The David Pakman Show - Reality is finally catching up

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Country music icon Dolly Parton dies at 80 after donating millions to medical research, providing free books to children, and defending rights -- South Carolina Republicans nominate Darline Graham for Senate despite her admitting she knows nothing about China and Taiwan -- An Iowa voter who backed Donald Trump three times expresses deep frustration over prices and tells the president to stop his excuses -- Kentucky congressional candidate Ralph Alvarado removes photos with Donald Trump and America First slogans from his campaign website -- Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejects US tariff demands, prompting Donald Trump to post angry online threats -- Two unvaccinated people in Pennsylvania die of measles after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promotes chicken soup over evidence -- The Supreme Court allows Donald Trump to temporarily direct the Postal Service to filter mail ballots using federal lists -- Escalating trade tariffs between the United States and Canada threaten to raise prices on toilet paper due to its heavy reliance on wood pulp -- On the Bonus Show: A California couple confront their surrogate in court, Target faces backlash over a Halloween costume, a judge strikes down Texas's drag show ban, and much more... 👕 Cozy Earth: Code PAKMAN for up to 20% off at https://cozyearth.com/pakman 💪 Get a FREE AG1 Pro Yeti Shaker in your Welcome Kit at https://drinkag1.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Book: https://bit.ly/m/attention -- 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 (01:17) Dolly Parton dies at 80 (07:56) Darline Graham wins Senate primary (19:26) Three-time Trump voter turns on him (27:03) Republican candidates scrub Trump mentions (35:54) Carney strikes back against Trump's tariffs (42:42) Two unvaccinated Americans die of measles (50:26) SCOTUS allows Trump to let the Post Office filter mail ballots (58:04) Trump's tariffs will raise toilet paper prices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Shop Wayfair's Labor Day clearance now through September 7th at Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. We have a packed show today, and there's a strange theme, I think, running through almost all of it, which is that we're starting to see a lot of consequences. We start with the death of Dolly Parton, an extraordinary American, life, a reminder about decency and success coexisting. And then some of Donald Trump's own voters are turning on them in really brutal terms while Republican candidates are discovering that having Trump plastered all over your website might not be just might not be a very good idea heading into

November. And meanwhile, Donald Trump picks another fight with Canada, but Canada refuses to surrender. and the consequences could reach your bathroom, your toilet, I will explain. We also have a very disturbing public health story. Measles deaths are back in the RFK Jr. era. And meanwhile, while a lot of people are understandably distracted by the daily chaos, Donald Trump has cleared a huge obstacle to try to take federal control over the upcoming midterm elections. It's not getting the attention it deserves. We will give it some attention and I'll tell you what is happening there.

Dolly Parton has died at the age of 80 and the United States and really the world have lost one of those kind of increasingly rare public figures who did transcend just about every cultural and political divide. She was a musical icon. She was a brilliant songwriter. She was a very successful businesswoman. And by every indication, she was just genuinely a good person. Now, the story of Dolly Parton is very interesting.

She was born in a one-room cabin in Tennessee. She was the fourth of 12 kids in a family with almost no money. And she wrote some truly classic songs, Jolene, 9 to 5, I will always love you, sold more than 100 million records and built this incredible entertainment empire. But I am maybe even more interested for the purposes of this show about how her legacy goes way beyond just music. She has this imagination library, which has mailed hundreds of millions of free books to kids under five. Back in 2020, she donated a million dollars to COVID research at Vanderbilt. She funded work connected to the COVID vaccine. And she didn't really get involved in partisan politics,

but you could see from her worldview that she believed in. I don't know, I guess we would say like, compassion, allowing people to just be who they are and live as they are. And here is video of Dolly more than a decade ago. This is Larry King, by the way. This is not Dolly pardon. Dolly defending the LGBT community. And this was more than a decade ago. It really says a lot about who she was.

Didn't you recently, though, throw support to the LGBT community? Oh, I'm always encouraged. I'm not encouraged. They've made me the postal child, I think, only because I'm so outspoken as far as just being accepting of people in general. I do not believe that we should criticize and judge other people. I think we should be accepting and loving. We are all God's children.

We are who we are, and we should be allowed to be who we are. Did any of the faith-based communities that deeply believe the other way take umbrage with you? Oh, absolutely. They did? Oh, yes. all the time. I keep saying, well, if you're the fine Christian that you're, you think you are, why are you judging people? Why are you, that's God's job. We're not God. We're not judges. You know, we're supposed to love one another. We're supposed to not judge and we're not supposed

to take vengeance on other people. That's God's job. So I, I got too much to do my own, try to do God's work, too. I mean, not to, you know, to get into trying to do all that. So yeah, I have to, I suffer for everything I do. I'm not out to make any, you know, I just think that we should be more loving, more caring. We are who we are. If you're gay, you're gay. If you're straight, you're straight. And you should be allowed to be, you know, how you are.

And what's very interesting about this is that as you can tell, Dolly Parton was very religious. She was culturally southern, but she didn't say, well, my religion says I've got to be cruel to people. Or the environment I grew up in in the South means that this is my view about LGBT people or whatever the case may be. She had this instinct where her Christianity said, oh, you should include people. And she had this instinct which was, oh, my wealth should be used to improve the lives of other people, which is the opposite of everything that Donald Trump stands for. Now, Donald Trump seemingly realized to Trump often does this thing where when people die whose views are antithetical to his, he just attacks them. He just absolutely brutalizes them on social

media. But even Donald Trump seemed to realize, hey, Dali Parton is so universally loved that I'd better avoid saying anything vicious or strange about her. So he put out a truth social post where he said, quote, but he does start to make it about himself though. He says, quote, very sad to report that Dali Parton, one of the greatest country singers and far beyond ever has just passed away. This is a true loss for millions of people. There has never been anyone like her and never will. In her honor, I am lowering the American flag throughout the United States for a one week period beginning tonight at 6 p.m. Rest in peace, Dolly. The world loves you. Now, as far as Trump posts go, this is a remarkably appropriate post. But even here, Trump kind of starts to make himself the

central character. I am lowering the American flag throughout the United States signed President Donald J. Trump. So the personified narcissism of Donald Trump still comes through. But, okay, it's not as bad as many of Donald Trump's messages. I think the most revealing political story here is what government has done with the legacy of Dolly Parton. For example, Missouri recently cut funding for her imagination library from $6 million to $2 million. New enrollment stopped July 1st. Kids already registered are only going to get books. Guys, it's books.

