The David Pakman Show - 2/10/25: President Musk's power grab continues, Biden's clearance revoked

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Farron Cousins, host of Farron Balanced and Ring of Fire, fills in for David. Subscribe to Farron on YouTube: youtube.com/farronbalanced -- Donald Trump reverses a Biden policy phasing out plastic straws -- Attorney General Pam Bondi instructs the DOJ to investigate DEI, not white-collar crime -- JD Vance convinces Elon Musk to rehire a DOGE staffer who resigned after his racist social media posts surfaced -- A current DOGE staffer was once fired for leaking company secrets -- Trump purges the prosecutors investigating Elon Musk's businesses -- Trump revokes Joe Biden's security clearance just to spite him -- Donald Trump gets triggered by "President Elon Musk" appearing on the cover of TIME Magazine -- Trump speaks to reporters and exhibits signs of cognitive decline -- Republicans are gutting the Department of Education, which will disproportionately harm red states -- Democrats are desperate for a new party leader and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez may be the pick -- On the Bonus Show: Another Capitol rioter going back to prison, Bernie and Josh Hawley team up to help consumers, Trump trying to eradicate "anti-Christian bias," and much more... ☕ Cambio Roasters: Get 20% off with code PAKMAN at https://cambioroasters.com ☕ Beam melatonin hot cocoa: Code PAKMAN for up to 40% OFF at https://shopbeam.com/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow

Welcome to the David Pakman show. I am Farron Cousins sitting in for David Pakman today. And folks, we have so much to cover. I really ought to jump in, but just to let you know what we've got coming up on this week's show, Donald Trump has his feelings hurt by the cover of Time Magazine. J.D. Vance throws his wife under the bus to save a Doge staffer for his racist post on X. And of course, just nonstop chaos from the Doge office in general. Attorney General Pam Bondi decides that going after DEI is far better than doing anything to help consumers. And the leader that the Democrats absolutely need has finally emerged. All of that and so much more is coming up on today's show. So let's jump right into it. On Friday, Donald Trump announced that he is finally taking on the issue that propelled him to the white house.

The single biggest issue on the minds of every single American voter, no doubt about it. So he's bringing back plastic straws, right? Because again, I'm sure that everybody watching this, when you went to the polls in November, you said, well, I mean, you know, the, the economy's really not that great. It looks good on paper, but it's not working for me. I'm really concerned about what's happening in the middle East. I'm concerned about Russia. I'm concerned about the environment here. I'm concerned about all these things, but none of those concerns were bigger than of course, mushy paper straws. So on Friday, Donald Trump got on Truth

Social and made this bold announcement. I will be signing an executive order next week, ending the ridiculous Biden push for paper straws, which don't work. Back to plastic, he says. So, so there you have it. I mean, I guess all of our problems are solved in the United States of America today, right? I mean, you may not be able to afford beverages to put a straw in under Donald Trump's policies, but by God, if you ever get the chance to get a soda again, you can rest easy knowing that your straw will not get mushy because we are going back to plastic. Now, obviously this was not a, an issue. I think, I don't think you could find a single person in this country that cast their vote this past

November based on plastic straws. I mean, I genuinely don't think you would find a single person who that was their biggest issue. I don't think you'd find a single person today that would say that yes, the mushy paper straws are keeping me up at night. I had to talk to the kids at dinner and just say, I don't know about the future of our country because the mushy straws, right? No, nobody does that. This was not a thing that even needed to be done. And it's a distraction as per usual, because what happened on Friday at the same time that Donald Trump is out there telling us we're bringing back plastic. Well, one of the things that actually happened before Friday was the fact that we got new

scientific reports out showing that the human brains that they have examined, um, are showing about a spoons worth of microplastics. So you know, what a great time to bring plastic back at the time when's worth of microplastics. So, you know, what a great time to bring plastic back at the time when we're finding microplastics, a spoonful of them in human brains. So thank you for that, Donald. But the bigger thing, I mean, I don't know if it's bigger. I mean, obviously plastic in the brain seems kind of like a big issue, but if you're more financially minded, what also happened on Friday was that we got the January jobs report.

So at the same time, Donald Trump is talking about plastic straws. We're getting a report showing us that the economy only added 143,000 jobs in January, well below the expectation of 169,000 jobs. Now here's the thing. I'll give you this. President Biden was president of the United States for, uh, you know, 19 and a half of those days of January, Donald Trump only had 11 and a half days where he got to be president. So, all right, right. This, this was mostly Biden, but some Trump. However, Biden's out of office. Everything that happens from the moment Donald Trump gets sworn in, that's on him. So job growth in this country is slowing. It did not meet expectations.

In fact, according to analysts, this was actually the worst jobs report that we have gotten since COVID. That's how bad it was. And yes, as president of the United States, this is on Donald Trump, because let's not forget what's been happening so far in the month of February. We have had federal workers leave. We have had layoffs. We have more layoffs coming. We have had the mass deportations kick into high gear. Thousands of people, working people kicked out of this country. So I imagine that as bad as that January jobs report was, it's probably going to be the best one that we see for the next four years. Because as it stands right now, Donald Trump doesn't have any actual ideas on how to create

new jobs in this country. He doesn't actually have any plans to bring manufacturing back to the United States. Think of this. When Donald Trump decided last week to go ahead and pause the tariffs on Canada and Mexico, tariffs that by the way, he had put in place for several reasons, obviously border security, drugs, but another one was to bring companies back to the United States. And a lot of people forgot about that, right? That he said that repeatedly, but nowhere in the concessions that either side made from either Canada or Mexico or the United States, none of the concessions included bringing manufacturing back to the United States. So no, Donald Trump's tariffs are not going to bring jobs back. He doesn't even seem to care

about bringing jobs back. So again, at a time when the New York times is telling us that, Hey, job growth is clearly slowing in this country. That's not good. Trump has no plan to fix it. His only plan right now is to add to the unemployment rate by getting rid of all these federal employees and all of the immigrants. So these numbers are going to get much worse and they're going to get much worse very quickly. Furthermore, while this nincompoop is sitting there boasting about plastic straws, we were also getting reports, you know, okay, we got microplastics in the brain. We got a bad jobs report. What other bad news could Trump be distracting us from? How about the fact that the price of eggs, which has already risen by 35% over the last 12 months is expected to rise

