The David Pakman Show - 1/2/25: This new year is already outrageous

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

-- On the Show: -- The first 48 hours of 2025 confirm that this year is going to be absolutely insane -- United Healthcare is accused of denying coverage for a woman in a coma in the ICU because it might not be "medically necessary" -- Donald Trump is doing it again, planning to hold a rally in Washington DC the day before the inauguration -- Donald Trump bows down to Elon Musk again on H1B visas and MAGA is increasingly humiliated -- Despite the New Orleans vehicle attacker being American-born, Donald Trump takes to Truth Social to claim he was right about foreigners posing threats to Americans -- A look at how corporate media normalizes authoritarianism -- A Tesla Cybertruck explodes outside Donald Trump's Las Vegas hotel and casino -- Police seem impressed with the Tesla Cybertruck's ability to withstand explosions -- On the Bonus Show: How Mike Johnson could lose the speakership, unlawful border crossings drop to four year low in November, police identify woman who was fatally set on fire on NYC subway, much more... 🔊 Babbel language learning: Get up to 60% OFF at https://babbel.com/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free baked goods at https://wildgrain.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman 💻 Sponsored by Aura: Try it free for 2 weeks! See if your data is safe at https://aura.com/pakman 💻 Private Internet Access: 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/Pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- Pakman Discord: https://davidpakman.com/discord -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave a Voicemail: (219)-2DAVIDP

Welcome to 2025, everybody. I hope that your New Year's celebrations were, how do I put it, exactly what you would want. I'll admit I was asleep by 1045 and it was great. We are going to have an insane year. And I know four years is what a lot of us are thinking about because of the incoming Trump administration. And that's completely reasonable. I understand why that's your expectation. It's mine as well. But I want to talk specifically about 2025 because it's very clear based on the first 24, 36, 48 hours of the year, and based on everything we were observing from November 5th through December 31st last year,

it's abundantly clear that this is going to be a particularly bonkers year. We've been trying to prevent it. Many of us voted in ways that we thought would make it less likely, but I don't think at this point it's possible. 2025 will be nuts. Just in the first 36 hours of the year,

we saw a Tesla Cybertruck loaded to the gills with what appear to be fireworks explode at a Trump hotel. And then we saw police, uh, supplicate, uh, about how lucky we all are that it was a Tesla cyber truck. We'll get to that later. Maybe it's sort of a metaphor for the MAGA movement. It's flashy, it's chaotic, and it's bound to blow up in everyone's faces. We had an absolutely terrifying attack in, uh, New Orleans, Louisiana on Bourbon Street, which we will talk about. We saw in this nascent stage of the year, Donald Trump doubled down on being completely

owned by Elon Musk again on the topic of H-1B visas, visas at his New Year's Eve party, and he's now pretending he never had a different position, except he's on video clearly having different positions. And in the last few hours, we have learned that Donald Trump is going to be holding a rally just before his inauguration on January 19th. And this is going to be Trump global chaos 2.0. We made it a few hours into 2025 before the mass carnage and the political fiascos started. And Trump is still weeks from even being inaugurated. He has ideas about Ukraine and Russia, about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, about taxes, about health care, about tariffs that are all disastrous or childish or impossible ideas. Now, I expected it to be very bad. I was kind of chatting back and forth with a few people on blue sky over the new year.

I expected it to be bad. And I know many of you did as well. But I don't know that I've ever expected such atrocities as I do this time. And I'm including when Trump was elected in 2016 and we waited for his inauguration in January of 2017, almost eight years ago to the day, if you can imagine. I expected it to be bad and it was bad, but this is all seeming like it's going to be much, much worse. And then, of course, let's not forget Project 2025 and the havoc that it will clearly wreak. We've spent years warning

about the consequences of this type of leadership. We've spent years warning about how populist rhetoric can be used to bamboozle people into electing strongman authoritarians, the lies, the recklessness, the corruption. It was never just about Donald Trump. And we are about to see the infection of government with a sort of virus for which I don't know if we have any cure or vaccine for. I guess the vaccine would be education to a degree, and we know they've decimated that. It is going to infect and invade every corner of public life. And so we are buckling down to watch it unfold. We're not going to go quietly. And although this is sounding like

a very dark and dystopian way to start the year, I am inspired by much of what I'm seeing. The immediate tune out that we saw after November 5th has dissipated. And I am now getting emails. Remember November 5th through 25th, let's say I was getting dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of emails saying, David, I can't do it anymore. I have to tune out. It's bad for my health. I'm despondent. I don't think we can do anything to stop it. They are too well organized and on and on and on.

And I respected that very much. And I said, do what's good for you. Do what you feel you need to do for your mental and physical health. We're going to sort of regroup. And I believe we will be ready by January 20th. And what I am now seeing is that becoming a reality. Now I'm no longer hearing from the I'm tuning out for years, David. Maybe some of those folks did leave. But so many people are now getting ready for years, David. Maybe some of those folks did leave,

but so many people are now getting ready for what is coming. And I do think, as Mark Elias said, we need to build an opposition, not a resistance. I see it being built. The conversations I had in DC two weeks ago with other creators inspire me that we are all seeing the same thing. We ran this new year's day membership special yesterday and 170 people, uh, signed up in one day. If you miss that membership special, by the way, just email info at davidpackman.com say, Hey, I'd like that code.

