The David Pakman Show - 2/18/25: The future for Democrats, Elon's job may be illegal

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Evaluating fears that Democrats will never win again -- Donald Trump laughs while Elon Musk complains to Sean Hannity that liberals don't like him anymore -- Fox hosts are visibly confused as they wrongly claim the money Elon Musk is saving will go to people to help them buy houses -- Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump's Press Secretary, wildly claims that "tens of millions" of dead people are receiving Social Security money -- Elon Musk's job appears to be illegal -- Tom Homan, Donald Trump's deportation czar, says twice on national television that he has asked the DOJ to investigate Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- Tim Pool and Milo Yiannopoulos suggest, without evidence, that The David Pakman Show is receiving money from USAID potentially through shadowy non-profit organizations -- The US National Anthem is once again brutally booed in Canada -- On the Bonus Show: Trump suggests no laws are broken if he's "saving his country," Milei accused of crypto pump and dump, Elon Musk says team behind CBS's 60 Minutes deserves a "long prison sentence," much more... 🍵 Pique: Get 20% OFF delicious Pu’er Teas at https://piquelife.com/pakman 📖 Buy “The Snooze Who Refused to Choose” at https://wobblewand.com ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 👂 MDHearing: Use code PAKMAN to get a pair for just $297 at https://shopmdhearing.com/ 🍷 Naked Wines: Use code PAKMAN to get 6 bottles for $39.99 at https://nakedwines.com/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David -- 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

Speaker 1 Speaker 3 Speaker 1 Speaker 3 Speaker 4 Speaker 1 Speaker 5 Speaker 6 Speaker 6 Speaker 7 Speaker 8 Speaker 9 Speaker 10 Speaker 11 Speaker 12 Speaker 13 Speaker 14 Speaker 15 Speaker 16 Speaker 17 Speaker 18

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Speaker 43 Speaker 42 Speaker 43 Speaker 44 Speaker 45 Speaker 41 Speaker 45 Speaker 46 Speaker 46 Speaker 47 Speaker 47 Speaker 48 Speaker 49 Speaker 51 Speaker 52 Speaker 52 Speaker 53 Speaker 54 Speaker 56 Speaker 57 Speaker 58 Speaker 51 Speaker 52 Speaker 53 not going to stay on top forever. But when you look at the Democratic Party and how it seems impotent and failing, I find myself asking, will Democrats ever win again? In other words, the fact that no party wins forever is true. But also, is this a Democratic Party that can defeat anybody? And it's a fair question. And I think couching it like that, the way many of you are doing makes sense. Historically, we know that there is a cyclical aspect to political power, even though at

the 30,000 foot level, things may be moving one way or the other. And I believe in general they are moving towards the left rather than the right with regard to beliefs about most issues. We still have to understand the cyclicality of individual election cycles. And remember when the Republican party believed after Ronald Reagan's 1984 landslide, we've locked it up. It's going to be decades. And then of course, in 1992, just eight years later, Bill Clinton became president and then easily won reelection in 1996 and what we're supposed to be eight years of Republican rule ended up being a bill Clinton's democratic, uh, administration. Democrats also assumed that Barack Obama's 2008 blowout would be the mark of a new progressive

era. Two years later they got clobbered in the midterms. Yes, Barack Obama won in 2012, but then in came Donald Trump, who now will hold the White House for eight of 12 years by the time his second term is all said and done. So the point here is we understand cyclicality, but when you look at the parties right now, there are people saying Democrats just need to wait out Republicans. That's all that needs to happen. And sooner or later, the party in power is going to face a backlash, especially when they overreach and Republicans

are overreaching. That's the optimistic view. Democrats don't really have to do anything particularly special. But then there's another side to it. And here's the thing. Simply waiting two or four years might not be enough if Democrats keep making the same blunders that they have become known for. When you look at gerrymandering and voting restrictions, this isn't 2008 anymore and the playing field has been tilted by years of redistricting and new barriers to voting and Democrats waiting for political winds to shift isn't going to change for political winds to shift. Won't fix that problem at a structural level.

The messaging failures. Democrats can't just say the other side is bad. Vote for us. It might motivate the base, but it doesn't really do much for swing voters who want a clear and consistent vision. When you look at intra party chaos, progressives versus centrists, to put it extremely simply, even though I understand it's more complex and nuanced than that. That is a rift that often explodes into the public. And it certainly did not help in the 2024 election. Is that something that's going to be dealt with? And unless Democrats figure out

how to unify or at least collaborate across factions, support is going to keep hemorrhaging. Now we talk about how the winners always think they'll never lose again. Right now that's Republicans. They are riding high and to a degree they believe they will never lose again. They say, no, no, no, this was different. Even though Trump, you know, remember most voters voted for someone other than Trump. Trump got under 50% of the vote. Someone other than Trump was more than 50% of the vote. Sometimes on the other side of winners thinking they will never lose, uh, is that losers think they will never win again. And that's also a mistake because Republicans are not invincible.

