The David Pakman Show - 3/20/25: Karoline Leavitt in shambles as legal losses mount

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

-- On the Show: -- New York Governor Kathy Hochul joins David to discuss how she will resist the directives of the Trump administration, including on mass deportations and and ICE roundups -- Senator Bernie Sanders drops the hammer on the failures of Trumpism, explaining that the modern Republican Party has nothing to offer the average American -- Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump's Press Secretary, gets brutally fact-checked once again during a press briefing -- Donald Trump suffers multiple legal blows within 24 hours, but will they make any difference? -- In the second part of his interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham, Donald Trump completely falls apart -- Looking at whether the end of Tesla has begun, and whether it is reversible -- Fox News host Maria Bartiromo crashes, losing it over the shifting explanations for Donald Trump's harebrained tariffs -- On the Bonus Show: Trump will order plan to shut down of the Department of Education, Steve Bannon admits MAGA operatives working on third Trump term, Republican Andy Biggs wants to hear from Republicans only, much more... 🧽 Blueland: Get 15% OFF sustainable cleaning products at https://blueland.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 50% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF for a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman 💻 Sponsored by Aura: Try it free for 2 weeks! See if your data is safe at https://aura.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow

Welcome, everybody. I've been doing a lot of interviews lately on other the core ways in which MAGA politics aren't good for the average American. And in the book, I talk about how we got to this point in the interviews. I'm talking about the policies today or lack thereof from this modern Republican party that really just have nothing to offer for the average American. I'm not that good at explaining that compared to Senator Bernie Sanders. Senator Bernie Sanders laid out yesterday in speaking with our friend Ben Mycelis from Midas Touch. Bernie really lays out in the clearest possible terms why MAGA politics are a disaster. It's not about the old disagreements with Republicans about what should the top tax rate be. For example, it is a different sort of animal. And this is not

about Donald Trump's latest trial. It's not some culture war distraction. Bernie really lays out that the politics of the MAGA Republican party, as compared to what people like he and others are proposing, are really the difference between life and death when you look at life expectancy. So he's going to lay it out here. It's really a brutal indictment of what Trump and far right economics have done to the United States. And Bernie points out that Americans now live on average four years less than people in other wealthy nations.

Think about that for a second. Four years gone. And why? Because we have a political movement that prioritizes billionaire tax cuts over health care that is open to gutting social programs while handing corporations blank checks and that treats workers as disposable while pretending to be all about Americans. So Bernie says it way better than I can. Let's take a listen. Um, and here is the reality, which is not talked about very much. The reality is that in America today, our life expectancy is about four years less than other wealthy countries. But even worse is the fact that if you're working class in America, on average, you live seven to eight years shorter life than people who are wealthy. Now, why is that?

And the answer is not just health care, which is important. Working class people, low income people do not have access to the kind of health care that the rich do. But it is the stress, the day-to-day stress that working-class people live under. And I grew up in a working-class home. I know a little bit about what it's like to have a family living paycheck to paycheck. And what I did, that was in Altoona, Wisconsin. I said, okay, all right, tell me what it's like to live under economic stress. And people just stood up. And one woman says, you know, it's a question of whether I buy shoes for myself or my kids, whether I can afford eyeglasses,

whether I can afford to go to the doctor, whether, you know, I'm going to have the money to prepare a decent meal for my kids, that I live every day not knowing, you know, what to going to have the money to prepare a decent meal for my kids, that I live every day not knowing, you know, what to expect. How do I survive? And what that is about, that is the reality that tens of millions of our people are living under. We don't talk about it. And what I have learned over the years is that some of the most important issues are the issues that get least discussion. And one of those issues is not just the working class people. There's six years shorter lives, seven years shorter lives than the rich. That's important. Why is that? But what's equally important is 60 percent of the American people in the richest country on earth live paycheck to paycheck. So this is, this is the real failure of Trumpism.

Yes. As a conclusion to 40, 50 years of this sort of thinking, but it's not just the corruption. It's not just the criminality of Trump. It's the fact that their policies are literally killing people or causing people to die sooner than they otherwise would. And the worst part is that MAGA voters are actually some of the ones suffering the most from these failures, because as I've talked about before, if you look at states and rank states, the blue states that

are doing best have quality of life and life expectancy and, and, uh, sort of metrics similar to places like Norway and Sweden and Denmark. And on the other hand, states like Mississippi and Louisiana and Arkansas, which have been disproportionately devastated by this sort of politics have quality of life and what we call HDI human development index numbers, um, that are more similar to countries that we don't typically aspire to be. Um, the folks in those red States, the Trump voters are the ones with the skyrocketing healthcare costs and the lower wages and the crumbling, crumbling infrastructure, uh, that red States refuse to invest in for the benefit of their own people. And maybe the most tragic part of this is that Trump and his movement have really convinced

them that the real enemy is immigrants or trans people or, uh, some university professor in California who's teaching something they don't like. And it's part of the snow job that they've done to continue pitting people against each other on these contrived issues. While the big picture is life expectancy declining and all of these systemic problems that Bernie talks about. Now, in the next segment, we're going to briefly look at Senator Bernie Sanders calls out the kind of ridiculous apathy towards the suffering of federal workers that are being crushed by Trump and Musk and Doge. Some are suffering job insecurity, some wage stagnation,

some threats to their pensions because of the MAGA driven chaos. Let's take a listen. Number one, of course, what you're seeing precisely is that attitude now being reflected in what Musk is doing to the federal government. Oh, you worked for the federal government for 20 years? You're gone. We don't need you anymore. You have a poor performance. Who determined that?

