The David Pakman Show - MAGA culture fades as GOP panic grows

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

-- On the Show -- U.S. Olympians Hunter Hess and Chris Lillis publicly criticize Trump administration policies while representing the United States, undercutting the claim that opposing Donald Trump is unpatriotic -- Donald Trump’s absence from the Super Bowl and the fading visibility of pro-Trump symbolism signal a rapid collapse in MAGA’s cultural relevance -- Donald Trump repeatedly dodges direct questions, contradicts himself, and appears disengaged during press exchanges, raising concerns about his control and awareness -- Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt struggles to defend a racist video on Fox News, worsening Republican fears about message discipline ahead of the midterms -- A longtime Trump voter publicly renounces Donald Trump, highlighting how accountability paired with an offramp can weaken cult-like political loyalty -- Historical patterns show leaders who centralize power and weaken institutions, including Donald Trump, rarely control how their political stories end -- Reporting from Trumpworld insiders fuels concern over Donald Trump’s erratic behavior after a racist post, intensifying Republican anxiety before midterms -- Internal Republican polling shows Senate races tightening as Donald Trump’s presidency becomes a growing liability for GOP control of Congress -- On the Bonus Show: Right-wing reactions to Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show, and much more... 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please go to conicsonterio.ca. investing is all about the future. So what do you think is going to happen? Bitcoin is sort of inevitable at this point. I think it would come down to precious metals. I hope we don't go cashless. I would say land is a safe investment. Technology companies.

Solar energy. Robotic pollinators might be a thing. A wrestler to face a robot, that will have to happen. So whatever you think is going to happen in the future, you can invest in it at Wealth Simple. Start now at WealthSimple.com. U.S. Olympians are openly criticizing Donald Trump while literally wearing the American flag, and it blows up the MAGA narrative that opposing Trump is somehow un-American. It's not, we will talk about it.

And then the cultural dominance of MAGA is quickly collapsing, from the Trump dance being everywhere to Trump skipping the Super Bowl, very likely because he would have gotten brutally booed on live television. We are in the middle of a real culture shift that I want to talk about, and it's happening, it is happening much faster than people expected. We are also going to look at a complicated explanation to the posting and then subsequent removal of a racist video of the Obamas to Donald Trump's Truth Social. The video is bad enough, but the story around when it was put up, when it was taken down,

who did it, what the different explanations were is probably far more interesting. And we will also see some stunning insights. reporting about the behavior that is taking place in the White House with Republicans openly saying they are now worried that the Senate is in play and that they may lose it, which wouldn't that be a lovely little story to wake up to the first, I guess, Wednesday in this forthcoming November? All of that and more. Stay with us today because it's actually a show we should record and keep rather than record

and immediately delete. There is a narrative that has been pushed for years now, which is that opposing a president, if it's a Republican, whether it was George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq or now it's Donald Trump, that you're somehow un-American, that criticizing an administration is anti-flag and anti-country and anti-military and that it's fundamentally not patriotic. And what's happening right now is really breaking that narrative in public in a visible way and in a way that quite frankly, I love, because you now have American Olympians quite literally representing the United States on the world stage openly criticizing Trump administration policies while literally wrapped in the flag.

They are wearing the American flag on their uniforms and in their, you know, after event zip ups and whatever it is. And the importance of this cultural. and politically really can't be understated. So let's start with Olympian Hunter Hess, who said just because he's wearing the flag doesn't mean that he represents everything that is happening in the United States. Let's take a look.

It brings up mixed emotions to represent the US right now, I think. It's a little hard. There's obviously a lot going on that I'm not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren't. If it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I'm representing. just because I'm wearing the flag doesn't mean I represent everything that's going on in the U.S.

So yeah, I just kind of want to do it for my friends and my family and the people that support me getting here. This is a very simple sentence. It's in a way to many of us who understand that you don't have to agree with everything a president does in order to be patriotic. It's a very simple sentence to us, but politically it's explosive. What he is saying is that patriotism is not. loyalty to a president. Patriotism is not loyalty to a particular political party. Patriotism is not,

this is me adding it, patriotism is not loyalty to whatever military mission the president decides to send the troops into. Patriotism at its core is a loyalty to values and ideas. And sometimes that means you have to criticize the people in power in order to be patriotic. This is a very old American idea, by the way. We have a country founded on opposition to, government authority. At the time, it was the center of the colonizing force, England. And so it's actually a very American idea, but MAGA and people who support Trump want you to believe that if you say anything like this, somehow you are not patriotic, they are lying to you because they are desperate. Now, let's look at another example. Here is Olympian Chris Lillis,

who said that as he looks at what's happening with ICE protests and people's rights not being respected that he is heartbroken. Let's take a look at this video. I feel heartbroken about what's happened in the United States when, you know, I'm pretty sure you're referencing ICE and some of the protests and things like that. I think that as a country, we need to focus on respecting everybody's rights and making sure that we're treating our citizens as well as anybody with love and respect. And I hope that when people look at athletes compete in the Olympics, they realize that that's the America that we're trying to represent. So he says he's heartbroken about what's happening in the United States around ICE and the protests,

as am I, as I know many of you are. But then he says something that's very important politically, which is we need to focus on respecting people's rights and making sure we are treating our citizens as well as anybody, and important as well as anybody, with love and respect. Notice what he is doing there. And it's so critical that you understand that MAGA wants to make you believe that these sorts of statements are, first of all, controversial,

but that they are unpatriotic, that they are un-American. But there is nothing more American. I mean, what happened to these constitutionalists who used to say that they were the real, you know, the Republicans that said they are the real defenders of law and order? They understand that America living up to its values is a worthy cause.

