The David Pakman Show - ICE chaos as another one killed, Americans have had enough

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

-- On the Show -- Adam James, a licensed physical therapist working in home healthcare and content creator known as “epistemiccrisis,” joins us to discuss the state of Donald Trump's cognitive health -- The Trump administration escalates federal immigration enforcement as Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and ICU nurse, is shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis while filming and attempting to help a woman -- A legally-armed citizen follows pro-gun rhetoric, confronts federal agents during an immigration operation, and is killed by the state that claimed guns protect against tyranny -- The killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents exposes how state violence is normalized and defended while individual political violence is universally condemned -- Kash Patel contradicts gun law realities and his own past statements while right-wing figures misrepresent legal firearm carry to justify a federal killing -- Donald Trump unleashes erratic and conspiratorial social media posts attacking Minnesota officials while defending ICE actions and inventing financial fraud narratives -- A viral image of severe bruising on Donald Trump’s hand raises renewed concerns about age, medication use, and long-standing secrecy around his health -- Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara publicly condemns federal immigration tactics after multiple shootings, contrasting them with local policing that clearly avoided lethal force -- On the Bonus Show: A snowstorm pummels much of the US, Trump sues JPMorgan Chase over "debanking," Trump will skip the Super Bowl, and much more... 📜 Trust & Will: Save 20% on your estate planning at https://trustandwill.com/pakman 🤖 Sponsored by Venice: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off a Pro Account at https://venice.ai/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code DAVID for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.com/david -- 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 (01:11) Immigration enforcement escalates response (07:20) Armed citizen confronts agents(14:35) State violence revealed through killing(20:28) Gun law contradictions exposed(28:59) Trump defends tactics online(35:15) Adam James interview(50:34) Bruising image raises health questions(55:19) Police chief condemns federal tactics   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Federal immigration agents killed another 37-year-old, an American citizen in Minneapolis, Alex Prattie. And I am going to explain why the Trump administration is doing exactly what you would expect if you wanted to generate more authoritarian escalation. We're going to break down the insane contradiction where MAGA tells people, arm yourselves against tyranny, and then cheers when the government kills a legally armed citizen. Cash Patel goes viral, humiliating himself on gun laws, exposing how little these people understand

or care about the constitution they claim to worship. And then we will look at the latest truth social meltdowns. And the black rotting hand is raising real questions about transparency and presidential health. And the Minneapolis police chief has had enough of ice and says it's time for them to go. them out, they're not doing law enforcement, not at all. All of that today. They are going to start killing ICE agents. I don't like it, but ICE agents are going to start getting killed. And unfortunately, this is something that Donald Trump will use to his advantage. Let me explain and give me time to lay this out. First to just be clear up front before anybody

mischaracterizes what I'm saying here. I oppose all violence. Violence against civilians is wrong. Violence against federal agents is wrong. What the Trump administration is doing right now is a blueprint for escalation. Now, we've already crossed the line into something very dangerous. Let's talk about Alex Prattie. Alex Prattie was a 37-year-old ICU nurse, an American citizen, no criminal record, had some traffic tickets. He was filming federal agents in Minneapolis over the weekend. He tried to help a woman who had just been shoved to the ground, video, video. shows him holding a phone. He gets pepper sprayed. He gets tackled by multiple agents and pinned to the sidewalk. Another agent pulls a gun from his waistband, turns away and less than a second later, the shots start. Maybe as many as 10 shots in five seconds and Alex is dead. Federal officials, the federal officials immediately say he was a violent threat. They start banding around the around that he's a domestic terrorist. But the videos don't show that. Witnesses don't say that. State officials say the feds even have blocked access to the crime scene. So this is not law and

order. This is a, we can't even call it law enforcement. They're not in for ICE is not enforcing the law. This is a federal paramilitary force operating with near total impunity. And the part that a lot of people don't want to say out loud, because if you say it the wrong way, it sounds like you're advocating violence, which of course I'm not, is that when the the state starts killing people in the streets with no consequences, it's inevitable that there's going to be escalation, not because violence is justified, it's not, but because human behavior is predictable. You teach a society that violence is the language through your actions. Someone eventually is going to respond in that language. And if this continues, the retaliation

against agents is going to happen. And one or more agents is going to be killed. Not because it's right. Not because that's how we fix things. We won't. And I'll get to that in a moment. But because this is how systems break. Now, the darker part is the following. Authoritarians want escalation.

Chaos is useful to them. Chaos lets them say, we need more force. We need troops. We need emergency powers. We need to suspend normal rules. Maybe elections are too dangerous. Maybe the country is too unstable to vote. November and take Republicans out of power in the House of Representatives.

