The David Pakman Show - 8/11/25: Trump puts DC under siege as exports collapse

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Donald Trump deploys heavily armed FBI tactical units to Washington D.C. ahead of planned protests in a show of authoritarian force -- Trump orders homeless people to be removed from Washington D.C. in a dangerous abuse of federal power -- Trump holds a press conference announcing he's dispatching troops to DC -- JD Vance defends Trump over Jeffrey Epstein ties but fails to explain why Trump has not released related files -- Trump's economic promises unravel as tariffs, tax policies, and healthcare changes hurt working Americans -- Trump's trade war triggers a collapse in US exports, worsening the trade deficit and hurting American businesses -- Trump launches an angry rant against Nancy Pelosi accusing her of insider trading while ignoring his own corruption -- Maria Bartiromo looks visibly shaken as JD Vance struggles to defend Donald Trump's flawed tariff plan -- Trump launches an unhinged personal attack on Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett claiming she is intellectually unfit -- Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller, launches a MAGA-friendly podcast criticized as political marketing disguised as lifestyle content -- On the Bonus Show: Pentagon prepares to use force against drug cartels, US issues reward offer for Maduro's arrest, Las Vegas sees a drop in tourism, and much more... 📜 Trust & Will: Save 10% on your estate planning at https://trustandwill.com/pakman 🥄 Use code PAKMAN for $5 off Magic Spoon at https://magicspoon.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🧠 Try Brain.fm totally free for a month at https://brain.fm/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com/ -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow

Welcome, everybody. There are not a lot of individual days in American politics that are as significant as today. We think of January 6th. We think of election days, days in which once in a lifetime things happen. But in the last 24 hours, I believe that we have one of those days. We have the dispatching of FBI, the FBI dispatching soldiers to Washington, D.C. We have Donald Trump putting D.C. under federal control saying that we are going to be knocking the hell out of homeless and other people. And we have the expulsion of homeless people in D.C. and Trump saying, we're going to look at

Baltimore. We're going to look at other places as well. Today is one of those days. And what is maybe most terrifying is that a lot of Americans and a lot of the media are just kind of shrugging. It's Trump being Trump. So let's get into the sequence of this. First and foremost, we learned yesterday that Donald Trump's FBI is putting soldiers on the streets of D.C. Not the National Guard or, you know, we are talking about heavily armed tactical units in military gear to secure intersections and the city and all of this sort of stuff.

This isn't crowd control. These aren't local police. These are the sorts of people you would expect encounter terrorism raids or hostage rescues or battlefield style engagements being positioned in the nation's capital to confront what exactly. Well, Donald Trump told us today. We'll get to that. if this feels abnormal, it is abnormal. When we think about when have we seen federal forces on domestic streets in this scale?

Remember, we saw it in L.A. just a couple months ago. We think back to 1992 when George H.W. Bush sent thousands of active duty troops and federal agents to L.A. after the Rodney King verdict, that was considered extraordinary. It was a one-off response to an explosive crisis. Trump is now talking about D.C., Baltimore, we've seen it in L.A. I think he mentioned Oakland. This is not a response to chaos. This is staging a show of force in the way that authoritarian's do it. We've been here before. You know, you look at 1968, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, police and national guard troops clashing with demonstrators and very brutal scenes where we saw widespread violence in. 1970 at Kent State. We had National Guardsmen open fire on student protesters, killing some.

And then, of course, we have seen Donald Trump employ this sort of method in Los Angeles. And so what is clear is that when Trump isn't doing well, when Trump's cornered, when dissent is rising, authoritarian's love to reach for military force. And what's happening in D.C. is that playbook on steroids. Trump has stripped away the political guardrails that once constrained him. He has only sycophants working for him now. He had some bad people, but they weren't total sycophants working for him in the first term. That's gone. And so the loyalists are willing to bend or break norms in order to please him. You're going to see in moments, Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, just stand.

there implicitly endorsing Donald Trump making these announcements. Authoritarian leaders love to kind of blur the lines between the police and the military, who is doing domestic law enforcement, and they want you to stop noticing when tactical units roll by in an armored truck in downtown Washington, D.C. When you accept the site of these heavily armed federal agents standing guard in a public square as if merely being homeless or peacefully protesting or crimes and you don't immediately go, wait a second, this is what we're used to seeing in dictatorships. When that becomes normalized, they win. So we are seeing a test run here. And the last time that Americans got used to seeing troops on the streets, it, it, it's.

It's typically a wartime thing or an authoritarian dictator thing. And if Trump succeeds, that wartime mindset isn't going to be about foreign enemies. It's about the homeless. It's about brown immigrants. It's about protesters. So the question here is less about, is an individual protest going to be peaceful? Where are these homeless people going to go? It's not about that.

It's if we shrug collectively and the media sort of shrugs, we are going down a very dark path and now it is being focused on the homeless in Washington, D.C. Donald Trump woke up and decided that the biggest threat to the U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C., is not corruption. It's not extremists. It's not Trump's own authoritarian power grab. It's not Trump's lawlessness in having been convicted of 34 felonies and now he's the president. No, the most dangerous thing happening in D.C. is homeless people. And that's where we get to today. The solution from Trump order them to leave Washington, D.C. immediately promising to ship them

far away from the capital so that the city can become safer and more beautiful. Donald Trump announcing yesterday, about today, on truth social. Truth central. Quote, we're having a news conference tomorrow in the White House. I'm going to make our capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before. The homeless have to move out immediately. We will give you places to stay, but far from the capital. The criminals, you don't have to move out.

