The David Pakman Show - Did they think it would all just go away?

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

-- On the Show -- Members of Congress say partially unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files reveal concealed names, very young victims, and possible contradictions involving Donald Trump’s past claims -- Senator Chris Van Hollen confronts Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Lutnick admits he visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island after previously saying he cut ties -- Karoline Leavitt says the White House is moving on from Jeffrey Epstein questions, defends Howard Lutnick, and declines to rule out a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell -- Donald Trump says he cut hundreds of thousands of jobs, raises tariffs over personal disputes, and claims the economy and affordability are strong -- Prediction markets assign elevated odds that Donald Trump leaves office early amid political and health uncertainty -- Jessica Tarlov says Donald Trump faces an Epstein files problem, and Greg Gutfeld pivots to attacking the Clintons instead of addressing the claims -- A Rasmussen poll shows more voters say Joe Biden did a better job as president than Donald Trump, signaling weakness with independents -- Megyn Kelly criticizes Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show performance as anti-American, even though Spanish speakers and Puerto Ricans are part of the United States -- On the Bonus Show: More stories from David’s trip to Portugal, updates on the abduction of Savannah Guthrie’s mom, New York officials re-raise the LGBTQ flag at Stonewall after Trump took it down, and much more... -- 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) Lawmakers Allege Hidden Epstein Details(07:39) Lutnick Admits Epstein Island Visit(19:37) White House Moves On Epstein(26:33) Trump Brags Jobs Tariffs Economy(36:36) Markets Predict Early Trump Exit(43:16) Fox Panel Deflects Epstein Issue(49:56) Poll Shows Biden Rated Higher(56:02) Megyn Kelly Slams Bad Bunny   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Major new Epstein files developments today, the White House is straight up trying to shut down questions. They say they've moved on from the topic. That sounds pretty authoritarian to me. We also have new confrontations involving people tied to the files and lawmakers now reviewing unredacted documents and saying what they are finding in there is way worse than what we were told. We're also going to look at Trump bragging about cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs, not

exactly something to brag about unless you are suffering from MAGA brain rot and casually admitting that the tariff policy is based on who is annoying him personally. We also have brutal new polling for Trump and therefore Republicans now just nine months from these midterm elections and Megan Kelly has a full blown cultural meltdown over Spanish. Yes, it's about bad bunny. And it really reveals a lot about how parts of the right are thinking about culture and identity right now. And later, prediction markets are now putting real money behind the possibility of Trump not finishing

his term. The why is what's really interesting there. We'll explain what it means and what it doesn't. All of it today on the show. Great to be back in studio. We start with new developments in the Epstein. files and it really helps explain why powerful people keep trying to tell the public to move on. You'll hear Caroline Levitt a little bit later in the show say, we're moving on from this story.

Well, good for you, Caroline, but we aren't. Members of Congress were finally allowed to look at unredacted Justice Department files about Jeffrey Epstein. Not all of them, not even most of them, actually, just a portion. And even with that very limited access, we already have new, very extraordinarily serious questions about what is being hidden and why lawmakers from both parties almost immediately said we found the names of men likely implicated in Jeffrey Epstein's crimes whose identities had been concealed by Justice Department redactions. We heard from Republican Thomas Massey. We heard from Democrat Rokana, both of whom helped push for access to these files in the

first place, say that in just a couple of hours spent reviewing some of millions of documents, they found six men whose names had been blacked out, six men in a couple of hours. At least one is reportedly an American citizen. Another is a foreign national. One is described as a prominent individual. Another is tied to a foreign government. These are not little details that were hidden in the redacted versions of the files.

Now, this raises the possibility that redactions may have been used. used deliberately to protect powerful figures rather than to protect victims, which, oh, my goodness, that's exactly what we've been saying all along, uh, as I almost knock over my, my water here. But the point was we were told they were only going to be redacting for the purposes of protecting victims or individuals who are not, uh, guilty or potentially guilty of anything. Now, one of the most disturbing details in these latest revelations involves an email tied to a foreign business figure described in reporting as a Sultan whose association with Jeffrey Epstein was known, but it hadn't been fully detailed. And according to what's being described from the files,

an email referenced a torture video sent to Epstein. Now, we don't know the full context at this time. We don't know the details of the video. But the fact that materials like this existed in files and were redacted is already alarming. Like you don't have to decipher is torture literal torture or is it code for something or a euphemism. The fact that it was redacted previously is the scandal. And it raises an obvious question, who benefits from these redactions? I think we can infer a lot from the answer to that question.

There's another revelation that kind of resets the entire moribes. the entire moral gravity of the case. Congressman Jamie Raskin says the documents he reviewed reference victims as young as 15, 14, 10, and in at least once, one instance, a nine-year-old. Nine years old. This reinforces what survivors and investigators have said for years, which is that the Epstein operation was systematic and it was large. scale and it likely involved more people than have ever been publicly named. There's also a

potentially major political implication. Raskin says he saw an email describing a conversation between Epstein's lawyers and Donald Trump's lawyers around the time of the 2009 Florida investigation of Epstein. And according to Raskin's description of this, the email suggests Epstein was not a member of Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, but was a guest and had not been asked to leave. One of the big stories that Trump told us is, as soon as I found out what was going on, I asked him to leave. We later found out. It seems Trump asked him to leave, not because he found out what was going on, but because Epstein allegedly took an employee from Trump's spa to go work for Epstein. Now, the subsequent revelation is he wasn't even a member and asked to no longer be a member. He was just a

guest there. So that entire narrative may be completely false and it would contradict so many claims of Donald Trump's. The bigger story, I believe, is the redactions themselves. And some lawmakers are asking the question about why powerful men appear to have been shielded when the law is supposed to protect victims, not influential associates of Epstein. Congress still has access to only about half of the total Epstein files. The review process is very tightly controlled. Lawmakers have to give advance notice. They have to review documents in person. They can't bring in any electronic devices, they can only take handwritten notes. That is not what most people picture when they hear there is going to be unparalleled, never before seen transparency. This story is now way bigger than

