The David Pakman Show - A government detached from reality
Episode Date: August 25, 2026-- On the Show: -- Dani Pinter, Chief Legal Officer at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, joins us to discuss representing her client in the ongoing legal battle to hold Andrew and Tristan T...ate accountable for alleged sex trafficking -- Donald Trump suggests renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America and denies attacking Canadian French-language protections -- Jesse Watters asks Abdul El-Sayed about youth medical procedures, prompting El-Sayed to ask Watters about his circumcision status -- Donald Trump maintains a daily official schedule that begins with his first substantive event at 12:30 PM after morning Executive Time -- Donald Trump presents an unverified vaccine schedule from a podium while claiming it will lower rates of autism in children -- Vice President JD Vance claims fraudsters should go to jail, recounts a family argument, and asserts housing affordability is improving -- Media commentator Scott Jennings declares military victory over Iran during a broadcast despite high oil prices and low public approval -- On the Bonus Show: Darline Graham and Ralph Norman head to a runoff today, New York supermarkets sue Mamdani over city-run stores, the Kennedy Center's finances tanked after Trump slapped his name on it, and much more... 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get up to 27% OFF at https://helixsleep.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🧠 Try Brain.fm totally free for a month at https://brain.fm/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Book: https://bit.ly/m/attention -- 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) Start(01:24) Trump wants to rename Lake Ontario(09:52) Jesse Watters interview with Abdul El-Sayed(22:28) Trump avoids working in the morning(29:20) Trump presents unverified vaccine schedule(38:19) Dani Pinter Interview(59:01) JD Vance claims fraudsters should go to jail(65:58) Scott Jennings declares victory over Iran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Vice President J.D. Vance accidentally articulated a very good case for prosecuting his own boss.
And he insisted it's a great scenario for young people, all of whom can afford their own homes now,
except none of the numbers actually bear that out.
Donald Trump now starting his days after lunch, but he still found time this morning to threaten Canada
and announce that Lake Ontario may become Lake America.
We are going to look at the empty schedule of Trump and a public appearance so bizarre that the reggae version of YMCA wasn't even the weirdest part.
And then a Fox News interview completely off the rails when Jesse Waters talks about children's dingalings and gets asked about his own manhood in return.
and Trump's favorite CNN defender, Scott Jennings, has made an announcement.
America has won the war in Iran.
I know the war still continues.
I know the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted.
I know that Iran certainly hasn't surrendered and we have no deal.
But Scott Jennings says, rest assured, we've won it.
Let's get right into it today.
Donald Trump woke up this morning and decided the United States should read
name Lake Ontario to Lake America because he's angry with Canada and furious with Ontario.
And somehow, and this is really weird, that was not necessarily the strangest thing about the message
he posted to truth social onto a truth social for his Canadian counterpart, starting with
quote, the United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to
like America in that we don't expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
The president of the United States, the actual president as horrifying as that is to acknowledge,
apparently unable to complete a basic English sentence unless it's Natalie Harp typing out
these posts, which sometimes it is, and in which case she can't complete a basic English sentence,
making an announcement that he may rename an international body of water to punish a Canadian
province that is not just saying, do whatever you want to assert. Now, Lake Ontario, some of you
may remember from elementary school, Lake geography. Lake Ontario is shared by the United
States and Canada. And Trump can certainly order the American federal government to call it
Lake America. He could do that. He could demand that every Republican politician politics.
solemnly repeat, put their hand on their heart and say, I pledge allegiance to Lake America.
He could do that.
He could force government maps to say Lake America.
But that doesn't change what it's actually called by the international community.
And it certainly doesn't change what Canada calls it.
And if this sounds familiar, it should.
This is the same stupid routine we saw with the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump said, oh, it's going to be the Gulf of America now.
We are flying over the Gulf of America.
And he pretends.
and so do many Republicans, nauseatingly, that this has really accomplished a major act of statesmanship,
except this time the threat is implied by the name change because Donald Trump is saying,
we're not going to be doing much business with Ontario. And of course, this is in the context
that we talked about yesterday of Donald Trump launching another ill-advised trade war with one of our
closest allies, a democratic ally, an ally of so many friendly people. Whenever I go to Montreal,
they come up to me on the streets and they say, sir, I love the show. And I'm getting off track.
But the point is, this is very much economically significant. Ontario is home to the center of Canada's
auto industry. That is deeply integrated with American manufacturing. Trump's entire USMCA,
the only real differences that it had with NAFTA, the important differences related to the car industry
and to vehicles made jointly by Canada, U.S. and Mexico.
Parts cross the border, sometimes repeatedly during the production of a single vehicle,
an American part may go to Canada to be assembled into a component, which then comes back
to the United States and is part of the finished vehicle, for example.
And so blowing that relationship up, it punishes Canadians. It makes stuff more expensive.
How many times have I going to explain it? It makes things more expensive for American manufacturers.
They pass it on to the consumers of the final product. That's basic trade. Trump doesn't understand
basic trade. He doesn't understand that international trade is a system of mutually beneficial exchange.
He sort of understands it like a mob boss.
There's a winner and there's a loser.
And if a country refuses my demands, I start threatening them with economic destruction.
Now, there was another post here as well where Donald Trump was attempting to refute the claim
from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney that all of a sudden the negotiations with Canada
over the trade deal started to touch on multilingual elements of Canadian society and other stuff.
Trump is denying it and he posted, quote, I would never interfere with Canadians speaking French.
In fact, I have never even thought of doing such a stupid thing.
This lie was made up by a weak and ineffective prime minister.
Uh-oh.
In an attempt to gain political support, which he has totally lost from the people of Quebec.
I love French Canadians.
Now notice the denial is very specific.
Trump says, I would never interfere with Canadians speaking French.
The dispute is not about Trump walking through Montreal and saying, no more French.
We call it a half moon-shaped pastry.
Never utter the other word.
That's not what it's about.
Canada says American negotiators treated Quebec's French language protections, which
govern product labels as an irritant to the deal. And Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada
simply is not going to accept the deal, which weakens the protections of the French language.
Trump responds by going, I never said I wanted Canadians not to speak French. So it's a straw man.
It's designed for people who will never look into what the disagreement actually involves,
which is a hell of a lot of people. I love the idea that Trump says, I never even thought of doing
such a stupid thing. But he says it right after saying, hey, we should rename the Lake Ontario
to Lake America because I'm mad at Ontario. So he does stupid things all the time. He recommends
and proposes stupid things all the time. Now, apparently interfering with French language
protections would be stupid, but changing the name of the Great Lake wouldn't be stupid.