They have their own internal battles. Historically, they overreach and then it bites back at the ruling party, whether it's privacy overreaches, whether it's foreign policy and extensions of the military and of course the economy. If the economy dips, voters tend to blame whoever is in charge. And I know that we all understand that Republicans are much better at blaming Democrats for things Democrats have nothing to do with than Democrats are at blaming Republicans. I get that. But at the same time, you can nothing to do with than Democrats are at blaming Republicans.

I get that. But at the same time, you can only do that so much and to to a certain degree. And when you look at egg prices, when you look at the tariff program, when you look at everything that's going on right now and it points, at least theoretically, if it continues to a problematic economy for the average American, that's going to be a problem. And if the economy is not clearly good and Republicans keep pushing too hard on social issues on things like do we want to gut Social Security? Do we want to impose extreme abortion bans? They risk driving moderates away.

And if the party fractures between the MAGA loyalists and the establishment conservatives in a way that actually affects their ability to coherently explain why anyone should vote for them, it will crack the foundation of their power. But then we get back to Democrats. Democrats can't rely on those scenarios playing out. Democrats need an offensive strategy, not a defensive one. And the down ballot focus reclaiming state legislatures and governorships and off your elections. It's all critical.

And I don't really see Democrats doing anything right now other than waiting for a big national wave in their favor. And it misses that real power starts locally in many cases. So if I were advising Democrats and I'm not and I'm terrible at this stuff and I also don't care about the Democratic Party beyond, is it the best option in this election cycle? I'm not a Democrat. I've never been a Democrat. As all of you know, I just vote for whatever the best option is.

And I see political parties mostly as, as corporations that exist, uh, to justify their own existence. Democrats do need policies that resonate across the spectrum. And so yes, healthcare affordability is part of it. Sustainable jobs as part of it, protecting fundamental human rights as part of it. But as we saw in 2024, uh, appearing to take more seriously issues of crime and immigration when it was what many Americans wanted. And you can say, David, they only Americans only believed crime and immigration were important because Republicans tricked them into believing that fine.

I wouldn't even argue against that. But if Americans have come to believe that it's important, then you can't be seen as not caring about those issues, which is not what I'm saying was the case, but it's certainly the way that it appeared. And the internal food fight is going to have to stop. I get that there are disagreements over policy. They are inevitable, but it can't be seen as the airing of dirty laundry because it gives opponents ammunition. It confuses voters, uh, and it leads to lower engagement. And that's the kind of last

aspect of this. Engage every single election, midterms, off your elections, local races, skipping them only entrenches the GOP power. And so Democrats do have to fight everywhere, every time. So if we zoom out, will Democrats ever win again? Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't seem as though the duopoly is going to be replaced soon enough for Republicans to lose without Democrats winning. When Republicans lose, at least in the next few cycles, it will lead to or it will mean that Republicans have won. But Democrats do need to get serious about structural issues and strategy. They can't just wait for the pendulum to swing back. And people keep telling me, you know, Republicans are going to implode.

Trump's going to implode. It's all going to implode. Sure, that that almost certainly will happen. But Democrats need to understand and seize on the real opportunity to shape the direction that that goes rather than just waiting around. So let me know what you think. Do you see the path forward? Do you feel that there is a lost cause here? that that goes rather than just waiting around. So let me know what you think. Do you see the path forward?

Do you feel that there is a lost cause here? We will certainly continue to talk about it. I have another preview to play for you of tonight's interview on Fox news by Sean Hannity of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. They are slowly excreting out on X little bits and pieces of this completely farcical interview. Now, yesterday I pointed out to you that it doesn't scream. I'm the one in control. When is the president of the United States? You sit down with the guy that everybody thinks is really in charge and it almost seems like he's kind of babysitting you.

That does not scream strength and power. We now have another little clip that I will play in which you will see Elon Musk bemoan. The left used to love me, but they don't anymore. But pay careful attention to the reason he thinks the left doesn't like him anymore. Check this out. Speaker 2 Speaker 3 to the reason he thinks the left doesn't like him anymore. Check this out. Now you're going to rescue astronauts. And now, again, you do you do all of this. I would think liberals would love the fact that you have the biggest electric vehicle company in the world. Yeah. I mean, I used to be adored by the left. Not anymore. Less so these days. He killed that, huh? I mean, I really didn't. I mean, it's this whole by the left, you know. Not anymore. Less so these days. He killed that, huh? I mean, less so. I really didn't.

I mean, this whole sort of like, you know, they call it like Trump derangement syndrome. And I didn't, you know, you don't realize how real this is until like it's, you can't reason with people. So like I was at a friend's birthday party in LA, just a birthday dinner. And it was like a nice quiet dinner and everything was, everyone was behaving normally.

