down with any of this, overtly or implicitly. It could be a real problem for Donald Trump. And that's where we are right now. Donald Trump stunned, stunned, stunned people in the White House press briefing room when he waxed poetic about washing sidewalks. Washing the sidewalks. It's really important to understand that this is sort of a. It's nostalgia porn, in a sense. And Republicans engage in nostalgia porn. We've got to go back to the good old days and Often they talk about the 50s, 1950s. Sometimes it sounds like they're talking more about the 1850s. This is Trump with the latest nostalgia porn during yesterday's press briefing where he took questions.
- [28:13]
David Pakman
You have countries where every Saturday the people go out and they wash their sidewalks in front of their stores or their houses. They scrub, they scrub their sidewalks. So we aren't quite at that level yet. I don't think, think, Gary, we're not quite there yet, but maybe we will. They go, they go out and they scrub. I think it's so beautiful to hear that and to see those stories.
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Unknown Co-Host
But, you know, there are so many things to say about this. First of all, countries where everyone goes out to engage in activities like scrubbing sidewalks, it's really more reminiscent of places like North Korea where a leader has total and complete power over their people and they require them, sometimes under penalty of death, to engage in menial minutia, trivial type work. That's one aspect. So Trump kind of nostalgically talking about that is another reminder of just how authoritarian this guy is. But I also have to tell you anecdotally, I often, when I'm out early in the morning will see store shop owners of different kinds spraying down their sidewalks. And I often think to myself, it seems like a real waste of water. There's got to be some water, better way to do what they're trying to do here. But you cut it both doesn't really indicate much about a country because the countries where that sort of behavior is widespread, it's often a dictatorship. And also it is kind of happening in the United States. And when I travel, I see it as well. When I'm up early and, you know, getting to a coffee shop for a beautiful cappuccino right at 7am when they've opened, I see it, I see it in cities all across the country. So the question is, why is Trump talking about sidewalk maintenance? And is this a quirky one off moment? I don't think it is. This is what Donald Trump's public appearances have become. It's these kind of random half memories strung together with wistful commentary about unrelated or irrelevant topics. And we're supposed to nod, and he wants the media to nod. And just imagine Joe Biden giving a speech about Naito, for example, and veering into a nostalgic monologue about pressure washing driveways or scrubbing driveways or whatever the case may be. Fox News would have a countdown clock to 25th Amendment. But when Trump rambles about sidewalk scrubbing, Maga goes, he's being so authentic. Oh, you know, you really know what he's thinking. And the thing is that I don't even really know the point he's trying to make. I intuit that he's talking about civic pride. He's talking about scrubbing sidewalks as a metaphor for something, but at the same time, it's a level of incoherence and delusion that is sort of what happens when Trump runs out of applause lines and you get into these meandering observations. And if this were the energy, and I mean, I say if he brought that sort of energy to campaign rallies, he was bringing that kind of low energy to many campaign rallies. And a lot of the people who support him just don't care. If Biden did it, they'd be having a field day. But when it's Trump, much like when he says authoritarian stuff, people just kind of shrug and look the other way. Donald Trump's handpicked FDI FBI Director Cash Patel did something absolutely fascinating yesterday during Donald Trump's press conference. He kind of went rogue. And you can see Trump, he doesn't like it. Trump puts that pursed lips sort of expression on that he does when he doesn't like what's being said. The entire press conference was meant to tell us crime is so bad everywhere. Thanks to Democrats who run cities and states, but especially in Washington, D.C. crime is so bad that Trump is declaring an emergency, deploying federal troops, nationalizing D.C. law enforcement, bulldozing encampments of homeless people because crime is so bad. And Cash Patel gets up there and he actually goes, oh, the murder rate is coming down. And it's coming down very quickly. Take a listen to this, and you can see Cash is off message. Cash is making a great argument against his own boss, our children.
- [32:31]
Cash Patel
And the murder rates are plummeting. We are now able to report that the murder rate, it's on track to be the lowest in US History, in modern recorded US History, thanks to this team behind me and President Trump's priorities.
