The David Pakman Show - 11/20/24: Explosive panel on the future of Dem Party as GOP civil war brews

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, and Steven Kenneth "Destiny" Bonnell II, political streamer and debater, join David to discuss whether the 2024 election results mean that the Democratic Party should move to the left, the center, or stay exactly where it is -- A Republican civil war is brewing, with growing opposition to some of Trump's cabinet picks, as well as over the selection of Senate Majority Leader -- Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are in panic mode after their pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to suck up to Donald Trump backfires publicly -- Donald Trump delivers a confused and bizarre speech at Mar-a-Lago as the delusions resume -- Donald Trump's dangerous and absurd promises continue during a strange speech at Mar-a-Lago -- A sick looking Donald Trump goes to Texas with Elon Musk to witness the launch of a Spacex rocket -- On the Bonus Show: Manhattan DA agrees to postpone Trump's sentencing, Trump's DOGE commission promises mass layoffs and ending telework, news influencers lean right per new Pew study, much more... 🐶 Ollie dog food: Use code PAKMAN for 60% OFF your first box of meals at https://ollie.com 📰 Subscribe to The Washington Post for just $0.50/week at https://washingtonpost.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🖼️ Aura Frames: Use code PAKMAN for $45 OFF & free shipping at https://auraframes.com/pakman 🍷 Naked Wines: Use code PAKMAN to get 6 bottles for $39.99 at https://nakedwines.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- Pakman Discord: https://www.davidpakman.com/discord -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave a Voicemail: (219)-2DAVIDP

. Welcome everybody. We have a truly delightful situation here where there is a Republican civil war very quickly brewing and it couldn't come as a better time if you are disgusted by Donald Trump's recent cabinet picks and nominations as of course I am. Uh, you know, everything was kind of lined up perfectly for them. So here's the setup. Republicans won everything. They got the Oval Office. They got the Senate. They got the House complete in total control.

The stage was essentially set for them to finally deliver on all those promises they've been making for years. You know, the creating of jobs, lowering gas prices, slashing egg prices, milk prices, chocolate prices, prices on those beautiful deck upon mandarins. Yes, even big Mac prices were all going to go down under Trump and Republicans and they will end every single war while we are at it. They were just getting ready to do all of it. But instead of the harmonious rollout of their dream agenda, we're already seeing cracks in the foundation and those cracks are quickly turning into a full blown Republican civil

war. So let's start with the first bombshell. We already talked about this earlier this week. The Matt Gaetz attorney general nomination turns out that nearly half of current Senate Republicans reportedly are not going to support confirming Matt Gates. If that's true, that's not a small roadblock. That's a complete and total dead end. Gates's chances of becoming a G are toast if half of Republicans aren't going to support the guy.

And you of course have to wonder how did we even get to this point? Because we were told these Republicans are as unified as ever. They are on the same team. The left is fractured, but the right is completely one, uh, immovable behemoth, the singular, uh, element, all thinking together or whatever. We then go from Gates to and by the way, the Hegseth nomination is also potentially falling apart. There are reports from inside Maga World, which means Trump's gaudy house in Florida.

There are reports from Maga World that they are considering a replacement for Pete Hegseth. Supposedly their research into Hegseth didn't reveal that he once paid a woman off after she accused him of rape. And that is apparently not a thrilling to those who are now in charge of Trump's transition. And then we have new drama and the new ROM drama is around the new Senate majority leader, John Thune. Now you would think this would be a very straightforward process. Okay. It's not going to be good going to be Mitch McConnell.

Do we want Thune? Do we want corn in? Okay. It's Thune. Let's all get United behind Thune, but that's not the way it's going. MAGA Republicans are already sniping at each other over who's truly MAGA enough to lead the Republican party. So we go to Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, who was on CNN yesterday. And she says, you know, John Cornyn and John Thune, they've all made anti MAMAGA statements about Trump.

It doesn't seem she's particularly happy with the selection. Take a listen. I do want to go back to something you said, Congresswoman, because these are Republicans, the Republicans asking for this House ethics report to be released. It's people like Senator John Cornyn of Texas. He it'd be hard to describe him as anything but aligned with MAGA. Are you suggesting that there's something in his stock portfolio that's questionable? I'm suggesting that John Cornyn, to my knowledge, made statements that was actually anti-MAGA about President Trump.

And same with the new elected Senate leader. But I will say that Thune has since changed his tune, and it seems like he's more aligned with MAGA and President Trump. But when they ask for the House ethics report, do you think there's something corrupt about that? When they're asking for testimony, when they're asking for this report, again, a bipartisan report, do you think there's something unethical about that? I think that what's unethical about it is that this has been shut down,

that they're not requesting reports on other people who are normally under investigation currently. Okay. And of course the reason why people are saying, well, let's take a look at that. Matt Gates report is because Matt Gates suspiciously and abruptly resigned from Congress within minutes seemingly maybe a couple of hours of being nominated to a G and that report was scheduled to come out just two days later. If the report would clear Gates, why wouldn't you want to see it? But here's Ana Paulina Luna already saying these Republicans that seem as though they are aligned with MAGA, they've made

anti-Trump statements. Now, if Gates did nothing wrong, they should want the report published. If it's baseless, the report will exonerate him and then we can go directly into whatever the next thing is. But Anna Paulina Luna is not sold on it. And that continues to be a topic of discussion. Furthermore, you know, I find it interesting that these actual allegations come out at peculiarly peculiar timing while he's being nominated to be the attorney general. To be clear, I do think Matt Gates is going to be an incredible attorney general. I think this baseless smear campaign, frankly, is abhorrent that it's happening to

someone like Matt Gates, who's done so much to fight the government corruption. Matt Gates is just so great. So what's the point here? The point is there are cracks. You have cracks within the Republican party over Gates, over Hegseth, over the Senate majority leader. This is a time we were told United Republicans are going to fix everything from prices to foreign policy, to education policy, to everything in between. And increasingly they are falling apart. Now for Democrats, the strategy here is very simple. You stand back and you let it happen because this kind of chaos doesn't really need interference from the left. Let them tear themselves apart, expose the dysfunction and just watch as they fail to

deliver on their promises. Now, I will say it again. I want jobs to do great under Trump. I want the stock market to do great under Trump. I want the stock market to do great under Trump. I want wages to exceed inflation under Trump, all of these things. I want it all to happen, but if it doesn't, they need to be held accountable. And the civil war that is currently brewing in the Republican party, it's not really a bug. It's a feature now that they've won everything and they could just be united and fix everything. They're already showing that they're not going to be able to do

it. Joe Scarborough on morning Joe, the same Joe Scarborough who has spent years branding himself as a Trump critic says that after his controversial trip to Mar-a-Lago, he has been flooded with phone calls and not just any phone calls. Mind you, the phone calls are from literally around the world, he says, with very supportive, very positive people telling him it was so good when he and Mika Brzezinski went down to Mar-a-Lago and kissed the ring. Here is Joe Scarborough explaining it. Don't be confused. Even though there is endless criticism of what he and Mika did, the epitome of access

