The David Pakman Show - Another War Is Starting And Trumps Confused About It

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

-- On the Show -- Donald Trump casually references a CIA drone strike inside Venezuela so incoherently that journalists and officials initially cannot tell whether the United States carried out an act of war or whether the president is confused -- Donald Trump's long claim of an Epstein hoax collapses as documents, photos, statements, and flight records confirm his sustained proximity to Jeffrey Epstein and undermine the idea that Trump was unaware or uninvolved -- Donald Trump launches a chaotic spree of false claims and incoherent statements about hostages, Putin, asylum, and foreign policy that expose his increasing detachment from reality -- Donald Trump delivers a rambling press conference filled with lies, vague threats, and factual ignorance that leaves reporters stunned and forces aides and journalists to correct his statements in real time -- Benjamin Netanyahu awards Donald Trump a symbolic prize that feeds Trump's obsession with validation and reinforces a pattern of foreign leaders flattering him to manage his ego rather than honor real achievements -- Jessica Tarlov reminds Fox News viewers of Donald Trump's record of believing authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, puncturing the myth that Trump is tough or strategic with dictators -- Donald Trump repeatedly claims he inherited a broken economy despite taking office amid falling inflation and strong employment, then blames Joe Biden -- Donald Trump's elastic definition of ending wars collapses when applied consistently, revealing that by Trump's own standards Barack Obama would qualify as having ended far more conflicts -- On the Bonus Show: Gen Z men drift away from Trump, Kennedy Center performers cancel events after Trump name change, Trump installs plaques in his White House "walk of fame," and much more... 💻 Sponsored by Private Internet Access: 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/DavidP 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.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 (01:30) Trump Venezuela strike confusion (07:13) Epstein hoax collapses (14:26) Trump incoherent foreign policy spree (23:17) Rambling press conference meltdown (33:13) Netanyahu flatters Trump with prize (39:06) Fox News truth moment (46:22) Trump lies about economy (52:26) Trump war claims fall apart    

The president appeared to casually announce American strikes inside of the country of Venezuela during a random radio interview. And for hours, no one could tell whether it was the truth or whether Trump was simply confused. Now, it was later confirmed and we will talk about it. We will then talk about the Epstein hoax, which turns out to be a lie in reverse. The real hoax was pretending that Trump had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein, despite years of documented ties and Trump's own words. We're also going to break down maybe the most dishonest claim about Joe Biden's presidency, which is that he handed over a mess to the current administration. I will prove that he did not.

And then think about this. Trump claims to have ended eight wars. We'll examine the eight. But by Trump standards, how many wars could Barack Obama claim to have ended? I believe the number is 15. We also have a horrible person giving another horrible person. a prize. This time, it's Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, giving Trump the Israel prize. What does it mean? And is this just another manipulation of the orange president?

And then a rare moment of truth on Fox News and how their audience reacts to it. All of it and more on the second to last show of 2025. Glad to have you with me. Did Donald Trump declare war and strike a country? Or is he simply confused and have symptoms of the dementia that Dr. John Gartner spoke to us about yesterday? I don't know the answer. Let me explain what's going on. CNN a few days ago aired audio from a relatively obscure radio interview that Donald Trump did.

And it should have set off an alarm bell in Washington and around the country because Donald Trump appears to casually say, oh, we have carried out land strikes in Venezuela. That would be a huge deal. No warning, no formal address, no clear explanation. Just Trump going, oh, yeah, we've started a war. We are now bombing the land of Venezuela. And the terrifying part is that at the time, we didn't know whether this was another demented and addled utterance from Trump that might not comport with anything in the real

world or whether Donald Trump has actually launched a war against Venezuela without telling anybody. Let me play the clip for you. This is the moment in question. And we just talked out. I don't know if you read or you saw. They have a big plant or a big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from two nights ago, we knocked that out.

So we hit them very hard. Now, CNN later was able to confirm that the CIA drone did strike in Venezuela earlier this month at a port facility on the veterans. Venezuelan coast. And according to multiple sources, the strike targeted a remote dock. It was believed to be used by the Venezuelan gang Theran de Aragua, or as Trump calls it, trendorakwa to store and ship drugs. And there were no casualties, but this is the first known American attack on a land-based target in Venezuela. That is an escalation. That is not what the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize would be doing under the self-proclaimed headline of being the anti-weigh. war president. But Trump did not announce it like the commander in chief explaining a serious national security decision. Why did I do it? Here is the authorization that I saw it. No, he kind of vaguely mentions it. He goes, by the way, we just knocked out a facility a couple days ago. In other words, Trump appears to acknowledge a covert strike offering no details, no justification, no legal

explanation, and no sense of the gravity of what he is doing. And then the interview just moved on. Now, maybe even more alarming is that Trump's statement of that came after he had already expanded CIA authority to conduct operations inside of Latin America, including these counter narcotics boat strikes that we've been talking about. But officials have also openly admitted that the real goal here is to try to push regime change and to get Nicholas Maduro, the leader of Venezuela, to step aside. Now, as I've said before, if it's not counter narcotics and it's just regime pressure, I'm against American involvement in regime change in Latin America.

