The David Pakman Show - 3/24/25: Dems filling rallies as Trump melts down over Elon

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as other Democrats, are filling venues that Trump never filled with raucous and inspiring rallies -- A review of economic performance after two months of Donald Trump's second term -- Donald Trump suffers a full frontal crash in which he goes full authoritarian, a truly horrifying display -- Donald Trump is melting down over the level of power that Elon Musk currently holds -- A shocked Donald Trump is stunned that his son, Barron Trump, is able to turn a laptop on in just five minutes -- The Trump voter whose wife was arrested and detained by ICE is now begging for donations to cover legal expenses -- After their daughter died of measles, the parents are still saying that they are against the measles vaccine -- Senator Bernie Sanders walks out of an interview with ABC News' Jonathan Karl over vapid and pathetic questions -- Donald Trump's enablers are quietly preparing their exit strategy -- On the Bonus Show: Countries issue travels notices to the US, Greenland slams visit by US officials, Finland ranked as world's happiest country, and much more... 🌳 Fast Growing Trees: Get 15% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://fastgrowingtrees.com 🍽️ CookUnity: Get 50% OFF your 1st week with code PAKMAN at https://cookunity.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David 🍷 Naked Wines: Use code PAKMAN to get 6 bottles for $39.99 at https://nakedwines.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow

Welcome to the show. Hope you had a good weekend. My book comes out tomorrow. I hope that you've ordered it. Please do review the book right away on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads. It'll really help us into week two and week three Democrats showing signs of life. Democrats really rocking red States with crowds that Trump could only lie about having. That's the truth. Um, we're going to talk about everything that's been going on, but more importantly, what this represents is a sort of new era. Now we had the devastating loss of November. We had the

despondency and a lot of people understandably kind of checking out of politics. Many of you telling me, David, sir, I need a break. Um, and all of that made sense. And then now, having been reminded of how bad it really is under Trump and the what the second term portends, people getting activated in ways we haven't seen in a very long time, even though corporate media news ratings continue to decline MSNBC, CNN down toilet ratings. Independent shows like ours are bigger than ever. Our best January on record was this past January, our best February. And some people like to not even say that are and they say February. However, you like to say it last month, the best of those months ever and March on track for the same. Everybody is seeing

this exact same trend because people are activated, but they're activated not to hear from. I'm so sorry. I have to say this, not to hear from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, but because they want to hear from our friend, Greg Kassar, Alexandria, Casio, Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and so on. And so look at this picture from Denver, Colorado over the last few days, an absolutely massive crowd, 34,000 people speaking of Greg Kassar, here he is in Tucson, Arizona, introducing AOC, who introduced Bernie Energy audience. Take a listen. That's not right.

It's not right. They want to come after programs for working people. They get their eight million dollars a day while they try to cut food stamps for the working class. They, well, Elon Musk makes his eight million dollars a day while they try to cut food stamps for the working class. While Elon Musk makes his $8 million a day in government contracts, he's coming after your grandma's $65 a day. While Musk gets his $8 million a day, he's trying to shut down the Department of Education, trying to shut down the Department of Labor. Musk wants you to work more hours to make him more rich. Musk wants you to pay more taxes to make it more rich. Tucson, I've had enough of this. It's time to say fire Elon Musk.

All right. And then the energy palpable as Greg Kassar introduces AOC. All right. And then we'll hear a little bit from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This is Tucson, Arizona. This is happening in red states all over the country. And they will throw out every label and judgment and cultural debate in the book to keep us distracted, folks. This is what the focus on trans kids is all about. Come on. One percent, one percent of the entire population. If people want to have conversations about that take it to the ncaa it doesn't need to be on the floor of the united states congress we need to be taxing the rich on the floor of the united states congress we need to be establishing guaranteed health care on the

floor of the united states congress not erasing american history on the floor of the united states congress we need to be passing a living wage on the floor of the United States Congress. We need to be passing a living wage on the floor of the United States Congress. And then Bernie Sanders just as fired up and firing up the crowd to absolutely important is for us never to forget. We are today the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. There is no excuse for 800,000 people to be sleeping out on the streets. There is no excuse for 20 million people, including people right here, paying 40 or 50 percent of their limited incomes for housing.

This is America. We can build four million units of low income and affordable housing. We can lower rents. And Bernie Sanders also going directly at the campaign finance system and how Elon Musk dumped money into Trump. And now he's extraordinarily powerful. Now, I don't care if you're a conservative Republican or a progressive. Does anybody think it makes sense that we have a campaign finance system where one man, Musk, can put two hundred and seventy million dollars to get Trump elected. And then his reward is that he becomes the most powerful person in government. Well, you know, that makes sense when you see democracy as an auction available to the

highest bidder who recently was Elon Musk. Now we're going to look at a clip of John Ossoff, who also held his own anti Trump rally in the red state of Georgia with a fellow Senator Raphael Warnock. We're going to look at that in a moment. But the important takeaway here, there's a number of important takeaways. You don't have to believe that Bernie is the future of the Democratic presidential candidate for Democrats. And in fact, Bernie said in it, Bernie made clear in an interview yesterday that he is

