The David Pakman Show - Everything is suddenly going wrong

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

-- On the Show -- Donald Trump damages Republican prospects in the 2026 midterms as betting markets shift to a 50/50 chance of Democrats winning control of the Senate -- Megyn Kelly and Mark Levin publicly feud with personal insults on social media while Donald Trump intervenes to defend Mark Levin, exposing growing conflict inside the MAGA movement -- Karoline Leavitt struggles to answer basic questions from reporters about the Iran conflict, troop deployments, and allied military support -- Donald Trump posts a lengthy late-night rant attacking the Supreme Court over a tariff ruling while repeating claims about the 2020 election and accusing the court of political bias -- JD Vance claims rising gas prices in 2026 are the fault of Joe Biden, even as prices surge after Donald Trump’s Iran war and instability in global oil markets -- Donald Trump boasts on Truth Social that media figures who criticized him have lost influence, signaling pressure on journalists and media organizations that challenge him -- Stephen Cheung attacks Gavin Newsom with personal insults after Gavin Newsom posts a clip from our interview with him in which he criticizes Stephen Miller -- Tim Dillon criticizes Donald Trump and warns that the Iran conflict and economic conditions could push the country toward a wider crisis -- On the Bonus Show: Tucker Carlson says he is under investigation, rumors spread about Netanyahu being replaced by a body double, and much more... 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code DAVID for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.com/david 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF for a year subscription at https://startmail.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(01:38) GOP Senate outlook collapses(07:44) Kelly Levin MAGA feud(17:21) Leavitt struggles on Iran questions(25:13) Trump attacks Supreme Court ruling(31:12) Vance blames Biden for gas(37:50) Trump boasts about media critics(42:46) Cheung attacks Newsom over interview(49:11) Tim Dillon criticizes Trump  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. There are troubling new signs that Donald Trump has put his own party in serious trouble heading into the midterms. I'm not talking only about the House of Representatives. I'm talking about the Senate where the betting markets now have it as 50-50 who will ultimately take control of the Senate in November. At the same time, we have a MAGA meltdown as Trump supporters Megan Kelly and Mark Levine are fighting with each other in a bizarre public. as Donald Trump's press secretary, Caroline Levitt, struggles really badly to answer the most simple

questions about what is happening in the Iran war, what is going on with troop movements, and Trump in an act of desperation posts a late night wall of text rant attacking the Supreme Court after another setback. And this is going to read like a joke because the reason gas prices are up is because of Donald Trump's decision to invade Iran. But the hairbrained and slightly dim, uncharismatic vice president, J.D. Vance, is saying gas prices are up in March of 2026 because I hope you're sitting down because of Joe Biden. If you guessed Biden, you guessed Biden. And meanwhile, the administration is bragging about media figures they believe they've taken down. Scary times and Stephen Chung

is coming after my interview with Gavin Newsome. What a program today. Donald Trump has done something unconscionable to his Republican Party. And I love it. I love every second of it. And I think you're going to love it too, unless you're a MAGA and then you're going to be very angry, probably with me, even though I have nothing to do with this. What Donald Trump has done in Iran has now caused an incredible change for Republicans heading

into the midterm elections, which are now just seven and a half months away. Democrats have powerfully surged from behind and are now 50-50 in the betting markets to take control of the U.S. Senate. This is really worth digging into and looking at just how remarkable this is. Now, reminder, we're looking at betting markets. These are not polls. These are not who do you plan to vote for in November. This is the Kalshi betting market, which party will win the U.S. Senate. It's people answering, who do I believe is going to win?

And it is now 50, 50 in the Senate. Now, if you go back and you'll, you see it here in the polling, in the betting market numbers. If you go back to late 2024, Republicans were estimated to have an 80 plus percent chance of keeping the Senate. Even all the way into March and even April, almost April of 2025, Republicans were expected to easily keep the Senate. But what happened at the point of this first decline that you see? Well, that was Liberation Day. That was April 2nd. That was when Donald Trump dumped horrible tariffs on the world's nations and immediately lost some possibility of his party keeping the Senate,

going from 80 to 83 percent down to only a 70 percent chance. And then again, as we move forward to roughly November into December of last year. And then again more precipitously when Donald Trump invaded Iran. Look at the March numbers. Dear God, dropping off of a cliff. We saw the Republican chances of keeping the Senate dropped to 65 and then 60 percent and 55 percent. And we are now at 50 50, 50 per the betting markets in terms of who keeps the Senate in November. Now, meanwhile, you might be saying, damn, David, if that's where the Senate is, where's the House? It is ugly in the house. A similar story. There was a point at which it was sort of like, oh, you know, maybe 70% Democratic chance. And then it even got as low as only a 58% Democratic chance of taking the

House. Democrats are now by 85 to 15 in the betting markets expected to take control of the House of Representatives. Now, what is most notable and remarkable, about this is that it's self-inflicted. It's not some external thing happened that nobody could control, but Trump didn't have like the best handling of it or Republicans drop the ball or no. Trump did the tariffs and he didn't have to. The tariffs encouraged prices to keep rising, hurt small businesses, hurt employment and that hurt Republicans' chances in the forthcoming election. Trump didn't have to go and invade Iran. He didn't have to, but he did. And that has significantly hurt Republican chances of winning in November.

