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This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up, required compatibility and availability various 18 plus. There's a stunning new international survey which finds that confidence in Donald Trump has collapsed to just 23%. And the reputation of the United States is crashing as well. Four years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Donald Trump is not apologizing. They're actually still bragging about it. And we're going to look at who made it happen and why it matters and maybe how we can prevent it from happening again. Now, meanwhile, the reflecting pool saga is getting even more absurd. They've put up fences around the algae infested pool after Trump's weird claims about knife wielding vandals making a slit. And there are questions swirling around Mitch McConnell. He is in the hospital, we don't know what hospital and we don't know why. And there are now people saying, is he even really alive? And then there's this bizarre report suggesting that Donald Trump may be receiving an experimental drug that has only been approved for one person in the United States, a 79 year old man in April, which is when Donald Trump was 79 years old. There's a lot more detail to it. We're going to get to all of it. Today, The gold standard for public opinion polling is Pew Research Center. And Pew Research center has found that the entire world is turning against the United States. And unfortunately, it's because of Donald Trump. And I say unfortunately because he is going to be here for several more years. Only 23% have confidence in Donald Trump. Around the world now, Pew Research center has been tracking opinion really for decades. They are one of the best. And the numbers are ugly, dilapidated, disgusting, shriveled and flaccid. I mean, it's just these tiny, pathetic, shrunken numbers for Trump. And I believe that this is bad for every American. Now let's first look at the Data. Pew polled 36 countries. A median of 23% of adults say that they are confident in Trump's leadership. 23%. That's fewer than one out of four. And the kind of tragic part of all of it is that the ratings for the United States have flown, fallen along with lack of confidence in Donald Trump himself. In a number of countries, confidence in the United States has fallen by double digits in a single year. As Donald Trump just sort of continues this reign of incompetence and decline. Look at the collapse among some of our top allies. In fact, in Canada four years ago under Biden, 83% of Canadians said, hey, we see the United States as a reliable partner, 83% under Biden. Today, only 35% of Canadians trust the United States. It is not lost on me that when Trump was president, he insisted that the country was respected under him during his first term. And then when Biden became president, Trump insisted that the United States is no longer respected because Biden is president. But if we reelect Trump, which the country did, the US Would go back to being respected globally under Donald Trump. But much like many of the other things that Donald Trump says, the opposite is true. Respect for the United States around the world has completely collapsed since Donald Trump came back to power. Now think back to the Iraq war under George W. Bush in 2003. There were a lot of people around the world who didn't like us then. We are less popular now than when George W. Bush was carrying out his ill advised war based on faulty intelligence in Iraq in 2003. Germans are more negative in their opinion about the United States taking today under Trump than they were during the height of the ill advised Iraq war. Think about that. The countries that most dislike and distrust Trump are pretty diverse. This is another interesting angle. Turkey, a Muslim country. Sweden, a Scandinavian social democracy. Mexico, a Latin American Catholic country. These are some of the countries that least trust Trump and they are very different among themselves. Now, I already know, you know, if there's any magazine watching, I already know how magas react to this sort of news. They go, who cares, who cares about, you know, the opinions of other countries? We're the United States. We're right about everything. These other countries are wrong about everything. You know, we, these sissy Italians with their espresso, the French people with their steak frites, don't like Trump. Or, you know, David, your fellow Argentinians with your delicious Milanese and empanadas and your cool coffee shops, you guys in Argentina don't like Trump, we don't care. Screw you. And it's very funny. But I would say to them, hold on a second. You should care about global opinion of the United States if you care about American, American jobs. When foreign consumers and investors and tourists and businesses lose confidence and trust in the United States, they don't travel to the United States. As much. They buy less from the United States, they invest less here, and they look for alternatives in other parts of the world. What about national security? When allies trust the United States and the president, they are more likely to share intelligence and they're more likely to agree with or support American decisions about sanctions or treaties or whatever. If you're a national security hawk, other countries are more likely to buy American weapons. I mean, like, it's not really. I'm not big on the military industrial complex, but if you are, you would see that more American weapons are purchased from your favorite defense contractors. If other countries trust the United States, we're more likely to get cooperation on security. All of those things are more likely when the United States is respected. What about the dollar? This is another big issue. The dollar's dominance depends partly on trust. America's financial advantages with the dollar as the reserve currency to a degree exists because other countries see the United States as stable. They see the United States as reliable, and that confidence is an asset. And if global opinion doesn't matter, why does Trump constantly talk about being respected? In other words, Trump himself claims, endlessly claimed, when Biden was president, no one respects us and it's really important that our countries respect us. And now that he's back, Trump claims other countries do respect me. So clearly Trump believes that it matters. It just so happens that we are less respected than we've been in a very long time. Now, let me say one other thing. The military understands this a lot better than politicians. Generals and diplomats spend decades building relationships militarily and diplomatically because they all know that when we have cooperation from allies, American lives are safer financially. We are better off during conflicts and crises when we have those military and diplomatic relationships. So one of the confusions that I think underlies the sort of flippant nature of a lot of these magas going we don't give a damn. Being feared is not the same as being respected. Countries can dislike you, distrust you, and still temporarily cooperate out of necessity. But that is a much weaker position than having genuine allies who see the President as respectable and stable. You don't really have to care about foreign feelings. You should care about is the United States stronger, wealthier, safer and more influential when the President is respected or when the president is not respected, I believe the answer is obvious. And global confidence affects all of these areas and the numbers are an embarrassing disaster. And as you look around the world, you are writing off the opinions of others at our own financial, national security, and even socio cultural peril. I would Argue embarrassingly bad numbers. Today is the four year anniversary of when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the United States. Roe v. Wade was landmark legislation, landmark Supreme Court decision rather from 1973, which guaranteed some minimum access to abortion federally and a Supreme Court that had on it three justices that were nominated by Donald Trump made this decision four years ago. Now, I believe there are three really important points in thinking now four years out from the overturning of Roe v. Wade that need to be made and I'm going to make them one by one now. First point, MAGA and Trump and that whole contingent, they love this. They bragged about it. This was their goal to get Roe v. Wade overturned. This was not like an accident or a side effect or a nice to have. They were planning this from day one of when it looked like Donald Trump had a shot at being President of the United States. And because of the age and other circumstances of the supreme court back in 2016, we could project the winner of the 2016 election was going to get some Supreme Court picks. Now just a couple reminders of this. Here is Donald Trump bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade, saying he did it, he's proud, all of that stuff.
