The David Pakman Show - 10/7/25: Air travel collapse grows as authoritarians are enraged

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Mike Nellis, Democratic strategist and social impact entrepreneur, joins David for a Substack Live to discuss what went wrong with Kamala Harris's 2024 campaign -- Donald Trump��s government shutdown leaves airports unmanned, flights delayed, and the FAA in crisis as air travel collapses under dangerous conditions -- Kevin Hassett admits soybean exports to China stop, silos overflow, and Trump’s trade war sparks panic inside his economic team -- Trump shocks reporters by floating clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell, bragging about ending wars, and musing about using the Insurrection Act -- Karoline Leavitt clashes with reporters as she defends Trump with false claims, wild health care math, and attacks on Antifa funding -- Emmanuel Macron, Ilham Aliyev, and Edi Rama laugh after Trump confuses Albania, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, humiliating the U.S. on the world stage -- Trump concedes the shutdown is about killing Obamacare while ranting about Portland and insulting a judge he himself appointed -- Trump melts down over Bad Bunny, the NFL, water in Los Angeles, and the Insurrection Act during a chaotic Newsmax exchange -- On the Bonus Show: A judge who ruled against Trump has her house burn down, AOC tells supporters to “laugh at” Stephen Miller’s “insecure masculinity,” Trump announces a White House UFC event on his birthday, and much more… 🐟 Wild Alaskan Company: Get $35 OFF at https://wildalaskan.com/pakman ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF for a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.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) Intro (01:01) Shutdown wreaks havoc on air travel (06:23) Hassett deflects blame for trade chaos (13:59) Trump hints at Maxwell clemency, wars, Insurrection Act (22:32) Leavitt defends Trump with false claims (29:05) World leaders laugh at Trump gaffe (1:00:33) Mike Nellis Substack Live (1:06:53) Trump admits shutdown targets Obamacare (1:10:59) Trump rants on Bad Bunny, NFL, LA, Insurrection Act  

Air travel in the United States is turning into an absolute disaster, flights delayed for hours, control towers going dark, airports shutting down, all thanks to the government shutdown of Donald Trump and the Republicans. We're going to look at how this chaos is breaking the system that keeps planes in the air. Then Donald Trump's press secretary, Caroline Levitt, melts down on camera. And world leaders are laughing at this administration once again. And what about the podcast bros that helped elect him? They're suddenly pretending they were never really that into Donald Trump.

Trump finally admits what the shutdown is really about. We'll also hear from political strategist Mike Nellis about how do democratic campaigns end up going wrong so often. It is worse than you think. Let's dive right in. Well, air travel is suddenly a disgusting mess under Donald Trump. And if you're wondering why, you don't really have to look very far. It's all around us what's going on.

We see the airports shutting down. We're seeing the flights delayed for hours, unmanned air traffic control towers. And there is one orange man that we can thank for most of this. You know his name. The Trump government shutdown, which is now stretching into week two. has really broken the system that keeps planes in the air. Yesterday, the control tower at Burbank Airport in California just closed, not at 2 a.m. It just closed.

It wasn't because of weather, but it was because there were not enough staff and a pilot radioed in for clearance and got the response. The tower is closed due to staffing. So let that sink in for a moment. Important major U.S. airport, great alternative. by the way to flying into LAX. And it's just closed without air traffic control. Flights were still taking off. Pilots just had to coordinate amongst themselves like it's some small, you know, little town strip or something like that in rural Nebraska. At Newark and in Denver, it really

wasn't much better. The FAA was forced to issue ground delays. Every traveler's favorite, the ground delay, basically telling planes don't take off until someone on the other end can handle you. And the cause, again, is that air traffic controllers are working without pay. Some are calling out sick. Others are exhausted. Some are saying we're working 10-hour shifts here six days a week. And I can't blame them. Who am I to say, no, they need to be there anyway.

As the Transportation Secretary Duffy admitted, these people are responsible for. millions of lives while also wondering, how am I going to pay my mortgage this month? And of course, Sean Duffy, Trump's transportation secretary, is not taking responsibility. They're just blaming Democrats. That's the strategy. Just to just blame Democrats while the entire aviation system that he oversees is crumbling in real time. Now, then we go to something that's arguably even worse. The essential air service program, I don't know how many people are even familiar with this,

but it's a great, important thing. It sort of keeps small towns and rural communities connected by air. That runs out of money this week. The idea is subsidized flights that don't really make commercial sense to keep these rural and disconnected communities connected. So if you're in rural Montana, if you're in parts of Alaska, you might lose flight service permanently. And it's not like a freak occurrence because the FAA has been warning for years.

shutdowns make systems unsafe. They delay modernization. They slow hiring. They push controllers past their limits. Now, you might remember in 2019, the 35-day shutdown ended only when 10 controllers called out sick, grounding flights and forcing Donald Trump to cave. He learned nothing because we're seeing the exact same thing. And it's the exact same playbook. Use the chaos as leverage, except this time the chaos is happening 30,000 feet above our heads. I don't like it. I'm considering driving to DC in a couple of weeks for an event, something I have never done.

I hate just long trips on the highway, but I'm thinking of doing it if this uncertainty and degraded system remains. Now, meanwhile, in Sacramento, we've got a helicopter crash, three critically injured, air travel is just stretched to the breaking point. Now, Gavin Newsom is coming in and saying Trump's FAA is kind of asleep at the wheel. And Newsome happens to be right about this. When you hand the country to a guy who thinks being president is a reality show and the Oval office is more a sound stage or a video set than a place where important decisions are made,

you end up with people who can't get home and pilots who aren't getting paid and control towers going dark. Trump says we're making America great again. be lucky if planes are still taking off if we have two more weeks of this. Let me know if this is affecting your travel plans. I know we have a lot of pilots in our audience, but also people who travel regularly. Are you thinking of or are you modifying your travel as a result of this? And this is just like I could do an hour with 20 different areas that are being impacted.

We could talk about government contractors doing really important work. could say, well, they're just contractors. Well, yes, because the government has decided to contract out a lot of important stuff. Just because they're only contractors doesn't mean it's not degrading government services. We could talk about farmers. We talked about air traffic control. We could talk about ports. There's all of these areas. All of it suggests if this continues, prices for many things will go up. And all of it suggests safety overall for moving around the country and for other elements of safety is going to go down. That's where we are. And the economic panic is starting to hit Trump's econ team. I want to talk about that a little bit. Kevin Hassett, the NEC director,

was on CNBC. And he is trying to avoid admitting the obvious, which is that Donald Trump's disastrous economic decisions are causing problems for farmers. They're causing problems for trade. He's trying to find language that will allow them to acknowledge there are problems, but to blame someone else. Never, never acknowledge that Trump may be part of the problem. But if you read between the lines or listen to exactly what he is saying, you realize that the problems HACID is acknowledging are actually Trump's fault.

He won't say it, but you can read between the lines. Take a listen. just shifting gears a little, where are we on trade? Where are we with China? Could you see tariff money being used to support the farmers who obviously are being hit hard by, I think, you know, China retaliated against some of the tariffs recently. Maybe they had slowed buying soybeans last year, but certainly they went to zero in May based on the tariffs. Right. Is that an option that it's going to happen? So Joe Kernan, as Maga, Maga and Trumpy as he is, does say the reason China is no longer buying American soybeans

is because of the tariffs. And we've got soybeans just sitting around. And meanwhile, China's getting its soybeans from other countries. This is because of Trump's tariffs. It's optional. It's self-imposed. Let's see how HACET deals with it. Right.

The president has already said that he thinks that the tariff money is going to be useful for helping us find the funds that we need to help farmers. We've had numerous meetings over the last week or two about exactly what we're going to do. Now let me pause it already. This is we've dealt with this before. Hacet is saying we are going to solve a problem Trump caused with the money that we are collecting due to the tariffs. That it.

