The David Pakman Show - 9/30/25: Another shutdown looms as Trump promises loyalty purges

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

-- On the Show: -- Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut, joins us to discuss the looming government shutdown, gun violence, and Trump's authoritarianism -- David breaks down how government shutdowns are a manufactured crisis created in the 1980s that punish ordinary Americans while politicians treat them like a game -- Grocery prices surge to record levels with beef, coffee, and fruit soaring, exposing Donald Trump’s failed promises to lower costs -- Leaked texts from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reveal officials know Trump’s trade policies are devastating farmers but stay silent -- Trump stumbles through a chaotic press conference mispronouncing names, complaining about teleprompters, and pushing a doomed Gaza deal -- Trump openly vows to fire generals and admirals in loyalty tests while floating military action in Venezuela and against cartels -- Marjorie Taylor Greene defies Trump by backing Epstein document releases and breaking with him on major issues despite her far-right extremism -- Trump loyalists like Kash Patel and Pam Bondi risk long prison terms under civil rights laws as Rick Wilson warns of Nuremberg-style accountability -- White House lawyer Lindsey Halligan delivers incoherent remarks minimizing slavery, embodying Trump’s pattern of choosing loyalty over competence -- On the Bonus Show: Elon Musk and others are named in new Epstein documents, YouTube settles a $24 million lawsuit with Trump, MAGA erupts over Bad Bunny headlining the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and much more… 👩‍❤️‍👨 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 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get 27% OFF sitewide at https://helixsleep.com/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.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) Government shutdowns loom (07:24) Grocery prices hit record highs (12:28) Leaked texts reveal failing trade policies (19:14) Trump’s chaotic Gaza press conference (25:25) Trump’s military loyalty tests and threats (34:44) Marjorie Taylor Greene defies Trump (48:00) Chris Murphy interview (52:50) Trump loyalists face prison risks (57:26) Incoherent defense of Trump policies  

I have to apologize up front. I'm starting with something very negative today. I've been getting dozens of questions from some of you. David, why haven't you been breathlessly covering the lead up to the potential government shutdown? The meeting that was supposed to happen at the White House with Jeffries and Schumer and then it didn't and then it did. And we might close down the government or we might not.

Let me explain to you, especially for folks who are kind of new here. I don't typically cover the day-to-day political theater of each government shutdown. Who walked out of which meeting and who's holding the bill this time and which party is spinning it better. It is noise in the sense that I believe treating every shutdown like a sports rivalry misses the bigger picture and it is the bigger picture where the average person gets crushed. The truth is that this entire shutdown ritual is an atrocity and I refuse to cover it like some normal part of governing, even though it happens again and again and again for no reason.

This is a contrived crisis. It's unique to how our system was set up and it was later twisted into a weapon. Now for most of American history, shutdowns didn't exist. If Congress was late passing a budget, the government just kept running. didn't grind to a halt, workers didn't get furloughed, the country didn't get pushed back to the brink every single year, and the political posturing just wasn't a part of it. Now that changed in the 1980s. What happened was that Ronald Reagan's Justice Department reinterpreted the Anti-Deficiency Act.

This is a law from the late 1800s that was never designed for this purpose. And what they decided was that if Congress hadn't explicitly passed new spending, the government literally has no authority to operate. Unless you sign off, we've got spending, we've got money for the money for the government to operate, the government shuts down. And that launched the shutdown era. Once this door was opened, politicians who don't give a damn about prioritizing what's best for you, realize they could use this shutdown thing as leverage.

And instead of being embarrassed by missing the deadline, which they should. be. If you are elected and you're paid a much higher than average salary and you've got this cushy job and you've got all these days off and vacation, you should be embarrassed that you can't even get a budget pass. But if you miss the deadline, you can now use the threat of a shutdown as a bargaining chip. It's effectively a hostage situation. And like any hostage situation, it's the innocent bystanders who suffer the most every time this happens the legacy in corporate media starts obsessing over who's at fault now i'll be the first to tell you who's at fault does matter it's mostly republicans who are at fault when governments shut down but the story becomes are

democrats refusing to give in are republicans demanding unfair ransom but this misses the larger point which is that no matter who's to blame in a given year and it's usually republicans i'm not hiding that it's usually republicans but no matter who's to blame in a given year this entire shutdown mechanism is a disaster for ordinary americans federal workers go weeks without pay veterans waiting on benefits are left hanging government contractors often don't get back pay they're just out money small businesses that rely on those government contracts can go under Families waiting on loans or social security checks are told to wait and travelers face delays as TSA agents and air traffic controllers work without pay. And through all of it, the politicians who created this stupid mess keep cashing their own checks.

And the kicker is that when the shutdown ends, nothing gets solved. Agencies are backlogged, projects are stalled, confidence in the government sinks even lower. the shutdown never solves a problem. It creates problems and it delays working on actual problems. And every time the government shuts down, the country is weaker. This is why I refuse to participate in the normal coverage. And every year or every other year when this comes up, Pat and I talk about it on the bonus show. We're getting emails. Why haven't I been following the latest meeting? The meetings on, the meetings off. How would we be in any way more broadly informed or better positioned if I had been covering that up until now. This is not a story about who wins or

loses the standoff, the way legacy and corporate media make it out to be. The story is that the shutdowns themselves are an atrocity. They are this built-in form of sabotage that just punishes everyday Americans while politicians treat it as a game. They love getting attention. Whoever is in the out party loves getting invited to the White House to sit with the president to negotiate and blah la la la la la the legacy in corporate media love hosting the who's to blame thing i saw it on cnn i saw it on msnbc saw it on fox news it is all just a disaster other democracies have problems but they mostly argue about policy they debate what should be in the budget they don't hold their citizens hostage every couple of years, sometimes it's every year to get attention

and to score political points. This is an American dysfunction. And so part of me not covering it is part of what they want is the attention. Part of what they want is the attention. On my phone, if I showed you my, my text messages and signal chats and email, you would see that the communication is just pouring in. Here's the, you know, these newsletters I'm on. Here is this elected officials five top bullets about the impending shutdown fight. And then this and we've done this every year, every other year for how long that I've been doing the show.

