The David Pakman Show - 8/27/24: Trump preparing to back out of debate, Bernie & Newsom brutalize the trolls

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Fred Trump III, Donald Trump's nephew, joins David to discuss his new book, "All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way," and discuss how Donald Trump became who he ultimately became. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3WZEnCn -- Senator Bernie Sanders gives the perfect answer to ABC News' Jonathan Karl when Karl tries to sow division within the Democratic Party -- California Governor Gavin Newsom once again runs a clinic on how to deal with Fox News interviewers -- Donald Trump appears terrified to debate Kamala Harris and has started laying the groundwork to back out of the September 10 debate -- Donald Trump is suddenly terrified and tweeting uncontrollably -- A review of Donald Trump's past statements about Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and Kennedy's past statements about Trump, reveal some odd trends -- A confused Donald Trump publishes a video about Afghanistan that makes as little sense as anyone could imagine -- JD Vance is hugely struggling in favorability and approval polls, a very different scenario than the one Tim Walz finds himself in -- Voicemail caller points out that Donald Trump, now speaking at rallies inside a glass box, does resemble the "late great Hannibal Lecter" -- On the Bonus Show: Arizona police refuse to endorse Kari Lake, and much more... 💾 SoftwareKeep: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off at https://davidpakman.com/softwarekeep ☕ Beam melatonin hot cocoa: Get up to 40% OFF at https://shopbeam.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep: Get up to 20% OFF + 2 free pillows at https://helixsleep.com/pakman 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN10 saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com 🍽️ CookUnity: Get 50% OFF your 1st week with code PAKMAN at https://cookunity.com/pakman 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- Pakman Discord: https://www.davidpakman.com/discord -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave a Voicemail: (219)-2DAVIDP

Speaker 1 Welcome, everybody. Hope you're doing well. You know, things were so crazy and hectic last week with the DNC and in general over the weekend that we missed some really interesting examples of how to properly handle and sort of diffuse some of the attempts to divide the Democratic Party. And I'm not even necessarily arguing that every single one of these examples I'm going to play for you is an overt attempt to divide the Democratic Party in order to help Donald Trump. But these are really good examples of how not to allow that to happen, whether or not it's the intention of an interviewer. We're going to look at Gavin Newsom in a moment.

But I want to start with Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders on Sunday was on ABC's This Week with Jonathan Karl. And Jonathan Karl asks a question where, listen, we don't have to be critical of Jonathan Karl. It's a fine question, which is there are disagreements within the Democratic Party when it comes to Kamala Harris's president positions and policies on something like health care and Medicare for all, as an example. And he goes to Bernie as one of the big voices for Medicare for all. And he sort of sets up what appears to be a sizable division within the Democratic Party. What Bernie does is brilliant, which is he turns

it around and he says, compare the views of Kamala Harris to those of Donald Trump, which is the relevant practical question facing voters in what is it now? Nine weeks, eight weeks, I guess nine weeks, something like that. And there's a lot to say about this. So let's see how Bernie handles it. And then we're going to talk about it more. Also, in her first campaign, she supported Medicare for all like you. She supported a ban on fracking and offshore oil drilling. These are clearly new positions now that she's taking. Why is that? Let me just say this. You go out, you do a poll, as I have done,

and you ask the American people whether or not health care is a human right and whether we should do what every other major country on Earth does and guarantee health care to all of our people, the answer is yes. Should we be spending twice as much per capita on health care, despite 85 million people being uninsured or underinsured? Most of the American people understand the system is broken. So Kamala Harris and I have a disagreement. I do believe in Medicare for all.

I think the current system is dysfunctional and broken. She has a different point of view. But right now, Kam current system is dysfunctional and broken. She has a different point of view. But right now, Kamala Harris is running against Donald Trump. And Donald Trump's position on all of these issues are virtually extremely right wing pro insurance company. He wants to end the Affordable Care Act for millions of people off of the health care that they have. So I think when you look at her positions versus Trump, the issue is clearly day and night.

Her positions are far, far more superior. Bernie does two critical things here, and this is this is not minor stuff. This is of the most important sort of aspects of shaping the debate around not only this election, but around what has become apparent division within the Democratic Party, even though we might just call it more benignly diversity of opinion. Right. It's every difference of opinion doesn't have to be a divisive crack in the Democratic Party the way some would like to have you believe it is. Bernie does two things. The first thing Bernie does is he says, let's step back for a second from Jonathan Karl saying, Kamala had this position in 2020, but now she believes this Kamala had this

because it let's step back from that for a second. The framing should be when we look at the American people who at the end of the day are the most important ones, because it's the American people who are saying through our elected officials, what do we want? The American people overwhelmingly believe whatever you call it, it doesn't have to be Medicare for all. And in fact, you can make the case that the American people might prefer might prefer a different way of getting everybody health care that's affordable.

But the American people in general believe that the government should provide some basic level of health care to everybody, regardless of ability to pay. I've outlined a dozen different ways to do it. You look at what Germany does versus France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Singapore. There are different different ways that we could achieve that. But the American people are on the same page, whether it's the Bernie version or the Kamala Harris version or someone else. That's the starting point, number one. And then number two, the question Jonathan Karl asks 70. What are we? Seventy two, seventy five days before the election

is not the most important question because we all disagree with what Trump would offer. OK, yes, we may have differences with regard to the best implementation. There's people in my audience who really like the French system and there's people in my audience who really like the Singaporean system. But we are all essentially in agreement that the system Trump likes and what Trump looked at trying to pass in 2017 would be a disaster.

