← The David Pakman Show
The David Pakman Show
9/16/25: They’re coming for the 1st Amendment, and they’re thrilled
01:00:09
-- On the Show: -- CBS reporter Nancy Cordes corners Donald Trump with a list of right-wing political violence incidents, showing that most political violence in the U.S. comes from the right -- Trump says he is "not so sure" about the First...
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- [00:08]
David Pakman
Well, Donald Trump was just cornered with a list of right wing political terrorism attacks after he spent weeks trying to build this story where political violence in America comes from the left. Antifa, Black Lives Matter flag burners, sort of the usual caricatures. And then yesterday the entire thing collapsed because standing in the Oval Office, CBS reporter Nancy Cordes finally did what journalists should have been doing for a very long time. And that's putting the receipts right in front of Donald Trump. Now, we've known for a long time that overwhelmingly political violence in the United States is right wing. That doesn't mean we excuse left wing instances of it. It doesn't mean we condone violence. It doesn't mean that we say that violence of any kind or using guns to solve political or cultural, social problems is ok. Of course not. We denounce all political violence, but we also don't miss the forest for the trees and delude ourselves into believing that this is overwhelmingly or even disproportionately a left wing problem. And so Nancy Cord said, Hold on, Mr. President. We have, of course, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, whose motives, by the way, we still don't know. And as complicated and convoluted as they might be, we, we simply don't know right now whether the motivations were left or right wing. But what about the example of Minnesota Democrat Melissa Hortman just months ago? What about the attack against Paul Pelosi in his own home? What about the shooting of Gabby Giffords? What about the attack on the Pennsylvania governor's mansion, where, by the way, I was just yesterday with Governor Shapiro looking at where that damage recovery has been taking place and getting a firsthand look at that terrifying arson attack. What about that? I saw it firsthand yesterday and for a very brief second. I mean, this is like very, very brief. You could see that Donald Trump was cornered here.
- [02:11]
Interviewer/Guest 1
Do you think it would have been fitting to lower the flags, to have staff when Melissa Orman, the Minnesota House speaker, was gunned down by an assassin as well?
- [02:22]
Donald Trump
I'm not familiar, the Minnesota, Minnesota House.
- [02:25]
Interviewer/Guest 1
Speaker, a Democrat, was assassinated this summer.
- [02:29]
Donald Trump
Well, if the governor had asked me to do that, I would have done that. But the governor of Minnesota didn't ask me. I didn't. I wouldn't have thought of that, but I would have if somebody had asked me. People make requests for the lowering of.
- [02:41]
David Pakman
Flag and it's always someone else's fault.
- [02:44]
Donald Trump
Oftentimes you have to say no because it would be a lot of lowering the flag would never be up had the governor of Minnesota asked me to do that. I would have done that gladly and given the killer.
- [02:54]
David Pakman
Now, this is really the moment when the entire narrative should shatter. Now, Donald Trump gave a non answer. He always gives a non answer. You know, he kind of tilts his head back and he goes, well, you know, it was, I wasn't asked to lower it in that case. The translation here is I don't really want to acknowledge instances of right wing violence. I don't. Lowering the flag to half master after a Democrat was killed would be in some way acknowledging the right wing violence. And I don't want to do that. Now remember that just the day before Donald Trump said, this is a, this is just a problem on the left, this is not a problem on the right. Now, I might argue demonizing the left absent evidence is actually the problem. But Trump says there's no problem on the right.
- [03:52]
Donald Trump
Well, the problem is on the left. You look at the problem, the problem is on the left, it's not on the right like some people like to say, on the right. The problem we have is on the left. And when you look at the agitators, you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place. That's the left.
- [04:12]
David Pakman
That's the scum of the left. Is the problem really presidential language, really unifying language that's going to bring this country together? Now, as I always do on this program, I don't claim to be the ultimate source of truth. You can fact check me and you can fact check Donald Trump. I welcome that. Don't take my word for it. Go to the FBI data, go to the DHS data, go to the independent terrorism researchers, CCSIS and the ADL and others. They all have come to the same conclusion. The vast majority of political violence in this country comes from the right. It's not a left wing talking point, it's a factual talking point. And the list is very long. Charlottesville, January 6, the El Paso shooter who targeted Latinos. The Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh. Paul Pelosi getting his skull bashed in with a hammer by a guy who was looking for Nancy Pelosi. Melissa Hortman in Minnesota, gunned down this summer. When you line it all up, Trump's story, Stephen Miller's story, J.D. vance's story, it doesn't just fall apart, it becomes insulting. And it's of course dangerous gaslighting because it is potentially, and I would argue probably going to turn violence against people seen as being on the left. And by the way, this is the same Trump who ordered flags at half staff for right wing activist Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk, who, Listen, we don't, who, who once called for the death penalty to be given to Joe Biden. So what we need to sort of consider here and acknowledge is that to Trump, some lives just matter a little bit more than others. If you're loyal to Trump, you're a heroic martyr. They talk about putting you on Mount Rushmore. They say that you're a civil rights leader. They equate you to Martin Luther King Jr. Even though Charlie Kirk didn't have the most positive things to say about Martin Luther King Jr. And if you're not a Trump loyalist, but you're similarly gunned down, you're not a hero, you're not a martyr, you're more disposable than anything else. And then that gets us to Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller sort of always lurking in the background like that. Well, let me not make any insulting analogies. Always lurking in the background, jumps in to say that the administration is going to crack down on people paying for violence. What does that even mean? Now we're going to get to Stephen Miller later. Deserves its own discussion. But Miller is now repeating this sort of Tucker Carlson fan fiction conspiracy type stuff, that NGOs, or handing out checks and hammers to protesters. And it's all part of the authoritarian playbook, which is you take a normal constitutionally protected protest activity and you blur the line between protesting and violence, and then you crack down and then they can go, we were just targeting violent extremists. Not speechless. But the truth is that they want to target speech, they want to target dissent. Trump is now not so sure about the First Amendment. Terrifying, chilling, dystopian stuff, which we'll delve into in a little bit. And it's gone way beyond just Donald Trump. Stephen Miller, as I mentioned, JD Vance filling in for Charlie Kirk on his podcast yesterday, they're reading from the same script and you got to hand it to him. They're on message. They're. They're on message. The left is violent. They are the greatest threat. We've got to crack down. Dissent is becoming violence and we've got to jump in there. But who's been shot? Who's been killed? Overwhelmingly, statistically, it's Democrats, it's synagogue congregants, it's immigrants, it's abortion providers. The violence is overwhelmingly coming from, from Trump's side. And somehow he's convincing millions of people that they are the victim. So there is hypocrisy the hypocrisy doesn't matter anymore. The right doesn't expect consistency, moral consistency, factual consistency. They don't care. Double standards. It's just whatever is convenient today. But there is a broader strategy here. Because if Trump admits the violence is mostly from the right, he has to admit that his movement is fueling it. Because if he goes and looks and says 90% of the violence is right wings. Maga has been the American right wing for 10 years. It logically points to Trump is part of the problem, which of course, he is. So he inverts reality. He says, it's the left, it's the flag burners, it's the scum, he says. And his base just eats it up. You look on Twitter, you see that they're eating it up. The reality check is as follows. You can't make political violence go away by pointing fingers. You can make it worse. Worse by denying where it's coming from and not dealing with the rot within his own party. And when the President of the United States refuses to lower the flag for a murdered Democrat, but lowers it for Charlie Kirk, it's not just bias. It is bias, but it's authoritarianism. It's the state picking winners and losers based only on one factor. It's the thing that's been most important to Trump forever, loyalty to the leader. And now they're coming for the First Amendment. If you thought Trump couldn't get more obvious about being an authoritarian, I've got news for you. He's not sure about the First Amendment. In the aftermath of the killing of Charlie Kirk, Trump was ranting about protesters. He was blaming them for everything between, you know, violence and hating America. And he was asked, but don't they have a First Amendment right? They're protesting. And Trump says, chillingly, dystopianly, terrifyingly, I'm.
- [10:19]
Donald Trump
Not so sure that's a violent, radical left group. Ok, A lot of comments for doing that. They still have their First Amendment right Now they're still out there.
- [10:29]
Stephen Miller
You've got an amazing team.
- [10:30]
David Pakman
I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure about the First Amendment, the cornerstone of the Constitution. Even the Second Amendment. Extremists talk about the first and Second Amendment, and Trump talking about protesters bothering him makes it really clear. It's not only that deaths are more tragic when it's someone loyal to Trump. Trump is also making it clear that speech is more important when it is speech loyal to Trump, but when they don't agree with Trump, it's a problem.
- [11:11]
Donald Trump
And a woman, in many cases, women, you can see, they're professional agitators. I had one the other night. I had four the other night, all in one group. Total phonies that started to scream when I got into a restaurant. Oh, you know, something with Palestine. I said, well, I'm doing a great job for peace in the Middle East. I should get lots of awards for that, right? With the Abraham Accords and everything else. But a woman just stood up and starts screaming, and she got booed out of the place, too. The people. There were a lot of people in the restaurant. I went there to show how safe. And it was safe. I mean, the woman is just a mouthpiece. All she was. She was a paid. She was a paid agitator. And you have a lot of them. And I've asked Pam to look into that in terms of rico bringing RICO cases against a criminal rico, because they should be put in jail. What they're doing to this country is really criminal.
- [12:01]
David Pakman
RICO for protesting. Now, I know many of you have. Excuse me, have written to me and you've said, david, you know, the protesters Trump's referring to, it's Code Pink, Code Pink, are like very anti Ukraine. They defend China, they defend Russia, they defend totalitarian regimes. That. That absolutely may be true. But criminal RICO for protesting, for voicing your opinion. And you can go back and look at Democrats and Republicans, you look at Reagan, you look at Bush, you look at the other Bush, you look at Obama, Biden, Nixon, they all would have instinctively said, of course everyone has First Amendment rights. Of course, that's the bare minimum. It's Democracy 101. But Trump can't even fake it. Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, was interviewed by Stephen Miller's wife on her abortive new podcast. She's also not so sure about the First Amendment.
- [12:53]
Interviewer/Guest 1
All of a sudden, there's free speech and then there's hate speech. And there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society. Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people?
- [13:10]
David Pakman
So hate speech. Show them that some action is better than no action.
- [13:15]
Interviewer/Guest 1
We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything, and that's across.
