The David Pakman Show - Tariff scam collapses as health panic explodes

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

-- On the Show: -- A federal trade court blocks Donald Trump’s new 10% global tariffs, ruling they were not justified under decades-old trade law -- Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says Americans should take summer road trips despite gas reaching $4.55 a gallon -- Donald Trump abruptly cancels a live press event with Brazil’s president without explanation, leaving reporters waiting for hours -- Donald Trump makes confusing and false claims about military strikes, gas prices, the stock market, and public health at the White House -- Republican officials shift attention toward voter fraud claims as voters remain frustrated over prices, instability, and Trump’s unmet promises -- The Friday Feedback segment -- On the Bonus Show: Mehdi Hasan destroys Michael Knowles in January 6 debate, Americans get polled about beating Trump in a fight, and much more... 💳 PDS Debt: Get your free assessment & find the best option for you at https://pdsdebt.com/pakman 🤖 Sponsored by Venice: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off a Pro Account at https://venice.ai/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code DAVID for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.com/david 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman 🔬 Freedom From Religion Foundation: Text DAVID to 511511 or go to https://ffrf.us/david -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start (01:36) Trump officials insist the economy is fine (08:17) Republicans try rigging the midterms (21:15) Trade court shuts down Trump's tariffs (27:33) Trump abruptly cancels meeting with Brazilian president (39:04) Trump misleads on gas prices, stock market (47:36) Friday Feedback segment Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Give her something unforgettable, thoughtful, meaningful, uniquely hers. Give more than a gift for less. Give AncestryDNA.A. Visit Ancestry.CA today. Offer ends May 10th. Terms apply. A federal court dealt a crushing blow to the latest tariff scheme of the Trump administration. Now, you might say, wait, I thought that they already had the tariff struck down. The Trump administration went back and tried a different justification from the 70s for the tariffs. And that one is also against the law. Trump says they will try again.

Full propaganda mode launches as gas prices surpass 450 a gallon and Trump administration officials have turned to just saying everything's great. Gas prices are fine. 350 was way too high when Biden was president, but 450 is great when it's Donald Trump. Also, the president disappearing from a scheduled live press event with the Brazilian president. Instead, they made it closed to the press. And even Fox News was left to wonder, what's going on here? This is really weird. We will also talk about whether winning by cheating is really winning.

I would argue the answer is no, but Republicans seem to have no problem foregoing convincing people that their policies are good and instead trying to secure the midterm elections of 2026 by manipulating voting systems. I don't think that that's really winning, but I'll make my case and then you can decide. All of that and much more today. A court has just devastated Donald Trump's blanket tariffs saying that they are illegal. Now, you might be saying, I thought the Supreme Court already decided that. I thought the tariffs were already ruled illegal.

Yes. But then the Trump administration went back and said, let's try it again with a different legal justification and now a trade court says, you also can't do that. What the Trump administration tried to do after the Supreme Court said, sir, you can't do that is go back and use a sort of obscure justification from 1970s trade law to say, yes, we can put blanket tariffs on everybody and everything. The earlier tariff scheme was struck down by the Supreme Court in February and now this has been struck down. What the White House essentially did is they went through old trade law and tried to find some justification for forcing through tariffs without going through Congress. That's the key because if they tried to go through Congress, even the hairbrained and dilapidated

Republicans in Congress, at least some of them would have said, no, we're not going to do that because these blanket tariffs are bad for the country. They're bad for the American people. wouldn't have worked. So Trump had to find some way to do it without Congress and it has failed. Now, this is separate from the reality that the blanket tariffs are an economic disaster. We didn't need the Supreme Court to tell us that. We didn't need a trade court to tell us that. We figured that out on our own. What we did need a court to tell us is that it's illegal. And Donald Trump reacting to the court blocking this attempt at tariffs by doing what he always does. attacking the judges, radical left, blah, blah, blah, no surprise.

Used to do an Obama, they give $6 billion to get some person out. What's your reaction, sir, to the Court of International Cray's ruling against your 10% across the board tariffs? Well, we were surprised. We had one very positive vote. We had two radical left judges that voted against it. If you vote with him, that's great. If you don't, you're a radical left judge.

So nothing surprises me with the courts. Nothing surprises me. What happened? So we always do it a different way. We get one rule legal, we do it a different way. We're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars from tariffs. And we're taking it away from countries, frankly, that have ripped us off for years. Now, just remember, we aren't taking any money away from other countries.

The hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs that we are quote, taking in are coming from American companies. I have friends who import stuff and the way it works is as follows. You buy chotchkes from China and you pay the Chinese company. They throw it on a boat and then it shows up at a port in the United States. And now the port authorities say you've got to pay us the tariff. You've already paid China for the stuff. They've got their money. But the port authority says we need to collect tariffs to send to the Treasury.