Wouldn't that be nice for Donald Trump? So let's get something very straight. I want to speak as clearly as possible. They are going to end up in a situation where the very chaos they cause is used to justify a bigger crackdown. Now, on the threats around the election, it might sound quaint to mention this, but Presidents do not run elections in the United States. States run elections. Local officials run elections. So even if he tries because he's already said, wouldn't it be nice to, you know,

use that justification? We're at war. We are in an emergency. We can't have an election. Trump has flirted with that. He cannot wave a pen and end the 2026 election, even if there is a war going on, if there's a pandemic, if there's unrest. Trump's term or a term will end January. January 20th, 2029, no matter what. But Trump can try to make the country feel ungovernable, I guess is the word I would use. And he can provoke unrest. And then if and when the ice agents start getting killed, he goes, oh, now it's so crazy. We now need martial law. We now need to deploy the military. We now need to suspend the 2026 election. We've got to flood every city with federal agents and escalate, escalate, escalate until people are so afraid that maybe they accept

the authoritarianism. So this is the double-edged sword, which is that the impunity that we see these ice agents operating with leads to chaos. The chaos will lead to ice agents getting killed. And then that will become the justification to say, now we've really got to repress protests and civil society. The repression will create more chaos. And this is the authoritarian feedback loop that I've described to you before that people like Ann Applebaum and Ruth Ben Guiat have talked to us about. So it has to stop. And I don't say it has to stop because of the optics, although the optics are, you look, you should see the emails I'm getting from people around the world. David, what is happening to the United States? We look on in horror. This is this is becoming a developing

nation to use Trump's term. It's a third world country over there where you've got lawless militias killing people on the streets and then they just fly them out and there's no investigation. This is how democracies slide into police states, into security states, one emergency at a time. Ordinary people get crushed in the middle and understand that I don't claim Trump is sitting at the White House going, I want ICE agents to be killed. kill ice agents. I don't believe that that's what's going on. But Trump wants chaos to justify a bigger crackdown. And there would be no better justification, no more chaotic occurrence than ice agents getting killed. And unfortunately, the longer this goes on, the more inevitable that seems.

All right, let's talk about the guns. MAGA tells people you need guns. You got to have them. If the government becomes tyrannical, you would have no tool to defend yourself if you don't have a gun. More guns, the better because of the tyrannical government. That's the pitch. That's the fantasy.

That's the moral framework that they have been selling as MAGA for 11 years and as Republicans for decades at this point in time. So what happens when someone takes that seriously? A white American man, 37 year old Alex Prattie, no criminal record, legally carrying a gun out there hoping to defend civilians against federal agents he believes are acting tyrannically. The government shot him dead. That is what happened this weekend. 37 year old ICU nurse Alex Prattie worked with veterans, legally.

owned a firearm. White guy with gun should be MAGA and NRA's dream. Federal immigration agents were conducting these aggressive operations in Minneapolis. Prattie showed up. He's filming. He's trying to help a woman that agents had pushed to the ground. He gets pepper sprayed. He gets tackled. And he gets shot multiple times. Around 10 shots in a few seconds, it is believed. The official story is he approached with a gun. He was brandish. a loaded firearm. But now as we have bystander testimony and video, it seems he was holding a phone that agents had removed the gun. It may not have been loaded. There's controversy around that detail. I don't, I can't say I know for certain at this point in time. And then after disarming

him, he is shot and killed. So connect the dots. Gun activists say, you need guns to resist tyranny. A citizen confronts what he believes is tyrannical state power and the state goes, you've got a gun, now you die. And that is the end of the story. This is the part where the fantasy collapses because when it's their government, suddenly the guy with the gun is a domestic threat. When Obama's president, oh, everybody must be armed. When Biden's president, everybody must be armed. But suddenly this time, someone is legally carrying a gun and the agents are heroes. Suddenly, the Second Amendment is conditional. And the people who talk about resisting tyranny are the first to cheer when the state kills somebody for exercising the right that they said you should really exercise this right. You might say,

well, this is a bug in the system. Wrong. Wrong. The core contradiction and reality of the situation is that they only care about those principles when they are convenient to them. Now, let me zoom out just a little bit here. I don't believe we should turn the Alex Pready assassination into a story that is primarily about guns or the problem. I think that that actually plays into Donald Trump's hands. It lets Trump pivot to culture war noise and avoid the real issue. I'm mentioning it because it is an incredible hypocrisy and later we'll look at video of Cash Patel sort of participating in that hypocrisy. But this ties directly into Trump and the ICE deployments. This is what happens when you normalize mass militarized immigration enforcement as political

spectacle. And so I don't want to make this mostly about the guns, but there is this incredible double standard about the guns. The main focus here really is. You put heavily armed federal agents into civilian spaces. You tell them they're fighting an enemy from within. And you blur the line between what is policing and what is a paramilitary operation. And this is why I don't believe we should use the term law enforcement for what ICE is doing anymore because they're not really enforcing the law, certainly not the law that they were created to enforce. And then when a citizen shows up angry, legally armed, wanting to help people and intervene, it escalates instantly into lethal force. So the problem isn't really one shooting.

