The David Pakman Show - Did David do something BAD?

Episode Date: September 27, 2026

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Hey, everybody, welcome to the bonus show. What you're hearing right now is a free sneak peek of our paywalled content, which our paid members get five times a week. If you want the extra coverage in your feed every day, go over to join pacman.com and join the community. All right, welcome to the bonus show. Glad to have an opportunity to catch up with folks. Update on my movements. I am going to Texas tonight. The next. book event is Friday morning. This is a complicated one. It's Friday morning at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas. Now, here's the deal. I have an event where a political reporter will be interviewing me about the book. It's very early in the morning. My understanding is that

that's only open to members of the Texas Tribune. Now, I think that means people who have ever subscribed to the Texas Tribune. I don't know, but that's at 8 a.m. The important part I've been told to communicate is I'm going to be signing books at the Texas Tribune Festival at 9 a.m. Local time. So it's Texas time, central time on Friday, 9 a.m. Friday. I don't exactly know whether you need a ticket to the whole festival to come to the signing or whether it's just a ticket for the day or whether that's the same thing. Like I've had to relinquish control because there's so much stuff going on.

But we do have a link to that event at David Pakman.com slash attention so you can see the info but 9 a.m. in Texas, in Austin, Texas, I'll be signing books. The next chaos is friends have been texting me saying there's a nor'easter coming. So are you going to be able to get back to the northeast after your Texas stuff? And the answer is I have absolutely no idea. I don't know. Hopefully I am. I wanted to address something that came up yesterday. Some of you who follow me on social media may have seen, may have seen that I posted pictures with President Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative yesterday. And we're still figuring out what we, I'd like a 10-minute conversation with him. And we're trying to figure out what to do. We have video. We have pictures.

Most people thought it was super interesting. But there were some reactions I saw in the comments from people going an Epstein lister. David, you talk to a guy on the Epstein list. How dare you? I really am trying to figure out like everyone in my personal life thought this was such a cool opportunity. You know, when I came here from Argentina and then started a little independent show and I never imagined I would be meeting with presidents. And so to me, it's like I, I've said if Donald Trump gave me the opportunity to interview him, of course I would do it. If George W. Bush did. If Barack Obama or Barack Obama, if either of them get, if you're in the space of doing political commentary, of course you would meet with or interview presidents who are either

current or former presidents of the United States. But there were people going, are you kidding, David, the Epstein list guy? Now, I don't even think we need to like adjudicate the Epstein list stuff with Clinton. Like my understanding is that like most powerful people, he knew Epstein. But he sat for this deposition or this, you know, sat with the House committee, answered all My takeaway was he was completely honest and when he found out about what Epstein was up to he didn't associate with him anymore. Like is are people are people trolling me or are you really saying David despite Clinton being completely forthcoming during the testimony and no evidence that he was involved in wrongdoing related to Jeffrey Epstein? I should have said no, I won't meet with President Clinton. Like that just doesn't really make any sense. And so I'm what I'm trying to figure out.

is does that represent like a tiny sliver of the audience? And it's not even necessarily the audience. It's people who just are algorithmically shown this picture of me with Clinton that's on my Instagram. And they go, what can I criticize David for? Or like, what about you all? People in the membership of the show. Like, did I do something bad by agreeing to speak to President Clinton? Now, by the way, I have to tell you, one of the things we spoke about, this wasn't really an interview per se. It was like a, hey, how are you? What do you? do what are you thinking about. One of the things we talked about is AI. And it was a remarkable contrast. Remember that Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton's 80. He is still younger, even though Bill Clinton was president

34 years ago he was sworn in. Even though Bill Clinton was sworn in 34 years ago and left office, I guess it would be 20, 26 years ago. He's still younger than Donald Trump is today, barely. But his understanding of AI, is light years ahead of Donald Trump's. And he listed a bunch of the books that he read about AI. You think Trump's, I don't think Trump's read a book in the last 60 years. And I found it super interesting to just see the contrast like in cognitive capacity between two 80 year olds, one who was president decades ago and one who's president now.

