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- [00:02]
David Pakman
Springfest is heating up at Lowes, and for a limited time, we have the extra big deals you need to impress guests. Get your outdoor space ready and save $50 on a select Cobalt 24 volt blower kit now $79. Plus save $80 on the Char Broil Performance 4 burner grill now $199. It's springtime and our best lineup is here at Lowe's, valid through 413 while supplies last selection varies by location.
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Donald Trump
Foreign.
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David Pakman
Just exploded and canceled the entire thing. This is getting completely out of control. You might be saying. Wait, wasn't Trump all about opening the Strait of Hormuz? That's right. But now Trump announced that he is closing it. What? Closing it to open it? Closing it to open it. Can you imagine something dumber? Well, I'm sure there will be something. First of all, just days ago, Trump claimed victory by getting Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, which never happened. Now he says we're going to win by closing the Strait of Hormuz. It's going to require some explanation. Let's first put up Donald Trump's wall of text Truth social post where he said, quote, about the negotiations that J.D. vance was leading, which failed miserably, he says, quote. So there you have it. The meeting went well. Most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, nuclear, was not. Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the finest in the world, will begin the process of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz. At some point, we will reach an all being allowed to go in, all being allowed to go out basis. But Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying there may be a mine out there somewhere that nobody knows about but them. This is world extortion, and the leaders of countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted. I have also instructed our navy to seek and interdict every vessel in international waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas. Blah, blah, blah, blow them to hell, locked and loaded, etc. You can read the entire thing, but the point is, Trump said it was open, it wasn't. Now he says he's closing it. Why are we having our navy blockade the Strait of Hormuz if Trump won already? Iran's military has been decimated, the strait opened Tuesday, and everything is fine. Well, Trump says it's because Iran won't agree on on nuclear. Now let's slow it all down. A little bit. The Strait of Hormuz was open before any of this started. I mean, before Trump invaded Iran over six weeks ago. And we'll talk about that timeline, by the way, if you like the coverage of what's happening in Iran, not that you like what's happening, but you like being informed about what's happening. Make sure you like this video and hit subscribe on YouTube. We can tell on which video people hit subscribe, and that helps to tell us what content people are enjoying. The Strait of Hormuz became a problem when Trump invaded Iran. For the last week, after saying, it's open, Trump and his White House kept insisting, we have solved that problem. We've gotten a deal done. It's all happening. And then it was like, well, it doesn't really look like the deal is done. And then it never really looked like the Strait of Hormuz was open. And now Trump suddenly acknowledges, okay, Iran never did open the Strait of Hormuz, and now we, the United States, will be blocking any and all ships going in and out. So was it open? Was it reopened? Is the United States now closing it? Why? Donald Trump also followed up with the following, which I'm not going to read the entire thing. I'll give you a sense of it. Quote it. Iran promised to open the Strait of Hormuz, and they knowingly failed to do so. Why didn't Trump tell us that on Tuesday when we knew that that's what was going on? This caused anxiety, dislocation, and pain to many people and countries throughout the world. They put mines in and blah, blah, blah. The meeting began early in the morning, lasted through the night, 20 hours. But the one thing that matters, Trump says, is that Iran is unwilling to give up its nuclear ambitions. I want to remind you we had a deal that Trump said was bad where Iran was not refined, enriching uranium. We had a deal and Iran was sticking to it as far as inspectors knew. I know Netanyahu tried to say Iran's not, but there was no evidence that Iran was not sticking to it up until the point at which Trump backed out of it. Trump said, we're out. So they went back to enriching uranium. And now Trump is desperate to get back to what we had that he got us out of. And we see the economic consequences. Oil up, stocks down, ships can't get through. There's concern about bombings and mines and all of this different stuff. And so Trump goes, I'm going to close the Strait of Hormuz. You look at his explanation, he Says, well, Iran may have planted mines, but we've also destroyed their navy. And the negotiations made progress, but it doesn't matter, and everybody is working together. But he goes out and he undercuts and undermines J.D. vance's negotiations. So all of his actions are contradicting everything that they publicly claim to be working towards. But the most important thing is we had what Trump wanted before any of this started. And I don't mean before June of 25, when he bombed Iran for the. I think that was the first time. Hard to keep track. I mean, up until 2018, when Trump got out of the Iran nuclear deal. Now, let me touch on another area that's a little bit delicate. Trump's completely incoherent here. These posts are just jumping from topic to topic with claims that don't line up and timelines that don't make sense and facts that change from one sentence to the next. It's open, and it will be open soon, but it's closed. And now we closed it, and then they never had opened it. Really? Hmm. That's really weird. This is erratic. And when you're talking about military action and global trade routes, nuclear weapons, the risk of a wider war, erratic is very dangerous. And it goes to Trump's decline. I'm not going to go through the whole list where I give you the 150 different ways in which Trump has declined, but the rest of the world is trying to interpret this and say, what is going on here? What's being implemented, what should be happening in the markets? People don't know whether this is a bluff. They don't know, is this a real escalation? Is Trump even really going to do this? By the time I published this clip, we may have learned this was a bluff or not, or it didn't start it as one, but it became one because Trump realized, actually, I can't do what I'm threatening to do. But the most important takeaways are when Trump made the decision in 2018 to get out of the Iran deal, which was a bad decision, he was far less diminished than he is now. So if the decisions he made in 2018 were that bad, how could he possibly make good decisions today? And number two, all of this talk about the Strait of Hormuz, it was open. It was open before any of this stuff started. So for me, you know, when I see Trump's post, it's less about what exactly is he doing right now. It's more, does he even understand what he's doing? I don't Think he does. Let me know what you think. Info at David Pakman Dotcom, Leave me a comment I want to hear from you. The fascists always eventually lose, and Maga should be terrified about what happened in Hungary. This is one of those stories that can feel kind of distant. Oh, something happened over there in Europe. But it connects directly to Donald Trump after 16 years in power. Viktor Orban, a favorite authoritarian leader of Trump, just lost. Not controversially, not narrowly, not by just a tiny little bit. He got crushed in a landslide. And the guy who beat him, Peter Magyar, is on track for a two thirds super majority, which basically means full control of parliament. Now let's