The David Pakman Show - 6/17/25: Iran conflict rapidly escalating, Trump suffers G7 humiliation

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

-- On the Show: — Trump, the self-proclaimed anti-war president, warns Iranian civilians to evacuate Tehran—after blowing up the nuclear deal, igniting the region, and flirting with a catastrophic new war — Trump crashes the G7 summit in a bizarre, humiliating display—ranting about Putin, dropping papers, and confusing basic facts while world leaders look on in disbelief — Trump explodes at Pete Hegseth after his sad birthday military parade falls flat, then melts down as his team blames a biographer’s “peanut-sized brain” for leaking the truth — In the middle of the night, Trump spirals online with unhinged rants about Iran, France, and Tucker Carlson—while the world braces for conflict and the White House denies peace talks — California Governor Gavin Newsom shuts down a Republican congressman with one brutal stat: California’s homicide rate is lower than the red states screaming the loudest about “crime” — Asked basic questions about the crisis he’s causing, Trump stumbles through gibberish, denies reality, and confirms he has no idea what he’s doing—or what he wants — Tucker Carlson admits Fox News is a propaganda network—but conveniently forgets he was one of its top liars, now torching the house he helped build — Fox News abruptly cuts away from a drunken propagandist Rebekah Koffler mid-interview, as her slurred rant about Trump’s military parade collapses on live TV -- On the Bonus Show: California may ban masks for ICE agents, Trump sells a sketchy $499 smartphone, and Mike Lindell loses another $2.3 million defamation case, much more... 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free baked goods at https://wildgrain.com/pakman 🐟 Wild Alaskan Company: Get $35 OFF with code PAKMAN at https://wildalaskan.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 💼 Odoo: Try it completely FREE for 14 days (no credit card needed) at https://odoo.com/pakman 🥦 Lumen lets you master your metabolism. GET 15% OFF at https://lumen.me/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com/ -- 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. You know, if someone were to come to me and say, hey, David, are you anti war or pro war as a general concept? Of course, it's a very abstract question, but I would consider myself antiwar in the sense that my instinct, my preference is to see diplomacy as a much better option than war and to see war as an only when necessary sort of thing. Now, Donald Trump swore up and down that he was the antiwar candidate. He said this in 2016. He said thiswar candidate. He said this in 2016.

He said this in 2020. He said this in 2024. He said he would easily stop and prevent and get us out of if it started World War Three. He's the peace president, the guy who said Obama would bomb Iran simply to save face. And that is the very same Donald Trump now ordering Iranian civilians to evacuate Tehran. It's not a typo. It's not a joke. It's the president of the United States warning a foreign capital that the military might be coming and very hard.

Now, of course, the context here is that over the weekend, Israeli warplanes struck inside of Iran. And this triggered a very deadly exchange between Iran and Israel. Hundreds of missiles fired, some striking near American diplomatic zones in Israel, Israel doubling down. And the question is, where is Trump going to land on this whole thing? And Trump is now sort of generating his own Tom Clancy reboot, flying back from the G7 summit, issuing pretty thinly veiled threats and urging Iran to surrender. But I do think it's important to remember the context. And this is the guy who once tweeted a bunch of

stuff about what Obama was going to do to Iran simply to boost his poll numbers. We'll get to that. But I want to first remind you, this is a nice little montage from Patriot takes on X. Some of the times, some of the times that Trump told us he's the guy who will prevent World War Three. He's the real antiwar candidate. Speaking of World War Three, I'll keep you out of World War Three. What would happen if we had a war? We won't with me, but you will have World War Three, I believe, without me. But we won't have.

I will be sure that World War Three will not happen. I'm the only one can say it won't have. I will be sure that World War Three will not happen. I'm the only one can say it won't happen. But I stand here today and I'm the only candidate who can make this promise. I will prevent and very easily World War Three very easily. And there you have it. Now, relevant prior tweets, as there often are with Donald Trump, just a few from when Barack Obama was president. Donald Trump tweeting now that Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin, watch for him to

launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate. Trump previously tweeting, quote, I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face. Donald Trump, while Obama was president, tweeting, quote, Remember what I previously said? Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is. Obama. Right now.

Back then, Trump was accusing Obama of being a warmonger. And now all of a sudden, Trump finds himself knee deep in this Israeli military campaign, saying he might have to take necessary action, moving American assets into the region, daring Iran to come back to the negotiating table with a fist raised rather than a hand extended. And the kicker here is this entire firestorm really started when Trump tore up the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. Obama's deal, not a perfect deal, but at the point that Trump ripped it up, it had been an effective deal. It was keeping as far as all the evidence shows. It was keeping Iran's nuclear ambitions in check.