We must demand an end to this manufactured crisis. Now, I don't know exactly how to do it, but we are reliving the same farce over and over again. Nobody signed up for this crap. My little piece of resistance is that I am not going to pay lip service to the entire thing by going breathlessly over the machinations and the pros and cons of this and that. Today, we are going to interview Senator Chris Murphy, who I think has actually been striking the right note on this, but I'm not going to go to him about the negotiations. I'm going to go right in on why do we even have this and why is it?

that we seem to have to deal with this when other countries don't. So we'll hear from Chris Murphy a little bit later. If you've been wondering, though, this is why I haven't been doing the same type of coverage on the shutdown that many other shows have been doing. All right. We are now in the nightmare scenario on grocery prices for Donald Trump. Grocery prices are at record highs. David, didn't you tell us last month that they were at record highs?

Yes. And they have gone even higher over the last 30 days. people struggle to afford beef, tofu, if that's your preference, instead of beef, coffee, fruit, fruit, vegetables, as some elected officials call them. They do not want excuses. They want results. Trump promised results. Trump promised on day one, groceries are going to go down.

All costs are going to go down, but groceries specifically are going to go down. And in August of 2025 alone, we get the numbers like on a delay, prices jumped even more. It was the steepest monthly gain in nearly three years compared to a year ago food is about 3% more expensive. Since 2019, prices are up more than 32%. And as you can see here, if you look at different elements, cheese, alcohol, grocery, dairy, produce, meat. It's all up and some is up precipitously.

Okay. Ground beef at a record 632 a pound. Coffee's up 20% year over year. Steaks are up 17%. Beef and veal overall, 14%. Apples. My beloved Granny Smiths. I actually went apple picking the other day. I found a new green apple. The Rhode Island greening. And then also a crimson crisp. These are top notch apples. Anyway, it was 25 bucks for a bag of apples. Apples are up 10%. bananas are up 7%. Eggs, which spiked earlier because of avian flu, have dropped from their peak, but are still significantly higher than last year. Every one of Trump's promises has not come to fruition. Now, why is this happening? The tariffs are part of it. That's totally self-inflicted by Donald Trump. Rising labor and fuel costs are part of it. Supply chain disruption. Weather has been a factor. Corporate profiteering. But the tariffs are a really big deal. The 50% tariff on Brazilian coffee is not making America great again. Okay. It's making my cappuccino more expensive. Now, for Trump, this is not just about economics because it's about politics at its core.

High grocery bills hit households every single week. Families leave the store either paying more or with less. And no matter how Trump tries to spin this thing, voters, I hope, are going to blame the guy in charge. Trump said that he would fix it, but he is now panicking as prices keep going up. Now, remember some of the promises Trump made about this. We will end inflation and make America affordable again. We're going to get the prices down. We have to get them down's too much groceries, cars, how everything. We're going to get the prices down. But prices will come down. You just watch. They'll come down and they'll come down fast, not only with insurance, with everything. Tomorrow, I will end inflation. I will,

we will cut your taxes, end inflation, slash your prices. I will end inflation. End inflation. Slash your prices. To rapidly reduce inflation, I will end inflation. I will end inflation. Very much. quickly you know and inflation slash your prices we will cut your taxes and inflation slash your price i think you get it okay and again remember if you heard a full grown man talk about groceries like this you'd be right to suspect he doesn't have a clue but likewise an old-fashioned term that we use groceries i use it on the campaign it's such an old-fashioned term but a beautiful term groceries it sort says a bag with different things in it. Groceries went through the roof. It's a bag with different

things in it. Groceries are up. It is a political disaster for Donald Trump. And I wish I could tell you, oh, as soon as X happens, those grocery prices are going to come down. I just don't think so. By the way, one last thing. I got a couple of angry emails from Magas saying I'm lying about the price of my eggs. Why on earth would I do that? I everybody knows I don't eat a lot of eggs. So I've decided I want to get the good eggs. I get the pasture raised organic. They used to be 669 a dozen. Then they were in the sevens. They most recently have been as high as 949 for those same eggs. And I have also paid around 8.79 a dozen for the same eggs. It's like I'm just telling you what the price is. Why are you emailing me telling me that I'm lying? That doesn't make any sense.

All right. So groceries up, political disaster for Donald Trump. We have some bombshell leaked texts that prove the people around Trump know that his economic policy is loony tunes. It's cuckoo for cocoa puffs or even cocoa for cuckoo puffs, I might better say. Treasury secretary Scott Besson, who I sat next to at dinner not long ago, as many of you remember, he didn't have his phone out during the dinner. He was pictured reading a text message from the Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins. And when you zoom in on this text message, you see that what Brooke told Scott is, quote, Argentina sold a large amount of soybeans to China when we would normally be selling to them.

