The David Pakman Show - ICE agents in trouble as under the bus goes Bovino

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

-- On the Show -- Graham Platner, a Marine and U.S. Army veteran and oyster farmer, joins us to discuss his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Maine -- The Trump administration publicly shields ICE agents while quietly setting up a political scapegoat strategy that would sacrifice individual officers to protect Donald Trump and senior officials -- Tom Homan signals internal blame shifting as the Trump administration prepares to distance itself from ICE and Border Patrol agents amid political backlash -- Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell asserts independence and delivers bleak economic signals that undermine Donald Trump’s economic narrative -- Donald Trump delivers erratic remarks alongside Nicki Minaj endorsements and incoherent policy claims that highlight cognitive decline and performative chaos -- Senators Marco Rubio and Rand Paul openly clash over authoritarian logic and foreign policy, exposing fractures inside the Republican coalition around Trump -- Fox News figures Brit Hume and others acknowledge polling reality and concede that Donald Trump’s immigration and economic policies are politically damaging -- Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem deflects responsibility for false claims about a Minnesota killing by invoking obedience while positioning herself as expendable -- On the Bonus Show: Democrats and the White House try avoiding another government shutdown, the Melania documentary is bombing, the FBI searches an Atlanta election office looking for 2020 voter fraud, and much more... ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF for a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman 🤖 Sponsored by Venice: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off a Pro Account at https://venice.ai/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 0:00) Start(01:18) Trump sets up ICE scapegoats(07:20) Homan hints at blame shift(13:29) Powell defies Trump narrative(21:19) Trump rambles, chaos on display(28:22) Rubio Paul GOP fracture(36:47) Graham Platner Interview(1:00:56) Fox admits Trump damage(1:07:04) Noem deflects Minnesota killing   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are starting with something that should make everybody nervous, including the people enforcing Donald Trump's policies. ICE agents believe that they have total impunity right now. People have been killed, no serious consequences, and a system that is mostly protecting them. But authoritarian systems don't protect people out of loyalty. They protect people until the optics flip. And we're seeing Trump quietly backpedal and throw people under the bus. We're seeing Tom Homan say, if the ice agents or CBP break the law, they will be held accountable. And so ice agents do need to be careful. Then Jerome Powell says no to Donald Trump, drops bad jobs news and insists the Fed won't be bullied. They did not change the federal funds rate.

And then we see the real Trump derangement syndrome. Her name is Nikki Minaj. And she was on stage with Donald Trump in a particularly incoherent moment. We're also going to cover Republican infighting, Fox hosts quietly realizing they are getting screwed, and Christy Noam is trying the Nuremberg defense, just following orders. I don't believe it will work and I will tell you why. All of that today. Right now, if you are an ICE agent or a Border Patrol officer that has been deployed to Minneapolis

or other places where there are operations taking place under Trump's deportation agenda, you probably feel like you have total impunity. You can do whatever you want and get away with it. People have been killed. Agents have been reassigned. No charges, no serious investigations. And the system closes ranks. The administration defends them and the message is you are protected. And that protection is very real for now. But the problem is that these things have a tendency to reverse. Let me explain what I mean. The thing about authoritarian leaning. political systems is that they don't protect people out of loyalty. They protect people out of convenience. Trump isn't defending the officers who have been involved in these killings because he believes

that they are the most upstanding people who behave perfectly. He's defending them because of the political math around it. And if the political math changes, the rules all of a sudden change. Now, today, you will see this happening in real time before your eyes. In Minnesota, multiple civilians have been killed by federal immigration agents just in the last month. We've seen the protests. We've seen the calls for impeachment. We've seen threats to block funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Video evidence directly contradicts the narratives from this administration in multiple cases,

which is exactly the kind of thing that makes the whole operation politically radioactive. Now, we are seeing Bovino out and Tom Homan in. I'm going to play some clips for you in a moment from Tom Homan, but we are seeing a shift because Trump's people are defending the agents for now, but the pressure is building. And at some point, they may decide they need to prove that checks and balances still exist, even if only for show. So what's the easiest way to prove that checks and balances exist? You don't go after the policymakers. You don't go after the people who ordered and orchestrated the operations. You go after a.

a sacrificial lamb. You find one agent or a few to throw under the bus. You hold a dramatic press conference where you say, we've identified a rogue individual or a couple of rogue individuals. We are restoring accountability and you throw the book at them. And next thing you know, they end up in prison. It won't change the system big picture. Mostly they are still operating with impunity, but if you are the agent or agents that become the scapegoat, the sacrificial lamb for accountability, all of a sudden, the system that protected you is using you to protect itself and you end up in prison. So these ice agents have to be very careful. Now, this is not hypothetical. This is how authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes operate. They rely on the security forces

to go in and do the dirty work. And then they scapegoat those forces, when it becomes politically useful to them. Scapegoating is a core feature of authoritarian politics. And authoritarian leaders love to use scapegoating to deflect blame, to preserve power and to go, we've taken care of it. We've taken care of that problem. Tom Homan, who is replacing Greg Bovino on the ground in Minneapolis, is already alluding to this, where he says, ICE and CBP officers, if they aren't working with

professionalism, we are going to deal with them. ICE and CBP officers are performing their duties in a challenging environment under tremendous circumstances. But they're trying to do with professionalism. If they don't, they'll be dealt with. If they don't do it with professionalism, they will be dealt with. Now, this is not a moral change for Tom Homan. This is not a reversal in the Trump administration for what is okay or what isn't okay.

It's just a practical reality. They are realizing they may need to throw. someone under the bus and say, look, we did identify someone that needed to be charged, and we have charged them. And if you are that ICE agent, if you were that Border Patrol agent, well, you are going to end up under the bus. We have seen this globally. You know, when we look at dictatorships in Latin America and Southeast Asia, they use death squads

and security forces to suppress dissent. And then when the international pressure mounted against their their activities, they suddenly prosecuted a few low-level officers and the leadership walked free. So we've seen it. We've seen this before. Russia, Turkey, and Egypt label the opposition as terrorists and they empower security services to crush them, but then they will selectively purge or prosecute officers when the optics don't look so good. And the message is always the same. Loyalty goes one way. If you are an ICE agent right now thinking I will never be held accountable because the Renee good people got away with it, and the Alex Prattie people got away with it at least for now, you may be right. But what happens