We're going to put you in jail where you belong. It's all going to happen very fast, just like the border. We went from millions pouring in to zero in the last few months. This will be easier. Be prepared. There will be no more Mr. Nice Guy. We want our capital back. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

We can't speak euphemistically. about what's going on here. The sitting president is openly saying, I'm going to use federal power to physically remove poor and homeless people from the capital because I don't like the way it looks. Forget about rights, forget about morality, forget about treating people like human beings. And he's doing it in a city that unlike every state in America, it already doesn't have full self-governance, no voting representation in Congress, no governor. They've got the president, Congress with unelected representatives, and whatever limits they decide to ignore and non-voting representatives. And Trump is ignoring all other input on this. He controls the D.C. National Guard

directly. He's floating, taking over the city's police. And now he's escalating, telling residents, If you're poor, you're gone. Go far away. No Mr. Nice guy is the way that Trump describes it. And the kicker, and we're going to see this in a really funny, sort of funny and dystopian way in a little bit. As all of this is going on, violent crime in D.C. is down 26% from last year. Shouldn't Trump actually just be taking credit for that?

That might actually, he might finally, even though it has nothing to do with Trump and, you know, it really has nothing to do with Trump Biden or the presidents. He could take a credit for that as many presidents would try to do. Carjackings down 37%. But in Trump world, the facts don't really matter. It's just about perception. And if the perception helps Donald Trump to justify another power grab, another soft launch of martial law, he's good. That's all he needs. So this is way bigger than D.C. Trump's admitting it's way bigger than D.C. Trump's admitting it's way bigger than D. He's already talking about Baltimore, Baltimore. It's really about precedent using federal muscle to override local laws.

And if he can get away with it in D.C., there's a good chance he can get away with it anywhere. And in a sense, he did get away with it in Los Angeles already. If you, for a second, think that this sort of power isn't going to be turned on political enemies, history tells you you're lying to yourself. So today, Trump is holding a White House news conference to lay out the plan. This is a made for TV announcement where Trump is going to play strong man. He's going to wrap himself in filthy allusions to law and order, rhetoric and, you know, going to dare people to stop him.

And Pam Bondi stood aside and Heggseth stood aside. So the fight is here and you've got to see the way Donald Trump laid it out. Just hours ago, minutes ago, as of my. recording of this video. Donald Trump soft-launched national martial law talking about D.C., but then saying we're going to look at New York City. We're going to look at Baltimore. We're going to look at Oakland. And the media is mostly shrugging. And a lot of Americans have become desensitized to this. This is a red alert, my friends. You know, some of the changes that Donald Trump made to the tax law, I don't agree with them. But they're not.

sirens going off, right? This is that. Donald Trump announcing that he is invoking section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act, taking control of the D.C. Police Department. Listen to this. And worse. This is Liberation Day in D.C. and we're going to take our capital back. We're taking it back under the authorities vested in me as the president of the United States. I'm officially invoking section 740 of the district of Columbia Home Rule Act. You know what that is? And placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control. And you'll be meeting the people that will be directly involved with that.

Very good people, but they're tough. And they know what's happening. There is no more dry run. It is happening right now. And I know that no matter what I cover, some people write in and they say, David, you're downplaying the threat. And others write in and say, David, you're hyperbolicly overplaying the threat. This is an authoritarian nightmare and you only need to listen to Trump.

Go straight to the source. I always say, caps critically analyze primary sources. go and listen to the full press conference and you will see that there is no context that could make this okay other than Trump saying before all of it the next 45 minutes I'm just going to be saying things I don't really mean. That's the only context that could mitigate this. Here is Trump saying we are going to use the language of violence, which is the language they understand. Until you knock the hell out of them because it's the only language they understand. But they fought back. against law enforcement last night and they're not going to be fighting back long because

I've instructed them and told them whatever happens you know they love to spit in the face of the police as the police are standing up there in uniform they're standing and they're screaming at them an inch away from their face and then they start spitting in their face and I said you tell them, you spit, and we hit, and they can hit real hard. It's a disgusting thing. I've watched that for years, for three, four years. I've watched them. The police are standing, and they're told, don't do anything under any search or this, and you can see they want to get at it. And they're standing there, and people are spitting in their face, and they're not allowed to do anything. But now they are allowed to do whatever the hell they want. This dire public,

safety credit. So then Trump stops his rant and goes back to his script. There's no commentary needed to dress this up. He told us during the campaign, he is going to be an authoritarian madman. And he is now acting as an authoritarian madman. Trump says, what about other cities? We are going to go further. We're starting with D.C., but we're going further. It is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore. They're so far gone. We're not going to let it happen. We're not going to lose our cities over this. And this will go further. We're starting very strongly with D.C. and we're going to clean it up real quick, very quickly, as they say. It is. You know, there are people who are still sort of in the Trump being Trump era. Oh, it's Trump being Trump. He's deploying troops.

He's federalizing the police. He's doing these things. He's doing it right now. And the risk is that if we continue to look away or say it's just Trump being Trump, he's going to steamroll with this stuff. Now, there are some people who wrote in and said, David, this is obviously Trump distracting from the Epstein files. Put that out of your mind.