This gives China more leverage over us. I'm going to give you the upside and I'm going to give you the downside of this. On the one hand, you could say, you know what? The fact that Brooke Rollins is sending Scott Bessent this message is reassuring because we now know some members of Trump's administration acknowledge that this is a screw up. They recognize that the tariffs are one effed up mess. It's a reassuring thing to see. But there's another side to this and it's darker and it's uglier, which is it's actually

terrifying to realize that Brooke Rawlins recognizes that this is a screw up. Scott Besson, you know, he's receiving the text message, but at least he's gotten the message that some of the other people in Trump's administration believe that it's a screw up. And they are letting it continue. And not only are they not blowing the whistle publicly, Besson still goes on TV and goes, this is working as planned. This is going to work over the long term. It's all coming together nicely, countries are negotiating with us. So it is not exactly a profile in courage. Now, in fact, as we've spoken about yesterday in the need to bail farmers out once again, predictably so, this is all much worse for farmers than they are willing to admit. Here is a chart of American soybean sales

to China. And you will see that that is a complete and total decline. And soybean sales from the United States to Chinese companies have gone from about seven million metric tons to zero, zero. This was a predictable effect of the tariff scheme. When you asked economists, what's going to happen if Donald Trump puts in place these blanket tariffs? They said, well, other countries will seek alternative sources, we will be having to justify higher costs to end users in the United States. There will be inflation. There will be supply chain disruption. And it was so boring.

And it was so pedantic and it's exactly what is going on. So you tell me, I guess my question to you is, should we be reassured that there are people inside of Trump administration acknowledging the fiasco that the tariffs are? and that it's bad for the American economy, or should we be furious with them, that they are aware of it and they are saying nothing? I want to hear from you, info at david packman.com or leave a comment on my substack, substack. Have you ever wanted to feel more connected to your partner but found that daily life gets in the way?

There is an app designed specifically to help couples deepen their bond called paired. Our sponsor paired gives you daily personalized questions, quizzes, fun games, really just crafted to inspire meaningful and enjoyable conversations with your partner. And you won't see your partner's answers until you've shared your own. So it's like a safe, genuine space for honest dialogue and discovery. Recently, one paired prompt asked, what's something you admire most about your partner? this simple question created a conversation with my girlfriend and highlighted things that we sometimes overlook. The paired app is a great daily reminder of the qualities that make

relationships special. Whether you're just starting to build your 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 everything from immigration policy to economic shifts. If you want to get a bigger picture, a broader picture of what's being reported, ground news is an invaluable source to keep you informed and Ground News is offering my audience 40% off.

They're top tier vantage plan. You'll only pay five bucks a month. Go to ground. news slash Pacman or enter the code Pacman in the app to get started. The link is in the description. The David Packman show is primarily funded by members of our audience through the membership program. It is finally the last day of September as I have been primed.

promising you for a long time. Today, we are doing a massive one day membership special. It's to sort of commemorate, although it's a negative commemoration or I guess we're getting a day closer every day. We are three years, three months and three weeks from the end of Donald Trump's term. It is a three themed membership discount. It's the largest membership discount we've done in years. If you didn't get that email today with the coupon code for getting this discount, shoot

us an email info at david packman.com and i will make sure to get you that coupon code it expires at midnight tonight authoritarianism in action donald trump is making it clear he is planning a disgusting purge of disloyal members of the u.s military this is how authoritarians function here Here is Trump on his way to this totally depraved, authoritarian, dilapidated meeting of the generals and the top military officials with the Secretary of Defense Pete Heggs that took place this morning. And here is Trump making it really clear. If I don't like somebody, they will be fired on the spot. This is the new loyalty test.

And this is terrifying. I'll tell you why in a moment as if you can't tell. I know you can. I rebuilt the military in my first time. We had a great first time. We had the greatest economy ever and it's being beaten by a lot this time. So I'm going over. I'm going to be meeting with generals and with admirals and with leaders.

And if I don't like somebody, I'm going to fire him right on this spot. Now maybe Trump is kidding. He doesn't seem to be kidding. Trump doesn't really have a sense of humor. So I doubt that he is kidding. But this is, we're checking off another one of these terrifying boxes. Oppression and suppression of unfriendly or serious news media that will criticize you when you deserve to be criticized.

Check, we've got it. Denial of due process to people based either on political beliefs or on identity. Check, we've got it. Ignoring court orders, check, we've got it. I could go through the entire list. to propagandize about who is really an American, which categories of people are really American. We've got it.

These are all hallmarks earth of authoritarianism. And now Donald Trump is doing the next one. And you know what? I don't want to say Trump's smart. And I don't think this is even Trump who is the catalyst for this. But what the administration clearly is recognizing or they are acknowledging from history is that often the success of authoritarian depends on the loyalty of the military. This is particularly salient for Trump because he's sending the military into all sorts of places they shouldn't be. He sent the military

to L.A. He sent the military to D.C. We see a plan now to deploy military to Portland when we start thinking about Trump's potential invasion of Venezuela. That's going to require the military. And so one of the things that can trip up an authoritarian is, do I have the military on my side? And one of the ways to ensure that you do is loyalty testing them, making sure you weed out those who are or might be disloyal. And in this case, disloyal might means they won't follow unlawful orders from Donald Trump or from their superiors. I wish that every single one, single one of these generals and admirals refused to show up and said, sir, no, no. Trump continued saying, we need to do a great spiritizing. And this is about esprit decor, as he likes

to say. Why gather all the generals in one place first? Well, this is only in a spriticord. You know what it's a spirit? We're going to be a spriticor. Talking to him, Pete Hexett is talking right now, I'm going to have to leave because I have to talk to him. But these are our generals, our admirals, our leaders. And it's a good thing. A thing like this has never been done before because they came from all over the world. And there's a little bit of expense, not much, but there's a little expense to that. We don't like to waste it.

We'd rather spend it on bullets and rockets, frankly. But this was the one time we had to do a great spiritizing. It's going to be great. I've seen it already. We have every general, every advo, we have great people. We have our real warriors over there. And when they're not good, when we don't think they're our warriors, you know what happened? We say you're fired.

