The David Pakman Show - 3/31/25: Third term insanity spreads, Elon is stepping down

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

-- On the Show: -- David lays out his political views in response to audience questions as a sort of anti-authoritarian progressive manifesto -- NBC News' Kristin Welker reports that Donald Trump told her he's exploring the idea of a third term, despite legally being unable to serve again -- A deep dive into the ways Donald Trump could try to argue for a third term, and their legal shortcomings -- Donald Trump admits he has "no idea" what Signal is and appears completely confused -- Elon Musk announces he will be stepping down from DOGE soon, claiming to have accomplished everything -- Elon Musk holds a town hall that goes horribly wrong -- Tucker Carlson says he won't fly with vaccinated pilots and spouts outrageous conspiracy theories -- Donald Trump is asked "what is a woman?" and struggles to answer it -- Donald Trump unveils yet another outrageous economic idea, this time suggesting tariffs on everything country -- On the Bonus Show: White House weighs how to help farmers as trade war crushes them, Trump funding cuts ripple through rural America, Florida special election suggest trouble for Trump & Republican leaders, much more... 🌳 Fast Growing Trees: Get 15% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://fastgrowingtrees.com ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get 25% OFF sitewide at https://helixsleep.com/pakman  🧠 Try Brain.fm totally free for a month at https://brain.fm/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. I'm going to start with something a little different today. You know, I've received a lot of emails lately, especially I think because with the book out, there are people who are hearing about me from reading the book and not the show. And so I've been getting asked the question, what exactly are your political beliefs? Yes, you're on the left, but can you really lay it

out? Where do you stand on different issues and different principles and ideas? And I think that this is an excellent opportunity to kind of lay it out and sort of like, this will be what I can refer people back to in a context where I've been critical before of those who just want to talk about principles, principles, principles, ignoring difficult policy decisions. I have a chapter in the book about avoiding these philosophical black holes for two reasons. Number one, if I tell you my values are Liberty, individual autonomy and egalitarianism. What does that really say in 2025 about what policy should be?

So one reason that I favor an approach of always talking about our beliefs in the context of policy is that the beliefs alone don't actually tell you what policy you should support or oppose. And secondly, we have right now in the American right wing, uh, a movement that claims certain, uh, virtues and, uh, um, principles, but then they abandoned them immediately when those are politically inconvenient. So for those, those reasons in the book, I've said, don't get sucked into the black hole of exclusively talking theoretically abstractly about principles.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about principles and policy and kind of lay out where I am. The big picture is I consider myself an anti-authoritarian, socially responsible, pragmatic, progressive. Oh, my God, David, that's such mumbo jumbo. Yeah, it is. But the point here is just saying I'm on the left, especially as left and right have become pretty useless shorthands for political beliefs right now is kind of meaningless. So I'm going to lay it out for you. When I say I'm anti authoritarian, what that means is that I favor libertarianism, but not capital L. Okay. Not, not the libertarian party. What I mean is on the spectrum of authoritarianism to libertarianism, both lowercase, I believe we opt for the more limited but effective government,

meaning I want to be able to make a clear case as to why I think government should be involved in certain areas. We need government to protect civil rights. We need government to provide essential public goods and regulate markets where necessary without going any further into controlling people's lives where the government has no business being. So in that sense, I'm anti authoritarian. I'm a progressive when it comes to ensuring a baseline of dignity for all. What do I mean by that? Food, health care, rights and opportunity. We need government involved there. I'm a libertarian in my attitude, which is I am deeply opposed to authoritarianism.

I'm against overreach by governments. I'm against ideological rigidity and I'm against coercive systems of any kind except where they are necessary in societies that are quite frankly bigger than 150 people based on sociological and anthropological data. I support a version of capitalism that has guardrails, that defends equality of opportunity and global cooperation by consent. But I'm against purity politics. I'm against forced collectivism, which is why I'm not a socialist. So I see my politics

as pragmatic, anti-authoritarian and predominantly rooted in the real world. Now, let me give you some principles. Number one, I see government as a tool, not as a savior. So we should centralize certain societal and economic activities when necessary, either for reasons of scale or of justice. When we talk about should we have a bunch of mercenary armies or should that task, the military be centralized for the government? I believe that for scale and justice and sanity, we should just have one military that the government runs,

education, health care, et cetera. OK, but I want the government staying out of areas where society can self-organize pretty effectively. And I think markets are OK there. And that gets me to principle number two, capitalism with exceptions and safeguards. My view is that markets work well in a lot of areas, tech, consumer goods, et cetera, if they are properly regulated. But health care and education I see as public goods and not commodities. So I want government involved there. Third, I am an advocate of equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. We have normal distribution. Imagine a bell curve in any aspect of life. We expect normal distribution.