Unfortunately for all of us, this is what American governance has become. It's ill. It's ill.
ill-advised, ill-conceived trade wars that Trump doesn't understand, conducted really through social
media tantrums, very often late at night or early in the morning. And international diplomacy has
been reduced to this sort of childish name-calling and major economic relationships are in danger
because Trump is personally disrespected. Now, Canada is preparing retaliatory tariffs.
What that means is that American businesses and consumers are going to end up absorbing some
of the resulting costs. And the very highly integrated North American auto industry now faces a period
of significant uncertainty and at a time where new vehicles are as expensive as they've ever been
and out of reach for many Americans. And Trump's contribution is, you know how we're going to fix
this? Lake America, thank you for your attention to this matter. It's humiliating, of course,
And it makes you cringe when you think about how embarrassing this is for the rest of the world to see.
But a lot of Americans are too busy worrying about how even they will afford anything they need
to be worried about how this looks globally.
It's terrible for the average American.
And I think that that is how people should decide who they're going to vote for in November.
Have your day-to-day decisions and circumstances and whatever.
Has it all become lighter and easier thanks to the economic policy of this administration?
You don't have, don't, don't trust me to tell you.
You go, well, David, you don't know what people are.
That's right.
I don't know what any, every individual is experiencing.
What I'm suggesting is to honestly ask yourself, have the promises about affordability
come true?
Has gas come down 50%?
Has energy come down 50%?
Is housing cheaper?
Are you making a lot more money?
Are groceries declining?
in price or increasing in price. You don't have to take my word for it. This makes me and a lot of us
on the left different than when Trump goes, don't believe what you're seeing and hearing. Just listen
to me. I'm telling you, go and find the information for yourselves and you will see that none of
these promises have come to fruition. And then you'll have a decision to make. And that decision
will be who deserves my vote in November. A Fox News interview with Democratic Senate candidate,
Abdul El-Sayed went completely off the rails when Jesse Waters started talking about children's
twig and berries. He calls it a dingling, his terminology, not mine, and got a really pretty
personal answer, which had to do with circumcision. Here is Jesse Waters going, it's not
okay to slash dingalings off kids, is it? And Abdul al-Syad goes, Jesse, tell me,
Are you circumcised?
And he was building to a point.
Let's take a look.
The idea that the government shouldn't tell you what kind of health care you should have.
I just think the government shouldn't tell you what kind of health care you should have.
And if you're a minor, it's between you, your doctor and your parents.
Now, if you disagree with that, if you disagree with that, if you disagree that health care decisions
need to be made by a doctor and their parents and a patient, then I just think we agree to disagree.
But, you know, you want to put government inside a clinic or a hospital, selectively.
You're a doctor, right?
I am.
So you think it's okay for a parent to slash his kids stiggling off?
You think that's okay?
I mean, do you...
So do you really want to have this conversation?
Are you circumcised?
Yeah, yeah, but I mean, that's a personal question,
doctor.
So you probably should want to move on.
You probably should want to move on.
It's circumcision is different than castration.
I think it's a problem.
It's a problem that you think
that you get to decide what happens,
between a parent, a doctor and a patient.
And I'm just saying that, yes, circumcision is surgery on a kid's dingling.
So if you really want to bring that up, you can.
Now, I'll be honest with you.
I don't think that gender affirming surgery and circumcision are really analogous in the way
that El-Sayed is suggesting.
But it is a phenomenal way to turn it around on Jesse Waters.
I mean, just absolutely hilarious insofar as Jesse Waters asks an inflammatory question,
using, you know, the medical terminology of an eight-year-old.
What about the dingling?
And El-Sayed turns the question around on him.
Now, again, circumcision and gender-affirming surgery are not identical procedures.
But the point here is about when should the government say we will override what a family or a patient
or a doctor or all of them together have decided is best for an individual?
That's the nuanced conversation that Jesse Waters didn't want to have.
He wanted, are you for or against mutilization of children?
Mutilation, of course, but Trump has made up a word.
And Jesse Waters ends up looking kind of silly.
Now, El-Sayed tries to move the conversation towards what voters consistently identify as their biggest concerns.
And that's health care, grocery and gas prices, cost of living, housing, et cetera.
And Jesse Waters goes on to the next culture war question.
which is men and women's sports. This is how they describe it. And it becomes another very interesting
moment. And I think there's actually a lot of analysis to be done here. So let's take a lot.
So again, like Jesse, you have not asked me one time about the issues that people actually care
about in Michigan. You don't want to talk about gas prices. You don't want to talk about groceries.
You don't want to talk about health care. You don't want to talk about the stupid trade war.
That's about the destroy machine.
We spent a whole interview talking about that stuff. That's destroying, that is destroying our own military.
You don't seem to want to talk about any of those things.
You want to bring up all this cultural war that, you know, I'm not here to fight a culture war.
We talked about the war.
We talked about gas prices in the Green New Deal, okay?
If you want to do an interview, I'm going to up every time.
You can do the interview, okay?
I'll ask the questions.
You're doing the greatest hits, Jesse.
Like, I mean, this is, like, you can play this game if you want, but like, you can keep doing the greatest
hits if you want.
You told me we're going to come on for a conversation.
And when we have conversations, I think it's okay to also ask questions.
I just want to understand what you're getting at here.
I'm going for U.S. Senate.
Whether you think men should play in women's
Senator in Michigan, it's a big issue. I'm interested in getting money out of politics, putting money in your pocket, and passing Medicare for all.
You know what people don't care about what sports kids play.
You're filibustering. It's a big issue. Because, like, I want to talk about the issues that you were lost on that issue last time.
Deserved to hear about. All right, so you want to answer that question. What issue? You want to answer the question.
What issue? Go ahead, Jesse, what issue? Should men play women's sports? You have daughters, right?
I think that, look, I played sports my whole life.
Sports were an important part of my life.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to play sports.
And at the end of the day, the decision of who gets to play what sports ought to be decided by the people who governs sports.
I'm running for U.S. Senate.
Jesse, it's insane.
I'm out here trying to take on like the healthcare crisis in Big Pharma, and you're asking me about who gets to play what sports.
I don't know.
It's kind of a big thing if you've been following the news recently, Abdul.
Let me ask you about the politics.
We'll get to your race.
So listen, El-Sayed gets a lot of things right here.
The issue of trans sports is a distraction.
And it's a distraction that can be, you can confirm that it's a distraction objectively because
there are a lot of states with zero, one or two trans athletes at a level where it would make
a difference.
