The David Pakman Show - No Kings vs CPAC did not go well

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

-- On the Show -- Karen Bass, Mayor of Los Angeles, California, joins us to discuss her approach to reducing homelessness and crime in LA, as well as her concerns about Trump intervening in the 2028 Olympics -- Donald Trump allies gather at CPAC with smaller energy while millions attend No Kings protests across thousands of rallies -- Fox News defends Donald Trump over gas prices by highlighting historical oil averages, while Trump again promises to replace the Affordable Care Act -- Donald Trump delivers a rambling speech, misstating foreign policy achievements and admitting he labels military actions as operations to avoid congressional approval --Many politicians and political media figures shape their messaging around polls, incentives, and engagement rather than consistent ideology or concern for voters -- Republican figures such as JD Vance and Marco Rubio position themselves for influence as factions within the MAGA movement prepare for leadership after Trump -- Megyn Kelly criticizes the Iran war but shifts responsibility toward right-wing activists and journalists rather than holding Trump accountable for the decision -- Joe Rogan calls many MAGA supporters uninteresting and unintelligent, prompting a response from JD Vance as Republicans attempt to contain criticism -- On the Bonus Show: TSA workers start getting back pay despite the DHS shutdown persisting, birthright citizenship goes to the Supreme Court, architects criticize Trump's ballroom's design flaws, and much more... 🛏️ Eight Sleep: Get up to $350 OFF the Pod 5 at https://eightsleep.com/pakman 🎙️ Plaud: Get the NotePin S at https://davidpakman.com/plaud or https://amzn.to/3PurJeG 💻 Sponsored by Private Internet Access: 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/DavidP 😺 Smalls cat food: Use code PAKMAN for 60% off & free shipping at https://smalls.com ✉️ StartMail: Get 50% OFF for a year subscription at https://startmail.com/pakman 🤖 Sponsored by Venice: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off a Pro Account at https://venice.ai/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start(01:29) CPAC vs No Kings rallies(07:59) Fox News spins gas, Trump ACA(17:28) Trump’s rambling foreign policy claims(24:16) Politicians follow polls, not ideology(32:06) MAGA leaders jockey for influence(39:51) Karen Bass interview(56:19) Megyn Kelly blames others for Iran war(1:03:20) Rogan insults MAGA, Vance responds   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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at westjet.com slash 30 years. On today's show, a weekend of contrasts. Two realities collide. No King's protests on the one side, CPAC on the other side, and one side came out looking very, week, quite frankly. At the same time, Fox News is trying to spin rising gas prices using

statistical tricks that I know you would never fall for. And we will look at it. Meanwhile, Trump is panicking and back with vague healthcare promises, the same vague promises that put us two weeks away from a new health care system in July of 2020. We know that didn't happen. And at the same time, Trump is off the rails asking to be asked questions about sex at a bizarre speech. Plus something super interesting. Joe Rogan takes a shot at MAGA, at Trump voters saying they are dorks. And we will look at their response from inside the movement. Meanwhile, Megan Kelly tries to shift blame away from Trump over the.

Iran war in something that is kind of surprising to some Megan Kelly observers. All of that and more today. It's almost April, if you can believe it. Where were you this weekend? On the same day, same country, the United States, two completely different political realities played out. The MAGA reality was completely humiliating. On the same day, we had CPAC, one of the same.

the days of CPAC, and we had the third No King's protests. More than 3,300 rallies across all 50 states estimated 8 million total protesters. If you're being honest about what you're seeing, one of these looks like momentum and enthusiasm, and the other very much does not, especially given that they cheered for impeachment. reaching Trump at CPAC, if you can believe it. So let's start with CPAC. C PAC is not a small event. It is arguably the event that shows where the right wing movement is.

Does the right still have energy? Does it have direction? Is it unified? Who is in control of the movement and the Republican Party? And what did it look like? Well, it looked quite small. It was thin. It was less charged up than we've come to expect.

It wasn't a collapse. They had the event and, you know, people went. They had speakers and whatever. But this is not what we have come to expect for CPAC. It's not what we've come to expect CPAC to represent from a sociocultural standpoint in American politics. And incredibly, the idea of Trump being impeached. was cheered at CPAC, humiliating organizer Matt Schlapp, who said, no, no, no, that's the wrong answer,

attendees. How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings? No, that was the wrong answer. How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings? No. They're still cheering. And you can see this guy in the back sort of like. Oh, dear God.

We are about to get eaten alive by the monster we helped build. Now, for comparison, here's a hundred thousand people at the Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts. Here is the crowd in, this is in Dallas, Texas, of all places, just a massive, massive crowd. Not a crowd of donors, not a crowd of insiders, not people with. conference badges and VIP meet and greets and it's just regular people who decided to show up and it was all over the country. So this kind of leads us to ask maybe the obvious question. What actually represents political energy right now?

Because for years, the narrative has been the right shows up and the left doesn't. The enthusiasm is on the right. The left is apathetic. And anecdotally, there's a bunch of apathy on the left. And in fact, one of the, I don't want to make this a downer. If people want, we could just do it hold downer. But I'm not ignoring the fact that there are contingents. I would call them fringes of the left.

In fact, I don't even really think at this point they represent anything that I recognize as left. They represent sort of something, something different. But there are fringes of people who have historically considered themselves part of the left that are just kind of pooping on everything that's going on right now. All the potential candidates are bad and everything that's being done is bad. And Trump is out flanking the left and Trump is somehow more left than the law. I don't even think those people are part of the movement anymore.

