The David Pakman Show - Texas collapse and health collapse in the same day

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Donald Trump attacks James Talarico as a vegan and plans rallies for Ken Paxton while Republicans reveal growing fear about holding Texas -- A Texas Republican voter says Donald Trump controls the Republican Party and refuses to support Ken Paxton in the general election -- Donald Trump declares “perfect” health after another medical exam, while the White House turns medical updates into a publicity campaign -- White House social media accounts flood the internet with energetic Trump photos as videos of him appearing asleep spread online -- Dr. Jonathan Reiner warns that Donald Trump’s repeated daytime sleeping and insomnia could signal serious health concerns -- Videos show Donald Trump swaying while saluting, fueling debate about age, fatigue, balance issues, or shoe lifts -- Jessica Tarlov criticizes Donald Trump’s Iran policy on Fox News and leaves the rest of the panel visibly speechless -- JD Vance stumbles through grammar comments and welfare claims during an awkward public appearance -- On the Bonus Show: Biden sues DOJ to stop audio release, California's public universities embrace AI, construction begins on the White House UFC cage for Trump's birthday party, 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 🍓 Strawberry.me: Get a $50 credit when you sign up for coaching at https://strawberry.me/pakman 🧠 Try Brain.fm totally free for a month at https://brain.fm/pakman 🥄 Magic Spoon: Use code PAKMAN for $5 off at https://magicspoon.com/pakman 💻 Sponsored by Private Internet Access: 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/DavidP -- 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 (01:24) Paxton defeats Cornyn in Texas Senate runoff (12:19) Texas Republican turns on Trump (20:50) Trump claims perfect health another physical (27:57) Trump social media accounts flood the zone (35:28) Doctors warns about Trump's lack of sleep (43:32) Trump struggles to keep his balance (51:11) Fox News liberal silences the panel (58:27) JD Vance stumbles through speech Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Republicans are suddenly terrified that they could lose Texas. Trump is jumping in. Ken Paxton won his primary will face off against Tala Rico. The best they've got against Tala Rico is he's vegan, even though he's not vegan. And even if you were, who cares? And then Donald Trump says he has a perfect bill of health. He had his third annual physical in 13 months yesterday, came out of Walter Reed Hospital, and says, it's all perfect when you are bragging about.

passing a physical, it starts to get a little bit weird. We will also hear from an actual doctor weighing in on Trump's behavior, Trump's physical characteristics, his sleep cognition, and why getting exams every what, four and a half months is a little bit strange. And then our friend Jessica Tarlov silences her Fox News co-hosts whose brains are filled with mayonnaise during a segment about Iran. And then J.D. Vance reminds everybody, he's usually not the sharpest guy in the room, even when he's the only guy in the room. We'll have the videos. We'll discuss all of that and more coming up today. If I have anything to say about it. Republicans are now panicking that they could lose Texas and that Texas could send its first Democratic senator to Washington, D.C. in

decades, Trump losing it, they're attacking Tala Rico, but why? Well, last night was the runoff for the Texas Republican primary. When they had the primaries some months ago, on the Democratic side, James Talariko won. He won clearly. He won dominantly. On the Republican side, nobody got to 50%. The incumbent Senator James Cornyn, who's running for reelection, failed to get to 50% in a multi-way race and the attorney general Ken Paxton, who's challenging Cornyn, failed to get to 50%. So yesterday they had a little thing we call a runoff. Trump waited, waited, waited until it was clear who was going to win and then said, I endorse Ken Paxton.

And indeed, no surprise to anybody. Ken Paxton did win. And he won easily, basically by a two to one margin, if you can believe it. Another, if you believe it, anti-Maga, I'm sorry, pro-Maga. result, anti-ocational critics of MAGA result, where Ken Paxton secured about 64% of the vote and John Cornyn secured 36% of the vote. By a roughly 2 to 1 margin, the incumbent Republican senator is out and the challenger will now face Tala Rico in November.

