The David Pakman Show - 7/18/25: White House staffer explains Trump’s panic as polling gets even worse

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Jessica Tarlov torches Trump’s immigration failures on Fox News as co-hosts sit in stunned silence -- Trump spirals into a Truth Social meltdown accusing his own supporters of falling for the “Epstein hoax” -- Former Trump aide Sarah Matthews says Trump’s panicking as Epstein backlash spreads inside MAGA world -- Fox News’s John Roberts parrots Trump’s claim that the Epstein files are fake and awkwardly calls him “Daddy” -- Trump promised mass deportations but is falling far short as overcrowded ICE facilities spiral into crisis -- An interview with Trump hosted by his daughter-in-law Lara Trump goes horribly wrong despite the softball setup -- The Friday Feedback segment -- On the Bonus Show: Trump diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, CBS cancels "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," Charlie Kirk takes Trump's Epstein marching orders, and much more... 🪒 Harry’s: Get a trial set for just $8 plus a free gift at https://harrys.com/pakman  📜 Trust & Will: Save 10% on your estate planning at https://trustandwill.com/pakman 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🍷 Naked Wines: Use code PAKMAN to get 6 bottles for $39.99 at https://nakedwines.com/pakman 😬 Remi mouth guards: Get up to 50% OFF with code PAKMAN at https://shopremi.com/pakman 🔊 Babbel language learning: Get up to 60% OFF at https://babbel.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, everybody. Thank you all for the awesome feedback this week on two different things that we've been doing. Number one, we've been doing a daily sort of like just the news podcast, which is three minutes and it summarizes the news elements of everything we talk about on the show. So it takes out the opinion and it's really just like a rundown and preview of the day's news.

We've been doing this daily on our sub stack. If you want, you can get that emailed, but you don't have to. And you can find it for free at sub stack dot David Pakman dot com. People loving that. And then number two, dozens and dozens of such nice messages from new viewers to the show who found me in the last 48 hours, thanks to my live stream with Heather Cox Richardson, who her fans are both very intelligent and also very devoted. She's got over two point six million followers on sub stack, which is insane. And so many after my conversation with Heather coming in and saying, hey, now I'm a follower of the David Pakman show. So welcome to all of those folks. It's really great to have you here and you can check out my conversation with Heather

also on our sub stack. We had a really beautiful moment on Fox News this week involving Jessica Tarlov that her fellow co-hosts were not really there. They were there. They were there. They were there. They were there. They were there. They were there. They were there. They were there. They were there. Heather, also on our substack. We had a really beautiful moment on Fox News this week involving Jessica Tarlov that her

fellow co-hosts were not really ready for. So let me kind of explain it. You all know, I expect because you've listened to the show, have been following what's going on that a bunch of Trump's base is furious with him over the Epstein situation and also that Trump is underwater in terms of approval in every single poll. He's even underwater specifically on immigration. And that's what came up during this segment. Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal on the panel, as usual, drops the hammer about how deeply

unpopular not just in general Trump is, but specifically when it comes to immigration, which many on Fox have been cheerleading as a great success of this administration. She explains what the numbers are and nobody can really rebut it or explain it away. And it was one of these moments where it's like, damn, maybe she actually can get through to some of these people watching Fox. Not the people that you want to be hearing from on this. I think having border crossings down to zero is an incredible achievement.

The problem is, is that the rest of the immigration policy is an absolute shambles. His approval rating on immigration ranges from minus twenty seven. That's in Gallup to minus 19 and CNN and minus 15 in the new Quinnipiac poll that's out today. He's in the red or underwater however you want to say it on deportations as well, which was one of his key promises. In the CNN poll, his approved strongly number down to minus 21. It's the lowest it's been at any point in either of his administrations. What do you think that is? Because he's not doing a good job of being president.

Oh, I love that. You know, there's really, there's really no spinning these numbers. His approval is low because he's being a terrible president. Trump's approval on immigration is in the toilet. It's historically bad. And what's funny is immigration was supposed to be the great victory of Trump. Listen, the tariffs are sort of a question mark. And now we've got the Epstein thing.

And what about saying no new wars, but he's bombing countries? Oh, what do we do about that? But he's doing what he promised on immigration. And so you've got to give him marks on that. No, his approval on immigration is a disaster and you don't get there unless you are executing a policy that is really repelling to the public. And that's what's going on. It's been completely chaotic. He first said, we're only going to go after it. Let me go back one second. No matter which version of Trump's promises you liked, he's failing. So let me break that down.

Remember which version of Trump's promises you liked. He's failing. So let me break that down. He said he would go after the worst of the worst violent criminals who are undocumented and have been convicted of crimes. Instead, we see ICE deporting farm workers and parents and kids with cancer. We see ICE hanging out in Home Depot parking lots where people are waiting for work and going to Wal-Mart and this sort of thing. A girl undergoing treatment for cancer was removed while fighting leukemia.

And so that story about we're going to get the worst of the worst. They haven't stuck to that. Number two, Trump said he was going to be the deporter in chief. He was going to deport more people than anybody. And he's deporting not even roughly half of the people that Obama was deporting. Now, I don't say this because I go whoever deports the most I love it. This is not how I would measure the success and efficacy of an immigration policy, but it's what Trump promised. And there were people saying this guy, we, you know, you've got these people who believe there's 20, 30, 40, 50 million undocumented immigrants in the

United States, which there of of course, aren't. But if you believe that you would expect Trump to be able to deport a whole hell of a lot of people, he's roughly deporting half of the people that Obama was deporting. Trump's got the camps. He's got Tom Homan. He's got Christine Ohm. He's got a renewed focus on this issue and he can still only get half of the deportations done that Obama.

