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Beautiful Anonymous changes each week. It defies genres and expectations. For example, our most recent episode, I talked to a woman who survived a murder attempt by her own son. But just the week before that, we just talked the whole time about Star Trek. We've had other recent episodes about sexting in languages that are not your first language or what it's like to get weight loss surgery. It's unpredictable, it's real, it's honest, it's raw. Get Beautiful Anonymous Wherever you listen to podcasts.
David Pakman (1:06)
We start today with legal news. A federal judge has handed down what could be the most devastating legal ruling of Donald Trump's post 2020 political career. This has nothing to do with documents. It's not about hush money. It's not about the insurrection. This is about something that Donald Trump just plainly thought he could get away with, which is using the US Military, the National Guard, federal law enforcement, like his own police force. At the start of this, when we started with Los Angeles, subsequently went into D.C. now, threats of Chicago and other cities. At the very beginning of this, I mentioned to you, it's not clear that this is legal. There may be a legal problem here. And indeed Judge Charles Breyer, this is not a radical. Okay, called it what we suspected it was, which is against the law. It's not questionable, it's not about, it's controversial. It's just illegal. There's a 52 page ruling which I encourage you to look at. You could also use, you know, a tool that will summarize it for you in the, in the 52 page ruling, Breyer just obliterates the legal foundation that Donald Trump used to send the National Guard and even Marines to Los Angeles. And he doesn't, he doesn't mince words. The judge makes it very clear that the goal here is to create a national police force force with the president as its chief. That is an authoritarian nightmare. It is mini fascism for lack of a better term. And so the ruling is not vague. It says there are specific acts here that are not okay. Pentagon led troops arresting people and doing crowd control. All of this violates the Posse Comitatus Act. That's the law, I've mentioned it to you many times, that forbids the US Military from functioning as domestic police. This is not a few rogue soldiers out of line. This is systemic. And willful is the term that the judge uses because there's a deliberate command structure behind it. It wasn't some troops acted out and did domestic law enforcement. Trump sent the troops to American cities under false pretenses and said, act as police here. It happened in L. A, it's happening in D.C. trump is now talking about, we got to go to Chicago. He said, oh, there were 58 shootings in Chicago over Labor Day weekend. So we've got to go back in there trying to create these justifications, but legally, they really aren't justifications. Trump on Truth Social wrote, quote, chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the world by far. I will solve the crime problem fast. But what Judge Breyer says here is that this really isn't about crime. This is about the law around the military and law enforcement. It's about Trump wanting control. And local leaders know it. You've got Mayor Brandon Johnson in Chicago who signed an executive order basically walling off federal forces from being integrated with local police. You can't collaborate on patrols. You can't do joint immigration enforcement. You can't send in mass federal agents who show up and do anonymous policing. And the message here is very clear. You can't turn a city into a battleground. J.B. pritzker, the governor in Illinois, is stepping in and preparing for what might really be quite a legal battle. And you've also got military veterans that are protesting this, saying this is not what service members have signed up for. So the legal ruling here in Los Angeles, it is a setback in a way, but really it's a terminal diagnosis for this federal fantasy that Donald Trump has of pseudo martial law and he controlling everything. We now have precedent. The ruling says that was illegal. If you do it again, it's not a gray area. It's criminal. Now, Trump's not going to go quietly. He never goes quietly. And what Donald Trump's legal team is doing, they're sort of scrambling here. They have until September 12th to appeal, and other cities are watching closely. And the Trump administration is trying to figure out on what basis could we appeal this ruling. It's also possible that Trump will just ignore the ruling which said this is against the law and send troops to Chicago anyway. And if he does that, yes, there could be another lawsuit, but we could be looking at a full scale constitutional crisis. I think Trump knows it. And this is part of why Trump is probably accelerating and saying, we got to get there soon. This is not a. It's not just a campaign for power, which, of course, Donald Trump wants. He wants to see, how much can I flout the law, how much can I ignore legal orders from