journalism, he wants us to believe they're calling him and everybody is just thrilled at what he did yesterday. I saw for the first time what a massive disconnect there was between social media and the real world because we were flooded with phone calls from people all day, literally around the world, a very positive, very supportive people from Switzerland called Joe and said, sir, it was so good when you went down and bowed before Trump and kissed the ring. We loved it. In Malaysia, they called them and they said, Joe Mika, we're so thrilled you went down to Florida. It's going understand what you do, did you dig, et cetera, et cetera. But once in a while I would get a text or a from sort of go oh man i hope you're doing okay and i call him back and i go well eddie gladys went up

and we go eddie are you on twitter and he goes i am i go okay well i'm not so we've had a good day mika just had a wonderful event and it's fantastic uh uh we're we're we're gonna do that all of us are gonna do the best we can do and we're all working towards a better America. Take it day by day, day by day, day by day. And again, you, there you go. Flooded with phone calls from around the world. It is starting to sound a lot like those Trumpy and sir stories. You know, the ones I'm talking about, sir, I've never seen anything like it.

People are crying, sir. I'm hearing from the generals, except this time it's Joe Scarborough playing the part of sir, uh, rather than Donald Trump. But here's where it gets really rich. Despite the feedback to their trip to Mar-a-Lago to reopen communications with Trump, that's what they said they did. Apparently, it's not going so well online because the comments on this particular segment where they explain how great everything is, the comments are disabled. That's right. No comments allowed. So I'm guessing the feedback they were getting was not exactly the flood of positivity that Joe was talking about. Now,

as we mentioned on the bonus show yesterday, and by the way, if you're not a member, what better time to join than now? This is just about the most bottom of the barrel example of access journalism that you could imagine. It's not reporting. It's not analysis. It is overt, naked, cozying up to power for the sake of being close to power. And what's worse is that the clip that started the whole thing, they acknowledge we didn't even get an interview with Trump. We just went down to privately suck up to the. Over the past week, Joe and I have heard from so many people, from political leaders to regular citizens deeply dismayed by several of President-elect Trump's cabinet selections. And they are scared.

Last Thursday, we expressed our own concerns on this broadcast and even said we would appreciate the opportunity to speak with the president-elect himself. On Friday, we were given the opportunity to do just that. Right. Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally with President-elect Trump. It was the first time we have seen him in seven years. Now, we talked about a lot of issues, including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets. We talked about that a good bit.

And it's going to come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show, has watched it over the past year or over the past decade, that we didn't see eye to eye on a lot of issues, and we told him so. What we did agree on was to restart communications. Right. My father often spoke with world leaders with whom he and the United States profoundly disagreed. That's a task shared by reporters and commentators alike. We had not spoken to President Trump since March of 2020. You get the point. It's just like when her dad, Zibinu Brzezinski would speak to global

leaders that he didn't necessarily agreed with, agree with. So this is what started it all. They went to Mar-a-Lago for what? To hang out with Trump, to schmooze, to make up after years of calling him dangerous. They jet down to Florida for a little Mar-a-Lago meet and greet. So this is indeed access journalism in its purest, most distilled, atavistic form. The idea that you need to maintain a relationship with power, even with someone like Trump, just in case you need the access down the road. But the problem is that when you play the game, you are not holding power accountable. You're actually enabling it.

And don't forget that this is the same show that gave Trump untold amounts of free air time during the 2016 campaign and then spent years trying to rebrand themselves as part of the pro Biden resistance. And now they're at it again. So they're at Mar-a-Lago soaking in the flood of positive calls that Joe is getting. Sir, we in New Zealand are thrilled that you went down there. So what's happening here is obvious. It's not journalism.

It's not even really entertaining. It's a it's a grab for relevance as MSNBC ratings sink dressed up as a global event. The world was thrilled that we reopened lines of communication with Trump and the fact that they're disabling comments just proves that they know exactly how ridiculous this whole thing looks. So we are doing everything we can to generate a real critical ecosystem on the left, not the I'm a former Republican, but I don't like Trump and I'll kind of help Biden. But now that Trump's back in power, I want to be on Trump's good side. That's not what we're building. I told you about it yesterday.

It's called chorus. We're going to do everything we can to build a real progressive ecosystem to try to keep these people accountable. I'll say more about that soon in the interim. If you're as disgusted by this morning, Joe stunt as we are, just make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel, youtube.com slash the David Pakman show. Those who follow me on social media may be familiar with my dad's dog, Nemo Pakman, like me, Nemo Pakman has no middle name. Uh, and that's why Thank you. real whole foods with minimal processing is one of the best choices for their health. No harmful fillers, preservatives. Ollie is made in the U S in American kitchens using ingredients sourced from trusted growers and producers around the world. You fill out all these 30 second quiz. They'll do a customized meal plan based on your dog's weight activity level and other health considerations for first

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Really a steal. That's Washington post.com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. Today we are going to be speaking with two distinguished gentlemen who have been on the show before. We'll be speaking with Stephen Kenneth Destiny Bunnell, the second political streamer and debater. And also he has a much shorter name, Cenk Uygur, host of the Young Turks. So to get us into this conversation, we recently did a poll on our YouTube channel on scientific. Does the democratic party need to move left or right? Or

is it fine where it is? 47% of our audience said Democrats should embrace left-wing economic populism and move further to the left. 44% either said that the democratic party is perfect the way it is changed nothing or should move further to the center, deal with issues of crime and immigration in a way that more resembles the way the right talks about it, et cetera. I think to start with, I just want to hear about your reaction to that and which direction sounds like it's the one we need to go in. So, David, I know those questions are rough and it's hard to phrase them exactly right. But I think that you put two different things into one question and then hence it becomes misleading. So let me break it down for you. I think there are three different parts of the Democratic Party now.

And they're usually called two different parts, but that's very wrong. So there's the establishment part. I think that's basically the part that Destiny supports. Rah, rah, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, corporate Democrats who will deliver five to 10 percent, and then you're supposed to kiss their ass for it and go oh my god you changed my life so much and it's nothing but propaganda they do basically almost everything the donors ask them to that's the loser wing of the party uh and i don't mean that in terms of the folks who are advocating for it god bless everybody's got every right to advocate for what they believe and i mean they are literally losers hillary. Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump, who, you know, is barely in double digits in IQ points. Biden nearly

lost. So if you want to keep making that same mistake, you know, a couple of decades later, there'll be no party left. But like, if we just get the best corporate robot, like Pete Buttigieg, maybe he'll be the answer. No, corporate robots are by definition not the answer. So we're in a populist era. We're in an era where online media is stronger now for the first time than mainstream media. Authenticity is rewarded. And so sending out people going, I am doing what the donors asked me to is a disaster, epic disaster. And you've seen it with your own eyes. So I'm trying to wake people up. Now, when you go to the progressive side, everybody just goes, oh, progressives. But wait a minute, there's two very different camps in there. There's a camp

that's Bernie 2016 that I'm in, that's economic populism, left-wing populists. And then there's the identitarian left, which is go maximum on crime doesn't exist. You know, trans people should be able to play in any professional sports they like, free surgeries for detainees, on and on and on, right? And so my thesis is not one that's even, I don't even think it's arguable, let alone controversial. The corporate wing and the identitarian left wing proved to be a spectacular failure in this election. Clearly the popular wing, and by the way, this is not a matter of dispute. You can just look at the polling. So the identitarian left says defund the police is going to poll really well.

