The David Pakman Show - 2/11/25: Judges strike down Trump orders, JD Vance doesn't care

Episode Date: February 11, 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 (David returns tomorrow) -- A federal judge says that Donald Trump is ignoring his order to resume federal funding -- A federal court prevents the Trump administration from sending immigrants to Guantanamo Bay -- JD Vance writes "judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power" -- Trump gets booed at the Superbowl and claims Taylor Swift was booed out of the stadium -- Trump allies suggest they will target New York Attorney General Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump's business -- Trump again threatens tariffs against Canada and Mexico -- A Trump voter is shocked to learn that Trump is purposefully damaging the economy -- A Minnesota law firm is suing Mike Lindell over unpaid debts -- Farmers are reporting missing millions of dollars from the Department of Agriculture -- Republican senators are largely silent over Trump's abuses of power, in fear that Trump and Elon Musk will retaliate -- On the Bonus Show: Trump fleeced supporters out of billions with meme coin, Democrats already want to impeach Trump, measles outbreak hits Texas, and much more... ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 📖 Buy “The Snooze Who Refused to Choose” at https://wobblewand.com 🥄 Use code PAKMAN for $5 off Magic Spoon at https://magicspoon.com/pakman ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman 💪 AG1 is offering you a FREE $76 GIFT when you sign up at https://drinkag1.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 from Ring of Fire and Farron Balance sitting in for David once again today. And wow, do we have a lot of stuff to cover. Donald Trump continues to get smacked down by the courts and now his own vice president, along with the real president, Elon Musk, are threatening to just not listen to the courts. A lot to talk about with all of that. Trump voters are suddenly realizing that he's brought nothing but chaos to the White House, much to their shock. But I guess they haven't been paying attention to the man for the last nine years. And Donald Trump went to the Superbowl on Sunday and did not have a good time and made sure that he let the entire country know about it. Uh, we've got all of that plus so much more coming up on today's show.

So let's get right to it. Donald Trump suffered yet another legal blow on Monday when a federal judge told him and his entire administration that you guys are violating my court order that said you couldn't freeze the federal funding that you had tried to freeze. And therefore you must immediately release all of that funding. That order was handed down by us district judge, John McConnell, when he said in his ruling quote, the broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is as the court found likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country. These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the order. In other words, I told you to unfreeze the funding. So by God, you better unfreeze the

funding because as we all know, Donald Trump had issued his initial executive order that said, Hey, we're freezing all the funding, the loans, the grants funding for these departments, everything is frozen. And the judge McConnell came out after it was immediately challenged in court and said, no, you actually can't do that. I'm putting a pause on your freeze, which was supposed to mean all the money keeps flowing. But Trump and his administration decided they didn't want to do that. So they kept the freeze in place against the court's orders. Now that money has to continue to flow. But what's really funny to me is that Trump's lawyers went in front of the judge. They were like, Hey judge, um, you know, we have to keep it frozen

because there's just, there's so much waste and fraud and abuse. So, you know, that's why we're, we're doing this. And the judge didn't buy it for a second. Like didn't even come close to accepting that as a viable argument. The judge said in response to that claim quote, the freezes in effect now were a result of the broad categorical order, not a specific finding of possible fraud. So Trump's people went to the judge and said, listen, there's so much fraud. We had to freeze it. And the judge is like, that's cool, but that's not why you froze it in the first place. Okay. So don't try to pull the wool over my eyes and tell me that you did it because of reason X when reason X didn't even exist when you did the order,

you know, here's the thing about Donald Trump, he and the people he's surrounded himself with, they're great at lying. You know, they can pull off massive cons on millions of people in this country. We have obviously seen it happen in the last three elections. We have seen it happen with the people conned into buying Trump sneakers or Trump coin, um, or any of his other horrible products. But the people he's not able to con are the judges for the most part, right? You know, you can lie to the public all you want, nothing we can do about it, but you go into the courtroom and you try to convince a judge that something that didn't happen somehow did happen. You're not going to win ever. Unless of course that judge's name is Eileen cannon. Then of course she'll buy it hook, line and sinker and you'll get off with everything.

But these judges like judge McConnell here, he's not fallen for Donald Trump's crap. And that's going to create a world of problems for them in the future. But this was not the only court case that Donald Trump suffered a major setback with. That happened on Monday. On Sunday, a federal judge decided to put a freeze on Donald Trump's plan to send up to 30,000 undocumented people to the prison base, Guantanamo Bay. As we all know, not that long ago, Donald Trump suggested, Hey, what if we start putting all these people were deporting into Gitmo, you know, out of sight, out of mind, you're not going to have protesters showing up there to shine a light on the abuses. This is a great place to go and hide these people

that we are deporting. Now that's not exactly what Trump said, but that is the reasoning behind it, right? We all know that we can see through what he's doing. If you ship them off to an Island that we're not even allowed to go to, obviously whatever happens to those people behind bars, there is going to stay hidden for as long as humanly possible. So that's the plan. So that's the plan and that's the reason. But a judge on Sunday said, absolutely not. We are not going to go through with this. So he has put a freeze or a temporary restraining order, I guess would probably be better on this plan to send these

immigrants to Gitmo. Here's something that I think a lot of people don't quite understand. When you're in the United States, whether you are a United States citizen or not, whether you are in this country legally or not, you are still protected by the laws of the United States constitution. And the constitution is actually pretty clear about cruel and unusual punishments, right? It's very clear about overly harsh punishments. Those are not things you are constitutionally allowed to do. If somebody crosses the border illegally or comes into the country legally on a temporary visa and then overstays the visa, not only is that only a misdemeanor, it is also not

