The David Pakman Show - Americans are paying the price as the whole room laughs at Trump

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Donald Trump succeeds in a political culture where social media rewards outrage, conspiracy content, and emotional reactions -- A deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship draws scrutiny after the Trump administration cuts weakened CDC programs -- Donald Trump promotes a White House UFC event while gas prices climb above $4.50 per gallon and markets react to uncertainty -- Donald Trump becomes the subject of public ridicule after awkward remarks about Melania Trump and bizarre stories -- Anti-medical conspiracy rhetoric encourages some parents to reject vitamin K shots that prevent deadly newborn bleeding disorders -- Kevin Hassett celebrates rising credit card spending as economic strength, while Americans increasingly rely on debt and fall behind on bills -- GOP Rep. Carlos Gimenez compares compares current economic conditions to a hypothetical Biden presidency, arguing Trump is better -- Our video discussing abortion-related healthcare access gets suppressed by social media algorithms that limit politically sensitive content. Here is the original clip: https://youtu.be/1Hh_02YWLqY -- On the Bonus Show: The DNC refuses to release the 2024 autopsy report, John Roberts doesn't think the Supreme Court is political, CNN founder Ted Turner dies at 87, and much more... 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code DAVID for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.com/david 🔬 Freedom From Religion Foundation: Text DAVID to 511511 or go to https://ffrf.us/david 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get 27% OFF sitewide at https://helixsleep.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start (01:20) Trump is a symptom, not the disease (09:16) Hantavirus outbreak on cruise ship (18:20) Gas is up 66% as Trump plays with toys (27:05) Trump laughed at during speech (35:52) MAGA parents reject vitamin K shots (43:28) Keven Hassett celebrates high credit card spending (47:42) Republican Rep says Biden would be worse (54:01) Our abortion video gets suppressed Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Behind every F-35 jet is a Canadian company, horizontal tails built in Winnipeg, engine sensors from Ottawa, and stealth composite panels crafted in Loonenburg to name just a few. Thanks to thousands of skilled Canadian workers, the F-35 aircraft is delivering unmatched capabilities for 20 allied nations around the world, and will generate more than $15.5 billion in industrial value for Canada. This ad is sponsored by the F-35 partner team, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and RTX. Learn more at www.f35.com slash Canada.

Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor,

free of charge. BetMGEMGEMP operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Some gifts say, I thought of you. The best ones help you discover more. This Mother's Day, give her something personal with Ancestry DNA. Now, up to $75 off. Explore her origins and discover the journeys that made her who she is. Save today.

Give her something unforgettable, thoughtful, meaningful, uniquely hers. Give more than a gift for less. Give AncestryDNA.A. Visit Ancestry.ca today. Offer ends May 10th. Terms apply. Have you ever noticed how every single crisis that happens under Donald Trump somehow traces back to the very systems that Donald Trump has gutted? We have another example today. It's the hanta virus and it is very difficult to ignore given what we know happened during COVID. We will also talk about maybe the biggest story today is broader than any single. scandal, I'm going to really explain why if we keep seeing Trump as the problem rather than just

a symptom, we're going to set ourselves up to lose again. And I don't want to see that. Also today, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-science politics are contributing directly to babies dying from a preventable vitamin K deficiency. This isn't even about a vaccine. a shot, but it is not a vaccine and it is still wreaking absolute and total havoc. And finally, what on earth are they thinking, asking the question, what if Joe Biden were president right now?

Because I think for most Americans, the answer is things would probably be better. All of that and more today. I believe that we have to put an end to the fantasy idea that Donald Trump is the disease. or we are going to end up screwing ourselves again in these next elections. Trump really is a symptom. And I've talked about this for a while now. I've been talking about this really for almost a decade. If the focus is only Trump, we are going to miss the next disaster and probably end up stuck

with Trump 2.0 and a lot of people are going to suffer. What happens when a country spends years turning politics into entertainment is that someone like a Donald Trump gets elected because we reward ignorance. We give attention to those who sound confident even if they have no knowledge or intelligence. And in that sense, Trump is really the end result. He's the consequence of a problem that this country has been facing going all the way back to George W. Bush, if not further, I kind of write about it in my first book, The Echo Machine. And if people don't want to grapple with that because it's easier to just sort of look at Trump and go, Trump is the problem, then we are going to get really screwed, maybe in 2026, but more likely in 2028. Now, what Trump does

provide is a simple villain, a clean ending. Trump is in. Trump will be out. Maybe he gets prosecuted. Maybe not. Who knows? But we move beyond Trump and things kind of go back to normal. And I know a lot of people on the left who are sort of expecting that this is going to happen. But if you actually devote a little bit more thought to it and consider if Trump disappeared tomorrow, the conditions that led to Trump would still be there. And therefore, Trump is an outcome. Trump is a symptom could just happen again. The outrage algorithms that pushed Trump's primary candidacy back in 2015 into the public eye would all still be there. The conspiracy content would still exist. the fake experts would still exist. The influencer culture would still exist. The ability to get people

in front of cameras to defend any wacky thing that the next Trump says and go, well, it's not that crazy when you consider this, that, and the other thing. You would still have millions of people trusting no nothings and random streamers and TikTok personalities more than they trust doctors and scientists and historians and journalists. And unless we deal with that, we're not really going to change the conditions that led to Donald Trump. Trump did not create the environment. He understood it. He took advantage of it. He framed his candidacy in a way that would benefit from this environment. And what Trump figured out is that modern politics has very little to do with governing and just about everything to do with attention. Short clips, emotional certainty, outrage, scapegoating

of whoever, whether it's China or Mexican immigrants. You need simple village. villains and you've got to sound confident at all times. And this is the language of the modern internet and of the modern sort of political news cycle. And this has changed who is able to win. So now 10 years into Trump, we live in a culture where everybody has access to information all day long. They're not necessarily facts, but it's information. And very few people even know how to evaluate is what I'm getting based in fact is what I'm getting actually tied to reality. You watch a 90-second Tick-Tac video about tariffs or about vaccines or vitamin K or whatever, Ukraine, and you feel informed. And then you feel as confident as the confident charlatan in going out there and saying, I know what's going on and I'm going to vote on that basis.

