The David Pakman Show - 8/5/25: Trump cracks as MAGA wonders if they've been conned

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

-- On the Show: -- David hosts a Substack Live with Olivia Julianna -- Donald Trump unleashes a bizarre Truth Social rant accusing Barack Obama of orchestrating a coup and calling for retribution -- Donald Trump lashes out at Senate leader Chuck Schumer on Truth Social telling him to “GO TO HELL” amid political standoff -- Marjorie Taylor Greene declares she’s done with the GOP, criticizing the party for misogyny and lost loyalty in MAGA politics -- Trump’s latest “smoking gun” evidence debunked as likely fabricated by Russian intelligence in Kremlin disinformation scheme -- Trump breaks his campaign promise by walking back IVF insurance coverage despite earlier executive orders -- The era of exaggerated clickbait videos is ending as algorithms reward authentic, engaging content, causing many creators to lose views -- Trump, once a critic of the system, now controls institutions he once denounced, disappointing his MAGA base -- The Democratic Party risks disaster due to lack of clear strategy, message, and ability to connect with voters outside their base -- On the Bonus Show: Texas Democrats flee to prevent Republican gerrymandering, more on Marjorie Taylor Greene, Fox host sucks up to Trump, and much more... 💵 Sponsored by Ridge Wallet: Use code PAKMAN for 10% off at https://ridge.com/pakman 🥕 Quantum Nutrition Labs: Get additional 10% off with code PAKMAN at https://qnlabs.com ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 💪 AG1 is offering you a FREE $76 GIFT when you sign up at https://drinkag1.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

Donald Trump is melting down again and it is not over gas prices. It's not over the border. It's not about inflation. It's about Barack Obama and it is happening again. Trump unleashed a caps lock laced tirade on truth social. Trump accusing Obama of orchestrating a coup after the 20s. election, calling it the crime of the century, and Trump wants blood. Trump wants revenge.

He says that they must pay, quote, the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax is now totally undisputed. The facts are all in there black and white. It is the biggest scandal in American history. The perpetrators of this crime must pay a big price. This can never be allowed to happen in our country again. He then went on to share a video from The Daily Signal, featuring this right-wing historian Victor Davis Hansen, accusing Obama-era intel leaders of conspiring to destroy Trump after his victory over Hillary Clinton.

They must pay for the crime of the century. So there are about 15 different things here that are really wacky. Of course, the Russia hoax is not undisputed. Trump, if this sounds familiar, you might remember during Trump's first term, he said that the biggest crime of the, uh, of in American political history was Obama gate. And when he was asked by a reporter, what is Obama gate? He got mad and he said to the reporter, you know what it is. Who are you with? Guys like Washington Post. He goes, you know what it is. We still don't know what Obama gate is, but apparently it has now been supplanted. This is a rage

post that is really built on a fringe narrative pushed by Tulsi Gabbard. She says Obama and top national security officials fabricated Russian election interference. The whole point of it was to delegitimize Trump. It's a total rewrite of history. And it's not a very good rewrite of history. Every major intelligence agency confirmed Russia meddled in 2016 to help Trump win. They didn't hack our election systems. This is the key distinction that Tulsi and others are kind of blending.

They didn't hack Connecticut to give Connecticut to Hillary instead of Trump, even though Trump actually won. Okay. That's not what they did. But they meddled. They had an opinion. They ran influence campaigns. They did Russia type stuff. Bipartisan Senate report led in part by Marco Rubio confirmed it. No serious person is debating this. But Trump's not serious. And Tulsi is very much not serious. They want to distract with very this is not subtle timing. The meltdown is coming as the Epstein scandal explodes. Questions swirl about. Trump's relationship to Epstein, the revisionism. And after years of barely saying that he barely, I've said, he barely knew Epstein.

Trump now says, oh, Epstein stole workers from my spa. They were underage girls. And Virginia Joufrey is one of those who later died by suicide. I mean, this is a mess of a situation. Trump's running from it. And so what he does is fire up the maga machine with recycled rage and a video of Victor Davis Hansen and talk about Obama. and he says it's a coup. And he wants blood. He says that they must pay. Revenge porn for the people

who obviously never got over 2020. And some of them never even got over 2016. And just like always, it's built on the thinnest possible layers of innuendo. The smoking gun documents, it's declassified material that's been available for years, none of which disputes Russia's interference. Trump world stitches it together into this fantasy where Obama's a criminal rather than the guy who's been convicted of 34 felonies. And so we really shouldn't miss the bigger point. Yes, it's a meltdown. It's a pattern. When Trump is cornered, if he's legally cornered, politically, morally, he goes for the playbook. Can I blame Obama? Often the answer is yes. Can I invent a conspiracy involving Obama? Can I demand vengeance and say that the real people responsible are going

to pay? And all of it is sort of in the context where he hopes no one notices what he's trying to distract from. And the terrifying part is that he's not shouting from the sidelines. He's doing this as president of the United States with now the full force of the federal government to go and settle personal scores, gaslight the country, launch investigations into people he doesn't like. And his base is some of them are noticing. Some. But a lot of his base is too angry to care. A lot of his base is too paranoid to ask any real questions. His base has been saying for a decade, they're out to get us and they're out to get you. And now Trump's feeding it to them. So they go, yeah, that's what we've been saying.

Some in MAGA are catching on. The mass arrests they were promised aren't happening. The indictments and the retribution. It's not panning out because there's no evidence. And so they're getting in these sweaty rants and recycled YouTube theories. But sometimes Marx figure out that they're marks. can't afford that. So it's going to be very interesting to see how he proceeds, given that he can't afford to have them get suspicious. And they're getting suspicious already. Donald Trump has finally cracked and he is starting to tell people to go to hell. This is what it looks like when the guy with the nuclear codes and the power to unilaterally deploy federal

troops starts to lose his grip on the narrative. And we're seeing it in real time. latest truth social rant includes an actual go to hell. It's aimed at Senate majority, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer. He includes a screed against extortionist Democrats and he praises Maga Mike Johnson and it's all over the place. But the contrast here is stunning because on the one hand, Trump's spitting bile at the opposition like a cornered WWE villain. And on the other hand, he's handing out gold stars to Republicans who are willing to roll over quickly.

So let's take a look. Trump engaging caps lock, quote, the Democrats are extortionists who almost destroyed our country. Now we are back. And the USA is the hottest country anywhere in the world. Make America great again. This is classic Trump projection. Acuse others of doing what you were doing. Declare victory no matter what's going on.

