The David Pakman Show - 9/17/25: Our worst fears are coming true

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Tyler Robinson is charged with murdering Charlie Kirk, facing possible death penalty charges, and sickening text messages are revealed -- FBI Director Kash Patel erupts at a Senate hearing, attacking Cory Booker and Adam Schiff while trying to salvage his position -- Grocery costs surge under Donald Trump as tariffs fuel sharp food inflation and spark political backlash -- Donald Trump’s DOJ deletes a study proving most domestic terrorism is carried out by far-right extremists -- Donald Trump openly admits he wants to use hate speech laws to target media outlets that criticize him -- Donald Trump’s UK visit is marred by protests, scandalous images, and polls showing collapsing global confidence in his leadership -- Tucker Carlson warns against Trump’s push for hate speech laws, fearing it could undermine his own influence and free speech -- Donald Trump lashes out at Gavin Newsom with false claims about low-income housing and water mismanagement in California -- On the Bonus Show: House Republicans are targeting members who criticize Charlie Kirk's views, Elon Musk calls for Destiny to go to prison over Kirk comments, Fed likely to cut interest rates today, and much more... 🌳 MyHeritage: Discover your family roots for FREE for 14 days at https://davidpakman.com/myheritage 💻 Get Private Internet Access for 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/David ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.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 (00:00) Tyler Robinson charged in Kirk murder (08:41) Kash Patel clashes with senators (20:14) Trump tariffs raise grocery prices (27:33) DOJ deletes far-right terrorism report (36:31) Trump targets media with hate speech plans (41:55) Trump’s UK trip hits protests, scandals (48:02) Tucker Carlson warns on hate speech laws (55:57) Trump attacks Newsom with false claims

Hey, this is Dan Harris, host of the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm here to tell you about a new series we're running this September on 10% Happier. The goal is to help you do your life better. The series is called Reset. It's all about hitting the reset button in many of the most crucial areas of your life. Each week will tackle a topic like how to reset your nervous system, how to reset your relationships, how to reset your career. We're going to bring on top-notch scientists and world-class meditation teachers to give you deep insights and actionable advice.

It's all delivered with our trademark blend of skepticism, humor, credibility, and practicality. 10% have here is self-help for smart people. Come join the party. Welcome to the show. Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old alleged murderer of Charlie Kirk, has been charged. We're going to hear the charges in a moment. He is facing the death penalty. We also have had a release of text messages.

text messages that many people, for different reasons, are saying they don't believe these text messages were really written by Tyler Robinson. We're going to get to that in a moment. We start with Jeff Gray, the Utah County District Attorney outlining what the criminal charges are. I am charged with bringing justice for those who harmed, for those who are harmed. I am charged with bringing justice for Charlie Kirk. I am committed to these aims.

I take this responsibility seriously. Today, after reviewing the evidence that law enforcement has collected thus far, I am filing a criminal information charging Tyler James Robinson, age 22, with the following crimes. Count one, aggravated murder, a capital offense, for intentionally or knowingly causing the death of Charlie Kirk under circumstances that created a great risk of death to others. Count two, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, a first-degree felony. The state is further alleging aggravating factors on counts one and two because the defendant is believed to have targeted Charlie Kirk based on Charlie Kirk's political experience.

expression and did so knowing that children were present and would witness the homicide. The state is also charging defendant with count three, obstruction of justice, a second degree felony for moving and concealing the rifle used in the shooting. count four obstruction of justice a third degree a second degree felony for disposing the clothing he wore during the shooting count five witness tampering a third degree felony for directing his roommate to delete his incriminating texts count six witness tampering a third degree felony for direct all right i think you get the point 22 year old tyler robinson charged with murder, could get the death penalty if convicted. I am against the death penalty

even in this case. I don't believe that we are well served by the state saying, well, you did the horrible thing of killing someone. Well, now we're going to kill you. I also happen to think it's a worse and more severe punishment for him to have to sit in prison if convicted for the rest of his life rather than just turning the lights out. That's my view. Now, uh, the two enhancements were mentioned because the crimes were committed close to her in front of children and because this crime was carried out, uh, based on Charlie Kirk's political beliefs. Then we get to the text messages. Uh, the alleged shooter is accused of sending texts to his partner slash roommate. and this is part of the narrative that is still being put together here, confessing.

And there was reportedly a note hidden in which the suspect said he believed he was going to have a chance to kill Charlie Kirk when Kirk came to town and that he was going to take that chance. He wrote in the note that he spent more than a week planning this killing. He wrote in a text about Kirk to his partner, I had enough of his hatred, some hate can't be negotiated out. Now, despite a lot of speculation, and this is one of the main aspects of the speculation right now, the prosecutor did not answer questions about whether it was Charlie Kirk's anti-transgender views that were specifically the catalyst for Robinson wanting

to target him. And that is so much as being built up upon that in the sense that the right believes if it was Charlie Kirk's views on transgender that were the impetus for Robinson seeking him out, then this proves it is a, quote, left-wing instance of violence, whereas some on the left believe that if the reason that Robinson hated Kirk was a different political issue, then it would not be a left-wing instance of violence. We're going to get back to that. There's an interesting situation as of yesterday with Robinson's lawyer, which was that no lawyer was listed on the court docket as of yesterday, which is unusual. And when reporters went to the family and said, who's representing him? What's the situation with a lawyer?