And so you is the importer bringing in the Chinese chotchkes cut a check or a wire transfer, Western Union, whatever, for the amount of the tariffs. You as the company have paid the tariffs. China has not paid the tariffs. But Trump is basically saying, you know, we're just going to try again. We'll find some other way. And this confers a deep disrespect for. constitutional limits. It is not a respect for separation of powers. The mindset of I'll just try again with some other obscure justification is the mindset of someone who sees the constitution and the law and the courts as an obstacle course that I need to try to get around however I can, not something that places constraints on executive power, which is I thought the way that

Republicans were supposed to see this stuff. Now, according to the ruling, what Trump did wrong is he improperly used section 122 of the 1974 trade act. This is very obscure law, admittedly, and that was put in place for a really specific historical moment when the US dollar was tied to gold and lawmakers at the time were worried about currency reserves collapsing. That's the reason that that was put in place and Trump, of course, attempting to misuse it. The reality, of course, we all know this. These blanket tariffs function like taxes. Trump said he was against new taxes, but it is in fact a new tax. It's a regressive tax because it disproportionately hits people who earn less money and smaller companies that are less able

to pay tariffs on imported goods. And it's an incredible kind of irony, even though irony probably understates it because Trump spent years attacking inflation under Biden and saying, we're going to bring it down. But all along, we saw that he was proposing policy, that would actually bring the price level up. You put an import tax on everything. Just going to make stuff costs more. It's very simple economics. I don't even know that it's college economics. I think I learned that in high school economics. Associated, Associated Press AP economics with Mr. Baldwin. I think even Mr. Baldwin explained this to us. And now courts are telling him it's sort of irrelevant in the sense that you don't even have the authority to do it this way.

Now, there is one other problem that this creates for the. the administration, which is that after the Supreme Court said you can't do it this way and after the trade court says you can't do it that way, the tariffs are going to need to be refunded. And there's a process for requesting those refunds. And the refunds don't go to China. If China had paid the tariffs, China would get the refunds. The refunds go to American companies. And Trump has already said it's a great thing that some companies aren't asking for the refunds. The latest signal that you've got to remain loyal. You paid tariffs that were. illegally collected, you have the opportunity to get the tariff money back, but you choose not to,

out of patriotism for Donald Trump, you get to stay on Donald Trump's good boy list. And if you request the money back, you might just end up with a proverbial bag of coal at the end of the rainbow. Dear God, we are screwed with this stuff. They are hoping that your brain, doesn't have the capacity to figure out that they are lying to you about gas prices and the state of the economy. Gas is now over 455 a gallon. These are the highest gas prices in almost four years. And it is not because of an unpredictable, vague, global event that nobody could have foreseen. Now, it's because Donald Trump launched an optional war with Iran who controls 20% of global oil supply that goes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Some know it is the Strait of Bermouth. We are now beyond the point at which they can come up with anything substantive to tell you that there is no reason to worry. So they are just telling you everything's great. We're in a good place. Really? What does that mean? Here is transportation secretary Sean Duffy, a former reality show contestant telling us,

it's all good. If you're getting ready for a summer road trip, we often see gas prices go up into the summer as there's more demand. People take road trips. Not me. I'm not a big fan of long road trips, but there are people who love it, love it. And they buy a lot of gas and gas prices go up. If you're worried about the cost of that road trip, rest assured that Sean Duffy says, you don't have to worry. Why you don't have to worry? I don't know. But he says you don't have to worry. A very different world. And I just don't think we had other presidents who've been willing to see the threat and address the threat of Iran. And so I think opens up. You're going to see prices come down immediately. You saw yesterday energy prices came down below $100 a barrel.

I think right 93 this morning. I don't quote me on that. But I was looking at things like 92, 93 for Brent Crude. So we're in a good place. We see the price of Peru going down significantly recently, but when could we see that at the pump, especially now we're getting into that summer blend, gasoline. 90% of Americans take road trips for their summer vacation. Well, we want to encourage all Americans to take a road trip, whether you're going to go two hours or two days, to see your country. Everyone should come to Philadelphia, by the way.

This is where it all started. Great history here. So if you think about a summer road trip, come to Philadelphia. But it's interesting the way gas stations work. It's really fascinating. It's really. Let's talk. Forget about the fact that gas is 458 a gallon.

Gas stations are just so interesting. They've got pumps and they've got little TV screens that try to sell you stuff while you're pumping gas. Tell me if the critical thinking triggers for you at any point as we hear these people just argue that it's all great in the economy. really being able to do a defense of energy prices because Trump promised down 50% and gas is up 66%. A little bit different than what was promised. They are trying to shift to other topics.

Like for example, economic advisor Kevin Hassett says, we added construction jobs. Now tell me if critical thinking kicks in here. Okay. When you hear the claim he makes, there's a question you should be asking yourself. Let's listen. And then I'll tell you what that question is. Anybody who works at a factory is going to see a huge increase in the demand for their labor as the factories get set up. And it's happening in Trump time.

You know, one of the most brilliant things that President Trump did, and he was 100% the guy. I was in the Oval when he said this, is that let's not have expensing for new factory buildings go on forever. Let's have it last for only four years. And so right now, if you want to get your full tax benefit, if you're building a new factory to create jobs in anybody's small town, then that factory has to be up and running in four years. Isn't that great? If you're struggling to pay for gas, there are benefits to be had if you build a factory, okay? Otherwise, they don't get the big deduction.