not running. OK, so this is not me telling you. Bernie has said he's not running. You don't have to believe that it's AOC. I have no idea. Some people like AOC. Some people don't. Some people say she's too far left. Some people said she sold out. Now she's too far, right? The point here is number one, the energy is back. Number two, the people getting more attention right now than Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer for all good intentions that we ascribe to them is a different type of Democrat. I like seeing that because I think the future presidential candidate is going to come from

that new group, not from the previous group. Number three, the themes are spot on. What was I just talking about with Congressman Jamie Raskin last week? I was suggesting and he seemed to agree that we need to be on message and we need to be on message about these cultural issues. The reason we call them contrived is because they are contrived. And AOC saying we're talking about under one percent of the population when we talk about trans people, I would go even even further. And remember, this is not to say we don't care about trans people. This is to say, why are they getting

disproportionate hate as scapegoats from the right? And it's exactly for that reason. Under one percent of the population is trans. Only a fraction of that population is involved in sports at all. Only a fraction of that fraction of a population is involved in sports at all. Only a fraction of that fraction of a fraction is involved in the sports in which the issue of birth biological sex matters. And only a sub fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction is at a level where we really even need to be worried about this. It's a completely contrived issue. And what I love hearing from

Bernie and AOC and Greg Kassar and in a moment from John Ossoff, which you will see here, is that they are saying on the stuff that matters, health care, economics, wages, jobs, etc. They have nothing to offer you. They have nothing to offer you. Here is Senator Ossoff. Speaker 2 And none of this is on the administration's agenda. They just do not care. They do not care. Trump's cabinet is worth like $60 billion. That's not even including Elon. They are literally the elites. pretend to hate. Right. The president is not at his palace in Florida thinking about whether you can afford daycare for your daughter or how to stop insurance companies from denying your claim or anything that matters to our daily lives. When is the last time you even heard Donald Trump talk about health care or child care when he said that

he had concepts of a plan. John Ossoff is very good at this. These rallies are a great sign of energy coming back. We're going to be talking about it a lot more. And of course, Democrats must be on message to make this effective. This these last five days seem to suggest that there is a message here that has been found. How have the first two months of Donald Trump's economy gone? You all know that I am a partisan observer of politics in the United States, but I made made a pledge to you

that I would tell you just the facts when it comes to the economy. Where are the numbers under Trump? And we are going to continue doing exactly that. Let's just review and see where we are and then see what we can glean from it. Unemployment rate at the end of President Biden's term was four point one percent under Donald Trump. Now two months unemployment is at four point one percent. It is flat. There has been no change as of this moment to the unemployment rate under Donald Trump. The inflation rate when President Biden left, it was at two point nine percent

year over year for the year ending December 2024. It briefly went up to three and then is now down to two point eight inflation under Donald Trump, essentially unchanged down slightly from two point nine to two point eight percent GDP growth. It's going to be a while until we get GDP data that encompasses Donald Trump's presidency. We now got the Q4 number from 2024. The economy grew and annualized two point three percent in the fourth quarter of 2024. Totally normal, uncontroversial number. Nothing crazy to look at and say, oh, my God, this is incredibly good.

It's incredibly bad. It is fine for a country and an economy the size of ours. Really kind of like nothing to see here. No Trump data yet. Mortgage rates are slightly down. The 30 year fixed rate mortgage is often the one that's used kind of as a barometer. When Joe Biden left, it was seven point oh four. It is now six point six seven after two months of Donald Trump down about a quarter of a percentage point. This is you can argue it's good. I mean, the thing about mortgage rates is they tend to move opposite home prices when mortgage rates come down. all of a sudden people can afford more

house at the same payment. And that can tend to have a slightly upward influence on home prices, about a quarter point difference. So far, we talked about consumer sentiment as tracked notably by the University of Michigan. And as you can see here, certainly down slightly. We don't yet have the February number, but that is where we are. And then stock market performance, notably stocks up 22 percent in 2023 under Biden, stocks up 22 percent in 2024 under Joe Biden. Since Donald Trump has become president, the broader markets on average are down 5.7%. That is a significant stock market decline in a short period of time under Donald

Trump. So what, what is the truth about economic data so far? Basically flat with two metrics about expectations pointing down. Does this mean we're headed to a recession? Not necessarily. Does this mean that this is inevitably the direction things are going to go? No, not necessarily. What we see is that unemployment has not really changed. Inflation has not really changed. What we do see is consumer sentiment down significantly, suggesting the average American has an

expectation that things are not going to be so good in the near future. And the stock market, which is a futures market of sorts, it's not literally trading futures. Literally trading futures is something different. But in a sense, the stock market is reacting to expectations about what is coming, tariffs, et cetera, and the effect that that will have down 5.7% in just a 50 something, six 62, something like that days. That is not so good. Those are the facts. Now we can still interpret and make our analysis. But when we talk about whatever metrics, we always want to start with the data and go to the primary sources, go to the St. Louis Fed, go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And we do this no matter who is president.

Do not fall for the people who will trust or not trust the exact same sources, depending on who is president and depending on what direction a move is more convenient to them politically. We can evaluate Trump's policies and then we can also look at the data and then we put it together. That's where we are right now. My question to you is whether there is any other metric you want me to start, including in our once a month economic update.

