The David Pakman Show - 9/23/25: Trump medical misinformation explodes as CEO’s admit the truth

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Nathan Taylor, Executive Director of Public Engagement for Election Truth Alliance, joins us to discuss discrepancies in the 2024 election and how to bolster election integrity -- Donald Trump spreads medical misinformation about Tylenol, autism, and vaccines while fumbling through basic science -- Karoline Leavitt defends Trump with misleading claims, conspiracy-style answers, and dangerous rhetoric about transgender people -- Republicans gain power through relentless organizing while Democrats waste energy on commentary without mobilization -- With authoritarianism accelerating under Trump, mass activism is urgently needed to defend democracy and civil liberties -- Conflicting statements from Howard Lutnick and Karoline Leavitt reveal deep incompetence around Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee plan -- Fortune 500 executives privately acknowledge that Trump’s tariffs, chaos, and political bullying are crippling business and markets -- On the Bonus Show: ABC reinstates Jimmy Kimmel's show, Trump pressures Pam Bondi to prosecute his political opponents, Trump administration cancels hunger reporting, and much more... 💰 Kikoff helps you build your credit! Get your first month for $1 at https://getkikoff.com/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.com/pakman 👩‍❤️‍👨 Try the Paired App FREE for 7 days and get 25% OFF at https://paired.com/pakman ⚠️ 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) Trump pushes Tylenol–autism myths (11:13) Leavitt defends Trump with conspiracies (21:31) GOP organizing outpaces Democrats (27:58) Urgent call for mass activism (36:21) Nathan Taylor Interview (1:05:39) Chaos over $100K H-1B fee (1:11:48) CEOs warn Trump hurts business  

Donald Trump yesterday delivered the most dangerous press conference, I would argue, of his entire presidency of both presidential terms. He said, we've found that Tylenol taken by pregnant women causes autism. We should separate out the MM and R from the MMR vaccine. He said that the Amish and Cuba have no autism. And it was a disgusting, depraved, dilapidated press conference that in some sense, you know, when Trump talked about injecting bleach, injecting bleach, if someone did it, would be very dangerous. But doing it requires like, what's the dose? Do I have the right kind of syringe?

Like the odds of a whole bunch of people going and injecting bleach is relatively low, although doing it would be very dangerous. What Trump is talking about here can be much more easily adopted by parents and individuals and has the potential to become extraordinarily widespread. Now, let's get right into the first clip. The big revelation, they said we're going to have news about autism, as Trump sometimes says it, in September. And he says Tylenol, Tylenol, known generically as acetaminophen, is a culprit. commonly known as Tylenol during pregnancy can be associated with a very increased risk of autism. So taking Tylenol is not good.

I'll say it. It's not good. For this reason, they are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary. Now, by the way, no medication should be taken unless medically necessary. Like that this is all bullshit. I would get a second opinion on the things that Donald Trump is saying here. Now, the main danger with Tylenol's overdose, which can cause severe liver damage. It can be life threatening.

Now, we've long studied Tylenol, again, generically, we're talking about the drug acetaminophen. The safe adult limit is 3 to 4,000 milligrams per day. Depends on health status, depends on guidance from a doctor. If you have liver disease, if you drink alcohol heavily, you're at greater risk. You should talk to a doctor about that. But the link to autism is not just we don't know. It's been debunked. In fact, we, interestingly, when you look at countries with different average rates of Tylenol

consumption or the equivalent, right? places to call it paracetamol, etc. You see that there is not a correlation with autism diagnosis rates. Over the last 10 years in the United States, we've seen Tylenol use by pregnant women decline anyway. And autism diagnosis rates have gone up. Notice I'm saying diagnosis, not autism rates, because we are also exploring how much is autism going up, if at all, versus what is the threshold for diagnosis or our skill at identifying cases. But this is all. just nonsense based on everything we know right now. Now, Trump pulled another one out of his hat. He pulled another, he pulled another turd out of his hat, for lack of a better term. He says,

you look at the Amish, they have no autism. And by the way, I think I can say that there are certain groups of people that don't take vaccines and don't take any pills that have no autism. Autism. That have no autism. Does that tell you something? That's currently, is that a correct statement, by the way? There are some studies that suggest that, yeah, with the Amish, for example. The Amish, yeah, virtually I had no, I heard none. See, Bobby wants to be very careful with what he says and he should, but I'm not so careful

with what I say. We know. If you are a community that distrusts and avoids the medical world, you can avoid diagnosis. If it were true that we believed the Amish had lower autism rates, it was. wouldn't necessarily mean that much. Now, multiple studies and clinical reports have documented autism in Amish communities. The perception of no autism comes from underdiagnosis and under reporting. There's more limited access to healthcare. There's less of a focus on psychiatric evaluation. If you don't take a pregnancy test, you're not pregnant, right? That's ridiculous.

That's to a degree what is happening with the Amish community. But then there's also another part which I want to be culturally sensitive about which which we have to acknowledge, which is that because Amish are on average sort of sheltered and not in Western modern society as we talk about it, there are many Amish who come off as autistic to people who live sort of like in society, but within the Amish communities they sort of blend. And so one of the other things about Amish and autism, not that Trump knows about any of this stuff, but I'm just giving you the information is that a lot of behavior is more common in Amish communities that is seen as neurotypical.

And so distinguishing out the actual cases of autism can sort of be more difficult to do. Kids grow up with this sort of like more tightly structured environment, sheltered, slower pace of life, less emphasis on technology and abstract academics and social media. and sometimes those things can highlight differences between neurotypical and neurodivergent folks. And so it's just not standing out in a way that it ultimately leads to an evaluation and a diagnosis. So to all of this to say, Trump doesn't know what on earth he's talking about.

And he went even further and he said, you know, you look at Cuba. Cuba also had they've got no Thailand all. They've got no autism. This country is going through what parts of the world are going through. And I will say there are parts of the world that don't take Tylenol I mean, there's a rumor and I don't know if it's so or not that Cuba, they don't have Tylenol because they don't have the money to fight Tylenol. And they have virtually no autism.

Okay. Tell me about that one. Well, I will tell you about it. In fact, Cuba has an autism diagnosis rate of about 83 per 10,000 children. That's right about what the United States is, 80 per 10,000 children. In fact, what Trump is saying disproves his hypothesis that the Tylenol all. might lead to autism, because if it's true that Cuba has no Tylenol, and they do have it, but under a different name, the rate of use may be different, but they have virtually the same

rate of autism diagnosis as we do in the United States. Now, it did get to a point where, as is often the case, Donald Trump struggled with reading, and when he tried to say, acetaminophen, sometimes pronounced the cedaminephine, it was difficult, really, really difficult stuff. Effective immediately, the FDA will be notifying physicians at, the use of acety of, well, let's see how we say that. Acidaminophen. Acetaminophen. Is that okay? Which is basically commonly known as Tylenol. It's commonly known as Tylenol. All right. So Trump's struggling. And then finally, Trump also talking about the Hep B vaccine, which is given to infants within usually about an hour of birth.

