The David Pakman Show - 1/28/25: Even MORE tariffs, egg prices hit ALL TIME high

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

-- On the Show: -- The left-right political spectrum is completely broken -- Fox News starts to prepare its audience for inevitable higher prices under Trump -- Egg prices are now up and hit an all time high under Donald Trump -- Donald Trump continues being soft on China, now threatening new tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors and pharmaceuticals -- Donald Trump suggests the deportation of convicted American citizens to foreign prisons "for a fee" -- Elon Musk's West Wing office is revoked as he is sent across the street to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building -- A pardoned Trump rioter is killed by police and another arrested within days of receiving Trump's pardons and commutations -- On the Bonus Show: Pete Hegseth is confirmed as Donald Trump's Secretary of Defense, Trump starts to target transgender military servicemembers, China's new DeepSeek AI is absolutely crushing, much more... 🖥️ UPLIFT Desk: Get up to $300 OFF and 4 free accessories at https://upliftdesk.com/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free baked goods at https://wildgrain.com/pakman 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman 👂 MDHearing: Use code PAKMAN to get a pair for just $297 at https://shopmdhearing.com/ ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 💻 Sponsored by Aura: Try it free for 2 weeks! See if your data is safe at https://aura.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 the show, everybody. I want to start today with something I've been thinking about and reading about, which is the completely broken nature of dividing politics into left and right. Now, you know the drill. We talk about, are you on the left? Are you on the right? Is a policy left-wing or right-wing? Is an elected official pushing for a left-wing ideology or a right-wing ideology? And it can be sometimes useful as a shorthand, but it's a binary framework that is extraordinarily outdated and increasingly broken in the kind of modern political space, and I'll explain why. I recently read the book The Myth of the Left and Right by Hiram Lewis and Verlin Lewis, and we're going to link to the book in the description to the YouTube video for this clip. But I want to tell you a little bit about it

because it's critical to understand the broken spectrum in the middle of this wacky Trumpian movement. So the first problem with the left-right spectrum, which I mentioned earlier this week, you've got Milton Friedman, the free market economist who championed deregulation, privatization, small government, happened to also be Jewish. On the other end, you've got Hitler. Now, both are often labeled right-wing, but does anybody seriously think that Milton Friedman's vision of laissez-faire capitalism has anything to do with Hitler's genocidal fascist authoritarianism. But the left-right spectrum doesn't really care. It's just kind of like neither of them is on the left, so I guess that they're on the right.

Now, you see a lot of the same contradictions on the left as well. Take Bernie Sanders and Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro. Both are often labeled left-wing. But does anyone really believe that Bernie's social democracy, democratic socialism, he may actually says he goes a little further, the focus is Medicare for all, free college. Does anybody think that that's really similar to Chavez or Maduro's authoritarian populism, which centralizes power and undermines democratic institutions and has led to disaster for Venezuela? Not really. There's really not much that's similar there. But again, the left-right political spectrum doesn't care. It kind of says like, ah, it's close enough. The second problem with the spectrum is how the labels end up getting weaponized. If you call someone far or extreme left or far or extreme right, you're rarely describing policy positions or actual beliefs. You're kind of like slapping a scarlet letter on them. And I'm guilty of this myself to a degree because not using these shorthands is often just a lot more complicated.

And we'll get to that in a moment. But often what we mean is you're extreme and therefore you are wrong rather than really evaluating the ideas that people are kind of grappling with. So the key point is the left-right spectrum fails to describe people and it fails to really explain policy. It distorts our understanding of politics. Let's look at Tucker Carlson, who I think is a great example right here. Tucker Carlson's rhetoric, at least, is that of an economic populist. He's skeptical of big business. He's anti-war. These are positions that almost sound like they would be on the left in the just binary left-right spectrum. But he's also a so-called

culture warrior. He's against wokeism. He's against immigration to a great degree. So does that put him on the left or on the right? The standard binary political spectrum doesn't really do well with that. Now, don't get me wrong. Tucker's policy ideas are terrible. No matter what you call them, they are terrible ideas. But the label is really lacking in this political environment. Then you get to somebody like an Elon Musk. Elon Musk is a billionaire capitalist, loves free markets, doesn't like unions. Pretty classic right wing on the traditional spectrum. But he's also a climate change activist to a degree who supports carbon taxes and wants to get us off of gas-powered vehicles. Those are often considered left-wing positions. Now, more accurate might be Elon's