Now I'm going to come back to that in a moment.
He's hitting a lot of the right points, which is national politics.
politicians should not be writing the rules for all sports age groups and levels of competition.
We should be empowering.
And by the way, we don't need to empower.
It's already the case.
Sports leagues can make these decisions.
If you are doing soccer for five-year-olds, you might make a different decision than NCAA
wrestling in California.
And that is absolutely true.
Like, should it be the sports leagues or Chuck Grassley deciding the rules?
Obviously, it should be the sports leagues.
But Democrats have often handled this question badly.
Like as soon as you do, why are you asking me about this?
It does sound sort of evasive.
And I think about eight years ago when I was on some shows where they asked me about it,
I started with that.
And I think that it was a mistake.
Voters understand that biological sex can affect athletic performance, particularly after
male pre puberty.
Now, I think there's a lot to discuss about, well, if you've,
had gender affirming care for a certain amount of time and then we can evaluate depending
on the sport.
That's all totally fine, okay?
But I do think Democrats have missed the vote on.
Voters intuitively understand biological sex affects athletic performance in a bunch of different
sports.
So the concerns about fairness, they are used as a weapon by the right.
They are disproportionately blown up into something that they really aren't.
I think a better answer is to be a little more straightforward, which is to say, hey, listen,
protecting fair play for girls and women is legitimate as a goal.
And including trans kids where inclusion doesn't undermine fairness is completely fine.
There are tons of sports that are gender segregated and they don't really need to be.
And the people administering those sports are the best position to make.
those decisions.
The rule for Olympic weightlifting doesn't need to be the rule for an eight-year-old soccer
league, but it definitely doesn't need to be Josh Hawley, you know, or Marsha Blackburn, who
are drawing the rules.
If you've got a high-stakes varsity championship that involves strength or something, that's
different from an intramural league or something that's already co-ed, so who cares?
they're an athlete as experienced male puberty arguably makes a difference, the nature of the sport,
whatever. But here's the point. What we need to really go back to is this is not the business
of the federal government. There are dozens and hundreds of leagues and different sports.
And why is it you want to push that on the federal government when the federal government is best
positioned to go and get people health care to deal with housing affordability, etc? I think that that is sort of,
like the important thing. And the scale of the issue has been so distorted. Again, I want to give you
the numbers. The NCAA president testified that among more than half a million college athletes,
he knew a fewer than 10 who were trans. In the entire state of North Carolina, there are two
trans girls out of 180,000 student athletes. Okay. This is crazy. Now, some state,
Whacky right wing states are choosing to reorganize their entire legal system around one or two student athletes.
Other states might not even have a single trans student athlete.
So it doesn't mean we don't care about fairness.
It's the answer should be proportionate to the situation.
Let the athletic associations and leagues and administrators say for these sports in these leagues,
here are the rules.
Have an appeals process.
If there's an unusual case in some, some scenario is unusual, allow an appeals process.
Say, we are committed to preserving fair competition where there is a genuine advantage,
but we are going to do inclusion when there is not a fair play concern.
That, I think, is stronger than sometimes the way Democrats will go after it.
But remember, all of the, Jesse Waters doesn't give a damn about that.
Jesse Waters doesn't want to develop a workable policy.
He is trying to put the issue in front of millions of viewers to get them thinking about kids
dinglings to use his term instead of, damn, how much am I paying for health care and energy
and groceries?
And I think Jesse Waters learned the hard way that this was not a great way to approach
this interview.
He says he'd love to have Abdul El-Sayyad back.
I don't know if he will.
We'll have to wait and see.
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Take a look at Donald Trump's official schedule for today.
This is so astonishingly light that if this.
If this were Joe Biden's schedule, Fox would spend a day saying, is it time to invoke the 25th
amendment and remove him because he clearly simply cannot work.
Look at this.
Trump's first actual meeting is at 1230.
You'll notice at 8 a.m. he has what they call executive time.
This is a euphemism that they created during Trump's first term.
And it basically means Trump's watching TV, posting online and calling sycophants who are
willing to tell him he's doing a great job. We have this policy meeting at 1230. He's pre-recording
an interview at 2. He has a close to the press policy meeting at 3. And then he is doing
signing time at 4 where sycophants put executive orders or bills in front of him to sign. And then that
is it. He has no public event. He has no intelligence briefing. He has no news conference. His first
substantive item is after lunch and his day appears to end around four. Now, I want to remind you
that when there was reporting during the Biden administration, that Biden was mostly working 10 to
four for his public appearances, a six hour period, there was outrage. How could he only be doing
that? And we knew that outside of that time, Biden was reading important policy
reports and documents and receiving intelligence briefings, all stuff Donald Trump doesn't do.
But even still 10 to 4, he can't be president.
He can't.
We then got a report that Trump's actually mostly working 12 to 5.
And then they said, oh, that's fake news.
That's not true.
But during those five hours, even if true, he's getting a lot done.
And today his schedule is 1230 to whenever his 4 o'clock signing is done.
And the reporting that Donald Trump has limited his public schedule seems to be not only
accurate.
It seems to be generous.
Today, we can't even identify five hours of work, three closed door events, a pre-recorded interview,
and signing time.
Now, is it possible that Donald Trump's private meetings are very long and demanding?
I guess.
I mean, it's true that the public schedule doesn't capture every presidential activity, but
that charity, that defense was never extended to Joe Biden.
When Biden worked from Delaware, they said, oh, that's a vacation day, even though his staff
is with him. Secure communications capabilities are there. The president still has responsibilities
no matter where they are. And when Biden called a lid early, they said he's physically incapable of
working. When Biden stumbled over a word, it was Sleepy Joe. He's cognitively disabled. He must
be removed right now. Trump is 80. He falls asleep multiple times a week in public. His schedule
as light as it is, is completely padded with soft executive time, spending weekends golfing at his
properties.
And he reportedly has attended only a fraction of the intelligence briefings that Biden got.
And some days, the supposedly hardest working president in history doesn't start identifiable
presidential work until 1230 in the afternoon.
And he's done by 10 after 4.
So once again, if we apply to Trump, the standard.
they established for Biden. Is Trump disabled? Is he capable of performing the job? Who's running the
country before 1230? Now, during Trump's first term, there were these leaked private schedules,
which showed that about 60% of Trump's working hours were this vague, amorphous executive time.
And his first meetings often didn't start until 11 or 1130. And what they said was, well,
Trump's leadership style is a little bit different. Now, I guess that leader,
style is back.
Trump's older.
He's slower.
He's more confused.
And he's working a really restricted public schedule.