Having an opinion used to be predicated on knowing something. You don't need to know anything anymore. People have way more opinions than they have facts. And there's the expectation that you will have an instant opinion about just about. everything. And if you pause and you go, hey, you know what? I need to read more about that a little bit before I give you my opinion. You lose the conversation immediately because certainty beats knowledge every single time. And that's one of the problems that got us Trump in the first place. And those conditions really haven't changed. Trump communicates the way that social media

rewards people for communicating. And if we don't understand that, we're simply not going to win. One of the things that I think has to change is that if you go back, politics shifted from being something that was part of our civic duty to understand what's going on, consider our options and vote accordingly. And it became something like fandom. Now, I've been very clear that I don't see it that way. I see elected officials, not as people that we should be fans of. and cheer and celebrate in the sense of we turn away from the specifics and we just say this is the person. I'm a fan of this person. We should be evaluating elected officials for the policies that they are proposing.

And they can only propose policy to the extent that they understand it. The problem that we saw with Trump is that without understanding anything, he would make these sweeping proclamations about I understand trade and I'll fix it in China's the problem. And what do we get? Blanket tariffs that raise prices on everybody and a guy who cheers about getting rid of NAFTA only to replace it with something almost identical, the USMCA in his first term. So we really need to bring things back. You know, when they love to say, oh, you know, Biden never had people with Biden flags on boats, which proves people like Trump more. Now, what it proves is that the people who like Trump see him more as a celebrity. And the people who thought Biden would do a better job than Trump, I was one of those people.

I voted for Joe Biden in 2020. We don't really care about these people as rah-rah celebrity fans. We just go, okay, I think this person has the better policies and I'm going to vote for them. That's why you didn't see the Biden boat flags. Also, I don't know how many Biden supporters had boats, but that's kind of a different story. So the point here is we need to really reorient ourselves to a story that is much bigger than one guy. Trump didn't invent conspiracy culture, but he did benefit from it. He monetized it. He didn't invent distrusting institutions like our own intelligence agencies and our own health agencies.

He exploited that for political benefit and in a sense mastered the attention economy. I would even argue, not only does this problem go beyond Trump, it even goes beyond Republicans because the entire cultural space now runs on outrage. Podcasting runs on outrage. media runs on outrage, everybody competing for the emotional reactions because they figured out this is how you win. It's a business model and it's a political model. And it's let's destabilize people emotionally and then offer them something with a clean scapegoat. We are a decade into this thing.

And the problem, the difficulty about that is that a lot of people have become so used to this being the status quo that they confuse popularity and social media retweets with intelligence. and credibility. So we've got to rebuild this thing from the ground up. And very soon, I would argue now, it's time to start transitioning out of Trump as the object of the problem to Trump as a symptom of a much bigger problem. That's what we need to solve. Now, how do you stop politics from being primarily entertainment? I don't have the answer. But the first step is to identify the problem. And I fear a lot of people are not identifying. the problem. Did Trump blow it again with another virus? Any time that we have a health-related

situation in the United States and Donald Trump is president, sadly, we can point to Trump's actions as part of the problem or potentially going to make the problem much worse. When there's an infectious disease scare or an outbreak or a containment issue, we do a little bit of digging And we find out, wow, Trump is running the government and he is gutting the very systems that are supposed to catch and help prevent these problems early. Now, at this exact moment, we have a cruise ship sitting off the coast of Africa dealing with a deadly hantavirus outbreak. Three passengers are already dead as of the last moment. I checked. Multiple others have been evacuated.

Health authorities are trying to contact trace. There's a 40-day incubation period, so it's very complicated. And the virus that's involved is called the Andes strain of the hanta virus. It doesn't typically spread person to person, but in rare cases it does, and it seems to be happening right now. Context. This is not like a civilization ending scenario, as far as we can tell right now. It is being said by health authorities that the risk to the public is low.

We've heard that before, but it does appear to be true. Now we get to the part that starts to sound very familiar. Weeks ago, reporting revealed that the Trump administration's cuts to the CDC effectively crippled what is called the vessel sanitation program. That's the program that's responsible for inspecting cruise ships, sanitation oversight, monitoring outbreaks, and reporting publicly what's going on. So once again, it's deja vu all over again. the government office specifically designed to monitor disease spread related to cruise ships

was gutted by Donald Trump because he doesn't think this stuff matters. He doesn't care about it. This is not a situation that is happening because we had such a terrible economic collapse. We had no choice but to gut that vessel inspection program. We had the money for it. It's because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Trump administration have been ripping apart public health infrastructure and replacing it with consistent. conspiracy-brained, you know, anti-government politics. This was a choice. This was optional. And that is a

major part of the story here. It's not, oh, the hanta virus is going to wipe out humanity. I don't think it is. I'll end up eating my hat if I'm still alive to do it if I end up being wrong. But one of the problems with the people that operate the way Trump and RFK operate is that they look at a system and they go, well, it doesn't seem like a necessary system because we don't have a cruise ship laden outbreak right now. But the whole point of these preventative systems, it's sort of like the referees in sporting events. If you're noticing the referees, the refereeing may not be so good. Good refereeing sort of becomes part of the background and you go, oh, that was a great game. I didn't even think about the refereeing, but the refereeing was good.

