The David Pakman Show - Militarize elections, shut down Epstein files, hope for the best

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

-- On the Show -- Donald Trump allies float deploying ICE agents with guns at polling places to intimidate voters and manipulate elections without formally canceling them -- Donald Trump faces mounting legal pressure as Republicans open the door to subpoenas while Georgia election conspiracies trigger new lawsuits -- Rep. Ted Lieu cites allegations involving Donald Trump in newly-released Epstein files while stressing the difference between claims, evidence, and proven wrongdoing -- Donald Trump lashes out at Kaitlan Collins over Epstein questions and spins implausible defenses rather than answering basic accountability questions -- Donald Trump melts down when pressed on nationalizing elections and signals willingness to override states if outcomes displease him -- Karoline Leavitt repeatedly defends Donald Trump by minimizing unconstitutional statement and deflecting blame onto political opponents -- House Speaker Mike Johnson admits he cannot prove election fraud claims while repeating them anyway, revealing how Donald Trump traps allies into owning indefensible lies -- Donald Trump’s drive for total control reflects fear of legal, financial, and criminal exposure facing his family and allies once his political protection disappears -- On the Bonus Show: David shares stories from his ongoing Portugal trip, and much more... 😺 Smalls cat food: Use code PAKMAN for 60% off & free shipping at https://smalls.com -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start(01:34) Armed ICE at polling places(08:58) Trump legal pressure escalates(16:20) Epstein claims versus evidence(23:58) Trump attacks Kaitlan Collins(31:44) Trump hints at election takeover(38:27) Karoline Leavitt downplays illegality(45:23) Mike Johnson admits no proof(51:56) Trump’s fear-driven power grab   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please go to conicsonterio.ca. Local news is in decline on. across Canada. And this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void. And it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us, because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News. The Trump administration is laying the groundwork to sabotage at least one election.

He can't cancel elections, so the new idea is very, very dark. In addition to nationalizing them, which we talked about yesterday, the new idea is to militarize them, voting with people standing there with guns. I'll tell you what the play is and where else we've seen it in history. Trump also getting hit with a brutal legal one-to punch. Republicans may have thought that dragging the Clintons into the Epstein hearing sounded like fun, sounded like a win, but they have now opened the door to Trump, his kids, and other allies to be subpoenaed.

And then we have to talk a little bit about the Epstein files themselves. A Democratic lawmaker drops a shocking claim involving Trump and children. We're going to walk through what is alleged and what is proven and what is possible. And then a complete and total meltdown when a nasty woman calls Trump out on live TV. He doesn't like real journalists and he doesn't like women who aren't intimidated by him. So if you've got a female journalist who's not intimidated by him, it is a recipe for a meltdown. All of that and more today, plus on the bonus show, what I've been up to here in Portugal, very relevant to the political situation in the United States.

States. How do men holding guns while you vote sound to you? If it sounds like 20th century authoritarianism, it's because that's exactly what it is. Now, one of the reasons that Donald Trump is so dangerous is that he learns from failure. He doesn't just lose and move on. He loses, and then he thinks about what stopped him, and then he tries to figure out a workaround. And that That is exactly what we are seeing right now with Donald Trump in the 2026 elections. You control Trump's destiny. I do. We all do collectively as voters and potential voters in the upcoming midterm elections.

Trump, like most authoritarian, don't want, doesn't want other people determining his fate. And Trump has now figured out he can't cancel the elections. We talked about that yesterday. It's not how the system works. in the United States are run by states, not by the president. There is no legal switch. There's no kill switch in the Oval Office that lets him say no more voting and we're done here.

Trump knows that. And so instead of canceling elections yesterday, we talked about Donald Trump's idea of nationalizing the elections. But there's another idea. It's arguably darker. It's arguably more dystopian. And it is to militarize elections, to make them so intimidated. and chaotic and coercive that the outcome can be influenced without technically ending democracy

on paper. Much like ICE is effectively limiting the first and second amendments, even though you go and you look up the Bill of Rights, it's still there. In the same way, you can have an election, you can have democracy on paper, except if people are intimidating into potentially not even voting, then you don't really have a full free and fair election. It's funny because Trump has now spent a decade saying we don't have free and fair elections, mostly catalyzed by his own losses in 2016 to Hillary who would start four wars, which of course never would have happened in the popular vote in 2020, in the popular and electoral vote to Joe Biden in 2024.

He's been saying, I am really the winner of California. Nonsense. And so what we see now is talk of militarizing the polling places. Steve Bannon, one of Trump's kind of close. and one of his primary propagandists went on TV and said in future elections, they are looking at having ICE agents at polling places, men with guns while people vote. And his words were that they could never again allow an election to be stolen. And of course, no election was stolen.

Here's Stephen Bannon sort of propagandist in chief. You're damn right. We're going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We're not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen. ICE is a federal law enforcement agency. It is not an election monitoring body.

It has no role in voting. Putting armed federal agents at polling places would not be about security. It would not be something ICE agents are qualified to do. It is only about fear and making people afraid and intimidating people. Depending on who you are, fear works differently. For me, or if you are a white native-born voter in a right-wing area or, you know, I'm a white presenting naturalized citizen from Argentina, we might not really be intimidated by the presence of those ICE agents.

