David Pakman (16:10)
So anyway, we got a reality check from Furnish Amiri, who's the United nations correspondent for the Associated Press, who said a UN Official said the UN Understands someone from the president's party who ran ahead triggered the stop mechanism on the escalator. Also, the White House was operating the teleprompter for Trump. There is literally no story here and nothing says Alpha more than spending four days complaining and conspiracy theorizing about an escalator and a teleprompter. Donald Trump suffered an acute meltdown on Truth Social. As the nightmare of this final term in office continues to build. Donald Trump saying, quote, the Democrats want illegal aliens, many of them violent criminals, to receive free health care. The Democrats want $500 million to help radical left news outfits. The Democrats want to leave dead people on Medicaid and Social Security rolls so that criminals can continue to be allowed to receive that payment and steal their money. The Democrats want to cut billions of dollars from our once vulnerable rural hospitals, which we fixed by giving them the largest cash infusion ever. The Democrats want men playing in women's sports, transgender for everybody, open borders, and perhaps most importantly of all, a five letter word crime. They like it and we don't, and so many other things that will destroy America. We cannot let this happen. This is classic Trump. You know, fear and outrage lumps several unrelated claims together. Criminals, health care, dead people, 500 million bucks. Radical left media. He finishes it with a we're all going to die if we don't stop them today. It didn't happen under Biden the way he said it would. It's fear mongering and I wish it didn't work as well as it did, I really do. But this stuff works. Trump then with another one going after Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris, who is dumb as a rock, is going around and using as a standard part of her speech on why she lost the election that 2024 was the closest presidential election in the 21st century. Everyone knows this is a lie and was covered as such by Fox News. I won the Electoral College 312 to 226, a landslide. Counties nationwide, 2600 to 525 a landslide. All seven swing states. A landslide. And despite the fact that California's fake mail in ballots came in at ridiculous numbers, it was rigged. I still won the popular vote by millions. Bush, as an example, won the election by 537 votes. Many other elections were close. Comilla's closest in the 21st century. Soundbite was, like everything else in the Democrat Party, a total lie. I expect an apology. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Classic Trump personal insult. Kamala's dumb as a rock revisionist framing of 2024. So it's trash the messenger and then claim the election wasn't close. So everything's a lie. Standard Trump playbook. Now, Trump did claim a pretty sizable electoral college margin. He's not wrong about that. He doesn't sound that confident. He sounds self conscious, but he's not wrong about that. But the truth is that this came down to relatively few votes in key swing states. That's kind of always the case. It's just the way American elections work with the electoral college, urban rural divide. Red and blue states just kind of the way it is comes down to relatively few votes in relatively few states. That was no different. And then Trump finally exploding. A real disgrace took place at the United nations yesterday. Not one, not two, but three very sinister events. First, there should be spooky music playing here. First, the escalator going up to the main speaking floor and came to a screeching halt. It stopped on a dime. It's amazing that Melania and I didn't fall forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps face first. It was only that we were each holding the handrail tightly or it would have been a disaster. This was absolutely sabotage, as noted by a day's earlier post in the London Times that said UN workers joked about turning off an escalator. Okay, remember, we already figured out one of Trump's people triggered the stop. Trump continues the people that did it should be arrested. Well, it's Trump's staffer who did it. Trump continues. Then, as I stood before a television crowd of millions of people all over the world and important leaders in the hall, my teleprompter didn't work. It was stone cold dark. I immediately thought to myself, wow, first the escalator event, now a bad teleprompter. What kind of a place is this? Remember that we learned that it was the Trump White House that was in control of the teleprompter. And also Trump has claimed for years he doesn't need teleprompters for speeches why would it be such a big deal that the teleprompter stopped working? Trump said, I proceeded to make a speech without a prompter, which kicked in 15 minutes later. Good news is the speech got fantastic reviews. Maybe they appreciated the fact that very people could have done, very few people could have done what I did. And third, after making the speech, I was told that the sound was completely off in the auditorium where the speech was made. World leaders, unless they were using interpreter pieces, couldn't hear a thing. All right, anyway, I'm not going to read the whole thing. But he continues with the woe is me sort of stuff. Immediate accusations of sabotage. It's all dramatic, it's all personal, it's punitive. He's calling for arrests. It's tailored to portray Trump as a victim of a global conspiracy to make him look bad, to