The David Pakman Show - 6/2/25: Republican says they’ll block Trump’s bill, Elon’s derange interview

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

-- On the Show: — Republican Senator Rand Paul announces he’ll vote to block Trump’s DOGE bill, calling it a tax hike dressed up as populism — Trump officials admit the promised wave of new trade deals has produced exactly zero agreements so far — Trump’s FDA pick spreads vaccine misinformation on live TV, leaving host Margaret Brennan stunned — Donald Trump mocks Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis, floats bizarre conspiracies, and suggests pardoning P. Diddy — Trump tells so many lies during a single appearance that even a friendly crowd seems stunned — Elon Musk’s interview goes off the rails as he dodges basic immigration questions and spirals into Trump flattery — Elon Musk was reportedly involved in a physical fight in the Trump White House over failed budget promises — JD Vance blames Biden for economic shrinkage… four months into Trump’s second term — Trump brags that Melania asked if he’s “as long” as golfer Bryson DeChambeau in another Freudian overshare -- On the Bonus Show: Attacker injures eight at Israeli hostage march, AOC more popular than Trump or Harris, CDC is stripped of power to help stop childhood lead poisoning, much more... 💊 Chapter: Get Medicare help for free at https://askchapter.org/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get 27% OFF sitewide at https://helixsleep.com/pakman 🥦 Lumen lets you master your metabolism. GET 15% OFF at https://lumen.me/pakman 👩‍❤️‍👨 Try the Paired App FREE for 7 days and get 25% OFF at https://paired.com/pakman  -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow

Welcome to the show. Hope you had a good weekend. Republicans have a very complicated situation right now. We have more than just a small rebellion happening in the Senate from Republicans against the House passed Trump tax bill. And we start with Senator Rand Paul publicly splitting with Donald Trump really over one of the central pillars of Donald Trump's economic agenda, which is the Doge bill, this sweeping package of tariffs and spending cuts branded as a win for the American worker. Some call it the big, beautiful bill.

Others call it the Doge bill. But Rand Paul isn't buying it. And I really can't blame the guy. And the most important aspect of this is that Rand Paul says he is not alone. He says there are other Republican senators who are not going to vote for this bill as is in the Senate. He was asked by Margaret Brennan yesterday on the Sunday shows face the nation specifically. Are there other Republicans who are going to stand with you blocking this bill?

And he says there are four of us at this point in time which would kill the bill. Take a listen. Well, you know, we hear from other senators who also get complaints from their people in their districts, but they're falling in line. Do you have three other Republicans who will stand with you to block this bill? I think there are four of us at this point. And I would be very surprised if the bill at least is not modified in a good direction. Look, I want to vote for it. I'm for the tax cuts. I voted for the tax cuts before. I want the tax cuts to be permanent. But at the same time, I don't want to raise the debt ceiling five trillion. So I've told her if you take the debt ceiling off the bill, in all likelihood, I can vote

for what the agreement is on the rest of the bill. And it doesn't have to be perfect to my liking. But I can't be if I vote for the five trillion dollar debt who's left in Washington that cares about the debt we will have lost. But the GOP will own the debt once they vote for this. But that, of course, what's hilarious about that is even his own party doesn't actually care about the debt and deficit. It's a cudgel that they use. They talk about debt and deficit when it's a Democrat proposing something that involves spending Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act infrastructure, whatever the case may be. But as soon as it's them, they don't actually care about the debt and deficit. Now, Rand Paul says he does care about that. The only so there's two sides here.

OK, first is, you know, translation. Trump sells the bill is tough on China. It's not. Trump sells the bill as America first economics. It's not. And you've got libertarian conservatives like Rand Paul, who are saying this is not going to work as is at the same time. Rand Paul is also saying, while I wouldn't vote for the bill in its current iteration, if you just take the increase to the debt ceiling off, I will vote for it.

Even though even without that, the bill still blows up the deficit. So this is where you see someone who holds a little closer to his stated principles than most of the other Republicans in Rand Paul. But at the same time, he doesn't really, because he's saying if you take this one thing off, I will vote for it even though it still violates the principles he claims to value. Now, this interview went on and there were other interesting elements to it. Here's another one where he says, I talked to Trump a bunch this week about tariffs. We just don't agree.

The president has taken note of some of your skepticism and he did tweet yesterday saying that if you Rand Paul vote against his massive border and tax bill, the people of Kentucky will never forgive you. Do you consider that a threat? And do you know if you have three other Republicans who will join you to block it from passage? I had a very good conversation with the president this week about tariffs. He did most of the talking and we don't agree exactly on the outcome. But when I come home to Kentucky, I talk to the Farm Bureau, which is opposed to the tariffs. I talk to the bourbon industry, which is opposed to the tariffs.

I talk to the cargo companies, UPS, DHL, all their pilots are opposed to it. I talked to the hardwood floor people. I talked to the people selling houses, building houses. I have no organized business in business interest in Kentucky for the tariffs. So I think it's worth the discussion and it's worth people remembering that the Republicans used to be for lower taxes, tariffs or attacks. So if you raise taxes on the private sector, that's not good for the private sector. He's getting really to the core of this, which is whatever you think about tariffs and taxes conceptually and in the abstract, tariffs are attacks. Trump keeps playing, claiming that these tariffs punish foreign countries.