And sometimes the president's stewardship pushes the country away from its values. Historically, that is what most protest movements in the United States have claimed to be doing. Civil rights, anti-war movements, labor movements. They frame themselves as we want to make the country better. The country is going in the wrong direction. Now, here is why this is politically dangerous for MAGA messaging.

The political strategy for years has been, let's frame any of our critics as radical. as anti-American, as out-of-touch elites. You know, sometimes they would apply these words they didn't understand. They're Marxists, they're anarchists, or communists or whatever. People who hate the country at the end of the day.

It is much more difficult to do that when the people criticizing policy are Olympic athletes wearing USA uniforms on a world stage because it creates this cognitive dissonance. Now, we've seen this cognitive dissonance elsewhere. This is why I find it so interesting and useful. when, you know, a proverbial or literal, big, strong guy, when someone who's the physical image of what MAGA considers a real man expresses progressive values or values that are antithetical to the Trump administration. It's interesting because it creates a cognitive dissonance.

I was told people who criticize Trump are weak. What are the phrases they use? Girlie men or whatever, you know, Arnold used that phrase, et cetera. I was told that if you look like a big muscle guy and maybe you drive a truck or you've got a job working with your hands, that of course you would support Donald Trump. And so when people that are physically that say, oh, Trump's a disaster, it creates a very interesting cognitive dissonance. And similarly, when you see athletes in some ways being athletic is an embodiment of the stereotypical alpha male that Magick claims to support, when you see athletes wearing the American flag on their uniforms,

say, we don't believe that what's happening in the United States right now represents our values. That really goes far. And if someone representing the country says, hey, we've got to respect people's rights more. We're not doing a good enough job of respecting people's rights in my country. It is really hard to paint them as anti-American without starting to sound extreme yourself. And so culturally, this signals something bigger, which we're going to get into in a moment. which is that there was a period when sports culture specifically and popular culture more broadly was drifting to the right. You saw pro-Trump celebrations in sporting events. You saw normalization

of pro-Trump symbolism at in-professional sports, athletes who felt there was no social downside to being associated with Donald Trump. And now you're seeing the opposite signal. And it's happening very quickly. You've got athletes criticizing policy, athletes talking about human rights, athletes talking about the legitimacy of peaceful protest, which should not be controversial. And so where we are going to go next is how quickly this reversal has happened. Trump is increasingly getting embarrassed because MAGA culture is collapsing. We already talked about athletes at the Olympics representing the U.S. criticizing Trump administration policy.

And there's a bigger story here that I want to talk about. what started as misplaced righteous indignation. They believed they were righteously indignant. And I guess they were just in a completely misplaced way. It was about school boards and gender battles and, you know, Trump's going to fix everything for you. That has degraded into a total laughing stock as MAGA has lost its cultural influence and relevance.

And it is now relegated to screaming about men and women's sports, women who get Mara Lago face, this sort of like a plastic surgery trend where all the women at Mara Lago look the same, and yelling that the Epstein files aren't really that bad. That is what MAGA culture has left. And we have to talk about it because it's not only fascinating, it's a real sea change in terms of what it might portend for American politics. If you look even a year ago, there was a real argument that the right was gaining cultural momentum. You saw the sports celebrations, influencer spaces, podcasts that weren't explicitly political, but they leaned right culturally, and they helped get Trump elected. I'm talking Joe Rogan and

Rojogan and Andrew Schultz and all of them. You saw it in young men who didn't think supporting Trump had any social cost, who, by the way, are now finding, I can't get a date when they figure out that I voted Trump. That was the story coming out of the 2024 election. Trump wasn't just politically viable. He was normalized in the culture, spaces that used to reject him or now welcoming him with open arms. That is cracked really quickly. And the Super Bowl is a fascinating symbol of how that happened or a representation of it. Trump didn't go. And the public explanation Trump gave was, oh, it's far. If it were closer, I would go. We all know the obvious explanation. Trump has an extraordinarily fragile ego. He would have gotten

booed loudly on camera in front of the entire country and the world. And that doesn't confer power. It doesn't confer political power and it doesn't confer cultural power. Now, at the same time, we saw the rights attempt to counter program implode. It was basically Kid Rock. That was their bench. You know, it used to be Kid Rock and John Boyt and the guy who does the proud to be an American, you know, that guy. Where Kid Rock was supposed to put together, this alternative entertainment or something like that. And it was laughed out. It failed completely.

