David Pakman (Main Commentary) (30:13)
He cannot get beyond 2020, psychological. Psychologically, he is frozen in November of 2020. Every speech becomes a time machine or a black hole out of which you can't get. He is not running the country. He's just relitigating a loss from five years ago. Now, that was what Trump said at this totally deranged event. But there was a moment where what Trump did was terrifying, and we are going to talk about that next. I want to approach this carefully and with tact. Donald Trump is very clearly unwell. He was disoriented. At the end of a White House event just hours ago, he was confused and wandering around. Now this clip is going viral. And in the clip, what you see is Donald Trump getting up at the end of this event, looking around, thanking people in the audience, sort of perplexed as to what comes next, doing the thing where he taps his right leg with his right hand. That seems to be, and I'm going to go back, that seems to be a reflex Trump has when he's sort of disoriented. He pats his own right leg with his right hand, braces himself on the lectern, looks around and then sort of seems unsure as to where to go or what to do. This is not a diagnosis. This is a reminder that when Biden did something similar with a perfectly clear explanation, they said Biden is done, his brain is cooked and he's got to be removed right now. Now, of course, we later found out Biden was gesturing to specific people standing to the side, but it doesn't matter. But Donald Trump again, as he didn't seem to know what was going on or what to do. This is getting traction. And it's also getting traction because this isn't happening in isolation. We have seen repeated moments over the last lesson, six years, some say 10, but certainly over the last couple of years where Trump is verbally collapsing. His vocabulary is getting increasingly limited. He's confused about names, he makes up facts, he mixes up timelines. He seems not to know where we are in time. He claims events that didn't occur, he abruptly changes topics. His attention is a mess. And when you see that combined with these moments where he's spatially unsure, people start asking questions. And that is very reasonable. The presidency is a high stress job. It requires stamina and focus and information processing and executive control. And when Trump hesitates, grips the lectern, scans the room, you see the vacant look in his eyes. It's concerning because it's the commander in chief. Now. There's, of course, a few possibilities. One, this is nothing. Brief pause, staging hiccup. He didn't know where to go. We're over interpreting it because it's Donald Trump. Number two, it's something, but it's just fatigue. Trump doesn't sleep much. Travel schedules, events, late nights, anybody can look off. Except increasingly, Donald Trump is keeping a lighter and lighter schedule. And so that gets us to possibility number three, which is that there is something systemic going on. There is a pattern here. We can't conclude number three from one clip alone, but we also can't ignore patterns. When you pair the clip with claims that political opponents dropped out when they didn't. We'll get to that later. Trump said that Gavin Newsom ended his presidential campaign, that he dropped out. You might be saying, what is he talking about? The repeated insistence on polls that don't exist, the constant relitigation of events years in the past and living in the past, the fragmented speech patterns. There's a cumulative effect that we as humans who use pattern recognition to figure out the world can't ignore. Now the hypocrisy is a big part of this. Trump and his allies spent years aggressively questioning the cognitive fitness of Biden. They made it central to their messaging. That has to go both ways. If the cognitive sharpness of a president or candidate is the most important standard, we've got to apply it to Trump. That needs to be done fairly. Allies care about stability. Military leadership cares about stability. When the president appears physically uncertain and cognitively disoriented. We have broader concerns about who is really in charge here. Now, I would respect some of the Magaz a lot more if they said, listen, I support Trump. I love his tariffs, I love his deportation policy, as silly as that would be. I support the policy, but I'm concerned about what's going on with him. I would respect that. I would respect those people a lot more. Doesn't have to be partizan, right? These are just basic questions about competence supporters. Waving them off doesn't make them go away. I would argue that the presidency is too important for denial on either side. And if nothing is wrong, let's be more transparent. If something is wrong, let's also be transparent. And so this clip going instantly viral because it is not only exactly what they said Biden was doing when he wasn't, it is fitting into a regular constant growing pattern. Let me know in the comments. What do you see? Let me know in an email info@david pakman.com what do you think? And remember, excuse me, getting so overwhelmed with emotion that I choked. Make sure you're on my Substack newsletter so I can keep in touch with you about all of these issues. You can sign up@substack.david pakman.com let's be honest, the math is not adding up lately. Between the grocery store skyrocketing insurance premiums even with a steady job, more families are being forced rely on high interest credit cards to cover expenses. If you are a homeowner caught in that