another 20% this year. I'm sure if you're like me, you've probably seen the photos on social media and the videos, people walking into grocery stores and, you know, showing the price of eggs, some places as high as, you know, 14, $15 per dozen. And that's not going to get any better. If the price of eggs right now is due to the fact that we are having to basically cull entire flocks of chickens due to bird flu, which is, you know, that we are having to basically cull entire flocks of chickens due to bird flu, which is, you know, what we're being told. And I do believe that I'm not just saying we're being told, I believe it. Don't get me wrong, but we've kind of gutted already. Trump has the government institutions that deal with things like that. You know,

the places that put out the guidelines, the places that warn people, Hey, bird flu has been in your area. Please protect your flocks. We've gotten rid of the reporting. We've gotten rid of the monitoring. We've gotten rid of the funding that's frozen at the moment. So the price of eggs is going to get worse, but there's another part of that too, because chickens don't just produce eggs, right? What, what else do they produce? Meat for consumption. So the price of chicken in general at the grocery store is also going up. Again, those reports were coming out last week showing that. Again, same time Donald Trump's out there telling us about plastic straws being the greatest thing since sliced bread, gasoline prices started to go back up. in spite of Trump telling us he's going

to drill, drill, drill, and that's going to lower prices for you. Gas prices are going up. They're going up in a non travel part of the year. A lot of people miss that. A lot of people don't necessarily put two and two together. We typically see gas prices go up a little starting in November around Thanksgiving time, lot of travel going through December, lots of holidays through the new year. We'll see a little bit of it during spring break. And we usually see it during summertime prices tend to start going down in September, but they do fluctuate throughout the year. I know I was a blogger

at the smog blog for many years where one of my main things was tracking the price of gasoline. So that's what happens, but for it to happen at the beginning of February, which is not a travel time of year, it is not a time when millions of Americans are going on vacation or traveling the country. That is not normal. And that's what I'm trying to tell you. Seeing gas prices increase at this time of year is a bad, bad sign. On top of that coffee prices, those are going through the roof. The price of many other consumer goods. We now have bird flu in cows that could drive up the cost of foods across the country. And of course the mass deportations that are taking place are crippling some farms in this country already.

So the price of every other food may go up very soon, very quickly. In other words, why the hell is the president of the United States focusing on plastic straws when consumers are continuing to get hammered, even though he promised us he was going to bring prices down. But of course, a couple of weeks after the election, he told us, well, you really can't do much about it now, can you? So here we are, a president of the United States that would rather focus on your straw not being mushy than on whether or not you can afford a straw in the first place. And speaking of members of the Trump administration, not doing anything to help consumer prices, freshly minted attorney general, Pam Bondi, who has not even been on the job for a full week yet, has issued a memo directing the DOJ to go

after any company, any publicly traded company that does DEI or I a, because again, apparently the DOJ has nothing better to do than to waste their time worrying. If companies are training their employees to understand that, Hey, other people in this country also exist. But on Wednesday, when Bondi was of course confirmed, sworn in, takes the job, in a span of 15 minutes, her office issued more than a dozen memos directing the DOJ under her guidance about what they were going to be doing. And it of course included things like going after sanctuary cities, bringing back the death penalty and enforcing a very strict return to office policy. But then was the memo on DEI and that memo, little selection of it here from Slate said, quote,

she wants a list of business sectors of concern within the department of justice and the most egregious and discriminatory DEI and DEIA practitioners in each sector of concerns. It also asked for quote litigation activities and other strategies to target these private sector companies, evidently envisioning a coordinated agency-wide onslaught that would divert many attorneys' attention away from their normal areas of practice. Her plan from the civil rights division and office of legal policy wants quote specific steps or measures to deter the use of DEI and DEIA programs or principles, as well as proposals for criminal investigations and up to nine potential civil compliance

investigations of these companies within the sectors of concern. And of course, this applies to publicly traded companies, which has mentioned several times throughout the entirety of the memo. The DOJ right now could be working on going after corporate price gougers. They could be looking into these companies that are screwing you over and artificially driving up the prices that you pay at the grocery store, that you pay at the gas pump, or that you pay for electronics or home goods or whatever it is, because we know that is happening. And the reason we know that that is happening is because during the time, you know, a year or two ago, we had massive inflation, these CEOs were on record telling us point

blank. Yes, we have raised our prices more than inflation was because we could. That's when we do it in times of hyperinflation. These companies artificially raise their prices because they know that if inflation will eventually go down and the price will go down, but it'll never hit that original before inflation because of the excess prices they're now charging us. So they can put more money in their pockets. The DOJ could be going after them. The DOJ could be going after the corporate polluters. The DOJ could be doing one of a million things, but instead under Pam Bondi's guidance, they're going after any publicly traded company that

engages in what she feels is DEI. And we've already seen a lot of companies out there drop all their DEI training, all their DEI initiatives, all of it gone because they don't want to be on this list of companies, right? I mean, she's telling everybody, Hey, everybody, you here, you give me nine, you give me nine companies. You come up with another nine companies. What an arbitrary and honestly weird number, right? Like not, why not just go to 10? Why not make it a nice even number, maybe five. What happens if they can't come up with nine? Do they get fired? Do you just get rid of that department of the DOJ? I mean, her memo didn't really go into detail about what's

going to happen. But what we do know is that if you're a company and you're teaching your employees or having training sessions, explaining to them to treat people, you know, like equals, treat them with kindness, accept the fact that other people that don't look like you or sound like you exist. Well, if you're doing that, you may be going to jail, according to Pam Bondi. Look, we got to take a quick break. If you want more from me, I'm Farron Cousins. You can find me on two different YouTube channels, youtube.com slash the ring of fire and youtube.com slash Farron balanced. And I'm also all across social media, blue sky, Instagram, Facebook, Tik TOK, and threads at Farron balanced.