And so there's a race unlike anything we've ever seen to create jobs in America right now. And since President Trump signed that pledge, 54,000 jobs have been created for construction workers for building factories, 54,000. They're out there working as hard as they can. And then once they get the building up, the bricks and everything, the bricks and mortar, Then they have to put in electric. They got to put in plumbing and so on. And so I think the trades are definitely going to be very, very high demand.

All right. So what is the critical thinking question that we should all be asking? Kevin Hassett goes, things are great because there are 54,000 factory construction jobs that have been created by these factories. Well, there's a bunch of questions you should be asking. The first one is, is 54,000 a lot or not? Remember that in the United States, we have for now, a growing population. So to some degree, jobs need to be generated merely to keep up with the growing population. Creating some jobs matching population growth isn't really net job growth. That's question number one. And the reality is that that is not a lot of jobs. Number two, if you already work in construction and you get put on a factory job, that's not a new job. It's sort of like, imagine

that there was some new thing that was being done to cars, right? Hey, you know what? We have just created a bunch of new car mechanic jobs because we require every car to have a do-hickie installed. Look at all of the people working and installing do-hickies. Well, what if most of those people were already car mechanics? Yes, they have a new task that they're doing, but those aren't new jobs. Those are just the car mechanics that are now doing a new thing.

That's another issue. factory construction jobs are just these are people already working in construction. They're not new jobs. And then maybe most importantly, overall, manufacturing construction jobs are down since Donald Trump came into office. And so even if we were to accept that these were 54,000 new jobs, which they're not, that number is actually down over the year plus that Donald Trump has been in office. So you've got to be able to think through the things that they are telling you. Here's another one about how great everything is. Brooke Rawlins, Ag secretary, agriculture. She says very soon farmers will be in a golden age. You've just got to wait for it. Don't blink because you might miss it. For our farmers

and our ranchers, for farm security, for food security, making sure our farmers can prosper as they move into hopefully what will be a golden age under this president, these trade deals are very important. But the president also understands that the over reliance on a country like China has massive implications from a national security perspective. So we are very grateful that the president has moved out. He's put the farmers at the top of his list as he's- Yeah. So listen, in Trump's first term, he screwed the farmer so badly that they required a bailout.

In Trump's second term, he screwed the farmers even worse and they required a bailout. But Brooke Rollins wants you to believe, number one, that Trump cares about farmers, which he doesn't. And number two, that we are just, even though he screwed him once and he screwed him twice, we're on the border here. We are just so close, so close to the golden age for farmers under Trump. My suspicion is the golden age for farmers is a little further in the future and it won't come until Trump is actually gone. And then finally, here is energy secretary, Chris Wright, asked on Fox, what about people's gas price concerns?

And here's what Chris Wright had to say. And what about people's concern about gas prices? They're seeing numbers that you give them some heartburn and some heartache. And it's hard for a lot of people to figure out how they're going to stomach this for much longer. It is. And of course, it's been tough for our administration as well. This is an administration, the first Trump term and the second Trump term, all about lowering energy prices and an incredibly successful record in doing that. So when President Trump looked

at the trade-offs of going into Iran right now, he knew his sort of beautiful record of just constantly pushing down energy prices, gasoline headline prices as well. But Iran has roughly a thousand pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent, massively higher than you ever need for any commercial power production. It's actually quite close to weapons-grade uranium. So they just get to this threshold where they're not far away from nuclear bombs. Yeah. Reppens wade. Reppens weighed uranium. Listen, um, is anybody falling for this shit? I mean, honestly, when you hear when you hear rights say this stuff, does that sound good to you? Because Trump has had such success pushing gas prices down that he knew that this was a worthwhile

trade off in order to go into Iran because they have nearly weapons grade uranium. I want to remind you, why are they enriching uranium? Because Donald Trump got out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 for no real reason other than he hated it because it has Barack Obama's name on it. And now we're supposed to believe that Trump has the best interest of the average American in mind, that everything is great and that we are on the cusp of a golden age of the American economy. These people can't be kicked out fast enough. And we've got to start in November because otherwise it is only going to get worse. If debt feels like it's draining your attention each month. Multiple due dates, rising interest, balances that barely move. You are not alone.

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paceman.com. Panic exploded yesterday after Donald Trump simply disappeared from what was supposed to be a meeting with the Brazilian president open to the press. This is really strange and particularly of concern after video was released of Donald Trump dizzyingly struggling to walk straight after getting off of a helicopter raising new medical concerns. Trump canceled alive in front of the camera's event yesterday with no explanation. Why was it canceled? Why wouldn't Trump come out? We just have no idea. And it was interesting to see that the networks had no idea either. Fox News was awaiting this press event, which would involve Donald Trump and the Brazilian president Lula. And they were waiting and waiting and waiting. And eventually after saying any minute Trump's coming out,

any minute he's coming out, it just didn't happen. And they kind of ended their coverage with a collective I don't know. Meanwhile, we have a live look at the White House as we await President Trump to speak. he is meeting in the Oval Office with Brazil's president. We do await President Trump any moment now. Fox News alert here. We are waiting President Trump. He is set to speak any moment now from the White House. President Trump is set to speak live from the White House any moment.