- [13:24]
David Pakman
Even Charlie Kirk has previously acknowledged that hate speech doesn't legally exist in the United States, that you've got ugly speech, gross speech, and evil speech, but that it's all protected by the First Amendment. Maybe the Attorney General should take a look at this little thing called the Constitution. So this is not, you know, oh, Trump's not being polished here. The President of the United States said he's not sure whether Americans still have free speech rights, and his attorney general agrees. It's not a gaffe. It's not. He's being taken out of context. Trump and Pam Bondi are completely on the same page here. This is a window into what they think. This is a window into what they believe. And it is not happening in a vacuum. This is a pattern. He's floated suspending habeas corpus, imprisoning people without a trial. He's demanded loyalty essays from federal workers and potential federal workers, testing, would you be loyal to me or would you be loyal to the Constitution if it came down to it? He has called protesters terrorists. He's called for violence. In fact, he did it again yesterday. I'll play the clip later. And so it's the same story every time. You've got rights, sort of, but they're conditional. If you're with Trump, you get them. If you're against Trump, some of those rights might start to erode. And the process is unfortunately mirroring something we've seen in authoritarian regimes. You delegitimize your critics, you call them dangerous. You start to question, do they really deserve rights? And. And then you create an environment where punishing dissent, punishing speech is normalized and accepted. And we saw it under Franco in Spain. We saw it under Pinochet in Chile. We see it in Russia today under Vladimir Putin. And they start by asking the question that Trump is starting to say, do my enemies really deserve rights? I'm not sure about the First Amendment. What about criminal RICO for people protesting? And so that's not a democracy. That's authoritarianism. Free speech means their speech, and therefore it means very little. And, of course, any time we criticize them and we say, hey, you know, maybe there can be consequences to speech, they go, oh, that's cancel culture. But the second anyone protests Trump, the Constitution is optional. And Trump is unfortunately just saying out loud what his supporters quietly believe. Rights are not universal. They are tribal. And huge credit here, by the way, for Brian Glenn for even saying in that first clip, but don't they have First Amendment rights? That's the kind of obvious test that reporters aren't asking enough. And when you corner Trump with the most basic first principle questions about American law, he fails. So this isn't a mistake. He meant it. And they mean this stuff. And throughout the show, you may be presented with assertions from these people. We're going to listen to Stephen Miller and others where you go, well, maybe they don't really mean this. All the evidence from the last eight months is they do mean it. And if Trump is able to get away with this stuff, it really imperils democracy itself, where rights exist for Trump's loyalists and others risk getting silent. So when people say you're exaggerating, X or Y could never happen here. Remember that. People keep saying that and then the stuff keeps happening. You would never see the streets militarized by federal troops while we've seen it. And the president of the United States is saying, I'm not sure about free speech rights. I believe the guy, I believe him. And we've got to fight like hell to make sure that he doesn't get to actually put that into action. 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I think you will to head over to sheathunderwear.com/pacman and get 20% off with code PACMAN. The link is in the description. The David Pakman show is an audience supported program. I invite you to sign up for membership at join pacman.com or become a Substack page paid subscriber at substack.david pakman.com both are the most direct ways to support the work that we do. And boy oh boy is this a time when the support is needed. They have had it folks. They are coming for all of us. And over the last 24 to 48 hours I have had more conversations with content creators. If I were to add up the followings of the content creators who over the last two days have expressed concern that we're going to be targeted by this administration. It would be in the tens of millions of followers. Okay. People are worried and for very good reason. At every single instance, we are seeing that there is an appetite to, as they see it, avenge the death of Charlie Kirk by targeting people who had nothing to do with it and advocate nonviolence, advocate peaceful opposition and working using the systems we have to change society in ways that we think would improve things. So here is Donald Trump again talking about can we bring RICO cases against some of the people whose views and opinions. At the end of the day, we don't like chilling stuff given all the.
- [19:56]
Interviewer/Guest 1
What'S going on, Charlie Kirk's assassination, left.
- [20:00]
David Pakman
Wing violence going on.
- [20:03]
Interviewer/Guest 1
Do you have plans? And actually this is a great, great.
- [20:06]
David Pakman
Opportunity with all these.
- [20:08]
Interviewer/Guest 1
Do you plan on designating Antifa finally a domestic terror organization?
- [20:14]
Donald Trump
Well, it's something I would do, yeah, if I have support from the people back here. I think would start with Pam, I think. But I would, if you give me, I would do that 100% and others also, by the way. But Antifa is terrible.
- [20:30]
David Pakman
Antifa is terrible.
- [20:32]
Donald Trump
There are other groups. Yeah, there are other groups. We have some pretty radical groups and they got away with murder. And also I've been speaking to the attorney general about bringing RICO against some of the people that you've been reading about that have been putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation. These aren't protests, these are crimes. What they're doing where they're throwing, throwing bricks at cars of the, of ICE and Border Patrol, they come in a beautiful new car, they're so proud.
- [21:00]
David Pakman
And of course, throwing bricks at cars is a crime, but that is just such a tiny, insignificant slice of what is going on here. And Trump saying we're going to bring RICO against Antifa, it's like saying we're going to bring RICO against, you know, we're declaring a war on country music. Like what's the organization or what do you mean? What are you talking about? Against. Antifa is not even an organized thing at this point. But the appetite is clear. The appetite is. We don't really respect free speech. We don't really respect dissent. And I'm not, I despise George W. Bush as president. But Bush acknowledged, although it might be easier not to have the adversarial media, it's constitutional. It's what we have. It's part of the United States of America. Now, Jesse Watters on, on Fox News described and explained how they are going to be targeting the movement. And again, the context is a lot of this is targeting a movement for its opinions, which is what they said was wrong about the murder of Charlie Kirk. Kirk was murdered for his opinions, and that's wrong. They said, I agree. But now Jesse Watters is saying, well, we're going to target the entire movement. Listen to the fascistic nature of this.
- [22:16]
Stephen Miller
These people are incapable of turning the temperature down, so it's our responsibility to do it for them.