delegitimize the United Nation. And so Trump's pattern, as always, while claiming to be this impenetrable force of male, alpha male energy, he takes minor technical problems, some at least direct responsibility of his own staff, and he turns them into criminal malevolence by unnamed actors. All of this is meant to generate outrage. It's meant to simplify complex or procedural matters into a moral panic. And everybody is malicious. Everybody is out to get Trump. He's the biggest victim, despite leaving the leading a life of incredible privilege for all of this time. I want to hear from you. Does anyone in my audience think the escalator was sabotaged on purpose? Does anyone in my audience think Trump's audio was sabotaged on purpose? Does anybody think that Trump's teleprompter was sabotaged on purpose? Leave a comment and a like. I would love a like. Or send me an email info@david pakman.com you know, it's not that the system is broken. The system is rigged. And if you are drowning in debt, that is how they want it. 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The link is in the description The David Pakman show is of course an audience funded program, primarily funded by you. We have a membership program. We do an extra show every day for our members. We do commercial free audio and video feeds of the show. We'll do members only town halls and a lot of other great things. I invite you join the ranks of membership@join pacman.com and I also want to remind you that on the last day this month, the 30th, we are doing a 333 membership discount. Three is the theme. We will be three years, three months, three weeks from the end of Trump's presidency and we just hit 3.33 million subscribers on YouTube. So that's the theme. It'll be the biggest membership discount in years. And so if you've been thinking of signing up, it's a great opportunity to do it. If you want to do it on the 30th, do it with us on the 30th. Just get on my newsletter for free substack.david pakman.com and on the 30th you'll get an email telling you how to take advantage of this membership discount. Charlie Kirk has been killed. It is shocking, it is wrong. And it's part of a bigger problem that we kind of keep pretending that we don't have. And so I want to talk about solving political violence today. Political violence is not new in the United States of America. The question is, are we finally ready to stop it? I worry the answer is no, but we have pretty good information about how we would do it. Political violence doesn't mean you yelled at somebody at a rally. Right? We're talking about using force or threats of force to scare, punish, or control for political reasons, using physical acts, assassination, bombing, armed plots, kidnappings, attacks meant to send a political message. And what the numbers say is that in the United States over the last 10 to 15 years, the overwhelming political violence has come from the right. That's not my opinion. That's what the government and independent researchers have found. Anti government militias, white supremacist violence. January six was Trump supporters. Again and again, the numbers show the same thing. Now, politically motivated killings are a slice of all murders. And since the mid-70s, there have been a few thousand terrorism deaths in the United states, less than 1% of all homicides. But that 1% really matter more than the number suggests because those are attacks aimed at democracy itself. They're meant to scare people out of politics. They're meant to scare people out of activism. In some cases, they're meant to scare people out of even voting or expressing their political opinions. So why does it keep happening in the United States? For one, the country is flooded with guns. Every argument can turn deadly. The information space is toxic. Other countries have political disagreements. But if you get into a political disagreement with someone in a bar in France or London, you are significantly confident that there's not going to be an end point where one party pulls out a gun because they're angry, because most people don't have guns. It's just a mathematical reality. Propaganda then tells people, some people, that violence is patriotic. The president, back during his first term, Donald Trump said that knocking people around and all of this stuff is okay to do. And so then you see election workers harassed, school board members harassed, judges harassed without any kind of hesitation, because too many people in the country have come to believe that that is valid and reasonable to do. And then you also have a leader, a lot of leaders, who kind of wink at it. You know, they don't go, let's go shoot people. But they will talk about Second Amendment solutions. What do you think that means? They won't call out violence when their side does it. And so if leaders treat violence like a political tool, or at least don't denounce it, of Course, their supporters are going to do the exact same thing. Now, other countries have faced political violence, and they've been able to pull back from this kind of dangerous edge. If you look at Northern Ireland, there were decades of shootings and bombings. And the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 did not just sign a piece. It changed the system. Police were rebuilt with oversight and community trust. People stopped seeing them as a political army, but rather more like neutral protectors. Violence went down significantly. So the lesson was really simple. When law enforcement is trusted, violence can lose