The David Pakman Show - 6/26/25: Trump’s meltdowns get worse as new left movement rises

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Rutger Bregman, historian and bestselling author, joins David to discuss his new book "Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference" -- A new generation of left-wing leaders like Mamdani, AOC, and Bernie is challenging the Democratic establishment with a grassroots movement that seeks to rebuild the party from the ground up -- Trump’s judicial nominee Emil Bove was exposed for illegally ordering DOJ lawyers to defy court rulings, raising alarms about the dismantling of the rule of law -- Trump stumbled through bizarre, confused NATO remarks—blasting Spain and fumbling questions—while visibly disoriented and mocked by reporters -- Trump spent the night in an unhinged meltdown on Truth Social, ranting about conspiracies, enemies, and imaginary Pentagon briefings in a terrifying spiral of instability -- Senator Ted Cruz and Fox News absurdly rebranded Trump’s chaotic rants as “extraordinary leadership,” showcasing the authoritarian gaslighting now common in MAGA circles -- Trump exploded on a CNN reporter at a press conference, lashing out uncontrollably and attacking the media while dodging questions about intelligence reports -- Pete Hegseth demanded pro-Trump propaganda from the press, dismissing tough questions and declaring Trump’s military mission the greatest in history with cult-like fervor -- On the Bonus Show: Trump's "big beautiful bill" in trouble, Republicans want Trump to revoke Mamdani's citizenship, White House gets creepy about Trump getting called "daddy" at NATO, and much more... 🍓 Strawberry.me: Get a $50 credit when you signing up for coaching at https://strawberry.me/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 👩‍❤️‍👨 Try the Paired App FREE for 7 days and get 25% OFF at https://paired.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/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 to the show. I'm back from Washington, D.C. Almost didn't make it back. You know, five minutes of thunderstorms near DCA set off an unlikely but disastrous series of creeping delays. And it was a close one. It was a close one. But I did fortunately make it back for the show.

I've been asking myself and I want to ask you and bring you into this conversation. Are we witnessing right now the rise of a new political order on the American left wing? Is this happening? I'm going to give you the bullet points. I'm going to give you my analysis and then I want to hear from you. We saw in New York City, Zoran Mamdani, an open Democratic socialist, refuses corporate money defeat in the Democratic primary elements of the Democratic machine that include, of course, former Governor Andrew Cuomo.

It was a pretty convincing defeat. And this is arguably the same movement that gave us Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who similarly won a stunning upset Democratic primary in her district at the very start of her involvement in American politics. This is the same movement to a degree that backed Bernie Sanders for president multiple times when the Democratic establishment attempted to shut him down. And this is a movement that is now loudly saying, as I hear it, we do not trust the old Democratic Party to stop Donald Trump. So the natural question right now, almost July 20, 25, is are these some isolated victories

or is this actually the beginning of a new political order on the American left? Now, the answer to a degree depends on what you want to see. I know that my audience is not totally united on this. But if you step back and look at the National Democratic Party, mostly still run by what we would call centrist lifers, consultant class strategists, donor backed moderates, a growing number of left wing voices, including I know many in my audience are done with that. And if you look at just the comment sections for my interviews with any elected senator, it is palpable that there is a contempt among some in my audience, no matter what they say. Very mixed reaction.

I mean, just yesterday, interviewed Cory Booker. We posted a clip. I think Cory Booker said some excellent things if you just analyze what he said and the comments are riddled with people who are just furious. How dare I even interview him? And what about this thing he did? What about that thing he did when I think if we zoom out, Cory Booker is among Democratic senators, one of the better allies that we have.

And talking to him both on camera yesterday and behind the scenes only reinforced that. So if we look at this new political order, it, of course, blames Trump's return on the people that voted for Trump on MAGA. But it also blames Trump's return on Democrats who stood for very little part of my analysis of why Kamala Harris lost Democrats that ran on fear and fundraising emails without really offering a vision that goes beyond. We aren't Trump. We're Trump's terrible.

We're not Trump matches the criticism that I've had. But now we are seeing that rejection of establishment Democrats really show up at the ballot box. So we saw a candidate. It's like Mamdani in New York City. It used to be fringe not to take corporate PAC money. Now it's almost a requirement if you want credibility with these younger left wing voters. And more and more, the grassroots isn't just asking for better Democrats. It really wants a clean break from the donor class political ecosystem. And they might be right, because when you talk to Gen Z voters and many of them don't

even see the Democratic Party as the opposition anymore, Trump's in office. The far right is in charge. Young voters feel like Democrats have already surrendered on so many issues. You look at climate or housing labor. It's a very long list. So into that vacuum of leadership steps, a new kind of leader, people like AOC, Bernie, Mom, Donnie, people who don't just say vote blue, but who say, hey, the Democratic Party needs to be rebuilt. Now, there's an acceleration as aspect to that. That is not exactly my politics, but it doesn't matter. I'm secondary here.

I'm just analyzing what we are seeing. I only get one vote. There's a generational line that is sort of hardening here. The party of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries is still dominating in Washington, D.C. and boy, do they do they dominate. I mean, that's one of the things that was very front and center when I was there yesterday. But you look on the ground in districts and in cities and around the country and it's a very different story.

You see voters under 35. It's not just that they're more progressive. That that's there's an aspect of that, but it's more so that they are more skeptical of the institutions that got us the modern Democratic Party. They're more willing to call out corporate capture. They're more open to structural change that starts to border on acceleration ism. So this is not just a messaging issue. In some of my conversations with elected officials that will be playing over the next few days

that I recorded yesterday in D.C., you'll see that there is a focus on policy and there's a focus on messaging. But it's not even really that we are increasingly facing a worldview gap. And that may be a greater dividing line in this new political order of the left. Now, I also want to do sort of like a reality check about where we are. Zoran Mamdani won a primary. OK, we'll see what happens in November. It was a primary.