And it's really all they have. And so what you see is that because culture isn't just aesthetics, it provides a permission structure. When athletes were doing the Trump dance and UFC fighters were giving Trump their belts and this sort of stuff, it signaled something. And it told a story where young people, came to believe there's no cost to embracing Donald Trump. Maybe there's upside even to embracing Donald Trump. You barely see this stuff anymore. Now, in some cases, there are athletes who did it,

who have apologized, a couple UFC guys. In other cases, it's being used to mock Donald Trump. Look at this clown supporting Trump after their win. He's a loser and Trump's a loser. And if you look at this 12 to 24-month period during which this happened, you start to see the backlash in places that historically have stayed away from overt politics, sports leagues, Olympic spaces, music awards, wrestling crowds, these are all social signal spaces where for a while they stayed out of politics, then they got in and they were sort of Trumpy, and now the signal is shifting again. The Wright believed it was on the verge of cultural dominance. They were keyed up for it. American pop culture finally was breaking their way and they were going to be in, you know, wherever,

And you're seeing this reversion now. And the darker kind of more uncomfortable reality is that we have to think about why that's happening. It's because a lot of people realize that they were sold a bill of goods by Trump that he can't possibly deliver on. But there is an ugliness to this because Trump doesn't really care about democracy. And this is going to be another theme later in the show. We can observe this magocultural collapse all we want. And not much may really change in the short.

term because they've served the primary purpose, which was to get Trump elected, get him back in the White House. Once they've secured executive power, cultural popularity matters a lot less. Trump's ego is so fragile that he still cares about it. It still is really damaging to Trump that he can't even go to the Super Bowl because he knows he's going to get brutally booed. But beyond affecting Trump's ego, Trump's support could theoretically drop dramatically. It wouldn't really change the direction of policy.

because this is an administration that's really focused on pushing through as much of its agenda as possible by some reports about half of Project 2025 has been accomplished in some way, shape, or form. And the goal now is going to be prevent losing the midterms no matter what it takes. If leadership believes that the midterms could be rough and it's looking that way, but we've been talking a lot about the House. We're going to talk about the Senate a little bit later. the incentives become to front load major policy moves and do the structural changes and manipulate the elections as much as you can. None of this means that MAGA disappears. None of it means

Republicans can't win elections either. Culture and voting move sort of in the same direction, but they don't move perfectly in sync. But something real has changed here. And what we've seen when we looked at historical movements, and I'll give you some examples later, is that when you start losing the cultural momentum, it shows up politically with a delay. It shows up a little bit it's a leading indicator. And the right has spent decades arguing the culture is stacked against us. And for a little moment there, it looked like it was flipping. 12, 18, 24 months later, they are back to this completely parallel culture that most of polite society sees as embarrassing and cringe and very gauche. And this is the sea change that we're seeing. It's not that Trump has no

supporters. It's not that MAGA has disappeared, but there was a period where it was socially neutral to support Trump or in some cases even socially positive. You would get rewarded for that. It is completely eroded. And once that happens, it is really difficult to reverse it. So I believe this is a critically important moment, not only because we're seeing such a rapid reversal, but because we have an opportunity to take the anti-Trump momentum culturally and turn it into political action by voting in November. Political power can last. last a really long time if you keep winning elections, but cultural influence can evaporate quickly and take away all the political power that you built. So later in the show, I will tell you

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I'm going to walk you through a series of clips that if we take them together, tell a story that is really a disaster for Donald Trump. And honestly, it's pretty alarming no matter what your political orientation is. If you just want a president who is fully engaged, fully aware, and fully in control of what's happening around them, the pattern we are seeing, multiple exchanges, multiple topics, multiple reporters, is a guy who doesn't know what's going on, doesn't really seem to care and just can't do it anymore.

A reporter asks Trump, you frequently criticize Biden for not knowing what was going on in his name, in his administration. And yet when you posted that racist Obama monkey video to social media, and what does Trump do, he tells the reporter, well, you don't know what's going on. I know you are, but what am I? The political equivalent of I know you are, but what am I, take a look at this.

So, President, you frequently criticize Joe Biden for not knowing what is going on in his name, this racist video that was posted on your social media. I don't know a lot better than you do. You don't know what's going on. I know what's going on. No, Joe Biden didn't have a clue, but we know everything. So it's deflection, projection, and then just a vague, generic assertion of control. I believe that politically this is very dangerous because Trump,

is being asked about something completely concrete. Who posted the video? They said multiple different things about that. If Trump didn't post the video, then who's actually in control of the social media? And was it okay to post or not? And if it was fine, which they said, why was it removed? And Trump goes, you don't know what's going on. I know what's going on.

He attacked Biden for four years for not knowing what's going on and for other people supposedly managing all sorts of different things in Biden's administration. And yet, it seems that that's exactly what's going on with Trump. And he doesn't want to address it in any really substantive manner. Trump then pulls out this line that we've heard before, which is that not only is he not super racist, that Trump is the least racist president anyone has had in a long time as far as he's concerned. And that's a key part of the sentence.

Take a look. Black voters have been great to me. I've been great to them. And I am, by the way, the least racist president you've had in a long time as far as I'm concerned. We have, I've had a great relation. Think of what I've done. I have to tell you that as far as I'm concerned is doing some heavy, heavy lifting there. And this is a very longstanding pattern. Instead of engaging with the controversy substantively, he goes to the broad self-definition, least racist president in a very long time. And if that,

That's still convincing anybody. I want to talk to you. Write to me if you're still convinced of this. Now, you could be personally racist and do policies that are really great for minorities. That's possible. You could also be personally not racist, but end up for a lot of different reasons doing policy that's bad for minority groups. Like, all of these combinations are possible. It seems with Trump, it's probably both.

He does seem to harbor racial prejudices and his policies are not particularly good for minorities. interesting moment when the topic of Trump suing the government came up. And of course, when you sue the government if you win, the money comes from taxpayers. The reporter says you're asking Americans to pay for the damages you claim in your lawsuit. What about that? And Drum goes, no, no, no, it's not like that because the money goes to charity. Take a look. Mr. Preston, you're suing the federal government about your taxes. I'm wondering, is it fair to ask the American people to pay for that?