contextualize that a little bit. Orban was not, you know, a normal politician hanging on by a thread. He spent a decade shaping the system in Hungary, keeping himself in power. And courts, media, institutions, they all tilted in his favor for years. People pointed to him and said, this is the future of Hungary, it's the future of broader Europe. Trump loved the guy. Trump loves authoritarians. Trump supported him. Trump hinted at even economic backing during his election because ideologically they are so aligned. JD Vance went to Hungary, gave a speech saying, vote for this guy. He's great. It's all. And the voters said, we're not going to do it. And they ended it. And that's really the part that jumps out at me because as we've talked about this before, when we talk about fascism and authoritarianism, it often feels permanent. How could anything happen to dislodge these recalcitrant powers from being in office and eventually they get dislodged? Orban ran essentially the same playbook over and over. You should be afraid of migrants and war and enemies. Our culture is in decline. They're making us not European anymore. And it worked for a while. It worked for a similar period of period of time as it worked in the United States. But eventually people started asking sort of different questions. Questions. Well, what about the economy, which isn't looking so good? What about corruption, which is rampant in these sorts of administrations? And by the way, we've seen it in Cuba, we've seen it in Venezuela, these sorts of pseudo populist authoritarian regimes, some which are nominally on the left and some which are nominally on the right, they are rife with corruption and all of it. And people realized, hey, things aren't getting better. They told us that things were going to get better, and they're not. And then I see all of this corruption a reminder as to how it works here in the United States as well, right now. And once the public opinion starts to shift on that, it's very hard to reverse it. Magyar did not run on, yes, panic and fear, but with a different scapegoat, which would be one way to do it. It would be, no, you should be afraid, but what you need to be afraid of is different. They he ran on economic stagnation, anti corruption, basic quality of life, things that people actually feel, which should be instructive for Democrats in the United States as well. And when voters heard that and locked into it, the result ended up not being close. It was an overwhelming defeat for Orban. So we've seen this pattern before as the sweet sirens of Buenos Aires. Is that audible? I think it is. There was just an emergency outside. But don't worry, we can continue when we've seen this pattern before. Long stretches of dominance by an authoritarian, and they break when the public mood changes. That is irreversible for the authoritarian. So now this gets us back to Trump and Trumpism. Trump is using a lot of the same strategies, attacking institutions, discrediting media, telling supporters, you've got to focus on the threats and the enemies that I've determined you should be thinking of. And he's pointed to people like Orban as, look at what a great job he's doing. The model works. You can hold power by doing it. One of the biggest examples of that model has failed, and it failed through an election with voters showing up in huge numbers. Now, it's not automatically going to happen here. We have to first get past the midterms and then start looking at 20, 28. It doesn't mean that we can just look the other way and go, oh, it's we're good. It ended in Europe, in Hungary, rather. So it's going to end in the United States. What it tells us is even when the system seems locked down by authoritarians, it can still break, but it does require massive participation, and Hungary did it. Good for them. Part of it is getting voters to start caring about their lives rather than the warnings they've been hearing for years. And this is not about immigration. Doesn't matter. But to a degree, if you are just a working person in a northern state, not really affected by immigration in the way Trump wants you to believe you are, at some point you wake up and you go, why have I just been on this immigration thing? Only because Trump told me to be all about it. I have other concerns here. I have economic concerns that have nothing to do with immigration in the way that Trump is claiming. I have concerns about my community that have nothing to do with the lurid crime stories that Trump cherry picks and uses to scapegoat people. I care about the promises that he has failed on, including prices, the economy, energy, etc. And he's failing on that. So a switch can flip in this way and all of a sudden it goes in a different direction. So I think we should be looking really closely at what happened in Hungary. And one additional reason to look at it is Trump loves to talk about the power of the endorsement. Trump endorsed Orban and sent JD Vance there right before the election and Orban still got crushed. So I think that the takeaway if we're looking for something sort of optimistic, which I think is necessary at this point, even when it looks like, oh my God, there's tens of millions of Americans who voted for Trump three times, we're not going to be able to excise this movement. It can happen pretty quickly. And so if you're Trump watching this, he should be terrified. MAGA should be terrified, Republicans should be terrified. Good for the Hungarian people. If you deal with PDFs, you know how quickly a simple task becomes a headache. Edit one thing, convert the file, reorganize a few pages, and then you're fighting clunky software that makes everything slower. That's why I love updf. Our sponsor, UPDF is a PDF editor that actually solves the common issues people have with PDFs day to day. You can edit text, edit images directly, convert PDFs to Word, PowerPoint or Excel without destroying the formatting, and use OCR to turn scans into editable, searchable text. What also makes UPDF valuable is is its AI tools. If you're dealing with a long report, research paper, dense documents, UPDF can summarize it. You can chat with the document, even turn the information into something clearer and easier to work with. UPDF works across Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, and in addition to working better than the big name PDF software, UPDF is only a fraction of the cost. And for a limited time, UPDF is giving my audience an extra $10 off until May 30th. Just go to David pakman.com/upf the link is in the description. We all know the feeling where there's a nonfiction book that people keep telling you you've got to read. 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You can try Blinkist completely free for a whole week and get 30% off a subscription at blinkist.com/pacman before staying up all night posting insanity to Truth Social, Donald Trump actually spoke to the media. He stood there with his red hat, barely coherent, struggling to speak, slurring and swollen and sweaty. And he said a lot of things that raised serious questions. After Trump left these this conversation that I'm about to play for you. He was up all night posting to Truth Social, and taken altogether, it makes sense to be worried about what's going on with him. Trump is increasingly embroiled in a battle with Pope Leo, basically wanting us to believe that the Pope is some woke, never Trump, left winger of sorts when listen, I'm not Catholic. I don't really care about the Catholic Church, but I recognize the importance of the Pope to over a billion Catholics. The Pope is not someone to get involved in this sort of Trumpian sniping. But Trump is trying to get embroiled in that. And he says the Pope's not doing a good job. He likes crime and basically telling us this is a woke guy, take a
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Maria Bartiromo
look at this and they're going to
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Donald Trump
go back filled up with oil.
