BONUS SHOW: Trump's next giveaway to the rich, Macrons suing Candace Owens

Summary

Summary of "The David Pakman Show" – BONUS SHOW: Trump's Next Giveaway to the Rich, Macron Suing Candace Owens

Release Date: July 26, 2025

---

Introduction

In this bonus episode of "The David Pakman Show," host David Pakman delves into two significant and controversial topics: former President Donald Trump's proposed tax changes favoring the wealthy and the French Macron family's defamation lawsuit against American right-wing influencer Candace Owens. Joined by co-host Pat Ford, the discussion provides in-depth analysis and diverse perspectives on these issues.

---

1. Trump's Proposal to Eliminate Capital Gains Tax on Home Sales

Timestamp: [00:00 - 07:07]

David Pakman introduces Trump's latest tax proposal aimed at abolishing capital gains taxes on property sales entirely. Currently, U.S. tax law allows individuals to profit up to $250,000 (or $500,000 for married couples filing jointly) from the sale of a primary residence without incurring capital gains taxes. Pakman explains that these exemptions have remained unchanged since 1997 and have not been adjusted for inflation, suggesting that indexing these amounts would be more equitable.

Key Points:

• Current Law: Individuals can exempt $250,000 in gains, while couples can exempt $500,000 when selling their primary residences.
• Inflation Issue: The exemption thresholds have not been adjusted for inflation in 28 years, leading to lower real exemptions today.
• Trump's Proposal: Eliminate capital gains taxes on home sales altogether, which would benefit those with significant property appreciation over time.

Notable Quotes:

• David Pakman [00:00]: "Trump is floating no tax on capital gains for home sales."
• Pat Ford [03:47]: "They give a little bit of something to middle class folks. But really, if you take a look at who gains the most from their proposals, it's always the rich."

Discussion: Pat Ford critiques the proposal, arguing that while it may offer some relief to homeowners who have experienced modest gains, the primary beneficiaries are the wealthy who own high-value properties. She points out that adjusting the current exemptions for inflation would be a more balanced approach, as it would extend benefits to a broader range of homeowners without disproportionately favoring the affluent.

Pakman acknowledges the legitimacy of indexing exemptions for inflation but maintains skepticism about the overall impact of Trump's proposal, suggesting that it primarily serves as political posturing aimed at pressuring the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.

---

2. Impact on the Housing Market

Timestamp: [05:10 - 07:07]

The conversation shifts to the potential effects of eliminating capital gains taxes on the housing market. Pakman suggests that allowing homeowners to sell without incurring capital gains taxes could increase the number of property listings, thereby easing housing shortages and reducing upward pressure on prices.

Notable Quotes:

• David Pakman [06:08]: "If you dramatically increase the number of houses listed, it will put some downward pressure on prices or at least make it so there's not as many bidding wars."
• Pat Ford [06:52]: "Only in some particular cases. But overall, it seems like we're still going to have difficulties with the housing market for the time being as, yeah, as long as rates are this high."

Analysis: While Pakman acknowledges a potential positive effect on housing supply, Pat Ford remains cautious, emphasizing that high-interest rates are a significant barrier to housing affordability and sales. She concludes that the tax proposal alone is unlikely to substantially alleviate the current housing market challenges.

---

3. Trump's EPA and Climate Change Regulations

Timestamp: [07:07 - 09:56]

David Pakman shifts focus to environmental policy, critiquing Trump's efforts to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 2009 findings on the detrimental effects of burning fossil fuels. Pakman argues that overturning these scientific conclusions would impede efforts to combat climate change, undermining environmental protection and international credibility.

Notable Quotes:

• David Pakman [07:07]: "This is such a terrible idea. This doesn't get the headlines that Trump's authoritarianism gets, but it's extraordinarily damaging to the planet."
• Pat Ford [08:26]: "Now that we're in a position that, what, 16 years later we're saying we're going to try to reverse that policy and that viewpoint that the EPA had. We're just the laughingstock of the world right now, aren't we?"

Discussion: Pat Ford highlights the global repercussions of the U.S. retreating from established climate policies, suggesting that it damages the country's standing and commitment to environmental issues. Both hosts express concern over the anti-scientific stance, emphasizing the long-term environmental and reputational costs.

---

4. Macron's Defamation Lawsuit Against Candace Owens

Timestamp: [09:56 - 16:33]

The episode concludes with a controversial development involving Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron, the President and First Lady of France, filing a defamation lawsuit against Candace Owens. Owens had previously claimed that Brigitte Macron was born male and had undergone gender transition, allegations that the Macrons vehemently deny.

Key Points:

• Candace Owens' Claims: Owens asserted that Brigitte Macron was biologically male and transitioned to female, sparking outrage and scrutiny.
• Legal Action: The Macrons filed a lawsuit in Delaware, labeling Owens' statements as defamatory and baseless.
• Potential Implications: Discussions revolve around the lawsuit's effectiveness, possible "Streisand effect," and the legal challenges in proving defamation.

