The David Pakman Show - Even they can’t pretend anymore

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Aaron Parnas, political commentator, attorney, and host of The Parnas Perspective, joins us to discuss threats to independent media, the recent Supreme Court decisions, the midterms, and much more… -- Tucker Carlson announces plans to launch a new political party and criticizes Donald Trump by claiming he is not in control of his own life -- Donald Trump promotes Micron on social media for investing $250 million in children's accounts while failing to disclose his stock in it -- Roughly 8 million Americans lose their health insurance coverage after enhanced ACA subsidies expire and eligibility rules change -- Donald Trump delivers an incoherent speech in North Dakota where he performs a double-jerk dance to honor Teddy Roosevelt -- Maria Bartiromo and other Fox News anchors attempt to spin a disappointing June jobs report that missed economic forecasts -- White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's former congressional campaign committee still owes over $326,000 -- JD Vance speaks to military troops and his joke about Joe Biden fails to elicit any laughter or applause from the silent audience -- Chris Wright claims that the Democrats cause widespread blackouts while multiple states experience major power outages -- On the Bonus Show: Mitch McConnell was found unconscious last month, climbers get arrested after scaling the Empire State Building for a marriage proposal, the chilling reality of Trump's July 4 fireworks display, and much more... 💦 Pocket Hose: Text PAKMAN to 64000 for two free gifts with purchase of Pocket Hose Ballistic 🍴 Forkful: Get 50% off your 1st box + 10% off your next 3 boxes at https://davidpakman.com/forkful 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code DAVID for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.com/david 💳 PDS Debt: Get your free assessment & find the best option for you at https://pdsdebt.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start (01:18) Tucker Carlson announces a new party (09:11) Trump promotes a company he has stock in (15:48) Trump kicked 8 million off health insurance (24:28) Trump dances for Teddy Roosevelt (33:42) Fox hosts twist Trump's poor economy (40:21) Karoline Leavitt delinquent on campaign debt (47:35) Aaron Parnas Substack Live (1:05:54) JD Vance's charisma issues continue (1:13:58) Power outages happening under Trump+ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump may have just done something to hand Democrats millions of new voters. I don't think he realizes it. We also now are hearing that Tucker Carlson is going to talk about a new political party, to which I say, great, blow up the Republican Party. I love that. Fox News practically short circuits trying to explain another disappointing jobs report. And Donald Trump is publicly promoting a company in which he personally owns stock. And everybody's just supposed to pretend this is kind of normal.

We'll follow J.D. Vance, the vice president, delivering one of the most painfully awkward speeches I've ever seen. He's just not very good at this. And Trump's energy secretary invents a fantasy about Democrats ripping people's air conditioners out of the wall. Meanwhile, power outages are happening now under Trump during the heat wave. And we also have one of the strangest Trump speeches in a while, including Trump's suggestions, suggesting a threesome with his sons. I wish I were kidding. I'm sorry if people are eating as they listen today. But that is just some of what is on today's show. The newest secret weapon for Democrats may now be our old friend Tucker Carlson. If Tucker does what he actually says he's going to

do, which I'll explain in a moment, it could blow a hole straight through MAGA and straight through the Republican Party. So let me explain the circumstances. As many of you know, for years, Democrats have had to deal with third party candidates pulling votes from the left. You've got the green party, no labels, left-wing independent candidates. And just about every election, there was a concern that enough left-leaning voters might peel away and vote for one of these third-party candidates with no shot and that it would change the outcome. And in fact, In fact, we have elections over the last four election cycles where if you look at some individual states, you could make the argument that some states might have gone to a Republican because

the Democratic candidate lost enough votes to one of these third party or independent candidates. Now imagine that Republicans had to start dealing with that. And that is exactly what Tucker Carlson is now openly talking about in an amazing interview. He says he wants to help build a new political party because in his words, America has become a one party state posing as a democracy. This is something a lot of people like to say, which is there's really no practical difference between Democrats and Republicans. I don't think that's true.

I think there's too many ways in which Democrats and Republicans are similar, but there's a lot of ways in which they are really different. For example, we would have Roe v. Wade right now if Hillary Clinton had one in 2016 rather than Trump. Roe v. Wade is a big deal. That is a major difference. Okay. Tucker says he hasn't spoken to Donald Trump since the strikes on Iran.

We know that Tucker went to the White House multiple times to try to convince Trump do not go to war with Iran. Of course, Donald Trump did. And then Tucker drops what maybe is the most shocking line of this entire interview, which is he says Trump is not a man in charge of his own life. Think about just how extraordinary that is. If MSNBC reported this sort of stuff, CNN, whatever, me, it is one of the most influential right-wing media figures in the country. And what he's saying is it's not that Republicans are great, but they just need slightly better messaging or that they need to figure out a way to win more elections or he says the

Republican party itself has failed. And he wants to build something completely different. Now, when I hear something like this, I go directly to let's be as realistic about it as we can. Starting a successful third party is really difficult. I am a big advocate of reforming our elections and campaign finance such that it would be easier for third parties to become viable. Public financing of elections, shorten the campaign period, do away with the, you know, get rid of citizens united or come up with a new legal framework as far as campaign finance goes,

fine. But the way it is right now, what we have is a history kind of littered with third parties that never became anything because ballot access is difficult and fundraising is difficult. We have a winner take all electoral system rather than a ranked choice voting or transferable vote system, which I am in favor of. But the part that really matters is that to be disruptive, a third party doesn't actually have to win anything. It just has to take enough votes away from Republicans to change the outcome. And so I'm doing the very simple math. If Tucker, first thing is, even though there are some people on the nominal left kind of toying with Tucker, Tucker is out flanking the left and give me a break. Okay. Mostly Tucker is going to be appealing to

people on the right who would be likely Republican voters. It only takes a small portion of Republican voters going, I'll go for this Tucker thing to take enough votes from Republicans to hand Democrats a victory. And if Tucker convinces a few percentage points of Republican voters that Trump betrayed America first and the Republican Party has sold you out and you've got to vote for a new movement that is devastating in competitive House races for sure. It could affect Senate and even gubernatorial races. And at least theoretically, that third party from Tucker could destroy a Republican presidential candidate's chances of winning and hand the victory to the Democrat. Now, I do think it's important just to mention these aren't moderate suburban voters who would

likely to switch to something like whatever Tucker has in mind, these would be some of the more hardcore right wingers. And a lot of them have trusted Tucker for a long time. And they are exactly the kinds of voters that Republicans can't really afford to lose. And there's this insane irony in this entire situation because MAGA spent so long mocking Democrats over supposed of divisions and they love talking about, you know, you've got the centrist Democrats fighting with the progressives and Democrats are split. And if you're split, you can never win. And look now at where Republicans are finding themselves.

