The David Pakman Show - 3/18/25: Global war explodes, constitutional crisis is here

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Despite claiming to be the antiwar president, Donald Trump is presiding over a new escalation in Gaza, has launched attacks in Yemen, and still hasn't solved the Russia-Ukraine war -- A true constitutional crisis is here as Donald Trump's White House blatantly ignores a specific court order with regard to deportations -- Donald Trump announces he will be releasing JFK files, in addition to a number of other disoriented comments -- Donald Trump speaks from a balcony, channeling Evita, while attacking journalists -- David explores the connection between a chapter in his book "The Echo Machine" and the lack of a shared agreement on facts and problems in modern politics -- Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump's White House Press Secretary, melts down when fact checked during a press briefing -- Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump's White House Press Secretary, humiliates herself during a Fox News appearance -- Joe Rogan launches overt white national talking points -- On the Bonus Show: El Salvador's president taking advantage of Trump deportations, Tesla board members selling their stock, heat ages people as much as smoking, and much more... 🥦 Lumen lets you master your metabolism. GET 20% OFF at https://lumen.me/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free baked goods at https://wildgrain.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get 20% OFF sitewide at https://helixsleep.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

. Welcome to the show. Everybody global war is escalating under supposedly antiwar Donald Trump. That's right. Antiwar Donald Trump, who we were told would end all wars immediately, get us into no new ones and peace would reign supreme globally. Has presided now over more bombing than ever in Gaza, launched new attacks in Yemen, didn't end the Russia Ukraine war on day one, like he promised and is threatening to annex Greenland, Panama and Canada while threatening Iran. Does that sound opposed to global conflict to you? You know, for a guy

who swore that he was the peace president, Donald Trump is sure racking up quite a body count here. So here's what's going on. Gaza bombing resumed Yemen, more airstrikes than ever. And Ukraine, not even close to peace. The man who promised to end wars on day one is now knee deep in conflicts. He's dropping bombs left and right, all while pretending that he is still somehow this anti war hero. Remember when Donald Trump promised to stop the bloodshed, Israel just launched its most intense assault on Gaza since January, killing over 400 people. The reason, according to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there was not enough progress in

durable ceasefire talks, so they are bombing their way out of the stalemate. Trump, the supposed neutral broker, has been missing. He's been golfing, posting to Truth Social and cheering about winning tournaments that he organizes at Mar-a-Lago. And instead of peace, Palestinians are being ordered to evacuate. And we once again are wondering, is a full scale ground invasion coming? Trump's love affair with bombing Middle Eastern countries continues, this time with a new wave of airstrikes in Yemen. We talked about this yesterday. Over the weekend, U.S. forces killed at least 53 people in a relentless campaign

against the Houthis with more strikes coming in the following days expected. And Donald Trump isn't even pretending that this is about defensive action. He has opened up the door to a full scale offensive strike and has given authority to manage that to us central command. And then we look at Iran. Donald Trump is now escalating rhetoric against Iran saying they are sinister mobsters and thugs and threatening them with quote great force. This is the guy who campaigned on ending all wars and doing everything possible to avoid starting any new ones. And this is very different than what we are seeing today.

Donald Trump also spent his entire campaign bragging about how he would end the Russia, Ukraine war insanity. First he was going to end it within a day of becoming president elect. Then he was going to end it with a it within a day of being sworn in. Most recently we are told that might take a hundred days and even that seems pretty optimistic because the latest is that Trump held a call with Vladimir Putin reportedly through a Ukrainian president of Vladimir Zelensky under the bus floated a peace plan that sounds suspiciously like carving up Ukraine to appease Russia.

But meanwhile, Russian forces continue their assault and the Trump administration is restricting intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Although Trump recently said we've sort of restarted sharing intelligence, but did they, we don't know. The point is that war seems nowhere close to ending and Trump's big deal doesn't seem to be peace. It seems to be war and submission to authoritarians. We will be lucky if on top of all of this, he doesn't invade Greenland, airstrike Mexico, try to annex Canada. And what this is fundamentally about is not the fact that he's not able to end every war. We all knew he wasn't going to do it. It's that he sold himself

as the guy who would bring the troops home, stop the endless wars, make the United States of America a neutral player in global conflicts rather than an aggravating factor. And just look at what we're seeing under Trump's leadership or lack thereof. We are seeing mass bombings in Gaza resume an escalating war in Yemen, a Ukraine conflict that's not ending anytime soon. This is not peace. This is chaos. This is failure. And one of the growing sort of narratives or discussions that we're finding ourselves hearing quite a bit is which thing is Trump doing to distract from which other? And what I mean by that is, is Trump escalating global war to distract from what he's doing with the tariffs?

