The David Pakman Show - Desperation Peaks As 2026 Isnt Looking So Good

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

-- On the Show -- Attorney General Pam Bondi deletes a tweet praising what she thought was Donald Trump's success after realizing the overdose data actually reflects declines under Joe Biden -- Dr Oz downplays vaccines and promotes vague wellness advice while ignoring evidence that flu shots reduce hospitalization even in weak match years -- Donald Trump pressures supporters to donate immediately by falsely claiming Democrats will steal imaginary tariff rebate money -- Donald Trump reposts praise from foreign troll accounts posing as MAGA supporters while railing against foreign interference -- Caroline Sunshine frames Donald Trump as a paternal authority who rewards and punishes states, saying Trump is "daddy" -- Megyn Kelly argues Trump's personal misconduct does not matter while minimizing documented sexual abuse and overstating his policy record -- Tomi Lahren attacks retired and seriously ill Joe Biden for taking a vacation while excusing Donald Trump's constant time off in office -- Karl Rove warns that fatigue with Donald Trump is spreading inside his own coalition ahead of the 2026 midterms -- On the Bonus Show: Trump says he's halting child care payments to Minnesota, SNAP bans on some junk food items set to begin, the key moments of 2025, and much more... 💪 AG1 is offering you $126 in FREE gifts at https://drinkag1.com/pakman 🔊 Babbel language learning: Get up to 55% OFF at https://babbel.com/pakman 🛡️ 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 (01:25) Pam Bondi Deletes Biden Praise (07:29) Dr Oz Spreads Vaccine Doubt (17:17) Trump Invents Tariff Scam (23:38) Trump Boosts Foreign Trolls (29:29) Trump Framed as "Daddy" (36:06) Megyn Kelly Excuses Misconduct (44:35) Lahren Attacks Biden Vacation (49:52) Karl Rove Warns Trump Fatigue  

We are on the precipice of 2026, and it is looming very large for Republicans. We are going to talk about it. Donald Trump's Attorney General Pam Bondi, panic deleting a tweet after accidentally praising former President Joe Biden with her own chart. Really a revelation into how propaganda works in Trump world, which is vibe first, facts later. Dr. Oz went on TV and delivered dangerously bad medical advice.

raising more questions as to whether this guy should be in charge of anything, never mind anything medically related. And we now see the Trump administration shaking down its own supporters for cash using fake headlines, using imaginary deadlines, and completely fabricated economic ideas. It is pure panic. And it's all happening during a cost of living crisis. We're also going to show you how Donald Trump, I guess, accidentally. reposted praise from these foreign troll accounts, actually making our point for us.

And then Caroline Sunshine is back. And she says, Trump is daddy and you'd better accept it. It is a cult, ladies and gentlemen. The last show of the year. Glad you're with me today. The architecture of propaganda. Something I've talked about for a while. We do a lot of media analysis and criticism on this program.

We also like to look beyond a chart. or headline and really explain how you can deceive with statistics, charts, or graphic visualizations. But it all starts with Pam Bondi, Donald Trump's attorney general, who posted a tweet that accidentally praised Joe Biden. And then once she was called out for it, she quietly deleted the tweet. So let me explain to you what this is. Pam Bondi put out a tweet with a chart, which was meant to be proof that Donald Trump has

has been extraordinarily successful in reducing the number of drug overdoses. And when you look closely at the data, you realize that that is not what the chart shows. So first and foremost, what did Pam write? She wrote, quote, since day one, the Trump administration and this Department of Justice have been fighting to end the drug epidemic in our country. President Trump closed the border. DOJ agents have seized hundreds of millions of potentially lethal fentanyl doses. We are aggressively prosecuting blah, blah, blah.

And there is a chart which looks like something goes up and then it comes down. And the implication is that down is good and down is because of Donald Trump. However, and I'm guessing many of you know exactly where this is going. Let's take a closer look at the chart. This is a chart of annual drug overdose deaths in the United States. Pam Bondi posted it to make Trump look good. We have chart go down at end, right? Just very, it's like out of the Flintstones, very rudimentary.

Chart go down, Trump, good. Good for Trump. Well, not really. If you look at the label, this is a chart that looks at the period October 2015 to October 2024. And if memory serves me correctly, President Joe Biden was in office in October of 2024. And would you look at that? Overdose deaths declined.

Maybe even more notable from 2017 to 2021 when Donald Trump was in office, overdoses deaths went up. Now, to be totally frank with you, I don't play politics with this stuff. I just tell you about gas prices and what affects them. Doesn't matter who's in office. And this is kind of a nonsense way of praising or criticizing Trump or Biden. The reality is that overdose deaths, just aren't tied that closely to the president in Washington, D.C. And also the decline in November, in October and the last part of 2024 that's on the chart,

which was, of course, under Joe Biden, only gets us down to the same elevated level of the first term of Donald Trump. So this is a very silly way to look at the issue. But the political stakes are what are very clear here because Pam Bondi posted this for one reason and one reason alone. And that is to praise Donald Trump. And the chart that she posted fails to praise Trump because it doesn't include Trump's second term there. And once she realized it, she removed the tweet. And this is where it stops being like a silly oops kind of thing and become something that I think is far more important. Pam Bondi did not post this because she misunderstood the chart.

