The David Pakman Show - 4/18/25: Trump disgusted by prayer as Karoline melts down

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal on Fox News' The Five, silences her right wing co-hosts by simply stating the law about deportations -- Donald Trump is visibly disgusted with the Christian prayer at an Easter event -- Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump's White House Press Secretary, suffers a total meltdown once again when confronted with the truth -- A MAGA gas truck protest backfires outside a Tesla showroom -- Republican donors are revolting against Donald Trump's economic scheme, but it's merely out of self-interest -- Elon Musk is being investigated by multiple federal agencies, including the SEC -- Tom Homan, Donald Trump's deportation czar, smirks about the potential for a dictatorship -- The right-wing Wall Street Journal is now floating the idea of impeaching Donald Trump -- Donald Trump gets hit with the worst polling of his presidency so far -- This week's Friday Feedback -- On the Bonus Show: Senator meets with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Jesse Watters says Bulls hat is sign of MS-13 membership, Newsmax host defends Trump's geography flub, and much more... 🤖 Sponsored by Venice: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off a Pro Account at https://venice.ai/pakman 🥄 Use code PAKMAN for $5 off Magic Spoon at https://magicspoon.com/pakman ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF for a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman 🧠 Try Brain.fm totally free for a month at https://brain.fm/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/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

. every once in a while, there's a little miracle on Fox. One of their panelists actually tells the truth and the rest of the table has no idea of what to do or say. Uh, as is often the case, the one person occasionally telling the truth is Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal voice on Fox's the five who delivered what I can only describe as a legal beat down on her co-hosts and it left them quite literally speechless. Of course they were discussing Donald Trump's latest authoritarian fantasy of deporting people born in the United States, American citizens or naturalized American citizens

to other countries, in some cases, countries that those people don't even have a connection to. And Tarlov shuts it down. Let's take a look at this and you will see that nobody had a comeback because there is no comeback if you care about the law. I think that it's funny getting that hot mic moment where Donald Trump and the El Salvadorian president are talking. They're kind of loitering around at the front of the Oval Office where they're joking about like, oh, wouldn't it be great if you could take our homegrown ones? You cannot legally send Americans to an El Salvadorian prison camp no matter what they have done. Senator Kennedy was on our air earlier this afternoon with Sandra and John and said as much.

OK, you look at. No. One more thing to say. Actually, multiple more things to say. But what is most important is that under the Alien Enemies Act, you deserve due process. And that's what the Supreme Court ruled. And if you go back to World War Two, when we were invoking this same act, that people who were here undocumented from Japan, from Germany, from Italy, were allowed to go into a court where they could argue that they weren't a danger to this nation. Abrego Garcia was not afforded that right to come into court and to argue as to why he should not be deported. And it is not the same thing to deport someone to their home country as to send them to a

prison. Well, then you know that no one had a substantive legal comeback because there is no legal comeback. What Trump is suggesting, deporting citizens without due process, without any legal mechanism or deporting them at all is completely unconstitutional. It violates the most basic principles of American law. And what I like is that Tarlow didn't raise her voice. She did have to stop two interruptions, but she didn't raise her voice. She didn't insult anyone because she doesn't need to. She pointed to the obvious.

You can't ship someone that is a citizen to a foreign prison because you don't like them because this isn't a dictatorship. Yet. I sadly have to say that not being hyperbolic, not predicting this will become a full blown dictatorship or police state. Uh, but I do have to mention yet because there are people in power who would love that to be the direction this goes in. You know, the other hosts sit there, uh, blinking like deer in headlights, realizing that Donald Trump's plans do break the law.

They can't justify it legally because it's not legal. An important moment because it shows what happens when even a tiny bit of reality breaks through the Fox News filter and you could see it on their faces. Wait, is that true? If it's simply against the law, there's really no way that we can rebut it. And of course it is. And hopefully we'll hear more people like Jessica Tarlov speaking up on Fox News. And then maybe some of their viewers would start to realize the same thing.

The sad second layer is if you think about concentric circles of these right wingers, there are those who might wrongly believe that some of this stuff is legal. And once you explain to them that it's not, they go, well, then I'm not in favor of it. The second concentric circle is those who are indifferent to its legality, who you go, hey, by the way, this whole idea is not legal. And they go, well, I think it's morally right. So I don't care about the law. And then the third concentric circle would be those who know it's against the law and still have a bloodthirsty desire for it. There's probably some fourth ring of this concentric circle as well. If you want to see

any more evidence that Donald Trump is a completely fake, phony Christian, it's that at the beginning of Franklin Graham's prayer at an Easter lunch or dinner, who knows, two days ago, Trump scoffed, looked annoyed and then looked around as the prayer was going on. This is yet another reminder that Trump's entire persona of the Christian anti-abortion family man is completely contrived, but they don't care as long as he checks the boxes. But look, and I understand this is very visual. So, so I, if you're listening off to describe it for you, this is such obvious. It's so obviously a guy who is annoyed by religion, not a Christian. Let us pray. Our father and our God, we come tonight to say thank you. Thank you for sending your son. So Trump already scoffing at