if you're wrong and what happens if you're wrong in the worst possible way? Because if Trump decides that he needs to show that the system has guardrails, trust us. This is he's not going to sacrifice himself. He's not going to sacrifice Stephen Miller. It doesn't look like he's going to sacrifice Christy Gnome. He's going to sacrifice you if he thinks it will be useful. And that's the brutal reality of systems built on impunity. They don't really offer impunity. They offer temporary cover until you become a political problem. And believe me, you are expendable. So if you're an ICE agent, I would be very careful about assuming that you are untouchable. History tells us that in authoritarianism, you're only untouchable until the optics flip and the optics are flipping. Look at how they flipped

on Greg Bovino in the last 48 hours. And let's talk about that in a little more detail. Tom Homan, Trump's deportation czar, was sent to Minneapolis because he's replacing Greg Bovino. Now, they want you to believe the Trump administration wants you to believe that this is just an administrative change. Greg Bovino's doing a great job. Forget about the fact that he's walking around with a squad of goons going into Target to use the toilet and going into Speedway to get snacks and getting kicked out everywhere and deploying CS gas clumsily and wreaking havoc on the streets. They want you to believe everything that he's doing is great, but he has been demoted. Now, they're saying, oh, he's just going back to his old job.

And anyway, he was going to retire soon. But believe me, if he was doing something that was optically good for this administration, they would have kept Pavino in power. So in comes Tom Homan. And he seems to be saying we are going to start changing how we are operating. We are going to start removing troops. It seems very clear that they've realized this is not looking good. I do not want to hear that everything's been done here has been perfect.

Nothing's ever perfect and anything to be improved on. And what we've been working on is making this operation safer, more efficient by the book. The mission is going to improve because of the changes we're making it internally. No agency organization is perfect. President Trump and I, along with others in the administration, have recognized that certain improvements could and should be made. That's exactly what I'm doing here. As such, in meetings I've had with federal law enforcement managers, including ICE and CBP and other federal partners, as well as state and local officials, I have conveyed the President's expectations with regard to federal immigration enforcement efforts.

We will conduct targeted enforcement operations. All right. So this is the new phrase, targeted enforcement operations, trying to back off of the perception that they are just going around and screwing with citizens and random people, which of course, they are. Now, if this sounds like they are surrendering, Tom Homan wants you to know very strongly and very powerfully, they are not surrendering. And look, I will say it again, You know, we are not surrendering our mission at all. We're just doing smarter. They're going to be smarter about their mission, but you should be aware that the withdrawal

of these forces is conditional upon cooperation. If there is, depending on how that goes, there will be redeployment. Mr. Holland, Toronto, the Lord, the Associated Press, based on how you have described these changes in the mission. Can you be more specific about the objectives of operation Metro Surge if what you have described changes the parameters for interior enforcement only in Minnesota or also in Maine and other places? And finally, when would you consider that those objectives will be achieved and this operation will end? Is it in terms of agents on the ground, in terms of who you

are targeting for arrests? The withdrawal of law enforcement resources here is dependent upon cooperation. Like I said, one agent, one bad guy, bad guy in jail means less agents on the street. We have some agreements. We got more to talk about how we're going to implement these agreements. But as we see that cooperation happen, then the redeployment will happen. In other words, as long as state and local authorities do exactly what we tell them, we would consider getting some of these troops out of here. Aye, aye, yie. We then got to a bunch of lies from him about a whole bunch of different things, but there was a direct question

as to how many of these officers are currently operating in the state of Minnesota. Take a look at it. Can you please be specific about how many ICE and how many Border Patrol agents are currently operating in the state? I think we're near three. There's been some rotations. Another thing I witnessed and I came here, I'll share this way. you. I've met with a lot of people, a lot of the agents. They've been in theater. Some of these people

have been in theater for eight months. In theater, words typically reserved for war zones. And if your argument is, well, this has become a war zone. Become a war zone because of their presence, not because of the underlying circumstances. So there's going to be rotations of personnel. Hopefully less now that we have some agreements, maybe we can make it more efficient and save. But They've been in theater a long time. And so, you know, there's rotations happen all the time to get people out and go home, get some rest and see their families. Day after day, can't eat in the restaurants.

Day after day, having people spit on your bow whistles at you. They can't go into restaurants, guys. Day after day, having all these threats at you, day, having people trying to interfere with you. Day after day, you know, they're human. So, you know, we've got to rotate these people, and we've already rotated some. But my main focus now is draw by. down based upon the great conversations I've had with your state and local leaders. All right. So listen, this is a lot of propaganda. The main points are they realized Bovino was

screwing them. So Bovino is out. They realize they need to start drawing down their presence and they're making it as though as soon as they get what they believe is right, they will start doing that. And meanwhile, they're insisting that these are targeted operations, even though they have become very much scattershot operations. Bottom line, Homan's a disaster, but they do seem to acknowledge that this is not going well from an optics perspective. And maybe all we can hope for is that Trump's concern with whether he is liked for what he is doing will get him to go in a different direction in Minneapolis. It seems as though that is starting. Fed chairman Jerome Powell gives no F's about what Donald Trump wants and announced that they are not going to be changing the federal funds rate.

Donald Trump has insisted for a long time now that Powell, who he believes is clueless and too late and too slow and potentially a criminal, that Powell needs to just dump the federal funds rate. Jerome Powell for his side has insisted for a year, the Fed is independent. I will not be bullied into quitting. I will not be bullied into cutting rates. And he announced that there is no change to the federal funds rate, wildly triggering news for Donald Trump, and also mentions that the unemployment, the jobs numbers are remaining not so good. While job gains have remained low, the unemployment rate has shown some signs of stabilization and inflation remains somewhat elevated. In support of our goals, today the federal open market committee decided to leave our policy rate unchanged. Oh, boy. Having lowered our policy rate by 75 basis points over the course of our previous three

meetings, we see the current stance of monetary policy as appropriate to promote progress toward both our maximum employment and 2% inflation goals. And of course, Trump does not like that. Trump insists the economy is better than ever, but is demanding the kind of rate cuts you typically see when the economy needs urgent rescue. So which is it? Is the economy so good or is the economy so bad that you need you need these rate cuts. Well, Trump wants to have it all and nothing at all, all at the same time. Jerome Powell, I've got to hand it to him. He has been very clear and very direct. We will be objective and we will serve the American people. We will not serve Trump and his desires. We at the Fed will continue to do our jobs with objectivity, integrity, and a deep

commitment to serve the American people. Thank you. I look forward to your questions. Now, One of the topics that did come up was digging into more detail about the jobs numbers. And Jerome Powell didn't mince words. He said, these jobs numbers are not so good. We've got job losses in some scenarios. The unemployment rate was 4.4% in December and has changed little in recent months. Job gains have remained low. Total non-farm payrolls declined at an average pace of 22,000 per month over the last three months. excluding government employment. Not good.