a technocratic libertarian or something like that, but it's kind of still lacking as a description. And then we get to Donald Trump. If you were on the left, like I consider myself to be, you might feel the need to say Trump is far right. He's extreme right to kind of justify why he's bad, why we don't like him. But the truth is that Trump's unsuitability for office is not really about whether he's left or right. It's about his incompetence, his corruption, his authoritarian tendencies. He has some right-wing ideas, tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation. Those are traditionally right-wing ideas recently. He also has tendencies that at least historically were associated with the left, his occasional populist rhetoric on trade, his inconsistent but more recently consistent opposition to foreign wars, if

defined in a certain way. Now, whether Trump is genuine in those views, that's a different question, but let's pretend for a moment that he is. We have to understand that his blatantly authoritarian impulses, attacking the press, undermining democratic norms, trying to overturn an election, those do fall more squarely into what we consider right-wing. So the point here is Trump's flaws are not really tied to some ideological label. He has some ideas that historically have been more left-wing, but his implementation would be incompetent and corrupt. And this is really tied to who Trump is. He's flawed and unfit for the presidency. But if we

just reduce Trump to right-wing, we're really kind of missing the bigger picture. Now, what's the alternative to this left-right spectrum? What Lewis and Lewis argue in the book is we've got to get beyond the binary and really think about politics in terms of values and priorities. What do they care about? What trade-offs are they willing to make? Where are they on individual freedom versus collective responsibility? What are their values? So if we apply that to Trump, scary. What are Trump's values and priorities? There's greed. Trump's entire career has been built on self-enrichment, the shady business deals, funneling money into his properties, all of that stuff. There's ego. He needs adulation. He's obsessed with crowd sizes. He can never admit

a mistake. A thirst for power would be what defines Trump, relentlessly trying to consolidate authority and undermine checks and balances and punish anyone who dares to question him. And that gets us to another major value, which is loyalty over competence, filling his administration with yes people, firing anybody who dares to tell him the truth. So those are really the values. They're not overtly left or right. They're just bad values that hurt the average person and hurt the country. And that's really the point. Trump's unsuitability for office, to me, is less about ideology. He has bad policy ideas, but it's less about his ideology being objectively or exclusively left-wing or right-wing. The left-right spectrum is oversimplified, and Trump's lack of respect for democracy is a much bigger problem than where he is on that

spectrum. Now, what if we want a better model? I'll give you one option, and I'll warn you that I don't think at all that this is perfect, but it's an option that gives us a little more context. It's the political compass for quadrant system. Rather than just left and right, which is extraordinarily limited and oversimplified, one of the most promising alternatives is this two-axis political compass system, and it looks at economic policy. Are you on the authoritarian or libertarian side? I'm on the libertarian side on economic policy. And then social policy. Are you on the liberal versus the conservative side on social policy?

Being against gay marriage being legal is a conservative social policy belief. It could match up with more authoritarian or libertarian economic policy. So this is way better. Even this framework probably oversimplifies the complexity of human political belief, but it is significantly improving upon the one-dimensional left-right spectrum, which really reduces politics to a tug-of-war between two teams. Now, we should also mention, even if we were to evaluate someone like a Donald Trump here, it's a sort of it depends because Trump has expressed economic

libertarianism on some issues like deregulation. Trump has expressed economic authoritarianism on other issues like the government should be able to tell a business like Twitter what they should or shouldn't allow on their platform. That's economic authoritarianism. On the social side, Trump doesn't strike me as homophobic, really. But on the issue of trans, he certainly seems to have a problem. So anyway, the point here is, one of the difficulties is figuring out exactly what people really believe versus what they're willing to say. The other part of it is that things are far more complicated than left and right.

What I will try to do on the show, and it's tough to do it, I'm going to try to be more precise, and this is why we talk about, you know, anarcho-libertarian technocrats, maybe, to talk about like a Peter Thiel. Right wing is just so lacking as a descriptor. We are limited by, I want to be understood. And if every time I mentioned someone, I have to kind of come up with a more complicated way to describe their views. I don't know that it'll translate. And I do want to be understood. So let me know your thoughts, info at davidman dot com. Adjustable standing desks. And I've been using uplift standing desks for years, long before they became a sponsor. One of my favorite things about uplift desk is the endless configuration of accessories. I've got cable management, uh, power outlets, monitor arms to my right. If you want a

bottle opener or a hammock, they make that available to uplift desk gives way more options Thank you so much for joining us today. board's standing pads, which I have go to uplift desk.com slash Pacman to get up to five free accessories, free same day shipping, free returns, an industry leading 15 year warranty that covers the whole desk and an extra discount off of your entire order. That's U P LF-T desk.com slash Pacman. 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, Wildgrain, is the first bake from frozen subscription box for artisanal breads, pastries, and pastas. Wild Grain simply takes the hassle out of baking. Everything bakes from frozen in 25 minutes or less.