David, we'll give it to people. You can take advantage of it through the end of the week. What I am seeing is that people are getting ready. They are motivated and activated. And I do not believe that we are going to go quietly into the night. So that's my it sounds like we're starting in a dark place, but I actually think we're ending in a good place. People are ready. Let's get into it. And next week, we've got a lot of important stuff planned in terms of the strategy for this year and beyond. All right. You know, people are very much right to be furious at what's going on with the health

insurance companies. What we can say, of course, I don't support vigilantism. Of course, I don't support criminality, murder, homicide, assassinations. Of course, I don't support any of that. That is not a way to fix systems that I have ever seen work in history. And also, I understand why millions, if not tens of millions of Americans are furious at what health insurance companies and the health insurance industrial complex have done to the country and to our ability to get healthcare that we need, uh, at an acceptable quality at an affordable cost. We are now learning about United Healthcare denying the claim of a woman in a coma.

This is a story that has gone viral because of a social media post from Dr. Zachary Levy who says that he has a patient in a coma and that UnitedHealthcare said, we don't know that what you're asking for is medically necessary. Let's go to the post that he made, the doctor made on Twitter, where he said, quote, UnitedHealthcare just denied a claim on one of my patients in the ICU with a brain hemorrhage in a coma on a ventilator in heart failure because I haven't proven to them that caring for her in the hospital was, quote, medically necessary. Tear it all down. Dr. Levy went on to say, quote, Meanwhile, I've been instructed to write a letter of medical necessity to UnitedHealthcare, and this is all I can come up with. And what he wrote is the following. I'm writing on behalf of my patient to document the medical necessity of being on a ventilator in the intensive care unit for the treatment of their brain hemorrhage, cerebral edema,

and respiratory failure. Their treatment was medically necessary to prevent them from dying during this visit. Please contact me if you need anything else. You know, we need a quick approval here. This is the way that it often works. A doctor says, as a doctor with experience doing doctor stuff, here's what the patient needs. And then in comes an insurance company and says, nah. Now, you might soberly say it's logical that if a company is going to pay for something, that they would have a process for making sure that they are paying for something that is appropriate. Fine.

The problem is that the dynamic of this often puts non-doctors on a computer at UnitedHealthcare or Cigna or whoever in a position of saying, I as a non-doctor now decide whether the doctor's professional opinion is acceptable to me. What many have found is that when there is such a denial, you say, oh, let me know the name of the doctor who made this decision. They find out it wasn't a doctor at all who actually made the decision. And the fact that this is something people have figured out, that this is a technique sometimes people use to get reversals on these denials is a sad commentary on the situation that we have. Now, I do want to give you the other side of this whole thing. And this is not this is not a defense.

This is just explaining to you sort of like a, how we got here. Many of you are familiar with the $50 Tylenol pill in a hospital. Many of you have written to me and said, I got a breakdown of my hospital stay. They charged 50 bucks for a Tylenol pill, which costs pennies when you go and buy Tylenol at CVS or Duane Reade. An IV bag with saline solution. The hospital charged $300 for that. It's a dollar wholesale.

Now, why is that? Is it just asshole hospitals? Well, not really. And again, this isn't the defense of the hospitals. It's an explanation of how the system feeds the defense of the hospitals. It's an explanation of how the system feeds on itself and the hospitals react to the health insurance companies. The health insurance companies then react to the hospitals. When you see a $20 bandaid, it reflects not just the cost of the bandaid, but it reflects the hot, the cost for the billing

staff that hospitals have the medical coders that are required for the hospital to get paid by the health insurance company, compliance with the insurance requirements, the computer and software systems required to interface with the health insurance companies to, in a, in a sense, the hospitals charge higher prices to compensate for patients who can't pay their bills. So the fact that there are uninsured people, thanks to our system, or people who will come in and get treatment and never pay, the people who have the health insurance are charged more to compensate for that. Because hospitals know that they will negotiate with insurers. They will often set very high what might be called retail MSRP charge master prices so that then they

have room to negotiate with the insurance companies. You know, I told my the the appendectomy that shook the world years ago, I had appendicitis and I had an appendectomy and we looked at my bill with, with the audience at the time and it was like $35,000 or something like that. Uh, and indeed there were charges in there, you know, the, uh, the crackers they gave me in the recovery room were on there. And the one, uh, anti-nausea pill that they gave me. It was 70 bucks or all this stuff. But it didn't really matter in the sense that what the hospital was ultimately paid for was what was left of my $2,000 deductible, right? Which I think was like 1100 bucks at that point in the year, plus a pre-negotiated rate with my insurance company. I think it was like nine grand or something like that. So they prop up the bill with,

we gave them crackers and we gave them this and we gave them that. And we dosed him with this other thing. It's 36, $37,000. It's already been pre-negotiated. Oh, we've agreed to accept the nine grand or something like that. And this is all part of it. We also have lack of transparency. Nobody told me in advance appendectomies are 35 grand or your insurance company pays us nine grand. You've got to give us 1100. That's good. It just doesn't happen. And of course, in an emergency situation, who can shop around anyway, right? That's another broken part of the system. So all of these are reasons why these systems feed and feed and feed on themselves. And people have a right to be angry. My monthly health insurance premium in 2023 was $707 a month.