Notable Quotes:

• David Pakman [09:56]: "Candace Owens has long argued she believes Brigitte Macron was born a man and that due to her privilege and money, has access to the best gender affirming care in the world."
• Pat Ford [13:00]: "I do think that the Macrons are in some sort of pickle here, like the right acts like they are."
• David Pakman [14:54]: "Candace Owens is married to a guy named George Farmer, who's a British guy... her father in law is not big on him."

Analysis: Pat Ford discusses whether the lawsuit might backfire by amplifying attention to Owens' claims, also noting that Owens appears unlikely to retract her statements regardless of legal outcomes. The hosts consider the broader implications for defamation law and the challenges in addressing defamatory statements without further publicizing them.

Pakman adds context by mentioning Owens' personal connections and the potential embarrassment for her in-laws, highlighting the personal dimensions of the public controversy.

---

Conclusion

In this bonus episode, David Pakman and Pat Ford provide a critical examination of Trump's proposed tax changes and environmental policies, highlighting their potential benefits and drawbacks. Additionally, the discussion on the Macron family's lawsuit against Candace Owens underscores the complex interplay between defamation, public influence, and international relations. The hosts underscore the importance of evidence-based policy and the repercussions of political actions on both domestic and global stages.

---

Note: Advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections have been excluded from this summary to focus on the substantive discussions.

Transcript

[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 at. Join pacman.com here is that bonus show episode. Welcome to the Bonus show, the new tax proposal from the Orange Oracle, the Mango Menace, the Tangerine Terror. Yeah, anyway, I run out of. Ran out of other ones. Trump is floating no tax on capital gains for home sales. Now, here's what's really important to know. There is already a law where you're allowed to profit $250,000 as an individual or $500,000 as a married couple filing jointly when you sell a house. So what this means quite simply, is if you buy a house for $250,000 and you sell it for $500,000, you made 250,000 bucks in capital gains, but you don't pay taxes. There's an exemption on those $250,000 in gains. If you're a married couple, you could buy a house for 250, sell it for 750, and you would pay no capital gains tax. But above and beyond that, you would pay capital gains. I will mention as we get into what Trump's proposing, that since 1997 those numbers have been the same. So it hasn't been indexed for inflation. It probably should be. It's been 28 years. And so if you index the 250 and the 500 for inflation, you would have higher numbers at this point point in time. What Trump is now considering is to end capital gains taxes on properties altogether. And it's all sort of directed at the Fed. Trump mentioned if the Fed lowered rates, we wouldn't have to do this because then mortgages would be cheaper. But the idea here is let's completely exempt that. So there's a couple different groups of people that this would benefit. Number one, if you have been in your home for a really long time, we've talked before, Pat. Imagine you bought your home 40 years ago, paid 100,000 bucks, now it's worth 1.5 million. Because you're in one of these explosive markets, you are going to have to pay capital gains on everything above and beyond the 100k. However, you are allowed to include expenses in your cost basis. So in theory, you're not, I believe you're not allowed to include property taxes you paid over 40 years. But if you did upgrades, if you did expansions, you could include that. But you're going to pay capital gains in that scenario. And so there are seniors, for example, people who are not selling their homes, even though maybe they've, they want to downsize or whatever scenario they might be faced because they're going to have this huge tax bill. So it's true that it actually could help some people who bought a totally normal, not extravagant house a long time ago. In addition to that, cutting that tax could help people who are very wealthy. We where even if you didn't make a huge percentage, you know, maybe you bought a $4 million house five years ago and now it's worth $5 million on a percentage basis. It's not that crazy in a lot of markets. But you would pay capital gains, so it would help those people as well. So, like with most, most things, Pat, it's a combination of it will help some people who probably deserve help. It'll help a bunch of people where I don't know that the tax code really needs to be designed to help them. And all of it is Trump posturing over something that he really wants, which is the Fed to cut rates.

[Pat Ford]

That's the Republican game plan when it comes to tax cuts. Right. They give a little bit of something to middle class folks. But really, if you take a look at who gains the most from their proposals, it's always the rich. So in this case, people who have these very expensive homes. Yes, you can find some cases where this will help the average people out there. But for the most part, the people who are going to make the most are the wealthy. So it's no surprise. And it's also another one of Trump's ideas to eliminate taxes bit by bit. He's of course, achieved some of that when it comes to the big beautiful bill with the no taxes on tips. He's also floated no tax on Social Security. The no tax on overtime thing has been in the conversation when it comes to this idea specifically, if you just decided to change the numbers, change the limits, then I think you can make an argument for that. Right, because These numbers, the $250,000 for single filers and half a million for married couples filing jointly, hasn't been changed since 1997. So if you adjusted those numbers for inflation, they would essentially double. So if you wanted to make the argument that the first $500,000 in gains for an individual or first million dollars in gains for a married couple should be exempt, I'm open to hearing that out, because you're just adjusting for inflation. But when you go beyond that, you're just going to disproportionately help the mega rich. And we have enough of that already in this country.