So so you're basically just saying we're going to, what's that thing? We're going to rob Peter to pay Paul or what's the thing that they say. I've not not a frequent user of that phrase. Um, you have created a problem with the tariffs and then you're going to now try to sort of bail out the farmers by taking the tariff money, which supposedly was going to go to economic growth. We were going to be so rich and wealthy and you're just going to say now I've got to give it to the farmers because of the problem that my very tariffs created.

That doesn't sound very good. To help the farmers, but we're taking big measures and those big measures are going to be public really, really soon. And I, yes, so for sure, uh, China has, especially for soybean farmers has stopped by U.S. soybeans right now the silos are full and there are soybeans sitting on the ground with tarps over the that's unacceptable to the president. We're calling up all our soybean cuts. It's completely unacceptable to the president.

Well, then why did he do this? It's like an arsonist sets a house on fire and goes, this is so terrible. I don't like this. I've really got to do something about this. Well, you could have opted not to set the house on fire, right? Wouldn't that have made more sense at some point? around the world as part of our trade negotiations and we're also getting ready to have really strong policies to support our farmers.

We haven't heard anything about trade negotiations recently. What happened to India? It's still a work in progress. It's a work in progress. You know, sometimes it's really good to narrow the focus and say, give me some really specific answers here. We were told China was going to come crawling. They were going to be begging.

sir, let's make a deal. Let's, we've got to do it now. It has been, what, six months now and we have no deal with China. And China, which wants and needs soybeans for its economy, is saying, let's let the American soybeans rot in the silo covered with a tarp, as Kevin Hassett said. And we're going to just go and get our soybeans somewhere else. Cool. So what is going on? What's What's going on with India? Conversations are ongoing. Hassett was then asked by Kernan, what about the efficiency of government? We're in a shutdown and you guys were going to make government more efficient.

And Kevin Hassett's answer is borderline unintelligible. And government employment, the latest numbers I'm seeing is down by more than 200,000. And so for sure, we're going to continue to want to make government more efficient. But right now, this particular moment is about keeping the government. open. And if the Democrats refuse to keep the government open, then perhaps the efforts we've been making to make government more efficient will even accelerate because of the extra legal authorities we have because they haven't appropriated the funds. Now, of course, that is a lie. Everything in there is a lie. Of course, I don't know how you can argue that this is a Democratic

led government shutdown when Republicans control everything. But there is no special authority for the executive during a government shutdown. In fact, Legal experts have argued there is diminished authority because so many levers of government aren't functioning during a government shutdown. This reinforces something we started talking about last week, which I think is important. There are, I don't want to call it, you know, sane and insane or sort of loaded, sometimes pejoratively used terms. There are, there are individuals in Trump's administration on the economic.

side who recognize things are going in the wrong direction. It seems clear that privately, they know Trump is the catalyst for those things going in the wrong direction. Publicly, they are still defending Donald Trump. But step one is acknowledging that there is a problem. They are acknowledging there is a problem with farmers right now. They are acknowledging there is a problem with trade. There's a problem with India and China, which we were told we're going to come begging,

just crawling across the floor. to make a deal and they haven't done it. They're acknowledging that. We know from leak text messages that we looked at last week that privately, they're even communicating about that. It has not gone public, but you can tell from the fact that they're no longer denying the problem. They're just shifting the blame. They understand that this can only go so far. And the bigger problem for them is that at every public opportunity, Donald Trump is only making it worse for them. For example, in his latest press conference, I love our partnership with wild Alaskan company. They do sustainable seafood memberships and bring high quality wild caught Alaskan seafood

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Go to wild alaskan.com slash Pacman. Use code Pacman for $35 off your first box. The link is in the description. When White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt is asked a question that implies anything but the glowing positivity about the Trump administration that she desires, she lashes out. And sometimes she lashes out at the media, sometimes she lashes out at Democrats, sometimes she lashes out at protesters or whoever is convenient to lash out at in any particular moment. Well, CNN's Caitlin Collins asked Caroline Levitt about the conflict between what Donald Trump

says is happening in cities like Portland and what the mayors and governors say is happening, and what the protesters say, and what the media shows. Trump and Levitt and the administration want you to believe that it is complete and total anarchy and destructive chaos on the streets of Portland, Oregon, Chicago, Illinois, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Baltimore. You know the list. But then we see videos and we see reporting and we hear from the mayors and it's sort of like, Yeah, you know that there are problems in cities, cities have crime, sometimes chaos breaks out in like this little area, but it doesn't really justify sending in the military. Caroline Leavitt doesn't like it, like it.

And she goes, you're probably hearing from biased Democrats about that. Wow. But no local officials that you can point to that have said we need the National Guard because I spoke to the police chief of Portland last week. He said that the president's claims just don't match up with what's happening on the ground. I would encourage you as a reporter to go on the ground and to take a look at for yourself, because there's been many members of the press, not press in this room, but independent journalists, some of whom will be inviting to the White House very soon to share their stories.

Oh, yeah. Because they have been in the middle of these riots and they have witnessed the anarchy that is taking place night after night. It's on video. You should play it on your show. You have a great opportunity on prime time on CNN. Remember that to the extent that that stuff is happening as we covered in depth yesterday, it's happening as a result of Donald Trump's actions.

To show your audience, yeah, but you're probably talking to partisan Democrat officials who are opposed to everything this president does. You should also ask the people who live in Portland. We've actually heard from many members of the community who have said that this is complete civil disobedience. It's a mess. It's been loud. It's been troubling for neighbors in the community who are just trying to live peacefully. And these people are not there to peacefully protest. They are there to cause mayhem and havoc. This is the propaganda equivalent of if the president does it, it's not illegal.

By definition, if it sounds like it contradicts Trump, it must not be true. It must have come from partisan Democrat officials, as she says, or whoever. They will never acknowledge the reality in these cities, which is that things are mostly fine. And like any big city, there are problems to be dealt with. And they are not resolved by militarizing the streets and sending in armed vehicles and riot patrols and this sort of thing. Hilariously, Caroline Levitt sounded indignant. She said, I read in Politico, people are acting like Trump wants to take over cities with

the military. Yeah, that's exactly what he wants to do. That's what he's been saying the point of all of this is. Oh, Caroline. If the courts allow you to ultimately send in the National Guard into Chicago and Portland, do Democrats not have reason to be concerned that there are long-term plans by this administration to keep U.S. military or the National Guard in American cities like what we're seeing here in Washington? Why should they be concerned about the federal government offering help to make their cities a safer place?

Because it makes them even more chaotic, Caroline? They should be concerned about this. They should be concerned about the fact that people in their cities, right now are being gunned down every single night and the president all he's trying to do is fix it and there has been a complete smear campaign by the democrats and the media they're being really mean media quite frankly i was reading political playbook this morning one of the most inside the beltway newsletters you can find and and you guys are framing this like the president wants to take over the american cities with the military the president wants to help these local leaders who have been completely completely ineffective in securing their own cities.

Yeah. Well, the reason that Politico is writing that, if they are, I didn't, I didn't look at the political playbook. The reason that they're writing that is because Trump has been openly saying that. He's been openly saying we're going to do this in a whole bunch of cities. That's why they believe that. Now, the question of Geelaine Maxwell did also come up. Will Trump rule out granting her clemency?

Caroline Leavitt is just not weighing in. She won't even say whether such a request has been made. I was going to you in the blue shirt and tie. Thank you, Caroline. You're welcome. Today, the Supreme Court declined to hear Jolaine's Maxwell's appeal. Will Trump rule out granting her clemency? Is that something the White House is considering?