And I happened to mention, this is before the election, like a month or two before after I mentioned the president's name and it was like they got shot with a dart in the jugular that contained like methamphetamine and rabies. Okay. And I'm like, isn't Elon so funny? You can tell because Hannity's laughing. What is wrong guys? Like you just you can't have a normal conversation. And it's like it's like that become completely irrational. I hate to sort of rain on Elon's delusional fantasy. The left's disillusionment with Elon Musk is not about a single issue. It's really a confluence of factors. And Musk thinks he's the main character, like the left turned on him because he said, oh, Trump's not that bad. But the reality is you've

got labor practices, pandemic stances, shifts in political alignment, the way he turned Twitter into a node of right wing disinformation and propaganda, as well as his public rhetoric and the platforming and support of far right extremists around the world. They always pull this woe is me stuff when they are the ones that have gone crazy. So just to give you like a quick summary, Musk has, uh, opposed unionization efforts at Tesla's factories and critics on the left say the right to unionize is fundamental to fundamental way of protecting workers' interests, especially in large scale manufacturing. We don't like Elon because of that.

There are reports that have emerged over the years that say that the working conditions and the demands, the working conditions are unsafe and the demands are extremely unreasonable in Tesla's manufacturing plants. And Elon Musk's makes it must makes it seem like, oh, he's all about worker initiatives and safety and all this stuff. The anti-labor practices and the dangerous conditions have angered the left and understandably so Twitter. He took this combative, outspoken approach on Twitter. He ultimately bought the platform.

The tone he set there was anti woke or call it whatever you want. It amplified culture war conflicts. It amplified conspiracy theorists. It sanctioned far right extremists of all kinds. And yes, understandably, those on the left go. That doesn't seem good. I don't like that. And therefore, I don't support what Elon Musk is doing. The attacks on woke culture. He calls it the woke mind virus. He actually remember when he said the woke mind virus killed one of his children. Many on the left say he is dismissing social justice causes. You can criticize woke, whatever that means, but understand that that doesn't mean you have to align yourself with these outrageous right wing positions, which he has done. The pandemic rhetoric. Remember, he said, what was the thing with Sam

Harris? He said there wouldn't even be 600. There wouldn't even be 30,000 cases. And then we had 600,000 deaths. And when Sam Harris pointed it out to him, he basically never spoke to Sam again. And then, of course, the way that Twitter is being moderated, he claims he's a free speech absolutist, but he's actually banned people who are reporting on stuff he simply doesn't like while unbanning and platforming and even promoting algorithmically some of the worst right wing disinformation drivel. So there's a lot of reasons why people on the left would not like Elon Musk. I have been there from the beginning saying what he did on electric vehicles is absolutely fantastic. And he started doing that more than a decade ago at this point. Tesla led to just about

every vehicle manufacturer saying we can't ignore this electric electric stuff. We're not going to just put out 160 mile range vehicle. We have to start competing if we don't want to lose market share. Elon's Tesla is now losing market share, partially because they've lost first mover advantage, partially because people want nothing to do with Elon Musk. But you have to give Elon Musk credit. It was thanks to what he did at Tesla that that technology accelerated significantly. On the other side of it are the labor practices, the safety conditions, the disaster that has become Twitter, his completely unhinged political rhetoric, his doormat loyalist support of Donald Trump. And so we balance it and we say, hey, that was cool what you did in 2015 to 2019. You're now off the deep end.

That's what's going on. It's not because you said, hey, Trump, that's not why. And as always, making himself the main character. Let's hope this guy goes soon because it's getting pretty exhausting. I have a clip for you today explaining how at a core level, Fox News hosts and many right now do not understand how government works at a fundamental level. This we it's sort of convenient that I have a clip from Fox to show you. But there are so many people out there who have the misunderstanding that if Elon Musk identifies fraud and cancel some program, that money which was allocated on paper now can be used for some other thing that they like.

And the way Fox is pushing this narrative is by saying, hey, you know, all this fraud that Elon is uncovering because of Doge, we are going to take the money from the fraud, from the D.I. initiatives, and we are now going to get checks. That money is going to take the money from the fraud, from the DEI initiatives, and we are now going to get checks. That money is going to be reallocated. We just cut the government budget. We'll send refunds to everybody. We'll be able to get houses.

We'll be able to get cars and it's all going to happen very quickly. Now let's play the clip. Obviously just from the way I described it, I'm sure 99% of my audience understands that's not the way government works, but people at Fox 99% of my audience understands that's not the way government works, but people at Fox News seem to think it is. So let's take a listen. When you are finding all of this money, when you are taking it back, when you are cutting off future streams of funding, give that back to the American people. Then you will see the economy absolutely explode. And people will once again be able to take out new loans and start new

businesses and all the wonderful things that follow when they have more of their own money. Right. So I want to address this in three parts, the fraud angle, the, what happens to the money angle and the, they don't really want to spend that money anyway. So, so first let's talk about the fraud angle. Fraud exists in government programs. There's no doubt. I mean, every large system deals with fraud, whether it's public or whether it's private. The idea that Elon Musk or anybody is uncovering massive previously unknown pots of money that are just sitting there waiting to be redistributed to the public is frankly absurd. Government budgets are tracked, audited and accounted for. Sometimes they find fraud.

