The David Pakman Show - 1/6/25: Cybertruck guy was MAGA, Trump to be sentenced, oligarchs thrilled

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

-- On the Show: -- It turns out that it was indeed a Trump supporter involved in the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck in the driveway of Trump's Las Vegas hotel -- Donald Trump is stuffing his cabinet full of oligarchs whose primary goal will be to enrich themselves -- Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, is continuing to push ideas that are partially interesting, partially concerning, and will soon appear on the show with David to discuss it -- Republicans are slowly starting to admit that Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Trump's nominee to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, is wrong on many issues -- Donald Trump will be criminally sentenced this week, but despite facing four years in prison, will get no prison time -- Donald Trump melts down over the news that he will be criminally sentenced this week -- Former Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz suffers a total humiliation, going from nominee to be Attorney General to hosting a show on One America News -- Donald Trump plans to end work-from-home for federal workers -- Pro-Trump podcast host Patrick Bet-David seems shocked to learn who Trump's base really is -- On the Bonus Show: VP Kamala Harris will certify her own election loss, higher Social Security payments coming for millions thanks to President Joe Biden, Washington Post cartoonist resigns over paper's refusal to publish cartoon critical of Jeff Bezos, much more... 💻 Sponsored by Aura: Try it free for 2 weeks! See if your data is safe at https://aura.com/pakman 🥂 ZBiotics: Use code PAKMAN for 15% OFF at https://sponsr.is/zbiotics_pakman_1224 🛍️ BuildYourStore: Free AI store builder (w/ 3mo Shopify plan for $1) at https://buildyourstore.ai/pakman ☕ Beam melatonin hot cocoa: Code PAKMAN for up to 50% OFF at https://shopbeam.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- Pakman Discord: https://davidpakman.com/discord -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave a Voicemail: (219)-2DAVIDP

Welcome, everybody. Hope you had a good weekend. It is, of course, January 6th, 2025, four years to the day since those horrible Trump-inspired riots in Washington, D.C. We'll be watching what happens today, but presumably not the same thing. But I don't think there is any less surprising headline I could give you on such an anniversary than telling you that, yes, we have now confirmed that it was a MAGA who blew up the Tesla Cybertruck in the driveway of Donald Trump's Las Vegas hotel. Is anyone shocked? More violent events carried out by right wingers. Now it may be a disaffected MAGA, but it's a MAGA nonetheless. Livelsberger was a known Trump supporter and intended to vote for Trump in the 2024 election from what we know

from what was written prior to November, a critic of the Democratic Party and members of the Democratic Party who urged military personnel and veterans to get them out of the federal government and military, just like Donald Trump and many of the people around him wanted to do first, maybe through peaceful means, but suggesting violence if necessary. He expressed disdain for Kamala Harris saying that she was a DEI candidate. Who else was saying that? And celebrated the election of a real president in Donald Trump. This is who stuffed the Tesla Cybertruck to the gills with fireworks. He denounced diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the U.S. and advocated for uniting around figures like Donald Trump and RFK Jr. and others to promote a sort of national hegemony. He urged a return to the strength and masculinity

of the sort of alpha male prototype as a guiding principle for the nation and accused American leaders of being weak and feckless and serving only to enrich themselves. Now, the enrich themselves is an interesting little populist fork in the road. And we're going to talk about this a little bit later. Actually, in the context of many of you writing in wanting me to weigh in a little more substantively on what's going on with Jenk Uyghur from the Young Turks, who, by the way, is going to be on the show later this week. So we'll get back to the rich guys who want to enrich themselves aspect of this.

Now was there a potential mental illness component to the Cybertruck bomber? Maybe. He claimed he was under surveillance by American intelligence agencies because of his knowledge of advanced military technology and war crimes and covert operations. There are some people taking that seriously, others who hear it and say, this sounds like somebody who may be mentally ill. Now, I know that whenever something like this happens, some people react by saying, obviously he's mentally ill. No stable and sane person would ever do something like what this guy did. Okay. I think when, when we explore these incidents in this way, I think we mean something a little more specific by mental

illness, which is did not understand what he was doing was wrong, illegal, etc. He denied that the bombing of the Cybertruck and Trump's hotel was a terrorist act, framing it as a wake up call to a collapsing United States. Now, I think it's important to contextualize this with the reality that most politically inspired violence in the United States is right wing. This doesn't mean that we ignore left wing violence. It doesn't mean that we advocate for violence. It's just reality. When you look in the United States at politically motivated violence, it's overwhelmingly right wing on Fox news. The rare lone voice of reason, Jessica Tarloff, uh, brought this up and, uh, her

colleagues on Fox news is the five five not exactly thrilled with it. Take a listen. The reason that President Biden and the administration and Christopher Wray, who was a Trump appointee, have been talking about the threat of right wingers and far right wing supremacy, whatever you want to call it, is because that's what the numbers bear out. And we put up all those numbers about how many people had been killed by jihadists, but it's not as many as those who have been killed by white supremacists.