And in there is scholarship, which would explain how over the long term tariffs can become a detriment to the foreign country. But economists from across the political spectrum, including Trump's own former advisors, have said in practice, these tariffs function as if you just added a sales tax to those doing the buying in the United States, they raise the cost of imports. Businesses pass it to consumers. One more clip from this interview.

Here's Rand Paul with another truth, which is the math just doesn't add up. Just heard the Treasury secretary say a number of things, dismiss the potential price increases that could come from the tariffs when it comes to retailers. He also, uh, played down the cost of this tax and border bill that just passed through the house. Uh, do you agree with his math? Well, the math doesn't really add up. One of the things this big and beautiful bill is, is it's a vehicle for increasing spending for the military and for the border. It's about 320 billion dollars in new spending. To put that in perspective that's more than all the Doge cuts that we found so far.

So the increase in spending put into this bill exceeds the Doge cuts. When you look just at the border wall they have 46.5 billion for the border wall. Well the current estimate from the CBP is six point five million per mile. So if you get a thousand miles, that's six point five billion. But they have 46 billion. So they've inflated the cost of the wall eightfold. There's another issue here, which is Rand Paul is right that when you look at the Doge savings, the additional spending from this bill exceeds

that. But that that's if you believe what they are telling you about the Doge savings. When you look more deeply at the claimed savings of Doge and you find out that some of the savings they claim, they just put a B instead of an M billion instead of a million. Some of the Doge savings are already canceled contracts, including contracts canceled under Joe Biden. Some are provisional projects which haven't even started and don't even have spending until years into the future.

And so I guess you could say, well, we're not going to spend that, but it's not really any savings that will offset what Trump wants to spend with tax cuts on right now. So we zoom out. Rand Paul, although I disagree with him in principle on a lot of what he believes, he's saying this is not going to be a bill that helps the middle class. And he's right about that part. The spending cuts are fiction. And the bigger story is that the Republican Party's identity crisis is kind of exploding here because when Rand Paul breaks from the party and breaks from Trump, there's a deeper circumstance here, which is that you had this old Republican Party pro free trade low tax business aligned. That's like the Romney Mitt Romney Republican Party that is at war, civil war of sorts with the Maga right, which is really economic incoherence, sort of social reactionary beliefs and authoritarianism

above all else. And Trump has turned the Republican Party into this cult of personality with no ideological consistency. And Rand Paul, like him or dislike him, I'm not a fan. He has a series of beliefs that he's at least trying to stick to, even if he acknowledges he would vote for a deficit increasing tax cut as long as it didn't also increase the debt limit. So if Rand Paul and three others or four others really vote no, Trump's only real potential legislative achievement will be completely dead in the water.

And that would be a stunning rebuke from inside of his own party, no less. It could fracture this very fragile alliance that's holding the Republican Party together. And at the end of the day, they still have no trade deals done, which was the whole point of all of this. And that's what I want to talk about next. Donald Trump promised voters a tsunami of new trade deals that we're going to restore American dominance and fix the supply chain and bring the jobs back, even though we have 500 open manufacturing jobs in the US today, which companies can't fill.

So where are the trade deals? They said 90 deals in 90 days. They said everyone is coming to us begging, desperate to make a deal. And then George Stephanopoulos asked a really great question yesterday of Kevin Hassett, which is when are we going to see even a single deal? And Hassett goes, we expect we will probably see one maybe as early as next week, not exactly 90 deals in 90 days. We showed at the top this piece, you talking about how you believe we're on the brink of of getting many of these trade negotiations secure. Where are we exactly?

When will we see an actual agreement? We see any this week? I expected that we were going to probably see one perhaps as early as last week and I think that one of the things that's happened is that the trade team has been focused 100 percent like a laser beam on the China matter to make sure that there are no supply disruptions because these licenses are coming a little slower than we would like. And so we've been focused like a laser beam on that last week and the presidents we expect will discuss the matter this week.

Once that thing's resolved, then we're going to take deals into the oval that James Greer and Howard Letnick have negotiated. There you go. So what we are looking at here, all right, is that we might maybe be getting close to the possibility of an advancement, which might even become a discussion, which at some point might become a preliminary deal on one trade deal. But what we were promised, of course, was 90 deals in 90 days. And as you can obviously tell, that is simply not happening.

So just do a fact check. And one of the I think it's important to listen to what candidates say they will do. And then it's important to look at what elected officials are actually doing. No trade deal with China, despite claims that China is just desperate to get a deal done. No trade deal with the EU. No trade deal with India. No follow up to USMCA, no progress with post Brexit UK, still in a tariff war with Canada, Mexico and allies over steel, aluminum and solar panels.

That's where we are. That's the fact of where we are. That's the fact of where we are. Not a single new actual trade deal. And the closest we've come is this adviser who seems to have no idea what's going on, saying that he's optimistic and hopeful that perhaps maybe we will see some form of a trade deal next week, potentially. And meanwhile, U.S. manufacturers and retails are still dealing with the consequences of this disruption, supply chain disruption, tariffs that are on tariffs that are off import volatility.

