C (10:20)

But remember, when gas prices go up, that's disposable income coming out of people's pockets. So they're going to spend less on other things. So there will be a hit to gdp.

A (10:30)

So that is exactly right. That is absolutely basic macroeconomics. GDP will go down because of higher gas prices, because people will have less money to spend on everyday goods. You know, sometimes I get, these are kind of weird emails because a lot of people just, they make everything about me when they watch the show. But I've explained to people that not only I've said before, Trump's economic policy, his two tax bills in 2017 and then in the second term, they've been good for me as an individual if I think only of myself, like a man on an island with no one else, because they've carved out tax deductions for people who own exactly the type of business that I own. But I've explained, not only do I think it's not the morally right thing to do, even if I only think of myself self centeredly, egocentrically, the way Trump does, I should still want broad based tax benefits for the average person. Why? Well, I depend on advertising and memberships, people who go, hey, I Like David's show. I may not like his hair. I may not like his facial hair. I may not like his armpit hair. Okay, now we're going a little crazy. I, I want to support David's show. I'm going to pay six bucks a month. Why would I want a policy that doesn't fill people's pockets with a little more money with which they could subscribe to me? Like if you want to say, David, I don't really believe you care about the average person. I think you only care about yourself. Well then I should still want different tax policy than what these Republicans put forward. And case in point, the higher gas prices that take out disposable income from people's pockets. So now they go. Now I can't afford to support the average independent media show that I like. That is the same economic analysis that Jerome Powell is making here. Macroeconomically. He also addresses inflation which by the way is going up.

C (12:33)

Inflation has moved up recently and is elevated relative to our 2% longer run goal. Estimates based on the Consumer Price Index and other data indicate that total PCE prices rose 3.5% over the 12 months ending in March, boosted by the significant rise in global oil prices that has resulted from the conflict in the Middle East. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core PCE prices rose 3.2% over the 12 months ending in March. This relatively high rate largely reflects the effects of tariffs on prices prices in the goods sector.

A (13:09)

You hear that tariffs have led to higher inflation. The desired inflation rate of between 2 and 3% has now been eclipsed as he is talking about 3.5% total price inflation and rising. Finally from Jerome Powell a warning. Energy prices haven't peaked. And if you look at a gas price chart you can see that it is going vertical. It is going to take a while for that to peak and to come back down. And Jerome Powell telling us exactly that.

C (13:43)

For a long time we've been working on, on the hypothesis really that tariff tariffs would, would lead to a one time price increase and that that would go away over time. In other words, there would be no further change. So measured inflation wouldn't reflect that higher level going up more and more. And it's time for that to happen. You know, we really do expect that to be happening in the next two quarters. So we'll be watching very carefully to see that what we've thought all along would happen. That's kind of critical part of the forecast. We need to really see that with, with energy. It's, it's so hard to say. I mentioned, you know, in, you know, sort of the textbook, you, you would look through it an oil shock because they tend to be short lived and they tend to revert and monetary policy works with long and variable lags. So, you know, you wouldn't necessarily react right away. I think that is all the more true given that we're several years above 2% inflation and that we're already looking through the tariff shock. So I think we're going to be very cautious about that.

D (14:44)

It's.

C (14:45)

But the question about, about looking through energy really is not, not in front of us right now. It hasn't even peaked yet. And I think we'd want to see the backside side of that and progress on tariffs before we even thought about, about reducing rates.

A (14:58)

Listen to what he is saying. He is telling us, number one, we are expecting just from the current tariff shock, we're expecting two more quarters of potentially rising inflation. And then he drills down specifically on energy and he goes, we, we're not even at the peak on energy like. But before we even think, think about that starting to come down and before we even think about cutting the federal funds rate, which is another aspect to this. We are not even close to the peak on energy prices yet. Remember the promises, gas and electricity and everything will be down 50% right away when I become president, said Trump. And of course it hasn't happened.

D (15:38)

But I think Eric, they're not like they lived up. I used to.

A (15:42)