This is the David Pakman show, and we'll be right back. serve plastic K cups going to landfills daily. It's a big issue. And that's why I'm very excited to share the solution. Cambio roasters, our sponsor, Cambio roasters offers the world's only patented K cup made from recyclable aluminum instead of plastic. These aluminum cups for your Keurig are disposable like the plastic K cups you're used to, but you'll be saving so much Thank you so much, David. 10,000 coffee farming families, ensuring 60,000 fewer people go hungry each year. Stop wasting plastic and enjoy better coffee. Go to combioroasters.com and use the code PACMAN to get 25% off any 10 pod box or larger. That's C-A-M-B-I-O roasters.com code PACMAN gets you 25% off. The link is in the podcast notes. Many of us have struggled with sleep at one point or another.

A sleep aid many turn to is melatonin because it's a non-pharmaceutical remedy, clinically proven to work without the side effects you might get with antihistamines or prescription meds. My favorite way to take melatonin is with the Dream Hot Cocoa Powder from our sponsor, Beam. It works. When you mix Dream Powder into hot water or milk for a delicious mug of cocoa, half an hour later, blissfully sleeping. No sugar added. It's naturally sweetened and it comes in delicious flavors. My favorite is cinnamon cocoa, but vanilla chai is great too. You can get better sleep with melatonin proven to help you fall asleep and stay asleep longer. Feeling rested makes the next day so much better. Keep dream powder nearby to soothe you to sleep when you need it.

Get 40% off for a limited time when you go to shopbeam.com slash Pacman and use the David Pakman show. I am Farron Cousins from Ring of Fire and Farron Balanced sitting in for David today. Well, in case you hadn't been paying attention, there's a little bit of drama taking place over at Elon Musk's Doge office with regard to an, I guess you'd call him on again, off again employee named Marco Iles. Last week, the Wall Street journal revealed that Mr. Iles had in fact been tied to a Twitter slash X account that, uh, as recently as September had been posting some pretty nasty racist things on social media, including things like normalize Indian hate. And for the record, I was racist before it was cool. And you could never pay me enough to marry outside of my ethnicity. That of

course, among several other things, including pushing for a, uh, what was it? Eugenic immigration policy. Some of those posts were from this past summer. The rest of them, of course, took place around September. So these posts were not even a year old. And that of course is important because this 25 year old employee, once the wall street journal started asking the Trump administration, Hey, what do y'all think about this? Immediately resigned, which is good. He should have resigned. But then on Friday, Elon Musk decided maybe this guy shouldn't resign, even though he did so voluntarily because of what was coming out. Elon Musk got on his own social media platform, Twitter, and decided to put out a poll. Should he be rehired?

And one of the people who actually I'm assuming voted in it, but also responded to that poll was none other than vice president JD Vance, who of course happens to be married to a woman from India. You know, the same country where Marco Elez said, normalize Indian hate. JD Vance has three children. So you would think JD Vance would be like, yeah, maybe this guy should go. His attacks on India are an attack on my wife. They're an attack on my kids, but no JD Vance said this. Here's my view. I obviously disagree with some of he leases his posts. Some not like, yeah, I don't disagree with all of them.

Holy hell. Wow. But I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life. We shouldn't reward journalists who try to destroy people ever. So I say, bring him back. If he's a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that. So first of all, which ones of his posts do you agree with? That's the question I have. Cause you said you disagree with some of them. You didn't have to add that qualifier in there, but you did. And now I want answers on that. And I think everybody in this country is entitled to

answers on that question. Which ones of his posts do you agree with vice president Vance? Furthermore, if he's a bad dude, he's literally attacking your wife in this, maybe not by name, but definitely by ethnicity. So what in your mind also, this, I guess would be a follow-up question, constitutes somebody being a bad dude, right? I would think saying I was racist before it was cool, which is one thing he did post. I would think that I was racist before it was cool, which is one thing he did post. I would think that would make somebody a bad dude, but perhaps me and the vice president just have different standards, I guess. But I am, I really think the public needs to demand answers to those questions. But then of course, after JD Vance post this, Elon Musk came out and he said,

he will be brought back to air as human, to forgive divine. And Vance, of course, had referred to him as a kid. Shouldn't ruin a kid's life. First of all, he was 25. Second of all, these posts all took place within the last year. I mean, not even within the last year, within the last nine months. It's not like these were youthful indiscretions that he did at age 14. He was making these posts while you were the vice presidential nominee, JD Vance. Okay. Like, I, I don't know what more y'all want in order to make somebody untouchable, right? Like we don't want to touch them. We don't want them anywhere near it. Oh, you shouldn't ruin this kid's life. No, but this kid is being given access to information that could ruin other people's lives. You seem to be fine with that. And of course, JD Vance, again, married to a woman

from India was called out by Democratic Representative Ro Khanna. Ro Khanna said this, quote, are you going to tell him to apologize for saying normalize Indian hate before this rehire? Just asking for the sake of both of our kids. And the vice president of the United States responded to the democratic representative by saying, quote, racist trolls on the internet while offensive, don't threaten my kids. You know what does a culture that denies grace to people who make mistakes, a culture that encourages Congressman to act like whiny children. You disgust me. The vice president of the United States said you Ro Khanna are the one that is disgusting

here. Not the person who posted the racist things that of course impact Ro Khanna's family. And of course, JD Vance's family. That's not disgusting to JD Vance, but Ro Khanna calling it out is, and here's the thing forgiveness, right? Mercy as JD Vance is calling for. Marco Elez hasn't asked for that. Marco Elez hasn't apologized. I mean, that's literally what Rukana said. Are you going to ask him to apologize? You don't give somebody forgiveness if they are not sorry. That's not how it works. If they're not seeking forgiveness, then there's nothing to forgive them for. But we can't legislate morality, even though Republicans try to do it. And so this is where we are. I guess this kid is getting

