Reality is gone and revenge is here

Summary

Podcast Summary: The David Pakman Show

Episode: Reality is gone and revenge is here
Date: July 30, 2026
Host: David Pakman
Notable Guest: Hilary Shea (Speech Language Pathologist)

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Overview

In this episode, David Pakman critically examines the Republican Party’s current obsession with punishment, vengeance, and spectacle – specifically their treatment of Dr. Anthony Fauci, their embrace of conspiracy and baseless accusations, and the unraveling of objective reality among key conservatives. The episode features deep dives into recent Congressional antics, including the browbeating of Dr. Fauci, Ron Johnson’s vaccine hysteria, and outlandish statements from GOP figures. Additionally, Pakman interviews speech language pathologist Hilary Shea, analyzing Donald Trump’s cognitive and speech patterns, explores the legal risk swirling around Barron Trump, and covers economic confusion at the highest levels. Throughout, Pakman highlights both the absurdity and real dangers of the current political climate.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. GOP Orchestrated Grievance Politics & The Fauci Hearings

[00:00 - 11:30]

• Theme: The Republican Party is abandoning governance in favor of grievance, conspiracy, and retributive spectacle.

• Dr. Anthony Fauci, 85 and retired, was dragged before Congress, serving as a prop for Republicans to generate viral video clips—what Pakman brands as “clip farming.”

• Notable Exchanges:

  • Bernie Moreno berates Fauci (02:17):
    “Who the fuck do you think you were for doing that?”
  • Pakman:
    "Other countries look at us and they go, what the problem is? You don't have enough thinking, educated, smart people in positions of power. And you're berating a guy who stayed in office... Did he make mistakes? Yeah... but this is who you want to berate.” (02:46)
  • Senator Moody indignantly accuses Fauci of endangering democracy by criticizing Ron DeSantis' anti-mask policy (03:33).
  • Pakman:
    "This sort of like what seems to be completely contrived indignance in her voice. I find it nauseating. I find it completely vomit as being wrong on everything." (04:04)

• Pleading the Fifth:
  Fauci invokes his Fifth Amendment right. Pakman points out the hypocrisy of MAGA figures mocking this, when Trump himself has pleaded the Fifth “hundreds of times” (04:42–05:36).

• Clip-Farming Antics:
  Senator Josh Hawley asks nonsensical questions just to highlight Fauci’s invocation of the Fifth (05:41–06:17).

• Rand Paul vs. Fauci's Lawyer:
  Senator Rand Paul threatens to eject Fauci’s lawyer for attempting to speak in his client’s defense (08:39–09:42).

Pakman’s conclusion:
“What they achieved, if anything, is they dragged an 85-year-old retired scientist doctor before Congress so that they could just try to make mincemeat out of him and get clips bullying him. How strong they are.” (09:45)

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2. Fringe Accusations & Calls for Vengeance

[11:31 - 15:23]

• Tommy Tuberville:

  • Bizarrely claims Fauci has a role in “killing 9 million people” and vows to pursue him legally if elected governor (11:31–13:38).
  • “He will eventually end up either broke or in prison... We're going to go after him with everything we've got because the guy killed.” (11:31)
  • Also threatens to “put him in front of a firing squad for all they care” (13:41–13:54).

• Peter Navarro:

  • Blames Fauci for stopping hydroxychloroquine distribution, claiming “thousands of people could be here alive” if he had succeeded (14:49–15:20).

Pakman’s response:
“Prove some of it. Prove it. Foushee killed 9 million people. What the hell are you talking about? ...evidence has become optional in Republican politics.” (12:57–13:38)

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3. Ron Johnson’s Vaccine "Mass Suicide" Claim

[18:56 - 19:13]

• Ron Johnson alleges “mass suicide” among vaccine-injured individuals, without providing evidence:

  • “The rate of the injection injury of suicides is increasing because they've given up hope...” (18:56)

• Pakman debunks:

  • Explains how such claims require controlled data and evidence (19:13+).
  • Critiques anti-vaxxers' emotionally charged but unsubstantiated rhetoric.

Quote:
“This is a United States senator with staff subpoena power ... If there were credible evidence of a mass suicide crisis among the so-called vaccine injured, we would have some data ... Instead he just blurts out this insane accusation and he moves along.” (19:13+)

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4. Legally Radioactive: The Barron Trump Question

[23:15 - 32:57]

• Background:
  • Increased scrutiny on Barron Trump (now an adult)—potential exposure in lawsuits and speculation regarding ties to the Tate brothers and other misdeeds.
  • Pakman leans heavily on disclaimers, noting the risky and sensitive nature of covering allegations about Barron’s possible autism.
  • Democratic staffers worry the pursuit of Barron could backfire—public sympathy may transfer to Barron/Trump if disability is at play.

Pakman’s warning:
“If this backfires and it is seen as potentially cruel... sympathy is going to immediately grow and it could end up being a really ugly and difficult situation. So these are the things that Dem staffers have said they are worried about. And I think it very, very clearly has to be considered.” (32:55)

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5. Interview: Hilary Shea, Speech-Language Pathologist—Analyzing Trump’s Speech & Cognition

[32:57 - 51:07]

Topics Explored:

• Vocabulary Decline, Twitches, and “Glitches”

  • Shea confirms Pakman’s lay observations, attributing Trump’s physical twitches to “myoclonus,” linked to neurological decline (33:51–36:00).

• Glitches during speech: Brain puts energy into correcting errors, making twitches more frequent (35:29–36:26).

• Vocabulary Diversity:

  • Shea: Trump’s declining vocabulary diversity is “clinically relevant,” suggesting greater brain deterioration compared to peers (37:48–38:54).
  • “So that signifies that the brain deterioration in Trump is much more significant than in Biden.” (37:48)

• Word Finding & Fluency Issues:

  • Circumlocution and paraphrasias are signs of neurological issues, possibly dementia or stroke (42:41–45:11).
  • “The word finding is actually less concerning for could just be typical than the phonological issues that he's having, especially because he wasn't having them before.” (46:05)

• Fine Motor Skills:

  • Pakman: Trump struggles with capping pens and other tasks; Shea notes decline in fine motor function often mirrors speech articulation breakdown, rooted in overall brain decline (47:16–48:25).

• Montreal Cognitive Assessment (“MOCA”) Testing:

  • Shea downplays the test's reliability as a sole indicator; frequent administration may indicate concern for decline or monitoring of medication efficacy (40:29–41:18).

• Mitch McConnell’s “Freeze” Events:

  • Shea suspects possible seizure or TIA (transient ischemic attack) given his symptoms post-concussion; reiterates risk of neurological decline in aging politicians (49:00–50:50).

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6. Trump vs. the Fed: The Interest Rate Showdown

[51:08 - 56:50]

• Trump’s Federal Reserve appointee, Kevin Warsh, holds interest rates steady—contrary to Trump’s demand for cuts.
  • Warsh:
    “There is no soft inflation target. Not on this committee’s watch. … Five plus years of inflation above target cannot be cured in nine weeks or by a single month of modest price decreases.” (53:19)
  • Decision upsets Trump, upends his narrative blaming his predecessor for high rates.
  • GOP narrative on economic “disaster” vs. actual numbers (GDP at 1.5% growth).

Pakman’s take:
“This destroys Trump's story about Jerome Powell… and then he comes in and they go, yeah, we're not lowering rates right now.” (56:02)

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7. Oval Office Decompensation: Trump’s Public Decline & “Word Salad”

[59:12 - 65:06]

• Pakman plays disturbing Oval Office clips: Trump delivers incoherent responses on foreign policy, war, grass, windmills, air traffic towers.