Now we've got our eye on it. Trump, meanwhile, is set to speak. We promise. We just haven't gotten word when that's happening. We were hoping, John, that we were going to get to see the two of them, as it was sort of we were led to believe that, But we did not. But it sounds like the meeting went well.

And he has parted ways. Just imagine for a second. Okay. Let's all do a little visualization exercise, okay? Close your eyes. And imagine that it is 2023. And Joe Biden is the president of the United Chase. And there is a long announced meeting with a foreign leader.

They're going to be on camera. They will be addressing the media. They will be answering questions, both of them together in the flesh. And then an hour goes by and another hour goes by and another hour goes by. And the White House doesn't explain what's going on. And Joe Biden never comes out. And then you learn the foreign leader has already left the White House. It would be 24 hours of panicked breaking news about how

Biden can't think. He's dead. He can't do it. He can't stand. He's deathly ill. He's impaired. This was supposed to be live and open to the press. It never happened.

Fox kept checking in. No explanation. We don't know. And that's it. They just move on. What on earth is going on here? They wouldn't talk to the press and Trump never came out. Not normal, truly a bizarre situation.

And even News Nation was sort of like, we don't eat, we don't, why? What happened here? Now, let's head to the White House because we're following some breaking news. Brazil's president has just left the White House after meeting with President Trump. This was a meeting that was supposed to be opened up to the press, but that did not happen. The two leaders were expected to focus on tariffs and organized crime as the Trump administration has been mulling, labeling two Brazilian-based cartels as terror groups. It's a similar move to Venezuela, which led, of course,

to strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. Let's get right out to Washington correspondent Kelly Meyer, who has been standing by tracking it all. So Kelly, the president was supposed to open this up to the press at some point. Do we know why things appear to have not gone as planned? We don't know just yet, Nicole. This is just breaking in the last few moments. We actually saw. Anyway, they didn't figure it out.

And everybody's acting like this is normal. Where is the search for the real answers? Was Trump misfiring and short-circuiting so badly that they realized we can't put cameras on him right now? Was Trump tantruming and throwing proverbial or literal ketchup at the wall? What happened that justified this? Why are we acting like this is normal? Biden never did this. Now, Donald Trump ended up posting to truth social about the meeting.

Doesn't explain why the entire thing was canceled after making people wait three hours. Quote, just concluded my meeting with Luis Inacio Lula de Silva, the very dynamic president of Brazil. We discussed many topics, including trade and specifically tariffs. The meeting went very well. Our representatives are scheduled to get together to discuss certain key elements. Additional meetings will be scheduled over the coming months as necessary. You know, in other administrations, if something like this happened, the defaults. fault assumption would be there was a diplomatic problem. They, the meeting didn't go as long it was

as, as was expected because there was some kind of conflict of opinion. There was a diplomatic problem, some issue of policy here. But this is Donald Trump. And that is not typically the way things go with Donald Trump. The only time I can really remember that was when the second North Korean summit ended early because it was obvious that they weren't making progress. And typically when that happens, you would want to get out ahead of it. You would come out and you would say, Hey, listen, you know what? Our counterparts were being stubborn. They were being recalcitrant. They weren't willing to work with us. And so we decided to cut this early. But they didn't do that. And no explanation has been given as to what happened here. And so again, when there is no transparency,

speculation fills the gaps. Is Trump physically so addled that he can't do it? Was it a cognitive explanation. What we just have no idea. The White House hasn't said. And Fox News's curiosity about this seems quite diminished when it is Donald Trump rather than Joe Biden involved in this type of nonsense. Now, this wasn't the last we heard from Trump for the entire day. Later in the day, Donald Trump did reappear looking very ill and making no sense whatsoever. Donald Trump's brain badly malfunctioned multiple times, including calling a reporter, a black woman, of course, a bitch after very mysteriously not showing up for an open press event with the Brazilian president. Yesterday seemed like a bad day for Trump. The term sundowning has been thrown around.

Donald Trump belligerently talking about how all of this firepower is being used against Iran just after he said the Iran war was over again. The Iran war is over, but here is Trump bragging about hostilities and destroying stuff. We're negotiating with the Iranians. We have, you probably heard, we took our three destroyers and we rammed them through some pretty big stuff today and we knocked the hell out of the destroyers weren't hurt in any way. The people weren't hurt, but they were firing at us and we were firing back at them. And our firepower was a hell of a lot stronger than theirs. And they're not. So we the,

the war is over now for like the second or third time, but we're firing at each other. Got it. The hell out of them. They took down a lot of small boats, you know, we call them small boats or fast boats. They're both small and they're both small. their fast with some weaponry on the front. You know, this is what, so they, this is now replacing the Navy. Right. So a few days ago, the big announcement was the war is over. Stock market spikes. Everything's good. We've got a deal. Then it's like, well, we have potentially a deal assuming that Iran goes along with it and we're like, oh, I don't think

Iran's going to go along with that. And then even though the war is still over, now we're firing at each other and destroying boats. That's war. That's, but, but a rose by any other name. Donald Trump asked the obvious question. Is there still a ceasefire given that you're bragging about all of these attacks that are going on? And Trump goes, well, you know, we blew him away. And then Donald Trump appears to threaten nuking Iran. You'll hear him talk about a big glow, which is being interpreted as the glow of nuclear fallout.

