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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
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today on the show, the Supreme Court hands down some extraordinary decisions to the Trump administration. We will discuss all of them. Some of them that are not getting the attention they deserve are very consequential. Then Donald Trump suffers a devastating legal defeat. He can't escape it anymore. The money is already on the way to Eugene Carroll. We're also going to look at a brand new report raising serious ethics questions after Trump bought millions of dollars in stock. And then just two weeks later, his own administration pursues a massive government contract that looks like it's designed for the very company Trump bought stock in. What a surprise. Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to this administration, accidentally admits exactly what critics have been saying about inflation all along. And Dr. Oz says something so absurd about health insurance that it is a stunning reminder that this guy is overseeing Medicare and Medicaid. And then top Republicans are suddenly revealing what they're actually terrified will happen to them if they lose the midterms. And it's pretty bad, I've got to be honest with you. All of that and more on today's show, if I can fit it in. One of the most, most anticipated Supreme Court decisions came out today, and it is a complete rejection of Donald Trump. You love to see it. This was a case about birthright citizenship, something we have by law in the United States. Donald Trump didn't like that. He tried to end birthright citizenship by signing an executive order arguing if you're born in the United States, but to parents who are here illegally or temporarily, like maybe tourists or students, then you were not an American citizen. This is what Trump wanted. This is not what the law is right now. And the Supreme Court decided, actually the 14th amendment does apply to anyone born in the U.S. there are some very small exceptions, diplomats, for example, but basically it's total. If you're born in the United States, you are a citizen of the United States. Now, before we get into the sort of bulk of the decision here, this was six to three. What that means is that there are three right wing Supreme Court justices who would have happily allowed Donald Trump to change who Is a citizen something that is in the Constitution because Donald Trump wanted to do it via executive order. That's terrifying. And a reminder of the importance of presidents. Pick Supreme Court justices that really matters. Trump really wanted this one. He even attended arguments back in April at the Supreme Court. Presidents don't typically go to oral arguments at the. At the Supreme Court. Now, there are a number of arguments used to try to attack what is the law right now. And if you want to change the law, there's a process for doing that, and we'll get to that. But right now, the law is what it is. One of the things people who agree with Trump love to say is, listen. We need a system for stopping pregnant women from other countries to come to the US have their kids here, anchor babies so that the kid can stay, and then the parents use that to justify staying. We have a system to prevent that. We have customs officers who are trained to detect that. And they consider the sort of financial resources of someone flying into the United States, the country of origin. How pregnant are they? How long are they planning to stay? What housing arrangements have they made? Is it perfect? Is every customs officer always able to detect, I believe, you're coming here specifically to give birth so that your kid is a citizen? No, maybe not. But the point is, we have a system in place. You can be refused entry for that, and if your feeling is it's not working well enough, well, work on improving that system. We don't even have to argue over whether you like it on the merits. It's just if. If that's your problem, you don't go and upend the 14th amendment. You simply train customs officers to be better at detecting people coming here to try to have kids. Then they do the textual analysis of the 14th amendment. We'll put up the relevant part of section one of the 14th amendment, which says all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. This is the relevant part. There's two arguments that, that sometimes opponents of the 14th Amendment will try to make. They will say, well, it's born or naturalized. Or, let me put a different way, they say born and naturalized. But it's born or naturalized. Simply being born in the United States is enough. And subject to the jurisdiction thereof. They love to say that if you are born here to undocumented parents, you are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. But that's not true. Now, before I explain that, Notice what the 14th Amendment does not say. It doesn't say only people born to citizens. It doesn't say only people born to legal residents. It does not carve out an exception for somebody who's here temporarily or without legal status. And so they focus in on the subject to the jurisdiction thereof. The only exceptions, the only people not subject to the jurisdiction are children of foreign diplomats who have immunity from US Law and historically members of invading armies. If there's an invading army here and they have a kid, that kid would not get citizenship. Everybody else, if you're physically in the US you are subject to US Law. You can be arrested, sued, taxed, or prosecuted. If you're here illegally or as a legal tourist or as a legal student, you're subject to American jurisdiction. And therefore the 14th amendment applies to you. There is an old case where the Supreme Court already addressed this. It's US V. Wong Kim Ark. And the court said children born to noncitizen parents are citizens, period. So there is no serious legal foundation to exclude anybody from the 14th amendment other than the children of diplomats. As I mentioned, this is a new argument. Trump reacting by ignoring, focusing on the wins instead. Minutes after this decision, Trump posting, quote, big win. The United States Supreme Court just ruled against men playing in women's sports. Wow, that takes that ridiculous situation off the table. And then Trump posting again to Truth social media. The Supreme Court just took restrictions off political spending. A big win for Republicans and more importantly, the First Amendment. So listen, Trump got some wins yesterday and today, and I'll talk about some of them in a moment. But this is a big loss for Donald Trump. Trump staked a lot on this. He showed up at the Supreme Court, he wanted this badly and he didn't get it. Now, if you really believe that if you were born to an undocumented immigrant, you shouldn't be a citizen. You can lobby to change the law. You can go through the process of trying to get a constitutional amendment. I don't think they'd be able to do it because they simply wouldn't be able to build support for it. But there is a way to do this. And my opinion is it shouldn't be changed. But if enough people think it should, we have a process for that. It's not the process that Donald Trump went through. And Donald Trump was rebuked here. But don't forget that he convinced three justices to say, sure, upend all of it. Get rid of it, throw it in the trash. And if we ever find ourselves again in a situation where you don't love the Democratic or the Republican candidates simply remember the consequences on this one. Fortunately, the decision went the right way. But if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, do you think we'd have Roe v. Wade right now? Of course we would. We absolutely would still have Roe v. Wade. So a big loss for Trump. We will talk, though, about some of the wins that Donald Trump got. We have more new decisions from the Supreme Court, and if I kind of zoom out and bottom line a bunch of them for you, it is impossible to see the United States as being in anything short of a crisis right now. Fortunately, the Supreme Court did rule the 14th amendment is the 14th amendment, and did not rule with Trump on that one. We already talked about it. But the Supreme Court did issue a number of rulings which expand the power of the presidency, as if we need a more powerful presidency. Number one, the court has affirmed Donald Trump's ability to fire most independent regulators, including the heads of independent agencies, without cause, meaning for any reason whatsoever other than illegal reasons. I believe that that still wouldn't allow Trump to fire people because they're black or Christian or whatever. And before this ruling, Congress sort of insulated the people in charge of about two dozen agencies from political influence by saying, the president can fire them, but he needs to show cause. If you don't like how their regulations are affecting you or your family's ability to monetize the presidency now, you can fire them. They go away like a miracle. The court ruled 6 to 3 on this, of course, the three liberal justices saying no way, but they didn't have the numbers. So that means Donald Trump now controls in this completely unfettered way, the sec, the Fed and the ftc, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He also has control over infrastructure, communications, energy, labor, personnel, civil rights, operational and science service providers, the fcc. I could go on and on. It is a long list of organizations and importantly the National Labor Relations Board, meaning