The David Pakman Show - Do they think they will get away with this?

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

-- On the Show -- Rand Paul rebukes right-wing media figures for lying about the ICE killing of Alex Pretti and defends constitutional carry rights -- Jessica Tarlov questions Melania Trump about unity, exposing selective right-wing outrage over language, immigration, and who is treated as a legitimate American -- Federal immigration policy deliberately escalates confrontations, deeaths, and creates conditions where stochastic violence becomes statistically inevitable -- Donald Trump threatens Iran with military force on Truth Social, contradicts his anti-war branding, and escalates global tensions -- Trump administration officials including Kristi Noem and Greg Bovino face demands for accountability over immigration policies that predictably lead to civilian deaths -- Donald Trump forgets the word Alzheimer’s while insisting on cognitive perfection, highlighting double standards and unresolved concerns about presidential fitness -- The Friday Feedback segment 🚀 Rocket Money: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions at https://rocketmoney.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get 20% OFF sitewide at https://helixsleep.com/pakman -- On the Bonus Show: The Friday Bonus Show hosted by Producer Pat -- 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 Start02:37 Rand Paul rebukes right-wing lies08:20 Tarlov grills Melania on unity18:54 Immigration policy escalates violence25:27 Trump threatens Iran militarily32:45 Accountability for deadly policies38:39 Trump flubs Alzheimer’s term44:27 Friday Feedback segment Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We're starting today with a Republican senator absolutely destroying a MAGA host on live TV over the ice shooting narrative as it pertains to Alex Preti. When your own party starts calling you out over your propaganda, something is breaking and I believe it is. We are then going to hear from Melania Trump, who gives a bizarre and incoherent answer on Fox News. And we're going to talk about the massive hypocrisy of the rights screaming, learn English at brown immigrants, while giving. wealthy white immigrants a free pass. After that, we're going to dig into why the ice escalation strategy won't end well, how it creates a feedback loop towards a security state, and why all of it is very useful for Donald Trump. We'll also look at an unhinged truth social rant threatening Iran with a massive military strike, not exactly the anti-war president. And then we are also going

to talk about accountability for top officials, why some of them may eventually face real consequences and Trump forgot the word Alzheimer's while insisting his brain is perfect. You can't write stuff better than that. All of that and more on today's show. Get the full episode on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, anywhere your podcasts exist. Let's do it. Republican Senator Rand Paul is not messing around almost every day this week. Well, I guess like every other day this week.

There has been an example of Rand Paul very calmly, very, very. consistently in terms of consistent with his prior stated values, which is rare for Republicans who flip-flop all over the place, dismantling false narratives about the legality of kidnapping Nicholas Maduro from Venezuela, making Secretary of State on yesterday's show Marco Rubio look really unprepared. And the latest one is with Rob Schmidt on Newsmax. Rob Schmidt is hardcore MAGA. Hardcore MAGA. Trump's never done anything, Rob. Schmitt didn't like. And Rand Paul very calmly explains to him, you, Rob, are spreading disinformation about the killing of Alex Prattie. Let's take a listen to the first clip, straight up saying,

have you seen the video? The video does not depict what people are claiming it to pick. I think after seeing this, if you call this a good shooting, you aren't watching the video. This was a real tragedy and a mistake. The man had been disarmed and then was shot 10 times. I want ICE to do a good job. I want ICE to get rid of the violent people in our communities, but we can't have it if we say things like, oh, yeah, well, he was an assassin and he was a domestic terrorist. If we say things that are obviously not true, the situation is going to get worse. I agree that some of the administration made this worse by saying things that obviously

were untrue and we didn't know a lot. We're still wondering, I mean, you- All right. So remember, the defense from the magazines, the stuff that they got wrong, you can't hold them accountable for that. We didn't know yet. Well, but then why were they speaking? They love loose lips when they want to get ahead of the propaganda game. But then when they get stuff wrong and you go, hey, do you want to? What about this? Are you ready to now declare X? They go, well, listen, now there's an investigation going on. Well, why were your lips so loose back then when you thought you could get away with some favorable propaganda? Rand Paul very directly and

clearly saying people keep saying he brandished his weapon. Alex Preti did. He did not. If you keep saying it, you're going to encourage more of this crap. And in this case, it's important to know he didn't draw his weapon. They said he brandished his weapon. That is not true. If you keep saying things that are not true, you're going to encourage more of this crap.

But on the other side, does Minnesota need, does Minnesota need to cooperate? Yes. Without question, the sanctuary city policy is part of it. is part of the problem as well. And I the other issue and Rand Paul is completely correct. I mean, just how could you possibly argue that he is wrong? Rand Paul took another issue up with Rob Schmidt. And it's an important one because of the hypocrisy.

