The David Pakman Show - 10/15/25: As bad as MAGA is, Dems still facing tough 2026

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Rep. Jake Auchincloss, Democrat from Massachusetts, joins us to discuss the government shutdown, the Israel-Gaza peace deal, and much more… -- Democrats face potential loss of 19 seats in 2026 due to Supreme Court redistricting decisions and voter fear, despite Trump’s failures -- Federal agents under Trump use tear gas on Chicago residents and police after a Border Patrol SUV chase, injuring children and cops -- Trump lies, misstates grocery prices, threatens Boston and Los Angeles sports, and seemingly expels a tonsil stone during remarks -- Trump makes bizarre and insensitive comments at a Charlie Kirk memorial, including sniper and electoral college rants -- Eric Trump claims God saved his father from a shooter but not Charlie Kirk, raising questions about religious logic -- Trump publicly favors Hamas over rival Gaza militias, contradicting U.S. law and signaling support for authoritarian control -- Gavin Newsom exposes Trump’s confused remarks on California wildfires and imaginary water valves, highlighting signs of cognitive decline -- Leaked Telegram chats reveal young GOP leaders joking about Hitler, racism, and violence, causing party-wide scandal and calls for resignations -- On the Bonus Show: The Supreme Court will consider further gutting the Voting Rights Act, gun crime cases fall as federal agents prioritize immigration enforcement, Trump is giving Argentina $20 billion to help Javier Milei, and much more... 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman 📜 Trust & Will: Save 10% on your estate planning at https://trustandwill.com/pakman 🥑 MASA tortilla chips: Get 25% off with code PAKMAN at https://masachips.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get 27% OFF sitewide at https://helixsleep.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start (01:03) Democrats risk losing seats (07:46) Federal agents clash in Chicago (16:44) Trump’s chaotic cabinet meeting (24:10) Kirk memorial marred by Trump (29:37) Eric Trump’s God comments (36:45) Jake Auchincloss interview (51:46) Trump praises Hamas (56:40) Trump wildfire lies continue (1:00:31) Young Republicans scandal    

Today, Democrats are staring down what could be a total wipeout in 2026. Part of it depends on a forthcoming Supreme Court decision about voting rights, but part of it is can Democrats convince voters they are actually better at governing for the average person? We'll also talk about Trump's federal goons tear gassing not only protesters, but also local PD in Chicago, Trump's lying about prices again, and some awkward theological questions come up when Eric Trump says, God saved Trump from the shooter's bullet, but didn't save Charlie Kirk? That sounds kind of weird. Gavin Newsom is also reigniting the Trump has dementia campaign and the explosive I Love Hitler

leaks from young Republicans. Plus, we will talk to Congressman Jake Ockin-Clos and much more if you'll allow it all on today's show. All right, Democrats are facing a possible loss of 19 currently held Democratic seats in 2026. That would make it pretty difficult to take back the House. And taking back the House is the most immediate, important, and robust bullwork against the MAGA and Trump agenda. The House controls the purse strings. The House controls the money, appropriations.

Most, if not all, of what Donald Trump wants to do would be curtailed overnight if Democrats can take the House. Now, this has been the big headline for the last 24 hours. Democrats could lose 19 seats. Now, you might say to yourself, wait a second, Trump's a disaster. MAGA's horrible. How could this be? How could Democrats lose?

Especially when the out of power party usually gains seats after. the opposition wins the White House. Trump won in 24. So Democrats should do well in 2026. Well, the answer, the answers, I should say, are numerous. Now, I'll give you the technical reasons first. Depending on the outcome of a Supreme Court case, Louisiana v. Calais, a specific type of partisan redistricting, also known as gerrymandering, may or may not be allowed to stand. If it is allowed to stand that's very bad for Democrats. And so based on that forthcoming Supreme Court decision, there's a bunch of states which may or may not be allowed to draw districts in particularly politically gerrymandered ways. That will impact 2026. Number two, will the authoritarian repression

of this administration scare people off from voting in 2026 if they are afraid rationally or irrationally about potential repercussions in their personal lives if they vote against MAGA. There are people who are scared given what's going on in media, given what went on with a bunch of people losing their jobs based on social media comments related to the killing of Charlie Kirk. Will people feel confident that they can go and vote their conscience without repercussions and without blowback? And it's like, yeah, okay, that's all true.

But there is a much bigger story than this. In a sane world, which we don't have, MAGA would get zero votes in 2026. Why? Well, you look at what's happening. The United States is humiliated globally. Trump is barely coherent. Governors and senators say Trump's got dementia. Tariff policy is causing chaos and hurting small businesses and consumers.

We were told prices will come down, but they're up. We were promised massive growth, but we don't have it. We've got this disastrous deportation campaign. We're denying people due process by we, I mean the Trump administration. On health care, supposedly we were going to get people health care, Trump said, but millions are at risk of losing care. So in a world that made sense, MAGA would all lose in 2026, but it's going to be close. They might even be able to keep control of the house.

Now, how is this possible? It's easy. The low effort explanation is dumb MAGA voters. Now, are there dumb voters? Of course, we've gone out and talked to a lot of them. There are a lot of really dumb, uninformed people there. They vote based on beliefs that don't comport with reality, don't comport with the facts. The country twice failed a national IQ test, voting to elect Donald Trump twice.

And by the way, almost in 2020 as well. But if you stop the analysis at voters are dumb, while it is often true, it is not nearly enough. saying voters are dumb isn't going to help you win in the same way that just insisting the economy's fine when a lot of people said it doesn't feel fine to me that doesn't win just saying these voters are dumb is not going to be enough to win a lot of voters aren't dumb and a lot of voters assessed in 2024 that for all of trump's faults they just aren't confident that democrats offered something clear coherent and better for the average working class person they said okay i don't think what Trump's offering is good for me.