Outcomes will vary and will be normally distributed along this curve. So what I want is to eliminate systemic barriers to get rid of rigged rules that don't really provide a quality of opportunity. That's my focus. Number four on free speech and being against coercion. I don't consider myself a free speech absolutist, but I basically want to not restrict speech as far as governments are concerned. And also we have to accept that speech has consequences, which are also speech. This is one of the areas where a lot of these free speech right wingers get mixed up, which is they have one version of free speech for the speaker and then they want to limit or constrain the speech of those reacting to that speech. Speech has consequences and it might be, I'm not going to do business with you anymore.

That's a form of speech, et cetera. I am against a ideological enforcement and I'm against purity tests on all sides. Number five, dignity as a baseline. No one in a wealthy country should go hungry, be homeless or go without health care. So we need a strong safety net. It's not optional. It's one of the sort of parameters of social democracy, regulated capitalism as I see it. Six, international cooperation without imperialism. I favor alliances. I favor treaties. I favor shared action. I am against acting as the world's self-appointed enforcer, spreader of democracy or policeman. Number seven. And if you've read my book, you know this. I'm about reform over revolution. I want to fix broken systems

instead of giving people the idea that by tearing it all down, we will get to some utopia. You really don't want to burn it down unless you know exactly what you're building and who will do the building. Many times the burn it down ends up in the wrong people rebuilding it. It ends up being even worse. Number eight, I am consistent in my anti authoritarianism. I'm against strong men. I'm against dictators. I'm against centralized coercion.

And as a result of this, I also am against imposed socialism, forced collectivism. Uh, I would welcome individual businesses choosing to organize as worker co-ops, et cetera. But much like we see in the successful economies of Denmark and Sweden and others that I talk about in the book, uh, I don't want a government to come in and impose. We are going to collectivize or socialize. Now, in terms of what I support versus what I oppose in terms of policy in a lot of these areas. OK, government's roles that I think are valid.

Public health care. Yes. Civil rights protection. Yep. I believe in progressive taxation. I don't believe in central planning or government control over most industries with markets. I want regulated capitalism with real competition and innovation. I don't want unregulated monopolies, which is often what capitalism turns into.

And I don't want healthcare as a profit driven market. Those are examples when it comes to equality, I want anti-discrimination laws, educational access and safety nets. I don't want quotas without merit or forced equality of outcome. Doesn't doesn't work. Just simply doesn't work. Civil liberties, free speech, rights to protest, privacy protections, not fringe interpretations of cancel culture, state censorship or ideological silencing on policing and surveillance. I want police reform, judicial oversight, de-escalation practices to be a bigger part of policing. I don't want militarized police.

I don't want mass surveillance. I don't want warrantless spying on immigration. I favor legal pathways to citizenship. Skilled immigration probably needs to increase to the United States. I am not an advocate of so-called open borders, which we don't have. Uh, we need to also consider that these mass deportation schemes will be economically disastrous, uh, aside from whatever your moral and ethical feelings are about them on culture and identity. I recognize identity in history. So, uh, uh, people's identity brings a unique perspective and that should be considered. I don't want identity-based gatekeeping or the exclusion of groups, foreign policy, NATO and alliances aid to allies, a diplomacy first approach. I favor spreading democracy by force and unilateral military action.

I'm typically against authoritarianism. I always said voluntary cooperation and pluralism over dictatorship, over forced socialism and over ideological dogmatism. And finally, I don't believe in one size fits all answers. I believe in the principles I've told you, human dignity, civil liberty, shared responsibility, the value of voluntary systems over coercive ones, but also one society gets beyond 150 people and certainly beyond a thousand. You need a central taxing authority. You need central law enforcement. We just need these things at a certain point.

So I'm a progressive in goals. I'm a libertarian in the sense of being anti authoritarian. And I'm sort of grounded in the idea that it's not freedom versus fairness the way that a lot of right wingers talk about. Freedom depends on fairness and fairness depends on freedom. These things go together. That's my view. Those are my principles and how I would apply them to policy. There's a lot more about that in my book, The Echo Machine. And thank you to the more than 300 people who have already left reviews. The reviews are critical right now. Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads. Maybe tomorrow, maybe Wednesday, I will finally have

data as to how this first week of books, book sales went optimistic, cautiously optimistic. Thanks to everybody who reviewed already. The weather's warming up. It's just about time to start enjoying the outdoors again. If you live in a place that has seasons and it's time for the Thank you so much, David. to privacy trees, flowering trees and shrubs. They make it easy to find whatever fits your climate and your space. Everything's delivered directly to your door in just a few days. You'll get support from trained plant experts on call to help you plan your landscape, choose 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, including up to half off. And my audience gets an additional 15% off when you use the code Pacman. That's fastgrowingtrees.com. Use code Pacman for 15% off. The info is in the podcast notes. Another day, another Tesla story. What is going on with this company? Well, if you go to ground.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. The David Pakman show is an audience supported program. We are primarily funded by your memberships. You can read about them and sign up at join pakman.com. If you are

