The David Pakman Show - 4/23/25: Tesla collapsing, Trump terrified of Epstein files

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Ned Lamont, Connecticut Governor, joins David to discuss the disastrous Trump tariffs, the trade war, and what states can do to fight back against the economic policy of the Trump administration -- Tesla records a 71% decline in net income as Elon Musk's political alliance with Donald Trump is destroying the company -- New concerns about Pete Hegseth's drinking surface after his recent manic, disheveled appearances -- Donald Trump does not like being asked about the potential release of the Jeffrey Epstein files -- Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump's White House Press Secretary, hilariously says that Trump supporter Tim Pool is "unbiased" -- Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump's White House Press Secretary, tells numerous obvious lies once again on live television -- Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Secretary of Health and Human Services, is planning a registry of autistic people -- Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Secretary of Health and Human Services, says he has never seen an adult with "full blown autism" in a bizarre public event -- On the Bonus Show: 60 Minutes Executive Producer resigns over loss of independence, jury finds New York Times did not libel former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Supreme Court seems likely to allow religious families to opt out of LGBT storybooks, much more... 💼 Odoo: Try it completely FREE for 14 days (no credit card needed) at https://odoo.com/pakman ✏️ Outschool: Use code PAKMAN for up to $20 OFF at https://outschool.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🤢 Reliefband: Use code PAKMAN for 20% OFF + free shipping at https://reliefband.com 🤖 Sponsored by Venice: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off a Pro Account at https://venice.ai/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

Well, what a way to start the day. Tesla is collapsing with net income down 71 percent in the first quarter of 2025. And we now understand why Elon Musk is leaving Doge and going to at least attempt to get back to work. Tesla posted its first quarter 2025 earnings and it's an absolute bloodbath. Net income down 71 percent. Just brutal. Elon Musk chose to funnel resources into the Cybertruck, which looks sort of like what a 10 year old would design in Minecraft. And it is not going well. Total revenue missed expectations by nearly two billion dollars. And the kicker is that Tesla only technically turned a profit this quarter

because it sold nearly 600600 million of regulatory credit. So if you take that away, you realize that Tesla only made any money because it sold government favors its actual operating income. Just $399 million includes the credits. And we are to believe that this is a nearly trillion dollar company. I am so glad I got out when I did. And it gets even worse. Vehicle deliveries, which is sort of the primary activity that delivers value, generates value vehicle deliveries down 13 percent, the worst quarterly sales report in three years.

And there is one thing one man responsible for this. And that's Elon Musk. The guy spent the first quarter as the company was on the decline, working for Donald Trump's ridiculous Department of Government Efficiency, which mostly has targeted humanitarian programs and science posting authoritarian memes, attacking trans people, including his own daughter, flashing an arguably fascist salute at Donald Trump's inauguration. And who could have guessed that people might not want to buy a car from a guy who's doing this stuff? There's a growing

movement called Tesla takedown, where former fans, including progressives, are dumping their cars and boycotting the brand. And if you look at the used market for Tesla's falling off a cliff now, to be fair, right. I always try to be fair. Um, we are seeing a soft used market for electric vehicles in general. This is something that the EV space is going to have to contend with, but, uh, Tesla EVs in the used market, uh, depreciating even more quickly. And everything that I just told you about just gets us through March 31st. The numbers I gave you only account for Q1, which ended March 31st. Arguably, the stuff that's continued in April is even worse. And we don't even have those numbers. That's, of course, part of the

second quarter for Tesla, April, May, June. And we will get that data in July. But it's not looking good. So the big takeaway here is that after years of exponential growth, significant growth, maybe not always exponential, significant growth, Tesla is now in a free fall with regard to its primary revenue generating business justifying activity, which is delivering vehicles to people. And this is, you know, the right, which says they defend speech and all of this stuff. They are now saying, oh, this is so unfair what they're doing to Elon. This is a lesson in what happens when a brand gets hijacked by a megalomaniac CEO with a persecution complex, a bad Twitter habit and some unfortunate political alliances. This is speech. And if you are a defender of speech, as I am, all you can say is that this is how capitalism works.

This is how we have the consumer choices that people are allowed to make and say, here's what I want to support. Here's what I don't want to support. And of course, Elon Musk's Musk gets to say and do what he wants to do and what he believes. But consumers can also utilize their speech rights to say, I will speak out against the brand or I will peacefully protest at a Tesla showroom or I will not buy a vehicle. Now, of course, I do not support the burning down of the burning of vehicles, the burning of Tesla showrooms, violent. I don't support any of that stuff. But what I'm talking about is the speech rights, which include

organizing against the company that you don't like choosing not to do business with a company. All of these are values which the right claims to defend and support, except when it's Elon Musk and it becomes inconvenient. The proof is in the pudding and the numbers are a disaster. New alcohol concerns have exploded over Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's bizarre appearance on TV yesterday at the White House on Easter. And this has been an issue for a long time. As many of you know, Pete Hegseth promised that he wouldn't drink at all if he were made secretary of defense during the confirmation process. We start with his appearance yesterday morning on Fox and Friends, where he was sort of a combination of manic and moving weirdly. And just again, the sort of thing that gets people asking, is he drinking again and get

along to go along and, you know, start doing meet the press and and go into the Council on Foreign Relations and spending time with all the new cocktail sipping crowd? That's not why I'm here. I'm here because President Trump asked me to bring warfighting back to the Pentagon every single day. That is our focus. And the day before Pete Hegseth showed up at the White House with one sideburn, sort of like this prototypical.