Now, we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. These are betting markets. These aren't votes. It's just people betting what they believe will happen. We need to get out there and vote. But think about the consequences of Democrats potentially taking both the House and Senate. Trump's legislative agenda would be dead. And unless Democrats agree, they are passing no major bills for the last two years of Trump's presidency.

Democrats will control all congressional committees. They will get to decide what gets investigated, what hearings take place. Trump will be under constant investigation. subpoenas, hearings, document requests, public testimony. There are potential impeachment proceedings that we would see. No Republican policy bills will move forward on immigration, tax cuts for the rich. deregulation, all Republican priorities are going to be DOA. Trump will also lose control of the political narrative and the congressional hearings that

will no doubt start will be dominating the news cycle, leaving Trump to throw ketchup at the wall in the White House residence. And Republicans will also lose the ability to block oversight. They won't be able to stop subpoenas or committee investigations. If Trump needs to get people confirmed by the Senate, that's going to be a big uphill fight for them. And I expect that if Republicans lose the House and Senate in November, many Republicans are going to see that the days of MAGA are numbered. And like rats abandoning a sinking ship, many are going to start distancing themselves from Trump, which will create a secondary

wave of chaos within the Republican Party. Trump will become the lamest of lame duck presidents. Power will shift to Congress and away from the White House. And Democrats would have the opportunity, not a guarantee, but the opportunity to shape really the policy conversation going into the next election. So it is really important that we work very hard to take the House and the Senate from Republicans. The House seems like it's in really good shape for Democrats. Senate is 50-50. But 50-50 is pretty good when just 13 months ago it looked like there was essentially no chance for Democrats to take the Senate. We could end up with the last two years of Trump's presidency, which will shape his legacy to a great degree, being the most disastrous two years of any presidency

in modern history. I want to make that happen. I don't know about you, but that's attractive to me. And so we'll be talking and building as we get closer to the election about exactly how we make that happen. We have absolutely lunatic MAGA on MAGA drama going on right now. Could be a preview of what we would expect if Democrats take the House. and potentially the Senate in November.

I want to explain it to you. I want to tell you why I believe this is so important. But we have to start with what's happening. Sycophantic cuckoo-cou-trump supporter, Megan Kelly, and sycophantic cuckoo-coup-trump supporter Mark Levin, former and current Fox News hosts, respectively, are beefing. Here is what took place. Megan Kelly started by reposting a tweet from a guy named Ryan Grimm, who is from DropSight News, And it's about the attack on a Michigan synagogue.

And in response to Megan Kelly retweeting that, an individual named Brooke Goldstein, who directs the Lawfare project, attacked Megan Kelly, saying, quote, Megan, it's honestly sad to watch someone who was once a respected and serious journalist let bitterness and emotion override the principles that built her career, reposting content from Ryan Grimm, co-finding. founder of the Soros founded DropSite news, just because you share a problem with Israel, is a stunning collapse in judgment. That got into Mark Levin's head. So Mark Levine gets involved posting about Megan Kelly's post, quote, she's evil, diabolical, gone. Well, Megan Kelly was not going to go quietly into the sweet night.

Megan Kelly replied, I'm sorry you have a micro penis, Mark Levin, but don't drag the rest of us into your drama. To which Mark Levine replies, poor Megan Kelly, an emotionally unhinged, lewd and petulant wreck. She's completely revealed and destroyed herself. She's everything people say she is, but much worse. Never an intelligent, thoughtful, or substantive comment.

utterly toxic. To which Megan Kelly replies, Micro penis Mark Levin thinks he has the monopoly on lewd. He tweets about me obsessively in the crudest, nastiest terms possible, literally more than some stalkers I've had arrested. He doesn't like it when women like me fight back because of his micro penis. Now, I want to be really clear, because I don't want to be misquoted. I have no idea whether Mark Levin has a micro penis, a medical condition, a serious medical

condition where the stretched penile length is at least two and a half standard deviations below the mean for a person's age and developmental stage. That's a condition. I don't know whether Mark Levin has that condition. This maga on maga battle is a big, big deal. We've previously talked about Republican battles between MAGA and anti-Maga Republicans. Oh, you know, Rand Paul's ideology is very different than Stephen Miller's, for example. That's non-Trump Republicans and Trump Republicans.

We've seen a lot of that. This is within MAGA. This is within the hardest core MAGA. Megan Kelly, a big MAGA supporter. Mark Levin, a big MAGA supporter. And Donald Trump jumped in here to defend Mark Levine. Now, I'm not going to read this entire thing. Trump posted a wall of text to truth social.