This is the second one of Trump's presidency. We did one around February 20th. We've now done one around March 20th, plus a couple of days to get the, those final days of data. We will do one in another month. If this needs to be expanded with additional metrics, let me know, uh, info at davidpacman.com. We will take a quick break. My book comes out tomorrow. I know many of you have already received it. Please review the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads. Very quick break right back after this. The weather's warming up. It's just about time to start enjoying the outdoors again. If you live in

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the right plants and care for them. I have some beautiful white hydrangeas on the way from fast growing trees right now. They are going to look great. Really looking forward to having them. And right now they have some amazing deals at fastgrowingtrees.com. I'll see you next time. I used to spend way too much of my day thinking about planning meals, what to make, how long it'll actually take to make it, whether it will be something I like. Since I started using CookUnity, I have cut the stress out. Our sponsor, CookUnity, delivers restaurant quality meals to my door. It just saves me time

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with fresh chef prepared meals. Go to cookunity.com slash Pacman or enter code Pacman for 50% off your first week. That's cook unity.com slash Pacman enter code Pacman for 50% off. The link is in the podcast notes. The David Pakman show is an independent progressive political program. This means our primary source of funding is you folks who like the podcast, folks who like the YouTube channel, the Tic Tac, which is approaching one million followers. We'll say more about that at some point. Really appreciate everybody who has chosen to support the show. We know that every day you stay subscribed to membership is a choice you are making not to break up with us.

You can sign up at join Pacman dot com and learn about all of the great member benefits, including the daily bonus, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves is bad. That's really Alex Jones talking about our bonus show, by the way. I know there's people, new people in our universe who don't know what that clips from. That is when Alex Jones talking about our bonus show, by the way. I know there's people, new people in our universe who don't know what that clips from. That is when Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist, you know, the guy about who talks about globalist, that guy, he unleashed a horrible rant against me. And it included saying also things like that is a frickin predator right there about me.

And thank your lucky stars every day. You're not Dave Pakman. Right. Anyway, he hates the bonus show. I judge for yourself. That's my ask. You can sign up at join Pakman dot com. Of course, you will get instant access to the bonus show. Donald Trump went full frontal over the weekend. Now, hold on. Before you get disgusted. Yeah, that's Trump. Before you get disgusted. That's not what I mean. Donald Trump launched a full frontal attack on democracy, on the freedom of the press, speaking exactly the way we know authoritarians speak. Listen to this. The New York Times is back to being the enemy of the people.

I think Elon wouldn't do it. I think he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't want to put himself in that position. But if you read what's out of the New York Times, it's such a dishonest newspaper. It's such garbage. It's you know, it used to be called all the news that's fit to print. Well, it's all the news that's not fit to print. They have fake sources or they don't have sources. I think they make most of it up. But this was a made up story by the New York Times. I call it the failing. It's a failing newspaper. It's failing and they shouldn't do that. They really are the enemy of the people. Nothing says transparency and democracy more than attacking media outlets that you don't like as enemy of the people. And yes, that this video of Trump, that nacho cheese glow that he has, that that tanning bed look has not been digitally added. That is the way Trump looks.

Trump continuing the full frontal attack on press freedom and democracy by saying that MSNBC and CNN soon are going to be turned off. We do need honest journalism in this. You know, we've made such big strides over the last two months, but we just need honest journalism and we don't have it. When you have a CNN, I watch, you have to watch these people every once in a while just to see where they're coming from. And it's so dishonest. MSNBC is, I think probably worse.

And they're both doing horribly in the ratings. I think they're going to be turned off. I don't think they're not doing any ratings. You're doing well on the ratings. Soon they are going to be turned off and then more authoritarian. If you can imagine it. Donald Trump asked, do you think that you have the authority to just round people up and deport them without giving them due process and actually giving evidence against them.

And Trump goes, not only do we think that that's what the law says, it's what the country needs. Do you think you have the authority, the power to round up people, deport them, and then you're under no obligation to a court to show the evidence against them? Well, that's what the law says and that that's what our country needs, because we were unfortunately they allowed millions of people to come into our country totally unvetted, totally unchecked. So you're asking he have the authority to allow millions of people. Did Biden have the authority?

Right. And of course, when you show up to the house of a woman who's married to a citizen and is in the process of getting her paperwork in order. Is that a violent criminal? The likes of which Trump said would be the priority of this administration and rounding people up. No, it is not.