unions, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, NASA, the EPA, Social Security Administration, U.S. postal Service. I am finding myself drawn again to issue a reminder about Hillary versus Trump in 2016. Really mattering. Not only would we have Roe v. Wade right now if Hillary Clinton had won, we would also still have more limits on presidential power when it comes to firing whoever he wants for whatever reason he wants, even if there is no cause. And there were. I don't want to harp on this. We're going back a decade. There were people ostensibly on the left who at the time were going, oh, Hillary is a corporate shill. She's just Like Trump, I'm going to stay home. I don't care about the Supreme Court. It doesn't really matter. We have really seen that it does matter, and I hope people remember that in the future. Now, separately, the Supreme Court also ruled that Donald Trump cannot remove a governor of the Federal Reserve. If he had been allowed to do that, he could effectively take even more control over the Fed. That being said, the White House is saying it's going to look for a different way to fire Fed governors. I want to remind you, talk about another example of their principles don't really matter. Republicans and the right wing used to be about taking away power from presidents. We want states to decide, we want consensus to decide. We don't want the president having more power. We support a limited executive branch. And now that's not convenient to what Donald Trump wants. So that principle goes right out the window. And I think that that's really the bigger story. Every time you hear the president has more power, think about Donald Trump. Don't think about Republicans or Democrats. Think about Trump and think about the next president and the one after that. Supreme Court decisions don't expire when Trump leaves office. They become a baseline. And the baseline for presidential power has now been ratcheted up. And that is exactly why the founders built a system of checks and balances. They wanted and understood that they under, Let me put a different way. They understood that while they want well intentioned presidents, even well intentioned presidents shouldn't have unlimited authority. Someone will eventually abuse it. We are at almost 250 years of the United States and, and most of the argument has been let's prevent people from having too much power. We don't want power concentrated in one person. And this Supreme Court keeps going. Now let's give more power to the president, More power to the president. Now, could this come back to bite them once it's a Democrat in the White House? Maybe, maybe. But if you're someone who used to say, I don't want government to have too much power, you should be concerned about this regardless of who's in office. And, and I'm looking a lot at a lot of those small government conservative Republicans who spent decades saying we need to take power from the presidency, not give it, and now they're looking the other way. Suddenly they don't care. The hypocrisy is truly stunning. There is a fascinating prediction market that is attracting attention because it's asking a question that quite frankly, even a few years ago would have sounded completely absurd. Will Donald Trump declare A national emergency over supposed election interference before the 2026 midterms, which are now only a few months away. The fact that this is even being discussed tells you a lot. The fact that the odds are spiking is really the red alert concern. Now. Part of the reason this is a topic is the recent Supreme Court rulings that expand presidential authority and also limit some avenues for challenging election procedures. So we now have a Kalshee betting market. Will Trump declare an election emergency? And after bottoming out around 19% a few months ago, nearly 4 40% now believe that, yes, Donald Trump will declare an election emergency before the midterm elections. This is. This is the betting market. This is not a poll. This is how people are betting. And you can evaluate to what degree you think that is relevant to our analysis. This is the same Donald Trump who spent months false, falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen until it was clear he wasn't going to be able to stop Biden from becoming president, and then has since spent years continuing to insist that it was stolen. And think back now to 2020. Trump pressured State officials to find votes for him. He encouraged efforts to overturn certified election results. And he still says, elections I win are the only ones that are legitimate. So when people ask, would Trump be willing to invoke a national emergency over supposed election interference, of course he would. Look at all the stuff he was already willing to do. We've watched him claim election fraud for years. When the political outcome doesn't go his way, he says it couldn't have possibly been the right outcome. And I believe that in part, this is why the midterm. Midterms matter so much. Trump can't afford a political defeat. And later in the show, we're going to look at people like Mike Johnson and Stephen Miller sort of acknowledging it will be really bad if Democrats take the House of Representatives and. Or the Senate, obviously, if Democrats take the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson almost certainly is no longer going to be speaker. Unless some Democrats join Republicans in voting for Mike Johnson. And suddenly, Trump is going to have congressional committees investigating everything he's done in what will be the first two years of his presidency. There will be subpoenas and oversight and hearings, legislative roadblocks. The entire political landscape is going to change. So these midterms are so much more than just another congressional election. It is going to be a referendum, especially after the Supreme Court decisions. Does Trump continue to govern with basically no institutional constraints, or is he at least going to face a more aggressive opposition in Congress? The Polls aren't looking so hot for Republicans. And the worse that the polls look, the more reasonable it would be to expect Donald Trump to once again start talking about fraud, cheating, election interference, a rigged system and all of this stuff. It's been his pattern for years. He is more disinhibited than he has ever been. He is in greater decline than he has ever been. And the Supreme Court has granted him a bunch of leeway with executive power. So it is almost the perfect storm of Trump saying national emergency. Now, if Trump did that, of course, there would be legal challenges, there would be political resistance, there would be constitutional questions. I don't know if he would get away with it, but if the last decade has taught us anything, it's that a lot of ideas that would have once been dismissed as that's impossible. They're now very real battles. And so I think this is worth paying attention to. And the thing people really need to understand is that Trump never needs to prove widespread election interference to simply claim it. He can claim it. And we've seen the movie before, right? In 2020, we had 60 court cases, recounts, audits. There was no evidence of the massive fraud that Trump claimed, but it didn't stop him from continuing to say it every single day for six years. And so if Republicans keep underperforming the polls, they are going to look at every angle on this and it may lead them to. Our best bet is for Trump to declare an emergency. Will he get away with it? Hopefully not. And by the way, what will? I don't think it's ultimately going to be a court that determines does Trump get away with that or not. I believe it is going to be whether they can manufacture enough consent on social media and on digital platforms and in the news media. And I spend a bunch of time in my forthcoming book Pay Attention, talking about this. One of the things that is going to. Because the, the, these, the national emergency would be sometime before the election day, obviously, a great factor in influencing how that national emergency is received is going to be what sort of algorithmic play does it get? I write about that in my forthcoming book, Pay Attention. We have a limited number of signed copies available. You can get them and all other formats of the book at David pakman.com/pay attention. This book took a lot of work to write. I'm in the middle of recording the audiobook now. I would be flattered if you were to preorder the book at David pakman.com/attention. Debt has a way of distorting reality. You make the payments, you follow the rules and you still feel like you're falling further behind. That's not a personal failure. This is how compounding interest and fees are designed to work and the longer it drags on, the more expensive it's going to get. That is where our sponsor PDS Debt can Help PDS Debt works with people dealing with unsecured debt like credit cards, personal loans and medical bills. Instead of offering generic advice. Take the time with them to understand your specific financial situation and they'll give you a personalized plan to help you save more, reduce what you owe and pay the debt off faster. There is no minimum credit score required. They are A plus rated by the Better Business Bureau, have thousands of five star reviews across major platforms and I've already helped hundreds of thousands of people get out of debt. Every month you wait costs more in interest and in fees. So the best time to start was yesterday. The second best time is right now. Don't wait another month. Take back control in 30 seconds. Get a free personalized