Exactly. Totally glitched. Completely glitched in every way. This is a much more trustworthy voice on the state of the American economy than is Donald Trump, that's for sure. Trump is saying it's all great. And Jerome Powell is saying hold on a second, things are not looking so good. A lot of clothing brands today talk about sustainability, but our Fair harbor sponsor actually builds it into how their products are made. Fair harbor was founded with a specific goal. Reduce plastic waste by turning recycled plastic bottles into durable comfortable fabrics. Instead of treating sustainability as an add on, make it the core of the company and make it the core of how Fair harbor clothing is designed to be worn and reused over time. I've been wearing some Fair harbor pieces and what stands out is the environmental factor doesn't come at the expense of comfort or practicality. The clothes feel soft, broken in, easy to wear day in and day out. The they're not stiff, they're not over engineered, they're designed to actually be used, which really matters if sustainability is going to mean anything at all. So if you're looking for swimwear, shirts, hoodies or other casual clothing that works for everyday wear and Travel, head to FairHarbor clothing.com/David and use code David for 20% off your full price. Order now through May 15th. The link is in the description. Everything you do on your phone paints a picture of your life going back years. Cell phone carriers track, sell and sometimes leak that data. But our sponsor Cape offers an alternative. CAPE is America's privacy centered mobile carrier. You get unlimited call, text and 5G coverage just like with other carriers. But unlike other carriers, CAPE keeps your data private. CAPE only collects the bare minimum about subscribers, destroys call metadata after one day, and then they take it even further. Unlike any other mobile carrier, CAPE rotates your network ID every day to help keep you anonymous. That really matters for anyone who cares about minimizing exposure to out of control surveillance. You also get secondary phone numbers, SIM swap protection and network lock, encrypted texting, encrypted voicemail and secure global roaming. And unlike random prepaid carriers that don't own their infrastructure, CAPE does. CAPE owns its own mobile core and issues its own SIM cards. This ensures your data stays private. No other privacy focused carrier in the United States can say that. Go to cape.co pacman and use code PACMAN to get 33% off CAPE for 6 months. The info is in the description. We are increasingly being pointed in the direction of the White House Correspondent's Dinner. Shooter was not a shooter in the sense that he may not actually have fired his weapon. Which raises a whole host of other questions that legal problems, political problems and rhetorical problems. Let's back up and I want to kind of build this up from the ground up. Something isn't adding up. And we start with Attorney General Todd Blanche's statement yesterday. Now you might be remembering that the day before he had made some comments about we're looking into who fired their weapons and the arrested alleged shooter fired at least one round. But now Todd Blanch is backing off of that language even more and he's going with a much softer statement which is simply it wouldn't surprise me if the shooter fired his gun. Really? Well, we're calling him the shooter for a reason. Right. But this is extremely careful language that continues to back off in terms of confidence that the shooter fired anything. Take a look at this.

E (19:54)

So I understand that there is shocker leaks around that but but I'm not going to get ahead of the work of the law enforcement. It would not surprise me if it turns out that the, the that our Secret Service agent was shot by the individual who's, you know, who's currently been charged with that crime. But that is something that, that is, would be wide, wildly inappropriate for me to comment on beyond, beyond saying just that just because there's, when we know something, I'm sure that we will, we will let the folks know. But I just want to get that right instead of speculate.

A (20:27)

Now, of course we want him to get it right. The thing is now that the story is sort of crumbling, he is hesitating and saying we need time. Initially we were talking about, oh, the shooter got off five to six wild shots in the lobby before being stopped. Now, this doesn't mean the shooter didn't want to kill Trump. This doesn't mean the shooter wasn't armed. But it is a dramatically different story from what we were told and it points, as we are increasingly covering it points to Secret Service and law enforcement incompetence. Now, I want to remind you, we started to suspect that maybe the shooter hadn't really done any shooting after Todd Blanche had said the following on the previous day. Have you been able to determine whether the gunman fired shots, if so, how many shots he fired and who exactly whose bullet hit the agent?

E (21:22)

We're still, we want to get that right. So we're still looking at that. It appears, and I don't want to to overstate because we are still looking at this, that there were five, five shots that law enforcement fired. We are, we have all the evidence is being examined very carefully and expeditiously and we'll know more soon. We do believe that as the complaint lays out, that the suspect that the defendant fired out of his shotgun and we know that that happened. But as far as getting into exacting

A (21:51)

ballistics, we're still looking at whether the gunman fired out of the shotgun, but we believe that he did that was a day earlier. And then we also had this statement from Todd Blanche with again, which again just makes us say he, he doesn't really sound confident in the claim that the shooter shot five to six times.

E (22:09)

I don't have anything further to talk about with the ballistics that are still being analyzed. And I said it yesterday and every law enforcement member who is speaking on this issue is saying the same thing as they should, which is that this is an ongoing investigation with really, really smart experts trying to understand what everybody's super smart. We just don't really happened in that shooting. And where the bullets went, went and ended up and where the bullets came from. And once that is at a place where we can definitively say, to the extent we can definitively say.

A (22:41)

I love that. Once it's in. Once we can definitively say, if we get to a point where we can definitively say. So let's put it all together now. We have an incident serious enough to involve a Secret Service agent being shot. We have someone already charged with the crime, and yet officials are not only not confirming whether that person actually fired the shot that hit the agent, they're increasingly backing off of that claim. Now, the most important part of this is for people who are going well, but. So, David, what, what, what do you believe happened? I'm not saying this guy wasn't there to assassinate Donald Trump. He pretty clearly was. He showed up days early to the hotel, came with guns, and was ready to do. Appears he didn't even get into the same room as Trump, didn't even get onto the same floor as Trump, and maybe didn't fire any shots, at least potentially. This is how confusion spreads, and this is how you end up with people saying, oh, I think the entire thing was staged. It might have just been incompetence and misreporting of what took place. And now it opens the door to millions of people who go, I think the entire thing was staged because without clear information, people fill in the blanks themselves and speculation takes over. And before you even have facts, you've got narratives that are fully formed. And we've seen this before when we get early reporting in chaotic situations, that's often wrong or incomplete, you end up with conspiracy theories and confusion and all of it. And it foments the idea that it was staged. Now, if the shooter didn't shoot anybody, he still was there with the intent to kill Trump. He was still there with guns. He still attempted to, and I guess to some degree breached that outermost layer of security in the lobby of the Washington Head Hilton briefly before being taken down. But it kind of makes a lot more sense if he didn't shoot his gun, which I hope we eventually confirm one way or the other, because as I said earlier, given how Secret Service and law enforcement tend to handle these situations, it would have been completely defensible under the law for the shooter to have been killed. And I struggle to imagine that if someone surrounded by law enforcement, the shooter was just firing indiscriminately in the lobby, that he would have been killed. The fact that he wasn't killed was weird to me. And then when you consider that he wasn't even on the same floor as Trump. Why would he start randomly firing in the lobby if he was nowhere near Trump? I mean, maybe because he thought he could shoot his way to Trump, but it also kind of didn't make sense. And now where we find ourselves is, did the shooter even discharge the firearm? Or did we again see another one of these instances of Secret Service incompetence? Like Todd Blanche says, hopefully, eventually we will know the answer to that question. Donald Trump suffered a terrifying break with reality while holding an Oval Office event with the astronauts from Artemis 2. Now, what I am going to play for you here is not a modified. It is not a skit from Saturday Night Live. This is real video of Trump saying to the astronauts from Artemis 2 that physically, Trump is very, very good and is fit to be an astronaut. How is this real life? The astronauts look a little skeptical. I think I would say people have unbelievable courage.

