The David Pakman Show - 8/15/25: Trump meeting Putin in Alaska, ICE camps expanding

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Dan Koh, host of The People's Cabinet, fills in for David. Subscribe to Dan's YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/@ThePeoplesCabinet -- Trump gives vague answers to reporters ahead of his visit to Alaska to meet with Russian President Vladmir Putin -- ICE agents in unmarked vehicles and masks show up at a Gavin Newsom event -- California Governor Gavin Newsom holds a press conference to unveil California’s independent redistricting plan -- ICE announces plans to double immigrant detention capacity this year -- DOGE has way over-inflated its reported contract savings and financial claims -- Trump’s actions in Washington, D.C., including defunding police and erecting checkpoints, signal a focus on authoritarian control over safety -- Trump signs an executive order requiring federal AI models to adhere to ideological neutrality, effectively banning DEI-focused systems -- The White House orders a review of Smithsonian exhibits and materials to ensure alignment with “American ideals” and promote “American greatness” -- On the Bonus Show: Democratic Senator speaks the truth about the war in Ukraine, Dan explains the inner workings of the White House, and much more... 😺 Smalls cat food: Use code PAKMAN for 60% off & free shipping at https://smalls.com ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🔊 Babbel language learning: Get up to 60% OFF at https://babbel.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get 27% OFF sitewide at https://helixsleep.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 David Pacman show. My name is Dan Coe filling in for David Pacman. Please send some vibes his way with a new baby to his family. And please subscribe to his channel. Please, if you also like what you're here today, subscribe to the People's Cabinet. I'm a former White House official who does analysis of the news as well as interviews with leaders shaping America's future. So I want to start with the Ukraine summit today in a lot.

Alaska. A lot has been made about this, a lot of questions. I think the main question to ask, though, is that what evidence do we have that Trump knows how to outfox Putin? I would say there's not a lot. There's been a lot of admiration that Trump has thrown Putin's way. He has sided with Putin over U.S. intelligence about election interference. He has sent Putin COVID tests in the middle of COVID when Americans were dying. And more importantly, he seems to have this reverence for powerful dictators that obviously he views Putin in that same breadth. There were two questions yesterday in the Oval that were particularly concerning that showed kind of where Trump's mindset, and I just want to read both of them. First, one of the questions,

are you prepared to offer Vladimir Putin access to rare earth minimal to incentivize him to win the war? Trump says we're going to see what happens. The second question is, would you support or agree to reducing NATO troops in Europe and countries like Poland in order to get Russia to agree to a peace deal. Trump's response was, that hasn't been put before me. I'll think about that for later. Okay, so first and foremost, as we all know, Putin, unprovoked, invaded Ukraine. So the notion that we are going to try to bribe him and give him rare earth minerals that Putin would want in exchange for not trying to take over our country is puzzling at its face. but shows you Trump's mindset.

More importantly, though, NATO is an alliance, and I want to play this clip from Senator Chris Coons, for all of you who may not know the details of NATO, that I think summarizes this most effectively. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, which just celebrated 75 years, is the most successful military alliance or treaty organization in history. and its core is Article 5, which says an attack on one is an attack on all. And it's only ever been invoked once, and that was when the United States was attacked on 9-11. And NATO troops served and fought alongside American troops in Afghanistan for 20 years and took casualties and sacrificed at about the same level as the United States on a per capita basis. They showed up early, they fought bravely, they stood alongside us. easily have thrown up their hands and said, this is not our fight. Mainland U.S. was not invaded.

It was a simple terrorist attack, but they didn't. They came, when called, and helped defend the United States in our interests. So NATO stood with us after 9-11. And obviously, we are far away from Ukraine and Russia geographically. Poland is not. And NATO is standing with Poland to help make sure and dissuade any movement from Putin into Poland. That is the big concern internationally. The fact that Trump would even imply that he would question that alliance, reduce troops, put potentially Poland more in harm's way, is a warning bell for the world. And once again, is a reminder that this is not a president who honors the treaties that this country agrees upon. That makes us all unsafe. And so what is a moment? And so what is a president?

the ideal outcome of what's going to happen at the summit? For that answer, I brought on John Feiner. John Feiner is the principal deputy national security advisor to President Biden. His job was to oversee the entire national security apparatus for the White House. And he joined us to talk about this summit, best and worst case scenarios and things we need to keep in mind. So without further ado, John Feiner. John Feiner, former principal deputy national security Thank you for joining us. Great to be here. So there's a lot of talk about this summit, about, you know, who's calling the shots and what's going to happen in it. I'm not asking you to go through the entire history of Ukraine in one minute, but if you could just give us a quick overview of how we got here.

Yeah. So as I think most people watching and listening know, Russia has been at war with Ukraine against Ukraine since 2013, 2014, but really expanded its war in February of 2020. And interestingly, just because there's about to be this presidential summit, President Biden and President Putin met the only time they met during the Biden administration in the summer of 2021 to talk principally, primarily about the Russian buildup, military buildup that looked like it was going to be threatening Ukraine. The United States had identified that this was a problem, was going around the world, telling countries we need to be ready for this. Many countries were skeptical that it would actually happen because it seemed like such an outrageous thing for Russia to essentially. try to swallow all of Ukraine militarily, but a few months later, that's exactly what they tried to do. So what do you think is the goal of this? It seems like Putin was somewhat of the instigator of having this meeting. It's obviously happening in Anchorage, but there's some

history there with Russia and Alaska in general. What do you think is the goal of this conversation from both sides? So from the U.S. side, there's two theories. And I have my own sense of which one I think is right, but I'll just lay them out so people understand what could be going on. One is that President Trump, having come into office, very angry at Ukraine, believing that Ukraine was actually the country that was preventing peace in this conflict and wanting, I think, understandably and admirably to try to end the war, believe that the way to do that was put a lot of pressure on Ukraine, get Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire, and then of course, Russia, Vladimir Putin, who Trump has this affinity for, would make peace.

war would be over. So he did that. He put a ton of pressure on Ukraine. And we saw that when President Zelensky came to the Oval Office and they had that famously awkward encounter where Trump was basically scolding him. But it turned out the Ukrainians then called his bluff. They basically said yes to everything the Trump administration was asking for. Yes to a ceasefire. Yes to terms that probably they don't actually want. But they did this. Like what in a vacuum? Like being willing to talk about, at least talk about ceding some of their territory to Russia. They hadn't actually agreed to do that, but they agreed to put those issues on the table. And then Russia became the party that said no to the ceasefire. And that sort of scrambled,

that was, by the way, what many people who have worked on this issue and followed it would have expected, but it sort of scrambled Trump's thinking. And so a month or two ago, he started to really harden his language, at least, about Vladimir Putin and about Russia, started to threaten new sanctions against Russia and started to resume what he had stopped for many months, which is arms shipments from the U.S. to Ukraine to help them fight the war. So one theory of this meeting is that Trump is going to go in, take a very hard message to Putin, try to extract some concessions from Russia to try to generate a ceasefire that Ukraine can live with an end of war. But I think the other theory, which is every bit as plausible

and in my view probably the more likely theory, is that Trump has wanted for a very long time since his first term in office and probably since well before that to have this better cozier relationship with Russia and with Vladimir Putin, who he clearly admires on a personal level. When they met in the first Trump administration, they had this very friendly conversation in which Trump came out publicly and said, my intelligence community thinks a lot of bad things about Russia. But to be honest, President Putin made a very compelling case. And I know I kind of give him a lot of credit for that, which really horrified people in the government and in the intelligence community and around the country. So I think there is every bit as likely a chance that

he is going to use this meeting to try to put U.S.-Russia relationship on a better path. And one signal of that is who's actually going to this meeting from the U.S. side. It is not a delegation of military people from the State Department, which has been historically very tough on Russia. It is a delegation made up primarily of political and economic advisors to the president, the Treasury Secretary, the Commerce Secretary, the kinds of people you would bring if you wanted to talk about deepening economic relations between the United States and Russia. we've had sanctions on Russia going back to 2014 and really intensified after 2022.