I'm from Argentina and I know a little too much about how that goes. But I would rather the administration just be honest than not come up with this whole alleged counter narcotics thing. Just tell me what you're really doing. Now, by the way, the way that the public learned that this had taken place was an offhanded comment by Trump during a radio interview that was not predominant in the news cycle that day. And the other reason that this didn't get a lot of attention up front is we are so used to Trump being confused, addled and feeble about what is even taking place that a lot of

people heard this and thought Trump probably doesn't even really know that that happened. He's probably confused. It probably wasn't the land strike or it probably wasn't Venezuela or he's confused by what was going on in Nigeria rather than Venezuela. The assumption that there is cognitive decline, confusing Trump about what he is doing, held back this story from going mainstream. And that's a pattern that we've seen repeatedly. Trump makes a claim about bombing a country. He threatens someone with consequences. He takes military action. And then we wait for clarification from people who actually know what's going on, whether it's a administration aid or a general or an

intelligence official to tell us, yes, that is real or no, that did not exactly happen. The U.S. has already destroyed more than 30 boats in international waters as part of the Venezuela campaign. There's been a blockade imposed on oil tankers. Military assets have been built up in the Caribbean. And defense secretary Pete Hegseth even compared drug traffickers to al-Qaeda. So this is not nothing now that we know that there has been a land-based strike. And it is not the action of an anti-war president.

The core sort of problem here is that we no longer can tell. Is Trump deliberately withholding information? Is he mistakenly and casually revealing classified operations? Or has Trump just lost track of what it is that is going on? When the president speaks, we shouldn't be in the position of saying, did Trump declare war? Does he not know what he's what he's doing? Does he not know what his administration is doing? We need to wait for some kind of clarification.

And the fact that this is now a legitimate question every time Trump says we have done something tells you a lot about what you need to know with regard to how dangerous this moment is. New war or dementia, maybe it's both at the end of the day. For years, we have heard allegations of the so-called Epstein hoax. And you know what? I'm here to tell you today, there is an Epstein hoax. And the Epstein hoax was the attempt to perpetuate the lie for years that Donald Trump had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. Here's just one example of what I'm talking about, Trump referring to the hoax of Jeffrey

Epstein. As far as the Epstein files is, I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. I threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert. Remember that that's a lie. Trump threw him out because he stole an employee from Trump's spa. But I guess I would turn out to be right. But you know who does have Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, who ran Harvard was with him every single night, every single weekend. They lived together. They went to his island many times. I never did. Andrew Westman are here. All these guys were friends of his. You don't even talk about those people.

you just keep going on the Epstein files. And what the Epstein is, is a Democrat hoax to try and get me not to be able to talk about the $21 trillion that. There you go. Now, of course, the only hoax was the one that attempted to convince people that Trump had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. None of it's fake. None of it's imagined.

None of it relies on conspiracy theories. We have real victims. We have flight logs that put Trump on Epstein's plane at least eight times. We have money trails. we have photos. What's fake is the idea that somehow all of this stops mattering when Donald Trump's name is involved. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee release these numerous batches of Epstein-related material, and it includes powerful people. And among those people is Trump. Trump has acknowledged he's known Epstein for decades, called him a terrific guy, said he like women on the younger side.

None of that spin. That's Trump on the record in the early 2000s. And now the defense is always the same. They had a falling out and Trump didn't do anything wrong and that's it. That to me dodges the real question. Either Trump spent nearly two decades around Jeffrey Epstein and failed to notice what Epstein was doing or he noticed and he chose not to say anything. Those are kind of the options right now. Neither one reflects intelligence. They reflect failings of character. And the fact that the word hoax keeps getting used, it's Trump's all-purpose eraser. It's like one of those magic sponges. It just gets rid of everything.

January 6th, that's a hoax. Well, what do you mean it was a hoax? Do you mean it didn't happen? That there wasn't violence, that it was a setup by the FBI, that you didn't incite the violence? What do you mean? The Georgia phone call, the ring which Trump said, you got to give me a break. I need 11,000 votes. That was a hoax.

The felony convictions of Trump's first administration. That's a hoax. affordability. That's a Democrat hoax. Epstein, definitely a hoax. So unless Democrats are involved that he can point to and say these are the guilty parties, these are all hoaxes. And even more and more Trump supporters now realize that this just really isn't adding up. Some Trump supporters are buying it, but some are realizing this, this seems like a cover up. And undoing a grift is really hard. They've fallen for a grift and now they're in the position of do we want to undo it or do we go with it?

So we have now not only to fight for transparency, but we have to fight the false notion that this is some kind of democratic plan dating back decades to catch Trump once he's president of the United States. If this were the type of hoax that Donald Trump is describing, there would be no reason to redact anything. There would be no reason to redact things with Trump's names on it. Information doesn't need black bars because it's false. Lies don't need careful legal review because they are lies.

And so what we are seeing here are selective releases, heavy redactions, legal defensiveness. That doesn't mean everybody pictured committed a crime. I increasingly believe that Trump's concern with this is that it's going to drag down a lot of his friends. At this point, I do think that if there were real evidence of Trump participating in crimes with Epstein, I think we would have it. Now, that doesn't mean Trump is is completely innocent here because I think it was clear that Trump knew what was going on and opted to do and say nothing. But we don't have to assume everybody named in the files is guilty of a crime

to realize that there is a cover up that is going on here. So it strains credulity to argue that this is a Democrat hoax. The abuse was real. The network of trafficking minors was real. The access that wealthy and elite people were given was real. The only hoax was the claim that Trump had nothing to do with it, that he was unfairly targeted, that he's not in the files, and that he never flew on Epstein's plane, all of which no longer hold up under the evidence. So when they tell you it's a hoax, if you see it on Reddit or on X or wherever you're hearing that, tell them the hoax was that Trump wasn't involved, which now we know that he indeed was. If you're online, someone's always trying to track you. Hackers, advertisers, data brokers,