Trump doesn't like that one either. And hepatitis B is sexually transmitted. There's no reason to give a baby that's almost just born hepatitis B. So I would say wait till the baby is 12 years old. Wait a second. It's sexually transmitted. So give it out at age 12 and formed and take hepatitis B. And I think if you do those things, it's going to be a whole different. It's going to be a revolution in a positive sense. Yeah, well, you know, hep B can spread through sexual contact, but it can spread through blood, saliva, and other fluids. And babies are really vulnerable to it. Sometimes moms don't know they have it and they pass it on. Now, mostly now, at least in the United States, we're testing

pregnant women for that. But later they can come into contact with an infected household. member's blood even through a tiny cut or someone visits. So the newborn Hep B vaccine is used to prevent lifelong infection. It's not because the baby's involved in sexual activity. It's because the risk is so serious and the vaccine works so well and the side effects are so minimal that the risk reward is extraordinarily favorable. That's why you do it. And then Trump's final word of wisdom, MMR, separated. Take the measles vaccine, mumps vaccine, and rebella vaccine, separate them out. I also, and we've already done this, we want no mercury in the vaccine. We want no aluminum in the vaccine. The MMR, I think, should be taken separately. This is based on what I feel

the mumps, measles, and the three should be taken separately. Trump doesn't know what the R is for. And it seems to be that when you mix them, there could be a problem. Yeah, well, we have a bunch of studies that have looked at the MMR shot versus separate measles, mumps and rebella shots, no difference in safety. And in a sort of statistical sense, getting one shot is better than three. because it's fewer times you're sticking a needle into someone. So it's less trauma. Your arm hurts once instead of three times, lower infection risk because there's one poke instead of three. And

the kids are protected in a more timely way. So this all goes back to this Dr. Andrew Wakefield guy who's no longer a doctor. He started the MMR autism stuff. It was based on like 12 kids that were brought to him. There was huge self-selection bias. And he also had a financial stake in a measles only vaccine, the paper was later retracted. His medical license was revoked. So every single one of these ideas is a bad idea. And this is one of those situations where the blue states are really taking the lead on this. You know, you look at California, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut. They are mostly saying we're not changing our guidelines. We're going by what the medical science says, not what Bobby Kennedy or Donald Trump say.

I would argue the most dangerous press conference that Donald Trump has ever done. White House press secretary Caroline Levitt has resurfaced and delivered one of the most disgusting press briefings that I have ever seen. Her press briefing rate has slowed down. It's almost down. I was going to make an IQ joke. It's very low. We talked about how previous prior to yesterday, she had only done one press briefing for all of the month of September. Why? Well, they don't have a lot of positive things to tout and they don't really want questions about a lot of the things that are going wrong. Well, Caroline Levitt resurfaced. She was asked, how is Trump bringing the temperature down for political violence in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's killing when at the

in his usual eulogy, which is a term we're using very loosely. It was more of a political speech. But at the eulogy Trump delivered for Charlie Kirk, Trump said he hates his political opponents. How does that bring the temperature down? Here's how Caroline Levitt answered. Yesterday. So we heard from Erica Kirk. She said she forgives the man who shot and killed her husband. And then right after that, we heard from the president who said, I hate my opponent and I don't want the best for them. How does that square with bringing down the temperature of political violence in this country? And then if I could, I had a follow up on Venezuela too. Look, the president is authentically himself. I think that's why millions of Americans across the

country love him and support him, including Erica. Herk, who you saw so beautifully, was on stage with the president in an unthinkable moment in the midst of an unthinkable tragedy and was leaning on the president for support during that time. And he was there to give it to her as well as the vice president and many other top ranking cabinet officials. Now you may not have heard an answer there other than Trump is authentically himself. And that's true.

Trump's authentic self is divisive. He's divisive by nature. That's why he said, I hate my political opponents. It's very simple. Now, yesterday I told you about how Donald Trump's deportations are, Tom Homan, was caught accepting $50,000 in cash at a Kava restaurant between olives. He was handed 50 grand in cash. That investigation was ended by Trump, clearly the swamp-filling political cronyism that

Donald Trump said he would eliminate. Caroline Levitt was asked about it. She goes, well, he just didn't take the cash. Thank you, Kelly. So, too, on the Holman investigation, I mean, can you just speak to, did the president ask the Justice Department to close the case? And does Holman have to return the $50,000? Well, Mr. Holman never took the $50,000 that you're referring to. So you should get your facts straight, number one. Number two, this was another example of the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump's strongest and most vocal supporters in the midst of a presidential campaign. You had FBI agents, going undercover to try and trap one of the president's top allies and supporters, someone who they knew very well would be taking a government position months later. Mr. Holman did absolutely nothing wrong. And even the president's Department of Justice, even Cash Patel's FBI looked into this just

to make sure they had a number of different prosecutors and FBI agents who looked. Listen, so she now is saying he never took the cash. There's a little problem with this. Krendelanian from MSNBC explains it in a tweet. He said, quote, the White House is now saying Tom Homan didn't take the 50,000 in cash. That was not part of their statement when we first went to them on Saturday. Multiple people familiar with the case say he did accept the money, as does an internal government document reviewed by MSNBC.

So she's lying now. She just, she just lies. She lies. The big, it's almost like, you know, Pinocchio's nose gets bigger, the more he lies. Caroline Levitt's cross hanging from her neck seems to get bigger, the more she's. lies and she's got a big one on yesterday. It's a big boy. And we have a government document that says he did accept the 50 grand in cash. And also the initial response from the White House did not deny that he accepted the $50,000 in cash. Caroline Leavitt was asked about something

economic related. And she claims Trump has secured $9 trillion in investment to the United States. As I've said before, this is also not true. It is lie after lie after lie. Part of President Trump's mission to restore America as the manufacturing superpower of the world. He has secured nearly $9 trillion in U.S. investment, nearly nine times more than Biden attracted in his entire four-year term. And we expect that number to be upwards of $15 trillion very soon. Now, as I've said before, Donald Trump has not secured any of that money, just to pick one. The United Arab Emirates, for example, said we would consider 1.4 trillion.

trillion in business with you over a 10-year period if there are deals and projects that we find to be suitable. Trump came back from the Middle East trip and said, I've got the money almost like they stuffed it into the wings of the plane, right? But these are theoretical commitments over a 10-year period. The entire GDP of the United States is about $30 trillion. The idea that Trump brought $9 trillion home is ridiculous. And then finally, finally, Caroline Levitt.