It's not something I've heard discussed. And we don't comment on clemency requests that may or may not have been made, but I'm certainly not tracking that one at this point in time. There you go. And Trump claims he isn't either. As you saw earlier, when he was asked about Jelaine Maxwell, he goes, why, who? Oh, I haven't heard that name in a very long time. we now know that the pardon is indeed under consideration. Caroline Levitt jumping into the fuzzy

math of Donald Trump, you know how Trump likes to say we're going to reduce the price of something 300 percent, 1,000 percent, 1,500 percent. Caroline Levitt is uncritically repeating the same failed arithmetic. By the way, this, I saw a comment from my friend, uh, Joe Joe from jurors, also known as Joanne Carducci. She said this sort of math is how they came up with there are 20 million undocumented immigrants in this country. It's the same sort of of math that has you saying things like a thousand percent off. Is he willing to give more, to share more on what he'd like to negotiate on the Affordable Care Act later?

Is he willing to say specifically what he would like in when? But look, the president is definitely committed to fixing and improving our health care system. You saw it again last week when he had one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world coming into the Oval Office in promising to lower drug prices by 200,000. 300, 100% in many cases for various types of drugs for American patients. That is a huge fix to a broken. It would be interesting if the math checked out.

And unfortunately, the math simply doesn't work. They should go back to what is the, is this, I guess it's like seventh grade math or something like that. And then finally, when all else fails, bring up our old friend, Antifa. That always works. Today, the Supreme Court declined to hear Jolaine's Maxwell's appeal. Will Trump rule out granting her clemency? Is that something the White House is considering?

And sorry, there's overlap here with the few seconds we heard earlier. It's not something I've heard discussed. And we don't comment on clemency requests that may or may not have been made, but I'm certainly not tracking that one at this point in time. Caroline, Jordan, go ahead. Thank you, Caroline. So we're talking about these radical groups in Portland and Chicago. I know the president has spoken about,

potentially going after George Soros with RICO charges and for funding all of this violence. Has there been a update on that? And also, is the administration looking into the other nonprofits, maybe taking away their 501C3 status for funding this violence? And then I have one more question. Sure. The financial backing of these groups, particularly Antifa, is certainly something the administration is looking into aggressively.

And the federal government has never really been mobilized. or tasked with doing that. So we're kind of kick-starting that into gear. The FBI is working on it alongside the White House's Homeland Security Task Force. We have our intelligence community looking into this as well. Antifa. That's really at the crux of what's going on here. We're not going to forget about the Epstein files, Caroline.

Whenever I hear them start talking to starting to talk about Antifa, I'm reminded of the Epstein files. That's where my mind goes. And they're going to go after 95-year-old George Sorrows. me a break. These people are sick. And I hope Caroline Levitt lives to regret it at some point. I don't know that she will. She'll probably just get an even bigger cross necklace and look the other way, but go watch tennis somewhere. But I hope that she lives to regret her participation in these atrocities. World leaders once again burst out laughing at Donald Trump. I'm not saying it

figuratively. I am saying it literally. One of the things that Donald Trump hates the most is being laughed at. It's one of his biggest insecurities. In addition to a. of course, his insecurity about his physical appearance, his insecurity about his weight, his insecurity about his hair, his insecurity about his skin, his insecurity about his lack of athleticism, his insecurity about lack of real friends, his insecurity about the size of his hands. Other than those things, one of the things that Donald Trump really hates is being laughed at, and world leaders are again openly laughing at Donald Trump. This time, because it happened so often. This time, it's because Donald Trump claimed to have solved the conflict

between Albania and Aberbaijan. Now, you might be saying, Aberbaijan, right. Trump meant Azerbaijan. And I guess he was also thinking of Armenia, not Albania. It, none of it makes any sense, but this is a reference to this video of Trump claiming to have solved a problem that didn't exist. To think that we settled Aberbaijan and Albania, as an example, it was going on for years. We settled Aberbaijan and Albania. So then what happened? Well, at the European summit in Denmark, Albanian prime minister Eddie Rama joked with the French president and with the president of Azerbaijan. I guess we now have solved a problem that doesn't exist. And they have a grand old laugh at Donald Trump. World leaders laughing on camera about the pathetic absurdity of Trump.

You should make an apology to us because you didn't congratulate us for this deal that President Trump made between Albania and he worked very hard. He would. You didn't congratulate us on the peace deal that we made that Donald Trump took credit for. And they laugh because there, of course, is no such peace deal. They have never been at war. Now, this is like another one of these stupid, both stupid Trump. Yes. Okay.

It is not just a slip of the tongue. Trump has been confusing Albania and Armenia for a while. This isn't the first time that Trump has been laughed at in this way. You might remember the NATO summit back during Donald Trump's first term, the United Nations general assembly, the pattern is Trump speaks and the room laugh. Sometimes in his presence, sometimes not. When Trump embarrasses himself on the world stage, defenders pivot to the same talking point. We don't care what Sissy Europeans think about us. That's what the big, strong MAGA boys like to say. That argument completely misses the point. This is not about seeking Europe's approval.

We don't need the French president going, Trump's so great. He's so dreamy. This is about credibility that affects you and it affects me. When world leaders are literally laughing at the United States president, when Trump is the laughing stock of global leaders, we don't look strong, we don't look independent, we look stupid. Diplomacy runs on trust and respect. And if the world looks at us and sees an American president who can't distinguish Albania from our media, Armenia, and says, Aberbaijan, how does that make anyone say, oh, we need the the U.S. involved in these negotiations. We need the United States's voice on this issue or that

issue. Now, of course, Trump promised the opposite. Trump argued we were not respected under Biden, but finally, when he kicks Biden out and comes in and does his big strong boy that we're going to be respected again. But it's not happening. Trump has become a running joke. He's the he's the punchline to global leadership jokes. And the other heads of state are laughing at. him. So saying, oh, I don't care, you know, go wear your berets and get your baguettes and we don't care what you sissies say. Well, we're being humiliated globally and it's not good. America's influence depends on being taken seriously. If no one takes you seriously, you don't have influence. That has to do with adversaries, right? We need to be respected by our adversaries,

but we also need to be respected by our allies. And Trump can't even get through a conversation without mixing up countries and the laughter from Europe is not just about Trump. It's about what Trump has turned the United States into. I'm embarrassed and humiliated by it. If you think that this is an important storyline, the humiliation and lack of respect for the country around the world, make sure you've liked this video on YouTube. Make sure you've hit that subscribe button. We're going to take a quick break and talk to Mike Nellis next. You know, I'll often talk to my friends, about what do we really think is private on our computers and on our phones? And many people believe that their emails are genuinely private. And it turns out that a lot of the

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migrate your emails, migrate your contacts. You really can't go wrong. Try StartMail for yourself completely free for seven days at StartMail.com slash Pacman, which will also give you 50% off your first year. The link is in the description. it's great today to be speaking with mike nellis we're going to talk strategy we're going to talk substack and democrats and a lot of other things it's good to finally connect with you mike same same i was telling you off stream i'm a i'm a huge fan of your youtube page you do really good work i appreciate that i'm a big fan at your substack so we're we're mutual fan just on different different platforms um listen i think one of the things i would love to first get your thoughts on as

someone who what was a strategist at one point for Kamala Harris is to get an insider's take either you could say I'm speculating or you could say I know either way is totally fine right but the what I think a lot of us experienced from the outside was that the first couple weeks of the Harris campaign in 24 were pretty damn good I mean there was the two week week period where the speeches felt very dynamic there was a sort of grassroots feel even if that was just perception. It still felt sort of like uprisingy type campaign. They were doing the these guys are weird thing. That seemed to be working to a great degree. And after two weeks, something changed. Nothing was officially announced. There was no like the campaign will now do something