So if you were expecting him to do the mass deportations, he's failing there as well. And then you've also got some of the civil liberties, civil liberties conservatives who are seeing ICE agents wearing masks and broad broad daylight like it's, you know, a cartel operation, raiding communities, racially profiling, no transparency, no oversight, no sense of proportion. It's mostly people on the left, but it's also some people in the Republican Party who look at this and they go, this just doesn't seem right. And it's been a performance for MAGA audiences that love seeing people getting dragged out

of neighborhoods. They've liked it. But a lot of people, even centrists and some people in the moderate right, have had it with this stuff. And so it's not a left wing critique. These are people who are looking at the tactics and they don't like them. They're looking at the record and they're going, he's not even doing the thing that he promised to do. And meanwhile, there's no other area that's going really well. Tariffs aren't going well. Government transparency isn't going well.

Foreign policy is not going well. What Trump is benefiting from right now. And you know, I'm always just totally upfront about the economic numbers. Trump's benefiting from the fact that gas prices are basically flat. Now, he promised they'd go down. They didn't, but they're flat. Inflation prices have continued to increase, but relatively slowly between two point four and two point seven percent annualized.

Um, and so the stock market's been, you know, doing, doing fine. So Trump's benefiting from that right now. There are warning signs economically. My expectation is that if dissatisfaction continues with the immigration protocol and dissatisfaction continues with Trump's transparency on Epstein and we start to get into economic problems that these numbers are going to be the numbers Trump will dream of. They will be way better. These the numbers today will end up being way better than where Trump could end up.

And Trump seems desperate and wrecked by this. And I think it's worthy of a little bit of discussion. Donald Trump is completely unraveling. He posted a meltdown on Truth Social where he rants that the Jeffrey Epstein case is the newest hoax alongside the Steele dossier, alongside the 51 Intel Intel agents letter and alongside Hunter Biden's alleged bathroom laptop. Here is what Trump posted to his own platform. Truth central, quote, the radical left Democrats have hit pay dirt again, have hit pay dirt

again, just like with the fake and fully discredited Steele dossier, the lying 51 intelligence agents, the laptop from hell, which the Dems swore had come from Russia. No, it came from Hunter Biden's bathroom and even the Russia, Russia, Russia scam itself, a totally fake and made up story used in order to hide crooked Hillary Clinton's big loss in the 2016 presidential election. These scams and hoaxes are all the Democrats are good at. It's all they have. They are no good at governing, no good at policy, no good at picking winning candidates.

Also unlike Republicans, they stick together like glue. Their new scam is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein hoax. And my past supporters have bought into this bullshit hook line and sinker. This is Trump attacking his own voters. They haven't learned their lesson and probably never will. Even after being conned by the lunatic left for eight long years, I have had more success in six months than perhaps any president in our country's history. And all these people want to talk about with strong prodding by the fake news and the success star of Dems is the Jeffrey Epstein hoax.

Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work. Don't even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success because I don't want their support anymore. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Make America great again. So look at the highlights here. Trump's going after his own supporters for falling for a hoax because they've started to believe or at least ask questions.

Might Trump be in the Epstein files? And Trump is so rattled by what might be coming out that he's attacking the base. He's saying my base is weak. They've been duped. I don't want your support anymore. This is a panic for Trump. And where it gets weirder is that Trump says the Epstein situation, including thousands of pages of documents, victim testimony, federal charges, flight logs, convictions, videos,

pictures. It's another Democratic fabrication. So so think about what would have to be true for us to believe that Obama, Hillary, Comey and a rotating cast of deep state operatives fabricated the Epstein files, manufactured court cases, hoodwinked victims and the entire criminal justice system for eight years, including while Trump was president. Because remember, Epstein was arrested when Trump was president and Epstein died in his jail cell when Trump was president. All of that was done to make Trump look bad.

And the part that people really need to sit with is if that is true, if the Epstein case is fake, if it was invented to frame Trump, it would be a massive crime. People should be investigated, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned if that's what they did. But no one has been charged. No one's being investigated for the supposed fabrication because there is no such evidence. And by the way, Trump controls the DOJ. Don't you think that there was even a plot, you know, a plausible shred of an iota of

truth to these claims that Pam Bondi would be investigating the people that fabricated the files instead? Pam Bondi in February said, I've got the files now. Now all of a sudden it's there's no files and it's all a hoax. So the Epstein case is not a hoax. Trump knows that. I think his former supporters know it. The question is, do his current supporters know it?

His attorneys certainly know it. And Trump is here saying this is the new Russia, Russia, Russia. And he's screaming at the people who once supported him. He's pretending that an unhinged social media post proves his innocence or is going to convince anybody. But this is a guy who is wrecked politically and emotionally. If this were a nothing burger, he would be ignoring it. But he's melting down every day. He suspects he's in the documents. And I think increasingly Trump realizes it's going to eventually be made public, whether it's on purpose or not.