They will only be able to get books as the existing funding allows. And so politicians love honoring beloved people after they die. They lower flags and they publish statements. and that costs nothing. But continuing the work of these people is a choice. And Trump is right that there was really nobody quite like Dolly Parton who accumulated massive fame and massive wealth, but primarily used those to bring people in. And she didn't demand a unflinching loyalty. She wasn't constantly announcing how well liked she was. And if politicians really want to honor Dolly, What I would love to see them do is spend less time attaching your names to tributes and just

ensure that the kids she cared about keep receiving their books. We're talking about books at the end of the day. So Dolly Parton dead at 80 and also probably a factor in Donald Trump's reaction is we know Trump is increasingly sort of fixated on his own mortality. Donald Trump is also 80. And I assure you that this is another aspect that without a doubt Donald Trump is thinking about. We have now learned that you can openly admit you essentially know nothing about a central

part of the job you're seeking and Republican voters don't give a damn and they might even give you a promotion. I'm talking about Donald Trump backed Senator Darlene Graham, the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham and currently the interim appointed senator for South Carolina. She won her primary. She defeated Congressman Ralph Norman last night in South Carolina's Republican Senate. at runoff. She is now going to face Democrat Dr. Annie Andrews, who's a Charleston pediatrician in the general election in November. And because South Carolina is a deeply Republican state,

Darlene Graham is now the favorite. Now, I'm not suggesting we give up the fight. We'll get back to Annie Andrews in a moment. But this is an incredible story, really of nepotism, of loyalty to Trump and just completely abandoning any expectation that elected officials understand their jobs or are qualified for them. Now, the only read, this is not her. Some people go, her only qualification is that Lindsey Graham was her brother. No, it's not a qualification. The only reason she's in this position is Lindsay Graham was her brother. She's temporarily occupying that seat. She's never held elected office. She has no legislative experience, but she has the right last name and most importantly, she has Donald Trump's endorsement.

Trump's MAGA Inc. Super PAC spent more than $800,000 supporting her. Trump campaign for her. Senator Tim Scott, Governor McMaster, were behind her. And during last week's debate, Graham was asked a really basic question. Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues from the United States? And her answer was basically, huh? Her answer, if this was a sane country, would have ended her political career. I'll remind you of how that way.

Senator, are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States? If so, why? I'm sorry, could you repeat the question? Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States? And if so, why or how? I'm just going to be honest here. I'm not on national security. I'm not that informed on national security.

Right. But I do support the military. brother was in the Air Force for. Yeah. Don't know a thing about it, but I support the military. And as shocking as that answer is, as much as it audibly shake it, you could hear, ooh, in the audience, you kind of have to admit, that perfectly represents today's Republican Party in all of the worst ways. She's a United States Senator. It's not an obscure gotcha question. Taiwan and the South China Sea are extraordinarily consequential national security issues facing the United States. They relate to technology. They relate to semiconductors.

They relate to our relationship to China and what would and how far would the United States go to defend Taiwan if China were to attempt to seize it. And senators vote on so many things related to this. Military funding and weapons sales and sanctions and potentially even our Americans sent to war to defend Taiwan against China. And her answer was basically, I don't know anything about that, but I love the military. And Lindsay was in the Air Force. And South Carolina Republicans nominated her anyway. She at her, I guess you would call it a victory speech gave the strangest defense for opposing single payer health care where she seems to basically be saying the patriotic way to do it instead of giving people health care is when people get sick, just die and leave your kids without parents. which is what happened to her. This is insane. She's like accidentally telling the truth. We have a plan. It's called just shut up and die. No person in South Carolina has pushed harder for the absolutely terrible idea of turning

confused little boys into little girls and vice versa than Annie Andrews. Gun control. Government run health care. A until the moment of birth, bad idea after bad idea, Annie Andrews backs them all. I have a different background in vision for our state. I'm a hard worker with a servant's heart. I grew up in the back of a bar and liquor store in one room in Central South Carolina. My parents worked long, hard hours to make ends meet. We didn't take vacations. If they were sick, they had to get up and go to. work because the doors weren't open. We weren't making money. My mother passed away when I was 11 and my father just over a year later. For the past how patriotic. 30 years, I've worked hard for the people of South Carolina. And for the past seven years, I've led a state agency and I go. So I guess she's

like, no single payer health care, this crazy democratic stuff, do it the right way. When my parents got sick, they just shut up and died. Now, interestingly, for all of her attacks on government involvement and everything, after her parents died, she did rely on government assistance. But she's not going to mention that. Now, fortunately, voters have another option in November. It is a great option. We are talking about Dr. Annie Andrews. She's a pediatrician. She's a mother. She's spent nearly 20 years actually caring for the children of South Carolina. She's treated newborns with jaundice and teenagers, mental health crises and families struggling with a really crappy healthcare system and one of the worst in fact in South Carolina.

