The David Pakman Show - 121025 Trump Melts Down As Dems Win Big

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

-- On the Show -- Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a longtime writer and editor at National Review, joins us to discuss Trump's takeover of the Republican Party and the future of the conservative movement -- Eileen Higgins wins the Miami mayoral race by nineteen points as Democrats gain ground in multiple statewide and local contests -- Donald Trump claims prices are falling, makes false economic statements, targets elected officials, and tells supporters they should have fewer basic items -- Donald Trump insists the economy deserves an A plus, repeats false claims about the 2020 election, contradicts himself on foreign policy, and attacks reporters when challenged -- Donald Trump posts a long late-night rant declaring himself the hardest-working president, denies cognitive decline, and suggests criticism of his health is treasonous -- Donald Trump comments on Karoline Leavitt's appearance during a rally while glitching in other moments and rambling about unrelated topics -- Jessica Tarlov confronts Fox hosts about Republicans halting economic reports as she argues Trump caused rising costs while Biden left office with three percent inflation -- On the Bonus Show: Instacart is using AI-enabled pricing, Australia's youth social media ban takes effect, a House panel ends the Trump boat strike probe, and much more... 🖼️ Aura Frames: Use code PAKMAN for $35 off Carver Mat frames at https://auraframes.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman 🔊 Babbel language learning: Get up to 55% OFF at https://babbel.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start (01:38) Eileen Higgins wins Miami (07:29) Trump false economic claims (22:16) Trump praises economy, lies (30:59) Trump late-night rant (37:03) Ramesh Ponnuru interview (59:09) Trump on Karoline Leavitt (1:04:02) Tarlov on economic reports    

Democrats have taken Miami for the first time in almost 30 years. They have also flipped some other Republican strongholds. And it has all sent MAGA and Trump into yet another meltdown. It's not only Miami, it's other parts of Florida. It's Georgia. And Republicans are losing races in places that they were really supposed to win by 20 points. It's a warning for 2026. They seem to know it.

Then Trump goes to Pennsylvania and gives what was billed as a major economic speech and destroys the entire point of the rally within just seconds of starting it by saying everything's fine. Prices are down. Everything's good. The crowd didn't buy it. Nobody buys it. And that was just the first 30 seconds. We then have Donald Trump lying to female reporters grading the economy A plus and getting angry when

the female reporters say, wait a second, sir, is what you just said true? Also, what is going on with Caroline Levitt and her machine gun lips? Not my term, to be clear. We will also speak to the thinking person's conservative, Ramesh Panuru. I've been looking forward to speaking with them for a while. What a program today. I say we record this one rather than immediately deleting. it, which was what we normally do. No, just kidding. It's a great program today. We have major election

news to start with today. It is yet another disastrous set of election results for the Republican party. They want you to believe this means nothing and everything is fine. Okay. If that's how they want to play it, I simply don't think that's what the facts say. And I'm going to explain it to you. We start in Miami, Florida, where for the first time in almost 30 years, Miami will have a Democratic mayor. It will be Eileen Higgins. Eileen defeated the Republican candidate Emilio Gonzalez. The results overwhelming. Higgins, the Democrat winning by 19 points, 59 to 40, truly a remarkable result of note. And this gets into one of the ways in which Republicans will try to minimize and undercut and devalue this. The turnout was 37,000.

out of nearly 175,000 registered voters. So that's under 25% turnout. It is a reminder that participation really matters. And the lower turnout is expected to be the more influence that any individual voter or group of voters can have. And this is especially relevant in midterms where turnout tends to be low. So a reminder, it really is to a great degree about turnout. But Donald Trump defeated again, posted on truth social prior to the result.

It's mayor race is Tuesday. It is a big and important race. Vote for Republican Gonzalez. He is fantastic. You can also vote today. Make America great again. Well, it didn't work out for Donald Trump as the person he picked lost hugely. Now some other results from last night in Florida State House District 90.

That's a district that Kamala won by 10. The Democrat won by 29 from plus 10 to plus 29. That is a 19 point swing away from Republicans and towards Democrats. That is a massive change. In Florida state Senate district 11, that's a Trump plus 40 district. The Republican did win, but only by 19. That is a 21 point swing. to the left. Massive double digit swings to the left. In Georgia, a Democrat defeated a Republican

last night. Eric Gisler is the Democrat. He defeated the Republican Mac Dutch Guest. That's a name. Mac Dutch guest. Well, Mac Dutch guest was defeated. So we won't have to figure out how to say that quickly three times fast. Flip the seat from formerly held by a Republican. Now, of course, MAGA and Republicans are saying none of these results mean anything. Well, buyer beware with adopting that perspective. You know, they look at Miami and they say, well, it's a blue city voting for a Democrat. Well, Miami has a long history of voting for Republican mayors. And we saw a huge swing left compared to the presidential election.

You should pay attention to that if you care about winning in 20. There is a long growing list of these signs that 2026 could be really bad for the Republican party and for Trump and for MAGA. We have not just yesterday's results, which show these massive leftward swings, but we look at the race from last week in the Tennessee congressional district, which, yes, was won by the Republican. Afton Bain did not manage to win it, but it was plus 22 for Trump. And it ended up being only plus eight for the Republican.

That's a 14 point leftward swing. You look at Virginia, 2021, the Republican Glenn Yonkin won by about two. This time, Abigail Spanberger wins by nearly 15. That's a 17 point swing. You look at New Jersey gubernatorial in 2021, Phil Murphy won by I think it was three. This time, uh, Mickey, Mikey, uh, shirrell wins by, I think it was 13 or 14. another 15 point leftward swing. So these are massive rebukes of Donald Trump.

These are potentially huge signs for the midterms. 20 point swings are wild. And the question is going to be, do Republicans take this seriously? Do they decide, hey, you know what? Any affiliation or association with Trump is actually hurting us. It's time to start denouncing or will they stick with Trump for the time being? We don't know yet. We're 10 plus months away from these elections and they're really going to get going in earnest

in probably February. But Republicans are going to have some decisions to make. Marjorie Taylor Green's decision was I'm getting out of Congress altogether. She said, bye bye, and opting not to even get into that primary race she was going to be facing in Georgia. So real trouble ahead for Republicans. Democrats do need to know how to capitalize on it, not something that Democrats always do. And as I said on CNN last week, if Republicans genuinely believe none of this means anything.