Often, the primary is a proxy to the general in a lot of these elections. But we have to wait and see what happens in November to say, OK, was this actually an instance of in yet in this new political order? AOC for all her star power and how I think she's developed into a far more pragmatic and effective member of Congress. She is still a member of Congress with limited legislative wins. And and this is the part that gets tough. Much of let me take that back.

Some of this new left that brought her to victory at the beginning of her political career is now angry with AOC. To some, AOC has sold out now because she is more cognizant of how you get power and how politics in Washington works. So we'll see what is next for her. Bernie never became president. He's made it clear he's not running again. He's near the end of his career.

So the point here is there's a lot of energy. There is clearly a desire for this new left political order. Energy is not the same thing as power yet. We will see whether the energy translates to power. Now, still, if the Democratic establishment keeps offering nothing except Trump sucks and if Trump keeps getting worse, which he almost certainly will, this new movement might not just be the future of the left. It might be the only thing that's left if the establishment Democratic Party just keeps

running on Trump's bad, which doesn't really seem to be that great of an idea for winning elections for years. The progressive left has lifted, lived in a sort of state of suspended animation, maybe a lot of ideas, but nowhere really to go. We now see a different playbook. Build power locally, win primaries, reshape the bench. It's not glamorous to the same degree, but it is how a lot of historically successful movements have started.

So we're going to see if it grows or whether the establishment is able to crush it. Sometimes insurgencies that challenge power do get crushed by the establishment. So we will wait and see. But this may be the rise of a new political order on the left. I want to hear from you about it. Let me walk you through something that should set off every alarm bell in your head. Emile Bovey, Donald Trump's former acting assistant attorney general and now a handpicked nominee for a lifetime seat on the federal bench, was just exposed in a whistleblower

complaint for ordering DOJ lawyers to break the law. This is not novel interpretation of the law. This isn't bending it. This isn't skirting it. This is breaking the law. This was not some vague political directive or a poorly worded email. According to a 27 page sworn whistleblower statement, Bovay explicitly told DOJ attorneys, ignore federal court orders, deport people anyway.

In other words, if the court tells you to stop, do it anyway. The planes take off no matter what. This was, by the way, yesterday when we did our interview with Cory Booker yesterday, it was minutes after he came off of the hearing floor where he was questioning Bovay about exactly this. This was happening in real time. So let allow to sink in what this is. A Justice Department official saying to lawyers, you all should say F the courts and do whatever

Donald Trump wants. That's not tough immigration policy. It's not strong leadership. It's criminal conduct. Now, here's where it gets even worse, because you would think, well, if it's illegal, surely there are consequences, right? But this is Trump's America. Illegal is a suggestion.

Illegal is an idea. Illegal is a suggestion. Illegal is an idea. Illegal is a theoretical concept. Unless someone enforces the law, you know, indictment, whatever. These are just headlines. At the end of the day, a guy tells staff to violate a court order. And what happens? Nothing. A few senators maybe will grow a spine and we'll see something, but nothing. This guy might even get a promotion for it.

And the dirty secret about power that we've learned really quickly over the last few months is that if there's no real enforcement, then illegal is a theoretical concept of no substantive value. It's like speeding in a town where there's no cops. I see the speed limit. I went at twice the speed. There's no police. There's no red speeding cameras.

Technically, it's against the law. But how are you going to enforce it? What does it mean? It's against the law. There's no enforcement mechanism. And what we've seen under Donald Trump is that they're building a government around. There's no enforcement mechanism to stop us. Now, if we talk about a meal, both a little bit, this is the guy who recently showed up

in court asking to dismiss Eric Adams corruption case. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, not because Adams is innocent, but because Trump wants political favors straight up quid pro quo. And this is the sort of thing that used to happen behind closed doors. It now can happen in broad daylight because why not? Right. What's the consequence when DOJ attorney Eris Raveni tried to tell the truth in court, he was told to lie and to go back and change the filing to commit perjury.

And when he refused, they fired him because again, in this world, the truth gets you punished. Lying gets you promoted. And now that guy, a meal, Bovey is up for a lifetime seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He said, ignore the judiciary. He wants to be the judiciary. If you pitch this as fiction, studio executives would go, it's too on the. It's just not believable enough.

And if you want to talk about irony, the very courts that Bove wanted to ignore, those are the courts that he might soon command. It's sort of like hiring an arsonist to run the fire department. It's sort of like putting someone in charge of a government agency that they don't think should exist, which, by the way, is exactly what Donald Trump does. Let's not kid ourselves. If the Senate signs off on this, if Republicans nod and smile and do their advice and consent and they're not going to do anything about it, they really aren't just complicit.

They're co-conspirators. And the truth is that Bovay is the blueprint, not an outlier. Trump surrounds himself with people who hate the agencies that they are meant to lead. And now this is what we are up against. If you are the kind of Republican senator, as many are who say that they respect the Constitution. Here's your moment. Right.

If you confirm a guy who told DOJ lawyers defy court orders, you're saying the Constitution is optional and that law and order was just a campaign slogan, which of course we know that that's all it was. We've seen what happens when people like Judge Eileen Cannon get lifetime appointments. It's real damage. It's generational damage. And if you give someone like a meal, bovey, a robe and a gavel, you're institutionalizing corruption. So this is the part where I say we're going to stay on the story because we're going to

at the same time. What can be done? What can be done? That's what we need to figure out. Make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel. We're going to take a quick break. We've got a great program today. Are you feeling stuck in your job?