a new listener, a new viewer who just heard about this show, either for example, through Tik TOK, where we hit a million followers over the weekend, or because you bought my book, that is the primary means of funding the show. And I invite you to get the full experience, the bonus show every day, the commercial free audio and video feeds by signing up at join Pacman dot com. Quick, easy and directly supports the work that we do. All right. Listen, this is not a drill. Donald Trump told NBC News he is not joking about trying to get a third term as president, which to be clear, is unconstitutional under the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution. Now this is not just another Trump rally soundbite where he's tossing red meat. Well done, obviously, because it's Trump red meat to the base. This is Trump to a national

news chain saying, I have been thinking about ways to circumvent the two term limit in the constitution. And when Kristen Welker from NBC news pushed him suggesting he might try the JD Vance workaround, all of which I will explain and define for you in a moment. The idea there is Vance wins in 28 and then immediately resigns and hands the presidency back to scrumps. Trump said there are other ways. So let's start with the transcript. Here's the transcript. Welker says, well, let me throw out one where president Vance would run for office and then would basically, if he won at the top of the ticket, would pass the baton to you. And Trump says, well, that's one, but there are others too.

Kristen Welker says, there are others. Can you tell me another? Trump says no. And Welker says, okay, but sir, I'm hearing you don't sound like you're joking. I've heard you joke about this a number of times. And Trump says, no, no, I'm not joking. I'm not joking. Trump was then asked about the very same thing, uh, seemingly on a plane yesterday. And, uh, here is what he had to say. You said you were not joking about a third term about possibly wanting a third term. Does that mean you're not planning to leave office on January 20th? I'm not looking at that, but I'll tell you, I have had more people ask me to have a third term. Does that mean you're not planning to leave office on January? I'm not looking at that, but I'll tell you, I have had more people ask me to have a third term, which is in a way it's a fourth term because the other election, the 2020 election was totally

rigged. So it's actually sort of a fourth term in a certain way. I just don't want the credit for the second because Biden was so bad. He did such a bad and look at Howard Lutnik laughing in the background like this is fun. Yeah. And I think that's one of the reasons that are popular. You wonder, I think I'm popular because we've done a great job. I think we've had the best almost 100 days of any. So listen, I want to I don't want to give everybody hyperbole.

And I also cannot in good faith pretend that this isn't going on. So what we're going to do in a moment is actually talk through the four ways that Trump could try to get another term. But the zoom out is even if you like me don't believe that this is going to happen and I don't. Donald Trump is governing like a strongman. He's gutting oversight. He's centralizing power despite claiming to be of a political party that wants to diminish presidential power. He's actually worked to increase presidential power. He praises dictators and now he's playing coy at minimum. Some would say, no, he's planning on it, David. He's at minimum playing coy with a third term. This is the next step in that very same direction. So we do have,

before we get into the details here, we have a sort of, you know, if it, if it talks like a duck and walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, we should start to think the most likely explanation is that it's a duck. So there is no question that Trump has no moral issue with seeking or getting a third term. There's no ideological problem here. He has no problem changing or ignoring law in order to get what he wants. That's all true. But now let's really dig into the details. I used to joke that Donald Trump would try to go for a third term if he could get away with it. And now it's not even a joke. He's floating it openly. He said to NBC News's Kristen Welker that he's not joking. And there's the idea of the JD Vance play and some others.

So now let's really dig into it. There's a great new piece by Politico's James Ramoser. I recommend you read the whole thing. We are linking to it. And he outlines four ways that could be tried to stay in power beyond 2028. Now, if you're sitting there thinking, David, hold on a second, sir, the constitution says you can't do that. You are of course correct. The 22nd amendment to the constitution very clearly says no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice person elected more than twice. Very clear.

But Trump doesn't care about the rules. He never has. And the Supreme Court, which is now packed with loyalists, could let him get away with it or to put it a different way, who is physically going to stop him. So let's go through the different ways that he could attempt this. And then I'll tell you the problems with with each of these methods. So number one is he runs as vice president in twenty28, JD Vance runs as president or whoever, uh, that ticket wins Trump's VP.

And then the president resigns on day one and Trump can step back in. Uh, another path would be just running again and saying, stop me. Ultimately it would be up to, uh, cases appealed all the way to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court saying, no, you can't do this. Do we believe the Supreme Court would say, no, you can't do this? Some say yes, some say no. It's got three Trump loyalists on their path. Number three would be to create a movement to repeal the 22nd Amendment. The 22nd Amendment is what places that two term limit on Trump. And then fourth, Trump could simply physically refuse to leave. That's it right now. Of course, that puts an end

to the democratic experiment of the United States of America. This is not about whether Trump can get a third term. This is about whether anybody will physically stop him from trying or from doing it. Now, let me tell you the problems with each of these four ideas. Number one, repeal the 22nd Amendment. 22nd Amendment is the roadblock. You get rid of it, solves the problem. Repealing a constitutional amendment requires super majorities in Congress, and it requires three fourths of the states.