Donald Trump jumping out there with a truth social post, self-congratulatory of course. And he says, quote, congratulations to Ken Paxton on such a tremendous win and to John Cornyn for having run a strong and powerful race. And more importantly, having had a truly great career. John will remain, my friend, for a long time to come as we both watch Ken become a fantastic common sense senator, one who is respected by all. His opponent, Alfred E. Newman, referring to Tala Rico, may be the worst Texas candidate I have

ever seen. A strong open borders advocate, he's weak on crime, believes there are six genders, is insulting to Jesus Christ, will never support the military, was a big mask wearer until recently, and is a vegan. That's how Trump used to pronounce it until someone corrected him, and is a vegan who dislikes meat. Not exactly a good way to be if you're wanting to win an election in Texas. Jasmine Crockett, a very low IQ individual who is no relation to the legendary frontiersman Davy Crockett would have been a far better choice for the Duma-Krats, Democrats. I will do some nice, big, beautiful rallies for Ken. Texas, this will be fun. God bless America, President Donald J. Trump. I like that Trump goes, he's a vegan who dislikes

meat rather than a vegan who likes meat. By the way, Tala Rico is not vegan. He says he loves Texas barbecue. I don't know why this vegan thing is really a big deal. But, but I'm not, I want to explain why this is so huge for Donald Trump. First of all, Trump likes to pick winners. And what I mean by that is Trump likes to attach his name to people who are already likely to win so that he doesn't have to do anything and so that he doesn't get embarrassed. That's what he did with Paxton. The issue if Paxton were to lose to Tala Rico is not only that it would be one of Trump's

picks losing. That's bad enough for Donald Trump. But it would be that it would, it would be a loss in. Texas specifically, which hasn't had Democratic senators for decades. And so if it came to be, and we will do what we can to make it come to be, if it came to be in November, that James Talariko, the vaguen, um, destroys or even just defeats Ken Paxton, it will be terrible for Trump in that he will have been part of a decade spanning loss for Republicans. in Texas and they are very scared of that. Now, they are panicking on all fronts. Here's R&C Chair

Joe Gruders, who refers to the Democratic candidate as Talafrico and again brings up this whole vegan thing. Because Tala Frico is a creep and he thinks he's a vegan. He thinks God is non-binary. He wants to mutilate children. He wants to put boys and girls locker rooms. People are done with that. That's if you looked at the autopsy of the Democrats put out, it's simple. All those things and the fact that they are openly supporting communists and socialist. People don't want the United States Senate. Certainly the voters in Texas don't want that. We think Paxton will win.

We'll think it's, we think it's a red seat. Hands down, we're not going to have any issues heading into November. We're happy with Paxton and we're going to do everything we can to make sure he's successful. Tala Freeco the vegan. Man, that is not sounding very policy-based to me. guys, I don't think so. And so the fact that they're immediately assailing the calendar, a character, the calendar, they don't like his calendar. It's too busy. They're assailing the character of James Talariko. They're going after things like he's vegan. And Trump plans to do rallies.

All of that together signals major concern. Now, as far as Ken Paxton is concerned, an interesting little detail. This is an article from last year from the New York Times. Ken Paxton claimed three houses as his primary residence records show, he could have secured favorable mortgage rates and may have violated the law if he knowingly falsified loan documents. Now, what's funny about that is that this is way worse than what Trump wants Adam Schiff thrown in jail for. And there, you may or may not recall Trump is targeting Senator Adam Schiff over essentially the same thing.

And I don't want to make this show only about mortgages because it's, you know, it should be about bonds, not mortgages, if it's going to be about a financial instrument. But there's this thing with mortgages where there's a lot of programs to get favorable rates when you are getting a mortgage for your primary residence. If you go to the bank and you say, hey, I want to buy this house and live in it, you get one set of rates. If you go to the bank and say, I want to buy this house, not live in it and rent it out or it's a vacation home.

It's a second property. Usually the mortgage rates aren't as favorable. And what Trump wants Schiff investigated for is that Schiff got one mortgage on the basis that it would be his primary residence. And then years later, he got a different mortgage on the basis that it would be his primary residence. Now, as I've explained before, there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. If he's lying at any point, that would be a problem. But it is common that people go, I'm buying a house. It's my primary residence.