This year, that same plan went up to $743 a month. I recently had labs done. The labs were billed at 600 bucks. My insurance only pays 300. So even though I'm paying my 700 bucks a month in premium, I still had to dump in another $300 for my labs. I still have co-pays of $30 at my doctor and $60 at specialists. So what I'm going to do is look at getting a super high deductible plan, maybe a catastrophic plan,

maybe instead of 740 a month, it'll cost me 200 a month. Everything will be out of pocket for like the first five grand. Uh, I've got to meet that deductible and then my insurance will pay for everything. That's another possibility. But the fact that this is the way it all works is a broken system. So people have a right to be angry. What's going on is absolutely outrageous. I hate to break it to you. Trump's not going to solve this. Trump's promise for a beautiful health care plan. It's a 10 year promise now. Back in 2015, he started saying, we'll replace Obamacare.

Obamacare was five years old then. It's now 15 years old. Trump's not gonna do it. So if we are going to solve this problem, oh sure, it'd be great to just have a president that will solve it. Well, it's gonna be four years. The way to solve this now is for some state

or group of states to do what Vermont planned to do and ultimately was not able to do, which is a state single payer system that I am increasingly convinced, especially when we're going to have four years of Trumpism, that is going to be the path to creating a model and saying, look, they were able to do it. Vermont, due to its rural nature and the way they were planning to fund it and a bunch of other details, it didn't work out. There are many other states that are considered good candidates for this. Washington is one that's often mentioned because it has more of a blend of urban and rural. You need some density, more densely populated areas in order to have a risk pool that more appropriately

represents a sort of a normal distribution of outcomes. There's a whole bunch of other factors, right? But Washington's being talked about as a possible place. Connecticut is an interesting one. Geographically, it's smaller. Of course, you could say, well, David, Rhode Island's even smaller. Yes, but Connecticut is better off financially and a larger total GDP. So Connecticut may be an ideal place to test something like this. Of course, Massachusetts is often mentioned in this as well. So that is where I think we are going to see the start of something like this, especially when Trump is president. People are right to be angry. Let's take a quick break. We are shot out of a

cannon on the first show of the year. It's great to have you here. We have a lot ahead. Many people in the audience know I speak multiple languages. I first learned Spanish when I was born in Argentina. Then I learned English. I learned some Hebrew in Hebrew school. I learned French in junior and high school. I am no stranger to the language learning process. And one of the most useful tools I've ever used is the app called Babbel. The way our sponsor Babbel teaches you languages truly works and it works fast. Instead of a bunch of silly quizzes and games like a lot of the other apps, Babbel is designed by real people for real conversations. All of Babbel's tips quizzes and games like a lot of the other apps. Babbel is designed by real

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your Babel subscription, but only for my audience at Babel dot com slash Pacman. Rules and restrictions may apply. Get up to 60 percent off at Babel dot com slash Pacman spelled B a B B E L.com slash Pacman rules and restrictions may apply. The link is in the podcast notes. Winter is the perfect time to cozy up at home with some freshly baked treats like flaky pastries, hearty breads, comforting pastas, and you can do it without any effort. Our sponsor wild grain Thank you so much for joining us. in 25 minutes or less. No mess or cleanup. Your family will be amazed thinking you've become a master bread baker all of a sudden. My favorite is the croissants. You throw them in the oven, 25 minutes. Wow. If you're ready to bring all your favorite breads, pastas, and pastries right to your doorstep, check out Wild Grain. You can build your box of artisanal pastries, breads, and everything

right now. And for a limited time, wild grain will give my audience $30 off your first box, plus free croissants in every box. When you go to wild grain.com slash Pacman to start your subscription free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box. Go to wild grain.com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. see the urgency of the moment and of building a robust opposition to the freight train that is off the tracks and barreling towards us, I invite you to get a membership at joinpacman.com. I really appreciate the 170 people who signed up yesterday with our New Year's Day special. If you missed the special and want to take advantage of it, email info at davidpacman.com and say, hey, David, give me that code, sir, or please or whatever, you know, just give

me the code. Joinpacman.com is the place to sign up. Donald Trump appears poised and determined to repeat one of the most vile moments in American history with an ominous rally in Washington, D.C. on January 19th, the day before his inauguration, reminding all of us of that horrible and disgusting day, January 6th, 2021. The Make America Great Again victory rally is planned for the 20,000 seat Capital One arena. And it feels like deja vu for any of us who remember January 6th, 2021. Trump is framing it as a celebration of his victory over Kamala Harris in November. But the echoes from the January 6th fiasco are difficult to ignore.