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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. at joinpacman.com. You also are invited to pre-order my forthcoming book, The Echo Machine. I am close to being able to announce a very limited number of legitimately signed copies of the book. They are going to be more expensive because we are going to have to ship them first to me to sign them and then out to you. So there are going to be to ship them first to me to sign them, and then out to you. So there's going to be more money. It's probably going to be like $50. It's going to be a limited number, probably not more than $100.

If you are interested in one of these, please email info at davidpakman.com with the subject signed book, and then we will follow up with a link to pay, provide your address, and we will get it out to you. If you're outside of the United States, it'll probably be 60 bucks. Nobody's under any obligation. I'm just kind of telling it the way it is. This is the way it's going to have to work out just because of all the logistics of it. But more about that soon. And of course, you can find the book, The Echo Machine, anywhere books are sold. We have surpassed 6,000 pre-ordered copies. This is so tragic and so predictable. Fox News is now starting to prepare its audience, not for lower prices, but for higher prices. We all knew it was

coming. During the period between November 5th and January 20th, Donald Trump started adjusting expectations. Well, it's difficult to bring down prices. Well the United States really could adapt to Trump's trade wars by just making everything here. For example, what about coffee? Coffee is a fantastic example of why this nonsense is not going to work. So let's take a look at the video and then we will discuss it. Coffee from Columbia. We actually make our own coffee here, too, in Kona and Hawaii. Right. There's there's multiple things coming out of our neighbors, countries that aren't sort of reducible to one thing. But I think that's part of what the media has been articulating this entire time, arguing that the GOP reduces humans to an identity. But really,

it's them shoving these countries into boxes. President Trump sees them as partners. Yeah, what's interesting is Trump's trying to bring about a world where he'll drop the the rate for companies that actually come here and make some of that stuff to 15 percent tax rate. So we might not have to miss coffee or whatever they think they're going to miss that we can clearly make our own, but maybe not as much of, because maybe some of those countries will come here and they'll package their stuff or distribute it from here. So coffee is a really great example to talk through. First of all, you have to ask the question, can we even grow coffee in the United States in terms of the requirements? You've got to look at the climate that coffee needs.

The bean belt is between the tropics of cancer and Capricorn. In the US, it's really Hawaii and Puerto Rico that naturally fall into that zone. There is part of California and Florida, which with very expensive irrigation and climate management could kind of be pushed into the zone where you could grow coffee. If you do that and pay what it would cost to do it, you then have your labor costs. Coffee production is labor intensive. We have higher labor costs here in the U.S. than the major coffee exporting countries of Brazil, Colombia, Vietnam, and others. You then have to look at what about land availability.

Hawaii and California have limited land that would be available for coffee, and it is way more expensive than that coffee producing land in other countries. The US is the largest importer of coffee, 1.5 million metric tons of green coffee beans last year. To produce 1.5 million metric tons domestically, you'd need somewhere between one and a half and three billion coffee trees. Those need to be spaced between 1,200 and 2,000 trees per acre. So that means

you need about a million acres, 750,000 to 1.25 million. Call it a million acres to do our own coffee growing. That's like all the agricultural land in West Virginia. It's like all the agricultural land in South Carolina. If you do it, the coffee will get really expensive. And then the stuff that West Virginia or South Carolina stopped growing to grow coffee is also going to get really expensive. And then you have to consider, well, what's like the total additional cost? You are looking at coffee shops where drip coffee is currently two to five bucks a cup of six to $15 per cup. Okay. That's like tripling the price. If you're used to buying your beans at the grocery store for six to $12 per pound, you're going to be talking about $18 to $30 per pound. Can it be done? In theory. Is it economically practical? No. Is it going to just make things

super expensive for Americans? Yes, it is. Yes, it is. And this is why, slowly but surely, we are seeing the narrative shift to, it'll be more expensive, but it'll be American, gosh darn it. Are people going to go for this? I don't think so. And the proof that they're not going to go for it is that for all of the complaining about cheap Chinese tchotchkes and onshoring and all of this stuff, for 40 years, by decision after decision after decision, as a country, we've implicitly decided we'd rather the low prices and get the cheap stuff from China. We've decided. And so all of a sudden, if you say, hey, how about higher coffee prices immediately, and then we'll rebuild supply, create supply

