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- [00:00]
David Pakman
Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately, though, Mint's story is better. Every plan $15 a month, even unlimited. That's it. Happy ending, zero tears. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
- [00:23]
Jesse Watters
of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See Terms.
- [00:30]
David Pakman
Today we're going to take a look beyond the daily Trump circus and check out the machinery being built underneath it and why this danger is not going to disappear when Donald Trump finally does. We also have the United States burning through missile stockpiles, all for a war Trump can't win and can't even figure out how to end. As Tucker Carlson warns, this could become a nuclear conflict. Meanwhile, measles is surging as Fox News personalities pretend we don't know why. And the White House responds to mounting crises with bizarre AI propaganda declaring a golden age nauseating. We're also going to look at what I got wrong about Trump and how the country became used to conduct that once would have ended a presidency, and how a Republican who is competent could advance much of the same extreme agenda. War, propaganda, institutional failure. We're going to look at all of these things today on the program. The Republican plan for after Trump is a lot worse than you think. And I want to talk about this today because very few people are talking about this. There is this, I think, comforting idea to many that comes up whenever Donald Trump does something especially unhinged. And it's the following idea. If Republicans could just get rid of Trump and replace him with a normal Republican, everything would basically be fine. And there's this idea that if you could, you know, bring back someone like a John McCain, or maybe if Mitt Romney decided, oh, I want to go back and run for something that you just put in someone like a McCain or a Romney as president, president, everything basically would be OK because they are far more normal than Donald Trump now, that would be better in some ways. If you put in a conventional Republican, it would be less chaotic. I presume that they would be less obsessed with revenge compared to Trump. They would be less likely to spend every day posting deranged conspiracy theories and AI slope Fine. And I've even said I would rather go back to when we were arguing about the top tax rate rather than doing election denial, authoritarianism, threatening political opponents, threatening media that you don't like. Of course I would rather be in that situation. But even that framing is deceptive, and I'll tell you why. All of that talk creates this imaginary Republican Party where they're basically like us, but they want a slightly lower tax rate and a little bit less government spending that doesn't exist. Okay? And to the extent that I've suggested that accidentally, I'm sorry, because that is not what I mean to imply. Trump did not create the Republican agenda. Trump took the Republican agenda and he made it louder, uglier, and more personal. And if you were to replace Trump with a polished Republican with more discipline and fewer scandals, they might actually be more effective at putting more of this radical agenda into place. Start with elections, for example. The Republican project beyond Trump still includes insane gerrymandering, voter restrictions, partizan election administrators, a judiciary that protects Republican policies, and then Trump adds to that election denial. But the effort to lock in minority power predates Donald Trump significantly. That doesn't go away when Trump leaves. Okay, that's number one, elections. Number two, federal government. Trump wants to fill agencies with people that are loyal to him. A normal Republican might talk about efficiency and accountability. The practical result is probably still agencies are weak, career experts are pushed out, and there's very little government oversight. Not that much of a difference from Donald Trump. Topic three, deregulation. Republicans say we've got to cut red tape. What it means is fewer people enforcing labor laws, fewer people enforcing environmental protections, fewer people enforcing civil rights rules, and fewer consumer safeguards. Trump will announce it with a ridiculous stunt, but a competent Republican like a Marco Rubio would do a lot of the same stuff. They would just do it quietly. We then get to the economic agenda, Trump's agenda, and a normal Republican would have a very similar economic agenda. Tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy. Let's weaken unions, let's cut regulations, let's put pressure on the reduction of programs, welfare programs that people use. We can benefit. We can weaken benefits through tougher eligibility rules and work requirements and privatizing, and it's a lot of the same crap. And then finally, on abortion, Trump is incoherent on abortion because I think personally he's fine with it, first of all. And secondly, Trump knows that abortion is a dangerous issue politically. But the broader right wing movement still wants to ban medication, abortion, go after contraception, do fetal personhood maybe go after fertility treatments. It's kind of all the same stuff. So the point here is, if you look at all those areas, or you could look at mass deportation, normal Republicans still want to do workplace raids and surveillance and detention facilities. They might just not do it as cartoonishly as Donald Trump does it. Education. Your normal Republicans are not that different from Trump. So is Trump uniquely dangerous? Yes. His election denial is dangerous. His personal corruption is dangerous. His authoritarian instincts are dangerous. His fixation on revenge is dangerous. But if you replace him with someone who is basically the same but accepts election results, is it an improvement? Yes, it's an improvement. But better than Trump is a really low bar. And a normal Republican might have calmer press conferences, they might have fewer scandals, but they would still push the same damn underlying agenda of minority rule and upward redistribution, weakening public programs, abortion restrictions, mass deportation, deregulation, conservative control of the courts. All of that would stay. And so our challenge, what we really have to think about is we don't want to confuse a normal presentation with normal policy. You could get rid of the Trump circus, and then fewer people might recognize the emergency. And if you put in a quieter, smarter Republican, they could just get better at achieving a lot of the same crap Donald Trump wants to do. So this is an important framing for us on the left to keep in mind as we go into 2026, but more importantly, 2028, which is. It is very plausible. It's not a guarantee, but it's plausible that whoever ultimately ends up being the Republican nominee in 2028 in terms of tone and appearance, is going to seem way more normal than Donald Trump. And as a result, we are maybe going to think that they are far less dangerous, but understand that they