The David Pakman Show - 9/22/25: Charlie Kirk funeral goes fascist as Trump threatens everyone

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania, joins us to discuss political violence, free speech, discerning fact from fiction online, and much more -- At Charlie Kirk’s memorial, Donald Trump, Erika Kirk, Stephen Miller, and others turn the service into a showcase for authoritarian themes -- Trump rambles about vaccines and corruption during a bizarre late-night press event -- Gavin Newsom signs the No Secret Police Act to stop masked ICE raids and challenges Trump’s deportation regime -- Karoline Leavitt vanishes from press briefings as Trump’s White House spirals into chaos -- Trump stumbles through an interview with Peter Doocy while joking about violence and media control -- Trump shields Tom Homan after he is caught on video taking a $50,000 bribe -- David contrasts Jimmy Kimmel’s censorship with Roseanne Barr’s firing following MAGA allegations of hypocrisy -- Trump claims negative media coverage of him is illegal while ignoring free speech protections -- On the Bonus Show: Trump wants Bagram air base back from the Taliban, lawmakers want trans people Institutionalized, AOC weighing Senate or presidential run, and much more... 🔊 Babbel language learning: Get up to 60% OFF at https://babbel.com/pakman 🍷 Naked Wines: Use code PAKMAN to get 6 bottles for $39.99 at https://nakedwines.com/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 (00:00) Charlie Kirk memorial turns authoritarian (09:03) Trump’s late-night vaccine & corruption rant (13:26) Newsom signs No Secret Police Act (20:17) Karoline Leavitt disappears from briefings (26:10) Trump's interview with Peter Doocy (35:17) Trump shields Homan after bribe (40:04) Josh Shapiro Interview (57:07) MAGA accuses David of hypocrisy (1:01:36) Trump claims negative media coverage is illegal  

I can't believe this is what we're starting with today, but this is where we find ourselves right now. Last night, the funeral or maybe better said memorial service for Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump spoke, Stephen Miller spoke, Don Jr. spoke. And it was truly one of the most fascistic and disgusting events of any kind, never mind a memorial or funeral service. of the most disgusting and fascistic events of any kind that I have seen. Now, there are people who are offended. The people who used to say, David, being offended isn't an argument. Now they are

offended with me. Because I had the audacity to tweet last night, quote, the Charlie Kirk funeral is absolutely disgusting. Riddled with speeches that only dial up the temperature, Stephen Miller's was particularly vile. And I invite you. Look at the comment. And you'll see these rabid maga right wingers saying, but David, Erica Kirk forgave the shooter. It was an unbelievable event. Well, the analogy to me is, imagine you order eggs Benedict. And they go, it's great eggs Benedict. Look at this perfectly poached egg.

But then you look at it and the Holland days is rotten to the core. The English muffins got maggots crawling all over it or whatever, right? Magas, you know, but the poached egg is perfectly poached. The Erica Kirk forgiveness of the shooter, if sincere, is arguably a great thing. But the question is, what is the overall impact of this funeral? And it is to dial up the temperature even more. I'm going to give you some examples. Donald Trump, for example, saying that while Charlie Kirk didn't hate his opponents, according

to Trump, Trump hates his opponents. Trump doesn't want the best for them. Is there anything further from the teachings of Jesus than this? This was, meaning in some nominal way, this was a Christian memorial service because Charlie Kirk was a Christian. And Trump comes in and Christ like Trump goes, I. hate my opponents. What a message of peace and love. In that private moment on his dying day, we find everything we need to know about who Charlie Kirk truly was. He was a missionary with a

noble spirit and a great, great purpose. He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent. And I don't want the best. for them. I'm sorry. I am sorry, Erica. But now Erica can talk to me and the whole group and maybe they can convince me that that's not right, but I can't stand my opponent. How can a single Christian accept that and go, that's a Christian eulogy. That really hits upon and really embodies the teachings of Jesus. We had another moment, a really, a really touching moment from Donald Trump about tariffs. The eulogizer in chief here to remember the life and legacy of Charlie Kirk saying

tariffs. Tariffs are making us rich. I'm sure this brought great comfort to the mourners. Just like Charlie and Erica made turning point hot, we are looking at a country that has the chance to attain a level like never before. Tariffs are making us rich again, richer than anybody ever thought was possible. And the only one challenge in them are people that hate our country or foreign countries that are paying a price because they did the same thing to us for years. They took advantage of us, but we're making money. We're becoming richer and richer. And we're taking care of our people better and better when we do that. You can tell Trump is deeply spiritual from this.

care of other countries better and better but we're doing unbelievably well the tariffs have really been a whole the election was big but the tariffs because of the election came in and remember other nations do that to us and charlie understood that he saw the money he saw what was coming into our country and we can use that for medicare medicate social security remember erika kirk forgave the shooter so we have to see this 40 minute demented rant from Donald Trump as just part of this extremely godly eulogy. Trump then really awe-inspiring to the mourners threatened to invade American cities with the military.

And that's what Jesus would have done. We get rid of, you know, we took out 1,500 career criminals, 1,500. If you have three career criminals that can make a big difference. But I'm so proud of Washington, D.C., and now we're going into Memphis, and we'll get that one straightened out fast, and then we're going into some others, but we're going to go to Chicago, and we're going to have Charlie very much in mind when we go into Chicago, and we'll get that one straightened out. You have an incompetent governor who, he thinks it's okay when 11 people get murdered over the weekend. He thinks you don't have any crime when 11 people get murdered and 28 people get shot. You can really feel the spirit of Jesus coursing through this discourse from Donald Trump. And then finally, before I play the Stephen Miller clip, which is one of the sickest things

I've ever seen, Trump also sort of brags. We are really going after the left radical maniacs. And we know who a lot of them are. This is not a clip from Trump's latest failed political rally. This is Trump's eulogy for a man who was. killed. It's a terrible thing. Because you can't let that happen.