Oh, what do you call it? It's sort of like two on the nose. You know, you watch a movie and there's a character that struggles with alcohol that only shaves half their face. And Pete Hegseth showed up to the White House on Monday with one sideburn raising concerns. This is not a joke. This is serious. I mean, this is serious enough that Pete Hegseth was asked about it during the confirmation process prior to not in the confirmation hearings, but in emails, in interviews rather prior to the confirmation hearings. And he

said, no, no, no, I will not. I have no issue with alcohol, but I promise I won't drink at all if I become secretary of defense in potentially one of the most consequential Freudian slips we've seen. Fox News is Brian Kilmeade accidentally introduces Pete Hegseth as the former secretary and then corrects him. But of course, this may simply be foreshadowing what we expect and need any day now. Here to set the record straight himself, the former secretary, the current secretary of state, Pete Hegseth, former host right here on Fox and Friends. That's right. Former Secretary Pete said that he may indeed be former secretary of state very soon, as

of course, NPR is now reporting that the chaos has led Trump to say it's time for him to go and Trump will publicly say that he stands behind Hegseth until his replacement is announced. And finally, more of this kind of pseudo manic behavior on Fox and Friends yesterday. Based in in reality. So, Mr. Secretary, I guess I can conclude this. We know some bizarre situation with Michael Waltz happened with the first time the whole thing with the signal app came out. You believe this came out. They said it was called Team Huddle because so one of the people who work for you, one of the three who no longer are there, leaked this out as a way to get back at you? That's right, Brian. When you dismiss people who you believe are leaking classified

information, and again, the investigation is ongoing and that will take time, and when the evidence produced it will go to DOJ, why would it surprise anybody, Brian, if those very same people keep leaking to the very same reporters, whatever information they think they can have? So case in point, a very unusual communication style for a sober secretary of defense. We don't know if the alcohol problem has resurfaced. What we do know is that the performance is a disaster. Numerous leaks and information sent to people who have no business, nor clearance, nor a reason to be involved receiving a bunch of this information. And every indication is that this guy is on the way out and that before we know it, we will be

hearing that he will resign because he has realized that he is becoming a distraction, not because he did anything wrong. It's all because of the deep state and people going after him. But in order to allow Donald Trump to continue succeeding on a world stage, he has decided to take himself out and stop being a distraction. That is where we are right now. I expect him to go very soon,

alcohol or not. This is not the guy you want in charge of the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, or any of the United States of America's foreign dealings. That's for sure. If you run a business, you know, managing multiple systems gets overwhelming. That's why there's Odoo, the all in one business management software. It simplifies your entire workflow, puts everything together in one easy to use platform. Our sponsor Odoo will seamlessly integrate all these different parts of your business, CRM and sales, accounting, inventory, manufacturing. Imagine effortlessly sending quotes, managing leads with predictive scoring, automating purchase orders, tracking real time inventory, all of it with an intuitive dashboard. Manufacturing becomes streamlined with Odoo's comprehensive production planning, scheduling tools, quality management features. You know,

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get up to $20 off your child's first class or tutoring session for a limited time. When you go to outschool.com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman that's outschool.com slash Pacman use code Pacman for up to $20 off. The info is in the podcast notes. The David Pacman show is of course an audience supported program. We are primarily funded by you. People who say I like this enough to support it. You can read more about membership and sign up at join Pacman dot com. We do a daily extra show for our members called The Bonus Show. We also provide commercial free audio and video streams of the show to our members and many other great member benefits Thank you so recall, Donald Trump has always been clearly hesitant to say he would release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

And of course, the speculation is the natural belief is that it is because of Donald Trump being on lists associated with Epstein flights and visits to his island, potentially that Trump has a self-preservation reason not to release the Epstein flights and visits to his island, potentially that Trump has a self-preservation reason not to release the Epstein files. Well, Trump was asked about it yesterday, sort of surprised by it. And he goes, oh, yeah, I don't know about that. Let me give you the answer before we hear from Trump. You're never going to see those files under Donald Trump. Here is Trump asked about it and how he responded. Mr. President, what do you say? Which documents? I don't know. I'll speak to the attorney general

about that. I really don't know. I know that we've done we've done the RFK, the Kennedy, Martin Luther King. He just doesn't know. it's out there very shortly. So we'll find out. But we've and we've we've really, really announced we're doing them in full transparency. You know, we did JFK. People would say, oh, maybe it wasn't all. It was all bad. We are never going to see those files. You can tell Donald Trump is in no hurry to release those. And I still find it funny that anybody thinks they're going to see them. You may recall when Donald Trump as candidate Trump did this interview with Fox and Friends. This was, by the way, not with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, but with Fox and Friends

morning host Pete Hegseth. Trump was asked again about those Epstein files. And as you can see, he goes, oh, the Epstein ones I'm not so sure about. Speaker 4 Would you declassify the 9 11 files? Yeah. Would you declassified JFK files? Yeah, I did. I did a lot of it. Would you declassify the Epstein files? Yeah. Yeah, I would. All right. I guess I would. I think that less so because, you know, you don't know it. You don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there because it's a lot

of phony stuff with that whole world. But I. Yes, those files would be phony and fake. And so Trump is a little bit less interested, a little bit less motivated in releasing those folks. You're not going to see him, probably because Trump is implicated in those files. All right. Trump then is asked about China and his completely ridiculous trade war tariff war. And Trump seems to acknowledge here that China has called his bluff and China has won because Trump says, well, we're not really going to keep these high tariffs on China.