Maybe it is a distraction or maybe it isn't, but this is the sort of stuff Trump promised during his campaign. So whether it de facto distracts from Epstein or it's calculated right now to distract from Epstein, it doesn't matter. That only minimizes the seriousness of it. Now, an interesting side by side when Trump was talking about all the crime, MSNBC actually had stats up on the screen of all the areas in which crime. is down. DC homicide down 12%, DC robbery down 28%, DC overall crime down 26%. I'm not going to play

for you, but there's this very funny visual thing that was going on. And then finally, Trump announcing we are getting rid of the slums. Understand what this means. We've seen other places try it. It's criminalizing homelessness. And we get rid of the slums too. We have slums here. We get rid of them. I know it's not politically correct. You'll say, oh, so terrible. No, we're getting rid of the slums where they live. This is not the time to look away. I've been doing this a long time, 70, 80 years now. It feels like it. Feels like it's been 70 years of this administration. I've been doing this a long time. And I don't remember, I mean, listen, January 6th, right? I don't think I remember dystopian authoritarian dictatorial times of this type with the one January 6th, 2021 example,

other than that, in all the time I've been doing this. So listen, we're going to keep doing this as long as they will allow me. It's clear that they're going to be targeting independent progressive media as part of this. They've started to to some degree. Make sure you're following on YouTube. Make sure you're subscribed to my substack. We're not going to go quietly. That's clear. Having the right estate planning done, a will, maybe a trust, is super important. I recently took care of it myself. It's not the most fun thing to do, but it is very important. And our sponsor, trust and will, makes it really easy.

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I would be humbled to have your support. And the best way to do that is to sign up at join packman.com. Sign up as a paid substack subscriber at Substack. David Pakman.com or even consider doing both. We do extra content for our website members. We do extra content and Q&As for our substack members, different things on different platforms. Pick what works for you. But I am so appreciative of everybody who has been supporting the show. J.D. Vance desperately attempted to defend Donald Trump with regard to the Jeffrey Epstein accusations. And he failed very, very, very hard. It was like a.

Olympic level mental gymnastics on this. And one of the funniest things is that J.D. Vance attempted to link Jeffrey Epstein's criminal legacy to Democrats. One of the really funny things is that Trump was a Democrat at the time that these things are alleged to have happened. It's lost on JD. Take a look at this clip from an interview on Fox News and that there's a lot to talk about Full transparency. But I have to say, Maria, I laugh at the Democrats who are now all of a sudden so interested in the Epstein files. For four years, Joe Biden and the Democrats did absolutely nothing about this story. We know that Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of connections with left-wing politicians and left-wing billionaires. And now President Trump has demanded full transparency from this. And yet somehow the Democrats are attacking him and not the Biden administration, which did nothing for four years.

Was it the right move for Comer to send subpoenas to the Clintons? It absolutely was, and it drives home how, while the Democrats have tried to make this Epstein thing about anything but the fact that Democrat billionaires and Democrat political leaders went to Epstein Island all the time, who knows what they did, but it's totally reasonable to ask these questions. What you saw in the House's subpoena is they are trying to investigate all of the things related to this particular case. I know a lot of Americans want answers. I certainly want answers. And I think James Comer and the team of the house, they're doing the right thing. And of course, we know that Clinton or allegedly he went to the island 26 times, 28 times, totally appropriate for Comer to be asking what was going on at that island.

Notice how he has no mention of the fact that the attorney general already told Trump, sir, you're in the files. Now, if Trump really wants full transparency, if he's going to be the transparency, if he's going to be the transparent magnate that J.D. Van says that he is, then tell Pam Bondi release everything now. Trump has the keys. And now they're hiding behind. Well, he's directed Bondi and Bondi's equivocating. Just put it out. If he's really transparent, what is the hold up here? Now, I do think that this thing about Democrats, Democrat billionaires, Trump was a Democrat billionaire. when these things were allegedly going on. The big parties with the celebrities, the donations

to the Democrats, buddy, buddy with the Clintons. So JD's whole framing here that this is just a left-wing problem, Trump's a noble truth teller helping to expose it. The most basic fact check collapses every single one of those claims. And J.D. Vance's job here really isn't to make sense. Like, if the, and Maria Barteromo's job doesn't seem to be to actually get any sense out of them. What, what Maria is doing is allowing JD vans to give explanations that don't make any sense. Trump is the guy who's transparent here. All these Democrats seem to have been associated with Epstein. Well, Trump was a Democrat at the time. Trump was told by the attorney general he's in the files. And Trump, if he really wanted this stuff released, they want to pretend like Trump can't simply

override whatever safety mechanisms and review protocols and redactions and all this different stuff. If Trump wanted it done, he goes to Bondi and he goes, listen, Pam, release everything now. Release it all. I want it released by midnight. And if Trump said do it, it would be done. That's not what they're doing. Trump's not being transparent. And weeks ago, Trump threw out this little bit of pablum to the masses. I've directed Pam Bondi to. release pertinent grand jury testimony, limiting the scope to grand jury testimony and using the subjective term pertinent, who decides what's pertinent? So J.D. is working really hard here, really hard to try to take the attention off of Trump as potential co-conspirator or perpetrator,