courts? Now with the deportation of Kilmar, Abrego, Garcia and that entire planeload of people, in fact, you. You'll remember that a court said, you can't do it, and they said, the planes are in the air. We're not turning them back. Eventually, the courts did win and they brought Garcia back. The much like the correction often gets less attention than the original headline, the court's reversal often gets less attention than when the principal in this case Trump, ignores the court's direction. But ultimately, the court did prevail, and Garcia came back. This could be the moment that courts finally just sort of say no to this. And if they don't abide by this, there is a real question as to how this ends. And then you start saying, well, is it going to get violent? What's the direction in which this is all going to go? So we're going to be following it extraordinarily closely. Trump is making it clear he wants to get to the next iteration of this federalization of police forces. But at least as far as Los Angeles is concerned, a judge said, no, no, no. This was completely against the law. Now, there's another question here that is not lost on me, which I'm sure many of you are asking. Trump did the thing. He did the L. A Militarization. A court said it's against the law, but so what consequences are there? Does Trump get charged with some crime? No, of course not. Does anybody get fired from the Trump administration now? Probably not. And so question one, when a court says something and Trump is president and authoritarians love to ignore courts, question one is, does he do it again anyway? And if so, what consequences are there? But number two, now that we've determined something he did is illegal, are there any consequences for that? And sadly, I wish I had more for you. The answer is just probably not. A panicked Donald Trump is scrambling to kill the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. As I've said before, if you're totally innocent, why are you panicking? And Donald Trump is in full blown panic mode here because there's a rogue faction of Republicans that is dangerously close to forcing a vote on, on releasing all of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Not the 97% that are already public. The real stuff we're talking here about, the critical documents that they've been sitting on. Congressman Thomas Massie, not a liberal darling, not a guy who I look at and say, those are my politics. Congressman Thomas Massie is working with our friend Congressman Ro Khanna to gather signatures for what's called a discharge petition. It would bypass Republican leadership and it would bring a full vote on releasing the files to the floor. They are, as of this writing, two Republican signatures away from forcing that vote, and Trump is absolutely losing it. Cocoa for cuckoo puffs. As I like to say, Cuckoo for cocoa puffs. I don't. You can say it either way. The White House reportedly warned these rebels in the Republican Party that if you do this, we see it as a hostile act. What does that mean? Well, you have to remember Trump's prism is loyalty, and his goal is fear and power. So what Trump is trying to do here is to say, if you participate in this, even if you're a Republican, I will turn against you. I might try to primary you. It's sort of like the nice, nice congressional office you've got here. Sure would be a shame if anything were to happen to it. Like, it's Mafia style stuff. Now, again, we get to the sort of critical material question. What's in the files? We don't know. The panic tells you a lot. If it were nonsense, if Trump had nothing to do with Epstein, if there was nothing new in these files, why would you work so hard to bury them? Now, as I've said before, it might be that Donald Trump is simply trying to protect his friends who are incriminated in the files. It might be that Donald Trump is in the files, but not with any criminal wrongdoing, but just because he was in that orbit and he wants to cover that up. Or it might be that Donald Trump is accused of criminal involvement in the sex trafficking in the file. We just don't know. The Oversight Committee has already released 33,000 documents, but 97% of those were already public. We're not falling for the fake transparency. No client list, no new names, no justice for the victims. We need the full files now. Meanwhile, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie says that Trump's campaign to block the vote is very intense behind the scenes and that Trump has recruited others, like Speaker Mike Johnson, to try to whip votes against this Idea. But the problem for Trump is that even some of his most loyal sycophants are breaking ranks. You've got Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, who ran out of an Epstein victim hearing sobbing yesterday. They all signed the petition and Mace was in tears. She said it was so difficult for her because less than two years ago she was the victim of a sexual assault and it just was too much for her to handle. She had a panic attack and she wants