But I don't at all believe that Democrats are necessarily better. Now, we might say, well, that's wrong, but that gets to the problem of Democrats in communicating. So as bad as Republicans are right now, you also have to be looking at the people that can't clearly make the case that they're better. And that's the Democratic Party. Imagine if someone comes to you and says, do you want this rotten hamburger? We might say you've got to be an idiot to take the rotten hamburger. Well, if what's alternative to that is a nice, beautiful, ripe banana or a beautiful meatball

parmesan, it would be easy to convince anybody. Don't go with a rotten burger. Look what I have. I've got this meatball parmesan. But if you see people choosing the rotten burger, a sensible person would say, wait a second, wait a second. If I am struggling to talk people out of a rotten burger, I've got to look at what I'm offering. Why isn't everybody saying we like what you have?

Do we have a great sandwich and we don't know how to sell it? Well, maybe. Or maybe our sandwich is rotten too. And that's why people are struggling to pick between the rotten burger and our rotten sandwich. The consequences of this could get very ugly. I believe and I was thinking back midterm by midterm, I believe that this is the most consequential midterm that we are coming up against here in decades, by far the most consequential that I have covered because Democrats should win based on historical precedent. Republicans should lose even not

considering the disaster of MAGA. If we have a situation where having one, with Republicans having one in 2024, Democrats are sort of up for winning based on historical precedent. Plus Trump is destroying the country. If Democrats were still to lose, we've got to take a look and say, what the hell is going on here? So I'm extraordinarily concerned. I know that many of you are as well. What do you believe Democrats need to do in order to convince voters that they do actually have something that's better if you believe that they do. And maybe some in our audience don't. I want to hear from you info at David Pakman.com. There is helicopter footage out of Chicago that shows Trump's federal goons using tear gas on protesters, but they're also

hitting local police officers with it before they peel out of the neighborhood in their vehicles like a paramilitary drive by. We've got video here that we will look at as I sort of explain what's going on. Now, all of this started when border patrol agents, not local police, border patrol agents chased an SUV through a residential street in the southeast side of Chicago. They rammed the car using what's called the pit maneuver. This is a move that a lot of police departments, it's considered so dangerous that many police departments ban it. People have died from the pit maneuver. If you watched, you know, police chases 20 years ago, it was relatively common, much less so now. The crash sent the suspects flying out of the car. They were caught. But what happened,

next really is where things started to fall apart. Residents started to gather after federal agents reportedly chased and crashed into an SUV in the neighborhood. Neighbors came outside, parents, kids, seniors. They watched agents with assault rifles surround the area. And then you see the smoke grenades. You see the pepper balls. You see the tear gas. Chicago police say a bunch of their own officers were disabled by the gas they were there trying to calm things down think about that trump's federal agents tear gas chicago cops the mayor of chicago doesn't want the federal agents there the governor of illinois j b pritzker doesn't want the federal agents there you look at the individual witness stories uh a teenage girl hit in the head with a canister a 15 year old

boy americ not that it matters but happens to be an american citizen detained handcuffed held for five hours without even being allowed to call mommy his lawyers say he was kept in a garage by masked agents a 15 year old now this is not an isolated incident uh the chicago tribune reports that this was the third time in just weeks that federal agents have deployed tear gas in Chicago neighborhoods. This includes near a school. According to NBC, Chicago, this entire operation may have been illegal violating a federal court order from just last week, which bans officers from using tear gas or chemical weapons, except if it's a life and death situation. I don't think you can look at that and honestly say that it's a life and death situation. And to recap here,

federal agents under Trump chasing immigrants through city streets, crashing into a car, gassing a neighborhood, injuring kids and cops, and violating a federal court order in the process. This is what authoritarian drift looks like. They talk about law and order. We will. Let's get the lawless Biden administration out and we will finally restore law and order. And then not only do you deny people due process and all of these other things that we've been covering for the last nine months, you then send federal agents into cities to restore calm. Except that's not what they're doing. They're escalating the conflict. Authoritarian propaganda has as a hallmark as a typical characteristic that you create chaos. You blame the chaos you created on your enemies. And you justify the chaos you created to do even more cracking down. So Trump's DHS shows up. They provoke residents. They gas. They gas.

the crowd and cops and then they go look at how chaotic this is. We need to do even more. We need more troops here. We have more justification to keep doing it. Now, if this sounds familiar, it's because it's a classic from Republicans. We don't like Social Security. Let's screw up Social Security and then go, look, this is terrible. We've got to privatize it.

We've got to get rid of it. They don't like the post office. So they go, hey, let's screw up the post office. office, put in place a postmaster general who doesn't like the post office, make it function poorly. And then we go, look, FedEx and UPS would do a much better job. Let's get rid of USPS and let's privatize it or with Obamacare. They don't like Obamacare. They go, okay, we can't get rid of Obamacare. Let's defund Obamacare. Let's get rid of the individual mandate, which makes it mathematically insolvent. And then we can go, look, it's not working so well. We got to get rid of it.

well, it's not working so well because of what you did. This is a classic of authoritarian propaganda. It is bringing violence and chaos to our streets. And even governors seem unable to keep these folks out. So where will we be three months from now? Will this be over? Or will we have San Francisco and Baltimore and all of the other cities that Trump's been threatening to go to overrun with federal agents, masked federal agents, often not identifying themselves, running rampant and terrorizing communities. I don't know where we're going to be, but we've got to make sure everybody sees what's going on.

So please make sure to share this video if you're watching on YouTube. Leave a comment. I want to hear your thoughts. We'll take a quick break and be right back. A lot of people think identity theft is something that only happens when someone hacks into your account. But the truth is that it usually starts with your personal information being posted online by data brokers where anybody can find it.