If you find fraud, the money goes back into the program it was stolen from or just into the general treasury. It doesn't turn into a slush fund where people start getting direct payments. It just just doesn't work that way. So now let's talk about cutting DEI programs. These are initiatives designed to address systemic inequities in hiring and education and in other areas. You might like those programs or you might not.

That's OK. That's not what's at issue here. If you cut those programs, the money that is saved doesn't vanish into thin air, but it also doesn't get funneled into people's bank accounts. It either gets reallocated to other government programs. And remember, since we don't run a deficit, it's not like if you cut a program, all of a sudden there's money there. It just reduces the amount of the deficit that you're running. There is no mechanism that would convert that savings that you get from cutting a program

that Elon crosses off with a Sharpie into any kind of payment to people who live in the United States. It's just not how any of it works. But then this gets us to the even bigger issue, which is that a lot of these people, anytime you say, Hey, did you know that we spent, you know, make it up. We spent a million dollars on some program that I don't like. They go, Oh, we should take that money and we should give it to housing homeless veterans or something like that. But aside from the fact that that's not how it works and the money has to be allocated, voted on, then then distributed it.

Forget about the fact that it doesn't work that way. When you actually go to a lot of these very same people and you go, hey, you know what? We would be far better off dealing with poverty and homelessness by just giving houses and health care to people. And then the savings from getting them out of the emergency rooms and getting them off the street is huge. They go, no, no, no, they haven't earned that. They don't deserve that. We can't just give stuff away to people. So it's also naive to think that they're even sincere about the idea that that's what they want to do. Now, I think it's worth saying one programs, they are now scapegoating DEI by arguing this is not a useful way to spend any money.

But we're talking about drops in the bucket. I'm not even saying that there's only one perspective on whether it's worth the money. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. But my point is the other day, Caroline Leavitt, Donald Trump's press secretary, held up a piece of paper and said, look, Elon found $30,000 that went to a DEI program in a multibillion dollar organization. That's like nothing.

Even if you eliminated every single one of those DEI programs, it would do nothing relative to the federal budget. And they are fantasizing about people getting, you know, $2,000 checks. And then absolutely the last thing here, the timeline that they have in mind that Elon crossing stuff off in February is going to get anybody money in March or April. Put aside the fact that it doesn't work that way. Put aside the fact that the budgeting doesn't function in that way. Have we ever seen money at the federal government level reallocated and disposed of that quickly? It is completely and laughably

divorced from reality. I don't think they care about reality. Caroline Leavitt made a remarkable claim about Social Security fraud. Let me remind you that Caroline Leavitt is Donald Trump's press secretary, typically seen wearing a novelty sized cross on her neck, although not in this particular interview with Fox News that I'm about to play for you in this interview, Caroline Levitt says that thanks to Elon Musk, they are going to fix up the fraud and social security, which includes tens of millions, not hundreds of thousands, not millions, but tens of millions of dead people getting fraudulent social security payments. Take a listen.

He is now delivering on it. And I've been fighting fake news reporters all day long here in the Washington DC swamp who are trying to fear monger the American people into believing that this administration is going after their hard earned tax dollars and their hard earned social security checks. So I want to set the record straight on your show tonight, Sean, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to do so. President Trump has directed Elon Musk and the Doge team to identify fraud at the Social Security Administration. They haven't dug into the books yet, but they suspect that there are tens of millions of deceased people who are receiving fraudulent Social Security payment.

Think about that number. Tens of millions of deceased people receiving social security payments. Let's explore that a little bit. So first of all, even though they love to present it as every federal agency has no way to detect fraud. The social security administration has a bunch of systems to prevent exactly this, to prevent dead people from receiving payments. This includes cross-referencing death records at the state level from families, from other federal agencies. When a beneficiary passes away, that death is typically reported either by a family member or a funeral home or a state agency.

Benefits are stopped promptly at the most when it comes to the time of filing the last taxes for that individual. And the box is checked. This is an individual who died during the tax year. This is being submitted by someone else, a representative that triggers the end of Social Security payments. So we have all of those systems in place. Now, in 2022, the Social Security Administration reported an improper payment rate of point five percent. OK, that's everything, everything, everything, everything in that included in improper payments would be payments to dead people. Now at its absolute peak, it was believed to be in the tens of thousands. That includes people who might have received one payment after dying and then the paperwork

was processed and they didn't receive any more payments. Doesn't mean we don't care about this stuff. If you're not supposed to be receiving the money after you're dead, although of course there are survivorship benefits depending on the situation, but we're not talking about that. It's, it's barely, barely happening. Now, the other thing that's important to consider is that for those who get paper checks, which is increasingly few people, and this also applies to older, older years from which the data is taken just because a check went out to a dead person doesn't mean that they deposited it.

So the peak peak was theoretically tens of thousands of people. The systems have improved since then. Caroline Leavitt is on TV saying it's tens of millions of dead people that are getting social security money. The problem with all of this is that me fact checking it and us thinking through tens of millions, damn, that, that doesn't really make any sense. That doesn't do as much as the fact that Caroline Leavitt was on TV last night claiming that this is going on.