And when he calls Democrats extortionists, he's the guy whose entire post-2020 strategy has been, if you don't give me what I want, I'm going to burn it all down. And the idea that the country is back is laughable, economic whiplash, global instability, threats against civil liberties every day, creeping authoritarianism. And it's all built in this Trump world where optics are supposed to be reality. Hottest country in the world. I mean, what are we even talking about here? Senator Crying Chuck Schumer, Trump continues, is demanding over $1 billion in order to approve

a small number of our highly qualified nominees who should right now be helping to run our country. This demand is egregious and unprecedented and would be embarrassing to the Republican Party if it were accepted. It is political extortion by any other name. Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the radical left lunatics to go to hell. Do not accept the offer. Go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are and what a great job the Republicans are doing and have done for our country. Have a great recess and make America great again. So here's the real meltdown.

Okay. Here Trump goes scorched earth on Schumer accusing him of extortion, orders Republicans to tell Schumer go to hell. This is politics under Donald. Trump. And there's no other way to consider it other than the president is instructing lawmakers to blow up a process and walk out like punks. Don't negotiate. Don't find common ground the way at one point. We could do with people like John McCain sometimes. Don't even grandstand. Just leave and then spit out maga slogans. It is authoritarian posturing dressed up as tough talk. And it's very dangerous. Finally, Trump says, quote, a great job being done by leader John Thune and speaker Mike Johnson. Thank you both. The great big, beautiful bill will go down as one of the most

consequential pieces of legislation in the history of our country, MAGA. So that's it coming full circle. If you're loyal, you get a gold-plated pat on the head. You challenge Trump. He drags you to the underworld, says go to hell and tries to weaponize the Republican Party against you. And what's especially wild here is the tone, because Trump is throwing, you know, exaggerated quotation marks around just speaker Mike Johnson. And he, it's almost like he's mocking them, but praising them at the same time, which is a classic of authoritarians. It's not totally clear.

Does he respect them or does he see them as obedient tools? And he's treating them in that way. aside for a second. No actual accounting of what the bill does. Just capital letters. The bill is big and beautiful and don't negotiate with Democrats who should go to hell. The world sees this and we get the emails. David, it's so sad what's happened to the United States. How is this going on? How do MAGA people tolerate it? They tolerate it in part because they're part of the cult and in part because they've been convinced. The goodies are coming. I really don't think they are. Radical, repugnant, reactionary Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green has just dropped an anti-maga bomb.

And I absolutely love this. You know, when even the space laser lady, the Jewish space laser lady, when she looks around and she says, I don't know that I want to have anything to do with this Republican Party, you know something wild is happening. Now, I think I should premise and preface this that this is not about policy. This isn't like, oh, Marjorie Taylor Green had a crisis of conscience over climate change or social programs. This is bitter politics. That's all that this is. It's power, attention, proximity to Trump and to power. And who gets invited to sit. at the big kids table because what actually broke Marjorie Taylor Green was not immigration. It wasn't taxes.

It wasn't foreign policy. It was the White House pulling its support for Elise Stefanix nomination to the United Nations and handing it to Mike Walts. The guy caught in Signal Gate, the signal fiasco for adding journalists to threads about classified information. who's getting rewarded. And that is crazy. But it's sent Marjorie Taylor Green completely spiraling.

She's not mad about Yemen. She's not bad about the substance of the signal leaks. She's mad because this is how you find out that you are being demoted in the hierarchy. She spent all these years debasing herself for this movement, heckling at the state of the union, embarrassing herself, pushing conspiracy theories, voting with Trump 99% of the time. And now all of a sudden, she is watching men she hates climb past her on the MAGA ladder. Up, up, up. And suddenly she goes, oh, the party has turned its back on America first.

And she's going it alone. And Republican men are treating women like trash and this sort of thing. She once showed nude images of Hunter Biden on the floor of the house. And she's shocked to discover that the GOP has a way. woman problem. It has a misogyny problem. And apparently it's only a problem when she feels like she's on the receiving end of it. Now, again, do not mistake this for a moral stand. She's not saying, I am pivoting to principle. And from now on, principle will be the guiding. This is about she wants to be relevant. She wants attention. She is worried. She's getting iced out of the inner

circle of Donald Trump. Trump's back in power. He's handing out favors again. And he's not giving her any of the favors. Marjorie Taylor Green has gotten no less extreme. She's gotten less useful to Trump. And in MAGA world, loyalty and usefulness are what gives you value. And if it dries up, you're on your own. So this little Marjorie Taylor Green rebellion, she's not wrong. The Republican Party has a woman problem. There's no question. But it's not ideological. It's a personal problem. It's desperation. And it tells us that the MAGA coalition is, not united. We already knew because of what's going on with Epstein. They're not united on release the files or not. Do we believe what Dan Bongino and Cash Patel are telling us or don't we?

They're not united. Is Trump covering something up? 50% of Republicans say that they are. This is another sign that there is this lack of unity here. It's a game of King of the Hill. There's blood in the water. They're throwing chum in there. Is that the word? And the question is not, wow, is Marjorie Taylor Green finally standing up to the Republican Party, it's who else is MAGA leaving behind and are they going to flip out the way Marjorie Taylor Green is now flipping out? And to understand that, you have to remember that this MAGA thing, it's not a political platform. It's really a pyramid scheme.

And if you stop bringing in value and bringing in people under you, they'll just move on to a different pillar of the pyramid, I guess is what we would say. So don't expect Marjorie Taylor Green all of a sudden to say, oh, I really care about corruption and getting everybody health care and making sure nobody goes hungry. Like there's no ideological shift that's happening here. She's pissed off that she's no longer in the it wasn't ever Trump's inner circle, but sort of like that second ring of concentric circles. And she doesn't like that I guess her friend, Elise Stefanik, has been dumped, massive dumps

For Mike Waltz as ambassador to the UN. Sorry, Marjorie, you're losing control of the monster that you help to build. Ridge is doing something huge right now, running a sweepstakes where two winners will get their choice of a $300,000 Lamborghini Uricon, Sterato, a $150,000 Hennessee Velociraptor, or $100,000 bucks in cash. It's now through September 15th. Every dollar you spend at ridge.com slash Pacman gets you one entry. If you've been thinking about upgrading your wallet or keycase, this is a great time to do it. There is also a no purchase necessary way to enter, which you'll see on the page. I've used Ridge wallets for years. Mine is slim. It fits into your front pocket. It holds 12

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and use the code Pacman for an additional 10% off, which you can use in combination with other promotions on the website. The link is in the description. Well, here's a plot twist. Maybe nobody saw coming. I don't know. It turns out that the new scandal that MAGA is pushing, the one that they're saying, this is the proof that Hillary and Obama and Comey, they frame Trump. They planted and treasonous and seditious, I guess, investigation into Trump in 2016. That entire underlying belief comes from a Kremlin fabrication, Russia. Let me explain. Last week, the Trump administration declassified what they are calling the Durham annex. This is 29 redacted pages of hype that they say proves Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, James Comey. The deep state conspired to invent the

Russia hoax to damage Trump back in 2016. They want Obama imprisoned. They want Hillary imprisoned. Trump's base is frothing and Fox News is just going completely wild. But according to the actual document, the star evidence emails allegedly from George Soros's Open Society Foundation. It was likely created by Russian intelligence. So to recap, Trump declassifies a document to prove Democrats faked Russia gate. The document shows the only fake evidence came from Moscow. You almost can't make this up except it appears that they did.