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For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated. And I did it and I'm proud to have done it. They wanted to get it back. Right? You wouldn't be have that. There would be no question. Should nobody else.
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He loves it. They are cheering and bragging. These are old clips, but it's just a reminder when it happened. Here's one other one, especially since I
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was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides wanted and in fact demanded be ended.
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Roe v. Wade and then in fact Donald Trump. This is a crazy. We're pulling out old videos here from the archives. Trump argued that Americans criticizing Roe v. Wade being overturned should be put in jail because it's disrespectful to the justices.
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They were very brave, the Supreme Court, very brave and they take a lot of hits because of it. It should be illegal. What happens, you know, you have these guys like playing the ref like the great Bobby Knight. These people should be put in jail. The way they talk about put them
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in jail for the things they say, oh wait, do we have a first Amendment? Who cares, It's Donald Trump. So point number one is they had a plan to do this. They executed on the plan and it in a while I don't respect at all what they did. There is a Lack of long term thinking and execution in the United States. And you've got to hand it to them. They got Trump elected instead of Hillary. They knew Trump would get some Supreme Court picks. They knew that once Trump got those Supreme Court nominations confirmed, states would file lawsuits around abortion, one of them would get appealed to the Supreme Court. And now we've got a shot at overturning Roe v. Wade. They were capable of carrying out a multi year plan to make this happen. And it's important to remember that that is possible. It is possible. Second, who we elect for president really matters. Now a lot of my audience might go, of course it matters, David, that's why we vote. Why are you even saying that? Well, remember that there were a lot of people back in 2016 who were sort of suggesting it doesn't really matter whether Hillary Clinton or Donald, Donald Trump win. Many of you, if you were watching this show back in 2016, will remember that. I was saying at the time, guys, the Supreme Court really matters in every election, but it really matters in this particular one. And there were some people on the left going, ah, Hillary versus Trump. They're two sides of the same coin. They're both corporate stooges, they're part of the same elite overclass. And Hillary isn't progressive enough and she'll start four wars and I don't really care who wins, I might stay home. Maybe I'll vote for Donald Trump as a goof. And you even had some commentators who were saying, I will never vote Hillary and my audience shouldn't vote Hillary. If Hillary Clinton had won, which she almost did, came down to what? 100000 votes in three states. If Hillary Clinton had won, we would have Roe v. Wade right now. Now, would she have been a perfect president? There's no such thing. Would we have agreed with Hillary on everything? Of course not. But it's the four year anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the repeal. We would have Roe v. Wade if Donald Trump had lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016. So this is second point. It's a reminder. Even when you don't love either candidate, the results matter and can lead to very different outcomes. I'd rather have Roe v. Wade right now than not have it. Thirdly, and this is maybe the most important forward looking thing, do not believe them when they say this is where it stops. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, I said to everybody, they're not stopping here. They say, we want to bring it back to the states. That was what a lot of the Advocates of repealing Roe v. Wade would say, we're not trying to ban abortion. We're just trying to let every state decide. Because one state, Florida, might decide something different than Connecticut. That was their sales pitch, let states decide federalism. We're not going further than that. But look at what happened in the four years since Roe v. Wade was overturned. A whole bunch of states rushed immediately. I mean, within hours of Roe v. Wade being overturned, you started seeing this. They rushed to pass near total abortion bans. And we saw women denied care during miscarriages and medical emergencies, doctors leaving states where they were worried, I'm going to get prosecuted for providing health services. And immediately Republicans started saying, hey, maybe we do want to look at some national abortion restrictions. And some of the same legal theories that were used against Roe have been talked about with regard to could we ban contraception? Could we ban ivf? Could we do away with other privacy rights? So the lesson is it's also bigger than, than just abortion. They spent decades telling you what they want to do. They want abortion to be illegal. And part of that one stop on that journey was to overturn Roe v. Wade. And a lot of people were like, they're never going to be able to do it. Hillary versus Trump doesn't matter. Don't worry about it. And then they did it. And then we figured out what they want to do next. And I'm worried we're going to make the exact same mistake again. Let's not make the same mistake again. The elections matter. When they tell you what they want to do, believe them. If you run a business, customers can slip through the cracks like grains of sand. Missed calls, forgotten follow ups, dropped conversations. Quo, spelled Q, U O, is the communication system built so you don't miss calls. Your team can handle calls and texts from a single shared number with every thread visible. Replies are faster, customers are taken care of and they feel it and everybody gets the full picture. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2 with over 3,000 reviews trusted by over 90,000 businesses. 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Which is why I recommend Venice. It's sort of like a VPN for AI. Our sponsor Venice gives you access to all the best and Latest language models ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok Deep Seek as well as leading image, video and music generation models all in one place. But you can use them privately and anonymously and it's completely uncensored. On Venice, you can ask the AI for anything and it won't say no. Nothing is tied to your identity because your prompts are encrypted. They never even leave your device, so no corporation or government can spy on you. And those conversations access the world's leading AI models privately. You'll get 20% off any plan when you go to Venice AI/Pacman and use the code Pacman. The link is in the description. This is of course an audience supported program. I need your help today and I have a free free ask that will take you 15 seconds. Right wing podcasters are banding together to try to push progressive podcasts off of Spotify and Apple podcasts top shows. All I'm asking you to do today go to either or both Spotify and Apple podcasts, find my podcast and leave a rating. That's it. That's all I'm asking you to do. If you're feeling extra generous, maybe make sure you're following or subscribe to my podcast. On those platforms. None of this costs a penny. It's 15 seconds of your time. Let's try to beat back this concerted effort they're making to have Right Wing slop dominate the news podcast charts. It's ugly, ugly stuff that I can assure you. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe I have located the surveillance footage showing exactly what and who damaged the reflecting pool. I think I have the video. Let me play it for you right now. Look at the pool. As you can see there, his motor cave drove right through the empty pool. Last month the President announced Cruz will paint the pool in a color he called American Flag Blue. A reporter asked the President about his priorities considering the US is still at war. With Iran. So of course, this is sort of tongue in cheek. The reflecting pool story has entered a phase so absurd that I, I don't even know where reality ends and parody begins at this point. Remember what Donald Trump told us? He said someone took a knife or a box cutter and they made a slit in my rubber of the reflecting pool. That's what Trump said. And he said people have been arrested. He said it's vandalism, it's sabotage. These are criminals, the whole thing. And we have not found any surveillance footage, even though the area is under 24 hour surveillance, that that actually took place. But we did find that the length of the so called damage happens to coincide with Donald Trump's motorcade driving across the reflecting pole. Now, I'm not even claiming that that's what did the damage, but I'm certainly suggesting that it's more likely that a motorcade of heavy reinforced SUVs are more likely to have damaged it than some lone individual, whether they're from Antrifa or not, with a box cutter making a slit in Trump's rubber. And you know what they're doing now? It just keeps getting more and more humiliating. They are putting fences around the reflecting pool. Fences. I guess Trump's finally building the wall. Here's footage from TMZ of a fence going up. What we see here, I'll describe it as workers carrying sections of chain link fence and setting up a barrier. We're going to fix it up with a no bid contract. It'll get damaged and then we'll block it and nobody is going to be able to go near the thing. It's beyond parody, ladies and gentlemen, we have another video of this little construction project. You can see that National Rent Defense doing the incredibly patriotic job of fencing in the reflecting pool. All right, why is everything so humiliating? Like it, Every single project starts with a combination of incompetence, nepotism, cronyism, or all three. It goes wrong, and then it requires more money and draws more attention to itself for the degree of humiliation that it causes. Now I have a bit of great news. In the middle of all of this, our algae collection, my summer algae clothing collection is selling off the charts. Yesterday we put up on the screen my green algae collection. And there's make algae great again hats, there's green shirts that say reflecting pool blue. These are just flying out. Someone ordered $600 worth of these yesterday. And by the way, to that person, let me, this is a very interesting thing. Someone in proximity to D.C. i won't say exactly where, but basically like D.C. ordered like 20 of the green American flag blue shirts. If you're planning something interesting, like if this is for a softball team and everybody's uniforms are going to be the green algae shirts, or if you're doing some kind of stuff, standout or protest or activation at the reflecting pool with the shirts, please let us know and send us pictures because when I see someone buy 20 of those shirts, I think something's going on. So Anyway, those@store.david pakman.com are selling off the charts. People love it. Now think of the progression of how this has gone. They spent days describing what happened as a horrific act of anti patriotic vandalism. Trump personally told us about mysterious criminals allegedly attacking the pool with knives and box cutters. And even though he originally told us nobody with a knife would be able to do anything. And the solution we've arrived at is we're going to put a fence around a pool of algae. If I had told you at the beginning, we knew it would go bad, but if I had told you at the beginning of this project that this is how it was going to end up, it would have been too on the nose. I don't think anybody would have believed it. Imagine pitching this to a network executive. The president becomes obsessed with a reflecting pool which is too dirty. He spends 15 million in an OBED contract to fix it. It doesn't work because the algae comes back. He blames vandals and people with knives and then puts a fence around it so no one can enjoy it. Any executive would go, that's so stupid. We can't do that as a show. Like, we've got to tone it down, but that's where we are. And what I think is amazing is that, listen, the reflecting pool is just the reflecting pool. Except it really is a perfect metaphor for the administration where problems that aren't really problems are treated like emergencies. Inconveniences are crises. And when there's any setback, you need a scapegoat. And then you need to find some way to make the entire project even more embarrassing. And in the middle of all this, don't forget that the algae is still there. The algae didn't hear Trump's press conference. The algae doesn't care that it's supposed to be banned from the reflecting pool. Trump can post whatever he wants to troth central, and the algae doesn't give a damn. It's just like Covid. Covid was going to disappear like a miracle by April of 2020. And Covid was like, yeah, I don't think so. And the algae apparently isn't either. Because nature is stubbornly unimpressed by Donald Trump. I have to tell you one unexpected side effect of this entire saga. I think the algae is winning. I think Trump is being defeated by the algae. It has survived people getting arrested. Supposedly it's surviving the chain link fence. And, and it is one of the most pathetic embarrassments of this presidency where a president whose day is now reportedly restricted to 12 to 5 is spending days talking about a dirty pool and mysterious knife wielding vandals who we just can't find on video. And what we're left with is a fence around green water. It is all so damn humiliating. Is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell alive right now? Oh boy. Speculation is running rampant. Many of you wrote in to me about this yesterday. 