Not good at all. Trump's argument for a long time and others have been, well, the reason that there are job losses is because we purged the waste, fraud, and abuse from the government. So a lot of those losses are losses on paper of scam jobs with the federal government. They weren't productive jobs. They were no good. But Jerome Powell is making it clear, even if you exclude government jobs from this, we are seeing job losses. losses. Powell was asked, can the Fed maintain independence in this environment? Of course, the implicit

question is in this environment where Trump is the one exerting massive influence on the Fed. And Powell says, oh yeah, we're all committed to that. You're confident it can maintain that independence at this point. Yes. I mean, I'm strongly committed to that and so are my colleagues. And I have to tell you, it's not that, you know, Fed shares are not. populist heroes. Fed chairs are not the folk folks you think of when you go, who is out there really helping the average American? It's a sort of a different role, right? It's technical in a sense. It relates to monetary policy. But one of the things that I have to praise Powell for is that in every

way he is remaining as apolitical as he can. And when he was even asked to weigh in about his presence at a Supreme Court hearing, he said, I'm not even going to comment on stuff. on comments by other officials. Associated Press, thank you. I wanted to ask that you attended the Supreme Court hearing last week on the Lisa Cook case and Treasury Secretary Scott Besson criticized that as political. Can you say why you attended and what you would say in response to the Secretary's criticism? So let me start with, I don't respond to comments by other officials, whoever they may be.

It's just not appropriate to do that. I will tell you why I attended. I would say that that case is perhaps the most important legal case in the Fed's 113 year history. And as I thought about it, I thought it might be hard to explain why I didn't attend. In addition, Paul Volcker went to a Supreme Court case famously in I guess in 1985 or so. So it's precedented. Anyway, so the point here is he is not even going to weigh in specifically and respond. to what Scott Bessent says, you can say a lot of things about Jerome Powell. A lot of them would

be untrue if they are negative. And one of the strongest arguments you could make against his actions is just that in general, at a systemic level, the Fed is not really functioning in a way where the average person really benefits from their decisions. That's a criticism you could make of the system. But as far as Powell goes, he has remained apolitical and he has remained steadfast in his commitment to making decisions about rates, not because of what Trump says wants or demands, but based on his consultation with the other Fed governors. And you got to praise him for that. You know, I'll often talk to my friends about what do we really think is private on our computers

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The David Packman Show is an audience supported program. I invite you to get yourself a membership at join packman.com. This is our primary source of funding, the podcast, the YouTube videos, the Snapchat videos. Everything that we are doing is funded by memberships. Our two newest members who I want to say a huge thank you to today are Matthew Hopkins and Jennifer Beck. Thanks, Matthew and Jennifer. They'll get the bonus show, the commercial free video show, the commercial free audio show,

and a bunch of other great perks. Read about it and consider signing up at join packman.com. I want to show you video of the real Trump direction. arrangement syndrome. It is not those who criticize Donald Trump. It is those sycophants and dilettance and suckups who see, hey, you know what? I think I can get goodies if I suck up to Donald Trump. And the latest derangee, for lack of a better term, is Nikki Minaj.

Mnage, who lost millions of social media followers after her recent friendly overtures to the administration, here she is Trump saying, let's bring her up and that he's going to let his nails grow like Nikki's nails. I guess not realizing that her nails are fake. Look at the cultish nature of this. This was an event, by the way, meant to promote Trump's Trump accounts, savings accounts for kids. Nikki, come on up. Come on. She's been such a great supporter and a great supporter of Trump accounts. And I said, I am going to let my nails grow because I love those nails. I'm going to, I'm going to let those nails grow. All right. So up comes Nikki Minaj and then she makes a declaration. And the declaration is that there is no bigger fan of Donald Trump's than Nikki Minaj and that. And that,

whatever other people say to her about it, she doesn't give a damn, and it only makes her support Trump more. In a moment, I'll tell you what I think this is really about. Hello. Well, I don't know what to say, but I will say that I am probably the president's number one fan. And that's not going to change. And the hate or what people have to say, it does not affect me at all. It actually motivates me to support him more.

And it's going to motivate all of us to support him more. We're not going to let them get away with bullying him and, you know, the smear campaigns. It's not going to work, okay? He has a lot of force behind him. God is protecting him. Amen. Wow. What a great job. So listen, I believe that this Nikki Minaj thing may be her posturing to get a pardon from Trump for her brother. Now, I only learned this recently. Nikki Minaj's brother was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for raping an 11 year old

girl according to reports, widespread reports. This happened in 2020. Jelani Mirage was first convicted of predatory sexual assault and child endangerment in November 2017 and was sentenced in 2020. And it is totally plausible that all of this from Nikki Minaj is a play to get her brother pardoned. I'm just throwing it out there. It might, it's a far more rational explanation, I have to admit, than all of a sudden she is just taken with Trump's policy.

Okay, so Trump announces that Visa is creating a platform to allow credit card holders to put their cashback rewards right into Trump accounts. What a great idea. Another handout to big corporations. Reason. I'm officially calling on all employers all across America to follow the lead of many of these amazing companies and make matching Trump account contributions to benefit for the American. American worker and they're going to benefit the American worker so much. This morning I'm also pleased to announce that Visa is creating a brand new platform, which will allow credit card holders to deposit their cashback rewards directly into Trump accounts. That's a big deal.

Visa. Thank you. Where's Visa? The head of Visa. Thank you very much, Visa. There's always some corporation involved getting money, isn't there? These initiatives could not come at a better moment because there's never been a better time to invest in the United States of America than right now. Who knew it would have happened this fast? I inherited a mess. And clearly a lot of people don't think it's a great time to invest in the U.S. And unfortunately, the dollar is at a long time low against other currencies. So a little bit counter to the fact to what Donald Trump is promising.

A strange moment. Donald Trump said, if I nominate Ted Cruz for the Supreme Court, everybody will vote for him, albeit for different reasons. But Ted Cruz has one thing that if I ever have problems, because it's hard to get people to prove. He's a brilliant legal mind. He's a brilliant man. Brilliant legal mind is not what comes to mind when I think of Ted Cruz, I have to admit.