Latinx is going to poll really well. Except it doesn't. It polls disastrously, right? And the corporate wing says, oh, me kissing the ass of corporations is going to poll really well. It doesn't. It never does, right? But when you look at the populist left, you've got paid family leave, you've got $50 minimum wage, you've got lowering drug prices, on and on and on. Universal health care, they all poll two-thirds or higher. So why not do the thing that's popular?

And, of course, there's a reason why they don't. And it's because the whole thing is built on money, money, money, money, money, money. I mean, the first thing that Joe Biden took out of the first COVID relief bill was a $15 minimum wage. He was lying about it from day one. He buried that. And why it's super, it was Paul again, pulling over two thirds. Why would you take that out? Why wouldn't

you let the Republicans defeat it if they're going to defeat it and they use it as a tool against them to win elections? The reason you don't do any of that is because your donors ordered you not to do that. Destiny about to that point, Bernie Sanders said shortly after the election, I'm paraphrasing, of course, the working class abandoned Democrats because Democrats abandoned the working class. Do you think there's truth to that critique from Bernie? No, of course not. It's I mean, like the again, the reality is, is incumbent parties all over

the world lost, um, it like in every single country, the incumbent party lost vote share, lost seats in parliament, lost their elected leaders. I mean, like it was a referendum on inflation worldwide. We all felt it. And inflation is the thing that you feel the cumulative effects of. So there you go. Um, I mean, like when has there ever been a president in recent history that has been better for labor than Joe Biden? And is Trump that has been better for labor than Joe Biden?

And is Trump going to be better for labor than Joe Biden or Kamala Harris would have been? Like it's just there's no there's no policy foundation in that statement. And then to Cenk's point, I guess like this is the the eternal mystery for progressives is that and I've argued with so many on this. Their candidates are supposedly the most popular. Just nobody knows it yet. And all the positions that they have are the most popular positions. Then why do their candidates lose all their elections? Even when they're outspending opponents, they lose their elections. Why? What's where are all of these progressive candidates taking, you know, taking Congress by storm that are so popular and have all these popular positions and before and then I'm curious what

you'll say, but I will head off one response because I know it's going to be well, it's because the party's opposed to them and the corporate donors. The party hated Donald Trump when he ran in 2016. Republicans hated Donald Trump in 2016. It wasn't the billionaire class and it wasn't the donor class. He genuinely got a lot of support from the party and he eventually rose up through the ranks and he became popular and he became the nominee. And I think that if there was a progressive candidate, they could at least be winning their local races. But I mean, I don't know what's going on there. Yeah. You're shaking your head. How do you see it?

Yeah. So first, I love talking about worldwide elections because I think it goes to exactly the point I'm making. Candidates that are for the status quo are losing everywhere. And what's interesting is they keep going. I don't get it, Brazil went left, then right, then left, UK went left, then right, then left. What's going on here? Are they left or are they right? They're not left or right. What the voters are doing is voting for change

and voting for populism. And so that is your Rosetta Stone. That will tell you if the right-winger or the left-w wingers going to win and so even muck rome was and new party we l one in stunning fashion that he said did the standard thing that everybody else does and then they voted against him because then he became the central what is the status quo that the whole world

is vomiting out right now that's neoliberal policies give all the money to the very top, and don't worry, it'll trickle all over you many decades from now. As people on the left, we've been fighting against this ideology for decades. But now our leaders have been co-opted by the donor class, and they say the same goddamn thing. And that's why we're losing these elections. It's not a matter of whether don trump is better for labor the kamala harris of course that the question is in the primary is a candidate like bernie sanders better than hillary clinton or kamala harris on labor and answers obviously obviously so go towards labor go towards change

so cut look even within this election guys was a perfect microcosm when kamala harris first came out anna and i on the young turks said oh my god she's running a brilliant campaign we're on tape saying that why she came out as an economic populist in the beginning she went after corporations doing price gouging she went after uh the housing prices she was addressing the economic needs of the average man. And then she picked Tim Walz, the most populist of any of the potential candidates. And then she took what was, Joe Biden was down in the polling anywhere from two to eight points nationally.

She eventually sprung up to seven points ahead nationally. She had it. And on the show, I said, if the election were held today, she'd win. And that was true. And then a giant turnaround and she lost the lead entirely and lost the election. What was the turnaround? Her brother-in-law Tony West, who's a corporate lawyer for Uber, convinced her to kiss the ass of corporations and that was a brilliant political strategy. So what did she do?

She put out a letter of 90 corporate CEOs backing her. And she started bragging about all the corporate CEOs are on my side. All the corporate CEOs are on my, I'm like, stop, stop. You're doing terrible damage. Right? And then she had Mark Cuban go on every cable news show. Now guys, remember she's in favor of big business. Don't worry, big business. She loves big business. Then Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney, all the wrong direction, and she lost the lead, and she lost the election. It's right there. It happened right in front of your eyes. So now this idea that the establishment wing uses, just because we spend billions of dollars against your progressive candidates, and we have all of mainstream media lying and doing propaganda

on our behalf and saying there are no donor class the donor class doesn't affect anything oh my god the billions they took in donations from corporations it doesn't affect anyone no bernie sanders is the real problem he's going to execute people in central park oh my god if he actually serves the average american it's going to be terrible everybody unite unite against them right and you guys also with your own eyes think about it in 2013 when bernie sanders was pulling out one percent against hillary clinton i did a video on the young turks saying that brother could actually beat hillary clinton in the 2016 primary why did i say that not because of bernie bernie's a great guy he means well etc he's got his faults like everybody does. But it's because I sensed a massive populist energy in the country and he went from 1% to 48%. So why did he not

get over the hump and get to 52%? Because the minute he got into the 40s, they went from ignoring him to he's going to execute people in Central Park, his followers are brown shirts. He's anti-Semitic. He's a, he's this, he's that he's terrible. So yeah, with all of the media and all the money against you, it's a little harder to win. If you don't acknowledge that you're just being intellectually dishonest. Let's do it. Do you acknowledge that? Hold on, last thing, last thing. But despite all that, we, I, i helped to co-found just democrats we launched it on the young turks and everybody told me there's like maybe you'll get one maybe you'll get one we got 11 people rejecting corporate pack betting into into congress it was stunning and we had one of

