The David Pakman Show - 4/2/25: It's LIBERATION DAY as Tesla collapses, Booker speaks 25 hours

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Brad Schimel, the Trump and Musk-endorsed candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court has lost in a major setback for the MAGA agenda -- Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) sets a new record with a Senate speech lasting more than 25 hours -- GDP collapse is expected for Q1 2025 with a consensus estimate of just 0.3% growth and an Atlanta Fed GDPNow estimate of -3.7% -- Tesla sales collapse, down 13% year-over-year for Q1 2025, their worst quarter in three years -- Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump's White House Press Secretary, lies uncontrollably about everything from deportations to the Signal investigation -- Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump's White House Press Secretary, opens the door to a third Trump term while speaking to the press -- Elon Musk is confronted by the lone liberal on Fox News' The Five and doesn't answer a single one of her questions -- Joe Rogan attacks Donald Trump for the totally failed mass deportations -- On the Bonus Show: Trump announces new round of tariffs, DOJ to seek death penalty for Luigi Mangione, "torpedo" bats have everyone in Major League Baseball talking, much more... 🤢 Reliefband: Use code PAKMAN for 20% OFF + free shipping at https://reliefband.com 🥦 Lumen lets you master your metabolism. GET 15% OFF at https://lumen.me/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free baked goods at https://wildgrain.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow

. Welcome everybody. We start today in Wisconsin and Florida. First of all, Wisconsin where Donald Trump and Elon Musk's money got absolutely flattened. We've been following the race for a single Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin, which really turned into a very high stakes, high money, a national showdown. And there's a very clear winner here and there's a very clear loser. The winner is Susan Crawford, the liberal judge backed by Democrats, absolutely crushing Trump endorsed Brad Schimel by more than eight

points. Now you might say, David, sir, that is a frickin predator right there, right? No, you might say, David, sir, crushed. It's only eight points. But you have to understand the context. The context is Wisconsin is a state that presidentially has been so, so tight, sometimes coming down to a fifth of a percentage point. And secondly, there were millions of Elon Musk's dollars here.

Elon Musk essentially burned 25 million bucks failing to get Brad Schimel elected here. Here is Susan Crawford laying it out exactly as it is, which is we really here really beat back an anti-democratic effort. So today, Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy. our fair elections and our Supreme Court and Wisconsin's stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale. Listen, Elon bought himself a president. He did it, but he failed to buy himself a Supreme Court justice and Supreme Court judge

of Wisconsin State Supreme Court judge. And bear in mind that Elon Musk did the doom and gloom dystopian predictions where he said that if Susan Crawford wins this seat, the state will fall. He's predicting complete and total disaster as a result of this result. So the result alone is big. The context is even bigger because of the money that flooded in Musk dumping in the 21 million directly into the campaign. He gave a couple million dollar checks and also flew to Wisconsin a bunch of times and

expended a bunch of other money with his private jet. All in all, this is probably twenty five million bucks and it didn't work. And in fact, it might have backfired. It's certainly conceivable. What we're hearing anecdotally, to put it a better way, what we're hearing anecdotally is that voters are rejecting the pay to play power play for Musk and Trump because some of them enough Wisconsinites don't want to see the richest man on earth or maybe second richest try to buy their court. And what Crawford said, you know, it's idealistic.

Justice doesn't have a price. Our courts are not for sale with 150 million. Maybe Elon would have been able to buy it. I mean, I, I do think that there is a price, but it's not one that he spent. And this was not about just one judge because the Wisconsin Supreme court rules on abortion. It rules on voting rights. It rules on redistricting things that decide future elections. And so this is absolutely huge. And liberals have locked in a majority in the Wisconsin Supreme Court until at least 2028. Now, Musk and Trump are trying to spin it. Musk ranted about the corruption of the judiciary. Of course, he was the one trying to

corrupt the judiciary by buying a state Supreme Court seat. Some on the right are saying it's rigged. One woman shouted cheater when Schimel conceded. She said cheater about Susan Crawford. But the facts are the facts. And she won and Schimel lost. And this was the first real electoral test of Donald Trump's second term. It did not go well. Now there is another kind of important takeaway here, which is that even though we are in this era of performative politics and billionaires on stages and endless spin, you can get to a point where despite tens of millions of bucks pouring in, voters say enough, enough. And that happened here. It doesn't mean that money will always lose. In fact, money typically wins, but it shows that you can beat money. It's not

just a win for Susan Crawford. It's really a win for the idea that that democracy can punch back. Now, Donald Trump is trying to spin it as a win. He posted to his platform, Truth, Social Central, quote, Voter I.D. just approved in Wisconsin election. Democrats fought hard against this, presumably so they can cheat. This is a big win for Republicans, maybe the biggest win of the night. It should allow us to win Wisconsin like I just did in the presidential election for many years to come. So Trump is completely ignoring the results of the Supreme Court race and just saying, hey, voter I.D. won. Now, let me tell you the truth about this. Trump is referring to a voter I.D. amendment as if it's some massive win. Voter I.D. has already been the law in Wisconsin since 2016. The only thing that happened with voter I.D. last

