The David Pakman Show - 1/3/25: They've decided immigrants did it, Trump explodes

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Despite continued evidence to the contrary, Republican elected officials continue to blame 'the border' for the New Orleans New Year's Eve attack carried out by an American citizen -- CNN host Jim Acosta calls out his guest for defending Trump blaming foreign criminals for the New Orleans attack, but his guest simply keeps lying -- It turns out that the Las Vegas Cybertruck bomber was a "big" supporter of Donald Trump's -- Elon Musk threatens to sue media outlets for their reporting of the Cybertruck bombing at Donald Trump's hotel in Las Vegas -- Donald Trump explodes in a post-frenzy in the middle of the night -- MAGA civil war grows as Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert is now attacking Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy -- David is criticized because his left hand was in his pocket in his Oval Office picture with President Joe Biden -- The first Friday Feedback of 2025 -- On the Bonus Show: Patrick Bet-David community noted over MLM scheme, and much more... 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman 🥦 Lumen lets you master your metabolism. GET 20% OFF at https://lumen.me/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🧠 Try Brain.fm totally free for a month at https://brain.fm/pakman 💪 Alpha Progression: Get 20% OFF your 1st month or year at https://alphaprogression.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep: Get 25% OFF and 2 free pillows at https://helixsleep.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. Incredibly, we are seeing the primary lens through which the New Orleans New Year's Eve attack is being viewed is through the lens of immigration and the border. Now, I'll explain why to you in a moment, but we're going to look at a couple of clips, a couple of examples of right wing elected officials and politicians continuing to insist that the prism through which we should think about, interpret and understand the New Orleans attack that left many dead on New Year's Eve. It's really a story about immigration and the border and undocumented migrants, even though the attacker we now know with certainty is born in Texas, a military veteran, which, by the way, is also the case with the Tesla Trump Hotel bomber guy, I guess is what we're calling him.

There is nothing related to foreign countries here. There is nothing related to the border. But Republicans are, I would argue, cynically seizing on a detail about the vehicle in question to try to make this a Trump was right. Those dangerous criminal illegals are the problem. The border is the source of all of our domestic issues. Let's start with one clip house Republican on Fox business saying the open borders are the problem. I'm on the border security caucus and we've had former border patrol people come in and talk to us. Fifty-five thousand, under O'Biden, I call him O'Biden because I think he's Obama's third term.

Fifty-five thousand special interest aliens have come across our border. That's from countries who hate us. Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, you can go right down the list. And yet they're coming into this country free. They've been handled down the list. And yet they're coming into this country free. They've been handled to border. Now, Cheryl, if only 10% got through that we didn't know about up to 5,000, that's 5,500 special terrorists. You guys following this math? Now, if you're waiting for how this explains the New Orleans attack, just keep waiting. There's potential terrorists that are in this country in Mayorkas and company. As you know, they said we've got operational control of the border. He's been saying that

forever. They're not doing their job and Americans are paying the price for that. Why are they talking about the border when a Texas born military veteran took a truck to New Orleans and massacred a bunch of people. I'll give you the answer. I'll give you the answer. But first, I want to play for you another one of these examples. Here is MAGA Mike Johnson, for now the Speaker of the House, saying that Joe Biden's wide open border played a role in this attack. And let me say something else that's obvious. And I don't know if enough attention. When MAGA Mike says something is obvious, it's almost certainly untrue that you can almost count on. Is being paid to this. But we all know that for the last four years,

the Biden administration has been completely derelict in its duty. The congressional Republicans, we here in the House and the Senate have repeatedly asked the DHS under the Biden administration about the correlation, the obvious concern about terrorism and the wide open border. The idea that dangerous people were coming here in droves and setting up potentially terrorist cells around the country. We have been ringing the alarms. We impeached DHS Secretary Mayorkas in the House over that very issue and others related to it. So this is a big concern. They told us, Lawrence, for four years that the number one threat was so-called

racially motivated extremism. It was nonsense. This is the thing that we were all concerned about. This is why we raised the alarms. This is why we passed H.R. 2, the strongest border security act ever passed by Congress. And Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate. All right. I think you get the picture. Biden, wide open border, Schumer, Democrats, dangerous, this, that, the other thing. Here is the current link that they are seizing on to pretend to pretend that this is related to immigration or the border or whatever. They are fixating on reports that the truck used in the New Orleans massacre at some point recently came through the U.S.-Mexico border. Now, why is this, generically speaking, completely irrelevant to the story?

I'll give you all the information I have right now. Now, if the information changes or we get more information or conflicting information, I will tell you. What is reported right now is that the truck that was used in this massacre was not owned by the perpetrator, but was rented by the perpetrator on an app called Turo, T-U-R-O. It's sort of like instead of renting from Enterprise, you can rent cars. Typically, it's from individuals, although, you know, it's sort of like with Airbnb, companies are starting to be on there too. And what it appears to be the case is that

plate readers have determined that at some point, this truck did cross over the U.S.-Mexico border. Now, of course, if that's all we know, which is all we know right now, if it changes, I'll revise the story. All that might mean is someone else who rented the same truck on Turo went to Mexico at some point. It doesn't change anything about the fact that the perpetrator in New Orleans was a Texas born American citizen, military veteran. And the common thread between the various instances of carnage and violence and explosions on New Year's, even New Year's day is not the border. It's military veteran status. And we're going to get to that in a moment. But first, I want to stick with this story a little bit.