The president has talked about the possibility of easing those sanctions, not increasing them, if he and Putin can come to some sort of understanding. So I think what a lot of people are worried about, actually, is that this goes the other direction. They have a very positive meeting. The U.S. agrees to a bunch of things that take some of the pressure off of Russia, and Trump then shifts his focus back to trying to make Ukraine make concessions. That's from the U.S. side.

And what do you think Putin's angle is? And can you also just give a brief overview of the significance of Alaska being the venue for this? Sure. So Alaska used to be a part of Russia until mid to late 19th century when it became part of the United States and obviously geographically very proximate to Russia. And no Russian president has ever visited there. This will be the first time a sitting Russian president has visited Alaska. And I think that is something symbolically that President Putin wants.

I'm not one of these people who believes when you meet with adversaries diplomatically, it's necessarily a concession. I think diplomacy should be used to advance American interests even against people we don't like. That said, President Putin has been quite isolated globally since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And for him to get this big meeting for the first time face to face with an American president, high profile, also high stakes, is actually itself a pretty big victory. for Putin. The fact that this meeting is happening at all. And for him, as long as this doesn't end up in a total meltdown, with Trump kind of walking out and saying a bunch of nasty things and imposing a bunch of new sanctions, which, as I said, a month or two ago, he was threatening. And it looks like the U.S. and Russia are more on the same page. That will be a huge win for Putin. He doesn't

need necessarily tangible outcomes to have a win. Just the appearance of two big leaders on the big stage deciding the future of the world. With Ukraine, by the way, excluded obviously from this conversation. And what do you make of some of the comments that President Trump made in the Oval yesterday, both potential openness to, you know, minerals or other things that Putin may have asked for in the past, as well as potential reduction of NATO troops? Yeah. So Russia has a lot of things that it wants from the United States. They have been deeply uncomfortable with NATO's presence increasing the physical presence, the number of troops along their border. By the way, it's worth reminding people that in the Biden administration, we added two new countries to NATO after Russia

invaded Ukraine, Finland and Sweden, which historically had been so-called neutral countries in Europe, not on the side of Russia, not on the side of NATO. But after Russia did what it did, they came into the alliance and added hundreds of miles to NATO's border with Russia, which was deeply unsettling for Russia. So yes, I do think President Putin will say to President Trump, look, all of these NATO troops on my border are very uncomfortable for me. They make the Russian people feel insecure, like we are going to be attacked by NATO. And if you want a more peaceful environment, you should pull some of those forces back or reduce their number. He will probably also say, look, all of this pressure that you're putting on Russia, it's hurting my country.

It's hurting my people as they go about their daily lives. It's turning them against the United States. And if you want a better relationship, if Russia and if the United States wants a better relationship, with Russia, you should turn down some of that sanctions pressure. Stop hurting my people. One other thing, Dan, that's just worth mentioning is that a lot of times when leaders get together, it's a big news event in the moment and then sort of fades in the aftermath. In U.S.-Russia relations, there has often been quite consequential actions that took place either in these meetings or just after them. When President Obama met President

Putin in 2015, it was in New York at the UN General Assembly. I was there working for for John Kerry. That happened two days later. The main topics of that conversation were Ukraine and Syria, which Russia was also helping, the Assad regime, which has since fallen. Two days after that meeting, Russia, for the first time, sent significant numbers of troops and aircraft into Syria just after President Putin met with President Obama. As I mentioned, when President Biden met with Putin, several months later, Russia invaded Ukraine. And in the Trump, Putin famous meeting in Helsinki, President Trump, Trump seemed to side with Putin and against his intelligence community. So unlike a lot of other

diplomatic conversations, which are mostly about the photos and the optics, there often is consequential action that takes place either in these conversations or afterwards. And how do you feel with Ukraine not being in this meeting? Obviously, there's an incremental step even if Putin and Trump come to an agreement. How unusual is that? And what is the typical process afterwards? Yeah. So I think the conversations that the Ukrainians and the Europeans have been having with their American counterparts in the buildup to this meeting have been along the lines of don't agree to something that's bad for Ukraine and expect us to go along with it. Expect yourself to be able to impose that agreement on Ukraine because Europe will stand

with Ukraine. And you've seen President Zelensky come out and say, look, we are not about to make a bunch of concessions to Russia just because President Trump is going to meet with President Putin. Do not expect that. And I think the Europeans will back him on this. So whatever President Trump and President Putin agreed to, if they want to actually be implemented in the world, it will have to be something that is consistent with Ukraine's interests and with how Europe sees the conflict, which sometimes is very different from how President Trump sees the conflict. And finally, just from an American interest perspective, what is the best case scenario of this summit and what is the worst case? I mean, honestly, for me, the best case scenario is that not all that much happens because I'm worried very much about the United States making major concerns. sessions to Russia, either in the meeting privately or even publicly when they talk to the press afterwards. And that President Trump sends what has been the stronger message he's been using

publicly about Russia's responsibility and Russia's essentially guilt in continuing to prosecute this conflict against Ukraine. That's the best possible scenario, even if there are no real outcomes. The worst case scenario is that President Trump is charmed by President Putin, as he has seem to be in the past, that he comes out of the meeting afterwards and says, we had this big, beautiful, he's got a lot of good adjectives, often a fantastic conversation. And that I think we and the Russians are on a much closer path as countries and the two of us as leaders going forward. And that could mean things like reducing NATO presence in Europe and reducing sanctions pressure on Russia. I think those things would be disastrous for the United States, certainly also

principally for Europe and for Ukraine, which is clinging to a sort of stalemate in this conflict, but it is fragile and day by day. And the U.S. and Europe are keeping Ukraine in the fight. John Feiner. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. I don't have a cat myself, but many friends and family do. And lately they have all been talking about smalls. So when smalls came on as a sponsor, I wanted to learn more. Smalls is a fresh take on cat food because their recipes are protein packed, made with ingredients you would actually recognize from your own fridge, no preservatives, nothing artificial. Real food made for cats. That's why cats.com and Forbes both named it best overall cat food. Friend of mine recently

mentioned, their cat seems excited when the smalls boxes show up. They tried putting it side by side with the old food. The cat went straight for smalls, which is a pretty good sign. If you've got a cat. Give Smalls a try. Smalls is offering my audience 35% off plus an extra 50% off your first order with free shipping. Just go to smalls.com. Use the code Pacman. The link is in the description. Donald Trump has already packed his second term cabinet with loyalists. He's threatened deportation as political punishment. He's expanded executive authority in ways we have not seen in modern history. These are real changes that are happening right now. And with It's even more alarming is that a lot of the media is either glossing over the worst of it

or they're reframing it so it all sounds a little more palatable. And that is why I use ground news. This is a news comparison tool. Doesn't just feed you headlines. It shows you here's how different outlets left, right center, are covering the same story. And this is one of the few tools I know of that can really help you detect the political spin, the bias, catch stories that your usual sources might be. downplay or not cover at all on everything from immigration policy to economic shifts.

If you want to get a bigger picture, a broader picture of what's being reported, Ground News is an invaluable source to keep you informed. And Ground News is offering my audience 40% off their top tier vantage plan. You'll only pay five bucks a month. Go to ground. Dot news slash Pacman or enter the code Pacman in the app to get started. The link is in the description. Welcome back to the David Packman Show. My name is Dan Coe filling in for David Packman. Please subscribe to his channel. And if you can, please subscribe to the People's Cabinet. If you like what you hear, I'm a former White House official who does news analysis as well as interviews with the leadershiping America's future. So I want to talk about Governor Newsom's speech yesterday and why it was so significant. But I think it's important to start with some of the context here. Texas is all but assured to now redistrict in favor of five more

excuse me, Republican seats, and that is inevitable almost at this point. And Governor Newsom has taken the lead in the fight against this. The larger picture here is that Democratic approval rating is at 28%. The top issue is that people don't think that we are fighting hard enough. And the other, by the way, picture is that you have the 2028 election and you're seeing some of these presidential candidates being, having their metal tested of what they're going to do in this critical moment in our tomorrow. And so, for example, with the Texas redistricting, you saw Governor Pritzker, inviting a lot of