She posted it because it looked like proof of what she was trying to argue. And this is how propaganda works in Trump world. You don't start with facts. You start with the conclusion. Trump good. You start there. Then you go hunting for, can I find a chart? Can I find a statistic?

Can I find a screenshot that appears to support my conclusion, which is Trump good? The fact that the data didn't really show that is kind of secondary. If it fits the idea of what you're trying to argue, you post it. And if you get called out because it turns out that it doesn't, you delete it. And that is exactly what happened here. Now, overdose data, interestingly enough, there's a real conversation here about the underlying data. Overdose data is especially easy to abuse, which makes this worse, because drug overdose deaths are really not linked in any tight way to whoever is president at the moment.

Number one, overdose deaths lag policy by years. Secondly, it's often not really about policy. overdose deaths can be affected by the fentanyl purity. I hate to acknowledge that, but fentanyl purity can have a lot more to do with the number of deaths than a lot of this other stuff. Is there job instability and economic stress, which does come down from economic policy, but it has a relatively slower effect? What's the regional health care capacity and how equipped their different regions, states and municipalities to deal? with overdoses but to save people. And the point here is a lot of those forces don't flip because a new president is sworn in. Trump came in and dumped massive blanket tariffs on the world.

That immediately had an effect. The drug overdose deaths, you know, even the decline in 2024 under Biden, it didn't really fix the problem. It was only loosely even connected to presidential policy. And so what we really have to consider here is that not only does this charge, not prove Trump saved lives because it doesn't include this first year of Donald Trump in office. You can't really assess policy on drugs by just looking at who is in the Oval Office. And that applies in a lot of areas and not in others. And I've always been completely upfront with you about where it does and where it doesn't. But Pam Bondi humiliated again.

And remember, the goal of posting this stuff is not really to inform. and it is it is only based in a desire to pray at the altar of the orange president who they worship. That's at the bottom line, what this is. Dr. Mehmet Oz is a medical doctor. This is not one of the doctors who is not a medical doctor, but he unfortunately has gone completely off the rails. Mehmet Oz is the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. He appeared on Newsmax to talk about the flu. as many of you know the flu was in my house it entered two weeks ago probably through the front door

attached to my daughter and then it's spread through the house and everybody got it and it's been complete chaos so the flu is in a lot of places dr oz went on newsmax to talk about the super flu he had a long list of ideas for how to deal with prevent the flu minimize its seriousness but not there is, hey, by the way, we have this thing called the flu shot, which is extraordinarily effective at keeping people out of hospitalization from the flu. He just goes, the flu shot doesn't work very well. But here's a bunch of other ideas. Let's listen to what he has to say.

And then we will evaluate each of the things he says. And remember, this is a real doctor. This is not one of those situations where it's like, oh, I'm doctor so and so. You're a chiropractor. You're not a medical doctor. What are you talking about here? Oh, I'm a doctor and I'm giving medical advice. Oh, really? Because you have a PhD in some liberal art, which is a valuable degree for that field, but not for medicine. No, this is an actual medical

doctor. So what's going on here? Well, flu is always a problem. Every year there's a flu vaccine. It doesn't always work very well. That's why it's been controversial of late, but like many illness. It's actually been controversial because we have ushered in this completely whacked out anti-vax ideology. That's why it's become controversial. The best news out there is if you can take care of yourself so that when you do end running into the flu, you can overwhelm it. And as much as it's trying to overwhelm you, you do better. So things like getting sunlight. And if you can't do that in northern parts of the country, I would tough this time of year, take some vitamin D. Zinc seems to be

effective as a basic supplement. But fundamentally, the Maha initiatives, eat the right food, food that came out of the ground, looking the way it looks when you eat, it can consume it. And getting physical activity actually makes sense. sense, but the most important tool of all is sleep. It is the main way we generate growth hormone, gets her immune system psyched up. So if you can get your sleep in this time of year, which can be tough because during the holiday season, folks go get to work, they go party. They have fun with their families. They deal with all the Michigan gas that surrounds all those three issues and they get worn down. It tends to set you up for a bad flu. Well, listen, Mishigas aside, working out

sounds great, remaining active. Great. I mean, that's a basic risk factor red. reduction activity, eating as little processed food as possible, that's phenomenal. I advocate that. I don't know any doctor who goes, no, more processed food. But let's really think about what Dr. Oz is saying here. First, let's go through his suggestion, sunlight and vitamin D. If you are deficient in vitamin D, supplementing to a normal level will help you be normal in your immune response.

It doesn't, you know, if you have an adequate baseline level of vitamin D, supplementing to raise it even higher is not going to help you. I previously, you know, in, I think it was in March, sort of like when I would imagine living in the Northeast, my vitamin D would be the lowest. I got a vitamin D test, and it was borderline. I think you want to be at 30. And I was at 29 or something like that. And so this was before I was taking a multivitamin powder. I said, all right, well, listen, multivitamins contain vitamin D. I will do that. I'll get my supplement. And my vitamin D level has been normal since. There's no additional benefits. benefit to just supercharging the amount of vitamin D and you can even have some negative

effects. So that is a perfectly reasonable thing if you are deficient, but beyond getting to the normal level, you're not going to get a benefit from it. Now, sunlight as a source as opposed to vitamin D supplementation, fine. The thing about sunlight and the flu is if you're outside while getting sunlight, you're not inside. Flu spreads more inside. So that can certainly help.