might just be better at passing a lot of the same stuff Trump would pass if he could do it. And we don't want to take our eye off the ball in that respect. And it is very important. You know, this is just a hypothetical. Rand Paul is a Republican who sometimes, because he's a libertarian, civil libertarians and left libertarians will sometimes overlap with some of the stuff Rand Paul wants. Not all of it, not nearly all of it. He's be terrible, but sometimes we can hear Rand Paul and we go, that sounds kind of reasonable. What we don't want to end up is in a situation where someone like a Rand Paul is the Republican nominee in 28, which I don't think he will be. But imagine, and we let our guard down because we go, who? This is so much less dangerous than Donald Trump maybe less cartoonishly dangerous, but potentially much more effective at getting terrible policy passed. So that's the warning we have to keep in mind, and we'll certainly have more time to talk about it as we get into and beyond 26 and then start approaching 2028. The United States is running out of missiles under Donald Trump. We are five months into the Iran war, and Reuters now reports that the military has used virtually all of multiple types of missiles. Two crucial classes, attack miss atacms and precision strike missiles. These are sort of like the two most important long range precision weapons that we have now. We are not totally out, but we are virtually out of these types of missiles. The United States has also burned through about half of the global Tomahawk supply. And defensive stockpiles are shrinking very quickly. Donald Trump spent his entire first term saying Barack Obama left the military depleted. And he repeatedly told audiences, when I enter office, I am going to fill the cupboards because they are bare, thanks to Barack Obama. And he said generals would come to him and go, sir, we have no ammunition. The military is depleted. I have to rebuild it. That was total bs Then Trump used it to justify expanding the military industrial complex and the defense budget. But as is often the case with Trump, sometimes the projection you see right away, sometimes you have to wait a few years. Trump, now, nearly a decade after making those claims in 2017, is presiding over something much closer to the crisis he pretended was going on. Because Trump launched the Iran war at the end of February, said it would be two to three weeks, it's five months now. There's no congressional authorization. And now the reduced stockpiles of the United States actually could be a problem if we have to respond to a crisis that involves China or Russia or North Korea. And the numbers are nuts. The CSIS estimates we have expended 65% of the Patriot interceptors between February and July. And the TAD interceptor stockpile is 38% lower than it was before this war. These missiles can't be replaced overnight. Now let me get back to do we need as many of these missiles? Because I know some of you are going like, maybe it's good, we'll get back to that. But these can't be replaced overnight. They're about $1 million each. They need specialized manufacturing. They can take years to make in significant numbers. So Trump is depleting the cupboards, and his response has been, we still have more munitions than anybody else in the world. Doesn't really answer the underlying situation. Possessing many weapons in general does not replace the specific missiles required for particular types of attacks or defenses. Now the Pentagon says we're trying to manufacture more and we can still do that. But moving missiles from other regions is just redistributing the shortage. So I am against the military industrial complex. I would like the United States to have a smaller global footprint when it comes to the military and bases. This is not me going we need more missiles than ever. The point is, Trump spent years falsely accusing Obama of leaving the cupboards bare and saying that that puts us at risk. And then he goes and he starts an unauthorized war, says it'll be quick, burns through virtually all of our stockpile of two types of long range missiles. The cupboards were not bare when Donald Trump arrived. Now he is emptying them and he is. If what he alleged Obama did put us in a vulnerable position, then he is now putting us in a far more vulnerable position. And of course his defenders just say he had to do it, he had to do it. Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. But didn't we destroy their nuclear program? Essentially destroy their nuclear program when Trump bombed them in summer of 2025? Well, they rebuilt it. Okay, so did we destroy it now? No. Even by that standard, even saying, well, that's the goal this time, Donald Trump is still failing. So depleted munitions, which by MAGA standards put us at risk, exchanged for still not destroying Iran's nuclear weapon program. This war is not working out particularly well, that's for sure. Summer is a good time to upgrade the everyday things that make hot afternoons more comfortable. That's where our sponsor Cozy Earth can help. Cozy Earth's oversized beach towels are super plush, absorbent, designed to feel substantial without being cumbersome. It can make a pool day or a backyard afternoon or just a shower feel a lot better. They are 40 by 70 inches. Huge. 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I served the Wild Grain Cherry Pie Bites warm with vanilla ice cream when I had friends over. It's great buttery crust, flaky. It was gone quickly. You can choose from classic gluten free vegan and protein boxes. If you're looking for an easy way to enjoy bakery quality bread and pastries at home with ease, try Wild Grain. They also donate two meals to a food security nonprofit of your choice with with every order at no extra cost. They've already donated over 850,000 meals to families in need. Wild Grain has more than 40,000 five star reviews. They were named USA Today's Best Food Subscription Box three years in a row. Plus they've got award winning croissants which I love. Go to wildgrain.com/pacman to get $30 off your first box and free croissants for life. The link is in the description Listen, I've been covering Donald Trump for more than a decade, and there are things I got wrong about him. And I don't mean that I thought he was harmless or secretly a moderate or he would become much more presidential once he entered the White House. I never believed any of that stuff. But what I got wrong was what would stop Donald Trump? And now that we are starting to get into the twilight of Donald Trump's political career, I think I have some perspective on the things I got wrong. And so an example is I did think early on that Republicans would eventually abandon Donald Trump, and maybe it wasn't going to be immediately. But after enough scandals, after losing enough elections, after enough criminal cases, after the deranged behavior, I wrongly thought maybe the party would decide that this went too far. And instead what happened is the party completely reorganized itself around him.
- [16:19]
Jessica Tarlov
Right?