So an excellent job by Bernie Sanders, diffusing the attempt at divisiveness, different ways to solve the problem. None of us agree with the way Trump would do it. Trump would make the problem worse. That's what's at stake when you're thinking it's how is it a relevant question in November? Bernie and Kamala differ on health care. Therefore, maybe I should vote Trump. It's it's ridiculous. And I don't know whether Jonathan Karl is doing this just because he's trying to generate interest on his show

or because he's actually trying to sow division and help Donald Trump. I don't have any evidence he's trying to help Trump, but it's important to do what Bernie did and not get sucked into it in that way. And there are other issues. Certainly Israel. Gaza would be one of them where the focus is how does Kamala's view differ from AOCs and how does that differ from whoever else? Right. We're 75 days from either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump becoming president. And Trump has said, let him turn it into a parking lot, finish the job, whatever. So it's worse for the Palestinian people for Trump to win. Once we say, OK, the Trump options off the table, now we get involved and we say, how do we want Kamala Harris to deal with this issue,

which at a starting point is going to be in a much better way than what Donald Trump would have done, would have done excellent, excellent job by Bernie Sanders in not allowing the primary story to be apparent division within the Democratic Party. Gavin Newsom, much like Bernie Sanders, is excellent at facing off with hosts who either implicitly or explicitly are trying to play up divisions within the Democratic Party, which has often the effect of making Trump seem maybe like an option that should be considered, even though he should not. There are some clips from Gavin Newsom being interviewed on Fox News at the DNC. We didn't get to them last week because it was such a busy week. But I want

to get to them now. Gavin Newsom is so good at laying out in simple terms the contrast in vision between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. And I won't say more. I'm just going to play this first clip and you'll see what I mean. This theme of this convention, a lot of it is about freedom. You have criticism of Governor Tim Walz and how he handled COVID-19. Obviously, you took criticism about how you handled COVID-19, that there was a real crackdown on people's businesses and how they dealt with it. Yep. How do you say that that was freedom? Well, I mean, in health, wealth, and education, states like California outperform states like Florida.

They claim to be freedom states, even though they're banning books, banning speech in the boardroom, in the classroom, banning women's rights, the right to choose. I mean, you want to compare and contrast, pretty easy. We believe in bodily autonomy, we believe in the freedom to love, freedom to go to school without fear of being gunned down. We care more about our children than the National Rifle Association. I'll take this debate head on any day of the week on freedom.

And don't forget, I was doing ads a couple of years ago on this saying, how in the hell are we losing the debate on freedom? And with respect, during COVID, Donald Trump himself was out there promoting a lot of these policies, supporting this policy. I don't think that. I know that because I was he was not supporting going after people and having neighbors snitch on neighbors. No one that that wasn't about. But as it relates to the governor, the concern was it was. All right. I'm going to leave you with this early.

Another of it. All Republicans. All what Gavin Newsom is doing in a sense here is the let's cut to the results side of things. Now, Gavin Newsom has this personal controversy with regard to how covid was handled because he went to a birthday dinner at the expensive restaurant, the French Laundry, in the middle of a bunch of the restrictions that was completely wrong with regard to the way it looks. He said I was completely wrong to do that. So let's put that aside for a moment. What Newsom does brilliantly there is he cuts to the end result, which is just look at the

performance. People make more money in California. We have better health outcomes. Education has better performance. You could go way further, which is innovation is dramatically better in California on the basis of new patents and trademarks and however you want to measure it. And and that's often a way to get out of the weeds because Fox hosts know what they're doing. They know how to set up the debate and how to frame a question such that it puts you on the defensive. And sometimes what you need to do,

as Gavin Newsom did, is you change the scale of the discussion. You go from the 500 foot to the 30000 foot. Now, he did another great example of that more broadly when talking about the economy. The topic of economics came up and listen to what Gavin Newsom at three. And let's have a real conversation. You want an economic policy to compare and contrast. We know what Trump says. A 10 percent tax on the American people on three point one trillion dollars of goods, a 60 percent. You're talking about terror. Or he hasn't laid on.

He hasn't laid down at all across the board. He hasn't done that yet. And that's not true. Here we go to Kamala Harris from California. I want to go. OK, so and then Brett Baier again wants to get off of that topic. It's another example of Gavin Newsom going, hey, let's zoom out for a second. Left, right and centrist left wing, right wing and centrist economists have looked at Trump's

tariff plan and they've estimated roughly it'll cost the average American family about three thousand or thirty five hundred bucks a year. Sure. Over the long term, as I discussed yesterday, you can argue there may be a dynamic effect where supply chains are brought back home over a period of eight to 10 or more years. And then maybe in the long run, on an inflation adjusted basis, it will do something for prices. That's not disastrous for the average person. That's not the effect that it would have over Trump's four year term to just do a massive dump of tariffs in this way. That's the zoom out.

That's the big picture. And whether Trump wants to blame Biden for the price of eggs or whatever he's doing, you've got to zoom out and establish what that is. Then they get to crime. OK, so we're going through a bunch of these critical issues. Then they get to the issue of crime. And once again, Gavin Newsom doesn't get caught in this. Can you justify why blue states are doing X?

And instead, he zooms out to when we talk about crime, why are we even talking about blue states when it's the red states with the higher crime did prop 507 in California, which is coming under a lot of criticism, which is 507. I know a lot of propositions. I've never heard of 507. The writing of how the prosecution for small crime. Oh, 47, 47. I'm sorry.