Like I know that they're saying, oh, you know, midterms, off year, blue cities, low turnout, none of this means anything. All right. Ignore all of it if you really want to. That is at their peril that they are potentially doing that. Again, with this caveat, which is not a small caveat, if Democrats are well prepared to actually try to take advantage of it. Donald Trump went to Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania yesterday. Why? It was billed as a major economic speech. Trump was going to really speak to the people, the average American about

affordability, about inflation, about prices, about tariffs, as he calls them. And he was going to show supposedly that he understands what people are struggling with. He's there for people. He is working to make affordability greater and all this different stuff. Except within minutes of starting the major economic speech, Trump ruins the entire point by saying this whole affordability ability thing is a hoax. Prices are down. We've fixed everything. The crowd knows it's not true. At every opportunity, Trump doing the opposite of what he was there to do. And this is why he and Republicans, are facing such a crisis. Listen to this.

Does this sound like a guy who understands the plight of the average American? You know, and I said it the other day and a lot of people misinterpreted. They say, oh, he doesn't realize prices. I have prices are coming down very substantially. But they have a new word, you know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability. So they look at the camera and they say, this election is all about affordability. Now they'd never talk about it.

They never talk. Thank you very much. They say I'm not allowed to run. I don't know what the hell that's all about, but that's okay. Well, there goes basically the entire point of this rally, right? It's a hoax. There's no affordability issue. Prices are going down.

Now let me remind you if inflation is as little as 1% prices are going up. If inflation is half of 1%, prices are going up. if inflation is negative are prices going down. Prices are not going down. They are going up about as slowly as they were for the last 18 months of Joe Biden's presidency. Inflation is roughly unchanged. But I don't know that Trump understands this. I don't know that Trump cares to understand it. Trump continuing. We had the highest inflation in history and we have brought prices down quickly. That has not happened. That is not what has. has taken place.

But that's our message. They gave you high prices. They gave you the highest inflation in history. And we're giving you, we're bringing those prices down rapidly, lower prices, bigger paychecks. You're getting lower prices, bigger paychecks. We're getting inflation. We're crushing it.

And you're getting much higher wages. I mean, the only thing that you're really going up big, it's called the stock market. And you're for the stock market. Trump eating a few words there. People in the crowd don't believe this. Now, I know you see people on stage holding signs that say bigger paychecks and lower prices, but they know that that's not what's going on. Some things have only gone up a couple percent since Trump became president. But what was the promise? Lower prices. Trump promise deflation. Deflation usually coincides with major economic problems, something Trump may not be familiar with. But the crowd is not going to be

convinced of this and Trump even saying at one point to the people in the crowd, you were doing better than you have ever done. If we learned anything from the mistakes of the Biden presidency, it's that telling people everything's awesome doesn't convince them if they don't feel it, if they don't see it in their checkbook, proverbial checkbook, if they don't feel it at the kitchen table. You're doing better than you've ever done under our leadership. More than 40,000 Pennsylvania's have been lifted off of food stamps, 40,000. You know, it's an interesting phrase saying you've lifted people off of food stamps when all you've done is kick them off by making the food stamps more difficult to get. That's a, that's some risky politicking.

And I don't know that we we should not interrupt Trump when he is making this number of mistakes. I don't know where that quote comes from. Do not interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake. But bragging about fewer people on food stamps. because you've simply kicked them off, I don't think is going to fly very well with the people in the crowd. Now, unbelievably, I mean, this is almost beyond belief. Uber capitalist with the gold toilets, Trump tells the crowd, you don't need that much stuff.

You don't need that many pencils. Your kids don't need that many toys. I don't know that this is a winning message, folks. You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils. Because under the China policy, you know, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two, you know, they don't need that many. Wow.

But you always need, you always need steel. You don't need 37 dollars for your daughter. Two or three is nice, but you don't need 37 dolls. You know, when the guy with the gold toilets is telling people who are just trying to scrape by, you don't really need this much. stuff, that does not sound like a winning economic policy. I told you yesterday that if the economic data is going to be good, you don't cancel it, right? You don't cancel the inflation report if the inflation report will give you something to brag about. You don't cancel the jobs report. If the jobs

report is going to be something you can point to and say, look at what great a job I'm doing. You don't cancel the advanced GDP reading. If it's going to give you something you can cheer about and say, look at what a great job I'm doing. You don't tell people you will have less stuff and you will like it unless you were expecting people to have to go without. And Trump just straight up making things up saying, oh, Turkey was down 33%. I mean, at this point, it's just whatever he can think of, just say it. And the crowd growing more and more skeptics. So rent prices are down. Dairy prices are coming down very strongly. None of that is true. The cost of Thanksgiving turkeys was down by 33% compared to the Biden era.

Biden era, you know what you did during the Biden era for Thanksgiving? You said, oh, my God, this is terrible. It was a rotten Thanksgiving. And Walmart, I thank them. You know, they came out with a big, like sort of a numbers thing, a chart, and they had a 25% less. Walmart did a numbers thing, and it was so good. So that's pretty good. A Thanksgiving meal with all of the trimmings is 25% less under Trump.

Anyway, as you all now know, because I've mentioned it ad nauseum, what Walmart did is they removed a bunch of items from last year's Thanksgiving kit. And they also replaced some of the more expensive name brands with the Walmart store brand, which is cheaper. It doesn't have to be worse necessarily. You might know whether it's better or worse if you've sampled. But the point is it's cheaper. And Trump insists it's just going so well because of the Walmart meal that they did.

These rallies, even though the message, so the message was supposed to be economic, Trump screwed up the message by coming in and saying not, we are going to fix it and I feel your pain. He said, everything's fine. Don't worry. Everything's cheaper. We've solved the problem. Trump did have to inject other elements into this, including talking about Ilhan Omar and her turban and marrying her brother or something like that. This story Trump loves to tell. And of course, if you're in the crowd and you're like, like, wow, grocery prices are really expensive. I don't know that this is doing anything for you. That's a great like Somalia. Welcome. Do we have any individuals from Somalia in the group?