Well, I did. I never met you. I never saw you. I never talked to you. You're gone. So that is precisely what they're doing. And I want to say this. I know there are people out there who say, well, you know, it's really unfortunate what's

happening to these federal employees. People like Musk are great believers in technology, artificial tech, artificial intelligence, and robotics. And when that revolution sweeps across the private sector and threatens the jobs of tens of millions of workers, you know what the the muscles of the world are going to say? You're out of here. Have a nice day. Goodbye.

You know, that is not just an American problem. What Bernie is talking about there, this this playbook funnel money to the rich, destroy social programs, distract the public with endless culture war nonsense. This is being used by reactionaries worldwide. The UK, a conservative implosion, the authoritarian drift in Hungary and in other places. The failures of this ideology are visible in many parts of the world and Bernie's absolutely right. This is what they offer. It's more suffering,

lower life expectancy, more inequality, fewer years of life working productively and fewer years of life living as well. Excellent, excellent takedown. Bernie's really good at this and he's going to be doing this at some town hall events alongside AOC. What happens when you make a right wing Twitter troll, the press secretary, is that it's not sustainable. It is not sustainable in any sort of long term way. And that's what we are seeing with Donald Trump's press secretary, Caroline Leavitt. Caroline Leavitt is now every day struggling visibly to keep up with the continued lies, authoritarian attacks and dictatorial instincts of the guy she works for, Donald Trump. And it's a reminder that as bad and dishonest as Kayleigh McEnany was at this job when she held it during Donald Trump's first term, she at least came prepared. And Caroline Leavitt is now getting regularly fact checked.

She is completely unable to substantively respond to those fact checks. The latest is, oh, the judge that said you can't deport the migrants to El Salvador. That's a Democrat activist appointed by Barack Obama. And of course, a reporter points out he was appointed by Bush and Caroline Leavitt just doesn't. And this judge, Judge Boasberg is a Democrat activist. He was appointed by Barack Obama. His wife has donated more than $10,000 to Democrats. And he has consistently shown his disdain for this president and his policies. And it's unacceptable. I wanted to go about the idea that these people are all foreign terrorists, but Joe Spokberg was originally appointed by Georgia W. Bush and then elevated by Barack Obama. I just feel like I

should clear that up. Who cares, though, right? I mean, Obama appointee George W. Bush appointee. It's a Democrat activist as they like to say, this is emblematic of the unsustainability of this. And I would be shocked if Caroline Leavitt really is able to stick it out in this administration. It's just not striking me as particularly likely, but every single day, these humiliations are happening. A reporter asked a great question because Trump was asked recently, will you defy court orders from judges? And Trump goes, no, no, no, we would never defy a court order. But if it's a bad judge and we determined that it's a bad judge, then, uh, you know, we might just have to do our own thing. Caroline Levitt was asked, how do you define a bad judge, then, you know, we might just have to do our own thing.

Caroline Levitt was asked, how do you define a bad judge? Is it just someone who disagrees with Trump? Here is her answer. Understanding. And that's the truth. And if I could ask a question about the judge as well, how does a president define a bad judge? Just someone who disagrees with him. And it's a dangerous precedent in this case? Because this is a temporary ruling from Judge Boasberg that he could ultimately rule in your favor. Is he setting up a standard here for calling for the impeachment of a judge who may ultimately rule on your side? No, it has nothing to do with disagreeing with the president on policy. It's with disagreeing with the Constitution and the law. and it's trying to usurp the authority of the executive branch of this country. It's having baseless reasoning for these injunctions and it's a clear effort by these judges to slow roll this president's agenda.

They want you to believe that it is the justice system that is acting outside of the constitution and that Donald Trump is doing the constitutional thing by ignoring orders from courts. The truth is of course much the opposite. We, I hate to cite John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme court, but he is correct when he says we have a process when you disagree with a court order. The process is that you appeal, You don't ignore it. You don't, which Trump did. You don't demand that the judge be impeached, which Donald Trump did.

You don't just say, I am the ultimate source of power, truth and knowledge in this country. And in this world, which Trump has said many times you appeal and the biggest scam that they are running right now is arguing that it is they who are following the constitution when in reality they are the ones ignoring the rule of law. They are the ones ignoring due process and they are the ones ignoring the constitution. Now, finally, again, Caroline Levitt asked, what about Trump firing two FTC commissioners because they're Democrats? And she says he has the authority to do that. Of course, the law suggests he does not. Thank you. Two quick questions. Can you explain the president's thinking in his decision to fire the two Democratic commissioners, especially given that Mark Matter is on track to be

confirmed next week and there would be a Republican majority, my biggest question is why now? Sure. Because the time was right to let these people go and the president absolutely has the authority to do it. And they were given ample notice in a letter that I believe your outlet reported on. So it pretty much explains exactly why this administration chose to let those individuals go. Is the ultimate goal to get this to the Supreme court to try to overturn the 1935 precedent. The goal was to let these individuals go. If we have to fight it all the way to the Supreme court, we certainly will. This is of course yet another lie from Caroline Levitt. Donald Trump did not have authority to fire those two FTC commissioners. He did it anyway