these state representatives to Illinois and offering them a place to be, to protect them. Governor Newsom has really stepped up as well and in terms of showing the fight. So he calls a press conference to announce what he is planning to do. And I should note that California has an independent commission that determines how the districts are apportioned and and the favorability based on the demographics for those seats. The process now is that in both the state and the House of California, there needs to be a two-thirds vote to then get on the ballot a question whether that commission should be essentially overturned or superseded to Governor Newsom's map that he has proposed that will add many more

seats from California that would favor Democrats. And that would be a temporary measure until 2030. That's basically the way this is going to go. Obviously controversial. But as you'll see, Governor Newsom feels very strongly about this, given the situation at the federal level with President Trump. So on this backdrop of this press conference, ICE shows up, many of them wearing masks. It is absurd on its face that this was done for a practical reason. If you are a violent, undocumented immigrant, why would you show up to a press conference with extensive security and elected officials? That would be the dumbest move of all time. And so this is done for one reason and one reason only, just to intimidate. Apparently, they arrested a strawberry vendor

as part of this process. But it is symbolic of the antagonistic view this administration takes on local officials, which is somebody who used to work with local officials, you need all the help you can get because when incidents happen, like the wildfires, you need collaboration at the federal and local level. So that's the backdrop in which this was happening to start. A little bit about the way this whole ice thing has proceeded. if the goal is to take violent, undocumented immigrants and deport them, which I am fully in support of.

If you have committed a felony and you are violent, you should be deported. I think all of us should. They are proceeding in the exact opposite way that builds trust for the community that will help in the long term your goal. If your goal is to deport violent, undocumented immigrants, committed felonies in this country, this whole thing about masks and everything is not the way to go about it. Because in order to do that, in order to create that opportunity to get as many as possible, you need to build trust with your community. This is the opposite of that.

Now, a lot of people are saying, a lot of people are saying, well, you know, protesters wear masks, and they're getting docks and stuff. First of all, nobody should get doxed. Okay, I think we should agree with that. No one should get doxed. But there's very big difference between protesters exercising their right of free speech and wearing masks and doing whatever they do to cover their identities or for COVID reasons or what have you. And ICE agents who have the ability to arrest, who bring the force of the government,

who can use lethal force if necessary, covering their faces, showing up unmarked, and doing the things that they are doing. When people see unidentified individuals pulling up and unmarked cars and pulling people into the cars, what the hell you think they're supposed to feel? Or think, even if you are fully supportive

of what ICE is doing across the board, If someone pulled up and tried to take you into a car unidentified, how would you feel about that? Would you go along with it? Like there's this whole thing about, you know, people say, oh, you know, if I got pulled over, I would obey everything and I don't understand why people get so scared or whatever. Well, that's one thing if a police officer shows up fully identified. But if someone pulls up in a van and tries to take you away, you bet people are going to resist if they don't know what the hell is going on or who the hell that person is.

The fact that these people are walking around like Gestapo should concern all of us and candidly just erodes the trust that you want to show. If you want to do, if you want cooperation with the community, if you want people to help root out those violent, violent criminals, you build that trust. And we've come away since George Floyd. We've come away with body cameras and otherwise. But the reality is this is not normal. This is not what, uh, what has always happened. This is something that is new in the Trump administration. And so Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who was leading the administration's investigation,

was out there saying we're here making Los Angeles a safer place, since we don't have politicians who can do that. We do that ourselves. I bet you if you asked Gavin Newsom or any of the other people there, how they felt about violent undocumented people, he would tell you that we should deport them. should have them have due process, and we should deport them. So there's this whole narrative that Democrats don't care about undocumented immigration. That is not true. It is not true in the

least bit. Of course, we want, by and large, I'm sure there are some people you could probably find on TikTok who wouldn't say this, right? But of course, we want violent criminals off our streets. If you are undocumented and you've committed a violent felony, you should absolutely be deported and you should have due process. But this notion that all of a sudden, we should then be okay with masked men with lethal force going around, rounding up people, arresting strawberry vendors, terrorizing neighborhoods, making people afraid to go outside. American or not should concern all of us. And there is a reason why Governor Newsom did this press conference as a symbol at the Japanese American National Museum. You know, in the 1940s, over 120,000 Japanese

Americans, many of them U.S. citizens were put in internment camps, not necessarily because they had displayed some kind of loyalty to Japan over the United States, but because of suspicion and other things. Many of them were there for years, okay, American citizens. So if you think that there is no precedent in history for, you know, a proxy for loyalty to the U.S. and terrorizing people for political gain or for situations of loyalty or what have you or, you know, taking advantage of certain uncertainty and people's fear, that is one example. that has happened in the last, you know, 80 or so years. History repeats itself, ladies and gentlemen.

And we need to be very vigilant that we do not go back to those times. And right now, there are communities of color. There are communities as a whole who are petrified of what's going on. And every minute ICE continues to do this is a minute in which trust is just eroded at a larger level. Some of the progress that we have made to improve police and community relations, just continue to be affected by this. It's not just about undocumented. It's about our trust with law enforcement

and our government and our people. It is exacerbated by all of the other things that we are seeing, which I'll get to later in the segment. But we should all be concerned about what we're seeing in this antagonistic view that somehow Trump administration knows everything. They're going to show up with armed people and masks outside of the governor of California's

press conference. We should all think that that is fundamentally absurd on its face. So let's get to the press conference because I think that's the main part of this. So as I mentioned, the governor is proposing this bill. It is clearly in response to what is happening in Texas. And this was his big speech around it. There's a couple things that I think is maybe interesting to talk about at its face that people who may have not worked in politics may not know. And so for every elected official, by and large, there is what's called an advanced team. The advanced team is responsible for things like putting on events. And when you put on events, a good advanced team is very mindful of how it all looks and how it all fits together. So here is a picture of

Governor Newsom speaking at this event. I want to just explain how thoughtful the advanced team was here. So there's a couple of subtle things that are important. So if you look at the governor, obviously he looks presidential standing in front of a big crowd. And you look at the people behind him. It is a constellation of people, a diverse crowd, men, women, people of color, to express this unity. A lot of labor unions were there. All the leading elected officials were there and symbolically standing behind Governor Newsom to say that this is not what we stand for as United States citizens and as Californians. And we're going to stand up. to this. A couple of other things to point out. The podium and the name of this, the election

rigging response act, first of all, he's making it very clear in the name of the act that this is about election rigging and it being read symbolic of this is a Republican election rigging, right? That's that's not it. That's not unintentional. It may be easy to miss, but as someone who's worked closely with advanced people in the past, that's probably a very intentional act. just showing very clearly through the language what this is all about the defending democracy signs blue obviously evoking that democrats are trying to fight for democracy and obviously you have the American flag so all of these things are kind of helping to inform people about where we're going with this and why it's so important to to fight back. The other thing, this was a 10-minute speech

right for governor newsom there was a lot of other people who spoke i think that was really important too because in the era of social media in the era of uh people running around and having a short attention span the days of the half hour stem winder or whatever should be over and i think this is really important that governor newsom recognized that uh to do that and so i want to play a couple pieces of the speech uh just to just to give some color and to say why i thought it was so important that he positioned it in this way. So first, let's start with this clip. I don't need to belabor this, except I want to level set.

People are scared. People are fearful. You had a United States center that was thrown down to the ground in a federal building. Alex Padilla. J.D. Vance, his name is Alex Padilla, not Jose Padilla. That's the Vice President of the United States. It's another museum not so far away from us. Talks about those 53 days.

Some of you know what I'm referring to. Wake up, America. This is a serious moment. Wake up to what's going on. So I think it's really important that he points out that people are scared and that people need to wake up. I think it's important to acknowledge the fact that with all of what's happened in what's only six or seven months, people are incredibly intimidated by what the president is doing. They're incredibly concerned about it. I think it's also important to remind people to wake up because this is a president who has literally psychologically conditioned the United States with all the things that he is doing. And so people are not necessarily as sensitive to every single incremental step. But again, let's talk about how important it is that we fight back here because of these actions, you know. And so let's let me play another clip here

from a little bit longer in a speech. We're here with our state of mind with the clarity of our purpose and conviction to recognize that we need to reconcile the world we're living in. We do have agency. We're not by standards in this world. We can shape the future. And that's what we intend to do today. We're here because Donald Trump on January 6th try to light democracy on fire. tried to wreck this country, tried to steal an election, as Alex just said, by trying to dial in for 11, almost 12,000 votes. And here we are an open and plain sight before one vote is cast in the 2026 midterm election. And here he is once again trying to rig the system.