If you are a visibly minority voter, someone with mixed status family members, the message is obvious. You might show up and have a real problem, even if you are legally allowed to vote. And that is exactly the point. Because Trump's problem isn't that he lacks supporters, his problem in the midterms is going to be turnout. out in high participation midterms, the incumbent party in the White House tends to lose. Trump is deeply unpopular. And so the strategy, if you can call it that, is to instead of persuade voters that you're offering them something that will be good for them, just discourage them from showing up.

This is also, by the way, an explanation as to why the rhetoric keeps escalating because Donald Trump and his allies constantly say elections are under siege and there's fraud everywhere And we need extraordinary measures in order to keep our elections safe. That is language used to justify extraordinary force. And this is where the constitutional danger really kicks in. Trump can't tell states to cancel elections, but he can try to federalize the environment around them and to then use that federalization to militarize the elections, deploy federal agents to preserve integrity and all of this nonsense.

Maybe we have an emergency and you've got to push governors and secretaries of state into conflicts with these armed agents that they never imagined they would be in and aren't necessarily even prepared to be involved in. So it's not really a coup. It's certainly not tanks rolling down Main Street, but it is a bureaucracy of intimidation. We've seen the groundwork laid. Trump is suggesting federal law enforcement against domestic opponents. He's talking about expanding presidential authority. He's saying I'm going to do retribution. And so now you see his allies floating this armed presence at polling places.

None of this is normal. None of this is legal under existing election law. But who is going to stop Trump physically when it comes down to it? So if anybody still thinks Trump's really concerned with fraud and how to stop it, there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud. You might find one person, you might find Paul Smith Jr. who filled in a ballot as Paul Smith Sr. But Paul Smith Sr. is dead.

And so it's still one vote. It's just a paperwork mix up. Someone submitted an absentee ballot before Election Day. And then they died. And then comes Election Day. What do you do with that? Well, different states have different rules for how you handle that. It's not an election fraud problem.

Once you normalize the idea of men with guns, where citizens are voting, that is an authoritarian line that is very difficult to uncross. So when you hear Trump world, Steve Bannon, these sorts of people, talking about election security, understand what they're really talking about,

power to make people afraid, and reshape elections, not by winning the will of the voters, but deciding who feels safe enough to vote. The only problem for Trump is that the country, courts have been somewhat effective at stopping these hairbrained ideas, and it was not a good 24 hours for the orange guy from the standpoint of legal, and I want to address that with you next.

Donald Trump in the last 24 hours was hit with a legal one-two punch, and finally, it is coming from problems that he created for himself on multiple fronts, and it may really cause a problem for him. So if you are looking for like a single bad headline or a speculative legal theory, that's not what we have here. What we are talking about here is a slow erosion of the guardrails that Trump could count on to protect him and they are slowly being taken apart brick by brick exposing Trump as we approach the midterm election. Start with Congress. Republicans just did something they think is really cool. They have gotten Bill and Hillary Clinton to agree to testify before the House Oversight Committee about Jeffrey Epstein.

They threatened contempt of Congress and criminal penalties and the whole thing. And the Clinton said, all right, well, we're going to do it. Democrats immediately saw what Republicans had done. And now they are warning Republicans have set a precedent. Former presidents and first ladies and family members, they are fair game to be brought in. when Democrats regain subpoena power, which I believe will happen in November, Baruch Hashem, if we all go out there and vote and make it happen, right? Trump and or family members are going to get hauled in under oath.

His businesses, his finances, one lawmaker put it very plainly. Trump, all of his kids, everybody. And the part that Republicans seem desperate to ignore is that if Bill Clinton merely being mentioned in the Epstein files justifies bringing him in to testify under oath. Trump being mentioned tens of thousands of times along with his properties, associates, his wife, it would logically mean you've got to bring them in. You don't get to invent a standard. If you're mentioned, you should testify under oath and then pretend that it doesn't apply

to you. Republicans wanted this to be a one-way street and it isn't. Now, at the exact same time that that's going on, there's legal trouble for Trump in Georgia because he still refuses to accept that he just lost the 2020 election. That's it. The FBI raided a Fulton County election hub recently. They seized ballots and voting records and county officials are now preparing to sue in federal court to force the government to return them.

Why did it happen? Because Trump is once again pushing election conspiracy theories, hinting that interesting things are going to come out of Georgia and suggesting that Republicans should take over elections, nationalize and militarized voting, as I said earlier. This is a world not only of authoritarianism, but relevant for our discussion today. This is a world of narcissism. In Trump's reality, you don't lose. And if you lost, it was because someone cheated. And if there's no evidence, it proves that the conspiracy was so widespread that they hid the evidence. It's classic conspiracy thinking.

Trump will never accept that he lost. He would rather burn the country down than admit defeat. Because losing for Trump wouldn't just be a political failure. It would be a psychological annihilation to the core of his ego. And Georgia is where this keeps coming back to haunt Donald Trump. Remember that after 2020, Trump pressured officials to, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.

His allies were pushing fake slates of electors or slates of fake electors. Are the electors fake or are the slates fake? It's all kind of fake. Local election workers were harassed and targeted and there were racketeering charges. Trump avoided all of it only because the Supreme Court handed him sweeping presidential immunity for things he did while he was in office. It was bullshit, but that's what they did. He's back at it.

