The David Pakman Show - 9/25/24: The truth about Trump's tariffs, Biden's humble final speech

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Susanne Craig, investigative reporter and author, with Russ Buettner, of "Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Create the Illusion of Success," joins David to discuss the book, which you can get here: https://amzn.to/3MWyyRw -- Republican Senator Mitch McConnell admits that Donald Trump's tariffs are a bad idea, and we dive into when and how tariffs can be an effective tool -- President Joe Biden delivers a final humble speech to the United Nations, something Donald Trump could never do -- New data shows 51% of 2024 votes will be cast early, and among early votes, 61% are for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump -- Fox News hosts are devastated by yet another stock market all time high -- Donald Trump and JD Vance are hit with rare but not unheard of criminal charges filed by a Haitian group in Ohio -- Donald Trump's brain appears to malfunction during a speech in Savannah, Georgia during which he wanders around hugging the air -- Voicemail caller is furious that David "paywalled" his story of meeting actress Rosario Dawson at the White House -- On the Bonus Show: Kamala Harris calls for an end to the Senate filibuster, Democratic Party office shot at in Arizona, Alex Jones' Infowars will be auctioned off to pay Sandy Hook families, much more... ☕ Beam melatonin hot cocoa: Use code PAKMAN for up to 40% OFF at https://shopbeam.com/pakman 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN10 saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com 👍 Buy the FÜM Journey Pack and use code PAKMAN for a FREE GIFT at https://tryfum.com/pakman 🍷 Naked Wines: Use code PAKMAN to get 6 bottles for $29.99 at https://nakedwines.com/pakman 🥄 Use code PAKMAN for $5 off Magic Spoon at https://magicspoon.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/davidpakmanshow -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- Pakman Discord: https://www.davidpakman.com/discord -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave a Voicemail: (219)-2DAVIDP

Speaker 1 Welcome, everybody. Let's start today with everyone's favorite subject, tariffs, not normally the most titillating topic, but it is one of the few topics that even approximates policy that Donald Trump is willing to talk about. I'm going to play a very interesting video for you of Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, saying he's not a fan of Trump's tariff proposal. Now, when it comes to policy, Trump will mostly only talk about mass militarized deportations of migrants and putting tariffs on China.

Trump has said he'll put a 10 to 20 percent blanket tariff on Chinese goods. Trump has offhandedly said earlier this week he'll put a 200 percent tariff on John Deere products if John Deere does indeed move any production to Mexico. Trump's economic tool is tariffs. Tariffs are going to solve the national deficit. Tariffs are going to solve how national deficit. Tariffs are going to solve how we pay for child care. It's always tariffs. Trump has one hammer. It's called tariffs. Everything looks like a nail. So here is Mitch McConnell asked, what do you think about this Trump tariff plan? President Trump has proposed a 200 percent tariff on John Deere tractors.

If they're made in Mexico, Are you concerned that some of these tariff proposals by the GOP nominee could drive up costs for consumers or for urban exporters in Kentucky, for example? Yeah, I'm not a fan of tariffs. They raise the prices for American consumers. I'm more of a free trade kind of Republican that remembers how many jobs are created by the exports that we engage in. So I'm not a tariff fan. So listen, many of you have written to me, many of you with tears in your eyes as you type just sobbing, saying, Sir David, can you explain when using

tariffs as an economic tool would be useful? Rarely is there a tool that's just always bad if it's not a good idea to implement tariffs the way Donald Trump plans to implement them. When would tariffs be OK and wouldn't just cause inflation? And I think that this is an excellent question. Whether or not tariffs raise domestic prices depends on a number of factors. How competitive is the industry? How available are substitutes and what are the broader market dynamics? So for example, if the country imposing the tariff, the United States in this example, doesn't produce enough of the good being tariffed domestically or doesn't produce it at the same

quality, consumers will probably keep relying on the imported good paying the tariff, which will make it more expensive domestically. So imagine you get most of your electronics from Thailand and then all of a sudden there's a tariff on Thai electronics. If the American made electronics are of lower quality or you just don't make electronics domestically, consumers will just keep getting the Thai electronics, paying the tariff, and it will be inflationary. The fact that you put in that tariff. Another example, lack of substitutes. If there are few or no alternative sources of the good, either domestically or from some

other country, the price is going to increase domestically as a result of the tariff. So imagine some unique foreign luxury product. If you put a tariff on that and domestic producers can't offer an alternative, consumers are just going to face higher prices. It will be inflationary. There's a bunch of other factors. What sort of market power does the importer have? What sort of market power does the exporter have? Are there supply chain disruptions that are particular to this is more when you're using component parts, like if you put a tariff on auto parts from China for American assembled vehicles that can cause a supply chain disruption

and make the vehicles more expensive in the United States. That's something we saw during covid, for example. So when can you use tariffs without raising prices domestically? Well, it's the opposite of all of these scenarios. If there's plenty of domestic options for getting a particular good, you can often safely tariff imports of that very same product when there are substitute products available. It's not necessarily that the U.S. makes the same good, but it's that the U.S. or third countries have a substitute that's feasible. You know, there's I don't know what's a good example of this. You put, you know, my sumo oranges, my my beloved sumo oranges. You put a tariff on Chinese sumos. But all of a sudden, Chile is making sumos. I think they are actually. So, hey, you know what?