And big picture, this sort of victory rally, once again, we don't want to overuse the metaphor or the analogy. But when you think about the sorts of leaders in the 20th century who did these sort of massive rallies where he's not even running for anything anymore. He can't run again, term limited. Um, the echoes of 20th century authoritarianism are very difficult to miss. Now the rally is being organized by the Trump Vance inaugural committee. That's the sort of slush fund that Trump's favorite and soon to be favorite billionaires are dumping money into Trump through. This is scheduled for 3 p.m. Eastern on

the 19th. Trump will speak, you know, hours later. I'm sure he'll be late to it as well. On the face of it, it's sort of your generic Trump spectacle. The excuse me, the red hats and the roaring crowds and chanting about making America great again and how the Marxists and the anarchists and the fill in the blank, right? They're all terrible and Trump's defeated them and he's going to beat them off from having any influence. But when you look at the location, you look at the timing, you look at the rhetoric already around this thing. It's hard to believe that it is just a milquetoast campaign style event. Part of it, of course, as I mentioned, there's no more campaign. He already won. He needs to be worried.

If Trump really cared about doing what was good for the American people, for his voters, for the people of this country, instead of doing an all day authoritarian style rally the day before being sworn in, he would be soberly working on his day one proposals. Of course, we know if he did work on day one proposals, they'd be terrible for people. They'd be terrible for the country. And so after all of it, we are seeing the same playbook he used before his supporters stormed the Capitol in January of 2021. Summon an angry, bloodthirsty crowd, fill the air with grievances that you are going to fix and just kind of let the powder keg ignite. Now, whether Trump's the one throwing the lit match into it or he's just saying, come to the rally with your lit matches.

And once I leave, if one of you throws the match onto the fire, well, that's not my problem. Trump's actions since his second victory show no signs of reflection or of restraint. He's doubling down on the same tactics that divided the nation during the first term, and it's actually much worse. His cabinet picks read sort of like a rogues gallery of far right loyalists and billionaires, each more committed than the last to doing whatever Trump wants for their own personal gain, unchecked power, not a concern. And far from learning from his catastrophic handling of his first term or the deadly riot that marked the end of that first term, Trump is determined to lean into the chaos. So the rally is ominous. There is a potential for violence. I hope there is no violence, but this rally is just the opening act,

the rally on the 19th, the inauguration on the 20th. It's all kicking off the new beginning, not of a chapter we haven't read before, but of a sort of slightly rewritten chapter that has an instantly lame duck Trump ready to do whatever he thinks will be best for his legacy. It's less of a reflection of unity, but more a now extraordinarily fractured electorate. If you think about 2017 versus 2025, the electorate is far more fractured among cultural lines right now, ideological lines. And with the second term coming, the possibility of getting to a breaking point once again is extraordinarily real. He hasn't learned from his mistakes. He's repeating them.

And we are all going to have to be prepared. And I think we are, quite frankly. And let's hope that law enforcement is prepared as well. Donald Trump is now bowing down to President elect Elon Musk and MAGA is more furious and more humiliated every single day. Donald Trump looking as orange as we have ever seen him ever at Mar-a-Lago on New Year's Eve was asked, why'd you change your mind on H1B visas? And of course, Trump did change his mind. Four years ago, Trump was waxing poetic about how we are going to change the rules on H1B and never allow an immigrant to take an American job again. And now all of a sudden,

with president elect Musk calling the shots with Vivek Ramaswamy empowered with this Department of Grifting Edgelords, DOJ, they say, no, we love H-1B. Of course they do. They are tech guys who realize because of Republicans' own doing, education kind of sucks in the United States. Let's bring people in from countries where education is still functional so that they can help us grow our net worths. And so now Trump is fully on board.

He denies that he has ever changed his view. Listen to this. There you go. No, we need to bring people in. We're going to have people in. We're going to have jobs for the people, except, except that Donald Trump did change his mind. Donald Trump did his classic. Let me tell you a story about one individual who lost the job. Let me tell you a story about a guy who had to train his foreign replacements. And this is Trump as president a few years ago saying we are going to limit H1B. We're going to cut this whole thing down. This is the opposite position that he now has. This is the opposite position of what Elon Musk has espoused. And this is the opposite position of what Vivek Ramaswamy has espoused. This is like a different Trump. Recently, the CEO

of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Jeffrey Lyash, made a disastrous and heartless decision. The TVA announced that it would lay off over 200 American workers and replace them with cheaper foreign workers brought in from overseas. Cheaper. The Tennessee Valley Authority leadership then ordered the American workers to train their foreign replacements rubbing salt in their very open wounds. So we're going to bring in workers. They're going to be foreign workers. And people from Tennessee and some other states

right around it are going to train them what to do and how to do it. It doesn't work that way. As we speak, we're finalizing H-1B regulations so that no American worker is replaced ever again. H-1Bs should be used for top, highly paid talent Wow, that's very different than what he says now. To replace them. I want you and your colleagues to know that my administration will not be putting up with.