According to his decrees, I think he suspects we're going to figure it out. Let me know what you think. You can email info at David Pakman dot com. You can leave a comment on my YouTube channel. You can leave a comment on Spotify. I want to hear from you. Do you think the files will ultimately come out? to a meeting or you're just going about your day. And when you're trying to look sharp, Harry's makes it simple. Our sponsor Harry's makes high quality shaving and grooming products that just show up right

at your door. No overpriced markup from the big brands. I love the feel of the weighted handle on Harry's razors. It's easy to grip. It's nicely designed. It just looks good on the counter. The shave is smooth. It's nicely designed. It just looks good on the counter. The shave is smooth. The blades stay sharp.

They're foaming shave gel leaves my skin feeling amazing. They also have great body wash and deodorant products, really solid quality, just nice sense, more affordable than what you find in most stores. So whether you are already loyal to a grooming routine or you're just looking to upgrade from whatever you grabbed off the shelf Harry's makes it really really easy and you don't spend a fortune right now You can get a Harry's trial set for eight dollars plus you'll get a free gift. Go to Harry's dot-com slash pacman That's h a r r y s dot-com slash pacman to get a Harry's trial set for just eight bucks It's not the most fun thing to do, but it is very important. And our sponsor, Trust and Will, makes it really easy. And you can get 10 percent off at trust and will dot com slash Pacman.

It's a straightforward process. They walk you through it. All of the documents are state specific. They are legally valid. They are customized to your needs. Your care wishes or nomination guardians, final arrangements, power of attorney. needs guide you from start to finish one question at a time. Save your loved ones time and stress by having your documents in one place with bank level encryption with live customer support available through phone chat and email. Trust and will is trusted by hundreds of thousands of families and counting.

Protect what matters most in just minutes at trust and will.com slash Pacman and get 10% off plus free shipping. That's trust a and D will.com slash Pacman for 10% Well, about the sticking, rubbing and chafing that you can get with traditional underwear. Our sponsor sheath underwear have created unique boxer briefs with multiple ergonomic compartments in the front, which prevents skin on skin. And that means everything stays separate, comfortable, dry and cool. You will have a boost of confidence when you're out and about. I've known so many people who were skeptical about those compartments. Friends who say, I heard that ad for sheath. What about those compartments? And then they try it and then they're amazed at the comfort and breathability

when they finally try it. You will thank yourself. Plus sheath has brand new materials like bamboo and mesh for even more cooling comfort. They will be the most comfortable pair of boxer briefs you ever put on. No more sweatiness and chafing and readjusting, especially at the gym. It's a lifesaver. Give she thunderware a shot. I've had a great experience. I think you will too. Head over to sheath underwear dot com slash Pacman and get 20% off with The David Pakman show continues to be an audience supported program. The Daily Podcast, the videos, tick tock, the substack newsletter, all of the distribution staff salaries, connectivity, occasional legal costs, although we try to keep those as low as possible.

As you all know, it's all really made possible by the audience and the primary means of that support comes through membership. You can read about it and sign up for it at join Pacman dot com. very much. rocks. When you go through the membership sign up process, a White House staffer is revealing why Donald Trump is now panicking. Now that part isn't speculation. We've spent the week and part of last week looking at not only Trump's erratic panicky behavior, but also hearing from people like Stephen Bannon, who have been very clear and upfront in saying there is reason to panic here.

If the Epstein files aren't released, if Trump can't get out from under the cloud of his own making on this issue, Republicans might lose 40 seats in the House of Representatives in 2026. So we know that that's going on and we now have confirmation of that from someone who worked in a prior Trump White House. Remember Sarah Matthews? She's the former Trump press aid and she is now saying he is panicking now. He has to be panicking now.

Why? Because the Epstein story won't die and it is generating a rebellion inside Mago world. Now it started with the Trump truth social rant where he told the supporters, forget about Jeffrey Epstein. We covered that Monday. He got completely ratioed. You, you don't know what that means. It's a term the kids these days are using, but we talk about it on Monday.

And he said, let's stop wasting time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein. Nobody cares about Jeffrey Epstein. Now that alone is absurd. Trump campaigned on exposing the network. He claimed that the list of clients would be released. His attorney general, Pam Bondi, said earlier this year, it's on her desk on Wednesday. We looked at the letter that she sent Cash Patel in which she says, I have hundreds of pages of documents and I believe you have thousands and you should give them to me.

Now she has been saying there is no such list. It doesn't exist. We're not going to release anything else. We're not going to charge anybody else. And MAGA isn't buying it. You have these hardcore supporters really melting down, demanding answers. Elon Musk, Trump's on again, off again billionaire buddy, although they're now off, said Trump's not going to release the documents because Trump is in the documents, which is very plausible,

very, very plausible. So that's not Rachel Maddow saying it. That's Magas sometimes favorite unstable tech guy wearing a doge slash mega hat. The Epstein list was going to be their gotcha. It was going to be proof of the deep state proof that Biden was covering stuff up, even though Biden wasn't president when Epstein was arrested, nor was he president when Epstein died by suicide. It was going to prove that the elites were all in this together, but not Trump, not Trump.

But now the theory is coming inward because Trump made the promise. Trump had the DOJ. Trump appointed the people and now they're being told, never mind. And Trump trained his followers. If government actors tell you there's nothing to see here, don't believe them. And now Trump's government is telling his followers there's nothing to see here. And a whole bunch of them don't believe them. These are the people who used to chant, you know, drain the swamp and lock up Hillary

or whatever. They're now starting to think the guy holding the bucket is actually standing in it. So now we zoom out. Is it about Trump and Epstein? Yeah, to a degree. But this is about the rich and powerful closing ranks, even across party lines when they feel threatened. And it includes Trump. That's the key thing. Trump, Clinton, billionaires, royals, celebrities. When Epstein died in federal custody, it really was a power scandal. And now we're watching it happen again.