Please raise your hand. That's for Minnesota, you know? That's called the Great Big Minnesota scam with one of the dumbest governors ever in history. I love this, Elon Omar, whatever the hell. Her name is with a little chung, the little turban. She has a little shing. Love her. She comes in. There's nothing but bitch. She's always complained.

She comes from her country where, I mean, it's considered about the worst country in the world, right? They have no military. They have no nothing. They have no parliament. They don't know what the hell the word parliament means. They have nothing. They have no police. They police themselves. They kill each other all the time. I love it. She comes to our country. And she's always complaining about the country. Constitution allows me to do this. We ought to get her to hell out.

She married her brother in order to get in, right? She married her brother. Imagine if Donald Trump married his sister, beautiful. She's a beautiful person. If I married my sister to get my citizenship, do you think I'd last for about two hours or would it be something less than that? She married her brother to get in. Therefore, she's here illegally.

She should get that. out, throw the hell out. She does nothing but complain. And then the crowd starting to chant, send her back, send her back. Listen, without even weighing in on the specific commentary he's making, which is very disgusting, whatever your thoughts are about Ilhan Omar. And I know people, I know my audience is split about about the squad in general, which is fine. If you are looking at your household ledger and seeing that the number, numbers aren't adding up that it's not a viable economic situation. And Trump is ranting about someone's turban referring to it as her shing or whatever he's

shing, whatever he said. I don't know that that's making you think this is a guy who has your best interest in mind. Now, Trump justifying bouncing from topic to topic by saying he's doing the weave ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. So it's November 5th and it's also, again, this thing. called tariffs. And I told you, I was about to say that, you know, because I love the weave, the weave. You know what the wave is? You're here. Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. You always have to get back to the right location. Yeah. Imagine if that's how I did my show. I'm going to go Bing, Bing, ping, ping,

ping, and back and forth and back and forth. And then no Trump rally is complete without at least a little transphobia. I mean, listen, it's still Trump at the end of the day, even if the topic is supposed to be pricing and affordability, he's got to do his greatest hits. I think transgender for all is a great, great thing for the Democrats to be talking about. Transgender for every member in your family. If they're not feeling well that night, let's just change their sex. Now, let's not talk about it. Let them go and let them fight, fight, fight to get these things.

One of the things I was realizing as I watched this deranged and toxic. rally is that Trump is sort of fueled by his obnoxious supporters who will cheer for any of this crap. The more they get agitated and excited by what Trump is saying, the more he feels the momentum. So a rally about affordability at which Trump says, we've solved affordability. Prices are down. Everything's good. Later in the show, we'll get to what he had to say about Caroline Levitt at this event. And it's pretty disgusting if I do say so myself. If you are scrambling for a meaningful last minute holiday gift and running out of real ideas, aura frames can save you.

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minutes and every frame arrives in a premium gift box. There is still plenty of time to get an aura frame shipped before Christmas. And you'll get $35 off their best selling. CarverMatt Frames when you go to auraframes.com and use the code Pacman at checkout. The link is in the description. A pending Supreme Court case could strip our Fourth Amendment rights and allow immigration agents to come into our homes for any reason, no probable cause needed, all while Republicans try to twist things so that you think this is all great for America. This should be the biggest story in the U.S. right now, but it's almost impossible to keep up with the millions of moves that Trump is making every single day.

That's why ground news exists. Ground news is an app and website that exposes the blind spots and spin before it takes control of our opinions. Ground news is the smarter, more reliable way to stay informed when MAGA is banking on us getting distracted. I'm partnering up with ground news to give you 40% of. off the same vantage plan that I use. So you'll pay only five bucks a month for all of their premium features. Just go to ground.news slash Pacman or use the code Pacman in the app when you sign up. The link is in the description or scan the QR code. The David Packman show remains primarily an audience supported program. I invite you and welcome you to support the program by getting

a membership at join packman.com. We've got a lot. list of perks for our members. You can read about, including an extra show we do every day. And I want to say a huge thank you to Marilyn Lee and Leanne Plumenden, who are our newest members at join Pacman.com. Donald Trump was interviewed for the Politico Conversation show by Dasha Burns. The grade heard round the world over which many were laughing at Trump, as we will look at later, is that Donald Trump was asked to grade the economy right now. And Trump says the economy right now is an A plus plus plus plus. Take a listen.

Pretty good. But I do want to talk about the economy, sir, here at home. And I wonder what grade you would give a plus. A plus. A plus, plus, plus, plus. Plus plus plus plus plus plus you've got people hungry, people skipping meals, people having to choose between medications and food and paying their daily expenses, not problems created by Trump, but problems Trump said he would solve, which have gotten worse under Donald Trump.

A plus plus plus plus sounds to me like there's some serious grade inflation going on there. apparently unable to get out of a talking point coma that includes all of the greatest hits, including the election was rigged. Soon we're going to get the evidence. He's talking about 2020. It was rigged any day now. The evidence is going to come out. I think that you know, think of it. If our election wasn't rigged, it was a rigged election now everyone knows. It's going to come out over the next couple of months too loud and clear because we have all the information. Right. We've had it for years, just haven't brought it out. If the election wasn't rigged and stolen, you wouldn't even be talking about Ukraine right now.

Right. If Trump, the rightful winner in 2020, had ascended to the throne. I'm sorry, been sworn in as the democratically elected president of the White House, of the United States to the White House, Putin never would have attacked Ukraine, which, by the way, isn't the flex Trump thinks it is, because Putin may have had other ways of achieving his strategic goals if Trump were president, given how easily may be. manipulable, manipulatable, manipulable, Trump is. So not exactly the big hammer drop that Trump believes that to be.

Trump completely out of touch with prices, just as out of touch as he was at the Pennsylvania rally last night. Trump says, it's all down. Everything is great. I dare you to count the lies in this clip. Here's what she said about the economy. She said, quote, groceries, utility insurance and the basic cost of running small business. keep rising faster than wages.