assessment at ptsdet.com pacman the link is in the description Most sweet snacks are either satisfying or sensible. Our sponsor, Magic Spoon is both. Magic Spoon treats are crispy, airy snack bars with 12 grams of protein, 7 grams of fiber, 0 grams of added sugar and 2 to 3 grams of net carbs. They come in great flavors like marshmallow, chocolate, peanut butter and double chocolate. My favorite. A perfect sweet, light snack I can throw in the bag and take on the go. They remind me of cereal bars. Same texture and flavor but without the carbs and without the sugar. Magic Spoon is easy to find. Just look for Magic Spoon at your local grocery store. They also rolled out treats nationwide at 7:11. And if you haven't tried them yet, check out Magic Spoon's new protein pastries. High protein, low sugar takes on the classic toaster pastries I grew up with. You can get $5 off your next order, including the protein pastries@magic spoon.com/pacman. The link is in the description this program is not like what you see on tv. It's not like the three letter cable news networks. It's not like the big media conglomerate publications. We're an independent show. There is no parent company. There are no seven layers of editors and producers that tell me what to do. That's all great. It also means that this show depends directly on the support of our audience. And I'm flattered every time I see that someone signs up@join pacman.com or gets a Substack Premium subscription and says hey, I know it's only a couple of dollars but I am voting with those couple of dollars for the shows I believe are doing something that is important. So I invite you with total humility and peace and love to get a membership at join pacman.com get a substack premium subscription at substack.david pakman.com and I will also remind you that my forthcoming book Pay Attention is now available for preorder. If you want a signed copy this these will only be available for preorder for a limited time. At some point we've got to cut it off and I've just got to sign them and that's all we can do. Go to David pakman.com/access to preorder the book in any format you want. Physical book with my signature physical book without my signature audio book, Kindle book. We're even considering doing one, a book that will deliver by smoke signals. It will take three years to get the full book that way, but we're considering a smoke signals version of the book. Needless to say, David pakman.com/attention is the place to preorder and I believe tomorrow I'm going to have updated preorder numbers for you. If I told you that the president bought millions of dollars of stock in a company and then just two weeks later his own administration announced plans for a massive government purchase that appears designed around that company's products, you would probably say that sounds a little weird. It sounds a little bit corrupt. It sounds a little bit cronyistic. It sounds a little bit like a swamp. And that is the exact timeline that a new CNBC investigation is exposing. Here is that timeline. On February 10th, Donald Trump personally bought somewhere between 1 and 5 million dollars worth of stock in Action Enterprise. Action Enterprise manufacturers police body cameras. Many of the police body cam videos that you see floating around on social media are action body cameras. And accident also manufactures 90% of the tasers used in the United States. That's February 10th. Trump buys millions in stock. Fourteen days later, February 24th, ICE announces we have a new contract we want to fill. We need 17,800 tasers. It's a five year contract for $220 million. And we need unlimited cartridges and we need training for the tasers and the key detail in this entire thing because CNBC went and spoke to procurement specialists and policing experts. The specs of the contract directly match the Taser products manufactured by Axon. So it is very clear that what's going on here is that Donald Trump personally bought a stake in a company and then his administration designed an rfp, a request for proposal, which would directly go to, hey, Axon is the company that can really do this now. Now, let me give you an analogy to what this is. Imagine that the government said, hey, we need a contract for electric vehicles. And the vehicles we need, we're not picking favorites. We'll work with anybody. But we need an electric SUV with a 400 mile range that has built in air compressors in the trunk. And then you would look at the market and you would go, well, there's only really one SUV. It's the Rivian R1S that fits those guidelines. And the government could go, we just have a list of requirements. We're agnostic to who we work with. If you have an electric SUV that can go over 400 miles and has a trunk air compressor to pump up tires, then you can be considered for this contract and say, yes, but you wrote that up knowing that that Rivian is the only one. I'm using this example because I drive a Rivian and that's what they are. And that is exactly what is going on here. We just want to get these Tasers. And here's the list of requirements. Who can do it and deliver them in this volume? Well, it's probably only this one company. Now, I do think it's important to stick to the facts. There's no evidence that Trump directed the procurement that we have right now. There's no evidence right now that Trump knew that this procurement was going to happen before he bought the stock. There is no evidence Axon knew Trump became a shareholder. We don't have that information right now, and the investigation is clear about that. But of course, that's not really the issue. The issue is presidents are supposed to avoid situations where government decisions could even appear to benefit their own financial interests. And this certainly appears that way. Now, it could be even worse. It could be that everybody is in the know and this is overt corruption. Right now, we only have the appearance of impropriety. Now, the White House insists there's no conflict. Trump's assets are held in a trust. His kids manage the trust. His investments are handled by outside financial managers. And by the way, presidents are exempt from federal conflict of interest laws anyway. So even if Trump were doing something sketchy, he's exempt from those laws. That is not a very strong defense because of course, Trump talks to his kids. He knows what's going on. He knows what moves they're making with his money and saying, even if I did this immoral thing, it wouldn't be illegal is not like a super hot defense of your ethical guidelines. It doesn't answer any of the ethical questions here. Why should the president personally own millions of dollars in a company that stands to benefit from the policies of his own administration? Every administration should want to avoid that question. And instead it's coming up again and the bigger pattern is really the concern. Is it crypto? Is it the family business ventures? Is it the licensing deals? Now it's stock holdings connected to government policy. There's story after story where Trump's public office and his private financial interests end up very close together. The article doesn't prove corruption. It doesn't prove Trump told ICE write up a contract proposal that would directly go to Axon, which I own, Stockton. Those claims right now go beyond the evidence that we have. But it shows yet another situation of an apparent conflict of interest. These are the types of conflicts presidents are usually wanting to avoid because they care about public trust. I don't know that Trump really cares about that. When a president buys stock in a company and then his administration pursues a contract that seems tailor made for that company, two weeks later, people will ask questions and they should. Most presidents care about the appearance of that. Trump doesn't seem to care. And to be frank, why would he care when there don't seem to be any consequences to him to doing this sort of stuff? Contracts handed out to friends, no bid, contracts under faulty urgent emergency parameters to do the reflecting pool given out to people. I mean, Trump doesn't seem to care. And if you keep getting away with this sort of thing, at the end of the day, why would you care? So I can understand why Trump doesn't care. Other presidents would. The question, of course, is to the MAGA voters and the people who voted for this crap. Do you feel good that your tax dollars are potentially going to a contract cronyistically handed out to a company that Trump is an investor in? Do you feel good about that? It's a very simple question and you can tell me, well, David, I don't want men in women's sports or I don't want, you know, I like the war in Iran or deportations or whatever. But, but are you happy that these contracts appear to be going in the direction of benefiting Trump and his family personally? Just answer that question, let me know what you think. Whoa. Well, we now have a serious problem here. The most ended war ever might have to end again. And Donald Trump is calling making housing affordable a yawn. Well, I'm, by the way, yawn for the guy who can barely stay awake is kind of funny. Donald Trump asked yesterday when meeting with reporters in the Oval Office. Reminder. Donald Trump increasingly sits down now when he does events. And as usual, as has become the case when the press is led into the Oval Office, Trump is already sitting down. Something seems to be going on with his mobility. Not the primary point of this story. Trump asked by a reporter, are you going to sign that housing bill? And Trump goes, it's a yawn.