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You can do both if you like audio visual stuff, the website membership may be your thing. If you prefer written content, the substack premium membership may be your thing. Or you can do both, join packman.com. Read about it. Substack.davidpack.com. Check it out. All right. We have a situation where Donald Trump held a meeting with the president of my birth country of Argentina. It was so unhinged and so deranged. Yes, Trump shot out another tonsill stone. This is not primarily a show about dentistry. and oral health, but why not, right? When life gives you lemons, you do something with them. Let's take a look at some of the things that were said. And of course, Donald Trump furious, furious that George Stephanopoulos had the audacity to follow up when J.D. Vance refused to answer questions. Trump attacking George Stephanopoulos. Remember, they don't want real journalism. They want fluff Journalism.

Take a couple of questions from the news. I'm sure they'll be extremely non hostile and friendly. Like J.D. went through a very friendly interview with George Slobadovus who was nice enough to pay me $16 million the last time we came. He had to pay $16 million to me, which was good. It was worth it. It was worth having somebody lie. If you get $16 million, that's good.

He wants friendly questions. He said it right there. his standard for what is appropriate. And the reason why that's what Trump's media standard is is because he wants to tell lies like this one without anybody ever questioning it. And you had the greatest inflation, the last administration had the greatest inflation in the history of our country. And now as you know, groceries are down. It's all down. And of course, groceries are not down. In fact, groceries, a category where prices have continued to increase even faster than the overall inflation rate. The reason Trump is so antagonistic of the media

is because he only wants easy questions. He wants fluff. He wants to be able to say grocery prices are down and for everybody to go, yes, sir, they sure are. Trump refusing, in fact, to take questions from ABC over that interview. from ABC fake news after what you did with Stephanopoulos to the vice president of the United States. I don't take questions from ABC fake news. Brian, go ahead. Yes, sir.

Yeah, there you go. And instead he calls on Marjorie Taylor Green's boyfriend, Brian Glenn, who says, yes, sir, I am ready with a complete and total fluff question. Now, note the authoritarian fiasco here. What ABC News did is ask a question. Tom Homan accept the $50,000 and if so, has he given it back? J.D. Vance didn't want to answer the question. So he said he didn't take a bribe. Well, that wasn't the question. The question, whether it's a bribe is a legal question. The question

is, did he accept the 50 grand? And J.D. Vance spent two and a half minutes not answering the question. Ultimately, after asking it four or five times, George Stephanopoulos ended the interview. And they call that bad. They don't like that because they want fluff. Now, Trump also played up the mobster style stuff, during which he threatened to take World Cup games and maybe even Olympics events away from Boston, away from Los Angeles, away from whoever doesn't bend the knee and pray at the very smelly altar of Trump. I can. Mr. President.

I had some street takeovers that we saw. Are you, is the mayor, are you going to work with or try and work with the mayor of Boston? And then they have a World Cup, they have several World Cup games. I know Argentina knows about World Cups. They have several World Cup games. Could those games move to cities that do? I do have to say, we do know a little something about World Cups in Argentina. That's true. I like that. We could take them away. I love the people of Boston. I know the games are sold out. But your mayor is not good. They're a worse than her. At least she's intelligent. You know, some are extremely low IQ. Those bother me more. She's intelligent, but she's

radical left. And they're taking over parts of Boston. That's a pretty big statement, right? You know, Boston, as far as cities go, is extraordinarily safe. We could get them back in about two seconds. All she has to do is call us. We'll go in and take them back. But she's afraid of because she thinks it's bad politically. She can take them back to the Boston police are great. She'll never tell them to go after Trump because they love me and I love them. And I got a tremendous police vote. military vote, you know, and firemen vote, all of them. No, I think she is, um, hurting Boston. The answer is yes. If somebody is doing a bad job and if I feel there's unsafe conditions,

I would call Johnny the head of FIFA, who's phenomenal. And I would say, let's move it to another location. Wow. And he would do that. He wouldn't love to do it, but he'd do it very easily you do it. Yeah. You know, Trump will never do this. Trump is friends with the owner of the New England Patriots Robert Kraft. These World Cup games are set to be played at Foxborough at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough. Foxborough is nearly an hour outside of Boston. It has nothing to do with Mayor Michelle Wu. It has nothing to do with Boston PD. And there is no way that Donald Trump is going to screw his friend Robert Kraft by moving the games. But he's got to pretend that he is going to. Now, during the Boston talk, this is sort of like, this is a side issue.

This is not the main thing. But Donald Trump did appear to fire out another tonsill stone while speaking. And you see it go there. It is really wacky and nasty stuff. And while this is not, as I mentioned, primarily a show about oral health, why not? Donald Trump does seem, as we add to the various ways in which Donald Trump is struggling. of those is he regularly appears to fire out tonsil stones during public speaking. Okay, Trump continues to struggle to understand or hear questions, needing multiple clarifications

on this room from J.D. Vans. Would you like to visit Argentina soon? There's an invitation for that. What does that mean? Do you like to visit Argentina? I do. I would love to. I'm just a little busy. I would love to go to Argentina. I'd like to be like Biden. I'd like to go to the beach. All right. And then Trump really struggling to hear and needing to, this is the one where J.D. interprets for it. Thank you, Mr. President. Last week you said that NATO should consider expelling Spain. What? You said that NATO should consider expelling Spain. Would you support that?