Jim Acosta from CNN did something good. I know that may come as a shock to many of you. Jim Acosta called out a Republican strategist for continuing to defend Donald Trump's claim that he was right. Dangerous, foreign, illegal, undocumented criminals are to blame for our problems, including the New Orleans vehicle massacre that took place on New Year's Eve. Now, Trump's view has already been debunked. It was an American born military veteran who committed this act of violence. But Trump is insisting I was right. Criminal, violent people.

CNN's Jim Acosta had a variety of strategists and people commenting. And Jim Acosta just straight up calls this guy out and says, you are not telling the truth. And the guy doesn't care. And he keeps lying because they've decided if we repeat these talking points enough, it will make it true. And let's let's talk about some some other potential for chaos here. I mean, Donald Trump is posting misinformation about the deadly attack in New Orleans. We can show some of this on screen. He posted on Truth Social earlier this morning that it was somehow related to immigration blaming open borders. But CNN is reporting the suspect in New Orleans is a Texas-born U.S. citizen.

We were just mentioning earlier in this program that the person who rented the cyber truck in Las Vegas was a member of the U.S. Special Forces. Neil, I mean, we're right back where we were in 2017, where Donald Trump, he takes misinformation, he takes false news from wherever, and he puts it out there, and it just confuses the hell out of everybody. What's the solution here? I mean, why can't he just stick to the facts? Look, in this particular instance...

Or wait for the facts to come in. In this instance, if the reporting is correct and what we're hearing from law enforcement, the suspect in New Orleans was, in fact, an American citizen who served in the army and was radicalized by ISIS. That said, we can't ignore the fact that from 2021 to 2024, there were 400 people on the terrorist watch list that were stopped at the border. And now if your head is spinning because you're like, wait a second, what does that have to do with this situation? And the answer is nothing at any point, right? Any crime could be committed and I could go, listen, we can't ignore the fact that there are Hezbollah cells that are radical. Oh, that may be true, but it has nothing to do with this attack. Are you ignoring the fact that we still have

sexual assault that goes, no, I'm not ignoring it. It's just not relevant to this story. And this is Neil Chatterjee, who was a former advisor to Senator Mitch McConnell. It has nothing to do with this story, but can you ignore it? We're not talking about ignoring it, but this is about the New Orleans situation. They're just the people that we stopped. So it is a real issue. And I think that's what President Trump does. Yeah, but Neil, I mean, he brings focus to these issues. You might have people coming across the border and yes, that is obviously.

On the terrorist watch list. Okay, that's obviously a problem. But if that is not the case in New Orleans, and that is not the case in Las Vegas, you can't bring it up. You can't bring it up. I think it's not connected. But if that is not the case in New Orleans and that is not the case in Las Vegas, you can't bring it up. You can't bring it up. I think it's not. It's not.

It's sort of like if 100 people die in a fire and then someone goes on TV and goes, listen, it does appear as though in this case, fire was the cause of death. But we can't ignore the fact that people are getting run over by cars all over all year long. Well, it's not that we're ignoring the fact that people are run over by cars. It just has nothing to do with people who died in a fire. And that's what this guy is doing. His objective is to bring attention to what he identifies as the problem. He believes that concerns about border and border security were vital to his winning election and wants to highlight those issues. And I think that is what he has chosen to do in this particular instance. I think as we have seen for really the past decade,

you don't necessarily take all his tweets literally about the issue that he's trying. This is the same old scapegoating that we've seen like this is nothing new and this is disgusting of what we're seeing that what happened in new orleans is disgusting we should talk about all the facts to make sure this could never happen again but not put it on the backs of my grandparents or my parents who were immigrants all immigrants being something that's bad immigrants are good immigrants are good for our economy having bad people stopped i agree is good as well but we't let misinformation. This is how you get more attacks like this, like somebody from Dallas, Texas. It's crazy. It's like, hey, here's a particular guy who rented a car and ran a bunch of people over. That's terrible.

Are you saying you don't care about people coming over the border illegally? No, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the American military veteran who rented a car and ran a bunch of people over. Oh, so you don't care about what's happening at the border? No, it's just not relevant to this conversation. Jim Acosta doing what he can. But once they've committed to a talking point, one of the things we've learned is it's really, really, really difficult to get them to re-examine

it. It reminds me of the cat. They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs. Once they decided that's the story, that's the story. It doesn't matter whether it's true. It doesn't matter whether they decide, you know, maybe we should try to stick a little closer to the facts here if we can.

They're committed and that's it. It is going to be a very, very long four years. Let's take a quick break. We've dealt with the New Orleans New Year's carnage and chaos. We now know way more about the Las Vegas Cybertruck Trump Hotel explosion. Lo and behold, the believed perpetrator there, also a military veteran. Should that be the focus?

