The David Pakman Show - 12/30/24: Jimmy Carter dead at 100, MAGA turns on Musk as Trump inauguration looms

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Former President Jimmy Carter has passed away at the age of 100 and we remember the legacy of his presidency and post-presidency -- MAGA turns on Elon Musk on the topic of H1B visas as the situation quickly becomes a disaster -- Donald Trump sides with Elon Musk over MAGA on the topic of H1B visas, despite Trump not understanding them -- A confused Donald Trump appears to flip flop on the topic of H1B visas, but a deeper analysis shows he doesn't really know what they are -- Elon Musk loses it over the H1B visa fiasco, banning MAGA influencers from Twitter -- Low-income Trump voters are starting to panic over the realization that Donald Trump will slash their benefits -- A report from the Washington Post claims that President Joe Biden now regret dropping out of the race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump -- A reporter is allegedly attacked by a furious supporter of Donald Trump -- Donald Trump will either implement the economic policies he promised and crash the economy, or abandon those promises -- On the Bonus Show: Growth of women in power grinds to a halt, another Democratic defection, US homelessness up 18%, much more... 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN10 saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com 👩‍🎓 The 431 Exchange: Help us reach our goal by donating at https://431exchange.org/pakman 🧴Geologie: Use code PAKMAN70 for 70% OFF your skin care trial set at https://geolog.ie/PAKMAN70 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 🥦 Lumen lets you master your metabolism. GET 20% OFF at https://lumen.me/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/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 the show, everybody. Former President Jimmy Carter has passed away at the age of 100. What a legacy. We will talk a little bit about the presidential legacy as well as the post-presidential. New York Times reporting, Jimmy Carter, peacemaking president amid crises, is dead at 100. Rising from Georgia farmland to the White House, he oversaw the historic Camp David peace accords, but his one-term presidency term presidency was waylaid by troubles at home and abroad. This is a longstanding sort of perspective on Jimmy Carter, which is, oh, his presidency wasn't really that good, but he did some good things after the fact. Very much not accurate. It's very popular from people who love to have a unique or interesting position to argue that Carter was essentially an ineffective and sort of feckless president who accomplished nothing as president, but was a nice guy and ended up doing some nice things after he was no longer president

of the United States. I don't think that this is really accurate. And of course, we know about all of the post-presidency accomplishments, including working with Habitat for Humanity, working as a sort of negotiator or go-between in a number of political situations and so many other things. But our friend Bill share had a very good post on blue sky where he said, quote, don't buy the failed president rap on Carter camp, David accords, Panama canal treaty created the education department, energy department, FEMA super fund, legalized home brewing, solved the Iran hostage crisis without bloodshed, solved years long inflation crisis, tapped Volcker for fed knowing he'd hiked rates.

He'd hike rates. Uh, I think bill makes a good point. And especially given that Carter only got one term, a very reasonable and sober analysis points to Carter did do a lot of great things. And yes, because he was relatively young when he was president and he lived so many years after being president of the United States, he did also have an extraordinarily productive and impactful post-presidency period. For me, the real takeaways from Carter are less about individual political accomplishments, but more about a different model for what leadership can look like. That doesn't include loud bluster. It doesn't necessarily have to

play off of the stereotypes and tropes about the powerful, super tall, right? I mean, this is something about presidents and their height, Jimmy Carter, not a tall guy, a sort of boisterous and loud doing quietly, but with presence, important and significant things. And one really great thing for the legacy of Carter, of course, presidential funerals, important and sort of a final public, in many ways, event for past presidents. If Jimmy Carter had passed away not long from now, it would have been Donald Trump overseeing that presidential funeral. Instead, it's going to be President Joe Biden overseeing it as current administration sort of managed that to a great degree, working with the state and the

foundations of past presidents. It's a really good thing in terms of what that event would have been like, that it is Joe Biden who is going to be handling that. It would be a global humiliation to have Trump oversee it. One sort of, I don't want to call it funny because it's just so, so wild. Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, put out a statement about the passing of Jimmy Carter and he sent condolences to Jimmy Carter's wife, Rosalyn Carter. Of course, the only problem with that is that Rosalyn Carter has been dead for over a year. And another humiliation, they just, they can't get it right. Even the simplest things, Greg Abbott putting out this statement, Cecilia and I send our prayers and deepest condolences to first lady Rosalind Carter

and the Carter family. Of course, Rosalind Carter passed away last year at the age of 96. So there's always a faux pas. And then hours later, the statement was replaced with one that doesn't mention condolences for Rosalind Carter like it never even happened the way they love to do it. They just can't get through any of it without humiliating themselves. But we will remember the legacy of Jimmy Carter, especially as the presidential funeral is now in the works and will soon take place. All right.