Elon Musk floated his own political party. He kind of got bored with it. And I think realized it's not as interesting as I thought. It's kind of difficult and annoying. So he's not doing it, but he's talked about it. And now you've got Tucker Carlson saying, oh, he's going to try to build some third party as well. And then even if you're not into the idea of a Tucker third party, you've got a lot of right wing voices that are at least questioning Donald Trump. They still want to be in the Republican

party. They don't want to go third party, but they want to get the MAGA influence out of the Republican party. And some of them might be saying, well, this is an alternative. Tucker's idea is certainly an alternative. This is Republican in fighting. And there's another Republican battle forthcoming as well. We could very much end up in a situation where 2028's candidate is determined in a very ugly primary of something like a Vance versus Rubio that even further splits the Republican party. And those tensions could create the sort of seeding ground that makes it even easier for someone like a Tucker to say, hey, come over this way. So Democrats don't need Tucker to agree with them on policy and Tucker is not going to agree with Democrats on policy. What would be great

for Democrats is for just enough Republicans to go, I am sick of my party. And I don't know, Tucker's got some good ideas. Maybe I'll go that way. And this is only possible because we have a winner take all first pass the post system. And because of that system, if a party can get two, three, four, five percent of the vote and pull it mostly from one party, That changes an election. So I hope Tucker follows through could be one of the biggest political headaches for Republicans in a long time. And if you're a Democrat watching this unfold or you're a left leading independent, it is really tough not to look at this and say to yourself, please proceed governor. Absolutely. So let's root on the idea that Tucker would do this.

It would be just a delightful layer of chaos to add to what is almost certainly going to be a very chaotic 2028 Republican primary. Donald Trump just posted what he clearly thinks is a victory lap. He announced that Micron, the electronics company, is making a $250 million investment into so-called Trump accounts for kids. And Trump is posting about this as if it's proof that his policies are working and companies love them and we are now in a new golden age. But there is a very important piece of context that, oh, what a coincidence Trump forgot to mention, which is that Donald Trump is an investor in Micron. Trump owns Micron stock.

And Trump has even been caught promoting Micron right after he bought shares of the company. So Trump has, as is often the case, a personal interest here. First, let's look at Trump's post where he said, quote, big news. Micron, a truly great American company and one of the hottest. anywhere in the world has announced a historic $250 million investment in Trump accounts. This incredible gesture, oh, it's a gesture made by Micron's fantastic CEO, Sanjay Marotra, will make many children extremely happy someday in the not too distant future. This is the biggest corporate investment of its kind and will help jumpstart the American

dream for these fabulous children as we celebrate. America's 250th anniversary. This massive investment will help millions of American children and families get a strong start in life and give them real financial security. Micron is investing directly in the American worker and family, blah, blah, blah, micron, micron right. Micron isn't Micron great. Trump is funneling money into his own pocket. Let me remind you that we learned that on March 25th, Trump bought Micron stock personally. And the next day, he calls into Fox Newses the five. And he goes, I just met with Micron and it is such a hot company. I just left the head of Micron. It's one of the hottest companies. But yeah. Exactly. Trump is promoting micron after investing in micron. And now for

250 million in investments in these Trump accounts, which who knows what will ever happen with those accounts or the money, Trump has another opportunity to promote a company that he owns stock in. So think about what is going on for a second. Trump is finding every single way to funnel money into his own pockets. And he has a financial interest in the success of the company that he's saying is super hot. Now, Trump's position in Micron is relatively small compared to his overall wealth. And maybe the trades are handled by an outside manager or whatever. But none of this changes the basic conflict, which is that presidents usually go out of their

way to avoid even the appearance of using their office to help companies in which they personally have stock in or personally benefit from. And this is why previous presidents used blind trusts or totally divested from these sorts of individual holdings. Trump has made something like 3,700 individual stock trades during the second term. He's pocketed over a billion dollars from being involved in crypto. And it is naked corruption. Naked corruption. What we were told would happen is very different from what has actually happened. And again, if you're just a working class person who became convinced that Trump has my interests in mind and I'm going to vote for him and it's all going to be great.

As you see Trump promote companies he owns stock in and you see Trump promote crypto scams from which he is earning over a billion dollars and you are going, damn, gas at 385 makes it difficult for me to get to the end of the month with my budget and my income. Do you feel like you're being well served by Trump? And bigger picture, the public sees this stuff and goes, Is Trump serving the country or is Trump serving his own financial interests? And of course, this is nowhere near the first time we talked about other companies where we found out the exact same thing. This is why ethics rules exist.

This is why conflict of interest norms exist. We shouldn't as the American people and taxpayers be asking, who is the president working for? Is he working for us the American people? Or is he working for himself and to promote? companies in which he has a financial stake. And we know the answer. It's the latter. Now, imagine if this were any other Democratic president. Imagine if Biden owned Micron stock and then started promoting Micron and going Micron's hot. The CEO is great. And by the way, the company is also donating some money to my new pet project. Fox News would have breaking news

banners for a week. We'd have congressional hearings. People would be screaming about corruption and self-dealing and using the presidency for financial gain, and they'd be right. But when Trump does it, it's normal. And maybe that's really the biggest issue here, which is there's the 250 million, there's the micron stock and all of it. We're expected to just shut up. We're expected to stop asking questions because it's Trump. And again, the standards that apply to everyone else just disappear when it's Trump.

And we're supposed to clap and go Trump accounts, Micron, Sunday. Morrowtre so hot, but Trump's got a financial interest. And we're supposed to pretend that there's nothing there worth discussing. So listen, I don't know if where we stand now is that it's a waste of time to even talk about this stuff. Like do the people we care, but we're already not supporters of Trump and maybe Trump supporters don't care and won't care. So like is, is there still a point of talking about this stuff?

is in that people need to be informed, but I don't know that if they don't, if they wouldn't care if Trump shot someone on Fifth Avenue. Are they really going to care that Trump's promoting yet another company he has a financial staking? I don't know. Let me know what you think. Do any of these people care? And then we get to, this is even worse, then we get to health insurance.

There are eight million additional Americans who should. be ready to punish Trump and the Republican Party. They should be furious with Trump right now. And if even a fraction of them, remember what happened when they vote in November, Republicans should be absolutely destroyed. Now, let me tell you what is going on. We all remember the campaign promises lower costs of everything. Life will become more affordable. Americans will be better off and all of that stuff. We now have a new study which finds that about eight million Americans have lost their health insurance since Donald Trump took office a second time. It's an astonishing eight million people. Enrollment data finds that four million fewer people are enrolled in Affordable

Care Act plans compared to this time last year and then an additional 3.8 million have lost Medicaid or chip coverage. So you put those numbers together and you're talking about eight million people who had coverage before and now they don't. Was this an unavoidable natural disaster? Of course not. This happened because those enhanced Obamacare subsidies expired to the glee of Republicans. This made coverage more expensive for millions of people and other policy changes just set up more barriers to people keeping their coverage. Now, it's really important when we think this through to remember that for years, Republicans said we've got something better than the Affordable Care Act.