With Iran still on. Yeah, it is. It's a they trifled with us today. The ceasefire's on. We're just blasting the hell out of each other. We blew them away. They trifled. They call that a trifle. I'll let you know when there's no cease. You won't have to know. If there's no ceasefire, you're not going to have to know. You're going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran. Oh boy. And they better sign their agreement fast. I guess, could you give us an update on what is the latest in those talks?

No, it's going. The talks are going very well, but they have to understand if it doesn't get a signed, they're going to have a lot of pain. A glow. By all reasonable assessments of what Donald Trump is saying, that is a threat to Iran to nuke them. Really great end to the war, isn't it? The topic turned to the ballroom. Remember that we were told it would be a hundred million dollar ballroom that the American people would pay nothing for. And then it was going to be a $200 million, $250, $350, $350, $350, $400 million ballroom, but donors would pay for it because they're such good people until the White House correspondence dinner shooting created the opportunity to say, hey, you know what? This is such an issue of national security that we actually do need taxpayer money. Trump was asked, why are you putting taxpayers on the hook?

And he goes, well, it's not really for the ballroom. Take a listen. Why should taxpayers now be on the hook for a billion dollars? Well, they're not, because that's for many of the projects. That's for projects having to do with safety in a certain section of the White House grounds. That's not all for the ballroom. And we're putting up $400 million to do the ballroom section of the ballroom. We are putting that up privately.

I am doing it along with other patriots that love our country. But they want to do certain things militarily. militarily with respect to the ballroom, having nothing to do with us or having to do with the safety of the president. So having to- So think about that. Now it's no, no, no, no, no. The ballroom itself will be paid by donations. But since we have the ballroom, we need to do a whole bunch of other stuff from the standpoint of security and you will be paying for that. And of course, with money being fungible as it is, it's sort of a farce to see. say, well, these dollars are for the bricks, but these dollars are for the security of the bricks.

Give me a break. They want you to pay for the ballroom and they want me to pay for the ballroom. We then have the hanta virus situation, which we spoke about yesterday. Donald Trump was asked, have you been briefed about it? Are you worried about it? And Trump goes, eh, I don't think it's really anything to worry about. I'm also with ABC News. Can I think about you that a hentza virus? Have you been briefed on the virus? Yes, I have. Can you tell us what you learn in these briefings? Well, I think you're going to be told everything and you already have. It's very much, we hope, under control. It was the ship. And I think we're going to make a full report about it tomorrow.

We have a lot of people, a lot of great people are studying it. It should be fine. We hope. We should be fine, we hope. I hope Americans don't have to be worried about it spreading. Listen, hontovirus and COVID are not the same thing. Haunted virus's spread is much more limited. It is a totally different thing. But I just want to remind you that when Trump told us COVID was under control, after that, 1.2 million Americans died. Just remember that. Remember that. Then the malfunctions started. Some people might call these lies. Others are calling them the rapid decline of Donald Trump's a brain. And the stock market hit a new high. Nobody thought that was possible. Stock market today

for the 59th time since I'm president hit a new high. And people that I want to remind you that the stock market was down yesterday. Trump said this on a day that the stock market was down. Continuing to glitch and malfunction, Trump also says gas prices are down. after the answer is not to do it during the negotiation. Are you considering maybe going back to that now that gas prices are more than $4.00. Good. Well, no, gas prices have come down today. Gas prices have come down today, Donald Trump says.

And it requires only looking at gas prices to see that if they came down yesterday, maybe it's a penny. But this is not the chart of gas prices that are coming down. As you can see, if you go back four years, you have to go back essentially to four years ago to the day, almost, to find higher gas prices than you do today. They're up like a rocket. And then finally, Donald Trump attacks a reporter. Happens to be had just, it's just a coincidence happens to be a black woman.

You are here against the backdrop of the war in Iran. Why focus on all these projects right now? You know why? Because I want to keep our country beautiful and safe. Beautiful also. This place was a disgusting place. It was Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and we had a terrible, I don't know, you probably don't see dirt, but I do. And you walk down this pond. If you would have walked down, they'll tell you better than anybody. They had to take 11 or 12 truckloads of garbage out of that lake out of that lake, out of that water and sat there for years like that. And that's not what our country is about.

Our country is about beauty, cleanliness, safety, great people, not a filthy capital. What is the status? It's such a stupid question you asked. We're fixing up the reflecting pond to the- Such a stupid question. That's Rachel Scott asking that. And then Donald Trump appears to call her a bitch as he wraps this up and walks away. Hard to hear. here. Remember that disinhibition is a symptom of dementia. Trump appears to mouth that she's a bitch. Take a look. Thank you, press. Thank you, press. This way. Thank you, press.

There it is. Donald Drey. Oh, dear God. The president of the United States, whose brain is certainly fine and firing on all cylinders. If you love having quality, fresh breads and pastries at home with no hassle, our sponsor, Wilde, Wild grain makes it easy. Wild grain is a bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries, fresh pastas. Everything arrives frozen and bakes in 25 minutes or less. No thawing required.

