The David Pakman Show - 4/15/25: Deporting citizens goes mainstream as dictatorship in focus

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Jonathan Allen, senior political reporter for NBC News and co-author alongside Amie Parnes of the new book "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House," joins David to discuss the book, Biden's failed re-election campaign, the election of Donald Trump, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3Y2mwMF -- Donald Trump's America is becoming a dictatorship, and we deep dive into why that term is not hyperbole -- Presidents Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador hold a dystopian, terrifying press event at the White House -- A shouting Stephen Miller melts down on Fox News and defends a deportation that the Trump administration has already admitted was a mistake -- At the latest AOC/Bernie Sanders rally in Nampa, Idaho, Ocasio-Cortez refers to Donald Trump as a rapist and criminal -- Donald Trump gets the epitome of the softball question, asked how he manages to be so healthy -- On the Bonus Show: Bill Maher visits the White House, Social Security wrongly lists thousands of migrants as dead, Trump admin announces freeze to billions for Harvard, much more... 📜 Trust & Will: Save 10% on your estate planning at https://trustandwill.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free baked goods at https://wildgrain.com/pakman 🔊 Babbel language learning: Get up to 60% OFF at https://babbel.com/pakman 💻 Sponsored by Private Internet Access: 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/Pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get 20% OFF sitewide at https://helixsleep.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow

Speaker 1 Speaker 3 Welcome, everybody. I want to start today using a word. We have the best words here that many people are understandably afraid to use. That word is dictatorship, because, of course, we look around. We have elections, we have courts that some people follow when they make a legal court order. But what we are seeing right now at the federal government is not just dysfunction. It is a devolution, devolution, devolution into dictatorship, becoming a dictatorship and becoming is a key word. Now, I want to

make it very clear that this is not some like over the top hyperbolic nonsense. I'm not saying we live under Hitler. I'm not saying we have a 20th century style literal dictatorship under Donald Trump. But what we do have are the first signs of the structural decay where courts get ignored. The law is bent around one man, a large orange man. Civil society gets demonized. Power centralizes in the executive. Opposition is framed as illegitimate. Media critical of leadership is seen as disloyal and treasonous. And you don't have to live under literal dictatorship to see that these are the early stages of how dictatorship forms. Plato warned about this.

First, the people get angry and they get desperate. Then a strong man comes in loud and angry and vengeful and sometimes charismatic who says he basically always he is the only one who can fix it. And soon the institutions don't work unless he allows them to. The institutions don't work unless unless they allow him to do whatever he wants to do. So it's really important to understand that authoritarians don't always storm the palace on horseback. Sometimes they tweet or once Twitter becomes X, they excrete on X. Sometimes they host rallies. Sometimes they just ignore court rulings and dare anyone to stop them. And nobody does.

And look at what happened this week alone. The Trump administration is defying a nine zero Supreme Court ruling, ordering them to return a wrongly deported man from El Salvador back to the United States. Their responses were not doing it. We'll look at video of that, uh, of Trump alongside the Salvadorian president a little bit later. That was a wrongful deportation. The administration admitted it was a mistake. A unanimous Supreme court said, fix it. And at least for now they're refusing that's dictatorship behavior. It's not a full dictatorship. It's not Hitler. OK, but this is how it starts. And this is why the word becoming is so important. When the executive stops following rulings from the judiciary and nobody stops them,

that is part of a move towards dictatorship. And it's part of a bigger pattern. Trump threatening again to deport U.S. citizens, defying the court rulings, as I talked about, calling civil rights lawyers terrorists, open the door to start on the road towards dictatorship. And just because it's happening through press releases and legal memos and executive orders doesn't make it any less real. That's how it always starts by making it sound boring and normal so that a lot of people don't pay attention until we're already 15 steps deep into it. And of course, underneath all of this is the economic pain. Trump's tariffs, early signs of disruptions to Social Security, Medicaid cuts that are in the works, Trump underwater in every poll on nearly every issue. This is why the word becoming matters so much.

We're not North Korea, but we're also not where we were 10 years ago before Donald Trump, as he likes to say, came down the escalator and said a lot of Mexicans are rapists. The guardrails are coming off one by one. And if we don't call it what it is while there is still time to do so, we potentially lose the ability to stop it. And so there's a bunch of factors here that are important to consider. Number one is the slow motion nature of the transformation of a democracy into something else. We've been a flawed democracy for some time. We are now devolving into whatever comes after that. Uh, we also have to consider and kind of go beyond this, that we do have an environment right now. And it's not about

blaming any one person or any one system or any one platform. But we have an environment where there is nothing that is too far for the sycophants and the loyalists to defend. And so I know that there are some out there who are saying, yeah, you know, I am sort of concerned by some of the things that I'm seeing. But if it were really that bad, if it were really that dangerous, if this really suggested that we were on the precipice of something like what you're talking about, David, everybody would be up in arms. But of course we know that that's not the

case because we have an environment right now where at minimum, I mean, Trump talks about, I could shoot someone on fifth Avenue, right. That's like a benign example. If Trump shot someone on Fifth Avenue, you would have the right wing media ecosystem come in and talk about how it was only self-defense and why are sissy liberals against people protecting themselves? You'd have the algorithms of the social media networks feeding people the right wing coded content that would make Trump shooting someone on Fifth Avenue look like the big, strong alpha thing to do. And someone was coming after our kids and Trump.