Are the tariffs meant to distract from the growing constitutional crisis over deportations, which we will talk about in a moment, or is ignoring the court order on the deportations meant to distract from the fact that he is not executing an anti-war presidency? We don't know. And, and that this even may give him too much credit. Trump may be getting too much credit in the idea that he's deliberately trying to distract from a, by doing B or C. But the next thing we must talk about is the constitutional crisis. It is happening. The constitutional crisis legal experts have been warning about is happening

right now. It's unfolding in real time as we see the Trump administration outright ignore a federal court order and is daring the judiciary to stop them. We talked about this on the award winning bonus show yesterday. All awards we give out, I admit it, but many awards have been won over the weekend. Two plane loads of Venezuelans were deported under Donald Trump's immigration crackdown and a judge explicitly ordered those flights to turn around midair. The administration refused. They didn't do it. They said the ruling doesn't apply because the planes have already left us airspace.

They are not subject to recall. Now some are thinking about this as an immigration issue. This is not just an immigration issue. This is the president of the United States openly defying the judicial branch and sending the message court rulings don't apply to me. This is not the first time that Donald Trump has challenged judicial authority. Remember that his administration aggressively fought against court rulings on the mass firings of federal workers on freezing federal funds on blocking asylum claims on revoking automatic birthright citizenship. We are at a tipping point and I try to avoid being

hyperbolic on this show, but I also try to avoid understating a crisis and it is critical to understand why this is a crisis. When we say threat to democracy, it is not a vague nebulous thing. When the white house ignores and disregards specific concrete court orders, you must do X and they ignore it. We have to look at this as what it is. There are serious legal questions surrounding the deportations that go even above and beyond just ignoring the court order, which themselves are arguably a crisis.

There are really four additional legal issues here. Number one, the legal basis that the Trump administration is using for these immediate mass deportations is something called the alien enemies act. Legal experts say completely improper usage simply doesn't apply here. Gangs are not foreign governments making the legal justification very shaky. We have not declared war on these countries. The legal justification just doesn't apply. Secondly, did the administration violate a federal court order? Because if so, officials could face sanctions or even be ordered to reverse the deportations. Number three, what about due process? Many of those deported were not given proper hearings.

They were not given access to an asylum claim and there are civil and human rights concerns there. And then fourthly, what about international law? Trump laughs at international law. The U S appears to have deported individuals to El Salvador without clear consent. And that is also potentially a breach. Now it gets to the sort of nitty gritty. If courts rule against the Trump administration, they might say, you've got to bring back the deportees. Uh, however, how on earth do you enforce such a ruling, especially now that the deportees

are in El Salvador and a Salvadorian president, naive Bukele has said, we're not sending them back. So understand that this is not normal. Previous presidents, Democrats, Republicans, they have battled court rulings. Sometimes we agree with the administration when these battles take place and sometimes we don't, but ultimately prior administrations have complied with court orders. Trump is pushing the limits further and why wouldn't he? Because he's gotten away with everything so far and if Trump can get away with ignoring

court rulings on immigration, what would stop him from doing the same thing on elections, on congressional subpoenas, on constitutional rights? So we are at a real stress test for democracy here. If courts cannot enforce rulings, checks and balances collapse. And that is the real crisis here. Trump is betting nothing will stop him. And you know what? I think he's probably right because nothing has stopped him for years. When we talk about the framers of the constitution, establishing checks and balances. We also acknowledge they never thought that the American people would vote in a charlatan like Trump who would flout every norm, law and

regulation. Plato knew it. Plato was worried about democracy, which he believed ultimately would lead to the most ignorant and uninformed buffoons. My word buffoon, not his ignorant, uninformed buffoons electing a president. And then that president would be a fiasco. Plato predicted it a long time ago. Framers of the constitution didn't think the American people would ever do it. Well, they have. And now what we are up against as we saw in term number one, and we are seeing now is that the constitutional checks and balances, the systems that we have in place, even the judiciary seems unsuited in terms of really having the teeth to make Trump do what they declare and what should be done. So what is next? You really

can't blame Trump because if you get away with nine things, wouldn't you also try to get away with the 10th? It's also finally really important to understand that Trump is really the kind of final manifestation of the direction that things started going since the civil rights era. I write about that specifically in my book, the echo machine, which will be out in a week. We are down to the final seven days before the book is out. I worked very hard on this book. I think it's critical to understand how we got to where we are. And that's part of what the book does. I would love for you to order it available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, any local bookstore can get it for you. The latest is that there are eleven hundred signed copies spoken for

at Brookline Booksmith. They're having me sign two hundred more. Those final 200 signed copies you can claim at David Pakman dot com slash booksmith. We will take a break. Massive dumps after the break. No, no, no. It's not what you think. Did you know that 80 percent of New Year's resolutions fail by February? Lumen is something you can do for your health. That's easy to stick to our sponsor. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach with a single breath. First thing in the morning, Lumen measures your metabolism. It tells you, are you burning fat or are you burning carbs? And it'll give you tailored guidance for nutrition workouts, sleep and stress management. No more cookie cutter, one size fits all nutrition plans.