night was that it was added to the state constitution. It's already been in the law for nearly a decade. Nothing changed. But instead of acknowledging that his candidate lost, which Trump never does, he pretends like they never existed. He says, we got a really big victory here as opposed to, damn, we poured 25 million bucks into this thing and it didn't work. Trump must think his base won't notice or won't care. And he's probably right. Now let's talk a little bit about the Florida race in the sixth district of Florida. The Democrat lost. Okay. The Democrat, uh, in that race was Josh while, uh, was defeated by Randy fine by 14 points, 56 to 42. Now I'm going to give you a word of caution here for the right. They are cheering

this like it is a massive victory because the Republican won by 14. But what you have to consider is that six months ago, Trump won the very same district by 30. So what happened here is that Trump's margin of victory was cut in half for a Republican in just six months. If they want to pretend that this is a massive endorsement of the MAGA Trump agenda by electing this Randy fine, they can go ahead and do that. But if I were Republicans and I saw November, Trump wins by 30 April 1st, the MAGA candidate wins by only 14. I'm worried. That's my takeaway.

Your mileage may may vary. Buyer beware. Cory Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, who was on this show just weeks ago, delivered the longest Senate speech in American history, ending yesterday, 25 hours and six minutes long. Not a typo. And this broke former Senator Strom Thurmond's record, which was, by the way, trying to stop the Civil Rights Act.

So significant symbolism here in that Cory Booker, a senator of color, breaking the previous record for the longest speech on the Senate floor held by a guy trying to stop the Civil Rights Act. So symbolically, this is a much better use of time. Here is the moment that Chuck Schumer tells Cory Booker that he broke the record. John. With the senator yield for a question. Chuck Schumer is the only time in my life I can tell you, no, I just want to tell you a question. Do you know you have just broken the record?

Do you know how proud this caucus is of you? Do you know how proud America is of you? And then here is the moment that Cory Booker, after 25 hours and six minutes, finally yields the floor back. Let's get back to the ideals that others are threatening. Let's get back to our founding documents that that those are perfect geniuses, had some very special words at the end of the Declaration of Independence, was one of the greatest in all of humanity, declarations of interdependence. When our founder said, we must mutually pledge, pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. We need that now from all Americans.

This is a moral moment. It's not left or right. It's right or wrong. It's getting good trouble. My friend, Madam President, I yield the floor. All right. Now the context here, Cory Booker was not trying to stop a specific bill. He was protesting. He was specifically protesting Donald Trump's second term. Elon Musk's bizarre doge, the attacks on education, uh, people being snatched on the streets with no due process, the lawlessness

of the current administration. He stood and spoke reading letters from constituents and citing bipartisan sources, even apologizing for democratic failures that helped enable this entire thing. Now there are those who are calling this merely performative. I got many emails. My audience is divided. Was this useful activism or was this merely performative? My view on this is that if we're honest, of course it's a performance, but that doesn't mean that it's meaningless.

I'll explain kind of my takeaway here. This is about visibility. This is about saying someone is still fighting. Now, of course, nobody got health care who didn't have it because Cory Booker spoke for 25 hours and six minutes. Not a single person was lifted out of poverty because Cory Booker stood there for more than a day and spoke. That's all true. But the point here is that it is visibility about the need to do something and to bring people into the fold. The number of streams, you know, the the audience started small on Monday night and it built and it built and it built. And

I don't I couldn't even tell you the total number of people that were watching the stream of this towards the end, because you've got to look at all platforms. Independent media was rebroadcasting it. Corporate media. Is it is it in the millions? I couldn't even tell you what the number was, but these are insane numbers and it is a spectacle. But the point of a spectacle in this case is to wake people up. And the spectacle garnered a massive audience.

And Booker's speech said, let's not wait. Let's start doing stuff right now. Is it going to stop Trump by itself? Of course, it's not. The speech wasn't meant to stop Trump, but it was meant to inspire. And a lot of the stuff I've been critical so much of the stuff that Democrats have done, it hasn't really inspired anybody. In fact, it's been a turnoff to a met too many voters and democratic approval is in the toilet. We, you know, have been speaking about that with a number of elected officials recently, but to the extent that it was indeed a performance meant to inspire and bring people in and make them

aware of what's going on, it succeeded. And you've got to give Senator Booker credit for that. So we're going to try to have him back on the show and then say, my question will be now what? Now that you've done this, now that a bunch of people that weren't paying attention, paid attention. Now, what do you do? Because we do need to get people health care. We do need to get people out of poverty. We do have to deal with what's going on with education and all of these things that he talked about. So it was performative and it was quite a performance, but I think writing it off as merely performative would be very wrong. I want to thank everybody who made my book, the echo machine on, uh, made it make the top 10 nonfiction audio books in the United States for the last week.

I was notified this morning that the Echo Machine is in the top 10 audio books in the country for nonfiction books. Thanks to you. We don't yet have other numbers waiting on them, but I appreciate you so much. Nearly 500 of you have already reviewed the book on Amazon. I really appreciate that. I want to say one other thing. One of the things that other creators and I have been talking about is the unfortunate reality that if any platforms shut us down, we have no way of reaching our audience.