Epstein as an individual. Who controls information is a big part of this? Who controls information when powerful people are involved? And when institutions decide what the public gets to see and when they're supposed to stop asking questions, that's how major abuse scandals historically stay buried when the people in power protect powerful people who are potential or alleged perpetrators. Right now, we are starting to see bipartisan claims from lawmakers of both parties that names were hidden, that the abuse was even worse than publicly known, and that key timelines involving powerful people, are contradicting public claims. We're not getting closure here. What we're getting is more questions and we know we're only getting part of the picture. Later, we'll hear from Caroline Levitt, who has

decided the story is over. We have a little something to say about that. But one of Trump's goons was confronted about this and we're going to talk about this next. A Howard Lutnik was confronted yesterday by Democratic, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen. And it is a fascinating, fascinating, sort of a bit of insight into the machinations behind the scenes around Epstein and the Epstein cover up. Now, to set the stage here, a Lutnik previously said in 2005, he never was going to see Epstein again. And the Epstein files reveal that they have. had lunch in 2012. So when questioned about it, Lutnik simply tries to downplay the significance of that meeting. He goes, it was an hour. There were nannies, blah, blah, blah. But unfortunately,

for him, the details of the exchange only make it worse. And it is a direct contradiction to what he said in 2005. So let's get right into it. And we will evaluate as we go. My opening statement, you led people to believe that you had cut off all contact with Jeffrey Epstein after the 2005 encounter you and your wife had in his apartment. But as I'm sure you know, the Epstein files show a very different record of interaction. Why did the Epstein files show you coordinating a meeting and planning a visit with Jeffrey Epstein? on his private island in December 2012. Thank you for the question.

I'm glad to be here to make it clear that I met Jeffrey Epstein when I moved to a house next door to him in New York. And I met him then. Over the next 14 years, I met him two other times that I can recall, two times. And that is none for six years. So six years later, I met him. And then a year and a half after that, I met him and never again. Probably the total.

And you've seen all of these documents of these millions and millions of documents. There may be 10 emails connecting me with him. So so far, it's I'm not really in the Epstein files that much. And I didn't really have that many meetings. And I didn't really have that much of a. a relationship with him. Okay. Remember, this is already more than he acknowledged in a recent interview, which I'll play later. Probably about 10 emails connecting me with him over a 14 year period. I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with that person.

Okay. Secretary Lutnik, I think you understand the root of concern here. It's the way you described very emphatically your first encounter with him in his apartment, said you were disgusted, would never have any contact with him again. Did you in fact make the visit to Jeffrey Epstein's private island? Now, remember, this is a visit he never previously acknowledged and that he said he would never have contact when they began after the apartment meeting. Remember. did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies. I had another couple with they were there as well with their children. Now, the reason he brings up all of these kids being there is because he argues it's

exculpatory. Nothing bad could have happened if all of us had our kids there. Now, I'm not arguing anything bad happened. What I am telling you is that when we're talking about a guy who's accused of doing horrible things to kids saying we met with Epstein with plenty of kids, it's not really exculpatory. Now, to be clear, I'm not alleging anything here. I'm only saying it doesn't clear anybody to go, no, no, no, no, no, it was fine because we brought a whole bunch of kids around the guy. Now, we all understand. Epstein is not alleged. Well, I'm not alleged. Well, I'm not. actually, the nine-year-old stuff is pretty damn close. Anyway, let me not say more.

We'll evaluate it as it goes. And we had lunch on the island. That is true for an hour. And we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife, all together. We were on family vacation. We were not apart to suggest there was anything untoward about that in 2012. I don't recall why we did it. But, Mr. Secretary, again, as I said, there's not.

an indication that you yourself engaged in any wrongdoing with Jeffrey Epstein. It's the fact that you believe that you misled the country and the Congress based on your earlier statements, suggesting that you'd cut off all contact when in fact you had not. When you visited the private island, did you see anything inappropriate during that visit? The only thing I saw with my wife and my children and the other couple, and their children was staff who worked for Mr. Epstein on that island. And you realize that, you know, this visit took place after he'd been convicted, right? I mean, you made a very big point of saying that you sensed that this was a bad person in 2005.

And then, of course, in 2008, he was convicted of soliciting prostitution. of a minor. And yet you went and had this trip and other interactions. Did you have a dinner in Epstein's New York City home in 2011? No. So the information that suggests that there was a dinner with Woody Allen and Woody Allen's spouse at the Epstein residence, that's, there's nothing to that. Is that right? I actually don't know what you're referring to. There was, look, I I looked through the millions of documents for my name just like everybody else. Everybody. Yep.

And we all check to see if we were in the Epstein files, right? And what I found was there was a document that says that I had a meeting with him in May, I think, for an hour at 5 o'clock. Not dinner or otherwise for an hour at 5 o'clock. All right. There's also a reference to the fact that Epstein had expressed an interest in meeting your nanny. Do you know whether Jeffrey Epstein ever met with your nanny? No, I saw that. I had no idea what that was about. It had nothing to do with me.

No, as far as I know. No. Would you, Mr. Secretary, be willing to ensure that the file is complete to share with this committee and the Congress, your own records, any records you have that relate to Jeffrey Epstein? Jeffrey Epstein. I will surely talk about that. I hadn't thought about that. I have nothing to hide. He's going to talk about whether to do that.