We can go and get the sumos from Chile instead of China. We're hurting China economically, but consumers in the U.S. aren't paying higher prices. So there are these situations in which you can do it. Trump's tariffs on China will increase prices. Many consumer goods are heavily sourced from China. Domestic alternatives aren't readily available. As I've said, we can reengineer our entire manufacturing chain, but that would take years in the short term. Even in the medium term, it would be quite inflationary. Many products from China are low cost. The substitutes will be more expensive or less available when we have them. That'll drive up costs, increased production costs, because companies that rely on Chinese components or materials

will have to pay more for the components. They will just pass that on by charging more for the finished product. And then finally, foreign producers may not absorb the cost. Trump has the idea if you put a 10 percent tariff on China, China will just cut the cost 10 percent to account for that. Very often that does not happen. And if you look historically at examples, it very often doesn't happen. And so when you look at the tool tariff, yes, there are times you can narrowly use tariffs in certain situations on certain goods or on certain materials without causing domestic inflation. Trump's 10 to 20 percent on Chinese stuff is very much the opposite. Mitch McConnell

happens to be right on this. By the way, bonus clip from this press conference that Mitch McConnell did. He was asked, is this entire Mark Robinson thing in North Carolina a bad idea? And here's what Mitch McConnell had to say. As a leader of your party, would you recommend that Republicans abandon the North Carolina gubernatorial candidate, Mark Robinson, over his lewd and graphic posts on a foreign website? Well, it won't surprise you to know that I'm happy that there's not a Senate race in North Carolina. All right.

So Mitch McConnell acknowledging the long odds now facing Mark Robinson after being caught declaring himself a black Nazi who would like to own some slaves if slavery came back, who admitted to peeping in girls locker room showers and who said that he's into transgender pornography, despite public statements denouncing the trans community. Mitch saying that's not good. It is not good. Joe Biden did something yesterday that Donald Trump could never do, would never do, which is that Joe Biden admitted. It is no longer time for me to be the leader. It is time for it to be someone else because I love my country more than I love my party or being president. Maybe not even more than he loves

his party, because arguably what he's doing by stepping aside and allowing Kamala Harris is actually good for the Democratic Party as well. Biden speaking at the United Nations. Take a listen. I made the preservation of democracy the central cause of my presidency. This summer, I faced a decision whether to seek a second term as president. It was a difficult decision. Being president has been the honor of my life. There's so much more I want to get done. As much as I love the job, I love my country more. I decided after 50 years of public service, it's time for a new generation of leadership

to take my nation forward. My fellow leaders, let us never forget, some things are more important than staying in power. It's your people. Notice the applause. We'll come back to that. Some things are more important than staying in power. Imagine delivering that message to Vladimir Putin or even to Donald Trump himself. Can you imagine Trump

ever saying, hey, you know what? It's time for the next generation. I'm not the best person for the job anymore going forward over the next four years. Trump would never say something like that because Trump's belief is that he knows more than everyone and he's better equipped than anyone to be president of the United States. Humility. Can you imagine Joe Biden also addressing and I'm glad he did the decision to pull out of Afghanistan? We need to end the era of war that began on 9-11. As vice president to President Obama, he asked me to work to wind down the military operations in Iraq. And we did, painful as it was. When I came to office as President, Afghanistan had replaced Vietnam as America's longest war.

I was determined to end it, and I did. It was a hard decision, but the right decision. Four American presidents had faced that decision, but I was determined not to leave it to the fifth. It was a decision accompanied by tragedy. Thirteen brave Americans lost their lives along with hundreds of Afghans in a suicide bomb. I think those lost lives, I think of them every day. I think of all the 2,461 U.S. military deaths over a long 20 years of that war. 20,744 American servicemen wounded in action. I think of their service, their sacrifice, and their heroism. I know other countries lost their own men and women fighting alongside us. We honor their sacrifices as well. Acknowledging there was tragedy in getting out, but that it had to be done. And when you consider the fact that we were losing troops, coalition troops in Afghanistan over the last 20 years doesn't diminish the tragedy of those lives that were lost getting out, but it does put a stop to it. Now, for contrast, I do want

to remind you what happened when Donald Trump spoke to the United Nations in 2018, not quiet respect and applause, which is what Joe Biden got yesterday from the international community, but audible laughter. Remember this moment globally humiliating for Donald Trump, Madam President, Mr. Secretary General, world leaders, ambassadors, and distinguished delegates. One year ago, I stood before you for the first time in this grand hall. I addressed the threats facing our world, and I presented a vision to achieve a brighter future for all of humanity. Today, I stand before the United Nations General Assembly to share the extraordinary progress we've made.

In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country. America's so true. Audible laughter. Didn't expect that reaction, but that's OK. Speaker 1 Well, it's because you were a joke on the global stage, sir. You know, my instinct is that it's always difficult to know as a presidency comes to an end. How it will be looked at in the future when we look back, how will it be seen? That being said, we're getting a sense of the joke that the Trump presidency was as we now get further from it and hopefully don't go back

to it. And my guess is and maybe it's wishful thinking because we know that he did so many things right and just seems to be a good guy. Doesn't mean he did everything perfectly. My sense is Joe Biden will be seen as an exemplary leader of the United States further down the line. You never know until some time's gone by, but it seems like that would be correct. And Biden showing the humility Trump is constitutionally unable to show. Let me know what you think. Make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel, YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman

show. We'll be with you for whatever comes next after November. Are you having trouble sleeping or staying asleep? Sleep is one of the most important foundations of mental and physical health. And our sponsor beams formulation called Dream is a delicious nighttime hot cocoa drink with melatonin, clinically proven to help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. Melatonin can also help The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com. chocolate, peanut butter, sea salt, caramel. I love the cinnamon cocoa version. No sugar added, sweetened with monk fruit, just 15 calories per serving. Dream hot cocoa is it's just a nice way to wind down before bed. It's hot and flavorful. It's not overly sweet. It's a soothing way to relax about an hour before going to bed. Go try beams best selling dream powder and get 40 percent The David Pakman Show David Pakman dot com slash Pakman.