If I nominate him for the United States Supreme Court, I will get 100% of the vote. The Democrats will vote for him because they want to get him the hell out. And the Republicans will vote for him because of the United States will vote for him because they want to get him the hell out too. Where's Ted? Where are you, Ted? There you go. So a brilliant idea there from Donald Trump. And then speaking complete and total nonsense. And again, Trump is not really able to stay coherent at these events for any serious period of time. Trump just starting to say things that don't make any sense whatsoever. See if you can make heads or tails out of this. So Lee went out to California after the fire, which it had never happened, if they would have let the

water flow from the Pacific Northwest, which everybody's been telling them, including me, now I just opened it up. We literally sent in the military to open it up. But if they would have let, you wouldn't have the fires because you would have had a little thing called the old-fashioned way, water in the fire hydrants. Fire hydrants as opposed to empty fire hydrants. You would have had water and most of the houses had the sprinklers on top. No, there was no water in their sprinkler in their living room. All those fires wouldn't have started. And I, and a I know that many of you didn't know that fire suppression was such an area of expertise for Donald Trump, given that his specialty is really pediatrics. No, I'm kidding. Just complete and total nonsense.

I mean, I'm reading between the lines and Trump is again talking about lies with regard to water availability. Trump accounts. Are you going to set one up for your kid? Let me know in the comments If you had a kid in 2025 or are having one this year, next year, et cetera, let me know. It's all completely wacky. We are starting to see more and more Republican versus MAGA conflict. And the latest example is yes, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Republican Senator Rand Paul. I have a lot of criticisms of Rand Paul. I disagree with a lot of things he said.

For example, Rand Paul once said that if you have universal health care, you have universal health care, doctors become enslaved by having to give treatment to people. Completely whacked notion from Rand Paul. But sometimes Rand Paul is correct. And Rand Paul has some ideas that I agree with. And one of those ideas is that what is going on with Nicholas Maduro seems to be completely outside of the law. And Marco Rubio and Rand Paul started to argue about this. And, um, Rand Paul explains just because we say someone in another country committed a crime doesn't make it so. And this is a very interesting exchange. It is.

And let's vote on these things. But I think we're in violation of both the spirit and the law of the Constitution by bombing a capital, blockading a country and removing elected officials. And we certainly wouldn't tolerate it nor would I if someone did it to us. We didn't remove an elected official. We removed someone who was not elected, and it was actually an indicted drug trafficker in the United States. And their system...

Our laws, indicted under our laws. Look, Bolsonaro says that De Silva is not really the president of Brazil. Our president said Biden wasn't really the president. Hillary Clinton said in 2016, Trump wasn't the president. So you have these arguments. Remember, Hillary Clinton never said Trump wasn't the president. That's a lot. I agree with you.

It probably was, and most likely was. Because most assuredly was a bad election, he wasn't really elected. But at the same time, if that's our predicate and you don't have to come to us because it's a drug bust, we're just removing somebody, you can see where it leads to and it leads to chaos. And that's why we have rules like the Constitution. So we don't get so far out there that presidents can do whatever they want. It's crazy that Rand Paul is explaining to Marco Rubio. We do have this thing called the Constitution.

We do at least theoretically have the rule of law. And if all of a sudden Trump say so that Maduro is a criminal and we go and capture and kidnap him is legitimate, then wouldn't it be legitimate if the situation was reversed? Now later Rand Paul comes back to that and gets really to the crux of it. But here is another example on which Rubio is just vapidly unprepared with regard to could other countries, if another country bombed our defense missiles. and captured our president. Would we consider it an act of war? If so, isn't what Trump did in Venezuela, an act of war? And of course, it is. So I would ask you, if a foreign country bombed our air

defense missiles captured and removed our president and blockaded our country, would that be considered an act of war? Well, I think your question is about the con, and I will acknowledge you've been very consistent on all these points the entire career. That's exactly right. He has. It's Rubio and Trump, who haven't been. So let me, no matter who the, who's in charge. So I will point to two things. The first is it's hard for us to conceive that an operation that lasted about four and a half hours and was a law enforcement operation to capture someone we don't recognize as a head

of state, indicted in the United States, wanted with a $50 million. My question would be if it only took four hours to take our president, it's very short, nobody dies on the other side, nobody dies on our side. It's perfect. Would it be an act of war? And Rand Paul accurately point. out here that the duration of the operation doesn't really say it's a one way or the other, whether it's an act of war.

And by the way, you could drop a missile in five minutes. You could go, listen, how could something that takes five minutes be an act of war? It's a very silly argument. I don't believe that this operation comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition of war. Would it be an act of war if someone did it to us? Nobody dies. Few casualties.

They're in and out. Boom. It's a perfect military operation. Would that be an act of war? Of course it would be an act of war. I'm probably the most anti-war person in the Senate and I would vote to declare war if someone invaded our country and took our president. So I think we need to at least acknowledge this is a one-way argument.

It's a complete one-way argument. They would never apply the same standards with what Trump did to Maduro if the situation were reversed. One more clip. Rand Paul is just right on this. There's no, you know, whatever, he's a Republican, I'm just evaluating arguments. Rand Paul says, imagine, Imagine if a foreign country indicted our president for violating some law in their country. Would we ever think about extraditing the president to that country? Would we ever think that that is a serious reason to come and get our president by force? Of course now.

Would be, let's say it's not a war. We're just going to define it away and say it's not a war. That's one of the arguments. So it's a drug bust. What if a foreign country indicts our president for violating a foreign law, should we extradite our president? should we be okay if they come in and get him by force? Look, I think ultimately we're always going to act in our national interest.

And so if somebody comes after our national interest, like the case you've described, which obviously does not exist at this time, but the case you've described, the U.S. always has the right to act in its national interest and to protect itself. I don't know about this equivalency. Does this justify them doing it? We're always going to do what's best for the United States in America. We're always going to protect our system. But the point isn't, and you're exactly right, we will act in our national interest and we should.

So I'm not disagreeing with you at all. What I'm saying is, though, that our arguments are empty then. The drug bust isn't really an argument. It's a ruse. The war argument, not a war is a war, is a ruse. It's not a real argument. And we do what we do because we are, we have the force. We have the might.

