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Coming up on today's show, the Trump administration has officially put me on a list of so called media offenders. This is a bigger story than just me. The government has now gone from attacking political opponents to universities, to law firms, to major corporate media outlets, to independent creators, including me. I'll talk about why this is a huge difference from what we used to see and why it's so dangerous. You probably know why. Also, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, I believe has stumbled upon the most effective anti Maga message for 2026. It's not Trump's dangerous, it's he's wasting your money on himself. And we'll look at some examples. I also plan to debunk one of the dumbest claims you'll hear all week. After Trump's energy secretary says solar energy is irrelevant in the winter, we'll run through the greatest hits of solar and ev misinformation. And later, of course, new questions about Donald Trump's health as visible swelling in his eye and hand is now getting attention. What a show today. Glad you're here. An enemies list is what dictators do. The Trump White House is once again targeting a media outlet. But this time it's different because I'm the person that the White House is targeting. Yesterday I found a page on the official federal government White House website called David Pakman. The Trump White House has a page about me. I will tell you exactly how to find it because some people wrote in and said, I don't know that this page is real. You go to whitehouse.gov, you go to menu Media Media Offenders. You scroll down, it defaults to cnn. You go to the second page of Media Offenders and you see a page called Leftist Influencers. And there it lists David Pakman. And here is the David Pakman page. The White House is now targeting me. The White House wants me de platformed. The White House is trying to suppress my speech by designating me a media offender. We now have put aside the implications for a moment. Think about how this has scaled and changed. Okay, first he went after the elected Democrats. These are his political opponents. Okay? Then it was prosecutors, judges, investigators, universities, law firms, major corporate news organizations, public broadcasters, and now it's independent creators. They're saying, here's a list of people we want to identify as enemies to our supporters. And, and whether that means that it pushes YouTube and other platforms to de platform me or whether that means that it weaponizes Trump supporters against me, either cybernetically, from the, from the standpoint of cyber, not cybernetically. Cyber, Cyber Li, to quote Mike Pillow, or even violently. This is absolutely chilling. I saw a comment about this on social media saying, you know, this is equal, David. You talk about them and then they put you on a list. It's all fair, it's all the same. There is a fundamental difference between a commentator criticizing his government, which is what I'm doing, and the government creating a catalog of critics and people that they have decided are not people who deserve a voice. One is accountability. We hold the government accountable. The other is raw authoritarianism. And remember that these Trump supporters spent years arguing the government shouldn't decide what the truth is. Government shouldn't police speech. Government shouldn't pressure media. Governments. Creating an enemies list of media critics has a very long and troubling history. You look at the Soviet government, which maintained records of journalists, writers and intellectuals and people deemed hostile to the state. You look at Viktor or Bond's government and allied organizations that put out these lists of journalists and academics that are enemies. And maybe they're foreign agents. They're certainly our opponents. And the closest American parallel, if we want to look for one, is the Nixon White House, which had a list of. It was an actual enemies list of journalists, politicians, activist donors, and critics. And so when you look at history, when governments become hostile to criticism, they often stop arguing with journalists about the merits of what they're saying. They start labeling them, these are our enemies. They do lists and registries and blacklists and foreign agents lists and all of this stuff. So a couple of important things that I'm going to mention. Number one, they can brand me a media offender, they can brand me a leftist influencer, or they have me categorized as left wing lunacy on their page. All of this different stuff, we're going to keep going. And the fact that there are very few of us identified in this way by whitehouse.gov means that I've hit a nerve. Now, the issue they're mad at me about relates to Trump's health. And that is further evidence that this is an area of sensitivity. They know people are. Listen, when we, we've been covering Trump's health for a long time, tens of millions of views on that issue. People care and the White House cares. That is important. Now, when the full force of the federal government turns its attention on you, turn really bad things can happen. I'm talking to lawyers, I'm talking to advisers. We don't really know the full scope of what we're up against yet. What are they going to try to do with the people on this list. So listen, this is the red alert. It's no longer, you know, they might. No, no, no, no. It's now. We are under attack in a way we have never been been by any administration before. A month ago, Caroline Levitt and Don Jr. Started tweeting against the David Pakman show, weaponizing their followers against me. And now I'm on a list. Folks, the list is here. So at a minimum, the bigger we are, the more noise we're able to make if and when they come after us. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube, folks. It's it costs nothing. Make sure that on our non algorithmic platforms Spotify and Apple podcasts. You're following the podcast. It costs nothing. Leave us a rating on Apple and Spotify. It costs nothing. If you can get a membership@join pacman.com Please do. It really matters right now. But just following us on platforms, sharing this out, commenting Tuesday, we are doing a one day membership drive and it's gone from being something positive and nice for the summer into the White House is targeting us. We need to do a membership drive. We don't know what we're up against. I would love it for you to get on my newsletter. It's free. You go to substack.david pakman.com just get on my free newsletter Tuesday. You'll get an email with how to sign up under this discount. But at minimum, minimum, make sure you're following me on whatever platform you're seeing this on. It's happening now. They're doing it. We're on the radar. We've struck a nerve and if I have anything to say about it, I'm not going to stop. I know my team isn't going to stop. We're making a difference. But this is a really important time for you to get involved. Ladies and gentlemen, the White House put me on a list for talking about Trump's health. And on the same day Donald Trump laid back at the Oval Office desk during a live on camera event. He's almost laying down sleeping. Look at this. And now we know why the White House doesn't want me talking about Donald Trump's health. This is Trump listening to his EPA administrator Lee Zeldin. He's. They almost should bring a cot in for, for him. Look at this.