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Really.
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Making housing affordable is a yawn. But will you sign that housing bill?
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I have that. It hasn't been sent to me yet. It's coming. I understand. And then I'll make. Then I'll make it. Here's what I would like to sign much more than a bill that. Big deal. It's a yawn. Some people say it's wonderful. To me, compared to the Save America act, just about everything is a big yawn.
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Compared to the Save America act, which would make it harder for people to vote and it would depress voter turnout in a way that Trump thinks will be good for Republicans. Compared to that, getting people affordable housing is a big yawn. Another clip of Trump that would make a great campaign video against Republicans. People can't afford housing. Trump promised to do something, and yet a bill that would do something about it is a yawn. A reporter asked Trump, what are your plans for the housing bill? And Trump goes, it's just so unimportant. What are your plans for the housing bill, Mr. President?
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I don't know. I think it's so unimportant by. Compared to. By compared to the Save America. I think the Save America America act is exactly what it says. It's saving America from crooked elections. And the housing bill is a bill that can get approved. They worked on it long and hard. It's very bipartisan. That means the Democrats like it. I think it's maybe even. It's probably maybe more that way. They're getting things that I wouldn't necessarily agree to. No. Nobody knows more than housing in the history of the presidency. Nobody. Nobody did. Well, like me in housing. I made a lot of money. I made a lot of money with housing.
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What an incredible populist message you ran on cutting housing costs. Here's a bill that would do a little bit to cut housing costs. You're bored by it, it's a yawn. You want an election fraud bill instead that is meant to stop Election fraud that simply isn't happening. And remind people you've made a lot of money with housing.
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Hmm.
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Election fraud bill we don't need is more important than helping people get affordable housing. These should just be campaign ads against Republicans. The housing bill is boring. To Trump, that's one of the biggest problems, and that's why he doesn't care about it. I don't know that I've ever seen a president so explicitly admit he simply doesn't care about the plight of the average American that he supposedly represents. Trump then railed against mail in ballots because they are so corrupt. And of course, Donald Trump has voted by mail multiple times, including just months ago. But it's also corrupt.
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This is the Save America Act. Voter ID with photo ideally, but voter id, proof of citizenship and no mail in ballots, which is, to my way of thinking, maybe the most important of all because it's so corrupt. But you have exceptions if you're away. Exceptions for the military. They're deployed. Exception. Illness, disability of exceptions, strong exceptions.
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I guess Trump is one, is one of those exceptions because he's away, as he likes to describe it, folks, this guy doesn't give a damn about you. He does not give a. He simply wants to make it harder to vote. He doesn't care about making housing more affordable or making groceries more affordable or making gas more affordable or boosting manufacturing jobs in the United States. The manufacturing job level is at the lowest in a decade or longer, something like that. But what he does care about is messing around with people, messing around with voters, and also messing around with citizenship. In advance of the Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship, Trump asked, what are your thoughts about this? And Trump begrudgingly goes, I guess I'd have to accept the decision of the Supreme Court. Like, even that is sort of like, I don't really like to do it, but I might have to.
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Birth rate citizenship is next. What are your thoughts? Birthright citizenship.
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What are your thoughts and will you accept?
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Accept it if it rules against you? I guess I have to accept. It's the Supreme Court. So I guess I think it's very bad for our nation. We're the only nation that does it. No other nation does that. Birthright citizenship?
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No, it.
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Not even close. Some did it. They ended it. It's tremendously destructive. It's extremely costly. I don't know. It's up to them. But in terms of. For the good of the country, it'd be great if they did the. They didn't allow it. It would be great. But I can't tell you the Slaughter case was the big case today. That was really a big case because it gave strength to presidents and strength to the presidency, very important.
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And of course, that is an issue we've talked about. But Donald Trump is lying when he says no other country does birthright citizenship. Now, it is true that the particulars of birthright citizenship are not exactly the same in every country. Different countries have different rights, sort of different spin on it. But part of the reason the United States has birthright citizenship of the style that we do goes back to the origins of this country, or the oranges of this country, as some presidents like to call it. An orange president likes to talk about the oranges of things. We do it this way because of the way that the country was created. Now, if you argue that that is wrong, there is a way to change it, but you've got to go and get a constitutional amendment. Doing it the way Trump is doing it is pathetic. And he simply be it's. I'm even shocked. Trump said, I guess I have to abide by what the Supreme Court says. Now, as far as the war with Iran being over, you might remember that that war has ended so many times. Trump really has set a record for most times ending a war. The same war. And Trump now goes, we've almost won militarily. Wait a second, I thought the war was over. I thought we had a cease fire. I thought we were just negotiating, dotting the T's and crossing the eyes, as I like to say, and all of a sudden we've almost won.
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Well, there'll be a meeting on that tomorrow and do a and to go into Qatar. I think they've already left, or they're just about getting ready to leave. So we'll see how that goes. But we're doing very well on that front. But the meeting in Doha is going to be perhaps important, perhaps not. We're going to find out, but we're winning militarily. It's almost one militarily.
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I would say we're getting dangerously close to winning.