Actually, everybody should note that Trump blinked. What a surprise. Secretary of State Secretary Justin suggested that the tariff rate is high as they are now. That could be an argument of trade. You see, I'm sure 145 percent is very high, and it won't be that high. It's not going to be that high. It got up to there. We were talking about fentanyl where, you know, various elements built it up to 145.

No, it won't be anywhere near that high. It'll come down substantially, but it won't be zero. It used to be zero. We were just destroyed. China was taking us for a ride and just not going to have it's not going to happen. We're going to be very good to China, have a great relationship with President Xi. But what a different sounding Trump all of a sudden they would make billions and billions and billions of dollars a year and they would build their military out of the United States and what they made. So that won't happen. But they're going to do very well.

And you know what this has now led to? As I am recording this right now, the Dow Jones industrial average is up over a thousand points. Trump blinked. All the tough talk has been replaced with no, no, the tariffs on China will come way down and we're going to get along great. And China hasn't done anything. China didn't even need to negotiate. They just waited for the tough talk to dissipate. And all of a sudden now, Trump realizing the the insanity of what he has done, is taking any step he can to try to resuscitate the stock market. And indeed, today, the Dow up a thousand points. Trump wildly claiming during the same event that the price of eggs is down 93 or 94 percent.

Now, some of you who are good at mental math will do some calculations and realize that doesn't sound quite right. But if you remember my first week, I was standing here, Paul, and they were screaming about eggs. The cost of eggs have gone through the roof. They were up like five hundred crazy, like four or five times. And we won't have eggs for Easter. They were saying, be no eggs. You can't have eggs for Easter, they were saying. Be no eggs. You can't order eggs. They wanted to sort of plastic in the shape of eggs.

Well, yesterday we had 48,000 people at the Easter hunt. They call it the Easter roll at the White House. And we had all eggs. And as you know, the cost of eggs has come down like ninety three, ninety four percent since we took office. And they're pretty much normally priced now. That's right. A dozen eggs is now 30 cents. Prices are down ninety four percent. Or alternatively, if you look at the current egg prices and you go, wait a second, that doesn't seem right. Maybe eggs were famously one hundred dollars a dozen when Trump took office and he has managed to reduce those prices. Ninety three or ninety four percent,

just pulling numbers out of his ass. No connection to reality whatsoever. And then finally, the second reason, in addition to Trump bending to China, that the stock market is up today, Trump clarified, I am not looking to fire the Fed chairman, Jay Powell. If you are trying to pacify markets, this is a great way to do it by saying I'm actually going to cave and not do that crazy thing I threatened to do. It's late. It's not good. I don't want to talk about that because I have no intention of firing. Mr. President, there are reports that you're considering doing something for moms across the country, giving them some type of bonus when they have a child. Are you considering that? Sounds like a good idea to me. Yeah, please.

You have no intention of firing your own child because here, a few days ago said that you and people in the audience are studying this idea of possibly getting a fourth term passed. Do you have any plans on doing that? Never whatsoever. Never did. The press runs away with things. Now, I have no intention of firing him. I would like to see him be a little more active in terms of his idea to lower interest rates. This is a perfect time to lower interest rates. It's a perfect time to lower interest rates. If he doesn't, is it the end? No, it's not. But it would be good timing. It would be it which could have taken place earlier. There you go. A very conciliatory Donald Trump working overtime

to save the stock market. And he got to hand it to him. Caving to China and caving on getting rid of Powell now points to the Dow up. It's gone up another 100 points since I started recording this segment. Now, nearly 1100 points. Trump realizing, I guess, where his bread is buttered. And what a shock, huh? What a shock to all of us. But at least eggs are down 94 percent. That's a great miracle that he has been able to accomplish. Hey, this is really funny. The Trump White House

press briefing room has started to bring in someone different each day to the new media seat. And yesterday it was Tim Pool, a pro Trump influencer who overtly said, I support Trump. I voted for Trump. This is not, you know, the equivalent of an Associated Press or Reuters reporter. This is an overtly pro Trump influencer. They bring Tim Pool into the White House. Caroline Leavitt calls him unbiased. And then he asks the most pathetic non-question. He asks the sort of question

you ask if you want to get invited back. This is the question where you are on your knees begging for continued access. So let's take a look at the whole exchange. Many of these organizations that are represented in this room have Martin lot step on false narratives such as the very fine people hoax, the Covington smear, and now what's being called the Maryland Man hoax, where an MS-13 gang member adjudicated by two different judges, I believe, is just simply being referred to as a Maryland man over and over again. Now, in an effort from the White House to expand access to new companies, you've created this new media seat.

