The David Pakman Show - Americans are leaving and credibility has collapsed

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

-- On the Show -- Americans relocate abroad in record numbers as foreign residency data, citizenship renunciations, and student enrollment trends show growing dissatisfaction with life in the United States -- Casey Means struggles to defend past financial conflicts, evasive public health answers, and refusal to clearly endorse measles vaccination during a contentious Surgeon General confirmation hearing -- A Reuters Ipsos poll finds that a majority of Americans believe Donald Trump has become more erratic with age as economic dissatisfaction fuels concerns -- Republican Congressman Glenn Grothman claims missing Epstein-related files reflect liberal elite sexual behavior, ignoring allegations against members of his own party -- CNN analyst Harry Enten highlights new data suggesting Texas may be trending politically competitive as voter shifts challenge longstanding Republican dominance -- JD Vance deflects unfavorable Fox News polling showing Donald Trump deeply underwater on the economy by blaming Joe Biden rather than presenting evidence of current improvement -- JD Vance and Mehmet Oz announce a temporary halt of congressionally approved Medicaid funding to Minnesota raising constitutional questions about executive authority -- Donald Trump calls for Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Robert De Niro to be sent back from the United States after public criticism of him -- On the Bonus Show: How Democrats countered Trump's State of the Union address, trans drivers in Kansas must surrender their drivers licenses, a MrBeast editor gets implicated in a Kalshi insider trading scheme, and much more... 🤖 Sponsored by Venice: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off a Pro Account at https://venice.ai/pakman 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN10 saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com💡 Outskill: Grab your free seat to the 2-Day AI Mastermind at https://link.outskill.com/PAKMANDEC1 -- 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) Start(01:12) Americans leaving in record numbers(08:04) Casey Means confirmation clash(26:27) Poll shows Trump erratic concerns(32:17) Grothman deflects Epstein scrutiny(40:08) Texas shows competitive shift(45:24) Vance dodges Fox polling(52:40) Medicaid funding halt controversy(58:49) Trump targets critics to leave   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the first time since the Great Depression, the United States is seeing net negative migration. This means more Americans leaving than moving in. I'm going to explain why this should be called the Donald Dash, where people are relocating, and really what it says about confidence in the future of the United States. We'll also look at testimony from Casey Means, the nominee to be Surgeon General, which did not go particularly well, dodging questions about conflict of interest, refurb. refusing to clearly endorse the measles vaccine and even offering some mystical answers. We will also look at new polling that a majority of Americans believe Donald Trump has become

more erratic with age and that his brain is not functioning particularly well. And we will also look at Republicans reducing Epstein questions to Democrats are perverts. That's my summary or analysis. And what happened to J.D. Vance when he was confronted on Fox News of all places. All of that and more today. Americans are leaving the United States in numbers that we have never seen in modern history. If we go back all the way to the Great Depression, the United States has experienced net negative

migration for the first time going all the way back almost a hundred years. The Trump administration is saying that falling immigration and rising deportations are a victory. In other words, when presented with the state of the Trump administration goes, well, of course, that's great. We're deporting a lot of people and we're limiting immigration. But the problem is, if you look beneath the hood a little bit, the number of Americans that are choosing to just leave the country, not for immigration related reasons, is going sky high. Now, one of the problems is we don't have perfect exit data because the United States stopped comprehensively tracking citizens who leave a while ago.

But if you look at foreign residency permits, passport applications, home purchases, university enrollments, citizenship renunciations, they all point in the same direction. I was just in Portugal. Portugal's American population is up more than 500 percent. since the pandemic. Ireland and Germany are seeing record inflows of Americans, applications for British and Irish citizenship or at historic highs, and requests to renounce American citizenship jumped sharply in 2024 in advance of the swearing in of Donald Trump, and they are again accelerating. Now, you know, it's this isn't really theoretical for me in a lot of ways. First of all, I was just

in Portugal, met a ton of Americans who relocated there. These are not. not tourists. These are not. We're trying it out for six months. These are families with kids in many cases, mid-career professionals, retirees, people who sold their homes in the U.S. and permanently have moved to Portugal. And when I would ask them why, there were only a few answers and they were very clear. They were things like, I don't like wondering whether there's people in the grocery store who might pull out a gun or at the movies who might pull out a gun. Like, They just don't really have guns around. They don't worry about their kids having to do active shooter drills.

They don't worry about school shootings. They don't worry that a medical emergency is going to bankrupt them. They have predictable health care costs. Insurance is affordable. It's just lower stress. Now, more than 100,000 American students are enrolled abroad. International students coming to the U.S. are declining. And there's a Gallup poll that found one in five Americans would personally.

permanently leave the country if they could. And if they could is a big part of it during the 2008 recession for those thinking, well, it's merely economic. It was one in 10. So that is double that rate. Now, I think this could reasonably be called the Donald Dash. Trump's second term has expanded deportations. They've cracked down on universities. There's a crack down on free speech. There's an increasingly volatile political climate deportation rates, you know, all this different stuff. And then And that is a factor in people choosing to live. Now, there's also systemic issues. Housing costs are a systemic issue in the United States.

Healthcare expenses are bigger than Trump. Child care costs, student debt, burnout. All of this stuff is bigger than Trump. So I don't think it would be accurate to pretend that this is only because of Donald Trump. But historically, when people lose faith in leadership or stability, they leave. Americans left during the Great Depression. fled Nazi Germany, Castro's Cuba, Chavez is Venezuela, Russia after Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. is not usually one of those places that we think of people leaving and fleeing, but

emigration is happening. It's sending a signal and it means that there are a lot of people in the United States who believe that their prospects are better elsewhere. And that is really an indictment of what is happening in this country. Now, I think it's also important to briefly sort of address the group of people like Elon Musk and others who are really worried about people not having enough babies. They're obsessed with we've got to get the birth rate up and we need more. We need people having three, four, five, six kids.

