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The David Pakman Show
BONUS SHOW: Elon Musk leaves White House, FBI to release Epstein video
00:16:51
-- On the : Elon Musk leaving federal government, White House sued over lack of sign language, FBI says it will release definitive Epstein video, much more... -- Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership Become a Patron:...
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- [00:00]
David Pakman
Hey everybody, David here. What you're about to hear is an episode of the Bonus show. We do a bonus show every day for our members and for a limited time we will release one of the week's bonus shows on Saturdays exclusively for our audio podcast listeners. If you'd like to get access to all of the bonus shows, simply sign up@join pacman.com here is that bonus show episode. Welcome to the Bonus show. Elon Musk is leaving the federal government. The question of what happens with him, what happens with Doge, what happens with what at once was a pretty firm grip that he had on Donald Trump and the MAGA White House. What happens with all of these things? And Donald Trump announced on troth Central that he's having some kind of final event for Elon at the White House. And then he said something about he'll never really be gone or something like that, but but he'll never be out of our hearts or something crazy like this. So listen, here's my sense of this. On the one hand, I believe Doge is dead. I think that's has on paper failed to accomplish just about everything it claimed it was going to accomplish. They did lay off a bunch of people, but as we know, their claims about supposed savings were exaggerated or typos, or taking credit for things that were actually done under Biden, or canceling programs that were so far in the future that you can't really call them savings at this point in time. And of course, spending in these first few months of Trump's presidency has been even higher than last year, comparing year over year for the same period. So on the facts, you tell me, Pat. But I believe that Doge has failed at its stated objectives.
- [01:54]
Pat
Absolutely, Doge has failed. And we're seeing that with the new bill proposal from the Republicans in Congress. The whole point of Doge was to reduce the size of the federal government. Trump, like every other president before him, is poised to grow the size of the federal government. So they were able to accomplish some things for the right when it comes to the pet issues that they like. But ultimately it's going to be seen as a major failure. And I'm also with you that it's going out the door that Doge is no longer going to be with us pretty soon. It already wasn't really a cohesive unit. It's not like it was its own government entity. It was just a bunch of 20 year old kids basically who were going into these different agencies and causing havoc. And just like Musk, I'd imagine who had that 130 day temporary government status as a worker. That must apply to the other DOGE officials as well. So they must also be exiting the door pretty soon. Maybe some of these policies that they decided to institute will continue on in the respective departments that they were involved in. But for the most part, I think it's pretty much over.
- [02:59]
David Pakman
I think the lasting impact will be that they got the keys to a lot of important systems and so Elon will be gone. As Pat points out, these, you know, young tech bros who were given a bunch of access to stuff are going to time out in terms of how long they can be there in these sorts of advisory roles, but they now have control over a bunch of these systems. And so the one thing I do believe will persist through the Trump presidency is that they are going to have the ability to gum up all sorts of different systems and to retain access to a bunch of these systems with which they can wreak havoc. That will, I believe, be the lasting legacy of dogecoin.
- [03:46]
Pat
That absolutely sounds right to me. And who knows what Elon Musk is going to do with the data that he was able to obtain.
- [03:52]
David Pakman
Right.
- [03:53]
Pat
All in all, I'd imagine he must regret working in the Trump White House because DOGE was not able to accomplish its goals. And also Elon's credibility has been soured that much more. His net worth has taken a nosedive under the Trump administration because of the tariffs and because of what that's done to stop stock values like Tesla. So if he could take it back, I'd imagine he would. Although with someone who has an ego the size of his, maybe he thinks that everything went fine and if his reputation has taken a little bit of a hit, he'll be able to recover in no time. That's probably what he's thinking.
- [04:29]
David Pakman
I do think if you read between the lines, he knows that this hasn't been great for him personally when he says, you know, I'm not going to put as much money into politics in the future. I think I've done enough coming up with every, every idea under the sun to try to rescue some of his, you know, they're not necessarily failing businesses at this point, but certainly businesses that have been diminished both in terms of bottom, bottom line and reputation. So it'll be interesting to see, but not a surprise. Even though they are paying a lot of lip service to saying everything's fine. And this is not about any kind of falling out. All of the behind the scenes reports are that Trump has been increasingly irritated by Musk and then most recently as I talk about on Elon Musk, also turning on Donald Trump's tax bill, which, listen, of course he did. It's the opposite of what Doge was set out to do. As you pointed out. I think that they are pretending everything's hunky dory. And I have a very difficult time imagining that that's actually the reality.