So I'm wondering if you can comment on following this expansion. You've had numerous outlets to disparage the. What a question that you've had sit here as well as the reporters. I'm wondering if you comment on the unprofessional behavior as well as elaborate if there's any plans to expand access to new companies. So we're going to hear Caroline Levitt's answer in a moment, which includes calling Tim unbiased. But this this is not a real question. OK, this is what you say to suck up to someone to say thank you because you allowed me to be in here.

And I have to mention also, given all of the hubbub around how people are dressing when they go to the White House, how is Tim wearing a hoodie and a beanie in a press briefing? And it's not considered disrespectful. Like if we're still going through the motions of pretending we care about decorum, which the right is doing, what the hell is going on here? All right. So here after that completely farcical question, listen to how Caroline Leavitt response. Sure.

Well, we certainly welcome a diverse viewpoints in this room, which is one of the reasons we have you in here. And there's many new faces in this room in comparison to the previous administrations. We want to welcome all viewpoints into this room. We welcome unbiased journalists who really care about the truth and the facts and the accuracy and you unbiased rightfully pointed out the Maryland man story, which I from this podium when the Atlantic published, she can tell how unbiased him is by the way he framed up the story about the deported migrant who the Supreme Court said should not have been deported. On that very first day, I came to this podium

and said, this is wrong. The press in this room have this story wrong. And we have seen more and more evidence come to the table that we have had all along. We were always right. The president was always on the right side of this issue to deport this illegal criminal from our community. And it is despicable to see the media continue to refer to this individual as someone who is just a peaceful man living his life in Maryland. This was and always has been an illegal criminal, an MS-13 gang member, and a designated foreign terrorist. And the administration maintains our position to deport these individuals from our community. So thank you for really great, great journalism.

Being here, Tim, it's great to see you. It's so good. So there it is. Unbiased reporter Tim Pool asking a fair question. Certainly one way to spin it. But we actually have a lot more serious stuff to discuss from yesterday's press briefing. Let's talk about that. Caroline Leavitt dropped a disgusting bomb.

I mean, truly putrid stuff during yesterday's press briefing. She was asked, do you have any actual justification for suggesting that the reason Pete Hegseth is potentially in trouble is because the entire Pentagon has turned against him in a concerted effort to rid themselves of him as secretary of defense? Do you have anything that you can say to justify that? She doesn't. She doesn't. I have two questions, one on the Pentagon and another on the economy. You said on on Fox News that the entire Pentagon is working against Secretary Hexeth. But the people who were fired were Hexeth's own guy. So how do you square that? And what do you say to concerns that that's bad management? They were Pentagon employees who leaked against

their boss to news agencies in this room. And it's been clear since day one from this administration that we are not going to tolerate individuals who leak to the mainstream media, particularly when it comes to sensitive information. And the Secretary of Defense is doing a tremendous job. And he is bringing monumental change to the Pentagon. And there's a lot of people in this city who reject monumental change. And I think, frankly, that's why we've seen a smear campaign against the Secretary of Defense since the moment that President Trump announced his nomination before the United States Senate.

Let me reiterate, the president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth in the. Of course, and he will stand strongly behind him until he stands behind him in order to give him a kick in the ass out of the Department of Defense, which is likely going to happen soon. So, of course, no actual evidence. And then were these staffers fired or did they quit? Confusion with regard to that as well. They then get to the topic of the Fed and Fed Chairman Jay Powell.

Caroline Leavitt insists that Jay Powell is acting in a political manner rather than doing what is right for the American economy. Powell, of course, has insisted he is not going to be influenced by political actors and he is going to do what he believes is best for the American economy. Meanwhile, remember that Donald Trump totally backtracked yesterday on firing Jay Powell and said, oh no, no, no, it's never something I was thinking of. But listen to the rhetoric from Levitt about Jay Powell here. I'll have to ask him and I'll get back to you, Phil.

You're welcome, John. Thanks a lot, Caroline. I have some economic questions for you. Kevin Hassett has been a key economic advisor to the president in both of his terms in 2020. And he still is. And he still is. He was just in my office. Absolutely. In 2022, he said that the independence of the Fed is super important. That's a direct quote. Is that something that the president subscribes to? Does he still believe in the independence of the Federal Reserve? Look, I think the president has made his position on the Fed and on Powell quite clear. The president believes that they have been making moves and taking action in the name of politics, rather

in the name of what's right for the American economy. The president has the right to express his displeasure with the Fed, and he has the right to say he believes interest rates should be lower. He believes Americans should be able to borrow money cheaper than they currently are right now. And I also spoke to Kevin Hassett about the Fed as well. And he has called into question the Fed's independence and whether they are actually doing things again out of the best interest of the economy or are they doing it for partisan

reasons. The president wants to see interest rates lower. He has made that quite clear. We've also seen if I may understand that Trump wants interest rates lower for political reasons. And what Jay Powell has said is he's not going to move interest rates around for political reasons that the Fed as an independent agency will use economic metrics, not the desires of the president of the United States to determine when interest rates need to move.

