The David Pakman Show - 10/24/25: Bubble bursting as red states decline, Trump crushes farmers

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Rand Paul publicly rejects Trump’s call to execute drug dealers, revealing how cracks are forming inside the GOP as Trump demands blind loyalty -- Trump’s trade wars and tariffs wipe out U.S. soybean exports, bankrupting small farms while he falsely claims to champion agriculture -- Mike Lindell pleads for donations to fund his final appeal after losing defamation cases, symbolizing the collapse of his company and credibility -- Trump’s tariffs, deportations, and tax cuts backfire exactly as critics warned, driving inflation, worker shortages, and economic pain -- Farmers and ranchers turn on Donald Trump after his Argentina beef deal floods U.S. markets, enrages rural America, and exposes his “America First” hypocrisy -- Trump’s support erodes as donors, politicians, and voters quietly distance themselves, signaling the slow collapse of his political empire -- Republican states double down on failed tax cuts and gutted services, deepening poverty while relying on subsidies from the blue states they mock -- Trump’s extreme policies play out in real time, proving that his campaign promises weren’t exaggerations but blueprints for national chaos -- The Friday Feedback segment -- On the Bonus Show: Trump ends trade talks with Canada over a Ronald Reagan TV ad, Steve Bannon says there's a plan for Trump to serve a third term, and much more... 🔊 Babbel language learning: Get up to 60% OFF at https://babbel.com/pakman 🥣 Graza olive oil: Get 10% off “The Trio” set with code PAKMAN at https://graza.co 🥑 MASA tortilla chips: Get 25% off with code PAKMAN at https://masachips.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 (01:15) Rand Paul rejects Trump’s execution call (06:43) Soybean exports collapse under tariffs (11:25) Mike Lindell’s final appeal plea (18:08) Tariffs and tax cuts backfire (26:18) Farmers turn on Trump (34:31) Trump loses support gradually (40:14) Republican states worsen poverty (47:06) Friday Feedback  

Today, Republicans are increasingly turning on Trump and Rand Paul is the next guy as soybean sales to China have gone to zero and Mike Pillow makes a final desperate appeal. We're also going to talk about all of the things that the Republicans, the Manosphere, bros, and others told us we're never going to happen and they're all happening right now under Trump. And Trump is having more and more trouble with farmers who are slamming him and rightly so. Also, why do red states keep getting poorer and why do they think that they could succeed and survive on their own when they clearly couldn't? And we will also have your emails, feedback, comments, and replies.

All of it on today's show. It's the Friday show. This has been a pretty good week of shows. We often at the end of the week go, wow, that was bad. But this was a pretty good week. We've also got a great, great bonus show today. And so much more all today on the David Packman show. We are seeing more and more Republicans turn on Donald Trump.

Trump may not care about the law, but there are a couple of Republicans left that still do, at least sometimes. And it turns out that committing crimes isn't great for Trump's credibility with the Republicans who still care about the law. We're going to play a clip here of Rand Paul. Now, you all know, I'm not like a Rand Paul fan. If Rand Paul gets something right, I'll tell you. If Marjorie Taylor Green gets something right, I'll tell you. If Thomas Massey gets something right, I'll tell you. These are not progressives. These are not our allies. These are not people who can be trusted to advance our agenda. But if they get something right, we point it out. And sometimes it's sort of a, And even this person gets it right, you know that something is a little wacky.

And here is Rand Paul explaining how outrageous what's happening in Venezuela and off the coast of Venezuela with the bombing of boats is. Number one, there is no fentanyl made in Venezuela. Not just a little bit. There's none being made in Venezuela. These are outboard boats that in order for them to get to Miami would have to stop and refuel 20 times. and all likely going to Trinidad and Tobago,

which is an island right off of the coast of Venezuela. So there's a lot of reasons to be worried about this, but number one is the broader principle of, when can you kill people indiscriminately when you were at war. That's why when we declare war, it's supposed to be done by Congress, it's supposed to be thoughtful, it's supposed to be debated,

and we're not supposed to do it willy-nilly. And then when you have war, you just kill people in the war zone. And even then there are rules of engagement, But interdicting drugs has always been a criminal activity and a criminal anti-crime sort of activity where we don't just summarily execute people. We actually present evidence and convict them. Can you imagine present evidence, due process, people get convicted, they get punished and sentenced in accordance with their crime.

Wow. What a world. Now Rand Paul was the only Republican senator, I believe, not invited to Trump's luncheon. this week, you can tell Trump is starting to lose his grip a little bit when even the people that used to defend him start to speak up. And of course, again, Rand Paul's not suddenly liberal. He's not on the left. He's doing something Trump hates, which is telling the truth. And when Trump said, I want to execute drug dealers, Rand Paul says, we don't just summarily execute people. To his blame, Rand Paul looks the other way on.

so many things that Trump does. Trump lying, bullying, breaking other laws. This time, I guess, Trump is going too far even for Rand Paul. You might remember that on the impeachment, Rand Paul called, was it one or both of the impeachments? Now, I don't it's so hard to remember. Rand Paul called one or both of the impeachments witch hunts. He mocked reporters who criticized Trump, but all of that really doesn't mean anything now.

held this big lunch and he didn't invite Rand Paul and Rand Paul is occasionally critical of Trump and the currency for Trump is loyalty. That's all. Rand Paul dared to say something that's true. And the real story, as is often the case, you know, Rand Paul saying, hey, we're kind of the United States. One of the things we don't really do is summarily execute people with no due process. But what this is really about is how in an instant Trump turns on you and you're on the outs. This is about control. Trump doesn't want allies. He wants followers more like in a cult who don't question him.