And there's an aspect of this that's maybe just human nature, which is when they hear that from Caroline Leavitt and then they hear what I'm saying, people go, ah, I just, I don't know. I don't know who to believe. And of course the fact that their government, uh, agencies, government officials, Caroline Leavitt are so regularly and so obviously lying to them. It is a form of gaslighting. Now, meanwhile, the problems at the Social Security Administration continue. CNN reporting that the acting head of Social Security

has now resigned because of conflicts with, you guessed it, Doge. All right, we have some breaking news for you. The acting head of the Social Security Administration has resigned. Michelle King's departure comes after she refused to provide Doge staffers access to sensitive information. Your information. King had been with the department for 30 years. It's the latest act of resistance meant to slow cost-cutting moves by President Trump and Elon Musk. Doge had to go to court to gain access to treasury payment systems, and it is fighting to enter a sensitive database in the IRS. All right, we have some breaking news.

So there you go. Things clearly not going swimmingly. And this is part of the plan. You and I might see this and we would say, oh, this is terrible, right? I mean, this Doge is upsetting people and creating so much conflict that officials are quitting. That's terrible. This is part of the plan. And we talked yesterday in my segment about the kind of real time in the public eye, um, swing towards authoritarianism.

Part of what they want to do is they want to make these public officials, these bureaucrats miserable, so that they do quit. And it seems to be happening. All right. This next story comes straight from a very detailed piece by Mother Jones reporter Pema Levy. And it's all about the legality of this entire Doge infrastructure, which is not a topic that's gotten a lot of attention. What's gotten attention is does Elon Musk have conflicts of interest? What's gotten attention is that it makes sense to have two co-leaders of Doge. And of course, it didn't. And Vivek Ramaswamy bailed.

How much is Donald Trump monitoring what's going on? All of these questions have received attention. But one of the things that is pointed out by Pamela Levy in this piece is that it seems as though much of what Elon Musk specifically is up to is against the law. And the article claims that Elon Musk is engaged in the kind of hostile takeover of an American government that there's basically no legal framework for and that there's absolutely no way he could be doing this stuff without running into conflict of interest laws. And ironically, it's Elon who appears to be breaking the law. Of every what was that phrase he used every hour of every day, which is what he said others are doing, that he's firing,

he seems to be the one breaking the law every hour of every day. If we zoom out, understand that as one of the richest people, the richest person on Earth potentially or up there with the top three, he has this entire planet of business interests. And the moment he tries to remake federal agencies, he will run straight into laws designed to prevent exactly this kind of conflict. And Mother Jones quotes Robert Weissman from Public Citizen, who sums it up perfectly. No person on the planet has more varied business interests before the U.S. government than Elon Musk. Arguably, he is the least appropriate person to be in this role. According to a lawsuit filed by multiple states, Musk is basically operating

with limitless power inside the executive branch and receiving all sorts of business benefits in the process, which is just the epitome of conflicts of interest. He's got Tesla, he's got SpaceX, he's got Starlink, he's got more. And now he's controlling and slashing budgets of agencies investigating that or regulating his companies. And we're supposed to believe there's no conflict there. Now remember that last week Donald Trump said, oh, he's personally keeping tabs on those conflicts, which is one of the funniest things we've heard. Trump said, you know, in the efforts that he's undertaking with your party, you granted

him new authority this week. Will he secure any new government contracts while he is working on Doge? No, not if there's a conflict. If there's no conflict, I guess, what difference does it make? But we won't let him do anything having to do with the conflict. Are you personally checking to make sure there's no conflicts of interest? Yeah, I am. He answers to you.

Sure, he does. First of all, he wouldn't do it. And second of all, we're not going to let him do anything. The idea that Trump is checking personally on what Elon is up to and making sure that there's no obscure or sometimes not so obscure conflict of interest is just laughable. And you know, Elon Musk insists that he is the epitome of transparency here. But the irony is very thick because Musk is refusing to disclose which member of his Doge Bros team are being granted unrestricted access to top secret government data.

When outlets like Wired published their names, Musk said it was a crime and started banning people on X who share that information. So as Mother Jones is stressing here, ignoring the rules does not make them magically disappear. And the article points out that Elon Musk's entire arrangement resembles an illegal hijacking of the federal government. And we have lawsuits from states. We have lawsuits from USAID. They're all trying to block Elon Musk's takeover.