the beginning and then you'll see him get bored and looking around. Jesus Christ to this earth to take our sins. That he died on the cross, shedding his own blood for each and every one, buried in a tomb of sin. But on the third day, you raised him to life. And Father, we know that if we confess our sins and repent and believe on the name of your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, bored now and looking around waiting for it to end. This is Christ. We shall be saved. And father, it's my prayer tonight that many people this Easter would turn from their sins

and by faith believe on the name of your son and it's his name that we pray. Amen. You can really sense that Trump is deeply, deeply spiritual. Listen guys, give him a break. Pretending to be a Christian is a tough work and he's doing it every single day and he's been doing it for a decade. Uh, at the same Easter dinner. Here is Pastor Jentezen Franklin saying to Trump that an angel stood between Trump and that bullet. Unfortunately, it seems that the same angel directed the bullet into a completely innocent man.

Corey compare comparator standing behind Donald Trump. But we want to say thank you. We see all that you do. All your family goes through. And we're so thankful God assigned an angel to stand between you and that bullet. But we want to say again, still no explanation as to why. Why if God was a factor here, did God allow the bullet to kill a completely innocent bystander, adding yet another innocent victim of gun violence in the United States?

I've not gotten a satisfactory answer other than the vague, Oh God works in mysterious ways. Or another one I've heard is no, God was involved in making sure Trump didn't get hurt, but anything else that happened didn't have to do with God, which sounds weird to me. Okay. And then finally from the Easter dinner, Trump just bragging. There's no venue in which his instinct is not to just start bragging with God's grace over these past three months. And we have had a great three months. They say maybe the best three months ever for a president and an administration. It was really great. We have fantastic people and they're people that believe like you do, but we've achieved more than most administrations they've been saying

do in four years or even eight years, just in a short period of time. You know, when I think about the words Trump and Easter, you probably know where I'm going with this. I don't think of Trump as a deeply religious person. I don't think Trump is representative of the best virtues and values of Jesus Christ. I am reminded that Donald Trump said the pandemic would be done so by Easter of 2020. And of course, we fell just a little bit short of that. Donald Trump's White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt, had another absolutely embarrassing meltdown on live television.

And it might be it might be the most awkward press briefing yet. She was pressed and for good reason about the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador. And Levitt actually proactively tried to frame it as a great legal triumph. She declared you can call him a Maryland father, but he will never be a Maryland father. Take a listen to this. Nothing will change the fact that Abrego Garcia will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again. And the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the president of the United States and the secretary of state could not be compelled

to forcibly retrieve this citizen of El Salvador who is currently locked up in a maximum security prison in his home country due to his MS 13 membership. Now of course it's only 25, 26 seconds we listened to, but there's a lot of lies in there when she says the Supreme court ruled that we can't be forced to get them out by force. Supreme Court didn't really weigh in on that. The Supreme Court said the deportation was wrong. The lower court's authority to determine that was valid and that the Trump administration

must facilitate the return of a Brego Garcia to the United States. The other aspect to this is if what she cares about is what the Supreme Court says. The Supreme Court has also previously ruled that it is against the law to imprison people without due process. And they are very selective and capricious about when the Supreme Court or any court decision actually matters to them based on whether they like it or not. So this was not a calm explanation about law and precedent. It was a performance that was cold and it was hostile and it dripped with content and lacked empathy and compassion.

And it is merely political theater. Now when she finished these remarks, she asked, does anyone have a question? And a reporter says, I have a question. And instead of taking it, Caroline Levitt looks around and goes, anybody? And then just leave. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions for Patty or for me? No, I have a question. No, you better.

I'll see you all later. The president will be at his dinner later this evening. Thank you. Thank you for being here. There you go. It's becoming a pattern. The Trump team doesn't want to answer questions. They want monologues and soundbites. They want to control the narrative and have zero

accountability. And when they don't get that, they melt down, they walk out or they insult the person asking the question. The truth is, of course, many of us have questions, real questions. Why was Garcia deported with so with a total lack of due process? Why do you want us to believe that the president of the deporting country and the president of the country receiving the deportee, the U.S. and Salvador, El Salvador, Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele together don't have the power to move one man from El Salvador back to the United States? That's hard to believe. And of course, why is the administration stonewalling questions as to whether they will present

any of the evidence we've heard human trafficking thrown around as something that Garcia may be engaged in? We've heard absolutely high ranking MS-13 member based on alleged testimony through a confidential informant in a net in a memo six years ago, not exactly meeting the standards of evidence as I understand them. And then, of course, why does Caroline Leavitt sound more like the press secretary for a campaign than a public official meant to inform the people? I think we know the answer to that last one. We'll take a very quick break. Make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel, folks. We're beyond 3 million subscribers and pushing towards 3.5 million. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube and make sure you're getting