Get out. We had some real bad ones last thing. And I rebuilt the military, the entire. All right. And then now we get into the later part of what we saw him say earlier. So loyalty test, plain and simple. This is, he is going to make it clear. And, and Hegseth in his speech, which is so vomitist that I'm not even going to play it.

Hegg Seth in his speech talked about, you know, there's no more woke and we're not giving people promotions based on race and all of this sort of thing. It is a full blown authoritarian military loyalty test. This is a red alert emergency. Finally, Trump asked, are you going to be doing more strikes on Venezuela? And Trump goes, well, you know what? There's no more fishing boats there because they struck a fishing boat with civilian. fishermen and killed everybody.

Are you preparing to take strikes against drug gangs in Venezuela, sir? We'll see what happens with Venezuela. Venezuela has been very dangerous with drugs and with other things. And they've been very, very dangerous. So we'll see what happens with Venezuela. We had a lot of drugs coming into water. We got water drugs. Just a simple term.

Water drugs. We don't have any body. boats on the water. There are no boats. There are no fishing boats. There are no anything. So we hit a number of boats. You probably saw that. And since we did that, we have absolutely no drugs coming into our country via water because it was lethal. And now we'll look at cartels. We're going to look very seriously at cartels. What I'm hearing is Trump is going to look very strongly at going from bombing civilian fishermen to bombing Venezuelan farmers. That's what I'm hearing when I hear Trump talk about this stuff. We should all be terrified and there is no end

in sight. Donald Trump glitched badly. We have the receipts as he attempted to announce a framework for an Israeli Gaza ceasefire and peace deal. The framework is pathetic. It's never going to work. We'll talk about that in a moment. But here is Donald Trump calling for the creation of a new body. He's going to hit the body. It's an international oversight body. Who will be in charge of this body? I'll give you two guesses and you probably only need one. To ensure the success of this effort, my plan calls for the creation of a new international

oversight body, the board of peace, we call it the board of peace. Sort of a beautiful name, the board of peace, which will be headed not at my request. believe me, I'm very busy. But we have to make sure this works. The leaders of the Arab world and Israel and everybody involved asked me to do this. So we'd be headed by a gentleman known as President Donald J. Trump of the United States. That's what I want to. Everybody else wanted it. Trump would have just assigned it to someone else, but everybody came to him and said, you've got to do it, sir. No one can broker peace like you. some extra work to do, but it's so important that I'm willing to do it, and we'll do it right,

and we're going to put leaders from other countries on, and leaders that are very distinguished leaders, and we'll have a board, and one of the people that wants to be on the board is the U.K. former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, good man, very good man, and some others, and they'll be named over the next few days, and it'll be quite the board, working everybody. wants to be on it now. Oh, yeah. So Donald Trump has found the solution and he has put himself in charge of carrying it out. Now, Donald Trump had another one of these glitches and these are getting pretty serious. Donald Trump glitched when trying to say Abraham. He instead said Abraham and his shoulder just glitches. Something is happening in his a brain when this happens. I'll say a little. I'll say a

little more about the pronunciation in a moment, but take a look at this. Glitching badly. Israel, then I have in addition to negotiating the Abraham. Did you guys see that? Abraham. Abraham. Something is happening in the connection between Trump's body about which so much has been written, good and bad, uh, and his brain. Abraham. Take one more. Then I have in addition to negotiating the Abraham Accords. I like to say it that way because the real people, that's what they call Abraham. I would say Abraham, but it's so much nicer when you say Abraham, so much more elegant. Now Trump, so in Hebrew, and this was alongside depraved and dilapidated Israeli prime minister

Benjamin Netanyahu, this press conference at which they took no questions, by the way. In Hebrew, it is Avraham. I don't know that Trump really knows that. He just seems to have glitched again and gone into this seizing, shoulder seizing thing. All right. Moving on, more substantively, an extraordinarily low energy Trump, you would think the big news here would be, hey, we made a deal, even if Hamas has not agreed to it, which we will talk about in a moment. You think the big news would be we made an incredible.

deal finally, but instead it was a very low energy Trump complaining about his broken teleprompter again. Agency in United Nations was interesting because, as you know, a few days ago, they introduced me, ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States, I'm looking at my teleprompter and the thing was dead stone cold dead. It was dead. The thing's up here. I have a long, beautiful speech to make.

I'm back, 30 feet back. And I'm saying, they're introducing me. There's nothing on my teleprompter. The prompter he famously doesn't need, of course. So, but I made a speech. I actually got good marks. You think Biden could have done that? I don't think so.

I don't think he could have done that. I don't think too many people could have done it. But actually, it was actually more of a speech from my heart, if you want to know the truth. I think it was maybe better in certain ways because it was from the heart. Yeah. When Trump speaks from the heart, you can. really tell that he's deeply, deeply spiritual.

In another moment that really just made anyone who cares about government ethics cringe, Trump talked about how great the Qatari Emir is. And of course, he did get gifted a plane. And all of a sudden, this is a great guy. And I want to thank the prime minister was fantastic. We agreed to launch a formal trilateral mechanism between Israel, Qatar, and the United States to begin a dialogue to enhance mutual security, correct misperceptions and avoid future misgivings. And I want to thank Qatar its leadership. And the Emir, he's a fantastic person.

I think, you know, I'm going to be his public relations man because I know him differently that a lot of people know. We know he gave you a plane. But he wants peace. He wants to see peace. And his people and they really acknowledge the critical role that they played in mediator. Really just a remarkable profile in, uh, in non-corruption. Finally, they decide we are going to be ending this press conference taking absolutely no questions, which makes it not much of a press conference. A question or two from perhaps a friendly Israeli reporter if there's such a thing. That's a very, very tough proposition.