They as of yesterday did not comment. Now we get to some of the texts that Robinson sent, I guess after the murder. Quote, I had planned to grab my rifle from my drop point shortly after, but most of that side of town got locked down. It's quiet, almost enough to get out, but there's one vehicle lingering, going to attempt to retrieve it again. Hopefully they have moved on. I haven't seen anything about them finding it.

Later, he texted, I can get close to it, but there is a squad car parked right by it. I think they already swept that spot, but I don't want to chance it. Also asked his roommate to delete the texts, which plays a role in those allegations of witness tampering. Missing from any of this conspicuously is motive. Now, there are a lot of conspiracy theories that are flowing from this. Tomorrow or on the Friday show, I want to delve into the question of, is everything a conspiracy. And one of the things we have to contend with is that some of the conspiracy

theorists are the usual suspects. It's the people who have conspiracies about everything. Candice Owens believes none of this and doesn't believe the story. She also believes that the wife of the French president is biologically male. And she believes all sorts of conspiracy theory. So we start to see that it is the same people who always believe. they are being lied to the official story is bogus. Alex Jones believes that we can't trust the official story here. And Alex Jones believes conspiracy theories about almost everything. So we're going to get to this question of like, if everything is a conspiracy, is nothing a conspiracy or how do we even sort of exist? But I do find that the one part that to me is conspicuous is that although

it's been said by the Utah governor Spencer Cox and others, this was a left. wing individual and that may well be true. I will be the first to tell you. I don't care the political motivations in the sense of they are disgusting and disgraceful and condemnable no matter what they were. Whether this guy was angry with Charlie Kirk because of Charlie Kirk's views on transgender or whether this guy was angry with Charlie Kirk because of Charlie Kirk's views on taxes or it doesn't matter. This is a deplorable action regardless. But it is interesting that the texts don't reflect a left-wing ideology. Spencer Cox, although he said this is an individual who was pulled to the political left, didn't actually present any information about that.

And so that's just a curiosity. It doesn't mean it's true or it's not true. But it's just sort of like at this point in time, wouldn't we have some information that was able to sort of point us in one direction or another. But there are there is no shortage of people who are saying these texts simply don't sound like they were written by a 22-year-old. The timeline doesn't make sense. We're not being given clear information as to which of these messages were sent before versus after. We're going to delve into that over the next 48 hours. Tyler Robinson charged. Text messages released. Cash Patel is the director of the FBI, and he has no damn business in that role. And in a sort of final act of desperation to try to save his reputation and potentially even his job, I don't know what it would

take for Trump to fire him, but potentially even his job. FBI director Cash Patel showed up for a Senate hearing yesterday and went fully scorched earth, proving again something you suspected and I suspected, which is putting a, uh, you know, inexperienced conspiracy theorist in charge of the FBI is a very, very bad idea. And putting a guy in charge of the FBI whose priorities don't really seem to be law enforcement and public safety and solving crimes. They seem to be doing Trump's bidding for retribution against his political enemies. It's not a good idea. You're not going to get a well, a high performing FBI director if you do that. Well, a screaming cash Patel crashed out in response to Senator Adam Schiff's questions about Jeffrey Epstein about Jelaine Maxwell and started

attacking Adam Schiff. You don't normally see meltdowns of this sort during Senate hearings, but it's Cash Patel after all. Let's take a little. This is wild, wacky stuff. You clearly won't tell us the cabinet members associated with Mr. Epstein. Let me ask you one last question. And that is, right after she gives this testimony in front of an FBI agent among others, she's transferred to a minimum security prison, not suitable for a sex offender like herself. Who made that decision and why?

The Bureau of Prisons. The Bureau of Decisions made it in prisons. The Bureau of Prisons decided on their own without any consultation with Blanche or anyone else that they were going to suddenly, after this interview, completely unrelated to this interview, completely unrelated to anything she said, move her to a prison not suitable for a sex offender. You want the American people to believe that? This is not a believable explanation. Do you think they're stupid?

No. I think the American people believe the truth, that I'm not in the weeds on the everyday movements of inmates. What I am doing is protecting this country, providing historic reform, and combating the weaponization of intelligence by the likes of you. You know who he's performing for right now? Cash Patel has an audience of one right now. And it's the same way in every authoritarian government.

I'm performing for the dear leader. That is the only person that needs to see and approve of this. We have countlessly proven you to be a liar in Russia game. In January 6th, you are the biggest fraud to ever sit in the United States Senate. You're a disgrace to this institution and an utter coward. I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised that you continue to lie from your perch. This is embarrassing.

This guy has no business having any role. You know, sometimes people go, this guy shouldn't even be the janitor. I don't like that because it's sort of like insulting to janitors who are doing, you know, a necessary and important job. So I don't like that. So I'm not going to go, this guy shouldn't even be the janitor at the if he just has no business anywhere near classified information anywhere near law enforcement, anywhere near any of the centers of power of the United States.