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up at join Pacman dot com, you can use the coupon code not again to save about 50 percent off of the cost of a membership. MAGA has officially reached new levels of performative idiocy. A group of Trump supporters surrounded a Tesla showroom in California with their gas guzzling trucks to protest the people who are now protesting Tesla. Now, I know that this this is you've got to really think through the illogic of this. People were protesting Elon Musk's support of authoritarianism and his actions at Doge, etc. So then MAGA shows up in gasoline trucks, of course, none of which are Tesla's to defend Tesla by making the store completely inaccessible for customers with their gas trucks, which are what Tesla is looking to provide an alternative to. I know it doesn't make any sense. This happened in

Rockland, California. The Tesla Tesla takedown movement, which, of course, is anti Tesla, anti fascism, anti authoritarianism. Protesters are calling for a boycott of Tesla. These are the Tesla protests we've been following for a boycott of Tesla. These are the Tesla protests we've been following for a while. They are upset, understandably, that Elon Musk is using the company as a sort of piggy bank to help Trump return to power as as he did. And then meanwhile, we see MAGA's answer tailgating with diesel fumes, a brilliant political strategy to win the hearts and minds. And hilariously, none of the MAGA counter protesters were Tesla owners. In other words, the people saying Tesla's good, don't protest Tesla. None of them have Teslas. And they all

showed up in their very anti Tesla trucks. They showed up with their fossil fuel vehicles to say Tesla's good. It's basically like we hate your liberal protest, but we're also not buying these woke electric vehicles either. What is the end game here? Is it to block enough customers from entering Tesla stores so that no one can support the company that you're defending. It's like saying, I love Chick-fil-A so much. I'm going to park my car in the drive through, which, of course, stops people from buying Chick-fil-A. It's like two parallel boycotts aimed in opposite directions. The bigger story here is how normalized all of this behavior has become that it's not just about cars. This is about how Elon Musk has become sort of a vessel for Trumpism and how his companies

are increasingly seen as ideological battlegrounds. Mag is out here defending a company while simultaneously proving why people are protesting it in the first first place. I might call it dumb authoritarianism instead of reckoning with the Trump administration, ignoring a nine zero Supreme Court order about a nice deportation gone wrong. MAGA is blocking customers from entering a car dealership. You really think anyone's walking up to a Tesla store, seeing a wall of Confederate flag bumper stickers on gas powered trucks and thinking this is exactly what's going

to get me to go in and then buy or lease a Tesla? No. When the billionaire class helps to bankroll an authoritarian movement, the protests become this distorted circus of tribal loyalty and confusion. Confusion. And this is what the slide into authoritarianism looks like. The whole scene is a metaphor for the state of MAGA. It's not about principle. It's not even about outcomes because the outcome of the counter counter protest is that people don't get Tesla's. It's just tribal.

It doesn't matter how incoherent the messages Trump could endorse a vegan steakhouse tomorrow and his followers would start protesting cows and tofu. It's all completely incoherent. All right. This is very interesting. If you thought that Trump's tariff stunt would only hurt the working class, think again, because now Trump's own billionaire donors are turning against him. Let's go through what's going on. April 2nd was meant to be liberation day. Trump announced these sweeping tariffs,

10 percent baseline, huge numbers on some countries, China being one of them. And of course, as we now know, the stock market's reaction was swift, immediate and severe, dropping three percent a day, several days in a row. OK, we very quickly started hearing from some interesting individuals that they aren't happy with what's going on. We heard from Ken Langone. He's the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot, longtime Republican donor, longtime Trump supporter. He didn't miss words. He called the tariffs bullshit and expressed confusion over how these tariff numbers were even arrived at.

We then have Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel and another major Republican donor. He labeled the tariffs, quote, a huge policy mistake and warned that they would burden middle class families with increased costs. That's true. That's not his primary concern, though. And then even Elon Musk, of course, this big time Trump ally dumped 250 million into Trump's campaign working with slash for Trump. He was reportedly making personal appeals behind the scenes to repeal the tariffs or reverse them. And he even went public and said he wants no tariffs. And I'm hopeful, for example, with the tariffs that that at the end of the day, I hope it is agreed that both Europe and the United States should move ideally, in my view, to a zero tariff situation,

effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America. And that that would be my that's what I hope I hope occurs. And also more freedom of people to move between Europe and North America, if they wish, if they wish. All right. So Elon making it clear he doesn't like it either. And of course, we also heard from Senator Rand Paul, not a billionaire, but he said he's just against the tariffs, period. This ultimately led to Donald Trump announcing the pause on the tariffs. And that leads us to where we are today.