Trump went back. I mean, listen, it's it's satirical almost at this point, but it did happen. In July of 2020, Trump told Chris Wallace, we have a new healthcare plan. It will be signed into law in two weeks. It's been six years since that. We still don't even know what the plan looks like. But in theory, it was going to be cheaper. It was going to be better.

was going to give Americans better health care. And we've been hearing versions of that promise now for six years. And instead, if you look at the hard numbers, millions of people have simply lost their insurance. They don't have a replacement. They don't certainly don't have an improvement. They just no longer have insurance. And when you think about that number, eight million, that is eight. That's bigger than the population of many countries. And that's the number of additional people now going, can I have, can I afford to see a doctor? I have. I have. I have to see a doctor? I have a symptom. Hmm, what do I do? I need a prescription refilled. Can I afford that? I need a cancer treatment, but this is what my co-insurance or forget about co-insurance. Some might

may have catastrophic coverage with a high co-insurance. What is the out of pocket cost on that? If I'm a cash patient, I don't know that I can afford that. Or do I just hope nothing serious happens to me and maybe next year I can get coverage? Like, these are not abstract. questions when you are in a situation of need. Your family is in a situation of need. It's people's lives. And so I think that this should have major political implications. Trump announced we're having a giant midterm convention in September. I said yesterday. I think this is a very bad idea. He's obviously wanting to make the election about himself, but his approval is 30%. His approval on the economy is 27%. He thinks that this convention will energize Republicans and dominate.

the news. But the risk of doing that is that every single time Trump becomes the center of attention, voters should ask a really simple question. Am I actually better off than I was before? If you're one of the 8 million people who lost health insurance or one of the many millions more who kept it but your premiums went way up or your prescription drug prices went way up and your family's budget is now tighter, you don't even need. need Democrats or MSNBC or me going, this sucks. You've lived it. You have that experience.

And healthcare is one of the most powerful election issues because people feel it directly. Speeches can be ignored. You know, campaign ads can be ignored, whatever. But it's harder to ignore getting a letter from your insurance company saying, hey, your premiums going up 30 percent or canceling your plan because you simply can't afford it at all. So Republicans love talking about culture war issues, men and women's sports and all of this stuff. They're emotional. They do well on social media.

But that is not really what elections are decided by. Elections are decided by kitchen table issues. And there is no more emotionally salient and financially salient such issue than health care, medical bills, prescription drugs, whether you can afford to take your kid to the doctor or take yourself to the doctor. There are 8 million people who could decide this election. You don't even need all eight million to vote against Republicans. If some stay home and some vote against Republicans and whatever, that could be enough to absolutely

destroy Republican control of the House and Senate in November. So I think the story matters a lot. It's about health insurance, but it's also about broken promises that go directly to every single family. And I just suggest that people hold Trump to the promises he made. He said in indubitably, within a. day of me getting into power, life is going to get more affordable for everybody. And it's been the opposite. It's been the opposite everywhere. So go ahead, spend September holding this midterm convention

and say Republicans deserve to be rewarded. But the risk is that Americans will go, wait a second. This guy's been in power and none of the stuff he promised came true. The answer is obvious. I'm not voting for a single one of these Republicans. That's the idea. That's the goal. That's the risk to Trump. We'll see if it actually shakes out that way. I'm excited to tell you about the world's number one expanding garden hose and their brand new product, the pocket hose ballistic. I used to go through cheap hoses all the time because of the kinks and the leaks and the tangles.

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but you still care about the ingredients, you care about the quality. Forkful is the way to go. Go to David Pakman.com slash forkful and use the code Pacman for 50% off your first box plus 10% off your next three orders. The link is in the description. Shocking presidential moment yesterday as Donald Trump struggled to breathe while giving a speech impossible to catch his breath. the double jerk to Teddy Roosevelt and even suggested a threesome with his sons.

This is not some soap opera or science fiction story. This is the president of the United States. Here is Donald Trump looking at his sons and going, we're going to have a threesome. What is wrong with this guy? Is this a dementia moment? Is this something even worse? What the hell is going on here? He also received that incredible acknowledgement except for author and Douglas McArthur.

Arthur was his son, Douglas McArthur, great general. They're the only father and son pair to receive our nation's highest military award for courage above and beyond the call of duty. Now, as I see my two beautiful sun sitting there, I think I'm going to give one to myself, one to them and we'll have a threesome, okay? I'll pick out one of the two. I'll give them the Congressional Medal of Honor for something. What is wrong with Trump deteriorating quickly into delusional rantings?

Now, we're going to look at other moments, but I don't know that anything is as sick as what I just played for you. Now, at the end of the speech, Donald Trump paying homage to Teddy Roosevelt with some double jerk dancing. Dear God. So listen, I don't even think suggesting a threesome with his sons is the most concerning moment of the speech. I don't think doing the double jerk dance for the crowd is the most concerning moment of the speech. Donald Trump struggled to catch his breath and ranted incoherently. One of the things that we've been seeing is that when Trump has to stand, it's very physically taxing. And this is why most events are now with Trump sitting down at the Oval Office. And when the press is allowed in, he's already sitting. We've seen him the other day at the Senate,

just from walking into the Capitol building, he was struggling to catch his breath. And the crowd is silent as Donald Trump simply cannot catch his breath. And also what's coming out of his mouth isn't making a lot of sense. But he did all of these incredible things with pox and everything else. And we vanquished every foreign power from the hemisphere. And he raised the American flag on the far side. He raised. The American flag. Of the world, he had our American flag planted on every part of the world. This guy's not doing well.

And it almost, it's almost painful to watch. Trump's struggling to read the teleprompter recognizes a word. Thank God. By the grace of God, Trump finding a word he recognizes, loses his place on the teleprompter, trails off, goes back to the prompter. I don't think he can do this anymore. The Rough Riders victory at San Juan Heights led directly to the collapse of the Spanish line. Ah, the Spanish.

The members of NATO, but not very good members of NATO. They say, no, we don't want to help other people. What are we doing, huh? They are not behaving nicely, but they will learn. No one knows what the F he's done. talking about. And after they relinquished their grip on Cuba and Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico, Guam. Trump may be the most exciting moment was when Trump. I'm not big on speeches turning into weather reports. I'm not. That's not something that I usually like. But Donald Trump mentioned

that on July 4th, the day of his big speech, it's going to be 107 degrees in Washington, D.C. And I got to tell you, I like what Trump is suggesting here. Take a listen to this. Moments in our history, 250 years. Think about that. Three days from now, we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. What a document that was.

And this week, we look back on 250 years of glorious freedom. And we took so much time and so much time. and so much effort. And by the way, on July 4th, it's going to be approximately 107 degrees out. And I'm going to go and I'm going to make a really long speech just to show that I can do anything. Love it. It's going to be 107. Can you imagine going to this stupid speech from Trump and sitting there in direct sun, 107 degree heat with the fetid sannie cans and porta potty's and Trump not even respecting you enough to be on time.

I predict copious, copious medical emergencies. But you know what? Let's do that, sir. Let's see how that goes. Trump now moving to say people put algae in the reflecting pool. It's no longer like, oh, they put a slit in my rubber with a box cutter. Now it's the reason there's algae in the reflecting pool is because they put it in there. It is not lost on many in the audience.

I am wearing my American flag blue, which is a green color, make algae great again hat. The people love this algae stuff. I'll talk to you about the hats in a moment. But Trump now going, they put algae in my reflecting pool. They did. Sleepy Joe Biden spent millions of dollars trying to fix it and he was unable to do it. But we did it and it works beautifully. It's a beautiful. We got rid of the algae, which they put in. They put in algae. Who the hell put in an algae? They had a couple of people with signs, protect the algae.