She also says that not enough is being done. Mr. President, this is one of your supporters. Okay, good. And I love her because you said I got an A plus on everything, I guess. But she's still worried about the economy. But what you have to understand. The word affordability, I inherited a mess. I inherited a total mess.

Remember that inflation is no higher or lower than it was when Trump came into office. Prices were at an all-time high. came in. And they're even higher now because inflation remains positive. Prices are coming down substantially. Prices have not come down. They continue to go up by two and a half to three percent a year. Look at energy. You and I discussed before the interview energy. Electricity prices are up 10 percent. Energy has come down incredibly. When energy comes down, everything, because it's so much bigger than any other subject. But energy has come down incredibly. Prices are all coming down. It's been 10 months. It's amazing what we've done.

If you think of gasoline a gallon, they had it at $4.50, almost $5. You go to some of the states. He had it at $6. We hit three states two days ago, $1.99 a gallon. Gas was about 305 a gallon when Trump came into office and gas remains about 305 a gallon. He just lies, lies, lies. It's actually hard to keep track of all the lies. Trump shifting to foreign policy, referring to Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky as P.T. Barnum,

P.T. Barnum. Some real projection here, given all of the crap and chotchkes that Donald Trump has marketed and shilled over the years. He's a great salesman. I call him PT Barnum. You know who P.T. Barnum was, one of the greatest on earth. He could sell any product at any time. That was his expression. I can sell any product at any time. It was true. He said, it doesn't matter whether it works or not. But he's P.T. Barnum. You know, he's he. He, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, got Crooked Joe Biden, you give him $350 billion. And look what it got, got him about 25% of his country is missing. Trump doesn't seem to even know what he is talking about, but he's trying.

He's definitely trying. Not exactly the picture of empathy and understanding. When Dasha Burns points out, people are already looking at their budgets for next year as they try to get holiday gifts. And Trump just kind of writes off the entire thing and goes, oh, don't be so dramatic. Don't be so dramatic. Imagine if you are someone struggling to get even a couple of Hanukkah gifts. And this is what you hear Donald Trump say.

People are buying their holiday presidents presence. They're planning. Look, don't be dramatic. No, no. Don't be dramatic. Here's what I want to do. Here's what I want. I know.

And what I want to do is help them. So will I want to give. Go up. I'm giving them money. I want to give the money to the people. to buy their own health care. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. The Democrats don't want to do that.

They want the insurance companies to continue to make a fortune. The Democrats are owned by the insurance companies. They want the insurance companies to get this trillions of dollars. We spent, we spent trillions of dollars goes to the insurance companies. I want that money to go to the people and let the people. It is so evident from how Donald Trump is talking that he has no idea what the the average person is dealing with. When he is told people are struggling to buy gifts and this is what's going on. And he goes, well, I want to give them the money so they can go and negotiate

with the insurance company. What sort of market power and negotiating power would an individual with their premium money have to negotiate with a health insurance company? It is just a nonsense statement. And if there is a story about the last 24 hours of trumpets, he seems to have not only no empathy for what people are going through. He seems completely unable, I guess because of how he was brought up with a silver spoon in his mouth, rich guy from Queens and Manhattan, to even understand what it means to have a couple hundred bucks be the difference between I've got to borrow this month, or I can make it to my next paycheck. Trump asked about pardoning the former president of Honduras, and he pulls the, I don't even really know anything about it. You pardoned former Honduran president

who on Orlando Hernandez and let him out of prison, even though he wasn't. convicted in a massive international drug trafficking scheme. How is that zero tolerance on drug trafficking? Well, I don't know him, and I know very little about him. Other than people said it was like a Obama-Biden-type setup where he was set up. He was the president of the country. The country deals in drugs, like probably you could say that about every country, and because he was the president, they gave him like 45 years in prison. And there are many people fighting for Honduras, very good people that I know. And they think he was treated horrible. And they asked me to do it and I said, I'll do it.

I don't really know anything about it. But I did decide to pardon him because people told me that he was being treated very, very unfairly. Funny and tragic moment to wrap this up. Trump asked about Donald Trump Jr.'s claim that Trump is ready to walk away from Ukraine. Trump's answer is actually really funny. On Sunday, your son, Donald Trump Jr. responded to a reporter's question about whether you will, quote, walk away from Ukraine. And your son said, I think he may. Is that correct?

No, it's not correct, but it's not exactly wrong. We have to. I love that. It's not correct, but it is not exactly wrong either. They have to play ball if they don't read agreements, potential agreements. It's not easy with Russia because Russia has the upper hand. And they always did. They're much bigger.

Bottom line, Trump is indeed getting ready to walk away unless Ukraine does exactly what he wants them to do and accepts a terrible deal for them. What an interview. Pretty nice job there by Dasha Burns with the approach of giving Trump the rope and letting him hang himself with it. Donald Trump is not handling the questions about his brain very well. He jumped on truth social last night and unleashed a poorly written essay is what I would call it. about how he is the hardest working, smartest, most perfect president ever to live.

And you can tell exactly what is going on here. The growing discussions of Donald Trump's cognitive and physical health decline are getting to him. He's rambling about stopping wars and all of this stuff. But then he gets to the core of it. And this is driving him up a wall. Let's take a look at the post. Quote, there has never been a president that has worked as hard as me. My hours are the longest and my results are among the best.

Neither is true. Trump's reportedly working less. then 10 to 5. I'm sorry, 12 to 5. I've stopped eight wars, saving many millions of lives in the process. That is untrue. Created the greatest economy in the history of our country. That is very much not true if you look at the job data. Brought business back into the United States at levels never seen before. Simply no evidence of that. Rebuilt our military, created the largest tax cuts and regulation cuts ever. Closed our open and very dangerous southern border, which the previous administrations were unable to do so. And created.

an aura around the United States of America that has led every country in the world to respect us more than ever before. None of this crap is true. Trump continues. In addition to all of that, I go out of my way to do long, thorough, very boring medical examinations at the great Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, seen and supervised by top doctors, all of whom have given me perfect marks. This is where Trump starts ramping up.

