The David Pakman Show - Every aspect of the story is slowly collapsing

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

-- On the Show: -- United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz falsely claims on Fox News that Iran is negotiating from a desperate position of weakness -- Donald Trump inadvertently opens himself up to legal discovery regarding his January 6 actions by filing a lawsuit against the BBC -- Energy Secretary Chris Wright dodges a basic question about when gas prices will drop, falsely claiming he is out of the forecasting business -- Tucker Carlson reverses his brief criticism of the Republican establishment by offering an endorsement of Vice President JD Vance -- CBS News experiences a massive viewer collapse after network executive Bari Weiss shifts editorial priorities to favor Donald Trump -- The Trump administration relies on increased immigration arrests and cultural lectures to distract from the president's failures -- The Friday Feedback segment -- On the Bonus Show: Trump has implemented more than half of Project 2025, the Great American State Fair is coming to DC, Jesse Watters plans on buying 100 acres of "prime Cuban coastline," and much more... 🍴 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 💻 Sponsored by Private Internet Access: 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/DavidP 😁 Zippix Toothpicks: Code PAKMAN10 saves you 10% at https://zippixtoothpicks.com -- 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) Trump official says Iran is negotiating from weakness (09:19) Trump opens himself up to January 6 discovery (17:47) Energy Secretary backpedals on gas prices (24:39) Tucker Carlson is back to supporting Republicans (34:09) CBS News' ratings collapse after Pelley firing (41:51) Trump's vanity projects are a distraction (48:20) Friday Feedback segment Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Trump administration keeps insisting everything is going according to plan. Whose plan? I have no idea, but it's all going to according to plan. But today we're going to look at why that story is quickly falling apart. We're going to look at how Donald Trump's own lawsuit may be putting January 6th back on trial, why Fox News is selling a complete fantasy about Iran, and the moment a top Trump official suddenly forgot all of his confident predictions about gas prices. Also, remember Tucker Carlson's supposed break with the Republican Party?

Seems like it lasted five minutes. And there is a major media company paying a very steep price after trying to move closer to Trump. And I've got to tell you, I love it that they are paying that price. Also, we will have your emails, your substack comments, your YouTube comments, and so much more. Some of them are very productive and substantive. And some of them are just lame attacks, but we'll still look at a few. It's good to have a sense of what is coming in.

We've got quite a program today. One of the most remarkable things about the people in the current administration is they have an uncanny ability to confidently invent a reality that simply does not exist by any objective measure. they deliver it in a way that seems as though they know what they're talking about. I'm going to give you one example. Here is UN ambassador Mike Waltz. That's his latest role after he was pushed out of the last one in the Trump administration.

Here is what he said about the Iranian regime, Iranian leadership, et cetera, right now. And just try to evaluate whether we have any reason to believe what he's saying is true. been quiet after we bombed the hell out of them last year. And the Iranian regime is absolutely desperate. And I think the president, no president, has ever negotiated from such a position of strength. And the final piece, not Obama, not Biden, had a credible military option on the table that the Iranians have seen loud and clear that they're going to use. So all of those... environment. All of those, let's give this a chance.

Yeah. And I've said that many times, you know, these things take time. I mean, the fall of the Berlin Wall took time. And the chips are falling for Iran in a number of very constructive ways. And we see we get information so quickly now. So I think everybody weighs in every step. That's what it is. We're getting information so quickly that people might wrongly think this is not not going so well. What Mike Waltz lays out and what Martha McCallum, the Fox anchor, kind of helps some do sounds really cool, I guess, if you're a Fox viewer, but it ignores reality. Do we care about reality or don't we? And a lot of these people don't. If you are Iran right now, you don't just negotiate based on military capability. We know that we have the stronger military. Now, that being

said, Iran's military is not something to laugh at. But we have the stronger military. There's no question. But you don't just negotiate on that. You do have to negotiate based on political leverage. Right now, Iran has at least two reasons to think that time is on their side and they are unfortunate for the United States. It doesn't bring me pleasure to say this, but this was an optional war that Donald Trump chose to execute. The first point of leverage for Iran is that the midterm elections are just months away. And Republicans are worried that the Iran war is politically toxic because it is.

Polling has shown support for the war is very weak. And Republican lawmakers are understandably nervous about how this Iran war could affect their own chances of reelection. Can they hold the House? Can they hold the Senate? And the timing of this is unfortunate for Trump because we signed the letter. It's a beautiful letter, which starts the 60 day period of negotiation. After 42 hours of negotiation, J.D. Vance left Switzerland because he's like, this isn't really

going too far. The Iranian negotiators walked out because Trump threatened to bomb. them and all of a sudden, Iran is in a position where they would be thinking, hold on a second, 60 days would put us somewhere around August 19th. I think that's when the 60 days started. Within weeks of August 19th, Americans are going to start early voting, vote by mail and early voting for the midterms. Does Trump really want to go back into an unpopular war starting just weeks before voting

starts, no, that is something Republicans definitely don't want Trump to do. That gives Iran leverage because of the timing. Secondly, Congress has become a pressure point. Just this week, there was this very kind of ugly public fight between Donald Trump and Republican senators over the Iran war. And the Senate voted with, I think it was for it's sort of been gutted. Like, it never really had teeth, But the PR point is the is the point. I believe four Republicans joined Democrats. Federman didn't vote with Democrats and then two senators were missing, something like that, right? To say, that's it.