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And it's really very simple. It's the denuclearization of Iran. We don't want them to have nuclear weapon, and they're not going to have a nuclear weapon. And they've agreed to that in all fairness.
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B
And of course, they have not agreed to that because we still don't have a deal. Now, Trump likes to go, well, they signed the letter, but the letter simply says we're going to negotiate for 60 days and less than two days into that 60 day period, JD Vance was like, I'm getting out of Switzerland. I got to get back to the United States. I've got stuff to do. This is going nowhere. The Iranian negotiators have walked out. And then there were more strikes, and then there were more threats. And after declaring more than 40 times that this thing is almost or completely over, Donald Trump is now going, I think we're getting really close to winning militarily. You declared victory 40 times already. You told us two weeks ago it is finally, truly and really over. I'm starting to think maybe Trump is not exactly a reliable narrator or reporter for what's going on. And I do hope, you know, I, I hope that it's not the case that we spend the next two and a half years saying this thing is almost over. I hope that at some point it really will be over. But what Trump has to understand is that once you open this door, you're not the only person who gets to shut it. We open the door and other people stick their foot in the door. And now everybody needs to agree to close that door. And it's not going very well for Donald Trump, that that is for sure. I've noticed something changing lately. For the last several months, the message from the White House and from MAGA World has basically been the same. The economy's awesome, everything's amazing. Negotiations are incredible to end this war. The crowds are incredible. America has never been stronger. It's never been more affordable. It's never been, never been more economically powerful. They've been projecting complete and total confidence. But every once in a while they, I think, accidentally reveal what they're really worried about. Check out this video of Stephen Miller who said if Democrats regain power, it's game over. Game over is the phrase he uses.
- [41:29]
F
And one more point on this, Laura. This is existential for this country. You've covered more than anybody with the Democrats in. If the Democrats should. The Democrats regain power, it's game over. Twelve more justice on scotus, two new Democrat states. They're going to get rid of the Second Amendment. They're going to get rid of our borders, they're going to get rid of our police, they're going to get rid of ice, Border patrol, dhs, and they're going to elect communists. Like actual Communists, Laura, not even socialist Communists wreck this country.
- [41:54]
D
Now.
- [41:55]
B
There are not even any communists prominent in the Democratic Party. That part is very stupid. But some of that stuff is interesting. We're going to get two more states so that they will have representation as they realistically should. The packing the court idea, I mean, I don't even know that really Democrats are that into that idea. And there's a lot of reasons. There's a lot of reasons to it to do it, and a lot of reasons not to do it. But the point here is that Stephen Miller is kind of raising the alarm as to if Democrats gain power, things are going to change. Maga, MAGA Mike Johnson said if Republicans lose the midterms, all of a sudden there will be investigations. Forget about impeachment. It's going to be much worse than just impeachment. Here is the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
- [42:38]
F
If we were, we were to lose the midterms, Heaven forbid these Democrats, y'.
- [42:42]
C
All.
- [42:43]
F
Impeachment's not even the big concern. They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body and they'll go after the President's family, the Cabinet, his donors and friends. Half of you in this room will be targeted. I run the protection program. I'll take care of you. Okay, we're going to win. We're going to win the midterm.
- [42:56]
B
Okay, there you go. They'll investigate Trump, they'll investigate his Cabinet, they'll investigate his donors, they'll investigate his friends, they'll investigate everybody. And I have to say, it sounds kind of good. For the most part, it sounds like they're describing something that they are genuinely afraid could happen. And think about the implication here. If everything is going as perfectly as they claim, like if the American people really are thrilled when the, with the incredible leadership of Donald Trump, if Trump's delivering what voters wanted, why are people like Stephen Miller and MAGA Mike Johnson spending so much time warning everybody about what happens if Republicans lose? And the answer is very simple. They know losing is a real possibility. And I think there's something even more revealing here. Listen to what they're not worried about. They're not saying, you know, if Democrats win, they're going to pass better health care. If Democrats win, they're going to improve education or they might lower middle class taxes. They're talking about the things that affect them. Investigations into what they've done, accountability for what they've done, oversight over what they've done. They're being kept up at night by the possibility of accountability. And Mike Johnson isn't warning, you know, Democrats might be making better arguments about policy. He's warning they're going to have subpoena power. And that is a tell. Congressional investigations are one of the primary constitutional responsibilities of Congress. When One party controls the White House, the House and Senate, as Republicans do right now. Oversight diminishes when the opposition wins control of even a single chamber. At least you can do hearings and document requests and subpoenas and get people to testify under oath. That is not a radical new invention. In fact, that's how the system is designed. When we talk, you know, sometimes about impeachment and a lot of people go to the political calculation, could it work this, that the other thing, Impeachment is a con, a congressional responsibility. If you see impeachable actions, you must impeach. And if Democrats win the House, as I expect them to do in November, I also expect that there would be investigations. Why wouldn't they be? Republicans spent years investigating. I mean, listen, look at, look at the list. There were the Hillary Clinton Benghazi hearings. They investigated Hunter Biden, they investigated the Biden administration. They launched one inquiry after another, sometimes with, I guess, some evidence. They certainly didn't think congressional oversight was inappropriate then. So, yeah, if Democrats regain subpoena power and decide, hey, we believe there is evidence pointing to we should investigate the Trump administration, that is called politics, but it is also called checks and balances. And the ironic part is that Stephen Miller and Mike Johnson are accidentally making one of the strongest arguments for why elections matter. Hey, supporters, political power isn't permanent. What is in the majority today might be in the minority tomorrow. And, and the part that I sort of find the funniest of all of it is that after years of insisting if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, they sound really afraid about investigations. I don't know who will win the midterms. We have a ways to go. The House is looking pretty good. The Senate's looking kind of okay. But I do know that when the people running government spend this much time warning their supporters, do you know what's going to happen to us if we lose? They started imagining that possibility themselves. And if we look at these clips, they don't like what it means. There are a lot of very good reasons to boot these Republicans out in November. And one of those reasons is judging them by the own, their own standards and the promises they made, they failed to deliver on all of it. But giving people investigative power, giving to look at the facts of what's happened and determine whether subpoenas are appropriate, whether special counsel is appropriate, whatever, that is a really good reason to vote these people out in November. And I hope that we do it. Think of how much personal information you put into your favorite AI Chat bot. They track everything you say on the app. Many of them sell the data to ad companies and they use your personal info to train the AI to so your personal life lives inside the chat bot forever. Creepy stuff. 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 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. Every once in a while, someone in the Trump administration accidentally tells the truth. And when they do, it's usually pretty revealing. I've got a great clip for you. Here is Kevin Hassett, one of Donald Trump's top economic advisers. He was asked, why are prices going up after the conflict with Iran? Not just gas prices, but like other prices. And Kevin Hassett's explanation is, listen, you've got gas in a truck moving stuff to Walmart. If the gas costs more, stuff at Walmart is also going to cost more. Yes, that's right, Kevin. But that is not the great defense that he believes it to be. The stupid grin on his face suggests he thinks he's being clever. But let's watch the clip and I'll explain to you why this guy is just totally, totally off his rocker. What do you think the actual underlying rate of inflation is right now and how do you bring that down before?