Economics are often their primary concern. They believe we need to be growing in terms of population in order to grow economically. And that's sort of a controversial assertion. You know, it didn't. China came to a different conclusion, but that's during their one child policy, but that's a different story. If you believe, as many of these MAGAs do, that growth, economic growth depends on population growth and talent retention, when you start seeing working age professionals and families leave, you would say, wait, we're losing tax revenue, we're losing entrepreneurship, we're losing innovation,

we're losing future births as well because some people that leave will have kids other places, not here. So the people like Elon Musk and RFK, you know, they're warning about declining birth rates. If Americans are relocating abroad, that compounds the demographic challenge. And you can't just sound the alarm about fertility and ignore the fact that people are leaving and you're not letting enough people in. And that shrinks the working age population. It puts pressure on social security. It puts pressure on Medicare, puts pressure on GDP growth. If these MAGAs were serious, they would realize we need way more immigration to the United States, legal certainly, but by some population experts estimates, we need to triple the number of legal immigrants coming into the

United States just to account for the declining birth rate. But the big topic here, the Donald dash, people saying, I don't want to live in the United States under Donald Trump. And so quite simply, I am going to leave. Now, many of you have written to me and you've said, David, are you thinking of going somewhere. Now, there is sort of like a where could I go kind of thing. Certainly, I could go back to my birth country of Argentina at any time. Economic stability is not exactly a dream there. There's always the possibility of starting the citizenship process in Israel, but that's not appealing to me. There is a path to citizenship for Argentinians in Spain. That's another sort of possibility.

But I'm not seriously considering it, although I would understand especially why people in red states would be thinking about it. So record emigration out of the United States appropriately called the Donald Dash. Donald Trump's nominee for Surgeon General Casey Means is maybe one of the worst nominees for any position requiring Senate confirmation that I have ever seen. under any president. Now, we're going to look at some clips of her confirmation hearing, but I think, first of all, just to kind of level set, if confirmed, Casey means would be very different than other surgeons general. She doesn't hold an active medical license. Now, she argues, I'm not actively seeing patients. You're supposed to suspend your license when that's the case. But she also didn't complete her medical residency. She graduated for medical school, but she left a residence

program before completing it. Now, she argues that that's by choice. And it might be. But I've spoken to a lot of doctor friends who say, you know, for the most part, once you get to residency, the reason you leave is that it's not going well. And they kind of say to you, listen, we've come as far as we can go. It would be better if you choose to leave rather than having us say you're not going to be able to complete this. Now, that's not proof that that's what happened to Casey means, but every doctor friend I spoke to said, you know, when you hear about people leaving residency, I don't know. And by the way, there's people saying the same thing about Dr. Peter Attia, although that's neither here nor there. That's a sort of different story. So, okay, that's Casey means.

Here is Senator Chris Murphy talking about a conflict of interest, a prenatal vitamin wee natal. And I want you to listen very closely to how Casey Means claims that she has no such conflict. Dr. Means, are you familiar with FTC policy that requires those who are recommending products online to disclose their financial connection to those companies? In particular, the document from the FTC says this. If you endorse a product through social media, your endorsement message should make it obvious when you, have a relationship with the brand. Are you familiar with that? Certainly. So, as you know, there is a pending complaint regarding your failure to adhere to those guidelines

that basically makes the contention, and this committee has verified the data that underlies their complaint, that you routinely violated this policy. and that in fact in the majority of your posts for many of the products you recommend, you did not transparently reveal your financial connection. Let me give you an example. That's false. Well, let me give you, I'll give you an example. So there's a prenatal vitamin called we natal.

Your filings before this committee show that you started receiving compensation in the spring of 2020. And yet in September of 2024, you posted a video saying that you had no financial relationship to the company, just a big fan. And then in October, you said, not sponsored, just love these. But in fact, you have documentation before this committee that showed when you said those things,

you had a financial relationship. You had already started receiving money from that company. Uh-oh. So you weren't telling the truth when you said you were just a fan. You were actually receiving money, correct? In any post where I said I am not receiving money, I had not been receiving money at that time. But you had noticed the use of at that time. Received partnership fees for this particular prenatal vitamin.

In fact, prior to September and October, you had, had posted partnership links in which you get compensated based upon click-throughs, correct? I'm happy to look at whatever documentation you're talking about, but I do not, you, this is, it's incorrect and it's a false representation. And just to be very clear, I've spent the last several months working with the Office of Government Ethics to be fully compliant with this process. I take it very seriously. All right. So now she's going and filibustering about other things. This is a classic semantic evasion. Senator Murphy lays, out a very simple timeline. You were being compensated and you told the public you had no financial

relationship. That's it. That's not ambiguous. That's very binary. Either you do or you don't have a financial relationship. And her defenses, if I said I wasn't receiving money, I wasn't receiving money at that time. Now, what does that really mean? If you get paid in January and then you make a post in March and you go, well, at that time, I wasn't receiving money. Well, but you were paid in January. What does it mean? You know, does that mean that they're not paying you monthly? They paid you in January. Does it mean that you formally severed ties, but yet you're still recommending this thing?

What exactly does it mean? It's not transparent in any way. And instead of clarifying these relationships cleanly, she goes, well, if I said it at that time, at that moment, I wasn't receiving money. You mean that as you type the tweet, they weren't stuffing 20s in your pocket? What exactly do you mean? Senator also Brooks backed Casey Means into a corner about her failure to disclose conflicts. And in this case, instead of denying it, Casey Means just kind of concedes the point.