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I appreciate you very much. We go from a ridiculous Mar-a-Lago meeting with Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky to a ridiculous Mar-a-Lago meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu did something very special for Donald Trump, really the blind leading the blind or the corrupt leading the corrupt, but we'll get to that in a moment. We're going to look at the before the meeting and after the meeting of Trump's exchanges with Benjamin Netanyahu before going into their meeting, Donald Trump taking some questions and not missing out on an opportunity to tell provable, disgusting, dilapidated lies about the release

of Israeli hostages. Listen at this. Look at Netanyahu looking on with pleasure. You know, people with Putin, Netanyahu, they can't help but smirk in a self-satisfied way when they see Trump being a good boy, a good little dog, a loyal dog doing exactly what they would want him to do. Mr. President, can you guarantee that the last hostage is, and Phil, would be released before will continue to the second phase of the Casualtank? Well, let's put it this way. Every hostage just about that's been released was released because of me. Now, that is a lie, but Netanyahu's sort of nodding, even though we all know Netanyahu

knows that's a lie. Whitkoff, Jared Kushner, my whole team, Marco Rubio, Pete Hankseth, they were all released because of us. None were released in the Biden administration. None. Lime. We were all released because of us. Then we had a lack of releases with respect to the dead.

And all of a sudden they started coming back because I said, nope, you said you're going to we have one wonderful young man whose parents are right now inside. And he's what beautiful parents, a beautiful brother, sister. And. All right. So listen, Trump's lying here. It's just a lie. The Biden administration secured the release of a whole bunch of hostages in November of 23.

There were 105 hostages released as part of that ceasefire deal. There were two American citizen hostages released in October of 2023. There were another 33 hostages, including eight deceased, returned in early 2025. under Biden and Trump in the sense of the deal was made at the end of Biden's term and there was involvement from Trump's team. I think it's fine to give them both credit for that one. So that's just a lie. Trump is lying and Netanyahu just stands there and nods even though they, he knows that

Trump is lying. Trump was asked about a report that Ukraine tried to strike at Vladimir Putin's residence. Here is what Trump says. And he heard from Putin about it. That's for sure. and have a beautiful lunch, and we'll see you later. Mr. President, are you worried with this strike, the election strike on Putin's residents could scut a little bit.

Yeah, I don't like it. It's not good. I heard about it this morning. You know, who told me about it? President Putin told me about it. Early in the morning, he said he was attacked. That's no good. It's no good. Don't forget, you know, the tomahawks, I stopped the tomahawks.

I didn't want that. Because we're talking about, you know, it's a delicate period of time. This is not the right time. It's one thing to be offensive because they're offensive. It's another thing to attack his house. This one really upset Donald Trump. Of course, the Russians have tried to assassinate President Zelensky numerous times.

Never really seemed to bother Trump. Trump asked an interesting follow-up question about the alleged attack attempt on Putin's residence, which is, is there any evidence of that? And Trump goes, well, I mean, I guess it's possible it didn't have. happen, but Putin told me it did. I don't know. What? Well, it came out. It came out. Well, we'll find out. I mean, you're saying maybe the attack didn't take place it's possible to, I guess. But President Putin told me this morning it did.

I love that. Trump goes, listen, I mean, evidence. I guess you're suggesting something that is possible, which is the attack never really happened. I mean, after all, Trump isn't saying he has any evidence that that attack on Putin's residence happened. But he goes, but Putin told me. Just like Putin told me at the Helsinki summit during my first term that they didn't hack the DNC. They didn't do any hacking. And I believe him.

Why would Putin lie about it? He said it very strongly. Really a puppet of Putin increasingly so. I don't think Trump even realizes it himself. It's sort of like useful idiot. And that's not a pejorative in the sense of saying, oh, you're such an idiot. A useful idiot means that you are being used cynically by others and furthering the goals of others without even realizing it yourself.

And that seems to be the case. Shockingly, as we now are entering 2026, Donald Trump still does not appear to understand the difference between a political asylum claim and an insane asylum, aka a psychiatric facility. I did any, why won't anyone tell Trump that this is the problem? Right. Please. Mr. President, can I follow up on Venezuela? Was the facility taken out by the U.S. military? Or was another entity like the CIA?

Well, I don't want to say that. I know exactly who it was, but I don't want to say who it was. But you know it was along the shore. Mr. President, have you or anyone here in your administration talked to Maduro in recent days? Well, I spoke to. Recently? Pretty recent.

But nothing much comes of it. Yeah. Mr. President, can you explain the importance? You have to understand what he's done. They've sent billions of dollars of drugs in, but maybe just as bad. They've sent hundreds of thousands of people in from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions and insane asylums, uh, the drug lords, the drug dealers. We're all- I'm increasingly convinced that the confusion here, because for Trump, for years

now, he's been saying they're emptying out insane asylums into our country. And we look for evidence, for evidence of that from any country, Mexico, Venezuela, there's no evidence of it. And I'm increasingly convinced that Donald Trump believes that when someone shows up and says, I'm requesting asylum, I believe Trump thinks they're coming from a so-called insane asylum or psychiatric hospital. I think that Trump simply does not understand what's going on. And I wouldn't be surprised if the people around Donald Trump are scared to mention this because it's been so long. It's sort of like when you forget someone's name and then you see them a second time and you go, I'm going to try to figure out what their name is.

I'm not going to ask. And then you see them a third time and a fourth time and a fifth time. You don't know their name. After you've seen this person six or seven times, you no longer now feel ready to go, by the way, what was your name? Because they would go, we've seen each other seven times. You don't know my name? I think it's similar where if someone went to Trump and said, listen, for the last two years,

you've been repeating this insane asylum thing. these people are seeking political asylum, not they're not from an insane asylum. I don't think it would go particularly well. So, but that's my best guess of what's going on. And then finally, before the meeting begins, Trump, uh, ranting to Benjamin Netanyahu on a hot mic, saying, do I get credit for it talking about the eight wars that he says he ended? It's funny that he is, that's not something he only brags about in public, even when he is just talking privately, it's not really private. There are cameras in there. But the point is, These are not formal declarations from Trump.

