← The David Pakman Show
The David Pakman Show
8/8/25: Trump meddles in NYC mayor's race as tech CEOs capitulate
01:34:14
-- On the Show: -- Dan Koh, host of The People's Cabinet, fills in for David. Subscribe to Dan's YouTube channel at -- Trump announced plans for a new census excluding undocumented immigrants, a move that would face major constitutional...
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- [00:08]
Dan Koh
Welcome, welcome, welcome. My name is Dan Ko. I am still not David Pakman. The most important topic today is that David Pakman has welcomed a second child into this world. Let's all congratulate him and his family and let's all hope he gets a little bit of sleep. But there's a lot to cover. As I mentioned in yesterday's episode, I was the deputy Cabinet secretary and Deputy Director of Intergovernmental affairs in the White House. What the hell does that mean? It means that I helped work with the Cabinet on behalf of President Biden, as well as worked with mayors and governors on behalf of the president on things like disaster response and all kinds of the gambit. Before that, I was chief of staff of the Department of Labor. That is the agency that oversees the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So I gave a little bit of overview of how that works, but I'm going to elaborate a little bit more today. And I worked at the Huffington Post before that as chief of staff to Arianna Huffington and before that was chief of staff to Mayor Walsh in City hall with some dabbles in the private sector. So I am so honored again to be a part of your community. I'm so grateful to read all the comments from yesterday, both good and bad. I appreciate the feedback and I promise that I will try to get better. So I want to start first with a tweet that the president put out about the census. He wrote, I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate census based on modern day facts and figures. Importantly, using the results and information gained from the presidential election of 2024 People who are in our country illegally, will all caps will not be counted in the census. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Okay, so we're used to that last line from the president. So NPR writes this. According to a social media post by Trump, that census would exclude millions of people living in the country without legal status, an unprecedented change to how the country has conducted population tallies since the first U.S. census in 1790. Why is that? Because the 14th Amendment requires that the whole number of persons in each state be included in a key set of census numbers used to determine how presidents and members of Congress are elected. The Trump administration has released no details on the plan. As a result, it is unclear, such as whether Trump, who according to the Constitution, does not have final authority over the census, is referring to the regular scheduled national headcount in 2030 or an earlier tally. Now, what's interesting about this is this is not the first time that the president has tried this method. So, according to the New York Times, Mr. Trump tried a similar move in 2020 to keep undocumented immigrants out of the census. But a federal court rejected that attempt, and the Supreme Court declined to intervene, saying at the time to do so was premature. The president's efforts to exert power pressure. Excuse me, on the Census Bureau, which is part of the Commerce Department, were also unsuccessful. Okay, so let's start with the 2020 attempt. I think it's really important to outline the dynamics here, so I will get to later in this podcast, the difference between career and appointees and how this worked. But the bottom line is Trump tried to pressure the census to have this kind of data in 2020. And there were actually career officials. These are people who traverse administrations who resisted his efforts. And so there was a New York Times article that was written about this, how the census stood up to Donald Trump's meddling. Let me read you a little bit from it. There were 10 days left in the Trump presidency, and John Abode and Terry Velkoff had a decision to make six months earlier. In July 2020, President Trump had ordered the Census Bureau, where they. Where they were senior officials, to produce a count of every unauthorized immigrant in the nation. Anyway, this goes on to say that these two officials resisted the president's push to do that and to release data they did not feel was accurate. Okay. The problem is this caused the ire of Donald Trump not just for career officials there, but also Wilbur Ross. Wilbur Ross was the Commerce Secretary. And after the Supreme Court made their ruling, he became somewhat a Persona non grata for Wilbur Ross. So that's the situation in 2020. The reason why I give that context is because we all know the one thing that Trump learned the most from his first term to his second term was that he needed to install absolute loyalists at every corner. That's why he prioritized, prioritize that. Loyalty over qualifications. We are certainly seeing that, for example, in the Department of Defense with Pete Hegseth. We are seeing it in all over these appointments with where loyalty trumps qualifications, no pun intended. We are also seeing that at the Department of Commerce because Howard Lutnick was the head of his transition team. That is a very important role, one you only give to someone that you absolutely trust with loyalty. And so now Lutnick is a key person in this because the census is overseen by the Department of Commerce. So the person who would oversee the development of this is a absolute Trump loyalist, someone who will do whatever it takes to please Donald Trump. You see him in the Oval Office, always capitulating to him, always boosting his ego. So that is the stage that has been set. Here's the challenge. Nobody knows, as mentioned in the article, what Trump means by this census thing. It is required by law that every 10 years the census lines are drawn. Sorry, excuse me. It is required by law that every 10 years a census is performed. But that doesn't mean that Trump isn't going to try to change the methodology or make a move right now. And there's a clear reason why he would do that. And I will get to that in a second when it comes to redistricting. But here is the challenge, right? It specifically says in the Constitution that the whole number of persons in each state are counted by this. Okay? It does not say U.S. citizens. Now, the population that is derived from the census is used to draw congressional district maps. And that is where some of the crux of the controversy comes, because Trump is trying to say that because undocumented people are being counted, they're somehow affecting, you know, voter outcomes, et cetera. Now, it is true that the determination of House seats are based on census overall population and not based on American citizens. So that. That is true. But here is the point and here is the problem. The problem is when you start to target and survey populations based on citizenship status, the response rate and the data that you get back is a lot poorer. Why? Because people get scared about answering the immigration question. And these are not just undocumented immigrants, right? These are mixed family houses. These are people who support immigrants. There's people who just don't trust the government. And it is already difficult to get the right response rates from the census as it is. And you've already seen the kind of intimidation that this government is doing towards immigrants on the streets, many of them regardless of their status. There was an interesting study done by the Harvard Kennedy School about this. This was done by the Shorenstein Center. And the outcome of this study, using a randomized control trial, RCT, we find that asking about U.S. citizenship significantly reduces the overall share of questions that respondents answer, with suggestive evidence that the effects are more pronounced among Hispanic residents. We also find that citizenship questions significantly reduces the the number of household members reported as being Hispanic. These patterns are particularly stark among Hispanics who report being born in Mexico or Central America. Extrapolating our results to the general population, and this is really important, we estimate that asking about citizenship would reduce the share of Hispanics recorded by the census by approximately 6.07 million, or around 12% of the 2010 Hispanic population, a sizable reduction in the share of U.S. population that would be recorded as Hispanic. And remember, congressional seats roughly are 800,000 or so, give or take, per member of Congress. So if you extrapolate that out, you're talking eight, nine or more congressional seats in that representation that could be affected by this. Donald Trump knows this. He doesn't care. He loves the imagery of all of a sudden not counting people. Again, this is a president who allows due process to be taken away from people, despite the fact that the Constitution calls for due process for persons, not just citizens. But he doesn't care. And here is the effects of this. You're going to not just have unreliable data, but hundreds of billions of dollars are decided based on census data, how much aid to give to states, who is in need, you know, the various government programs that are helping our most vulnerable. So if Trump is successful in this endeavor, and by the way, Congress is supposed to be the ultimate arbiter of this, but if he is successful, then all of a sudden you're talking about disenfranchising tens of millions of people of color in this country potentially, and causing an entirely new round of intimidation that we already are seeing on the streets, but manifested and candidly weaponized through statistics, which I think should concern all of us. And one other thing on this, we know that as I mentioned before, loyalty is the number one thing. And that even though Congress is supposed to be the final arbiter on this, Donald Trump has shown that he's willing to blow through the authority of Congress and that Congress is willing to acquiesce, even though they're supposed to be the co equal branch of government. Even though you would think that since power is probably the number One thing in D.C. for many of these people, they would want to hold the president's who account and exercise their co equal right. That is not happening in any other case. And I can't imagine that it will happen now. So you're talking about a loyalist in Howard Lutnick. You're talking about a demoralized career staff. You know, those career staff that we talked about earlier are heroes, in my opinion. And then we're talking about a president who does not care about the rule of law or care about past precedent. So we are at a very precarious situation now of a president who will blow through precedent and blow through the rule of law to minimize minority communities, to undercount them, to be able to create representation based on his image and his vision for the country not based on what the Constitution says. So let's stay tuned for more on this. Okay, Gerrymandering. So you've heard a little bit about this in the news, but I want to take a step back because I think that Democrats in particular suck at explaining things. So I think we should start at how this works. As I mentioned before, the census every 10 years provides population data for the country. Then states decide how the congressional district lines are drawn. Federal congressional district lines are drawn based off of the census data. There are some laws in place in various states. Some have more influence over others based on what are called independent commissions, that is non elected officials who decide how the lines are drawn. And then in many states it is done by the partisan elected officials and typically the House controls that and the governor and that whole interaction. I want to give us case study as to how this can be so incredibly effective in influencing the