Brand Paul points out people being somewhere with a gun legally cannot be used to justify an increase likelihood of getting shot. I am not a gun guy. There's a I want more gun safety regulations. I want fewer guns around all of that stuff. But at the end of the day, if it's your right to carry, you can't use the exercise of a right to say, well, that right exercised might get you shot. And Rand Paul makes that clear. Well, what I would say is if it were my son and he says, dad, I'm going to a rally.

I'm going to take my gun with me. I would say not a good idea. But on the other side, I've been to hundreds of rallies with people who are armed. Virtually every meeting I go to in Kentucky, people wear their concealed carry. They wear their open carry. They have the constitutional right to carry. So if we're going to become the party that says, oh, you don't have a right to carry and you might just be shot, there is no reason to shoot somebody.

In fact, the gun statistics show that those who carry are like a thousand times less likely to commit a crime. and less likely to draw their weapon. Okay, I don't know about those statistics that he mentions at the end, but it would be interesting to look into. But what really is at the heart of this is that constitutionally protected activities are being used as justification to be roughed up or even killed by federal officers. Exercising the first or second amendment, if we believe in the Constitution, cannot be used as a justification for the taking of life for violence, for arrest, for detainment, for roughing people

up even for harassing people. And what is absolutely terrifying is that MAGA doesn't really care about that. I have a whole chapter in my book, The Echo Machine here about how the principles that this movement states and says that they hold dear, they don't really. They are not sincerely held. They are conveniently held. The Second Amendment as an absolute right to be armed in public. They hold that conveniently until it's not so convenient.

And with Alex Prady, it's not convenient because when you look at the video, you see that he didn't brandish his firearm. He wasn't a threat to agents. He wasn't even protesting. It wasn't a protest. He was there observing and then tried to go to the defense of a woman who was pepper sprayed. He was then disarmed. He never reached for his gun.

An officer disarmed him. And then they shot him dead. It is no longer convenient to claim that having firearms with you is not a problem. And so now they've gone to, well, he had a gun. Even if it was a protest, the law says that that's okay. So Rand Paul on this issue is completely right. All right, this clip is getting a lot of attention and for good reason. Melania Trump appeared on Fox's The Five.

She appeared on the Five because this ridiculous, pathetic documentary, so-called documentary about her life, even though it's apparently about one month of her life is coming out. The total documentary budget was 40 million, 28. million of which reportedly went to Melania Trump. Jessica Tarlov, who is the lone left winger on Foxes the Five, asks Melania a pretty basic question about Donald Trump being a unifier. And I want you to listen to the answer that Melania Trump gives. It's great to have you. Something struck me in the trailer. So the president is standing there and gets asked, you know, what will your legacy be? What's your focus for the second term? And he says, I want to be remembered as a

peacemaker and you added and unifier. And I'm curious as to what role you play in that or what your designs are for how you can help facilitate that because there's no question that the country needs a lot of unifying at this moment. Yes, it does, but I think he's unifier. He's unifier, not just here, United States, but around the world. He stopped many wars. And as well, he, he's a Here in United States, it's a lot of opposition and that's the problem, right? So the people are not agreeing with everything that's what he does. And they just need to come on the same page and see that he wants to make America only safer and better.

Listen, I am not mocking someone for speaking English with an accent. Melania is from Slovenia. English is like her second or third or fourth or seventh language. You know, she supposedly speaks seven languages or whatever number. That's totally fine. What is really interesting to me is the right wing reaction to language and how selective it is. Because for years, MAGA types have been screaming at immigrants. How long have you been here? Learn to speak good English. If you're in America, speak English. You, they don't even speak the language when they come here. They're barely coherent. They're not able to express complex ideas in a grammatically accurate way. You see this constantly aimed at Hispanic immigrants, at Asian immigrants, basically

anybody who's not white. Melania Trump has been in the United States for decades. She has been first lady and is again first lady. She's been living in elite circles. She's had every resource imaginable. And her English is very rough. I mean, just basic. grammatical mistakes. That is not a moral failing. Language acquisition is hard. Accents persist. That's fine. But where are the MAGA people now? Where are the Fox hosts asking? How long has she been here? A first lady who can barely speak English with making basic grammar errors? Where are the MAGA commenters going speak English? Where are the right wing memes mocking her for her accent? They're not doing it. And we know why. Because it's not really about language or a