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All right. Let's do a little critical thinking and media literacy. There is a headline taking the internets by storm about early voting and the share of early voters that are supporting Kamala Harris over Donald Trump. I want to tell you my thought process when I saw the headline. And there's a lot here that's important to discuss. So yesterday, headlines like the following started being reported. Half of voters plan to vote early with a huge partisan split. OK, that's interesting.

Let's see what it says. NBC News polling shows that 51 percent of registered voters say they plan to vote early with that group breaking hard for Harris. And on the other hand, Election Day voters are backing Trump. As we read down into the article, we get more specific data. And what the polling found is that about half of those registered voters say I am going to vote early, either by mail or in person. And among that group, Kamala Harris is winning 61 to 35. That's a big margin, a 26 point margin. My immediate questions when I see this polling, because there were a lot of people gleefully reporting this. It's over. We've

got it. Trump's done. My questions were, number one, OK, this year, it appears as though Kamala Harris will lead early voting 61 to 35. What share of the early vote did Joe Biden get in 2020, because while a 26 point lead sounds awesome, it would be relevant to know, given that Election Day voters will be voting overwhelmingly for Trump. What sort of lead did Biden have among early voters in 2020? That's question number one. And question number two. What portion of those who say they will be voting early will actually do it. It's perfectly reasonable that many people would plan to vote early, want to vote early, desire early voting, and then life gets in the way. And next thing you know, it's November 5th and they end up actually voting on Election Day. We're not going to know the answer to that second question until later. But I went back and looked.

How did early voting in 2020 favor Joe Biden or did it? And when you look at that data, the new numbers from 2024 aren't so excited. Exciting early voting by mail or in person in 2020 was Joe Biden, 69 percent, Donald Trump, 21. So the 26 point margin that exists today, 61 to 35 back in 2020 was a 48 point margin. This is based on reporting from Quinnipiac University and Pew Research Center. So what seems like a titillating and inspirational and encouraging and reassuring number. Wow. 61 percent of early voters plan to vote for Kamala Harris. Back in 2020, 69 percent of early voters did vote for Joe Biden. Kamala Harris is doing eight points worse this year than Biden did in 2020 among early voters. If you believe what early voters are telling pollsters and if you assume that what they are telling pollsters. And if you assume that what they are telling pollsters will mirror

what they actually do. Now, I know that there are going to be people that don't like the fact that I'm reporting this. There's a lot of kill the messenger lately. If you look on my subreddit, you see people saying, oh, can't we get a little more optimism from David? All of these negative forecasts and all of this stuff. Folks, this is not a show like some of these overtly Democratic strategist or Democratic Party aligned shows. Well, let's calculate how the audience will react based on what we say. And here's what we want them to do. And here's how we encourage them. No. OK, I've said and I've said clearly, no matter what the polling shows, we all must vote without a doubt. That being said, I'm just going to tell you what I see. And when I see that Kamala

Harris is tracking eight points worse than Biden in 2020 among early voters, that's a concern. Now, let me give you some counterpoints because there are counterpoints. One of the counterpoints is that in 2020, early voting and mail in voting was disproportionately more preferred by Democratic leaning voters in the context of a pandemic where Republicans were more overtly flouting, not flaunting. Look it up. Don't email. Don't email me about it.

Republican voters were more overtly flouting covid guidelines and were much more likely to vote in person. Whereas in twenty twenty four, from what I'm seeing, it seems that there is a slightly less overt partisan split in early voting. It's clear the early voting still is swaying towards Democratic and left leaning voters. But there are more Republicans seemingly this time around voting early. Trump has even said, hey, vote, vote whenever it's all rigged. Right.

Early voting is rigged. Mail-in voting is rigged. But like, do it. OK, do vote however you can. So one could make the case. And I think it's a reasonable case that although Kamala Harris is not winning the early vote seemingly in 2024 by as much as Biden won it in 2020, part of that is because both Republican and Democratic voters are participating in early voting in twenty twenty four in a way that Republicans did not in twenty twenty. What's the final takeaway? What sounds like a great number may or may not be, but we need to not take any chances and make sure that we are registered and make sure that we have a plan to

vote and that we have set aside the time to vote, whether it's voting early in person, voting early by mail or voting in person on Election Day. This time around, I have voted by mail. I vote early by mail and that works for me and I've done it and it's all fantastic. So that's where we are important to go beyond the headlines. Fox News is really depressed. And the reason that many Fox News hosts are depressed is that the stock market is doing really well. Remember that in 2020, Donald Trump predicted that if Joe Biden became president, we would have a 1929 style market crash depression. It would be terrible. It would be a disaster. And of course, much the opposite happened. It

is stock market record after record after all time high. Now, Trump is predicting that if Kamala Harris wins, we will have a 1929 style depression. If you always predict a depression is coming, you might eventually be right. But it doesn't really say much for your predictive powers. Well, we had yet another day during which the stock markets touched all time record highs. And Maria Bartiromo, it's got to be a really tough time for her right now. The stock market doing so well when you've got a Democratic president. Welcome back. Take a look at futures this morning. Another rally underway. The Dow and Dow stills up 67. The Nasdaq up 43. S&P 500 up seven and a quarter, extending into further

record territory. We're looking at last week's rate cut rally continuing. The Dow and the S&P 500 closing in record territory yesterday. So that's where we begin this morning in uncharted territory. Uncharted territory. That's right. Record highs. Now, she is hedging a little bit. And the way that Maria is reigning on the stock market parade a little bit is by now calling it the rate cut rally.