And in fact, they seem much more comfortable with lose. to Republicans time and again, but I don't want to make this negative. Okay. We have anecdotally some of that stuff. But overall, the left is reclaiming the enthusiasm. The left is reclaiming the narrative. And the narrative is getting tougher and tougher to defend for the right. What we are seeing, I believe, on one side is with CPAC, a centralized, top down hierarchical

event with controlled messaging. and predictable speakers. It sort of went off the rails when they cheered for impeachment. But for the most part, it's an entire event based around a very familiar script. On the other hand, with the no king's protests, even if the protest themselves didn't achieve something, as some of you wrote to me, we saw successful, decentralized, bottom up mobilization, eight million showing up, filling public spaces. That's a very important difference.

CPAC is trying to do maintenance on a dying vehicle. The no king's protests are building something new. Now, it doesn't mean Republicans are finished. It doesn't mean this is Trump's last political breath. It doesn't mean the protests automatically turn into people voting. It doesn't mean that like a single event decides anything. But it does mean that something is shifting here. And there is visible, undeniable energy outside of the MAGA ecosystem.

And the part that I don't think MAGA is willing to admit is that they see it. They see the dwindling enthusiasm at CPAC as 8 million took to the streets over the weekend. They see the split screens. They see the comparisons. Empty chairs at CPAC and 100,000 at the Boston Common, tens of thousands marching in Dallas, Texas. This is more than policy. And if you're a concern as well, there wasn't much policy at either. If we're trying to build a movement here and get people enthused and passionate, you've got to start by creating.

a story. CPAC is supposed to be the showcase story. Look at this shiny movement we have. They were lame. They were boring. And March 28th ended up being really an exhibit of contrasts. And it's a contrast MAGA is terrified by. Meanwhile, Fox News is trying to figure out how do we spin the gas prices that have gone nuclear?

Let's talk about that. One of the things that starts to happen when you can't defend reality. is you start creating an alternate reality. One of the ways that you can spin these massively spiked gas prices up 45% since mid-January because of Donald Trump's optional war with Iran, one of the ways that Fox News is trying to spin it is by talking about the average price of a barrel of oil. Now, a couple problems with this. The average price of a barrel of oil when Obama was president.

Obama doesn't really tell you much about what Trump has done to gas prices today. But let me play the clip and then I'll explain to you how they are messing with statistics to try to confuse you and quite frankly to confuse their own audience. Let me show you the daily average price per barrel. Just to put this in a little bit of context. We see can I get our team to put up the prices under Obama? They were $83 and $33 during his term. And under the Trump term, it's $52 under Biden.

It was $79. And then under Trump now, $65. And $54. So still well below what the others had on average. So that's good to pay close attention to this. This is going to fall apart in a second. That into context for sure. But a lot of Americans concerned what how high will.

How high will they go and can the president take control of the straits of Hormuz and make sure that oil prices don't go higher? Well, that's right, Rachel. And it all lands on how long this lasts. I spoke with someone yesterday who said, look, if this lasts another three, four weeks, that's one thing. But if it lasts another eight, nine, ten weeks, that's another thing. All right.

I think you get the point. This is a good example of how giving people the average doesn't mean much. depending on which average you're giving them. Now, average can mean the mean, the median, or the mode. The mode is rarely the most relevant one for most of the things that we're looking at. Mean is distorted by extremes. I'll give you an example. You put Mark Zuckerberg in a room with 10 broke people. The average net worth, if you look at the mean of each person in that room is billions of dollars. But we understand that one person has all the money and 10 of them are broke. The mean would tell you nothing about those 10 people's lives.

And in the same sense, what Fox News is doing really doesn't mean much, pun not intended, because when they showed you the average price of oil under Trump and the average price of oil under Biden, first of all, the price of oil has only recently spiked under Trump. So it's relatively fewer days and it is a day-weighted mean. Secondly, Biden's number looks worse because he inherited the American economy at a time where prices were globally high for oil because of COVID still. So that affects Biden's numbers. It doesn't really mean anything about policy.

If you step back, you have to really think to yourself and say, what policies did Trump put in place that would relate to the oil price? And there are two. There are tariffs. And importantly, there is this optional war with Iran. So Fox News is working really hard to deceive with with statistics. Now, meanwhile, Trump knows this is so bad that he's gone back to posting about health care. You know it's bad when Trump is posting about a health care plan.

He still doesn't even have. He posted quote, this is just randomly over the weekend. The unaffordable care act sometimes referred to as Obamacare must be replaced by payments being made directly to the people so that they can buy their own health care rather than to blow and uncaring insurance companies, Obamacare is not and has never been sustainable. It kind of is in the sense that it's been around 16 years. So by definition, it's sustainable. It didn't do as much as I would have hoped.

But remember that for Trump to be talking about healthcare, he must be desperate because he's been telling us that we are two weeks away from signing a new healthcare system into law for six years now. Remember this? We're signing a health care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health care plan. We're going to be introducing a tremendous health care plan sometime, prior, hopefully prior to the end of the month. It's just about completed now.

That was August of 2020. The next two weeks, I'll be pursuing a major executive order requiring health insurance companies to cover all pre-existing conditions for all customers. You told Chris Wallace that this summer would come in three weeks. You promise an executive order on preexisting. I have it already. It's all ready. It's all completely ready.

It's ready to go. They are panicking and they're throwing everything at the wall. I wouldn't be surprised if this afternoon they announce, hey, you know what? It's infrastructure week at the White House again. We didn't quite get it done during my first term. This time we're going to get it done. So it's vague promises going back to old failed ideas, friendly media, and, and, you know, is running cover and no concrete plan.