So the New America Foundation has done a breakdown in terrorist attacks since 9-11. It goes through 2023. We have to add the 2024 numbers once they're available, but you have 134 killed by far right-wingers, 107 killed by jihadists, 17 killed by misogynists or incels, 13 killed by black separatists or

nationalists, and one killed by gang members. I mean, that's got to be on the list. Let's put how many by the legals, you know? Let's add to the list. I wonder how many of those killed by white supremacists were killed in prison. That's by suicide.

I mean, because oftentimes they they how many people fell off an ice cream truck i don't know the numbers though i mean you're countering the numbers that are very obvious no well we're not terrorist attacks i yes they have their definition of a terrorist attack they have the ideologies behind these terror attacks i am not here to minimize any you do know great we'll tell the rest of the table. Minimize. Yeah. I'm just saying that the numbers don't. But it's not the argument holds. All right. OK, then you should. I don't think the numbers are accurate. What numbers? First of all, you're talking you're talking about post 9-11. Right. I mean,

the numbers that we have is, first of all, no, no, is 2015 in terms of ISIS. These are the only numbers that we have collected. You want to go. This is one of the things they I mean, listen, the playbook when confronted with this reality is the same. It's either say that the numbers are off or say that you're measuring the numbers from the wrong time or say that you believe the numbers contain subterfuge or deception. It's sort of the same thing as when we present them with the data about stock market performance under Democratic versus Republican presidents. And they say, oh, no, no, no, you're measuring it

wrong or to really measure it correctly. You need to allow a six month transitional period where the first six months of a president is actually the responsibility of the previous president. They try to massage the numbers in their favor. I think there's one other really important thing to talk about here. When we look at these numbers of politically inspired violence, the right thinks that it's a gotcha to say that the jihadist inspired acts of violence are left wing. But I hate to break it to you. There is nothing left wing about saying I am going to take the religious teachings of my faith and use them to justify violence in part because there are people who don't believe in my religion. That is fundamentally right wing. And so I know that we look at these numbers a couple of different ways. I, in my view, of course, jihadist inspired violence goes on the right,

much the same that hardcore white nationalist Christianity violence goes on the right, much the same that hardcore white nationalist Christianity violence goes on the right. All of that sort of violence is fundamentally right wing. But even if you don't do that, the numbers are still extraordinarily skewed towards the right. So bottom line, we figured it out. The Trump cyber truck, Tesla bomber, a right winger, a MAGA. Let's now see how they run cover for the guy. There is a great article on Truthout by C.J. Policronio about how Donald Trump is stuffing his cabinet with oligarchs who are poised to govern for their own profit. This is one of the most important and notable characteristics

of Donald Trump's incoming cabinet. If you thought Donald Trump's first term was a billionaire frat party, Trump 2.0 is really looking like it's going to be a full- full blown oligarchic takeover. Crony capitalist half measures put them in the rear view mirror. We are looking at a billionaire governance cabinet on steroids, and it's pretty wild. Remember Trump's first cabinet, Rex Tillerson, Stephen Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross. Right. I mean, there were certainly wealthy oligarchic types, but it turns out that that was really

nothing compared to what we are now looking at. Of course, we have Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, multi-billionaire, close to a billionaire leading as unelected bureaucrats, the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. We have that. This is the kind of shadow operation. They don't answer to Congress. It's designed to gut regulations and maybe slash Social Security and Medicare in order to enrich themselves, hamstringing agencies like the IRS.

It's all under the banner of efficiency. Fine. We know that, but there's more. Doge is not an official agency. It's basically Elon Musk and his ultra wealthy friends freelancing for Donald Trump. If you're wondering why Elon Musk got a seat at the table, he ponied up around $250 million for Trump's reelection campaign. Vivek, another doormat suck up donor. These are not public servants. These are billionaire servants or profit maximizers, but public servants is not the right term. Musk has spent years fighting regulatory bodies like the SEC and the National Labor Relations Board, and now he is positioned to actually tear them down for his benefit.

This has to be understood under the umbrella of Project 2025. That's, of course, the conservative blueprint to shrink government to the size of Trump's hands. Think of Reagan's grace commission with more billionaires and fewer safety checks. And the goal of all of this stuff is privatized public services for their financial gain, strip federal workers of protections, funnel what's left to private companies, their companies, if they can do it. And remember that in Donald Trump's first term, we saw the corporate tax cuts. We saw the rolling back of environmental protections. We saw the blocking of ESG investments, and now they want to kick it up a notch.

It's an unfettered, uninhibited, instantly lame duck Trump. And they are talking about trillions in budget cuts, numbers so huge that you can't do it without wrecking programs that millions of people are relying on. Now, if we zoom out a little bit, it is true that American politics has always had a sort of soft spot for the wealthy. The founding fathers owned land and enslaved people. And for a while it was, Hey, it's the landowners who get to vote and to decide, right? I mean, it's, it's sort of like the, the, on the one hand we talk about the egalitarian goals of the founding of the country. And also we have to remember the, the, the sort of robber baron gilded age, only white landowning men can vote