D (26:17)

Unbelievable. A lot of other things, too, by the way. To get in there, you have to be very smart, have to do a lot of things physically good. So I would have had no trouble making it physically. Very, very good. Maybe.

A (26:30)

There you go. Trump physically would be able to be an astronaut. Trump can't even jog 30 seconds. Trump is obese. I don't even know that just on the basis of his. A weight to height ratio alone, he would be. Forget about his age. Like, put that aside for a second. But Trump has worked very hard with doctors willing to indulge him, to propagandize to the American people that he is healthier and fitter than Barack Obama was when he became President of the United States. A complete and total break from reality. And speaking of a break from reality, Donald Trump mixed up, I think, Ukraine and Iran, while talking, he started to say that Ukraine's ships are underwater and their planes have been shot down. I think he's talking about Iran here, right? I mean, Trump doesn't have any idea what he's talking about.

D (27:24)

But we talk more about Ukraine.

A (27:26)

But which war do you think ends first?

D (27:30)

That's an interesting question. You know, coming from you, that's very interesting. Which war would end first? I don't know. Maybe they're on a similar timetable. I think Ukraine, militarily, they're defeated. Okay, you wouldn't know that by reading the fake news, but militarily, look, their Navy. So they had 159 ships. Every ship.

A (27:49)

Ukraine's 159 navy ships.

D (27:52)

What is right now underwater, typically, that's pretty good. What do you think, Jared?

A (27:56)

I mean, there you go. So Trump, I guess, confusing Iran and Ukraine. And just disorientation and confusion and a lack of connection to reality is really the theme here, which we'll talk to Frank, Dr. Frank George about a little bit later. At another really wacky moment, the Artemis 2 crew looks absolutely horrified as Trump is attacking Naito and he tries to suck them into it. Sort of like he tried to suck in Doordash grandma into talking about trans sports. And the astronauts look like they are dissociating just so that they can not have to deal with this.

D (28:31)

That's not good. What do you think of that, Jared? Sending help after we win the war? I don't know. Some of that. I don't want to get you guys involved, but I can imagine what you think, Mr. President.

C (28:43)

The United Arab Emirates, the UAE and

A (28:45)

the astronauts actually do something I do in uncomfortable situations where I don't want to be involved. When, when the, when I found myself in these situations, awkwardness or, you know, I'm out to eat and someone I'm with is being insanely rude to the waitstaff. I stand or sit perfectly still. I don't move a muscle with the idea, the hope, the desire that I might be able to blend into the background. Sort of like a camouflage, as some like to pronounce it and just not be seen very still. And the astronauts. Clear, clear. Clearly trying to camouflage themselves into the background of the Oval Office so that they don't have to deal with Trump attacking Naito. Trump on Iran has declared his own blockade. Genius. And says now they're in the position of having to cry uncle if they want it to end. I don't think Iran agrees with this

D (29:41)

perspective by other countries for years. And those days are over.

C (29:45)

Yeah.

E (29:45)

Mr. President wrote in Iran, how long

A (29:47)

are you preparing to maintain the blockade?

E (29:50)

Could that go several more months?

D (29:52)

Well, the blockade is genius. Okay. The blockade has been 100% foolproof. It shows how good our Navy is. I can tell you that. Nobody's going to play games. We have the greatest military in the world and I built much of it during my first term and we've been building it since. And the greatest anywhere in the world, Nobody even close. And. And you see that every. Whether it's Venezuela, which, and they have a good military in Venezuela, but it was in one day. It was actually over in about 48 minutes. Iran, the same thing. I mean, militarily, we've wiped them out. They have no military left. It's all. The Navy's at the bottom of the sea. The Air Force is never going to fly again. We've, we've got an amazing military now. We. Now they have to cry uncle. That's all they have to do. Just say we give up, we give up. But their economy is really in trouble.