Trump really seems to be insisting on the number of wars that he ended. But to both of them, I said, we're going to cut you off, one more trade. Then I put 200% tariffs on the next day they called. We looked at 35 years of fighting and they, they stopped. Do I get credit for it now? I did eight of them. India, how about India and Pakistan? And then, so I did eight of them.

And then I'll tell you the rest of it. How are you doing, okay? You're going to all be outside, the beautiful sun. Good. Enjoy your lunch. All right. So Trump says he'll fill Netanyahu in later about the eight wars that he ended. Let's sort of put a pin in that.

Let's put a pin on it. Let's pin it. Whatever. We're going to come back to the eight wars and look into them in more detail. So this is the setup. This is before the big meeting. They then meet with the Israeli prime minister. They come out and the press conference off the rails.

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu had a meeting yesterday. They came out of it and a press conference was held. Trump's decline is so steep that he is no longer able to keep it together for even 10 minutes here. Trump with another foreign policy disaster asked, did you and the president? Prime Minister discussed the West Bank. Of course, the West Bank, one of the Palestinian territories that is part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From Trump's answer, I don't think he knows the first thing about the West Bank.

Talk about that. Mr. President, Mr. President, did you have a message for the Prime Minister about the West Bank? And are you at all concerned that settler violence, Israeli settler violence, could be undermining the peace plan. Well, we have had a discussion, big discussion for a long. time on the West Bank and I wouldn't say we're doing lots of talking and thinking about the West Bank. We agree on the West Bank 100%, but we will come to a conclusion of the West Bank.

I could ask, what is the disagreement? Well, I don't want to do that. It'll be an outset inappropriate time. But he will do the right thing. I know that. I know him very well. He will do the right thing. Yeah.

Talk about that. All right. So my takeaway from that is Trump has no clue about the West Bank. He has no real feelings about the West Bank. He doesn't understand the West Bank and is probably sort of confused about the way in which the West Bank and Gaza sort of intersect here. Trump was asked, are you worried about China doing naval exercises around Taiwan? And Trump goes, I don't think it's going to happen. And I'm not worried about anything.

Spoken like a true diplomat. Doing naval exercises basically to test encircling Taiwan. Can you explain to us what your knowledge is of that? What do you think about that? Have you had any discussions with you? Well, I have a great relationship with President Xi, and he hasn't told me anything about it. I certainly have seen it, but he hasn't told me anything about it. And I don't believe he's going to be doing it.

No, nothing worries me. Nothing. There it is. Trump sort of knows about it. Doesn't think it's going to happen even though it's already happening. And he's definitely not worried about it. Really the guy you want to be making foreign policy decisions when woken up at 3 a.m. Although I guess Trump's up all night a lot of the time.

So maybe it's better that he doesn't have to be woken up at 3 a.m. You just say, sir, could you take a break from posting to truth social for a second? We have an emergency. Trump bringing up the ballroom, the ballroom, which is at a total standstill after Donald Trump demolished part of the White House. The construction project is at a standstill. Trump fired the architect. it's a globally and historically humiliating mess.

Trump says something weird. He says, we're going to be doing an inauguration in the new ballroom. What inauguration is Trump planning exactly? Biden reappointed him as too bad. You would have thought he wouldn't have done that. But he's an absolute fool who's building a new federal reserve or he's doing a renovation of a building. Maybe he's up to $4.1 billion to do a renovation of a few very small buildings.

it's the highest price in the history of construction. He's spending more money than any building has ever spent per square foot on the renovation of, as an example, I'm doing a magnificent, big, beautiful ballroom that the country has wanted. The White House has wanted for 150 years. It's a massive job, and it's a tiny fraction of that number. And we're under budget and ahead of schedule. Now it's...

None of that is true. The budget is doubled and the project is at a standstill. It's bigger than I told you. It's, you know, after realizing we're going to do the inauguration in that building, it's got all bulletproof glass. It's got all drone, they call it drone free roof. The drones won't touch it. It's a big, it's a big, beautiful, safe building. Yeah.

Extraordinarily safe, extraordinarily big. What inauguration is Trump planning in this ballroom? because it putting aside for a second that I don't know they're good that the inaugurations are going to be done in the ballroom. I don't know that the ballroom is ever going to be built. And if it is, it's increasingly seeming like it's not going to be done by the time of the next inauguration. So as usual, Trump a little bit disconnected from reality.

The topic of Iran comes up. And what's fascinating about this is as we go through what about what's happening with Russia. What about the West Bank? What about China and Taiwan? Trump is unable to get beyond just a superficial statement on any of these issues. And I think it's pretty clear he doesn't know anything about any of these issues. Trump asked about Iran and he's just sort of like, I don't know, I'm kind of hearing some stuff. Well, I don't want to say that, but Iran may be behaving badly.

It hasn't been confirmed. But if it's confirmed, look, they know the consequences will be very powerful, maybe more powerful than the last time. Yeah. And Iran should have made a deal the last time. I gave them the option. I said, you can make a deal. Do it. I told them, do it. And they didn't believe me. Now they believe me. You have evidence that Iran is behaving badly. And what do you mean? This is just what we hear. But usually. I'm just kind of hearing rumors. Trump has access to arguably the best intelligence in the world, although he often says the intelligence agencies suck. But Trump, has access to the best intelligence agencies in the world. And he's asked about evidence for some

of the claims he's making. And he goes, yeah, we're just kind of hearing this stuff. Evidence, shm evidence. I don't really know. Finally, the topic of the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, came up. And Trump's latest is he's thinking of suing Jerome Powell for incompetence. Something tells me, that's not going to happen. It had no impact. We won all seven swing states. But, but no, no, we're thinking about bringing a suit against Powell for incompetence. Yeah. Because think of it. These are two, these are an outstanding buildings.