That is real experience. And if you are in South Carolina or you're interested in helping, there is a great option in Annie Andrews who sees as a doctor how the decisions in D.C. affect hospital rooms and how they affect working families. And she's running on a completely read. There's nothing crazy about Annie Andrews platform. It's just like, we're going to protect health care. We're going to lower costs. We're going to fight for South Carolina families who are being ignored by people who just want to please Donald Trump.

And it is a really powerful contrast where on one side, you've got Darlene Graham, the picture of nepotism and cronyism appointed to her late brother's Senate seat to set despite having no experience, propelled through a primary despite going, I don't know. anything about foreign policy or national security. She had Trump's endorsement. She got 800 grand from Donald Trump's super PAC. That's one side. The other side is a doctor who has spent her career working and helping children and families understands how there's a trickle-down effect from government policy to what happens to people's lives. Now, I'm not naive to the reality that South Carolina is a tough state for any Democrat. We're not going to pretend otherwise.

But we don't give up. Difficult doesn't mean impossible, especially when Republicans have nominated someone who admits a huge part of the job is it's kind of not my thing, not my thing. This is where people need to get involved. So if you live in South Carolina, are you registered? Do you know where to vote? Have you talked to people about this race? And wherever you live, you can volunteer, you can make calls, you can donate, you can amplify Annie Andrews. And it would be a. remarkable victory to say we're not going to do the clueless nepotism stuff. We're not going to do it. What Republicans are counting on is that South Carolina leans so red that it doesn't matter how terrible their candidate is. Doesn't matter if she understands the job. They're counting on voters

looking and seeing South Carolina and going not winnable. We're not even going to bother. So let's not make it easy for them. Even if Annie Andrews doesn't win, make them spend money to defend it. And if they spend money in South Carolina, it's money they can't spend elsewhere. Being this uninformed really should be completely disqualifying and nepotism should not substitute experience. Well, she's clueless, but she's Lindsay's sister. Give me a break. And in addition to this, the beautiful cherry on top would be to make Trump lose on another one of his endorsements as we want to try to diminish the strength of that endorsement as much as we can. Annie Andrews is a great candidate. She deserves our support.

And also, we are up against it because it is South Carolina after all. So it's a race we will certainly talk more about. And one where, you know, sometimes we have these races where like there's a horrible Republican, but they're either essentially unopposed or the Democrat is terrible or whatever. Annie Andrews is great. We should be glad for that. Summer is a good time to upgrade the everyday things that make hot afternoons more comfortable. That's where our sponsor, Cozy Earth, can help. Cozy Earth's oversized beach towels are super plush,

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These are Trump voters. And there is a three time Trump voter that summed up the entire problem basically in four words. Stop the bullshit. I guess that's kind of three words. Depends on whether bull and okay. Anyway. There is this growing.

gap between what Trump promised to do and what people are experiencing. And one thing we learned from the Biden administration is you can tell people everything's awesome. But if they don't feel it's awesome, if they don't believe it's awesome, it's not going to work. And that's what Trump is up against right now. Listen to this guy. He says he voted for Trump three times, but he is sick of it. Well, you can't not vote for him again. So I guess it's not a day too soon. President Trump promised to bring down prices. You voted for him three times. times. Are you disappointed? Very disappointed. Very disappointed. Why? Because the price haven't gone down. I don't know. I don't know. I just, I'm over it, I think, over the Trump thing. The Trump wagon,

we're going to call it. You could talk directly to the president about the war, about the prices, about the economy. What would you tell him? Stop the bullshit. Make America great like you said. That's what I'd say. So listen, there's two sides to this. Is it devastating to Trump? Because these aren't, you know, MS now panelists delivering 12 minute monologues about Trump. And it's just someone who actually voted for Trump three times. Yeah, it's devastating in that sense.

But we're more than a decade into this thing. And the, you know, the chuckling and the, I guess it wasn't true that he was going to do all that stuff. There's also like a guys, we've been telling you this stuff for a decade. And then after the first four years of Trump, we said it to you again and you voted for him again. And then you voted for him again in 2024. So there's like it's great and it's terrible for Trump that this is happening. It's great for the country and terrible for Trump.

But also like, guys, come on. We've been, we warned you about this so many times. That being said, the underlying message is an important one with the midterm coming up, which is you told me things would get better. I believed you. I voted for you. They didn't get better. I'm sick of it.

Here is a MAGA Iowa voter. who is also, he's just sick of all this crap. Two years out of high school and I'm already struggling for my life. It's just, that shouldn't, that's not the American dream. If you could talk directly to President Trump, I would you tell him right now. I would just look him in the face and just say, you. There you go. Not mincing words.

So even though Trump's not on the ballot, he should be worried because of what happens if Republicans do lose control of the House or House and Senate. But there's a bigger issue here, which is that Trump and MAGA have survived politically by convincing supporters whatever's going wrong simply isn't Trump's fault. If prices are high, that's Biden. If the economy is weak, that's Democrats. The war isn't ending after two weeks. Someone else screwed it up.

Your grocery bill isn't going down. Well, it's actually fine. The economy's great. We've solved affordability. But it's so bad that people are noticing what's happening. to their lives. You can tell someone we defeated inflation the way Trump has done dozens of times. They know that they're paying more than ever at the grocery store and that they just spent 120 bucks and they look down at one bag of groceries and they go, what did I even get here? You can tell

them affordability as an issue has been resolved, but they see their credit card bill. They know they're racking up debt falling behind on their car loan. You can tell them this is the golden age of Trump. And then they look around and they go, man, things aren't feeling super golden right here. and this is what is so dangerous. The voters aren't saying, I wish Trump was more effective at communicating his accomplishments. No, they're saying, I'm over it. It's bullshit. F you.

