The David Pakman Show - 2/28/25: Economists panicking as MAGA voters turn on Trump
Episode Date: February 28, 2025-- On the Show: -- Economists are increasingly panicking about a possible "Trump recession" -- MAGA voters are turning on Donald Trump after realizing what his policies mean for them, and many ar...e calling right wing radio to tell them about it -- David tells the story of being threated into removing a video with a $150,000 demand letter -- Donald Trump explodes after a series of devastating polls -- A CSPAN caller explains that the price of his insulin has gone up 1200% since Donald Trump became president -- DOGE has found zero actual fraud so far -- Joe Rogan goes full conspiracy, dropping all pretense of objectivity -- Larry Kudlow, current Fox host and former Trump adviser, admits that prices will go up and growth will be limited under Trump's policies -- The Friday Feedback segment -- On the Bonus Show: The Friday Bonus Show hosted by Producer Pat 🥦 Lumen lets you master your metabolism. GET 20% OFF at https://lumen.me/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman ☕ Beam melatonin hot cocoa: Code PAKMAN for up to 40% OFF at https://shopbeam.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep: Get 27% OFF and 2 free pillows at https://helixsleep.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- 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
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to the show.
Economists are starting to panic about a possible Trump recession if Donald Trump is able to
continue his economic agenda.
Now, let's not pretend that this wasn't obvious from the start.
Let's not pretend that we're surprised.
Donald Trump's economic approach of chaotic trade wars and aggressive
budget cuts and pandering to right wing populist rhetoric. It's always been a recipe for disaster,
but we've been hoping that he simply won't actually do this stuff either because he'll
change his mind or it just won't happen or someone will talk him out of it. But economists are now
sounding the alarm about what could be an impending Trump recession
if the policies take hold.
And just a basic understanding of economics makes it easy to see why the administration's
obsession with slapping tariffs on our closest trading partners and gutting federal agencies
is pushing the economy to a tipping point, predictably drastic cuts
and reckless policies that play well on right wing media, especially before an election,
but fail in the real world. And let's go down the list. If you tariff Canada and Mexico 25 percent
on key imports, you choke the North American auto industry, you disrupt supply chains.
And so this makes companies pull back on hiring. The job losses stack up and then fewer people
have money with which to buy stuff. And it's a demand side disaster. You then look at the budget
cuts, which now they are talking about. The Trump team has gleefully been slashing funding from critical agencies, typically
based on ideology, not on actual economic reasoning.
They gutted NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's budget because
they published climate data.
Businesses don't know if they can rely on how accurate weather forecasts are.
How are companies supposed to make informed decisions in that kind of uncertainty? And Noah's just one example. The administration's obsession
with rooting out, quote, woke agendas has led to mass firings and contractor cutbacks across
the federal government that ripples through the private sector. Workers don't know. Will I have
a paycheck tomorrow if I do answer an email from Elon or if I don't? And when they don't know. Will I have a paycheck tomorrow if I do answer an email from
Elon or if I don't? And when they don't know if they're going to have a paycheck tomorrow,
they stop spending. When companies don't know if their projects will be funded next quarter,
they don't invest. And that's how you set off this contract, a contracting cycle, a cycle of
contraction. Trump's tax cuts, the one big, beautiful bill
that he wants to do. It's not going to bail him out. It's not going to be good for the economy.
And meanwhile, cuts to green energy projects have halted billions of dollars in private investment
projects in battery manufacturing, solar energy, offshore wind. They're just dead.
The projects are dead. The projects are dead.
The jobs are lost.
The associated economic growth goes away.
The opportunities for American workers go away.
So what's happening right now, the alarm that's being sounded by economists is completely predictable because they were also sounding the alarm before the election.
The Trump administration is doubling down on chaos as a governing strategy
and the economy is what is at risk. We've been warning about it. I discussed that turning
economic policy into a culture war is a spectacle that won't end well. Slashing funds from federal
agencies under the guise of fighting woke without really accomplishing anything is not a good idea.
Relying on tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations as a cure all is not a good idea.
It causes instability.
And now we have economists warning of a recession that they tried to downplay and say it'll
never happen.
Economists are warning if Trump does the stuff he promised to do, if he does the stuff he's
trying to do, it's going to become a reality.
This is not hindsight. This is foresight because it hasn't happened yet. OK, we saw it coming.
It hasn't yet happened, although there's concerns that some of the economic indicators in the next
month may point that way. We can still stop it if Mike Pence has the courage. Now, we can still
stop it. But something needs to get in the way of Trump accomplishing his
objectives.
And we talked about the polling fiasco that Trump is dealing with yesterday.
Is it possible someone in Trump's orbit might be able to talk sense into him and say, don't
do this stuff?
It's a bad idea.
I don't know.
I don't know.
But some MAGA voters are noticing and we should talk about that next. If you listen to right wing radio over the last seven to 10 days, you will hear way more
than the typical number of Trump supporters and MAGA people saying, I voted for the guy,
but I'm just not sure about some of this stuff.
Let's go through some of these examples.
Let's start a media matters.
Did a great job compiling these.
Here's a caller to The Hannity Show who says, you know, you're not really standing up for the rank and file
people that are being hurt by this doge purge. Listen to this.
Leo Maryland next Sean Hannity Show. Hi. Yeah. Hi, Sean. I know in the past you've always
stood up for the men and women in the rank and file FBI agents.
And it's the time they may need your voice again, especially the couple thousand have been seemingly targeted because they worked on the January 6th case.
And I know one of the main goals in the FBI of the new administration is to depoliticize it.
And this appears to be a misstep in the wrong direction.
Well, we need to look at every individual case.
That's what I would say.
I know Kash Patel.
I've known him for a long time.
He's been on the show many times.
So Hannity goes into apologia for Kash Patel.
But the caller is right. This is more
politicized, not less. Here is the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show taking a call from Linda.
Cake up whole bean, ground bean. It is delicious. Let's take a call from Linda, who had Linda. I'm told by our team you have three adopted Ukrainian kids.
You want to weigh in on the Ukraine situation.
Go ahead.
Oh, boy.
Yes, thank you.
I'd like to preface this by saying I support President Trump.
I'm very happy he's president.