So listen, 2005, he meets Epstein and is so creeped out, they decided we are never going to be in the room with this guy again. We have that clip. And he opens the doors. And there's a massage table in the middle of the room and candles all around and stuff. I say to him, massage table in the middle of the room. table in the middle of your house? How often you have a massage?

And he says, every day. And then he like gets like weirdly close to me. And he says, and the right kind of massage. My wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again. That's pretty clear, huh? 2005, he gets close to me. And he goes, it's the right type of massage. And I was so disgusted.

And then his wife and he decided never again. And then three years later, Epstein's convicted. And of course, this reinforces Howard Lutnik's instinct, never to be around this guy ever again. And then he has a meeting with him in 2011. And then he has lunch with him on his island in 2012. This one vignette that we've just spent the last. last however many minutes going over. This single vignette of lying and deception and and sort of glad-handed elites is just one out of dozens or hundreds or even thousands. And we haven't

gotten the full story really on any of them. So we will have broader coverage of this. The coverage will be wider. It might be longer, but it'll certainly be wider on the show later. And subsequently, make sure that you're subscribed to the YouTube channel to get all of our updates on this. If you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button. And of course, all of these stories are part of our daily one hour podcast, which you can get on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you like to listen. A lot of clothing brands today talk about sustainability, but our Fair Harbor sponsor actually builds it into how their products are made.

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clothing that works for every day wear and travel, head to fair harborclothing.com and use the code Pacman for 20% off your full price order now through February 28. The link. is in the description. The David Packman Show continues to be a program funded by you. We really don't have the safety net that those in legacy and corporate media have. There's no golden parachutes here. There's no cushy proverbial money trees growing in the backyard. We really do depend directly on your support.

And the primary mechanism for that support is the membership program on my website, join Pacman. and Substack Premium subscriptions, which you can read about at substack. David Pakman.com. Our two newest members today are John Wood and Gerard de Jardin. Welcome to both John and Gerard. Really appreciate both of you. Join them.

Get the extra bonus show. Get the commercial free audio and video feeds of the show. Get all of it by signing up at joinpackman.com. You know, one of the differences, at least in theory, between a democracy with a free press and an authoritarian regime is that in an authoritarian regime, the regime decides when a news story is over. And in a democracy with a free press, the journalists decide when a story is over. So you tell me whether it sounds like a democracy with a free press or an authoritarian

regime when White House press secretary Caroline Levitt, Comrade Levitt, says we are moving on from this story. We're moving on from it. The White House is moving on. Let's take a listen. And that remains true. And this call, if it did happen, corroborates exactly what President Trump has said from the beginning. And I'm sure many of you, when you read that alleged FBI report probably thought to yourself, wow, this really cracks our narrative that we've been trying to push about this president for many

years. So we're moving on from that. Reagan. We are moving on from that spoken like a true propaganda minister. We are moving on from that. If the White House decides the story is over, that is the final word as far as Caroline Levitt is concerned. Now, we're not going to let her do it. And I know that there are lots of excellent journalists who simply will not bow down to this. Some of them are independent. There's even people in legacy and corporate media as much as we criticize it who are not going to let the story go away. And it's understandable why they want the story to go away because Caroline Levitt is increasingly

unable to answer for or defend the growing number of Trump associates that are appearing in the files. Trump appears in the files. Someone said a million times. I don't know if that's true. We know he's in the files tens of thousands of times. Maybe it is hundreds of thousands or even a million times, but certainly he is in there thousands of times, tens of thousands of times.

And so she doesn't get to decide that the story is over. But here she is uncomfortably having to answer questions about Howard Lettnick, whose previous claims that after meeting, after I met Epstein once, my wife and I decided we would never be in the same room as him again. And then after that, he had a meeting with him and he had lunch on his island with him. All right. So here's Caroline Love. It's Caroline.

Secretary of Lutnik today was testifying on the Hill. And he said that he had visited Epstein's island in 2012 with his wife and children. And that's after he said that he had cut ties with Epstein. And the Justice Department document showed that he was in contact with Epstein through 2018 over messages. So does the White House stand behind Secretary Lutnik right now or given? what he has said today, has there been any shift in how the White House is viewing Secretary Lutnik's performance? No, Secretary Lottnick remains a very important member of President Trump's team, and the president fully supports the secretary. I will just point out that there are a lot of

wins in the news this week that people in this room have not asked about because you That's what we call a subject change. This is another tactic. No, no, no. We have full confidence in Howard Lutnik. It's all very well and good and it's phenomenal. Now, here are six propaganda items. You know, Donald Trump did a new, he signed a declaration about how great olive oil is, thanks to Robert F. Kennedy. And why don't, why aren't you talking about that? The topic of a pardon for Jelaine Maxwell came out. Now, we, you may or may not have heard that Jolene Maxwell has essentially said during a remote virtual testimony, she said that unless she said that unless she, is granted a sentence commutation or a pardon, she is not going to finger, and I'm using that term

proverbially to be clear, she is not going to finger specific individuals unless there is something really made available to her. So here is Caroline saying a lot of things, but not that Trump is ruling out a pardon for her. Elaine Maxwell, is the president going to rule out a pardon for her in her testimony deposition yesterday? Her legal team seems to be making a case again for a pardon from the president. Again, this is not something I've discussed with the president recently because frankly, it's not a priority. He's focused on many of the issues that the American people are dealing with and providing solutions to those issues. So I haven't spoken with him recently.