Well, anything I win, I'm going to give 100% to charity. But that still takes it from the American people. No, no, because they give money to charity. They give away $40 billion a year to charity, our government. You know, our government gives away $40 billion plus a year to charity. So anything I win from that. But when they go and release your tax returns, which is totally illegal, people go to jail for that. And they've already found a person that did it.

And as you know, they got in big trouble. and based upon that and other things we did, and we did sue. And anything I win, I'm giving 100% to charity. Really good, very, very good and respected charities. So this isn't really how money works. And when you get into circular logic like that in real time, Trump doesn't answer any question. He talks through the question.

And the explanations that he gives don't make any sense. sense. It's fine to sue the government for taxpayer money because the money would be then donated to charity. Well, so I guess then you're forcing taxpayers to donate to particular charities because you've decided that that's what they need to do, even if they are charities that they don't support in any way. It doesn't make any sense. Trump asked about what does he say to Americans who were offended by the racist Obama monkey video that he posted. Trump goes, I don't know anything about it and I don't have any kind of message. It's your message to the many Americans who were offended by the video.

You don't want to tell us about this? I didn't know about it. So I mean, it went up. I really have no message. All I know is, here's my message that our country has never been in a position like this. We were a laughing stock all over the world and now we're a country that's respected, more than we've ever been respected before. If you go back a year and a half ago, our country was a laughing stock.

And now we're respected all over the world like probably almost never before. I would say maybe like never before. And, you know, if you look at from an economic standpoint, the King of Saudi Arabia said it, and other Senate, we were not a country that was even thought of as a country that was going to make it back. And at one year, we're the hottest country. We are right now the hottest country anywhere in the world. So that's my message. This is politically brutal. This is brutal. We know that he doesn't know how to handle this

because Republicans are even saying this is one of the worst mistakes that he has ever made. And the interesting kind of conflict here is you can't both be a leader who is fully in control of everything and someone who says, I didn't know about it, I wasn't involved in it, I didn't do it even though it was posted under my name. You've got to pick one. But Trump always wants every side of every issue. What's your, think back to 2015. What's your position on the issue of abortion?

He goes, well, you've got to punish the woman. Actually, we're not going to do that. Illegal, but some exceptions. You don't like his position today. Pick one tomorrow. That's always been Trump's tactic here. Finally, Trump asked, did you see that J.D. Vance, your vice president, got booed at the Olympics.

and boy was it brutal. And Trump goes, that's really weird. Everybody likes him. They're doing a great job. Did you see that the vice president got booed during the opening ceremony, though? What do you make of that sort of frosty? The vice president got booed during the opening ceremony.

What do you make of that frosty? No, is that chill? Yeah. It's surprising because people like him. Well, I mean, he is in a foreign country, you know, in all fairness, but he doesn't get booed in this country. He's a particular sport. Trump's control over his administration is slipping very quickly.

But more interestingly, as culturally MAGA is in serious decline, they continue to just insist we're more popular than ever. 99% approval rating, thank you, in polls that, of course, we can never find. He's losing his grip on the country. He's losing his grip on culture. And of course, he's also losing his grip on being able to remain even mildly co-concure. when he's talking to reporters. Now, as bad as Trump was trying to clean up this Obama monkey video mess,

just wait until you see when Caroline Levitt tried to do it. This did not go well for Donald Trump's White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt. Caroline crashed trying to defend Donald Trump. Let's talk about a Fox News appearance, which was meant to clean up a political mess. The idea was, let's fix a problem, not. create a new problem. And understandably, that's what you would expect to happen. You go on Fox News. Fox News is a friendly network to the Trump administration. And Fox asks, are you throwing a staffer under the bus for the Trump Obama Monkey Post? And Trump's press secretary, Caroline Levitt,

tried to explain how this now infamous racist video that got posted and then deleted after backlash is both no big deal, but Trump didn't do it, but it's fine. And it's, and it's, anyway, if it had been Trump, it would be okay. Laura Ingram, who is by far not a hostile interviewer simply says, can you really blame a staffer for this? It's a gift question. And it's a, like, just give me anything defensible sort of question and check out Caroline Levitt's answer. It's been issue after issue at the same time. And I know you've been dealing with this today. But Donald Trump's true social post set off a firestorm on the, you know, online. I only noticed it this morning because I was writing, but it was a video that he had posted

portraying Michelle and Barack Obama with an eight motif. And I guess there were other politicians who were portrayed in other animal motifs as an internet meme. Tim Scott, the senator, obviously African-American, said he was praying it was fake because it was the most racist thing he'd ever seen it out of the White House. The president should remove it. Caroline, I know the president did remove it, deleted it. But it was up for, I think, 12 hours or something like that. How did this happen and can you really throw a staffer under the bus for this? Well, look, Laura, you know, it was a meme that was posted by a staffer on the president's true social account. It was from a Lion King video depicting, as you pointed out,

different Democrats as different animals. I think Kamala Harris was depicted as a turtle in this video meme. The president did take it down. He spoke with lawmakers today out of respect for them, including Senator Tim Scott, the post was removed. But leave it to the leftist media, of course, to talk about this all day, rather than talk about the fact that the Dow has broken over 50,000 points for the first time in our nation's history, rather than talk about it.