The promise of exposure is buried. The promises of transparency are replaced with nothing to see here. The client list that was imminent now doesn't exist anymore. And instead of answers, we get these very vague truth social posts, a suspiciously quiet justice department and an increasingly panicked Trump who every time he's asked about this topic either gets angry at the person asking it says that's not even a topic you should be asking about or tells us conflicting stories. There is no list. There's a list. But James Comey made it up. There's a list.

But Obama made it up or whatever. If this were Joe Biden bearing the Epstein files after promising to release them, Fox News would be running live helicopter shots of Biden's house. That's what it would be. But it's Trump and it's the guy who turned all of this into a campaign issue. Trump was going to expose pedophilia, sex trafficking, all this stuff. And now they're going, hey, guys, stop asking questions. It's time to stop.

So Sarah Matthews says Trump is likely to try to distract the public, say or do outrageous things to change the topic. That's always kind of been the move. I don't even think it's as crafted or micromanaged as some. You know, sometimes I'll get emails. David, don't you think that Trump bombed Iran to take attention away from Epstein? Or don't you think that Trump said Epstein? There's nothing to talk about with Epstein to distract from the failed 90 deals in 90

days. It's not that calculated. It's just when Trump panics and feels cornered, he'll just blurt out something. And it's often kind of spur of the moment. The difference this time and Sarah Matthews is making this point. And I think it's a natural point to make is that the people increasingly upset are Trump's own supporters. There are people left and right who care about the Epstein list.

But I think as a more general principle, we on the left don't primarily want to vote for the person that's going to give us a list as relevant as that is and as important that it is as it is to protect kids from a law enforcement standpoint. We're sort of thinking, is there an economic policy here that is going to lift people out of poverty, make it so that if you work, you should certainly be able to afford a home, health care and food. Right. We're more on those basics. The right became obsessed with this topic because many of the people that now work for

Trump told them you should be obsessed with this topic because many of the people that now work for Trump told them you should be obsessed with this topic. And that, I believe, is what is panicking Donald Trump the most. Fox host John Roberts insists the Epstein files don't exist. And that's what daddy is telling us. Daddy being Donald Trump. Here's Fox host John Roberts saying a lot of sources are telling us there are no such files and he's got a statement.

OK, you must be getting what a wasted question. Also had some news about Epstein saying the PAM Bondi gave them a quick briefing about it. He said that those files were made up by Komi and Obama that Pan body has been handling this very well and whatever decision is made regarding the Epstein files is up to her There was a real dust-up between Pam Bondi and cash Patel and Dan Bond Gino The president daddy as Mark Ruta has dubbed him Stepped in and ended that feud the other day with a lengthy post on

truth social. So we'll see where it all goes. The idea that the feud was ended, that the controversy was ended, that it's all been put to bed because Trump said stop talking about Epstein and Pam Bondi said there's no list after saying she has hundreds of pages and wants thousands more in February. And after Dan Bongino and Cash Patel spent years weaponizing this thing and saying when Trump gets into power, we're going to know the truth. And then they go, turns out there's nothing to know.

It's all fine. This is no big deal. Nobody is falling for that. Even on the MAGA side. Now there are people on the MAGA side that are taking an approach that is more about self preservation and sort of tamping down the potentially problematic nature of this for Trump. And so you had like Charlie Kirk go, I'm done talking about Epstein. His audience revolted.

And so Charlie Kirk got on the air the next day this week and he went, yeah, I just I'm not I'm going to talk about it today. I just meant I was done with the topic for yesterday and yesterday only. So few important takeaways here. This is them losing control of the monster they created. I'm sorry for using that analogy or metaphor so many times this week, but it's a very, it's very apt. Fox is in is in an interesting position because Fox is trying to stake out multiple positions simultaneously. On the one hand, Fox wants to retain access to this administration. And so that's why John Roberts repeats this totally unbelievable statement about there's no list and everything's cool.

The reason John Roberts is uncritically repeating that statement is because Fox wants to stay in the good graces of the Trump administration. On the other hand, Fox does have a nonzero part of their audience that isn't believing this crap. They are not falling for it. They aren't satisfied with being told that entire thing we spent years telling you is, oopsie, it's a mistake. Don't worry about it, et cetera.

So Fox is is in this very strange position. Others have staked out one side or the other. Charlie Kirk, mostly defending Trump. People like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly, Jay, Peter Patrick, David and others, mostly criticizing Trump. But the takeaway here is the levy at some point is going to break and it is either going to break in the direct excuse me, the direction of what Bannon said earlier this week, which

is they're going to lose 40 seats in the House or there will be a sort of concerted effort to say if we don't move on, we're going to get screwed. Let's stop talking about this. And I would expect that to happen sometime in the next probably five to seven days. 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 vantage plan, which makes you in the description. We're going to be talking about the on In the middle of all the other drama, the Trump administration is failing on deportations and MAGA is starting to notice and they are starting to panic. So let's take a step back and kind of reset Trump when he ran. And then once he won and once he was inaugurated, promised mass deportations, millions and millions, he said on Inauguration Day. And we are now more than halfway through 2025. And he has not delivered that, thankfully, by the way, but he has still done damage.

