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I get so many headaches every month.
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It could be chronic migraine, 15 or
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more headache days a month, each lasting
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four hours or more.
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Botox Onobotulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for Those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, Myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.
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Why wait?
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The and oil prices are at $100 a barrel, when reporters try to ask basic questions about the war, Trump melts down, Caroline Levitt melts down, the insults fly, reporters are called obnoxious, and Trump actually admits the most important point of all of it, which is maybe the United States shouldn't even be there at all. We will talk about it. We will also look at a bizarre moment when Donald Trump's Treasury Secretary is yanked out of an interview. Rush to the Situation Room, and when he comes back, he's shaken up, he's mumbling and stumbling and stuttering and looks to be on the verge of tears. And then just wait until you see the surreal interview between the President of the United States and Jake Paul. What a show. I am genuinely sorry to have to start the show like this, but we just received devastating economic news and I don't know that Donald Trump's presidency can really recover from this. I'm going to explain to you what's going on. We just got the new GDP Numbers not for Q1 of 2026. We're still in Q1 of 2026. It'll be over at the end of March. We just got the 2025 fourth quarter GDP numbers and the US economy grew just 0.7% in the final quarter of 2025. Now, even the estimate wasn't that robust. The estimate was 1.4%, the expectation, and we have now determined it's 0.7%. You will remember that Donald Trump was talking about 4 or 5% growth. Why can't we have 6 or 7? Could we have 8 or 9% growth? Some of the people around Donald Trump said, and so we have a massive, massive slowdown. And we now are facing disastrous Q1 GDP numbers because of Trump's optional and probably illegal Iran war, which would be the second quarter in a row of really terrible GDP numbers. Now, some of the estimates of the effect of Donald Trump's invasion of Iran on GDP are about a 1/8 percentage point reduction. If growth was already going to be 0.7% this quarter, we don't know, but imagine that this quarter was going to be like last quarter, 0.7% growth, losing a point because of Donald Trump's Iranian invention invasion would push GDP negative in Q1 of 2026. Oil prices are out of control because of the conflict. In fact, just to be thorough, let's just see where they're at right now. We know what's going on with gas price. About 100 bucks a barrel as of this exact moment that I am recording. Gas prices as you know, rapidly approaching $4 per gallon now at above 370 per gallon. So Donald Trump is a major economic problem. It's a, it's a political problem. The Federal Reserve now also has a major problem on its hands. This actually relates to Trump's obsession with I got to get too late Powell to cut the federal funds rate. Normally, as stagflation fears grow, which they are growing right now, normally the Fed would say, hey, we have a tool for that. We can cut the federal funds rate. But if inflation goes up, because energy prices are going up, oil is up, gas is up, that increases the cost of transportation, meaning everything that gets shipped to you or to a distributor gets more expensive. If you're in that situation and the labor market starts showing signs of weakness, which it is, we lost 92,000 jobs in February. Unemployment ticked up a little bit. All of a sudden, the Fed is going to say, I don't know that that's the right thing to do here. And consumer confidence reflects this instability. Consumer confidence is falling. And there are a few different important considerations here. The most important, the one I care about the most, is what happens now in your home. I just care about the average person. What is the effect of the weak jobs market, spiking energy prices, reduction in gdp, which can often mean that companies start laying people off or at least doing a hiring freeze, or all sorts of things can happen. Can you afford your life? That's number one. This is a political show. And so we also have to consider what, what this does for Donald Trump's party, especially given that they could lose control of the House and the Senate in the forthcoming midterm elections. Historically, when you've got a weak economy and you've got a foreign war, it's a problem. And I know that there is a sort of rally around the president kind of thing generically with foreign wars, but when that war is seen as optional, boneheaded, not in the interest of the United States, at least not right now, for, for most people, I don't know that it ever would be, but certainly not right now. And the economy is weak. And for Donald Trump, we may not even yet know the full economic disaster because we're not going to get those GDP numbers for some period of time, you've got a real problem. Now consider all of the failed promises that Donald Trump has made he and hasn't stuck to. He promised to lower the cost of living, but it's up. He promised to lower gas prices, but they're spiking like crazy. He Promised cheaper energy, but oil is up, electricity is up. He promised inflation would be over, but inflation has remained positive, and he said it would. We would see a price level decrease which requires deflation. We haven't seen it. He says GDP is going to be phenomenal, but GDP has been pretty weak under Donald Trump. He said we'll have a manufacturing boom, but the manufacturing jobs level in the United States is the lowest it's been in a very long time. He said factories would come back. Most of the factories they can point to as being under construction are related to things that happened while Joe Biden was president, even though Trump wants to take credit for all of that himself. Trump said that the national debt was going to come down, but it has continued to increase. He said we're going to see middle class tax relief, but much of the benefit of the tax plan went to corporations and really wealthy people. He said the trade deficit would be gone, but we're still running very large trade deficits. He said tariffs would strengthen American industry, but they've made everything more expensive. I'm not going to give you the full list. This is a full blown, full blown economic disaster for Donald Trump, and it is only going to get worse the longer this continues. Now, let me say one other thing about the. The longer this continues, Trump keeps playing with. We've basically completed the war. We're, we've won the war, it's over, we're ending it. And meanwhile, the strikes continue. But there's another layer to that, which is it's not only Trump's war to end. One of the biggest factors now driving oil prices up, which drives gas prices up, which will drive the price of everything up, is the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, which is not open. Trump's administration put out something like it's open other than, you know, other than the little detail that ships might be fired on by Iran, it's essentially open. Okay, so then it's not actually open. Trump can actually end it for real this time. Even if we stop the, the missile strikes and the bombing, we can't make everybody else agree that this entire thing is over and it's full speed ahead. So, long story short, serious economic problems here. And in the meantime, Trump is trying to pull the old, I think it's over, folks. Let's see the stock market go back up and gas prices go back down, but it's not working. Something bizarre just happened, truly bizarre. Donald Trump went on Truth Social and declared unilaterally that the United States has completely decimated Iran, we've won the war. It's his mission accomplished moment. Except just about everything in this truth social post is completely imaginary. It is a fantasy world in which Donald Trump finds himself. Let's take a look. He said, quote, the United States of America has beaten and completely decimated Iran, both militarily, economically, and in every other way. But the countries of the world that receive oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage. And, and we will help a lot. The US Will