So that's like a benign example. I'm talking way worse. What if Trump talked about deporting US citizens? Oh, he's doing that. And what's the reaction? A combination of he doesn't mean it. And maybe we should do that. And we need to be tougher. And what you want criminals to just do whatever they want. There is essentially nothing. Maybe we can come up with an example that would be a bridge too far. But there is essentially nothing I can think of where we would have a united opposition to what Donald Trump does. He will have the algorithms. He will have the right wing media

defenders. He will have people like Stephen Miller screaming on Fox News that they're right in everything they do. We'll have an example of that, by the way, later on in today's show. So for those who are sort of sitting back and saying, I'll know when it's really serious, because everyone will be telling me that every news channel will be telling me that every neighbor will be telling me that every social media platform will be telling me that. I think that that's not something I would hold my breath for. And so we need to figure it out ourselves instead of saying, I don't know, not everybody's freaking out right now. What we should be saying is how have dictatorships developed in the past? How has authoritarianism crept in in the past?

It wasn't someone shows up and on day one does all the dictator stuff by decree. It's been slow and boring in many cases, ignoring a court order here, attacking the free press here and making it slightly less free, punishing journalists willing to not tow the party line. And then it builds and it builds and it builds illegal deportations of people not from here, illegal deportations, maybe of people from here, which is sort of like the next shoe to drop that we're all now waiting for. So my message would be, let's not, number one, fall into the hyperbole. Trump is not Hitler, but let's also not get all scared and say, oh, no, you can't talk

about a dictatorship. We should remember what Plato said. We should look at how these things have happened in history. And we should recognize that we aren't there, but we're seeing warning signs. And if you don't do anything when you see the warning sign, sort of like the canary in the coal mine, then before you know it, it's too late. That's my message. I want to hear from you.

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You can read about all the member benefits. You can sign up so quickly your head will be spinning at how easy and quick it is. In a chilling moment, Donald Trump suggests again that he wants to deport American citizens to El Salvador, telling Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele during a White House visit yesterday that home groans are next and you've got to build more prisons in El Salvador. He then doubled down on this during a new interview this morning. This is what we're talking about when we say creeping authoritarianism, creeping dictatorship. This is not a drill.

This is now. Take a listen to this. And what Trump said is I want to do it with the homegrown criminals next. Oh, you said next. The homegrowns built you get about five more places. Yeah, that's fair. All right. It's not big enough. You've got to build about five more places because it is not big enough.

Then Donald Trump this morning saying the following about exactly this. Could we use it for violent criminals, our own violent criminals? I call them homegrown criminals. I mean, the homegrown ones that grew up and something went wrong and they hit people over the head with a baseball bat. We have and push people into subways just before the train gets there, like you see happening sometimes. We are looking into it and we want to do it. I would love to do that. Trump says, of course, if we can, there are numerous legal problems with that, as I have

told you about many, many, many times. And of course, if nobody forces you to abide by the law, does the law really matter? If a tree falls in the woods and you know the thing? OK, the law exists to the extent that anyone can be compelled to follow it. The Trump administration has already suspended habeas corpus for the Maryland dad sent to El Salvador, violated the rights of guarantee guaranteed. I feel silly saying it. I guess they're not guaranteed, supposedly guaranteed to him by the judiciary and the

constitution. And now Trump is indicating that he intends to do the exact same thing for citizens. No check on executive power. No due process, nothing. And it violates multiple amendments to the Constitution. We've talked about the legal problems before. Trump continuing during this Oval Office thing that they did talking about. I'd be willing to pay for those facilities to be open if new ones were going to be built.

I'd do something. We'd help them out. We have the great facilities, very strong facilities, and they don't play games. I'd like to go a step further. I mean, I say I said it to Pam. I don't know what the laws are. We always have to obey the laws. But we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways. We know, by the way, that he doesn't know what the laws are. He didn't have to clarify that. That hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they're not looking, that are absolute monsters. I'd like to include them in the group of people to get them out of

the country, but you'll have to be looking at the laws on that, Steve. OK. Yes, the law will be an impediment here, assuming that Donald Trump follows it or that he can be compelled to follow it. Now CNN's Caitlin Collins during this abortive oval office event asked the president of El Salvador, Bukele, to weigh in on this and to weigh in specifically about will they return the wrongly deported Maryland father? And Bukele says, I can't snug a smug snuggle, smuggle. I can't smuggle anyone into the United States. Of course not. Can president Bukele weigh in on this? Do you plan to return him? Well, I guess I'm

supposed to have suggested that a smuggle terrorist into the United States. Now, of course, there's no evidence he's a terrorist, but OK, let's ignore that for a moment. How can I return him to the United States? I smuggle him into the United States or whether I do, of course, I'm not going to do it. It's like, I mean, the question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don't have the power to return him to the United States. But you can release him inside of some of the world. Yeah, but I'm not releasing.

I mean, we're not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. I mean, we just turned the murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere, and you want us to go back into releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? No, that's not going to happen. Well, they'd love to have the murder capital of the world. And that's good. And that's not going to happen. Well, they'd love to have a criminal, you know, I mean, I mean, there's so they would love it. Yeah.