I happen to know a young woman who's been very active over the last couple of years because we were together on Disney and a couple of other things. All right. So you get it. He does the thing where he says, oh, tell us how they told you you were going to be training your foreign replacement, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It also bears some mentioning, some mentioning that Elon Musk at Tesla has faced significant backlash because of his habit of replacing American workers with foreign workers here on H1B visas. You don't have to be a genius to figure out what's going on. Trump is against H-1B previously because he perceives it as being a threat to American workers.

Elon Musk loves H-1B because it's how he has filled a lot of positions at Tesla and at his other companies. Vivek Ramaswamy loves H1B. He's talked about how he has used H1B to his benefit at his companies. All of a sudden, Musk and Ramaswamy have the ear of Trump. And next thing you know, even though MAGA is pissed, Laura Loomer is pissed. They're all furious about this pro H1B thing because remember they are xenophobic, anti-immigration, whatever. But Musk likes it and Vivek likes it. And now

Trump says, I'm very much for it. Let's do more H1B. It's going to be great. We're going to bring the best people. And it just so happens that it coincides with the people that have Trump's ear. And Elon Musk, by some reports, has moved into Mar-a-Lago with one of his kids. He's with Trump everywhere. He was with Trump in Paris. He was with, he was at Trump's table on New Year's Eve, dancing kind of awkwardly to YMCA. And now all of a sudden Trump's views align perfectly with Musk. So what are the themes here? The important themes are the principles Trump claims to espouse are principles only as far as they are convenient to Trump. And as soon as they're not, or someone gets his ear with a different view, he changes his mind. It doesn't

matter. Yes, we should punish the women who get abortions. Sir, you don't want to say that we should not punish the women who get abortions and on and on and on. Number two, there is very clearly a sort of awakening happening among some magas that the stuff Trump said he would do that would be good for the American worker. It doesn't really seem like he's super committed to that. And of course, that's an important takeaway as well. And then number three is just this runaway train that seems to be Trump wanting to please people richer than him and how that train is going head on towards sort of against his campaign promises and where it all lands. I mean, listen, honestly, it probably lands at most MAGA voters just blaming Democrats somehow. But on Trump's inauguration day, we are going to sort of draw a line in the sand and we're going to follow this really objectively and clearly. On Trump's inauguration day, I will come to you with tears in my eyes and I will say,

here's the unemployment rate as of today. Here's the stock market level as of today. Here are here's the wage level, the consumer price index and inflation numbers. We will say this is where Biden left off and Trump started. And then quarter over quarter, we will be able to evaluate how the numbers change under Trump. And we'll see whether he's able to deliver on the economic promises that he has made. I hope he does. I am not one of these people who's hoping for Trump's failure. I hope that he does.

But if he doesn't, we're going to track those numbers very closely. Let's take a quick break. A couple of horrible incidents in the early hours of 2025 that we will discuss in just a moment. Data brokers are continually collecting extensive details about your online behavior, address, phone number, email, financial information, even political views. This sensitive information about you can easily be found on public data search sites by anybody could be an ex could be an employer. And these brokers sell the data to other businesses and even government agencies like the FBI and NSA who can buy it in bulk to surveil Americans without a search warrant. Scammers and spammers also get your details from these lists. And that's why you get the text messages and the calls and the emails. But you can stop it. Our

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But I feel secure thanks to aura. One sponsors, Aura monitors your personal data. This includes your social across billions of data points, including dark web and public records. It will let you know if there's an identity theft risk and they provide up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. Aura offers additional safety features like real time breach alerts, a password manager and much more. I don't want to leave myself or my family vulnerable to these data breaches. Thank you so much for joining us. exposed. That's a U R a.com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. All right. I mentioned at the top of the show that there was this horrible, horrible incident in new Orleans,

where an individual drove a vehicle through a crowd of people, numerous casualties, the breaking news channels, associated press Reuters, et cetera, they've all done a good job of giving the facts. And so this is not about retelling the story. If you're interested in the details of what took place, it is widely available. What I want to focus in on is how when you have only a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And despite the fact that the perpetrator in New Orleans is an American born

military veteran, not a foreigner, Donald Trump doubled down saying, I told you that these foreigners represented criminal danger in the United States. Let's start with the statement that Donald Trump put out about the incident, which was then amplified by Donald Trump's incoming press secretary, Caroline Leavitt. Donald Trump saying, quote, when I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the fake news media. But it turned out to be true. The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before.

Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department. The Trump administration will fully support the city of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil. But there is a problem. And even Fox News reported the truth as we now know it. With this article, Bourbon Street attack suspect Shamsud Din Jabbar was a U.S. Army veteran, per the FBI. And the article also mentions that the 42-year-old is an American, an American-born American citizen. Of course, I know that many of you are already picking up on what this is really about. Shamsuddin Jabbar is not a name that that many of these magas are willing to accept as being

simply an American based on the way that the name sounds. Well, maybe technically he's an American, but Shamsu Dinjabar, come on, guys, give me a break. It was actually quite funny that Fox News covered Trump's statement and even Fox News clarified, by the way, in this particular case, this is not a foreigner. And it's elected. Donald Trump put out a statement on social media earlier today that reads as follows. When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the fake

news media. But it turned out to be true. The crime rate in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the fake news media, but it turned out to be true. The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before. Our hearts are with all the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department. The Trump administration will fully support the city of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil. Now, the former president said criminals coming in in his statement meaning into our country. But to be clear, Molly and Brian, the suspect was born in the United States. He served in the United States Army. He was a veteran.

The FBI is the lead agency in this investigation going through the social media and any other accounts associated with the suspect. But so just a little footnote, right? President Trump reacting to this horrible incident, pointing out that he was right, that the crimes that are committed by foreigners or would be committed by foreigners are just absolutely terrible and horrible. And it's all very, very, very bad. And by the way, like, okay, in this particular incident, it happened to be an American born military veteran with no, uh, no, no other citizenship, no dual loyalty, none of this stuff, but like Trump's right.

And so on and so forth. This tells us a lot about the perspective of what a lot of them mean when they talk about American, right? When we look at it, we say, okay, so where were you born? Uh, what is it that, uh, how, how do we, how do we define what it means to be an American? And I think for most of us, it's, well, you were born here or you moved here and were naturalized or right. So for a lot of MAGA seeing the skin color and name combination of this individual, all right, maybe in some technical way, that's an American, but it's not really an American in the way that we mean it. And, uh, that's just a reminder of the way that Trump policy is going to be carried out. Now we don't yet know all of the details of this attack and we ultimately will. But what we do know is that Trump saying, I told you so on these foreigners, very much

not based in fact. I want to talk a little bit about corporate media's normalization of authoritarianism, which I believe is going to be very relevant over the next four years. With Donald Trump's second term about to kick off, it's really more important than ever to understand how the U.S. media normalizes authoritarianism. The framing and the tone and the focus of reporting on Donald Trump's policies and behavior play a major role in shaping public perception and also in manufacturing consent in reducing horrible authoritarian overreaches to mere policy disagreements. And what I don't want to see is us fall into the same traps that helped Donald Trump during his first term. Think back to that first term when Trump separated families at the border,

the media's response would often fixate on the logistics. You know, Trump is struggling to manage the backlash to his zero tolerance policy. What about the human cost? What about the authoritarian impulse behind that policy of family separation and the sort of clerical use of cruelty as a deterrent that got buried under political analysis as if it were just another routine policy debate. Here are the logistics of separating families at the border. And it's just kind of like a very, you know, there's no reason to be worried beyond just what, how do you manage such a policy? And the same thing happened with Trump's constant attacks on the press.

The headlines, headlines would say Trump is a very fierce critic of the media. Trump's breaking norms by saying, I don't like what Jim Acosta asked me. He's banned from the white house press room. For example, Trump was systematically undermining a free press, which is a cornerstone of democracy in general and a cornerstone of the framework of the United States. And even the media itself, which was being attacked by Trump, would say he's punching back at his perceived critics. And it makes it sound kind of like an edgy, tough guy strategy rather than the dangerous attempt to erode accountability that really motivated Trump's attacks on on the media. And so that was the first term. And now Trump is gearing up for a second

term. And to a degree, corporate media is already falling into familiar patterns. When Trump unveiled plans to reinstate Schedule F, which is this mechanism for purging the federal workforce of those that he deems disloyal. A lot of outlets sort of use the anodyne phrase reshaping the federal bureaucracy, always using the term bureaucracy as a sort of pejorative or as a negative. It's sort of like calling arsonists engaged in remodeling efforts, right? When they decide to burn a house down, this is not bureaucratic tinkering. What the vacant and Elon and Trump plan to do is really laying the groundwork for consolidating power. And they've said it, it's about turning federal agencies into tools of personal loyalty to Donald Trump.

Corporate media is failing you on this. It's just failing you. Now, corporate media's ratings, for the most part, are down dramatically since the election. But that's a different story. One other example, Trump's recent rally announcement. We talked about it earlier that he's doing this rally on January 19th. Instead of really grappling with the fact that Trump is, even though he won

and he has no more presidential races to run, instead of really saying, wait a second, Trump even now is finding ways to whip his base into a frothy frenzy with violent rhetoric and recreating a very similar event to what led to the Trump riots in 2021. They talk about the expected crowd size and the slogans and how this is a rally that might be used to preemptively boost his popularity and have him enter office with a higher approval

rating. It's the same very dangerous superficial playbook, which is you treat it like theater instead of really interrogating the authoritarianism that lurks beneath what Trump is doing. Now, why do I bring it up now on January 2nd, 2025, 18 days from Trump's second term? Well, that's exactly why, because Donald Trump's second term is shaping up to be even more dangerous than the first. He's surrounded himself with loyalists and he's doubling down on the grievance politics. He's explicitly promising to weaponize government against enemies. And after Matt Gaetz, his candidate, a nomination to AG failed.

