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Everyone deserves to be connected. That's why T Mobile and US Cellular are joining forces. Switch to T Mobile and save up to 20% versus Verizon by getting built in benefits they leave out. Check the math@t mobile.com switch and now T mobile is in US cellular stores. Savings versus Comparable Verizon plans plus the cost of optional benefits plan features in Texas and fees vary. Savings with three plus lines include third line free via monthly bill credits. Credit stop if you cancel any lines. Qualifying credit required. We will start today with what might be the most devastating confirmation yet that the tariff policy is mostly being paid for by us, by you. An incredible new study. New polling also shows that Trump is in trouble. 58% of Americans say his first year back in office has been a failure. 39% approval. This is not like, oh, he had a bad week. These are the sorts of numbers that lead to a midterm bloodbath, which we will discuss. And then maybe the most unhinged letter of any presidency ever. Trump writing a letter to Norway that he will take Greenland from Denmark because Norway didn't give him the Nobel Prize. Plus Kristi Noem lying badly about how many of the ICE arrests are actually people who have committed crimes. She gives one number. The facts point, not surprisingly, to a very different number. All of that and more on the one year anniversary of the Donald Trump second term return to office sequel that none of us wished for. But now we have to hope ends soon. Well, welcome Everybody. It is January 20th. Donald Trump has been back in office for a year and his major economic policy, the tariffs, has just been brutalized by a study that finds that 96 cents of every dollar in tariffs is paid for by you, by me, by the consumer, by the importer, not by the foreign country that is selling us the stuff. There are three years left of Donald Trump's presidency. By the way, I'm wearing my 120, can you see it? My 1 20, 2029 shirt. These are available in our store. These are just flying off the shelves. Three year. This shirt is particularly relevant today as we have one year down and three years to go and we are waiting for January 20th of 2029. But between now and then we are going to have to deal with the reality of Donald Trump's tariffs. And there's a new study reported about by the Wall Street Journal, not a left wing rag, which finds that Americans are paying 96% of Donald Trump's tariffs. The foreign exporter is paying 4%. That is it. Now we were told by people like Scott Besant and Kevin Hassett and who the hell knows who else, that the way that this was going to be good for Americans and bad for the exporters in other countries is that the exporters were going to lower prices to account for the tariffs. So we would pay the same, but the exporter would accept a smaller profit. Well, we now have the data. It's not happening. The exporters from other countries are paying for 4% of the tariffs, and American importers and consumers like me and you are paying 96%. So when Trump says foreign countries are paying for the tariffs, it was never true. It is not true today. The underlying research comes from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. They looked at $4 trillion in U.S. imports from early 2024 through late 2025. And their conclusion is very simple and it's a brutal conclusion. If you believe in this tariff program, the tariffs are working like a consumption tax on Americans. It's simply, this is what you used to pay. Well, add 96 cents for every dollar of tariffs and that is what you pay now. And so when Trump brags about, we brought in hundreds of billions from tariffs. We didn't bring it in, we just took it from American companies and consumers. The money is coming almost entirely free from us, not China, not Europe, not Brazil or whoever else Donald Trump is trying to punish. Now, I it's sort of like, wow, mind blowing. This is Econ 101 sort of stuff. The tariff is charged to the American importer at the cost. The cost is then passed down the chain. The importer might eat a little bit of it, the retailer might eat a little bit of it. And what doesn't get eaten shows up as higher prices, which we then have to pay. Pay all of it reduces disposable spending money for Americans. You might say, well, if the retailer takes the hit, all the people that work for the retailer now are going to have downward pressure on their wages or the retailer may lay people off, or the retailer may cut hours, and then the people working at the retailer will have less money to spend in their local community. So it is trickle down in a sense, but it's a very different trickle down than the one that Republicans want to talk to us about now. Trump defenders immediately jump on one talking point, which is, well, you know what? Inflation hasn't exploded, so it can't be that bad. And of course it is true that we are not seeing 5, 6% inflation. That that's true. But remember what Trump promised, the tariffs would reduce prices. And what has happened Instead is that prices have continued to increase by about 3% over the first year that Donald Trump is in office. 20. Trump promised prices down line, go down. Trump said prices will go down. Prices have gone up. And importantly, there's a Harvard Business School piece of research which says that only 20% of tariff costs have shown up in consumer prices during the first six months of Trump. It does take time, especially with products with a longer manufacturing life cycle, for the higher prices to be reflected in retail prices. So there is still time here. It just means the prices are lagging a little bit. The key part Trump never mentions is that the promise was the tariffs will not only lower prices for Americans. That one hasn't happened. Hold on, I have my new Trump grunting here. Wait, no, no, no. I have a better Trump grunt. Where did that one go? Oh, no, I don't have it. Oh, this is terrible. Oh, here it is.
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Ladies and gentlemen.