future of the country. So this is from, this is from Instagram. This is actually from Courier News. So let's work at look at North Carolina. After Democrats outperformed expectations during the 2022 midterms, Republicans in North Carolina redid their congressional map, altering its partisan breakdown from 7D 7R to 10R 4D. Basically a proxy for how how the people vote in terms of partisan partisan voting. This initiative effectively eliminated three Democratic seats. So you see the difference in representation from the old map and the new map. And this is North Carolina, not surprisingly, a swing state. Fast forward to 2024. Republicans barely held on to their House majority by a three seat margin. The exact number of seats that the North Carolina legislator legislature stole from Democrats. Had Republicans in North Carolina not rigged their seats congressional map, Democrats would have won the house in 2024. So here's the thing. I am a Democrat. I do not like what Republicans do. And it is historically true that Republican controlled houses are more likely to gerrymander than what we've seen from the Democratic side. But they did nothing illegal. This is part of what the law has allowed them to do. As a matter of fact, there was a Supreme Court case about this in 20, I believe it was 2019. This is an article from the Guardian. The US Supreme Court paved the way for Texas's gerrymandering mess. And so let me read this and then I'll talk a little bit about Texas. With Texas Republicans rushing to fulfill Donald Trump's wish to gerrymander to the max, many Americans are no doubt wondering why there isn't some referee to stop this hyper partisan race. To the bottom that is poisoning our democracy. The Supreme Court should be the referee that puts a halt to this ugly undemocratic mess. But In a shortsighted 54 ruling in 2019, the court's conservative majority essentially told state legislatures that anything goes when it comes to gerrymandering. Their message was no matter how extreme the gerrymandering is, will look the other way. So that was a key decision in 2019 that has opened the door for, for what you are seeing right now. And so what is the implications of this? So here is an NBC News graphic that shows who approves congressional maps. So you look at the legislature, again, those are the state elected officials are the orange here, independent commissions are the yellow and then various other ones. So independent commissions, again there's some variation to this, but to make it more basic, are are non elected people more likely, as mentioned, to not have the partisanship that you're seeing in the gerrymandering. And there is a interesting chart on this which is also in NBC News. It says competitive races were more likely in court and commission drawn district than the ones drawn by state legislators. From 2012 to 2030 when commissions or state or federal courts drew the lines last decade, the rate of competitive elections jumped those safe seats are still overwhelmingly likely. Competitive elections were especially prevalent in states where court drawn districts. This is the court deciding 18.1% of these races in those states had single digit margins from 2012 to 2020. So basically what it's saying is not surprising. When you install elected officials in this process, it causes partisan districting of the congressional districts. This is also a problem as it manifests itself because if you're creating more partisan districts, you're creating a more partisan country because you're putting people in Washington who are more partisan who are going to more likely try to assuage their base in the districts. Iran for example, in 2018 in Massachusetts in a 10 way open primary and something like 20 or 30 of eligible voters in a primary did actually vote. So it just shows you that you have to cater to a small group of people. You have no choice. But the reality is the people who are not necessarily catered to, but the people who actually vote in these races tend to be more partisan and tend to be a smaller non representative sample of the whole population. So why does this all matter? Republicans are worried that they're going to lose in the midterms. That is an objective fact. And so instead of trying to figure out how they win over populations and how they make sure that they do things like not cut Medicaid in the big beautiful bill. They are going to their house and local elected to try to create new seats for themselves. So Punch bowl just announced that they are just wrote this this morning. House Republicans are now aiming to pick up a dozen or more House seats. Okay, so this is creating Republican angled House seats throughout the country. Donald Trump in an unprecedented Donald Trump backed redistricting drive looking to head off the Democratic Wave in the 2026 Midterms and cement the President's power. Republicans are hoping to net a minimum of three House seats in Florida and as we scoop Thursday and that and add that to five seats in Texas, one each in Missouri and Indiana, plus two or three in Ohio where state law mandates a redraw ahead of 2026. Okay, so to focus first on Texas, the reason why you are seeing members of the Democratic electorate there elected representatives not in Texas is because they are trying to avoid having a quorum in the House that would allow a vote to happen to that would essentially rob Texas of the Democratic congressional seats that they currently have. And nobody knows how this is going to end there. There's warrants for their arrest that's being called. They are, they are hiding out places like Chicago, elsewhere. But eventually there needs to be some kind of vote. So this is just not looking good for Democrats. But that's not enough for maga. That's not enough for the President. And that's why you are seeing J.D. vance go to Indiana and try to lobby the governor there, Mike Braun, to, to gerrymander his, his place. And here's the problem with that. This just creates an utter race to the bottom. Okay, I showed you earlier about the different states and the independent commissions, etc. But governors of states that are Democratic are fighting back. Gavin Newsom, for example, has rolled out a congressional map that he wants to pick up up to five seats for Democrats in California. But as you saw on that chart earlier, there's an independent commission there. So what is he going to do? He wants to have a vote to get rid of the independent commission to be able to do the hand to hand combat that he feels he needs to do to combat Republicans. In normal circumstances, I think a lot of us would have concerns about this. In fact, overwhelmingly in polls it shows that Republicans or Democrats really dislike gerrymandering. But here's the thing. Democrats can't fight with one hand behind their back. This is unprecedented times and it caused and this is time for unprecedented action. That is the reality. So we can't play patty cake with Republicans. We can't sit back and let them take 12 plus seats from us. And all of a sudden they have an overwhelming majority in the House when we would have had that majority. And more bills like the one that Donald Trump did, that was a massive tax break for the rich that screwed the working class would just be yet another open door for two years or more on Trump. So we have to fight back. And so what we're seeing, Gavin Newsom do, we're seeing with other governors trying to figure out how to do that across the country. Governor Kathy Hochul is looking at this as well. Now, her problem is that there's, there's some, there's some regulation in place there that may prevent her from making any moves till 2027. But you're seeing all of these Democrats do that as well. The sad reality of all of this, though, is that in the backdrop of all of this, there are people hurting who desperately need Donald Trump's attention and help. I talked about Texas. It is appalling that with all this conversation, very little is still spoken about the horrors of the flooding in Texas. But I want to use this platform to talk about what's so important about keeping those people in the front of mind. There was a August 4th article in CNN. It's been a month since the Daily Tech. Excuse me. This article in CNN says it's been a month since the deadly Texas floods. Survivors are grappling with trauma and still waiting on financial help. It tells harrowing stories of people still battling horrible damage, financial fallout, infrastructure. I want to read this one passage. For many survivors who lost their home, it remains unclear how much support they will see from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That's FEMA and other government programs. Even if help comes, it won't be quick. The average FEMA home repair payment for flooding disaster is about 8,000, Madison Sloan, the director of the Disaster and Recovery Fair Housing Project at Texas Appleseed, told cnn. According to her analysis, the figure can be much higher or lower depending on the level of loss, but it's unlikely to be enough. The system is not set up as a safety net. It's set up to fill gaps. So there are people whose homes have been destroyed. They need help. They need help not only from the federal government, from an agency that the president has called to be demolished and completely abandoned, but they need help from those elected officials. And I am a true believer as someone who spent a significant amount of my time in the public sector, that every second you're not focused on one Thing, you are not giving what you can to that thing. And so for every minute they're spending on redistricting, gerrymandering, you know, trying to figure out how to get these elected officials back to the House, they are not on those victims. And today I want to make sure that all of us put first in our minds those victims, because those are the people who are suffering the most right now. And all of us are going to suffer the long term as a result of this race to the bottom. The last thing I would say is this entire saga just continues to suck out the faith that many Americans could have in this government. I come from the local arena. I took pride in, and Mayor Walsh, who was my boss at the time, took pride in every time member of the public reached out to us about a pothole, about piece of graffiti they wanted clean, about a tree they wanted removed from their sidewalk, that we would get back to them immediately. We actually had this app that if you sent a picture of a pothole, not only would you get back a picture of the pothole filled, but you would also get a picture of the team that filled it. Because we wanted to make sure that people knew that this was a community of people who cared. I believe that every time someone did that, it was taking a leap of faith in their government. And every time we responded, they would want to interact with their government more and they would want to believe more in this country's abilities to serve their people. All of this we're seeing just saps that from people. And I think Democrats need to fight back. Let me be very clear. But this entire saga is once again reminding those disaffected voters, those 50%, 55% of people who don't vote in presidential election, general elections, that government is so cynical. And that's what makes me most sad about what the Republicans have started here. And so we need to fight back, and we need to find ways to keep people's faith in government. Because once people lose faith in government, that's when our republic is truly at risk. We continue to fight this president. We will fight this president tooth and nail. But. But we gotta give people reasons to continue the fight. So let's continue the fight. I'm gonna take a break now. Again, this is the David Pakman Show. I am Dan Koh. I am host of the People's Cabinet. We do interviews with leaders who are making a difference in this country, as well as giving daily explainers and political analysis when we're able to. So please subscribe to the People's Cabinet. Follow me at Dan K and more to come on the David Pakman Show.