We have a quickly building MAGA versus Elon disaster. MAGA turning on Elon Musk. Serious drama brewing in MAGA land right now. And it's all about get this H1B visas. Yes. The same crowd that loves chanting build the wall is now turning on members of Trump's own incoming administration over immigration policy. Let me explain what's happening here. When Trump campaigned, he promised

this hardline immigration crackdown. And it's one of the reasons that his base loves him. But some of the newly appointed allies, I'm thinking of Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, they have a different take, especially on H-1B visas. Now, the H-1B is a visa that lets American companies hire foreign workers for specialized jobs. The idea being we don't have enough of the right people in the U.S. We need to bring them from elsewhere. And over the last week, over the last few days, things have gotten very heated because Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, who are going to lead Donald Trump's shiny new doge, almost a self-parody, the Department of Government Efficiency, they have started to make comments that MAGA supporters aren't loving.

Vivek said that tech companies hire foreign workers because some Americans aren't the right people for these jobs. Maybe it's a work ethic thing. Maybe it's a work ethic thing. Maybe it's a qualification. And Elon Musk has said, we don't have enough super talented engineers in the United States. They need the H-1B visa to get the talent from other countries. Then Sri Ram Krishnan, who's an Indian American entrepreneur, was named Trump's AI policy advisor. And a bunch of these far right outrage machine pushing perverts went into overdrive. Trump's loyalist, Laura Loomer said that the appointment of Krishnan was disturbing, ranted on X. This is the platform formerly known as Twitter that she

didn't vote for more H1B visas. Now, of course, part of this also had the xenophobic implication that Krishnan is some foreigner. We're talking about an Indian American here. And then Elon Musk doubled down, saying that the United States has a shortage of engineering talent. He went on Twitter and put out an excretion where he said, quote, no, we need more like double that number yesterday. The number of people who are super talented engineers and super motivated in the USA is far too low. Think of this like a pro sports team. If you want your team to win the

championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole team to win. Now, on this issue, it does seem like Elon may well be right. And there's a bigger arc here. Elon Musk is very concerned with declining birth rates and a population collapse. And if you share that concern for the United States, if you accept the sort of standard economic thinking that says that growth comes from your population growing, and if the population of the U.S. starts to decline as it is expected to,

that's going to be an economic problem. If you buy into that, then you have to say, how else do we increase the population of the country? And if we can't increase birth rates, you have to increase the population by bringing in people from other countries. And so there are lots of population experts who say under this sort of standard economic thinking, the U.S. needs to be bringing in far more immigrants, ideally immigrants under H-1B type visa programs, highly skilled, et cetera. Okay, so that's Elon Musk's view. Laura Loomer doesn't like it. She posted, quote, how does it make sense to have unemployed American graduates in STEM, Elon Musk? How does it make sense to keep importing infinite foreign wage slaves who

will further plummet the pay for STEM jobs in the U.S.? This doesn't help American innovation, and it doesn't help Americans, she said. It helps foreigners. Reducing the cap on H-1B visas is not America's first immigration policy, and it's not smart economic policy. This will worsen the student loan debt crisis in America by contributing to higher unemployment rates for American STEM graduates. I think she, she means raising it. Why would American students be motivated to work in STEM if billionaires just want to replace them with cheap foreign labor? How is it America first to let Indians here, they go, they can't resist the xenophobia. How is it America first to let Indians here? They can't resist the xenophobia. How is it America first to let Indians replace America's top talent, which is what Sriram

Krishnan says he wants to do? These are his words, not mine. And then as far as Vivek Ramaswamy is concerned, he went on a tirade about how American culture celebrates mediocrity and we need to bring in people from other countries, etc. Now, the irony here is wild. Trump's base is furious that his administration might soften on immigration policies that they see as core to the MAGA agenda. But don't forget that Trump himself has flip-flopped on this this H1B visa issue before. He has both said they are necessary for companies like Google and others, but he has also said

that they displace American workers and that's bad. That's classic Trump where he'll take both sides of an issue and it's never clear whether he understands it. And in fact, Trump doesn't understand H1B visas. We found that out as well. I'll talk about it in the next segment. So we now have a situation, thanks to Musk and Ramaswamy getting in the middle of this and saying, here's what we need to do on this issue. The Republican Party at war with itself,

within MAGA at war with themselves. And you've got the Trump loyalists demanding a full crackdown on H-1Bs. On the other hand, you've got tech elites, billionaires, and wannabe billionaires like Musk and Ramaswamy saying, no, we need these visas. A bunch of the way we became centimillionaires and billionaires is by importing foreign talent that we believe is better for our companies than American talent. The clarity we need is that this isn't just about immigration. This is about the future that the Republican Party envisions. Is it America first nativism, which is what helped Trump win in 2016? Or is it a more globalist tech friendly vision pushed by the

Silicon Valley types that are now joining Donald Trump's team? H1B visas are an issue, but it's a microcosm of the larger MAGA identity crisis and this MAGA on MAGA violence that we're talking about. And it's playing out in disastrous real time on social media. My guess, and I made this guess six weeks ago, it's coming true sooner than I expected. My guess is we're going to see more and more of these intra MAGA clashes taking shape, partially because this is a movement that is made up of perspectives that can't possibly coexist to a degree. And partially because MAGA loves these civil wars, whether it's a Republican democratic American political system, civil war,

or whether it's a MAGA versus non MAGA Republican civil war, or whether it's a pro versus anti-immigration within MAGA civil war, they now have the leadership in all of these areas. It is their battle now, and we will see where it shakes out. But predictably, Elon Musk's involvement here causing serious chaos. I'll remind you, we are two days away from 2025 and two days away from our January 1st membership special. I've been hearing from people, David, I went to your website. I tried to sign up for your newsletter.