Give me those rates. Cool. And then they say, I'm going to buy a different house. They might be selling the first house. So the new one will become their primary residence. Or they might be keeping the first house and saying this, I'm going to primarily live somewhere else. All of that is completely legal.

Your first mortgage might require that you call and say, hey, I'm, this will no longer be my primary residence. The mortgage may be subject to a rate revision or not. But the question is, do you intend it to be your primary residence at the time that you close on it? And if the answer is yes, does not a problem. said when shifted that it's a crime, absent any evidence, Paxton's accused of doing the same thing three times. So if we care about this mortgage provision, which is so pedantic and anodyne,

but Trump claims to, why don't you care about it when it's a Republican? We all know the answer. Now, Ken Paxton is coming out swinging and saying that Tala Rico is a threat to our way of life. And finally, he's a threat to our very way of life and our values. I mean, he's a threat to our very way of life and our values. I mean, he's a vegan who thinks God is non-binary and that there's actually six biological sexes. Big, strong Republicans are threatened by a vegan. Remember, he's not a vegan. But is it alpha to be threatened by a vegan or veganism? I got to tell you, I've been out to eat with plenty of vegans in my day. I have never felt threatened in any way when they say, could I get an impossible burger patty on my burger instead of a beef patty and I go, what are we doing after

dinner? That's it. It's not threatening in any way. It was fine, but they are very scared. They're scared of veganism. They're scared of all of it. Check out the impossible promises, by the way, that Ken Paxton made last night. Listen to what he's going to be able to do, supposedly. But I truly believe that together, not only will we win this race, but we can ensure that America's best days are ahead of us. You see, I'm not just running against the Democrats. I'm running to deliver for you just as I have as Attorney General. You can tell he really means it.

I'm running to lower your cost of living because you deserve to be able to buy a home, afford groceries, and have a high quality of health care without being forced to stay up at night, worrying about how you're going to pay your monthly premium or pay off your debt. How is he going to achieve that? He's going to lower cost of living and allow you to buy a home. a home, groceries, and pay for healthcare with zero concern for what the health care costs or for the fact that you might have to go into debt. Those are some big promises, I have to tell you. And I struggle to think about how they're going to do that.

Maybe the funniest moment of the night, Texas Republican Congressman Brandon Gill says, thanks to this victory for Ken Paxton, they are going to take their country back. Now, think about that for a moment. No back, aren't we? And you know what that means? That means that we are finally going to take our country back, aren't we? So Texas has had Republican senators for decades. Republicans right now control the White House, the House, and the Senate.

How would a Republican replacing another Republican in the Senate when they already control everything be taking back the country? It's a reminder that these bullet points are persistent. It doesn't matter whether they're in or out of power. We need to make America great again. Well, you're in power. Why didn't you do it? Now, we're going to make America great again.

We're going to take our country back. You control everything. Who are you going to take it back from? No, we're going to. It's these victimhood grievance politics, scapegoats. You must have scapegoats. These are always in place with this authoritarian version. of the Republican Party, even if they're in power, someone else is hurting us and we need to stop that.

We have incredible video of a Texas Republican voter saying, hell no, I am not voting for the person Trump endorsed. Now, we already know that Ken Paxton won his primary last night. Senator John Cornyn will be removed from the Senate at the end of his term. the next senator in that seat will be either the Republican nominee, Ken Paxton, Attorney General, or Democratic candidate James Talariko. Amanu Raju from CNN was at a polling place in Texas yesterday, and he caught up with a Republican voter. And they had a very interesting conversation.

Take a listen to this. Who did you vote for? Cornyn. Why'd you vote for coronet? Because Trump did not endorse him. That was a big fact. It makes me sick that the Republican Party is completely controlled by one man. Trump.

If Paxton wins a nomination, could you vote for him in the general election? Hell no. Hell no. So a couple takeaways here. First, if our number, we've really got a level set. Our number one priority has to be not feeling good about clips on the internet, but getting power back. You get power back by winning seats and there's an opportunity here.