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Right? Prices down. Okay. Not only have the prices not come down, Trump said that the. What a show today. Trump said the tariffs were going to raise the level of manufacturing employment in the United States. Manufacturing employment ready for this one has continued to go down. I know, it's terrible. So what did the tariffs really do? They made things more expensive for importers, they made things more expensive for manufacturers. They made things more expensive for American consumers, and they generated revenue almost entirely off of the backs of Americans. The final reason this is now the political. The. The final reason this matters politically is because Trump just overnight is threatening even more tariffs. He's threatening 200% tariffs on France now. I guess he is threatening to do even more of this. So if Trump does more, it's only going to get more expensive. Trump tariffs are a regressive tax. Lower and middle income families feel them more because lower and middle income families are spending a higher percentage of their income on goods. So it is very much not America first. And the most telling line in this entire research piece comes from one of the authors of the study who said, quote, there is no such thing as foreigners transferring wealth to the US in the form of tariffs. It. There is no. It doesn't exist. There is no mechanism through which that can happen. Trump didn't make other countries pay. He made you pay. We have the data and that is where we are right now. All right, There is a number in the new CNN SSRS poll that should make every 2026 Republican candidate for office start updating their resume. See how many key words you can cram in there about your skills, because you're going to need it. That number is 58%, a majority of Americans. Not 51%, but 58% now say that Donald Trump's first year back in office was a failure. A failure. And if you're thinking, yeah, but polls just give you, like, the vibe of what's going on, consider that there is another important number. 39. Trump's job approval in the same poll is only 39%. So it is not a rough patch that the President is in. Historically, presidents under 50% approval going into a midterm get their party absolutely mauled just like a dog. They treat them terribly. A Gallup looked at this over decades and found that when the president is below 50% approval, the president's party loses an average of 37 House seats. 30, 37. The baseline is ugly, which is in modern midterms. The President's party in general loses anyway. It's usually 25 seats, but when they're under 50% approval, it jumps to 37. So this is not like, oh, Republicans might lose a few seats. The normal outcome is Republicans would lose 25 seats. The expected outcome with Trump under 50% approval would be that Republicans lose three 37 House seats. But with prices continuing to go up. When Trump said they would go down with a deportation campaign that is not only unpopular with Americans, but Trump said, oh, the deportation campaign is going to make wages go up for Americans, it's going to create jobs for Americans, it's going to see prices going down, housing is going to get cheaper because you won't have undocumented immigrants compete. None of it is happening. None of it is happening. And so every day detail is exactly what you would expect to produce a blockbuster blue wave in November. But only if we make it happen. Only if we make it happen. Now, if we dig in a little more deeply to some of the other elements of the poll, 36% say Trump has the right priorities. So only a third of Americans really think Trump is even working on the right stuff. Only about a third believe Trump's. Trump cares about people like them. A majority say Trump has gone too far, abusing presidential power, trying to strong arm institutions. So you've got anger over cost of living, plus anxiety about, damn, this guy seems like he's out of control. And 2026 is looking brutal. If those numbers hold. Right, that, that's a, that's a big if there. And we've got to make sure that, that we make that happen. And there is still a question mark about that. One other thought on this. There is this issue of The Senate. And of course, if you pay attention to politics right now, you recognize that the House is looking very, very bad, very, very bad for Republicans. But the Senate is a little bit different. The Senate is trickier. And because only a third of senators are up for reelection every two years, it really depends more on the map. You can have anti Republican sentiment going in, but a map that is favorable to Republicans. And if you look at the specific states and the candidate quality and all of this, right now, the Senate is looking very difficult for Democrats. I'm not going to blow smoke, okay? If you look at the competitive Senate races, you just look at the map, it's not looking awesome. So 58% saying Trump is doing a bad job, that's a problem for Republicans. But the Senate, because of the map and because of the particulars, may end up not being so bad. But of course, it really is up to us at the end of the day, and we have to make sure that we do everything we can to make it as bad as possible. Now, let's just explore for a second the outcome of Republicans keep the Senate, but Democrats take the House. It still ends Trump's presidency as we know it. He will get no major legislation done, period. And we would also expect investigations. You know, I don't necessarily know about impeachment. Impeachment would certainly go nowhere in the Senate if that were to happen. But it's. Trump certainly seems convinced that he's getting impeached if Democrats take the House. But maybe most importantly, Democrats will be able to apply pressure as Trump's legacy will become the most important thing to him. There will be some leverage that Democrats will have to be able to hopefully stem the bleeding of, of some of the most disastrous Trump's Trump policies. So there is a lot riding, a lot riding on these elections, and the numbers so far are a disaster for Donald Trump. I do not have a cat myself, but if you spend any time around people who do, you know very quickly who is really in charge. And a couple of friend of mine, friends of mine have cats. And the cats are very picky about food. And for a long time they assumed that's just normal. And then they switched to Smalls and suddenly mealtime stopped being a daily standoff and a battle of wits and will because our sponsor, Smalls is real food for cats. Their recipes are protein packed. They're made with preservative free ingredients that you would actually recognize, no artificial fillers or mysterious items. It's fresh food delivered right to your door, tailored to your cat's. Preferences. One friend of mine even did the side by side test and their cat immediately went for Smalls which tells you a lot. It is also why cats.com named Smalls the best overall cat food and Forbes agreed for a limited time you'll get 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com/pacman. The link is in the description the David Pakman show is an audience supported program and today is the day. Our one day membership special one 2026 three years to go for one 2029. By the way, I'm wearing my one 2029 t shirt which is available on our online store. This morning a very special email went out and the email contained a coupon code allowing you to avail yourself of the biggest membership discount in a very long time. If you are not yet a website member and you're thinking about signing up and for whatever reason you didn't get that email, shoot me an email info@david pakman.com say David, give me that coupon code please sir and we will get you that code. Big, big day. Join pacman.com Donald Trump has written a letter to Norway so insane, so unhinged, so dangerous, so authoritarian, so demented that it really should get him locked up. Now, I am not saying oh, lock them up in jail without charges. No, no, no, no. What I'm saying is this is the sort of stuff worthy of a 72 hour psych hold for evaluation in a psychiatric institution. That's the kind of lockup Trump deserves. Trump's letter to Norway essentially is communicating that because Trump did didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize, he no longer will think of Norway in peaceful terms in the context of taking Greenland from Denmark. Now you might be saying, what the hell, because Norway didn't give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize, he will take Greenland from Denmark. It doesn't make sense to me. To me either. Here is the letter. Dear Jonas, Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight wars plus I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America, Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China. And why do they have a right of ownership anyway? There are no written documents. It's only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there. Also, I have done more for Naito than any other person since its founding. And now Naito should do something for the United States, the world is not secure unless we have complete and total control of Greenland. Thank you, President Donald J. Trump. This is a lunatic letter saying, Norway didn't give me a Nobel Prize. By the way, the Nobel Committee is a private organization which gives out a private prize. The country of Norway is. Is not giving out the Nobel Prizes, but put that aside for a second. Trump says, Norway didn't give me a Nobel Prize, so I will take Greenland from Denmark before Russia or China take it first. This guy is not well. The president is explicitly tying global peace to a personal reward system that he has become fixated with and obsessed with. He's saying, give me territory or I punish your economies.