And this is a reference to the decision by the Fed, not made by Powell on his own, but made by the 12 Fed directors across the country, some Democrats, some Republicans, the decision to cut the federal funds rate by 50 basis points, point five percent. And it is absolutely the case that as a general principle, when you cut the federal funds rate, you do encourage investment in the market because the benefit to keeping money in interest bearing accounts declines. And thus, it is true that historically cutting the federal funds rate does help the stock market. The problem is that that's been the case for five days or I guess six, five, six days as of today.

And we had something like 50 or 100 new stock record stock market highs under the Biden administration before this rate cut took place. More from Fox News. It's like a funeral over there. Here is a report that we have yet another consecutive day of record highs. And then the camera cuts to Larry Kudlow, poor guy, Donald Trump's former economic adviser. And Kudlow says Biden is leaving his successor a world of disorder, a world of disorder with regular stock market highs.

I guess here we go. The third straight record close for the blue chips, the S&P 500 also closing at all time highs. Tomorrow, the financials did really well. As we were watching over the past several months, we've got former TD Ameritrade CEO Joe Mobley at a game how they will do in dropping rates. That'm Larry Kudlow. All right. Kamala Harris's tax hikes would kill 800000 jobs. Donald Trump's tax cuts would create over a million jobs. And Senator Mike Crapo, he says most of the Trump tax cuts won't increase the deficit at all. There you go. Larry Kudlow going immediately to bashing Kamala Harris and saying everything she would do would be terrible, despite the fact that she would be very similar to President Biden, who has presided over a remarkable economy. Meanwhile, I can tell you

what's not going well. And it's the stock for the Trump Media and Technology Group. The theme here is down, down, down, now down 80 percent, 80 percent from its high back in April and things not looking good. So the theme here is if it's good for the country, but not so good for Trump, they aren't happy for all of their talk of being the patriots. You know, they say the immigration bill would be good for the country, but Trump says it would be bad for him. So they kill it. The stock market highs normally would be so good, but they don't really help Trump's case that everything Democratic is bad. So it must not actually be the case that it's so good. We've seen them play games with the government shutdowns over

the last decade. Now, there was one guy on Fox News. I'll give him credit, kind of pointing out the truth. And that guy is Fox News host Neil Cavuto, who says, you know, Trump seems to talk about the stock market one way when the market is up and another way when the market is down. You know, it's interesting that Donald Trump, you know, he's taking credit for this and that the markets are anticipating is going to get back in power. He doesn't say that when we have a down day in the markets or maybe it's a different poll that's shown something. And I get that and both sides get that. Speaker 1 Yeah, both sides get it, but both sides don't really do it. And Neil Cavuto is absolutely right. If the stock market is up, Trump will say it's up because they think I'm going to win and I'm so good for the stock

market. If the stock market is down, he will say nothing or he will say it's down because now it's sort of looking like maybe Kamala has a shot and that's scaring the stock market. All of that is nonsense. All of that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's not based in fact. And what I would encourage you to do, as I've said before, I don't show up here and claim to be the ultimate source of truth. Go and look average stock market returns when you've got a Democratic president, average stock market return when you've got a Republican president. Don't take my word for it. I've looked at the numbers. My rudimentary arithmetic skills tell me that the numbers are much better when Democrats are in the White House. But don't trust me on it. Right. That's

the difference between this show and many of those right wing shows who claim to be the ultimate source of truth. My understanding of numbers is stocks do better when there's a Democratic president. Go and fact check me. And then once you figure out the numbers, then you decide whether Trump's claims and Fox News's claims about stocks under Democrats versus Republicans ring true to you. Let me know what you find info at David Pakman dot com. This is super interesting. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have been hit with criminal charges of a kind you don't often see. Let's discuss what's going on. NPR reports Haitian group seeks charges against Trump and Vance over false Springfield, Ohio

claims the leader of a nonprofit. This is NPR. We'll link to the article. The leader of a nonprofit representing the Haitian community invoked a private citizen right to file charges Tuesday against former President Trump and running mate J.D. Vance over the chaos and threats experienced by Springfield, Ohio, since Trump first spread false claims about legal immigrants there during a presidential debate, the Haitian Bridge Alliance made the move after inaction by the local prosecutor, said their attorney,

Subodh Chandra of the Cleveland based Chandra law firm. Charges brought by private citizens are rare, but not unheard of in Ohio. Examples might be a grocery store charging a customer for a bounce check. State law requires a hearing to take place before the affidavit can move forward. As of Tuesday afternoon, none had been scheduled. What are they charged with? Disrupting public services, making false alarms, telecommunications harassment, aggravated menacing and complicity. The filing asked the Clark County Municipal Court to affirm there is probable cause and

issue arrest warrants against Trump and Vance. So listen, there have been many who have covered this story as they've been indicted and will imminently be arrested. I respect you too much to tell you that that's what's going on here. But this nonetheless could become another thorn in the side of Trump and Vance requiring to defend requiring them to defend themselves. Do I think that criminal charges are logical here and likely to lead to a conviction based on the facts? I don't. I don't.