I love what he's doing with Doge.
However, I'm not happy with his recent comments on Ukraine.
I spent quite a bit of time in Ukraine.
They love freedom there.
They want their independence.
But this comment about Zelensky being a dictator is just not correct.
The Constitution in Ukraine actually does not allow for elections during wartime.
His popularity in Ukraine is actually above 50%.
So let me ask you this, Linda.
I appreciate you calling in.
How should it end?
All right.
So, you know, the defense from Clay and Buck is to kind of change the subject.
But Linda is absolutely correct.
Trump's wrong to call Zelensky a dictator.
Here's a federal employee who called into Hannity's program.
The reason I'm calling is so I'm a current federal employee. I became a federal employee shortly after I got back to duty from the army.
My wife's a federal employee. The federal government, when it comes to civilian employees,
is less than 1% of the entire US population, right? So like 2.4 million based off current
OPM information. And we had no idea what's going going on and it's frustrating all of us because like
how do you make life decisions try to figure out what to do how do you know to send your kids to
college if you can afford to buy a house when there's no information coming from the administration
which i support strongly like i'm a it's a disaster but i support strong support of this
administration and what their efforts are but they're not communicating to us to any way of what their overall goal and plan is other than
you know you see some politicians like oh we're going to cut 60 to 70 percent of the federal
government well okay that's everybody well i haven't heard that number 60 or 70 percent
can i can you be more specific what what do you do for the federal government so i i don't want to be too specific because I'm some people I work with listen and I don't
want to.
So I work for.
So anyway, Hannity eventually tells the guy, make yourself really essential so that you'll
like get a different job if you lose this one.
Not exactly great advice.
And the caller is making a good point.
How do you make plans for your family about buying a house, school, anything if you don't
know if you're going to have a job, if your job might depend on whether
you do or don't answer an email from Elon and how you answer that email.
Here's another caller who says what Trump's proposing with Gaza is nuts.
What's going on?
How are you doing?
So I cannot agree with you on the Gaza situation.
I cannot, at least as far as making those people leave their land and not being able to return.
That is totally wrong.
First of all, right now, have you seen pictures out of Gaza?
I've been to Israel many times.
And the place is pretty much decimated.
It's rubble, and it's a safe haven for Hamas terrorists that were voted in by the Palestinian
people.
So the plan is to go in, demilitarize it.
So Hannity defends Trump's idea of get all the Palestinians out of there.
Never, never let them come back.
But the caller doesn't agree with that.
It's endless.
Here's a call to kill Meade's program about how Elon rather Trump is trying to bribe people
with Doge dividend.
Chris, Ben, you're in Arizona.
Hey, Chris.
Ben, it's nice to talk to you.
What's on your mind?
Yeah, what's on my mind is, say, if you just take 100000 people and I know 65000 voluntarily
withdraw from the job, so if you take 100000 at 50,000, that's about $5 billion, a drop in the
bucket. The last tax
break that Trump
gave was $1.9 trillion
and 65%
went to people making over $130,000 a year.
That amount is like $1.2 to $1.3
trillion. You've got to get after
the excess spending. You have to go after
military waste and
the rich, make the rich make the
rich pay.
Instead, he's kind of a five.
But I would say that the top 10 percent kill me talks over it.
But the guy says they're trying to offer people five thousand dollar bribes.
And then finally, Mark Levin takes a caller who's concerned about his wife's his fiancee's
immigration status.
Oh, yes, sir.
So I just want to talk about I've actually
been to Ukraine during the war.
My fiance is Ukrainian.
I filed the paperwork for her to come over here because we actually were just friends
at the time, but we became more with time.
And she's been here because her city gets bombed usually every day.
And it's just it's very concerning to me.
I've been a Republican ever since I could vote.
And same with my family.
And so you can hear how Mark Levin is really concerned, isn't it?
Family's here.
I'm here. Let me guess. You're going to say, what is this animus against Ukraine and this either open or backdoor support for a mass murderer like Putin? That's your question, right?
Yes. And also, my other question is, you know, her parents are here and she is here and her daughter and planning on getting married now for a few months.
And it seems like I've read on the news now that if you were paroled in the United States,
you can't file any forms.
OK, so this gets into a very specific immigration situation.
And I don't know whether this guy's fiance should or shouldn't be allowed to stay.
I have no idea.
But the point here is. Dozens of calls going into right wing media.
I support the administration, but I don't like what Doge is doing.
I don't like what they're doing with the federal government.
I don't like what they're doing with these potential bribes.
I don't like what they're doing with immigration and deportation.
I don't like what they're doing with Gaza.
This is not normal that this number of
right wing shows are fielding antagonistic and not not personally antagonistic, but antagonistic to
the agenda. Phone calls from their base combine this with the polling data that we talked about
yesterday that Trump is facing. This is the if if Democrats figure out how to get it together,
it could be one of the worst midterm elections for the Republican Party in decades in November of
twenty twenty six. It's a two letter word. That's the key. I f if and that's what I'm going to be
focused on, including next week when we talk to elected Democrats. Let's take a quick break.
Make sure that you are subscribed to the podcast to get the full show on Spotify or Apple podcasts.
And please help us reach that three million YouTube subscriber goal.
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All right.
I'm going to tell a story on the show that I have never told before because lawyers have
advised me not to tell it.
And I figured out a way to talk about it today that I think is going to be OK legally.
And the reason I'm going to tell the story today is
because, uh, some of you reacted by saying, when I said last week, I'm hearing from lawyers about
how they would go after progressive independent media, they being the Trump administration,
they would do it indirectly. They wouldn't do it with criminality. They would do it with
frivolous audits, or they would do it with frivolous audits or they
would do it with frivolous lawsuits or they would do it by pushing social media to demonetize or
restrict. And a lot of people wrote in and said, no one's ever done anything like this to you.
Nobody ever would. And it just you don't matter. Essentially, I want to tell you a story of what happened. This is a few years ago.
We did a piece of content and an elected official was mentioned in that piece of content. And I'm
sorry that some of the details will be vague, but what our lawyer who represented us in this matter
said is you just don't want this to crop up again. We did a piece of content about an elected official and shortly thereafter we received
a letter from a very expensive DC law firm, um, uh, saying, we believe that this piece
of content is defamatory.