Now we can all have opinions about what the federal funds rate should be. Some of our opinions may be more versus less informed. Sure. But this is overtly a contradiction when she is saying that Trump has expressed that he wants interest rates to be lower. That is the position of a political actor for political reasons. Jay Powell is not going to use that to determine what the federal funds rate should be. And of course, Trump realizing that this was not helping the stock market. And so that's why yesterday he backed off of the idea that he would be potentially firing Jay Powell. Now, finally, Caroline Leavitt was asked,

people have been getting warned in other countries about traveling to the United States. Do you have a message for those people who may not travel to the United States as a result of this? And you'll notice she doesn't actually answer. And she just says the U.S. is an awesome place to do business. Go ahead. Yes, I'm calling on you. You're welcome. The last few weeks, several countries have warned their citizens about travel to the US and the Department of Commerce's own stats know that from a lot of show that from a lot of countries, the number of visitors is falling.

Is the way about any message for people that might be reconsidering business or tourism travel to the U.S.? Where did you see that report? It's coming from the Department of Commerce. Said what? It's hard to hear you. Sorry. That visitors from a lot of countries have fallen in the last three months. I'd have to look at that report to comment on the merits of it. I think most people around the world recognize the United States of America is a great place to do business.

It's a beautiful place to visit and they should certainly come here because it's a much safer country than it was four years ago under the previous president. Of course, not an answer, not an answer. It's a great place to do business is not an answer to there are countries warning citizens not to come here for their own safety. What do you say? A more reassuring response would have been those citizens have no reason to be concerned whatsoever, none whatsoever. But of course, she answers about something else. How long are these press briefings sustainable? You know, from the point of view of the White House, I think quite a long time because her performance is certainly good in the using the rubric that Trump uses to evaluate how these are, which is she doesn't

really directly answer questions. She always defends Trump, et cetera. From the point of view of the reporters, I don't even know why they bother asking questions at this point, because you're simply not going to get a substantive answer. 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.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 sources, political bias, and give me other reports on the same story so I can verify the information. My viewers get 40% off

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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. It's great to welcome to the program today, Ned Lamont, the governor of Connecticut, uh, governor. It's so great to have you on. You know, my audience knows I really like talking to governors because you are administrators in a way that our friends in the House and Senate in Washington, D.C., simply are not. It's a different role. It's a different job. And so where I want to start with you today is when you as governor are dealing with the on and off tariffs and the market instability and

the things we are seeing from the Trump administration, what are the kind of nuts and bolts of the issues that trickle down to you as the governor of a state related to that, that you are contending with? Hey, David, great to see you. Yeah, you're right. Governor's a different role. If you're a senator, every day you could do this to Donald Trump. And if you're a Democrat, because you think he's fundamentally compromising core values in the Constitution. If you're an attorney general, you sue him every day because you want to make sure that they stop cutting funding for kids in need. If you're a governor, you're in a slightly different role, you know, trying to find places where we can agree and more likely where we don't

agree, but not necessarily fighting all the time. You know, I work pretty closely with red state governors. And I say, for example, I'll get to tariffs, but I'll say, you know, when it comes to Medicaid, you guys are going to get hit even harder than Connecticut is because you have more rural hospitals. Let's work on this together to see what we can do to save, you know, health care for those folks. You know, tariffs for me, if I look at it through my Connecticut lens, it's a it's a tax on people. It's a six letter word for tax. I just came from a food bank where pineapples imported from Costa Rica are going to cost 20 percent more, unless Donald Trump changes his mind again. And that uncertainty is really tough for a governor and not too easy for business folks trying to figure out whether to invest or not. things that some fellow Democrats in Connecticut have proposed to offset the federal government cuts in places like health care, education, child care is to increase state spending to offset that

to keep level funding for some of these programs. The sort of more deficit hawk type folks are, of course, concerned about the sustainability of that financially. Talk to me about how you're thinking through those cuts and what you can do at the state level and whether the debt aspect of it is a concern. Oh, thank you. It's a concern. And let's say I get a third of my budget is paid for by the federal government. Let's say I have 7,000 employees, including at the Veterans Hospital, who are subsidized or paid for by the federal government. We got, say, $6 billion of Medicaid alone is paid for by the federal government. So look, there's no way that we, the state taxpayers of the state, can make up for that shortfall.

You know, some of my fellow governors are pretty tough. They're saying, we can't make up any of that shortfall. We don't want to get into a battle of this is necessary, this is less necessary. You know, I've tried to say, look, we're going to do everything we can to protect the most vulnerable. We've got the ability to do that. And that's what we're going to do, comma. There's no way I can make up that entire shortfall. We're going to have to find some alternatives. Speaker 1 When it comes to immigration, I had Governor Hochul on the program about a month ago, and she said, I'm paraphrasing here that she will really direct police and law enforcement to cooperate with this mass deportation scheme only to the

extent required by law and not any further than that. Within 48 hours of her statement on the show about that, the Trump official Twitter rapid response account clipped that and said, look at what this irresponsible governor is doing. She wants undocumented this and criminal that. So it was completely kind of spun around. I want to hear about your philosophy when it comes to the immigration policy of this administration. Connecticut is considered a quote sanctuary state.

What are you doing with regard to cooperation or lack thereof with federal immigration authorities? There's a misnomer out there that undocumented criminals are walking around the streets and that's just BS. We are very strict in terms of getting anybody dangerous off the street, criminals off the street, those who have committed felonies off the street. And maybe like Kathy Hochul said, you know, we work with federal, be it, you know, DEA or ICE, whoever it might be when it comes to those criminals. That said, my law enforcement, the New Haven police, don't ask the immigration status of people who commit low-level crimes, you know, be that speeding or jaywalking or even shoplifting. That's just not what we do.