- [16:20]
David Pakman
Republicans who criticized him either retired, lost primaries, changed their tune, or discovered, you know, maybe I wasn't really that opposed to Donald Trump to begin with. And loyalty to conservative principles went completely out the window. And it was all about loyalty to Donald Trump personally. Even Republicans who clearly dislike him concluded, if I oppose him, it's bad for my career, I'd better just support him. I was wrong about that 10 years ago. I also thought that the losses would weaken Trump. I thought a terrible midterm in 2018 would weaken him, and finally losing a presidential in 2020 would weaken him. And I thought that that would all weaken Trump normally When politicians lose elections, especially as incumbents, the party will very quickly start looking for somebody new. And Trump turned it into a source of power. And he was able to do it by telling his supporters, the election was stolen. I actually won it. And he made an agreement with that lie that it is going to be a test of loyalty, and was able to transform himself from a defeated politician into the victim of a massive conspiracy. And then he ran on being a victim in 2024. I also sort of wrongly thought the scandals are going to accumulate, and at some point, the weight of all of these scandals will become impossible to ignore. And, in fact, the opposite happened. Every new scandal just pushed the previous one out of the news. And time and time again, behavior that would have ended just about any other political career just kind of became part of the background. It was baked in. And people didn't necessarily approve of it. They just became accustomed to it. And they were like, listen, he says he's anti war. I don't give a damn about all the other stuff. They were wrong, by the way, that he was anti war. But that's not the story today. I think I also kind of underestimated how useful Trump's incompetence could be to him. A lot of us early in Trump's political career, we saw him, and this guy is so incompetent. He doesn't understand trade or health care, immigration. He doesn't understand a damn thing. And that's going to hurt him. But that's not the way it worked. Now, the chaotic stuff, it did cause some failures and some problems, but it overwhelmed everybody trying to hold Trump accountable. And the press could barely finish covering one outrageous statement before there were three more. And then you had courts and investigators and political opponents forced to choose which of these 12 emergencies can we actually give proper attention to? And so what Trump did was create so much noise that it became really tough to focus on any single abuse. And then maybe I think the most important thing I got wrong is I overstated or over overestimated the institutions around Donald Trump. And early in Trump's political career, we would talk about institutions as though, like, listen, these are machines that are going to protect democracy automatically. What we realized is these institutions are not machines. They're just made up of the people inside of them. And institutions really only work if people are empowered and also willing to accept personal and professional consequences for defending those institutions. And what we saw in practice was so many Republicans and government officials, media people, business people, decide it's just too difficult or complicated to do that. We're going to accommodate to Donald Trump. And some accommodated because they wanted access and some wanted tax cuts. Some wanted judges on their side. Some were afraid of Trump's voters. Others assumed, I can't do it. Somebody else is going to draw the line of accountability. So what I got wrong about Trump wasn't that he represented really dangerous stuff. We were right that Trump represented serious danger. I was wrong to believe that the danger would be so obvious that it would get even Republicans to resist him and that the scandals would weaken him and that losing would marginalize him and that he would ultimately be contained by institutions. Institutions. I was wrong about that. What ultimately happened was Republicans surrendered. There was like a routine to the scandal. Losing became martyrdom because I'm treated so unfairly. And institutions were only as strong as the people running them, which, quite frankly, was not that strong. So I don't think that what Trump has accomplished, and we see it as failure, but there are people who say Trump accomplished stuff. Stuff that's bad. Right? But he accomplished stuff. Trump didn't accomplish what he accomplished because he was a brilliant strategist. He benefited from cowardice from some, opportunism from others, exhaustion from others, and the fact that humans make almost anything normal. And I think that's the lesson that I really missed. The biggest protection Trump ever had was not that everybody believed the stuff he said. It's that people just got used to the fact that he said untrue things all the time, and he did crazy things all the time, and it became part of the status quo. And we have to add to this weaponized hatred of Democrats, because if we go all the way back to 2016, if the country, mostly Republicans, but even some on the left, if the country had hated Hillary Clinton a little bit less personally, if just a few Republicans had said, you know, instead of letting my personal hatred of Hillary Clinton decide my vote, I'm going to let my principles decide my vote. And when I look at Trump, he violates my principles, I'm going to stay home or maybe even vote for Hillary. We never would have had this in the first place. That never happened. That never happened. So there was a lot that I miscalculated about Donald Trump that I've sort of learned by doing now for a decade. And I think the hope has to be maybe we use some of that information, we used some of what we learned to try to Prevent disaster in 2026 and just. Or more importantly, in 2028. What do you think? Am I. Do you agree with. With What I'm identifying that I got wrong about Trump. Are there other things? Are some of the things I mentioned not actually things I got wrong? Let me know what you think. Leave a comment Send an email info@david pakman.com Tucker Carlson convinced millions of people that Donald Trump is the anti war candidate. And he now believes that Donald Trump's Iran war is heading to north nuclear weapons usage. Tucker says this has been obvious to him since day one. Let's listen to what he had to say.
- [23:14]
Tucker Carlson
It has been obvious to me since day one that this was moving toward a nuclear exchange. I just thought that from the very beginning. The really dark part about that though
- [23:22]
David Pakman
is it's not an exchange.
- [23:24]
Tucker Carlson
Well, exactly. Sorry, that's just a phrase.
- [23:26]
David Pakman
Yeah, yeah, but that's how dark is that to even. Well, I don't know.
- [23:29]
Tucker Carlson
We're assuming that there would be no response. I mean, there are a lot of other players in this beyond just Iran. There are a lot of countries with nuclear weapons, including Pakistan. You know, a lot could happen, but the use of nuclear weapons for the first time in 80 years, like I thought that immediately.