Now, there are broader conversations to have, like, for example, who is anyone to tell Iran that it can't have nuclear weapons when other countries do? OK, that's a question. That's a question on which reasonable people can debate and argue and make different points and come down on different sides. Or what about should it be countries that do or don't have nuclear weapons that get to decide these are all fair questions. But understand that as far as the evidence, not the bluster we were hearing, oh, they're they're giving they're they're developing nuclear weapons even though they signed the

deal. Well, we didn't have evidence of that at the time. What we know is that Trump got out of the deal because he didn't like it because he didn't like that Obama's name was on it. Trump said he would get a better deal. Instead, we got nothing. And of course, Iran did the obvious, predictable, logical thing. I said it the day Trump ripped up the deal, go back to my videos from that that era and

check it out. The the logical thing, whether you do a game theory analysis or however you want to slice and dice it. Of course, when Trump unilaterally rips up a deal that Iran had not violated, Iran will go back to nuclear work. And this has now led after a bunch of claims, promises and statements from Trump over many years to missiles flying once again.

So we have Trump, the so-called peace president, pouring gasoline on a powder keg. So we're not seeing restraint. We're certainly not seeing diplomacy. It's the sort of nonsensical foreign policy that Trump claims that he is against. And it's wrapped up in, you know, stars and stripes, sort of stuff. So there's a desperation here. Wall Street is rattled. Oil markets aren't thrilled.

As we speak right now, Oil is where is oil? I can't find it. I should have had it ready. I don't know where oil is. Not that oil is the number one thing. It's really just a proxy to understand the expectations about certainty versus uncertainty. And so then we go to Capitol Hill and then you even have some Republicans saying war powers resolution.

They're talking about that. So what happened to Donald Trump's big antiwar energy? Well, he never really meant it, much as I've been telling you now for a decade. All of the positions that Donald Trump and MAGA have staked out are born out of convenience and out of what can I use to pull myself one rung higher to the promised land of winning an election? I'm anti war until I'm not right. I'm against government intervention and businesses until intervention is convenient.

And so what we're left with is a president who once was warning about wag the dog type politics. And he's now starring in the sequel of sorts. Warn about Iran, tear up Obama's legacy, start a war to distract from disaster at home. It's all on the table now. And it's important to understand that Trump built this sort of highway right back into this situation. And if this does spin into a wider war, we've just got to remember the tweets, remember the bragging, remember the irony, remember the promises, because Trump so far doesn't

seem like the guy to stop, quote, World War Three. And he might be writing the first chapter in the book World War Three. And that that's where we are as far as the deal that is no deal. But we've got to also talk about what happened at the G7. Imagine a guy crashes a high level diplomatic summit face like an orange creamsicle holding blank papers, yelling about tariffs and saying Vladimir Putin will only talk to him. You might think it's a bad episode of a political TV show, but it's the actual president of the United States at the G7 yesterday. Now, of course, it's no surprise that Trump's behavior was embarrassing to himself.

But my concern really is that it's humiliating to the United States. So here is Donald Trump explaining how Putin will only talk to Trump because he's so offended that he was thrown out of the G8 by Justin Trudeau. Little bit of a problem with that, which is it did not happen under Justin Trudeau's watch. Take a listen. The biggest economy in the world after the United States. Well, it's not a bad idea. I don't mind that if somebody wants to suggest China coming in, I think we suggest.

But you want to have people that you can talk to. You know, they they don't talk. Putin speaks to me. He doesn't speak to anybody else. He doesn't want to talk because he was very insulted when he got thrown out of the GA as I would be as you would be as anybody would be he was very insulted and I mean he was thrown out by Trudeau who convinced one or two people along with Obama he was thrown out and he's not a happy person about it. I can tell you that only one little problem with this, just a teeny tiny problem. Russia was booted in 2014 for invading Crimea.

Trudeau was not even the prime minister. It was Stephen Harper. These are facts that are very easy to look up unless you're sort of too busy scribbling your name with big Sharpies on blank sheets of paper and calling it a trade deal, which is part of what Donald Trump did at this completely humiliating appearance. Now, Donald Trump then was standing with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. And again, he sort of waxes poetic about when the G7 was the G8. But Trudeau didn't like it.

