Transcript
David Pakman (0:00)
Today we are asking a question that a lot of people do not want to touch, but I believe we have to touch it. What happens to the Trump voters when Trump is over? Do we forgive? Do we forget? Do we draw a line? We will talk about it. We will also look at a stunning example of obvious corruption and nepotism right out in the open. Eric Trump, with no background in robotics whatsoever, has landed a $24 million Pentagon contract. Republicans say nothing. Also today, Trump's approval hits a historic low. The numbers underneath are even worse, including cracks within his base. And we're going to look at a brutal takedown of a so called pastor who just spreads hate. And the moment a Republican fell apart when asked a simple question. Also, would you consider this the golden age of the economy? Are things as good right now as they have ever been? I'm going to show you the mental gymnastics behind that claim. What a show. Today I say we record this one rather than immediately deleting it like we sometimes do. What on earth do we do with this? The Trump supporters, once Donald Trump is gone? We have to figure it out now, at some point, whether it's sooner or
David Pakman (continued or co-host) (1:33)
later or kind of soon or, you
David Pakman (1:34)
know, whenever the Trump era is going to end, Trumpism may continue. We don't know yet. The damage from Trump will last last beyond Donald Trump's presidency, but at some point Trump will be gone. And when that happens, there is a question that it doesn't seem a lot of people are thrilled to be dealing with, but we're going to have to deal with it, which is what do we do with the tens of millions of people who voted for Donald Trump? Sometimes, not once, not twice, but three times. Now, I am not talking about the elected officials. What do we do with Lindsey Graham? Well, that'll get it figured out at some point. What do we do with the media figures, Mark Levin and whoever is still on Trump's side in the media? I don't even know that's going to get figured out. I don't have the answer. That's a different category. I'm talking about regular voters. Your neighbor, your cousin, the guy at the gym, the parent at your kid's school. Do we treat them like they simply made a political mistake or do we treat them like they participated in something so corrosive to democracy that we can no longer see them in a normal way anymore? I think we have to first acknowledge we're not going to be able to hand wave away the people who between 2015 and 2029, a 14 year, period, by the time it's all said and done, supported Trump the entire way. These are people that they are significant in number, and their damaging effect on this country has been significant. Now, there are people who look at Trump voters and say, this is the modern version of the kkk. They knew what they were supporting. There's no coming back from that. That's one perspective. I'm not in that camp. There are others who say, you know, people get misled, people get manipulated. They fell for a charismatic fraud. Welcome them back if they're willing to change. The uncomfortable truth is that there's going to have to be elements of both. And I'll explain what I mean. I don't think we can build a functioning society where 30% of the country is exiled from polite society. I just don't think it works. I don't think it's realistic. I don't think, arguably it's not even desirable if our goal is stability and democracy. But on the other hand, we also can't pretend that nothing happened. We can't say, once Trump is gone, you know, you supported authoritarian rhetoric, you supported a guy who crushed the media, you supported election denial, you supported attacks on institutions, maybe you even supported the Jan6 riots. But it's no big deal. Let's be friends, let's move on. I think that's how you guarantee that it happens again. And this is where I believe the analogy to the manosphere and these influencer pipelines matters a lot. I've said before that people who got pulled into that world are always welcome to come out of it. You're always welcome out of the cult. But there are conditions. We have to acknowledge what happened and how. You have to say, I was wrong, I bought into something that wasn't real, I contributed to something harmful. We don't need a public shaming ritual. They don't need to get flogged in town square. But there has to be an acknowledgment, because without the acknowledgment, there's not going to be change, there's going to be silence. And then the same pattern will repeat itself again. And it might be smoother next time. They might be smarter next time. There is going to be another figure at some point, like a Trump. They might be more polished, they might be less chaotic, they might be more effective, they might be smarter, they might be able to read better. Which, by the way, you know, imagine if Trump were able and did read regularly. He would probably be far more dangerous. And if we don't Honestly, deal with what just happened, People are going to fall for it again. I like to analogize to smoking. We all understand something very basic about smoking. If you've been smoking 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, and you quit today, that's still a good thing. It's always better to stop. You can stop the damage and maybe there's an opportunity for repair. The point is, it's never too late to make a change. Even if you participated in what from 2015 to 2029 will be 14 years of damaging this country, that damage has been done regardless. It's still better for you to stop. We don't pretend the smoking never happened. We don't say you quit. So there were no consequences to smoking 10, 20 or 30 years, no risks, no harm. But both can be true at the same time. And I think that that's how this works. It's never too late to stop being part of something destructive. It's never too late to try to become a force for good pro democracy, reject corruption, reject authoritarianism. And people who are willing to do that should be welcomed. But we don't erase the past. We learn from it. So I don't believe that the Trump supporters should be exiled like amnesia after Trump is gone. I think that, that it is reintegration with some very basic conditions. You're welcome back into the pro democracy movement to the anti corruption coalition. In fact, we should be clear. We need you, we need more people. But you don't get to rewrite history. You don't get to say, I always had some doubts if you didn't. And you don't get to excuse potentially 14 years of supporting this insanity by just going, well, I had a few doubts, but I didn't like Hillary or Biden or Harris or. There has to be some level of accountability, even if it's just, I'm going to be intellectually honest about what happened. Otherwise, we are fixing nothing. We are just waiting for the next version of the exact same problem. And I think that's the real risk here. It's not Trump comes back, it's the next. Trump is smarter, more charismatic, more articulate. And if people don't remember what happened, we end up in even bigger trouble. Eric Trump's company won a bid for a military contract. What? How did that happen? They must just be the best, right? Well, take a listen to this.