The problem isn't really the gun issue and that Alex president. was legally armed. The issue is the broader policy choice to turn supposed immigration enforcement into just a show of force against even American citizens where misunderstandings instantly become fatalities and there is no accountability because officer safety and immunity and domestic terrorists and all of this stuff. So the real story here is not guns, it's power. The state labels as a threat with significant power, anyone that they find, politically inconvenient. And political movements quickly abandoned their principles when those principles become inconvenient, something I've talked about with you for a long time and wrote about in my book

the Echo Machine. The fantasy of the white legally armed guy as the hero has now become the white legally armed guy is dead. And we are going to delve into this significantly because it is hard to imagine a more tragic outcome than what we are seeing every single day. Send me your thoughts, leave a comment, email me info at david packman.com. All right, I'll be honest. Estate planning is nothing that anybody wants to do, but most of us understand we really should do it and a lot of people put it off. Many Americans say they have never gotten around to making a will, even if they are parents, homeowners or caring for family members. If that sounds like you, check out our sponsor, trust and will. Trust and will helps you create an estate plan online. It's a guided step-by-step

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You can join them and sign up at join packman.com. All right. Listen, I don't think the magas are going to like this. I hope this doesn't get me canceled. I hope this isn't misinterpreted. It is extraordinarily useful right now to compare the killing of Charlie Kirk to the killing of Alex Pretty, the 37-year-old ICU nurse killed by ICE agents over the weekend. Every murder is tragic.

Every murderer must be held accountable. Every person killed is a victim of senseless violence. But I am going to argue something that a lot of people are going to be uncomfortable with. The murder of Alex Prettie by federal immigration agents is far more disturbing societally than the murder of Charlie Kirk. Both are disturbing. Both are disturbing. But let me explain why this is the conclusion I've come to. Charlie Kirk was a media figure, a political actor.

He was killed by an individual. Everyone agrees the individual broke the law. And Tyler Robinson is going to trial. If he's convicted, he'll almost certainly spend the rest of his life in prison, possibly facing the death penalty. It is a tragedy about a radicalized person committing an act of violence and now will be held accountable by the justice system. Now look at what happened with Alex Prattie and arguably with Renee Good before him.

This is not about a rogue individual. This is a system and this is the second, third time that this has happened. It is, they had an opportunity to change the playbook and instead they double down after the killing of Renee Good. Now, you know, we've seen these official narratives. The mother with toys in the glove compartment of her car and an ICU nurse. are domestic terrorists case closed before the blood even dried. No real investigation into use of force by ICE agents, no accountability, just a story repeated loudly that it becomes the reality

for a bunch of the country. You have federal agents killing peaceful protesters and you have right-wing media immediately demonizing the victim, not the perpetrator. You have disputed claims contradicted by witnesses and video. You have people who pulled the trigger seemingly facing no consequences reassignment to another state in the case of those who killed Alex Preti, maybe an investigation that we've investigated ourselves and we've found that we didn't do anything wrong, that sort of thing. After Charlie Kirk's death, people like me who condemned the killing but disagreed with Charlie Kirk politically, we were asked over and over.

But David, do you condemn the murder of Charlie Kirk? But do you really condemn it? And I did. Of course I did. But where are all of the MAGAs condemning this? Where are the endless demands that conservatives condemn federal agents killing civilians? They're not there. And the reason why is that it worked the first time.

These are demonstrations of power to admit any fault wrongdoing or doubt about what ICE agents did or to suggest. maybe there's going to be accountability here, that would imply that they don't dictate reality. And the whole point is to dictate reality and break the will of the public. Teach people, resistance is futile and simply rewrite events in real time. When an individual commits political violence, the system condemns it and punishes it. That's what's happening now to Tyler Robinson. When the state commits violence and it's not one shooter whose identity we know, but a bunch, who are operating with masks, all of a sudden, they protect the system.

They excuse the system. There are people cheering the system. That's what makes the killing of Alex Preti so much more disturbing because it's not just a crime. Obviously what Tyler Robinson did is a crime and he's going to be held accountable for it as he should be. We are seeing institutional violence and it's being completely normalized. I'm going to have clips for you. Well, you know, he shouldn't have been there in the first place.

He shouldn't have had a gun. Wait a second. Being there in the first place, that's the First Amendment. Having a gun, that's the second amendment. That's the approach that you're taking now. You constitutional conservatives. So we have a normalization of institutional violence and then lies about what happened being enforced as the truth.

Everybody should be terrified. My libertarian friends, my right wing friends, my Republican friends, everybody. should be saying this is unacceptable. But unfortunately, that is not really what I'm hearing from a lot of these folks. So this is not, do not interpret this as any kind of defense or mitigation of the murder of Charlie Kirk. I am as vehemently condemning the murder of Charlie Kirk today as I did before. But from a systemic perspective, from a what does it say about our country perspective, it's bad enough that we have a political environment that radicalizes individuals like Tyler Robinson to go out and do what he did. That's terrible. But at least we have a system that will still hold them accountable. With what's happening in Minneapolis, the system is what is committing the acts. Never hold accountable. Not only are they not holding accountable, they're the ones perpetrating these acts. It's feeling like a very dark moment for the country. And it's really important to hold them to the claims they've made and hold them to the standards

they claim to want to be held by. And that's why we're going to talk about Cash Patel next. FBI director, Cash Patel, is going gigaviral because of unearth, unearth comments he made about Kyle Rittenhouse years ago, now compared to the comments he has made about the killing of Alex Prattie by ice agents. Now, let me just remind you. Kyle Rittenhouse was this young guy who decided to go to a protest armed in order to help defend people. Interesting. Well, let's start with Cash Patel yesterday speaking to Maria Bartaromo on Fox News. And Cash Patel says what happened to Alex Priddy was justified because he brought a loaded firearm. He brought a loaded, loaded firearm.