So we should be crystal clear about what this is versus what this is not. These donors are not upset because the tariffs will hurt working people. They might pay some lip service to that, but primarily they're upset because the tariffs are going to hurt them. When Trump was targeting immigrants, slashing social programs, passing tax cuts for the wealthy, they were either silent or they were cheering it on. Now that their stock portfolios are bleeding. Now it's all of a sudden a crisis. And it's pretty ironic that these are the same people who poured millions into electing Donald Trump twice, bankrolled him again in 2024,

helped build this monster. And now they're surprised that the monster is biting back. What we're watching is not a break with Trumpism. It's a negotiation. The donors don't care about the authoritarianism, the culture war nonsense that it just if it messes with their business, then it is not good. That's the bottom line. The moral rot, who cares? Margins is what they care about. And if the past is any guide here, these donors are going to fall back in line the moment Trump says something about deregulation or corporate tax cuts. So there are some billionaire GOP donors turning on Trump, but it doesn't represent an ideological split.

It's a temporary tantrum because the cash flow has been interrupted by the tariffs. All right, let's go back to Elon Musk. It's starting to happen. The tech billionaire meme troll self-declared free speech warrior is now under federal investigation, not by one agency, but multiple. First, you've got the SEC, which has filed a lawsuit against Musk for failing to timely to make timely disclosures regarding his acquisition of Twitter stock in 2022. Now, according to the SEC, Musk crossed owning five percent of Twitter March 14th, 2022. He didn't file the disclosure until April 4th. And that delay allowed him to

buy additional shares at artificially low prices, saving one hundred and fifty million dollars, while other investors were selling their shares with no knowledge of the fact that Elon Musk had this stake. You're not allowed to do that. That's now under federal investigation. Number two, the GAO, that's the Government Accountability Office. This is like the congressional watchdog. They are launching an investigation into recent changes at the SEC, particularly those that

were influenced by Doge, meaning in a way by Elon Musk himself. This probe comes after concerns were raised about staff reductions, consolidation of operations, curtailing enforcement powers at the SEC. And all of it is part of this broader effort under Trump and Musk to just shrink, downsize and neuter the federal government. That's number two. And then in addition to all of that, number three, the GAO is auditing Doge's activities

within various federal agencies, including the Department of Labor, Education, Treasury and Social Security Administration. And that audit is focusing on whether Doge adhered to privacy and security regulations, as well as the fact that many of its operatives have direct connections right back to Elon Musk's businesses. They have no experience running anything government related. And that's raising alarms about the fact that they were all given access to these critical systems. And then finally, as if all of that were not enough, Senator Jean Shaheen has introduced legislation aimed at preventing conflicts of interest by banning government contracts and grants to companies owned by

special government employees. That's exactly what Elon Musk is. This is clearly designed to go right after Elon Musk, who has this dual role as top government advisor who holds the purse strings all of a sudden and the CEO of companies like SpaceX and Tesla that deal directly with the government in many ways. Now, I want to caution people in the audience before you get too excited. Elon's not going to jail. This is not a perp walk. This is little aspects of the government. Very politely asking one of the richest men in the world, maybe consider

following some of the rules if you feel like it. And the truth is that these investigations are important. But we've seen this show before. Musk ignored a judge's order to testify in this same SEC case for months. Zero consequences. He's violated past SEC settlements. He's mocked the agency publicly and he kept right on cashing the government checks for those contracts with his companies. And it's the same idea as with Trump. The rules don't apply to him the way they apply to anybody else.

And unless someone is going to forcefully make him play by the rules, he's not going to. Trump doesn't do it and neither does Elon Musk in a functioning democracy. None of this would be OK. You wouldn't have a federal advisor who's also a federal contractor deciding about where government spends its money. I mean, it's it's it just doesn't make any sense. You wouldn't have someone using public office to gut the agencies meant to regulate his own companies in a sane country. This would be a scandal. It's been happening every single day for months. We have some investigations.

I don't know that we're going to have real accountability. I want to show you a guy with the disgusting smirk when it comes to dictatorship and authoritarianism. Here is Trump's border czar. Tom Homan asked about the law. And he has a smirk because of what they are planning to do. Check this out. There are laws on the books that make it a criminal offense to shield or harbor illegal immigrants like the sanctuary state city leaders. Do you think they should be prosecuted? Look at the smirk on this guy.

Absolutely. And hold tight on that one because it's coming. It's coming. I've been clear on that since day one. You can, the sanctuary city can sit by and watch their communities get ravaged by illegal aliens. They can watch young women get raped and murdered. Trump administration not to stand for that. Understand the extraordinary double standard here. On the one hand, one of the things we talk about is if you really want to take a big bite out of the undocumented immigrant problem as defined, what about enforcing the law that it's illegal to hire undocumented labor? They don't do that. They do the deportations one by one, but they don't go after the fact that there's a huge market for that labor. They don't do that. They do the deportations one by one, but they don't go after the fact that there's a huge market for that labor. If companies didn't hire undocumented

immigrants and verified legal work status, we wouldn't have a lot of this problem that those laws they don't want to enforce. But now what Homan is smirking about is they're going to try to figure out a way to go after sanctuary cities. Could we arrest a mayor that simply doesn't cooperate proactively with DHS and ice? This is the sort of thing that they are gleefully going to try to do. Same day, Tom Homan appeared on Fox News to talk about the wrongly deported Abrego Garcia. Here's what he had to say would happen if he somehow does end up back in the United States. There and demand his release.