He's created this sort of bloated, chaotic, overcrowded, completely inhumane detention system and a deportation rate that it's not just lower than what he promised. It's lower than what Obama managed to do a decade ago. Obama, Obama. Yeah. So let's look at the numbers. Last month, ICE arrested about 30000 immigrants, the most in at least five years. So it sounds like Trump's doing what he said he was going to do.

But there were 18000 deportations. And even by Trump's own wildly aggressive fear based standards, this is a failing operation. And you go back and it's the trend. May had 24000 arrests and 15000 deportations, sort of like a pattern, fewer arrests and deportations than sort of like a pattern, fewer arrests and deportations than under Obama. You look back at the Obama numbers in 2013, an average of 36000 monthly deportations. Trump's not even doing half of that.

So here's the key phrase by Trump's own metrics, by magazine standards, the tough guy, law and order mass deportation guy, he is coming up very short. And the people in his base who cheer for this kind of cruelty should be asking, where are the results? And the explanation for what's going on is surprisingly simple. Number one, the math never really added up because Trump made it sound like there are millions of dangerous criminal,

undocumented immigrants hiding in plain sight, waiting to be scooped up. That was always a lie. We've been saying that is a lie for what decades at this point. Most undocumented immigrants aren't criminals. Many have been here for years. They're working. They're raising families. They are paying taxes, by the way, many of them paying into systems that they are paying into but are never

going to get any benefits out of. So the myth of this criminal horde was always designed to justify a crackdown that would be really expensive and massive. But now that they're in the position of trying to deliver on it, the numbers just aren't there. And this is why ICE has expanded and moved the goalposts into let's sweep up people with pending asylum cases. Let's sweep up people who have broken no laws, people who have legal protections granted by immigration courts, temporary but still active legal protections.

But those courts are standing in the way as they should be because the Trump administration is trying to deport extrajudicial. They're extra judicially trying to deport people with no due process. Trump response, a desperate response has been let's try to ignore the courts. And so they want to fast track deportations through these expedited removal processes where you don't get a hearing, you don't get a judge, you don't even get a defense. In some cases, they're trying to deport people not even to their home countries, but the third countries, Guatemala, Honduras.

We've seen it in El Salvador. And that's based on a new Supreme Court ruling that lets them temporarily do that. So is it cruel? Of course. Is it legally flimsy? Yes. Is it creating an insane backlog of appeals and legal battles that's going to make it make everything even more expensive?

Yes, it is. But by Trump's own standards, the deportation program is failing. The approach of the administration is just deny everything. DHS put out a statement saying it's all a lie. We're doing great. We're doing everything that we said we were going to do. Everybody's being treated well in detention, which we know isn't the case. And meanwhile, the administration is coming back to Congress and saying, we want more

money. We want additional legislation. We want additional appropriation. So here's the question that I think is most important to ask at this point in time. Is this the direction we want immigration policy to go where we have a broken status quo, broken system, and we say the way to fix it is give us money to do more arrests, to have more beds and to be able to do more deportations, even though they're not really able to find the criminal immigrants that they claim they were going to find.

The problem is it's not really about the money or the law because the right is obsessed with punishment and fear. And we have real ideas for immigration reform out there, many of them, but none of them really play up the fear and the punishment aspect. Right. Because we could all say, hey, instead of treating immigration like a national security crisis, we see it as a policy issue and a humanitarian issue. So we've got to deal with why are people even trying to come here?

We've got to deal with the violence and the poverty and even climate related reasons in other countries that people would say, hey, I'm going to try to go to the United States. We need a faster legal pathway. We need more immigration judges. We need more work permits. We need to strengthen asylum procedures instead of getting rid of them altogether. And we've got to invest in a lot of the infrastructure that includes like legal aid and lawyers for people.

None of that is fear based and none of that is punishment based. And so the system is overwhelmed, not because there are too many people in a way. It's overwhelmed because there are too many people in a way it's overwhelmed because there are too few resources for proper adjudication. I don't know anyone on the left who's saying, let's open the border. What we want is a functional modern border and an immigration system becoming of a country as wealthy as the United States that's not relying on mass detention. It doesn't have backlogged courts and it doesn't have this sick fantasy of mass roundups, putting people in cages in Florida and then putting them on planes in some cases to countries

they don't even have any connection to. So the Trump system is failing, number one, because there simply aren't the number of so-called criminal illegals that Trump told us there was going to be. But also because they're not doing anything about the gridlock and the overcrowding and the infrastructure when they do sweep people up that do not meet that definition of criminal illegals. So Trump sold them a fantasy. They're now stuck trying to defend a complete and total disaster.

And by their standards, Obama did a better job, which is a really wild scenario to be in. Donald Trump was interviewed by his own daughter in law and it still went bad. Here's Lara Trump, Trump praising Trump and talking about how great all the things he does are and how amazing everything is. And Trump can't even do it. And this sounds just creepy. Trump says he sees things in a lot of women that they don't even see in themselves.

I think this has been sort of a trait of yours your entire life. If you go back to the Trump organization, you gave people opportunities that maybe they would never have taken themselves. And I feel like you've often seen things in people that they don't even see in themselves as well. Especially women. You did it for me. Well, I would say that for me as well.