What do I mean by that? Our 3.06 million followers on YouTube. If YouTube bows to pressure from MAGA and shuts us down, we have no way to reach those 3 million people. If Tic Tac shuts us down, we have no way to reach the million followers we have on Tick Tock. And so one of the things we want to do is given the fears and speculation about what this administration might try, we need a way to directly contact you. And the only way that that exists right now is my newsletter. Okay.

So I'm asking you the only way I will be able to get in touch with you if anything gets shut down is our newsletter. Please make sure you are on my newsletter. You can find that at David Pakman dot substack dot com or you can sign up for it on my website or you can just email info at David Pakman dot com and say, put me on the newsletter. You might say, well, what if sub stack shuts you down? We own the data. That's the critical difference with Substack. We have that list and it's the fail safe that we are all trying to build here. OK, so please make sure you are getting that newsletter. Let's take a break. We're going to talk GDP. We're going to

talk deportations. Major major show today. Glad you're here. If you've ever dealt with nausea occasionally, more frequently, you might want to check out one of our sponsors, relief band, a wearable wristband designed to relieve and maybe even prevent nausea. Many people use it for nausea related to anxiety or migraines or traveling by car, plane or boats or motion sickness. Easy to use, works quickly, lasts as long as you need.

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a digital clock uses smart skin sensing technology to preserve battery life. Relief ban has earned an a plus rating from the better business Bureau. It has over 100,000 satisfied customers online. If nausea is something you deal with, it might be worth seeing if relief band can help visit relief band.com and use the code Pacman for 20% off plus free shipping. The info is in the description. The U S economy just got slammed with a gut punch and it is a gut punch that is landing squarely on the desk of Donald Trump as president Trump is continuing to roll out sweeping tariffs and then going back as he's promising liberation day, a completely harebrained concept, the damage of which we still don't fully understand, slashing funding for federal agencies and laying mass numbers

of people off as all of that is happening. The economic fallout is now becoming undeniable. I'm going to give you two numbers. The first number is negative 3 point seven. The GDP now model from the Atlanta Fed is now projecting minus three point seven percent GDP for Q1 of 2025. This is the first quarter which ended on Monday, March 31st. This is a number so bad that it is rattling economists and it is even rattling parts of Donald Trump's own administration saying minus 3.7 would be very, very bad. Now, to be totally clear, this is only one projection, a different projection or a survey, um, that CNBC did CNBC did an economist survey.

What do economists expect for Q1 GDP? They are, they are expecting growth, but of 0.3%. That's basically flat. Now who previously told us that flat GDP growth or even 1% GDP growth or even 2% GDP growth is a disaster. Donald Trump did. It's Donald Trump who previously said when we had 1.9% growth under Barack Obama, it was Trump who said that number is a disaster. If 1.9% under Obama is a disaster, what is 0.3% under Trump or what is negative 3.7% under Trump? So we will see where this lands. My expectation is that it'll be somewhere between minus 3.7 and plus 0.3. That is not good. That is not good. Now the white house has been pushing liberation day tariffs, and this is the kind of new phase. They're adding a nationalist spin to Trump's economic agenda. Not only am I going to put in import taxes, but I am going to liberate you by putting on import

taxes. It kind of doesn't make any sense. And behind the scenes reports are of course that economists know these policies are going to choke the economy. And we are now seeing that in the GDP predictions, the surge of imports rushing into the United States ahead of tariff deadlines subtract from GDP. This is another critical thing to understand. Businesses are panicking because of the expected on again, off again tariffs because they are expecting to have to pay more for stuff. They import more. Now imports are subtracted from GDP. And then you combine that with collapsing consumer and business confidence. This is not good for the economy. Uh, February's consumer spending was up 0.1%. That's not good. It was down 0.6% in January.

The spending forecasts have cratered. Action economics dropped its projection from up 4% to up 0.2%. And then finally, Barclays is saying that there are convincing signs of a serious slowdown in the data. The most optimistic forecasts say that after this very problematic first quarter, Q2, we're expecting 1.4% growth, Q3, 1.6 and Q4, 2%. Understand that these are annualized numbers, so it's not, oh, that's like 6% growth. No, no. These are annualized numbers. All of this is below trend. All of this is below what Donald Trump has said is necessary to be able to say that you're doing a good job on the economy. So we have the economic story, but it also very quickly becomes a political story because Donald Trump campaigned on being the business genius who was going to increase growth. The truth is,

and it is going to become starkly evident if these predicted numbers hold true. The truth is that even though the Biden economy had problems and even though during the Biden economy, many people said it doesn't feel like I'm doing well and you've got to respect that. That's real. People vote on that. Despite all of that, once you start seeing 0.3% GDP growth followed by 1.4, those Biden numbers are going to look very good. Now they're going to lie to you about it. They're going to say that the numbers were juiced or this is temporary pain for long term gain. They're going to tell you all these different lives and we'll debunk them one by one as they