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America grande ultra vest, right?
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America grande autra vests. This is. This is delusional. This is erratic, dictator wannabe stuff. Reward me now or peace becomes optional. And if you try to resist me, I will crush you economically with tariffs. And if you deny me territory, I might just deploy the troops. If any prior president had written this letter, Congress would be holding emergency hearings saying, do we have to remove this guy? Allies would be demanding explanations, and the conversation would be, how do we get him out of office? Is he fit to serve? And instead we're debating, oh, is this just Trump being Trump is. You know, Trump is an unconventional, unconventional communicator.
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Right?
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It's a president threatening allies and questioning the sovereignty of foreign territory and tying war and peace to his ego and saying, stop me if you dare. Stop me if you think you can. If this letter does not end Trump's presidency, and it won't if, if this letter doesn't end Trump's presidency, I don't know if the presidency has limits. I don't know if there are checks and balances remaining at this point in time. And this is a much broader. Listen, it's. It's not. We don't know what he's going to do in Greenland ultimately. And my. My prediction has continued to be the US Is not going to control Greenland by the end of Trump's presidency. We, between now and then and how we get there over the next three years, I don't know. But my prediction. I'm not a betting man, but if I were, my bet would be the US Is not going to control Greenland. But there are other areas in which the lack of checks and checks and balances and the complete inability and unwillingness from the Republican Party to try to control Trump in any way has real consequences. We are seeing it as now, the Minnesota escalation is escalating even further. The Minnesota situation, I should say, is escalating even further with some troops from Alaska reportedly being ready to go to Minneapolis. Why Alaska? Because those are, like our only troops that are prepared to be in the type of cold that is going to face operations in Minneapolis. So who's going to stop that? Is it still. Oh, it's Trump being Trump. It's bluster, it's talk, it's focus more on what Trump does than what he says? Well, we are focusing on what he does rather than what he says. And it is an absolute and complete, complete atrocity. Now, in the meantime, as Donald Trump was getting ready, I guess, to go to Davos last night, he was asked a few questions, including about, about France and, and Greenland. And it did not go particularly well. Concerns about Donald Trump's brain are once again escalating as he seemed unable to answer basic questions. And he drops some thinly veiled threats, stuns reporters, and his answers really don't make any sense. This was. As he was preparing to board Air Force One, Trump was asked, first of all, have you invited Putin to be a member of the Gaza Board of Peace? Listen to Trump's answer here.
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Have you invited President Putin to be a member of the Board of Peace? Yeah, he's been invited.
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Yes, he has been invited. The guy who is currently in the middle of an invasion of another country, attempting to seize the territory, and a creator of war, the creator of war is being invited to be on the Gaza Peace Board. On what planet does that make sense? And then further, Trump was asked about Macron saying he will not join the Board of Peace. And Trump immediately threatens a 200% tariff, which, as of this moment that I am recording, has caused the dow to drop 500 points and the NASDAQ to drop over 300 points. Trump's. Well, I'll just tariff France 200%.
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Give any response to President Macron saying he will not join the Board of Peace? Did he say that? What nobody watches wants him because he's going to be out of office very soon. So, you know, that's all right. What I'll do is if they feel like Costco, I'll put a 200% tariff on his wines and champagnes and he'll join. But he doesn't have to join. If he, if he said that, you're probably giving it to me a little bit differently. But if he actually did say that, but as you know, he's going to be out of office in a few months.
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Well, he's not going to be out of office. In a few months, he has over a year, like close to a year and a half left of his presidency. This is French President Emmanuel Macron, of course, that I'm speaking about. But a completely unwell Donald Trump, he is simply told, hey, here's someone who said a thing. Oh, yeah, well, he'll be gone soon. And also I'll just tariff French products like wine 200%. And Trump seems to recognize that that would be bad for Costco. Why would you want to hurt an American company that pays employees good wages and provides good working conditions? Well, because Costco has not been particularly supportive of Donald Trump's unhinged economic and other policies. A deeply unwell, feeble, addled guy who also said, I don't care about the Nobel Peace Prize. You know, Donny boy, I'm struggling to believe that a little bit because you've been obsessing over it for months. And you told Norway you might invade Greenland because they didn't give you the Nobel Prize letter that you wrote the.