to put the files out. So when even that group of people is willing to defy Donald Trump on this to some degree, the tide seems to be turning. And the excuse that this is about attention seeking for Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna? I don't think so. I mean, Trump ran at least initially on transparency on Epstein. Later on, he started to equivocate. Remember when Fox said, you're going to release the JFK files? Absolutely. You're going to release the MLK files. Files no one was asking for, by the way. Absolutely. You're going to release the Epstein files. Yeah, well, I'm not totally sure on Epstein files. You know, there could be people in there who we don't want to ruin their lives. They might not really have had anything to do with it. So we started to get a sense as Trump got closer to being reelected that he was not so hell bent on releasing the Epstein files. Now, there's a White House official that told CNN that anybody working with Massie on this would be seen as a traitor. Massie fired back, saying, this is simply about corruption. It's not about partizanship. It's not about taxes or jobs or the economy. It's not about any of that. It's just about corruption. And we don't care about party. Now, one other sort of interesting aspect to this, Thomas Massie is operating under the belief, the assumption that Trump's base wants to know the truth and get the Epstein files. Now, that's probably true. You know, the Kuhnen crowd, the MAGA keyboard warriors, they spent years obsessing over Epstein until it started getting a little too close to home. And so we now are in a situation where I'm not as convinced, given the assumption that Trump is at least in the files, even if not implicated in crimes. But in the files, I'm not so sure that the hardcore MAGA base really still wants the files if it's going to implicate the Dear Leader. Counter, counterpoint. We know that in cults, when the Dear Leader is implicated, the cult members, or at least the Most brainwashed ones tend to just either ignore it, say that those are lies, the files were planted. What Trump did isn't really that bad. So I don't think we are going to get a clear read on really how the hardcore MAGA base will react. One other thing about this, the question I'm most interested in is who Donald Trump believes he's protecting by trying to quash the release of these files. The obvious assumption is that it's Trump himself. As I mentioned earlier, there's the maybe Trump's friends are in there and Trump is trying to protect them. The only thing that makes me doubt that is Trump has always been transactional. He doesn't really care about other people. Maybe his own family, but political allies, they come and go. Trump doesn't really care about other people. I wonder whether Trump would really go out on a limb and potentially make his own base say, you're not being transparent the way you told you were going to be. I question whether Trump would really do that for other people. The counter, counter, counter to that is it's not that he cares about the other people's reputations, it's that his success depends on those other people, either in terms of political support or financial support. And so, yes, Trump is acting to protect other people, not because he genuinely cares about them, but because there's something in it for him. Are they Mar a Lago members? Are they senators who help him? What are they? So if this were a nothing burger, if Trump's name weren't in there, or if Trump didn't have anything to lose, I think we would have the files by now. Trump would be demanding it. Instead, Trump is panicking. He's scrambling. He's calling in favors, he's threatening his own party. And nothing says I'm innocent like trying to kill a vote on releasing evidence that you ran initially on being transparent about. So I'll put it to you. What do you think is really in the files? Why do you think Trump is panicking to cover them up? Leave us a comment@substack.david pakman.com One of our sponsors is BetterHelp. I am a huge believer in therapy. Let's say you've been thinking for a while about getting into therapy. You know it's the right move. You have things you'd like to talk to someone about. There is no better time than the present. But you don't have to drive across town every week and sit in a waiting room because of BetterHelp. BetterHelp is the world's largest therapy service, it's 100% online. With BetterHelp you can tap into a network of over 25,000 licensed and experienced therapists specializing in a wide range of issues. You answer a few questions about yourself and BetterHelp will match you with a therapist based on your specific needs and preferences. The sessions can be on the phone, video call, chat, anytime, anywhere from your couch, at home, from your office at work, and if your therapist isn't the right fit, you can switch any time at no charge. My audience gets 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/pacman the link is down below. If you were spending $6 a day on Cafe Cold Brew or drinking