Do I agree with the Haitian community that what Trump and Vance have done has pointedly weaponized global, certainly national, but arguably global hate and harassment against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, who are indeed there legally. Yes, I do. They clearly have done that. So I'm curious to see whether such a hearing will ultimately be scheduled. This is there is legal precedent for this, but against a former president and Republican nominee, if I'm completely honest with you, I don't know that I expect this to go too, too far. But I do sympathize significantly with what they are going through there in Springfield, Ohio, and Donald Trump fixating on something that got a reaction from Kamala Harris during the

debate. They're reading the cats, they're reading the dogs and then generating significant, significant harassment and hatred against that community. So I remain cautiously optimistic this will go somewhere. I believe that the way to rid ourselves of this targeted harassment against groups like Haitian immigrants is to soundly defeat Trump and Vance at the ballot box. I don't think, you know, a citizen's arrest or citizens charges in Ohio are going to be the way to do it. I don't think Trump ultimately landing in prison for any of the various criminal charges against him is going to be the way to do it. Many of us have bad habits. We want to kick finding motivation

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author, along with Russ Buettner of Lucky Loser, How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. Suzanne, I'm so glad to talk to you about this because there's really so many layers to this story. There's the layer of if you accept Trump as the successful business person, we would ask the question, do successful business people make good presidents? But I don't even think we're there because there's the question of is Donald Trump actually a successful business person and or a self-made man. Many people now know that Trump is not a self-made man, that he inherited wealth and his business

from his father, Fred. Well, maybe Fred was the self-made guy. But you talk about in the book how government programs, to a great degree, helped Fred build the wealth that Donald ultimately inherited. So can we start with with Fred Trump? Yeah, it's a good place to start. And I think, you know, Fred, his father had a bit of a leg up. The family had some money. His father died when he was young. It wasn't a huge amount of money, but it was enough money that it allowed him to start building single family homes. And it's

sort of an incredible story. Fred was in his teens when his father passed away of the Spanish flu. And the mom there was really driving the bus. She wanted to start a business and Fred dreamed of being a builder. So he started taking courses at the local Y and learned the trade and started building these single family homes. And that he was very good at it. And that could have been his trajectory. But he met a time in American history where the government started putting together programs for people coming out of both the Depression and World War II. And Fred got in on those programs.

And he expanded very quickly into building large scale housing projects. You can still see some of them today in New York. Two of the big ones that come to mind are Beach Haven and Shore Haven, but he really made his money through those programs. And those programs were put together at a time, one could argue maybe in a rush, there was a lot of loopholes in them and Fred made a lot of money exploiting of loopholes in them. And Fred made a lot of money exploiting those loopholes and I think kind of pushing things to the edge. But that's how the family fortune, by and large, was made. So Donald Trump has sometimes talked about how he got started with this small loan of a million dollars. But that seems like a very incomplete sort of origin

story, really, isn't it? I would say rather than incomplete, it's just wrong. And it's interesting because Russ and I got a hold of a lot of documents from Fred Trump's financial life, tens of thousands, more than 100,000 pages. And the closest we could come to identifying anything close to a million dollar loan was a gift of a million dollars he was given in the 1970s by Fred. But Donald, at every turn, you know, there was a succession struggle in the family early on. Fred Trump Sr. has an heir, had an eldest son, a namesake who was supposed to be the heir. And early on, that didn't work out. Fred, his son, I think, was interested in the family business early on, according to friends that we spoke to in high school who knew him.

But he had other interests. And Fred, his dad, was sort of having none of that and just saw a weakness there. And I think it ultimately destroyed Fred Jr. He died of alcoholism related complications in his early 40s. It was quite tragic. But by the time Donald Trump was 18 or 19, that succession battle was over. And Fred Trump had had picked his man and it was Donald. One of the claims that's been made and superficially, I ran some numbers and it certainly seems plausible is that had Trump Donald Trump all along simply thrown his money, his family's money, ultimately his money into an S&P 500 index fund or a total stock market index fund,

just let it ride, reinvest the dividends, et cetera, that actually he'd be wealthier than he is today. Bearing in mind, we don't exactly know how wealthy he is because there seems to be some some doubts about it based on everything we've learned. Is that is that fair to say? Has he done worse by doing things with the money rather than just letting it ride in the market? The resident, I feel there's no question he invested in himself and it was a bad investment compared to just putting his money in the S&P 500, for example. You know, would you know? Yes.

No question. Yeah. And can you say anything more about to what degree that's the case or what is that gap that that mathematical gap that appears there based on your understanding of the amounts of money he received and the times at which he received them? Well, I think he he if he just invested in the S&P 500, it would have been more than double what he has, what not what he has now, but what he inherited, not just inherited, but also the money that he got from The Apprentice. We talk about the book, and it's named Lucky Loser for a reason, because Donald Trump has had some incredible strokes of luck in his life. One of them was simply being born the son of Fred Trump

and into an incredibly wealthy family at the time. Fred would have been a billionaire by today's standards, and they lived a very privileged life. And he inherited more than $400 million, ultimately, when Fred died. And then there was also all the things he got, all the money that he got, sometimes that his other siblings didn't get during his lifetime. And then the second rush of money that he got was from The Apprentice, the TV show. And that one's sort of an interesting one, because I think when people try to get their

head around how do you make so much money from a TV show, he made pretty much the equivalent of what he inherited from his father. It was because while he was a host of The Apprentice and he had a $50,000 fee originally for doing that, he cut an incredibly lucrative deal with Mark Burnett, who was the producer of the show. And he had been coming off of Survivor. And Mark Burnett was starting to understand the power of product integration money. That's when you have a product on a show and the company that produces that product, they pay to have their product on the show. And The Apprentice was essentially an hour, 45 minute long commercial for products. A toothpaste company would come on and they would have the contestants battle to make an ad campaign for them. And we learned through financials that we obtained from the show that they were making, every episode was making $1, $2, $3 million, $4 million. Donald Trump was getting half of that.