- [05:25]
Pat
Why do you think the breakup between Trump and Musk is so cordial? In the past, when Trump has gotten rid of people who worked under him, it certainly was not. It was a bad breakup with both parties yapping about the other on social media, going on news channels to talk badly about the person that they used to work with. I think in this instance, it's because Elon Musk is one of the richest people in the world, if not the richest. And so Trump doesn't want to upset him and maybe he respects him because he has that status.
- [05:59]
David Pakman
I think that's right. My instinct is that it's about they both realize it's potentially damaging to them if this becomes very ugly and very public. And I think they realize it's just best for that. It's not about caring about the other person. It's they both realize they are better off if it remains cordial.
- [06:18]
Pat
That's especially true for Elon Musk. Right. Because if he was to turn against Trump in a public facing way, then all the Trump supporters would be against him. He wouldn't buy his cars anymore, and the left is already mad at him. So Elon would have absolutely no place to go. So I think that's very much true for Elon, more so than Trump, even.
- [06:36]
David Pakman
100%. 100%. All right, well, we'll see what Elon goes back to next and we'll see if Tesla recovers and stops hemorrhaging sales and market share. We will see. The national association of the Deaf has filed a lawsuit against the White House over the lack of American Sign Language interpreters at media briefings of all kinds. The lawsuit says that the White House stopped providing ASL interpreters when Trump returned to office for a second term. The lawsuit, which was filed, filed this week, says that ASL interpreters must be present at these events and video of them be available for viewers. Remember that ASL is distinct from English. It's its own vocabulary. It has its own grammar. And the NAD says that at least several hundred thousand people in the US Communicate mainly in asl. Many deaf and hard of people, hard of hearing people know little English. And that is why closed Captions alone are not sufficient. So I think that there's a couple of interesting things here. I am, of course, 100% for accessibility. And I remember during a lot of the Biden White House and even the previous Trump administration, like during the COVID briefings, you would have in the corner a sign language interpreter that was doing this. I didn't realize that closed captions were an unsuitable alternative. I genuinely didn't know. And so I'm learning that information now. I think that there's two. And listen, I'm. For the interpreters, to be clear. I have the interpreters. I have no issue with that. I do think that there are a couple things here. The argument that because a few hundred thousand people communicate primarily in that language and therefore it should be provided, that is a less compelling argument to me because we have groups of much more than a few hundred thousand that exclusively communicate in other languages. And I don't know that legally it would be a good argument to say, hey, we've got 5.5 million people that only speak Spanish here. You must provide everything in Spanish as well. I would love it in Spanish. But I think it's not as good of an argument as the accessibility issue. And saying that this is actually an ADA Americans with Disabilities act related issue. Because the number of people alone, although interesting, I think is a less strong argument on its own for why this must be provided.
- [09:06]
Pat
Yeah, absolutely. I think when you take a look at the numbers, it's not sufficient enough to warrant having someone who is an interpreter. It's more because it's about accessibility and it's about making sure that we treat people across the country equally, regardless of any disabilities that they may have. It's no surprise to me that the Trump administration was reluctant and unwilling to include an interpreter who can communicate in ASL because they probably just wrote it off as woke. They probably thought that it was something that the Biden administration did and it was unnecessary for the vast majority of Americans because they don't need the sign language interpreter. And so therefore they were just willing to get rid of it. Maybe they thought they didn't like how it looked on screen or something like that. It really may have just boiled down to that.
- [09:53]
David Pakman
Yeah.
- [09:54]
Pat
And you mentioned how there were ASL interpreters during the coronavirus pandemic briefings that was also court ordered. The Trump administration was dragging its feet. Oh, I didn't remember that during the first administration and a judge had to step in ordering that they included an interpreter for their press briefings. Going forward, of course, Biden had it for his entire four years. So I think that from an accessibility standpoint, it does make sense that you would have to include the interpreters. But it is an interesting point that you raise about how there are lots of other groups who exclusively speak Spanish or French or other languages, and they don't have the same treatment. They don't have. They don't get the same accessibility.
- [10:32]
David Pakman
I get the sense also that the Trump White House sees this as coming under the umbrella of dei, even though this really is not about dei, this is about disability access. But I just get the sense that for them, it's just kind of all the same. Screw all of it.