- [23:46]
David Pakman
Now let's stick to the facts first and then we'll do the analysis. Right now there is no public evidence that Trump has tried to order a nuclear strike on Iran or is preparing. He has talked about obliterating a country and killing all the people, which we are sort of interpreting to be alluding to nuclear weapons. However, is Tucker's broader warning crazy? I don't think that it is and I'll explain why. This is a war that has already involved the United States, Iran, Israel, American military bases, Iranian missiles, regional allies, attacks on shipping, a bunch of failed cease fires, and a whole bunch of threats of greater escalation that slowly starts to make the unthinkable thinkable. One side attacks, the other side retaliates. The first side responds with something bigger. Everyone insists the next attack is going to end the war and the war keeps growing. And the, the, the sort of linchpin in all of this is that the person managing all of it, Donald Trump, not a calm, restrained, emotionally stable individual, makes major decisions based on ego and flattery and what he sees on tv. So I think, you know, this, I don't know if this is one of those, like the worst person in the world is right about one thing kind of thing with Tucker, but I think it's right to be nervous about this going nuclear. And Tucker's criticism kind of gets even more extraordinary. Listen to what he says about the girls school that was hit during the US Bombing campaign in Iran. Here's what he had to say about that.
- [25:22]
Tucker Carlson
I feel so personally affronted by it. You bomb a girl school and then you don't apologize? I feel like smacking him in the face. Who do you think you are?
- [25:30]
David Pakman
Yeah, I'm a history nerd.
- [25:32]
Tucker Carlson
So this is your country? I don't think it is. You just, like, rolled in here and, like, took control, and then you get to do stuff in my. In my country, my ancestors built like.
- [25:40]
Kevin Hassett
No.
- [25:40]
David Pakman
Yeah, yeah.
- [25:41]
Tucker Carlson
And don't you feel that?
- [25:43]
David Pakman
Of course I feel. You know, the pathetic thing about all of this is that all of a sudden now, as Tucker is increasingly connected to people like Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, people who are on Trump's bad list. Right. You've been naughty. Tucker spent most of the global war on terror, dating back to 9 11, titillated and aroused by all of the various sorts of behavior that he now claims to be against. And Tucker hates Trump based on the text messages that have leaked. And now he sees a strategic opportunity to position himself as a Trump critic and an alternative for the right. But for the most part, outside of the confines of Trump, Tucker has been a supporter of most of this sort of global war on terror status quo. Now, is it understandable to be angry about, you know, the striking of the girls school and Trump's role in it? Of course. Of course. And Trump's response was to deny it and suggest, you know, Iran might have done it or maybe it was somebody else. Trump can't just admit something went horribly wrong. We made a mistake. Even if kids are dead, the most important thing to Trump is we got to protect Trump. Tucker is. What we have to see Tucker is doing is confronting what he helped to create. He sold Trump as the guy who would stop the wars, and now he says, Trump is leading us towards nuclear war. But you promoted Trump as the guy who would put America first. And now he wants to smack Trump, he says, over the deaths of Iranian schoolchildren and the fact that he thinks Trump might consider introducing nuclear weapons into this entire thing. It's quite a reversal. Tucker deserves no medal for discovering years too late that Trump is reckless, dishonest, and incapable of accepting responsibility. But we knew this for a decade. And so I think that Tucker's warning matters. One, because it reveals how badly Trump has fractured his own movement. Two, because in making these criticisms, Tucker, like all of these other right wingers, ignores his own role in supporting Trump and fomenting Trump and putting Trump in power. They wanted America first. They at some point believed that Donald Trump was going to be America first. They definitely didn't want more expanding Middle Eastern wars with no end in sight. And Tucker now is in the position of going, I don't know. This is really concerning. I think Trump's doing this wrong. This might go nuclear. Nice work, everybody. You were part of getting us into this situation to begin with. So we've talked about this. You've lost control of the monster you built in other contexts as well. We've talked about how the conspiracy theorizing of the right has now made them look at the Epstein files and go, trump's part of the conspiracy. That's part of the monster they helped build. We see how now anti vax sentiment is causing measles outbreaks. And this is part of their accepting and fomenting all sorts of other medical conspiracies about COVID vaccines and microchips and all of this stuff. So when they end up sometimes making, listen, am I worried Trump might go nuclear in this war? Yes, I'm worried. Oh, I agree with Tucker. The difference is I tried to prevent Trump from ever becoming president. Whereas for a long time, Tucker and the movement he at least used to be part of were responsible for getting Trump in the Oval Office. We can't forgive him for that. We can acknowledge, hey, terrible person made a good point. Broken clock is right every once in a while, fine. But it applies to Tucker, it applies to Rogan, it applies to the manosphere. You all played a role in getting us to where we are. And while we can say it's great that you're acknowledging your mistake if that's what you're doing, I don't even know that Tucker is really doing that. He's kind of pretending he had no role to play in it. Let's not forget the role that they did play. Most sweet snacks are either satisfying or sensible. Our sponsor, Magic Spoon, is both. Magic Spoon treats are crispy, airy snack bars with 12 grams of protein, 7 grams of fiber, 0 grams of added sugar, and 2 to 3 grams of net carbs. They come in great flavors like marshmallow, chocolate, peanut butter and double chocolate. My favorite. A perfect, sweet, light snack I can throw in the bag and take on the go. They remind me of cereal bars. Same texture and flavor, but without the carbs and without the sugar. Magic Spoon is easy to find. Just look for Magic Spoon at your local grocery store. They also rolled out treats nationwide at 7:11, and if you haven't tried them yet, check out Magic Spoons new Protein pastries High protein, low sugar takes on the classic toaster pastries I grew up with. 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And it is optimized for lightning fast streaming and downloads. Right now you can get 83% off. That's just 203amonth plus four extra months for free at PIA vpn.com/pacman the link is in the description Fox News host Jesse Watters asked why is measles suddenly exploding in the United States. Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal on that show, gave him an answer and he responded with what may be the most honest thing he has ever said on Fox, which is I have no idea when it comes to whooping cough in the past. Now if that's confusing, the context and the framing is what really matters. Let's take a look at this video. Then I want to talk to you about what is maybe one of the most important sort of cultural scaffoldings of MAGA right now. Take a look at this.