And it's incredible how much more with it Clinton is. So anyway, the question is like, did I do something wrong here, guys? I don't know. It just seems natural that if you do, if you cover US politics, given opportunities to meet with the president or former president, you take it. So I want to hear from you all about that. Number two, I had more conversations with creators about this question of as the Democratic primary gets going, what are our audience is going to want from us in terms of who we are

supporting and what was interesting. I know I brought this up earlier in the week. I'm not going to dive into the question again. And every creator I spoke to yesterday at Clinton Global Initiative said, we're grappling with the same thing. Now, I think that there are some like first to vertical. So there's kind of a split in the creator world right now. You've got the people who have like more established shows. Like we have a show where we're doing an hour to 70 minute episodes on weekdays and it's distributed on different platforms.

And it's like long form. It's wide. And then we chop that up onto social media. That's one model. That's my my model. There are a lot of newer creators that I met yesterday and that I know who are what I call direct to short form. So these are people who their primary content is they take out their phone and using selfie cam. They record something vertical. It's short and these things go right on Instagram and TikTok. A lot of them don't really have shows in the way that I do. They don't have a podcast. They don't have a YouTube channel. If they do the YouTube channel is only shorts.

I think that the expectations are very different with those creators. And this was sort of a split where there were a bunch of creators who were direct to vertical who said, you know, in our space, it's way more common to just pick a candidate. And you just talk about that candidate. You're not really doing coverage of the race. You're like, here's the candidate I like. And so I think that there's also going to be a very big split. My expectation is that shows like this that are more structured with a team.

team and we schedule interviews rather than just like, hey, you know, Gavin Newsome, let's do 30 seconds. I think shows like this one, there's going to be an expectation of us and of me that I am going to make some kind of editorial decision. I will be much more part. Partisan is not the right word, but much more direct about like, here's the candidate or candidates that I like and these I don't like so much. Or I'm going to be covering the horse race. I'll give you the pros and cons of the different candidates, but it's not going to be so much about me pushing anyone candidate. My goal really is, of course, to maintain a relationship of trust with the audience, but also to have credibility once we get beyond the primary. And one of the things that hurt a lot

of creators' credibility in 2020 and in 2016 also, but especially in 2020, there were creators in 2020 whose entire existence, their reason d'etre, the reason for existence, to you. use the French phrase was I like this candidate. This is the one candidate that I like. And they covered that candidate in a way that was pejorative and antagonistic of every other candidate. And when Joe Biden ended up being the nominee, they couldn't credibly, if they had wanted to, they couldn't have credibly shifted into saying, we now have to come together and support Biden because the alternative is Trump. But also, they didn't really have anything else the audience was interested in because it was just all based around one candidate. And a lot of those shows died almost overnight. And so I think that

that's also a consideration for some of these first to vertical I'm all in on one candidate sort of shows or content creator. So anyway, cup. Those are a few of the things that I am thinking of. And I'm sure that this is going to be a bigger, bigger conversation. If you have not yet reviewed my book on Amazon, please do. I think there's only five reviews right now. The review, are critical in the first week at continuing to push sales. All sales until midnight, Saturday night count towards the first week of sales. That first week of sales is what determines bestseller status. So like this is the final push. The book is out. If you haven't gotten it, please do. Upper West Side Barnes & Noble in Manhattan has five, 10 signed copies that I left behind. And

Brookline Booksmith told me they have about the 20 copies left. So you can go to David Pakman. slash attention for all of that. I will be signing books in Austin, Texas Friday at nine as part of Texas Tribune Festival and then October 3rd in Springfield, Massachusetts alongside Jessica Tarlov. All info about those events at David Pakman.com slash attention. Thank you for bearing with me for this final crazy week. Hopefully I will be able to get back to the Northeast despite the forthcoming nor Easter. And I will be back tomorrow with a new show and a new bonus show. That wraps up today's free look at one of our bonus shows. You just got a taste of the exclusive content we put out five days a week for our supporters.

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