Last time we did speak about it, he said it's not something he's considering or thinking about. The thing she doesn't mention is that while Trump, when when Trump says I'm not thinking about it, they want you to believe that what he means is it's not something that matters to him. It's not a priority to him. He's not leaning towards giving her a pardon. What they actually, what the reality of this is is that if indeed it came to it and the you know what hit the fan, Trump's additional statement has been, but I have the right to do it. Trump goes, you know, it's an interesting question. I'm not, I'm not thinking about it.

I'm not thinking about it, but, but I have the right to do it. I can do it if I want. She doesn't mention that part because the real story is Trump wants to go. I'm not worried about it because it wouldn't implicate me, but I do have the right to pardon her. Well, sir, no one is questioning your right to do it. We're questioning why on earth you would do it. the horrible acts that she has been convicted of. Finally, and this is this is straight up Kafkaesque,

Caroline Levitt says that one of the priorities of Trump is going after pedophiles and rapists. They aren't even going after the alleged predators in the Epstein files that we know about. She wants us to believe that the pedophiles and rapists that are hidden out there, we don't know who they are. Trump's going after them. He's not even going after the ones whose names we know. It is not. And let me correct the record. Number one, the Trump administration has been clear from day one that any illegal alien present in this country is subject to deportation. However, the priority, of course, is going after the convicted criminals, the worst of the worst, the murderers, the pedophiles, the rapists in this country. Interestingly, and the-

Yeah. Number one, they are casting a much wider net than the violent criminals who are undocumented that they told us they would. That's number one. But number two, I kind of questioned the commitment to going after pedophiles and rapists when we've got a list of a whole hell of a lot of them in the Epstein files and nobody is going after them. In a bizarre and disoriented interview, Donald Trump bragged about cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs. What a winning message, right?

Take that to the polls on November 3rd. Now, there is a little bit of a twist to why Trump is bringing this up. This was a really bizarre interview with Larry Cudlow. Weirdly, the chairs they're sitting in look both enormous and teeny, teeny tiny. But let's listen to the substance of what Trump said. I've cut hundreds of thousands of jobs. And we still have good employment numbers. But if I want to have the greatest employment numbers you've ever seen, all I have to do is say,

I'm going to hire half a million people. That's what the Democrats. But you want the private sector. No, what happened is the people I cut are now working in the private sector. And they probably hated me when they lost their job and now they love me. They're making twice the money. That's right. The people laid off by Doge love Trump.

They probably love me. They're probably making twice the money. Now, let me mention a couple of different things. Of course, the reason Trump is bragging about cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs is that the MAGA worldview today, you know, They checked three months ago, three months from now, who the hell knows, it'll be whatever they needed to be. But the MAGA worldview right now is that federal government employment is wasteful. These are bogus jobs.

You know, it's funny. I was just talking to friends in Argentina, a country that is known for federal government jobs being bogus, no show. What's the, it's, uh, sinecures. That's the word for, for exactly what they are. The idea that all these jobs are merely sinecures. The truth is that the United States has never had an overemployment of federal workers, at least in the modern political era, during Trump, during Obama, during Biden, during Bush.

And if you look up the percentage of all jobs that are federal government jobs, in the United States, it sort of bounces between one and a half and, you know, 1.5 to 1.9% of all jobs would be government jobs. In many other peer countries, in Canada, 19% of employment is the public sector. In the United Kingdom, 16% of all employment is the public sector. The idea that the United States, as a country of 340 million people, a wealthy country, has flat out too much government employment is incorrect. Now, what I will tell you, of course, is that in some of these other countries, because

of their health care systems and because of other programs they have, the government jobs are different jobs than we have in the United States. And in fact, you could make the argument that we should be reorganizing federal government employment to get rid of some of the departments that are overly bureaucratic, areas where departments could be consolidated. I'm all with them if that's what they want to do to then shift government employment into other areas that would be more useful and productive for the United States. But flat out going, we just had too many people working in public sector government jobs. Praise me because I cut hundreds of thousands of them. That makes no sense whatsoever. I don't think I cut jobs is a good message going to the polls. All right. Next,

Trump says to Cudlow that he changed the tariff rate on Switzerland because the prime minister was aggressive with him. My contention to you here is that this should be exactly. Exhibit A for the Supreme Court to decide we got to can these tariffs because clearly they weren't an emergency. I'll explain in a moment. I had an incident with a very nice country, Switzerland. They were paying no tariffs, sending stuff over here like nobody could believe. And we had a $42 billion deficit.

And we weren't taking anything. I said, well, we have to do something because we have to even that up a little bit. I didn't have to get everything at one time. So I put on a 30% tariff, which is very low. Still, we were having a big deficit, but it was half the deficit. Then I got an emergency call from, I believe, the Prime Minister of Switzerland, and she was very aggressive, but nice, but very aggressive. Sir, we are a small country.

We can't do this. We can't do this. I couldn't get her off the thought. We are a small country. I said, you may be a small country, but we have a $42 billion deficit with you. No, no, we are a small country again and again and again. I couldn't get off the phone. So was a 30%. And I didn't really like the way she talked to us. And so instead of giving her a reduction, I raised it to 39%.

Oh, man. It is madness for tariff policy, which affects not only Americans and American businesses, But people around the world, it is wacky for tariff policy to be determined by Trump's personal feelings about how people talk to him. The definition of narcissistic egomania. But by the way, if the Supreme Court needed any additional evidence to overturn Trump's tariffs, Trump saying that he set tariff rates based on the tone of how people speak to him proves this is not an emergency. If he is free to just kind of pick a tariff art, if they're nice to me, then the tariffs

lower, if they're aggressive with me, then the tariff is higher. That proves these were not brought about by emergencies. Trump bragging that he has the greatest economy ever. And they've just got to get people believing that. They've got to tell people that. In 50 years, a president that's won, even a popular president, somebody that's done well. I'm popular and I've done well. I mean, I think we have the greatest economy actually ever in history.