the most stunning political upsets literally in american history when aoc beat crowley and we did that with almost no money. Okay. So even with overwhelming odds against us, anything that is remotely that just a 5% fair playing field and we win. Imagine if we had the party infrastructure with us rather than against us. So destiny address any of that that you want, but specifically Jenks answer your question about why aren't the progressives winning if the ideas are so popular that Jenks said, which is when Bernie got into the 40s, the entire apparatus gets aligned against him. I mean, it becomes an unfalsifiable claim,

like it might just be that Bernie was just too far to the left for what the Democratic Party was ready to handle, which you would expect to see reflected in the media and in the people. I mean, it becomes a false. Well, you can have you can have elections where like Nina Turner is spending a ton of money and she still loses. You can have elections where the progressives are spending a lot of money and there's always a reason. It's either a new corporate donor or a new media is being biased or a new whatever. You know, all the media hated Trump. I didn't stop him in 2016. The Republican Party hated Trump. I didn't stop him in 2016. I think that at some point, like progressives will have to understand that it takes more than just, you know, screaming about the most leftist populist policies ever to get elected. You know,

we talk about like the world had a referendum on neoliberalism. No, it was just a referendum on incumbent parties, you know, and sometimes when you vote for it, people see that it doesn't even work out. You know, it was it was a whole bunch of populism that moved to Brexit and that hasn't worked out well for the UK at all. So now they're kind of turning back in the other direction. those countries are attending right have to do with fallouts from the refugee crisis still and all of the migrants fleeing into europe still so i mean like this idea that the world wants these you know hollow empty populist leaders that at the end of the day don't even have great policies for them and again for some reason like where are they why are they not taking over congress like where are all of these people in congress you know we had the justice systems that came in originally which was awesome um but there was i don't remember this exactly but i remember i looked up the step because they went from saying that like only 10 percent of our candidates won to like 90 percent of our candidates. The justice system went from supporting, I think, like 70 plus

candidates one season to the next election cycle, like like six. And, you know, if there was so much of this populist energy, why aren't they being elected everywhere? Like they're still representing a minority opinion in the party. Destiny, I want to stick with you for a second. Before the election, you tweeted, if Kamala ends up winning the entire far left, the commies, tankies, Hamas supporters, et cetera, need to be effing jettisoned from the party. We don't need them to win. We can turn out our own base and they are an absolute effing cancer to be associated with. Given Trump's victory and whatever it means to you, do you stand by that? Yeah, one trillion percent.

I think that having to answer for you, having to. But I mean, I represent far more of the party than than the far. You don't. Apparently you represent the loser wing. You can see like every progressive candidate that is running in all of their elections that are being tossed. They lose their primaries. They lose their actual elections like they say they're losers. They're by definition, they're losers. The issue is that one is the the lefty media sphere will never, ever support a candidate that is electable in

the mainstream. They just won't. They turn on Bernie Sanders and they turn on AOC. Even those people aren't far left enough for the insanity that is the far left online now. So trying to kowtow to this group of people who want to see an actual communist or this anti-capitalist or just somebody of their, I guess, merit at more local levels or even like in congressional levels rather than just like for the presidential race. That's number one. And number two, that media sphere is toxic and we have to pretend that they're part of the in-group. Again, a big benefit that Trump enjoys is when he gets attacked, Trump can run this whole media circuit on the right where every single person is sycophantically obsessed with him. He doesn't have to answer any, you know, any attacks. He can sit there and attack the other side endlessly and relentlessly. And there's no accountability. And then, you know, you're Kamala Harris or you're, you know, the Democratic candidates like, OK, well, going on the right platforms is very difficult because these people are going to,

you know, rake me over the coals. And then I go to the left platforms. These people all call me corporate sellouts, you know, donor class, whatever. OK, well, Jesus, I've got my center left media, but they're so obsessed with trying to be fair and balanced and to try to not be not have like Trump derangement syndrome that they're going to hold me like ultra accountable. So you have these wacky, unbelievable moments where people like Walls and Vance are on stage. And the question for Walls is, didn't you lie 20 or 30 years ago about the months you were in Taiwan? And then the question for Vance is like, did you really mean it when you said you would also overturn like the next election? And we have to pretend that these two things are even. It's just ridiculous.

The Democrat establishment and then the Democratic media sphere needs to do a better job at like reinforcing the voting for the in-group, because at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is getting your candidate elected. You can do all the activism on Twitter or whatever you want, but if you're not pushing for electable candidates to get elected, then you're engaging in slacktivism. Junk, feel free to respond to that however you want. But I would love to hear you address the issue. Destiny's bringing up about the asymmetry when it comes to the media ecosystems. And it's not about if she had done Rogan, she would have won. I don't believe that. I don't think there's any evidence of that. But generally the question of the media ecosystem. Yeah. So, um, lots of thoughts here. First

off, why, why could Trump overcome it? And Bernie couldn't, uh, you're leaving out the fact that Trump was an enormous celebrity and they literally gave him over a billion dollars in free media as he was running on the republican side whereas bernie sanders got in his miraculous run to catch hillary clinton that started in 2015 where he went from one point to basically about 48 percentage points abc covered him for seven seconds the whole year seven seconds so that's what mainstream media does because they're that they're literally corporate media they're multi-billion dollar corporations so they hate actual populists like

bernie sanders fake populists like donald trump oh it's a clown show we're having fun give him a couple billion dollars in free media and see how it turns out well it turned out very poorly and there's a conflation here between mainstream media and left-wing media. I think that the question on the debate stage that Destiny's referring to, yeah, totally outrageous, asymmetrical, ridiculous, those two things are not comparable. That's mainstream media doing false equivalency. That's not the conversation that we're having here. We're very, very far from mainstream media. So in terms of what went wrong with the Just Democrats real quick, and then I'll come back to what should the left wing media do. So in the beginning, when the co-founders were running it, that's when we ran to 70 candidates and we were very successful.