That's a huge difference. And obviously, two people in interviews don't prove some massive national political realignment. Maybe these voters are unusual in some way. Or maybe they go right back to voting for Republicans, other Republicans. But the level of frustration is what is critical because it lines up with a bigger political problem for Trump. He created massive expectations. No one forced him to do it.

No one forced him to say, we're going to cut gas and energy by 50% in the first year. He could have campaigned on, give me the full four years and we will gradually improve affordability. Much less exciting promise, much more realistic one, but Trump promised instant results, ending wars overnight, lower prices, peace, prosperity, all this different stuff. And we were told, once you put me, the genius businessman back in charge, everything will become palpably and obviously better. Voters aren't experiencing it. Trump is running out of people to blame. And there's one other problem. Trump isn't going to change. Trump isn't suddenly going to become restrained, focused, and honest. That ship has sailed, probably sailed 70 years ago. He will keep exaggerating

and boasting and blaming everybody else and insisting that everything is just amazing, which means the more disconnected his rhetoric becomes from people's lives, the more voters are going to start having the same reactions as these people. They haven't converted ideologically. They're not liberals. They're not progressives or anything like that. They're just exhausted. I'm over the Trump thing. Promise after promise and it doesn't come true. Trump's entire movement depends on extraordinary personal loyalty. It's never revised. You never rethink it. And then, And therefore, now that is a major problem for them because the loyalty is only expected to go one way. Trump doesn't give a damn about these people.

And they are going to have some tough choice or not, they may be tough to them. They should be easy choices, but they are going to have some tough choices from the standpoint of continuing to support Republicans in November. Now, let me just say it again. I know I've said this a lot, but it is so important. I am still hearing from and talking to non-Trump Republicans who go, Trump's a mess. But I really like my senator who's a Republican. I really like my member of Congress who's a Republican. I just don't like Trump and what he's doing.

Your member of Congress, your senator, if they're a Republican, has been rubber stamping 92 to 99% of what Donald Trump wants. And so you should be holding them accountable. Don't lie to yourself. and say that while Trump is no good, your Republican representatives have been great because they have enabled Trump to do all of this stuff. They have not done anything to try to constrain him and they just rubber stamp one after the other every stupid thing that Trump wants.

So now we have an opportunity to hold him accountable. I say that we do it. There are Republican candidates who are realizing I got to run away from Trump or I am going to get crushed. There is one Trump endorsed congressional candidate that has started scrubbing Trump from his campaign website. And we have the before and after pictures and it is remarkable. I'm talking about Ralph Alvarado.

He's the Republican nominee in Kentucky's sixth congressional district. to be a state senator. He's a doctor. Used to be Tennessee's health commissioner. And during the primary, he was like, I'm all Trump, Trump aligned. I'm America first and all of that stuff. Trump endorsed him. He ran an ad campaign saying Trump is the only leader that I trust to protect this country. And his website even had him pictured with Donald Trump, smiling thumbs up. But now all of a sudden, Trump is gone. Take a look at this. We start with the earlier by it's, not even really a bio. It's a, you know, like kind of a hero image. And what he used to say is President Trump needs more allies in Congress to deliver on his bold vision. I will be that

fighter. That's gone. He now has a quote about health care. So the mention of Trump removed like it never like a miracle. It's gone. Now, the candidate didn't change and Trump didn't change. The voting intentions of Alvarado presumably didn't change. His assessment of Trump's character and agenda, I don't think changed. What changed is they are realizing Trump is like an anchor for them and they can ride that anchor to the bottom of the ocean. We then have another image, which was, this is the meat Ralph part. And what you see is that the before has him standing next to Trump and Trump has his doofy, stupid thumbs up look. And then they changed. change that. And now all of a sudden, it's just Dr. Ralph, Christian, husband, father, and physician.

And all of a sudden, there's no mention of being alongside Trump and the picture of him with Trump is also gone. Now, this is not altogether different from what happened with George W. Bush in 2008. Some of you may be old enough to remember that when John McCain became the Republican nominee in 2008, a Bush was basically missing from the entire presidential campaign because he was so unpopular. Trump is even less popular than Bush was at that point in time. And one of the things that changes from the primary to the general is that during the primary, you can get more mileage out of basically competing to show how much you love Trump. Once the general election begins, you need to start trying to pull in independence. You need to pull in some moderates. You need to pull in Republicans who are rightly disgusted with Donald Trump. So Trump becomes a liability. And so what do you do? You Photoshop them out of the

campaign. The picture with Trump is gone. The mentions of Trump are gone. And Alvarado's campaign is pushing back by, they were asked about this. And they go, well, Trump's picture is still elsewhere on our website. All right. I guess you haven't removed him from every corner of your website, but you've certainly removed him from the prominent sections, including your bio. People go to see, who is this guy, Ralph? It used to be, oh, he's pictured with Trump and Trump's doing a thumbs up. So that, that signals something. Now Trump is gone. He's gone from the bio. He's gone from the picture. And when you think back to 2008, Bush did endorse John McCain. John McCain did accept that endorsement, but he didn't make any campaign appearances for him in the

general. And one of the things John McCain did, he did he did. did was desperately work to distance himself from Bush, who was so unpopular. And Barack Obama repeatedly reminded voters McCain supported Bush's positions roughly 90% of the time. That's what I'm reminding you about your so-called moderate Republican representative. Now, Trump has not yet reached the catastrophically end of president, catastrophically low end of presidency approval of 24. But it is not the end of Trump's presidency yet. So at this point in the presidency, he is less popular. And Republicans are going to sort of be voting not only for their representatives in November,