A (30:48)

It's not seeming to me as we are now into week nine and close to week 10 of Trump's three to four week war, it doesn't seem to me that Iran is going to cry uncle. Now let's get to the most alpha moment of the entire thing. Trump is a big, strong guy, big, strong alpha male, healthy as a horse, fit enough to be an astronaut. But the seashells on a North Carolina beach arranged to say 8647 by James Comey. Those could have killed Trump. Talking about how busy you were this morning. James Comey was in court. He self surrendered. He's now been charged a second time, this time over a social media post with seashells that said 86 47. Do you really think that he was endangering your life or threatening your life with that?

D (31:36)

Well, if anybody knows anything about crime, they know. 86. You know what? 80, it's a mob term for kill him. You know, you ever see the movies 86 the mobster says to one of his wonderful associates, 86 that means kill him. It's. I think of it as a mob term. I don't know. People think of it as something which,

A (31:59)

I don't know why Trump has a problem with things the mob does, because you'll remember that Trump famously had said previously, only the mob pleads the fifth, but then Donald Trump pleaded the fifth hundreds of times. So I guess Trump, maybe that's a compliment that the mob does having to do with disappearing.

D (32:14)

But the mob uses that term to say when they want to kill somebody, they say 86 the son of a gun. I'm trying to keep the language nice and clear. They don't use that term, son of a gun, they use another term. But that's a mob term for killing.

A (32:30)

Yeah, but you really think your life is in danger?

D (32:33)

Probably. I don't know, you know, based on, based on what I'm seeing out there. Yeah, The.

A (32:38)

It seems very obvious to me that Trump doesn't believe this for a second. He has to say, yes, the seashells endangered my life because otherwise the entire prosecution of Comey looks really stupid. Now, I think it is important to mention that they said they spent nine, 10 months investigating the picture of the seashells before ultimately deciding that Comey would be charged. There are other influencers, including a guy named chat Jack Pacific, conspiracy theorist who had previously posted 8,646 meaning get rid of Joe Biden. And when asked will you be going after Jack Pacaviak? They said, well, you've got to look at the circumstances and all of these other things. It's not so clear. Exactly. So you're not. So it's all political. But for the magas, your big strong orange president was threatened by seashells. Let that sink in for a moment. You use your email for everything. Banking, work, purchases, medical information that makes your email provider one of the most important places to think about privacy. Most big tech email services scan your messages, build profiles about you, use the data to show you ads. Our sponsor Start Mail takes a different approach. Start Mail looks and works just like the big name email services you're used to. But Start Mail never scans your mail, never tracks anything about you, never sells your data. Start Mail also includes powerful privacy features you don't get from big tech email providers. For instance, you can create unlimited email aliases so you don't have to give out your real address to anybody, which will reduce spam and phishing risks. You can also send PGP encrypted emails even if the recipient isn't using encryption. And if you switch to Start Mail, it is really easy to migrate your existing emails and contacts in just a few clicks. Go to start mail.com/pacman to get 50% off your first year. The link is in the description. If you use one of the mainstream AI chatbots, they monitor everything you put in the app. Stuff about your personal life, your work projects, medical questions. All of that info stays in the system for forever. To train the AI, they build a profile about you based on what you input. If you care about privacy and bypassing censorship, I recommend using Venice instead. Our sponsor, Venice lets you use all the biggest and best AI models. They do not store your prompts. Your prompts are encrypted and stored only locally in your app or browser. Not used for training data. Venice also offers completely uncensored chat bots and image generation. You can ask it anything and it will answer it is finally AI you can completely control. None of the conversations are tied to your identity and you use Venice exactly like the mainstream chat bot app that you're already used to. The interface will feel really familiar. You'll also get 20% off a pro plan at Venice AI/Pacman with the code PACMAN. The link is in the description we welcome back to the program today Dr. Frank George, a psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist cited 4,000 times in the scientific and medical literature. He ranks in the top 1% of all Google Google scholars worldwide and has been studying Donald Trump for the past 10 years. It's quite. Trump is quite a complicated text, as we might say, isn't he?

B (36:26)

Yeah, I think it takes 10 years to figure him out. Some of it's very simple, but some of it gets pretty complex as well.

A (36:33)

Well, one of the things that I think is a good example of simple but also complex is there are a lot of observers of the President's who say and have been saying he's declining, he's getting worse. It's, it's noticeable and, and yet here we are, where he's still able to sort of keep it together enough to give speeches and be with the King. It's embarrassing, it's erratic, but he's still able to do it. Can you put a little bit of texture or kind of characterize the decline that you're seeing, especially over the last year?

B (37:07)

Sure. In fact, one thing to notice about decline and how it relates to any disorders is the, the meeting with the King. If you noticed one of the things in the news was how he stepped in front of the royalty to be shaking hands. And you know, that's not just him having bad manners. You know, I, I and a number of others, you know, clinicians and etc. Would see that as he is exerting his dominance. It's part of the grandiosity, it's part of the disorder, the most malignant narcissism. He has to be above everybody in every situation. And so that, that's really just one more expression. It's not just being rude, it's being pathological. And it's, it's gotten worse in the sense that it's just become more and more frequent. I think that's a lot of the progression is the increase in incidence. Yeah, I think like 10 years ago, even five years ago, he would not have done something like that. Now it's almost expected. And he did that before where he was standing on a stage, I think. Was that with the G20 leaders in one of those big meetings and he pushed someone aside.

A (38:24)

So yeah, he pushes people out of the way and kind of says, I'm going to be in front here. Yeah, yeah.