Truth essential. Yeah, where he said, quote, Mark Levin, a truly great American patriot is somewhat under siege by other people with far less intellect, capability and love for our country. Mark is tough, strong and brilliant, hence the nickname, the great one, conceived by our maga friend, the wonderful Sean Hannity after years of dealing with Mark in legal media and other capacities. Okay, blah, blah, blah. But the point here is Trump is taking the side of Mark Levine over Megan Kelly. And this is a theme that is developing in MAGA. There are MAGA aligned people that are increasingly at odds with what Donald Trump is doing. Megan Kelly has expressed some skepticism of how Trump is

handling certain areas of his presidency. Tucker Carlson, who is an on again, off again friend of Trump's and sometimes he's warring with Trump, but sometimes he's invited to the White House. Tucker Carlson has gone full-blown anti-Trump in the sense of saying that what's being done in Iran doesn't really make any sense. And there are other examples. We are, I believe, only seeing the beginning of this. There is, you know, the iceberg analogy where you see only the top 10% of the iceberg floating out of the water and the other 90% is underneath.

there is clearly growing, a growing sense of betrayal, actually, to use Joe Rogan's word, among some MAGA about what Donald Trump is doing, because he is doing almost the exact opposite of much of what he promised to do when he was a candidate. And especially if Republicans start to lose, if Republicans lose the House, if Republicans lose the Senate, I believe you will see these increasingly skeptical MAGA people who, who are kind of like, I don't know, I've been a big Trump guy, but he's not really doing what he said. And a lot of the stuff he is doing is kind of failing us. I don't know.

I believe that they will be completely and totally unleashed and are going to go completely anti-Trump, potentially setting up Trump for one of the most disastrous final two years of a presidency we will have ever seen. And maybe even reaching approval ratings so low, we may not have seen those in decades or ever. But that is all hypothetical. And it is predicated on more and more MAGA people realizing there's nothing Trump can offer them anymore. He can't run again.

He is not potentially going to be in a position to even choose the heir to the MAGA throne because he'll be so unpopular. Only then are you going to see these stubborn, sticky Trump supporters start to peel themselves away from Donald Trump. And I look forward to it. it. I think it's going to be absolutely great. Now, on Monday, we will be unleashing Trump's gas promo. Don't don't get ahead of yourselves. I want to be careful in what I'm saying. Because of the price of gas going totally nuclear, next week, we are going to be doing a one week membership

drive where each day the discounted membership price will be the cost of a gallon of gas in Trump's America. It will be very high as far as gas is concerned. But it will represent a massive discount off of $7 a month memberships. If on Monday, you look at the price of gas and you go, eh, I think by Friday it'll be lower. You can wait and then take advantage of that discount on Friday, which will just mirror the price of a gallon of regular gasoline per the gas buddy charts. I'm getting so excited that I'm hitting my microphone and I apologize. If you want to be notified about this discount, all you need to do is get on my substack

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The link is in the description. Unfortunately for her, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt is kind of running out of options. She's trying to explain what is taking place in this administration, but she can only explain it by lying or by not telling the whole truth. Neither is particularly good. She has given up on coherence and she is just saying words from the English language. And I have a perfect example for you. This continues to be an issue.

She continues to be asked about Trump is saying other countries. need to help us in the Strait of Hormuz. And the question from a reporter is a good one. Trump didn't consult these other countries about invading Iran. Trump clearly didn't prepare for the possibility that this could happen in the Strait of Hormuz and it would continue to push oil prices. Let's see where they are right now as they were about 100. Okay, they dropped a little bit, but around $100 a barrel. Why would countries that weren't consulted in the first place now feel a responsibility to come and do what Donald Trump wants in the straight of Hormuz. And Caroline Levitt just spits out words that make no sense.

Because President Trump says that other countries should now step up to safeguard ships in the streets of Hormuz. Why should other countries that were consulted about this war that are involved in this war and now put their troops in Rome's way in the street of Europe. Because these other countries are benefiting greatly from the United States military taking out the threat of Iran. The rogue Iranian regime has long not just posed. a threat to the United States of America. But of course, to our Gulf and Arab partners in the region, as you see, I believe Iran has struck more than 300 civilian targets in the Gulf region. Notice how none of this actually addresses the question of why would countries who weren't

consulted about the war now put troops in harm's way to help Trump because of his incompetence. If you think about Europe, their ballistic missile capability that the United States military is currently wiping out was a direct and imminent threat to our European allies as well as our bases in the region, which is why President Trump took this action in the first place. So these countries are absolutely benefiting from ensuring that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon. This is something not just the United States, but the entire Western world has agreed with for many, many years. So I think the president is absolutely right to call on these countries to do more, to help the United States to reopen the Strait of Hamous so that we can stop this terrorist regime

from restricting the free flow of energy. And the- Notice that Trump calling for something doesn't really mean anything. The fact that they are doing so just underscores why President Trump needed to take this action in the first place. Yeah. She is, she is really reaching deeply there. The truth of course is there is, they tried the argument that there is a NATO responsibility

to go and help Trump in the strait of Hormuz. There isn't. The NATO Article 5 shared defense is about NATO-MATO, MAPE, members being attacked. No NATO member has been attacked here. Trump invaded Iran, which unleashed chaos in the Strait of Hormuz. Now ships are being bombed in the Strait of Hormuz, but you don't have a responsibility under NATO to go and help Donald Trump because he made a bad decision with regard to invading another country. Number two, when it comes to other countries saying, hey, wait a second, we don't think that committing troops to potentially die over gas prices is worth

You have to remember two things. Number one, Trump clearly didn't care enough about the impact that gas and oil spikes were going to have politically on the United States. And then once he realized, damn, this is really a problem for me. He now says, well, everybody else should be willing to commit troops to something that is a political problem for me. That is not how this works. He should have thought of all of these things to begin with.