And he sort of pulls in Russia, Ukraine into this. It's never clear what he understands or how much of this is just let me say words I recognize in English. Marco Rubio standing there maybe is the most irrelevant and impotent secretary of state and American history together very well. I look forward to that. standing there maybe as the most irrelevant and impotent secretary of state in American history together very well. I look forward to that. The G7 used to be the G8 Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn't want to have

Russia in. And I would say that that was a mistake because I think you would never war right now if you had Russia in and you would never war right now if Trump were president four years ago. But it didn't work out that way. But it used to be the G8. And now it's, I guess, what's that, nine years ago? Eight years ago, it switched over. They threw Russia out, which I claimed was a very big

mistake, even though I wasn't in politics then. I was very loud about it. It was a mistake in that you spend so much time talking about Russia,. He's no longer at the table. So it makes life more complicated. But there's an idea instead of blaming the attacker for the attack, you blame Justin Trudeau for kicking Russia out of the G8, even though that happened when Stephen Harper was the prime minister of Canada. What do you think, guys? Is this is this showing us Donald Trump's incredible skill and finesse when it comes

to foreign policy? A pertinent question was asked. Why has there been no trade deal between the United States and Canada yet? And I'll leave it to you to decipher what Trump is saying here. What is holding up a deal with Canada from your perspective? So much holding up. I think we have different concepts. I have a tariff concept. Mark has a different concept, which is something that some people like. But we're going to see if we can get to the bottom of it today. I'm a I'm a tariff person. I've always been a terrible simple.

It's easy, it's precise and it just goes very quickly. And I think Mark has a more complex idea, but also very good. So we're going to look at both and we're going to see what we're going to come out with something over Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump chomping on quite the word salad for lunch yesterday. As you can see, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stepping in to end this and to stop a neon orange Trump from taking more questions. All Democrat run cities and they think they're going to use them to vote. It's not going to happen. Thank you. So I just I'm going to exercise my role, if you will, as a G7 chair, since we have a few

more minutes with the president and his team. And then we actually have to start the meeting to address some of these big issues. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There you go. And Mark Carney having to step in and say the toddler is getting grumpy because the toddler is hungry. And so we're going to move on here.

A final moment. This is horrible and funny. Our friend Pekka Kellen, Emmy had some funny tweets about this. Trump attempting to, I guess, display some kind of agreement about something, opens up one of these little folders, these leather folders with papers. He fumbles and drops the papers while standing there with Keir Starner. None of the papers seem to have text, only Trump's signature. And then he confuses the UK with the EU, just humiliating and pathetic, an utter embarrassment. The UK and we just signed a document.

This is a very important document. Little windy area. We just signed it and it's done. And so we have we signed it our trade agreement with the European Union and it's a fair deal for both. And of course, Trump wanted to say we've made a trade deal with the UK, not the European Union, even though he's also wrong about that. And the papers were blank. And Trump is not influencing policy. He wants you to believe he's brokering deals, but he's not. He's handing

world leaders sheets of paper and demanding to be treated like a genius. So this is yet another opportunity where it's you could have shown leadership here, but it became a highlight reel of confusion, isolation, disorientation and revisionist history. Not just a failure at the G7, but Trump isn't. It's not that Trump didn't score any points in the game. It's that he doesn't understand the game. He's not playing the game. And everybody else is like, it's the guy who knows only how to flip over the board who's here. Trump then flying back to the United States, leaving the summit early. And when he came back, it didn't go much better. So we're going to talk about that after the break. We'll have more

about this on today's newsletter, which I hope you will grab at David Pakman dot sub stack dot com. We do a daily one hour audio podcast. If you're watching this on YouTube, know that you can get the full show on Spotify and on Apple podcasts for free. All widely available. Let's take a quick break and be right back. Americans 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.

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dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, show at what I believe is maybe the most critical time to be doing so. Let's talk a little bit about the disastrous aftermath of this dark, dystopian, dilapidated and, quite frankly, poorly attended military parade on Saturday, which just by chance coincided with Donald Trump's 79th birthday. Donald Trump wanted something powerful. Donald Trump is enamored with the ways that North Korea and Iran and Russia, that authoritarians exercise power and project that power. So Trump wanted a military parade to mark the army's 250th anniversary, probably more

importantly, his own 79th birthday as well. Discipline, uniforms, tanks, service members marching in uniform in lockstep, a big crowd, something to really strike fear into critics and to make them look like a king. What Trump got instead was a poorly attended school field trip. And according to biographer Michael Wolf, Trump furiously flipped out after watching his dictator fantasy fall apart on Constitution Avenue. The soldiers looked relaxed and human. Some were smiling, which I guess is great, but it wasn't what Trump actually wanted. The crowd was sparse.