He doesn't play by a different set of rules. He doesn't believe in the rules. And as a consequence, we need to disabuse ourselves of the way things have been done. It's not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil, and talk about the way the world should be. We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt. And we have got to meet fire with fire. So he says we are not by standards and essentially it's not just enough to have a candlelight vigil. We've got to fight fire with fire.

Let's play this out a little bit because I think it's important. The Democrats right now have no power in the House, in the Senate, and obviously in the White House, in terms of fighting back Republican legislation, the co-equal branch of government for Republicans has not done its job. That is just an objective fact. They have not stood up to Donald Trump. And so in order for us to have any way to push back against Trump, we have to win the midterms. We just have to win the midterms in 2026. And this is a fleecing of that chance by Texas and by the Republicans to redistrict to prevent that from happening. If we sit back and say, oh, you know, we don't want to play this game, we will lose the house.

And Donald Trump's, you know, reign over the country with all of what he's doing, we'll just continue unchecked. I think it's really important to point out, especially as you're talking to people, you know, the alternative here is we lose the house and Trump continues to have unchecked power for his entire term and potentially more. And we just can't let that happen. So then he goes on to say this. It's not complicated. We're doing this in reaction to a President of the United States that called a sitting governor of the state of Texas and said, find me five seats. We're doing it in reaction to that act. We're doing it mindful of our higher angels and better angels. We're doing it mindful that we want to model better behavior as we've been doing for 15 years in the state of California with our independent redistricting commission.

But we cannot unilaterally disarm. So I think it's really important how he ends it as well, talking about independent redistricting, how we have to model better behavior. There was a national bill proposed to essentially create independent commissions across the country to remove politics from this. This was by Democrats. Not a single Republican supported this. Okay. So the notion that this is the, you know, politicians are all the same. Parties are all the same. really doesn't hold water when you actually look at the proof. And so I think this is really important that Governor Newsom has reminded people of this, reminds people that in 2030, this returns to the normal process because people need to be reminded that this is not the same thing happening on both sides. It is very intentional that the governor put response in the act name that he put in there.

And it is a sign that this is not something that Democrats want to do, but we are not going to sit back and just let us be ramrodded by this administration and let our democracy slip away because we want to play kumbaya on patty cake, right? We can't do that. Our democracy is at stake. We need to use every arrow in our quiver to stop that from happening. And so Governor Newsom should be applauded for the work that he is doing. He is taking a leadership role. Governor Pritzker is taking a leadership role. And all of our leading Democrats in this country need to do the same thing.

Now, what else is on the horizon that we could potentially push back on? On September 30th is the deadline for budget and whether the budget can get approved by Republicans, a budget that is proposing extensive cuts, including cuts to law enforcement, et cetera. We need to use that as well as leverage. We need to push Republicans to stop gutting the very things that make us American, that make us safe, that provide funding for our kids and for our kids' future. All of this stuff is trying to be swept under the rug, and you will hear Speaker Johnson saying that Democrats are being obstructionist. I guarantee you that every time this happens in an opposite scenario, this happened with Democrats, that Republicans do the same thing. We would be fools as Democrats not to try to use the leverage of a government shutdown to try to get what we want.

And for people, for communities of color, for all of us, okay, our most vulnerable, all of us. Okay. So we should be fighting for that. We should be demanding from our elected officials. What is next? How are you going to make sure that we get what we want in the budget? That is the next fight after this one. By the way, Governor Newsom's bill is not a fait accompli.

It is going, polling is shown it's going to be a very, very tight race. I understand the concern. I understand the reticence from some people to say we shouldn't do what Republicans are doing. But again, I want to remind people that if we let Texas go through, and by the way, they're not stopping with Texas, they're going to go to Indiana, they're going to Missouri, they're going to a bunch of places, we will lose the house. And whatever Donald Trump is doing now, that's just. just getting warmed up, we'll get even worse. And so we have to fight fire with fire. We have to fight back. And I challenge all elected Democratic officials and all of us who care about our country to stay in the fight with Governor Newsom, Governor Pritzker, and all of the other people that we

see who are actually fighting out there. I want to talk about another issue around ICE that's much broader than just what we saw at Governor Newsom's press conference. The high level here is that this is an administration that thrives off of fear and intimidation. We've seen that over and over again. We've seen it with, as I mentioned, mass men showing up in unmarked cars in taking video of the work that they're doing and putting it out on social media, of having images of alligators with ice hats on, intimidating immigrants, et cetera. They thrive off that, and they want to see as much of that as possible. In the Big Beautiful Bill, there is money for 10,000 more ICE agents. Remember that they froze 800 million worth of contracts, sorry, 800 million worth of grants for law enforcement

related activity, but 10,000 ice agents they're going to be hiring for. First and foremost, it is incredibly hard as someone who worked in federal government. It is incredibly hard to find, train, and hire anybody in the federal government. There's a process that is typically led by career officials. I don't know what the Trump administration will do, but is an incredibly extensive process of vetting, of applying, and getting people hired. That 10,000 is going to be an incredibly difficult situation on its face,

which is why you're seeing Tom Homan expand the age eligibility for it. So there's an article that just got published in the Washington Post this morning that says ICE documents reveal plans a double immigrant detention space this year. Billions will be spent to reach more than 107,000 beds, including in mega facilities, tents, and at least two new family detention centers, according to an interagency roadmap. So the article says, when President Donald Trump took office this year, the United States already commanded the largest immigrant detention system in the world with a capacity of close to 50,000 migrants. Right away, his administration is setting a goal of doubling it. And so there's a very

extensive map and an extensive plan to do this. It says the document outlines the strategy behind ICE's breakneck expansion, a chaotic effort that has already triggered lawsuits and accusations of cruelty. The roadmap last updated July 30th shows that ICE intends to expand immigrant detention to new parts to new parts of the country, nearly doubling the number of large-scale mega detention centers and relying increasingly on makeshift soft-sided structures that can be built in weeks. The government is also planning to dramatically expand its capacity for detaining parents and children and what would amount to the nation's largest family detention program in decades. Okay. So I think it's really important to point out that Democrats lose,

if we say, and I do not believe this to be very clear, the Democrats lose when they just protest any kind of deportation in general. That is a losing argument. But this is not that, right? The Republicans do not want to just deport violent criminals who are here illegally. They are looking to do just this widespread operation that should concern everybody. What is most concerning about this is if you think it is bad right now with ice on the streets, mass men showing up, with people being deported without due process, what is it going to be like with 10,000 more ice agents with the doubling of capacity. If you have a hammer, everything is going to look like a nail. And so it is also concerning that you see a lot of

conversation from Stephen Miller, from Tom Holman, et cetera, about quotas. They're setting quotas, thousands of deportations or arrests. I'm not sure the exact metric a day. Regardless, it is about incentivizing and setting goals for these agents. If you have a quota, we all know this from anything that we do in the private sector. If you have a quota, you're going to do everything you can to hit it and you're going to make a ton of mistakes if you're not careful. You're talking about training up 10,000 ICE agents when it's already hard to recruit. Again, by the fact that they have expanded their age consideration shows that it's hard to recruit. That, that, and it's face is concerning. You're setting quotas. You're going to have people out there

desperately trying to hit their quota. It's understandable if that's the goal and that's how you're measured on. The terror in the streets and the and the and the concern that people will have in terms of terror, I mean that the that people feel is only going to get that much worse. The tension between federal and local is going to get that much worse. And it should concern all of us. Families, children, expanding children detention centers. This is what this administration is doing, okay? Children have absolutely no agency about whether they cross the border or not. And so we're going to have big children detention centers all across this country. And I want to say one other thing, which is, again, the times in which the federal government

and the local government, where that relationship is most important is when there is some kind of unexpected disaster, okay? God forbid, and I work close, this was my job in the White House, was to work with local officials. God forbid there is some terrorist act or candidly more likely some kind of weather-related incident. The minute that is happening, the collaboration and the relationship between the local officials and the federal government, in this case the White House, is literally the matter of life and death. Why? Because we, we, would call the mayor of Tampa, Mayor Castor, during one of the hurricanes. She said, we need this. We need funding there. We need a, we need some FEMA resources here. And we'd be able to

send that immediately to people in need that literally minutes are going by in the difference between life and death. That collaboration is so important. And so if there is some kind of natural disaster that could happen in a matter of months, there's already a new hurricane on the horizon, for example, and there isn't that trust. And, you know, if it were in L.A., and Mayor Bass is trying to reach President Trump and he's not returning her calls, it is literally the matter of life and death. It is the thing that makes people's most cynical about politics is that people just can't get along, can't get out of their own frigging way to help people.