You can't let that happen. Can't let it happen to a country. The Department of Justice is also investigating networks of radical left maniacs who fund organized fuel and perpetrate political violence. And we think we know who many of them are. There you go. So Donald Trump making the glorious and God. announcement that we're going after the radical left lunatics.

And then as if this wasn't enough, Stephen Miller here really channeling, you know, pick your 20th century authoritarian dictator, pick whichever one you want. Stephen Miller delivering a, delivering a rant so sick, it almost is beyond belief. The light will defeat the dark. will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us. Because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.

And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred.

You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity. Nothing brings people together like telling half the country that they are worth nothing.

and do nothing and build nothing and and bring forward nothing. This is sickening, sickening stuff. So I'm glad that Erica Kirk was able to find it in her heart to forgive the shooter. I hope that that brings her some kind of peace or closure in this terrible, terrible situation because I'm against all political violence and I am against the killing of Charlie Kirk and I denounce it. But I also have to denounce anything that turns up the temperature and is likely to incite more political violence. And this sickening series of eulogies, can you imagine even calling these eulogies, is only going to make the problem worse. A soaking wet Donald Trump delivered a sick middle of the night press conference flying back from the memorial service of Charlie Kirk early this

morning. Not only was he shockingly orange and slickly wet would sweat, swollen and disheveled, he also made it very clear that he is deputizing the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to go and suppress more speech. Asked, who should Pam Bondi be focusing on? And Trump says everybody. She should be focusing on everybody, whether there's evidence that they committed a crime or not. Mr. President, in regards to Pam Bondi, who should she focus on as far as bringing accountability? Everybody, really. It's a big office. She's doing a good job, but focus on everybody. There are a lot of crooked people that were here before me. And people that almost destroyed our country.

If I didn't win this election, our country would be destroyed. We wouldn't, we wouldn't have a country right now. And of course, because we are all now working together amicably in the spirit of turning down the temperature, de-escalating, moving people away from considering violence as a way to solve political problems. Thanks to all of us working together with that goal in mind, with that goal in mind, Donald Trump says, had I lost and Harris had won, we wouldn't even have a country today. That's really going to inspire people to say, hey, you know what, we can get along. We can figure out these problems by working together.

Maybe the most disturbing moment and we're going, this is sort of its own topic and we're probably tomorrow going to have a lot a lot of time here. We are building towards an announcement from the Trump administration that pregnant women taking Tylenol causes their kids to have autism. Just as a reminder, autism has been around and differentiated from other conditions for a very long time. Tylenol hasn't been around nearly that long, but put that aside for a second. Donald Trump is previewing the big announcement. He was asked during this swollen, sweaty rant about it. Here's what he had to say.

I think we know what that is. Are you going to announce any link between vaccines and autism tomorrow? Vaccines are very interesting. They can be great. But when you put the wrong stuff in it, And you know, children get these massive vaccines like you give to a horse, like you give to a horse. It is not true that children are being given horse doses of vaccines if there were even such a thing. And I've said for a long time, I mean, this is no secret, spread them out over five years, get five shots, small ones.

Do you ever see what they give, they give? I mean, for a little baby to be injected with that much fluid, even beyond the actual ingredients, sometimes 80 different vaccines and it's crazy. It's, you know, that's a common sense thing too. It's like you're, it's like you're shooting up a horse. You have a little body, a little baby, and you're pumping this big thing. It's a horrible thing. So I've always felt that. But we'll be having a big discussion tomorrow about autism. Autism. We're going to be having a big discussion tomorrow about autism. They're going to point to Tylenol to a great degree. And Trump's still kind of playing coy with the vaccines.

Of course, horses do get vaccines. There is, I think horses get tetanus, but there's some kind of like equine, encephal, something, non-encephalitis. Anyway, they, I don't even know why we're talking about horses, quite frankly. That's, that's where we're at. We should really be talking about donkeys, actually. But anyway, this is, this is how it continues. And, Now they're going to scale up conflict around autism and Tylenol and vaccines. So we're following every bit of it. It's all disgusting. But at least we have a little something from a little someone who is fighting back that I want

to tell you about. California just threw a bomb at Donald Trump's militarized deportation machine. Governor Gavin Newsom has signed the No Secret Police Act. What does this do? does a few things, but it bans law enforcement in California from wearing masks to hide their identities, except in very limited cases like riot control or undercover work. And Gavin Newsom says it straight up. Masked men snatching people off the streets are Trump's America. It's meant to terrorize. Here is Gavin Newsom himself telling us about it.

I'll be signing a bill the first in the nation saying enough to ice unmask. What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? If you're going to go out and you're going to do enforcement, provide an ID, Tell us what's agency you represent. Provide us basic information that all local law enforcement is required to provide. This is a direct shot at Trump's mass deportation rates. And you've got ICE agents showing up masked, no badges.

Sometimes they won't even say what agency they're with. Newsom says it's authoritarianism and I agree with them. He's right. If you've got masked federal agents detaining people in broad daylight in these circumstances. This is the stuff of dictatorships. It's not the stuff of democracies. And the question now becomes, is Gavin Newsom's order going to stand up in court? That's really the big question. California can't completely control federal agents. And I want to be as forthright as possible and not spin this like, it's over. It's a victory. What California can do is say not without

accountability. It doesn't seem that Newsom can just keep the federal agents out. But this, it seems he may well be able to do. Now, now what legal experts say this is fundamentally about is about state sovereignty. You have to draw a line that feds can't cross. And this is likely to go straight to the courts. Trump's DOJ is probably going to sue. Trump's DOJ will almost certainly say that states can't tell federal agents what to wear. That's a granular level of control that states simply don't have.