So I'm not saying, hell no, we don't work with you. I'm just saying, we don't work with you because we are doing our job and you do your job. And I think I'm very careful about this. I really care deeply about the fact that a lot of our kids now, Hispanic kids, trans kids, just don't feel comfortable going to school. I want Connecticut to be a safe haven. I want our schools to be a safe haven for these kids. And I really worry about all this talk about mass deportations and the agents going to our schools. That's bad. We're not going to stand for that. Are you getting pressure from the from the federal administration that they're not pleased with the way that you're handling this? No, I haven't gotten that. But look, they asked us to issue was sign an affidavit that said, if you don't get rid of all references to DEI in your K through 12 education, we're going to cut all your funding.

And we said, look, we're honoring federal laws. It goes to Title VI. We don't have to sign an affidavit necessarily. We have FEMA. They provide a lot of emergency relief for us. And they've gone to our Connecticut Guard and they said, if you don't do this, that, the other thing as regards immigrants, we could cut off all your federal funding for emergency response. It's just insane. A lot of our FEMA funding goes to things like cybersecurity. That doesn't just protect Connecticut. That protects America. So it's a complicated situation, David.

What's your instinct as to the so-called real purpose behind the DEI related push? Remove all of these guidelines, don't have these programs, because it's hard for me to imagine that Donald Trump on a personal level is really that hell bent on not protecting certain groups or like I'm trying to figure out as an administrator what you're inferring as to the real goal of this? Is it to virtue signal to people who funded his campaign? Is it because they'd rather see the money allocated differently for political gain or what do you make of that? I think he confuses affirmative actual quotas. Folks going out and I work my heart out to get more teachers, more male teachers, more teachers of color.

When it comes to recruiting for state government, I go to every community in the state, regardless of background. I say we can provide some of the training you need. We want you involved here. I'm not saying no. I'm not favoring one group over another. But the outreach is very important. I tend to think that Washington and the Trump administration thinks about GIs quotas and that scares people. I want to talk to you a little bit about blame and governors, because if I kind of point

us back to 2010 and the Affordable Care Act, we had this incredible situation where Obamacare was passed. And one of the aspects of that was that governors could decide to or not to do the so-called Medicaid expansion. Red state governors disproportionately didn't do that expansion. And one of the things that ended up happening in the 2012 election was that many voters in red states said, I heard about Obamacare and nothing happened in my state. I blame Obama. And of course, the real blame was with the administrator of their state, the governor

that said, we aren't going to do that expansion. This is more a political question than a practical question because it comes to do with framing and optics. But do you face those same sorts of situations today where there are circumstances that are a result of federal policy, but that you as the governor of Connecticut, in a sense, the buck stops with you with regard to who is going to get blamed. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. regard to who is going to get blamed. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, the by the way, J.D. Vance told me that Donald Trump saved Obamacare. I heard him tell that. So remember that when you're talking about making all these cuts to Obamacare and expanded Medicaid. Look, my job is to fight for my state in any way I can, fight for those that are most disadvantaged. We did expanded Medicaid. We got more of our people insured than just about any state in the country. We did. That keeps us safer, less measles, less COVID as time went on. It works and it makes a difference. To your bigger question, you've got to show people that these initiatives are not just words, that they make a difference in people's lives. And I think that was part of what we learned in the last election. I mean, whatever you think about Joe Biden, I think the infrastructure bill he got through is probably

one of the most important things that passed since I've been around. I've been around a long time. We have old infrastructure in this state. We're speeding up rail. We're speeding up roads. We're putting people to work. We've got to do a better job of saying these initiatives are making a difference in your lives. I think to your point, some people just didn't see it or feel it. What are some of the specific things in Connecticut with regard to infrastructure that maybe our audience, you know, in Texas, which has its own set of circumstances or Oregon or whatever, what what sort of specific to Connecticut infrastructure right now that's important and needs to be funded and improved?

That our rail from New Haven to New York was 15 minutes faster 50 years ago, 60 years ago. And now we are speeding it up again. And I'll be able to get you from New Haven to New York in the same amount of time as it takes to get from New London to New York. We're really speeding things up. We're a state that makes a big difference. More time at home with your family in the morning. Easier to get to work.

Less time sitting on a road. What that means in terms of the environment, getting you out of cars. These are the type of things that make a difference. They don't happen overnight, but I think people are already beginning to feel it. You know, we've taken 10 minutes off that commute already. People notice that. Why has it slowed down 15 minutes over a period of decades when you would imagine it should be getting faster, not slower? Yeah, great question. We got these old bridges. They're built by, you know, William McKinley, Donald Trump's favorite president. They go back 120 years. We got to slow down as you go over those old signalization. So the trains slow down on their way into a station station then speed up again

just straightening out the tracks so you can go a little faster look we're not china so that you know shanghai to beijing they just those tracks go straight and they go 200 miles an hour yeah we'll never be that because we're a democracy and sometimes have to go around mrs o gillicuddy's home but that said we can still take 10 or 15 minutes off your commute. That's what we're doing. Governor, last thing I want to ask you about at the national level, a lot of the feedback I get from my audience is I don't see Democrats having a real clear and coherent vision. I know I don't like Trump, but the reason to vote for Democrats in the 2026 midterms is a