- [49:21]
E
Yeah, the thing is that we've just had an oil shock. And when you have an oil shock, one thing we know is that top line inflation moves way more than core, but the core does move a little bit. And one of the ways you could think about it is that, you know, you've got gas in a truck moving stuff to wall Walmart and the gas is more expensive. So the stuff at Walmart has to be more expensive to.
- [49:42]
B
Genius analysis, Kevin. Yeah, you know, we understand that. In fact, we've been talking about that for months. That's the point. That is the criticism he's now conceding the Criticism. For years, Trump and Republicans told Americans inflation was Joe Biden's fault. If there was an increase at the grocery store, an increase at the gas pump, a shopping trip that's a little more expensive, they blamed Biden personally. The President is sitting behind his desk, he's got a price dial and he's just, he can turn it up or he can turn it down whenever he wants. And remember all of those I did that stickers that people put on gas pumps with Joe Biden's face when gas was higher than 187A gallon, but well lower than it is right now. And Trump was giving speeches about inflation under Biden and every carton of eggs somehow was proof that Biden destroyed America. Now Kevin Hassett comes along and he goes, look, if gas gets more expensive, transporting goods is going to get more expensive and therefore prices at Walmart are going to go up. That's right. That is how economists have been explaining inflation for years. Welcome to the conversation. What he's describing is called higher input costs. If it costs more to move stuff around the country, businesses generally pass at least some of those higher costs on to consumers. That is not like this shocking economics revelation. It's Econ 101. If flour gets more expensive, bread and cookies, soft baked chocolate chip cookies with mountains of chocolate chips, they're going to get more expensive as well. If your electric bill doubles, the pizza shop double is probably going to have to charge a little more for the pizza. It's not complicated. The question here is who made gasoline more expensive this time? Was it a global price shock due to a pandemic that had nothing to do with Biden? Or is it because Trump said, you know what, even though I ran on no new wars, I think I'm going to start a new war immediately affect 20% of the global oil supply, which goes through the strait of vermouth, and it's going to trickle down and make everything more expensive. He has the explanation right, but it's that this time it wasn't some global situation. It was a choice that Donald Trump made. Now, whether you supported any particular decision or opposed it, if they contribute to higher oil prices, then according to Kevin Hassett's own explanation, the the higher fuel costs work their way down into the prices consumers pay. That's his argument. The same people who spent years insisting that every price increase was personally Joe Biden's fault are now saying, you've got to appreciate the complexity of the global markets. Oh, we do. But the trigger which is higher oil and gas was Donald Trump. And it's fascinating how all of a sudden they discover nuance when prices went up under Biden. It's the president has failed. Now it's, well, you've got to consider that global energy markets affect transportation costs and then that's going to have an influence on retail pricing. Great. I, that's, it's great that you now are acknowledging that Trump chose to go to war with Iran. And it's this almost perfect irony. Kevin Hassett is trying to defend the administration with this nuanced explanation. And instead he ends up explaining why simplistic political attacks over inflation never really made a lot of sense in the first place. And he accidentally gives the most persuasive rebuttal to years of Republican talking points and squarely puts the blame now on Donald Trump. So it's kind of like, I mean, gee, thanks, Kevin. We already knew how this all worked. The question is, when was his own party going to stop pretending that they don't understand how it works? And he finally is acknowledging it. Now. What I think is, is logical as a follow through here is to apply the exact same standard to tariffs, because the same logic applies to tariffs. If you make gaskets more expensive input cost, then your final price for stuff is going to go up. Well, if now the importer, in addition to buying the product, has to pay a tariff on it, whatever they are manufacturing with that product is also going to have to get more expensive. And so I think we need to go further. It's great that Kevin is acknowledging that this is how it works with gas prices to retail prices, but it's also the way it works with blanket foreign tariffs to retail prices. If the steel you need to build the building now has a tariff on it, then it's going to make the building or the apartments or the office space rent or whatever cost more. He does understand it. They only pretend not to when they think it's inconvenient, but then all of a sudden they turn around very, very quickly. There are clips that are so ridiculous, you have to wonder whether the person speaking has ever interacted with the system they're supposed to oversee. I have one of those clips. This is Dr. Oz, now running the federal agency that oversees Medicare and Medicaid. He was trying to explain supposed fraud in the Affordable Care act, also known as Obamacare. And his evidence is that 40% of the people who got a plan haven't used their insurance. And that proves there are a lot of fake people. This is a doctor in charge of Medicare and Medicaid. And listen to this.
- [55:30]
C
Historically, Obamacare had 9 million people on it. 9 million people. This year, over 23 million people apparently, apparently signed up. But of the people who signed up, 40% never use the insurance. Let me ask you a question, John. You have health insurance. Do you use it once a year, buy a prescription, you go visit the doctor, call somebody. If I don't use it once a
- [55:51]
D
day, it's pretty infrequent.
- [55:53]
C
Well, in Obamacare right now, 40% of the people ostensibly signed up never use the insurance. So it raises again the reality that there are many people who are signed up who are getting paid for, but don't believe they have the insurance, don't know they have insurance, didn't want the insurance, and these brokers are able to make a ton of money off the American taxpayer. So of course, the Democrats are arguing aggressively that any people who leave Obamacare is only happening because of the enhanced premium subsidies that were put in place for a short period.