But that may be exactly what California wants, which is let's have a legal showdown. force judges to confront whether in the United States of America, you're allowed to use what are typically secret police tactics, the tactics of the Stasi in East Berlin, East Germany during the Cold War. And of course, Maga World is losing its mind. Law enforcement groups are saying it's dangerous to officers and Trump's allies are saying, look, it's Gavin New Scum is siding with the criminals. And of course, he's not.

is a sheriff running for governor who said anyone who supports what Newsom is doing is an idiot who should be eliminated from office. And so where the Republican party finds itself today, most of it, not all of it, but most of it, is defending secret police tactics while screaming about safety. And the very interesting thing, and I hope this happens, is that New York is looking at a similar bill. Massachusetts is looking at a similar bill. Other states may be as well. So I hope that Gavin Newsom has started something bigger here. And Trump is not going to take it well. The law really kind of like shines a spotlight on the deportation regime. And it exposes that at its core, this is just authoritarian rot. So I see this as a story that's much bigger than just masks in

California. Authoritarian regimes throughout history have relied on anonymity to crush dissent. This is a hallmark of authoritarianism. You look at Franco Spain. You look at Pina Shea's Chile. The secret police model has characteristics that keep coming up. Mass men with no names or badges, accountability to nobody. And so what I like about Gavin Newsom's framing here is it puts Trump's raids in that lineage. And I don't think that lineage is an exaggeration. Democracy requires accountability. If you have state power carried out by people hiding their identities, the concept of the rule of law completely breaks down. You don't know who's detaining you. You don't know why.

and there's no one to hold responsible. That is the definition of lawlessness. And when it comes from law enforcement, you've got a real problem here. So the MAGAs very hypocritical. They spent years saying COVID mask mandates are that they're violating my freedom. They're violating my liberty. And then it's ICE agents covering faces to round up immigrants. Suddenly the masks are the freedom.

And the masks are the safety. tells you everything that you need to know. Now, we're going to have more about this on our podcast. Some people go, David, when you say this is on the show, what show? I just see clips. We do a daily one hour podcast. You can get it on Spotify. You can get it on Apple podcasts or anywhere that there are podcasts. Make sure you're subscribed to the audio podcast. It's free. Much more about this coming up. Are you planning any exciting trips? I've got a couple lined up and one thing that I've learned is that being able to speak

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White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt is missing from press briefings and the White House is not being upfront about what's going on. We have the receipts. I've been looking forward to talking to you about this. If you've been following the Trump White House fall apart in real time, here's another piece of evidence which really points to the chaos inside of the Oval Office. Caroline Levitt has basically disappeared from press briefings. This is not speculation. It's right there in the public record. Her media appearances have diminished dramatically. But I'm talking about press briefings, the so-called beacon of transparency.

where the press gets to ask questions and hold the administration accountable. Since the inauguration, Caroline Levitt had originally held at least one press briefing every single week. No exceptions. Now, sometimes the gap was like a little longer than seven days, but every calendar week there would be a press briefing. That is now changing. The first skipped week was August 4 to 8. After months of weekly appearances, she goes, In August, she gave three briefings total, already a steep decline from the normal pace. In September, we've had one briefing in three full weeks. That is not a subtle slowdown.

That's like we're done. It's falling off of a cliff. Now, the excuses are starting to mount. Well, Trump left for the UK. Okay, fine, but Levitt has held plenty of briefings on Monday. before and Trump didn't leave till Tuesday. If she wanted to, she could have done one. She didn't do it. And when you look at the schedule, it really tells the story. You look at January through July, regular consistent press briefings multiple per week at times. August skips a week and

then three. And then September, one appearance over a three plus week period. Now, we care about this for a couple of different reasons. I spoke about it with Donald Trump's own former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews on the Friday show. This is an administration that came in saying we are going to be more transparent than anybody. It's not going to be like the Biden administration. They ripped Biden in fact and said, oh, Biden was being, Biden was being hidden from the American people. The Biden administration was hiding from the American people. And they had these rants. Not enough press briefings. Where's Karene Jean-Pierre? What does she have to hide? Why aren't there questions being answered? Why is Biden unavailable? This was a go-to,

line of attack. And they said it's going to be totally different when Donald Trump is president again. And now Caroline Levitt has basically vanished. The same people who said, we're going to have daily briefings. They mocked Biden for ducking the press. They're silent. They don't care because it's their side now. And if you want transparency, you're not getting it from this administration. Now, there's a natural question, which is why. Why, why is this happening? Is she burned out? Is she being pushed out?

Is the White House so chaotic and so toxic that even its most loyal mouthpieces can't keep the act up anymore? Whatever the reason, this is what a transparency collapse looks like. It's not just a policy collapse. It's not just a polling collapse. The basic sort of machinery, the scaffolding of communication is collapsing. Now, when I asked, and check out the interview, by the way, I did with Sarah Matthews last week. When I asked Sarah Matthews, what is your experience of reasons not to brief?

Because she worked in the first Trump White House. She said it's usually that there's something specific you don't want to talk about or you feel that you have nothing positive to bring forward, which leaves us to speculate. Do they not want to talk about what's going on with the economy and the failure of the tariff policy, maybe? Do they not want to talk about how terribly the authorities. deportation scheme is going. Maybe do they not want to answer questions about the complete and total lack of transparency

around the Epstein files? Could be, is it that the anti-war president is looking pretty war hawkish and they don't want to talk about that. Could be, could be all of the above. And so Sarah Matthews speculation was it's either there's something specific you don't want to answer questions about or you just don't have anything to propagandize about and to show up and go, well, we have an incredible day today. The president has achieved X and he's done Y and whatever, even if it's crap, right? You have something to plausibly throw there. The press

secretary's job is show up and sell the message. She's not showing up. And so we're naturally wondering, are they acknowledging that they don't have any message to sell at this point in time? But when you consider that this was the administration that said there will be no one more transparent than us. We will be briefing more than anybody. The Biden administration will be put to shame. We're going to be out there every day taking questions. And all of a sudden, this, this is the, this is what they used to promise to bludgeon their political opponents. And now it's completely broken down. So I'll ask you, where do you think Caroline Levitt is? Or maybe better said, why aren't they doing press briefings at this point in time? Why is she barely doing press?

appearances. I want to hear from you. You can email me info at david packman.com and remember to like this video and leave a comment. It really makes a huge difference in YouTube's algorithm, which is increasingly pushing out left of center content. Make sure to give us a like. It really makes a huge difference. Is this Donald Trump's worst interview of all time? Donald Trump sat down with Peter Ducey, the son of Steve Ducey. And this was the softball interview to end all softball interviews. And Trump still couldn't keep it together. Now, the topic of TikTok came up.