That is what this is setting up. It is setting up an antagonism, even more antagonism between local officials who say, listen, I know what I'm doing. Let me do my thing. And Donald Trump, who says he knows better. And he's basically saying that to everyone. So we need to gear up for this. We need to track very closely what they're doing. We need to see where they're setting up these detention centers, what quotas they're setting, and how we best fight back and be thoughtful about a strategy that is the positive, rational alternative, that every undocumented person here illegally who has committed a felony, violent crime, should be deported and we should root them out. But the amount of harm that this administration, is doing with ICE and trust in communities is unacceptable and un-American.

We'll be right back. 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.

I've even been using Babel's speech recognition technology to improve my pronunciation, super helpful. Babel is designed by over 200 language experts and proven studies from places like Yale and Michigan State. There's a study that found that using Babel just 15 hours is like a full college semester of a language. They offer 14 languages and more than 16 million people have used it. They've got a 20 day money back guarantee, so it is risk free to try.

Here's a special limited time deal for my audience. Right now, get up to 60% off your Babel subscription, but only for my audience at babble.com slash Pacman. Rules and restrictions may apply. The link is in the description. Welcome back to the David Packman show. My name is Dan Coe filling in for David Packman. send good vibes his way and the birth of his new baby and his whole family. I used to work in the

White House and have a podcast called The People's Cabinet as well as a YouTube channel. Please subscribe. It's so helpful as someone new to the content world to have new subscribers. And I deeply appreciate all of your comments and feedback. I want to start with an article and Politico about Doge. So Politico just published an article called Just How Much Has Doge Exaggerated its numbers. Now we have the receipts. A political analysis of Doge data reveals the organization saved less than 5% of its claim savings from nearly 10,100 contract terminations. And so there's a lot in this article, but I just want to read one passage. Through July, Doge said it saved taxpayers $52.8 billion by canceling contracts.

But of the $32.7 billion in actual claim contracts savings that political could verify, Doge's savings over that period were closer to $1.4 billion. Despite the administration's claims, not a single one of those $1.4 billion will lower the federal deficit until unless Congress steps in. Instead, the money has been returned to agencies mandated by a lot to spend it. Okay. So remember the big Madison Square Garden rally with Trump and Musk, where Trump asked Musk, how much you think you can save from the government? His answer was $2 trillion. Now, anyone who spent any time in government knew that was complete horseshit, because there is so much that goes into the budget, and there's only so much that you can do with what is called the non-mandatory part of the budget.

So wiping out defense spending all of that, which I'm not advocating to do, even if you were to do that, there would still be, you know, something like a $6.3 trillion budget that you would have to figure out where to get the money from. That only accounts for, you know, $700 billion or so. So how do we think about this going forward and the lessons that we could learn from Doge? There's a lot in here. But to start, the amount of morale impact this has on career employees. There are three million. million employees in the United States who work for the federal government. It is so hard to recruit those people because the salaries are nowhere as good as the private sector. The top talent is always being drawn away. And so the way you do it is to provide good benefits and job security and the idea of patriotism to your country. With Elon Musk marching in on day one and asking people to resign, demoralized, and I heard it all the time from people I knew in the career government, demoralized career public officials. That was the first thing. The second thing is,

Elon Musk had had this reputation of this businessman coming in and being able to change things. You know, he turned Tesla around, et cetera. It is this larger thought process of these business people who have no experience in government. And candidly, Donald Trump is another example of this, but they can just march in to the White House and to the administration, and they're going to have just as much success in an industry they know nothing about, right? Many of these elected officials would not do well at Tesla or any private sector organization like that, but they know how to operate in government. Elon Musk had no idea what he was doing, and it became very clear at the outset that that was the case.

So as we look at this and as we think about it, I think the lesson is government is a craft. It's an industry, just like every other place. And I don't say industry in a disparaging way. I say it in a way that this is a complex organizational structure that if you have no experience, it's going to be very difficult for you to be effective. And he made a ton of mistakes. As you know, he has alienated in Trump and Trump has alienated to him. Far more is being added to the deficit now than what would ever be saved at Doge at this point.

Elon has said so. He has lamented that fact. But here's the thing that a lot of people don't quite understand. the movement of foreign aid and the celebration that Elon Musk had around USAID and our role in the world and what he claimed was waste and fraud will have generational impact for all of us. So I brought on the principal deputy national security advisor to President Biden. His name is John Feiner. He was in charge of basically running the day to day of the national security apparatus,

everything from October 7th response to how we think of ourselves in the world in the United States. Talk a little bit about the impact of USAID and how we move forward as a federal government post-Dge. So here's my interview with John Feiner. John Feiner, principal deputy national security advisor to President Biden. My question to you is about Doge. There's a lot of articles that have kind of autopsy aftermath of Elon and the Doge project that basically is saying that there's a lot of inflated numbers in terms of savings. One area that is obviously well documented is the gutting of USAID.

I think a lot of Americans don't quite understand what USAID did. I'm not asking to explain all of that, but what I am asking you to explain is with some of the extensive cuts to USAID, what international interest does that affect for us and what should we be keeping in mind as we proceed going forward? Sure, Dan. I'll give one somewhat concrete example because I think it's easier sometimes to understand specific illustrations than it is the big numbers. By the way, the big numbers are horrifying, not the dollar values, which I think are not the right way to think about this, but more how those dollars translate into lives saved in the countries where the United States is focusing its aid. And you've seen these studies that show tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of lives saved in a relatively short period of time and all of that being reversed with the cut. But the way I like to understand the impact is pick an area like global health. The United States goes around the world and has a range of programs, many of them through USAID or other partner agencies, to try to address or even eradicate deadly diseases in countries

far from the United States, but diseases that if left to get out of control could end up very easily in the United States the way people travel back and forth these days. When I was in office, many times a month, I would have public health experts come into my office and say, look, some of our USAID people in the field or our CDC Center for Disease Control people in the field just called and said there's this outbreak in a faraway place, maybe the Democratic Republic of Congo, which many people couldn't find on a map, but is a major country in Central Africa. and it looks like this disease may be the kind of fever that once we test it, we will determine could be the Ebola virus. It's killing a small number of people in a faraway village. So we now have to ramp up our operation to try to stamp out that outbreak in the DRC and also take measures to prevent that disease from spreading to other countries and ultimately

to the United States. At the end of the day, and this is important, the primary goal here is to prevent these deadly pathogens, these deadly biological threats from coming here to the United States, this is not just about charity to countries far away. So we would do things like check on the supply of our vaccines. If we didn't have enough vaccines, ramp up the production of those vaccines, decide how many of those vaccines to send to the field to try to stop it there and how many to keep in the United States for the worst case scenario where this disease arrives here. We would look at travel restrictions for people who had been in those countries. Should we

limit their ability to come to the United States, should be test them on arrival. All of this is informed by public health analysis and expertise, but it starts with having people in the field to identify the problem early enough that you can get your arms around it. I worry now that almost none of that is happening because of the cuts we've made, the people who are doing this work who have gone out the door, and we have put not just people far away at risk, but people here at risk as a result. Can you also talk about how foreign adversaries or allies, even may fill in the gaps of the aid that we were giving and how that could be concerning to Americans? Yeah, it's not the purpose of our foreign assistance, but it's a very important