We believe that you knew that what you were saying was false and you specifically decided to publish it anyway,
to ruin the reputation of our client and elected official. Uh, and we, uh, believe that this might,
might be $150,000 worth of damage. Now, of course they throw around these numbers to scare you.
And I was scared. And so we got a lawyer who specializes
in this stuff and he looked it over and he spoke to the attorneys representing the elected official
and we looked at it up and down. And, you know, he explained to me, listen, they make a lot of
claims here that are really not supported by the law. For example, one of the claims in the letter was,
you know, David, you didn't come to our client to get his side of the story. And our lawyer
explained to me, that's true. You didn't, but you're not required to, it's not defamatory
because you didn't try to get that guy's reaction. That doesn't determine whether it is or isn't
defamatory. And we worked through this and accrued, you know, five grand in legal fees.
And ultimately what our lawyer advised me was, listen, David, uh, I think you're absolutely
in the clear here. I believe that if this went, if we pursued this
legally, this individual would not even want to subject himself to discovery. He, he just,
it would be too much risk. This is meant to scare you. Uh, if it went forward, I believe that you
would win and you would be eligible to recover attorney's fees. However, however, I have to advise you based on the representation that this individual
has, how long these things are likely to go, you'll eventually get your legal fees back.
Probably not a guarantee, probably, but you might have to float $100,000 in legal fees
to get there.
And how does that sound?
Then I said, especially at the time, I said, we don't have the capacity to float $100,000
in legal fees.
And he said, I am for speech.
I am always for more speech.
And I never recommend that people censor themselves or anything like it.
But in this case, because of what this would mean financially to
even have to fight this, even if at the tail end of the rainbow, you get your legal fees back,
which is never a guarantee, likely, but never a guarantee. I'm going to recommend that you
take the content down and they will likely say we reserve our right to come after you, but we are telling you we are not going to pursue this
matter at this time. And that's what we did. And it felt like shit. And I was in a situation where
I didn't think I had any other option because of what that represented financially. Now,
I do think today the show is big enough that if something like this happened and I
just went scorched earth and went to my audience and said, listen, at the risk of getting myself
into more problems, this is who's coming after me.
This is what it's going to cost to fight it.
Let's open a legal defense fund.
And I think right now we could probably gather $100,000 to float such a fight, a fight that
I think would be ideologically correct. The point here is the following.
The idea that these right wingers wouldn't come after us with frivolous this or frivolous
that meant to bully and push us around because we're too small.
This story I just told you was years ago.
Okay.
And if we were big enough, then certainly there's at least a dozen shows like this one
that could be plausible targets from this new weaponized Trump, DOJ and other associated
organizations, IRS, et cetera.
And I don't want to have to go up against them, but lest anyone think it's implausible.
We dealt with what I just told you years ago, and we were already talking about a hundred
thousand, $150,000.
Then just think about what it could be today.
Terrifying stuff.
Best thing you can do.
Just make sure you're subscribed, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the YouTube channel.
If you've got a few bucks, certainly get a membership.
But the most important things are the bigger we are,
the bigger our network, the larger the number of people. If we have a problem, I can go to and say,
guys, this is what we're up against. Let's figure out what to do. Donald Trump is furiously posting
through the pain once again, scrambling to spin a fresh onslaught of brutal polls that show his approval
rating is nosediving just a month into his presidency. CNN poll published Thursday found
47 percent of Americans approve of his performance. This is the lowest first year of your term
February approval of any president since polling has begun other than
Trump himself during his first term, the Washington post and Gallup released similar results.
Uh, the Washington post Ipsos poll found that 57% of Americans think Trump is exceeding
the authority of the presidency through his authoritarian actions. 48% are flat out opposed to what
Donald Trump is doing. And Gallup shows 51% disapprove of Trump. So what does Trump do?
He just completely loses his mind on truth. Central quote, I won the presidential election
in a landslide, won all seven swing states, the popular vote and all 50 states
shifted Republican a record.
And now I have the best polling numbers I've ever had.
The Democrats run by broken down losers like James Carville, whose week of mind and body
are going crazy and just don't know what to do.
They have lost their confidence and spirit.
They have lost their minds.
We are going to have big wins for our country and make America great again.
It's already happening and we'll get bigger and better than before.
Just about everything there is a lie.
Trump then seizing on MSNBC schedule changes in all capital letters saying, quote, MSNBC,
commonly known as MSDNC, is a threat to our democracy.
Such lying and misrepresentation, bad people at the top.
Trump then setting his sights on author Michael, Michael Wolff saying, quote, so-called author
Michael Wolff's new book is a total fake job, just like the other junk he wrote. He called me many
times trying to set up a meeting, but I never called him back because I didn't want to give him the credibility of an interview. Others in the administration
were also called. They reported his calls and likewise did not talk to him. I assume, however,
he was able to speak to a small number of people, but not meaningfully. His other books about me
have been discredited as this one will be. Also, I am one who believes in commenting about fake news or made up stories,
even if you have to punch low and shouldn't be wasting the time required to do so.
We had one of the greatest elections in history and perhaps the greatest first month ever,
according to almost everybody. Of course, that's not true. And Trump is wildly trigolied
by the polling, the polling that shows this guy is sinking and he's sinking quickly. And finally, Trump setting his sights on Comcast. And he says lowlife chairman of Comcast, Brian Roberts, the owner of ratings challenged NBC and MSDNC, has finally gotten the nerve up to fire one of the least talented people in television,
the mentally obnoxious racist Joy Reid. Based on her ratings, which were virtually non-existent,
she should have been canned long ago, along with everyone else who works there. Also thrown out
was Alex Wagner, the sub on the seriously failing Rachel Maddow show?
Rachel rarely shows up because she knows nobody is watching.
OK, on and on and on.
This is not a reaction born of stability.
This is not a reaction born of confidence.
And as we talked about earlier this week, one of the defining features of Trump is that he is very emasculated by those who are what he wants to be.
And we saw that with French President Macron.
Macron is smarter than Trump.
He's better with language than Trump, even when Trump's only language is English and Macron speaks multiple languages.
He is healthier looking than Trump.
Trump's obese.
Trump doesn't exercise.