Similarly, when these programs work, these preventative programs and first response programs work, You shouldn't really see or hear too much about them because they exist and they're operating and they're preventing problems. And this is a thing. Well, you know, you look at our medical system. We don't real in most areas with the medical system, we don't reward preventing problems, but we reward financially fixing problems, treatment, medication procedures. And it's the same sort of thing. You know, air traffic control staffing. It's government waste.

And then planes nearly collide and you go, oh, okay. So that's the point. They're supposed to sort of blend into the background. And monitoring pandemics, they've turned into deep state nonsense until you start getting the outbreaks, until the hospital start filling up. And then you go, why didn't we spend on that stuff? Well, it's because people like Trump and RFK say that that's excess spending. Cruise ship sanitation programs, we don't need to spend money like that.

And then people start dying on international ships. It's the same failed mentality that caused the chaos and the problems during COVID, which is they attack the experts and they undermine institutions and they spread other ideas like hydroxychloroquine and injecting bleach and all of this stuff. And they pretend prevention is worthless until they realize actually we should have been investing in that. If inspectors are doing their job correctly, you don't really notice. nothing dramatic happens and we should call that a success. Trump's politics place value on spectacle. And if it's not emotionally satisfying and salient and something that you can go on cable news and rant about, it becomes a target to be cut.

And that is the way that the pattern has shaken out here. The modern Republican approach to government is basically sabotage public institutions, wait for something to become dysfunctional. At that point, you go, look, this doesn't work. The government can't be involved in this. Let's privatize it. Or maybe we just do nothing and we've proven that it was worth stopping the spending on it. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You fire inspectors. You weaken oversight. You create problems. And then you go, look, see, we told you nobody could have predicted this. Well, the people you fired could have predicted it. Experts predict things. This is, you know, there's this bigger picture of I'm not a cruise ship guy personally. cruise ships are essentially floating disease incubators, thousands of people in closed environments

moving internationally. And that is, if you're going to do that, you really should have the monitoring that was gutted by Donald Trump. So I don't believe that this is a panic over the hantavirus segment. The World Health Organization is being clear about that. Unless something changes dramatically with its transmissibility between people, I don't believe that that is going to end up being the story. But the bigger story to me is once again, we had systems in place to monitor and suppress

these kinds of problems. And people like Donald Trump and RFK Jr. look and they go, yeah, we don't need that. Let's get rid of it. Well, people are paying the price again. Are we ready to say that this is a failed leadership approach? Sometimes the hardest part about having great seafood at home is not the cooking. It's finding seafood you actually trust, which is why I recommend. wild Alaskan company. I've been using them for years even before they were a sponsor. Wild Alaskan

company delivers wild caught premium seafood to your door on your schedule, individually portioned fillets that are vacuum sealed, easy to prep, whether you want a quick dinner, something more elevated. The fish is quick frozen from Alaskan waters, which will lock in the texture, flavor, and key nutrients like Omega 3. And my favorite part is that every single order supports sustainable harvesting practices and Alaskan fishing communities whose history is tied to those waters. This helps the planet. It means you know your fish is coming to you with no antibiotics, no additives because it is 100% wild caught, never farmed. They also back your order with a 100% satisfaction and money back guarantee.

Go to wildalaskan.com slash Pacman for 30% percent. $25 off your first order of premium wild caught seafood. The link is in the description. You know, the United States started as a rebellion against a monarch who claimed divine authority. And the founders followed that by creating our secular constitution. No references to a deity, no religious tests, clear separation between church and state. That was on purpose. It was designed to protect pluralism and individual conscience and religious freedom for everybody. But today, we're seeing increasing efforts to challenge that. Donald Trump's America praise event on May 17th, which aligns government with Christianity. That raises major constitutional concerns. Our sponsor,

the Freedom from Religion Foundation, works to protect separation of church and state because it protects you and it protects me. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States, the question isn't just what we celebrate. It's what do we defend? Visit fFRF.us slash David or text my name, David, to 511, 511 to learn more or to join because protecting that separation protects our rights. The info is in the description. Text fees may apply. If you thought for a second that Donald Trump really cares about you and how much it costs you to buy things, he doesn't give a damn about it and we have more video proof of this as if we needed more evidence of it. Now, let me set this up for context.

Donald Trump does an event in the Oval Office and he brings out renderings. These are like Trump's toys, essentially, of the UFC event that is. planned for the White House. They're doing a big UFC fight on the front lawn of the White House. Gas is up 66% since January 15th as Donald Trump is doing the following in the Oval Office. A lot of people haven't seen this yet. I'll give you that. I think you'll probably be able to do okay with it. Wow. The media's going to go crazy. Not bad, right? Championship belt. Dana White was here last night. Did you know that? He was here last night. He loves this guy.

He loves all of them. Here's another one. This is another. They go all the way out, all online. It's all people invited. Our country is invited to this. It's free. And you know, in the park right across the street,

they're gonna have, I guess, anywhere from 75,000 to 100,000 people. Free. You're gonna set up eight big screens, and they're gonna have the fight. And then out here, we're gonna have the fight. We're going to have 4,000 seats right in front of the front door of the White House. The hardest ticket I've ever had to. Best life show on Earth, June 14th.

This will be the greatest show on Earth is at night. That's all lighting and cover. And I think you get the idea. So it's going to be June 14th and it's going to be great. And this is a little different for these political people. And, but these are really, these are really. These are real warriors. When we talk about warriors, these are warriors.