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The link is in the podcast notes. You know, for weeks now, discussions have focused on Trump's big, beautiful bill and its potential Medicaid cuts. However, a far more dangerous overlooked provision in the bill exists at ground dot news slash Pacman. You'll discover what Maga lawmakers quietly included a provision that could block federal judges from enforcing court orders unless a bond is posted. And if this passes, it could render Trump above the law. This is a critical detail.

It's largely unknown and it really exemplifies this flood the zone strategy of the Trump administration. Now, this is why ground news is essential. It really is the best way to uncover buried information by showing you not just the story, but its origins across the political spectrum. You can see bias ratings, credibility scores, coverage timelines and their browser extension also will flag potential bias when you're on a news site sort of guiding you to more reliable sources for fact checking. Ground News gives you a smarter and more reliable way to stay informed. I'm partnering with them to give you 40 percent off their unlimited David Pakman.

The David Pakman Show is an audience supported program. I invite you to join the ranks of membership by signing up at Join Pakman Dotcom. Very much appreciate everyone who is newly supporting the show and folks who have been supporting for more than a decade. In some cases, you can use the coupon code. It will end soon. This reign of terror of Trump is and will end soon. That's the coupon code. It will end soon. You can use that at Join Pacman Dotcom when you sign up. Donald Trump at NATO hunched over, confused, dejected and all of a sudden turning his attention to Spain, saying it's terrible what Spain has done. Do not adjust your screen.

Do not be confused. This really is Donald Trump disoriented and diminished. No idea what's going on. Trying to make heads or tails out of it. Let's take a look at some of the statements that this is the president of the United States at NATO. Such an important place. And this is the nonsense that is coming out of his mouth. Listen to this. A question on Spain. Are you satisfied with today? Oh, I think Spain's terrible what they've done. No, I do. They they're the only country

that won't pay the full up. They want to stay at 2 percent. I think it's terrible. And, you know, they're doing very well. The economy is very well. And that economy could be blown right out of the water with something bad happening. Spain is the only country that are you from Spain? Good. Congratulations.

You're the only country that is not paying. I don't know what the problem is. I think it's too bad. This is 10 percent funny. Like listen, I get it. Are you from Spain. I think it's too bad. This is 10 percent funny. Like, listen, I get it. Are you from Spain? Oh, that's too bad. Like I have a sense of humor and this is Trump being unintentionally funny.

There is something funny about it. But 90 percent of it is Trump thought at one point Spain was part of bricks. Trump I would be shocked if he knows a damn thing about Spain, like much of the things and countries that he talks about. And this is what happens when the president just doesn't know anything. And this is seen as a virtue. Not knowing anything has been molded and repackaged and squeezed into the container called I'm an outsider. Trump's ignorance has been reframed as an asset.

This guy is not a political insider. And it got even worse with people in the crowd sort of snickering as another question about Spain came up and Trump just hunched over and stumbling through non non answers that are just rambling. And people in the crowd realized, damn, none of this makes any sense. I wanted to know if you're aware from Spain. I wanted to know if you want to. That's the Spain corner, right? Shouldn't have said that. That's okay. I do like Spain, by the way. I think it's unfair that they're not paying, but go ahead. Are you going to negotiate directly with Spain about... I'm going to negotiate directly with Spain. I'm going to do it myself. They're going to pay. They'll pay more money this way. You should tell them to go back and pay. You're a reporter. Tell them to go back. They ought to

join all of those countries that are paying five percent. Spain's going to be just about the only one that's not. They were the most hostile toward toward doing. I just doesn't make sense to me. OK. So, again, this is there is so much about politics that is what is the story that you can sell. And we see this and we go, oh, my goodness, he's arguing with reporters.

He's being rude to people. He's dismissive. He has this condescending I know more about everything than you attitude. This is an embarrassment. This is not diplomacy. That's the view of many of us. And I'm there with you. Like 10 percent of it is funny.

His attitude is sort of funny, but globally humiliating, of course, to MAGA. They love this shit. We really have to understand that one of the things we on the left sometimes fall for is we see something so pathetic and embarrassing and we assume everybody's going to see it the way we do and everybody's going to react the way we do. And they're going to realize this is terrible to have a president who behaves like this. If you look on Twitter, you look at the comments to some of these things, people go damn right. Look at Trump finally standing up for the United States.

He's not the president of Spain. He's saying Spain's got to pay. We love it. This is strong, Trump. This is what we voted for. This is fantastic. It's a completely different perspective. And so we have to remember just showing them the stuff isn't enough to get them over to

our side in terms of worldview. Now the question came up of what happened to ending the Russia Ukraine war in 24 hours. Trump hates this damn question. He first said he would end it within 24 hours of becoming president elect, then 24 hours of getting inaugurated. Then within 100 days, it's all come and gone. And Trump's answer is it's harder than people know, which really means it's harder than Trump knows.

We all knew the promises made no sense. Go ahead. Right in the back. Yeah. You told one the tall man. Mr Mr. President Johannes Petra from Austrian national television. He once said that you would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. You later said you said that sort of time sarcastically. Of course it was sarcastic. But you've now been in office. Now it's sarcastic. Five months and five days. Why have you not been able to end the Ukraine war?

Because it's more difficult than people would have any idea. Vladimir Putin has been more difficult. Frankly, I had some problems with Zelensky. You may have read about him and it's been more difficult than other wars. I mean, look, we just ended a war in 12 days that was simmering for 30 years, frankly. He ended a war in 12 days. That's the new view. So listen, his explanation is it was it's just really difficult to end the Russia-Ukraine

war. What about mentioning that before? No, then it was time for the sarcasm that he would end it in 24 hours. And this is what always happens. Who could have known health care could be so difficult? That's what we heard in 2017 when Trump abandoned his plan, which would have cut health care from 24 to 32 million people. It's just it's tough.