He isn't afraid to stand up to Trump.
He isn't constantly measuring who likes me in the room and how will I tailor what I say
based on that?
That is the Trump that ends up doing this on social media when he learns that his polling is in the toilet.
And by the way, the more that C-SPAN gets calls like the one I'm about to show you,
the lower the approval is going to go. We often talk on this program about how there are real
repercussions to the things that our elected officials do. And a gentleman from West Virginia called C-SPAN
and explained the following about what's going on with insulin prices. Take a listen.
Yes, ma'am. I'm calling from West Virginia and which was a red state for Donald Trump.
And they have a place called down here, public debt. And a lot of my neighbors were going for Trump. They walking around scared, crying, nervous, and they were forever Trumpers.
But on a personal note, I'm a diabetic and I'm on Medicare. And when Joe Biden was in there,
my insulin was six dollars for a 28 day supply. I just went to CVS to get my new supply.
It went back up to $80 they said because the American recovery act was canceled.
So it went from $6 to $80.
So I don't know if anybody else out there on Medicare.
Yeah, there are a lot of people reporting the same thing.
Now I think it's important to be honest and accurate. The reason why people's
end user cost for insulin changes are numerous and it doesn't always have to do with Trump
necessarily. It depends what insurance you're on. This individual said Medicare. So that is
governed by government negotiations. But others have jumped in and said, oh, you know, I have
Aetna and my insulin price change.
There's a lot of different reasons why this can go on.
But that call is what could be the undoing of this fiasco known as Trump term number
two.
Now, as is always the case, I, it would be wrong for me to ignore that.
We've seen this game before where people suffer because of something a Republican
does and somehow they figure out a way to blame Democrats.
And sort of a version of that is when Obamacare started and a lot of Republican governors
said, we're not going to do the Medicaid expansion.
And people in red states said Obamacare didn't work.
Thanks, Obama.
It was actually the fault of their Republican governor.
So the question as to who gets blamed is a real practical one.
But the more calls like this that start floating around, the worse it's going to be for this
Trump presidency and this administration.
The polling is going down, inflation is going up, and these calls are becoming more and
more frequent.
Where will we be six months from now?
Scary to think about.
Let me ask you a very simple question.
How much fraud has Elon Musk and Donald Trump's doge found so far?
Is it $100,000 in fraud?
Is it a million?
Is it 10 million?
Is it a billion or $10 billion in fraud? Are we getting anywhere
close to the $2 trillion that they said they would find in fraud and inefficiencies? The
answer is they have found zero fraud thus far. Aaron Ruppar wrote a great piece about this on his substack public notice where he goes through
and he explains that they are using all sorts of different vague and squishy terminology.
They are calling things fraud, but they have not actually found a single dollar of fraud so far. Despite the hype, not a single fraud program or incident
has been discovered. Now, instead of finding fraud, it is true that Doge has focused on
dismantling federal agencies, canceling programs, threatening employees with firings or layoffs,
demanding federal employees write a to do list of what they worked on if they want to
keep their job, especially if you're not loyal to Trump.
We could look at the Department of Transportation, FAA lawyers understaffing national parks,
firing inspectors general.
But they have not found any fraud whatsoever.
They also say that they have saved a ton of money by canceling contracts.
That's probably also a lie.
Only a fraction of the dollars they've said they say they've saved are actually accounted
for.
Some of the savings are simply contracts that have already been paid that they won't be
doing again.
But that's not really a savings.
A lot of those were one off contracts.
Now, in order to try to contend with the fact that they are not really finding any fraud
last week or maybe it was the week before I played a clip for you where Donald Trump's
deranged and delusional and extraordinarily dilapidated press secretary Caroline Leavitt was asked by a reporter,
what about this is fraud? Aren't these just policies Trump doesn't like? And she didn't
actually have an answer. So in order to try to remedy this, they're coming up with new
words, new phrases. And one that Fox news propagandist
Sean Hannity came up with is wrongful spending. Now let me define wrongful spending for you.
Not fraud, not fraud. Here's Hannity. Now of course, Doge is rooting out waste, fraud,
abuse, corruption all across the federal government. They've already recovered billions and billions of wrongful spending while reducing the size of government. And liberals now
are screaming into the void. And now. So a couple of things here. First of all, no money has been
recovered. Just nothing. Nothing has been recovered. And it's funny because Hannity is going even
further recovered. We're talking about canceling future spending.
What are you talking about?
We've recovered money.
And then the thing that crawl, scroll, uh, crawls up the screen is nonsense, right?
I mean these contracts that have been terminated, not a single one with evidence of fraud, individuals
that have been terminated.
It's not fraud.
Trump might say we want fewer employees. We want to save money in the future, but it's not fraud. Trump might say, we want fewer employees.
We want to save money in the future, but it's not fraud and you're not recovering any money.
Now, when Trump was asked about it, he came up with this very vague thing.
So they signed a contract and a government agency and it has three months and the guy leaves that
signed a contract and nobody else is there and they pay the contract for 10 years.
Yeah. So the guy is getting checks for years and years and years.
And he's telling his family, obviously, maybe it was crooked,
maybe paid to get the contract,
or maybe paid that they didn't terminate it.
But a lot of maybe here.
You know, we have contracts that go forever.
And they've been going for years.
And they're supposed to end in three months or five months
or two years or something, and they go forever.
So the guy is either crooked, you know, where he knew this was going to happen, or he's crooked because he's getting payments that he knows he shouldn't be getting.
But they're finding things like that.
Now, of course, nothing like that has been found.
Nothing has been found.
Is it true that some contracts get renewed?
Yes, that's true.
Is it true that over time the need for certain services may change?
And of course, of course, but that's not fraud. And hilariously, and this is kind of when I knew
that they realized they've got nothing. Peter Alexander asked Caroline Levitt whether any of
it is actual fraud. Like, is there there's a lot of stuff you're pointing to papers
and contracts, but is anything actual fraud, legally speaking? And Caroline Levitt said that
that's clever. Fraud, of course, is a crime. So have you turned over evidence of fraud to the
Justice Department? And when should we expect to see those indictments? It's a clever question.