And Rand Paul and Thomas Massey and now Marjorie Taylor Green sometimes question what MAGA is up to, not most of the time, but sometimes. And when Rand Paul says that there's no fentanyl made in Venezuela, he's correcting a lot of a lie from Donald Trump. Trump can't handle that. Every time someone stands up to Trump, Trump cuts him off. And what's left are the people who are too scared to speak or too ambitious to care. And the longer it lasts, the smaller and more paranoid that the remaining cadre ends up getting. Authoritarian leaders often turn on their own people. And one of the really interesting things about Trump's 10-year political career is that if you think back to the original cohort

of Donald Trump's cabinet even and the people around him in 2017, 2018, what is today the inner circle of Trump is completely different. It's been a complete and total replacement. And it's a very common thing with authoritarian that they turn on their own people, not because they're betrayed, but because they start to believe. loyalty means silence. You can never say anything against me if you are loyal. So Rand Paul's not a hero. I'm not trying to make him out to be a hero. But when he says we don't summarily execute people, he's right. And it's a reminder of how far Donald Trump has dragged the Republican party

to wear policy, crime, the law. Who is willing to pretend this is normal? There's a bunch of Republicans who are. They're still in Trump's good graces. Rand Paul is not. The farmers are getting crushed. Soybean sales to China have gone to zero. This is not what winning looks like. And is there anyone left who thinks that this is going well? As we've talked about before, American sales of soybeans to China have gone to zero as of the

end of May. It is not a mystery why this is going on. It's because of the the Donald Trump led trade war on many countries, but certainly on China. And meanwhile, Donald Trump's agriculture secretary says no one's ever been more supportive, outspokenly supportive of our farmers than Donald Trump himself. But secondly, no one has been more outspoken or I believe more supportive of our farmers and our ranchers than this president has, perhaps in our lifetimes, perhaps since Abraham Lincoln founded the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Yet another one of these comparisons to Abraham Lincoln, you know, she's taking orders from Trump really well. Trump has started to say he's a better president than Lincoln was. And now you've got other people saying even Lincoln might not be able to outdo Trump. And the Lincoln comparison would almost be funny if the reality weren't completely brutal for our farmers, which is that Trump screams about America first. And meanwhile, Brazil and Argentina are taking over America's old soybean customers. in Iowa are losing billions cumulatively. And meanwhile, China is going elsewhere because

Trump's trade wars wrecked American farmers, agriculture, and ranchers in his first term. And he's doing it again. And when he slapped these tariffs on China, Beijing and Xi retaliated. And the United States has farmers who are just getting crushed. And it's happening on soybeans. It's happening on pork. It's happening on dairy. The exports have completely collapsed. Washington now has to step in with a bailout, a bailout, which Trump says you're going to pay with the tariff money, which he says comes from China, but of course it doesn't. We know who really pays the tariffs to American small businesses and Americans through price increases. And the part that a lot of people are forgetting is that some of these farmers never recovered from Trump's first term. They took loans during

Donald Trump's first term just to survive that. Some of them are still paying for those loans. And now Trump's just bashing them over the head again, again, again. And now in Trump's second term, it's like groundhogs day except worse, because foreign buyers are gone, markets have dried up, small family farms are closing, and agribusiness is just scooping up, scooping up land. Trump doesn't see farmers as people. He sees them as props.

Can I talk about the farmers? Can I do a photo up with farmers? Can I pay lip service to farmers in some way? Can I set them up to help me at a campaign rally? But they're disposable once the cameras go off. And Trump says he loves them, but you look at the chart of soybean sales going to zero. Plunge, just plunge. That's how much Trump really loves them.

And we were promised winning and what they got was bankruptcy. Now we've kind of been going back and forth, me with you in the audience, on this question. of, you know, Republicans say we don't want a nanny state. The government can't protect everybody from everything. We shouldn't be, you know, limiting the size of sodas that you can buy in New York City or whatever the grievance of the day is. And so by that logic, should we even be bailing out the farmers? the other hand, although most farmers voted for Trump and Trump said he was going to do this,

a lot of farmers didn't vote for Trump. And so now they are getting punished, brutally punished, their businesses being decimated. So should the government be coming to the aid of the farmers, even in my own audience, there is dissent in the ranks, I guess I would say, where not all of you are necessarily on the same page. Let me know what you think. And also, I think, Is it the same to say, well, the farmers were crushed by the government. The people with diabetes thanks to drinking soda all day, that's not the government that caused that. That's private industry. So there it does make sense for the government to come in and regulate, but we've got a different situation here with the farmers. Let me know what you think.

Is this a problem that the government should be bailing out farmers for? Mike Lindell, the CEO and founder of My Pillow, also known to us just as Pillow, says that it is almost over. He's making what might be a final desperate appeal and says it's going to be over very, very soon. The self-proclaimed Pillow King and Trump supporter turned, I guess we could call him election conspiracy purveyor, says he has only five days left. And I guess since the videos from yesterday, it's only four days now, to file an appeal. in the defamation case that he lost last month. He doesn't have the money. He doesn't have the money. But this has to be appealed by October 27th, and I need your help. If you go to mypillotrial.com, we've raised about half the money needed. If I don't, if I don't appeal this, it's going to be

all over. Mike Pillow begging for donations yet again, saying if you don't send them money right now, it is over and it probably is over. I find this to be potentially the final act. This, this might even be the denouement of one of the strangest meltdowns in modern American business and modern American politics. And I genuinely feel bad for his employees. I do. This was optional. And we, you know, Mike Pillow's been on the show a few times. We have been sort of tracing the downfall of Pillow for a very long time. During COVID, Pillow opted. to show up at the White House, say Trump was sent to us by God and say he was going to make masks and gowns or I don't even remember whatever else. And then he continued with the election