No more of this Iran war. And Trump was furious. And he goes, these rhinos and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And even after huge pressure from Trump, that's the way they voted. And so now Congress and the Senate is becoming a pressure point for Trump. That is also leverage from Iran. So think if you are Iran, why would you rush to make any concessions today if you're analyzing that Trump could be even weaker in two months after the 60 days if it starts getting into

Trump said he was going back in if we didn't come to a deal? If you're Iran and I hate to say it because I despise these outrageous authoritarian theocratic regimes, I don't think Iran should have a nuclear weapon, all this stuff. I'm just being realistic. If you're Iran, why are you going to rush to make a deal today? You might be dealing with a far more diminished Trump come the end of summer. Why would you negotiate from a position of panic when the United States and Trump are facing domestic pressure and it's getting very difficult here at home?

It doesn't mean that Iran has the upper hand or are winning or are even in a good position, But it is a reality that Trump is not negotiating from a uniquely unmatched position of strength that is just incredible. And negotiations don't happen in vacuums, politics and public opinion and congressional pressure, election calendars. All of this stuff affects the way that this goes. And Mike Waltz is just not describing reality. I'm sure that what Mike Walt is describing is what they would love to have as a situation.

I'm sure that what Mike Walt is describing is what they would love voters to believe is going on, but it is not what's going on. Iran is not seemingly desperate. If Iran were desperate, they would be behaving very differently. Trump is the one constantly declaring victory. He's, we won this war like 40 times at this point. And all of it betrays anxiety and lack of confidence, not the certainty that you're winning and you're doing the right thing. And one of Trump's biggest negotiating weaknesses has always been he's obsessed with an. announcing quickly. And this is potentially a third point of leverage for Iran. Trump has announced that he won so many times that that also would be a reason not to go back into this war.

And that puts Iran in a pretty strong position. You see the elections. You see the congressional vote. You see that Trump is already trying to get all of the political benefit of announcing the win. And we've seen these mistakes before. We've seen them in past presidents. We've seen them before with Donald Trump, just because we are militarily superior and we are doesn't mean that we are superior in negotiating. These are related things, but it's not all one thing. One other thought about this. There's an irony that by going on TV as Mike Waltz did and insisting that the other side

is desperate, you're trying to shape public perception here more than you are trying to actually move forward the negotiations. And ask yourself, if Iran were truly negotiating from weakness as the administration claims, why is there still a struggle to get the deal done? They would be desperate to sign right away. So viewers are going to keep being told this sort of stuff. Hopefully people can see through it. And there is a real risk that if this extends into closer to the election, it is going

to backfire dramatically for Republicans, which is. I would love to see. Donald Trump and his lawyers have accidentally done something that Jack Smith never got the chance to do a special prosecutor. Trump and his lawyers, listen to this. They may have created a pathway to put January 6th back under the microscope because of a lawsuit that Trump filed. This is one of those incredible stories where as is often the case, Trump's biggest problems are becoming self-inflicted. It's not Jamie Raskin or Antrifa or whoever. Prosecutors didn't do it. Trump did it. Here's what happened. You might remember that Donald Trump sued the BBC for $10 billion over this documentary called Trump A Second Chance. Now, the BBC acknowledged

there was a portion of the documentary that gave the impression Trump directly called for violence on January 6th. It was edited together in a way that gave that impression. BBC admitted we made a mistake on that. Trump sued. And the problem is that when you file a defamation suit, you don't just get to show up and tell your side of the story. The defendant gets discovery. And BBC's lawyers immediately realized if Trump says the documentary falsely portrayed his role in the January

6th riots, then his actual knowledge. his intent, his state of mind, his conduct becomes relevant evidence. In other words, now January 6th is part of Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit. And the BBC is now trying to get broad discovery into all of Donald Trump's communications from that time, all of the records from around January 6th, including a lot of the stuff that special counsel Jack Smith was relying on during his investigation. And Trump's lawyers now seem to be panicking. They are going to the BBC.

They're going to the judge in the BBC case. And they're saying, we're moving forward with a lawsuit. But these discovery requests, they're excessive, they're broad. They can't be permitted. And what they want to argue is that BBC is turning the lawsuit into a trial about January 6th, which isn't supposed to happen. But that's kind of what happens when you make January 6th central. to your lawsuit. Now, I had a situation I've described before where we did an interview and we got

one of these scary legal letters from an elected official's high price lawyer. And I lawyered up and it's expensive when you do that. And my lawyer came to me and he didn't he didn't have literal tears in his eyes, but he clearly didn't like the advice that he was giving me. And he said, listen, I am for speech. This is my lawyer speaking. I am for speech. And rarely do I I give the advice that someone should take down speech of theirs. But although I think you would ultimately prevail, I think you would ultimately get your legal fees covered, you could accrue multiple six-figure legal fees to fight this threat if they were to sue you for defamation.

And especially at that time, this was years ago, I was not in a position to do that fight. I don't think we could have raised that legal defense fund. I think now we could. I don't think then we could have. And so he said based on all this, I, it pains me to recommend this. But I think that you should take the interview down. And we did. And one of the things that he told me is, I suspect they won't really want this to go forward

if they sued or to even sue because you would get discovery. And they don't want that. But multiple six figure legal fees. So anyway, the point is the threat of discovery can be a big factor in people choosing to do or not do certain legal things. You don't get to sue someone over your conduct on January 6th and then insist no one's allowed to examine your conduct on January 6th. That's the point.