The environment was not really electric. It was muted. And the whole thing came off more like a poorly attended neighborhood block party where a lot of people said, I actually have a game. I want to stay home and watch instead of going to this thing. And Trump was reportedly furious and placed the blame on his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, allegedly screaming about the tone, accusing the troops of looking too friendly. They were too nonthreatening.

The authoritarian orange guy wanted menace and he didn't get it. Imagine being mad that the people being forced to march in your military birthday parade just didn't look angry and scary enough. And it doesn't stop there because when the story got out, the White House didn't even deny it with a straight face. They said that Michael Wolff, who reported on this, has a, quote, severe and debilitating case of Trump derangement syndrome that has rotted his peanut sized brain. That statement came from the White House communication director, not a guy on Reddit, not, you know,

some drunk muttering to himself outside a gas station or on the subway platform. That is the official communication from the president of the United States office. We used to have a thing called decorum. And I don't really care that much about decorum for its own sake. But there was a situation where when politicians lied, they lied in a certain way that was not a full blown psychiatric projection coming from the West Wing, the way that we see it right now. And it starts to make people like Kim Jong Un look way saner than he is.

We've all been subjected to and sort of been living in Donald Trump's psychological breakdown now for a lot of time. Back in 2016, you might remember that forensic psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee was warning anybody who would listen. She said Trump's behavior is dangerous. It's not just about politics. It's to the public's mental health. And Dr. Bandy Lee, we interviewed her.

She explained how pathological narcissism on this scale can spread. It never stays contained. It will start to warp norms, which it has. It will poison the discourse, which it has. It will destabilize communities, which it has. And a lot of people didn't want to hear it. We started seeing the National Psychiatric Associations allegedly coming under pressure to keep quiet because they the Trump administration didn't like what was being said. And consider now that if you were 10 or 12 years old in 2016, you're, you know, 19 to

21 right now, you kind of grew up watching a man lie every day, spew cruelty on social media, dodge consequences, mistreat the people that work for him. And it was all presented as an image of masculinity and strength. That would be your model for leadership and manhood and power if you're around 21 or 22 years old right now. So this is much more than a Trump problem. This is a generational problem. Now we go back to the parade. Yeah, the parade was a disaster without a doubt.

But the bigger story is what the parade trumps reaction and Trump flipping out on Pete Hicks at reveal, which is this is a deeply broken man surrounded by enablers obsessed with looking powerful while everything around him is crumbling. So the parade did not end up being a show of strength. It was this kind of lonely tantrum. I believe the soldiers knew it and on some level Trump knows it too because he flipped out on Pete Hegseth for the obvious failure that it was. And Trump is not doing well. And what happened last night in the middle of the night is just a reminder. Something is very off.

In the middle of the night last night, the world is on the brink of war. We're following what's happening in Iran. And Donald Trump is spiraling, posting erratic rants on truth. So truth central at eight o'clock at midnight, at two a.m. at six a.m., each more disjointed than the last. Imagine what's going on. What is Trump up to? Maybe he got a little sleep between two and six.

I don't know. But this is what he's doing. Eight p.m. OK. doing. Eight p.m. OK, someone please explain to Kuki Tucker Carlson that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. So start there. Trump lashing out at Tucker Carlson, of all people, his one time kind of propaganda wingman turned Russian apologist. This is not a post about policy.

This is a post about insecurity. Tucker has been going pretty soft on Iran lately. We're going to get to that. And Trump doesn't like the idea that anyone else on the right might be seen as the real alpha. So instead of explaining U.S. policy, Trump does this WWE style promo against the formal former cable host saying that he's kooky. So I was eight p.m.

Then we get to midnight Eastern time. Trump quote, If I didn't put the National Guard in Los Angeles, the place would be burned down to the ground right now. I did incompetent Governor Gavin Newsom, who doesn't have a clue the favor of a lifetime, one of the worst governors in history. That's midnight. OK, this is what Trump's doing at midnight. This is pure fantasy.