There has been extensive fraud, particularly if you look at Social Security. In fact, according to an IG report from the Social Security Administration,
there was seventy one billion dollars worth of fraud in one single fiscal year that we know
about. To be clear, that seventy one billion dollars was from 2015 to 2022. So it wasn't
in just one year. It's clever now to say fraud is a crime.
If there's really fraud, that means there's criminality.
Shouldn't it be prosecuted?
And she goes, oh, that's so cute.
That's so clever.
Peter, until they show us evidence of any of this stuff, I would wait to believe it.
Do I think there is no fraud in government contracts?
No, I believe there is some fraud in government contracts? No, I believe there is some fraud in government
contracts. Any large organization, be it for profit or governmental, you're going to find
some fraud. The bigger it gets, the more fraud in theory you're going to find. Is it materially
relevant to the point of saying we need an unelected bureaucrat to start slashing randomly
and emailing employees and saying,
justify your job to me.
It's not the way to find the actual fraud.
We have systems in place and you know what?
If you better wanted to be able to find the fraud, maybe don't fire the inspectors general
who could actually be there to figure out what really happened.
Where have there been crimes, and make sure that
they are dealt with appropriately. These people are pathetic. I will believe that there is fraud
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off. The link is in the podcast notes. Let me ask you a very simple question. How much fraud has Elon Musk and Donald
Trump's doge found so far? Is it one hundred thousand dollars in fraud? Is it a million?
Is it ten million? Is it a billion or ten billion dollars in fraud? Are we getting anywhere close to the two trillion dollars that they said they
would find in fraud and inefficiencies? The answer is they have found zero fraud thus far.
Aaron Ruppar wrote a great piece about this on his substack public notice where he goes through and he explains that they are using
all sorts of different vague and squishy terminology.
They are calling things fraud, but they have not actually found a single dollar of fraud
so far.
Despite the hype, not a single fraud program or incident has been discovered.
Now, instead of finding fraud, it is true that Doge has focused on dismantling federal agencies,
canceling programs, threatening employees with firings or layoffs, demanding federal employees
write a to do list
of what they worked on if they want to keep their job, especially if you're not loyal to Trump.
We could look at the Department of Transportation, FAA lawyers understaffing national parks,
firing inspectors general, but they have not found any fraud whatsoever. They also say that they have saved a ton of money by canceling contracts.
That's probably also a lie.
Only a fraction of the dollars they've said they say they've saved are actually accounted
for.
Some of the savings are simply contracts that have already been paid that they won't be
doing again. But that's not really a savings. A lot of those were one off contracts. the savings are simply contracts that have already been paid that they won't be doing
again.
But that's not really a savings.
A lot of those were one off contracts.
Now, in order to try to contend with the fact that they are not really finding any fraud
last week or maybe it was the week before I played a clip for you where Donald Trump's
deranged and delusional and extraordinarily dilapidated press secretary Caroline Levitt
was asked by a reporter, what about this is fraud?
Aren't these just policies Trump doesn't like?
And she didn't actually have an answer.
So in order to try to remedy this, they're coming up with new words, new phrases.
And one that Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity came up with is wrongful spending.
Now let me define wrongful spending for you.
Not fraud, not fraud.
Here's Hannity.
Now of course doge is rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, corruption all across the federal government.
They've already recovered billions and billions of wrongful spending while reducing the size
of government and liberals now are screaming into the void. And now. So a couple of things here. First of all,
no money has been recovered. Just nothing. Nothing has been recovered. And it's funny
because Hannity is going even further recovered. We're talking about canceling future spending.
What are you talking about? We've recovered money. And then the thing that crawl, scroll, uh, crawls up the screen is nonsense, right?
I mean these contracts that have been terminated, not a single one with evidence of fraud, individuals
that have been terminated.
It's not fraud.
Trump might say, we want fewer employees.
We want to save money in the future, but it's not fraud and you're not recovering any money.
Now when Trump was asked about it, he came up with this very vague thing.
So they signed a contract and a government agency and it has three months and the guy
leaves that signed the contract and nobody else is there and they pay the contract for
10 years.
Yeah.
So the guy is getting checks for years and years and years and he's telling his family
of obviously maybe it was crooked, maybe paid to get the contract or maybe paid that they didn't terminate it but
a lot of maybe here you know we have contracts that go forever and they've been going for years
and they're supposed to end in three months or five months or two years or something and they
go forever so the guy is either crooked you know where he knew this was going to happen or he's
crooked because he's getting payments that he knows he shouldn't be getting, but
they're finding things like that. Now, of course, nothing like that has been found.
Nothing has been found. Is it true that some contracts get renewed? Yes, that's true. Is
it true that over time the need for certain services may change. And of course, of course, but that's not fraud.
And hilariously, and this is kind of when I knew that they realized they've got nothing.
Peter Alexander asked Caroline Levitt whether any of it is actual fraud. Like, is there there's a
lot of stuff you're pointing to papers and contracts, but is anything actual fraud, legally speaking? And Caroline Levitt said that that's clever. Fraud, of course,
is a crime. So have you turned over evidence of fraud to the Justice Department? And when
should we expect to see those indictments? It's a clever question. There has been extensive fraud,
particularly if you look at Social Security. In fact, according to an IG report from the
Social Security Administration, there was $71
billion worth of fraud in one single fiscal year that we know about.
To be clear, that $71 billion was from 2015 to 2022. So it wasn't in just one year.
It's clever now to say fraud is a crime. If there's really fraud, that means there's
criminality. Shouldn't it be prosecuted?
And she goes, oh, that's so cute.
That's so clever, Peter.
Until they show us evidence of any of this stuff, I would wait to believe it.
Do I think there is no fraud in government contracts?
No, I believe there is some fraud in government contracts.
Any large organization, be it for profit or governmental, you're going to find some fraud in government contracts, any large organization, be it for profit or governmental,
you're going to find some fraud. The bigger it gets, the more fraud in theory you're going to
find. Is it materially relevant to the point of saying we need an unelected bureaucrat to start
slashing randomly and emailing employees and saying, justify your job to me? It's not the
way to find the actual fraud.
We have systems in place.
And you know what?
If you better wanted to be able to find the fraud, maybe don't fire the inspectors general
who could actually be there to figure out what really happened.