Some have even said they have never seen such strong results. I do these tests because I owe it to our country. In addition to the medical, and medical is capitalized for reasons we will never know, I have done something that no other president has done on three separate occasions, the last one being recently, by taking what is known as a cognitive examination, something which few people would be able to do very well, including those working at the New York Times. And I aced all three of them in front of large numbers of doctors and experts, most of whom I do not know.

I've been told that few people have been able to ace this examination, and in fact, most do very poorly, which is why many other presidents have decided not to take it at all. Despite all of this, the time and work involved, the New York Times and some others like to pretend that I am slowing up and maybe not as sharp as I once was, or I'm in poor physical health, knowing that it is not true, and knowing that I work very hard, probably harder than I have ever worked before. I will know when I am slowing up, but it's not now. After all of the work I have done with medical exams, cognitive exams, and everything else,

I actually believe it's seditious and perhaps treasonous for the New York Times and others to consistently do fake reports in order to libel and demean the president of the United States. They are true enemies of the people and we should do something about it. They have inaccurately reported on my election results and in fact, we're forced to apologize, Blah, blah, blah, stop talking about my decline. If you had shared a message like that 11 years ago before Trump came onto the political scene, saying this will be the post of an American president years from now, no one would have believed you.

Trump is saying it's criminal to talk about his cognitive health. Think about the dictatorial delusions that that requires. And of course, he's endlessly referencing how frequent. he is being cognitively tested. You don't give cognitive tests this regularly to people unless there is a suspected problem. And every time someone mentions, man, Trump seems slower. He seems confused. He's mixing up names. He's forgetting where he is. He comes back with I identified a camel and I knew that this was a tiger. So I'm completely fine and ready to be president. But then Trump goes to this darker place, which is the this could be seditious or treasonous. He says,

Journalists are the enemies of the people. He straight up says we got to do something about it. This is what authoritarian decline looks like. A leader who is insecure. He really wants to be liked. He wants to be seen as smart and attractive. He's obsessed with his image. And he is furious that people are noticing the changes in him.

And if Trump were actually confident in his mental state, he wouldn't be writing midnight tantrum manifestos about how great his brain is and how he keeps passing a brain injury. test. So yes, the questions about Trump's cognitive decline are landing hard. The meltdown over it and Trump's obsession with the topic is the proof. And that of course suggests there is something there. A lot of people think identity theft is something that only happens when someone hacks into your account. But the truth is that it usually starts with your personal information being posted online by data brokers where anybody can find it. Our sponsor, in Incogni is a service that helps protect your privacy by forcing the data brokers to delete your

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doxing, harassment, and Incogny's data removal process is the only one independently verified by Deloitte. Get 60% off an annual plan when you visit incogny.com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman. The link is in the description. It is great to welcome to the program today, Ramesh Panouru, who is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a longtime writer and editor at the National Review. And as I like to say, Ramesh, you're a thinking conservative, which doesn't imply anything about anybody else necessarily.

It's just you're the type of person I want to kind of speak to to get a sense of where you see the right and the conservative movement and the Republican Party being today. So I really appreciate your time today. Thanks for having me on. So listen, I mean, I think maybe a place to start is as you see where the Republican Party has landed after 10 years of Donald Trump's political career, is there conservatism in the MAGA ideology? Are there things, especially in this second term of Trump that you see as a more traditional

conservative and you say this aligns with my views? I like this. I like this policy. I like this part of it. What do you like? What do you not like? Well, that is a very big question because there are certainly a lot of points of overlap between traditional or pre-Trump conservatism and MAGA conservatism, which is why this coalition

has been able to work. But of course, there have also been a lot of changes. I like some of those changes, but I'm not happy about others. let me step back a sec and just and and and and make an important sort of background point, which is that, you know, Trump disrupted the prior Republican sort of orthodoxy or formula. But it is not obvious that he has replaced it with something because he's such a moving target himself. So you can say, well, he's, he's anti-immigration. But in fact, he talks fairly frequently when he talks about these things about wanting record levels of legal immigration.

And then he'll do something else where he supports slashing it and then he'll come back to saying he wants record levels of legal immigration. He'll say NATO is actually a success story now. And at other times, he'll complain about the Europeans. So I don't know that that MAGA ideology has quite congealed. to the extent that people, sometimes people who say that they are MAGA and sometimes people who think of themselves as opponents of MAGA, say that it is. I would say that if you look at what Trump has done in both his terms in office,

the parts of it that correspond with kind of traditional conservatism, you know, cutting taxes, deregulating, appointing conservative, originalists judges and justices, the opposition to race-conscious public policy, those things by and large, I think, have been good. On immigration, I would say that the country has long needed more seriousness with respect to controlling the borders and actually just having a policy that it means to enforce. I don't know that I don't support some of the things that the administration has done toward that end, particularly the first-term family separation,

the sort of mass-scale family separation policy, which I think was a humanitarian disaster, and also set back the cause of long-term immigration control. And then there's things like the foreign policy, which is chaotic, right? I mean, so we have this undeclared war maybe against Venezuela in the name of fighting drugs. And at the same time, he's pardoning people

who are involved in large-scale drug trafficking. And so you have to say to the extent that MAGA is all about his whims and personality, I think it's a, you know, it's bad to have the politics and the governing agenda that is based on that. And B, you could have picked somebody with a better personality. What about something like, I guess what would be really Trump's foremost economic policy to the extent that it is one, which is blanket tariffs. Because my sense is that it was very clear that for a long time, the Republican Party was for free trade and against protectionism.

What about that, which is really, I mean, when we look at the farm bailout, when we look at Trump's speech yesterday in Pennsylvania, which was sort of a panic, let's go try to reassure people, we've got to do something. It's all downstream from the tariff policy. Do you, is that a policy you support? No, I think the general case for free trade is as strong as it has ever been. Now, there are exceptions, particularly I think when it comes to national security. And I am open to the idea of targeted tariffs in critical sectors having to do with China and with, you know, friend-shoring or reshoring critical supply lines. I haven't actually seen many proposals that make a lot of sense. But what we're seeing instead is just chaotic, kind of spastic protectionism that is not achieving its stated ends. We've had nine months straight of decline in manufacturing.