  • Example:
    “Grass is like human beings. Grass is a life also.” (61:18)
  • Example:
    “Any time you see windmills, you see a failing country.” (61:59)
  • Example:
    “They're literally falling down... So we're talking about new towers and all new air traffic control.” (63:33)

• Public decompensation noted and aides seen rushing press out of the room (64:36).

• Pakman:
  “It is going to become increasingly difficult for Donald Trump to do these events. And there is a reason that Donald Trump is sitting down when they start, sitting down when they end, is not pictured walking in or out of the room. And why they are increasingly short in duration. And it's that he can't do it. It's not working now.” (65:06)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• Pakman:
  “These desperate and disqualified, disgusting, triggered snowflake Republicans decided to drag 85-year-old Dr. Anthony Fauci before Congress...” (00:33)
• Bernie Moreno:
  “Who the fuck do you think you were for doing that?” (02:17)
• Sen. Rand Paul:
  “You are not recognized. Security, we'll hold off but you will respect these proceedings.” (08:50)
• Pakman:
  “They wanted to generate clips supporting conclusions that they reached years ago, which are that Foushee is really evil and vaccines are poison…” (19:13)
• Tommy Tuberville:
  “He will eventually end up ... in prison ... we're going to sue the heck out of this guy ... We're going to go after him with everything we've got because the guy killed.” (11:31)
• Hilary Shea:
  “That signifies that the brain deterioration in, in Trump is much more significant than in Biden.” (37:48)
• Kevin Warsh (Fed Chair):
  “Five plus years of inflation above target cannot be cured in nine weeks or by a single month of modest price decreases.” (53:19)

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Major Segments Timeline

| Time | Segment Description | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Opening: GOP Vengeance Politics, Fauci Congressional Flog | | 02:17 | Bernie Moreno’s Outburst | | 03:33 | Sen. Moody & DeSantis defense; Fauci’s Fifth Amendment | | 05:29 | GOP Badgering over Pleading Fifth | | 08:39 | Rand Paul Attempts to Eject Fauci’s Lawyer | | 11:31 | Tuberville’s Fauci Vengeance & Navarro’s Med Rant | | 18:56 | Ron Johnson: Vaccine “Mass Suicide” | | 23:15 | Barron Trump: Legal & Political Risks | | 32:57 | Interview: Hilary Shea on Trump’s Speech/Cognition | | 51:08 | Trump’s Fed Dilemma—No Interest Rate Cut | | 59:12 | Oval Office: Trump’s Incoherent Press Events | | 65:06 | Closing Reflections |

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Final Thoughts

David Pakman delivers a scathing, fact-driven, and at times caustically humorous takedown of Republican political spectacle, their detachment from reality, and the hazards of vengeance-based politics. The in-depth interview with Hilary Shea provides credible, clinical observations on Trump’s speech and cognitive issues, underlining the seriousness of observed presidential decline. The episode balances dark comedy, alarm, and critical analysis, making clear the dangers of a political culture that has replaced governing with viral outrage and conspiracy.

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Transcript

[David Pakman]

Today's episode is really a tour through a Republican Party that has replaced governing or even pretending to govern with grievances, conspiracies and a bloodthirsty desire for revenge. They dragged 85 year old Dr. Anthony Foushee before Congress so they could swear at him and threaten him with prison and make all sorts of accusations they absolutely can't prove. Ron Johnson then took it even further and said that the vaccines for Covid have caused mass suicide. We're also going to get into legally radioactive questions surrounding Barron Trump and I'm going to try to avoid getting myself sued. And Donald Trump's handpicked Federal Reserve chairman rejects Trump's demands for lower interest rates and undermines everything Trump said about Jerome Powell. Plus another bizarre Oval Office performance involving windmills, human like grass, Star wars and AIDS rushing the press out of the room. Plus I will speak with speech language pathologist Hilary Shea. I think it'll be a really interesting conversation if they let me do today's show. I think it'll be a good one. These desperate and disqualified disgusting, triggered snowflake Republicans decided to drag 85 year old Dr. Anthony Fauci before Congress ostensibly to investigate the pandemic. And what they really wanted are viral clips of themselves berating him and swearing at him and insulting him and pretending that shouting obscenities at an 85 year old retired scientist and doctor is government oversight. We can be proud of these Republicans for doing this stuff. Let's watch a little bit of this spectacle and then we're going to talk about what actually happened. Here is Bernie Moreno saying to Foushee, who the f do you think you were? This is clip farming, folks. That's what this is.

[Bernie Moreno]

When that story broke, I said to myself, I cannot stand Eilee on the side and watch this happen. It was about six years ago today that I decided I'm going to give up my businesses, sell them all, run for office, run for the United States Senate. Here I am sitting in front of you six years later saying, who the fuck do you think you were for doing that?

[David Pakman]

You know, I actually shouldn't laugh because this is just such a disgrace. Other countries look at us and they go, what the problem is? You don't have enough thinking, educated, smart people in positions of power. And you're berating a guy who stayed in office and not, not even office, who stayed at his job longer than he had to. And did he make mistakes? Yeah, I mean, mistakes were made all around the world and in the United States during COVID Donald Trump made a whole bunch of the mistakes, but this is who you want to berate. Here is another example. You insulted Governor Ron DeSantis. You insulted him.

[Senator Moody]

And you called our governor, Governor DeSantis. And I'm going to quote this so I get it right, right out of your journals, a total jerk. That he is a complete disgrace. That he is blocking local authorities from mandating masks in various locations, including schools. And you were very concerned and upset that we were actively, and I'm going to quote, criticizing you. And we talk to her virtually every day about.

[David Pakman]

I have to tell you guys, this sort of like what seems to be completely contrived indignance in her voice. I find it nauseating. I find it completely vomit as being wrong on everything.

[Senator Moody]

And what is astounding is that you wrote you feared because of that. Because we were questioning our government, because. Because we were fighting back for the truth from our government, from scientifically based recommendations, because we were pushing for that. You said you feared that our democracy is in dire danger.

[David Pakman]

Did you get the clips you wanted, Senator Moody? Now, Dr. Foushee also angered a lot of people in the room that day because he pled the Fifth. Now, the MAGA right, loves to say, oh, only the mob pleads the Fifth. Only guilty people plead the Fifth. It happens to be the framework upon which our legal system is based that pleading the Fifth cannot be used to infer or as evidence of guilt. And by the way, Donald Trump has pled the Fifth hundreds of times when being deposed in a lot of different scenarios. Put that aside for a second. The clip farmers of the Republican Party tried to get their clips. Like, for example, knowing that Donald Trump, Dr. Fauci, was not going to be responding to these questions. Senator Hawley goes, what day of the week is it today? Oh, he's so clever. He's so damn clever.

[Senator Rand Paul]

Senator olling.

[Senator Josh Hawley]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, nothing says honesty like taking the fifth on Doc.

[David Pakman]

Talk to Trump about that. Why did Trump take the fifth 450 times during a deposition?

[Senator Josh Hawley]

Let's try something. What day of the week is it today?

[Kevin Warsh]

On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

[Senator Josh Hawley]

What color tie are you wearing?

[Kevin Warsh]

On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

[Senator Josh Hawley]

What color is the carpet in front of you?

[Kevin Warsh]

On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

[Senator Josh Hawley]

Let's just get one thing straight. You don't have any rights under the fifth Amendment because you've been pardoned as you've.

[David Pakman]

Now, of course that's untrue because pardons don't cover state charges. I mean it's like this is just so stupid.

[Senator Tommy Tuberville]

Very well, no.

[Senator Josh Hawley]

As the Supreme Court has been clear for a century and more. Brown versus Walker, 1896. When he has been pardoned, he may not stand upon his privilege. You know that your lawyer is sitting behind you now, shifting nervously in their chairs. They know it. This isn't about the Constitution. This isn't about the law. This is about contempt.