a criminal matter in the courts. It is a civil matter. All immigration cases in this country are civil, not criminal. That is another thing that a lot of people do not know. So you can't take somebody who has violated some civil offense, especially a misdemeanor civil offense and send them to Gitmo. That is not how this works in the United States. And that of course is what this judge decided to tell the Trump administration. You simply can't do that. This is clearly unconstitutional. So this particular case that this judge made this ruling on on Sunday involved three detainees in new Mexico who had already, already been sitting in a, a new Mexico detention facility for months and months and months and months. They had not

had hearings yet. They had not gone through the legal process. They were effectively forgotten about by the justice system. So already the judge in that case was like, yeah, we've already mistreated these people enough. You're not going to send them to get Mo. But as usual, this is just a temporary order. And who knows if Donald Trump and his administration are even going to abide by it, because that brings us to the biggest story over the last couple of days, over the weekend, a federal judge is starting to see a pattern emerge here with all these federal judges. Right?

But on Saturday morning, a federal judge came out and said that no Elon Musk and your Doge office, you guys can not have access to the sensitive information inside of the U S treasury department. Uh, that that's simply not okay. Legally speaking, that's not okay because these individuals, these kids that Musk has working for Doge had access to who the treasury was paying, had access to your, you know, tax refund status and payment information, your bank account information, your social security number, quite literally all of the things that we're constantly told to protect online. These people had access to, and they didn't need access to according to the judge. So the judge says, no, you can't

have access. Now we're going to move forward with the court case, challenging this, but until that court case is resolved, no access for you, as you can imagine, because of this decision and because of all of the other decisions, I mean, we also got a judge smacking down Trump's birthright citizenship revocation. So Trump's not doing well in court and his friends and allies, Elon Musk and vice president JD Vance are very upset by this. So Elon Musk following the decision on Saturday posted this on his website, formerly known as Twitter, a corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached now. And then Musk also retweeted somebody who said this. I don't like the precedent it sets

when you defy a judicial ruling, but I'm just wondering what other options are these judges leaving us? The, the judge left you the only option that you need, which is Elon Musk can't have access to your personal data. Okay. Do you need more options than that? Because I don't think you do. I think you just need to go with what the judges say. You may not like it, right? We've all seen court cases in recent years. We've seen judicial rulings that we don't like that. We really despise and detest with every fiber of our being. Unfortunately, we have to accept it because that is the way the judicial system works. You don't just get to pick and choose like, well, the court says this, but, uh, I'm not going to do it. As if Elon Musk's posts weren't bad enough. As I mentioned,

vice president JD Vance also decided to weigh in on the issue, telling us all that he has no idea how the federal government works. The vice president of the United States doesn't understand federal government and that should scare the living hell out of you. But here's what JD Vance said on Twitter. If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. First of all, it wouldn't be illegal. Second of all, we actually do have military courts that get to decide on the legality of what the generals do. Okay. So you were in the military, J.D. Van, like, you know that. So right off the bat, you're doing a really bad job of telling people the truth because yes, we do have a military court system and they can rule on the legality of what generals do. There's a whole court system

for that specific thing. He continues. If a judge tried to command the attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Again, that's also something that happens fairly regularly here in the United States. It's happened with democratic attorneys general. It's happened with Republican attorneys general. They do something, it gets challenged in the court and the judge then says, plaintiffs, you're right. The DOJ can't do this.

So you're O for two, bud. Like the courts can't do these things. Yes, they can. And they do it on a regular basis. And then he continues, judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. Okay. Well, you're kind of right. They can't control the power that the president has, but they do get to interpret what powers the president has. They also have the authority under the United States constitution to interpret the legality of what the president does.

So, oh, for three there, vice president Vance, I suggest you learn how the United States judicial system actually works and how the executive branch works. And perhaps if you have time, because I know I'm giving you a lot of homework there, JD, maybe read the constitution. You know, it's just off the top of my head. Those are a couple things that you could do so that you don't say such stupid things on Twitter next time. The problem here, of course, is that we have two very stupid people. We have Elon Musk and we have the vice president of the United States arguing that the executive branch doesn't have to listen

to the courts. That's what an authoritarian regime does. This is not normal. This is not okay. This is very dangerous. This is how a banana Republic would operate. And if Elon Musk and JD Vance have their way, that is exactly where this country is headed. I am Farron cousins. If you want more from me, please go check out my YouTube channels. I've got two of them, youtube.com slash the ring of fire, youtube.com slash fair and balanced. I'm also all across social media. You can find me on any outlet at Farron balanced, Farron cousins sitting in for David Pakman on the David Pakman show. And we'll be right back. found hundreds of articles covering this story, which is an app I've trusted for years to help me

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the same vantage plan that I use. Go to ground dot news slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. One of our sponsors today is Winchester Wobble Wand Books, children's books by Winchester Wobble Wander designed to inspire a lifelong love of reading and creativity for children and families. And the latest book from Winchester Wobble Wand is called The Snooze Who Refused to Choose. This is a whimsical story that takes you into snooze town where the snooze would much rather nap than make decisions. But when the town's troubles grow and young voices plead for help, the snooze would much rather nap than make decisions. But when the town's troubles grow and young voices plead for help, the snooze faces a choice he can no longer ignore. It really is a