But there's no meaningful evidence on sunlight and vitamin D beyond are you deficient? If you're not deficient, you're getting the maximum benefit you can in general. Then he talks about zinc. Very weak evidence with zinc. Again, beyond do you have the adequate level or are you deficient? If you are not deficient, supplementing zinc has not been shown in studies to help prevent flu reduce influenza incidents in human studies, no effect on preventing. And then if you're deficient, maybe there's weak evidence that if you're zinc deficient,

you might have a longer flu or be less equipped to fight it. But if you have an adequate zinc level, that's about as far as you can go with zinc. Now then Dr. Oz talks about sleep. And he says it sikes up the immune system. proper sleep lets the immune system function normally. If you're getting a reasonable amount of sleep, your kind of innate and adaptive immunity will perform. You'll have the expected amount of antibody production and immune memory.

In other words, if you're not getting enough sleep, you might have more of an inflammatory response. It might take the body maybe a little bit longer to clear or develop antibodies against the flu. But again, if you're getting a normal amount of sleep, that's about as you can do, good as you can do. It doesn't give you any extra protection. Now, most of the things that I've just mentioned, you accomplish with a basic multivitamin, tablet, gummy, or powder. You got to get your vitamin D.

Well, you've just got to have an adequate level. For most people, the multivitamin is enough. Zinc, you just got to have an adequate level. You take a year-round multivitamin. You're going to have that. What about the flu vaccine? Now, there are years where the flu vaccine is not very good at preventing the flu. This year is an example.

We have this H3N2 strain of the flu. There's another one. There's a ton of flu. It's very prevalent. They're calling it the super flu. Okay. This year, the flu vaccine is not particularly good at preventing you from getting the flu. But it is still extraordinarily good at reducing the chances that you end up hospitalized because

of the flu. Over the last couple weeks, I've talked to a lot of doctor friends of mine, including those who work in ER and pediatric ER. And they've said the ER is filled with people who are sick enough from the flu to come to the hospital. And some of them are sick enough that we have to admit them. If you get the flu shot, you are significantly less likely to end up in that situation. You'll still get the flu.

You'll be sick for a few days, but you are far less likely to end up hospitalized. Shouldn't that be the top line? The top line is start with the flu shot because it's so good at keeping you out of the hospital. know, it's, hey, you know, there's this shot, but it's controversial because it's not very good. So sunlight, zinc, sleep, et cetera. Perfectly reasonable recommendations in general. If you're not getting enough sleep, your body is going to be less able to fight off virus infect, viral infections.

If you have an inadequate vitamin D level, that is going to affect your body. If you aren't anywhere close to the amount of zinc you need. But most people with a normal diet and certainly with a multivitamin are going to be okay there. How about the flu shot, which will sign. significantly reduce the odds you end up in the hospital. These people are irresponsible and it all flows down from the top. But remember, Trump has sort of toyed with this anti-vax movement. He's talked about medical freedom and he wants the political benefit. But Trump gets his flu and COVID boosters every year because that's what he's determined is actually best. The other crap

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The David Packman show has been in 2025 and will continue to be in 2026, an audience-supported program. I welcome and invite your support through the membership program at join packman.com. You can use the coupon code. It will end soon to save about 50% off the cost of a membership, which of course includes the daily bonus show, an extra show for our members, commercial free audio and video feeds of the show, and a whole bunch of other great perks you can read about at join packman.com. Donald Trump is now openly telling his supporters to hand over their cash and quickly, or

Democrats are going to steal it and give it to immigrants. That is the actual pitch that is coming from Donald Trump. He sent out a completely frantic fundraising email. And this was through the never surrender pack. Supporters were warned. You need to donate now. And there is a real risk of problems if you don't. So let's take a look at some of what the email includes.

It says, uh-oh, troubles are boiling over. Here are three reasons I need you to stop the boil. These read like sales letters. Here are the three reasons. I need you to stop the boil. Now, before my end of year fundraising deadline. Number one, rebate checks on the line. I want $2,000 tariff checks for workers.

Dems want to send your check to illegals if you don't respond in the next hour. Do you think Chuck Schumer is sitting there going, you know what? I'm going to wait 60 minutes. And if people don't start donating to Trump, I'm sending checks to illegals. I mean, how stupid do you? Oh, well, I guess the election results sort of speak for themselves. Number two, last mandatory fundraising report of the year.

Reaching our final goal of the year determines everything to elaborate. It is very likely that our success or failure at reaching this goal will determine whether we keep the Senate and House majority in 2026. We're walking on razor thin ice. And then reason number three, stopping commune. stopping communism of which we have none. Trump writes, AOC, Zoran Mamdani, and Ilhan Omar have taken over the Democrat Party with a communist agenda.