some of the fuel. Not all of it, but some of the fuel. You look at Spain, they spent decades fighting the separatist group eta. Eta. The state cracked down really hard on violence, but it gave the Basque region more political autonomy. And so they kind of marginalized Etta. And we have seen a dissolution of that group and a significant decline in violence. You've got examples in Germany, you've got examples in Denmark, where they build these programs for extremists. They include counseling, they include jobs. We talk about, how do people end up radicalized? Well, it's often a combination. You can combine sometimes bad economic circumstances, not feeling like active or productive participants of society, isolation, access to guns makes what they're able to do even worse than. So you've got to start picking these different aspects and trying to work on each of them. And so the lesson is off ramps. Prevention is not just police and prisons. You need more than that. Colombia is an interesting example where FARC fighters disarmed after a deal was signed and there was investment in rural areas. Homicides dropped to very low levels. Not perfect, still problematic in Colombia, but a work in progress. And the thread in all of these cases can be so boring. It's political inclusion. It's credible policing, it's prevention programs. It's leaders who really clearly say no to violence. And it's made clear that all of society will shun you if you commit the violence. It can't be. One side is kind of wink, wink at me that like, yeah, violence is bad. But Trump goes, don't be too. Don't be too soft with the protesters. You've got to really make it clear that every single leader is saying, no violence, and society will ostracize you for the violence. There are better options than the violence. So what it would look like here is, first of all, I'm not going to say Republicans or Democrats. Just every elected official needs to draw a very bright line. Violence is disqualifying, period. There's no excuses. There's no, like half hearted conditional condemnation. Just, it is disqualifying. Second, police have to be credible, right? You've got to protect protest rights, but you also have to crack down on threats against officials and workers and all of it. And then, number three, prevention has to be real. You've got to build exit programs at scale and fund communities that can sort of pull people back before they act on this stuff. And you really have to protect the front line of democracy. Election workers, judges, school board members. We need to treat every threat against them seriously, and many are not taken seriously. And at some point, you know, maybe you deal with the informational mess of social media and all of it. I don't know exactly how you do it, but you've got to consider that the lies and conspiracy theories certainly are not helping. They fuel anger, they fuel retaliation. Officials need to move quickly and with, with facts and shut down the scapegoating. So none of this is complicated stuff, but we don't seem to have the will to do it in the United States. Other countries treated political violence like a disease, and they said, we've got to cure this. The United States treats it more like entertainment and one killing is too many. When violence becomes normal, we're in a real problematic position. So we can't let the extremists set the rules. We know what works, and I hate to say this, we could add hunger overnight if there was the political will to do it. We know what works, but we don't seem to have the political will in the United States. And if we don't have a 10 political violence, then you've got to start asking the question, who benefits from political violence continuing? And that's a, that's a heretical question to be asking. Donald Trump must be impeached again. Right now, I don't even really know how to open the door to this topic, but Trump's been impeached twice. Once for abusing power in Ukraine, once for inciting an insurrection. Both of those were serious. Both of those were correct. Both of those were historic. He was impeached but not convicted. As you know, now we're in 2025 and we have something even more fundamental, which is Trump is waging war on the First Amendment. By definition, I would argue that this is a high crime because it violates the Constitution. The framers of the Constitution were really clear about this danger. And if you look at the Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton wrote, impeachment exists to address the misconduct of public men, abuses that violate the public trust and undermine the system itself. They didn't want a king, they wanted checks and balances. And they gave Congress the tool of impeachment. For moments, I would argue exactly like this. This is not a policy disagreement. We're not going to impeach someone because of a disagreement about the tax rate, even if they think the tax rate should be 0 or 100. We might disagree, but we're not going to impeach them for that. We're talking about the First Amendment, your right to speak, your right to criticize the government, your right to protest without being silenced. And if a president can dismantle those protections without consequence, what is the. The Constitution no longer matters. All the people that, that pray to the Constitution, borderline prey, see it as a sacred text. If you're not actually defending it, then what are we really doing here? And Trump's doing it in broad daylight. We've got the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco. Stephen