- [56:21]
B
So let's stop there. There. There is so much misinformation and disinformation there. Now, I want to do the lowest hanging fruit first and then dig into some of the details. What he's describing is not how insurance works. It's sort of like if you didn't crash your car last year, your auto insurance was a fraud. If your house didn't burn down and you needed to make a homeowner's insurance claim, it must have been fake homeowners insurance. If you didn't have a medical emergency, your health insurance somehow wasn't real. It's one of the strangest arguments I've heard. Not from a random person on Reddit, from someone responsible for overseeing Medicare and Medicaid. The whole point of insurance is I hope you don't need it. That's why it's called insurance. Now he is making the argument that 40% of people aren't doing anything with the insurance. They're not going to the doctor at all, they're not getting a prescription. Now this is where it starts to get into the weeds. And I don't want to dilute the argument, but I always like to give you as much information as I have there is. A lot of people don't have any medications that they take. They might take multivitamins, but you buy those at the retail. You don't get those through insurance. You might, you know, you get skin creams, but they're over the counter or whatever. It's not that rare that some people have no prescriptions, but some of these insurance plans and I, I always hesitate to get to get into the weeds, but it matters. Some insurance plans have a separate prescription side and so it may be the case that they didn't use their insurance for medical services but that there were prescriptions run through the prescription benefit side. This is really technical stuff. He also said, you know, brokers are making a lot of money selling people these insurance plans. I don't know about every state but in most states, certainly New York and Massachusetts, which I'm familiar with, you don't have a broker. The state has a website where you are getting these Obamacare compliant plans. There is no broker. So like brokers are making money. Doesn't really make any sense. As usual, Dr. Oz seems to misunderstand a lot of this stuff. But the main concept is you pay for protection against something that might happen. You don't buy fire insurance hoping your kitchen catches on fire and then you get to use it and then they raise your rates or maybe even non renew you. You don't root for your car to get totaled so that the insurance company knows you're real and you don't hope that you have to use your health insurance. Most people I know hope that they don't have to use use it. And from the insurance company's perspective, if you pay premiums and the people, if you're paying premiums and not filing claims, you're kind of the ideal customer. That's who insurance companies want. They want people paying into the system and requiring very little in return. And this is sort of the concept of an insurance pool. You have a lot of people, healthy people who offset the costs of the people who get sick. That's kind of the model. It's like saying people, 40% of people who have smoke detectors never have had a fire. That's the goal. Imagine going to a gym and going. I've noticed a lot of people who haven't had heart attacks lately. Something suspicious is happening in this gym. Prevention is part of the point. And there's one other by the way obvious possibility which I think has to be addressed. Many people don't use their insurance in a given year because they stay healthy or they only get preventive care that's covered without any claims. And that's not fraud. That's good news. Now to be fair, there is fraud in health care. The biggest area is fake billing schemes. Where it is providers submitting fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid. They that really has to be investigated. But this person didn't go to the doctor this year is not evidence of fraud. If anything, it's evidence that the insurance did what it's supposed to do. And I want to mention one other thing. Some people have insurance and do have a reason to go be seen, but because their copay might be 20 bucks, it might be 50 bucks. Depends on your plan, depends on the state. Some people don't want to spend that money. And so some of these people who are covered do have circumstances that would make an interaction with the medical system logical, but they can't afford or aren't, aren't able to comfortably pay the co pay or even in some cases, it's not a copay, it's a coinsurance where you might be responsible for 35%. For example of the visit. Donald. Donald. Dr. Oz doesn't seem to get any of this and he's the person overseeing huge portions of the American health care system. And you would expect, you would hope that someone in this position understands the basics of how insurance works. And instead he's puzzled that wait, people can buy insurance and they might not use the insurance. It must be fraud. I didn't use my car insurance last year. I didn't file any homeowners insurance claims. Apparently my house is imaginary and my car is imaginary or something like that. According to Dr. Oz, maybe I don't exist either. These people are so beyond incompetent that it is terrifying that they have taken over the vast majority of the federal government. Not everything. There are still people out there in programs doing good work. But as far as the leadership goes, the people appointed by Donald Trump, truly pathetic stuff. The David Pakman show is an audience supported program and the best, most direct way to support the show is by becoming a member. @join pacman.com you'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show and plenty of other great membership perks. Get the full experience by signing up@join pacman.com there's something I've been thinking about lately that I don't think gets enough attention, which is that Donald Trump has created a political trap for himself. And like a lot of the problems Trump has, it's completely selfish inflicted. Think back to what Donald Trump told people during the campaign. Inflation he was going to fix wars he was going to end, definitely not start any new ones. The economy would boom. He was going to solve trade, he was going to fix crime and he was also going to fix the border. And according to Trump, virtually every problem in the United States existed because Joe Biden was incompetent or maybe it was Obama's incompetence before Trump's first term. And to fix these complicated problems, all we had to do was put Donald Trump back in office. And this is where I believe the trap comes in. Once you tell people every problem is somebody else's fault, and then you become president, you don't have anybody else to blame anymore. He's still doing it. But. But every problem that still exists is now happening on your watch. And if you trained everybody to believe presidents are the ones responsible for every problem, you put yourself in a situation where, when there are still problems and you're the president, you have to pretend everything is solved. You can't admit, well, you know, negotiations with Iran, they're not going so well. You know, I wanted prices down, they're still too high, or a policy is not working the way I expected. He can't even admit something is simply taking longer than he promised, because as soon as he does, he admits that the guy who was supposedly going to fix everything hasn't fixed everything. And if the problems are the responsibility of whoever is president today, it must be that he is responsible. So instead, every announcement is the greatest, every negotiation is fantastic. It's going so phenomenally well. It's all historic. The crowds are enormous. Polls he doesn't like are fake. Every criticism is a hoax. It is a completely unsustainable way to govern, because reality is eventually going to catch up to you. And what worries me is not like, oh, Trump exaggerates. Yeah, Trump exaggerates. When a president convinces himself that admitting a problem exists is politically impossible, he becomes much less likely to actually solve the problem. Because to solve a problem, you have to acknowledge that it exists, and that is what competent leaders do. I remember when Barack Obama became president. This was like 80, 90 years ago, a long time ago. I was just a young boy at that point. Obama became president, and he started to lift the country out of the financial crisis and. And in the. In sort of like the defense of John McCain, in a way. The country was lifting out of that Crisis, likely in 2009, 2010, regardless. But certainly Barack Obama helped it along and didn't stand in its way. But even after that, when Obama ran for reelection in 2012 against Mitt Romney, Obama said, we've made a lot of progress getting out of the Great Recession, but the economy isn't working for everybody. We have work to do. There's more to do. That's what a competent and mature leader is able to do. You identify what's working. You identify what you've done right. But you also say, here are things we need to do more of. We haven't, it's not perfect yet. We haven't totally solved this problem. Trump is the opposite. He first of all never acknowledges that he hasn't completely solved the problem, but he backs himself into a corner where if you just admit reality, it