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plenty of styles and colors. Go to sheath underwear.com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman for 20% off. The link is in the description. If you win by cheating, is it really winning? That's what I want to talk about today. If you have been paying attention to how this 2026 midterm is building, you might have noticed, I noticed, that Republicans aren't trying to convince voters that their policies are good for the country or that their policies are good for the average person. They are going to try to

take the midterm elections, try to keep control of the House, try to keep control of the Senate and governorships primarily by messing with the rules around how people vote. Now, Republicans, you know, they love calling themselves the party of the people. We represent real Americans. They are the party of common sense, they will tell you. They are representative of the true America, not this pervert. version of America, that right wing, sorry, that left wing radicals are pushing. Then my question to them would be, why aren't you running on achievements and instead focused on messing with how people vote? That's what they're doing right now.

If their ideas were really popular, you would focus on convincing voters. Vote for us because we brought you 458 of a gallon and gas and we brought you the Iraq. Iran war and we brought you no new healthcare plan even though Trump's been promising it for 11 years. And we brought you all of the things that they brought us. You would say come out to vote more people the better because we've done such a good job. You would be making your case to the people on the basis of policy instead of obsessing over who gets to vote, which ballots count, how are districts drawn? How can we cast doubt on ballots? How can we deal? How can we deal? register people. Maga's heading into these midterms with real problems. We know that. We know that in

general, they would be set up to lose the house for historical reasons. Party in the White House changes. Usually you expect at least one of two houses of Congress you might lose in the House of representatives. They would be set to lose. Fine. But if you think you're doing a good job, run on that rather than lawsuits about early voting and closing polling places. But they know that prices have gone up instead it down. People feel it. Groceries are up, rents up. They haven't done anything with housing. They haven't dealt with the health insurance situation. Just really basic stuff. Trump ran on, I will provide instant relief on this stuff. And they haven't provided relief on any of it. And people feel squeezed. Instability. We're in a war now. Another war. Trump sold himself as the anti-war guy.

He's going to restore order and keep us out of these quagmires, especially in the Middle East. and we're now into week 11 of a three-week war in the Middle East with chaos and tension and drama and Trump says the war's over. And one day later, he's like, we're knocking the hell out of each other. And then you've got, I mean, listen, I don't know how big of a role this is going to play in the midterms, but you've got the Epstein stuff and the broader issue of wealthy and powerful people protecting each other. That really matters because MAGA's identity was built on Trump is just like us and he is

going to fight the elites. He's going to fight corruption. He's going to drain the swamp. He tricked people. Actually, I just recorded an episode with Mori Povich for his podcast. And I talked about how one of the greatest scams Trump ran was that as one of the wealthy corrupt elites, he convinced his voters that he's not one of the wealthy corrupt elites, but he is going to root out the corruption of the wealthy elites. I mean, just laughable, laughable. But they fell for it. And people are now realizing, damn, he didn't drain the swamp. Damn, he's helping to protect the Epstein perpetrators. So when people are frustrated, tired, and skeptical of what you're doing, you don't go out

and say, reward us as a party because we've done such a good job. You instead say, oh, there's voter fraud. The mail-in ballots are fraudulent. We've got to purge voter rolls and let's gerrymander and put in place election officials that are willing to do whatever Trump wants. And we've got a lot of suspicious. results we're expecting to want to have to challenge. They are laying the groundwork to win, not because people go, they're doing such a great job, but because they're trying to suppress

turnout and mess with the voting systems. And so I get back to the question I kind of started this whole thing with, which is if you win by cheating, have you really won? And it's not a theoretical thing. If the path to power only depends on manipulating districts, making it harder to vote, flooding people with propaganda, convincing your supporters that elections only count when your side wins. What is the victory there? That is not democracy. Even if you manage to win that way, I don't believe that that is a democratic outcome.

Democracy means you compete for votes with ideas. Sometimes voters might say, I don't like your ideas or I believe you failed to deliver on your promises. Sometimes people would reject your message and they go, I just don't agree. That's how it's supposed to work. But with MAGA, they treat losing. illegitimate. If we lost by definition, it's illegitimate. And it's incredible because these are the same people who spent years screaming that Democrats were destroying democracy. Meanwhile, Trump tried

to overturn an election he lost. I have a lot of criticisms for just about anybody involved in politics, but I can sit here and look at you and just go, listen, Trump just won in 2024. That's it. He just won. The Biden campaign, which ultimately gave way to the Harris campaign, campaign didn't convince enough people to vote and to vote for them. Now, you could say, well, there's a bunch of different factors. Why? And people were lied to it. I'm with you.

But they just lost. Trump won. Trump gets to be president. See how easy it is for me to say that? They still aren't even saying that about 2020. They still aren't even acknowledging that Hillary won the popular vote in 2016, even though Trump ultimately won the electoral college. They can't do it.