And by the way, we'll follow up on that story a little bit later as well. We are going to discuss later this week. How do empires die? And there is a lot of slow creep and this sort of authoritarianism and disregard for laws. Historically, I'm not being hyperbolic and predicting the end of the United States. Historically, this sort of slow erosion of democracy is how many an empire and many a democracy have fallen. So we will talk about that. Donald Trump is melting down because Elon Musk is suddenly getting presidential level access and Trump can't handle it. Now, you might say, what's going on

here? The Pentagon was set to brief Elon Musk. That's the same guy who puts out excretions on X that are disgusting memes and is palling around with President Xi and the whole thing. He was going to be briefed. Elon Musk was on potential U.S. war plans with China. It was going to be Elon getting the briefing, not Trump, not anyone who's been elected to anything or subject to a Senate confirmation. It was going to be Donald Trump. And that apparently was too much for the delicate ego of our very frail, very insecure wannabe authoritarian. So Donald Trump took to truth social in full meltdown mode, raging that the story is completely untrue, that the fake news was targeting him. And he weirdly referred to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman as maggot

Hagerman, maggot Hagerman. Because, of course, when you're the leader of the free world and you respect the free press, you have to come up with nicknames for reporters doing their job. Trump taking to troth and he said, quote, Elon will be briefed by the Pentagon about the USA's top secret plans against China. Should there be a war, according to the failing New York Times, one of the worst and most purposely inaccurate newspapers anywhere in the world. Their fake concept of this story is that because Elon does some business in China, that he is very conflicted and would immediately go to top Chinese officials and spill the beans. Ratings challenged fake news. CNN immediately picked up on this absolutely ridiculous and false story,

which is probably libelous and went heavy with it. Fortunately, nobody was watching. Maggot Hagerman, the really dumb scammer who constantly writes about me for The Times using anonymous, made up, non-existent sources and who I haven't spoken to in ages is a big part of the scam. She led the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax only to realize that she was duped and got it wrong. She owes me a totally discredited Pulitzer Prize for her bad reporting. The fake news is the enemy of the people. And Elon is not being briefed on anything by China and anything China by the Department of War. This this is not about national security. Donald Trump doesn't care that Elon Musk has business ties to China or that giving him top secret military plans is an ethics nightmare. Trump

doesn't care about that. Trump is only furious that somebody else is getting attention. Somebody else is seen as important and being catered to someone else. And this is the real element. Someone else might be seen as having real power. Now, of course, Trump doesn't want to do the work of being president. This we know he wants to golf. He would love rallies. He wants praise. He is fine handing off real responsibilities like national defense to unqualified billionaires like Musk if it means he can go get a tee time at Bedminster or Mar-a-Lago. But the second that that person becomes the face of anything, he starts getting Elon starts getting credit, starts getting headlines, starts getting decision

making power. It's World War Three on truth central. So this is classic Trump. You surround yourself with people you can offload the job to so you can golf and DJ at Mar-a-Lago playing the latest, you know, cats song you like and then turns on them the second they start looking more important than he does. Now, Elon Musk is not a patriot to Trump. He's competition and nothing threatens a narcissist authoritarian more than someone else being

seen as the guy in charge. So Elon might be running Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. Trump's the one running the Department of Insecurity and Unchecked Ego. I still maintain at some point this is going to completely blow up in Trump's face when I don't know if I were a betting man, which have I mentioned I'm not a betting man. If I haven't, I should say that I'm not a betting man. But if I were a betting man, I would guess that the Elon thing doesn't even go close to four years. Hey, listen to this. The guy who wants you to buy his crypto meme coin was impressed that a laptop could be turned back on in only five minutes. What am I talking about?

In case you needed another reminder that Donald Trump lives in a technology free time capsule, Trump is now marveling on camera that his son, Baron, is able to turn on a laptop. This this is so wild. In the Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham, Trump said to Laura Ingraham, he went into Baron's room and the laptop was off. He came back five minutes later and the lap to brace yourselves. OK, the laptop was on a mere five minutes later. Yes, it is a technology skill that just blew his mind. But is Barron's aptitude, in your view, business or politics? Maybe technology. He can look at a computer and try turning off his guys, turn it off.

I turn off his laptop. I said, oh, good. And I go back five minutes later. He's got his laptop. I said, how'd you do that? None of your business, dad. No, he's got an unbelievable aptitude. And do you understand what Barron Trump was able to do in just five minutes? The laptop went from a state of being off to a state of being on technology. And whoa, and Barron is doing stuff on it. Now, let's be honest. This is not just amusing. It's a little bit amusing, but it's really more revealing than

anything else. This is a man, as far as we know, who treats basic computer functions like a sort of forbidden wizardry that is almost magic. It's adjacent to magic. A man who once said he doesn't use email, he doesn't use computers. The guy who has been dictating tweets to people who probably thinks the cloud is where his golf swing disappears. And yet this is the guy who wants you to believe he understands cryptocurrency, that he's deeply involved in tech innovation of all kinds, that his scammy, you know, self-branded Trump coin isn't just another grift to squeeze his followers dry. So we are all being sold this idea while Trump is stunned by a booting up laptop. We are being sold the idea that Trump's now a player in digital currency and really understands

it, that he understands blockchain, that he can explain defy decentralized finance. It's laughable, but it's also insulting and it's part of a bigger pattern. And the bigger pattern is that Trump's relationship to technology is totally performative. He doesn't get it. He uses it as a prop, much like he uses minority voters, much like he uses rural voters, farmers, poor voters. If it's an NFT of him dressed as Rambo, uh, or a shady crypto project or whatever, the technology is not the point. The grift is always the point. So the next time someone tells you that Trump, uh, is, is promoting some new investment in