People don't know that it's tough. We've all been saying it's tough. We've all been saying the predictions make no sense. And then finally, really wacky moment. Trump tags in Pete Hegseth during this presentation. So Hegseth can rail against the media. And so people like you picked up and said, oh, it's not severe. We're just looking for the report was not a complete report.

Yeah. The message was probably wait till you know the answer before you answer. Did you not have a public component to your Zelensky meeting for a tactical reason with President Putin? Hello, Mr. Secretary. Yeah. There's a reason the president calls out fake news for what it is.

These pilots, these refuelers, these fighters, these air defenders, the skill and the courage it took to go into enemy territory, flying 36 hours on behalf of the American people in the world to take out a nuclear program is beyond what anyone in this audience can fathom. And then the instinct, the instinct of CNN, the instinct of the New York Times is to try to find a way to spin it for their own political reasons to try to hurt President Trump or our country. They don't care what the troops think. They

don't care what the world thinks. They want to spin it to try to make him look bad based on a leak. Of course, we've all seen plenty of leakers and what do leakers do? They have agendas and what do they do? Do they share the whole information or just the part that they want to introduce? And when they introduce that preliminary, a preliminary report that's deemed to be low, a low assessment. You know what a low assessment means? Low confidence. All right. Get, get, get, get that.

Get this guy out of here. Um, Trump tagging in Pete Hegseth to just say, you're all so terrible to this guy. Why can't you just talk about how awesome he is? Put this up, put a pin in this because we're going to get back to Pete Hegs, Seth, demanding with a straight face that the media produce pro Trump propaganda, the likes of which would make North Korean news anchors blush about how outrageous and suck up. It is. So we're going to get back to that.

Trumpet NATO did not go well. This led to an all night meltdown. Here's the reality. Donald Trump melted down in real time on truth social overnight, central on that one. And corporate media just doesn't notice. We have an unwell person that we are dealing with here and we are watching him unravel in real time. Over the course of just a few hours, Trump posted a series of completely unhinged rants

to his social media platform. Each one of these is more detached than the last. These are the posts of someone deep in a spiral, completely unable to regulate himself emotionally, unable to stop, but still in possession of the most important office in the country, still with access to the nuclear codes. Take a look at this and just imagine if Joe Biden did two percent of this. Trump posting, quote, Secretary of Defense War Pete Hegseth, together with military representatives, will be holding a major news conference tomorrow morning at eight a.m. Eastern at the Pentagon in order

to fight for the dignity of our great American pilots. These patriots were very upset after 36 hours of dangerously flying through enemy territory. They landed. They knew the success was legendary. And then two days later, they started reading fake news by CNN and the failing New York Times. They felt terribly, fortunately for them, as usual, solely for the purpose of demeaning President Donald J. Trump.

The fake news times and CNN lied and totally misrepresented the facts, none of which they had because it was too soon. There were no facts out there yet. The news conference will prove both interesting and irrefutable. Enjoy. We're going to get to that press conference later. But understand two things. Very important.

Number one, during the Bush Iraq years, some in the audience may not have been following politics then or maybe were too young then to follow politics. During the Bush era, they did a version of this, which is if you question any aspect of the mission, you're you're attacking the troops, you're making the troops feel bad, you're not supporting the troops, you're unpatriotic. That's something that was big during the lead up the drums of war beating up to the Iraq war. And then after it started as well, this is back in 2003. They're doing the same thing.

And I think there's an irony also, which is we're simultaneously supposed to believe that our troops are the big strong men. Right. And also they feel really bad when they see these articles. They just they feel bad. You're making them feel bad. So wait a second. Are they the tough guys or aren't they?

Now this entire narrative of they feel bad, I think it's completely fabricated by Trump. I think it's plain and simple. That's what it is. But OK, so starting to spiral on truth social. Then Trump continues breaking news. I was shocked to hear that the state of Israel, which has just had one of its greatest moments in history and is strongly led by Bibi Netanyahu, is continuing its ridiculous witch hunt against their great wartime prime minister.

Bibi and I just went through hell together. Yeah. Trump had to take a break from golfing to launch the bombing. Bibi and I just went through hell together, fighting a very tough and brilliant longtime enemy of Israel, Iran. And Bebe could not have been better, sharper or stronger in his love for the incredible Holy Land. Anyone else would have suffered losses, blah, blah, blah.

Trump then gets to I just learned Bebe has been summoned to court for the continuation of his long running. He's been going through it since 2020 unheard of first time an Israeli prime minister has been on trial, sitting prime minister, politically motivated case, blah, blah, blah. He wants it canceled immediately, says Trump. Cancel the case against Bibi Netanyahu. Put aside anything you feel about Bibi Netanyahu. Just for a moment. I don't like the guy. I think

there's never going to be peace when Bibi Netanyahu is in charge. Also not when Hamas is in charge. But put that all aside for a second for Donald Trump to be demanding that the legal system of Israel end a specific case against their prime minister just beyond the pale. I mean, truly, completely beyond the pale. Trump calls it a travesty of justice. The travesty is Trump posting these messages. OK, then Trump continuing to just rant and rave is just endless. Fake news CNN is so disgusting and incompetent.