which by the way, we don't even know that that's the case. I know every time I say this, people get upset. They go, David, you know about Trump. Until we have the files that say, Trump was a client engaged in criminal activities. I am not in a position to say that. Now, people were right to me about a lawsuit that was that was recanted. We, we do have to adhere to some what the facts are as we know them. It's conceivable that Trump is in the files as an associate of Epstein and that that's bad enough and that he was buddy, buddy with Epstein and others who were committing crimes

long after he knew what was going on. That, that it could be that. If we have evidence of more, then, of course, I will tell you. But it doesn't have to go to the worst case scenario to realize this guy's not being transparent and J.D. Vance is trying to distract from all of it. On the one hand, Trump is now lashing out with the D.C. police federalization and the stuff we talked about earlier. On the other hand, there's another reason that a lot of interference is being run right now

and a lot of distraction is being sought, which is what is starting to happen with the economy. And I really want everybody to understand that. Let's talk about it. Donald Trump's 2024 campaign was built on a very familiar set of generic economic promises. We're going to protect American workers, which in some way was like, we're going to stop brown people from taking your jobs, which is, of course, not a factual way to kind of present it. We're going to bring down prices. We're going to defend Social Security and Medicare and America. will be put first in every economic decision rather than last the way Sleepy Joe does.

So we are now about seven months into Donald Trump's second term. And the promises that Trump made are sort of colliding with the reality that none of it is looking good, especially for the people who believed Donald Trump. Start with tariffs. Trump campaign on the idea that we're going to put in place tariffs, tariffs will punish other countries like China, American manufacturing will be revived and it's going to be so good. Now we are starting to see the way it actually happened. Trump's import taxes, which is what tariffs are, have triggered retaliatory tariffs abroad.

They've raised costs for American businesses. And they are having a number of deleterious impacts on not only the job market, but also on exports, which we will get to. And it's all going very poorly. Farmers who voted for Trump are losing foreign markets. Manufacturers that depended on imported parts are cutting jobs because the parts cost more and they're losing contracts. You look at prices on everyday goods. Inflation is still positive. Trump ran on bringing prices down. To bring prices down, you need deflation. That means when an inflation report comes out, there's a minus sign in front of it. If inflation is two or three percent, which by the way, is fine. That's a, that's a perfectly reasonable inflation

rate. Obviously, it's being appended to periods of rising prices. But when we hear inflation's 2.8 percent, that means prices went up 2.8 percent. Wages are not going up that fast. So prices have not come down. That was Donald Trump's promise. And all of this stuff is. is hitting working class households, farmers, manufacturing and factory workers. These are the people Trump claimed he was going to champion. So that's tariffs. We then have the tax plan. Trump vowed that his tax cut would pay for itself.

It's going to generate so much growth. It'll pay for itself. The middle class is going to really benefit. Now, the reality is you look at how much do you save or lose on taxes based on your income in Trump's tax plan. It's really good for the very rich. It's good for the sort of rich. It's pretty good for the kind of rich.

It's not good for lower, middle, and working class families. That's just what it is. And if we had looked back at Trump's 2017 tax cuts and jobs act, we would have seen that that's the way it always sort of works out. We then get to Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. These are programs. Trump said I'm going to protect these 100% protection, but it's not happening. We saw that the tax bill is going to.

to lead to potentially 12 million people 10 10 to 12 13 according to one call it 10 what's a couple million people losing Medicaid between you and I. It's going to lead to roughly 10 million people ultimately losing Medicaid coverage. So that's an economic broken promise and it's a healthcare broken promise. And every single one of these elements is one where there are people that voted for him because of the promise and now he's doing the opposite. So when you zoom out, you realize that Trump, to a degree, has lost control of this monster. The global oil markets are going to dictate a lot of the way that things go economically.

Third, I guess we would call them second and third party tariff and trade deals. What I mean by that is we tariff China. China tariffs us, fine. But there's another layer, which is we tariff China. goes to Malaysia or to Brazil or to whoever, and they cut the U.S. out of markets. We won't import or export stuff. We're going to make deals with Brazil or somebody else. That fails Americans. That undermines the goals that Trump ran on. Now, later on, we're going to get to an incredible thing. Trump hates trade deficits. He wants us to export more than we import to every country.

In fact, Trump calculated, it's a crazy calculation, but one of the ways Trump calculated his tariffs was, I guess, by taking the trade deficit and dividing it by some number and, you know, multiplying by the inverse square. Who the hell knows? But the point is, Trump hates trade deficits. Exports are collapsing. Other countries are saying, oh, because of the tariffs that American manufacturers are now facing, American manufacturers are raising prices on the stuff they export to us.