They might be able to ultimately prevail, But I don't know that they can prevail quickly enough to stop irreparable damage from being done. This is part of that slow motion, hostile takeover in plain sight that I talked about yesterday. And the idea that there's any oversight going on here is just laughable. We continue to follow the weaponization of the justice system. What am I talking about? Tom Homan, Trump's deportations are, has now acknowledged on two different programs that he has asked the department of justice to investigate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Why would he do that? What on earth could AOC have to do with Tom Homan's deportation mission? Well, he explained it on a couple of different shows yesterday, extraordinarily

chilling when it comes to speech and free speech and protection under the law. Here is Homan confirming on Fox News he has asked the DOJ to investigate AOC. Are you talking about AOC over the weekend? Do you believe she is breaking the law? I'll leave that up to DOJ. What I find disturbing to any member of Congress wants to educate people how they evade law enforcement. You can claim you're educating those constitutional rights. Okay. You can keep that claim, but it's what she in fact is doing. Telling people don't open your door, hide in your home, don't talk to ICE. We're talking about people who are in the country

illegally, committed a crime, they're a public safety threat, they've been convicted of serious crime, and they've been ordered removed by a federal judge. So it's like AOC and others don't want ICE to enforce the laws that they enacted. She's a member of Congress. Let us enforce the laws you enacted.

That's what we're supposed to do. You can't go after her. Do you think others should? No, I think I've asked DOJ. Where is that line of impediment, of interference? If someone stands in your way to prevent you from arresting somebody, put your hands down, that's impediment. But what line is telling people to hide from lies, not open the door? I want.

Where do you cross that line? You know, this is a reminder that just because you are in law enforcement doesn't mean that you know the law. And this is a classic example of conflating legal advocacy with criminal activity. Now, if AOC were telling people things that were untrue, you're allowed to commit acts of physical violence against ICE if they come to your door. Well, maybe there's something there. But informing people of their rights is a constitutionally protected form of speech. Now, I have one more video clip to play for you, and then we'll dig into this a little

in a little more detail. Here is Homan for a second time yesterday talking to Hannity saying, oh yeah, I want AOC investigated. When does it cross a line into aiding and abetting lawbreaking? Would it have to have direct involvement by her in helping people to evade ICE? That's exactly the question I posed to the deputy attorney general. I asked him to look into it. I said, I know, I know I do in my career. Someone steps in front of it in between you and the person arresting or being. Yeah, that's a violation. But at what point do you cross the line on saying you're educating people versus your teaching them how to debate?

I should rest. So I've asked. Well, one area where you might cross the line is if you recommend things to people that are not based in the law. And we'll get into what AOC is telling people in a moment. That question to the Department of Justice for clear guidance. So I can share that with the officers of ICE. So we're looking for that clear direction so we can start taking action on people that want to invade, who want to help educate these people to evade eyes. So they want to look at taking action against people, educating others. So here is the very cut and dry. It's not hyperbolic.

It's not speculative. It's not conjecture. Advising people of what they are legally allowed to do is never a crime. And in fact, it's protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The right to free speech includes the right to inform others of their legal rights. If those rights pertain to immigration, so be it. If they pertain to criminal law, they pertain to any other area. That's what AOC is doing. There is a fundamental principle of democracy that they claim to care about. They call it free speech. If advising people of their rights were a crime, then every lawyer, activist, friends giving legal advice could be prosecuted. That is not how the law works.

Aiding and abetting, which Hannity is talking about, is a legal term and it requires someone to actively assist in the commission of a crime telling someone you have a right to remain silent. You don't have to open the door for anybody if they don't have a warrant to come into your house. That's not aiding and abetting. That's the law. It's informing people of their rights under the law.

Non cooperation in and of itself is not a crime. People have a right to refuse to speak to law enforcement authorities or immigration authorities. They have the right to ask for a warrant before allowing anybody to enter their homes. These are well-established legal protections, which in other circumstances, these right wingers love to defend. And what Tom Homan is doing here is trying to criminalize advocacy. It is a tactic we've seen before. It's a tactic we've seen in the context of immigration enforcement.

It's a tactic we have seen in general when governments become authoritarian. And the idea is to create a chilling effect where people are afraid to speak out. They're afraid to help others understand their rights. They will simply look the other way and say nothing. This really isn't about law enforcement. This is about silencing dissent. And they want to create a narrative that anyone who challenges or criticizes immigration enforcement policies is breaking the law. And it's not true. AOC is not breaking the law. The idea that AOC could be prosecuted for this is legally dubious at best. And we actually have case law. The Supreme Court hasOC could be prosecuted for this is legally dubious at best. And we actually have case law.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the right to advocate for nonviolent resistance and to inform people of their rights. You're allowed to do it. And in fact, during the civil rights movement, activists would routinely encourage people know your rights, resist unjust laws through nonviolent means. It wasn't a crime then. It's not a crime now saying I'm not going to say anything is not a crime. Telling people that they can do that is not a crime saying, I will not open my door unless you have a warrant is not a crime telling people,

Hey, did you know you don't have to open your door unless you've been presented with a warrant? It is not a crime. This is a political attack, plain and simple. And it's an attempt to demonize AOC. It's an attempt to demonize AOC. It's an attempt to demonize those who are simply saying you do have rights. That's it. Here's what they are. You should know about them and you should be aware that you can deploy them if that's what you want to do. And they are framing that as criminal. That is how you know this is the authoritarian direction accelerating things that are illegal. They don't care about what Elon Musk is doing with Doge. They look the other way.