So first, it wasn't just the media. This is not a media-driven story where if only nobody talked about the racist video, the racist video would have been fine. We know that Republicans are privately freaking out about it. Republican incumbents were reportedly panicking about having to defend it. This was not an obscure internet controversy. This was something being posted on the president's primary social account of communication,

widely condemned as racist. And the Lion King explanation that was floated out there really makes no sense. First of all, are there any monkeys in the Lion King? Maybe like there's an incidental monkey, but it's not really about monkeys. And this is what happens when the priority is never accuracy. It's let's say something to slow down the news cycle. Let's say something that gets us to being able to say the next thing. And when you watch the full exchange, it's very clear that the underlying strategy is the

one they always apply. Minimize it, deflect it, blame the media, call it a meme and then move on as if there's nothing to talk about here. It's really important not to let them tell us when there is or isn't something to talk about. I've talked to reporters before where I was aware that they're. they had sources who were trying to tell them there's no story here. And what I've said in those situations is, listen, you need to determine whether there's a story here. Don't let other people

tell you whether there's a story. I'll just answer your questions as one of your sources. I'm not going to tell you there is or isn't a story, but you should be the person to determine that. And when you allow Caroline Levitt to decide there is or isn't a story here, you are letting them control the news cycle. And then finally, when this objectively extreme, disgusting thing is written off as just a meme, it doesn't calm anybody down. It just makes you look disconnected from reality. Now, I think for Republicans, this is very dangerous. And I'll tell you later about how they're freaking out about the Senate now.

The midterms are coming. We are now just nine months from the midterms. There are a lot of vulnerable Republicans. They don't want to be in the position of having to defend a racist meme or denounce Trump. That's not a position they want to be in. They want to talk about how Trump fixed inflation, which he didn't, but it's easier to lie about that. They want to talk about how Trump did everything he promised on immigration, which he didn't, but they'd rather do that because they can lie more easily about it.

They want to talk about local issues. And instead, they get dragged into explaining the late-night social media behavior of a clearly crumbling and declining president. And the deeper problem for the administration in these nine months that are left is you can't run a discipline political strategy if the message can be blown up by a single post. You can't protect swing district candidates who are sweating bullets, more than Trump even sweats, if they are constantly being asked, are you behind the monkey post or do you denounce the monkey post? And you could see that even Laura Ingram, you know, friendly territory, she's even pushing a little bit because she understands this isn't really a clean explanation. Was it just a meme or was it the media's fault?

Or was it from a Disney movie? It's not coherent messaging in any way. And I think that the fact that the messaging changed so many times so quickly tells us everything we need to know. No big deal. Maybe staff posted it. Trump did post it, but he didn't see everything that was in it. It's just a media hysteria.

This is very bad for Republicans. It's scrambling. And my hope is, I know that when I've had high hopes for the American electorate, I've been disappointed before. But my hope is that voters can tell the difference here. And if Republicans start to believe that they're going to have to run this entire nine months of midterms defending stuff like this, they are going to panic. And later, I will actually give you the information as to why they are now panicking not only about the House, but the Senate is now, it's an uphill battle, but it is very much in play. During these colder months, it's great to have something warm,

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He was talking, by the way, about Donald Trump when he did that. I told you last week, we shouldn't shame them. If we just shame them, it's like with other cults, they resist, and they'll go 180 right back to the cult. But we also can't pretend that this wasn't predictable and that they were going to get screwed by the guy they voted for. So we now have an opportunity to do exactly what I suggested. Let's take a look at this video. I were registered Republican. My dad was the president of American Pipelowners Association.

So I came by it rather naturally. Voter for the president supported him. But I really want to apologize. I mean, I'm looking at this awful. picture of the Obama's. What an embarrassment to our country. All this man does is tell lies. He is not worthy of the presidency. He takes bribes blatantly, and now he's being a racist. Blatently, they were supposed to deport the dangerous criminals. They were not supposed to go after small children, storm schools, bring terror upon, you know, the little kids and the women and children,

not just the immigrants in the school. All the children are scared. This is not a decent man. This is not an honest man. He openly takes bribes. He's pathetic as a president, and I just want to apologize to everybody in the country. for supporting this rotten, rotten man. John, did you vote for him in all three elections?

I did. I was sucked into the stupidity of creating jobs. Ha, ha, you idiot, how did you ever fall for it? It's not going to work. If that is our reaction, it is not going to work. That is not going to make others say, hey, maybe I also need to rethink this Trump stuff. Instead, it should be, hey, you know what? This was totally predictable. We've been telling you for a decade that this guy,

was going to screw you and the country, but it's great that you figured it out. It's like quitting smoking. Late is better than never. And it was predictable. Maybe you weren't in a place where you could see it, but now you've seen it. And like I said last week, the right response should be it wasn't unlucky. You were wrong. You were predictably wrong. How do we know? Because so many of us we're predicting it. A lot of us warned you and you dismissed the warnings, but the great thing is you don't have to make the same mistake again. There's always another election coming up. We've got one nine months away and then we've got one two years after that. That's, I believe, the key move. It's accountability and it's an off ramp. It shouldn't be we hate you forever, like I said. It should be,

we did tell you so. We want you to choose better next time. We will help you choose better. better next time. And I think, or at least I hope, that that combination is sort of acceptable, but slightly uncomfortable. And you might say, well, why should it be uncomfortable? Very often growth is uncomfortable. You know, you think about lifting weights to really make progress. You're going to go through some lack of comfort or riding a bike long distances. You're going to have periods of discomfort. And that is going to get you to the other side, presumably in a stronger and more kind of prepared state of mind and bodily state. So we can't normalize amnesia.