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Farron Balance sitting in for David Pakman once again today. And folks, I don't know if you know this, but, uh, we had a big football match on Sunday. It was super. No, seriously though, the Super Bowl was, of course, Sunday evening, kind of a lackluster game, depending on who you were going for. But just in general, if you weren't going for either team, just wanted to see a good game, you saw a blowout. But that's not what I want to talk about right now. What I want to talk about is the fact that, of course, the president of the United States on the taxpayer's dime attended the Superbowl in New Orleans. He did not have a good time. In fact, he left the game early. You know, I mean, it was a bit of a blowout, but he left the game early to get on truth social, to attack Taylor Swift. And of course,

to attack pennies in a separate post. But anyway, Donald Trump got on truth social following his early departure from the Superbowl on Sunday and had this to say, the only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas city chiefs was Taylor Swift. She got booed out of the stadium. MAGA is very unforgiving. So in case you're not familiar with what happened, Taylor Swift inside the stadium was shown on the Jumbotron at one point. And yes, members of the crowd booed just like when Donald Trump was introduced at the game, members of the crowd booed. I noticed he didn't put that little factoid in his truth social post, but Taylor Swift did get booed. Now she didn't, as Trump said, get booed out of the game. Um, there were some people in the audience who booed her. Maybe they were MAGA or maybe far more likely scenario

here. They knew that Taylor Swift, a former Philadelphia Eagles fan was pulling for the chiefs and they, the people booing wanted the Eagles to win. So it would make sense for the people booing, not because of her political beliefs, but because she was going for the opposing team. And they don't like that. If you've ever been to literally any live professional sporting event, that's what happens with the other team. When the other team runs out onto the field or onto the basketball court, they get booed by the home team. So when you take an event like the Superbowl and you got a lot of Eagles fans down there, um, they booed her because she's basically part of the chiefs. That's a very simple explanation and the most logical explanation of what happened.

But what Trump also doesn't realize is that just a couple months ago for several nights in a row, Taylor Swift packed the Superdome in New Orleans as part of her concert tour. It was so loud that you could feel the shaking of the stadium outside the stadium. Do you know how I know that? Do I have to actually admit it? I was there. So trust me, Taylor Swift doesn't have any issue with the people in new Orleans hating her. Um, they showed very clearly for again, several nights in a row that they absolutely loved her. You on the other hand, Donald Trump, you got booed. You didn't mention that you've been booed at every sporting event that you've gone to by at least some group of people. So again, not uncommon, but here's what gets me about this whole thing.

This man, this geriatric president of the United States, most powerful person on the planet next to Elon Musk, apparently, but decided to get on his social media outlet and attack one of the biggest pop stars the planet's ever seen. Why? Because he's mad she endorsed vice president Kamala Harris instead of him. Still, even though he won. That's how petty he is. That's how small he is. That's how disturbed he is. Like we should demand better from our leaders. We don't want vengeful, petty little troglodytes running the country, or at least we shouldn't. But that is apparently what we have. Now, as I mentioned, he also went on a tear about pennies a little while later, right? Like I've, I've attacked Taylor Swift.

Now let me go after the pennies. Um, and he said that he was going to abolish pennies because it does actually cost more to make a penny than a penny is worth. So maybe in the near future, we're going to have the abolition of pennies in the United States, which economists actually say would not be a smart move because it could cause rapid sudden inflation because prices would have to be rounded up because you wouldn't be able to give pennies as cheap. So it's a weird thing, but it's also a weird random thing for him to suddenly get mad about. It was weird for him to be mad about Taylor Swift, but it's

even weirder to be mad at pennies. I mean, did somebody give him some change after he bought concessions and he was like, ugh, get rid of these forever for everyone. I don't know. But all I do know is that based on his attitude after leaving the game and the fact that he endorsed the chiefs to win, uh, Trump did not have a very super football Sunday. And speaking of Donald Trump and his friends having weird random things to attack, a group of Donald Trump allies have announced that they are in possession of some very damaging information that could take down New York attorney general Letitia James on Sunday, multiple Trump allies posted on social media. One of them retweeted or re-truthed, I guess, by Donald Trump claiming to have

info that Letitia James actually committed the same crime that she prosecuted Trump's organization for first one, of course, was Roger stone. Roger stone got on truth social and said this a careful examination of New York attorney general Letitia James financial disclosures shows she inflated the value of her assets in order to get mortgages on various commercial properties. Exactly what she falsely accused president Trump of doing. Now that was the extent of his post. He did not have any links. He did not include any pictures of these financial disclosure forms. Roger Stone just came out and said, I looked at her financial disclosure forms and clearly she's inflated the value to get loans. I don't know if you've ever taken the time to look through a politician's financial disclosure

forms. It is a very boring and tedious task, but let me go ahead and tell you something. Do you know what you can not find on somebody's financial disclosure forms? You can't find the information that they gave to banks to secure loans. See that kind of information is actually protected. Now they have to put on there what property they own and how much the property's worth. They have to put on there the money they owe to any financial institution or individual or whatever it is. But there is no human way possible that Roger Stone was able to look at her financial disclosure forms and discern what she told the banks on her loan application in order

to secure money for property. That that's, that's not on there. It is simply not on there. Plus don't you think if it were on there that somebody in the DOJ would have already looked at that? I mean, because these are publicly available, right? And Trump controls the DOJ. He's got Pam Bondi as his attorney general. Don't you think let's just use a little bit of logic and common sense here. He would have told one of them like, Hey, look at this real quick. And then boom, done what they haven't. Um, because again, you can't discern that from the information available on a financial disclosure form. So Roger Stone doesn't have any receipts, but you know who says they do? Laura Loomer. She is the second Trump ally that added onto this claiming that she actually has