B (38:29)

I have to dominate. I have to be the best at everything. It's when he, like with COVID even when he devalued all the scientists in that one big press conference and said basically he has to be the best out of all the medical people, so why not use bleach? You know, he can't just say, oh, there are other experts. He has to be the best at everything.

A (38:52)

Can you help us make sense though of mean what, what you're describing in a sense sound like self centered, ego, maniacal personality traits. And I believe that you characterize it as malignant narcissism. Is malignant narcissism a what we might call a condition in the sense that dementia or bipolar disorder are, or is it a description of one's personality or maybe is it both?

B (39:20)

That's, that's a great question and it's something that is really important for people to understand. I'm glad you brought it up. Yes, dementia, bipolar, depression, those are instances that can be overcome. Well, the dementia progresses also, but it's still a disorder that happens at some point. Depression is something that happens to you. Malignant narcissism is something that is a core of the person's personality. It begins before birth. It has some genetic components develop neurodevelopmental components ones childhood, adolescence. It just becomes more and more enabled depending on their environment. Donald Trump had the absolute best, or in this case worst environment for enabling it worse in terms of letting it be enabled. And it is part of the person's core. So it's not the sort of thing where, oh, you're a malignant narcissist. Well, we'll just treat you and you'll get better. No, it's not like it's part of their core.

A (40:27)

One of the things I'm interested in is that I think some in the audience see a sort of causality that goes in the following way. Donald Trump's decline is the cause of the erratic decisions, for example, with regard to Iran or his behavior in a particular public setting. If I understand some of the things you've written and said correctly, you seem to have a different take on the causality where some of these situations maybe are what is causing Trump to decline. If I misunderstood that, then I'm glad for you to correct it. But for example, I think you've said that the Iran circumstances in some way have accelerated Trump's decline rather than being evidence of the decline. Do I have that right?

B (41:16)

You do. It's. But let me go one step further at that. It's a bit of a circle, it's a bit of a loop in that the disorder is there. The what people refer to as. It's his strategy. He's playing five dimensional chess. He's not. His only strategy is Self preservation.

A (41:35)

Right.

B (41:36)

And so that causes a lot of the chaotic behavior. You know, what we see as the blockade. No blockade, you know, get rid of the nukes, regime change, you know, all of that kind of chaos.

D (41:48)

Yeah.

B (41:49)

But the fact that it's not working, then that becomes a cause of further collapse or further chaos. So it feeds on itself. And unfortunately for him and for us, the bad, dare I say strategies, or at least decisions, you know, have ended up making the entire situation both geopolitical and personality disorder, you know, both of them worse. The idea being that, you know, people can say, well, he started the whole Iran thing. Part of what was going on was you need a distraction. Anything to distract from the Epstein files. Right. Being in the news every day. Oh, nothing like a good war. And he has wanted to do that for years, even back in his first term. That was one of our great fears, is that he would just go out and invade Iran or nuke Iran or whatever it might be. And so now having the opportunity to do that, it can serve as a distraction. But the distraction, because of the poor outcomes ends up being another injury, and it ends up piling on to the Epstein files. It ends up not being a distraction. It ends up being another issue. So. So, yes, so you're correct in one thing causes the other and then the other causes that thing over and over.

A (43:17)

Last time we spoke, you were of the opinion that it is frontotemporal dementia, not Alzheimer's, that the President is suffering from at a 30,000 foot sort of macro level. Are malignant narcissism and frontotemporal dementia more commonly coexisting than they do, than they exist individually? In other words, is there something that makes both occur more frequently in people?

B (43:47)

Oh, no, they. They're independent on one another. I really don't think one is at all predictive of. Of the other.

A (43:56)

Okay.

B (43:57)

You know, they're both a pretty low probability. The probability of them coexisting is sort of astronomically small. It's a. It's a bad lottery win, basically.

A (44:09)

That's interesting. So it's not that Trump's personality all along would have given any kind of suggestion that this is what we might expect as he gets into his later years, that statistically, at least, that's not the case?

B (44:25)

That's correct. You know, the incidence of frontotemporal dementia is relatively low in the population. The incidence of malignant narcissism is relatively low in the population. To have one occur along with the other independently, you can sort of multiply Them and get a. A number that's astronomically small.

A (44:47)

Very small. Yeah, I am.

B (44:48)

And then to have that occur in a world leader.

A (44:51)

Right.

B (44:52)

It makes it infinitesimal. Perhaps the first time in history, as Trump would say, I'm the best in history sort of thing.

A (45:01)

There was this moment a couple of weeks ago where the President posted an image of himself as Jesus. Healing a patient or healing a sick person, I think is better said. Trump then said, that was a patient, and I was portrayed as a doctor. And of course, I sort of thought about that and applied a little bit of common sense to it. And I know of doctors who wear scrubs. My pediatrician growing up was known for wearing a bow tie with his white coat. I've seen the, you know, fleece vest that has the doctor's name on it. I haven't seen the flowing white robes with the red. I forget the name of it. Someone told me what it is. But my question to you about that is, is your interpretation that that is something Trump made up because he realized it would be socially inappropriate to say, yes, I was portrayed as Jesus, or do you think Trump really believed that that was a portrayal of a physician rather than of Jesus?