Trump is, I guess, still popular in the Republican party. He's not that popular. The country is just too polarized for anything close to that level of consensus. That's not going to happen. Second idea, Trump runs as VP. Then the president resigns, makes Trump president. There's a couple of problems with this. Number one, the 12th amendment presents a pretty serious roadblock to Trump even running

as VP because he's ineligible to be president. Again, what the 12th amendment says is no person constitutionally ineligible to be president is eligible to be vice president of the United States. That in edge of ineligibility to the presidency under the 22nd would disqualify him from being VP under the 12th. Now, what could the Trump people argue? They could say the 22nd amendment only prevents Trump from being elected, not from serving. So then you could say, well, maybe someone else runs and then the VP resigns and the president appoints Trump VP then resigns and Trump's president. Even then, I think if the president resigned and Trump were VP, it would skip Trump and go to speaker of the house. To be clear, this is

completely untested legal territory, completely untested legal territory. We would have to see. Third option. Trump just runs again. Trump goes, I'm running. He files papers. The courts let it slide and then it gets up to the Supreme court and the Supreme court says, we're going to allow it. I struggle to think that that's going to happen. Even with three loyalists on the court, I struggle to think that that happens. And then finally, there's the I will refuse to leave idea, which is Trump just says, OK, I didn't run. Someone else won. I'm just not leaving. I'm here. I'm chaining myself to the Diet Coke button in the Oval Office and I'm not going to leave. OK, I mean, will the military, Congress, courts and Secret Service all let it happen?

I want to say no. I and I know some people might write in and go, David, you're being naive. Of course, the military, Congress, the courts and Secret Service all would let it happen. I don't think so. I don't think so. And I'm ready to be told, David, you are simply naive. But those are the four methods. These are the justifications and these are the counterpoints to each and every one of those. Imagine that your national security team leaked military strike plans like hair dye in a signal group chat to a journalist and your president's response is I have no idea what signal is. I don't care what signal is. Well, that's what happened. This is the man currently running the US government, Donald Trump.

And in an interview with NBC News, Trump was asked about a major scandal. His national security adviser, Mike Waltz, added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic to a signal chat where top Trump officials were discussing a military strike on the Houthis in Yemen. Instead of showing concern, Trump ranted about fake news, called the story a witch hunt, but then said the quiet part out loud. I don't know about signal. I have no idea what signal is. I have no idea what signal is. I just want you to consider for a moment. If Barack Obama said, I have no idea what email is, or if Biden shrugged off a military leak and said, slack, never heard of it. Don't care about it. It would be a 24 seven meltdown on Fox news and other right wing media. They'd be calling for the president's head. But with Trump, the confusion's kind of baked in. He doesn't get the technology. He doesn't want to get the technology. He assumes that if he acts angry enough and yells fake news a few times,

it'll go away. Uh, the leak is also not hypothetical. The Atlantic's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg confirmed he was added to the chat. It's not a wild accusation coming from the left that this has been confirmed by everybody involved. And Trump's big response is not to fire anybody, not to increase security, but to say, I don't care what signal is. I have no idea. I don't care. And by the way, we had a tremendously successful strike and that's what nobody wants to talk

about. Well, listen, I'm fine talking about the strike after we finish the discussion of how Trump's top officials are sending war plans through apps that Trump didn't even know exists. So this is why people are worried because it's not just about policy, it's basic competence. If you cannot understand how your team is communicating, should you have access to the nuclear codes? I would say no. Now, of course, they love to say, oh, but Biden this and Biden that. The reality, of course, is that Biden was never asked about things that happened and said, haven't heard about it, haven't been briefed. You could say correctly that Biden was slowed down. You could say correctly that Biden never should have run for reelection. You could say correctly that Biden seemed disoriented in that debate with Trump.

All would be true. But Trump has no idea what's going on with signal. He was asked last week, what do you have to say about the four military service members that died in Lithuania. Trump said, haven't heard about that either. He is being kept out of the loop and that the explanation as to why should be a major concern to all of us. What do you make of it? Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube. Make sure you're following on Tic Tac. We'll take a quick break and be right back. email 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 will buy this information from companies to spy on people without a search warrant.

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Well my friends, it is going to be over soon. Elon Musk, tech billionaire, Tesla CEO, part time edge Lord and full time chaos agents is stepping down from his Trump appointed role as the head of Doge. Seriously. Um, Elon Musk is calling this 130 day tenure and he says it's a revolution in government. He's claiming victory. He says, I did it.