the receipts of some wrongdoing by Letitia James. Here's what she said. I have very damaging receipts on Letitia James, much more than what I posted last year, which was nothing, which was shared by POTUS. Very powerful people would be able to do massive damage with these receipts in their hands. Those powerful people have my number. They should call me. Here's a better idea. If you genuinely have these receipts, which you claim to have, post them. Okay. You don't actually have to wait by your phone to see if it's going to ring. You have a platform where you do writing. You have social media platforms. I'm pretty sure you have pages where you post videos. You have a TikTok,

an Instagram, whatever. You can just do it if you do in fact have what you claim to have. I mean, you did it last year. Why aren't you doing it this time, Laura? You just want people to wait a little bit, you know, have this corrupt attorney general in New York as, as you claim still on the job when you have information that could end her career. Listen, I don't have a, you know, a stake in this fight. I'm not even in New York. So Letitia, Letitia James, excuse me, is not my state attorney general, but if she broke the law, she shouldn't be in office. I believe that about any person. If you broke the law, you shouldn't be in office. So if you have this information,

go ahead and release it, right? They get, it doesn't really change anything. The problem is y'all don't. And that's the issue I have with MAGA in general, is you get these people that come out and make wild claims and you people just accept it. You're just like, okay then yep, that's the truth. There's receipts. She's corrupt. You got to see the receipts. You got to ask. You have to demand better of the weirdos that you have on your side telling you these lies. If Laura Loomer had the receipts, she would have released them. If Roger Stone had evidence that she was inflating her value of the properties in order to secure bank loans, he would have called Donald Trump and gone to him directly with it. The fact that neither of these people anything. But all that aside, we've got some very serious

things to talk about over the weekend during his interview on Fox news that aired prior to the super bowl, Donald Trump suggested that the tariffs that are currently paused on Canada and Mexico could be coming back a lot sooner than the 30 day pause that Donald Trump had initially put in place. Here is what he said during this Fox news interview. He was asked like, Hey, are these pledges from Canada and Mexico to do all these things you wanted them to do that they were already going to do in the first place, but they said they would do the things you wanted. Was it good enough? Was the question he was asked and he said, no, it's not good enough. Something has to happen. It's unsustainable and I'm changing it. The

great negotiator, the art of the deal, the deal maker after he made the deal now says I'm changing it. You can't do that. Um, that that's not how deals are made. That's how you screw people over. Absolutely. But in terms of just going back to Canada and saying, Hey, uh, you're going to have to give more. That is not the original deal. But again, I think what happened here is that Donald Trump has suddenly realized he got played. Canada was already going to do the vast majority of the things they agreed to do as part of this concession to not have the tariffs in place. Almost every bit of it was already approved by the country back in December before Trump was even president.

Mexico, same thing. Trump says, you have to send 10,000 troops to the border. Mexico says, oh, oh no. Okay. We will. They already had over 14,000 troops at the border. They actually get to send people home under this agreement. Trump got played. And I think that's what he finally realized. Maybe somebody close to him finally came up and said, listen, um, yeah, didn't go the way that you thought it went. So maybe that's why he's a little angry now. Maybe that's why he says he's going to have to change it, but it'll never be good enough. That's what everybody has to understand. No matter the concessions, even if Canada and Mexico come back and they make all new concessions, things they weren't already planning on doing, they can give Trump everything he wants on his wishlist. And then what's going to happen?

He's going to come back with more things you got to do. And maybe they'll do that too. And then the same thing will happen. And eventually it'll hit a point where these other countries, whether it's Canada, Mexico, or anybody else he's threatened with tariffs, they will all eventually say, no, I'm not going to do this anymore. I would love nothing more than for all of these tariff plans from Donald Trump to disappear. The tariffs are going to be devastating for the United States economy. We have a trade deficit with Canada. We have a trade deficit with Mexico. The tariffs are going to hurt us far more than they would hurt them ever because the retaliatory tariffs they're going

to put in place are far worse. And because their leaders are a little bit smarter, they're more targeted. Canada actually already had a plan. They were going to put retaliatory tariffs in place, targeting red States, making sure that the Trump voters are the ones who get screwed over the most from his tariff plan. So they're far more strategic. They seem to have a better understanding of how tariffs even work. And they're not going to play around much longer with this man. So if he says he wants to change the deal, good luck. I hope it works because I don't want this country to be screwed, but no matter the concessions they give, it'll never be enough for him. And eventually he will put those tariffs in place. Even though we, the people of this country,

will be the ones to quite literally pay the price for it. I'm Farron Cousins in for David Pakman. David Pakman dot com. Magic Spoon cereal has 13 grams of protein, zero grams of sugar and four net carbs. So you can feel good about what you're eating. The most popular flavors are fruity and cocoa, but there are many more. And if you're already a fan of Magic Spoon, I have big news. Magic Spoon has turned their super popular cereal into high protein treats that are light, crispy and crunchy and taste The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. If you're still using a free email service, your emails are often being scanned and tracked even after you delete them. Companies use the data to know everything about you and show you ads, even your most personal communications.

That's why I recommend you check out start mail. Unlike free email services, our sponsor start mail never scans or tracks your emails. Thank you, David. with just a few clicks. Start Mail also offers a business plan with unlimited domains, advanced phishing protection and shared aliases for seamless team collaboration. Go to startmail.com slash Pacman to get 50 percent off your first year. That's about two dollars a month for a personal plan or about three dollars a month for a business plan. Plus, get 25% off additional accounts for team members. That's S T a R T mail.com slash Pacman for 50% off. The link is in the podcast notes. Welcome back to the David Pakman show.