You don't get the right to break the law. Well, what law was broken when Prattie was legally carrying the gun? We'll get to that. Here is Cash Patel. I mean, thousands of people are marching through Minneapolis. They are targeting the border patrol. I mean, it feels like the rhetoric and the, the protesting is only ramping up. What is your advice to the people right now who are out?

that this is a second killing at the hands of Border Patrol in two weeks. As Christy said, you cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protests that you want. It's that simple. You don't have that right to break the law and incite violence. We will, of course, always protect your First Amendment speech. And if you peacefully protest, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But you have seen a trend here, not just in Minnesota, but across the country in these protests turning into violence, scenarios and people wait a second cash wait wait wait wait wait you can't show up with a loaded gun you don't have a right to break the law i am all for gun safety regulations you all know that we

don't have enough of them and we don't enforce the ones we have but i'm also for let's understand the law under the second amendment and minnesota statute 624.714 you are allowed to legally carry firearms in public, including during protests. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that public carry is a constitutional right. Having a gun does not constitute inciting violence. Now, many of us have been saying for a long time when these ammosexuals whose firearm size is inversely proportional to the size of their right, you know what I'm talking about. Also, the second, wow, that's a big lifted truck, sir. You must have a massive. We have said they seem to be just trying to rile people up. But that doesn't make it illegal.

Socially, we understand when these guys with the huge trucks and huge guns and tiny show up, that they are trying to get a reaction. They are trying to incite and it's still legal. Alex Prattie did not draw his firearm by all reports. It was taken off of his waistband or some kind of holster. He had a phone in his hand. And even if he had the gun as he did, the law doesn't say that that's illegal because it's legal. Now, by the way, what did Cash Patel say when he was speaking about Kyle Rittenhouse?

He did this on the genocidal anti-vaxxer Stu Peters show. who, by the way, the guy that Cash is being interviewed in this clip I'm going to play is someone that Cash said he didn't know during his confirmation hearing. Here he is on his show. And here is Cash Patel saying that Kyle Rittenhouse deserves due process and all of this stuff. Take a listen. Where is that due process standing cause of the left now in the written house cases you just outlined?

The left wants to be hypocrites. They can be hypocrites because they write their own narratives, fictional, defamation. people along the way and know they can get the media to print their garbage, their fake news garbage and wreck people's lives. Kyle Rittenhouse's life was wrecked by some who jumped the gun and said, I think he's guilty before there had been a verdict. And Cash was furious. He was there legally carrying a gun. But when it comes to Alex Prattie, it's he was there carrying a gun. You can't do that. Therefore, his killing is justified.

Remember, their principles mean nothing. They mean nothing. They abandon them as soon as they become inconvenient. Couple bonus clips on this. Here is Scott Besson also asked about this. And he also throws in inaccurate statements about the gun element and also statements not based in what the law is. Before you go, I know this is not your lane, but I got to ask you about what's happened

in Minneapolis. As a member of the Trump cabinet, are you concerned to see another American citizen ends up dead shot by federal law enforcement? Jonathan, it's a tragedy when anyone dies, but I can tell you, the situation on the ground there is being stirred up by Governor Waltz. I was out there two weeks ago.

Governor Waltz declined to provide a security detail for me to go into the Minnesota Capitol with the state police. That has nothing to do with whether that killing of Alex Pruddy was justified. Like, why are you even talking about this dude? So he is fomening the, he is foaming chaos because there is substantial waste fraud and abuse. My job is Treasury Secretary. Waste fraud and abuse. What does that have to do with Alex Pruddy being shot 10 times? There is to investigate that. And I think that this chaos is going out

there. And again, I am sorry that this gentleman is dead, but he did bring a nine millimeter semi-automatic weapon with two cartridges to what was supposed to be a peaceful protest. Two notes there. Notice that Bessent doesn't say the gun was loaded. He says he has a, he had a gun in two cartridges. And what he's describing is legal under the law. He was legally carrying the gun. Don't do we not care about that anymore? I think that there are a lot of paid agitators who are jenning things up and the governor has not done a good job of tamping this down. Yeah. I mean, as you know, he was an ICU nurse, worked for the Veterans Administration, and there's no evidence that he brandished the gun whatsoever. But he brought a gun. He was disarmed before he brought a gun. Have you ever gone to a protest, Jonathan?

I mean, we do have a second. And of course, we do have a second amendment says Jonathan Carl. It's not illegal to bring a gun to a protest. I don't like it. Personally, I wouldn't do it. And I would rather other people not have guns. But these are the people who insist that it's completely legal. Christy Noem said versions of the same thing and she she has a new wrinkle on this. You know, my message to individuals is don't go impede law enforcement operations. That's not legal. You're breaking the law when you do that. It's also breaking the law to concealed carry in Minnesota without an ID on you. And you shouldn't be laying. Hey, you know, in Minnesota, failing to carry your concealed carry permit with you is a $25 fine. Guys, it's it's legally trivial. It's like a parking ticket. He goes, well, maybe he deserves you. all of it because he didn't have his ID. Did those officers ask for his concealed carry ID?

Is that is that something that happened? Now, the reality is that right wingers do this all the time. We have the pictures. They showed up with guns in Oregon in 2020, in Montana in 2020, in Virginia in 2017, all armed right wing protesters in Virginia in 2021, in Mississippi in 2020, in Michigan in 2021, in Maryland in 2020. I could go on and on and on. I wish that we didn't have, what is it, 400 million guns in this country. I wish people didn't believe they needed guns. I wish people didn't bring guns anywhere that they went.