B (46:04)

I don't believe that for one moment.

A (46:06)

You don't know.

B (46:08)

It's. It's just truly a messianic, Messianic image, you know, imagery.

A (46:15)

Yeah.

B (46:16)

And it's not the first time he's done it. Remember the. The picture of him as the Pope? It was one instance.

C (46:24)

Yes.

B (46:24)

And lately the, you know, the Pope is making some negative remarks, not all directed at Trump, but, of course, you know, Trump interprets anything negative as an affront. It's part of the disorder. And so, again, he needs to dominate, except in this case, he needs to be the best religious figure. He sort of needs to be the new Messiah. And so, you know, there's the image. And as I understand it, that was originally. It was an AI that some. That he saw and decided to. To promote. But the fact that he would do that, I mean, he has supporters that worship him, you know, so that's not surprising that someone would come up with that. But the fact that he, you know, the President of the United States would latch onto that and promote it, you know, is just part of this messianic, you know, grandiosity, part of the malignant narcissism.

A (47:19)

You know, one of the things that I. I've been hearing from my audience is that after years of hearing about Donald Trump's decline and predictions that we're only a few Months from when, he simply won't be able to function anymore. More, as I pointed out at the beginning of our conversation, he sort of figures out a way to keep functioning, at least at a superficial level, enough that he can get, like I said, through events, etc. What do you make of the predictions that at least the timeline has been wrong in terms of within six months he'll barely be able to speak this sort of thing. What's your interpretation of that and the trajectory of what we're seeing?

B (47:59)

I think to some extent that's, dare I say, a bit of click baiting or sort of thing going on.

A (48:07)

Specifically when people have said, hey, three months, this guy won't be able to walk around anymore.

B (48:12)

Yeah, things like that.

D (48:13)

Yeah.

A (48:14)

Okay.

B (48:14)

You just don't know. And in part the disorder, which is why his overall decline has become more and more obvious. You have the dementia type disorder, the progression varies. It is an irreversible progression, but the time frame varies, how it's expressed varies. There are a lot of variables there. Plus, keep in mind, he has the absolute best health care in the world and he's not just sitting on a couch decaying. So his prognosis is declined. But, you know, it may be a year, two years, six months. You know, I just don't think we really know. So, yeah, I think that's really hard to say. But overall, it's a decline is progressing and there's no going back from that.

A (49:04)

An incident like the threat to wipe out Iranian civilization, or on a smaller level, referring to a reporter by saying, quiet, piggy, that's been interpreted by some as a loss of impulse control or a disinhibition, which then you open the door to speculation, because loss of impulse control and disinhibition can be associated with a number of different conditions or circumstances. Do you see those actions as a disinhibited loss of control, or do you see it as something different?

B (49:37)

I see it absolutely as disinhibition, loss of impulse control. Those types of actions would not be unusual in a malignant narcissist anyway. And if they're being exacerbated by symptoms of frontotemporal dementia, those actions, the. The disinhibition causes them to occur more frequently, more severely. You know, it turns out that, you know, when people talked about Alzheimer's, it's like, oh, for God's sakes, I wish it was Alzheimer's. Because that, you know, diminishes a person. You know, they just slowly disappear, which is tragic. With ftd, it augments the underlying. And in his case, the underlying is very serious. So we see that increase in disinhibitory behaviors, dysregulation, loss of impulse control, and the parts of the brain that are involved in the degeneration that we see with frontotemporal dementia are some of the areas that are to say, already disinhibited by malignant narcissism pathways. So really you're just seeing an exacerbation of that whole effect at both the behavioral and the neurobiological level.

A (50:56)

If we put aside the disinhibition and separate frontotemporal dementia from the malignant narcissism, what other symptoms of frontotemporal dementia does the President exhibit?

B (51:11)

You could almost go through any of his speeches and point out, almost line by line, even some that don't appear obvious, like, oh, he didn't confuse Nancy Pelosi with Nikki Haley for the eighth time in a row. You know, types of confabulations, but just his misuse of words, the types of words, his perseverating on a topic, you know, for years, you know, I mean, the biggest example is the rigged election type of thing. But you know, Obama. Yeah, I mean, there are some things that he just will not get over. And that's an example of this perseparation. But also the confabulations, the reciting stories that just are not true and are only, not only not true, but they're impossible. Like the Air Force in The War of 1812 is like one of the classic examples. And yet that is such a, I think, a clear symptom. So it's those sorts of things. It's not just the dysregulation. There are a number of other things like that as well.

A (52:20)

One sort of interesting point I've seen is that we really can't consider anything he says in a speech as, as symptomatic in the sense that these are prepared speeches someone else wrote for him. But, but I think that what's difficult about that is he goes off script often and very frequently. The sort of most notably alarming moments are the ones where he isn't reading the script. But I think to some extent there is something to that. If he seem, if he's reading something wacky that someone wrote for him, I don't know that we can say that that's evidence of anything. But looking at the off script moments seems maybe particularly instructive.