There was no mass destruction in Los Angeles. The National Guard wasn't even under Trump's direct authority the way he's describing it. OK. But in Trump's mind, he saved the city despite the fact that the protests were contained to a few block radius and they were overwhelmingly peaceful. This is textbook historical revisionism. Trump taking credit for something that didn't happen to justify what he did as an authoritarian. And then, of course, attacking Governor Gavin Newscom while the world watches Trump fumble

yet another international crisis. This is not strength. Then we get to two in the morning. OK, Trump, quote, publicity seeking President Emmanuel Macron of France mistakenly said that I left the G7 summit in Canada to go back to D.C. to work on a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Wrong. He has no idea why I am now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a

ceasefire much bigger than that, whether purposely or not. Emanuel always gets it wrong. Stay tuned. So we are now into middle of the night, paranoid theater. What do you think Trump is doing at 2 a.m. as he types this out? Where is he sitting? What is he up to? Trump is denying he returned to D.C. to work on diplomacy, as if that would be something

to hide. And he teases this vague ominous, much bigger reason than stopping World War Three for returning. So it's vintage Trump. Vague threats, blown up ego, zero details. But the real problem is that if he's not working on a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, what is he working on? The post is more alarming than anything that it does to answer questions. And then at six a.m., remember, is Trump sleeping?

What's he doing? Trump, quote, I have not reached out to Iran for peace talks in any way, shape or form. This is just more highly fabricated fake news. If they want to talk, they know how to reach me. They should have taken the deal that was on the table would have saved a lot of lives. So this is the full pivot after, I guess, being up all night into denial and blame. Trump insists I'm not talking to Iran even though we hope someone's talking to Iran. Trump says I'm not negotiating a ceasefire even though we hope I hope someone's negotiating

a ceasefire. And then he starts scolding, scolding other people. So this is governance by chaos. He wants credit for working all night, but he's just shouting at people. He's contradicting his own administration. He's making it clear that if there is a war, it's certainly not my fault. Now, the reaction from the Trump fans is critical to understand the most loyal Trump fans love saying isn't this great?

He has so much energy. He's up all night. He's leading. He's focused all hours of the day. He's running a 24 7 White House. But step back for a second. This is not high level strategy. This is a guy spiraling on social media from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. 10 hours straight, obsessing

about Cape former cable news hosts, ranting about the French president, lashing out at governors, lashing out at world leaders while casually saying he's not doing the one thing I wish he were doing, which was trying to get some kind of ceasefire, trying to reduce the possibility that we do go into the very World War three, that he promised us he was the only person who would be able to promote it, so prevent it. So he's not working in any kind of productive sense. He's unraveling and that should terrify everybody. But the

MAGA people go, oh, he's so great. He's up all night. He's working not like sleepy Joe who would be asleep. We're in trouble. We're in real trouble here. 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.

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lead scoring and inventory management. and to That's OD o o dot com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. I want to talk a little bit about crime, an issue that is always there, an issue that is often weaponized by elected officials, an issue that was arguably arguably not handled particularly well by Democrats leading up to the election of November of twenty twenty four. But that is also weaponized by Republicans in a completely dishonest way. California Governor Gavin Newsom sort of proverbially stuffed Republican Congressman Mike Smith into a locker. Let me explain. Republican Congressman Mike Smith really thought that he had a zinger. He tweeted at Gavin Newsom in the context of the L.A. protests.

Governor, I suggest focusing on the lawlessness and crime in Los Angeles and San Francisco instead of auditioning for the twenty twenty eight presidential primary with stale talking points. Now, you can practically hear the smugness dripping off of this one. And Gavin Newsom responded with facts where he said, quote, Your state's homicide rate is one hundred and seventeen percent higher than California's. This is what happens when you come for a guy with statistics, when the other guy has nothing but, you know, a

bad idea for a tweet and Gavin Newsom didn't just dunk on Mike Smith, he really buried him under his own talking point. And you might recall a similar incident that we covered not long ago. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried the same thing. She went on Fox News and she said, oh, we would never have the lawlessness and the chaos of California in Arkansas. And Gavin Newsom responded, your homicide rate is way higher than ours in San Francisco. And then it also happened when Republican Senator Mark Wayne Mullin, who I find to be

one of the most regrettable and despicable members of the Senate right now, Mullen put out a video about the same issue. And Newsom responded, if you want to discuss violence, let's start with your state's murder rate, which is 40 percent higher than California's. So let's now zoom out. Republicans love pointing fingers at cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. It's just popular. They see it as low hanging fruit.

Nobody's going to look too deeply. Oh, it's so dangerous there. But when you look at the per capita homicide rates in many of these deep red states, way higher, way higher. I mean, you look at Louisiana, 16 homicides per hundred thousand residents in 2022. That's more than twice the national average of roughly seven per one hundred thousand. You look at Mississippi, almost 30 gun deaths per hundred thousand residents. That's nearly three times the rate in California. Now, that's what the numbers show. Now, you present Republicans with this. They either won't know what to say, they'll change the subject. Sometimes they will come up with these tired phrases like, well, that's because the people in the blue states are too scared to report the crimes because the police won't do anything.