Please, my deadline expires in less than 48 hours, and we're still so far away from our goal. Stand with Trump. Maga can't afford to wait any longer. Only a massive and immediate response will do. I need you to help me hit my end of the year. Okay, blah, blah, blah. Now, interestingly, depending on which version of this email you got and which donation page,

it links through to, the donations, even though he says he needs the money now before the end of the year, there's a little box which says the donation will be recurring, which will be an interesting little treat for people come 2026 and the money's still being deducted. So what's the strategy here? I mean, it's a message that that is not relying on policy ideas. It's a message that's relying on panic, imaginary deadlines, and completely made up stuff like communism has taken over the Democratic Party. Big red buttons, stop the boil, stand with Trump because you've got to protect your money

by sending money to a multi-billionaire. That doesn't really make any sense. And zoom out and look around. We have a cost of living crisis in the United States while Trump floats the idea of these tariff checks, which even his own economic officials say is unlikely to happen and it's kind of a mess, we have a policy that is making the problem worse. It's the tariffs. Trump's out there going, I need your money. And by the way, we recognize things aren't so good. And we remember things aren't so good because of Donald Trump's policy itself. Consumer protection experts are warning.

This is the kind of rhetoric that fuels scams. When a president tells them, money is waiting for you. Donate to me and that'll allow me to get you this $2,000 check at some point later. You can tweak that very slightly and prey on people with fishing emails and fake fundraising emails and all of it. And a lot of these folks are going to get caught with that. And what makes this arguably worse is that Trump's own voters are starting to catch on. Focus groups show that supporters who back Trump in 24 are kind of souring on his handling of the economy.

We're going to talk about that on the Friday show. they're realizing the tariffs are not really this master plan that's going to fix everything. There's a lot of bait and switch going on. So we've got Trump's promises, cheaper gas right away, cheaper groceries right away. None of it has happened, by the way, emailing supporters like a televangelist saying they are going to give your money to illegals unless you donate to me. This is very far from leadership. This is certainly desperate.

It's an act of desperation. It's looking like a shakedown. And the part that doesn't really add up is how do some of these people still have money to send to Donald Trump when you consider the state of the economy and that we know back when Trump was raising money to fight the election results of 2020, which half of it went actually to pay off his campaign debt? He's selling cheap hats and they're buying junk merchandise and it's nonstop fundraising emails. How do they have the money for this once you consider the tariffs and inflation and in just days, health insurance? premiums are going to be going up. At some point, you've got to ask, is there any juice left to squeeze out of his followers for Donald Trump?

And if the answer becomes no, they become useless to Trump. Trump only cares about his supporters to the extent that they are useful. And if they keep sending him money, then he considers them useful. And if they don't, then all of a sudden, he goes back to trying to be isolated from these folks, much like he did in his upbringing as a wealthy guy. in Queens and Manhattan. Trump spent most of his life trying to be kept away from the very people he's now grifting for money.

At the end of the day, if you're part of the cult, you believe you've got to send the money to the dear leader. You know these prosperity pastors in the Christian evangelical space who, oh, anything you send me, God will give you back a hundredfold. By the way, I'll get a private plane in the meantime, but send me a thousand and you will get 100,000 back from God. It's the same kind of thing that's going on here. Send the money to the dear leader, no matter whether he's orange or yellow today or whatever color he is, send the money to the dear leader and it is going to come back flowing to us, just like the prosperity pastors. But when you

turn around, the prosperity pastors have bought themselves a private plane in a G-wagon, and Donald Trump is doing the equivalent of the exact same thing. A confused Donald Trump, that's the theme. He's confused often. posting troll messages, even from foreign influence accounts, over the long holiday and general week, the holiday and regular weekend. Donald Trump spent a long time in a posting spree on truth social, just blasting out hundreds of truth social posts. It wasn't really holiday cheer. It was like an unhinged kind of digital spiral.

And when you look at it, there's some pretty revealing stuff in. there. Trump is reposting messages that according to metadata aren't even American and maybe part of a foreign influence campaign, which Trump has denied even exists. Trump reposting a message from Trump girl whose handle is underscore you woe me who said the election was stolen. President Trump was correct. Trump re-truthed it or yeah, this was on truth social. By the way, one in the morning. And when you go further down because that now you can actually now see or this one is on Oh, when you look at the same person on Twitter, you see that their account is based in South Asia. That's pretty interesting.

Trump boosting a Caroline Levitt fan account. And when you look at the location of this account, it's based in Eastern Europe, non-EU. Hmm. That's kind of interesting. and you go down and you look at each of Donald Trump's posts and then find those users over on X. And you see that a lot of these accounts appear to be the foreign influence campaigns that Donald Trump says he knows nothing about and has never benefited from. So zoom out. An analysis was done.

Trump re-shared at least 17 posts from X accounts based outside the United States, many in South Asia, many in Eastern Europe. and they are all pretending to be red-blooded American MAGA patriots. And Trump is reposting their commentary unaware or unconcerned, I guess, by the fact that he is amplifying apparent foreign troll accounts. This is not new. Trump has leaned on the same foreign accounts during previous posting binges. And Trump treats this as proof that there's enthusiasm. behind his agenda.

But what's weird is you go and you talk to an actual, you know, farmer in Iowa and they go, yeah, I voted for Trump, but this economic policy is a mess. And the people seemingly most enthused by it are posting from accounts apparently based in other parts of the world. Now, remember that this is the guy who promised cheaper groceries on day one, and it hasn't happened. So it makes sense that the people who are actually being affected by that, the Americans, are not the ones gleefully posting about Donald Trump.