We do it because it's in our interest. So we wouldn't let anybody come in, bomb us, blockade us and take our president. You know, we've had arguments about legitimate, illegitimate presidents, bad elections, rigged elections. So there's all kinds of same arguments that we've had in our country that they've had in Venezuela. What Rand Paul is exposing here very accurately is that the only thing that really determines who can do what and whether the U.S. should do anything is do we have the force to get away with it. That is really the point at the end of the day. The reason we're, you know, they're falling all over themselves. Well, indictment, drug trafficking, boats with narcotics. And he was,

wasn't really elected fairly and all this different stuff. Okay. Yeah. But so the only reason that we're really doing this and saying that it's justified is because we have the force to do it and we could get away with it. If anybody else said, well, listen, let's do the same with the United States. It would be no, no, no, because we have the force to stop you. It is not about the legality. It is not about the constitutional infrastructure. And Rand Paul does a really good job of exposing that. Rubio was not prepared. And he really struggled through that. One thing that keeps coming up as AI becomes more mainstream is how casually people are handing over sensitive information. Think about how many private questions and personal

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or app. No surveillance or censorship, no content policing. And the pro plan adds features like PDF uploads, higher usage limits, custom system prompts, and uncensored image generation. while keeping control in your hands. If you want private AI, go to venice.a.ai slash Pacman to get 20% off a pro plan. The link is in the description. It's great to welcome to the program today, Graham Platner, who is a Marine and U.S. Army veteran, oyster farmer, and a Democratic candidate running for U.S. Senate in Maine.

We recently interviewed another participant in that primary, the governor, Janet Mills, and we said we wanted to talk to Graham and we are going to talk to Graham today. So I really appreciate your time. Oh, no, of course. Thanks, David. Listen, in all of these races, there are sort of two dynamics. There is the dynamic of the primary. And then there is the question of who is best suited eventually to face off in this case against Senator Susan Collins, who's the Republican. Talk to me a little bit about your thoughts as to in the primary why you are the best candidate, but then also importantly, why you rather than the governor would be better positioned to defeat Susan Collins, which is arguably just as important. Yeah, honestly, more so in some ways because Susan Collins needs to go. I think we can all agree on that. The answer to both, though, is actually the same answer, which is that right now, whether

it's in the Democratic electorate or the electorate writ large, people are sick and tired of a politics that is not representative of them and doesn't represent them. People are sick and tired of this. I mean, it's a, it's a word we throw around a lot, but like people are sick and tired of established in politicians. And folks who have who have been in this system for decades, who I think a lot of people see them rightly or wrongly, but, see them as essentially the creators of the situation we find ourselves in now. And people are looking for something different. They're looking for a kind of politics that in many ways is more small D democratic, more built out of communities, built more out of organizing, and really

focused around the concept of building representative power that isn't beholden to corporate interests that isn't in bed with large donors and like all the things that we could come up with examples all day long, but of that kind of political power structure that people have seen for years, not represent them. And in many ways, exploit them and all for the benefit of the ultra rich and the ultra-powerful. Do you think that the perception of what you just mentioned explains why Democrats didn't do well in 24? I think that's part of it. The big one, though, is that the problem with those, that kind of politics is it has, it's so divorced from reality, from material realities with people that it essentially tells people that what they are experiencing or what they're

seeing with their own eyes isn't happening. And people just don't believe it. I mean, when you're told that the economy is doing well, when you're being told that we, that GDP is high, unemployment is low, everything is good. Meanwhile, people are working three jobs just to afford their rent, which makes up 50% of their monthly income. That doesn't work. I mean, and I'll just be, I also think it goes to like foreign policy stuff as well. And people are told that what's happening in Gaza isn't happening, but everybody opens their phones and sees it. It's hard for folks to be like, I don't, what are you going to tell me? Like, not to believe my own lying eyes, not to believe my own material reality.

That I think was a, one of the reasons I think Donald Trump has been so successful is that in some way, he tells people that the thing that they know is true is true, which is that they are living in a system that is screwing them, that somebody somewhere is stealing from them, and that they need to be blamed. Now, of course, we know that Donald Trump and right-wing populism don't actually give answers to that. But I think people can be very forgiving of a lot of other things if they are told that at least foundationally, the thing they know in their bones is happening when you tell them it actually is. And the other side is telling you, oh, no, things are great. People respond negatively, which I think is one of the major reasons that Democrats lost in 24. I think it also is just the fact that there really wasn't much clear policy. There wasn't much clear policy. It was a change election that the Democratic Party ran as an election to protect the status quo. They essentially ran the wrong kind of messaging and the wrong kind of policies and politics that people were actually.

actually looking for. And I think fundamentally, that happened because within the party, it has ceased being in touch, at least many in leadership, have ceased being in touch with the daily struggles of regular working class Americans. I'm interested in how some of your policy positions and ideas kind of intersect with that. And a lot of it interestingly has to do with what we're seeing right now with these ICE and CBP operations. You're a staunch defender of gun rights. And I'm interested in your view, you know, my view on the, the firearms component of what happened with Alex Prattie has been that while I'm not a gun guy who believes the more guns there are, the safer we are, I have to acknowledge that Prattie was doing what the Maga right has been

saying is not only legal, but keeps everybody safer, which is he had a firearm with him. He had it legally. He had ammunition. You know, Donald Trump's saying it's a little weird. he had this gun and ammunition. And it's like, listen, people who have guns typically carry carry ammunition with them as well. I will just say that as somebody who does occasionally carry because it's my right in the state of Maine to do so. I always carry a reload with my pistol. It's not a weird thing at all. Carrying carrying two extra magazines for someone who carries

a weapon or a firearm is that's not remotely out of bounds or weird. It's an entirely normal thing. If all of that, all of that being true. I guess is my question. Do you believe that more broadly speaking the way that we need to deal with the presence of these operations, which there's news out of Maine as well about about these operations as Susan Collins announced that she spoke with Kristy Nome and was told ICE has ceased the enhanced operations in the state of Maine, which I'm glad to hear. I'll believe it when I see it. You'll leave it when to see it fair. What do you think is.

Christine Nome don't hold a lot of water with me. Um, we've, I want to hear your approach if you were in the Senate, which is different than being, for example, governor where you're more at an operations level. We've heard from some Democratic senators about the need to write really strongly worded letters, for example, to try to address what's happening. And a lot in my audience are sort of rolling their eyes about more letters, dear God. Really specifically, I mean, how would you deal with these operations, whether it be Maine or Minnesota or any state if you are in the Senate? One of the very still clear positions of power the legislative branch has in this country is the power of the purse.

Now, in my opinion, the legislative branch has abdicated its responsibility around war powers, has abdicated its responsibility around a lot of things. But one thing it still absolutely has the power of is money. They allocate funds. an agency that is stepping all over the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Fifth, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Tenth Amendment. Like, there is an easy constitutional argument here that agencies that do not respect the constitutional rights of American citizens do not deserve funding. Period. End of story. And it's been really frustrating.