sort of stuff. Now, Trump's twist on the whole thing is that he's not even pretending to hide it. He's bragging. Who is he turning the country over to? Billionaires. Doge, his cabinet members. It is not a representative government. It's a fully, clearly, publicly displayed oligarchy. Now, the reason, if it's not obvious, that we all should care is that when the billionaires are in charge, the policies will favor the billionaires. It's not a conspiracy. It's common sense. Worker protections are not hugely interesting to billionaires. Environmental protections are not hugely interesting to billionaires. Social safety nets gutted. The bottom line is if you're not part of this club,

you're going to be footing the bill for their benefit. As we've said before, you've got to follow the money. Trump's whole drain the swamp mantra was always a ruse for consolidating power for the super rich, for his buddies, for his cronies. If you're not on the guest list, then too bad. You're going to do cleanup duty after paying for the entire thing. So we are preparing for what two weeks from today will be the second Trump administration. Trump continues to talk about making America great again, again, but if this cabinet of oligarchs gets its way, greatness is going to be reserved for the billionaires, for those who have been able to a pony up the money for Trump and many of us are going to be left behind.

So we've got to keep our eyes open, but importantly, and this is what I'm going to talk about after the break and what I'm going to talk about with Cenk Uygur soon. We have to remember that even if some of these magas espouse populist sounding rhetoric, I know that a lot of what Tucker says sounds similar to what Bernie says, but the way they would deal with it couldn't be more different. I worry Jenk is falling for it. I worry some others have fallen for it. So we're going to talk about that after the break. And we're going to talk about it on Wednesday with Jenk Uygur. I am willing to work with anybody who has the right solutions in mind, but just because someone espouses populist sounding rhetoric does not mean that they have the right solutions in mind. But just because someone espouses populist sounding rhetoric does not mean that they have the right solutions in mind. Let's take a very quick break and we'll be back right after this. We've seen massive data breaches over the last year at a disturbing rate, exposing people's

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slash Pacman and use code Pacman for 15% off. The link is in the podcast notes. The David Pakman show continues to be made possible primarily by the audience, by viewers like you. I want to say thank you to the 338 new members who took advantage of the January 1st special. Thank you. Kicking off 2025 really as powerfully as any year, I have to say. If you are still interested in taking advantage of that January 1st special, if you missed it, if you didn't get the email or weren't signed up to get the email, just send one to info at davidpacman.com and say, I'd love that code, David, please. And we will get it over to you. All right.

So many of you have written in and have said, David, you must weigh in on what's going on with Cenk Uygur from the Young Turks. Isn't he your friend? Don't you have to talk to him about what's happening because he's turning into MAGA? Well, let's talk about what Cenk has been saying with the context that Cenk is going to be on the show on Wednesday and we're going to talk about all of this. The concern from some in my audience has been that Cenk Uygur is doing a Dave Rubin style turn. He's becoming a Magapatamian. He's becoming a Magadonian. Okay. In part because

he's saying, hey, maybe MagGA can get some good stuff done. In part because he showed up and spoke to Charlie Kirk at the Turning Point USA America Fest atrocity a week or two ago. So I'm going to play a couple of clips here that I believe are going to allow me to give what my current view is on what's going on with Jank. Last week, I covered that Laura Loomer, who is disgusting and gets so many things wrong, correctly identified some of the reasons we might not want unelected billionaires running the government. I said, it's a broken clock that's occasionally right. Here is Jenk's take on Laura Loomer. Let's listen. She has said the worst possible

things about Muslims. I'm Muslim. So I get it. I get it. She's terribly wrong on race, right? But at the same time, you have significant portions of MAGA that are now saying, corporate rule sucks, and I'm tired of taking my taxpayer money and giving it to these executives and to these companies. And let's make sure we're careful about the donor class, even ones next to Donald Trump. That is an excellent development, excellent. They are thinking for themselves. They are looking out for corruption, even among Trump's donors. So even if I disagree with them on the H-1B visa, the fact that this rebellion is happening and the civil war is happening is wonderful news.

Not because, oh, it's going to destroy the Republican Party, which is what Rachel Maddow is going to say, right? But because it's actually showing you that they're thinking for themselves, and we might be able to have the most untraditional alliances you have ever seen. Okay, one more clip and then we will discuss it. Here is Cenk saying, it's a great thing and it's an important thing that not only Laura Loomer but also Steve Bannon are saying the donor class is a problem. They are correct about that.

And the fact that they are telling right wing voters in this battle, remember, watch out for the donor class, watch out for the corporate executives. True, true, yeah. Is really important. So as much as I loathe Bannon and Loomer on those things that I have every right to loathe them on, it is super interesting and important. And yes, I'm gonna say it,, that they are saying, watch out for the donor class, watch out for corporate rule. I mean, Steve Bannon the other day said we need

to increase corporate taxes dramatically. We need to raise taxes on the rich. And those folks need to help pay for the things that helps the average American. I mean, that is what we've been saying for 20, 25 years. So So listen on the Bannon quote, I don't think Bannon's sincere when he says it, but it doesn't matter. Okay. Jenk is not wrong that some elements of MAGA saying some of these things is positive in a generic way. I think it's fine if there are shared goals where for whatever reason, because they have a personal grievance or for whatever other reason, if some of these MAGA nuts have some overlap and we can get something done that helps people, why would we say no?