Now, the big story is the double standard.
With Joe Biden, his age was a defining national crisis.
And a single blank space on his calendar was proof that he was incapacitated.
And with Trump were told, no, no, no, he's posting to the internet, guys.
He's watching TV.
He's talking to friends.
That's hard work at the end of the day.
If your grandpa spent the morning watching TV and arguing on Facebook.
Facebook with people and calling others to complain.
Would you say that that was a demanding shift at the office?
Of course not.
Now, Trump built this political brand around the claim that he is more vital and has more
vigor than anybody.
But Biden's too old tired and diminished to do any work.
Trump's now working noon to 4, 1230 to 4.
And the people who were defending the attacks on Joe Biden and saying Biden must give us minute
by minute proof of what he's doing, they suddenly aren't interested anymore. And we are supposed to look
away and pretend that none of this is going on. Now, meanwhile, as we covered yesterday, Donald Trump
has put on at least 20 pounds over a recent period of time. The disclosures from the standpoint of
health are completely lacking in specificity and completeness. And they just want us to look away
from everything, even when we see a guy who really doesn't seem to be able to do it anymore.
So, you know, I know that Trump's diminishing vigor has been a story for a long time.
And it just is sort of like continuing to slowly diminish and maybe he'll be able to last the
rest of his presidential term. Maybe he won't. We don't know. But I just wish people would hold
Trump to the same standards they held Biden. Do we care about the presidential schedule or don't we?
Is 10 to 5 too short?
Because if it is 1230 to 410 must also be too short.
And these people as a reminder don't really care about any of these principles.
Presidential fitness is the most important thing when it's Biden.
We don't want to be regulating businesses.
Let them do whatever we what they want.
Except when we want Twitter to publish our COVID disinformation.
We care about individual autonomy and freedom except when we want to tell women what they can
and can't do with regard to medical services. It is a waste of time to talk to them about their first
principles. They'll have to go. Let's go back to first principles. You guys don't have any.
The only principles you have are what can I conveniently argue today? Let's not fall into that.
This guy is working 1230 to 410 and wants us to believe he is the vigorous, uh, uh, more vigorous
than Barack Obama was in his late 40s when he became president. We don't believe it. It's obvious.
It's not true. Just stop lying to us. Please.
Now, some of you can tell very clearly that there is something very wrong with Donald Trump right now.
And I'm not talking about Donald Trump's cancels.
I'm not talking about Donald Trump's hands.
I'm not talking about Donald Trump's brain.
What I'm talking about is that Donald Trump seems to think that he solved autism.
We have to have a real conversation about what went wrong here.
Trump says he believes his new vaccine recommendations.
will prevent autism. Take a listen to what he had to say.
We took in school and we introduced the real food pyramid and reformed the vaccine recommendations
to protect America's youth. We're making America healthy again. We're strongly requesting,
even telling people when you get your shots for your young child. And this has to do,
we think, with preventing autism, that you go to the doctor for five small shots and set of one
big, massive shot. You do it in five different shots, five different shots, small little shots
where those beautiful little bodies can handle it. And I think you're going to see a very big difference
in the rate of autism, which is like an epidemic what's happened with autism. Understand what
Trump is saying. He's saying, I believe that if you split up vaccines for kids, you will see a notable
decline in the rate of autism.
That is an insane thing absent any research supporting that idea for a president to say.
We have no research that spacing shots out will reduce or change autism rates because autism
isn't caused by vaccines and it wouldn't be prevented by rearranging the schedule.
It's been studied endlessly.
What we've got is the president of the United States.
at a lectern describing beautiful little bodies handling teeny tiny little demure shots,
presenting himself like he cracked a medical mystery, which has been studied for decades. He is
parroting completely unscientific and quite frankly creepy medical misinformation.
And there are people who are going, it's so great that he's working on this issue.
He cares so much. He split up the shots for his kids. No, he did.
Even that story that Trump has told is bogus.
And we know it's bogus because the individual shots were not available in the United States,
certainly not at the time that he says Ivanka got the separate shots.
Now speaking of things nobody wants to address directly.
Look at this.
As other speakers were speaking, Donald Trump's skin on his right hand is so discolored.
It's almost bright white.
And this is, of course, the growing mystery around Donald Trump's hand bruising, which they said,
oh, it's from shaking so many hands.
Well, Trump only shakes hands with his right hand.
Why is his left hand also bruised?
He then started putting bandages on the hand, but that was very no conspicuous.
So then he started putting makeup except the makeup is not really matched to Donald Trump's skin tone.
Nobody has actually given us a satisfactory explanation from this.
And Trump is just standing there with the top of his hand, five shades too light.
And everybody just keeps moving and goes, oh, there's nothing.
There's no need to worry about that.
We then got to the topic of Caroline Levitt, who was in the audience for this speech of Donald
Trump's yesterday.
And Donald Trump again goes with this thing.
He's just joking.
She loves her children more than Trump because she's quitting.
It's just a joke.
But deep down, I think Trump really is confused.
How could somebody want to just hang out at home with their kids rather than to work for me and
defend all of my hairbrained lies?
How is that possible?
And our press secretary, mother of two, and well, she decided she loved her children more than she loved Donald Trump.
I'm very upset about this.
So funny, just a joke, right?
She has to go home and spend time with her children.
That does happen on occasion with some people when they love their children, and she does.
And Caroline, congratulations on your newborn, your perfect newborn.
And she's done a fantastic job.
She's been a great, great.
press secretary now if i say you're the best of all time i have sarah sitting here so i'll have
he is um he's describing a staff for choosing her own kids over him as this strange affliction that she
came down with and he really is telling on himself here because that is how loyalty is ranked
for trump and choosing your children over defending trump's lies to trump is a surprising outcome
How could anybody choose that?
That doesn't make any sense.
Now maybe the most surreal moment as Donald Trump wraps up, the band plays.
You know, someone told me this was a reggae version of YMCA.
It seems more like an elevator music type version.
Listen to this.
All right.
So anyway, if I hope people weren't eating during that, what we are now getting is a steady
flow of medical misinformation delivered by the president as if he is.
doing some kind of personal triumph. I figured it out. We're going to give people little shots and then
autism will go away. His hands are visibly injured. We still don't have an explanation. And then he
jokes about how could a staffer love her own kids more than she loves me. Now, individually,
these items are odd, but this is a pattern. And the pattern is there is a system in place at the
White House that rewards all of the wrong traits. Confidence while delivering medical
disinformation, that's to be admired. Choosing Trump over your family, that is to be admired. And somehow
Caroline Levitt didn't do it. And that is a real problem. Everything is backwards. And it is incredible
that those who claim to be on the side of the moral majority are completely comfortable saying
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Today, I am joined by Danny Pinter, who is chief legal officer at the National Center on Sexual
Exploitation and represents Jane Doe, an alleged American victim of Andrew and Tristan Tate.
