David Pakman (36:33)
There it is. Donald Trump. Oh dear God. The President of the United States, whose brain is certainly fine and firing on all cylinders. If you love having quality fresh breads and pastries at home with no hassle, our sponsor Wild Grain makes it easy. Wild Grain is a baked from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries, fresh pastas. Everything arrives frozen and bakes in 25 minutes or less. No thawing required. Simple ingredients, slow fermentation process. It really improves the flavor and texture. I always keep wild grain, sourdough bread and croissants on hand. Convenient. Tastes like something you'd get from the bakery. Straight from freezer to oven, no planning required. The pasta is great too. I love having wild grain on the busy nights when I need something good but without spending a bunch of time on it. And wild grain boxes are customizable. You can get the variety box, they've got gluten free, vegan, they've got a free protein box. Wild grain is offering $30 off your first box plus free croissants for life. When you go to wildgrain.com/pacman or use the promo code Pacman at checkout. The link is in the description. Most guys I know wear underwear that is acceptable. It's not particularly comfortable, it's not really breathable. It's just like, okay, I guess it does the job. But many guys don't realize that there is a meaningful upgrade available. Our sponsor Sheath underwear is that upgrade. Sheath uses a dual pouch design upfront which can separate and support it reduces friction. It improves airflow all day and instead of everything being pressed together like with traditional designs, you get the structure and the space that you deserve at the end of the day. The material is lightweight, it's soft, it's breathable, still supportive, high quality holds. Its shape doesn't bunch up. Once you try it, you'll notice the difference, especially on hot days. I've been wearing sheath for years. Sheath is one of those things you'll be glad you did every time you get dressed. Not just for men. Sheath also has a full women's line with the same focus on comfort and quality. Plenty of styles and colors. Go to sheath underwear.com/pacman and use the code PACMAN for 20% off the link is in the description if you win by cheating, is it really winning? That's what I want to talk about today. If you have been paying attention to how this 2026 midterm is building, you might have noticed, I noticed that Republicans aren't trying to convince voters that their policies are good for the country or that their policies are good for the average person. They are going to try to take the midterm elections, try to keep control of the House, try to keep control of the Senate and governorships, primarily by messing with the rules around how people vote. Now Republicans, you know, they love calling themselves the party of the people. We represent real Americans. They are the party of common sense. They will tell you they are representative of the true America, not this perversion of America that right wing. Sorry, that left wing radicals are pushing. Then my question to them would be, why aren't you running on achievements and instead focused on messing with how people vote? That's what they're doing right now. If their ideas were really popular, you would focus on convincing voters vote for us. Because we brought you 458 of a gallon in gas and we brought you the Iran war and we brought you no new health care plan, even though Trump's been promising it for 11 years. And we brought you all of the things that they brought us. You would say come out to vote. More people the better because we've done such a good job. You would be making your case to the people on the basis of policy instead of obsessing over who gets to vote, which ballots count, how are districts drawn, how can we cast doubt on ballots, how can we deregister people? Mag is heading into these midterms with real problems. We know that. We know that in general they would be set up to lose the House for historical reasons, party in the White House changes. Usually you expect at least one one of two houses of Congress you might lose. In the House of Representatives, they would be set to lose, fine. But if you think you're doing a good job, run on that. Rather than lawsuits about early voting and closing polling places. But they know that prices have gone up instead of down. People feel it. Groceries are up, rents up. They haven't done anything with housing, they haven't dealt with the health insurance situation. Just really basic stuff Trump ran on. I will provide instant relief on this stuff. And they haven't provided relief on any of it. And people feel squeezed, instability. We're in a war now. Another war. Trump sold himself as the anti war guy. He's going to restore order and keep us out of these quagmires, especially in the Middle East. And we're now into week 11 of a three week war in the Middle east with chaos and tension and drama. And Trump says the war is over. And one day later he's like, we're knocking the hell out of each other. And then you've got, I mean, listen, I don't know how big of a role this is going to play in the midterms, but you've got the Epstein stuff and the broader issue of wealthy and powerful people protecting each other, that really matters. Because maga's identity was built on. Trump is just like us. And he is going to fight the elites, he's going to fight corruption, he's going to drain the swamp. He tricked people. Actually, I just recorded an episode with Maury