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Pete Buttigieg
Cleo and Tristo
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Donald Trump
I don't think he's doing a very good job. He likes crime, I guess. He hit us. Think of it. He's worried about fear. What about the fear when the ministers and the priests and all of those great people that were arrested during COVID and in many cases they're outside 10ft apart and they were arrested. So we don't like it. We don't like a Pope that's going to say that it's okay to have a nuclear weapon. We don't want a pope that says crime is okay in our cities. I don't like it. I'm not a big fan of Pope Leo. He's a very liberal person and he's a man that doesn't believe in stopping crime. He's a man that doesn't think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapons so they can blow up the world. I'm not, I'm not a fan of Pope Leo.
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David Pakman
Trump is not, well, you know, conservative Catholics. Some said, well, Joe Biden's a bad Catholic because Biden was liberal on abortion. And they said, I don't know if that's really in the spirit of Catholicism. What about this? Now, Trump doesn't claim to be a Catholic, but conservative Catholics who said, because of the issue of abortion, I've got to go, Trump over Harris or Trump over Biden? Is this something you're comfortable with? Is this something that you can say, yeah, this is the guy. Even though he is now viciously attacking the Pope, Attacked, by the way, for things that are in line with the teachings of Jesus. Based on my extremely amateur understanding of it seems to me that it is the Pope rather than Trump. Can you imagine? It is the Pope who is on the side of Jesus's teachings, not Donald Trump. And Trump goes, well, the Pope likes crime and the Pope thinks it's okay for Iran to have nuclear weapons. There aren't really arguments there. It's stringing together accusations in a completely incoherent way. Now, before spending the entire night posting about Iran, Trump said to reporters during this conversation, I think Iran is in very bad shape. They're desperate. It was a long meeting. Iran is in bad shape. Take a look.
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Donald Trump
I think Iran is in very bad shape. I think they're very desperate. We had a meeting that lasted 21 hours. We understand this situation better than anybody and Iran's in very bad shape. And just so you understand, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.
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Maria Bartiromo
We'll not have.
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Donald Trump
There is no way that they're going to get. They still want it. And they made that clear the other night. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.
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David Pakman
21 hours with no Big Mac break. Can you even imagine that? No, seriously though. Trump says Iran is in bad shape. Trump says Iran is very desperate. The truth is that Iran still seems to have leverage on the United States. I don't say that joyfully. You know all of these emails I get from Magas. David, you look like you're hoping for Iran to win the war. No, I'm against authoritarian theocratic regimes and I'm also against authoritarian dictator wannabe American presidents starting illegal wars for no sensible reason and then potentially using them for his personal gain by selling Venezuelan oil, which is a whole other topic that we're discussing today. And so when Trump goes, no, it was. It's very serious. 21 hours, and they're in bad shape. They're desperate. Iran has taken a lot of losses, there's no doubt. But they've somehow gotten Trump to go from they must open the Strait of Hormuz to I'm closing the Strait of Hormuz. That sounds like Trump is the one who's flailing and scrambling. And then finally, Trump was asked about Viktor Orban, someone that Trump supports, someone that J.D. vance flew to Europe to support and say, vote for Orban. And Orban losing. And Trump just walks away. Take a look.
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Donald Trump
Serious example. Thank you very much.
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David Pakman
Trump knows that the days are numbered for this sick, disgusting movement that includes maga and it includes the supporters of Viktor orban. He sent J.D. vance, they did a rally, they said, vote for this guy. He's great. He's like MAGA reincarnated in Hungary. And under the bus again goes JD Vance or Bond destroyed. And Trump simply walks away. He'll praise the guys when it helps him politically. But after Orban took this brutal loss, what could Trump do? He could go, well, it was rigged. Really? How did they rig that one in Hungary? What do you know about the voting system there that you can argue that it was rigged? And instead, strong man, silent when it starts to get a little difficult after that, just consider the insanity. After that, Trump went home to his bed, to his toilet, I don't know. And spent the entire night posting trash. That's where the United States presidency finds itself today, and it is truly sad. The President had an overnight mental health emergency. We're not kidding. We're not laughing. This isn't funny. This is extremely serious. After speaking briefly to reporters completely incoherently, Donald Trump spent roughly between the 9pm Eastern hour until the 4am Eastern hour posting, posting, posting endlessly to Truth Social, clearly unwell, clearly, clearly suffering another meltdown due to failure after failure after failure on Iran and in other areas. Multiple posts, videos, conspiracy posts. The kind of behavior that would raise a very simple question if it were your uncle behaving this way, which is, why is he awake? Why is he saying these things? And do we need to have a psych hold at a local mental health facility? I wish I were kidding. I wish I were exaggerating. Let's take a look, just at a little bit of the breakdown of all of this stuff. Donald Trump, first of all, finding and posting articles that praise him for his behavior with Iran. These are increasingly difficult to find because his actions on Iran have been increasingly unhinged. Posting memes and fake images and AI edited and Photoshop edited images of Barack Obama, for example. When, of course, the issue here is Trump, not Obama. Trump is president, not Obama. And if Trump had just stuck to the Iran nuclear deal that was signed by Barack Obama in 2015 instead of getting out of it in 2018, we almost certainly wouldn't be in this situation right now. The Dow wouldn't be down an additional 300 points today. Posting stuff about Obama being a secret Muslim. Posting stuff about, you know, himself with Jesus playing chess. The alluding to this idea that some magas push, that Trump is secretly playing some kind of complicated chess game that nobody else is even smart enough to understand. Posting stuff about Iran and different crimes and images and stuff about Israel and Iran and Obama and Biden and political cartoons. We're just scrolling through this stuff because the substance really matters less than the fact that Trump is doing it. Trump posting an image of himself styled as Sun Tzu from the Art of War called Don Tsu as if he is some kind