But when we have the laws that we have, it was legal what Alex Prattie was doing. Now, you might be saying to yourself, damn, this is a crazy 72 hours in America. What's going on with Trump this entire time? is he's silent. He is not silent. And we must talk about that next. Donald Trump suffered a complete and total meltdown, unable to stop posting to truth social, spiraling in yet another psychotic episode as the country is turning against ICE operations. And as Trump himself is reportedly not happy with how this is being handled in Minnesota by his people, not that he disagrees with it morally, but he's like, I'm getting bad press because of what's happening. So let's take a look.

Donald Trump having another one of these apoplectic explosions on truth social where he says, quote, among other things, this is a cover up for the billions of dollars that have been stolen from the once great state, but soon to be great again of Minnesota. What does he mean? What on earth does he mean? What is the cover up? That ice agents killed Alex Pretti or or that people are now outraged that Alex Prattie was killed. What exactly is the cover up that he is talking about? Trump then puts up a wall of text, not all of which I will read to you about the specifics of the killing of Alex Prattie, where he says, quote, this is the gunman's gun loaded with

two additional full magazines and ready to go. What is that all about? Legal, by the way. Trump is describing legal activity so far. Where are the local police? Why weren't they allowed to protect ICE officers? police are being stonewalled by ICE and we'll get to that. The mayor and the governor says Trump called them off. It is stated that many of these police were not allowed to do their job, that ICE had to

protect themselves, not an easy thing to do. Why does Ilhan Omar have $34 million in her account? And where are the tens of billions of dollars that have been stolen from the once great state of Minnesota? We're there because of massive monetary fraud with billions of dollars missing and illegal criminals that were allowed to infiltrate the state through the Democrats open border policy. We want the money back and we want it back now. Those fraudsters who stole the money are going to jail where they belong. This is no different than a bank robbery. Okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Trump describing, notably, zero illegal activity from Alex Prattie. He had a gun and bullets. Yes, legally. And people like Trump have been saying that that's awesome, that that's a great thing. thing for the country. Trump continues, quote, Minnesota is a criminal cover up of the massive financial fraud that has gone on. Trump continuing. Jonathan Fahey, former ICE director, is fantastic on Fox News in explaining the motives behind the fraudsters and insurrectionists in Minnesota, all meant to justify the presence of ice. And then Trump switching to an unhinged and impinged, and impassed,

penetrable wall of text about his ballroom. People are being shot dead by ice for legally carrying guns in the streets. And Trump posts, quote, I'm building on top of everything else that I'm doing, one of the greatest and most beautiful ballrooms anywhere in the world with more than $300 million of great American patriots money. And working closely with right from the beginning, the U.S. military and secret service. This is a gift, zero taxpayer funding to the United States of America of $300 to $400 million, depending on the scope and quality of interior finishes. Trump might plate the toilets in real gold and then it'll be $400 million. For a desperately needed space sought for over 150 years by previous presidents and administrations

so that the White House would no longer be forced to use a cheap and unsafe tent for big, important state events, dinners, meetings, conferences, and future inaugurations. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Continue and continuing. So-called preservationists should not be allowed to stop this. Me, me, me, let me do whatever I want, et cetera, et cetera, Donald J. Trump. He is losing his grip on reality. He is losing his grip on his party.

He is losing his grip on the media narrative about what these ice goons are doing. prediction, my expectation, my belief about what we are going to see is a dramatically unhinged Trump escalating, seeking power and doing everything he can to be liked again because that is fundamentally what he wants. He may start firing people. He may lash out. He will become more authoritarian. The next nine months leading up to these midterm elections could be some of the most precarious and dangerous times in the United States that I will have ever been involved in covering as a content creator. That's my belief as of today.

And it seems to be getting more and more likely with every passing hour, never mind every passing day. 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 struggles and business ideas. People have typed into these AI tools, assuming the conversations are temporary. And we're now learning that many of those platforms are storing or reusing the data in ways that users never really consented to.

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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. Today, I'm going to be speaking with Adam James, who is a content creator under the name Epistemic Crisis. Adam is a licensed physical therapist of 14 years working in home healthcare. And Adam, people might be saying, how is that experience relevant to anything that you talk about, David? But you, I mean, you'll tell us you, when we see the publicly visible symptoms and characteristics

of Donald Trump, these are things you're very familiar with. from the folks you work with. That's right. Yeah, it's something I see every day when a neurologist or any other physician diagnoses a patient with these types of neurological conditions, many times we are then called in and then we see that patient in their own home two, three, four times a week in some cases. So we become extremely familiar with it. I have questions about so many of the things I observe with Donald Trump that go directly

to your experience, I as a layperson see that he sometimes has this way of standing where he kind of hinges forward at the waist very noticeably. Or for example, I see him walking and the trajectory of his right leg is sort of being dragged and then pulled around almost like from the hip, if you imagine it tracing a half circle in the air. I could go on, right, and give you other examples. as a professional, are any, am I, am I seeing things that aren't really relevant or is there stuff here that is worthy of discussion? It's all worthy of discussion. What you're seeing just with the gate, the swinging that leg in a semicircle at times is, I think it's a combination of he's probably had some measure of stroke like event, whether it's a CVA or TIA, most likely last

September when he disappeared for several days. The swinging of the leg is a adaptation to right-sided weakness from some sort of stroke events, I believe. But a wider-based gate is also a symptom of dementia, specifically frontotemporal dementia, which I think is what he's dealing with most. So the wider someone's gate gets, the slower their gate speed is, those are all adaptations for an increased risk of falling because subconsciously, he knows my balance is decreasing and I need to protect myself.