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Unknown Co-Host
Now, here's the problem. Here's the problem. And I get that he's saying it's thanks to Trump that this is going on. Cash Patel is correct. The MAGA narrative depends on painting every American city run by Democrats as this lawless, dystopian wasteland overrun by gangs and dangerous immigrants and George Soros funded prosecutors who won't do anything about crime. But the data paints a very different picture, and the data is a betrayal of the entire point of this press conference. And Trump does not like being Contradicted, you see it on his face. It's one of the, this would be like if, you know, Kim Jong Un's general walked in and said at a rally about how great the economy is, that the economy isn't doing so hard or something like that. Cash is going off script and he is completely making irrelevant the entire pretext, context and environment in which Donald Trump says he needs to do all of these things. Now, the question of course is, is when does Cash Patel get the call to clarify his comments? And my assumption would be that that would be something like, although thanks to Donald Trump, the murder rate is down nationally, there are blue cities that are being run by lawless, crime loving Democrats. And there, there's a real problem with crime, except we all know that it's the same statistics. In Trump world, you can either be loyal or, or you can tell the truth, but seemingly you can't do both. And Trump did not like what Cash Patel was saying. But it's the truth. Crime is down and the entire thing is a farce. Donald Trump has already packed his second term cabinet with loyalists. He's threatened deportation as political punishment. He's expanded executive authority in ways we have not seen in modern history. These are real changes that are happening right now. And what's even more alarming is that a lot of the media is either glossing over the worst of it or they're reframing, framing it so it all sounds a little more palatable. And that is why I use Ground News. This is a news comparison tool, doesn't just feed you headlines, it shows you, here's how different outlets, left, right, center, are covering the same story. And this is one of the few tools I know of that can really help you detect the political spin, the bias, catch stories that your usual sources might detect, downplay or not cover it all on everything from immigration policy to economic shifts. If you want to get a bigger picture, a broader picture of what's being reported, Ground News is an invaluable source to keep you informed. And Ground News is offering my audience 40% off their top tier vantage plan. You'll only pay five bucks a month. Go to Ground News, slash Pacman or enter the code Pacman in the app to get started. The link is in the description. I want to introduce you to an amazing tool that has helped a huge number of people reach their health goals. It is called Lumen and it's the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism, through your breath and on the app. It'll tell you, are you burning fat or carbs? And give you tailored guidance to improve nutrition, workouts, even stress management. You your metabolism is like the engine of your body, how you turn food into fuel. And because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does, optimal metabolic health can translate to many benefits, including easier weight management and improved energy levels and fitness results. It's a long list. Lumen gives you recommendations to improve metabolic health based on the context of your breath measurement, which whether that's first thing in the morning, before and after meals or workouts. And you can get 20% off your lumen by going to lumen.me/pacman. The link is in the description a completely feeble and disoriented orange Donald Trump confused Russia with Alaska multiple times. If Joe Biden did this, they'd be calling for his head. Presented to you here emergency.
- [37:08]
David Pakman
And it's embarrassing for me to be up here. You know, I'm going to see Putin. I'm going to Russia on Friday. I don't like being up here talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once beautiful capital was.
- [37:22]
Unknown Co-Host
Trump is not going to Russia. He is going to Alaska. Now listen, these are the same people who lost their minds every damn time Joe Biden misspoke when Biden called someone by the wrong name. MAGA said this is a national emergency. We must put a stop to this. And Fox News spent days and days talking about it and talking about neurological conditions. And the right would clip every stumble and every verbal slip, including looping them slowed down on social media, asking is he fit to serve? And all that. Trump is now confusing a US State with the country that we fought a cold war against. And the same crowd that said mental acuity is the most important thing. They're very, very quiet, very quiet. And it got worse. In the sort of same kind of ramble, Donald Trump started talking about changes in land and how Russia has taken oceanfront property. These are really, really wacky delusions. Like, I've heard more coherent stuff sitting at a bar next to someone who's been there eight hours bad.
- [38:43]
David Pakman
But it's very complex because you have lines that are very uneven and there'll be some swapping, there'll be some changes in land. And the word that they will use is, you know, they make changes. We're going to change the lines, the battle lines. Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They've occupied some very prime territory. We're going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine but they've taken some very prime territory. They've taken largely ocean, you know, real estate, we call it oceanfront property. That's always the most valuable property. If you're in a lake, a river or an ocean, it's always the best property. Well, Ukraine, a lot of people don't know that Ukraine was largely a thousand miles of ocean that's gone. Other than one small area, Odessa, it's a small area. There's just a little bit of water left. So I'm going to go and start, see the parameters. Now. I may leave and say, good luck and that'll be the end. I may say this, this is not going to be settled.