And according to this Durham annex, the emails were a composite of several messages that were hacked from U.S. think tanks, which remember Trump told us, no, Putin told me they didn't hack. He said it very strongly. They've stitched together this composite of emails into a Frankenstein sort of narrative by Russian operatives to frame Hillary Clinton. That is what Trump is calling the smoking gun. That is what Tulsi is calling the smoking gun. This is the same guy, Trump, who stood on a stage with Putin in Helsinki, remember,

and said he was very strong in his denial, that Russia hacked anything. This is the same guy who took Russia's word over 17 American intelligence agencies because his ego was better suited to that. This is the same guy who pushed the lie that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, because again, Putin told him that that's what happened. So Trump has always been the perfect mark for Kremlin disinformation. He believes flattery. He repeats whatever benefits him.

And he never, ever checks the source because lies are more useful to Trump than the truth if they serve his narrative. So this isn't so much a scam. handle as it is a rerun. Whenever Trump is drowning in a mess, it's the Epstein documents right now. He goes, it was Obama. It was Clinton. It was Soros. And then some half-baked conspiracies thrown at his base like red meat. And it kind of worked in 2016. And in a way, it worked in 2020 for some of them. Oh, they took it from me. I really won. Whatever. But he's recycling Russian propaganda again. And even Trump's own people are getting nervous about this.

one advisor said to Rolling Stone, we are promising the base that these people committed the crime of the century, meaning Obama, Clinton, et cetera, what if we don't take them down? And this is like a blown up version of we found all of this fraud. Every government department, social security, this Medicaid, it's fraud everywhere. Well, fraud's a crime. So are you going to find the people who committed the fraud? Fraud doesn't commit itself. It's committed by people. You're going to go after any of these people? Eh, spoiler. They're not going to. Obama's not going down. People aren't going down for fraud because they can't.

It's not real. None of this stuff exists. And this is where it starts to collapse under its own weight. Even the most loyal cult followers at some point need to pay off. You know, the, remember these cults where it's like on March 21st, I don't remember April 21st, 2015, the rapture will happen and or space aliens will come down. The good ones are going to be transported to eternal life or the. The, you know, the ground will open up and the bad people will get sucked in and it doesn't

happen. Oh, I misread and or miscalculated. It's going to be next year. Next June 15th, it's going to happen. If it never happens, we know from studying cult history that the cult starts to dissipate. It starts to evaporate. And they want Hillary in handcuffs. They want Obama indicted. They want the whole thing. But the only storm that's brewing to use the term they talk about. The only storm brewing is in Trump's head where disinformation is gospel. Epstein's a footnote doesn't matter. And the wildest part of all of it, all of this is that this annex that they're hyping, these 20 something pages that prove everything. It came from the same Durham investigation that Trump's own justice department spent years on and came up with nothing. Durham couldn't

prosecute anybody. Couldn't connect the dots because the dots weren't. They there. And now they're reanimating this sort of zombie document. It's on the they're bringing it's the living dead. And they think it's going to deliver the kill shot to Obama. It won't. Trump's fallen for the same trap again. He's chasing foreign forged fictions and real scandals are burning all around him. The Russia hoax isn't real. But the Kremlin's ability to manipulate Trump seems extraordinarily real. And now Trump is selling apparent Russian fans. fabrications as his finally I have my defense. It's Obama and Hillary.

They did everything. Doesn't seem Magas falling for it. Not enough of them anyway. He's going to give us free IVF, we were told. The women, some women, Republican women, came to Trump's defense and said, this is the guy who will force insurance companies to cover IVF. said he would be the fertilization president as nauseating and disgusting as that sounds. That was the big promise. And he's not going to do it. He's not going to do it. And I know many people fell for

it, but it's just not going to happen. That is a promise Trump made to desperate families struggling with infertility. He trotted it out as proof that he cares about everyday Americans. And it turns out it was either a lie or it was a. scam from the very beginning. Trump said, we're going to make IVF more affordable. We're going to make it more accessible. He signed an executive order saying exactly that. Maga said he's being bold.

He's pro-family. He's making history. The administration has walked it back. According to a new report from the Washington Post, the Trump White House says there are no plans, no plans to mandate insurance coverage for IVF, zero. Nothing despite what he told voters and despite what's in his executive order, he's not going to do it. The excuse that they are giving is legal constraints.

Apparently Congress would need to pass a law. Trump controls the Republicans control the house. Republicans control the Senate. There's no bill. They're not even trying to pass a law. But they do have control of everything and they could do it. So at this point, I think we just have to acknowledge that this was a photo op. It was a headline.

It was a distraction. The cameras are off now. The families that believed him, they're getting left behind, two bad guys. And it's coming at a time when IVF access is already under threat, especially in places like Alabama, where extreme abortion laws are throwing fertility care into complete chaos. Trump knows it. He sees the headlines, but it came time to help and he bailed out. So it's not just a broken promise.

It's personal. IVF isn't this abstract culture war issue. It's about couples who have drained their savings, suffered sometimes numerous miscarriages, clinging to hope. And Trump said, I'm going to help you. I'm going to be the fertilization president. I know it's disgusting. It's vomitous. But now he's leaving them to rot. And don't forget that it was a campaign pledge directly calculated to appeal to moderate suburban voters and women and young couples trying to start a family. And he made it sound like he was going to be the defender of reproductive rights. And it turns out he was only defending his poll numbers. So when Trump talks again and starts flapping his lips about protecting life or standing with families,

just remember he made this promise many times and he has bailed on it. He could do something. We need a bill. Then put a bill together. Your party controls the House and the Senate. Do it. He promised hope. And he's giving people nothing. My question for the MAGA people, if any of you are willing to write in info at david packman.com are you tired of being used as a political prop or do you have some excuse for why this is actually exactly what trump promised let me know all right this is really interesting something is happening in the creator space and if you are in the creator world you might already be feeling it which is that there is a crash in the effectiveness of overt clickbait. Hyperbole for hyperbole's sake is fizzling and it is not performing the way it was at a

previous point in time. Now, this is less a political story than it is a media story. And I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but there are entire, for example, YouTube channels built on overt clickbait. And what I mean by that is videos whose thumbnails and titles reflect content that is simply not in the video and it is not true. And there was a while where these channels sometimes generated with the assistance of AI, sometimes partially or sometimes completely, they were doing very well. There was a little cottage industry of, for example, even like when I went on the Patrick Bet David show now a couple years ago, there would be channels that would just take clips of that,

put them together with completely hyperbolic and inaccurate titles about what happened. happened in those clips and publish them. And many of them would get hundreds of thousands of views. A lot of these channels that are built on the exaggerated clickbait nonsense are quietly dying. There's been maybe a shift in the algorithm. Maybe viewers are changing. Maybe viewers have become desensitized to some of these tactics. And creators who built their brands on these cheap dopamine hits are getting absolutely wrecked. Now, I want to say up front. I'm not above playing the game. You have to play the game if you want to succeed.