And they scream about how Democrats. are the anti-democratic ones. So now we're getting into another election. They're doing the exact same stuff. There's major backlash over prices. Something like 80% of Americans expect the economy to be worse in a year, not better. It's instability in the Middle East. It's hypocrisy. It's failed promises. And they're not going out there and saying reward us for the great job we've done. They are just going, we got to be really careful about this voting system. It's really rife for manipulation. The ballots need to be questioned. The counting. We need to deputize county, clerks to say, I don't believe these ballots were done the right way.

And they are questioning the legitimacy of the likely defeat that they are facing before a single vote has even been cast. Normal political parties would go, how do we win more voters? Let's convince people that we've done a good job and we'll do an ever even better one and we have good ideas. This movement is saying something different. How can we circumvent the will of the people in order to stay in power? even if the will of the people isn't to choose us. Not democratic, not even remotely.

You know, the United States started as a rebellion against a monarch who claimed divine authority. And the founders followed that by creating our secular constitution. No references to a deity, no religious tests, clear separation between church and state. That was on purpose. It was designed to protect pluralism and individual conscience and religious freedom for everybody. But today, we're seeing increasing efforts to challenge that. Donald Trump's America praise event on May 17th, which aligns government with Christianity. That raises major constitutional concerns. Our sponsor, the freedom from religion foundation, works to protect separation of church and state because it protects you and it protects me. As we approach the two and the two.

150th anniversary of the United States, the question isn't just what we celebrate. It's what do we defend? Visit ffrf.us slash David or text my name, David, to 511, 511 to learn more or to join because protecting that separation protects our rights. The info is in the description. Text fees may apply. In reality, you're that guy that got laughed off garbage Fox News. You looked hurt inside. Roll the tape. You know, I don't remember that happening. It's a very interesting memory, but it may be a false memory.

It's funny. When I get messages like this, this one comes from YouTube and we'll look at a bunch of messages that came in this week. Sometimes it makes me stop and go, wow, did that actually happen? And I've completely forgotten. I haven't been on Fox News in, I don't even know how many years. And I certainly didn't get laughed off. But I always have to remember the people who write this crap have no idea what's going on and

probably lead very, very sad lives. And so I try to approach them with a position of empathy rather than anger and tell myself, if they are willing to write this crap to someone they don't know, they must really be be struggling in their lives. And that's very, very sad. We're going to continue with Friday feedback and some more substantive messages, including Tim's on Spotify. Tim wrote, David, why don't we uncap the house? We should have hundreds of more representatives. I agree with this. And this is, I'm, it's sort of surprising to me that this is not on the radar of more people. The house of representatives has a fixed number of members of Congress and it is 435. And simple arithmetic

tells us that if the number of people in this country keeps going up, which it's expected to for some time, although relatively soon, it's actually going to flatline and then start to decline, but that's a different story. If the number of people in the country keeps going up, the number of people in each district on average keeps going up. And so members of Congress over time represent more and more people. Are they able to represent the average person equally well when there are more and more of those people? If at one point, the average district had 400,000 people in it, and then it became 600,000 people

in it. And then I'm trying to remember, I think that now it's about 750,000. If we just go extremely roughly, 350 million people in the United States, 435. 800. So now and now we are at on an average, 804,000 people per district. Are you really going to get equally good representation? It's sort of the same thing. If your doctor has 5,000 patients instead of a thousand patients, are you likely to get the same level of care when your doctor has five times as many patients? I would argue the answer is no. So I've been in favor of, listen, uncapping is sort of a later stage.

But there absolutely should be more members of the House if we believe that the ratio of voters to representatives should match what it was some time ago. The problem, of course, becomes in the implementation because we all know that if it was, if it was decided, we're going to be adding members of the House on a particular year, Whichever party is in power and has the ability to draw the new districts is going to do every damn thing they can to gerrymander the districts to high heaven. And this is of course why as a precursor to adding members to the House of Representatives, which we should do. We should be creating a durable, robust and permanent nonpartisan redistricting system. And it should not be subject to the whims of

who controls the state legislature or who controls the House of Representatives. That is a difficult thing to do because for the most part, everybody tries to benefit from being in a position for drawing districts. But I agree. We need more members of the House of Representatives. From Instagram, here's a beautiful message. Itchy triggered finger wrote to me and said, you're as independent as a slave. You know, in my forthcoming book, pay attention. I write about this a lot. I write about what does it really mean when a YouTube or a podcast or someone like me or others that you might listen to or watch say that we are independent? And it has meaning. It means certain things, but not others. If you haven't preordered my book pay attention, this is a great time to do it.

Barnes & Noble, Amazon, other websites, the audio book, et cetera. The reality is that as independent creators, we are independent in a lot of ways. I don't have. five layers of management above me telling me what I should or shouldn't talk about or telling me what position I should or shouldn't have. Everything that's on this show, it's just what do I believe? What do I feel? What do I think? The stories that are on are on only because I chose them. Not because anybody else suggested do this story or don't do that story. Um, advertisers. We have advertisers. I never talked to them. No advertiser has ever suggested I do or don't. cover a certain story. And if they did, we would say we don't take editorial suggestions. Now, is it possible

that advertisers are choosing this show because they vetted us and vetted me and have determined we don't think this guy, David, me, is a risk to their brand. Sure, but that's natural. The biggest lack of independence we have, and this is not what most people think, is that the platforms I'm on can decide with the push of a button, you are no longer on our platform. or you can be on it, but you can't monetize. And that is a relevant issue. And I write about that extensively in my forthcoming book. And this is why I believe it's important for creators to independently build out ways

to contact their audience. This is why I've said, if YouTube shuts down my channel, I would have no way on YouTube of telling you that because my channel would be shut down. If Instagram shuts me down, I have no way to send any message or post to our combined, what is it now, 600, 700,000 followers on our two Instagram accounts. And so that reality has pushed me to remind the audience, we own our substack newsletter list. And if we get shut down anywhere, I will be able to contact you only if you are on my substack newsletter. So consider getting on my substack newsletter, but the you're as independent as a slave, I think implies other stuff.