Yeah. Which is, by the way, the 10th toughest threshold in the United States of America, meaning you can steal up to nine hundred and fifty dollars of goods and it will be charged as a misdemeanor. You can steal two thousand five hundred in the state of Texas. Why you're not focusing on those other 40 states is behind me. That's the critical line. Trump at every speech now, he goes, you know, these shoplifters, they're going into a CVS in California with a calculator and they're saying, oh, I found nine hundred and fifty dollars worth of stuff

and I can just take it now, of course, and I can just take it is wrong. It's the threshold for being charged as a misdemeanor rather than a felony. But Gavin Newsom brilliantly points out the threshold is twenty five hundred dollars in Texas. You can steal more stuff in Texas and it will be charged as a misdemeanor than in California. Why are you talking about California? I mean, 10th toughest felony threshold in the United States of America. That's fact that she was a tough prosecutor in California. See now, Brett Baier has to bail. Brett Baier has he cannot put any response forward when Gavin Newsom points out, yeah, the 950 is the 10th lowest threshold in the country and the threshold in Texas is way

more lenient. So Brett Baier just goes on to something else. You remember her primary for president? She was attacked from the left for being too tough, for being prosecutor, for having a prosecutorial mindset. So look, I mean, all these things, this is all fair game. But at the end of the day, she's got a record of accomplishments as being part of the Biden Harris administration.

We've seen inflation tamed down to two point nine percent. No one's denying the inflation scars. No one's denying what's happened around the world, with a few exceptions around the globe as it relates to the impacts of covid in supply chains, a war in Ukraine and the impacts that's had on the global economy. But no country has done better and no investments have been made comparable anywhere in the world. So this is this is very, very good stuff from Gavin Newsom. And he rightly points out, wait a second. The right says, oh, Kamala Harris wants to defund the police and do all these things. But the criticism from the left has been she's too strict when it comes to policing and prosecution.

She's she's very much the opposite and right and left conflicting on what's bad about Kamala Harris. And Gavin Newsom does a really good job of laying that out. And by the way, I like that that he mentions this is all fair game. You know, Brett, if these are all topics that are absolutely fair game, if you were right about the facts, you happen not to have the facts on your side. And that is an excellent, excellent approach. So I hope we see Gavin Newsom more as a surrogate in these environments. Gavin Newsom is excellent on Fox News. Pete Buttigieg is excellent on

Fox News. And, you know, we we often hear the criticism that the left has no bench, has no bullpen. There's a serious, serious bullpen right now. Everybody from Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, Jasmine Crockett. I mean, people of all geographical origins, of all kind of like employment and and working backgrounds. It is a deep bench right now. And Gavin Newsom is excellent. So let's take a very quick break. If you're looking forward to the Trump Harris debate. It may not be happening.

I'm going to tell you after the break what the latest is with that. If you are a student or you run a business, you know how expensive software subscriptions can get. I can tell you as a business owner myself, it adds up, especially with so many software companies forcing bundles and subscriptions on you. And the solution is our sponsor, Software Keep. With Software Keep, you only buy the software you need. You only pay once. You always get a huge discount and you'll get better customer support. Not only will you only buy the software you need. You only pay once. You always get a huge discount and you'll get better customer support. Not only will you save money on software for Windows and Mac, but the experience with Software Keep is better. Before you buy,

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to warn you that debate may not happen. And the reason it may not happen is that failed former President Donald Trump seemingly terrified, low energy, staying home instead of campaigning, much to the dismay of many of his campaign staffers. He seems to be laying the groundwork to bail on the debate. A number of articles coming out over the last 24 hours, Huffington Post, coward critics mock Trump after late night freak out over Kamala Harris debate. Cold feet. Trump lays groundwork to chicken out of Kamala Harris debate. Well, what is it that Donald Trump said that made it even more clear that he's super scared to debate Kamala Harris and may indeed be looking for a reason to get out? Well, it was the following

post that he made on his failing social media platform, Troth Central, Donald Trump posting, quote, I watched ABC fake news this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Karl's ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton, who was fantastic. And there's so-called panel of Trump haters. And I ask, why would I do the debate against Kamala Harris on that network? Will panelist Donna Brazil misspelled give the questions to the Marxist candidate like she did for crooked Hillary Clinton? Will Kamala's best friend who heads up ABC do likewise? Where is little George Slopidopoulos hanging out now? Will he be involved? They've got a lot of questions to answer. Why did Harris turn down Fox, NBC, CBS and even CNN? Stay tuned. And of course, stay tuned means

wait around to see whether I'm actually going to be doing this debate or I am going to run away with my tail tucked between my legs back to play golf at Bedminster or Mar-a-Lago or who knows where, maybe a rally in Montana, a critical a critical location for the forthcoming election. It is an embarrassment that Trump is even considering bailing on the debate. But for right now, his cult followers are so cultified by him that they will defend the threat. For now, if you look online, you look at the subreddits and truth central comments and Twitter. For now, the cultists are mostly saying they're not going to treat him fairly. Kamala Harris wasn't even selected

democratically. She's not a legitimate candidate, either because of her race or because of what happened in the primary. Why would Trump debate her? So for now, the cultists are saying what you would expect them to say. But my prediction, Anthony Scaramucci had a similar interpretation. If Trump does actually cancel on the debate, I think it's going to be a different story. Of course, there are some of the most deeply