we're not going to buy it anymore. And so Trump's very policy, which was to a degree catalyzed by his distaste for trade deficits, is causing trade deficits to grow. So there are people out there, and I'm sympathetic to them, people who voted for Trump out of a frustration with a system they believed was rigged against them. Trump used that populist rhetoric in his first campaign, and he used it this time around. I sympathize. with that. A lot of people are dealing with a system that's rigged against them. Rigged not in a secret way. Just openly, you look at the tax code. You look at all these different things. Yeah, it's rigged in the Bernie Sanders definition. But now the policies Trump's enacting will make the problem worse. They will deepen

inequality. They'll gut middle class security over what little security there was. And if history is any indicator. The blame shifting is going to be absolutely relentless. The consequences for Americans will be very real. And Trump has executed a complete and total bait and switch. He said, I'm going to protect you. I'm going to bring you prosperity. It's going to be great. And we have policies that benefit the wealthy, punish consumers, and they are really risking long-term economic damage. Now, after the break, we're going to dig more deeply into the export thing because it is such a critical part of what's going on. Make sure you get my daily one hour podcast. It's free. It's on Spotify, now with video on Spotify as well. It's on Apple podcasts. It's anywhere you would want it. We'll take a

very quick break. 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. Our sponsor, Incogni, solves the problem for you. Incogni contacts the data broker sites on your behalf and forces them to delete your data. The data brokers are legally obligated to comply and Incogni handles the entire process for you. Incogni is now taking this even further with their custom removals feature included in the unlimited plan. They've got their 250 plus sites where removal is automated. But if you find

your information anywhere else, you can custom submit that and they will have it removed manually. This is serious protection. Using Incogni can cut way down on the spam calls and the messages that you get. Fewer risks, more control over your identity. Try it risk-free. for 30 days and get 60% off an annual plan when you go to incogny.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. A pending Supreme Court case could strip our Fourth Amendment rights and allow immigration agents to come into our homes for any reason, no probable cause needed, all while Republicans try to twist things so that you think this is all great for America. This should be the biggest story in the U.S. right now, but it's almost impossible to keep up with the millions

of moves that Trump is making every single day. That's why ground news exists. Ground news is an app and website that exposes the blind spots and spin before it takes control of our opinions. Ground news is the smarter, more reliable way to stay informed when MAGA is banking on us getting distracted. I'm partnering up with ground news to give you 40% off the same. vantage plan that I use. So you'll pay only five bucks a month for all of their premium features. Just go to ground.news slash Pacman or use the code Pacman in the app when you sign up. The link is in the description or scan the QR code. Well, all hell is breaking loose for the economic genius of this administration because the thing

that Trump has been bragging about since his first campaign, the thing he swore he would fix forever for Americans, America's trade deficit is getting worse. The kicker is that it's happening because of Trump's own policies. Since March, U.S. exports have not just slowed down. They have plunged. We are talking about billions of dollars in products that American companies used to sell overseas that are sitting unsold. Why? Because the rest of the world is deliberate. deliberately walking away from the United States. Hedge fund manager Spencer Hikimian summed it up this way, quote, exports have fallen right off a cliff since March.

Countries around the world are responding to the U.S. trade war by boycotting American goods and services, another penalty Americans are paying for Trump's tariff crusade. The penalty is not on Trump. Trump's a billionaire. He's fine. the penalty is on you. It's on you in terms of higher prices. It's on you in terms of fewer jobs. And it's on you in terms of a shrinking export market that makes the very trade deficit Trump hates even bigger. Think of that. Trump hates the trade deficit. He says, I want to

export more than we import. Why are we importing so much from China? We should export to them. Well, The reason is 50, 60 years of economic policy that said, we want to import cheap stuff from China. We don't want to pay what it would cost to make all these chotchkes in the United States. We'll get them from China. And so that's why we import more. And Donald Trump's tariffs are making the trade deficit even worse. You look at Canada.

Canada's one of our top export markets. In 2024, Canada bought 28 billion in food products from the United States. Canadian stores are now being pressured. Do not stock, do not sell American food products. 71% of Canadians plan to buy fewer American food products this year. Trump added a 35% tariff on Canadian imports, which started August 1st. When you tax their goods, they don't thank you. They respond in kind.

They tax your goods or they stop buying them. This is called a trade war. That's how it works. Europe's going the same way. Europe's central bank survey found 44% of Europeans are avoiding American products. Tesla sales in Europe are down almost 28%. Now, there is a political cost to buying American. And it goes beyond goods.

Tourism is down. The World Travel and Tourism Council says that canceled international trips are going to cost the United States over 12 billion. dollars. So that means hotels lose money, restaurants, airlines, small businesses. On the bonus show today, producer Pat is going to talk about the Vegas ghost town situation that's going on. And the irony, and it's a sick irony because people are getting hurt. But the irony is that Donald Trump obsesses over trade deficits like they're a scoreboard, but by blowing up our export market, he guarantees we are going to maintain trade deficits. Now, I am not arguing trade deficits

are objectively good and bad. The U.S. tends to run trade deficits because of how we've organized our economy. We tend to buy a lot of cheaper goods and have moved in the direction of being a service economy. And those are political decisions, which you can agree with or disagree with. But that's the way our economy is organized. But Trump treats the trade deficit like a scoreboard. And if foreigners stop buying our stuff, the deficits are going to get bigger.

And Trump is making the problem worse. Now, I want to deal with the tariff part a little bit. And hopefully this is useful to people. If it's not just be like, David, don't talk about this stuff anymore. Even if all the tariffs disappeared tomorrow, we could be talking about permanent or at least semi-permanent damage here. Because once consumers switch away from your product for political reasons, they don't just switch back.

Habits change. Competitors fill the gap. You know, I know so many people, they were genuinely Tesla fanboys. They just loved it. And then all of a sudden with the political Elon stuff, they went and they said, I'm going to try a Rivian. I'm going to try the ionic, Hyundai Ionic. I'm going to check out the Kia EV9 or the BMW I X or maybe I'll go to a hybrid. And even if Elon were to go, I take back the white nationalist salute and I take back all of it.