Lumen lets you know what is happening in your body in real time and will build a personalized health plan based on that data. Lumen gives you daily macro recommendations based on what's happening with your metabolism so you can really fuel your body with what's best right before a workout, breathe into Lumen, and it'll tell you if you're burning carbs or fat. Lumen will tell you if you need to carb up before a workout for an energy boost, or if you're good to go, go to Lumen.me slash Pacman to get 20% off your Lumen. That's L U M E N dot M E slash Pacman for 20% off. The link is in the podcast notes. Winter is the perfect time to cozy up at home with some freshly baked treats like flaky pastries, hearty breads, comforting pastas, and you can do it

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Memberships go directly to supporting the work that we do. And I really appreciate everybody who has signed up since it has become clear that this administration doesn't like adversarial media and that this administration doesn't respect freedom of the press unless it is laudatory sort of praise that is coming from media outlets. So we are really up against it here. Grab a membership at join pacman.com. You'll get the daily show commercial free in audio or video form, whichever you prefer. You'll also get it hours before it's premiered to the general audience. And finally, we do an extra show every single day called the bonus show. Alex Jones hates this damn thing. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money.

Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. Exactly right. All right. Donald Trump has announced a massive dump in a disgusting rant while turning the Kennedy Center into yet another political tool. Here is Donald Trump saying the Kennedy files, tremendous amounts of paper will be dumped. Listen to what he had to say. And by the way, reeks of desperation as what we really want to see are the full real Epstein files. He doesn't want to release those. Why?

Well, he could be implicated there. Take a listen to this. But while we're here, I thought it would be appropriate. We are tomorrow announcing and giving all of the Kennedy files. So people have been waiting for decades for this. And I've instructed my people that are responsible. Lots of different people put together by Tulsi Gabbard. Right. And that's going to be released tomorrow.

We have a tremendous amount of paper. You've got a lot of big paper. I don't believe we're going to redact anything. I said, just don't redact. You can't redact. But we're going to be releasing the JFK files and that would be tomorrow. Do you have anything else to add to that, Carolyn? So that's a big announcement. They've been waiting for that for decades. But while we're here, I thought. So how about those Epstein files? How about it now? You know, I really am agnostic with regard to whether these it is there. And the reason I use that term, is there really some mother load in the John F. Kennedy assassination files that goes above and

beyond what has been speculated, suggested and demonstrated so far. I have no idea. It's possible that that exists. It's possible that it does not. I have not. I'm not feeling definitive one way or the other. Where Donald Trump seems to really not want anybody looking is that the Epstein files, Jeffrey Epstein, the flight logs and whatever else might be part of that, including going back to earlier investigations down in Florida into Jeffrey Epstein. And the speculation is it's because Trump himself is implicated there.

Trump known to associate for long periods of time with Jeffrey Epstein. That really creepy video of Epstein and Trump kind of looking at and evaluating women dancing the Epstein files. We would really love to see. Are they really going to release the mother load of the JFK files? Well, we will certainly see. Now, during this bizarre event at the Kennedy Center, Donald Trump also repeated the blatant lie that Russia has a Ukrainian army, uh, a contingent surrounded in Kursk, but he says he's going to talk to Putin and Trump really kind of making himself the F the hero of this completely fabricated situation in Russia and Ukraine. Listen to the tomorrow speaking with president Putin of Russia to save some soldiers who are in deep trouble. They're captured, essentially.

They're surrounded by Russian soldiers. So I give you a lot of different things in one news conference, but it's a big deal. They're surrounded by Russian soldiers, and I believe if it wasn't for me, they wouldn't be here any longer. I was able to get them not to do anything at this moment. But it's a bad situation in Russia and it's a bad situation in Ukraine. What's happening in Ukraine is not good.

But we're going to see if we can work a peace agreement to cease fire and peace. And I think we'll be able to do it. I'm speaking to president Putin. Is any of that true or is Trump once again, making himself a main character in a movie that nobody's watching? Nobody's even producing the movie. It would not come as a surprise for Donald Trump to pull the whole, I saved these soldiers. Putin had him surrounded and I came in there and I saved them. And he has me. They all have me to thank. And Zelensky should be grateful. He needs to prostrate himself in the ritual humiliation that Donald Trump has now taken

to demanding from everybody. Thank me. Thank me now on your knees. What a wild situation, Trump. But we have no evidence that what he describes is happening. Might it be happening? Maybe we have no evidence that it is anything other than a complete and total fabrication. Now, Trump weighed in on why he's even getting involved with the Kennedy Center honors. I, I hesitate to tell you that his answer is

clear. OK, listen to what he said. Mr. President, when most people think of the Kennedy Center, they think of the Kennedy Center honors takes place in December every year. Is that something that you anticipate hosting at the White House? And what do you think that we're going to have honors? We're going to have I think it's going to be a much bigger show than it has been in the past. It got tired, very tired, very tired, very boring, very radical left.