also coordinate with those countries so that everything goes quickly, smoothly and well. This should have been a team effort, and now it will be. It will bring the world together toward harmony, security, and everlasting peace. Signed, President Donald J. Trump. Think about the contradiction for a moment here. If your enemy had been completely decimated, why is the most important shipping route on the planet shut down right now? Why are tankers being blown up in the Strait of Hormuz? Why are countries debating whether they need to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz? Because the war clearly isn't over and because the most critical, arguably the most critical, energy infrastructure element at play here is not functioning right now. While Trump is saying we've substantially completed all of our goals, which he hasn't, and it's essentially over, which it isn't, and we have obliterated Iran, which they haven't, we see that we have an escalating conflict in the region. U.S. and Israeli forces just keep striking and striking and striking, and there's retaliatory attacks and drone attacks, and there's threats of even more attacks. The fighting is in week three right now, and it has spread to multiple countries, and there's military installations in the region that are being flattened. And none of this is what victory looks like, unless I've completely lost touch with the dictionary definition of victory. Now, there's another reality check that I think is important, and I want to go back to the Strait of Hormuz. That shipping route normally carries about a fifth of the world's oil supply, and it's completely disrupted by what's going on right now. Tankers. There's videos on social media of tankers being blown up. Shipping has slowed dramatically, and you see it reflected. This is the free market they love to talk about, even though the oil market isn't really free in the sense of supply and demand. We are seeing oil prices, as I'm recording, at 100 bucks a barrel, and gas prices, which are now up as of this moment, about 37%. I'm doing just kind of like, rough math, looking at the charts. Right. Right now, that's not an economic environment where you go, we won. It's victory. It's all phenomenal. I did a big boy. And there's another aspect to this that completely undercuts Trump's claim that he won and that it's over. He is now asking other countries to send warships to get the Strait of Hormuz reopened. But many of those countries are not saying that they're going to do it. And several governments are saying, you've got to de. Escalate. Instead, we, we can't go forward here just by building up even more of a military presence and doing even, even more belligerent stuff there. And of course, that's not victory when that's what you're finding yourself needing to do now. What's Iran doing? Iran's leadership has publicly rejected negotiations. They've said they're ready to continue fighting. And this is exactly what I said on day three of this thing, which is maybe Trump's going to go at it a few days and say it's done. Maybe Trump's going to go at it four to five weeks and say he's done. Turned out it was like two and a half weeks. It's not only up to us. Once you start a war, it's not only your call when it ends. So there's a very simple picture, and they are trying to confuse and distort and use all sorts of different phraseology to make you think otherwise. Missiles are flying, shipping routes are under threat, oil markets are in turmoil, and tankers are being blown up in the Strait of Hormuz. And meanwhile, Trump goes, please send warships to the reason to the region. So this is a, it's a political playbook we've seen before. Declare victory too early. Bush did it in Iraq. Project strength. Bush did it by showing up, you know, wearing the, the fighter pilot's helmet on an aircraft carrier. Trump, I guess, just thinks he's constantly projecting strength no matter what he does, and then hope that nobody takes too close a look to realize that you're just blowing smoke. We see the facts on the ground. We know what's going on, the war is going on, and the global economic fallout is a disaster. So we, we're going to see if we can do a little something, and I think you'll kind of like this. We are going to start dealing with Trump's gas now. Now, I should clarify that I'm not talking about what you think I might be talking about when I say we're going to finally deal with Trump's gas next week. We are going to do an all week membership drive where the discounted price of a membership on my website, which is the primary means of support we have, will be whatever a gallon of regular gasoline costs under Trump. Okay, normally our memberships are seven bucks a month. Whatever gas prices are on Monday the 23rd, that's the first day of this thing. That's the discounted price we will offer memberships for. If it were today it would be $3.70. That's like a 50% discount. So you'll be able to pick whatever you think will be happening with gas prices next week. If on Monday you think it'll be lower by Thursday, you can wait and maybe the membership price will be lower Thursday. All you need to do to be notified of this discount is get on my mailing list, which you can do@substack.david pakman.com I love anything that will solve small daily annoyances in a simple way. And that's why I love my gear from Extra, our sponsor. The Wallet Pro by Extra is slim, clean and practical. Click the button, your cards pop out instantly. No digging around. And it also has RFID blocking to protect against wireless theft. And it comes with a lifetime warranty. And you can pair the Wallet Pro with the finder card for iOS which lets you track your wallet from your phone if it goes missing. Extra also makes the Travel Pack vacuum kit which lets you compress clothes and create up to 60% more space in your suitcase or carry on something I desperately need. The rechargeable pump makes it quick to use. The Travel Vacuum bags are built for durability on real trips, not just for closet storage. Now Extra is having a sale offering up to 45% off. You can unlock an additional 20% off with code Pacman for a limited time. There's also a 100 day money back guarantee. Go to David pakman.com exterior the link is in the description Coming out of winter, a lot of people will try to reset their routines. But health routines can get overly complicated very quickly. Pills and supplements and schedules and consistency becomes difficult. Our sponsor, AG1 just makes it really simple. It's a daily health drink. It supports gut health, it fills common nutrient gaps, and it has more than 75 ingredients including five probiotic strains. And the thing I love is instead of juggling a multivitamin and supplement and all this stuff, it's just a scoop mixed with water. I like that it's an anchor. Simple every single morning schedules shift and things go on. AG1 keeps me consistent. AG1 provides all sorts of nutritional support, B, B vitamins, etc. The probiotics support digestion. If you want to try it, go to drink ag1.com/pacman to get an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3 and K2 for free in your AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription. Order only while supplies last. The link is in Description the David Pakman show, of course, continues to be primarily an audience supported program. I invite you to sign up on my website join pacman.com you can also become a substack premium subscriber at substack.david pakman.com extra special huge thank you today to our two newest website members. That's Henrik Kubitsa as well as Madge Russell, Henrik and Madge. Thanks for your support. Join them. Get the bonus show. Get all of the great member benefits. Very simple. With average tech skills. It takes about 50 seconds, 55, 50 seconds to sign up at join pacman.com you can see it in his eyes when they're not swollen shut. You can see it in his face. You can see it in the pallor of his skin. Donald Trump is desperate. He is struggling. He doesn't like being pressed for answers on substantive issues. A reporter on Air Force One just hours ago asked Trump a really good question. Why are you sending 5,000 marines and sailors to the Middle East? And this is an important question. If we're putting more of the Sons and Daughters of America in harm's way for a mission that we don't really understand, and it's not clear Donald Trump himself understands it, we should have a crystal clear sense of at least as far as why Trump thinks it's worth doing. What does Trump say? He tells the reporter, you're a very obnoxious person.