Povich for his podcast and I talked about how one of the greatest scams Trump ran was that as one of the wealthy corrupt elites, he convinced his voters that he's not one of the wealthy corrupt elites. But he is going to root out the corruption of the wealthy elites. I mean, just laughable, laughable. But they fell for it. And people are now realizing, damn, he didn't drain the swamp. Damn, he's helping to protect the Epstein perpetrators. So when people are frustrated, tired and skeptical of what you're doing, you don't go out and say, reward us as a party because we've done such a good job. You instead say, oh, there's voter fraud, the mail in ballots are fraudulent, we've got to purge voter rolls and let's gerrymander and put in place election officials that are willing to do whatever Trump wants. And we've got a lot of suspicious results. We're expecting to want to have to challenge they are laying the groundwork to win. Not because people go, they're doing such a great job, but because they are trying to suppress turnout and mess with the voting systems. And so I get back to the question I kind of started this whole thing with, which is, if you win by cheating, have you really won? And. And it's not a theoretical thing. If the path to power only depends on manipulating districts, making it harder to vote, flooding people with propaganda, convincing your supporters that elections only count when your side wins, what is the victory there? That is not democracy. Even if you manage to win that way, I don't believe that that is a democratic outcome. Democracy means you compete for votes with ideas. Sometimes voters might say, I don't like your ideas, or I believe you failed to deliver on your promises. Sometimes people would reject your message. And they go, I just don't agree. That's how it's supposed to work. But with maga, they treat losing as illegitimate. If we lost, by definition, it's illegitimate. And it's incredible because these are the same people who spent years screaming that Democrats were destroying democracy. Meanwhile, Trump tried to overturn an election he lost. I have a lot of criticisms for just about anybody involved in politics, but I can sit here and look at you and just go, listen, Trump just won in 2024. That's it. He just. He just won. The. The Biden campaign, which ultimately gave way to the Harris campaign, didn't convince enough people to vote and to vote for them. Now you could say, well, there's a bunch of different factors why. And people were lied to and I'm with you, but they just lost. Trump won. Trump gets to be president. See how easy it is for me to say that? They still aren't even saying that about 2020. They still aren't even acknowledging that Hillary won the popular vote in 2016, even though Trump ultimately won the Electoral College. They can't do it. And they scream about how Democrats are the anti Democratic ones. So now we're getting into another election. They're doing the exact same stuff. There's major backlash over prices. Something like 80% of Americans expect the economy to be worse in a year, not better. It's instability in the Middle East. It's hypocrisy. It's failed promises. And they're not going out there and saying, reward us for the great job we've done. They are just going, we got to be really careful about this voting system. It's really rife for manipulation. The ballots need to be questioned. The counting. We need to deputize county clerks to say, I don't believe these ballots were done the right way. And they are questioning the legitimacy of the likely defeat that they are facing before a single vote has even been cast, normal political parties would go, how do we win more voters? Let's convince people that we've done a good job and we'll do an ever even better one. And we have good ideas. This movement is saying something different. How can we circumvent the will of the people in order to stay in power, even if the will of the people isn't to choose us? Not democratic, not even remotely. You know, the United States started as a rebellion against a monarch who claimed divine authority. And the founders followed that by creating our secular constitution. No references to a deity, no religious tests, clear separation between church and state. That was on purpose. It was designed to protect pluralism and individual conscience and religious freedom for everybody. But today, we're seeing increasing efforts to challenge that. Donald Trump's America Praise event on May 17, which aligns government with Christianity. That raises major constitutional concerns. Our sponsor, the Freedom From Religion foundation, works to protect separation of church and state because it protects you and it protects me. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States, the question isn't just what we celebrate, it's what do we defend? Visit ffrf.us/david or text My Name, David to 511511 to learn more or to join. Because protecting that separation protects our rights. The info is in the description text. Fees may apply. In reality, you're that guy that got laughed off garbage Fox News. You looked hurt inside. Roll the tape. You know, I don't remember that happening. It's a very interesting memory, but it may be a false memory. It's funny when I get messages like this. This One comes from YouTube. And we'll look at a bunch of messages that came in this week. Sometimes it makes me stop and go, wow, did that actually happen? And I've completely forgotten. I haven't been on Fox News in I don't even know how many years, and I certainly didn't get laughed off. But I always have to remember the people who write this crap have no idea what's going on and probably lead very, very sad lives. And so I try to approach them with a position of empathy rather than anger and tell myself, if they are willing to write this crap to someone they don't know, they must really be struggling in their lives. And that's very, very sad. We're going to continue with Friday feedback and some more substantive messages, including Tim's on Spotify. Tim wrote. David, why don't we uncap the House? We should have hundreds of more representatives. I agree with this, and this is. It's sort of surprising to me that this is not on the radar of more people. The House of Representatives has a fixed number of members of Congress, and it is 435. And simple arithmetic tells us that if the number of people in this country keeps going up, which it's expected to for some time, although relatively soon, it's actually going to flatline and then start to decline. But that's a different story. If the number of people in the country keeps going up, the number of people in each district on average keeps going up. And so members of Congress over time represent more and more people. Are they able to represent the average person equally well when there are more and more of those people? If at one point the average district had 400,000 people in it and then it became 600000 people in it, and then I'm trying to remember, I think that now it's about 750,000, if we just go extremely roughly 350 million people in the United States, 4:35, 800. So now, and now we are at an average 804,000 people per district. Are you really going to get equally good representation? It's sort of the same thing. If your doctor has 5,000 patients instead of a thousand patients, are you likely to get the same level of care when your doctor has five times as many patients? I would argue the answer is no. So I've been in favor of. Listen, uncapping is sort of a later stage, but there absolutely should be more members of the House if we believe that the ratio of voters to Representatives should match what it was some time ago. The problem of course, becomes in the implementation, because we all know that if it was, if it was decided we're going to be adding members of the House on a particular year, whichever party is in power and has the ability to draw the new districts is going to do every damn thing they can to gerrymander the districts to high heaven. And this is of course, why, as a precursor to adding members to the House of Representatives, which we should do, we should be creating a durable, robust and permanent nonpartisan redistricting system. And it should not be subject to the whims of who controls the state legislature, who controls the House of Representatives. That is a difficult thing to do because for the most part, everybody tries to benefit from being in A position for drawing districts. But I agree, we need more members of the House of Representatives from Instagram. Here's a beautiful message. Itchy triggered Finger wrote to me and said, you're as independent as a slave. You know, in my forthcoming book, Pay Attention, I write about this a lot. I write about what does it really mean when a YouTuber, a podcast, or someone like me or others that you might listen to or watch say that we are independent and it has meaning. It means certain things, but not others. If you haven't preordered my book, pay attention. This is a great time to do it. Barnes and Noble, Amazon, other websites, the audiobook, etc. The reality is that as independent creators, we are independent in a lot of ways. I don't have five layers of management above me telling me what I should or shouldn't talk about about, or telling me what position I should or shouldn't have. Everything that's on this show. It's just, what do I believe? What do I feel? What do I think? The stories that are on are on only because I chose them, not because anybody else suggested, do this story or don't do that story. Advertisers, we have advertisers. I never talk to them. No advertiser has ever suggested I do or don't cover a certain story. And if they did, we would say we don't take editorial suggestions. Now, is it possible that advertisers are choosing this show because they vetted us and vetted me and have determined we don't think this guy David Me is a risk to their brand? Sure, but that's natural. The biggest lack of independence we have, and this is not what most people think, is that the platforms I'm on can decide with the push of a button, you are no longer on our platform or you can be on it, but you can't monetize. And that is a relevant issue. And I write about that extensively in my forthcoming book. And this is why I believe it's important for creators to independently build out ways to contact their audience. This is why I've said, if YouTube shuts down my channel, I would have no way on YouTube of telling you that, because my channel would be shut down if Instagram shuts me down. I have no way to send any message or post to our combined, what is it now, 600, 700,000 followers on our two Instagram accounts. And so that reality has pushed me to remind the audience we own our substack newsletter list. And if we get shut down anywhere, I will be able to contact you only if you are on my substack newsletter. So consider getting on my substack newsletter. But the you're as independent as a slave, I think implies other stuff. The DNC controls you or this sort of thing. The truth is we exist on rented