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David Pakman
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Dan Koh
We'Re back Again, my name is Dan Koh. I am host of the People's Cabinet podcast. We interview leaders shaping America's future, as well as doing explainer videos of a lot of the craziness you're seeing in D.C. and beyond, as well as a few hot takes. I am filling in for David Pakman. David is celebrating the birth of his second child and is probably very tired, so please send some good vibes to him and his family on this happy, happy moment. So let's get started on our next section here, which is about the Republican distraction machine. There are two main stories that I want to cover today. First is Sydney Sweeney. And I know you've probably seen a lot of this in the news and you're probably exhausted by it, but I think it's really emblematic of the challenge that Democrats have with this ginormous megaphone that Republicans have built, not just in traditional linear media, but in independent media and on social media that Republican, that, excuse me, Democrats are still bringing a little trumpet to. Okay, so American Eagle releases this advertisement, and I'm sure you've seen it before. I don't think we need to play it here, but it basically shows Sydney Sweeney buttoning some jeans. And it says, Sydney Sweeney has great genes. And obviously it's a play on genes, genetics versus just the genes. So I found this interesting because it first came out, didn't hear a ton about it. And then I heard J.D. vance on the Ruthless podcast say this. The Democrats have essentially been like, Sydney Sweeney represents, like a Nazi white supremacy issue. Do you think it's that deep? And do you think attacking Sydney Sweeney is how they can win back young males? Is that a good move? Yeah. My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is Nazi. That. That. That appears to be their actual strategy. I mean, it actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems, though, which is that you have, like a normal, all American, beautiful girl doing like a normal jeans ad, Right? They're trying to sell, you know, sell jeans to. To. To kids in America. And they have managed to sew unhinge themselves over this thing. And it's like, you guys, did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election? Like, I actually thought that one of the lessons they might take is we're going to be less crazy. The lesson they have apparently taken is we're going to attack people as Nazis for thinking Sydney Sweeney is beautiful. Great strategy, guys. That's how you're going to win the midterms, especially young American men. Their course Correction lasted about 30 seconds. That's right, lasted 30 seconds. Somehow has gotten even crazier. But again, it's just so much of the Democrats is oriented around hostility to basic American life. So you have a pretty girl doing a jeans ad and they can't help but freak out. It reveals a lot more about them than it does us, no question. Okay, so he's basically making this a part of woke culture, so to speak. Right. He's basically accusing Democrats of being overly sensitive about political correctness, about not being, you know, not being cool and not appreciating a hot girl in an ad. Right. That's basically what. What they are doing. And so I saw this, and then I also saw some online media amplifying this. Now, not just the traditional online independent media, first of all, DoD, the Department of Defense, the largest employer in this country that is supposed to be focused on our national security. National security tweeted a picture of Pete Hegseth in jeans, and it says SecDef. That is the handle for the Secretary of Defense. Has great jeans with him and his sunglasses. Obviously a reference to the Sydney Sweeney ad. Then immediately it was retweeted by Libs of TikTok, which is a very prominent right X outlet that says, Pete Hegseth has great genes. Cope and seethe libs again. For me, I was like, this is kind of weird because I don't really see many libs needing anything to cope and see. But it also just kind of tipped off a warning bell for me because it made me realize that this was all a coordinated attempt to create distraction and to make everyone think that Democrats are overreacting to something that they're not. Okay, so this was really interesting stuff that we're seeing covered now because I think a lot of people are wiser to this whole thing. So Media Matters did a study. Fox has devoted over seven times more coverage to Sweeney than the Epstein scandal. Recently, Fox News has continued to obsess over an American Eagle advertisement featuring Sydney Sweeney talking about her, quote, good genes, spending 4 hours and 50 minutes discussing the ad since July 28. By comparison, Fox has devoted just 40 minutes to covering continuing developments related to the fallout from the Trump administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. So this is where it all starts to make sense. Right? Jeffrey Epstein was dominating news headlines for weeks. Trump couldn't get rid of it. Right. And so what they are doing is creating a distraction to try to paint a caricature of all Democrats in order to distract from the real issue, which is Donald Trump is literally covering for convicted sex traffickers, sending Ghislaine Maxwell, the number one accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, to literally a minimum security prison that is nicknamed Club Fed, that does not have traditional barrier fencing, that has yoga and Pilates classes, and has some kind of puppy program that because she is a convicted sex offender, she's not allowed to be a part of. That's how ridiculous this is. Ellie Hoenig, the CNN legal analyst, has outlined how rare this kind of transfer is and can only really be done on a special occasion. And so again, I think we need to keep center here what the distraction is. But this Sidney Sweeney thing points to a larger problem in the Democratic Party. So there was a New York Times article written about this yesterday that I thought was really interesting that kind of confirmed my gut about this. Here's how the New York Times describes it. So they quote a couple of people on X who are offended by the tweet. Okay. Or offended by the ad. Excuse me. But then it says those, however, appear to be outliers. Nearly 3/4 of posts that were critical of Ms. Sweeney or the ad had fewer than 500 views. Many pro Trump users amplified the critical posts in reposts and reshares, driving even more attention to posts that would normally reach only a few thousand users. The tide began to shift on July 27th when large right wing accounts such as, as I mentioned before, Libs of TikTok began reposting critiques of the American Eagle campaign, mocking them as examples of quote triggered liberals. Keep this up. Democrats posted the account, which is run by a woman named Chaya raichik and has 4.3 million followers on X. This is going to be great for you guys. Then it goes and talks about how other people lifted up on the right, Charlie Kirk lifts it up and then it becomes an entire thing. So again, this is emblematic of a larger problem for Democrats, which is the Republicans have built an absolute machine to amplify whatever they want to paint any narrative they want that is hugely problematic for Democrats. So I want to show you a chart that Media Matters created where they followed, where they tracked the following of top right leaning and left leaning shows. So look at all of this red. This shows what we're up against and how much work we have to do as Democrats. You can see at the bottom there, David Pakman show. Let's go. You can see Trevor Noah who is a, you know, is left leaning, but I wouldn't call him somebody who is, you know, deeply in the left news every single day. You know, you see Midas touch there, young Turks, et cetera. But we're being absolutely crushed by right leaning media online. And so when they want to propagate any kind of story or narrative, we just don't have a chance. Now there's been a lot done here to address this and we're still working on it. And the thing is I think that all of us in this community right now understand that all the tides are lifting all of the boats in this situation. There's one person that I want to raise as being a leader in this fight who is someone I know well. His name is Ayin Tarabi. Acen is someone you've probably seen online through his handle. More importantly, you have probably seen his clips from TV and his retweets of other people. This is a chart that was done by the Washington Post that shows literally a David and Goliath situation that Asin is somehow able to, to be able to fight up against that. So here's a chart of a lot of Republican and any Democrats who are in this top echelon here of the top 25 political and news accounts on X. Okay. Elon Musk and this is by Cap. Elon Musk is dominant as you can see. But this little, well I would say medium sized blue circle that could is Asin. So if you don't follow Asin, you should because he is literally monitoring media all day long, clipping what he thinks is compelling content that the left needs to pay attention to and amplifying other people. First of all, I can't even imagine what this guy's Twitter inbox looks like because I've sent him stuff, other people sent him stuff. And literally the difference between one person or hundreds of thousands of people seeing your content is based on what he is doing. But, but the Washington Post profiled him. He said. The author said Torabi's devotion has paid off. The liberal center for American Progress's database tracking 2,000 of the top political groups, that's that chart and influencers across the Internet shows that Tarabi's posts have been seen hundreds of millions of times in the last 30 days than news giants such as MSNBC and CNN. Ranked by views or total impressions. He is the only non conservative voice in the top 10. Probably because his posts and the way they help win political arguments have bipartisan appeal, which is true. Oftentimes he will just tweet the the clip and he will have some narrative, but not an overly partisan narrative. And then other people will opine on it. And so I think that's really important to point out because he is an example of what we need, okay? We need local news, we need national news, we need linear media, and we need