It's looking like we are getting closer to a deal to keep TikTok legal in the United States. Here is what Donald Trump had to say about this. very carefully because there is some chilling stuff here. Disaster. So you get back from the United Kingdom this week, first thing you do, talk to President Xi. It seems like you guys are getting really, really close to a deal for Americans to take over TikTok. Don't get to keep the algorithm because it's so addictive.

That's what makes it so valuable. How much money are we talking? How much are these Americans? A tremendous amount of money. Billions? Oh, I'd rather have them, you know, they're very well-known people and Larry Ellison's one of them. He's involved. this great guy. Michael Dell is involved. I hate to tell you this, but a man named

Lachlan is involved. You know who Lachlan is? That's a very unusual name, Lachlan Murdoch. Mr. Murdoch, I believe, and you call him, and Rupert is probably going to be in the group. I think they're going to be in the group. A couple of others, really great people, very prominent people. And they're also American patriots, you know, they love this country. So I think they're going to do a really good job. Do you want TikTok turning into TikTok Fox? The current situation is bad enough. And there was a study done a few months ago looking at the sort of political leanings of different platforms. Every single platform leaned right in terms of what political content was boosted more, got more impressions, better performance other than TikTok. Now, this is not me coming in

and saying, oh, I think that the Chinese Communist Party is great. I don't. I'm not a communist. I'm not a socialist. This is not me coming in and saying there are no data privacy concerns on TikTok. There are. And there are data privacy concerns on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all, all the different platforms.

But what I am saying is that if you look at the landscape, no matter how many times these right wingers want to pound you over the head and saying every single platform is left wing, the data doesn't support that. And the only one that was even close. to 50-50. It wasn't even 50-50. It was like 55-45 to the right. But the only one that was even close to 50-50 was TikTok. And now, all of a sudden, Rupert Murdoch of Fox News, News Corporation is going to own a stake in the American operations of TikTok and is going to be able to meddle with the algorithm. We are really up against it. And this is why I keep saying to people,

there has never been a more critical time to support independent media. If you're watching right now, make sure to like this video and subscribe to the YouTube channel. If there are other creators that you care about, follow them on any platform they're on. On substacks, we own our data. Make sure to get on the substack list of people because we've got 1.2 million followers on TikTok. What happens if Rupert Murdoch takes control of this thing blows up the algorithm.

And by the way, on TikTok, you can have millions of followers get banned like that. You never know why it's a nightmare. That's it. Those 1.2 million people will never hear from us again. So this is why it's really important to be in direct contact with the creators you support. Substack, I think, is one of the best ways. Substack. David Pakman.com. Now, Tommy Vitor from Pod Save America had a great tweet about this.

this where he said, quote, to sum it up, Murdox and Trump supporters will own TikTok, Elon Mosk owns Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg is an amoral chode who is for whoever is in power, Barrie Weiss will run CBS News, ABC bends the knee to any threat, MSNBC is dying. Look at all the liberal media bias. Hard to say it better than Tommy does. Now, at another point during this interview, Trump joked about getting late night hosts fired and about killing innocent civilian fishermen. These are not exactly the jokes of someone who supports free speech or of someone who supports the rule

of law and is not a war monger. Okay. But this is what now counts as funny in Maga world. I'm basically a nice person. People just don't know that. Over in Europe, you were with business leaders. Everything that you do, there is a business aspect to it. What is the worst business to be in right now? The captain of a cartel drug boat in the Caribbean. They're in trouble. Or a late-night network TV talk show host.

They're both in trouble, although Greg Gutfeld's doing great. So I think I'd take that one by a long shot. And we have the water drugs, I call them the water drugs come pretty much stopped. In fact, I think water fishing, I think almost anything we have to get into a boat right now in that area would would not be doing too well. We have to- This is what's funny these days. The president pushing for late night hosts to be fired.

The president joking about killing innocent fishermen off the coast of South America. Now remember, this is a softball interview and boy is it. we get to the topic of AOC. And to be frank, I'm kind of interested in what Trump's current view is of AOC. Here it is. Let's get right into it. Politics. Today there is a report that AOC wants to run for president in 2028. This new Sunday show, it's kind of a next gen Sunday show. We're trying something new. Do you have anything nice to say about AOC? Well, look, she's the wrong philosophy for the country in terms of keeping America great. We're making great. We're taking in so many different elements of success, including tremendous trillions of

dollars. And our country's being great. Again, we have a closed border now. Nobody is coming in illegally. They're coming in legally, not illegally. So many things have happened. Her philosophy is so bad. She's got a little spunk. She's got a little something that's good. Joe Crowley, she ran against him. And I said, you know, Joe, you're going to lose this thing unless you go out in campaign. you campaigning a little bit. I happened to turn on television. I saw her campaign. It was almost like by accident. And I said, you're going to have to run a little bit. Oh, well, no, she's a young. She's a young girl. He said. She's a young girl. Let me translate this for you. Okay. What Trump is saying is, I think she's attractive, but I wish she was sucking up to me. That that's the, that's Trump's

view about AOC. That's how we can translate it. And then again, a very hard hitting Fox interview, Ducey asking, when you were a widow boy, what kind of a car did you want? That's the journalism of Peter Ducey. And last one, when you were a kid, what kind of a car did you always want? I always wanted to have a Ferrari. Sounds strange. Did you ever get a Ferrari? I did.