That's not how civil litigation works. And this has backfired before that by the way, there's another Florida defamation case this week where a judge reminded Trump's attorneys. Trump must comply with discovery. If you want to keep pressing forward, he must provide the required documents, which they have not done yet. And I love what the judge said, which is there is no presidential exemption to discovery because Trump filed the lawsuits.

If you file an optional lawsuit, you can't then argue, well, I'm the president, so we don't have to comply with discovery. Well, if you want to push the lawsuit forward, if you insisted on pursuing the lawsuit, you've got to follow the same rules as every other plaintiff. And that's what's coming up with Donald Trump. He loves filing lawsuits. He imagines himself controlling the narrative and he can make accusations, generate headlines. I'm suing for $11 billion or whatever. Everybody's defensive. But lawsuits are a two-way street. And once discovery begins, the other side gets documents. They get to ask questions. They get depositions. They get communications. Trump doesn't want to do any of that. So what's happening

and it's a real delight is that Donald Trump's lawyers are recognizing some of these we thought were easy defamations cases. They could actually be terrible for Trump. Instead of putting the BBC on trial, we may be putting Trump's actions around January 6th on trial. And we don't want to do that because Trump cannot resist filing these lawsuits. I assume it gets dropped. But if it doesn't, that discovery is going to be fascinating. Sometimes cooking healthy meals at home just feels like another job, eats up your schedule,

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or use the promo code Pacman at checkout. The link is in the description. One of the funniest things in politics is watching people suddenly discover that there is uncertainty in the world after spending months and months and months and months. acting so confident and telling us everything is going to be exactly as they say. And I know I'm being vague, but I'll give you an example of exactly what I'm talking about. Watch this video of Donald Trump's energy secretary Chris Wright. Now, Jonathan Carl, the reporter, asks a really straightforward question, which is when can

we expect gas prices to get back down to where they were before the war? Now, just to remind everybody, gas prices are off of their peaks. They peaked at 456. They're down to about 385. Still by Trump's standards, especially when Biden was president, a very high number before the war. They were at like 273 a gallon. So we're like still over a gallon, a dollar per gallon higher than where we were.

Jonathan Carl goes, when are the gas prices going to come down? And Wright responds, oh, you know, predictions. I'm out of that business. Take a listen to this. How soon do you expect gas prices to get down to the levels? that we saw before this war. Oh, I've got long out of the business of predicting oil or gasoline prices, but they will continue to head down.

Flows of oil and natural gas through the straits have already returned to normal, and they will continue that way, whatever happens with the negotiations with the Iranians. He says he's long out of the business of predicting oil and gas prices. Not that long, dude, because we have the tape. We have a video of Chris Wright doing exactly that. And it wasn't a decade ago in some other job. And it wasn't before he worked for Trump. And it wasn't before the war.

While serving as Trump's energy secretary during the war with Iran, Kristen Welker asked him the same question. When can Americans expect gas prices to come down? Trump kept insisting it's going to be very quick. And they were going up, up up. And this is March. This is just weeks ago. Wright's answer was very clear, which is when the comment.

Conflict ends, it'll just be a few weeks, and then we're going to be back down. Take a listen to this. And remember, he's out of this business now. Being here, I want to start right there on gas prices, top of mind for Americans. Since the war began, the national average price for gasoline is up 24 percent. And diesel prices have jumped 32 percent. Mr. Secretary, when can Americans expect to see the price of gas come down? Oh, shucks.

Yeah, after the conflict is over, you'll start to see prices come back down. But Iran immediately going to impede flow through the Straits of Hormuz, launching attacks at all of their neighbors, even those completely uninvolved in this conflict, just illustrates why it's so important to defang this regime. It's been the greatest supporter of terrorism in the world. The greatest killer of American soldiers over the last 20 years has been Iran. and we haven't fought a conflict against them until this.

It's just this president did not want to kick this can down the road to the next administration. The world simply can't see. How nice of Trump, huh? A nuclear armed Iran. And so I'm proud of his actions. But yes, it is a short-term disruption in the flow of energy. Very sure. It's just going to be a question of weeks once this thing ends.

So let's review. March, I'm going to predict exactly what's going to happen. And it's going to be really great, by the way. June, I'm not in the business of predicting what's going to happen. It's a very interesting transformation. Apparently he was not out of the gas price prediction business. He was in the gas price prediction business right up until people realize, damn, these gas prices are not coming down the way that they promised.

And I believe that that's the key point. The real story is not that he suddenly thinks it's too difficult to forecast. The story is that the earlier forecast aged like milk and now, I mean, it's funny, predictions disappear when they're wrong. And we've seen this like with these cult people who go, we're going to be raptured on April 21st, 2012 or whatever the date is. Then it doesn't happen. And they go, I'm out.