[David Pakman]

Now some of you might notice that over Dr. Foushee, his left shoulder is a familiar face and it is the face of Fox News hostess Laura Ingraham. Now the whole point of this was for Republicans to get their sound bites of them bullying an 85 year old man. And part of this was that they brought in a group of people to stand up behind Foushee. Dr. Foushee, will you turn and look at these people? And one of the people that stands up when this goes down again, it's just, it's clip farmers. These are like kick streamers. Laura Ingraham proudly and defiantly stands up. Take a look at this. This is so embarrassing. The world is laughing at the circus that we have become.

[Bernie Moreno]

Doctor Frederick, you just turn around and look at the people behind you. You're not willing to do that. That's not a question. It's not a question to your lawyers. Not a question. It's a request. All you have to do is look up from your lawyers and look at the people who were absolutely shamed for saying what we know now to be the truth. You can't even look at them. That's a, that's a question. Are you able to look at them? You can sit down. The audience.

[David Pakman]

What a powerful moment, isn't it? What? What a powerful moment. And then finally Rand Paul loses it when Dr. Foushee's lawyer tries to say something and he eventually tells security to kick out Foushee's lawyer, Senator Peters.

[Senator Rand Paul]

You're not recognized. You're not recognized. If you are unruly, you will be removed from the proceeding. You are not. You are not recognized. And you, you are not recognized.

[Senator Josh Hawley]

Sir.

[Senator Rand Paul]

Sir. You are not recognized. You are not recognized. Security, we'll hold off but you will respect these proceedings. You were told not to sit at the table. You insist on sitting at the table and we told you you would not be recognized. You are not invited here for testimony, sir. You are Being disruptive. Would you behave this way in a courtroom? No, because the judge would put you in jail. I can't do that today, but I can have you escorted from the premises. So I would say, sir, sit quietly and don't say another wor. I said sit quietly. You are not recognized. Another word and you're gone. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to hear what

[David Pakman]

the attorney has to say.

[Senator Rand Paul]

He is not recognized by the committee or the chair.

[David Pakman]

If he heard anyway. It's like how much of this crap am I going to play for you? You know, what an embarrassing spectacle. So what they achieved, if anything is, is they dragged an 85 year old retired scientist doctor before Congress so that they could just try to make mincemeat out of him and get clips bullying him. How strong they are. Now they knew Foushee would invoke his fifth amendment right. And the hearing was just designed to produce outrage. It wasn't designed to get us any answers. And Josh Hawley even said from the dais, foushee has no fifth amendment rights, which is an absurd legal determination which by the way, Holly has no authority to make. And Rand Paul tries to get his lawyer removed for defending his client. Now there are legitimate questions about pandemic policy. There are legitimate questions about public health messaging. Republicans ignored all of them because they wanted this stupid vengeance theater. And it's what, seven years later Foushee still has the. I mean it's a quite extraordinary ability to trigger the entire Republican party. What a world where they simply cannot contain themselves around this 85 year old retired public servant. And when the hearing ended and they went on tv, it got even worse. These Republicans are so consumed by Dr. Fauci that they've graduated to inventing crimes. Here is Tommy Tuberville who says Dr. Foushee killed 9 million people and we're going to put him in prison. And then we'll get to others, Peter Navarro and others. Can any of these losers prove any of this crap? Let's take a look at this first clip happened.

[Senator Tommy Tuberville]

You know, I was on the help committee when he first the COVID first hit. We went through probably every other week, maybe sometimes every month we had a hearing hearing with Dr. Fauci. We all ask him questions. He lied to us and he knew he was lying to us because we found out all the information. Now since then, a lot of it even in his diary. Liz, but the problem is you. He hurt trust in this country. He put this country in a tailspin. He almost bankrupt our country with what they did Between Obama and Biden, this guy gets Weasel of the year award. I mean, I mean, he will eventually end up either broke or in prison because I'll tell you what's going to happen. I'm eventually going to be the governor of Alabama and we had the most of anybody per capita of dying in this country. And we're going to sue the heck out of this guy. He's going to court every day of his life for the rest of his life. And he's going to have to look these people in the face, these families, because the pardon does not cover state government. And. And we're going to go after him with everything we've got because the guy killed.

[Peter Navarro]

Yeah.

[David Pakman]

He might be 95 by the time they work all that stuff through the

[Senator Tommy Tuberville]

system had something to do with killing 9 million people. Is it. It's an. Yeah.

[Senator Josh Hawley]

We can't prove that. Right.

[Donald Trump]

So.

[David Pakman]

But that's yet to be determined.

[Hilary Shea]

How many people are you.

[Senator Tommy Tuberville]

We can determine it now. We can determine.

[David Pakman]

The Fox host is terrified about legal liability. We don't really have proof of any of that.

[Senator Tommy Tuberville]

He was in on the gain of function.

[David Pakman]

He was saying you can determine if we understand that. Yes. And that you want to move to do that. I want to get to, well, prove some of it. Prove it. Foushee killed 9 million people. What the hell are you talking about? And the Fox hosts are understanding that these are very radioactive allegations to be making and this would be the moment to present some of the evidence, explain the crime, identify the 9 million victims of Foushee and demonstrate causality. But he just moves on. And the claim they sort of treated as self evident because evidence has become optional in Republican politics. Here's another clip of Tuberville and he says we are going to put him in front of a court and in front of a jury. We're going to try to put him

[Senator Tommy Tuberville]

in prison, everything, hopefully in the next six months.

[David Pakman]

This is on Newsmax.

[Senator Tommy Tuberville]

By the way, I'll be the governor of the state of Alabama and I promise you one thing. We will find out if there's a possibility that we can bring him to Alabama to put him in front of a court and a jury to see if we can put him in front

[David Pakman]

of a firing squad for all they

[Senator Tommy Tuberville]

care about this guy in prison. He killed millions of people, folks. I mean, this was a catastrophe and everything.

[David Pakman]

This guy is campaigning for governor and he's promising that he will drag Foushee into a courtroom with the goal of dragging him into prison for what? Crime committed where Under Which Alabama statute? Based on what evidence? He doesn't know. Obviously, governors can't import people they don't like. They can't assemble juries and see if we can find a reason to imprison them. But think of the people out there who are going, oh man, my cost of living is up. Gas is so expensive, energy is up, housing is up. They really need to drag Dr. Foushee in for a hearing. That's, that's really what's going to fix the problems in this country. Here's Peter Navarro. I had a million doc doses of hydroxychloroquine and Foushee stopped me from giving them to people.

[Peter Navarro]

Stuff with science. Science, Jasmine, I want to emphasize, tells us now works. He was saying didn't work. I had a million doses of hydroxychloroquine in warehouses as a defense policy coordinator for the DPA that I was trying to distribute to hospitals. And he got the FDA to stop me from doing that. Thousands of people could be here in this country right now alive if I had been able to distribute that. Take that to the bank. That's what they, the science says.