There is no evidence that there is a plague of unreported undocumented murders happening in blue states. It's just laughable. It's ridiculous. So what the numbers show is much darker crime skies hovering over red states than any of these West Coast sanctuary cities. The murder rates in deep red states is often way higher. Newsome has the receipts. California's homicide rate is lower than the national average, dramatically lower than

the red state elected officials that are yelling the loudest. And when you look at the FBI data, red states consistently rank near the top for violent crime. You look at homicide, you look at assault, you look at robbery, you look at Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, all of these above the national average. And you compare that with blue states, California, you know, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts. What we see here is red state politicians loving to reflexively blame urban blue enclaves for so-called lawlessness.

But that's not actually what's happening. New York City versus Oklahoma City is another popular one. New York State versus Oklahoma as a state. It all points in one direction. Now, I also think we I don't know that Kamala Harris handled this the right way as a candidate, but it is also the case that nationally the murder rate has just been coming down. Uh, overall, the United States is becoming a safer place to be in. That doesn't mean we don't care when we see crime outside of our windows.

It doesn't mean there isn't work still to do. The improvement isn't uniform, right? States with higher baseline crime can see a reduction but still have a lot of crime. So this is not a finished issue. But on a per person basis, America's most violent states are in red America. They aren't these blue coastal cities that Republican talking points love to focus on and that right wing elected officials love to demonize. The other thing is a lot.

I hate to be this. I know will feel insulting to a lot of my audience. I hate to have to go to such basic arithmetic stuff, But a lot of people don't understand crime rates per capita. If I said to you, France has more robberies than Lichtenstein, I think most of you would intuitively go, wait a second, France has almost 70 million people. Lichtenstein is 40,000 people. Most people would realize if we just compare the numbers, it doesn't tell us much. We need to look at the rates for these things. And the same sort of idea applies here when we look at red states, blue states, red cities,

blue cities, et cetera. So if lawmakers were serious about fighting crime, they should really focus on where the statistics say the problem is the worst. And right now, blue states like California, blue cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, these are not the places at the top of the list. But Republicans don't care because it plays really well with their base. This morning, Donald Trump answered questions nominally, like what I mean by that is reporters asked questions and Trump used words from the English language. They weren't

really answers. Now, one of the questions Trump was asked on the plane was, have you called Tim Walls yet? This is a question that has come up because Minnesota had this horrible tragedy where a lunatic, MAGA terrorist killed Democratic elected officials, almost killed other elected officials that he shot, had a list of even more Democratic elected officials that he wanted to kill. But he is surrendered to police. He is now in custody. There was the idea that, hey, Tim Walz is the governor.

Tim Walz was on the hit list. Maybe Trump will call him. And Trump goes, ah, he's whacked out. I'm not calling him. Have you called the governor yet or been able to speak to any of them? I don't really call him. He appointed this guy to the position. I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out.

I'm not calling him. He's the best. So I could be nice and cool. But why waste time? There you go. So Trump's not going to waste time calling the whacked out governor of Minnesota after one of his own supporters killed, assassinated. That's where we are right now. Democratic elected officials in the state

screwed Tim Walz. Then maybe more substantively, the topic of Iran came up. Trump was asked, are you open to negotiating with the Iranians? And Trump goes not really in a mood to negotiate right now. I've been negotiating. I told him to do the deal. Trump has said it. His mood is not one for wanting to negotiate. Isn't it great when global conflict comes down to the mood of one guy who doesn't really understand anything? Now, very interestingly, Trump seems to say here that he doesn't trust his own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.

Trump was asked about the reality that despite what Trump is now saying about Iran approaching a nuclear weapon that Tulsi just a couple of months ago said, Iran's not close to building a nuclear weapon. And Trump goes, I doesn't care. I think they're close. Oh, really? Well, the intelligence community doesn't think so. Don't care. Your director of national intelligence doesn't think so.

Don't care. All right. Just I guess he just doesn't care. He believes what he believes. And then finally, Trump over the last 24 hours has sort of said ceasefire. I'm not working on any ceasefire. He was asked what's better than a ceasefire between Iran and Israel? What do you want?

And Trump kind of goes, we just want the end. And then a real and then something that will be giving up entirely. This is all about ego for Donald Trump. Trump ripped up the Iran nuclear deal. Iran hadn't violated the deal, but Trump didn't like that. It had Obama's name on it. Trump just didn't want it. So he unilaterally said the deal is done. Iran does what any natural country would do if you had not violated the deal.