What a humiliation and put on a show you so you can go raise money. for your charade. You are a political buffoon at best. Well, you can take an internet troll. Take it to the bank that the FBI is protecting this country and the state and citizens of the California. We are bringing historic reform. But all you care about is a child sex predator that was prosecuted by a prior administration and the Obama Justice Department and the Biden Justice Department did squat. And what did President Trump do?

bring new charges courageously. And what have we done? You said I'm the most transparent FBI director in history. 33,000 pages of information to you. I challenge you to say anything credibly to the truth. Go ahead and run to the cameras where you want to go now. Be quiet. Before I go.

What an embarrassment. I mean, just what an embarrassment. And one of the, you know, you could say, well, Schiff was trying to get under his skin or Are you constitutionally suited to the role of director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations? If a senator asking you some questions sends you for this sort of tantrum, it didn't go much better with Cory Booker either, by the way. That rant of false information does not bring this country together. If you want to work on bringing this country, it's my time, not yours. My God, my God, you're going to be lecturing this country.

It is my time. I follow you on your social media posts that tear this country apart. You can try all you want to the division in this country. Senator, it is my time for what you have said. Sir, you're making a mockery of this committee. Sir, you don't tell me my time is over. You know how far we've come since you can't lecture me. You can tell me my time is over.

You may be the charge of the FBI. I'm not going anywhere. Mr. Chairman, not afraid of you, Mr. Chairman, not afraid of you. You know, one of the things about these outbursts is that they really remind us of where different political movements are sort of socioculturally. We see this and we see that a guy who, he has a role there, right? Like you could go, well, everybody's kind of shouting. There is a process here and the process is that the senators ask questions and that the witnesses respond to the questions, ideally within the time allotted and answer the actual questions rather than filibustering

or talking about other things. That's the process. Cash Patel didn't show up ready to do that. Cash Patel showed up ready to perform for an audience of one, his boss, Donald Trump. Fine. But we look at this and we go, man, that's really embarrassing. This is the guy who when the phone rings at 3 a.m. with regard to the most important investigation, sometimes related to the most dangerous criminals and matters of national security,

this is the guy they call and they go, what, what do we do? Now, in practice, I don't think they're really calling Cash Patel. I think they know that's a bad idea. And the hardworking men and women of the FBI are actually proceeding with their work without involving Cash Patel. But at least in theory, this is the guy they're supposed to call. What an unstable lunatic. But that's not the way Maga sees it.

We have to see this through the eyes of Maga. Trump sees it and he goes, wow, he really ripped Adam Schiff a new one. He really didn't take any crap from Cory Booker. Maga thinks he's being tough. And so we have to remember that just because we're embarrassed by this and most of the world is embarrassed by this, you know, Russia loves it, but Russia loves it because it's so evident that this sort of thing destabilizes the perception of American democracy. That's what Russia wants.

But they don't care that half the country and 95% of the planet sees this and goes, what an embarrassment, would the United States really in decline? They go, man, he was so good. He didn't take any crap from these libtards. And when that's their perception, there's very little we can do to actually pierce that. So embarrassing. But Cash Patel probably came out with regard to his standing in front of his own supporters, Donald Trump and the Maga Base, probably looking better.

Let me know what you think. Leave me a comment as well as a like, by the way, on YouTube. Or send me a message info at David Pakman.com. What do you think? I've been tracking my family tree for a long time now and the service I've always relied on is My Heritage, which I started using long before they became a sponsor. Trusted by over 90 million users, My Heritage makes it easy and fun to build your family tree with a range of powerful genealogy tools at your fingertips.

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drive hoping to break our prior record for one day memberships. I need to remind myself what that number even is. It's in the hundreds, not the thousands. I would love for you to sign up on September 30th. It'll be a discounted offer and you can be notified simply by getting on my newsletter substack.david packman.com grocery prices are exploding again and Donald Trump has a new political panic on his hands. This is not like, oh, this is meant to distract from that is meant to distract from this other thing.

It's simply the case that over the last several weeks, because of one crisis after another, there hasn't been a lot of talk about what's going on with grocery prices. But grocery prices are blown sky high. According to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, food prices jumped 0.6% in August alone. Now you might say, well, 0.6% doesn't sound like that much. That sounds kind of small. But this is the sharpest monthly increase since 2022. And we know, because Trump told us while Biden was president, that families are buckling under

sky high grocery bills. Trump made the promise that he would lower grocery prices. Trump made the promise that tariffs were going to lower costs for American families, even though every serious economist knew that that wasn't going to happen. And we were told, you know, you put a tariff on China. You put a tariff on these other countries. It's going to protect American workers. It'll make goods cheaper.

Elizabeth Warren had a great tweet. Under Donald Trump's economy, coffee's up 26%, beef up 14%, oranges up 17%, bananas up 6%. Chicken is up 6%. Chocolate chip cookies up 5%. Chips up 4%, milk up 4%. But worker pay is up only 2%. Trumpflation is eating your paycheck. And instead, we see tariffs.

raising the cost of fertilizer, farm machinery, transportation, these are all elements of the economy that have a ripple effect into grocery aisles across the country. Remember Donald Trump's promises and this is why this is such a big story. It's because Trump made the following promises during the campaign. We will end inflation and make America affordable again. We're going to get the prices down. We have to get them down. It's too much. Groceries, cars, how everything. We're going to get the prices down. But prices will come down. You just watch. They'll come down and they'll come down fast, not only with insurance, with everything. Tomorrow, I will end inflation. We will cut your taxes and inflation. Slash your prices. I will end inflation and inflation. Slash your prices.