Unfortunately, all of us kind of left the building for different reasons. And then the new management decided they were going to run only a small number of races. But to be fair to them, they actually won a very high percentage of those races in the second time around. That's how they were able to build up from four to 11. So there's good arguments political strategy-wise for either direction. But what really took the steam out of just Democrats is that the founders wanted AOC and the others to go in a populist left direction, an economically populist direction. And instead, but that's very, very difficult. The reason why it's so difficult is because

their colleagues get so mad at them if they talk about money in politics, because then they all go, are you saying Hakeem Jeffries is corrupt just because he took all this money from the oil companies, the drug companies, the banks, AIPAC, every other lobbyist, you better not be mean to your colleagues. So they powered down on our most popular positions and they went identitarian left instead. But that is extreme. So that's why Destiny's conflating those two things. And I think, I'm not saying Destiny's doing this, but I think that a lot of people in media almost do that on purpose. A lot of them don't know. They just think progressives means both of those things at the same time and then they just say oh they're all unpopular and a lot of times especially mainstream media they'll go defund the police latinx universal health care

wait one of those things does not belong on that list universal health care pulls it over 70 percent so you've got to separate out those two wings. Anyone who's been economically populous has done a terrific job. For example, Tim Walz. We all like Tim Walz, right? Every wing of the Democratic Party likes Tim Walz. Well, Tim Walz was an economic populist, got a lot of things passed in Minnesota, and was rewarded for it, and was very very popular in minnesota because he delivered for the average guy including paid family leave and which is actually very very easy to pass it's at 84 approval it's just that the corporate wing goes yes i know it would make us popular it would

help our voters it's what we promised it's super easy to pass but we don't want to because our donors told us not to. Well, that's a wing that's going to get clobbered throughout the rest of time. That's the neoliberal wing. And the idea that the world is not under neoliberal rule right now is absurd. Of course we are. All the countries are under neoliberal corporate rule, and that's why the voters are rebelling

against all of them. So what's the media supposed to do? Now online media, corporate media is good at corporate media. They're always going to tell you whoever takes the most donor money is the greatest. They're leading the race with a billion dollars in bribes. Bravo, bravo, terrific job, corporate Democrat, corporate Republican. And remember guys, Trump beat the corporate Republicans. Like, you guys make it seem like, oh, hey, people are in favor of Republicans or their voters are still.

No, their voters rejected their corporate wing. And, you know, it came with a lot of baggage we're not happy with, right? But you have to give them a little bit of credit for actually, like, not for supporting Trump, who I think is a fake populist, but for at least rejecting Mitch McConnell, rejecting all those guys. credit for actually re like not for supporting trump who i think is a fake populist before at least rejecting mitch mcconnell rejecting all those guys so what our side that we say all mitch mcconnell to the billion dollars in corporate uh... money throughout his career terrible evil corrupt guy

nancy pelosi took a same billion dollars from very similar donors did exactly what they want to just like Mitch McConnell. Terrific angel, wonderful. Yeah, you could think that, and you could do all the marketing in the world for rah, rah, Nancy Pelosi. But at the end of the day, the American people woke up and they know that the billion dollars, whether it goes to a Republican or a Democrat, is corruption defined. So what we should do is we should have strong primaries and really challenge our candidates, because this whole idea of anointing, how's that working out for us? So we were supposed to trust the geniuses in Democratic leadership.

Oh my God, they're playing four dimensional chess. We'll never figure out what they're doing. They're so smart. Really? Even under Obama. Okay, Obama won a couple of times in it we've got some along history and talk about how selfish he was but in the meanwhile while he was in office the democrats lost

thousand seats nationwide and by the way the guy not most responsible for that was rama manual and now the corporate democrats are saying let's bring back rama manual to lose another thousand seats. Are you insane? And then they said, oh, we have to anoint Hillary Clinton. How did that turn out? We have to anoint Joe Biden. We have to anoint Kamala Harris.

And by the way, Biden only won by 43,000 votes in three swing states. They nearly lost to this imbecile three times. Look, you can't say someone has despotic tendencies, is a fascist, is a moron, is the worst guy in the world. And they lose to him two times and say, you should put me back in charge because I know what I'm doing. No, they have proven definitively that they do not know what they're doing. Destiny, go ahead. I mean, I mean, there's nothing to to say like progressives have nothing to show for their record they have like bad polling like that 70 80 percent of america supports single parent that's not true um we've done the polling on this over and over and over again if you poll

in the most favorable manner they support it if you pull for what it actually is that that support plummets to like 25 percent that's not remotely true it is absolutely true um i don't remember if it was a if it was you were arguing against Democratic policies. That's amazing. Why don't you just join the Republican Party? Well, let me just go to a bet. If I can interject one thing. Yeah, go ahead.

From what I've seen, the polling Jenk mentions does exist around 70, 75 percent support. The polling I've seen with what we might call more specific wording. It's not that support drops to 25%, but I have seen it dropped to more like 48 to 50%. I, I do think a lot of it, it's complicated because if you just ask someone, does the government have a basic level of responsibility to give people some healthcare? Most people say yes. And also a lot of them don't necessarily know what that means. I don't know that we're going to solve whether it's a good policy based on three different

polls that ask it in a different way. I don't know. I've I've seen the polling. Yeah, I understand. I'm just saying that, like, if you want to if you want to if you want to actually pass any policy or do anything, you have to have an actual realistic understanding of what it is Americans even think before you even begin to go down the path of how do we implement it. And the reality is, is single payer health care, when you ask somebody, do you think the government should provide health insurance for people that

polls incredibly well? Yes. When you ask, should the government be the second question, there were all three of these were listed in a I wish I remember the name of the polling firm, but this is around. I think it's the Kaiser Family Foundation that it might it might be that there's a second way of asking it that's more neutral of like, do you think that the government should be? Do you think that the government should be able to offer insurance or something for all levels? Something like that. But then the third question is, should the government be the sole provider of insurance and ban private insurance? And that one is incredibly unpopular. I think that's the ban private insurance. It's like even countries that have universal

systems, they don't ban. Most of them don't ban private insurance. So I don't even know why that would be included. Because that's what Bernie's plan was. Bernie's plan for health care was the furthest left plan of any country that would have ever existed in the on the face of the earth. There is no other plan. Not true. And B, you really sound like a Republican. That's great. But I actually read the policy. OK, so Bernie Sanders plan included things like no copay for drugs and covered things like vision and dental and provided for a single means of both insurance and I believe delivery medicine throughout the entire country. It was it was more left than any other medical plan on the planet.

I do agree with what you're saying, Pacman, that there are multi-payer systems. I'm a big fan of either a public option or even a single payer system, depending on how you administer it. I think it's fine. Medicare expansion, all things are fine. But you have to be honest about like, where is the electorate? How do they feel about these things? And you can't just constantly blame donors and billionaires and even like this huge cope of calling Trump a fake populist. Trump is as populist as they come. He is one man against the system who's telling you that he's going to fight and take it all down as one person against all the corrupt donors and everything else.

This is as populist as they possibly come. Populism become dictators. This is what populism is, is the precursor to things like fascism or authoritarian regimes. You always get these like strong. Yeah, that's that's a great strategy. Do things that are on. I mean, he's on it. So, yeah.

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checkout. That's a U R a frames.com use code Pacman to get $45 off their bestselling Carver matte frame. The link is in the podcast notes. The last thing I wanted to ask about involves sort of both of you on Twitter. Um, Jenk, you, you kind of went mega viral for responding to Elon Musk and saying, Hey, put me in charge of slashing that Pentagon budget. Elon actually replied.