I'm out. God works in mysterious ways. I don't know what's going to happen. There's a broader pattern in that. Remember how Republicans spent years insisting that presidents deserve credit and blame. for gas prices. When gas prices move in a favorable direction, it's proof of good leadership, and they are competent and elections matter. And every dip in prices was evidence we're so good as Republicans. It's working. Gas prices are coming down. But suddenly now we're told, oh, you know,

energy markets are very complex. Nobody can predict anything. It's a real black box. We don't know where prices are going. Everybody's cautious all of a sudden. And it is amazing how gas prices transform from you can grade a president by looking at gas prices. It's like a report card into unknowable force of nature. Totally impossible to make any sense of what's going on. That's why I think this change matters. Campaigns love to run on predictions. If you're building up support for a war, you want to make predictions that it's all going to be fine. And then when you start getting judged as to whether that happens, you don't want that anymore. You don't want to make forecasts. And if it's not going well, you go forecasts are so difficult.

It's all it's a tough business to be in and all of this other stuff. These people are quickly realizing we screwed this up. And I believe now Trump knows that the Iran war was a mistake politically. Whether he'll ever accept that it was a mistake geopolitically or from a foreign policy perspective is a different question. But at least as far as his domestic approval, he knows that it's been a disaster. The people around him obviously know that it's been a disaster. And they are now left in positions where they have to try to defend predictions they've already

made or when it's pointed out that that didn't go quite right, they'll try to blame Biden. Maybe they'll blame Obama. Maybe they'll blame the Qatari and Pakistani intermediaries or Iran or they might even blame J.D. Vance as they're setting up to do. But they never just take responsibility despite arguing for decades that the most important thing Republicans do that Democrats don't is take responsibility. Trump's never taken responsibility for anything. He's never apologized for anything.

He's never said I made a mistake. He finds someone else to blame. And it doesn't matter how many gotchas you get on these people. They will never concede that they simply screwed up. Earlier this week, Tucker Carlson had a moment that got a lot of attention. He was talking about the Republican Party. He was talking about foreign policy, war with Iraq. Iran and he made it clear, I am breaking with the Republican Party.

I'm not voting for Republicans. I'm leaving the party. Remember this. We just looked at this two days ago. I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party. I'm not going to support the Democratic Party. I don't know what I'm going to do.

But at this point, you know, how could you support, how could I or any American voter support a political party that's not loyal to the United States that puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens like that's that's you know it's not possible to vote for people like that and i'm not going to and i think i voted republican my entire life i worked at fox news i've cnn msnbc i i've been a consistent defender for 35 years of the republican party i mean very consistent defender but there's no defending this because it's immoral and it's exactly the opposite of what a political party in a democracy is charged with doing which is representing its own voters, its own citizens, its own nation, and they're not doing that.

So no, I'm out. And if I'm out, I'm out. That didn't last very long. Now I said at the time, let's not get carried away. I told you two days ago that one thing we've learned over the years is that Tucker Carlson loves flirting with how politically independent he is much more than he actually wants to be politically independent. And sure enough, it lasted about five minutes. Tucker Carlson, appeared on Alex Jones show. Now, by the way, I know a lot of you are going to write in and go, what do you, what do you mean Alex Jones show? He ended his show. Info Wars is done. I have no idea. I guess now Alex Jones after the big hubbub of how info wars is over. I guess Alex Jones has a new show called Alex Jones Live. I don't know, but he's still on the air. And Alex Jones complains

to to Tucker. J.D. Vance is being treated so unfairly. And Tucker goes, oh, I would support J.D. Vance for president. I thought you just said you're out and you're no longer voting for Republicans five minutes ago. Take a listen to this. Well, will you support J.D. Vance? I think he's great compared to Rubio. Obviously, he's great compared to Rubio. Um, obviously. Look, I'll support the best person. I, I always have like J.D. Vance enormously. I think he's really smart. He's in an impossible situation. I think he's doing his best. I strongly disapprove of obviously, as I've said, 100 times of this war and of what. Oh, I love how Trump and others have been blaming Vance when he's volunteering to go stop it when internally it's confirmed he tried to stop it just like you

did. I love how the guy that was right, he's the bad guy now and the war is his fault. Oh, it's the people who tell the truth who are punished. It's the people who try to do for selfless motives the right thing who were punished. Look at that. Look at look at what happened. Tucker didn't become a Democrat, which we knew he wouldn't. But he's not suddenly this clear thinking independent. He's not rejecting MAGA. He's not deciding, oh, Republican politics are so broken. He moved from team Trump to team Vance. He's not leaving the movement. He's just having a disagreement as to who should lead the movement. And by the way, Trump's going to be gone regardless. So the whole like should Trump lead the movement stops being a question when Donald Trump's

term is over. So I think this is a very important distinction. There are a lot of people interpreting Tucker's criticism of Trump over Iran as evidence that he's finally breaking from the Republican Party. He's not. Tucker is doing this very old tradition that we see inside political movements where he's positioning himself for the succession battle. Maga might not want to admit it. There's a conversation happening about what's after Trump.

Is it Vance? Is it Rubio? Is it someone else? Is it Tucker? Is it Marjorie Taylor Green, who I guess is also leaving the Republican Party? And there are people, even some on the left, falling for this going, man, I don't know, Tucker and Marjorie, especially now that they're leaving the Republican Party, they might be the exact types of independent thinkers we need.