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Can you Very obnoxious person Go ahead.
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You're a very obnoxious person. Why is it inappropriate? Why is it obnoxious? It's only obnoxious to be asked for a justification for sending troops places if you don't feel that you have a particularly good answer to the question of why you're doing it. And that is exactly where we find ourselves today. We we are, of course, losing service members. Service members have died because of Donald Trump's decision to go into this optional war in Iran. As bad as the Ayatollah was and the Ayatollah was bad, that doesn't mean the United States should go in. And it doesn't mean the United States should go in now. And it doesn't mean that Donald Trump went in legally. And so Trump has asked, any comment on the service members who have been killed? Trump ignores the question, do you have
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a comment on the six service members?
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What do you want to see in the deal? Because earlier you said, do you have a comment on the six service members who passed? Trump ignores it. Go ahead. Who else? Who else here? The troops deserve better. And we were told that there is no candidate and eventually no president that cares more about the troops than Donald Trump, that values and reveres and upholds the service of the troops and their sacrifice, and he would never send them into harm's way. And, oh yeah, all of that stuff was just bs and we knew that it was bs, number one, because Donald Trump sort of understands the importance of serving in the military as being something that other people do, suckers and losers. As he famously referred to service members he didn't want to go to Vietnam, have felt no patriotic duty, apparently, and got a note about his bone spurs. So we know, oh, I always wanted a Purple Heart. These are not the comments and actions of someone who truly understands the sacrifice that is implicit in military service. And so now Trump has no comment on the service members who passed. He doesn't care. Trump was asked about his increasingly sort of divergent comments last week, saying, we're nowhere near sending ground troops to the Middle East. And then, oh, but he interrupted and he said, why would you ask me a question like that? Trump visibly angry at journalism taking place.
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We are nowhere near sending round trip
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trips to the Middle East. I don't talk to people like you about that. I mean, why would I tell you I'm sending or not sending? I don't. Military strategy, we talk about, I mean, who would answer a question like, I
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D
don't talk to people like you about that? But of course, this is a different question. Last week when Trump was asked about troops in the Middle east, he said, well, listen, I wouldn't tell you exactly what I'm going to do, but we're nowhere, nowhere close to sending troops to the Middle East. Now 5,000 have been deployed. And Trump is asked not about the specifics, but about what happened to change it. Yeah, we know you're not going to tell us in advance exactly what you're going to do. Fine, I understand that. That makes sense for a lot of different reasons. But what happened to go from we are nowhere close four days ago to doing it, especially since I thought we won the war. I Thought we completed all of the objectives. I thought it was over. I thought Iran was dead in the water. And the Strait of Hormuz. Turns out none of that stuff is true. And then we get to what is really a growing issue, the Strait of Hormuz. And Trump now says, I'm demanding that countries come in and help. They should be helping us. That might have been something to think about before this sort of decision. That might have been something to think about earlier. And again, we have widespread reporting that Donald Trump is surprised by what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz. Caroline Levitt denies it. She says it's a fake news story. But it very much seems as though Trump is surprised by it.
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E
There. Are these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their territory. It's a place from which they get their energy and they should come and they should help us protect. You could make the case that maybe we shouldn't even be there at all because we don't need it. We have a lot of oil.
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D
You know, Trump means something different, but he has sort of stumbled upon a great truth. There he goes. You know, you could make the case that maybe we shouldn't be there at all. Now what Trump means is you could make the case it shouldn't even be our responsibility to protect the Strait of Hormuz. That's what Trump means. He's like, we have plenty of oil. It's really for other people that were even there. Except that's not really true, is it? Because 20% of the world's oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz, and it still affects Americans when oil prices spike because of what's going on there. Now it seems as though Trump may be making money from that oil spike after taking control of Venezuela's oil. But that's a different story we covered on Friday. But there's a bigger sense in which Trump is right when he says, maybe we shouldn't be there at all. Maybe we shouldn't be there at all at all. Like, this entire idea was a bad one. And of course, that's true. And Trump was completely unprepared for what ultimately took place. A moment of strange truth, I guess you could say. You could certainly make the case that we should not be there at all. Couple more. This is. This is really disturbing. Trump including that we may be going into Cuba soon. Soon we will be making a decision. We might do what we have to do in Cuba. Why not? Another war? From the winner of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize.
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Thank you Very much.
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D
You're talking to Cuba.
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What do you want to hear from them? Well, I am holding Cuba's a failed nation. Cuba also wants to make a deal. And I think we will pretty soon either make a deal or do whatever we have to do.