conspiracies saying Trump really won in 2020 when Trump lost. And he appeared on my show and he talked about some of these comings and goings and it all started to get very bad for his employees. He started to lose deals with retailers. I think it was Macy. and I don't remember who else said, we don't want your products anymore. Mike Pillow was always a right winger, but my pillow was a legitimate company, even if you don't like the products, in the sense of selling tens of millions of units, employing over a thousand people, deals with major retailers. And Pillow decided to blow it all up when he went all in with Trump and bankrolled

the cyber symposium or as he called it, the cyberzebosium, it revealed. nothing. He attacked voting machine companies. He accused secret cabals of stealing elections and got himself sued into oblivion. And Dominion and Smartmatic didn't just file lawsuits. They won judgments, big ones. And his empire started to disintegrate. The retailers said no more.

The affiliates left. The revenue went down. His factories downsized. He had the auction where he was auctioning off a whole bunch of stuff. And the tragic part is that, you know, I'm a labor guy. The employees didn't do anything wrong. Some of them, I'm sure, support Trump. Some of them don't.

They were making pillows, shipping, logistics, working in warehouses. A lot of them lost their jobs. And they didn't really do anything wrong. So while Pillow is begging his followers to save him, what he's really trying to do is not about the business, although he often says the business might go under the, the suppliers, the workers. They're kind of collateral damage in this entire thing. Pillows trying to save himself, and it's representative of the perfect mega business model. Destroy your company, blame other people, and then beg your fans for cash. And this should really be, you know, Mike Lindell used to be

a cautionary tale about addiction and recovery and maybe in a sense an inspirational tale. He dealt with addiction. He went through recovery. He ran a successful business. Cool. Even if you don't agree with his political views or his religious views, fine. He's now a cautionary tale about how delusion and cult membership can lead to your downfall and destroy not only your livelihood, but also that of your employees and your business. He's got four days left to come up with the rest of this money. I don't know what happens if he can't, but this saga may quickly be coming to an end. And the irony is that he said he was going to wake America up. His company is at risk of being put to sleep here. How bad do we feel for pillow? How bad do we feel for

his employees? I certainly feel worse for them. This wasn't their choice. Many of you know that I grew up speaking Spanish, but I took French in middle school and high school. I'm a little rusty on it. And when I was getting ready for my last trip to France, one of the things I was most worried about was, am I going to be able to communicate in everyday situations, ordering food in French, asking for directions, greeting people. I didn't want to be the person flipping through my phone, trying to translate everything. And what really helped me was Babel. Instead of like vocabulary lists that go on forever in a vacuum, our sponsor Babel teaches you language through real conversations. So the French Babel taught me was super useful on the trip. And the best part is that

Babel fits into quick 10 to 15 minute lessons so I could fit it into my busy schedule very easily. Thanks to the interactive dialogue exercises in the Babel app and the spaced repetition that made the phrases stick. I was just more comfortable. I have to admit, my girlfriend was actually impressed with my French when we were in France. I could order at restaurants, buy train tickets, figure out, is there a baby changing station in the bathroom? And also just chat with locals made it way more enriching. You can get up to 55% off at babble.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. The David Packman Show remains primarily an audience-supported program. Memberships and substack premium subscriptions together are our primary source of funding. For our website

members, we do an extra show every day called the bonus show and provide commercial-free audio and video streams of the show just for you hours before the show is made available to everybody else over on the substack premium side we've got a subscriber only Q&A's bonus posts and we are going to start allowing our substack paid subscribers to select some of the stories that make it onto the show or bonus show you can check it all out at join packman.com or substack.d david packman.com. You know what's wild. We were told explicitly and repeatedly and confidently that there were certain things that were never going to happen under Donald Trump. And a lot of these Republicans looked us in the eyes and they said, you guys are being hysterical.

That's not how these things work. It's Trump being Trump. And now it's all happening exactly like we said it was going to. I'll give you some examples and we'll start with tariffs. Trump announced his tariff plan and Republicans said to us, you don't have to worry. the tariff burden will be on China and foreign countries. It's not going to affect domestic prices. It's not going to affect American companies or consumers.

They said it over and over and over again. Trump said China's going to pay. It was gospel on Fox News. But we knew that is not how tariffs work. It's never been how tariffs work. Tariffs are an import tax paid by the importer. If Ford imports something from China for their cars, Ford paid. the import tax, also known as the tariff. And so if you talk to economists rather than partisan

hacks, they would tell you that's how it works. We said it was going to happen. And what's happening right now is prices are going up and it's happening in part because of the tariffs. Electronics cost more. Shirts cost more money because American companies pay the tariffs when they import the goods. They pass that cost onto you. Republicans said never going to happen. It's happening. 2, mass deportations. When Trump started ramping up the deportation rhetoric, we said this will devastate industries. This will be bad for the economy. A lot of sectors rely on immigrant labor, both documented and undocumented, agriculture, construction, meat packing, food service. And Republicans laughed, and they said Americans are going to take those jobs and we're going to be better off economically.

The economy is going to be fine. It's going to be better. And now we see farms in California can't find workers to pick crops and produce is rotting in the fields. Who is that good for? Nobody. Construction projects are stalling because there aren't enough workers, which reduces the housing stock, which raises the cost of housing. Meat processing plants are not operating at full capacity. Food prices, which Trump said we're going to come way down, are up.