- [32:33]
Jesse Watters
So the backward looking, you know, anything that's wrong, it was Biden's fault. Sometimes it's Obama's fault. President Trump does this all the time actually is, you know, an evil guy because, you know, he is obsessed with the flattery and he has, you know, the time to be on the phone with these people. Donald Trump picks up the phone for anyone who calls and he'll sit on the phone with you all night. He's in the middle of a war. He can take your phone calls. The measles are not just a little bit up, it's over 2,370 cases, highest in 35 years. CDC has 25% less staff, 45 states. There are people with explosive diarrhea. And there is no end in sight for this. We just had our first two fatalities. We don't know if it's Taylor Farms. It was Taylor Farms and it's not Taylor Farms.
- [33:18]
David Pakman
Why are measles okay?
- [33:20]
Jesse Watters
Then why is it? Why is whooping cough back then?
- [33:23]
David Pakman
I have no idea.
- [33:24]
Jesse Watters
Because people aren't getting vaccinated anymore because you have an anti vaxxer as the head of hh. Women are.
- [33:30]
David Pakman
Heard anything about the cough? This is news to me.
- [33:35]
Jesse Watters
Women are petrified to take Tylenol because this administration is telling them that it's unsafe for their unborn child, that it's going to lead to a rise in autism, which is completely unfounded.
- [33:45]
David Pakman
So the focus of this is incredible confidence from Jesse Watters. And then he goes, I have no idea. That really should be the motto for this entire show for Fox News, for maga. But I find it particularly revealing in this particular case. If you go back to July 30th, the United States already had almost 2400 cases of confirmed measles in 2026. That's more than in all of 2025. And that was only through the end of July. 94% of the cases this year of measles are associated with outbreaks. In 2024, there were only 285 cases. This is a remarkable number associated with outbreaks. To be very clear, measles had been declared eliminated in 2000. Now when that happens, it's not nobody can ever bring it in again. It means that sustained domestic transmission has been stopped because we have enough vaccination. Vaccination has been falling and MMR coverage among kindergarteners in the United States went from over 95% to about 92% over just a few years. Now you might say, well, that's a really small decline. Measles is so contagious, its reproduction rate is so high that communities need to be at 95% or more to have herd immunity. And when you look at the national number, like even 92.5% nationally, that ignores that there are parts of the country that are at 99% and part of the country, parts of the country that are at 88, 89%. So you get an average of that 92.5. But you've got parts that are higher and that are lower. Once measles enters a community that's lower on the vaccination rate it can spread very quickly. And what we do know is that two doses of the MMR vaccine are about 97% effective at preventing it. Jesse Watters apparently can't put any of this stuff together. It's a very simple causality. Vaccine rates go down, vaccine exemptions go up. Diseases that used to be controlled by vaccines start circulating again. Well, what could have caused it? Maybe it was the. Could it have been Hunter Biden's laptop? Could it have been what? No, it's the lack of vaccination. Now, Jessica Tarlov also brings up whooping cough, also known as pertussis. Now, there's some nuance here. Pertussis moves in cycles and immunity from the current vaccine can decline over time. And we had a bunch of pertussis cases in late 2024. It's actually been lower so far in 26 than at the same period last year. But this broader resurgence is a very real thing. And the CDC says that more than six times as many pertussis cases were reported in 2024 compared to 2023. Numbers were still elevated in 25. Vaccination is the tool we have for preventing severe whooping cough, especially in babies. So I think the general point that Jessica Tarlov makes is correct, which is, even if the epidemiology of pertussis is more complicated than measles, when vaccination coverage declines, preventable disease gets more of an opportunity to come back and to spread. And the same right wing media ecosystem that spent years encouraging suspicion of vaccines, it's very dangerous. Now they sit around going, I don't know why whooping cough is back. Well, you promoted the distrust and you normalized and weaponized conspiracy theories, and you treated basic public health guidance as an assault on my freedoms. And then kids start getting the diseases that we thought were under control, which were under control. And Jesse Watters, after these confident declarations, including of how horrible a person Jessica Tarlov is, he just goes, I have no idea. I don't know, Jessica. I have no idea. I have no clue. And Jessica Tarlov puts the answer right on the table. Now, it's possible. It's possible. I don't want to assume I don't know him personally. It's possible that Jesse Waters just doesn't have the courage to acknowledge any of this stuff. Maybe, I don't know. Jesse Watters lacks the capacity to understand the causality of vaccinations. Down, cases up. One of the things they love to do is they go, well, the COVID vaccine didn't prevent Covid and We were lied to about that. And I have to hand it to them. I write about this extensively in my book. Pay attention to a lot of these talking points are much stronger for the right in digital media ecosystems because it's so simple. They told us the COVID vaccine prevented Covid and it doesn't now. What's the truth about it? The truth is, listen, the controlled trials of the original COVID vaccine against the original strain did show that it was very good at preventing transmission. You wouldn't get Covid with that original vaccine. When confronted with the original strain of the virus. Over time, the virus evolved and the vaccines were always trying to catch up. And over time, the vaccine's ability to just prevent you from getting Covid was far inferior to what that initial. Initial one was. Was it still good at preventing death? Yes. Was it still good at preventing hospitalization? Yes. Would it be great if it worked like measles, where it just prevents you from even getting the disease? Of course, that wasn't the case. But the fact that that changed over time with COVID says nothing about MMR or D TAP pertussis, all these different vaccines that we're dealing with now, they love to mix it all together with that confident air of how dare you confront me? And then when they're asked simple questions, they go, I don't know. I don't. They don't really know. But that's never stopped them from commenting, and that is absolutely terrifying. The official White House account on Twitter has published a bizarre one minute AI propaganda video portraying the current state of America under Donald Trump as a golden age. Now I get. I haven't been to the movies for a while, apparently. This is supposed to be a parody of the AMC Theaters introduction where Nicole Kidman walks through an empty theater and says, heartbreak feels good in a place like this. Except it's Trump instead of Nicole Kidman and it's state propaganda instead of movies. So here's the first. Here's the announcement that they made. Silence your cell phones. Sit back. Welcome to the golden age. And then here's the video. This is from the official communications operation of the United States government. Someone conceived of this and then said, yeah, let's put this out.