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Of warmth of a job, an economy, a community, a family. And for too long you saw Democrats who were telling these coal miners they should just learn to code.
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Now listen, Lee Zeldin is boring, I understand that. But Trump's Falling asleep two or three times a week on camera, and this time he's almost horizontal. He used to talk to us about how Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Obama would disgrace the Oval Office. Obama once put his feet up on the desk and Biden didn't know what was happening. And it was a disgrace to the Oval Office. Trump's almost laying down his sleeve. He's almost entering REM in the Oval Office. Isn't that disrespectful? This was an insane event. Donald Trump pulling out one of these stories of a guy who called him sir. And it was a big strong guy. You might think, David, that's. That's a satire of what we say about Trump talking, but Trump doesn't really talk that way. Trump talked about a big strong guy who called him sir.
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Quarterback. Jackson was the quarter is the quarterback for the Giants. He's a big strong guy. And I said, how do you think you do in women's sports? Jackson? He said, pretty good, sir. He didn't know I was joking.
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Big strong guy said, pretty good, sir.
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He was not worried. Let me put it that way. He would have been the greatest athlete in the history of women's sports. You got to see the size of this guy, like a male model. And he's going to be a great quarterback, folks.
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Trump could barely be bothered to wake up during this event, and he wakes up and he goes, a big, strong guy called me sir, and he looked like a male model. People are struggling to pay for groceries. People are struggling to pay for gas. People are trying to figure out, how will college ever be affordable for my kids, given what's going on with college costs. And this is what Donald Trump is doing now. At a certain point, the topic did turn to Iran and Donald Trump. I don't know that this is a Freudian slip so much as it is. Trump doesn't really understand the English language. But Trump says something kind of odd about winning. Take a listen to this.
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So I think we're doing very well, but we're going to see if we're going to win one way or the other. We're going to win on paper or we're going to win military. One way or the other, it's going to be militarily or on paper.
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You know, winning on paper is. Excuse me, winning on paper arguably means you didn't really win. Like, someone goes, listen, on paper, they're the best team, but they lost everything with. I don't think Trump knows what he's talking about. Winning on paper wouldn't be a victory, arguably, Trump, Google, listen on paper, we bombed him and we killed the Ayatollah and we did xyz. So we won in reality, you didn't win, though. You won on paper. And instead of paper, it's really on Truth Social. You won on Truth Social, but you didn't win in reality. More importantly, though, Trump keeps talking about this as a future event. We're either going to win this way or we're going to win that way. But you've already declared victory eight times. You said, we've basically got a deal. Eight times. We are in almost week 50. We were in week 14. We're almost in week 15 of a three week war and we are going to win. Trump says, one way or the other. Trump wants a new area outside the Lincoln Memorial called the Trump Promenade. And I love how Trump goes. That's what they want to call it. Who is the they that he's talking about?
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The Lincoln Memorial. The front was supposed to be the back. The back was supposed to be the front. It never got built because they built two roadways behind it after it was built. And it shut off the gateway to the water. That was really going to be the main entry. And we're going to be doing that. We're going to call the promenade. They want to call it the Trump Promenade, but I don't know if I want to do that.
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They want to call it the Trump Promenade. By they, Trump must mean people he convinced to say this, and people very interested in sucking up to Trump, I guess. And then in a final bizarre moment during which Trump was able to stay awake, he says that, you know, what happened to Joe Biden during that infamous June 27, 2024 debate could have happened to Trump. And all of a sudden, I think that something's going on here. As the focus has increasingly grown with regard to concerns about Donald Trump's health, Trump seems to kind of defend Joe Biden's acuity and goes, you know, when I had him in the Oval Office, he seemed completely and totally fine. Something happened during the debate and maybe the debate alone. I think this is Trump realizing I got to tread lightly here because I'm not doing so well as far as cognitive goes.
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Joe Biden is out promoting a new book this week. When you met with Joe Biden, President Joe Biden, right here in the oval office on November 13th of 2024, could you detect any cognitive decline in President Biden at that time?
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No, not really. He was the same guy I've been watching for a Long time. I mean, you could go back 40 years. I watched him 40 years ago, 30 years ago. He was never the sharpest guy. You do know that, right? It wasn't like he was sharp as a tack, but no, it was the same guy. They actually invited me here before the election, which was strange. You know, we went here before, but then I met also, as you know, we did the ritual and I mean, he was fine as far as I was concerned. I don't know.
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This is fascinating because that's a 2024 meeting. Trump is now saying. Think of it. Trump is saying that in 2024, after Trump spent five years talking about Joe Biden's decline and lack of cognitive acuity, Trump goes. We met in November of 24 and he was fine. What? And then in the year and a half since, he's continued to go after Biden on the. But he was fine in November of 24. Wow.
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Something happened to him during the debate. It could have been me.
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Yeah.
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I think I had a very good debate. Nobody ever says that. They say that. They say that Biden did badly. What about me? Did I do well?
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You know, there's everything's about Trump reason he did badly.
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So the question is, did he do badly because he choked or because he didn't have it? But he didn't have a good. I would say this. He did not have a good night.