little blurrier. I'm not sure exactly what Democrats stand for. I understand Trump's bad, but why should I vote for you? Can you talk a little bit about how much does the national concern after everything was lost in November affect you and Democrats in Connecticut? And are you as a governor operating in a in a different political environment than that? Or are you also dealing with some of that same discontent? I hear that discontent all the time, but the choice is clear. I mean, he wants to have a significant tax cut for millionaires and billionaires and pay for it by taking away health care for your grandmother at the nursing home or your daughter who's about to have a baby in regards to Medicaid, cutting back on Obamacare,

like we said. I think that Democrats have got to do a better job of saying how they're fighting for you every day. He's fighting for they them were fighting for you. In other words, the Trump is bad. You agree it's not enough. There needs to be a positive vision that's put forward. Look, the world is a lot less safe than it was before. We're better with our allies. He's pushing away our allies.

He's treating our allies like enemies. Look, we just lost two trillion dollars of, you know, market cap. That means your 401k is weaker and you're not as wealthy as you were just, you know, three weeks ago. Elizabeth Warren, you know, she wants to have a wealth tax. That's one percent a year for 15 years. They did that in 15 days. So I think we can make a pretty strong case that they're not helping the big middle class in this state and in this country. And Democrats are getting on our high horse and ready to go. All right. We are going to follow and see whether that holds

through over these next couple of election cycles. Governor Ned Lamont of Connecticut, really appreciate your time and your insights today. Nice to see you, David. Thanks. All right. So we all know Alexa listens to us, recommends products based on our conversations. Meta retargets us based on our browsing and engagement history. Have you wondered what chat GPT and Claude are up to with your conversations? We feed so much of our information to these AI chatbots,

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plan because I get upgraded features like uploading files, unlimited text prompts. Check it out. If you want to use AI without censorship or fear of handing over your most intimate thoughts to a corporation or the government, go to Venice dot AI slash Pacman and use code Pacman to get 20% off their pro plan. That's Venice dot AI slash slash Pacman get 20 percent off with code Pacman. The info is in the podcast notes. All right, so this just happened and no, it is not a conspiracy theory. It is real and it is happening. The Trump administration is creating a government run autism registry, a database of autistic people in the United States

using private medical records, wearable devices, pharmacy data, and more. And take a guess who is behind it. Donald Trump's secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Yes, the anti-vaxxer who thinks that he's going to cure autism very soon. According to NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, also kind of a vaccine skeptical crank, the government is going to start scraping private medical data from pharmacies, from insurance companies, from labs, from the VA, even potentially from smartwatches and other wearable devices to build this sort of registry. They're going to pull genomics records. They're going to pull Medicaid data, prescription history to feed this beast of an autism registry. A few handpicked researchers will get access.

They can study your data, but don't worry, they can look at it, but they can't download it. Very reassuring, isn't it? This is of course, medical surveillance of a vulnerable population. No one voted for this. No one asked for this. No one with an ounce of scientific integrity thinks that this is going to end well. And of course, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has claimed

on the record that autism is preventable. He's floated the idea of curing it. And he is, of course, trying to resurrect the debunked autism vaccine link, which has been thoroughly disproven for over a decade based on the now retracted quote study from Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who has also lost his medical license and had a financial interest in a measles only vaccine as an alternative to the MMR vaccine. But RFK now has the power of the federal government behind him. The CDC under Kennedy is investigating the link between vaccines and autism again in 2025 and we all know what's going to come next. They are going to say, Hey, look, autism diagnoses are going down. Now it won't be because autism is actually declining, but it will be because terrified parents stop having their kids

tested, fearing government retaliation, insurance discrimination, and all of the rest because of this database that has been built, built RFK Jr. And Trump will claim victory. They'll say, look, we did some stuff and autism is going down just like we said. And then they will give the credit to removing vaccine requirements. So this is the formula. We've seen this formula many times before. You manufacture a crisis. You credit yourself for the solution after making it impossible for anyone to seek help. And of course, this is not about actually helping autistic people.

This is about tracking them, branding them, building a narrative. And the kicker is that it sets a precedent because if they can do this with autism, what stops them from creating registries for other conditions that are politically inconvenient? Depression, ADHD, gender identity. RFK Jr. is a guy who can't seem to grasp that arise in diagnoses might simply be better diagnostic tools. And we have many examples of this in medical history. For example, when mammograms were introduced and made standard of care, breast cancer diagnoses went up. That didn't mean that breast cancer suddenly appeared. It meant that we got better at finding it and finding it earlier and finding it with more precision. They are building the autism registry with your private health data, and they're going

to use the impact of people hearing that the registry exists to claim that they're actually doing something medically. And of course it's happening under the same president who is floating the deportation of American citizens to El Salvador and all of the other authoritarian stuff. The zoom out big picture is that the authoritarianism is palpable here and we're seeing it now push into the sort of area of medical surveillance and the guy doing it couldn't possibly be less qualified. Speaking of RFK and autism, he now has made the wild claim that he has never seen an adult with what he is describing as full blown autism, meaning nonverbal and not toilet trained. That's his word, not mine. Take a listen to RFK

dispensing this invaluable wisdom to Sean Hannity on Fox News this week. Speaker 4 Anybody with common sense, Sean, would notice that because the autism, this epidemic is only happening in our children. It's not happening in people our age. Speaker 5 There was better recognition. You'd see it in 70 year old men. And I'll say this. I want to be very careful when I say it, because I've never seen a person with full blown autism. I've seen many people with Asperger's and, you know, on the spectrum who are my age. I've never seen anybody with full blown autism. That means nonverbal, non-toilet trained. You don't see these people walking around a mall because they don't exist in our age.