I don't know, guys, I'm sorry. I voted for him three times, totally unpredictable. Nobody could have guessed this would have happened. Cool, man. Yeah, welcome back. Nobody could have guessed it. No, it's we all predicted it. Tens of millions of us in the United States

and hundreds of millions of people around the world predicted it. But we're not going to weaponize the humiliation against you. We want fewer people falling for this again. And so now it's not just us trying, to tell others, this guy's going to screw you. You can join us. And when it's whoever they deputize as the heir of MAGA, telling everybody the same crap that Trump told them, you can now be one of the cautionary tales. Guys, I fell for it three times, but I'm not going to fall for it again. We're going to name the mistake. We're going to explain that it was foreseeable. We're going to invite

people back without letting them pretend it was all a mystery. And I'm here waiting. So as I've said before, keep emailing in, keep calling in when we do the TikTok lives. If you have made a 180 on this president, we're going to need every single one of these folks to help us prevent this from ever happening again. Let's talk about how it ends for authoritarians. This is very interesting. This is sort of a mix of politics and history. There's this pattern across history that political scientists and historians have studied for a very long time, which is that when leaders concentrate power around themselves, this could be a full-blown dictator, or it could be like a dictator-wana be like a Donald Trump, when they weaken institutions and they start

purging or investigating their rivals and ruling through cult of personality or cult of fear, they usually end badly. They don't typically end up with a quiet retirement, and they rarely become respected elder statesmen. They almost never walk away with an intact legacy. Now, I will make a distinction again. Trump is not, strictly speaking, a dictator in the way that Hitler, Stalin, and Gaddafi were, or that Putin is, or that Kim Jong-un is. The U.S. still has elections, and so far, the winners of the elections have represented the will of the people. Now, why that was the case is where we get a little scared, but we're going to come back to that. The United States still has courts. It still has states with independent authority.

in a lot of areas. And formally, we still have a democracy in the United States. But when we look at what Trump wants and what he has tried, we see that he is, if he was allowed to do it, he would be like the dictators. Override election outcomes, sure. Attack courts and prosecutors, absolutely. Use state power against political enemies, deploy the military domestically, all of the above. These are authoritarian patterns. The system may allow the strong man to do more. or less of it, but my point is that it doesn't end well. Now, some authoritarian's lose power suddenly. You know, Hitler died by suicide in a bunker as his regime was collapsing around him.

Gaddafi ruled Libya for decades, captured and killed during an uprising. Romania's Chochescu went from total control to execution within just days. And what we see is that when power is built around one person, it breaks, it often breaks really fast. Some survive but lose everything. You know, I'm thinking of Slobodan Milosevic, ended up on trial for war crimes. Alberto Fujimori, Peru's authoritarian president, went to prison. Former authoritarian leaders in South Korea were prosecuted after the democratization of South Korea. Some will flee and live in exile. You know, Uganda's Ediamin died in exile. The Shah of Iran fled and spent his final year.

kind of moving between countries. Now, there are others who will avoid prisoner assassination, but they still lose their power. They lose their wealth, and they have no legacy whatsoever. And sometimes it's because of legal exposure or their reputation collapses when the propaganda fades. Very few authoritarian end with a positive historical legacy. Trump is obsessed with legacy right now. Now, some of them die in power, and when they die, they're praised by their supporters. But historical consensus over time will still destroy their legacy. And even the leaders who delivered economic growth alongside the brutal repression that they dropped, they're usually remembered mostly for the oppression. Now, many of you I know are going to be asking an important

question, which is, well, does it always end badly? Because look at Putin. Look at Kim Jong-un, now the third in a familial line of dictatorship in North Korea. It hasn't. ended badly, or at least not yet, and that is a key part of it. One element is timing. Many authoritarian leaders look stable for a long time, and then there's a sudden collapse. We're talking about eventually, okay? These systems can look very strong because any dissent gets crushed and the information about them is controlled. Weakness can be hidden until, boom, there's a crisis and there's an economic failure, or they lose a war, or there's a split among the elites or there's a fight for who's going to be the successor.

Information control is another really important factor. There are highly controlled systems where outsiders don't really see the internal problems until they're already really severe. And then succession planning is the other aspect of this. Even if a leader stays in power until death, authoritarian systems will often get really unstable when leadership changes. There are structural reasons that authoritarian systems produce these outcomes. Number one, authoritarian create a lot of enemies.