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D
We will either make a deal or do whatever we have to do. The peace President Tulsi told us the Magaz said, this is the guy who will keep us out of wars. Hillary will go to war, Biden will go to war. Kamala will go to war. But this guy seems to be one of the biggest warmongers in a long time if he thinks it will benefit him, even if he has miscalculated that. And what does this lead to? This leads to Caroline Levitt having to try to clean it all up. Caroline Levitt was on Fox News just hours ago, and she thought that this would be an easy one. She thought that she would show up and get easy questions and give answers that make some semblance of sense. She was right about one part. She, she did get easy questions. They treat her with kid gloves on Fox News. But she is, of course, going completely cuckoo, trying to defend the indefensible of the Trump administration. And what does she now pull out? We've got to get the SAVE act passed. The SAVE act is becoming the new Infrastructure Week. Remember, during Donald Trump's first term, constantly as bad news rain down upon the administration like blows from a box, they would go, oh, it's infrastructure Week at the White House. And we would all laugh and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, infrastructure Week. Well, now it's the SAVE Act. Gas prices are through the roof. Oil prices are spiking. American service members are dying in an optional war. The war the world is saying we're not going to come to now help you after you made this harebrained decision. So what does Caroline Levitt say? She brings up the issues everybody's thinking about. Transgender mutilations and men in women's sports. Really important issues for the average family as they sit there going, wow, our gas prices are up 35%, electricity is up 12%, and it's only going higher. But what about men and women's sports? Caroline, can you give us an update on the Save America Act? It seems like the majority leader, Senator John Thune, is going to bring it up for a vote. This has to be a red line in the sand for the gop, right?
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That's what we're hearing and it's what we're hoping. The president has made it very clear he wants that Bill on his desk here at the White House as soon as possible. It is five of the most common sense proposals that any party has ever put forward. And the American people overwhelmingly support this bill. Voter id, proof of citizenship to vote, no mail in ballots, which we know create tremendous amount of fraud in our electoral system. Cannot transgender mutilate our young children? We need a ban on those procedures and surgeries. And then, of course, no men in women's sports.
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D
Folks. I don't know how else to say it. That's not an issue. Men and women's sports is not an issue. I don't give a damn about that as a political issue. David, you don't care about trans people? No, no. I care about treating everybody kindly and and d dignity and respect and nondiscrimination as it pertains to the trans community. What I'm saying is men and women's sports is not a real issue. Just consider the numbers. About 0.6% of adults identify as trans. It's a little bit higher among youth as they sort of explore and consider questions of identity. Of the 0.6% that are trans, a small fraction of people are playing organized sports. There is about 8 million U.S. high school students total that play sports each year. You look at investigations in different states and you find single digit numbers of trans athletes. There are states that have zero trans athletes. There are states that have two. But then you go further. Most of the trans athletes playing in the league associated with their gender identity rather than their birth genitalia. It's mostly trans boys. What I mean is it's humans born biologically female who are competing in boys sports. They don't care about that. They don't care about, quote, women in men's sports. They only care about men and women's Sports. You've got 0.6, a small subsection are actually in athletics. Most of them are trans boys or trans men, where nobody cares about that. So when you isolate trans girls competing in girls sports in a lot of states, it's 0, 1, 2 or 3 people total in the entire state. Over 520,000 college athletes in the NCAA system. And according to NCAA investigations, fewer than 100 trans athletes total. And only a subset of those are trans women. A lot of them are trans men. And so you keep hearing about Lia Thomas. Oh, Lia Thomas in swimming. The reason you keep hearing about Lia Thomas is because there are so damn few examples of this that they can even point to. That's how rare it is. Which is why you keep hearing about Riley Gaines And Lia Thomas. All right, so it's not an issue. It's just. It's simply not an issue. And the American people actually don't care about it. It's a tiny subset of MAGA cultists who claim to care about it. They probably are completely unaffected by it personally. All right, finally, Caroline Levitt weighing in on what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz. And she goes, yes, the president is talking with our allies. What she means is Trump is desperate and he doesn't actually have a plan.
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B
So, yes, the president is speaking with our allies in Europe and also many of our partners in the Gulf and Arab world to encourage them to step up, to do more to open the Strait of Hormuz. And our NATO allies, especially, need to step up. Look, President Trump has been very frank with our friends in NATO for a very long time. He got them to increase their defense spending up to 5% percent, and now he's calling on them to do the right thing because, again, the United States of America is leading the way, not just to support and protect our American assets and bases in the Middle east, but also to defend Europe in the Middle east and the rest of the world from the.