There's more of a nexus there than there is with the border. Let's take a very quick break and we'll pick it up with that. Guys in my audience, I know you're tired of the chafing with traditional underwear. Our sponsor sheath makes the most comfortable boxer briefs I've ever worn. If you're sick of the boxers that are too loose or the briefs that are too tight, sheath is for you. Sheath underwear is designed with two special pouches in the front, keeps everything separate in its own compartment with extra confidence that you will feel throughout the day, keeping things

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T H underwear.com slash Pacman use code Pacman for 20% off. The link is in the podcast notes. Did you know that 80% of new year's resolutions fail by February? Lumen is something you can do for your health. That's easy to stick to. Our sponsor Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach with a single breath. First thing in the morning, Lumen measures your metabolism. It tells you, are you burning fat or are you burning carbs? And it'll give you tailored guidance for nutrition, workouts, sleep, and stress management. No more cookie cutter, one size fits all nutrition plans. Lumen lets you know what is happening in your body in real time and will build a personalized health plan based on that data.

Lumen gives you daily macro recommendations based on what's happening with your metabolism. So you can really fuel your body with what's best right before a workout, breathe into Lumen, and it'll tell you if you're burning carbs or fat. Lumen will tell you if you need to carve up before a workout for an energy boost, or if you're good to go, go to lumen.me slash Pacman to get 20% off your lumen. That's l-u-m-e-n.m-e slash Pacman for 20% off. The link is in the podcast notes. The David Pakman show this year will continue to be a primarily audience supported program. I really appreciate your support. We had, let me get the updated number, 213 people take advantage of the new year's day membership special. If you missed it, if you want to take advantage of it, if you didn't get the code in your email, you can email info at davidpacman.com and say, David, I'd like that code, please.

I think of the 213, probably 50 or 60 were people who missed it on January 1st, but emailed in after. So email info at davidpacman.com. Ask for that code if you would like it. And of course, you can sign up at joinpacman.com. We do an extra show every weekday for our members, and there's a bunch of other great perks available. Well, well, well, it turns out that the Cybertruck Trump bomber was a big Trump supporter and

also a military veteran. Now, I want to deal with this story with tact and humility and sensitivity to the reality that it doesn't seem to me that we yet have all of the facts. We just don't know yet what this individual's motivation was, but I'll tell you what we do know. On New Year's Day, a Tesla Cybertruck loaded to the gills with fireworks exploded in the Port Cachere of the Trump Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. It is being investigated as a potential deliberate act. The term act of terror has been thrown around. The reality is we don't yet have all of the answers.

Now, of course, given what's happening in public involving Donald Trump and Elon Musk, if you see a cyber truck at Trump Tower, you might or at Trump's hotel, you might say, oh, it must be like a Trump supporting Elon fanboy. And that's it. If such a vehicle is filled with explosives and blows up, you then start to say, well, was this an act of hostility against Musk and Trump? Or what, what is the point of all of this? We now have learned a little more about the bomber. The Daily Beast reports the man suspected of being behind the cyber truck explosion in Vegas was a quote, big supporter of Donald Trump and voted for him in November, according to senior law enforcement officials. This came from an interview between Matthew Lively's burgers, loved ones and investigators.

His family added, they believe the 37 year old green beret who died in Wednesday's blast outside Trump international had Republican leanings. He loved Trump and he was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American. It's one of the reasons he was in special forces for so many years. Um, okay. We still really don't know the motivation. We don't know if this guy was planning something different from what happened and it all went wrong in the port cashier and it exploded in the wrong place. We just don't know yet.

Was this a disaffected Trump supporter who was furious at Elon Musk playing this really central role, uh, in the forthcoming Trump administration? And he said to him, so this is all speculation, right? To be clear. He said to himself, I voted for Trump, but now Trump's been taken over by the tech bros and I'm going to go and get me a cyber truck and blow it up in Trump, uh, Trump's, uh, casino driveway maybe, or is it something totally different, which is I'm going to rent one of these cars because I love it. And then I'm going to have a grand old time with fireworks. And I'm going to stay at Trump's hotel just to show how devoted I am.

And then I don't know, it went wrong. And we don't know that MAGA works in mysterious, mysterious ways, as we've said before. But there are a few important elements here, not a left winger. We can eliminate that entire storyline. This was not some furious left winger who said, I hate Musk and I hate Trump. And I'm going to do symbolically the, and I'm going to attack both of them by getting Elon's car and doing damage to Trump's hotel. No, that narrative, not the one. Secondly, this was not an immigrant. It was not a trans woman. It was not an anarchist, communist, socialist, whatever. Actually there is an

anarchistic element here, but the traditional Trump, Oh, you know, it's all of these ists and isms that are the problem. This was another American born military veteran Trump supporter. And if we want to find the theme in the new Orleans attack and what happened with the Tesla cyber truck. If we want a thread of a sort of through line between all of this, it's two veterans from various elements of the military. Now, I don't suggest to you that that's why they did they did this, but understand that immediately the false narrative that this was all about the border and immigrants and criminal illegals with no evidence that became the story for MAGA. And it wasn't true. And if we want now to take a serious look at what this really might be about,

at least theoretically, in terms of commonality, we can't ignore that these were both military veterans and it should be looked at more closely as it has been the sort of radicalization that takes place in the American military. Not saying it's the explanation here, but the MAGA explanation about the border is very much not the explanation. Now, if you want to see who is extraordinarily triggered by this whole thing, it's Elon Musk. Let's talk about that next. Tech bro Elon Musk is now threatening to sue media outlets over how they are reporting on the explosion of the Tesla Cybertruck in the Trump casino and Hotel driveway on New Year's Day. Let me tell you what this is about. Politico has an article.