It's just rhetoric trying to sprinkle in some nostalgia and reflection or rather deflection with no reflection of the fact that they've failed time and time again. We are unlikely to get a new health care plan while Donald Trump is in office. But more importantly, we need to make sure people understand that these numbers they're playing with do not relate to the situation at hand. And the situation at hand is that there are relatively few things presidents can do to affect oil and gas prices. Trump has done those things. And I hope that people are seeing through this absolute and total nonsense. Now, speaking of gas prices, last week we did our membership drive based around Trump's gas, really nasty, nasty stuff.

Trump's gas prices are really high. We dropped our membership prices to match that. If you missed that special, if you missed that promo and you want to take advantage of it, if you email me, we'll send you the code. Okay. Info at David Pakman.com. Say, David, I missed the code. Give me that code.

And we will send you that code. We'll take a quick break and be right back. I run hot when I sleep. I end up kicking the blankets off. in the middle of the night, I needed this huge, loud, eyesore fan before and would still wake up too warm, which is why I love our sponsor 8 Sleep so much. Their pod 5 smart cover fits on top of your existing mattress, automatically adjusts temperature on each side of the bed so you're not waking up too hot or too cold.

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speech. The speech center in Donald Trump's brain appears to be shutting down. And by the way, little cherry on top, he also admitted to crimes during this. this speech. This is starting to get weird. And remember, we want to fight the natural human urge to become desensitized to this sort of thing. Here is Donald Trump telling us, you can talk sex with him if you want. He will answer your sex questions. Thank everybody very much. And I'm asked to take a few questions. And unlike other politicians, they would like the question screened. I don't ask for screening of the questions.

You can ask me anything you want. You can talk sex. You can do whatever the hell you want. I'm here for you. Thank you. Now, Donald Trump didn't have all fun in games during this speech. And in fact, there was a moment. There was a moment where Donald Trump's speech deteriorated rapidly and notably.

Now, I know a lot of you are looking at this and you're going, David, are you not going to mention that Trump is soaking wet from sweat? No, I'm not. David, are you not going to mention that Trump's right eye is almost completely swollen shut? What about the fact that Trump is gripping the lectern like his life depends on it or the fact that Trump is using a teleprompter, which he said only lame presidents use? Aren't you going to mention any of those things? I'm not going to mention any of those things.

I guess I just did. But it is impossible not to notice that when Donald Trump says Norway has lost so credible, that is not English. These and answers. A really good friend of mine, the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, and Johnny is great. You know, when I didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize, you got to sit, I don't care. has lost so credible. I stopped eight wars.

Norway has lost so credible. I stopped eight wars. Okay. That is not normal speech. Those speech patterns are extraordinarily disturbing and concerning. But what is arguably even more concerning is that Donald Trump is not ashamed of committing crimes. Donald Trump gleefully lets us in on a little secret.

If I call it a war, I'm supposed to get authorization from Congress. So I call it a military operation. Trump is admitting what we all know, which is that he doesn't give a damn about the law, and he knows he's breaking it. As a leader, and we had a deal. I was going there and I didn't want to go during the war. I said, look, you know, we have a thing called a war or as they would rather say, a military operation is for legal reasons. I say military because as a military operation, I don't need any

approvals. As a war, you're supposed to get approval from Congress. Something like that. Something like that. Isn't that cutesy? Very demure. Very cutesy. Joking around about the fact that he knows he's breaking the law. He knows that it is a war because 99% of the time he calls it a war except when he remembers supposed to call it a little a little military operation because they don't like when you call it a war because you're supposed to go to congress these are not you know oh i uh what what what's some minor thing i j walked i did a diagonal cross even though you're supposed to cross one way and then the other way oh my good i did a little thing called jaywalk we're talking about people's lives. We're talking about one of the most consequential decisions that a president can make,

which affects not only the global order. It affects the economy of the world as we are seeing quickly deteriorate under this paradigm. People they're dying in the United States, in Iran, civilians, members of service members. And I a little cutesy. I call it a special military operation. He's disgusting. He's disgusting. Uh, fill in the blank. with just some other generic lives. Trillion for four years. In 11 months, we did 18 trillion. And we have factories being built all over the country at a level that's never been seen

before. Now, of course, that is not true. There are very few factories being built. The manufacturing employment level is lower than it's been in years. But to the extent that there are factories being built, they're mostly because of Joe Biden's infrastructure bill, which Donald. Trump is against. Think about that for a second. And then finally, Donald Trump says, you know what? I thought the stock market would go down way more when I launched this war. I'm sorry, the military

operation. I thought that we would see a bigger drop in stock hasn't been that bad. You know, it's sort of crazy. I hit 50,000 on the Dow. People said that wouldn't be possible within four years. I did it in one year. Now, consider a couple things here. Number one, when Trump says the Dow decline or the stock market decline, rather, hasn't been that bad. What he's saying is he would have been willing to suffer, to sacrifice rather, way more on the behalf of the American people whose retirement accounts depend on the stock market. He actually expected you to lose even more money out of your retirement account when he did this. And he was fine with that. He volunteered you. It hasn't been as bad as he expected yet. But more importantly, this endless discussion of Dow 50K, it has now been seven weeks

since the Dow briefly hit 50,000. You can see that that happened between February 6 and 10. And it has not seen those numbers since because of the fiasco that has been unleashed. Now, don't get me wrong. I want it back there. You think I like logging in and seeing my index fund account the way it is lately? It's a bloodbath. But I've got to tell the truth. And Donald Trump is losing his speaking ability. He's lost his ability to tell the truth if he ever had it. And he has no shame about committing crimes. That's where we are today. How many people in my audience realize that a ton of these elected officials do not give an F about you? Of all the reasons to tune out of politics, most of which I think are terrible, I really can't argue with the notion that a large

share of elected officials primarily care about themselves and their political careers, not you and not me. Now I know that that sounds harsh, but stay with me for a second. Every single election cycle, every campaign, every speech is built on this idea that they really care about you. These elected officials, these candidates, they care about your life, your future. They don't. They mostly do not give an F about you.

they care about is getting elected and getting reelected. Now, I know some of you will say, but what about this other person who does care? What about Bernie? What about my elected official? Yes, of course. Some do care. This is not everybody. But if we look at incentives and we understand the system, you can only see that this is logical. Start with why do elected officials say one thing one week and the exact opposite the next, the ones that do. Why do they suddenly evolve on issues? Right. Is the polling changes?