And it is not this like unpredictable esoteric theoretical economic theory. It's people who pick strawberries, processed chicken, sometimes transport the stuff. They are being rounded up and deported. Republicans said it would never happen and it's happening. We then go to inflation more broadly. You look at Trump's policies. The tax cuts for the wealthy, the tariffs, the deportations, the federal reserve pressure. Hey, Jay Powell, please cut rates, blah, blah, blah.

We said this will be inflationary. They said no, no, no, the tax cuts pay for themselves. The tariffs help the economy. We're going to be so prosperous. Prices will come down. Everything's going to be great. Well, inflation hasn't come down. It's slowly going up, not because of Biden's policies from years ago, but because of the policies

that are implemented right now under Donald Trump. If you deport the agricultural workforce, food's going to cost more. It's simple economics, which they claim to understand. When you put a tariff on everything, stuff costs more. If you blow a hole in the deficit with tax cuts for billionaires, that has consequences. Republicans said it would never happen and it's happening. I wish they would simply admit they were wrong. I would have such respect if one of these people publicly came out Bessent, for example,

and said, we miscalculated. They either pretend it's not happening or they blame Democrats or some combination of the two things. It's sort of like a national gaslighting. You heard them say mass deportations wouldn't hurt the economy. You heard them say these tax cuts would supercharge growth. They won't increase the deficit. You're not crazy. You're not misremembering.

They just weren't telling you the truth. We've got the receipts to prove it. One other that I want to talk about. They said for a long time, we're never going to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicare, Medicare, Medicaid, never going to do it. And we said the, the proposals necessitate that. You can't accomplish X without touching those things. And they told us we were nuts.

And it went from we're never going to touch those things to we're just going to reform them but not cut benefits, which was a lie, as I told you on Wednesday, to all right, we are going to touch these things, but it's going to be for the greater good. This is not about dunking on Republicans for being wrong. Real people are suffering because of policies that were sold on lies. And the thing about it is, it's sort of like when in the first term, Trump said, I'm going to build a wall with Mexico that Mexico will pay for. It ended up not happening.

And in the aftermath, you've got all these people on the right going, well, you know, in order to understand why it didn't happen, happen, you have to consider the idiosyncrasies of and the fragmentation therein and we had the particular set of fact. We all knew it was never going to happen. From a construction perspective, you couldn't do it in four years. From a political perspective, Mexico was never going to pay for the thing. And Trump built 200 miles or something like that. We don't need complicated explanations.

We knew it wasn't going to happen and it hasn't. So all of the stuff that they told you wasn't going to be happening is happening now. And I wish someone would remember it the next time that they make promises. Now, as is often the case when we when we talk about these things, I can shout about it till I'm blue in the face and I'm turning blue. Most people don't watch political shows. I mean, like, this is just, you know, I talk about this whenever I get together with Brian Tyler Cohen and Tyler Cohen and Brian Tyler and and and Brian Cohen.

We all get to all of us, we get together or with the Midas touch guys. And we kind of have this realization where it's like as big as we get. There is this glass ceiling where a lot of the country says, I don't care about politics, don't like politics, just I don't vote. I don't care about it. And unless we can really get these ideas that these Republican promises were destined for failure, we've got to get it out beyond the political space. And so this is why I think it's so important for the left for Democrats, however you want

to kind of couch it to really expand beyond the overtly political shows. It's a must. And it also is really important. You know, sometimes we talk about the infighting within the left. If we imagine for a second, oh, let me actually get exact numbers, about 2024 presidential results. If we imagine that in 2024, Kamala Harris had 75 million votes. Imagine that of that 75 million, five million was reluctant.

And then there's another five. million outside that actually was so reluctant that they stayed home, right? Together, that's like 10 million votes. I believe it is easier to work on the huge swath of America, tens of millions of people who simply do not vote, get them activated. I believe it is way easier than arguing with the slivers of the left. And I'm probably even overstating their numbers. The slivers of the left that are just doing the infighting. I think the infighting is fine. There should be. a, there should be a debate as to what the direction of the Democratic Party should be. But I think as a matter of winning elections, we've got to go and get those non-voters.

That is really the opportunity. Democrats have not figured out how to activate them and they're going to need to. Remember when Donald Trump called himself the best thing to ever happen to farmers? That is not exactly true. And the farmers are now reading the fine print. We now are dealing with Donald Trump wanting to bail out. Argentina's far-right president, Javier Millet, by importing Argentinian beef to the United States and giving him, is it $20 or $40 billion at this point? Who the hell knows? And the plan is to just

flood the U.S. market with foreign beef to lower prices. Trump is acknowledging grocery prices aren't down. He says they are, but implicitly he's acknowledging that they're not because he's trying to figure out ways to bring down, for example, beef prices. And you have American ranchers and American farmers rightly furious with Donald Trump. John Boyd is the founder of the National Black Farmers Association. He said Trump set us up and sold us out. And that is putting it gently, to be frank. He says it's appalling that Trump who campaigned on loving farmers is now helping Argentinian farmers first. Now, many of you know I'm from Argentina. It is deeply painful to me that for decades, Argentina has been an economic mess.

And when Argentinians elect a nominally left-wing president, it doesn't get any better. And when Argentinians elect a nominally right-wing president, it doesn't get any better. I say nominally because politics layer on the political spectrum a little differently in Argentina, but it doesn't matter. The point is corrupt leader after failed leader after corrupt leader. I do not believe for a second that Trump dumping 20 or 40 billion into Argentina is going to solve the problem. In fact, Argentina has a big problem with leaders absconding with money, kind of to a degree how

Argentina ended up in this mess to begin with, although only one piece of many. So as much as I want Argentina to do better for the sake of my friends and family and because I wish that that were the case, this is not a solution and it is really hurting American farmers. There is one soybean farmer saying Trump created this problem. Price of soy dropped under the Trump administration, largely the result of the Trump administration's trade war with China. John's crops diligently planted, meticulously cared for, are losing their value. Are you angry? Oh yeah.