- [34:11]
D
Let me explain what's going on here. Okay, first of all, just to get it out of the way, when Caroline says the president is speaking with allies to encourage them to do more in the Strait of Hormuz, what she means is Trump was indeed completely shocked at what's going on. He didn't plan for this. He didn't account for it. He didn't have any kind of Plan B or Plan C. And now he's panicking. But that's not even the big story. You know, for the last many years, Donald Trump has been increasingly skeptical of Naito. And when he has been asked, will the US Come to the shared defense of a Naito country if the Naito country is attacked? Trump has been far from a definitive yes. He's been like, well, they got to pay their fair share. I don't know this. That. The other thing Caroline arguing that based on Naito membership, other countries have to help us is not what Article 5 in Naito says. Article 5 in Naito applies to the shared defense of a Naito country. The United States was not attacked in the way governed by Naito. Trump decided to go to war with Iran. That decision has unleashed chaos in the Strait of Hormuz, and Trump now wants help trying to secure that so that oil can pass it safely, so that oil prices will come down and gas prices will come down. There's nothing in Naito about if a member does a really stupid invasion of another country, you then have to join the war. That is not what Naito says. So they're desperate, they're panicking, they don't know what the hell to do. And later in the show we'll talk about the broader reaching implications of this A lot of people put on music while they work, assuming it helps them concentrate. But in practice, familiar songs, lyrics or constantly changing tracks often will take attention away from what you're working on rather than supporting attention. And that's where Brain FM comes in. Our sponsor, Brain FM is a music app designed to support focus, relaxation or sleep with music created by human musicians working alongside neuroscientists. Instead of generic playlists, Brain FM offers task specific modes like deep work, creative and motivation depending on what you're trying to do. What makes Brain FM different is the science behind it, because it's the only music app funded by the National Science Foundation. Based on their unique audio technology designed to influence brain activity associated with focus, Brain FM also has published peer reviewed research showing their technology supports attentional performance. They even have an optional ADHD mode for people who benefit from additional stimulation. But the app really is built for anybody looking to reduce distractions and stay engaged with their work. You can try Brain FM totally free, free for 30 days by going to brain.fm/pacman. 30 days is a long free trial. Go check it out. The link is in the description One of my close friends has a cat and I actually kind of like the cat, even though you all know I'm more of a dog guy. She is very picky about food though. The cat, not my friend. Mealtime used to be this whole negotiation where she'd sniff the bowl and walk away like she was offended. Then my friends switched out the cat food by our sponsor Smalls and the difference was immediate. They even tried the side by side test with the old food in one bowl, the Smalls food in the other. The cat goes to the Smalls every time. Suddenly mealtime was no longer a daily standoff and became something everybody looked forward to. That's because Smalls is real food for cats with protein packed recipes made from ingredients you'd recognize. No preservatives, no artificial fillers, all delivered right to your door on a schedule that works for you and the meals are tailored to your cat so you're not at the store guessing anymore. It's also why cats.com named Smalls the best overall cat food And Forbes agreed. Give your cat the food they deserve for a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping at smalls.com/pacman. The link is in the description. I'm going to show you one of the strangest things I've ever seen in all of my time covering American politics. Donald Trump's Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, was being interviewed. He was in the middle of an interview that was being recorded, and it was about the economy. It was about the war in Iran. Suddenly, an aide walks out and interrupts the interview and very ominously says Trump wants to see him right away. In the middle of the interview, Bessant gets up and quickly leaves. Someone comes over, rips the mic off of him, and he rushes to go meet with Donald Trump. He was gone nearly two hours. This is already notable, but when Besant came back, he was physically visibly shaken up, and he was stuttering and blubbering like a fool. He appeared to almost break down in tears at one point in time. And everything he was saying was the opposite of what his body language and behavior projected. Take a look at this. I have never seen anything like this.
- [39:34]
F
I listened to you on the president wants you.
- [39:38]
D
Sorry.
- [39:39]
G
Because once you very much.
- [39:40]
F
Oh, okay, okay. No problem at all.
- [39:46]
D
This is the interruption.
- [39:50]
F
See you shortly, Mr. Secretary. Mr. Secretary, I have to say.
- [39:54]
D
So now he's back. It's been almost two hours.
- [39:56]
F
It's a first, I'm sure a loss as well, that an interviewee has been pulled away to go to the Situation Room. How was the president? Was he. Was he stressed? No, the President is in great spirits. The Iranian mission is proceeding well ahead of schedule. And I have to tell you, well, that I'm a teenage teenager who's considering military service. And I could give this team my highest compliment. From President Trump to the head of the Joint Chiefs to the Secretary of War, I would. They say that I would trust my child's life in their hands.
- [40:40]
D
Yeah. His voice is shaking, he's distracted, he's blubbering and stumbling, and he looks like he is almost in tears. Whereas behind, before that interruption, he seemed kind of relaxed in conversation. It was like a completely different person that came back guarded, like someone had just told him something extremely serious behind closed doors. Now, Bessant had been talking about the economic consequences of the Iran war, what's going on with the global oil markets, the possibility that the US Navy might end up having to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz out of desperation to try to stabilize energy prices, which are completely off the chart. That, as I've mentioned, that route carries about 20% of global oil supply, which means a disruption there. Does exactly what we are seeing, which is send oil and gas prices sky high. And we are seeing this affect economies all over the world. Already oil prices 100 bucks roughly right now. Global stocks have collapsed. Gas prices are up over 33%. So when the President pulls the Treasury Secretary out of an interview to bring him into the Situation Room and then he comes back shaken, that is not like a routine phone call that you get and you go, oh, yeah, I'll return that later. Whatever was happening in the White House was extremely urgent, at least as far as Trump was concerned. Now to, in Trump's not, not in Trump's defense, but to sort of account for Trump's temperament sometimes. Trump decides he needs to see someone right now. And it's because Trump is flipping out. He's having a ketchup on the wall sort of moment. And it's not really because something is that urgent. But when Besant comes back, he tries to downplay it. Trump's in good spirits, but he can barely string together a sentence. One other thing there. I tried to research this and I didn't really find anything. Let me, let me just try one more time. There's a moment where Scott Besant says, I have a teenage. A teenager. And a couple of you wrote to me about that and said, is it possible that this has to do with some kind of gender thing? Like instead of saying a teenage son, he said teenager. And there's. What he was uncomfortable about was that his son is maybe gender non binary and he didn't want to. I was not able to find a single shred of that. I noticed the weirdness from Besson around my teenage. A teenager. But I don't really have any strict factual basis on which I could say that that's what this is really all about. So Cabinet secretary yanked off of tv. Two hours of some kind of emergency involving the Treasury Secretary and then a visibly rattled return to the camera. At minimum, all hypothesizing, theorizing, conjecture and speculation aside, it is absolute and total chaos at the White House that we know absolutely. Certainly Caroline Levitt resurfaced and was exposed as a clueless sycophant. This is kind of weird by Fox News host Lara Trump, Donald Trump's own daughter in law, Caroline collapsing again. And I am starting to wonder if Caroline isn't getting to the end here. Here is Caroline Levitt indicating that Trump unleashing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve right now is, is good, it's logical, it's morally right. But when Joe Biden released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, it was for political reasons. It was because there was an election coming up. There's a little problem with this, as Donald Trump would like to say, which is that the facts completely contradict it. Let's first listen to what Caroline Levitt had to say.