totally different. Right. And I think the speeches started to get kind of like the same speech every day. They got away from these guys are weird stuff. The media choices started to feel a little risk averse. Jake Tapper has written about this. Jonathan Allen wrote about it in his book from an outside perspective. What happens in a campaign when there is such a change? Is it someone close to the candidate comes in and goes, a lot of this stuff is wrong? You've got to change it. What is it that is taking place when we see these changes? So I'm speculating because so folks know I was a senior advisor to Harris for about five years. I was on her first presidential campaign oversaw all the digital. I did not work on the last one. So I tell people when I meet them

at the grocery store and they ask me what I do. I'm like, can't be mad at me for what happened. But so if I had to speculate here, my guess is that they were flying by the seat of their pants with very little information in the beginning. So they were playing to an audience that was largely us, right? There was a reason that we liked everything that we saw Brad Summer. The content was for Democratic activists and Democratic donors to create that enthusiasm that they needed to raise all the money that they did to get the party to come together so she could secure the nomination are building the operation she needed in 107 days. And if I had to guess, then they got polling information

of what the general electorate looked like, how independence were feeling, how people who were on the sidelines were feeling, and they started to make strategic decisions. And this is always one of the hardest things on a campaign is you have to make tough choices. And I've tried to be as generous as I can to the Harris folks. There's plenty of things that I would say, like they did,

they made a mistake. But that's with hindsight. And it's without the information that they had. Like, I don't know what information they had in front of them that made them decide not to do Rogan, for example, because I feel like that's an obvious one. they should have done that. And I would have kept going with the weird stuff.

I like the weird stuff. But sometimes it's like the things that I like and resonate with me are not the same things that are going to resonate with the median voter. And what I remind people all the time is the median voter in American politics is like a single parent working like two jobs. And they're lucky if at the end of the day they can put their kids to bed and drink a beer and enjoy their lives. They're not thinking about the world the same way that we are.

So they had a lot more information. I know a lot of folks on the left are mad that they went, you know, deep with the like Liz Cheney, bring everybody together, go after, like, you know, independent, you know, conservative voters who were on the fence about Trump. That strategy may have been right. I don't know. I think there's always people are like, well, she lost so it didn't work. But it's possible that they were looking at a five to ten point loss and they closed that to a 180,000 votes in three states lost. I don't know. So that's the hard thing to kind of gear up for. But I've been in that position where you got to make tough calls and it sucks.

Now, in retrospect, they were the wrong calls. Do we agree? Or are you still of the mindset that they might seem wrong to people like us, but they actually were the right calls at scale. I don't know because I don't have the information is the truest answer to it. It's easy to say you lost, but she may have maximized her vote. I think the thing to keep in mind is the inflationary crisis that we went through dragged down every major political party and every major political leader in the West for the last, you know, three, four years. Like everybody lost in.

There's no ideological consistency to it. She actually, before the Canadian elections, she overperformed better than any other incumbent party than anybody else had. Now, you can quibble in like, to me, it's, I think the bigger issue that you can kind of pinpoint is, they got really risk-averse in the media appearances and what they were allowing her to do. And so if she had gone on Rogan for three hours, could that have flipped 180,000 voters in three battleground states? I don't know. But I know that Trump reached like 10 million people on Rogan's YouTube page alone, not to mention the economy of scale that exists below Rogan that pushes things out. That's probably like 100 million impressions that she didn't get. You'd have to do

MSNBC every day, every hour for like 100 days to get any kind of exposure even similar to that and certainly not with the same audience. And there were plenty of times that she went on a long-form podcast, did a great job. She went out with Bray Brown. It was great. She did call her, call her daddy. And that was really, really good with Alex. I forget what her last name is, but that episode was really good. So it's Alex Cooper. I didn't think that went well at all. That's interesting. I want to hear from you about what you think went well on that because when I saw it, I'm not like a big Alex Cooper fan so I can't tell you exactly how it compared to every episode that she's done but I knew enough to know it was like a different studio and we later learned like yeah that wasn't

even like a regular studio it was built just for that felt a little bit unnatural I didn't really come away think I thought the Howard Stern interview was significantly better than the caller daddy interview I thought the caller I don't know I don't want to say the caller daddy interview hurt more than it helped but I didn't I didn't come away going that was a real win but you thought That one was good. Yeah, I thought it was, I mean, it was a while ago. So we're talking almost a year now, so I haven't listened to it in a while. What I remember feeling like, this is fine, this is good.

There's nothing to complain about. I don't remember people complaining about it very much. But, you know, again, I think even with Caller Daddy is like, you're already preaching to the choir with Alex's audience, would be my guess. You're trying to get disaffected people that are going to stay home to vote for you that are probably values the line, but skeptical about your work. Like, Trump, she invited Trump on. I said at the time, I thought it was a mistake for Trump not to do Caller Daddy.

Yes, Trump would have alienated 90% of the. people who listen to that, but you're angling for the 10% of people that are going to listen to you. And the same thing with Rogan. Like 90, maybe not 90%, but a huge chunk of Rogan's audience was not going to like Kamala Harris. They were not going to agree with her. But if she could reach 10, 15, 20%, it makes a big difference. Like, one of the things I try to remind my clients all the time is, in every election cycle, we're bleeding white male voters. That's just a reality of what it is. And this last election, we bled young male voters, period, regardless of race. But white men are the ones that are steering away from us. We don't talk to them. We don't go

into their spaces. We don't build up surrogates. We don't offer policy solutions specifically to the problems that they're facing. Now, to be clear, some people are going to like in the comments get mad at me and they're going to go, well, but the world is run by white men, Michael, we don't need to do that. And you're right, the world is run by white men. It's built for white men to be clear. But if we're bleeding votes with this constituency, even if we could get a fraction of a fraction of them back, you make it a lot harder for somebody like Donald Trump to win. And if you want to bring back, let's say, like protections for Roe v. Wade, if you want to pass sensible gun control legislation, if you want to get this country back into a good

position, you're going to need some of those folks to come back so that they can't elect the Marjorie Taylor Greens, the Donald Trump's, the Tucker Carlson's of the world. You need to get a lot of those folks back, and we don't talk to them. So I think not going on Theo Vaughn and Rogan, those things matter. You'll see Democrats do a better job of that in the next election, I think. One more question on this, and I want to talk a little more broadly. There are sort of like, I guess we would call them reports, although there are stories told in some of these big election-related books.

And I haven't yet read Paris's book. I'm going to, but I'm sort of thinking of Jake Tapper's book and Jonathan Allen's book where they describe election night conversations where Harris's serious confidence about the direction of the election slowly is eroded by staffers coming in and sort of giving her little bits of information about Pennsylvania starting to not look so good, et cetera. I asked Sarah Matthews about this with regard to her work in the Trump White House and and how Trump was sort of like isolated from the information we all had, for lack of a better term. But what I want to hear from you is like, in the lead up to the election, I was honest with my audience.