No. No. If you're on the political left and those are your values, Tucker and Marjorie Taylor Green are the last thing that we need. Now, the other aspect to this is that there's a reality where Trump's 80, he can't run again unless he changes the constitution, which I don't think he's going to do. someone is going to inherit the movement. Tucker clearly sees J. P. Mandel, J.D. Vance, as a potential air. And he doesn't only say Vance is better than Rubio or that Vance is right about Iran. He goes,

J.D. is really smart. And I've always liked J.D. So if that's what you think about J.D. and J.D. might be Trump's successor where in what way are you leaving the Republican Party? And the truth is that when you look at Tucker and Vance, they're closer within the Republican coalition than might be obvious. They're both skeptical of foreign intervention. They they position themselves as populists, whether they are, you know, that's a kind of different question. They appeal to the nationalist wing of the party. They've built brands around the elites have failed us. And the funny thing is Tucker spent all this time building an image as an outsider who I'll challenge the establishment. And then he gets close to breaking up with the Republican party.

And I might do something different, but then he never leaves. And he starts trying to shape the movement. So I am not falling for this whole like Tucker's quitting Republicans. He didn't abandon MAGA. He's not politically homeless. He looked around and he goes, okay, I'm in a room. Trump is going to be leaving the room. So being Trump's friend doesn't really matter that much. Who's next? J.D. Vance and the Republican civil war doesn't disappear. They're moving into the succession phase. So I continue to be extraordinarily skeptical about Tucker. And here's the real concern to me, which I alluded to earlier. Republicans screwing up succession planning, that's their task to screw up. It's sort of like have have at it, huh, screw it up in any way you want.

Vance, Rubio, rip yourselves apart, have a civil war, have 50 candidates. Do whatever the hell you want. I don't want to see people on the left fall for this whole like, we should look more to Tucker and Marjorie Taylor Green because they're willing to criticize their own side or in totally self-serving ways. rather than actual people on the left whose values we align with. Don't fall for that crap. And I've seen some content creators and others fall for it.

I'm not falling for it. I don't believe my audience is going to fall for it. But if there's people you know who are falling for it for it, don't let them because it's a very bad idea. Most VPN companies sell privacy the way that diet pills sell confidence. A lot of marketing, not much proof. But the thing is that your data is constantly being tracked. That is why I like our sponsor, private internet access.

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to order. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. I'm truly delighted to report to you that CBS is experiencing a total ratings collapse after pro-Trump Barry Weiss turned the never. network, basically into a mouthpiece for the Trump administration. You know, for years we've been told the same story, which is if you want to succeed in the media, you've got to move closer to Trump, become more MAGA, Trump's winning, he's doing everything. Great. This is what the right wingers would say. Stop challenging Republicans, appease the right, get close to Trump.

CBS is running a real world experiment based on that theory, and the results are just so ugly. the news under Barry Weiss, CBS News has gone under this sort of transformation where veteran journalists were pushed out. They shifted their editorial priorities to try to be more favorable to the Trump administration. A lot of longtime viewers of 60 minutes and other shows notice this is like getting very friendly to Trump. You're trying to make Trump look better. You are canceling or covering up or softening critical reporting about the Trump administration.

And the numbers bear it out. CBS evening news has been struggling. The problems are now hitting CBS mornings. There's a new report that the mornings show saw a ratings decline after they fired 60 minutes of Scott Pelly recently. Total viewership down 11% overnight in that critical 25 to 54 demographic, which is really the audience that's most valuable because advertisers care about it. That's who they want to sell to.

That 25 to 54 group dropped by 28%. They lost nearly a third of their 25 to 54. And I believe that viewers are sending a message and the message is we don't like this crap. This is not a good change. Now, by the way, this is happening as there is talk of Barry Weiss having a larger role at CNN in guiding programming. And what happened is they made these changes. They became more friendly to Trump and pro MAGA and all this stuff.

And the audience didn't go, wow, I love this. It's just so nice to hear great things about Donald Trump and Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller. They didn't want that. They didn't. Nobody was sitting around going, you know what CBS could really use? We need a makeover that sucks up to Trump. The people who were watching watched because they liked it. And in comes Barry Weiss and management starts changing all of it.

it and a whole bunch of people said, I'm out of here. And I think that this is as a media analysis story, there's a myth that if you move to the right, you unlock a new audience, that people will just show up because they'll go now that they're not placating the far left, I like it. Why would hardcore magas switch to CBS? If you're watching Fox News and you like it, presumably. because you watch it. And then you hear, oh, CBS went pro maga. Why would you switch to it? You've already got Fox News or you already have Newsmax or rumble, you know, the entire pro

Trump media ecosystem that's been built for them. Mike Pillow TV, Lindell TV or whatever. And meanwhile, what CBS is doing, it's very low energy. They're chasing viewers that they're unlikely to win anyway, but they alienate the audience that they had. And it is like the word, business strategy that you can imagine where you go, let me find a way to change what I'm doing, to lose my existing customers while failing to gain any new ones. And am I a bad person for admitting that I'm enjoying it? And I want to distinguish. I don't want to see reporters, producers, or staff members suffer.

Even like Tony DeCople, who I've met a couple of times and spoke, he's a very nice guy. And it's it's we could go, oh, well, he should quit in protest. Cool. Fine. But the point is, I don't want individuals here to be suffering. But this is a very dark media environment. And one of the few signs that reality matters is that the viewers of CBS are voting with their remote controls or their mice and keyboards or their phones, right?