Why does Trump say he does want a ceasefire and he doesn't want a ceasefire? A woman who gets an abortion should be punished and then she shouldn't be punished. Why is this going on? Because they aren't fundamentally operating from ideology. They're operating from incentives. There are exceptions on the left and some on the right. I think Rand Paul mostly just tells us what he really believes. And he believes, although I think he's wrong, he believes that what he wants to see happen

would be better for the country. I think the same thing about Thomas Massey. I think the same thing about Bernie. I think the same thing about just to pick random people when Congressman Jake Ockincloss is on the show. And a lot of you liked them because you said this guy genuinely seems to get it and care. I'm not saying it's none of them. But the incentive is to say whatever polling tells you people.

want to hear. They'll, you know, say Taylor Swift is the best thing in music if that's what's trending and if it's going to get them votes. They'll be more libertarian if that polls well. And then they'll say raise some taxes or maybe it's fees, but we'll cut taxes, maybe on some people, not others. For too many people in politics today, there is no real core. The core is rotten. There's no belief system. It's what gets me the most votes right now. And the part that a lot of people don't want to admit is that while you might sound horrified by this, you go, oh, I would never. A lot of voters reward that behavior because voters say they want authenticity, but then they respond to whatever message feels good to them in the moment. So politicians

adapt to that all the time. They do focus groups and internal polls and external polls and messaging tweaks and micro-targeting on social media. It's a performance. And the irony is, is that the people who try to appeal to everyone often end up appealing to no one because people can sometimes sense it. Even if they can't fully articulate it, they start to feel that something is off, but it sometimes takes a while, which is why the incentives are to try to do this. Now, there are exceptions. I again want to say it.

There are people who go into politics because they do want to help. That does exist. But the point I'm making is that the system doesn't reward those. people, I would argue, nearly as much as it rewards those who are flexible, let's call it that, and have a communication strategy that is about trying to just convince people. You're flexible on beliefs and messaging, and then you get something else that is really important. The same person criticizing politicians with no ideology will turn around and say, my preferred politicians are courageous truth tellers.

Now, I would like to say, I would like to say that we all know who the real truth tellers are. But we know that there's a big bias with this. There is very low approval for Congress, but much higher approval for the specific representatives of people. It's sort of like when you ask people, do you think you're in the best 50% of drivers or the worst 50% of drivers? And like 80% of people believe they're in the top 50%. mathematically impossible. Similarly, we have a lot of people who go, so many of these elected officials are terrible. They're disingenuous. They don't have the best interests of the people in mind.

My elected officials good, though. Much higher approval rating. So statistically, that doesn't make sense. Something's got to give here. The other thing that I think is important to consider is that it has become a big element of politics that people want their ideology validated. They want they want someone who's on their side, an inconsistency really doesn't matter anymore. Now, later in the week, I'm going to talk about how being wrong also doesn't really have a downside for a lot of elected officials. But if we zoom out here, we have a situation where double standards and inconsistency have stopped mattering as long as you hear what you believe you want to hear from your elected

officials. Now, if we zoom out even further, this is more or less the structure of modern politics, short-term incentives. A lot of the people talking about politics. also don't care about you. Now I'm talking about content creators. The people on your feed, you should critically analyze. The people making videos telling you how angry you should be, how scared you should be, who you should hate doing the scapegoating and all of this stuff. A lot of them are operating out of incentives, clicks, views, watchtime, subscribers. And if outrage

performs, that's what they'll give you. If fear performs, that's what they'll try to induce in you. As I've said before, there are a lot of areas where I'm leaving a lot on the table. I could be playing up the holder canceling the election thing. That wouldn't be honest, but it would perform really well. I don't do that kind of thing. I just tell you what I believe. Some of what I believe doesn't get a lot of clicks.

That's the reality. If telling you that everything is collapsing takes more or gets more engagement, that's what you're going to get. So the system that affects elected officials to a great degree affects content creators as well. Again, there are tons of people who don't fall under the umbrella that I am pointing out. So what I think is important to consider is that once you see this reality about the political messaging that you're getting, a lot of what is out there is less confusing. You can better understand why elected officials behave the way they do and why a lot of content creators behave the way they do.

If you understand that the primary incentive is stay in power, keep my audience. Everything else comes after that. To be clear again, this is a harsh critique. It does not apply to everybody, but it applies to too many. And we have to remember that when we're analyzing the messages that we get. So now I want to hear from you. Who do you believe this critique applies to? And who do you believe it doesn't apply to?

I want to hear from you. Leave me a comment. Send me an email info at david packman.com. Donald Trump may find himself too weak to pick his successor as the leader of MAGA. Let me explain. If you're waiting for a sort of Julius Caesar moment where the MAGA movement finally, turns on Trump, I don't believe that it's going to happen. You are kind of like waiting around for a lightning strike when it's more likely that the tide coming in will slowly drown you to use a kind

of metaphor or imagery. I think that the reality of what's happening on the MAGA side is actually more interesting and more consequential than just they've turned on Trump. They're not so much breaking away from Trump, but they're preparing for a world in which Trump is not the center of their political movement. Now, for years, the kind of gravity of the movement was stay close to Trump and by his sheer weight, and I'm using that metaphorically, I'm not talking about Trump's obesity, by the sheer weight of Trump. If you stay close, he's going to kind of keep you in that orbit, circling. But lately, it's a little different. And if you look past the public displays of fealty that are still there, the behavior of a lot of the people.

these people has changed. You are seeing a more insurance mindset, a risk mitigation mindset from a lot of MAGAs. The big players are starting to build their own lifeboats. J.D. Vance has, you know, got Peter Thiel. And there are many others. Media people, et cetera. They're kind of crafting their own messaging lanes. They're cultivating donor bases like Marco Rubio.