Danny, thanks for being here. Really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
So how did you first get involved in this case?
Yeah, so a survivor leader came to our organization and said that there was a young woman who was, you know, an alleged victim of the Tate brothers who I didn't know who they were at the time, but we're a nonprofit organization and often survivors will come to us or women or children or men who've experienced exploitation and come to our organization.
So I was first introduced that, you know, she had experienced something. She was afraid. At the time,
media was trying to track her down and she was very scared and trying to avoid all this media attention.
And so that's when I first met her and kind of understood what she had experienced and
really my it was my first introduction to who the tape brothers were.
There's extensive reporting about this sort of compound in Romania. And in addition to
the compound, there there's also sort of like a villa of condos that as I understand are nearby.
And some of the allegations include that women were almost held.
I don't want to say in like a slavery or kidnap scenario.
I want to make sure I'm using the right words, but that their freedom was limited while
they were working in, I guess what's described as sex cam work for the Tates.
Can you sort of like smooth out some of the rough edges of the circumstances I just explained?
Sure.
So the reporting of the Romanian investigation and prosecution described that several women were working for the tape brothers in webcam and that the Romanian prosecutors alleged that forced fraud or coercion were being used.
They talk a lot about fraud and that's when they discussed the lover boy method saying that Andrew and Tristan lured women to come work with them, live with them, be with them under the auspices of a romantic relationship.
when their true goal was allegedly to get them to work on webcam and give them all the proceeds.
And so the allegations of that case are the women described constant surveillance,
that they weren't free to leave or move independently.
And so it was really this emotional connection and this dishonesty.
And then a constant surveillance monitoring all their movements in isolation was the method
by which they were allegedly coerced into doing webcam work and giving all the
proceeds to the tape brothers. Some of the reporting alleges that people who went to where some of the
women were housed perceived that they were undernourished. There is reporting of sexual assault of
some of the women. And there is also reporting of physical abuse, non-sexual physical abuse of the
women. Can you talk a little bit about the client you represent? What is she experienced?
So a lot of the cases sealed and confidential. So I can't give too many.
many details, but at a high level, my client was only there for about a week. So her involvement
is that she was primarily a witness, and she described what she observed, what the women told
her. One woman in particular described sexual and physical abuse, and so she relayed what she
heard from this young woman and all of sort of what she perceived to be red flags. A lot of it had
to do with this sort of constant surveillance, dishonesty, could.
She described that she was not able to go anywhere on her own and no one really was.
They all had to have sort of an escort to go anywhere.
They were sort of isolated in that location that where they were located is not like downtown Bucharest.
It was an isolated location.
You couldn't just walk to get places and then they weren't permitted to really go anywhere
without an escort.
So that's, you know, primarily what she was describing in her witness statements to Romanian authorities.
Some of the defenses that I read put out in writing often include things like, hey, listen,
these accusers willingly moved all the way to Romania and were choosing to do this.
No one kidnapped them and put them on a plane or they never, many of them, most of them never
called the police, which is something that, for example, they could have done.
I don't know if they could have.
I don't know what sort of phone lines or phones they had access to.
I don't really know.
What do you make of some of those defense?
And then there's sort of like the broader concept of how consent is defined when there is a coercive
isolation that's taking place, right?
Yeah.
So a lot of that's red herrings describing something that's not alleged.
So it's not alleged that the women were forcibly kidnapped like in the movie taken.
It's not alleged that they were chained up.
Certainly those things would be abusive in trafficking, but that's not the modus operandi that
was alleged here.
under the law, what is alleged does track not only the Palermo Protocol, which governs anti-human
trafficking laws in Europe, but our own human trafficking law in the United States, which says that
either force, fraud, or coercion, if any of those three are used to cause someone to engage in
commercial sex, that meets the definition of sex trafficking. So that means even if there's no
physical violence, but someone is lied to, and those lies,
causes them to, let's say, perform on webcam pornography, which would be a commercial sex act
if it's for profit, if they were lied to you to get them to do that, that would qualify as trafficking.
So a lot of the allegations around the Tate's is that this fraud scheme was used, that women were
told lies about why they were coming, about the nature of the work, about the percentage that they
would receive, for example, and that there was also these coercive elements.
and at time, physical and sexual violence.
Why did your client decline criminal restitution in Romania?
So she specifically, the way the Romanian system works is at the time that a complaint
victim makes a criminal allegation, they can choose to receive restitution or be a civil party,
they say, to the restitution process or not.
And she specifically declined to be a civil party because, and she even says this,
in her statement. She doesn't want it to be said that she gave this testimony for money.
She just wanted peace and quiet. All she wanted was to get out of there safely, to help the
women around her that she felt were in danger, and to do the right thing. It's interesting
because, and maybe we'll get to this, but the Tate brothers have sued her. She has faced
unbelievable harassment ever since she escaped Romania, and they are suing her for her testimony,
which is quite shocking to me because not only did she not go to the media, which would be her right to tell the truth to the media.
Not only did she not walk into a police station, which again would be her right to tell the truth to the police,
but she was rescued during a raid that she did not initiate and was then asked to cooperate with the police,
which is the right thing to do. It's almost an implication from the Tate's lawsuit that she should have refused to cooperate to the police.
She shouldn't have told the truth of what she observed.
But that would be wrong, right? Not only does she have a First Amendment right to do that. It would be wrong not to tell the truth if she felt people are in danger. So you explain that though, because I want to make sure I understand this. I'm not really familiar with people being sued for testimony. I'm familiar with, for example, if there's perjury, someone could be pursued for perjury if they, if they lie knowingly lie under oath in the United States during a criminal trial. Is this is this something that's related to the Romanian legal system that you can sue for testimony? Is that also the case in the U.S.?
And also, if this happened in Romania, the lawsuit was in Florida, right?
Like, what's the jurisdictional kind of situation there?
So great questions.
One, the tape brothers tried to essentially file criminal charges in Romania against her for
what they said was perjury, her lying to the police.
Romania declined to prosecute saying they did not find that she did lie to the police.
So they refused to prosecute her for those crimes.