What do you consider expelling Spain? Oh. I'm very unhappy with Spain. There you go. There you go. So Trump increasingly struggling either to hear or to understand questions. It's never or both. It's never totally clear. But making a fool out of himself, but not to be outdone by himself, Donald Trump then went to a ceremony for Charlie Kirk. And that is when it really got bad. Yesterday, Charlie Kirk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I'm not even going to. a way in on whether that's appropriate. Trump gives that out like candy. He gave it to Rush Limbaugh and a whole bunch of other people. What I want to focus in on is how everything ultimately is about Donald Trump, even in an event meant to honor the memory and what Trump sees is the legacy of someone

that was supposedly his friend to the extent that Donald Trump has friends. He just can't make it about the other person. Here is Trump opening the memorial event by saying that people love the new Rose Garden as he redesigned it. What a psycho. This is the, please, be seated. This is the first time we've been at the new and improved Rose Garden. And people are loving it. They're loving it like they've not loved a lot of things. We have the presidential walk of fame, which you just saw. And I just opened. We wanted to get it open for this occasion. We were hoping we were able to get outside and the weather allowed us to. It was supposed to be terrible rainy day. I was telling Eric and God was watching and he didn't want that for Charlie.

He just didn't. God. We're going to get to the God stuff. I'm so sorry, guys, but God didn't want bad weather for the day of the ceremony for Kirk. But wouldn't we be asking where was God on the day of the shooting? I'm so sorry to ask such an indelicate question, but we're going to get back to that. But this is, this is the real Trump. Okay. I'm going to show you what the real Trump is. Here is Trump at an event for someone killed by a gun saying that Trump was able to turn at a good time when someone shot at him. It was an incredible thing. Trump was able to do. Charlie Kirk, I guess, wasn't able to do that. Can you think of a sicker and more insensitive thing to say? Law enforcement fired sniper rifles at ice agents and me, you know,

but I was, I made a turn at a good time. I made a turn at a good time. I turned to the right Charlie couldn't believe it actually. He said, how the hell did you make that turn? I said, I don't know. This is so disgusting, even for Trump. Now, think back. You can tell Trump is really deeply connected to the killing of Charlie Kirk. The day after the killing, Trump was asked, how was he doing? He goes, oh, pretty good. Did you see that the construction has started for my new ballroom?

Trump opens this event by talking about how we redesigned the Rose Garden. And then he goes, I was able to turn to avoid getting shot, which in the context of Kirk getting shot to death is just disgusting. Now, Trump later got distracted in the middle of his speech by sirens, and he talked about politically correct sirens. Anybody know what that means? Nobody, listen to the beauty of that sound. Seriously. And that's the real deal, sirens.

They're not politically correct sirens. You hear, they're about three miles away. That's great. What a beautiful sound. They're stopping crime. That's what they're doing. Not a politically correct siren, that's for sure. You know, the other day, I actually ate a politically

correct, Bartlett pear, delicious, not mealy at all, just the absolute perfect, perfect texture. You can tell Trump is really emotionally connected to Charlie Kirk and his death because he took a moment during this ceremony to rant about his electoral college victory. We won the electoral college. Remember, they said, well, it's going to be very hard. I'd say 270. Well, we got 312 to 226. And then we won something called district. districts and councils and different things, but in one case, we won 2,750 to 525. That's the one where you see the map is almost entirely red, except they have a little blue line on one side and a little blue line, meaning New York and a little bit lost.

What a beautiful tribute to the deceased, certainly. And then finally, kind of a weird dementia type moment where just nothing he says makes any sense, which is usually where these speeches end up. When you see these violent incidents and then you see people holding this gorgeous sign with beautiful wood, beautiful cardboard, wood, everything, everything's perfect, paint job. And they're all the same. There are thousands of them. You know that they weren't made in the basement out of love? They were made by anarchists. And in some cases, wealthy, I'll probably find some of my nice friends that are up there being so nice to me, especially lately, they've

being very nice. But it surprises you who they may be. And you almost wonder why, why. Does anybody know what the hell this guy is talking about? Not exactly a heartfelt and moving tribute to his deceased friend. That's for sure. If God saved Donald Trump, Donald Trump, why not Charlie Kirk, this might seem like an indelicate question, but it is exactly what Eric Trump insinuated when interviewed by Benny Johnson. After Donald Trump made a disgusting joke during a ceremony for Charlie Kirk at the White House, Eric Trump went to talk to Benny Johnson and made it even worse. You know that phrase God works in mysterious ways?

That is a phrase that I see as a cop out. Now, I'm going to explain. When Trump was presenting Charlie Kirk with a posthumous presidential medal of freedom, Donald Trump sort of joked that they tried to kill him too, but he turned his head and survived. This is, of course, in very poor taste, but I don't want to dwell on it here because Eric Trump, not known as the smart one, went on Benny Johnson's show and said he believes essentially that God saved Donald Trump from the shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania. Check it out. The God wants Trump in heaven and has saved Trump from the shooter. Listen to this. And believe me, if he wasn't heaven bound, he wouldn't have been alive after Butler. If he wasn't heaven bound, that flag wouldn't have folded

up like a perfect angel right above his head. If he wasn't heaven bound, if he wasn't meant for this purpose, he wouldn't have beaten Hillary. We wouldn't have beaten Hillary. We wouldn't have got through the landmine of what under siege was where they tried to destroy us in every way, shape, or form. They tried to suck the breath out of us. They tried to suck the money out of us. They tried to suck the voice out of us. They did everything humanly possible to destroy us. And yet here we are. And we have this amazing piece, you know, deal on Charlie Kirk's birthday. So listen, all of this stuff about God wants Trump for heaven. God save Trump from the shooter, all of it. This all raises a very obvious question, if you believe in this kind of thing. If God could save anyone,

and chose to save Trump from that bullet. Why didn't he save Charlie Kirk? Now, implicitly to logical and critical thinkers, it would suggest, well, God thought Trump was worth saving, but not Charlie Kirk. That's a really ugly and difficult thing to come to, to believe, and to think. If God is all powerful and all knowing and gets involved in moving bullets around and determines the trajectory and path of any bullet, he chose to save Trump, but not Charlie Kirk. Now, if you present that to people like Eric Trump who are religious or pretend to be. I still don't buy that the Trump family is religious. They were never religious. All of a sudden religion was something they took on as part of their political persona because they were trying to win as Republicans. But put that aside.