Can you believe this? This world has gone crazy. I've started to get pictures from by by the way, no one put in algae. That's so stupid. I've started to get pictures of people who got the hat I'm wearing today, the make algae great again hat from our store, taking selfies of themselves. at the reflecting pool. And it's a very similar green. We've done a very good job with the trucker hat of getting the shade of green right. Anyway, the hats are available at store. David Pakman.com. All right, Trump then shifting into big, strong guy came up to me in tears and thanked me. It's shocking how men are always crying around Trump. They all think you're a genius. I'm the genius. I'm the one. Now, I'm only kidding. No, I told the story the other day for a first time.

A policeman came up to me, a big, strong, good-looking guy, and he said, sir, I want to thank you. Sir? Sir? He was sort of crying. I like that. Did you guys see that? He was sort of crying. Sir?

I want to thank you. He was almost sort of crying. I said, what do you want to talk to me about, officer? He was standing online. He was watching as I shook hands with people. Some of these people are extremely strong and shaking hands. They break your hand because they're so emotional. Sir, thank you very much.

You guys at NFL offensive linemen. Sure, I'd like to thank you very much. All right. Anyway, everybody's crying and thanking Trump. A moment that was very culturally interesting where Trump goes, who here has a 401k and like three people clap? And Trump goes, oh, it sounds like it's most of the audience. Sorry, sir, not true.

You that have 401ks, which are many. Who is a 401k? 4.1K. Yeah. Big percentage of the audience. Oh, three people clapped and drug goes, sounds like, sounds like everybody. And then as I mentioned, the speech ultimately wrapping up, Donald Trump barely surviving it, barely able to breathe with the double jerk dancing. Sir, with tears in my eyes, I say to you, make that July 4th, 7 degrees speech very, very long. I would absolutely love that. Remember the economic promises?

The economy is going to explode the second Donald Trump gets back into office and manufacturing is going to boom and hiring is going to soar and America will proudly enter a golden age. Reality keeps getting in the way of that. And the June jobs report came in weaker than economists expected. And it just so happened that Maria Bartaromo. And her friends were on the air live when the underwhelming June jobs report came in. And Maria goes, I'm a little disappointed, frankly, a little bit disappointed. All right. We got the number. Cheryl Casoni on it. Right to you, Cheryl.

We came in underneath expectations. We came in at 50,000 non-abarm jobs. The street was looking for 110,000. The other. So half the jobs that were expected. Yikes. Employment rate fell to 4.2% down from 4.3%, which it had been holding steady. for about three months. Looking at a few of the numbers just to give you a sense here. Again, that 57,000 number is for non-farm. Average hourly earnings up three and a half percent year over year. June government jobs coming in at 8,000. Remember, we don't get an estimate from that going into this report. Again, those factory jobs, manufacturing jobs 3,000. And then looking back at a couple of other things here, the under-employment rate, the U6 rate,

7.9% and then we're also looking at at let's see here payrolls yeah payroll revisions I got to give you this revision. May payrolls has just been revised to a hundred and twenty nine thousand April just got revised to a hundred and forty eight thousand a private sector jobs that came in at 49,000 the street was looking for a hundred and ten thousand so again I don't want to overstate. These are disastrous numbers. Half of what was expected in just about every category is what happened in June.

I'll say what the government is talking about exactly where these changes occurred within this report. Marine, then I will send it back to you in the panel for full reaction. But what they're saying here is that basically we saw trending up employment stories in professional and business services, social assistance, health care, leisure and hospitality lost jobs. So we saw an increase in health care, increase in social assistance, increase in professional business services, but we saw a fall in leisure and hospitality. That is the kind of the top line there. Labor force participation rate, that actually fell by 3 tenths of a percent to 61. They love that as a metric.

0.5 percent. And that's something that Mohamed Al-Aryon was talking about. It was at 61.8 percent, Maria. So again, different story than the other reports that we got, frankly, for March and for April and for the month of May. But again, lower numbers, and there's the market for you on your screen, Maria. Well, look at this market reaction. We are at the highs of the morning right now after these job numbers. The Dow Industrial's up 152, the NASDAQ up 134.

This feels like a Goldilocks story once again, Steve Moore. Yeah. All right. So disappointing numbers, but don't worry, it's Maria. And within moments of acknowledging that everything came in half of expectations, she pivots right back into propaganda. And she goes, Trump's been calling this the golden age. It certainly feels that way.

What? Everything's amazing now all of a sudden. You've got North Korean anchors taking notes and going, damn, I guess this is how we're supposed to do it. And Trump has been calling it the golden age. And I got to tell you, it certainly is feeling that way, Nancy. Yeah. Once again, we've got strong economic growth.

We've got a strong earnings period and a market that just won't quit. When you look at your own portfolio and what you're telling investors right now, Nancy, what would be an appropriate portfolio? So listen, they kind of have two competing jobs. One is they've got to tell you what's happening. And they did, which is these jobs numbers came in at about half of the expectations. The other job is you got to make sure viewers never stop feeling good about Donald Trump. And when the jobs numbers collide with propaganda, the propaganda seems to win.

And it's a very familiar pattern. If the numbers are strong, they go, Trump's an economic genius. If the numbers are weak, they say, don't worry about it. Trump's such an economic genius that it's going to be fine. If inflation goes up, it's someone else's fault. If unemployment goes up, there must be a hidden explanation. If hiring is slow, you just keep repeating golden age, golden age. until nobody notices. So it's not so much economic analysis, even though it's called Fox business.

It's public relations. It's PR. And the comparison people have been making to state-controlled, you know, North Korean television is not really about whether Fox is a government broadcaster. It's that they have this instinct. And their instinct is bad news when Trump is president means we reassure the audience. Everything is actually okay because we have Trump there. If the numbers are good, it's because of Trump. And if the numbers are bad, they don't matter because Trump is so good and the numbers are irrelevant. And that's what happened here. Now, I try to give a more nuanced view of the economy. It's a cop the economy is complicated. One jobs report doesn't define a presidency. One really good or bad jobs report wouldn't define a presidency. But if your approach is to spend years insisting

every positive number under your guy proves his brilliance, you can't suddenly, dismiss disappointing numbers when they arrive. Either the data matters or the data doesn't matter. You can't have it both ways. And judging from the reaction of Maria Bartaromo, even Fox News is finding it harder to pretend that the sales pitch is living up to or that the numbers rather are living up to the sales pitch. And if you want to get actual analysis of this stuff, I recommend starting with going straight to the data, to the reporting, start there. And then go to serious publications. And I won't even mention any because I know no matter which I say someone will have a problem

with it, but email me if you want to know what I consider to be the serious economic publications. But I think it's relatively obvious, which they are. And even better, just find individual economists that you trust. Many of them have substacks. You can go right to the source and just read what they have to say. Hey, this is really wild. Caroline Leavitt owes $300,000 that she is now delinquent on. Now, as I explain to you what's going on, as White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt spends just about every day standing in the White House press briefing room when she's not on maternity leave, which she's entitled to, of course.