But a woman. Trump sees things in women that nobody else has ever seen. Wow. Creepy, terrifying. The topic of the Texas flood response came up. And let's see, can you even understand what argument Trump is making here? There's been this devastation down in Texas. And you've said that from the perspective of the federal government, every resource

will be available to Texas. There's been so much heartbreak though. What is your message to the people who are suffering down there, to the parents of the young girls at the camp who were killed? What do you want to say as their president? Well, there can be nothing worse. Losing a child to start off with and the way this happened. There was very early warning.

They warned a day before. They warned even two days before. They warned four hours before. Maybe they should have had bells or something go off. But it's pretty dangerous territory when you think of all the times that they've had this problem. They were given a lot of warning, but it was late at night, and people were sleeping.

Some people heard the warning and they got out. They were able to get to higher land. But when you when you hear this wave that was up to 30 feet high just came roaring through that valley, it's just a very sad thing. So I think what Trump's saying is we did absolutely everything we could have done. Anything bad that happened is someone else's fault. It's either the people or the municipalities or the state. Or maybe it's Biden's fault. Maybe it's even Obama's fault. Lara Trump continuing the journalism saying, how do you feel about all of the people who call

you the bodyguard of Western civilization? What a question, especially this last couple of weeks has been pretty amazing. Some people have called you the bodyguard of Western civilization. You know, how do you feel about that title? Well, I understand what they mean. It was going bad. We were going bad. This country was going bad. A lot of people were talking to China and others about getting involved because we were a dead country. We were gone and in the minds of many I tell you in my mind one of the

reasons I read I saw what was happening very early on when I saw people pouring across our border. I said, no, put up that little. It's a little it would have taken three three weeks to put up little sections of wall that we laid out because of legal reasons. We condemn nation reasons, you know, different things. And because we wanted to bring our equipment back in through the wall because we built just rambling, just rambling.

And this is supposed to be a softball interview. This is an interview with your own daughter in law, the premise of which is make myself as orange as I can, which Trump did, and make this as easy an interview as we can make it. And he's still not making any sense. The hard hitting journalism continued. Lara Trump asking Donald, how did you create such an amazing cabinet? You did it for me. Well, I would say that for me as well.

But your cabinet is comprised of so many incredible people and people that even a year ago, so many wouldn't. Is this a news or an opinion show on Fox? I never I have a hard time distinguishing ever have imagined like R.F.K. Jr., who a year ago was running for president as a Democrat. Why do you think you have this ability? And I feel like it has really been to your benefit. Look at this incredible cabinet you've put together.

They're all people who are working to make America great. They've been incredible. Actually, the cabinet's been incredible. And I had a lot of good people on my first term. But again, I came here. I had never done it before. And I'm picking people that I never heard of. And I'm taking recommendations of people

that were sort of stupid people, like a John Bolton. He's a stupid guy, or Jesper, who was terrible. I mean, he was terrible. But I took some recreation but overall I got it right I mean we rebuilt our military we did so many so many great things but I know I now know the people I know so well I know better than anybody you know I spent four years with sometimes you hit and miss and sometimes you don't.

But we had we had great people the first time, but we have really good people this time and they get along with each other. They love each other. They love the country and it's smoother. I think it's more than you know, we did. A lot of people thought my first term was phenomenal. I know. Oh, God. How does anyone do this and feel good about it? And maybe they don't.

Maybe they don't. How would you like to be remembered? She asks her father in law just to wrap up here. You're talking about people not remembering. I don't think anyone will ever forget President Donald J. Trump. But when history looks back on this time in our country, when history looks back on you, how would you like to be remembered? A good person, but a person that saved our country.

I really believed our country was going down for the fall. I don't know if it ever could have come back. It was very close to the edge. And I really would like to be known as the man that saved our country. Very modest perception, right? I want to be seen as a good person who saved the United States from certain destruction, which would have happened if Sleepy Joe was reelected or Kamala Harris had won. And then finally, maybe the pinnacle of journalism, Donald Trump telling Lara Trump that her husband

is great, who, of course, happens to be Donald Trump's own son, Eric Trump, a true Walter Cronkite would have been sobbing tears of joy to say how important has family been to you? And I mean, I I'm gonna say the last 10 years and all of this. Well like your husband is great I mean he's great whether he was my son or whether he was an executive you can't you can't hire anybody like him he's so good and he runs the business and Don helps run the business and Ivanka is doing a lot of things. She's

amazing person. And she's a little bit involved a little bit, you know, when they want words of wisdom or whatever. She's she's, you know, she did a very good job here. She just say referring to your own son as your husband. Definitely an interesting choice. But this is what Fox News is presenting to us as an interview with the president of the United States. Everybody in any way involved with this interview should be hanging their heads in shame. But I think they see it as awesome and they don't even realize that the softball interviews Trump still can't handle.

So I learned a while ago that I was clenching and grinding my teeth at night, not on purpose, not because I was necessarily stressed out by something obvious, but grinding and clenching without even knowing it. And when I talked to my dentist about it, about getting a night guard, it was a whole thing. Appointment mold, waiting a bill that seemed very high. And ultimately I found Remy and Remy is our sponsor today. Remy sends a kit right to your door to take an impression of your teeth with super clear step by step instructions. You send it back to them and they will custom for free at shop. Remi.com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman to get 50% off your night guard at checkout. That's shop. R E M I dot com slash Pacman. Use code Pacman for 50% off. The link is in the podcast notes.