Same state, he just can't quit Georgia. So if we zoom out, you've got on one side, Republicans cracking over the door to congressional subpoenas of former presidents and their families. And Democrats are lining up to walk Trump right through it. On the other side, Trump is tangled up again in Georgia conspiracy theories that are leading to lawsuits, court fights, and scrutiny. And this is a building legal pressure from multiple directions at once. It's like the pressure building in Trump's ankles as they swell and swell and swell and

swell. They can only take so much. And I think it's important to go back to what my friend Aaron Parnas told us during a recent Substac Live, which is that for all of the headlines about Trump ignoring this court order and that court order, to a great degree, 70, 80, 85 percent, it's slow. Justice sometimes moved slowly. Eventually, the courts are actually getting what they demand from Trump in more than three quarters of the circumstances. So, He should be careful. In the meantime, we have to keep building independent media. We have to keep building it because independent media is a bulwark against this creeping authoritarianism.

And we've got to keep building it because independent media, as we've seen with my friend Don Lemon and others, is increasingly a target of this administration. So make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel. Get my substack newsletter. We're going to go over all of it today. I do not have a cat myself, but if you spend any time around people who do, you know very quickly who is really in charge. And a couple of friends of mine have cats. And the cats are very picky about food. And for a long time, they assume that's just normal. Then they switch to smalls and suddenly mealtimes stopped being a daily standoff and a battle of wits and will,

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And Forbes agreed for a limited time, you'll get 60% off your first order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. Lest anyone be confused, the David Packman show is an independently funded program. This means our primary funding source, quite simply, is folks like you. People who go to join Pacman.com, get yourself a membership. We do an extra show every day for our members. On today's bonus show, I'm going to tell you a little bit about what I've been up to here in Portugal,

and it is directly relevant to what Americans are doing as a result of the Trump administration. I'll talk to you about that on the bonus show, and you can sign up at joinpacman.com. There is a story circulating right now that is extremely serious, extremely sensitive, and also very easy to misunderstand if people aren't careful. It's something we've talked about before, and I want to walk through it again. Democratic Congressman Ted Loo, who's the vice chair of the House Democratic caucus, went in front of a microphone and said that the newly released Epstein files include allegations that Donald Trump raped children and threatened to kill them. This is what Ted Liu had to say.

Why are Republicans so interested in Bill Hillary Clinton? it's because they're trying to distract from the fact that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files thousands and thousands of times. In those files, there's highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children,

of Donald Trump threatening to kill children. So I encourage the press to go look at these allegations, and I'm highly disturbed that Deputy General, Tom Blanche, just got the law wrong. Yesterday, he said, essentially that it is not a crime to party with Jeffrey Epstein.

Well, that's actually not correct. If Jeffrey Epstein was human trafficking minors for these sex parties, and you show up and patronize the establishment at that party, yes, you're guilty because patronizing is part of the law, the federal sex trafficking law. So, Deputy General Taliband just got that wrong, which maybe explains why they aren't investigating all these folks, including Donald Trump. He needs to read the law and investigate these people.

He also needs to resign, not only for not knowing the law, but a massive, not only screw-up, but the biggest privacy violation in history, they release a lot of pictures of minors unredacted, just violated the privacy of these girls. It is uncalled for what they did. One thing that they could not do under this law was to invade the privacy of these women now who were girls at a time who were victims of sex trafficking. Also, he met with Galane Maxwell, Maxwell moved her to the military prison and then got a puppy for her.

So for all those reasons, he's just got to leave the Department of Justice. All right. These are allegations contained in documents connected to Jeffrey Epstein. I've discussed these documents and a particular document that Lou is referring to before. And I do think it's important. We've got to play it down the middle with regard to what is an allegation and what is proof. What Ted Lou is referring to are not findings of guilt. They are not criminal convictions.

They are claims that appear in files connected to the Epstein files more broadly. And it's important not to blur the lines between what this is and what it could be. Now, Lou's broader point here is political and it's procedural. He's accusing House Republicans of trying to distract from what's in the files by dragging Bill Clinton into testify and dragging Hillary Clinton into testify, even though neither has been charged with any crime related to Epstein, nor have there even been allegations of such crimes. And Lou says everybody in the Trump administration, including the Justice Department, is mishandling

the release of these files. None of that is in dispute. That is absolutely true. The Department of Justice released millions of pages of this stuff under transparency law. They didn't properly redact some of it. Victims' names were briefly accessible, explicit materials. That prompted outrage from survivors' advocates and forced the DOJ to pull down a bunch of these documents.

Okay, so we've got that. Now, the allegation that keeps resurfacing about Trump raping a child and trying to figure out and potentially being involved in an attempt to kill the child. This comes from years ago. There's a couple different things that this refers to. First, there's a woman using the pseudonym Katie Johnson who filed the lawsuit against Trump and Epstein, accusing them of raping her when she was a minor. The lawsuit was withdrawn, and some aspects of the claim were later recanted. There's no criminal case. There's no finding of guilt, no indictment, no true. trial, the identity of the plaintiff was never publicly verified, and that didn't move forward.