says we need to look into transgender violence, even though statistically trans shooters. By the way, remember that the Charlie Kirk shooting, we were first told the shooter is trans. We were then told the bullets are trans. And then we were told the roommate slash love interest is trans. That third thing may or may not be true. We still don't know. But trans shooters are underrepresented relative to their proportion of the population. But Caroline Levitt says, oh, no, we've got to look into transgender violence. Really what we need to look into is violence against trans people. As president last night on Air Force one about this pattern of transgender violence, we're seeing, you know, Charlie's, Charlie's killer lived with his boyfriend who identifies

as transgender and then we have the annunciation shooting, the covenant shooting, all of these incidents. The president said that we're looking into transgender violence. Does that mean the FBI is looking into it? And can you give any more clarity on how the administration is just viewing this uptake and specifically transgender violence. It's definitely something worth looking into, and I think anyone who denies that at this point is being willfully ignorant, and the administration is taking it seriously, all causes of violence, and why these people would be driven to such evil and such hatred. And there's probably many answers to that question, but the administration is really focused

on all of them for individual investigations and cases, of course, the FBI and the Department of Justice are leading those. You know, young white men are dramatically overrepresented as perpetrators of violence relative to their share of the population. And I haven't heard a single one of these people go, we really need to look into what's going on with young white men. Why are they committing so much violence? On the other hand, trans people are disproportionately victims of violence are underrepresented

as shooters. And yet Donald Trump and Kuki Caroline want you to believe that we. really need to investigate why so many trans people are committing acts of violence. It's sickening, sickening stuff. And we're going to cover this in more detail on our substack. If you're not getting my substack, I would love it if you did. It's free. Okay. I'm selling you nothing other than offering you a free good time. Go to substack. David Pakman.com. Make sure you're getting my newsletter. And we're going to follow up in more detail about this issue. You know, no matter how fast time seems to be flying by, it is never too late to make some progress. If you're saving for a

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in every box. When you subscribe at wildgrain.com slash Pacman, the link is in the description. All right. On September 30th, we are doing a one day membership special. That date will mark three years, three months, and three weeks remaining of Donald Trump's presidency before we can send it to the dustbin of history, right? As Ron De Sanctimonious would say, we are doing. We are doing, a blowout one day membership drive. I would love for you to participate if you are not currently a member. Make sure you're on my newsletter. And then you'll get an email on the 30th telling you how to avail yourself of this explosive and dangerous membership discount. Hopefully the uh, hopefully cash Patel doesn't shut us down because the membership discount is so huge. And if you

don't want to wait until the 30th, you can sign up today at join Pacman.com. I hate what I'm about to admit to you. I really do. But we may lose again and again and again because the truth is that the right has figured out something that the left exhaustingly still has not, which is that it is not enough to say Trump is corrupt. He's authoritarian. He's dangerous and to send a strongly worded letter. It is not enough.

It's true that Trump is corrupt. It's true that he's an authoritarian. It's true that he's dangerous. But oftentimes we are not mobilizing people on the left. are rightly angry. But meanwhile, Republicans have made calls to action their entire playbook. They are mobilizing. And I want to break down some of the areas in which they are absolutely crushing us. You look at school boards, okay? Moms for Liberty, Liberty floods meetings until they control the agenda. They get bookspan. They bully teachers about a curricula. They reshape curricula in towns

you maybe haven't even heard of. And Democrats, you know, we've got a strongly worded op-ed in the local paper. Maybe we've got a hashtag campaign or somehow like that. One side is showing up in the room. The other is writing tweets about the room. You then look at youth recruitment. Obviously, we've got to talk about Turning Point USA. They built this entire pipeline, the campus chapters and the conferences and the trip trips to Arizona or Florida or whatever, wherever the merchandise and all of it. They are really training the next generation of right wing organizers. And the left is counting on young people to vote because Republicans suck. It's not that much of a plan. It's really wishful thinking. You then go to state houses where

Republicans are treating abortion bans like a weekly grind. They show up every session. They introduce bills. They push votes. They don't stop until something else. until something is passed while Democrats sometimes do show up once. Sometimes Democrats lose and then they go to Twitter and they say the system's broken. Well, the system is broken. That's why Republicans are exploiting it. But unless we actually take that back, we're not going to be able to fix it. We're not going to be able to win. You look at the administration of elections and what's called the precinct strategy. What Republicans have done is look at the dullest corners of politics, county election boards, and they turn it into an.

organizing target. And now they start stacking those county election boards with their own people. And on the left, we say, oh, you know, this is, we don't even realize we're getting out flanked by something that sounds really boring. And then finally, you got to look at higher education. This one is quieter, but maybe it's the most pernicious. Red state governors have discovered they can take over universities by filling the trustee boards with partisans.

DeSantis did it in Florida. out diversity programs, rejected tenure, fired faculty, installed right-wing activists as leadership. Glenn Yonkin has been doing it in Virginia. Greg Abbott's been doing it in Texas. Republican legislatures have been doing it elsewhere in the Midwest. Missouri's one place where it's happening. So this is not like culture war rhetoric.

This really is structural power. Trustees control budgets. They control faculty hiring. They control tenure. They control accreditation. And Republicans saw the boards that ran universities and said, this. This is our organizing target. This is how we can start controlling the culture from the bottom up.

Many Democrats didn't even realize the boards existed until they had already been captured by Republicans. So the pattern here is the right is doing a lot of critiquing, but they're mobilizing and organizing. The left is doing more critiquing than anything else. And so we often win arguments and then Republicans actually win power and win ground. So this is not just about what the left doesn't do. about what we waste time doing, pouring energy into, sometimes it's candidates that have no chance to be quite honest and Twitter debates that convince no one and symbolic gestures.

And I understand the politics of performance or the performance of politics, maybe better said, but Republicans are more focused on the power of politics. Now, this is why I think Gavin Newsom's Proposition 50 feels like a little bit of a spark. Whatever you think of Newsome, he's at least experiment. with the right formula and he's pairing critique with action, Prop 50 is not just another speech about Republicans being wrong. It's a specific and concrete initiative. It forces a fight. It gives people a clear yes or no choice. They're going to vote on it. It's mobilizing volunteers. It's generating interest online. And so it's the idea, and this is why I'm optimistic about it,

that if you combine messaging with organizing, you can do more than just win an argument. Now, I expect that for as long as the left is playing defense and the right is playing offense, we're going to be sort of like fact checking from the sidelines. We're going to win a lot of arguments, but not much more. So the question I have is, what would it look like if Democrats and progressive media and other voices like the David Packman show? If we all combined the critique with a couple of concrete steps, one thing that people could do today because we know that the critique alone isn't enough. And if the left doesn't learn that lesson,

I hate to admit it, but there's going to be another loss and another loss and another one after that. The time for mass activism, I believe, has arrived. It's not someday. It's not, you know, after the next election we might really need to get out there. It's not after we get the courts involved. It's not when Republicans finally go too far. They've gone too far. The fantasy is gone. the time I believe is right now. Let me lay it out. We are in 2025. Trump's back in power. He's governing like the strong man authoritarian. He promised to govern us. He has floated suspending habeas corpus. He's cracked down on protest. He says criticizing him on TV feels and should be illegal to him. He's gotten entertainers fired because they criticize him. So we are way beyond rhetoric.