because the law means absolutely nothing to Trump. And you know what? Who am I to say that that he's wrong in the sense of who's going to do anything about it? Everything that he has done when he says I'm going to flout, that's F-L-O-U-T. When I'm going to flout the law, nothing happens. So why wouldn't he continue doing it now after the break? I'm going to talk to you about the numerous legal blows that the administration suffered. But if no one has the power to enforce anything, what difference does it make? We are just five days from the release of my forthcoming book, The Echo Machine. The last signed copies remain available at David Pakman dot com slash booksmith. I was notified this morning. People already are getting books in the mail. I don't know. The release date

is until Tuesday. I know that the warehouses have delivered the books to the booksellers. It seems that they're already shipping out. So you may even be able to get the book before the weekend. If you order today, we'll take a quick break and be back right after this. Did you know that an estimated 5 billion plastic hand soap and cleaning bottles are thrown away every year? Our sponsor, blue land is on a mission to eliminate single use plastic by reinventing cleaning essentials to be better for you and better for the planet with the same cleaning power that you're used to. The idea is super simple.

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for a while. Couldn't be happier. And you'll get 15% off your first order at blue land.com slash Pacman. That's B L U E land.com slash Pacman for 15% off. The link is in the podcast notes. 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've trusted for years to help me critically analyze the news I consume. Our sponsor, Ground News, doesn't tell you what to think.

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notes. The David Pakman show continues to be an audience supported independent media program. If you have a cable subscription, you're sending three bucks a month to Fox News, whether you like it or not. Consider consider directly supporting a show that you actually want to support, whether it's this one or another one. Progressive independent media does depend directly on your support. You can get the daily bonus show as well as commercial free audio and video streams of the show by signing up at join pacman.com. It has been another brutal 24 hours for Donald Trump. At least that's what the headlines keep

telling me. Trump suffers multiple legal blows and yet you give it an hour or you give it a day and we get the inevitable follow up. Oh, well, it looks like he's just going to do all of that stuff anyway, because that's how this seems to work. And no one has any real teeth to apply any pressure to this guy to follow the law. Now, I do still think it's worth kind of running through the latest legal rulings to understand what's going on and how what Trump is doing is not kosher, even if he's going to ignore the rulings, which we will talk about in a moment. So first and foremost, the federal judge in Maryland has ruled that Donald Trump's Department

of Government Efficiency, which I guess is led by Elon Musk, unless saying that Elon Musk is in charge, would subject him to oversight, in which case it's led by Elon Musk, unless saying that Elon Musk is in charge would subject him to oversight, in which case it's led by other people whose names we aren't told. A federal judge in Maryland has ruled that Doge illegally tried to dismantle USAID. So the entire plan to gut foreign aid, it appears as though it's not going to happen in Washington, D.C. A judge blocked Donald Trump's order to kick trans troops out of the military, basically saying, hey, maybe don't strip rights from the very people who are risking their lives for this country.

So it seems that that's not going to happen. Another judge halted Trump's attempt to kill $14 billion in climate grants. Surprise. You can't just cancel programs because oil executives get sad about them. And then fourth, uh, on education, it turns out that Trump's attempt to slash $600 million in teacher training grants was also illegal, was also destructive. And a judge said no. And of course that makes sense because Donald Trump's entire philosophy on education seems to be if he can't read well, then no one should be able to. Now let's get to the critical question about these rulings. Does any of this actually matter? Because if the last nine years of history serve as a guide, Donald Trump is

just going to ignore the rulings and do whatever the hell he wants anyway. And if I hear another senator solemnly say we are a nation of laws, I think I'm going to lose it because clearly we are not. We are a nation of please don't do that, followed by you did it anyway. What are we going to do? Trump has been sort of suffering these legal blows for his entire adult life and certainly during his political life. And even the word suffering is probably the wrong choice because it's not really deterred Trump from doing anything. It's like Thursday for Trump.

You get sued, you get ruled against, you keep doing it anyway. You don't turn the planes around, you deport the people anyway, rinse, repeat and go play golf. So I want to feel good about these rulings. We know if there's anything that is positive about the rulings, it's that they confirm that our instincts and the instincts of legal experts, that the stuff that Doge is doing and that the Trump administration is doing, these things do violate the law. That is a great thing to know. We are, we can be confident in that, but unless someone is actually going to have the authority and the wherewithal and the resources to hold Donald Trump accountable. And I mean, really hold the administration accountable. This is kind of

background noise to the Trump circus. And so great for legal blows in 24 hours. Now, is anyone going to do anything about it? Uh, Donald Trump did something absolutely nuts during part two of his interview with Fox news propagandist Laura Ingram. He seems to imply and Laura Ingram seems to believe that they put the original declaration of independence in the ovalval Office for Trump to look at. This is a copy. This is obviously just a copy. But listen to Laura Ingraham go, oh, God, oh, my God, the Declaration of Independence. Look at this. They said we have to do something like drapes or something because the light eventually affects it. And it's very cool. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Did you guys catch that? Very cool. Oh, my gosh.

Isn't that great? Just what up yesterday? Laura, this is a copy, OK? You can get these for 14 bucks. This is a copy of the declaration of independence. He doesn't have the original declaration of independence in the Oval Office. I don't understand whether Trump is, does Trump know that this isn't an original? Does he know it and he's pretending it is? Or is he not even pretending that it is? But it's Laura Ingraham who's pretending that she thinks that this is the original Declaration of Independence that's been placed in the Oval Office.