B (52:58)

Absolutely. And even some of his tweets, his posts on truth, social I suppose are some of them really do seem scripted and posted by other people. Yes, but, you know, we see some of these, like the f bomb post, etc. That are clearly him. And I think those are the clearest moments of his current decline, if you will. So you're right. In some of the prepared speeches, he can still read sometimes, especially with the Bible passages, he had a bit of difficulty doing the reading. But in general, prepared remarks, yes, he can still read. But yeah, when he goes off on his own, I think it becomes pretty, pretty clear pretty quickly.

A (53:51)

Do you have a prediction as to what we will see over the next six months?

B (53:55)

Oh, boy. I get asked that a lot.

A (53:59)

And if the answer is no, it's too hard to predict that, that's fine.

B (54:05)

I can put it at two levels. One, I'm not a fortune teller, you know, so I will not predict what he will do. What I can say is that it will be narrower in terms of his options. It will be an escalation. Whether that escalation is verbal action, those sorts of things, we just can't say from day to day because there's no clear strategy for him to escalate. There are topics for him to escalate, and those topics are narrowing as he collapses more and as he escalates more. So I think we're just going to see more and bigger, if you will.

A (54:49)

We've been speaking with Dr. Frank George, psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist. I really appreciate your time. Thank you.

B (54:58)

You bet, David. Thank you.

A (55:00)

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C (58:09)

Mr. Hearst, do you have signal on your phone?

A (58:14)

I'm sorry, why is this relevant?

C (58:16)

Do you have signal on your phone?

A (58:18)

What does this have to do with the budget?

C (58:19)

I'm gonna take that as a yes. Mr. Kane, sorry. General Kane, do you have signal on your phone?

A (58:27)

I do, sir, yes.

C (58:28)

Okay, so I want to talk about signal Last year, the Secretary and other administration officials discussed sensitive and almost certainly classified information about a strike in Yemen using the unclassified Signal app. Mr. Hearst, what's the current policy for Signal on official DoD devices?

D (58:44)

I'm the comptroller.

C (58:46)

I don't do CIO work, so therefore it is allowed. Is that your statement that it is now allowed to have Signal on your device?

A (58:55)

Mr. White said, My statement is I run the budget for dod.

C (58:58)

Yeah, okay, well, he's got it on his phone, so therefore it must be permitted.

A (59:02)

Toronto.

B (59:02)

I gotta go back and look if

E (59:03)

it's on my official phone.

A (59:04)

I was talking about my personal phone. I'm not exactly sure.

E (59:07)

I'll go back and look, though.

A (59:09)