[David Pakman]

Okay, why Foushee wouldn't let me give out a million doses of a medication I didn't know a damn thing about. Wah, poor me. Peter Navarro is a mediocre economist, okay? Not a doctor, not a pharmacologist, not an infectious disease specialist. The FDA revoked hydroxychloroquine emergency authorization because we had clinical evidence that showed it doesn't do anything good for people in the hospital with COVID And there are risks, there are cardiac complications. Navarro story makes Foushee sound responsible for something bad. And you had a lot of political operatives that wanted to push an ineffective medication into hospitals. And fortunately public health officials stopped them from doing it. Maybe Foushee did really save millions of lives. As I'm hearing this story from people, Peter Navarro, These people believe that this is what's going to save them in the midterms. They've lost on the economy. They've presented no credible argument for why any of them deserve to be reelected or for Republicans that are running from scratch to be elected for the first time. And so they're going with, look at what Foushee did seven years ago when, by the way, Trump was president. And let's see if we can somehow use this hearing to clip farm and justify people voting for us for reasons we can't even really think about or explain. Pathetic people. And after the break, we're going to get into some of the meat of why they are so panicked. I don't have a cat myself but I have spent enough time around friends cats to know that there are picky cats when it comes to food. They don't like it, they won't eat it. But one of my friends has had a ton of success switching to Smalls cat food. Before Smalls mealtime was very hit or miss. The cat gets excited. Now our sponsor Smalls is fresh human grade cat food made with real ingredients, no fillers or artificial stuff. High protein, gently cooked, promotes digestion, delivered right to your door. My friend did a side by side with the old food and Smalls the cat went for Smalls. You your cat deserves more than a bowl of processed shortcuts. Try Smalls. If your cat doesn't love Smalls, you get a full refund for a limited time. My audience gets 60% off your first order plus free shipping and free treats for life. When you go to smalls.com/pacman the link is in the description. If you do only one thing today, I would love it if you subscribed to my YouTube channel where we are pushing to 4 million subscribers. There are only a couple of progressive shows at or above 4 million. We are trying to be one of those. I guess it's really two or three and we would be the third or fourth. So if you haven't yet subscribed on YouTube David pakman.com/YouTube or if you're watching on YouTube right now, just hit the subscribe button button. Something went very wrong with Republican Senator Ron Johnson during the Fauci hearing yesterday. Ron Johnson claimed that people supposedly injured by Covid vaccines are committing what he describes as mass suicide. And you might say I haven't heard about that. That sounds weird to me. Does he have any evidence? Good questions. Let's listen to what Ron Johnson had to say about this.

[Bernie Moreno]

We haven't acknowledged these injection injuries. These people can't get treatment. They're being gaslit by their doctors. So it's all in your head. The rate of the injection injury of suicides is increasing because they've given up hope because our medical establishment, federal health agencies completely fail them, failing to acknowledge it.

[David Pakman]

So again, is he actively suffering from RFK juniors brainworms or something like that? Like what on earth is Ron Johnson talking about? He uses that phrase injection injured, which is highly emotionally salient, but it sort of means nothing and it's the newest euphemism in anti vaccine circles. And then he goes, people are committing mass suicide. It's like the people's Temple and Jim Jones. Except, by the way, that was really a murder suicide. So maybe not the right analogy. But not merely. I heard of one person. He goes, there is mass suicide happening among the vaccine injured. And he describes it like a wave of deaths. Now, I hate to ask such a quaint question, but do we have any evidence of that? How many people over what period of time, you know, compared to what baseline of suicides? How was vaccine injury established? How was causation determined? What study documented the mass suicide event? Johnson provides none of it, because it's not a scientific claim. It's this mishmash of emotionally loaded words that are just designed to frighten people. That's what they want to do. I write in my forthcoming book, Pay Attention. Have I mentioned I wrote this book and it's coming out soon? I write about the emotional load that the right is so good at adding to every issue. And it could be a scapegoat. It. It could be a villain. It could be fear of something. And in this case, if you acknowledge reality, it's pretty damn boring, which is vaccines can cause adverse reactions. They're overwhelmingly mild. Like, my arm hurts or I have a headache. I feel a little flu, like, for 12 to 24 hours. Any medical intervention you do carries some risk. And there are rare, serious vaccine reactions which should be studied, treated people should be compensated where appropriate. And there is such a fund to compensate people, but it is extraordinarily rare. Now, that doesn't transform every health problem that happens after vaccination into a vaccine injury. Remember that early on in the vaccination campaign for Covid, there were Republicans coming out and going, look at all these people who died after the vaccine. Some of them were 88 and died six months after the vaccine. That has nothing to do with the vaccine. And it certainly doesn't establish this outrageous claim of mass suicide by the injection injured. There was a time in American society where if you made such a baseless and outrageous claim, you were sort of laughed out of the room, you weren't treated as a serious person. And all of a sudden, they are treating this like, oh, my God, it's this. This means that we've got to drag Fauci in here and swear at him. Now, the basic distinction, and we've talked a lot about conspiracy theorists, and what counts as evidence for or against the basic distinction that conspiracy theorists erase is that something that happened after an event doesn't prove that it happened because of that event. Hundreds of millions of people receive Covid vaccines. And within any group that large and that diverse in terms of health, background and age, people will subsequently have heart attacks, people will subsequently get cancer or be diagnosed with depression, some will get into car accidents, some there will be tragedies. Because it's a very large group of people. If you're going to establish causation from the vaccine, you need controlled data, you need comparison groups, you need medical research. But Ron Johnson doesn't give a damn about that. He wants to clip farm and to get himself out in front of Dr. Foushee and go, the vaccine injured have committed mass suicide and this is his identity. Years promoting Covid misinformation and treating these fringe speculations as though these are the facts and they are suppressing them. And during the hearing he referred to vaccines as experimental gene therapy. Insanely misleading phrase. And now he's escalating to this wave of vaccine related suicides while presenting no evidence that such a thing exists. Tucker Carlson presented without evidence the idea that millions have died from the COVID vaccine. Oh, what's that guy's, there's the two brothers, Brent Weinstein. Weinstein, Weinstein, I think they say, who said millions have died from the COVID vaccine? What are you talking about now? This is a United States senator with staff subpoena power because Republicans are in power right now. He could speak to experts, he could request legitimate research. He could, if there were credible evidence of a mass suicide crisis among the so called vaccine injured, we would have some data and we would, we would be able to demand a serious investigation. Instead he just blurts out this insane accusation and he moves along and he knows that the phrase is going to circulate, the anti vaxxers are going to look at it like disaster porn and nobody's going to ask for proof. And this is really the point. Why did Republicans organize this hearing? Did they want, did they want to learn about Dr. Foushee's logic and saying X and not Y? No. Did they want to learn about vaccination? They wanted to generate clips supporting conclusions that they reached years ago, which are that Foushee is really evil and vaccines are poison and every pandemic grievance is a Democrat's fault, even though most of this stuff happened when Trump was president during his first term. So it's, it's such an incoherent performance from Johnson that saying it's brain worms is almost like a generous interpretation because we're just laughing it off. The less charitable one is he knows exactly what he's doing. He knows exactly who he's triggering with this nonsense. He's doing it on purpose in the same way that Trump talked about let's go to the Capitol on January 6, knowing how people would react, knowing I don't respect it, it's disgusting, it's irresponsible, and it's the last thing that we need right now. Of all the segments I've ever done, this is probably the one I have to be the most careful about if I don't want to get sued by Melania Trump. So let me see if I can build this up in a way where I'm not going to be buried in legal fees, because this is a really important story that needs to be told. It's about Barron Trump. Over the last couple of weeks, there has been more and more scrutiny on Barron Trump, who, again, I'm going to remind you, is an adult. He's the son of Donald and Melania Trump. Trump refers to him as his kid in the loose sense, but he's not a child. Barron Trump is an adult. And there's growing legal scrutiny on Barron Trump. For example, the lawsuit that Trump filed against the BBC, which the BBC is fighting, has the potential to open up Barron Trump to discovery and to questioning. That's been reported on, and that is potentially a concern because it could pull Barron Trump into the public eye. Congresswoman Yasmine Ansari said that because Barron is an adult who was involved in Trump's world, he should be investigated for his possible connections to the Tate brothers, Andrew and Tristan Tate, who were recently arrested. So the point here is Barron Trump is. Is increasingly a player in the misdeeds of Trump. Barron is subject to investigation, and as of this point in time, we have no firm evidence of criminality. Those are the facts. There is another wrinkle to this entire thing, and this is where I have to be really careful. As many of you know, Barron Trump has essentially not spoken publicly. There's really no video of him speaking extensively since he was a little boy. And there is speculation as to why this is. This is not my idea, but I had conversations with Democratic staffers in the last two days, and they are following the growing demands for investigation of Barron Trump for the taint stuff, possibly for the Tate stuff, possibly for insider trading and other things. But Democratic staffers are worried about this Baron thing. The reason that they are worried is that if Barron Trump were to be pursued, they have concerns that something will happen that will make Barron much more sympathetic to the public, and it could completely backfire on Democrats. Now, I'M going to be very careful here. That thing is that there are longstanding rumors and claims that Barron Trump is profoundly autistic. Now, let me issue a clear disclaimer. This segment constitutes commentary and opinion based on statements, claims and speculation made by others for which a public record exists. Nothing in this statement should be construed to state, imply, or suggest that I have any personal knowledge that Donald Trump is autistic, profoundly autistic, or has any other medical or developmental condition. I hope that that's clear. If Barron Trump were autistic, and I'm not saying that he is, there would be a situation where aggressively pursuing him could backfire spectacularly on Democrats. We saw a version of this when right wingers were mocking Tim Walls's neurodivergent son Gus. And Gus became emotional at the DNC in 2024, and the cruelty with which Republicans were going after Gus became a big story. And the public mostly rallied around Gus Waltz. And even Ann Coulter deleted her attack after the backlash. And the people that were trying to embarrass the Walz family ended up making themselves look really monstrous. Now, Barron is an adult. Adulthood matters if there is legitimate evidence connecting him to Andrew or Tristan Tate or to any relevant conduct, insider trading, whatever people are talking about. Just because he's Donald Trump's son doesn't mean he's immune from investigation. Neither would autism. But investigators should follow specific evidence. They should ask questions about conduct. They shouldn't engage in any kind of amateur diagnosis or talk about Barron's mannerisms or turn this into a spectacle. If Barron were ultimately revealed to have some kind of developmental disability, Trump and Melania would immediately portray every question, every, every subpoena, every investigation as look at these nasty Democrats bullying a vulnerable young man. Now, that characterization may or may not be fair, but it would be really effective. And all of a sudden, any of the underlying acts potentially committed by Barron would just become irrelevant. Sympathy would pour in. Trump would get to play the protective father instead of having to account for for what his adult son may have known or what his adult son may have done. We know this is a huge red line for Melania because in 2016, her attorney threatened legal action over a YouTube video that suggested the then underage baron might be autistic. And the creator, who at the time said he was autistic himself and he was intending the video to defend Barron, removed the video and apologized. And Melania's attorney categorically said Barron is not autistic. The speculation in and of itself is bullying. So this is not just a sensitive subject in the abstract sense. This is a subject where Melania Trump has deployed lawyers and has demanded retractions and apologies. So again, please note. All right. I am reporting on things in the public record. I am not alleging any condition. I am not disputing any statements about Barron's circumstances or any of that. Ok. The point is, people who are pursuing Barron politically, you need to understand that there is concern about this. If you have evidence of wrongdoing by Barron Trump with regard to the Tates or trading or any of this stuff, present it carefully. Present it professionally. If all they have is rumor and innuendo and, you know, footage of Barron from when he was 10, you got to be really careful with that stuff. And if this backfires and it is seen as potentially cruel and designed to embarrass or humiliate or something like that, sympathy is going to immediately grow and it could end up being a really ugly and difficult situation. So these are the things that Dem staffers have said they are worried about. And I think it very, very clearly has to be considered. Hey, if you're hearing this, that means you're listening to our podcast on one of the many podcast networks that we stream to. And first, I just want to say thank you for being a listener of this show. It really means a lot that you're tuning in here. I would love to ask you for a quick favor. We are so close to reaching 4 million subscribers on YouTube. And YouTube is where we post everything you get through the audio podcast and a lot more stuff. It would mean a lot to me if you took a quick second to pop over to YouTube, search up the David Pakman show and hit subscribe. Every bit helps. I would love to have you as a subscriber there. Today I'll be speaking with Hilary Shea, a licensed and certified speech language pathologist with two 12 years of experience specializing in concussion and neurological disorders. Hillary, great to have you on today. I appreciate your time.