I don't know. It's sort of the blind leading the blind here. Trump at another point during this interview said, you know, I wasn't sure about running in 2024 because I won in 2020 by so much. It seems like a non sequitur. You're coming back into office when you walked out of here. Well, I felt that, but I didn't know. And let me say it. I didn't know if I was going to run because I knew how much I won that election by. But if I if I thought I didn't win the election, I absolutely wouldn't have run. But incredible. Trump considered not running this time because

he knew the margin of victory he claims to have had in 2020, where, of course, he lost to Joe Biden. I don't know. I don't know. Laura Ingraham asked Trump a very deep question. What would these other presidents whose portraits you have up in here be thinking right now about how you are running the country and what's going on? Very proud of this Gulf of America. And in fact, Elon said to me, you know, we're landing in the Gulf of America. So he was saying and he said it naturally. He said it so routinely said, yeah,

the capsule, you know, is landing in the Gulf of America. So I called Elon. Where is it dropping down? He said, Gulf of America. How cool is that? Right. What do you think all these presidents would think right now? I think the state of our country, I think a year ago they would have been disgraced by our country. And I think today they're proud of our country. This is maybe the most childish assessment of what prior presidents, particularly from the sort of nascent period of the United States, would be thinking today. Trump, of course, is so childish in his ability for abstract thought that when he's asked the question, he can't contextualize it historically. He can't think

of any meaning larger than himself. It's a year ago when Biden was president, they would have been disgraced. Uh, and now that I'm president, they would be very happy and very proud of the country. This is the deepest sort of thought that you're going to get from this guy. Uh, Donald Trump mentioning that he is starting to, um, sort of gild the Oval Office, adding in a lot of the gold crap that he likes in his Trump Tower penthouse. Another reminder that money really cannot buy class. The mantle and you have the cherubs from is that from Mar-a-Lago? That's actually their gold, all gold.

Look, and you you know the it's angels they say angels bring good luck and we need a lot of luck in this country with what they've done over the last four years so uh take a look do you know that a little secret i don't know if you're going to waste your time putting this on but throughout the years people have tried to come up with a gold paint that would look like gold and they've never been able to do it. You've never been able to look at that. Look, you've never been able to match gold with gold paint. That's why it's gold. There you go. An incredibly articulate explanation. Gold is gold because it looks like gold and

things that aren't gold don't look like gold as much as gold looks like gold. Instructive, very, very instructive. Laura Ingram asking the hard hitting question, where is the button you press to have a diet coke rushed into politics? He was actually a great guy, John John. But remember when he was a young boy, the picture of him at the bottom of the desk, Where's the Coke button? It's right here. Everyone thinks that's the nuclear. Everyone thinks that's the nuclear weapon. They think it's a nuclear weapon. They say, if I press this, it's the end of the world. Oh, and then there's like the business. Really a picture of health, an emergency diet Coke button, big Macs and who the hell knows what else.

Trump continuing to, uh, leave his footprints on the white house. Remember when Melania got rid of all the Rose bushes from the white house. Now Donald Trump appears to be paving over a bunch of grass. Are you, are you paving over the grass here? What was happening is they're supposed to have events. Every event you have, it's soaking wet.

It's soaking wet, and people can't. And the women with the high heels, it's just too much. That's where you did the Kavanaugh. That's where we did. That's right. Amy Coney Barrett.

And the grass just, it doesn't work. And we have a gorgeous zone and everything else. Okay. But, you know, we use it for press conferences, and it doesn't work and we have a gorgeous zone and everything else. But, you know, we use it for press conferences and it doesn't work because the people fall into the into the wet. The roses stay the grass.

Rose is not the rose garden. No, all of this is just the center section. The roses are back, of course, because I believe Biden put them back. It's just completely crazy. All right. And then finally, a little more substantively, eventually after Diet Coke buttons, gold paint copies of the Declaration of Independence, after all of it, Laura Ingram asks Trump. What about a recession of Fed saying they can't rule it out? It could actually happen. What can you say to what can you say to Americans tonight who

are concerned about the possibility of a recession, given the fact that you're trying to reorient the economy to a manufacturing economy again? I think if I didn't get elected, our country would be finished to start off with. And I think I now that I did get elected, I think we're going to have the strongest economy in the history of the world. And I had that economy in four years with all the harassment, with all the crazy people after me, with all of the things that went on, even with COVID. And the strongest economy in the history of our country at a stock market that went up 88 percent, 88 percent, number one in history. The other markets went up 66 percent and I think like 71 percent. Will we see a recession in 2025? Are you ruling it out?

We're going to have the strongest economic country in the history of the world. I leave it to you to decide. Do you believe that Trump will be proven right? The strongest economy in the history of the world. Interesting question. personal communications. That's why I recommend you check out start mail. Unlike free email services, our sponsor start mail never scans or tracks your emails. It also blocks tracking pixels, which companies and hackers use to capture your IP address. And when you delete an email and start mail, it is gone forever, keeping your information private. Start mail allows you to create unlimited email aliases, protecting your identity and reducing spam. This lets you use different email addresses for different purposes like newsletters or shopping.