chains for coffee in the U.S., and when it's all said and done, add inflation to it if it takes five to ten years to do it, we will then have $15 cups of coffee at your local coffee shop. Americans aren't going to go for it, and that's what Fox News is starting to prepare Americans for. Incredible stuff. Red alert. Egg prices News is starting to prepare Americans for. Incredible stuff. Red alert, egg prices, all time high, ever. Highest egg prices ever right now under Donald Trump. Egg prices are way up since Donald Trump was sworn in. Now, I want to be honest and forthright about all of this. We're only, what is it, eight days into Donald Trump's presidency. When Joe Biden left, egg prices were $6.47 a dozen. Now they are $7.09. This is an increase of about 10% to egg prices. They are higher today than ever before. Now, of course, of course,

we need to wait longer, but we also have to, we need to wait longer. But we also have to hold Donald Trump to his word. Now, there are a lot of different reasons why egg prices are high right now. And I know that there's a lot of interest in blaming the president, whoever the president is. The reality is far more complicated. The point, of course, is Trump promised to get egg prices down and to get them down right away. Now, why are egg prices so high right now? Bird flu is one big reason. One of the big drivers of egg prices being up is the bird flu outbreak.

It's devastating farms in the United States. Over 136 million birds have been infected or killed, and it's disrupting supply, and it's making eggs more expensive. Presidents can't just wave a magic wand and fix that. The concern is that Trump doesn't want to deal with bird flu. Trump is terrible at dealing with pandemics, and Trump has already signaled he's going to let bird flu run rampant. That's not going to bring prices down. Secondly, in general, despite campaign promises, presidents don't have much control over food prices. And we talked about this yesterday. When you prioritize tariffs and ignoring bird flu, immigration crackdowns, rather than dealing with food supply issues,

that's certainly not going to put any downward pressure on egg prices either. And then, of course, we have to acknowledge, as silly as it is to say, hey, eight days in and the prices are even higher. Well, they are, and he said that he would lower them. Republicans spent years blaming Joe Biden for high food prices, even though it was the pandemic, it was global supply chain issues, and other things that were the real causes. So Trump's in office now. We have to apply the same logic, or at least they should.

If Biden was blamed for grocery prices on day one of his presidency, why should Trump not be held accountable for the fact that egg prices are up 10% since he took office? I was sort of joking yesterday. I mean, it was true, but it wasn't a serious analysis when I told you that a friend of mine sent me a picture of his beloved Vital Farms pasture-raised eggs up to nearly 10 bucks a dozen from $7.79. We don't look at things anecdotally, but now we have the data. And indeed, egg prices are up 10% in just the eight days since Donald Trump was sworn in. So the reality is that this is way bigger than any president. It's about bird flu. It's about supply chains and labor shortages.

There's not a quick fix. There is no real distraction from this. Beyond just the eggs, we have to understand that Trump's policies, threatening tariffs on countries like Colombia, Canada, Mexico, China, this is all going to disrupt food supply further. And if we are already seeing egg prices up 10% despite all the things Donald Trump told us that he was going to do. Just imagine the chaos that will rain down upon the food supply industry once Donald Trump's policies, to the extent that they are policies, start to trickle down and have an effect. It's going to get extraordinarily ugly. This is why they're already talking about Biden screwed it up so badly that now we're in rough shape.

This is why Fox News is starting to prepare people for the prices may indeed not come down, but it's going to be someone else's fault. And over the long term, we're going to bring a lot of this manufacturing and production and harvesting back domestically. That may happen or it may not. But the shelf life on that, the timeline rather, is way longer than Donald Trump is going to be in office. Will he get blamed if the egg prices keep going up? Or let me put it a different way. If you are a MAGA or a MAGAdonian or a MAGApotamian or a supporter of this president. When can we start blaming Trump for the egg prices, given that you blamed Biden for them when he was president? Is it after a week? Is it after a month, a quarter, a year? Is it not until the next person's president? Let me know. If you don't

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economic chaos. The new one is, in a completely suck-up move to China, Trump has announced that new tariffs on Taiwan are forthcoming. This was during a sort of press conference speech type thing at Trump's Doral in Florida yesterday. Donald Trump said the United States is going to be placing tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals imported from Taiwan to the United States in the very near future. This will, of course, scale up trade wars. Let's take a look at what Donald Trump said. In particular, in the very near future, we're going to be placing tariffs on foreign production of computer chips, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals to return production of these essential goods to the United States of America. They left us and they went to Taiwan, where, which is about 98 percent of the chip business, by the way. And we want them to come back. And

we don't want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program that Biden has. Give everybody billions of dollars. They already have billions of dollars. They've got nothing but money, Joe. They didn't need money. They needed an incentive. And the incentive is going to be they're not going to want to pay a 25, 50 or even 100 percent tax. They're going to build their factory with their own money. We don't have to give them money. They're going to come in because it's good for them to come in. They're giving them money. They don't even know what they're going to do with it. I people tell me, we have no idea, we don't need money. They don't know, they're probably gonna use the money to build in other places, other countries.