We broke 50 and we broke 7,000. They said I wouldn't do that for four years and I did it in one year. We have to get the word out. Okay. If we can get the word out, we should. Yeah. Why won't they say, sir, please, thank you. Thank you for the economy because you know what?

I'm good enough and I'm smart enough and gosh darn it, people like me. This didn't work for Biden. If you would think that Trump wouldn't fall for one of the great mistakes, arguably, of Biden Harris, which is telling people the economy is awesome. It didn't work. It didn't work. It is the losing calm strategy of Biden Harris on the economy. All right.

And then finally, Trump insists no one's talking about affordability anymore because the prices are down. And everything else. I mean, everything's going great. We inherited a total mess from Biden. And not only the borders, but the economy, the inflation, the inflation was the worst ever in history. They say 48 years, but basically ever in history. And the prices were high.

And you don't hear them use the word affordability anymore. They can't use it because we brought the prices down. Right. You know, Trump doesn't know what the hell is going on. And I would love it if they did the Bill Gates grocery test. You know, Ellen DeGeneres once did a thing where she had Bill Gates on her show. billionaire founder of Microsoft now works full time in philanthropy. And Ellen asks Bill, when did, I'm paraphrasing by the way, when did you like last grocery

shop for yourself? And he goes, oh, it's been a while. Okay. Well, how much do you think milk costs? How much do you think eggs cost or whatever? And he like doesn't really have that much of an idea, kind of, but not really. I think Trump would have even less of an idea. If you said to Trump, hey, listen, like, if you just go and you get chicken, bone in chicken,

like, what do you, what do you think it costs? what is a what is a box of Cheerios or what you know when an avocado how much do you think an avocado cost I think he would have no idea and it would just be a reminder that this guy not only has no clue what's going on with prices he doesn't actually care what's going on with prices. I would love it if that were tested. Trump at his most disoriented will have more clips from this interview if you can call it that on our Instagram on our TikTok on our Snapchat. If you grew up eating cereal, you probably remember the fun of the crunchy bright flavors on Saturday morning and the whole thing.

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The link is in the description. prediction markets are now openly pricing the possibility that Trump leaves office early. This is not like some fringe way. This is real money. Millions of dollars being traded about this. I want to slow down. Let's look at what this means because I think some people might overreact or also dismiss this entirely.

I think both reactions are wrong. Now platforms like Kalshi have contracts where people can bet on whether Trump's. makes it to January of 2029 or doesn't even make it to 2028 or whatever. And these are legal prediction markets. This is people saying I'm willing to put my money behind this. There are many opinions about whether these betting markets are good for society or an issue for problem gamblers. I'm not ignoring that stuff.

But we have data about where people are on this particular issue that I think is really Interesting. Now, recent trading puts the odds of Trump leaving office early roughly in these ranges. 19% believe that Trump will not even make it to 2027. One out of five believe Trump won't make it through the to the end of the year. 36% believe Trump won't make it to the end of 2027. In other words, by 2028, before January 1, 2028, Trump will be out. And then 45%, nearly half of the money being wagered, believes Trump will not make it in office until the day he is scheduled to leave, which is January 20th of 2029.

Now, let's talk about the significance of this. In plain English, the markets believe there is a non-trivial chance Trump does not finish his presidency. That is not typical. Historically, sitting presidents usually do finish their presidencies and they have very low early departure odds unless there's a major scandal or some clear health crisis. Now, very important point. Prediction markets are not predictions of truth.

They are predictions of what the people betting believe will happen. They are sentiment plus risk pricing. They can be wrong. They are often wrong. But they're also not random. They're not disconnected from the reality on the ground. When you see millions of dollars moving, it usually reflects a real situation. And the uncertainty about Trump's ability to finish his term right now is different for different

groups because so far I've mentioned nothing about why Trump wouldn't finish his term. Is it because of a health problem or is it because of a political problem? Now, some people are betting Trump won't finish his term for political reasons. They think about impeachment scenarios. They think about election losses changing the congressional math and then maybe the numbers would be there or maybe there's a legal or a constitutional crisis. So institutional conflict. For other people, the reason they are betting on Trump not finishing his term is health related. Age, stress, his health situation, the actuarial reality of the oldest president ever, questions about cognitive durability, physical durability.

So there isn't just one story driving these bets. the political risk traders and the health risk traders and then the volatility people who are like, I don't know, the odds are interesting. I'm going to take a shot at this. I do not believe for all the possibilities, I do not believe anything short of death or true medical incapacity will remove Donald Trump from office. If you think about the political scenarios, there are not the votes to remove him via impeachment and Senate conviction.