Where have there been crimes and make sure that they are dealt with appropriately.
These people are pathetic.
I will believe that there is fraud when they actually give us the proof.
You know, I recently tried to get in touch with Joe Rogan. I said, I'm going to be in Texas
for book related stuff. I would love to be on. I did not hear back from Rogan. And as many of you
know, I've been on the Rogan show twice. I don't know that I am eligible to be back on in the sense that when I've found that
Rogan says something I disagree with over the last few years, I criticize it and I always
couch it as this doesn't mean I personally hate the guy.
This doesn't mean we couldn't have a good conversation.
In fact, I would welcome the opportunity to try to figure out
what it, what is it that happened with Rogan? Was it moving to Texas and changing,
uh, the people around him that changed his views on so many issues? What, what was it?
So in any case, for me, none of this stuff is personal. I did not hear back from Rogan.
Uh, so I don't think I'm going to be back on in the midst of this. I was sent this clip
of Rogan speaking to actor Woody Harrelson.
This is really tough to watch.
Let's just I won't even preview what's in it.
Let's just jump in.
Comedy Mothership.
Yeah, I'd like to do that.
It's fun.
It's a great place.
My buddy Jimmy Dore is there this weekend, who's also great.
And he's filming his comedy special there this weekend.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Jimmy Dore is amazing.
He is another guy that's risen as an independent journalist. He's a comedian.
So first of all, I do not believe that Jimmy Dore is a journalist, but I also don't believe that I'm
a journalist. I don't think any of us are journalists. I think we are all commentators.
We're just giving our opinions on things. And this is already a media literacy problem that we have in this country. Is it reporting or is it commentary? And he started
his show basically just making fun of political things. And then during the pandemic, got vaccine
injured and really got kind of red pilled and kind of became like the voice of truth and reason.
And, you know, he was vaccine injured. And now we can,
as a result of the injury. We can now count on Jimmy Dore to tell us the truth.
Another guy has been completely outcast by supposedly progressive people for just telling
the truth. Now, of course, I don't even know that it's accurate to say Jimmy
Doerr has been outcast by progressive people. This is one of the things that's really important to
understand. When you change your views and you go, hey, actually, the vaccines are fill in the blanks,
everything Jimmy Doerr has said, which isn't true.
And it doesn't really seem like Trump's actually that bad. And, you know, I don't want to misquote
Jimmy Dore, but, you know, this kind of playing coy with like I'm as left as anyone. But like
Harris, no, you know, Trump's actually not what people say. Once you start doing that, it's not that you're outcast because you're willing to tell some
truth that nobody on the left wants to hear.
You just lose any connection to the values and principles of progressivism, which include
that we follow the science.
We try to separate our feelings from the facts. We oppose authoritarianism.
And this is the kind of scariest part. There's a lot of people in what I refer to as the
revolutionary left, which I don't even really know that is the left. There is a a wing or a sort of
through line of people who at some point considered themselves
to be nominally on the left who are just enamored with authoritarianism and often authoritarian
leaders and authoritarian dictators.
And there's really nothing there that is leftism, as I recognize it, where leftism is really libertarian, small libertarian,
where you say, let's get out of people's lives, except for places where we have a really good
case that government should be involved. There are things that are too big to just handle in
the libertarian way. And then we say government should be involved there. Healthcare would be
one of them. Collecting taxes would be another one of them. Doing the roads would be another one of them. Military would be another one. So like the,
the, the hyper libertarian would say government shouldn't even do military. We should leave it
to private armies and they can be contracted for now. Right? So the, the small L libertarianism
of the left that I recognize and consider myself a part of would say a lot of this stuff, let's
just keep the government out. I don't need the government directing, you know, how we do mobile
phone development. Let's let Apple and Samsung and whoever. Right. But in some areas, I don't want
the libertarian version of mercenary armies. Let's have the government do military. OK,
you guys get it. The problem is that the rhetoric of a lot of this populism has started to become indistinguishable
left and right.
And then they start playing coy with authoritarianism.
And then we go, guys, there's nothing on the left that we recognize here.
So I don't care about Jimmy Dore in the sense of saying we have cast him out from the left.
I just don't hear him say anything that still places him on the left.
He has segregated himself by virtue of what he was.
He has started to say no one has cast him out.
All right, let's continue.
Inconvenient truth.
Inconvenient.
Yeah, but I guess the progressives are they, by the way, Woody Harrelson seems to have
no idea what's going on now.
The conservatives, we got to change the term because yeah progressives
seem a lot less progressive yeah and i really felt quite you know i think this whole thing i felt
quite yeah i think they got co-opted and i think it was on purpose i think there was there's some
very sophisticated psychological this is the a Alex Jones PSYOP perspective.
Manipulation that was involved and a lot of money was being spent.
I wish they told us who spent the money and how and also kind of like why, too.
In order to push some very specific narratives. For what reason?
And they did a great job of it. You know, they did a great job. But we're finding
out because of the Department of Government Efficiency that most of this was funded by
our own tax dollars, which is really fucking crazy. Now, this is another one that I mean,
this is like 12 conspiracies. Another one that they're pushing now is even that like shows like
mine without my knowledge are funded by USAID through shadowy nonprofits who then come and buy ads on
the show, just make completely made up. And it's funny that Rogan has fallen hook, line and sinker
for Doge is finding all of this stuff. Doge still has not found a single instance of demonstrated
fraud that they have proven when Caroline Levitt holds up papers and she goes, look, 30 grand for a DEI
program. First of all, DEI programs aren't fraud. You might think that they're bullshit. You might
think we don't need them, but they're not fraud. And also we're going to solve this problem. 30
grand at a time. I'm sorry. We're not a lot of these NGOs that supported a lot of these crazy
riots and all these different things that were happening in our cities was really supported by our own tax dollars.
And it was just a subversion of public discourse.
Instead of allowing people to figure out what's right and what's wrong, they pushed what they wanted you to say,
and anybody who deviated from that was canceled.
And because of the fact that before Elon bought Twitter, the left had complete total control over the narrative because they that both the Trump administration and the Biden
campaign right ones in power had back channels to say to Twitter, we find these accounts
problematic.