I actually had a Ferrari for a while. Now I buy American. I buy American. I love our American cars. And you know, our car, I don't know if you know what's going on. I love Tesla. The man, we used to man, we were the capital of the world for cars, right? And 52% of our car manufacturing was stolen from other countries, Mexico, Canada, Germany, China, Japan. They're coming back. They're all coming back. The numbers are incredible. So we're going to be manufacturing a lot of cars. Peter Ducey got it. Now, I just want to say, say one other thing. I know that sometimes some of you write in and you go, David, you know,

sometimes when you interview Democratic elected officials, you don't really disagree that much with them. And sometimes I will interview an official with whom I don't disagree with very much. And that comes through in the interview. That's true. This is what it looks like. This interview is what it looks like when you are a total and complete suckup looking to retain access. Sometimes I do interview folks and I agree on the subject matter. I interviewed Newsome about Prop 50. I agree with Prop 50. I'm unsure that we've got the numbers if every state does it.

I confronted him with that, but I agree with the plan, right? I'm not going. Governor, when you were a with a boy, what was your favorite wego? Right? I'm not doing that. Okay. This is what it looks like. And Peter Deucy should be ashamed of himself.

Really? Donald Trump's deportation czar, Tom Homan, was caught on video accepting a $50,000 bribe at a restaurant. And Trump helped him out and ordered the investigation ended. Law and order, right? Draining the swamp. Trump's borders are was caught, not in a complicated Wall Street scheme, offshore account, white collar, weird crime.

We're talking about a bag of cash at a Kava restaurant, a bag of cash at a chain Mediterranean lunch spot that I don't particularly like, but that's not really the important thing here. This is not subtle corruption. This is like cartoonishly obvious. This is the kind of thing Trump says happens in third world countries. But when Trump got back into office, his Justice Department killed the investigation into Tom Homan. Homan wasn't cleared.

The money wasn't fake. The tape wasn't doctored. They just said the probe's not credible. We're going to shut the whole thing down. The guy who is now running Trump's mass deportation machine was caught on video, taking a bag of money, allegedly, and is still in power because Trump bailed them out. Now think about the hypocrisy here. Trump's entire campaign pitch has been, I'm the law and order president.

I'm going to drain the swamp. No more cronyism. No more nepotism. screamed. Biden's letting criminals run free. Biden's running interference for his friends and family. And Trump back in 2020 said if Joe Biden ever got in, the radical left would turn the justice department into a weapon. But as usual, the allegations or confessions. And that's what Trump did when he got into power. He turned the justice department into a shield for his buddies. The excuse, well, acting attorney general Emil Beauvais said, the whole. The whole,

home and operation was a deep state op. That's it. Bye-bye. That's the whole defense. The bag of cash, it was the deep state. The FBI operation, it was the deep state. The video evidence, it was the deep state. Maga's answer for everything is if our guy does it, it's a witch hunt. And if your guy even sneezes near it, lock them up for life. If Hillary had been three restaurants away at an olive garden, stuffing her face with breadsticks, they would have said she was so close. She must have had something to do with the cash, lock her up right now. Now, remember that Donald Trump loves to posture about corruption. He said, Mexico sending rapists and criminals, Democrats are running a crime wave. It's all corrupt. And so he went to suburban moms during the campaign and said,

I'm going to protect you from chaos. I'm going to protect you from everything. But Trump's own top official for deportation was at the center of an FBI sting. They got this guy dead to rights from all the information we have. And Trump's response was not to say, I'm staying out of the way. Law and order. His response was to cover it up. So he's not draining the swamp. The swamp is so full, it's overflowing. The swamp is weaponized. The guy in charge of deportations is allegedly on tape taking bribes. And they're not holding him accountable. They're saying, oh, the whole thing was a witch hunt. It's a witch hunt. Trump protected. his guy and MAGA doesn't give a damn because they've fallen for the idea that this is the deep state.

They've fallen for the idea that there's no substance here and they're going to get away with it. I hate to acknowledge it, but they're going to get away with it. One of the easiest ways to make a good night even better is a great bottle of wine, not something random off the shelf like I would pick because I'm clueless, but something that feels a little more thoughtful, worth opening. And that's why I've consistently gotten wines from naked wines. Our sponsor Naked Wines works directly with over 90 independent winemakers around the world. So you get access to boutique bottles that would be way more money in stores. The prices are great. The quality is impressive. I like that I can customize the

boxes. Do I want reds or whites or a mix? The last one I opened was a white from a winemaker. I hadn't tried before. One of the best bottles I've had this year. Crisp, I love crisp, made with care. Check out Naked Wines. You can get six bottles for just $39.99, including shipping. Go to Nakedwines.com slash Pacman. Click enter voucher. Use code Pacman for both the code and the password. The link is in the description. It's great to have on the program today for the first time, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Governor Shapiro, great to see you. You know, I sort of wish the topic were different today. We're going to talk a bit about political violence.

The trajectory is I want to talk a little bit about the last two weeks, talk about solutions, and then hopefully have a moment to bring up what I think is the democratic failure on this issue and maybe the biggest area of opportunity. So to start with, the conversation about political violence is now again kind of on the front because of this killing of Charlie Kirk, a killing which I have condemned, and regardless of what you believe about his political views, which I found vile, we all condemn. No, no, no. The killing is just awful.

And we should all speak in a unified voice about that. Now, in the aftermath of this, we have started to see the claims about where does most of the violence come from, for example, and CSIS, ADL. pick, pick your poison, make it clear that this is predominantly, but not exclusively, a right wing issue in the United States. Doesn't mean we don't care about the instances from the left. We care about all of it. But so the first thing I want to ask you is, what is your level of concern that we're having the right conversation at this point in time to really get at solutions? Like is the is the, are we even addressing the problem accurately?