What you do on YouTube versus Facebook versus TikTok, Snapchat, audio podcast. There's different ways that you have to package your content on YouTube thumbnails matter, titles matter, hooks matter. All of that is true. And every creator who is succeeding is to a degree playing that game. But here's the sort of line that you can't go over. If you give your video a title like Trump taken out on a stretcher and there's no stretcher, it didn't happen, no hospital, no nothing, you're just straight up lying and something seems to be

shifting where these overt lies aren't performing for people the way that they used to. I don't believe that this is because the platforms woke up all of a sudden and said, now we care about the truth if before we didn't. I don't think that that's the case at all. believe that it's that viewers are starting to burn out on that stuff. They're clicking less. They're trusting less. The fakeouts and the rage bait and all of that. I think it's starting to fizzle. Now, we've seen a lot of trends sort of come and go in the creator space because we've been around for a while. And what often happens is that when audience tastes start to change, the algorithm

will reflect those changes. YouTube will reward retention over reaction, for example, or TikTok will shift towards actual engagement. Even Facebook, which is sort of like home of the boomer apocalypse scroll and they used to actually throttle political videos altogether. Even Facebook is reportedly changing a little bit. So the creators that made their careers out of X destroys Y with totally fake. references to what's in these videos, they are seeing their numbers really decline. And I think that increasingly audiences do not want to be manipulated.

They resent the attempt to manipulate them. They want to be, some want to be informed, some want to be entertained. We can talk about politics as entertainment, but that's a separate issue. You can be provocative, you can be bold, but you can't be fake. And the job now is we need to make people care. but we need to deliver something of value. And even when we use titles with a punch, the video has to contain the story. There has to be the substance has to be there. And otherwise, you're going to lose views. You're going to lose credibility. And in this algorithmic environment,

credibility is a pretty important currency. So I don't know what's next. We covered the very suspicious subscriber numbers for Benny Johnson, whose views, whose subscribers have gone up by millions in the last quarter, but his views are actually down. It doesn't make sense. Is there manipulation? We're not sure. We may be heading into a phase where the creators that win are going to be the ones that build trust rather than attempt to hijack.

And it is more difficult. It does take more time. I believe that our longevity is evidence that it. is more sustainable. And so I don't think the overt dishonest clickbait is dying because it stopped working. It's almost dying because it worked too well for long enough that people started to resist it. And so my currency continues to be authenticity and just being genuine. I will never tell you that my opinion is something that it is not.

I will never tell you that I expect something to happen if I don't really expect it to happen. I'm going to be completely authentic and there will be videos that do well and videos that don't. But long term, this is probably a good way to sort of shake out, separate some of the wheat from the chaff, I think is the way that I would say it. Let me know what you think. Leave a comment here or leave a comment on my substack, substack. .david packman.com. 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 what'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 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. All right. Welcome to my next substack live. Today we're going to be speaking with Olivia Giuliana. This is really great. You know, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you, and this week we're actually talking to a bunch of different activists and people who are involved in this movement, but they do very different things than I do, is because, you know, I sit in my studio and I do my show, sometimes you bring me something. You know, I'll get emails from Olivia at times when I try to be sleeping saying, here's an issue that's important. Here's a candidate that's important. So, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is I want to

hear about what are activists doing today day to day? Because my day to day is what's on the show today? Who am I interviewing, right? You are in this space where you're involved in all sorts of different things. So I'm really looking forward to this. Thanks for doing it. Yeah, of course. Always happy to talk about what activists are doing, thankfully. It really just depends on what shenanigans are being pulled at any given time in any given location since Trump has taken office. You know, this week, I'm going to probably be at the Texas Capitol. There's a public committee hearing about the redistricting they're trying to do in Texas. So I'll be there. We'll see if they actually let people testify. The Texas

legislature is notorious for giving odd hours and putting limitations on it to keep public comment minimal. So that's what this week looks like for me. It's just making sure that people have the resources they need to get registered so that they know they have the right to get public comment. Other weeks, it looks like going to protest at the University of Houston because professors have to go back to the country of origin because their visas were revoked or they were denied. That's what it looks like here in Texas. But it's just constantly trying to keep track of the ever-changing amount of information that's out there about what is going on here in America. Let's get back to that. For people who are my followers and maybe they don't know you, you have a very interesting origin story.

And one of the really interesting things was when we saw each other at the White House in the, towards the end of the, of the last year of the Biden administration, I got a chance to meet your dad. And what was so interesting about that and he was a super nice guy was, as I recall, I don't know that you deprogrammed him. Right? I'm like, there's big language here that I'm applying to this, but it's a very interesting story of political differences in families, in a sense. Yeah, you know, I grew up in a very conservative Christian household. I grew up Southern Baptist. I went to the kind of churches where, you know, they put hands on you and people spoke in tongues. And that was very much the environment that I grew up in. And my dad has been conservative for my entire life. You know, I went to school in the morning, talk radio was on. When I was going to bed, Fox was playing on the TV.

And I like to say my dad didn't shape my political opinions, but he did shape my political mind. You know, he went to school for political science. He didn't get to finish because he had a football injury and my mom started having kids. But he was always very much invested in it. And so it was very important to him. that we were invested in it, that we, you know, read the Constitution and that we knew what our rights were and that we voted at every election we could. And it was just very important to him. And so I grew up believing that I was a Republican because that's what I'd been

taught. And it wasn't until I got into high school. I joined debate and I started researching for myself. I realized there were so many things I didn't agree with. I didn't believe in. And my dad, up until this sheet this past year, he was a Republican. You know, he voted for Donald Trump in 2020, and he supported Ted Cruz. Like, this is a, this is the very odd story of, you know, my dad loves me, but he's not always been very supportive of what I do. And when we met was, I took my dad to the Hispanic heritage celebration that was happening at the White House because, you know, we're Mexican-American. And I actually think that that day was kind of a big moment for him because he was around all of these Democrats who he had like heard all of these things about on the news for so long. And then he was like, wow, these people are nice and normal and they're not insane.