[Hilary Shea]

No, it's great to be here. Thank you.

[David Pakman]

Listen, we could start in a lot of different places and I'll mention a few and then we'll pick a place to start. We've observed in Donald Trump what appears to be a diminished range of vocabulary, that the sort of number of words he uses is diminished over time. We've seen these, what I call glitches where when he gets a word wrong, there's a physical thing where a shoulder goes up and he seems to almost reboot, for lack of a better term. Yeah, all of this stuff that as a layperson I observe and I don't know what to make of it. You work with folks in a lot of situations that seem to have overlap with what we see with Donald Trump as a layperson. Am I making something out of nothing or are there clinically relevant observations that we can make here?

[Hilary Shea]

No, you are. You are on target. And at this point in his decline, I think it is just very easy for people to identify without any type of understanding of why. And that's one of the reasons why I talk about this on my channel. Concussion talks SLP is because, like there are reasons why. So with that question, I actually want to separate out twitches and glitches because there's two different things going on and then when they occur at the same time, there's a reason. So the twitches are something likely that they're likely something that's called myoclonus. And a myoclonus is going to be a brief burst of an involuntary muscle movement. So that's where you see kind of the arm go out, the shoulder go up, kind of whatever. What's happening within the brain networks is that the brain is supposed to be regulating and suppressing, suppressing unwanted motor movements. If you think about kids, they're all over the place. Their brains haven't developed enough to do this. And then kind of as we age and the brain declines, it comes back. So the frontal lobe should be suppressing unwanted motor movements like those twitches. That's called inhibitory control or disinhibition. But what happens is as brain decline in dementia, it damages the circuits. There's. We have this like excitatory go do this inhibitory stop. Then we have what's called cortical excitability. This is a lot of neuroscience, but especially just the neurons are very hyper excitable and that results in these sudden muscle contractions that are unwanted.

[David Pakman]

So now why are they happening in conjunction with the word glorious milestones of all time.

[Donald Trump]

And you know what that is? 250 yes.

[Hilary Shea]

So the word glitch that has to do with where the brain's energy is going. The brain's energy is going to the glitch. The glitch is its own separate issue. A language difficulty, phonemic paraphrasia. So because the brain is already struggling to suppress these movements, now all of a sudden it's putting a lot more effort to this speech because there was an error. And it has to think, how do I correct this? Or how do I get out of this situation? The twitches happen more Frequently.

[David Pakman]

Okay, now I'm trying to think of if I, for example, am doing a difficult math problem in my head, in theory, my brain is focused on that math problem and it is not suppressing these physical movements, but yet it doesn't happen to me. So. So I guess my question is, is everyone in the same situation where there is this balance between controlling the movement and controlling thought and speech?

[Hilary Shea]

Or.

[David Pakman]

Or is there something that would explain why with Trump it manifests in this

[Hilary Shea]

way, so everyone's going to be in the same situation to some degree. If you're taking that math problem, for example, you might notice that, like, you're like doing this with your pencil and not recognizing it, or your foot's tapping or something like that. So you might have those so called unwanted or unplanned movements, but they're not happening to the point where in the middle of speaking, which, while it is difficult, is not that difficult. It's just the amount, the frequency and the severity that tends to change when brain decline comes in.

[David Pakman]

When it comes to these studies, like for example, during the 2024 election campaign, there was a study done which purported to analyze the change in vocabulary diversity over a period of time for Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And roughly what it found was that over the prior period of time, Joe Biden's vocabulary diversity had diminished a little bit, Kamala Harris's was basically flat, and Donald Trump's vocabulary diversity had diminished significantly. Meaning the number of different words he uses in public speaking have gone down. Is that clinically relevant in some way and how does it interface with your work and what can be going on?