So like the big takeaway from this Republican going, I want to, I wanted to do the opposite of what Trump endorsed. And in the general election, even as a Republican primary voter, I'm not voting for Paxton. Cool. That points to huge opportunity for Tala Rico to win in Texas. First would be the first Democratic senator from Texas in decades. We have a tangible goal now of making that happen. There will be phone banking opportunities, door knocking opportunities, the opportunity to donate. There's going to be all of it. So we're going to get to that. That's the most important takeaway. And it remind it should remind us and them on the on the Republican side. It's dangerous to turn your political party into a personality cult because it could

work for a while. But eventually some voters are going to stop feeling represented and they're going to start feeling controlled. That's what happens with cult leaders. It feels as though they get you. They represent you, et cetera. But they are starting to feel controlled by Trump rather than represented. And so for me, the key line isn't, I won't vote for Paxton, although that's very important electorally. It's it makes me sick that the Republican Party is controlled by one man. That's the deeper dissatisfaction with the status quo of this Republican Party.

And what this does to Trump's endorsement power is totally destroy it. It used to be that Trump's endorsement was almost like a superpower. He really was raising up all of these new MAGA candidates, people who had no business being in elected office, Marjorie Taylor Green and who the hell knows who else. It's now becoming a liability. There are there are Republican, not Democrats in Connecticut. There are Republicans in Texas who here Trump endorsed this person. I'll vote for the other one.

And if the Trump endorsie wins, then I'm not going to vote for them in the the general. That's a disaster if you're the Republican Party. And this is the sort of difference between the Republicans that genuinely love Trump, the people that leave me, uh, the comments about how Trump's the best thing that ever happened to anybody and Trump invented sliced bread. And Trump brought back the avocado from a bad reputation. He's achieved everything. And then you got the Republicans who tolerated Trump. They were like, listen, I don't like Hillary. I don't like Biden. I don't like Harris. I have fallen for the idea that Trump's conservative. even though he's just an authoritarian nut.

That second group is very clearly fraying. And this Republican voter that Manu Raju spoke to is a perfect example of that. And listen, I don't want to assume too much about this guy. This was Austin, Texas. I can see the guy looks white. And like me, he might be Hispanic white. I don't know anything about him. So I'm inferring some things.

But this guy is maybe in the ballpark of the prototypical suburban, colise. educated, higher turnout Republican that goes and votes in the primaries and, right? This is the sort of voter that Democrats need to crack Texas. And I think if I'm if I'm honest and I always am with you, Texas is probably still leaning Republican in this race nationally, statewide is what I mean. If you look at the polling and the betting markets, it still looks better for. Paxton, but not that much better. And we've got six, five and a half months until the election. And the way that they're campaigning, the fact that Trump's going to be out campaigning and doing

rallies, they know this race could get very uncomfortable. And the more Republicans are framing these elections as tests of loyalty to Trump, as Trump's approval goes lower, lower, lower, the better the opportunity is to put a Democrat back in the Senate representing the state of Texas. So we're going to do everything we can. I believe these are the most consequential primaries I've ever been a part of. On June 9th, in order to fund another year of this show, we are different than a lot of independent media shows. A lot of independent media shows rely on contractors who get no benefits and get hourly wages and irregular work. I've decided we have employees. They are real employees. They get benefits. They only work for this show.

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The link is in the description. Donald Trump had his third annual physical in 13 months yesterday. I know. No one believes this crap. Trust me. I know. And of course, the results are that everything is perfect and he did so well. And he can keep being president in case anybody was worried about that. Donald Trump posting about this to truth social where he says, quote, just finished my six month physical. Now, we're going to, I'm going to get back

to that. Just finished my six month physical at Walter Reed military medical center. Everything checked out perfectly. Thank you to the great doctors and staff heading back to the White House, President Donald J. Trump. Now, we know there are untrue things here. It's not perfect when your ankles are swollen to the size of tree trunks and your hands are so bruised that you need makeup and bandages to cover it. And the reasons for why your hands are so bruised is never proper. explained. We know that everything isn't perfect just by looking at Donald Trump and seeing how often he falls asleep in public and how he walks unsteadily and all of it. So by definition, we know that he's lying by saying everything's perfect. Now, may he be doing as expected for his

age and wait? All right. Well, but that's not that doesn't make him sound as hot as he wants to sound. But there's another another interesting little thing that he slips in. Trump says just finished my six month physical. This is the first time we've ever heard of this. Always before it's Trump will be having his annual workup, his annual physical. And then when he had two of these in less than a year, it was like, okay, that's sounding a little strange. Now we're at three of these in 13 months.