Colbert had nothing to do with ratings. It wasn't about creative choices. It was the White House made it clear that mocking Trump was unacceptable. Now Kimmel's back because ABC was losing money. But Sinclair and Necstar don't seem to be airing the show. But then Trump said, maybe we will sue ABC for bringing Kimmel back. This is a major impeachable problem. You've then got Trump's lawsuits, media companies that are getting buried under legal attacks, not because they fabricated stories, because they dared to allow comedy, to allow satire, in some cases simply to report the truth about Trump. The lawsuits aren't about correcting the record for Trump. They're about intimidating and they're about making it so expensive and risky to challenge Trump that people start to self censor and they say, this is what I believe, this is what the truth is. But I'm not going to say it doesn't stop with the press and comedy. Because then you look at protesters. Protesters are facing unprecedented crackdowns. Permits are being denied, rallies are being broken up, activists targeted with surveillance. The right to assemble and speak freely and hold your government accountable. These are also under attack by the Trump administration. If a comedian can't joke about the President, if a reporter can't investigate the President, if a citizen can't protest the President, what is left of the First Amendment? And this is why impeachment exists. The House doesn't have to invent any new rule. The House doesn't have to develop some novel interpretation of the Constitution or of the duty of impeachment. The standard is really simple measure. What Trump is doing against the Constitution, lay Trump's suppression of speech alongside the First Amendment. And when you do it, there's only one conclusion. Impeachment isn't just justified, it is mandatory. The House must impeach Trump. Now. Think about the consequences if the House just kind of shrugs it off. If Trump is allowed to silence speech without any consequence, every future president will know that they can do the same thing. So it might be comedians and journalists now, and maybe some protesters, but the next thing you know, it's anybody who dares to speak up, even on social media. And we've seen this play out in authoritarian regimes. Journalists end up in prison, comedians are driven into exile, movements are silenced. And if this country goes down that road, I don't know that we come back. So this is beyond left or right. This is not about whether you agree with Jimmy Kimmel's jokes or the editorial perspective of the Washington Post versus the Wall Street Journal. This is simply, does the United States have a Constitution worth defending? And that's why this moment is so stark. So the House of Representatives has a choice. It either enforces the Constitution or it admits the First Amendment is optional, which is a tragedy once you cross that line. Democracy is optional. So that's the reality, and that's the danger. I don't believe that there is a political question here as to impeachment. It is a constitutional obligation. If abuse of power in Ukraine was impeachable, which it was. If the incitement of insurrection was impeachable, and it was, then Trump's assault on free speech has to be done. It is the most impeachable act yet. It's the line. Cross it and the First Amendment is gone. Cross it, and I don't even know if we're still a democracy. So Donald Trump must be impeached. He must be impeached. And it is the duty of the House of Representatives to do that. Every interview with members of the House I do, from this point forward, I'm going to ask them about this, and if they say no, I will say, well, why not? 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 seen in modern history. These are real changes that are happening right now. 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Go to helix sleep.com/pacman the link is in the description I want to suggest to you today that the current administration and Donald Trump as a president are the most anti business that I can remember. The context is that Donald Trump loves to call himself the businessman president. He makes deals, he has instincts, he has. He gets it done. But if you look at his record, it's the opposite. He has governed in ways that have really hurt businesses and scared investors and undermined free markets which he claims to support. And this is why, as I told you earlier this week, CEOs behind closed doors straight up say this is the most anti business president in modern history. You start with the tariffs which were sold as a way to bring back American manufacturing. But what's happening is higher prices for American companies and consumers. Businesses that rely on parts from other countries are paying more, meaning they either have to accept a lower profit or they pass the cost to consumers. They're mostly passing the cost to consumers right now. You have supply chains rerouted overnight, delayed projects, companies stuck playing a guessing game. And the next thing you know, instead of being more competitive, the tariffs make the United States look weaker and less predictable. And then you look at how Trump treats the Federal Reserve. Every business person knows the Fed's independence is sacred. And it's important. The point of monetary policy is not to be pushed around by political pressure. But Trump has spent years attacking Fed leaders, demanding lower interest rates, threatening to replace people who don't follow his orders. And that does not create