Oh, I'm totally mad. There's no reason for it. This is absolute stupidity. This is a man-made crisis caused by Donald Trump, period. Soybeans are the largest agricultural export from the U.S. Last year, the value was more than $24 billion. China bought 52% of those soybeans. Since May, the country has placed zero orders.

Zero. That is 0.0. Here's another farmer saying Trump's destroying the market. We don't want a bailout. We want to market. Bailouts don't work. Bailouts are band-aids. We aren't even made whole off of this.

That's money that should be going towards senior citizens. That's money that should be going for the Affordable Care Act. That's money that should just be going to regular tax cuts for normal Americans and not billionaires, period, plain and simple. And what he is doing is destroying our markets. This is the second time that Donald Trump has done this exact thing. Um, the putting aside the Argentina thing for, for a moment, versions of this exact same thing happened during Donald Trump's first term. And now, I guess under the guise of helping Argentina,

Trump is again messing with farmers. We're now selling zero soybeans to China. China's fine. They've found new partners. It's the American farmers that will get screwed long term. And even experts are saying this isn't going to fix anything. Argentina simply doesn't produce enough beef to really make a dent in the American market. We are hurting American farmers and ranchers for no real reason. It's just to give Donald Trump more money to send to his friends. Colin Woodall from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association said Trump's plan harms American ranchers while creating chaos.

I think that's true. This is what happens when you elect a guy who doesn't understand economics and who thinks deal making is yelling, you're fired or take the deal and calling Michael Flynn in the middle of the night to say, is a strong dollar or a weak dollar good for the United States? Trump did that during his first term. When a reporter asked Trump, how are American farmers going to feel by what you're doing here? Trump said condescendingly, Argentina's fighting for its life, young lady.

That was Trump's response. The America first guy goes, they're fighting for their life. life, young lady. Thomas Massey, a Republican congressman that Trump wants out, said this is not America first. We don't need the U.S. flooded with beef from Argentina. So Trump's farmers are now furious. Economists don't understand what the hell Trump is doing. And some Republicans are now starting to call Trump a sellout. This is worse than a bad trade deal. This is really just a long-term fiasco. And the worst part of it, and I think a lot of people don't really get this, you can't fix this now if you just undo the tariffs. I think Trump is holding hope that when it gets

too politically difficult or if it gets too politically difficult, he can just go, oh, I'm canceling the tariffs. I'm going to reverse this, that, the other thing. China's gone. China on soy has found other places to get it. Those other countries are thrilled. China's thrilled. They've cut the United States out. They can show we don't really need to do what you want us to do. We'll do what's best for us. And if Trump were to back off the tariffs, I don't really see any reason for China to go, okay, okay, we'll cancel all the deals we made with these other countries. Trump, if he wants to get some of these deals back, is likely to have to not only back off of the tariffs, but then go to these countries and say, I'm going to give you an extra sweetener, an extra

element for you to come back. And so that could end up costing us more than just having done nothing to begin with would have done. So the irony is tragic. The America first president is now importing other countries beef because he can't even manage America's own. And when the dust settles, I hope at least the farmers realize who's to blame. Not all, but most farmers and ranchers did support Donald Trump in 2024. I hope that when it's all said and done, obviously that they get to keep their livelihood. I never wish for anyone to lose their livelihood. But I hope they understand why this happened and who did it. In Trump's America, loyalty is this one way street. You've got to be loyal to Trump, but he doesn't have to be loyal to you. It would be nice

if at least there were some political repercussions to this absolute disaster. I've been using Graza olive oil for years. And I am super excited that Graza is now a sponsor of the show. Graza olive oil is always fresh. It's never blended. They use one olive from one region in Spain, no mysterious blends. It's a traceable and fresher product. And the packaging is super practical. None of these messy, drippy spouts. Graza oils come in easy to use squeeze and spray bottles. They've got three types, super simple. Frizzle for high smoke point cooking, sizzle for everyday cooking, and drizzle, which is more for garnishes and dressings. I've been using Graza oil in my house for years. I love everything about it. My audience gets 10% off the trio,

which comes with all three varieties they offer in a squeezy bottle. So you're all set for every style of cooking. Go to graza.co and use the code Pacman. The link is in the description. All right. I want to talk about something that feels almost inevitable at this point. We are watching the Trump bubble crack in real time. And I don't believe the question any longer is whether it burst. I think the question is when does it burst and what impact does it have when it does? Because here's the thing. Every political movement built on a cult of personality eventually collapses. Sometimes it collapses with the death of the cult leader, but it always collapses. We look at history, we see it, and we're seeing the pressure build. So I want to take a little bit of a look at what's

actually happening. The approval. rating is sliding, we see that. Not catastrophically over the last few months, not all at once, but it is steadily sliding. It's like air leaking from a tire. And even in red states, even among Republicans, you're seeing slippage. The true believers will tell you, oh, but the polls are fake. But what they can't explain and Republican politicians are nervous is that if they really thought that everything was fine, they wouldn't be hedging the way they are. The MAGA base is very loud online, very passionate. But if you look at their fundraising numbers, they're down.

If you look at the ride or die people from 2016 who doubled down in 2020 and maybe we're with them in 2024, some of them are pretty tired. Some of them are broke from donating to Trump time and again. Some of them are realizing that the things Trump promised aren't materializing. They're not going to materialize. And then you've got the Republican infighting. Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Green occasionally Rand Paul. When the demagogue starts to weaken, the knives often come out.