It's a ridiculous plan, very expensive and ridiculous. The only way you'll get out of this is to build your plant. If you wanna stop paying the taxes or the tariffs, you have to build your plant right here in America. That's what's gonna happen at record levels. We're going to have more plants built in the next short period of time than anybody ever envisioned before because the incentive is going to be there because they have no tariff whatsoever. In fact, they have help from us if they build their plant in America.

So on the surface, I get how sort of low information voters, I'm so sorry, it's such an offensive term. I kind of get how it sounds tough and like Trump's doing a big, big boy and that it's all about America first when he does this stuff. But if you scratch even slightly below the surface, you realize that this is another example of Trump's haphazard, clueless approach to trade policy, one that really could backfire for the American economy, really, really badly. Taiwan is a global powerhouse in semiconductors. They do 60% of the production of global semiconductors and 90% of the most advanced semiconductors, just a behemoth in this space. They are also a key player in pharmaceuticals. And so when you slap tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals from Taiwan, it might sound like a way to boost American manufacturing. It might reduce our reliance on foreign supply chains. But the thing is, trade policy is not

that simple. And Trump's approach ignores the huge downsides to this. Let's start with the pros. So, you know, trade and tariffs, tariffs are a tool. It's not objectively bad to use tariffs, as I've said before. What would be the theoretical pros of such an approach? In theory, tariffs might encourage domestic production of semiconductors and of pharmaceuticals. That'd be great for national security. That would be great for the resilience of our supply chain. There would be another calamity that interrupts the supply chain. It might reduce U.S. trade deficit with Taiwan, which Trump wants to do. All sounds pretty good, except these are tools that have a cost. And when you look at the other side of it, the other side of the ledger, you see how it falls apart. Because first, these tariffs would immediately raise costs for U.S. businesses and consumers. Put aside pharma for a second. Everything needs semiconductors right now. Immediately, everything that needs a semiconductor is going to get more expensive. They're in your

phone, they're in your car, they're in your laptop. More expensive chips means more expensive products. There's just no way around it. It's the simplest of simple math. Then you've got the pharmaceuticals. Tariffs could make drugs that people's lives depend on even more expensive. Do we really need that in a country with the healthcare affordability problems of the United States? I would argue no. Now, secondly, Taiwan is not just going to sit back and take it. We always need to do a dynamic analysis, which is what's the math of what we do, but then how would the other party respond and what's the math of that? And almost certainly Taiwan would hit the United States with tariffs. And all of a sudden, soybean producers in

the U.S., pork producers, machinery producers of machinery that goes to Taiwan, all of those people get hurt. The farmers in the U.S. get hurt, the manufacturers get hurt, and they're already dealing with significant economic uncertainty. So then we've got the bigger picture. Taiwan is a critical ally in a region that's dominated by China. You alienate Taiwan with tariffs, it will further strain diplomatic relations, it'll push Taiwan closer to other trading partners. And this is exactly what China wants. China wants conflict between the U.S. and Taiwan. And China would love Taiwan to come to them for some of the stuff that ends up having tariffs on it.

This is all the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish. So what's the net effect? The net effect is, much like with all of these kind of harebrained ideas, higher prices for consumers, disrupted supply chains, retaliatory tariffs that hurt American consumers. In the long term, and again, I'm not partisan on this, tariffs in the long term could cause some growth in domestic manufacturing. It's not like the snap of a finger to build advanced semiconductor manufacturing capacity. It's billions and it's years. It's not something you slap together overnight because of a tariff.

Trump will be long gone before those supply chains can be meaningfully modified. So Trump's approach is clumsy and reckless. It's sort of like, look at a hammer, right? Is the hammer good or bad? Well, what are you doing with it? If you have nails that you have to nail in, the hammer is an appropriate tool. If what you're trying to do is, you know, if what you're trying to do is bake a cake, the hammer isn't the right tool. And therefore, it's all about how you use it. And Trump's approach is always just to go swinging the hammer around, never knowing what he might hit. So if we want to strengthen domestic manufacturing, I'm all for it. If we want to secure the supply chains, I'm all for it. There are better

ways to do it. Investing in the infrastructure here and the innovation here would be one way. And then naturally, some of that production would be relocated, starting another trade war that at the end of the day is just going to hurt American farmers, American manufacturers, American consumers. It's just the wrong way to go. All right. In addition to announcing another new trade war, this time with Taiwan during his appearance at Doral, Florida, Donald Trump also announced, this sounds crazy because it is, the deportation of American citizens. Donald Trump says that he wants to start incarcerating Americans in other countries for a fee. Take a listen to this one. They even break into apartments and

rape elderly women And beat up elderly men, beat them to hell And I don't want these violent repeat offenders in our country anymore I want illegal aliens from other countries who misbehave And I say, and this is subject to getting it approved But if they've been arrested many, many times, they're repeat offenders by many numbers, I want them out of our country.