They're carving out an identity that doesn't necessarily depend on Donald Trump. And what they're fundamentally doing is testing the waters for when their audience is ready to say, all right, Trump's gone. What do I respond to now? What's going to keep me engaged in politics? Now look at the contrast of some of the people that are trying to position themselves for the future. I mentioned J.D. Vance. He is in this kind of new right framework.

Peter Thiel, the techno libertarians and it's a different space than Trump occupies. Marco Rubio, he's like a steadier. kind of institutional Republican who appeals to a more traditional base. And we've seen him look physically uncomfortable when Trump is doing some of his nonsense. We've read that a lot of donors are quietly lining up to say, we want Rubio not Vance in 2028. Two years ago, it would have been natural to assume Trump decides who is the heir to the Maga throne. I don't think there's any certainty of that at this point in time, especially if Republicans lose the midterms, doubly so if they lose them badly, and the simple reality of Trump's decline and age

and potentially two years of being the lamest of lame ducks we've ever seen. I don't know if Trump's going to be in a position to decide who replaces him in the MAGA movement. I talked to Gavin Newsome about this in person a few weeks ago, and he says it's possible that the exact same thing will go down. I don't think we know what post-Trump MAGA will look like. And I don't know that anybody is ultimately. ultimately going to be the decider. And the uncertainty is also translating to the policy world.

There are now independent think tanks and policy shops coming up with the agenda that should be the Republican agenda when Trump is gone. That's pretty interesting because if you're thinking in those terms, it assumes it should be something different than what Trump offers. And it also isn't asking Trump for his opinion. These are two very significant changes compared to the the way MAGA has operated for a while now. And so as we step back, we see that the people in the movement are thinking about what comes next, behaving differently now, hedging, and at the end of the day, they don't want to be dependent on Trump's dominance as what will either carry them or destroy them.

Now, if we kind of go back to this gravity analogy, MAGA has been a solar system with a single sun. And that son has been Donald Trump. He sets the tone and he has coarsened the tone. He sets the priorities. He chooses the cultural grievances, men and women's sports or whatever it is. It emanates from this rotten center. That gravity is loosening. And some of the orbiters may soon be ready to reach escape velocity and go elsewhere.

So it wouldn't be like the solar system implodes on itself. It would be that some of its planets leave to go off to greener pastures or something like that. What we could end up with, and it depends on the results in November, we've got to make it happen. What we could end up with is a Trump that is so weak that he ends up being the presidential equivalent of what his father was when he had dementia, which is he still went into the office. He had a phone. He would sign papers. But the phone would only go to his secretary. And he was not actually involved in anything serious.

There is a real shot that that is how Trump's final two years end up. I think we need to make it that way. If you're online, someone's always trying to track you. Hackers, advertisers, data brokers, governments. This is why I use private internet access. It's a VPN sort of like sending your traffic through a private encrypted tunnel. People outside can't see what's in there. PIA hides your IP address.

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But the numbers have been improving under Mayor Karen Bass and she's up for a fight with Trump's ice goons. So let's talk to her. Now I am joined by the mayor of Los Angeles, California, Karen Bass, mayor, so good to talk to you. You know, I'm really interested in the issues of homelessness and crime, partially because I think sometimes Democrats are not great at talking about those issues. I was looking at the data from Los Angeles. Crime has been declining in Los Angeles. And you've also seen a decline in unsheltered homelessness. not going to pretend that everything's been solved. Cities of millions of people have difficult problems to solve. But I'm interested in like what what have you done especially because the

narrative from the president about Los Angeles is that it's this, you know, crime infested, homelessness plagued place and no one cares about improving. What, what practical steps have you taken there? Absolutely. And when I hear him describe Los Angeles, I have no idea what he's talking about or where he's talking about. But let me just say that, you know, on day one, when I took office, I actually didn't even begin at City Hall. I went straight to our emergency management department and declared the city to be in a state of emergency because of homelessness. In Los Angeles, we had 40,000 people sleeping on our streets and three, four of them, don't wake up every morning.

So that to me was horrific. I absolutely believed it was a humanitarian crisis. And so my goal on day one was to get people off the street and get them into housing. Not shoe them away, not hide them, house them. And when you house them address what led to their life falling apart that they're on the street and what do you need to heal them so that then they will be successful in permanent housing. So that is what we have done, but I will tell you that we have a system that has been dysfunctional for over three decades. And so while I am getting people off the street, I was also trying to diagnose what the heck was at the root of the dysfunction and how to change the system at the same time, where we have succeeded, but not to the scale that we need to be, of course, but of getting people off the street.

where we are still in process and have so much further to go is transforming a 30 plus year dysfunctional system. There are same time. Sorry, Mayor, I was going to say in terms of that system that, of course, predates your tenure. What was the missing piece before you were there that you think led to the 30 years of the of the problem? Well, one piece.

And it took me a while to find this out. Los Angeles made a policy decision, I guess, maybe 20 plus years ago, that the focus should be on building housing. Now, I agree with that 100%. The problem is, is that in our city, that system is dysfunctional too in terms of the building process. So, for example, residents in L.A. taxed themselves to address building the housing, 10,000 units they were going to build. Well, they did get it built, but it took way over 10 years to do that. While they were letting people stay on the street and focusing just on building, then homelessness exploded. Now, let me compare that to New York.