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Donald Trump is now acknowledging that after he spent years attacking Biden's cognitive acuity and before he continued spending years attacking Biden's cognitive acuity, he met with Biden and Biden was completely fine in the Oval Office. Think about that. So that's a big story. But it's also a big story that Donald Trump does seem now to be taking a softer approach on Biden's cognition because of all of the attention that is increasingly on Trump's cognitive decline. What do you make of it? Let me know in a comment. Let me know in an email. Info@david pakman.com if debt feels like it's draining your attention each month, multiple due dates, rising interest, balances that barely move. You are not alone. Our sponsor, PDS Debt, works with people facing credit cards, personal loans, or medical bills. And they don't use a one size fits all approach. They review your specific situation, connect you with custom options that are really designed to save you money and pay your debt off faster with no minimum credit score required. PDS Debt has helped hundreds of thousands of people and is A plus rated by the Better Business Bureau with thousands of five star reviews nationwide. And instead of juggling statements and guessing on next steps, they focus on clarity, a realistic timeline and practical guidance you can actually use. The process starts with a quick, simple free assessment which will match you to the best path forward today. Waiting can cost more in interest and fees over time, so don't wait another month. Take back control in 30 seconds. Get your free personalized assessment at PDS debt.com/pacman the link is in the description when it comes to what you're getting dad for Father's Day, don't overthink it. Get him something that'll keep him comfortable every day. Something practical. Sheath Underwear delivers exactly that. Our sponsor Sheath makes premium pouch underwear with a smart front design that will separate and support and give everything room to breathe, the room everything deserves, which is very important during the hot summer months coming up. She's lineup includes soft bamboo and modal options along with different cuts and colors. You can give them an everyday essential without being boring. She fuses fabric that's lightweight, breathable, built for comfort through long days at the office, work days or just lounging around the house. For Father's Day, get dad the underwear he would probably never think to buy for himself, but will be glad he owns when he's got it. Go to sheath underwear.com and use code Father for 30% off until June 21st. The link is in the description Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, I believe, is focusing in on the one thing most likely to destroy Maga in the 2026 election and if they're not careful in the 2028 election and potentially AOC has found the biggest weakness for Trump and for MAGA. It coincides very much with something I've been talking about. So I'm going to play a video for you here. This is Congresswoman AOC speaking to our friend Scott McFarlane from Midas. And here she is with an assessment of what is taking place right now. I think this is excellent messaging going into the election. Take a listen. What do you think your constituents think about these vanity projects, Trump's undertaking in D.C. the Kennedy center to the arches and ponds?
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Yeah, you know, I think people think that this is, you know, that the reflecting pool and the ballroom and all of these things are almost like a joke. But the reality is that for my constituents who are being kicked off of food assistance, who in New York State, our essential plan that covers people at the bottom rung of income, availability to get health care, the entire essential plan in the state of New York is being eliminated Health care plans across the country are being eliminated or completely changed in order to accommodate a trillion dollar cut in our health care system. So when people see a ballroom and they see at the same time their health insurance getting cut off, they know that they are paying for that ballroom with no health care, higher grocery prices, and increasingly impossible to afford housing. And so I think people are pissed off about it and they should be. It's wrong. This is a complete theft of our money. This is what I want people to understand. This is our money. When you pay your taxes, that money that you are paying is being stolen from to pay for a vanity project in a ballroom or to renovate the Kennedy center or whatever it is that this guy wants to do, instead of actually what it should be, which is paying your taxes so that you actually get something good back for it.
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This is verbatim the message I've been screaming about for six months. This is all your money. I think this is a brutal message against maga. For decades, Republicans built their power around the idea that these elected officials in D.C. are wasting your tax money. They don't care about you. You pay these taxes. People who don't give a damn about you are going and spending the money on stuff. Democrats are spending money on researching, you know, the sex patterns of titmice and whatever irrelevant thing they love to point out. Usually they misunderstand what it is, but they, they pull these random, you know, partially government funded projects and they go, this is what your tax money is going to. What Trump has now done. And Republicans have done that successfully to a degree in that it's been politically effective. What Trump has now done is he's created an opening to turn that around against them. Trump is saying, hey, you're struggling with rent, you're struggling with groceries, childcare, health care, retirement account contributions. I need you to subsidize the, the arc of Trump and the reflecting pool and the Iran war and the tariffs and all of that stuff. And a lot of Democratic messaging kind of gets lost because it sounds ideological. This is not ideological. People understand, why am I paying for that? Wait a second. I worked, I paid taxes, and I only got to keep part of the money I earned. And then what is being done with my tax money? And Trump has sold himself as a businessman who knows how to manage money, but it's not being managed in a way that I think most people would agree with. So the political challenge is we need to connect every single vanity project, the golf trips where Secret Service rents out Trump's own resort and Uses taxpayer money to funnel it into Trump's income, business income, the self enrichment schemes, the slush fund, which I guess now is dead. All of that stuff. It's a single narrative. Your money is being wasted. People don't need to know constitutional law to understand that. That's what's great about it. My taxes shouldn't be going to a presidential ballroom. It shouldn't be going to a UFC arena on White House grounds or whatever the next, as they're calling it, vanity project is. That is a really powerful message. Notice how it's different than going, Trump's evil, he's authoritarian. Those arguments are persuasive to some voters. I believe it's accurate to call Trump an authoritarian. But he's spending your tax money on himself. He's got billions and you don't. That can reach people who don't even really follow politics very actively. The MAGA coalition has a lot of voters who are not ideological conservatives. They're against waste, they're against the. They're against the establishment, they're against. We're against politicians. We want a non politician. I believe that group is very susceptible to messaging about how their money is being spent on this crap. So if Democrats can make every story about tariffs and the construction projects and crypto and family business dealings and golf and favoritism to donors about your money is being spent. He's taking your money and spending it on himself or giving it to his friends. I believe that that is a much more powerful, powerful message than every scandal being separate, another day, another way in which Trump is taking your tax money and spending it on himself or his friends. And it ties in very well with the anti corruption message that I've been talking about, which I think also can play well with less overtly political people and people who are maybe not. Not such close followers of a lot of this stuff. It needs to be hammered on. And I know that there are, there are people in my audience who have turned on aoc. There are people I hear from who go, oh, you know aoc, she now has gone establishment. She sold out. She's no longer for all of the things that she used to be for. And no, no, no, no, no. I think AOC has actually locked in on a much more accurate perception or sense of what can really move voters in a way that allows them to remove Trump from power and remove MAGA from power in a proverbial neutering of their ability to reach voters. So I think AOC is making a lot more sense these days than she Used to. And her political instincts have really developed very nicely. Donald Trump slept through one of the dumbest claims of the year. This. This story is not actually about Trump. Trump happened to be sleeping while this took place, but this is not about Donald Trump. Donald Trump's energy secretary, Chris Wright, said something really wacky about solar power. Take a listen to what he said and then think for yourself as to whether it makes sense. Then we'll analyze it.