those weird store bought cold brew concentrates, I want you to know there is an easier, better tasting and more affordable way. Our sponsor Trade Coffee makes it super easy to brew incredible cold brew at home with beans roasted specifically for cold brewing, all delivered right to your door. I've tried a bunch of their cold brew selections. It is smooth, it is fresh, it's as good as any cold brew I've had and I'm very picky. They even grind the beans for you so all you have to do is scoop it into a pitcher, add water, steep it overnight in the fridge. Trade works with some of the best roasters across the country and has put together a curated cold brew collection so you're not guessing what will work well cold and the flexibility is awesome. You can skip deliveries, you can pause when you're out of town, pick it back up whenever you're ready for a limited time. Trade is giving you 50% off a month of cold brew. That's around 60 cups of cold brew for 50% off when you go to drink trade.com/pacman the link is in the description well, I've gotten dozens of emails from people in my audience sort of jokingly asking, david, are you getting red pilled? Is this your political awakening? Are you going to pull a Dave Rubin or a Tim Pool or an Anna Kasparian? Is this your moment to go from left to right? So let's talk about that. Am I getting red pilled now? If you haven't heard this word, the term red pilled comes back to the Matrix, the film the Matrix, which now must be must be over 20 years old, right? I'm very old. I don't know. It's an old movie at this point. And taking the red pill means you're waking up to the real truth. It's a harsh truth. It's a difficult truth. But you're waking up to it now. Red pilled in Internet slang has sort of become a paraphrase for adopting right wing or reactionary beliefs. I've been red pilled. I'm rejecting progressivism. I'm going to the right. And it sort of means like you're selling out or you've become a reactionary, that sort of thing. Now why would I be getting red pilled right now? Well, some have accused me of selling out, being a puppet for the dnc, taking dark money to secretly push a neoliberal psyop agenda. And so the joke is, and maybe it's not as much of a joke as to others as it is to me, the idea would be, well, given that that's happening, I must now start screaming about soy in the water supply and posting gym selfies and Jordan Peterson quotes and going hardcore right wing. So, so let me break this down and sort of assuage fears. The last week has really been something. It has been eye opening. I don't know that red pill is the term that I would use, but the last week has been something. I was named in this Wired article with a bunch of misleading claims about a group called Chorus, which is a nonprofit that supports and incubates independent creators. And suddenly there's a slice of people out there. I don't even say my audience, but there's a slice of people out there acting like I'm getting marching orders from the DNC and that the Benjamin Netanyahu of the world have become my handlers. The worst part, and I'll be honest about this, and I have been the worst part is the accusations are coming not from the right, but they're coming from the left. They're coming from what I described yesterday as the purity test accelerationist left. They took a headline they didn't investigate and they said, that's it, we're done with David Pakman. Comments flooded 6000. Actually now 8000 YouTube unsubscribes. Not because I said anything right wing, not because, because I'm supporting any right wing cause. Not because I've changed my views on policy, because I'm participating in the very infrastructure that I've been calling for for years, which is a more organized left that supports creators. So did I have the thought, if this is how I'm going to be treated by my own side, what the hell am I doing here? But if that's your concern, I'll just tell you very clearly, just because a faction of the left has become a purity testing clown show doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to believe trickle down economics works or banning books is good or Viktor Orban is an interesting leader to pay attention to. I am still a social Democrat. I still want a stronger social safety net. I want climate action. I want to support labor, civil rights, public health care. None of my political views have been changed by this. I don't become a right wing reactionary because someone on the left said something I don't like or disagree with. I don't become a right winger because some online leftists lost the plot and think coalition building is a form of betrayal. And importantly, some of my strongest criticisms of the Democratic Party have come in the last two weeks. I don't know how many of you saw I did this segment last week ripping the Democratic Party to shreds. It went viral. Fox News covered it. How hard am I ripping Democrats if even Fox News sees a cynical opportunity to exploit it. So I have not changed in terms of my views. What has changed, as I pointed