It's another trend that we see. And so you've got Republicans who were too scared to criticize Trump in the past developing a spine. Not most of them, but some of them. You see some governors distancing themselves. You see senators who voted to acquit him twice, suddenly having diplomatic things. to say about the future of the party and, you know, looking inward. And so what it seems like is happening is that a bunch of Republicans kind of smell blood

in the water. They're doing the math. They see a nearly 80 year old guy, legal challenges to so much of what he's doing, an economy that's not delivering, losing support among the base blanket tariffs. And they might be thinking his time is coming and maybe my time is coming. And so what the bursting will probably. look like is not one moment. It's gradual. A thousand small defections. You know, the local Republican who stops mentioning Trump and campaign ads. We've seen that. The Fox News host who covers

him a little bit less testing the waters. We've seen that. The mega donor that says, I'm going to shift a little bit of money somewhere else, which we've also seen. And then one day, the people who were all in start looking around and realizing we are in shrinking company here. The thing they based their entire political identity on may deflate. Now, there's a psychological need not to feel like you wasted years on a loser. And they may be looking for an exit ramp. Now, some won't actually leave. Every single cult has the diehards who go down with the ship.

But the casual supporters, the kind of transactional Republicans who back Trump because he won, the people who like that he made. liberals mad, you know, they're looking for the door. And what can accelerate the collapse is losing and Trump is setting himself up to lose. The economy, he promised, is not materializing. The policies aren't working. The approval numbers are dropping. And when the dear leader stops getting political wins, the spell can break. When the pitch was, I'm a winner and I'll make you win and you don't win, what is left? Now, there's also the generational component, which I think is worth mentioning, you know, young Republicans who aren't Maga believers, they're thinking about the next

30 years. And the next 30 years does not include Donald Trump. It might include Donald Trump Jr. God forbid, but they're not going to hitch their wagon to, you know, the sinking ship of a 79 year old. The prediction for me is as follows. When the bubble bursts, it will ultimately burst quickly. We will go from the inevitability of Trump's legacy to who would Trump? I don't know. We're kind of between, you know, J.D. Vance and whoever, but there's going to be very little discussion of Donald Trump because a lot of these strong men leaders, a lot of these people at the top of a cult of personality, they seem invincible until all of a sudden they're not. And Trump's comeback has been much weaker than the original, lower energy, a much more fragile movement. And the

historical revisionism, I expect when Trump is finally done, is going to make. your head spin. Fox is going to pivot so quickly. They'll find the next strong man, the next con man, but the version of Trump we see right now is definitely on borrowed time. So watch for the signs, watch for the donors hedging their bets, the pressure is building, the base is exhausted. I believe it is eventually going to collapse spectacularly. And that is not in the scenario where Trump dies in office, which there are a lot of people saying, obese nearly 80 year old, the actuarial tables aren't good. He's clearly lying about his health. I'm not even dealing with that scenario. I believe that the implosion is ultimately going to be absolutely nuts. Ambitious politicians will

start circling. And there is going to be a whole Trump who kind of thing. Earlier in the week, I told you that if New England plus New York wanted to secede and make their own country, it would be one of the wealthiest and most successful countries in the world. The red states really can't secede because they depend on the blue states. What I want to talk about today is related to that, but it's different. It really should be a massive political scandal, in fact. Red states keep getting poorer. It is not an accident. This is predictably the result based on the policy they support. Look at some of the poorest states in the country. Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky. They're all red states. They're all solidly Republican.

They are all getting poorer. We keep hearing. Republicans are going to turn these places around. And meanwhile, we find the richest states, Massachusetts, New York, California, Connecticut, Minnesota. They are all blue states, states with the highest minimum wages. And yet they are still doing better. Stronger worker protections and more union members. And they are still doing better.

Better funded schools. And they're still doing better. social safety nets and they're still doing better. And if we look around the world, and I mentioned this on Tuesday, you see Denmark, you see Sweden, you see Norway, you see countries with strong socially democratic policies ranking highest in prosperity, happiness, health outcomes, economic mobility, universal health care, strong education systems, worker protections. They have all the things that Republicans like to say will destroy a state. And yet, the most successful countries around the world and the most successful states in the U.S. share those socially democratic policies.

They are not socialist hellholes. It's still capitalism. The American states that most closely mirror that model are the most prosperous. The connection is not subtle. You look at the red states and what's happening. They cut taxes on the rich. They promise jobs and prosperity. It doesn't happen. The revenue disappears. So they slash their education. budgets. They slash healthcare. They slash infrastructure. Things get even worse. And then they act shocked when businesses don't want to relocate there. Well, the schools are terrible and there's crumbling roads and low access to health care. Why would we go there? Kansas actually tried this. We covered this extensively when it was going on. The Kansas experiment was massive tax cuts that were going to

create an economic boom. They were going to be so attractive to businesses and to others that it's going to create an economic boom. And it didn't happen. The state fell apart. schools started closing early roads fell apart even republicans reverse course did other red states learn no they go what we need is the same thing kansas did mississippi one of the poorest states said let's cut taxes for the wealthy doesn't work uh their schools are a disaster on average and they're going to get even worse they reject the medicaid expansion so now you've got rural hospitals that are closing but the rich in corporations got their tax breaks right what What drives me nuts about this is that these states survive despite their mismanagement

thanks to federal subsidies coming disproportionately from blue states. California and New York send way more money to Washington than they get back. And then Washington sends the money to the red states that are failing thanks to their own disastrous policies. Mississippi gets way more money out than what they pay in. You also have to talk about the brain drain. Young people who get educated in red states leave for where the good jobs are, where the salaries are higher, where their rights are protected.