but they are going to be voting for who is going to set the agenda and be the kingmaker going into 2028. And at least some of these candidates seem to be realizing that the affiliation, the association with Donald Trump is not a good idea. They did arguably need Trump to win their. primaries where the voting base is far more radical, but now they need to win over voters who can't stand Donald Trump. And one of the things that Republicans spent years doing is attaching themselves completely. They just gave themselves up like cult members to Donald Trump. You don't get to delete

his picture. And now all of a sudden you're an independent thinker. You can delete mentions of Trump. You can change the pictures. But your record doesn't change. And Dr. Ralph, as he wants to be known, has a long track record of paying homage showing cult like loyalty to Donald Trump. And we shouldn't allow voters to forget that. Now, are there other candidates who will make a different calculation? Of course, there are in other part that even though Trump is deeply unpopular, there are parts of the country where he is more popular. And there are really red states where you don't, you know, Kentucky is, is interesting

because they've got a Democratic governor and there are different dynamics at play. So the calculation might be different in a place like Utah or Arkansas or Mississippi, where it's actually much more to your advantage to align yourself with Donald Trump. But the most important point is the more independent the voting base seems to be, the more open to considering who is really working in my interest. and who is working to line his own pockets, voters are willing to ask that question, they are going to be increasingly leaning against Donald Trump because anyone who really honestly thinks about that question knows that the answer is Trump's in it for himself, not for anybody else.

So Trump is being scrubbed. We will see if even more candidates decide to do the same thing. Every political story has two parts. What happened and what different media outlets want you to think happened. And you can see the framing difference pretty clearly in this story about Donald Trump signing a $70 billion immigration bill after this long fight over ICE funding. On the left, the focus is what will the money fund billions for the next three years of Trump's mass deportation campaign. On the right, the emphasis is Trump taking future ice shutdowns off the table by signing the bill. One side is asking, what does this mean for immigration enforcement for mass deportations? The other is framing it as Trump ending the threat of ice shutdowns.

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or a search result or a business database. You can paste that link into Incogni and they'll get to work right away to get it taken down. Removing your info from these databases means it's harder for scammers and identity thieves to reach you and you can get 60% off an annual plan at incogni.com slash Pacman with the code Pacman. The link is in the description. Trump started a trade war with Canada. Canada decided we're not going to surrender. And Trump now is. reacting like a guy who flipped over the monopoly board because no one would let him buy park place, except it's not monopoly. It's international trade. It affects hundreds of billions of dollars. And Trump seems genuinely furious that Canada will not simply do whatever he tells them to do.

How dare they think about what's best for them? So Trump spent yesterday just attacking Canada in a series of increasingly bizarre posts after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said, we're not going to accept these demands. Trump wrote, Canada's been ripping the USA off for decades. They're charging our farmers' tariffs of 400% or more. Canada's driving American businesses out of business. Now, all of this stuff is either straight up false or very misleading. For example, the 400% claim.

Canada has very high over quota tariffs on certain dairy products. But those rates apply only after the dairy, the dairy free. The, it's soy tariffs. No, the after the tariff free quotas have been exceeded and the lower tariff quotas have been exceeded. But Trump doesn't care about that. He's angry because he has this negotiating strategy, which is everybody should bow down to me. And it's not working.

He imposed tariffs. He said and thought and believed, I guess, Canada was going to panic. And Canada was going to run back and say, Mr. Trump, please, what do we have to do to make it stop? And Mark Carney is like, yeah, we're not going to do that. Now, one sticking point apparently is about Trump's demands to weaken protections for the French language in Canada. Trump came back and was like, I never said they couldn't speak French, but that's not what it

was about. It was about packaging and labeling. Mark Carney was just like, we're not going to do that either. So Trump announces 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. And then he starts this crazy posting spree. We would never interfere with Canadian speaking French. This is the most, the Canada's being the most difficult and unreasonable of any country I'm dealing with. And then he even had this insane statement where Trump said about Canada, they feel entitled, but they are not a state. and will be entitled no longer.

What's happening here is that Donald Trump grew up, basically from the time he was a kid, to expect others to behave a certain way with him. And now that Canada isn't behaving that way, Trump's incapable of interacting with them without reminding them of his fantasy that somehow a sovereign country will become the 51st U.S. state and then just posting time after time after time about Canada. Over the last 10 years, the U.S. lost on average $60 billion a year with Canada. No more. This is another confusion for Trump.

Trump describes a trade deficit as losing. That is not how trade deficits work. But my favorite part of the tantrum is that Trump got so angry at Ontario, which, by the way, is where the Canadian auto industry is very important to American trade. He was so angry with Ontario that he said, you know what? They might force me to rename Lake Ontario, Lake America. So this is the childish toddler mentality. Canada won't give me what I want.

So I'm going to rename a lake and then I'll show them. Now the slight complication, of course, not that he cares is Lake Ontario's an international body of water. It's bordered by both the US and Canada. And Canada's response to all of this. So much of this I summarized for you yesterday. Now Canada has had a chance to respond. Are they they're so scared of what Trump is doing.

They're going to buckle. No. They're not doing it. Canada has announced $20 billion in retaliatory tariffs on American goods. So the the sort of sequence here simplified is Trump started a trade war. Canada didn't back down. Trump insulted them. Canada is now retaliating.