It didn't work. We are figuring out what's going on with the newsletter signup. But if you want to be absolutely certain to get that email on January 1st with our membership discount special, just email info at davidpachman.com and say, sign me up for the newsletter. We'll make sure you're put on there. There's something weird going on with our sub stack newsletter sign up. We're figuring it out. If there is any doubt and you want to make sure you don't miss this special on Wednesday, just email info at davidpachman.com say, sign me up for the newsletter. And then you'll be notified on the

first of this membership special. Let's take a break. We will then be reminded in stark relief that although Donald Trump has very strong opinions about H-1B visas, he doesn't seem to know what they are. And then so much more to discuss today. One of our sponsors today is Zippix nicotine toothpicks. Zippix brings you a convenient alternative to smoking and vaping and the vape clouds, the ashtrays, the thing in your lip that people can see. I've seen that around. This is an easier and less messy way to curb the cravings. And you can use Zypix just about anywhere. Zypix is available in six flavors with two or three milligrams strength. The nicotine and the flavor are long lasting and Zypix has helped countless people kick the bad habits and they are bad habits. Zypix toothpicks are FDA registered. Their customer service is

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Now, Donald Trump took his sweet time, not exactly courageously coming out in favor or against of one position or the other. But Donald Trump has indeed decided to side with Elon Musk over many of the wishes of MAGA influencers on this particular issue. The problem, Trump doesn't even understand what's going on with these visas. And we're going to get to that in a moment. This all centers around a New York Post written interview with Donald Trump. In this interview, Donald Trump takes the side of Elon Musk, where he says, quote, I've always liked the visas. I have always been in favor of the visas. That's why we have them referring to the H-1B program, which lets companies hire foreign workers in specialty occupations. Then Trump goes on to say, and with Trump, he's always confused

about something. Trump says, I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great program, says Trump, who restricted access to foreign worker visas during his first administration and has criticized it in the past. We will get to that. Trump doesn't know which visas apply to the workers at his clubs. Trump's wrong about what he is saying here. Trump doesn't have H1B visa recipients working at his clubs, but he thinks he does. This is not only the big boy, powerful business guy who's great at business, who doesn't even realize the visa program that he utilizes for workers. He's also going to be president of the United States and making policy

on immigration. And he doesn't even realize the relevance of one visa program versus another. Let me explain. The H-1B visa program is for skilled workers in specialized fields. Usually it requires at least a bachelor's degree or an equivalent. It's for jobs like software development, engineering, research, roles that demand a high level of education and specific expertise. Now, there's nothing wrong with not having that expertise, but the people Trump has working at his club are on H-2B visas. These are for non-agricultural temporary jobs. It's usually seasonal industries, hospitality, for example, like Trump's clubs, landscaping, construction.

These are visas often used at resorts and clubs, ski resorts in Montana and Wyoming, for example, that during the winter bring in a bunch of workers, housekeepers, servers, groundskeepers. This is another example of Donald Trump confidently taking a position on which he has flip-flopped based on the facts, except he's got the facts wrong. H-1B is great. I use it at my clubs. No, you don't. And of course, either way, there would be a right and a wrong or there would be an argument to be made about H-1B. And what about Elon Trump, Laura Loomer, who's right, who's wrong. But the additional layer with Trump

is that Trump takes a position in this case, it's against sort of MAGA, the MAGA base, which says, no, no, no, don't do this. He takes Elon's position, but he thinks these are the visas his workers are here under. And it's not. It's the H2B. Confidently, confidently, arrogantly wrong about the facts. But Trump's not going to let that get in the way of having an opinion. So that's layer one. Trump doesn't even know what visas they are. Let's now go to layer two, which is that Trump, of course,

has flip-flopped on this issue. So if you want to find an instance of him having a different perspective, you can. This is a classic Trump move. One of the things we've talked about over the last nine years, if you can imagine, is that if you don't like Trump's position on an issue, just wait five minutes and then he'll take a different position on the issue. Should women who seek abortions be punished? Yes, but no. Pick a position within 24 hours during his 2016 campaign. His view on that issue changed. Is it a good idea or a bad idea to impose blanket tariffs? blanket tariffs? Well, lately the answer is it's good, but if the idea was, no, it's a bad thing. You could go back to other eras of Donald Trump's

political world and find a view on that. Should States be allowed to completely ban abortion? You can pick and choose over the last nine years and find that Donald Trump has had dramatically different views on that. When it comes to health insurance, should Obamacare stay or should it go? And if it goes, what should it be replaced with? Just wait around and Trump will give you every position on that issue. And here, when it comes to the H-1B visa fiasco that is ripping MAGA apart at the seams. Donald Trump is now saying, I like Elon's position. MAGA's furious because Trump is choosing Elon over them.