So what we are led to believe is that two presidents, the president of the United States and the president of El Salvador, they just don't have the power. Nobody can get one wrongly deported guy back to the United States. The guy whose administration deported him can't do it. And the guy whose country now has him can't do it. They're all powerless. Who knew that these presidents so totally lacked all power to do anything. OK. Meanwhile, Trump now appears to have fully turned on Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, continuing the antagonism of Ukraine,

implicitly propping up Russia. What a surprise. President Zelensky's serve out his offer to purchase more Patriot missile batteries. All right. He's always looking to purchase missiles. You know, he's he's against. Listen, when you start a war, you got to know that you can win the war. You don't start a war against somebody that's 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles. Shameful, indistinguishable from Russian state television, which says, oh, the Kremlin didn't

start the war. It was Ukraine that did. Now there's two possibilities. Both are disturbing. Trump knows Ukraine didn't start the war, but he says it anyway. Or Trump genuinely doesn't realize that Ukraine didn't start the war. Both are really bad. And then finally, sort of the cherry on top, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, says we are going to help you if you if you liberate 350 million people, you've got to imprison some of them. In fact, Mr. President, you have 350 million people to liberate, but to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some. That's the way it works, right? You cannot just

free the criminals and think crime is going to go down magically. You have to imprison them so you can liberate 350 million Americans that are asking for the end of crime and the end of terrorism. And it can be done. I mean, you're doing it already. And I'm sure that

people have seen the change in the streets. A long way to go, you're doing it already. And I'm sure that people have seen the change in the streets a long way to go because you're just initiating your second term. But it's clear that, you know, with the numbers at the border, you know, we need the even in Democrat run series, they get a help from from from the world. You know, one thing that I thought this is disturbing stuff. One thing I do find funny is that when we on the left say, hey, let's look at Denmark, Sweden, let's look at different countries and say, can we do health care the way they do it or what can we do? They go, oh, no, no, no.

The US just has too many people to handle things that way. Meanwhile, El Salvador has a smaller population than Massachusetts and these right wingers seem convinced that everything El Salvador does we can do in the exact same way. What happened to we're just too big of a country to do the same thing. OK, so vile and disgusting stuff, but nothing compared to what happened when Stephen Miller went on Fox News. You know, you've really lost the plot when Fox News starts trying to calm you down. And that's what happened live on air when Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who always sounds like he's one bad headline away from

eating drywall. He absolutely melted down on Bill Hem Hammer over a man that the administration wrongfully deported and now refuses to bring back. Now, this was not bluster. Miller went full tilt here, screaming over Bill Hammer, refusing to let him finish a single question and insisting loudly that the deportation was no mistake, even though the Trump administration has already admitted it was. They're still not going to bring him back, but they've admitted, oh, no, it actually was a mistake. Let's check out the clip and then discuss. Your argument is that you don't have to bring him back home, but will you?

So I want to correct. I hate to do a bill, but I got to correct you on every single thing that you said because it was all wrong. First, we won the Supreme Court case. Clearly, 9-0. A district court judge said unconscionably that the president and his administration have to go into El Salvador and extradite one of their citizens, an El Salvadorian citizen. So that would be kidnapping. That we have to kidnap an El Salvadorian citizen against the will of his government and fly him back to America, which would be an unimaginable act and invasion of El Salvador's sovereignty. So he appealed to the Supreme Court and it said clearly no district court can compel the president to exercise his Article 2 foreign powers

in any way whatsoever. DOJ called me after that Supreme Court ruling and they said, this is amazing. We won this case 9-0. We are in excellent standing here. So this has been portrayed wrong for 72 hours in the media. They said the most a court could ever compel you to do would be to facilitate return, which would basically mean if El Salvador voluntarily sends him back, we wouldn't block him at the airport. We would put him back into ICE detention, and then he would be deported either back to El Salvador or somewhere else. The Supreme Court said that is the most the government can be expected to do. So we won the case handily. The misreporting on this has been atrocious.

I appreciate the clarification. No, Bill, it's important. He was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador. Okay, so do you still believe he is a member of MS? He's an illegal alien from El Salvador. Hold on, this is important. In 2019, he was ordered deported. He is a final removal order from the United States. These are things that no one disputes. Where is he from? El Salvador. Where is he a resident and citizen of? El Salvador.

Is he here illegally? Yes. Does he have a deportation order? Yes. A DOJ lawyer who has since been relieved of duty, a saboteur, a Democrat, put into a filing incorrectly that this was a mistaken removal. It was not. This was the right person sent to the right place. Now, some have said, well, but he had a thing called a withholding order. So a withholding order means you've been ordered deported, but an immigration judge is saying you cannot go back to a particular country. Here's the thing. If you are a member of a foreign terrorist organization, you cannot have a withholding order. Since he's in MS-13, there is no withholding order. Furthermore, the gang that he is accused of being persecuted by doesn't exist anymore in El Salvador. The 18th Street gang is gone.

So you have an illegal alien from El Salvador. Bill, where are we supposed to send the illegal alien from El Salvador? You haven't even allowed me to ask you a question. Are you convinced he is still a member of MS-13? That was your original charge. Yes. But here's the thing, Bill. Yes. But not only am I convinced of it, not only is El Salvador convinced. They have presented And so listen, the details really don't matter. They have not presented any evidence that this guy's a member of MS-13, but that's really not what's at issue. What's at issue is whether individuals are being provided due process.

This is not how the law works. The way Stephen Miller is presenting it is not how the law works. The man in question, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had legal work status in the United States, was wrongfully deported to El Salvador because of what ICE called an administrative error. A federal judge ruled the deportation was illegal. The Supreme Court unanimously agreed, even the conservatives on the court. Here's where it goes full authoritarian.

Instead of obeying the ruling, Miller said that returning Garcia from the Salvadoran mega prison would be kidnapping following a Supreme Court order is now kidnapping. This is how fascists talk. The rule of law is only real when it goes their way. And even Bill Hemmer, a guy whose job is basically to nod along when Republicans talk, even Bill Hemmer was being shouted down by Stephen Miller. You haven't even allowed me to ask a question, he said, because it's not about answers. It's about power. It's about punishing people.

That's the whole point. Textbook authoritarianism court makes a state makes an error. Court corrects it. The regime says no. And the very same logic underpins every dictatorship. The law only matters when it serves the state, when it serves the leader. Might he be an orange leader or a different color? Otherwise it's ignored.