Even if he did that, a lot of those people are happy with their choices. They're not going to go, oh, I really, I got to go back to Tesla because Elon changed his mind. And that applies to a lot of different products. So we are going to be seeing what may not be a temporary dip. This may be the new normal. This is a structural decline, not a cyclical decline. We're losing billions in exports, billions in tourism. And what leverage do we have in trade?

deals in 90 days became three frameworks in 115 days or something like that. This is Trump doing it to the country. We have to hold him politically responsible. That's the question. Will voters do it? Donald Trump has a new target this week. It is one of his oldest enemies, Nancy Pelosi. On truth social, Donald Trump erupted into one of his trademark rants accusing Pelosi and her husband of beating every hedge fund in 2024. He says they beat all the Wall Street geniuses on insider information. And without missing a beat, Trump Halt calls her a disgusting degenerate. Take a look at this.

Quote, Crooked Nancy Pelosi and her very interesting husband beat every hedge fund in 2024. In other words, these two very average minds beat all of the super geniuses on Wall Street. thousands of them. It's all inside information. Is anybody looking into this? She is a disgusting degenerate who impeached me twice on no grounds and lost. How are you feeling now, Nancy? So let's take this in two parts. I would be fine with a rule banning all members of Congress and their spouses from trading individual stocks. I've said it before. Apply it to everybody. I am fine with that. The public has a right to be skeptical when lawmakers have access to non-public information and they make money in the market. I know you can say, well, it's illegal. There's

the Stock Act plus insider trading laws. And yeah, I get it that it's on paper illegal. If we've learned anything recently, it's that something being illegal on paper doesn't actually stop people unless there's an enforcement mechanism or they believe that they're going to be caught or they get in trouble for it. This is arguably a bipartisan thing. If you are writing laws, that affect industry, you shouldn't profit from those laws. The idea that Pelosi is the corrupt, disgusting degenerate, and Trump is not, that is like pot calling the kettle black. Trump is not an ethics reformer who wants to clean up Congress.

Trump's the guy who spent his presidency using the office of the presidency as a personal ATM, 1.6 billion he made during his first term. government's booking rooms at his hotel while seeking policy favors, son-in-law walking away with a $2 billion deal with the Saudis and Trump's charity shut down for self-dealing as a slush fund, Trump's business convicted on tax fraud, all of it. If Trump really believed that profiting from public office was wrong, he could have started by holding himself accountable. He could have started by holding his family to the same standard he is demanding from Nancy

Pelosi. But that's not the point of Trump's rant. The point is revenge. Pelosi was involved in Trump getting impeached twice. She humiliated him. He has never gotten over it. She stood behind him at the state of the union and ripped up his speech and the entire thing. She marshaled the votes to impeach him for trying to pressure Ukraine into helping his campaign

and for inciting an insurrection on January 6th. In Trump's mind, she can never be forgiven. So years later, she is living rent free in Trump's head. He sees an opportunity to accuse her of corruption and he takes it and he knows his base is going to eat it up and they're not going to question Trump's actions along these exact same lines. It is the same sort of fake populism that Trump's been selling for years. He goes, oh, the super geniuses on Wall Street were defeated and he pretends to speak for the little guy.

And he says, Pelosi's doing the wrong thing. But look at his policy. He pushes tax cuts for corporations. He makes life harder for working Americans. So I am fine with banning members of Congress from trading stock. I think doing it is actually harder than it sounds. But it can be done and it should be done. But if Trump wants to have that conversation, he's got to explain why the rules he wants

for Pelosi shouldn't apply to him and everybody in his inner circle. Until then, this is nothing more than hypocrisy. And that's why his rants are sounding a little less like strength and a lot more like desperation. You can actually see Maria Barteromo's face fall apart in real time as Vice President J.D. Vance tries to explain Donald Trump's tariff plan. She realizes mid-sentence. See the look on her face here? She realizes, dear God, this doesn't make any sense.

Listen to what Vance said. Do it. The second thing the tariffs are doing is it's bringing in a lot of additional revenue, which of course, we're using to give tax relief to the American people and make it easier for average Americans to get by. So that is a lie. It's a lie. The additional revenue, J.D. says, is just the tax increase on you or on me on every

American. The tariffs are taxes on the stuff we import. We pay them. There is no magical tax relief coming out of this. The money is coming out of my pocket. Oh, but David, you don't manufacture stuff, right? But when I go, when I buy, what do I have here? When I buy, you know, a lens like this land, this is a beautiful, look at this lens, by

the way. It's a beautiful Lumix lens. When I buy this lens, actually, where is this made? This is not a good example. It doesn't say. Let me put it down. When I buy something whose component parts have been tariffed, I pay more because the manufacturer has paid more.

Now, Trump may still not understand that. But I think J.D. Vance does understand it. J.D. is not stupid. And that makes this a lie. And that makes them really dangerous. To follow the logic here, you have to believe three things at once. Number one, that tariffs don't cost American companies or consumers anything because the foreign companies are eating the tariffs.