Depending on where they're watching CVS. They're going, there's a change. I don't like the change. therefore I react by leaving. And it's an important message, I think, to send the executives as well, which is convince. They may be convinced that the path to success in this environment is to appease Trumpism. And we've watched media companies become terrified of criticism from the right and start changing themselves in response. And so when we see the strategy fail, it's like a silver lining. It's this little shred of sunlight breaking through a very bleak

landscape suggesting there isn't infinite gullibility. There's a lot of gullability, but it's not infinite gullibility. And there are consequences for abandoning your identity as a news channel, disrespecting the people who made you successful in the first place. And by that I mean people like Scott Pelly and also the audience members. And I'm satisfied seeing this happen. I'm satisfied watching executives create controversy, push out respected journalists, and then discover, oh my God, our viewers are gone. And it's not good for CBS, but I would argue it's good for the broader principle that your audience matters.

And it's a simple lesson of you've got to respect the audience. You don't grow by betraying your audience. I mean, listen, if you look, are there exceptions to this? I guess Dave Rubin at some point in his trajectory had a bigger audience when he left the left than when he was, I guess, like a co-host on the Young Turks. He did peak, but then look at where his channel is now, where the views are way down and it's just, it's all formulaic in some way. And I think, you know, some, I've told the story of when a big radio executive is,

came to me. He didn't say, sir, I was way younger and he didn't respect me that much. But he, at his curiosity, he said, would you just like become right wing if you knew that there was more money in it? And I said, no, that would be completely disingenuous. What I'm doing here is just being me and giving my opinion. People may like it. People may not. If I were to leave the left and become right wing, might I gain some right wing audience? Maybe, but that's a pretty damn saturated market already. Would there be interest in how I, this long time leftist leave? Maybe. But what I would lose from the audience I've built way exceeds that. And you don't build trust, I don't think, by abandoning your identity. And you certainly don't solve a ratings problem by

becoming this kind of watered down version of the outlets that already are dominating the pro-Trump market. CBS hasn't gone fully Fox News. They're sort of like milk toast, lukewarm Fox News. It's not interesting to the Fox News people and it's definitely not interesting to the historical CBS audience. So I love that it's happening. I love it. Am I a bad person? Let me know in a comment.

Let me know in an email. All right. Let's talk about desperation. Excuse the course analogy. When an animal is cornered, sometimes it will lash out in violence. Desperation can also make people do stupid things. And sometimes they are dangerous things and sometimes they are things that make absolutely no sense.

And right now the Trump administration is very desperate because almost everything they're doing is failing. We looked at a poll earlier this week showing Trump's approval at 30%. That is not like, hey, you've got you're at 88 and you've got a little room for improvement. That is like disaster, political emergency. The economy's not delivering. Trump said he was the peace president. He started a war. The promises won't materialize foreign policy, gas prices down.

I mean, just every single promise is going haywire. He overpromised and he under delivered. And so we get to a point where the political isn't working. I mean, listen, there's also growing signs of Trump's cognitive struggles, his physical struggles. It's all going terribly. So what do you do when the public stops buying what you're selling? They believe the answers are more ice arrests and more babies. I will explain.

If something's not working, do even more of it. Come on, guys. Here is Tom Homan, Trump's borders are saying, get ready. We're going to do a lot more ice arrests because people love that stuff, huh? Went really well. Here's Tom Hohm. We got a lot of work to do. So with additional resources, additional money from the big, beautiful bill and the reconciliation

package, you're going to see a lot more arrest activity to go on through all the country. So the video briefly freezes there, but we got the audio. Notice what is missing here. And I'm going to give you more examples. We're building our case. There is no like, you know what we're going to do? We're going to get wages up. We're going to get energy costs down and grocery down.

We'll make healthcare affordable and accessible and none of that. they are doing instead of dealing with what affects the daily lives of most Americans. They're going, don't worry, ICE, which is insanely unpopular, is going to start arresting even more people. What a strategic pivot. They are, they are turning to an unpopular policy as approval collapses. And I believe that the problem is that the administration seems to think that immigration is their silver bullet issue. And there's reason that they would think that in their defense. During the campaign, it did seem as though their promises around immigration were highly

motivating, highly motivating to voters. And it turned out that they lied about what they were going to do. We're going to go after only criminal illegals as they like to call them and they didn't do that. And we saw killings by ICE and it's just, it's gone terribly. And so they're kind of going like, okay, foreign policies failing. We're underwater 27% approval. the economy, gases up, groceries are up, everything's up. How about we do what people elected us to do?

One of the things, which is the deportations. But they are now in a position of governing and people vote on immigration, but they also vote on whether they can afford groceries and whether the rent went up. And the implementation of the immigration scheme has not been popular. Americans haven't liked what they've been seeing. So there's like a muscle memory that the White House is reverting to. They've been playing this one for a while that fear and raids and arrests. And when you don't have anything else to say, hey, we did it. I'm hanging my hat on this other thing. You go to spectacle.

And then like almost right on cue in misguided priorities and lack of likeability. J.D's idea is babies. Babies, babies, lots of babies. His wife is pregnant. And he goes, I'd have nine if I could. And now I'm just all like, I would have nine kids. But, you know, as you know, it takes takes two to tango. Mammalian reproduction depends on.