The history I just described to you is real. We can't pretend it doesn't exist, but pretending that it's any kind of settled fact would be very dishonest. Second, in the new Epstein files, there is a document, which I looked at in detail with you before, which says that with Epstein in some small lake that's sort of like a little side basin of Lake Michigan on a boat, Trump and Epstein are accused of all sorts of stuff. I told you at the time I don't find this particularly credible. It reportedly happened decades ago. A lot of little details don't make sense.

Like, for example, it supposedly happened before it is publicly believed Epstein and Trump even knew each other. That's weird. The allegation is that it happened in a little sort of, I don't know the right word if it's what it would be called, but it's like a little offshoot of Lake Michigan with much lower depth water. And it's difficult to imagine that the sort of boat that Epstein would be even beyond would fit because of the depth of the hall.

I'm not a boat guy, but I hope I'm explaining myself clearly. There's a lot of details that are kind of weird. And so I said, this is what the document says. I struggle to believe it. That is another aspect of what Ted Liu is referring to here. Now, I think that the broader story beyond any one document is that this is becoming a very ugly political fight where Republicans say we must have transparency, but they only want to focus on Democrats connected to Epstein.

On the other hand, we on the left have been saying, whoever this takes down, give us the transparency you promised. Oh, but it might take down Bill Clinton. I don't think it will, but if it does, go for it. That is the difference right now between Republicans and Democrats. So where this leaves us today is that there are allegations in the files involving powerful people, including Donald Trump. Allegations aren't proof.

Some claims have since been withdrawn. Some have been disputed. Some have been found not to be credible after law enforcement at the time looked into them. Some names appear in the files without even any allegations. And the Justice Department is making everything worse by handling the release completely recklessly. If Republicans want transparency, support a serious victim-centered process, not these selective hearings where Hillary and Bill come in, but Trump and everybody Trump knows doesn't have to come in. And if Democrats really want accountability, be really clear about what's alleged and proven. So Ted Lou, I don't think he's doing anything wrong by mentioning that these allegations are there,

but it is also important to consider the context that a number of these allegations we've already examined and some of them do not seem particularly credible. Unfortunately, for CNN reporter Caitlin Collins, she has a number of characteristics that Donald Trump finds repulsive. She is a woman who is not intimidated by Donald Trump. Trump hates that. She is a reporter who asks about topics that Trump doesn't want to talk about and make Trump look bad. Trump hates that.

She is a person that Donald Trump simply can't push around. And when she asked Trump about Epstein, Trump did not like it and went after her personally. Take a look at this. Caitlin Collins trying to ask Trump, what do you say to the Epstein survivors and Trump just goes on to attack her and to assail her character? Take a look. something that people care about. Yeah, what did you say? What would you say to the survivors?

You are the worst reporter. No wonder, CNN has no ratings because of people like you. You know, she's a young woman. I don't think I've ever seen you smile. I've known you for 10 years. I don't think I've ever seen a smile in your face. You know why you're not smiling? Because you know you're not telling the truth.

And you're a very dishonest organization. And they should be ashamed of you. Okay, guys. He said, you mentioned health care. And the bill that was just passed does not include your health care savings account. So this is a question for you

and maybe for Mr. Speaker as well. I'm so proud of the health care savings accounts because it's going to happen. One thing that authoritarian do not like is when they can't control other people. Authoritarians love to control other people. And especially for authoritarian strong men, if there's a woman that they can't control,

if there's a journalist who just won't show up and do glowing coverage of Donald Trump, they really don't like it. Now, think about that video I just played for you. Forget about being president. Imagine any person speaking to anybody like that. Imagine a boss speaking to an employee like that. Imagine, you know, a business owner speaking to a vendor this way. Imagine a husband speaking to a wife that way. And it has somehow become normalized. This is, at one point, talking like that to reporters, we would say that's below the dignity of the office of the presidency.

But this is Trump. And one of the things that Trump really proves and embodies is that money can't buy class. And Trump is furious because someone is trying to ask them real questions. Now, Trump weighed in further on the Epstein files and said, it's all a conspiracy against him. Take a look. And you tell me something else. I think it's really time for the country to get onto something else, really.

Now that nothing came out about me other than there was a conspiracy against me, literally by Epstein and other people. But I think it's time now for the country to maybe get onto something else like health care or something that people care about. As usual, in order. to believe Trump's version of events, you have to believe that everything is as convoluted, complicated, and difficult to understand, and you can imagine. It can't simply be that Donald Trump was a lot closer to Epstein that he wants us to believe, and that even if he didn't

commit any crimes, we don't know, maybe he didn't, even if he didn't commit any crimes, that he was involved in Epstein's life at a time when everybody knew what Epstein was up to. A couple other clips from this, Trump was asked about the fact that Putin started launching attacks on Ukraine, even though he said he wouldn't. Trump rather than admit that Putin just lied to him and did whatever the hell he wanted, Trump has to concoct the idea that Putin kept his word because there was a Sunday to Sunday ceasefire. And also, what about time zones?

Who knows what time it really even was when he made the promise? Take a look at this. On the crane, Mr. President, yesterday you were talking about how Vladimir Putin had agreed to pause during the cold weather. Overnight, those attacks have started up again. It was Sunday to Sunday, and it opened up, and he hit him hard last night. Now, he agreed. He kept his word on that. It's a lot. You know, one week is, we'll take anything because it's really, really cold over there.