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But because we had those coal plants operating and running, and not only did they run, wind power disappeared when the storm hit. Solar is irrelevant in the winter. So things we talk about didn't even matter to our electricity grid except for cost burdens. Coal stepped UP and produced 25% more electricity during this storm than its normal reliable chugging out of electricity.
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What on earth is he talking about? Solar is irrelevant in the winter. I believe it's really important to debunk this stuff because growing these technologies does depend to a degree on people having a sense of what reality is. Growing solar, growing electric vehicles. It is true that solar produces less electricity in the winter than in the summer. That that's accurate. Saying it's irrelevant in winter is like saying air conditioning is irrelevant in the spring because it's used less in the spring than in August. Yeah, but when it's hot in the spring, you still use your air conditioning. You still benefit from it. Solar is not so much heat powered panels work more efficiently sometimes in cold weather than in extreme summer heat, because at really high temperatures, the efficiency of solar panels goes down. What matters is light. Solar panels are converting sunlight into electricity using semiconductor materials. Semiconductors in general perform better at lower temperatures. So if you've got a sunny 40 degree day and a sunny 95 degree day, same amount of sun, same number of hours of sun, the 40 degree day will actually be more efficient. For the solar panels. Most solar panels, for every degree Celsius that the temperature goes up, the solar panel loses half of a percent of efficiency of output, which makes it less efficient as the temperature goes up. So all else being equal, solar panels are more efficient in the winter. Now, of course, it's true. Winter days are shorter, there are fewer hours of light. And when you have winter storms in some part of the country or more cloudy days, of course that diminishes the amount of light and that diminishes the total amount of electricity that can be generated from the sun with solar panels. But you also have situations where, you know, other forms of energy aren't equally efficient or equally robust at different times. Of the year, different times of day. And I'll talk about that in a moment. But this doesn't make any sense. And this is the sort of stuff that when people believe it, they go, yeah, that's right, screw solar. If solar were irrelevant in winter, utilities wouldn't keep adding it. Utilities don't tend to do stuff that wastes money. And solar continues to be one of the fastest growing sources of new power generation. By the way, by the same logic, they love to say when it's not windy, wind power is irrelevant, or during a drought, hydropower is irrelevant. A good robust grid uses a mix of resources. And by the way, another classic is solar is irrelevant at night. Okay? I mean, like you can when you go to the grocery store when it's open and you bring that food home. Is the stuff you buy at the grocery store irrelevant when the store is closed? No, you have it at home and you can use it when you need. And similarly, there are grid scale batteries designed to shift solar power from being collected during the day to being used to power stuff when the sun isn't shining. Nobody's claiming solar panels produce electricity at night. The question is, can the energy produced during the day be stored and used later? And increasingly the answer is yes. There's also home level batteries people can get. Not grid level, but home level so it'll collect. That's typically used more for when there's a power outage, unless you're fully off grid. But the point is, they don't ever want to live in the nuance. They just want to go with not windy, then we have no wind power, not sunny, then we have no solar power. These are the same people who give you all of the anti electric vehicle talking points as well. They go, well, EVs are stupid because the electricity comes from coal. A lot of the electrical grid is still from fossil fuels. That's true, but centralizing the combustion is still better than each car driving around pumping out emissions from a tailpipe. And over time, the grid can be transitioned off of fossil fuels. That's like a very dumb argument. They'll go, well, battery production is worse for the for the environment than gasoline. Making batteries has a cost, that's true, but burning gas for 10 to 15 years in your car has a much bigger cost. EVs don't work in the winter, the range drops, it's true, but they still work fine. You can't take road trips. I just drove to Montreal without even stopping to charge. You can take 250 to 400 mile trips and recharge when you get there. That is possible with modern electric vehicles. Another one they love is if everybody got an EV today, the grid couldn't handle it. Well, you know what? There aren't enough EVs for everybody to get one today. This is a process. Demand changes over time. As people get EVs, the grid will be made more robust. I'll just do one more EVs catch fire. Gas cars catch fire at a greater rate than EVs, so on solar, on wind, on geothermal, on electric vehicles. These people are terrible. I suspect that they know they're lying, but they don't believe that their followers are informed enough to know that. And that's why they try this stuff. If you've been paying attention to recent events, you've seen how the line between church and state is blurring, how religion can be brought into public life in ways that raise real constitutional questions. That doesn't just affect one issue. It shapes policy. It shapes rights and how power operates broadly. 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 A lot of people put on music while they work, assuming it helps them concentrate. But in practice, familiar songs, lyrics or constantly changing tracks often will take attention away from what you're working on rather than supporting attention. And that's where Brain FM comes in. Our sponsor, Brain fm, is a music app designed to support focus, relaxation or sleep with music creatures created by human musicians working alongside neuroscientists. Instead of generic playlists, Brain FM offers task specific modes like deep work, creative and motivation depending on what you're trying to do. What makes Brain FM different is the science behind it, because it's the only music app funded by the National Science foundation based on their unique audio technology designed to influence brain activity associated with focus. Brain FM also has published peer reviewed research showing their technology supports attentional performance. They even have an optional ADHD mode for people who benefit from additional stimulation. But the app really is built for anybody looking to reduce distractions and stay engaged with their work. You can try brain fm totally free for 30 days by going to brain fm power pacman 30 days is a long free trial. Go check it out. The link is in the description. Donald Trump has a terrifying new symptom. He is swollen like a beach ball. And they are finally admitting to this. There are two elements to this. Let me explain both. First and foremost, people are noticing that Trump's right eye is completely swollen to the point of almost being completely swollen shut. This was noticed during the Pod Force One interview with Miranda Devine. I want to, of course, we're looking at the picture. You see this insane swelling under Donald Trump's right eye. His eyes look completely uneven. The thing is almost completely swollen shut. Cool. Part two. His right hand looks swollen. Look in this video at how completely swollen and disfigured Trump's right hand is looking. Almost like a rubber glove that's been inflated. Take a look at this. Teddy Roosevelt's portrait is above your head, right? Tell me, is he your one of your favorite presidents and why?