84 year old Republican Senator Mitch McConnell has been in an undisclosed hospital for undisclosed reasons for 10 days now. His office has put out statements saying he's recovering and he's getting excellent care, but we have no idea what condition he's getting care for. His office did confirm Yesterday that Mitch McConnell will continue not voting in the Senate this week. And the claims of his recovery are really weird when they won't tell us what condition he's recovering from. This is of course not his first hospitalization this year. He was hospitalized some months ago for what I think was a flu like illness. And they won't even tell us what hospital he's in. Undisclosed hospital, treated for an undisclosed condition after falling badly and having a number of these freezes in public while he was speaking. No explanation was really given for that either. In fact, that's a whole other thing. Mitch McConnell had two incidents with where he was giving a press conference and he. Froze. And afterwards his office said only he's feeling better. Feeling better. But what do you mean? That's not like, oh, he had a cold and he's feeling better. It was something very strange that was going on. Now, Mitch McConnell has already said he's not running for reelection and now people are speculating he has died and it has been covered up. Now let me talk about a few angles on this. What do we know? He's been in the hospital for 10 days. That's not a short stay. That's a long time for a top senator to be away from work and hospitalized. He is the Senate Majority leader. Add to that that we don't know why he's in the hospital. It starts to get murkier. Add to that that they won't tell us which hospital he's in. That gets even murkier. Now there have been people claiming this is a cover up in the death of Mitch McConnell. Now you might say, why would they cover it up? The reason that some are writing to me is, David, they're covering up Mitch McConnell's death because they know that Andy Beshear, who is the Democratic governor of Kentucky, would appoint a Democrat to replace Mitch McConnell if Mitch McConnell died. That's the speculation. There is a little problem with that theory, which is that Kentucky doesn't do gubernatorial appointments. Kentucky is one of the few states that would immediately set up a special election. And so the legislature isn't involved in replacing senators. The governor is not involved in replacing senators. The way it works is candidates would get on the ballot, there's a bipartisan process, they've got to get a thousand signatures. Then they do an election. It's a primary like system. If a candidate wins 50% of the vote, they get the seat. If nobody gets 50% of the vote, the top two have a runoff 70 days later. So the point is it can't be that they are covering up Mitch McConnell's death to avoid Bashir appointing a Democrat because Bashir would not get to appoint a Democrat. Now what do I think is going on? I have no idea. We have this kind of broader gerontocracy in the United States. A government biological by the elderly. And I think we also have a transparency issue. I think these really are the two stories. Whatever is happening with Mitch McConnell, there's this basic transparency problem where one of the most powerful people in the federal government can disappear for 10 days. We don't know where he is or why he's in the hospital. It's not even really about just Mitch McConnell. We've had questions about the health incapacity of aging Democrats and Republicans. Presidents, senators, representatives, judges. It's a system that keeps reinforcing the status quo. Without giving us a real opportunity to talk about this. Now, I, I don't know that I even have to mention this, but I will. With age comes experience. This is not like an ageist crazy thing of get, get anybody older than me out of government. We just do have objectively a gerontocracy where even accounting for age bringing experience, the median age of our federal elected officials doesn't even come close to being representative of the median age of adults in the United States. I know if you average in 2 year olds, but I'm talking about just adults here. There is a difference between age and fitness is the other thing. We interviewed Robert Reich last week and he sort of joked, Listen, I'm 10 days younger than Trump and even I don't think I should be president. People just slow down at 80, whatever. Even still, though, there is a significant difference between someone like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump on the one hand, and on the other hand, folks like Robert Reich and Bernie Sanders. So I think the real question is, are we getting information about the health of officials who are making decisions so that we can then consider that information in how we vote? Because we have a political system that concentrates power in a very small number of individuals. They stay in office for decades and suddenly when one of those people is unable to do their duties or they're gone, the public suddenly discovers, man, there's not really a lot of contingency planning here. There's not a lot of enforced transparency. And the US Is now routinely putting voters in a position where we have to choose between leaders who would have been well beyond traditional retirement age a generation ago. Now, you could say that that's good, or you could say that that's bad. I think that there are a number of concerns with it. But if you look in the private sector, if a CEO running a Fortune 500 company repeatedly froze in public, fell down, disappeared into an unknown hospital for an unknown condition, and shareholders were told nothing, there would be huge scrutiny. I would argue government is more important than any one company. So don't we need at least as much scrutiny and transparency when it comes to the federal government? So Listen, is Mitch McConnell alive? I have no idea. I think the broader story is so much of American government depends on this small group of elderly folks whose health status is a matter of national importance and, and is not being dealt with with any level of transparency. What do you think? Is Mitch alive? Is he dead? What's going on? If you're trying to get away from cigarettes or vaping, one of the first practical questions is what you replace them with. Especially if you're not ready to eliminate nicotine immediately. Check out our sponsor, Zipix Nicotine Toothpicks Zipix uses quality plant derived nicotine with a very short list of ingredients. It gives you another option for managing nicotine with no smoke or vapor. Zipix comes in six flavors. There's two or three milligram options, lets you control the nicotine as compared to a cigarette or vape. They're also easy to use throughout the day and in places where smoking or vaping isn't allowed or it would require you to step out conspicuously for a cigarette, which can cause other problems. Zipix also offers caffeine and B12 toothpicks if you're reducing nicotine altogether or don't even use it at all. If you're tired of cigarettes or vaping, try Zipix Nicotine TOOTHPICKS and get 10% off your first order with code PACMAN@ZIPPIXTOOTHPICKS.COM the link is in the description. You must be 21 or older to order. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Hearing aids have gotten shockingly expensive. 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Maryland Hearing is giving my audience a pair of hearing aids for just $247 plus you'll get a free extra charging case, a $100 value. Go to shop stop md hearing.com use my promo code PACMAN. The link is in the description Donald Trump had a really tough day yesterday. He went to Pennsylvania to give a speech to voters which went horribly wrong in its own right. And we will get to that. But after landing in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump, looking a really strange color orange, holding a comically oversized umbrella, attempted to speak to reporters and and he was asked, what about your allies who have been critical of your Iran deal? People like Ted Cruz. And Trump goes, they need an education, even if they are my allies. What will you say to allies of yours like Senator Cruz who's been critical of the Iranians?