Now it's Pam Bondi, another hardcore Trump loyalist who's slated at least potentially to become attorney general. So the reason I'm bringing it up now is we're beyond 2024. We're 18 days from the inauguration. Trump's telling us what he's going to do and the stakes really couldn't be higher. And the media's role is either going to be we're going to expose this behavior as authoritarian or we're going to enable it. And it's going to make a big difference. I can do everything possible on my show, but it's just one show. And I just don't have the reach that

corporate media has in some total. And if corporate media continues to sanitize Trump's actions and looking at these authoritarian moves is, oh, it's a controversial move. It's an unusual choice. It focusing on the strategy over the consequences, then Trump's effort to dismantle the democratic norms he wants to dismantle is going to slide under the radar. And we saw it to a degree in the first term, and we're potentially heading that way here. So what can we do? Number one, I'm doing what I can to tell you, recognize these patterns in media coverage.

When you see it, when you see the corporate media using euphemism and false equivalency and false neutrality to cover naked authoritarianism, you reach out to them and you say, what the hell are you doing? For as long as you continue covering this stuff in this way, I'm tuning out. Demand better from the media outlets that you are covering this stuff in this way, I'm tuning out. Demand better from the media outlets that you are seeing this stuff happen on. And maybe most importantly, stay engaged because Trump's strategy depends on people either tuning out or becoming desensitized to what he's doing. The media will shallowly cover it and that will make it worse. But if you understand how corporate media coverage

is normalizing the authoritarianism, you're not just better equipped when it comes to media literacy, you're better equipped to foment democracy. And so we can't let corporate media frame Trump's second term as just the second of two chapters in a political theater. Because if we do that, we will very quickly lose, uh quickly lose the sense that this is not politics as usual. It's authoritarianism. We need to call it what it is before it's too late. So many different VPNs reach out to me wanting to advertise on the show. And I always turn them down because most of them do not pass the sniff test.

Most VPNs are all owned by the same big mysterious company. They log your internet activity so they can sell it or give it to law enforcement. And these VPNs are just out to make a buck without really protecting your privacy. The only VPN I trust enough to have as a sponsor is private internet access. Our sponsor, private internet access, is the only VPN who has proven multiple times in legal proceedings they don't keep logs of your activity. The judge ordered that PIA show user activity history each time they demonstrated they don't have the records. That no log policy is also independently audited by Deloitte. And PIA is also open source.

So you can also see in the code that none of your activity is being logged. And you can protect unlimited devices with just a single account. Private internet access is giving my audience 83% off, which is just two Oh three a month plus four extra months for free. Go to P I a VPN.com slash David. The link is in the podcast notes. Another completely bonkers story to kick off the new year. One person is dead after a Tesla cyber truck exploded outside Trump's hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Seven people injured, according to authorities per the New York Times. They said this is believed to be an isolated incident. They have not ruled out a connection to the attack in New Orleans at the time of this writing.

The article explains that this took place Wednesday morning. One person killed seven injured when a Cybertruck exploded. As of this moment, it is believed that this was a car, a Cybertruck, loaded to the gills with fireworks. And we have the video of it. I will play it for you here. And what you will see if you're just watching, uh, listening rather than watching is, uh, the cyber truck smoke starts coming out of it. It's right in front of those gaudy gold colored Trump letters at Trump's casino. And, uh, the thing explodes. Let's take a look. All right.

So absolutely and completely insane. Here is CNN with a report on it. We have this just in a law enforcement official briefed on that Tesla cyber truck explosion outside of Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas tells CNN that the incident is now being investigated as a possible terrorist act. Police say it took place at around 8.40 a.m. local time. There was one person inside the vehicle who died, and seven other people suffered minor injuries. The FBI is involved in this investigation, and we are going to stay on top of the story and bring you updates as we go.

So listen, this is the classic case of rampant speculation being reported as fact. There was one set of storylines that was this was a booby trapped Tesla Cybertruck, which was remotely detonated. and the person sitting in the vehicle was merely a victim. There were people arguing that the person in the vehicle was a perpetrator deliberately blowing up the truck and taking their own life as some form of protest. We don't have any confirmation of any of this stuff. We do know that it is being investigated as a possible, uh, a deliberate summer, even using the word terrorist act. We have others saying that this was some kind of accident. The person just had a bunch of fireworks and then,

you know, who knows, were they smoking in the car? I don't, I don't even know. And it accidentally went off. Obviously the, you know, when you look at the close recent relationship between Musk and Trump, that Musk is being called by some president Musk. And it seems that his influence over Donald Trump is at an extreme fever pitch right now. And the cyber truck, which represents Musk, is at a Trump hotel. And that's so much mirroring what we're seeing in the public eye right now. Isn't it obvious that this is not a coincidence? Yeah, that makes sense. And yet we just don't know right now. We just don't know right now. And one of the wildest things about this was how many of the police officers involved

were weighing in on the fact that it is a cyber truck. I want to talk about that next. I watched a little bit of the video of a press conference given by Las Vegas police and the local sheriff's office after this Tesla cyber truck exploded, apparently filled with fireworks in the Port Cashier, as Eric Trump called it, of the Trump Casino in Las Vegas. It was notable that a lot of the officers, they seemed to think that it was just great, that it was a Cybertruck, that with a lot of other vehicles, the explosion would have gone out to the sides and maybe forward and back. But because it's a Cybertruck and it's such a great car, a lot of it was sort of directed up and that that's a good thing.