- [22:23]
David Pakman
Now, I hate to interrupt already. It's richly ironic that Jesse Watters says the left is incapable of turning the temperature down when within hours of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, he was saying, this means war.
- [22:39]
Stephen Miller
For the safety of the country and for their own safety, their heinous movement should be politically destroyed, systematically dismantled, Their financial backing should be bankrupted, their media sponsors defeated in the marketplace, their candidates beaten at the ballot box, and their acolytes in academia, behind the pulpit and city councils and corporate America will be spotlighted and given one chance to confess and apologize. And if they don't, thrown out a polite society. We cannot live with people and work.
- [23:13]
David Pakman
With people like this. They can't teach our children. They can't be trusted with power. You can just feel. I mean, just. Just. He's radiating the authoritarian zeal of Stalin, of Mao. This. This is exactly the sort of anger and thirst for suppression and oppression that those authoritarian leaders would express. We then heard from Congressman Michael Rowley, who said, well, I'll just play for you what he said.
- [23:51]
Interviewer/Guest 1
You feel this is going to bring us together? Because it's uncertain when you look at some of this reaction from some of these deep liberals.
- [23:59]
Republican Congressman
Well, Anna and I have been talking, and I'm going to put focus on the opposition, the Democratic Party. You can't use this rhetoric about us all day long where you call us Nazis, you call us monsters, you call us all these different words that are just horrific and they drive people to insanity. There is not one person in the Republican Party that is in Congress right now that hasn't had a death threat. I've had a dozen this year. Your rhetoric needs to be toned down. You need to lower the temperature. When Joe Biden was in office, we listened, we watched and we spoke, but we spoke fluently and we didn't speak with this hate.
- [24:35]
David Pakman
Does. Is that anyone's recollection of how this party behaved when Joe Biden was in office? We listened, we watched and we spoke, but we spoke fluently and without hate. Does anybody in my audience remember that? That's the Republican approach to Joe Biden's four years in office? Because maybe I was in some Kind of a coma for those four years. I don't remember that at all.
- [24:58]
Republican Congressman
And we didn't speak with these words that were drawing people to take action against us. You tried to kill our president twice. You actually killed Charlie. Enough is enough. Stop the shenanigans and lower this rhetoric to a normal place where we could all exist together.
- [25:15]
Interviewer/Guest 1
Yeah, it's just unbelievable how, you know, they've politicized and weaponized politics.
- [25:21]
David Pakman
I mean, they've politicized and weaponized politics coming from the political movement responsible for 75 to high 80s percent of all the political violence in this country. This is a concerted and coordinated effort to gaslight and at the top of this, unfortunately, and I say that because he seems effective at convincing magazine, unfortunately, Stephen Miller is participating in this. And he sort of, before we hear from Nancy Mace, puts the. Puts a bow on what they're going to do.
- [26:01]
Stephen Miller
You know, what emotions I'm feeling right now. This is something people say. I mean, you kind of know the answer. There's incredible sadness, but there's incredible anger. And the thing about anger is that unfocused anger or blind rage is not a productive emotion. But focused anger, righteous anger directed for a just cause, is one of the most important agents of change in human history. Charlie showed that. Amen. And we are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks. So let me explain a little what that means. So 30 seconds.
- [26:41]
David Pakman
Be quick, Stephen.
- [26:42]
Cash Patel
The.
- [26:42]
Stephen Miller
The organized doxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people's addresses.
- [26:52]
David Pakman
Now, you might be wondering, is Stephen Miller talking about what they are doing or is Stephen Miller talking about what his opponents are doing? And we're going to get back to that.
- [27:02]
Stephen Miller
Fighting that with messaging is designed to trigger incite violence and the actual organized cells that. That carry out and facilitate the violence. It is a vast domestic terror movement with God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie's name.
- [27:27]
David Pakman
It seems to me that he's describing their tactics, but it doesn't matter. He's ascribed them to the political left and they are now going to do the clampdown. He is saying, we're sending Homeland Security, we're sending Department of Justice. Is it going to potentially include progressive content creators? Probably. Is it going to include people simply attending peaceful protests? Probably. Is it going to include media networks? Is it going to include online platforms? All of the above, I would expect. Finally, here. Here is Nancy Mace. And Nancy Mace is disgusting in the direction that she is taking this.
- [28:07]
Interviewer/Guest 1
I mean, there's a whole group of Democrats who use the word fascist repeatedly during their campaigning, their political campaigning. And, you know, the suspect had the word fascist etched on his ammunition. So what does that tell you? Well, you mean, look at Kamala Harris. When she was running for president last year, she admitted she said live on air multiple times over, that Donald Trump was a fascist. And this ideology, they've called us Nazis, they've called us Hitler, they've called us fascists, they've called us terrorists. This is why our lives are in danger. And how do you have unity with a group of people who want to murder you? And, you know, I talked to my pastor on Sunday. I'm struggling with this, because these people need to be held accountable. They need to be fired from their jobs. They need to go to jail if they've committed a crime. And, you know, how do you handle that? And so that's the question we're all asking ourselves. And we want to be safe in our communities. But also, if you've done this guy right here, this sounds like he was organized. I know that Kash Patel said that he was. They were talking to many people on Discord. It was definitely premeditated. But this ideology, and he comes from this community because his boyfriend, I guess, is. Is transgender or transitioning, but they come from this community that is advocating for violence. And.