Trump escalated. Canada's refusing to capitulate. Trump is escalating more and threatening and saying they're being difficult and unreasonable and I will rename a lake. And then they're going, yeah, we don't care. We're not impressed by any of this. The master negotiator, bringing in a businessman is going to be so good for the presidency. Other countries will bend to my will because I'm so tough and you think they were scared

of Obamna? No, they're scared of me. And instead, Canada has figured out something very important, which is Trump makes a lot of threats, but the threats only work if everybody is terrified to say we're not going to bow down. And Canada has decided we are not going to bow down. Now, I got a couple of interesting questions in the email yesterday about what is the economic effect of these retaliatory tariffs. In other words, isn't there a zero sum nature where if we put tariffs on 50 billion and

they put tariffs on 50 billion, it just sort of balances out? You know, the answer to this, you don't really need to go more deeply than to say, well, it balances out in terms of trade, but everybody ends up paying more for. stuff. Like, you could make that the analysis and leave it there. The truth is the analysis is a little bit more nuanced and we're not going to be able to complete that analysis here. But the concept would be depending on what we tariff from Canada and what Canada tariffs from the United States, it might not just be zero sum in this sense. If we tariff final goods from Canada and can this is hypothetical and Canada tariffs component parts from the United States, which then are used to build

higher value things in Canada, then that's probably worse for the United States than Canada. The details don't matter so much as the concept that what is being tariffed, the nature of what is being tariffed, how many substitutes there are for what is being tariff. If we tariff something from Canada that there are easy, alternatives for for American businesses, then that changes versus whether it's something we can really only get from Canada. But it doesn't even really matter. The point is trade wars make stuff more expensive for the average end user, the consumer.

And this is when we're already in the middle of an affordability crisis. So it is a very bad idea. That's the important takeaway. I thought you could cure measles with chicken soup. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told us apparently it's not true. This is very serious. People are now dying of measles in the United States. We knew how to control it. We've got a great, safe, effective vaccine. And at some point, we have to stop pretending it's another quirky RFK Jr. Controversy. When you put vaccine conspiracy theorists in charge of public health, there are real

consequences and now two people they're dead. Two unvaccinated people have died from measles in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. These are the first measles deaths in Pennsylvania in more than three decades. Pennsylvania has reported almost 400 confirmed measles cases in 28 counties this year. Governor Josh Shapiro is beside himself trying to figure out how can we undo the damage that RFK and Trump's Department of Health and Human Services are doing here. Now, nation, We're around 3,000 cases. That's roughly the highest number in 35 years. And there is something stunning about where these deaths happened.

And I mentioned it. It's Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. RFK went to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. And he stood in front of a crowd talking about measles and listened to what he said. This is the guy Trump put in charge of American public health. Listen to what RFK said about measles and treating it. God. Now I got, I am a measles survivor. It was extraordinary, lucky. Very, very lucky to have lived through that nightmare. Because we had to stay at home and watch TV the whole week with all of my

brothers and sisters. It was horrible. And, oh, what is the cure? What is the cure? What is the cure? for measles. Your measles is chicken soup and vitamin A. Ha ha ha ha ha ha chicken soup and vitamin A. Now the Secretary of Health of Human Services talking about one of the most contagious diseases on earth and two unvaccinated people have died from measles in that very county where he said that. Now, I'm not suggesting that Kennedy's comments caused these particular deaths. We don't know. that. I certainly can't say that. But we can say something much broader and probably more important, which is that public health depends on trust. The person running HHS should make it

easier to distinguish medical evidence from conspiracy theories, not harder. Measles vaccination is really good at preventing measles. Kennedy has been spreading doubt and misinformation about vaccines, about the seriousness of measles, about the need to vaccinate. And now there are growing calls for him to resign or be fired. Now, I don't think Trump's going to fire him. Trump loves this stuff. But we have heard from Maryland Senator Angela also Brooks, who says these lies in conspiracy theories are quite literally making people sick. He must be removed. Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock said he is a hazard to our health. He should resign. And Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro stopped, I guess, sort of short of saying he has to leave, but said he had a blunt conversation

with him where he said, you are causing a problem. Your statements and your misinformation are making people in my state of Pennsylvania less healthy and less safe. And that is exactly right. This is why, you know, there was a lot of laughing when it became clear that RFK was going to be running American health policy. But it's not funny. And it was never, you know, look at the eccentric guy with the brain worm who eats roadkill. Ha, ha, ha, this is going to be so funny. If you spend years convincing people that doctors and scientists and vaccines and public health agencies at the federal level and public health agencies at the state level. None of them can be trusted. Some percentage of people is going to listen. And some of those won't vaccinate themselves and some won't vaccinate

their kids. And when vaccination rates fall, diseases that were gone will be back. And Trump bears responsibility for it. He knew who Kennedy was. Everybody knew who Kennedy was. long record of vaccine skepticism. It's not like, oh, once he was nominated and he went to the confirmation hearings, he was like, I'm not so big on vaccines. This was one of the central controversies regarding the appointment. This is a multi-decade anti-vaxxer. And Trump put him in charge. And we have the numbers. It's not this vague. Well, you guys fearmongered about RFK and now like we see it. Highest measles caseload in 35 years. And it is not an internet debate. This is not people arguing. on Reddit or X on TikTok or whatever. Diseases spreading, infecting people, families dealing with

it, and now people are dead. So if the people running the healthcare system face no consequences, what does that say about the direction that this country is going? Now, I'm not like, I'm not huge on designating countries first world or third world, especially like in a pejorative way and There's the even worse phrase banana republic, which is extraordinarily pejorative. That's not what I mean. But we've covered before attitudes towards public health in some developing nations. And we had when there was the Ebola crisis and American doctors were sent to West Africa, we had these horrible anecdotal stories about just completely false beliefs about medicine and

And I don't it's hard to talk about it without kind of being pejorative. But we were we were shocked by what some of the views in West Africa were with regard to what the West has come to learn about about Ebola. Fine. When we see stuff like this and people laughing off vaccines and going every vaccine is bad, it's poison, all this, all this different stuff. We start to say to ourselves, are we sort of in the state of a of a developing nation where there is so much misinformation and just clueling.

around basic public health interventions. And unfortunately, we kind of are. This is very state stratified in the sense that what's happening in Connecticut and Massachusetts around these issues couldn't possibly be more different from what's happening in, you know, West Virginia and the more rural parts of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is a pretty purple state overall. So it is very state stratified, but stratified. But still, this is that we're going back. folks and RFK is proudly leading us into it. Hey, if you're hearing this, that means you're listening to our podcast on one of the many podcast networks that we stream to.