come forward. But what I continue to say is the same thing I said when Biden was president, the same thing I said when Trump became president and all of it is the following. Look at the numbers in black and white and judge for yourself. We don't yet have the GDP number. When we do, we will be able to say is the chaos at the White House is the shrinking GDP is is is any of it. Is it worth it to fight these contrived culture wars and own the Dems? Or would we rather have genuine fiscal stability? It'll be a question. You will

be able to answer it and voters will answer it when they go and vote in 2026. We are witnessing the unraveling of Tesla in real time and it is completely self inflicted. Tesla just reported a 13% year over year decline in vehicle sales for Q1 2025. I love Tesla. I am glad to say, had I re-upped and gotten a new Tesla lease in January, I would have contributed to slightly better numbers. And boy, am I glad that I didn't. And I got rid of that thing as soon as I could and went in a different direction. This is the worst quarter for Tesla in three years. They delivered just over 300,000 vehicles below analyst expectations. And it is continuing a trend that is getting worse every month.

Do not let people tell you this is because everybody hates electric vehicles and electric vehicles suck. No electric vehicle sales continue to grow. This is an Elon Musk problem and it is because he has made himself completely radioactive. There was a time when Elon Musk was seen as a quirky visionary when it came to electric vehicles and he was, he did a lot to advance Evie and battery technology and mainstream electric vehicles. This was years ago.

He's now just divisive. He's uh, not just running Tesla anymore. He's sort of the main character in a nationwide backlash movement called Tesla takedown. People are organizing boycotts because of his extreme political alignment, particularly this disastrous Doge collaborate. Maybe we'll call it doggy, the doggy collaboration with Donald Trump. And that includes the layoffs. That includes gutting social programs, harassing public workers, all of it. Put this in a context where Musk previously amplified white nationalist talking points on X. And he is now trying to play both tech genius and political attack dog. And his company isn't doing well. Tesla stock is down big. They've wiped out hundreds of billions of

dollars in market cap. Elon Musk personally, depending on the day, depending on how the stock's doing, has lost about 100 billion dollars. Tesla sales in Europe are down 43 percent, even though EV sales overall are up. China, as I told you last week, is looking very grim because of a suspended self-driving test for Tesla that's going on there. And meanwhile, General Motors doubled their electric vehicle sales year over year. So this is not an EV problem. This is an Elon Musk problem. This is a Tesla problem.

Now, the violence that we have seen at Tesla showrooms and the property destruction, vandalism, arson, et cetera. I'm against all of that. I'm in favor of peaceful protesting, holding signs, boycotting all of that stuff to the extent anybody's burning vehicles. I'm against that. By the way, it we still don't really know who's doing the burning in the sense of their allegations that it's Soros funded, whatever.

There's no proof of that. Others are saying these are provocateurs from the right trying to make the left look bad. I also haven't seen proof of that. I don't care who's doing it that I'm against. But people saying this is capitalism, this is a sort of free market, and I am going to do what I think is most aligned with my political views that we must support. That is speech and that is capitalism. Now we see Trump saying we're going to charge them as domestic terrorists and all of that. It's a disaster. And Tesla's collapse is happening. It is market forces. It is macroeconomics and it is Elon Musk

taking a popular future focused company and driving it proverbially into a political ditch for clout, for ego, for culture war nonsense and, and all of it. So this seems to be at this point, really difficult to reverse. People are now talking about Elon. One, one, a board member said Elon Musk should actually step down as CEO. I don't know if he will, but it's all looking very bad. And this is called activism. This is called speech. This is called the market. Did you know that 80% of new year's resolutions fail by February? Lumen is something you can do for your health. That's easy to stick to our sponsor. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach with a single breath. First thing in the morning, Lumen measures your metabolism. It tells you, are you burning fat or are you burning carbs?

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That's l u m e n.me slash Pacman for 15% off. The link is in the podcast notes. Donald Trump's white house press secretary, Caroline Levitt, is either unwilling or unable to stop lying day after day after day. She, of course, claims that Christianity is the highest of all values for her. And of course, lying uncontrollably is not a Christian value I've been able to find in any of their sacred texts. Here is Caroline Leavitt defending the deportation of a man from Maryland with protected legal status, which ICE has already acknowledged was a mistake. Here is how Caroline Leavitt chooses to deal with that.

Just changing subjects for one second. The administration has expressed a complete confidence in how all the deportation flights to El Salvador were conducted. But now that the administration has conceded that there was an error of one Salvadorian national, will there be any reviews conducted? And does the president express any thoughts on the one error that was disclosed in court last night? Well, first of all, the error that you are referring to was a clerical error. It was an administrative error. The administration maintains the position that this individual who was deported to El Salvador

and will not be returning to our country was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang. That is fact number one. Fact number two, we also have credible intelligence proving that this individual was involved in human trafficking. And fact number three, this individual was a member, actually a leader of the brutal MS-13 gang, which this president has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Fact number four is that foreign terrorists do not have legal protections in the United States of America anymore. And it is within the president's executive authority and power to deport these heinous individuals from American communities. It is a promise he campaigned on. It is a promise he is keeping.