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Prime Minister saying that the Nobel Prize has influenced your thinking on Greenland. No, I don't care about the Nobel Prize. First of all, a very fine woman felt that I deserved it and really wanted me to have the Nobel Prize. And I appreciate that. If anybody thinks that Norway doesn't, doesn't control the Nobel Prize, they're just kidding. They have a board, but it's controlled by Norway. And I don't care what Norway says, but I really don't care about that. What I care about is saving lives. And I think I've saved tens of millions of lives. If you look at India, Pakistan, just as 1, 2 nuclear powers, you look at so many of the countries that were in a 30, 30, in some cases a 35 year war, and I got it done. We stopped eight wars.
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And Trump says, I don't care about the Nobel Prize. Even though he's been obsessing about it for. He's actually, it's not even been months, it's been years that he's been obsessing over this thing because Obama got it. That's really what it's about. And I saved tens of millions of lives. What is he talking about? Does he even know the populations of some of the countries that are involved here? I assume he doesn't. I assume if you go, by the way, how many people live in Pakistan? I don't think he has any idea. Trump then, on the eve of the one year anniversary of the second term, as prices have gone up, remember Trump, Trump promised prices down. Trump Prices down. Prices are up. And Trump just says, oh, they're down. We fixed all of it. Everything's fixed.
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How you feel about the first year of your second term? Amazing. Tomorrow is the first year. Think of it, one year. I don't think there's been a term like it. I don't think any president has had a better first year than we've had in terms of success.
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Only like every other president, again, we've.
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Taken our country from a failure with open borders, no business, everything going badly, terrific inflation, the highest inflation in history. Prices that are through the roof, and we brought prices down. We have very little inflation.
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You know, it's funny because last week Trump said there is no inflation. Now Trump says there is very little inflation.
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We have a great economy and the prices are coming down still further, but.
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The prices are going up.
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Of course, I inherited a mess, and now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.
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You know, I was thinking about this whole inflation thing, and I know that I've. I've kind of ranted about this so many times, but just for context, you usually want to. 2 and a half percent inflation. In standard economic thinking, which you can say, well, standard economic thinking is a disaster, but in standard economic thinking, that's kind of where your growth comes from. And the deflation that Trump has promised, meaning prices going to actually going down in nominal terms, deflation only would typically take place in pretty precarious economic situations, and it can include a deflationary spiral, stagflation and other scenarios. And I would love it, and I would respect it so much if a presidential candidate just said, listen, when prices go down, like actually down, it often is bad in a lot of ways. It's bad for businesses. Wages also come down. You're starting to see more unemployment. So I want to be realistic with everybody. My goal is to get inflation to the desirable 2 to 3% and then work on increasing the employment level and getting wages up above and beyond inflation. That's my goal. And then we will all be better off if I did that. If other people are promising you prices will go down, I hate to break it to you, but. So I would respect that way more. Now, you might say, David, you could never win anything if you say that you would. You have to promise that prices will actually go down. Well, the counterpoint would be most candidates don't promise that because most candidates recognize that that is unlikely to happen. I would respect Trump much more, and by the way, that would let him more credibly achieve success because Trump could Go, listen, I came in and we've got inflation bouncing between 2 and 3%. That's great. We want, let's work to keep it there. And meanwhile, I'm going to work on wages. I'm going to work. But no, Trump promised something that was unlikely and would really only happen in terrible economic circumstances. And, and it puts him in the position now of having to lie. We fixed inflation, prices are down. It's all taken care of. And of course, we all know that it isn't true. Final clip. Trump asked, what are you going to say to European leaders when they obviously tell you we don't support your plan in Greenland? And here is Trump's answer.
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What do you plan to say to European leaders when they push back on your Greenland plan? Well, I don't think they're going to push back too much. Look, we have to have it. They have to have this done. They can't protect it. Denmark, they're wonderful people and I know the leaders are very good people, but they don't even go there. And, you know, because the boat went there 500 years ago and then left, that doesn't give you title to property. So we'll be talking about it with the various people. We've had, we've had tremendous success and we've, you know, I've done more for Naito than anybody else. I don't think you'd have NATO right now. I got him to go 5% and pay as opposed to 2% and not pay. I've done more than any other American president for Naito by far.