But here's where I'm concerned. And I'm going to talk to Cenk about this on Wednesday. Broken clocks occasionally being right doesn't mean you start using them to tell time. It is no secret that those who use populist rhetoric on the left and on the right start to sound alike. I have rung this warning bell for years. The tricky thing about populist rhetoric is that it's not policy ideas. It's rhetoric. Of course, Bannon occasionally sounds like Bernie, but their solutions are all different when they actually end up in a position to be able to do something about it. Let me give you some examples. If you take the left and the right, uh, populists, they love attacking the establishment and the elites,

the left wing populists and the right wing populists rail against the elites and argue that powerful elites, which could be corporate executives, they could be financial institutions, they could be entrenched political leaders. The left and right wing populists correctly say they've rigged the system against ordinary citizens. Awesome. Both sides use language that frames politics as a conflict between the people and a corrupt ruling class. The left wing populists will usually say the solutions come from social democracy, more robust regulations to curb,

curb corporate power. And that can include, maybe we tax the wealthy more. Maybe we tax corporations more. We have a more redistributive system of wealth. Let's break up big banks. Let's break up nationalize. Let's break up and maybe even nationalize key industries to reduce monopoly power. Let's strengthen labor unions to empower workers. Those are the left wing proposals to this problem of the entrenched corporate elites. The right wing populists will often approach it by saying we need cultural or nationalist solutions. We need protectionist trade policies like tariffs, which Trump wants, and they frame it as defending domestic workers,

even though it doesn't. They want to restrict immigration. They want to blame elites for open borders that undermine national sovereignty. Ring a bell. It's all the stuff that Trump is doing. They typically now I know Bannon is saying raise taxes. Almost none of the others are saying it. They typically want to maintain or even lower corporate taxes by saying that's how we maintain our economic nationalism.

That's how we keep jobs at home by lowering taxes even more and place almost no constraints on business practices at all. So understand, jank and loomer very much similar on the rhetoric, the entrenched elites, the donor class, etc. The solutions they want are very different. And this is why for a decade now I've been saying these people are getting bamboozled by the populist sounding rhetoric. Let me give you another one. Okay.

Anger at a rigged financial system. This is another classic. The left wing populists and the right wing populists will point to major banks, Wall Street, the financial sector. They'll say they rigged the economy in favor of the wealthy. Okay. They'll portray the big financial institutions and the head fund managers as profiting from the losses of ordinary people through the housing crisis, a debt crisis, etc. Okay. And that's where it splits. The left- wing populists want to rein in the financial industry, put in place a financial

transaction tax, higher tax brackets for top earners, higher brackets for capital gains, introduce or expand public banking so that there's really a sort of public good around basic banking services. Postal banking is another proposal. Regulate or even break up the too big to fail banks. That's the left solution. The right wing populists will criticize, you know, the global financiers, which often, by the way, delves into just anti-Semitism, but they still want low taxes and they want deregulation. They'll scapegoat certain elites, usually tied to global organizations, Klaus Schwab, the IMF and you know the stuff, right?

But they will maintain what they call the pro-business policies domestically. They'll reduce oversight. They'll rail against corruption, but still continue to want to deregulate without pushing to any systemic reform. So I could go on, right? I'll do one more example. Cynicism towards mainstream media. This is another one. I, and I know the gears are turning and we're all kind of realizing this, the left-wing populists and the right right wing populists say mainstream media is biased. It's part of an establishment bubble. It doesn't tell the truth to regular people. Right. Sound familiar? They both often will rely on direct communication bypassing corporate media, whether it's a YouTube show or a Trump rally or whatever.

The difference is the left wing populists will say the media conglomerates serve corporate interests and push a sort of traditional neoliberal agenda. So we want to deconsolidate. We want to support public media. We want to boost independent journalism, maybe even doing something like what the UK does with BBC and funding from the population. The right wing populists, after making the same criticism of legacy media, will say it's a cosmopolitan bias, a liberal bias. They're undermining our conservative values. They're undermining the family. They're undermining Christianity. Their focus is on a hardcore, culturally conservative solution. So do we agree with them about the diagnosis? I don't know because the solution is so different.

And so this is what I want to talk to Jenk about. It's great if there's overlap and stuff we can work on together, except if their solutions are the wrong ones to every one of these problems, when the rubber meets the road, how useful is that really going to be? So I'll talk to Jenk about that on Wednesday. I briefly, briefly want to just tell you about at least one Republican senator who is acknowledging that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is just wrong on vaccines. Now, here's what's going on. Here's what's going on with at least RFK Jr. A lot of these Republicans do not buy into the anti-vax stuff from RFK.

And a lot of these Republicans are increasingly willing to say it. However, that doesn't mean they're going to vote against the guy. So here's a clip of Senator Bill Cassidy. He's a Republican. He says RFK is wrong on vaccines, but at no point does he suggest he's not going to vote to confirm him? And I think this is probably going to be most Republican senators. Take a listen. Junior faring among Democrats on your committee. I haven't spoken to him about it. I just don't know. I will meet with him this coming week. I look forward to the interview. I agree with him on some things and disagree on others. There's food safety. I think the ultra processed food is a problem.