Well, good luck with that. Carol Evans is exactly right. Every time I read a story about this is Maryland father, Maryland father. They don't mention he's a member of MS-13, who is a designated terrorist group, one of the most violent gangs in the world. They don't mention he's an MS-13 member. They don't mention he's an El Salvadoran citizen being held by the country of El Salvador. El Salvador makes that decision. Now, the courts have said we've got to facilitate.

We'll facilitate, but El Salvador has full authority on this. Again, a terrorist threat. Now we know if somehow he comes back in and that happens, he's going to be detained and removed again. He's an MS-13 gang member based on our intelligence and El Salvador's intelligence. He will be detained and he will be deported. What's the sense of bringing someone back to simply go and face deportation again? Well, of course, the entire point here is that the law gives people access to due process.

I was going to say it guarantees them due process. It's not guaranteed because they're not doing it right. What do we what is guaranteed mean in this environment? And Tom Homan saying this makes it clear that a new deportation is not inevitable. If you listen carefully, what Homan says is if he comes back, he will immediately face deportation again. But the truth is that he faced deportation once before in 2019 and he avoided deportation. He could in fact avoid deportation again. This is why we have due process. This is why when Caroline Levitt says he's an MS 13 member, we say you haven't demonstrated

that. You've presented no evidence in public and no court or immigration judge has determined that to them due process has become a technicality when supposedly to constitutional conservatives, it was the most important and highest power due process, the rule of law, my how things have changed. And we'll see ultimately what happens with Homan's idea of going after those who simply refuse to cooperate with immigration authorities. This is terrifying stuff. You know, I'll often talk to my friends about what do we really think is private on our computers and on our phones.

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in the podcast notes. That's brain dot FM slash Pacman. Well it finally happened. The Wall Street Journal, one of the flagship publications of the American right, the billionaire class, the corporate elite, the wall street journal published an op ed openly floating impeachment as a way to stop Donald Trump from destroying the American economy. Not after he leaves office right now in the middle of Trump's second term. It is not written by some never Trumper. It's not written by a left wing bomb thrower.

It's written by Holman W. Jenkins Jr., a conservative columnist who's been defending Republican policy for decades. And that is what makes this such a huge deal. I encourage you to read the entire piece and we will link to it. But in essence, what this piece argues is that Trump's tariff war is a disaster, pushing the United States and China towards a total trade freeze, which would be extraordinarily disastrous for our economy. Investors are losing faith in the United States as a stable and sane place to put their money. And courts may soon

have to weigh in on whether Donald Trump's trade war is even legal or constitutional. And here's the big one. Jenkins says impeachment may be the least bad option remaining. A future Trump impeachment seems all but guaranteed. It may even be desirable to restore America's standing with creditors and trade partners. Now that's the key with creditors and trade partners. Billionaires and giga millionaires are getting fed up with the chaos. We heard from not Mike Portnoy, Dave Portnoy, if he's going to keep losing 3% a day in the stock market, which admittedly has not been happening every day since

he said that he's going to keep losing 3% a day in the stock market, he's not going to go for any more Republicans. So this is not because Trump's a wannabe authoritarian. It's not because of creeping dictatorship. It's not because of the mass deportation schemes. Trump is threatening the US is placed at the center of global finance. That's what scares them shitless. The billionaires and the billionaire class don't like it. Their wealth isn't just about dollars and stocks. It's about the US being the world's reserve currency, the safe haven for capital,

the place every investor trusts in a crisis. That's what gives them their power. That's what lets them dictate terms to the rest of the world. And Trump is setting that on fire. They're realizing it now that the guy they propped up because he gave them tax cuts and he said he hated regulations. He's too unstable to protect the very system they rely on. Their greed blinded them. Now if you believe Bill Maher, who recently had a powwow dinner with Donald Trump at the White House, Bill Maher says Trump's not actually deranged. He plays a deranged guy on TV and Bill Maher said it like that's praise of Trump.