And Miller even claimed it would be an invasion of El Salvador's sovereignty to bring Garcia back except president naive Bukele of El Salvador is now helping Trump to violate that court order. So what you're watching is what we talked about in the top segment on the show. It's the slow erosion of checks and balances in real time. If the White House can deport someone unlawfully and then ignore the order to undo it, even after the Supreme Court tells them to what's left of the system, what what functional piece of the system is left. And just for fun, this was Stephen Miller's second on live TV meltdown of the week.

He also lost it over Trump's tariffs, which Miller claimed would make America the manufacturing center of the world. Sort of like when you set your house on fire to save on heating bills. That's his argument. The shouting, the gaslighting, the refusal to follow the law. None of this stuff is accidental. It's part of a movement that doesn't want democracy if it means disobedience. What they really want is loyalty and obedience without questioning them. And if no one is around to

stop them, if no one is around to enforce that they must follow the law, they're going to get away with it. And that's exactly what we're seeing. People in my audience know I am a bit of a pastry connoisseur. Our sponsor, Wild Grain, is the first bake from frozen subscription box for artisanal breads, pastries and pastas. Wild grains boxes are customizable depending on what you like and prefer. They've got their classic variety box. They've launched the new gluten free box. They have a plant based box that's 100 percent vegan. And it just takes the hassle out of baking because all items bake from frozen in 25 minutes or less, nothing to clean up. My experience has been awesome.

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Many people in the audience know I speak multiple languages. I first learned Spanish when I was born in Argentina. Then I learned English. I learned some Hebrew in Hebrew school. I learned French in junior and high school. I am no stranger to the language learning process. And one of the most useful tools I've ever used is the app called Babbel. The way our sponsor Babbel teaches you languages truly works and it works fast instead of a bunch of silly quizzes and games like a lot of the other apps. Babbel is designed by real people for real conversations. All of Babbel's tips and tools for learning a new language are approachable. They're rooted in real life situations and conversations. Babel's bite-sized 10 minute lessons are just perfect for me. I can do it on the go, do it during a lunch break.

It really sticks fast. Babel was able to help me feel ready for my recent trip to France. I'm using Babbel to brush up on Italian and German just for fun. Studies from Yale, Michigan State University and others prove Babbel is better. One study found that using Babbel for 15 hours is like a full semester of language at college. Here's a special limited time deal for my audience right now. Get up to 60 percent off your Babbel subscription, but only for my audience at Babbel dot com slash Pacman. Rules and restrictions may apply. Get up to 60 percent off at Babbel dot com slash Pacman spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash Pacman. Rules and restrictions may apply. The link is in the podcast notes. It's great to welcome to the program today, Jonathan Allen, three time New York Times

bestselling author, senior political reporter for NBC News. His new book written with Amy Parnes is called Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. It's so great to have you on. The book is, of course, fascinating. I want to pick somewhere to start. We could kind of start anywhere and I want to start somewhere that's been of interest to me to see sort of what insights you might have.

A year ago, 13 months ago, I went to the White House on the day of Joe Biden's State of the Union address, met with Kamala Harris in a small group at the time. She was, of course, not the the Democratic nominee for president. I was impressed with her. I found her able to talk about disparate issues. She was engaging. She was a very different Kamala Harris than what I had seen portrayed in interviews up

until that point that Kamala Harris, I believe was there the first 12 to 15 days of her nominee ship. And I, from the outside perceived that something happened after that point, they stopped doing the, these guys are weird stuff. The same speech seemingly was being given every day, multiple times a day. It felt as though the air was just kind of let out of her campaign. I know we're starting kind of in the middle here. Is there something that was happening behind the scenes that explains why it seemed so different from the outside

all of a sudden at that point. So I look throughout this book, we've got sort of storytelling, I think new revelations. And one of them is the degree to which president Biden really handcuffed vice president Harris and really sort of from the beginning. But there were points along the way where you could see that, you know, sort of really take hold. And it wasn't just him. It was the campaign leadership that didn't change. She gets in there. She's got 107 days. She decides to leave the campaign leadership. Jenna Malley Dillon, the campaign manager in place. Jenna Malley Dillon has her lieutenants. They were running a race for Joe Biden that was on track to lose, that was not focused on change. Most of the American public thought the country was on the wrong track. And when I say most of, I don't mean 51% or 55%.

I'm talking about like two-thirds to three-quarters of the country thought we were on the wrong track. So there were obviously a lot of Democrats who were going to vote for Biden but were dissatisfied, or people who are sort of outside the political process that were dissatisfied but might have been available as Democratic voters. And what you see from Biden throughout this book is him sort of leaning over Kamala Harris's shoulder and telling her there should be no daylight between the two of them. He was very concerned about his legacy, very concerned about not being undercut by her, very confident that what, you know, the track that he was on had been the winning one. To this day, he tells people he would have won, which I think is absolutely absurd, especially after what we saw in the debate stage. So I think, you know, the White House staff told the campaign staff that it was OK to have some distance between the two of them for her to, you know, bring a sort of change message and to be a different candidate than Biden. But Biden himself was telling Harris, don't throw me under the bus.