brought back so that he can bring his normalized Indian hate right back into the Doge office where apparently that's not a disqualifying thing to say. But if you think that Mr. Elez is the only problematic person in Elon Musk's gaggle of teenage weirdos, then think again, reports have come out showing us that yet another Doge employee also has a very questionable past. This time, not about racist posts on social media, but about not being a trustworthy person who was fired as a contractor for a cybersecurity firm called Path Network because an internal investigation found out that he was leaking company secrets. This employee at Doge is a man by the name of Edward Korostein,

who was fired from, from cybersecurity firm Path Network in 2022 for quote, leaking internal information to the competitors. A spokesperson for path network said, quote, I can confirm that Edward Coristine's brief contract was terminated after the conclusion of an internal investigation into the leaking of proprietary company information that coincided with his tenure. But a report from the new report, new Republic, excuse me, goes even further. They said, several people who knew Corostin said they were confused as to how he ascended to such a consequential position and nervous as to how he'll handle the enormous responsibility that comes with it, given that he could not handle it at Path Network. So you're fired from a cybersecurity firm because you're leaking

their secrets. And now as a member of Doge, he has access, well, basically to everything, whether it's your private data, whether it's the payment information from the federal government, the payment systems, and the people who know him are like, Hey, this is probably not a good idea. When do we start listening to the people who know the people best, right? Because we should be listening to the people who know Coris Dean saying, yeah, not sure this is great. Just like we should have listened in the 2024 election to all of the people who had worked with Donald Trump in the past, who had known him privately, personally, who kept telling everybody, Hey, this is a dangerous idea to put them back in the white house. When somebody who knows somebody

deeply knows them greatly has known them for years is telling you multiple people, by the way, not just one, but multiple different people with no skin in the game at all, telling you that this person is bad. Doesn't matter which person it is, whether it's this guy at Doge, whether it's Elon Musk himself, whether it's Pete Hegseth, whether it's Donald Trump or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the people who know these people best have told us openly, publicly, whether they wanted to or not, that these are bad people. That these are people that should not be in the positions that they are in. Do not put them there. And then time after time after time, we always ignore it. You know, that, that to a degree is on us at that point, because if we had listened to the people who'd warned us about Donald Trump, the people who

worked with him, right? Not just the pundits, not just the Democrats, but the people who knew him best. If we had listened to them, we wouldn't be having conversations about Hegseth or Kennedy or Musk or these little Doge staffers. None of that would be taking place, but we ignored the warnings on Trump as a country. We ignored it. And that brought these new people who we got warnings about and the Republicans in the Senate also ignored the warnings about those people. We have seen the Doge office, Elon Musk openly say, hey, yeah, we know we had a racist guy here, but ah, bring them back, right? They're ignoring the own warnings from their own people. Like that's not even coming from other folks. It's coming from the people themselves. Like, hey, I may be a bad dude and they continue

to ignore it. And the government, the country is going to ultimately be the ones paying the price for that. And in other Elon Musk news, as if we needed any more, but according to a new report from the lever, when Donald Trump carried out his recent midnight massacre, firing the inspectors general from multiple different government agencies, he also managed to do a massive favor for his good buddy, Elon Musk, who of course dumped $288 million into the presidential election. By firing these inspectors general, Donald Trump fired five of them who either had previously investigated Elon Musk or were in the process of investigating Elon Musk.

Here's what the lever reported. At the department of agriculture, where the inspector general's office was probing alleged animal abuse at Musk's brain implant company Neuralink, inspector general and 22 year USDA veteran Phyllis Fong was escorted out of her office by security guards last Monday. Department of Defense inspector general Robert Storch was fired just months after he reportedly opened a review into repeated failures by Musk and his rocket company SpaceX to properly disclose their contact with foreign leaders. The Department of Transportation, which oversees the National Transportation Safety Board, had its inspector general fired as safety regulators oversaw several open probes into Tesla, which of course is his electric vehicle company,

over its remote and self-driving vehicles. The same goes for the Environmental Protection Agency, where investigators have settled multiple lawsuits with Tesla in recent years over Clean Air Act and hazardous waste law violations. Trump also fired the inspector general at the Department of Labor, which oversees the National Labor Relations Board. The board has 17 open investigations against Musk's companies, Tesla, and SpaceX for alleged unfair labor practices, safety violations, and discriminatory work practices with those inspectors general being fired, likely illegally, because you have to give Congress a 30 days notice. If you plan to remove these people, which Trump obviously did not because he hadn't even been in office for 30 days

yet. But with these firings, these investigations are likely dead because these inspectors general are not going to be replaced by people who are going to come in there, guns blazing and just investigate all this corporate malfeasance. God, no. These are individuals that are going to come in there guns blazing and just investigate all this corporate malfeasance. God, no. These are individuals that are going to come in and make sure that we're not doing DEI at the EPA or at the National Transportation Safety Board or in the labor department. All of these investigations into Elon Musk, investigations that happened because of horrific reports given to the federal government are likely gone. So that $288 million that Elon Musk spent helping Donald Trump by the 2024 election, it paid dividends for him. I mean, he has

already seen his net worth in general skyrocket by billions of dollars since Donald Trump won. He's doing better than ever, right? And now on top of having even more money than he already had, he doesn't have to worry about any kind of criminal fines or penalties because those investigations are not coming back. I am Farron Cousins in for David Pakman. Don't forget. You can also find me on my two YouTube channels, both Farron balanced and ring of fire, youtube.com slash the ring of fire, youtube.com slash Farron balanced across social media at Farron balance. Doesn't matter what the platform is. That'll be my handle. I'm sitting in for David Pakman on the David Pakman show, and we'll be right back. VPNs are all owned by the same big mysterious company. They log your internet activity so they can sell it or give it to law enforcement.

And these VPNs are just out to make a buck without really protecting your privacy. The only VPN I trust enough to have as a sponsor is Private Internet Access. Our sponsor, Private Internet Access, is the only VPN who has proven multiple times in legal proceedings they don't keep logs of your activity. The judge ordered that PIA show user activity history each time they demonstrated they don't have the records. That no log policy is also independently audited by Deloitte. And PIA is also open source. So you can also see in the code that none of your activity is being logged.