assimilation or American culture. It's who counts as American if you are MAGA. When a brown immigrant speaks poor English, they're portrayed as an invader. They're a burden. They don't belong here. And when a white European married to an American billionaire speaks English that's just as bad or worse, and by the way, often when it's aimed at Hispanic immigrants, it'll be people who have been here seven months. She's been here 30 years. But it's a very much. elegant and it's mysterious and it's exotic and it's different standards. Same country, same language, different reaction. The MAGA obsession would speak English was never about communication. It was about marking who is an outsider and who is accepted here. And it was about drawing a line between

real Americans and those people, those other people. Melania's white, wealthy, European, married to Trump. She's in. Accent doesn't matter. Atrocious grammar doesn't matter. Incoher. doesn't matter. She were a Mexican immigrant or a Syrian refugee or a Haitian asylum seeker. The exact same speech skill would be turned into a Fox News Chiron about cultural collapse. Look at who's coming in. They're invading. This is how identity politics on the right works. Bonus clip from Maria Bartaromo. This is less about English and more about the incoherence of the substance. Here she was also interviewed promoting this documentary by Maria Barteroma. He would like to have a country that all of the people can walk down the street and not to be harassed or murdered or women raped.

I think it's very important. And what happened a few years ago, so many criminals came over the border. And he closed the border now a while back already. At some point he closed it. Before now, I don't know. We need to take care of our citizens. You know what's so ironic about this. What's so ironic about this is she says, you know, we need a country where women won't be harassed or raped.

And Donald Trump, her husband, has been accused of harassing and sexually assaulting dozens of women. She says, we need a country where that doesn't happen. Well, your husband is one of the people accused of doing that. She argues that she argues that as a matter of principle, it's great that Trump closed the border so people stop coming in. But she's one of the people that came in. And for a period of time she was working here without authorization to work. Her parents came here through the very chain migration that Trump has criticized.

She is ever. She and her husband are everything that she is criticizing. And it is incredible that the irony is totally lost on your average MAGA. We're going to take a break. We've got a phenomenal show today. Make sure you're getting my daily podcast. Apple podcasts, Spotify, player.fm, dog catcher, podcatcher. You know, I could just go on listing.

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made some of you uncomfortable about what happens when you deputize ice like a domestic army and send them into communities to provoke confrontations, which is what they're doing. And some people twisted the things I said into me saying protesters are violent, which is not what I said and not what I believe. I'm talking about my segment earlier this week where I said the way this is all shaking out, ICE agents are going to end up getting killed. So let me explain further here. Most protesters are, of course, peaceful.

Most protesters aren't even protesters. I mean, I think it's important to say Alex Preti wasn't even really a protester. He was just there observing and then tried to come to the defense of a woman who was pepper sprayed. But it wasn't even really part of a protest. But even if it were and there are protests, the protesters are peaceful. And most people filming ICE are peaceful. And most people confronting federal agents. are unarmed and they're trying to document what they see as abuses.

And even if they were armed, they might be legally armed like was Alex Pruddy. The problem here is not protesters. The problem is scale and escalation created deliberately from the top down. So far it has been civilians who keep ending up dead, including Alex Prattie and Renee Good and people who have died in ICE custody as well, which we shouldn't forget. videos of people being shoved and beaten and shot and then smeared as violent after the fact. And this is documented rather than hypothetical. We know it's happening because we have it on video.

But the uncomfortable truth is that you can't build a system of constant physical confrontation and pretend that the violence is only going to go in one direction forever. That's the point that I'm making. Humans don't work that way. Probability doesn't work that way. What people mean when they talk about stochastic outcomes where there's no central order, no one's saying go shoot an ice agent, a system that creates a huge number of confrontations statistically predicts someone will snap and that doesn't require a plan, a leader, an organized movement

or so-called protesters that plan to be violent. Now some of you might be saying, oh, stochastic, you've talked about that before. Stochastic terrorism. Stochastic terrorism is when leaders normalize violence and dehumanization in the abstract, and then a random actor takes it literally and goes out and attack someone. What we are seeing here is even broader than that. This is stochastic escalation. Flooding cities with armed agents, shoving people, spraying people, threatening people for speech,

that creates a paramilitary theater and it makes violent incidents more likely. It's not a moral claim about what should happen. I'm against all of the violence. It's a descriptive claim about what tends to happen in real societies. Critics want to pretend I am saying protesters are wanting to be violent or will become violent. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that federal policy that deliberately creates physical conflict as a governance strategy is going to lead to unpredictable outcomes where the violence will go both ways.