Plus, Start Mail lets you encrypt every email, even if the recipient doesn't use encryption. Switching is easy. You can migrate all your existing emails and contacts with just a few clicks. Thank you, David. for a personal plan or about three dollars a month for a business plan. Plus get 25 percent off additional accounts for team members. That's S.T.A.R.T. Mail dot com slash Pacman for 50 percent off. The link is in the podcast notes. Big companies with poor security get hacked every day and your personal information is being sold on the dark web so criminals can target you.

Not something I have to worry about as much since I have aura. Our sponsor aura vigilantly scans the dark web to see if any of your personal information has been leaked like login credentials or addresses, social security number or also will alert you in real time. If any criminals use that information fraudulently, for example, to try to open a credit card and to keep you from getting hacked in the first place, aura offers additional safety features like advanced anti-malware and password management for every device you have. And your subscription comes with $5 million in identity theft insurance just in case aura for It is great to welcome to the program today, New York governor Kathy Hochul. You know,

governor, I love speaking with governors because you really are administrators in a way that members of the House and Senate aren't there. They're doing an important job. It's a different job. You really are an administrator of a state in a way that I think is very interesting for the audience to hear about. You recently had this meeting with President Trump. It's been described as productive. We also know that there have been tensions between the White House and Democratic governors. Can you characterize a little bit of what the feel is like when these meetings take place, when the context is one that seems quite hostile to us out in the public? Right now, and that's an excellent question. And I appreciate your

recognition of the role that governors play. I did spend some time in Congress. I've been elected official at all levels of government of the last three decades. So but governor certainly is the one that's more akin to a president. I describe it as the president of a state, these little kids who ask what a governor does. And so it is a different level of responsibility. So what that leads to is I have to pick my fights, right? Federal government funds our state with $93 billion every year. I will be screaming and yelling about every dime they try to take away. I had a press conference in a hospital talking about how devastating Medicaid cuts would be for a very vulnerable

population of really sick kids. And I said, any Republican member of Congress who can come to a place like this and look in these children's eyes and their parents' eyes and then go back to Washington and still cut Medicaid, well, you are the cruelest, most heartless people who ever walked this earth. I'm also fighting on education cuts. We're going to lose $5 billion from the Department of Education. So I have very clear lines of what the battle lines are. And I fought when they tried to take away funding or talk about shutting down our congestion pricing first in the nation. That is good for the environment. It gets cars off the streets, reduces congestion. That's what we're doing in New York City. No one else has tried this in our country, and they're trying to stop us. And I made a very strong point. Here, the Trump

administration says it's better for states to control, make decisions on whether or not a woman can control her own body, leaving reproductive rights, abortion rights to the states, control their own body. But you're telling me, as governor, I can't control my own body, leaving reproductive rights, abortion rights to the states, controlled her own body. But you're telling me as governor, I can't control my own traffic patterns. So those are the areas I'm happy to have the fight. And I have. But areas where I can find some common ground will mostly be around infrastructure. And I wanted to create a bond with the White House in terms of saying, can I get your support to redo Penn Station, for example? Anybody who's come through Penn Station would know exactly what I'm talking about, why it needs to be done. So I would just say in these meetings, I'm very clear on my values.

And I said in my first conversation with the president, I will support and talk to you about policies that are beneficial to our state, especially on infrastructure, but I would always stand up and fight for our values as New Yorkers. That's a real easy lane for me. And all Democratic governors, I believe, are feeling the same. We'll work over here in this area where we have some common ground, but there's a much bigger swath of differences where we have to be loud voices on behalf of our constituents. There may be no greater area than that, at least as concerning my audience with regard to the issue of immigration, ICE raids, roundups. You know, we've seen the dramatic videos and I don't say dramatic in a positive or negative way, just drama with regard to what this means for individuals that are being targeted. What is or was your message to this administration about the ways in which you will or will not assist them when it comes to their goals? And it's hard to think of a place greater

than New York City with regard to how that is going to affect the immediate area. What was your message to the administration on that? It was strong. We're not allowing families to be separated. We're not going to allow this mass deportation where we will cooperate. And I did this even under the Biden administration. If you have a warrant or, you know, someone's on a terrorism watch list or committing crimes in their home country or committing crimes here, that's a different category. And I will help you with those to protect everyone, whether newly arriving New Yorkers or whether they've lived here their entire lives. So that's real clear to me. But don't bleed over into going to schools and sensitive places. So our state policy, our state law does not allow for our state police to be involved in those situations. Now, what we have

are some renegade counties in New York, because individual counties can sign a pact with ICE, and we have a lot of them, some on Long Island, some in upstate New York, where there's different political views. They are cooperating with their local police departments, but what I control is the state police, and they will not cooperate in that. And so I've gone out to these communities so often, and I'm so proud to represent such a diverse state, diverse city and celebrate that as part of our identity. But the fear that people have is so palpable.

Kids aren't going to school. People aren't going to worship in their churches on Sunday mornings. Even I was talking to a legislative represents Little Haiti. I walked there after the attacks on Haitians during the campaign. And a lot of the little shops this. I have said, we'll help you over here with the real criminals, but can't you just leave these people alone? I have 400,000 open jobs in the state of New York. I want workers to come here. What the administration can do, speed up work permits. Let's put them to work. That's what they want. And that's the solution that I think could get us to a far better place, better for our economy as well. But that's not an area they seem to want to talk about and react to. So publicly, we saw that when Governor Mills from Maine pushed back, the president said, I'll see you in court and you are you're going to be out of a job soon, became extraordinarily adversarial and hostile.