- [40:47]
Jessica Tarlov
We come to this place for MAGA to fight, fight, fight and win, win, win. Because we need that, all of us. The indescribable feeling we get when we hear the national anthem and stand together stronger than ever before under this administration. We're going somewhere we've never been. We aren't just watching history we're making it. Rebuilding our country better than ever. A country where we don't do heartbreak, we do victory.
- [41:28]
David Pakman
I'm so sorry if you were eating during this.
- [41:31]
Jessica Tarlov
An America that is safer, more secure, more prosperous, and any setbacks that stand in our way simply makes the comeback that much sweeter. Welcome to the golden age.
- [41:47]
David Pakman
So someone thought this up. Someone generated it. Someone presumably reviewed it, and then whoever was controlling the official White House account said, hey, you know what? This strange artificial Trump movie trailer about how the executive branch, branch should be communicating with the American people, let's publish it. And of course, you look at it and there's no real message. And it's so representative. It's such a microcosm of this administration. They don't explain a single policy, they don't explain any. Any services, they don't announce anything, no action is requested, there's no useful information conveyed. It is simply a propaganda message of Trump is magnificent. Sit back and watch the spectacle that is Trump. And, and it's incredible how when we think about our, our democracy, we, I think, understand it requires participation. Democracy isn't simply. You have no interaction with the systems of power and representatives, and stuff just happens and that's it. Citizens are supposed to question leaders and organize and speak out. Voting is an important thing. We're trying to hold government accountable. There's all these different things. That's democracy. How does authoritarianism work? That's the key here. Authoritarianism does ask the public to become an audience. In authoritarianism, the request is silence yourself, much like silence your cell phones at the movie. Silence yourself, sit back, watch the strongman perform and let the giant screens tell you everything's awesome. We've already fixed everything for you. We have a country right now, in reality, with a cost of living crisis. Grocery prices keep going up, gasoline is more expensive than a year ago, thousands of Americans are being infected during a parasitic outbreak, and measles is up because of vaccination propaganda and all this stuff. We're in an unpopular war that Trump can't seem to win and can't seem to end. And his approval is as low as 30 in some polls and as low as 27% on the economy. So the White House has no policy ideas that what they have is a fake movie trailer announcing the golden age has arrived. It contains no measurable condition. It's just like a weird Brandt strongman branding thing, with an assertion that's repeated so often that his supporters are expected to repeat it. It's the golden age of Trump. This is why so? In the book I talk about how the digital platforms are made for terrible right wing ideas. If you've not preordered the book, please do. It's so important, as we are up against this technology in elections, to understand how it works. David pakman.com/audition. Preorder the book. Send me your receipt to be entered in a raffle for the original copy of the book. This is why I slopped is also a perfect medium for Trump, because what can AI generated imagery imagery do. It can generate a world where there's no problems, everything is big, it's golden, it's triumphant. Trump's never confused, he's never asleep in public, he's never, you know, in cognitive decline. The crowds love him, the buildings are shiny, there's no enemies, everything succeeds. It's the visual equivalent of a Trump truth social post, which is totally synthetic grandeur with no relationship to observable reality. And this is part of what I believe is a broader transformation of the White House account into a Trump fan page. The at the administration is putting out all of these AI images. Trump is a king, he's the Pope, he's the doctor, he's Jesus, he's a Jedi, he's a fighter pilot, all this stuff. And then they use government accounts to distribute it. Because the point is, glorify one guy, Trump, humiliate every single one of your critics. And a government can make a joke or use popular culture. I don't have a problem with that. That's not sinister. The problem is the pattern, which is we have the presidency and then we have Trump's personal brand. Those have been. The distinction has been erased and we now have the official voice of the US Government existing merely to flatter Trump, to troll his opponents, and to construct this alternate universe where he's the central character of every story. And I would argue, I mean, this thing looks so cheap. I would argue that even the cheapness is, is serving a purpose, which is that whenever critics object, which of course we object to the authoritarianism of this, the supporters can go, it's only a meme. You guys have no sense of humor. But one of the things we know about propaganda is that even if you package propaganda as a joke, it's still propaganda. And the unserious presentation normalizes a very serious idea, which is the government belongs to Trump, its communications apparatus belongs to Trump, and it serves one goal only, which is to manufacture the mythology of Trump. Previous presidents have made, you know, self congratulatory videos. Fine. They don't transform the official White House presence into this nonstop stream of algorithmically generated leader worship that is institutional decay combined with AI and social media. And this is something we have to be very worried about. So the message is, silence your phone and silence your voice. Sit back, ignore the high prices, ignore the crappy war, the polling, the disease outbreaks. Trump told us there's a golden age here, and you'd better accept that. The question will voters accept that when they go to vote in November? 