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Yeah, blah, blah, blah. But Trump is apparently flying to Switzerland under the pretense that European countries aren't going to have much of a problem with Trump saying, hey, you know what? Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland, I think we're going to do away with that by force. Yes, yes, Mr. President, of course, of course. Go ahead and do that. I think Trump's up for a rude awakening in, in Switzerland, and I predict that he will lash out like a little kid. That's my prediction. After the break, the overnight meltdown is back. Cold weather is sometimes when simple meals matter the most. And during the winter, there is nothing like pulling a warm bread out of the oven at home. It'll change the mood with the smell alone, never mind the taste. Our sponsor, Wild Grain, is the first bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries and fresh pastas. Already in 25 minutes or less with no prep. Wild Grain uses simple ingredients and a slow fermentation process which will add flavor and can be easier on digestion. No preservatives, no shortcuts. Lately I've been reaching for the wild grain sourdough loaf for quick dinners. Their cranberry pecan rolls are great for the weekends. Everything comes out perfectly browned and fragrant. Wild grains boxes are customizable. They include gluten free vegan and free protein box options so it fits whatever you've got going on. Delivery is reliable. Baking is hands off perfect for cozy brunches or easy weeknights. Nothing like having an artisan bakery in your freezer to chase away that winter chill. Get $30 off your first box plus free croissants for life at wildgrain.com/pacman the all night meltdown is back. Donald Trump spent overnight melting down. The meltdown has thr the US Stock market into a free fall as of this morning's open, including because Donald Trump is threatening France with 200% tariffs and once again Greenland is in play. Trump has decided the United States must take control of Greenland, which is this semi autonomous Danish territory. When Europe didn't immediately kneel to his demands, he responded the only way he knows how. He says on Truth Social I had a very good telephone call with Mark Rutt, the Secretary General of naito, concerning Greenland. I agreed to a meeting of the various parties in Davos, Switzerland. As I expressed to express to everyone very plainly, Greenland is imperative for national and world security. There can be no going back on that. Everyone agrees the United States of America is the most powerful country anywhere on the globe by far. Much of the reason for this is a rebuilding of our military during my first term, which rebuilding continues at even more expedited pace. We are the only power that can ensure peace throughout the world and it is done quite simply through strength. Trump arguing the only way for peace even though the US not having Greenland for all these hundreds of years has not caused the problems he claims it would. The only way for peace is the United States must take Greenland. Trump then posted this is Wild what appears to be a private message from the French president to Donald Trump. A private message. Trump posted it and it says, my friend, we are totally in line on Syria. We can do great things on Iran. I do not understand what you were doing on Greenland. Let us try to build great things. And Macron says I can set up a G7 meeting after Davos in Paris on Thursday. I can invite the Ukrainians, the Danish, the Syrians, the Russians in the margins. Let us have dinner Together in Paris, together on Thursday before you go back to the US And Trump has published that to to his truth social and bigger picture. It was all night, folks, just all night. Trump posting about Nevada voter fraud conspiracies. Trump posting messages from Mark Rutt, the Secretary General of Naito's, meant to be apparently private. Trump just posting them. Trump talking about our brilliant Naito ally. The UK is planning to give away the island of Diego Garcia to Mauritius and for no reason whatsoever, Trump just attacking, attacking and say we must have Greenland. Trump posting about three footage of the church raid in Minnesota by the agitators and insurrectionists, saying these people are professionals. They are trained to scream, rant, rave like lunatics in a certain matter, just like they were doing, they should be thrown in jail or out of the country. This is, this is all overnight, folks. Trump posting memes and nonsense about Biden, about supposed to signature fraud. AI generated images, including one of Trump holding up placing an American flag on Greenland with Marco Rubio and J.D. vance standing behind him. Trump posting an AI generated image. Look at this. An AI generated image of Trump in the Oval Office meeting with people. And the map on the map behind him shows both Greenland and Canada as parts of the United States and Venezuela. You may or may not notice the detail of Venezuela also drenched in an American flag. This is the. By the way, this was at 1 in the morning, 12:58am that Donald Trump posted this. He is up all night. Here's the text message from Macron posting messages from world leaders and threats. And this is something that the supporters of Trump want to reduce to. He's communicating in an unconventional way. Trump likes to, you know, put his cards out in the open and show what he's working with. This is what we voted for. Nobody's going to misinterpret Trump. He really knows how to negotiate. He knows how to do deals. I am always careful. You know, sometimes when we say this, it seems like mental illness. And a couple people will write in and they'll go, you know, David, most mentally ill people, they're not violent. Most mentally ill people aren't stealing things from others. Don't reduce to mental illness. What are really character flaws at the end of the day? And you know, I'm with you. But we can't ignore that Trump does seem cognitively unhinged. Trump was always an egomaniac. You grow up in, you know, rich guy in Queens and Manhattan, shielded for your entire life from the very people that now have become your political base. You get everything you want you sexually assault women and mostly get away with it. That is going to create an ego, self centered egomaniac who's going to go, I take what I want and that's it. That is not mental illness. Those are personality realities about Trump. Those are character realities about Trump. But we also can't ignore that he does not seem mentally fit to be in this position. It's both. And so it's not about reducing or diminishing Trump's behavior merely to mental illness. Especially since mental illness can just mean, oh, I have anxiety. That doesn't mean you're going to go out there going, we've got to take territory and I'm going to sexually assault this person and that person and then demand a Nobel Peace Prize. No, but we have to account for the fact that this is a deeply troubled individual with regard to his moral compass. And also he does seem to be having some kind of. It could be what we characterize as mental illness or a neurological problem. It is all of the above. And he spent the entire night posting this crap to Truth Central. Exactly. Kristi Noemi had an exchange with a reporter and it is really the encapsulation of how immigration rhetoric works in the Trump era. She was asked a very simple question. What percentage of the people that ICE has arrested have committed a criminal offense? Now, remember, I want to set the stage for you being in the country. Undocumented is a civil infraction. We were told by the administration we will go after those who have committed criminal offenses. Right. Somebody who's here illegally and committed a murder, committed a sexual assault, committed burglary, etc. And we know that that is not what is going on. The question from Margaret Brennan is not a gotcha. It's not ideological. It is a question that has an answer that is a number. What percentage of the people in custody have committed crimes? Kristi Noem says 70%. And then there is an exchange which I think is okay for Margaret Brennan, but we're going to dig into it more.