How did the president take to you saying, here are the limits of my cooperation and it's not going further? I mean, how does he take something like that? Well, that was not, there was not an audience. I was in the room with other governors when my great friend from Maine, Janet Mills, who a former attorney general, she's gutsy, she's tough.

And I would back her any day of the week. Yep. And so when she said, she's the one who said, I'll see you in court because that's what we're doing. I can't tell you how many lawsuits we have filed with our attorney general and areas where we've had to stand up legally. And so they know I'm doing this. They already know I'm in court in countless cases, birthright citizenship and others where we've had some success. So that's where we are.

And so the conversations in private, we talk about a variety of issues, but I talk about how the Chips and Science Act is really important to a state like New York because we're able to land one of the largest semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the country. We'll be built in upstate New York, which is an area that's struggled for a long time. I want those 50,000 jobs. And I said that to the president. So the point is, it's not a yelling match. It's not hostile in that environment. Yeah. But then I don't mind going out and talking about, you know, my values in a rally or in a protest or wherever I need to be. That's my job. One of the things we saw in 2010 with the passage of Obamacare was that you had a number of governors who rejected the Medicaid

expansion, uh, red state governors. And what that led to come the election of 2012 was that you had voters, not in New York, but in other parts of the country who said, Hey, you know what? I heard about this thing, Obamacare that passed. I'm supposed to have healthcare and I don't, I blame Barack Obama. Now, of course, you know, I know many of my voters know the reason they didn't end up with health care was that their governor opted not to participate in that Medicaid expansion. The point I'm getting at is a lot of times what happens federally makes a headline. And what happens within the 50 States in administering some policy or program does not get the same level of attention.

And so as I now start to think about what happens with the democratic party in terms of off your gubernatorial elections and of course the midterm national elections in 2026, how are you strategizing and thinking about communicating to voters in your state the areas in which the things that the Trump administration is trying to do, you are keeping out when you see them as bad for your constituents or ways in which you are actually trying to provide something that is not being provided by the federal government? How do you communicate that from a PR perspective? Well, you take me back down memory lane because

the Affordable Care Act, my support for it as a new member of Congress is the reason I became a former member of Congress. I won in a special election in 2011. The whole nation was watching because no one expected a Democrat to win in the most Republican district in the state. This was Trump country before there was a Trump. Yeah. And I won because I went into the diners and the farms and the downtown areas and the VFWs and talked about how important Obamacare was for our struggling families and people with pre-existing conditions. And also that they were attacking Medicare at the time, that was a winning issue. And I just localized that. I made that my campaign ads. And there was never a single speech I gave during that special

election where I did not mention that this was a cut in Medicare to fund tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Fast forward. I lost my seat because I wouldn't vote one of 43 times to repeal it. So I am steeled in the knowledge that you have to localize this message. Yes, we'll have campaign ads, the DCCC and others will be playing in this space next year. And last year, we worked so hard to deliver seats for Akeem Jeffries. We won five out of seven battleground congressional races that were up for grabs. And I made this my mission as governor.

I lead the party as well here. And I raised money and I focused our attention. I went out to rallies. I hired 100 people. I opened 42 field offices that had never been opened before. I'm going to do the same again. I'm going to keep raising money into the state party. Anybody wants to help us, we're going to focus on making sure Hakeem Jeffries is the speaker. And how we can do that is they've been giving us so many issues to run on. I mean, I cannot imagine we're going to have trouble choosing what to hit him with because there's so much just today eliminating the Department of Education. Like I said, all the kids who rely on Pell Grants, half a million kids in New York, that's their ticket out to sometimes poverty or tough circumstances to be able to go to college. Kids with disabilities. Who doesn't know a child with disabilities taking lot of races on the ballot and we can be the leaders of this message and have it go down to the level of Congress,

as well as any local races. So the question would be which issues we run on. And I can tell you right now, from my experience, it is touching Social Security, calling it a Ponzi scheme. That's going to hit people right here. Yeah. But matter what your party is, you do not touch Social Security. And I'm fascinated by the fact that they would actually bring that up because they should have learned lessons from the past. But clearly they didn't. Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, bingo. But also affordability.

We are promised lower prices on Inauguration Day. And instead, they've gone up dramatically because of inflation didn't go away. Now the stock market keeps tumbling. But tariffs, a state like New York, $50 billion of cross-border trade with our neighbors to the north. And now you're jeopardizing that. That's jobs. That's people's livelihoods. I think even in Republican areas, we're going to have an opening with Elise Stefanik becoming the UN.N. ambassador. Northern New York, that's that's in play, in my opinion, now, because that area has been hit hard by the proposed tariffs and the and the instability that's created. And so, David, there's a lot to work with here.