But it was on Sunday, and he went from Sunday to Sunday. You just wanted he didn't go further or go longer? I would like him to, I want him to end the war. I spoke to him. I want him to end the war. Trump cannot, under any circumstances, contend with the possibility that Putin's comfortable lying to Trump, that Putin's not scared of Trump, that Putin will tell Trump whatever, and then Putin will do whatever the hell he wants.

As usual, Trump suggests that there is a grand conspiracy against him. They wanted to send me to jail for the rest of my life. life and no one's ever been as innocent as I am. Today we heard that the Clinton set deposition dates to testify before the House Oversight Committee. Any reaction to that and related to the... I think it's a shame, to be honest. I always liked him. Her? Yeah. She's a very capable woman. She was better in debating than some of the other people. I will tell you that. She was smarter, smart woman. I hate to see it in many ways.

I hate to see it. But, you know, then I look at me. They went after me like you know, they wanted me to go to jail for the rest of my life. Then it turned out I was innocent, very innocent. You know, I had a friend that said a very smart friend. He's a very wealthy man, knows the life, streetwise guy. He said, you have to be the most honest person anywhere in the world because there's never been anybody who's been examined up and down. You know, I had hundreds of thousands of pages of documents,

millions of pages, millions of pages. With all of that, they found absolutely nothing wrong. Remember, his tax returns, oh, his tax returns, they fought for years and years. And then the Supreme Court, I was surprised. They ruled I had to give my tax returns. I'm the only one that had to ever do that. But I had to give my tax returns.

I gave my tax returns. They hired the best accounting firms in the world. They found nothing. And then finally, cherry on top, as they clear reporters out of the room, you can still hear Trump complaining about the fact that Caitlin Collins doesn't smile at Donald Trump. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, press.

Thank you. Thank you. Let's go. Thank you, let's go. Thank you. Thank you, press. Thank you. Thank you, press.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Let's go. Thank you. Thank you, thank you for us. This is truly a pathetic man-child. Beneath the dignity of the office, of course, but a nearly 80-year-old man whose ego bruises so easily that it almost bruises more easily than those hands, if you can believe it.

The David Packman Show is an audience-supported program, and the best, most direct way to support the show is by becoming a member at join packman.com. You'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show, and plenty of other great membership perks. Get the full experience by signing up at join packman.com. Donald Trump had what I can only describe as an authoritarian meltdown on live television. It is a moment where the mask slips off and you realize how low he's willing to go. A reporter asked a very simple question, a very real. reasonable question.

Trump's new thing is that elections should be nationalized. In other words, Trump wants to take control of elections away from 50 states, each of which runs its own election, and just take control of the election. So everything happens the way Trump wants, or maybe it doesn't. So the reporter asked him, what did you mean by that? What are you talking about? This should have been easy. If you are going to make a claim that extreme, you should at least be able to explain it.

And instead, Trump completely unravels. He says we need elections to be honest. And if a state can't run an election, then the people behind Trump standing behind him should do something about it. He then says states at the end of the day are basically agents of the federal government. And he mentions Detroit and some other places. But what's wild is that we still have no proof of the problem that Trump is citing to justify this outrageous authoritarian behavior.

Let's take a look at what he said and then I'll give you my take. What exactly did you mean when you said that you should nationalize elections and which 15 states are you talking about? I wouldn't see elections be honest. And if a state can't run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it. Because, you know, if you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway. But when you see some of these states about how horribly they run their elections, what a disgrace it is, I think the federal government, when you see crooked elections and we, We had plenty of them. And by the way, we had them last time, but go to 2020.

Look at the facts that are coming out. Rigged crooked elections. If we have areas, take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Pennsylvania. Take a look at Philadelphia. You go take a look at Atlanta. Look at some of the places that are horrible corruption on elections. And the federal government should not allow that.

The federal government should get involved. These are agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can't count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over. But the Constitution says it should be states that administer elections, Mr. President. You know what? They can administer the election, but they have to do it honestly. Are you open to negotiating an odd warrant when it comes to ISIS? So Trump says there's horrible corruption, but I guess he's too dumb to find any of it?

Like if it's so obvious that this corruption exists, why has he still been unable to find a single provable instance of it. Now, I think it's important to slow it down because some of the things Trump says are wrong, some are incoherent, and a bunch of them are dangerous. First of all, states are not agents of the federal government when it comes to elections. This is important to understand because they love to play games with this. Elections are run by states. It's not a loophole.

It's not like, well, in spirit, they're really run by the federal government, but because of some technicality, that is not the case at all. the system is states run and control elections. Each secretary of state in each state is independent. They are not an agent of the president or of the executive or of Washington, D.C. or of the federal government. This is why Trump can't just cancel elections. This is why Trump can't just overthrow results, overturn results when he loses.

Number two, Trump again says that there has been horrible corruption. He's not able to name a single example. There's no evidence, there's no specifics, there's no cases, there's no prosecutions. It's just the vibe that Trump wants. And he's been saying this for almost 10 years now. He still hasn't admitted that Hillary Clinton simply got more votes than him in 2016. He won the electoral college. Nobody's denying that.

But Hillary got more votes in the popular vote. Detroit, you know, Atlanta, Pennsylvania, endless investigations. Courts looked at it right after 2020. Trump's DOJ has looked at it. Republican officials looked at it, and over and over again, the conclusion is the same. There was no widespread fraud. And as far as Georgia goes, Joe Biden genuinely just won Georgia in 2020. So maybe Trump's lying.