Here are the police officers and I'll give you my analysis up front. It seems like there are some officers here really thrilled that this put them in direct contact with Tesla and Elon Musk. That's the sense I get. But I also would like you to pay attention to on that video, as you see that it looks like the exterior of that truck is completely intact as it sits there. The fact that this was a cyber truck really limited the damage that occurred inside of the valet because it... Thank God it was a cyber truck.

It had most of the blast go up through the truck and out. In fact, if you look on that video, you'll see that the front glass doors at the Trump hotel were not even broken by that blast, which they were parked directly in front of. You can see that in the video there. Yeah. Now, interestingly enough, this is not a unanimous opinion. There are those who actually said the fact that it was a cyber truck was worse. It's a worse thing because the rolled steel that's used in cyber trucks is apparently like more brittle. And so it's more likely to fragment

and to kind of go out like shrapnel. I don't know the answer, but the officer certainly seemed very pleased with that. And then another moment, again, they just, they seem very pleased with themselves that Elon Musk is involved here. Yes, actually, I have to thank Elon Musk specifically. He gave us quite a bit of additional information in regards to how the vehicle was locked after it exploded due to the force of the nature or the nature of the force from the explosion, as well as being able to capture all of the video from the Tesla charging stations across the country. And they were sent. He sent that directly to us. I appreciate his help on it. I'll take

and the officer just seems very pleased that he was in touch there with Elon Musk. My so two thoughts on this. So many people wrote in saying, David, this is obviously X or this is obviously why, as I said in the last segment, as of the moment I'm recording this, we just don't know if the idea was indeed to kind of like leave this cyber truck as a bomb. It's not totally clear why there was someone in the vehicle at the time that it exploded. There's a lot of details that we don't know. Where I kind of want to push back to or move to is that I don't believe, I'm going to focus on the Elon Musk part because there's an investigation going on. I believe that the love affair with Elon Musk that

MAGA briefly had is going to dissipate. MAGA is already displeased that Musk is pushing for more H-1B visas and he's convinced Trump about it. And now Trump says, yeah, let's do that. That's a good idea. I think that that's destined to implode. I think that a lot of these different aspects of the must thing are destined to implode and call me crazy. I don't believe that an unelected billionaire with significant personal stake in all of the decisions that he is going to be recommending Trump make. I don't think that's the right person to be involved in a lot of this stuff. And I don't think it's good for MAGA and I don't think that's the right person to be involved in a lot of this stuff. And I don't think it's good for MAGA and I don't think it's good for the country. All right. Let me do a

little sort of bookkeeping and updates on a few different things. First of all, on the bonus show today, the speak, the next speaker of the house is going to be of critical importance in determining how much of Trump's agenda gets done. MAGA Mike Johnson might not win the Speaker of the House vote. We're going to explain that on the bonus show today. Secondly, very quietly, November border crossings, unlawful ones, reached a four-year low. Absolutely no attention being paid to it by the MAGA people who insist that that's the number one issue. We will discuss it. And number three, we are going to talk about this incident in New York city where a woman was set on fire on the subway. The woman has now been identified. We have more details about the story. I'm going to discuss it when producer Pat joins me on the bonus show.

We are now really in the final stretch of the release of my book, The Echo Machine. The book comes out March 25th. We are right around 5,000 pre-orders. The average commercial book release sells 2,000 books total. We are at roughly 5,000 pre-orders and we still have months until the book's release. So first of all, thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered the book. You can still get all of the free extras all the way through March 25th. It wasn't just a 2024 deal. So I would suggest to you, if it sounds like something that would be up your alley, a book called The Echo Machine that explains how our politics degraded to where it is today

and what we can do to fix it and countries that have done it right. Pre-order the book. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Audible, Kindle. You can call any local bookstore and say, I'd like the book, The Echo Machine by David Pakman. And then to get all of your free stuff, go to davidpakman.com slash free book stuff. Don't email in about it. You have to go to davidpakman.com slash free book stuff. We are right about to pass 5,000 pre-orders. They said we couldn't do it and we've done it. Let's go for 10 is my opinion. And then lastly, we will be here tomorrow and then we will be back

for a full week next week. I know the last two weeks because of the holiday schedule, things have gotten sort of mixed up, but we are back and we are here. So I will see you on today's bonus show and I will be back tomorrow with a brand new show.