I guess other people aren't, but she is. And she talks about this is a responsible, competent, accountable administration. But we have newly filed federal election commission disclosures. Caroline Levitt ran for Congress back in 2022. You might not have known that, but she was a candidate. And she still owes $326,000. Now, it's not that unusual to have some campaign debt. You know, candidates lose elections.

They wind down their campaign. And it can take a while to pay off vendors that you owe money to. That's not really the story. The story is what makes up a lot of that $326,000. More than 210,000 of the money that she owes should have been refunded to donors because the contributions exceeded the legal limit. In other words, people gave more than the federal law allows. Sometimes this is done on the expectation that the candidate's going to continue and then they

don't. You're supposed to send that money back to the voters. And according to the filing, that hasn't happened. The campaign doesn't have the money. And this is a debt that's been sitting there now for four years. Now, under federal law, Levitt isn't personally on the hook for the debt. The way that they're allowed to do it is, here's my campaign committee. It's a separate legal entity.

I'm not the personal guarantor. So I'm not saying she's personally delinquent on a loan. But this is a politically terrible look because these are the same people who never stop lecturing everybody else about. personal responsibility. If you're a working person and you're behind on your bills, you got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Get your budget balanced. Make some cuts. Stop buying lattes and avocado toast and take personal responsibility. You're a student struggling with student loans. Pay what you owe. Get a better job. If you're on government assistance, well, we're going to

try to kick you off and when it's one of their own with hundreds of thousands of dollars, unresolved, which by the way, is owed mostly to individual donors. Suddenly, it's like, oh, it's complicated and these rules are flexible and there's a whole other series of explanations. Now, there's another interesting twist to this entire story. An FEC complaint related to the campaign was filed back in 2022, but the FEC has been unable to take any enforcement action for more than a year because it doesn't have enough commissioners to operate. How convenient yet again, the people constantly demanding accountability from everybody else fiscal responsibility, follow the rules, live within your means. The spotlight is now on one of their own and the standards change. Imagine if a Democratic

White House press secretary had an old campaign with more than $300,000 in debt, including over 200,000, that is simply you should have refunded it years ago to your donors. And then they don't have any money in their campaign account. It would be wall-to-wall coverage on Fox News. Congressional Republicans would demand investigations. They'd say, we need hearings, we need subpoenas. And instead, because it's Caroline Levitt, most people don't even know about this because it's barely being reported.

So once again, one set of rules for everybody else, but one special set of rules for the people doing the lecturing. Now, I address this in my forthcoming book, pay attention, and I talk about how algorithms make it so that stories like this never see the light of day. We are now above 1,300 pre-orders for my book. Let's get to 2000. I would be humbled, flattered, and thrilled if you pre-ordered my book. You can find all the ways to pre-order it at David Pakman.com slash attention.

I worked very hard on this book. I'm currently in the arduous painstaking process of recording the audio book. And I would love it if you got yourself a copy. A limited number of signed copies are available at David Pakman.com slash attention. But you can get an audio book, ebook, whatever is your thing. 1,300 and something we're at. We're going for 2,000. I'll have another update on numbers next week.

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the link is in the description. It's great to be joined again by Aaron Parnas, who is a political commentator, an attorney, also host of the Parnas perspective. And am I even right about that, Aaron? Like, do you consider yourself a commentator? Because I think on some level, you also are just reporting what's in the news.

Yeah, I try not to be a commentator. I try to just be a reporter as much as possible. So it really just depends, I guess, on how you want to label me. But how are you? I'm, you know, I'm a media offender now and I'm living under that reality. What do you think about all of that in terms of? I mean, you're a lawyer.

I spoke to Mark Elias recently and he said, listen, when it's the White House that creates such a list, you always could sue and make a show of suing. But the truth is that you'd really need to demonstrate that being on that list is creating some specific harm or that someone's targeting you or that the point of putting you on the list is like that just being on the list itself does not seem actionable. Oh yeah. I actually, I would even disagree with Mark. I don't think you can sue the White House for this. I mean, to me, it seems more of like parity than anything. And parodies protected speech. So I'm not actually, I don't think you can sue. I think it's just the White House trying to

put a target on your back, on Brian's back, on other people's backs. I think that's the goal. So glad you're staying safe. One of the things that I do think is interesting about what you do, what I do, and everybody kind of has their own platforms that they spend more time on and do it a little bit differently is the more that there are attacks against people doing what we do, the more it reinforces that we're actually making an impact, making a dent, and that this entire thing is starting to be an important part of the discussion, which I find hugely flattering.

but even more just reinforcing the importance of the work that we're doing. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I take it as a badge of honor. I get like death threats every day. And it's insane. It's terrifying, but I do wear it as a badge of honor. It means that we're doing something right. So I would just say keep it up.

What do you think, as you saw the Supreme Court decisions earlier this week, there were some on Monday and then some on Tuesday, of course. There were so many important topics, including certainly what fortunately didn't happen when it comes to birthright citizenship. We also saw issues of sports, more social issues, others. Other than the decisions themselves, what matters after these sorts of decisions in terms of like sometimes you hear, well, we're going to try to go a different route to get the same outcome. Like Trump said, if the Supreme Court wouldn't let us do what we wanted to do, then we'll go through Congress. And like it actually doesn't seem like you can really do that.

Which of these do you think are going to have follow-on effects that really matter? Yeah, for sure. And I see so many comments. Thank you guys. You guys are all awesome. Make sure to subscribe to David and me if you haven't. I think regarding the Supreme Court, I have two big takeaways from the end of this term. The first is the slaughtered decision, which I think is actually the most egregious decision by the Supreme Court in the past 50 years, 60 years. I mean, when I speak to Republicans, they wanted this slaughter outcome more than they wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. That's how big of a deal this was for them, because it overturned Humphrey's executive nine years of

precedent, yada, yada, yada, yada, but it essentially tears down any independence of the FTC, FEC, NLRB. And here's where we're going to see impacts from the slaughter decision. You had the mail-in voting decision, which protected mail-in voting, right? What Trump can now do is he can go and fire every single board of governor, every single governor on the board of governors in the USPS. He can appoint his own USPS board of governors, essentially unanimous, and make it such that the USPS no longer sends mail-on ballots to states that he doesn't want them to send to it. Right? There's an outcome right there. Now, the courts are going to go back and forth, but ultimately it's going to go up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court is going to probably

side with Trump on that. That's number one. I think the second takeaway I have in all of these cases is the birthright citizenship case, not in that the court upheld it, but rather that it was a five-four decision, in my opinion. And it really, I mean, functionally it was, because even Kavanaugh said that the executive order was constitutional, he would have upheld birthright citizenship on a statutory basis, not on a constitutional basis. So you had four justices willing to essentially rewrite the 14th Amendment. That is, in a lot of ways, terrifying to me because what it means is that in the next two and a half years, and say there's a Republican that wins in 2028, potentially the next six years, a liberal justice, Justice Roberts, Justice Barrett, pass away,

get very sick, retire, anything can happen. You now will then have five votes to overturn birthright citizenship and by product really change the Constitution, as you know. And so we are one vote away from. And I think that is a major takeaway. Congress can't legally go and change birthright citizenship, can't rewrite the 14th Amendment. You need a constitutional amendment. And I actually, you know what, I am fully in support of a constitutional convention. I think that the Constitution needs to be amended in a lot of respects. I think it hasn't been touched in a long time. And it is very hard to amend the Constitution. So my hot take is I think we need to make it easier to amend the Constitution. I think we start at the Second Amendment. I think we start at the Fourth Amendment.