They weaken institutions that would manage peaceful transitions. And when you take legitimacy and it's gone and instead it's just fear, who's afraid enough of me to let me get away with what I'm doing? When you lose the loyalty that you created, it all falls apart. Now, again, I'm not saying the United States is 1930s Germany. It's not Cold War Romania. The modern version of this would be loss of power leads to legal exposure, loss of party protection leads to investigations that are bipartisan,

legacy collapses after leaving office, and political abandonment takes place when the leader becomes a liability. All of that could happen in the next nine months. Authoritarian leading leaders always think they can control the ending. Trump's obsession with legacy is leading him to try to, acquire new land for the United States because he thinks that will be part of an irreversible legacy. It's leading him to try to change the physical structure of the White House because that can be his legacy and so many other things that we've been talking about. They believe they can hold

that loyalty and that the institutions they destroy won't recover and the fear will last forever. All I'm telling you is look at history. History tells us that when you build power around one person, it can look unshakable in the moment, and then suddenly it's not. And when that happens, it doesn't end well for the person at the center of it. Now with Trump, a lot of this might happen after he is no longer, let me put it this way. It might happen when he has slipped the surly bonds of earth, if you understand what I mean. But it almost certainly is going to happen because it has happened time after time after time for the last couple hundred years. Disagre. Disagre. with me? Is there any way Trump can come out of this with a saved legacy? Send me an email. Info

at David Pakman.com. Leave a comment. And remember that this story is part of my daily podcast. You can get that podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcasting platform that you like for free. The David Pakman Show is an audience supported program and the best most most, most, you know, 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. Does the term off his meds surprise you at all about the current president of the United States? There are some stunning claims being made about Donald Trump indeed being off of his

medication after this recent racist monkey video involving Barack Obama and Michelle Obama was posted. And if the idea was to calm concerns about Donald Trump's health and mental state, the exact opposite is happening. Now, I want to be careful here. There are two different things going on at once. One is reporting. The other is speculation. The reporting is coming from people who claim to be speaking to White House insiders, and that's pretty explosive. And we're talking about Michael Wolfe. Whether those individuals are speculating is the second part of the question. Now, according to reporting tied to commentary from Trump biographer Michael Wolf, there are people inside the White House who privately are saying that Trump's recent behavior

is because he is off his meds. And that phrase reportedly came up after Donald Trump posted this video of Barack Obama and Michelle Obama depicted as monkeys. The post stayed up about 12 hours was then deleted, and it triggered condemnation. It triggered defenses because it was a fine thing to post, but Trump didn't really post it. And we talked about the back and forth. So here is Trump biographer Michael Wolfe with his reporting as to what he has been told. Truth social frenzy that was going on on Thursday night. You know, a breakdown.

And I spoke to people in the White House about this. And their view was, whoa, you know, actually. let me quote, off his meds. So, which is an interesting thing that they can acknowledge when Trump is too Trumpy, when he has gone further than they would have expected, and at which point they acknowledge that there is something that has probably happened, that something pushed him over the edge, which is another term they use. He went over the edge last night.

So we're talking, of course, about the racist meme of the Obama's presented as apes, which... Which, what that was in the context of like 60 or 70 Trump truth post that night. So let's start with what we actually know. The video was posted to Trump's truth social account, presumed to have been posted by Trump, causes immediate backlash. Some Republicans even say that's a disaster. That's a complete disaster. Republicans in competitive districts panic because they either have to defend something insane

or criticize Donald Trump, both of which concern them. White House scrambles to contain the damage. Now, at one point, the explanation was this is basically a meme. Then it shifted to it was posted by a staff or not by Donald Trump. The problem is Trump claims to be in control of everything. Trump said he did post it, but he hadn't watched the video. That alone would be a political disaster. But then now we get into this off-his meds thing.

Now, this is coming from Michael Wolfe. Michael Wolfe says people inside the White House are privately using that term. There's a question as to whether they mean it literally or whether they mean it figuratively. In other words, is Trump off his meds in that he is refusing to take medications that he is supposed to be taking?

Or is Trump off his meds in the sense of he's lost it and he's not listening to reason? To me, the bigger issue is less than, about whether the phrase is literally medically true. It's that allies and staffers are now describing Trump's behavior as adjacent to mental illness. They are using a phrase that if not literal, like if it's literal, that's one set of disasters. He's supposed to be taking certain pills and he's refusing them. That's a real problem. That's called medical noncompliance. Medication noncompliance. It's an issue doctors deal with unfortunately relatively frequently. But if the

phrase is being used metaphorically, staffers see Trump as erratic unpredictable and beyond control beyond what they expected. That's a disaster. That's a complete disaster in and of itself. Now, it's not new behavior. The reporting from Michael Wolfe describes this kind of internal attitude that goes back to the campaign. Truth Social is like a containment zone. If Trump posts there instead of elsewhere, it'll probably get less attention. But as Truth Social has become the default one and only place where Trump posts, it is getting more attention when Trump does something totally wacky. Now, the Obama monkey video was different, I believe, because there's a line that even some Republicans don't want to defend publicly. We don't know

what they really believe. Like, you know, Tim Scott is black. He's a senator and he's black and he's a Republican. I genuinely believe Tim Scott was disgusted by the post. There are other Republicans who maybe they're not disgusted by the post. They should be, but maybe they're not. But it's about what are they willing to say? Are they willing to say that or do they, are they scared of acknowledging that? And that is why it really matters politically. The midterms are coming. Vulnerable Republicans don't want to be defending racist AI memes posted by Trump that depict Obama, the Obama's as monkeys. And by the way, my friend Harry Sisson was in the video depicted as some other animal. I don't remember if it was like a giraffe or a, um, wasn't a gazelle? I don't

remember. Anyway, Harry Sisson is in the video as well. Then we get to the broader question as to how much presidential behavior is being filtered, managed, or explained away behind the scenes. And I believe that this is really important as we think about this. None of this behavior, even with the speculation of Trump off his meds, none of it is medical evidence in the traditional sense. None of it proves Trump is or should be on a particular medication, has a particular diagnosis or health status. That is, that's a medical question, and it is beyond Michael Wolfe's ability to tell us. He's reporting what people in the White House are saying.