Actually, today this has been driving. be nuts because we did have what seems and may still remain the case, watching a lot of Democratic leadership that sometimes does not rise to the moment, at least making all the right sounds about holding out and not funding ice. And I think as Democrats, we need to be really, really disciplined about our messaging, pointing out that the only reason we might head to a government shutdown is merely because Republicans were unwilling to strip the DHS funding out of the larger bill, we could not do this. We could do that separately. But it's Republicans that have brought us to this point, just because they want to give ICE nine more billion dollars. However, I've already

started to hear things about how like, well, ICE has already funded for six years. We've already funded ICE. And so what does this really matter? That's what law is for. You can unfund organizations. This country, all that we often pass funding measures that then later on get revisiting. and the money gets reallocated. That's what laws are. We enforce the most recent laws. We can change them. We can pull money back if need be.

And I think that that is a place, a position of institutional power that does still very much exist that the Democratic Party and Democrats in the Senate specifically need to hold the line on and need to use the bully pulpit of being a United States senator to be having this, to be saying this very plainly, frankly, the way I'm saying it, to the American people. It's not a complicated situation, to be entirely

honest. If you can, you can discuss this, an agency that murders American citizens in the street and steps all over Americans constitutional rights is not an agency that deserves a single dollar federal funding. Do you believe ICE should be defunded or abolished? ICE needs to be destroyed as an agency and fully rebuild. I mean, this is something, that I also think is ICE was formed in 2003. Yeah. It's only existed. It's not some foundational element of American security.

We used to have the INS. We had a whole other thing once. And I mean, we can have plenty of criticisms of how the INS work, but recently people are like, well, if you get rid of ICE, what are we going to do for immigration enforcement? It's like, I don't know, all the stuff we did prior. And we can make a new agency with new rules and new personnel and new institutions.

and a new culture to actually enforce immigration law, not just be weaponized essentially as a paramilitary political force, which is what we have right now. And so it's been, I think an agency that is willing or is capable of going this far outside the bounds of constitutional behavior is not something that deserves reform. I want to talk a little bit about the funding sources for some of these programs, which are American taxpayer dollars. Right now, if you make $609,000 or more, you're in the top federal tax rate and your rate on your income above $609,000 is 37%. If it were up to you based on your ideology, morality, politics, understanding of economics, what would the top tax rate be and at what income level would it start?

It's a, we, we have reached a point where the wealth disparity in this country is so vast that there is an insane amount of money far above that $609,000. I personally would like to see a billionaire minimum tax where we just go after almost every dollar over a certain number. In income or net worth, though, Graham? So, and this is, it's a good question because, I mean, I think income we should do. But we also have to go after wealth. I mean, it is only relying on income tax, especially in an age where the ultra-rich, they just borrow against their assets for liquidity.

Yes. And we, but because their assets are technically unrealized, we don't tax them. And yet, they can borrow against them for liquidity, which they can then write off as debt. it's absurd. So, I mean, I think part of the mechanism there is either we just go after certain types of unrealized wealth in general. Certainly, I think if you're going to borrow against an asset, that asset needs to be taxable. End of story.

Because you are using it essentially as income. You're using it for cash. And then you get to like have it count against your tax bill because it's debt, which is utterly And so I if I had my way and I understand this is a long shot, I would love to return to the era of Dwight D.I. Eisenhower where our top marginal tax rate is 90%. And that would be at what income level? I mean, that honestly is up for debate. I'm I am I've I've read a bunch of different white papers and memos. Certainly we're getting up into the, I would say, above a hundred million dollar realm for for for that kind of thing.

What I don't want, and this is something I think it's important to be able to understand, if you make 500, if you make a million dollars a year, five million dollars a year, in our society now, you are closer to someone living in poverty than you are to a billionaire. Which is hard for a lot of people to conceptualize. Of course it is, because we've allowed for a consolidation of wealth in essentially an incomprehensible manner. And where we set those levels, I mean, I, of course, I think, if you're making over $100 million a year, materially, you're going to have a hard time arguing to most Americans that every dollar above that,

if you lose it, if you lose at a certain rate, somehow you're going to be emiserated. Hard to argue that. It's a ridiculous concept. But certainly, once we're getting into $100 million realms, we need to be looking at very high rates. How do I say this? We need to also reevaluate how our spending works and how we spend. I think before we also start identifying,

because what's going to matter, we need to figure out how much money we need and what we need to spend it on. And until we stop spending money on the military industrial complex in the way that we do, I'm not entirely sure that we're going to have a good answer because that number is going to be flawed, because we'll be blowing taxpayer money on what I find to be rather, I mean, I fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. I've seen the fraud, waste, and abuse. I know how worthless all of this is. And I, the rates that we set are going to have to reflect the actual needs.

But, you know, I want to have a universal health care system. And I am happy to go after as much money in the highest echelons to make sure that we can fund that. And also make sure we're not putting it. It cannot be regressive. It always needs to be a progressive tax program. Now, let me ask the natural follow-up, which my audience will come after me if I don't. Somebody who is potentially going to make $100 million in income is going to figure out a way to not have that be income.

And this is one of the other mechanisms that exists, which is well, instead of $100 million in income, you take a very small salary and then you've got deferred compensation and then you've got stock options and then you've got post-retirement, whatever package. get the point, which is you can reduce your income and then have that money come in in other ways. Is that what your what your wealth tax idea is meant to go after? Yeah. I mean, Elizabeth Warren has a very good wealth tax proposal, essentially around this exact problem. Because that is true. That's the case. Now, I also think, and this is another kind of leg of the stool here, is funding enforcement mechanisms. Like the IRS goes after poor people,

when we cut its funding. The IRS goes after small businesses when we cut its funding. And why is that? Because it's expensive to battle corporate attorneys. It's manpower intensive. I have a very good friend of mine

who was an IRS special agent. And he always told me, he's like every time our budget gets cut, we essentially change our entire enforcement strategy because we do need to show wins. We need to go after tax cheats. We have to go after, we have to go after un-claimed taxes. To go after large corporate structures and the ultra-rich, we need a mountain of lawyers and personnel to do the forensic audits, to chase the money down. That stuff costs man, it's manpower and money. And when you don't have that, instead,

you're just going to go back, you're going to go after a small business that did its deductions wrong or because because you know you can get money and wins out of that so you're not going to go so i think we need to all of this only works and i'll just be up front i'm a big material guy i i don't really care about words on paper or philosophy if we cannot make it a material reality and in our society material reality comes from enforcement and so i very much think that we we can talk about wealth taxes we can talk about changing income tax structure All of that needs to be running in tandem with a robust enforcement mechanism that's empowered to go after those who are, frankly, stealing the most money by not paying taxes, which is always the ultra rich and corporate power. Go to the ones with all the money for God's sake.