independent media out there fighting this machine every day. Rob Flaherty was the former digital director for President Biden. He's a friend of mine. He recently wrote an article in Politico about this very thing. He said there's hope on the horizon. There's a hungry audience for left of center content that is fueling a massive outgrowth of upstarts. Outlets and creators like the Bulwark Mutuals. Heather Cox, Richardson, Midas Touch and others are growing on YouTube, TikTok and Substack by the minute. But startups take investment and if funders wait until close to the election to get started, it will be too late to influence both this one and the next one. So this is really important to point out and I am a living example of this. One of the reasons why, after leaving the White House, I decided to do this was because I saw some of this research and realized as amazing as Acen is, we need thousands and thousands of asins to catch up to what the right is doing. He is leading the way and he is the model, and so is Midas Touch, and so is David Pakman and all of these amazing outlets that are fighting up against this huge megaphone that the Republicans have and have built over the course of years and decades that we are playing catch up to. Here's what's so exciting though. When I first decided to do this, one of the first people I had on my podcast was Ben Meisellus and Brian Tyler Cohen. Both have been incredibly supportive of the work that I did. This is not. And they, they've shown me through their actions that this is not a zero sum game. This is not a, you know, if you take traffic from me, you know, I'm not going to have as many views, any of that stuff. Ben was the first person to reach out to me. He has mentored me, he has encouraged me, and as a matter of fact, he is the reason I am here right now. Okay? He is the one who told David Pakman that I had potential and that when David knew that he needed a fill in that he suggested me. So we are all a team. We all need to fight against this machine. And so for all of you at home, whether you have one Twitter follower or hundreds of thousands, get the content out there, get the narrative out there, that's how we're going to win. Because sure, you could make the argument that some of this is an echo chamber and that we're talking to other Democrats. But if you're able to talk or give some kind of insight to somebody that they read on social media or somewhere else that they didn't realize and they find compelling and convincing, that's when they take that to their community, their neighbor, the people that you all know across this country who are disaffected, who have almost given up after 2024's outcome. And if we can get just one person to change their mind in the right place, that can make all the difference. The difference in Wisconsin in 2020. Brian Tyler Cohen taught me this was one per precinct, right? That's how close some of these elections were. So if we can get a small number of people swayed through either directly talking to them or whether we are able to get them to talk to their neighbors directly with what they hear, that will change this country and that will change the trajectory of the country, not only for us, but generations to come. So go out there and tweet, post on Facebook, start a YouTube channel. We need you now to another story that we see in the news a lot, the autopen scandal. So it was reported yesterday that Anita Dunn was appearing before the House Committee. I will have disclosure that I know all of the people who are being called to the Hill, but. But in my opinion, I will always give you what I think is my opinion on this. And you can make decisions. This is just yet another example of the Republican distraction machine. Right, let's take a step back. Jeffrey Epstein files have still not been released. The behavior from this administration is clear that they are covering something up. And so it is in their best interest to do whatever they can to distract from people paying attention and the pressure that is on Donald Trump on this. So it originated from a late night true social post. Trump claimed that because some of the pardons that were signed by President Biden were done via auto pen, that they were null and void. That triggered James Comer, a representative from Kentucky, to launch an investigation and call a bunch of Biden officials to there. There was also a book that was released that accused President Biden of, of certain things that was also a part of this. But it's really important to just kill this notion that the auto pen is some kind of scandal in a couple of ways. Let me take a step back at the way the White House works, okay? The President's time is incredibly valuable. We all know that doesn't matter if it's a Republican or Democratic president. There is Someone called the staff secretary. It is a position that Republicans hold and Democrats hold, whose job it is to control the paper that gets in front of the president. You saw that in a very extreme example by the president's staff secretary, Will Scharf, who was standing next to the president on Inauguration Day with a bunch of documents. It's Will's job. It was Neera Tanden's job and Stephanie Feldman's job in the Biden administration to make sure all of that paper is run efficiently and runs in an efficient process. Both Neera and Stephanie were incredibly organized professionals. And as you can imagine, everything is optimized around making sure that the president is making the most informed decisions possible. Right. That is the number one goal. All of it with good process. So the question is whether this auto pen thing has any merit and the reaction that from experts on this point out the absurdity. So here's an article that cites Jay Wexler. This is from npr. A professor of Constitutional law at the Boston University School of Law told NPR he thinks the auto pen issue is a, quote, non starter and a distraction. Importantly, he says there is nothing in the Constitution that requires pardons in writing at all. Quote, the auto pen, the argument that the pardon fails because it was signed by auto pen fails at the get go because there's no requirement that the pardon even be signed. Right on top of that, Trump has admitted that he has used the auto pen. Now, he claims that it was for, quote, only very unimportant papers. But the bottom line is he is saying that the president's authority can be used on an auto pen by the fact that he did it himself. And so the notion that he can do it but the president by President Biden can't is just absurd on its face. And just to be fair to everyone involved, this has been going on for a very, very long time. Jefferson, yes, Thomas Jefferson used a version of the auto pen back in the day. Truman did it. JFK did it. Obama did it. As a matter of fact, Bush did it. And he, in 2005, he sought an opinion. And I want to read it. Okay, here's an Associated Press article. There is no law governing a president's use of an auto pen. A 2005 opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department said an auto pen can be used to sign legislation. Okay, that is a 2005 opinion from the Justice Department under George W. Bush. So that is a Republican opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel, not a Democrat opinion. Here's the other irony, James Comer, the person who is leading this inquiry. Here's an Embassy News article. Represent Representative James Comer has been leading the probe into Joe Biden's cognitive state during his presidency, with Republicans alleging that Biden's occasional use of an auto pen to sign documents, a president, a practice other presidents have done as well, demonstrated that he wasn't fully in control. But documents show that some of the letters and subpoena notices that Comer has sent out in connection to his investigation have been signed using digital signature, not himself. Okay, so Comer, with this drama, saying, oh, how horrible is it that we're using auto pen, are signing subpoenas digitally. Right. Not even signing it himself. So this hypocrisy isn't even being hidden here. And again, this has been done by many presidents. This is not anything, any malfeasance. This is just a complete and utter distraction. And that is part of this whole Republican machine that I talked about before that we should be concerned about. Here's the other thing that they are espousing. You have people coming in to this hearing and they are taking the Fifth Amendment. They are pleading the Fifth. Excuse me, that is their right. The Republicans are trying to spin this as Democrats hiding something. Okay. That is, that is their, their portrayal. They are very vocal about that. But I want to read something from a Daily Beast article written. It's a misconception that the Fifth Amendment only applies to the guilty. It is rather about due process that no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself and seeks to prevent the use of torture to elicit confessions. As the US Supreme Court put it. One of the Fifth Amendment's basic functions is to protect innocent men. The attorney for one of Biden's aides cited this precedent in his statement. Okay, so these are not well intentioned people. These are not serious people. As we see, Comer is using a version of autopen himself to even issue the subpoenas. And so that's why people are pleading the Fifth, because they know that anything that they say could get twisted by this administration into anything that they want to use against them. Right. This is not a serious group of people. And it's interesting, when I was doing my research for this segment, I wanted to see what other validators we can find. I found an interesting validator I once, and this is a quote from that validator, I once asked, if you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment? Now I know the answer to that question. When your family, your company and all the People in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated witch hunt. You have no choice. Donald J. Trump, he pleaded the fifth 440 times in a deposition. Okay, so this is all a farce. This is all a distraction from what is happening to this president whose approval ratings are at the lowest that they've been, who's underwater on areas like immigration, the economy, which he ran on, and we need to hold them to that account and not get caught up in this bs. And