And they're very, very rare. They do exist, but they're so rare that I've never seen one. There you go. This if I said to you, you know, Bobby, I never see quadriplegics at the gym. Would you say, well, they must not exist then because I don't see them at the gym. I think you get a little bit of the idea as to how ignorant, dangerous and flat out wrong this is. You know, it's like, gee, Bobby, I wonder why you don't see 70 year old nonverbal people who can't use the bathroom by themselves walking around the mall.

What a mystery. Adults with severe autism often live in care homes. They often are at an age, 70 year olds, where their parents, who are often the primary caretakers for much of their lives, are no longer around. So the adults with severe autism that he's suggesting don't exist are living in support facilities or they are with caregivers. Many have lower life expectancy. They're not out, you know, mainlining beef tallow at a fast food restaurant with RFK Jr.

Doesn't mean they don't exist. Means you're looking in the wrong places. Go to a care facility. Talk to a specialist. Walk into any autism support center in the country. RFK seems to think that the lack of severely disabled autistic adults in his personal bubble is proof that they don't exist.

It's not just ignorant, it's vile. And and by the way, even he admits that he's met people on the spectrum. Cool. Well, then, so what's your point? Because when people talk about the rise in autism diagnoses, they're not talking about exclusively severe cases being created out of thin air. What we're talking about is broader and better diagnostic tools. So girls, for example, are sometimes more difficult to diagnose with autism because it presents differently.

Adults, anybody who's high functioning and it sort of evaded the diagnosis for a long time. People with ADHD like symptoms, but it's not actually ADHD. It's sort of sort of lower on the spectrum autism. That's most of the growth. It's not this secret wave of completely incapacitated people. The number of infantile or severely disabling autism cases is basically flat. The rise is improved screening and expanded definition. And the same guy that's parroting the vaccines cause autism stuff for years now is actually confused about the data that his own lies help to distort. Think about that. The vaccine. That's not super clear. Let me explain it. The vaccine autism link has been debunked by decades of studies,

but incomes, Bobby Kennedy jr. Using the absence of severely disabled adults at his dinner parties as evidence of what exactly if he's going to lead a health agency, he should start by learning how autism actually works. And bonus clip. He also seems confused about ADHD, Tourette's syndrome, narcolepsy and other conditions, all of which he is now calling injuries. And and these are a broad category, the ones that Marty mentioned, like ADHD, neurological disorders, ADD, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, ticks to Rett syndrome, narcolepsy, ASD, autism.

All of these are injuries that I never heard of when I was a kid. They were not part of the nomenclature. They weren't part of the dialogue. Yes. Many were simply not well understood at that time. He's 70 years old. Sixty five years ago when he was a kid, medicine was different. That's true.

There was zero spent in this country treating chronic disease. When my uncle was president today, it's about one point eight trillion dollars annually is bankrupting our nation. And think about how stupid such a statement is. He's comparing the raw dollars spent on conditions that we are only more recently getting better at diagnosing. He's comparing it without inflation adjusted numbers. He's comparing it to a time when there were fewer people living in the United States and

he's comparing it to a time when a lot of these conditions were not as well understood of what value is it to say $1.8 trillion. It's just a big number meant to confuse. It doesn't account for anything, anything at all. Seventy four percent of American kids cannot qualify for military service. Oh, how are we going to maintain our global leadership with such a sick population? We have all these autoimmune disease, these exotic diseases. And again, I never heard of juvenile diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Crohn's disease and a hundred others. So listen, he's mixing a bunch of stuff. And usually there is

like a kernel of truth with a lot of these things. Some of what he's mentioning is lifestyle related. And we've got to deal with that. We have millions and millions of Americans living increasingly sedentary, unhealthy lifestyles and feeding themselves highly processed food all the time. That's a problem. There's no question about it. Starting to go into calling these conditions injuries and saying nobody had these 65 years ago when I was a kid, that's not science, that's propaganda. And it's hard to think of someone worse to be in this position. Truly tragic stuff on the bonus show today. A 60 Minutes executive producer has resigned, citing a loss of independence in the aftermath of a Trump lawsuit.

It's getting bad over there. A jury has found that the New York Times did not libel former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. And finally, the Supreme Court seems likely to allow religious families to opt out when there are LGBT themed stories in school. What is their potential justification? What will the impact be? Is there a slippery slope here? All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com. Remember that my book, The Echo Machine, now a multi-week New York Times bestseller, is available everywhere that books are sold. We are pushing slowly towards a thousand Amazon reviews. We are at nine sixty one.

If you've gotten the book, please review it. Help us get there. And finally, make sure that you are getting our newsletter. You can go to David Pakman dot com to sign up. You can email info at David Pakman dot com and say, David, get me that newsletter. Or you can go to David Pakman dot substack dot com. See you on the bonus show.