indoctrinated cult followers who are just going to keep believing Trump dropping out of the debate is justified. ABC fake news, George Slopidopoulos, Kamala, this, that, the other thing. Some of them will continue to the very end saying Trump is right not to debate. But there are definitely followers who will say and we started seeing them anecdotally who will say, wait a second, he won't debate her when debating Joe Biden helped Trump so much. I mean, think of it. Trump debated Joe Biden and Biden did so poor, horribly that it set off a chain of events

that got Biden out of the race. That's how good the debate against Joe Biden on June 27th was for Donald Trump. So clearly there is upside if Trump will do well and he's just going to not even show up. Something is wrong. Something seems very wrong. This is not the alpha male powerful energy that Trump and his followers claim that he has. So the risks to Trump not showing up are significant. I'm hoping from a personal standpoint, I want to see them on that stage together. I'm hoping that he does debate, but he is very much, very much setting things up not to. And another sign that Donald Trump is going completely off kilter is the fact that he's all of a sudden, despite the fact that he has a financial stake in Truth Social, which is failing

suddenly back on Twitter and Twitter, back on Twitter, adjet tweeting. And I want to talk a little bit about that next. A suddenly terrified Donald Trump is tweeting uncontrollably. You might recall that Donald Trump was previously banned from Twitter when it was still called Twitter in that intervening period between being banned and ultimately unbanned. Once Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X in that intervening period, Trump said, I'm launching Truth Social. I'm only posting to Truth Social. Truth Social is better than Twitter.

But Trump is now entering a phase of desperation. And you can tell he's desperate because counter to his own financial motives and those of his investors, he is now increasingly posting to Twitter. And some of these tweets are happening within minutes of each other. And some of these tweets are happening in a way that is completely apoplectic and reflective of Donald Trump's fears and insecurities about what's happening in this election. Let's take a look. The tweets, of course, as unhinged as you can imagine, starting with who is negotiating for us in the Middle East. Bombs are dropping all over the place. Sleepy Joe is sleeping on a beach in California, viciously exiled by the Democrats. And Comrade Kamala is doing a campaign

bus tour with Tampon Tim, her really bad VP pick. Let's not have World War Three because that's where we're heading. Remember, Trump's been predicting World War Three for nine years. And fortunately, so far, it hasn't happened. Trump then engaging caps lock and tweeting November 5th will be the day will be the most important day in the history of America. There are a couple interpretations of that. I'm hoping it doesn't end up being true. I hope it ends up being an uneventful day in which Donald Trump's MAGA movement is put

into the dustbin of history. Trump continuing Kamala and her handlers are trying to make it sound like I am the incumbent president. Actually, it's everyone around Trump who keeps referring to him as the president that are making it sound like Trump is still president. But put that aside. They're trying to make it sound like I'm the incumbent president so that they can blame me for the failure of the past four years.

No, it was their failure. It is one of the worst presidencies in history. And she is definitely the worst vice president. Trump continuing. There will be no future under comrade Kamala Harris because she will take us into a nuclear World War three. She will never be respected by the tyrants of the world. Of course, Trump also predicting that it will be the end of the U.S. if Biden wins. And of course, everything's fine. Now he's making the same predictions about Kamala Harris. Trump continuing comrade Kamala Harris will obliterate Social Security and Medicare by giving it away to the millions of illegal immigrants who are infiltrating

our country. Of course, she will do no such thing. And undocumented immigrants pay into a lot of these systems from which they don't actually derive any benefits. And then finally, Trump posting in all capital letters, no tax on tips plus a video. Of course, we've looked deeply at no tax on tips. And while it's fine, it's not a good substitute for actually raising the federal minimum wage one damn time for all after this waiting years and years without any increase. And because of the income of 95 percent of those who work in tipped jobs, no tax on tips would not actually change anything for them. So Trump's desperation visible by starting to sort of tease not going to the debate and

also visible from the fact that he is adjet tweeting to Twitter, despite the fact that he said, no, truth central is the place for me. He has no reach on truth. And so he's trying to reach people via Twitter. But if you think that Trump's tweets are embarrassing, given what's going on, just wait until I show you Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s. On yesterday's show, we looked at some of this very strange event when Donald Trump introduced Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fresh off of Kennedy suspending his campaign and endorsing

Donald Trump. He came in to the unauthorized use of the Foo Fighters song, My Hero. He came in with pyrotechnics. He came in to suck up to Trump. But one of the fascinating things that's just a reminder, just a reminder of how absurd this entire RFK Trump thing is, is the following. Let's look at some of the things that RFK said about Trump and Vance. Just recently, RFK said about J.D. Vance that he is owned by the CIA. That doesn't sound like making America great. And his pick as vice president is a salute to the CIA and to the intelligence community and to the military industrial complex.

And their gravy train is going to continue. So now that is what he's endorsing. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now endorsing a salute to the CIA and the military industrial complex. And then look over time the things that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said, quote, President Trump has lurched into what may be his most reckless obsession yet. His administration would probably seek an emergency use authorization for a covid vaccine before science. Some scientists believe it is safe to do so. He he said back in May of 23, just to quell any speculation under no circumstances, will I join Donald Trump on an electoral ticket? Our positions on certain fundamental issues, our approaches to governance and our philosophies of leadership could not be

further apart. Well, he has endorsed Trump now. he said in December of 23, I'm not a Trump supporter. If I were, I wouldn't be running against them, but I want to beat him in a fair election, not because he was kicked off the ballot. OK, fine. He wants him to stay on the ballot, but he says he's clearly not a Trump supporter. Robert F. Kennedy in September of 2023 said, I will ban fracking. Donald Trump has spent a long time now in the last month attacking Kamala Harris and for years attacking Joe Biden because he said they will ban fracking, which is terrible. Trump wants fracking. Robert F. Kennedy said, I will ban fracking. And yet Trump is now acting like RFK is just fantastic. Back in April of this year, Robert F. Kennedy tweeted, President Trump calls me an ultra left radical. I'm so liberal