I think there are plenty of amendments that I would like to go and look at as well. And I would like to add amendments, take away amendments. I mean, there are so many things that you can do with this Constitution. So I'm glad some Republicans are finally on board. But those are my two big takeaways, essentially one of the things i i've been saying is i would while i would disagree with their view on birthright citizenship i would much more respect an approach that said listen we all are on the same page as to what it says right now we're not going to go this route of going well when they wrote it they didn't mean let's just concede that it is what it is we believe it should be changed and we're going to go through the actual process to do that which is to get a

a constitutional amendment. And then there can be a debate about it because when Trump goes, no one else has birthright citizenship, obviously that's not true. When some more nuanced people go, well, no one has birthright citizenship exactly the way that we do. That's closer to the truth. And if there really is an appetite to say we want to change how we define citizenship, we have a process and I would respect them going, we're going to win the will of the people, we're going to convince people that we want to change that. What I don't respect is the trying to re-engineer and wordsmith on the 14th Amendment when they're never willing to do it with the second or when it's inconvenient. It's merely a plan born out of what's politically

convenient today. Yeah, for sure. And it's not even just a second amendment or the 14th amendment. I mean, a lot of people want term limits for justices, right, on the Supreme Court. You legally can't do that through Congress. Constitution provides that there are no term limits for Supreme Court justices, that they have lifetime tenure. So you want term limits for justices, you have to get a constitutional Amendment passed. I mean, that's the only way to do it legally. And so I think that we need to look at the Constitution as a whole. I'm glad Republicans are finally coming around to it. So let's see what happens. When it comes to looking at 26 and 28, I'm really interested in a situation where oftentimes the narrative about elections is that one of the two parties is very divided, but not usually

both at the same time. It's either Democrats who are fighting an internal battle or its Republicans. But as we look at, depending on what happens in 26, 28 could be interesting in that on the Republican side, you could have a battle between those who want a continuation of MAGA and those who don't. And then on the Democratic side, you could have a battle between those who are more in the sort of Newsom-Pritsker-Shapiro-Westmore side of things. Those who are, forget about that, even more in the Jeffrey's Schumer camp of things, which is a more like really keep things the way they are. and then those who are more on the side of the sorts of folks who have been winning Democratic primaries recently, like we saw in New York and Colorado, more platinum type.

What is your sense of what the dynamics would be if both sides are engaged in these internal battles as to the future of their parties and how that might be different than what we've seen before? Well, I think what we're seeing on both sides is this kind of, they're sick and tired of the establishment. The average everyday American is tired of the status quo on both sides. That's why they elected Trump on the Republican side. They wanted someone to go in and quote, shake things up whether or not he's doing that. That's the voter's choice, right? On the Democratic side, people are tired of the establishment.

I mean, even in Colorado's first district where Malak Keros won this week, Diana did get the former Congresswoman there. She was one of the most progressive members of Congress. I mean, she was endorsed by the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I mean, she's very, very progressive member of Congress. Malakiros is just a tad bit more progressive, but she represents a new face. And I personally, I like new faces in Congress. I think that we need across the board. I've been a big proponent of term limits.

I've been a big proponent of, I do think primaries serve a very functional purpose in our society because I think that any member of Congress who can't win their own primary, that's their fault. Right. if they're not, if they're not ingrained in the community well enough, that's their fault for losing. And so we're seeing a major shift. I think it's this anti-establishment push. And I would even argue, like the Newsom's of the world are anti-establishment in some way, shape, or form. I think Newsom coming out, calling for a billionaire's tax is very anti-establishment. It's very anti-status quo. I think you're going to see more and more folks kind of embrace this. Let's get a new generation of leaders in. Let's get a new

fresh faces in. then it's happening across the board, and it'll continue to happen. There's this line, and I think it's usually true, which is the more robust and hard-fought of primary is, the stronger the position of the eventual winner. And I've basically agreed with that for a very long time. I wonder, in looking at the Republican side, if it gets very ugly between Trump wants to pick an error but is so unpopular that a lot of the Republican Party revolts against what Trump wants, Vance and Rubio both go for it and it gets very ugly.

Tucker's trying to start his own party reportedly, which if he can pull three or four percent away from Republicans could destroy Republicans. Do you see a Republican primary that is extremely robust and actually does hurt the eventual nominee? I don't actually. I think it's going to be a two-person race in the Republican primary. And I would argue I think Rubio is going to come out on top and be the nominee by the end of it. And I think it's going to be a hard spot that. I totally see it being particularly. potentially Vance Rubio as the ticket or Rubio someone else, if it's not fans.

I think that's what's going to end up happening. I think the whole Tucker thing is a bit anticlimactic. Elon tried to start his own party. It didn't work. Tucker's the same thing that happened with Tucker. What I will say is though if Tucker runs as an independent and not starts his own party, just runs as an independent. I think that could hurt the Republicans, but we'll have to see if that happens.

But I actually think on the Republican side, you'll have a less kind of chaotic primary in terms of numbers. I think you only have a two-way race. Whereas on the Democratic side, everyone and their mother's going to run, like 20 people are going to run. And Lord only knows what's going to happen there. When it comes to the role of independent media now and how it's really changed over the last several years, what is your sense of what role we and also right-wing influencers will have on this next presidential election? Because it'll really be the first one where the independent media space will be this big. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think it's an important time to recognize that independent media is the media, right? Like, I mean, I think that is the mantra that people need to accept. I mean, just even look over the past 24 hours, independent media has been constantly reporting on the fact that the first Air Force veteran, the first active duty service member came out, called for Trump's impeachment and was arrested. Mainstream media was relatively quiet. And I think that heading into the 2028 election, especially, you're going to have creators moderate debate.

you're going to have candidates go on all of our shows regularly. I mean, I've already, and you have too. I mean, we've already interviewed almost every single 2028 hopeful, right? I mean, it's only going to continue heading into November of 2020. So I think we're the future. What do you think is the landscape right now in terms of the platforms? And what I mean by that is we all know that different platforms have different norms and expectations.

We're on a whole bunch of these platforms. The strategy that applies on YouTube may be different than the one that applies on TikTok, substack, etc. Do you think that the platforms are increasingly involved in the day to day of how the news and politics landscape shakes out? Or like in the early days, news and politics was this backwater where like it took a long time to even get reps assigned to news and politics folks on YouTube. And it was just like, yeah, yeah, news and politics is this other thing. It's this appendage, but it's not really the core of what we do. Do you think platforms are starting to take the space we're in more seriously? Oh, 100%.