As a licensed physical therapist, are these things that can be worked on such that they improve? Of course, the first step is you've got to acknowledge that there's a problem and the second step is you've got to say, I want to work on it. But putting that aside for a moment, are these things that are simply progressive or can they be worked on? So to a certain degree they can be worked on with a patient that's in the shape that he's in, honestly, more of my work would be focused on safety adaptations, like in his living space, the use of an assistive device for walking to prevent a fall. So yes, they can be worked on.

They can be improved upon. There's a certain measure of improvement you can see from something like a stroke-like event. But then there's also a case of. a chronic progressive disease that has no cure such as dementia. You're literally dealing with losing neurons are dying and you are losing brain tissue. And that's most likely reflected on the multiple MRIs that he has had because I believe they're tracking the progression of dementia. So let's talk about the MRI. It turns out he didn't really have the MRI that he told us he did. Now let me kind of set the stage here. A few of the

months ago, Donald Trump said, yes, I got an MRI. He was asked why he didn't know. He was asked of what part of the body he didn't know. The White House then issued multiple statements about Trump's MRI. And then after two months, it turned out that it was a CAT scan. So there are questions about that and how Trump would be so confused about what he got. But are you, what am, do we know that he even has received MRIs? Because my, now I'm thinking everybody has just been talking about this CAT scan the whole time. Right. So. I take into account also his mentioning of his cognitive assessments. Okay.

Because of what we really believe that the cognitive assessments he's had, most likely the Moka, the Montreal cognitive assessment. Yes. They are tracking the progression of dementia with this man. He wants to pretend like it was a aptitude test. That is no way, shape, or form what that test is for. Right. He talks about it almost like an IQ test. Yes. He wants us to believe they're just,

wanting to show the world how smarty is. So that test is usually paired. It's usually combined with neurological workup, which would include MRIs. I believe he's had everything. I think he's had everything. All of their messaging is always going to be a lie because they don't want anybody to publicly know

how ill he really is. So I go with what they, the clinical symptoms he actually displays and also the things that they get the most upset about, such as him falling asleep in cabinet meetings. Those are the indicators of what's really going on with him, for me at least, because they're never actually going to tell us what's going on with him. A couple other things I want to ask about. There was a video of Trump walking down a red carpet. The red carpet was perfectly straight. It didn't curve. It didn't bend. And this was when Donald Trump was meeting Vladimir Putin. And you see, especially if you speed the video up, that Trump is meandering from side to side. And so even though the carpet is straight,

Trump is tracing what we might call almost like a sign wave, if you looked at it from a drone looking down. Yes. Is that sometimes just the way people meander down a sidewalk or is there something relevant there to your work? I think it's relevant because dementia decreases the brain's ability to process visual information. That leads to the glassy-eyed, you know, blank stare, because they're actually not encountering visual stimulus the same way that someone without dementia does. It's combined with the right-sided weakness, the legs swinging in that semicircular fashion. Typically, when you advance a limb through what we call the swing phase and gait, you get hip flexion, you get knee flexion, you get dorsiflection at the ankle to prevent the toes from,

from clipping the ground as the leg swings through. Let me explain that. In other words, if your foot was just hanging loose as you swing forward, the toes would start dragging against the ground and you might trip or whatever. So there's a natural motion where you lift the, you flex the foot so that the toes point more up than down. That's correct. And so the adaptation of the semicircular swing to the side is an evidence of weakness.

That's not the ideal, the normal way that a swing phase occurs in human gait. When it comes to the speech patterns of Donald Trump, and if any of this stuff is simply outside your area of comfort or expertise, you tell us, we observe everything from repetition of an increasingly narrow set of words, in other words, a diminished vocabulary. Yeah. We see confusion between, for example, green Greenland and Iceland recently and sometimes multiple times or other confusions. We see sometimes kind of trailing off and then abruptly almost like coming to and then talking about something different. Is that an unrelated series of characteristics or is there something

that ties that together? No, that's all tied together. The frontal lobe is basically what alerts us to we're doing something we shouldn't be doing or we're saying something we shouldn't be saying. His frontal lobe is shrinking inside of his skull and the MRIs will reflect that. That's why they pivoted to the CT scan. They don't want you to know that they're watching his brain shrink. So the frontal lobe is stopping him from ordering his thoughts. I just made a video myself about how he mentioned the discombobulator that they used in Venezuela. Right. And he goes, you know, the discombobulator. I'm not allowed to talk about it. My brother in Christ, you should not be mentioning anything about American military effort.