The ones gleefully posting about Donald Trump are accounts apparently based in other countries where they aren't affected by the expensive groceries of the United States. Look where we are today in terms of the policy promises. And if you go and you talk to actual Trump voters in the United States, many of them still like Trump, there's no doubt.

But many of them have soured on Trump. And they said, well, I really like that he was going after the liberals and he wasn't going to take any shit from them. All of this stuff, or they might say he ended eight or nine wars and all. None of it is real, but many of them are recognizing my personal financial situation isn't going particularly well. And this is why in the absence of that support domestically, he ends up reposting and signal boosting this stuff from other countries.

So to me, the real danger here is that there's a movement which is running on grievance and fantasy. A lot of the Americans who supported the movement have gotten completely. screwed. The danger, of course, is not Trump being confused or reckless in his social media activity, although it's not something you'd like to see from a president. There is a third of this country, I estimate, that doesn't care what's true anymore. And the signal boosting of foreign troll accounts only reentrenches or further entrenches those problematic beliefs. To a huge chunk of the country, Trump is perfect. To a growing piece of the country, they're not getting

what Trump promised, but the propaganda value from these foreign accounts remains. And that is how you build the bubble in which you claim, everybody loves me. As Trump says, we got the best marks from Republicans. 98% of Republicans love me. A lot of Republicans still love Trump. But half don't even consider themselves MAGA anymore. It's cracking. Our job in 26 is going to be, okay, but how do we get control back?

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Caroline Sunshine is known as a political aid and a former actress who worked as a White House staffer during Trump's first term back in 2018. And she says to her fellow Fox News panelists, Trump is daddy and daddy has cut you off. Take a listen to this. Oh, you and I both. Jason. I'm also born and raised in this state. Let me try to put this in terms that Gavin Newsom will understand. Donald Trump is daddy. And Daddy cut you off. And Daddy said you can't use his credit card anymore.

Because why should California and Gavin Newsom be getting federal funds when they don't even follow federal law? Nobody is obstructing federal immigration law more than the state of California and Gavin Newsom. You don't get a penny if you're not going to enforce federal law. Yeah. Now, this is not, this is sort of a superfluous comment, but I saw a lot of people who wrote to me about this clip mentioning it. There is this magaification of what women are expected to look like. If you look up Caroline Sunshine, number one, you might be shocked to learn that she's only 30 years old. And a lot of people wrote in saying, David, I thought that this was a 50-year-old woman who had

work done. This is a 30-year-old who has restyled and restyled herself in this Mar-a-Lago image. This is not primarily a show about the physical appearance of people, but there is something very interesting sociocultural going on, sociocultural going on about the women that kind of are adjacent and ancillary to the MAGA movement, that they all seem to be, Whatever they're doing, it might be styling, it might be surgery. I don't even know what it is. I don't care.

But there's a certain look that they are expected to have. And Caroline Sunshine certainly meets that requirement and Trump is daddy. She's also saying all of the stuff that's expected. Now let's take a moment to analyze this. This is a grown adult describing the president of the United States, a nearly 80-year-old man, who has been accused by dozens of women of inappropriate behavior, which, by the way, we will get to in the next segment. as a father figure who controls the credit card. He controls access to the checkbook, to the resources.

And this is where these cult dynamics, they're not really abstract. They're very literal. In cult psychology, one of the defining traits is infantilization. Now, of course, there's also the deification of the leader. That's going on as well. But the infant infantilization is a big part of it. The leader is a sort of parent. The followers are the children.

And the leader doesn't so much govern. he rewards and punishes. He's a strict father. You are not a citizen with rights. You are a dependent. And you either behave or you are going to get cut off. And that is the framing that she uses. Daddy cut you off.

Daddy said you can't use his credit card, referring to stopping funding to blue states over various different controversies. And notice what is being kind of normalized here. She's talking about withholding federal funds, money that states already paid into. As if this is an allowance that Trump hands out if you've been a good boy or a good girl. If you've been obedient, you will get the money that you are already, by the way, entitled

to. That's extortion logic. It is not a functional democracy where federal funding is allocated by law and by formulas and by need. In an authoritarian world, funding becomes leverage. You might have to beg for it. You've got to comply and then you'll get paid. And if you dissent, you're going to suffer.

That is the system that she is in. endorsing and the part people aren't thinking through enough is that this game of deciding who deserves the federal money based on your behavior or loyalty to Trump. It doesn't stop where they believe that it stops. At its logical conclusion, it destroys the country. Red states depend on federal funds. Blue states are net contributors of federal funds. If you applied this daddy cuts you off logic based on political allegiance,

Eventually, the states that are going to get wrecked, truly beyond repair, are the red states. And that tells you something important, which is that none of this is about fiscal responsibility. This is just about, who can we dominate? And dominance requires a dominator. And for Caroline Sunshine, it is daddy Trump. And if you're wondering, like, why does this really weird language keep showing up? That is why. Trump as daddy.

Trump is the protector. Trump is the one who decides who gets to eat. And this is also why criticism of Trump to a lot of his supporters feels like a personal attack. You're not just disagreeing with Trump or the policy. You're disrespecting dad at the end of the day. This is the real Trump derangement syndrome. Not people reacting strongly to Trump's authoritarianism and saying, hey, this is bad. This is un-American.