He's at four billion more. He said, four billion more. It's going to end up costing more than four billion dollars. Four billion. It's the highest price of construction. Again, Democrats, high as- Now, let me explain this to you. Trump's ballroom, which is at a standstill, has doubled in budget, but it's going swimmingly.

misunderstands that this Fed construction project is insanely over budget, even though Jerome Powell has explained it's not. And he believes that that may be a reason to personally sue Jerome Powell as if he's as an individual involved in running that project. Delusional cuckoo for cocoa puff stuff. And Trump mentions he still might fire Jerome Powell. And will you ask Jay Powell to resign from the board entirely? be a favor to the nation.

But he's come close. I mean, we're getting pretty close. I would fire him. I would, I'd love to fire him. But we're so close, you know, maybe it. But maybe I still might. Really treating the Federal Reserve as an episode of The Apprentice. I might fire him.

I might not. I might replace him. I might make him, you know, do some kind of physical obstacle course to see if he's really up to the task. Or who knows, maybe I'll set them up in some kind of televised sting operation. It's all just a reality show for Trump. And if there is any real takeaway here from the Mar-a-Lago being the site of the meeting with Zelensky and of the meeting with BB Netanyahu and all of these press conferences,

it's that for Trump, it's all kind of the same. Mar-a-Lago and the Oval Office, it's all kind of the same. Cameras show up and Trump gets to say things. firing people on the apprentice or firing people in real life. It's all kind of the same. It's all just a show for Donald Trump. And he wants to be the host of the show. Now, incredibly, Benjamin Netanyahu is participating in the show in a disgusting way.

And we're going to talk about that after the break. Make sure you're getting my daily substack, by the way. Sign up for it for free. I'm selling you nothing but a good time. Substack. dot David Pakman.com. A lot of people think identity theft is something that only happens when someone hacks into your account, but the truth is that it usually starts with your personal information being posted

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protection for you and your family against identity theft, against fraud, doxing, harassment, and Incogni's data removal process is the only one independently verified by Deloitte, get 60% off an annual plan when you visit incogni.com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman. The link is in the description. All right, Donald Trump is getting another ridiculous prize. A horrible person is giving a horrible person a prize. And for being supposedly against participation trophies, it's crazy how many Donald Trump is getting these days. So here's what's going on. We already covered Donald Trump's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House during their post-meeting press conference. Netanyahu announces that he is awarding the Israel Prize to Donald Trump.

And Trump's response was, wow, I'm so surprised. And I really appreciate that. And of course, he's going to put that on the shelf next to his FIFA Peace Prize and his made up. What was it that he used to say his Michigan man of the year or something like that from 30 years ago. So I want to be really upfront about what's happening here. And this has nothing to do with achievement. This is validation. This is Netanyahu. You could say Netanyahu is horrible.

But what as far as the prize goes, you could say, oh, Netanyahu's so dumb by giving this to Trump. Or you could say actually, Netanyahu is playing Donald Trump like a fiddle. And he's smart to do exactly this. This is optics. Trump wants the applause. He wants the recognition. He wants to be able to have something and point to it and go, look, they love me. They love me. Here is Netanyahu very solemnly and soberly announcing this. To Israel, it's been my honor. And the award that I was given was really surprising and very much

appreciated. Well, President Trump has broken so many conventions to the surprise of people. And then they They figured out, oh, well, maybe, you know, he was right after all. So we decided to break a convention to or create a new one. And that is to award the Israel Prize, which in almost our 80 years, we've never awarded it to a non-Israeli. And you probably should not have made an exception for Trump. We're going to award it this year to President Trump. This was announced formally over lunch.

Wow. The beautiful lunch announcement that they made. the so-called FIFA Peace Prize? Trump stood there, beaming, accepting an award that came into existence five minutes before it was given to Donald Trump from an organization that doesn't give Nobel-style peace prizes. And Trump brags about ending wars that are still happening. He brags about ending wars that want wars. He believes he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. So this is not a one-off. This is part of a personality, egomania that leaders around the world and organizations around the They're trying to figure out how can we get one over on Trump.

And Trump constantly compares himself to Obama. He's upset Obama got the peace prize, but Donald Trump didn't. And he treats it like a personal insult that the Nobel Committee hasn't validated him. So instead he gets prizes from other people. He got a prize from FIFA that FIFA invented in order to give to Trump. And now the prize from Netanyahu fits perfectly into that pattern. It doesn't matter that the Israel peace prize is usually given to an Israeli every single time. It doesn't matter what Trump has done to advance peace or stability or diplomacy.

All that matters is here is someone validating me with something called a prize. And I find this increasingly unsettling because Trump is now collecting awards the way a child collects participation trophies, which they say that they are against, except these trophies are being handed to Trump by loyalists and sycophants and people who quite frankly know how to flatter Donald Trump. Putin should be the next one to give Trump some kind of prize. The Russian friendship award of the esteemed leader or whatever. And this is starting to look increasingly like a version of what happened with Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump, later in his life. I've told the story before, which is that as Fred Trump's dementia got worse later in life, the family created

sort of like fake work for him to do. So Fred Trump would still go into his office except the phone didn't go anywhere. You couldn't get an outside line. It would just go to his receptionist. And they would put papers in front of him for him to sign. But he had no idea what was going on. And it wasn't real in any way. We are watching something that is eerily similar with Donald Trump. Trump is getting prizes that mean nothing. He's being given prizes. In some cases, the prizes are real. But Trump is not deserving of them. And the explanation for why Trump is getting it doesn't really makes any sense. And then he talks about wars that he ended, that he didn't really end and people around him go, yes, sir, of course, you ended the wars.