I think some people are. You're certainly trying to. I am, but I, I think you've got the President of the United States trying to end what should be a constructive dialogue about how do we universally condemn political violence, as you and I did at the top of the show here. How do we look at what the reasons are for the rise in political violence? And then how do we come together as a nation and heal and try and ensure something like this doesn't happen again? That's the conversation, David, we should be having. Instead, the president wants to point fingers only at one side. Instead, the president wants to make it harder to heal. And instead, the president wants to use the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk

as a way to try and silence people that he disagrees with. I think that is very, very dangerous. I think it is on people like you to have incredible platforms like you have, to engage in a thoughtful, constructive dialogue on how we address these issues. And it's on leaders like me. to speak and act with moral clarity, not do what the president does, which is cherry pick, only certain incidents of political violence that seem to want to count in his mind, where that need to be condemned. One of the things that history shows us is that sometimes when you have these moments of political violence could be in Weimar Germany.

We saw it post-9-11 U.S. when it comes to the Patriot Act. Sometimes there's a reflexive attempt to sort of. of use these incidents to suppress speech or to erode privacy rights in ways that could be in conflict, in fact, with the Constitution and due process and the Fourth Amendment, we're already sort of seeing, you know, the firings and self-censorship at networks of late night hosts, lawsuits against media outlets, firings as a result of what took place just a couple of weeks ago, Where do you think that that reflexive instinct comes from or is it a calculated thing from those who lean towards authoritarianism to say, hey, I see my opportunity here.

I'm picking my spot. This is when I'm going to try to suppress speech. David, that's an incredibly important and astute question. I don't know that I have all the answers, but let me sort of just give you my take. And I'd welcome your feedback. We have seen, as you correctly noted, a more. recent example in modern history post 9-11. We have seen examples where coming out of tragedy, elected leaders will use that tragedy and use the name of national security to restrict

speech. Before Donald Trump and this present, you know, chapter that we are in, what has saved us and brought us back from the brink there, where you've had individuals who are not acting in the best interests of the United States, is our institutions, our courts, lawyers, judges, you know, the media, and others who are able to kind of get us back into balance and lean on our First Amendment rights. What we're seeing today may not be all that different in terms of the action of an executive in terms of using a national security rationale to stifle speech or pull back the, you know, the speech that they disagree with, right, or stop the speech that they disagree with. It's a better way to say it. What's really different now, though, is our institutions

have been so battered and so weakened by this president that I'm very, very worried that we are going to see our institutions not hold and allow the president to run amok over our First Amendment rights. It's not just the firing of Jimmy Kimmel that concerns me by a comedian who told jokes about Donald Trump and lost his job. It's that people like you who were doing a public service of providing information to the public, questioning leaders like me, putting your own perspectives out there that maybe just maybe you're now going to think twice before you choose to engage in a particular line of questioning or in other words the self-censorship rather than the overt censorship because the act of doing something bold the way they did

with Kimmel then ends up having a chilling effect on your speech take that to the next step when your speech is chilled, David Pakman's speech is chilled, my ability to hear different perspectives is limited as well. So limiting your speech, limiting the speech of a late-night comedian, limiting the speech of a news anchor on a, you know, on a network TV broadcast limits my ability as an American to hear different perspectives. And that erodes our freedoms. And that is one one of the groups whose speech seems to be lost in this is those actual conservative Republicans, not MAGA. I mean, just as an example, I recently had Donald Trump's former deputy press secretary,

Sarah Matthews, who is like a kind of old school. She's, she's in her 20s, but she's like an old school Republican in the sense that I don't know that a 20-year-old be happy with you calling her open school. But we'll, yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, her ideas. We were the party that was like small L. Libertarian where we say we don't need the government

involved in a lot of areas like influencing what media outlets say. Free speech, what the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, these were values that even though I didn't agree with them on a lot of issues. Twenty years ago, Republicans at least were on board with that. They seem gone from MAGA. Correct me if I'm wrong. Totally gone. Listen, these guys cloak themselves in the blanket of freedom all the time.

Let's examine their record. They're for restricting speech, firing you from your job, if you espouse a view that they disagree with, telling women that they can't do certain things with their own bodies, telling the American people that they can't take certain medicines or vaccines that they would like. Restricting my ability as a parent to make decisions over my kids' health care. And the list goes on and on and on. They're attacking institutions that we need to protect speech, whether it's the media, whether it's law firms, whether it's universities, and they're doing it, you know, all in this name of like faux patriotism.

Look, David, these guys are completely full of shit when it comes to freedom. They are continually restricting the freedoms of Americans. I think the Democrats are the ones who are standing up for freedom. We're the one standing up for individual liberties. You want to use Sarah's words? We're the one standing up for that libertarian approach. Leave people to making decisions over their own bodies and allow them to be able to hear all the different perspectives to form their own mindset.

The Republican Party under Donald Trump is restricting our freedoms. And that is very, very dangerous. Now, where I think the big failure and opportunity for the Democratic Party comes is is in the following, and I want to see what you think. We don't have a generic cross-section of society that is perpetrating the vast majority of the political violence or of the shootings. We are talking mostly about young men. And so that should get us to think about how are young men disproportionately the ones ending up in a place where they decide they are going to do some of these things. And unfortunately, the messaging from Democrats,

to young men hasn't really been awesome. I mean, I've done some pretty deep dives into this and a lot of the messaging from the right is completely toxic, but whether it's through business content or fitness content or real estate wholesaling, you get sucked in to the right wing perspective on alpha and beta males, et cetera. The alternative from Democrats, I don't think has been great. It's evidenced in the voting in that young men moved in the direction of Donald Trump in the last election, I don't think there are that many Democratic figures that are sort

of representing a good alternative model as it might be to this kind of alpha, beta male framework that the right has laid out. What do you think and what might be a better approach? Yeah. Look, I would just respectfully kind of push back on maybe the beginning of your of your statement, although I think you've touched on some really important issues. I think we have to be careful to suggest that the violence we're seeing as only limited young males. I was prosecutor for six years prior to being governor.