ground, which is that of the platforms on which we distribute. That applies to all of us. And that's why I've said it's really important to build out independent ways to contact people in the audience. All right, Conrad on Instagram wrote, I'm in Arizona. I follow your posts. Your content is a big part of the reason I even have an Instagram account. Without content like yours, I don't need or want Instagram in my life. Thank you, Conrad. I really appreciate that. You know, we. The whole reason I've always taken a multiplatform approach and distribute on any platform we can be on. We're on something called the MSN Partner Network now, the Windows loading screens that show you a little news. We're on that because I never know who's going to shut me down and on which platforms are we going to find potentially new audience that doesn't even know that we exist. And that's why we're on Instagram. That's why we're on on all of these platforms. Stephen Zalon Dick wrote on Facebook, I would love if you would do a segment on returning shopping carts to the corral. Absolutely. You know, my segment on tipping went sort of viral and has gotten across all platforms in the millions of views, which is amazing. It's clearly hit a nerve and something a lot of people are frustrated with growing tipping culture in the United States. The people who just leave the cart in an adjacent parking space or worse, at the grocery store. Do you have no sense of decency? Do you have no humanity? Now, there's not. One of the things I've learned doing this show is that there is quite literally nothing I can say on the show that won't make someone angry. Every single sponsor I've ever had has made someone angry. Last week I used the term alcoholic. People wrote in and said, that's inappropriate. Previously, I had said that someone had had significant autism and I was told, significant. That's offensive. You're supposed to address it in a different way. I'm doing the best I can. Okay? There is no reason not to return the shopping carts. Now you might go, well, what about someone who has a physical limitation and if they were able to shop with the shopping cart, it follows that they would be able to Put the shopping cart back. Okay? I'm not being insensitive to mobility limitations. I'm simply saying if you were able to complete the shop with the shopping cart, why on earth wouldn't you just put it back? Does that bother anybody else? I find myself highly, highly agitated by it. Okay? Hetty Turner wrote in about the White House Correspondent's Dinner shooting and said, fake assassination attempt, just like the last one. It was all to convince the builders and Congress to get his ballroom built from this fake assassination attempt. He went straight into nonstop talking about his ballroom. You know what? I've already addressed this. The ballroom is stopped by a judicial order. Trump getting not shot at the White House Correspondents Dinner by someone on a different floor of the hotel is not going to speed up the ballroom's construction. It's just not. And so for those who are convinced because of all the talk of the ballroom that that's going to happen. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Another theory that surfaced from the shooting. This is a wacky one. This is from Nats Curly on Reddit who said, who else has been hearing about this time travel theory? I've been trying to debunk it using logic, but I give up. What are your thoughts, David? Please cover it. Basically, I'm referring to about the Correspondents Dinner. There was a tweet from three years ago saying the guy's name and a weird image that looks like Trump in the photo with his fist in the air. Obviously years before the photo was taken. The profile image of the Twitter account is Pepe the Frog wearing a tuxedo, which is the dress code for the dinner. The Twitter account has the name of some scientist or something and never tweeted anything else in the three years since. Isn't that weird? I'm trying to debunk it. Listen, I couldn't even find this crap. I looked for it. Let me look again. I don't even know how to search for this. And the right way to find it. Pepe the Frog, Trump correspondence dinner, Twitter. Okay, let's see. Fact check. Here it is. A post with the name Cole Allen is circulating. A screenshot shows a 2023X post that reads Cole Allen, the name of the suspect in the shooting. While social media users shared a screenshot of an authentic x post from 2023, it's unclear why the account made the post or whether it has any connection to the shooting suspect. Ok, so it appears as though. And it is from a user named Henry Ma. Yeah, it seems that there's an element of truth but it is sort of like not really relevant to anything. But if I'm misunderstanding let me know. Chris Lane on Facebook wrote every school should now have a ballroom. I really like this one because it you may recall that after the Uvalde Texas shooting Ted Cruz and others said we really need windows and doors. We need locked doors. That would be the solution to shootings and this is sort of a play on that. Listen, if the ballroom is a solution to the White House correspondents dinner shooting every school should have a ballroom and then it would be much safer from shootings. I like what you did there. I think that that's a good one. Send me your thoughts on anything you hear me say on the show info@david pakman.com we will also feature messages from other platforms. We've got a great bonus show coming up for you today. Sign up get instant Access@join pacman.com.