Nobody corrects him. He says, oh, people are coming from insane asylums. And nobody goes, actually, they're requesting political asylum. It has nothing to do with insane asylums. And every single one of these things reinforces the bubble. When Trump says 500 times, they're coming from insane asylums and no one corrects him, it reinforces the bubble around Trump. When Trump says, I should be getting prizes, FIFA makes one up for him.

And then Netanyahu gives him one that's for Israelis. It reinforces to Trump that he deserves prizes. So I think Benjamin Netanyahu knows exactly what he's doing right now. He is flattering Trump for legitimacy and power. FIFA did it and everybody who plays along is doing it. This is not what I would call this is a management of Trump. People are figuring out how to manage Trump. And if you have a president who needs constant affirmation, who obsesses over prizes,

who confuses recognition with reality, that's not someone I want making any decisions on strategy or decisions that will have long-term consequences or decisions based on when was the last time someone whispered something to Trump and he'll go with the last thing someone told him before the microphone and the camera show up. So this is both pathetic but also terrifying. And we really need to figure out how to get the hell out of this situation. The lone Fox liberal on the five, Jessica Tarlov, made a point that was almost accidentally devastating. And I believe the fact that it happened on Fox News in front of Fox's own audience is really important.

Jessica Tarlov said that watching Trump talk about Ukraine and Putin felt like watching the Helsinki press conference over and over again. I love that I will often make a commentary on this show. and then it is mirrored by Jessica Tarlov. I'm not suggesting she's watching the show and getting it from me. What I like is that the very same ideas I believe to be true, she is putting in front of a Fox News audience. And that is so valuable. Remember when Trump and Putin stood next to each other in Helsinki during Trump's first term. And Trump said, listen, Putin said they didn't interfere in the 2016 election.

And he said it very strongly and I believe him. that was a sitting president siding with the former KGB officer, then president of Russia, over his own intelligence agencies. Jessica Tarlov explains that this was very similar to that when Donald Trump came out of his meeting with Zelensky and said, I spoke to Putin and this and that and the other thing. If they're willing to sanction him into oblivion. And there are a lot of members of the Republican Party, more old school Republicans, like guy who feel like that's the right approach to that.

And that Putin has every time shown a list of demands pretended that they were different than the time before, and it's exactly the same. He has never changed the goalposts. He wants things that Zelensky cannot agree to. It would be turning over his country to Russia. And Rosanna points out that Trump didn't get riled up and the weather, it looks spectacular.

I wish that I was also in warm weather. But he wasn't riled up because Zelensky played this perfectly and has learned from the terrible Oval Office meeting with J.D. Vance, when everyone freaked out on each other, that he has to just sit there and grin and bear it. And I felt a little bit like I was watching a redux of the Helsinki press conference in 2018 when Trump came out and he said, you know, I talked to Putin about the election interference that he told me he didn't do it and I completely trust him. You've heard similar sentiments from Steve Whitcock who's supposed to be getting us a great deal. Putin's a really good guy. He's not going to do anything. The sentence that matters the most is that Trump had the audacity to say Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed. Zelensky, a comedian by trade, broke a little bit of a smile at that point because you have never heard anything more ludicrous than the idea that Putin wants Zelensky to succeed. And you saw this morning on Fox, Fox and Friends, I think, that the Deputy National Security Advisor, Victoria Coates, saw that footage and said, I think Zelensky can be forgiven after four years of war to not be thinking Russia's intentions for Ukraine are the best. Yeah. Jessica's point is powerful for two reasons. Number one, it's great to remind the Fox audience that Trump has fallen for this crap before. But it also really cuts through the mythology of Trump as the tough negotiator because Trump doesn't even recognize that he's being played. Trump is not outmaneuvering anybody. Trump believes dictators. I want a president that outmaneuvers

dictators. Trump believes the dictators. And if their words flatter Trump, he takes them at their word. And if they deny something, Trump takes the denial as proof. That's it. Open and shut case. And what made this Fox segment especially valuable is that the reminder was delivered to a Fox audience that rarely sees Trump's record described this plainly and accurately. It's not just Putin that gets away with us. Remember Kim Jong-un. Trump came back from the first of two North Korean summits, glowing, talking about beautiful letters. They fell in love, a great relationship. But importantly, Trump gave the list of commitments that Kim Jong-un made. Anybody like people who watch this show, many of you, who have studied history, understand, damn, those were the same

promises from the Kim family that Kim Jong-un's father and grandfather have been making to the United States for decades. And they never do it. And Trump comes back going, look at what they gave me. Look at the thing. These are major breakthroughs. But Kim said nothing new. And they were the exact same promises that Kim Il sung and Kim Jong-il recycled. It's the exact same script.

And because a dictator got along with Trump and fed him this stuff, the outcome is Trump goes, we did it. We got it. There were people at the time who said Trump was playing 4D chess. Turns out that wasn't the case. He fell for the oldest trick in authoritarian diplomacy. And he did it proudly and he bragged about it. And so the through line here is Trump is quick to believe strong men, but he's quick not to believe the leaders of democratic countries, including many of our allies. He relates to the strong men.