If you ask Eric or another believer about it, they will often go, no, no, no, no, you can't say that, David. God works in mysterious ways. God may be using Trump one way and is using Charlie Kirk a different way. God has a plan. The plan includes Trump alive, but Charlie Kirk dead. Oh, okay. But what about like the fact that the killing of Charlie Kirk has devastated his loved ones, his wife, his children? God has a plan. You can't question it. It's mysterious.

Got it. Okay. And if God's plan was to save Trump, why not just make the gun jam up rather than leaving it to chance of Trump turning his head or why not prevent the shooter from even being born? Or why not, you know, with Trump, God allowed the bullet to miss Trump. but to kill a completely innocent guy, Corey Comparatore, who is standing behind Donald Trump. Why? God works in mysterious ways. You can't question it. You can't ask about it. Now, I'm going to be honest. To me, this is all nonsense. But there are religious people who have a much more sensible take

on this. And I've heard it. Not all of the religious people do the no God allowed everything up to the lead up of Trump being shot, but then prevented the bullet from killing him, but allowed Charlie Kirk to be killed. God works in mysterious ways. No, there are religious people who are quite sensible on this. And they go, listen, David, I believe in God. I believe in a higher power. But God simply is not involved in the minutiae like this, not in the day to day. It's just God is not involved in it. And that's why you can't apply that agency in this way. That at least solves for this problem. But I would love to hear from some of the folks who insist, no, no, no. God is involved in the minutia. God did.

prevent the bullet from killing Trump, but allowed it to kill a random innocent guy behind him. And of course, by definition, God allowed Charlie Kirk to be killed as well. Here's my explanation for why. I want to hear from some of those folks. Genuinely, I do. We're going to take a quick break and be right back. Sometimes the best snacks are the ones that have been around for a long time. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to get a great snack. And that is what our sponsor, Masa, is aiming for with their delicious tortilla chips that are made the traditional way. You know I love this stuff. Okay, Masa makes their chips with three ingredients, organic, niximalized corn, Redmond Real Seasol, and 100% grass-fed beef tallow. The chip is

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The link is in the description. Donald Trump has already packed his second term cabinet with loyalists. He's threatened deportation as political punishment. He's expanded executive authority in ways we have not seen in modern history. These are real changes that are happening right now. And what's even more alarming is that a lot of the media is either glossing over the worst of it or they're reframing it. So it all sounds a little more palatable.

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You'll only pay five bucks a month. Go to ground. .news slash Pacman or enter the code Pacman in the app to get started. The link is in the description. It is great to have back on the show today, Congressman Jake Ockincloss representing Massachusetts fourth congressional district. It's great to have you back on. There's so much to talk about.

I want to first maybe take your temperature on the shutdown and then go into some related issues. You, if I understand your position correctly, you've said Democrats shouldn't just cave and reopen the government and that some of the structural reforms, the health care subsidies, some of these other things are important. How do you balance that with the fact that the shutdown also has negative impact? on people? And how do you decide where you land ultimately? I don't want to shut down. Shutdowns are bad for the American people. They undermine the

integrity of the federal government. And I don't think it's Democrats who are shutting down the government. Republicans have the White House, the Senate, the House. They've claimed a mandate. They've also declared that they, quote, hate Democrats. And now they have found themselves with their vaunted mandate, unable to keep the government open precisely because they won't talk to Democrats. This is Congress 101. You want a deal. You negotiate. But Donald Trump has spent more time and more willingness to negotiate with Hamas than he has with the Democratic Party. That is a failure of his governance. Before this shutdown, I put forward a series of proposals that would be a starting point to get to yes. Talked about reversing the worst of the

Medicaid cuts, particularly through Medicaid 1115 waivers, which are happy to talk more about, talking about funding COPS grants so that local law enforcement have the tools they need to hire and train police officers. Talked about a vote on the tariffs that have been the biggest tax hike in the history of the middle class. Basic things, all of which have a super majority of support from Americans, none of which are esoteric, partisan issues, right? And they haven't so much has picked up the phone. Do you think shutdowns are ever appropriate to use as leverage? Or would you rather see shutdowns done away with altogether? I mean, not every government. In some places, if you, if the government gets to the point where it's going to shut down, there's an automatic call

for elections, for example, and there are very real repercussions for the lawmakers that allowed that to happen. I mean, what, what's your sense if we zoom out, understanding that you never want a shutdown. Love the question. And in fact, I just wrote a substack on this question on my substack simple but not easy, where I call for multi-year agency-specific appropriations. So, David, if you'd be willing to let me, like, wonk out for one minute here for our listeners. The way it works now is there are every year on September 30th, funding runs out. And every single year, Congress basically has to agree on every single element of the federal government, its budget. And that's been the way basically for the last 40 years, 50 years, roughly since

about the 1970s is the way we've done it. Since it started in the 1970s, only four times has Congress successfully funded the entire federal government on time. Four times. It's like 10% or fewer of the years. And never in the 21st century. So this system is broken. The single year appropriations of across-the-board funding for the federal government is broken. My approach is simple and I think more tightly scoped, which is to say Congress should take its time on an agency-by-agency basis to do multi-year authorizations and appropriations. So, for example, the Federal Aviation Administration, those are air traffic controllers and airport inspections, we come together, the authorizing committee, which would be transportation infrastructure. They

agree on new policy for the FAA, which, by the way, we did two years ago, was a good bipartisan process. Then, based on that new authorization, you give them five years worth of funding, and basically a ticket that says every year they go back to the Treasury and they draw funding based on that five-year authorization. For maybe the Environmental Protection Agency,