You know what? You're probably right. From a company called Peak. Yes. Okay. And in your newsletter number 33, you acknowledge that Peak has sponsored you. Now, were you aware that this company was served notice under California's Proposition 65 for containing and failing to disclose that led above.

the allowable amounts of carcinogen and reproductive toxin was present. I just want to repeat, I've worked with the Office of Government Ethics. I'm not going to be taking any financial compensation. Okay, but we're talking about conflicts. And I have been clear. Notice by the way the bait and switch. She tries to go, listen, I've already said I won't be taking any money, right? But we're not talking about that.

By the Office of Governance Ethics through an exhaustive process, I have signed a letter that I will be fully compliant. And this is before during an affidance, after the term, I take it very seriously, and I'll work close with them to make sure there are no conflicts. The point here is that you've received compensation from these companies, including Daily Harvest, where this company was subject to an investigation by the Food and Drug Administration after hundreds, became seriously ill after consuming the product. And these are companies that you have received money from.

They've been investigated, and you are railing out against pharmaceutical companies that you say are advertised. these products that mislead the public, and yet, you know, you've received compensation from companies and you've promoted them in your newsletter, and you're doing the same thing that pharmaceutical companies are doing by advertising and influencing people for these products that have been deemed to be unsafe for the public.

Now, let me just move on as well to that. Listen, Casey Means is not a doctor in the sense of being a licensed physician who practice. Okay. She is really a wellness entrepreneur who went to medical school but didn't finish her residency and didn't practice as a doctor. And that fits perfectly with this kind of Maha, RFK Jr. Trumpification of the medical world. And the problem with trying to dance around these disclosure rules is that you can't argue that there were misunderstandings once it's laid out as clearly as Senators Murphy and also Brooks laid it laid it out. Okay. So we.

We then get to Senator Susan Collins. Susan Collins brings up Casey means use of illicit psychedelic mushrooms. Now, I think that there is a lot of interesting science behind the use of psychedelics in different treatment modalities. It is still illegal in the United States. Let's listen to this exchange, which I think is very interesting because again, it's just Casey means can't answer things directly. Ed, that you were inspired to try. Try psychedelics in what I can only describe as an internal voice that whispered, it's time to prepare. Illicit drug use remains a huge problem in this country, and this didn't happen in your teen years. According to your book, in 2021, you began using illicit psychics.

psychedelic mushrooms. So my questions to you are two-fold. One, do you stand by what you said in your book, encouraging people to try psychedelics? And second, as surgeon general, should you be confirmed, how would you speak to the American people about the use of illicit drugs? Thank you so much, Senator Collins. And I also thank you sincerely for engaging so deeply with my work and learning about me. This is a very important question. And I would start by just saying that I believe what I would say as a private citizen is, in many cases, different than what I would say as a public health official. Joining a team where the purpose of this role is to communicate absolutely the best evidence-based science to the American people.

to keep. Now remember what she's saying. Communicating the best evidence-based science. We're going to get back to them safe, thriving, and healthy. And when it comes to psychedelic therapy for mental health issues, I think the science is still emerging. And so it would certainly not be a recommendation to the American people to do that under under no circumstances. I do believe that there is exciting work being done in this area that needs to continue on. on psychedelic therapies for PTSD and veterans, for mental health issues, and some of the researchers who are doing this work have said it's some of the most promising and exciting of their entire career. So I look forward to following that, but to be very clear under no circumstances,

would I recommend that to the American people in this role? Our illicit drug use problem in our country is monumental and severe, and I look forward to working with you on these issues that are so important. What did you mean by saying that you heard an internal voice whispering to you saying it's time to prepare? Yeah, in that passage of the book, I'm referring to... Well, Senator, I was high as a kite at the moment.

My mother's passing, which happened. She got a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer about a week after that experience. And in my meditations and prayers at that time, I was having... a deep sense that something ominous was coming. So listen, the shrooms made her have a premonition about her mom's health and all right, well, I mean, that's serious. Okay, so we'll move on here. Again, she tries to turn around questions from Senator Chris Murphy and blame him and his staff

for the fact that they are even asking her about this stuff. It's always someone else's fault. Function Health, which is your lab testing platform, data shows that you discreetly, that you disclosed your partnership with them less than the third of the time that you recommended their services online. Genova Diagnostics, you disclosed your sponsorship and only two of the nine times that you promoted Genova. Daily Harvest. You disclosed your sponsorship and only three of the 14 posts recommending that product. Zen basal seeds, you disclosed your partnership only two out of the 13. 13 times that you recommended the product.

This seems systemic. It seems that in the majority of instances in which you were, as a medical professional recommending a product, you were hiding the fact that you had a financial partnership. You seem to be in regular, willful violation of the FTC rules. That is concerning as someone who agrees with Senator Cassidy, that our focus has to be on restoring trust in the medical profession.

And yet over and over again, you seem to be at scale recommending products without telling your followers. And you have... She's just a wellness influencer. That's the answer to all of this. 200,000 newsletter subscribers, you have almost a million Instagram followers.

And in only three out of 14 times on Daily Harvest, when you were promoting Daily Harvest, you disclose that you're getting paid by them? It sounds like you have a lot to say about this issue. And I would be very interested to see how your staff looked at this data. I have a strong feeling that the way in which they gather this data is is done intentionally to. It's everybody else's fault. They're not trying to make me look bad. Okay, finally, asked by a Republican Senator Cassidy, who's also a doctor, are you going to recommend people get the measles vaccine?

She avoids the question. And this is very troubled. Question. We've had two children die from measles in West Texas. We've now have an outbreak of like a thousand children almost in South Carolina area. You're a mom. We're on verge of losing our measles elimination status. Would you encourage other mothers to have their children vaccinated against measles with the MMR vaccine? Like you, I'm a physician. I believe vaccine saved lives.

I believe that vaccines are a key part of any infectious disease public strategy. and I would work with you, the CDC, the NIH, ASEF. Would you encourage mothers to vaccinate their children with the MMR vaccine, seeing how we've had children die and this outbreak in South Carolina? I'm supportive of a vaccination. I do believe that each patient, mother, parent, needs to have a conversation with their pediatrician about any medication they're putting in their body and their children's bodies.