New York early on built their system where they have interim housing. They didn't just focus on bricks and mortar building. They bought buildings. they got people off the street right away. So where we have 40 plus thousand people who are unhoused in Los Angeles, New York has 80, but 97% of them are not on the street. They're in some form of interim housing or shelter. We chose not to do that. And I understand why it was well-intentioned ideology, which is a rigid interpretation of housing.

Now, I'm a big proponent of housing first, but to me, housing first does not necessarily mean permanent housing or something that you build. I think that we should have built a system of interim housing where someone could stay for a year, year and a half or two years while something was being built. The other mistake, fundamental mistake, was not focusing or even understanding the type of support systems, services that people needed to be successful. So what you have, and this part continues today, is people being housed but being churned in and out, in and out, in and out, because they're today still not provided the adequate

support that is needed. Let's talk about that a little bit. I saw an internal audit that found that 15 to 20% of participants in what I believe I'm accurately referring to as the motel program, but I'll give you an opportunity to correct that if that's wrong. 15 to 20% of the people in the motel program end up back on the street either because of the strict rules or lack of immediate mental health support, which is a key part of kind of breaking the cycle here. What can be done about that? Well, let me just, let me just tell you that is partially true.

Let me explain why. And actually, I believe the number is higher. Okay. So when we, the way this is. does this is, and the city does not provide services. The county does that. So we get people off the street. We have contracts with probably over 15 community-based organizations. They are responsible for the people once they're off the street. None of those organizations have the capacity to provide the type of services that are needed. The real truth of the matter is, is that a percentage of those people wind up back on the street, but we don't exactly know where they are. So some people are on the street. Some people have reunited with their families. You know, a number of

people who are unhoused actually work. And they might have reached the point where they could do a first and last month's rent. So several fundamental problems. The system does not evaluate itself. So we don't know where these people go. I think it's higher than 15%. And the community-based organizations don't have the capacity to provide the services. Fortunately, I have a health care background. I worked in the emergency room. I've worked with unhoused patients. I have a different view of this, I think, than most people. This might be an overgeneralization for me, but I believe that a lot of people that have been in this field for a long time know housing, but they don't necessarily know the people, if you know what I mean. Because everybody talks about mental health and

substance abuse. I'm concerned about diabetes and cancer and high blood pressure. All of those things really can lead to people being homeless when their health care collapses and they can't afford, you know, and they wind up missing work because they're not taken care of. And so I think that there are a lot of reasons why people wind up on the street again. But the truth of the matter is, we're not sure what happens to them because the system is not in place to track them. Let me shift gears a little bit. At the state of the union address, President Trump vowed in whatever it means for him to vow to do something. He vowed to make Los Angeles safe ahead of the 2028 Olympics. Now, you've had your confrontations with his ideas of National Guard deployment and other

interventions in Los Angeles. What do you expect he is going to try? And what is your plan of action there? Well, I think, you know, I mean, we know the president pontificates. I think that what his plan is, is there will be military involvement in the Olympics. I actually do not believe that is unusual, but to me, that does not need troops walking up and down our street. I think the president is very invested in the Olympics and the World Cup being successful. And he knows that having troops march up and down our street is not the type of environment that you want to have for the world to come here. And so I imagine he's going to have a big presence during the Olympics, as most presidents do around the world. But I consider

that blustering speech that we're used to. from the president. You see, do you see those, that bluster as a different category than what we saw in Los Angeles over now I'm losing track of when it was. I guess it was early last summer. June. Okay. You see these as different things.

It's not just more of the same. I don't see them as the same thing at all. I don't. But here's my concern though. Yeah. Back to what we were just talking about. If you go to our Skid Row area, you are literally talking about it. in a concentration of about 20 blocks,

you're talking about over 4,000 unhoused people concentrated there. Yeah. So even though I am proud of the fact that for the first time, by the way, and I should have said this earlier, street homelessness has decreased by 17%. I again have been focusing on the encampments around the city and reducing those, but not by shooing people away.

Here's my concern is that the volume and the skin, in the Skid Row area is very, very difficult because we need to have thousands of units all at the same time. So what I'm trying to work on right now is how do we have a project that brings in that we can address the scale? Because what I don't want to see happen is the troops come to Skid Row and round everybody up in an alligator alcatraz type facility. Yes. I don't want to see that happen. So I'm very concerned about that. I'm not so much concerned about troops marching up and down our streets.

Like, you know, they did a little bit in June. June 6th was the day we weren't dated. I'm the encampments. I'm curious, you know, sometimes I'm the sort of person that I want data. I sometimes think that loan anecdotes don't necessarily give us an idea of what solutions are. But sometimes anecdotes are at least interesting to get some information. I have a friend who lives in LA who had a two tent encampment develop on his front lawn. And he involved on his front lawn.

He involved he was he's on a corner. So it's like it's sort of an attractive little space there. He involved the police and I wasn't there. Right. Mayor. So I don't know exactly what he was told. But long and short, the police didn't help him as he saw it. Right.

What is the prevailing law in situations? like that. Okay, so you know the law has changed. When the Supreme Court uphill grants pass, now the police could technically make that encampment move. Prior to that in our city and I'm pretty sure in our state too, but definitely in our city. The police can't just do that. And that is because of a series of lawsuits that advocates waged, which it is not that I disagree with those lawsuits. but I wish that there was more focus on a solution because no one wants it in can. I don't care how big your heart is

or what your beliefs are. Nobody wants an encampment on their front line. But I'm going to tell you the secret to encampments. Number one, we have an outreach team all with lived experience. But the secret is you take everybody together. That was not what the city was doing before. They were picking individuals.

out and leaving the encampments there. And I think a lot of people did not respect the fact that encampments are small communities. The reason why we don't have a problem getting rid of the encampments is because we house everybody. As a matter of fact, the problem we have is that when we go to remove an encampment, we'll count ahead of time like there's 15 people, but then on the day, on moving day, there's 25. Why? Why? Because unhoused people have cell phones.