What a shock that he would do that. But you don't need to go back in history that far to find instances of Donald Trump taking a very different position on this issue. Here is Trump in 2020 on H-1B visas, making it clear he's going to gut them to prevent foreigners from taking American jobs. Listen to this. 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. Oh, the Tennessee Valley Authority leadership that 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, 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. Trump's against the very concept of this program, which he wrongly believes he is using at his clubs. I mean, think of it. We're We're finalizing H1B regulation so that no American workers replaced ever again. Wow. H1B should be used for top, highly paid talent to create American jobs, not as inexpensive labor program to destroy American jobs.

Sitting at the table are six of the TVA workers who were ordered to train the. All right. So you get you get the point here. Trump does a dog and pony show when he's president. He brings people in and says these poor workers sitting around this table, these poor workers have been told you will be training your foreign replacement. We're going to stop that. We're going to stop H1B. We're going to stop that. We're going to stop H1B. We're going to

stop the whole thing. And then now Trump says, no, H1B is great. Elon's president Musk is correct. We're going to do it. And I love it. And people at my clubs and so on and so forth, except the people at his clubs are on H1, on H2B visas, as we talked about earlier today. One of the real difficulties of evaluating the Trump proposals is that number one, Trump will often say one thing and do the opposite. Other times Trump will say one thing and then say that he will do the opposite and do nothing or pick randomly, almost like throwing darts at the board, or Trump will do the opposite and do nothing or pick randomly, almost like throwing darts at the board or Trump will do one thing and later claim someone else did it. Obama maybe, or well, hold on. Do I have my Obama here? And we will ban men. That's the wrong one. Um, one of the

difficulties here is that Trump will often do whatever someone whispers into his ear five minutes before it's time to do it. And so as an example, Trump has been promising blanket tariffs on China, Canada, Mexico, other countries now for months and months. This tariff idea has been a really strong piece of Trump's campaigning for a long time now. But we all know that the tariffs will raise prices for Americans. If when Trump is sworn in and the time comes to do something about this, someone goes to Trump and says, hey, here's the thing. If you do this, the prices of consumer goods are going to skyrocket and you'll probably get blamed. Do this other thing instead where you just like put some not super meaningful tariff on one industry, on China, or even better, say that you are currently

really strongly intimidating China by threatening the tariff so you don't feel you have to do it right now and claim victory anyway. And Trump just won't do it. Now, we're later going to talk about how with a lot of these economic policies, there's two possibilities. Either Trump implements what he promised and he hurts the economy or he finds a way to simply not do it, uh, to leave the economy intact. But then he's abandoning campaign promises. This is the situation Trump is in. The takeaway on the visa thing is that Trump has taken both sides of H1B. He's confused about what H1B is. And for now,

he has chosen to take the side of Elon Musk. MAGA doesn't like it. And it all seems to be coming to a head. Triggly Elon Musk lost it over MAGA people angry with him that he supports H1B visas. And he started just banning the hell out of people. Ban, ban, ban all over Twitter. NBC News reports Elon Musk accused of censoring conservatives on X who disagree with him about immigration. Is that the free speech that Elon promised he would bring to Twitter when he bought it and made it X, at least 14 conservative accounts said that they had been revoked their blue verification badge, cutting them off from a variety of features. The accounts were still active, but without access to modify to monetization. Others say that they have been banned altogether. For example, Politico reports

far right activist Laura Loomer claims she was suspended on X by Elon Musk. The provocateur said the Republican Party needs to have an honest conversation about big tech influence over MAGA. There is an anti technocratic wing of MAGA. Laura Loomer is part of it. So are many others. They don't like the idea that technocrat tech billionaire, Elon Musk is going to show up and all of a sudden upend what they thought Trump was going to do. And so they have gone to war. But Laura Loomer says they banned me. Elon suspended me. This is a reminder about principles, the principle of free speech, the principle of Twitter as a free speech platform, which I've told you is a bogus statement. If the primary impetus for a platform is free speech, it's usually one of two situations.

One, it's only really about the speech that you like. And as soon as you don't like it, it's no longer about free speech. Or number two, it's about creating a venue where horrible, usually racist, sexist, xenophobic views can be exposed without consequence. Because if it weren't for one of those two things, why would you even bring this up? Platforms are platforms and they have terms of service. It's not a free speech platform. It's a platform.

And people are allowed to speak unless they violate terms of service. That's the way it always works. But every time I hear this is primarily a free speech platform for people to regain the speech that's been taken from them. It's typically just in my experience, it's typically people who are really desperate to say some of the most vile things and have no consequences whatsoever. That is what X became. I would get targeted by overt anti-Semitic threats.