What we can say is that there is reporting that insiders are using language suggesting Trump is unstable. And that is evidenced by Trump's rapid reactive self-damaging posting that he's, is doing, and the concern from Republicans is that they're going to get crushed in November as a result of that. Final point here, which, again, is political. It's not a medical point. Even if you throw out the office meds line, like, we don't know whether it was meant literally or metaphorically, whatever, even if you get rid of the line, the political reality doesn't change because voters are asking a simple question, is this behavior, behavior I want to vote for or against

in November. And if Republicans that are on the ballot are either defending this behavior or coming out against the behavior, how does that impact a Republican voter's interest in voting for Republicans or even voting at all rather than just staying home? This all, like the entire show has kind of been building to the question of the Senate. If Republicans lose the House and Senate, imagine what that will do. And that is where we need to go next. For about a year, the conversation in D.C. has been, the House looks really bad, like really, really bad.

There's almost no margin for Republicans. It looks terrible. Narrow majority, bad special elections, candidate quality issues, suburban erosion, all of it. None of that was new. Republicans have been managing the likely anxiety about the House for a long time. What's new and what is scaring. them is the Senate suddenly being in play. There is internal Republican polling showing that competitive Senate races are happening not just in the expected battlegrounds, but in places Republicans assumed

were safe. Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, these are states that are supposed to be insurance policies for Republicans, and now they are needing to put budget into those. And the reason this is happening is pretty damn simple. The two issues that powered Trump in 2024, immigration in the economy, are liabilities. You start with immigration. We are going to do this cleanly and efficiently. We are not going to wrap up American citizens. We're not even going to wrap up undocumented people who haven't committed any crimes. We are going to go after violent, undocumented people who have committed violent crimes. That's not happening. The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have been a disaster.

Americans are quickly turning against that. So that was Trump's issue number one, and it's not going well. Issue number two is the economy. We're going to bring down prices, hasn't happened. Everybody's going to be feeling less of a financial strain. It's going to be great. None of it is happening. The other aspect of this that's really interesting

is that Democrats are recruiting stronger candidates than Republicans expected, which forces Republicans to have to spend money defending seats that should be safe. Texas is suddenly being talked about as competitive depending on what the final matchup ends up being. Georgia is getting harder. Now, none of this guarantees that Democrats win those seats,

but making them have to spend money to defend these seats is a very good thing for Democrats and a bad thing for Republicans. If you see a seat shift from safe Republican to defensive Republican or battleground Republican, that means money, Money is just going to have to pour into that race. If Republicans believe that they could lose both chambers, I don't think they're going to sit back

and accept it. And this is like we're kind of getting to the, in a sense, the climax of the show, which is all of this stuff is going wrong. But we've already seen the voter roll purges, polling place closures, aggressive voter ID rules, legal theories designed to let a legislature say, we don't agree with this result, so we're going to change it. And unfortunately, Trump as unhinged as ever, Republicans worried more and more and more that they might lose both the House and Senate. If the stakes are we lose the House and Senate, they are going to put massive pressure on any tactic that will let them save it. And we should

really be clear-eyed about how far that can go. The Republican Party will pull out every stop, legal or illegal that you can imagine to avoid losing the House and Senate in November. Marshall law, they'll consider it. Abuse of the Insurrection Act, sudden foreign military escalations to garner nationalist support, political violence from their supporters. I mean, there is nothing that will be morally off the table for Donald Trump. And Bannon's talking about ICE agents at polling places like I told you last week. Now, nothing I just mentioned is guaranteed. It could be any of it.

It could be some of it. We don't know. But pretending they would never. Come on, guys. The last six years tell us, yes, they would. January 6th showed us how far parts of the movement are willing to go to hold power. And we've got to be vigilant. Now, if we panic, that's not good.

If we do conspiracies, that's also not good. Vigilance. Protecting voter access, protecting election networks, documenting intimidation, supporting legal challenges early enough for that to make a difference. The bottom line is the following. Then I'll tell you about the bonus show. Republicans are realizing the House was always a long shot, but the Senate might be more fragile than we thought.

And if both are at risk at the same time, their incentive to bend the rules and ignore the norms and test as much as they can constitutionally, what are the limits of the Constitution? Their incentive to do all of it is going to get much stronger. Now, even with all of this risk for Republicans, Democrats, and there's risk to everybody here. The risk for Republicans is they get humiliated out of any control,

and these are the most embarrassing two final years of a presidential term that there have been in 100 years. For Democrats, it's an uphill battle, but they have everything to win here. Uphill doesn't mean impossible. every vote counts, every court case has to be dealt with, and I hope it goes without saying that we all need to make sure that we vote, especially because midterm turnout tends to be lower, which means every single one of our votes is relatively worth more. Now, we have a phenomenal bonus show for you today.

Remember that this is a program funded directly by the audience through the membership program. I would love for you to sign up at join packman.com. We are pushing towards 8 million total followers across platforms. Everything counts. If you follow us on threads, that counts as one. If you subscribe to the Apple podcast feed, that counts as one. It all counts. Help us get to 8 and subsequently 10 million, hopefully by the end of the year.

What a show, what a day. We'll talk to you on the bonus show.