You're a nation's doctor. Would you encourage her to have her child vaccinated? I'm not an individual's doctor, and every individual needs to talk to their doctor before putting a medication their body. Now, that might sound reasonable, but a better answer would be, of course, the default should be, yes, we advocate vaccination against measles, which is so safe and effective and prevents outbreaks. If there are edge cases where an individual shouldn't be vaccinated, those conversations can be had with doctors.

but of course as the surgeon general whose job is to make public health recommendations for the country, the default would be, yes, vaccinate against measles. If you can't clearly endorse that and just go, well, vaccines are cool, but you got to always talk to your doctor, you're already struggling, a disastrous nominee, but she might get confirmed, which is terrifying. One thing that's become impossible to ignore with mainstream AI chatbots is how aggressively they police what you are allowed to ask. Perfectly normal questions. Get flagged, refused, or answered with warnings like you're doing something wrong just for being curious.

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There's a fascinating and disastrous new Reuters Ipsos poll, and it finds that six in 10 Americans now say Donald Trump has become more erratic with age. That includes a third of self-identified Republicans. This is not a fringe perception. And only 45% of Americans believe. that Trump has the brain that it takes to deal with the job of president. This is absolutely fascinating. We've got it up on the screen.

What Americans think about Trump's mental fitness. This was, by the way, done right before the state of the union. I don't know if Trump's total meltdown during the state of the union, including rocketing out six tonsil stones while visibly slowing down as the speech went with that right eye, completely swollen shut, change their minds and made the numbers worse. But these are pre-State of the Union numbers. Trump has become erratic with age. Sixty-one percent of Americans believe that that is indeed the case and that includes 30 percent of all Republicans. On the question, Trump is mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges. Only 45 percent of all adults believe that the president has

the mental sharpness to even do the job. That's not do you like his tariff policy. That's not, do you think he's handling foreign policy well? It's not, do you like what he's doing on men and women's sports as he said? This is just as he have the mental sharpness to do the job. Only 45% of Americans believe that he does. Now, listen to how that sentiment is showing up in real world voters. This is not a pundit we're going to hear from. It's also not a pundit. which I don't know how it became so common to say pundant instead of pundit but you hear it everywhere on TV folks it's pundit this is from a voter who called into C-SPAN take a listen to this I just want to say and I mean this in all sincerity this man is mentally of it to be president

right he doesn't live he's everything it comes out of some weird thing in his head but he is not living in reality honestly they need to he needs to be impeached well when it comes to the speech when it comes to the speech last night specifically what was your reaction to that it's all it is it's like listening to he's mentally he doesn't know he's talking about he's just making up stuff i love this woman i live in the real world prices are up i don't live in his world where whatever he wants it to be he just makes it up and throws it out there and expects everyone to believe him he is a pathological a liar. He is a narcissist and he has severe mental problems.

If we're giving out the presidential medal of freedom, we got to give it to that woman. I mean, they're handing them out like they're chicklets. So we might as well get one to that woman. So there's about three or four different layers to what's going on here. Okay. First of all, the caller points out this reality versus messaging disconnect. Trump is giving one set of messages about the economy and he's, you know, talking about prices are down at the macro level and we fixed everything, trade.

fixed, all this different stuff. Prices plummeting and inflation numbers are fake, all this stuff. And then the caller is saying, I see what's going on in my life and it's not what Donald Trump is describing. This is problem number one for Trump. Problem number two. And this is all what we're getting from the poll that we looked at and from this caller. Leadership and credibility. Approval ratings and disapproval spikes tell the story. And what's revealing is how people talk about the leaders. When people say that the leader is not living in reality, It starts to be like the pseudo cult leader Kim Jong-un type dictators where he lives in the best country and most prosperous country in the world. The first time he golfed, he got holes in one on every shot on every hole.

And then he never defecates and rainbows come out every time that he steps outside, right? It's that level of disconnect that the caller is presenting. Number three, the cognitive decline story is getting big. And for years, Trump's team weaponized. cognitive fitness critiques against Joe Biden and saying Biden's detached from reality. He's aging. He's mentally unfit. And now voters are applying the same lens to Trump and many of them are realizing Trump seems even worse off. We then get to the need for a narrative change when there is economic pain when more than 80% of people say affordability hasn't improved because it hasn't.

Inflation is still positive, meaning prices are still going up. Half say it's gotten worse. You can't use abstract economic indicators, whether they're accurate or not, importantly, and many of Trumps are not accurate, to tell people that everything is great. And then that sort of builds to political consequences. And this is why the polling really does matter politically. If there's declining confidence in Trump's decision making, coupled with rising impressions of him as erratic or disconnected, at the same time that people are being told things that they see day to day in their lives aren't true, that is going to be a major problem for

2026. 28 will get to, I don't know, but it's going to be a major problem for 26 if the average voter listens to the messages this administration puts out and says, oh, they're out of touch with reality. They are describing a world that does not exist as far as my life is concerned. So great caller, distressing poll if you are Trump, but if there's anything to be reassured by, and again, we've got to make it happen in November, but if there's anything to be reassured by, perception is increasingly matching reality when it comes to the impotence of Donald Trump. There's a clip circulating of Republican Congressman Glenn Grothman attempting to explain why the Epstein-related files disappeared.

Remember, we covered yesterday that there are over 50 files, Epstein files, that reference Trump that are gone. Let me see if I have my Alex Jones. Hold on. Thank you're lucky stars every day. You're not Dave Packman. Oh, no. There's one I have Alex Jones goes, this dude is gone.