Unless you are a radical left, it just seemed that nobody was chosen. There are a lot of people out there that can get the honors and we're going to do it. I think we'll have a very big show. It's going to be a very big show. We have some surprises on that show. Big surprise. Ted Nugent and Kid Rock will be honored and performing and hosting and doing everything because they've got nobody else. Big surprises, but I think it has a chance to be a very big show. That's a big part of the Kennedy Center, the honors that evening. And so I think you're going to be really surprised. I think it's going to get great ratings, actually. The ratings are going to be really surprised. I think it's going to get great ratings. Actually, the ratings are going to be absolutely unbelievable. I love Tesla. Okay. And then finally, Donald Trump weighing in on the auto pen controversy. If you missed this one, I'm jealous of you.

I wish I had missed it as well. Donald Trump declared in a middle of the night truth social post a couple of days ago that the pardons signed or issued by President Joe Biden are void and vacant because Biden used an auto pen. Now, auto pens are commonly used by all presidents to sign documents. A reporter asked Trump a great question, which is, have you ever used the auto pen? And Trump goes only for stuff that's not important. And you'll make your own determination. Yeah, only for very unimportant papers. And I don't call them unimportant if you do letters where people write in and you know, they'd love to have a response to a right responses and I'll sign them whenever I can.

But when I can't, you know, we'd use an auto pen. But to use them for for what they've used them for is terrible. Right. Now, of course, a better question might have been, Mr. President, sir, did you hand sign all fifteen hundred pardons for the January 6th rioters so that then we could maybe compare apples to apples? Or did you not even do that and just issue one blanket pardon, which is arguably of even more legal dubiousness, if that's a word that question didn't get asked. So Trump announcing a

disgusting, massive dump of documents today. Big paper, massive paper. We will see if ultimately that happens. Maybe by the time you listen to today's show, you will have heard about it. One other moment I want to talk about from this event, which was even stranger, like a disoriented Evita, Donald Trump attacked a reporter while speaking from a balcony at this event related to the Kennedy Center honors. What a weird moment. Surreal. Dare I say Kafka ask not Orwellian, but maybe Kafka ask Donald Trump confused, attacking journalists asking him questions as he poses for pictures on a balcony like a modern day Evita. We make a lot of changes, including the seats, the decor.

Yeah, it's just not gaudy enough for Trump. Pretty much everything needs a lot of work. So Mr. President, you surprised by the reaction that the vice president got here at the Senate of the other. I don't know about that. He's the most popular vice president we've had in years. The most popular vice president we've had in years. I don't know anything about it.

I figured you'd ask a question. Mr. President, what are we talking about price-wise? It's right big to bring it up to your side. I'm not a fan of that, whatever it is. I think it's such an important part of the fabric of the country and of D.C. So we want to do it right. We'll do it right. We'll do it once. So you want a little picture like this? Go ahead. Are you guys ready? Come on. Really quite an aura there surrounding Donald Trump, although the aura, it seems to potentially be body odor. It doesn't, it's not exactly the same

aura, uh, of people past. So the, the latest is that the Kennedy Center honors will be completely subjugated for political purposes. They're going to find, I guess, right wing entertainment and other figures to honor. And it is going to be kind of like the latest cultural battle line to try to turn anything that Trump can get his hands on into a MAGA fiasco. He also appointed its Laura Ingraham. And who else was it? Let me see if I can find it quickly. Laura Ingraham. And there was another new board member that Trump appointed. Oh, who was it? Oh, Maria Bartiromo, Fox News, brown noser and perpetual screamer. Maria Bartiromo also

appointed to the board of the Kennedy Center Honor. So it's it's we've lost it. We've lost it not as something from the left, just as something nonpolitical. It's gone. It's now into the depths of MAGA, maybe to never surface again. Tragic and terrifying, terrifying stuff. Once again, Donald Trump's cabinet picks are all about loyalty over expertise. Election denier Carrie Lake to lead voice of America. The government funded broadcaster meant to report unbiased news. Ground News found hundreds of articles covering this story, which is an app I'll see you next time. the spin they put on each story. You can even filter out certain sources you don't want. So you can stay informed without getting buried in the noise. Trump is shaping our future in ways that will last decades. And if we're not paying attention, we will allow history to repeat itself. So stay engaged with ground news who is fixing what is breaking right in front of us, the trust and transparency in the media. Ground News is giving my audience 50 percent off the same vantage plan that I use.

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sleep dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. As many of you know, my book comes out next week and leading up to it, I am going to use parts of the book to make new critiques of what's going on today. Now, these are not going to be repeats from the book, but rather it's ideas in the book applied to what we are seeing today. And one of the major arguments I make in the echo machine is that the right wing media ecosystem has made the concept of shared facts impossible when one half of the country doesn't believe climate change is real, insists the 2020 election was stolen, claims vaccines contain microchips. There's really no conversation to be had.