I helped cut the federal deficit by a trillion dollars And now with his mission accomplished, he's heading for the exits. Now, if you believe that, if you believe that I've got a bridge to sell you, let's be very real. This is not a clean exit. This is not a victorious, uh, uh, receding back to running his businesses. This is a very carefully staged retreat. Now let's talk about the real numbers. The actual numbers that Elon Musk's department claims to have saved are $130 billion. That's not a trillion. That's 13% of what he claims. Even the 130 billion has not been identified by a verified rather by a single independent agency. It's a bullet point. Now, when we dug into the details last week and the week before, we found that some of their hundred and thirty billion

dollars in claimed savings were things that actually date back to programs eliminated under Biden. Some of the claimed savings were decimal point errors where they overstated by orders of magnitude the amount of savings. Others are canceled programs that haven't actually even received any money and the actual savings is zero. So even what they claim, Trump says, I save. I'm sorry. Musk says we saved a trillion. We cut a trillion. Their real bullet point is we saved one hundred and thirty billion. The audited bullet point is close to very, very little. So this is how Elon operates. You overpromise. You under deliver. You lie, declare victory and disappear before the consequences hit. And what Elon Musk is now trying to do is get out before the layoffs and the program cuts and the sloppy spending slashes start to hurt real people in an even more serious

way. He's cutting and running right as the lawsuits are starting to overturn some of what Doge has done as the oversight demands are saying, we're not going to go with this unless we actually can go through a proper oversight process. The public backlash is mounting and maybe even more importantly, part of why Elon is bailing is his businesses are starting to struggle as a result of him, him being supposedly working a hundred hours a week on 17 different projects. Doesn't let you be too in depth on any one of them.

Tesla struggling, space X is struggling. SpaceX is struggling. X is struggling. Shareholders are getting restless. So this is the pattern. Elon swoops in, grabs a bunch of headlines, pushes some superficial change when the real work starts or the PR turns or the damage begins to be felt by average people, he exits and the Republicans who have been yelling for years, why can't the government run more like a business? They kind of got their wish and it looked really bad. It's layoffs and unchecked power, a complete lack of accountability lies from the top and the billionaire walking away before the dust even settled.

So did Elon Musk save American government? No. Did he end waste or fraud? I don't even know that he found any fraud. We still don't have a single person who's been charged. Okay. The investigations take time, but if they found as much fraud as they claim, which is a crime, you would think there are going to be many arrests and prosecutions here. And then he is now bailing before the math catches up to him. Is this reform? No, it's a performance. Yes. But the saddest part of it is we're all going to be left holding the bill. And the most terrifying part of it is that this has worked to bamboozle and trick and grift the very people who are going to be hurt the most by it. And now some of them are expecting checks in the mail. You've got to see

this. Elon Musk held a town hall yesterday. And I'll be honest, I'm using the term town hall really loosely, really, really loosely. This was one of the most completely deranged public events I've seen in a while. And we've covered Donald Trump. OK, at one point, I almost feel bad for this woman. At one point, you hear a woman from the audience say, do you know when the Doge checks are going to be sent out? I don't know how else to say this other than there are no Doge checks. There are people who have been convinced that because of the trillion dollars in savings that Elon is claiming, which is imaginary,

they are now going to get a refund. Now, as I've explained to you before, since we're running a deficit, even if this savings were real, which the bullet point they're claiming is 130 billion, most of that seems to be made up. Even if it were real, if the point here is to get us out of deficit spending, you can't start cutting checks to people. The savings would simply go to cutting the deficit. But what why would we let facts get in the way of reality? Here is a woman I feel really bad for saying, when do you think I'm going to get my check?

I just want to say that Dozier's findings demonstrate to the American people that the government clearly does not care about our hard-earned tax dollars. I'm only 26, but I can imagine it's frustrating for people who have worked their entire lives to see their tax dollars going to fraud, waste, and abuse. And you alone have contributed so much money to our government via taxes. So thank you. You contributed $260 million to Trump's campaign. Your leadership and team is capable of transforming our government into something better than what we see today. I just want to say I'm sure I'm not the only one who's wondering, but we know that Doge has found quite a bit of money. And remember, they haven't found any money. We would like to see some of that returned to the American people.

Do you have any information on when Doge checks would be written or sent out? It's sort of like, what are you talking about? Sure. Well, I guess we need to be successful at scale. We've made a lot of progress, but there's still a tremendous amount of work to do. Now, remember, he's also claiming mission accomplished and he's leaving effectively by as government spending is made more efficient and spending is reduced. The the tax by inflation is reduced. So, by the way, take really close attention to what he's saying here. One way or another, you will effectively be better off.

Did you catch that? So there are no doge checks coming. OK, what Elon is saying is that the way you will get your money is that all of the savings he found will have a deflationary effect and spending less on stuff is like getting a refund. Now, we will we will follow that. We will see if we ever get a negative inflation rate. But this is him saying you're not really going to get a check per se, but everything's going to be so much cheaper thanks to what I've done that that will be your refund if resources in the United States are not wasted. So and it's it's it's it's a it's somewhat up to the Congress and maybe the president to, you know, as to whether specific checks are cut.