That's not true. It's not happening. Number two, you have to believe that those same tariffs are helping U.S. companies, even though foreign companies aren't raising prices. And then number three, while helping U.S. companies, the tariffs will also bring in revenue that is coming from foreign countries rather than the American people. of those things is true. It's sort of like saying I'm going to get rich by taxing unicorns. And you go, well, there's a couple layers to that. Who pays the tax and are unicorns even real? Or maybe it's

like you have two buckets and you say you're going to get rich by taking water from one bucket and putting it in another bucket. I don't know if my my analogies are good here. J.D. is smart enough to know that this isn't true? And Maria Barteromo's face says it all. She knows this nonsense isn't true either. Support our show by checking out our sponsor Brain FM Focus Music. They're giving you free access to their app for a whole month at Brain.fm slash Pacman. Once you try Brain FM, you'll quickly understand why this has become my go-to music app when I just want to focus on work. In addition to music for focusing on work, they have modes specially designed for sleep, relaxation, meditation, all created by musicians working with neuroscientists.

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Until I discovered this, Brain FM is personalized, depending on your brain type. So if you want to improve your focus or relax, give Brain FM a try for 30 days totally free. Go to brain.fm slash Pacman. The link is in the description. Donald Trump has a real problem with women who don't bow down to him. We already reviewed earlier in the show Donald Trump calling Nancy Pelosi a disgusting degenerate. attempting to hold her to a standard he doesn't even hold himself to why she had the audacity

the ovarian fortitude to impeach trump twice and it's an unforgivable sin but there is another woman who doesn't bow down to trump and trump's not happy that woman is congresswoman jasmine crocket and trump woke up this morning and decided i think i'm going to go on a full-blown unhinged rant against the sitting member of Congress. Most people hadn't, I hadn't even had my cappuccino yet. And he was already ranting. In classic Trump fashion, there's no substantive policy critique. It's not a debate about legislation. It is just schoolyard level insults. Take a look at this, quote, and he calls her quote, Congresswoman. He puts Congresswoman in scare quotes. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett is a low very IQ individual. Now, I've got to tell you, Trump overwhelmingly says

that women and non-white people, and if it's a non-white woman, even better, are the low IQ people. Okay. Jasmine Crockett is a low, very IQ individual, much in the mold of the AOC Plus 3 gang of country destroying morons, only slightly dumber. Each of these political, Political hacks should be forced to take a cognitive exam, much like the one I recently took while getting my physical at our great Washington, D.C. military hospital, Walter Reed, as the doctors said, President Trump based it, something that is rarely seen. These radical left lunatics would all fail this test in a spectacular show of stupidity and incompetence.

Take the test. It would not be a true Trump rant without the inevitable detour into self-congratulation. Trump again bragged that he recently took a test during his physical at the great DC military hospital saying he aced it. Doctors were shocked. They've never seen anything like it. Now, of course, Trump's referring to the Montreal cognitive assessment. It's sort of a brain injury screening test.

It includes identifying a picture of a lion and drawing hands on a clock and of course, remembering five words. I can't forget. Remember when Donald Trump told us about the test. You'll go person, woman, man, camera, camera TV. So they say, could you repeat that? So I said, yeah. So it's person, woman, man, camera, TV.

Okay. That's very good. If you get it in order, you get extra points. In order, you get extra points. So the irony is the mental fitness card was Trump's favorite attack against Joe Biden. He would deploy that against Biden during the campaign. As there are more and more public moments in which Donald Trump's own coherence is a question mark, to put it lightly, Trump's recycling the same bit.

he devolves more and more. He points fingers more and more. And I can tell you, you can dislike Jasmine Crockett's politics, but she seems to have no cognitive issue whatsoever. She is fast. She is sharp. Her memory seems completely and totally fine. But Trump believes that pointing fingers is going to distract from what he's up to. So for Trump's diehard followers, it's another truth social victory lap. It's more red meat. They love it. Yeah, Jasmine Crockett's got a low IQ. For people who are able to see this for what it is, it's a reminder that the guy holding the nuclear codes is starting his morning with unfiltered personal attacks on elected

officials. He seems to believe it's normal and tragically a lot of his followers do as well. Yesterday it was the quote disgusting degenerate Nancy Pelosi. Today it's Jasmine Crockett whose IQ is not just low. very low, very low. Disgusting stuff, but we've come to expect it. I don't know if you have been sitting around saying, you know who should really start a podcast, the wife of Stephen Miller, Donald Trump's advisor. I haven't been sitting around saying we need a podcast from her, but we are getting a podcast from her anyway. The wife of Stephen Miller, the architect of family

separations, Katie Miller, has decided the world needs the Katie Miller podcast. She tweeted about this. Today, I'm launching the Katie Miller podcast as a mom of three young kids who eats healthy, goes to the gym, works full time. I know there isn't a podcast for women like myself. Hope you'll join me. I did a quick search. There's apparently tons of mommy podcasts of women who have young kids, eat healthy, go to the gym and work. There's dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of those podcasts, but she needed one. She needed to make a podcast. And my takeaway is microphones are too cheap.

Everybody can now afford microphones, and that's a real problem. So here she is telling us about her podcast. Hi, I'm Katie Miller. Welcome to my podcast and welcome to my living room. You may be wondering what I'm doing here hosting a podcast. It seems these days just about everyone has a podcast. For years, I've watched from the sidelines as people I know, people I respect, have hosted TV shows, radio shows, podcasts.