- [44:50]
B
And then, of course, as you mentioned, the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which this president takes very seriously and is doing responsible responsibly, unlike the last administration who abused the SPR for political reasons to try to artificially lower gas prices ahead of an election that was despicable, this president takes it very seriously. We will refill the SPR as soon as this operation is over.
- [45:13]
D
But then, you know, I'm going to delve into the full scope of why this is total crap. But there's something important here. Caroline Levitt says Joe Biden used the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to artificially lower prices, but that's not what Trump is doing. In a sense, it's always an artificial price lowering. If you open up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we can discuss the timing, we can debate the political motivations, but it's always artificial in the sense that you have a calculated decision based on an amount of oil that is retained off market and you're dumping it into the market to lower the price. It's always artificial in that sense, or it's not, but it's not. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Now, Robert Graham on Twitter had a phenomenal debunk of this claim. Robert Graham posted, quote, in March of 2022 in response to the Ukraine war, causing oil prices to spike above $100 a barrel. Biden released 180 million barrels over six months. This was eight months before the midterms. In March of 2026, in response to the Iran war causing oil prices to spike above 100 a barrel, Trump is releasing 172 million barrels over five months. This is also, by the way, emphasis mine on also. This is also eight months before the midterms. In both cases, Biden and Trump released around the same amount of oil roughly eight months before midterm election. But there is a key difference, which is that Biden did it in response to Putin's aggression and the United States was fighting on the side of the attacked country, Ukraine. And it wasn't a war we started and it wasn't an optional war for the United States. Trump, on the other hand, is the AGGRESSOR Biden's actions didn't cause the spike in oil prices. Trump's decision to go into Iran did cause that spike. And in our case today, Trump and the United States are the aggressor rather than trying to help a country defend its borders. Caroline can't do it anymore, guys. She simply can't do it. Couple other clips. Here is Caroline Levitt saying it's not true that Trump was surprised by what happened in the Strait of Hormuz. He wasn't unprepared. Of course. Trump was very obviously unprepared. He even has said it and acknowledged it. And it's really not clear that the United States can even win this war according to Donald Trump's own standards of victory.
- [47:50]
B
And we've been working 247 here at the White House to make sure the American people understand how much of a tremendous success this operation has been over the past two weeks. And it is abhorrent. Some of the stories that are coming from the mainstream media and these reporters run these anonymous sources as gospel truth without checking with the people who are actually in the room. And I'm speaking about a CNN story alleging that the administration was ill prepared for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. That is unequivocally false. Let me be clear. The Pentagon has been accounting for this in their planning of this operation since the very beginning. And the administration is taking tangible steps to address it. CNN issued a correction on that story after I called them and spent nearly an hour on the phone rebutting it. ABC News using unverified non credible tips from anonymous tipsters to scare people in California that Iran was allegedly plotting to attack the coast of California with drones, again based on unverified intelligence. They left that word unverified out of their story purposely and we forced force them to issue a correction.
- [48:58]
D
All right, so there is Caroline Levitt. And of course, all of the evidence is that Trump was indeed unprepared for and surprised by what happened in the Strait of Hormuz and by Trump's own definitions. Hey, regime change. Well, the same family is still in charge. It's not really regime change. We're going to take out their nuclear capabilities. Doesn't really seem as though they necessarily had them and or if they did, it certainly doesn't seem as though they've been taking taken out. But of course we have no transparency. Lie after lie after lie. Finally, and by the way, this is on Lara Trump's show, which I guess is a prerecorded show. There do seem to be some cuts here. These do seem to be chopped together. Answers from Caroline Levitt. At least that's my perception of it. That's just my opinion. Caroline Levitt says, remember we have a long term plan here. And when she tells us the long term plan, I've got to be honest, I don't think we're going to be able to do it.
- [49:49]
B
But ultimately your audience must remember this is for the long term gain of wiping out the threat of a Iranian terrorist regime from obtaining and using a nuclear bomb against the United States of America and our allies. Well, Caroline, you guys are doing amazing work there at the White House. We are so appreciative of all you do.
- [50:10]
D
We're so proud, Caroline, of how you defend every lie of the President's with two lies of your own as we both sit here, by the way, with our big cross necklaces to show how moral and Christian we are. And I used to think Caroline Levitt was just firing on all cylinders as a paid propagandist. Obviously she lied all the time since the beginning and that she was extraordinarily well suited for the job. She's getting worse at it and I don't know if it's that the scope of the lies she's being put in a position to tell are increasingly untenable. I don't know what it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if she can't do this too much longer.
- [50:54]
B
Pet Owner Save this TikTok has free training guides and behavior tips, potty training tricks, healthy diet ideas, no expensive classes needed. Just scroll and learn. Download TikTok now.
- [51:10]
D
The David Pakman show is an audience supported program and the best, most direct way to support the show is by becoming a member. @join pacman.com you'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show and plenty of other great membership perks. Get the full experience by signing up@join pacman.com I don't think I have ever seen Donald Trump look this bad and sound this incoherent. This is what we call downer Trump. The sad, depressed Trump. He's sweaty, he's glistening, he's yellow, he's orange. Everything seems ill fitting and he's not making any sense. Donald Trump was asked, how long do you think this war is is going to last? How long is it likely to last? And Trump can't tell us. How long. Now do you think the war is likely to last?
- [52:07]
E
I can't tell you that. I mean, I have my own idea, but what good does it do?