We are way beyond hypotheticals. It's happening right now. Now, unlike Donald Trump's first term. Trump has learned a couple of things. Back in the first term, sometimes the system would sort of trip up Trump. Courts would block his worst ideas. Some cabinet members would resist the chaos. It's gone. Today, the courts are stacked with loyalists. The federal government has been purged of dissent and the movement is very disciplined. So we are sprinting into this authoritarianism. The climate around political violence is deteriorating very quickly after the killing of Charlie Kirk. The rights response was actually more incitement. Trump calling, but talking about leftist scum and how he hates his political enemies.

MAGA leaders are openly encouraging their base to see violence as politics, but it's just a different name for it. They're giving permission for the rage to spill into the streets and to really treat political opponents as targets. And the contrast couldn't be clearer because when the left organizes a peaceful march, police are deployed in riot gear. When the right talks about Second Amendment solutions, they're treated as patriots by the MAGA people. And then on top of this, free speech is under siege right now.

The pushing out of Coburn Kimmel, although I guess Kimmel's coming back, although I guess the affiliate stations won't be airing the show, so it's all really wacky. The message that's being sent is you criticize the president. and you're gone. Your career is at risk. And it's not because of bad ratings. It's because you crossed an authoritarian line with your satire. So you combine that with book bans and curriculum censorship, attacks on independent media. The picture is very clear. Now, just as a reminder, remember to like this video and share it. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube. This is a critical time to do it. And a lot of the ways that you can help support the media you do like are free.

share, subscribe. But all of this is feeling very familiar. And history is full of examples of what happens when you start to lose in this way. The labor movement didn't get the 40 hour work week because it was handed to them. They organized and walked out and forced the issue. The civil rights movement was not one in courtrooms alone. There were the mass marches. There were the siddons.

There was the bravery of people who said, we're not going to accept injustice like this anymore. And so you look at different countries, you look at Hungary, you look at Turkey, Russia, authoritarian leaders tightened their grip because a lot of people assume someone else is going to act. So then they can ratchet it a little bit tighter and then it becomes difficult to act. So that is why I believe right now in September of 2025, the case for real activism in the streets has never been stronger. sustained visible activism. Now, I wrote about this. My book, The Echo Machine is back here.

I got something really weird going on on my hair. I wrote about this in my book, The Echo Machine, which is that historically, it's been boycotts, strikes, marches, sit-ins and sustained public pressure that force elites to act rather than stay comfortable. It worked for labor. It worked for civil rights. It worked during the AIDS crisis. There's a lot of times that it worked. And so voting matters, but marching, striking, boycotting, refusing to normalize what's happening is a part of it. And activism is what puts authoritarian regimes on defense. And it's the only thing that has ever shaken entrenched power. Now, I've covered politics for nearly two decades. Bush, Obama, Trump's first term, Biden. There is no moment at which I believe.

believed more strongly than I do now that mass activism may be the only way forward. The institutions we thought would save us have been captured by Trump. The elites we thought maybe would stand up even if only for their own interests. They are mostly silent. And so are we now at the breaking point that people have been waiting for? I don't think the question is whether activism is necessary. It's are we willing to do it? Are we willing to risk inconvenience, discomfort, maybe worse, right?

To stop the authoritarian slide. History tells us the answer determines whether democracy survives. And I do believe Trump will leave. I do believe there will be a 2028 election. But the question mark is how much damage is Trump going to do between now and then. So I want to hear from you. I believe the time for mass activism is not after the next outrage. It's not tomorrow.

I believe it's right now. There have been anecdotally some protests, no Kings 1, no Kings 2, et cetera. What do you believe? Is this the time and must it start right now? Info at David Pakman.com let me know and leave a comment on this video if you're watching on YouTube. Have you ever wanted to feel more connected to your partner but feel? found that daily life gets in the way. There is an app designed specifically to help couples

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connection or you've been together for years paired helps make it easy and enjoyable to strengthen your relationship and it's just five minutes a day head to pared.com slash Pacman for a seven-day free trial and 25% off your subscription. The link is in the description. Donald Trump has already packed his second term cabinet with loyalists. He's threatened deportation as political punishment. He's expanded executive authority in ways we have not seen in modern history. These are real changes that are happening right now.

And 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

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Today, I'm going to be speaking with Nathan Taylor, executive director of public engagement for the election truth alliance. This is quite, quite honestly, Nathan, this is one of the most requested interviews over the last couple of months with folks saying you've got to hear Nathan out and hear what he has to say. So can it maybe what I'll do is I'll set up my understanding of some of the claims that have been made about the election and then you'll explain to me what your claim is. Is that fair? Yeah, let's do it.

So Greg Pallist put out a piece some time ago. I looked at the piece. The piece made a number of claims that I found to be a little too circumstantial for me to make a definitive statement about 2024. They included extrapolations of prior, for example, black voter behavior in terms of the split between Democrats and Republicans, assumptions about changes to the number of registered voters, extrapolating from that in some cases with eight or 10 year old data to make claims about 2024, it didn't feel super solid to me.

And so I came away from those claims sort of saying, listen, I'm open to hearing anything. This I don't find convincing. So let's now give with that as the context, give us the, at the most basic level, the claim you're making. And then we will talk about the evidence. Yeah, sure. And if I may, I'd love to throw a little bit of background at you just for my work history and the ETA. So my personal background, I have a degree in cybersecurity and information systems. I am also, I was a 25 Bravo computer tech specialist in the Army. Actually, commissioned as a signal officer as well. So I do know a little bit about computers, computer systems, some data analysis. And on the civilian side, I worked with a company that provided real-time network. monitoring for multiple entities like banks. So I've done a lot of data analysis. I've looked at network security. And what happened was right after the election, there were multiple red flags

that brought the ETA together. So the ETA at this point, there's three executives, me, Lily and Jive. Lillian Jive have different backgrounds in either statistics and finance or political science. So we all got together. That's when we sat down and we said this. We said there are some interesting things with the election. Let's do a little bit of investigation. Let's see what can we start looking at to determine if our elections are being run correctly, free, fair, safe, and secure. That was the concern as we wanted to verify the vote, to validate. And so that is what we did. We started bringing in volunteers with various backgrounds and statistics. Some of them have PhDs and statistics. Some of them are auditors or computer scientists. And,