And every single person in this room should be grateful for that, considering especially MS-13 is very prevalent and prominent here in the District of Columbia, in Maryland and in Virginia, and the president, the attorney general, everyone who has been involved in these operations is focused on eradicating these criminals and terrorists from our communities. That is completely like out of control diarrhea of the mouth propaganda. This is not a clerical error. It's systemic. Trump claims he's deporting criminals, but clearly they're

profiling people. So she can say, we, even though the fine, you have to read between the lines, fine. She can't rebut that this is not a criminal because criminal, at least for now, still has a definition, but she goes, but we maintain that he was a member of a gang, even though he hadn't necessarily committed crimes. He, what we are talking about here is the deportation of someone legally here on asylum. And one of the things that keeps coming up is sort of like a trial by media as to whether any individual is sympathetic. This person was sick or they have a kid who was sick or it's a dad or it actually does not matter. It doesn't matter legally.

Now that she was asked for evidence and here's what she had to say. Our communities said he was a convicted member of MS-13. What evidence is there to back that up? There's a lot of evidence in the Department of Homeland Security and ICE have that evidence. And I saw it this morning. She saw it with her own eyes. Of course, evidence that someone was convicted should be pretty easy to provide. And they provided none of it whatsoever.

She then is asked again, wait a second. You're saying you saw evidence of that. What are you talking about? A few questions about this deportation case. First, I wanted to clarify something that you said to Jeff a few minutes ago. You said you'd seen evidence that this man was a convicted gang member. In what court was he convicted and for what the this individual was an MS-13 ringleader. This individual was also engaged in human trafficking.

And I'm glad you brought up this point again, because I would like to point out that if you just saw the headline from the insane failing Atlantic magazine this morning, you would think this individual was father of the year living in Maryland, living a peaceful life when that couldn't be further from the truth. She can't say that there's any evidence in a court because this man wasn't convicted of anything. Either we respect the law or we don't. And the bottom line is that if someone is physically in the United States, in the asylum process, they have due process rights. It's not a loophole. It's not a trick. It's not some Marxist communist subversion of law and order. It's law and order. The government doesn't get to just

grab people and deport them because it wants to. Uh, Caroline Levitt seeing something at an ice office isn't proof. It's not a conviction. You must go through a legal process. A judge has to hear the case. The person has a right to defend themselves. That's what due process means. Now, I know they don't like it and they want to talk about how sympathetic, you know, the, to pretend this was just some suburban dad. It actually doesn't matter. Yes, we can talk about the personal stories and they are tragic, but legally speaking, it doesn't make a difference. Uh, all right. They got to some other stuff during this live fest about, um, here's one about tariffs and Levitt seems confused as to what's being quoted was said publicly by Trump or not.

She is the worst press secretary I can remember. Yes, it is. The president has said foreign countries and companies will eat the cost of tariffs in his speech on Inauguration Day, he said, quote, instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens. So then why did he have to tell the domestic automakers not to raise prices? Well, that was a private conversation that was had.

I'm not sure if that comment was made or was not made. But as for what the president said in his inauguration day speech, he's absolutely correct. A tariff will be a tax on these foreign nations, these foreign companies. And if they want to be absolved of that tariff, then they can come here to the United States of America to do business, bring their jobs here. Now, of course, the tariffs are a tax on the American importers, which is yet another lie. But the I actually don't know whether what you're saying Trump said was in private or in public.

I just don't know. So let me just talk about this completely different thing. You can't get away from basic economics and basic economics is that a tariff is an import tax. Now, you could say there's a good reason for it. It's strategic. There is a long term path as to how this tariff is going to help us. Trump's not able to do that because these blanket tariffs wouldn't be helpful long term. It's short term pain for then medium term pain for then long term pain. That's all it is. And of course, her knowledge of economics is

very lacking. And that's why we end up in these situations. Now finally, you might recall that yesterday I played a clip of Caroline explaining that the investigation into the signal fiasco has been concluded. We've investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing. Good for them. Here. She was asked, can you share any of the findings? And she, she basically just says, no, I can't. Um, you said case closed yesterday. Do you, as that case was closed, do you have anything that you can share about what was learned, how this can be avoided in the future? Any, any sort of findings from that investigation? The case is closed and the president continues to have confidence in his national security advisor.

There you go. Can't you understand reporters that when they say the case is closed, it means they've cleared themselves. They've absolved themselves of any wrongdoing. If the real question is, has anything actually been fixed? The answer is, of course, no, it hasn't. Is this the most dishonest and propagandistic press secretary you can remember? I covered Kayleigh McEnany and I think Caroline Leavitt is way worse. You might have missed it, but something deeply alarming happened on national TV and it barely made a ripple. Donald Trump's press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, was asked again about Donald Trump openly musing again about serving a third term. And of course, we know that this is explicitly unconstitutional under the 22nd Amendment.

What was Caroline Levitt's response? Well, it's to leave the door open to exactly that possibility. So as you know, Caroline, the president a couple of times over the last few days has floated this idea of a third term, which the 22nd Amendment doesn't allow. But he's certainly talking about it. He talked to NBC News about it. And then he was asked about it on Air Force One on the way back from Mar-a-Lago last night. Listen here. I don't want to talk about a third term now because no matter how you look at it, we got a long time to go. We have a long time. You know, we have almost four years to go. And that's a long time. But despite that, so many people are saying you've got to run again.