Governor, I know we only have a few minutes. The last I want to drill down on the tariffs a little bit because you talked about localizing. Do you have numbers for how the tariffs as proposed so far, how much that will cost New Yorkers? And maybe it depends on whether they're in New York City or in less urban parts. But can you put some numbers on that? We're looking at two to three thousand dollars per family, which is exactly the opposite of what people were promised. And I'm going to remind them that. And that is another area for Democratic governors like myself to show the contrast. What am I doing in my budget negotiations that I'm doing as we speak? I have a plan to put $5,000 back in families' pockets between a middle-class tax cut, an inflation rebate, $1,000 for every child under the age of four,

$500 for older kids. And I'm picking up the cost of school lunches and breakfast, saving a family with even two kids, $3,200 right there. That's how we can draw the contrast. Republicans taking money out of your pockets, and we're the ones putting it back. That is going to be a winning message in 2026. I'm confident. Yeah. I was speaking with Congressman Raskin yesterday and we sort of workshopped. They really have nothing to offer you as kind of a motto for the next few years. And it sounds like that's exactly what you're pointing out. Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. All right. Thank you. license plate, family members, financial information, even political views. Europe has laws that offer some protection. But in the US, the data is widely accessible. Even the FBI

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And this will save you hundreds of hours. Very few people have the time or resources to do this on their own. This service can also reduce the number of spam calls and emails you get, since many solicitors and scammers get your information from these very same sources. Go to Incogni dot com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman for 60 percent off. That's I.N.C.O.G.N.I.com slash Pacman for a huge 60 percent discount. The link is in the podcast notes. Are we seeing the beginning of the death of Tesla? Is this how Tesla will die? Will Lockett think so? He's a climate and politics journalist who has a very good substack about corruption and other topics. And he wrote the piece. This is how Tesla will die. And I want

to talk about it. Tesla was once really the golden child of the free market, a company that, according to its most devout fans, didn't just sell cars, but sold the future. It was an innovation juggernaut. It would disrupt the stale auto industry with cutting edge electric vehicle and a battery technology. It was promising full self-driving. I participated in it way back when, when I said, this is the company moving forward, Evie technology, the fastest. And in fact they did. And it pushed other vehicle manufacturers to say, we've got to do something. We don't really need to worry if there's an EV out there that can go 35 miles on a full charge. But now that they can go 200, 300, 400 miles on a full charge,

we need to innovate as well. And it pushed other manufacturers to do that. We are now in 2025 and in 2025 Tesla's future looks a lot less shiny. And if you listen to some analysts, it may not have a future. Now, we'll lock it rights in his piece, quote, thanks to an aging lineup and a ketamine fueled government destroying Nazi saluting CEO. Tesla sales are plummeting across the globe from a stock perspective. Tesla's PE ratio price to earnings. In other words, what is a share of the stock cost relative to what the earnings of the company are? It's astronomically out of sync with reality. You look at Toyota, a company that makes more cars, arguably has better electric vehicle technology in development and has raked in more than double Tesla's 2024 net income. It's PE ratio is roughly 15% that of Tesla's,

which suggests that Tesla's valuation is just out of whack. Now it's important to understand that as a technology company, in addition to being a car company, Tesla's valuation never was really based on what it produced. It was based on speculation. It was based on the technology that it's developing and how that technology may become ubiquitous or sort of a standard. But right now, speculation is crashing into reality because Tesla sales are cratering. They're down in the European Union. They're down in China. They're down in the US. They're set to drop further. The Cybertruck is a flop. They've already started to scale back production. There's a massive recall, which we will talk about tomorrow

because the Cybertrucks are just falling apart on the highway. The 4680 battery, which was supposed to be the big innovation, is essentially obsolete. It was revolutionary. Supposedly at one point it's failed to materialize in any real way. And the full self-driving, which Elon Musk for 10 years has told us it's a month away from being completely ready for prime time. It's falling further and further behind, uh, other companies when it comes to the autonomous driving. And so what we are seeing, and I haven't even gotten to Musk and politics yet, when a stock is propped up by hype instead of fundamentals, it can work for a while, but the cracks will start to collapse the structure. And that house of cards

is now collapsing because Elon Musk has become a central player in the Trump administration. You look at the finances of Tesla, huge liabilities. Uh, Elon has collateralized his Tesla stock for personal loans linked to space sex, Twitter, et cetera. If Tesla stock falls too far, lenders can issue a margin call. This would be completely unsustainable for the company. And the death spiral would look something like this, according to Will Lockett. The stock keeps going down because sales decline. Investors realize there is an unlimited growth here.

The speculative bubble bursts. It wipes out the hype that has sustained the valuation of Tesla stock. So far, Tesla stock price falls below the threshold at which Musk's collateralized loans can remain out there. And he's told you got to pay these loans. Banks will issue margin calls and it means Elon has to come up with billions in cash money. He may not have. Then you need a up with billions in cash money he may not have. Then you need a private investor to step in, which may not happen because Elon has alienated

anybody with the means to help through his political insanity and lenders will then come in and liquidate the assets, including Tesla. Now it's important to mention none of that means Tesla disappears. There are many ways companies of this size can kind of limp along, even if their value craters. But Tesla, as we know it, the speculative overhyped machine propped up by Elon's cult of personality, that would be dead. And I say this as one of the biggest supporters of electric vehicles.