But here's the thing. Even when we do manage to agree on the facts, that doesn't mean that we agree on what the problem we're trying to solve is. And I believe that that's just as dangerous. So, for example, take climate change. Problem one, which I talk about in my book, is that we have no shared basis. In fact, a huge swath of the right resisted admitting that climate change was even happening when they started to admit, OK, climate change is happening. They resisted the idea that humans

play a role. Humans aren't possibly powerful enough to affect the climate of the planet. It has nothing to do with what humans are doing when they couldn't resist that any further. They said, well, humans may play a role, but that role is tiny and it's not worth worrying about. And it's definitely not worth doing anything about. But even if we agreed on the facts, we would still have an issue of not agreeing on the problem. Let me explain to you what I mean. Liberals, progressives, the left, even most of the world's scientific community agrees that rising temperatures, extreme weather, sea level rise is a threat to humans on this planet,

to life on this planet. It's more than just humans. The problem, as we might say it, is that human activity, fossil fuel burning, deforestation, industrial emissions is destabilizing the planet. It's going to make life harder. In some places it's going to make life impossible. So life impossible. So our goal would be let's reduce emissions. Let's invest in renewables. Let's prevent a catastrophe. That's how we would define the problem. Remember, this is when we've gotten them to agree on the facts. Climate change is happening and humans are playing a role, which we haven't even gotten to yet. But imagine that we did. We define the problem as I just did. The MAGA people, you know, right wingers, whatever. Even when they acknowledge climate change and human role in that, they don't see the same problem to them. The real threat

isn't a collapsing ecosystem. It's being forced to change their way of life. It's government intervention in stuff. When they think about climate action, they're not thinking about saving Miami from going underwater or preventing wildfires in California. They think about, do I have to give up my SUV? Do I have to give up my gas stove? Do I have to give up cheap flights to Florida? Their problem is not climate change itself. It's anything that threatens their immediate personal comfort and their consumption habits and their way of life. Even though of course, over the longterm climate change will be very disruptive to their way of life. This disconnect is crucial because even when facts

get through, the solutions are impossible when the problem is not agreed upon. Now I've been talking about climate, but this happens across the board in the echo machine. My book, I look at how right wing media has systematically trained its audience to see entirely different problems than those outside the bubble. And when people don't even agree on what the issue is, you can't get to a solution. Here's some other examples. Health care. The left sees the problem as millions of Americans are unable to afford basic medical care. And the left wants to get everybody at least some coverage.

The right would define the problem as government overreach into healthcare, socialism, taking away private insurance. Uh, and so we aren't even on the same page as far as the problem goes. How do you fix a problem if you don't agree with the problem is on wealth inequality on the left, we see much of the problem as corporations and billionaires hoarding resources while workers struggle. The right sees the problem of inequality as lazy people not working hard enough. If the lazy people worked harder, there would be less inequality because they would have

more money. One, a couple other examples, crime. The left sees the problem of crime as systemic related to poverty and all of these circumstances lead to crime. The right sees the problem as woke da's being soft on criminals who are just born to be criminals and are immutably going to be criminals. Hard to solve a problem when that's the way you see it. And then last example, education, the left tends to see the problems in education as public schools are underfunded

and we need to invest more in education. The right sees the problem as woke teachers, indoctrinating kids, and they oppose in many cases, even the concept of public education. They want to privatize. They want vouchers, charter schools, private schools, et cetera. Every single one of these issues follows a really similar pattern, which is that even if you get past the misinformation, even if you get the MAGA voters to acknowledge the facts as they are, their definition of the problem is completely different. And you still have no way to really solve anything unless we can agree on that.

One of the most damaging effects of the right wing media ecosystem, the, the, the echo machine, as I call it in my book, the echo machine is that it hasn't just taught people to believe things that aren't true. It has taught them to focus on the wrong problems. MAGA voters have been conditioned to see these manufactured crises, woke M&Ms, trans athletes, CRT in elementary schools. By the way, nobody talks about CRT anymore. Now it's DEI.

They, they have been taught to see these contrived issues as existential threats and they ignore the real problems, economic inequality, climate change, health care costs, poverty, et cetera. The result is perpetual outrage with no progress. The right gets to campaign on fighting woke ism, banning books, getting men out of women's sports while avoiding the fact that they have no serious solutions to the real problems Americans are facing. This is a circle. It's, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. If the right wing base is constantly focused on the wrong threats, they won't ever demand real change of the kind that we need. And if they never demand real change of the kind that we need. And if they never demand

real change of the kind that we need, the people at the top, so Trump, you know, Republican elites, right wing media moguls, they get to keep their grip on power and nothing changes. So the message here and part of what I talk about in the book is that if we want to break out of this cycle, we can't just correct falsehoods. And intuitively, we've known this for a while. The conversation has to be reframed around actual problems. And one of the additional wrinkles that I've kind of thought about that's not in the book, but that I'm now kind of elaborating is that we really need to connect policy to what happens in the real world. Sort of ironically, those two recent stories we did, man votes Trump, wife gets deported. And then yesterday, man votes Trump,