He asked for suggestions. Don jr replied something like this is being considered or it was considered a destiny. You responded to the entire thing by saying sigh S I G H. I think my first question to you, Jenk is, do you think they genuinely want to cut defense spending or this entire department of grifty edgelords thing is just really about cutting social programs at the end of the day? Or do you, do you really think the Pentagon is something they would cut? So um, let's look at this conversation, right?

So first of all, why do I call Trump a fake populist? Because he goes rah rah average man, which I think is smart political strategy because he's focusing on things that are popular. That's what populism is. Wow, that's rocket science to figure that out, is to do the correct electoral strategy. But then when he gets into office, what's his number one priority? Corporate tax cuts and delivering for his donors like Miriam Adelson. He put in Marco Rubio, Elise Stefanik, Mike Waltz, Mike Huckabee, all Team Miriam, neocon

war hawks. What happened? I thought you were anti-war. And part of what I'm doing here is some of the right wing populists actually do agree with us on some issues. So for example, anti-corruption. When I point out that Mary Madelson gave Trump $137 million and then he gave her four appointees, people even on the right wing go, yeah, that sucks and that we don't agree with Trump there.

And that's a stunning turn of events. I've never seen that happen before, but it's actually genuinely happening online you should give them some credit for that now on a on I'm cutting what I'm asking is do you guys really mean it and so if you really mean it most the corruption is in the Pentagon so that's where all the pork goes because if you question that pork they go you're endangering our national security you're

putting all of our lives in on the line etc so they stuff it full of pork so i said look guys if you're going to do cuts let's start at the pentagon i can cut 400 billion dollars overnight for you and what it's doing is is putting them to the test do you really mean it or don't you and so a couple of surprising things happen from there. First of all, if you look at my comment section, right-wing populists actually do mean it. So this is going to be really, really interesting. So then Elon and Don Jr. say, yeah, hey, you know, a lot of these contracts go to these defense contractors because the generals, after they retire, go to work for those defense contractors. And that gives them an incentive to sell us out and to buy all these bloated programs because they're literally going to get paid by those same companies. And if they say, yes, you're right, which is where they are today, and we should stop that so that conflict of interest what that's a left-wing position that we've been arguing for twenty years

i'll take it that's fantastic and that's the unity that mainstream media pretended that they were in favor of but only when they were doing corporate deals for taxes for the rich and set her up now we have some potential actually at the same time i sucker. I've been in this game a long time. So is it possible that they don't cut the Pentagon and instead they cut social spending? Of course, of course, that's more likely, right? But at least the very first conversation we're having online about what to cut is the Pentagon.

Perfect. You can't ask for anything better from the left wing populist way of looking at it. So, Destiny, tell us about the reason for the sigh. Is it that you think Jenks being naive, that they're not really going to cut or that he's barking up the wrong tree here? I don't think they plan on cutting. I don't even like the conversation. I feel like so many issues I have with this. When progressives and really with anybody talks about taxes or anybody talks about budgets, like the conversation, people always talk about like taxes, like they're either this like tool of punishment or self-flagellation, or it's like this noble way of, I think that we should figure out what are the government programs that we want to fund and why. OK, so do we want single payer health care? Do we want expense-shared Medicare? Do we want to do SNAP and WIC and, you know, benefits programs?

Do we want to have tax subsidies for electric cars and solar? We figure these things out. Once we figure that out, we have our liabilities. OK, this is how much we owe. And then we need to figure out how do we raise the money for it? OK, do we tax people? Do we tariff? Do we whatever? Like, how do we how does the government fund these programs? That should be the totality of the conversation about taxes. These arbitrary obsessions with like, we got to slash the Pentagon by X dollars. We have to slash the military. We're like, why, why? What do we, what do you want to cut? Like, let's talk about that. Do we like, was the F-35 program a mistake? Do we want to have,

you know, like no, no military presence around the world? Do we shut down all of our bases? Do we want to have no more funding towards any type military presence around the world do we shut down all of our bases do we want to have uh no more funding towards any type of participation they're like what do we actually want to cut because the random thing like imagine and it's so crazy to me too especially because like jenka's a business owner and all these other guys are business owners like you walk in you ask okay i come into your business and you want to cut things like is it just i'm going to cut 40 of my budget did you just fire randomly like 40 of your employees are like no well you look at departments maybe that aren't making money you look at parts of your business maybe you don't need but it's never just like randomly like okay percent of your employees are like, no, well, you look at departments maybe that aren't making money. You look at parts of your business maybe you don't need. But it's never just like randomly like, OK, we're going to cut half our thing today, you know, unless you've got like a loan that's being called in and you have to pay up or something.

So, I mean, like that's one part of it. The second part of it is. It's OK, so far, so to be fully transparent, I'm on hinge now when it comes to dealing with conservatives. I'm more concerned about turning out base than ever appealing to these insane people. There is no principled foundation to what conservatives believe regarding anything having to do with foreign policy or the military. The exact same people who will say there were no wars under Trump will ignore the fact that he hid how much more we were drone striking people in Yemen. People will say there are no more wars under Trump. And they'll ignore the fact that we allowed, you know, the allies that we had in Syria to die. We'll say no more wars under Trump.

We'll ignore the fact that Iran attacked Saudi Arabia, that the United States bombed a Syrian airport, that Assad was chemically gassing his people. Still, that border riots were raging on in the Gaza Strip. Like, it's just it's ridiculous. So for the first time ever, Russian troops were engaging with Ukrainian troops directly in the Donbass in 2018. This idea that like Trump has some allegiance to some foreign policy position where it's like, oh, we're going to cut military spending is absolutely not true. Well, even more so than I mean, if that's true and they'll consider cutting something because Jenks bringing it up, isn't that a reason for him to be involved rather than saying, oh, this is a waste of time? I don't know. I mean, I just I I just hope that people are aware

of what I just I just need people to be aware of like what's of like what's going on. Like if you get like if you get like, oh, well, they managed to cut 50 million dollars from the military budget and that money, you know, was like all earmarked for the V.A. or something like that's not a good thing. Like we want you know, we want something. I wish that people just spoke in policies more rather than like we need to tax billionaires because we hate them or like we need to give tax cuts to billionaires because they save us or we need to do that. It's like, what are the policies that we want to support? What do we want to cut from the military? What do we like? That's, I think, the more important conversations. Cenk? It's amazing. I mean, unfortunately, this is proving at least part of Magna's point here, which is

destiny is now defending the Pentagon against cuts like that's the neocons. And then we brought in the neocons, the Liz Cheney's and the Dick Cheney's. I don't want to abolish our entire military. No, of course not. I'm going to tell you what to do in a second. But this idea of like, don't touch the Pentagon. Wait, wait, I never said don't touch the Pentagon. I just said, name what you want to get rid of.