You say you'll learn a new language every year, but few of us actually follow through. That's why I always recommend Babel. It's the app that finally made language learning stick for me. This year I've got a trip to France planned. I've already started brushing up using Babel's 10 minute lessons. The app is built around real life conversations, not games or gimmicks. So I'm learning exactly what I actually need to know when I land. in to special limited time deal for my audience right now. Get up to 60 percent off your Babel subscription, but only for my audience at Babel dot com slash Pacman. Get up to 60 percent off at Babel dot com slash Pacman spelled B a B B e l dot com slash Pacman. Rules and

restrictions may apply. The link is in the podcast notes. All right, let's get into Friday feedback for the week. We collect and assemble feedback from our various platforms. You can email info at David Pakman dot com, but we will include comments left on sub stack tick tock, Spotify, YouTube, Facebook. We include comments delivered to us by telegram smoke signals and Morse code. All right, let's start with Yahushua who says we don't need this kind of decisiveness What are you accomplishing by spreading hate towards our president? I can only imagine that you meant

divisiveness rather than decisiveness that you meant divisiveness rather than decisiveness. This is one of the greatest ruses that can be pulled in the space of political discourse. It's not a new one. And the way it works is this way. When they criticize the left, it's because the left has to be criticized in order to retain the cohesiveness of the country. But when we point out, hey, this guy's an authoritarian nightmare, this guy's breaking the law, this guy's ignoring everything that he said he was going to do when he ran. When when we point that out, they go, oh, that's being divisive. You've got to stop being so divisive by criticizing what Trump does. Listen, you got to wake up, my friend. I am here to do

one thing and one thing only maybe only as an exaggeration. But primarily, the point is, give my opinion about what I see happening. That's the point of this show. Now, sometimes people write in, they go, David, you should remove the opinion and just give us the facts. Well, that's what a news reporter would do. But that's just not what I do. There's other shows. And then the other one that happens is what you should be nicer to Trump. I am simply going to point out what I see and how I see it and the idea that it's divisive when we do it, but that it's just the right thing to do when they do it. Get we things are too insane for us to have time for that.

All right. Therese Longo Chubbuck wrote in about the Medicaid cuts and said the following. If you are eligible for Medicaid, you will get it. If you are not eligible, you will no longer get it. It's as simple as that. And of course, to Reese couldn't be more wrong. The whole idea here is nothing is changing with regard to eligibility in the tax bill. First of all, that's not true because they're putting in all sorts of additional requirements

other than just paperwork requirements. But even without that, simply if if I came to you and I said about your driver's license, OK, it used to be the K or it is the case. You've got to be. I don't even know what the rules are now. Depends on the state, but you've got to be 16 years old and you've got to have gone to driver's ed and have a certain number of hours driving and whatever. And then you've got to schedule a test through our online portal.

If I were to come in and say to you, listen, we're not changing anything about the requirements to have a driver's license, but you now need to complete a 20 page questionnaire every three months. It must be submitted in person during days one, two or three of the month. And by the way, we're defunding the offices where you can submit it. And so you've got to remember to call two weeks prior to get an appointment and you can only get an appointment between nine a.m. and 12 p.m. on Monday and Wednesday. Right. Without changing the requirements for having a license by putting in place these paperwork

requirements, these bureaucratic requirements, I am making it more difficult to ultimately get the driver's license. That's what's happening with Medicaid. And so Teresa's living in a fantasy world where she says, you're eligible, you get it. That's it. And of course, that is very much not the case. And the whole point is that the paperwork is the cuts. That's the whole idea.

Darwin Engie wrote in and he has a great question or there's an interesting kernel of an idea here. What would happen if the press didn't show up at all? Just like Donald's birthday, nobody asked questions, don't show up at all, just leave him sitting there by himself. Then what would happen? He has nobody to cry to. So this is a very interesting piece of feedback because what Darwin is correctly weighing in on is that on a personal level, Trump has an egomaniacal, self-centered desire to be the center of attention. Trump wants 40 microphones to show up when he is going to speak. The leader will be speaking, put up all the microphones, get the lights, get the cameras.

And there is a degree to which if the press corps just stopped traveling with Trump, if nobody reported a word about what Donald Trump did on a personal level, that would be damaging to Trump. There are two problems with that. Number one, as arguably the most powerful office of the country, if not the world, the idea that we're not going to cover what the American president does, that the press corps is not going to cover it strikes me as problematic. But maybe even more importantly, there is another historical reality that we have to account for, which is that when authoritarians, dictators and dictator wannabes don't get criticized and exposed and reported

on, they then can operate from the shadows and often do even worse things to it. In a sense, as bad as the deportation fiasco has been, it's been somewhat constrained by wall to wall protests, coverage and stories about the horrors of it. And so, although Darwin is right, that if we want to piss off Trump personally, you ignore him, you deprive of the attention that he wants desperately. There are other problems with ignoring what authoritarians do. OK, Christopher Bach wrote on YouTube, David, I used to believe you were a center, just a centrist Democrat, albeit a very intelligent one, sort of along the lines of pods save America. a very intelligent one, sort of along the lines of pods save America, bros.