- [39:45]
Unknown Co-Host
I mean, what on earth is this guy talking about? And of course, another example, if Biden did this, they would say, remove him now before the sentence is finished. So the pattern here is really clear. A president clearly not in full command of his thoughts. He's drifting into bizarre real estate analogies in the middle of talking about geopolitics. And the hypocrisy from the right is just deafening. If Biden had confused Russia with Alaska, if Biden had said, I'm going to Russia when he wasn't, it would be plastered on Fox's homepage for a week. Trump does it and slips of the tongue. They happen to everybody. The difference was in between Biden's gaffes and he had coherent policy ideas that were good for the country. And is there anything more important than that? Trump's gaffes are the policy points. Trump's policy points are rambling monologues with no connection to reality, wrapped in self victimization and, I guess, real estate cliches. And this is the guy that Republicans say we want representing us on the world stage in Russia, even though it's actually going to be in Alaska. Where are the calls for an investigation into fitness? Donald Trump's newest press secretary, Caroline Levitt, is supposed to be the sort of polished face of the administration. And she has become its most visible nervous breakdown, its most emblematic representation of the sheer absurdity and internal contradictions of all of their positions. Case in point, a reporter asks Caroline the most simple, most obvious question about the claim of something called the Epstein hoax. The question is, what part of it is a hoax? And that genuinely is a good question. When they say that the Epstein hoax is a hoax, do they mean Epstein didn't really do child sex trafficking? If so, why is Ghislaine Maxwell in prison? Do they mean that any documents that come out are fraudulent? Do they mean that what? Which part of it is the hoax? And here is Caroline Levitt not really loving the question. And the answer is even more pathetic.
- [42:05]
Caroline Levitt
Thank you for being with us today. Sure, Jackie, thank you.
- [42:08]
Unknown Co-Host
Caroline.
- [42:09]
Unknown Reporter
There's been a lot of discussion about the Epstein files and the President's comments yesterday calling it a hoax. Can you clarify which part of the Epstein hoax is the hoax part?
- [42:19]
Caroline Levitt
The President is referring to the fact that Democrats have now seized on this as if they ever wanted transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, which is an asinine suggestion for any Democrat to make. The Democrats had control of this building, the White House for four years and they didn't do a dang thing when it came to transparency in regards to Jeffrey Epstein and his heinous crimes. It was this President who directed the Department of Justice and the Attorney General to do an exhaustive review of all files related to Jeffrey Epstein, which they did.
- [42:51]
Unknown Co-Host
Notice that directing a review is very different from, hey, Pam, release the files right now. Which Trump didn't do.
- [43:02]
Caroline Levitt
The Attorney General and the FBI, led by Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino, Cash Patel, these are great patriots, some of the most trusted voices and the Republican Party movement, it's part of the reason the President appointed him, appointed them to these high law enforcement positions. And they spent many months going through all of the files related to Jeffrey Epstein and they concluded what they found in that memo, which they drafted and they released. And so the President has been transparent. He has followed through on his promises to the American people. But he doesn't like to see Democrats in the mainstream media covering this like it's the biggest story that the American people care about.
- [43:40]
Unknown Co-Host
You know, one of the really interesting things about this rant from her, which always is tinged with anger at someone daring to ask a question. The hostility towards reporters is just wild. One of the really interesting things about what Caroline Levitt says there is, it's not going to satisfy anybody in the sense that on the one hand when she says, oh, whoa, the victim video just disappeared, on the one hand when she says Trump has advocated the most transparency of anybody. Even Magas don't believe that Republicans believe that the Trump administration is participating in a cover up as to the full truth about the Epstein story, that they're not going to be satisfied by that. And then on the other hand, the fact that they are so unwilling to, to actually release the documents when Donald Trump has the power to do it, but is choosing not to, or at least, you know, clearly he, if he wanted to say release it, he would have said it to Pam Bondi. This is a statement that's not going to satisfy anybody. Trump hasn't kept his promises. He's not being transparent. His supporters know that he hasn't delivered on these promises. And you've got entire corners of the MAGA Internet raging about it. So the reason that Caroline Levitt gets upset isn't the question per say, although that's how she always acts indignant. How dare