Like I said, the words he used to her were no daylight kid. And I think she felt I think she felt hamstrung, you know, not just by him saying that, I think through her own sort of feelings of loyalty, which I think, you know, can be a very good character trait, but can also be a devastating one. So I think, you know, what you observed, I think is true, a candidate that was much more contained and packaged than you sometimes see from Kamala Harris. If you if you meet with her in private there, I was very upfront with my audience. I wasn't cagey at any point. And I just told my audience throughout twenty twenty four at every point in time, who do I think is the most likely person to defeat Donald Trump? And for a while,

even though I was, again, being upfront with my audience that this is not the same Joe Biden of four years ago, it's certainly not the same Joe Biden that ran circles around Paul Ryan in that 2012 debate. I was making the calculation in, I don't know, April of 2024 that at that point the damage from him getting out would have been worse than going in with somebody who is not at their a level. For me, it very clearly changed with the June 27th debate. Can you talk a little bit about the behind the scenes?

Cause you go into the book and in so many different ways, the concerns behind the scenes and the efforts to hide the reality of what was going on. But in terms of my pragmatic, who do I think is most likely to beat Trump? Did people behind the scenes up until the June 27th debate also think that it was the best shot up until that point? Or did something happen earlier to change that view? So it's a great question, and I think it depends on who you are behind the scenes. I think the closer you are in proximity to Joe Biden, the more you believe and were willing to make the case that only Joe Biden could win. So if you're talking about Mike Donilon and Steve Ruschetti,

the top White House advisors, if you're talking about First Lady Jill Biden. And of course, Joe Biden himself, you know, we see this deterioration, but it's not linear. It's not like Joe Biden's here one day and gone the next, right? So President Biden wanted to be president of the United States for his entire adult life. He finally gets to that place. He beat Donald Trump, you know, felt the love from Democrats about having done that. And, you know, from his perspective, it's understandable that he was the best candidate to run. But what you see behind the scenes is just these different points where he is deteriorating. And, you know, one example that we have in the book is Eric Swalwell, the congressman from California, who had run against Biden in 2020.

They'd fought on a debate stage, goes to the White House in the summer of 2023 for a congressional picnic, and Biden doesn't recognize him. And Swalwell has to kind of cue the president. You know, we tell a story about Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House, Republican speaker of the House, until he was, what's the best term for it, like jacked by the rest of the Republicans. But he's at the White House, you know, for an event with Jackie Walorski's family, former congressman, late congresswoman. Biden had done a shout out to her at an event like a month after she died. And as a makeup, he invited her family to the White House and they go on this sort of meandering tour. And Jill Biden says to her husband, you know, don't go outside. Don't't go outside. Don't take them outside.

It's at night. He walks them outside, takes them to a pool house and, you know, the pool house at the White House. And it's like a couple of locker rooms and he's showing it off as though, you know, it was like a Gilbert Stewart painting of George Washington or something. And McCarthy's thinking like, I got to act like a staffer and sort of, you know, move him into a better place. And, you know, there are just all kinds of things that his staff, that Biden's staff does to start trying to accommodate him,

whether it's physical needs in terms of like new shoes or getting onto the Air Force One using a smaller set of stairs, you know, down to using neon tape to show him where to go when he's going to fundraiser. So there's just a lot of signs of deterioration. And it's hard to know with some of the people very closest to him, you know, what what exactly would have triggered them, you know, making a call to say, like, this can't go on, because ultimately, the president's got the power. And the minute you're a close advisor, and you tell him to get out, you get thrown out of the room.

Was it the June 27th debate that ultimately was dispositive and kind of orienting the train towards getting out? Not for him. And not for those people closest to him. I think it was a dispositive event for Nancy Pelosi. I think it was dispositive for Barack Obama. It was dispositive for many donors. We talked to donors who, you know, were getting pressure from the White House to set up new fundraisers after that.

And they were like, we can't fill a room. And then the Super PAC donors to a group called Future Forward just choked off all of their cash for the super PAC. I mean, it was just really a sort of, I'm trying to think of the right term for it, but you just had this incredible coming together of Democratic influence folks who tried to push him out. But again, the president of the United States has all the power to stay in or get out, and Biden didn't want to. He came in a couple weeks after that, went to Congress and said, hey, I'm not

going anywhere. And then if you'll remember, Nancy Pelosi went on TV and said he has a decision to make. Yeah. It was like he's already decided. Right. But, you know, so I think the other thing that's important to remember is that there were people who understood he was on track to lose. You know, I think Pelosi was one of them. I think he was on track to lose. You know, I think Pelosi was one of them. I think Obama was one of them who, you know, saw that debate. And I think they were stunned by it, as everyone was. I don't think anyone thought that he would show up quite that way. But for some, it was more of an opportunity to do something that they thought probably needed to be done before. And for most of the Democratic universe, it was, you know, an oh my God moment. Like they had no idea because they'd been told by

the White House over and over and over again that Biden was fine. You know, they dismissed Republican criticism as Republican criticism because it was coming from the other side. They say, well, if the Republicans say Joe Biden's not, you know, not fit to run or not fit to serve. Then it must not be true. And you talk in your book, I think, about polarization a lot. And that sort of knee jerk desire to see whatever the other side is saying is totally untrue, can be damaging to your own side. Can you talk about the Obama factor a little bit? Because you mentioned a few minutes ago about the moment at which former President Obama realized that this wasn't a good idea to press forward. At the same time, there was I can't really call it reporting, but there were assertions made by some that Obama slash the Obamas weren't particularly thrilled with Kamala Harris either.

Is there anything you can say that suggests that that's true or, or maybe give us an overview of the Obama's role in all this? Sure. I mean, you know, according to the sources we've spoken to, um, the Obama's, uh, let me just speak to Barack Obama because I have much more reporting on him than Michelle Obama. Um, and it's too easy to group people together. But, you know, for Barack Obama, according to the sources we spoke to, he never thought Kamala Harris was the right answer. He did not think that she would be successful. He thought Joe Biden needed to get out.