If I look at the seven key swing state polls, they all look worse than they looked for Biden in 2020. And they mostly look worse than they looked for Hillary in 2016, where she already had lost that election. I was not at all surprised by the results and the information seemed publicly available. do you buy that the candidate might have come to believe a narrative where it looked really good up until 10 p.m. on election night, how does that happen or explain it to me? I want to understand how that happens. I buy that that happens. And I buy it for a few different reasons. The first one is, like, remember, Kamala Harris did not build the team of her own. Like, she inherited and adopted Joe Biden's team. And a ton has been written about how that relationship was not perfect. And one of the things is, like, I don't agree with everything in Jake Tapper. book I've often described it as the most frustrating book I've ever read because I don't believe half of it and the half that I do believe really pisses me off. So it's like she was robbed of the opportunity to run in a Democratic primary and become a better candidate with a better team. Like she either would have risen to the occasion and been in a better position to win the race

or somebody else would have usurped that position, which is exactly what happened to Hillary Clinton in 2008. Like Democrats had a actual landslide election in 2008 because we ran Barack Obama. And now I think in hindsight, like Hillary Clinton may not have performed as well in that scenario against John McCain. I think it's something to be mindful of we have to let Democratic primary voters decide, but it also gives them a chance to build their campaign and get their opportunity to be a better candidate. So that's number one. Number two, if you're running for president in the United States, you are doing one of the hardest things that you will ever do in your life period. You kind of have to, on a certain level, delude yourself into believing that it's fate that you are

going to win. You're going to be president in the United States. Like Kamala Harris, I don't think it ever lost an election before that, really, because she didn't, ultimately she didn't make it to the 2020 primary. So you can argue she didn't lose, but maybe she was. she did but you know she'd never lost she'd gotten a chance to be on the vice presidential ticket they defeated a trump and pence um four years ago like it to me i can understand going i'm going to win and if you if you believe what's written in those books like tapper's book it's in there i think and then there's just a couple of other anecdotes that exist that they were closing really strong that they found themselves like way way back a couple months before the election and they were closing so strong and

sometimes the candidate with the higher favorables is the one who converts the most i think people don't understand, like, it's unusual for Kamala Harris to have been the candidate that people liked personally more, but choose to pull the lever for Donald Trump in that election. And again, 180,000 votes, three states, it's very close. But I can see her just believing that. I mean, the same thing happened to Mitt Romney, too. I mean, that race was closer than people remember it being. And Romney believed that he was going to win. And you always get kind of insulated. Like, you're out there doing the campaign. You're basically talent at that point. You're like, you know, does Stephen Tyler know what's going on with, you know, anything in his operation? Like,

probably not because his job is to go out there and sing and party like that's what it is so i just think it's probably somewhat similar to that when we think about being an advisor and strategist to campaigns more generally are there ever conversations where you know you're sort of i don't know if interviewed is the right term but like you have a conversation with someone who's either running for re-election or thinking about challenging an incumbent or whatever and you just kind of go listen you really just can't win here there's not really an opportunity here for you do you ever have conversations conversations like that? What are they like? Or if someone is determined to run, it's just sort of like, all right, I'm here. We can try to run. Yeah. So what I'll say is like, I have had conversations

like that. I think a lot of political consultants don't have conversations like that because we are incentivized to get you to run. Like if you're, and I'll tell the people this, like, I run one of the largest digital fundraising and advertising firms in the space. So I've worked on a lot of races that I didn't really believe that we could win. And then somehow, somehow we pull it out. Like, it has happened before. Like to be, I did Katie Hobbs's race four years ago. I'm doing a reelection now. like it was a hard race like i think even going into it if you asked the campaign leadership a lot of people would have been like i don't know that we can win this it's going to be close and sure enough she'd beat she'd beat carrie lake which was amazing there was a lot of people i think that were just like a little

bit you know worried about it and we didn't know if we could do it but we did it you know and so i will tell you that there was a candidate that was thinking about running for senate in this last election where like a lot of her consultants that i that i was working with were telling her to run and i pulled her aside and went i don't i don't think you should run and ultimately she did it and i think that was the right call. And it's a really hard thing to do because I'm incentivized to do that. Like, that was probably like, you know, $10 million I would have gotten for the digital persuasion, the digital advertising that I could have done. And I would have gotten a hefty commission on that. But like, for me, I care way more about winning elections than I do about, like,

making the money. Like, we make plenty of money regardless. So I try to give the best advice that I can. But the other thing is like sometimes running and losing is also okay. Like you can run and lose and your star can rise and you can make a point and you can move the ball forward. Like, we need a lot of people who were going to step up in states like Arkansas and Mississippi and Iowa that like are going to have tough go of it's if they're going to win, but they're going to have a down-ballot effect. Like Tim Ryan ran for Senate in Ohio against J.D. Vance, right? And that race was not as close as we would have elected to be. But the coordinated campaign that he ran dragged two House candidates up that helped Democrats split the House in that election. So I just think it's just

kind of a different place to be in and you kind of have to just take everything into account when you're making those decisions. Have there been conversations where your counsel sort of is I doubt you can win, but the dynamics of the race are such that there might be a benefit to running and losing anyway? Yeah, I've had those conversations before. I've also told people it's like, look, it's going to be hard for you to win this race. I'm going to do everything that I can. But like you can also, and let's talk about like these midterm elections, right?

We're in a weird scenario where Democrats probably are up by like 8% in the generic ballot and we'd be my guess if the election were today. But the economy is teetering on the brink of a recession. So if you're looking at running in like, you know, let's say you're, I believe the South Carolina Democratic candidate, their name is Annie Edwards. I don't work for Annie, but I've heard really great things about it. Let's say you're Annie Evans, you're like, it's going to be a hard race to win in South Carolina. Like, you know, Jamie Harrison didn't do as well as we wanted to six years to go against Lindsey Graham.

But Lindsey Graham is a lot older now. His approval rating isn't great. Donald Trump's in the White House. Again, the economy's teetering on the edge. If we run the right campaign, if we get raised the right amount of money, if the economy falls off a cliff, you could see it being a state where, you know, could you move 10 points in a more positive elector in South Carolina? Probably with the right candidate and stuff like that. So, again, sometimes it's worth taking the risk to try. Like, I think with the primary between Tala Rico and Colin Allred, that's a good race.

Like, we should be playing in Texas if for no other reason than for the down ballot effect, but also because Texas isn't that far away from flipping. And in a race where people are turning against Trump and turning against MAGA, you could see Texas flip. And that would be monumental. I mean, it was unthinkable for Georgia to turn blue. And we have two Democratic senators from Georgia right now. Since you mentioned Colin Allred, I'm sort of debating in my head whether to do this, but I'm doing it on my show tomorrow, so I just am going to do it.

I have serious concerns that after everything that's happened, and it pains me to admit this because I want a lot of these folks to win so we can defeat some of the terrible Republicans that are out there. I'm worried that the Democratic Party is sort of pointed towards a disaster over the next couple of years. And there are three particular conversations I had on my show recently that worry me, all with people that I like. One was with the Colorado governor, Jared Polis.

the other was with Colin Aldrich, and most recently with Rahm Emanuel. And I did these interviews, and I liked these three guys. And I came away very similarly worried as many in my audience, where a lot of people are just kind of like, David, they're not even remotely answering your questions. And they're doing the same talking point stuff that is what has made a lot of these Democrats seem very disconnected, where for all of Trump's faults and all of Trump's dishonestly. At least he just kind of seems genuine. And when he's asked a question, he's sort of in his way answers it. What he says is totally nuts, right? I mean, there's no, there's no question about

it. And like with Polis, I had this thing where I asked him about private equity owning so many apartments in Colorado and whether that's like a good thing. And he gave an answer that did not satisfy anybody in my audience. And with all right, I asked him in this environment, what's going to make some Republicans at least vote for a Democrat in Texas? And he gave like a seven minute history lesson dating back to 2016 that my audience like glazed over about and it was just like I came away kind of like are we doing the same thing over again so I kind of want to hear from you like what is what would you diagnose as the issue with democratic communication right now yeah that's it's a big topic and I could spend all day talking about it so I think the the first thing is

we lack quality candidates who want to run for office who want to get shit done and who know what they stand for. The number of candidates that I talk with, many of whom I don't go to work with, who cannot articulate why they are running outside of, it's my turn, or somebody told me I'd be a good candidate for something

and don't have like a firm grasp of who they are. It is like, it really drives me crazy. And that's why, like, my people will have heard me talk about Mallory McMorrow a thousand times. Like, I love Mallory McMorrow because she has a clear compass of who she is and what she cares about on what she's fighting for, to the point where I work for, I might give her advice and she would go,

that's not me. I don't say that. And I have lots of candidates that I can just, like, I have candidates who I write stuff for who just say it and don't care what I wrote. You know, they just move on. They're like, oh, that's a good tweet. Get it up. And then they don't add their, like, flavor to it.