Even if Democrats take the House and impeach him, there are not going to be the votes to take him down with a conviction in the Senate. Even if Republicans lose the Senate, which we are talking about as a possibility, there are still not going to be the two-thirds of the Senate vote required to actually convict Donald Trump. I don't think you're going to see Republicans come over. So I don't think that the math is there on that one. Number two, constitutionally, I don't believe there is any path to a 25th Amendment removal of Trump without overwhelming bipartisan buy-in and there is zero sign that Trump's cabinet in any way would be willing to remove Trump via the 25th Amendment. Third, and this is sort of like psychological and behavioral,

people with strong narcissistic, egomaniacal traits like Trump are not going to voluntarily give up power. So if we acknowledge, well, impeachment's not going to work, 25th Amendment's not going to happen, maybe Trump will decide this is becoming an embarrassment. I'm going to resign. People like Trump don't resign out of embarrassment. They don't resign out of pressure. It's just not how it works. So when I look at the leaving office early scenarios, I only am thinking about death. Trump dies and is no longer in office, severe medical incapacity or something unprecedented, something that's just never happened or occurred to us before that removes him from office. Right now, what the markets are saying is this presidency has way more early exit risk than

a normal presidency and you can see that it's spiked recently and the numbers continue to go up. The bigger story, if we zoom out politically, is that this is about the instability that it causes. You know, Trump's leaving earlier. He's not or the 25th Amendment's imminent. The real story here is that global and domestic actors are now modeling a scenario where the American presidency destabilizes stabilizes in the middle of a presidential term. If you look at history, once institutions start planning for instability, the political environment itself becomes more unstable. And that's the feedback loop we're talking about.

The odds of climbing that more and more people believe this is a possibility generate headlines and behavior and political momentum. But these are stunning numbers. I don't think I've ever seen numbers like these. We also arguably didn't have this level of precision, precision before. And now we have it. And this is a very interesting development. Let me know what you think.

Do you believe one or another scenario is more likely? Is death or incapacity more or less likely than a political or constitutional scandal to take Trump down? And in general, do you think it's likely? Leave a comment. Send me an email info at David Pakman.com. There was a really revealing moment on Fox News where the lone liberal Jessica Tarlov described what's happening with Epstein really as a story about elites. And that is it is it is increasingly not a partisan story. I believe that this is where the Epstein file story is going.

And one of the interesting things here is that what Jessica Tarlov says to her right wing co-hosts, it's very simple. It's not a complicated story, but it is really dangerous for Donald Trump politically. Because if the Epstein scandal becomes an elite problem, meaning it's not about any one criminal, it's not about any one political party or orientation, it is about networks of power, money, and influence. When she points out that it is objectively true that you've got people tied to Trump world being mentioned in connection to Epstein and it's mostly being suppressed or ah, who really cares about this, you start to see this as elites protecting elites, powerful people protecting

powerful people. And as Trump and his administration say it's time to move on, nothing to see here, if people come to realize that this is a cross-partisan story, as some already have, this is going to become a real problem. Now, watch where the right wing playbook kicks in here, because instead of addressing anything that Jessica says, Greg Gutfeld, who I guess is a comedian, I don't know, He pivots to the Clintons have the biggest problem here. Or it's saying that the average American household paid an extra thousand dollars last year because of the tariffs. It'll go up to $1,300. This year, consistently voters say though, Trump isn't focused on the things that they care about, which is lowering prices.

And I think that there are two plot lines of the administration for obvious reasons, really want to ignore but matter to voters. First of all, Donald Trump and his family, their corruption. This story, Andy McCarthy is doing a series of the National Review on it. All the crypto money that they're taking in from the UAE and others is a really big deal. And then what's going on with the Epstein files. And I'm not making this partisan. I'm saying it is an elite problem. John Ossuff is now calling it the Epstein class and even name check George Soros in his campaign rally.

If it's us versus them and Trump is just saying, ignore it, it's going to go away. And you have Howard Lutnik, for instance, testifying that he went to the island in 2012 when he said in 2014. ever cared about this until now because Trump won. It's like immigration. You didn't care about all the illegals until Trump. Listen to the panic in Gutfeld's voice. One and now you care about Epstein. Well, here's fine under Epstein.

And I was obviously very careful to say that I am not accusing the president of doing anything. I'm saying that he has an Epstein filed problem and he knows it. No one has a problem more than the Clinton. Who care? Don't. Then now there's total what aboutism. And the Clintons have agreed to testify if that is what lawmakers want. This is classic what about

ism. It doesn't answer the question to say the Clintons have a problem. It doesn't address the substance to say Jessica did or didn't care about this at some prior point in time. None of that disputes the facts. It just changes the subject to Greg Gutfeld's political enemy and it hopes that the audience emotionally follows it. If there is evidence against anyone connected to Epstein, left, right or otherwise. We on the left have been saying, release the evidence and investigate it. It'll take down Clinton. Don't care. I don't think it will. But if it does, too bad. We need the truth. The position in a functioning society should be, let's get the truth out wherever the truth leads. But notice that the pivot happens, the instant the conversation torches Trump or the people

around him. And then Gutfeld goes further and he says, you know, the fact that people hate Trump so much proves that he's fulfilling his promises. Sort of like a, people might hate him because he's terrible for the country, Greg. Ever thought of that? See, all huge wins, but it's two against one. He's got to fight the Democrats and the media. It's always going to be that way.

We're used to it. We'll take it. But wherever Trump succeeds, you're always going to get this blowback, and it's a tradeoff. The more Republicans love him, and they do, the more insane the vitriol will be. Because that means he's doing his job.

See, I would be worried if he was getting strange new respect from the view or morning Joe or dear Jessica saying, you know what? I think he's really grown. He's really about. But the fact that you hate him now more than you've ever hated him, I don't know. That he is fulfilling his promise. And I like that. All right.

Listen, this is a politically radioactive scenario for Donald Trump. It's not like, oh, there's a single clip and you explain away the clip. It's not, well, Fox did one panel discussion and no, no, no, no, no. When a scandal becomes associated with elite protection networks, it can stop being a partisan thing for a lot of voters. Now, not the hardcore magas, but for a lot of voters, it becomes a trust issue. Trust collapses quickly when you've got two sets of rules. And of course, there are two sets of rules. So the bigger takeaway here is you are seeing competing narratives.