Vaccinations he's wrong on. And so and so I just look forward to having a good dialogue with him on that. OK. And then yesterday. Now, you might hear him say he's just wrong on vaccines. Therefore, I can't possibly vote to confirm him. Right. Wrong. I think that this is really what it's going to come down to, which is that Republican senators are going to go through the motions of a real tough, critical, uh, confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy jr. They will say a lot of what you say about vaccines is not based in science. A lot of what you say about vaccines is not based in fact, RFK will come prepared, ready to say he is not going to just come in and ban access to child vaccinations. He's going to be ready. He's not going to fall for that. And then Republican senators will basically get in line. They'll say, listen, we had vigorous discourse. We agree about some things.

We disagree about others. I'm confident that RFK is not planning to just come in here and slash access to childhood vaccinations. And thus, even though we may disagree on some things, I think he's the right pick. He's a fine pick and I'm going to vote to confirm him. And in goes RFK Jr. I think that's obviously the way it's going to go. Now, Pete Hegseth two, three weeks ago, I was leaning to maybe Hegseth doesn't get in as secretary of defense. At this point, it's sort of seeming like he does. Tulsi Gabbard, I was thinking she doesn't get in as director of national intelligence.

I think it's still plausible that she doesn't. One of the things that's going on is that Trump's nominees have been directed by the transition team to stop posting to social media. And so what at the time was like meltdown after meltdown because they kept posting and doing interviews and appearing, they've gone essentially radio silent until their confirmation hearings by design. And so this has reduced the temperature and it's also reduced the amount of attention that they are getting because they're not making public declarations. This is a strategy. So we will see what happens at the confirmation hearings. I think RFK obviously gets confirmed. I think Hegseth probably gets confirmed. And I think

Tulsi is still the sort of toss up. Let me know what you think. Also, make sure you've preordered my forthcoming book, The Echo Machine. Now in the final stretch of the pre-order campaign, you can find it at davidpakman.com slash book. We will take a break and continue right after this. Starting an online business has really never been easier with no upfront costs, minimal investment and manageable time commitment. It is an ideal side hustle that can scale. I'm David Pakman, the David Pakman show host. build your store. AI makes it super easy and super quick. Build your store uses AI to create your website in minutes with a super simple intuitive process guiding you every step of the

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Use code pacman for 40% off. The link is in the podcast notes. Well, it's happening. Donald Trump is going to be criminally sentenced this week. He is facing four years in prison. But I'm not going to pretend that this guy is going to serve a single day. There is every reason to believe, including the signals from the judge, that Trump is going to get zero, zero prison time. The Associated Press reports, in an extraordinary turn, a Judge Friday set Trump's sentencing in the hush money criminal case to January 10th, a little over a week before he goes back to the White House, but indicated he wouldn't be jailed. The development nevertheless leaves Trump on

course to be the first president to take office convicted of felony crimes. We of course go back to our old friend, uh, judge Juan Mershon, who presided over Trump's trial, signaled in a written decision that he would sentence this former and future president to what's known as unconditional discharge in which a conviction stands. But the case is closed without jail time, fine or probation. Trump can appear virtually for sentencing if he chooses. Rejecting Trump's push to dismiss the verdict and throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds because of the impending second term, Mershon wrote that only bringing finality to this matter would serve the interests of justice. He says he needs to balance Trump's ability to govern unencumbered by the case against public interests, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This court is simply not persuaded that the first factor, meaning Trump governing unencumbered

outweighs the others at this point in time, Trump flipped out. And we will talk about that in a moment. So listen, he's getting away with it. He's maybe not getting away with it as cleanly as he would like, which is the conviction completely overturned. He's still going to be a convicted felon when he takes office 14 days from today. That's not going to change, but it is the case that he is in all practical senses, getting away really with all of it with, I believe, one case postponed till after Trump's out of office, two others suspended. And this one about

to be, um, in the sentencing phase with Trump, uh, getting no sentence whatsoever. Uh, he has effectively gotten away with it. And I think it's important for us to just kind of acknowledge when we would report a year ago, a year and a half ago, Trump sees this campaign for the presidency as the way to stay out of prison. Um, that's just what it was. And he won. So now he's going to get to stay out of prison. You've got to take your losses when you're handed them. What can we do? The, we knew that these were the stakes, a combination of lack of motivation or enough mode, excuse me, motivation to go and vote for Kamala Harris combined with a lack of urgency and seeing Trump face real justice. It all came together and he is going

to get away with it. What we can hope for now, where we can focus now, what we can work on now is creating a robust enough opposition that, okay, listen, Trump as an individual, he got out of it. You got to hand it to him. He got out of it. But we are not going to allow the disastrous policy ideas that Trump has sort of casually floated with or without understanding them recently. OK, we are not going to allow those to become a reality. And hopefully there will be some agreement on that, uh, from Republicans or enough Republicans with the small minorities that Trump will have small majorities rather that Trump will have, uh, to get some of these things over the finish line. Hopefully 2026 goes as

disastrously poorly for Republicans as it has the potential to do. Uh, and what else can we do? You've got to focus on what you can do at this point. He seems to have gotten away with it. However, however, that is not preventing Trump from melting down over the sentencing. Let's talk about that. Upon finding out that he will indeed be sentenced criminally this Friday, Donald Trump completely melted down on truth social, just losing his mind posting quote, there has never been a president who was so evilly and illegally treated as I corrupt Democrat judges and prosecutors have gone against the political opponent of a president,

me, at levels of injustice never seen before. Corrupt judges or judges so blinded by their hatred of me and my political ideology to make America great again are making a mockery of the United States judicial system and the world is watching and disgust. None of that is true. The world is disgusted that Trump's getting away with it. Trump continues deranged Jack Smith, the evil and sinister prosecutor appointed by crooked Joe Biden to take me down was found to be illegally appointed by a corrupt DOJ and FBI. And all of his many charges against me were dropped or dismissed.