Yes, we understand that part, J.D. But what is so insensitive about this whole like, got to have more kids thing. Another thing that they're pushing is what about the cost? There are a lot of Americans who would, there are a lot of Americans who don't want kids. Cool. A lot of Americans would like to have kids. But it's not that they're anti-family or anti-natalists or whatever. They can't afford it.

Child care costs of fortune, housing costs of fortune, health insurance cost of fortune, raising a kid costs of fortune. If you want a higher birth rate, which Elon Musk and Trump and Vance, they've all talked about, some for religious reasons, some for sort of technocratic reasons. If you want a higher birth rate, the most important thing is make life more affordable. So even these distractions about ice or chilled babies, they still go back to the failed economic promises. If you want people to have more kids, do something about paid leave, about the cost of childcare,

about the cost of health care, about economic security. But we get lectures about we got to populate the earth and save civilization and Elon Musk has at this point 10, 12 or 14 kids. I don't know. It's this cultural messaging ignoring the fact that there are no materials. solutions. And I think that's the big story. It's an administration that relies on symbolic politics because the tar, the tangible results are tougher to deliver on. We can just start having ICE arrest more people. We can do culture war crap. We can talk about the importance of

having babies and all of that. If the voters are unhappy, you've got to solve the problems that they're facing or you try to distract from the problems. The White House is choosing to distract. And the question is, how will that work out for them in November? The David Packman Show is an audience-supported program. And the best, most direct way to support the show is by becoming a member at joinpackman.com. You'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show, and plenty of other great membership perks. Get the full experience by signing up at join packman.com.

You know, one of the things you just have to get used to if you do any kind of online content is that not everybody's going to like you. It's just a reality. And some people won't like me because they've evaluated the things I say and they just don't agree. And you know what? I respect that. And they can write in and they can tell me, here's what I think you got wrong.

Here's where I think you're going wrong. But then others are just kind of horrible people. And there is someone who wrote to me on Instagram, Admiral Whit the With, who says, where did you get your info from, David? Living under a stone for years, Trump is on top of the game. And only Republicans understand that Iran is a tarot state. Not taro like the vegetable, but I think they mean terror. Why do Trump get so much support from the other Arab countries, David? He stopped eight wars.

Taken one day Maduro out. Gaza is a little more tricky. But overall, Trump do their best he can. Not to forget that he cleaning up the mess Obama make and Biden to with stupid money deals. Obama. Exactly. Exactly. These are not people we can convince and bring over to our side. Now, I hate to do this because a couple people get mad every time. But, but there is, I believe, some potential cognitive issue with a lot of these people. Now, it may just be that they are all. foreign individuals who don't really speak or write English, but there is something about the texture of a lot of these emails from supposed pro-American patriotic Republicans where either you don't really speak English or there is some kind of cognitive or other issue.

Either way, neither of those would be things to make fun of people for, but we just have to acknowledge we will not win by convincing these people to change their minds. We need to find other voters, get people who agree with us out to the polls. These people, I believe they are lost forever. If they want to come back, okay, we welcome them, but it's not worth arguing with them. I just don't think it's going to go anywhere. All right, let's get to some more substantive stuff. On the subreddit, friendly drummers wrote, there may very well be an October surprise with Graham Platner. First of all, I drag my dying body to vote for him. I do believe it's worth it to get rid of Republicans.

That said, regardless if you believe the allegations, it's noteworthy that allegations of physical assault and kidnapping didn't come out until after he was going to win the primary. It was not during the primaries the allegations came after. If you think these allegations are bad, just wait until October. It's going to get much nastier. I would not be surprised if there's more tangible evidence. more witnesses, dirt that will come out, et cetera, et cetera. Listen, I think it is almost certain that there is going to be more dirt coming out against

Graham Platner. I've said Susan Collins is a disaster. She's got to be removed. But Graham Platner does not embody what it is that Democrats and the left historically have said we want to support. When you hear there's a candidate with a Nazi tattoo and he said he didn't know anything about it, but it appears that he lied about that. and then allegations from women. Usually the reaction from Democrats is that's a really terrible

candidate and we're used to those being Republican candidates, this time it's a Democrat. I don't think he's a good candidate. I interviewed him. I interviewed Mills. Mills was a terrible candidate. She had no business running. It's an unfortunate situation. And I would bet money, although I don't bet, um, that more allegations do come out against Graham Platner. And at that point, all that we will be able to do is deal with them. Also from the subreddit, Trump and Republicans are setting the stage to refuse to certify California's election results in 2028, writes Chris Fathead going on to say, it's obviously funny to laugh at Republicans losing their minds because Pratt is going to lose. But we all need to understand this is their goal.

They will challenge California's results. Refuse to certify. Best case scenario, they prevent a Democratic president from being certified while the case works through the legal system. Worse case scenarios, They get the entire state's results thrown out. They get them to declare Republicans win California. Or they declare some kind of state of emergency around elections and install Trump as president indefinitely. Legally, I don't know what their strategy will be, but I am 100% positive. Trump's people are having conversations about it. If it gets to the Supreme Court, they will side with Trump. Listen, I think a bunch of these predictions are not going to happen. Trump is not going to be installed as president indefinitely because of what they do with California's

results in November or the primary. That's not going to happen. The Supreme Court, I doubt will side with Trump. But they are going to try something. There is no question about it. And part of the reason you know they're going to try something is anybody with common sense would go, wait a second. California's results show that Republicans didn't do well and the results are very similar to the polls. That doesn't seem like one to get your knickers in a twist over. And yet they're going there was fraud and all this different stuff.