that's when we sat down and we said, okay, how could we look at elections and how could we perhaps apply statistics to look at elections to flag any concerns? And at the time, we knew that there was audits in the elections. We reviewed those. And if you're familiar, audits, that's a standard practice in finance, engineering, public safety. So auditing elections shouldn't be that much of a concern, but immediately when we did start talking about this right after the election, the concern was, as you said, people wanted very credible, very well-established concerns, and the common pushback was election denial was on the rise. So I just want to make that clear. This is not election denial. This is election integrity and auditing. This is a standard practice. And because of that

mindset, we said, okay, let's do this. If you can apply statistics to detect fraud in banking. If you can apply statistics to do safety and quality testing and engineering, why can't we use statistics to flag non-human or abnormal voting behavior that could mean vote manipulation? That's what we said. And then we discovered this is already a thing. It's happening outside the U.S. already. There are already election fraud experts such as Roman U.D. Sergei's Filkin, Peter Klymick et al, who've been applying election statistics to Russian elections, to elections in Afghanistan, Kenya, and Bolivia. And they have all begun to find credible concerns of election front.

So we took their techniques, and the ETA has ran with those methods. And we've begun to analyze swing states and non-swing states for the 24 election. And then we begin to publish those reports. So that's the background. As you said, I'd love to kind of walk you through some of the things we do, some of the things we find, and then the big picture. So any questions are anything so far? Yeah. So let's, in order to pick one.

thing because we could spend hours on this. Let's go to is there and then you walk me through the example if you have it. Is there a state that was reported as one by one candidate that your analysis leads you to believe that was wrongly reported. And in fact, the will of the voters was that the other candidate should have been awarded that state. Yes, we've published two different reports now, both for swing states, three in total, but two of them meet that criteria, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. If you're familiar with Pennsylvania, there's a lot of controversy around Pennsylvania, especially on election night. I think they had over 30 bomb threats and multiple machine failures across the state. So what we've done for Pennsylvania, and the report

is on our website right now, Alexatruthliances.org, and we've analyzed the entire state of Pennsylvania, every county in the state. We've also analyzed three main, very strong Democratic counties and put those up in the report. So what our statistics is finding and what our statistics does? So, for example, we like to use the work of Dr. Walter Meben and Peter Clemick as examples. So I do have a visual for you. Now is probably a great time to reference it. So what we've done. On the first slide for these visuals, this is a heat map. And as I said, this is an example of how we do statistical analysis of elections. This is a method developed by Peter, Peter Klemich, at all. So this is a group of election fraud experts and statisticians.

And they've said, let's look at Russian elections. Let's look at Ugandan elections. And they put out a paper. And on the right side of the screen, we reference their statistical analysis of those elections. So we see Russia in 2011, Russia in 2012, and we see a Uganda, which I don't know the exact date, but it's in their paper is one of their foundations. And so what a heat map does is we look at every precinct in a county. This data is public. You can go get it from the county's websites. You can get it from the state. So we took publicly available data and we developed this heat map on the left for you. In California is an example of what we argue is more of a normal and expected election.

Per the work of Peter Klimick, they say a non-manipulated election should be more of a circle. There should be no noticeable shifts in precincts of high versus low turnout. And that's what we're measuring. So the X-axis turnout. Turnout is just how many votes were cast

compared to how many people could vote. And that's it. So if you're 50% turnout, half of your voters showed up and voted. And then the Y-axis is the amount of votes each candidate got. looking at one candidate for these heat maps and that's Donald Trump win candidate in a majority of the swing state, all the swing states.

So Nathan, if I may here, just to make sure we're not missing anything. The idea here is by looking at voter turnout versus candidate performance, you're accounting for the size of the precinct. In other words, we're already adjusting for population density insofar as we're not looking at the number of people that voted. we're looking at the percentage of eligible voters in a precinct. So we this is not about, oh, well, it makes sense because denser urban areas tend to lean one way. We've accounted for that by looking at voter turnout rather than number of votes. Yes. And this is, as I said, based exactly

on the work of Peter Klemich and other experts that have looked at other elections. So we're actually going to compare U.S. elections to some European and other elections. Got it. And I'll run you through just very quickly what is concerning and what would be potential vote manipulation on a heat map. If you look at Russia on the right side of this, a heat map that begins to stretch up into the right could be indication of vote manipulation. Specifically, it may be an effect of ballot stuffing. Whether it's physical ballot stuffing or digital ballot stuffing, we don't know. That's where you would go and investigate on the ground. But as we see in Russia, in both 2011, 2012, they have key indicators that they are potentially manipulating the elections in Russia by stuffing. And you actually

see some places in Russia in 2012 that are at 100% turnout. And that's in the top right of the little grid there for the heat map. So as you see, California, we're going to use California as a baseline here. This is Chasta County. This was won by Trump. So this is what's important. That county was won by Trump. But it looks statistically normal. It looks like a circle. Trump genuinely won that county is your belief. Yes, yes. Statistically speaking, there are no red flags here. It looks very normal. And then, so we'll go to the third slide for you. And this is, as you said, are we concerned that there was multiple states, a single state that could have had vote manipulation change the outcome of the election at the presidential level? So Pennsylvania 24. This is every precinct

in every county in Pennsylvania. This took a lot of work. to pull all that data together. But we visualize it here for you on the left. And immediately, we see a serious concern that instead of what we would expect in a free and fair election, which is a more circular distribution, we see a strong shift where in places of higher turnout, in precincts of higher turnout, independent of county. So we're looking at Philadelphia. We're looking at Allegheny County.

We're looking at Erie County. These are some of the more blue counties in the state, even in those counties. In precincts, over 60% turnout, the Republican candidate for president begins to win in those precincts. They begin to get more votes consistently. And what's important here is, as most people would say, maybe there's some really strong pockets of Republican voters in some places. This effect is consistent across a majority of the precincts. This isn't just a handful. This is almost algorithmic in nature.

And that's what our analysis is showing here. And the other half of it is as well. there's almost an artificial wall, and you can see it for Pennsylvania, where instead of that more circular round effect, we see a stretching around 85% turnout. So it almost seems like these precincts could have been, in this case, this could be vote manipulation stuffing. They could have been stuffed up to around 85%, 80, 85%, and then any votes after that point, deleted. So the, if we are to assume the worst here, and then we'll get to the differential diagnosis in a moment, And I have some other questions.