I'd report them. 15 minutes later, I get an email. We investigated this, David. We found it doesn't actually violate our terms and conditions. But Laura Loomer expressing that she doesn't like Elon's view on H1B, it may well be rooted in xenophobia. That's why Laura Loomer may not like it. I don't deny that. But just saying, I don't like this perspective. And she gets suspended on the supposed free speech platform. As usual, the principle that they claim to support free speech, even speech we don't like. And there is no bigger snowflake on this issue than Elon Musk, who is reportedly mass unverifying and even suspending temporarily in some cases,

people who have a different view than his free speech for some, but not for all free speech, depending on your opinion. That's the real MAGA. If you want to change your IP address when watching or downloading large video files, you need a VPN. Most VPNs come with a lot of buffering and waiting when you're dealing with video, but our sponsor, Private Internet Access, will not subject you to that. PIA is the only VPN fully optimized for lightning-fast streaming and downloading 4K content without the buffering. Changing your IP address with a VPN lets you do things like watch the UK version of Netflix

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Low income Trump voters are now panicking, realizing, wait a second, this prick's going to slash my benefits. That's right. Here we go again. We've got a story that is becoming all too familiar. It's a classic case of Trump voters realizing they may have been sold a bill of goods. And this time it's happening before Donald Trump is even sworn in. There's a very good piece in the Washington Post by Tim Craig called After Backing Trump,

low income voters hope he doesn't slash their benefits. Voters in the struggling Pennsylvania city of Newcastle backed Trump, hoping he'd curb inflation, but the incoming president will be under pressure to cut spending. So a bunch of examples in this article, Lori Mazura is one such example. A single mom from Newcastle, Pennsylvania lives on 1200 bucks a month from social security plus food stamps. Her situation is so dire. She bikes to the grocery store because she doesn't have the money to fix her truck. She voted for Trump and she voted for Trump because she thought he would be a champion for working class Americans. She said, I think he knows it's the poor people that got him elected. So I think Trump is going to do more to help us. Now, we all know that this isn't true, right? Trump's

new team, Elon Musk, Vivek, they want to cut two, two and a half trillion dollars from the federal budget. You can't do that really without cutting from food stamps, Medicaid, the very lifelines that folks like Lori depend on. Lori isn't alone. They interviewed other people from Newcastle. Newcastle is one of these kind of prototypical struggling industrial hubs. It flipped for Trump this election. It's the first time the city voted Republican in nearly 70 years. And a lot of it is because low income voters who are struggling and have been struggling for a long time under Biden, previously under Trump. They want a change. They want relief. And so Trump says, well, I'll cut inflation and this and that.

They said, sounds good to me. Now, there's a couple of things that I think are important to talk about here. Of course, it's easy to say these people are just ignorant. Anyone who understands tariffs knows you can't put blanket tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada and expect prices to go down. They are stupid. They deserve now what they voted for. Sure. I mean, I mean, you can, you could take that perspective morally, I guess, right? If only they had economic education, they would know when you just put an import tax on everything, which is what a tariff is. Prices rarely go down when you cut taxes for the rich, which Donald Trump wants and plans

to do. That's not going to make it so that prices come down for the average person. Fine. It's fine to say that they should be more informed than if they were. Maybe they wouldn't have fallen for it. But that doesn't change the fact that when these folks struggle, which they will continue to do under the Trump administration, it's bad for everybody, right? Like even if you say, I don't care about these individual people, if a large swath of the

population is struggling in these ways, thanks to Trump's policies, it's bad for everybody, regardless of your financial position, if you understand demand side economics. And of course, part of the reason that the article points out now all of these folks are worried is that they're seeing the red flags. They see Trump's budget picks being connected to Project 2025, which straight up says we've got to gut food stamps and other social programs, even though Trump says, no, we're not going to touch social security. We know that his advisors are saying, can we cut Medicaid? Can we cut social security? Nothing is sacrosanct. Nothing is off the table. So look at Newcastle because in a way it's a great example of what we're dealing with here. One in four people in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, live in poverty. 90% of the school kids qualify for free lunch. The federal benefits are what's keeping this community afloat.

So if Trump cuts those, which he would love to do, this community is absolutely decimated. And yet there are lots of people who are saying, oh, you know, they quote a woman, Kathy Davis. Trump has so much common sense. Right. But his common sense is pointing him to want to cut the programs you depend on. This is not a surprise. Trump's first term was filled with moves that hurt working class voters, tax cuts for the rich, trying to repeal Obamacare, policies that don't address stagnant wages. But we are finding ourselves here again, watching people who need government programs. Their lifeline is government programs.

And they say, I'm throwing my support behind the guy who is setting things up to cut them. And he's bringing in a cabinet and a set of advisors that's going to cut all of this stuff. And the sad part, as one local Democrat put it, is that the voters didn't look at the big picture, which is that when the the promised cuts roll in, they are going to start paying the price. So the practical sort of political question that's left is how many times does this cycle have to repeat itself before they realize Trump's promises are only promises meant to get elected and then do nothing else? How long will it take until voters start regretting their decision?

Maybe again. And unfortunately, I mean, listen, Trump's term limited out. They didn't learn it the first time. Biden came in with a different set of economic policies, and it didn't generate enough enthusiasm for Biden and ultimately Kamala Harris to prevent Trump from coming back in. They fell for the same talking points from Trump. Once again, talking points that are just fluff stuff. Trump either doesn't understand or doesn't intend to do. And based on the history, the regrets keeping in a creeping in, but will it really do something about them saying, well, this is a party that we really shouldn't vote for at all. We shouldn't fall for it again. Historically, they don't learn like that. And they end up putting right back in power

the very sorts of agendas that created this problem for them in the first place. Joe Biden, according to an exclusive new report from the Washington Post regrets dropping out of the race and believes that he would have defeated Donald Trump. What is going on here? This is very, very interesting. The Washington Post article reads Biden and some of his aides still believe he should have stayed in the race, despite the rocky debate performance and low poll numbers that prompted Democrats to pressure him to drop out. Biden and these aides have told people in recent days that he could have defeated Trump, according to people familiar with their comments who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Aides say the president has been careful not to place blame on Harris or her campaign.