They love the job we do. Most importantly, they love the job. Now, of course, the 22nd Amendment was passed in the wake of four terms of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. It was Republicans who pushed it in the first place, saying that'll never happen again. It took just over three years to pass and ratify that amendment. So if the president hopes to change it, it would seem to me time is running out already. It's funny to me that journalists ask the president this question. He gives an honest and candid answer,

and then they spiral about his answer. He was asked this and you heard him and he's right. People love the job this president is doing. And as he said, we are focused on this term. We have four more years to go and look at what the president has done in more than 60 days. We have. So notice that that's not a denial. There's not a correction. It's of course, people want him to serve more. Now you might notice that she also said they asked him the question and then they spiral based on his answer. Well, yes, sometimes you react to the content of the answer.

Answering the question doesn't end the topic. Answering the question is step one and then having a conversation about it. Now when she was later asked in this exact same interview whether Trump might actually try to stay in office longer than the Constitution allows. Here's what she said. The 22nd Amendment was passed in the wake of four terms of Franklin Roosevelt. Sorry, this is an overlap of the exact same clip. And that's my mistake.

Sometimes the truth is worth being worried about is the takeaway. Now, as we spoke about earlier this week, there are ways to remain in office more than two terms. Not all of them are legal. One option is the constitutional path, which is the 22nd Amendment says you can't do it. Repeal the 22nd amendment that requires super majorities in Congress and three fourths of the states. I don't believe that that's going to happen. You know, Trump's sort of popular in the Republican party. He's not that popular. The country is way too polarized to get that level of consensus. The second option, it's legally muddy. It's running as VP and then the president resigns and Trump would ascend to the presidency.

The problem there is that the 12th amendment says you can't be VP if you're ineligible to be president. Again, you can't run for VP if you're ineligible to be president. So then you would have to say, well, what Trump could do is be appointed VP after a VP resigns or he could run for speaker of the house and then be there. It starts to get extraordinarily muddled legally and, and none of this stuff has been tested to be very clear. Uh, the third option is he just runs again and we've talked about this before.

Who would actually stop him? Would the court say no? I think even a Trump friendly Supreme Court probably would say no to Trump running again. And then the fourth option, kind of the nuclear option is the guy just refuses to leave. The problem there is it would require the military and Congress and the courts and Secret Service all to let it happen. I might be naive. I just don't believe that the military and Congress and the courts and the Secret Service would go along with it. So when MAGA Mike Johnson was asked, is there a constitutional way for Trump

to do this? MAGA Mike Johnson was actually right. And he said there is one way and it's to repeal the 22nd Amendment. I wish it were that simple. I wish it were that simple because that's certainly not going to happen. 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% vegan. And it just takes the hassle out of baking because all items bake The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. heat and throw them in the oven and people love it. Definitely the croissants are my favorite. The quality and the freshness of the items is extraordinary and it is just so convenient.

Go to wild grain dot com slash Pacman to start your subscription and get thirty dollars off your first box plus free croissants in every box every month. That's wild grain.com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. Well, this is pretty interesting. Fox News has a show called the five. The five has one sane person on it. One of the five people, her name is Jessica Tarlov. And it's essentially a show where four right wing nuts take turns yelling over the one liberal Jessica. And somehow they had Elon Musk on and she seemed to be the only one willing to ask a real question. And it's a great question. The question is, you know, you,, Elon have been making all of these cuts

and laying people off, but your companies are getting government contracts. How is that defensible? And Elon Musk can't defend it because there is no explanation. He doesn't even deflect. He just does his trademark blank stare and then shifts to talking about something different. Take a look at this. I wanted to talk to you about what Doge has been doing. So you've been making cuts to a lot of the agencies that have open investigations and regulatory battles with your companies. At the same time, you continue to get billions in government contracts. Tesla gets billions in subsidies. How do you explain that to the American people?

Right. Well, everything that Doge does is an open book. So I think the most transparent action, the most transparent organization in government ever, every single Doge action is listed on the Doge.gov website. It's also listed on the Doge dot gov website. It's also listed on the X handle. Now let me just pause here. If you follow American politics, you've probably heard that line a hundred times already where

no matter what he's asked about Doge, he goes, we're the most transparent in history. We list what we've done on our website and we put out excretions on X telling you what we've done. So so far, it's not an answer as to the conflict between his interests in cutting and laying off and all of this stuff and getting massive government contracts. Has he answered the question so far? The answer is no, but he's got another minute. Let's see. So if anyone has a concern about any one of those actions, they can bring that up. They can raise that. And and I do want to say, like, sometimes we make a mistake. Nobody bats

a thousand. We will at times make mistake. And OK, let me pause it again. If you've been following American politics, you've also heard that he strings that together. He has said that during cabinet meetings with Trump and others. We won't be perfect, but when we make a mistake, we will correct it quickly. None of this has anything to do with the subject matter in question. Make a mistake. We'll act very quickly to correct it. I am under such an extreme spotlight, so much scrutiny that it's literally impossible for me to get away with anything nefarious, and obviously no doubt I wish to. So this is a case where we have radical transparency. We're actually willing to admit

that we do make mistakes. Often people are not willing to admit they make mistakes, but we are. But we want to emphasize we fix them quickly and we're trying to do the right thing for the American taxpayer, for the American people. And I think history will be the judge that what we've done here and what we're doing is a very good thing for the strength and future of America. What can you say? I mean, there is no answer that makes sense. How on earth can you face the American people and say, listen, I'm doing mass layoffs, I'm doing mass cuts, I'm completely wreaking havoc and just using, uh, my preferences as the barometer to decide what we do.