Musk warns of lawsuits over media coverage of Tesla Cybertruck explosion. So what Elon Musk's gripe is, is that a lot of the reporting about this incident in the headline, either number one, deceptively implied that the cyber truck spontaneously caught fire rather than it was loaded to the gills with, with fireworks, or he is generally upset that so much of the headline includes that it was a Tesla cyberbertruck. The counterpoint being, you know, in most situations, if a car is loaded with explosives and goes off and it happens to be a Ford Ranger or a, you know, Chevy Silverado truck, rarely, if ever, would the brand and model be part of the headline? It would be a detail.

Who cares that it was a Silverado? Who cares that it was an F-150? In other words, what would be relevant would be who had control of the car, what sort of explosives, how many people were hurt. And it is absolutely true that some of the articles about this incident did focus on the fact that it was a Tesla Cybertruck. Now, I submit to you that it is very relevant given Musk and Trump's closeness. And then on New Year's Day, a Tesla Cybertruck, which has become sort of the emblematic microcosm of, I hate to say it, but kind of like a part of my body might be small. So I get the cyber truck to prove that I'm big, right? You understand what I'm talking about.

Sort of the reason some of these, some of these guys get like a Ford F-350 with dualies and they don't have any reason to have such a vehicle. Okay. When you see that and the location of Trump's hotel, any sane and rational person would immediately wonder what kind of a political message is this meant to send in public? Trump and Musk are together all the time. And now a Tesla Cybertruck explodes in Trump's driveway. It's logical to wonder about that. So let me I'm going to give you you two categories, but first let's see what some of the controversy is all about. Robbie Starbuck, a right-wing provocateur, put out an excretion on X where he said, quote, honestly, Elon Musk should consider suing outlets

who framed the story like this. These headlines are sabotaging Tesla's brand by making people think it caught on fire. There's about one Tesla fire for every 130 million miles traveled. Other cars have one fire every 18 million miles. And Elon Musk retweeted that and said, maybe it is time to do so. So let's divide these reports into two categories. Full disclosure. I used to be a Tesla shareholder. I no longer am. I used to be a Tesla driver. I no longer am. I don't think the cars are awesome. I've had two of them. The build quality isn't awesome. I also think Elon Musk is nuts. I want nothing to do with the brand, but I want to be objective and fair here. AP had a headline, Tesla catches fire. That headline is deceptive. It is very much not getting at the spirit of the

situation. The idea of Tesla catches fire is meant to build on often disproportionately. It's sort of like dog bites boy versus pit bull bites boy. And we know that when a bite is carried out by a pit bull or a dog believed to be a pit bull or a mixed or mutt that someone thinks could have part pit bull. OK, we know that Cocker Spaniel Bites Boy is not a headline you are likely to see, but Pit Bull Bites Boy is. And along those lines, Tesla catches fire is very much playing up on the false notion that electric vehicles, Tesla included, catch fire more frequently than vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. The opposite happens to be true. On a per mile traveled basis, you have to account for it, right?

There's way more gas vehicles than electric vehicles. On a per miles traveled basis, electric vehicles catch fire way less than gas powered vehicles. And so when I see Tesla catches fire and I read the details and it's someone filled the car with fireworks, it does not honestly reflect the substance of the story. The relevance of the cyberruck being the vehicle in question is not technical. It's not, oh, Cybertrucks are likely to catch fire. No, it's political. And if you understand what's going on politically in this country, if you understand that Elon Musk put a massive dump of $250 million into Trump's campaign,

and you understand that Elon Musk has essentially bought for himself an advisership in which he can push Trump and he's got Trump's ear to say, tax this, don't tax that, eliminate this, eliminate that, give me this break, help Tesla, help SpaceX, whatever. If you understand that, it is hugely relevant when you see such a explosive metaphorically and literally event involving a Tesla vehicle that has become emblematic for sort of waste and excess and attention seeking. And the location is Trump's casino and Musk and Trump are hanging out completely relevant. So do I think that Elon Musk has a case here in terms of suing? I don't, but I'm not a lawyer. Do I think that Elon Musk is right when he says Tesla catches fire is a very deceptive

headline? Yes, I believe that's a deceptive headline. Is it relevant and is it honest and is it accurate to say Tesla cyber truck loaded with fireworks explodes in Trump casino driveway. Yes, that is relevant. It's relevant politically. It's relevant socioculturally based on what's going on. If you disagree with me, if you think any mention of Tesla cyber truck in the headlines of articles about this story, if that is deceptive, then I want you to let me know info at David Pakman dot com. We'll take a very quick break and the show continues after this. 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