And he thought that there should be some sort of mini primary, some quick primary, you know, ending in an open convention and the winner of that would be best off to win. And it's a sort of like West Wing fantasy that that would happen. It requires a certain ignorance of or willful ignorance of what the rules are for nominating a candidate. Joe Biden had 90 percent of the delegates roughly after the primary, and all of them were pledged to him. These are Biden people. They ran as Biden delegates and Biden-Harris delegates. And the idea that they were going to abandon whoever he endorsed, and there was, I don't think there was, I don't want to say there was never any question, but like, logically he was going to

endorse Kamala Harris, because it's a support for his belief in her as vice president the first time around. To think all of that's going to get undone in a couple of weeks, and that you're going to be able to have a convention and not have so much blood on the floors to destroy the party, maybe for multiple cycles, right? Because you skip over the first black woman vice president, you know, the fights that would emerge within the Democratic Party after that, I think, are uglier than anything we saw this election. So, but to your question, Obama did not have faith in Harris, and he didn't have faith in Biden. He didn't want Biden to run in 16. Biden stayed out because Obama, you know, put his thumb on the scale for Hillary Clinton.

He didn't think Obama should, he didn't think Biden should run in 2020. He didn't think Biden should run again in 2024. And it reduced his influence, all that reduced his influence with Biden. You know, he was not in a place where he could call Joe Biden and say, hey, Joe, we're close friends. You were my vice president. I'm telling you that it's time to get out because Biden thought Obama didn't have good political judgment after having won in 2020, despite Obama's reservations. Can you talk a little bit about what was going on within the Trump campaign as all of this happened? Because prior to the June 27th debate, Trump had been doing the Biden dementia stuff at

rallies. He had been doing it for a while in different kind of shapes and forms. What happened in the period, I guess, between June 27th and when Biden ultimately did step aside, like was it glee from within the Trump side? Was it caution as to what might happen? There was that one video of Trump in the golf cart where before Biden announced anything, he said, we knocked him out. He's, he's done now based on that debate. So was that because he was hearing things or what was happening there? So I think the, the best answer to that is it's a combination. And, um, there is some feeling of vindication because they've been

saying this all along and then everybody sees it. Um's some glee from the victory, you know, from Trump, or to your point, at the golf cart, he's like knocked the guy out. And there's fear that the Democrats are going to replace Biden because now Biden is weakened. And that's what ends up being the sort of campaigns, the Trump campaign's view of it is try to keep Biden in as long as possible. Like if they get Biden to be the candidate, they are very confident they've won this election. Right. And you thought at one point, Speaker Mike Johnson started talking about Kamala Harris, and he was quickly shut up. And there's this uncommon discipline from Trump during that period where, you know, normally Trump is dominating news cycles and he's frustrated. We report on this. He's super frustrated that like after the debate,

all the news is about Biden, even though it's about Biden having a debacle. He's super frustrated, but his campaign kind of prevails on him to just sort of step out for a little bit and let the Democrats fight among themselves. Don't get in the way of, you know, an imploding adversary. And I think you see that over and over again with Trump in this campaign is discipline that we have not seen before in his campaigns or in his White House, and certainly not since he became president. Him just holding back, choosing stability over chaos over and over within the campaign. That doesn't mean he didn't go out and say crazy things, because he did go out and say crazy things. Yeah.

But the campaign itself cut pretty well on message, and Trump himself reined it in. I mean, another good example is how they, you know, completely disowned Project 2025. It's not that Trump doesn't want to do those things. We're watching him do them now. But he understood it as a political liability and just, you know, sort of threw it under the bus and said he didn't want to have anything to do with anybody that had anything to do with Project 2025. And then, of course, is his director, budget director, who makes tons of policy decisions.

Russ Vought is one of the guys that was tied into to Project 2025. Few other things I want to ask you about, you know, in the period between June 27th and when Biden ultimately announced he was stepping aside, I started saying to my audience, I do not believe this is recoverable. I believe we have now kind of gone past the tipping point where Biden is going to have to get out. And the question is when and the question is what sort of happens in the immediate aftermath. And there were people in my audience who acknowledge that.

And there were some people who got very, very angry and said, David, the fact that you're even talking about this is part of the problem. We're going to lose if we start talking like that, et cetera. And my point was, I think Biden's going to lose if he stays in after Biden got out. And I started looking at swing state polling. And there was a period of time there, late September, October, first half of October, where in every swing state poll, the key seven swing states, Trump was winning every single one. And I went to my audience and I said, listen, we start with the 2020 map and what it took for Biden to win. And then we

just look at all of these key states. and we now have to believe every single one of these polls is wrong. And actually, Biden is winning at least four or five of these seven states. And I heard from a very loud portion of my audience that, David, we don't need negativity right now, et cetera. My view was I want to be honest. And number two, hearing that your candidate might lose. And I'm sorry, it's it's Harris at that point. I think I misspoke and said Biden at this point, it's Kamala Harris who was down in those seven states. My view was it should motivate us to hear that Trump may win that in my world, encourages people to say, I don't want that to happen.

Maybe I wasn't going to vote. Now I'm going to. But there was a contingent that simply didn't want to hear it. Was there anything analogous going on behind the scenes with regard to polling in those sort of six final weeks? I mean, yes, absolutely. Let me go back to that for a second, because and this ties back into the book behind your shoulder there, your best seller.