Think about an escalation loop where the administration. sends agents everywhere. People protest. Agents escalate. Someone gets hurt. Anger grows so there's more protests. So more agents are sent. Someone fires a gun. And the government says that's terrorism. We're going to crack down even harder and send more people. That is how democracies spiral into security states through a feedback loop of fear, violence and repression. And political theorists have warned about this for a very long time. Hobbs argued that chaos just. to fight authoritarian power. And modern authoritarian's learning to manufacture chaos for political gain is only going to feed

that loop. Order through fear is one of the oldest tricks in politics and it is very effective. If an ice agent is killed, Trump does not lose politically. He wins because he gets an emergency. He gets a propaganda moment. He gets a justification to send even more troops and do more speech restriction and centralized power even more. This is why chaos is politically useful to authoritarian because it lets them present repression as bringing stability.

Things are so chaotic, I'm going to bring you stability by repressing speech, by repressing rights. This is why I said escalation is the policy and not just an accident because you can't separate what happens in the streets from the incentives at the top. We are already seeing agents telling people they will be punished for speech. We had the clip on Wednesday. If you raise your voice, I will erase your voice. That's what a border patrol agent said to someone. That should alarm anyone who cares about basic constitutional rights. Federal agents threatening punishment for speech is not law enforcement.

It's intimidation and it is authoritarianism. So when I say this isn't going to end well and it's an ice agent is going to get killed, I mean it literally. I'm not, I'm not being rhetorical. This will not end well for protesters. This will not end well for immigrants. will not end well for civilians caught in the middle. And it probably is going to lead to some ice agents being thrown into these confrontations and ending up on the wrong side of it. Statistically,

because of the chaos that they are generating. This is what happens when a government chooses confrontation as governments instead of, hey, let's deescalate. Let's have democratic accountability. Let's actually do what we said, which is we're just going after violent people who are here undocumented, who have committed other crimes, not people just working and parent in this. This is how security states are built. You manufacture an emergency and then you use the reaction to it to manufacture another one and another one. Violence is wrong against civilians, against ICE agents, against anybody. Escalation makes violence more likely. Pretending otherwise is fantasy.

So this has to stop. This is how systems break. This is how ordinary people get crushed in the middle. But we also have to be aware about the predictable. and expected consequences of such a policy being escalated and carrying out in an increasingly widespread and out of controlled way. Donald Trump posted something completely unhinged on truth social threatening Iran with what he describes as a massive armada and warning that the next attack would be way worse than previous strikes. The winner of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize

wrote that the fleet is ready to act with speed and violence and warned Iran that time is running out. He marketed himself as the anti-war president. Tulsi Gabbard, who was the only anti-war Democrat, then became a Trump supporter and said Trump's really the only anti-war candidate. And he was going to end endless wars and keep us out of wars and whatever. And there, I guess there are people out there who still believe he is the peace candidate. He posted the following, quote, a massive armada is heading to Iran. It is moving quickly with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose. It is a larger fleet headed by the great aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln, than that sent to Venezuela. Like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission with speed and violence if necessary. Hopefully

Iran will quickly come to the table and negotiate. a fair and equitable deal. No nuclear weapons, one that is good for all parties. Time is running out. It is truly of the essence. As I told Iran once before, make a deal. They didn't. And there was Operation Midnight Hammer, a major destruction of Iran. The next attack will be far worse. Don't make that happen again. Thank you for your attention to this matter. So here's what's going on. Trump will often bomb or threaten to bomb people when he's dealing with a domestic crisis. Many of you wrote to me and said, David, the threats against Iran are because Trump has the ICE fiasco to deal with, the tariff fiasco to deal with, the price level fiasco to deal with, the health fiasco to deal with. You get the

picture. I have no idea whether it's deliberate to distract or not deliberate, but it doesn't seem to work. People don't seem to be getting distracted from the domestic fiascos when Donald Trump threatens a foreign country. Now, in reality, Trump is not the peace president. He has launched strikes. He's threatened regime change. He kidnapped Maduro. He escalated military confrontations. And today, it's another threat for another conflict in the Middle East. And it comes with rising tensions with Iran reports that U.S. warships and aircraft are being deployed in the region. As Trump says, the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Group. And Trump even references the prior U.S. strike on Iran and warns the next one will be even worse.