And then in addition to that, he was striking licensing deals off of his celebrity. And he was making another half of money about roughly came from product integration and another half, another 200 some million came from the licensing deals that he struck. So these were the two huge rushes of money that he had in his life, these two fortunes. And what the book shows is that he invested them in businesses and short that largely lost money for one reason or another. Can you talk a little bit about Trump's bankruptcies and specifically address Trump's claim whenever

he's been confronted with this, that his bankruptcies were all just knowing how to use or game the system, much like when he gets called out for donating to Democrats in the past. He says, well, I was playing the game. I knew how you manage it. Similarly, that his bankruptcies were not failures in a business sense, but they were him understanding the law and understanding the benefits of calculated bankruptcy. Is that true? I really just there's simple things to break that down for his Atlantic City bankruptcies. This is a man who went into Atlantic City and built three casinos that were competing against each other.

Is there any shock that they went bankrupt? They went bankrupt because of his bad decisions. You know, I mean, that's the bottom line for those. I mean, when I hear that, I hear he's a master of the tax code and that's why he has losses. We looked at this. There's some depreciation in the numbers that we saw and we've seen his taxes for his corporate and personal taxes for 20 some years, his modern taxes up to 2018. What we saw was was actual losses in the businesses which we had visibility into. There are a few that make money, but for the most part, by and large, he they lose money and they require a lot of money,

just capital injections to keep going. Speaker 1 I want to talk a little bit about the tax returns, because you were the reporter to whom Donald Trump's ninety five tax returns, I believe, were anonymously mailed during the 2016 presidential election. And if I recall correctly, although sometimes our memory of this stuff gets hazy, the headlines were Trump's tax returns leaked and we're going to learn all this stuff. But then it turned out it was the ninety five tax returns. Was it only ninety five that was leaked to you?

No. So I'll walk you through that. The first the first returns that we got were the nineteen ninety five tax returns, and those showed cumulative cumulative losses of roughly a billion dollars. It was a pretty shocking number. We were able to confirm that those were authentic and we got them to press. But then as we went on, it's like this great thing about the wonder of journalism. You never quite know what you're going to be doing when you come into the office the next day. more information. So we kept writing. And in 2017, we started to look into Fred Trump and just the wealth that was inherited. We wanted to break down exactly who was Fred Trump and what did Donald inherit from that? And as part of that search to get to the bottom of that, we started just by looking at property records in New York City. They're this great system where you can look up the owners of properties. And in part of doing that, we saw some names that were on a lot of the documents. So we started to keep a

source list. One of the people that we saw was occasionally would appear on it was Mary Trump and her brother, her brother, Fred III. They all have similar names named after each other. And we realized and we'd known that Mary Trump had been in litigation with the family over her grandfather's will. She was essentially, her and her brother were essentially cut out. They weren't left very much and they felt that they should have received a share equal to Donald and his siblings. So they went and there was a lawsuit that went into litigation. And that's sort of a magic word for reporters. We knew that a lot of information, a lot of financial information had likely been

turned over. We didn't know what. But I went to Mary Trump's door and I spoke to her. And initially she wasn't receptive, but eventually we met and she she didn't really know either what was in those documents but she agreed to go and get them for us and we took them and we we went to uh we took them to a room a locked room in the new york times and spent about a year going through them and that story had some tax return information more about about Fred Trump. We had some partnership information. We had his gift tax returns back to the 1940s. But we were able to ascertain through that story, both that Donald Trump inherited this $400 million plus money, but that it was enhanced through tax fraud. And there we saw something quite fascinating, which was Fred Trump, there's a lot of differences between Fred and Donald. In some ways, they're similar. But one of the differences is Fred Trump kept so much cash on hand. And in the early 1990s, he was getting on in age. And the kids realized that if he died, they'd be facing a 50% roughly gift tax on that cash. So they set up this corporation.

And what they did is Fred Trump, he bought a lot of stuff for his buildings. You think boilers and paint and things big and small. And he would go and buy them from wholesalers. Well, one day, all of that switched and another company started buying it. It was a company controlled by Donald Trump and his siblings. What they would do is they would buy it. They would sell it to their dad at a markup and pocket the difference. The only purpose of that company was to do that and drain the cash down from Fred Trump so that they could get a hold of it to avoid that higher tax. So that story ran. And then we got, eventually,

we kept digging around. We got another sort of, I guess, a transcript of tax return information from 1985 to 1994, if I'm remembering that correctly. And that showed another decade where he lost just hundreds of millions of dollars, including even the year he wrote Art of the Deal, which was, you know, he's claiming to be this big deal maker and a huge success. And in fact, that year, he's lost tens of millions of dollars on his tax return. And then the final piece of it was we ended up eventually getting his tax return information for a few decades, both personal and corporate, up to 2018. We were able to get that before even the Supreme Court ruled on it and show readers that he doesn't pay a lot of income tax, that he's had huge losses. But also we were able to reveal a lot about, you know, just the magnitude of money that he that he made from The Apprentice, which is papered over the losses on a lot of his other

businesses. Last thing I want to talk about losses on a lot of his other businesses. Last thing I want to talk about is more recently Trump's income and businesses from the outside. It seems as though, number one, Trump has very high fixed costs by nature with the plane and the various homes. And there just seems to be a lot of overhead there, which maybe generates the need for Trump to do things like selling a commemorative coin just five and a half weeks out from a presidential election, which, you know, you don't typically see presidential candidates do so. So maybe there's like a high fixed cost and a need for cash there. But then also there's been this reporting that while he was president, he made one point six billion dollars, about 400 million dollars a year. What is that income from? Is it rents on buildings?