[David Pakman]

So we'll see whether this is even something that they're seriously going to propose. Again, it's all, you know, we're thinking about it, but it depends on Fed lowers rates. So we will see about that as far as that goes. But that's the idea. And I agree with you, Pat. And indexing for inflation does make sense.

[Pat Ford]

And one of the reasons why Trump is saying he wants to do this is to help the housing market because there haven't been a whole lot of sales with this high interest rate environment over the past few years. Do you think this will do anything to accomplish that? Because one big reason people aren't buying right now is because the rates are so high. That's not going to help people too much if they put a policy like this in place with that issue. And then when it comes to people not wanting to sell, a lot of people don't want to sell because they've locked in such low rates and they probably haven't accumulated the amount of capital gains that would benefit them from a policy proposal because they've probably only bought those houses over the past like five years or so. So it seems to me like this wouldn't really do that much to boost the housing market either.

[David Pakman]

It might not, but here's the way in which it could, which is if you say to a bunch of people, instead of selling and paying capital gains, you can sell without paying capital gains. That probably will induce some people to list their houses. If you dramatically increase the number of houses listed, it will put some downward pressure on prices or at least make it so there's not as many bidding wars. Now, you raise the question of where will those people go and will those people who might have a low interest rate go some. But you know, some of them would be cash and whatever. So I think your point is a good one. But the way it would help would be a lot more people putting their houses on the market. When you flood with supply, it can help to hold prices down.

[Pat Ford]

Yeah, I could imagine it doing some benefit when it comes to helping the housing market, but only around the edges. Only in some particular cases. But overall, it seems like we're still going to have difficulties with the housing market for the time being as, yeah, as long as rates are this high.

[David Pakman]

Let's talk about the EPA. Trump's EPA wants to overturn a 2009 finding that underpins a lot of the government taking action to remediate climate change. And it's the finding that when you burn fossil fuels, pollutants go into the atmosphere. And this is bad for the country, bad for the country, bad for the planet. And that is pretty good science at this point in time. What the EPA is now arguing is that they want to overturn that or basically be liberated from what they consider to be the oppression of that. And of course, as we understand, if you repeal the. An important scientific basis for. For why we should seek to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the first place, it opens up the door to just saying pollute more, burn more, do whatever the hell you want to do. And it is hard to think of a more anti science position. The whole idea here also is to get the EPA out of a legal responsibility to address the harms done by climate change. This is such a terrible idea. This doesn't get the headlines that Trump's authoritarianism gets, but it's extraordinarily damaging to the planet. If this happens, maybe it will make.

[Pat Ford]

Some headlines around the world, though, because you have to imagine that the rest of the world is laughing at us when it comes to this. I mean, the fact that the EPA only came around to this finding in 2009, I think is damaging in and of itself because we KNEW Long before 2009 that greenhouse gas emissions were harming the planet. I understand that governments in general often lag behind when it comes to these types of things because if they institute policies, of course it's going to affect the economy and they're often reluctant to do so. But 2009 was very late. Now that we're in a position that, what, 16 years later we're saying we're going to try to reverse that policy and that viewpoint that the EPA had. We're just the laughingstock of the world right now, aren't we?

[David Pakman]

And we really are. And the reason that this is relevant is that you can argue Trump's plan is to argue that if you don't have the framework of greenhouse gases are bad for the environment, you then can argue that the EPA has actually overstepped its authority in attempting to regulate something which they now claim isn't bad for you, and therefore it's an argument to just say we're not going to do any of that anymore. Which is exactly what Trump would love to do.

[Pat Ford]

Yeah, and of course it's legally dubious, but they might as well give it a shot. Right. Because There's a chance that the right wing courts will hold up this decision. They are not worried about making themselves look bad or dumb. They're willing to throw anything out there and hope that the courts agree with them.