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The distractions go away. The productivity just happens. And my audience can try it for free for 30 days. When you go to brain.fm slash pacman, Thank you. is in the podcast notes. One of the things I think is very much indicative of how a president is going to spend their time when they are president is how they spend their time when they are president elect this period between November and January 20th, the election day and the day of the inauguration. What are individuals doing during that time? And when we look at what Donald Trump has been doing during that time, it signals in absolutely every way that this is going to be

another distraction presidency. And what I mean by that is Trump being constantly distracted. He seems to have no interest whatsoever in moving back to Washington, D.C. and living in the White House. He seems to want to hang out at Mar-a-Lago by the pool, DJing and dancing to YMCA and hanging out with people that are, to call them friends might be a bit much, but at least minimally people who are willing to pretend to like Trump in order to get access and hang out at Mar-a-Lago. And part of what makes me convinced that this is going to be a completely whacked presidency is not only the evidence from presidency number one, but it's that most days Donald Trump is just spending hours and hours and hours in the middle of the night, mind you, posting

to Troth Central. What I'm about to show you took place sort of like around 1 a.m. last night into 2 a.m. Some of the posts even even later than that. And it is a sort of peek into the absurdity of what Donald Trump is thinking about and focused on. And I think it does give us a window into what his priorities are going to be once he becomes president again. Donald Trump spending hours last night. and I'm going to show you some of these posting articles, essentially all articles about, uh, either conspiracy theories or self-aggrandizing ego boosts. For example, a Fox news article saying that he should get to decide what happens with tick tock when he goes back to the White House theme. Trump knows more than everybody and Trump should get to make every decision. A poll, a poll from Twitter,

which means nothing about whether people like Trump or Kamala Harris better. Big shock. 96% say they like Donald Trump better. More articles about how everyone is bowing down to Trump. And by the way, most of these are from extremely low quality websites like one called PJ Media. The Trump effect, two governors join GOP, self-aggrandizing ego boosts, putting Trump at the center of everyone's universe. This time it's Trump is so compelling as a person and as a candidate and as a political figure that people are just falling all over themselves to become Republicans articles, defending Trump's idea of buying Greenland or taking control of the Panama Canal. The idea being Trump spits out some harebrained

authoritarian idea. And very quickly, everybody comes to his defense and says, this is a great idea. Great idea. Similarly, articles defending Trump's call for other countries to spend more money for NATO articles. Uh, one about Kevin O'Leary from shark tank saying Canadians love the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state. They don't, by the way, an article from Newsmax saying Trump should do his crazy tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations, despite the fact that it'll blow up the deficit. Once again, uh, an, an article from the Washington examiner with the most self-serving pictures of Trump after getting shot and during the McDonald's stunt and others articles from conspiracy sites like the gateway pundit about how all of the late night shows are failing.

Thanks to their bashing of Donald Trump and on it. And this is this, everything I've shown you so far is within the same hour. You have to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll to find something that doesn't fit this category of self-aggrandizing ego boosts. And we're still scrolling as I talk to you. All of this is going to play a central role in Donald Trump's forthcoming presidency. All of this is a reminder that what Trump's priority, but by you, after five hours of this stuff, you finally get to a nomination post from Trump. The takeaway is this is a presidency that is going to be all about Trump's perceived influence on his legacy. Who likes me?

Trump desperately wants to be liked. And one of the interesting things that we've, we've, as I've said many times, money can't buy class. And one of the things you notice when you see Trump's various homes is despite all the money, it's very gaudy and class lists. And similarly, all the money in the world can't seem to buy confidence and Trump regularly needing reassurance to his ego that he's doing the right thing and everybody likes him and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's what we are to expect.

And I think that we are going to see far more of these middle of the night explosions. Lauren Boebert, radical and repugnant Republican congresswoman, is now acknowledging, yeah, a lot of us MAGA people aren't super thrilled with what's going on with Doge and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Here is Lauren Boebert appearing on Piers Morgan Uncensored, and she appears quite frustrated that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are getting so much decision making power. And part of her stake in this is she's a member of Congress. She believes not incorrectly, mind you, that it is Congress that should be making a lot

of these decisions and doing oversight. She's not wrong. Her motivation, of course, as always, is what's good for her. Let's listen to what she had to save our country. I'm excited for the Doge commission that was created. Now, Pierce, it's a little frustrating to me at times to have this Doge Commission, but I'm so excited to have Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk heading it up because they are powerful voices in America. And it's

frustrating because, you know, having this oversight and accountability and looking into the spending of tax dollars and all of these federal agents, agencies, well, we used to call that Congress. But apparently, since Congress is doing that, we need. I agree. I think she's not wrong. She wants more power, right? So she's not constitutionally concerned, but she's not wrong. What Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been deputized to do as unelected bureaucrats

typically would be handled by elected members of Congress who control the purse strings and decide we're going to spend on this or we're not going to spend on that or whatever the case may be. And Lauren Boebert is frustrated and she's right to be frustrated, although she's frustrated because she's the one who wants Trump's ear to say, let's not fund this. Let's not fund that. Let me fire half of the Department of Education. She's just upset someone else is going to get to do it. And that when she could be down at Mar-a-Lago at the pool with Trump, it's Vivek and it's Elon Musk. But she's not wrong. And in fact, if your priority is separation of powers, constitutionally directed organization of government and all of these things that these right wing constitutional conservatives supposed

claim to care about, you would be saying, why are we giving the unelected bureaucrats the power here? It doesn't make any sense. One more clip here from Lauren Boebert. She says that whatever opposition there was to Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, it's done and he is likely to be confirmed. There were talks of Pete Hegseth not getting confirmed, but I think that is far gone away with now. It's done away with and Pete Hegseth will be confirmed. And I won't be surprised that all of his picks get confirmed. He has great people who are motivated to save our country. Yeah. So, uh, cash Patel supposedly as FBI director, there is massive opposition from within the FBI to cash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence.