That's classified. He knows he's not supposed to talk about it, but his brain is not stopping him from talking about it. You've made a very controversial prediction. You believe Trump has two to four years of life left. Now, I want to, I don't want this to be, you know, is that the growth of grocery store the other day, buying six months worth of milk because we were getting snow. And that's the normal thing to do. You stock up on milk and bread for six months. And I was looking at these, you know, the tabloid magazines and the checkout line. And it's sort of this stuff like, you know, Hillary Parkinson's one week left before she's in a wheelchair sort of felt. And when you hear Trump has two to four months left to live, you know, from an actuarial standpoint, Trump is probably a superager and may have six to eight years of life left statistically. What makes you say it's two to four months? So if it's frontotemporal dementia he's dealing with, the life expectancy after diagnosis is roughly seven to 12 years. He's been displaying these symptoms since before he was elected in 16. Really?

Yeah. Yeah. So their ability to hide his actual condition is effective to a degree. The main danger they have, I'm talking about Trump's team, like the cabinet. the people closest to him. The main danger they have is he can't shut his mouth. They would never have had to comment on what happened at Walter Reed if he could simply never talk about having an MRI. Right. So he's much more ill than they will ever admit and that they will do their best to conceal. They'll seat him behind a desk so you can't see the swelling in his feet and ankles, et cetera.

So for me, I'm looking at the time frame, the actual normal life expectancy for these things. you know a comparative example would be bruce willis who now is in a actually a care facility he's been moved from a home where he lived by himself and received 24-7 care to now actually be moved to a facility his symptoms of frontal temporal dementia started with aphasia where he could no longer perform on camera he could not execute lines anymore that was 22 23 um and now he is where he is. So they are, I'm just going by what the typical life expectancy is and the symptoms he displays. And they're, you know, he is a McDonald's fiend. Like there's nothing about this man that would be considered a compliant patient. And noncompliance from patients,

if you ask any healthcare worker, is one of the bains of our existence. People who are doing things that are medically and advisable just literally don't want to change. He's 80 years old at this point. I mean, he, and he, again, there are multiple other health conditions that they are not, they will never comment on. They say the swelling in his feet and ankles is from chronic venous insufficiency. I believe it's from congestive heart failure and or chronic kidney disease, or maybe a combination of the two. So he is, he's got multiple chronic conditions that you have to stay on top of you if you don't want them to kill you to put you in a cardiac event or a stroke like event or that kind of thing. So I'm taking the whole picture into account and that's that's where I'm landing.

I guess the counterpoint is most people don't have access to the sort of health care that the president of the United States does. And there may be a lot that can that is done with someone in that position. Correct. So we see what appears to be a bruising from an IV injection site on his hands. Right. Which they also lie about that and say that it's from shaking hands or yeah. Oh, I clip the table. No. I clip the table. Yeah. That's an IV injection site. He's, My guess that he's most likely getting IV diuretic medication to pull excess fluid off of his body so that he doesn't end up in a congestive heart failure exacerbation and require hospitalization. And there's a certain measure of stuff that they can do inside the White House or on Air Force One that the general population would never have access to, which makes the visits to Walter Reed that much more conspicuous. Like, why would you go to Walter Reed and do X, Y, and Z?

if you've got all this capability at the White House itself. Are you putting your money where your mouth is on this in the sense that on Cali right now, you can bet on. I mean, listen, only it actually went up while we've been talking incredibly. At the start of this conversation, only 16% believe that Trump would not make it to December 31st of this year. Now it's 18%, but it's quite literally rising as we talk. But the point is there would be great odds and money to make on this if you think his life expectancy is two to four months. Sure. I'm not going to be participating in that just because it feels morbid. Okay. But I understand the principle. Like, I mean, again, people are, people kind of question,

like, do you really think that? I'm like, listen, this, I feel like I'm watching a TV show that stars one of my patients. That's what this feels like. We have been speaking with Adam James, who is a licensed physical therapist creates content under the name Epistemic Crisis. Adam, appreciate your time and insights. Thank you. Thanks for having me. During these colder months, it's great to have something warm right out of the oven to have it home.

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how it fits into the whole picture, the lack of transparency. But interestingly, Donald Trump was asked about it. And his reaction seemed almost surprised. And he very quickly realized the need to come up with something to say about it. And Trump says it happened because I, I bumped it on a table. I clipped a table, as he says. Now, the question I have for you as we watch this, is it logical that the most alpha healthy president in the world gets what appears to be a borderline rotting flesh wound from bumping his hand on a table? Does that make any sense? Would aspirin do that? Let's listen. Thank you very much, everybody.

We saw the freezing on your hand. Are you okay? Very good. You good? I clipped it on the table. So I put a little, what do they call it, cream on it. What do they call it, a little cream? Clipped it.

I would say, take aspirin if you like your heart, but don't take aspirin if you don't want to have a little bruising. You know, if you take the big, I take the big aspirin. And when you say, you take the big aspirin, take the big aspirin, they tell you you bruised. The doctor said, you don't have to take that, sir. You're very healthy. I said, I'm not taking any chances. So anyway, but that's one of the side effects that take you death. Thank you. My doctor who's big and strong and muscles and just a mouth like a machine gun and sweat pouring, he said, sir, you don't have to take the big aspirin if you don't

want. Listen, people bruise. Older people bruise more easily. People on blood thinners like aspirin bruise more easily. But what's raising eyebrows here is the size and the color of the bruise, the location on the hand, the frequency with which Donald Trump has bruising on his hands. A small bump on a table doesn't produce something that looks like deep tissue bleeding. It just doesn't It doesn't make any sense. And when you start to see this, you have to be wondering about vascular or hematological issues. Is Trump getting regular IV treatment through that? There's no proof of that.