But I would think, Mr. President, that I would go by your instinct, that this is, we'll have enough time for questions. Let's settle the issue first, I think. Thank you very much. Thank you. That is taken, believe it, Mr. President. That is too horrible. Can this state, I'm shocked that the stage did not cover. collapse under the weight of horrible alone from these two individuals here.

So listen, the analysis of the deal, quite simply, Hamas isn't going to go for it. You know, a council of peace headed by Donald Trump. I don't see how Hamas agrees to that. You all know Hamas is a terrorist group, right? I mean, it's not that, but you got to offer something better than Trump's going to run the council of peace, offering amnesty for members. members who accept peaceful coexistence, coexistence with Israel, hardly attractive. I don't think that that's going to really convert too many people.

Supposedly, Arab countries have committed to the demilitarization of Gaza, according to Trump, which is cool. I mean, listen, if it's true, that would be a major and positive step. In practice, there is absolutely no indication of what that means. It's sort of like they've agreed to get rid of food dies. Okay. Was there a regulation? No.

Who's agreed? Well, some people told Bobby that they're going to get rid of food dies. This is weak, weak stuff. And I would be stunned if this actually led to any serious progress. But listen, they made an announcement. They got up on the stage. Trump glitched badly and we will see where it lands. Make sure that you like, comment, and subscribe based on this video on YouTube.

That really helps us. And it costs you nothing. And we're going to take a quick break and be right back. If you were shopping for a new mattress, I would recommend you start by looking at Helix sleep, the mattress I've been sleeping on for years, the only one that I recommend because they custom tailor it to your needs. I took their sleep quiz. It took a minute or two.

I said, oh, you know, I like to sleep on my stomach. I tend to feel hotter in the middle of the night rather than colder. I like medium firm. And Helix just nailed it. Matched me with the perfect mattress. Most people don't even know where to start when you're looking for a mattress and Helix just makes it easy. There is really no substitute for the mattress that's right for you.

Your body will thank you. Delivery was fast. Set up was easy. You do get 100 nights to try it out. They'll even take away your old mattress. Helix is giving my audience 25% off sitewide. go to helix sleep.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. It is great to welcome to the program today. Democratic Senator, Chris Murphy from Connecticut. Senator, it's such an

important time, I think, to have you on, specifically you, because I found you to be a straight shooter on a lot of the issues that we're dealing with right now, including the shutdown that we're facing. And I'll just be totally upfront. I'll show you all my cards. And then I want to hear from you. My audience is pretty sick of the entire shutdown routine. And what I mean by that is every once in a while, we start getting the legacy and corporate media coverage. Did the meeting with the president happen or didn't it?

Does it look like we'll be able to avert it? What about a stop gap? And my audience for the most part understands that this is in a sense sort of like a contrived scenario that hurts Americans when it happens. It first happened under Reagan's presidency. It's not mandatory that this is how we sort of organize the way we do business. And I'm curious from you as someone who in this particular case is on the Democratic side, the party not in power.

It's not just about this shutdown for a lot of my audience. It's about the fact that this keeps happening. What can be done if anything so that we can get out of this doom spiral and get back to doing things that are really, you know, good for the American people at the end of the day. I think that's a really important way to intersect with this debate to just like not accept this as normal, right? So I think it is important to remember that there were no shutdowns, really even no threatened shutdowns during the four years that Joe Biden was president. And why was that? Because, you know, he, you know, made the effort to ahead of time, reach out

across the aisle to Republicans and say, you know, let's find a way to come to some common ground on a budget that makes sense for everybody. So these shutdowns are really more a matter of Republicans being in charge and refusing, refusing to negotiate with Democrats. But yes, we should probably at some point step back and say the whole way we're doing things is ridiculous. We can't agree on a budget on an annual basis. So why don't we do what a lot of states do, which is to have budgets that run two years at a time. So there are some reforms that we could all agree to that would make these sort of cliffs happen less often. But this shutdown is a little unique in that Republicans basically said, we are not going to talk to Democrats at all. We're not going to honor any of your

priorities, but we want your votes anyway. And the second thing that makes it unique is what they are asking us to fund. They are asking us to fund a censorship state, a political repression state. They are literally asking Democrats to provide the votes so that the Trump administration can hunt us and imprison us. And so those two things make this moment unique. Even though it feels like Groundhog Day up, another shutdown, this shutdown is a little different because Republicans literally until yesterday hadn't even gotten in the room with Democrats. Democrats. And two, the nature of what the Trump administration is doing, I think makes them, you know,

close to illegitimate negotiating partners. That presents a real difficult question for Democrats. I'm wondering if you can give us a sense of the mood amongst your Republican colleagues with respect to who would be, quote, blamed if there is a shutdown. And they'll give you a little bit of context for that question. The other day, I was at a coffee shop eavesdropping on the. the conversation of two roughly 70-year-old ladies next to me who were sort of talking about where they get their news and they seem sort of like centrist moderate voters.