of military genius. Trump posting and reposting stuff about the Iranian leadership and this, that and the other thing. Okay, I think you get the point. Overnight, even actually up until 6am Eastern time, Trump seemed to be up all night. Again, not the behavior of a stable genius. Now, let me tell you what stands out, what's relevant and what's most important here. Because it's like, oh, the exact Obama Muslim meme doesn't really matter. And that's true. What matters is the following. The volume of what Trump is posting is disturbing. The timing of Trump's posts is disturbing. Multiple posts in the same hour dumped overnight. These bursts of activity, including stuff that doesn't even make any sense, random conspiracy memes and different things. It's irrelevant whether Trump is posting from his bed or his toilet. I don't even want to get into that speculation. There's a lot of that speculation. Where exactly in the residence is Trump while this is going on? I don't care. The point is, this is not just a guy with a phone. It's the sitting President of the United States. If this were your uncle, you'd be worried. It's Trump at nearly 80 years old and significantly in decline. The President of the United States, arguably the leader of the free world, and this is what he's posting. Now, there's a criticism here for Democrats as well. There are some Democrats and This, this is not a both sides thing. To be clear, there are some Democrats who are accurately characterizing the behavior of Trump as demented as, as extraordinarily unwell and as requiring the removal of Trump. Not that Democrats can do that right now, but at least some Democrats are being clear about that. There are some other Democrats that are not meeting the moment by calling this what it is and are using mealy mouthed language about Donald Trump seems distracted and unable to really carry just crap, guys, we've got to call this for what it is and Democrats really need, need to do that. Now. I think it's important to mention that in the midst of this totally deranged behavior from the President of the United States, they are increasingly targeting and coming after independent media. I told you last week, Donald Trump Jr. Retweeting attacks and calling me a sick person. Caroline Levitt retweeting and signal boasting those very signal boosting those very attacks. So while it is Trump's behavior that is completely erratic and unhinged, he's up at 2 in morning, 3 in the morning, 4 in the morning posting like this, we have people close to the President attacking people like me. And so as a reminder, we're going to be here to keep fighting. We need and appreciate your support. Thanks to the nearly 10,000 of you who subscribed to the YouTube channel last week. In this critical time, make sure you are supporting the shows you value. We're trying to get to 4 million YouTube subscribers. I need your help. I'm asking for your help. We don't have the algorithms on our side and in addition, this administration, as Trump's behavior is increasingly demented, is targeting us and coming after us. So make sure that you are subscribed or following me on any relevant platform that is important to you. Now, what is this fundamentally about when we think about our allies, Iran, the economy, inflation, gas, oil, etc. It's about does the President have decision making capacity or has he lost it? I believe he has lost it if he ever had it. Is the President able to emotionally regulate such that he and his administration can in some calm and rational way deal with the issues we are facing? I believe the answer is obviously no. And question three is who is actually in control moment to moment? I don't have the answer to that. We suspect it's some combination of Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Susie Wiles, you know, J.D. vance doesn't really seem to be in control of anything. Trump doesn't seem to really like the guy. You don't want impulsivity in this role. The supporters of Trump often see this and they go look at his energy. This guy's almost 80 years old, not like Sleepy Joe, and he is relentlessly fighting for the American people. They find that when Trump posts a slop memes at 3am that it's evidence of his energy and passion and engagement with the job. They see it as strength. It is constant erratic output. It's like a diarrhea of the post. It's instability and it's been normalized to some degree. And that's the part that should most scare people. If any previous president, any previous president, Democrat or Republican, I don't care spent the entire night posting in bursts like this after speaking incoherently to reporters. It would be treated as a five alarm story. The morning papers and the morning news shows today would have spent their entire show talking about the erratic behavior of the President should he be removed. It barely registers. It should be a national if not a global story when a president behaves like this. And it was a yawn this morning on corporate media. So when you look at this overnight spree, the takeaway shouldn't be Trump posted a lot. It's this is a guy in decline. Maybe beyond simply decline. Posting all night from the most powerful office in the world, ruining people's lives economically as he does it. So is it a mental health emergency? I would argue that it obviously is. Many VPNs claim they don't track you. Only one can prove it and that's our sponsor, Private Internet Access. Private Internet access is the only VPN with multiple real world court cases showing that when law enforcement requests user logs, they don't have them because they don't log anything. Their software is open source. Anyone can inspect the code and confirm that there's transparency that you do not normally see in the VPN industry. You can use one account on unlimited devices, phone, laptop, tablet, even your router. Works with Netflix and YouTube and streaming services worldwide. It is like a secure tunnel between you and the Internet that nobody can see into. I've been using PIA for years. It's one of the few privacy or security tools I truly trust. Get 83% off just 203amonth plus four extra months free at PIA vpn.com/pacman the link is in the description Maga CNBC host Joe Kernan almost having a heart attack when Pete Buddha judge confronted him. It takes two to tango I think is like the appropriate phrase here given that I'm in Argentina on the one Hand, Pete Buttigieg is really good at this stuff. On the other hand, Joe Kernan, who has come after me on Twitter and is just a trigger, trigger guy overall, he not well suited to remaining calm when he's getting dog walked by Pete Buttigieg. So we're going to check this out. This is really worth watching. I don't always play, like the full thing, so to speak, on the show, but I'm going to this time because to see Joe Kernan come close to having a heart attack as Pete Buttigieg very calmly dismantles and explains every aspect of what Joe Kernan is saying, being wrong to him, this is more than Kern and going, well, I disagree with you. He has this visceral emotional reaction because he's a MAGA guy, because Pete Buttigieg is making him look stupid. And the dumber Joe Kernan looks, the more he talks over Pete Buttigieg and the more that he interrupts and the louder that he gets and the more visibly frustrated that he gets. This is very good. Let's take a look.