If we assume the worst, the technique would be maybe the voter turnout didn't really go as high as it looks like in some of these areas. It's like over 90%. I'm looking at the chart. Is it like 92, 93% in some of these counties? Is that right? Yeah, in some of these counties and precincts. So maybe instead of really having that level of turnout, the real level of turnout was lower,

but there was manipulation either physical or digital, as you say, ballot stuffing or through technological systems, which credited votes above and beyond the real votes to candidate Trump. Is that essentially the sort of like most dystopian interpretation of this? I would say this. We don't truly know how much of this could be stuffing versus switching, but we do know the scale of impact. So we don't know exactly what the real turnout could have been.

was still expected to be very high, but we do know that switching, deleting votes and stuffing votes could create this effect. And we are able to estimate the amount of votes that could have been impacted at the presidential race in Pennsylvania. And per our analysis and per the work of Dr. Walter Meben, he's a PhD statistician professor at the university of, I'll have to double check which exact university is. I think it's Michigan. And so he's put up a paper as well. he actually looked at Pennsylvania. So, as you said, do we think this is enough to change the outcome of Pennsylvania for the 24 election? 120,000 or so, 121, or 22,000 votes is what Trump was winning by in Pennsylvania for the presidential race.

Our analysis says potentially 190,000 votes could be manipulated, stuffing, switching. And Dr. Mevin even supports, and his model. model, his method even says up to maybe 210,000. So yes, if this is vote manipulation, if these effects from high turnout bending fitting one candidate is because of some type of digital vote manipulation, this would be enough to change Pennsylvania. And we're seeing the same effect in North Carolina, which it would be enough as well. The margin is 184,000. We have over 190,000 flagged anomalous votes. And it could be enough to change the outcome in Nevada as well. And these are just the states we publish.

We've been looking at other states that, other swing states that raise the same concerns. Statistically, we just haven't yet estimated the potential impact. So as of right now, if indeed, let's assume it's true, Harris really won Pennsylvania, Harris really won North Carolina, Harris really won Nevada. Trump actually still has 270 in that scenario, but what you're saying is this is only what you've published and you believe there is more. Yes. So the common pushback we get is everyone says every state runs their own election, every state uses different systems. What we've started to find as we do this analysis is what is the common trend between all of these swing states and all

of these other states that we've not published yet. We are finding these concerns statistically. And it's very simple and very concerning. This is where my background with cybersecurity starts to jump in is we did find that at least 70. percent of the U.S. uses the top two voting systems. And these include the tabulation machines. And so this is a fact I want you to understand. If you are able to compromise these systems, these tabulation systems, in 2024, nearly 100 percent of votes were counted by tabulation machines at some step in the process, even the handmarked paper ballots. And so that's very important is because we're seeing in these swing states, they're all using these same systems. And

we're starting to find in states that aren't swing states that do use these systems the same effects. And as of this moment, that leans more towards the technological manipulation rather than the physical ballot stuffing, right? I mean, because the physical ballot stuffing would not be as relevantly mediated by the same tabulators. The tabulators seem to point more to the technological manipulation? Yes, the consistency, how aggressive and consistent this is across multiple precincts and counties, points to it being a system instead of people going and doing things because it's too algorithmic.

We can actually, we've begun to now analyze, is there a consistent pattern? Is there an algorithm? Is there, you know, a formula? And we're able to start seeing that there may be a formula in how these votes are being shifted around. And that'll be coming out and go forward. Yeah, go ahead. One of the questions I know my audience will have is, does the scenario Nathan is drawing

up require individuals at either every county precinct, et cetera, or would this, and again, this is all, I'm not telling my audience this is what happened. I'm asking questions to try to figure out exactly what the claims are. Would this be something that theoretically could be pre-installed in some of these machines such that the machines already know what to do, and it doesn't require someone in Pennsylvania in Philadelphia Precinct 39 is pressing a button. Yes, the concern is that whether through compromise of the vendors, through a common point, like, for example, some of these systems use hard drives if you were able to influence

them before those high drives ever get sent out or putting code on the machines. Yes, you could do this before the election. Cybersecurity wise, an example of this is this is. just malware that would have a time to window to execute. It wouldn't be manipulating votes or changing things before the election or after the election just during that window. And we actually found, and this is something people know about, but maybe not as readily, is we, there's an example of this have already happened with technology. Have you heard of Dieselgate? Dieselgate. Oh, this is the Volkswagen gas mileage scandal, I guess we would call it. Yes. So Dieselgate

was where Volkswagen had a software program to cheat emissions and when they were auditing the machines in a lab or when testing them, the cars ran normally and their emissions was normal. Right. But the data from emissions reports

wasn't matching up. There was way higher emissions than what should have been accounted for. So some independent non-profits actually got together and they took a Volkswagen system and they put a tester on the back of the vehicle in the trunk and on the tailpipe, and they drove it on the highway.

And in use, the Volkswagen began to output higher emissions. So they had designed a way to cheat audits so that when they're being tested, they look normal. But when they're in use, they begin to act in this way. If it was voting systems, you could do the same thing. Whether by design or through malware, during testing, you wouldn't catch any problems. But when they're being used, you could manipulate votes. And the other half of the battle is we're finding the largest voting system brand in the U.S.

They do seem to have cellular modems in their tabulators that counties are using to send early reports to the counties from the precincts. We've begun to investigate this as well because the common pushback is our systems aren't connected to the internet. Your tabulators could be. And if I have the means to compromise them digitally, I don't ever have to be anywhere near these systems when they're operating. I can compromise them before during testing, put malware on them at any point in the process, and then manipulate votes. And it would be very difficult to catch that without sufficient audits and without statistical investigation to go and figure out where to look. All right. I want to ask you about one more thing, and then I'll sort of give my sense to my audience of what I think makes sense to do based on what you're asserting.

I want to just propose a differential diagnosis, right? What we're pointing to here is an association between counties. Sorry, is it counties or precincts with higher turnout? Precincts in this case, precincts. What you've identified as an association between higher turnout at the precinct level and a larger share of the vote going to Donald Trump. That's the association that you've identified that we're focusing in on here. Is it possible?

Is it possible? Or from a statistical perspective, how would we contradict the idea that the, that the There are certain parts of states where due to what's happening socioculturally, it makes sense that the higher turnout correlates with more support for Trump. For example, I'll propose one possibility. In some areas, just based on activism and who's there, new voters said, let's get together and vote Trump. It was specifically a Trump supporting effort. And so that explains why you've got an anomalous larger turnout share, but it is because of some state level activism or precinct level activism, that it was mostly Trump supporters

that said, hey, we're going to turn out more than we did in previous times. Is that a plausible differential diagnosis here? That is a good concern. But two things is the first, we're seeing this effect even in places where the population wouldn't match the results. in some of the most heavily Democratic registered places in the U.S., Nevada, Las Vegas. We're still seeing this effect, but this effect isn't happening right at the beginning. It happens almost after a certain threshold of votes or a certain threshold of turnout.