So that is, I think, the number one thing. And I think the second thing is the Democratic Party super risk averse. We're afraid of offending anybody. We got to wait for a poll. Like, you know, Sarah Lonwell was giving me shit on my show the other day because we were talking about how I was one of the Democratic consultants that was like begging Democrats to talk more about the Epstein files when they first tried to cover it up in the beginning. And I was telling her, like, I was on conference calls all week going, what are you doing? Like, this has real energy to it.

Like, get behind it. This is a window and to start talking about what's going on with corruption and Trump. And she was like, see, that's the problem right there. Why are you ever on a conference call having to talk about that? Like, it should be so self-evident that your clients know what they stand for that it's very easy to, like, shove the issues through that messaging box, right? And so if you know, what you're standing for what you stand for. It's a lot easier for you to develop a message on what's happening in the news today. And you see that with the shutdown right now. The shutdown messaging is

good. It's probably like B minus, maybe B plus. It's not A plus though. Go watch AOC and Bertie Sanders video that they put out where they're walking down the street and they're talking about it. That was not a scripted video. That was them just shooting the shit and it's better than 98% of the things that I've seen put out there because AOC knows

exactly what she stands for and Bernie knows exactly what he stands for. And they can articulate it very clearly. I don't have enough Well, I didn't see the video. What was the gist of their message on it? It was them walking down the street and Bernie being like, hey, look who I ran into. It's AOC. AOC, why are we shutting down?

Why are we refusing to help Republicans keep the government open? She goes, well, because they're trying to raise your health insurance premiums by double. And they don't want to meet with us and they don't want to talk about. And Bernie's like, and you're right that we're doing that. And our health care system's already a mess. It's a disaster. And then Bernie actually talked about something in that video that I hadn't heard any other Democrat talk about that I'm now saying when I do my TV hits is the studies that are out there show, if you increase, health insurance premiums by the amount of money that Republicans want to right now,

50,000 working class Americans are going to die every single year on average. I had not heard that from any other Democrat before. That is a level of moral clarity that is key. And I don't think it has to be like, you know, a DSA or Bernie Wing or moderate or any of that. I just think, like, you need to be able to speak to what you stand for and why you're running in a much stronger sense than a lot of the candidates the establishment puts up right now. They just can't do it.

They got to wait for a poll. They got to talk to their TV guy. They got to blah, blah, blah. And, like, I'm just kind of tired of it. I'd rather you, like, let it rip. And the Republicans are better at letting it rip. Now, the bottom, you know, 50% of the things they say are ridiculous and insane and get them in trouble. But then they come off as more authentic than we do.

And we come up as very clearly poll tested, reading the same dribble. That's what you experienced with those three interviews. The same guys saying the same stuff. And even if it's like the flavor's a little bit different between Jared Polis and Rahm Emanuel, it's the same shit, different day. Yeah. I want to do, you mentioning your TV. it's reminded me that I want to do a little bit of inside baseball here. I want to hear a little bit

about your prep for these TV hits. And I've been up front with my audience about the fact that I'm like just not that good at it in a way. Some of them go fine. But like I just don't think it's naturally something that plays to my abilities. And where I get hung up is I'll know who I'm up against. I'll know what the topic is. I'll know what points I want to make. I've got some rebuttals in mind. But then they'll do what I call the Charlie Kirk move, which is they'll take as soon as you hear a certain word, you go, ah, I'm steering in this direction. So the way Charlie Kirk would do it, would be like, if anything related to abortion came up, he would go, when does life begin? And now he's got a decision tree that he's taken control of. He can funnel the conversation.

If anybody mentions anything about Israel or Gaza, Charlie Kirk always would go, wait, wait, wait, wait, Does Israel have a right to exist? And now he's in control of the conversation. And so sometimes I'll give you an example of what will happen. It'll be about undocumented immigration and deportations or whatever. And the guest will go, hold on a second, hold on. And we all agree that deporting people who are here illegally is good. And they've kind of taken control of the story in a way where I go, well, you know,

what is the way to prep for these sorts of conversations so that I can be more effective like you? yeah well i mean the first thing is like knowing what what you stand for right like and i think like a lot of people i get i was actually at a wedding this weekend and my my old shop teacher was there um with his kids and he was like how do you go do that like how can you do that and i go well it's a lot easier when you're not full of shit like it just is and so like when i go on and i like i was on with jesse waters and jesse waters i don't know if you've seen this clip but jesse war screamed at me screamed at me about some woman that he knew who died on the streets of chicago and was like

trying to rattle me and like i took a deep breath and i went jesse i'm very sorry for what happen to your friend. But when I walk my kid to school in the morning, I don't want to have to walk past the tank. I want there to be real community solutions. I want to know my police officer. I want to keep my streets safe. And I want to do it the right way, not sending in the military to do it. And like, to me, it's just, that's what I believe. And so, again, there's a lot of people out there that, like, they can't go do a TV hit because they need their, like, perfect talking points. They've got to have their comps and, like, feed it to them. They have to get it out. And there's a lot of really brutal clips of, like, older Democrats not able to, like, handle the

pivot. When you're on right-wing media, you won, I think, like, my dad, My dad's a three-time Trump voting Republican. And right before I went on Waters, the first time, he called me like 15 minutes before. And he goes, I just want you to remember, you're the bad guy. You're the bad guy. And like, almost like playing professional wrestling for a second, the, like me embracing that I'm the heel when I'm on Fox makes me feel like more free. Like, who cares if I fuck up?

And I apologize if I'm not supposed to be cursing on your channel. I apologize. You can believe me. I should have asked beforehand. But like, it's okay if I make a mistake because I'm the bad guy. They want me to make a mistake anyway. I'm here for the 10% of people that know that what's happening in this country is wrong and want to be reminded or want to know that somebody cares about them.

And they want to create a perception of you and I as Democrats. They want to say that we're weak, that we're a feat, that we have blue hair, that we have piercings that were weirdos, blah, blah, blah. And that's what Charlie Kirk was great. Like, Charlie Kirk was great at going to, and I say great in the context of what he was good at, but he would go to a college campus. He would get into a debate with an 18-year-old young woman who doesn't really know who she is yet because you're 18. You don't know who you are. She'd have blue hair and she'd be talking about

transgender issues or abortion or whatever. And then he would crop that up to make her look like she was an idiot when in reality, your argument was probably fine. It was just a disagreement. But that was his thing. And then he was beloved by 50, 60, 70 year old Republicans who love seeing him do that. So they do that. I think for you, it's like, you're going to know what the topics are coming in. I have a hit tonight on News Nation. We're talking about Kamala's book tonight at 815. And like, I know roughly what he's going to ask me because it's going to be like, why is Kamala Harris selling so many books? Is Kamala going to run for president, et cetera?

And, like, I have my answers to that that I know. But I also know that I'm going to work in certain things that I want people to know about Trump. Like, why is the book selling so much right now? Well, it's probably because Kamala wrote an interesting book, and it's probably because a lot of Americans have buyers remorse right now. The last 10 months have been really difficult. Look at the tariffs. Everything's more expensive.

It's exactly what Kamala Harris predicted. She said that within Trump's first year, we'd be teetering on the edge of a recession. That's what I see right now. And you get that in. And what they'll try to do is they'll come back to you and go, well, Mike, but Joe, Biden made inflation like 40,000 percent or whatever, and I'll go, Joe Biden isn't president right now. And so I just kind of like try to logic it out a little bit. But I'll also say it's not for everybody either. Like I have, I don't want to like toot my own horn. It's just

it's like I'm like a good bullshitter. So like I can do that kind of debate. I used to do it in high school and in college. So I just kind of like am used to that. I also grew up with a dad who is massively conservative and a giant troll. Like he's just a giant troll. So like when I'm arguing with like a less talented version of my father. Like that's all I owe it all to my dad, really. Okay. I've said I don't believe Kamala Harris should run in 2028. And when I met her in 2024 before we knew that she would be the nominee, I was hugely impressed with her and found her formidable, incredibly intelligent, knowledgeable off the cuff about everything from AI to immigration.