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Joe Kernan
I understand that.
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Pete Buttigieg
And look, I'm saying this as somebody who knows what it's like to be sent to war by a US President. And when a president sends you to war, when you and your buddies are on that gray tail plane going into a war zone, you do it with some level of confidence, some level of assurance that your chain of command, although
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Joe Kernan
the president of the United States doesn't even sound like. Now that we're there, do you hope this has a successful outcome? There were 40,000 Iranians that were slaughtered by the same regime. 47 years of killing Americans, stirring trouble all around the world.
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Pete Buttigieg
How do you feel about that regime being left intact by this president?
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Joe Kernan
That's going to be the case. And I don't know what might happen.
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Pete Buttigieg
Is that an argument for. Is that an argument?
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Joe Kernan
So you don't want this to work and it was just a bad move. You want us to pull out now?
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Pete Buttigieg
Look, there's no obvious way out now, but I want to make sure that this ends in a way that, first of all, our economy can recover, that we're not paying so much for gas. I mean, right now, now oil's 100 bucks. Jet fuels 200 bucks. Gas is over four bucks.
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Joe Kernan
Diesel's like average.380. Under Biden for four years.
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Pete Buttigieg
And. And when we left, inflation was lower than it is today.
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Joe Kernan
You accounted for 21% pricing.
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Pete Buttigieg
This president took the inflation rate.
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Joe Kernan
Inflation.
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Pete Buttigieg
This president took the inflation rate. It's more than 3% year on year. You saw the numbers just come out. It's more than 3% year on year.
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Joe Kernan
Okay, it is.
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Pete Buttigieg
The math is direct.
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Joe Kernan
Look, it's much from 2. 7 to 3%.
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Pete Buttigieg
It's higher than when he got here.
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Joe Kernan
It's not 9%.
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Pete Buttigieg
His central campaign promise was he was going to take inflation and drive it down. And instead he took inflation.
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Joe Kernan
I thought in the.
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Pete Buttigieg
It was three when he got here. And now it's more. It could not be simpler than that.
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Joe Kernan
It's around three and we're involved in a war.
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Pete Buttigieg
You said on day one it would go down. He came in on day one and now it's up.
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Joe Kernan
It's up to three percent. It was 21 one and a half percent priced. It would go down four years over four years. It was 21 and a half.
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Pete Buttigieg
Promised it would.
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Joe Kernan
You own Democrats own the affordability.
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Pete Buttigieg
Listen to me, period. Why did the president fail?
- [36:54]
Joe Kernan
You don't think Democrats own the affordability crisis?
- [36:57]
Pete Buttigieg
Why did the president fail to keep his promise to lower prices, in your opinion?
- [37:01]
David Pakman
I'm laughing because this is, this, this piece of it is basic. The president did say that he was.
- [37:06]
Pete Buttigieg
He wanted to be in office to
- [37:08]
David Pakman
bring inflation down and he has not brought inflation down.
- [37:11]
Pete Buttigieg
That's all. He drove it up. He not only failed, he drove it up.
- [37:14]
Joe Kernan
Mr. Secretary, let's talk have had a minimal. A minimal.
- [37:19]
Pete Buttigieg
You tell a family where I live that $1,000 per household is minimal from
- [37:23]
Joe Kernan
the 21 1/2% increase that. You're the Democrats.
- [37:26]
Pete Buttigieg
We can, we can argue all day about just how bad Covid was and how bad it got and what it took and you call it unless where I live, a thousand bucks per household isn't minimal.
- [37:35]
Joe Kernan
Now you found. Now Democrats found religion on inflation after presiding over the worst inflation in 40 years. Now you found it's 20, 26.
- [37:44]
Pete Buttigieg
They're in charge. You guys are in charge. I'm aware you're going to do differently. What are you going to do differently to make the prices actually go down like you promised?
- [37:52]
Joe Kernan
Number one, we got to get through this war. And you've heard people get through this war.
- [37:56]
Pete Buttigieg
We didn't have to be fighting this war. What are we doing?
- [37:58]
Joe Kernan
That's a matter of opinion.
- [37:59]
Pete Buttigieg
You can't say that. It's a matter of opinion that I share with most Americans and a large number of Republicans and a whole bunch of MAGA people who bought into this president because they actually believe in what they have.
- [38:07]
Joe Kernan
75% Republican approval for the war.
- [38:10]
Pete Buttigieg
You don't start with the approval you have within your own party. But the point is, the magical Democrats
- [38:16]
Joe Kernan
aren't going to approve anything.
- [38:17]
Pete Buttigieg
I'm talking about Americans. Americans disapprove of the president and their right to do so.
- [38:23]
Joe Kernan
He's got the same approval rating other presidents have had at this point in the term.
- [38:27]
Pete Buttigieg
A little bit above 42% right now is unpopular for very good reasons, one of which is no more popular than
- [38:33]
Joe Kernan
Obama was or Biden was at the same term, at the same point of his presidency.
- [38:37]
Pete Buttigieg
That depends on which polls you're looking at. But by and large, no. I'm sorry, but like, I've been out on the trail. I was in Marjorie Taylor Greene's district. Marjorie Taylor Greene, this is a Trump +38 district, or it was.