And that's what's weird, is if we were seeing high votes for Trump from the beginning or from low turnout to high turnout places, then yes, this would be normal. But it almost seems to begin to happen after a threshold. And here's what's interesting. There's the last little piece. We haven't revealed this yet. So this is the first time anyone's ever going to see this. We asked the question, which is if the concerns we're finding is a compromise of the systems, what if we look at the places that did hand count some of their precincts and some of their counties in the 24 election?

And that is the second slide we have for you. And this is very simple. this is 24 this is in Minnesota so St. Louis County they hand count a few of their precincts and they do have almost like a split where some of the some of the like half the county

will do machine and half the county will do hand counting and in this case we compared the two this is the same county and this is 24 and we found that in the precincts that hand counted their results Trump won this county

overall by the way in this sense he got more votes. I think you got a little closer to 55% of the votes in this county. We found that in precincts that hand counted their results, Trump was receiving on average around 40% of the vote. In precincts that they machine counted using these tabulation systems that were flagging as a concern, Trump got 7% more of the vote consistently across all of those precincts. That put him above the 50% margin. And statistically speaking, this does not look like a free and fair result. It actually exhibits effects of potential switching of votes for the machine. Now, again, differential diagnosis playing devil's advocate. Yeah. Is it possible that there are reasons that correlate with

Trump voting why Trump voting precincts would be more likely to machine count than hand count, right? Because we've got to back that out in order to be able to make the claim. Yeah, that's a good point, that's something you would be able to identify as you dive a little bit deeper into historical representations, which we will be releasing as we go forward is we actually have the same data, multiple elections going in the past. And we asked the question then of when did these places actually start using voting systems? And we'll be publishing that as we go forward. But no, these are good concerns. I will highlight one other thing then, which is less about the data, but more about the intent. So as we said, if you were to pull this,

off, right? It would take access to these systems or compromises of these systems. And honestly, like, that would be hard to go unnoticed, right? But we do have examples of these systems being targeted. Back in 2024, in November 13th, free speech for people had a group of cybersecurity experts say, hey, we know about known attempts to compromise the election systems across the U.S. Examples of this was in Messick County, Colorado in 2021, when actors breached voting systems in potential benefit of, you know, Trump's administration or Trump's campaign at the time. We see these same examples in Coffee County, Georgia. So what's interesting to us is if this is a compromise, as we said, we're going to keep putting these reports out there. We're going to keep

asking these questions. And I love the devil's advocate because that's what you have to do to test things. Yeah. But we've moved forward. The ETA has moved forward from statistical reporting to actual on-the-ground investigation. So that is the other half of what we do now is we will continue to put out these statistical analysis, but we ask the question, if this is vote manipulation, let's go to these places, and let's work with the people on the ground, and let's see if we can find evidence that this is a real concern. And we are moving forward with two cases litigation where we have found sufficient concerns

of a vote manipulation. We've not published these yet. And we were hoping to file our first lawsuit this month, we're, you know, we've actually hit the opposite of what you'd expect, which is we have so much that we're struggling to cut out the things we think are less effective and put in. And I can maybe tell you just a few examples of what we are finding. Well, you know, what I would rather do is just get, there were a couple things I wanted to ask about.

And then I think maybe what you're, that might be best left for a second interview. But so, so my audience knows right now, you've talked about Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Nevada in this interview as published stuff, that would still give Trump 271. Is it your belief right now as you speak to me based on everything you have published and not yet published that Donald Trump did not genuinely win the 2024 election? As of right now, every set of data and additional evidence that we have found points to a serious concern that our election system could be compromised. It could have changed the outcome of not only the presidential election of the 24, but it could

have also impacted state, Senate, and House positions that would go on to impact Congress. Okay. So here's what I'm going to say to my audience and encourage them to do, which is what I'm going to do. Nathan has laid out this case. He's provided some visuals. The first thing I would do is now I'm going to go and first try to verify that the data Nathan's working with is accurate. That's the first thing is the input data accurate. I'm then going to

evaluate his conclusions, delve more deeply into differential diagnoses, and that's the process I will start to use to make a decision. And then what I would love to do, Nathan, is after you, you have more to reveal. And after I've had a chance to do that, we could have you back and have another conversation. Yeah, that would be great. Our data is actually our methods and our data is public at data.electiontrutheliance.org. We built a dashboard, digital dashboard. So you can actually go download the data for yourself, compare it to the county and state reports. And then you can do your own method or analysis or apply our method analysis yourself on the dashboard. All right. We've been speaking with Nathan Taylor, executive director of public engagement for the election truth

alliance. Nathan, I appreciate you being here. Of course, this is opening up a very serious potential can of worms, which we're going to investigate. I look forward to speaking to you again. Thank you so much for having me. And I have a lot more to share. Every time you Google your name, you will probably find dozens of sites that expose your personal information. This can include phone number, home address, family details. It's just sitting there waiting to be scraped or abused. Incogni is a privacy service. They go after these sites on your behalf. They contact the data brokers. They demand your data be removed, which the brokers are legally required to do. Incogni will automatically remove your information from hundreds of the biggest and most notorious

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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. A terminal level of confusion has hit Donald Trump's White House as the result of more utter incompetence among those around him. We have the receipts. And it would honestly be funny to watch if people's well-being and livelihood didn't depend on this stuff. Now, let me explain to you what's going on.

Donald Trump's press secretary Caroline Levitt had to hit Twitter to try to clarify that Donald Trump's proposed new $100,000 H-1B visa fee is a one-time fee, not an annual fee. Now, Caroline Levitt's tweet is the following. Quote, to be clear, this is not an annual fee. It's a one-time fee that applies only to the petition. Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will not be charged $100,000 to re-enter. H-1B visa holders can leave and re-enter the country to the same extent as they normally would.

Whatever ability they have to do that is not impacted by yesterday's proclamation. And this applies only to new visas, not renewals, and not current visa holders. It will first apply in the next upcoming lottery. cycle. Now, why is Caroline Leavitt having to do this? I know some of you are probably already confused what she's talking about. The reason Caroline Leavitt had to do this is that Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnik said multiple times in a row, the $100,000 H-1B visa fee is annual. He called it an annual fee multiple times. Don't take my word for it. Listen to this. I think, Sean, do you agree with it? Well, they're $100,000 per year. So the whole

idea is no more of these big tech companies or other big companies trained foreign workers. They have to pay the government $100,000. Then they have to pay the employee. So it's just not economic. If you're going to train somebody, you're going to train one of the recent graduates from one of the great universities across our land, train Americans, stop bringing in people to take our jobs. That's the policy here, $100,000 a year.

That's the second time, $100,000 a year. H-1B visas and all of the big companies are on board. We've spoken to them about the gold card. They love it. They love renewals, first times. The company needs to decide do they want. Is that person valuable enough to have a hundred thousand dollar a year payment to the government? Okay.