And you can protect unlimited devices with just a single account. Private internet access is giving my audience 83% off, which is just $2.03 a month, plus four extra months for free. Go to PIAv dot com slash David. The link is in the podcast notes. Once again, we're seeing big tech blur the lines between private industry and public

government. Zuckerberg, Bezos, even Sam Altman at Open AI are donating millions to Trump's inaugural fund because they say he'll lead our country into the age of AI, despite these same tech CEOs warning about how dangerous AI can be. Algorithms control what we see every day to serve corporate and political interests, which is why I've trusted ground news for years to help me find the truth. Ground news doesn't tell you what to think. They show you each news outlets, biases, credibility, financial incentives. So,

you know, who's benefiting from the way each news outlet spins each story. You can even filter out certain sources you don't want and stay informed without getting buried in the noise. Stay engaged with ground news who is fixing what is breaking right in front of us, trust and transparency in Welcome back to The David Pakman Show. I am Farron Cousins from Ring of Fire and Farron Balanced sitting in the David Pakman show. I am Farron Cousins from Ring of Fire and Farron Balanced sitting in for David Pakman today. Well, Donald Trump has of course on his path of revenge against everyone and everything that he feels has wronged him over the years. And on Friday evening, the target of his ire was none other than former president Joe Biden. Donald Trump got on truth social and announced in a very lengthy post that he was terminating president Biden's

security clearance, which of course will also cancel his daily national intelligence briefings. Here is what Donald Trump wrote. There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information. Therefore, we are immediately revoking Joe Biden's security clearances and stopping his daily intelligence briefings. He set this president in 2024 when he instructed the intelligence community to stop the 45th president of the United States, me, from accessing details on national security, a courtesy provided to former presidents. The Her report revealed that Biden suffers from poor memory and even in his prime could not be trusted with sensitive information. I will always protect our national security. Joe, you're fired. Make America great again. Now, of course the, her report, which was hugely biased

did of course make mention of president Biden's poor memory because he didn't remember certain details about his son's death, but also actually remembered far more intricate details of it. As we got to see in the full transcript, but former president Biden, no more national security briefings, which honestly is probably a relief, right? I mean, you're clearly not going to run for president ever again. You're not going to be involved in government ever again. Why do we, why do we even have this in place? Right? That seems like not a good idea. Now, listen, I'm not saying it's just not a good idea for Biden. I'm saying in general, why does a former president still get intelligence briefings? Right? This is now a private citizen going about their private lives,

but to keep getting secure, why? Like, that's what I want to know. I really genuinely am curious. Why do we still do that? I mean, that seems like a bad idea, no matter who the former president is, no matter what their mental capacity is, maybe we shouldn't be doing that at all in general. But I will say in this specific case, it really has nothing to do with president Biden's mental capacities, whether he has memory issues, whether he has other problems or whether he's perfectly fine. None of that factored into Donald Trump's decision. This was 100% because Donald Trump had his national security clearances and daily briefings stripped from him in 2021, because at the time president Biden described Donald Trump's behavior as erratic. And we all saw it. This was a man who of course inspired a coup against the federal government,

the Capitol riot on January 6th, 2021. This was a man who was impeached twice. This was a man who was having, you know, kind of unsavory relationships with foreign leaders. This was a man who owned a golf resort in Mar-a-Lago were on multiple different occasions. Spies from other country were caught on the property. One of them with like multiple cell phones. So yeah, not exactly the most trustworthy guy. And we didn't even know it at the time, but this was also when Donald Trump had stolen all of those classified documents. So even before that revelation, Biden was like, Hey, this guy can't be trusted. Let's not keep giving him all of our national security information. Probably not a great idea. But again, in general, that's probably not

something we should do. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Now, if you were to have somebody who maybe serves one term and made it abundantly clear, yes, I am running again, or I'm going to run for Senate. I'm going to run for house. I could kind of see why that might be helpful or necessary, but even then, you know, that's tenuous at best. I still think just as a rule of thumb, we ought to be like, listen, thank you for your service to the country. Um, we're, we're not going to keep telling you things cause you're no longer the president. So adios, right? Like happy trails, best wishes, all that. I mean, look, I'm sure president Biden is not going to be losing any sleep because he's no longer able to get his

intelligence briefings. Pretty sure he's not going to be crying into his pillow at night because he doesn't get his security clearances that he's literally never going to use again. So Donald Trump may think that he's being vengeful and ha ha, I got you buddy. But really you're just coming across as a petty little tyrant throwing a temper tantrum because you're mad that the same thing happened to you. So you're doing it to a guy who could not care less about it. So you may think you won, but I'm pretty sure Biden's laughing about this. Oh, and by the way, speaking of, uh, things that are getting under Donald Trump's skin, it's not just that Biden revoked his security clearance. Another thing that got under Donald Trump's skin

within the last few days alone is the new cover of Time Magazine. In case you haven't seen it, Time Magazine is out with a new cover that shows Elon Musk sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. Of course, implying that Elon Musk is in fact, the individual that is calling the shots for the United States of America today. This goes along with the Democrats calling him president Musk and vice president Trump. And we know that those claims in the past that Elon Musk is running things. And I say in the past guy's been president for three weeks now. Um, but anyway, it's really gotten under Donald Trump's skin to the point where just a couple of weeks ago, the white house had to come out and say, no, Trump is in charge.

You know, this was right before the inauguration. His spokespeople said, listen, Elon Musk is going to do great work, but Donald Trump is the guy calling the shots. Make no mistake about it. Everything goes through Trump. They actually echoed that this past week with Elon Musk as well. Like, oh, he's doing great work, but make no mistake. Everything he does comes through me. It comes through this white house. He doesn't do anything unless we approve it. And then time comes out with the cover on Friday and Donald Trump just in shambles. So while he's meeting on Friday with the Japanese prime minister, a reporter asks him, hey, do you have a comment about the Time magazine cover? Donald Trump says no.