But which means that they're not going to be cut. OK, let me give you the answer. We're all wondering when the Doge checks are going out. Those don't exist, ma'am. There are no doge checks. Congress is not going to cut doge subsidies. Uh, it, it just, it just doesn't exist. Uh, they have no idea that they are being scammed and this is what happens when people

start believing in billionaires as if they are gods like they did with Trump in 2016. You get an audience full of people. Yeah, the Doge checks. There's no Doge checks coming. What do you what are you talking about? And then it gets worse. Moj Moj, Musk, Elon, Moj, Musk gets heckled, not even aggressively.

And he goes full conspiracy mode talking about George Soros. The federal government likes shocking, really. It's insane. Yeah, it's really wild. So I mean, it was inevitable that at least a few Soros operatives would be in the audience. Yeah. When you are criticized, it must be a plot funded by hold on a second. How old is George Soros now? It's obvious that 94 year old George Soros is paying people to go to a Elon Musk town hall and boo. This is the go to deflection for people with no answers. Blame the 94 year old Jewish billionaire and imply that

a shadowy communist force is at work here. My regards to George. Say hi to George for me. You were saying you were saying you. Yeah. Then he went on even more about this. But I think the real issue is like like who's organizing and funding that? Like this is the same people that organized and funded the, you know, the infiltrators, you know, the hecklers early at night.

So it's whoever they are, you know. And I guess we know some of their names, but it's really, yeah, yeah. Saras and a bunch of others. Right. Really electrifying speaker. Speaker 2 Really what I sometimes I wonder what is their goal? Like what? What's what's their aim?

You know, I guess is it communism, I guess, is part of it or just I don't know. Some of the order. Speaker 1 But yeah, now it shouldn't be lost on us that the whole point of this event that Elon did is to try to turn the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in his favor. And so think of the sick irony in it. It's a it's a terrifying, dystopian, sick irony where on the one hand, Elon is saying the protesters are here because of George Soros. Soros wants communism. And so he's putting his thumb on the scales.

Elon went to Wisconsin with the idea of handing a couple people a million bucks to try to buy a Supreme Court seat. The shadowy billionaire messing with our elections is Elon Musk, not George Soros. And I sort of jokingly said, I want to get this right. I shockingly, I put out an excretion on X over the weekend, but I also put it on blue sky and sub stack. I said, I'm aware of a guy who came to the US on a student visa, dropped out of school and then worked illegally.

Then he started tampering with federal elections and is grifting the government for profitable contracts. His name is Elon Musk. And as always, the calls seem to be coming from inside the house. And it is Elon Musk who is doing that, which he accuses George Soros of doing. So, you know, what are we even talking about here? Doge checks doesn't exist. Soros operatives booing in the crowd doesn't exist. Approaching communism doesn't exist. This is a billionaire tech CEO who used to be treated like a genius and is now ranting like someone who's upset that he lost the debate on Facebook's comments section in 2011. That's where we are.

And terrifyingly, he has seemingly nearly as much power as the president of the United States. The upside, he's leaving in a few weeks. The downside, I guess millions of Americans are expecting to their app for a whole month at brain.fm. Once you try Brain.fm, you'll quickly understand why this has become my go-to music app. When I just want to focus on work, in addition to music for focusing on work, they have modes specially designed for sleep, relaxation, meditation, all created by musicians working with neuroscientists. A peer-reviewed study showed that Brain.fm's music boosts attention, especially for people with ADHD tendencies.

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Tucker Carlson says he doesn't want to fly on planes if the pilots are vaccinated because it's just too dangerous. The woman he speaks to says she's proven that pilots have a lot more heart trouble than the general population to 90, 98% plus or minus four. Now, I, I guess that means she's saying that she is somewhere between 94 and 102 percent certain about this. These people are nuts. But this is very scary. But this is scary. Let's listen. And then we're going to break it all down. Now, I dare you to follow this. I dare you to follow this. I don't want to fly in a plane with vaccinated pilots because I think it's too dangerous.

But are there numbers on this? Oh, yeah. So tell me what they are. And I'm so sorry to jump in already. Here's one question. Who are the stupid people? Is it Tucker and this woman? Is it the people who believe this stuff?

Or is it us, the people who don't? My organization, Airline Employees for Health Freedom, we started getting phone calls. I know somebody that's sick or I know this or I know that. So we just put a data collection link up and it got so intense that I said, you know what? I'm going to stop everything. I'm going to write my dissertation and I'm going to study the vaccine injury amongst commercial airline pilots.

It was about seven months of data collection, 1600 plus respondents across the industry and understand the population is about 80-20 vaxxed, right? My study actually came out about 50-50 because a whole bunch of my unvaccinated friends wanted to help. You following this? Which watered down my numbers, but it actually makes them that much more powerful because at 50-50, if I found this, what would I have found at 80-20? And what I found is commercial airline pilots in the United States are suffering pericarditis and myocarditis at rates exceeding the CDC's national average. And I proved it to a 98 percent plus or minus four. There you go. So let's do what Tucker didn't do.