that his emissaries asked me to be his VP. I respectfully declined the offer. I am against President Trump and President Biden can't win. Well, now you have endorsed President Trump. Robert F. Kennedy once tweeted Trump is destroying the planet. He's reversing the progress we are making on climate. We have an opportunity now to protect the earth. Stand up to Trump by donating to him. Well, he is now endorsing the guy that he said is destroying the planet. Oh, and here's the same one again, which we can just skip. So to believe that this is anything other than brazen opportunism and a naked thirst for power from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is laughable. And to believe that this is anything other than an act of desperation for Trump,

who sees the writing on the wall. The polls have reversed. Enthusiasm has reversed. The money is flowing into Kamala Harris, and he knows that to some degree, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hurts him. This is a desperate move from Trump to try to get reposition to somehow get back in control of this race. They're all pathetic and they all deserve to lose to Kamala Harris. That's the outcome I'm hoping for. I love my Helix sleep mattress. I've been sleeping on Helix mattresses for years now, which is why I asked them to be a sponsor. You actually take their famous sleep quiz takes just a few minutes to answer questions about your sleep preferences, body type, sleep position, whether you have back pain and Helix will match you with a mattress that's

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Use promo code Pacman 10 at checkout for 10 percent off. That's Pacman 1 0. The info is in the podcast notes. It's a real pleasure to welcome to the program today. Fred Trump, the third, whose new book All in the Family, The Trumps and How We Got This Way is a fascinating and in some senses, Fred, potentially terrifying insight into a lot of what we've seen and might kind of see in the political world in the future. Just to start with something. When you saw the Trump brand from from your perspective, how much of it do you think ultimately was because of Fred Trump senior? How much of it was because

of Donald Trump? Like what was your internal understanding of this brand as a business entity? Yeah, the interesting thing, and it's a really neat question. My grandfather was hugely successful, built more apartment buildings in Brooklyn than anyone second most in Queens. You know, big guy in the democratic machine politics of both Brooklyn and Queens. But in his way, he was very understated. He wanted two things, really. He wanted a big house for his kids and he wanted a big car. And he always had that. He was not the flashy guy at all, which was interesting compared to where Donald wound up. Now, my grandfather was against Donald moving his business into Manhattan. He thought, our business is in Queens and Brooklyn. He was totally against it. And people have asked me, do you think he would be proud of the brand as it is?

I'm sure my grandfather, well, I know he was. He was proud that Donald had that driven characteristic. I don't think my grandfather was very happy. And I know my grandmother was very unhappy with what Donald had to do in his mind and his actions to get where he is. When it comes to the kind of origin story about this small loan of a million dollars as this, you know, footnote about how it all kind of kind of got going. What's the truth of the amount of support that your grandfather put towards the eventual Trump empire? Speaker 4

The Trump empire, you meaning Donald's the Donald Trump empire? Yeah, to be clear. Speaker 1 Without and keep in mind when the million dollar issue came up down in Atlantic City, grandfather was already showing levels of dementia. And again, I'm on the record as saying I am not a doctor. I don't pretend to be. But both of my grandfathers had dementia. Several other family members in the Trump family had it. So I knew what the warning signs were. I knew that Donald had played my grandfather for this scheme. And that, you know, helped bail Donald out, much like Donald stealing my inheritance from my grandfather in 2000. So can you explain that? I don't know if the audience necessarily understands that. My dad died at a very early age in 1981. I was a sophomore in college. Donald was named my trustee at that point.

Flash forward a couple of decades, my son, William, who I hope we have a chance to speak about, was born with a terrible seizure disorder, was at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan for three weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, two other hospitals for an additional four weeks until he finally came home. A couple of days later, I'm greeted with a note or a letter from one of Donald's attorneys saying, in essence, that I had been taken out of my grandfather's will. Through judicial findings and taking him to court, we found out that Donald had hatched a scheme to, in essence, take myself and my sister out of my grandfather's will. And here's the thing that is just beyond the pale. As I mentioned, he was my trustee. You're supposed to trust

the person who has that position in your life to take care of the issues that you have. Donald's the exact opposite and took away what was rightfully mine. And that also helped Donald through a horrific time in his financial career. I mean, it was so embarrassing that the banks were putting him on an allowance. So between the chips that my grandfather left on the table at one of Donald's casinos and the money that was taken from me and my sister, you know, they should be thanking us or he should have thanked us for for helping him get out of his financial straits. Before we talk a little bit about the situation with your son, just so everybody understands the kind of family tree when Donald I've said that one of the few times Donald