And then after a second or two, after saying no, this guy looks up at the reporter and says, is Time Magazine still in business? I didn't even know that. So he tries to take a dig at Time Magazine, right? Like, oh, they're so insignificant. I, I didn't even know if they existed anymore. Huh? Who, who reads time magazine? Who cares about it? Certainly not me. I don't even know if they exist. This is the same guy who two months ago was on the cover of time magazine as the person of the year. He also sat for a lengthy interview for that piece. So for him to sit there and say like, I, I didn't even know they were still in business. Yeah, you did. And you hyper-focus on them because it is

very important to you. You're trying to act like, oh, it's no big deal. If they, they put him on the cover behind my desk, I don't, I totally don't care, but you do. And it's driving you crazy. And I love every second of it because it hurts you so deeply. And you being a guy that doesn't know how to even process his emotions is just absolutely hilarious to me. And I'm going to soak in every single second of it because I'm enjoying watching you hurt and not knowing how to properly process what you're feeling inside. But then Donald Trump, again, knowing full well that Time Magazine still exists, because again, he sat for the interview. He celebrated the release of the cover by ringing the bell on Wall Street. You know, like a little kid who got

straight A's on their report cards. It was like, okay, you get to ring the dismissal bell. You get to make the announcements for the school. That's what he is. So he knew they existed. Don't fall for his crap. But then he goes off on this tangent about Elon Musk. And he says, Elon is doing a great job. He's finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste. You see it with USAID, but you're going to see it even more so with other agencies and other parts of government. He's got a fantastic, he's got a staff that's fantastic. Now it's important to remember that he said this the day after that staffer resigned after being tied to those horrifically racist posts on Twitter. So a staff that's fantastic. If you ignore the racist and you ignore the guy that was fired from his previous job for leaking

secrets, other than that, totally great children he has running that department. He's wanted to be able to do this for a long time, but everybody else knew it was existent, but I think never so much. When you look at USAID, that's a, that's a fraud. The whole thing is a fraud. Very little, very little being put to good use. Every single line that I look at in terms of events and transactions is either corrupt or ridiculous. And we're going to be doing that through our government. There it is. That's the line.

Did you pick it up? I hope you did. Cause he's like, I'm going through it. Every line that I see is total waste, total fraud, total abuse. So he's praising Elon, right? Cause that's what they want to talk about. But then he's got to throw in there like, but make no mistake. I'm the one going through it. I'm the one finding these things, not Elon, but Elon's doing great. He's a great guy.

Wonderful. Doing great things with a terrific staff. You're not doing any of it. You're really not. Oh. And by the way, they're, they're really not finding the things that, uh, they think they are. They've actually released, you know, plenty of like, oh, look what we found and it's nothing. It's gigantic, nothing burgers that are either totally taken out of context, misconstrued, misrepresented to the public, or the funds are so insignificant as to not even matter in the first place. That's what we're seeing here. But according to Donald Trump, Elon's doing a great job, but only because Trump is letting him do it. Now that of course, isn't that the only weird interaction Donald Trump had with reporters last week, while Donald Trump was signing his executive order, banning transgender athletes

from playing in sports, specifically just transgender women from playing in women's sports, which according to statistics, I think affects five people in the United States, five. So he signed an executive order specifically to screw over five people, but nevertheless, he signs this executive order and then he starts talking to reporters. And it's at this point where his brain just totally breaks. Here's what he said after signing that bigoted executive order. The room is packed. You know, I offered to build a ballroom. I'm very good at building ballrooms. I build beautiful ballrooms and I actually offered to build a ballroom for the white house. I was going to build it right there. He said, pointing off into the

distance. I was going to build a beautiful, beautiful ballroom. Like I have at Mar-a-Lago as beautiful as it can be. It was going to cost about a hundred million dollars. I offered to do it and I never heard back. So I'm going to try to make the offer to myself, you know, because we could use a bigger room. Now, ballrooms, the press, you know, offering to give yourself a government contract to build something that you actually say you're going to pay for yourself, but clearly you're not. None of those were the topic at hand, none of them. But something interesting that I picked up in that statement from Donald Trump, not only was it wildly off topic and not related to anything that they're, you know, uh, discussing, he used the word ballroom five times in just these couple of sentences here, like six sentences, five times. He uses the word ballroom four times. He used the adjective beautiful three of them in one sentence, right? I was going

to build a beautiful, beautiful ballroom. Like I at Mar-a-Lago, as beautiful as it can be. The same word three times in one sentence. So after I read that, for no reason in particular, I decided to look up some of the warning signs of dementia. And wouldn't you know it, repetitive speech is a common behavior in people with dementia. It's also known as a perseveration. Some of the causes for people with dementia to be repeating words over and over and over include basic memory loss. People with dementia may not remember what they've said or none. Emotional state. They may feel anxious, confused, or insecure.

Or environmental factors. They may be anxious, confused, or insecure. Or environmental factors, they may be bored, uncomfortable, or have a physical need. Some examples of this repetition that you see in people with dementia, repeating a word, phrase or question, yeah. Repeating a story or information, yeah. Using the same answer to multiple questions. Well, he wasn't asked a question about it. Staying stuck on a topic. Definitely one that we see with this guy. The reason I even bring this up is because before the 2024 election, we started to get

more and more and more reports from mental health professionals. You know, one of them, even in the New York times did a big piece on it of all of these health professionals warning us that there was something dangerously wrong with Donald Trump's mental capacity, you know, uh, psychological components, potentially neurological components. So not just, you know, the, the thoughts and feelings, but also the physiology of the brain itself. All of these people were out there telling us, we see the signs, we know what's happening, you know, short of being able to get brain scans. Typically these are warning signs and nobody listened. And now that, you know, ever since the election, those stories disappeared. His, his mental issues clearly didn't disappear,

but the stories did. The warnings did. I mean, not saying that those mental health professionals just went on their merry way and said to hell with it. No, I think at this point they're like, well, we did what we could. What else can we do? The guy's president now, we have no authority. We can't convince people to get rid of him. He's there. But the warning signs were there. The stories were there. The people, the experts were there. You know, if president Biden had said something like this, the press would still be talking about it today. And again, this happened last Wednesday. They'd still be talking about it. All the Sunday talk shows this past weekend would have been nothing but Biden's got some serious issues. He's repeating words all the time. They would