I've handed over control of a lot of this stuff to 23 year olds who don't even know what's going on and have no bearing, have any access even to any of these systems, but I'm getting massive government contracts and here is why that's okay. He can't do it, right? There is not an answer that is defensible. His companies, Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, they are constantly under investigation for labor violations, environmental issues, workplace safety, treatment of employees. And at the same time, those very companies are receiving massive federal contracts and subsidies documented, not hypothetical. And meanwhile, he's telling us how he's cutting a trillion bucks and everybody getting laid off.

It's going to be so good for the country and it's going to be so good for everybody. There is no realistic answer that you can give. And so he does not answer Jessica Tarloff's question, which was a good one. At another point, Greg Gutfeld asks Elon, when are you going to be on my show? And Elon does something that should make any comedian cower in fear. Elon tells Gutfeld that he finds him very funny. Now, you probably know where I'm going with this. Elon Musk has no sense of humor. The fact that he finds Gutfeld funny is a brutal insult to Gutfeld's comedic chops.

When the hell are you doing my show? I've I've left you. I left messages. I've I've sent carrier pigeons. I get no response. Well, I'll be happy to do your show. I actually I actually I I've actually I've seen pieces of your show and it's very funny. Actually, I've seen pieces of your show and it's very funny. Actually, it's my style of humor. So I know by my style of humor, he means stuff that is completely not funny to anyone, which is how I would describe Greg Gutfeld show. And then sort of more substantively, but also much more strangely, when Elon Musk is talking about people funding for funding and organizing the protests against Tesla, he brings up that we need to go after the generals. And it's kind of like, what the hell is this guy talking about with the purpose of intimidation?

And it's harming innocent people. It's really terrible. And I think what we actually have to get to are the people who are organizing and paying for these attacks and protests. That's who we really need to go after because the people who are actually throwing the Molotov cocktails, they're the foot soldiers. We need to go after the generals

and we're going to do so. The president has made it very clear that we're going to go after those that are paying and organizing. Oh, I guess what he's saying is the people at the protests are the proverbial foot soldiers and they need to go after the proverbial generals, which I guess these are the folks, like he said in Wisconsin, that George Soros is organizing protests against Tesla. These these violent attacks and Attorney General Bondi has

said the same thing. I believe that that is exactly what will happen. Do you know who they are? We're coming for them. Do you know who those generals are? We know. We do. Yes. And hopefully the prosecution will be for Rico and an organized criminal enterprise, which makes the penalty absolutely worse. The funniest thing about this whole the Tesla protests or Astro turf and all of these different things is that implicit in all of this is that people would need to be paid to hate Tesla and more specifically to hate Elon Musk. It's like if you've been following what Elon Musk is doing, you know, no one needs to be paid in order to demonstrate against Elon Musk. So he appears on the five. One person asks a real question. Her name's Jessica Tarlov. He doesn't answer it. How do you defend government

contracts while you are doing what you were doing? He just does. He just goes, oh, we're transparent and blah, blah, blah. He then praises Greg Gutfeld's comedy. Bizarre. I mean, some of the least funny comedy I've seen. And then he says that the unnamed generals known to him, but he's not naming them. They are going to go after. And we are supposed to believe that this man is brilliant enough to fix every problem we have in this country that I've got a bridge to sell you if that's something that you believe. All right. Many of you sent me this clip of Joe Rogan. Yes. Podcaster Joe Rogan calling out the Trump administration's deportation policies. This happened on a recent episode of the podcast. And Rogan said that what's happening with the deportations is horrific. He mentioned a gay barber being swept up

in Trump's gang deportation push and sent to El Salvador's mega prison, a place, by the way, notorious for having actual gang members in it. And Rogan says this is a human rights nightmare. And he's correct. But there is a lot more to this story. Let's watch the clip first and then we'll talk about it. But the thing is, like. You got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting like lassoed up and deported and sent to like El salvador prisons i read some story it was a glenn greenwald yeah yeah the gay barber guy yeah yeah yeah it's it's scary man is that true is that story accurate with a bunch of these trend our agua guys allegedly they got one guy who at least one guy who wasn't a criminal uh who was just a gay barber, who I think, according to the story,

came here legally. When you do things quickly and you do things aggressively, that's how you get done. But that's also when mistakes get made. Just so you know, that's not our bleep. We don't bleep anymore. And I think a human being being plucked out of nowhere and ending up in a country he's never been in, in a maximum security prison with gang members, seems like a bad thing to happen to me. It's horrific. It's horrific. I don't think that should be controversial. No, that's not controversial at all.