you. It's that they don't have a good answer. Part of her anger is, I don't really have a better answer than the terrible one that I've been giving you. And the Epstein comments of Trump has directed a full review of this is similar to like, I'll have a health care plan in two weeks. This is bait. It's meant to get people to go. He's ordered a review. He's doing it. And Caroline Levitt's job is sell the bait as if it's anything real, as if it's anything tangible, but it's vapor. It's what happens when you pour water onto cotton candy. It's just like it's gone. And that's why she pivots to the standard playbook. I'm angry the media is bad and Caroline's owning the fake news, but everybody outside the culture can see what's going on because this is the easiest question and this is what governing by conspiracy theory looks like. Slogans that collapse as soon as you get a question. And when the collapse is public, it's not just that the optics are bad. What sounds like a hoax is them telling us that the Epstein story is a hoax. Will we ever get the documents? I've said for a long time, under Trump, you're not going to get the documents unless they're stolen and leaked. That's the only way. All right, so we all know Alexa listens to us, recommends products based on our conversations. Metta retargets us based on our browsing and engagement history. Have you wondered what Chat GPT and Claude are up to with your conversations? We feed so much of our information to these AI chat bots. Thoughts, dreams, sensitive questions, business ideas. They take the information, tie it to your identity, and they can sell that to third parties and governments. ChatGPT has the former director of the NSA on their board right now. That doesn't feel awesome. It took us a long time to truly understand what social media companies were doing with our data. We don't have to make the same mistake with AI. And that's why I've started using Venice AI, a generative AI platform that is private and permissionless. They don't spy on you, Venice. I won't censor the AI. They have a safe mode which you can turn off for both text and image generation. Messages are encrypted. Your conversation history is only stored on your browser. I love the Pro plan because I get upgraded features like uploading files I unlimited text prompts. Check it out. If you want to use AI without censorship or fear of handing over your most intimate thoughts to a corporation or the government, go to Venice AI/pacman and use code PACMAN to get 20% off their pro plan. The link is in the description. Donald Trump's newest press secretary, Caroline Levitt, is supposed to be the sort of polished face of the administration, and she has become its most visible nervous breakdown, its most emblematic representation of the sheer absurdity and internal contradictions of all of their positions. Case in point, a reporter asks Caroline the most simple, most obvious question about the claim of something called the Epstein hoax. The question is, what part of it is a hoax? And that genuinely is a good question. When they say that the Epstein hoax is a hoax, do they mean Epstein didn't really do child sex trafficking? If so, why is Ghislaine Maxwell in prison? Do they mean that any documents that come out are fraudulent? Do they mean that what? Which part of it is the hoax? And here is Caroline Levitt not really loving the question. And the answer is even more pathetic.
- [49:06]
Caroline Levitt
Thank you for being with us today. Sure, Jackie, thank you.
- [49:09]
Unknown Reporter
Caroline, there's been a lot of discussion about the Epstein files and the President's comments yesterday calling it a hoax. Can you clarify which part of the Epstein hoax is the hoax part?
- [49:20]
Caroline Levitt
The president is referring to the fact that Democrats have now seized on this as if they ever wanted transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, which is an asinine suggestion for any Democrat to make. The Democrats had control of this building, the White House for four years, and they didn't do a dang thing when it came to transparency in regards to Jeffrey Epstein and his heinous crimes. It was this president who directed the Department of Justice and the Attorney General to do an exhaustive review of all files related to Jeffrey Epstein, which they did.
- [49:52]
Unknown Co-Host
Notice that directing a review is very different from, hey, Pam, release the files right now, which Trump didn't do.
- [50:03]
Caroline Levitt
The Attorney General and the FBI, led by Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino, Cash Patel, these are great patriots, some of the most trusted voices in the Republican Party movement. It's part of the Reason the President appointed him, appointed them to these high law enforcement positions. And they spent many months going through all of the files related to Jeffrey Epstein and they concluded what they found in that memo, which they drafted and they released. And so the President has been transparent. He has followed through on his promises to the American people. But he doesn't like to see Democrats and the mainstream media covering this like it's the biggest story that the American people care about.