And I actually think we're going to see more attempts to crack down on folks like us on certain platforms. I think platforms want to suppress certain content, especially platforms. Like, for example, Twitter is a very right-wing platform. We'll try to crack down on the left. I think you may even see TikTok try to do similar things. We've seen it with that, seen it elsewhere. And I think it just ultimately depends. like, do the platforms need something from the White House?

If they need something from the White House, then we're going to see people like us kind of be suppressed. They don't need something from the White House, and we'll be fine. I think that's why Substack is so important because it's really just the only platform, in my opinion, where we have true, complete ownership of what we do. I think a lot of people hear that, and I talk about that also,

and they don't necessarily understand what that means. And the way I explain it is, if you look at my YouTube channel, I can speak to my 3.6 million subscribers. Cool. I can do that for as long as my account is not limited and for as long as I have my account. But I don't own any of that data. If my account were to be shut down overnight, and by the way, it wouldn't even have to be YouTube who does it if you get hit, if the right makes a campaign of bogus copyright claims against me, at least temporarily, they might be able to get me limited. I would have no way of reaching those 3.6 million people. What makes substack different and it's not a question of praise or criticism it's just a fact is we can take our subscriber lists on substack and download them and what that means is then if anything happens on any platform we have this database we own and we can say to people hey this is what happened and i wish other platforms did that they they don't and this is why it's so important that people do follow us on

on substack it costs nothing and that way we can be in touch and being able to communicate what's happening is often half the battle. 100% and that's why people need to go and subscribe. Right? People need to subscribe to build independent media on here because this really is the present and the future and it's the only platform that we truly own. Aaron, do you think in our last few minutes here,

do you think that over the next couple of cycles that we are just going to see the existing infrastructure grow and become more mature, or do you expect some kind of disruptor in terms of either a new platform, or some new entity, which could be anything from regulation to financial injection. Do you expect a big change to the landscape we're in? I think so.

I don't know what it is. I think there will be a change. I think that there will be some type of regulatory scheme that's at least pushed. I don't know if it'll be implemented. Really? I do. I mean, I've been hearing it all the time from folks on the right and the left who want something done. So we'll see what happens.

I don't know. I kind of like where we're at. I kind of like the Wild West a little bit. I don't like when the government tries to get involved in like my social media. So we'll see. I don't know. Aaron Parnas, he's recording on planes. He's recording underneath stairwells.

You should see the places. I've seen Aaron record and publish videos. Always good to talk to you. The Parnas perspective, make sure you're following him on Substack and on all of platforms, keep up the good work and we'll talk again very soon. Peace. Talk to you later. Bye.

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Incogni will follow up until it's done. Incogni's custom removals is my favorite feature. If I find information on a random directory or an obscure. business database or some new people search site. I just paste the link into Incogni. Their privacy experts work to get it removed. Removing your information from these online databases is critical to protect yourself and your loved ones. Get 60% off when you go to incogni.com slash Pacman. Use the code Pacman. The link is in the description. There's something that's becoming increasingly obvious about J.D. Vance every time he's put in front of a crowd without Donald Trump standing next to him. I'm going to play a clip for you. Here is J.D. speaking to the troops. And he tries to crack a joke

at Joe Biden's expense. And nothing happens. Just silence. I have pocketlint with more charisma than this guy. Take a look at this. And then I want to talk about the struggle that J.D. Vance is up against. It's amazing to be here. You know what I'm thinking as I'm coming down the steps is. Don't fall and bust your ass in front of all you and in front of all these cameras because they would never let me live that one down. You know, the previous president, I'm trying to be nonpartisan. You ever see these old cartoons where you've got the angel on the shoulder and the devil on the shoulder? No. Well, because I'm speaking to all of you are great patriots and service members, I've got the angel on my shoulder saying, JD, don't be partisan.

We're going to make this nonpartisan. And then I've got the devil on my shoulder who wants to talk about every time that Joe Biden fell up or down the stairs. And the media didn't care about that. But if I did it one time, if I did it one time, it would be a major, major story. Wow. That punchline really landing with the force of a web paper towel or something, right? And it reminded me of a conversation I had recently with some, just some acquaintances that are sort of like pretty reliable Democratic voters. And when we talked about 2028 and the Republican primary, what struck me wasn't that they disliked

J.D. Vance, which they did and that that's expected. I was very surprised by the contrast that this group of Democrats that I was talking to drew where they said, we see Vance as a complete and total tool. He's trying too hard. He seems like he's auditioning for something all the time and but then they said something interesting, which is compared to Vance, Rubio, Marco Rubio, the current secretary of state feels pretty normal. Like we don't agree with him politically, these friends said, wouldn't go out there and say, I want Rubio to be the president. But if Rubio were to be the next president, he seems much more serious and competent and like an actual adult. And the feeling was sort of like I would prefer it to be a Democrat because I'm a Democrat.

But it wouldn't be a red alert moment if Marco Rubio became the next president of the United States the way it would if it were J.D. Vance. And my takeaway was it's not that any of these people like Rubio, but it's that Vance and of course, Trump before him like now and potentially before if it ultimately becomes J.D as the nominee. Trump and Vance are so incompetent in a cartoonish way that we just wouldn't be worried if Rubio was the president in the way that we're so worried about the possibility that it could be J.D. Vance. And it's a really tough place for J.D. to be because VPs are usually kind of expected to spend four years building credibility and showing they could lead if it came down to it. And especially if they have presidential ambitions the way J.D.

Vance does giving voters a reason to imagine them as president. And what Vance is doing is the opposite. It people see another clip and another clip and another clip and they go, man, this guy can't possibly do it. He has no charisma. He has no gravitas and he's just cringe in every way. Here's another clip and again, the troops behind JD. They're just not into this crap. One of the reasons why I wanted this job is because it's pretty cool to have the common out

of the Marine Corps have to salute a member of the E4 Mafia. That's pretty cool. Nobody, nobody is reacting to this crap. Call it an ego thing. But I left the Marine Corps as an E4 as a corporal of Marines and some of the proudest things that I ever did I did in the Marine Corps and some of the best friends that I've ever made were in the Marine Corps with Marines, with sailors, with all the people that I served with and had the pleasure to get to know.

Great speech, JD. Thank you. But one of the things I learned in the United States Marine Corps serving from 03, 3,000. to 07 is that we sometimes had leaders who would ask you all to go to war, but would not give you a clear mission on the other end. And one of the reasons why I'm proudest of what the president of the United States has done over these last 18 months is because when he has asked you to go to war, he has given you a defined mission.

He's asked you to go and accomplish it. He has? That's not been my experience. He must have kept those missions a secret. Most importantly, he's giving you the tools to kick the hell out of the enemy and to come home safely. That is what you should expect of me of our great secretary. Anyway, as you can see, one of the least engaging speakers may be ever seen in American politics. And every single speech feels so rehearsed. Nothing, nothing feels authentic.

It all feels like even the jokes or focus group tested, but they're, they've got the wrong people in the focus group because then the jokes never land. And he has this habit. of delivering the lines like he's expecting applause, but he hasn't earned any applause. And then when the applause doesn't show up, it gets awkward very quickly. Now, I think the bigger political problem for Vance is there was a period where it was just assumed like this guy's got the 28 nomination if he wanted. It's his for the taking. He's the vice president.