I didn't say don't touch it. I just said, don't touch it. But you're happy to, let me, are you happy to have the conversation about cutting the Pentagon first? If you have a thing you want to cut from it, then yeah, sure. Okay. So like, you're not like, even as a general thing, you're like, well, I'm not sure about cutting the Pentagon. That's amazing to me. So well, I'm not sure about cutting the Pentagon.

That's amazing to me. So why did I pick the Pentagon? First of all, I would much rather have that than cutting social programs. But more importantly, that's where all the waste is. And that's not theoretical or hypothetical. It's real. They just failed their seventh audit in a row just yesterday. And in the last audit that they failed, they said we can't find $400 billion.

Well, if you can't find it, then you're not going to miss it. So that's why I say $400 billion. In 2015, they buried a report. They said they had done $125 billion in wasteful spending and didn't know where it went. Not a million, 125 billion. So they're just robbing us blind. The central area of the robbery is the Pentagon. It's not about- When we say this money is gone, is this like they can't account for it?

Or is this like there are certain projects that maybe an office of inspector general can't have insight to without clearance, so we don't know? Because you're making it sound like the money is just like what they're pocketing it or what they can't account for. They literally say difference though, Jenk between spent on stuff we don't know versus we can't account for it. Those are two different things admittedly. And I don't know if we have

visibility into is the money gone or are they not able to account for the program spending? I can't believe I'm having this conversation with two people on the left. No, Jen, to be clear, I'm with you on cutting. I'm with you a thousand percent on cutting Pentagon. I even would tell you specific things I would cut. My only gripe is I don't know from what I've seen that when they say unaccounted for, it means spent on mystery stuff. I don't know that that's accurate, but I'm with you 100% on cutting.

And so when Elon asked for specific suggestions, I said, look, the reason I did the conflict of interest on the generals first, number one, every real person agrees. The only people who don't agree are, uh, you know, the corporate guys who are like, oh, well of course, once we retire, we should be able to take millions of dollars from these different corporations we've been serving all along. But in terms of the budget, I said in my tweet, obviously, you'd have to go line by line. If the Pentagon says to me, there's $125 billion in wasteful spending, and we don't know where it is, how am I supposed to tell you where it is? They just told us,

they don't know where it is. So if you to tell you where it is they just told us they don't know where it is so if you give me the details of the look this is now fantastical right in the who now is there any chance that elon goes hey you know what jake's a businessman he went to war like i did he's a genuine populist all right let's bring him in and let's look at the line items one by one and the pentagon budget and then take out the wasteful spending if we did that do you have any idea how happy the american people would be and that would be actually unity they would love it and we could show them here's the waste here's the thing that was that didn't work here's how they spent eight thousand they did a markup of uh... of eight thousand percent on soap

dispensers at boeing et cetera et cetera now are they really going to do that probably not probably they're going to say all you have for sure in a cut medicaid medicare and everything that helps the average man and we'll get back to the pentagon later that's probably how it'll go but even if that's how it goes now a lot of the right wing populist go wait a minute i thought you said you were going to cut the pentagon i'm in favor of cutting guys take the way in right wing populists are saying cut the Pentagon. This is what we've

been dreaming about our whole lives. And now you're against it. That just doesn't make any sense at all. Take the win. I'm for it. I don't know. I'm certainly not against it. I think the question is, as you're pointing out, at the end of the day, they probably won't do it. If we get people thinking it's a good idea, it still is a win. Right, Destiny? If if what if they cut the Pentagon, if they say to Cenk on Twitter, we're going to consider that and then they don't do it. And then right wingers go, hey, you said you were going to do it, but you didn't do it. That's still a win of sorts. That would never do. You're implying a world where the right wing has the accountability for literally anything they do ever, which, yeah, they've never done it. But

theoretically, I mean, like theoretically, theoretically, in a world where I can wave a magic wand. So I think MAGA has changed in a way that the rest of the country and media ecosystem does not understand. So MAGA in the old days was, yes, daddy, harder daddy, right? And so these days, does that wing of MAGA still exist? Absolutely. If Trump, the demigod, says something, they're going to change their position and support him completely. But there is a different wing of right-wing populists now.

And I see them openly disagreeing with Trump on Israel and on several other issues. So, you know, maybe I'm wrong. And then you guys will get to say, oh, I can't believe it. You thought that there was any right-wing populist who actually meant anything and had principles. That's such a joke. They all wind up saying, no, add to the Pentagon. Let the generals take any job they want. Israel first, America eighth. If that's if it turns out I'm wrong about that and all the right wing populists were frauds and they all just fall in line and do whatever Trump demands of them, including following all of his donors dictates, then, OK, I'll own up to being wrong. But I think that that right wing

populism does exist and it will challenge Trump on some things and probably Israel first. Yeah. The party that elected the guy who's working with the richest man in the world and has now put him in charge of a faux government agency to cut government spending as this guy enriches himself by tens of billions of dollars. I'm sorry, I'm not buying that one at all. That's a that's an unbelievable position to actually be in that as much as we might hate the corporate donor class or whatever, and then vote for Donald Trump, who literally received how much media coverage, like how much did did Elon spend? Forty four billion dollars to buy Twitter to turn it into a Trump marketing platform. That's unreal to me that anybody would think that something good is coming

from that. All right. Well, listen, we're making predictions about the future. We won't know today whether it will or won't happen. So let's put a pause on the conversation there. Stephen, Kenneth, Destiny, Benel, the second and Jenk Uyghur. Always great having both of you guys on. Thank you, David. Yeah, thanks. Ever walk into a store and have absolutely no idea what wine to get. It happens to me every single time because I don't

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Head to nakedwines.com slash Pacman and put in my code Pacman for both the code and the or the David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. bottles of wine for 39 99. The link is in the podcast notes. Well, the delusions are starting or they are restarting or they are simply continuing. Donald Trump, after weeks of silence since winning the election, is now back and he spoke publicly at Mar-a-Lago. He was all dressed up for this one in his black, best black suit and, um, saying some really ugly and confused stuff. Uh, critics noting that Donald Trump, when the camera pans away, pans out, zooms out, you can see that he's gripping the lectern. He again seems extraordinarily low energy and disoriented.

And you have to remember that this is what we are. We're not even at the starting line yet. It's November. He gets inaugurated in January. We, we have not even started the four year countdown and it's already very, very bad. Trump raising eyebrows when he told an audience at Mar-a-Lago that many of his donors are horrible, vicious killers. Take a listen to this. I never took it down. I said, I'm not taking that down. People said, oh, maybe you'll take it down.

No, but I think that's what it's about. We raise more money for charity and politics, I guess, for the charity than any place in the world. That's part of the house and a big part of its Palm Beach. And I think that's what it's about. And I think that's what it's about. And I think that's what it's about. And I think that's what it's about.