I mean, we saw a lot of different kind of people engage in violence. And so I think we want to just be a little careful on that. That being said, I think you raise a broader point here about the way in which young men are getting their information, experiencing things being fed to them online. And on that, I think you are really spot on. You know, I'm the father of three young man, a 20-year-old, a 16-year-old, and a 14-year-old. And so I see it directly, the stuff that served up to them on Instagram or TikTok or what have you, the platforms that are trying to, you know, prey on them and move them in a certain direction,

the stuff that just pops up on their reels, even though they didn't go looking at, you know, for it, it's served up to them. It's dangerous. I think the social media companies and their algorithms and their closed systems are designed to create this division and serve a lot of this stuff up to young men in a way that is really dangerous. And I think we've got to push back on that. I've tried to speak out about that. I know others have. I think Governor Cox of Utah did pretty nice job of beginning a conversation on that. There's a lot more work that needs to be done. one of the things we're doing in Pennsylvania, led by my wife Lori, is she's created what we call like a toolkit that's available to parents and teachers on how to help people discern fact

from fiction online. Not that they should view the world from a left-wing perspective or right-wing perspective, but hey, what's fact and what's fiction? What am I getting here that's designed to get me pissed off and enraged about something, what's real and what's not. And I think those are the tools we've got to give the young people. I know there's a move to say, take their phones away. I mean, yeah, sure, maybe in class or something like that. But here's the reality. These phones are around, right? And we're never going to, like, ban this. And so we've got to help our young people be better consumers of this information and discern fact from fiction. I know we're down to our last couple of minutes, just to get on the record that I

wasn't pulling the young men thing out of nowhere, there's very good reporting, including from the Violence Project, that 98% of mass shootings are carried out by men and overwhelmingly they are younger. The median age is 31. So, but your point is a good one, which is we're not only talking about that group, but as a matter of practice, it does seem to be disproportionately that. And that's fair. And I wasn't trying to be argumentative with you. I just think as we think about violence, we think about young people, we think about consuming information, on different platforms. I think we've got to be mindful of young women as well in this process. I mean, we're seeing, by the way, more and more young women, this is not political violence,

but move, you know, be targeted for nihilism and the sort of very dark corners of the internet that try and focus on dragging young women into that space. So I think this is something we've got to deal with with young people across the board. But your point is well taken. I understand where you're coming from. Last thing, in the immediate aftermath, Donald Trump went on national TV and started talking about left-wing scum. He said this is essentially exclusively a left-wing problem, et cetera. My audience has the data, so I don't need you to rebut them on that. But could you give us a sense of what an actual turn down the temperature sort of reaction would have been in this situation from the president? Look, I think what I've tried to do and what other leaders have tried to do,

which is to speak and act with moral clarity, to make clear there is no place for violence in our society, and that political violence is particularly insidious because it's designed to silence people. It's designed to stymie speech, and it's designed to divide us. A president of the United States, who was doing his or her job effectively,

would have pulled us together, put America on their back and made clear that we're better than this. that we're not going to leave any room for this. We're not going to pit one American against the other, but we're going to work together to drown out this hate and stop this level of violence. That is what we need more of in society.

That's how I try and lead in Pennsylvania. I know others are doing that work across America as well, and that's what we need. Instead, the President of United States cherry-picked which type of violence is okay and which type of violence isn't okay. Instead of words of healing, He used the rhetoric of rage, and that makes us all less safe.

We've been speaking with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Governor, thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. David, thank you. Wish you continued success. Many of us know it can be tough to stay on top of nutrition every single day, especially when things get busy and hectic. That is why I've made AG1 part of my morning routine.

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tastes good. Just helps me feel like I'm covering my nutritional bases. And now clinically backed with an advanced formula, it's the perfect time to try AG1 if you haven't. Head to drinkag1.com slash Pacman to subscribe. You'll get a free bottle of AGD3K2, a welcome kit and five travel packs with your first order. The link is in the description. Well, they think they finally got me. Maga thinks they finally found the thing to take me down. Now, as I explain this to you, my question to you all is, are they really this dumb or are they pretending? Let me explain what happened and I want you to make the decision and leave a comment and let me know. After Jimmy Kimmel got fired following threats from Donald Trump himself a couple of months ago, following FCC chairman Brendan Carr,

some of the usual Maga, the threat from FCC chairman Brandon Carr. Some of the usual MAGA suspects decided to take a troll through my old tweets and they think they caught me in a terrible double standard. Now, here's what I said. After Jimmy Kimmel was pushed out at ABC for making a joke about Trump. I tweeted, quote, one of the hallmarks of authoritarianism is to terrify people into self-censorship. ABC ending Kimmel's show is the perfect example of this. But they think they've got me back in 2018 when Roseanne Barr was fired after making a racist tweet. I tweeted, big win in the battle of ideas and free speech. Rosanne said what should she wanted to say, ABC made the business decisions that were right for them.

Now, do you genuinely think people are so dumb that they're going to fall for this? Let me remind you that the first amendment applies to the government. One instance of this is a private company saying, we don't want to employ Roseanne because she's spewing racist trash under our brand. The other is a situation that stemmed from the president of the United States himself and his FCC chairman using the power of the state to threaten and silence a comedian. That is the whole point of the First Amendment. Government censorship versus private decisions.

Now remember that back in July, Donald Trump was already targeting Jimmy Kimmel. He put out a truth social post where he said, quote, everybody is saying that I was solely responsible for the firing of Stephen Colbert from CBS late night. That is not true. The reason he was fired was a pure lack of talent and the fact that this deficiency was costing CBS $50 million a year in losses and it was only going to get worse. Next up will be an even less talent to Jimmy Kimmel and then a weak and very insecure Jimmy Fallon. The only real question is who will go first.

Okay. The day Kimmel was suspended, the FCC chairman had said the following. to Benny Johnson. There's actions that we can take on licensed broadcasters. And frankly, I think that it's, it's really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, listen, we are going to preempt. We're not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out. Because we, we licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC. if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.