Wasn't that the point of all of these tariffs? So I don't think the administration really knows what it's doing and this. And I think that, look, have there been some people who made exaggerated predictions of the harm that tariffs would do? That it would lead to hyperinflation, that it would cause a recession. Well, sure. I mean, partly, you know, some of the heightened predictions were because the administration initially came in with, huge tariffs and then backed off a bunch of them. But they're not accomplishing what they're supposed to accomplish and they are creating some serious

harms. So it sounds like at least in two big areas, the tariff policy you as a conservative are generally against on immigration while you said you do want, I forget exactly the phraseology you use, but we needed to do something about the issue at the border. It sounds like you're not happy with at least the implementation and maybe it's like the the the ice raids or you could tell us exactly what what you don't like, but those are two pretty big areas that Trump campaigned on and has done mostly what he said he would do, that it sounds like you're saying you as a conservative are against.

Yes. Although again, you know, in terms of whether he is making good on his promises, everything's always so, so slippery. So Trump campaigned on prioritizing the worst to the worst, right? Yeah. And that I think is clearly not what he's doing in terms of fighting illegal immigration and deportation. At the same time, I think one of the more effective things that the government could do about enforcing the immigration laws, which would be to set up a system where employers have to verify the legal status of people that they hire and can do that. have a system where they can do that, they're not, that's not something that's been a priority.

Right. Because, you know, I think probably for the main reason that this has never taken off under either party, which is that large employers don't want to have that burden and don't want to have that responsibility. But look, if we're serious about the immigration laws, that seems to me to make a lot and more sense than a lot of the things that they're doing. I want to ask you about there's a vignette from last night's speech in Pennsylvania that sort of sets up this next question, which is we have a lot of Americans concerned about affordability.

We have 40% of Americans who, if they were hit with an unexpected $400 expense, we'd have to borrow or put it on a credit card, right? We have that as the sort of framework. The administration seemingly recognizes that they send Trump up to Mount Pocono yesterday to talk about affordability. And in the middle of this speech, Trump pulls out the. the trans stuff. He talks about we got to stop trans for everybody and you go to school and a boy goes to school,

comes back a girl. That's sort of rhetoric, right? It always sort of plays okay in these rally crowds because I think it's partially the environment and maybe there's a self-selection bias. But when you hear something like that, does that sort of tickle your fancy in terms of the stuff you think a president should be talking about. And is, is that a priority in this country dealing with trans stuff in whatever way? Or does it really seem to you like the wrong direction for a president to be going in? I guess I come down in the middle on that question, which is that, look,

there are some federal policy issues that are related here. And I think that the Biden administration got them wrong. And I think that by and large, the Trump administration, got them right. I do think it's a it is a it's a political mistake to act as though this is the top or number one issue or you know, I mean, I think we just saw that in Virginia where the Republican candidate for governor was acting as though this was the top issue when obviously voters have other things on their minds. And even if voters sort of agree with you on the underlying policy, they might think, okay, can we hear about something else? I also think that, you know, and here I'm, this is the sort of thing that a lot of maggot people have no patience for,

I know, but I do think that when you have these issues that are sensitive and divisive, that you can be firm while also, you know, acknowledging that very good people on the other side and, you know, that there are complicated situations and so forth, which, of course, this president tends not to do. What's an example of a trans-related policy Biden got wrong and Trump fixed? Well, for example, the Biden administration, I don't know they ever finalized it, but they were trying to push for the idea that educational institutions had to include. include trans athletes in the gender by which they self-identify rather than their sort of

chromosomal or biological sex. And I think that was a mistake. I think, you know, there are all kinds of things. So I think you probably could get a public consensus on the idea that, for example, you shouldn't have employment discrimination against trans people. But I think a lot of people who agree with that will will draw line at things like high school and at college athletics and say that's different and that's unfair or raises different sorts of issues. And we just haven't had that kind of willingness to find a middle ground like that. I believe it was a judge actually who reversed that Biden expansion just before Trump was even even sworn in.

If I recall correctly, not that that specifically. sort of is an adjudication of everything that we're talking about. I'm curious on the sports stuff, like my view on this has been, there is no question that there are specific situations that I think there would be 95% agreement on would be unfair in some way. And so maybe it's like if we talk about wrestling at a competitive level when it comes to trans women, right, where I think actually there's like 95% agreement probably. The question I have for you is about, the scope of that issue in the following sense. First of all, there's a whole bunch of sports that are separated by gender where it doesn't

really matter, you know, archery, equestrian, you know, we've got a long list that we can just kind of take off the table. We can also take off the table anything involving trans men, in other words, to use your term, individuals who are chromosomally women, nobody cares about that because if anything, they're at a disadvantage rather than an advantage. So like, the thing, the thought I have about this is. how the reality of the the number of people that this genuinely applies to in a space where something quote should be done, it seems so small in the grand scheme of the world of sports.

So I've been a little surprised that it has gotten the political cachet that it has. What's your sense of that? Well, sometimes the perceived unfairness or screwiness of policy sort of moves people beyond the numbers involved. And of course, you know, you do have the situation where if somebody claims, like, say, first place and something and people think it's unfair, that doesn't just affect the person who would have gotten first. It also affects the person who would have gotten second and third and fourth.