His illegal raid of my home, by the way, not determined to be illegal, will go down as one of the dirtiest tricks ever perpetrated by one candidate, a dumb as a rock, sleepy Joe Biden on another. With all of this said, I still have confidence that the appellate courts will bring justice to America. Trump continuing. I never falsified business records. It is a fake made up charge by a corrupt judge who is just doing the work of the Biden Harrison justice department and attack on their political opponent. Me. He created a case where there was, keeps a gag order on me so that I can't talk about how crooked he is. The fake news knows all about it, but they refuse to talk. He may be the most conflicted judge in New York state history. The accountant testified with

total corroboration that the records were perfect and totally above board. A legal expense was called on the book's illegal expense. There was nothing else that could have been called. By the way, endless. This guy is so triggered. He just can't stop. This was the so-called falsifying of records.

I was hiding nothing. Everything was out in the open for all to see. Every legal scholar of notes said there is no case against me. The judge should be disbarred. This is why people and companies are fleeing New York, a corrupt court system in another crooked New York case. Another corrupt judge overturned five times on my case alone. And the most overturned judge in New York valued Mar-a-Lago in Palm beach, Florida at $18 million when it is worth 50 to 100 times that amount. Note that Trump continues to be confused between the market value

and the assessed value and also claiming Mar-a-Lago is worth $1.8 billion, I guess, which is nuts. And he says, and then we have also in New York, the woman I never met celebrity photo lines from 30 years ago, don't count who was awarded almost $100 million, a totally out of control. Trump hating judge presided the Biden Harris DOJ was involved directly or indirectly in each of these cases. I won against a range Jack Smith. Okay. And then finally, and I apologize for subjecting you to this. This is one of the biggest Trump meltdowns we've seen Trump continuing every legal scholar and pundit, including the highly respected and sadly recently passed David Rivkin, as well as Jonathan Turley, Ellie Honig, Andy McCarthy, Alan Dershowitz, Greg Jarrett,

Elizabeth Price Foley, Katie and Andy Cherkasky, Paul Ingrazia, and many others have unequivocally stated that the Manhattan DA's witch hunt is a non-existent case, which is not only barred by the statute of limitations, but on the merits should never have been brought. This illegitimate political attack is nothing but a rigged charade. Acting Justice Mershon, who is a radical partisan, just issued another order that is knowingly unlawful, goes against our Constitution, and if allowed to stand, would be the end of the presidency as we know it. Mershon has so little respect for the constitution that he is keeping in place an illegal gag order on me, your president and president elect just so I cannot expose his and his family's disqualifying into legal conflicts.

Trump really wants to go after the judge's family, doesn't he? And finally, Trump wrapping up, I am the only political opponent in American history not allowed to defend myself a despicable First Amendment violation. There's an ellipsis there and Trump goes on to one more part of this, but I'm going to skip that because I think I've subjected you to enough torture for a guy who is getting away with it, for a guy who is going to get off scot-free without a single day behind bars. And he deserves it, doesn't he? It's crazy to be this sore of a winner. And if there's one thing we learned about MAGA, since they won everything on November 5th and Trump's cases are dismissed and he's not going to do jail time. If there is

one thing we've learned is these are some really, really sore winners. We'll see what happens at the sentencing on Friday. 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 rights attempt to sow election distrust and weaponize the courts. This story is almost exclusively being covered by right leaning news outlets spinning the narrative to villainize the election workers. So the public probably has a skewed perspective on what's really happening.

That is, unless you use ground news, which lets you see every side to every story like this one. Ground news is an independent platform that exposes the biases of media outlets by showing you who owns them, what angle they're taking on each story and what hidden agendas might be lurking in the background. Thank you, David. Sound.news slash Pacman for 50% off their unlimited access vantage plan. It's their biggest sale of the year. And the link is in the description. All right. So we've gotten to what I guess is the tail end of the arc of the total and complete humiliation

of former Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz has gone from being nominated to be the attorney general of the United States to interviewing George Santos on Gaetz's own brand new show, not even on Fox News, not even on Newsmax, but on OAN, One America News. This is really, really embarrassing. And Matt Gaetz trying to poke fun, I guess, of his failed makeup attempts with George Santos. And if this is anything like what this program will be, this is going to be very, very bad. What was going on with my makeup? Help me. Give me advice. Matt Gaetz, let me tell you something. Highlighter is not for you. Stop highlighting the center of your face. It makes your eye very small and it gives you the glow. Not the glow you think it gives you.