Maybe Trump is genuinely incapable of understanding reality because his ego depends on not understanding it. Pick whatever explanation you want. But what I would suggest is where we really need to put our focus is that Trump says, again, if states can't run elections properly, then the people standing to, behind him need to do something about it. That is the language of a threat. He's not talking about legislation. He's not talking about legal challenges. He's talking about force. If they can't run the elections the way I believe they should be run, the people behind me will apply force to take over

the elections. That is how authoritarian talk. They don't go, I lost. Better luck to me next time. They say the system is corrupt. They say, trust me. And they say, let me do whatever I think I need to do on the basis of that corrupt system, for which I presented no evidence. Notice also how Trump never explains really which are the states that had the proven corruption issues. He goes, oh, 15 states. Right, but what issue was there in each state? How were they corrupt?

How was it proven? No idea. Because he doesn't know because it didn't happen. Once you get specific, it all falls apart. Now, you might be saying, a reporter should say to Trump, give us the specific info. It's happened. It's Trump weasels his way out of it. He goes, well, it's going to come out. It's going to come out. I don't have the data here. We'll present the data to you. It's all going to come out. What Trump is really saying if we read, if we put on our translation device that translates authoritarian into English, Trump is saying, if states don't deliver the outcome that he wants, he's going to intervene. It's not democracy. It's not election integrity. It's not law and order. That would be the very fraud he tells us he needs to protect us from. One other theme of authoritarianism, which Trump really embodies, is that they claim to be the only

ones who can protect you from what they are actually doing. It is a form of projection, and it is a form of naked and brazen, self-centered authoritarianism. The problem that is now surfacing is that some reporters are a little bit more willing to challenge Trump's lap dogs than they are to challenge Trump himself. And that's what happened to Caroline Levitt. Let me throw out a phrase to you and you tell me what comes to mind. I support the Constitution, but of course the Constitution matters. However, okay, does that sound like the phraseology of a constitutional conservative? It doesn't to me, but it's what Trump's Press Secretary, Leavitt said just hours ago. She used the word, however, Trump supports the Constitution,

however. And this relates to the nationalizing of elections, which is Trump's latest authoritarian wet dream. Listen here to Caroline Leavitt. But to be clear, he does believe the state should oversee him. The president believes in the United States Constitution. However, he believes there has obviously been a lot of fraud and irregularities that have taken place in American elections. And again, voter ID is a highly popular in common sense policy that the president wants to pursue and he wants to pass legislation to make that happen for all states across the country. They really don't seem to get this, which is weird because they are supposedly the protectors

of the Constitution. That's what they told us. You shouldn't bring a gun to a protest, they say. Forget that it wasn't a protest that Alex Prattie went to. Well, but it is legal to bring a gun to a protest. you shouldn't be killed for it. It's not nice to yell at ICE agents, but it is in the Constitution that you can do it, period, and therefore you shouldn't get arrested or tased or pepperballed or whatever for it.

And similarly, of course Trump defends the Constitution, but, however, as usual, I've been saying it for a decade. They want to debate principles and ideas. Fine, but why? Because as soon as the principle is inconvenient to you, you say who the hell cares? We support the First Amendment, except they don't with regard to protests against ICE. We support the Second Amendment, except they don't when it comes to an anti-ice individual, simply being legally armed, not brandishing a firearm, not participating in a protest, just there.

All of a sudden, the First and Second Amendment they don't really care about. This is why it's a waste of time to debate principles, these people. Caroline Levitt was asked about bad bunny's comments regarding ICE at the Grammys. Here's what she had to say. I'm sorry. On the statements of bad money saying ice out. Yeah, I mean, look, I think it's very ironic and frankly sad to see celebrities who live in gated communities with private security, with millions of dollars to spend protecting themselves trying to just demonize, again, law enforcement public servants who work for the United

States government to enforce our nation's laws. And you didn't hear this same type of uproar from celebrities in Hollywood when the previous administration allowed an invasion of our nation's borders and allowed innocent women and girls like Jocelyn Nungeray and Lake and Riley to be killed and raped and murdered at the hands of people who should have never been in our country in the first place. And now you have law enforcement who are simply trying to do their jobs to remove violent predators like those who took the lives of innocent Americans. There was no uproar from Hollywood and the elitist crowd at the Grammys then, but there is now. And I think that speaks to the unfortunate irony that we're seeing in Hollywood. Listen, you know, gated communities. Half of Trump's

cabinet lives on military bases. I would guess that Caroline Levitt lives in a gated community or something like it. And the problem, of course, is when the brown immigrant says it. That's what this is at the end of the day. And remember, what country is bad bunny from? He should go criticize his country. Well, Puerto Rico is part of the United States. I hate to remind you. A little tiny detail that a lot of MAGAs don't want to accept. As Trump was asked earlier about this, Caroline Levitt also asked, isn't Putin disrespecting Trump by after saying there would be a pause on bombings? He unleashes a violent attack on Ukraine. What does Caroline Levitt do? She blames other people. And if you can blame Joe Biden, all the better. Take a look at this.