cycle carrying balances with interest rates in the 20s or even 30s, it is time to get some relief. Right now, mortgage rates are at a three year low. Our sponsor American Financing are helping homeowners pay off the high interest debt at rates in the low fives. The salary based mortgage consultants at American Financing don't just push loans, they build an exit strategy from debt. On average, they are saving their customers $800 a month. Plus if you start today, you may even delay the next two mortgage payments. And at American Financing there are no upfront fees or obligations. Just to find out how much could you save, call 866-891-7848 or go to american financing.net/pacman. The link is in the description. Let's talk about our old friend JD Vance, who by the way, he is the vice president. I know it's easy to forget because they keep them keep him mostly locked away so he doesn't embarrass anybody. J.D. vance should have been treated by Lara Trump during this FOX News interview the way that J.D. vance was treated by George Stephanopoulos asking for proof, following up about lies. But of course, Lara Trump didn't do that. JD Vance went on Lara Trump's show, friendliest setting possible. No pressure, no follow ups. And JD Vance delivers a line that falls apart the second you look at it. Now, of course, the context is J.D. vance is extraordinarily uncharismatic. J.D. vance as regularly saying things that make him so unlikable, lack of gravitas and okay, anyway, JD Talks about all of the factories that are being built thanks to Trump. Take a look at this. Of reshoring manufacturing, of all these great factories that are being built. But when they turn on and you're hiring thousands of American worker per factory, that's when the real Trump boom I think starts. Right? He is talking about all the factories and the Trump boom that will be happening. Well, I would love it for him to name some of these factories. Now, some of you in the audience might say the reason JD Isn't naming specific factories is because there aren't any. But the real explanation is a little bit darker. Let me come back to that. The interesting thing about factories and manufacturing jobs is that they're not metaphors. A factory is a physical building. You need land, you need permits, you need supply chains for the input, products, investment, labor planning. This stuff takes years. If all these factories are under construction because of something Trump did, we should be able to identify the factories. Which projects are actually getting going because of Donald Trump, which actually are based on things Trump did after he returned to power, which executive order or legislation from Trump led to the construction of these factories. Now, you might already kind of get a sense of where I'm going with this, but the question is what policies changed the math so that all these companies said, let's build a factory, we're already building it and we're about to start hiring a whole bunch of people. The trick is the following, Vance is number one, selling the possibility of future factories which have not yet started construction based on anything that Donald Trump did. And, and this is the key, he is trying to take credit for factories that are being built now because of the Chips and Science act signed into law while Joe Biden was president, thanks to Democrats. And they don't want you to know that the reality about factories is it takes a while. We've been hearing, you know, infrastructure week and everything's a couple of weeks away and now they're building factories thanks to Trump. But the truth is it takes a really long time for the entire process that leads to breaking ground on a factory. And a lot of the construction that is going on now, and it's not a crazy amount, but there is some is because of a Biden era law that after you got the land and the permits and the construction company and all of it is only starting to be built right now. But it has nothing to do, nothing to do with Donald Trump. Now the other thing I think is important to mention here is that there's a sort of interwoven promise that Trump made, which is that under his stewardship, the economy was going to see more and more manufacturing jobs. And the truth is that that's not happening. Manufacturing employment levels are lower than they've been in a really long time. And in fact, there are open manufacturing jobs that Americans don't want at the wage that is being offered. Maybe if the wage offered went up, Americans would want them. But this all ignores like a really big overarching reality. The really big overarching reality is that it doesn't really make sense to do most manufacturing in the United States. There are some macroeconomic realities that we have to confront, which is that Most Americans, certainly 75%, probably 90%, probably even 95% of Americans would never want to pay and or couldn't afford to pay what stuff costs or would cost if it was made in the United States. Do you think America, what does an iPhone cost at this point? Is it 800 bucks? A thousand iPhone cost? Let me see here, 800 to 1100 dollars. Do you think that Americans who are currently paying 800 to 1100 dollars for an iPhone would be happy to say we're making them domestically, but I'm going to pay $2700 for the iPhone, which is what one estimate predicted. Of course not. And the truth is, I'm not saying I like it. I'm not saying we should have gone this direction when we started going this direction 40, 50 years ago. But. But the truth is that when