[David Pakman]

That's exactly right. So we'll see if it happens. But it is absolutely terrifying. This is exactly what we feared. The Macron's, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron, the President and first lady of France, have now filed a defamation lawsuit against right wing influencer Candace Owens. I want to remind you about this. I'm very unsure about this, Pat, because I don't know if this is like a Barbra Streisand effect sort of thing. Let me back it up and remind people. Candace Owens, the American right wing provocateur and influencer and conspiracy peddler, has long argued she believes Brigitte Macron was born a man and that due to her privilege and money, has access to the best gender affirming care in the world and was able to sort of convincingly, even though Candace figured it out, transition to a woman. This reached reportedly the level of Donald Trump, where we talked about recently, Trump actually saying to Candace Owens, according to Candace Owens, Trump called me and he said, please don't do the Brigitte Macron as a man thing. It's hurting my relationship with France. And I sat next to her. She's definitely a woman now. The next level is that the Macron's have filed a defamation suit saying that the comments from Candace Owens are outlandish, defamatory and far fetched, far fetched fictions. This has been filed in the US State of Delaware. So I have a couple of thoughts here, Pat. There are different types of defamation and as Mark Bankston explained to us, in some of them you have to prove that you were materially damaged by the false claims. In others you don't. I don't know which category this would be in. More so though, do you think that in a way the Macrons are stooping to Candace's level by even doing this and maybe putting more attention on it, where now the president of a country is suing you for defamation. It's almost giving her more power in a way? I just don't know.

[Pat Ford]

Maybe. But the story has already gotten so big, right? Like we already found out about how Macron apparently asked Trump to ask Candace to not talk about the story anymore. It's gotten a lot of rounds in the press. I think you do get to a point where the story in and of itself is big. So big that you'll yeah, draw a little bit more attention to it by doing a lawsuit, but it's already gotten so out of hands that it's okay to give more attention to it. And also it's apparently more positive attention for the Macrons because it makes it look like they're fighting back, that they're doing something to debunk the ideas. So I understand the Barbra Streisand effect argument here, but I think that things can get to a point where they're already big enough in the news that you might as well pursue it.

[David Pakman]

I guess I am unconvinced. And part of it for me, I guess, will also be seeing what the standard is, because I don't. Even if people are aware of it, is it damaging the Macron's in any way that there's this person in the United States saying, I believe Brigitte Macron is a man?

[Pat Ford]

That's the type of argument that many on the right are trying to make, which is that, oh, people on the left say that there's nothing wrong with being trans. So why are the Macron suing Candace Owens for saying that Brigitte Macron is a man? Well, of course she. If she isn't a man, if she doesn't identify as man, then that's something that's not her identity. So you could say that that is damaging. But to put a number on it to explain exactly the damages, I guess that's a little bit more difficult. But I don't think that the Macrons are in some sort of pickle here, like the right acts like they are.

[David Pakman]

One of the things I think is clear is that there is no credible evidence. And Candace Owens has insisted on this, but there simply is no evidence. And so as a matter of credibility for someone who I guess wants to be taken seriously, does Candace Owens want to be taken seriously? You would think she would drop it just because after all these years of pursuing this, there's still not a shred of evidence for the claim.

[Pat Ford]

I remember Candace Owens said that she was willing to stake her career on this, that if it was proven that Bridget McCrone was not a man, that she would be willing to retire. I certainly doubt that Candace Owens would be able to step aside from her career right now. I don't think she would be a person of her word if it was proven false, the types of things that she was saying. But also, are we really going to get to a point where like in the court proceedings they're like doing some sort of testing on Brigitte Crone to prove her Gender, like is that really where this is going to end up? It'll probably get settled and not go that far. But is this really what's going to happen?

[David Pakman]

Right. Like are there, are we going to take depositions and have DNA tests or what? Right. I mean just all of this is just kind of nonsense. One other just little note, Candace Owens is married to a guy named George Farmer, who's a British guy. George Farmer's dad is Baron Michael Farmer, who's a House of Lords peer and former Conservative Party treasurer who I guess doesn't think too much about a lot of Candace Owens views and has distanced himself from them. I'm not saying that he hates his daughter in law or anything like that, but it seems at least with regard to a lot of the things that she has said, her father in law is not, not big on him.

[Pat Ford]

I'm not all that surprised. Right. These House of Lords figures are supposed to be prim and proper. They have a prestigious position in the UK government, the UK monarchy. So I mean, I wouldn't be surprised that he wouldn't want to at least speak publicly about the types of things his daughter in law are saying because it's hugely embarrassing, isn't it?

[David Pakman]

It really is. And I look forward to getting back to the UK soon to investigate exactly what the view of Candace Owens is in the uk. Now that's not what I would do, but I do like visiting the uk. They're always very nice to me. There are a lot of fans of the show in the UK, interestingly because. Did you know they speak English there, Pat?

[Pat Ford]

Did they really? I thought they spoke British.

[David Pakman]

No. Well, yes, that's fair, that's fair. No, they do big fans of the show out in London and hope to make it back soon. All right, let me know what you expect in the lawsuit. We'll see you back here tomorrow. New show, new bonus show.

[Liquid IV Ad]

Dreaming of blissful summer days and creamy popsicles. Capture sun drenched memories with the orange vanilla Dream hydration multiplier from Liquid IV. Just one stick and 16 ounces of water can help hydrate you better than water alone. Live your summer dream with Liquid IV Tear Pour live more. Go to liquidiv.com and get 20% off your first order with code INDULGE20 at check.