- [29:22]
David Pakman
And of course, it is not a community advocating for violence. And even the claims about the trans boyfriend or whatever are, as of this moment, unproven. But Nancy Mace says it's time to melt it all down. We've got to destroy the entire movement. We're hearing it from members of Congress, we're hearing it from the President, we're hearing it from advisers to the President. They are all saying, we are coming for you. And that's terrifying. And J.D. vance sort of explains it in slightly more detail. So this is where we are. The Vice President of The United States, J.D. vance, filled in for Charlie Kirk on the Charlie Kirk podcast yesterday, and he is calling for a national snitch campaign. He says, call their employer. If you see someone celebrating Charlie Kirk's murder, let's listen. And then I want to discuss flows from all of us. So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's.
- [30:22]
Stephen Miller
Murder, call them out in hell.
- [30:24]
David Pakman
Call their employer. We don't believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility. And there was no civility in the celebration of political assassination. Get involved, get involved, get involved. It's the best way to honor Charlie's legacy. Start a chapter of TP USA or call their employers. So from inside the White House, Vance is encouraging a mass doxxing, encouraging his supporters to get ordinary people fired for what they post online. They claimed to be against this. They this is cancel culture. This is not free speech. This is authoritarian policing of speech. Now, of course, of course private employers can fire people as long as it's not for an illegal reason. We're firing all of our black employees. We're firing all of our Jewish employees. That would be against the law. J.D. vance is not suggesting something that's illegal. J.D. vance is suggesting something they claim to oppose. And they would claim to oppose this sort of authoritarian speech policing. It came from a Democrat. If Barack Obama said call the employers of anyone cheering Trayvon Martin's murder back in the George Zimmerman days, they would have talked about it for decades. It would have been a decades long story. Now, before we get into the substance, I do want to again talk about the hypocrisy, because Stephen Miller was on the show yesterday that JD Vance hosted. We looked at the clip and Jade and Stephen Miller said, we're going to go after the left for the doxing campaigns against conservatives. Miller said, the conservatives are the victims, the conservatives are the targets. And J.D. vance nodded along. And then J.D. vance goes, oh, we're going to do it. We're going to do the same thing. Steven, you're right, it's terrible how the left is doxing the right. By the way, to my audience, please go and dox these left wingers celebrating Charlie Kirk's murder, which by the way, statistically there are almost none of. And in a country of 340 million people, you will of course find anecdotes of just about anything you're looking for. But there is no big movement to glorify the murder of Charlie Kirk. In fact, every serious leftist I know has completely denounced it. And so we go back to the authoritarian playbook. It's projection. You accuse your opponents of doing the thing that you want to do, then you turn it around and do it yourself. And it's very dangerous. And where it gets ugly is that people have already been wrongly identified. You can argue whether this is a good or bad tech tactic. If you get the right people. You could say, no, I think it's wrong or it's right, or social media, you know, Walmart should be looking at every tweet or whatever. But we now have a Walmart IT worker in Maine who was suspended from his job because right wing doxers decided he was mocking Charlie Kirk family fled his home and it turns out that it was not actually this individual. And they have now had to go into hiding as a result of this. And the kicker of course is that the suspect, the alleged shooter in Charlie Kirk's killing, we don't have any reason at this point to believe that it was a left wing extremist. The motive may have ended up something that overlaps more with left or right wing ideology. We don't know. I'll tell you as soon as we do. I have no intent of hiding that at this point in time. Time. But what we know for sure is he came from a MAGA family. His online footprint was this sort of like video game meme space. It was an antifa. It wasn't a coordinated left wing plot. At minimum, we know all of that stuff. But it doesn't matter because the right is using this to sort of get a blank check to justify a crackdown. Now when we zoom in, why do politicians love this whole call their employer tactic? They like it because it chills speech. It gets people to self center censor. If you see that people's employers are getting called and that people are getting fired, you will be scared to post or talk or criticize. And it might right now be about Charlie Kirk, but in a month it might just be about Trump's tariffs or Trump's militarization of police or whatever. It creates this self censorship. And that's the point. And J.D. vance knows you don't really need to get that many people fired. You need people worried that they might get fired. And that's how you can control people without passing any law. And this is not happening in a vacuum. We've seen MAGA politicians float ideas like this about suspending habeas corpus. We've seen Trump talk about using the military against protesters. We've seen Stephen Miller talk about building a blacklist of journalists. And JD Vance takes it a step further, further, which is he's deputizing MAGA voters as soldiers in this culture war. And what they're armed with is an HR department. You know, I'm reading a book called Tunnel 29 about the movement to escape East Germany during the Cold War. And in East Germany they had The Stasi, the secret police. And it was one of the most effective surveillance states in history. And it wasn't because they had awesome technology where they could actually monitor everything everybody was saying. They convinced ordinary people to spy on each other and to report on each other. And. And according to the book I'm reading at one point, something like one, I believe it's one in six East Berlin, East German residents were informers, and they were informing on coworkers and neighbors and family members, even in some cases. And so this is how you control a population. You don't need the brute force, or at least not by itself. You make people afraid that their neighbors are going to turn them in. And the irony, of course, is that these are the people that have been screaming about cancel culture for a decade at this point. They spent years telling us they are the victims of unfair firings. People are losing jobs, people are suffering reputational damage. There's a mob pylon. And the solution they now have is we're going to do cancel culture. So understand, at its core, MAGA doesn't care about free speech. They care about power. If speech is restricted for them, it's tyranny. If your speech is restricted, it's justice, and it's how we build a better society. And if their people get fired, it's persecution. If your people get fired, it's accountability. That's the game they play. Where this leads, if we game it out, is that, you know, it's Charlie Kirk stuff right now that they want to weaponize and get people fired for. Next week, it'll be anybody criticizing Trump. Next month, it'll be journalists who are doing adversarial coverage of the administration. Anybody who questions the MAGA worldview becomes a target. And if you think that sounds extreme, just look at history. And we now have JD Vance, the vp. It has weight when he says this stuff. So the next time you hear MAGA talk about censorship or free speech, remember this moment. The bigger picture is they don't want to win the debate. They want to silence the debate and not even have one. And the longer we pretend it's politics as usual, the faster we slide to something very dark. A lot of people think identity theft is something that only happens when someone hacks into your account. But the truth is that it usually starts with your personal information being posted online by data brokers where anybody can find it. Our sponsor, Incogni, is a service that helps protect your privacy by forcing the data brokers to delete your information. This includes your name, address, phone number, even sensitive things like property records or your political affiliation. And now with their custom removals feature included in the unlimited plan, you're not limited to just the list of 250 plus brokers they work with. By default, if you find any site exposing any of your private information, even one they've never seen before, you can send a link and Incogni's team will work to get that removed. This is serious protection for you and your family and against identity theft, against fraud, doxing, harassment and Incogni data removal process is the only one independently verified by Deloitte. Get 60% off an annual plan when you visit incogni.com/pacman and use the code PACMAN. The link is in the description. Donald Trump has lost it and has made a terrifying, terrifying demand. And Trump's latest explosion really shows why travel is down to the United States, why people don't want to come here to visit. Here's the clip. Let's take a look and then discuss.