we do it for 10 years. Maybe for the National Institutes of Health, which we want to really insulate from politics, we do it for 15 years. Maybe for the Department of Defense based on the Constitution's prohibition on a standing army, We do it every single year to keep it as close as possible to the will of the people. But you stagger different agencies for different time lengths

based on insulation from politics versus accountability to the public will. And Congress is able to take its time on both the authorization, which is the policy, and the appropriations, which is the money. And that way we're not every single September in the situation where we've had nine months of posturing followed by six hours of behind the scenes deal making

that doesn't produce a great product because it was thrown together at the last minute. it. That makes a lot of sense. And my instinct is that my audience is going to respond quite, quite favorably to that. Sort of ancillary or tangential to the shutdown is the issue surrounding the election of your forthcoming colleague at Alita Grahalva. Now, we're going to be talking to her tomorrow on the show. I'm curious, is there anything you can tell us that's happening behind the scenes with your colleagues? And you don't have to name anybody, but just generally, where there's an acknowledgement that a lot of the attempt to delay her swearing in is related to her

expected vote on the Epstein files, which would be to release rather than to cover up. Is that really a salient matter to your Republican colleagues, as far as you know, is that at play here and why they're playing these games? Yes. I want to put forward two points on the Epstein issue. One is the biggest scandal to me is not what might be in those Epstein files, right? The biggest scandal to me is that even if the worst of the worst that we are imagining were to come out in the Epstein files, let's imagine, which is not a long stretch of to imagine, that Donald Trump was just smeared across the Epstein files in a series of very, very compromising positions. The biggest scandal is that even if that were to become common knowledge, the Republican Party would still cover for him. A bunch of Republican members that Congress would walk down the hallways and mumble when reporters ask them questions and they would say, oh, I didn't see that, or, well, I guess that's not really an issue that the American people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

This guy could literally be a, you know, fully compromised pedophile, and the Republican Party would still back him. That tells us all we need to know about how broken the Republican Party is behind Donald Trump and how broken this cult of personality has become for the American public. The other issue about the Epstein files is that it's really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the endemic corruption in this administration where there's one set of rules for the tech moguls, there's one set of rules for RFK Jr. and his henchmen. There's one set of rules for Howard Lutnik and his crypto bros. And there's another set of rules for the middle class where they just can't get ahead

on their Trump's administration. Now, if ultimately, I mean, even Marjorie Taylor Green said the other day, ultimately Grahavah is going to be sworn in. Ultimately, they're going to get the vote. What is the play then in order to try to delay if eventually it's going to come out? I don't know Speaker Johnson's machinations. My hunch is that it actually won't be Speaker Johnson who ends up running obstruction at the last moment for Donald Trump.

It'll actually be Pam Bondi. As we saw with their recent testimony to Congress, she has fully vacated even the illusion of a Department of Justice that has a firewall with the White House and that is pursuing justice impartially. It's a fully owned entity of Trump Incorporated. And my hunch is she'll find some semi-legal or illegal way of just ignoring the congressional dictum.

And I think what's imperative for Democrats is to not make this an isolated situation around the Epstein files. those who have the most salience, I know those are the most salacious, but to describe and to delineate how this actually, this is just one dot of a constellation of corruption. I mean, you've got the Secretary of Commerce flacking his own crypto enterprise in Pakistan and the Middle East. You've got RFK Jr.'s top policy aids owning companies on the side that are flacking bidets with tax preference dollars. You've got Brad Smith, who ran CMS for the first hundred days, hooking up health insurance corporations with less regulation

and more reimbursement, despite the fact that those health insurance corporations are investors in his company that he's currently running. And don't even get me started on the Trump family itself, right? Like the Trump coin and his sons. This is threaded through. This is marbled within the patrimony of Donald Trump. And the Epstein files are one example of it. I want to zoom out a little, and this is the last sort of general area. I want to talk about. If we just look historically, Republicans having taken the White House in 2024, the 26 midterms should be pretty good for your party.

At the same time, we have, number one, some polling concerns as to the status of the Democratic party right now. Number two, the Supreme Court is going to be hearing this case that could impact potentially as many as 19 currently blue seats, which could turn red depending on how that shakes out. Governor Newsom, who we recently had on and we'll be talking to again, has Prop 50 going. in California to try to mitigate some of this. The point here is a midterm that really should be pretty good for your party may not be so. And one of the things I keep hearing from my audience is, you know, David, I know that Republicans

are offering me a proverbial rotten meal. But then I hear from Democrats and even if they've got a nice meal, they're certainly not explaining why it's better in ways that are emotionally salient. And we saw this in the exit polls of 24, which was a lot of voters weren't really convinced that what was better for the average middle class voter was Kamala Harris rather than Donald Trump. Are you and your colleagues behind the scenes sort of acknowledging, hey, our messaging is not necessarily getting through.

We have a problem here. What do we do? Like I think my voters want to hear about like if the platform is that much better, why is something in the communication not functioning well? Yeah. It shouldn't be behind the scenes. It needs to be fully out in the open. And it's not a messaging problem.