The real Trump derangement syndrome are people like Caroline Sunshine so deranged that they surrender their agency. adults to Donald Trump. The facts don't matter when politics become like a family hierarchy of sorts. If daddy lies, you defend them. If daddy fails, you blame someone else. If daddy says, I really won the 2020 election. You go out there, you go, Daddy really won the 2020 election. If he fails to lower grocery prices, you find a scapegoat like Biden. And if other people get punished by the dad, you cheer. And the danger, of course, is that this escrow. escalates and that there is nothing that will stop Trump. So this is abuse dressed up as authority.

That's what this clip reveals. Not that Trump is daddy, but that a disturbing number of people, including, I guess Caroline Sunshine, are perfectly happy being the children in this entire political system. We are going to watch a clip of Megan Kelly that I believe lays bare the entire argument that the right is making about Donald Trump. They're not just defending. They're not just excusing Trump. They are openly saying his personal conduct doesn't matter as long as I believe he's delivering on the culture war or maybe on immigration or whatever issue is important to you. Now, I want to discuss with you why that argument is partially true in theory, but in Donald

Trump's case, it completely collapses. So here's the clip of Megan Kelly being interviewed and saying, eh, Trump's a, a, a, allegations of assault, this, listen to this defense of Trump from Megan Kelly. My own personal opinion is most of the allegations against him are much more complicated than the mainstream media would have you believe. And I don't think Donald Trump is a rapist or a sexual assaulter. I do think he's taken inappropriate liberties with women and gotten handsy with them in a way he's owned himself.

Okay. Years ago when he was a celebrity and it is what it is, that's the past. but it's just about so much more than that. We are talking about how many people dying at the southern border because of the invasion that we've suffered under Joe Biden. We're talking about Lake and Riley, whose killer was led in under Biden. We put him on a taxpayer flight down to Georgia where he murdered her. I don't give a shit about Trump getting handsy with somebody 20 years ago.

I want someone who will close the border, which he has. I want someone who will keep boys out of my daughter's sports, which he has. I want someone who will stand up to the insane DEI policies so that white kids will stop hearing in school that they're born with some original sin from which they cannot recover. So listen, that is, that is whacked out. I want to start with the part that a lot of people on the left sometimes get wrong. Not every, let me build this up, okay? Not every personal failing disqualifies people from public office.

If a politician cheated on their spouse 20 years ago, but they're going to pass policies that will lift millions out of poverty and expand health care and improve people's lives, fine. I don't care. You know, public office isn't a priesthood. It's not about moral purity. And outcomes do matter. Megan Kelly's not wrong that outcomes do matter.

The problem is that that principle can only go so far. At some point, the character problems are the governance problems. And you can evaluate as an thinking, intelligent person when those situations are relevant. If someone is corrupt before they enter office, they don't magically become ethical when they're sworn in. They don't suddenly lose their willingness to engage in corruption simply because they got voted into office. If someone lies reflexively in their personal life, they will probably lie reflexively in public

office because you're okay lying. George Santos is a great example of this. If someone privately abuses power, they're probably going to abuse power institutionally as well. And this is the problem I have with Megan Kelly's argument here. First of all, look at what she's minimizing. Oh, he probably got handsy with people and, you know, it's from another era. That is not what the allegations are. Trump has been accused by more than two dozen women of sexual assault or misconduct. A jury found him liable for sexual abuse. A judge said what Trump did meets the common definition of rape, even though he wasn't convicted of rape. The act for which he was found liable meets the definition of rape. That is not one vague incident from 20 years ago. This is a documented pattern of behavior,

backed by testimony, evidence, and civil verdict. And importantly, Trump has shown a total lack of willingness to even engage with the substance of the allegations. He says anyone who tries to pursue claims against him is a bad person and they need to be countersued and all this different stuff. So saying Trump got handsy and it's a difference of opinion, it's not. It's really a rewrite of reality. So number one, Megan Kelly is dramatically minimizing what Trump has been accused of. Second, her tradeoff argument doesn't even work on its own terms. She says she wants someone who closed the border.

Trump didn't close the border. And in fact, you look at Trump's first term, illegal crossings surged. Then they're down up. There's a seasonality. But, okay, he promised a wall that Mexico would pay for. He didn't build the wall. And obviously, Mexico didn't pay for it. She says she wants someone who's going to keep boys out of her girls, her daughter's

locker room, girls locker room. Trump, first of all, it's a non-issue. But Trump has not really done anything about that either. What he's done is he's used trans people as political punching bags to rile up his base and hasn't actually resolved any real problem. So even if it's like a pick your, pick your poison sort of thing. Her argument about the personal has no relevance to the political only goes so far. And I think she fails to make that argument.

And her argument that she doesn't care about the personal because Trump has done all of the political stuff fails because he actually hasn't done it. If the policy outcomes outweigh personal behavior, the outcomes she's citing are essentially imaginary. But there's a bigger point that I want to make. Trump's sexual misconduct is not an isolated flaw that you can separate from his presidency. There is a theme in Trump's presidency, which is a disregard for consent, for truth, and for accountability.