So these things tend to ramify. But I certainly, you know, the point about the numbers not being large, I think it's, is a correct one. But it does also cut both ways in the sense that why are people who believe that this is sort of an absolute right. This is a trans right. Why are they dying on this hill? That's that's that's a I think that question kind of can can cut a couple of different ways. That's interesting. Let me ask you about a sort of different area. Why do you think that so many Republicans are against the child tax credit when I think that it is a pretty pro family policy and sort of aligns with stuff Trump has said about like baby bonuses or however he kind of phrased

it. What is it about the child tax credit that doesn't convince some Republicans? Well, as you as you may or may not know, I have been a champion of an expanded child tax credit for for quite a long time now. My, my, some of my children are now, my children are now, longer children, but I'm still in favor of this. I would say that there's still significant Republican support for the child credit. As recently as 2017, in the first Trump tax cut, Republicans did expand the child credit more modestly that I would have liked, but they did. There was a lot of opposition to the way that Biden and the Democrats went about it. because there does seem to be strong to support,

not just among Republicans, but actually if you look at the polling among the public at large, for the idea that the child credit should go to families that are working. And the Biden administration thought as a way of fighting poverty that it was important to sever that link between work and the child credit. So that's one thing. You've also got a faction of, of Republicans who are, I think, are small a number,

but more influential than their numbers, who just think we should have a flat tax and children shouldn't get a tax break. They're just a special interest group. And you will sometimes see this point of view articulated in the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, which I largely, I think the Wall Street Journal's editors are great and do a lot of great work,

but I think they're just wrong on this issue. And they understand the case for low taxes when it comes to other kinds of investment, but investment in children, which is the most important kind of investment that most people do. They just don't see that at all. Last thing I want to ask you about. We are going to eventually come up on the next Republican primary. If you look at the betting markets, there's a lot of excitement, I guess you would say, behind

J.D. Vance as the heir, apparent. sort of potentially in connection with the ideology and imbibed in him by by Peter Thiel. But when I talk to a lot of sort of prognosticators, they remind me, whoever seems like the natural nominee three years out almost never actually is. And that's what history has told us. Just in the abstract, what sort of Republican would you like to see as the next nominee? And if it's a specific person like some of my friends who are center right, they say, I really like Mitt Romney, even though he has made it clear his career in politics is over. Romney is the guy,

or some say it's the late Senator John McCain that is the person. Is there someone that you would like to see as the as the next direction for the Republican Party? You know, I haven't really thought so much about that question because I think that it is so overwhelmingly likely that the next Republican nominee is vice president, Vance. Wow. That it's, you know, the only certain chances in which I can see Vance not being the nominee is if something has happened to the fortunes the Republican Party that have made the nomination not worth having in 2028. But I would say in general, what I think the future direction of the Republican Party ought to be is a new synthesis

that takes what is best about the pre-Trump and the post-Trump party. So with the post-Trump party, I would say that there is more of a focus on the national interest, at least notionally, that I think is right, that our foreign policy has to be based on concrete national interests, that our immigration policy needs to be based on the interests of people who are already here, native-born and legal immigrants alike, and that, you know, we need an economic policy that is And here, I think, MAGA sometimes gestures in the right direction, an economic policy that is geared towards helping people thrive and in particular helping people form and raise their families

the way that they want to. I think that that is a set of policies that is of priorities that is totally constant with the traditional conservatives, this unlimited government and federalism and decentralization, But I am waiting for somebody to articulate that. And a big open question is can somebody do that and can somebody keep all the pieces of this Republican coalition together without the force of Trump's personality? Is it a big question whether the people who were not voters pre-Trump go back to being

non-voters after Trump is gone? Well, I think some of them have become Republicans. and, you know, that may not be permanent, you know, if the Republican Party were to change again radically. I think the bigger problem that the Republicans face is not sort of the Obama and other Democratic voters who've moved over to the Republican side keeping them. The problem is the people who just don't vote that much at all,

the sort of casual or as the people, as people say, low propensity voters. Yep. The swing voters who just sort of kind of gave Trump a try in 2024, they don't seem particularly excited about voting this next time around and particularly about voting for Republicans. Yeah. And I think Republicans have sort of taken them for granted as part of a new realignment

before that realignment actually happened. All right. We've been speaking with Ramesh Pannuro. Really appreciate your time and your insights today. Thanks for having me. When I was preparing for my last trip to Italy, I didn't want to spend weeks and weeks trying to learn Italian with the typical apps where you get, you know, flashcards and games and it doesn't really translate to talking to people.

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Here's a special limited time deal just for my audience. Get up to 60% off your Babel subscription at babble.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. There was a very dark and disturbing moment in Donald Trump's recent rally speech about affordability, the economy and prices in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania. And it is the growing obsession that Donald Trump has with his own press secretary, Caroline Levin. It's pretty clear Trump is sort of smitten by her.

And Trump has now regularly talked about her physical appearance and he continues doing this thing about the machine gun lips that she has. I'm going to play the clip for you and just consider how unusual a way this is to talk about an employee, to talk about someone that you are supervising at the end of the end of the end of the day, although the amount of supervision that Trump provides is probably pretty limited. This is how Trump is talking about his press secretary. Take a listen to this. Our superstar today, Caroline, stand up there.

Isn't she great? Is Caroline great? You know, when she goes on television, Fox, like, I mean, they dominate, they dominate when she gets up there with that beautiful face and those lips that don't stop, but pop, up like a little machine gun. Those lips that don't stop bop, pop, pop, like a little machine gun in a lot of work environments, like sane work environments, that would be a lawsuit for sexual harassment. And the fact that Donald Trump is just regularly doing this is really wild.

And it's a reminder of how the cult of personality works. It kind of goes both ways. On the one hand, Trump demands and expects loyalty from people, unending loyalty, lay down and walk all over me sort of devotion to the dear orange leader. But then the other side of it is that the people that become these cultish followers of Trump, like Caroline Levitt, for example, are sort of kept engaged and invigorated by it by getting these sorts of. messages and this kind of adulation and praise primarily about their physical appearance from the dear leader. And I am not suggesting that Trump is running one of these sex cults, right? Like there's so many we could talk about where there were, you know, sexual favors were kind

of part of the dynamic between the cult leader and the followers. And that might involve, uh, that that might include Charles Manson or the people's temple and Jim Jones or that the, the one that the Indian guy that has a, uh, Netflix documentary about him. I forget what it even is the love something or other. I'm not suggesting that Trump is doing that. But the dynamics are reminiscent of that, which is that in addition to demanding subservience and loyalty and all of it, if there is not like a sexual cult that's part of it, which I'm not saying is the case here, there are at least these overtones of physical attraction and

that sort of thing. And it is part of in cults keeping people sort of in line and engaged. And this is Trump's version of it at the end of the day. also kind of weirdly glitching at one point during the rally. On day one, I ended the war in Pennsylvania energy. I terminatees. I just terminated some. I terminatees.