Some of the dumbest anchors in the business. And then finally, Trump posting rumor is that the failing New York Times and fake news CNN will be firing the reporters who made up the fake stories on the Iran nuclear sites because they got it so wrong. Let's see what happens. And the media is basically silent about this. Are they you know, they're either obsessed with whether Joe Biden looked tired when he was videoed getting an ice cream last week or they're pretending that Trump's behavior

is normal or even worse. You'll see in a moment they're pretending that Trump's lashing out on true social is strategic and that it's a form of leadership. This is not normal. This is not normal. This is not strategic. This is deeply dangerous. And people in the media have to do a better job of covering this for what it is. This is not only an obviously unwell man.

He has the power to sign executive orders and appoint judges and command troops and launch nuclear weapons. And the fact that this is yet another overnight meltdown to me only only makes it more serious. It's it seems that this is just 24, 7, 24, 7 with Donald Trump. The last message there was at eight this morning and they they went overnight. This isn't ending. It's escalating. But Fox News loves it. This you have to see if you believe, as I do, that Donald Trump's early morning and overnight all caps tantrums on truth social are signs of a guy who's unraveling and unstable. Maria Bartiromo and Ted Cruz want you to know this is leadership Trump hitting truth social

heavily and they say that he is showing leadership on truth. I don't even know how else to explain it. They describe it as a very busy morning on truth social. They should be questioning his stability. They should be questioning his judgment. They should be bringing up the sheer weirdness of all of it from a sitting president. But they call it leadership. Take a listen today.

The president had a busy morning on Truth Social posting this. Israel is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home while doing a friendly plane wave to Iran. Nobody will be hurt. The ceasefire is in effect. The president brokering ceasefire and peace in the Middle East yesterday. Joining me now is Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary Committees. Senator, it's great to see you again. Thanks so much for being here

this morning. Assess the president's leadership on all of this and what has taken place. How do you see things? Yeah. Well I think president's lead, president Trump's leadership has been extraordinary. It has been clear-eyed. He has stood unshakably alongside our friend and ally, the state of Israel. And he acted decisively this weekend to take out Iran's nuclear capability. The military attack that our soldiers carried out was incredibly effective. We had seven B-2 stealth bombers that dropped a total of 14 bunker buster bombs on three nuclear

facilities annihilated those nuclear facilities. I think you get the point. They love it. Very busy on truth social, extraordinary leadership, as if nothing says strength like being up at five a.m. posting dozens of times to truth social with fake polls, jail threats, random TV rantings and other nonpresidential stuff. It's not only dangerous the way that Trump is behaving, it's dangerous the way that right wing media and Republicans are reacting because he's pushing conspiracy theories, threatening enemies, spiraling publicly.

But instead of confronting it, the enablers go, this is brilliant stuff, really, really brilliant leadership. And they're gaslighting the country into pretending that a deeply unwell man is a political genius. And that's an authoritarian playbook item known for a long time. Whatever the leer, the dear leader does, whether it's erratic or cruel or unhinged, it's not just acceptable. It's inspiring. We should be impassioned by the behavior of the dear leader.

And if you disagree, you're simply the problem. This is the sort of thing you see in North Korea where the supreme leader's every utterance is declared profound, wise and historic, even if he's ranting about how the moon obeys his commands. And when Trump posts 30 times before breakfast about fake trials and television ratings, suddenly it's evidence of brilliance. So this is no longer news. It's propaganda.

It's an attempt to launder an unstable guy into strength. And it's a classic of authoritarian regimes. They rely on this kind of distortion. You don't ever explain the leaders behavior. You sanctify it. You praise it. You take something unhinged and you say, what a heroic act. Trump could bark at a mailbox and Ted Cruz would say, I appreciate Donald Trump taking

a powerful stand against the deep state. And what's happening here isn't just absurd. It's a test to see how far they can go. And sadly, I think they can get very, very far with this forced adulation. in partner's answers until you've shared your own. So it's like a safe, genuine space for honest dialogue and discovery. Recently, one paired prompt asked what's something you admire most about your partner? Answering this simple question created a conversation with my girlfriend and highlighted things that we sometimes overlook. The paired app is a great daily reminder of the qualities that make relationships special, and It's great to welcome back to the program.

After far too long, Rutger Bregman, historian, bestselling author, co-founder of the School for Moral Ambition and also his latest book is called Moral Ambition. Stop wasting your talent and start making a difference. It's so great to have you back. First of all, thank you. Thanks so much for having me, David. It's so good to see you again. You know, one of the things I like about talking to you is very often we get into the we get

tunnel vision when talking about problems in society where we just are arguing over the answer to the question. And what I like that you sometimes do and you did it, you know, at Davos years ago in those viral videos and in different places, as you'll say, wait a second, I don't know that we're even asking the right question necessarily. Let me reframe the question we're asking rather than just start arguing about the answer related to your book and also the status quo around jobs and employment, the meaning of work to people's lives and just sort of in this general area.

Is there something in the conversation around labor, working and jobs, maybe in the United States? But you can answer more broadly as well, if necessary, where you think that the wrong sort of question is being asked or or debated like is something missed about when we talk about minimum wage tying health care to employment or whether college degrees are really, you know, the micro. What is the macro that maybe is getting missed in this conversation? So look, I was watching MSNBC the other day after, you know, the the great victory of

Mondani in New York and, you know, corporate media again, being very scared of like a Democratic socialist. And I thought it was really funny from a European perspective, because for me, like Mondani is like a total middle of the road politician, right? Just the old fashioned European social Democrat, you know, coming up with very, like, pretty obvious idea, like, let's support the working class, you know, there's a real cost of living crisis here, we got to do something about that affordable childcare, or pretty mainstream, I would say this is like, not radical, like a tiny little bit higher taxes. So indeed, I think we can expand the imagination, especially in this era of massive geopolitical

shifts and massive technological shifts. In my very first book, Utopia for Realists, I already wrote about the rise of the robots or AI as we call it today. And I think this presents an enormous opportunity to totally reim imagine the role of work in our life so today we have around 25% of people in rich countries who think that their own job is socially meaningless. Bullshit jobs as the anthropologist david graber called them i think there's a real possibility if we go on like this that that number will keep going up you know it could be 50% could be 75% as the AI keeps taking more and more jobs. We should never underestimate capitalism's extraordinary ability to come up with new bullshit jobs. But there's an alternative here as well. And this is an alternative that has been dreamt about by some of the greatest thinkers for the past two centuries by people like the