So what is Trump doing? He's retroactively going, I do my six month physicals. Even then it's weird because if you do them every six months, you'd expect to have three in 18 months. Trump's had three in 13 months. But this is just something that legacy in corporate media isn't even touching. The fact that with six month physicals, what do you mean? These were annual.

Why is he going 13, three times and 13 months? Well, now he's making it a little less bad, I guess, by saying that it's his six month physical. The White House then activating around it, screenshoting Trump's truth social post and posting to Twitter, perfect bill of health. Now, I want you to forget for a moment. Put aside for a second whether we believe the the substance, perfect bill of health. I don't believe it.

And I've already told you why. Put that aside just for a second. The weirdest part is the PR campaign around an annual physical. Normal, healthy people don't usually need celebratory graphics announcing that they pass the physical. It's just like you just go and you come out and that's kind of it. You know, perfect bill of health. that creates more suspicion because it feels theatrical. It feels very defensive.

Why are you even posting about this? Why are you officially signal boosting Trump saying he had a great physical? And the reason is that we have some of the facts. They're hiding a lot of the facts, but we have some of the facts. Multiple major medical evaluations every four and a half months, four and a third months, when these were annual physicals. And now Trump's calling them six month physicals. That raises questions, whether you're in politics or not.

If someone told you, I've had three big workups in the last 13 months, you would go, oh, why, that's not typical. What, what's the reason for that? And if they go, no, nothing just because the doctors are so impressed with me. We would all go, what the hell are you talking about? The doctors are so impressed. They want you coming in every four and four and a third months. That doesn't make any sense.

Of course it doesn't. But we're supposed to believe it when it's the president. So there's a difference between we are being transparent. And this is propaganda. What they're putting out is propaganda. It's not transparency. It's image management. And they're doing this.

And I am going to show you the evidence in a moment. They're doing this because the White House knows there is concern and suspicion about Trump's health, stamina, alertness. He's falling asleep all the time. The cognitive condition. I have new video of Trump unable to stand straight. He's trying to salute and swaying back and forth on Memorial Day. All of this stuff is visible.

And the more visible the decline becomes, the more aggressively they're insisting that everything is perfect and fine, which only makes people who are paying attention go, this is not the way you talk about a guy who's firing on all cylinders. It's overcompensation, to put it very simply. And they feel a vulnerability. And so they go maximalist in the opposite direction. All caps, graphics, promotional language, best physical ever. The irony of it.

I know where you know where I'm going with this and we'll deal with this more on Friday. The irony of it is that Republicans spent years demanding transparency about Joe Biden's health and his cognition and his medical condition. And the broader issue is less about whether Trump is sick. It's they aren't even living up to their standard for honest, normal, credible health information about the most powerful person in the United States and one of the most powerful powerful people in the world. Most presidents release medical summaries.

They don't typically do social media victory lapse over a physical. And perfect health about an obese 80 year old who looks visibly terrible and falls asleep in public multiple times a week isn't really cutting it. Now, Trump may be broadly functional, functional enough. He may be healthy enough to last two more years as president. He may not be. But the propaganda language just weakens the credibility. If they said, listen, Trump underwent a routine exam, he remains fit for duty and in good health

for his age and underlying health circumstances, I would go, that sounds about right. That you're putting a positive spin, realistically positive spin on a guy who has some health challenges. There's also the kind of deeper phenomenon here, which I don't want to make the main topic of the show where politics is operating like celebrity branding at the end of the day. And that's part of why even a medical checkup, if that's what this was, becomes an image management event of sorts. But if you zoom all the way out from this, the greatest evidence that they know something