So anti-war president, that idea, that's gone. Put that in the toilet and flush it 10 to 15 times. But what is especially striking is that this is all happening. I won't say it's too distract from, but it is happening concurrent with domestic chaos, scandals, narratives about Trump's administration that are collapsing. And he starts threatening foreign countries. Now maybe it sometimes feels deliberate like a distraction. maybe it feels like impulse. But there is a consistency to it, which is that Donald Trump

escalates rhetorically on Iran, Venezuela, China, whoever. And then sometimes the conversation would shift away from the domestic crises. The problem for Trump is that whether it's deliberate or not, it doesn't seem to be distracting people right now. People are so in general, Americans care less about foreign policy than domestic policy because domestic policy is about the right here. Polling for decades has told us that. But it's also not working to go, oh, we might, an armada's going to Iran. It's also not working because the American people are so enraged and disgusted more than 50% of us with what is happening domestically in this country. The health care premiums that have skyrocketed are the prices, which were supposed

to come down, but just kind of keep going up, not that fast, but they keep going up. The ice fiasco, which is just a complete perversion of what Donald Trump said he was going to do originally, which is going to get undocumented violent criminals out. They're killing citizens, folks. They're killing citizens at this point in time. The health crisis and the cover up that goes with it, the Epstein files, I could go on. And so it doesn't seem to have the political power of distraction, whether it's deliberate or not from the Trump administration. People are focused like a laser beam on the domestic issues right now. Now, I do think it's important just to remember that the anti-war branding of Trump about himself was very hollow. And I know that there are people who fell for it.

There were people on the right who fell for it and said, oh, Hillary will start four wars. Kamala will start five wars. They fell for it. But there were also some people on the left who fell for it and said, you know, I got to give Trump credit. My big thing is anti-war. Trump's the guy with the real anti-war rhetoric right now. And I warned you. And I said, he said, he's, you know, he's He has never been anti-war in principle. He was anti-war in slogans. He was anti-war in campaign speeches if he perceived it would be useful for him. But in practice, he has embraced military strikes and saber-rattling and unilateral action

if the sissy Europeans don't want to help us. And his base wanted a president, I guess, who convinced them that he would stop the endless wars, but they got someone who is doing very much the opposite. And the craziest part is that it doesn't even serve Trump at the same. this point because people are exhausted, markets are nervous, allies are skeptical, people are wondering why are my friends and family, whether they're immigrants or not getting wrapped up in these operations and why haven't the prices come down and why has health care doubled? This is not strategic foreign policy and it is not a functional domestic distraction policy

either. The things we can say are that this is extraordinarily impulsive, performative to a great degree and really dangerous for the long-term stability of the United States. Anti-war Trump. Give me a break. Scams and identity theft rarely start with a hacked password. They usually start when your personal information is easy to find online. Your address, phone number, relatives, employment history. That information lives on countless data broker sites on the internet, accessible to almost

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Scott Jennings used before you get your knickers in a twist, I am not suggesting that due process is denied to anybody. But let me zoom out and kind of explain what I mean here. This is bigger than one shooting. This is bigger than one city. This is bigger than like a chaotic couple of weeks or months of raids. Fundamentally, this is a question of is there accountability at the top? The ICE deployments are not random events.

They're not accidents. These are policy choices made by Trump and his top officials. You don't flood cities with heavily armed federal agents and escalate confrontations in civilian spaces and then act shocked when people get killed. It is the foreseeable outcome of militarizing immigration enforcement and turn to the it into a political spectacle, which is now backfiring significantly. This is where people like Greg Bovino and Christy Noem come in. They are not commentators.

They're not random surrogates. They are running operations. They're defending them. They're justifying the tactics. Bovino before he was demoted was out there throwing CS gas canisters struggling to open them, by the way, but throwing CS gas canisters. Christy Noam has participated in these raids, sort of superfinding. right for optics, but she's there. She's out there. She knows what's going on. And when the state

kills people as a result of policy, responsibility doesn't stop with the person who pulled the trigger. Now, you might be laughing and saying, David, even the person who pulled the trigger isn't being held responsible. And of course, for now, that is true. But my point is that there's a chain of command. It's basic rule of law thinking. There is a chain of command that is not just one person. If investigations show criminal misconduct, these people should be subpoenaed. They should be investigated. They should be charged if appropriate. And yeah, they should be perp walked. Now, we've done this before and other democracies have done this before. After Watergate, it wasn't just low-level staffers. Nixon's top aides went to prison. H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell. The message was simple.

Power doesn't immunize you from consequences after the Iraq war torture scandal. Not as good of an example, but you had military officers and intelligence officers who were investigated. Some were court-martialed. And I believe that there were some convictions. It was not nearly enough accountability. Whatever it was and my memory is not perfect of it. It was at least a recognition that just following orders isn't a defense.