And congratulations on that. I've been. Thank you for listening to it on audiobook. And it on that. I've been listening to it on audiobook, and it's fantastic. Look, part of the problem for the Democratic Party was that there was such dishonesty or such an unwillingness of powers within the party, the consultant class, the fundraising class, elements of the media that are aligned with the Democratic Party to level with people about where things stood. As far back as before the debate, when Biden was clearly behind, you know, the

numbers are small because we are so evenly divided and polarized, but it was pretty static for a long period of time with Trump in the lead. And I think that, you know, your honesty with your audience, even though some people don't want to hear it, is important. It's important to be able to say, look, the party's telling you this, but it's not right. You know, for your case, you're trying to motivate voters. I just, I'm a journalist. I like honesty. But I think, you know, what you saw in the campaign, on the Harris campaign, is they kind of hit a ceiling. She was rising and rising. She recovered what Biden had lost.

She got past the point where Biden was. And they got into, you know, what I would call like a virtual tie with Trump. So if you ask her people, I would say, you know, as late as early October, her internal polling showed her winning a majority of the electoral votes. And then around October, I think October 10th was the last internal poll that I saw that had her doing that. And we reveal that for the first time in this book. What I think happens at that point, you also get, by the way, on the other side, fascinating. We report on this with Trump. He's getting super frustrated with his campaign because he has backed off. He has

let the fight play out on the Democratic side. Harris is rising. His polling shows basically a dead even tie at that point. And he brings in Corey Lewandowski, this, you know, former campaign manager who does not have the ability to run a national political campaign, but brings him in, sends him down to Palm Beach to like look at what's going on with the campaign. And Corey reports back that there's mismanagement of the finances and stuff. And Susie Wiles, the campaign manager, and Chris Lasavita, another senior advisor, go to Trump and they get him on Trump Force One to basically shut Lewandowski down. And that's one of the more dramatic scenes in the book dealing with Trump is him shutting Lewandowski down and, again, choosing calm over chaos.

But with the Harris folks, they continued to tell everyone that they were going to win. When their polling stopped showing that, the last we reveal for the first time in the book, the last assessment they had before Election Day had Trump winning. It was narrow, but they had Trump winning. And yet they told everybody else that she was going to win. David Plouffe was out on television saying that she was going to win all seven swing states. You know, they told her that she was poised to win. She was surprised on election night, shocked, crestfallen, heartbroken. You can see in this book, I think, through her eyes what so many Democrats were feeling,

which is that they'd basically been gaslit by their leadership. And I think that's important for Democrats going forward and, you know, maybe in the future for Republicans when they're, you know, going through similar things. It's important because you've got to be able to assess, like, who's telling you the truth in order to at least know what you have to do to win. And I, you know, I just think that it's it's shocking and it's it's saddening that a candidate is so certain of victory because they've been told things that that aren't true or they've been led to believe things that aren't true. Last thing I want to ask you about, this doesn't have to be a long thing necessarily. I realized that Harris was going to lose at about seven oh five Eastern on election night. And what I looked at was we had numbers from Kentucky and Indiana, and I simply compared

Trump's margin of victory in those states in 2020 to what it very clearly was with a lot of the vote coming in quickly in 2024. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was like he states he won by six or seven. He was winning by like 20 or something. It was crazy. It was just crazy. And because the margins were so small in the swing states that alone to me said, this is probably over. When did the campaigns start to realize what was going on? I mean, start to realize, I think it's a different, different metric for everybody, but I will tell you this with all the data they have, they can compare, you know, the suburbs of Indianapolis and their voting trends to like

what's going on in Georgia, right? Like there's such a, an affinity, I guess, between voters in various places that like, you know, they've got these huge models, they plug in numbers, they should be getting this. So, you know, I mean, look, they're looking at numbers in Georgia and North Carolina, and they know that if the same thing is going on in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin, that this is, you know, that this race is over, but they're not sure till they actually see the votes. And so I think it takes a little bit longer. And, you know, we go through election night in detail in the book. You know, Harris isn't told until late at night, you know, 11 p.m. ish that that it's over. And, you know, I was looking at Georgia precincts myself. So you were a little ahead of me in terms of when you when you made your calculation, but I was looking at Georgia precincts coming in and I was like, I don't see her coming back to win given just the shifts, right? Like you should see demographic

shifts. You can see geographical, you know, shifts where there's just a few more points for Trump than it was last time, or in your case, you know, some more points. So it takes a while longer because they don't want to tell somebody that they've lost. And then there's some fluky thing like the Midwest isn't behaving like the Mid-Atlantic or the Southeast. The book is Fight Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House is quite a book. We've been speaking with the book's co-author, Jonathan Allen. Really appreciate your time today. Thank you, David.

Congratulations on your bestseller and enjoy the promotion Yeah. Thank you, David. And congratulations on your, uh, your best seller and enjoy the, uh, promotion process. Thank you. So you can watch lots of great content not normally available in your country. For instance, PIA lets me see a bunch of great Argentinian soccer I can't normally get in the U.S. They have servers in 91 countries and with just a single account, you can use PIA on unlimited devices, computer, tablet, phone, TV, game console. Thank you. for free. Go to PIA VPN dot com slash David. The link is in the podcast notes. I am very particular about my mattresses, and I have learned that you can have the most beautiful view out a hotel window. And if the mattress is not right for you, I just don't sleep well. I have been sleeping on a Helix mattress at home for years now, and I love it. They have a two minute sleep quiz. You answer questions about your sleep preferences. It tells you this is the mattress for you. I was matched with the midnight mattress model. It has cooling features. I get too hot at night. I'll admit it right here. Fake news media won't tell you, but I'm willing to tell

you that right here. They also have dual comfort mattress topper with glacial techs. It has a soft side and firm side for two sleepers who maybe want different things. That is a total game changer. Every Helix mattress comes with a hundred night sleep trial. So do the mattress toppers. You can get your money back if you don't love them. Helix will even get rid of your old mattress. If you want Helix is giving my audience 20% off sitewide at Helix sleep.com slash Pacman. That's H E L I X sleep dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez not holding back in Nampa, Idaho yesterday, arguably the most right wing state in the country or close to it, calling Trump a rapist and a