speaking of, I have one last thing to say. I obviously work for President Biden. I know him well. So I. I have certain feelings about some of the accusations against him. Some of the accusations in the book that was referenced, okay, two of them that were somehow big, incriminating bells, that his best work hours were 10 to 4 and that he didn't remember the names of the people who worked for him. Okay? I think you can't throw a Rock in D.C. and find a principal that someone staffs who forgets names of their staffers. That happens all the time. In fact, that happens to everybody, regardless of age. Secondly, I don't know a single person in this country whose best hours aren't during the workday 10 to 4. Okay? So it would be irresponsible. Doesn't matter the age to do that. Now, was President Biden old? 100%, he was old, objectively speaking. Okay. He was 82 years old at the time. But here's the thing. I never once questioned his ability to make the right decision for this country and more importantly, what drove him every single day. And I get emotional when I think about this, but I think it's important to just give you straight what I think and you can make the decisions yourself. I remember being in the Roosevelt Room with the President during the hurricanes, both North Carolina hurricanes and Florida hurricanes. And the Roosevelt Room is right next to the Oval Office, and there's a big group in there. The FEMA director was in there. We were talking about what resources we can bring to those. Those places to help people. And it started to break up and the President was still in the room. And I said to the President, you know, we're really trying to figure out what to do to help people who have lost their homes. And he looked me straight in the eye and he said, dan, it's not just about the homes. It's about what's in the homes, the memories that people have built in there, the photos that they'll lose, that they'll never get back. And that is what struck me Because I thought to myself, here's a guy who could not be more cloistered from the public. Right now. He has 24, 7 Secret Service security. There are people, literally snipers on his roof while he sleeps. But he never forgot that. Empathy and humanity for people. And I just contrast that to what we see today. I'll share this picture here. This is a picture of me in the Oval Office after one of the hurricanes with the president. He was there because he wanted to make calls to every official that I could put in front of him who were affected by hurricanes that were happening, because he knew that those local electors, as a former county executive, county commissioner, he knew a county elected official, he knew how much stress it was for those people. And he wanted to make a call letting them know that he was thinking about them, that anything he could do for them, that he was there. He had a conversation with Zeb Smathers, who was a mayor in North Carolina. I think of a population of 5,000 people or so for 25 minutes just to say, I'm here for you. And you contrast that response to President Trump when a state rep in Minnesota was assassinated. And they asked him, have you called Governor Walls? And he said, why would I call him? So I ask you to think about all the things that the president tried to do to help this country. I ask you to think about the work that's coming from the infrastructure bill to help, for example, the Brent Spence Bridge in Kentucky or a battery plant in West Virginia, or the chips factory that's going to be opening in Ohio that will bring hundreds of jobs, thousands of construction jobs all across this country. I think I want you to think about that president and the work that he cares about and contrast it to what you see today. This is the David Pakman Show. We'll be right back. Subscribe to David Pakman and subscribe to the People's Cabinet.
- [52:54]
David Pakman
If you were shopping for a new mattress, I would recommend you start by looking at Helix Sleep, the mattress I've been sleeping on for years, the only one that I recommend because they custom tailor it to your needs. I took their sleep quiz. It took a minute or two. I said, oh, you know, I like to sleep on my stomach. I tend to feel hotter in the middle of the night rather than colder. I like medium firm. And Helix just nailed it, Matched me with the perfect mattress. Most people don't even know where to start when you're looking for a mattress. And Helix just makes it easy. There is really no substitute for the mattress. That's right for you, your body will thank you. Delivery was fast, setup was easy. You do get 100 nights to try it out. They'll even take away your old mattress. And right now, Helix has an exclusive offer just for my audience. Go to helix sleep.com/pacman. You'll get 27% off site wide. The link is in the description. 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 it so it all sounds a little more palatable. And that is why I use Ground News. This is a news comparison tool. It 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 downplay or not cover at 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.
- [55:07]
Dan Koh
Ok, we are back. My name is Dan Koh. I am host of the People's Cabinet. We interview people who are shaping America's future as well as explaining what the hell is going on. I am filling in for David Pakman. The most important story today is once again, David Pakman has had his second child and we all send good energy his way and to his family. I'm really grateful to him and to the entire community for welcoming me. Thank you for all of your kind words. They really do mean a lot. So now we're going to be talking about my favorite topic as someone who used to oversee the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now, don't worry, I'm not going to explain the the whole thing for 15 minutes like I did yesterday, though that is a clip that you can listen to if you want to. But the thing that I did highlight yesterday was what Trump's future playbook was going to be. It's going to Be trash the BLS methodology. That was step one. Two, nominate someone who says it needs, quote, updating. Three, funnel cash to outside help enriching allies. Four, surprise the numbers go up. And five, compare apples to oranges and brag about record growth. That's what the playbook is. And we're already seeing that playbook happen. So let me introduce you to a guy named Stephen Moore. He's an economist. He was also a co author of Project 2025. And I found this interesting Vanity Fair article in 2019. And here's a interesting tidbit that I should read. Quote, here's my challenge to any informed voter of any partisan leading tweeted University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers about Stephen Moore. Call your favorite economist. Whether they're left, right, libertarian or socialist, none of them will endorse Stephen Moore. He's manifestly unqualified. And I'm totally serious about this. I think Ivanka would be a better pick for the Fed than Stephen Moore. Okay, so that's a little bit of a bold statement, but obviously this guy is not the most reputable person in the world. So I want to play you a video from when the jobs numbers came out. Again, this was August 1st. At the first Friday of every month, the jobs report comes out. So this was done at 8:30am and it's, it's done live and it's very dramatic on CNBC and Fox Business. So this is Fox Business. Stephen Moore was on. So let me Play this clip. 73,000 jobs, 73,000 jobs created in the month of July. Number just coming out. And that's total 4.2% of the unemployment rate right in line with expectations. Here are the numbers for the month of July. Jobs came in at 73,000. That was lower than the expectation which called for 110,000 jobs. The unemployment rate right in step with expectations at 4.2%. Steve Moore, your reaction? Look, I think this is all a result of this disappointment number is a result of all the turmoil over tariffs and trade wars. Okay, so he says tariffs and trade wars are the reason why you're seeing these numbers. Now, with all due respect to economists, I have a great deal of respect for economists. A lot of times they're trying to retroactively create rationalization or explanations for things. You know, the numbers come back and they try to then adapt as a result. So he's saying tariffs and trade wars. That's his justification. But then Donald Trump later that day fires the Bureau of Labor Commissioner, claims it's all a fraud. Claims the calculations are all wrong, as I talked about yesterday. So this is what people do to appease Donald Trump. Stephen Moore prints a couple charts. Okay. And waltz is into the Oval Office. So this was yesterday. And this is example of step one. Okay. Step one of the playbook, which is trash the BLS methodology. So here he is in the Oval Office yesterday with the President. Yes, judge. Thank you, Mr. President. So I called the President because I had some very good news from some new data that we've been able to put together that no one has ever seen before. And I'll just very quickly go through these. So I was telling the President that he did the right thing in calling for a new head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because this shows that over the last two years of the Biden administration, the BLS overestimated job creation by 1.5 million jobs. That's a. Mr. President, that's a gigantic error. And I don't know if she's. I'm not. Might have been an error. That's the bad part. It was an error. It would be one thing. I don't think it's an error. I think they did it purposely. Whether or not you may well be right. But even if it wasn't purposefully, it's incompetent. Right? Okay, so there's a very interesting thing that happened there. If you notice. He's suggesting. Stephen Moore suggesting it's an error. President Trump is suggesting it was intentionally done. Okay, take a step back. As I mentioned before, there are 2,000 people at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 40 or so, who are directly involved with putting together this jobs data. Every month, there are hundreds of thousands of data inputs that is done to collect this. So faking this or somehow manipulating it is incredibly difficult. That would take a national conspiracy. On top of that, the director, in this case, Erica McIntarfer, doesn't even see the data until two days before