I am Farron cousins from ring of fire and fair and balanced, both of which you can find on YouTube. And I do encourage you, please do that. And if you want even more from me, you can find me across social media at fair and balanced. Doesn't matter if it's blue sky, Instagram, Tik TOK threads, or Facebook at fair and balanced. We'll get you right to me. Now let's get back into it because there's still so much to talk about today. Ever since Donald Trump got back into office, one of my favorite types of stories to do are stories about people who voted for Trump suddenly realizing, wait a minute, I'm getting screwed over here.

It is literally the, I never thought leopards would eat my face, said the person who voted for the leopards eating people's faces party. Uh, we have seen far too much of that since Donald Trump was elected. And here is yet another one with an interesting little twist to it. The wall street journal recently spoke to a lot of Trump voters about, you know, the economy, what they think is going to happen, what they think of what Donald Trump has done so far on the issue of the economy, which is nothing other than put tariffs in place and engage in mass deportations, which of course are driving prices up. But other than that, Trump's done nothing. And his voters seem to understand that.

But before I get to the voters being shocked at what's happening, let's talk about some of the other things that the wall street journal brought up in that article. First and foremost, they wrote that consumer sentiment fell about 5% in the university of Michigan's preliminary February survey of consumers to its lowest reading since July, 2024 expectations of inflation in the year ahead jumped from 3.3% in January to 4.3% in February. So a one point jump in a month, which has the paper says is very rare to see a full percentage point jump in a month, which has the paper says is very rare to see a full percentage point jump in inflation expectations. Morning consults recent index of consumer confidence too fell between

January 25th and February 3rd, driven primarily by concern over the country's economic future, which of course, economists, including some economists on the right have all warned us that across the board, Donald Trump's plans again, mass deportations and tariffs on everybody are going to drive consumer prices and inflation much higher. In other words, everything Trump wants to do is going to be very bad for you financially. So what do the Trump voters have to say about this? The wall street journal spoke to several, but the most important one was a Trump voter by the name of Paul Bisson. And here's what Mr. Bisson, my apologies if I'm mispronouncing that name, but here's what he had to say about

what's happening with Trump and what's going on in Washington, DC. He said, quote, I don't like the turbulence. I don't like the chaos in the market. His policies have led to that chaos. A hundred percent correct. No notes. Very good statement. But then he kept talking and then he said about the tariff threats. He said that will make the economy worse. And that's not what we signed up for. Isn't it though? I mean, listen, Donald Trump told a record number of lies while he was in office during

his first term. He has lied nonstop about the 2020 election since leaving office, lied about the documents, lied about the legal cases, lied about the prosecutors, lied about Taylor Swift. He's lied about everything and continues to do so to this day. But I will give full credit to Donald Trump because one thing, eh, part of one thing he has never lied about is that he wants to put tariffs on other countries. Now, the part of that, that he's lied about is that the other countries pay them. No, they don't. And I think the voters have woken up to that, but he has never said, I will not put tariffs on a country and then put tariffs

on them. He has been very open, very transparent and very upfront about the tariffs. He campaigned on it. So for Mr. Besson here to tell us like, we didn't sign up for this. We didn't vote for that. Yes, you did. You can blame a lot of things on Trump. He hoodwinks people. He's manipulative. He's conniving. He has all those horrible things rolled into one, but you can't blame him for the tariffs because he told you he was going to do it. And that's why this particular, you know, Trump voter makes me so angry. Like that's not what we signed up for his literal quote. That's not what we signed up for. Show me during his campaign where he said he would not put tariffs in place. You can't do it because it doesn't exist. Now show me where he said, we're going to put tariffs on everybody. Hell,

that's a five second Google search. And you've got more sources than you could ever imagine because he told us repeatedly, adamantly, honestly, with the exception of who pays for them, that he was going to do this. So again, I don't defend Donald Trump very often, if at all, but on this one, he told you he would do it. So you can't come back to us and say, well, this isn't what we signed up for. No, it's literally exactly what you signed up for. And I have sympathy. I probably shouldn't at this point, given the number of stories we have seen about these Trump voters suddenly realizing, Oh no, the leopards are eating my face. But I do still have a tiny iota of sympathy because this man also talks about, you know, he was hoping to retire

in the not too distant future, but he says, we've already cut back. There's no more cutting back to do. So for him personally, his financial situation based on what he told the wall street journal, it's not doing well. And of course it will get worse under Trump, but you voted for it. He was upfront about it. He told you we were going to have mass deportations. Then the economist told you that's going to drive up the prices of everything. He told you he was going to do the tariffs. And then the economist told you that's going to drive up the prices of everything. So if you're upset about it, I get it. And I'm right there with you. I'm not happy about it either, obviously. But to say that it's not what you signed up for is just dishonest. You did make that choice. And if you didn't know that he was going to do the

tariffs, then it's because you were not paying attention. You were not an informed voter. This was not information that was hidden. It was in conservative media. It was in liberal media. It was in independent media, corporate media. Everybody talked about it prior to the election. So if you made the choice to vote for somebody after consuming no news or information about them at all, that's on you. That's not Donald Trump's fault that you were not an informed voter. Now, I don't want to sit here. I'm not trying to victim blame or anything like that, but

there does come a point where these individuals who openly picked this have to acknowledge their mistakes because this isn't acknowledging a mistake. This is like, Hey, I was just taken by surprise. You shouldn't have been. And if you were that's on you because everybody tried to warn you, even conservative media tried to warn that, Hey, the tariffs, not a great idea. People in Trump's white house right now are warning him. Hey, the tariffs, not a great idea. The information was out there. And if you chose to ignore it, that's not on Trump. That's on you while we're on the subject of Trump supporters, uh, being a bit unhappy, the biggest Trump supporter of them all out there that I think has kind of disappeared from the news, which is unfortunate because I love talking about him.