And this is not good for American business. So when Hassett says we might be getting a trade deal, perhaps as early as next week, what he's really saying is we have no progress to show at this point in time. We don't really have any idea how to fix this other than Trump endlessly postponing the tariffs, tabling the tariffs and saying, well, we're going to try to negotiate here. We may not need the tariffs due to all the strength I'm showing. Remember, if we think back to the campaign, Trump's whole appeal was I'm going to be great for working class voters, especially in the Midwest.

And a lot of that was I understand trade and I'm going to fix trade. We're going to win it trade. You go back to his first term. He saw factory employment not recover in the way that he said it would. And of course, we all knew that because a lot of those jobs are gone or people don't want them or companies aren't offering nearly enough of a respectable wage. He didn't fix the deficit, which he said he was going to eliminate the full national debt within his first term.

He didn't do it. The deficit grew. The debt grew even faster than under Barack Obama. And he has shown no evidence so far on his primary claim from his first presidency to the second one, which is he can outsmart China and he can outsmart China with some esoteric combination of toughness and skill at negotiating, I guess. And what China did as soon as he started this hyper tariff mania is they pivoted to trade

deals with other countries while Trump is flailing and sort of waiting around almost like he's he's waiting for a prom, an invitation to the prom from a girl who's already going with somebody else. So we are in year one of term two and the entire policy has been reduced to maybe perhaps possibly one trade deal that didn't happen last week. It's not happening this week, but it's potentially going to happen next week. This is a very far cry from leadership and it's very bad for the average American business. You know, every time we call out Donald Trump's authoritarianism, the right calls it media hysteria.

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them off as medical evidence. Margaret Brennan looks genuinely stunned and for good reason, because although this is an individual with a medical degree speaking, this was really a political influencer in a metaphorical lab coat, pushing the idea that if enough people believe something about a vaccine, then it must be valid public health advice. If a lot of people don't like the vaccine, the vaccine must be bad. This is a doctor speaking. Take a listen to this.

So I don't know if you know these statistics but 80 for 88 percent of American kids their parents have said no to the COVID shot last season so America the vast majority Americans are saying no maybe they want to see some clinical data as well maybe they have concerns about the safety. I don't want to crowd source my health guidance I want a clear thing right? You don't go with popularity as you're saying data and when we look at that data. Yeah so let's see the data. OK, so the CDC data said 41% of children aged 6 months to 17 years hospitalized with COVID between 2022 and 2024 did not have a known underlying condition. In other words, they looked healthy.

So COVID was serious for them. So first of all, we know the CDC data is contaminated with a lot of false positives from incidental positive COVID tests with routine testing of every kid that walks in the hospital. When I go to the ICU, when I walk to the, we know that data historically under the Biden administration did not distinguish being sick from COVID

or an incidental positive COVID test. When you go to an ICU in America and you ask, how many people are in the ICU that are healthy, that are sick with COVID, the answer I get again and again is we haven't seen that in a year or years. And so the worst thing you can do in public health is to put out an absolute universal recommendation in young healthy kids.

And the vast majority of Americans are saying, no, we wanna see some data. And you say, forget about the data, just get it anyway. Okay, so on data and transparency. For about the data just get it anyway. Okay so on data and transparency for decades since 1964 it was the advisory committee on immunization practices ASIP that went through this panel recommendation I mean people watched these things during COVID the report was then handed up it offered debate it offered transparency and it offered data points that people could refer back to. Why did you bypass all of this and just come down with a decision before the panel could meet and make that data?

That panel has been a kangaroo court where they just rubber. So listen, the data is bad because of this reason. The CDC panel is bad because of this reason. Just trust Bobby Kennedy Jr. and whatever he tells you as he wipes raw milk off of his mouth and trust Marty McCary and trust the fact that a great number of Americans are self destructive and stubbornly ignorant. And as a result of that, they haven't gotten the vaccine. So you shouldn't either.

And Margaret Brennan does a really good job of exposing Marty McCarrie here for making it up as he goes along, making conflicting recommendations, casting doubt on CDC data while then saying, no, the data you can believe. And he is so terrible during this interview that she is left shaking her head as she wraps it up to right now. You just said don't trust the CDC. We're saying it's going to be between a doctor and a patient until that committee meets or more experts weigh in or we get some clinical data.

There's zero clinical data. You're opining. I mean, you're just it's a theory. And so we don't want to put. Wrong definition of theory, by the way. This is a doctor. An absolute recommendation for kids with no clinical data. So you made this pronouncement as well on pregnant

women. There is data. Researchers in the UK analyzed a series of 67 studies which included 1.8 million women and the journal BMJ Global Health published it. People can google it at home and it says the COVID vaccine in pregnant women is highly effective in reducing the odds of maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection, hospital admission, and improves pregnancy outcomes with no serious safety concerns. This is data that shows that it is recommended or could be advised for pregnant women to take this vaccine. Why do you find otherwise?

There's no randomized control trial. That's the gold standard. Those 67 studies are mixed. The data in pregnant women is different for healthy versus women with a comorbid condition. So it's a very mixed bag. So we're saying your obstetrician, your primary care doctor, and the pregnant woman should together decide whether or not to get it. 12% of pregnant women last year got the COVID shot.