And so then the tape brothers sued her in Florida because she's an American.
citizen. They also sued her parents. They allege that she lives in Florida. She doesn't,
but that's where she was when she, before the events of Romania, Trist and Tate met her in
Florida. Her parents reside in Florida. So that's how they, that's the jurisdictional hook they
have to Florida. Okay. But it's quite unusual, quite unusual to sue someone for testimony to the
police. And it's very difficult. So you can, but to be successful is very difficult.
I don't anticipate them being successful.
There's a level of protection for making reports to the police.
There's a qualified privilege in doing that because, of course, we want to encourage people
to make reports even if maybe they're not sure.
We don't want people to be afraid.
They're going to be sued if they make a mistake.
But of course, you can't blatantly lie to the police, which, of course, Janeo did not do.
And she has First Amendment rights as well.
So in our view, this lawsuit that Tay brothers have brought against her is doomed.
to fail. And actually in the hypocrisy of the tape brothers messaging, they constantly say the process
is the punishment when talking about their own prosecution. Yes. In my view, the process is the
punishment of Jane Doe. They have sued her not because they can win and they know she doesn't have
money. They have sued her and her parents to punish her. This process is the punishment for giving
that testimony. And in my view, and in my opinion, it is a warning to all other victims, not
to cooperate with the police and not tell the truth or you're going to have to face the hell
that Jane Doe is experiencing right now.
One of the things about this when you talk about the punishment that comes to mind is your
client has also become the target of online harassment after these filings, which is sort of like
another layer altogether.
And when we've talked on this program about the kind of environment of the manosphere and some
of the behavior of the people that see these individuals that they idolize and follow like the
the Tate brothers, there's this whole underbelly of online harassment as well.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah.
So, you know, Andrew has talked about one of the reasons he was very successful online and
went viral was sort of this clip factory that he was able to develop with his followers,
right?
He has a huge army of followers.
He essentially trained them up on how to quickly disseminate clips and posts.
In my view and what Jane Doe has a legend or counter suit is that.
the tape brothers have used this army of their followers to post harassing defamatory,
hateful things about Jane Doe.
And so they spread very quickly.
They get an inordinate amount of views and virality they wouldn't normally have because
he has this at his disposal.
And we believe he quite intentionally has done this to scare and harass her.
And it's worked.
She's terrified.
She's received hundreds of death threats.
She's living and hiding and has been for over three years now.
There's this video that recently, I think it's been in the last few weeks where the Tate's
returned to the United States and then they were arrested and there's video of both of them
being taken into custody. Do I understand correctly that during the period shortly after they
landed in the US, they filed a restraining order against your client?
Yes. So they first came to Florida in March of 2025.
And went on like we did not know. No one knew they were coming. That was a shock for everyone that they were going to be allowed to leave Romania. It was not public knowledge. And Jane Doe certainly didn't know that they had quite suddenly gotten permission to leave. And so ahead of landing, they quickly filed a restraining order, which I believe was absolutely frivolous. It's full of untrue things and inaccurate things. And I think it fits right into their pattern of getting ahead of everything. Right.
I think they anticipated that had they come to Florida where her parents live and where they
alleged she lived again, she doesn't live there quite intentionally because she's living
and hiding away from the Tate brothers.
But they say she lives there.
So they come from Romania to where she lives, where her parents live, that she would perhaps
file a restraining order to protect herself.
And so to get ahead of that, they filed their own.
But the fact that it's frivolous is plain and the fact that they never persist.
They never even sought a hearing for it.
They never even tried to actually get the restraining order.
They just filed it as something they could wave around to say about Jane Doe, in my opinion, and to try to get ahead of the fact that they anticipated she might or her parents might find file such a restraining order.
Would in what way would it hurt them if she were to file such a restraining order?
Like, is that a big deal in the context of these cases?
Well, it's interesting.
I mean, it would hopefully protect her marginally.
her marginally and her parents, does it have any legal consequence beyond that?
I don't think so.
But for the Tate Brothers and their legal team, in my view, to them, everything is about PR.
And I don't, this is just my personal opinion, but they seem to view social media reaction
and PR as more important than actual legal wins.
And I think in their mind, if she got a restraining order, that would look like some
kind that they are dangerous. It would affirm that maybe that they are a danger to her and that
that would be a bad PR result. Can you big picture for us? You know, there's the case you're working on.
There's British warrants for rape and human trafficking. There's whatever's happening in Romania.
There's all of these kind of interrelated cases. Can you disentangle it a little bit and just
kind of explain what is most likely to generate some kind of accountability here? Because I think
the frustration from many in my audience, including by the way, I have people in my audience to say,
hey, my 14 year old son still loves watching Andrew Tate videos on social media. I don't know
how to get a hold of that. That's sort of a different story. But the point is a lot of people
are concerned that there's really not going to be accountability here. What's the big picture of
how all of these different cases are interrelated or are moving forward? Yeah. So I do have.
have hope that there's going to be real accountability and at least that the justice process
will move forward. The Tate Brothers are, of course, have a right to do process and, you know,
are innocent and to proven guilty. But what frustrates a lot of people is that this process
has not gotten started. I believe that has been as the result of calculated moves by the Tate
brothers to avoid process. But I do have a lot of hope that it is now marching forward.
So there are several different cases spanning three countries.
First, there were four women in the UK who reported Andrew Tate to the police alleging sexual and physical violence back in 2014, 2015, around that time.
He, the police, which they have now said, this police department in the UK have essentially admitted that that investigation was bungled.
They have reopened it, but it ultimately sat there collecting dust until 2019 when they finally dropped the case.
And meanwhile, he moved to Romania around.
2016, Andrew and Tristan Tate did. So those women were trying to pursue criminal charges since that
time. They have now launched a civil case. Meanwhile, in Romania, there were several reports
by individuals to the police in Romania prior to my client or that April 2020 raid. People,
several different women and or their families had reported the Tate Brothers for suspected
crimes. So there was already open investigations into the Tate Brothers before they were finally
rated in April 2022. That raid then opened a larger investigation after eight months. They were
famously arrested in December and held in custody. That prosecution was for seven victims. So it was
organized crime, human trafficking, assault against both brothers and it was on behalf of seven
victims. That case proceeded all the way through the pretrial stage. It was ordered to go to trial.
the tape brothers appealed. The appeals court, and this is important because the tape brothers spread
a lot of misinformation about this. The appeals court found that almost all of the evidence was
properly gathered and validated, including the text messages, the things taken from the devices,
the money trails, the subpoenas from banks, from only fans, webcam companies. All of that was upheld,
but three things the court found irregularities, which means procedural problems. They found the tape brothers
were not interviewed under caution, meaning they were essentially not Mirandized when therefore
it's interviewed, and that two of the witnesses were interviewed without the Tate Brothers
Council being notified and present. So essentially the appeals court said, you need to just
redo those three pieces of key evidence and then refile your indictment. My understanding is that
the Romanian authorities have redone those things. Both of the witnesses have been re-interviewed
with opposing counsel present. I don't know if the Tate brothers have been re-interviewed. I assume
they have. That testimony is likely not even necessary to move forward with prosecution.