They call their friends and say they're really going to house us. They're not just moving us. So we have learned that we have to have extra rooms when we go resolving in camp. We've been speaking with the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass. Mayor Bass, really appreciate your time. Thanks for talking to me. And we will be in touch with you. Yes.

And next time, let's talk about crime. Yes, absolutely. Because Democrats do not do that. well and I would love to engage with you on that. I'm with you. Thank you so much for your time. All right. Bye. You use your email for everything. Banking, work, purchases, medical information. That makes your email provider one of the most important places to think about privacy. Most big tech email services, scan your messages, build profiles about you, use the data to show you ads. Our sponsor Startmail takes a different approach.

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if you switch to StartMail, it is really easy to migrate your existing emails and contacts in just a few clicks. Go to startmail.com slash Pacman to get 50% off your first year. The link is in the description. If you use one of the mainstream AI chat bots, they monitor everything you put in the app, stuff about your personal life, your work projects, medical questions. All of that info stays in the system forever to train the AI. They build a profile about you based on what you input. If you care about privacy and bypassing censorship, I recommend using Venice instead. Our sponsor Venice lets you use all the biggest and best AI models. They do not store your prompts. Your prompts are encrypted and stored only locally in your app or browser.

not used for training data. Venice also offers completely uncensored chatbots and image generation. You can ask it anything and it will answer. It is finally AI. You can completely control. None of the conversations are tied to your identity. And you use Venice exactly like the mainstream chatbot app that you're already used to. The interface will feel really familiar. You'll also get 20% off a pro plan at venice.a.ai slash Pacman with the code Pacman, the link is in the description. Something extraordinarily revealing just happened. And it is such an instructive lesson in how the right wing media ecosystem works right now. Megan Kelly comes out and just pounds the Iran war. She says it's going terribly. We need accountability. There need to be consequences.

says, cool, sounds good. I'm with you. But then listen very carefully to where she goes with it. No accountability for the person who made the decision. No accountability for the person she voted for. No accountability for the president of the United States. Megan Kelly opposes the Iran war, says it's going poorly, says we need accountability, but not from Trump who decided to go to war.

She says, whoever convinced him is deserving of accountability. ability. Acting like Trump has zero agency. What about Trump's agency? It's not very confidence boosting to assume that the guy you voted for was led into this thing. Is it? Doesn't speak too well of Trump. Well, let's listen to what Megyn Kelly had to say. This is interesting. As this thing goes south, we need to know exactly who talked him into it and what representations were made to convince the president that this was a good idea. Who? Who specifically? The names we know are BB Netanyahu first and foremost. Lindsay Graham equally to blame. We know from the Wall Street Journal report that Mark Tieson of Fox News and General Jack Keene were major advocates of the war. Okay,

like those guys, but they appeared have been very wrong that this was a good idea. And we could keep going. Mark Levin, chief among them. He says now, oh, I wasn't me. Every night, every night on Fox News out there, urging the president to do this. And then he had a meeting with him in June where we know he denies it now. We know he pushed him for this. Ben Shapiro was out on his show every day pushing this war. Like there were very prominent activists on the right who were practically frothing at the mouth for this thing. And now that it's not only going poorly, but the president's poll numbers are in a precipitous free fall, we'd love to see some accountability. Who? Who promised him what?

Oh, Megan, is the guy you voted for so gullible that it couldn't have been his decision? Wow. She says rightly that we need accountability about the Iran war, but only from the people who convinced Trump to do it. How backwards is that? We're talking about the most powerful person in the country or maybe the world that she voted for because she thought that he could do the job. And the argument is he was persuaded. He was he was talked into it by Mark Levin and people she named who's name recognition

is probably 4% since when does Trump do things he doesn't want to do? Maybe she's suggesting Trump regularly does things he doesn't want to do because if he didn't want to do this and he was talked into it, it's unlikely this is the only thing he's been talked into. And this is the guy, Trump, who built his political identity on I alone can fix it. I understand the problem better than anybody and I'm the sole person who can solve it. And now he's a passive participant being led around like a dog by Mark Levin and Lindsay. Graham, he's taking suggestions from podcasts and Twitter accounts. Now, I want to be real with you.

Trump is very much influenced by things he sees on TV and what he sees on Fox News and the people around him. But the point is the supporters are acknowledging that he is gullible and has no agency. That sounds very strange to me. Now, what I think this is really about is not political analysis. Megan Kelly is doing narrative and reputational protection here. What's happening is the policy is going to be. badly. The optics are bad. The results are bad. Gas prices, oil prices, people dying. And instead

of saying Trump made a bad decision, she goes, because it's not going well, it must have been someone else's idea. It can only have been someone further out in Trump's orbit. It couldn't have been Trump himself. So maybe it's influencers or commentators or the ecosystem, anybody but the guy in charge. And that's the pattern. When things go well, Trump gets all the credit. When they go bad, he has no agency. Must be someone else's fault. Can we blame a prior president maybe? Obama. Sure. What about Obama? That is not leadership guys. Either the buck stops with the president or it doesn't. She's talking about we need accountability and doesn't even mention accountability for the guy who made the decision and is the commander in chief. They want to give him all the credit on the upside

and no responsibility on the downside. Now, Megan Kelly understands the media. You could say she's wrong about a lot of things, but she understands the media. She knows how framing works. She knows politics. This is not confusion where, oops, she just forgot innocently to mention Trump and his agency and all of this. It is a deliberate attempt to protect the dear leader. And she's redirecting her audience to criticize something safer. She hates Mark Levin. She said he's got a micro penis. I don't know if he does would mean under two and a half inches erect, right? I don't know what she knows about that medical condition, but she said he's got a micropenus and she has a vendetta against him. So she's like, go criticize Mark Levin instead of Trump.