They've not disclosed that, but that's what keeps coming up. And the bigger issue is that presidents are supposed to be transparent about their health. Trump has never been transparent about his health. It started with these bizarre North Korea style letters before Trump even became president. healthiest person ever and all of that from his doctor bornestein they hid the severity of trump's COVID when he was in office they lie about his basic medical facts his height and weight he's older now he's under extreme stress he is obviously not in peak physical condition and all of a sudden it's i clipped the table i mean just think about that for you you you clipped look i'm i'm self-clipping

um the the the idea that that's going to cause a massive black wound on your hand It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And if there's anything that Trump is maybe glad about from the constant negative coverage about the ICE fiasco is that there has been less of a focus on Donald Trump's health, but there should actually be more because Donald Trump seems to be getting worse and worse. And as we speak to more and more professionals as we continue to do, I believe that it is only going to become more concerning. The state of the union is coming up in about a month.

I am not going to do what they did about Joe Biden. I am not going to say they're going to hop Trump up on drugs to make him more coherent because I don't really think that that would work. I think Trump is so incoherent at this point that that is not really going to work. I am not going to make any predictions. What I am going to say is that I expect that Trump's level of coherence at this year. state of the union is going to be notably diminished, notably diminished from any prior state of the union address. I know it's a month away. Of course, I will be covering it live. And I'll give you more

information about that as we get closer. Minneapolis police chief Brian O'Hara went on national TV and he said what basically every city official is thinking and very few are willing to say out loud. People have had enough. ICE is bringing the chaos. They're not solving the chaos. They are the, the generators of the chaos. And it is time for them to go. This is not a left-wing activist. This is not anybody from Antrifa. This is not Black Lives Matter. This is not a Tick-Tac commentator. This is the chief of police of Minneapolis. And he says Trump's ice goons are reckless and they are dangerous and they've got to get out of here. Even if there is an investigation that ultimately proves that at the time of the shooting, it was legally justified, I don't think that even matters at this point because there is so much outrage and concern around what is happening in the city.

What do you mean it doesn't matter at this point? You mean the situation on the ground is already the impression is left? People have had enough. This is the third shooting now in less than three weeks. Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year, recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn't shoot anyone. Right. And now this is the second American citizen that's been killed. It's the third shooting within three weeks. People have been speaking out, saying that this was going to happen again.

And I think everyone is kind of waiting for folks on both sides to come together and just figure this thing out. This is not sustainable. This police department has only 600 police officers. We are stretched incredibly thin. This is taking an enormous toll trying to manage all of this chaos on top of having to be the police department for a major city. It's too much. The statistics he mentions, we recovered 900 guns in a year. We arrested hundreds of violent offenders and we didn't shoot a single person. It's a reminder. It's a reminder. that the performance review of ICE gets an F. Federal immigration agents have been flooding Minneapolis as part of Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown. And in just a few weeks,

we've got multiple people shot by federal agents. We've got Alex Prattie killed. We've got Renee good killed. We've got others injured and one other individual killed. Local officials are saying this is out of control. This is causing. We were policing Minneapolis before. Now we're unable to do it because of the presence of ice all of a sudden. Federal agents arrive and within weeks, people end up shot and killed. So this is not about crime rates. This is tactics, training, incentives, and political messaging. And local police departments, which we are critical of when appropriate, for all of their flaws, local police departments are actually accountable to city government's local voters and internal oversight. The people who shot Alex Prettie,

have been flown out of Minneapolis and reassigned. As of this moment, we don't even know their identity. At some point, I'm guessing that we will. And they are acting like a political, what would we call? A political force not subject to accountability and not subject to investigation. So the deeper dynamic here, the repeat, the rinse repeat trend is Trump floods a city with heavily armed federal agents. the agents escalate confrontations, people protest, which causes more chaos, and then people

start getting killed, which causes Trump and people around him to go, look at how chaotic it is in Minneapolis. We got to send more troops there. This is, as I mentioned earlier in the show, this is the authoritarian feedback loop. And I don't know whether anybody gives a damn what the local police department says. We know Trump and the administration don't care what the governor says. We know Trump and the administration don't care what mayors say or mares that for some reason they call them mares like a female horse. It's a very unusual thing. But they don't care what mayors say.

And I don't know that they're going to care what police chiefs say. They are determined to be there to cause chaos. And the tragic thing that we have to sort of think about and consider is that the constitutionally protected and richly important activity of peaceful protest exposes. protesters to significant risk as Alex Preti tragically encountered over the weekend. Now on the bonus show, we are going to talk about the continued devolution of what is happening on the streets. I will tell you and we will discuss the after effects of this massive winter, snow and ice storm. We'll talk about JPMorgan closing Trump's accounts. We'll talk about the

political controversy over the forthcoming Super Bowl. All of it and more on today's bonus show. Get yourself signed up at join packman.com.