And Romania has indicated that they intend to file a new indictment, but combine all of the
investigations because there are several, and that this new indictment would be on behalf of 46
victims and include minor victims. So while that has been proceeding, meanwhile, the UK has
also been quietly investigating because additional women have come forward. And so the charges for which
the tape brothers are currently under arrest and facing extradition is with regard to this new
UK prosecution for several women that have come forward from alleged crimes that happened in the
UK prior to the tape brothers moving. So at this point, we see that they're arrested.
The Romanian prosecution says they're going to, they're cooperating with America and the UK.
They are not fighting the extradition to the UK. They have no problem the extradition to the UK.
So what I anticipate happening is while the tableers will try.
try to challenge this extradition.
I think likely they will be extradited to the UK
where they're gonna face what seems to be very serious charges.
We'll get more details about that September 16th,
but they include indecent images of children,
sex trafficking, sexual assault.
These are racking up pretty serious crimes.
So they'll be extradited.
I, this is my opinion.
I think they'll be extradited in the UK,
face that prosecution in the UK,
and then they could even be extraded back to Romania
to face the charges of the 46 victims there.
So I think at this point, we're seeing, you know, international cooperation from the United
States, Romanian, UK.
I don't think the ball is going to be dropped at this point.
All right.
We're going to watch it very closely.
We have been speaking with Danny Pinter, who is the chief legal officer at the National
Center on Sexual Explo representing Jane Doe, one of the, an alleged American victim of Andrew
and Tristan Tate.
appreciate your time and your insights today. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Hey, if you're hearing this, that means you're listening to our podcast on one of the many
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Every bit helps. I would love to have you as a subscriber there.
J.D. Van stood up a few hours ago and he said, hey, you know what? The gig is up. If you
commit fraud against America, you should go to jail, which I thought was so great. The only problem is it should
really apply to Donald Trump and he seems to be applying it only to other people. Now, J.D. Vann said
said this in a room full of people where he also said, hey, you know what? My wife gave me a choice.
I can either be the vice president or we can have a fourth kid. But he bragged, I convinced her to allow
me to do both. This is such a weird speech and it's a reminder that this guy lacks charisma.
He lacks gravitas. I don't even think he's genuinely going to be in the running to be the president
of the United States. I think it's going to collapse. That's my prediction every time I see J.D. Van
speak. Let's start with the tough guy routine that he's doing here.
And no fraud is too small. If you are defrauding the American tax paper payer, we're going
to do everything that we can to put you in prison and send a message to the other frauders
that gig is up, commit fraud against America and go to jail.
I agree. I think that's great. But say it again, J.D. Say it really slowly and think
hard about which administration you're currently number two of because this isn't like,
oh, I have to manufacture a gotcha. He handed it to us. If commit fraud, go to jail is their standard.
There is a long line of people who should be very nervous. And Donald Trump is the one who should be
at the top of that list given the various frauds. He is accused of having participated in including
crypto frauds and NFTs, one world financials. It's too long a list for.
me to even remember.
Now here is JD changing tone.
He played his tough guy character.
If you commit fraud, you go to jail.
And now he's switching to charming family man.
Listen to this.
The second lady, when the president asked me to join the ticket and become his running mate,
the second lady said, well, you could have one or two things.
You can be vice president or you can have a fourth child.
Ladies and gentlemen, I must be pretty persuasive because I got both.
But I got it in part.
I like to joke because, you know, she was not sold.
Usha was not sold on having a second child.
And then I said, honey, the Congress just gave us the $1,000 Trump account and the working
families tax cuts.
She was like, all right, I guess we're going to have to have a fourth baby to take advantage
of this.
How charming, huh?
He's telling a story where his wife lays out in either or.
And the punchline is he took both anyway.
He didn't respect the choice.
And he frames it as a personal win for his own persuasiveness.
I would love to hear from women watching this.
Does that when JD does that routine, is that charming to you?
Or does it read more like a guy who thinks no is just the opening bid in a negotiation?
Because those are two very, very different things.
I want to hear from the women in the audience.
Let me know what you think.
And then there's one that is really not a matter of opinion.
Here is J.D. Vance saying it's become so much.
easier to buy a home now, especially for young people under Trump. And we can't find a single
fact that supports that claim. We got a lot of work to do, but we're making progress on all
the things that matter the most. On the affordability question, we know that under Joe Biden,
the cost of a median price home nearly doubled. Now, for the first time and over five years,
rinse are falling for the first time. We got a lot of work.
to do, but we're finally seeing that American dream of homeownership become accessible again
to our young people.
Now, he is lying.
Home buying is sitting at some of the lowest levels in decades.
Interest rates, which we're going to come down very strongly, are still hovering very high.
And while it is true that there are some parts of the country where rent asking prices, not necessarily
what people are paying, but rent asking prices.
have come down very slightly. Overall, we still see that inflation is outpacing wage growth,
and it is a disastrous situation for housing. Prices are higher than basically than they've ever
been. Mortgage rates are very high. Young people are getting priced out and they are getting worse
rates than they could have gotten years ago. So it's really not one of these. Well, it kind of, it depends
on how you look at it and depending on how you frame the data. He said the exact opposite of
what every single housing number in the country shows right now. And the pattern across all of these
clips of JD is that he's a guy who commits to the confident version of a sentence, regardless
of whether it's true or whether it's flattering or whether it holds up for even five seconds
after he says it. And there's a warning here that he gives to people about fraud while he is
figuratively standing next to Trump. And he's bragging about ignoring his wife's terms.
And he's going, I'm so persuasive. I'm just such a persuasive.
And he's telling young people, the housing market's improving.
It's great out there for you.
But the opposite is true.
So it's not so much that these are like gaffs.
This guy delivers lies confidently in a completely uncharismatic way.
And it has been seen, unfortunately, by many as something that is appealing as far as personality
traits go.
The thing is, I think most people don't like it.
I think people recognize that the gig should be up for JD, as he likes to say.
He has no business in politics whatsoever.
And I believe that he is going to struggle if he does really try to be the next Republican nominee.