I've driven one now since 2018, nearly middle of 2018, nearly seven years. The key thing here, which I haven't mentioned yet, but now needs to be mentioned. A lot of people don't want to buy a Tesla because they don't want to support a CEO who's palling around with white nationalists, tanking companies with erratic decisions, amplifying far right conspiracy theories and participating in a destructive debasement of the federal government with mass layoffs causing insane amounts of pain. So if this is how Tesla dies, it won't be a grand conspiracy. It won't be because the media was mean. It won't be because of government interference. It will be because Tesla was

always a little more of an illusion technologically than a car company. Sooner or later, reality catches up to illusions. And right now, the completely absurd political machinations of Elon Musk may be accelerating that. What do you think will happen to Tesla sales and Tesla cars? Let me know. A Fox business host, Maria Bartiromo, normally a Trump loyalist, hardcore Trump brown noser, had a meltdown tantrum over the chaotic tariff policy. It's fascinating to watch. Maria was interviewing Scott Besson, the US Treasury secretary, and you will hear Maria Bartiromo get increasingly frustrated as she tries to pin down why is Donald Trump even proposing these tariffs?

Because remember, at first it was about trade and unfair trade deals we were fighting against. Then it was about fentanyl or as Trump calls it, fentanyl. Then it was currency manipulation. Now it's about food testing. The point is they don't even know why they're doing these tariffs. The justification keeps shifting because there is no real justification. This is another impulsive half baked idea from Trump. And it exists only because he likes the idea of winning against foreign countries even if it screws American consumers. And here's Maria Bartiromo and she's frustrated and she's right to be frustrated.

And they have substantial tariffs and as important as a tariff or some of these non tariff barriers where they have domestic content production, where they do testing on our whether it's our food or products that bear no resemblance to safety or anything that we do to their products. Now, you might be saying, wait, this is now the reason for the tariffs. This seems different than everything we've been told. See, these are these are the things that people are really worried about because they first thought it was just about trade. Then they thought it was just about fentanyl. By the way, this is a critical thing. And I'll back it up. So we hear all of this. When Maria says they thought what she means is we were told thought it was just about trade.

Then they thought it was just about fentanyl. Then after that, we talked about, well, maybe it's currency manipulation and maybe it's now you're talking about food testing. And when I bring up the issue of clarity, that's that's what I'm talking about. And that's what I'm hearing from corporate America, that we're not sure where this is going. But of course, we will get resolution on on August on April 2nd. Rather, the reason that it's difficult for Maria to pin down what this is really about is that there was never a coherent purpose or explanation. These tariffs are attacks on Americans. They raise costs. They eliminate jobs. But instead of admitting that, Trump's team simply comes up with new and novel

explanations for why the tariffs make sense. And when even Fox hosts are struggling to keep up with the explanation, you know you're in trouble. And the second that Maria Bartiromo starts asking even mildly critical questions, Scott Besant just dismisses her. He doesn't even try to make a real argument. He responds with arrogance, arrogance when asked, can you guarantee there won't be a recession story? The other day you were asked a question by another outlet. Can you guarantee that we're not going to have a recession? And you wanted to address that this morning. Yeah, well, look, it was a it was a silly question. Can you guarantee there's not going to be a recession?

I can't guarantee anything. I can't guarantee that the journalist who asked me the question that her news program is going to be on in a year. But what I can guarantee you is that there is no reason we need to have a recession. I think that there's the economy in the first quarter is doing better than the media is reporting. I think we're seeing some careful language there. Very good underlying data from credit card companies, from banks. I think that the airlines, which reported some bad passenger numbers, a big amount of that is from federal employees who are not flying right now.

So this is actually a pretty big moment because I have no expectations that Maria Bartiromo will become an actual critic of this administration. But it shows that Trump's people don't even feel the need to keep Fox hosts happy anymore. For years, Fox was their safe space, this kind of endless loop of softball questions and free propaganda. Not that these are particularly tough questions for Maria Bartiromo, but even the Fox hosts are realizing these economic plans are incoherent. We get a different explanation every day and they are getting steamrolled every moment that they push back. This is not only about tariffs. Of course, this is about the Republican sort of business class finally realizing they have

lost control of the monster they created because they spent years pretending Trump was this economic genius. Even though the trade policies never made sense, the deficits were the opposite of what he promised. The tax cuts did nothing for working people. They thought we can kind of ride the wave and cash in and keep our influence. But now Trump world doesn't need him anymore. He's got the cult. He's got the grifters. He's got the true believers. They don't have to justify anything anymore.

Tariffs. I'll give you four different explanations and who cares if you believe them. The reality is really simple. Tariffs are a tool that can be used intelligently, but as used by Trump, they are simply a blanket import tax on Americans. They raise costs, they kill jobs, they weaken the economy. They can't admit that. And so what Trump's people are doing, scrambling for a new explanation, or you might call it an excuse every single day because you can never admit fit, admit failure in Trump's world. It's not an option.

Trump has never admitted failure on anything. He's never apologized for anything. And even Fox News is now struggling to keep up with the lies. Now, on today's bonus show, Steve Bannon has admitted MAGA people are working on a third term for Trump. Is Bannon serious or or easy just trying to agitate. There is also a plan in development to shut down the Department of Education. Will it succeed? And finally, we have a Republican congressman who says, no, no, no, I want to do town halls. I want to hear from people as long as those people are Republicans. I'll tell you about the fiasco after fiasco that's

happening at the town halls. And remember that we are now just five days from the release of my book, The Echo Machine. Books have started to ship. Two emails I got, people already received books. You can get it on Barnes and Noble, Amazon or from any local bookstore and signed copies remain available for just a few more days at David Pakman dot com slash booksmith. Twelve hundred signed copies spoken for so far. We are close to the end. I don't know how many extras I will be signing, but there are a few left. I will see you on the bonus show. I will see you back here tomorrow.