I'm going to be very upfront with with you guys in the audience. I don't think Biden could have won if he stayed in the race. And if you ask me, what do I have to point to as far as that goes? It's the campaign that Biden was running and public opinion up until the time that Kamala Harris took over. Kamala Harris lost and I believe Biden would have lost. And in fact, if you go back to a week ago today, I did my sort of final postmortem. Why Trump won and why Harris lost? And if we look at the reasons, they really almost all apply to the campaign that Biden was running and to public opinion polling up until the point that Biden

dropped out and Harris stepped in. Democrats were flunking on the economic messaging, on immigration messaging and on crime messaging. That's not unique to Kamala Harris. That was happening under Biden, even though the economy was good by all traditional metrics. People didn't believe it. And the economic messaging wasn't convincing people. People weren't hearing what they believe they needed to hear on crime, even though crime has been declining. Remember, we're operating in a world of perception. Yes, the economic indicators were good. Yes, crime was declining. But people did not believe that the way the Biden administration was talking about it and ultimately the Harris campaign, they didn't believe that it communicated a seriousness that they needed to hear. That was the same with Biden as with Harris. So I don't

think if Biden stays in, it solves that issue. Number two, the global anti-incumbent mood post pandemic, which doesn't exonerate Biden or Harris. Biden was facing that just like Harris was. So why would we say Biden would win where Harris lost? Number three, Democratic voters not feeling urgency. Trump was out. You're no longer trying to remove Trump. Trump is out. And you're like, yeah, things maybe are OK. Maybe they're not whatever. I just don't see the possibility of Trump coming back as the red alert that some people

see it. That was true with Biden as the Democratic candidate. That was true with Harris as the Democratic candidate. The polling scenario, the polling for Harris when she took over, improved from where Biden was when he dropped out. It then came back to earth a little bit. But on Election Day, Harris's polling was as good as was Biden's when he dropped out. So there's also no mathematical or polling case to be made that the, uh, uh, uh, staying in of Biden would have led to a Biden win. The pendulum swing that we have in the United States was facing down Biden, just like it faced down Kamala Harris. Trump's economic message,

while vapid and based on things Trump doesn't understand and can't possibly do, it was hitting home to enough voters that they said, let's give Trump a shot. Biden was facing that just like Harris. So I could go back through the entire segment I did a week ago. The point I'm trying to make is I understand seeing how Harris was defeated, being Joe Biden and saying, damn, you know, maybe I should have stayed in. Maybe I would have had a shot. I understand thinking that my interpretation is both Biden and Harris would have lost. Now, I think it's important to drop in one caveat, which is, as is typically the case now in every presidential election in the United States, it ends up coming down to very few votes

in just a few swing states, and it did. So what I will say is that if Biden had stayed in, could it have caused some important campaign altering event that would have swung 250,000 votes away from Trump and towards Biden in some key swing states such that Biden wins a few more states and maybe gets to 270. Of course. But that also could have been the case with Kamala Harris. I mean, listen, the failed Trump assassination changed the entire dynamics and I believe was a big part of the numbers ultimately pointing to Biden has to drop out.

So the point here is I get the way Biden and aides might be feeling. But if I take emotion out of it and just carefully analyze which of the things that went against Harris would not have gone against Biden, it seems like it really all would have gone against Biden as well, other than antipathy for how Harris ultimately became the nominee. Although, although a lot of the people angry about how Harris became the nominee were also angry that the democratic party didn't hold a real primary as no party does when they have an incumbent president running for reelection. So even that may not have been a difference maker. Let me know what you think. If you disagree and you have something objective and empirical to point to that says, here's why Biden would have won if he had stayed in.

Send it to info at David Pakman dot com. I want to see it. Did you know that countless commercial databases and people search sites are storing your personal information? Thank you, David. has laws that offer some protection. But in the US, the data is widely accessible. Even the FBI will buy this information from companies to spy on people without a search warrant. Our sponsor, Incogni, provides a solution. It takes just seconds to sign up and Incogni will send removal requests to all of the major