- [50:41]
Unknown Co-Host
You know, one of the really interesting things about this rant from her, which always is tinged with anger at someone daring to ask a question, the hostage hostility towards reporters is just wild. One of the really interesting things about what Caroline Levitt says there is, it's not going to satisfy anybody in the sense that on the one hand when she says, oh, whoa, the video just disappeared. On the one hand when she says Trump has advocated the most transparency of anybody. Even Magas don't believe that Republicans believe that the Trump administration participating in a cover up as to the full truth about the Epstein story, that they're not going to be satisfied by that. And then on the other hand, the fact that they are so unwilling to actually release the documents when Donald Trump has the power to do it, but is choosing not to, or at least, you know, clearly he, if he wanted to say release it, he would have said it to Pam Bondi. This is a statement that's not going to satisfy anybody. Trump hasn't kept his promises. He's not being transparent. His supporters know that he hasn't delivered on these promises. And you've got entire corners of the Maga Internet raging about it. So the reason that Caroline Levitt gets upset isn't the question per say, although that's how she always acts indignant. How dare you. It's that they don't have a good answer. Part of her anger is I don't really have a better answer than the terrible one that I've been giving you. And the Epstein comments of Trump has directed a full review of this is similar to like, I'll have a health care plan in two weeks. This is bait. It's meant to get people to go. He's ordered a review, he's doing it. And Caroline Levitt's job is sell the bait as if it's anything real, as if it's anything tangible, but it's vapor. It's what happens when you pour water onto cotton candy. It's just like it's gone. And that's why she pivots to the standard playbook. I'm angry the media is bad and Caroline's owning the fake news. But everybody outside the cult can see what's going on. Because this is the easiest question, and this is what governing by conspiracy theory looks like. Slogans that collapse as soon as you get a question. And when the collapse is public, it's not just that the optics are bad. What sounds like a hoax is them telling us that the Epstein story is a hoax. Will we ever get the documents? I've said for a long time, under Trump, you're not going to get the documents unless they're stolen and leaked. That's the only way. Well, this is very interesting. A Marjorie Taylor Greene, radical and repugnant reactionary Republican congresswoman from Georgia. Marjorie is turning her a sort of flamethrower on other MAGA figures. And some of those MAGA figures are inside of Donald Trump's inner circle. And when I say turning the flamethrower on them, she is, she's really going for the jugular here. Marjorie Taylor Greene was talking about Laura Loomer. Laura Loomer, a woman, I'm trying to figure out, like, what characteristics I can reliably tell you about her. A radical extremist woman who seems to have sort of ingratiated herself into Donald Trump's inner circle. And Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't like it and says, these are, these are just not the types of people you should have near the President of the United States. Take a listen. And this is part of a sort of growing turn from Marjorie Taylor Greene against MAGA establishment. But my opinion is that this is really about something else. I'll tell you what, in a moment.
- [54:32]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
It's shocking. These, these are not the kind of people that should have the President's ear. They're dangerous, especially when they're calling for nuclear bombs to be dropped and America's military and sanctions and all type of government action. But yet these are people that have, can never win an election themselves. Laura Loomer, she lost two congressional races. Mark Levin wouldn't dare run because he would likely lose. And so it's really interesting to see these people just use their, basically their platforms as a bully puppet and just.
- [55:03]
Unknown Co-Host
Go, by the way, oh, God, it's a bully pulpit. She called it a bully puppet. We have so much else to talk about. I'm not going to get hung up on that.
- [55:17]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Straight to name calling and lying about the people that they're, that they seem to be the enemy at the moment.
- [55:24]
Unknown Co-Host
So here's the important thing to understand. In a sense, Marjorie Taylor Greene is Right. Marjorie Taylor Greene is not the person who should have the President's ear. But Laura Loomer shouldn't have the President's ear, and Fox News host Mark Levin shouldn't have the President's ear. None of them should have the President's ear. But this is classic cult dynamics. This is cult leaders and grifters don't just attract loyal followers, they often attract other grifters. And the whole MAGA ecosystem is basically a magnet for opportunists who either see cash flow or fame or adjacency to power. And they think, hey, I can get in on this. Let, let me get in on this thing as well. They obviously don't want others being in those positions. But when you pack enough of them into the same room, right. You throw Elon in there and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mark Levin and all these people, you pack enough of them into a room, it's only a matter of time before they start fighting with each other. Who's the real voice of this movement, who really is advising Trump in the best way? And, and this is where it starts to get maybe arguably more interesting. I don't know if you're familiar with this horseshoe theory of politics. The idea is that when you get to the extremes of the political spectrum, people start looking a lot like each other. Like, I'll give some examples. Sometimes you get to the extremes of the political spectrum and they're all anti vax. You've got on the right the hardcore anti government, anti vaxxers. And you've