This is an embarrassment. This is a complete and total humiliation. But there are a lot of people who don't see it that way, who see this and they go, it's so great that Trump is doing interesting things and involving different organizations like his friend Dana White at UFC in what is at the end of the day, just a huge money making scheme. It's great Trump is doing this. Yes, gas is up 66% over the last.

three and a half months, sure, but Trump playing with picture books of the UFC fight at the White House while gas prices are over $450 a gallon is okay. I don't mind that. But that's where we are right now. Trump doing an insane, extraordinarily expensive from a logistical standpoint event at the White House and bragging about it while you are paying over $4.50 a gallon or even more for gasoline depending on where you are. What would be happening right now? if prices for gas were up 66% in three and a half months and Joe Biden was the president of the United States. And imagine if on top of that Biden were golfing every weekend. And imagine if on top of that Biden were building a $400 million ballroom and saying,

hey, maybe we'll also add a billion in taxpayer money to that and holding a UFC fight at the White House. What do you think Fox News and Rogan and the Manosphere and the podcasters would be saying if that were happening under Joe Biden? And then Trump just straight up says, I don't care, telling us that even if oil had gone to $200 a barrel, it still would have been worth it to do what he did in Iran. And I thought oil prices would go to $200, $250. It's at $100 now. And I think you're surprised and I'm surprised. But even if it went to $200, it would have been worth it. I understood that we had just set a record, $50,000 on the Dow. 7,000 or the S&P, a record.

And I said, I hate to do this, but we have to make an excursion down to Iran because we can't let them have a nuclear weapon. Look, this is something Trump says very offhandedly. He doesn't even think twice. But what this means is he never cared how expensive your gas got. He wanted to go into Iran. He ran on, I care, I feel your pain. I will prioritize affordability. It's the number one issue.

And then he says, even if oil prices had gone to $200 a barrel, which implies a gas price of $8 a gallon, I still would have done it because he doesn't care how that affects the average person. He doesn't give a dam. Then he doubles down on this and saying, I expected the stock market to go down even more than it did. They all want to go there and elsewhere. We just hit a new high of the stock.

market, the stock market's the highest it's ever been. And I expected that the market would be down 20, 25%. I was willing to do that to get rid of a crazy country, crazy. The people, look, you know, you talk about regime change. Their first level leaders are dead, their second level leaders are dead, some of their third level leaders are dead. I call that regime change. But I thought we'd be down maybe 20 percent and we're up.

The stock market's higher now than when we started this war. And I thought oil prices would go to $200, $250. It's at $100 now. Your 401k went down 8%. You think that was bad? Trump thought it would go down 20 to 25%. And still, he said, I'm going to go into Iran. Why?

Because he does not care. He doesn't care about the very people he. he said are his core group, the average American, the people he sucked dry of donations, and the people he went to for votes and said vote in person or vote by mail or do this, do that, bossing tens of millions of people around insisting he cares about them and he doesn't give a damn. He was okay to sacrifice 25% of your retirement account because he wanted to go into Iran. Now, after announcing yesterday morning, we've got a solution. The war is over again. My three-week war is now ending in week 10.

He was asked, what is the status of those talks? Because you said, like, assuming it gets signed, what is the status? And Trump goes, well, they're acting like they don't even remember the talks now. Take a look at this. What are the status of these talks that are very good? Just give some insight as to what we have talks. And we've had some good talks before, as you know, and all of a sudden the next day, they're like, they forgot what happened.

And, you know, they're proud like, like these guys are proud. Nobody more proud than these guys. Sometimes they fight on pride because, you know, they're injured. They're hurt. No matter how great you are, you get hit by somebody else that looks like them. It's, it's very tough. But they have great pride. These people have great pride.

The others do too. Enemies have great pride. As usual, it's all a farce. Trump announces a nice, probably, maybe likely, assuming it happened. deal, markets pop, Dow was up, what, 600 points yesterday. He got what he wanted once again. And then when he's actually asked about the status of the talks, he goes, oh, I don't know. I guess they're acting like they don't remember that we did these talks. I don't know what's going on anymore. It is all a farce. And, you know, there are people in the audience. I get it. You're busy living

your lives. You're not following the ins and outs of foreign policy. Fine. You weren't following the Iran nuclear deal and the comings and goings of the Ayatollah. Fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But the takeaway here is you are the lowest priority of this administration. They brag about we lifted millions off of food stamps. You didn't lift them. You kicked them. You kicked them off of food stamps and said, you don't get food stamps anymore. That's different than, oh, we've lifted these people out of poverty with wage increases and better jobs and economic stability and housing programs. And now they no longer qualify for or need. food stamps under the prior guidelines. No, you just change the guidelines to kick a bunch of people

off. They do not care. And one of the questions we're increasingly dealing with is what is it that will actually get to these self-centered authoritarians like Donald Trump? And I think yesterday, we may actually have found the answer. An entire room laughed at Donald Trump at the White House. And he didn't like it. People like Trump, authoritarian, they hate it when they are the object of laughter. They don't like being laughed at. And one of the most effective ways to weaken authoritarian is sometimes to ridicule them. Melania Trump was speaking.

And Melania Trump mentions Trump's empathy, which of course, we know he doesn't have. And Melania laughs and the entire room laughs. Very humiliating for authoritarian leaders. Take a look. Most know my husband as the strong commander-in-chief, but his empathy transcends the role and shape a caring leader who constantly remembers each and every American soldier is someone's child. Understand that authoritarian's want to project inevitability. and strength and instill fear in others. And they need to look untouchable. The entire performance depends on convincing people that it's useless to resist. Don't even bother because everybody

admires me and everybody takes me very seriously. And that's why they're obsessed over crowd sizes and television ratings and cognitive test scores and military parades and these displays of loyalty because that's how they believe they look strong. Image is the most important thing. And the way that you cut into that image is ridicule. Ridicule actually breaks the spell of the authoritarian. And this is why dictators and authoritarian-minded leaders, they often disproportionately hate comedians and people who do satire and late-night talk show hosts and memes. Does that remind you of anybody? If you are feared, you are making other people easy to manage because they are afraid of you.