British economist, Joe Maynard Keynes or the science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov. Actually, in the 60s and the 70s, people said, you know what? The future of capitalism is going to be total leisure for everyone. Fully automated luxury communism. I think that's what our friend Aram Bastani over at the Novara Media calls it. And that is, I would say, definitely a possibility, but we got to fight for it. And we know we got to at least start with asking the right questions. Is it fair to say or let me ask it this way. I've read probably 30 or 40 books in my life that reference when Keynes said technological

advance will lead to a 15 hour work week. And of course, every technical technological advance led maybe to more efficiency, maybe to more surplus value from from people's work hours. But we haven't quite gotten to that 15 hour work week quite yet. Is it is that simply a structural thing where there is no technological advance that will open the door to everybody's 15 hour work week? And only if we decide that it's a worthwhile goal, which is a different question, it's going to be a restructuring

of society and the economy that would achieve that. Well, again, there are alternatives here as a guy who comes from the Netherlands, which is the shortest working week in the world and that still has a very productive capitalist economy. I know that there's a big bandwidth. There are lots of alternatives out there. And also, what history teaches us is that actually the work we were shrinking up until the 60s and the 70s, people worked much harder in the late 90s and the early 20th century. It's just that it stopped doing so. And especially in the US, people started working more again.

And yeah, there are many books to be written about why that happened. I would say that the corporate takeover of America has a lot to do with that. But yeah, I would say that the ultimate goal of technological prosperity has always been or should always have been. Yeah, freedom. And so that we can finally figure out what life is really about. What's your view of the. Oh, I'm glad it's the ultra.

What's the altruist movement? I forget that that, you know, Sam Bankman Fried was a part of altruism. Yes. Effective altruism. I'm curious what your view of how that intersects with, you know, in your book, you talk about moral ambition and people in high achieving professions, but who are feeling morally stagnant, for lack of a better term. You know, the the effective altruism movement has had some setbacks maybe because of some,

I don't know that I would call them pseudo scandals, but just individuals that got involved who maybe, you know, were not the best representatives of it. But I find it to be an interesting movement in that one perspective is you can actually have the greatest impact by staying in the high achieving job, but donating a lot of money effectively rather than, for example, abandoning that and doing something that might be personally more rewarding. Do you have an opinion on the movement?

Oh, absolutely. There's a lot to say about this. The first thing I would say is that I'm a guy who comes from the political left. And sometimes I worry that we have a lot of people who are good at raising awareness, you know, expressing the right opinions, winning debates in the group section, the comment section, but don't actually make a big difference, right? What I like about effective altruism, I've visited a conference once, you see a lot of people, you meet a lot of people who actually practice what they preach. So I've never seen as many vegans, you know, in one conference room. I've never

met as many people who've donated their kidneys one conference room. I've never met as many people who've donated their kidneys to random strangers. I've never met as many people who donate a significant amount of their wealth and their income to pretty effective charities. So there's a lot to like here, honestly, and a lot to admire. Well, they had some bad press recently, and there was quite a bit of hubris in the movement. I mean, I would say that the collapse of FTX to Sembank-Murphy, that wasn't a minor incident. It didn't help. It didn't help, indeed.

But there's something to be said for the whole notion of earning to give. Actually, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels did it already. Like Friedrich Engels was making the money so that Karl Marx could write capital. So it's a pretty old idea. And we've seen it throughout history that some of the greatest movements for human rights, the abolitionists, the suffragettes, they didn't get government subsidies. You couldn't like say, hey, give me a grand to fight slavery. You were fighting the government. You didn't get some fancy corporate sponsorship deal. No, you really needed to rely on ambitious philanthropists. This has been true for all these movements. In the US, you had the Garland Fund, for example, an amazing fund that hired the first full-time

lawyer for the civil rights movement. That basically laid the groundwork for an eventual victory with Brown v. Board of Education. I'm a guy who's known for dunking on billionaires and their philanthropy. And I will keep doing that until my dying breath. But as a historian, I do know that there have always been exceptions. And I would love to see more of that. I want you to talk a little more about how you define bullshit jobs. If people haven't read David Graeber's book, Bullshit Jobs, it's excellent. And you referenced him.

But you mentioned something a few minutes ago about I think it was the way that the job is or isn't fulfilling to the person doing it. You know, I think one of the interesting things is that, you know, if you take a job like driving for Uber, in a sense, it's the ultimate non bullshit job in that people need transportation. You are moving people from where they are to where they need to be. And there's a significant pragmatic utility to it. And a lot of the problem with it is actually that the driver is undercompensated and that

is in a relationship with the company that, you know, based on the Uber drivers I've talked to and what the revenue split is, seems fundamentally unfair. So it's not really a bullshit job. It's a gig job that maybe is unfair in some way. Can you elaborate a little bit on the definition as you see it and what qualifies? Sure. Sure. I think David Graver's powerful insight was that we can just ask people themselves.

People themselves are the real experts on their own job. So if someone says, look, what I do is just utter BS, I can go on strike and no one will give a shit. I think we can believe them. And since Graeber's book came out, we got new evidence. The best study that I know of was done by two Dutch economists. They had a data set of more than 40 countries, 100,000 employees who were all asked this question, what do you think about the social meaning of your work? Do you make this world a better place? Yes or no? Or are you in doubt?