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Well, I think anybody that's been critical of it has to be educated, even if their friends are mind because we have Iran in a position that nobody's ever had. This should have been done for 47 years by other presidents. And we have Iran in a position where their military has been totally wiped out, their leadership has been wiped out, their radar has been wiped out. Everything has been wiped out. They have not a good negotiating position. But despite that and money that will be taken out of Iran is going to go to our farmers.
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So listen, the message for Ted Cruz is Ted Cruz has got to be very careful because if Ted Cruz isn't careful, Trump might just go and call his wife ugly, which he did during the 2016 Republican primary. And oh, Ted Cruz still got in line and still sucks up to Trump mostly. Now, of course, Ted Cruz is correct. This is a, this is in the best case where the deal is outlined, succeeds. It's a far weaker deal than Barack Obama had. It's not clear Iran even respects Trump enough to try to hold to the deal no matter what. The Ted Cruz actually is right to be suspicious of the deal. But Ted Cruz might find himself politically on the outs if he says the wrong thing and doesn't get in line. Now, Donald Trump is insisting that, that his version of events with regard to the reflecting pool is accurate. He goes, they brought in a knife and they cut a slit. It's the slit from hell that Trump just can't resolve.
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They've arrested I think six people on the reflecting pool. So the reflecting pool looks fantastic. I just got pictures of it. It's beautiful. But somebody went in with a knife and cut it. They cut it up good. And then they cut a 250, 350 foot slip in the form of lots of little slips.
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By the way, notice that he's called, he now seems to be calling them slips instead of slits. Very weird, horrible stuff.
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And they destroyed the grass, put a brand new big load of grass out there. They destroyed it. So it's all being fixed.
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But they put a huge load of grass after the slit in Trump's rubber pissed them off deep. Dear God. Now, what we've learned in the last 24 hours, we kind of speculated about this yesterday, but now we've learned about does seem as though they did arrest people. That doesn't mean they did anything wrong because we have video of people just kind of like looking at the reflecting pool sitting down. This is before they put the fencing up. And there's video of agents swarming, just random tourists who are like sitting at the reflecting pool. So I don't doubt for a second, second that they arrested people. Whether those people use knives to cut 300 foot slits before a load of grass was dropped, that I seriously doubt. Now, Donald Trump was asked about the fact that they have not released any of the supposed video that they have. Trump said, we've got video Reporter says, we tried to get the video, but they're not sharing it with us. And Trump goes, no, no, no, we've got that video. We're going to share it eventually. You mentioned yesterday that the Interior Department has video and photos. We reached out to them, and they haven't shared it with us. You willing to come up?
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They've arrested, I think, six people on the Reflecting pool. So the reflecting pool looks fantastic. I just got pictures of it. It's beautiful. But somebody went in with a knife and cut it. They cut it up good. And then they cut a 200, 300.
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A
So we're getting that. This is the, the, the, we're going to get the pictures sort of thing. I do have something to say about this, and I think it bridges the possibility of Trump lying with the likely reality of the situation. And it has to do exactly with the idea that you can just arrest people. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they did the underlying thing. They're detained, they may be arrested, and then you kind of move on from it. They're ultimately not charged with anything, or at a minimum, they're not charged with putting, putting a slit in the pool with a knife simply to be able to say, we did arrest people. And that is something you can make a reality. If Trump goes, we've arrested people, and the truth is they haven't. They can very easily go and arrest people. Generating surveillance footage of someone cutting a slit in the reflecting Pool that you don't really have requires more deception, but you can just start arresting people. That's really not, not a huge deal. Okay. Trump then says, we are going to fix the pool. We're going to let all the water out of it and then refill it
- [42:31]
B
once again to do a federal takeover
- [42:33]
A
of DC soon, since it looks likely that a socialist.
- [42:36]
B
So we have a radical left communist elected, I guess, soon to be elected mayor of D.C. d.C. Is now a safe. You people know better than anybody it's a safe, beautiful city. When I came here was an unsafe, unkempt, horrible city. It was horrible. The monuments and the waterfalls and the statues and everything were graffiti written, hadn't been fixed in 50 years, clean. Now it's beautiful. We did 52 statues, monuments, waterfalls, including the thing that, you know, where the vandals hit the, the reflecting pool. But we'll get that back very quickly. In fact, I will say this morning, I sent people over, they say, it looks absolutely beautiful, but we're going to have to let a little water out and fix it, and then we'll put
- [43:21]
A
the water back, just a little water out and then we're going to fix it. I don't think that there has ever been a president in modern political history. Maybe a long time ago, but in modern political history, I don't remember any president so involved in the minutiae of what are really relatively small projects. He's sort of like the maintenance guy in some weird way, but he's also incompetent at it. And it turns out that like Covid in 2020, the algae isn't just going to go over way, go away overnight like a miracle. Now, finally, Donald Trump. This is, I got a bunch of emails about this. Some people wrote to me and they said David Trump doesn't know how to close an umbrella. And yes, he has had that problem before where he tries to close an umbrella, he can't and he just sort of like puts it down and gets into his plane or car. And others were like, no, no, no. This is like a. Trump is just kind of like, I'm going to let the servants do this. So here is video of Trump walking with this comically oversized umbrella on the way to his speech in Pennsylvania. And he, the umbrella is taken from him by a number of, I guess, Secret Service people. It looks very dumb. And then there it is. The umbrella is taken and Donald Trump gets into the car. Yeah, I, Trump has struggled to close umbrellas before and some people are like cognitive decline. He can't close the umbrella. I also think Trump just doesn't give a damn. And it's sort of like, here, take it, you deal with it. I never want to see this thing again until someone hands it to me open once again so that I can shield myself from the rain. So, so there's Trump speaking to reporters and then he goes to give a speech. And that's when things really went wrong. Donald Trump went to Pennsylvania to give a pro worker speech. They had signs that said workers for Trump. And everybody on stage was wearing these high visibility vests and it's all bs. Donald Trump is one of the most anti worker presidents we've ever had. He's hostile to unions, he's hostile to collective bargaining, he's hostile to workers rights. And okay, but the whole concept is he's flailing. He's at 27% approval on the economy. We got to do something. Let's get him to Pennsylvania to speak to workers. What does Trump do? He immediately does the trans weightlifting dementia routine. Take a look, take a listen. This is the president, folks.