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Sure, but you just said millions. What's the breakdown of the percentage of those who you have in custody who have actually committed a criminal offense versus just the civil infraction? Every single individual has committed a crime. Both. 70% of them have committed or have charges against them on violent crimes and crimes that they are charged with or have been convicted of that have come from other countries that are here illegally, first of all. And then they have committed a criminal act while they've been here or in their home countries as well. It's not 70%. Yes, it is. It absolutely is. 70% of everyone. Changing your percentage, you, you pick and choose what numbers you think work. But that is the facts is that 70% of the people that we have detained have charges against them or have been convicted of charges, and they need to be brought to justice. And we're going to keep doing that no matter how much you guys keep lying and don't tell the public the truth. It absolutely is that these law enforcement officers are out there every day doing the work to protect the American people, and they will keep doing that because they believe in enforcing the A law, which is exactly what President Trump has charged them with. Okay, well, our Reporting is that 47%, based on your agency's own numbers, 47% have criminal convictions against them. But let's talk about the other number again. Absolutely, again.
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And of course, it's funny when Kristi Noem is saying my own agency's numbers are not accurate. So let's go through the different levels of fact checking. First fact check was Margaret Brennan saying, you're saying 70% of those in custody have committed crimes. Your own agency publications say it's only 47%. Okay, so that's already a difference. But According to track reports.org the ICE data actually says 74% of detainees as of November. So that maybe this changed in the last six weeks. 74% of detainees as of November have no criminal convictions. And even among the remaining group that that does, many of those convictions are traffic violations. So Kristi Noem says 70% are violent criminals. The real data is inverted. 74% have no criminal conviction. And of the 26% that do, a significant portion, these are really minor offenses like traffic convictions. This matters for reasons that go way beyond just, oh, she looked dumb during a TV appearance. We are seeing the justification of raids, detentions, militarized enforcement, treatment of migrants, and by the way, treatment of American citizens as well, who are caught up in the entire thing. We are told this is a public safety emergency. When you actually are detaining 74% people who have committed no crime, and you are wrapping up in that American citizens and all of these different innocent bystanders, you are manufacturing consent for a policy that makes no sense based on the actual data. And then they get caught lying about it. And instead of correcting the record, remember Margaret Brennan cited dhs, his own data. Christine Young was, no, it's not. No, it's not. No, it's not. She smiles, she dismisses the data, and she promises some mystery correct numbers that she never actually gives. We have the data. The real numbers are very inconvenient, Trump said. We're going to go after the worst of the worst. We're going to go after criminals. And the reality is there aren't that many of them. Now. I don't know of anyone on the left. Find them if you see them. I don't know of anyone on the left that is dying on the Hill of convicted rapists who are here illegally should get to stay. I don't know anyone who's arguing that there is a relatively tiny amount of those. And by the way, they were being deported under Obama as well. And so whatever you think about this deportation program as a matter of policy, the idea that Trump is doing it much better than Obama, Obama did it without all of this fanfare, without militarizing the streets. You could go, I disagreed with it then and I disagree with it now. Or you could say, I agree with it now. But then you should be ready to acknowledge that somehow Barack Obama was able to do it without throwing innocent American citizens into it, without throwing individuals who had committed no crime into it, without militarizing the streets, without involving the possibility of federal troops and state National Guards clashing the way we're seeing in Minnesota. So if you agree with the idea of what Trump is doing, you should be saying, Obama did it better. He did more deportation, and he did it without all of this Michigan chaos that we are seeing. But they're not going to say that. They're not going to say that because they only support it when Trump does it. They only think 3% inflation is good when it's under Trump. When it was 3% inflation under Biden, inflation was out of control. Sleepy Joe doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't know left from right. He doesn't know if it's night or day. But When Trump's got 3% inflation, he fixed it. It's all good. And we could apply this to a whole bunch of other areas. No. No wars. Well, what about everything Trump is doing? Invasions and kidnappings? Well, it's different. Trump's doing it right. He's doing it the right way. We can't expect them to ever hold consistent standards. We can't. And so we've got to assume that they will be hypocrites and work around it. I love it when a box of bottles of wine from Naked Wines shows up at my house. We unpack it. I'm partial to the white wine. My girlfriend is more partial to The Red Wine. Our sponsor, Naked Wines, is a wine club that will connect you directly with independent winemakers all over the world. This means you are getting world class wine delivered to your door at up to 60% less than what you would pay in stores. And the reason is very easy. No middlemen, no huge markups. Just the winemakers and you. Every box has introduced us to bottles we never would have picked up on our own. Makes any regular weeknight dinner feel a little more special. And it's an easy way to enjoy great wine without overthinking it too much. Whether you're a wine expert or you're like me and you know virtually nothing at all about wine, head to naked wines.com/pacman. Use the code Pacman as the code and password to get 6 bottles for only 39, 99 shipping included. The link is in the description. Let's talk about the de facto destruction of the First Amendment through the repression of anti ICE protests. This is maybe one of the most important things that is going on right now in terms of simply do people really have the ability to exercise their rights? Now, the scenarios that I am going to draw up for you here, they often start the same way. You've got