[Hilary Shea]

Mm, it's absolutely clinically relevant because, you know, again, if we look at development children, they have lower vocabulary, they develop their vocabulary. We all as adults have a robust vocabulary. As brains decline, we lose that. And that's in everybody. Like, I keep trying to not scare people, but everybody's gonna go through this. Even if you just have a typical age related decline, we're all gonna go through this. So, so if you look at someone, we'll compare Biden and Trump. Biden's a little bit older, and yet still his vocabulary was a lot more, a lot closer to what his most robust would have been. And then you look at Trump and those percentages are so different. So that signifies that the brain deterioration in, in Trump is much more significant than in Biden. I can look at those numbers and go, huh, wow, this 80, I don't know how old he is anymore, but 80, 84 and 80, I think, year old man. Like, his vocabulary is very repetitive. It's very monosyllabic, which sometimes is going to have to do with the fact that it's really hard for Trump to say multisyllabic words right now.

[Donald Trump]

I am here to announce my candidacy.

[Hilary Shea]

There's also some perseveration where it's not just the words that he uses are the same, he also just says the same stuff over and over and over again. Why are we still talking about the 2020 election? It's because he is, which means just getting stuck in a loop on the 2020 election and among other things, or a lot of other things, where he says almost the exact same thing in every speech. So there's a lot that goes on.

[David Pakman]

You give the Montreal Cognitive assessment as part of your job?

[Hilary Shea]

I do.

[David Pakman]

First of all, getting a perfect score on it, as Donald Trump claims to have done numerous times, what can that tell us and what can it not tell us?

[Hilary Shea]

So if he actually got a perfect score, a 30 out of 30, it honestly tells me nothing. Nothing. Nothing really positive or negative, because a third. So a 30 out of 30 on the mocha, you should really be able to achieve that with. Even people who have dementia who come into my office who already have a diagnosis can still sometimes get 30 out of 30 on that test. I actually gave it to my 5 year old, he was 5 at the time, just to be like, hey, guess what? Like, my son almost passed this test and he's five. He doesn't know what an analog clock is, and yet he could still, he missed points for that, but he could still do well enough. So 30 out of 30 doesn't actually tell me much. The fact that he has taken it multiple times over the course of a year and a half tells me way more because.

[David Pakman]

Okay, let's dig into that. Let's dig into that. So there's the claim that the reason Dr. Oz said Trump constantly takes it because he knows he scores well and he likes scoring well on the test. It gives him something to talk about. Others have speculated you, you would only be administered this test so frequently if there was a concern. Is it possible that because he's president and he wants to brag about it, he's just being given the test regularly?

[Hilary Shea]

I mean, if I were a good clinician, I wouldn't give it that. You're not. You know, there is something with test retest reliability. The more that we give a test, the more potential there is that someone who took the test six months ago could remember things with the mocha, I will say there are multiple versions. They test the same skills but have different animals, let's say.

[Donald Trump]

Right.

[David Pakman]

It could be a giraffe one day, but an elephant.

[Hilary Shea]

Yeah. So we do have a few, few different versions, but it's not. It's not clinically relevant. So even if the President of the United States was like, I really want to take this test, I would try to steer him in another direction and say, hey, you know, you did so great the last time. We don't even need to take that test. We know you're fantastic. There's no good clinical reason to give it unless they are tracking decline, possibly medication use. There's always that question of, is he taking this new medication? You know, is he getting some medication none of us even know know about? And so people who are in studies will likely get the MOCA or whatever test they're being given multiple times more frequently than the general population would. So if they're actually doing it, not just to say, sure, President Trump, if you want it, let's give it to you. They're looking for something, whether it's decline or medication. How is he responding to medication?

[David Pakman]

You've spoken about word retrieval fluency issues where Donald Trump, he's thinking of a word that he can't find. And so, like, for example, if I. If I couldn't find the word loan, I might go, well, you know, they gave me a thing where I asked them for money and then they give me cash and I pay them back over, like, and I wouldn't be able to find the word loan. Is there clinical relevance to that?

[Hilary Shea]

Mm, yep. So if we think about word retrieval fluency, it's can you access the vocabulary that you have and can you do it fluently enough? Which is basically common conversational, what you would have just done. That description of it is called circumlocution. That is, just describe the word and see if either that cues my own brain or accuse my listener's brain to provide it, which is completely normal. Again, these are things that, when they happen every once in a while, it's not a big deal. When I get more tired at the end of my day, I have those issues as well. But the frequency of his, especially given that a lot of times he's giving a speech off a teleprompter, he should not be having any issues finding words. They should be right there. Now, we do know that he goes off, off the teleprompter frequently.

[Donald Trump]

Venezuela is a very happy place at a tragic incident with the you know, with the event that took place a couple of days ago, a couple. A week ago. What a terrible thing that was. They had a. They had a movement, a shifting of earth that was unbelievable. Nobody's ever. They'd never seen the. Anything like it. A lot of people were killed, so it's all unrelated. But by the way, we were the first ones there to help. We were there to help Venezuela. It was an earthquake, I guess you'd call it. It was a pretty massive earthquake.

[Hilary Shea]

But yes, if you're going to have a word finding issue, there are likely neurological reasons behind that. Stroke is one of the biggest reasons why you would have word finding. Dementia is another reason. Things like brain tumor, things like medication, side effects. But. But there's something going on that is not probably normal.

[David Pakman]

What have I not talked about that you, as a professional speech language pathologist, observe in Trump's speech that is relevant.

[Hilary Shea]

Yeah. So many things, but we don't have time for all of this. The biggest thing are the phonemic paraphrases. So word finding is actually different. Word finding is part of language. But why I'm called a speech language pathologist is because they're two separate things to treat. Language is I can't find my words. Speech is I can't produce the sounds and get my words out. So he has a lot of what are called phonemic or phonological paraphrasias that occurs when a person knows what word they want to say, but they just make incorrect speech sounds they can substitute, they can omit, they could add a sound, they could mix up sounds in a word. And that's what we've seen him doing, all of those things.

[Donald Trump]

Name the undisputed. Just when did this come out, Mr. Speaker, the undisputed champion of.

[Hilary Shea]

So where that comes in is like we have like the concept of I want to talk about the word cat, and then I'm going to pick the word, I'm going to go find it. The word is cat. Then we have something called phonological encoding. That means I have to go in order to do that, I have to motor plan. That's the sequencing part. That's really hard for him. And then I have to then be able to coordinate it with my, my respiration, my breathing, my voicing and my articulation to be able to say it. So it's quite complicated, but he does it all the time.

[David Pakman]

Can these symptoms, I guess is the word I'll apply or phenomena, can they be simply restricted to. These are speech issues and they don't relate to any deeper cognitive or neurological problem. Is that possible?

[Hilary Shea]

I don't think so. Not off the top of my head. The word finding is actually less concerning for could just be typical than the phonological issues that he's having, especially because he wasn't having them before. If you think, if you look back to his prior speeches, he didn't have a lot of them before. So we have a baseline where we know that this isn't something that is difficult for him. Look at Biden. He has a known stutter from childhood. So I don't look at phonological issues with Biden the same way I do with Trump. So if you're going to have an a phonological issue that is new, you're looking at something neurological, something like a stroke, dementia.

[David Pakman]

If this next aspect to this is outside of your purview, just tell us and that's fine. One of the things I notice is fine motor skills seem to be a problem for Donald Trump when he tries to cap a pen. When he spent 90 seconds trying to clip a medal on someone recently and ended up kind of tying it in a weird knot. At Lindsey Graham's funeral yesterday or the day before, he struggled to open tic tacs and then when he finally got one, it sort of like bounced off and fell to the floor. Is that within your purview of observation? Is it related to what we're talking about?