it is released, one day before the President is briefed. So this notion that she faked it is crazy. Also, as I mentioned, this is all based on statistical science. It's a sample. You get more data back and you make revisions. And so it is not. It is not sound at all for her to have modified the data somehow when she saw the revisions leading to what it would be. It is her duty as a economist to accurately report the information that is presented to her. There is no faking here. And even if she wanted to fake it, there's no process to do that. On top of that, they talk about 20, 23 and 2024, in March of 2023 and in, and I should say January and February, the complete months of 2023. Bill beach was the commissioner, not Erica McIntofer, and Bill beach was a Trump appointee. And by the way, I worked very closely with Bill beach and I have great respect for him. These are people who are taking career officials who have been there for a very long time and shepherding this data. Okay? Another thing that I want to point out is that Trump keeps talking about 818,000 jobs, but what he's leaving out is something really interesting. These numbers of 818,000 were later reduced. Here's a political the adjustment announced August 21, 2024 was preliminary with a final number based on complete data to be released in February 2025. When the agency published that final number, it was a smaller decrease of 589,000 rather than the preliminary decrease of 818,000. This means Trump was wrong on CNBC. By the way, that's the interview that we played yesterday. Trump was wrong on CNBC when he said the final number was more than the original 818,000. Now, we're not at all, we're not at all surprised that Trump is lying, okay? But the reality is, like PolitiFact checked monthly employment revisions published around the time of 2024 election, okay? These revisions are made every month. None of these were close in scale to the 800,000 or 900,000 figures that Trump repeated. Right? So this is just a lie to make things look like there's some kind of justification for what, what Erica McIntyre did. Now, is even that reduced number a large number? Yes, it is. But it's not out of the realm of in, in some cases, a lot more jobs number revisions happened, for example, after the Great Recession. So you can, you can say that it is a large number, but to suggest that it was somehow a books cooking is crazy. And if you look at actually the chart that that was brought into the Oval Office because it was fuzzy on the screen. It's just unclear where any of these numbers are coming from. And it is just part of a larger point here, which is just these people are coming in to appease the president, right? This is a, this is a president who loves flattery. And so someone coming in waving these jobs numbers make, make him feel really, really good. And that's the whole point, right, is to create this justification to flatter the president in hopes that he shines brightly on you. And so there's a couple of things that I also Want to point out as to where we go from here. I think you're going to see a lot of other flattery and conspiracy theories about the data to try to make Trump look good. As I mentioned before, the President needs to announce an appointment of a new pick. The person who was in in that position in the interim is a guy named Bill Watroski. Okay. He has been a career nonpartisan person at the Bureau of Labor Statistics for a very, very long time. He is somebody who will not fudge the data. And again, part of the structure of career officials to make sure that that is the case. I feel incredibly bad for him. He is going to probably facing a lot of pressure, but I don't doubt his methodology, the real question, or his integrity because he's seen Republican and Democratic leaders. The real question is going to be who he appoints next. That person. I almost guarantee you, in fact, I guarantee you will start talking about concerns about methodology, the data that will open the door for not only a way to goose the numbers, but to call in outside vendors who could be allies of President Trump to enrich through contracts. There's a lot more here. This was just emblematic of the very start of what you're going to see with this whole drama, which is going to hurt everyone. As I mentioned, trillions of dollars are decided based on jobs numbers. Trump will use that to his advantage. He will compare apples to oranges to his own benefit. Okay, and another economic news that is important to understand is that Trump just announced that the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Mirren, will fill a key Fed post that will also help Trump in his quest to show that he is this ultimate job creator. Okay, now it's interesting. It's a couple of interesting things about Stephen Merritt. He's currently the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. The Council of Economic Advisors is the economic entity within the White House that does a lot of statistical analysis on behalf of the administration, as well as advising the President on key economic issues. Okay, so are two different entities in the White House that are fiercely focused on the economy. One is the Council of Economic Advisors. They do a lot of the original research. Then there's the National Economic Council, which oversees a lot of the policy around the economy. So on this side, you have these people advising, doing research. On this side, if you have work being done in agencies that have to do with the economy, you essentially do the work in the agencies. And those people then work roll up, so to speak, with that policy to the National Economic Council who help decide what to recommend to the President. So that's basically it in a nutshell. I think it's important to point out though, like no one knows anything about the Fed. I think that we do a terrible job of explaining. So I'm going to do a little bit of high level explaining just so you understand what's at stake here. Okay? So there are seven board of governors at the Fed. They get a 14 year term, which is really long. And it's done by design to help traverse administrations from the seven. The President picks a chair for a four year term. Okay? So that is what's going on with Jerome Powell right now. He is the chair and that's what happens. There is the Federal Open Market Committee. Okay, bear with me. I'm almost done. The wonky shit. It's made up of those seven governors plus five other people, okay? They meet eight times a year, about every six weeks and they vote on whether or not to raise interest rates. Basically what that is is the cost to borrow money in the economy from, you know, that's how it works. Just to make it as simple as possible. Their goal is 2% inflation year over year. That's what they're trying to do, okay? They look at economic indicators. The jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is one of them, to try to decide whether or not they should lower or increase interest rates. Now, Donald Trump wants lower interest rates. Why? Because when you lower interest rates, people can borrow money cheaper and therefore they're spending on more shit. Okay? So you have. Because it's not as, it's not as, it's not as beneficial to just leave it in a bank account to gather interest when the interest rates are low. Right? And Donald Trump wants, boom. He wants people spending money. He wants people out there. The risk of doing that is you get inflation if you're not careful, okay? And that's why the Fed is being so careful. And by the way, that's why they're independent, is because you want to make sure that these are informed decisions based on indicators versus based on the whim of a President who just wants to see people spending more money. Okay? So that's, that's part of the reason why the President's so stressed out about the Bureau of Labor Statistics, because he wants to get interest rates lower. There is a indicator for inflation that is tracked by the Department of Commerce. That is one of the central things that the Fed looks at. And over the course of the last few months, that number that again, their goal is 2% is now upwards of 2.8%. Okay? So there's a lot of concern about raising interest rates because of that, as well as the fact that Trump's tariffs and his ridiculous strategy is causing so much strife in the economy, causing markets to go up and down, prices to go up. Objectively speaking, prices are higher than they were last year by 2.8%. Right. By many indicators or other indicators that also show that. So there's right to be concerned here. Trump is putting one of his loyalists in there, Right? One of those. One of those seven. Because he knows that he needs more people in there who are critics of Jerome Powell, which this person is. Okay. And that person is going to pressure Jerome Powell more and more to try to change interest rates. So Trump is trying to remake the Fed in his image. Now, I'll be fair to say that it is the right of the President to appoint whoever he or she wants. But this is just another campaign for the President to try to get a decision that should be apolitical to be political. And you are seeing him continuously, demeanor, Fed Chair Powell. Right. You saw it when he visited his. The Fed, and he tried to claim that it was more expensive to renovate than it actually was. Right. In the tweet for Dr. McIntofer, he's calling for the firing of the Fed. He's not doing it. I think he realizes the impact of that. But he fires the BLS commissioner anyway because he knows that. That fewer people understand what that means. We need to continue to pay attention to this. Again, this is Trump rebuilding the entire MAGA government and his image. It's also important to point out that Stephen Mirren studied at Harvard under Martin Feldstein. Okay, so this notion that Stephen Mirren is that that Harvard is some kind of, like, liberal bastion and that only Democrats go there is ridiculous. But that is the facts. This is a loyalist to President Trump. You bet. In the meetings that he will be in with Chair Powell, he will be vocal about lowering interest rates even when the numbers don't say so. And so these are things that we all need to look out for. All right, we're going to take a break. Please subscribe to the David Pakman show and also subscribe to the People's Cabinet if you like what you're hearing. And we'll be right back.