So people have serious concerns, and it's probably because they want to see a randomized trial data. The randomized trial in pregnant women. But in the meantime, the world moves on. And you published in the New England Journal of Medicine on May 20th, in that report you referenced, you listed pregnancy as an underlying medical condition

that increases a person's risk for severe COVID. You said that. So then seven days later, you joined in this video announcement saying you should drop the recommendation for the covid vaccine in healthy pregnant women. So what changed in the New England Journal of Medicine? We simply list what the what the CDC has traditionally defined as high risk. And we're just saying it. Decide with your doctor. If you're confused, this guy is as

pathetic as you can imagine. So your confusion is because he's flip flopping. And finally, here's Margaret Brennan just kind of shaking her head. How is this the guy that the Trump administration is putting forward? Unclear what pregnant women now should do until they get the data that you say talk to their doctor. When do they get the data? You're promising all these controlled studies in the absence of data. They should talk to their doctor and their doctor knows their best wisdom and judgment. FDA commissioner, thank you for trying to help. Oh, yeah.

So let's kind of see if we can disaggregate a couple of different things here. When it comes to reducing hospitalization and death, the code of covid vaccines are really good. I wish I think most people I know wish that it were better at preventing transmission. It's not the first one way back in 2021 was as the variants started to come forward and new versions of the vaccine were put out. They they weren't and aren't good at preventing transmission or infection, but they're very good at reducing hospitalization and death.

One of the things that is true is that childhood covid mortality is low, but it's not zero. Vaccination rates dropped among kids because of politicized fear mongering, not because of safety data that was concerning to people. And the same CDC data that he cherry picks when it's convenient shows that the vaccinate that vaccinated kids had lower hospitalization rates and fewer long covid cases. It's just the data you can say, I don't care about that, but you should acknowledge the totality of the data.

McCarrie presents it like it's proof the vaccine's not worth it. In reality, it's just proof that misinformation works. Now here's the thing about Marty McCarrie. He's not always wrong. And that's what makes him dangerous. He wrote a book that has a lot of interesting chapters in it where he talks about surprise medical billing. He talks about over testing and over treatment in the United States.

He talks about how it turns out that a lot of appendicitis cases can be successfully treated with antibiotics, even though there's a bias to doing an appendectomy. He talks about how vaginal birth after C section is actually something that is much more feasible than many in the United States acknowledged being very quick to say if you had one C section, we're going to do another one. He's got a lot of interesting stuff that he has written about administrative bloat. But then on this issue, partially because of the administration that that he's in, partially because most people aren't right about everything.

He has started to really appeal to the anti-vax, anti-science circle. And this is who Trump wanted to run the FDA. So Margaret Brennan's reaction here was good. Why would we go with popularity rather than data? And then he's cherry picking data that you can and versus can't trust from the CDC. So McCurry sometimes has a point on some of these issues. He's found elements of greed in the medical system that he's called out in his book. When it comes to vaccines, he's now really just trading in ideology over evidence.

And this is why putting people like this in charge of science is a very bad idea. In a completely disgusting moment, Donald Trump said of President Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis, I don't feel sorry for him. He's vicious. The epitome of a nasty and despicable human being. Listen to this. He's been a sort of a moderate person over his lifetime, not a smart person, but somewhat vicious person. I will say if you feel sorry for him, don't feel so sorry because he's vicious. What he did with his political opponent and all of the people that he hurt, he hurt a lot of people by and so I really don't feel sorry for him. You can dislike Joe Biden's politics all you want. Any normal human would see this as a disgusting thing to say, an absolutely vile thing to say.

And in general, this entire conversation with the press was shockingly disturbing. Trump suggesting rogue operatives might have used the infamous auto pen to secretly sign things that Joe Biden had no idea about. Trump predicts it will be one of the greatest scandals of our time. Meanwhile, you know, he's accepting crypto bribes for dinner, but completely unsubstantiated claims about Biden and the auto pen we are supposed to believe. Do you think that Dr. Jill Biden should also have to come in and testify about what she did or didn't do?

Well, I hate the concept of it. It's the wife of a man who was going through a lot of problems and everybody that dealt with him understood that. And I guess it came out during the debate loud and clear that was the big, that was the biggest signal of all. They have to do what's right. The country was, there was a lot of dishonesty in the election, as you know, 2020. That's been now caught.

People understand it was a rigged election. And when you go further out, when you see the auto pen, I mean, I think the auto pen is going to become one of the great scandals of all time because you have somebody operating it or a number of people operating because I knew Joe. It takes 10 people to operate the auto. But Joe Biden wasn't in favor of opening up borders, letting 21 million people into this from prisons and mental institutions and gang members.

He wasn't into that at all. And you know, who signed the who signed these orders, proclamations and all of the different things that he signed that set our country so far back? You know, it's funny. Trump alleges without evidence that bills were signed into law without Biden having any idea using the auto pen. That's a claim for which we have no evidence. We've seen Trump sign executive orders without having any idea what's in them.

He'll go, what, what is this one? And then the bald guy goes, sir, this is such and such. And Trump's like, wait, what, what is this? But he just signs it anyway that we have evidence for. But we're supposed to believe the scandal is this completely unsubstantiated claim about Biden and the auto pen. Trump also claimed that the power to impose tariffs was granted by the founders. Of course, it was not.