you consider wages and labor standards in China as compared to the United States, we are not going to be able to do the manufacturing on the level that Trump claims. We're going to do it at prices that Americans are going to be willing or able to pay, but they don't want to acknowledge that we're going to bring it back. And of course they're not bringing it back. And quite frankly, it doesn't really make sense to bring it back. So JD Is not really looking like a vice president leading an agenda here. He looks like a spokesperson who is confused about reality and is doing a worse job of it even than Caroline Levitt. If you're going to sell a manufacturing revival, you've got to point to specific employment increases and specific factories that are breaking ground and being built because of something Trump did. Just because it's happening while Trump is president doesn't mean it has anything to do with Donald Trump. And J.D. vance is very, very bad at this, that's for sure. Donald Trump went on Truth Social and stroked out again, posting two messages that tell you a lot about how he sees power right now. I want to take them one at a time. First post from Trump on Truth Social, Truth central. Quote, any country that wants to play games with the ridiculous Supreme Court decision, especially those that have ripped off the USA for years and even decades, will be met with a much higher tariff and worse than that which they just recently agreed to. Buyer beware. This is the language of grievance. This is not governance. Countries negotiating trade terms aren't playing games. Trade disputes are normal. Legal rulings happen, appeals happen, countermeasures happen. This is called international commerce for Trump's framing. If there's resistance to anything, they're not respecting me. If there's an adverse ruling, it's illegitimate. Any country that just says, hey, we have interests, we're going to try to assert our interests, that is cheating, and it is a personal attack on Donald Trump. And then buyer beware. Tariffs aren't supposed to be punishment magically paid by foreign governments, by the way. They're not paid by foreign governments. Tariffs are taxes on imports. U.S. companies pay them. I'M angry at China, so I will put a tariff on China that American companies pay, which most of most of which is then passed on to American consumers. We already saw this in Donald Trump's first term. His tariff battles triggered retaliation. They disrupted the supply chains. They led to billions in federal bailouts to farmers, and then he's doing the same thing again. So when he threatens much higher tariffs, and even worse, he is presenting erratic volatility as a sign of strength, that he's strong. But businesses don't invest when things are volatile. They invest based on predictability. And if trade policy depends on who Trump is mad at this week, we're in for a really bad one. Second post from Trump, quote, as president, I do not have to go back to Congress to get approval of tariffs. It has already been gotten in many forms a long time ago. They were just also. They were also just reaffirmed by the ridiculous and poorly crafted Supreme Court decision. This one is, is arguably more important. The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. Now, over time, Congress has delegated some tariff authorities to the executive branch through specific statutes. That is true. Delegated authority isn't unlimited. It can be interpreted, it can be challenged. It can be narrowed. Courts, review. How far does that extend? Congress can amend it. There's separation of powers. Trump doesn't frame it that way. He doesn't say, listen, under existing law, I believe I have this authority. He says, I don't have to go to Congress, period. That's the mindset. I can do whatever I want. Congress is an obstacle. Judicial review is ridiculous. If there's a constraint on Trump, he says it's illegitimate. Now, notice the contradiction. He calls the Supreme Court decision ridiculous and poorly crafted. But he says it reaffirmed his authority. So the Supreme Court is incompetent, but also helpful to him. That is the pattern. That's much bigger than tariffs. Institutions that limit him are corrupt. Courts are flawed. Congress isn't necessary. Trade partners are ripping us off. The media is fake. Elections are rigged. If there's an independent center of authority, it's invalid. And if they do what he wants, then he sort of will begrudgingly recognize their authority. That's why this really matters. Trump is escalating this economically volatile situation in a way that he wants you to believe is him being really tough and fighting for you. Except it's not fighting for you. In fact, the blanket tariff was a disaster for the average American. And then he wants you to believe that it's inevitable, that he has the power to do whatever he wants together. This is a president that sees checks and balances not as the system within which we work, but as personal annoyances. I am not a fan of George W. Bush. I think he was a bad president and did horrible things. But Bush did respect and understand that there are some final decisions that that's it. The Supreme Court is certainly one of them. And when you start talking about presidential power as something that was permanently gotten a long time ago, that is how you normalize. Unilateral rule, which is of course what Donald Trump would prefer. It would be much easier if I were a dictator. George W. Bush said that, sort of jokingly. Trump genuinely believes it.