- [46:01]
B
And she gets over the weights. And she stands, and then she gets him, and she gets her. And the mother's screaming, darling, I love you, darling. And the father's looking, saying, she has no chance. And she's like this. You seen? Do you.
- [46:20]
A
Is that how women lift weights?
- [46:24]
B
Drop some? And she's, like, devastated for the rest of her life. And then a guy comes along who transitioned. That's the term.
- [46:32]
A
He transitioned. That's what they call it. But that's a new term that the liberals came up with. Nasty people. I actually have some of the grunting on my soundboard here.
- [46:43]
B
Ha ha.
- [46:45]
A
Yeah, exactly. Vile and disgusting. And my question is, if you're a worker there, you're like, hey, Trump's. Trump is going to do a speech about labor. It's going to be a speech about workers. Oh, I want to go to that. Because I'm struggling. And Trump's like, no, do you feel better about what this administration is doing with regard to work? Different moment. Trump struggling to speak, talks about Muslims. Muslims, but also Iran.
- [47:18]
B
We knocked him out one week. It was essentially militarily over much bigger country, 91 million people, and much different ideology. The. The idea ology of the Muslims is
- [47:29]
A
slightly different, the ideology of the Muslims
- [47:34]
B
than the ideology of the Catholics. We have the Catholics and the Muslims slightly different. But Venezuela has been great and Iran's been great. I mean, you know, if Iran's reasonable, if they're smart, otherwise we'll have to finish the job, which will take about maybe less than a week. But they're going to be okay. I think they're going to do what they have to do because, sure, Saudi Arabia and Russia will repeat
- [48:03]
A
the most pro worker speech in years from Trump, and he's like mushrooms. Trump says maybe he should run again. And sadly, a bunch of the crowd actually cheers for that crap. Anybody care about the Constitution?
- [48:21]
B
They cheat like hell, but we won it by a lot. And maybe we should run again. Should we run one more time?
- [48:31]
A
I'd like a little too much cheering there for my level of comfort. The topic of the UFC came up, and of course, if you're a struggling worker and you're trying to make ends meet, and Trump promised gas prices would be down, but they're up, and housing prices would be down, but they're up. And obviously the UFC fight at the White House for Trump's birthday really resonates with the average worker. Trump addresses the UFC fight that took place at the White House, and he seems to say that there are no women in ufc. Kind of weird.
- [49:08]
B
And you're fighting the toughest people on earth. I mean, these are the strongest, toughest men on earth. No women in the crowd, but. Which is nice.
- [49:19]
A
But no women, which is nice. What does that mean?
- [49:22]
B
These are the toughest men on earth. And it's tremendous pressure. And, you know, the muscles. You got the muscles, you guys, you got the big, strong muscles, but you got this muscle, too, because it takes much more than just the normal muscle to win those matches. I mean, the strategy and the genius that goes. It is a genius. A lot of people wouldn't understand that,
- [49:41]
A
but Trump's smart enough to understand how smart the UFC fighters are. That's an interesting. That's. It's kind of a. It's kind of an interesting thing. A lot of people don't have the capacity to understand how genius the UFC fighters are, but fortunately, Trump, because, you know, he's just naturally gifted, and he went to Wharton and all of this stuff, he does have the intelligence to realize these UFC fighters are really, really smart. By the way, women do fight in the ufc. And finally, Donald Trump, capping off his speech to workers. It's about workers with one of these infamous sir stories.
- [50:19]
B
Stories, sir, all about this police officer. I met a police officer, first time, similar thing, but now the numbers are even more. I met. I was in New York. I met a great police officer, New York finest. And he said, sir, I want to thank you, sir. He said, for what? He said, my wife didn't think much of me very much. We were having marital difficulty. Actually, she thought I was nothing. I'm a police officer. I'm a tough guy. Looked at him, the muscles were all over the place. He didn't suffer from that. But she thought maybe that muscle wasn't so good because he was always losing money in the stock market. And he said, sir, in the last year and a half, my 401k is up 74%, sir. And she thinks I'm Warren Buffett. She thinks I'm a super genius, sir. I said, how are you getting along with her? He said, well. Well, I'm not so sure I like her anymore, but that's. I. I won't tell you that.