And let's look at the actual science. OK, Penn State College of Medicine looked at 58 million people across 22 studies. And what it found is that your risk of myocarditis is 15 times higher if you get covid than if you don't. And even when comparing covid vaccine to covid vaccination, the risk from infection of myocarditis is seven times higher, still really rare, but it is way higher from covid than from the vaccine. Now, it is true that myocarditis is a rare side effect of mRNA vaccines, especially in males under 30 after the second dose. But the risk is tiny and it's smaller than from covid itself. Now, then you have a study from European Medicines Agency, which found that it is under one in 10,000 that myocarditis, it's almost always mild.

It almost always resolves with no treatment. And it is way less dangerous than the myocarditis that can be caused by the covid itself. So even comparing myocarditis from covid to myocarditis from the covid vaccine, the myocarditis cases from covid are far more serious. OK, then we have a study from the UK University of Oxford looked at nearly 43 million people over a year, found that the risk of myocarditis from covid is 11 times higher than from any vaccine. Even when looking at young men under 40, which is the highest risk group of that side effect, the vaccine risk is still exponentially lower than the covid risk. These are not fringe studies. We're talking peer reviewed, massive sample sizes backed by public health agencies in many countries. Oh, I don't trust

the CDC. We'll look at studies from the UK and the EU. Then none of them found any evidence that covid vaccines are causing people to suddenly die in large numbers. It's it's not happening to pilots. It's not happening to athletes. That's another one they love. Tucker really loves the pilot angle. Now, the FAA has also found no surge in in-flight medical incidents. Airlines required vaccines and have seen record numbers of post-pandemic flights. No credible study has linked pilot deaths to vaccination. And don't forget that myocarditis also existed before vaccines. It's often caused by viruses like covid. And when you look at the numbers, vaccine associated myocarditis way more mild and way more treatable and way more rare compared to covid associated myocarditis, more common than it being caused by the vaccine, more severe, linked to worse outcomes,

including hospitalization and death. So where we get is Tucker does it with a straight face. He pretends to care about your health. Is he lying? Is he out of his depth? Does he not understand it? Or is he grifting? Is he doing titillating material even though he doesn't believe it? I have no idea. But if Tucker really cared about myocarditis, he would be urging people avoid covid, not the vaccine.

But it was never about science. It was about sowing distrust. It was about stoking outrage. And he's doing it here. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. After years of Republicans saying smugly, what is a woman is the simplest question in the world to answer. You'd have to be some kind of woke, brainwashed Marxist to even hesitate to answer. What is a woman? Donald Trump was asked, what is a woman?

And he choked. He couldn't do it. Take a listen to this. I want to say, first of all, happy Women's Month. You do so much for women by, first of all, keeping men out of women's sports and you platform so that was an easy one. You've got from so many great women, like your chief of staff, Susie Wiles. You also have Caroline Leavitt doing a great job as press secretary. Now, Alina will be joining as well.

Since Democrats seem to struggle answering this question, I wanted to ask you, what is a woman and why is it important that we understand the difference between men and women? Well, it's sort of easy to answer for me because a woman is somebody that can have a baby under certain circumstances. She can she has a quality. A woman is a person who's much smarter than a man. I've always found a woman is a person that doesn't give a man even a chance of success. And a woman's a person that in many cases has been treated very badly because I think that what happens with this crazy, this crazy issue of men being able to play in women's sports. So to recap, what is a woman, sir? Well, you know, it's sort of easy to answer under certain circumstances. It's a woman who can have a baby and it's also someone who's been treated very badly. Congratulations to Donald Trump for the most incoherent answer to a question that his

own party turned into a culture war lightning rod. This is the question that conservatives have been building their entire anti-trans panic around. Matt Walsh made an entire movie about what is a woman. Republican politicians shouted it in hearings. Fox News hosts ask like it's a mic drop. What is a woman? They said it was easy. It's basic. It's biological. You just say it. That's the whole point, right? And yet here is Trump, the man they call their alpha, the guy who tells it like it is fumbling the ball on the one yard line. Now, the reason that Donald Trump's answer was a word salad is because the question is contrived.

It's not meant to get a real answer. It's meant to be a trap. It's a wedge issue. It's a culture war hammer. But when you try to use it seriously, when it's not just for trying to dunk on liberals, even Trump knows that it falls apart. Now, here's the twist. None of this will matter to the people who ask this question in bad faith. They'll say, oh, Trump's heart was in the right place with his answer and he misspoke. And at least he didn't

say gender is a spectrum like those stupid liberals. But the reality, of course, is simple. The right said this question is everything. They mocked people who paused for nuance, who said, well, you know, the question of what is a woman has a different answer depending on whether we're talking about a urologist or a nondiscrimination law or under the law. Right. The answer depends on the context. And then Trump gets asked and he can't answer it. So my suggestion would be the next time these people try to gotcha someone with what is a woman, maybe we should say, let's check what Trump said to start with,