stability. That creates fear. And investor. Investors don't like fear. They don't like uncertainty. They wonder, is the United States a country with a currency that can still be trusted? Because the monetary policy, rather than being about economics, which it should be, is becoming more and more about politics. This is not capitalism as we know it. You know, Trump has really been moving towards a state directed capitalism where the government takes equity stakes in private companies and forces revenue sharing agreements or blocks mergers. That is not letting the market decide, which is what they say they vote value. That's the government picking winners and losers, which they said Obama was doing and shouldn't be allowed. And the winners always happen to be the ones that pledge loyalty to Donald Trump, not the ones who build the best businesses. Which gets us to the policy whiplash. The rules under Trump change all the time. One week there is a tariff, the next week there isn't, then it's back. Entire industries don't know, should we invest? Should we be laying people off? Should we wait? Should we shut down altogether? And if you think about yourself trying to build a factory, for example, or launch a product when the rules could flip, your source materials are going up and down in costs based on tariffs that you can't even keep track of, that sometimes change because of a post in the middle of the night or whatever the case may be. That's a form of economic sabotage. And then we get to the inflation problem. The tariffs drive up costs, and at the same time, Trump wants Fed rates to come down. That is a recipe for stagflation, meaning higher prices and lower growth, weaker growth, lower employment, businesses get squeezed because on the one hand you've got the costs going up, on the other hand, you've got fewer people who can afford your product, meaning demand goes down. That's very bad for growth. And then it's also kind of destroying America's credibility as a safe place to invest. Because investors from Other countries go, well, I've got money, where do I invest it? The United States. The tariffs are on or off. The business cycle is being mutilated by this hairbrained scheme from Donald Trump. I'll take my money and I'm going to go elsewhere. This is not the way it used to be. The United States used to be a good business environment in that way. Now other countries have good business environments as well. You know, people love to say Scandinavian countries in Northern Europe, they're terrible for business. Denmark has a great business environment. But the United States business environment was also good. But we now are sort of emblematic of the type of instability that a lot of companies try to avoid. Now, the last piece which I talked about with you on Tuesday is that CEOs know this. They talk about it in private, they talk about it amongst themselves. They admit Trump is making things worse, but they're scared to say it publicly because they know when you cross Trump, I'm going to get social media attacks or I'm going to get hit with a boycott or a federal investigation will suddenly appear. No one wants to risk that for their company. So they smile in public and they show up and shake hands and go, what great leadership, Mr. President. And the irony is it's not great leadership. The businessman president isn't a great businessman and he's not a great president either. Now, I think that he will be remembered for the tariffs if indeed those hold and do what we expect them to do to the country. It's going to undermine the bullying of the Fed, will undermine trust in the dollar, and it's going to turn the economy into a de facto loyalty test. More emblematic of the regimes that I thought we didn't like. Places like Russia as an example. So this is not how a pro business president behaves. This is the record of what I believe is the, the most anti business president in American history. And this is, you know, they talk about trickle down taxes, cut taxes for the rich and then it trickles down to everybody. Everybody gets wealthier. Doesn't happen. Fabricated, debunked widely. What does trickle down is all of this is noticed by voters and it's affecting Donald Trump's approval and hitting him where it arguably hurts him the most. Donald Trump's approval rating is collapsing and at this point, it's kind of on life support. The latest numbers are from the American Research Group. They are brutal. Only 37% of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing. 58% disapprove. This is the same floor that Trump hit back in 2017, and we're at the exact same spot today on the economy. Remember, we were told the economy is a strong point. This is nuts. 34% approve on the economy. 63% disapprove. This is worse than overall jobs numbers among independents, those who arguably decide elections, only 31% approve of how Trump is handling the economy. Now, look at the history on some of these numbers. At this point in his presidency, which was the second of two consecutive terms with Obama, of course, he was in his mid-40s. George W. Bush, even after the disaster of the Iraq war, was still higher in terms of approval at this point in his presidency than Trump is right now. So Trump is really in uncharted territory here. One of the weakest incumbents, I guess we would say, or one of one of the weakest presidents in modern American history. But the really telling part is that among the 37% that say, I do approve of the job Trump is doing, almost half say in a year the economy is going to be worse. There is no hope there. It's loyalty over hope. I approve, but I think the economy is going to get even worse. It's loyalty with despair. You might be able to say you can't govern a country when your base believes things are going to get worse under you. And the economic pessimism is everywhere. Right now, 61% of Americans think the economy will be worse a year from now. Overall, 80% say the economy is bad or very bad or terrible. Household finances. 