out yesterday, is I no longer believe we are all part of the same movement. There's the governance focused big tent win elections and pass laws left. That's where I am. And then there's this purity test left. The ones who don't really care if we lose and sometimes seem to like it so they can say I told you so as long as they feel morally untainted. They treat compromise as corruption. They think we need a better media ecosystem must mean install CIA approved thought leaders or something like that. So maybe we were never really part of the same movement. If I've been red pilled about anything, maybe it's that we overlapped when convenient and that was it. But I'm not getting red pilled. I'm done pretending that everyone with a left wing label is on the same page. You can stand for progress in a lot of different ways. You can want change without torching everyone who's only 98% on your side. But no, I am not having a political awakening. I am not the next Dave Rubin. None of that is happening. Donald Trump is jealous. He's really, really jealous. While world leader leaders are gathering without him. They're shaking hands. They're holding hands. They're shaping global alliances. Donald Trump is rage posting from the sidelines and he is seething and reminding everybody he's no longer at the big kid table. And tragically, this gives me no pleasure. The United States is increasingly losing influence. Donald Trump posted to Troth Central quote the big question to be answered is whether or not President Xi of China will mention the massive amount of support and blood that the United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its freedom from a very unfriendly foreign invader. Many Americans died in China's quest for victory and glory. I hope that they are rightfully honored and remembered for their bravery and sacrifice. May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un as you conspire against the United States of America. Signed, President Donald J. Trump. That's a real post. Okay, that. That's untruth social from the President of the United States. He also tossed in some really weird historical tangent about how the United States is giving blood to help China gain freedom. Putting aside the historical revisionism of that, it's really not the point. The point here is Trump's not trying to warn anyone. Trump's not calling out any global threat. Trump is jealous. He's envious, like the kid who got left out of the fun. This is a guy who spent four years during his first term measuring diplomacy, calibrating diplomacy by how much foreign leaders flatter him personally. Are they staying at his hotel? Are they bringing in gifts? Are they telling him how the US Is so hot under his leadership? The deals didn't really matter, the alliances didn't really matter. He cared about. Did Kim Jong Un write me beautiful letters? Love letters. He called Putin a genius for invading Ukraine. He swooned over the autocrats because they were treating Trump like he was one of them, which is what he wants. And so now, when Trump sits in D.C. and watches Xi, Putin, and Kim meet without him, he's not thinking about American security. He's thinking about status, his ego, his sense of loss. And this is a post that reads to me a lot less like a geopolitical commentary than like a bitter ex partner texting, tell your new boyfriend I say hi. This is what Trump doesn't get and what Trump never understood. Foreign policy is not a loyalty test in the way that a lot of Donald Trump's domestic hijinks is. But to Trump, everything is sort of a loyalty test. If you praise him, you're a strong leader. If you ignore him, you're disrespecting America and you're weak and you're pathetic. There is zero daylight between Trump's personal pride and the interests of the United States. In his mind, they're the same thing. And that's what makes this so extraordinarily dangerous. When A president still attempts to command influence through the fear mongering and the insults and the posts and, and when your supporters take those posts seriously, it's humiliating and also damaging to American relations. Trump has a desire to be seen above all else, even by the adversaries of the United States. And so Trump isn't warning us, hey America, be aware, there are adversarial leaders. Bad actors are meeting. Trump's upset. Why am I not with them? That is all that this is about. This is a guy who was at the centerpiece of a global reality show for a while and he's relegated to sending drunk texts from backstage. Figuratively, I know Trump doesn't really drink. So Trump is increasingly out of power. Even as President of the United States, Trump is making himself irrelevant. And the only way he knows how to process that is by turning these global alliances into kind of a personal snub. The tragedy is that millions, tens of millions, I don't think hundreds of millions, but tens of millions of Americans see this and they say, this guy's the answer. Look at what a great job he's doing. Phenomenal stuff. That's what should scare us the most.