because apparently he doesn't know. Now, I've been thinking about this because it would be you know, when I spoke to Cory Booker, we we said we should be able to answer this question in a clear and straightforward way, even if it is the contrived gotcha environment. So it seems to me that a woman is a person who identifies with the role that society has historically called female, which mostly includes individuals born with female anatomy, but also some people who were not, you know, it's not really a biology quiz. It's how are we experiencing the world and how are we living? Uh, but maybe I'm wrong on this one. I'm sure that they will say that I am. But Trump clearly struggling with what we were told was the simplest question in the

world. All right. New idea. Tariffs on every single country. I know it sounds crazy, but Donald Trump was asked questions on a plane with Howard Lutnick standing behind him laughing. And Trump said, oh, you would start with all countries for tariffs. I'm not sure if that you're planning. So there are you're expecting to hit something like 10 to 15 countries. Is that right? No, no. All of the countries across the board. I don't

know who told you 10 or 15. I heard that you were going to hear it from me. You would start with all countries, not just 10 to 15. Now, a couple issues with this. Number one, it probably violates World Trade Organization rules. It would undoubtedly lead to retaliatory tariffs and it would increase prices for U.S. consumers on virtually every single imported good. Trump was then asked, are you worried about stagflation? And Trump goes, stagflation.

Now, is that something that you're worried about, given the impact of your efforts to readjust the economy? I haven't heard that term in years. I don't know anything about it. This country is going to be more successful than it ever was. It's going to boom, boom down USA. Now Trump says he doesn't know anything about stagflation and that's really not a term he's

heard in a long time. You know, uh, first of all, stagflation is a combination of stagnant growth with high inflation. Economy is not growing, but inflation is high and unemployment is high. This was a major problem in the 1970s. Now, Trump has previously talked about stagflation. You know, when when Obama was president and he would go on Twitter and type that Obama is causing stagflation. Now, just two years ago, this was a term that he was talking about. So does he remember it or not? Who the hell knows? The point here is there are some very basic elements of economics that at a minimum you need to understand in order to really be able to weigh

and evaluate the consequences of policies you're proposing. Tariffs is very, very high on that list because if you start imposing tariffs, the tariffs will restrict economic growth. The tariffs will cause inflation and the tariffs may lead to layoffs and higher unemployment. So all three elements of stagflation would be precipitated by this wacky tariff everyone policy that Donald Trump is talking about. You also, if you're going to start playing with fire with regard to tariffs, you also need to be able to say very clearly or rather understand very clearly who do we depend on in which industries and Trump doesn't seem to listen to this.

We want to bring we have our own lumber. We have our own energy. We don't need energy from Canada. We don't need lumber from Canada. We don't need anything from Canada. We don't need cars from Canada as an example. So we are going to I think we're going to have I call it the golden age of America. I believe this will be the golden age of America.

Thank you very much. So listen, uh, Trump says we don't need energy from Canada. We don't need lumber from Canada. What do you, what do you mean by need? Right? I mean on energy, Canada is the largest foreign supplier of energy to the U S especially crude oil and natural gas in 2023. More than half of oil imports came from one country from Canada.

We don't need it. Well, we do. We need anything, right? I mean, one way not to need it would be dramatically reduce how much of the stuff we're burning doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon. Another option would be to get it from elsewhere or to produce more domestically. But that takes some time. Lumber. Trump says we don't need lumber from Canada. OK. U.S. imports about 30 percent of our softwood lumber from Canada. Critical for construction. There have been years long disputes over tariffs because of that dependency. The U.S. does produce energy domestically. The U.S. does produce lumber domestically, but we are not able to immediately meet current demands without imports. And if we can no longer get those from Canada or if we can no longer get them at competitive prices,

it's yet again going to be more inflation for consumers. And then finally, Trump generically says we're finally respected again. Thanks to respected as a country again, it was strongly respected. And people are amazed that I was with some very important people today and they said that they've never seen a turnaround of a country as fast as this respect. Yeah, there's definitely been a turnaround. That's I concede that it's been a turnaround now being globally respected. Couldn't find any data that supports that. Is Trump going to really do this and put tariffs on every country? At this point, I have no idea.

We will talk about farmers and rural America on the bonus show. Rural America is struggling and has been struggling and farmers are struggling. Does this administration have any economic policy ideas to help those folks? We're also going to discuss the Florida special elections and what that does with regard to the midterms. It's not looking so good for Republicans, but I do want to dig into the details of that. Thank you to everyone who has bought my new book, The Echo Machine signed copies. OK, I'm going in today to sign books. OK, the final number that I will sign will be determined by the number of orders that come in today. David Pakman dot com slash book Smith for signed books. You can also order everywhere

books are sold. We have cracked the top 300 books across all of Amazon, hundreds of thousands or millions of books available for sale on Amazon. We are in the top 300 and so important, so important to sanctimonious. Make sure you review the book. We have over 300 reviews on Amazon. They're continuing to come in weeks two, three and four will depend on reviews which cost nothing. I'll see you on the bonus show. I'll see you here tomorrow. We've got some great interviews planned and a lot more.