To rapidly reduce inflation, I will end. end inflation very quickly you know end inflation slash your prices we will cut your taxes and inflation slash your prices rate we're going to get your prices down that didn't work out now now a lot of you write in and you sometimes say you know david is it fair to hold trump to these expectations presidents only have a little bit of an effect on everything related to food and is it fair? Well, if Trump's promises had been, listen, I recognize what's going on with cost of living in this country. I'm going to do everything I can, but it's tough to turn around. You know, if he had been realistic, then we wouldn't be holding him

to his own unrealistic promises. But it is Trump who said groceries are coming down. It's all going to come down. It's all going to start coming down on day one. Now, of course, if you had heard, Donald Trump talk about groceries during his campaign, you would have realized he didn't actually understand it. Remember this? Likewise, an old fashioned term that we use groceries. I used it in the campaign. It's such an old fashioned term, but a beautiful term groceries.

It sort of says a bag with different things in it. Groceries went through the roof. And I campaigned on that. I talked about the word groceries for a lot. It's a bag with different things in it. So we knew Trump wasn't going to be able to do this. we see prices spiking. Some of the categories are climbing substantially. And so what happens as a family walks into a supermarket and they go, okay, things here are more expensive. I'm leaving

with a thinner wallet. I've got fewer options. Now, the White House is trying to spin the numbers. And what they're pointing to is, well, you know, the annualized grocery inflation rate since Donald Trump took office isn't that bad. But that's cold comfort to anybody who's watching the receipt climb higher every week. Trump, we have to hold him to what he promised. He didn't promise a slower rate of price increases. He promised price reductions. That means the inflation rate needs to have a minus sign in front of it. We do not have that.

Now, the big picture, the bigger economic picture here is that everything was going to be fixed by tariffs. It's sort of like, you know how GLP ones now? They're like, oh, not only your GLP ones good for weight loss, they prevent dementia and they prevent cancer. And it's sort of like, do they or don't they? It's being researched. Trump's equivalent is tariffs will fix everything.

Tariffs will bring prices down. They'll bring wages up. They'll bring jobs up. They'll strengthen American manufacturing. None of it is happening. And what we have for Trump is a failed promise of cheaper groceries becoming one of his most visible economic failures. Now, I want to always be up front with you and tell you.

truth can presidents do that much about grocery prices not really much like with gas prices there's a couple of things that presidents can do one is tariffs but not creating them what presidents can do to lower grocery prices is lower or eliminate tariffs on inputs uh inputs to the food system so if you lower tariffs on fertilizer if you lower tariffs on farm equipment on imported foods, then you might be able to put a little bit of downward pressure on grocery prices. You can regulate supply chains, right? So if there is a bottleneck in shipping or trucking or at the ports that is causing an increase to grocery prices, well, you could try to end that in order to counteract it. You could do food assistance and subsidies. So you could say, hey, we've got snap. We're going to

expand snap. That is not directly lowering prices, but it's lowering the effect that burden of groceries on a household budget. But a lot about groceries is outside of a president's control because it depends on global commodity prices, which have very little to do with the president. Obviously, whether a natural disasters can affect food prices, private retailer markup. So the problem, there are sort of two problems here. Number one, Trump promised something that is impossible. And number two, MAGA believed it.

And now isn't holding him accountable there is an opportunity to hold Republicans accountable for this and it's going to be in November of 2026 But the problem as usual are promises that Donald Trump can't possibly keep and when he fails to keep them he just blames other people All right. Trump is panicking over reports that confirm most political violence in the United States is right wing it is not left. And when Donald Trump panics, because reality comes up against his lies, the truth gets deleted. Listen to this. The Department of Justice just erased a study from its website showing that the overwhelming majority of domestic terrorism comes from the far right. White supremacists, right-wing militias, neo-Nazis, not from environmental activists, not

from Antifa. not from student protesters. We have serious academic work and law enforcement work that proves the violence in this country by every serious measure is overwhelmingly right wing. This wasn't speculation. It wasn't like an op-ed. This is research commissioned by the Department of Justice's own National Institute of Justice. And what it documented was what counterterrorism experts have been saying for decades.

I've read decades old books about this issue. They already knew it in the 90s. Far right violence outpaces all other types of domestic terrorism and domestic violent extremism. And up until September 12th of this year, you could read that report on the DOJ website. And it is gone. It's been memory hold. deleted to the depths of who the hell knows where. And the page now says, materials are being reviewed under Donald Trump's new executive

orders. Let me give you the translation of that. Inconvenient truths are not allowed under authoritarian rule. And the data that Trump is trying to hide is really, really clear. You go back to 1994. The vast majority of politically motivated murders in the United States have come from the far right. Now, depending on the exact time frame, it's about 70%. Left-wing terrorism exists.

It is marginal. There's a handful of incidents. It's mostly property damage. It's not killings. And every single time that the right wants to downplay this, they love to talk about 9-11. Let's explain why this is so important to them so that you can be better prepared when you see this online, when you see this in real life. They love to include 9-11 in the statistics to make it look like Islamist terrorism dwarfs everything else in the United States.