wife gets arrested by ICE while awaiting citizenship papers. Those stories really connect policy to real world consequences. And so that's another aspect of this. It's something that corporate media has failed to do. It's something the left hasn't always really done well either because getting someone to accept reality is step number one. The further challenge is often getting them to care about the right things. If this is all generally interesting to you, consider getting my book, the echo machine. It's out in seven days. I'm told that pre-orders are going to start shipping this week. You could

have your book very soon. Get a signed copy at davidpacman.com slash booksmith or otherwise order the book anywhere that books, eBooks and audio books are sold. They log your internet activity so they can sell it or give it to law enforcement. And these VPNs are just out to make a buck without really protecting your privacy. The only VPN I trust enough to have as a sponsor is Private Internet Access. Our sponsor, Private Internet Access, is the only VPN who has proven multiple times in legal proceedings they don't keep logs of your activity. The judge ordered that PIA show user activity history each time they demonstrated they don't have the records. That no log policy is also independently audited by Deloitte. And PIA

is also open source. So you can also see in the code that none of your activity is being logged Thank you. PIA VPN dot com slash David. The link is in the podcast notes. Donald Trump's completely incompetent White House press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, suffered another one of these humiliating meltdowns. She was asked about the new controversy that Donald Trump has started in claiming that Joe Biden's pardons are void because Biden supposedly used an auto pen to sign the pardons. By the way, something Trump also does. She was asked about it. And here is how Caroline Leavitt responded and reporters having to explain to her that that it is up to her to be able to answer these questions, not for them to do her work for her. Listen to this.

If the president was even consulted about his legally binding signature being signed onto documents. And so I think it's a question that everybody in this room should be looking into because certainly that would propose perhaps criminal or illegal behavior if staff members were signing the president of the United States autograph without his consent is on the record talking about issuing preemptive pardons to these people. But was he aware of his signature being used on every single pardon? That's a question you should ask the Biden. Is there any evidence on that that he wasn't aware

of it? You're a reporter. You should find out, Sean. I I'm without speech. Caroline Leavitt, when asked, do you have any evidence for the things you've asserted, goes, you're a reporter, you find out it is Caroline Leavitt's job as the press secretary to make sure what she's saying is true and to turn it around and say, maybe what I said is true. Maybe it isn't. You find out, Caitlin, you're the reporter. This is part of the total disrespect and debasement that we are seeing here in terms of the relationship with media.

Are you lying to us, Caroline? Can you tell us any evidence you have for what you're saying? You're a reporter. You find out absolutely terrifying. Now later during the same press briefing, Caroline Leavitt, apparently in one of these Freudian slips said the following, take a listen. We want to restore the department of justice to an institution that focuses on fighting law and order.

Did you catch that? We want the department of justice to fight law and order, not to fight for it, just to fight it. Did you miss that one? Listen again. We want to restore the department of justice to an institution that focuses on fighting law and order and crime and putting real criminals behind bars, not targeting Americans because of their religion or their political speech. We saw that under the previous administration and it's unacceptable to this president. Well they've achieved that if the goal was to turn the Department of Justice into an entity that fights law and order,

they have certainly done it by weaponizing it in the very way they said Joe Biden was weaponizing it. Consider that a reporter brought up reports about the Trump administration considering withdrawal from the International Center for the prosecution of crime of aggression against Ukraine, basically saying Trump wants to let Russia get away with it. And Caroline Leavitt goes, ah, you know, there have been many reports flow. Sure. Thanks. Um, there happened to me, you report just in the last few hours that the administration

has decided to withdraw from the international Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine, which is designed to hold Putin accountable for war crimes. Are you able to confirm that? And if that has occurred, why has that occurred? I'm not able to confirm it because I have not

heard that. I will caution. I know there have been many inaccurate and misleading reports from Reuters lately, so I would caution anybody taking that seriously. But I can check in and get one of the tools of the authoritarian playbook. One of the chapters out of the authoritarian playbook is you so doubt on absolutely everything. Can we trust what you're saying, Caroline? She says to Caitlin Collins, you're a reporter. Go figure it out. Can we trust these reports from historically reliable reporting outlets, Reuters and Associated Press? I don't know anything about it, but I would be very skeptical about accepting anything reported by them. A press secretary who claims

just not really to know anything other than a handful of talking points. She's not prepared for briefings. Her reflex is always to either attack the person asking the question or attack the source of the report. You know, Kayleigh Maganani, she lied a lot. Big, big, big liar. But she was prepared. You know, we would joke about her stacked binders with the tabs and the whole thing. She was organized in her apologia for Donald Trump. Caroline Leavitt is a completely different sort of disaster. And this is what report, you know, I, it would be great to say, we've got to get her out of there and figure out. This is what it is. This, this is what the press is dealing with. And, uh, the, the press is simply going to have to go around her rather than working with her to try to figure out what the hell this

administration is up to. And as if this press briefing wasn't bad enough, she appeared on Fox News last night. Let's talk about that. Caroline Leavitt, after her totally disjointed press conference yesterday, during which when asked for evidence for the things she was saying, shot back at CNN's Caitlin Collins and said, Caitlin, you're a reporter. You figure it out. You figure out if there's any evidence. She appeared on Fox News and totally humiliated herself. You would think that by now the Trump administration would have learned you don't send