Like that's a good thing. It's less bad to only pretend to be crazy. Now you can come down on either side of that. On a recent bonus show, Pat and I talked about, is it worse to be totally unhinged or to play an unhinged character because you've calculated that that's how you benefit. You can decide that. But the point here is we are looking at Trump's actions, not the things that Trump said. And the instability is causing a problem for the billionaire class because they wanted

a puppet. They wanted someone they could control. And instead they got an out of control wrecking ball that's potentially going to destroy everything it bumps into. And they're panicking. So when you see a Wall Street Journal op ed like this one gently suggesting impeachment may kind of be the only thing, it might be the least bad thing. It's not just political. This is economic self-preservation. It's the billionaire class

realizing they may lose more than just money here. They may lose the very system that gave them what they have today. Now, of course, the irony is they did it to themselves. They said, I don't like Biden. And eventually it became I don't like Harris. I'm going to bet with their vote and with their money, I'm going to bet on a narcissist with the attention span of a mosquito and the economic knowledge of a goldfish. And now they're begging for a lifeline, maybe even impeachment to go and clean up this mess. Now, what should the left's role? What should the Democratic Party's response be to this? Depends the direction that we want it to go.

Accelerationists will say, get the hell out of the way, let them destroy it completely, and then we can rebuild it from the ground up. Now, those of you who have read my book know I am not an accelerationist. The risks of burning it all down is you might assume it will be rebuilt one way and it won't. You might assume you get to rebuild it, but you won't. Even worse, people might end up rebuilding it. That's not my approach. I know some in my audience like that. I personally don't. My approach would be very quickly. And I mean, like for November of twenty six, OK, very quickly figure out a way to turn this around to justify electing the people that you can say will do a better job.

We definitely are going to have to take a wait and see attitude as far as that is concerned. But when The Wall Street Journal is talking about impeachment, you know, things are falling off the walls. Donald Trump also just hit the worst polling numbers of his entire presidency. And this is not some outlier from a left wing think tank. This is from CBS outlier from a left wing think tank. This is from CBS. You gov. It is getting so bad that even they can't sugarcoat the disaster.

The bottom is falling out and I want to break it down. In February, Trump was plus six approval, approved versus disapprove, plus six. In March, it was even he had lost six points. In April, he's at minus six. That is a 12 point swing in under two months. And the number that should terrify every Republican running with him, this is the key, is that 54 percent of Americans now blame Trump for the state of the economy and only 21 percent blame Biden. Now, as always, when we see these

numbers, we go, oh, it's breaking my brain that 21% blame Biden. It's breaking my brain that only 54% of Americans now blame Trump. And you're right. But what matters is how these numbers are changing in March, 38 percent blamed Biden. That's down to 21 percent, down 17 points. In March, 34 percent blamed Trump for the state of the economy. Now, 54 percent blame Trump. You don't typically see numbers shift like this so quickly. Why did they shift tariffs?

Number one, recession fears. Number two, general what we might call generalized chaos. Number three, Trump ran last year on fixing the economy. That was his whole thing. Americans are watching their retirement accounts, which have shrunk prices, which are going up the bond market fiasco, which Trump panicked and tried to reverse. And now they're actually blaming the guy in charge. We should be glad not that things aren't going well, but that increasingly bond market fiasco, which Trump panicked and tried to reverse. And now they're actually blaming the guy in charge. We should be glad not that things aren't going well, but that increasingly Americans are blaming the guy in charge because often that doesn't happen. Think back to Obamacare and the

Medicaid expansion. Many red state voters said they passed Obamacare and I didn't get Medicaid. Why not? I blame Obama when of course it was an optional expansion, which many red state governors said were not doing the expansion. They still blamed Obama. So this idea of misplaced blame in American politics is a big deal. Uh, Trump tried to pin it on Biden. The public didn't buy it. He tried to distract with deportations, with Tik TOK bands, with tariffs. None of it is working. And in fact, we should talk about the tariffs a little more deeply. We covered the small business owner who saw the China import tariffs go from $26,000 to

multiple six figures overnight. We covered the Fox host admitting that Trump's tariffs are causing inflation and might even cause a recession. We covered Stephen Miller screaming on Fox news as the administration openly defies court rulings. So this has gone beyond a policy failure. This is now visual chaos. You can't pay attention to what's going on in the news and not see and feel the chaos.

One day Trump says one thing. The next day an advisor contradicts it. The next day they deny both and Americans are watching and they're not confused anymore. They're increasingly angry. We've seen presidents dip in polling before, but this isn't, you know, a second term slide because of a scandal or because of fatigue. This is the brand Trump created, which is I'm good at the economy getting obliterated. And we're not even at the worst of it yet because the full effects of the tariffs, I

mean, they're ostensibly paused. Some of them sort of for 90 days or maybe not quite so much. But we've only dealt with the announcement of the tariffs and a little bit of the implementation. The full scope of the implementation is ahead of us still if Trump's going to do it. Trump's approval is already underwater before the real backlash begins. We talked about that as well. But it only matters if Democrats have something coherent to offer. I don't know that they do. And this is why every single elected official that appears on this show, I will have been and will continue to say

we know Trump's bad. We see what he's doing. But that doesn't mean all of a sudden people necessarily want to vote for fill in the blanks. Right. Not we're not picking on anybody, but people won't necessarily vote for Hakeem Jeffries because Trump's tariffs are crazy. People won't necessarily vote for Chuck Schumer because Trump's clueless on trade. And so there has to be some coherent idea here as to what to do next. Some of these ideas I do include in my book, The Echo Machine. The book is really more of an overview as to how we got here, but there are ideas in it. And to everybody who's bought the book, thank you. And please remember to leave a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Goodreads. If you would be so kind, let's take a very quick break.