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, and every bit helps. I would love to have you as a subscriber there. Donald Trump is reportedly melting down daily inside the White House, screaming at his own staff, hoping to somehow solve the disastrous aftermath of the war that he chose to start and whose end has happened 50 times, but it just never really seems to go as planned. Now, there's a very interesting report from Trump biographer Michael Wolf, who says that Trump is basically trapped between admitting that the thing didn't work and we kind of lost, or escalating into an even more catastrophic ground war, even as it is supposedly imminent, that this deal will be really, finally, truly and honestly completed. And of course, Donald Trump, being Trump, is responding to this completely impossible situation by just screaming at everybody around him. Michael Wolf said that Trump's predicament is as follows. He's stuck. He can't do anything. He can retreat. He can admit defeat, which also he doesn't want to do. So he's yelling at people, solve the problem. There must be something we can do. There's additional reporting from the Wall Street Journal, from NBC News, that Trump is regularly erupting at his top national security officials when they meet about Iran. He's screaming expletives when they just tell him, like, listen, here's the reality of what's going on. And the reality, the reality is not so good. Trump has reportedly been told, we are basically out of options other than a full scale ground invasion. The air campaign has done what an air campaign can do, but missile supplies are low. Iran is not doing the unconditional surrender that Trump promised from the beginning. And if you keep going through munitions at this rate, we're going to be out, and we still aren't going to have this decisive looking victory that Trump wants. So Trump is basically saying, give me other options. And he's being told there really aren't other options. And when you have an understanding of war that comes through TV and campaign slogans and fantasies about looking really strong, you end up kind of confronting the limits of military power. And you go, there must be more options. And everybody tells you there really aren't. You want to do a ground invasion or do you want to just end the whole thing? Now, remember that if we go back to campaign promises, Trump promised to end forever wars. And he said, I'm going to keep us out of new conflicts. This is like, it's so repetitive at this point. This is the stuff he said. He said, everybody is going to bend to my will because they're so afraid of me. And instead, he launched his own war. He expected it to function like one of his real estate negotiations or an episode of the Apprentice. You put pressure on people, you threaten people, you declare victory, you leave. And everybody goes, oh, sir, how did you do it? Iran didn't cooperate with that script. And so Trump's choices politically are all very difficult. It's. You walk away and pretend it's all a success. And even with a deal, that's not the case, and probably Iran still has control over the Strait of Hormuz number two, you kind of keep going the way it's been with these airstrikes. You've kind of exhausted all of your useful targets. What else are you going to go after? Unless you go after civilian infrastructure directly, which is potentially a war crime. Or you go, well, once you've bitten, you know, I bit off a piece of the cookie nominee, the whole thing. I'm going to invade Iran with ground troops.
- [51:57]
Jesse Watters
Troops.
- [51:57]
David Pakman
And then all of a sudden, you're really in exactly the kind of forever war that you said wouldn't happen. Trump wants a secret fourth option, and he's sort of acting like White House staffers and generals and different people are withholding that from him, and he's going, solve it. But yelling solve it won't regenerate missiles that you've blown up already. It won't force Iran to surrender. It's not going to reverse what happened. Now, I think it's important for us to remember that Donald Trump demanded sole credit when he thought the war would be easy. This is my choice. I figured out that it's a brilliant idea and a tough idea to go in and do this. We're going to get such a victory. It's going to be amazing. Now it's completely stuck and he's yelling at other people to rescue him. This is how Donald Trump operates. And Michael Wolff summed it up with a label. He says, Trump is now the Hormuz president. And ultimately that may be the legacy of the entire disaster, which is you've got a self proclaimed master dealmaker. He started a war he can't win. He started a war he can't end. And he's just screaming at everybody because they can't give him an escape route. The legacy of Trumpism is shifting from incompetence to, to destructive. Is it destructive incompetence? It's moving. Maybe better said, it's, it's moving from casual arrogance to destructive incompetence. That is the wreckage that Donald Trump is leaving behind him. And I think it's important to consider that he may be punished for this through Republicans being voted out in November, but he might actually evade that. And so there's parallel tracks. It would be wrong to assume because the Iran war has gone so horribly wrong, Republicans are obviously going to be punished in November. And as I spoke about with Rick Wilson earlier this week, there are a lot of Republican voters out there who are willing to acknowledge that what Donald Trump has done is a disaster, but they're not willing to hold their elected officials accountable for it. They're not willing or able or understanding that. For all the times you say, I don't like what Trump is doing, your senator, if he's a Republican or your congressperson, if, if, if she's a Republican, are rubber stamping everything that Donald Trump is doing, or 95, 96, 97% of it. They also need to be held accountable. And I'm hopeful that at least some voters are going to. I may be wrong. We will see. Kevin Hassett is supposedly Donald Trump's top economic brain. He's so smart. But when he was asked about the economy, we got the strangest explanation from him about California housing costs and a really weird lesson about socialism. I want to fact check both of these. Here is Kevin Hassett, and he is trying to suggest that, yes, housing costs are down in California, but it's not because Gavin Newsom did anything good. It's because California sucks and everybody's leaving. And that's what's Making housing cheaper. Check this out.
- [55:11]
Joe Manchin
And our D reg efforts are also putting a lot of downward pressure on prices. And so I think the question is, is it going to continue? And I think that you're right to highlight shelter costs. And one of the metrics of shelter costs that I find most interesting is that they're going down pretty rapidly in places like California because everybody's leaving. And so when we look at the aggregate numbers, the fact that it's actually, even though there are high prices in California, it puts downward pressure on inflation because shelter costs are such a big share of inflation, and everybody's leaving the state.