something digital or whatever. This is the guy who just discovered laptops can go from off to on in only five minutes. Maybe it's Barron who should be running that crypto scam because at least he knows where the power button is. Another day, another Tesla story. What is going on with this company? Well, if you go to ground dot news slash Pacman, you will see how some outlets are covering Tesla and Elon Musk compared to others. The story really is one story, but the way it's told really can change your perspective. And this is the exact problem

that our partners at ground news help to solve. Ground news is the only site that shows you how political bias and financial incentives and even blind spots shape the narratives in the news that you read. Otherwise you're letting billionaires and political agendas shape everything from public opinion to policy. See every side of the news story, read the news from multiple perspectives and see through the media bias with reliable news from local and international sources. Go to ground dot news slash Pacman to get the same top tier vantage plan that I use at nearly half the cost, just five bucks a month. The link is in the description. do not pass the sniff test. Most VPNs are all owned by the same big mysterious company. 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.

And you can protect unlimited devices with just a single account. Private internet access is giving my audience 83% off, which is just $2.03 a month plus four extra months for free. Go to PIA VPN.com slash David. The link is in the podcast notes. If there's one thing that we have learned about cults, it's that the cultists never think the consequences are going to apply to them. We've talked about this with cult experts, cult psychologists, sociologists who study cults.

It's always going to be someone else who pays the price, of course, until it isn't. Last week we met a Bradley Bradley Bartel. This is the Wisconsin guy who proudly voted for Donald Trump twice, only to now be begging for donations online to stop ice from deporting his wife. This is the same ice that Trump promised to unleash with even fewer restrictions than during his first term. And it is happening right now. Like I told you last week, Bartel's wife is Camilla Munoz, and she was detained by ICE while the couple was returning

from their honeymoon. She is now locked up in a detention center in Louisiana. And Bradley Bartel's GoFundMe is trying to scrape together three3,000 for legal fees to fight against her removal. Now I want to pause here just based on what I've told you so far. I, I, I have to be able to speak frankly on this program. So I say the following with total3,000, you are not the target beneficiary of Trump's economic policy. If you need to crowdfund for 3000 bucks in this situation, MAGA has nothing for you. As Jamie Raskin and I talked about last week, if you need to crowdfund for three grand, you're not going to get the stock market gains, which by the way, right now nobody's getting, but you're not going to get the stock market gains because that is going to go disproportionately to the rich. You're not using an LLC to get out of taxes. You're not getting the tax breaks.

You are, as they say, voting against your own interests. Spectacularly so. Now also the next part is rich. Camilla's own Facebook posts show she's a Trump supporter too. So we've got a deportation happy administration, two people who supported it caught in the gears of the very machine they voted to build. If it wasn't tragic and if I didn't feel some basic level of empathy for humans, it would be a sort of entertaining performance art. It really would. But let's not miss sort of like the hammer that gets dropped here. The same people who preach personal responsibility and vote for the guy who says he is the candidate of personal responsibility. They are now asking you to pay for their immigration attorney because of the problem they got into

because of whom they chose to vote for. The cognitive dissonance is doing backflips here. You vote for the cruelty. It knocks on your door and suddenly it's time for GoFundMe. Now, of course, we've learned Trump and ICE don't care that your wife overstayed her visa because of covid. They don't care that you are now married and that she has a legal path to citizenship, never mind residency. She has a legal path to citizenship. They don't care that they promised to deport people.

And you're simply the next headline. This instance also cuts straight through the false narrative that Trump and ICE are only targeting what Trump describes as criminal illegals, people who are here undocumented, but have been involved in, you know, a sexual assault. Uh, they're, they're gang members. They are, uh, they have a history of violent crime or, or accused or have even been convicted of violent crimes here in the United States. The cases that the right loves to wave around to justify all of this. Camila Munoz is none of those things. This is a woman who overstayed a visa during COVID married a US citizen is in the process of getting permanent citizenship here in the United States.

So whatever you, whatever your view is on immigration, this is not someone who should be a high priority target for law enforcement. And I think that this is a good reminder that progressives should be clear. And you know what? Bernie was clear over the weekend when he was interviewed about this. Defending immigrants doesn't mean defending everybody indiscriminately. It's a mistake, I believe. And Bernie believes when progressives start to defend individuals who are here undocumented and have been involved in violent crimes that there's no political upside and there's no sociocultural upside to that. But it does mean that we defend basic humanity. We defend proportionality. And if there were

really as many criminal illegals popping up everywhere, you know, you lift a sewer grade and there's 10 of them and then you open the door and you know, to a truck and 10 more pop out. If, if the criminal illegals to use their term were so common, they wouldn't be resorting right now to finding people with forget about a path to residency, but a path to citizenship. So Bradley, uh, the guy who says he doesn't regret voting for Trump. Now this is what he's dealing with and he's asking for your money to fix the problem. Your call, whether you think he's deserving of your donations in a heartbreaking and deeply disturbing interview. The Texas parents of a six year old girl who died from measles say they are still against the measles vaccine. They say measles isn't that dangerous. And they say they wouldn't

have done anything differently. Now, I'm going to play the clip for you. I am. This is going to be tough in this sense. I am going to try to cover this story with tact and sensitivity to what these people just went through, but I'm also going to have to be very real with you about what's going on. Okay. So let's check out the clip. You're going to hear a translator at one point, and you might wonder these people are from Texas. Why are we hearing a translator? What, what is the accent of these people? These are American folks, okay? They are Mennonites. Mennonites are a religious sect.