It's an ideas problem. I am fed up with Beltway strategists and consultants who sort of massage and message tests and pressurize different talking points. No, like, it's about framing it as the working class, and it's really condescending to the average American. The average American is listening or reading four to six hours of content online every single day,

video, audio, text. They have the appetite to hear Democrats explain ideas in depth, new ideas that challenge the status quo and that explain why we are the party of improvement and we are the party for the middle class. The middle class has not had a voice in the Trump administration. The middle class doesn't have a super PAC, it doesn't have a lobby, but it should have the Democratic Party. Alyssa Slotkin has been clear on this matter and I subscribe to her point of view. and now we need to explain to the middle class why we are going to tackle and treat cost disease which has afflicted housing and health care

and utilities which now consume more than half of the middle class families take home pay. We will treat cost disease to make life more affordable. We will take on corruption on both sides. I've talked about the corruption of MAGA, but there is corruption on both sides and we need to take it on through election reform that gets rid of partisan primaries

and gerrymandering and citizens united. and we need to become the party trusted on education. The school closures were a catastrophe. We have not put forward a resonant and refreshing education agenda in the last five years. And we need to talk about building 1,000 trade schools, about surging one-on-one high-doseage tutoring to every student in America and about banning smartphones across the classrooms of this country so that these kids can learn and thrive. So in your mind, the communication maybe could use some improvement, but it's, also a core of ideas that really will make people's lives better, that you, are you saying

that those ideas have been missing or that they haven't been conceived in a way that's salient to people? Haven't been conceived. There was an old maxim that Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line. That's not true anymore. What happened over the last decade is that Republicans fell in love. They created a cult of personality around this individual. And Democrats fell in line.

And they fell in line for some righteous reasons. And I think it actually is important to have discipline in the ranks in the House Democratic Caucus and the Senate Democratic caucus, because we're in the minority and we have to hold the line. I don't have a problem with discipline. I do have a problem with an ideological straitjacket because that ideological straight jacket

is asphyxiating new ideas and young talent. And it's going to lock us into a permanent minority as a party, even putting aside the rigging and the gerrymandering that Republicans are contesting, if we stay in this present course after the census in 2030, we will be locked out of a governing majority as a party. We have to realign the electorate. We have to define a new center based on the best ideas across different ideological factions in this country and be unapologetic about it.

That means specific ideas that actually explain to the American people, not just who we are against, but what we are for. All right, Congressman Jake Ockinclos, I hope that more of your colleagues are thinking along these same lines. And I know that some are. And we've spoken to many of them. Always appreciate your time. And we'll talk to you again. Good to be with you, David. If you were shopping for a new mattress, I would recommend you start by looking at Helix sleep, the mattress I've been sleeping on for years, the only one that I recommend because they custom tailor it to your needs.

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Go to Helix sleep.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. Donald Trump did something really weird. He publicly sided with Hamas, or at least he's saying he prefers Hamas over rival Gaza gangs. Let me explain what's going on here because it's very interesting. In the wake of the Israeli Gaza deal, I hesitate to call it a peace deal since really none of the underlying conflict is resolved. But in the wake of that deal, something started to happen that often happens, which is that

has started to reassert control in the Gaza Strip. Now, this is not about whether Benjamin Netanyahu is good, he's not. This is not about whether Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory are legal. They are illegal by international law. What I'm talking about here is about something that often happens. Think back to when Biden executed Donald Trump's plan to leave Afghanistan. The Taliban came in and started to reassert control. And Trump attacked Biden for that, even though it would have happened.

if Trump had carried out the plan, it happens often. We have something analogous to that happening in Gaza right now, which is that there is reporting that Hamas has been killing Palestinian opponents in Gaza city's main square. These are like public executions that are taking place. These are fights between Hamas and local militias who do not like Hamas, got it. So Trump has asked about this. And what does he say? He goes, well, you know, some of those militias, he calls them gangs, some of them are

bad people and i'm okay with this and initially speaking they needed you know they did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad very very bad gangs and they did take them out and they killed a number of gang members and that didn't bother me much to be honest with you that's okay it's a couple of very bad gangs you know it's been different than other countries like venezuela sent their gangs into us and we took care of those gangs we have washington dc is one of the safest cities in the country was one of the so understand that Donald Trump is supporting Hamas here after all of this Trump is saying I like Hamas more than those militias good for them glad to see them doing that but the context of this entire deal this entire conflict

for years has been Hamas is bad and needs to be removed period Hamas being in control reasserting control would indicate a failure in resolving the problems that Trump identified in that region Trump's whole play has been or has become now, if a group does something useful for me, I'll praise them, even if what that is is killing people in public. Now, normally, when a group like Hamas is reestablishing control, the international goal is demilitarization. Endorsing what they're doing, which is what Trump is doing here, is pretty crazy.

You don't tend to see that. And the standard post-conflict policy usually calls for either, you know, sometimes you see independent security forces under international supervision, human rights monitors, aid that is sometimes tied to disarmament. The point is prevent exactly what we are now seeing, which is one faction executing rivals in the town square while claiming, hey, we're here to restore order. When Trump publicly sides with Hamas, Trump is signaling that authoritarian control is better than a democratic transition.

And it is the same mistake that the United States made when it empowered the Taliban to stabilize Afghanistan, which is a short-term win with a long-term disaster. Now, the irony here, if there is any, and this is actually tragic to even say irony, it seems sort of like we're minimizing, but there's a sick irony that Trump's own rhetoric undercuts his strong on terror branding. American law designates Hamas as a terrorist organization. Now, you could say, well, is that, is that right? Is that fair? I know there are some in my audience who go, no, Hamas is not a terrorist organization or they're no more terroristic than the IDF or put that aside for a second. The internal logic of it is the U.S. has designated Hamas a terrorist

organization and no sitting president has ever described violence by that group in positive terms. So when he goes, well, I do like Hamas more than the militias. He is contradicting decades of bipartisan foreign policy and telegraphing that actually ideology doesn't matter to him. Who's winning at the moment and is that useful to him? And so not that Trump could Trump's credibility on this conflict couldn't be lower. Just like Netanyahu's credibility on the conflict couldn't be lower. But Trump saying, I like what Hamas is doing with public killing with no due process is not something I had on my bingo card. During a speech where Donald Trump was supposed to be awarding the Presidential Medal

of Freedom to Charlie Kirk, he went on a rant about Los Angeles wildfires. The reality, of course, as he continues to blame Gavin Newsome, is that the Pacific Northwest is not connected to California's water system. There aren't valves to open up. Gavin Newsom hasn't blocked water or any of it. Now, the unfortunate reality is that Trump continues to insist that Gavin Newsom is doing something here that is preventing water from getting down. I'm actually going to play the clip for you of what Donald Trump had to say about this.