There's two problems with saying, well, because of 9-11, domestic terrorism is mostly left-wing. Number one, the attackers were foreign nationals. It wasn't domestic terror in the sense of what we're talking about. It was an international plot carried out from abroad. Yes, it took place physically in the United States. But it's not really representative or connected to what we're talking about here when we talk about political violence in the United States. But secondly, and this is the part that is very rarely discussed, if we're talking about

ideological lineage, why would we consider Islamic terror left wing? It's not liberal. It's religious fundamentalism. By definition, religious fundamentalism is right wing. Just because the extremists on 9-11 were Muslim doesn't make them left wing. And in fact, look at civil society in the countries that they come from. Look at the Taliban. Look at ISIS.

Look at the authoritarian theocracies of the Middle East. It's the same authoritarian kind of patriarchal, theocratic worldview that Christian nationalists push in the United States, different religion, but same politics. So the big picture really doesn't change when you go, oh, but 9-11. In the United States of America, the real persistent homegrown terrorism is coming from the far right. It's not even close. And Donald Trump is now desperate to cover this up in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing because

Trump has been insisting we have a problem only on the left here, not on the right. The radical left is the problem. We need to reconsider the First Amendment, Trump said. We need to potentially even do RICO criminal charges. charges against protesters, but the truth is that the vast majority of the domestic violence, political violence, and domestic terrorism is coming from Trump's side. And that is part of why the narrative around this shooter collapsed so quickly because first MAGA said, it's a far left shooter.

Then it was like, well, it's a trans shooter. But then we found out the family is really conservative. His circle of friends leans right. And so if this was a radical leftist. it's a very strange sort of set of circumstances, and now they've gone much quieter on that. Now, I will be the first to tell you that it seems as though the political beliefs of the shooter, to the extent that we understand them right now, are sort of a mixed bag of grievance ideas sourced from, you know, incubated by this right-wing family, but certainly potentially

influenced by the left. It primarily seems like someone who was driven more by emotional trauma than sort of concrete political beliefs. But again, no matter what the political beliefs are of Tyler Robinson, the 30,000 foot view is most of this stuff is coming from the right. Now, we need to also consider that just deleting stuff is not really a great way of making it go away forever. You know, the study is archived.

The screenshots are everywhere. And there's potentially a stric sand effect here, which is that the harder they try to hide it, the more people might end up seeing it. And that's why I think the story is very important. It's not really just about the DOJ report. What happens when an administration decides, hey, there are facts here that are really inconvenient. We're going to try to eliminate the facts. And the way we do that is by deleting stuff.

And this is another hallmark of authoritarianism. It's not just about controlling people. It's about controlling memory. What are you allowed to know? Authoritarians love to control what you're allowed to know. It's sort of like we're getting rid of this. Having in your browser history reports about right wing violence is sort of like when you had the wrong books previously in authoritarian regimes. And when the Stasi showed up, you would just start burning the books or whatever equivalent authoritarian system. And the truth is really. very simple. We have a domestic terrorism problem in the United States. It's overwhelmingly a right-wing problem. I want to solve all instances of it. Even if you go, well, it's 70% right-wing, 7% left-wing, and 23% sort of non-political. I want to solve all of it. But we've got to be honest about what the problem is if we're going to solve it. If Trump's willing to just erase

this, we know he's willing to erase a lot of other stuff. And that's really part of this, this whole idea behind Doge. It's not just get rid of people. It's also root out a lot of just fact-based, empirically based ideas that the government is working on and replace it with hyper-partisanship. And you got to hand it to them. They're kind of succeeding at it. 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.new slash Pacman or enter the code Pacman in the app to. get started. The link is in the description. On his way out to the UK, Donald Trump admitted on live TV that he's really going to do it.

He's going to go after media outlets. He doesn't like. He was departing the White House for this UK trip, stopped to talk with reporters. And he was asked, what about this whole thing of going after hate speech? And Trump says, well, what that means is we might go after you. He said this to ABC's Jonathan Carl. Any news that treats me unfairly we might go after. Take a look at this dystopian nightmare.

This is chilling stuff. That'll come to a vote, but we'll see what happens. And what do you make, Pam Bondi saying she's going to go after hate speech? Is that, I mean, a lot of people, a lot of your allies say hate speech is free speech. You probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It's hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they'll come after ABC.

Well, ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech. So maybe they'll have to go after you. Look, we want everything to be. Here is the hip, but this, this is terrifying. This is like red alert stuff. And I know that when everything's a scandal, nothing's a scandal, but this is completely and totally terrifying.