- [70:43]
David Pakman
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- [73:24]
Dan Koh
Is in the description okay, we are back. My name is Dan Koh. I am host of the People's Cabinet Podcast. We interview leaders who are shaping our future. We do explainer videos, hot takes every now and then. Please subscribe to our channel if you like what you're hearing today. And please subscribe to the David Pakman show. Again, most importantly, let's all celebrate the fact that he is a new dad once again. He has announced his retirement, but I'm sure he and his wife and his family are a little sleepy right now. So let's ascend them all well on this wonderful blessing to the world. Okay, a few more topics I want to cover. First and foremost, Trump has always talked about how he's for the working person, right? This is what he says that he stands for, etc. But when you peel back the onion over and over again, it becomes clear that that is not the case. So I want to bring attention to two examples and then also in that process, talk to you a little bit about how it actually works in government. With hiring, Trump talks about how he's for the unions, that he cares a lot about unions. But it was announced yesterday that the Trump administration begins to strip federal workers of union protections. Department of Veteran affairs appear to be the first agency to begin terminating union contracts affecting more than 400,000 workers, most of them represented by the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union for federal employees. So this is all part of dosh, right? This whole idea that federal workers don't do anything and that really we should be like the private sector, make cuts, give people voluntary terminations that results in us losing key staff, weather service, fema, et cetera. But they celebrate it like it's some efficiency, when in the reality it's going to come back to bite us in the ass. So, just to put it in perspective, the VA is one of the largest employers in the federal government and employs 479,000 people. Why? Because it's taking care of our veterans. Okay? These people who have risked their lives for us. And so doctors, nurses, services, it better be pretty big given what they risk for the country. And so what bothers me is that MAGA and Trump talks about America and how he's making America great again. He is putting those who are putting their lives on the line for America at risk. He is taking away resources from the people who are actually making America great. That is the biggest irony of this entire thing, right? And so taking away their collective bargaining rights means that obviously it's going to be harder for them to be paid more eventually. But it also means making it easier to potentially get rid of them, which is part of this whole thing. Trump announced that he would, as part of his budget proposal, that he wanted to cut 80,000 people at Veterans Affairs. Okay? 80,000 people who are taking care of our veterans. He wants to cut okay, that was his original proposal. He's tried to scale it back now, but that. That was on the table. Senators like Ruben Gallego have been fighting that pretty aggressively. So that's still there, that threat of firing. Now, part of the hiring that the Biden administration did was for something called the PACT act, which gave services for people who got sick because they were near what was called burn pits. The fumes from the burn pits, when they were at war, would give cancer, including. The president believes his son Beau, and this was resources for them. And this is a president who claims he's for vets, literally cutting them. This doesn't just stop there, okay? He claims he's for minors. There's a famous image of him standing in front of a bunch of minors, okay, saying that, you know, he's doing all this work for him, but he got rid of a program that helps protect minors from black lung disease at hhs. Okay? There's been some court battles. Now there's some talk about reinstatement, but his proposal was to cut that program. RFK Jr. Did that. Okay? So this is a president who says one thing, but is actually doing something completely else behind the scenes. Let me just give an example of why this is so important. There are about 3 million people who work for the federal government. By the way, 85% of those people are not in D.C. they're all across the country. So the notion that D.C. is full of all these federal workers who are all liberals is just like, not. Doesn't hold water. Okay? There are about 4,000 political appointees. Political appointees are switched over at the whim of the president, whoever comes in, okay? That's how it works. So there are protections for the career officials, the rest of them, that entire rest of the 3 million, to protect against organization, administrations coming in and just cleaning house and hurting people and hurting our government. Because you can't have everybody, all 3 million switch out every four years. Trump is trying to take away protection so he can do that. He also tried to create a situation where policy staff were no longer career, but what they called schedule F, which made it easier for him to fire those people so that all of the people within federal government would be at his whim at any given moment. I will tell you something. Federal employees were some of the most impressive people I ever worked with. I talked a little bit about FEMA yesterday and a woman I met who literally her job. It is every six or seven months when a new tragedy hits to uproot her entire life to go there. That happens. As well. Everywhere across the country, these, these public servants who are doing things. This is a mundane one, but it's important to point out I know a guy who I work with the Department of Labor. Every single agency has what's called a scif. It's a place to keep confidential information. His job was to be down in the barrels of the building where the skiff is, that he couldn't even tell people or was not even supposed to tell people where it was, to make sure that was running and that was secure. That was his job every day, going to a windowless basement area and making sure that everything was running. These are the people who are doing the work. These are the people that President Trump claims to be supporting. And instead, he's hurting them. And that's what this entire irony of MAGA is for Donald Trump claiming that he's for workers claiming he wants to make America great. But the very people who are making America great, he's undermining behind their backs. Okay, Another thing that we seem to normalize here is this notion that you have to bend the knee and give some kind of tithe or gift every time you see the President. And that that combination of gift giving and flattery will get you where you want to go. But the reality is we are seeing that happen, and it's a tragedy. Okay, so the Washington Post article that came out today, America's CEOs come to the White House bearing gifts and flattery. So yesterday, Tim Cook came to the Oval Office. This is a executive who gave a million dollars, by the way, to President Trump's inauguration committee. He came and there's a video here on the Washington Post of him with a 24 karat gold offering, essentially. Okay. And it says Cook was the first Silicon Valley CEO to tame Trump during president's first term. But in the Oval Office on Wednesday, it appeared Trump brought the leader of the 3 trillion company to heal. So he gives this gift and he says, you've been a great advocate for American innovation and manufacturing, and I'm grateful for your leadership and your commitment. Okay, here's what. And he also announced, by the way, that he is going to have an additional $100 billion in US manufacturing over the next four years. That is a good thing. It is good that jobs are being created in the U.S. the article then goes on to say the flattery appears to have paid off. Trump announced in the same meeting that he planned to levy 100% tariffs on semiconductors imported to the United States. Apple would be exempt, he said, because the company is building in the United States. Now, you remember that despite other, other plans by Apple in the past, Trump was threatening Apple outwardly. Right. He's saying that everything should be produced in the United States. That's what he was demanding. Even though some analysis showed that iPhones would be thousands of dollars if that were the case. But now all of a sudden, he's about faced because he's seeing all this flattery and, and it's not just about the investment that Apple is making here, because Apple has been making investments in the United States. It's about the orientation. It's about bending the knee, giving these gifts. We've seen this with other executives. Jensen Huang, Okay. Jensen Huang is the head of Nvidia, one of the most successful companies in the world, especially when it comes to AI and semiconductors. So the article says Trump and Huang, the CEO of the AI chip powerhouse, met for the first time in January, but they have become fast allies. Huang has made frequent visits to Mar A Lago. And Huang's warm relationship with Trump was on display at the winning the AI Race summit last month. Okay, so Trump riffed about how he had talked with his aides about breaking the company up before he knew what he did. But Trump and his staff told him it would take the greatest minds at least 10 years to catch Huang, even if he ran Nvidia completely incompetently. Now, this is a guy who, no, he's an executive. I don't blame him for trying to grow his company, but he knows flattery, right? He goes to Mar A Lago, he talks to Trump, he butters him up. So what's the kickback? Here's the Washington Post again. Trump in July granted Nvidia permission to sell China its advanced H20 computer chips to develop artificial intelligence, despite concerns from national security officials and prominent conservatives that sales present a national security risk. That same month, Nvidia became the first company to reach a $4 trillion valuation. So to oversimplify it, under the Biden administration, we were concerned that if China got a hold of some of the chips that Nvidia made, particularly the high end chips, that they would be able to produce and compete with us more forcefully on AI. So we restricted some of those because we wanted to make sure that America was placed first. Jensen Huang was very, was very smart in his flattery of Donald Trump. He used the playbook to flatter Donald Trump, and now all of a sudden, poof. Those