I also will be seeking permission to do so. We're going to get approval, hopefully, to get them the hell out of our country along with others. Let them be brought to a foreign land and maintained by others for a very small fee as opposed to be maintained in our jails for massive amounts of money, including the private prison companies that charge us a fortune. Now let them be brought out of our country and let them live there for a while.

Let's see how they like it. So there are a number of problems with this, not the least of which is that Donald Trump is increasingly doing and threatening to do that which he wants to punish other countries for doing. You'll remember that at his Vegas rally over the weekend, Donald Trump said something like, the audacity of these countries to empty their prisons into our country. And of course, what Donald Trump is doing now is taking detainees

here and just emptying them out into other countries. Further, Donald Trump is now saying, well, we're now talking about potentially even citizens here, sending them to other countries. Yes, it's cruel. That's kind of the point. That's the point with a lot of these ideas. But it also is completely dubious legally. And we lack all infrastructure, legally speaking, to do something like this. But that has never stopped Trump in the past. And we have a situation right now where the level of cult among this guy's followers is so extreme that they will just go along with everything. You know, one of the things we learned when folks like Luke Beasley and Adam Mochler and others go to the

Trump rallies and they interview these folks is that they will accept and defend just about anything if they believe that it has Trump's seal of approval. And even things that don't really have Trump's seal of approval if you tell them that they do. And so I'm sure they love this crap, but it is just a completely wacky, wacky idea. Trump also kind of rambling sort of incoherently during this speech, talking about people on a plane and the movie Con Air and a lot of weird stuff. Take a look at this. 300 people sitting in a plane. Every one of them, either a murderer, a drug lord,

a kingpin of some kind, the head of the mob or a gang member. And you're flying that plane. It's not going to end well. You ever see the movie Con Air? That's what you accept. Here's the difference. The people in Con Air were actors. They weren't nearly as tough as these guys. I would say that that plane would be gone before it ever left. Those pilots would be gone before it ever left. So they don't want us to shackle them. I don't want to be in that plane. So just if anybody, if you for a second were optimistic or hopeful that Donald Trump was not going to do this sort of thing anymore,

because remember, he's a changed man. He's ready to unite. He's ready to govern this second term. That's not happening. And he is doing the exact same stuff. And finally, Trump still seems confused between insane asylums, so-called, and requesting political asylum. Check this out. I always felt the border was first because I felt that people could really understand that you can't have people pouring in from the prisons all over the world and from mental institutions all over the world and dumped into our country. So I talked about that much more so than I did inflation. I

mean, inflation was terrible. It was the worst. I think it was the worst in the history of our country. This is one of the most sort of humiliating. This is one of the most humiliating little details of the last couple of years of Trump. We have been wondering for a while, and we were wondering during the campaign, why does the guy keep bringing up Hannibal Lecter? Hannibal Lecter, the fictional character, of course, played by Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. And I believe we figured it out, which is Donald Trump has been confused between the concept of a, quote, insane asylum, what we might call a psychiatric hospital, and people who request political asylum. He seems asylum confused to a great degree. And I think that's what this has been all about, the Hannibal Lecter stuff. And he's completely confused about it and continues

to be. Apparently no one corrects him, and that's where we end up. So we, while we are battling the bad policy ideas and the trade wars of Trump, which will absolutely continue during this second term, we are unfortunately going to have to keep contending with the nonsense confusion that he seems to be experiencing. One guy that he's pushing away from it is Elon Musk. I want to talk about that after this short break. to report unbiased news. Ground News found hundreds of articles covering this story, which is an app I've trusted for years to help me critically analyze the news I consume. Our sponsor, Ground News, doesn't tell you what to think. They show you each news outlets biases, credibility, financial incentives. So, you know, who's benefiting from the spin they put on each

story. You can even filter out certain sources you don't want so you can stay informed without getting buried in the noise. Trump is shaping our future in ways that will last decades. And if we're not paying attention, we will allow history to repeat itself. So stay engaged with ground news who is fixing what is breaking right in front of us. The trust and transparency in the media. Ground news is giving my audience 50% off the same vantage plan that I use. Go to ground dot news slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. We've seen many high profile data breaches