There was reportedly massive opposition to Tulsi Gabbard, the opposition to Pete Hegseth, who has sort of gone quiet. We had the holidays, new year, et cetera. Um, it does sort of seem as though the concern over Pete Hegseth, or at least the motivation we might say, um, to oppose him has diminished. And so I still think that there is a real possibility that Kash Patel is rejected. I think there's a real possibility that Tulsi Gabbard is rejected. I think we just have to accept that Lauren Boebert seems to accurately kind of have her

finger on the pulse. It's not feeling like the motivation to reject Pete Hegseth is really there. So we will potentially be facing Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, which is absolutely terrifying. You know, one of the things I learned doing this show for a while is I can't do anything right. I can't do anything right. I can't dress myself. I can't speak.

I can't light the set properly. I can't focus the camera properly. I can't do mental math. I can't do anything right. And the latest instance of this is that apparently I did two very disrespectful things when I met with President Joe Biden in Washington, D.C. two weeks ago. Let me put this up on the screen for you. Yesterday, I published to my social media, including Blue sky, which by the way, is the great, great place to

follow me. A picture of me in the oval office with president Joe Biden. I have the picture up on the screen. And if you're looking at the picture, there's a cut. Actually, it's really three things I was criticized for. Maybe you can guess what they are. The first criticism I received is how dare I disrespect the office of the presidency, President Biden and the Oval Office by having one hand in my pocket while I am shaking hands with Joe Biden. Uh, I don't even know what to say. I Googled this. It doesn't seem to be a sign of disrespect.

This was sort of a casual situation. It's really awkward to stand there for a while as the White House photographer knocks out picture after picture. And you're sort of told to move around a little bit. So not every picture is the same. At some point, I don't even remember doing it. My left hand slid into my pocket. And the last, the picture that the White House went with as the official picture of David Pakman with the president was of me with my left hand in my pocket. I think it looks casual and cool, but I'm crazy, right? I mean, what the hell do I know? I'm sure, you know, whoever it was, Brittany from Texas knows better about what I should be doing in the Oval Office. So that's number one. That was the biggest one where people said, David, really, really poor taste. What a

faux pas. You're not going to be invited back. I'm not going to be invited back, but that's because Trump's going to be in office for four years. Second disrespectful thing that I did, I wore a light gray suit. How guys, this is like the Obama tan suit thing. David, how dare you wear a light suit in winter to the white house? Well, listen, it was 65 degrees that day. You should have seen, there were people who didn't even wear suits as part of our meeting. There was someone there with a bright green suit. This is not a big deal. Okay, get your mind out of the gutter.

Get your mind out of the basement. And then finally, a couple people attacked me because I wore a brown belt with a gray suit. I hate to tell you guys, I don't consider myself the icon of fashion, but I know that you can wear a gray suit with brown shoes and a brown belt or black shoes and a black belt. That's one of the advantages of the gray suit. It's versatile. And indeed, I was wearing brown shoes and I was wearing a brown belt. And Joe Biden didn't care that I wore a brown belt. OK, people can find something wrong, I guess, with anything. And I did something, I guess, evil when I visited the White House. Give me a break. All right. We've got a great bonus show for you today. Final opportunity to take advantage

of the New Year's Day special. If you want to take advantage of it and you missed the email on January 1st, you can email info at davidpakman.com and we will send you the coupon code. And finally, we are now indeed in the home stretch for the pre-order campaign for my book, The Echo Machine, the book is now the number one new release in the fascism category on Amazon. Can you believe it?

It is the number five new release among all media in politics books. You can preorder it at davidpackman.com slash book. And every preorder gets a bunch of free stuff. If you submit your preorder receipt to davidpackman.com slash free book stuff. We are now done with these holiday weeks, a full week of shows next week. Can't wait to see you. But first we've got the bonus show. The new year is here and there is no better time to commit to your fitness goals. Alpha progression is the ultimate science backed workout app to help you crush your goals in the gym with fully customizable plans. Why choose alpha progression? It has a 4.9 star rating in the app stores from thousands of glowing reviews. It was twice named Apple's app of the day. It's just a great value, easy to use interface and completely customizable. It's been created

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The link is in the description. I've been sleeping on a Helix sleep mattress for years now. Couldn't love it more. Before Helix, I just buy whatever generic mattress from a store thinking they're all basically the same. Turns out I was very wrong. Since switching to Helix, my sleep has improved. Helix mattresses are customized to your needs. I took the one minute sleep quiz where I gave input like my height, my real height, not like you know who my weight, my real weight, not like you know who my sleeping position, firmness preference, whether I have back pain, whether I run hot or cold and Helix matched me with the right mattress for my preferences. And it's been a total game changer. My favorite part is it stays cool

while I sleep. Most people don't even know what they need in a mattress and all Helix mattresses come with a 10 year warranty. You also get a hundred nights to test it out. If you don't love it, they'll pick it up for free and refund your money. And they'll even remove your old mattress. If you want my audience gets 20% off plus two free pillows with all mattress orders. When you go to helix sleep.com slash Pacman that's H E L I X sleep.com slash Pacman for 20% off and two free pillows. The link is in the podcast notes. All right, let's get into the first of what will likely be many Friday feedbacks of 2020. The link is in the podcast notes. What are the first priorities of the incoming administration going to be? How horrible will they be? How can we block them?