She's right. Everybody's hosting a damn podcast. And I thought, hey, I could do that too. And why? Because for years, I've seen that there isn't a place for conservative women to gather online. There isn't a place for a mom. What? I'm like me, mom of three young kids, four, three, and almost two, and a wife, and trying

to do a career, eat healthy, work out. There isn't a place for a mom like me. And so I wanted to create that space where we- Is it possible that she just doesn't have anything interesting to say? And that's why there's not a place for people like her, what? Have real honest conversations with people across the political spectrum and across the world to get lifestyle information, news, laugh with our friends, gossip about what's going on in the world from our perspective.

From that of a mom with three kids, who's trying to make every day be the best it can, from bedtime to bath time, to breakfast in the morning, to getting out the door for work and everything in between. A little bit about me. I've been a communications director to senators, to a vice president. You know, maybe what she means by there's no podcast, for women like me is we need a podcast for women who think Trump is doing a great job and

whose husbands are in charge of locking kids up. I guess, I guess there isn't a podcast like that. I worked in high levels of the US government. And most recently, I'm concluding my time working full time for Elon Musk. And so please join me for my podcast. We're going to do this once a week on Mondays to talk about lifestyle, what's going on, real honest conversations, none of the bullshit, with people from across the spectrum, whether that be politicians, business leaders, celebrities, musicians, artists, scientists, you name it, we're going

to have it because this is life about women, for women, with men too, talking about what matters to women. And that isn't just what everyone considers a woman's issue. Because what's a woman's issue. I have yet to find out. So join me every Monday. Yeah. She's a big supporter of the self-described fertilization president, Donald Trump. So who does she bring on for her first serious interview? And I'm honestly asking the question here, who the hell would watch this? Like, who would even remotely find this entertaining or interesting? She brings on vice president J.D. Vance for her first serious interview. And if you expect it to be an insightful and thought-provoking conversation, I don't usually think of J.D. Vance in those terms, but take a listen to this hard-hitting

journalism. Oh, my God. So, Marco questions. What's the most surprising thing you've learned about Marco? He also has a sweet tooth, which, you know, he's in great shape. He works out. But he can, I mean, how ice cream. To the point where half the time that I see Marco in the hallway, it's because he's just been down to the Navy mess in the White House and he's gotten a bunch of ice cream. Mark Rubio is known as a funny jokester. By the way, I've had lunch in the Navy mess. It is very cool. What's the funniest joke he's told you?

But the idea that Marco Rubio is down there getting ice cream all the time sounds a little weird. We're the funniest moment you've had with him. Okay. So you guys will have to determine whether we can actually put this in the final good. It's not. I'm thinking got it if not. So this is, we were talking about something very serious related to the Middle East. And he starts this joke, totally deadpan. He's like, you know, I learned something interesting about the Middle East because I had a constituent call a few years ago when I was in the Senate.

And a woman was visiting Israel and her husband died while they were in Israel. And I was like, oh, man, that's terrible. And she was trying to get help from us for how to get the, the, the Bible. body back to the United States and she said to me, you know, man, I, I don't know. Maybe I don't want back the last time somebody was, was, sorry, the last time somebody died over here. Isn't this so funny, guys? Here, they rose from the dead three days later. And I didn't know until the.

Oh, yeah. Every end that it was in a totally bullshit joke. I was like, on the edge of my seat, like, what happened with this poor woman or husband? He's got jokes. He's got a lot of Florida man jokes. Yeah, he's done because, you know, you'll take some crazy story from the Jacksonville Times and then it ends up, you think it's a joke, but it's actually something that actually happened in the Florida Pan Am.

Anyway, so I've been able to recover from how funny that was to be able to kind of discuss this in a more serious way. I think what, so obviously this isn't journalism. This is a friendly talking, friendly platform rather to sell talking points. There's not really any cultural commentary. It's kind of political marketing, and they're trying to dress it up as mom content. That's what this is really about. But there's a bigger story here.

And I got to hand it to him. And this is, there's an important takeaway. The right does know how to build influence. Now, I see this show and I go, oh, my goodness, I'm despondent after 15 seconds. I would be looking for an ice pick to gouge my ears out after a few seconds. But to the extent that they build this. ecosystem. And they've got the mom fluencers and the lifestyle podcast and the gym bros and all that. And they funnel audiences into a political worldview. This is more overtly

political, but there's a lot of them that they're less overtly political, but they're still sort of like red coded, we might say. They are effectively doing this. So yes, the microphones are too cheap. And when you combine cheap microphones with Stephen Miller's politics, you really get something that is part of, part of the machine that the right has built. And they crush the left with it. They just do. Okay. So I want to apologize for my mullet type thing that I've had today. It's been so great being back and having you and Dan Coe was awesome last week. Producer Pat has some great stories picked out for the bonus show, including, including what is happening in Vegas. There is a real problem in Vegas with tourism. We've got a U.S. reward for the arrest

of Nicholas Maduro. What is what exactly is Trump thinking with this? Great bonus show. Sign up at join packman.com. I would love it if you also got on my free newsletter at substack. David Pakman.com where soon I will be having a live conversation with a Robert Reich. It's going to be phenomenal, phenomenal. We'll see you on the bonus show and back here tomorrow.