- [38:54]
Donald Trump
Border Patrol ice, you know, it's got whatever it is and they're throwing rocks at it. And after 50 yards it looks like an old beat up vehicle. It was just brand new. It's just bought for the purposes. And they don't have to take that anymore. I let it be now will take responsibility. They don't have to take it anymore and they don't want to take it. They were told by a past administration. It became almost a culture. If somebody throws a rock at you, do nothing. If somebody spits in your face, do nothing. And I say when they spit, you hit. Do whatever you want. You do whatever the hell you want. I watch it. I watch it so sick. It made me for four years I had to sit home and watch people screaming at policemen and spitting in their face and they weren't able to do anything. They just had a grin and bear. They're standing up like a piece of steel. And a woman, in many cases women, you can see they're professional agitators. I had one the other night. I had four the other night all in one group. Total phonies. I started to scream when I got into a room restaurant, oh, you know, something with Palestine. I said, well, I'm doing a great job for peace in the Middle East. I should get lots of awards for that.
- [40:09]
David Pakman
This is part of why a lot of people do not want to travel to the United States at this point in time. The president of the US saying to his followers, do whatever the hell you want to people you don't like. It is not Trump being Trump. It's not bluster. It's calling for mob violence. So if you take it all together, look at today's show, they're calling for violence. They're calling for criminal charges against people based on their opinions and statements. They're calling for a mass doxing campaign. This is a message to forget the law, forget the Constitution, and just start lashing out at people and, and, and the crowd. MAGA is mostly cheering this now. If we break down all of the reasons why it's so terrifying. Before the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Trump has been riling up his base for months. Protests, immigrants, anybody who dares to dissent. And now he's gone from saying, they're bad, they're the enemy, to do what you want. If they spit, we hit. It's incitement. It comes naturally. It's like second nature to Trump. And this is why people around the world look at the United States and they go, that's not safe. I've been speaking with friends in the uk, Spain and Denmark, and they go, you know, when I drop my kid off at school, the idea of a school shooting, it just. It doesn't even cross my mind. When I think about an encounter I might have on the street with the idea that the other person is going to be armed, it doesn't even cross my mind. It's just a different world in the United States, and it's making a lot of people say, I'm not going to travel there to visit. And that's why tourism is down. It spills out into the real world. We saw it on January six, the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer, the arsonist at Governor Shapiro's house. It starts with rhetoric. When they spit, you hit. And then if you're imagining a tourist saying, does that sound like a place to bring my family? When the President of the United States is saying that, or a student saying, does it make sense to study abroad there? The message that we're sending is America is not safe under Donald Trump. And if his people don't like you, they've been told, do what you want. Trump could have walked it back and he could have said, I'm saying metaphorically, of course. Oh, if they spit, we explain to them we really don't like what they're doing. But that's not what he means. He means violence. Violence isn't an accident in Donald Trump's movement. It's really the fuel. And the crowds aren't cheering for policy, they're cheering for permission. And the permission is, can I strike out at someone who disagrees with me? Pretty please, dear orange leader, can I do that? And Trump is saying, absolutely, I'm giving you carte blanche. In, in churches, don't they call it special dispensation? I don't even know. I don't know anything about Christian churches, but it rings a bell. And so the authoritarian playbook of dehumanization, encouraging violence, denying responsibility, it's happening here. And when the violence comes, Trump will go, oh, no, that I was misunderstood back then. But by then, it's going to be too late. So he's not even pretending to support peaceful protest or the rule of law. He's saying, we might criminalize peaceful protest and we might decriminalize beating the hell out of people. Peacefully protesting. And so, objectively, the country is more unstable and less safe under Trump than at any recent point. And it's not a shock when we look at the tourism data and see how it's completely imploding. Governor Gavin Newsom has issued a terrifying warning about what the administration is planning here in the United States. Gavin Newsom, quote, tweeted a video of Stephen Miller. We'll get to the video in a moment. And Newsom added, wake up, America. Stephen Miller has already publicly labeled the Democratic Party as a terrorist organization. This isn't about crime and safety. It's about dismantling our democratic institutions. We cannot allow acts of political violence to be weaponized and used to threaten tens of millions of Americans. I have the video that Newsom is referring to.