- [51:15]
A
You know, this is like, maybe this is something. Maybe this is nothing. Trump's really talking a lot about the muscles and attractiveness of other guys lately. And this is not in any way kind of like, oh, is Trump really gay? Or something like that, which, if you were, who cares? A bunch of people wrote to me, and they said, you know, when I had a family member male family member who started experiencing Alzheimer's. They all of a sudden got kind of touchy and acted almost like attracted to men, even though they were, as far as we knew, heterosexual. And I don't know anything about it. I'm just bringing it up because I am noticing it and people wrote to me. Even during yesterday's speaker speech to workers, Trump brought up multiple times men with great muscles that he likes. And he's brought it up recently when sports teams have come to the White House and good looking men. I don't know, is there something there? Is it nothing? And I think it would be more related to whatever Trump's cognitive state is than some, you know, hidden homosexuality. I don't think at all that that's what's going on. What does anybody think of it? And maybe most importantly, if you're a worker and you've been struggling under Trump's economy, did this speech with grunting and sir stories and all of it transphobia, did it reassure you that Donald Trump has the best interests of workers in mind? Let me know in a comment or send an email info@david pakman.com the David Pakman show is an audience supported program and the best, most direct way to support 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 Donald Trump erupted in a dementia laced truth social tirade is the only way that I can describe it. And as sort of like haha as it was, it was also terrifyingly dark. And there is something really genuinely weird about some of these posts. Take a look at this. This morning, Donald or last night, Donald Trump posting quote, weak and pathetic. Congressman Dan Goldman just lost big. I guess people didn't like him illegally targeting President Trump. In any event, this jerk is finally gone. You might see this and go, okay, yeah, Trump is just like ranting again. But there are a lot of ways to interpret this post because the disinhibition and the use of ad hominems, it starts to make us go, wait a second, can Trump distinguish between we are politically opposed and I consider you a personal enemy because for Trump, critics aren't just like wrong about things that they believe they are enemies. They deserve to be humiliated. And that's a sort of very different type of thing that sometimes happens with cognitive decline. Let's not make that the main point of all this. But that sometimes happens. Now there's this central MAGA message that is more of a blend between the personal and the political, which is loyalty to Trump matters more than governing, it matters more than legislation, and it matters more than ideology. And that comes through where he's like, this jerk, he's got to go. Trump then ranting and raving about Iran, the negotiations over which, by the way, 24, 36 hours, without a word about it, JD Vance went, they were going to have 60 days to negotiate. After 45 hours or something like that, JD's like, I'm going home. I got to get back. Trump posting quote. So I have Iran on the ropes, ready to go down for the fall, willing to give us practically anything and for the first time in decades, respecting the hell out of me, the United States and its president. Sorry. Respecting the hell out of the United States and its president, me. And the U.S. senate decides to have a poorly timed and meaningless War Powers act vote telling the number one sponsor of terror in the world that the United States doesn't like what I'm doing to them and I must stop. And by so doing has provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Four Republican losers voted with the Democrats and Iran asked my people, what does that all mean? These senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done one way or the other, because I always get it done. Now I have. I'm of two minds about this vote. On the one hand, of course, the House and Senate should be doing everything under the sun that they can do to rein in this war, but they should have done it 17 and a half weeks ago. I actually wonder if by making this vote now, if the negotiations fail, can Trump blame the Senate? And I think that if there's any critique of what the Senate has done, which I agree with the vote, of course it would be that the timing might allow Trump to go. It wasn't because of my incompetence or mental illness or whatever that these negotiations ultimately failed. It was because of the Senate vote. I don't know. There's a. There's a grandiosity to the entire thing where Trump kind of boils down a complex international conflict to a personal contest between himself and Iran, and then the Senate's getting in the way, but Trump is the decisive actor. It's classic exaggeration and self aggrandizement. Respect the hell out of me. I always get it done. That language has completely supplanted evidence in the world of Trump, and he's laying the groundwork for claiming total credit if the Negotiations somehow succeed, but if they fail now, Trump gets the opportunity to blame the Senate. I think that's potentially a risk. But still, the right vote. Trump then, reacting to the results In New York's 12th congressional district primary yesterday, where George Conway, who he refers to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway, lost again, it's all personal with Trump, quote, wow, Mr. Kellyanne Conway, a Trump deranged loser at the highest level, is getting absolutely crushed in the primaries tonight. He'll end up at about 5% of the vote in a rather weak field of young and aggressive communists. No wonder his husband dumped him like a dog. This is a truly unattractive person both inside and out. Have a nice life, George. So, again, personal grievance, insults, family matters. Trump cannot stay focused on the political. I don't even think this is really about George Conway's influence. It's Trump is signaling, if you criticize me, I will retaliate personally. And that's certainly a theme we've seen a lot in the last 11 years of Donald Trump's political career. And then finally, Trump back to Iran this morning where he says, quote, iran has informed me that, has informed the US that despite trouble making fake news, reporting to the contrary, there are no tolls, no insurance costs, and no other charges of any kind being sought or received by Iran on ships traveling the Strait of Hormuz. If this is false information, negotiations would end immediately. Additionally, no money has been given to Iran or released from their money to them by the US we will be releasing some of their money that is totally controlled by us to our farmers and ranchers for the purchase of corn, wheat, soybeans, and more food is desperately needed in Iran, and we will be purchasing it for them exclusively from the United States. Thank you. Blah, blah, blah. So notice the contradiction. Trump goes, no money has been given or released. And then he's explaining, but it's going to be okay. So it's this rambling structure about shipping tolls and negotiations and assets and farmers. There's no coherent message. But that weird contradiction still comes through. And what Trump is trying to do here is reassure multiple audiences at the same time. If you're an Iran hawk, I'm going to try to reassure you, I will go right back to bombing if I need to. If you're a farmer who has. If you're a farmer, you've been screwed by Trump now in his first and second term. If you're a farmer, Trump's