Those files are gone. Glenn Grohman was asked, why are the files gone? And it's very hard to decipher what he's saying. But I think he's saying that because Democrats are perverts, the files are gone. This is really weird. Listen to this. Representative Grohman, you are on the oversight committee in attendance last night, several members of the guests that were invited, victims of Jeffrey Epstein, your committee's investigating that.

What more do you think needs to be done on this front? Well, we want to look in. I think one of the things we ought to be doing is looking for other people who can give us more information. You know, I'm going to be present. I intend on Friday when we depose President Clinton. I don't think he's the most honest person in the world, so I don't expect to get a lot of breaking news out of him. But perhaps some of the other characters were around Epstein Island. The other characters who staffed Jeffrey Epstein's airplane

will be more forthcoming and tell us a little bit more that's out there. You know, we've heard of a lot of famous people who've already been caught in this net. We know who the problems are. But I think there are a lot of people I'd like to yet know. I do think that perhaps early on some of those files disappeared. But, you know, it says something about the elite of this country. And it seems largely we're dealing with liberal elites, but not exclusively.

Their sexual worries are very different than that of the average American. That's the takeaway that we're dealing mostly with liberal elites in the Epstein files whose sexual mores are different than those of the average person. Trump is president and he is on record saying creepy and disgusting things, even about his own daughter and it's multiple affairs and all. And it's the sexual mores of the left that are the problem and that's really what the Epstein files are revealing. Now notice what happens here.

Epstein's crimes were real. His network of offenders was real. His association spanned finance and academia and royalty and business and politics. multiple political parties. This was a scandal about power protecting power. And growth and reduces it to liberal elites have perverted sexual mores. When politics becomes totally tribal and it breaks your brain, this is what happens where you boil down a complex institutional failure, multiple institutions overlapping to the

other side is morally disgusting. And here's the deeper problem. When you turn a potential federal failure into a culture war talking point, you guarantee that there's never going to be a serious investigation because if the explanation is the sexual mores of liberal elites, you don't really need accountability. You just need to have a moral panic. Oh my God, look at the things these liberal elites want to do. It is completely unsurious intellectually.

We have one more clip of growth men. And then something became very clear to me. I wasn't super familiar with Congressman growthman. I realized as I was watching this interview, this guy might just be really dumb. And I apologize. I hate to present such a simplistic analysis. Check out his answer to this economic question. You've probably seen polling over the last couple of days leading up to the State of the

Union charting the president's performance on the economy. The last one, this one from the post on ABC News saying 57% of Americans disapproved of that handling of the economy. Do you think that's a messaging issue as far as what the administration wants to out and how Americans are receiving that? Like I said, I think they have to lay out that the things that people are disappointed in are very difficult to undo, say, the inflation of the Biden years. And that's got to be explained to people.

I think we can do a better job of highlighting the labor shortage and how much money is available out there for people who want to work. I'll tell you, I've spoke several times with Walmart, for example. Now, they only hire the best, but you've got truck drivers for Walmart now making 140, grand a year. That's pretty good, right? The question is about broad economic dissatisfaction and the response is, I know of a specific trucking job at a single company with a good salary. That is a talking point from a press release, from a Walmart press release. If your defense of the national economy is that there are Walmart truckers doing well, you're really not engaging with the experience

of most voters. And this actually goes back to the Epstein comment. It's the same response types. In both cases, the instinct from growth men is I'm going to give you an anecdote rather than thinking structurally about systems. The Epstein files, well, listen, there are liberals that are sexually deviant. That's really what this is about. Economic dissatisfaction. Here's one job that pays surprisingly well. There is no structural thinking there.

There's no acknowledgement of complexity or engagement with institutional credibility or systems that we have. This is like the intellectual floor of modern partisan politics. And there's one other thing going on here. When growth men blames liberal elites for sexual corruption, he's performing outrage for his base. It's a performance. It's not substance.

It's not about solving a single problem. You solve nothing by going, well, the sexual mores of liberals. You're just signaling your tribe loyalty. And when he pivots to Walmart truckers make 140K, he is doing performative. optimism for his base. He's, again, not solving a single thing. He's just signaling. And meanwhile, serious systemic questions go completely unanswered. I don't know. I feel silly with this, like, this guy seems kind of dumb analysis, but he doesn't seem particularly bright. And if these are the only sorts of people that the Republican Party has to offer to solve real problems,

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Availability is limited. Grab your free seat using the link in the description. What is happening in Texas? Could the Texas Senate seat really be in play for Democrats? You know, it seems like every election cycle for the last, I don't know how many years, 15, 20 years. We hear Texas could be in play. Democrats could win a Senate seat in Texas.

though it hasn't happened for decades. But tomorrow, we are going to dig into more detail about the specifics of the primaries happening in Texas Senate races. Today, I have fascinating video from just hours ago from this morning. CNN's data analyst Harry Enton almost blows a gasket with new data that shows Texas really is shifting red to blue that we are seeing Democratic primary turnout come in really high. And we are seeing Republican primary turnout in those Texas Senate. race is low. Let's check this out and then we will discuss. Something is going on in Texas. Primaries are March 3rd. That's next week. There is a really interesting phenomenon happening, though, among who is voting. Let's get the scene at chief data analyst, Harriet. We're not even

exactly talking about the candidates here, which is why it might be even more important. No, mind blown to quote the show, Blossom, Joey. Whoa. I mean, look at this. okay, share of Texas midterm primary ballots at this point in the cycle, cast in Democratic primaries or Republican primaries. In 2022, the last midterm, overwhelmingly, the votes were being cast in Republican primary, 62%. But look at what's going on now in the 2026 cycle. More votes are being cast on the Democratic side. What a shift from where we were four years ago at this point.