And they're laughing at you. It's devastating not only to the ego of the authoritarian, but it's also devastating to the authoritarian's ability to control people. They don't even take me seriously. They're laughing at me. And that is what happened at the White House yesterday. Donald Trump bizarrely refers to his own son as a little boy that is Melania's. What?

This is a 20 year old and it's also Trump's son. if I said on my show, oh, you know, my girlfriend has some great daughters. But aren't they my daughters, too? Look at this. Most importantly and most importantly to her, she's done an incredible job as first lady. And she's an incredible mom. She has a little boy who's quite tall. He's a little boy to us, but he's quite tall, right? And he's great, Barron. And she takes great care of him. And thank you. You can really tell Trump is truly a family man. Trump visibly confused. He seems not to understand the concept of a sea like the Mediterranean Sea.

He's like, see, what are they talking about? No, S-E-A. And when Trump pretends others might be confused by something, what it means is he is confused. Take a look at this. Drug traffic coming into our country's way down. And by sea, by sea, by ocean. by the water, you know, a lot of people say, what do you mean by sea? Is it sea like vision? No, it's the SEA. Yeah, I guess Trump is confused between oceans and seas. It's all very weird. This guy's not

exactly operating on all cylinders. And then I have to tell you, maybe the most relatable thing Trump has ever said. Trump says that autocorrect messes up Melania's name in posts. And he needs that fixed and he's going to the military. Now, most of us don't have the ability to go to the military when we want autocorrect fixed. I don't know why we would even need the military for that. I think it's tech companies. But this is actually maybe Trump's most relatable moment. Take a look at this. More than most. It's Melody Wolf. And, you know, I love the name Melody because for a long time, you know, they have spell correct and word correct in these crazy machines that we use to put out truths or they used to be called tweets.

And every time I wrote Melania, it would correct to Melody. So I'd do thing, and I work very fast, very fast, blah, blah, blah, and I talk about it, and I say, and Melania is fantastic, and happy Mother's Day Melania, our great first lady Melania, but it would spell correct and word correct to melody. And sometimes I wouldn't proofread it. And I'd say, hmm, and I would get just absolute decimated. These people would decency. He said, he didn't know the name of his wife.

He keeps calling her. And I said, what the hell is wrong with this machine? I didn't know about that little feature, but I got that corrected eventually. You know who corrected? The military. I said, come here, you've got to correct this. You're killing me. I took more abuse.

She's been called Melody a lot. Anyway, I had to explain it to you this way. I stood up here to explain it to you. I apologize. Yeah, you know, I actually imagine Trump with those huge fingers trying to tap out Melania and it just gets auto corrected. And it goes, I don't even know what it auto corrects too, but certainly not, not Malania. Trump's maybe most relatable moment ever. You know, most of Trump's rants expose how disconnected and indifferent he is to the average person's struggles. At least he stumbled across something that some of us can relate to. And then finally, finally,

Trump insisting his real expertise. It's not foreign policy. It's not economics. It's not pandemic prevention. It's ballrooms. And he says the ballroom is just such a popular idea right now. I was in a position being a builder and having built many ballrooms and many other things. I'm good at ballrooms. And we're giving you the, I believe it's the best. It will be the best ever built. And it will have windows that are thicker than any ballroom I've ever. built. I usually have glass that's about a quarter of an inch thick. This is about six inches thick. This can repel a lot of different, a lot of different weapons. But it's going to be incredible. It's going to be aside from being secure, I think it's going to be the most beautiful ballroom ever built.

And it's something that the White House has needed, the presidents have needed. And it's an honor to be involved. And it really has become very popular. When people see the design, they really, they really like it. And it's been great, getting some great reviews also. I want to remind you once again, you've been sold a scam. It was going to be a cheap ballroom paid for by donations. Then it was going to be a more expensive ballroom paid for by donations. And now it's going to be an insanely expensive boondoggle paid for probably by you and by me. How does that make you feel? Makes me feel like crap. I'll tell you that. Shopping for a mattress is one of those things where most people have no idea where to start, which is why I recommend Helix sleep. Our sponsor, Helix, makes the process simple,

because instead of guessing, you just take a sleep quiz, you'll get matched with the best mattress for you. It takes a lot of the uncertainty out of buying something. You're going to spend every night on. you'll be glad to have one tailored to your unique needs. I'm mostly a stomach sleeper. I like medium firmness and I tend to run hot rather than cold at night. Helix had exactly the mattress for that. I've had my Helix mattress for years now. It is the one I keep recommending because it feels supportive, comfortable even after all these years. Helix also ships free in the United States, you get 120-night sleep trial and a limited lifetime warranty so you can buy with complete confidence. Go to helix sleep.com slash Pacman to get 27% off sitewide, exclusive for my audience.

The link is in the description. The Maga right is killing babies by suggesting to parents that they not give vitamin K shots to newborns. Now, I want to be super clear. When I say shot, I mean an injection. I do not even mean a vaccine, but we will come back to that. We are seeing the rate of newborn deaths in the United States surge. These are numbers that have come down over decades and they are now going up.

Why are they dying? There are babies bleeding to death because of vitamin K deficiency. This is preventable. When kids are born, when babies are born, they offer and usually give a vitamin K shot. And you have the MAGA right suggesting parents not do that. Tell them no on the vitamin K shot. I thought that they cared about babies.