He owns licensing fees for buildings, his name's on, but he doesn't know. Like how does he what is his current income from? Yeah, and I can't speak necessarily to that number. It may be revenue, but what he has been able to do recently and I'm not sure it makes up for, you know, we saw coming into him running for president that his licensing deals, not surprisingly, were on the downtick. He was, you know, several years into Celebrity Apprentice. His brand was not as red hot as it was when The Apprentice first took off. And then when he came down the escalator that day to announce that he was running for president,

he made disparaging comments about Mexicans. And a lot of the licensing deals just went for the door and NBC also fired him. And then during the presidency, he definitely was able to profit off of it in certain ways. I use that word carefully because a lot of the ways that he was able to make money, the old post office comes to mind. It's the hotel that he was operating in Washington. People would come and stay there. Governments would buy rooms. All that did was just sort of mitigate his losses. He lost a lot of money on the old post office. We can see that through his taxes and also from information that has been released on the hotel.

And he was also pumping a lot of money into it. But that money that was going in from insiders trying to curry favor definitely curbed his losses. And he also, at Mar-a-Lago, he also raised the price of entrance for people wanting a membership, so that helped. But right now, he's really in an interesting situation. He's no longer a hospitality brand. He's a political brand. I talked to experts during the book writing process about that. And many of

them, these hospitality consultants who track brand, they're not following him anymore. He's gone into things like you mentioned the coins. He's got sneakers going. He's done a Bible. These are licensing deals. And they're bringing in some money. I just don't see them sort of outweighing what he was bringing in. And then he's got True Social. That's tricky. That's the publicly traded company. I don't know what it's trading at today, but if he were to sell whatever interest he has there, it would kill the stock. So that's a tricky situation. And then remember the headwinds that he's facing if he's forced to pay the fines in New York state. And just talk about the New York attorney general there. He had a judgment against him. The fines are in the 450 million

range. And if that case is upheld on appeal, he's going to have to write a check for that. So there's a lot of headwinds coming in and we don't know where this is going to end. A lot of it depends if he's elected or if he's not. Yes, very much seems to be riding on that for sure. Yeah. We've been speaking with Suzanne Craig, who, alongside Russ Buechner, is co-author of Lucky Loser, How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.

Suzanne, so great having you on. I really appreciate it. Thanks for this is really great. Thanks for having thanks for having me on to chat about it. We're excited about the book. Many of us loved eating breakfast cereals as kids. But now that we're adults, you don't want all the sugar and the carbs, which is why I love our sponsor Magic Spoon, the nostalgically delicious cereal that tastes just like your

favorite sugary cereals from childhood, but without the sugar and packed with protein. Every serving of Magic Spoon cereal has 13 grams of protein, zero grams of sugar and four net carbs. So you can feel good about what you're eating. The most popular flavors are fruity and cocoa, but there are many more. And if you're already a fan of Magic Spoon, I have big news. Magic Spoon has turned their super popular cereal into high protein treats that are light, crispy and crunchy and taste just like the classic Thank you, David. on the campaign trail yesterday, Donald Trump gave what was billed as an economic speech. Any time a speech of Trump's is billed as being about policy, you know, it's going to go off the rails. And indeed, it did. This speech was in Savannah, Georgia. And at a certain point in the speech, Donald Trump wandered around on the stage, hugging the

air, pretending to be hugging a chart that he likes. This is not a man who is doing well. And if Joe Biden were to do this, it would be a week of programing on Fox News about cognitive decline and the need to impose the 25th Amendment on history. I have a chart that's my all time favorite. I love that. Is it around? Is it around? I extraordinarily bizarre behavior of that chart.

And you know what? Maybe people are being too hard on Trump. I once became enamored of a PowerPoint presentation I made. And so I get it. I get it. I get no. This is bizarre, bizarre, nutty behavior. And Trump couldn't seem to keep his brain clear to even say the most basic things. Trump, despite the fact that he claims he will lower taxes, claimed he delivered the biggest tax increases in history. What we did so much. We gave you before the greatest, the biggest tax

hikes in the history of our country and the greatest regulatory cuts in that we gave you the biggest tax hikes in the history of our country. And it's Biden who they say is having the cognitive issue. There were glitches, including Trump talking about stopping her country, this storics and then moving on and we must stop her country destroying. This is a country that throat pop he does when the shoulders glitch. It's you know, my two year old daughter, she's gotten into doing that. Trump seems to be doing the exact same thing. Moments after this, Trump claims that it's Kamala Harris who has the real cognitive problem,

which is wild because there seems to be zero cognitive issue with Kamala Harris. These people, we have to get back to a country again. We have to be respected. They laugh at us all over the world. They're laughing at us. And you know what they're really laughing at? Kamala, because they can't believe that she's going to be president. They can't believe you talk about cognitive problems.