One narrative is follow the evidence wherever it goes. I've been saying that for years. The other is change the subject, bring up someone else, redefined criticism. They now are faced acutely with Lutnik having said after 2005, I knew I would never be in the same room as Epstein again. And then he met with him in 2011 and then he went to his island in 2012. And so now they're explaining, well, those were short meetings. And at the one in 2011, we didn't have dinner. It was characterized as dinner, but it was four o'clock.

I ate dinner late. People are not falling for it. And so history shows us which of the. narratives tends to win long term. The elite protection narrative or the two justice systems, two rules narratives. You can't run a political movement on if you're accused of something, it means you're doing something great. People aren't falling for that and it is great to see Jessica Tarlov explain it to the Fox News audience, but also to her Mayo brain co-hosts as well. The David Packman Show is an audience-supported program and the best most direct way to support

the show is by becoming a member at joinpackman.com. You'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show, and plenty of other great membership perks. Get the full experience by signing up at join packman.com. One of the most politically dangerous things that can happen to a president is not bad news. news from your opposition, which is pretty much to be expected, but it's when you start getting bad news from your own side. And that is exactly what is happening to Donald Trump now, because there's a new poll from the right wing pollster Rasmussen, not a liberal outfit by any means, showing numbers

that if you are a White House that understands that you need to have Republicans in power beyond November, if you want to get anything done in the last two years of Trump's presidency, should make you extraordinarily nervous. Now, the headline number is that when voters were asked, who did a better job as president? Donald Trump or Joe Biden? Biden led. And that is today and that is a right-wing pollster. Forty-eight percent say that Biden did the better job. 40 percent say that Trump did the better job. This is a brutal number for Trump. And it's even worse because of where it's coming from. Like if CNN put out a poll like this, even though CNN's polling is Fine. A lot of right wingers would be able to go, ah, we don't have to pay attention to that.

If MSNBC put out a poll saying Americans think Biden did a better job than Trump, they would just dismiss it. This is a pollster that historically leans right and which Trump has touted as saying you can trust Rasmussen. And so when you get numbers like this, you know something has shifted. It's not only one number. If you look at the broader approval environment of Trump, it's very weak. Recent averages have them in the low 40s on approval, disapproval well above 50%. That is not where you want to be heading in the midterm cycle. And there's also a deeper narrative problem developing. Trump campaigned on this golden age. We're going to make America great again again. It's going to be going back to a golden age. Maybe it's like the 1950s. Maybe it's like

the 1850s, it was never clear, but it would include cheaper groceries and lower housing costs and a stronger economy and mass deportations. And it'll be a reset of everything that has gone wrong under Biden and Obama and the entire thing. Oh, where's my Obama Obama? Obama. But when voters were asked, has the golden age arrived? Is it here? Did Trump keep his promise?

The answer is overwhelmingly no. 27% say that the golden age promised by Trump is here. 58% say it is not here. And that is a collapse from early 2025 when a majority did believe this new era of greatness may actually be coming to light. Now, politically, this is where things get very dangerous for Trump. Presidents can survive bad numbers if voters believe that the improvement is coming. But when voters decide that the problem itself was fake or that the person who promised solutions,

even if the problem was real, can't possibly deliver them, you can't really recover from that. I'll give you an example. Tariffs. If you came to believe that Trump's tariffs were the solution to a problem, you might now be saying, well, clearly they're not. And so more of the same is not going to solve the problem. ratings move, you know, Bidens have moved up and down, Obama's moved up and down, Trump's moved up and down, although mostly they go down over presidential terms.

A poll is a snapshot, but the direction is what matters. And the direction is a decline. Two big drivers behind this. Number one, the perception of cost of living. Why do I say perception? Cost of living is objectively going up. Yes. But as we found out during the Biden administration, the perception of what is taking place

is as or more important than what is taking place. If you have macroeconomic conditions that look okay, but voters feel that they are getting crushed by housing and grocery costs, they are going to punish whoever is in power and Trump is in power. And number two, the optics of immigration enforcement are really going south for Trump. If you look at polling, it suggests that voters do want to remove violent or criminal offenders who are here undocumented. Most Democrats are okay with that.

But this broad strokes, chaotic-looking enforcement is scaring moderates. It's scaring suburban voters. And especially when stories come out about people being swept up randomly, it is killing Trump's approval on that. So you put all of this together. People expecting or being told you're going to get lower prices, they don't feel it. They don't feel it because they're not getting it to be clear. But what matters is if they feel it.

And then he's losing ground on what was going to be his. signature issue, deporting people. This is why the Republican polling angle matters so much. When friendly pollsters start showing erosion, it usually means the enthusiasm of the base is slipping, independents are moving quickly away from you, neither is good. This doesn't mean Trump's doomed politically. It doesn't mean Dems automatically win or anything like that. But it means there's a persuasion problem for the White House. A lot of people aren't falling for it. And the worst part for Trump is this piece. If voters start looking back at Biden more favorably over time, even if they didn't love him when he was president, it creates a comparison problem that is a real serious problem

for Donald Trump. You can't run against the past when you're the currently one in charge and when people think back to Biden and go, it was actually better then. It was better when Biden was here. So if you're heading into a midterm as Trump is, this is exactly the kind of political environment that turns into losses, even in places you expected to hold. That's what we're hoping for. That's what we're pushing for. It depends on us getting out there in voting. And we are going to be building towards a huge get out the vote effort, voter registration drive,

etc. I'll have more information about that very, very soon. You know, it is really a pleasure to watch Megan Kelly melt down over nothing, over cultural anger. There are few things more revealing in a sense. than when someone says the quiet part out loud. And that's what happened with Megan Kelly. Megan Kelly didn't just criticize Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance. She didn't only complain about the language choice that the songs were in Spanish. She went into full-blown cultural panic mode,