If the base connects the outcome directly to Trump's decision making, which they're doing, we've seen the videos from CPAC, they've got a big problem on their hand. So instead it's yeah, something went wrong. It's not going so well. Let's find influencers and senators and media people to blame guys, he's the president. He made the call. And even if he was in, He is paid for the buck or he's elected. I guess he's not getting paid because he donates his salary supposedly. He is elected because the buck stops with him. And he is to be the ultimate judge of what the people around him are suggesting he do.

Everything Megan Kelly is doing is to avoid saying Trump ultimately decided. And what's very interesting is that Megan Kelly has kind of gone back and forth to some degree as to how pleased she is with what Trump is doing. But now that Megan Kelly is sort of feuding with Mark Levin, she's fluting with, feuding with Ben Shapiro, this is a great opportunity for her to go, look at this other direction when you want to blame and not Trump. Classic, classic move from propaganda movements. Here's all the people we must have accountability and transparency about the people I've decided

we should look at. This is fascinating. Joe Rogan, who has been, whether people like it or not, one of the most influential cultural figures adjacent to the MAGA ecosystem, who endorsed Trump, who voted for Trump. He just took a massive shot at MAGA, the voters, the people who voted Trump, who are in his audience, who love Rogan. Rogan goes, MAGA is such a stupid slogan. And the MAGA people, it's a lot of dorks.

A lot of dorks. This is pretty interesting. Take a look. The phrase, make America great again. I don't care. But if that phrase sucks, here's the thing. Like, first of all, America is great. Make America greater, I'm down.

But make America great again. And then it becomes a movement of a bunch of fucking dorks. Because a lot of them are dorks. A lot of them, these really weird fucking uninteresting, unintelligent people that have got something they cling to. And there's a lot of people that are just real genuine patriots. And they're all lumped into this one group and you got to accept the dorks too. Fuck that. Now, J.D. Vance was asked about this comment. And here's what he had to say to Benny Johnson. Joe says Magus full of dorks. What do you think? You consider yourself a dork?

He's magist dork. By the way, that's J.D. Vance's authentic laugh. He's he's tried it out a lot Now. Okay, here's his answer. Okay, here's his answer. What do you think? You consider yourself a dork? This is Magas's dorks. I would, I think we have many, many fewer dorks than the far left, but everybody's-

There you go. I know you are, but what am I? It's a lot of jokes on the far left. Sorry, J.D. What was that? MAGA has never just been about politics from the start. It was about identity. Identity and the vibe and belonging to a group being part of something that felt big and strong and confident.

I alone can fix it. I can fix healthcare. I know more than the generals. I know more than the doctors. I know more than the spray tan technicians. That's why I chose this color, right? When someone like Rogan, who a lot of young men and podcast listeners politically disengaged people pay attention to, starts saying this is like kind of uncool. This is very different than an MSNBC criticism or a

Democratic strategist is attacking Trump. The not the keep one of the key people in the broader cultural space of MAGA is saying this movement is filled with dorks. It's a problem for them because movements like MAGA need cultural legitimacy because they are vapid and empty of actual policy. The few policies are terrible. Put tariffs on everything. everything and start a war. What? That's not good. So it's got to be about something else. The second that the cultural cachet flips and it starts to be like, this is kind of lame. This is repetitive. Trump seems out of touch. I expected the stock market to go down more. Really? You were willing to crush my retirement account even more than you did. Why? Who put you in the position of saying that that

sacrifice is worth it when it won't even affect you and your friends? And so look at the response. J.D. Vance jumps in and he wants to contain it. He wants to downplay it. Reframe and go, the left actually has the dorks. They know this is really risky. The policies suck. And a lot of the people in MAGA, when you show them the policy, they go, this isn't good, but he represents me. I identify with them, et cetera. And so if the younger online male audience starts drifting away, because now even Rogan's like, these are dorks. I don't want to be one of those Rogan dorks. It's really hard to reverse that. Culture is not shifting because of white papers and policy papers. It's perception. And when the perception is, wow, Rogan thinks we're dorks. That's interesting and new. And I believe

it's worth paying significant attention to. You can't fix it by changing your tariff policy. It's like a branding issue. And historically, branding issues are really tough to change. When people are branded when it mattered that elected officials were consistent like John Kerry in 2004 and they were branded flip-floppers. He couldn't get away from that. Now, a lot of money went into ads that made that case, but it was really an impossibility to fix that. So I'm not saying MAGA collapses tomorrow, but it does mean something significant when

you've got cracks that are being fomented by Joe Rogan, one of the cultural leaders of the Manosphere and the young men MAGA movement. It's not, you know, Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer can say whatever he wants. It's not going to have a cultural impact on Republicans. These are adjacent voices. They said, hey, I voted Trump. That's who I would vote for.

I'm endorsing him. And then Rogan's using the word betrayed. And now he says that the movement is made up of a lot of dorks. This is going to change things. Without a doubt, this is going to change things. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. I hope you'll be there. You can sign up at join packman.com.

And if you missed last week's Trump gas membership special where you could get a membership for the cost of a gallon of gas in Trump's America. And you want to take advantage of that. Shoot us an email info at David Pakman.com and say, hey, David, I would love that code.