- [38:50]
Joe Kernan
I've seen 500 people. You'll get a chance to prove that in November this year.
- [38:55]
Pete Buttigieg
We had a chance to prove it last week.
- [38:57]
Joe Kernan
The Senate might go. I understand.
- [38:59]
Maria Bartiromo
Yeah.
- [38:59]
Pete Buttigieg
Because people are.
- [39:00]
Joe Kernan
Presidents make difficult decisions, obviously.
- [39:03]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah. But usually they make difficult decisions to try to make other people better off. This president has made decisions to make himself better off. That's definitely happened. If you're the kind of person who can pay a million bucks for the entry fee to Mar a Lago, then you're doing great. But everybody else is hurting right now.
- [39:19]
David Pakman
So this is not a debate in any sense of the word. When one person loses control of their ability to think and their ability to remain calm, this is what it looks like. Now, notice the contrast. Pete Boot Edge. Edge, as I like to call him, stays completely calm while Joe Kernan gets louder and he gets more frantic. Buttigieg is explaining things and Joe Kernan is reacting and he's angry. And it's facts versus feelings here, not in the way that the MAGA people like to tell us that it kind of goes down and the feelings just aren't holding up. Now, one of the things that I've experienced in conversations that get very passionate and emotional is that when you realize you're getting pounded, you try to interrupt and stop the other person from talking. And I kind of get the urge because in situations I've been in, when the other person starts making an argument and I've identified the argument, I know I can rebut it. I calmly wait for them to finish. In fact, it's better because the more you give them rope to confidently tell you, here's why you're wrong. If I'm prepared to show them that didn't make any sense, I'm better off letting them confidently Assert their position, and then I debunk it. When you interrupt and you yell over and you talk over, and you won't let a thought be completed on some level you are anticipating or you're realizing, I don't have the substance to rebut this. And this was Joe Kernan on his own set, on his own network, and he can't keep control of this exchange. And so it's interesting because the confidence that we see, a lot of these MAGA people have confidence in bad ideas, it works. When you control the bully pulpit, it sometimes works. You know, if you're Trump in front of a friendly audience and no one's going to challenge what you say, that confidence about things you're wrong about can work. If you're Caroline Levitt to a lesser degree, you can't control the press's ability to ask questions, but you can end the press conference, you can move on to somebody else. At an individual level, she still is sort of in control of that room, although she often loses control. Joe Kernan lost control. Pete Buddha Judge was in control of this conversation. And without raising his voice for an instant, he made Joe Kernan look like the MAGA clown that he is. One other aspect that I think is important to mention here, I was recently on a podcast called the Can't Be Censored Podcast. It's a Canadian podcast. They flew in and interviewed me, and it was a good conversation. One of the things they asked me was about why don't I react more emotionally when I'm talking to people I disagree with? And my argument was that it doesn't serve my position. I look unhinged, I look out of control. And I understand being passionate, and I understand caring about the issues you're discussing, and I understand feeling frustrated by terrible, dehumanizing arguments from the right. But I still think that I end up looking worse if I am the one who stoops to the sort of behavior that Joe Kernan stooped to in this clip. And the confidence of maga. We saw this gap where you can sound really confident and you can speak very loudly, but that doesn't mean you're at all competent in what you're saying. And the arguments ran out for Joe Kernan. Awesome job by Buddha Judge. The people that like Pete for 2028, one of the things they like the most is that he goes into these spaces, Fox News or, to a lesser degree, cnbc, and just pounds them like you would do with, you know, taking peppercorns and making cracked pepper. I don't know something else anyway? Chimichurri. He's just pounding those herbs. Very Argentina themed here. Really nice job by Pete Buddha Judge. I don't know if he's going to be back on there anytime soon.
- [43:26]
Pete Buttigieg
Taxact knows filing taxes can be confusing, so we have live experts on hand who can help answer any questions you may have. Questions like can I claim my SUV is my home office? If I answer work emails in my car? If I adopted 12 dogs this year year, can I list them as dependents and am I doing this right or am I doing this very, very wrong? Our experts have the answers to those questions and many others. Tax act let's get them over with the David now playing on Netflix if the flood doesn't kill you, what lies beneath will. When a category category 5 hurricane decimates a coastal South Carolina town, the storm surge brings devastation, chaos and something far more frightening. Hungry sharks. Thrash is now playing only on Netflix.
- [44:25]
David Pakman
Thrash is rated R. Pacman show is an audience supported program and the best, most direct way to support the show is by becoming a member. @join pacman.com you'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show and plenty of other great membership perks. Get the full experience by signing up@join pacman.com you have to see this. Fox host Maria Bartiromo had an eyebrow raising moment when Trump admitted what we've all suspected we which is that come the November election, gas prices could be even higher than they are today. But wait a second, I thought it was going to be three to four, maybe four to six weeks in Iran and gas prices would briefly go up, but then they would come down very quickly. But Trump is now admitting they may be higher in November. He seems disoriented in this interview that he gave Maria Bartiromo right after he made the announcement that he will close the Strait of Hormuz after fighting to have it open. Let's take a look. Donald Trump appearing with Maria Bartiromo to mirror what he said on Truth Social. There is going to be a complete blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. Iran will not be allowed to make money selling oil to people that they like. Here he is explaining it all to Maria Bartiromo.
- [45:48]
Joe Kernan
But Mr. President, you wrote on Truth Social this morning saying that we will begin the process of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz and at some point we will reach an all being allowed to go in and all being allowed to go out basis. So tell us what you're trying to
- [46:07]
David Pakman
accomplish with this blockade.