is a dangerous thing to do politically because it can flip conflicts with this mythology you've created about yourself. And this is the MAGA trap. He promised to solve everything quickly, so completely and totally that he now cannot acknowledge when something isn't going according to plan. And if you cannot admit that there is a problem, it is going to be extraordinarily difficult to fix it. And what it leads to are. I was like thinking of the right way to say it. We might call them idiosyncratic outcomes where you claim to have ended the same war 40 times. That only happens in a world you've created where you can't just say, yeah, things are going kind of screwy here. This is, this is not the situation we want to be in and I don't like that this is the way it's going and I wish it were going faster. You can't do that when you have basically made the president the all powerful, either for good or for bad. You have to then claim everything is perfect and everything is resolved. Or as another example, you cannot say, I believe the tariffs are good long term, but they are causing real problems for people today. If this is your worldview, instead you have to say foreign countries are paying the tariffs and it's like, no, they're not. Talk to any company that imports raw materials and they will tell you, before the tariffs, I just paid for the stuff and I paid for the shipping. After the tariffs, I'm paying for the stuff and the shipping and also the tariff, I'm paying for it. It's not China paying for it, it's not Bangladesh or whoever. I'm paying for it. You get these idiosyncratic outcomes when you were not willing to even acknowledge the reality of the situation. And then it gets us to like the discussion about gas prices where I For over a decade I've been saying for the most part, presidents don't affect gas prices except three things they can do gas tax holiday, release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or go to war with a country that either has or controls oil supply. Donald Trump did one of those things. But Trump can't operate in that world. And so he cannot simply acknowledge that that's what's going on and the people around him can't acknowledge it either. And every once in a while it slips out. Earlier in the show, we had the clip of Kevin Hassett going, well, stuff at Walmart's more expensive because gas is more expensive. Yeah, very, very separated from the active voice of. Because Trump did it. But at least he's acknowledging the causative flow of the entire thing. This is the MAGA trap. I don't expect that Trump is ever going to change, and I don't think they're ever going to get out of that trap. Donald Trump has officially lost one of the highest profile legal battles of his life. The Supreme Court decided that it would not hear Donald Trump's appeal of the civil verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming e. Jean Carroll. Meaning that that $5 million judgment against Trump now stands and she will get the money. There was no written explanation from the court. There was no public dissent from any justice. They simply decided, we are not going to take up the case. And the key point is that this, this is no longer a case working its way through the courts. It is over. Trump appealed to the highest court in the land and they said, we are not going to hear it. And in fact, it's even worse for Trump. Trump lost and appealed and lost again and appealed and asked the Supreme Court, please come rescue me. And the Supreme Court said, we're not going to do it. So Trump now has to pay. In practical terms, he already did because the money was already sitting in a court controlled account because Trump posted a bond after the original verdict back in 2023. So the belief is that Jean Carroll is expected to receive the funds very quickly. I don't know if she already has. She may have, or it may take a little longer. But remember what this case involved, because this is. We have become so desensitized to what is happening. This is the President of the United States. A New York jury concluded Trump was liable for sexually abusing her in the mid-1990s. And then he defamed her decades later by falsely attacking her after she came forward. The jury said Trump owes her $5 million. Trump has spent years saying it was all unfair. The jury should never have heard testimony from other women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct. The famous Access Hollywood tape never should have been admitted as evidence. There were evidentiary rulings by the judge that were wrong and it all has to be thrown out. And none of it worked. None of it worked in Trump's favor. The federal appeals court upheld the verdict. And now the Supreme Court is saying, we are not going to intervene. So every single one of those subsequent or earlier rulings, rather, remain intact. Roberta Kaplan is E. Jean Carroll's attorney. She says this is the end of Trump's effort to escape accountability. The repeated appeals have failed. The jury's verdict is affirmed. Now, of course, Donald Trump's team is behaving exactly the way you would expect them to, which is they say the case is a political witch hunt. Trump is going to continue fighting. I don't see how. But what they can't change is that the jury said Trump is liable for sexual abuse. Trump is liable for defamation. The appeals process reinforced that. And the Supreme Court is not going to get involved. Now, this is not. This is the most fascinating part. This is not even the end of Trump's financial exposure in the Carroll litigation, because separate from this case is the $83 million defamation judgment that comes from Trump's repeated attacks on Carroll after she first accused him. That one is making its way through the appellate process. It could get to the Supreme Court and with interest, the liability to Eugene Carol would exceed $100 million if that judgment ultimately survives. So right now, this is about $5 million. There's a broader legal story that's much bigger. Trump exhausted every available appeal in this case. He got to the highest court in the country, and they said, we are not going to get involved. So all of that rhetoric, remember, about I was totally exonerated and I'm winning and all of that stuff, this one ends the opposite way. The verdict stands. Trump is liable for sexual abuse, and the money is going to Jean Carroll. Trump loves to talk about his wins. The. This is a major, major loss. Now, one additional detail I think is worth noting here. Kind of practically speaking, there are still, as I mentioned, there are people going, oh, Trump is going to find a way not to pay. The reporting is the money's been in escrow for years, and that now it very easily and quickly goes to Aegean Carroll. The most important kind of final takeaway on this is what this says about the current state of American politics. Think about if this verdict had involved just about any other politician, it would have been politically devastating. The facts of a civil jury finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and then defamation of the woman he sexually abused. Exhausting every appeal, losing at every level. That would devastate most elected officials. If I'm realistic, I don't think this changes a damn thing for your average Trump supporter. Large segments of the core base of maga, they've already priced it in. They either acknowledge Trump did this, but go, I don't care because he's so good on policy, they can't defend that. But they say it, he's great on policy, so I don't care about this. Or they go, none of it's true. He's getting railroaded, he's getting sandbagged. It's a witch hunt. But the point is whether they believe the allegations are false or the case is politically motivated or like, they don't really care about this. At the end of the day, this does not affect Trump's support. And this is, I would argue, the most remarkable feature of Trump's political career. The conduct that would end careers for other politicians has almost no effect on Trump whatsoever. Regardless of how voters feel about this decision politically, the legal outcome, we are finally beyond 5 million bucks. E. Jean Carroll is getting the money, or she already has. And it is a major loss for Donald Trump. And you know, it hurts him on a personal level having to see that money go to Aegean Carol. It hurts Trump and it'll probably send him for another truth social tirade. Now on the bonus show today, we will talk about other decisions from the Supreme Court, including upholding late arriving mail in ballots. This is a very important law and the Supreme Court has upheld it. The Iran war has reportedly cost each household $1,000. All right, is that a lot? Is it not a lot? We will talk about it. And millions now say they will not celebrate the 4th of July due to deep pessimism about the direction of the country. But are they pessimistic for one reason or for another? That's often the key. All of that and more we will talk about on today's bonus show. And remember, my book is available for preorder, signed for a limited time. Make me sign another book. Will film me signing the books, by the way, by getting a signed copy at David pakman.com/attention. I'll update you tomorrow or Thursday as to where we are on preorders. I'll see you on the bonus show. What a day.