And, you know, last year my dad voted for Kamala Harris and Colin Alred. So progress definitely made. But I just, I started making content on social media because we were in rural Texas and I didn't know any Democrats. So I thought I could maybe find them online and, you know, five years later, here we are. So talk me through like, so you start making content, what's his initial reaction? And I'm guessing because, you know, most people who start making content, it doesn't really go anywhere. As you start building a following, what does he say? Is he worried about his conservative friends seeing what you're doing?

Is he worried about you're advocating for the wrong stuff, Olivia? Like, what was that like? You know, she never told me what I could or couldn't believe. It's actually a running joke in my family. My dad always said something along the lines. Like, you can bring home a Republican. You can bring home a liberal, but don't ever bring home a vegetarian. I think that's a Texas thing is, you know,

He had friends that were Democrats and Republicans. And so for him, it really was a matter of, am I being safe? Am I happy? And I think the biggest obstacle really was my extended family. They are not the most supportive of what I do. A lot of people who, you know, I grew up in the church with, they're not the most supportive. And that was a little bit of the contention point at first was, you know, what are people going to think? especially because at the time I was living in such a small town.

It was the kind of town where, you know, like, my dad had graduated from high school there. My grandfather graduated from high school there. So everyone knew who I was, and everyone was like, oh, Paul's daughter, that crazy liberal. But, you know, as time goes on, as time went on, I think he saw just how much passion for it I really had. And he became a lot more supported.

So, like, he would start going to events with me. And he would start, you know, watching interviews I did. And I think actually one of the biggest moments in our relationship was I was invited to speak at the Texas Capitol in 2021. And I didn't have a way of getting there. I asked my dad to take me. And it was an abortion rights event. And my dad said no, because he's pro life. Thankfully, you know, I found a way to get there.

But years later, my dad just out of nowhere, he told me. He was like, you know, that is one of my greatest regrets of the father, is that I didn't go with you. I should have been there for you. And, you know, he's, I say he's cautiously pro-choice now. I think he, like many people, thinks that what's happened has just gone way too far. And, you know, having me as a daughter certainly helps kind of break through there. But it's been a journey over the last few years, for sure. Last thing on this, and then we'll get back to activism.

Was there a specific issue? that made him say in 24, okay, I'm not voting for Trump again. I'm voting for Kamala Harris. January 6th was a really big thing for him. He felt like he, the thing for him is he was like, you know, Trump's a sore loser. And he just kind of, he just kind of kept going on about like he can't, he just can't accept a seat. Like, this guy's a loser. And an abortion, you know, my sisters started having kids.

And, you know, I have a sister who was pregnant in Texas when the abortion ban started getting really dangerous and really risky. And that was something that he took really seriously and understood the weight of what was going on. All right. So with that as kind of context, one of the things that I hear a lot now from people who they don't like what's going on, but they do want to get involved is, okay, voting, got it. I'm going to vote when there's an election. Fine. I could become a content creator, but I don't really want to do that. I don't want to be on camera or whatever.

What are the sorts of things that I can do? We saw, I mean, listen, with the big, beautiful bill, I was very honest with my audience. It's sort of like, listen, Republicans are going to pass this thing, and you're going to get your four Republican senators who will sort of pay lip service to. I'm concerned. I don't know.

But then they'll just offer goodies until they get to 50. and then it's going to come J.D. Van and he'll break the tie. So it's not that calling your lawmakers doesn't matter, but Republicans have determined they're going to pass this damn bill and ultimately it happens. So there's sort of a question as to like, what sorts of things can young activists do right now to have the biggest impact? Yeah, I think that we had to look back at, you know, 2017, 2018, what were the things that were effective in the first Trump administration that really helped? And something that is wildly effective, and it's so simple, is being involved and looking at what's going on in your local government. It matters so much more than people think it does, because the way I get

people to understand this is by saying, you know, Trump can give the orders from the White House, but ultimately it's the sheriffs and the county commissioners and the city council members who are deciding how money is getting spent, who is deciding what the ordinances are where you live, Like, these are the people that are going to be enforcing these rules and regulations, and they're not expecting people to pay attention. And that's why, you know, you saw an influx in down-ballot victories in 2018 after the first Trump election is because people kind of started to realize and correlate some of those things. And we've really seen, like someone in the comments is saying, people paying attention to school board races. These are extremely important in determining the future. of this country because of the curriculum and schools. So the thing that I always tell people,

the most important thing you can do is become active, engaged in your local government and also show up and make them know that people are actually paying attention here. You know, I live in one of the biggest cities in the country. I live in Houston, Texas. And in 2023, only 17% of eligible voters in our city voted in our mayoral election. Wow. And our city council elections. And now we have three Republican at-large city council members and the biggest bluest city of the state. And so if people just pay attention to that and get involved there, we can start to make a really big difference from the bottom up. So what local, so there's obviously voting in mayoral or depending on what the structure of your city government is, sometimes it's,

you know, a select board, mayoral and city councilors, okay, school board seems like another aspect to this. What else is there locally? A lot of places have civic clubs that will, they'll have political events that you can do like block walks, door knocks, protests. They'll keep you plugged into that. But they also will do mutual aid at the same time. So like for me here in Houston, I'm a member of the Houston LGBTQ Plus caucus. That is a club that is dedicated to helping and supporting the LGBTQ plus community. here in this city.

I'm also a number of the Harris-Townie-Dem Democrats. So I know at any given time, if there's something going on in the city or there's an event going on, I can go and find out where I need to get plugged in. And almost every major city, pretty much every major city has these. Every county, for the most part, will have a county Democratic Party that typically coordinates with a lot of these nonprofits that are doing on-the-ground mutual aid where you live. And so if you really don't know where to start, that's kind of the best place where you can get involved is find your local city or county Democratic Party

or find a nonprofit in your area that's doing something that you care about. Maybe you don't care about politics and maybe that's really overwhelming to you, but you care about the fact that children are going hungry. Go volunteer at the food bank. Go help organize a food drive. These are actual real tangible things that can make a huge impact on people's day-to-day lives. What do you think more generally about with the successive generations in elections up until 2024, usually as you go down to younger and younger age groups, they vote more and more Democratic, on average, across elections over periods of time. We saw for the first time in 2024 that the youngest voters made a move in the direction of the right, in the direction of the Republican Party.

This is on average nationally, of course. What do you think is the reason for that? Is it, I'll give some options, but these aren't all of them. There's the possibility that it's ideological, right, that younger voters are identifying more with the policies of the Republican Party over the Democratic Party. There's the possibility that it's about sort of the activism that's happening online, the Manosphere, Charlie Kirk on campus, you know, this sort of thing. There's the possibility that it's economic, right, which is. younger voters are saying, I'm graduating college, costs more than ever, debt, jobs aren't paying. I don't know. I think maybe it's time for me to give the Republicans a shot or something

like that. What do you think explains it? I think it's a combination of all of those things. But before I give my answer, I'll say, I think we have to look at the frame of reference that young voters have. So I'm 22. You know, this past presidential election was the first presidential election I was eligible to vote in. And a lot of people don't understand about Gen Z, you know, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party that we've been raised with is very different than the traditional two parties that most generations have been raised with. So, for example, you know, I was born after 9-11 happened. So I grew up in a post-war on terror America. That's the reality for many people in my generation.