We'll get to some of your feedback next. You know, every time we call out Donald Trump's authoritarianism, the right calls it media hysteria. But I want to remind you that Trump admits he's looking for ways to defy the constitution and maybe even pursue another term. Now if you don't know the bias behind your news, you might believe, Oh, Trump's just teasing us. There's nothing here. Go to ground dot news slash Pacman and see how media bias influences more than your perception from Trump's policy and ability to understand

and undermine constitutional norms. I've been with ground news for years now because this is what they do. They expose the hidden agendas behind reporting sources and make it easy to compare coverage and understand critical issues. Even better, if I'm reading a story on another site, the ground news browser extension will flag the source's political bias and give me other reports on the same story so I can verify the information. My viewers get 40 percent off the same unlimited vantage plan that I use. So you get their top tier plan for just $5 a month. Go to ground.news slash Pacman. The link is in the description or scan the QR code. All right, let's get into Friday feedback. You can send emails to info at David Pacman.com. If you have something to say, we also will look at sub stack comments, Twitter replies, YouTube comments, Tic Tac and all these different things.

Let's start with some criticism, some more respectful, some less. Zach Ryder says David Pakman is the epitome of a weak man. He's broken. You know, I welcome substantive criticisms. And what I would love is for Zach to tell me which policy am I getting wrong? Where is my economic analysis incorrect? What is it about foreign policy that I am misunderstanding? That is something we could actually work with. The epitome of a weak man. He's broken while Zach's the one spending his time posting comments online about people he doesn't really know. I don't know.

Not so sure about that criticism. Cap Mike, on the other hand, says I refuse to listen to economic opinions about Trump's tariffs from people who don't even know how many genders there are. You know, Kat, Mike, one of the things that sometimes happens is that I will get hate mail that really is better destined for someone else on this gender stuff. You know, I've been pretty clear. I, uh, want everybody treated with dignity and empathy. I always want to make sure that we're providing a quality of opportunity. I think that on issues of, for example, gender and sports leagues are more

than well equipped to handle this stuff and we don't even need government intervention. But this is not a show that I hate to even use this, but this is not like a gender woke show where that's the primary prism where I, you know, it, it just seems like the criticism is really better for some other show, not for this one. Uh, okay, let's continue. Teresa, maybe it's Teresa. Teresa says, did anyone notice that the whole world is talking tariffs and the stock market and we are no longer talking about signal gate? Yeah, so that is true.

It is true that essentially the public discourse has moved off of signal gate. But if the implication is that Trump timed the tariffs to take attention away from Signalgate, I don't think so. The the the tariffs have been their own monster for a while now. What I will tell you played a major role in getting off of the topic of Signalgate was that the administration investigated itself. And as Caroline Leavitt told us, they found no wrongdoing and they have closed the investigation. What do you do? What I mean, this is why at a certain point you just have to win. There's no alternative to you've just got to win because this is exactly what they can

get away with. We investigated ourselves. We've been cleared. The investigation is over. Many times Trump is doing things deliberately in terms of timing to take attention away from this and give it to that. He's been planning the tariffs for a while and they are their own sort of fiasco. Le Boutique on Tic Tac says Trump masters the art of using a shitload of words and saying

absolutely nothing like we did in school when we came unprepared to do a presentation. Yeah, this this is a pretty good assessment. You know, sometimes Trump uses a teleprompter, which, of course, Biden and Obama were evil for using. But sometimes Trump will use a teleprompter. And when he does, it's very clearly the first time he's reading the content of the teleprompter and sometimes he'll look at it and sort of surprise himself, almost like he's reading a news article, even though this is supposed to be what he says.

That's what happens with the teleprompter. When Trump doesn't have the prompter, it's a complete and total disaster. It's what about injecting bleach? It's the rant with the Los Angeles Dodgers about, um, Oh, you know, it has to do with strong arms and weak arms and all this stuff. Yes. He does sound like the kid giving the book report without having read the book. Shane says unrelated love the turtleneck. Susan agrees. This is from blue ski, also known as blue sky. That's how, you know, he's up to serious business. Yeah. If you, uh, if you turn on the show, um, and I'm wearing a

turtleneck, it's a very serious news day. There is no question about that, but now that it's getting warm, the turtlenecks are going to be increasingly, uh, infrequently worn. DJ Tanner's mom says you probably won't see this comment, but I just went on Amazon and bought your book while it's still available. Thank you for continuing the fight for free speech. I am humbled and flattered by everybody who has picked up the book recently. The book hit number six on all of forget about number six, nonfiction, new hardcover bestseller. The book was number six on all of Amazon out of millions of books, uh, over the weekend. It has had an insane week. If you haven't gotten the book, please do. If you have gotten the book, please review it. Uh, we now have something like,