60% say our household finances are getting worse. So this is more than just disapproval. This is like Jimmy Carter level warning signs. And what doesn't get enough attention is that Republicans are showing cracks. Almost one in five Republicans disapprove of how Trump is handling the presidency. More than a quarter of Republicans disagree with Trump's handling of the economy. These are not like rounding errors on the edges. This is a slice of Trump's own party breaking ranks. What does this tell us? That Trump is presiding over an economy that most Americans believe is going down. What we learned under Biden is that no matter what the statistics are, when people believe that it's bad for your party. That's what Biden proved. And Trump is arguably in a significantly worse situation because the job situation is worse than under Biden. Inflation's going up rather than down. Independents have abandoned him. Dissatisfaction is bubbling up from within the Republican Party. So the polling is bad. But it's an administration that is increasingly seen as illegitimate and impotent. If a presidency can survive on Life support, maybe this one will. But to use a medical analogy, the patient doesn't look very good right now. And, and the ventilator, keeping it alive is not the economy. It's not policy, it's not foreign policy. It's he's doing so well on national security. It's the right wing media bubble combining with cult style loyalty to keep Donald Trump at the 37% where he finds himself now. Now, I know many of you will say, well, but David, what does it really matter? This guy's not running again. It matters because Trump still wants to be kingmaker. It matters because there's a question as to whether MAGA will again rear its ugly head in 2028 or not. And it matters because the economy is actually declining fast enough that this might affect Republicans ability to even keep the House in 2026. And if Republicans lose the House in 26, Trump's agenda is dead. That's it. Members of the House control the purse strings. They control the money. If they can shut down everything Trump wants to do now, there will be two years of Republicans doing nothing on which Democrats can run in 2028. Now, whether Democrats will run effectively, that's sort of a different question. Sometimes the answer is no. Often the answer is no. But at least it's going to set up a scenario where if Democrats get it together, if Democrats get a winning message together, if Democrats can convince the average working class person, actually this is better. It's not just Trump bad, but you do have something to offer, which is what I've been begging elected officials to put together every single interview. Then maybe, maybe the scenario I laid out Tuesday about not winning again for a long time won't come true. That's my hope. Let me know what you think. Make sure to like this video on YouTube and leave a comment that's really useful to us. Plus, I want to see what you have to say. We'll take a quick break. I've been tracking my family tree for a long time now, and the service I've always relied on is MyHeritage, which I started using long before they became a sponsor. Trusted by over 90 million users, MyHeritage makes it easy and fun to build your family tree with a range of powerful genealogy tools at your fingertips. One of my favorite features lets you quickly find new family members and add entire new branches to your tree. It's always a good time to sit down with my family, show them what I found. For example, the other day I found a scan of an immigration document from when my mother's uncle's aunt arrived at Ellis island or this document from the US Canada border for my relative who was born in 1895. This is remarkable stuff and really interesting artifacts that are part of the puzzle of my family's past. MyHeritage gives you access to over 19 billion records like this, making it easier than ever for you to uncover amazing new pieces of your family's history. You can try My Heritage completely free for 14 days when you go to David pakman.com/myheritage. The link is in the description. It's time for Friday feedback. You can email me any time. Info@david pakman.com will feature some emails on Friday will also include YouTube comments, Tik Tok replies, Spotify posts and messages, the sub Reddit. Anything could show up here. Let's start with Rick the Clipper reminding us that Charlie Kirk said the Second Amendment causes some deaths, but that is the price the US has to pay. Now he is part of the statistic. Well, you know this, the tragedy of this. And I said this when Charlie Kirk was killed. Charlie Kirk had said some gun deaths are just the price we have to pay for the glory of the Second Amendment, for having the Second Amendment, which he believed was so, so important. I wonder, as I said before, if we had gone to Charlie Kirk and said, hey Charlie, on September 10, 2025, you were going to be one of those deaths, is that worth it? I wonder what he would have said. I wonder if the people around him, family, people at turning point, etc. If they agreed with his