That is not red states. That is blue states on average. But Republicans keep saying, oh, you know, these coastal elites and there's a little bit of population that's moving from California and New York to Texas and Florida. But the big picture here is that these red states aren't doing well. The welfare programs in blue states are not causing the problem that Republicans predict. Critical race theory, which they don't understand and isn't actually something being taught. It's not causing a problem for the blue states.

But what is making red states poorer and poorer is they keep electing people who run on making government not work, then government doesn't work and the state suffers. You come in and you sabotage education and you gut worker protections and you reject federal funding. And then you point at the wreckage and you go, look, government doesn't work. Well, it's government that they are voting for and government the way that they are doing it. And meanwhile, we've got the proof. You look at Scandinavian social democracy. You go, damn, things are pretty good in Denmark and Sweden. Then you look at Massachusetts and Connecticut. You go, wow, the policies in Massachusetts and Connecticut are really similar to Denmark and Sweden. And look, life expectancy is longer.

People make more money. Education is better, more access to health care, better infrastructure. It's so obvious and yet they don't want to acknowledge it. If you invest in education, infrastructure and healthcare, people do better. States that treat governance as an ideological experiment in proving government is bad, well, they're not doing well. Their schools fail. They get poverty and the future doesn't look so bright. So the data is clear.

The pattern's undeniable. And election after election, these states are choosing the same failed policies. Will they ever learn is the question I leave you with. 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.

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If you are ready to try the most delicious tortilla chips you've ever had, which are sustainably produced, go to masahchips.com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman for 25% off your first order. The link is in the description. All right, let's get to some Friday feedback. You can always email info at David Pakman.com, but we will feature comments from Facebook, YouTube, substack, Spotify. You never know what will show up. We start today with Keegan Colton who says about the potential release of the Epstein files.

They need time to doctor the files up and redact names. You know, there's a lot of you are thinking in the same way about these Epstein files. We asked Adelita Grahalva if inevitably you're going to vote to release the files. Why try to delay it? What difference does it make? And her explanation was, well, I will ultimately vote if given that opportunity, eventually she's going to be sworn in, but maybe by the time she's sworn in, they can come up with some other reason why the vote can't happen.

But there's a bigger story here. And we addressed it a couple of weeks ago, which is if Republicans at this point came out and handed us files and said, here are the files, I think all of us would be extraordinarily skeptical that those are really the full complete files. And so it it almost seems to me that we would more reliably believe the files are the files and the full files if they leaked. But then even if they leaked, I think there would be some suspicion that it was a calculated leak and that it is not the full files. The point is the transparency that we were promised has so obviously fallen by the wayside that I don't know that any of us would really believe when the files are out, if they ever are,

that they genuinely represent the full scope of the files. I would be extraordinarily skeptical. Let me know what you think. But I think that that message is absolutely spot on. A Robert Sedler wrote on Facebook, the math works just fine people. This is in regard to how Donald Trump and people around him will. say they're going to reduce the price of something by a thousand percent. And we explained, hey, that doesn't really make a mathematical sense. Robert says the math works just fine people.

Example, I left my house and an hour into my drive at 75 miles per hour. I saw a cop. I reduced my speed by 654%. And within minutes, I was actually back in my driveway, having never even left yet. I think I broke time and space, but still a lot of fun. Yeah. What, what? When Trump says we're going to cut the price 700%, unless you are going to start paying people to buy the thing, the math of it doesn't make any sense. Now, I heard an explanation that a couple of MAGA sent in. I'm going to tell you what it is. It doesn't really make too much sense to me, but here's what they say.

This is the MAGA explanation for how Trump is right that he's going to reduce the price of something 700%. Imagine that the cost in the United States is, you know what? what? I don't even want I don't even want to put this down. I'm actually saying I don't even want to put this out there because it's so painfully stupid that I don't even want to suggest it to anybody as an explanation. The math makes no sense. All right, from the subreddit combo nickel says Marjorie Taylor Green is a morally corrupt piece of human trash. This is very aggressive. While I understand there is some entertainment value with her virtue signaling

about the Epstein victims and allegedly turning on Trump, I, bristle at any attempt at covering anything she says or does with even a sliver of positivity. She is a truly irredeemable ghoul. We may face her in a national election in the future. And she doesn't deserve positive press of any kind to aid her in those efforts. Not a specific critique of this show, but I've seen friendly headlines about her from media on the left. Okay.

So here's my feeling on this. This is a show where I report to you reality or as close to reality. or as close to reality as I can get and when I don't get it right, you all correct it. It would be I don't do stuff on this show where I say I'm going to skip this story because of the indirect impact it might have. If Marjorie Taylor Green is getting it right on something, that's newsworthy in my environment. So I tell it to you. I also tell you as I did about Marjorie Taylor Green.

This doesn't make her an ally of the left. She's not a progressive. I make that clear. But what I worry about when I see posts like this is the idea that we shouldn't even when she says the Epstein files should be released, she's right. And if I don't acknowledge that she's right, I'm really just kind of being dishonest and doing a disservice to everybody in the audience. So I think that we should be complete in our commentary, which is she's still completely

whacked out on so many different issues. But when she gets something right, then I say she got something right. All right. Someone who uses the name Dykemouth says about my health insurance plan, which I spoke about last week. Paying $747 a month for health care is insane. It would not be tolerated here in Canada. Yeah.