a few people on a sidewalk, they've got their phones out, someone's yelling, what the hell are you doing? At an ICE officer. Someone else is looking for a badge number and there's no badge number or whatever because a lot of these individuals we simply cannot identify. Federal agents are in tactical gear. They're in unmarked vehicles. Their faces are covered, their weapons are visible. They don't say very much. And then it starts to escalate. And it doesn't escalate because anybody attacks an ICE agent. It doesn't escalate because anybody is interfering, but because someone spoke up. And then there's a shift. And this is what we are trying to wrap our heads around. The First Amendment has not been repealed. The First Amendment has been weaponized against the very people that are using it. Last week we played video of our friend Jesse Dallimore. He was out there doing what Americans are supposed to be allowed to do. Yelling, criticizing, calling out federal agents for what they were doing in public. He didn't touch anybody, he didn't block anybody, he didn't threaten anyone. He used his voice and he was able to walk away successfully. A lot of other people have not been able to simply walk away. We've seen videos of the people shoved to the ground, people dragged, people zip tied in many cases, not, not that it makes it right either way. But these are American citizens who are not even the targets of these ICE raids. And they are simply speaking. Sometimes they're yelling, that's true, but that is a form of speech. And they are treated like criminals for nothing more than simply being there, filming, yelling. They're not rioting. They're not vandalizing. They are simply protesting and speaking. And this is a really important contrast because it shows how arbitrary this has become. One person can scream in an agent's face and walk away. Another person is standing 10ft away with a phone and gets up, gets tackled, and dragged down the street. There's no clear rule anymore as to what you aren't actually allowed to do. It's. It's panic, and it's. At any point, you know, you know, the whole resisting arrest thing. Well, we roughed him up because he was resisting arrest. The new thing has become you're impeding our operation, really. I'm 10ft away on the sidewalk with a phone. I'm just. I'm just speaking and filming. Well, that has become the new resisting arrest. This should terrify anybody who cares about civil liberties. Right wingers and left wingers. Rights don't survive based on the vibe of the ICE officer who's making the determination. And what's happening with ICE right now is not just enforcement. It's an intimidatory practice. It is taking a. A conversation at a protest speech and making it dangerous. And the crazy thing, and the reason I'm talking about this today, is that it is working. They are successfully suppressing the First Amendment. A ton of people are opting not to protest because they see that just their speech at protests can get them thrown to the ground or even worse. You watch the footage and you think to yourself, wow, I agree with the protesters. I hate what ICE is doing, but I don't want to get my face smashed into concrete for yelling. I don't want to get a pepper ball to the head and maybe end up blind. I don't want to lose an eye because of a less lethal round that was fired. I don't want to explain to my kid why I was arrested for holding a phone and I can't pick them up at daycare. So that is not a cowardly reaction. I think it's important to say, if you've been watching this and saying, I'm not going to participate, it is rational based on what is going on. You are being asked to risk your physical safety to exercise a right that is supposed to be safe by Definition, it's in the Constitution. It's the First Amendment to the Constitution. How a constitutional right dies in practice is exactly this. Anybody can go, we haven't repealed the First Amendment. It's still right there. Nobody passed the law that makes it illegal to protest. Nobody has said, you are no longer allowed to voice your opinions. But they made the consequences unpredictable and violent enough that participation goes way down and fear does the rest. There's one other layer here that is even more dangerous, which is lack of competence. A lot of these ice encounters are being handled by agents barely trained to do anything, never mind deal with crowds, speech or dissent. People who see yelling and they go, oh, that's impeding what we're doing. They see a camera and they treat it like it's a gun. And then they say, your mere presence here is interfering with what we are supposed to be doing. That's how you end up with these wild escalations where nothing illegal is happening. You look at it and you go, nothing illegal is happening. And then somebody gets thrown to the ground, and every second of it feels like it's about to explode. And so when agents are this jumpy and this opaque about their practices and this insulated from accountability, another important thing, everybody's in danger. The bystanders are in danger. The journalists are in danger. People doing nothing but watching end up in danger. And that is how this has crossed a very dangerous line. The cost of speech isn't just arrest now, which, by the way, would be bad enough. It would be bad enough if it was like, you protest, you might get arrested simply for speaking. It is now bodily harm up to and including death. Too loud, you might get tackled, too, too angry, you say an insult, you might end up getting beaten or dragged. And so when we say, why aren't more people in the streets? People see what happens. And I am not suggesting we need less protest, we need more. But at the individual level, there is a suppression of the First Amendment happening by. It's sort of like, you know, you pull the slot machine and you don't know what you're going to get. I either lose my dollar or maybe I win 20, or maybe I win a thousand. And similarly, I go to a protest to say, I disagree with what is happening in my country and you might be completely fine, or you could end up injured, arrested, or maybe even dead. And so when we see people like Jesse Dallimore yelling and surviving, but then we also see others with very different experiences, we see the randomness of it and how quickly it can turn. And once it turns and goes sideways, there is very little protection. This is a de facto dismantling of the First Amendment. A right only exists if you aren't needing to gamble your life to exercise the right. If there's a chance you lose your life by exercising the right, I don't know that we really have that right anymore. And once a government normalizes treating speech as a physical threat, it doesn't stay limited to immigration protests. And so today it's the ICE stuff. But is