[Hilary Shea]

Absolutely. It's not necessarily something that I treat because it is more of a physical or occupational therapy, but we look at the whole person and if you're going to have issues with coordination with your speech, I'm guessing you're going to have issues with coordination elsewhere.

[David Pakman]

Why is that? What's the connection?

[Hilary Shea]

Oh, it's just the brain controls everything, so fine motor control of your articulators is the same thing of fine motor control with your fingers. Right. So, yeah, I've looked at, you know, his handwriting. I mean, you can see that perseveration in his signatures. I've done a couple videos when he's doing executive orders and he won. He'll kind of start it and it's like a jumpy thing. So it's not smooth and coordinated. He also has his. Mmmm. Just. It's like it just keeps going and going, going. You mentioned he can't cap the sharp. Again, all of those fine motor controls, they're there. It's not just the muscles themselves, it's the proprioception where his body is in space and what his. What his arms and legs and things are doing. It's visual, perceptual processing. It, it involves more than we think. So when you have general brain decline, you have, everything becomes affected.

[David Pakman]

Let me briefly just shift to Senator Mitch McConnell for a moment. We have no idea what the status of his health is today. But that's, that's not what I want to ask you about. He had these two freeze ups where in the middle of sentences he, he physically and verbally froze, seemed to lose contact with what was happening in the room around him and then sort of spontaneously came to. Can you talk to us about whether that has relevance to your work and your specialty? Because there's really the only explanation we've gotten from his office is he's feeling better after that happened. Which doesn't really explain what happened.

[Hilary Shea]

Right. It does. If he were my patient, ideally I would know exactly what was going on. It would be concerning for either epilepsy, some type of seizure, or it would be concerning for something called a tia, a transient ischemic attack. So that's, some people call that a mini stroke. Mini strokes kind of are the. Just like there's nothing going on. It's very short. You typically wouldn't see it on brain imaging. You might see if there's been multiple, there's some history of what looks like a tia, but it is just those like I'm out and I come back. And his, his case is a little bit concerning too because he also had that prior concussion and concussions you're potentially more likely for seizure and he was likely not fully recovered from that concussion after the fall. So I mean his case is like his brain is also not appropriate to be a senator in the United States Congress. And he needs to, I mean that was before this unexplained mystery hospitalization.

[David Pakman]

What would be the testing that would be done on, related to that after such an incident?

[Hilary Shea]

Yeah, they'd probably do CT scan and, or mri. They might be doing testing for seizures with, with EEG and then from there it's monitoring honestly, because they sometimes are not going to show up. But it's like you would think about, well, what recommendations do I have? If they think it's seizure, they might put them on an anti seizure medication. Otherwise though, they're going to say, hey, you should decrease the stress in your life. That's going to be. Lifestyle changes are going to be huge. You should try to get exercise and eat healthy and not be stressed out. And that's not exactly what a senator is doing.

[David Pakman]

All right, well as we know, he's now been missing for over a month and it's a whole, whole other can of worms that we're dealing with right now. We've been speaking with Hilary Shea, licensed and certified speech language pathologist. Really appreciate your time and your insights today. Thank you so much.

[Hilary Shea]

Yeah, you're very welcome.

[David Pakman]

Hey, if you're hearing this, that means you're listening to our podcast on one of the many podcast networks that we stream to. And first, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for being a listener of this show. It really means a lot that you're tuning in here. I would love to ask you for a quick favor. We are so close to reaching 4 million subscribers on YouTube. YouTube is where we post everything you get through the audio podcast and a lot more stuff. It would mean a lot to me if you took a quick second to pop over to YouTube, search up the David Pakman show and hit subscribe. Every bit helps. I would love to have you as a subscriber there. We just learned that GDP growth in the second quarter of 2026 slowed to just 1.5%, a number that Donald Trump previously has said is terrible. Trump promised 4 or 5. 6% GDP growth. We got 1.5. And in the middle of this economic disaster for Trump, remember that Donald Trump spent more than a year blaming his former the former Fed chair Jerome Powell for everything that's wrong with the economy. Remember, interest rates were too high. Powell is incompetent. He needs to reduce them. Mortgages are expensive. Because Powell hates Trump. The Federal Reserve should be cutting rates immediately and it would be great. Well, Donald Trump finally replaced Powell with his own hand picked chairman Kevin Warsh. And washed just did exactly what Powell has been doing. The Federal Reserve has decided to keep its federal funds interest rate unchanged. He didn't lower it. Now Warsh did do everything possible to make this more emotionally comfortable for Trump. He said the economy's good other than all the inflation. He celebrated supposed business investment. He said inflation is a bigger problem. It's Biden's fault. So Warsh has given Trump the propaganda he wanted. But the thing that Trump really desired, lower federal funds rate Warsh isn't doing. Here's Warsh justifying the decision by saying we have five plus years of high inflation. In other words, blame it on Biden.

[Kevin Warsh]

As before, the policy statement conveys just the facts. It's steering clear of forecasting a choice we consider especially prudent at these uncertain times. Uncertainty, however, does not mean a lack of clarity for some households, businesses and market professionals 5 years of high inflation have left a mistaken impression that's hard to shake, that the Fed's implicit inflation target was somehow above 2%. Let me reiterate. There is no soft inflation target. There is no soft implicit target. Not on this committee's watch. There's only a target, and it's 2%. Not one of my FOMC colleagues is under any illusion. We have begun a new chapter and we understand that the five plus years of inflation above target cannot be cured in nine weeks or by a single month of modest price decreases.

[David Pakman]

There it is. And he repeated variations of this phrase throughout the press conference. Now, of course, five years takes us back into the Biden administration, and that's deliberate. Now, I don't, I don't think that Warsh is wrong here. The real story here is Trump went through all this trouble to have someone in there who's just going to lower interest rates every quarter, and Wash isn't doing it to a degree. Warsh is right. If you just look at the target inflation rate of 2 to 3%, we have been above that for a bunch of the last five years for different reasons. Under Biden, it was because of the COVID pandemic. Under Trump, it's been because of Trump's optional tariffs and also the war with Iran. But the takeaway here is that Trump has been president now for a year and a half. Inflation is staying elevated, and it's staying elevated because of tariffs, because of energy prices, because of the war with Iran. You can't attribute every price increase to Joe Biden until the sun burns out. And Warsh is holding steady on rates. I mean, good for him, but he's trying to soften it with propaganda. And here he goes, oh, the economy is so resilient. Despite everything that's going on. We've got growth, but inflation is elevated.

[Kevin Warsh]

The economy is showing impressive resilience even with recent shocks. The trends are positive and reveal solid growth. Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little. Inflation remains elevated relative to the committee's 2% goal. The committee remains resolute. You've heard this before.

[David Pakman]

The only problem is economic growth isn't so good because we just got hit with a 1.5% GDP growth number. And all of this is meant to placate Donald Trump. And the three words that really explained the decision are inflation remains elevated. Trump said inflation has been solved. And Warsh goes, we're not going to lower rates like you want because inflation has not been solved. He does throw in this stuff about the business investment of this inflation of this economy is just so impressive.

[Kevin Warsh]

The most striking feature of the economy is the strong growth of business investment. The surge in high tech capex has been remarkable, but that does not necessarily make the Fed's role any easier.