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Well, he was a good one.
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Had Trump's right hand there looking insanely swollen. And after years of people not noticing these things or people noticing them and being told, don't believe your eyes, we've got media outlets that are finally starting to pay attention. Our friend Aaron Rupar has been posting about this. The New Republic has written about it. The explanation is, let me guess, is Trump's eyes swollen from shaking too many hands with his eye? Is that going to be the latest one? Now, the most important thing about this story is that I don't believe this is new. Now, before anybody accuses me of, of inventing a brand new health scare, I believe, listen, I've talked about Trump's eye before. Viewers have emailed me about it before. I've pointed out that Trump's right eye is regularly, almost completely swollen shut. I don't know how he sees out of the thing in some cases. And it's been pointed out in videos, it's been pointed out in pictures. And what's different now is other media outlets are starting to notice it. Whenever anybody before would raise questions about Trump's health, the response was often immediate. Don't believe your eyes, don't ask questions, stop speculating and just kind of move along. But there's a certain point where you keep seeing the same things over and over again and people start asking questions and people start to notice. And I think this is coming at a very interesting time. Remember that last week Trump had his third physical in 13 months and the White House said the report would be released quickly. And it wasn't. It was delayed. And then when it finally came out. It was published at 11pm on a Friday, when you publish stuff to bury it. And it was filled with just glowing descriptions of Trump's health and his extraordinary conditioning and outstanding test results. And some physicians who reviewed it, they said, I don't know that this is painting a realistic picture of Donald Trump's health based on especially his age and visible health problems. And now, just a couple of days after that, we are looking at visible swelling on Trump's right eye and Trump's right hand. Now, the explanation that's been floated for everything related to Trump's hand, the bruising, the bandaging, all of it is, Trump shakes so many hands that it causes the bruising, I guess. And if you were to say, well, Trump's hand is also swollen from shaking so many hands, imagine that we believe that, which of course, we don't. What about the eye? And more importantly, why does every visible question about Trump's health get treated like it's a state secret? That's the part that's fascinating to me. We don't have. It's not isolation. We have multiple physical exams, multiple reports that read like propaganda. Multiple visible symptoms of Donald Trump. Surprise medical visits, delayed reports, visits to Trump's dentist in Florida, even though there's a full dental room facility at the White House. We see visible bruising, we see visible swelling. It's not one thing. And it's always, everything's better than ever. Nobody's been more healthy than this president. Right now, he's healthier than when Obama was 47 and took office. Stuff that's totally unbelievable. So without diagnosing anything specific, we have to be asking questions. Now, maybe there is, it's increasingly difficult to believe, but maybe there's a simple, ordinary, benign explanation. But simple, ordinary, benign explanations don't tend to require extraordinary secrecy and deception. The eye is swollen, the hand is swollen, the ankles are swollen. People can see it. Trump's falling asleep two to three times a week on camera. Who knows during closed door meetings how often he's falling asleep. And finally, we've got other media outlets acknowledging it. That's what I think is important. Now, talking about Trump's health got me put on a list. The, the Trump administration put me on a list of media offenders for talking about this. If I was focused on Trump cheats at golf, I don't think I'd be on that list. If I were focused on, you know, Trump's foreign policy is terrible, which is a focus of this show. In the context of the Iran war, and its policy towards Ukraine, I don't think I'd be on that list. This topic is hitting a nerve and we are still being told the public shouldn't ask any questions. It doesn't need to worry. Certainly not how Republicans behaved when they had questions about Joe Biden's health. The standard should be the same. If visible health questions about a president deserve scrutiny, they deserve scrutiny no matter whether it's Trump or Biden. And they deserve scrutiny no matter whether I'm talking about it or not. Rather than putting me on a list and going, the problem is the person talking about it. The more the White House insists, as they continue to do that everything is just so. It's so perfect all of the time, the more people are going to wonder, what aren't we being told something's wrong with this guy and a lot of people are starting to talk about it. What do you think is going on? Just straight up, I mean, leave me a, leave me a comment, send me an email, etc. I want to hear from you. What do you think is going on? All right. It is time to send these people back to wherever they came from. I'm not talking about immigrants and I'm not talking about deportation. I'm talking about the politicians, the media figures, the operatives and the extremists who have spent the last decade plus dragging the country backwards while telling us they're making it great again. It's time for them to go back to private life. It's time to send them back to cable news and the podcast studios. I'm glad Dan Bongino left the FBI and now is back to podcasting. That's good. I think he does less damage as a podcaster. He still does damage, but I think it's less. It's time to send them back to Mar a Lago or whatever. And it's