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I don't want to leave myself or my family vulnerable to these data breaches. If you don't want to either, go to aura.com slash pacman to try two weeks free. That's enough time to see if your personal data is already exposed. That's a U R a.com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. All right. Well, it really seems that the honeymoon phase of the Trump Musk bromance is finally coming to an end. And honestly, we all knew it was only a matter of time. It seems as though Elon Musk, who was going to be working in the White House with Trump, is being told, no, no, no, no, you're going to be going across the street, my friend. It's a funny story. It's

also a depressing story. It's also kind of an obvious story. We've all been waiting for this. It is the story of two of the most egocentric and chaotic figures in the modern political space trying to be a political pundit has become a very vocal supporter of Donald Trump. He's dumped huge amounts of money into Trump's campaign. It got him a seat alongside Trump at a bunch of high profile events. And in fact, he has been so supportive that he's been glued to Trump since the inauguration. And now the White House is not so gently showing him the door to a different building that is across the street. So reports started to emerge this week that Elon Musk is being denied an office in the West Wing, which is the heart of the White House.

And instead, he's being relegated to the Eisenhower Executive Office building, which it's heart of the White House. And instead, he's being relegated to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which it's part of the White House complex. It's sort of like being in a parking lot. I've been to the White House and to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. There is no doubt that in the Executive Office Building, you do feel as though you're being kept separate from the real action. And of course, it's sort of all tongue in cheek. The people in that building are doing really important work. But after you dump in 250 or $260 million and you expect to be right there, and then you're told you'll actually be at the other building. It is a downgrade for Elon Musk for sure.

Now, a lot of the headlines are about Musk has been kicked out of the White House. Depending on how you define White House, it is and it isn't true. But he's being shuffled to the sidelines as he is increasingly sort of irritating Trump based on a lot of the good reporting that we have. The decision reportedly came from Donald Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles. She's the one who delivered a speech to incoming staff about collaboration and shared goals and said, we don't have room here for people who want to be sort of solo stars. Now, working solo and being a star, that's the only thing that Elon Musk really knows how to do. So it's obviously not a good fit to work in Donald Trump's administration.

And this is after weeks of Musk's constant presence around Trump, to the point where Trump was joking about Elon won't go home. And it's sort of a joke, but it has been true. And this really is a reminder about Trump's friendships and kind of the nature of relationships with Trump. Trump's friendships have the sort of lifespan of a fly. It was a matter of time before the cracks started. And then adding to the drama here is that Elon Musk has been embroiled in this controversy that surfaced. First, it was the Nazi salute. Then it was his appearance at this far

right German meeting. And Musk is denying everything and saying, these are just stupid allegations. They're based in nothing. It's just people angry with me because I stopped voting for Democrats. But this all does seem to be affecting Musk's kind of positioning within the Trump administration. And meanwhile, Musk's new role with Doge is also facing some legal challenges. I told you that Vivek Ramaswamy, who had been selected as the co-leader of Doge with Musk, is now just acknowledging that he's going to be making an announcement about running for governor. He's getting the hell out of there.

You don't leave after eight days if it's going well. And the problem that Doge is now having is that there's a lawsuit that says the entire thing violates federal law because it lacks proper transparency. Now, Trump's plan was don't make it an official department, make it sort of like an advisory type group, not subject to Senate confirmation, fine, but there is some problem now as far as transparency. And it's all leading, it's funny,

but it's pointing me to, it was all so absurd from the beginning. This was all a marriage of convenience. It was built on mutual admiration. Elon Musk seeing Trump as a guy who could get him goodies for his businesses. Trump seeing Elon Musk as a guy who, wow, he's even wealthier than I am, which is of course very impressive to Donald Trump. But when you put two massive egos in the same room, it's only a matter of time before somebody gets kicked out or, in this case, moved to a different building. It couldn't happen to a more deserving person, and Doge is very quickly falling apart. A Trump rioter has been killed just days after being pardoned, and another has been arrested. This stuff is almost beyond belief. So let me tell you what's going on. Two individuals who received pardons from Donald Trump just days ago for their roles in the January 6th Capitol riot, pardons that

were framed by Trump as justice for hostages who are great people who would never really commit any actual crimes and, you know, the whole thing. Here's the twist. Two individuals finding themselves back in legal trouble almost immediately after being pardoned. And it is a story that, of course, should raise real questions as to the wisdom of Trump's sweeping clemency in pardons and the character of the people that he chose to pardon. So we start with Matthew Huddle. Matthew Huddle, 42-year-old from Indiana. Huddle was pardoned by Trump after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor for entering the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. According to court filings, Huddle was not even a true believer.