The DNC controls you or this sort of thing. The truth is, we exist on rented ground, which is that of the platforms on which we distribute. That applies to all of us. And that's why I've said it's really important to build out independent ways to contact people in the audience. All right. Conrad on Instagram wrote, I'm in Arizona. I follow your posts.

Your content is a big part of the reason I even have an Instagram account. Without content like yours, I don't need or want Instagram in my life. Thank you, Conrad. I really appreciate that. You know, we, the whole reason I've always taken a multi-platform approach and distribute on any platform we can be on. We're on something called the MSN partner network now. The windows loading screens that show you a little news.

We're on that because I never know who's going to shut me down. And on which platforms are we going to find potentially new audience that doesn't even know that we exist? And that's why we're on Instagram. That's why we're on on all of these platforms. Stephen Zolondik wrote on Facebook. I would love if you would do a segment on returning shopping carts to the corral. Absolutely. You know, my segment on tipping went sort of viral.

and has gotten across all platforms in the millions of views, which is amazing. It's clearly hit a nerve and something a lot of people are frustrated with growing tipping culture in the United States. The people who just leave the cart in an adjacent parking space or worse at the grocery store. Do you have no sense of decency? Do you have no humanity? Now, there's not one of the things I've learned doing this show is that there is quite

literally nothing I can say on the show. that won't make someone angry. Every single sponsor I've ever had has made someone angry. Last week, I used the term alcoholic. People wrote in and said that's inappropriate. Previously, I had said that someone had significant autism. And I was told significant. That's offensive.

You're supposed to address it in a different way. I'm doing the best I can. Okay. There is no reason not to return the shopping cards. Now, you might go, well, what about someone who has a. physical limitation. If they were able to shop with the shopping cart, it follows that they would be able to put the shopping cart back. Okay. I'm not being insensitive to mobility limitations. I'm simply saying if you were able to complete the shop with the shopping card, why on earth

wouldn't you just put it back? Does that bother anybody else? I find myself highly, highly agitated by it. Okay. Hedy Turner wrote in about the White House. correspondence dinner shooting and said fake assassination attempt just like the last one it was all to convince the builders and congress to get his ballroom built from this fake assassination attempt he went straight into non-stop talking about his ballroom you know what i've already addressed this the ballroom is stopped by a judicial order trump getting not shot at the white house courtecour correspondence dinner by someone on a different floor of the hotel is not going to speed up the ballroom's construction.

It's just not. And so for those who were convinced because of all the talk of the ballroom that that's going to happen, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Another theory that surfaced from the shooting, this is a wacky one. This is from Nat's Curley on Reddit who said, who else has been hearing about this time travel theory. I've been trying to debunk it using logic, but I give up. What are your thoughts? David, please cover it. Basically, I'm referring to about the correspondence dinner. There was a tweet from three

years ago saying the guy's name and a weird image that looks like Trump in the photo with his fist in the air, obviously years before the photo was taken. The profile image of the Twitter account is Pepe the frog wearing a tuxedo, which is the dress code for the dinner. The Twitter account has the name of some scientist or something and never tweeted anything else in the three years since. Isn't that weird? I'm trying to debunk it. Listen, I couldn't even find this crap. I looked for it. Let me look again. I don't even know how to search for this and and the right way to find it. Pepe the Frog, Trump Correspondents, Dinner, Twitter. Okay, let's see. Fact check. Ah, here it is.

A post with the name Cole Allen is circulating. A screenshot shows a 2023 ex post that reads Cole Allen, the name of the suspect in the shooting. While social media users shared a screenshot of an authentic ex post from 2023, it's unclear why the account made the post or whether it has any connection to the shooting suspect. Okay. So it appears as though. And it is from a user named Henry Ma. Yeah, it seems that there's an element of truth, but it is sort of like not really relevant to anything.

But if I'm misunderstanding, let me know. Chris Lane on Facebook wrote, every school should now have a ballroom. I really like this one. You may recall that after the Uvaldi, Texas shooting, Ted Cruz and others said, We really need windows and doors. We need locked doors. That would be the solution to shootings. And this is sort of a play on that.

Listen, if the ballroom is a solution to the White House correspondence dinner shooting, every school should have a ballroom. And then it would be much safer from shootings. I like what you did there. I think that that's a good one. Send me your thoughts on anything you hear me say on the show. Info at David Pakman.com. We will also feature messages from other platforms.

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