And the number they arrived at is 25%. 25% of the modern workforce think that their own job is BS. And what's really interesting in the paper is that they break it down by profession so you can see how different professions think about it. And it's more or less what you would expect. So marketeers score very high on the BS ranking. It's like 40% or something. Same is true for bankers, HR consultants, journalists are somewhere

in the middle with 20% and then firefighters, police officers. Well, they yet have to find the first firefighter that considers his or her own job bullshit. But that is a pretty radical insight because 25% that is five times the unemployment rate. And these are very often people with nice resumes who went to good universities, who earned quite decent money. But again, let's repeat this again. They could go on strike and it wouldn't matter. Just imagine how huge this waste of talent is, right? If all these people would be working on actual problems, and we do face some pretty substantial problems as a species, just imagine how much better this world could be, right? Or we could shorten the working week by at least a quarter or

maybe a third. So there's a lot of opportunity here as well. And as I said, moral ambition is trying to be the antidote to that. It's all about devoting your career, those 2000 work weeks, to some of the most pressing issues we face as a species. And I co-founded this organization, the School for Moral Ambition, to actually help people because it's not easy in the current capitalist economy where so often BS is rewarded and the socially meaningful work is not. So it's a whole journey that people have to go on. But it can be a really rewarding journey.

I'm curious what you think are the lowest hanging fruit in terms of changes, solutions or policies. Sometimes when people who are more technocratically minded hear what we're talking about, they will often talk about, well, we need a system for government to compensate work that's often unpaid but high value, like parents who aren't working outside of the home or, you know, they're sort of like a more technocratic approach. Andrew Yang was a guy who had some really specific ideas when he ran for president about let's assign some dollar value to your data.

And that's a way where people can maybe recover some money that has been redirected. That's really there's I'm curious whether some of those technocratic ideas appeal to you or what's the what's the lowest hanging fruit that we could do? So here's how I think about this. Marx famously had a very materialist view of history. Right. He said that it's basically the economic forces that determine our destiny. And sure, there's a lot of truth to that.

The distribution of wealth and power and technology matters immensely. But what I see when I study some of the greatest movement we've ever seen, I spend a lot of time studying the British abolitionist movement, for example, because that one was super successful, way more successful than the American or the Dutch abolitionist movement, I'm from the Netherlands. And also the move from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era, what I see in those moments is that doing good became more fashionable, or people redefined what it meant to be successful. So maybe the Gilded Age is the best example, right? You had the robber barons becoming incredibly rich, you know, abusing their workers who were not being paid a living wage,

incredible monopolies, and also incredible immorality and corruption. Does that remind you of something today? But then what came after that was the progressive era led by people like Theodore Roosevelt, who was a pretty privileged guy, you know, came from a very privileged family. He studied at Harvard and he was just utterly fed up. He was very angry at his peers. He was angry at the people in his bubble. He was like, come on, just complain about a problem and not do something about it. That's in my view called whining. And honestly, I wrote this book, Moral Ambition, and started this movement

because I feel a similar anger. I'm just really fucking angry at many of my peers who ended up in these BS jobs at McKinsey or Goldman Sachs. And they are pretty talented. I know many of these people, right? And they could make a great contribution, but instead they've ended up in these super boring jobs, while they could make a massive difference

in the fight against tax avoidance, for example, or tax evasion. So it's a bit of a long, wide-ended answer to your question, but I really think that that's the low-hanging fruit. I believe that there is a possibility of a massive cultural shift, that we can make doing good more fashionable once again.

And I see some early signs of that. I mean, the extraordinary victory of Mondani in New York. I mean, that is like a beautiful example of me, to me, of moral ambition. Someone who actually cares about achieving results and winning elections, who's not wallowing in his own moral purity as we've been doing way too much for the past decade or so on the left. So yeah, I would love to see much more of that. The new book is Moral Ambition. Stop wasting your talent and start making a difference. We've been speaking with the book's author, historian Rutger Bregman.

Always great to talk to you. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me, David. Your personal data is everywhere and you might not even know people search sites and data brokers are quietly publishing your name, address, phone number, even things like property records, political views. It is not just creepy. It's dangerous because scammers and fraudsters and shady marketers can use this information

every day. and and to That's INC OGNI dot com slash Pacman for 60 percent off. The link is in the podcast notes. One of the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes is they are nasty to the media. Anybody that reports critically about what they're doing or that they even perceive to be reporting critically, even if they're just reporting the facts, they become the target of anger and sometimes they become the target of prosecution. And in some places they get killed. We're not there yet in the United States, fortunately.

But Donald Trump yesterday during this NATO press conference in the Netherlands, which, by the way, Trump struggled to say Netherlands many times. Trump went after a CNN reporter and then said to everybody, what are you people doing? Why aren't you telling the story as I want it told? And this is an authoritarian who isn't in control enough of the media outlets for his liking. Let's take a look at this. This this is really ugly stuff. Fake news wants to say, but you're not disputing the report said what it said, even though

it was initial. The report said what it said and it was fine. It was severe, they think, but they had no idea. They shouldn't have issued a report until they did. But we've gotten the information. I think Pete said it better than you can say it. And you know, you should be proud. You especially you should be proud of those pilots and you shouldn't be trying to demean

them. No, there's those pilots flew at great risk. Imagine talking to members of the press like this. And they never come back home and see their husbands or their wives. Let me just tell you, you and NBC fake news, which is one of the worst, and CNN, New York Times are all bad. They're sick. There's something wrong with them.