But I have deep set eyes, George. How do I fix the deep set eyes? Look at the flawlessness in my skin. No highlighter needed. You're a Florida man. I'm in Florida right now. When you're tan and you're a Florida man, you don't need that level of highlighter. Here's my honest advice for you, Gates. Here's what you need to do, Matt. You need to go by yourself. Double wear foundation from Estee Lauder. And what was going on? There you go. Wow. Now, I don't really think this is the last we'll hear of Matt Gaetz, because certainly after this initial episode, it's hard to imagine we're going to hear from him on his own show, since I don't think anybody's going to be watching. This all sort of feels like a throwaway.

You can see that it appears as though they've set up kind of like a remote studio for Gates where he sits in front of a TV. My point here is no one really seems to be taking this show very seriously. Gates doesn't seem to be taking it seriously and OAN doesn't seem to be taking it seriously. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is sort of like a temporary thing before his next thing, which maybe is some kind of consulting or who the hell knows. Now, to his credit, my understanding is that Gates is not bad at debate prep and campaign strategy for other Republicans, whether that's what he wants to do. I think he would much rather be senator from Florida, governor of Florida.

There's rumors. I don't think what he really, I don't think the prestige that he wants is associated with being a campaign prep guy. But from what I've heard from people that know the guy, he's actually pretty good at that. We will see where he lands, but talking about makeup with George Santos doesn't really seem like it's going to be it for him. Donald Trump is going to take office soon and will proudly and courageously and the horror that is people working from home. Yeah.

A Stephen Miller, his incoming White House deputy chief of policy, who is one of the architects of Trump's horrifying mass deportation plan, appeared on Fox News over the weekend and said people are coming back into the office. Wow. They are the ones doing this on the way out the door. Donald Trump, again, he announced that federal workers are going to go back to the office because they work for you. Everyone watching us at home tonight, they can't work for you from home, I guess.

Work for you, those federal workers, you pay their salaries. They need to show up at an office. And again, Donald Trump's going to rip up those agreements that allows those workers to work from home. Although we all know what the federal workers are really doing, is just absolutely nothing, nothing at best. At worst, they're working against you and your family and your security. And he's going to say that you have to get back into the office. And he's also going to say that workers who've betrayed the trust of the American people are going to be fired. And in cases where they violated the rights and liberties of the American people, they're going to face accountability. They are going to face justice. We are going to restore representative government and democracy in this country. And they are the.

Yeah. So listen, the work from home stuff, it's become extraordinarily partisan. I don't really get why other than I think it's associated with COVID. In general, if you're okay with people working from home, even though there may be a hundred different reasons why people are working from home, it's assumed or connected with COVID guidelines because a lot of work from home grew out of COVID and out of COVID guidelines. I don't really think this needs to be as controversial as some of these right wingers are making it out to be. There is no doubt that there are jobs. First of all, you've got jobs that are impossible to do from home. I mean, a lot of service stuff you just you can't do from home. You've got to be at the place where the thing is happening.

There's no doubt about it. With office work or what we might call knowledge work, it's really a mixed bag. It depends on what you're doing. Is your job more meeting oriented or is it more sort of solo deep work oriented? I know people who are in the office two days a week. The other three, they're really working on stuff where they'd have their door closed. Anyway, is there some benefit to being able to just go over and knock on someone's office door rather than scheduling a zoom or doing an email?

Yes, no doubt about that. In a lot of ways, is it really about personality and what sort of work environment works for you? Yeah, yeah, it is. And this open kind of hostility to the work from home thing that's very wrapped up with covid has gotten very weird. Also, Stephen Miller, with other horrifying announcements during this interview about what Trump's going to do far worse than dealing with work from home. Listen to this. Yes. Well, let's talk about the energy issue, Jason, which is so central to the election,

so central to the economic future of the United States. President Trump campaigned for two years straight on drill, baby, drill, open up an American energy, get the cost of living down, get inflation down, make America the energy superpower of the world. Make America energy dominant, energy independent. And what's Joe Biden doing on his way out the door? Trying to lock away America's energy resources from exploration. Trying to keep what President Trump calls liquid gold underneath the ground where we can't access it. But here's the thing. This desperate attempt is going to fail miserably.

Donald Trump is going to put his hand on that Bible on January 20th, and he is going to be the 47th president of the United States. And he's going to open up federal lands for drilling, for fracking. Aye, aye, aye. And he is going to bring down the cost of energy. He's going to cut the price of gasoline. He's going to make America the energy superpower of the world. Now, remember, by their definition, the U.S. is already the energy superpower. The U.S. produced more domestic

oil under Biden than ever before. But there's really three stories here that are important to talk about, and they're getting every single one wrong. First of all, they claim the U.S. is losing by their metric of being the energy leader, even though, as I said, we're producing more oil and gas than anybody else. Number two, they continue to act as though it's possible for Trump to reduce energy prices 50%, which Trump has promised. And they act as if it's a good thing. Number one, it's not possible, but if it were, it would be a very, very bad thing. The only way you're going to see energy prices drop 50% is if the United States gets into an economic crisis, the likes of which even it would be far worse than 2008.