The big bill of the bill. Would you like to see the Senate build in some support for your tariffs on the big, beautiful bill? Or should that be a standalone bill? I have great support on your tariffs on the big beautiful bill or should that be a standalone bill? I have great support on the tariffs. I mean, I was so honored that we got that ridiculous stay lifted because that would have taken away presidential power. It would have taken away everything that was granted by the founders.

It would have been a terrible thing. And it would have, most importantly, it would have left us vulnerable. We have a lot of countries that use tariffs on us and use them viciously, actually viciously. And if we didn't have the power to use tariffs on them and instantly not when you go back to Congress and try and get hundreds of people to agree on something that would take months to get just one simple proclamation. So Trump, in his understanding of the founders and framers of the Constitution and the country, you will not be surprised to hear that that was not true.

The founders, the right to impose tariffs by a president was not granted by the founders. And then Donald Trump doesn't rule out the possibility of pardoning Diddy. Is he now just looking for the absolute worst people to pardon? I guess we should be glad Osama bin Laden is dead. Otherwise, Trump might be looking for a pardon there. I mentioned once in 2012 that Diddy was a good friend of yours back then. He has since found himself in some very serious legal trouble. Would you ever consider pardoning him?

Well, nobody's asked. You had to be the one to ask, Peter, but nobody's asked. But I know people are thinking about it. I know they're thinking about it. I think people have been very close to asking. First of all, I look at what's happening, and I haven't been watching it too closely, although it's certainly getting a lot of coverage. I haven't seen him. I haven't spoken to him in years. He used to really like me a lot. I think when I ran for politics, he sort of that really

when I ran for politics, she just busted up from what I read. I don't know. He didn't tell me that. But I'd read some little bit nasty statements and the paper all of a sudden. You know, it's different. You become a much different person when you run for politics and you do what's right. I could do other things and I'm sure he'd like me and I'm sure other people would like me, but it wouldn't be as good for our country. As we said, our country is doing really well.

All right. So Trump's awesome, but he does not rule out pardoning Diddy, who is accused of absolutely heinous, heinous crimes. If you thought Trump was bad in the Oval Office, just wait till you see what happened when he went to Pennsylvania. Most of the time, if they're not running for anything, presidents don't hold rallies. Sometimes when we get to the next election, even if they're not running, they might show up to help a Senate candidate or maybe the next nominee from their party. But Donald Trump, for reasons we can't really understand, did a rally in Pennsylvania and he told so many lies at this rally that even the friendly crowd was completely stunned

by it in an utterly absurd moment. Donald Trump says that his victory in November was the greatest victory in one hundred and twenty nine years. You might recall if you live on planet Earth that most people who voted in November voted for someone other than Donald Trump. I said before and I'll say it again, we have the hottest country right now in just four months. But actually, you have to go back to November 5th. Since November 5th, that was Election Day. We had the greatest election victory, they say, in 129

years, the most consequential election in 129 years. I don't know what one hundred and twenty nine years was, but we'll see. We'll check it out later on. We'll find out. Must have been something pretty good. But we have the most consequential. We won every swing state. We won the popular vote. We won the districts. Two thousand seven hundred and fifty to five hundred and five. We're doing a job and you're doing I said before. This is just fabricated. Nothing about this is true. Donald Trump had smaller margins of victory than Obama and just about every other president. And most of the people who voted did not vote for Donald Trump.

Fifty point one percent of all voters in November voted for somebody other than Donald Trump. But it's just lie after lie after lie. Donald Trump claiming during a rally, we don't know why he's holding that he cut the trade deficit in half last month. This I'm sure comes as a huge shock to people in our audience who are saying, wait a second, Trump outspent Biden year over year over the first three months in office. That's right.

This stuff is being fabricated out of thin air. Last month, we also cut the trade deficit in half. And that's the story of today. They can't believe it. The numbers just came. We we cut before we even get started. Actually, we cut it in half. This friendly audience realizes this drivel can't possibly be true.

None of this could possibly be true. Trump still confused between political asylum and an insane asylum known as a psychiatric hospital. Listen to this. They came from mental institutions, the mentally insane. They were pouring into our country by the millions. They allowed this to happen to our country. If Joe Biden confused insane asylums and seeking asylum for four years, it would be 24 seven on every media outlet, but not with Trump.

Trump also makes a tariff announcement in Pennsylvania and Trump doesn't understand the difference between a percentage change and a percentage point change. This is something fourth graders learn. A lot of people who write me antagonistic emails haven't learned it, but many fourth graders know it. Trump does. We are going to be imposing a 25 percent increase. We're going to bring it from 25 percent to 50 percent the tariffs on steel into the United States of America,

which will even further secure the steel industry in the United States. Nobody's going to get around that. So first of all, Trump just once again randomly announcing tariffs at a rally. Not a good idea. Completely outrageous. And you can see the result of that in the stock market today. But this is fourth grade math that Trump doesn't understand. I'll give you a simple example. If we are going to go from a one percent tariff to a two percent tariff, that's an increase of one percentage point. You go from one to two. You've added one percentage point of tariffs,

percentage point of tariffs. But you've added 100 percent to the tariff. You've gone from one percent to two percent, meaning up 100 percent. You've doubled the tariff. Trump doesn't understand that difference. And then finally, Donald Trump talking about these MAGA savings accounts, which even he doesn't really seem to understand. And we're creating a special Trump account for every newborn child, starting them off with a one thousand dollar credit to be invested over the course of their life.