Now, the next question to Caroline was the president. told the UK, he doesn't need their ships. Are you saying he does need their ships now? Because he and you are incessantly saying these allies need to come to our support. And Caroline Levitt says, ah, wait one moment. This action in the first place. The president just told the UK a few days ago that he doesn't need their ships. And now he says he does? The president spoke on that last night. He said that he wished the UK had stepped up sooner and quicker. But he continues to speak with our allies. Europe and is calling on them to do more just as he did when he called on them to step up with

respect to their defense spending in NATO. He's calling them to do more here. And I think you'll see that come to fruition. Yeah. You know, it may come to fruition. It is, it is true that some of these countries, the UK and others might get together and they would go, listen, we have no legal responsibility. This is Trump's mess. This is not an Article 5 NATO issue. We put that aside for a moment. We don't believe that this invasion is worth it from the standpoint of increasing the safety of our country and our people. But Donald Trump is sort of like a child who needs to be saved from himself before he starts hurting other people.

And some of these countries, if Caroline is right, that they will ultimately come around to helping Donald Trump in the strait of Hormuz or in other ways, it will be because they realize we've got to figure out a way to get Trump out of this. Trump can't help himself. We are going to have to help him. Trump and Caroline and Maga will go, look at how big and strong Trump is. He told these countries, you've got to come help us. And they did. But it's sort of like when a parent bails out a toddler who has decided to do something incredibly dangerous. You don't go, the toddler is so smart and strong and powerful that they convince me to go help them. No, you look at the toddler and you go, that's a really vulnerable toddler who doesn't even know what they're doing.

I'm going to go and save the toddler because I'm the one who's mature and has the power here. That's what we're looking at here. We are looking at a situation where countries go, this guy cannot get out of his own way. We need to help him before he hurts himself and other people. Finally, finally, we looked at Trump being asked, why are you sending people to the Middle East now? Why are you sending what what what's happening that's precipitating this? We heard an answer from Trump that was barely an answer. Here is Caroline Levitt asked a very similar question. And she goes, ah, you got to talk to somebody else.

Why do you have the president. I would defer you to the Pentagon on that troop movement. And it's not something I'm going to get ahead of the commander in chief on. Yeah. And look, I'm not going to get ahead of him on any options that may be on the table for the president. You know, it's funny because it sounds sort of like an answer of respect and division of powers. So you got to talk to the Pentagon. I'm not going to get ahead of Trump, so on and so forth.

At the end of the day, the president of the United States is the commander in chief. It is up to Trump whether they commit Marines or in other cases, we learned that it's, the Navy is being sent and about 5,000 troops total. She is supposed to be a go-between, a liaison, an intermediary between Trump and the press. And so Trump's commander-in-chief, it's Trump's decision. She's supposed to communicate the rationale between behind Trump's decisions. There is, of course, no real rationale between behind what Donald Trump is doing. So Caroline has to hide behind.

Oh, I can't get ahead of Trump and you got to talk to the Pentagon. They don't have the slightest idea, the slightest idea. what they are doing and why they are doing it. And that is absolutely terrifying. Donald Trump delivered another late night wall of text on truth social, raising fears that he is sundowning again, crashing out in a fit of rage as his political career is crumbling around him. I want to talk about a few of the elements of this, but I'm not going to read the whole

thing because it's so long and so unhinged, but we will link to it. Donald Trump posted late at night, quote, the decision that mattered most to me was tariffs. The court knew where I stood, how badly I wanted this victory for our country, and instead decided to potentially give away trillions of dollars to countries and companies who have been taking advantage of the United States for decades. Our Supreme Court has made these countries very happy, but as the court pointed out, I have the absolute right to charge tariffs in another form and have already started to do so. And he goes on and on and on.

Then he says, I want to thank Justice Alito, Thomas, and Kavanaugh for their wisdom and courage pertaining to the tariff case and for understanding in addition to the law that our unfriendly competitors should not be reimbursed and rewarded for the decades of damage they have caused to the United States. Trump says he's going to fight hard to make sure that foreign countries do not get tariff reimbursements. And then he says a whole bunch of other crazy stuff. Now, let me tell you what is absolutely fascinating about this.

Tariffs are not paid by foreign countries. If there are going to be tariff refunds, why would China get a refund when China didn't pay the damn tariffs? The refunds would go to the American companies. It's really simple. If China sells a million dollars worth of steel to the United States with a 10% tariff, China gets their million dollars and the American company pays a million to the Chinese company.