The hypocrisy is the following. Republicans have spent decades telling us there's no such thing as hate speech in America. First Amendment protects even offensive speech. It protects ugly speech. It protects speech that we don't like. And they're right about that. They were they were lecturing about how the constitution doesn't care if you don't like what somebody says. But the second that triggered Trump hears criticism suddenly hates speeches, whatever makes him look bad. This is what they always accused the left of doing. They ranted about cancel culture, about how dangerous it is to silence voices. And now Donald Trump is promising government back.

cancel culture. He's going to use state power to censor the press. When a college student boycotts Ben Shapiro's speech, they go, it's tyranny. They don't respect speech. But Trump threatens ABC News. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we got to do that. We got to do that. And so this is not just hypocrisy. This is authoritarianism. Free speech in the United States has limits only when it crosses into direct threats like incitement, harassment, or defamation. If you look outside of that, the government doesn't have a role in deciding what's allowed to be said. They used to support that principle, which is the principle that's in the law and in the Constitution. Trump wants to flip it upside down and make himself or Pam Bondi, God forbid, the judge of what counts as fair

or unfair. And when you look at how he frames it, you understand what this is really about. You treat me unfairly. You have hate in your heart. There's nothing in there about hate speech. There's nothing in there about incitement or harassment. This is turning personal grievance into state power. And I, we all of a sudden, you defend speech and you start sounding like one of these constitutional conservatives. The core principle of free speech is protecting unpopular ideas, protecting dissent against the powerful. A lot of times we on the left rightly go, listen, you know, the neo-Nazis obviously can say whatever they want, but we don't need to go out on a limb to defend it.

And it's like, yeah, listen, they have a right to say it. I don't respect their views, but it's not like I'm going to do shows. We must defend the rights of neo-Nazis to say horrible things. They have a right to say it. But there's also consequences to speech, but we're not going to die on that hill necessarily. We're just going to say they have a right to say it. But here we're talking about something very different because it's not really just about, oh, it's unpopular speech.

We're talking about dissent against the powerful. And one of the hallmarks of authoritarianism is that they crush dissent against those in power. Trump even wants to go further and criminalize criticism of the powerful, meaning himself. And if that logic is allowed to stand, obviously ABC NBC, but that could reach independent media as well. Podcasts, YouTube channels, individual voices online that criticized Trump. They could be labeled hate. They could get targeted. And that is how authoritarian governments operate. Now, I know this is going to sound crazy. I happen to agree with Charlie Kirk's view about this. There's a tweet from Charlie Kirk years old floating around. There is no such thing as hate speech

in the United States. Some countries do have hate speech. speech laws. We do not have such a law in the United States. And so unfortunately, the theme with this White House and it's a theme that we see with a lot of these dictators and want to be dictators is the law is whatever I want it to be. It doesn't really matter what it is. We'll either interpret the law the way I want or we'll try to change the law to reflect what I want.

And that's extraordinarily dangerous. So that was Donald Trump on his way out to the UK. I do want to briefly talk with you about what happened when Trump arrived in the United Kingdom. You know how Donald Trump insists that thanks to him, we're now respected again around the world. Now that we've gotten rid of sleepy Joe Biden, the country is finally respected globally. Trump got a very, very rude awakening upon landing in the United Kingdom where the respect for Donald Trump was not exactly palpable, wasn't exactly. easy to find. First of all, protesters rolled out. This is amazing video. Protesters rolled out a huge,

just monstrous image outside Windsor Castle on the grounds. And it's a massive blowup of the famous picture of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein together. And as if this wasn't humiliating enough, ITV news reported on a projection of another image onto the side of Windsor Castle. And this one, it's Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Melania. On that tower, we see that tower behind me there, Tom, currently white, just a few moments ago, protesters, anti-Trump protesters from the hotel opposite, we think, manages, managed to project some images on there. And what were they of?

As you can probably see from some of these pictures, Donald Trump. Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew, and Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, that could not be a little more tricky and difficult just moments after Donald Trump arrived here. So, yeah, you couldn't really call it a security breach necessarily. But in terms of the diplomacy and laying on the charm, I'd say that was a bit of a massive failure. Let's just talk about tomorrow then.

Activists are determined to ruin Trump's time in the UK. and I love it. The UK's Channel 4 is going to be playing hours of Donald Trump's lies back to back to back on a loop during his visit. Now, these are anecdotes. I want to zoom out and talk about the bigger story because respect for the country around the world is relevant. It's relevant to trade deals. It's relevant to all sorts of multinational treaties and cooperation. Polling shows that America's image under Donald Trump is slipping sharply. In a Pew Research Center survey of 24 countries, than half of respondents in 19 of the 24 countries say they lack confidence in Donald Trump's leadership internationally. You look across Western Europe. Favorable attitudes towards the

U.S. have dropped six to 28 points since Trump was reelected. That's according to U.Gov's Euro track. You look specifically at Great Britain. 59 percent hold unfavorable views of Trump with only about 23 percent viewing Trump favorably. So, you know, we see Trump arrived at Trump arriving in the UK, there's the pomp, there's the ceremony, the circumstance, but he's arriving into protests. He's arriving into distrust, public skepticism, not like in fringe media. In Poland, the country, the continent, people around the world feel negatively about the United States because Trump is at the helm. Now, the optics are foreign leaders see it. The media is watching. citizens are watching and it has real effects, trust, alliances, cooperation.

If other countries start to see the United States as unstable or untrustworthy, and untrustworthy is a big thing, we do a treaty and then Trump doesn't like it and he just gets out of the treaty like the Iran nuclear deal, it looks terrible. It makes other countries say, oh, we're not going to work with you. Diplomatic leverage becomes strained. Soft power erodes. The narrative of Trump depends on renewal. We're going to restore America's stature to its previous glory.