ancillary benefit of it, that it helps us deepen our connection, our relations, improve our ties to other countries in ways that benefit us all over the world. And pulling back those programs creates this vacuum in those relations that other countries can fill. And I think in places like Africa, and even in South America, in our own hemisphere, in Southeast Asia, you're going to see countries like China and Russia rush in to fill the gap, not in altruistic ways the way the United States sometimes does, but basically by going to these countries and saying, look, you thought the United States was a dependable partner. They're not, obviously. They just pulled all of this support from you. So you should move in the direction of us. And they will try to

extract things from those countries, whether it's access to minerals that the United States also needs to fuel our future economy, whether it's votes in international institutions like the United Nations that go against our interests, whether it's siding with Russia or China as they try to coerce their neighbors, Taiwan in the case of China or Ukraine in the case of Russia. But they will try to use this to boost their support and their standing in the international community by basically saying the United States is not as good a partner as you thought were better and you should move into our camp. And that means what? That in the case of an eventual conflict where allies are needed globally, they're now more inclined to want to collaborate with

those countries instead of ours, is that right? It means countries less willing to speak out against coercion by Russia and China against other countries, which is a huge problem in the world. it sometimes will mean those countries standing up and supporting Russia and China, even though they know that what they are doing is wrong. It means those countries giving Russia and China access to their mineral wealth. I mean, these mineral inputs in places like Africa are really the fuel for the global economy, for things like clean energy revolution, modern battery technology. All of this relies on a supply chain that ties back into these countries that Russia and China will try to use their relations with these places to extract more and to dominate these areas that the United

States needs access to as well. So there are more political benefits. There are more material benefits. Again, none of this is why we do foreign assistance, but it has been a very helpful byproduct of the fact that we had good relations with countries around the world. They know that we are willing to step up when they are in a time of need and a time of crisis. And if there is some giant health crisis, natural disaster in these places. The U.S., I think, inclination and ability to help countries address it will be much less than it was before. And that will mean the value of a partnership with us is much less than it used to be. And finally, you've seen the entire apparatus at a very high level, our national security apparatus,

our four and eight apparatus. I know speaking from the Department of Labor, where I used to be chief of staff, seeing what they've done and what they're proposing to the staff for things like inspectors at the work site, wage an hour disputes, etc. I know that it will take decades at a minimum to rebuild what they've already done if they were to stop today. I'm curious in your perspective quickly, how you've seen it, the stories you've heard about the different parts of State Department, for example, that are being affected, even if today it stopped, how long it would take to rebuild what you think is necessary in this modern era. Well, look, I hate to end on a pessimistic note, but I really worry about whether it is possible to rebuild a lot of

what has been lost for two main reasons. Think about why people who have a lot of expertise, a lot of education, a lot of talent go into these jobs. If you are a PhD epidemiologist, why do you want to work in the government as opposed to a research institution out somewhere in the world? I think two basic reasons. One, you feel good about your public service and two, you have job security. But unfortunately, given what has happened with Doge, the disparaging of people's public service means it is harder for them to feel good about working in the government than they used to. A lot of the country, it seems like, has turned against government as a career and as an institution. Second, they don't have the job security they once had. Used to be, think, once you got

into these places, you were set for the next 20, 25 years if you decided you wanted to stay. That's no longer the case. So people are not going to settle for lower salaries, less flexibility and freedom to pursue other aspects of their professional life by coming back to the government now that those things have been robbed from them. And so I worry about efforts to rebuild. We're going to have to be creative about it. We're going to have to, I think, be realistic also about some of the things that Doge identified that probably the U.S. government and USAID and these institutions should not have been doing and not try to rebuild and reconstitute everything. I think that's going to be very important for Democrats, if and when we ever get back into power to be sensible about what to

to try to put back into place and what actually should be done differently. But I think the challenge of getting people to come back into these roles who have other options is going to be really hard. John Feiner, thank you for joining us. Thanks, Dan. When it was time for a new mattress, I didn't want to gamble on something generic. I had heard about Helix. I like that they customized the mattress based on how you sleep.

I'm mostly a stomach sleeper. So I took the quiz and ended up with a model that felt tailored to me. I've had it for years. What I notice is I don't wake up with back stiffness. I don't wake up with shoulder pain. I don't toss and turn looking for a comfortable position. It's just better than my old mattress. It's more supportive, but it's still comfortable.

Another thing I like about Helix is that there's no one size fits all approach. It's really tailored to you in terms of firmness as well. It's made a difference for me and I'm thrilled to be partnering with them. And right now, Helix is running a huge sale. 27% off site wide plus a free bedding bundle. That's a sheet set and a mattress protector with any Lux or elite mattress order. Go to HelixSleep.com slash Pacman to check it out. The link is in the description. Okay, welcome back to the David Pacman show. My name is Dan Coe filling in for David Packman. He is, uh, has a new addition to his family. Please congratulate him and his

family. Uh, and please subscribe to the people's cabinet. I'm a former White House official who who does analysis of the news as well as interviews with people shaping America's future. Your subscriptions are incredibly helpful for me as I'm starting out, so I appreciate it. I'm going to start with the DC takeover because it continues to get more and more absurd on its face. First of all, I want to start with something that is definitive, that I believe to be objectively true. I was on Stephanie Rule, the 11th Hour Stephanie Rule on MSNBC, and I summed up the fact that there is no president in modern history who is defunded the police more than Donald Trump. Let me play the clip.

Daniel, I want to get your take on this federal takeover, basically, of the D.C. police force. You once worked for the mayor of Boston. The president seems like he is creating a template like this could happen in other cities. What's your take thus far? Here's the disturbing part. If Donald Trump really wanted to address crime, he literally is defunding the police more than any president in modern history. Slow it down and walk us through this because I think this is the most important thing.

So I come from the city of Boston, as you mentioned. The way you measure homicides typically is per 100,000 people. So Jackson, Mississippi is 72, Memphis is 48, D.C. is 27. Boston is 3.5. How did we do that? We did it through community violence intervention. The clergy, the community, and the government all working together. And so the Bipartisan Safe for Communities Act, for example, put $250 million towards these kind of programs.

Donald Trump froze 800 million Department of Justice grants. 550 programs across 48 states dedicated to things like community violence intervention. That's one of the biggest cuts in history. He also froze 700 FBI jobs, 100 million from the alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, another 100 from domestic violence programs and violence against women at the DOJ. So if you actually want to address the problem of crime, you invest in these kind of programs. He's doing the exact opposite. And by the way, marching around Georgetown is not the way to reduce crime.

crime in D.C., marching DEA agents around the mall where there were zero drug incidents last year is not the way to reduce crime. This is all about show and this is all about control. It is true. And I want to elaborate on two specific cases, okay? One is Meridian, Connecticut. Any police department you talk to will tell you that overtime and paying for overtime is incredibly challenging. The budgets for police are not robust. And so having that having extra budget is really important. Meridian, Connecticut had a line item for over $100,000 worth of police overtime that was funded through federal grants that has now been frozen.

That is a very tangible example of how Donald Trump is literally defunding the police. Secondly, there's a program called Youth Alive in California, Oakland, which is actually one of the places that Donald Trump claimed was a disaster. Okay. They work with youth who have been involved in violence and are in the hospital. So these are people who have been in, you know, gang involved things, shootings, what have you. They go to their bedside and they work closely with them to reduce the chances that they get into violence. Again, as I mentioned in the clip with Stephanie, this is what has been proven to work, right? Community violence intervention has been proven to work. They had two million from the federal government that just got frozen. To a million gone, right? And again, 113 youth, one committed violence again, just one out of 113. These are proven strategies that work. And there's examples everybody in every community can find a nonprofit that is doing valuable work like this. In the Bipartisan Safe for Communities Act, as I mentioned, we funded this because we funded what works. This is not about funding what works for President Trump. This is about funding. his whole administration of control. That is what this is. So let me elaborate on that for what we're seeing in the D.C. takeover. If you really cared about reducing crime in D.C. And by the way, I think Democrats lose if we say, well, crime is low, so we shouldn't be bringing in more

resource. I think everybody wants a safer city. Nobody wants to walk around in their communities during the day, at night, and feel scared. So even though it is true that D.C. is at a 30-year low. I don't think that our argument should just be that. That's why I talk about how he's defunding the police and he's defunding what worse because I think that is incredibly important and people don't talk about that enough. But even so, if you want to reduce crime in a place like D.C., I think it is logical to say, okay, if I want to reduce crime, I'm going to deploy the National Guard and my resource

to places where there is crime and address it. But that is not what this administration is doing. Billy Binion, a reporter, put out this map. Now, first, let me take a step back. This image is of agents walking around Georgetown, okay? For those of you who are not, who have not been to D.C., Georgetown is not an area that one would consider to be overly unsubed. safe. It is an area near Georgetown University. It has very fancy shops. It is, it is objectively a fancy place where they foreseasons. Okay, that does not mean that crime never happens, but it means that that

is not the place where all the violence is happening. In fact, Billy Binion, as I mentioned, here, here's what he tweeted. This is a map of D.C. violent crime since January. Georgetown has reported one, one criminal offense thus far. The majority of the neighborhood has seen no violent crime at all. Many other neighborhoods can't say the same. Taxpayer-funded solutions need to be based in reality. And he's absolutely right. As you look at this map, there are areas that do have higher rates of crime. If you look in some of the areas of Columbia Heights, in some of South, East D.C., where I'm sure if you talk to the police force, they would tell you they need valuable resources and that Donald Trump could actually help. But that's not what this is about.