More people in Texas picking up the Democratic ballot. More Democrats are voting in Texas than Republicans. mean how unusual is that just how unusual well you see the massive shift from 2022 but look at history go all the way back when was the last time that more people actually picked up a democratic ballot cast a ballot in a democratic primary in texas and a midterm you have to go all the way back to 2002 so this could break this could break an over 20 years stretch my goodness gracious whereby more people are actually voting in the democratic side and i will know it it really hasn't even been close since 2002. Overwhelmingly more people have been voting on the Republican side in Texas,

and this year so far, more people are voting on the Democratic side. This is different, very different with a capital V in this case. So we still have a few days to go here. What are the chances, what are the prediction market saying about the chances this will stick? Okay, so we're only really really been talking about the early vote. But if you look at the cashier prediction market, what you actually see is the chance to have higher Texas primary turnout. Right now, the people putting their money where their math is actually slightly predict that there'll be more votes cast on the Democratic side than on the Republican side, 60% to 40% still a close race. But given that Republicans have been so outvoting Democrats. I think we get it. And I really appreciate

his his passion and enthusiasm. So is this proof that the eventual Democratic nominee is going to win the Texas Senate seat in November? No, of course it's not. We have to, I don't want to blow smoke. we have to do a serious analysis, which is that right now, there are really motivated Democratic voters in Texas. Part of it is because there are multiple candidates that have relatively significant support. You've got James Tala Rico, who is expected to win the primary. You've got Jasmine Crockett, who is not expected to win the primary, but she is polling relatively well.

And thus, you have a lot of very motivated Democratic primary voters who want to have their voice heard as to which Democrat should represent them on the ballot in November. Texas still has many, many more Republicans than Democrats. And so I believe that Texas is in play, but it doesn't mean that it's a likely victory for Democrats coming in November. What is very important about this is that for a long time, there are the every, every off-year election cycle, every midterm, rather, I should say, and every presidential election, you start to hear the demographics of Texas are shifting.

This time it could be it. The Democratic presidential candidate might actually be able to take Texas. And for a really long time, it hasn't happened. And there are some who say it's a pipe dream. It's never going to happen. A lot of these changes happen relatively slowly. And if you look back in history, if you look, for example, at the progressive era of the United States, 1890 to the 1920s, that's 30 plus years.

If you were in year 17 of 31 of the progressive era, it might not have felt like things were changing that quickly. There might have been a long time of going, well, we're working on getting women the right to vote. And we're still working and we're still working and we're not making progress and it's taking decades. And then it happens. And so I think that on the one hand, it's important to know that all of the, this is the year that Texas turns blue. All right. I mean, a lot of people have been wrong with that for a while.

But on the other hand, the shifts that we are seeing in Texas are significant. And sometimes you just don't notice the speed of change when you're in the middle of it. We're going to be watching Texas very closely. Tomorrow on the show, we'll dig in more deeply to the specifics of the races that are happening there, and then we'll see where the results land. J.D. Vance, the vice president, went on Fox News expecting a friendly interview, and instead he was presented with numbers. Fox put up polling showing Donald Trump is underwater on the economy.

Republicans are better stewards of the economy has been a talking point and sort of false conventional wisdom for a long time. And J.D. Vance has shown the numbers. And J.D. Vance doesn't like it. And what does he pivot to? The Biden administration left us a disaster. Ladies and gentlemen, it's almost March of 2026. And we're still blaming Joe Biden. The issue that might clip this administration. And that's the economy. On screen now, we can show you three of the most recent polls about the economy. How about Americans are feeling about it? Everything in red. Our Fox polling disapproves at 59 percent. Washington Post, ABC News 57, Wall Street Journal at 54. Now, let me just pause here for a moment. Bill

Hemmer is doing something astute. The last time J.D. Vance was on Fox, he was asked, I think it was over the weekend, he was asked by a different anchor about Fox polling that was bad for Trump. And J.D. responded with, well, we happen to think Fox polling is basically the worst of the worst. Now, the truth is Fox polling is pretty good. Fox polling is not done by, you know, Brett Baer or Greta Van Sustrin. Actually, Greta Van Custra hasn't been on Fox for a long time. The Fox polling is actually pretty good. Anticipating that Bill Hammer shows J.D. that there are polls from all sorts of polling agencies, including the right-wing Wall Street Journal that indicate that Trump is underwater on the economy so that J.D. can't just go, well, Fox polling is no good. So instead, J.D. goes to a different

one, which is blame Biden. It seems like you're pushing a car uphill. And you've got nine months to turn it around. You know Democrats are Jews. They are ready to vote to March. Do you have enough runway to get this economy where it needs to be before November? Well, Bill, in some ways we are pushing a car uphill because the Biden administration left us such a disaster of an economy, the highest peacetime debt in American history, skyrocketing inflation. A lot of Americans who had lost $3,000 was that how much the average American had lost in take-home pay. Now, in a year, we've actually seen the average American gain about $1,200 in take-home pay. Of course, that ignores the additional cost of tariffs and the fact that cost of living has continued to go up even though they promised it would go down and the cost of groceries has continued to go up even though they said it would go down. But if you're sitting at home from the perspective of the Biden administration, you are still worse off than you were when Joe Biden took over.

So we are absolutely pushing that car up hill. But here's the good news bill. I think we're about to get over the hump. I think that tax season is around. Very soon. the corner, a lot of Americans because of no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. Remember that there is no provision in the tax bill for no tax on Social Security.

They keep repeating it, but it's not true. In fact, I got a bunch of emails after the State of the Union from viewers saying, hey, I'm a Social Security recipient. I'm paying tax on Social Security. I'm wondering why does he, why does Trump keep repeating that? They're about to get a massive tax income refund. We've seen this massive trillions and trillions of dollars coming into our country. to build new factories.