A little baby is born. They're going to start off a little baby, a thousand dollars. And if we do a good job of investing their money, we're going to go with one of the one of the investing guidelines. Who the hell knows if they're any good, but they have a chance to be very rich. It's going to be very cute to see. We're going to follow it very closely. Magda accounts are going to be just so, so cute.

Sounds like socialism, doesn't it? And even the crowd sort of like, do we clap? But it's kind of sounding like the socialism we were led to to be angry about. My prediction is the MAGA savings accounts never happen. Not a betting man. But that's my prediction. Why is Trump even holding a rally? The world may never know.

If you or someone you love is on Medicare, this is important. The Department of Justice filed a major fraud complaint against three of the biggest Medicare brokers in the country. These brokers pretended to offer unbiased advice while secretly steering seniors into plans that paid them the greatest kickbacks. the the I'm I'll pound two 50 and then say a model that felt tailored to me. I've had it for years. What I notice is I don't wake up with back stiffness. I don't wake up with shoulder pain.

I don't toss and turn looking for a comfortable position. It's just better than my old mattress. It's more supportive, but it's still comfortable. Another thing I like about Helix is that there's no one size fits all approach. but David Pakman, It seems to include a physical fight. But before we get to that, during what was supposed to be kind of just a routine interview about technology and innovation and his involvement with Doge, Elon Musk didn't like being asked about policy. He gets a question and he says, let's only talk about spaceships. The reporter says, but I was told I could ask about anything.

And Elon goes, the reporter says. But I was told I could ask about anything. And Elon goes, no, no. But the interview didn't get off to a smooth start. I noticed that all of your businesses involve a lot of components, a lot of parts. Do the tariffs and the trade wars affect any of this? You know, tariffs always affect things a little bit. Wondering what your thought is on the ban on foreign students, the proposal. I mean, you were one of those kids, right? Yeah, I mean, I think we want to stick to, you know, the subject of the day, which is like, spaceships, as opposed to, you know, presidential policy.

Oh, okay. I was told anything's good, but no, well, no. Oh, man, these people are such snowflakes. You know, it's not even a difficult question. It's like, hey, you know, you're an immigrant from South Africa. You came to the U.S. to attend college. By the way, he then, while he was supposed to be studying, was working, which technically means he was here participating in behavior in activities, which he was not legally cleared to do. He could have simply said, I support legal immigration or I think

America benefits from global talent. And I think Donald Trump is just kind of cleaning things up and then we're going to get back to that. Instead, he panics and he goes, oh, you're not supposed to be asking me about that, which just comes off so, so flaccid and and pathetic in these interviews. And of course, Elon chose to spend the last year, year and a half wedging himself into American politics. Free speech warrior Trump aligned guy and doge turning X into a conspiracy echo chamber of the right wing. Someone asks him a basic policy question. You came here from another country. Your companies benefit from foreign workers. You were a foreign student. Trump wants

to ban foreign students. Seems like an obvious question. He goes, oh, you're not supposed to be asking me about that. Now, later in the same interview, Elon launched launched into an unprompted rant about government overreach. So it's not that he doesn't want to talk about politics. It's he only wants to talk about politics in a way that he determines is convenient. The opinion of the government is that like the government is just like the DMV that got big. Okay, so when you say it like, let's have the government do something, you should think, do you want the DMV to do it? And then Musk started talking about the Trump administration.

I hadn't even asked him about Trump. And, you know, it's not like I agree with everything the administration does. So it's like, I mean, I agree with much of what the administration does, but we have different sorts of opinion. You know, there are things that I don't entirely agree with. But it's difficult for me to bring that up in an interview because then it creates a bone of contention. So then I'm a little stuck in a bind where I'm like, well, I don't want to, you know,

speak up against the administration, but I don't want to. Also don't want to take responsibility for everything the administration is doing. Let me tell you what this is. This is a guy who is terrified of regulation that will affect his businesses and turning any of Donald Trump's attention on his companies. Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Starlink, ex formerly known as Twitter. These are all companies that are under scrutiny, some for potentially violating labor laws, some for safety rules, platform responsibility, the NLRB, the SEC, the DOJ.

They've all turned attention at different points in time to companies led by Elon Musk. And Trump has made it clear he would gut those agencies. And so what we're witnessing here is a billionaire sucking up to a strong man authoritarian because he doesn't want to be held accountable while pretending to care about free speech. And this has become the billionaire playbook bigger picture because the tech CEOs like Elon have realized something. Trump will let him do whatever they want as long as they support his authoritarian agenda and don't speak out publicly against him.