So that's the third time, $100,000 a year. So Caroline Leavitt had to come out and say, no, no, no, no. it's a one-time fee of $100,000. Now, the initial assumption was they're confused about their own plan. They don't understand their own plan. Some of them believe it's $100,000 a year. Some believe it's $100,000 one-time fee. They just don't know.

It's the Trump administration. So confusion is often enough of an explanation. But that may not be the explanation here. It may be that they wanted it to be $100,000 a year. But they then after announcing it, got feedback that that's completely bonkers insane that would never possibly work. And so they said, okay, okay, okay, we'll back off and make it a $100,000 one-time fee. We don't know, because this is an administration that's constantly in shambles. Now, let's talk about the policy

a little bit. The H-1B visa is a U.S. work visa. And what it allows American companies to do is if there is a specialized high-skilled job, often in tech engineering or medicine, they want to bring someone in from another country specifically for that job, it's called an H-1B visa. That's the process that exists. Now, even as a one-time fee, $100,000 would make the United States by far the most expensive country in the world to apply for this high-skilled foreign labor. Now, I understand the idea here. The idea is convince companies to hire American by making it more expensive to hire from other

countries. problem is because in part due to our education system, which Republicans have damaged, there are arguably not enough of the high skilled people that these companies want and need to hire from the United States. In other words, if Republicans really wanted to fix this problem and make it so that American companies look inward rather than to other countries for a lot of these roles, why are you worsening our education systems? And by the way, the people that are hired for these roles domestically, disproportionately are

coming up in these dangerous liberal blue state education systems and liberal universities. So to the extent that this is a problem, it's a problem of their own making. Now, Trump says we're going to make corporations pay. But in practice, this is just anti-immigration through economics. If you can't ban H-1B visas, you make them really expensive. And even as a one-time fee, if you do this, small and, For first of all, small and midsize businesses forget about it. The ones that rely on international talent, they can't afford this.

So that's it. You're hurting small and medium businesses. You will push skilled workers who might come to the United States, work productively, innovate, have kids here who then work here, pay into the system. They're going to go to other countries. So you're also hurting the United States in that way. And I should also mention that all of the people concerned about the birth rate, it's widely accepted that legal immigration to the United States needs to go up.

If you believe in the paradigm of in order to grow economically, we need more people here. And it's hard to convince people to have more kids. So one way to increase your population, increase your tax base, et cetera, is to bring in legal immigrants, especially highly skilled, highly qualified ones to do relatively high-end jobs. You should be in favor of this. Like what Elon Musk has been talking about is we got to get more people here, qualified, smart people. And so this is nuts in every sense of the word. If you really want to deal with this issue, you can't fix it in one presidential term. You've got to deal with education. Trump doesn't

want to do that. Behind closed doors, some of the top CEOs of the United States are admitting something they will never say on TV. They will never say it in a shareholder letter. They will never say it in front of Donald Trump, which is that Trump's economic policies are destroying the economy. These are not progressives. These are not democratic strategies. These are strategists. These are CEOs. Many of them are Republicans.

These are executives who benefit from Trump's tax cuts who love deregulation. They don't want to be called anti-business, but they are admitting what they see, which is tariffs raise prices, chaotic trade wars that freeze investment are bad for business, and politically bullying the Federal Reserve as Donald Trump has tried to do is not a good idea. Now, the tariffs, CEOs told a Yale leadership forum that two-thirds of their companies are being hammered by Donald Trump's trade policies. They estimate that 80% of the costs land squarely on the American firm and the consumer. You hear these rumors, oh, the companies will eat some of the tariffs or other countries

will eat tariff. It is not happening. It is 80% of it is floating down to consumers. Consumers are not going to pay $50 for a hammer. They're not going to pay triple for clothes just to make Trump feel like he did a big boy. Second is uncertainty. This is another word that kept coming up. Trump changes the rules on a whim. The tariffs are on, the tariffs are off. The supply chain shifts overnight. CEOs say we're holding back investments. We're shelving projects. We're freezing hiring. And it's not because they

don't want to grow. It's because they don't want to look like fools when Trump hopefully wakes up and realizes this was a bad idea. I'm going to do a 180 on that. I'm changing the next thing. They don't want to be left holding the bag. And that's not a position of strength. That's paralysis. Third is the Federal Reserve. Trump has spent months just hammering on Jerome Powell slash interest rates. Do it, do it, do it.

Now, the Fed has finally done the 25 basis point cut. But this is all an attack on the independence of the Fed that business CEOs see and they go, that's not good. Historically, that's not a good thing. There's a lot at stake there. If the world stops believing in the independence of the Fed, it could be bad for the dollar. And then you've got the part that fewer people are talking about, which is this obsession Trump has with trying to control private markets.

The America first president acting like a central planner, the likes of which you would expect, you know, in Beijing or in Moscow or in other places. So Trump is also, I mean, I'm not praising or criticizing. I'm just saying CEOs are worried because Trump's moving away from what we know of as free market capitalism is moving towards state run capitalism. So why don't the CEOs go public and call Trump out? I think they know what happens when you cross Donald Trump. They've seen what happens when a company or a CEO becomes a target. You get the boycotts, the social media tirades, and it's not good. Threats to your contracts all of a sudden start. Now, the irony is that in

public, Trump is still getting the dear leader praise from CEOs. You know, Zuckerberg and Bezos and Sam Altman, they show up. It's so incredible what you're doing, sir. We're so glad that we finally got competent leadership and, you know, whatever. And privately, they're going, this is very much not good. This is bad for our customers. This is bad for our employees. This is bad for our business. And when they see the layoff starting and they realize the dollar is not going as far for our workers, they're going to be in a very difficult situation. So this is not even left versus right. This is really about results. And one of the things about CEOs, many CEOs are political. There's no question. Sometimes they're publicly political. Most of them vote and have

private politics that they may or may not espouse publicly. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of downsides to shareholder value being the number one priority. But one of the things about it is that it can transcend politics. And for a lot of these CEOs, they like Trump's tax cuts for the rich. They may like what Trump is doing on vaccines or whatever. It goes beyond that and it's this guy is wrecking the business environment for us. And this is going to be a building problem for Donald Trump, a very, very serious building problem. Now, on the bonus show today, we will talk about the return of Jimmy Kimmel to his show. But is anybody going to air the show? That's the question. Trump is also putting pressure on Pam Bondi to charge his political foes.

This could be a real legal problem. And finally, the annual hunger report has been canceled by the Trump administration. You don't want pregnancy, don't test. You don't want autism. Don't evaluate people for autism. You don't want to acknowledge that there's hunger in the country in part due to your policies. Cancel the report about hunger. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show, sign up at join packman.com.

I'll see you then.