Who's most dangerous? And case in point, we did a little poll. It's not McLaughlin, as Trump likes to say, but we did a little poll on the YouTube channel. Seventy nine thousand of you weighed in. The question was, who is the most dangerous Trump cabinet pick? A full two thirds said Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the most dangerous Trump cabinet pick a full two thirds said Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is the most dangerous followed by Pete Hegseth,

Marco Rubio and Lee Zeldin. I think that in ways that are not as commonly within the political sphere, right? We think about dangerous cabinet members as a secretary of state that will belligerently, uh, uh, induce conflict with other countries or a secretary of defense like Pete Hegseth, who will belligerently and belligerent has a slightly different meaning with, with Hegseth do the same or what Robert F. Kennedy jr. I agree is extraordinarily dangerous, but in a different way than we normally expect cabinet picks and nominees to be dangerous. And I would also consider Tulsi Gabbard on this list as a potentially

of the most dangerous Trump picks. We still don't know who of these folks is going to get confirmed. Seems to be some resistance, for example, from FBI employees to the nomination of Kash Patel. We're going to follow all of it, but hard to disagree with RFK as a dangerous guy. David Post wrote, I am a liberal living in a red state. In fact, I live in a suburb that is fairly well off and probably at least 75% vote Republican. My right wing neighbors absolutely don't see our state as failing because they are doing well and the schools their kids attend are pretty good. They never experienced the failing areas of the state.

They are totally isolated from the inner city and rural poverty. It's very easy here to ignore the fact that our state is ranked 49th in almost every category you mentioned when you live in nice areas of the cities or nice suburbs. Yeah. You know, this, this is a common thing in a lot of places. I have friends in Florida who say, you know, David, sir, they're very deferential to me. They call me, sir. They say, David, sir, I see the news reports and the rankings about the education, healthcare, poverty, crime,

all these problems in Florida. But I live in a nice Miami suburb. My kids go to private school. It's so safe and it's everybody's playing out in the street and all of this sort of stuff. And they, many of them realize you can just pay your way out of most of these situations, even in States that aren't doing well in Argentina. I know people who say, listen, I know that the inflation rate is out of control in Argentina. Poverty is out of control services, all this stuff. But I live in a nice neighborhood in Buenos Aires, in a beautiful doorman building. My kids go to a, you know, a private school and my job is in Canadian dollars. I'm good. And it is not a unique situation that people guide themselves by what they immediately see. And they take anecdote as more valuable sometimes than broader empirical data.

As people, I think, who want to really lift all boats, it's important not to get caught in what I'm seeing personally must be everybody's reality because very often it's not. Sci-fi realism wrote, why is it people shame poor people for receiving welfare, but not the rich? Subsidizing poor people is cheaper than subsidizing rich people and bailing out their failed businesses. Poor people just want a better life, but rich people actively want to make more money at the expense of others. Yeah, there is a there's a sort of negative connotation.

If as an individual you're on food stamps, or I remember being in school in elementary school and we had lunch tickets, like full price, uh, subsidized and free, there was definitely a sort of pejorative attitude towards the kids who qualified for the free and reduced lunch through no fault of their own, of course, forget about the word fault, but certainly through nothing that the kids did. But taking corporate welfare, having your corporation bailed out or getting goodies as far as regulations or tax cuts or whatever, doesn't have the same negative social connotations for sure. And it seems like quite an unbalanced reality.

Over on the subreddit, the user deleted said, when was the last time a conservative came up with a new solution to a problem? Not a rhetorical question. I actually want to know if anyone has examples of conservatives thinking about solving problems in novel ways or pushing some frontier on something, anything like how to sort out city planning, finding new cures for diseases, making our planet just an all around nicer place to live. Not counting Elon Musk, because number one, most of his novel thinking happened before his conservative arc. And number two, right now, his solution seems to be to F earth. Let's go to Mars. I don't know that this is totally fair.

And as many of you know, I have a point of view. I'm on the left. I believe that the, the sort of social democracy perspective has been vindicated globally for the last 150 years. I believe that the sort of social democracy perspective has been vindicated globally for the last 150 years. I have an opinion, but I also want to be as fair and objective as possible. And the reason I think that I struggle a little bit with this question is it's a fair one. When was the last time that we saw overt conservatives come up with new solutions? But I would offer a counter, which is a lot of the people that are coming up with solutions aren't elected officials and they don't necessarily wear their personal politics on their sleeves. And so when we say, hey, here's a group of 30 researchers that were involved in figuring

out that you can significantly increase early detection of and treatment of some disease. We aren't necessarily privy to their political beliefs, nor do I really care about them. And so I think that there's a two part answer here. Number one, it is true that in a lot of academia and social sciences, the sort of thinking and the exercise at large lends itself more to those who would be politically on the left. It doesn't mean necessarily the institutions are biased. It's that if you're interested in a field like, for example, sociology, it might just, by its nature, interest people who are more on the political left than the political right, and that's okay. But the bigger part is a lot of the progress that's made, a lot of the accomplishments,