Things that are legal, like simply saying, here are your rights with regard to federal immigration authorities. They want criminalized. This is what authoritarian regimes do. All right. I want to go over something that's a little bit different, but I do think is worthy at least of a little bit of discussion. This clip was sent to me from the Tim cast show where Tim Poole and Milo Yiannopoulos, who I guess has resurfaced with new let's just call it a new

look. I don't know that it's appropriate to talk about exactly which elements of his face are new, but he's got it's a new look, Milo Yiannopoulos. And the topic came up generally of the Russian influencer money, which Tim Pool received. But Milo didn't know that he received it anyway. None of that is important other than to say this led to allegations that shows on the left like this one and my name was mentioned here, we might be knowingly or unknowingly getting money that came from USAID, the now canceled program. And I actually didn't know over the last two weeks I started getting hate emails from people going, David, your show's going to end now because you're not going to get that USAID money anymore.

And I didn't know where this was coming from, because, of course, we've never gotten money from USAID or any nonprofit that could be indirectly connected. We just we know our advertisers. They're just for profit companies. Someone selling a book, someone selling a mattress, right? It has nothing to do with USAID. But regardless, I was thinking to myself, why are people even talking about this show in USAID? Apparently, this is a known conspiracy theory. I believe the idea here is to say we may have gotten some Russian influence or money without knowing it. But David Pakman is getting USAID money without knowing it.

Let's listen to what they had to say. Billions a year. I have a question for for you and for everybody who's listening. Or I should say I have a tip, I suppose. We know for a fact there are many popular liberal podcasts that run nonprofits or have nonprofits buying ads. Now there there are many liberal podcasts that run nonprofits or have nonprofits buying ad spots.

Maybe that's true. I would love to know which nonprofits he hasn't said it here. Now, here Milo gets a little bit sort of like ad hominem where he goes, there are no big left wing podcasts, not David Pakman. But he's listening. Or I should say I have a tip, I suppose. We know for a fact there are many popular liberal podcasts that run nonprofits or have nonprofits buying ad spots. Any popular liberal podcast, whatever you want to call it, we're going to find out. So Milo says there are no big liberal podcasts. Remember David Pakman after the election. Now, of course, what he's referring to is the fact that for 36 hours after the election,

we lost subscribers. And it's funny because it's been months since that word almost three. You know that they keep going with this thing. The left has lost all of its following. If you just looked at the number of subscribers we had on November 6th and now we're almost at three million, you would know that that was like a 36 hour phenomenon. But OK, so anyway, let's continue. Popular. So let me this this point I'm making is that who is funding these shows and how are they being propped up? One, obviously, YouTube is propping them up, despite the fact they're clearly not popular, as we just saw the results of the election. OK, Tim's argument is. These shows like mine only get views on YouTube despite the unpopularity of our ideas because we lost the election, because YouTube is algorithmically propping them up.

Couple things to say on that. Number one, most people who voted voted for someone other than Trump. So if the idea is that YouTube audience is directly reflective of the percentage of the American population that approves of what you're saying. More people voted for something other than Trump. So there's no real concern there. I mean, yes, Trump won electorally. I haven't denied that for for a moment, but more a majority of voters that voted did not

vote for Trump. The idea that YouTube is propping us up algorithmically, if anything, it seems to be the opposite. And I actually think that it's in general. YouTube is not propping up news and politics generically. But OK, let's continue. However, we do know that many of them sell ad space to powerful nonprofits. I believe that if you track the government spending through these nonprofits, you will find it goes from government to NGO into the hands of liberal pundits. David Pakman. Now, the word is pundits, not pundits. It's a made up word pundit. I dare you look it up. Doesn't exist to pundit. And then

Milo says David Pakman. Now, you know, this to me is very clearly they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar getting money from Russia. I'm not alleging Tim knew. I don't know. I'm I'm you know, he says he didn't know. He says he did hardcore due diligence and he didn't know. He insists that what he was offered was market rate. I can tell you as someone that the information is public, right? This is not like a this is not like a bragging thing.

It's just my channel gets more views than Tim's. I can assure you that what he was offered was not market rate. It would be awesome if it was. I would say to Tim, congratulations, because then my market rate would be even higher. But this isn't the market rate. Now in order to say the other side does it too, they are saying, oh, they get money from USA. It goes from government USA, a nonprofit and then into the David Pakman show, even

maybe through a brand. Now you don't actually have to make this claim because there are content creators on the left who over the last 10 years were getting money, for example, from state media in Venezuela and from other left wing authoritarian regimes. So you don't even have to go and say, oh, David Pakman's probably we're not. And you can find examples of people that were you don't have to do this. But when I look, for example, at today's advertisers, Ground News, it's just a news analysis website. It has nothing to do with a nonprofit.

It has nothing to do with USAID naked wines. It's a company that does wine ship to your door. It has no connection to nonprofits. It has no connection to USAID. You may like the product. You may not like the product. Congratulations. It just doesn't. What's another advertiser today? MD hearing. They make hearing aids. They sell hearing aids. It's a for profit company. There's. They make hearing aids. They sell hearing aids. It's a for profit company. There's no connection to a nonprofit. There's no connection to USAID.