And when the steel gets to the shores of the United States, they pay a 10% tariff $100,000 to the US government. Why would China get a tariff refund when the American importer paid the tariff? Now, I continue to be unsure whether Donald Trump is saying this stuff. to keep up the political game that China or the other countries pay the tariffs, and he knows that they don't, or if Trump is genuinely that confused about how tariffs work. Trump is, of course, framing the tariffs as a punishment to the other country, but it's really a tax on American companies, 90% of which is then passed on to individuals. So the court case

that Trump is referring to with the Supreme Court, it's not an adjudication of whether tariffs are good or bad, it's simply were they imposed legally. Does Trump have the authority to impose tariffs in that way? And the Supreme Court has determined that they do not. If the tariffs are illegal, courts could say you've got to refund what's been collected. But it would be refunded to the party that paid it. And that's the American importer. Now, as usual, it's all about, are you loyal to Trump? Trump praises justices who agreed with him, but calls the court weaponized. when it rules against him. And he says, oh, you know, these Republican just trying to prove their independence, that's their job. It's it's not like, oh, look at them ignoring their real duty and just

trying to show that they're independent by voting a different way than the Republican president when a Republican appointed them. No, that's actually the job. The whole theoretical point, which they often fail to achieve and succeed at. The whole theoretical point is justices on the Supreme Court are supposed to be above partisanship. I don't think they always are. They failed to do it sometimes. But we have seen this claim again and again. You know, the 2020 election was stolen. Never proven in court. Why won't the Supreme Court? It's standing this, that, the other thing. His own justice department finds no evidence of widespread fraud. Well, they're weaponized this, that the other thing. The format is very simple. He makes a claim. There's a legal setback in proving that claim. And he attacks the judicial

body or law enforcement body that he sees as adversarial to the claim he's trying to make. The system's corrupt. We've got to go around it. So if you're a Trump supporter, the message is very simple. When you see a court of law come to a conclusion that differs from the opinion of Donald Trump, what Trump wants you to do is to say the court must be illegitimate. The justices must be corrupt. And it is Trump who is right.

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Vice President J.D. Vans just can't get out of his own way. And one of the things that really plagues him is that he can't get away with quite as much as some other people in the Trump orbit because he's so unlikable and so uncharismatic and so terrible at lying, quite frankly. Here is an example of J.D. Vance unable to connect in any reasonable way with the audience. We know gas prices are spiking. They're through the roof. It's because of the Iran war.

Oil prices are up. It's all precipitating the fear of an economic collapse. And J.D. Vance wants to pull out the whole it's Biden's fault thing. Now, I hate to admit it, but there are people in Trump's orbit who are sophisticated enough in their propaganda delivery skills that they can sort of do it in a way that to the untrained eye, you go, yeah, maybe there's something to that. J.D. Vance is so bad at this that when he tries to do the the gas prices or Biden's fault thing, it just falls completely. completely flat. Take a look.

All this conversation happens where Joe Biden left us in a terrible situation and the reason why gas prices are where they are today is because of Donald Trump's work to get them lower because in the Biden administration they were crazy high. Right. The gas prices we're seeing today are nothing like what we saw at the peak of the Biden administration because the president has set us up for energy dominance. And one of the lessons we all have to take. away, frankly, every time we get involved in anything overseas, whether it's in the Middle

East or anywhere else, the thing we got to take away from it is energy dominance and energy independence. Rely on our own people. Rely on our own energy. Yeah. Unfortunately, none of that is coherent with the Trump policy in the Middle East. None of it comports with reality. Just none of it makes any kind of sense whatsoever, at all ever full stop. Let's in fact take a look at that chart. Now we start with an 18 month chart. Obviously on the 18 month chart, you see that gas prices were just kind of bouncing in this

range between 290 and 320. A lot of that time was under Biden and then Trump came in and gas prices went up just a little bit, but they were basically the same. They were just, it was flat gas prices under Biden and under Trump. And then now after this short dip, you see this massive, massive spike. Trump takes over. Biden had had more than six months of roughly $3 gas and its level until Trump goes to war with Iran.

And we're going to come back to that because that's an important part of our story. Now, JD's argument is that these numbers are way lower than they ever were under Biden. Well, we can zoom out to something like a six year chart. And it is certainly true that you have this situation where there was this very brief period in mid-2020, where gas spiked to five bucks a gallon. You see that it's an anomaly. Just about everything you see in this chart has nothing to do with any president. And I include Trump in that.