So I think, again, Disney needs to see some change here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it's time for them to step up and say, this, you know, garbage. You remember the clip. If you can't tell the difference between ABC without any, no one is even alleging any government interference or pressure whatsoever when in 2018 ABC fired Roseanne Barr. But we have a very different situation now where Trump put a target on the heads of these late night hosts. The FCC chairman put a target on the head.

They've been using lawsuits against media. I don't know if they're really so dumb that they think these two things are the same or if they only believe their audiences are dumb. And the wild thing is here. They'll pretend not to understand the difference. They'll go on Fox News. They'll post clips on social media acting like they caught me in some hypocrisy. So that's my question to you.

Leave me a comment. Send me an email info at David Pakman.com. Do they realize that the Roseanne and Kimmel's situations aren't the same? But they don't think their audiences are smart enough to realize that? Or are the people putting out this trash actually dumb enough not to know the difference? A swollen Donald Trump now says criticizing him on TV is illegal. Well, I guess I'm about to commit a crime, free speech, right? We are seeing the most, by the way, I'm going to have a report about arguably Trump being

the most anti-business president in my lifetime. But right now we're talking about free speech. And I believe this is the most anti-free speech president in my lifetime. Trump said the following about criticisms of him in the media on social media. And a follow-up when Charlie Kirk, there's been a lot of talk about free speech this week. Do you see a difference between cancel culture and consequence culture? I mean, your question's a little trick question. I'm a very strong person for free speech.

At the same time, when you have networks that where I won an election, like in counties, I guess It's 2,600 to 525. That's called landslide times two. When you have that level of popularity or voter support, as I did in the last election, and yet 97 and 94 percent, different numbers, you see different numbers with different stats, but 97, 94, 95, 96 percent of the people are against me in the sense of the newscasts are against me. The stories are 90, they said 97% bad. So they gave me

97. They'll take a great story and they'll make it bad. See, I think that's really illegal personally. It's really illegal personally, says Trump. Unfortunately, it's not. It is very much not illegal. The First Amendment protects exactly this. Media criticism of the president. especially when it's harsh. That's kind of the whole point. You don't get to claim that speech is illegal because Jimmy Kimmel makes a joke you don't like. What would be illegal would be, you know, if there's defamation, knowingly spreading false statements that damage someone's reputation, direct threats, incitement to violence. But 97% of stories against me are negative. That is not defamation. It's called the journalism and a democracy or its satire or its opinion or its comedy.

These are all protected by the First Amendment, which Trump used to say he supports. Now, the Supreme Court has already said a lot about this. The Supreme Court has reaffirmed protections for harsh criticism of public officials. There's a case, New York Times v. Sullivan. In 1960, during the civil rights movement, the New York Times put out a full page ad criticizing how officials in Alabama were treating civil rights protesters. And they had some factual errors, by the way, like the ad misstated how many times Martin Luther King Jr. had been arrested. L.B. Sullivan, a Montgomery city commissioner sued the New York Times for libel, even though he wasn't mentioned by name. And he said the ad defamed him because it criticized the police who were under his authority.

He was initially awarded half a million dollars, which was an insane amount of money back then. And state court said, we uphold this. He was, it was liable. He gets $500,000. But then it went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court overturned it. And Justice William Brennan said, public official suing for defamation must prove actual malice, meaning they have to show that the statement was false. It was published either knowing it was false or with reckless disregard for whether it was true. If someone makes an honest mistake or if someone makes a harsh criticism or someone does negative coverage, you can't win a libel suit over that.

And that ruling ever since has given really strong protection when individuals criticize public officials. And what that ruling really did was it recognized that free debate, even if it has errors, is more important than protecting public officials from hurt feelings. So when Trump goes, oh, the negative coverage is illegal, he's ignoring not only the First Amendment, but he's ignoring that we have a foundational case precedent here that explicitly protects criticism of the president. Notice how it ties right back to the authoritarian playbook. You attack the networks as Democrat operatives. You claim criticism isn't really speech. You hint that it should be illegal and that the government should punish it. And we've seen

it before. They don't stop with the free press. They end this with state media. It's the sort of stuff North Korea has. That's often the end point for these people. Now, my hope, of course, is Trump won't be president long enough to make that happen. But Trump at this point is this swollen, orange, paranoid, desperate being. And when he says mocking him is a crime, what he's really doing is admitting that what he fears more than prison is people laughing at him. And we've known that for a long time. Trump needs to be loved. And I don't know of anyone with a thinner skin than Trump, especially someone as wealthy and powerful as Donald Trump. And his persona was built on telling it like it is. He mocks his opponents. He gives people these insulting nicknames. He runs on culture

war cruelty. But when the tables turn and he's the target of the comedy, he's the target of the satire. He's the target of the criticism. He goes, it should be illegal to criticize me. Constitution be damned. And that's really sort of like the motto. The slogan for this administration should be constitution be damned. We've got a great bonus show for you today. We'll talk about Afghanistan refusing a deal to give bagram base back to the U.S. after Donald Trump said, we want it. We will hear from Nancy Mace, who says trans people should be forcibly institutionalized and psychiatric hospitals. And we will discuss the possibility of an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Senate run or White House run. Does one make more sense than the other? First one than the other.

What do you think? All of those stories on today's bonus show, I am welcoming today. Oh, I got to welcome my new. Hold on. I want to say thank you to the two newest members, Kimberly Segudo and Melissa Lopez, who signed up just in the last couple of hours, our two newest members, join them and get the bonus show every day at join packman.com. And remember that on the 30th, the last day of this month, it is going to be three years, wait, let me, three years, three months, three weeks until Trump's term is over. Three, three, three. And we're doing a one day membership drive with a huge, the big, the biggest discount of the year. If you've been thinking, maybe I'll sign up. The 30th is a great day

to do it. Just get on my newsletter and then you'll be notified of how to make it all happen. You can sign up for the newsletter at substack.davidpack.com. I will see you on the bonus show in mere moments. And I'll be back tomorrow.