- [52:11]
D
Donald Trump has already said many times that the war is essentially over. But then when he is asked, how long is it going to last? He goes, I really can't tell you. I've got an idea, but I can't tell you. So are the 10 times you said it's over the the truth, or are all of the times you've said you don't know or can't tell us when it will be over the truth? Well, it's probably both would be the answer that Donald Trump loves to give. The question of is the military being used morally here? Is the military used respectfully and appropriately? There's this principle sending the sons and daughters of the United States into harm's way should really be the last resort. Do any of us believe that this was the last resort? There were no other options. Do nothing given that you had just obliterated Iran's nuclear capabilities in June. Wasn't an option. There were no other options other than doing this, which has now led to nearly 10 military deaths. And we don't even really know the full number, by the way, of the, of the injuries because they even Caroline Levitt said, yeah, you know, it's kind of in the ballpark. I don't really know. And Trump goes, the military is being used for the sake of peace.
- [53:28]
E
I rebuilt the military in my first term and we're using it in this term, you know, really for the sake of good, for the sake of peace, and for the sake of safety and good.
- [53:39]
D
Does anybody believe that Donald Trump's actions in Iran are going to make peace more likely? And I hate to go back to this, but it's important to understand how we got here. Forget for a moment about the June of 2025 bombing of Iran. Go back to Trump ripping up the Iran nuclear deal. I don't pretend that the Iran nuclear deal was perfect, but it appeared, based on all the evidence we had, that after it was signed by Barack Obama, Iran was sticking to the substance and the requirements of the deal. There was this brief moment where I remember Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu trying to argue Iran has violated the terms of the nuclear deal. Wasn't convincing. Did not convince me at all. It sounded like the case of, you know, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. It just did not seem believable. And what triggered going in this direction, arguably the biggest anti peace action was Donald Trump ripping up that deal. At which point I said, if I were Iran, I'd go back to working on nuclear. Why wouldn't I? I don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I oppose theocratic extremist regimes. I think the regime of Iran now for decades has been the most destructive force in that country with regard to its impact on the average Iranian person, especially the young Iranian people who are relatively progressive and that's not what they want. Trump is the one who's to blame. And now he goes, well, I'm sending your sons and daughters into harm's way for peace. Seems like this is going to be the opposite of peace. Trump predicting totally delusionally gas and oil are going to come down, you know, blah. It's just sort of like, yeah, tell it to me again, dude, I just don't believe you.
- [55:25]
E
Well, I think as soon as that's over going to come tumbling down on along with everything else. I think it's going to be you to see a very big decrease in the price of gasoline, gas, anything having to do with energy as soon as this is ended. But we had to end the nuclear threat in the Middle east and throughout the world.
- [55:45]
D
We are rapidly getting to a point where Trump, sorry about that. We're quickly approaching a point, and I've been saying this now for three weeks, we're quickly approaching a point where Trump going ok, we're done is not going to get things back to the way they were. We, I believe are now in an environment where Iran and potentially other Gulf states are going to continue either retaliating against the United States and or deliberately messing with the global oil market even after Trump goes, okay, okay, we're done now. Trump's standard, the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. Trump's standard is he wants unconditional surrender. He was asked what does that mean? And his explanation is not, it's not great. It's not great.
- [56:45]
E
Well, to me it means very simply that we are in position of dominance that nobody's ever seen before. And whether or not they're able to say the words or whether or not they're able to even fight, their name is gone. Their Air Force is gone. Most of their military is gone. Their big threat is gone in every way. They have no radar, they have no anti aircraft weapons, for the most part, weapons and force and definitely they have have no way of determining what they call visibility. So just about everything is gone and you'll see that. But today we've had some very, very big hits.
- [57:25]
D
Now remember that on the one hand, Trump is saying he's not exactly sure how he would define unconditional surrender. On the other hand, he's saying, we've gotten all the targets. But just two days prior, Trump said, we're actually deliberately leaving the biggest targets in case we have to go back. So which is it? Did you get all the targets or are you leaving the targets for later? Who the hell knows? It's, it's mad Libs. Pick your own adventure. Every single day. He's giving you every side of every issue. And finally, Donald Trump continues to be unable to say mutilation, saying that under his watch, there will be no transgender mutilization of our children, no transgender utilization of our children, and a completely swollen and soaking wet, sweaty Trump still struggling to say mutilation. And I think this is getting to be one of those things. Like when Trump continues saying, oh, they're from insane asylums. And nobody goes, sir, those people are seeking asylum. They're not from insane asylums. And it's gotten to be too late for him to stop. Oh, we're going to drop the price 1300%. Sir, you really can't drop a price more than 100%. It's been, it's like when you have met someone 30 times and you forgot their name, but it would be embarrassing to bring it up because you've met him 30 times and so you go, hi, how are you? Good to see you. Same sort of thing. The people around Trump do not want to bring it up. And if you think that this was embarrassing, I have two words for you that note. Sorry, that's not one of them. The two words are Jake Paul. I don't know what made anyone around Donald Trump think that it was a good idea to sit down with boxer, influencer, podcaster Jake Paul, but Jake Paul actually made a couple of attempts to ask some real questions. And I'm not saying this jokingly or pejoratively. I think Jake Paul has a brain injury or like, I guess you'd call it CTE from boxing. I don't know. Just from hearing him talk, he is able to actually ask some questions that really do deserve answers from Donald Trump, including, what exactly was your thinking with this whole Iran thing? And even in this completely sycophantic, you know, bouquet throwing interview, Trump still can't really explain what the hell are we doing in Iran.
- [60:02]
G
With Iran, we knew we had to do something because they were going to be attacking us. If we didn't attack them, they were going to attack us. And we did it first. And by going first, we wiped out thousands of missiles that would have been shot. And, you know, you can shoot them down, but you need to a lot of, a lot of very expensive weaponry to shoot them. We wiped out thousands and thousands of missiles by going early.