Some call them a cult. Some call them cult like let's table that distinguishing, uh, phraseology for now. But the point is Mennonites often speak very poor English despite being American. Uh, they, they speak something called low German in their communities. Now the first question you might say is who's interviewing them. They are speaking to the children's health defense. That's the anti-vax group founded by the guy who right now is the secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy jr.

So to set it up and we're going to get to the clip, I just, you know, need to do my explanatory setup despite losing their daughter to a almost always vaccine preventable disease, measles, they repeat conspiracy driven talking points and say a bunch of other wacky stuff. The mom says, don't do the shots. It's really not that bad. Measles isn't that bad. Turns out that they have other kids that got measles and recovered.

Their daughter wasn't so lucky. Several days of illness, developed labored breathing. She was eventually taken to a hospital in Lubbock, Texas, intubated, died a few days later. Let's listen. There's some doctors with the hometown. She says they would still say, don't do the shots. There's doctors that can help with measles. They're not as bad as they're making it out to be and also the measles are good for the body the measles are good for the body for the people because the measles are getting there getting that what is it? What? Yeah.

Infection. Infection. Yeah, they get infection out and... The measles get the infection out. Do you mind this immune system? Yeah. They're trying to say that the measles actually help spill the immune system in the long run if they get the measles. So does the vaccine. Okay.

So in the long run, he says they wouldn't get cancer as easily. No evidence of that. Like it fights off a lot of stuff, the immunity that they get from the from the measles. She almost said from the vaccine, she almost told the truth. She almost said, you know, the truth is the vaccine actually is a healthier thing to get. They also said that their daughter is better off where she is now and that it was simply her time on Earth. It was time for her to go. So let's go through this piece by piece. Measles, not a harmless childhood illness. It's one of the most contagious diseases known to medicine in unvaccinated populations. It can be deadly, especially for young children. The

complications are numerous pneumonia, brain swelling, deafness, death that many survive isn't really proof of anything, right? The outcome from diseases is probabilistic. It goes on a, on a curve and you can have, you know, 80% of the outcomes, uh, in that tall part of the curve. And then you have people who presumably get a disease and they barely even have a symptom. And then you have people that die. The fact that you have this curve distribution and that curve can be shifted by vaccination is not a reason not to get the vaccine. The effectiveness of the vaccine is 97 percent, with decades of safety data behind it. Side effects are mild. You might have a low fever. You might have a sore arm. The risk of catching measles without the vaccine, as you can see here, is very serious, very, very serious. What is the explanation here? And this is where I'm going to use tact, but I'm going to be honest with you. Is this partially

the disinformation that spreads in Mennonite communities and in other, as we've seen, right wing communities and some left-wing communities. There's left-wing anti-vax as well. Yes. So we have disinformation here as a factor, religious extremism. If this is what our religious leaders tell us and our religious texts tell us, that is also a factor here. Very sticky beliefs that are hard to change. Is there cognitive dissonance combined with trauma from what happened where they almost have to say, of course, we would do the same thing again? Yes, there is some of that as well. Are there I'm being respectful. OK, are there possibly untreated mental health issues here which have combined

with the disinformation, the religious extremism? I don't know. I mean, we we we know of in other situations how mental health issues of parents leads to inappropriate medical care for their children. That that's not unique to Mennonites or to anti-vax. The science, a lot of that stuff is unclear. Mental illness, disinformation, religious extremism, cult trauma. I don't know. OK, all of the above. The science is clear. The measles vaccine is very safe. The disease for unvaccinated children can be extraordinarily dangerous. And now after multiple kids of theirs got measles, their daughter is why I love our sponsor, Naked Wines. Naked Wines is a subscription service that just connects you directly to the world's finest independent winemakers.

So you can get award winning wine delivered straight to your door with my code Pacman. You can get six bottles for just thirty nine ninety nine. My girlfriend likes white wine. I know I'm more of a red wine guy, even if I'm generally clueless. So we usually get the split box from Naked Wines, which has both. Naked Wines believes that great wine is an experience and they're all about helping you connect with your friends, family, community over a shared bottle of wine. You get background information on each bottle. So when I have friends over, I can actually tell everybody where the wine came from and sort of sound like I know a little bit of something. And you can pause or cancel at any time. The link is in the podcast notes.

Bernie Sanders walked out of an interview with ABC's Jonathan Karl because the questions were that bad. It wasn't like confrontational. It wasn't aggressiveness. It was just kind of useless. It was really the DC cocktail party fluff that corporate media has been recycling for decades as the country falls to a deeply authoritarian incompetent man who's now in the oval office again.