Graham, last thing I want to ask you about, there have been a couple of sort of scandals, I guess we would call them, or controversies that have surfaced about your past. The tattoo on your chest that had a Nazi symbol. some inflammatory Reddit posts about rural white Americans being racist and stupid, et cetera, and then the alleged use of some derogatory slurs, homophobic slurs and some ablest slurs. I just want to hear from you as far as my understanding of your response has been on the tattoo, you were drunk and you didn't know the meaning and you've covered it up. And on the other stuff that it was a dark period and it was a different sort of era of your life. I mean, am I, am I sort of accurately characterizing what your view is on this?

Yeah. And like, and on the tattoo front, I mean, I got that to win the Marine Corps with a bunch of other Marines. We got a Skelling Crossbones, which is what we thought. I had that thing for 17 years. I re-listed in the Army and got a security clearance with the State Department and got full tattoo screens. I've been taking my shirt off for 17 years at the gym, at the beach. And no one ever once looked at it and said, oh, I think, think that's a Nazi thing. I just, for me, it was a, I always call it my, it was a Marine Corps tattoo. I got it with some machine gunners I was with because we were machine gunners.

We got a skull and crossbones for fairly obvious reasons. The moment I found out that it had these connotations, I covered it up. I have no interest in having something like that in my body. With the posts and all the other stuff, look, I've not been running for Senate my entire life. It was not, I've, I'm an elder millennial. I spent a lot of time on the internet. between the age of 15 and really around like 38.

Yeah, yeah. You and I are the exact same age. It's a difference of a few months. And that's kind of the environment I grew up in. And I like and also not to not to justify anything, but I spent most of my 20s and early 30s in the in combat infantry units. I did. Language and culture.

Everything is very crude, very offensive. I mean, we deal. We deal in immense amounts of violence. professionally. And part of the way that that kind of culture deals with it is with really, frankly, horrific language. It's also when I was in, it was all men, very masculine dominated. It's changed now, which I think is probably for the better. But the, it, that was the world I came out of. And it was the language that I used. And I certainly held opinions back then that I do not hold now. That's what I was going to ask, whether it was simply language you used without holding certain

opinions or whether you were also kind of sucked into some of the opinions. Not certainly not like I use language that can be skewed as homophobic without question. I would never, I don't think anyone who's known me my whole life would have ever called me homophobic. I've been a staunch defender, I would say, of gay rights to the point of like getting in fights about it physically. It's a, but you know, it was language that I used for a long time. because I thought it wasn't offensive. I just thought it was kind of like, there was just words that we used.

Then I got out of the service. I went to college. I made new friendships and new relationships with a lot of people. And people I cared about told me why this language was bad and I shouldn't use it. And so I stopped.

Because that's, I mean, in my opinion, that's how you grow as a human being. And not to sound too flippen. I also said things when I was posting on Reddit for years to piss people off in internet arguments. Things that I didn't remotely believe, but knew was going to get a rise out of whoever I was fighting with. And certainly at the time, you know, I was just,

I was an angry guy on the internet who liked to get in fights with folks on the internet about things. Generally, I would say arguing on very much the progressive and right side of things, but doing so in a way to definitely try to get a rise out of whoever I'm arguing with. And I didn't think I was ever going to. run for Senate. I mean, I've never thought anybody, why would anybody want to read my internet comments? I certainly never thought about that then. When we announced this thing, like, again, I'm an

elder millennial. I'm well aware that everything I ever said on the internet is going to be there forever. I knew at some point that was going to happen. And so when it all kind of came out as a scandal or whatever, my, I just, we didn't even hesitate. The best way to deal with it was to just talk about it openly and say like, yeah, of course. Of course. I'm not going to deny it. I'm not going to deny it was me, it was me. I said dumb stuff for years on the internet. It's not in any way, shape, or form reflect, like the comments, if you, I mean, there were like 1,800 of them. Some folks have read through all of them, and they've all been like, it's clear this guy is just like somebody who used salty language, but did have

some pretty progressive values the entire time. And that's, here in Maine, people heard my response to that, and they were all like, that sounds eminently reasonable. we'd all just kind of moved on with the race. All right. Listen, Graham, you've really said it all. We are watching this race very closely, both the primary and the eventual general election race in Maine. Graham Platner is a Democratic candidate running for U.S. Senate in Maine.

First is the primary, then is the general. Graham, I really appreciate your time and we're watching this one closely. Thanks a lot, David. Appreciate it. 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 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. This is one of those rare moments where you can see the

realization happen in real time that Trump is screwing up, that Trump screwed them and everything is going haywire. We have video of Fox News's Brit Hume, longtime Republican insider, admitting the obvious people hate what Trump is doing and it is going to hurt Republicans badly. He says people don't feel good about the economy. All the polling tells us this. It's not they feel a little bit uneasy. It's bad. And he's talking about polling that shows it's not getting better. He's talking to Brett Bayer and they slowly realize, man, this is bad. People are. not happy with what is happening in this country. Yeah, one quick one on the U.S. economy.

We hear from the administration about the growth and the potential growth in Q1, Q2, and what they see on the horizon. We asked, are you better off financially than a year ago, better 24% worse, 39%, same 36%. Uh-oh. It's what we've talked about numerous times, about feeling where the economy is and what that means for people at home. Yes, we look ahead to the midterms, Brett. People are going to be judging this election, and the President's continuing standing on the basis of how well they feel the economy is going.

There are signs, and some experts say that we're going to have a booming economy this coming year or this rest of this year, and the administration certainly needs that because while The stock market is high and employment is relatively high. People do not feel good about this economy. This poll suggests that and they haven't for some time. And it's not so far getting any better for them, which would be very dangerous for the Republicans in the midterm elections. Very dangerous for the Republicans in the midterm elections.

That is certainly true. And then they talk about immigration. And on immigration, maybe Trump is within legal limits. Maybe he isn't. But the point that Brit Hume makes as they look at devastating numbers about Americans' perception of ICE, the political limits have been absolutely blown away. In other words, maybe what Trump's doing is legally defensible, but politically it's completely toxic.