And one of them looks at the other and says, you know, and now these Democrats are going to shut down the government. Now you and I know that Republicans control everything right now. And also it does take some Democrats in the Senate to avert this. And so like it's not it's not quite that clean. But the point is perception is often reality. I'm wondering, and I want to hear your take on this, is it possible that Republicans don't seem as panicked about averting the shutdown because they've already made the calculation that

it might actually be bad for Democrats if this shutdown takes place? I think Republicans are always more cavalier about shutdowns because shutdowns just tend to erode people's faith in government. You know, during a shutdown, government looks inept. people lose faith in government's ability to solve any problems, and that accrues to the benefits of Republicans who want government to disappear so that the oligarchy, the billionaires and the corporations can essentially act rapaciously without any check from a government that's looking out for consumers. So I think Republicans are always a little bit more interested

in shutdowns. But right now, I don't think it's lost on most. people that Republicans are in charge of everything. The White House, the House, the Senate, right now the polling, you know, for what it matters, says that if a shutdown were to occur today, most Americans would say, well, yeah, that's Donald Trump's fault. And they already know that he is a chaos agent, that he breeds off of chaos. And so it would make sense that he would want the chaos of a shutdown. Now, as time goes on, that certainly could change. But I sometimes worry that Democrats get a little bit too fatalistic. about a fight. We can win a fight over whether or not we want to fund a government that is

raising health care premiums on people by 75%. We can win a fight over whether or not Democrats should offer their votes for a government that is actively censoring political speech. But we have to be really loud about the moral stakes of the fight. And often our party is not. I think that we should draw a line on the sand, that we're not going to fund a government for the next year that is destroying our democracy. I have no moral obligation to provide the votes to a government to fund the destruction of the rule of law. And I think I can win that fight in Connecticut and all around the country. But you can't do that tepidly. You have to be really loud in your defense of our democracy. And you have to be really loud in explaining to people

what Republicans and what Donald Trump are going to do if this budget doesn't have any constraints on lawlessness. There's another really ugly underbelly to this debate, which is that in addition to the furloughs that are part of the shutdowns, the White House has asked agencies to start preparing permanent layoffs as well. And so that, to me, points to Project 2025. It points to Doge. It points to the goals of the Elon Musk fiasco is short.

lived as it ended up being. How are you and your colleagues dealing with that, which seems to be sort of like a parallel goal here, to create a little cover to just start cutting jobs even further? Well, listen, I think it's important to understand that the president doesn't have any additional legal ability to lay off people in a shutdown. Correct. He claims he has that authority, but he does not. In many ways, the president's ability to lay off federal workers is constrained. not expanded during a shutdown. So if he tries to engage in mass layoffs using the shutdown as a pretext, the courts, if they are obeying the law, are likely going to step in and say that he can't do it. But we should not be bullied by the president's threats to act lawlessly, right?

I mean, that's what he's saying, saying if you shut down the government, I'm going to act illegally. So you shouldn't shut down the government. But he's acting illegally, even when the government is open and operating. Every single day he is acting illegally. He has fired thousands of federal employees lawlessly. And if we provide the votes for a budget without any protections against the lawlessness, then the lawlessness will just increase an expedite and it'll look as if Democrats have given a bipartisan endorsement of the lawlessness. So I'm not going to be bullied into voting for an immoral budget just because the president says that I'm going to act outside of my authority if we go into shutdown. And I'm going to be confident in the law, which says that the president

can't engage in extraordinary levels of layoffs during a shutdown. He actually is required to, he probably has his ability constrained, not expanded during his shutdown legally. Last thing I want to ask you about, and I know you've got to run, and it relates to the growing list of areas in which Donald Trump has violated the law. I read a, really good legal piece recently that argues there are at least a dozen different justifiable reasons for impeachment of Donald Trump just during this second term. Forget about term number one. Now, I know that it, you know, fait accompli, if somehow the House were to impeach at this point, there are not the votes in the Senate to convict. It's all theoretical. But just as a person to

person thing, if you evaluate the fact since Trump was sworn in for term two, has he committed impeachable offenses? Well, I mean, there's no doubt that the president has committed worse offenses in his second term than he did in his first term. And he was impeached in his first term. There's no doubt about that. Now, that's a legal determination for the House of Representatives to make. I'm a juror in that case. Yes. So it's never really made sense for, you know, senators who are going to sit in that jury to jump the gun. But yeah, it's like common sense, right? The president is engaged in much more illegal activity. much more corrupt activity than he was impeached for in his in his first term. And no matter

of the fact that I'm supposed to be an impartial juror in an ultimate Senate trial, I'm not obligated to stay silent about what is just the facts in front of all of us. And part B of this question and then I'll let you go. There are two opinions. One is if there are impeachable offenses, it is the duty and responsibility of the House to impeach without making a political calculation about whether you could ever convict in the Senate. The other view is, we don't have the votes in the Senate. It's just not even worth doing. Are you partial to one versus the other?

Well, I don't think that politics are not at play in your defense of democracy. Sometimes the offenses are so egregious that you do have to move forward on impeachment. And that becomes an important signaling effort to the country about what is acceptable and what is not. But impeachment is inherently a political tool, not purely a legal tool. So I think political considerations are not illegitimate in that exercise. But often it's politically the right thing to do if the legal grounds are there to impeach because you're telling the country, notwithstanding the fact that the other party has enough votes to block it in the Senate. It's important to draw that bright line. I think that's why the impeachment after January 6th was really important. Had the House not moved

for that impeachment, it would have looked as if political leaders in this country were endorsing violence. And that was an important moment, even though the Senate didn't have enough votes. Senator Chris Murphy, Democratic Senator from Connecticut, appreciate your time today. I know you've got a busy day. Thank you. Thanks, man. One of the best upgrades I've ever made to the meals I make at home is wild grain. Wild grain lets me have high quality baked goods ready at home whenever I want them. Wild grain is the first bake from frozen subscription box for artisanal breads, pastries,

and pastas. You can customize your box online. If you're gluten-free, they've got it. It all goes in your freezer. You put it right in the oven, 25 minutes or less, no need to thaw. No need to prep, no need to clean up. They've got some great limited time fall items, pumpkin cinnamon biscuits. My favorite apple cider donuts, I grew up with these in New England.