Trump seems slightly more human and connected to emotions is when he talks about the struggles your father, his brother had with substance use, specifically alcohol. And Trump has told a few different stories of why he doesn't drink. At one point, it was just that he was brought up in an environment that encouraged not drinking. More recently, he says it was because your dad, his brother would say no drugs, no alcohol. And that combined with seeing the effect that the alcohol had on your father sort of scared him away from ever touching anything. Aside from the speculation about his use of uppers, which I don't even know that we want to get into at this point, but we can if you

want to. Is that backstory that he tells where he seems sort of human? Is it even a real story? No. Dad had a terrible problem with alcohol and he was supposed to be the golden child in that family. He turned out to be the embarrassment in their eyes. Now, let's put everything in context. Virtually everybody in my family has an issue with alcohol. Everybody, his siblings, except for Donald. Why it was my father who was singled out, I don't know. But it may have been because, again, dad was supposed to take over the family business. He had a dream to be an airline pilot, and he became an airline pilot,

which Donald called him a glorified bus driver. So to answer your question more specifically, what Donald told me one time, and I remember it quite clearly, he goes, I never drank because, or took drugs, because if I did, I would want to be the best at doing it. And someone asked me the other day, well, he put out a statement in, I think it was in 2019 about my father and, you know, how he felt bad about it. My answer to that is, well, that's kind of decades old as far as I'm concerned. You were his brother. And believe me, my dad did a lot to help Donald, such as getting into the University of Pennsylvania and other things. Donald treated him, again, like he was the embarrassment of the

family. So his statements that, oh, you know, I'm so sorry about my little too late for me. When it comes to your son, William, you mentioned the seizure disorder, which I believe is connected to a known genetic variant that that can cause that case. Casey and Q2. Right. You've said a lot over the last few months about Donald Trump's sort of I'm editorializing here and you can correct me if I'm wrong, sort of uncaring attitude towards that, which when I heard what you said and you can tell us exactly what it is in a moment, it reminded me of Trump's at Donald

Trump's attitude sometimes after a mass shooting where he says we just kind of have to move on. It's reminded me of Trump's attitude after a natural disaster, for example, the hurricane in Puerto Rico, where he just kind of showed up and shot paper towels like basketballs. And it was like, we're here to have a good time. It seems to track. But tell us what his reaction was to that medical situation. Well, the first reaction. He never came to visit William when William was in hospital and all neither of his siblings did either, by the way. So I don't want to just say it wasn't done, but never asked about him when he was a baby. Donald still never met William, never. To go a little further with what you were saying, and there is a pattern, and

you know, of course I get the question, is he empathetic at all? The answer is absolutely not. I remember during that hurricane. But here's a personal story that kind of hit home with the first example you used. And as I've said, the reason my book is different is because I have personal anecdotes with him throughout the decades since I was a young kid. And I had great access to him, not just the visits to the Ophel office and certainly not just to playing golf, but I could call him at any time and he would get back to me. The day of the Uvalde shooting, I called him and I was upset, maybe a small word for what I was. And I said, you have to do something about this. And his answer was, there, as I mentioned in the book,

sat behind me at the inauguration in 2017. And I introduced my kids to him and said, I don't use this word often because I think it's been cheapened. Senator McCain is a hero. And they knew full well that what Donald had had mocked him and said he wasn't a hero. I'm just truly humble. So, yeah, to answer your question, a circle back. He doesn't have it in him. He doesn't want to be near people he deems lesser than him. And he basically deems everybody lesser than him, except maybe Putin and Kim Jong Un. When it comes to lesser people, a lot has been made mostly speculatively about Donald Trump's views on race or immigrants, Jews, etc.

My complete outside view that I've assembled only from what I've seen him say publicly is that he doesn't strike me as someone who's probably personally homophobic. He seems sort of indifferent, I guess I would say when it comes to Jews. I mean, I know that his son in law is Jewish. His daughter converted to Judaism. My wife is right. Your wife is just he strikes me as a guy who maybe doesn't have any proactive prejudice against Jews, but kind of sees them as an

oddity of sorts and maybe has some some views about them as a group. Talk to me a little bit about from behind the scenes. Was race something he talked about often, the claims of racial slurs in private, this sort of thing? Well, you know, as I mentioned, there was when, again, I was 10 years old and the Eldorado's roof of his Eldorado's roof was slashed. And it wasn't that he just used the N word twice is that he assumed they were black folk. When my bike was stolen and he helped me when the police found it and the young kid was there, he was adamant about throwing this kid

in jail. I said, no, I can't. I mean, kid made a stupid mistake. Okay. I'm not going to be part of that. And then you flash forward to 89 with the Central Park Five. So is he racist? Another definition, I certainly just don't know. I think he espouses what racist people or people who have views that I find repugnant follow. And that may just be politically expedient. I often joke he likes black people when they're reading putz for him on a green in a out from under a tree, then then, you know, black people are his best friends. I am I am I am just don't get it how and I saw a report on today about black men following him. I just I don't get it. I would advise them that they're being used as pawns and he will cast them aside should he win this election.

You mentioned earlier in the interview the generally Democratic leaning background of your family. One of the things that's been notable is that after a very long time, I think 68 years of being pro choice and sort of seeming certainly socially liberal. All of a sudden, the political Donald Trump, who decided that he was running as a Republican, said that he had an awakening with regard to the issue of abortion and became very much anti abortion.

He has a story he tells about meeting a kid he liked that explains why. You know, there seems to have been this complete and total shift. Can you talk a little bit about it? Is it a bait? Is it more that he was apolitical in the sense of what who can help me and I'll say whatever I need to say and align myself with whoever. Yeah, definitely. And you know, in his business career, I don't think he gave a damn about any of these issues.

Abortion, race, guns. I mean, he has no affinity towards guns. Since I was a kid, he used to say, oh, I have a carry permit. Okay, great. I get it. He likes to hang around or have bodyguards. Okay, I get it. But it was never a big issue for him. So I've said, and maybe I've gotten myself into trouble for saying it is, he had his populist vision in 2015. And it had started to really marinate over the years before that. And it stuck and people were totally enthralled with him. But then he starts getting involved with people who, you know, I use the godfather imagery on the book of being, you know, the Pinocchio where someone is controlling. He, trust me, he had no real love or followings of religion.