And this is Fox News Code for this is a political disaster. ICE efforts to deport illegal immigrants. If we ask folks out there too aggressive, 59%, not aggressive enough, 17, about right 24%. That tracks with other polls that we've seen in recent days surrounding a lot of this video that obviously has come out and there's all kinds of people weighing in on all sides. Yeah, Brett, I think that's right. He does track with the other polls and it suggests that while the administration is within its limits, its legal limits in this immigration crackdown and the drag net that's going on, particularly out in Minnesota, it has hit its political limits.

public's response to what it is seeing on its TV screens and reading about in publications and so forth suggests that people, you know, they want the border closed, they want criminal illegals rounded up, but they see, you know, they see these scenes in the street, particularly the two killings in Minnesota, and they see, you know, people who seem otherwise innocent, although they may be here illegally rounded up. They don't like that. We have a compassionate people and even illegal immigrants are not beyond the scope of that compassion. Wow. That is a fascinating shift in tone, isn't it? These are the people who spent years telling their audiences that Trump was a political genius. His base loves this stuff. The country is thrilled

about what Trump is planning to do. Now they're looking at the polling and they're going, ooh, this isn't so good. Even undocumented immigrants deserve compassion. You see the slow motion panic. This is like, you know, if a president takes a risky position and maybe it pays off, maybe it doesn't. Okay. Trump went all in on this maximalist brutal, chaotic version of this policy. And it doesn't. I mean, listen, maybe it plays well in the deep MAGA echo chambers. But it's alienating so many people, including moderate Republicans.

And this is the problem with governing by truth social post and Twitter engagement, which is it might feel good in the bubble, but in the real world that doesn't work very well. And so the immigration crackdowns and the economic chaos and the corporate giveaways and the authoritarian rhetoric, these aren't winning messages for swing voters. Fox is doing the math. The midterms are coming. The base is energized, I guess, behind Trump. But the middle is horrified. And the polls tell a clear story. Trump overplayed his hand straight up. It's the authoritarian track, trap. You govern to the very loud supporters that you will never lose. which leads to extremely radical policy. You ignore public opinion as it starts to crumble. And then oh my God, I'm shocked that the public has turned on me, fire Bovino and put Tom Homan in there. And Fox is kind of stuck now because this is the monster Fox helped build. They helped Trump build this machine. They helped sell the narrative. And now they're realizing this might cost the Republican Party Congress. So it's like these moments of accidental honesty, I guess I would

say, yeah, people don't feel good. Yeah, the administration went too far. Yeah, it's dangerous. And it's Fox News, not CNN that is saying this. So if Fox is admitting it, it's worse than even they are letting on their job is not to tell the truth. Their job is to keep their audience loyal and calm. And when they start panicking in this way, it tells you Trump didn't just screw up the country. He is screwing his own party. The Fox hosts are figuring it out and soon Republicans are going to have to figure out and determine which side are we on as we get to these midterms. Are we on the Trump side or are we anti-Trump Republicans? And just like Trump, they'll decide based on what they think is best for them. Let's talk about the Nuremberg defense.

Whoa, this, this is heavy. What am I talking about? After World War II, Nazi officials were put on trial for war crimes. And when they were confronted with the mass murder and the atrocity, that they committed, many of them said the same thing. I was just following orders. That is what we now know of as the Nuremberg defense. And the idea is if you did something because someone else told you to do it, because the system said this is what you're going to do now, you are still responsible. You are still, it was a defense that was rejected. The Nuremberg Tribunal rejected the idea that if someone told you to do it, then you're not legally responsible. You are not legally responsible. You You are. They said, no, you still have moral responsibility. You still have legal responsibility.

You can't hide behind the chain of command. Fast forward to 2026 where we are today. And we are watching a modern version of the Nuremberg defense play out in the Trump administration. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Nome is now getting smashed because her department has been pushing these false and incendiary claims about Alex Preti was a domestic terrorist. He was an assassin and all of this stuff. And he wanted to massacre agents. And the whole story fell apart.

And Christine Holmes posture is basically, I was just saying what I was told. She put out a statement. This was reported via Axios where she said, quote, everything I've done, I've done at the direction of the president and Stephen, referring to Stephen Miller. She is saying, CBP gave us the info. Stephen Miller had influence the White House narrative spiraled. Don't blame me. I'm just part of a system. The problem is, if it didn't work for Nazi officials, it's not going to work in Trump world either.

In Trump's political universe, loyalty flows upward. Trump's not going to sacrifice himself. He's not going to sacrifice Stephen Miller or the real architects of the policy. Even if what Christine Ome is saying is true, he is only going to sacrifice. those who are politically convenient. Greg Bevino has become one of those people. And so when Kristine Ome says I was just following orders, that doesn't protect her. If anything, it makes her more expendable.

She's not really the architect. She was just following orders. We'll throw her under the bus, which is exactly what Trump does when the heat gets too close. Rogue official misinformation and then instantly you become the scapegoat. Now, again, we're already seeing it happen. Tom Homan's replacement of Greg, replacement of Greg Bevino is an example of that. And this is how authoritarian systems maintain the illusion of accountability. They will radicalize policy at the top. It explodes.

And then they'll punish somebody lower down to protect the leader. This is why I said ice agents have to be careful. So far, the killers have gotten away with impunity. But they might throw someone under the bus there as well. So the historical reality of Christy Noem's Nuremberg-style defense is pretty naive politically. Historically, it's naive because just following orders is one of the most infamous excuses in history. But politically, it's naive because Trump doesn't reward people who look weak. Trump doesn't reward people who become toxic. And if this scandal grows, Christy Noem is exactly the kind of person that would throw, that would be thrown under the bus by Trump to prove that there are guardrails. That is the brutal

reality, just following orders, didn't make sense legally when the Nazis did it. And it doesn't make sense politically under Trump when loyalty is the number one currency. Bad idea, Christy. I don't think it's going to work. We have a phenomenal bonus show for you today. I'm going to tell you the fiasco that is the Melania documentary. It's actually kind of funny. The FBI has searched an Atlanta election office and grabbed a bunch of ballots. What the hell is going on and much more developing as to the potential government shutdown. I know it's happening again. All of that and more on the bonus show. Sign up at join packman.com and make sure you're subscribed free to my audio podcast. It's on Apple podcasts. It's on Spotify. It's on player.fm. It's on dog catcher. That's another with two G's

DOG. It's just about everywhere that you can get your podcasts.