When they want to ban abortion, they say it's because they care about babies so much. And yet, you've got Candice Owens, a big proponent of getting parents to refuse vitamin K shots. RFK has been talking about this too. And with RFK, you know, it's always it's always couched in deniable language where he just refuses to say that it is safe. Take a look at this video. And right now, Secretary Kennedy, given what I just told you about vitamin K, will you just tell pregnant women out there for the record, yes, you should get your babies the vitamin K shot? Well, first of all, anybody can get a hepatitis B shot and have their insurance company paid for it.

Secretary, the point is that you're discouraging it. You are suggesting it's unsafe. This is what parents are hearing. Why else all of a sudden are parents saying no to vitamin K? Will you just tell them for the record? There's women out there delivering today that they should get the vitamin K shot for their babies. Are you saying appetite at spi shot?

No, I'm saying vitamin K. Should women allow their babies to get the vitamin K shot so they do not have brain. You know, I would refer that to FDA and to the Furback panel. The FDA has approved it. It is a recommendation, but parents are listening to you and they are doubting science. Well, I've never said anything about vitamin K, so I don't see how they're listening to me on it. I've never said anything about it.

You have not. But also point out that there is no vitamin B shot in Denmark and they have the same rate, I mean, hepatitis B. Sir, I'm taking that right of hepatitis B as we do. Sir, this is about vitamin K. It is a spillover effect, just like measles vaccines and pertussis vaccine. I've never said anything public about it. So you saying that women are listening to what I'm going to move on, Mr. Secretary. You are putting our country in a position.

I've never said, literally never said anything about it. That's exactly the point. You don't say anything about it, but the doubt you've created about all of medicine and science is causing parents to make dangerous decisions. Well, ProPublica has a very troubling article about instances of kids who seem okay. Parents had refused the vitamin K shot at birth. And then in the first couple of months, there are problems. There's a seven-week-old boy in Maryland who's developed seizures suddenly.

There's a girl in Alabama who would stop breathing for periods of time. a boy in Kentucky who threw up and then became lethargic, a girl in Texas, not yet two weeks old, bled around her belly button. And with a lot of these cases, there are major interventions done. It could be IVs. It could be blood transfusions, resuscitation attempts, like really horrible stuff. And some of these kids tragically end up dying. And when pathologists look into what were the causes of death here, you see the kind of bleeding that you would not expect in a typical infant. And the deaths end up being caused in whole or in part by a rare but potentially fatal condition known as vitamin K deficiency bleeding.

The vitamin K shot at birth prevents this. Most of these kids had not gotten the vitamin K shot. think of that okay consider how optional this is in most of these cases and i want you to also think about something else because it's just indicative of the level of rot to which we have gotten this is not a vaccine i i know that there is a ton of vaccine skepticism of actual vaccinations but there is this outrageous mishmash confusion between injecting something that thing and a vaccine. Just because something is injected doesn't mean that it is a vaccine, but they're skeptical of all of it in this RFK world. If it comes out of a syringe, we're against

it, although you know, you can find pseudoscience stuff that they'll gladly inject, but that's a different story. Why is it that if they claim their most important principle is life, preserving life and all of it, why are they saying maybe don't, don't get the vitamin K shot or unwilling to say that the vitamin K shot is safe. Of course, we did it with both of our daughters and it goes completely without saying. We have a situation right now where once again, they have a principle they say is important to them life and save. It's not even adult.

We must save the lives of kids, not just adults. And then here is a way to do it. And they go, well, I don't know about that. I don't not, not too sure about that. But I thought you were pro-life. These principles don't mean anything if you just look the other way when it comes down to the rubber meeting the road. And so I know I spoke about this yesterday the day before.

I really don't encourage debating principles with these MAGA people because they'll stage an entire debate. In fact, I saw recently that Stephen Kenneth, Destiny, Benel Burrelli, the second had a debate with this wacky anti-abortion woman. And a lot of the debate was about the philosophy of when life begins and all. Guys, they don't really give a damn. Okay. It's pointless to debate principles with these people when they just abandon the principles. We are for life, especially when it comes to protecting newborns and the unborn and infants. But what about the vitamin K shot? Completely harmless and rare. These vitamin K bleeding situations are rare, but they can be very serious. Well,

that's different. Is it? Why? I don't know. It is a waste of time and they are killing children. Kevin Hassett stroked out and did something that makes a really creates a very dangerous precedent for talking about the economy. And I'm going to play a clip for you. As many of you, as many of you, you know, there are a lot of ways to measure how an economy is doing. And a lot of economic indicators you can look at and you can use them to make the case that the economy is good or you can use them to make the case that the economy is bad. Well, Kevin Hassett went on TV and he bragged about, bragged about credit card spending going through the roof. And he goes, the economy is so good. The economy is so good that people are racking up credit card debt like crazy.

Let me play the clip. And then I'm going to tell you and you probably can figure out why. This is not really the flex that he thinks it is. Take a look. And so the consumer is really, really firing on all cylinders just like the corporate sector you're seeing in the earnings reports. And they're doing that because they have so much more money in their pockets. In fact, I had the head of one of the big five banks in my office yesterday going through

the credit card data. And just as Secretary Besson said, credit card spending is through the roof. They're spending more on gasoline, but they're spending more on everything else, too. So think about this. Hassett says things are obviously awesome because credit card spending is exploding. The reality is that people are stretched so thin that they are charging stuff they might otherwise pay for. And they're paying interest on it because they have no choice. That's not good.