is wrong is the propaganda meltdown they had right after Trump left Walter Reed Hospital. And that's what I want to talk about next. The same Trump rapid response account that once went after your favorite podcaster, me is now panicking and trying to do cleanup over the Trump health crisis. Quite literally as Donald Trump was leaving Walter Reed Hospital from his third. annual physical in 13 months, the rapid response account started putting out the following posts on X. They put out a screenshot of Brianna Keeler clearly blinking. And they say, Brianna Keeler says nap went perfectly after falling asleep live on air. Rumor is she also failed her cognitive

exam, unlike President Trump, whose was perfect. Then they put out a picture of Dana Bash. And they say, Again, Dana Bash is looking down in this image. Dana Bash falls asleep ahead of her 55th birthday next month. What is going on? Then they've got Jake Tapper clearly blinking. Flashback, fake Tapper appears to doze off throughout his show. And then they've got one of Dr. Jeremy Faust, who was commenting on Trump's medical exam. He is clearly blinking.

And it says, is Dr. Jeremy Faust sundowning? So a couple takeaways. Number one, they are very aware of the concerns about Trump. They know that doctors are saying, you know, Trump's worse at night. Could it be sundowning? They know that their defense of Trump as merely blinking isn't being bought by anybody. And so what they want to do is make you think that just as easily as it looks like Trump is sleeping, but he's really just blinking.

They can do the same thing with Dana Bebush. or Jake Tapper or Brianna Keeler or the CNN guest. But we're smart enough to know the difference. We're smart enough to know that those CNN anchors genuinely were just blinking there and they haven't fallen asleep on live TV. But here is Trump. And this is, I could have, I could show you one of 30 of these. This is Trump actually asleep during a cabinet meeting.

He's not blinking. From both Islamist ideology as well as. and less terrorists, foreign terrorist organizations and those who seek to do harm to the American people, many of whom were led in across our borders under the previous administration. We are focused on these tasks and this imperative for the American people. And just appreciate your leadership. Mr. President. Trump was out.

Trump is regularly out. So two important stories here. And I think it's important. We don't want to overstate and we don't want to understand. state. The fact that they are doing this doesn't mean necessarily that there is more wrong with Trump than we know about, although we suspect there is. But it does the fact that they're doing these propaganda things doesn't prove anything. But the fact that they're doing it does confirm that they're worried about it. Because if this were a nothing narrative about Trump,

If they didn't realize, oh, a lot of people are worried about Trump's health, these videos really don't look good. They wouldn't be doing this. They are suddenly very worried. And of course, the timing is suspect as Donald Trump is quite literally driving back to the White House from Walter Reed from his third annual physical in 13 months that they start publishing this stuff. Now, I think the miscalculation they're making is that nobody's going to fall for this crap.

It's very clear people. One of the things that humans can do is recognize when basic bodily functions are happening in other humans. Is it possible to pretend to be asleep when you're not? Yeah, you know, actors do it. My toddler daughter has figured out sometimes it's funny to pretend to be asleep. And sometimes they do it successfully. And sometimes we go, I know you're not really sleeping.

But they are acting as though they can talk us out of believing that Trump is falling asleep and that he's merely blinking. He's deep in thought. He's looking down. This is how he processes information. But we can tell when humans are sleeping. We're pretty good at this. This is something that's evolved over 250,000 years of modern humans.

And they're not going to trick us. So the timing is very suspect. They're worried. They're panicked. And they should be because this is looking worse and worse. One of the most common career problems is not knowing how to make a change without blowing up your life and everything you have going on. A lot of people reach a point where they don't necessarily hate their job.

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Not a commentator. Not a chiropractor. not a massage therapist, an actual physician went on CNN to address Donald Trump's third physical in 13 months. And I got to tell you, it's not good. It's not good at all. And this medical assessment was so concerning that Dr. Jonathan Reiner was immediately invited back on to other shows to talk in more detail about what's going on.