It would be somewhere between 2008 and the Great Depression of 1929. That's how bad things would have to be for energy prices to go down 50% and enter such a deflationary spiral. And then as is often the case, conservatives, they want to conserve the old way of doing things for no real reason other than just, it's the way we used to do it. They are furious about better technology, both for powering your vehicles, heating your home, cooling your home. They just want to do it the old way. Let's frack, let's drill, let's then burn those fossil fuels and release the fumes into the atmosphere.

It's awesome. It's American. And it's just a reminder of how they are looking to conserve just for the sake of doing it the way we've always done it, which is extraordinarily short sighted and in many cases, very dangerous. Hey, this is super funny. Patrick bet David, the, um, host of the PBD podcast where I have appeared before, he had this little clip where he sort of learns that a lot of Trump's base doesn't like people like him and like me because we came here from another country. He explains, oh, I was getting feedback that was like, go back to Iran. Even though I'm a Trump guy, I'm checking all the right boxes, but they still don't like me. Yes, this is a significant portion of the MAGA base. Listen,

this is so funny. It's like he's learning in real time the people that he's chosen to associate himself with. The tweets I said, our founding fathers, a guy responds back and says, those are not your founding fathers. Guy posts a picture of the Shah of Iran says that's your founding father. But that tells you what, you know, a part of this, there's a nationalist. Yes. And there's white nationalists. White nationalists, Vinny, don't want people like us. I know. They just don't.

White nationalists are a very different model. You view me as go back to Iran. Yes. Deport Elon back to what he called South Africa. Deport Vivek back to India. Right. And you make those types of comments yeah even though Vivek was born here very good point right I don't think that's majority of America I think that's

less than five percent is the far right yeah that's a far nationalist that's the far right and the far left wants open borders see this is a classic. When they have no way to deny that there is this horrible, xenophobic, unsavory contingent in their movement, rather than just dealing with that, he goes, and on the far left, they want open borders. What does that have to do with anything? Whether it's true, doesn't even matter what that's not the issue. That's not really what we're talking about here. And let everybody come in here. Let's legalize everyone. The far right wants, if you're not a white nationalist, get the hell out of here.

The problem here is you as a consumer, not knowing the position of the individual before they say it and you think everyone is in that position. They're not. Not everyone's in that position. Yeah. They also want me to go back to Argentina, right? I mean, it's like this. This is not a new thing. We've all it's shocking to me that he's acting as though it's news to him that this exists on his side. And it's not 5%. Now, I'm not going to sit here and pretend it's everybody. I mean, it's not PBD, right? We can say a lot of things that we would disagree about. And when I was on his show, we disagreed about tax policy. We disagreed about so many different things. But one of the things that is absolutely

the case is that PBD is not in this. I should go back to Argentina thing because it'd be kind of hypocritical if it were the case, then maybe he should go back to Iran. Right. He's not he's not part of that. But pretending that that's only five percent. I mean, listen, if it's five percent of America, it's 17 million people. But that's if you consider the entire population, including kids, including people who don't

even know to have positions on this. If you just say, well, what percentage of Trump voters is the kind of ultra nationalist go back to Iran group? My guess, I don't want to overstate it, but it's probably a third of the Trump electorate that's overtly part of that. And maybe there's another third that kind of dabbles in it. They probably wouldn't say it, but to a degree they think it, that's what it is. You know, we, we shouldn't overstate it and we shouldn't understate it, but 5 percent of America. Yeah, I don't I don't think so. So just kind of funny to see him realize, man, I'm part of a movement that would kick me out of the movement.

Now, zooming out for a second. The purity test stuff. I believe it's a bigger problem on the left. I've said before, one of the reasons the right does win, and there's many reasons, right? I mean, at the congressional level, you've got gerrymandering and there's no one explanation, but one of the things that hurts the left are the purity test. The left seems to be sort of like, uh, motivated to some degree by who can we exclude from the movement because they don't check the right boxes. Of course, there's intolerance on the right, but it's more about, listen, I, they'll accept

Jewish people. They'll accept gay people. They'll sometimes accept trans people. They'll accept some Muslim people. They'll sometimes accept trans people. They'll accept some Muslim people. They'll be skeptical. They won't love it, but they'll accept it as long as you mostly accept their views because they know that it just helps them win. The left is still hesitant on that, and the purity tests do plague the left.

We'll talk about that with Cenk Uygur on Wednesday as well, given the sort of political journey he's currently on. On the bonus show today, one of her final official acts for Vice President Kamala Harris will be certifying her own loss. We will discuss. There are higher social security payments coming for millions of people thanks to a bill that Joe Biden signed. And the Washington Post cartoonist has resigned because the paper wouldn't publish a cartoon critical of its owner, Jeff Bezos. What's going on over there?

All of these stories and more on today's bonus show. You can sign up at join Pacman dot com. Still the primary funding source for the show. Thank you. Email info at davidpakman.com and say, I'd love that code. And remember, sign up for the YouTube channel. It's free at youtube.com slash the David Pakman show. I'll see you on the bonus show. I'll be back here tomorrow.