He admires the strong men. He trusts them more than democratic leaders, more than his own intelligence agencies in many cases. Putin said he did interfere. Trump believes him. Putin says he has the best interests of Ukraine in mind. And Trump acknowledges it. Kim Jong-un says, we're going to denuclearize. And Trump says, we got it.

We got victory from the North Korean people finally. So I love that Jessica Tarlov is exposing the Fox News viewers to this. They're usually told Trump's tough. He's shrewd, great businessman, respected by everybody, negotiator, the guy who always has the upper hand. And Jessica Tarlov calmly says, this was like North Korea. This was like Helsinki. I'm saying it was also like North Korea.

And when it's happening on the network that a lot of these people believe is telling them the truth, that is a good thing. One other myth that needs to be done away with about Trump in these situations is that Trump controls or intimidates authoritarian leaders. That's another one where they go, these authoritarians, they see Trump as willing to do anything. They tread very carefully. And that's what makes Donald Trump most effective. The evidence shows the opposite. The strongmen don't seem to fear Trump. They seem to know exactly how to play him like a violin. They know Trump's, they know how to incentivize Trump, praise him publicly, flatter him personally. Give him a prize if you can do it like Netanyahu did.

And that is because Trump doesn't have leverage. Trump is just really predictable. And if you're predictable, you are weak when it comes to foreign policy. And Trump claims that his strength is being unpredictable. He's actually extremely predictable, which is that if you praise him and you give him a prize, you'll have a meeting out of your hand. We've seen it. We've seen this movie before.

We know exactly who Trump is. We know how Trump succumbs to flattery. Helsinki was not an anomaly. It was a preview. And it happened with North Korea. And it is happening again. The David Pakman 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. Let's discuss one of the biggest lies ever told about the state of American politics right now. Donald Trump has been claiming for a long time. We inherited a mess from Joe Biden. Record inflation, the worst economy we've ever seen. I inherited a mess. He says it like it explains everything.

If anything doesn't look perfect today, it's because of the mess he inherited. And if anything looks good today, it's because of what Donald Trump did. Of course, that's not what happened. Let me give you first one example of Trump saying this just so you know I'm not making it up. I could play dozens of these. This is just one example of Trump's. We inherited a mess. Expects to combat, war, et cetera.

And you kind of take some of the same strategies. We'll love to hear your thoughts about where we are as a nation. How we're doing. Well, we're doing great. And recruitment is doing phenomenally. People have spirit our stock market hit an all time high prices are coming down. We inherited a mess. Prices are coming way down.

And I'll- All right, we inherited a mess. Inheriting a mess is the excuse people use after wrecking something that was at least somewhat working. Trump didn't inherit a broken economy. He inherited an economy that was pretty good by most measures, but still had the problems that the American economy has with regard to inequality in wages and in other areas that we cover. But by the traditional standards, the economy was basically okay when Trump inherited it from Biden.

And then he started to break it. He took office. Unemployment was near historic lows. Inflation had been brought under control. It fell from the post-pandemic peak of 9% down to bouncing between 2.5% and 3%. It wasn't a recent decline. Inflation was down that low dating back to June of 2023. Wages were going up, including for low income workers.

The stock market was doing well. Corporate profits, if that's what you care about, were strong. That's not a mess. That is an economy that had a huge global shock and is now stabilizing. But Trump needs the lie. Blaming Biden is the foundation of his entire economic defense. Every price increase, every slowdown, every bad headline, it's someone else's fault and he even rated his own economy and a plus plus plus plus plus I think there were five plus

pluses when voters were telling pollsters were struggling prices if he continued to go up but Trump said they'd come down and instead of adjusting policy to actually deal with the problems Trump gas lights we inherited a mess and what Trump does not want you to focus on is that many of today's economic problems don't just come from Trump's current decisions they come from the decisions Trump made during his first term. I'll give you some examples. Start with inflation. Right-wing media loves to pretend that inflation magically appeared under Joe Biden.

Now, of course, that's nonsense. Inflation started to climb during COVID under Trump. And Biden inherited that from Donald Trump. And it kept climbing as it did globally for a bit. And it happened because Trump botched the pandemic response. Yes, inflation went up in all Western. Western wealthy countries. But it went up more versus less, depending on what presidents did.

And if Trump had taken COVID seriously from day one, instead of calling Fauci a liar and downplaying the virus, the economy wouldn't have collapsed the way that it did. The Federal Reserve wouldn't have turned on the money printer at full blast to keep things from imploding, were it not for Trump? The emergency money printing fueled inflation later on. The inflation people complain about today, you can to a. would degree trace it back to that moment. Now, it's kind of ironic that the same flood of money also propped up markets and it juiced asset prices. And it helped Trump politically down the line

because Trump was able to benefit from the chaos he created by requiring the money printing, which propped up the stock market, which Trump then actually took credit for. So that's the part that the right never wants to talk about. Biden inherits a pandemic economy, gets inflation down, stabilizes employment, gets prices somewhat more under control than Trump. comes back and goes, let's put tariffs on everything, shrinks the labor force by doing immigration crackdowns and laying off federal workers, cuts research funding, starts a trade war with reality as well as every other country. And when Costco up, Trump goes, well, we inherited a mess and it's like mostly just beef.

Now, Trump inherited a post-pandemic recovery and he disrupted it. And if Trump had done nothing, we'd be better off today. Things wouldn't be perfect. But if Trump had done no new tariffs, no designed labor. shortages, no sabotage of renewable energy projects. Just don't do anything. We would be better than we are today. Trump didn't campaign on.