So here is a Jonathan Karl starts asking Bernie questions that are kind of predictably hollow. Bernie gets up and leaves and then after coaxing him back, Jonathan Karl follows up with, I'm not kidding about this, are you running for president in 2028 in the middle of what we have going on? Check this out. With AOC today, do you see her as a future of the progressive? We have one of the untold stories of what's going on in current American politics is that in the house of representatives you have dozens and dozens of strong smart disciplined hard-working young people in the progressive caucus and you know way back when when i first came to the congress in the house i helped form the progressive caucus we had five

people at that time now they got close to 100 so you got a whole lot of good people. Alexandria is extraordinary. I am so impressed by her work in Congress and her just she inspires young people all over the country. Would you like to see her join in the Senate? Right now we have, as I said, just a whole lot of people in the Congress. Okay, Jonathan, thanks. Wait, I got one more. I got one more. That's important. Well, I asked you, okay, you want to do nonsense? Do nonsense. No. I love it. All right, so now he coaxes him back and then asks the very hard-hitting question, you may be running for president again? I don't want to talk about inside the

beltway stuff. I got 32,000 people. I was just asking you about AOC, because she was out there with you. Well, fine, but I don't want to talk about this. What was the last question? I was just going to ask you one more question about you. I mean, that's all. I was literally less what what is your question i mean it's easier coaxes him back on camera i mean i i want to ask you about your future this is the biggest crowd you said you ran for president twice this is the biggest crowd you've ever seen are we going to see you run again or what what's your what's your future? Right now, I am very proud that the people of the state of Vermont sent me back to the Senate with 63 percent of the vote right now in Vermont.

Senator, that's what I do. And I'm very happy to do it. I am 83 years of age. So and I'm tired. All right. So listen, first, before we even get into this, Bernie's making it clear he's not running for president. OK, he says I'm 83 years of age.

He would be nearly 90 years old at the time that the next president would be sworn in January of 2029. Just as like a factual aside and in, I'm not thinking of it now, but as we start to think about this, I think it would be good to just understand that Bernie's making it clear he's not running again and it's not, oh, we, we don't like Bernie. No, we, we, we like Bernie. I supported him twice already. Uh, but the point is he's, he's making it clear. He's not running. Okay. He's tired. He's old. He says he's not going to be running. So here's what's going on. Uh, we are in March of 2025 billionaire billionaires are dismantling the federal government. Authoritarians are rewriting the rules of democracy and ABC news is asking Bernie who

would be close to 90 on inauguration day if he's planning another run and trying to generate inside the beltway drama about AOC switching from the house to the Senate, which I can assure you voters do not care about outside of what is she going to do as a lawmaker. Now, if you sat people down and said, you know, let's talk about the differences between what you do in the house and the Senate, I'm sure you could get people to go. Yeah, sure. It sounds good. Senate maybe, but this is really beltway stuff. I'm sure Jonathan Carl is a nice guy, or I assume he is because I assume most people are, but he is part of a system. And I talk about this in my book. It is a system that is going to output certain things when it's inputs and a structure

are what they are. This is what corporate media does. It ignores actual policy and actual stakes and serves up horse race theater. Remember the 2024 campaign where reporters asked Trump 5,000 times who his VP pick would be. And then he would play coy and it would just become story after story when like, we're going to know the question is what are the policies he's advocating here? And he was rarely asked about his plan to gut the department of education, which he's now trying to do. He was rarely seriously challenged about his plan to abandon NATO, which he seems determined to be doing. So Jonathan Karl's not incompetent. ABC News is doing its job, which is distract, sanitize, entertain in order to point to the next thing way down the road rather than, Hey, wait a second.

What does happen if Trump simply ignores legal court orders and what recourse do we have to try to crawl back into a system where the judiciary is respected and has power and teeth. And when Bernie doesn't play along, he gets treated like the problem. Oh, Bernie's so difficult. He's so he's obstinate. And so it's not just that the questions are vapid and shallow. It's that they're designed to be. These interviews are not meant to inform voters about policy. They want Bernie, who got a crowd with AOC and a bunch of cities over the weekend. As we talked about, they want Bernie to create drama by saying, oh, the Senate is way more valuable and AOC should

be there. Or I am, I'm not ruling out running in 2028. What Bernie has to say about poverty or Medicare or the creeping rise of global authoritarianism, it's just not that interesting. And that's where we land when Democrats are asked about hypothetical elections that are years away. And then they don't want to answer. They are considered to be the problem.

And then on the other hand, when Republicans lie about elections that already happened, like Trump claiming he won 2020, those lies are treated with soft gloves and false equivalency here. Uh, you know, some people say it was stolen while others disagree. That's a, that's a classic line from corporate media. Some say humans are having an impact on the planet's climate while others disagree. Oh wow. Thank you so much for being neutral when neutrality couldn't possibly be less objective.