got on the left, the hardcore anti big corporation, big pharma, anti vaxxers. And so they've gotten to the position in a very different way, but they end up being anti vaxxers. Or anti Semitism is another example. You go to the far, far right and the far, far left, you find anti Semitism. The flavor of it is a little different, the tone of it is a little different. But it's an example of how the horseshoe theory sort of works in MAGA world. It's a little less of a horseshoe and more of like a feeding frenzy. Because whether it's far right conspiracy theorists or far left fringe agitators that do not in any way represent the Democratic Party, the dynamics become purity tests, turf wars, who gets access, who gets to say, I represent the movement. And eventually it can become a civil war. And so what we're seeing here with Marjorie Taylor Greene, I know there are people saying, oh, it's principled. She's. She's very principled. Yeah. In some Kind of loose sense. These people have principles they at least claim to abide by or adhere to. But it's really a grifter on grifter crime wave crime in D.C. is down. It's grifter on grifter crime that is up. Greens attacking Loomer and Greens attacking Mark Levin. It is about territory and, and she is increasingly on the outs with Trump. She's not getting attention. She's starting to do sort of like nominally left wing shows and seeing which, what, what sort of attention she can get. They've built a movement that is devouring itself from the inside. And that is a lot of what is motivating Marjorie Taylor Greene here. Pete Hegseth was asked a very reasonable question on Fox News about Donald Trump's plan to get the homeless out of D.C. which is where will the homeless go? And Pete Hegseth goes, that is not my lane. Now, before I play the clip, there's a bigger issue here. In a normal functioning democracy, none of this would be Pete Hegseth's lane. And what I mean by that is he's the Secretary of Defense. I know that he's not qualified. I know he has no business being the Secretary of Defense, but he is. In a normal world, the Secretary of Defense wouldn't be dealing with housing, homelessness and poverty. They just wouldn't write. Civilian agencies would be local government, social services, public health officials. The Secretary of Defense shouldn't even have a role in this. So when Pete goes, where the homeless will be sent to isn't really my thing. He shouldn't even be involved in this.
- [59:21]
Cash Patel
And the National Guard going to be picking up these tents. Homeless tents are all over the city. They're okay. Street tunnel. There are some dotting along the area here. There were more before some of them been cleared out. What about those? We're working with the marshals alongside them, alongside park police, alongside everybody else. Wherever they need the National Guard to assist, we're happy to know where the homeless people are going to go. That's not really my lane. Our job is to stand alongside law enforcement.
- [59:45]
Unknown Co-Host
Yeah, nobody's really concerned with that. Actually, his interest is. His response is pretty illuminating in that sense. This is just classic, classic authoritarianism. The Pentagon talking openly about domestic domestic policing and immigration enforcement, security operations in American cities. This is not the role of a Secretary of Defense. This is what happens when you have an authoritarian takeover. And authoritarians love to blur the lines between military and civilian authority. Just, just make it blurry. And then I want to do whatever I want. And so when the Secretary of Defense gets involved in this, even though he shouldn't be, and he's on cable news being asked, where will the homeless Americans be sent that you're going to participate in kicking out? He doesn't know. It's just not his thing. Authoritarian playbook. You normalize military involvement in domestic law enforcement. It gets really easy to deploy troops for more and more civilian matters. Protests, political dissent, immigration sweeps. And now just for poverty, there's poor people. Get the Secretary of Defense involved. This is a nightmare. And as usual, we are hearing a lot of, kind of, or seeing a lot of shrugging. Yeah, all right. I mean, I guess. And so this isn't Hegseth Lane, but the entire project is in Hegseth Lane. And the Department of Defense has been kind of sucked into domestic law enforcement and governance. And part of what is happening here is propaganda by job title. By having the Secretary of Defense comment on homelessness, even if he says it's not in my lane, you're telling the audience this isn't a social issue. Homelessness is not just a social issue. It's a security issue. And of course, in some nominal way, when a homeless person commits a crime, you could go, well, it is kind of a security issue. But the idea that it's a national security issue of the sort that a Secretary of Defense would deal with is laughable. And it's reframing poverty as a threat. They love to criminalize poverty. This reframes poverty as a threat using fear based ideology, which is what they love to do. The I believe, accurate way to look at this would be to say poverty is a social issue that needs to be alleviated by working together with a number of different areas of government. Instead it's, this is a national security issue. You need tanks and you need the Secretary of Defense. Defense. You might start with cleaning up homeless encampments, but next thing you know, you are shutting down protests that are legal or raiding political opponents or enforcing ideological purity. And so that's not fear mongering. That is what authoritarian regimes around, around the world do. And it's terrifying that this is going on now on the bonus show today, we're going to talk a little more about Pete Hegseth. We're going to talk about who is now going to be in charge of the jobs numbers. It's absolutely terrifying. And Marjorie Taylor Greene, she's worried about reports about massive wealth jumps. What is that all about on the bonus show today? Sign up@join pacman.com I'm going to see you then.