And first, I just want to say thank you for being a listener of this show. It really means a lot that you're tuning in here. I would love to ask you for a quick favor. We are so close to reaching 4 million subscribers on YouTube. YouTube is where we post everything you get through the audio podcast and a lot more stuff. It would mean a lot to me if you took a quick second to pop over to YouTube, search up the David Pacman show and hit subscribe. Every bit helps. I would love to have you as a subscriber there. This is very serious. Donald Trump is trying to seize power over how states run their

elections and we're just weeks away from this midterm election. And if that were only what he was trying to do and not succeeding, we could say, okay, well, he's not going to get away with that. But the Supreme Court has now given him at least a temporary green light to do this. This did not get the attention it deserves. In a six to three decision along ideological lines, the majority, the conservative majority of the court lifted an injunction that was blocking key portion of Trump's executive order targeting mail-in voting. And what the order wants to do is create a federal list of eligible voters and tell the Postal Service only send ballots to people on this list. So think about what Donald Trump is trying to do. The federal

government wants to put together a list. The Postal Service would be forced to look at that list. And if your name is missing or it's there incorrectly or whatever, an agency controlled by Trump could interfere with the delivery of your ballot right before an election in which Republicans and Trump are terrified that they're going to lose control of Congress. What could possibly go wrong, right? Now, Trump, of course, has spent six years now without evidence claiming that mail in voting is riddled with fraud. He votes by mail, of course, but it's fine for him to do it. And he has tried to impose a whole bunch of different voting restrictions through Congress. That hasn't really worked. So now he's trying to do it through executive power and six

conservative Supreme Court justices just allowed the administration to move forward at least temporarily. Now, we need to be precise about what the court actually decided. The justices have not ruled that Trump has the constitutional authority to do this. They haven't ruled that he has the statutory authority to do this. What they said is the lower court intervened prematurely. Federal agencies hadn't yet completed their plans for how they would do this. And it was too early for an earlier court to intervene. This is an unsigned ruling from the Supreme Court.

And it explicitly says whatever the government ultimately does might be legal. They're not saying it is or it isn't, but they're saying the intervention happened too soon. That technical distinction doesn't reduce the danger of this. The administration can keep building the machinery and opponents are going to have to scramble to find new challenges. And we are weeks away from this election. Early ballots are going to be going out very soon. Now, Justice Katanji Brown Jackson made a statement about this.

And she said the majority of focusing on the majority's focus on better said, this technical procedural argument is ignoring that there's a broader effort being made by this administration to generate chaos ahead of the November elections. And this is often unfortunately, unfortunately, unfortunately in practice, although to a degree, it's how the Supreme Court operates. The Supreme Court will often make a decision on narrow technical grounds and avoid addressing the broader question, which is, can Trump just upend mail in voting through executive order? Now, even if Donald Trump ultimately loses in court, this confusion can be very useful.

Create a new voter list, change postal service procedures, force states to sue, then people are unsure which ballot is going to come to me. Is it going to count? Is it not going to count? And then if Republicans lose, they can point to the chaos they created as evidence that it was illegitimate states were sending out multiple different types of ballots. Well, that all happened because of what you were doing in court. Now, the administration of Trump insists that the final postal service regulations are much narrower than Trump's executive order. We're not going to have ballots rejected because the sender was absent from a voter list.

Well, then why is Trump trying to insert himself in this process? at all. States have the primary role of administering elections. And this is why when we spoke to attorney Mark Elias about Trump declaring an emergency to stop the midterms, he said, that's not really a thing. States decide that they are doing elections and how they are doing them and administer them. And you might have some Republican governors who hear Trump declare an emergency and they decide to play ball, but there's no way for the federal government to force states to say we are not doing our elections. And that extends to this situation as well. Trump doesn't get to invent federal control over mail and ballots just because Congress

refused to pass his restrictions. Now, California says it's going to sue again. New York Attorney General Lettisha James says this is not going to be the final word. Other courts are going to presumably find other ways to block this before November. But we should really understand what Trump is getting away with for now. He issues an executive order of very questionable legality. lower courts block it and then a Supreme Court with three of his own nominees says, eh, we found a procedural reason to get rid of this obstacle.

And the administration gets a step closer to using federal power to interfere between both voters and their ballots. This is how you weaken a democratic system. You get a technical ruling here, an improvised power grab there, a confusing rule that is deliberately confusing and the next thing you know, you have wreaked havoc on these elections. Now, I'm going to go back to what I said all the way. This is going to be an old one for some of our younger members in the audience all the way back in 2012 when Mitt Romney was running against Barack Obama. In Pennsylvania, one of Romney's officials said, voter ID will deliver Pennsylvania

to Mitt Romney. And therefore, the 2012. election. Now, Barack Obama ultimately won re-election and he won it easily. But the point here is, if you're convinced that you're going to win fairly, you don't start doing this stuff and you don't risk confusing people and creating chaos. And if you're convinced that you're going to win and and it's that simple, you just let the election happen. You do this stuff if you suspect you may lose and they suspect that they may lose. And that's why it's up to us. Listen, what can we do? do. On the one hand, we've got to vote. We've got to run up the score as much as we can because the bigger the margins are, the more difficult it is to win by confusing some portion of voters or

win by messing with mail in voting or whatever the case may be. But on the other hand, and I say this every election and Democrats don't always come through, we have to make sure that we are pulling out every single stop to ensure that we've got lawyers, we've got poll watchers, we've got courts may, doing everything that can be done to prevent these federal power grabs over what at the end of the day are state administered and state elections. The problem at the states is there's a lot of wacky secretaries of state, attorneys general, and of course, governor. So we've got a we've got our work cut out for us here.