She's got bigger cognitive problems than he has, in my opinion. This is how we're going to end the era of inflation and mayhem misery. I love how Trump drops in a complete non sequitur that is not based in anything. Kamala's got the biggest cognitive problems. And then he goes right back to the teleprompter speech about inflation like that, like it's a completely reasonable transition. It's bizarre. It's jarring. And it doesn't exactly telegraph stability when you think about Trump in high stakes situations. Trump also yesterday went as close to overtly pro Putin as I have seen him get lately. Usually when it comes to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump will kind of tiptoe around the praise. But this is pretty close to just pro Putin. It's sort of disturbing to hear. Speaker 4

Biden and Kamala got us into this war in Ukraine and now they can't get us out. They can't get us out. I watched him. We will win. We will. He's been saying that for three years. Every time Zelensky comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion. I think he's the greatest salesman on earth.

But we're stuck in that war unless I'm president. I'll get it done. I'll get it negotiated. I'll get it negotiated. I'll get out. We got to get out. Biden says we will not leave until we win. What happens if they win? That's what they do is they fight wars. As somebody told me the other day, they beat Hitler. They beat Napoleon. That's what they do. They fight and it's not pleasant. But you know, we've given them close to 300 billion dollars. So if you can unravel the word salad that was there, what Trump is saying is, hey, you know what?

Russia participated in defeating Hitler. So Russia can't be that bad. Right. And of course, it's a child's understanding of geopolitics, ignoring the kind of uncontroversial reality that global alliances can change over time. Priorities can change over time. The Cold War, Russia's involvement with Afghanistan and North Korea and global alliances change.

But yet Trump's kind of like, I don't know why they say Russia is so bad and Putin so bad because Russia was on our side in World War Two. And it's very difficult to have substantive conversations with someone who has such an immature view of geopolitics. And it's fine to have an immature view of geopolitics. And it's fine to have an immature view of geopolitics. You just shouldn't be president of the United States. Trump did go back to this whole black jobs and Hispanic jobs thing, really going through all of the different hits out of all the jobs that were created. Most of those jobs went to

illegal migrants. You know that it didn't go to Americans. And what's happening with the people pouring into our country is they are killing the jobs of the black population and the Hispanic population. They're taking their jobs out of all the jobs. Yeah. I don't think that this is helping him to convince non-white voters to flock to him on November 5th. We're definitely not seeing any evidence that that's working, despite economists left and right agreeing that Trump's tariff proposal would be inflationary for the reasons we outlined in more detail

at the top of the show. Trump brags about his tariff. And by the way, you know, for years they knocked the word. The word tariff properly used is a beautiful word. One of the most beautiful words I've ever heard. It's music to my ears. A lot of bad people didn't like that word, but now they're finding out I was right. Yeah. Economists agree it's a very, very bad idea. At one point in his cognitive wisdom,

Trump insists that his head or brain is like a muscle. It's this it's not muscle. It's this. It's not muscle. It's all right there. That's a muscle, too, they say. Like, yeah. And then in a final disjointed moment, Trump says it's really hard for him to get good sleep because he has so many great ideas in his brain rattling around. And I find it very hard to sleep. I get so many ideas. I'm thinking all the time. This guy just goes out, lies down, goes out pictures of them. It's pretty sad when you think about it. We will you know, we we laugh, but it's sad. Yeah. Stimulants also famously make it difficult to fall asleep at night.

Just just a note. So Trump's economic speech, a speech about economic policy supposedly build that way. Mostly Trump using the same sorts of ad hominems against his political opponents that he's been using for a while. And as far as policy goes, promising only the very tariffs that economists on both sides of the political spectrum insist will cause inflation to the tune of thirty nine hundred dollars a year for the average family. Not inspiring confidence in Trump's Trump's economic plan. That's for sure. We have a voicemail number you can call any time of day. Here's a caller upset that my story of meeting Rosario Dawson and John Leguizamo at the White

House was on the bonus show. But I want to address this in a little bit of detail because either way, I was going to get attacked. Listen to this. David, I'm listening to the show today and you said that on the bonus show, you will be telling the story of how you met Rosario Dawson at the White House. On the bonus show, David, you are locking this behind a paywall. You met Jedi Master Rosario Dawson.

You met Becky from Kevin Smith's clerk franchise, Rosario Dawson. How dare you, David? How dare you deprive us, your loyal audience, of this story by locking it behind a bonus show paywall, David? How dare you deprive us, your loyal audience of this story by locking it behind a bonus show paywall? David, I am so outraged. I am signing a billion year contract to never to pledge to never support you. OK, so now it's getting hyperbolic. Listen, there were a bunch of people who wrote in and said, David, it's really unfair for you to put

your story of visiting the White House last week for Hispanic Heritage Month on the bonus show. You're paywalling the bonus show. That's really unfair. We don't like that. This is what non members said. Fair. The counterpoint is I can assure you that five weeks out from a presidential election, if I spent the 20 minutes that we spent on the bonus show talking about my trip to D.C. on the broadcast podcast. I would get emails from people saying, David, we're five weeks out from an election and you spend 20 minutes talking about how Rosario Dawson likes the David Pakman show. What the hell is this? I'm unsubscribing from your public podcast. So either way, I would have gotten crushed by someone. It is on the bonus show last week on Friday's bonus show.

I tell the whole story. I'm sorry to everyone that I'm perpetually disappointing. I really am. On today's bonus show, we will talk about Kamala Harris's call to end the Senate filibuster. We will talk about an Arizona Democratic Party office that was shot at. And we will talk about Alex Jones info wars to be auctioned off to pay the settlement for the Sandy Hook families. Are we finally getting to the end of Alex Jones's broadcast career? I fear we are not. And I will explain why all of those stories on today's bonus show. Sign up at join Pacman dot com.