A bunch of this also Trump was president for. What you do see is that gas prices start to climb in 2020. And then they continue climbing when Biden takes over in 2021 and and peak in 2022. That's the pandemic. And again, if we go back even further into the eight year, you see this super cheap moment of gas prices down to 174 under Trump. And then you see gas prices spiking under Trump. It really doesn't have to do with Trump. I could play games with you and blame Trump or presidents have very little influence over gas prices. The gas prices collapsed under Trump because demand collapse because it was COVID, nobody was going anywhere. And then as post-COVID demand surge

started globally, gas and oil started going up. None of this stuff has to do with Trump or Biden. The reason that when we focus in on the 18 month chart and we look at this, ready for this number, 36% spike in gas prices during 2026. The reason we look at Trump is because Trump did one of the the very few things presidents can do despite gas prices. One in or to change gas prices. One thing presidents can do is declare a gas tax holiday where briefly there's no tax on gas. That's a temporary artificial savings. Number two, presidents can release oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. Trump is doing that. That's believed to have a 15 to 20 cent a gallon decline impact over the the short to medium term. But the most impactful thing that presidents can do that affect gas prices

is you go to war with a country that is either a major oil producer or a country that controls the path of oil throughout the world. And that is exactly what Donald Trump did. So to believe that this nearly vertical line in gas prices over the last 15 days is Biden's fault, you have to believe that Joe Biden somehow planted a proverbial bomb in 2024, which dormantly set Trump up for gas prices to spike in March of 2026 the day after Trump bombs Iran. Only if you believe that, could you believe that what we are seeing today is Donald Trump's being victimized by something Biden did when Biden was still president. Come on, guys, how gullible do you have to believe, be to believe that crap?

Why can't we all just shut up and accept if it's bad under Trump, it must be Biden's fault. That's what they want us to do. We are going to continue following this. It is abundantly clear that there is panic in the Trump White House over this and reporting from two weeks ago that Susie Wiles was running around the White House screaming about gas prices and how this is going to destroy them in November. Well, you know what? It very well may destroy them in November.

And if it does, there would be no more deserving people to get destroyed by it in November. Donald Trump posted something on truth social that I don't know that I ever expected to see from an American president. And it tells you so much about how Trump sees journalism in the United States. put up a post bragging about the media figures and media outlets that he says he has taken down. And it's basically the tone of a celebratory victory lap. Look at the people who went after me, he says, and look at where they are now. Here's the post where Trump has a section that says gone. PBS defunded, NPR defunded, Joy Reid out at MSNBC, Lester Holt out at NBC.

Facebook has stopped its biased fact checking. Jim Acosta's out at CNN. Stephen Colbert is leaving CBS. Chuck Todd is out at NBC. Layoffs at the Washington Post. John Dickerson out. Terry Moran out. This is Trump.

By the way, I thought these things had nothing to do with Trump. I thought it was always, we're not involved in any of this stuff. If there's a legal proceeding or a regulatory intervention or a business decision that's made by a media outlet, this has nothing to do with Trump or the Trump. House and now Trump is posting going, I did all of that. We're clear, as he puts it, we are cleaning up the media. Trump wants journalists and commentators and media organizations to see it and to be afraid. And the message is very clear.

It's a, it's a rough message. You criticize Trump. Your career might take a hit. Your business might take a hit. We might try to pull your media outlet off the air altogether. And if you look at the last 10 and a half years. at this point. Dear God, Trump has spent a lot of it attacking reporters, news outlets, individual journalists by name. And here, he's celebrating the idea that people who criticize him are losing

their jobs. Is there anything more anti-American than this? What about the First Amendment? And so this is sending a signal that we're all supposed to interpret. If you're a journalist, a pundit, a commentator, an analyst, an influencer, a content creator, if you're me or any of us in our cohort, If you are thinking about how aggressively am I going to cover Trump, you are supposed to get the message here. If you go after him, you could lose your job, your livelihood. You could maybe even end up in prison. Wouldn't he like that?

Now, the contrast with what the right has claimed also can't be ignored because Trump has spent years saying that it's the right that are the victims of media censorship. We just want to get out our views. and all of the left-wing media are censoring us. Yet the Republican President Trump is bragging about how media figures he believes he has pushed out are now out of jobs. He's saying, I did it, but I thought it was being done to you. So it's a different narrative depending on the moment.

It's either we are the biggest victims of the liberal media or the liberal media, supposed are going to be crushed by me when I decide I don't like them. So there are some who will continue reporting the exact same way as before. Count me in. That's where we're going to do it. Others may start calculating the risk. Others may start saying, well, I don't know. This is part of why you've seen some media outlets settle with Trump rather than fight what

seem to be pretty strong cases in court because the off chance that they do end up losing or that it jeopardizes deals they have. I have no deals with Trump. I have none of it. Okay. Anyone in our cohort could be next. I could be next, but we're going to keep doing the thing. There is no more important time quite literally to support the media outlets that you value.

If it's this one, great. If it's somebody else, awesome. It could be just following us. It could be hitting the subscribe button as you watch this video. It also could be getting a membership and doing a little bit more. For example, we have a membership plan at join packman.com. And I would be flattered and honored if you said, hey, you know what, David, I am going to support the work that you're doing a little more directly.

But this is the time. He might come for us. He might come for any of us. Increasingly, it's likely he's going to get someone, but he's making it clear and he's putting it in the open. And I can't think of anything less American. The David Packman Show is an audience supported program and the best most direct way to To support the show is by becoming a member at join packman.com.