Trump and Biden both had that Facebook owned by Meta decided before Biden was even president
that they were going to start getting away from some of the
political stuff in a way that hurt the left, didn't help them. It's all lies. It's all lies.
And I believe Rogan believes it. When I see him say this stuff, he genuinely seems to believe
this stuff. I don't think that this is, you know, we've criticized some who play characters. I think
Candace Owens basically plays a character. I think she based on her upbringing and everything we know about her.
I think she's a character.
I think Rogan genuinely believes this stuff.
I think he's wrong about it.
And the lack of specificity is the first indicator that there's really nothing here.
I welcome the opportunity to talk to him about it.
I will be down in Texas.
It seems he doesn't want to have me on, which is, course completely within, within his rights. It's his show. Uh, but it
is disappointing. Even former Trump advisor, Larry Kudlow now admits there's going to be some
economic pain. This is Larry Kudlow, former Trump economic advisor who at, at not that long ago was
telling us that Trump's plans are so pro growth and pro business,
it's going to be awesome. And now here is Kudlow going, this might not go so well.
There could be some short term one off price hikes, but at least for now,
the economic signals are flashing slower growth and higher inflation. Not good.
Now, of course, if the the rubber met the road, I think Kudlow would
try to say it's not really because of Trump. It's kind of like the way that the economy was handed
over to him by Biden, blah, blah, blah. But even Trump people are acknowledging.
It looks like inflation starting to creep back up.
We are seeing prices go back up and it's going to be bad for the economy.
And that's true.
Slow growth with higher inflation is a little thing we like to call stagflation.
And that is exactly where Trump and Musk are leading us.
If they don't change course, Record egg prices, inflation back up,
stock market completely flat. Trump's first month. OK, fine. It's just one month,
but it's not going in the direction Trump promised that it would go. He said prices would go down.
Growth would go up. We are soon going to have Q4 GDP numbers. And then I guess it would be in May.
We will have Q1 GDP numbers and we will start to compare what is happening here with growth.
And even Larry Kudlow, even a devoted sycophant, brown nosing sycophant, is saying this is
not looking good.
We should listen to them when they're acknowledging the reality and say, if even you get it, why
doesn't Trump care?
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the podcast notes. All right, let's get into Friday feedback, also known as the Friday feed bag where comments and emails and excretions are just pouring in
as we approach 3 million YouTube subscribers.
I predict that the hate mail will go absolutely nuclear or even nuclear.
Um, when we hit the 3 million subscriber mark, I think it will be extraordinarily triggering to many of the people that are waiting for the show to evaporate and to go down the
drain. So they are going to be very upset. But in the meantime, in the meantime, let's get to some
emails that came in to info at David Pakman dot com. We'll look at some subreddit posts and we
will discuss emotional and posted to the subreddit.
Trump and Elon are putting people out of work.
They're going to trigger a recession.
It's not just federal employees losing jobs.
Anyone in any sector that relies on grants or government regulations is at risk.
I know people who work in labs for pharma and environmental.
They're facing job losses.
So are people in education.
Even the threat of job losses has caused these people to tighten their budgets, which will
have an impact on markets.
This will eventually become everybody's problem.
I agree completely.
I have many friends who worked for nonprofits funded partially by USA ID.
Many of them are currently out of jobs, are looking for jobs and are being told we are
being flooded with applicants for jobs because of everybody who has lost their jobs.
I know people who are in industries that would be very much hurt by tariffs if and when the
tariffs, you know, become a reality,
a stable, fixed, semi-permanent reality.
This is what we call the opposite of demand side stimulus.
This is such basic economics.
When you give more people the means with which to buy things, it's better for the economy.
When fewer people are working, when people are making less money,
when people are worried their source of money will dry up.
They say, I will wait to spend either by choice or by necessity.
And I've explained how this affects this show.
You know, uh, the rich people can already afford a membership to my show.
If you go and you give everybody who's rich a tax cut, they are not going to be more likely
to get a subscription for seven bucks to my show or three 50 a month.
If you use a coupon code, the rich people are not going to be influenced in their purchasing
decisions by a tax cut.
On the other hand, if all of a sudden a bunch of working people lose their jobs, people
for whom the seven bucks a month they spend here and the however many bucks a month they
spend with a different show, that is meaningful.
And so they lose their jobs.
They will tighten their budget.
Similarly, if you do demand side stimulus, either by getting more people jobs or getting
them raises, all of a sudden folks who were marginal, they had zero disposable income.
They go, Hey, you know what?
I've got an extra hundred bucks a month.
I'm going to save 70 of it because of course my viewers are extraordinarily fiscally smart
and they're, they're going to, they say, I'm going to my extra hundred bucks, $70 of it
I'll put into my retirement account. And then the other 30, I will go out and get
myself a, uh, cappuccino one morning, and then I'll get a membership to David Pakman. And then
I'll get a membership to Jimmy Dore. No, probably not Dore, but you get the point. When more people
have money, it's better for the businesses that have something
to sell, be it a service or a product. So, yes, I do believe that taken to its full potential,
the Trump Musk economic policy, which sounds great. What's the policy? It's
them pointing at things in the dark. I think it will be very bad on the topic of dead people. They're dead getting social security money.
I heard from sinned blank who said when my parents died, social security couldn't wait
to take their money back.
The very month they died, they deducted that month's payment and shut down the account.
I don't believe this accusation for one minute. Yeah. You know, they've still shown no proof that a single dead person is getting checks.
Now I will concede to you with a country of 340 million people alive. There is no question
that some number temporarily slipped through the cracks. States may not always report deaths on time.
Um, uh, hospitals, right?
There is a temporary period during which we estimate at its peak, 10 to 15,000 people
received some social security money after dying.
Typically it's one month, sometimes it's part of a month and it is ultimately corrected.
The idea that tens of millions of people are getting paid Social Security money is a fabrication
for which they have shown no proof because they don't have any.
And it is all a pretext to justify cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and social security. If they can convince you that there
is endless fraud, then they can say, we must cut. We've got to do it. Um, okay. Accordia 91
refers to Elon Musk as space Karen and says, Musk didn't invent Tesla. He bought it. Musk didn't invent SpaceX. He bought it. Musk didn't invent Starlink.