So let's just play it. Let's listen and then let's discuss. I do want to see this, during this examination, a credible explanation for his visible health concerns. His bruising, which initially was described as due to his handshaking, which is not credible. His severe edema in his ankles, which was described as chronic venous insufficiency,

when just three months before, one year ago, his examination disclosed that he had no edema. which would then make it acute chronic, acute venous insufficiency, which is an entirely different thing. And finally, the president has severe daytime somalones. He falls asleep very awful. He's fallen asleep in the Oval Office on multiple occasions

with people talking to him in the cabinet room, and was concerned yesterday that he might have fallen asleep at Irwin to National Cemetery during Memorial Day Conservances. And chronic insomnia is a severe illness. it can result in an increase in the risk of dementia, decrease in cognitive effects in older people. It's equivalent to about increasing your age by about three and a half years.

It increases your cardiac risk of having a heart attack or developing congestive heart failure. And it can produce a decline in your sort of mental functions like it can increase depression, anxiety. So it's a real, problem and the president appears to struggle to stay awake during the day. And I'd like to hear what the White House has done to evaluate why the president has this increased daytime somnolence.

So listen, we didn't get any of those answers initially. And Dr. Reiner, an actual physician, is laying it out, bruising with explanations that don't make sense, swollen ankles with explanations that don't make sense, severe daytime daytime somnolence falling asleep in public all the time, and chronic insomnia, Trump is known to when he sleeps well to sleep four to five hours a night. And reportedly now, he's often getting two to three hours of sleep. That's all very bad. So CNN brings Jonathan Reiner back on a little bit later in the day. And they want to dig more deeply. And the more that Reiner weighs in on what we know and what we don't know, the worse it seems about Donald Trump. So I want to zero in on something you said, which was excessive

daytime somnulence, which I'm assuming is the, dozing off as we've the apparent dozing off I just want to be clear about what we've seen because he has appeared to doze off in White House events and when asked about a December cabinet meeting where the president's eyes were closed for a prolonged period of time multiple times the press secretary maintained that Trump had been listening attentively and running the entire three-hour marathon cabinet meeting talk to us about that I mean I'm not a medical expert but when I'm thinking of someone who's almost 80, I would think of a little dozing off here there to maybe be kind of normal.

Is that not normal? Well, we've seen the president appear to rest his eyes when someone is talking directly to him. And that is distinctly abnormal. It's unusual to be surrounded by people in the Oval Office and you fall asleep. And you know who agrees with that? Trump. Trump made this huge deal on the Andrew Schultz show and others going, this Biden, the situations he can fall asleep in like he's at the beach. It's like, okay, the beach, a lot of people sleep at the beach. Not that many people sleep in the Oval Office during meetings. We know the president is up late at night using social media. That's not really in question. And it may be something as simple as he just

has poor sleep hygiene. And when we're trying to get people to sleep better, we tell them not to do any work, in the bedroom to put down, put down their phones, try and get a consistent time to go to sleep. You know, the president has incredible demands on his time. I mean, and you know, he's almost 80 years old and even more reason for the president to get some rest. Insomnia is a dangerous thing for an older person.

It increases the risk of cardiac events. It increases hyper-attention. It increases the risk of dementia and deprecise depression. And often when an older person doesn't feel right, one of the first questions we ask them is tell me about your sleep, how much sleep are you getting? And if you've ever seen an older person in a hospital where it looks like they're losing it, it's often because it's very hard to sleep in hospitals. So every American should want this president to work efficiently and if I think everybody understands it. And then finally, and I found this very interesting,

Dr. Reiner does address this issue of, we've gone from annual physicals, which were happening so often that now they're calling them six-month physicals. And that hasn't really been explained. What's also interesting is that in many of these yearly physical exams, much of this evaluation is done in advance of the day where the president actually goes to Walter Reed. So we should have a read out about this pretty soon. Often his labs are, are, are pre-tested. So the White House often can generate a readout very quickly. One other interesting thing I noted was when the president, when he was leaving Walter Reed, posted on social media that he had a perfect physical, he called it his six-month physical. So I guess, you know,

what we're changing now from as a routine yearly physical for a president to, I guess perhaps as a nod to his age, it looks like this president will undergo a six-month cycle for evaluations. And what's funny is even that doesn't really cover it. Because again, I know you know these numbers by now. It's been three and 13 months. That's a physical every four and a third months plus three dental visits. So Dr. Jonathan Reiner is a physician and he's alarmed by the very same things we're alarmed by. I'm not a doctor. I speak to doctors. They go the hand bruising explanation doesn't make sense.