It is the same disregard for the wants and sovereignty of others that occurs when you're accused by dozens of women of sexual assault. That occurs when you just say, I don't care what the courts say as president, I'm going to do whatever the hell I want. actually is a through line there. When Trump tried to extort Ukraine, he is treating the presidency like a personal ATM. And this is how he does business. When Trump demands loyalty oaths from bureaucratic federal workers and then uses whatever means he can think of to try to overturn an election, that is a follow through from how Trump operated in the business world. And so for me,

as I look at this, Trump's personal conduct and the governing conduct come from the exact same place. It's not character assassination, to point that out. It's we are recognizing a pattern. So I don't think the question is, should someone be disqualified forever from public service over a single moral failure? The question is whether a lifetime of corruption, abuse, and dishonesty tells us what are you going to be like as president?

In Trump's case, it did. Trump is exactly the same as president as we saw him as a private citizen and business person. As a reminder, they have no real objective standards, so they're not going to be limited by them. If it was a Democrat accused and guilty of the things Trump has been accused and found guilty of, they would be saying this is unacceptable. It happens to be a Republican, so it's, listen, if you close the border, I don't care. She's admitting to the game. And this is why we need to understand it when we engage with them.

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This gives them a unique level of credibility. Try Incogni risk-free and get 60% off when you go to incogni.com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman. The link is in the description. Well, look at this. Sean Hannity had someone filling in for him for one of the last shows on Fox News of 2025. It was Tommy Lauren or Tommy Laren or Tommy Laren or Tommy. Tommy Laron, I don't even know which is the right combination. But Tommy, Tommy Laren went on and she dropped a bomb about President Joe Biden, the former president.

Listen to what she explosively reveals during this broadcast. Our New Year's Eve security risk assessment plus we'll dig into the psychological roots of socialism and you'll never believe where Joe Biden was spotted. Spoiler alert, he's on vacation. That and more as Hannity rolls on. How was that news? That's the, that's the scandal. A retired 83 year old former president with metastatic prostate cancer is on vacation.

They're saying it like they caught Biden committing a crime or pardoning people who he doesn't even know like Trump has admitted to. What should an 83 year old retired gentleman with stage four prime? prostate cancer be doing exactly. These people are broken. Their brains are broken. Now, let's talk about the double standard for a second because it's almost too perfect. Donald Trump is the president right now. While in office, he golfs constantly, constantly, weekends, weekdays, I saw a recent report. He's golfed. There was a recent 11-day period during which he golfed 10 of the 11 days. then he brings secret service to his golf courses and charges the government for rooms and

carts and security and rooms for secret service, the entire thing. And it has never been a scandal. We've reported on it. Journalists and independent media have talked about it. Never a scandal. And most of it was brushed off as Trump's working so hard. He's conducting business on the golf course. Presidents deserve downtime.

So in comes Tommy Laren. And even though Biden isn't the president anymore, he's on vacation and it's supposed to be some kind of outrage. It doesn't signal incompetence. It doesn't signal that Biden did something corrupt. It's not even a hypocrite. It's not even a hypocritical thing because he's not president. Even if he was critical of Trump's golfing, Biden's on vacation, but he's not currently

the president. And so I think we really need to dig a little deeper to figure out what makes this particularly grotesque. Biden's not just retired. he's ill, right? He has advanced cancer, has spent decades in public service, lost a son not that long ago, lost other families in the tragic car accident when he was younger. He aged in public. He left office. And the right wing reaction is what? Like, what should he be doing, if not just relaxing, as he is treated for prostate cancer in his 80s? Should he be suffering publicly? Should he be,

does he need to be more visibly miserable for Tommy Laren to feel better about it? There's nothing about accountability here. This is simply about cruelty. And it exposes something that's important to know. When Trump golfs, it's normalized because Trump is treated like a permanent force of nature. Meanwhile, Trump in reality is now working reportedly only 12 to 5 when they slammed Biden for keeping most public events between 10 and 4 during the last year of his presidency. And meanwhile, Trump's falling asleep regularly at public events during the day, something Biden never did, even though Trump. Trump branded Biden Sleepy Joe.

Think of the double standard here. He's never supposed to be questioned, never supposed to rest, never supposed to leave the stage. Everything that Trump does is framed as strength. And Biden is just an 83-year-old being treated for cancer who's retired and he's on vacation. And they want to make it a moral failure? Or what is even the argument here? Even after he's gone, even after he's sick, even after he's retired.

and notice how fast the goalposts move. Because when Biden was president, they screamed, he was old and tired and he should step aside. Well, he stepped aside. They scream, now he's on vacation. There is no version of Joe Biden's existence that will satisfy these people because the point was never consistency and the point was never governance or policy. The point was never work ethic. It wasn't about whether he can do the job.

They're just resentful. They don't want fairness. They want dominance. Trump can golf endlessly while president, and it's fine, but Biden can't go on vacation when retired. That becomes a scandal. It tells you everything you need to know. And quite frankly, if this is what now passes for outrage, an elderly, sick former president

taking a vacation, think about how much this says about people like Tommy Laren, deeply unsurious people. And I would argue sick people at the end of the day. and what are they going to say, I mean, listen, if Trump survives to the end of his term, which we just, we just don't know until it happens. If Trump survives until the end of his term, what are they going to say about whatever Trump does after the fact? We don't have to wait.