And I think that that's an important thing. In South Korea, we talked about this on the bonus show, presidents and top officials have gone to prison for corruption and abuse of power. It's taken seriously. In France, former presidents and prime ministers have been prosecuted and convicted. In Brazil, top political leaders have been jailed in these anti-corruption investigations. In Germany, after reunification, East German officials were prosecuted for state violence and for border killings.

That sounds familiar. In my birth country of Argentina and the neighbor. neighboring Chile, military leaders were eventually prosecuted for dictatorship era crimes. This is what semi-functional systems do. They treat state power as something that requires accountability rather than a loyalty test. For Trump, it's just a loyalty test. That's all that really matters. If we had an administration that truly respected democracy, Republicans would be screaming

about we need tribunals and we need handcuffs. And they would be running graphics with mugshots and chants. lock them up. So I think we need to be consistent. You don't get to militarize immigration enforcement, flood communities with federal agents, normalize lethal force in civilian settings, and then kind of shrug and get to move on. If Trump's administration is setting policy that predictably leads to civilian deaths, which is what happened, it has to be investigated at the highest level. And if it stems from top officials encouraging reckless tactics, which we believe it does, lying about events, which they're doing all the time, obstructing accountability, which they're doing all the time,

you need to start with the subpoenas, with the indictments, and with the trials. If they're acquitted, cool, I don't want to lock up anybody unless they actually are found guilty or take a plea. But we need to have that. And this is not about revenge politics. This is just a very basic principle, a government that harms people has to answer for it. That's the principle. The alternative is what happens in authoritarian systems. The people at the top are protected. Everybody else is sacrificed. And they treat civilian deaths as acceptable collateral damage. And they move on and they dare you to complain or protest. We can't do that. It's not American. We cannot let Trump's top officials off the hook because accountability is inconvenient politically right now or because the

new cycle moves on. As a starting point for this, Democrats need to take the House in November. It's like a mere tiny little starting point. If wrongdoing happened, we got to drag the people responsible into hearings. And then if there are criminal referrals, we drag them into courtrooms and we do it in the public record. Not because we love it. Not because it makes us feel good about the country, but it makes us feel worse if they go with impunity. So while I wouldn't go, it's so awesome that we have so many top officials that need to be indicted. No, but it would be good if those who deserve.

to be indicted, get indicted, because otherwise we have no accountability whatsoever. Donald Trump is out there insisting his brain is perfect. And while doing that, he forgot the word Alzheimer's. This is, it's Kafkaesque, dare I say. Mel Brooks couldn't write a better comedy than this. Donald Trump was talking to New York magazine about his father's health, his father who famously had Alzheimer's. And he said his dad had no major problems except one and then Trump glitches out, sentence. Here is the exact writing from the piece. Fred Trump died in 1999 at age 93. He had,

Trump said, a heart that couldn't be stopped with almost no health conditions to speak of throughout his long life. He had one problem, Trump said. At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do they call it? He pointed to his forehead and looked at his press secretary. for the word that escaped him. Alzheimer's, Leavitt said. Like an Alzheimer's thing, Trump said. Well, I don't have it. Is it something you think about at all?

I asked. Nope, I don't think about it at all. You know why? He said, because whatever it is, my attitude is whatever. The president of the United States, who we suspect is suffering from cognitive decline, is telling us he definitely doesn't have Alzheimer's. while forgetting the word for Alzheimer's. Now, that's not proof of anything, but you really can't

script this. I mean, it's like a late stage absurdism of sorts. Now, I want to be very clear about a couple different things. This is obviously not a diagnosis. A single word lapse doesn't prove anything. People forget words all the time, you know, stress and age and fatigue. It happens to a lot of people. It happens to everybody. But the context is important. Trump is the one who turned cognitive tests, brain injury tests into a personality trait. He's the one who constantly brags about acing them. He's the one who made person, woman, man, camera, TV into a campaign slogan. So when he forgets the name of the disease that killed his father while claiming to be cognitively perfect, it is sort of weird and I would argue relevant. And it's an uncanny pattern overall. So far,

so many of the things Trump says as accusations end up being admissions. COVID is a hoax and he gets COVID and he responds severely, like he was severely sick from it. Biden, you know, and from the MAGA movement of well, Biden is covering up pedophilia and this whole thing. Trump's name shows up repeatedly in Epstein documents and it's Trump who has worked to cover up the full release of the Epstein files. China and Russia will invade Greenland or is it Iceland if I don't do it. And he ends up confused between Iceland and Greenland and then says, we need to invade because otherwise they will. Well, how does that make it any better?

So when Trump spent years yelling Biden has dementia and then by Trump goes, I definitely don't have. What's that thing called? Oh yeah, Alzheimer's. Obviously we all go, man, does Trump have it? Is Trump actually the one who has it? It's not a medical diagnosis, obviously. But psychological projection is one of.