And someone goes, we're ripping it up. They go, all right, well, if the deal is done, we'll go back to researching nuclear and looking at enriching uranium and all of the other sort of precursor elements that are involved in having a nuclear program. Trump then goes, oh, no, they can't do that. And then now, given the possibility that Trump could get in, listen, I'm not going to say there's no way that Trump could help reach a ceasefire in this situation or get a new deal. Let him go try to do it. But Trump

is now saying he's not even in the mood to negotiate. He's not even interested in a ceasefire anymore. He wants an end. And as we know, sometimes these ends can lead to even more radical regimes coming in. That's a whole different story. But this is a guy driven primarily by ego. How can I self aggrandize and put the attention on myself? How can I make myself the main character of this entire thing? And it is not going his way. So for the good of the world and for the good of the country, I hope Trump changes his mind. I hope Trump directs his team to go and try to get a ceasefire, try to get a deal.

But Trump now seems committed to that not happening. And of course, he's as disoriented and as confused as ever as to the facts on the ground. This is what happens when you elect a guy like this. There's simply no way around it. It's what we expected and it's what we're getting. herbs to Well, this is really interesting. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has now admitted one of the things that we all know to be true about Fox News, which is that Fox News is a propaganda machine specifically designed to manipulate older folks into submission.

This happened on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast. He talks about Mark Levin. He talks about Jesse Waters. And he does also, by the way, his completely off the wall cackle laugh. But there's a lot of interesting substance here. So let's listen to what Tucker Carlson said and then we'll talk about it. So what is that? That's not by popular acclaim.

That's not like their viewer surveys. Like, you know, we need a lot more Mark Levin, less Jesse Waters, more Mark Levin. What they're doing is what they always do, which is just turning up the propaganda hose to full blast and just trying to, you know, knock elderly Fox viewers off their feet and make them submit. This is this. Now, there are some people I saw in comments online who find these comments ageist, like that Tucker's implying older folks are easier to manipulate with propaganda. I think there's there's two things that are really important to understand. First is Fox News is demographic skews older. It's it's

whatever you think about the susceptibility of older folks to what Fox News puts out. Fox News simply has an older audience. Cable News in general is an older news consuming audience than what you would see on other platforms. And Fox News specifically among Fox, CNN and MSNBC, especially during certain day parts, skews to a significantly older audience. So that's just a statistic. Now, I do think it's relevant to discuss that we know from studies on social media misinformation sharing that older folks are

disproportionately likely to share disinformation and fake news on Facebook, for example. And I'll be perfectly kind of frank. And it's a little bit sad. I think that this is just a reality of. After a certain point. Our comfort with newer technologies is diminished. And I'm including myself in this. You know, we publish the show to Snapchat and I look on there, I see what we're publishing, I see what the comments are, et cetera.

I couldn't tell you how the hell Snapchat works. And it's just I mean, it's not that I literally cannot understand it, but it's just sort of like another platform. I don't know. So I don't even think that just recognizing that sometimes newer technologies by virtue of being less comfortable and natural for certain groups or whatever. Right. I don't think that what Tucker Carlson is saying is ageist here.

I think it's just that he's conveniently leaving himself out of criticism for having participated in it and also acting as if he's presenting something different now that he's independent. Tucker hosted one of the most watched and most misleading shows in Fox News history. He parroted Putin talking points on Ukraine. He spread spread covid conspiracies. He suggested that the January six rioters were merely misunderstood patriots. And now he goes, oh, Fox News is this manipulative empire. They're preying on an aging audience or something like that. So I don't really see this as whistleblowing. It's a confession. It's accurate. And Carlson also argued

at a different point in this interview that Hannity and Rupert Murdoch are warmongers, suggesting that they're using their platform to push Trump into war. But they pretend to be antiwar. And the irony is so thick because Tucker Carlson once did the exact same thing. He styled himself as this truth teller, but he would then serve up distortion every single night. So none of this is about principle. This is about power. Tucker acts like it's bad to turn on a fire hose of disinformation at older folks.

But he used to turn on a fire hose of disinformation at older folks. Tucker acts as if it's immoral and unique to pretend to be one thing and to do another. But Tucker was publicly supportive of Donald Trump while his private text messages revealed that he deeply despised Trump because he said in text messages, I deeply despise Trump. So none of this is about principle. Tucker is calling others out for doing the exact same stuff that he did. He just no longer has a seat at Fox News. So now he's trying to burn it down from the outside.