Okay, so that's Hearst, not McCord, got mixed up with different parts of this hearing. So let me give you the context here. Signal, like I said, is an encrypted messaging app. Widely used. Journalists use it. I communicate with a lot of people using Signal, and government officials also will sometimes use it. That's not really the issue. The issue is the transparency and the record keeping, two areas that this administration said they would be better than anybody on. They would be pristine on transparency and record keeping keeping, and they are a disaster. And what we know is going on is that government officials in this administration are doing official business on encrypted apps with messages that disappear. And so a bunch of different questions surface as a result of this law requires that those conversations be preserved. Are they being preserved because Signal, by definition, doesn't do that? Is oversight being bypassed by virtue of using this app? Are decisions being made completely off the books, which makes them not subject to oversight or review or evaluation by the nature of using those apps with their disappearing messages? And none of that stuff requires any speculation. That's why this was asked in the first place. We've already had Signal Gate, and during that exchange, you see the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hexseth, sitting in the middle, just kind of looking down because he knows what this is about. And when a Pentagon official won't or can't give a straight answer about is an app on your phone that tells you they know that what they're doing is wrong. If it was a harmless answer, or if they thought maybe it was harmless, they would go, yeah, I have it, or, no, I don't have the app. That's it. The hesitation, the deflection, the uncomfortable moment that takes place There tells us 90%. The words tell us 10%. The hesitation tells us 90%. The broader pattern here is that we have Seen across agencies, officials relying on private or encrypted channels, while their accountability is diminished or is almost nonexistent. It is not only Republican administrations that have had an issue with this, but the Trump administration, and specifically the second Trump term has already had a major scandal involving this. The whole idea is we as taxpayers are funding this entire thing. Now, we understand that certain things are classified. That makes sense. We do not every individual taxpayer has a right to know any damn thing that we want to know at any particular time. But the whole point is, at least decisions are supposed to leave a paper trail. That way, if there is a problem in an appropriate setting and it might involve members of the House or Senate, it doesn't mean it's all made public. You have to have decisions that are reviewable. You have to have decisions that are auditable. That oversight can even be done. If this stuff disappears, you don't really have a functioning system for oversight and review. And so when I see this a basic question going, oh, I'm not sure why that's relevant. It is a far bigger issue than one app and we were told would be no greater transparent administration than this one. But now on the nuts and bolts of it, we are left to wonder what is being said? Where is it being said? Who's keeping track track of it? Who is making a bunch of these decisions? Also, who is party to these conversations, including people that maybe shouldn't be. There was one Signal thread that Pete Hegseth's wife was on for reasons that we still don't understand, based on that clip, they know that what they're doing is screwed up. They are not eager to answer questions and we are not seeing the most transparency and accountability of any administration. This is a reminder of why we need Democrats to take the House in November. Now, Democrats taking the House in November and getting Republicans out of power is not going to bring back Signal chats that disappeared. But it will put Democrats in a position that where they will want to, from what they've told us and I believe will do all of the oversight that they can. And if a bunch of this stuff has been destroyed or programmatically deleted by virtue of using apps like Signal, that will disappear the chats, then we need Democrats to expose that at minimum, because we were promised transparency and we are going to do everything we can to try to get it. There is a stunning new poll getting attention and the headline is very simple. Almost half of Democrats believe that the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting of Donald Trump was staged. 47% of Democrats, according to A Manhattan Institute survey believe that that entire event was fake in the sense that it was staged. Now there's this question of did the guy standing behind Trump, Corey Comperatore, really die? I don't think Democrats are denying that. Was he in on it? I don't believe the Democrats that think the event was staged believe that that innocent victim was in on it. But the big picture of 47% of Democrats saying Butler was staged is a stunning number. That's a lot of people. Now, I, I am not in that group. I don't believe the Butler shooting was staged. I don't believe the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting was staged. I've explained why and, and I'm glad to get back into it. I don't believe there's evidence that either was staged. And I need some evidence. Speculation or gaps in everything we know are not enough for me to say I believe that this was staged. When you look at what happened in Butler, I don't think the details even support a staged theory. They point to, to incompetence. And maybe we'll start with Butler because that's what the poll about and then is about. And then we can talk about White House Correspondents Dinner. Trump was shot. A man in the crowd was killed. It was a real event with real consequences. People experienced it in real time. The idea that it was staged hits a bunch of problems, starting with the logistics, which simply don't make sense. Under basic scrutiny, you would need a shooter, real or fake, live crowd, real bullets or convincing replicas, and then silence from everyone involved afterwards. That is not a simple operation. That is very high risk. It's a high risk conspiracy with a dozen or more potential points of failure where something could go wrong or leak out afterwards. And then there's the payoff, which is supposed to justify the risk, except it doesn't. Because Trump's polling barely moved after Butler, the impetus for staging it was believed to be Trump needed something to help him in the polls. And so the shooting curried sympathy for Trump. Except the polls moved half a point. Half a point, which is statistically essentially nothing and politically insignificant compared to what people would imagine might happen. And if that's the outcome, the idea that anyone would then try to replicate it again like, like Saturday at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, for example, doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. And when I step back, I see no evidence. I don't even see weak evidence for a staging. I see no evidence. I don't see circumstantial evidence. I don't see anything. No whistleblower, no document, no credible reporting. Just speculation. If you zoom out, there's a much simpler explanation that fits the facts. And we've seen it before with Secret Service, which is that the Secret Service is having issues. Butler looks like another example of incompetence. They didn't secure an adjacent rooftop that was right there. And there's more questions about, you know, does it make sense for Trump to be doing so many outdoor events and, you know, he kind of stopped doing them after that, other than being encased in a bulletproof glass box. That points far more as an explanation to what took place than it was staged. And. And that matches the evidence. It matches what we know, it matches what we saw. And so I lean in that direction. It doesn't require dozens of people coordinating. It just requires a little bit of incompetence. And it may even be connected to Donald Trump himself, particularly because of Trump's insistence on big crowds, proximity to crowds, prioritizing optics over strict security protocols. Now, separate from Butler, there's the more recent incident on Saturday at the White House correspondent's dinner in D.C. and my conclusion there is similar, but based on different sets of facts. There's no evidence that it was staged. The theories don't explain what happened any better than the obvious explanation, which is there should have been some kind of security apparatus that would have accounted for the fact that there are people staying in the hotel who haven't gone through a metal detector, have been there for days, and who have access to the lobby. It's that simple. They didn't do it. I was there, and I saw that they didn't do it. So where that leaves me is a situation where a lot of people, 47% of Democrats and some independents and Republicans, believe something for which I don't believe there is any evidence. And that's uncomfortable, especially for people who spend time criticizing the conspiracy thinking elsewhere on the political spectrum. But the pattern is similar. We've seen the start with the conclusion, and within minutes of the shooting on Saturday, I was talking to people in D.C. who said, oh, it was staged. And then they try to back out motive or evidence, if they can. In this case, there's no evidence whatsoever, but they're trying to come up with motive, but the motive is pretty weak. And I understand the instinct. Trump is a figure who would have no moral problem staging anything he thought would help him. I just don't think he would believe this would help him, especially because Butler didn't. And I believe you still need to find evidence. If you think you found a motivation and you think you found a gap in the facts, cool. You now should go and seek evidence for what you are claiming took place. And fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, I believe that there is a far simpler explanation, far less dramatic security failures, poor judgment, incompetence. In the real world, I land there for Butler and I land there for White House Correspondents Dinner. If someone has evidence and it can't be this thing where we go, well, the absence of evidence is part of the evidence because it suggests a cover up. Sometimes there's no evidence for something because the evidence doesn't exist. And so if someone really has evidence they want me to look at on either of these incidents, let me know on the Bonus show Janet Mills is out of the Democratic Senate primary in Maine. California billionaires tax proposal garners enough signatures to go to the ballot and families are suing the company that owns chat because of a mass shooter's use of the tool. Is this likely to succeed legally? All of that and much more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join pacman.com and remember to get my free substack at David pakman.com/substack the right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. @blinds.com We've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50,000 five star reviews to prove we deliver. 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