My pillow CEO, Mike Lindell, where the hell is he gone? Right? I mean, for the last four years, every other day, there's like a new Mike Lindell story. He's got a new wild claim. He was going to send the drones out to monitor the election and then Trump wins and a Lindell just kind of disappears. Well, I am happy to tell you folks that he is officially back in the news and not for a good reason. Not that Mike Lindell was ever in the news, you know, because something great happened with him. Nope. He's back in the news because he is being sued again, this time by a law firm for not paying legal fees. But don't worry. It's not his own lawyers that he didn't pay the legal fees for. No, no, no, no. It's part of a settlement that he agreed to last year

to pay legal fees for a group of a call center employees who had sued him for not paying overtime and sometimes not even paying real time wages. And as part of the settlement, he agreed to pay the legal fees for these people that had sued him. And according to the new lawsuit from the law firm, he hasn't done that either. Let me read you this from law and crime. In the underlying class action lawsuit, uh, the plaintiff sued my pillow as the lead plaintiff and representative on behalf of several call center employees. The plaintiffs claimed violations of federal for a federal law for failure to pay overtime wages and violations of state law for failure to timely pay straight time wages. According to an April, 2023 federal court decision in March of 2024,

the parties moved to settle in May of 2024. The court approved the settlement agreement. The company agreed to pay $36,866 and 38 cents to resolve the federal and state labor law claims. And he also agreed to pay $75,000 in legal fees for the plaintiffs. Now here's where things get a little bit murky. He initially paid the overall amount, right? The 36,000 like, okay, I owe 36,000 in back wages. Here you go. But one of the people who was part of the settlement said, Hey, uh, you actually sent the check to an address where I no longer live and I have no way to get it. Can you please reissue the check? Because technically if you don't give me the money, the settlement is not being honored.

After several attempts by that individual's lawyers to get Mike Lindell to send the 600, what is it like $686, I think, or $676. That's it. Like just reissue a check, cancel the first check, reissue a new check. And then you obviously still have to pay the 75,000 in legal fees. It never happened according to law and crime here. So after multiple attempts to get the $676, that individual had to go to the law firm who then filed another lawsuit and said, okay, you owe us the 676. You still owe us the 75,000. And by the way, because you're putting us through all this, we're going to ask the judge to tack on even more legal fees that you will have to pay us all because you didn't want to send the initial $676 again. And again, this employee tried multiple times to just get them to reissue

the check and they never did. I don't think I have ever seen anybody fall from grace so badly as Mike Lindell has. And to be honest, it is kind of sad. Like, listen, I don't like anything the guy stands for. I don't believe anything he says with regard to the elections, but he used to just be kind of the lovable goofball from the pillow commercial, hugging the pillow. And you know, it was fun. And from all the people that I've talked with that I've met with him personally, including David, he's like one of the nicest guys ever. Now we've seen him lose his temper a couple of times on video, but in general, he's a very nice guy. You know, I've spoken with folks, producers over at TYT who met with him and they're like, he really is the nicest guy. So you feel kind of bad for him a little bit

because none of these, well, this legal problem probably would still exist, but a lot of his legal problems. And by the way, the list is almost endless. Wouldn't exist if he hadn't thrown his lot in with Donald Trump. And then of course, become the election denier that everybody knows him for today. He would have still been the lovable goofball with the pillows, but let me read you this laundry list of lawsuits. He's still facing from law and crime in a long running lawsuit. Lindell management, LLC has been repeatedly rebuked by the courts for its refusal to pay the winner of a prove-my-wrong challenge. In March of 2024, a Minnesota county judge ruled against MyPillow in an eviction hearing, finding that the company owed over $200,000 in unpaid rent for a warehouse in Shakopee.

In January, a judge ordered MyPillow to pay $777,000 to a delivery company. Days later came a double whammy. Another judge ordered Lindell to pay over $50,000 for a frivolous lawsuit. He filed against voting software company, smart Matic and his, uh, my pillow related corporate entities have sued a collection of merchant cash advance companies over allegedly usurious loans. Um, and there is some updates on that. He is not doing well in that lawsuit because you agreed to the terms. Yes. These, you know, payday advance groups, but he also admitted, um, back in, I think 2023, he's like, I got no money left. I spent it all in this election stuff and I'll keep doing it. You wouldn't

have had to go to the payday lenders if you hadn't just blown all your money chasing rainbows, but that's what you did with all the election fraud stuff. You wouldn't owe that guy $5 million in the prove Mike wrong challenge. You did this to yourself because you were cozying up to Donald Trump and how has he repaid you? Like what have you gotten out of it other than a bunch of lawsuits? You're not serving in the administration. He didn't pick you to be in the cabinet. You got nothing. Your business, according to basically what you said, has been destroyed. Your life has been destroyed. Your reputation has been destroyed. Kind of like Rudy Giuliani. You did all the leg work for Donald Trump

and all you have to show for it is financial ruin. We got to take another quick break. I am Farron Cousins in for David Pakman. We'll be right back. cappuccino every morning. This way, I don't have to mathematically figure out, am I getting every vitamin and mineral I need from my diet? I do the best I can, but the AG1 just covers me. I drink it straight with water because I like the taste. You could put it in a smoothie, juice, shake. AG1 is just a sustainable routine for me because it's a scoop, one minute, once a day. That is it. I also love the travel packs, which let me take AG one anywhere I go. I've got the big pack of AG one at home and AG one is offering new subscribers, a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of D three K two Welcome back to the David Pakman show. I am Farron cousins from ring of fire and fair and balanced sitting in for David today.