This is not about addressing those problems. It's about showing. intimidation and flexing force. It's the same way that before you saw him with DEA agents on an area of the National Mall near the Lincoln Memorial that had zero drug incidents, okay? It is not, it is because these are high visibility areas for the public. Most Americans know what Georgetown and Georgetown University is. And so if you send troops marching around there, people, people pick that up, okay? Same with the National Mall. When you come to D.C. and you come as a tourist or what have you, you go to the National Mall and you see,

and so you recognize it. This is all about, you know, Donald Trump's a reality TV star, right? And so he knows that if he puts those images out there, people are going to recognize it and it will, quote unquote, resonate with them about the kind of things that are happening in D.C. That's what this is about.

It's once again a reminder of Donald Trump's mentality, which is he is going to, you know, almost like a Matador, with his cape, say here, here's what I'm actually doing when behind the scenes, he's doing something completely different. We see that, as I point out, with him defunding programs that actually help that have proven to be effective. We see that in his work with standing up with minors and saying that he's fighting for minors with minors behind him when he guts a program at HHS that combats black lung disease, which miners get when they go into the mines. We see him when he says that he stands for

unions when he has a member of the Teamsters, the president, at the Republican National Convention, but then he strips 400,000 people at the VA of their collective bargaining rights. We see this over and over again, the show of Donald Trump and the reality. This is yet another example that we're seeing in D.C. with this entire thing that is, quote, unquote, anti-violence, but as a matter of fact, makes us all less safe. One last thing. The National Guard is a finite resource, okay? I know I talk a lot about natural disasters, but it's what I'm most concerned about right now in the short term. Because there's going to be national disasters where the National Guard will need to be deployed.

And every minute we are spending, thinking about how we deploy the National Guard to D.C. or other cities that Donald Trump is planning, is a minute we're not spent on preparing for that national disaster. That is coming. That is what we should be using the National Guard for. And we certainly shouldn't be using them for symbolic marches around Georgetown in a time where people are already concerned about their futures, where trust between law enforcement and people are becoming more and more strained. This is not the way forward. So that's what's happening in D.C. and we're going to keep an eye on that. Another issue that I want to, another thing that I want to talk about that may have not getting as much attention is around AI. and how Donald Trump is controlling our entire tech apparatus and the tech CEOs that will make us unsafe, but more importantly, we'll control the information that we're consuming.

I know I sound dramatic when I say this, but bear with me because I think after I'm done with this, you will understand why I'm so concerned. So I think most of us know what chat GPT is. We've all used it. And again, it's based on what's called a large. language model. What does that mean? LLM, you'll hear LLM a lot. And so here's a very layman's terms example of it. It's basically like an advanced auto complete. So you feed it tons of information, articles, what have you. And it begins to recognize patterns in the language

and in the words. And it's so good at a certain point that it can predict the next word that the language will produce. So it's a very fancy way of saying it's an advanced auto complete. Okay. So if you ask a question, it will scour all of the data, use its pattern recognition to give you what they think is the best response. That is only helpful if you have the right inputs and right content that you fed it to train it. That's why you're seeing people saying we're training the model. That's the whole thing. And obviously, every single major technology company in this country, as well as many across the world, see dollar signs here. And trillions of dollars of their value is based on whether they can get AI right. And a lot of these companies, you may not fully realize it, are getting and training their models based on the things that you are doing. Right. So in the case of X, GROC, all of the training that is a large part of the training that's coming is from all the tweets and all the interactions that are happening on Twitter. Facebook and meta are doing the same thing

with all of the posts that you do on Facebook, and you can see it over and over again. It is really important to also point out that in the same way that when there are court cases, what have you, and the text messages that you send could be subpoenaed as part of court proceedings, that chat GPT, the things that you input into chat GPT, personal things, I am sure, are not, protected. You know, if you go to a therapist, for example, and you talk about something, there are certain protections that exist so that you can be open and you don't have to worry about it hurting you. That does not exist with chat GPT and AI models very large. And so that is very concerning for a lot of people because I think a lot of people are very personal about

their feelings on there. But it just shows you, I'm just illustrating that because it's just an example of the lack of protection in this new world that these platforms don't have, lack of protection that they have, right? So why is this all relevant? And what is Trump doing? Because as you all know, there is nothing that Trump likes better than to regulate power and to control power. So I'll read this quote.

On July 23, 2025, President Trump signed the executive order title, preventing woke AI in the federal government. This mandates that the federal agencies only procure models that adhere to, quote, unbiased AI principles, namely ideological, neutrality, and truthfulness, effectively banning models that embrace DEI frameworks or similar concepts. Importantly, the Office of Management and Budget has instructed to issue further guidance within 120 days of the order. That places a key deadline around November 20th by which companies should expect clarity on implementation. So why is this relevant? And why is this important for all of us to be concerned about? Because the definition of woke AI is not coming from objective people. This is coming

from the federal government. And what are they doing? What does an executive order do? Essentially, it allows the president to interpret the law and dictate, in this case, how federal contracts are, how the government qualifies the decisions in which they give out money. That's So that happens all the time in the federal government. They have a need. There's obviously trillions of dollars in play. They will put out a need, often called a request for proposal, RFP, you hear that being thrown around, and people respond to it. But what the government can do is they can say you are not qualified even as a candidate to receive a certain contract because of XYZ parameters you did not hit. So that happens a lot in government. And the

administration has the ability to influence that decision. Why do I say I'm concerned? There was an article in Mashable that was just published a few days ago. Meta hires far right influencer to help end Woke AI. It's a guy named Robbie Starbuck, and they hired him to be an advisor at Meta. Again, this is Facebook, Instagram, the platforms that many of you use every single day. to ensure its AI tools are free of ideological bias, quote-unquote. This should concern all of us.

It is one thing. If META had announced that they're going to try to create neutrality in its AI models, that would be a panel of three left-leaning, three right-leaning people, and trying to make sure that, you know, the information that are being fed into these models are not biased by data. They're not even hiding it, right? They're hiring a conservative individual to help regulate what is being fed into their models.

And by the way, this is exactly what Donald Trump is hoping for because he can control, he has a massive apparatus, as I've talked about in previous shows, to get information out there that is favorable to him, right? The entire right-wing apparatus basically has just swallowed.

with the exception of like Andrew Schultz and Joe Rogan swallowed the BS about Epstein files and stopped talking about it. And, you know, it is absurd given how much they did talk about it. And now they're literally covering for this entire thing that's happening. But he knows that at least as of now, you and I can go on chat GPT or what have you and ask some questions. And he doesn't have as much control over what comes in and what comes out. But putting what could be billions of dollars at stake for these tech companies gives the tech companies an incentive to make sure that the models are to the liking of President Trump and his administration.