a lot of the successes and advancements just aren't coming from people where we go, oh, look at what these conservatives did or look at what these liberals did. It's coming from spaces that are less politically coded. And if I'm objective about it, I think that that's my view. Oh, not that wrote in and said, it's kind of staggering how out of touch these takes always are. You didn't even mention Gaza. The reason why Kamala lost in Trump one was fairly simple. Democrat voters stayed home, not out of complacency, but out of disinterest and disillusionment. Democrats love to do nothing more than woke,

scold and discipline their own voters base and call them betrayers whenever they don't fall in line. And look where that got you. Democrats offered their base nothing more than orange man bad and hoped it would be enough. You need to sell a promise and a vision like Medicare for all. But Democrats were just selling. We're not Trump who is Hitler. And look at how awesome the economy is. Most people didn't think the economy was doing good either across the board. Just delusional, David. Well, most people, a majority did think the economy was doing well, but a majority was not enough to win the election. Now on the issues that the, uh, viewer points out of, you know, a vision on health care or whatever. I included that in my video on why Kamala lost. As far as Gaza, I try to be as objective as possible. I didn't find Gaza as a top issue in any poll done before the election, nor even in any exit poll. It's not any personal bias against recognizing Gaza as the reason Harris lost.

It's that I can't find anything, entrance polling or exit polling, that tells me that that was a big reason. Rather than attacking me as delusional, give me something that would show, hey, this was a big issue. Here's the states that it might have affected for Harris. Here's how she might have had 270 otherwise. And then I'll come back to it. T.S.G.F.O.G. says 184,000 children currently living in poverty in Arkansas, but only focus

on the woke left and the three trans girls playing on the soccer team. Yeah, that's basically Sarah Huckabee Sanders. And she now wants to turn around and say, look at how awesome Arkansas is. Everybody wants to move to Arkansas. And by the way, it's super cheap. And of course it's super cheap because there's very little demand or competition, people going to Arkansas Arkansas if all of a sudden everybody says Little Rock is God's gift to the United States and I'm sure Little Rock's great okay if all of a sudden everyone wants to move to Little Rock it's not going to be so cheap anymore prices rents real estate will be driven up uh restaurants will be so over full that they'll say, let's raise prices until demand gets

down to a level at which we can handle it. This is the way supply and demand works. And yeah, the mismanagement there has been wacky. Over on Facebook, Norm Marrier says, as a Canadian, I have to say that there's nothing very radical or so left wing about AOC and her ilk. We've had universal health care and affordable college and university education for decades. In fact, all Western democracies have it. It's sad that the U.S. is so far behind in this area. I thought there was a chance for progress

when Bernie Sanders came so close to capturing the Democratic nomination. Now it's back to square one with billionaires in power who only care about tax cuts for the wealthy and shrinking the size of government. No, we do not want to become the 51st state. Yeah, I spoke to a few of my Canadian friends recently. None of them want to become the 51st state of the United States. That's what they all have in common. Ping Vinny says, do Americans think they are some sort of billionaires who haven't just made it? Whenever I say something like billionaires should pay taxes, someone who makes $35,000 a

year gets mad and starts saying how they already pay too much in taxes. Like, do they think they're even going to be millionaires? Yeah, this, this has been, um, we've talked about this. I remember going all the way back in 2010 when the Tea Party movement came forward. I was six years old back then. I was doing the show, if you can believe it. When the Tea Party came out and they galvanized tons of support around we will cut taxes for the rich, we explored why would people go for that who won't be helped by that? If anything, they'll be hurt by it.

And part of what we came across is there are lots of people who see it as aspirational. I believe I could one day be in the tax bracket, at which point I would benefit from those tax cuts. That is part of it. Another part of it is they know that that's never going to apply to them as far as a tax rate, but they see it as I'm showing that I'm on the team. I believe in a bunch of the stuff that this movement is offering. And even though I don't benefit from the tax cuts personally, and I almost certainly statistically

am never going to, I am, I am signaling that I am on the team by saying that I support that, even though I don't think it's likely to help me. Both of those explain to some degree why people support stuff like lower taxes that they will never, ever benefit from. Edward Scott thinks we are about to end the show. There have been many right wingers who have been anxiously waiting for this. Edward said the final death throws of the David Pakman show is hilarious, should be are hilarious. That's what happens when you blatantly lie and obfuscate the truth and use heavy bias, hyperbole and misinformation to justify a false narrative. David is also a great example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Well, Edward, we just came off of our biggest year ever in 2024.

Election years tend to do that. I don't expect 2025 to be quite as big, but I think we're going to be okay. I really hope the people that have been holding their collective breaths as we circle the drain about to end because we simply have no more viewers, nor revenue, nor anything. I hope you're not still holding your breaths because you'd probably have run out of oxygen by now. Info at David Pakman dot com.

That is the place to send your emails to maybe be featured in Friday Feedback. I will also remind you that we are pushing beyond 5,000, crazy 5,000 pre-orders for my forthcoming book, The Echo Machine. You can find it at davidpakman.com slash book, or you can call any local bookstore you want and say, I'd like to order David Pakman's The Echo Machine, every bookstore can get it for you on the release date, March 25th. We will see you on the bonus show and then back here next week.