But you look at the signs and it's the opposite. It's global favorability down. The U.S. seen less as an ally, but like a I guess we have to work with the U.S. on this or that. You deal with them, but you don't really trust them emotionally. And in the United Kingdom, you know, you've got these historical. ceremonies, the state banquets and all of it, these are supposed to communicate respect and alliance. And when protesters hijack those, you start to see all of that erode and break down.

And the symbolism really does matter here. Once again, it's one of these. If Trump hadn't said A was going to happen, we would be less focused on B happening. Trump said under Biden, we weren't respected, but under he, under him, we would be respected. The opposite is what's happening. We're trying to simply hold them accountable to what he told us was going to take place. It's not happening. It's very bad for the country.

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Try Incogni risk-free and get 60% off when you go to incogni.com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman. The link is in the description. Tucker Carlson is breaking with Trump on the idea of suppressing speech in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's murder. This is very interesting, but the question as we go through this that I want to hear from you about is, is Tucker speaking out about this because it's an important principle to him? Or is it because he has some other personal grievance at play?

So let's talk through it, starting with Donald Trump was out. about his plan to crack down on protesters, they do still have the First Amendment right, to which Trump said chillingly, well, I'm not so sure. Remember this? That's a violent radical left group. Okay, go ahead. I got peppered with a lot of comments for doing that. They still have their first amendment right, though.

They're still on their protest. I'm not so sure if they have their first amendment rights. We then learned this week, it goes beyond Donald Trump. It's not just Trump, the top law enforcement official in the country, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, she said, oh, no, no, we're going to be cracking down. There's free speech and then there's hate speech. Now already that the U.S. does not have a hate speech law. She's wrong.

That does not exist. And there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie in our society. Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are you? using hate speech and putting cuffs on people. So we show them that some action is better than no action. We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything. And that's across the aisle. Now, Tucker Carlson is not having it. What I want to figure out is why. But here he is saying any attempt, any attempt to impose hate speech laws in the United States would be bad and it cannot be tolerated. Here's Tucker himself. That thinking that

she just articulated on camera there is exactly what got us to a place where some huge and horrifying percentage of young people think it's okay to shoot people you disagree with, to kill Nazis for saying things they don't like. Why do they believe that? How did we get here? Is it the video games? Is it the SSRIs? Yeah, probably. But what it really is is 12 and then 6.5. And then 6. 16 years of indoctrination in our schools at the hands of people who tell them that, who say exactly what the attorney general just said. Well, there's free speech, which of course we all acknowledge is important, so, so important. But then there's this thing called hate speech.

Hate speech, of course, is any speech that the people empower hate, but they don't define it that way. They define it as speech that hurts people, speech that is tantamount to violence. And we punish violence, don't we? Of course we do. They've been taught that every year of their lives. and so naturally most of them believe it. When Charlie Kirk is shot in the throat, the 30 out six on camera, I doubt very many young Americans want to see something like that or actually applaud the death of a man, a father or a husband.

But they've been told for their entire lives in schools exactly what Pam Bondi just told them. Well, there's free speech, but then there's also hate speech and woe to those who engage in it because it's a crime. That's a lie. And it's a lie that denies the human. humanity of the people you're telling it about. And so any attempt to impose hate speech laws in this country, and trust me, there are a lot of people who would like them. There are a lot of people

who'd like to codify their own beliefs by punishing those under the U.S. Code who disagree with their beliefs. Any attempt to do that is a denial of the humanity of American citizens and cannot be allowed under any circumstances. Now, Tucker goes even further during another moment, and he says, we see hate speech laws brought to this country, even Tucker says it'll be a time for protest. You hope that. You hope that Charlie Kirk's death won't be used by a group we now call bad actors to create a society that was the opposite of the one he worked to build. You hope that. You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we're seeing in the aftermath of his murder won't be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country. And trust me, if it is,

if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that, ever, and there never will be. Because if they can tell you what to say, they're telling you what to think, there is nothing they can't do to you because they don't consider you human. Now, the superficial charitable interpretation, which is where we can start, right? The superficial charitable interpretation is, you know, this is just what Tucker believes. Tucker is just, he's really for speech. When Tucker is saying, hold on a second, that's a little too far. You know that Trump is wandering into dangerous territory.

Usually Tucker is all in on Trump, all in on a censorship panic, all in on whatever the right wing line of the week is. But here he's sounding the alarm. If they go, this will be too far if they do it. But is it simply because Tucker is a principal defender of the Constitution? I don't know. To some degree, it sounds like this is about Tucker's own survival. Tucker's business model depends on being able to say the most inflammatory, the most racially charged.

When immigrants come in, things get dirtier. Remember when he said that on Fox News? Depends on saying the most conspiratorial stuff and calling it free speech. If Trump were to gut First Amendment protections, it would be very bad for protesters. That's clear. But it might be bad for Tucker Carlson's career. Tucker needs the chaos. Tucker needs the outrage machine running.

And if Trump guts the First Amendment might affect Tucker Carlson personally. Now, there's a bigger point here that I think is more important than like calculating Tucker's exact thought process, which is that authoritarian's always fracking. over which speech to control. Trump wants to crush protest and dissent. Tucker wants the pipeline to stay open for his hate adjacent content. I don't know that either of them actually cares about free speech and principle. They're protecting their slice of power.