Those construction jobs are starting to hit the economy. Then the manufacturing jobs, once those factories are built, will hit the economy too. So I think that we've got a lot of momentum here. But the president said this last night. We inherited a mess. Yeah. If voters still, it's March, almost March of 26. If voters are feeling squeezed on groceries, housing, insurance, child care gas,

your explanation is the last guy did it. How long is that going to work? Blame has to have some expiration date, especially when you, you ran a campaign on immediately and quickly fixing everything. And now they're like, I think this is the year we're finally going to get to it. This is a much deeper issue than this clip. Vance isn't disputing the numbers because he was given numbers from three different pollsters. He doesn't argue that the polling is flawed because he can't get away with that this time.

He also doesn't present any counter data. He doesn't explain how Trump's policies are measurably improving affordability because they're not. He just goes backwards and he's like, hey, you know, things were really bad under Biden. but we're trying to fix them. That is a political, it's a political gag reflex and it reveals where they are. For months, their messaging has been strongest economy ever, historic growth, incredible success, everyone's winning. The polling shows people aren't buying it. Voters are saying, the economy is no good. Trump's handling of the economy is no good. And so because they're 19

points underwater on the economy, they can't insist we fixed it. So they go back to actually it isn't so good, but it's Biden's fault. Anything bad is Biden's fault, but we've improved it dramatically. And soon it'll be good, but it's not. And it's Biden's fault, but it's much better. And then give us praise for that. And if it sounds like a, you know, dizzying mumbo jumbo, it is when your own friendly network Fox News shows you in double digit disapproval, net disapproval on the economy, that's a real problem. And so J.D. Vance's short circuit, it's not dramatic. He's not yelling. it's subtler and he's defaulting to an old script that they go back to because the current one's not working.

And it's a defense in year two of a presidency that we inherited a mess. They will be saying that I predict into year four of this administration. If it were really going well, you would have no reason to look backwards and to point backwards. Now, we have some historical examples that I think are interesting. Reagan in 84 ran on its morning in America. Bill Clinton in the late 90s pointed to wage growth and job creation. Obama in 2012 ran on factual economic recovery metrics after the financial crisis. None of them ran on.

Look at the previous administration. Look at what we were handed. They were all able to run on what is happening now. Reagan was running on what is happening now. Clinton was running on, look at what happened in my first term. Obama was running on, look at what happened in my first term. Pence's answer is notable because they have no confidence in simply running on the right now. Because voters are perceiving this gap between here's what they're telling me, here's what I'm

living. And prices are high and housing is high and there's a disconnect here. You can only blame your predecessor for so long. When confronted with uncomfortable data, even in a friendly environment, he doesn't counterpunch with evidence. He looks in the rear view mirror. And that is defensiveness. 19 points underwater on the issue which supposedly Republicans are the strongest on.

If that's the best you've got, you're in trouble in November. That's for sure. The David Packman Show is an audience-supported program. And the best, most direct way to support the show is by becoming a member at joinpackman.com. You'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show, and plenty of other great membership perks, get the full experience by signing up at join packman.com. They are now apparently confessing to crimes on live television. The latest one is that the Trump administration is stopping certain Medicaid funding to the state of Minnesota on the basis

of supposed Medicare and Medicaid fraud, which has been, I would argue, unfairly blamed on the Somali population. Now, is there Medicare and Medicaid fraud in the United States? Yes, there is. Is some of it presumably committed by people of a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including just American-born white people? Yes. But what's happening here is being done for political reasons, because they're now obsessed with Somalia and Minnesota. Let's take a listen to what J.D. Vance had to say. So we're announcing today that we have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money. Now, what is this going to mean? What this means is that, first of all, the providers on the ground in Minnesota have actually already been paid.

The state has paid those providers the money. What we're doing is we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that's being perpetrated against. You know, there's a key thing that JD mentions there. The money's already been appropriated. We're just not going to send it. Remember that Congress controls federal spending.

That's in the Constitution. When Congress appropriates money for Medicaid, the executive branch is required to required to spend it according to the law. It's not the president or the vice president or Dr. Oz's discretion to pause the funding because they don't like the behavior of a certain state. If Minnesota's violating Medicaid rules, there is a formal legal process to investigate that, to address it, and to have consequences. You don't get to invent a pause on live TV and withholding congressionally approved funds for political reasons is exactly what the impoundment control act was designed to prevent when Nixon tried this in the 1970s. So they seem to be breaking the law.

But what's another law breaking action from an administration that does it all the time? Then we heard from Dr. Oz with J.D. Vann standing behind him saying that basically the same thing. They're going to be deferring funds. I mean the swamp of the crooks that have inhabited it and are defrauding us. There are three bold actions. The first, and for many of you may be the most important, is we're going to for the first time, take a massive action to defer funds to a state. Let's start with this Medicaid program in Minnesota, which serves pregnant women.

Medicaid takes care of our children. 53% of kids are born in the poverty. They are supported through Medicaid. Disadvantage seniors, individual disabilities. It's unponderable that you would take advantage of these precious programs, yet they are putting it at risk, all of it, by stealing the money. So it's our duty to preserve Medicaid, and what we're going to do is identify the scammers,

which we have done in Minnesota. We've identified that they've hijacked in particular a certain part of the Minnesota Medicaid system. Said differently, and I'll just put the numbers out there, it's going to be $259 million of deferred payments for Medicaid to Minnesota, which we're announcing as I speak to Governor Walts and his team. That's based on an audit of the last three months of 2025. Restated a quarter billion dollars is not going to be paid this month to Minnesota for its Medicaid claims. Now, that's a million, rather a quarter billion dollars of money. That's your money.

It's your taxpayer money. And these home and community-based services, which, again, are services that are typically things you would do for your family. But for whatever reason, your family's not there to provide them are very hard to audit. And for that reason, there's been a lot of slippage. The guardrails have not been well maintained. And if you're not serious about the integrity of the program, you'll see these problems.