You'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show, and plenty of other great membership perks. Get the full experience by signing up at join packman.com. One of Donald Trump's top goons, his communication director, Stephen Chung, lost it over my interview with a nasty guy named Gavin Newscum. I'm not joking. Take a look at this. Gavin Newsom posted a clip of my interview with him with the text.

My message to Stephen Miller is simple. Resign. And this wildly triggered Donald Trump's communications director, Stephen Chung, who took to Twitter and said, quote, the master of the dark arts, Stephen Miller lives rent free in Gavin New Scum's head. as the disgraced governor sits in his cuck chair showing the world how much of a loser he is. Now, what was the interview clip in question that so triggered Stephen Chung? It is this video from my recent sit down with Governor Gavin Newsom.

Of the people that are left, who's most dangerous that if it were up to you, you would say removing this person helps the country the most? The dark heart of the administration, period, full stop, is one man, Stephen Miller, the darkest of the dark hearts. What specifically, because of his policy on the deportation stuff? Yeah, his influence is outsized. I mean, it was manifested through Christy Noem in many ways as a fault person for all that. I mean, all these guys. I mean, this is Stephen Miller at scale, the playbook, the masked men, the secret police, the mass deportations, the detention camps, the gross incompetency, the shock.

all this notion that might makes right this law of the jungle mindset the rule of you know don in this case the only person that he'll submit to so no Miller is the architect of all this that's not going to fundamentally change even if this new guy comes in what was most grotesque and incompetent about a gnome was how she vandalized the rest of that agency not just it relates to ice but what she did to FEMA yeah what she's doing to victims of floods and fire and droughts across the country that are still waiting for aid that's sitting on our desk because they're simple incapacity as an administrator to do her damn job. So there was so many reasons why she should have been fired.

But at the core of this, what's malignant, it's not her in contrast or comparison to him. So this is what sent Stephen Chung on a bender. Now there's a very, I hope, obvious point that's important to consider. Look at the specificity with which Gavin Newsom is telling us why Stephen Miller is so dangerous. And then look at the reaction from Stephen Chung. You do an interview about the policy of Miller. Gavin Newsom posts the clip and Trump's communications director doesn't defend the policy. He just does personal attacks.

Chung's not making an argument about immigration. Chung is not attempting to rebut the substance of what. Gavin Newsom is saying. It's just insults. New scum, cuck chair, he's a loser. And what's funny about Chung saying Stephen Miller is living rent free in Newsom's head is that Newsom posted a clip of an interview. And Chung immediately jumps on it with a personal meltdown using phrases like cuck chair and using the term new scum. That tells you a lot about who's really living rent free where here. Now, I think there's a bigger picture issue of the political climate. that we're dealing with. Criticism of policy, which is what Gavin Newsom did, is seen as a personal

attack. And that's Trumpism 101. If you go, listen, I don't think that Trump's trade policy is in the interest of the average American. This is a lightweight who was never really a high IQ person. You understand the difference there between this is bad policy. Oh, yeah, well, you're a cuck. What kind of a nickname can I come up for you? Your wife is a ugly. We've seen Trump deploy that beauty sometimes before. So the responses are all personal retaliation being triggered at an individual level. Now, let's kind of do one additional layer here of analysis. There are some who believe that exactly what the Democratic Party needs in 2028 is someone who triggers the right in exactly the way that Gavin Newsom does. On the other hand, there are people in my audience,

the different perspective, which is Newsom is just way too divisive as evidenced by the fact that he posts a clip from our interview and within minutes, the communications director of the president of the United States is out there attacking him and generally losing his mind. I don't pretend to have the answer. If you assigned me to either argue that we don't need someone that triggers the right as much as Gavin Newsom or that we do, I could come up with what feel like pretty good cases for their argument. So I think as we get beyond the 2026 midterms and start to think about 2028, and again, based on my conversation a couple weeks ago with Gavin Newsom, it certainly seems

as though he has every intention of running. And only something changing would derail that intention. That's my sense. We're going to have to figure out what do we need. I think the old mantras of you need a Southern Democratic governor or if you've got a Northern Democrat as the main candidate, their running mate needs to be from certain state. Nobody can win from New York or California. I think all that stuff is that is not valid anymore. I just don't think that matters anymore. I do think that there is value in thinking about, well, what sort of personality is the one that we're looking for here? And we have to consider that there are people who don't like Newsome, but like AOC, who aren't worried about the fact that AOC is wildly triggering to the right in different

ways, but at a similar level as Gavin Newsom. So I don't pretend to have the answer right now. I think it's too early, but I'd be curious what you think. Do we need someone that triggers the right more or less in thinking about attributes and characteristics for the 2028 nominee that we will eventually see? More and more of the Manosphere, soft Trump supporting podcasters are turning on Donald Trump. And today we are going to look at an example of comedian Tim Dylan. Tim Dylan has done a really interesting shift over the last few months, as have many other

podcasters, including Joe Rogan. Now, I am not presenting this as Tim Dylan was the most hardcore of hardcore Trump supporters. He was so super tuned into policy and all. I'm not claiming that. But certainly Tim Dylan is someone who seems to have had a sort of awakening over the last three to four months that a lot of what Trump promised is not what they were led to believe were led to expect. I believe that they should have realized it was coming. I mean, we figured it out, but a lot of them didn't, fine. But he is now making very clear that he believes the incentives

and the priorities and the desires of this administration are not favorable to the average person in the United States. Let's look at example number one. We've got some real fun people here that are trying to egg on World War III. I fully believe this is the plan. I think they want World War III. I don't think, I believe they want World War III. I think the Epstein documents started to expose things that could not see the light of day.