You know what? You should be praising those people instead of trying to find something by getting me by trying to go and get me. You're hurting those people. They were devastated. You know, I got a call from Missouri, great state, and I won three times by a lot. And I got a call that the pilots and the people on the plane were devastated because they were trying to minimize the attack.

And they all said it was hit. But oh, but we don't think it was really maybe hit that badly. And they were devastated. They put their lives on the line and your attempts to report facts are really upsetting the soldiers. And they have and I'm not referring to you, but real scum, real scum come out and write reports that are as negative as they could possibly be. It should be the opposite.

You should make them heroes and hero opposite. You should make them heroes and heroines. You should make them. That's what Trump wants. Telling exactly how everything should be reported on. Really, people that they were so devastated when they heard this news. And you know what they said? One of them, I spoke to one of them, said, sir, we hit the site. It was perfect. It was dead on because they don't understand fake news because they have a normal life, except they have to fly very big, very fast planes. That's right. Why can't you base all of your reporting around really big, tough members of the military

who are upset by your reporting and also don't understand fake news? What a what a vote of confidence from Trump. And it's interesting because if you really look at the language, even though what he's trying to do is attack the media for the reporting, he's kind of demeaning to the service members. They can't handle reporting that attempts to comport to the facts. They don't understand fake news. Here's another clip of Trump during this rant. I, I believe this is a separate, a different clip.

There may be a little overlap. I shouldn't have issued a report until they did, but we've gotten the information. I think Pete said it better than you can say it. And you know, you should be proud. You, especially you should be proud of those pilots and you shouldn't be trying to demean them. No, there's those pilots flew at great risk. All right. OK, so there's overlap here with the with the earlier clip. This is the epitome of thin skinned. And unfortunately, a lot of authoritarians had very thin skins. And so what did Donald Trump do? He made Pete Hegseth hold another one of these five a.m. Pacific press conferences this morning, eight p.m. Eastern. And what Pete Hegseth did, I don't think I've ever seen anything like this.

The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, came out and said, here's what you need to be producing, demanding that the media produce glowing Soviet style propaganda about what Donald Trump has been doing because you and I mean specifically you, the press, specifically you, the press corps, because you cheer against Trump so hard. It's like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad. You have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes. You have to hope maybe they weren't effective.

Maybe the way the Trump administration is representative isn't true. So let's take half truths, spun information, leaked information, and then spin it, spin it in every way we can to try to cause doubt and manipulate the mind, the public mind over whether or not our brave pilots were successful. How many stories have been written about how hard it is to, I don't know, fly a plane for 36 hours? That's what the reporting should be. This is really hard, guys.

Has MSNBC done that story as Fox? Have we done the story? How hard that is? Have we done it two or three times so that American people understand how about how difficult it is to shoot a drone from an F 15 or 16 or F 22 or F 35 or what it's like to man a patriot battery or how hard it is to refuel midair, giving the American people an understanding of how complex and sophisticated this mission really was. Imagine if the media actually took Pete Hegseth's advice and you open up a YouTube channel or

a publication and it goes article about how difficult it is to fly for 36 hours, article about how this has never been done before and so successfully. Article about how great all of Donald Trump's intentions are. That's what they want. It's pathetic. And there's nothing more beta than saying this is what I need you to write about. There are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did that by because of the hatred of this press corps are undermined because your people are trying to leak and spin that

it wasn't successful. It's irresponsible. And he's just scolding reporters. Folks in this room are privy to that information because of the proximity here in the Pentagon. It's an important responsibility. And time and time again, classified information is leaked or peddled for political purposes to try to make the president look bad. And what's really happening is you're undermining the success of incredible B-2 pilots and incredible

F-35 pilots. And it goes on like this for a little while. OK, unbelievable. This is the demand for compliance. This is what authoritarian regime authoritarian regimes and dictators do. A couple other notable moments from this totally deranged press conference. Jennifer Griffin, who, by the way, is no left wing bomb thrower, says, are you sure that the uranium wasn't moved before the attacks?

Because it's really seeming like the uranium was moved before the attacks. And Pete Hegseth goes, oh, you've been one of the worst, Jennifer, one of the worst scene that suggests his former colleague at Fox, by the way, what we didn't hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations. It's about highly enriched uranium. Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Fordow mountain or some of it because there were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance. Are you certain none of that

highly enriched uranium was moved? Of course, we're watching every single aspect, but Jennifer, you've been about the worst. The more the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says. You're terrible. I'm familiar about the ventilation shafts on Saturday night. And in fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission. Notice how she's actually going. I did a bunch of the suck up journalism. I said how awesome these B-2 bombers are.

Great accuracy. So I take issue. I appreciate you acknowledging that this is the first operate, the most successful mission based on operational security that this department has done since you've been here. I appreciate that. Yeah, he appreciates that. And then just one more of these demanding more glowing report. Let me read the bottom line here.

President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history. Right. And it was a resounding success, resulting in a ceasefire agreement and the end of the 12 day war. Move over D-Day. What Trump did was the most complex and secretive military operation in American history. And what a pleasure it was to Pete Haggis to be able to attach his name to it. They always go too far. The hyperbole knows no bounds.

Embarrassing, humiliating, but dangerous because when they demand compliance in this way, when you don't comply, it can get very ugly for the press. We've got a great bonus show for you today. We will talk about the signature policy bill of Republicans facing major problems in the Senate. We will talk about Republicans now asking Trump to revoke the citizenship ship of Zoran Mamdani, who won the New York Democratic primary mayoral primary. And we will also talk about this new weird daddy thing that the White House is obsessed

with regarding Trump. It's getting creepy. It's getting very creepy. Sign up at Join Pacman Dotcom. Get instant access to the bonus show.