criminal. A few people are offended, but I've got to tell you, most people are connecting with this energy. I believe there is something here. This was the latest installment of AOC and Bernie's fight oligarchy tour and very And very well done. Let's take a listen to this. Donald Trump is a criminal who was found guilty of 34 felony counts of fraud. Liable for sexual abuse. Of course, he's lying and abusing and manipulating the stock market too. When he talks about rapists and criminals, he should look in the mirror. So good line, you know, and like we've been saying, Cory Booker speaking for 25 hours doesn't get anybody healthcare. AOC calling Trump a rapist and a criminal doesn't get anybody the food that is increasingly

unaffordable. But what we are trying to probe here, and that's what's so interesting about this fight oligarchy tour, what we're trying to probe is what is viable as is for the future of the Democratic Party, not what sort of corporate Democrat can we take and squeeze and manipulate and build the studio to be interviewed by Alex Cooper and make into something. No, no, no. What part of the party is ready to go in terms of what the country is looking for? I don't know that it's AOC. Bernie has said he's not running, but this is a process that's going on now. Speaking of Bernie, Bernie Sanders going

directly at the authoritarian anti-media instincts of Donald Trump. And right now he's going after the media. I don't know if any of you saw it. He is now wanting to take away CBS's license because they did a story that criticized him. Oh, my word. CBS criticized him. Oh, let's drive them out of business. How terrible is that? He has sued ABC. He has sued Meta. He has sued the Des Moines Register. This guy cannot take criticism. He can dish it out all right, but he can't take it. And I say to Mr. Trump, if you can't take criticism, get out of the political process. This is a democracy. One of the things that is very common in authoritarianism is that you are both extremely weak and you are extremely strong.

And let me tell you what I mean by that. On the one hand, Donald Trump frames himself as the ultimate alpha. He's strong, not like these sissy Democrats, not like these sissy Europeans, not right. They are the strongest and yet they are so threatened by an adversarial media report that the initial instinct is not to dispute the substance. It is to say, can I get you taken off the air? They are so threatened by a college student who has a view counter to that of Donald Trump's that they can't simply refute it on substance. They have to round people up, deny them due process guarantee, supposedly guaranteed.

The word guaranteed has no meaning anymore, supposedly guaranteed to them by the constitution and deport them, uh, or revoke a green card or revoke a student visa or whatever the case may be. Those are signs of extraordinary weakness, not of strength. And that's a really common thing. Um, in authoritarianism, they came to Trump with tears in their eyes and they said, sir, how are you so healthy, sir? You are such a physical specimen. I'm not kidding. I'm going to play a clip here in the aftermath of Donald Trump's clearly unbelievable, uh, health, um, uh, report annual physical report in which he supposedly is six foot three inches tall and

has lost 15 pounds and now weighs only 224 and is just so healthy. They came to him and they said, tell us, sir, how are you so healthy? Here's what he had to say. You got the perfect health report. All the way. Oh, everybody in the press wants to know this. How do you do it, Mr. President? I haven't set up the 2 a.m. in the morning since I was 25. And now we're 2.16 in the morning having a press

conference. How do you do it? We had a couple of them at two o'clock in the morning. You're wearing the press out. Biden was sleeping for 10 hours already. Now, I have a lot of respect for the press, really. I do some of his fake news, but a lot of it's good. And, uh, I have a lot of respect, respect for the fake news media, which I'm trying to ban. Really? Some of it's totally fake and some like 60 minutes and that, how do you stay so healthy? How do you say so energized? Because I enjoy what I'm doing and I like the results. I think, uh, I think we're making American great again and it makes me feel good. And you'll probably keeps me happy.

Okay. Thank you. That's a nice question. Every time Trump puts a new tariff in his cholesterol goes down by five points. That sort of question would make North Korean propaganda anchors blush from how ridiculous it is. And then here is Trump, by the way, addressing the same issue alongside El Salvador's president Nayib Bukele yesterday talking about how he aced the brain injury test. Very low IQ president. And by the way, I took my cognitive exam as part of my physical exam

and I got the highest mark. And one of the doctors said, sir, I've never seen anybody get that kind of that was a Sir, I hope you're happy with that. We've never seen anyone so strongly not have a brain injury. Although they haven't been bugging me too much to take a cognitive, but I did do my physical and it was released. I hope you're all happy with it. I notice there's no question.

So probably you are. But the cognitive, they said to me, Sir, would you like to take a cognitive test? I said, did Biden take one? No. Did anybody take one? No, not too many people took them. I said, what about what about Obama? Did he take one? No, he didn't take one. Let me be the only one to take one. But I've actually taken them three times already. I like taking them because they're sort of they're not too tough for me to take. But very. Sir, could you name five objects? You know, we we started with the truly, truly dystopian authoritarianism that is being ushered in and we end with just flat out stupidity. We are going to discuss Bill Maher's White House visit on the bonus show. We will talk about Social Security listing thousands

of migrants as dead. You're dead to me in order to get them to self-deport. And the Trump administration is also freezing Harvard money. I will tell you why. Please remember that the number one way to support this program is to get a membership at join Pacman dot com. If you've not yet purchased my book, The Echo Machine, I would love for you to do so. And if you have purchased it, remember to leave us a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads. You can see all my recent appearances on other shows talking about the book at David Pakman dot com slash press. I will see you on the bonus show. I'm on with Josh Zeps tonight. Looking forward to it. And I'll see you back here tomorrow.