Caroline Leavitt on TV without preparing her to avoid seriously embarrassing herself. And yet here we are again in a segment that I can only describe as painful to watch. Caroline Leavitt tried to spin the latest legal fiascos for this administration only to end up making the case against Trump's own argument. Listen to what Caroline Leavitt had to say. And so we have, unfortunately, Sean, a judicial branch that has gotten so out of control. You have single judges in single cities in lower courts trying to determine the way in which the president handles foreign relations. They cannot be allowed to do that. If we live in a country where the will of the American people is subverted by a single judge in a single court. We no longer live in a democracy. Does she hear herself? Does she understand how what she's saying

applies to her administration and to the Supreme Court that has been established by her boss? Because what she is saying sounds an awful lot like an argument against the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority, which has been gutting voting rights, reproductive rights and democracy itself. But Caroline tells us about how one judge overruling Trump is undemocratic. And meanwhile, Trump is stuffing courts with right wing extremists in lifetime appointments. And that is completely fine and democratic. But it did not stop there because subsequently Caroline Leavitt pivoted to immigration and she repeated Trump's go to talking promises made promises kept Sean President Trump campaigned on securing

our homeland on expelling foreign terrorists and illegal violent criminals from our nation's interior and that is that is it is exactly what he is doing on February 20th President Trump signed an executive order designating trend de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization, because that is what they are. As you know, let me pause just briefly. Let me pause just briefly. The use of the alien enemies act has never been done in this context. The countries where these individuals came from and are being deported to are not countries with which the

United States is at war. They aren't in many cases separate from the trend, the Aragua situation. They are not deporting individuals who have done anything other than be here undocumented, sometimes as a result of paperwork delays and mishaps. And so this entire framing is delusional. But she continues. Take a listen. Just heard Sarah so eloquently say these are some of the most heinous monsters, criminal gangsters, violent murderers and rapists who have invaded our country under the lawlessness of the previous administration. There is a new sheriff in town now, and he is using every lever of executive authority to secure our country. That's why the president invoked the Alien Enemies Act. He is well within his constitutional and legal and executive authority to do so.

And our administration is prepared to fight this battle in court because we know that this was a whole of government effort. This was a successful counterterrorism operation led by President Trump, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, and now the Department of Justice, who will win this battle in court on behalf of the American people and the innocent, beautiful women who were slaughtered. Their lives were taken too short at the hands of these illegal foreign terrorists. And if the Democrats want to pick this fight, Sean, it's one we will pick all day long because they are now arguing that the president should have turned around those planes with these

foreign terrorists on them. I don't think the American public want these people in our country. That's why. All right. I'm going to have to stop it. Trump's actual immigration policies are an utterly chaotic mess. Of course, you know, you go back to the first term, the border wall that Mexico was going to pay for never finished. The mass deportations are happening. They're running into legal challenges left and right. They are deporting people who are not the violent criminals they said they were going to be deporting.

And then, of course, don't forget the idea of using the military to round up and deport millions of people because nothing says small government conservative like a police state crackdown on immigrants. And then, of course, ignoring court orders not to deport individuals to El Salvador. Talked about it at the top of the show, a growing constitutional crisis. This is the same press secretary who repeatedly calls the media dishonest while going on TV and humiliating herself with her own words, whether it's war or democracy or immigration. the Trump team strategy is clear. You say whatever sort of sounds good to a right wing audience. Hope nobody checks. And what you when you get

confronted, you just double down harder. And as usual, reality sometimes catches up to them. The consequences are frequently nonexistent, but reality does catch up to them. And we realized that not only is this entire immigration fiasco disjointed, it appears to contain extrajudicial elements. It appears to contain novel legal interpretations of the alien enemies act, which are not justifiable with any jurisprudence or precedent of any kind whatsoever. And their biggest ally in doing all of this is Fox News, right wing media, people like Sean Hannity, people like Charlie Kirk. There there are people who will defend what this administration does, no matter what it is. And Caroline Leavitt has quickly become one of the top propagandists and disseminators

of the lies of this administration. Joe Rogan, oops, just dropped a classic white nationalist talking point without even realizing it. At least I'm going to assume he doesn't realize it. On a recent episode of his podcast, Joe Rogan talked about how when China wants to stay Chinese, nobody has a problem with it. But when Poland wants to stay white, all of a sudden people aren't so happy. I know. I know. Listen to this thing. When an all white country wants to stay all-white where people get very nervous of. If you have – let's say China. Like China is Chinese people.