- [44:29]
Stephen Miller
Party does not fight for care.
- [44:33]
David Pakman
I don't know if it was clear that he said the Democrat Party Party.
- [44:36]
Stephen Miller
Does not fight for, care about or represent American citizens. It is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gang bangers and illegal alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization. Organization.
- [44:59]
David Pakman
Now, when you hear Stephen Miller say to J.D. vance, we're going to go after the extremists and the terrorists, he's labeled the Democratic Party extremists. So when he says we're going to go after the extremists, he means Democrats, just Democratic voters. That's it. And when he says we're going to dismantle terrorist networks, he's talking about the Democratic Party, tens of millions of Americans. It's not subtle. He rants about the organized, doxing campaigns. We already looked at that clip. He promises to devote every resource at the DOJ and Homeland Security to root out what he calls domestic terror. But that just means people on the left. That just means Democrats. And he's doing it all in the name of Charlie Kirk. Nothing about this is about crime. Forget about that. Nothing about this is about public safety. The goal is to criminalize dissent. Gavin Newsom realizes it, and he's right. Because if you rebrand Democrats as domestic terrorists and then Trump gets to say due process doesn't apply to domestic terrorists, all of a sudden, the Constitution's gone, habeas corpus is gone, the rule of law is gone. And Stephen Miller, who designed Trump's Muslim ban and the family separation policy, suddenly he's writing the playbook here. And that's terrifying. This is how the machinery of government gets directed at political opponents. You don't need to imagine where it leads, because we just look at history and we see where it leads. When there's a consolidation of power in authoritarian regimes, they start by redefining the opposition. These aren't just people with different opinions. This is a group of criminals. Different opinions would be fine, but these are extremists. These are terrorists. These are criminals. Once you do that, you can justify anything you do to them. Is it mass arrests? Sure. Is it bans on political parties? Why not? Is it violence? Yeah. And so the warning that Gavin Newsom is giving is very much informed by history. It's not about one speech or one rant. It's the blueprint, and they're laying it out. Blame the left, target the left. Dismantle democracy under the COVID of law and order. And Gavin Newsom's warning should scare the hell out of everybody. Because when a president and his top staff say our political opponents are terrorists and are extremists, we only have to look at Europe in the 20th century to know how that goes. It never goes in the direction of democracy. It never does. 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. 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 Dot News, slash Pacman or enter the code Pacman in the app to get started. The link is in the description. I'll admit that this is getting very weird. Cash Patel, Trump's FBI director, went on TV and said that the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk left behind a manifesto that proves the political motive, but that the manifesto no longer exists. But they can reconstruct it to tell us, I guess, what it says. This is very weird. Take a listen to this. And I understand many of you remain unconvinced. Written note was, did he write a written note before, before the assassination attempt? That's what the governor said yesterday. And what did that say? If you could.
- [49:18]
Cash Patel
What I'm able to say, I'm sorry. So what I was. What I'm able to say is I addressed it partially earlier, is that the note, we believe what did exist and we have evidence to show what was in that note, which is, and I'm going to summarize, basically saying I, the suspect wrote a note saying, I have the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I'm going to take it. That note was written before the shooting. Evidence of existence, we now have learned existed before the shooting was in the location in the suspect and partner's home. But we have since learned that the note, even though it has been destroyed, we have found forensic evidence of the note and we have confirmed what that note says because of our aggressive interview posture at the FBI.
- [50:04]
David Pakman
Now it's, if I'm charitable, it's possible that this is accurate, but Cash Patel is just inarticulately explaining it. And what I mean by that is it's possible that Cash Patel is explaining something that is completely real, but just in a way that is difficult to understand. I guess what his argument is that it's the paper is missing, but traces of it and context point to its existence or something like that. So the FBI reconstructs it and then matches DNA on a towel and a screwdriver and we're supposed to just like accept the entire thing? It's not impossible. You know, forensic teams can sometimes recover fragments and metadata or digital traces. But Patel is not explaining the method the chain of custody, corroborating witnesses who saw this note, and the fact that we don't have any of that stuff really does matter here because of the broader context where we know they are desperate to construct a certain story as to the motive and the motivations of the shooter. And so this is very likely designed to play to a specific audience. You know, there are conspiracy minded people, I've talked about this characteristic before, where if you have evidence, that's evidence of the conspiracy. If you don't have evidence, the absence of evidence is also evidence of the conspiracy theory because they clearly removed or deleted the evidence. So, like, evidence or lack of it proves the conspiracy. Either way, the missing manifesto becomes a kind of proof the manifesto is gone. And so think about the logic there. If there were a manifesto, it would prove motive and ideological intent. If there isn't a manifesto, it proves that the manifesto was destroyed to hide the conspiracy in some way. And so, like, either way, you prove whatever version of the story you're looking to prove, prove. And this is, it's totally circular, obviously, but the important thing is they don't want to lose the narrative. And we've seen this before, the missing thing that proves the COVID up is harder to disprove because proving a negative requires sort of an ironclad transparency that we rarely have. So to me, the questions we should be asking right now are, give us the specifics. Who saw that note? Where was it kept? How was it destroyed? Was it ripped to shreds? Was it burned? Was it thrown in the trash? What happened? Who reconstructed it? What were the forensics methods that were used to reconstruct it? Who had access to the rifle and the