I now see how invaluable you are to the righteous fight for justice and democracy. You're going to be very important going forward. And I'm here to tell you that yourself and people like you who subject themselves to scrutiny by the regime, we have your back. We will donate or whatever it takes to support your cause. So, Christopher, I really appreciate that on my political views. I want to preface this by saying it's not objectively good or bad for people's political views to remain exactly the same or to change.

Right. If I think back to my political awareness, which goes back, I guess, like to when I was 15 ish or something like that. I have changed my opinion about things over these intervening years. I've talked about some of these areas before. You know, my view on nuclear power has changed. My view on GMO foods has changed. My view on taxation has modified over time, changing views.

It would be weird to follow something for decades and to not have any view change. That doesn't sound like you're thinking at the same time when there's a total 180 in your politics, you know, like a Dave Rubin, like a Tim Pool, although he claims his views haven't changed, but the party alignment had. Anyway, if you're 45 and you do a 180 in all your politics, I think it's reasonable for people to go. Is money a reason for that?

Is their audience capture what's going on? So big picture. I think it's logical that we update our views as the facts come in, as we learn things, as we mature, etc. With regard to he thought I was a centrist, but a member. First of all, I've never been a Democrat. Secondly, I've always identified as being on the left. Recently there was a little dust up on my Instagram where there was a discussion.

David doesn't even consider himself part of the left. Why do all these studies include him on the left? I have always considered myself to be on the left. I am not on the socialist left. I'm not on the communist left. I'm not on the revolutionary Marxist accelerationist left. I'm not there, but of course I'm on the left. The assessment of my views often is never based on policy positions. And so whenever I'm asked about this stuff on shows, I go, listen, rather than just focusing on labels, tell me what issue you want to know my position on and I will gladly tell you.

All right. Zach's Kava Bannum said, David, I just want you to know I am definitely signing up to your sub stack just as soon as they shut this YouTube space down. I want to be able to see that your stories when I want to see your stories when I want and not just when they land in that inbox. This is an extremely timely and intelligent discussion you facilitated. This is a reaction to one of our substack lives.

Here's the thing. A lot of people have been asking, why are we pushing substack? And there really is one reason we own our data on substack. Every day we can download our full substack list. And no matter what happens, we have that list to reach out to our audience on YouTube. If we get shut down, Facebook, all these different platforms, we have no access to the audience that we've built. And so the two things we have access to are our website membership list and our sub stack list. Obviously, it costs money to become a website member.

So the free way to make sure that we can get a hold of you if we get pushed off of one platform or onto another is just to get on the substack for free. It's that simple. Substack David Pakman dot com. Alice Dare said it must be absolutely exhausting for Republicans having to make excuses for Trump literally every day. You got to wonder at what point do they say I'm not doing this anymore. Well, the interesting thing is that point may be the Epstein situation. This is why I said on Monday, we must exploit the

division over Epstein, not because we're obsessed with the story. I'm really not. I'm bored with the story itself. What I'm fascinated by is that there are MAGA people now saying, wait a second, Trump didn't run on this. Trump ran on transparency. Trump ran on showing us what was going on, not hiding it. So I believe it's important to exploit it. Healthy Donut wrote on the subreddit, freedom loving Americans must reclaim the flag and patriotism from MAGA. Republicans have essentially monopolized patriotism and the American flag. They fly it alongside the

Confederate and Trump flags, the banners of traitors. It's time to reclaim the flag, writes Healthy Donut. I agree completely. I did a segment about the no kings protests and how one of the notable and I believe important characteristics of those protests was that there were so many American flags. They were not American flags presented alongside these traitorous banners like Trump flags and Confederate flags. It was the left saying, hey, we want a better America. The American flag is an appropriate element, an appropriate symbol for protests that say we want a United States that's like the one the founders envisioned, one that doesn't

have kings or authoritarians or dictators, one that has due process. That's American. We should be waving a flag for due process. So agree completely. And I love that more people are coming around to the importance. It's just a symbol, but it is an important symbol of the flag. Nat wrote on Spotify, I can't wait to see what happens on August 1st.

I've got a feeling Donnie won't have many more trade deals than he has now. Will he taco again? Judging by the past six months, I think he will. OK, here's my prediction for August 1st. Trump will have some new trade deals to announce, but it's not going to be still. It's not going to put us to 90 deals in 110 days. It's not going to be 90 deals. And then I think there will be some postponement of tariffs, some frameworks that he'll announce.

It's just going to be the continued stretching out of all of this. The only caveat I would mention is that there is some reporting today and this week that we may indeed now be moving towards rate cuts from the Fed. I wouldn't put it past Trump if he gets the rate cuts he's been wanting. I wouldn't put it past Trump to use those as justification to postpone tariffs even further by saying, hey, you know what? The Fed now, by having cut the rate, is going to help us achieve some of the growth, the tariffs we're going to give us.

It'll be bullshit, but he'll say it. And so now I can do another 60 day pause or so. I wouldn't put it past Trump. Send me your thoughts. Info at David Pakman dot com. Three really important things. Number one, if you want a free membership to my website, get on the waiting list at David Pakman dot com slash free membership.

Number two, I would love for you to become a member at join Pakman dot com. And number three, I would love for you to get on my sub stack mailing list at sub stack dot David Pakman dot com. And number three, I would love for you to get on my sub stack mailing list at sub stack dot David Pakman dot com. We need the ecosystem to grow, to be robust, to be secure against the impingements of this administration and to continue building the progressive independent media ecosystem. I so appreciate you. We'll see you on the bonus.