And that's why they try to avoid speaking out about against student visa bans or abortion restrictions or climate denial. Now, Elon may have made a mistake by saying actually the tax bill that Trump wants is completely antidote. And I don't love it. But the sort of greater value here is Elon Musk doesn't give a damn about democracy. He wants deregulation. And when he's asked even the most basic question, should immigrants be allowed to study here? Should they be allowed to come here? It was, oh, you're not supposed to ask me about that. It's like a cheap solar panel just folding. But when he wants to assert politics as convenient, he will do it. This is a guy who's terrified. And we have to talk about the physical altercation we just learned

about this study. This story, rather, sounds like fan fiction written by a Reddit mod on ketamine. But it's just what allegedly happened. Elon Musk reportedly got into a physical fight inside the White House with the Treasury Secretary in the Oval Office on potentially what was his last day working for Donald Trump. We now have multiple sources, including Stephen Bannon, Axios, The Daily Beast, The New York Times that Elon Musk shoved Treasury Secretary Scott Besson during a screaming match about budget cuts. Why?

Because Elon promised Trump he'd cut a trillion dollars from the federal budget through his fake doge, a promise we knew was never going to become a reality. And when the dust settled, what he came up with instead of a trillion was the claim of a hundred billion. Even that number is completely unverifiable. It's a combination of programs canceled under Biden typos, errors and confusion. And Besson reportedly slapped at Elon and said, you promised a trillion. You read 100 billion.

And Musk responded by shoving Scott Besson. The fight reportedly spilled like a cartoon from the Oval Office down the West Wing, past the chief of staff's office towards the National Security Adviser's door. And one witness described it as, quote, two billionaire middle aged men thinking it was WWE at the White House. Now, Besson is not actually a billionaire. He's one of these center millionaires. But what's 500 million between friends?

Besson was reportedly shouting FUFU. Elon was shouting, I can't hear you say it louder. It's sort of like teenagers fighting at a mall or something like that. And these are the people in charge of the federal government. This was not Elon Musk's first outburst. A month earlier, he got into it with Marco Rubio during a cabinet meeting over Doge firings. Trump apparently backed off after that and said to Elon Musk, you got to cool it. And of course, we now know that Elon Musk is leaving. Steve Bannon outright

says Trump backed Besant in that fight, not Elon Musk. And that kind of makes the spin from Elon that everything's hunky dory, but he's just moving on. He left the White House on good terms. Everything's fine. That seems increasingly difficult to believe. Now, we have additional reporting that in the middle of all this, Elon Musk has been on a cocktail of ketamine, ecstasy, mushrooms and potentially other substances. That's according to The New York Times. So there is some practical question. If you're wondering why is Elon shoving the South, it's conceivable that the drugs are playing a role here to some

degree. Now, we then have the additional bizarre detail that Elon Musk showed up at the White House with a black eye under his his right eye. And when the topic came up, Elon said, oh, I let my son X punch me. And it turns out that five year olds can actually punch pretty hard. That's a question mark. And of course, speculation is, could it have been from the besant, besant brawl, even though it's not clear that the timing checks out on that. There's also now the belief that Stephen Miller's wife is going to work for Elon Musk.

And there are sort of reports suggesting maybe it's more than just a work relationship. And so did that punch maybe come from Stephen Miller? This is all just completely speculative and it's sort of gossip. I want to get to the bigger point. This is not just egos clashing at the very start of this. I told you this is inevitable. This is inevitably going to happen when you put together unqualified, emotionally unstable, rich guys high on their own supply. And Elon Musk didn't fail at Doge because the job was too hard.

He failed because the job wasn't real. He was never there to really find waste. He was there to shut down agencies that were investigating him or to kill off environmental protections that would hamper his businesses or to cut social programs under the guise of efficiency. The grift fell apart. He got mad and started swinging or shoving, I guess is what we would say. And this is the predictable outcome when you replace governance with Reddit threads

and drug habits and power fantasies. Trump's the guy who put him there, built a government like it's a reality show. And chaos was the feature and it completely backfired when they're in charge. They break things, they fail up, and then they start beating the hell out of each other. So I guess Elon's leaving, although Trump says he'll never really be gone. I think two, three weeks will let us know where the dust settles. But physical altercations now beyond belief, except it's all totally predictable. and all and for 15 percent off. The link is in the podcast notes. You really can't make this stuff up, except it's also predictable. J.D. Vance, the vice president, in a shockingly pathetic moment, not exactly a profile in

courage, says that for anything bad that's going on, this is still Joe Biden's economy. Of course, for anything good, it's Donald Trump's economy. He was interviewed on Fox News by Brett Baier. Here's what he had to say when confronted with the undeniable reality that the GDP declined for the first time in years during Donald Trump's first quarter in office. J.D. says Joe Biden, that's the guy you got to be looking at. The economy shrank first time in three years. People are pointing to the tariff policy. There are people looking at their 401ks that are worried. What do you tell them? Is this going to work? So the first thing is, when you talk about the economy, this is Joe Biden's economy,

and we inherited $2 trillion of debt, the highest peacetime deficits in American history, a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, which fundamentally peacetime deficits in American history, a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, which fundamentally means we're not making enough of our own stuff. And the president came in and he said, this is not always going to be easy. It would have been very easy for Donald Trump to do what administrations passed to done, which is borrow a lot of money and continue fueling the national debt. He said, no, we need to reset. We need American workers to have better jobs. We need to protect the jobs that they have right now. And we need to be more self-reliant as an economy, which, by the way, will drive down those skyrocketing

levels of debt that we've seen. That is what he promised he was going to do. And he came in and we started that process now. Oh, J.D., J.D., J.D. You know, the economy contracts for the first time in years, directly after Donald Trump's new tariff chaos starts. Economists point directly to what Trump is doing as the reason why the GDP declined. And J.D. Vance still manages to point the finger at Joe Biden. So is it gaslighting or is it total economic illiteracy? I think it's a sort of why not both type of situation.