That's that weird shoulder glitch that happened. In 80s. Whoa, careful there. Don't knock yourself off of the stage. And then a weird moment where this is just a matter of the wayward sound versus the way that they are spelled. It does sound weird though. Listen to this.

For minors, do we love miners? I love miners. All right. And this was joked about as Trump saying he likes minors like someone who is legally not of age. But Trump is talking. He's in Pennsylvania. He's talking about M-I-N-E-R-S. In other words, those who work in a mine.

This rally, which we delved into detail about earlier, on the substance, did not achieve what Trump set out to do. We went through that earlier. It was supposed to show that Trump understands the plight of the. average person and is working to make affordability more of a reality and blah, blah, blah. Trump failed to do that. He basically showed up and said, everything's fine. People are whining.

It's all a hoax. But we go beyond that and we recognize that there is some really weird stuff going on here. Trump is still glitching regularly. Trump is still using the feedback from the crowd to say increasingly unhinged and deranged and vile, disgusting, toxic stuff. And Trump continues to talk about Caroline Levitt's machine gun lips. That is some weird shit to quote George W. Bush speaking to Hillary Clinton after Trump's first inauguration speech back in 2017.

Jessica Tarlov is the lone liberal on Fox News as the five, how she tolerates being around these insufferable people. I don't know. But there was a very interesting segment in this show. You know, the Trump team knows the economy is not. going well. And that is why Trump is on the road. That's why he went to Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania yesterday and started trying to convince people that everything is great. It's why Trump has stopped releasing jobs numbers. It's why Trump has stopped releasing inflation numbers. It's why Trump has decided

to delay or rather cancel the advanced GDP reading waiting instead for the final GDP reading. They know that they are in trouble. But increasingly, they also want to blame Biden. for anything that appears to be going wrong. Trump is trying to argue that it was Biden who set the economy on fire and Trump is putting the fire out. Jessica Tarlov on Fox was prepared for this. Imagine having to deal with this every day at work. Jessica, one of the things that President Trump will do, no doubt, is to remind people

that the economy that he inherited from Biden was the one that ramped up inflation. So because the media will always pick up on Democratic. tax like Shapiro, Newsom, et cetera, then President Trump, I think getting out there will at least try to prevent any ground being gained by Democrats there. Now let me just make a quick pause. Can someone tell me in what way Biden ramped up inflation when Joe Biden took office as global inflation was going up. It peaked around 9% early in Biden's term because of the pandemic. And then inflation came down in the United States. faster than in other wealthy Western developed countries.

And it came down to a lower level than in other equivalent countries around the world. And it was bouncing between two and a half and three percent when Joe Biden left office. And it remains bouncing between two and a half and three percent right now. In what way did Biden ramp up inflation? Doesn't matter. Dana Perino is committed to the talking point. All right. He's going to try to.

But the argument that the guy who's been out for a year, that it's all his fault when you've implemented a totally new economic agenda and that it's a failure in basically every corner of it is not really resonating with people. When Joe Biden's inflation number was over 9%, the entire world's inflation number was up. Donald Trump doesn't have the same issues that Joe Biden did. He doesn't have a supply chain problem. He doesn't have a global health pandemic that was killing millions of people all over the world. He's just setting our economy on fire and not in the good way. Yeah, but Jessica, he's a Republican so he can do no wrong. dumpster fireway. The A plus plus plus grade, obviously that's ridiculous. But there are some key

indicators that Donald Trump and his administration knows that this is going really badly. First, Susie Wiles having to go out there and say he's going to get back on the campaign trail. That'll really animate the right. Well, guess what? It'll animate the left as well. We aren't getting the jobs numbers anymore, the GDP numbers or the inflation numbers. And we know that Donald Trump, if a number is even remote. Jessica making just about every point I'm making here. good or he can lie about it. He tells you what it is. Layoffs on track for great recession levels. ABC says 70% are spending more in their groceries, 60% more on utilities. Roiders, manufacturing's

been contracting for nine months straight. And this farmer bailout, $12 billion of his tariff pot, which he didn't need to put the tariffs in the first place. And the farmers are speaking out about this. This is Donald Trump's problem. He's the one who caused this, the head of the National Black Farmers Association, agriculture in this country has been in complete turbulence and turmoil since the president got elected. This is a very good summary of the absurdity of blaming the economic circumstances of today on Joe Biden. But there is going to be a bigger political problem here, I believe, for Donald Trump, which is that Americans knew when Biden's administration was saying everything's fine, that things weren't fine. And that was a real problem for Biden when he was

the candidate and ultimately for Kamala Harris. And it was part of why Kamala Harris lost. We are seeing that in triplicate right now. And Trump's tariffs are really negatively affecting manufacturing. We saw that the promise of lower prices turned into prices that keep going up, not faster than under Biden, but they just keep going up. And that's not what was promised. And as we get into 2026, voters are going to say to themselves, not only has Donald Trump achieved what he promised he would do, do I believe that I am better off now than when Donald Trump took office. And I know it's so sort of cliche to even bring that up. Are you better off today than you were four years ago, two years ago, whatever?

But as acutely as I can remember, we are hearing from diverse groups of people, farmers, manufacturing workers, union members, educators. I am struggling more today than I was 11 months ago and I'm struggling more with every passing month. That is not a situation where Trump can show up to Pennsylvania and go, it's an affordability hoax. It's a scam. It's a con job.

We fixed everything. This is why you take that reality. You take the economic numbers when we get them. And remember, if they were good, they'd be releasing them from the administration. and you take these incredible leftward shifts in Miami yesterday, in house races, in gubernatorial races. You put it all together. Republicans could lose 70 seats in the House of Representatives next year.

I am counting no chickens before they hatch, but it is a plausible scenario that we have to work to make a reality. Now, on the bonus show today, we are going to look at what's going on with the boat strike probe in the House of Representatives. I'll give you a preview. It's not great. We will talk about some AI pricing experiments that Instacart is doing, which some are furious about and much more. We've got a phenomenal bonus show for you today. Sign up at join packman.com. I'll see you then.