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incogni dot com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman for 60 percent off. That's I.N.C.O.G.N.I. dot com slash Pacman for a huge 60 percent discount. The link is in the podcast notes. As Trump's inauguration approaches, we're already seeing what the next four years are going to look like. A Trump campaign official said Pennsylvania election workers will face jail time for counting mail in ballots with technical errors like missing dates. Part of the right's attempt to sow election distrust and weaponize the courts. This story is almost exclusively being covered by right leaning news outlets, spinning the

narrative to villainize the election workers. So the public probably has a skewed perspective on what's really happening. That is, unless you use ground news, which lets you see every side to every story like this one. Ground news is an independent platform that exposes the biases of media outlets by showing you who owns them, what angle they're taking on each story and what hidden agendas might be lurking in the background. Ground news is daily briefings are a great way to stay

informed without feeling overwhelmed. It gives a quick breakdown of the day's most critical stories from every angle. Go to ground dot news slash Pacman for 50 percent off their unlimited access vantage plan. It's their biggest sale of the year. And the link is in the description. We have yet another one of these examples of Trump induced media violence. The Guardian reports that a reporter says he was attacked by a man saying this is Trump's America. Now, Colorado man arrested on suspicion of bias motivated crimes and assault as hostility to journalists rises. So let's take a look at this. A Colorado man attacked a TV news reporter while asking if he was a citizen. So we have a xenophobic aspect to it and taunting him that is

that this was life now in the U S with Donald Trump's second presidency looming, according to criminal court documents. The man, Patrick Thomas Egan was arrested on the 18th of December in grand junction, Colorado, unsuspicion of bias, motivated crime, second degree assault and harassment. Egan is supposed to appear in court in a few days. According to police, the 39 year old Egan followed the car of reporter Jerron Alex from KKCO and KJCT, who later told police you even a us citizen? This is Trump's America. Now I'm a Marine and I took an oath to protect this country from people like you. The affidavit described Egan as tackling Alex and putting them in a headlock before Egan began to strangle him, causing coworkers to run out and help people have died like this, right? I mean, these are,

we have countless known media stories of people dying from these headlocks. According to documents, witnesses said Alex looked like he was struggling to breathe and it was caught on surveillance footage. The alleged assault appears isolated. We have a hostile political environment to news media, which has included Trump calling the news media the enemy of the people, a threat to democracy, fake and crooked bastards. He has been deploying this rhetoric for a while. Freedom of the press foundation said it recorded 75 assaults on journalists since January one, which is a 70% increase over 2023. This is a Trump induced hate crime of sorts. I I'd be lying if I hadn't had a bunch of conversations recently with people in my orbit about, am I worried that X, Y, or Z might be going on under Trump? And of course, the answer is probably not, but yeah,

sort of. And there are all sorts of different precautions that I take. And, you know, I was just in D.C. and spoke with a bunch of other people who do what I do, and everybody is kind of taking similar precautions with regard to safety and privacy and different things. And so this is a growing reality. But also, but also, I think that there are relatively straightforward steps that many of us can take to protect ourselves. The really scary part is if indeed we are going to have a weaponized justice department

that is going to prioritize going after Trump's political enemies in a proactive and sort of decidedly one-sided way, it is logical if you're a random MAGA in Grand Junction, Colorado, to think, hey, you know what? Now with Trump in power, they're going to go after Hunter Biden and liberal journalists or whatever. They're not going to come after me for violence against an individual when I'm doing my right and going after the fake news media, just like Trump said, sort of like dumb people might not so stupidly think they aren't going to get punished for doing this sort of stuff. does weaponize the federal justice department against his political enemies, this is not going

to mean that district attorneys and attorneys general at the state level, police, et cetera, are going to turn a blind eye to this sort of overt political and xenophobic stuff. I could be wrong, right? This stuff from the federal level under Trump, maybe it could trickle down. And that will be a terrifying reality, certainly to have to deal with. But at least my hope is that that is not the case and that in this individual appears, at least for now, Trump's not in power to be in a situation where he's going to be prosecuted under the fullest extent of the law. A Trump second term proposals are sort of a recipe for economic disaster, a very bold promises. But if implemented, they will absolutely wreak havoc on the economy.

And I want to take a deep dive into this because we are quickly heading towards a fork in the road. And there are two possibilities. One fork is Trump does all the stuff he promised and it crashes the economy. The other side to that fork is Trump abandons his campaign promises. Which one is likely to be worse politically for him? That's what we're going to talk about. Now, the reason that this is all coming up is that earlier in the show, we did this segment

on low income Pennsylvanians are now worried, Hey, I voted for Trump, but the stuff he's going to do is potentially going to be terrible for me. He wants to slash all sorts of benefits for lower income Americans. Uh, if he does the tariffs, it's going to make prices go up. So what I want to propose to you is that there are only two options. Trump does all this stuff and it wrecks the economy, or he just ends up not doing that because he gets talked out of it. Let's talk about some of those ideas. Trump wants massive tariffs up to 60% on Chinese imports. Once he said like 200%, you know, crazy stuff, universal 10% tariff on everything else, Canada, Mexico. It might sound like Trump's doing a big boy and protecting American jobs, but higher tariffs mean higher prices in the United States. You're going

to pay more for everything from electronics to clothes. And other countries are also going to retaliate. Other countries are going to slap tariffs on American goods that we want to export. And what that's going to do is hurt American companies. When the American companies say, wow, we're selling 15% less to other countries because of the retaliatory tariffs, we don't need as many employees because we've got less business and it will cause layoffs and it will cause job losses. And this is how trade wars work. Now, the irony here is that the people hurt the most by this are the same working class Americans who believe Donald Trump's promise that he was going to bring jobs back. They are going to be the ones paying more at the store while losing jobs.