- [46:09]
Maria Bartiromo
All out. Yep. It's called all in and all out. There'll be a time when we'll have them all come in and all come out, but it won't be a percentage. It won't be a friend of yours, like a country that's your ally or a country that's your friend. It's all or nothing. And that'll be. That won't be in too long a distance. Now we're just bringing the ships up. We got a lot of ships that. We're bringing them up. We think that numerous countries are going to be helping us with this also. But we're putting on a complete blockade. We're not going to let Iran make money on selling oil to people that they like and not people that they don't like or whatever it is. It's going to be all or none. And that's the way it is. And it'll be. You saw. You saw what we did with Venezuela. It'll be something very similar to that, but at a. At a higher level.
- [46:53]
David Pakman
And this is going backwards now. So far, so far, this is bad policy. It's a sort of normal interview. Normal, abnormal. For Trump's standards, he is announcing policy that doesn't make sense. He spent weeks saying, we're going to get the strait opened. He spent one week saying the strait is open. And then he goes, iran never really opened it. And by the way, now I'm closing it. Nutso. Totally bonkos, non compost mentis. But for Trump standards, it's still sort of like, all right, this is kind of the interview that he gives. We continue. And Trump goes, hey, you know what? We don't really get our oil from there. We have a ton of oil. Technically true, but blocking the Strait of Hormuz will blow up your oil and gas prices and mine as well. Trump doesn't care about that. Take a listen to this.
- [47:50]
Maria Bartiromo
Mine. Two mines, 10 mines. And that will. If you have a ship that costs a billion dollars, you say, well, you know, I prefer not getting whacked by a mine, losing my ship or damaging it badly at least. And so that's a little bit of a thing that they can do that. It's military might and military power. Don't do it. But, you know, it's extortion and they're extorting the world. You know, we don't get our oil from there. We have so much. We have. And one thing you said is. I don't know if anybody heard it. Well, but we have votes pouring up to the United States. They'll be filling them up and they'll be leaving and they're going to be packed with the best, the best oil you can get. Light, sweet crude. They're going to have the best oil that you can get. But so that's interesting and it's great because we have a lot of oil. We don't get any. I mean, literally last year was 1%. We did that as a favorite. We don't need this strait, but other countries do. And I will tell you, while we're on the subject, we're very disappointed with NATO. Very, very disappointed that they didn't come. Now they want to come and they want to help with the strait and it won't take long to clean it out. So we're going to clean out the strait and they'll be able to use the strait and not too long a distance.
- [49:01]
David Pakman
If Trump cared about what you pay for gas, he wouldn't say this and he wouldn't do this. That's extremely important to understand. When Trump decided to go into Iran, so he says he expected gas prices to be even higher than they've gotten. What that means is that Trump was more than willing for you to sacrifice so that he can do his war games. And what Trump is now acknowledging is he doesn't care if they go up even more because as Trump says, we don't get a lot of our oil from there. That's true. But what he's not mentioning is that if you blockade a pathway for 20% of the world's oil, it is going to drive global oil and gas prices up even more. So what that means is, and now, as Trump is even saying, by the time of the election, they might still be elevated this summer you'll pay even more for gas than you already are because Trump is raising, blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Even come fall, as people who have oil based heating in their homes, which is still a lot of people, as they start using that oil and buying oil, you are potentially even by then going to be paying even more. And then the incredible moment where Maria Bartiromo raises her eyebrows as Trump says gas may be even more, even more expensive come election time.
- [50:27]
Maria Bartiromo
They all said, we agree.
- [50:28]
Joe Kernan
So do you, so do you believe the price of oil and gas will be lower before the midterm elections?
- [50:34]
Maria Bartiromo
I hope so. I mean, I think so. It could be, it could be the same or maybe a little bit higher, but it should be around the same. I think this won't be that much longer. They're wiped out, they're wiped out. And you don't get the, you don't get a fair shake. You don't get, you know, we need, we need a free and fair press in this country. And I don't even know why people would do that. Why would they say how wonderful they're doing militarily. They're doing so well. They totally, the country is wiped out. We lost one airplane and we captured the two.
- [51:04]
David Pakman
They could be even higher in November. And look at Maria Bartiromo's face as he said it. She realizes this is political suicide for Trump and for Republicans. Now, is it possible that Trump has already conceded? They're going to get crushed in November, they're going to lose the House. Just forget it. Don't even fight for it. Try to get whatever limited victory he can get in Iran and call it a success, even if gas prices will be higher. Maybe. But what's clear is he doesn't give a damn about the average American and what you are going to pay. Not the populist policy that we were sold during the campaign. Trump saying, you want to see a stock market go down? Well, let Iran have nukes and let them use them. There's a little problem with this argument, but let's take a look at the clip.
- [51:55]
Maria Bartiromo
To stop this, this country from having a nuclear weapon. You want to see a stock market go down, let a couple of nuclear bombs be dropped on us or frankly, anyplace else, and you'll, then you'll see a stock market that goes down. So the stock market has not gone down very much at all. Down a little bit. Much less than I thought. And the, frankly, the gas hasn't gone up as much as I thought. But regardless, even if it's, did, we have to stop this group of people from having. And again, it was worse because Khomeini was a total, you know, radical. I'll be nice. Maniac. He was a maniac. And you can't let them have a nuclear weapon. So I just have the greatest economy ever. Everything's going along and I say I'm sorry. I tell my economic advisors and say, I'm sorry, fellas, we, we're in great shape. We have to go and take a little journey down to Iran and we have to stop them from having a nuclear weapon. They all said, we agree.
- [52:56]
Joe Kernan
So do you.
- [52:57]
David Pakman
The problem with this is they didn't have nuclear weapons. Or if you believe they did, it would have been because Trump got out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. But if you believe they did. Trump told us he destroyed them when he bombed Iran in June of 2025. Except maybe he didn't. Or did he? Or did they rebuild them? And so the point here is, sure, if Iran drops nukes on someone, that would hurt the economy, that would hurt the stock market. We just don't have the evidence that that's something they were capable of or going to do. I don't defend Iran's rhetoric about destroying other countries. I don't support theocratic regimes. But I've got to go with the facts. And the facts don't point to that is something that was plausible or even likely. Trump, by the way, mentions, oh, the election was rigged, by the way. And Maria Bartiromo goes, yep. Even after she raised her eyebrows in horror at Trump saying gas prices will be higher, she goes, yup, the election was rigged. Take a look.