But the reward for knocking out Republican control at, knocking out Republican control of at least the House of Representatives would be a major victory and we've got to make sure that it happens. Donald Trump's trade war is going down the toilet and I mean it literally. One of the latest casualties of Donald Trump's escalating tariff war with Canada is something that we really, really don't want getting more expensive in the United States. And I'm talking, of course, of toilet paper, one of the most important products for Donald Trump's day-to-day life. After trade negotiations between the United States and Canada collapsed, we now, as I told you, see the countries exchanging massive dumps of tariffs and paper products

are getting absolutely brutalized. And Canada says that starting September 8th, not very long from now, hundreds of Americans are going to be facing retaliatory tariffs on a bunch of products between 25 and 50%. That includes toilet paper. And if you're thinking, well, I'll use Kleenex instead, it's also going to apply to facial tissue and paper towels. Now, why would Americans care about Canada putting tariffs on American toilet paper? Because Donald Trump has simultaneously imposed a 50% tariff on Canadian paper products. And the American toilet paper industry is far more connected to Canada than you might realize.

A lot of the American toilet paper is manufactured in the United States. but the industry relies on Canada for the raw materials. You might have noticed from looking at a map. Now, some people don't have maps. So you've got to look at pictures. But when you look at maps, you see that Canada has a lot of trees. And the United States imports a lot of Canadian toilet paper as well. In 2024, the United States imported $328 million worth of toilet paper from Canada,

making Canada the biggest foreign supplier of toilet paper. And major retailers in the United States. source a lot of those paper products from Canada. Manufacturers have warned this Canadian trade war is going to lead to significantly higher prices on these products. Procter and Gamble owns Charmin, ultra soft, 12 ply, softer than a baby's bottom, right? Procter and Gamble's Charmin. They said last year, tariffs are going to force them to raise prices. And we are now looking at something even worse. We are looking at creating a toilet paper price problem for ourselves because Trump decided let's do another trade war. Let's do it with one of our closest allies. Now, if you're

wondering, do Americans really use enough toilet paper for this to matter? Oh yeah. Trump alone is going through roll after roll after roll as he is flushing, who knows what, including classified documents down his toilet. Americans reportedly used an average of 141 rolls of paper per person per year, which sounds very high because that's like a role per person, every two and a half days in a family of four. That would basically be a new roll of toilet paper every eight hours. So I got to admit, I don't really understand how this is being measured. But Americans reportedly use 141 rolls per paper of paper per person per year, which would

put the United States as number one in the world for toilet paper consumption. And toilet paper is only one example of the absurdity here. If we move beyond paper and look at the massive tariffs that Trump has placed on Canadian dairy, and cars and auto parts. Canada is retaliating against American dairy and American seafood and a whole bunch of other products. Now, Susan Collins is worried. This is sort of an aside. I'll mention this. Susan Collins, who is embroiled in a tough reelection campaign in Maine, she's worried because the tariff on American seafood will go directly to Maine's lobster industry. You go into Quebec and a lot of that lobster comes from over the border in Maine.

That could be a real problem for Susan Collins. If there's any glimmer of positivity in this, this might be bad for Susan Collins, but the main issue is it's going to be bad for everyday Americans and that's really what we care about. Now, Trump's U.S. trade representative, Jameson Greer, horrible guy. He says there's no way the trade war is going to affect American consumers. You're putting huge taxes on finished products and raw materials crossing one of the largest trade relationships on earth. Businesses are saying this is going to be a problem.

And you're just going, no, it's all totally fine. It's not how tariffs work. Companies importing tariff goods pay the tariffs to the treasury. They can absorb some of that, but typically they shift about 80 to 85% of those cost increases directly onto consumers. Now contrast this with the promises of. Donald Trump. Everything will be cheaper. Affordability will be fixed. And what we're now talking about is how much more expensive is it going to be for Trump to wipe his butt? Trump wants to show Canada,

who's boss? It looks like once again, Americans are going to be picking the tab up one square at a time. And that is yet another disaster. And what's so the reason the toilet paper story is particularly interesting is if you think back to COVID, there was so much talk of. toilet paper. Toilet paper is we've got no supply and it's expensive and people are hoarding and because people are home instead of at work, those massive industrial sized roles that are really for public bathrooms can't be rejiggered in order to work in home dispensers. And we will never at once Trump takes over.

We will never again have a toilet paper shortages. And now we're looking at toilet paper getting 25 to 50% more expensive. So that's really the issue here. It is yet another hypocrisy. It is yet another way in which the average American gets screwed. Now on the bonus show today, a California couple is confronting their surrogate in a Texas court. There is a huge dispute over a newborn that is escalating. It's a crazy story.

Now Target is once again getting hit with backlash for a Halloween costume with what are being described as minstrel show features. We will look at it. And a judge strikes down the Texas ban on drag shows saying if you're offended by drag shows, don't go to drag shows. Personal responsibility, freedom, liberty. What a concept. All of those stories on today's bonus show.

Find it at join packman.com. And we, I am about, I am days from going and signing all of the preordered signed copies of my book. If you want to get a signed copy of my forthcoming book, pay attention, which is on the shelf behind me. Go to David Pakman.com slash attention. Get the order in. You can also get the book in Kindle, audio book, et cetera. I will sign them. I'm practicing my signature.

It's going to be nothing like Trump's crazy vertical signature. It'll be a normal signature. David Pakman.com slash attention.