That suggests to me they are going to try something, but I don't think it's going to be the full-blown disaster that that person wrote about. Let me know what you think. On YouTube, the freewa wrote in diplomacy, you strive for agreements, not deals. It's not the same. Well, one of the things that came to mind to me, as I heard Donald Trump are radically talk about this deal is done and that deal is done and whatever. One of the things that came to mind to me is that what matters is what the other parties agree to do and follow through on doing.

A deal in which even if the other party says we will sign off on doing X, Y, Z, if they aren't actually willing to do it and if you don't have mechanisms for determining whether they've done it, which remember when they were asked, what about ways to verify? And they go, well, it's going to have to be negotiated. It's kind of a worthless deal. And you can have legal recourse. You might have military recourse. But at the end of the day, if there are not enforcement mechanisms and counterparts

to treaties or agreements who are actually determined to be in the agreement and meet its requirements, they're kind of worthless. And this is why Trump's endless, they're agreeing to this. they're agreeing to that. Even when it often wasn't true, we knew that the commitments from a lot of these countries, Iran, we've experienced this with North Korea, are not particularly meaningful unless they actually are emotionally invested in some way. And I don't think Trump, listen, they think Trump's mentally ill. They said we use Trump's mental illness to manipulate him. That is not a sign of respect that I can assure you. Johnny's JD wrote on Spotify. David, please let us know how many

magas write in and admit they were wrong about Trump. I don't think it's possible for them to concede anything. My dad flies off the handle and starts incoherently spitting out unrelated nonsense about Hillary, Obama and the laptop when calmly asked how he feels about anything Trump does. What aboutism is all they know. Okay. I am, I don't know whether this is a good number or not. But in the last couple of weeks, I've heard from six, I heard from six former Trump supporters who wrote to me and said, I've turned the corner. I'm out.

Is six a lot or not a lot relative to the size of my audience? It sounds pretty low. But I have to assume that for every one MAGA who is willing to write to me and admit that they were wrong about Trump. For every one, there's got to be at least 100 out there, right? Maybe a thousand. I don't know. You tell me whether those numbers are impressive. Quite frankly, I don't even know. Dan Mertzig wrote to me on Spotify and said, I need an Obama shirt. Obama. And Roger says same. The Obamna shirt, I was, I have such a funny thing to mention about this. Last week, I wore an Obamna shirt on the show. we make and sell that shirt. Okay. So if you just go to our store, you can find it on the website.

You can order that shirt. The day I wore it, we sold like a hundred of those shirts. I got a funny email from someone who said, I'm an older person. Okay. And they said, listen, I'm an older person. And you have to understand, we are not going to buy misspelled shirts. You need to fix the spelling. There's an extra N in Obama. If you want to sell any of those shirts, you've got to fix the spelling. And I wrote back very nicely and I said, totally understand what you mean. It's an inside joke.

It relates to Donald Trump wrongly pronouncing Obama as Obamna. We're selling overall. We've sold thousands of these shirts. Very nice email. Polite. And I explained it is spelled correctly. Don't worry about it. Stephanie wrote in and said, I've noticed Trump is beginning to take on that distant far away

look with his mouth hanging open slightly. This is classic senile dementia. A lot of people wrote to me and said, David, what's changing about Trump? Yes, his vocabulary is getting more limited and all of that stuff. That's true. But what's really changing is he has this vacant look and people write in and they're they go, I saw it with Grammy. I saw it with pop pop or whoever. Observations from people. Anecdotes that taken together, maybe they do mean something. David Sutton wrote in on substack

and says, David, you missed the thread here. Obama's deal did not make Trump more rich or distract from his other crimes. Also, just a reminder that if Trump's lips are moving, he's probably lying and the mainstream corporate media simply will not call him out or question him. Yeah. So this is we talked about what did Trump not like about the Obama deal? And primarily it's that it had Obama's name on it. Trump doesn't like that.

Trump hates that in fact. And what David is pointing out is, well, he also doesn't like that the Obama nuclear deal with Iran didn't make Trump richer. It didn't distract from Trump's crimes, et cetera. And I think that those are those are also. factors. Trump's always about what is good for me here. And one of the things that should make us extraordinarily suspicious about Donald Trump involved in any kind of agreement with another country is the question of how he's going to enrich himself. And we've talked about some of the

ways. And once if and when we see the final text of this agreement, we will probably see more ways. Send in your comments info at David Pakman.com. Remember that my book is now. available for pre-order David pacman.com slash attention. A limited number of signed copies are available. The information is at Davidpackman.com slash attention. You can also get the audiobook. You can get the e-book. You can get whatever you want. And I am in the process right now of recording the audio book. a very painstaking process to get the pronunciation of everything like sabotage and tool C. Everything must be pronounced correctly in the audiobook. And my commitment to you today is it will be.

We've got a great bonus show for you today. I'll see you then and I'll be back next week.