basically saying that performing a show in Spanish at a major American event is a middle finger finger to the United States of America. We are going to go through this. This is really a delight to watch. I take great pleasure in the fact that she is so triggered and furious about this. I'm sorry, peers, but to get up there and perform the whole, the whole show in Spanish is a middle finger to the rest of America. Who gives a damn that we have 40, 40 million, Spanish speakers in the United States? We have 310 million who don't. speak a lick of Spanish. This is supposed to be a unifying event for the country, not for the Latinos, not for one small group, but for the country. We don't need a black national anthem,

we don't need a Spanish-speaking, non-English performing performer, and we don't need an ice. Isn't this the best? Or America Hater featured as our primetime entertainment. Okay. What is the national language? Officially the national language of the United States of America? I mean, English. And there's been a push for many, many years to make it to make it an official documented thing. You don't have one. If you would have let me finish my comment, I would have pointed that out, that people have been pushing to make it official. Okay, so you're trying to make official. This attitude that you have right here is why you in Great Britain have lost your culture. You seated your culture to a bunch of radical Muslims who came in

and took over and now it's gone. not allowing that here, whether it's Hispanic, whether it's Muslim. It's not happening in the United States of America. That's why President Trump was elected. And whether it's Bad Bunny, who is American, but refuses to speak English in his performances, or anybody else, we have to keep the Super Bowl, which is a quintessential American event. Football, that kind of football is ours. They call it American football.

And the halftime show and everything around it needs to stay quintessentially American. Not Spanish, not Muslim, not anything other than good old fashion. American apple pie. There should be a meatloaf, maybe some fried chicken, and an English-speaking performer. That's what the Super Bowl should be. Oh, man. That is really a joy to watch. You know, peers is right. The U.S. doesn't have an official national language. It's just a fact that's not political. The idea that Spanish speakers are some tiny, you know, niche group is ridiculous, roughly 40 million Spanish speakers in the United States. If just the Spanish speakers, speakers in the US formed our own country and I am one of those Spanish speakers, it would

be larger than most countries on earth. It's not fringe. So that is America. Now, she takes it even further. She says that the Spanish language bad bunny performance is linked to cultural collapse. There should be an immigration panic. Of course, ignoring that bad bunny is American. Puerto Ricans are American.

She says Britain has lost its culture. This is what happens when grievance becomes your worldview. Now, one little note on people don't understand the lyrics. A lot of songs that are in English, people don't understand the lyrics. This is like a widely discussed thing that song lyrics are often misunderstood. It's a little detail, but it's sort of like, who gives a damn? Do you like the music? Do you like the performance?

But everything starts to look like an invasion. We're being invaded by Americans from Puerto Rico. We're being invaded by a language spoken by 40 million Americans. Wait a second. And so everything feels like we're losing. They're taking something from us. And then the part that sounds almost like satire is she goes, oh, it should be quintessentially American meatloaf and fried chicken and apple pie and English speaking performers. It's this nostalgia, wet dream fantasy built around the diner menu of the 1950s. And the reality is American culture has always

been mixed. You bring in German immigrants and it affects the food and the language and Italian immigrants and Irish and Jewish and Latin American and Asian and you know, every single one of these waves changed American culture and every time someone was saying, no, they will destroy the country. After you had a lot of Germans come in, then you had the establishment whites, whoever qualified, going the Irish and the Italians, they're not, yes, they're European. But they're not really white like us. And then of course, now Irish and Italians are considered white. But now it's some other group that's like they're not really white.

Now one point about Bad Bunny specifically. And I want to go back to it. Puerto Rico is part of the United States. Puerto Ricans are American citizens. And so the factual wrongness of insisting that a Puerto Rican performing in the United States is any kind of foreign thing points to a deeper issue. And it is that all of this is not really about the facts. It's about cultural fear.

If there are anything, if there is anything that is perceived as a change, demographically, language, they panic. They have one vision of what America is. It's this really narrow slice of history. And the irony is that the Super Bowl is already a global event. There's global sponsors. There's a global audience. There's global performers.

I was in Portugal at the time of the Super Bowl and there were bars there. People were staying up very late to watch the Super Bowl. But suddenly Spanish is where the line is drawn. It's really just identity, anxiety. Now there is a real conversation to be had about national identity, assimilation, shared language, social cohesion. And it can be done in a serious manner. topics are looked at seriously by anthropologists and social demographers and that's not what

these commentaries, these panicked commentaries are. They are just culture war performance. And it's everything I don't like is anti-American, even if it's actually American. Now, I think that long term, this is very risky politically because younger Americans are growing up multilingual and culturally mixed in most of the United States. Diversity isn't seen as a threat. So when they hear, Here, wait, Spanish from an American is anti-American. That doesn't sound patriotic to me. That sounds scared. That sounds outdated.

And that's why it's a little satisfying to see how these meltdowns are happening. And maybe part of it is generational. Megan Kelly is what she must be about. She's 55 years old. Maybe there's a generational aspect to this. I don't know, but it starts to sound like old man yelling, get off my lawn. And if your vision and definition of America can't survive a halftime show in Spanish, I don't think it was very strong to begin with.

We have a phenomenal bonus show for you today. I will tell you what happened during my transit through immigration when landing in the United States. We will talk about the abduction of Savannah Guthrie's mom. And we will also talk about what is happening with the Stonewall Memorial in New York. The pride flag will be re-raised triumphantly. All of those stories and more on the bonus show. Get the bonus show now by signing up at join packman.com.

Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves as bad. Yeah. All of that and more on the bonus show. I'll see you then.