have brought on the mental health professionals. They'd be calling, you know, to use the constitution to get them out of office, but not with Trump. With Trump, it's just another day. It's just the way he is. No, these are warning signs. And whenever we see them, we need to address them, not as Trump being weird or crazy on online or in front of reporters. We need to call them what they are because these are symptoms. I'm Farron Cousins in for David Pakman. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Data brokers are continually collecting extensive details about your online behavior, address,

phone number, email, financial information, even political views. This sensitive information about you can easily be found on public data search sites by anybody. Could be an ex, could be an employer. Thank you, David. Spammers also get your details from these lists, and that's why you get the text messages on the calls and the emails. But you can stop it. Our sponsor, Incogni, will send removal requests to data brokers who are legally obligated to comply. If any of your information remains online, Incogni will follow up and ensure that it's taken down. Incogni keeps you informed every step of the way, and it just saves you countless hours

of work that would be nearly impossible to do on your own. I use Incogni and what they've managed to do is remarkable. Go to Incogni dot com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman for 60 percent off. That's I N C O G N I dot com slash Pacman for a huge 60% discount.com slash Farron balanced and youtube.com slash the ring of fire. And from even more for me, you can find me across social media, blue sky, Facebook, Instagram, Tik TOK threads at Farron balanced. We still have a lot more to talk about today.

So let's jump right into it. As we all know, the Trump administration is working overtime in order to try to kill the United States Department of Education. Elon Musk came out just a few days ago and announced that, hey, the DOE is dead. And of course, Republicans introduced legislation in January that would effectively kill the United States department of education effective on December 31st of the year, 2026. If that legislation passes right now, it's still in committee has not gone to a floor vote, but the legislation exists. And of course, that's a big piece of the puzzle because Donald Trump as president of the United States, Elon Musk as co-pres piece of the puzzle because Donald Trump as president of the

United States, Elon Musk as co-president of the United States, I guess we'll call him. They cannot get rid of a government agency. The only way to do that is through the same kind of legislation that created it. And Republicans do have majorities in both the house and Senate, but their majority in the house is razor thin. So who knows if they'll be able to pass it. But in the meantime, the destruction of the department of education is continuing. They're doing it by moving people out of the department, basically reducing the staff to the point where it becomes dysfunctional. And then they're going

to try to use that dysfunction as an excuse to get rid of it. It is this planned incompetence is what we need to look at it as. And of course, this was put in motion decades ago by Republican Grover Norquist. He said he wanted to shrink the government so small that you could drown it in a bathtub. And you do that by crippling these institutions from the inside out and then using the dysfunction that you created to show the public what, well, look how poor they are. Look how awful they are. The whole department is nothing but chaos. We need to get rid of it. And the public looks at it and says, well, yeah, you're right. It is doing pretty bad. Let's get rid of the department. And that's how you gain support for it. And right now,

across the country, there is actually a decent amount of Republican support for getting rid of the U.S. Department of Education, which would be an unmitigated disaster here in the United States for everybody. But as per usual, nobody would suffer more from the destruction of the department of education than Donald Trump's own voters. A new report from Axios has revealed that yes, indeed red States would be hit the hardest. If we got rid of the department of education, here is what they wrote. States that voted for Trump last November on average use more federal funding in their education apportions than States that voted for the former vice president Harris. That dependence is in large part because they're

just lower wealth States and they don't have the same capacity to step in and make up that difference. Average federal spending in the 2021, 2022 school year was 17% in Trump voting States compared to 11% in States that voted for Harris. At 23%, Mississippi had the highest proportion of federal public school funding that school year with South Dakota and Arkansas following with 22% each New York at 7% had the lowest, but New York still spins 33,444, uh, $440 per student per year. While Mississippi only spends 12,390 per student per year. So New York blue state spends more per student than any other state in the country and still takes less from the federal government than every other state in the country to fund their education system. So red States are going

to take the biggest hit, but you may be thinking to yourself, Farron, they're just getting rid of the department. They're not getting rid of the funding. The funding just won't have to go through the DOE. It'll be sent out to the States directly. Sure. And who's going to look over their shoulders to make sure that they're actually spending it on education because we're not going to have a department of education to do that, which is what they do now already. When these States, if the department of education is destroyed, right? When these States start getting this money from the federal government, because yes, I do think the federal government would still, still spend money. Nobody's looking over their shoulders to make sure it's actually going to

education because the states that need to be spending it on education are not just experiencing budget shortfalls in the education arena. They're experiencing budget shortfalls across the board, especially states like Mississippi, states like Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kansas. So when you have States that desperately need more money to continue to function and they get this money, even though it's, you know, you got to spend it on education. What they will do is they'll just pass a quick law that says any federal funding we received is now at the discretion of the governor of the state. And that governor can choose to reapportion funds to it, blah,

blah, blah. We've seen it happen in the past. So suddenly the money they are getting from the federal government to bolster the schools doesn't go to the schools. You don't get title one funding at all anymore, which of course is what's keeping a lot of these lower income red States afloat. So that would be gone already. So whatever federal funding you get is still going to be far less than what you're receiving now. The bottom line is that it's a disaster. Teachers will suffer. The children will suffer. Education overall is going to be destroyed in this country. And that's the plan. That is the goal. That is what they're trying to do here. And they don't care that the very people who put them in power are the ones who are

going to suffer the most, just like pretty much all of Donald Trump's other policies that are disproportionately affecting red States and his voters the most. And he simply doesn't care. Finally today, after talking nonstop about Republicans, let's talk about Democrats, right? They also still exist. They may not be in the majority anywhere anymore, but Democrats do still exist. They do still hold a little bit of power. The problem is in the Democratic party today, they got no leaders. Okay. We got a couple people every now and then that'll come out and say something profound or meaningful and, but no real single leader. You know, it's definitely not Chuck Schumer. It's definitely not Nancy Pelosi. It's definitely not

Ken Martin who just won the chairmanship of the DNC. So who is the leader right now? Well, if you ask me based on the things they have been doing and the things they have been saying, the person who needs to be the leader of the democratic party right now is none other than democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. And I'm going to point to two specific things that AOC has said within the last week alone that show that she understands what is happening in this country. I think just as well or better than any other Democrat in office today, because it's not about performative issues. Okay.