They've been a hit in my kitchen. The biscuits are buttery and flaky. The donuts are just a little crispy on the outside, warm, spiced center. Impressive stuff. You would never know it was baked from frozen. And also, wild grain slow fermentation process makes their breads more neutral. rich and flavorful. So maybe it's a cozy weekend breakfast or something to add to dinner. Wild grain makes it easy. And for a limited time, you can get $30 off your first box, plus free

croissants in every box when you subscribe at wildgrain.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. Donald Trump's own Frankenstein monster is suddenly turning on him. Her name is Marjorie Taylor Green. She's been one of Maga's loud. soldiers and she has basically said to Donald Trump and his White House shove it over none other than the Jeffrey Epstein files. Now, in an interview, Marjorie Taylor Green says the Trump team warned her, uh-oh, the Trump team warned her that if she supports this bipartisan effort to release more of the Epstein files, the really juicy ones, that it would be seen as a quote, very hostile act.

That is how authoritarian's talk. This little house you got here would be a shame if anything were to happen to it. What did Marjorie Taylor Green do? She called the White House aide back and said, I don't work for you. I work for my district. And that is MTG speak for go pound sand or whatever. Now what is maybe most interesting about this is that Marjorie Taylor Green really has been one of Donald Trump's most loyal foot soldiers for a very long time.

And she and Trump are in a sense cut from the same cloth. But all of a sudden, Marjorie Taylor Green is signed on to this bipartisan discharge petition. Nancy Mace has signed it. Lauren Bobert has signed it. Thomas Massey of all people have signed it. And so the goal here is let's force a vote to demand that the DOJ release really all of the Epstein documents. She's even threatening to read out the names of alleged accomplices on the house floor

if she gets them. Now, I don't want to confuse you here. be David is Marjorie Taylor Green all of a sudden a hero? Is she a good person? Is she a political ally? No, no, no. And my instinct is all of you recognize that. This is sort of like a broken clock moment. Even a stopped clock gets the time right twice a day. This happens to be one of those times. But it is surreal that the woman who once blamed wildfires on Jewish space lasers, although she says someone else posted that to my Facebook page, it wasn't me. She is now pushing harder than most of Congress for the Epstein documents. And sometimes the world is that upside down.

I see this as a classic, the enemy of my enemy type situation. Nobody on the left should see Marjorie Taylor Green as some kind of newfound ally. She's not all of a sudden in favor of accountability generally. She's realizing Trump's team doesn't own her. And if that puts her at odds with the MAGA White House, so be it. The rebellion is useful, but it is not shared values. It's just a common strategy. And I want to also be really clear about the motives here. Marjorie Taylor Green didn't all of a sudden wake up with a with a conscience and go the Trump White House doesn't own own me. I do what I want. This is about attention. This is about leverage. And this might even be. And I don't know if Marjorie Taylor Green thinks this long term. But maybe this is even about her positioning herself

for the post Trump future. She lives for the cameras. She wants to be seen as those. maga figure willing to draw blood. And so she's going to be out here not because she's risking her career for the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. She wants relevance. And the bigger picture is really undeniable here. Trump has built his brand on the idea that loyalty is everything. You threaten, you bribe, you dangle, but White House invitations.

He uses those tools like an authoritarian to keep people in line. And one of his loudest allies is saying, I'm ignoring the threats. And in fact, I'm throwing them back in your face. So when Marjorie Taylor Green says you don't own me, it could mean that there is a slice of MAGA. This is now not a slice of the Republican Party. This could be a slice of MAGA that is breaking. It's not just on Epstein. Marjorie Taylor Green is broken with Trump on Iran.

She's broken with Trump on Ukraine. She's broken with Trump on AI, even to some degree on Gaza. That is not a small departure. It's like ripping up the maga script on live TV. So that's where we are. The president who once thought he could ride the conspiracy train forever into the sunset is now getting bucked off by the very creature he helped to create. And if Marjorie Taylor Green, who by the way, she's never met a camera she didn't like,

if Marjorie Taylor Green is not afraid of Donald Trump, you have to imagine there are other magas ready to flip. None of this makes her an ally to the left. of this makes her a progressive. She's still the same hard right conspiracy theorist that she's always been. She's opposed to everything for reproductive rights to climate action. But she has found a way, she's found a different battlefield inside the same extremist movement. And Trump can only see this as a betrayal. Hey, a bunch of Donald Trump's henchmen and allies are facing prison. Think about this. Trump's Justice Department is waging war on his political enemies.

We know that we've talked about it. But based on new legal analysis, they may be setting themselves up for prison. This is not me saying it. Rick Wilson, former Republican strategist laid it out. These Trump loyalists are committing potentially career-ending life-wrecking felonies in broad daylight. Now let me explain what's at stake. I think it's pretty easy to understand. U.S.C. Subsection, sorry, under 18 USC subsection 242, if you use the power of your office

to strip an American of their rights, that's a felony for which you can get up to 10 years in prison. If someone is seriously harmed, you're talking about potentially life in prison. Section 241 makes it a felony just to conspire in the abuse. And if you add obstruction of justice, that's 5, 10, 20 years. Every one of these kangaroo indictments, fake affidavits, phony leaks to Trump's propaganda machine. These are felonies and these people, Pam Bondi, Cash Patel, Lindsay Halligan, the following orders crowd. They believe Trump's going to save them. They believe he will pardon us. He will protect

us. But let's be real for a moment. Trump has a long history of burning everyone around him the second they're no longer useful. His lawyers are going to be left twisting in the wind like they've been in the past. His aides could end up hung out to dry. His so-called friends who does Trump really have friends? I don't know. Betrayed on a whim. And Rick Wilson points out the obvious. Trump isn't exactly the healthiest guy. Even if there's a plan to hand out the pardons, what happens if he is unable to for whatever reason? These people are going to be left holding the back and their careers will be gone.