Now, Caroline. President Trump was talking yesterday about how President Putin had agreed to a week long halt on attacks on Ukraine because of the cold weather. But today, we've seen that Russia has launched some of the heaviest attacks this month. What's your reaction? Yeah, I spoke with the president about it this morning and his reaction was unfortunately unsurprised. These are two countries who have been engaged in a very brutal war for several years, a war that would have never started if the president were still in office. It started because of the weakness and incompetence of the previous president Joe Biden. So here's the bottom line as far as Caroline Levitt is concerned. All the crazy stuff Trump said didn't really happen or all the crazy stuff.

Trump said wasn't really crazy or all the stuff that Trump did that was illegal or unconstitutional wasn't really illegal or unconstitutional. Think back to Trump's first term where Trump said, believe what I say. Don't believe what you're seeing. Don't believe what you're hearing. Believe what I say. And so when you and I use our eyeballs and we look at the video of what happened to Renee Good, Or we look at the video of what happened to Alex Prattie, or we look at the video of what Trump said he's gonna do to elections or whatever. And we say to ourselves, wow,

I have an understanding of the Constitution and I can compare and contrast that to the videos. And I think we have a problem here. Trump and Caroline say no, no, no, no, no. Just listen to what Trump says. Put aside what you've seen, put aside what you've heard. Listen to Trump or listen to Caroline Leavitt. This is Trump's I alone can solve it, expanded

into ego maniacal narcissism. For me, I prefer to use my own judgment and eyes and ears and come to the conclusions myself. Can I say the same thing for tens of millions of Magapitanians? I really can't. If you like this show, I would love for you to get my substack writing. Each day, I'll send you a rundown of what's on the show, what's happening, what matters why. It's free. No spam.

Substack is also the only place. only place where we own our data. So if we get censored on social media or on any platform, Substack's going to be the only way I can tell you what is going on. Sign up now at David Pakman. Substack.com. Maga Mike Johnson is really up for a rude awakening and I will explain to you what I mean. Donald Trump screws people all the time. And the way he screws them quite simply is by putting them in positions that just aren't going to be sustainable as soon as Donald Trump's protection. expires. What do I mean by that? Donald Trump since 2020 has been putting Republicans in the position of having to say, oh yeah, we believe it. The election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Or of having to say, no, I disagree with Donald Trump publicly and then facing the wrath of Trump as he inevitably turns on you. But with every passing day, more and more Americans realize these claims are complete and total bullshit. Our elections are, for now, relatively secure. Biden really lost in 2020. Trump really lost California and all the states that he lost in 2024, despite claiming, if it was fair, I would have won every state. Hillary really did win the popular vote in 2016. Trump lost it.

Maga Mike Johnson is Trump's puppy, currently the Speaker of the House. Deep down, Johnson, I believe, knows that there was no fraud in 2016 or 2020 or 2024. But to stay on Trump's good side, he has to stay on Trump's good side, he has to be a lot. to say that there was, or he at least has to toy with the idea that there was fraud. But this has an expiration date on it. Check out this clip and then I'll explain what I mean. Follow up on elections. The president says that he wants Republicans to nationalize elections.

Do you agree with him? And do you have confidence in how elections are conducted right now heading into the midterm? We have thoughtful debate about our election system, every election cycle and sometimes in between. We know it's in our system. states have been in charge of administering their elections. What you're hearing from the president is his frustration about the lack of some of the blue states, frankly, of enforcing these things and making sure that they are free and fair elections. We need constant improvement on that front. I don't know what the ultimate solution is going to be. I'm not going to get

ahead of the negotiations here, but I think that is something that's going to be a continuing theme here. It's something that will continue to push. And we hope the governors will insist upon that same thing as well. In some of the states, like in California, for example, I mean, they hold the elections open for weeks after election day. That's just one thing that bothers so many people. We had three House Republican candidates who were ahead on election day in the last election cycle. And every time a new trunch of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost. And no series of ballots that were counted after election day were our candidates ahead on any of those counts.

It just looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I prove that? No, because it happened so far upstream, but we need more confidence in the American people in the election system. And it's essential in everybody, no matter what party you're in, should agree with that. The mass mailing of paper ballots or mailing ballots and all the other irregularities that have haunted us over the last couple of cycles, we need to tighten that up. Now, the red states have done a lot of good work in that front, but it's the blue states that I'm frankly concerned about. So we'll see how the law is modified and what's changed, but I hope we can get consensus

to get that done. Yeah. So Johnson says that there were Republican candidates ahead on election day and then votes were counted and suddenly they weren't ahead anymore. Okay. And he says that this looks fraudulent on its face. And then comes the tell. He admits he can't really prove it.

And that is really the whole problem in one sentence. It has been almost 10 years since Hillary won the popular vote in 2016. It has been almost six years since Trump lost. the popular and electoral vote in 2020. And they can't prove any of it because it isn't true. And he knows it. But now he has said it out loud on camera, the Speaker of the House. This is the sort of trap that Trump sets for people.

He'll push his allies more and more and more to repeat lies that sounds sort of plausible to a partisan audience, but they collapse the second that you apply any kind of standard of evidence. And once you've said it, you own it. And the problem for people like Mike Johnson and others is that it's hard to get off of that. How do you get off of that? If Johnson later admits there wasn't really fraud, he angers Trump and he angers the MAGA base and he now has a problem electorally.