let me see here. Almost we're closing in on a thousand reviews of the book, which is just absolutely nuts. So thank you to everybody. Um, okay. From Tik TOK, how do entrepreneurs deal with these changes from one day to the next. These tariff roller coaster is a nightmare for their business. You know how a lot of entrepreneurs are dealing with it. We're starting to hear about it. We were notified by an advertiser recently, something along the lines of, listen, it's not that the tariffs are affecting us in this particular way. It's that they were on and then they were off. And now our suppliers from whom we get parts don't know what they need to charge us. We need to delay our advertising package until the third quarter or the fourth quarter when

hopefully there's more clarity. So this is affecting everybody. You know, we, we produce, we own all of the equipment we need already. If something breaks, I'll have to buy a new camera or something, but we're not buying any equipment. We don't have gear. We're really just a service and informational business. And yet we are being affected by the tariffs because the advertisers that helped to fund

the show are saying the money I was going to spend with you, I'm not going to spend right now. It is an entrepreneur's nightmare. No doubt about it. Uh, B rad says, even if this does bring back manufacturing to America, it will be quite some time before factories would produce anything. Trump is the one who's mentally challenged. Yeah. I've met, I've made this point before. If you want to bring industry back or set up American semiconductor manufacturing or imagine that there's some particular car part that's always imported that we want to make here, it can take sometimes it's decades, but forget about decades, a decade.

It can take years. We could be talking six, eight, nine years. The idea that you're going to put a tariff on an overnight, this manufacturing is going to start happening here. It just doesn't work that way. And I don't know if it's Trump's naivete or Trump's disregard for how it actually works. I really don't know, but it is not a situation that can be remedied with fixes over the course of a quarter or even a year.

It's far more complicated than that. All right. The Craig said on Reddit, this is a good substantive critique. I want to deal with this. Uh, it's not the education system. David needs to stop saying the reason our government Maga and a large part of the population is ignorant to a lot of basic facts and other things like not knowing the difference between Oliver Stone and Roger Stone is the fault of the education system.

The education system is there with teachers ready and willing to do the job. The problem is the culture relating to the importance of education. Parents are far more interested in looking at their phones, concerning themselves with youth sports, ice fishing, four wheeling, owning $80,000 pickup trucks than their kids' education. It's the culture, not the system. Additionally, the behaviors teachers deal with, as well as having to take over the social development of kids is way out of whack. Teachers are practically raising these kids. Kindergarten age students are showing up with no number sense and staggering low level vocabulary. Start placing the blame where it belongs. You can bring a horse to water. So I have an all of the above approach here.

If I said to you, our healthcare system is broken and you go, the doctors are ready and waiting to treat people, you would probably easily make the connection that as well trained and well disposed the doctors are. If you have a system that expects them to see four patients an hour for eight to 10 hours a day and do notes and you pay them based on the number of things that they do, right? It's not the doctors, it's the system. And I agree with this person that the teachers are there and it's the system that is putting

the teachers in a position of having to do all of the things that this person says. Now in addition to that, it is also the parenting. There is no question. Now, having a kid myself and seeing other parents, the difference that I see in the kids when the parents do versus don't read to the kids, when the parents do versus don't enforce that, if you're out somewhere, uh, we're going to be polite to people and we're not going to draw on the walls of a restaurant, right? This starts at birth. And there's no doubt that by the time five-year-olds get to kindergarten, a lot has nothing to do with the teachers nor the system. It's the parenting, but to say that the system isn't the problem. No, the teachers aren't

the problem, but the system is a big part of the problem. Okay. So I think it's a perfectly fair distinction to make. R K Sue says, has anyone seen David promoting his book on mainstream TV or heard him on NPR? I'm watching this stoic grifter guy on MSNBC and wondering why the MSM isn't interested in David's obviously correct ideas about modern politics. Maybe I've missed it.

I mean, we had a month of Ezra Klein telling us red tape is destroying the Democratic Party. Yeah. So listen, go to David Pakman dot com slash press. All of my interviews are there. Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, Matt Dillahunty, Young Turks, Midas Touch, Impact Theory, Brian Tyler Cohen, Tom Hartman, Mark Thompson, Bill Press. They're all there. I'm doing NPR stuff this week.

So it's all available at David Pakman dot com slash press. I try to put all of my interviews up there. All right. We will see you on the bonus show. Make sure you're signed up at join Pakman.com email info at david pacman.com. If you have something to say, and remember, we are doing everything we can to build our newsletter. Why? It's the only place where we own the data. If YouTube shuts us down, if Tik TOK shuts us down, which has happened, we have no access to our user base with our newsletter. We download our full mailing

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