We all agree that it's like it's filled primarily with Chinese people. There's people that live there from all walks of life all over the world, but it's mostly Chinese people. If China had decided that they wanted to remain Chinese and stay Chinese and that being Chinese is very important to what China is, no one would have a problem with that. When a country like Poland does it, you're like, oh, those white people, they want to keep everybody out. They want it to be all white. Oh, boy. And because we're you know, that's post World War Two. That's that's post Aryan race talk. That's post Nazi stuff. That's what people are legitimately freaked out about. That's the most

recent stain in our history where we look back and say, wow, that was close. Listen, you know, on the surface, this might sound like a simple observation about double standards. You know, when China wants to stay Chinese, it's fine. When Poland wants to stay white, it's bad. But the reality is that this is an old rhetorical trick that's been used in white nationalist and white supremacist circles for decades. Now, I'm not saying Rogan's deliberately repeating that. I would love to talk to him about it. But Rogan's entire premise here is based on a complete and total misunderstanding or representation

of China and of Poland. China is Chinese. And when it wants to stay Chinese, no one has a problem, Rogan says. But when Poland wants to stay white, everybody gets upset. Now, here's the reality. China has 56 ethnic groups and more than 300 languages and dialects. It might all seem like Chinese to Rogan, one people, one language, but it's not. And the idea that China wants to stay Chinese is misleading because China is extraordinarily multi-ethnic.

Now, when white nationalists argue that places like Poland or any other European country should remain white, what they're really advocating for is racial purity. This is a core tenet of white nationalism. They frame any level of immigration or diversity as a threat to whiteness, even when the demographics shift by really small percentages. That's not the case in China, but that's what they're fighting against in Poland. Now notice how Rogan says Poland wants to remain white and, and the word remain is a key thing here because the argument being pushed, whether Rogan intends it or not, is that Poland has some kind of pure homogenous white identity that must be preserved.

This is the same language used by white nationalist groups who talk about the so-called great replacement, which is that white people are being systematically replaced in Western countries. In the U.S., it's Democrats are bringing in brown and black people illegally to somehow become citizens, even though there's no way and eventually vote in elections that these are versions of the white replacement theory, the great replacement theory. The idea that European nations must remain white echoes the talking points of groups like Identity Europa, the American Renaissance movement, people like Richard Spencer, white nationalist movements have always justified their racial purity by pointing to countries like China or Japan. And it is playbook stuff. And what it ignores is that, number one, these countries aren't as racially pure

as the white nationalists claim. Number two, the argument is really designed as a way to launder white nationalism into mainstream conversation by saying it's just fair. If China gets to stay Chinese, Poland should get to stay white. And it is the same logic that segregationists use in the United States during the civil rights era. Other cultures, they get to preserve their traditions. We just want to preserve ours. This is the same logic that South African apartheid supporters would use to justify racial separation. So what Rogan's statement does is it fits into the broader kind of grievance

politics of white nationalism. White people, especially in the West, are oppressed because they just want to maintain their culture. Now, of course, nobody is saying Poland can't preserve its traditions. What's actually happening is that these arguments are being used to push obviously anti immigration, obviously anti multiculturalism, but often just outright racist policies under the guise of protecting whiteness. Rogan is playing with fire here and I don't know whether he realizes it, but Rogan is amplifying an argument that's been used to justify everything from just banning immigration to outright violence on the basis of race.

Do you think he realizes that this is what he's toying with or does he have no idea? Let me know on the bonus show today. El Salvador's president sees opportunity in Donald Trump's deportations. We will discuss. Secondly, Tesla board members and executives have now sold off $100 million of stock. They seem to know where this is all going and it's down. And finally, new reporting finds that heat can age you almost to the degree that smoking can age you.

It's not unhealthy like smoking is, but it can affect the appearance in a similar manner. Is this a good study? Is this a good science? We will talk about it on the bonus show. Get instant access to the bonus show by signing up at join Pacman dot com. You can use the coupon code. It will end soon to get yourself a discount. And remember, we've got seven days left, folks.

This is it. Seven days left before my book, The Echo Machine, comes out. I am told books will start shipping this weekend to certain folks in certain parts of the country. You can get the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Also, Barnes and Noble has ordered two copies of the book for each of their 600 stores. Each of their 600 stores will have just two copies. They only count as sold when somebody actually buys them. So be aware that maybe as early as this weekend, certainly by Tuesday, you can go to any Barnes and Noble and get the two copies that each store will have. And finally, signed copies,

couple hundred or left. You can get them at Brookline Booksmith, David Pakman dot com slash booksmith. Exciting stuff. See you on the bonus show. I'll be back here tomorrow.