labor protests going to be the next thing? Climate protests, anti war protests, cop watchers, journalists, anybody who's inconvenient. And so we are going down a very dangerous path right now. Not just that people are getting hurt, but they are. But the message is getting out there. Speak if you want, but you've got to understand what it might cost you. And it might cost you a lot. And when people start deciding that the potential cost for exercising a right is too high, the silence, the self censorship does the rest. I don't know that I have any suggestions. The first step is identifying the problem, and I want to hear from you. Info@david pakman.com There is a viral video showing Tristan Tate, Nick Fuentes, Sneako Clavicular, Myron Gaines, Justin Waller, and maybe some others. If you don't know who those people are, just stay with me. Laughing and singing along to Kanye West's Heil Hitler song as they are going to a Miami nightclub. Now, I know many in my audience have no idea who these people are. And to be frank, other than Tristan Tate and Nick Fuentes, I didn't know who these people were until a few days ago. But this is important. Regardless, stick with this. These are people with huge followings. They are flirting with Hitler and they're flirting with Hitler love more and more. And there is an incredible irony in it. Let's first look at the video and then I'm going to explain it to you. The punchline is, Hitler would have killed most of them, and yet they worship him. All right, take a look at this. Okay. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Okay, got it. Okay, so let me tell you the irony of this performance, all right? These males, men are using the image of strong, authoritarian, alpha Hitler to justify their admiration for a Nazi regime. And the hilarious thing is that if you look at the racial laws that Hitler favored, the social purity laws that Hitler favored, most of these men would have been eliminated or sterilized under the very regime that they are glorifying. Think of that. You know, the Nazi master Race stuff was not just about being pro male or anti woke. It was like a strict pseudo scientific hierarchy based on Nordic Germanic blood. And if you didn't meet the Aryan criteria, you were labeled subhuman. Now just think for a moment. Tristan Tate and his brother Andrew Tate, their father was African American. Under the laws of Hitler, they would be classified as Rhineland bastards or subhuman of the first degree or something like that. The point is they would have been sterilized as were other mixed race kids under Hitler. This other guy, let's see which one it is. Just so people get a sense. The guy in the middle on the left here, Myron Gaines, I guess his real name is Amru Fuddle, unusual last name. He's of Sudanese descent. And the Nazis viewed Africans and those of African descent as racially inferior and a biological threat. He would have been at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. He would have been killed. Sneako is another one of the. I think it's the guy on the right here. He's Filipino, Haitian, Puerto Rican. Do you think in Hitler's worldview there was room for multiethnic live streamers? Do you think that that's the case? Front left is Braden Peters, who is known for going through a lot of different techniques and procedures to look more attractive, including steroids, bone smashing, jaw surgeries and all of this stuff. The Nazis were obsessed with natural physical perfection. And they were also eugenicists and they viewed inferior people who require medical intervention to fix themselves as a drain on the state. Do you this, this clavicular guy is infertile because of steroid use. That's called the biological failure for the Nazis. That was often going to get you sterilized straight up. And then we have Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist. He's, he's in the back here. Okay, here's a Heil Hitler salute from one of them. Anyway, you all know Nick Fuentes. He's in the, he's in the farthest back right side here. He is the most vocally pro white. He is of mixed heritage that includes Mexican heritage and of course Nazi doctrine. First of all, Nazi doctrine viewed Mediterranean and Southern Europeans, like Italians as lesser. And the Mexican stuff is not going to play with Hitler either. So there. And then religious identities, Tate, the Tates and, and I guess Andrew Tate is on here. It looked like he was sitting in the front at one point, I guess. Yeah, so Andrew Tate is there as well. So the critique also applies there. The Tates are Muslim. Myron Gaines, I think is Muslim. And that is also not going to fly with Hitler. So listen, the whole point I'm trying to make here is I don't think these guys are flirting with Nazism because they understand it. They are doing it because they have absorbed a sort of TikTok brain version of history where Hitler just means power, dominance, rebellion and owning the libs. And if you strip away the esthetics and the slogans, they have no clue what they are cheering for. This was not a regime that idolized mixed race, Muslim sex trafficking, alleged influencers. They would not have done well. They would not have been revered in Hitler's world. It was a bureaucratic death machine obsessed with racial bookkeeping and obedience and fertility and submission to the state. And so being sexual libertines and race mixers and religious deviants and all of it, it was not going to go well. This is the deeper danger of the manosphere. It's not just radicalizing young men, which it is. It's also lying to young men and it is selling fascism as empowerment when fascism is actually about erasing individuals entirely. It is telling young, young men you can be a warrior and a leader and an alpha, but history tells us they would be disposable bodies at best and enemies of the state at worse. Email me your thoughts about this info@David Pakman. By the way, if you missed today's membership special, huge discount, like 60% off, 70% off, something like that. If you missed it for whatever reason, it's today only. Email me info@david pakman.com say David, give me that. Give me that special code. We've got a phenomenal bonus show for you today. We'll talk about more of what's going on in Minneapolis. We'll talk about Jon Stewart potentially running for president. We will talk about Don Lemon caught in the crossfire, Don Lamond. All of that and more on the bonus show. You can sign up@join pacman.com but get the discount. Why not? It's today. Email me infoavidpakman.com Marketing is hard, but.
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I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads, go to libsyn ads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today.
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