And I think that's what it's about. And I think that's what it's about. And I think that's what it's about. And I think that's what it's about. And I think that's what it's about. And I think that's what it's about. And I think that's what it's about place in the world that's part of the house and a big part of its palm beach, people are very generous around here. Even total killers, horrible, some horrible, horrible, vicious killers, but they all contribute a lot of money. Some do it because they want their name in the shiny sheet and some do it because they're really

good people, but they are rich as hell and they contribute a lot. You know, it's funny how sometimes Trump struggles with humor and comedy, but sometimes he sort of tells the truth when he's trying to be funny. And it's a very scary truth. And that's a very scary truth. And that's right. It is absolutely the case that there are some horrible, horrible, vicious killers whose thirst for power and access to Trump. No, no bounce. And when it happens to coincide with unlimited or nearly unlimited financial resources, they are happy to just pour the money into Trump's various packs or into Trump's club.

Or as we saw during Trump's first presidency into his hotel in Washington, DC was, was which was essentially subsidized by world leaders choosing to stay there in order to ingratiate themselves with Trump and hopefully get, hopefully get goodies and special deals in sort of joking. Trump is as honest as I've ever seen him be, which is that there are some truly horrible people supporting him and now they are going to collect on their IO use. That's the part that is of critical importance. Now sometimes the way that these folks collect, uh, on their donations is, well, you'll make me ambassador to the Cayman

islands for a few years, maybe like that's one thing, the, the ambassador shopping, buying and selling for bundlers and major donors. And it's been happening for a long time. It happens with Democrats. It happens with Republicans. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it's a good thing, but I will tell you that it's not the worst thing compared to the worst things that happen, which is when the big donors want to collect on policy, on tax treatment, on changes to the tax code or to how health

insurance is structured, Medicare, Medicaid, social security that helps them, but really hurts a lot of people. You know, if you want to make your buddy ambassador to Aruba, I won't celebrate it, but the damage that that does is limited compared to when he starts making good on his promises, uh, to individuals. And it has to do with real life altering stuff. Um, so we're obviously going to be following those changes very closely. Finally, Donald Trump weirdly saying that he went 62 days without sleeping during the campaign. Unbelievable run. And we don't want that.

You know, I said that Michael, I was telling Michael before I went 62 days with no sleep or this or that. What we did was speeches, rallies. We did some other thing. Now of course, Trump's exaggerating. Trump's joking. This is Trump's great sense of humor coming through. I believe the record for staying awake is something like 11 days and very bad things

start to happen. But as usual, Trump's joking. But there's a real thing here based on everything we know from what Trump has said, from what Melania has said, from what people around Trump say, he doesn't sleep much at all. Trump claims to sleep for five hours a night, uh, potentially punctuated with, uh, rolling over and, uh, excreting some posts to X or posting on truth central. If it's true that Trump sleeps only four to five hours a night, unless he's in the extremely small percentage of the population that really only needs the five hours of sleep, this is

very unlikely. Most people need more. A lot of Trump's behart, bizarre behavior, erratic statements. A lot of what we see from Trump could be influenced by persistent lack of sleep. Now, every time this comes up, I want to be careful to, to, to clarify. I'm not saying if it weren't for Trump's lack of sleep, he'd be a fine president with good ideas that are good for the country. That's not what I mean. Trump's instincts are terrible. The things he wants to do are terrible. I'm not saying that, but as far as his behavior goes, persistent lack of sleep could actually potentially

be an explanation. So in Trump's jokes, we find maybe a little bit of truth. All right. I want to play an additional clip here of Donald Trump speaking at Mar-a-Lago. This is a different event and the scary promises are starting and this is something we should all be very worried about. Donald Trump speaking at Mar-a-Lago in front of a C-PAC sign claimed a certain amount of money that the new first lady, Ilonia Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as part of their Department of Grifty Edgelords Doge are going to cut from the

federal budget. Trump floated a number and the number is $2.5 trillion per year. Let's hear Trump say it and then I'll tell to cut from the annual budget. So the general budget is six point seventy five trillion. billion. Cutting 2.5 trillion means cutting 40% of the total federal budget through efficiency. And this is very unlikely for a bunch of different reasons. First of all, 70% of that federal budget is mandatory spending. It includes social security, Medicare, Medicaid, other programs. These are legally required. You need major

legislative changes to cut them. So Vivek and Elonia are not going to be able to do it. You then have discretionary spending. Now these numbers are very interesting. Discretionary spending is 27% of the federal budget. That includes defense, education, transportation, and more that is technically adjustable, but the entire discretionary part of the budget is about $2.5 trillion. So for Trump and Elon and Vivek to cut 2.5 trillion, you're essentially cutting all discretionary spending. Can they do it? No.

Is the idea that they might try dangerous and delusional and dilapidated enough? Yes, it is. And then finally, three to 4% of the national budget of the federal budget is interest on debt, also non negotiable in order to avoid default. So when you look at it, we've got 2.5 trillion in discretionary spending. Trump wants to cut 2.5 trillion. The numbers are just not adding up. And that's what makes it so scary.

All right. I don't want to spend a ton of time on this last thing, but so many of you wrote to me about it that I do want to acknowledge it. I don't I don't know how else to say it, but Trump looked really ill during his visit to Texas with Elon Musk and many people noticing, even though he's still obese and his body is huge, he his face looks gaunt and something about what he's now doing to his skin. I don't even know how to describe it. I don't know if it's simply a spray tan or what it is. Just a very ill looking Trump, almost looking bruised, although that might just be the spray

tan gone wrong. His lips are white. His his his neck looks gaunt. People noticing, um, uh, folds, very strange folds, symmetrical, uh, on various parts of, uh, his ears and different things. I am not purporting to know what to make of it. I'm acknowledging Trump looks particularly ill in these videos. It's not a white balance issue. Everybody else in the video looks as normal as they normally look. Elon Musk, Don Jr. standing behind him, Don Jr.'s daughter and everybody else kind of looks normal. I'm not making any assertions as

to what's going on here. I'm not making any diagnosis. I'm simply telling you I got the dozens of messages. Something does look wrong. I will leave it to others, including those who voted for the guy, I guess, to determine whether this is a man that looks like he's about to usher in a new era of health to the United States alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr. You be the judge and you get back to me on the bonus show today. The Manhattan district attorney has agreed to postpone Donald Trump's sentencing in the hush money case. He's a Teflon.

Once again, Trump's Doge commission is now promising mass federal layoffs and ending work from home. And finally, a new Pew research study, which I was on BBC last night discussing, finds that news influencers on just about every social platform lean right, despite claims that they lean left. We will discuss that and more on today's bonus show. The bonus show where you want to make money, everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. Much to Alex Jones dismay. The bonus show now with a record number of listeners and viewers. Thanks to all of our new members. Sign up at join Pacman dot com.

Remember that you can preorder my forthcoming book, The Echo Machine at David Pakman dot com slash echo. Now we have breached the thirty four hundred preorder mark and climbing. I'll see you on the bonus show and I'll be back here tomorrow.