So you bet you're going to read more from different tech companies about how there is probably going to be sources unnamed, about how they're going to be feeding it more information that is favorable to Donald Trump. What does that mean in practice? It means that the amount of information that people receive is. going to be now more biased towards the right, more biased to Donald Trump. One of the things that I think is a tangible example of that is, and this is meta, as, you know, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was getting rid of human fact checkers by and large. That was his big announcement,

obviously in response to Donald Trump not liking that. One of the things that I think has actually been interesting is how GROC on X has played a role of fact checking. Now, I'm not suggesting that GROC is perfect. It is shown sympathy to Nazism in the past, obviously unacceptable. But for a lot of the fact checking, it has now been replaced by GROC, right? And I've actually, I've actually, if I do say so myself, been relieved by the fact that there have been times where I've gone on TV, talked about a clear fact, talked about the defunding of the police by Donald Trump, and individuals who have sought to discredit me by going on GROC and asking GROC have given a fact-based answer that I gave that basically backs me up. But if Donald Trump is now the

arbiter of good AI, what does it mean if all of the things that people are trying to do to establish a neutral factual base goes out the window? That's what we need to watch out for. And the problem is we're not going to be able to track any of this overly closely from the back end because a lot of these companies will try to develop these things. It's all black box anyway. Very few people understand how LLMs are put together. This is something that we need to harp on. Because if all of a sudden, all of our AI platforms are all feeding us conservative information that is favorable to Donald Trump at all times, our entire country could be radically transformed by it. And I don't believe I'm being dramatic by that. So we need to continue to monitor closely how this is proceeding.

We need to monitor closely the deadline of November 20th, and we need to hold our journalists, and we need to hold our public accountable to what could come next. The last thing I want to talk about is the Smithsonian. So the Smithsonian, of course, is a treasured institution. If you come to D.C., you see all these different history museums, American History Museum, African American History Museum, National Portrait Gallery, all of these places that present our history, good and bad, and talk about and it's free for the public, right? So the problem is Donald Trump has now targeted the Smithsonian and targeted in a way that

given my experience in the federal government, I'm particularly concerned about. So, you know, let me just read the headline from the New York Times. Historians alarm by White House plan to oversee Smithsonian exhibits. The administration's plan to, in effect, audit the content of the Smithsonian Museums drew criticisms from groups that represent scholars and promote free speech. So I think we should all agree that we should, our American history should not be, you know, filtered through any lens, that we should be honest with ourselves about the things that we did well as a country and the things that we didn't do well as a country.

That's the way we learn, right? But that is not an administration, this is not an administration that seems to care about that. Let me give an example. let me first read the letter that was sent. Dear, this is Secretary Bunch, okay, Lonnie Bunch, he's a Secretary of Smithsonian Institution. We wish to begin by expressing our appreciation for the brief tour that you gave us. We are grateful that the board has expressed your commitment to a nonpartisan,

nonpartisan educational mission of this great institution. Now, I read that because this is ironic. As we celebrate our two and 50th anniversary of our nation's founding, is more important than ever that our national museums reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story. We will be, and to go on. In accordance with Executive Order 14-253,

restoring truth and sanity to American history, we will be leading a comprehensive internal review of selected Smithsonian museums and exhibitions. This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President's directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence

in our cultural institution. I won't read all of this, but if you just look at all the things they're going to look at, public-facing content are the things that if you come to visit D.C., you will see likely as well, things that you read online,

how it is curated, how are you planning exhibitions, the use of collection, and narrative standards. Donald Trump is literally trying to rewrite our history. I'll say it again. Donald Trump is literally trying to rewrite our history in the image that he and his team will seek. I want to go down and just show you the extent of the materials that they are looking to review.

I should also take a step back as someone who worked in the White House. Every minute that is being spent on one thing, on X, is not a minute being spent on Y. The most valuable resource in the White House is not money, although that is obviously a concern and resource. It's time. This is what frustrates me so much about this president because it's whether it is the ballroom, whether it is the South Lawn, whether it's the Kennedy Center, it's that for every minute he's spending on whether it's Kiss or what have you or Sylvester Stallone as the honoree is a minute he's not spending on how. we're going to bring inflation down, how we're going to have peace, and all of that. So look at the different things that they are planning on reviewing. The 250th anniversary planning, the current exhibition content, the traveling and upcoming

exhibitions, the internal guidelines, index of the permanent collection, educational materials, digital, I mean, it goes on and on and on. This is going to be a huge, huge lift for the Smithsonian at a time in which they're trying to plan for historical historical celebration of our country, which should include the things that we're less proud of. It is signed by Vince Haley, who is the assistant of the president

and domestic policy council and Russ Vaught, Lindsey Halligan as well. Let me talk a little bit about Domestic Policy Council and Office of Management and Budget. Okay. The Office of Management and Budget is responsible for overseeing

the $7 trillion of our budget in the United States. is the most powerful position in the federal government. Shalanda Young outside of the president. Shalanda Young was the OMB director under President Biden, and Russ Vaught is one of the authors of Project 2025, is for the president. Incredibly important job spending his time on this.

Vince Haley, Domestic Policy Council. So domestic policy council oversees initiatives that the president would like to do from a policy perspective on things like health, education, key parts of our country, okay? The fact that they are so involved in curation of the Smithsonian, there's two things. One, it's just absurd. That's what they're spending their time on, okay? Objectively absurd.

But two, means that they're serious about how they're going to try to rewrite our history in the image of Donald Trump. We already saw, and there's some reporting about whether this was reversed, that they remove Donald Trump from impeachment, from. impeachment exhibits. And again, I want to be fair. There's been reporting that's been reversed. But imagine what they could do, what they could do to our history. And again, as I point out before, if they are effective in essentially whitewashing parts of history, and I say that in a way of revising history to make it look not as bad, the generations that consume the Smithsonian content

that view that as objective about history, that goes away. way. And like, what are we left with? And what are the implications of future administrations who want to do this kind of thing? You know, time and time again in history, we have seen what happens when these leaders who are power hungry take away information from people. We're seeing it in the LLMs with AI, and we're seeing it in the very historical institutions that we hold so dear. I want to give an example of why this is concerning. Jillian Michaels on CNN Newsnight, a show that I am on, you know, had a different lens of history about slavery. Let me play that clip.

Have you looked at some of the things that were being reviewed? Yeah, slavery was a bad thing that was to talk about. He forgave me for saying that. He's not. He's not. No, he's not. And you cannot tie imperialism and racism and slavery to just one race, which is pretty much what every single exhibit does.

Well, let's talk about the fact that when you... In the United States, let's talk about the fact. Slavery in America was... Jews was it only less than 2% of white Americans owned slaves. But it was a system of white supremacy. Do you realize that slavery is thousands of the years old? Do you know who was the first race to try to end slavery? What is controversial?

I'm sorry. I'm very surprised that you're trying to litigate. I'm really surprised. Do you realize that? Jillian, I'm surprised that you're trying to litigate who was the beneficiary of slavery. I'm not. What I'm trying to tell you is that. In the context of American history, in the context of American history, what are you saying is

incorrect by saying that it was white people oppressing? Every single thing is like, oh, no, no, no, this is all because white people bad. And that's just not the truth. Like, for example, every single exhibit, I have a list of every single one. Like, people migrated from Cuba because white people bad. Not because of pastures. Yes, no, it's in there. That's what I'm saying you don't actually know what's in there.

Do you know that when you walk in the front door, the first thing you see is a gay fly. Trying to justify, first of all, there's a lot of debate about, percentages, et cetera, and families and what have you. We're trying to justify slavery in this country because, let's even take her as it is, only 2% of all individuals own slaves is by definition minimizing the horrors of slavery and the generational effects that it has had on our country. But if you don't have objective thought about our history, if you're not honest about what the impacts of slavery has been on our country over the long term, you get misinformation

out there that attempts to lessen it. So we all need to be vigilant about this. We all need to see how they are proceeding here. And we should all be concerned about these actions of this administration. That's it for the David Packman show today. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you like what you heard, please subscribe. And please subscribe to the People's Cabinet. It's my YouTube channel. Again, we do analysis of the news. We can take you behind this. scenes as someone who worked in government. And we also interview leaders who are shaping our country's future. So please, it's so helpful as a small creator to grow the channel with your support. I'm so grateful for all the comments, encouragement, discouragement, good feedback, and I look forward

to see you again soon.