And as this is the last segment of the regular show, please let me encourage all of you go subscribe to my YouTube channels. I've got two of them, both political, same stuff I've been talking about the last couple of days here, uh, youtube.com slash Farron balanced and youtube.com slash the ring of fire. And you can find me across all of social media at Farron balanced. Now let's round out the day with a couple more horrible stories about horrible things happening in this country. According to a new report from the Washington post farmers across the country are on the hook for millions of dollars because Donald Trump has frozen the funding of the United States

Department of Agriculture. Here's what's going on according to the Washington Post. On his first day in office, President Trump ordered the Agriculture Department to freeze funds for several programs designated by President Joe Biden's signature clean energy and health care law, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The freeze paused some funding for the department's Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which helps farmers address natural resource concerns, and the Rural Energy for America Program, which provides financial assistance for farmers to improve their infrastructure. Farmers who signed contracts with the agriculture department under those programs paid up front to build fencing, plant new crops, and install renewable energy

systems with guarantees that the federal government would issue grants and loan guarantees to cover at least part of their costs. Now with that money frozen, they are on the hook. In other words, as part of the inflation reduction act, president Biden made a deal with farmers across America. We need you to plant different crops. We need you to plant new crops. We need you to invest in renewable energy, but in order to get you to do that, we're going to cover at least some of the cost. And in a lot of instances cover 100% of the cost. We are trying to bring innovation. We are trying to help you and we are willing to pay you for it. So sign up for the program, which is a contract with the U S government. We're letting you know that we've got your back and we will take care of this. So lots of farmers took them up on that deal.

It's a great deal. And as they sit there waiting for this money to come back, which is actually to the tune of billions of dollars, they're not getting paid, which means the loans they took out to pay for these things, you know, whether it's build a new fence or install solar panels, they don't have the money to pay it because the money is supposed to be coming from the federal government. But Donald Trump, as he's known to do screwed over these farmers. They don't know how they're going to make ends meet. According to the article, they don't know how they're going to pay off these loans without defaulting. Now, of course, as we know, we did

have a federal judge on Monday who told the Trump administration, listen, I told you to unfreeze this money and you're violating the court order. But given the fact that Trump's already violated the court order once, that's no guarantee that he is going to release all the funds. So maybe they get the money. Maybe they don't. In fact, one farmer did say that she applied like, Hey, I'm ready for my reimbursement, but was told that her reimbursement payment was rejected due to Trump's executive order. So they're literally telling these people, no, Trump signed an order. We're not paying you even though we have a contract. And Elon Musk's Doge office says, we're looking at all of these things.

Maybe, maybe some people won't end up getting paid. They are trying to back out of the deals that they made with American farmers at a time when American farmers are probably getting hammered the most from Donald Trump's policies. We have already seen reports going back to the first week of this administration, you know, a big two and a half weeks ago, but we had reports of the migrant workers who were working on farms in South California. All the migrants stopped showing up because they were afraid if they all showed up there and there was a big group of them, they were going to be subjected to an ice raid and all be deported.

The same thing happened, uh, happening right now down here in my state of Florida, it's happening in the rust belt. It's happening in the Bible belt. It's happening all across the country now where these farmers are already struggling to get the people to show up. And of course, when the mass deportations, you know, continue and more and more people get kicked out of the country. These farmers have already told us we won't have anybody to pick the crops. We won't have anybody to do the work, which means you guys and the rest of the country, you're not going to have food. And what little you do have, the prices are going to skyrocket because

there's going to be scarcity all around. The only thing that's going to be abundant is scarcity at this point. On top of that, the tariffs, these are the same farmers that already got screwed over during the first Trump administration. When he put his first trade war in place, these farmers got hit the hardest to the point where we saw a record number of farms go into bankruptcy as a direct result of Trump's trade war. What did he do? Well, he waited till right before the 2020 election and started having the USDA send them checks, personal checks, not even like we'll, we'll subsidize your farm, literally giving

them cash to try to buy back their vote. So they got screwed over there. They're getting screwed over on the immigration issue, screwed over on the tariff issue. And now they're getting screwed over because the government program they signed up for to do what the government wanted them to do is frozen because of Donald Trump's executive order. These people, these farmers are pretty much the backbone of this country. They're definitely the backbone of everything on your plate. And this is what they're going through. If these farms start to shut down because they can't pay back their loans or they don't have workers in the fields, or they simply have to raise prices to the point because of tariffs that they can't, you know, we can't afford the food

anymore. We are in trouble folks. I never in my life imagined that we here in the United States in the year 2025 could be facing a food crisis, but that is what is awaiting us because of Trump's policies. The farmers have told us that it is not hyperbole. It is not an exaggeration. It is what the people who grow the food are telling us is probably going to happen. And how is this administration responded by making their lives even more difficult. Finally today, Elon Musk, God, I wish I could go a day without talking about Elon Musk, but this is the world we live in now. According to a new report from the Hill, along with a piece from the New York times that

happened to be a profile of right wing, uh, activist talking head, whatever you want to call them, Charlie Kirk. There is a reason why Republicans in the United States Senate, even if they have objections to some of Trump's nominees, there is a very good reason why they are of course going along with everything Trump tells them to do. And that is again, according to both Charlie Kirk and the New York times and reporting on the Hill, because they're terrified. These Republican senators, some of whom have served in there, you know, 10, 20, 30 years in the case of Mitch McConnell,