And Barack Obama was elected president when I was in kindergarten. So by the time I was old enough to really start paying attention to elections, the Republican that was leading the Republican Party was Donald Trump. He is the person who, for the majority of our lives, had been the person controlling the narrative of what politics looks like. And so a lot of these young people, when they hear things like this isn't normal, or this is extreme or this is radical. It doesn't resonate because this is the only political circumstance that we know.

And especially for young men, you know, to them, Donald Trump is this cultural icon. This is a guy who we grew up watching on TV. He was on WWE at The Apprentice. This guy who we watched, you know, hackle Vince McMahon, you can't be that scary. I mean, you know, he's a reality TV star. And he represents all of these things that young men are conditioned by society, largely by the Republican Party to be. He's wealthy.

He has a beautiful wife. He has successful businesses. He embodies all these things that they're told they have to embody as well. But it's impossible for them to do that in America because of the policy that the Republicans are pushing for. And if you're a young guy, and I know many young guys like this, it's not rigidness and ideology, period. It's not. Most of them are pro-choice. A lot of them agree with the substance of why the Black Lives Matter movement existed. They're just working their asses off, you know, working jobs, going to school, taking out loans. They're doing all these things. And yet they still can't get to the place Republicans tell them they should be. You should be able to buy a house. You should be able to provide. Why can't you? You're a failure. You're not a man. And if they're working that hard, are they going to blame themselves for that? Or are they going to find someone else to blame? And I think that that's where Donald Trump made the most games is convincing these young men, or these young men in particular, it was the fault of the Democrats, it was the fault of immigrants, it was the fault of women who are pushing you down. And I think that that's why we saw not just young people move to the right, but why we saw young men in particular move to the right.

You know, it's so interesting what you say because, of course, of course, you're correct about the image that Donald Trump wants to pull. portray himself as, and you're right that the people around him do the same thing. A little examination also shows that it's a pretty inaccurate image, right? I mean, when you look at by their own standards, not by our standards, but by their own standards, the makeup and the hair and the ill-fitting clothes, and he's kind of a slob, and he does an exercise, and he portrays himself as the biggest victim and has to go running to either courts or election boards or the media

anytime someone says something mean about him I mean it's quite snowflake even by their own standards but it doesn't really matter because they built the idea around him that is the alpha

and you could even apply this to people like even Miller or J.D. Vans there's this perception is reality thing where there's a lot of smoke and mirrors here but it works it's convinced people

And who better to do the smoke and mirrors in a reality TV star? Right. Right. What do you think? So I agree with you that this is this move for Gen Z towards the Republican Party this year. It doesn't seem based in policy. It's like, you know, it's not trade policy that's attracting Gen Z to Donald Trump or at least it doesn't seem to be. As you say in some areas, it's actually at odds with, for example, the generic, generic. pro-choice views of Gen Z, what do you think it would take to bring that group back to the left? And, you know, Bernie's explanation is there needs to be a credible path to believing that the Democratic Party is actually going to solve the issues of you graduate with insane debt, you can't afford a house and you can't get a job that allows you to even get an average apartment in most cities. Like, is it that kitchen table stuff you think that might bring that group back? I think that that's certainly part of it. I think another part of it is feeling represented and seen within the party. And I've talked about this before.

I think that the Democratic Party, in the name of being as inclusive as possible, has made ourselves very exclusionary. And I think an example of this is, you know, I've gone to so many political rallies. I've done so many roundtables. You'll see a politician change the message of what they're saying based off of who they're talking to. I'm like, I'm going to be in a room of young women today, so I'm going to speak like I'm talking to young women. Or I'm going to be in a place today with black voters, so I'm going to talk like I're talking to black voters. And the way that we've gone about doing that, I think has put people into these boxes.

and it's separated us in a way that the Republican Party just hasn't. You know, Donald Trump, he might change what his message is depending on his mood, but he doesn't change what his message is depending on his audience. It's almost always the same. But we are constantly changing our messaging. And I think when you do that, white men in particular, that's not something where they can go and they can find a place. Or, you know, young men in particular, I think especially with the rise of social media at the same time, they feel like they've been made out to be part of the problem or the enemy of the party.

And I think that the solution of this is, I didn't even think we necessarily need to change what our policy is. I think our policy is right. I think the way that we talk about it is the problem. You know, I think we have a very strong bench of strong leaders who are men within the Democratic Party. party who should just go out there and talk about what it means to be a man in America. You know, we have, you know, West Moore, he's a, he's a veteran. We have J.B. Pritzker, who is, you know, a billionaire who could talk about business. We've got Gavin Newsom, we got people, like Ruben Gallego, who's a father.

Like, these are people who know what it's like to be a man in America. They should be able to go out and talk about it without being told, well, why are we centering men in the conversation? We're not centering men in the conversation. we're having a conversation about them. That's the difference. What I think it's super interesting about that is I've recently seen former President Obama and I've also seen Scott Galloway.

I don't know how familiar you are with Scott Galloway. Both of them have been really talking about this issue of, hey, we can't just do like the toxic masculinity stuff. we need good visions of masculinity where like while the right might say bullying people is alpha putting people down is alpha this sort of stuff actually raising people up is what's alpha having the confidence to say hey you know what um if the bullying is actually a sign of a self-esteem problem. Not that you're cool. It's actually a sign that you are really insecure and we should ostracize the bullying and go, no, no, no, saying you're not going to bully my friends. That's actually like the alpha thing to do. And so it's very interesting that in the last six to 12 months,

both former President Obama and Scott Galloway have been starting to talk about that in ways that seem to me like much healthier versions of how the left should talk about masculinity. I agree. And you pulled my string here. I'm like, I sprung up because like I I've written so many articles about this, which it's ironic almost that, you know, the bisexual Latina from Texas is the one who's talking about how we should hear more about young men. But I talked about this and I was like, when you look at the framing of how Democrat talk to men so often, we are perpetuating the stereotypes of what men are supposed to be in America. And I'll give you an example. When we talk about abortion and how men relate to it, we say, well, real men are protectors of women and they'll do anything they can to protect the women in their lives. My counter to that is, well, men are affected by abortion bans too.

And it's not just because of the women in their lives that they care about. It's because if you're a young man and, you know, you haven't planned for a family and your partner has an unplanned pregnancy, you are now about to become a father. Do you have the financial means to do that? Do you have the ability to provide for this child? Are you going to get married? These are very real realities that young men have to face. And we don't message about that.