time to send them home through the ballot box by voting. Here is the way I would lay it out. We've spent the last decade in the United States being told every problem in the country is someone else's fault. It might be immigrants, it might be Democratic cities, it might be liberal universities, it might be left wing journalists, it might be Democrats, it might be foreign countries or who the hell knows what. Everybody has been blamed except for the people holding power. And what we have to show for it today is housing is less affordable, health care keeps getting more expensive, the national debt continues to grow, political violence is more common, public trust is zero. Families are divided, the country's exhausted, gas prices are up. Grocery prices are up, it's all up. And after all of that, they want us to believe that the solution is give them more power. Give them a bigger majority in the House when you vote in November. Give them a bigger majority in the Senate when you vote this November. At some point voters have to stop asking what is it that they've promised and what have they actually delivered for us? And they've delivered chaos and corruption and scandal and cover ups and Epstein cover up and health cover up and attacks on democratic institutions. Look at the people, by the way, who spent years claiming that they were defending freedom while they were cheering on efforts to undermine elections, punish critics and concentrate power in the hands of loyalists. So you know, I know that there's people out there who write in and they go, david, can America survive two more years of this? I think the question is why would anyone want two more years of it? This is why I believe this next midterm matters so much. And it is a lead in to the importance of 2028. One election doesn't fix everything. One candidate can't solve every problem. But politics is ultimately about incentives and about power. If politicians can lie, divide, inflame and abuse power with zero consequences, of course they're going to continue doing it. If they lose power, because that's what they did, they will learn to behave differently. It's an operant conditioning of sorts. Democracy only works if we can enforce accountability as voters. So you've got to show up, you've got to vote, you've got to pay attention. Even when it is in a presidential election and a lot fewer people pay attention during these midterms, we can't normalize behavior that would have been disqualifying 12 years ago. One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming someone else is going to fix the problem. This happens the bystander effect on the street. And it happens when it comes to government as well. Somebody else will do the organizing, someone else will do the voting, someone else will pay attention, someone else is going to stop the damage. That doesn't tend to work. The people who want power have already organized. That's how they got power to begin with. The people who want power are already motivated. That's why they've gotten organized. The people who want power are planning for the next election already. So what we need to do now is get involved and get engaged to send these people back to wherever they came from. We're not going to do it through violence. It's not going to be revenge or intimidation. It's going to, it's going to be through voting, through elections, through organizing, through the democratic process. That's how we do it. It's not through locking people up without due process, but it is about making sure that the justice system is functioning appropriately, that evidence will be looked at. And if there's evidence of wrongdoing, people are going to be charged with crimes. That's important. So it is undeniable that the last decade has damaged the country, but we aren't going to fix it with despair or cynicism, and certainly not if we give up. We've got to make sure that the people responsible suffer what they face, what they fear the most, which is losing that power that they've achieved. We can only do it if enough people decide we've seen enough. I've seen enough folks. They put me on a list. Now I'm on a list of media offenders. I think we've all seen enough. And so it is time to get these people out, send them back. We don't need them here. And part of what we're doing also because we may need a legal defense fund, who knows? We're doing a one day membership special on June 9. It is a single day membership drive. It is to fight back against the authoritarianism of this White House which has now been turned on me. They put me on a list. They say I'm the problem. The Trump White House did. We are going to do the biggest membership drive we can on Tuesday to try to be best prepared to take him out of power. And we got to take him out of power in November and then we've got to do it again in November of 2028. I would love for you to participate in this membership drive. Just get on my newsletter. You can get on it@substack.david pakman.com you've got to spell Pacman correctly, though. That's the key. Substack.david pakman.com we'll take a quick break after the break. Why wasn't I on the influencer Cuba trip? The answer might surprise you or it might not. That's after the break. One thing that drives me nuts about political media is how two outlets can cover the same story and make it feel like two different events took place, not because any of the facts have changed, but because the emphasis of the stories is different. This is why I use ground news, because ground news pulls together reporting from across the political spectrum and you can compare the headlines side by side and see how different outlets are framing the exact same issue. You can look at the bias distribution. You can look at factuality ratings. You can see who owns the outlets behind the reporting, which makes it easier to separate the substance from the spin. For example, Trump's EPA recently decided to remove limits on those forever chemicals in drinking water. Ground News shows how outlets like PBS and Raw Story are getting it right and right wing outlets put this anti Biden spin on it or they just stay very vague to avoid implicating Donald Trump. Ground News also has a blind spot feed. This is for stories that are underreported by one side and you can also get a personalized feed based on your interests. Go to Ground News slash Pacman or scan my QR code to get 40% off the ground News Vantage plan. The link is in the description Identity theft usually does not start with some movie version of how hacking takes place. It's boring details that are easy to find your full name, current and former addresses, phone number, date of birth, employment history. If you put a bunch of that stuff together, people can then start to figure out do I know your security answers to security questions? Can I open accounts in your name? This is why our sponsor Incogni exists. Incogni works to remove your personal info from the Internet. Places like people search sites, online