Now, you might be saying he's got to be trolling. Kevin Hassett can't possibly be this stupid. I don't think he's this stupid. I think he knows that rising credit card debt is not a sign of a good economy. It's actually a sign of a bad economy. Everybody's drowning in debt. We praise Trump. They are bragging about the fact that your prices went up on everything to the point that

on average, you have to start charging more and more stuff to your credit card. Now, let me give you another one that's a rate. similar and it points in a very dark direction. United States car loan delinquency. There are sort of the top line indicators that often are looked at. Where's the stock market? Where's unemployment? Where's gas? You know, inflation. But then there's these other metrics that we can look at that can be leading indicators of where the economy is going. There are more people late on their car loans today than in the last 10 years, and I actually believe that this chart only goes back 10 years, but I believe if you go back further, we have the most car loan delinquency right now that we have

ever had. That is a very bad sign. And it's a very bad sign on two levels. And I've talked about this a little bit before. On the one hand, car loan delinquency is a bad sign because it just suggests people are having trouble meeting their monthly expenses. If you start being laid on your car loan and you get later and later, you are probably going in a direction of financial insolvency and that's bad for the economy.

But there's a sort of trickle-down effect, which is that people rely on cars to get to work and to get kids to school so that they can then work at home or in an office. And so if your car gets repossessed and you lose your car, your ability to work is curtailed, which only has a subsequent negative effect on the economy as well. So the fact that what they have to try to argue that the economy is good is that people are spending a lot of money on credit cards shows us how little they actually have. And think about it. They can't point to inflation because inflation is up.

They can't point to gas prices because they promise they'd be down 50% and they're up 66%. So you can't point to that one. They can't promise to, they can't point to wages being up because wages are up less than inflation. They can't point to job creation because job creation is down and we actually had months of job loss, net job loss. So what can they point to? People are so excited about this economy that they are confidently putting stuff on their credit cards. I don't think we're falling for this, folks. When the weather cools down, Golden Nugget Online Casino turns up the heat.

This winner, make any moment golden and play thousands of games like her new slot Wolf It Up and all the fan-favored Hoff and Puff games. Whether you're curled up on the couch or taking five between snow shovels, play winner's hottest collection of slots. From brand new games to the classics you know and love. You can also pull up your favorite table games like Blackjack, Roulette, and Crops, or go for even more excitement with our library of live dealer games. Download the Golden Nugget Online Casino app and you've got everything you need to layer on the fun this winter.

In partnership with Golden Nugget Online Casino. Gambling problem call ConX Ontario at 1-866-531-2600. 19 and over. Physically President Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. See Golden Nuggettcasino.com for details. Please play responsibly. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour.

Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields, like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. The Pacman Show is an audience-supported program and the best most direct way. way to support the show is by becoming a member at join packman.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. One of these Republicans thought he had a really good idea and he made a huge mistake on Fox News. He delivered the line that they love to deliver.

And that line is imagine if Joe Biden were president right now. But I think that's the last thing that anybody should be saying on Fox News right now because it's going to give people ideas. People are going to say, wait a second. If Joe Biden were president, would we be at war with Iran right now? Almost certainly not. Wait a second. Would we have tariffs on everything if Joe Biden were president right now, blowing prices up?

No, almost certainly not. Would we see gas prices up 66% since January 15th if Joe Biden were president right now? Almost certainly not. Here is Congressman Carlos Jimenez on Fox News going, imagine what oil prices would be today if Joe Biden were in office. This is a terrible idea for Republicans. Take a look. Are you expecting to lose seats in the House for the midterm elections this year?

I was, but I'm not. Now you're not. And I'll tell you why. I think that the, no, I'm not. And I'll tell you why, because we need to go on offense against the Democrat. Can you imagine what all prices would be today if Joe Biden were actually in office and the straits of our moves were being closed by Iran? We were now energy independent and we're energy dominant.

Under him, we were energy dependent. And so the world would be in a much worse place if Joe Biden and the Democrats were in power. You know, there are a problem. probably some hardcore magas who will always say, of course, it would be worse if Biden were president right now. But a whole bunch of them, we know, have reconsidered their support of Donald Trump. And do you really want to remind them months before a major midterm election that there was another choice?

And you picked the bad choice. We got the bad choice. It's like the accidental nostalgia problem. Republicans want to keep invoking Joe Biden even now to blame him. They're being asked about economic indicators today. And they go, well, listen, this is the mess Biden handed us. We're in year two of Donald Trump's second term here. How long are you going to be blaming Joe Biden?

But when they keep invoking Biden, the risk becomes exactly what we're seeing here, which is prices are going up. And the stock market is unstable. And we've got these foreign conflicts where the straight is open, the straight is closed, up, down, we're at war, we're not at war. All of this stuff. And a lot of swing voters, if they really start asking themselves the question, where would we be if Joe Biden were president right now? I think a lot of them are going to come to the conclusion that we'd be better off.

And if they come to believe we'd be better off if Joe Biden were the president or if Kamala Harris had been elected, they're not going to go out and vote for Republicans in November. So I think that this is a very high risk strategy. And I would be curious to talk off the record, like so that they could actually be honest. I would love to talk to some Republican strategy consultants and just say to them, honestly, do you think continuing to bring up Joe Biden is to the benefit of the Republican Party at this point? Or is it going to remind people, wait a second, Biden wouldn't have done any of the crap that Trump is doing and we would all be better off today.

So this is probably a bad idea. And I hope they keep doing it. And I think it's important to tie as we on the left need to tie back reality to the promises. they said gas, groceries, inflation, it's all going to be done. Wars would end on day one. The Ukraine-Russia war would end on day one. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was going to be ended in Donald Trump's first term. That didn't quite work.

Energy is going to hold them to their promises. And it's no longer an abstract evaluation. Seven days into Trump's second term, sure, it's too early to evaluate a lot of these promises. other than the ones Trump said would happen on day one. A year in. All right. Well, it's starting to get a little difficult to say we can't evaluate. We are now well into year two.