I mentioned gun control, really didn't, but boy, he's the big NRA guy now. Right. You go down the line, the Heritage Foundation. And I know there somebody said the other day, well, Donald Trump, it was Dan Crenshaw. Donald Trump has said, oh, he has nothing to do with Project 2025. Believe me, I guarantee he may not have written a page of it, but he will follow it to the letter to get what he needs. There's a picture of you and Donald in the Oval Office together.

I'm curious, what's the relationship been like over the I mean, say, since 2015, are you in any kind of contact with him at this point? And if not, for how long have you not been since he said what he did about my son, William, that he should die. I think that should end any relationship. It's a shame. As I've said, I, you know, he's my family member. I've had, you know, deep affection for him over the years. He's done terrible, terrible things to me. I somehow found it in myself, maybe not to forgive, but to find a way to get along. That one may have been a little over the line for me. And others will ask, why did you go down to

the inauguration in 2017? You know, when considering the things that had happened over the years with him, the bad things. And for me, it's simply, A, he's a family member, it's historic. And it began my real national push for advocacy on behalf of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And whether he wins or loses, I will be at whoever's inauguration. And if the Harris campaign doesn't come up with what I and the people that I've aligned myself with, great advocates. I met Senator Tom Harkin the other day, just a hero in the disability world. I'll hold their feet to the fire because for me, it's just too important.

Speaker 1 Who do you plan to vote for in November? Speaker 2 I'm voting for Kamala Harris. And is it more personal or simply that the views are aligned with your views? Not personal at all, even though I think Donald has changed and is changing and he's going to become even more off the rails. And I think they put that out there that he will know No, for me, it's always policy over politics. And that's exactly what it is. I believe in the politics, A, of the Democratic Party, certainly what the Harris campaign has put out so far.

She has the energy. I looked at Donald now and he's looking tired, tired. And I worry that he is he will push things too far. The book is all in the family, the Trump's and how we got this way. We've been speaking with the book's author, Fred Trump, third. Fred, I really appreciate your time today. Thank you, David. Thank you. One of our sponsors today is Cook Unity, the first chef to you service delivering locally sourced meals from award winning chefs right to your door every week. And it's cheaper than other meal delivery options with Cook Unity. There is no cooking required for a chef quality dining experience right at home.

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it. Try a pair yourself and you'll finally understand the level of comfort and morale that you've been missing out on. They come in a bunch of different designs. They have something for everybody. The quality is amazing, super long lasting. We'll be right back. S.H.E.A.T.H. Underwear dot com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman for 20 percent off. The link is in the podcast notes. Well, a confused looking Donald Trump, desperate for relevance, recorded and released a very sweaty and orange video about Afghanistan.

And I want to talk about Afghanistan because some of you in the audience have been coming to me and saying, David, was Joe Biden getting out of Afghanistan really the accomplishment that you've been saying it is? And this is a perfect opportunity to discuss. Let's listen to what Trump had to say in in the sense that he read it off of a teleprompter. And then we're going to talk about what my audience has said and we'll try to make heads or tails out of it. This month marks the three year anniversary of the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. Kamala and Crooked Joe's catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan has just been horrible for all of us. Three years ago, Kamala and Biden's incompetence left 13 dead warriors, hundreds of civilians killed and grievously wounded,

and $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment on the planet abandoned to the Taliban, right into the hands of the Taliban. It also left 45 incredible soldiers so badly wounded, the legs, the arms, the face, obliteration. As Vice President, Kamala bragged that she was the last person in the room. She was the tough one. She was the last person in the room. During that disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan decision,

she repeatedly praised the decisions and she said, it led to a catastrophe, but it was worth it. The incompetence and weakness on display from the Biden Harris administration was an insult to every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine who ever served in our US military. OK, so he goes on 90 more seconds, but basically it's Biden bad. Harris bad. How they got out is bad. It's all bad.

They're incompetent. They're bad people. Definitely don't vote for them. Now what I want to address is the criticism that I saw from some, including, for example, sub Reddit user Schmertz one, two, three, four, five, who asked, was the Afghanistan withdrawal truly an accomplishment or was it a necessary evil forced upon the Biden administration? And Schmertz added, David often brings up the

Afghanistan withdrawal as a success of Biden. But I'm not sure you can argue that making the case that Afghanistan wasn't Biden's fault, but that the aftermath was chaos and Biden is to some degree to blame. So now that we've had years to think about this, here is the bottom line on the issue as far as I see it. Trump started this withdrawal process and it would have been done. I know that Trump now has had years to explain how it would have been so different if he did it. But Trump would have done the Afghanistan withdrawal essentially the same way that Biden did it based on what he said at the time. Of course, in hindsight, now he says, no, it would have been different. But at the time he expressed he would have done it just like Biden did it. It was going to be chaotic, period. Once you are somewhere for 20 years and

you shouldn't be there and you've impacted the situation and it was wrong all along, it's going to be chaos when you get out. But that doesn't make it wrong to get out. And it doesn't take away that it was a correct thing that you did. The war in Afghanistan also caused many of the things that we are now seeing. Right. When they say, well, now there's famine, there's violence, there's trafficking, there's not a proper rule of law. The war also caused a lot of those things. And and so therefore, it was necessary to get out. Trump said he would get out and he didn't. Biden got us out and getting out is an accomplishment. And it was the morally and politically correct thing to do when we want to talk about responsibility.