[David Pakman]

Now he kind of did the full Mar A Lago tasting menu. We've got strong growth, we've got impressive resilience, Business investment is great, and a lot of the inflation is kind of Biden's fault. And here's the dessert. No rate cut. And in fact, three members of the committee dissented because they wanted to raise rates by a quarter point. Can you imagine the bender Trump would go on if after replacing Jerome Powell because he wants rates lower, there were to be a decision to raise rates? Now, this is why it matters. You've got a board of Fed governors. It's not only Kevin Warsh who decides, but the debate inside the Reserve isn't do we just hold steady or lower? It's do we hold steady, do we lower or do we raise? And there were people on the board of Fed governors who were saying, actually, we should raise. This destroys Trump's story about Jerome Powell. Trump said Powell's belief that rates shouldn't be lowered was only out of an interest of sabotaging Donald Trump. And Trump goes, we're going to get rid of this. Too late, stupid Jerome Powell and put in someone brilliant and this guy is going to fix it all. And then he comes in and they go, yeah, we're not lowering rates right now. Now this is. There's debate over what is the right decision. It's probably been the right decision not to lower rates, although that may change six months from now. We have to see. But think about going through a year and a half of this stuff to finally get the guy you want. And then all of a sudden he goes, yeah, the economic, economic circumstances are not ones in which we should be lowering rates. Totally sending Trump for a bender once again. And if there's anything to criticize, I mean, it's probably the right decision. If there's anything to criticize Warsh for, it's that he has bent the knee to doing the propaganda. It's also awesome. But inflation, we're not going to lower rates. They suddenly realized something was wrong with Donald Trump in the Oval Office and they rush the press out. I'm going to look at a couple of clips of Donald Trump attempting to speak to reporters yesterday. You will see a lot of what speech language pathologist Hilary Shea described to us earlier today, here is Donald Trump telling us how strongly the war is over. The war with Iran is so over that he's going to hit him really, really hard. On what scenario do you see Iran

[Kevin Warsh]

attacking US Installations and personnel overseas and you withdraw or.

[Donald Trump]

Oh, I don't see that. No, we're not. No, we're going to. We're going to hit him very hard. I mean, I can actually say that because in that there's very little they can do about. Was a different group than we're dealing with. They've already apologized, but, you know, we got to smack them a little bit.

[David Pakman]

This war has ended so strongly that we are now fighting multiple groups in Iran, by Donald Trump's own description. But this, we've won this thing 50 times. Another Trump promise, I'm sure you remember, was the war between Iraq, between Iran, between Russia and Ukraine is going to be over so quickly when I get elected, when I get sworn in, within a day, within 100 days, and it's continuing. And Donald Trump weighing in on his recent meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He says, listen, I get along with both of these guys and we should really end this thing. Just end it. Trump's frustration really coming through.

[Hilary Shea]

How was your meeting with President Zelensky yesterday?

[Donald Trump]

It was good.

[Hilary Shea]

See a timescale.

[Donald Trump]

No, it was good. Look, you know, he's out doing his thing. I'd like him to end the war. So it's very simple. I get along with both. I get along with President Putin, I get along with President Zelinsky. I'd to like, I told him I wanted to end the war, get the war ended.

[David Pakman]

Thousands of people, just like, just ban the virus, just end the war.

[Donald Trump]

25,000 people died last month. That's standard, and it's not acceptable.

[David Pakman]

So now back to the real world. Briefly, there is reporting that Zelensky and Ukraine are planning a massive attack against Russia. Massive, massive attack. Trump, weirdly, on this grass thing where he says grass is like people. It's a very, very strange chapter in the novel that is this insane presidency.

[Donald Trump]

Changing all the grass and all the parks, that's going to be changed very shortly.

[David Pakman]

The part we need, Kentucky bluegrass, because that's where Mitch McConnell is from.

[Donald Trump]

So, because the grass is very, you know, grass is like human beings. Grass is a life also. And we're changing. We're raking, cleaning and changing all of the parks. We don't have people. We don't have the tents anymore. We don't have all the barbed wire up we don't have the wire up.

[David Pakman]

Have you ever met a blade of grass that really you off because it was so arrogant? It's just like people. Donald Trump continuing his brutal war against wind energy. And he goes, hey, you know what? When you see windmills, by which he of course means wind farms, you know that country is failing. Boy, I've got some facts for you in a moment.

[Donald Trump]

Zero. Which is almost hard to believe, but that's what the report says we are. Borders become very strong, and your border is very weak. He's got that problem and he's got energy problem. He's got windmills all over the place. And any time you see windmills, you see a failing country.

[David Pakman]

Windmills means failure. Now, it just so happens that Donald Trump's favorite state of Texas has a huge amount of wind power. It also happens that China, which Trump has said before, China's not stupid enough to do this. Wind power. China is doing a lot of wind power, and they are absolutely crushing us. Just really strange. He's. He's furious with wind power. A really bizarre and demented word salad. I won't even introduce this one. Just see if you can make heads or tails out of this.

[Donald Trump]

And then I don't know if that's because it's the right thing to do, which it is. But it's also that whether you're a Republican or Democrat, you don't want to go and be subjected to this airport, because this airport is. It's a terrible place to be. And it's going to be, I believe it's going to go. It'll be rated. Within a few years, it'll be rated the best airport in the country. So it's going to be so efficient. Right now, it's totally, totally inefficient. Between the trams and the Star wars thing that they call it, the Star wars and elevated buses, and nobody knows what's going on. It's a. It's a real mess.

[David Pakman]

And not only that, Donald Trump says air traffic control towers are falling down, Literally falling down, not figuratively, not metaphorically. I researched this. It is simply not happening. But why? Why let the facts get in the way of a story bunking into each

[Donald Trump]

other at an airport, but where planes come too close, where planes, in the case of the helicopter hit, they hit, the helicopter hits the plane. We are working on air traffic control to redo the entire system, including the new towers, because the towers are obsolete. You know, you don't think of it. You see a tower and it looks fine. You go into those towers. They're literally falling down. So we're talking about new towers and all new air traffic control.

[David Pakman]

I looked, I could not find a single story about a single air traffic control control tower that was falling down. Donald Trump wanting to solve problems poorly that are not even real problems. And finally, as it became clear to the aides in the room that Donald Trump was starting to decompensate and he simply couldn't do it anymore, the bevy of aides who mostly have the same look. I don't know if, like, am I not supposed to notice that? The aides have a very similar look. They just rush reporters out of the room. Rumors that there was a diaper blowout. We have no evidence of that. But very, very quickly wanting to get everybody the hell out of there. Dear God.

[Donald Trump]

And who would not sign proof of citizenship only People don't want to cheat. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

[Hilary Shea]

Thank you very much.

[Peter Navarro]

Thank you.

[Donald Trump]

Thank you, Beth.

[Hilary Shea]

Thank you, guys.

[Bernie Moreno]

Our.

[David Pakman]

These. Listen, if Hillary Shea, the speech language pathologist I interviewed earlier, is to be believed, then if her predictions are accurate or her analysis is accurate, she didn't really make predictions. It is going to become increasingly difficult for Donald Trump to do these events. And there is a reason that Donald Trump is sitting down when they start sitting down when they end, is not pictured walking in or out of the room. And why they are increasingly short in duration. And it's that he can't do it. It's not working now. On the bonus show today, a key committee vote for Todd Blanch has been postponed. And there is a big problem for Donald Trump's attorney general nominee, a problem that I love. I'll be honest. Elon Musk's ex AI is suing Minnesota over banning new defication technology and a US Government map of Africa mislabeled every single country. Can you believe this crap? When. When Sarah Palin said Africa is a country, that was embarrassing. But labeling every country incorrectly is even worse. Make sure you've preordered my forthcoming book. Pay attention. I've got a big media tour coming up over the next 10 days. We'll be doing a lot of interviews about the book. You can get it, including a limited number of signed [e-mail] attention on the bonus show. A lot of big stuff coming up.