It's time to simply say what were the promises and what's reality? And when they come out and go, what if Biden were president? Gas prices would be even higher. Come on, guys. No, they wouldn't. Nobody believes that. And by the way, as we played earlier, Donald Trump said he would have done the Iran thing, even if it would have spiked oil prices to 200 bucks a barrel.

which would mean we were paying eight or so dollars a gallon for gas. So we had a year of everything is Biden's fault. And with every passing day, that became less viable as an excuse. But once you fully control government for over a year, you just lose the ability to blame everybody else for every single outcome. And eventually voters are going to say, okay, why are prices so high right now? That all being said, Democrats still need a message. And right now the message isn't great. Yes, the message is Trump screwed you. Okay, fine.

Yes, part of the message is Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, neither would have gotten us into a lot of this stuff. That's true. That's accurate. I think that that's worth mentioning. But the bigger picture here has to be why are you voting for Democrats in November? Is it so that they will go and do oversight on what the Trump administration has done and try to hold people accountable? Is it because voting for Democrats in November is going to make Trump an instant lame duck who gets absolutely nothing else done?

Well, maybe it's that. Is it because voting for Democrats in November will finally usher in a serious era of anti-corruption? Well, if you can convince people of that, maybe that's the reason. But as I talked about at the top of the show, as I've been begging Democrats to do, you've got to communicate with people more effectively. Here's what we spent in Iran. what we could have paid for with a fraction of that money, whether it's paid child care or health care or you've got to really make this stuff hit. And I think that Democrats are scoring like a two out of 10

right now on actually making that happen. So let me know what you think. The situation is ripe for making this a hugely successful midterm. But I think Democrats really need to be doing more here. The algorithms are burying a major story right now. When I talk about it, they block it. You don't get to hear about this topic because the algorithms kill it. Let me explain what's going on. This is something sort of strange that happened, but I think we have a good understanding of what happened. A couple days ago, I covered a major developing story involving women's healthcare access in the United States.

Now, you'll notice me not use certain words in this segment because that's actually part of the problem. I covered a story with potential national consequences. It wasn't a celebrity gossip story. It wasn't titillating internet drama or left on left or clickbait nonsense. It was a major story about the fact that certain family planning services are going to be effectively banned if Republicans get away with something they are trying to do. on YouTube where we have nearly four million subscribers, the video flatlined out of the gate. It was our worst performing video in six months. I'm not even going to put up a screenshot

of the video because I'm worried then this video will get suppressed. The worst performing video maybe in years, certainly for six months. I understand not every video performs the same way, But I've been doing this long enough to know that sometimes something performs so strangely that it raises alarm bells. And 7,000 views in the first 12 hours for this video on something of such national consequence raised alarm bells. This was one of those times, especially because I'm talking about a topic where I don't even want to say certain words out loud anymore. But because those words seem to be part of the problem. This is how ridiculous it has gotten. I am trying to carefully navigate my wording because it is so unpredictable and I want people to hear about what's going on.

You all know the issue I mean, right? The health care issue that became a state's rights issue after the Supreme Court ruling of 2022. That's the issue I'm talking about. We as creators, journalists, independent media figures, we are feeling pressure to self-censor language because of concerns that the algorithm will quietly strangle the reach of the content. When one of the most important stories I've recently covered, it's getting very little attention suddenly is treated like radioactive material that has to be buried so deep underground that it will never be seen again. That is a problem for society. It's much bigger than just a digital platform problem. And the frustrating part is that this isn't

even about agreeing with me politically. You could disagree with me about the issue itself. That's fine. But shouldn't people at least see it? the reporting and see what Republicans are trying to do right now with this issue. Shouldn't people know what's happening? Shouldn't there be nationwide legal and healthcare developments reaching audiences instead of just sort of going into the void? And the answer is according to the algorithms, apparently not. And this is exactly why independent media needs direct audience support now more than ever.

I might come to you later with another story, which is I've been working with half a dozen left-wing creators right now to identify why it is that left-wing content is suddenly bombing on YouTube. Now, you might go, oh, it's because the content sucks. Okay. We have been doing this long enough to understand what sort of content should perform and what is unlikely to perform. And we are seeing right now what appears to be an overt suppression of left-wing content.

But we'll get back to that later. If your ability to reach people about important issues like healthcare access, if it depends entirely on an opaque algorithm controlled by giant tech companies, coverage of stories is effectively throttled overnight and Americans don't have the ability to even find out what is taking place in their country. Now, my ask is really simple here. Just engage with this video. it, comment on it, share it, hit the subscribe button on the actual video page, which tells

YouTube and other platforms, this is the content that got me to subscribe. I am not going to stop covering stories just because they make platforms uncomfortable and they trigger the algorithms. And honestly, the fact that I even feel the need to speak out about this in euphemisms should tell you everything you need to know about the current state of online media. This bastion of free speech that supposedly was going to exist. It's not true. If you want a full breakdown of the original story I covered, it's on YouTube.

And make sure to subscribe to my Substack newsletter because one thing I've learned from all of this is that direct connection matters, email matters. And we own our contact list on Substack. We're going to keep talking about stories that matter regardless. It's clear the algorithms are trying to suffocate discussion of certain topics, but we're going to keep doing what we're doing and we will be continuing to tell you what it is that is happening algorithmically now on the bonus show today we will talk about the latest controversy regarding the DNC's 2024 autopsy Kamala Harris wants it released chief justice john roberts says that justices

are wrongly being viewed as political actors they shouldn't be we'll talk about that and CNN founder Ted Turner has died at 87. We will talk about all of that and more on today's bonus show. You can sign up and get instant access at joinpackman.com.