I'm going to leave things alone. Trump said, oh, prices are going to come down right away. Affordability is going to increase right away. We're going to have a golden age. And now they're like, well, it's going to be the end of 2025, first few weeks, first few months of 2026. Q2 of 2026 is the latest that I've heard. We are now 11 months into this thing.

Prices didn't drop. Housing isn't suddenly affordable. Health insurance premiums are about to jump. Cuts to Medicaid and food assistance are coming. And when people feel the pain, Trump has a script ready. I inherited a mess. Let's scapegoat Biden. Let's scapegoat Obama if we need to.

Let's scapegoat immigrants. Let's blame judges who are making partisan decisions. Blame anybody you can other than yourself. You don't get to claim credit for the good. and disowned the bad, which is what Trump wants to do. And the clearest proof that I inherited a mess is a lie is that the economy was improving before Trump started applying his solutions, which have only made the problem even worse. Let's talk about ending wars. Donald Trump keeps repeating the claim that he ended eight wars. Sometimes it's nine, depending on the day. The number

shifts, the logic never improves. So instead of arguing about the exact count, I think it's worth asking a more basic question here so that you are ready to confront this talking point when you see it. What does Trump even mean by a war? And what does he mean by ending it? Now, there are dozens of examples of Trump saying this. Here is just one. You're talking about the whole president's last week tomorrow. It just seems to me that, uh, you know, look, it's only a field. That's all I've done in my whole life, I made deals. I know about deals. I do it well.

I don't think any presidents ever ended a war, frankly. One war, I did eight of them, Maria, right? And but I don't know, did Bush ever end? Do you think Biden ended a war? I did eight of them. I did eight of them. That's what I did. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna make two arguments here.

First, some of Trump's war ending claims are bogus. Second, if we apply Trump's standard of what it means to end a war to Obama, Obama, ended 15 wars. Let me break it down for you piece by piece. Once we look at the examples that Trump cites, we see what standard he's applying. A war that he ends could be a flare up, a cold conflict, a border skirmish, or even a situation that never was a war. And ending a war could be temporary ceasefire, a pause in fighting, a phone call that goes

well, or just choosing not to escalate a situation further. Now, under that definition, reality is optional and the permanence is irrelevant. I'm going to give you some examples. Take Gaza. Trump claims he ended the war in Gaza. But pointing to a ceasefire and a hostage deal while fighting continues, aid is restricted and the underlying Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not been resolved, to me doesn't count as ending a war.

But to Trump, that's a war that he ended. says he ended Israel versus Iran. He says, I ended the 12-day war. A war that was really not a war. It was a short exchange followed by a ceasefire, which by the way, Trump arguably played a role in generating to begin with. Some of the claims are even thinner for the eight wars he ended. The Egypt, Ethiopia dispute that he talks about, not a war. It was just a long-running disagreement over a dam. India and Pakistan. Trump says he brokered a ceasefire by a offering trade concessions. India denies that that took place. Then you've got Serbia and Kosovo. There was no war to end in the first place. NATO peacekeepers have been there preventing large-scale

conflict for years. Trump talks about Rwanda and the Congo. Trump hosted peace signings at the White House, but the main rebel group rejected the deal and just kept fighting. That's not really ending a war. Armenia and Azerbaijan, or as Trump once said, Albania and Aberbae, and Aberbae, He doesn't even know what's going on. They have draft agreements that have not been signed nor ratified. That's not ending a war. Cambodia and Thailand or Thailand, as Trump has sometimes called it, they agreed to a ceasefire, but then resumed fighting, then agreed to another ceasefire. Under any serious definition, that is not the end of a war.

But let's accept Trump's standard for a second. He says he ended eight wars. I don't think so. But let's assume that his standard counts. If temporary pauses count as ending wars, if a de-escalation counts as ending a war, if a conflict that resumes later is still called a war that you ended, then look at the list for Barack Obama. Obama withdrew troops from Iraq. The Iran nuclear deal was signed under Obama, which ended a standoff and blocked war through diplomacy. It later was undone, but it still was something that Obama did.

Obama normalized relations with Cuba, ending 50 years of really a cold war of sorts. Obama oversaw the end of Libya's civil war with the removal of Gaddafi, which we can talk about, we can criticize how it was done, but he did it. Obama helped broker the independence of South Sudan ending the Sudanese civil war. He worked with allies to secure a ceasefire. He helped suppress the M23 rebellion in the Congo by pressuring Rwanda and coordinating international support. Obama shifted U.S. policy toward Myanmar, forcing prisoner releases and pushing peace talks,

which led to a transition out of direct military rule. By Trump's standards, these are all wars Obama ended. Obama was involved in ending decades of fighting in the Philippines by executing diplomas. with the moral Islamic liberation front, also known as Milf. That's not a joke. That's actually what the acronym is. Obama helped impose ceasefires after fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And three times, he brokered or supported ceasefires in Gaza, maintained deterrence and

de-escalation between Israel and Lebanon, and refused to escalate after Russia's seizure of Crimea, which some say was a mistake. But it was still not an escalation that could have happened. So none of this means Obama's perfect. None of this means absent Trump's definition, we would call these ending wars. But by Trump's standards of what he did aid of, Obama did 15. So if we are to accept these definitions and if we are to make an honest comparison and it's basically a vibes based tally that flatters Trump, well, Obama's got him doubled.

Of course, he will never acknowledge that. And he will insist that all the wars he ended really were wars that he ended. We have a phenomenal bonus show for you today. We will talk about a poll about Gen Z men moving away from MAGA. We'll talk about chaos at the Kennedy Center, which Trump believes is called the Trump Kennedy Center. And we will fact check Donald Trump's plaques for past presidents. All of that and more on today's bonus show.

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