Their freedom could be gone and they could be trading their oath to the constitution, which they violated, by the way, for a prison jumpsuit. So this is the loyalty trap. We've talked about it before. Trump's currency is loyalty. He demands absolute obedience. He promises protection. The protection isn't really worth that much because there's one way flow of loyalty.

It goes to Trump. The more you give them, the more you sacrifice, but the more likely you could end up being the fall guy or the fall gal. Because when the music stops, Trump moves on. And that's where the history lesson kicks in. Rick Wilson, interestingly enough, invoked Nuremberg. That is not an exaggeration. The whole I was just following orders thing, it's a confession. It's not a defense.

And when people use their power to persecute others under authoritarian regimes, they don't get medals. They often end up getting trials and prison. They get remembered as villains, not as patriots. Do we think Pam Bondi will be remembered as a patriot for helping to violate due process in the way that she has helped to do? I don't think so. I actually go back to Arnold Schwarzenegger, who I don't agree with in a lot of areas.

I think Arnold's wrong on Proposition 50, for example. I supported he's against it in California. But when we think about the big picture of those who are on the wrong side historically, as Arnold has pointed out about his own father, they don't end up the heroes in the history books. The danger is bigger than Trump's cronies. I do think that a democracy is at stake here because Trump has this blueprint, turn the military into my protection racket, turn the DOJ into my protection racket, cross-examination. anybody and you're indicted. And so these henchmen may end up in prison and they should because

if they don't, there's no accountability. It's not just Trump's racket. It becomes the new normal for the country if they're able to get away with it. So someday, remember, due process if they are investigated and charged and convicted and sentenced and the cell door slams shut, I hope that they will ask, was it worth it? Caroline Levitt, we've said, not that she's committing crimes, but we have said, when Caroline is in her 30s or 40s, will she say it was worth it to tell all those lies in my 20s? Maybe she will, maybe she won't. But what about people that might end up in prison? I am going to play a video for you that is terrifying. This is the special assistant to the president, Lindsey Halligan. She is barely able to coherently speak. She is supposed to be

representing the White House and prosecuting Trump's agenda. She is barely able to put together a coherent thought. And so think of the contrast as we listen to her. This is sort of a new character in this administration. They want to project strength, intelligence, competence. This is what their public facing officials look like. You know, classroom shouldn't be stages upon which teachers can preach their various indoctrination masquerading as eternal truths. And similarly, museums that are over 70% funded by the federal government shouldn't be laboratories for political experiments. And so what we're doing is we just sent a letter to the Smithsonian asking for all information regarding their exhibits and their placards to. try to get to the bottom of what happened and where the Smithsonian went wrong and try to make

the Smithsonian amazing and great. If you're struggling to understand what she's talking about, you are not alone. And live up to what the president wants the Smithsonian and D.C. to be. It's the capital of our city and we need to make it amazing and great and beautiful. Yeah, Lindsay, I mean, obviously, Charlotte and I both lived in D.C. for a number of years. I love the Smithsonian's and visiting them, taking family and friends there. And we often talk about preserving history and museums and not erasing it. But how do you balance that? We need to be able to review this while honoring even our not so pleasant past. Yeah, I mean, it's not about whitewashing.

It's all about full context. So while slavery, Oh, boy. It's obviously a horrible aspect of our nation's history. You can't really talk about slavery, honestly, unless you also talk about hope and progress. And I think we need to be focusing on the progress that we've made since then. And we need to stop focusing so much on the lack of progress. We need to talk about the progress and stop focusing on the lack of progress. What does that even mean?

Is this an argument against teaching about slavery accurately? Is it an argument against talking about systemic racism? And the absurdity of stop focusing so much on the lack of progress. It's like saying slavery was bad, but let's not dwell on it. And it really lines up with Trump's patriotic education push, which, by the way, has gotten totally smothered by 15 other scandals. It lines up with Project 2025. They want people who are as clueless as Lindsay teaching history.

history, teaching about slavery. And this is another authoritarian theme. Control history and downplay oppression, always. So Lindsey Halligan, in a sense, isn't an outlier. She's the norm in Donald Trump's orbit. Loyalty over competence. You're chosen not for your intelligence or your skill. You're chosen for how loyal you're willing to be to the dear leader.

And what you get as a White House that hires lawyers whose main credential is appearing on Newsmax, which is Lindsay Halligan's credential. You just saw is what happens when democracy gets hollowed out and replaced with propaganda. And if these are the people defending Donald Trump's policies in public, imagine who is writing the policy behind closed doors. Stephen Miller is one of those people, terrifying. So this is embarrassing. This is dangerous.

Incoherent rhetoric is being used to justify authoritarianism. We should all be terrified and do everything we can to make it end. Now on the bonus show today, we will talk about Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Steve. Bannon being in the new Epstein documents. Oh boy. YouTube is also agreeing to pay Donald Trump $24 million to settle a lawsuit. And NFL is dealing with fury from the right because bad bunny will be doing the halftime show at this year's Super Bowl next year's Super Bowl.

I have to tell you, I love the selection. I love it. All right. We will talk about all of those stories on the bonus show. Sign up at join packman.com. If you missed today's email with the membership discount offer, email me info at david packman.com. Say, David, give me that coupon code. I want to sign up and I will gladly send it to you expires at midnight info at david packman.com.