directories, commercial databases. Incogni starts by removing your info from hundreds of the most well known ones and will follow up until it's done. And if you google yourself and find your info anywhere outside of this database of hundreds of these sites, you can submit a link to Incogni and they will do what's called a custom removal. All of these processes are independently verified by Deloitte and you can get 60% off an annual plan at incogni.com pacman with the code Pacman. The link is in the description A white boar from South Africa. I don't mean b o a r b o e r bore. You know white South African is really angry with me and wrote to me and it's the first email today in our Friday feedback and it's really whacked out stuff. I think you an idiot. You know the way you crack Trump down is a shame you cannot even stand behind you microphone. Trump is 79 years old and your disrespectful behavior makes me sick. You should be ashamed of yourself. Obviously you never even go to the military, hence the reason why you are so slap gat. Hope next time you cross a road a bus drives over you and I hope it don't kill you but makes you old before your time without A voice to continue speaking all the shit you speak and that you cannot stand still on two legs. You are lower than shit. You're a Zol and idiot. Wrong your. By the way, I invite you to visit South Africa so that I can smack you so hard that you will Never hear again Mr. Idiot from a white boar. Oh, boy. This is from Christian. You know, I don't want to comment on most of this because it's just so rancid and really indicative of both seriously antisocial tendencies and potentially severe mental illness. But the one thing I do want to mention is if I didn't go to the military, and that's a strike against me. What about Trump? What about Trump's my ankles hurt letter that got him out of the military? Oh, I know that doesn't actually apply to everybody. That only applies to Trump. I understand. Connie Kirkpatrick wrote in and with a beautiful message of love and healing and said, I wanted you to know. This is from substack. I wanted you to know that listening to you has been beneficial. I appreciate the lack of name calling, slander, mimicry that for so many others seem to feel a need to employ. I want to. I want information, not the drama. I can watch the original. For that I keep coming back because you keep it balanced and informational. Thank you. Well, thank you, Connie. I really do appreciate that. I am always doing the best I can. Although sometimes, you know, there's a little slander here and there on the show and a little bit of mimicry if we can do it, but not that much. Not that much. People weighing in on producer Pat filling in for me on Wednesday as I incredibly strongly reentered the US of A from Canada. Producer Pat filling in. Dustin Glover wrote, I like producer Pat, but I'm always a little disappointed when it's not David hosting the show. Well, you know what? You should be a little disappointed, right? I mean, like, how much could you like the show if you turn it on and someone else is hosting? That wouldn't make a lot of sense. And then Carolyn Richie Ritchie said, I'm the opposite. I'm like, oh, my God, a Producer Pat episode. So a lot of mixed feelings when I'm missing. If you really like it when I'm not hosting that much, you probably shouldn't even be liking the show. You know, I think, like, that's kind of the basis for the entire framework. But great reviews, strong marks for producer Pat. Here's a very interesting comment from YouTube about the continued issues with notifications and traffic and recommendation algorithms. I've been switching my notifications to all and the algorithm responded positively. I'm seeing my people again pass the word to other podcasters that speak the truth like you, David. Appreciate all your knowledge. Yeah, so listen, after I blew the whistle on the YouTube recommendation algorithm, really treating us brutally so nastily, really unfairly, a lot of you started changing. First of all subscribing if you weren't already subscribed on YouTube, which is important, but then setting your notifications to all telling YouTube I want to know about David's videos and many of you now writing in that you're finally seeing me in your algorithm again. So it does seem to be helping. Definitely keep doing it is I guess the message I would point to you. Okay, from the subreddit, Emotional Ant wrote, liberals should stop pushing the National Popular Interstate Compact. What they mean is National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. And they write, it's driving me mad that states where liberals have the majority in government are joining this compact. It's another case of tying our own hands. The reason is because Republican states are not doing the same. This means that in elections where a Democrat loses the popular vote but wins the Electoral College, Democrats will hand their state's votes to Republicans, but Republican states will not do the same. When Democrats win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College, we are literally celebrating the idea of giving Republicans an advantage in presidential elections. No, they are completely wrong. Okay, this is this, this is just not how the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would work. The way that NPVIC would work is it only triggers when enough states are in to total 270 electoral votes. So the scenario this person is describing where only Democratic states participate and it ends up helping Republicans, it cannot happen the way it is designed. Until the compact reaches 270 electoral votes from the states that join, nothing changes. Nothing at all changes. Once you have 270 that join, that point you have a National Popular vote. It doesn't matter what the states that haven't joined do because they no longer control the majority of the popular vote. So this of the electoral vote. This criticism is not possible mathematically. I think the stronger criticism is, are we sure that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact wouldn't face legal challenges successfully? That's, I think, the bigger question and I don't have the answer to that at this point in time. Nats Curly wrote on the subreddit, why wasn't David included in the Cuba trip? I believe what they're referring to is this Cuba trip involving Code Pink and Hassan Piker and the post says, why wasn't David included in the Cuba trip? I looked at the list of who went and it was a lot of left leaning Internet people and activists as well as democrats. David speaks Spanish and he could have done some great report hoarding on a trip like that. Seems like a missed opportunity. So listen, I wasn't invited because I'm not part of this kind of, oh boy, I'm not part of the authoritarian left that defends authoritarian regimes. So I would never be invited on these trips to places like Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, China, Russia. I've