Now I know that Donald Trump may well endorse him.
I know that Donald Trump may give him the blessing to become the heir to the Maga Throne.
And Peter Thiel is going to prop him up with money and all of this stuff.
I genuinely am becoming convinced that JD is just so unlikable at a fundamental level, so
uncharismatic that I really struggle to believe.
that he may be able to be the heir to the Maga throne. I want to hear from people in the audience.
And this is by the, I hope I don't have to clarify. This is not an endorsement of Marco Rubio.
Marco Rubio is a disaster. But Rubio at least is a little more charismatic, quirky sometimes,
but a little more charismatic. And also has some basic understanding of how diplomacy works and would
likely avoid as many overtly and cartoonishly embarrassing moments as someone like a JD Vance.
This is me thinking not who I want to see as president. I don't want either of them to be president,
but thinking more in terms of if I were Trump, how would I be thinking about it? And the gig should
really be up for JD. That is for sure. Scott Jennings has apparently been given the impossible
assignment of declaring victory in Iran on the behalf of Donald Trump. And I'm going to play for you
video of Scott Jennings delivering these lines. I don't even know that Scott Jennings believes
this crap and I'll get back to that in a moment. But here is a tweet, Scott Jennings tweeting,
quote, we've won the war against Iran no matter what partisan Democrats say. And then here is the
video. And one of the things you may notice is that it's really obvious that Scott Jennings
is reading a script. Now, the fact that he's reading a script doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't
believe this stuff. But when you look at the strange cadence and the halting delivery and the fact
that he is very obviously reading this off of the laptop that you can see the very top of at the
bottom of the shot. I wonder, like, does he even believe this crap or did someone put him up to it?
And I believe this announcement may confirm something that many in our political class
refuse to acknowledge. The United States has won the war against Iran. Wars are one when one side
achieves its strategic objectives and the other loses the ability to achieve its own.
Iran entered this war with four great pillars of strength.
Its nuclear program, its missiles and drones, its regional terror network, and its ability
to hold the world economy hostage through the Strait of Hormuz.
Every one of those pillars has been severely damaged or outright destroyed.
But Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, sees it differently.
Listen to him on Meet the Press this weekend, cut seven.
Donald Trump has lost this war.
America is weaker.
Iran is stronger.
The price to reopen the straight increases by the day.
Even though Iran has lost the war, they haven't lost their public relations agency, I see.
Democratic Party, it seems, is unified in its desire for the American people to believe that we have lost this war.
Even though it's clear the opposite is true.
Has Iran built a nuclear weapon? No, and they couldn't build one for decades based on the destruction wrought by the United States and Israel.
Has Iran defeated the United States military? No, quite the opposite. The Navy is fully sunk. The army is decimated.
Has it driven the United States Navy out of the Strait of Hormuz? No, our ships travel at will.
Is Iran able to stop oil from moving in and out of the strait? No, in fact, millions of barrels of oil.
are transiting the Strait of Hormuz every day, more and more every day, in fact.
The Iranian military has been devastated.
Its missile and drone attacks have dramatically declined.
Its economy is disintegrating, and its neighbors are aligning against it.
Yet Chris Murphy and Hakeem Jeffries and Corey Booker and virtually every other Democrat
wants you to believe that America has lost.
This is what Trump hatred has done to the Democratic.
Democratic Party. But there is something deeply wrong with allowing partisan hatred to make you
so emotionally invested in American failure, especially when that leads you to openly lie to the
American people about what's actually going on here. All right. So Iran has lost and the United
States has won. And Scott Jennings read that off of a script. So you can be sure that he really
means it and it's really true. Now, I think Rick Wilson got it right in his analysis of this.
us. He posted, quote. So, so the idea here is the U.S. has won and then Rick Wilson says,
except for losing control of the straight, losing our bases in the region, strengthening the
control of the Iranian regime over its suffering people, starving our sailors, running through
our stockpiles of precision weapons and giving Iran control of the global oil market, big win.
So I think that this is really the key problem. What exactly have we won?
The strait of Hormuz is this critical pressure point, predictably.
So, by the way, Iran's interference with regional oil exports keeps pushing prices up, gives
the Iranian regime massive leverage over the global economy.
We have no peace agreement.
And even if we got one, it would not be as strong based on the negotiations we've seen.
Even if we got a peace agreement, it wouldn't be as strong as the Obama nuclear deal that
Trump got himself out of.
The regime hasn't collapsed.
American forces are entangled.
It's now week 27 of the two to three week war.
And now the administration is rolling out another.
This is going to be the decisive round of sanctions, which so far we haven't been able to get anything
decisive.
And meanwhile, it's a deeply unpopular war.
According to Reuters, Ipsos polling, 31% of Americans support military action.
83% believe that this conflict is going to continue for an extended period of time.
So Jennings has found the solution, announced victory.
And what's very interesting about this is there was a Wall Street Journal article about two weeks ago,
which said, we have learned.
that Donald Trump plans to simply announce victory and leave. Of course, it won't really have been a win,
but he will announce it and leave. He hasn't done that yet. He announces that we've won a bunch of
times, but we haven't left yet. The war continues. Is Jennings floating a trial balloon for saying,
hey, we won and now we can leave? And it's sort of an interesting strategy. I can't say I respect it,
but it's interesting, which is when the facts are disastrous just redefine reality as partisanship. If you
notice that the war is going on still, oh, you're just a crazy partisan Democrat. If you notice
oil is disrupted and gas prices are high and none of Trump's promises have actually come true,
go, oh, that's the view of a partisan Democrat. So this is the governing philosophy of this entire
movement. If Trump says the war is over, Scott Jennings says the war is over, even while
Americans are still fighting it. If Trump says we won, we won, that is it. And the consequences here
are that I guess Scott Jennings is willing to appear on TV and look directly into a camera and read
whatever sentence someone has put in front of him on his laptop and go, we won. And meanwhile,
they can't even really define victory because of course there hasn't been one. We have a ward
that hasn't concluded, a strategy without measurable objectives, and a president who has said we've
won it or almost won it something like 50 times. But put all of that aside.
Ignore everything that your eyes and ears can tell you.
Scott Jennings has told us we won the war.
Incredible.
We will talk about today's runoff in South Carolina for the Senate, Darlene Graham and
Ralph Norman, voters heading to the polls.
We will give an update on New York supermarkets in the context of Mayor Zoran Mamdani's
municipal grocery store proposal and the Kennedy Center.
has seen a sharp decline in finances after Trump slapped his name up on it.
Who could a guess?
All of that and more on today's bonus show.
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