We don't message about helping them have the opportunity to be a father or to prevent that from happening in the first place. And I think that these are real missed opportunities and miscalculations that the Democratic Party has made pretty consistently that I think that we could change. And I think once we do, we'll start to see a lot of young men come back into the fold. I think that's very, very interesting and insightful.

Let me talk a few minutes in the time we have left about something that kind of directly affects us as creators, as writers, content producers. You know, we look around and we see the successful lawsuit against George Stephanopoulos. We see the success, thanks to Paramount's decision, to settle the 60 Minutes lawsuit because they wanted to avoid a protracted legal battle. it would it's not what 60 minutes would have done it's not even what cbs would have done but paramount made that decision uh we are seeing trump talk about denaturalize rosy o'donnell he's bragging on truth social about how he's responsible for stephen cobert getting canceled okay individually these are all

business decision legal situations etc the problem is it's encroaching closer and closer and closer on the independent progressive space. And one of the things I've been telling my audience is, one of the things that potentially puts us in a better position, you, people like Aaron Parnas, who we've had on, the Midas guys, you know, everybody in our ecosystem, is when we are, number one, directly supported by our audiences, and number two, own our data,

so that if a platform cancels us, we can still reach our followers, we protect I don't want to say uncancellable but it is a significant protection against some of the things that are happening when 30 layers of executives and producers are saying this is too much of a risk you're fired the show is canceled etc and so we're doing this on substack right now this is just the truth I say this on YouTube too where it's not the truth on YouTube if I get canceled on YouTube if YouTube shuts me down I have no way to reach my 3.3 million subscribers. I don't own the data. I don't have any of that. And so one of the things I think is so important about the independent progressive space on Substack specifically

is that people can directly support our work and we own our lists. We can download our list and then if anything happens on Substack, which hopefully never will, but you never know. We are able to reach our audiences. And so I think it's really important that people like you and Aaron and Midas and we're all building on a platform.

No platform is perfect. You never know when someone will pressure a platform. I've been doing it long enough that it can happen, but there are some really important things going on right now on Substack, and it's why I think it's such a great platform for people doing what we do. I agree. I couldn't agree more.

You know, my goal is to have Substack to be my full-time job at one point. God willing will get there. But, I mean, it's true, you know, that's that's a constant worry is, you know, is today going to be the day where they file a lawsuit against a creator or they file a lawsuit against an activist who's just saying things that they don't like? Right. But that's that's the risk that we take to tell the truth in modern day America, I suppose. And, you know, lots of us, I was talking with a lawyer recently about this, we are careful to say, as reported by, you know, right? We're not, we're commenting on it, but we're not report. because we believe that to a degree this protects us.

And I think it's true that it does to a degree, but at the same time, you know that if and when they decide they want to try to make an example of one of us, it's not going to matter if you said as reported by, right? I mean, because the lawsuit will be the punishment, even if it's worthless. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. You know, I don't want to say,

go after me, I'm not afraid to sell the truth, But, you know, I think that you'll see probably there are creators like us who are more willing to fight these things than the mainstream news actually is. So, you know, I mean, maybe that's what I'll take is one of us actually just doing the basic courageous thing of saying, I'm not going to apologize for telling the truth that a lot of these companies just aren't willing to do. God knows why. But here we are. That's where we are. We're doing the best we can with the situation we find ourselves in in the middle of 2025. Olivia Giulianas, who I've been speaking with, if you're one of my followers, make sure you're subscribed to her substack.

If I'm new here and you know, Olivia, I would be flattered if you subscribe to mine. Let's do this again. Olivia, keep up the great work and it's always so good to talk to you. And say hi to your dad for me. I will. I will. This is so much fun. Bye, y'all. Take care.

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And I was realizing that Donald Trump, has in a sense become the deep state that he warned us about to the extent that it ever existed. I want to explain this and kind of get your thoughts about it. For years, Trump had this political identity that was built around the idea that you can't trust the system. You can't trust the FBI. You can't trust the DOJ, the courts. You can't trust them. The media. You can't trust everybody's in on it. And that is sort of the catalyst for this concept of the deep state. some shadowy cabal that's really in control, that really holds the power. When I interviewed Vivek Ramoswami a couple of times back during the 24 election, he would talk

about it and MAGA just aided up. And if something made Trump look bad, certainly he was getting framed. And if a scandal emerged, it was fake news. If truth didn't fit the narrative, it was a globalist sciop. But the problem with all of this is that Trump now is the system. Over the weekend, I wrote a piece on my substack called Trump, Epstein, and the trust collapse. And in this piece, I talk about some of the aspects of this. Trump is in charge of the very institutions that he and his cohort said, you've got to distrust these institutions.

They are doing the same things that Trump once screamed were proof of a coverup. Look at the Epstein case, which is such a great example. For years, Trump world was screaming. The feds are hiding the truth. The DOJ is corrupt under Biden, of course. The FBI is blocking the release of the Epstein list. Just you wait because when Donald Trump goes back in office, the truth is going to come out. We're going to get all of it.

And Trump is back. And what we got is Cash Patel as FBI director, Dan Bongino as deputy director, Pam Bondi as Donald Trump's bootlicking attorney general. And what did they say? They said, no, everybody was right. Epstein really did die by suicide. Now there's no secret list of the clients to reveal. No, there's not going to be any more arrests or prosecutions.

There's just nothing here. And just like that, Maga sort of runs into the wall that it built for everybody else to run into and now they are running into it. And this is the core contradiction that nobody is. in Donald Trump's orbit now is willing to admit, which is that a movement based on total distrust of institutions can't survive when they succeed because they take control of the institutions and they become what they've been warning people about. And when you come in, you become the institutions you warn people about, you don't clean

house, you don't drain the swamp and you publicly make the exact same statements you used to say those aren't possibly true, your base will start to turn on you. And so Trump certainly didn't destroy the deep state. If it exists, Trump became the deep state. Trump is now the one saying believe the FBI. I've got cash and Dan there. Just believe the FBI. Didn't you say we can't believe the FBI? We can't trust. No, no, no, now you can. They are the ones saying the DOJ, not releasing all the stuff I and they said they are going to release. That's. nothing to worry about. The DOJ is functioning perfectly fine. But I thought you said distrust the DOJ when they don't release things. No, now they're not releasing things in a different way. When

Trump fires data officials because the jobs numbers didn't flatter him, that's the deep state he claimed was actually in control, but he's controlling it. And then of course, when you demand loyalty from every single institution that you said was broken, isn't it broken if they are just loyal to you. So Trump may be promised to dismantle the machinery, but Trump has seized the machinery and he's using it in exactly the ways he warned us about. And now he's saying every other president did it wrong. I'm doing it all right, except he's stripping the guardrails. He's more paranoid and he doesn't even have a pretense of shame about what he's doing. So this is really a form of institutional capture. And that's what actual deep state type apparatus is do.