view that the gun deaths are just the price we pay for having the Second Amendment and a worthwhile price at that. If we had said to them, well, Charlie is going to be one of those deaths on September 10, 2025, is that worth it? What would they have said? I don't know the answer. You know, sometimes with some of these Republicans, once something hits them personally, they do change their mind. I don't know what they would have said, but it's definitely a tragedy regardless. And I don't think that that's worth it. I don't think the gun deaths we have are a fair and worthwhile trade to maintain the Second Amendment. I just don't think so. Call me crazy. Ok, Jalil Carter, this is like a two parter. Jaleel Carter says, yes, it's unfortunate what happened to Kirk, but it's over now. Release the files, meaning the Epstein files, and stop dragging it out. And similarly, Zaina Griffith said Charlie Kirk wanted the Epstein files released. Trump did not. Coincidence? I think not. So let me address these kind of together. This second one is very conspiratorial. And I've heard this conspiracy theory before. We've heard a bunch of them. Charlie was souring on Israel, so Israel had Charlie killed. There's no evidence of that. This is a different version, which is Trump didn't want the Epstein files released and Charlie did. So he was killed by. I don't know. Insert your conspiracy here. We have no evidence of that, but Charlie Kirk did want the Epstein files released. Now, the first one that I showed you here is sort of a different one, which is, hey, now release the files and sort of a we're not getting distracted kind of thing. I don't subscribe to the refrains we often hear about. This is a calculated distraction from that. That's a calculated distraction from the other thing. I don't think these people are competent enough to carefully time and pull off these distractions, but I do think it's important that we not get distracted. And so we are dealing with an economy with more and more cracks in the labor market. We're reeling from political violence and language from the Trump world that is turning up the temperature even further when it comes to political violence. We're dealing with geopolitical conflict and RFK saying Tylenol causes autism. You know, we're dealing with all this stuff. And so in so doing, we just want to remember there. There are things we don't want to forget about, which are, we were promised the Epstein files. We haven't gotten them. Trump says the topic is over. And, yeah, I mean, add his name to the list. Charlie Kirk also wanted the Epstein files to be released. So you don't have to believe that these are calculated distractions to just simply say, we've not forgotten about the Epstein files. They should still be released. All right. On Spotify, Denise Ogan said, wait for Trump's war, guys. It's only a matter of time for me, I guess, midterms. I have no idea whether Donald Trump is going to start some kind of conflict on purpose. We know, at least generically, that when the country is embroiled in a military engagement, it often helps the party in the Oval Office or the party who has pushed for that engagement in elections. Arguably, we saw that with George W. Bush in 2004 when he defeated John Kerry extraordinarily narrowly. But I don't think Trump is thinking, oh, I should really start a war next September to help Republicans keep control of the House. However, Trump has proven that his anti war credentials are very shaky, Very, very shaky. And we've seen that he has an extraordinarily extraordinary willingness to, to engage militarily, whether it's with drones or other kinds of airstrikes or whatever the case may be, if he believes that it will be politically advantageous. And at the end of the day, Trump wants to be liked. Do they like me? Is sort of Trump's highest calling, in a sense. And so I would not predict Trump will start a war next September to help them. But I would not be surprised if there is a major military engagement coming up. And look, I mean, he's talked about Mexico, he's talked about Venezuela. This could end up in any number of places. I don't think any of them would surprise me. Lumpy Dumper said via Spotify David sir, where do you stand on the Democratic Party pushing for a government shutdown? Being someone who would be personally affected by such an event, I still wish that the Democratic Party would do something beyond just sending strongly worded letters. Well, you know, I'm not sure that the Democratic Party is putting pushing for a government shutdown. What I can tell you is I've heard statements from Democratic elected officials about the different ways that this could go. I was on a zoom with Senator Cory Booker last week. He said, I do not want a government shutdown. And I even sort of generically brought up like, you know, there are those who say the government shutdown under Republicans would be good for Democrats, but at the same time, if Democrats don't allow, and he just made it very clear, people suffer during a government shutdown. I don't want that, period. So I think I'm kind of challenging Lumpy's view that the Democratic Party is pushing for a government shutdown. Although I'm willing to stand corrected. Now, here's the tricky part about government shutdowns. We, in the sort of rational, empirical space, sometimes think to ourselves, listen, if Republicans shut down the government, and sometimes it's like, allow the government to shut down. You can use whatever language you want. If Republicans are in power, when