rooftop. And we should ask for records and affidavits and lab reports. Cash Patel, confusedly speaking, for 55 seconds, doesn't really tell us very much. And of course, this relates to the broader narrative they're trying to construct, which is that Governor Spencer Cox says the shooter leaned left politically. The manifesto supposedly proves it, but now the manifesto is gone. But they were able to reconstruct evidence of its existence. So all of this supports what is most politically convenient to them. Might it also be what's true? Sure, the speaker might have been the speaker. The shooter might have been a hardcore left winger motivated by whatever left wing ideology motivated him. We just don't have any of that evidence right now. They're claiming that it exists, but it's been destroyed and whatever. So the danger, of course, is that without a verifiable paper trail, the manifesto existed but we don't have evidence that it did. And it can still be used to justify a bunch of actions. Right. They could say, well, the contents of the manifesto, which no longer exists, justify surveillance on certain people or asset seizures or public blacklisting or whatever. And we should really be precise about the two axes of evidence here. One is physical evidence that can be documented, tested and presented in court. Second is narrative evidence, the story that is shaped by public officials right now, Cash Patel's story about a manifesto which no longer exists, but they know that it did that. Right now I put in the category of narrative evidence, and maybe at some point there will actually be physical evidence. And we have an environment right now where everyone is ripe, just anxiously waiting for something that will confirm their opinion of this shooting. I just want to know the truth. If it's, you know, this was a. This was an anti capitalist left winger who was furious about Charlie Kirk support for capitalism. If that's what comes out, I'll tell you. And if what comes out is that he's a groper, you know, a Nick Fuentes type fan who was seeing Trump as a traitor and Kirk as a traitor for not being right wing enough, I'll tell you that whatever it is, the deeper psychological point here is that random violence has an often messy, unsatisfying texture. And this is why people often go to conspiracy. They'd rather a conspiracy where the exact cause, proximate and secondary causes are known completely. And at this point in time, we just don't have that. And so we have to understand the motivations. A lot of, a lot of the people that are trying to construct this narrative, there are grim examples where these narratives have been constructed and they ended up being wrong. And Cash Patel seems a very willing participant in the context of his unending loyalty to Trump to generate that narrative. So we've got a manifesto, but we don't actually have it because it was destroyed, but we have proof it existed and we know what it said. It's feeling like a bit of a stretch, but maybe Cash is just being a little bit inarticulate. Fox and Friends is floating their favorite culture war conspiracy. Tyler Robinson must have been trans. And maybe the drugs that they take to trans. Now you might be saying, David, there's got to be a word missing there. No, the word the drugs they take to trans may be responsible here. This is Rachel Campos Duffy. Take a listen.
- [56:21]
Stephen Miller
There are a lot of people out there who are indoctrinated with leftist ideology, but that's a bridge too far. Obviously to take it to a level of violence. And that's where I wonder if there is a nexus between not just this ideology, but also his community. And maybe we'll find out more. As you point out, Lawrence, as the investigation continues, let me share this.
- [56:40]
Interviewer/Guest 1
Or maybe even some of the drugs that they take in order to trans. What do those drugs do to their body, their minds? We had Dr. Amen on yesterday as well, talking about the impact of that.
- [56:53]
Stephen Miller
You know, and it's funny, there is.
- [56:54]
David Pakman
Zero evidence for that. I mean, there is just nothing credible, nothing credible to suggest that the alleged shooter was on hormones transgender. I mean, there's nothing at all to suggest that. And this is just desperation. They are desperate to shove the story into a particular culture war box with their go to villain trans people. Now, the truth is there are allegations about the roommate being transgender. I don't even think that's been proven. But what we do know is that the roommate has been nothing but cooperative, completely cooperative in this process. So if anything, you could spin this as wow, despite Charlie Kirk's antagonism of being trans, the trans roommate, if true, helped bring Robinson to justice by cooperating with law enforcement. But that's not the story they're telling saying, you know, these drugs people take to trans. And what are we even talking about here? I don't know. You know, gender affirming hormone therapy is not like a violence inducing potion that we don't understand. It's a medication that helps trans people align their body with their gender identity. You may like it or not, but estrogen and testosterone prescribed and monitored by doctors are not going to turn someone into a shooter. And these are the same hormones that millions of non trans people take safely. Women use estrogen in birth control, men use testosterone for hormone deficiencies. It doesn't turn people into shooters. And so this is pure scapegoating. And they just can't accept that whatever his political ideology was, a young man from a maga religious law enforcement, gun loving family did this. So they go, well, let's figure out how we can blame trans or drugs or whatever. It's lazy, it's baseless, and it's dangerous. And instead of dealing with the real proven common denominator here, which is guns and the radicalization of young men through a variety of political ideologies, usually right wing, they're spinning these fairy tales and they're demonizing a marginalized group that doesn't appear to have had anything to do with this tragedy. We've got a great bonus show for you Today, the media clampdown continues with Donald Trump filing a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. We'll talk about why Cash Patel is testifying today. He may be testifying right now over his lack of appropriate leadership at the FBI. And Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, has endorsed mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani. What's the calculus? What are the implications? How does this relate to the free bus program, which, by the way, is a topic. I want to talk about all of that and more on today's bonus show. Get the bonus show instantly by becoming a member@join pakman.com remember to subscribe to the show free on Spotify or Apple podcasts. I'll be back tomorrow.