are restricted. China gets our chips, our technology. By the way, China is notorious for stealing technology that Makes us less competitive. Oh, and on top of that, there's now trillions of dollars. The valuation of Nvidia is now at $4 trillion. Look, he knows Jensen Huang knows how to flatter Trump, but this is just another example of how the flattery works. Right? Joe Biden and other past presidents would want to build relationships with these CEOs to help them grow. About President Trump, it's about who bends the knee to him. And only then does he allow these things. Even if he's willing to sacrifice the competitiveness of the United States against one of our key, key pacing adversaries for the future. The article also talks about Elon Musk. And I don't even have to talk about this one. Right? You know what happened here. You know, he spent 250 million getting Trump elected. He continues even in the background. You know, obviously there's been some tension recently between them, but he basically let Elon Musk run roughshod over the administration. There's one specific thing I want to point out. I don't want to get too into USAID today, but the work that Trump allowed, that allowed Elon Musk to do, not only is it hurting mothers who are in vulnerable positions all across this world who need that money for their families, for food for men and women across the world. You know, some people say, oh, well, you know, there's people struggling in the United States. We got to help them. We do. And I understand that argument. Here's the other argument that people seem to miss. Okay. When we don't provide that aid around the world, by the way, a minuscule percentage of our budget, Russia, China and other adversaries fill that void, okay? They provide the aid. It's already happening. And so when those countries continue to develop and they decide who they're going to ally themselves with, do you think they're going to decide on the United States that all of a sudden cut funding to them, or do you think they're going to go with those people, those countries? That's what makes us less competitive. Okay? This is a president who takes a short term approach that screws us in the long term, that we will be screwed in our ability to compete with our allies across these developing countries. Because this short sighted individual decided to just hand over the keys to Elon Musk to make all the cuts like he thought he was going to do to revolutionize government. Elon Musk said he was going to cut 2 trillion from the government. It's unclear if he cut anything. There were some reports on 20 billion or something. But then it was debunked on the amount they spent. This is the joke of this president. It all is the same under the same equation, which is claim you're doing something, but lie behind the scenes and actually undermine the very people that you say you're fighting for. Whether it's in the case of career employees or veterans or minors, or whether it is in the case of our competitiveness with our key adversaries and having the best technology in the world. Okay, so the New York City mayor's race continues to get increasingly bizarre, especially for Andrew Cuomo. So we know that he lost the primary. This is a man with credible sexual harassment claims, More than 10 people. And instead of being someone who comes across as gracious, he is now switched to an independent and running again. But that doesn't stop with just that, right? You know, some of that is politics. You know, that's what Eric Adams is doing. The New York Times just reported on August 6th. Okay. The title is Trump Ways Getting Involved in the Mayor's Race. President Trump may have moved out of New York City, but he has privately discussed whether to intercede in the fractious race for the mayor to try to stop Zoram Hamdani, the Democratic nominee. Okay. He's been briefed by Mark Penn, a pollster for Bill and Hillary Clinton. And in a previously undisclosed call in recent weeks, Mr. Trump spoke directly with Mr. Cuomo, an old associate in FOIL, according to three people briefed on the call who are not authorized to discuss it. Now, to be fair, Andrew Cuomo claims that he did not have this discussion. Right. But there are three individual people who have sourced that says that he did do this. Okay, now let's listen to what Andrew Cuomo said in a debate about Donald Trump and his feelings about him. We're going to protect our immigrants. This is a sanctuary city, and we are going to defend the laws of the sanctuary city. We have an NYPD that is the largest police force in the United States of America. Donald Trump only picks fights that he can win. He cannot win a fight with me as mayor of New York. Mr. Mamdani, Donald Trump only picks fights he can win. He cannot win a fight with me as mayor of New York. That was his line. Which is interesting because the New York Times released another article yesterday. Cuomo tells business leaders he doesn't personally want to fight Trump. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo has positioned himself as the only candidate to go toe to toe with Trump. But in a closed door meeting on Wednesday with some of the City's biggest business leader. He might adopt a more conciliatory strategy that he is not personally looking for a fight and compare their years long relationship to a dysfunctional marriage. Okay, so the notion that he would want to be married to Donald Trump in any way is insane, especially given what he had said on the debate stage. But this is just emblematic of the way Andrew Cuomo has proceeded, right, that, that people don't think that he believes in anything, that he's just desperate for another seat. All of this just adds to Zoram Mandani's candidacy and makes people think that, you know, Andrew Cuomo is not a principal person and is just desperate because he is in a position that he lost the primary and just wants to stay relevant. I mean, that's what most people are believing at this point. And you know, when people get desperate, they start to lash out and they start to go negative and we're seeing a lot of that. Yesterday I talked a little bit about some of the rights criticisms of Imam Doni and candidly, the racism that came, came with it. We are seeing Andrew Cuomo go there too. Obviously, Mamdani had put out literature in the past with some illusions, but Andrew Cuomo put this out yesterday. Okay, it's a, it's a video of, of, of Zorma Dani pausing as he speaks. Okay, very quick video. One week after his vacation at a family compound in a country where LGBTQIA plus are murdered. The do nothing assemblyman is looking absolutely exhausted. New Yorkers need to know, can the assemblyman keep up the pace of holding down a full time job? Not looking good. Okay, couple of things to unpack here. First, he is from Uganda. He has never denied that he recently got married and he wanted to celebrate his marriage in Uganda. I'm not sure how especially I just don't know how that is something to criticize. But here's what's really frustrating. Okay. His line about in a country where LGBTQIA people are murdered, there are 50 million people in Uganda. Okay. The notion that somehow Zoramdani, what he's trying to do is imply that Zoram Hamdani believes that LGBTQIA plus people should be murdered or that he's somehow a part of a culture that you should be afraid of. This is exactly the same shit we are seeing from the right. From Charlie Kirk implying that somehow he was involved in 911 to Matt Walsh implying that foreign born people aren't Americans. So what are we going to do now? Look at the ethnicity of all of the people in this country and try to see whether there are things that happen in their countries apply to them somehow and that therefore they should be othered. That's what this is about, right? This is trying to other Zoram Hamdani, just like the rights playbook and we should not fall for it. Lastly, I got a little advice for Andrew Cuomo. Okay. If you want to win, Mamdani's talking about issues. He's talking about policies. And you can disagree with a lot of those policies. I certainly do. But he's talking about them concretely. And I want to leave you with one last thing. This is a video and a tweet that Andrew Cuomo put out. Okay. A let's do this tweet, July 23, right around when he. When he decided that he was going to run as independent. Every New Yorker has a different opinion. That's what makes New York New York. But the one thing I hear everywhere I go is that our small businesses are being crushed by city government. There is too much red tape, unnecessary regulations and fines that drive them out of business. Too many storefronts are vacant, too many restaurants, bars and shops forced to close. Starting day one, I'll cut bureaucracy and fight to bring businesses back. Let's do this. Okay. That is the biggest ward salad I have seen in a tweet. Yes, there is too much red tape. Yes, fines bring people out of business. Where's the concrete proposals? Okay, Mamdani, you can disagree with them, but you know where he stands. Okay. Cheaper groceries, free transportation, rent freezes. Does it work economically? I have a lot of concerns with it, but at least you understand where he is. So what are you going to do to cut red tape? What are you going to do to reduce regulation? How are you, are you going to cut the fines completely? Okay. What are you going to do with the revenue you're using for those fines? Right. Those are all things that you should have concrete proposals to. And by the way, Cuomo has good stories to tell. He has good stories to tell about LaGuardia and transportation and he's starting to do that. But these, this kind of word salad stuff reeks of a poll tested message that was just regurgitated into a tweet. And again, it is emblematic of why he is losing. So that's it for the David Pakman show today. Please subscribe to David Pakman Show. You can do that with the subscribe button below. And if you like what you heard today, please subscribe to the People's Cabinet. I am so grateful to David for this opportunity. I'm so grateful to the larger ecosystem for giving me this chance, and I'm particularly grateful to you. It is so meaningful to me to see all of your feedback, positive or negative, in the comments. So please keep it up. Other things you would like us to cover, please let us know. 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- [94:43]
David Pakman
Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads, go to libsynads. Com. That's L I B S Y N Ads. Com. Today.