The person most responsible is George W. Bush. He got in with not even an idea of a plan to get out, left office without even an idea of a possibility of an interest in getting out. President Obama didn't get us out at one point, surged. It was very obviously time to leave. Trump said he would get us out and he didn't. The leaving did not go perfectly, but that doesn't change that it was the right thing to do and that a lot of the problems that are going on now were problems that were going on because we were there in the first place as well. This is a quagmire in Afghanistan that was 20 years in the making. Blaming Biden is really kind of out there. Now, you can still point out the vacuum led to it.

We knew that would happen when Trump announced we were getting out and it was still the right thing to do. Trump failed to do it. We knew it would happen when Biden got us out. It was still the right thing to do. And it happened. The exit was guaranteed to be a vacuum generating problem because the entire strategy was designed without a plan to get out in mind. So I do believe it's an accomplishment for Joe Biden. You can always

criticize in hindsight that it wasn't done perfectly, but the problems that are there predate getting out, at least in terms of the specificity. And it's no different than what Donald Trump told us he would do. The revisionist history of how he obviously would have done it differently is not based in a shred of anything we can find that he said before the withdrawal happened. And so it's easy to find problems now. But Biden was right to do it. And it is an accomplishment.

And certainly Biden not responsible for generating that situation to begin with. J.D. Vance continues to be brutalized by Tim Walz. They hate him. The country hates J.D. Vance. A good conversationalist. And now we have a huge, huge gap in vice presidential nominees as far as their favorability in the new Associated Press and our C poll, J.D. Vance is minus 17. The way we get those numbers is J.D. Vance has a 27 percent favorability rating and a 44 percent unfavorable. Twenty seven minus forty four gets you to that minus 17. On the other hand, Tim Walz has a plus 11 favorability rating. So when you look at minus 17 and plus 11, that is a 28 point gap. And Trump's selection of J.D. Vance basically breaks

every sort of rule about a VP pick that you're supposed to follow. Rule number one, get a VP pick who's not going to take attention away from you. J.D. Vance's interviews and speeches are so disastrous and he's so painfully uncharismatic that he's taking attention away from Trump. And it's all negative attention. Rule number one of choosing a VP pick has been broken. Rule number two, get a VP pick who will bring you some votes. You should be able to point to somewhere that he helps you or she helps you, even though the conventional wisdom is usually they don't. But can you at least find someplace where they can plausibly bring you some additional votes? There's nowhere for J.D. Vance in the most charitable interpretation. You could say J.D. brings Trump some votes in Ohio. Ohio has been

assumed to be a red state that would be won by Trump regardless for a very long time now. And so J.D. Vance also doesn't bring Trump anything. And number three, get a VP who doesn't actively hurt you in general. Forget about getting more attention. Who doesn't actively hurt you in general? J.D. Vance seems to be actively hurting Donald Trump. So the question that we are left with, particularly now that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump and listen, I'm not a fan of RFK's views, but there is no denying that RFK's presence on the stage with Trump over the weekend. He's more charismatic than J.D. Vance. He's a better speaker than J.D. Vance. He's able to connect in a way with the sort of propagandistic and bombastic elements of Trump better than J.D.

RFK seems like someone who, at least in theory, if he were on the ticket, would give Trump a little bit a little bit of support electorally. Not a lot. The early polling and Nate Silver has said it isn't much that RFK can bring to Trump, but there's at least a little bit of something there. We now run into the question of seemed like Trump wasn't going to replace J.D. A replacement makes Trump look bad. It reconfirms the notion that Trump isn't so good at hiring people. But now with RFK as a possibility, looking sort of OK up there on the stage with Trump over the weekend, does this create new energy for replacing Vance with RFK?

It is a risky move for sure. There are Republican insiders who would say this is crazy. He's basically a lifelong Democrat who has abandoned the Democratic Party, but is most known for medical conspiracies, 9-11 conspiracies and other conspiracies. I don't know that this is the guy we want either. So it's a real pickle of a situation. I don't envy the position Trump is in, but I do find it funny because it is of his own making. Let me know what you think. Is J.D. Vance getting replaced? We have a voicemail number. That number is 2 1 9 2 David P. This is a very funny call just to set the stage for you.

At a recent rally outdoors, Trump came out and stood in a glass box for his speech to keep him safe. Listen, I don't blame the guy. Right. I mean, it's the visual is really funny because he's supposedly the big, strong alpha male who's afraid of nothing. But now he speaks in a glass box. I would be terrified if I had survived an assassination attempt by a centimeter.

So it's not a crazy thing. Just the visual is funny. glass box. I would be terrified if I had survived an assassination attempt by a centimeter. So it's not a crazy thing. Just the visual is funny. Here's a call linking the glass box to the late great Hannibal Lecter, which is increasingly an obsession of Trump's. Hi, David, this is John. I think you might want to point out that with Trump behind the glass box now, she does resemble the late great Hannibal Lecter. Thank you. Speaker 1 Yes, we now have finally found a connection between Trump and the late, great Hannibal Lecter, which is the glass box that Trump is speaking from. Very nicely done. We have a great bonus show for you today. Get instant access by signing up at join Pacman dot

com. I also want to remind you that you can preorder my forthcoming book, The Echo Machine, anywhere that books, audio books and e-books are sold. Anyone who buys a physical copy of the book will get a signed book plate from me. It won't be stamped. It won't be a digital signature. It will be a wet signature pen on paper that I can promise that I can tell you. David Pakman dot com slash echo or just search the echo machine on any e-book, audio book or physical bookstore. I'll give you an update on

where the preorders are tomorrow and I will see you on the bonus show.