Trump sees that the way to protect his power is to try to clamp down on dissent. Tucker sees that the way to protect his slice of power is to keep the pipeline going and not have anyone even consider there might be some sorts of speech that we want to limit unfortunately when it's simply authoritarian's picking whose speech to stifle it's kind of how democratic norms start to die and a pluralistic open society starts to be diminished and it's never like one sweeping move it's never that's it's over you know even i i've said a bunch of times i'm reading this book tunnel 29 about um the cold war and getting out getting out of east berlin they didn't even build Berlin wall overnight. First, it was like, okay, we've defined where the line is. Then it's we're

going to install some barbed wire. Then next thing, you know, the bricks and the building materials show up. And you've got an actual wall. So the point here is it's really common with strong men that you end up in a battle where we're just negotiating over which freedoms are negotiable if that's what the dear leader wants. So I want to hear from you. Is this just a principled Tucker Carlson defending all speech? Or is there something in it for him personally? Donald Trump wildly attacked California governor Gavin Newsom again for something Trump either doesn't understand or is completely confused by.

Gavin Newsom is still getting under under Donald Trump's skin. Trump was traveling to the UK and he was still fixated on Gavin Newsome. Check this out. Here is what Donald Trump said. And then I'm going to fact check this piece by piece. Trump said, quote, shockingly, I have just learned that Gavin New Scum, the governor of California, is in final stages of approval to build low income housing in Pacific Palisades. Now, that's not true.

There is no attempt being made right now to build new low income housing in Pacific palisades. Trump continues. How unfair is that to the people that have suffered so much new scum allowed their houses to burn by not accepting hundreds of millions of gallons of water from the Pacific Northwest. Now, that is not true. The water in the Pacific Northwest simply doesn't connect to the water systems of California. Trump keeps repeating it. Repeating it doesn't make it true. Uh, Trump continues, but long after, I'm sorry, uh, and now the low income housing starts rising long before he gets permits for California citizens to rebuild. This is all.

also a lie. The governor doesn't issue housing permits. Housing permits are done by the city and by the county. And then Trump continues, but long after the federal permits were issued, there is no such thing as a federal housing permit. It just doesn't exist. Trump wraps by saying, quote, Lee Zeldin, EPA administrator and I as president have done the job and produced all permits long before anybody expected that to happen. Unfortunately, the governor of California, and Mayor Karen Bass failed you. Gavin New Scum's plan to build low-income housing at the super luxury Pacific Palisades fire site is what caused the destruction of the late great New York City, Mayor John

Lindsay's political career. And John Lindsay was a Republican. Again, there is no such plan to build low-income housing in the Pacific Palisades. Just about everything there is a lie. And Trump did this moments before while en route to the United Kingdom. He's supposed to be acting presidential. He's supposed to be meeting with government officials. And he's melting down again about Gavin Newsome.

Newsom is so deep under Trump's skin that it's like he has a timeshare at this point. The guy cannot stop. He's halfway across the world and obsessed with California building permits and water and zoning and all of it. And the funniest part is Trump tries to make it about political careers ending. He dredges up Lindsay, the Republican mayor of New York from 50 years ago. It's like Trump's career is cratering in real time. He's been indicted, impeached, convicted, all this stuff.

He's gaffing his way through speeches. Approval is record low. But he's talking about a New York City mayor from the, I guess at the 70s and then buried in all of the nonsense, what this is really about, buried in there about, oh, low income housing in the palisades and water and all this stuff. You see that this is the same old thing. trying to stoke fear that Democrats will dump poor people in wealthy neighborhoods. That's the trope. Now, here, it's Pacific Palisades and low-income housing. But we hear this all the time

in different forms. We've heard it about different cities. We heard it about the eating the cats eating the dogs thing. It's not happening, but it's meant to sound really scary. The not in my backyard people, the nimbies. Like, wait a second. Democrats are going to bring poor people. people, which by the way, the messaging, of course, is to make you think of brown people. That's implicit in this. There is this racial element to it. They're going to bring poor, probably brown people and just force them into my neighborhood and it'll be terrible. Well, that's exactly what they want you to believe that Democrats are going to do so that you'll get scared and you'll vote for Republicans. And it's just crazy enough and just terrifying enough to these people that it might

actually work. We've got a great bonus show for you today. House Republicans are threatening to cancel anyone who disparages Charlie Kirk. Is that free speech? Elon Musk says that Stephen, Kenneth, Destiny, Benel II should go to prison for arguing that Trump's election led to Charlie Kirk's shooting. And finally, will the Fed finally cut rates? Will it do it? We will discuss on today's bonus show. I invite you to sign up at join packman.com. And remember that on the last day of the month, September 30th, we are doing a one day membership drive. It'll be the biggest discount of the year. I would love for you to sign up. If you want to be notified about that membership discount, get on my newsletter. Substack.davidpack.com. Get the newsletter the 30th in the morning. You'll get an

email. Special email. Beautiful perfect email. It'll tell you how to avail yourself of that membership special see you on the bonus show see you back here tomorrow