- [10:51]
Pat
Well, so many of these things, they don't directly have to do with dei, but Republicans love to claim it has to do with dei. So even though ASL and having interpreters is something that we've long had well before this conversation about dei, they're able to wrap it up into the same group and claim that it's woke or whatever. So they're able to succeed when it comes to a lot of different arguments to their base anyway, that one thing or another qualifies as woke. But maybe this is just a bridge too far for people.
- [11:23]
David Pakman
The deputy director of the FBI is Dan Bongino. Now, that alone is shocking, but that's not really the story here. What I want to talk about here is that Bongino recently said that the FBI will be releasing a video to prove that Jeffrey Epstein did take his own life while in federal custody. This has been the subject of many conspiracy theories and that this was an orchestrated killing. I have a couple things here that I think are relevant to mention. Yesterday I did a story basically saying, hey, Maga, you're never getting the Epstein files. And I believe that under Trump, they will never get the Epstein files. The reason is that Trump is implicated in the Epstein files. I'm not saying he's criminally implicated, but I'm saying that he's implicated in the sense of he was hanging around with Jeffrey Epstein and probably some women that maybe legally were not women or were pretty borderline and that he was just sort of in the milieu and therefore Trump doesn't want the Epstein files coming out. The video confirming that Epstein did take his own life is probably a much more anodyne thing, a benign thing for the White House to put out. What's really interesting about this, Pat, to me, are two things. Number one, Bongino himself, when he was just a podcaster, not the deputy director of the FBI, he paid Lip service to what he thought was the unlikeliness of Epstein having taken his own life and really played up, if not wholesale endorsed some of the conspiracy theories. Now, now, now the logical interpretation would be, you know what, he did that as a podcaster. Now that he's in a position of power, he saw the information and he's like, oh yeah, that was dumb. Epstein really did take his own life. So that's one interpretation. Some of the magas are interpreting it as saying now that he's in the, in the system, he's been co opted by the deep state and he has to tell the lie. So that's one story here. But the other is I thought we were told that the surveillance video malfunctioned at exactly the moment where Epstein is believed to have taken his life. So do they have the video? I guess we don't know. But that's an interesting thing.
- [13:41]
Pat
The video in question apparently doesn't show Epstein taking his own life. It shows him moving to the jail cell. And in the time between he goes to the jail cell and when he was reported dead, there was no one else entering or exiting the cell. So that's supposed to be the video that provides conclusive evidence to everyone that Jeffrey Epstein actually did commit suicide or died by suicide. But I would imagine that when it comes to a lot of these Trump supporters, they're not going to find that to be suspicious sufficient. They'll say that the video was doctored. They'll say that the team, Patel, Bongino, everyone else involved were dragging their feet on this, had so much time to edit the video and they'll come up with some other explanation as to how this goes to show that really there was a conspiracy theory here. And they're already trying to, they're trying to add to it at this point.
- [14:35]
David Pakman
And you know what I mean, I'm not saying that they are right, but what I am saying is it's not shocking to me if the, if what the video is going to show is Epstein being led back to his cell and then presumably just sped up. Video of hours and hours and hours during which no one appears to go in. I mean, I don't think that to someone who has decided that the conspiracy theories are correct, I don't think that's going to convince anybody because that would be really easy to doctor. You can even pause video right moments or make it appear as though the video. Take a piece of video during which nothing happens. Overlay a clock that shows hours passing, even though hours didn't really pass. I'M not saying that's what they're going to do. I'm just saying to the conspiracy theorist, this isn't going to prove a damn thing.
- [15:24]
Pat
Absolutely. And I understand how some people could have questions as to how Jeffrey Epstein died, but there are some people who won't believe any alternative idea about what took place. They'll just say he clearly was murdered, and they're not willing to listen to any evidence to the contrary. And even when people like Dan Bongino and Cash Patel go in there and the FBI and say that, no, he actually did die by suicide, that's not convincing to them. So why are we to believe that if they release this video of only him walking to the jail cell, no one else involved, why would they believe that as conclusive evidence? They've already shown that they're married to the accepted idea that he didn't die by suicide. So why would they change their tune because of any piece of evidence. I don't think there's anything that you can present to these people that would convince them otherwise.
- [16:15]
David Pakman
And this is an example of sort of the monster you built, or maybe if you didn't build it, the monster you kept feeding so it got bigger and stronger. Now is a problem for you because now Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are constantly being asked about this, and they find themselves in this position. So certainly another example of that. All right, we will wait for the video and we will see if it changes any MAGA minds to the extent that they have their minds left. That'll be it for today. I hope everybody has a great weekend, and I will see you back here on Monday.