going, I'm going to take some of this Iranian money and maybe get it to you by forcing Iran to buy your product. If you are a voter where Trump promised inflation would be down, gas would be down, everything would be down, but it's up. Trump's trying to tell you we're also going to be helping you by doing this to bring prices down. And it's this jumbled mess. So we are now at a point where the administration is effectuating a politics of personal grievance, exaggerated claims of success, fixation on who is loyal to Trump, and completely disorganized messaging and nearly every single issue. You look at foreign policy, you look at congressional primaries, congressional votes, media coverage, it's all about Donald Trump himself. And in a sense, it's easy to call it a vulnerability. It is also a strength for Trump in that he can use that to dominate attention. But it does mean that if there's any setback or an odd statement, you can't separate it from Trump personally. It's part of the problem that everything is tied to Trump because when things do go wrong, the natural inclination is to go, if everything's about Trump, this failure also must be. Which is why it makes it so interesting when you see Trump go, oh, if we succeed on the negotiations, I get credit, but if we fail, I blame JD that's so appealing to Trump because he doesn't want blame for anything that goes wrong. The truth. Social posts are completely unhinged you, and I don't expect them to slow down anytime soon. All right, this is going to sound really strange. All I'm asking is that you stick with me for a moment, and then at the end of the segment, tell me whether you think I might be on to something here. There is new reporting that says Donald Trump may be the one person in the United States currently receiving an experimental drug. Now, everybody hold on. How could this possibly be right? I am very hesitant on any of these theories, but I'll give you the information we have, and then we'll try to figure it out together. We have learned that one person in the United States has been given access to a drug called Rettatrutide. That's the name of the drug, and we know that it was a man who was 79 years old in April. That's when the application was submitted to the FDA. Trump was 79 years old in April. Fine. The application was overseen by a senior doctor at nih, and ultimately it was approved by the fda. Now, what's interesting is that three sources went to Stat News with information about this. Stat News is like a health and medicine website, and this is a very interesting drug. Reportedly, it can give people weight loss capability equal to what you get when you have bariatric surgery. Except without surgery, it's just a medication that's injected once a week. And so what we know is that this one 79 year old man was given the drug under compassionate use. Now, normally compassionate use means this is someone who has a serious, immediately life threatening condition. We've tried everything else. We're going to take a chance on an experimental treatment for them. Now, this already raised some serious questions. If the 79 year old man were to be Trump, what would that mean about his health? But let's come back to that because there's a bunch of additional information. The drug is being looked at for a number of conditions. Obesity, type 2 diabetes, knee pain, sleep apnea, low back pain, liver disease. A whole bunch of conditions are being considered with this drug. But what we've learned is that the 79 year old patient wanted the drug for refractory obesity with obstructive sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension. Now, let me lay out some possibilities here. If we, let's imagine for a moment that we suspect the 79 year old is Donald Trump. What do we know about Trump? He's been interested in weight loss drugs for a while. He talks about GLP1s all the time. He calls it the fat shot. He talks about his friends are on the drug. So we know that that's a topic of interest for him. Number two, Trump is obese. Number three, Trump falls asleep in public all the time, which can be a symptom of sleep apnea. We don't know that. The White House certainly has not said Donald Trump has sleep apnea. But they hide things about Trump's health all the time. And it's certainly been speculated that, you know, obese guy falling asleep in public all the time, you would certainly consider sleep apnea. Now, the White House was asked, is Trump the patient who got the drug with this special approval? And they said it's not Trump. If you believe White House denials, then it's case closed. If you are skeptical about White House denials, particularly when it comes to Trump's health. Well, we know that Trump has a history of seeking out rare medical treatments for himself and his allies. Remember that when Trump had Covid during his first term, he was approved for the experimental use of Regeneron and it was also termed a compassionate use case. Trump pulled strings to get the late Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, access to a new drug to treat aggressive prostate cancer. He Sort of like got involved in that. And he also. We don't know the full details of this, but he ordered up some kind of really weird. Weird, rare is the right word. Heart surgery for Congressman Mike Dunn after a terminal diagnosis and even bragged about it. So we know Trump gets involved in some of this stuff. So here's where I'm at. If the patient is not Donald Trump, why was a 79 year old man given extraordinary access to an experimental drug for obesity and sleep apnea using this pathway of compassionate use that's usually for severe or life threatening conditions? That's an interesting question. If it's not Donald Trump. Now, if the patient is Trump, there are only a couple of possibilities here. Either the compassionate use application accurately reflects that Donald Trump's medical condition is very serious, or they lied. They might have lied about Trump's medical condition to try to get the drug because Trump is politically connected and understated. He's sort of like the most powerful person in the country. Now think about the double standard. Republicans spent years demanding that Joe Biden release more health information and do cognitive testing and put out medical records and get evaluations from specialists. When questions surface about Trump, all of a sudden they go, oh, it's private. How dare you even ask about that? So I don't think we need to jump to any conspiracy theory. We don't need to assume Trump is secretly critically ill. He might be, but we don't need to assume that. But we should not blindly accept the assurances from the White House that lies all the time about Trump's health, that the 79 year old, the formerly 79 year old patient here is not Donald Trump. I think the bigger story is our wealthy and politically connected people operating under a completely different set of rules when it comes to getting medical treatments. And it seems that the answer is yes. If this drug is safe enough for a sitting president to take, why isn't it available to everybody? And if it's risky enough that ordinary Americans shouldn't be getting it, why would Trump be getting it outside of the approved channels? So let me know what you think. I want to hear from you about it now. On the bonus show today, we will talk about that Senate vote to limit Trump's Iran war powers. We'll talk about how only a quarter of Americans believe that we defeated Iran in the war. Oh, boy. And we will talk about Zoran Mamdani emerging as a kingmaker in New York City Democratic politics. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up@join pakman.com.