Trump's defining traits. And so many of the things he has projected onto others are things that apply to him. Now, back to this New York magazine profile piece. It goes further. Trump's niece Mary Trump says that she sees in Trump the exact same deer in the headlights look that she saw in his father as he declined. Not a diagnosis, but it's not nothing. That's someone who is there. Trump says, I don't think about cognitive decline at all. My attitude is whatever. Genetics will save me. Except we know Trump does think about it because he's regularly bragging about his cognitive tests. And by the way, why is he getting cognitively tested so often? Our guests earlier this week said he believes Trump is getting regular MRIs specifically to track what is going on with his brain. The bottom line here

is presidential health matters. Cognitive fitness matters. Transparency also matters. We don't know the truth about Trump's physical health. We don't know the truth about Trump's. cognitive health, but we do know that he's not transparent. And when the oldest president in American history publicly forgets basic words while insisting that his brain is perfect, it's kind of weird. And it's something that we would talk about, not because it proves anything, but because pretending it means nothing is definitely not appropriate. Tell me the truth. Do you think Trump has Alzheimer's? Leave it in a comment. Send me an email info at David Pakman.com. If you were shopping for a new mattress, I would recommend you start by looking at Helix

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They'll even take away your old mattress. Go to Helix sleep.com slash Pacman and you'll get 20% off sitewide. The link is in the description. at what these people are saying about me. Friday feedback for the week. And by the way, a lot of people asking David, where'd you get that MAGA hat? I've been occasionally during the week wearing a MAGA hat that says make truth great again. This is one of our items. This is available on in our online store store.david packman.com. And I will say a little bit more about what's going on with the merch in a moment. All right. Justin wrote in and Justin says, Orange Man Bad. This whole thing is Joe

It seems you hate democracy. Biden encouraged illegal immigration and Trump was democratically elected to fix the problem. Now you cry dictator. He's called the president. He is in charge like a dictator, but democratically elected by the people. That is not true. It's not you don't get to be a dictator just because you were democratically elected. There are supposed to be checks and balances.

We have Congress. We have a court. We have more. But okay, this person is not going to understand. Poor Renee, her wife screamed, why did you use real bullets? Wow, just wow, so brainwashed, so sad, you don't help. I don't agree with how you put things. However, I do watch a lot of your videos.

So in case you wonder why so many people aren't subscribed, Florida seems to be taking the correct approach. Well, you know what, Justin? I sometimes do wonder, why are so many people not subscribed? And then I remember that a lot of people believe absolute and utter bullshit like you do. And that's why so many people aren't subscribed. So listen, if you want shows that aren't going to blow smoke up your whatever and that aren't going to sugarcoat and are just going to be honest, this is the show for you.

And there are others as well. And I would invite you to subscribe. And I would love it if you subscribed. However, if that is not what appeals to you, if you just want unhinged praise of Donald Trump and irrelevant criticisms of Joe Biden, guilty is charged. This show is not going to be for you. All right. Cion wrote in and says, since I started wearing your merch, hi, David, I recently ordered

and subsequently started wearing one of the show's sweatshirts. And I have had several really nice interactions from people who were fans of yours. Wide ranging demographics, old, young, white, Latino. They were all pumped to see an approach a fellow fan. And to me, it speaks to the quality of your work and your character. Anywho, glad to have you as a rational voice. And I look forward to future Parkman. Oh, no, future Parkman show episodes.

All right, let's assume that that was just an erratic auto correct. I have heard from so many people who have said, David, I was wearing your t-shirt at the gym. I was wearing the fake MAGA hat that says make truth great again, out. And people approached me. And we had great conversations with mutual fans of the show. I love that. I love that. You know, we we make very little money with the merch.

Like the profit margin is often like a couple percent. In fact, we had stuff mispriced at the beginning. And we were losing like a dollar for every t-shirt we sold, which is not a good way to run a business, okay? But these are really a conversation inducing pieces. And I love hearing from people that they are having those those great conversations. All right. O.C. Kings fan wrote on the subreddit, what happens if Nicholas Maduro is found not guilty? Maybe a stupid question, so forgive me, but given the thin evidence and lack of procedural knowledge by Trump's DOJ and other recent indictments. It's pretty conceivable that a jury will come back with a not guilty verdict in the