They're going to say it's great and that he's doing great things. Something interesting just happened, and it is more revealing than it might look at first glance. I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember Carl Rowe, the longtime Republican strategist and kind of the chief architect of George W. Bush's presidential campaigns, he is now openly acknowledging that the public is getting tired of Donald Trump, including Republicans. And he gives a number of explanations, Trump's constant hyperbole, his fixation on revenge, the way that his rhetoric is increasingly offensive or cruel and completely unproductive politically.

And that matters not because Karl Rove has suddenly developed concerns about Trump's character and not because Carl Rove is a particularly good guy, he's not. But because Rove pays attention to the political gravity of circumstances. He reacts when trends show up in polling and in turnout models and in voter behavior. And there's an important distinction here. The broader public has been fatigued by Donald Trump for years. That is not a revelation. That's not exactly new.

What's new is that the fatigue is no longer limited to swing voters or Democrats. It's beginning to show up with Trump's own coalition. And Friday, we're going to look really deeply at young men who went towards Trump in the last election but are now going away. And the real signal here, and what I believe has Carl Rove concerned, is that there is a change in the constituencies that are getting sick of Donald Trump. Roeve suggests that Trump seems to believe he no longer needs to persuade anyone. He's already president.

He believes he has this amazing mandate. And if he just says what he's doing is the biggest. the best that that's enough. But persuasion still matters, even to a base that is loyal. And we are seeing that in that little bits and pieces of the base are kind of peeling off. And they're recognizing it's been rhetoric only for too long. It's rhetoric all the way down. There's no policy. There's no action. There's nothing that's actually helping people. As we look to 2026 and we are officially launching our coverage of the midterms really next week. Midterms are less about spectacle and more about motivation.

They hinge on, do voters feel energized or worn down, and do voters feel motivated to vote? Trump's second term has been really heavy on the grievance and on the retribution. That can galvanize in short bursts, but it becomes exhausting over a decade. And when the economic concerns like affordability aren't resolved, Rove is highlighting something that is quietly damaging Trump's own supporters. If you add conspiracy culture to this movement, not only can it distract from the areas that should be the areas of focus, the conspiracy culture you helped create can be your downfall. And I'll give you a couple of examples. And I know many of you immediately will be thinking Epstein.

And you're right. Trump and his allies spent years elevating these conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein and kind of creating an environment of promised explosive revelations and accountability. Once back in power, those revelations haven't been met. And in fact, more than half of Republicans came to believe that Donald Trump was participating in some kind of a cover-up of the Epstein files. We don't get closure. We don't get relief. It's just frustration.

And Rove notes astutely that the conspiracy culture and the failure to come through on a lot of these areas really weakens the confidence of Trump voters in his justice department and also in organizations like the FBI. When people are encouraged to expect dramatic revelations and then you don't deliver it, the disappointment is real. And that creates a real political risk for Republicans heading into 2026. This conversation we will pick up on Friday. Republicans need high turnout to hold the House of Representatives. And they need to hold the House of Representatives for Trump to have any shot in hell at accomplishing anything over the next two years. In order to win in 26, you need a base that's motivated, confident, and optimistic and wants to get out there and vote not for Trump, because Trump's not on the ballot, but for other people.

If the base is irritated or the base is disillusioned, even a small drop can keep people home. And in competitive districts in midterms with typically low turnout, that'll crush you. And so the challenge for Republicans is Trump doesn't course correct. Trump doesn't acknowledge. Oops, I made a mistake. And Rove himself acknowledges that discipline and the message refinement that's necessary are not one of Donald Trump's strengths, to put it lightly. So when Republicans publicly insist, oh, Trump's support is immovable, they love them, everybody loves them, behind the scenes, even people like Karl Rove, let me put it a different way. When Carl Rove is willing to say this publicly, it means that he's already seen the data behind the scenes and they have information, objective data, that this is becoming a problem for them.

It's a warning sign. One other issue for 26 and for the next couple of years. Trump has nothing new to offer. He was disruptive in 2016. He was polarizing in 2020 after having been in office for four years. He's familiar now. Voters know the scripts. They know the insults.

They know the feuds. They know the exaggerations. None of it feels fresh. And that is going to make it difficult for people to be motivated yet again to come out and vote because Trump is pushing his political brand. So I think it's worth asking why is Karl Rove choosing to say this publicly right now? Strategists don't tend to do this casually, especially when it can be a red flag for your own side. And when this stuff starts appearing publicly instead of in a private memo, it usually means that the internal conversations have happened.

And they're not reassuring. So they're going public in order to try to turn this around. As we move towards 2026, the warning signs for this party, the Republican Party under Trump are harder and harder to ignore. but take nothing for granted. If there is anything that we have learned, it's that Democrats can screw up any scenario, even one that seems like you should have no problem winning. So this is only the start and Friday as we launch our 2026 coverage. We are going to get into this more deeply. Now, we have a phenomenal bonus show today.

We are going to talk about the Minnesota daycare fraud scandal. We are going to talk about snap bands, food stamp bands on soda candy and other foods. that start on January 1st. And we will also go through the moments that defined 2025 politically. Do you agree as producer Pat will join me on the bonus show? Sign up at join packman.com. What a year it has been. We are off on New Year's Day and we'll pick it right back up on Friday.