He bought it. Musk didn't invent X. He bought it. Musk didn't invent Trump. He bought him. Yeah. The
last one is sort of a, a tongue in cheek, but it is true that many of the businesses that Elon Musk
is in charge of, he didn't create, he didn't buy.
It's still nothing to sneeze at to be able to take an existing business and to increase revenue and
make it a better business. He hasn't done that with X. Certainly Tesla has exploded since he
bought it. Uh, but he hasn't done that with X. Bangkok Garrett asks who will ever accept
federal government jobs in the future?
One aspect of this destruction of the federal government that nobody seems to be considering
is that even if sanity does return via change of power, who in their right mind is going
to accept job offers for our important federal government positions?
Not the best and the brightest, that's for sure.
We're never again going to be able to attract competent people to the important jobs.
We need people to fill because of the lack of job security.
Just another reason we're so screwed.
You know, I'm not sure about that.
If this antagonism and hostility towards federal government workers that we're seeing from
Trump musk, if it's relatively short lived and reversed at the
earliest convenience, I don't know that it's going to have impacts eight, 10 years down the line.
The point is a good one, though, which is this is going to make people who would be great at these
jobs. You know, it's a vicious circle. It's sort of like the education stuff. They hate public
education. So they try to damage it.
And when they damage it, the quality of it gets worse.
The good teachers leave, et cetera.
And then they go, look at how much this thing sucks.
Let's just do charter schools and private schools.
Well, it partially sucks because you're doing stuff to make it suck.
And similarly, they love to say the government can't accomplish stuff.
It's not efficient.
It's not good.
We don't have good people. We have slackers, we have fraudsters, but then they actively make it a hostile place for
good people to work. And then they're going to be surprised and they'll go, it's not functioning
that well. Well, it's not functioning that well because you decimated it. It's it's a, a, a tale
as old as Republicans have existed. Uh, okay. Bright dreamer 25 sent in a picture or a photograph
of their cat watching the show and says, my cat likes watching David. Thought we could all use
something a little lighter. You know, even though I'm really a dog guy, they're eating the cats.
They're eating the dogs. You know, even though I'm really a dog guy, dogs don't
like the show nearly as much as cats. I don't know if it's that the show is too pedantic
and anodyne for dogs, but there is something about this show where cats love it. Dogs,
not so much. Dogs, not so much. Dave C. Dave CC asks, why is it that the usual suspects in the right wing media, the Republican Congress,
YouTube commentators don't mind living in a dictatorship and they even promote it?
I have an answer.
OK, but this is a good issue that Dave raises.
Dave says, so as we march into an authoritarian dictatorship under Trump, all of his media
enablers and Congress members continue to help him succeed.
Why would they want to live in a dictatorship themselves?
The Congress could stop this by voting down all of Trump's terrible cabinet picks.
If push came to shove, even the GOP controlled Congress could impeach and remove Trump as
having a king would be too much even for them.
They all have families and they are dooming
themselves as well as the rest of us by aiding him. Do they all plan to leave when the shit
hits the fan? Do they think they will be exempt? Yes. So let me explain to you how this is working.
The doormat loyalists of Trump, I call them doormat loyalists because they just lay down
like a doormat and Trump walks all over them. They believe that the dictatorship that Trump would love to have, we'll call it
an authoritarian presidency. They believe it'll never come for them. It's that simple. The, this
is, it always is the case in cults and dictatorships and in authoritarian environments, those allied with the dictator,
the cult leader, the authoritarian strong man, they believe it will never be turned
against them.
But as we've learned from history, particularly looking at 20th century at 20th century authoritarians,
the cults of the 1950s through the 2000s, eventually they turn on you. They turn on you either because
you've been replaced by even more sycophantic followers. They turn on you because they are
cornered and they are going to try to blame someone else. They turn on you. And so what
Dave is bringing up is so important. And the answer is yes, they believe they will be exempt. That is exactly
what they believe. Shaz on Facebook says, not jokingly, Elon is a national treasure,
a man working for free just to save our country for corruption. He doesn't need the money.
He is just trying to bring back efficiency and transparently transparency in government.
Let me explain something about this whole, he's doing it for free.
Oh, Trump is such a humanitarian.
He's he's not taking a presidential salary.
Well Trump stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more from the way that
he will direct policy and
run scams and grifts.
The 400000 dollar salary is meaningless compared to what he can make by lining his pockets
through policy and through enriching his friends.
And similarly, Elon Musk doesn't need, you know, I from what I've read, I think if Musk
were a government, a paid government employee, his salary would be 180.
There's sort of like these these levels of staffing in the federal government and a bunch
of the positions pay 180.
I don't know if that went up in twenty twenty five inflation adjusted.
Maybe it did.
Maybe it didn't.
But it was like in twenty twenty four, it was a standard hundred and eighty thousand
dollars salary.
That is nothing to the guy whose net worth fluctuates by billions every week because
of the movement of the stock market.
And if you believe he doesn't stand to gain personally from his involvement in Doge, I
have a bridge to sell you.
CJ makes videos said on the subreddit, I feel like I'm slowly starting to see slightly more
criticism of Trump from Republicans, but they still support him regardless. It's bizarre
to me. They will say, well, yeah, the leopards ate my face and I'm still not happy about
that, but at least Trump isn't as woke as Biden. I don't even really get what most American
conservatives believe in anymore. They will get to a point.
They have to acknowledge something severely bad.
Trump did, but explain how DEI is a bigger problem yet.
So here's the bottom line with this.
You are not going to see serious criticism from Republicans who have something to lose.
That's the critical thing.
The ones that are out of government or retiring or independently wealthy with
no connection to the administration. You'll anecdotally see people like Mitt Romney, Adam
Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Jeff Flake back during the first Trump administration. Some media
people, the only people on the right who seem willing to really criticize Trump, not in
a caveated way are those who
have nothing left to lose.
And to some degree I get it because if I knew as I'm sure they do, that the second they
express doubt about Trump, Trump will turn against them, potentially turn social media
against them, potentially turn the DOJ against them.
I would also be worried if I were them.
I actually,
I actually do get it. Uh, but of course it would be nice if they didn't get themselves into this
pathetic situation in the first place, uh, by looking the other way when Trump first ran
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