Like, my issue is not with that. I supported her. I think she's brilliant. I think strategically, it doesn't make sense. That's my view as of today. Have you been public about your take on this? Yeah. So my take is that everybody who wants to run should run,

including Kamala Harris. If she thinks that she's the right candidate, she should go stand in front of the voters, build an operation, show that people can do it. The thing that I care about the most is not so much who the nominee is. It's that Democratic primary voters choose them. That there is a trial by fire here

to build a better campaign and develop a better candidate. And listen, Kamala Harris had 107 days, which is not enough time to become the candidate that you want. She was not set up well by the Biden White House over the last four years. Maybe she can gain and grow and get to the point where I believe her ceiling is,

which is becoming president of the United States. Maybe she can't. I don't know. Maybe it's Gretchen Whitmer. Maybe it's Gavin Newsom. Maybe it's somebody that nobody's talking about right now. I want that fight. And I want it for a number of different reasons.

One, it's the best democratic way to decide the future of the Democratic Party, period. Two, you're going to develop so much talent inside the Democratic Party from 20 Democratic campaigns. I don't think people know that like when West Clark ran for president in 2004, he didn't win, but so much of the leadership that would go on to help Democrats flip the house two years later came off of West Clark's campaign, went on Barack Obama's campaign. Same thing with Howard Dean. The people who built the online fundraising mechanism, a lot of the people who built the online fundraising program for Barack Obama in 2008 had done it for Howard Dean four years earlier. You develop new techniques, new style, new technology. And part of the reason the Democratic Party is struggling right now in this last election is we didn't have 10, well, well-funded presidential campaigns to develop new leaders, new junior staff, new technology, new tactics. And that's killing us right now. And Republicans didn't have that either, to be clear, but they had a massive presidential campaign that just had a ton of money from day

one with Trump. And so they were able to do that. And so I don't care who runs relative. I mean, I have my candidates that I like prefer privately and some of which some of whom might work for, but everybody should run big, messy primary, let it play out. We'll be a better party for it, just like we were in 2008. do you um or let me put a different way sometimes you hear the idea that someone could win the primary without being the most electable in a national election so you you hear this about a lot of different people you hear oh you know um Bernie lost in 2016 but he would have done better than Hillary against Trump or you there's this idea that the person that comes from the primary

might actually not be the best suited in the general election. Do you think that that's possible or by definition, do you believe that whoever wins a primary if it's a fair primary is the best suited for the general election? I think it's definitely possible,

but here's my thing is a lot of people on the internet talk with great certainty about things that can't happen or won't happen, and then those things happen like unlikely things happen all the time. If a guy like Bernie Sanders was going to win in 2016,

it would have been because a lot of like unlikely voters turned out for him. Now, a lot of unlikely voters turned out for Donald Trump in 2016 and in 2020 and helped him win those elections. It may have been that Bernie would have been better to peel off some of them. In 16 and 24, excuse me, sorry, no, let me be clear. Donald Trump absolutely lost in 2020. I don't want to get anybody mixed up on that. But I don't know.

Like, people ask me all the time if, like, I think AOC can win. And like, AOC can win in the same way that Mamdani can win and did win the primary. It's because he brought in a lot of people who aren't normally part of the process like that. I might have my policy disagreements with the two of them because I'm much more of a, like, you know, center, left Democrat. I would probably consider myself like a Normie Democrat, not so much DSA. But I'm pretty like flexible if you have a good idea. I just, I don't know, people talk with certainty about things and I'm not always sure. Now, the candidate that people talk about that right now is like Gavin Newsom. They say Gavin Newsom might be able to win a Democratic primary right now, but he'd be

DOA in the general election. I don't know if that's true, but I do think like a California liberal who talks and looks the way that Gavin Newsom is, I've often joked that he was built in a laboratory for Republicans to run against. I like what he's doing right now. If you were asking me to just like pluck a candidate, I would not pick Gavin Newsom. I would probably pick like a Gretchen Whitmer or something like that, a Midwest Democrat that's much more appealing to the broader audience with a good sound record to run on. But again, I don't know that I'm right. I don't know what the mood of the elector it looks like.

It's all just our opinions at the end of the day. We're all just guessing. We're all just guessing. I've been speaking with Mike Nellis. Make sure to check out his substack. If you're one of Mike's viewers, make sure to check out my substack. Really good to talk to you. I'm so glad that that we did this.

long overdue and we should definitely do it again. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. All right, take care, Mike. Talk to you soon. Back to soon. Thanks, David. Bye. Bye. Every time you Google your name, you will probably find dozens of sites that expose your personal information. This can include phone number, home address, family details. It's just sitting there waiting to be scraped or abused. Incogny is a privacy service. They go after these sites on your behalf. They contact the data brokers, they demand your data be removed, which the brokers are legally required to do. Incogni will automatically remove your information from hundreds of the biggest and most notorious data broker sites, but you're not just limited to those.

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many of us have suspected for a while, which is that the government shut down, at least in part, is part of the determination that Republicans want to get rid of Obamacare by choking off funding for it. This is part of Project 2025. This is what we suspected. This is what some Republicans have been admitting. And so here is the video and there is that there is some deep analysis to be done here. President, are you open to sending the Affordable Care Act subsidies?

We want to fix it. it works. It's not working. Obamacare has been a disaster for the people. So we want to have it fixed so it works. That is a no, ladies and gentlemen, they are not open to extending Obamacare subsidies. Now, let's zoom out just a little bit. Some of us are old enough to remember that after Obamacare was first passed in 2010, Republicans

made, I don't know the exact number. It doesn't really matter. It's, oh, it's more than 60, more than 60 times Republicans did these. symbolic votes to try to repeal Obamacare, but we knew it wouldn't go anywhere because even though they controlled the House, they didn't control the Senate and Obama would have vetoed it anyway. It was a waste of your time. It was a waste of my time. It was like flushing taxpayer money down the toilet.

But eventually, when Donald Trump became president, they were in power and they came up with an idea, which is that without going through the legislative process, we can hurt Obamacare. They hurt me. They can hurt Obamacare by eliminating the individual mandate. The individual mandate said everyone's got to have some health insurance. And the reason for that is the way that insurance works is you want a really, really big risk pool. If you only have the people most likely to use health care in the system, then the math

of it is not going to work and it's going to make it really expensive. So they figured out, hey, we can hurt stuff by not funding it. When it comes to the Postal Service, when it comes to Social Security. Programs they don't like departments they don't like they figured out sometimes we can't get rid of it But we can just starve it of money it makes it suck and then we go look at how much this thing sucks. Let's get rid of it And so part of the desire for this shutdown is they don't want to relent on funding the Obamacare subsidies as part of a package to keep government open now you might say well okay they get rid of the subsidies, all these people that depend on the subsidies to afford their coverage can no longer

afford their coverage. They have no health insurance. We're back in the situation where they go to the ER to get primary care. It's expensive. They don't pay. We all pay anyway. What's Trump going to do to fix that? Well, the answer is Donald Trump's plan has been just two weeks away.

It's been it's two weeks away. And it's been two weeks away since August of 2020 when Donald Trump said to the then Fox News host Chris Wallace, in two weeks, we will not only announce, but sign into law a new health care plan. And it weren't. It didn't happen. We're still waiting for it. So Trump's admitting it.

Part of this entire shutdown thing is to kill those subsidies and people will lose health insurance. Donald Trump is arguing Portland is burning to the ground. It's not true. It's simply not true. We're going to look at that. It was amazing. Portland is burning to the ground. It's insurrectionists all over the place. It's Antifa. And yet the politicians who are petrified. Look, the politicians are afraid for their lives. That's the only reason that they say like there's nothing happening. And you've seen it. The place is burning down and they pretend like there's nothing happening.