And it's a brutal irony if you sit back and think about it. The MAGA faithful now have to choose between saying, you know what, we were wrong. Or they have to pretend that this betrayal that Trump is doing is part of the plan. It only seems like he's behaving the way he warned us about. But there's some greater good. He's ultimately going to whatever. Now, we do have this growing civil war within MAGA over this. And so the third option is kind of cannibalizing your own movement.

A lot of the influencers who worship Trump are now saying Trump's gone soft. The same channels that used to boost Cash Patel and Dan Bongino are now saying, they may be one of them. And the echo chamber is just starting to eat itself. So this is what happens when Trump spends years telling the base that the system can't be trusted. Now he's saying, please, I need you to trust the system. I'm running it now. You can trust it now. Please trust the system.

And that's really the trap. You build your movement. You then set it on fire and act surprised when it ends up burning your own house down. So I don't know where ultimately the MAGA base is going to land. You know, they didn't seem to be falling for the Epstein stuff. There's no list. died by suicide. It's all exactly like everybody said. They didn't seem to be falling for that. That's a problem for Trump. With the jobs numbers, the jobs numbers were so bad and corrupt that

I got rid of the person in charge of curating the numbers. Some of them are falling for it, but I don't know that enough will. It remains to be seen. We need to keep pumping the truth out there. The Democratic Party may not yet know how they're going to figure out a plan to win next year. We've got all these other issues. But we need to keep pumping the truth out there. And I think that MAGA knows that to a degree, their ability to convince people about a lot of this stuff is hampered by independent media existing and continuing to tell the truth. So it's extra important that we support independent media at this time. Doesn't have to be this show. Sounds self-serving. Don't support this show. Fine. You know, people email me. They go,

David, why can't you do a really good independent media show like this other one? Go support that one, right? But we've got to build the ecosystem and make sure that we're empowered to keep pumping out the truth. All right. I wasn't even sure whether to do this segment. And I'm going to do it because I think it's necessary. And we've gotten to a point where we have to talk about what is wrong with the Democratic

party. And it's not really the policies. It's not that Democrats have lost their values. it's that Democrats are flying blind to a great degree. Strategy, message, idea of how to win people over who aren't already on their side. I'm just not seeing it. And of course, I still consider myself a progressive. This is not like I've been red-pilled. I've seen the light. I'm leaving the left. This is nothing like that. I believe that progressive values are the best shot that we've got. But I've spent the last six months speaking directly with dozens of elected Democrats.

I'm as alarmed as I've ever been. So let's rewind a little bit. After Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump in 2024, I got invited to the Biden White House. A bunch of us progressive content creators sat down with staff and also with President Biden himself to talk a little bit about what went wrong. And what I said to their faces and what I've said publicly for years, you know, the thing was sort of nominally off the record, but I've been saying the same thing for a long time. It's not a secret. Number one, Democrats don't get independent media. They don't know how to

work with us or how to help build an ecosystem that Republicans have been able to build in which they're absolutely dominating. That's number one. And to their credit, something did change. More Democrats reach out. More Democrats are showing up on this show and on other independent progressive media shows. And for a moment, I thought they're starting to get it. Something is changing here. But the other thing that's happened over the last half year, as I've interviewed dozens of Democratic elected officials, senators, governors, and members of the House is that there's really no plan, unifying strategy or anything beyond Trump bad, we're better. And when I push them politely, respectfully, they often recoil. I'll ask follow-ups. I'll try to get clarity and suddenly I'm the problem like I'm laying traps.

You know, they're reacting as if I'm being difficult when I'm just doing my job. And my thought is if they really can't handle and by can't handle, I mean, it's like they don't really like they don't really like being pressed for facts from people nominally on their side. How are they going to survive Fox News or, you know, voters who aren't already living on MSNBC? And what's even worse is when I'll ask some basic things like what is the plan to win over non-democrats in 26 and 28? What's the plan to motivate non-voters in 26 and 28? They respond with words, right?

They don't literally say nothing. But it's kind of these technocratic talking points. Unemployment, you know, we're investing in the future and we've got to meet voters where they are and kitchen table and none of that really means anything to sort. to someone working two jobs and getting crushed by rent. It just like it doesn't. It doesn't make them go, I love that. I'm voting for you.

And to someone like me who is terrified of what Trump's second term already is, those sort of talking points don't connect with voters. They just don't. And maybe the dirty little secret that a lot of people aren't saying out loud is that too Too many Democrats are still scared to go off script of giving real answers, of engaging with the public like human beings. Someone who did a great job, it isn't not to put anybody down. I'm not naming names or someone who did a great job is Congressman Jimmy Gomez.

When he was on, I thought this guy is actually answering my questions. He's acknowledging problems. When he's not sure, he says he's not sure. And my audience connected with it. The emails I got about Jimmy Gomez were so much more positive than what I got for any any other Democrat that I've interviewed. The staffers continue to be really risk averse. They want the questions in advance. We never do that, right? They're very anxiously asking what's David going to talk about. They want control, control. What we really need is conviction. We

need to connect with voters here. You know, Trump is obviously a con man, but he gives his audience something. He gives them a villain to blame. Trump's good at scapegoating people. He gives of fantasy to believe in and promises false promises, obviously, but promises that he's going to fix the problems. What we hear a lot from the Democratic Party is we're not fascists. Great. Okay, that's a good start, but that's not a campaign platform. What exactly is the problem and what exactly is the way to talk to voters to convince people that vote but are disaffected by the Democratic Party and non-voters? Because non-voters, if someone could figure out how to motivate non-voters, you would win every election going forward.

So I'm not really hearing strategy. I've done now dozens of these interviews. I'm not really hearing strategy I feel good about. If there's continued kind of risk aversion, playing it safe, this overarching demand or desire for control, slogans and nervous staffers, I just think Democrats are going to lose again. They're going to lose in 26 and they're going to lose in 28. And I don't even know if they'll understand why to be. perfectly honest. So this is not about tearing the party down. I've never been a Democrat

or a Republican. I vote for who I think is the better candidate. And it's almost always Democrats. I've been clear about that. But this is about telling the truth, not ripping the party apart. There are Democrats who get it. There are Democrats who have a spine who can connect. I've interviewed many of them. But as a party, the plot has been lost here. And if Democrats don't wake up soon, they're going to lose a lot more than just the next election. And I worry, with direction that things are going, uh, we may lose the country. That's where I'm at. I hope that people aren't going to go, David, are you, you are you leaving the left? That's not. I haven't been red pilled or black pilled or cuck pill or whatever pills the kids are talking about these days. I'm just worried

that things are going to continue getting worse. And that's what I don't want. Let me know what you think.