I think this economy is in much deeper trouble than people think. And I think that this is the plan. The plan is like we need some kind of prolonged conflict to sink a bunch of people, money and sadly lives and things like that. Now you might say, oh, that's not a particularly interesting analysis from the standpoint of giving us new insight. But the point is who it's coming from. And when people like Tim Dillon, who are more casual observers of the political space, but

certainly have audiences that I would think more lean more pro-Trump than the audiences of a lot of other entertainers. It's still a very interesting conclusion that he's coming to here, which is that the incentives of why we are seeing a lot of these things, including the Iran war, relate to all stuff that doesn't benefit the average person, hiding the Epstein documents with World War III or whatever. None of that is good for the average person. And Trump ran on the sort of populism that is premised upon predicated on the idea that it's going

going to be good for the average person. Another clip from Tim Dylan weighing in on Trump saying, look at the stuff that he's doing. He's at the end of his life. He doesn't care what happens next. So whatever this man needs to hear, really, whatever this guy needs to hear, he's at the end of his life. He just, he's endorsing Jake Paul for president. He doesn't care what happens next. That's the thing with Donald Trump. He doesn't really care what happens next. So whatever this guy needs to hear to get him out of this war, tell him.

Tell him that. Whatever this dude needs to hear so that he can get us the fuck out of there because this is, and listen, obviously we all support the U.S. military. That's why we don't want. them dying. Exactly. Um, for literally no reason, um, in Iran, unfortunately. Now I know people attack me for saying that. They will say, well, you're just honoring their sacrifice. What I'm saying is that if we get a crazier leader than the one we had before, I, I don't get it. It's a pretty good analysis. I have to tell you. Um, but Trump is just kind

of on a farewell tour. And take a look here. He's endorsing Jake Paul for political office. And you really have to think to yourself, we do deserve everything we get as a country. You know, like we really do deserve it. There's certain things that people get in their lives. They don't deserve.

You know, somebody gets sick or whatever. You get a bad car accident. But, you know, this country deserves everything we get. Well, there is a little bit of a, you know, fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice. You can't get fooled again. And just so you know, when I say that, I know that's not the phrase. George W. Bush famously messed it up.

I get it. But the point here is people have fallen for it multiple times. There are, consider this for a moment. There are tens of millions of Americans who voted for Trump three times. Three times. How naive do you have to be at that point? Or, or in their defense, not really a defense, but different explanation for the, for the folly, how cognitively dissonant, how unwilling to recognize that you made a mistake do you have to be

to go, I'm going down with a ship. I'm voting for him a third time. Final clip. Here is Tim Dillon correctly pointing out. What happened to cheaper groceries? What happened to prices going down? So this is that. This is what we're doing.

Oh, I thought we're like going to, I thought our taxes. is, I thought like the cost of groceries is going to go down. No, no, no, we're ending the world. We realized we couldn't do any of that. Let's be honest. You think your grocery is coming. The price of a house is never coming down. We're ending the world.

I mean, it's pretty simple. There's zero way you're ever going to afford a house. Let's rapture you all. Let's rapture you all. It is the only shot you have at a good life right now is to hasten the rapture. That is right now the foreign and economic policy of our country currently right now is the rapture. That is the foreign and economic policy of our country is the rapture. You're out of here.

We're all going. The Messiah is coming back and he's going to figure it out because we don't know how to get these houses cheaper. We don't know. We do not know. We do not know. When the Messiah gets here, he'll figure it out and he'll rapture something. You get the point of this. Listen, there is a change happening. But turning that change into getting power back is going to depend on coherently explaining to people, not only why this

outcome was predictable, but you've got to have an alternative that is both emotionally salient and credible and believable and give people something else to vote for. Because otherwise, they may not vote for whoever Trump picks to replace them in 2028, but a lot of them may end up just staying home. So the circumstances. and the environment are certainly set up for a real sea change in this country. But Democrats have to offer something positive here to vote for. Now, as I told you before, next week, we will be unleashing Trump's gas membership promo. We will be doing a one week membership drive during which the monthly cost of a membership

will be available at the cost of a gallon of regular gasoline, which could represent up to a 50% discount from our normal membership prices. I would love for you to participate. You can get on our newsletter to be notified by signing up at substack. Davidpack. Get that newsletter. We've got a phenomenal bonus show for you today. I'll see you then.

I'll see you tomorrow.