And you know, my plan, which is 747 a month, it's not even by any means the most expensive plan of people I know. And in addition to that, it doesn't even include copays. So the 747 a month is like nine grand a year for my premium. But if you've got a couple of doctors visits a year with the $25 co pay and a couple of specialist visits a year, you know, I have my yearly yearly yearly yearly yearly, yearly eye exam and I have a yearly dermatology appointment and all then I'm popping out 50 bucks or whatever my co pay is on that.

So it's it this is it is what it is in the United States. when you are self-employed and don't have access to a group plan. It's horrifying, horrifying. Nate, neighbor, says, you are correct, David. Trump is doing what he campaigned on. Same thing with Project 2025. He said he knew nothing about it when we all knew that was the plan. Perhaps these people don't actually follow the issues and just root for them like they are a sports team. Yeah, I, I'm sick of the whole we never imagine Trump would do this. Trump told us he was going to do most of this stuff. 90% of the left wing ecosystem was saying it'll probably be worse. Some people tried to write some of this stuff off as just, oh, it's Trump being Trump.

He doesn't really plan to do a lot of the stuff. And we said, oh, no, he does. Believe him when he tells you that what he's going to do. And still, there are people now Joe Rogan, Andrew Schultz, um, I'm forgetting some of the others from from that ecosystem who were saying, we didn't vote for this. Oh, Theo Vaughn is another one. We didn't vote for this. Well, you kind did. And if you don't think you did, it's because you were willfully ignorant and just believing the obvious lies that Donald Trump was telling you. It's still good for them to figure out that they were lied to by by those who were saying he's not really going to do it. It's still good to figure out that they got it wrong.

It's still good to figure out that this is bad stuff to be doing. But they played a role in it at the end of the day. Eric says social democracy is the best system. Most of the Western world has this except us. We have capitalism, which is a rigged system that favors the rich. housing, healthcare, etc. RMS. Well, Eric, first, we've got to be precise. A social democracy is a form of capitalism. I think that sometimes people get confused between social democracy and democratic socialism. Democratic socialism is a form of socialism. Social democracy is a form

of capitalism. You can have capitalism is on a spectrum. You can have completely unrestricted libertarian capitalism, which there is no evidence work. You can't find evidence from around the world that it works. And then you can have social democracy, which is a form of capitalism that uses regulation and social safety nets to ensure no one's standard of living falls too far, that education has minimum standards, that healthcare has minimum standards. Denmark, Sweden, et cetera, have implemented that. Sometimes people come to me and they say, sir, we've never seen.

No, no, no. Sometimes people come to me and say, why don't you support full blown capital? capitalism. Or they'll say to me, why don't you support socialism? And my answer has been the same for a really long time. I support what I can defend empirically. I am not able to find instances of libertarian unregulated capitalism that work well at the country level. I am also not able to find instances of socialism that work well at the country level. What the evidence points to as the system with the highest standard of living while maintaining innovation, high levels of self-reported happiness and satisfaction, people aren't uninsured,

everyone can afford food and education, are social democracies. And so until we get evidence of a better system, that is where my orientation is, that social democracy is the best system. Now, sometimes people will come in and they'll go, real socialism has never been tried or real communism has never been tried. Well, there's a couple of options then if you want it tried. One is you impose it via an authoritarian edict from a dictator. I'm against that because I'm not an authoritarian. The other option is you convince enough people that such a system would be great such that they say it's what we want and someone chooses to organize themselves that way.

It may be difficult to convince people of it. Maybe difficult to convince people of it. Big Racks Russ wrote about my interview with Congressman Jake Ockincloss and says when I hear Congressman Jake speak, it reminds me that it is really not that hard to answer questions in a clear and concise manner with statements that make sense. This tells me when other Democratic or just other politicians dodge a question. it's a conscious choice to give a non-answer. I think that this is a very good assessment.

When I bring someone on the show and I ask them a question and they answer it in circles going around and around without a real substantive answer. And then I say, I don't really think I got an answer there. The question was, and I say it again, and they don't answer again, it's not that they're unable to answer it. It's that they don't want to. They've calculated that it's either politically disadvantageous to fully answer the question. or there's some other reason that they don't want to answer it. And I think we should all remember that.

They can answer the questions if they're not answering the questions. It's not because they can't. It's because they don't want to. Lucas Futurist wrote on Spotify about the Democratic Party. Honestly, I'm feeling pretty pessimistic about the Democratic Party apparatus. The core anatomy is rotten due to long-term corporate puppeteering. One way I see this getting better at a national level is a mass wave of authentic candidates challenging deadweight Dems and beating them in their own districts. Additionally, Dems need to win way more positions in local and state government, especially election official positions. We need a framework that supplies the talented with hands-on support minus the dark money. Well, listen, Lucas, it's not a, you know, rainbows and ginger snares.

assessment of the Democratic Party apparatus, but I think it's probably an accurate one. And it's both at the national and local level. And I mean, listen, look at all the interviews I've done recently with Democrats. There are Democrats who show up here. It's such a low bar. But there are Democrats who show up here and answer questions. As people pointed out, Jake Ockincloss did it. Jimmy Gomez did it.

We've, Tammy Baldwin did it to a degree. But a lot of the people that that are coming on, they're not really. really substantively answering a lot of these questions, and it's just part of the problem. So I agree in large part with the diagnosis and what the treatment needs to be can be debated, but at minimum, at minimum, just having candidates who can be themselves and have that be good enough rather than they have to craft the whole persona, that is a bare minimum. answering questions and speaking substantively and directly to constituents and potential voters. That's a bare minimum, but there needs to be more.

Send in your emails info at david packman.com. Make sure you're getting my daily newsletter, substack. Dot david packman.com. We'll see you on the bonus show.