It's not about holding a press conference and saying, we're mad at these people. Oh, we don't like it. That's great. That's great. It accomplishes nothing. But if it makes you feel better, democratic leaders, go ahead and do it. In terms of changing or fixing anything, that does absolutely nothing. And I don't care for it. AOC on the other hand, got on social media, did a video, not a fancy video, you know, didn't have reporters all around her. She just had her phone and herself. And here's what she told American citizens. I want you all to understand that if you are watching the news right now, and you're feeling overwhelmed by all the constant headlines and developments and what's happening, first of all, know that you are not alone. And second of all, know that that is exactly what this administration is trying to get

you to feel. What authoritarian regimes try to do is they often try to do what is known as flood the zone. It's important for you to understand that the paralysis and shock that you feel right now is the point. They are trying to induce a state of passivity among the general public. We need to try. I don't want to hear, oh, we can't do that. That's impossible. That's called consenting in advance. So when your mind says it's all over, we might as well. No, no, no, no, no. Do not be discouraged by temporary defeats. We keep going anyway. When we are relentless, they will fatigue. They can only hold this up for so long. I think that is a powerful message. And I think it's a message that the democratic

party needs to deliver to the public at large I think it's a message that the democratic party needs to deliver to the public at large, because she's absolutely right about the flooding the zone thing. I mean, Stephen Miller, one of Donald Trump's top aides in the white house, literally said before they came into office, that's what they were going to do. Steve Bannon back in the first Trump administration came out publicly and said, this is what we're going to do. We're going to drive you crazy, send you into this fatigue by giving you so much insanity at once. You can't focus on anything. And I think for the most part, the main democratic party has already fallen into that trap. Eight days, eight days after Donald Trump issued his pardon for the Capitol rioters,

eight days later, because a lot of crazy crap happened in between that, but eight days later, what did the Democrats do? They called reporters and they held a press conference to talk about how they were unhappy about the pardons of the Capitol rioters. Eight days later, everybody else had kind of already been like, well, this sucks, but we know we can't change it. We've moved on. Trump went on and did his midnight massacre of the inspectors generals, all these executive orders, the mass deportations had started. So there were already like a dozen bigger outrageous since then. And then Democrats were like, all right, let's, let's go to our podium and I can stand here for five minutes and talk. That'd be great. No, AOC gets it.

I don't think the rest of the party does, but if you're not sold on her being the leader, then let me give you this. Last Sunday, she went on a podcast, Latino USA. She went on a podcast to talk about Donald Trump's mass deportations, as well as what that is going to do to consumer prices here in the United States. And she said one line that absolutely made me realize that she gets it in a way that most people do not. She said, first of all, for all the people who cast a vote based on grocery prices and inflation, if you think your groceries are expensive now, wait until the farms are empty. And then she said this, but let's be clear. The people who are voting in this way, oftentimes don't respond to a case of compassion and humanity. That's the line. And she goes on and she says, you know, if you want to be hard nosed about it, understand that America's

immigration force and our community of immigrants, including the, especially the millions of undocumented people in this country are why America has prospered. If you think houses are expensive now, wait until there's no one building. Then if you think that having someone in your home, take care of your ailing mother or grandmother while you have to go out and earn an honest living while you're at work. If you think that's expensive now, wait until that immigrant workforce is gone. So she's saying, understand the consequences of what this means, but she's talking in different terms. We all understand you are watching this program today because I'm assuming you understand the humanity and compassion side of it. Okay.

Just like you understand the humanity and compassion of foreign affairs, whatever they may be, you understand the disaster side of climate change and what that means for humanity. But I've been saying this for years. In fact, several years ago, doing a fill-in right here for David, I talked about this. There are some issues that even though there is mostly a humanitarian side to them, you can't talk about them in those terms because most people are not moved by them. And specifically at the time I was referring to climate change. So what I said then, which is exactly what AOC is doing here is, okay, you don't want to hear the humanitarian side of okay. You don't want to hear the humanitarian

side of it. You don't want to hear the, uh, you know, environmental side of it. What if I break it down and talk to you about these issues in economic terms? And that's what she's doing because she does understand that. Listen, nobody wants to, most people don't want to see these immigrants and migrants be, be tortured or be arrested and have horrible things happen to them. Most people don't want to see that at all. But at the end of the day, they don't experience it. What they do experience is the financial hardship that comes from those people getting kicked out. So appealing to somebody's humanity can only go so far because when it's not affecting them directly, it is very easy to just push it out of your head. Like, God, that sucks, man. I,

I hate seeing this on the news. So, uh, by news, okay, well that's gone. Now you may think that's flippant, but that is the way that the majority of people in this country, majority, excuse me, think once it's off the television or once they've scrolled past that video, whatever hurt they felt is gone or it will be gone in the next five minutes. So you have to change the way you address the topics. You have to come at these things in a unique approach to actually get people to care about it because the humanitarian side, I'm sorry, it's just not going to sell. And AOC understood that when she did this podcast and that's what she's talking about. If you don't want to talk about how horrible it is that we're treating these people like vermin, then what if I broke it down and I made it relate to you

economically and how it's going to personally impact your life, then you're going to think about it even longer. Okay. It's not going to be gone once you scroll past that video, it's still going to exist. And that is how you change minds. That is how you change voting habits. And that is how you get people to care about issues that they can otherwise push right out of their heads. That is why I think she is the leader that the democratic party desperately needs right now. That's all the time we have for today. I will be back tomorrow. And in the meantime, again, I encourage everybody, please go subscribe to my YouTube channels, youtube.com slash fair and balanced youtube.com slash the ring of fire.

I'm at fair and balanced across all social media. And we've got a wonderful bonus show coming up today for the members. So stick around for that. If you are a member, and we've got a wonderful bonus show coming up today for the members. So stick around for that. If you are a member, otherwise hope you have a wonderful day and I will see you tomorrow.