So we'll take a look at the order. We haven't seen. You know, what I've started to wonder, is it possible that Donald Trump is being shown videos of Portland unrest from 2020 right now and Trump just thinks that it's going on now? Like, is it, is it possible that Trump is kind of being kept out of the loop about what's really going on in Portland? Because I don't know how you could come up with that perspective if you're actually seeing what's going on in in Portland right now. And we've got, you know, small protests, Nothing's burning down Trump's justification for sending troops in and it's just increasingly based on lies and then finally on the Portland ruling this is so funny Trump refers to a judge he picked as he even though it's a woman, but that is the least insane thing that Donald Trump says here. He wasn't served well, he wasn't served well by the people that they put judges like that on.

I wasn't served well by the people that picked judges, I can tell you. Things like that are. He wasn't served well by the people who picked judges. He picked the judge. It's just too bad. I appointed the judge and he goes like that. So I wasn't served well. Obviously, I don't know the judge.

But if he made that kind of a decision. And by he, of course, he means she. Portland is burning to the ground. You have agitators, insurrectioners. All you have to do is look at the, look at the television, turn on your television, read your newspaper. It's burning to the ground. The governor, the mayor, the politicians are petrified for their lives.

And you have a judge like that. He ought to be, that judge ought to be a sheriff. He ought to be ashamed of himself and it's a woman that Donald Trump selected. Nothing matters anymore. The facts just don't matter anymore. And one of the really interesting things is that you might think, okay, well, you know, Trump is one way when he's being asked questions by reporters, but he's different when he's being coddled by a friendly anchor.

The problem is even when coddled by a friendly anchor, these emails or these interviews are still completely abortive. Let's look an example at an example of one. It is harder to find a bigger Trump brown noser than Greg Kelly on Newsmax. He just loves Trump, loves Trump, tries to give him the easiest possible interviews. And Trump still manages to make a fool out of himself. Now, here, you all know, I am loving, loving the triggering around the bad bunny stuff. I love that they want to argue that the bad bunny's not American.

He is, he's Puerto Rican, Puerto Rico's part of the United States. I love that they hate that bad bunny spoke Spanish on Saturday night Saturday night live on Saturday. I love it. I absolutely love it. And here is Trump saying he's never really heard of bad bunny, but this is terrible and it shouldn't be happening and it shouldn't be allowed. The NFL just chose the bad bunny rabbit or whatever's name, this guy who hates ice. He doesn't like you.

He accuses everything he doesn't like of racism. Do you think maybe we should just. just kind of entertained blowing off the NFL like a boycott or something along those lines. They've been boycotting the NFL for how many years has it been? Let me see here. What year did Colin Kaepernick take a knee? 2016. They've been boycotting the NFL for a decade. First, it was Colin Kaepernick. Then it was other people kneeling during the national anthem. Then it was, was it that the NFL was like doing something for Black History Month? I don't even remember, then it was that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey or woke or something like that.

And then now it's bad rabbit that they don't like. Guy does not seem like a unifying entertainer. And a lot of folks don't even know who he is. I never, I never heard of him. I don't know who he is. I don't know why they're doing it. It's like crazy. And then they blame it on some promoter that they hired to pick up entertainment.

I think it's really, I think it's absolutely ridiculous. And while we're at it, I'd like them to change the kickoff rule, which. which looks ridiculous with it. Trump equally is infuriated by bad bunny and by the kickoff rule. It's kicked and the ball is floating in the end, everyone standing there watching it. It's ridiculous. It's not any safer than the regular kickoff. I think it looks, it just looks so terrible.

I think it really demeans football, to be honest with it. It's a great game, but it demeans football. Do you know what I mean by that? The kickoff rule, the new kickoff. Oh, yeah. Greg Kelly is really into that. I really hope that bad bunny does end up performing. And I say that, you might be saying, why wouldn't he?

There are rumors being floated that the the blowback is such that the NFL is going to, you know, find some way out of having bad bunny perform. I think that probably won't happen. I cannot, go ahead and boycott the NFL. We just don't care. You've been boycotting it supposedly for 10 years for 10 different reasons. Just go ahead and do it. And I love that a Puerto Rican singer is.

what is now triggering them and sending them off the culture war cliff. Donald Trump telling again the lie that he saved Los Angeles because Gavin Newsom had no water. This is not true, but Greg Kelly loves this story. And we'll do it in other places that need it. We saved Los Angeles. I'll tell you, if you, if you look, you know, we did this a few months ago with Gavin Newscombe in Los Angeles and we saved it. That place, it would have burned to the ground and the head police person.

was a protest of like in a two to about two by three block area in los angeles said if they didn't do this we wouldn't that we they have they totally lost control by the way two weeks later he was saying no they could have done it themselves you know is the old story but we we literally saved los angeles from burning to the ground along with the other half that burned to the ground because newsom didn't have any water and of course this entire water thing has been widely debunked it's not true los angeles doesn't get its water from the pacific Northwest the way Donald Trump claims. None of it is true. But this is, remember, this is a softball easy interview. And Trump still can't control himself. Trump was asked, are you going to invoke

the Insurrection Act formally because of what's happening in Portland? Trump goes, it's what's happening there is the insurrection. What? The Insurrection Act, is that going to be formally invoked? Is that a way to kind of get around all this opposition? Well, it is a way to get around it. If we don't have to use it, I wouldn't use it. If you take a look at what's been going on in Portland, it's been going on for a long time. And that's insurrection. I mean, that's pure insurrection. And then you'll have a governor get up and say, there's absolutely nothing wrong.

And you see these places are burning down. Like in Chicago with Pritzker, they lose five a weekend, six, seven, eight, ten, eleven. It's crazy. And, you know, like 35 or shot. You look at some of the bigger weekends and they'll have 11 dead 11 murdered and 50 shot and then he gets up in television tells everyone how safe it is it's not safe and we'll make it safe. I can make it safe and then finally capping off this unhinged interview with a word salad so impenetrable that even the people that are like decoding the dead sea scrolls are unable to penetrate what the hell is Trump talking about. And by the way, the one thing I do hear Trump say here is some footage from Portland. I think what he's describing is months old. I don't believe it's happening at this point in time.

It could be a very interesting. They interviewed people before in something. And I'm watching. And a woman said, I don't care who they bring in. People are being killed here. I just wanted to stop. They can bring in whoever they want. People don't care.

They wanted to stop. And that's what we did. We brought in the National Guard into D.C. And it's now one of the safest that went from a very very. very unsafe city to one of the safest cities in the country. All in, it took, you know, it took 12 days, and then let's say give us a couple of more days after that, figure a month, but it took 12 days before the crime really stopped, and after it stopped.

And, you know, our soldiers are not politically correct. These are, we won the case on merit at the Supreme Court. These people are there for merit. They're there because they should be there, and they look like soldiers. And they went in, and they just cleaned it up. And they're doing the same thing right now. in Memphis, Tennessee. I believe that the incident Trump is referring to is months old, and this reinforces my belief

that Donald Trump is simply being shown old videos and claiming that they are taking place right now. A softball interview, no hard questions from a friendly anchor who is a suck up to Trump, and it's still terrifying. Something is very wrong here. Now on the bonus show today, we are going to talk about the burning down of the house of a South Carolina judge who criticized the Trump administration. Next thing you know, the house is gone.

AOC is telling her supporters to laugh at Stephen Miller's insecure masculinity. She's getting at something that these people are really self-conscious about. I think it's very interesting. And then finally, UFC fights at the White House. What? Yes. We will discuss and it is absolutely embarrassing. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show.

Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves as bad. You can sign up at join packman.com. I'll see you then and be back here tomorrow.