And you might notice that this sounds. This sounds a little bit familiar at this point. Why? Why? Why would they do it? But they're hurting our country and we're really taking it back one by one. If we didn't go into Los Angeles early on in the administration, the commissioner, the chief of police, Los Angeles said, if they didn't go in, we would have lost our city. Now, they already lost 25,000 houses to fire because they wouldn't let the water come in from the Pacific Northwest. All right. So Trump is repeating again, the water, the water from the Pacific Northwest. This is completely made up. And Gavin Newsom, again, he's clearly had enough.

He is dropping another Trump dementia bomb where Gavin Newsom posted asking a chat bot is not having a sense of reality, a symptom of dementia. And the answer from the chat bot is, yes, losing a sense of reality, such as perceiving things that aren't real or believing things that aren't true, can indeed be a symptom of dementia. Trump is. so triggered by Gavin Newsom that he then went out and said, oh, he's got to get his act together. Gavin Newsom, he's got to get his act together because had we not gone in at the beginning of my term, had we not gone in with a very strong, powerful force, they would have lost L.A. Now, you already lost 25,000 houses to fires, if you got a big scar right in the middle of the city.

And that should have never happened because they should have the water flowing in from the Pacific Northwest. All they had to do is open up the valves. He didn't want to do it. And he didn't want to do it. He says for environmental reasons. I don't believe that. But you know. Anyway, once again, this is all completely made up.

So here's the theme that's going on right now. Governors and members of the Senate are regularly saying the president is suffering from dementia. Governor Gavin Newsom has now said it multiple times. Governor J.B. Pritzker has said it multiple times. Ruben Gallego said it last week. This is the bigger story. Trump's public appearances are getting stranger every week. He repeats himself.

He invents geography that doesn't comport with maps. He stumbles through half-finished sentences. Those who have been tracking his speech patterns say there's a continued deterioration. His language skills are declining. His motor skills are declining. His vocabulary is declining. And at times he can't complete a thought. And now he's obsessed with rambling about imaginary water pipes or invisible valves that have nothing

to do with Gavin Newsom. And Newsom is turning it into political strategy by going, this guy has dementia. I believe that Republicans are noticing this. It's impossible not to. But the cult is so strong that for now they are mostly staying silent. My question to you, what will it take for Republicans to finally start talking about this? Let me know what you think. You often hear it said that young Republicans are a new kind of Republican.

They're not racist. They're not xenophobic. They're not anti-Semitic. They're not focused on social issues. They're not focused on cultural wars. They care about their job prospects and what education costs and economics. That half-baked hypothesis was just blown up by what I'm calling the I love Hitler leaks. Exposing young Republican leaders, this is from a private telegram chat where people running state chapters of the young Republicans are joking about gas chambers, rape, slavery, Hitler, calling black people monkeys referring to Jews as liars, joking about murderers.

murdering political opponents and one of them peter ginta uh is the chair of the new york state young republicans wrote i love hitler in the chat we have a bunch of the different images here you're giving nationals too much credit and expecting the jew to be honest uh everyone that votes know is going to the gas chamber great i love hitler i'd go to the zoo if i wanted to watch monkeys play ball. They love the watermelon people. Everyone that endorsed but then votes for us is going to the gas chamber. This girl is fully our deed. Okay. These are not anonymous trolls. These are not baseless people in some subreddit using a username that's letters and numbers randomly put together. These are state chairs, vice chairs, legislative staffers, and reportedly at least one Trump

administration official. Now, some of them have apologized. Some of them are saying, oh, my comments were taken out of context. But we have 3,000 pages of chat logs and 250 different slurs that were used. These are the people positioning themselves to be the next generation of Republican leaders. And the party's response has mostly been damage control. Elise Stefanik, who previously praised this Junta, Guinta guy's leadership, is now saying, oh, people need to resign.

Now, others are saying these chats might have been doctored. There's no evidence of that. This is where you get when you built a movement on cruelty and grievance and you give it to the younger generation. And while this was breaking, the rest of the Republican Party wasn't exactly doing cleanup duty. Trump was threatening to violently disarm Hamas while also praising Hamas for public executions. J.D. Vance was attacking George Stephanopoulos for asking him legitimate questions and re-asking

them when he was unwilling to answer them. Trump was sending $20 billion in taxpayer money to bail out Argentina. So the point here is the broader picture is a party that's rotting from the inside out. And then you look at the next generation that's up and coming and you go, wow, these people somehow seem to be even worse. So when you hear Republicans talk about the future of the party, they don't have new ideas. They don't have better leadership. It's repackaged hate, racism, anti-semitism and xenophobia on telegram. Now, it's up to them, right?

We can say, oh, there have to be consequences. This is their people. These are their people. They are the ones who need to figure out what to do. Now, you're going to hear from the, oh, but what about free speech? They're just speaking. This is all about consequences to speech. This is not a First Amendment issue.

I lost my job for my conservative beliefs. That's what they're going to go to. If a conservative value is I love Hitler, then there might be consequences to that. But this is not an issue of the First Amendment. This is an issue of consequences to the things that you say. And this is who Republicans have coming up in their leadership, terrifying, disgusting stuff. We will talk, by the way, on the bonus show today about the Argentina bailout. We will talk about what's going on with gun crime cases, which are mostly being ignored in

lieu of the immigration crackdown. And we'll get into more detail about the Voting Rights Act case before the Supreme Court. All of those stories are on today's bonus show. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else makes money to fund themselves is bad. If Alex Jones hates anything, it's the bonus show. We will see you then. you can sign up at join hackman dot com. I'll also be back tomorrow.