Trump's been back in office now for more than four months. His administration unilaterally imposes these sweeping tariffs. They're on, they're off. It's on allies. It's on adversaries. Some of them take effect and then they're paused and no one knows what's going on. Other countries are moving away from the United States and making deals with each other. And what we see is the Q1 GDP report come in negative for the first time in years.

We see tightening supply chains. We see consumer confidence decline significantly. Manufacturing output is declining. Even Fox News pointed out the shrinkage took place after Trump's policy change. But J.D. Vance goes, oh, no, this is Joe Biden, who, of course, hasn't been in office since January. Trump's base still has not absorbed that tariffs are taxes on consumers. Trump puts a tariff on Chinese goods that doesn't in the immediate hurt China.

It hurts you if you're trying to buy a phone or a car part or potentially even groceries during Trump's first trade war in the first term. The average American household paid about an extra 1200 bucks a year because of Trump's tariffs. A 2023 Moody's report. This is before Trump won and took power, said if we restart tariffs, we could see stack inflation like conditions and consumer demand is going to weaken. And that's exactly what's happening.

And they're blaming Biden, even though every economist predicted if Trump does this, this is what's going to happen. So this is classic MAGA strategy. Claim credit for anything good. Blame a Democrat for anything bad. If inflation's down, that's thanks to what Trump has done. If gas prices are up, that's something to do with Joe Biden. If the GDP is up, it's thanks to Trump.

If the GDP GDP is down, it's thanks to Biden. Now I want to propose to you an alternative scenario. Imagine that Q1 GDP had gone up. Do you think JD Vance would be going around saying, oh, that's Biden's economy, even though GDP was up during Biden's presidency? No. If GDP had been up in Q1, they would be saying it's thanks to what Donald Trump did. If Trump's economy tanks, it's not really going to be because of Joe Biden. It's going to be because Trump goes back to the same failed trade policies that killed manufacturing last time.

And J.D. Vance is all too eager to just point the finger and say it's Biden. If it's bad, it's Biden. All right. Here's something really wacky. Donald Trump said that Melania has been asking him, how long are you? Are you as long as golfer Bryson DeChambeau? Now, of course, Trump is referring to golf, not the size of his.

But it all is really weird the way Trump says it. And it really does point to how Trump has used masculinity and bravado as part of his brand. Listen to this and then we'll talk about like off a lot together. It's not a very pleasant experience for me because I always consider myself a reasonably long hitter. And then I play with him and I go home and I say, my wife said, are you as long as Bryce? And I said, yeah, sort of. Are you? Melania was worried. Am I as long as Bryce? And I said, oh, no, I'm I'm almost as long as he is.

So he's talking about golf, right. And it's Trump's kind of inarticulate weird way of talking about things. Trump has used imagery of masculinity and personal bravado to build the cult of personality around himself. And whether it's bragging about winning golf tournaments that he organizes or claiming he got awards that don't exist or name dropping celebrities, the subtext is always the same. He's the alpha. And you'd better know that doesn't matter that he's obese and does all sorts of stuff typically not considered to be particularly masculine. The tanning and the makeup and the hair stuff and, you know, the entire thing.

And this story about Melania Trump supposedly asking if he's as long as Bryson Deschamps Deschampo, it's all meant to reinforce that he brings it up, not for laughs, but it's kind of like a strange dominance display. I hit really far, maybe not as far as Bryson, but certainly far enough. And I see it as completely Freudian. It's not the most offensive thing that Trump has ever said, not by a long shot. It's just a reminder that even when the topic is as harmless as golf, he talks about one primary thing and it is himself. And even the most ordinary, just meaningless

story becomes one of these ego driven spectacles that his followers, quite frankly, have come to expect. And to a degree, Trump's followers know that he's not the alpha that he claims to be. But for their own sort of edification and and and satisfaction, they want to be told these stories about Trump and they want to believe these stories about Trump So we all know that he was talking about golf in some kind of Freudian way It seems maybe what he was really alluding to here was penis size whether he knows it or not But Trump must be seen as the alpha and until you see him that way The anecdotes are going to continue on the bonus show today. We will talk about eight injured at a march for Israeli hostages by a Molotov cocktail

disgusting scenario in Colorado. New polling shows AOC is seen more positively by Americans than both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Is it statistically significant? We will discuss and state officials now say the CDC under the orange guy can no longer be trusted to prevent lead poisoning in children. I have some personal anecdotes about lead in children that I'm going to talk to you about on today's bonus show. Get instant access to the bonus show by signing up at Join Pacman dot com.

You can use the coupon code. It will end soon to save about 50 percent and we will be relaunching our substack very soon. I would love for you to get on the substack list. You can do so by emailing info at David Pakman dot com or simply sign yourself up on my website, David Pakman dot com. A lot of exciting things happening. I will see you on the bonus show and I'll be back with you tomorrow.