And so the low income Pennsylvanians we talked about earlier are right to be worried. This is textbook retaliatory tariffs and how failing to understand economic policy ends up hurting the very people that Trump says he's fighting for. He's not fighting for them. Remember the 2017 tax cuts? Trump wants to double down on that. Trump wants to cut corporate tax rates even more. He wants to extend tax cuts for the wealthy. It's great for billionaires. Elon Musk is thrilled. Vivek Ramaswamy is thrilled, but this is terrible for the deficit that they claim they will fix. The national debt they say is a red alert. Well, this is going to make it worse. And if you add more tax cuts and don't

balance the books in any way by their own understanding of economics, it's going to force the government to borrow more, meaning higher interest rates, slower growth, and the economic squeeze will continue. Trump voters in struggling communities were sold the idea that these tax cuts would trickle down. We talked last week about why that doesn't happen. The CEOs pocketed bonuses the last time we did this. Companies bought back stock to raise the price of their stock and wages stayed flat relative to inflation.

The people who cheered these tax cuts in 2017 are going to get hit in the same way in 2025. Maybe they'll realize that they've been duped, but the damage will probably be done. Now, Donald Trump is also pushing for the largest deportation operation in American history. It's cruel, of course, but economically it's reckless. There are industries like agriculture and construction which rely on immigrant labor, documented and undocumented. You take it away,

whatever the morality of it is, whatever the ethics of it are, you take it away, you'll have labor shortages. Labor shortages mean you've got to pay more to fill the job, which means the cost of construction goes up, which means the cost of the food at, by the time it gets to the restaurant or the grocery store has gone up and it's going to hit consumer prices. The price tag for the mass deportation Trump wants to do aside from the cost of the camps he wants to build and all of that, put that aside for a moment. The cost economically is going to be astronomical. And the kicker is that many of Trump's voters work in or depend on those exact industries.

What happens when the crops rot in the fields because there aren't enough workers to harvest them? Well, the prices go up, the jobs get cut, and the people who chanted build the wall are going to be left wondering, why did why did the price of my raspberries go up even more? And as if the deportations weren't enough, Trump also wants to cut legal immigration, except he says the H-1B visas are good, except he thinks that that's what he uses, except he's using H-2B. It's a mess.

But if Trump goes back to his previous position of cutting legal immigration, we have an aging population. We have fewer workers. We have social security and Medicare, which will be strained if that trend continues. So it's another short sighted policy from Trump. Now what's wild is how this long, uh, how, how this policy over the longterm, uh, imperils the economic health of the country without any of these MAGA people understanding it. What do I mean by that? Immigration has been a driver of U.S. growth for generations. Part of the reason the country is as economically productive as it is, is thanks to immigration. And yet you have a bunch of people who want to cut off immigration, which will only weaken the economy. And it will erode the very American

dream narrative that a lot of these folks claim to value. So there's two possibilities. If Trump follows through, the economy will nosedive. If Trump backs off, he's again, abandoning his core promises. Either way, you could say it's lose-lose, except it might not be. Because if Trump does this stuff and the economy suffers, they'll probably blame Democrats or pretend that the economy's fine. If Trump abandons the promises in order to help the economy, they will say, oh, it was because of Democrats that Trump wasn't able to do it. Either way, the Trump supporters are going to be sold a fantasy. And we shouldn't forget that Trump's base has been told for years.

Economic problems are always someone else's fault. Could be immigrants. It could be China. It could be Democrats. It could be the lab COVID came from. For a while, it was that you name it. But when the economy tanks because of Trump's own policies, they're going to have to figure out who to blame. It's going to be all Republicans in power for the next two years. But I'm confident,

confident they will find a way to blame somebody else because history tells us they always want a scapegoat other than admitting, damn, Trump really misled us. This isn't just about Trump. It's understanding how policy decisions ripple through the economy. And very often they say America first, they say tax cuts, they say tariffs, they say, oh, it sounds like stuff. It'll probably fix everything. The slogans don't pay the bills. And so I don't know whether this will be apparent enough in time for Democrats to make strong arguments for the 2026 midterms. I don't know that the MAGA electorate at this point is even willing other than the, you know, we've got these like sporadic Republicans against

Trump that we've talked to. OK, they figured it out. But for the most part, people don't want to acknowledge I've been duped and none of it's going to be the way I was told it was going to be. Classic Trump scenario, big talk, disastrous execution, blame somebody else no matter what. We're going to see it quickly. I think we'll see it in January. We won't even need to wait till February before we see it. Speaking of January, Wednesday, January 1st, we'll be doing a single day membership special. If you've been saying, maybe I want to support the show, especially given the upcoming opposition that needs to be developed. We are going to do a one day membership special on Wednesday.

If you'd like to be added to the discount membership list to get an email on Wednesday telling you how to sign up, email info at David Pakman dot com and say, put me on the list. I will see you on the bonus show. We will talk about another Democratic defection, homelessness and so much more. You can sign up at join Pakman dot com. I'll see you then. And we'll be back here tomorrow with the final show of twenty twenty four.