Again, that's bad for the cause. The cause is, let's get the gang members out. Everybody agrees. But what's not innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs? And then how long before that guy can get out? It doesn't seem he can get out, by the way. Is there any plan in place to alert the authorities that they've made a horrible mistake and correct it? Well, if you think about it from a government perspective, and this is where I think it gets quite sinister,

is once you've done that, the incentive structure is never going to be to admit that and deal with it. The incentive structure is to say nothing, to cover it up. Constantine is completely correct on this, and that's exactly what Caroline Leavitt is doing to pretend it didn't happen. Right. So someone ends up in a black hole. OK, so listen, there's a bunch of stuff here. First of all, Rogan's completely right about this. Rogan also voted for Trump, the very guy who's doing all of it. OK, so there has to be an accounting for the fact that the same Trump who promised the mass deportations hired Stephen Miller to design these policies, bragged about expanding ice raids, said he would fast track deportations without due process.

Rogan knew that Trump was promising that stuff and Rogan publicly said, this is who I'm voting for. So to a degree, Rogan himself is to blame. Now, he's not solely to blame. Rogan didn't get Trump elected. But what I mean is all of these right wing ecosystem folks and OK, Rogan, I guess it's like center right kind of with some left wing beliefs. But the ecosystem is fomenting this promotion of MAGA. They helped make it happen. So Rogan says, look, this is, this is wrong, but he helped to make it happen.

That's number one. Secondly, Rogan says the cause is going to be hurt by these incorrect deportations of like the gay barber. Let's get the gang members out. Everybody agrees on that. It's just not what's happening. Even if you put aside the case of the gay barber, people with tattoos, people with no criminal record, people who have never been to El Salvador are being sent there without trial, without a lawyer, without anything. And he adds that, you know, this this is bad for the cause of Trump, but this is bad

for human beings. And it's also against the law. And that gets me to kind of the next criticism here, which is regardless of whether they got the right person. Imagine that it wasn't a gay barber with nothing to do with the gang, but it was a gang member, you still are required to provide due process to people that are physically in the United States. If you come to the border and you request asylum and you're sent back, you're not entitled to due process in that case. OK, there's other problems with how asylum claims are adjudicated, but you don't have the same right to due process when you come to the border and then go back to Mexico. But this is a different situation. And so even if they got the right guy, for lack of a better term, it's still a problem. And of course, it's terrible that innocent people are being ripped from their homes.

And all of these other things are a problem on their merits, not merely on the basis of whether you get the right person or not. Now, if Rogan or the millions that he influences had voted for Kamala Harris, this wouldn't be happening now. You might say, whoa, David, hold on a second. Whatever criticisms you have of Kamala Harris and there there would be many in her administration would not be perfect because no administration is perfect. This wouldn't be going on. Her administration wouldn't be secretly deporting innocent people into violent prisons based on tattoos, profiling haircuts and what people are wearing.

So it's critically important not to pretend that this is a both side situation. Credit to Rogan for speaking out. I mean, listen, the fact that he what Constantine says, which is fix this stuff, they're just going to try to cover it up. That's completely correct. When we looked earlier today at Caroline Levitt being asked about people that were incorrectly deported, which is a weird phrase, weird term to use, but I think it's relevant for us. She just said, no, no, no. We, we maintain that those people were all gang members. It ignores the fact that they have no due process. So Rogan here is upset about a fire that's

burning that he helped to start. And it would be great for him to acknowledge that, as Bernie Sanders has said, you can't be an arsonist and then ask for credit for putting out the fire that you started. And when you light a match and then all of a sudden there's a huge fire, how much applause do you really deserve for saying this fire is a real problem? Because that's essentially what Rogan is doing. We've got a fantastic bonus show for you today. It's liberation day. You may not be feeling liberated. Fine. But it is liberation day, according to MAGA. And we will talk about what that means. The DOJ is going to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione in the CEO Brian uh, Brian Thompson murder. What's the legal basis

for that? And number three, we're going to do a little sports here, but there's some interesting stuff going on. So if you're like, Oh no, no sports, please. Um, the, in major league baseball, they have these torpedo bats now that are crossing, causing this huge stir. And I think there's something interesting about it when it comes to competition and records. And I want to talk to a producer Pat about it. So all of those stories on today's bonus show, remember that we are preparing for the possibility that we could be shut down on any of our platforms. The only way I will be able to reach you is if you are on my newsletter, our sub stack

newsletter, because we own that data. We own none of our data on the other platforms. Go to David Pakman dot sub stack dot com or sign up at David Pakman dot com or simply email info at David Pakman dot com. We'll get you on the newsletter no matter what. This is going to be the lifeline if the clampdown does happen. And finally, finally, you can sign up instantly at join Pacman dot com to get access to that bonus show that I was just mentioning. So I'll see you then. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

Congressman Greg Kassar, who recently went on Fox News and just crushed them, is going to be joining me tomorrow. Looking forward to that. See everybody soon.