- [55:43]
David Pakman
So I love how casually he just says this absolute crap. So there are like, three different claims packed into that. First of all, are California housing costs going down, because that would be a good thing, right? But for all this time, California is too expensive. Houses too expensive. There are measures that show a modest decline in California housing. Zillow's statewide asking rent data shows that California asking rent is down about 100 bucks a month per apartment from a year ago. Fine. Is California still expensive? Yes, it is. Average rent is still about 33% higher than the national average. Bureau of Economic Analysis says California has the highest housing rent price level of any state. That's not even consistent across California. By the way, San Francisco is really expensive still. And actually, rents have gotten more expensive in San Francisco. But overall, like the honest version is, there is a degree to which California housing has gotten a little bit cheaper from a high starting point. Okay, that's number one. Second, he goes, it's only because everybody's leaving. Is that true? Of course not. Now, California lost about 230,000 people to other states in the latest census estimate. That's real. But Also, more than 400,000 people move into California from other states every year. And California also gained over 100,000 people from international migration, meaning people coming from other countries directly into California. So it's a state of nearly 39 million people. Hassett is taking net domestic outmigration of about 6, 10 of 1%. And he goes, everybody's leaving. That's why housing is getting cheaper. Housing's getting cheaper. They don't want to give Gavin Newsom any credit, so they go, it's because California sucks so bad. Everybody's leaving. Third, even if we acknowledge it's gotten a little cheaper to rent and there are people moving in and out of the state, do we have reason to believe that migration is the reason that the housing prices have come down slightly? It could be one factor like In a, in a mathematical sense, fewer people competing for housing can reduce the demand. But there's been a broader national slowdown in rent growth, and there's a lot of states in which housing asking rents have come down a little bit and vacancy rates have ticked up a little bit. There's some affordability constraints in there. So Hassett is taking all of these different explanations and, and he's finding the one way that it'll allow him to insult Gavin Newsom, which is, yes, it's gotten a little bit cheaper for housing, but it's because the state sucks so bad under Gavin Newsom and everybody's leaving. The verdict here is there is often a kernel of truth in a big exaggeration. California has some net domestic outmigration. Very small statistically. Housing data varies a lot based on what you're measuring and which city you're looking at. Now, one more clip here. Kevin Hassett attempts a history lesson of economic history and he brings up socialism. Take a guess. Do you think that he is accurate and honest in this clip or not? Let's see.
- [59:00]
Kevin Hassett
Joe Manchin. What do you mean you can't support. What about all the good parts of socialism? Can't you support any of that? We actually had a legacy we media type, you know, trying to force poor Joe into saying something good about socialism.
- [59:16]
Joe Manchin
What you really need to do, Joe, like find whoever, the leading scholar right now on Hayek, the Road to Serfdom. Everybody should read the Road to Serfdom right now, How Socialism Leads to Totalitarianism. But there must be some person who just wrote their thesis about that. Bring them on the show and let them explain it to everybody. Because Hayek came in. What happened happened was after World War II, because we had centralized production.
- [59:38]
David Pakman
Okay, pay close attention here.
- [59:39]
Joe Manchin
Defeat the Nazis. There were a whole bunch of socialists in the UK and the US that wanted to take over the economy because they said, look, we've already centralized production, so let's just be socialist. That's why the CEA was created. That's why the OECD was created, because there were non socialists who wanted to stand up and stop that before we created a road to serfdom. And so yeah, definitely bring some somebody in to talk about Hayek.
- [60:00]
Kevin Hassett
Got to learn it that Reagan was talking about freedom. But you can't pass this down genetically every generation. And we're failing because generations apparently aren't learning about and you know, socialism is not far from communism. And then you got, you know, the sticky little situation where 100 million people die or Worse.
- [60:18]
David Pakman
But anyway, so listen, you all know that I am neither a socialist nor a communist, but I still want to be accurate. And we should understand what history is. There are pieces of real history there wrapped in just blatant disinformation. Did the US And Britain centrally coordinate a lot of their economies during World War II? Yes, they did. Britain elected a Labor government, nationalized a bunch of industries in the U.S. after World War II, there was a major debate about how much responsibility should the government have for maintaining employment. That stuff happened. And I will remind you, during COVID Donald Trump also did some nationalizing of industry where he said, we are going. The government is commandeering the factories of these companies. They're going to be making masks, they're going to be making gowns and all this stuff. Okay, so that did happen. Hassett's explanation is essentially made up. Congress created the Council of economic advisers in 1946 through the Employment act of 1946, because policymakers were worried that if you see this huge demobilization after the war, you could have massive unemployment and actually end up with another depression. And its job was to give the President an analysis so that they could promote maximum employment and production and purchasing power. The law mentioned free competitive enterprise, but the CIA was never assembled as like, we need. We have an emergency put non socialists in charge to stop this takeover. And really the central idea behind that legislation in 1946 was that the federal government has this ongoing responsibility to manage economic conditions and prevent another collapse. Conservatives at the time said, we don't like that. We don't want the government involved in this full employment proposal. It's giving too much power and too much responsibility to the government. And so he now, Hassett now says what happened was to stop socialism. In fact, what was going on at the time was that the framing was completely different and it was the right that said, we don't want to give the CIA that much power. So it's basically a lie. Hassa is taking a debate that did take place. How centrally planned should the economy be. That happened. Circumstances of some nationalization during World War II that happened. Big changes to employment policy, that happened. But then he cartoonifies this story to be beneficial to his view. And this is a big problem with the Trump administration's economics. They'll find a selectively chosen fact. They'll attach an ideology to it that's convenient but has nothing to do with what actually took place. And then they just hope nobody goes and looks. The truth here is the opposite of what Kevin Hassett is citing for the reasons why these conversations were taking place. Does it surprise me that it's totally bogus? No, but the degree to which Hassett has this smirk and I don't know if I can catch. It's sort of like this smirk here. He does this smirk while telling these horrible lies with such confidence that it really is nauseating. We've got a great bonus show for you today. Sign up@join pacman.com get instant access.