Maduro trial. What happens then? Do we say, whoopsie, guess you can go home now? Does he retake power? Does the Trump administration ignore the verdict and put him in Guantanamo or an ICE facility generally genuinely curious? So here's my expectation on this. I talked to a couple lawyers. The lawyers I spoke to said their expectation is that if as if this legal process against, as the legal process against Maduro goes forward, if, prosecutors start to get the sense that it is it is thin, that it's not a case likely to yield a conviction, um, that they may push for a plea deal and it may be a more and more favorable plea deal. And it could even be you get to go back to Venezuela, but you can never hold power again or

something that is relatively pathetic and has very little teeth. I think it is completely plausible that there is not a conviction of Maduro because it does seem like the case against him by the law. Remember, I think Maduro is terrible. I'm not a supporter of Maduro for all the people writing me these notes, David, you, Maduro supporting socialist Marxist what I am against Maduro. I'm also against the U.S. doing these incursions and deciding who is the next leader of Venezuela. That doesn't go well. But I'm not a Maduro guy. But the evidence against him does seem relatively weak based on the letter of the law. And I think it is completely plausible. I'm not going to say that he is acquitted, but that there is no. conviction and that a very favorable plea deal is offered as prosecutors determine, we are not likely to get a conviction here. Devourer of Redditors is pushing for Schumer Jeffries, 2028.

I think this is satire. I don't know. The post is, I'm tired of all these do nothing corporatist Democrats. We need some strong progressives who aren't afraid to wield their police. political capital for all its worth. We need an FDR, an LBJ, a JFK, probably if he weren't assassinated. And that's why Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are the winning ticket in 28. This sentiment was not welcomed with open arms on the subreddit. You might not be surprised to hear. I assume that this is satire. I don't think someone who wants strong progressives

unafraid to wield political capital would say that Schumer Jeffries is the right to. ticket, but maybe there's something missing here and it is serious. Fanatic watch wrote on the subreddit. I'm not worried about America's future. When Trump gets out and a new president replaces him and reverses many of his antics, a lot of leaders worldwide are just going to move on to and think of the Trump era as just a one-off mishap and nothing more. Most Europeans are smart enough to realize that Americans by large don't share the same. world view as Trump and that the American market is too big to ignore. I am not so sure. Listen, this is an optimistic perspective, which is as bad as Trump is and as much as Trump

has ruined relationships with allies around the world, as disastrous as he has been. On some level, other countries value the relationship with the United States and are going to come right back to us when Trump is gone. That would be great. The reason I'm skeptical is that a lot of other countries take their deals seriously. They don't break them on a whim like Donald Trump did with the Iran nuclear deal or whatever else. And so when China reorganizes its soybean imports to come from other countries, not the United States, I don't know that China's going to be as willing to go, all right, yeah, forget

that. We'll cancel that deal with Brazil and whoever else and we'll just go back to the United States. I'm just not sure that that's going to happen. So this is an optimistic perspective, but I don't know that it. it is an accurate one. AMC. Martin wrote on YouTube, it's not fair that Trump can forget he's president, but the rest of us can't. Yes. No, I have nothing to add to this one. This one is a nice one that combines disdain over Trump's authoritarianism with concerns about Trump's cognition. I have nothing to add, just like very well done and nicely, uh, nicely executed. Mike Tyke wrote

on YouTube. I love the pathological way that this country tries so hard to keep the panic level low. On the wrong track, really, never mind just leaving the track. The country has derailed, left the track, gone over a cliff and crashed and exploded at the bottom of a freaking ravine. Yeah, you know, what's really wild about being in the United States right now, you know, you look at the country on a map. Some countries don't have maps. No, sorry, sorry. That's that's an old classic. You look at the U.S. on a map. It is a massive country geographically over 340 million people. And we have a lot of people in this country who agree that the country is out of control. The problem is some of us believe the country is out of

control because of Donald Trump. On the other hand, there are Trump supporters who believe the country is out of control because of Biden and Trump is going to be the only thing that fixes the country. And so that is why we don't have, you know, the shock from Europeans and South Americans who write to me and they go, what on earth is going on in this country, David, in the United States, what is happening? They are not cognizant of the fact that there are tens of, you know, a lot of these countries have five million people. There are tens of millions of Americans who voted for Trump, think he's doing a good job, don't have any concerns that his brain is failed. don't have any concerns that he's an anti-democratic authoritarian. They're just like, yeah, this is the guy to fix the problem. And if that's where you start, it's going to be tough to talk your way out of it.

Very, very tough to talk them out of it for sure. We have a phenomenal bonus for a show for you today. Sign up at join packman.com. Get instant access. It's the best. It's the most direct. It's the most efficient way of supporting the David Packman show. I tip my hat to you.

didn't screw up my hair that badly. I'll see you on the bonus show.