He just sort of went because he thought it would be a historic moment. And he had nothing better to do after getting out of jail for a driving offense originally. January 6th, fast forward to just a few days ago after the pardon, Huddle ends up fatally shot by a Jasper County Sheriff's deputy during a traffic stop. What the hell happened? Well, authorities say that there was an altercation. Huddle had a firearm at the time. What a shock.

We don't have all the details yet, but it's not hard to see this as another example of someone who was given a second chance, couldn't stay out of trouble. Then you have Daniel Charles Ball, who's a Florida man, also pardoned by Donald Trump. Ball's alleged actions were worse than Huddle's. Prosecutors say that Ball threw an explosive device at law enforcement officers in the Capitol's Lower West Terrace Tunnel. Violent act. Could have killed someone. Seriously injured them. After his pardon, Ball was almost immediately arrested again on federal gun charges. Authorities found firearms and ammunition in his possession while executing a search warrant related to the case. Ball's attorney says these charges really are

connected to January 6th. They should be covered by the pardon. Prosecutors say, no, they're not. Pointing to Ball's prior convictions that say he is not allowed to possess weapons. It has nothing to do with January 6th. It has nothing to do with that pardon either. So what do these two cases tell us? They highlight, number one, the recklessness of Donald Trump's pardons. This was a disastrous idea, never should have been done, terrible. These were not just misguided acts of clemency by Donald Trump. These were politically motivated gestures.

They ignored the severity of the crimes that were committed on January 6th. Secondly, they underscore that for a lot of the people who were there, these were not the isolated incidents that their lawyers led us to believe they were. They are part of a pattern that either started before or is continuing now. It makes it really hard to believe that these were great patriots overcome with passion in a moment that they felt was critical to America's path or whatever. It's disregard for the law. It's habitual criminality before, sometimes after, sometimes both before and after January 6th. So we were sold or Trump tried to sell these pardons as a way to correct what he called the unfair targeting of the January 6th defendants. But when you look at Huddle and you look at Ball, it's really tough to see these pardons as anything other than a failure

of judgment by them and a failure of judgment by Donald Trump. And Trump loves to talk about the public is at risk if I don't start this series of mass deportations or that series of mass deportations. We've got to protect the public. Is the public being protected with blanket clemency and pardons for 1500 people, some of whom were habitual lawbreakers before, some of whom have become habitual lawmakers and are doing more now and are going out and illegally possessing firearms, tariff. And remember, always respect the police. This is a huddle was involved in an altercation with police where an officer said, this guy is a threat to me. What a theme officers targeted on January 6th officer in Ohio was worried that this guy was

going to do something with the gun. He wasn't supposed to have the theme here is that this was a very bad idea. These are not folks who have earned a second chance. Some of them are getting one anyway, and they're very quickly destroying that second chance and proving they shouldn't have been allowed anywhere, anywhere near clemency or pardons, but they were anyway. Now on today's bonus show, we are going to talk about Pete Hegseth getting confirmed as Donald Trump's defense secretary. It he is expected to ban trans military service members again. Will it work? Will it hold? We don't know. And also what happened in the stock market yesterday, part of the chaos and the collapse is something called deep seek. This is an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT that has only a fraction of the resource requirements and costs only a fraction of what ChatGPT costs. In my limited experience dabbling

with it, if I'm honest, it's better than ChatGPT. It's at least as good, and it costs a fraction of a fraction of what ChatGPT costs. This rattled the markets. Is China already crushing the U.S. on AI? We will discuss it. I also want to remind you that while the free goodies period of pre-ordering my forthcoming book is over, I am working on getting a limited number of copies that I will sign. I can dedicate and sign them and mail them to you. This is going to be significantly more work for us. It's going to require shipping them twice. They'll probably be 50 bucks and we're

going to do them on a first come first serve basis. So if you know you want one of these signed copies, email info at davidpachman.com with the subject signed book. We will send you a payment request. We'll finalize exactly how much it'll be. You know, the books, I guess the book is close to 30 bucks and then, you know, we've got to figure shipping it twice. And we will go in order. There might only be a hundred of these. Maybe there'll be a little bit more. Info at davidpachman.com, signed book in the subject line. We will see you on the bonus show. I will see you tomorrow. It is a stunning week and I don't expect it to slow down really at all, quite frankly.