- [53:56]
Maria Bartiromo
But under Biden, who was an incompetent president, he was grossly incompetent. Look, the election was rigged. You know that. I know that. Everybody knows that now. And it's all come out and it's coming out. But under Biden, if you take a look at what happened when he, when he was president, that's a war that would have never happened. Russia attacking Ukraine. Yeah, and I ended. I ended eight wars, including Pakistan.
- [54:20]
David Pakman
It was so rigged that Fox had to pay nearly $800 million in fines for allowing that message to go out on their airwaves. That's how rigged it was. This guy can't do it anymore. And we need to be serious about what needs to happen. Even if Republicans aren't willing to do what needs to be done. Sometimes you just kind of have to call things what they are. Very simply and very plainly right now, what that means is we have to acknowledge Donald Trump has no idea what's going on. He doesn't understand, nor do, quite frankly, I even think that he cares what happens to this country based on his failed war with Iran. Donald Trump, in advance of the failed negotiations with Iran, sensing apparently that a deal was not coming, said, whether we make a deal or not makes no difference because we won. That's his argument. We already won. So the deal on which everything hinges doesn't make a difference. Let's look.
- [55:24]
Donald Trump
Totally defeated, that country, and so let's see what happens. Maybe they make a deal, maybe they don't. From the standpoint of America, we win. One other thing that's happening is that boats are sailing up and heading out to our country, big, beautiful tankers, and we're Loading them up with oil and gas and everything else. And pretty beautiful thing to see.
- [55:53]
David Pakman
Have you agreed to release Iran's assets in other countries?
- [55:55]
Donald Trump
We're going to see what happens. We're in very deep negotiations with Iran. We win regardless, we've defeated them militarily. They've dropped a couple of water mines. You call them water mines in the boat. We've defeated all of their water boats too. Their Navy has gone 158 ships. They have 28 water droppers. Mine mine droppers they call them. All of them are sunk. They probably have a couple of mines in the water. We have minesweepers out there. We're sweeping these freight. In addition to that, we're negotiating. Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me. And the reason is because we've won. Whether you listen to the fake news or not, you know, it's amazing. Their credibility is down to 13%. The media credibility down to 13%. Think of it. We defeated their navy, we defeated their air force, we defeated their anti aircraft, we defeated their radar, we defeated their leaders. Their leaders are all dead. And now all we do is we'll open up the strait even though we don't use it. Because we have a lot of other countries in the world that do use it that are either afraid or weak or cheap. I don't know what it is, but we were not helped by NATO that I could tell you.
- [57:19]
David Pakman
Well, if it doesn't matter, why are there negotiations? Why is JD Vance in talks to make a deal if it doesn't matter? Is it Trump undermining his vice president again? Why threaten escalation if the outcome doesn't matter? Because negotiation requires caring about the outcome. If the outcome doesn't matter and you don't care about the outcome, what sort of a negotiation is really going to happen? If the outcome makes no difference, you also have no leverage. And so there's two interpretations of this. It's either you're telling the other side we don't really need a deal, we don't really care about a deal. The terms don't matter. We've already decided we won. Well, then there's not going to be a deal, arguably self sabotaging and throwing J.D. vance under the bus, or Trump anticipates that we're not going to be on the winning end of this. Trump anticipates that there's not going to be a deal. And so he wants to get out ahead of it and say it doesn't matter, even though it really does. Now A lot of people at this point would ask a question that I think is highly relevant and incredibly salient to the discussion we're having, which is how is Trump's cognitive decline affecting politics? This is how. It shows up inconsistent logic within a single sentence. We're negotiating for a great deal, and it doesn't matter if we get a deal. Contradicting his prior statements from just hours earlier, losing track of cause and effect. And why are we even here speaking in conclusions without supporting reasoning for anything that he's saying? It doesn't matter if we get a deal because we won. How are you defining that victory? What do you mean we won? At what point did we win? And if this were a serious discussion of policy, we would get an answer from the White House. Here are the objectives, and here is clear, consistent messaging. We're going to align our public statements with the negotiations. J.D. vance is there supposedly undertaking the most important negotiations that this administration has been involved in, at least as far as this second term. And publicly you say that it does matter. You don't do the pomp and circumstance about JD Going to negotiate and then publicly go, we actually already won, so the deal doesn't even really matter. You wouldn't be announcing policy via posts if this were a serious administration. You wouldn't be declaring the outcomes irrelevant. So there's actually two or maybe even three camps here in terms of the analysis as to what's going on. This is Trump's new rhetoric because he knew the deal would fail. This is Trump's rhetoric because he's actually actively trying to hurt J.D. vance and devalue and kind of throw him under the bus. Or option number three, which is kind of like an all of the above or none, driven primarily by Donald Trump's incoherence and cognitive decline. I can't tell you I know exactly which one it is. What we know from tracking Trump historically over the last number of years, number one, he only really cares about himself. And so you paying higher gas prices or J.D. vance failing negotiations. He doesn't care as long as it doesn't affect him directly. He may be miscalculating on that. I think it will affect him directly in the sense of making Republicans lose in November and throwing his final two years of the presidency into complete and utter disarray, which he's not going to like. But at the end of the day, this is all about how can Trump appear strong and pull out something approximating a victory. He's not seemingly going to get a victory on the negotiations, although then we heard again this morning those are continuing. And so he's pulling the. The negotiations don't really matter. This thing is over and we won. My question to the administration would then be, by which objectives did we win? And then you get six different answers from four different people. Not convincing me.