I would challenge Milo, who says David Pakman. I would challenge him to find a specific example of a company that's advertising with us that is connected to shadowy nonprofits or USAID. Well, now he might not even know. And that's the important thing. Now they're talking about me. I might not know. Well, no, no, no.

I mean, this is important. You can accuse him of knowing. You can accuse him of intentionally taking money. My point is this. I would never accuse David Pakman of knowing anything. Sure. They're very well. Isn't that funny?

Maybe. There very well may be individuals who their ad person comes to them and says, this NGO wants to spend $100 thousand dollars in ads on your show. And they say, yeah, we've never had an NGO come to us in that conservative thing, giving too much credit. No, I'm saying in general, big picture. No, you know exactly where the money is coming from. Dave Rubin knew where the money was coming from when it was coming from Russia. He used it to buy his children. So now Milo has stepped in it because he says Dave Rubin knew he was getting Russian money. And of course, Tim Pool got money from the same place. And now Tim Pool is going to

get very defensive. That is 100 percent false. And you know that ropes me into it. And I can I can verify it's 100 percent false. All right. Completely untrue. So and this is this is this is important big picture stuff because USAID is funneling money into NGOs. Irresponsible in the extreme to the point of ludicrous negligence to not know where hundreds of thousands of dollars are coming from and to not even ask. And that's not the story at all. So if you know what you're talking about, maybe it sounds smarter. All right. All right. So now they just argue with each other about Tim Pool taking Russian influencer money. It's funny how they were all having a good time dunking on me over made up claims. But now all of a sudden it gets a little tense. Listen, we just give me an example. Right. I would be glad

to track down the provenance of any ad dollar that's coming in. Of course, we're primarily supported by audience membership. So it's just individual people. So it's like you kind of have to ask yourself, oh, I'm a member. Did that money come through USAID and some shadowy nonprofit or NGO? Of course it didn't. But I think this is them trying to just say, oh, the left is doing the exact same thing and they're grasping at straws. Of course, it isn't happening. Remember when we were told that under Trump we would be respected around the world again. Audible boos once again for the United States national anthem in Montreal, Canada, before the USA, Canada, four nations face off hockey game. This is not the sound of respect when the anthem starts and everybody booed. Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming All right. Anyway, I think you guys know what what booing sounds like. I don't believe that booing anthems at sporting events is sort of the great indicator of the state of alliances globally and of foreign affairs. But I do think it's relevant to mention that this is a new thing under Trump and it has come directly from the belligerence and bellicose comments from Trump with regard to Canada. Now I also think there's an important double standard to point out with regard to the right wing reaction to this producer, Pat, the credit producer, Pat, with this. It turns out that the reaction from right wingers in the U.S. to

anything short of total adoration for the national anthem depends on who is doing it. And here's what I mean. Right wingers were all upset and they said, we must boycott the NFL when the kneeling stuff was going on. Can't kneel disrespectful to the national anthem. No, no, no. In this case, the national anthem is getting booed by Canadians, mostly white people in a sport hockey, which is mostly played by white people. And now the right wingers don't seem to have the same ire or anger at what is going on. They're not demanding a boycott. They are not saying that this is a league or this is a group of people or these are players or they're not saying any of it.

Now, I don't want to pretend that race is the only factor, but it is relevant that when it was black, disproportionately black football players kneeling during a national anthem in a sport that has a league with a large number of minority players, they were up in arms and there was no greater disrespect. And everybody deserves to have their livelihood upended and suspended and snipped. Whereas here we have mostly white Canadians in a mostly white sport booing. They're not kneeling quietly, mind you. They're now booing the national anthem. They now are not subject to the same demands for boycott. And it's it's Republicans just kind of going, ah, who cares?

These nobody's paying attention to it. Well, they could have said the same thing about the NFL protests. Right. Let them do whatever they want. We don't care. We're not paying attention. We still like the national anthem. There is a double standard. The double standard partially, I believe, is related to race. It's partially related to this is specifically about Trump. And it's hard to argue that you're as respected as you've ever been when you've got an entire stadium full of people booing your national anthem thanks to what the guy you elected is doing. But the double standard is abundantly clear on the bonus show today. The president of Argentina, my birth country is being accused of fraud over a cryptocurrency promotion.

Who does this remind you of? It seems that me lay and Trump have more in common than you might've thought. We will also talk about Elon Musk saying the team behind 60 minutes, the program deserves a prison sentence, chilling anti-media authoritarianism. And Donald Trump is suggesting that no laws are broken as long as he is saving his country. Certainly a novel legal interpretation. That's for sure. You can get instant access to the David Pakman show by signing up at join Pakman dot com. Also, remember, you can preorder my forthcoming book, Thank you. booksmith. We will get those out to folks as quickly as I can sign them. I will see you on the bonus show.