If he keeps repeating the lie, he's on record saying things he admits he can't substantiate and either way he ends up pretty exposed. Now, Trump doesn't give a damn. Trump never cares. He's insulated. As long as Mike Johnson protects Trump while Trump is in power, that's all Trump cares about. Let other people take the fall once he's gone. And that expiration date is accelerating very quickly because eventually Trump is not going to be

able to protect these people anymore. Courts don't care about party loyalty. Courts don't care about, well, I said it because otherwise Trump would have turned on me. History doesn't care about spin. And prosecutors definitely don't care. care about whether you're just doing what Trump wanted. Mike Johnson is learning something that other Trump allies have learned before him. Loyalty to Trump doesn't save you. It delays the consequences. And if you ever become disloyal to Trump, which of course only means you acknowledge the truth.

I mean, let's be frank, when Trump says that person is not loyal to me, what it translates to is that person was willing to think for themselves and just say the truth instead of repeating the lies that I fed them. If you are watching closely, I think you can see it on the faces of people like Mike Johnson and others. They are going to have no way out because Trump isn't going to be in power forever. And this actually leads to another incredibly important aspect of what we may see, which is that Trump is really fighting for a lot more than his presidency right now. And I'm going to get into an aspect of this in a moment. But when it comes to legacy, Trump is doing what he can.

can to do irreversible things. What do I mean by that? Well, construction projects that you can't just reverse overnight like an executive order. Acquiring more land for the United States, Greenland or who knows what, things that are difficult to reverse. But the other side of this is that Trump also needs to now be concerned with the protection of his family once he is no longer the president. And I don't know that he's considering that, but I want to consider it.

There's a reality coming for Donald Trump's family and the people who build their lives and careers around Donald Trump. And it doesn't have anything to do with polls or rallies or cable news appearances. It is about what happens when Trump is finally gone and no longer has the power to protect anybody. Because unless Trump manages to win everything and permanently bend the legal system to his will, even after he's no longer president, the fallout is not going to stop with Donald Trump.

His family and his allies are going to be exposed in ways they probably didn't plan for when Trump, as he likes to say, came down the golden escalator 11 years ago. Trump's children are very entangled in Trump's business empire. They are not like water boys and distant relatives or interns. They're decision makers. They are running these companies. And courts have already ruled that those businesses engaged in fraud. Judges have said Trump lied about asset values.

None of that evidence disappears. It sits there and it waits for a moment when the political pressure is gone and prosecutors can act. Now, as I've said before, it may never come for Donald Trump. I don't believe Trump will see a single day inside of a jail or prison cell. But when it comes to his family, that's a different story. You widen the circle a little bit. The lawyers who pushed the legal theories they knew were garbage.

The operatives who helped pressure officials, the donors and intermediaries who moved money in legally questionable ways and the allies who assumed, as long as I stay loyal, I'll have protection for the rest of my life. They are going to be in trouble. Federal pardons don't cover state crimes. Federal pardons don't erase civil liability. Federal pardons don't protect against future investigations depending on exactly how they are structured. And one of the things that Trump is going to have to contend with once he's no longer in power is that he can't, he can't prevent everybody that he would like to prevent from becoming a potential defendant or potential witness from becoming one.

And that's why Trump is obsessed with total control. Control over elections, control over every aspect of what is happening. It's not about winning an election anymore. It's he's got to dominate institutions, replace officials, attack judges, undermine prosecutors. For now, Trump has the shield of the presidency. And he can delay. He can stall investigations, cases get slowed down. He can hollow out agencies, which he's done.

And friendly leadership makes problems go away for the time being. But it only works when he's in charge. Once Trump is out, immunity arguments get very weak, executive privilege collapses, political caution is going to go away, and all of these cases that were either too sensitive or controversial or risky, are going to start moving forward. The gears are going to grind back into motion. That's how accountability works in the real world.

And prosecutors are patient people. Cases can pile up. They preserve the evidence. You've got civil cases ready to go. And when the political protection goes away, the system grinds into action. You look at history. We know how it works.

Former allies decide, damn, I'm not going to be protected. I have to do what I need to do to protect myself and my family. Whistleblowers suddenly appear. Cooperation deals get signed. And Trump's family, I don't. believe is going to be able to distance themselves when they were such a critical part of the operation. You can't claim ignorance after signing documents and running a company and profiting from all of it. And this is why I believe Trump is as erratic as ever. The talk of revenge, the attacks on institutions,

the loyalty tests, it is survival for Trump at this point. And the people around him are not fighting because they love America or even because they love power for its own sake. They are fighting with Trump for now because they are getting ready for the day the shield drops, could ruin them financially, could expose them criminally, and litigation that could last a decade or longer as they get dragged into courtroom after courtroom. So when you hear Trump warning, if we lose in November, it's a catastrophe. What they are really afraid of is not what will happen to the country if Democrats win. Nothing will happen.

We just had four years of Biden as president. What they're worried about is what happens to the Trump allies and family once Trump is no longer there to protect them. And I think they know that it's a potential disaster. On the bonus show today, what am I up to in Portugal? Who have I been talking to? How many Americans are getting the hell out of the U.S. and coming here to Portugal? I've talked to a whole bunch of them. we will discuss all of that and more on today's bonus show.

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