- [60:25]
D
Even after three weeks of this, and even in the friendliest of friendly venues, Trump has still not been able to workshop a better answer as to why and why now. And, you know, I think the answer is he thinks his answer is plenty good. I thought that they were going to come after us. I thought that they would be attacking us. I had a feeling, maybe based on fact, the topic of Trump getting shot comes up and weirdly, it seems to sort of seem as though Trump and Jake Paul are kind of making equivalent. When Trump was shot and when Jake Paul gets punched during boxing matches, it
- [61:04]
G
was bloody as hell. So when I checked, I put my hand up, I said, know I burnt it down and it was loaded up. So I said, that's either the biggest mosquito bite in history or I just got shot. And that was not a pleasant experience.
- [61:22]
H
Yeah, my like, adrenaline was pumping. I'm sure your adrenaline was pumping. Like one of my jaw was broken. I just couldn't really feel it.
- [61:28]
G
So you knew that you had a broke and you.
- [61:31]
H
No, no, my brother told me. He, I was talking to him and my teeth were like in the center of my mouth and he was like, yo, I think your jaw is broken. And then I like grabbed it.
- [61:41]
G
But when he was hitting you, you
- [61:42]
H
didn't feel that it was the last punch?
- [61:44]
G
It was the last punch.
- [61:46]
H
Yeah, the very last punch of the fight that did it. So that's when I like went to the floor and was like, whoa, was
- [61:52]
G
that hard to recover from?
- [61:53]
D
Yeah, it's a real, a real meeting of the minds.
- [61:57]
G
Now.
- [61:57]
D
I think the most interesting moment of this entire interview was when Jake Paul asks Trump one of these questions that it's an easy question, but you do have to have some kind of answer that shows you're not just an egomaniacal self centered lunatic. Jake Paul asks Trump, if you could be reincarnated as anyone at any time and experience someone else's life, who would you come back as? And Trump goes, oh, me. Right now, he would be reincarnated as Donald Trump. At nearly 80 years old in 2026, this is one of those things where you can go, well, you know, Abraham Lincoln. Abraham or Jesus Christ himself or what anything other than saying you would be reincarnated as yourself right now, which is quite literally the only way in which is not reincarnation. Listen, this is how impossible it is for Trump to just think about these questions.
- [62:46]
H
If you could Come back in history and reincarnate and, like, be able to experience someone else's life. Who would you come back in history as?
- [62:57]
G
That's a very interesting question.
- [63:00]
D
That's a very interesting question,
- [63:08]
G
Ladies and gentlemen.
- [63:09]
D
All right, so here's Trump's answer.
- [63:11]
G
Maybe Donald Trump. Right now,
- [63:18]
D
You could rank in infinity answers to that question. The only way to really not answer it is to go, I would be reincarnated as myself right now. God, you just can't do it. A couple more of these. Jake Paul talks to Trump about being in a fight himself, and Trump tells an interesting story.
- [63:40]
H
Have you ever been in a fight? I heard a rumor about you, like, helping Kobe one time at a game. Is that a long story?
- [63:48]
G
I was.
- [63:49]
H
Is this a story?
- [63:50]
G
Well, it wasn't a fight. I was breaking up a fight.
- [63:52]
H
Okay, okay.
- [63:53]
G
Which sometimes is more dangerous than being in a fight. Right. But now I like Kobe. Kobe was having a hard time with somebody, and it worked out fine. But. But, yeah, I broke it up. Probably not a smart thing to do.
- [64:05]
D
Anyway, I looked this up, and apparently this relates to an incident that involved former New York Knicks player Charles Oakley, and there was some kind of incident, like an elevator or something like that. Very, very interesting. All right, just a couple of moments. Final moments. Trump and Jake Paul complement the the physical appearance of each other's wives.
- [64:26]
H
He's a legend episode. It was the greatest thing I've ever witnessed in person.
- [64:31]
G
Wow.
- [64:32]
D
And to be a part of.
- [64:32]
G
She's a great, great person. Beautiful. You're not allowed to say beautiful.
- [64:37]
E
It's the end of your political career. But you know what?
- [64:39]
G
She's beautiful.
- [64:40]
H
Melania's beautiful as well.
- [64:41]
G
She's doing great. She's doing a good job.
- [64:44]
H
Look at us complimenting.
- [64:45]
G
Yeah.
- [64:45]
D
Melania is doing a good job. What is her job? I don't know.
- [64:48]
G
It's nice. That's nice when you can do that.
- [64:50]
H
Exactly, exactly.
- [64:51]
G
I just want to congratulate you. Great job.
- [64:54]
H
Thank you, man.
- [64:54]
G
You're a young guy, but you have done some incredible job.
- [64:57]
H
Thank you.
- [64:58]
G
And so different.
- [65:00]
H
He's a legend episode.
- [65:01]
D
All right, there it is. So make what you will of the interview truly bizarre. And nothing is complete without a little bit of a grift. Trump suggests to Maga that they buy Jake Paul's deodorant line.
- [65:16]
H
Thank you.
- [65:17]
E
Go buy.
- [65:18]
G
You go buy it, Maga.
- [65:19]
D
Go buy it. Go buy it, Maga. Trump says as he holds up a stick of deodorant. There it is, folks. Good interview, bad interview. I know that Donald Trump used these, you know, Nelk Boys, etc. Interviews sort of successfully leading up to the 2024 election. But I don't know that this is exactly the thing to be doing, especially as we are in the situation we are in in Iran. Let me know what you think. Next week we will be unleashing Trump's gas promo where we will do a membership drive where the memberships will be discounted down to the cost of a gallon of regular gasoline. Under Donald Trump, it's going to be at least and potentially more than a 50% discount. All you need to do to be notified of Trump's gas promo is get on my Substack newsletter@substack.david pakman.com We've got a phenomenal bonus show today. We will talk about. This is so weird. Missouri lawmakers have passed a bill removing legal barriers for pregnant women to get divorced. Now you might be saying, wait a second, there was a barrier to a woman getting a divorce while pregnant in Missouri. Yes, there was. And there is a bill passed to stop that. Dear God, what is going on in this country? All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at jointackman. Com.