the government shuts down, voters will hold Republicans accountable. We are sort of like sequential, concrete thinkers in that way. Doesn't always happen. And we know that the American electorate is sometimes fickle and often assigns blame to the wrong party. And so I think there is a risk for the Democrats to say, let them shut it down. They're going to get crushed next November. Because sometimes voters have a short attention span or short memory and sometimes they blame the wrong people. As a person myself, I tend to put the good of the people above the political good. So for me the priority would be, hey, people suffer when the government shuts down. Some end up getting back pay, but not everybody, contractors and others. So I don't want to shut down because I don't want to see people hurt. But to the comment, I don't really see the Democratic Party pushing for a shutdown at this point. Iv214 said on Spotify hey David, this is my favorite progressive podcast. Mostly because you seem more level headed and aren't an alarmist. I remember when Trump won you said you didn't think democracy would end under Trump. I'm just curious, has your opinion changed now? Did you think all the checks and balances would erode this fast? Are you surprised how easily corporations bowed to Trump? Thanks David. Stay safe. So listen, I believe we are going to have a 2028 election. I do. I believe Trump is going to leave. But the amount of damage that Trump is going to be able to do to norms and institutions and checks and balances between now and then is significant. Am I surprised at how bad it is? Not really. Have I changed my mind that democracy is ending? I think Trump is going to do every damn thing he can to erode democracy over the next three years. Three years, three months and a little more than three weeks. But I do think democracy will survive. The question is in what form? Will it be weakened and will half the country end up not really caring about whether the United States remains a democracy? That's a terrifying, terrifying element of it. Sharon Ott Stott said on Substack. I support you every way I can, but I can't afford to pay even a dollar. This is, this is upsetting. Fixed income, Social Security, inflation. I'm not even sure I can afford food for the month. Our belts are already tight. But love and peace to you, David. Keep going. Well, Sharon, I'm going to keep going. And as as many of you know, I've said before, less than 1% of our audience supports our show financially. And I'm fine with that. The whole point here is to spread the message as widely as possible. We make the show available for free on every platform. We subsidize that with about 710 of 1% of the audience subscribing directly either on my website or on substack. The whole point of that, when people go, oh, what am I, you know, what do I get for my three bucks a month? Of course you get the bonus show. You get the show commercial free, all of that stuff. But every person that signs up is subsidizing the show being free for like 125 other people. Like, that's kind of the math of it. Right? So I so appreciate this message from Sharon. I so appreciate the folks who are in that 710 of 1%. And just imagine what we could do if Instead of having 0.7% of our audience supporting us, we had 1.5%. We also do have free memberships available. So Sharon, consider going to David pakman.com/free membership because you can request a free membership there and we'll give those out as they are gifted. All right. Lee, 53, says on YouTube, David, you are always careful with your responses and don't escalate or try to create drama. This is a time when you seem to be getting more and more concerned and that tells me how serious this is. Yeah, you know, Lee is right. One of the things I always try not to do on this show is go overboard in terms of how serious something is. But I don't want to understate either. And there are always people who say, David, you're overstating a threat or David, you're understating a threat. I am always trying to sort of keep as the North Star accurately and substantively reporting to you. Here's the level of risk and Lee is right. I have never perceived the level of risk to be as high as it is right now. Never ever, ever. To institutions, to free press, to the media from political violence. And so Lee is right. Your perception is correct, Lee. I have never been as worried as I am right now. And there are a lot of different things we can do. My segment earlier this week about we should really be out on the streets like every day all the time. I do think the time for action is now. I'm going to keep talking about that. Finally, Richard Haley says all the liberal Democrats did for eight years under Obama and four years under Biden was attack the free press and limit free speech. Now you complain, you reap what you sow. Well, you know what, Richard, I don't remember spending those 12 years under Democrats attacking the free press or limiting free speech. And as usual, Richard is light on the example. So Richard, right back in. Give me some examples of the suppression of speech. Nothing like what we are seeing right now under Trump did we even remotely see, even remotely see during the Obama or Biden administrations. We've got a great bonus show for you today. Sign up@join pacman.com Remember to like this video. It really helps us in the YouTube algorithm. And if you're not yet subscribed, it's free to do it. Hit the subscribe button on YouTube. We'll see you on the bonus show. And I'll be back here Monday.