All right. So similar stuff from Dr. Oz, we're pausing the money. These funds are for actual health. care services guaranteed by federal law. And if an administration is withholding these funds outside of a formal enforcement process, which there isn't here, they haven't done investigations, adjudicated them, and then said, we're holding certain funds. This is very legally dubious. Medicaid is governed by federal statute. If a state qualifies under federal under the law, the federal government has to provide these matching funds. There's no, well, we kind of think you

might be mismanaging things clause that lets the executive brand, just go, we're not going to give you the money. Now, J.D. Vance was actually asked, what is the legal authority here? Which is a phenomenal question from a reporter. How can you do this given that the funds have been appropriated? You're legally mandated. And here is what J.D. Vance says. Yeah, so on the second thing, actually, Marco briefed me about 15 minutes ago on it, but we don't know a whole lot of details. And he's first answering a difference. I'll defer to to the White House to provide more updates as we get them, certainly, you know, a situation that we're monitoring. Hopefully it's not as bad as we fear it could be, but I can't say more because I just don't know more.

On the question of the legal authorities, I mean, inherent in Congress's assigning of the administration actually, you know, we're the ones who spend this money. Congress appropriates it. We're the ones who actually make sure this goes to the people it ought to go to. And inherent than that is making sure that it only goes to the people that Congress says that it should go to. This is total legal bullshit. Like I said to you before, the process is Congress appropriates the money and the executive branch disperses it. It is not subject to the White House deciding who has earned the money if you suspect fraud or any specific malfeasance. There's an investigation process. They haven't done it. Otherwise, presidents could punish states they don't like, which is, of course, exactly what Donald Trump is doing here. Let's talk about something that should really be setting off your authoritarian warning light. Donald Trump took to truth social after a couple of Congress women, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib, yelled out and heckled Trump during the state of the union

and says that they should be removed from the country. Let's first just, I'm going to quickly remind you what happened at the State of the Union. Trump is speaking, and then you will hear and see Congresswomen Omar and Talib yelling at Trump. That is why I'm also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals and enact serious penalties for public officials who block the removal of criminal aliens. In many cases, drug lords, murderers all over our country. They're blocking the removal of these people out of our country. All right.

You get the picture. So that's what happened. So Trump, Trump, Trump takes the truth social and he says, quote, when you watch low IQ Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib as they screamed uncontrollably last night at the very elegant state of the union, such an important and beautiful event, they had the bulging bloodshot eyes of crazy people. Lunatics mentally deranged and sick who frankly look like they should be institutionalized. When people behave like that and knowing that they are crooked and corrupt politicians

so bad for our country, we should send them back from where they came as fast as possible. They can only damage the United States. They can do nothing to help it. They should actually get on a boat with Trump deranged Robert De Niro, another sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely low IQ who has absolutely no idea what he is doing are saying, some of which is seriously criminal. Okay. So the whole point here is Ilhan Omar is a naturalized U.S. citizen. Rashida Thali was born in Detroit. Robert De Niro was born in Manhattan. Now, this is not really about immigration enforcement. This is the president of the United States suggesting deportation

for elected officials and a private citizen because they oppose him and two of them yelled during a speech. Now, I believe the most important thing is the following because I know my audience is very split about the role and influence of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib on the Democratic Party. You don't have to like screaming at the state of the union. I kind of don't like it. I didn't like it when they did it to when Republicans did it to Obama. I just don't like it. And I know some people go, no, David, I do like it.

This is how you get attention. Cool. It doesn't matter is the point. Either you like or you don't like. Maybe you think it cheapens the moment. Maybe you think it's the only way to confront the president who doesn't care what people say. It doesn't actually matter. You don't have to agree with Ilhan Omar or Rashida Talib or Robert Dehro. You might disagree with them. That is not the point. The point is that in a democracy,

yelling at the president is not grounds for exile and it is certainly not grounds for institutionalization nor deportation. Members of Congress are allowed to protest. They're allowed to be rude. They're allowed to be wrong if that's what you believe they are. They're allowed to oppose the president. That's how the system works. Trump isn't insulting them, although he is. He's reframing dissent as illegitimacy. If you criticize him harshly enough, you don't belong. If you embarrass him publicly, you should be removed from the country. That is authoritarian logic. Authoritarian leaders don't argue that their opponents are mistaken. They argue that their opponents are foreign, diseased, mentally unstable, or criminal. And then they strip them of belonging and they suggest they're not

really members of this country. That's the language of institutionalized, excuse me, mentally deranged, low IQ, send them back, get on a boat. That's what that is. It's dehumanizing rhetoric from a sitting president. And he closes the post by saying the country is bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever, and his critics are angry because of that. If that were true, sir, you wouldn't be threatening deportations over what is at the end of the day, heckling. Confident leaders don't respond to shouting with exile language. Remember that when Barack Obama would get heckled, he would very calmly go, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second, hold on a second. And depending on the circumstances, he would say, let's let those who are supposed to be speaking speak, or let's

address that and let me explain to you why you're wrong or whatever. So Trump's behavior is happening in an environment where they've normalized sweeping deportation rhetoric. And they've deliberately blurred lines around who belongs. And so recall that political conflict in democracies stays in the system. You argue, you vote, you win or lose. You don't say let's remove citizens from the country. You can dislike behavior. You can disagree with the politics. But when presidents start saying opponents should be sent back for what at the end of the day are opinions and speech, this is much bigger than decorum at the state of the union. It's how do we design power to function in a democracy? Who counts as an American, which is a classic trope for authoritarians?

count and you don't count and I decide who really belongs here. We have a great bonus show for you today. We will talk more about the protests of Trump's state of the union. We will talk about the letters Kansas sent to trans drivers demanding the surrender of their licenses. And we will talk about the latest insider trading case against an editor for Mr. Beast. This is very interesting. All of these stories and more on today's bonus show. Thank you.