So this is like empty calories, right? Uh, uh, for a public that is really starving for a deeper analysis. So I'm going to keep trying to do the best I can to both grow the pie of independent media, right? So we got to play the games in some places. I can use really boring titles on YouTube and then no one will pay attention. So we're going to play the games as necessary on each platform, but we're going to talk about, Hey, here are the historical equivalents for what we are seeing right now with regard to ignoring the judiciary. Here are five ways to organize healthcare, all of which would be better

than what we have. And here are the five countries that have chosen these systems. Maybe he's a nice guy. He probably is, but this is, this is not good. And Bernie Sanders realized it right away. A Donald Trump's enablers are quietly preparing exit strategies as the Trump era eventually is going to sunset for lack of a better term and how it happens could have a massive impact on what comes next in the United States. So let's kind of lay out the way it's going right now. And this has major policy implications. If you look publicly, if you just step back and say, what am I seeing out there on corporate

media? Republicans are publicly lined up behind Donald Trump like it's, you know, November of 2016. But behind closed doors, it's a very different story. Every member of Congress that I've interviewed tells me the same thing behind the scenes. Plenty of Republicans in the House and in the Senate think Trump is unfit for office, that what he's doing economically makes no sense, that this is all a really bad idea. They won't say it publicly. Most of them because the base still loves him.

They are too afraid of getting primaried. They are afraid of losing fundraising. And if this sounds familiar, it should because you think back to January six, 2021, Mitch McConnell stood on the Senate floor. We covered it live. I remember, uh, and called Trump morally responsible for the insurrection. And Lindsey Graham said, count me out from the movement that did that on January 6th. Kevin McCarthy said Trump bore responsibility for the Capitol attack,

but then they crawled back into the movement as it became politically inconvenient to think for yourself and have a spine in the Republican party. So now we're in Trump's second term, 2025, shaky economic indicators, not a recession at this point, but things are shaky. The administration is more chaotic than ever. And there is this shift that is happening. And part of it is Trump is done in 2028. No matter what Steve Bannon tells you, Trump's done a Republican operatives, lawmakers, 2028 hopefuls. They are keeping a very close eye on the volatility of Trump's decision making and the eroding approval ratings. And there's sort of like vultures circling a limping animal. They are not challenging him outright for now, but they are laying the groundwork behind the

scenes to move the second that it becomes politically safe to do so. So you're going to hear the soft rollout with phrases like we are approaching our next generation of leadership in the Republican Party. We want fresh voices for 2028. So it's it's not just political fluff. It's a message with a target. And the target is Trump. Everybody from Ron DeSanctimonious to Nikki Haley to Glenn Youngkin, they're quietly building their infrastructure. It's not for right now. It's for what comes next.

And the calculation is super easy. If Trump ism collapses under the weight of Trump or under legal baggage or whatever, there's a bunch of people who want to be first in line. Even if it doesn't come until late in this term, the end of 2027 or even later, Republicans are quietly gaming out the scenarios. What happens if Trump is legally sanctioned or incapacitated? What if public opinion turns way against him?

80 20. What if there is an unavoidable cognitive fitness incapacitation? So the point here is they aren't betting on Trump's strength maintaining to where it is Trump's blessing that they will need in 2028. They are preparing for Trump's failure and abandoning getting off the train at just the right time. There's also the Trump fatigue factor. Political staffers are burning out. High level staffers are cycling through really quickly and the mega loyalty tests are starting

to wear thin. So the seasoned strategists don't really want to deal with the Trump world chaos. And then you've got right wing media. Um, uh, the, the, the, the right wing media's aspect of this where right wing outlets are sending signals. If you know where to look, Fox of course covers Trump, but not with the same zeal. And we've even heard anecdotally just in the last 10 days, Peter Ducey and Maria Bartiromo and others starting to give airtime to some of the obvious questions that people are asking about the tariff policy or other policies.

The wall street journal editorial board will PD periodically remind readers of the instability of some of the economic ideas of Trump. You even hear from some of the new right talking about post Trump conservatism, which when I hear it, I hear a desire from them to go back to something like a Mitt Romney or a John McCain. And then finally, even some of the MAGA influencers are kind of hedging and they're talking about, we, we need discipline in our movement and using these sort of code words. So it is subtle for now, but the, the, the, the sort of moment that everyone is waiting for is when the risk flips. Right now, it's dangerous to oppose Trump. It may become dangerous not to, depending on how the next three

and a half years go. When that moment comes, many of the same Republicans who cheered the return of Trump in 24 are going to pretend I was always skeptical of this. I was never really on board. I was trying to move the party forward. So we're watching it. Pay attention to it. Be ready for it. Folks, my book comes out tomorrow. OK, I've got a whole shelf of them here. Let me grab one. The Echo Machine comes out tomorrow. Dozens of people have already received it. It started shipping out last week. I have two requests and only two requests for you. Number one, I would love it if you bought this book. Um, I don't yet know where it is going to land in terms of all of the nonfiction books that are coming out right now. We're doing everything we can to make it a success. Whether you like to

read, listen to audio books, Kindle, it's available everywhere at this point. You could get it as soon as tomorrow. If you order it right now, the final signed copies are available at davidpacman.com slash booksmith, booksmith. Sorry. Let me say that once more davidpacman.com slash booksmith. And finally, please review the book. I'm not telling people who didn't read the book to review it. All I'm telling you is there are three really important places to review the book. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads. The reviews alone could push this book into a successful first month rather than a first week. We will be featuring reviews also,

by the way, on our social media and in other places. So that's where we are. We've got a great bonus show for you today. You can sign up at join Pacman dot com. The book is out tomorrow. A lot going on. Glad to have you with us today.