40 years are terrified that Elon Musk is going to fund a primary challenger against them and cost them their job. So they have decided to forfeit their backbones to get rid of any independent thinking they may have in their head, just so they can keep their job, a job that they're telling us they're not going to do properly because they're afraid of losing their job. How ironic is that? Right? Like, well, I don't want to object to these people. I don't want to vote my conscience or vote my morals or vote my brain. So I'm just going to do what that guy tells me to do. Otherwise I'm not going to be here to do what that guy tells you to do. Like, do, do we need you there? Do you have a job worth saving if you're not going to exercise your independence? Right? I think that's the big irony that of course, neither the New York times piece nor the piece

on the Hill mentioned. These people are so desperate to save their jobs that they're not willing to do their job, which means they shouldn't even have the job. Huh? Kind of funny how things like that work out, right? And of course the media never bothers to mention the most common sense pieces of the articles that they're writing. But the threat of primary challenges is of course, very real. Not because Charlie Kirk says, Oh, I'll go out there and get the people. Sure. You will Chuck, whatever the real threat is that the world's richest human being is the one doing the threatening. So when Elon Musk says, I'll pay $50 million to have somebody run against you, he'll do it. If he has to spend a hundred million, he'll do it. If he has to drive

himself into bankruptcy, he'll probably do it. And I hope he does. That would be hilarious. But there's one thing that I think a lot of these Republicans in Washington, DC simply don't understand about American politics, which is also ironic because they're in American politics, but they're so in it that they can't see the forest for the trees, right? Here's what it is. You have the threat of a primary challenger, but not just a different Republican. Okay. It's going to be a MAGA loyalist. So you would have to run against a MAGA loyalist, a hard, right. Trump is the best thing to ever happen to the world person in your primary. And what a lot of these people in DC, the Republicans aren't taking into consideration is, can that even work in my state? I mean, listen, I know that Trump won a lot of

states, a lot of states where these Republicans are representing right now. But at the end of the day, we also saw a lot of ticket splitting. Great example, Arizona. Arizona went for Donald Trump. Carrie Lake, huge Trumper, also on the ballot for the Senate. Do, do, do you see Senator Carrie Lake in Washington, DC? Nope. Because what's good for the top of the ballot is not always what's good for the rest of the ballot and so on. So the threat of a MAGA primary challenger should not actually be that terrifying to most Republicans in this country. Now, are there areas of the country where a MAGA challenger could absolutely unseat a moderate? Absolutely. The problem that Elon Musk and Donald Trump has is that those States already have MAGA senators, like, you know, Alabama, Louisiana, you already got MAGA guys, South Carolina,

you got Lindsey Graham. Okay. So a MAGA challenger could win there, but you're not going to have one because you already have the MAGA people. Now you start venturing out into other parts of the country, right? North Carolina. You think a MAGA challenger is going to win in North Carolina? I don't. Do you think a MAGA challenger is going to win in, you know, the rust belt? I don't. So the threat isn't that big of a threat when you start to look at it and analyze it critically. But these Republicans aren't doing that because they're being told you're not allowed to think

critically. You have to do whatever we tell you to do. And if you don't, we're going to send a MAGA challenger over to your purple state and let's see how that works. Probably not as good as they think. And by the way, it's the same thing. And I've talked about this before. It's the same thing on the left too, right? Because I've seen a lot of people that have suggested that, oh, you know, a Democrat would have won here if they were more progressive. You know, if you had like a Bernie Sanders type, you probably could have won that race. No, you can't. Like you can't take a Bernie Sanders type, you know, really far left guy and have them win in the state of Florida. That'll never happen. You can't stick somebody like that in Texas and have them win. That's not going to happen. You can't do it in West Virginia,

right? That's why Joe Manchin, as horrible as he was, that's why he kept winning. If he had been more to the left, a Republican would have taken over. You've got to know the country. You got to get outside of your bubbles for the most part to understand that some politicians, whether it's far right, mid right, mid left, far left, some work in different areas of the country. Some don't it's a hodgepodge, right? That's kind of what makes the country great. So these Republicans that are terrified of primary challengers, aren't looking at their state critically and thinking,

well, wait a minute. I know Trump did win the state, but that doesn't mean there's a MAGA people. He was the only choice there. You look at other red states, which again, mostly purple states, the MAGA person didn't win. So that's all I'm saying. I mean, look, Herschel Walker from Georgia didn't win back in 2020. So there's a lot of areas, right? Or 2022, I guess it was, but anyway, a lot of areas, even Republican areas were super far, right? MAGA people simply don't stand a chance, but these spineless Republicans have been told for too long to not think about things. So they don't seem to realize that these threats from Elon Musk are likely toothless.

That is all the time we have for today, folks. I want to thank David and of course, producer Pat for letting me sit in here for the last two days. Again, if you want more from me, youtube.com slash the ring of fire, youtube.com slash fair and balanced across social media at fair and balanced. Thank you so much for watching. And for the members, I got a great members only show coming up for you in just a little bit. So thank you everyone for tuning in. Hope you have a great day and I will see you next time. David decides to go on vacation and is kind enough to ask for me to sit in for him. So thank you, David. Thank you audience. Have a great day.