He helped build this house. He's been kicked out of the house and now he's trying to burn it down. So congrats. Tucker's right. Fox News lies and the audience is disproportionately older, but he was one of the best liars that they had. And one of the interesting things, actually, it would be interesting to go and look at more of the interview, which I did, and I encourage you to do so. Bannon's attitude during the whole thing. You know, at some points, Bannon would smirk. At some points, Bannon almost seemed like he was trying to give no reaction at all.

At other points, Bannon seemed a little bit uncomfortable with what Tucker Carlson was saying. And so it was interesting to see that dynamic. But Tucker Carlson stumbled upon a truth that he himself, of course, is guilty of. Hey, this is really, really wacky. Fox News cut away from an obviously belligerently drunk propagandist. And then she went on Twitter and deleted her tweets about drinking right before the appearance. This is one of those sort of like what are people doing?

How does anyone think this is a good idea? Fox News brought on after 930 Eastern on the night of Trump's parade, Rebecca Koffler to talk about the military parade. And she is obviously intoxicated and they make the call to cut away from her. This is painful, painful to watch with us now is former defense intel agency officer Rebecca Koffler. Rebecca, what are your thoughts tonight on the incredible symbolism and the messaging that we saw here tonight from the commander-in-chief on the Army's 250th birthday? I am so excited Emily and

Oh God Lucas Tomlinson everybody like this is incredible. Finally, the United States is back. I want to really thank all of our Army, Navy, and Air Force officers who have been contributing to the mission. Most of the time for the past quarter of a century because of the mismanagement of the administrative administrative state they've been fighting these foreign wars but with our new and cheap darlin gene trump they are proud i think how much more of this can you handle there's only a few more seconds before they cut her off america

and i want to thank these offices for all of the sacrifices and dot all of the hardships that their families have been doing. Lawrence Jones, you are doing your you're not a man like you. You guys are very lucas. Thank you. I want to thank we can. Thank you so much, Rebecca.

Thank you and thank you for your service, too. Well, our final thoughts on this. Now after after this on air atrocity was over, Rebecca Koffler said that her being cut off had nothing to do with being drunk, that it was because of intermittent connection quality. I noticed not a single connection glitch during that. You know, Pete Hegseth probably watched that and was like, damn, she's lucky. I wish I could still be drinking like that. But I promised I would stop drinking if they made me a secretary of defense.

Now, she in a now deleted tweet she had posted with a picture of an open champagne bottle in front of a toaster oven. Well, President Trump is apparently encroaching on my airtime. My hit is moved to 820 or 830, depending on how long Trump takes. I'm honored. Refilling my champagne glass while waiting for my hit that was deleted after this fiasco after the appearance went haywire. Sad, sad.

And substance use issues are, of course, medical issues. Nothing to laugh at. And hopefully she gets whatever help she needs if she needs help. And if she doesn't, then good for her. On the bonus show today, ICE agents could be banned from wearing masks under a new proposal. We've been talking about how Donald Trump has long said the protesters in L.A. shouldn't be allowed to wear masks. But but what about the ICE agents?

Well, they might be banned from wearing masks as well, which I don't think they're going to like, to be perfectly honest. The Trump Organization's latest grift is Trump mobile. They will have their own smartphone. Yeah. And you can also bring your own smartphone to their service, I guess, if you want. We will talk about the latest grift and my pillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, known also as Mike Pillow or only as Pillow.

Wait, do I have any of his trend Iraq? Nope, that's not it. Oh, here we're doing a class action lawsuit against all machines. That guy has just lost to a machine. He has lost a two point three million dollar defamation case. It is not going well for Pillow. We will talk about all of those stories and more when producer Pat joins me on the bonus show.

How do you access the bonus show? People go, oh, I just don't know how to access it. You go to join Pacman dot com and you sign up. I also want to remind you, we will soon be relaunching our substack into a much greater and bigger publication. I it's completely free to sign up. Go to David Pakman dot substack dot com. And also remember, also remember that you can confront me if you've been desperate to do it, as I know many have, you can confront me on tick tock lives regularly. I did one last night. A white nationalist who says white nationalism

is good confronted me. We had a conversation and a Trump voter who says Trump's good confronted me and we had a good conversation. We learned they didn't really know anything. And we'll be publishing those clips to YouTube very soon and to all of our other platforms. So keep an eye on the tick tock lives. We will see you on the bonus show. I'll be back with you tomorrow.