just, I wouldn't be invited because I'm an anti authoritarian leftist. Now even if I had been invited, my ability to do reporting, I don't know how many people, how much people know about these sorts of trips. The idea that you can do reporting is not really reality. You can't really do reporting on these trips. They are sort of limited, sanitized opportunities to see what they want you to see. For example, during the Cuba trip, I believe that all of the people that went had electricity the entire time they were there. A relatively limited portion of the Cuban people have electricity 24 hours a day. They were able to have access to really nice hotels and restaurants that the Cuban people could never afford, for example. So, you know, it's just not my thing. They never would have invited me. I wouldn't have gone. And by the way, I think the trip was of questionable legality. Now I'm against the Cuban embargo, I'm against it, but as the law exists, I don't know if that trip was completely legal. So it wasn't a missed opportunity. It's not my thing. I would love to go to Cuba under circumstances where I could really, really see the country and how the average person is living and be confident that I could report honestly about that. I don't think that that trip would have been the case, but they never would have invited me. Those people don't, don't like me. I'm an anti authoritarian leftist. The people that went, love and are tied to some of these authoritarian regimes and they just never would even consider me for it. All right. A Facebook post about Donald Trump's ear. Casey writes, healed in a week, no scar and cartilage, does not grow back. It was a blood capsule like they use on movie sets. All three, meaning all three assassination attempts were staged. Listen, do I think it's possible that Donald Trump's ear was cut by a piece of glass from the teleprompter and that he wasn't actually grazed by a bullet. I think that that's possible. I think that that is possible. Do I believe that the entire thing was staged? I don't. Do I believe that the White House correspondents dinner shooting was staged? I don't. I've extensively gone into the reasons why I don't believe that. I'm not going to do it again today. But it is not my belief, nor do I think there is any evidence that the blood on Donald Trump's ear at the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting attempt was a movie prop, blood capsule sort of thing, because I have no evidence of that whatsoever. Sam Webb writing on Facebook, that question was about Iran and ended in reflecting pool, am I right? You are absolutely right. Sam is referring to the non sequiturs of Donald Trump. Donald Trump was recently asked about Iran and he did what he calls the weave. Some of us call it dementia, some of us call it. There's a lot of things we could call it. Some of them wouldn't be appropriate for the show. It started with Iran and Trump ended up talking about his reflecting pool, not his, the reflecting pool. His reflecting pool project, which is to repaint the bottom of the reflecting pool at a cost of $13 million. He cannot keep it straight. He cannot avoid straying from various and random topics. And it is a really scary trait for a president to have. Aaron Nelson says it is so obvious they're setting up the conditions to create major health crises. They'll weaken all protective systems until we eventually collapse. I've heard these hypotheses before. Let me explain what Aaron's talking about. Aaron is arguing that the reason the Trump administration and maybe even global elites aren't doing enough about Hantavirus or Ebola or even some of the tick borne viruses that are spreading in the Northeast and elsewhere. The reason that they're not, they aren't doing anything about it is they want it to happen to wipe out a whole bunch of the population and weaken systems and precipitate a collapse. The reason I don't think that this makes any sense and it doesn't pass the sniff test. And this was also said during COVID The global elites want Covid to take out most of the population so that then what all of these elites depend on the average person having enough money to pay for products and services that they sell to enrich themselves. If you. It's sort of like drug dealers don't want to do too much killing of their customers because then you have nobody to sell drugs to. Same sort of concept. I don't think that there's, I've never understood, I'll put it that way, the claims that the elites want a ton of people to die, to decimate the population, because putting aside whether we think morally they would do it, I simply don't think it makes sense for them economically and financially. If I'm missing something about that, please let me know and make sure that you are ready for Tuesday's one day membership drive. We will be discounting annual memberships massively on Tuesday. The point is to keep building this pro democracy movement. I want you to be a part of it. We are running an increasingly important operation here. We have a larger staff than we have ever had. We have expenses. We want to be here. And so we're doing a one day membership drive on Tuesday. Get on my newsletter@davidpakman.com substack and then you will be notified Tuesday of the big deal that we are doing.
Episode Title: The White House just put me on a list
Host: David Pakman
Date: June 5, 2026
In this charged and personal episode, David Pakman discusses his recent inclusion on the Trump White House’s “Media Offenders” list—an official enemies list posted on WhiteHouse.gov. Pakman uses this news as a launching point for a broader examination of authoritarian tactics, direct government targeting of independent media, and the implications for free speech. The episode also explores the evolving political landscape: effective messaging against Trump and MAGA in the 2026 midterms (spotlighting insights from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), debunks right-wing misinformation on renewable energy, scrutinizes Donald Trump’s visible health issues, and delivers a rallying call for civic action and democracy.
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This episode of The David Pakman Show is a powerful, personal, and informative breakdown of the escalating threats to press freedom under the Trump administration, the importance of clear populist messaging aimed at economic self-interest, the dangers of misinformation, and the urgent need for civic engagement. With a blend of pointed historical context, contemporary analysis, and pointed humor, Pakman mobilizes his audience to stand up to increasingly blatant authoritarian trends and make their voices heard at the ballot box. The episode closes with a reminder: “I've seen enough, folks. They put me on a list. Now I’m on a list of media offenders. I think we've all seen enough.” (44:45)
For full context and nuance, see the referenced timestamps for detailed discussions, direct quotes, and pivotal moments from this episode.