It's usually how this works. But with every passing week, I'm increasingly less and less convinced that that's the direction Trump wants this to go. He has never even shown much of an interest in creating a success. He doesn't build independent stars. He builds people whose identities depend entirely on him. And if you start looking a little too ambitious or a little too independent, Trump eventually sees you as competition.

And I'm increasingly convinced that Trump doesn't want his successor to do well. Trump wants a weak successor so that then when they lose or when they win and fail, Trump's ego is reinforced by the idea that see, not just anyone. can do it. They mag the Republican Party after I was gone failed. Trump would love that for his ego. He doesn't care about helping the Republican Party once he's gone. And he certainly isn't spending time elevating J.D. Vance and rarely talks about him as the future. Increasingly is talking about Marco Rubio, in fact. And I don't think Trump wants to hand J.D. Vance, the movement at all. Trump is the movement as far as he's concerned. The movement doesn't get inherited by anybody. Maybe

Don Jr. But if Trump disappeared tomorrow, J.D. Vance isn't even Trump but younger. He's Trump but younger with no charisma, no gravitas, and not even the ability to pretend to genuinely care about everybody else. So I think that people sense this guy has no charisma and no authenticity. And they can also sense imitation. Vance often comes across like he's doing an impression of what a MAGA leader is supposed to sound like. And Trump has a lot of flaws. You never feel like Trump's imitating anybody. And I think that's part of why Trump supporters have connected with them. And with Vance, it feels like you're watching someone try to pretend to be sort of Trump. And it's really difficult to pull that off. Number one, because Trump is still around. Number two, because audiences

usually want to go to the real band. They're not going to go to the tribute band when the real band is still around. And three, because JD lacks charisma in such a painful way. I don't, I mean, Dan Quail, which vice president has this acutely lacked charisma? Hard to think of one. And it's going to be a real interesting situation as this presidency winds down. Chris Wright made a number of funny comments when interviewed on Fox News. He's the energy secretary. But the funniest one, is that he says if President Biden had been the president again or if Harris had won or whatever, in the middle of this heat wave, they would have ripped everyone's air conditioners from their hands. What the hell is this guy talking about?

Now, if we had President Harris right now, we'd be dealing with blackouts and massive economic disruption because they would have continued to close all the coal plants. wouldn't have. Okay, this is the wrong clip. Let's play the actual correct clip here where he talks about the air conditioner. See the Europeans coming over here celebrating the World Cup and they're thrilled. Oh, my God, there's air conditioning here in the summer. Maybe we should have that in Europe. But President Biden, his his goal for the United States was to be France. Tear everyone's air conditioners out. Rip out those air conditioners. You know, this is a, this is a refresh or a rea, um, uh, uh,

They're bringing back the talking point from Trump's campaign, which is that if Biden wins or ultimately if Harris wins, you'll have no heating in the winter. You'll have no cooling in the summer. You'll have no windows. You'll have no energy. You'll have no nothing. And I am here to say, as a lover of air conditioning, I'm sitting in air conditioned to bliss right now, despite I'm not going. I don't have it set to 68. I'm not going to go that far. But in any case, there was never a plan for. Biden or Harris to take people's air conditioning or any of it. This is when they create straw men to then take down. Now, then Chris Wright does get to this issue of blackouts. And what he says is really funny. And I'm going to see if you can notice why this is so funny. Now, if we had President Harris right now, we'd be dealing with blackouts and massive economic disruption because they would have continued to close all the, all the coal plants. And they wouldn't have encouraged building anything new unless it was carefully blessed by the climate cult gods from above, which means nothing meaningful would be built and expanded. But that's, fortunately, we're not in those ages.

We're celebrating 250 years. All right. So there would be blackouts under Democrats, but fortunately, there's no blackouts now, except, except I hate to break it to Chris Wright, but this is happening right now. We are currently dealing with over the last 24 hours because of the extreme heat power outages in New Jersey, in Michigan, Ohio, upstate New York, Pittsburgh. I could go on. Like it's a very long list. And then we also have warnings about possible blackouts in New York City and elsewhere. So I guess it is Trump's fault since it would have been Biden or Kamala's fault if there

were blackouts while they were president. And if these exact outages had happened under Biden or Harris, you know that Fox News would have declared it proof that the Green New Deal, which isn't even the law, has destroyed America, socialism and communism and maybe even Marxism and maybe even Entrifa would be responsible for this. But under Trump, it's just like it's hot. Unavoidable. That's it. That's all that this is.

Now, this is going to become a real problem for Trump. It's going to become a problem for two different reasons. Number one, it's going to become a problem because it appears as though, especially today and into tomorrow, there are going to be more blackouts because of the extreme heat and great. grids that cannot handle it. And it has nothing to do with Joe Biden. It has nothing to do with Obama. Nothing to do with Barack Obama. That's right. But it's also going to be a problem for Trump because this regime is planning to force people to wait for hours in 107 degree heat with no water, supplies or sun protection before they get to see the fireworks and before they get to hear

Donald Trump speak. take a listen to this. I mean, part of this is just the heat, period. I mean, regardless of what's going on, the weather team here at CNN says that the forecast, 102 degrees on Saturday, is expected to be the hottest July 4th ever recorded. I mean, there's a list of what people can't even bring

because of the tight of security measures, reusable water bottles, sunscreen, bug spray, camping chairs, coolers, umbrellas. I mean, if you're a family, and you're going out to watch fireworks that aren't expected to start until after the president has spoken, it might make it tough to hang out for hours on end. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, look, maybe God's sending a message. I don't know. I can't speak for God.

But yeah, I mean, look, I anyway, you get the point. It's going to be a real problem. Now, as far as Saturday and Trump speaking, I would not be caught dead out there. And in all seriousness, like, this is This is not a joke. You do not want to end up being taken in an ambulance to the ER because you were out there exhibiting your loyalty to Donald Trump. Just like it's just not worth it. Just don't do it. Stay home.

Watch the thing on TV if you really want to see Trump speak in all seriousness. As far as the whole climate thing and black blackouts and all this stuff, either presidents deserve credit and blame for every local power outage, which is pretty ridiculous or they don't. But these right wingers have spent years in system. every outage, every price spike, every infrastructure problem, potholes. If a Democrat is president when it happens, it's because of failed leadership. And now they want to abandon that principle completely and go, none of this has anything to do

with Donald Trump. Well, there's going to be more blackouts. And if the buck truly stops with Trump, then it has to at least be Trump's responsibility. Now, we are on the bonus show going to discuss news that Mitch McConnell was secretly found unconscious and given CPR before being brought to a hospital. We are learning about what is going on with his condition. That'll be on the bonus show. A climber couple was arrested after scaling the Empire State Building. I guess it was part of a marriage proposal. And we will talk about what is happening in DC on the 4th of July and how it will be different than normal under Trump for

America's 250th anniversary. I suggest staying out of the heat. That's my suggestion. All of the All of those stories and more on today's bonus show, you can sign up and get instant access at join packman.com.