Jonathan Reiner agrees. They say the swollen ankles are chronic venous insufficiency. It's a benign chronic condition. Dr. Jonathan Reiner goes, yeah, but he didn't have it as recently as a couple physicals ago, which is not that much time because they're happening so frequently. That suggests that this would be acute, acute tree trunk ankles, not chronic benign. That's a different condition. And he's now going every six months. Wait a second. When was that change announced? Why? Dr. Jonathan Reiner agrees. So the more physicals Trump seems to have to reduce concern, it increases concern. And the more Trump says I passed the cognitive test, the more we go, why is he getting cognitively tested so much? And on top of all of this, and this gets difficult now,

we have yet another symptom that dozens of you wrote to me about. I want to talk about that next. There is disturbing video of Donald Trump visibly struggling to stand straight without swaying. And this is barely 48 hours old. Now, many of you wrote to me about this. I wasn't going to cover it. then in the context especially of these physicals and all of the results that are coming out and so many of you writing to me about it, I do think it's worth looking up. Now, many of you noticed that during the Memorial Day commemoration on Monday, Donald Trump

was swaying and seemingly constantly losing his balance and adjusting. And I said, is this really going on? And I looked at the video and it is. So first I'm going to play the video in normal speed for you and you will see that everybody else is standing there saluting still. And Trump is swaying. He's swaying, swing, swing. Let me play it first, but then I have a different way we're going to look at it. Okay.

Now let me do something else with it. If we remove the audio and we just scrub through, one of the things you notice is that everybody else is very still. Trump is the one that is swaying back and forth to and fro. J.D. Vance is still. Pete Hegseth is still. But Trump is swaying back and forth, back and forth. This coincides with Trump's increasing difficulty walking a straight line. We have a number of videos now, including the one that's up on the screen of Trump walking down a red carpet, for example.

We have another one from a helicopter. This is Trump after, I guess, getting off a plane where he's attempting to walk a straight line. And he's not. He's going back and forth, back and forth. So we now have multiple instances of Trump having more limited control over his body. Now, there are a lot of medical explanations here. One is just like sometimes this happens to older people. And there's a number of reasons why that could be.

And there's a whole bunch of other underlying conditions that this could be related to. Standing still is harder as you age. If you're overweight sleeping two to three hours a night and not physically fit, it's hard to just stand there with a hand up on your head saluting. It could be an inner ear or a balance issue. It could be a vestibular issue that can cause that subtle rocking where you're constantly trying to catch yourself. There are myriad neurological causes that can affect coordination in this way. And it can be neuropathy, Parkinsonian symptoms. That's a whole other category of neurology.

There can be musculoskeletal issues, back pain, hip problems, knee instability, arthritis, weakness where you're constantly shifting weight and kind of going side to side. It could be medications, everything from sedatives to blood pressure meds, alcohol, THC, uppers, downers, anxiety medication, stimulants, they can affect steadiness. Anxiety and adrenaline can do this. Cardiovascular factors, orthostatic issues, dizziness, dehydration, reduced stamina. And there can also be non-medical explanations. And one of the ones that comes to mind to me is the fact that Donald Trump is widely believed

to wear lifts to make himself appear to be taller. claims to be 6-3. We've got a lot of examples of Trump definitely not looking 6-3 and lifts. It's almost like you're wearing an internal high heel. And I don't, you know, Trump may not be that comfortable walking in the equivalent of high heels. And it may be that that slightly being pushed forward by the lifts is causing Trump to be off balance and that he's trying to figure out, do I use the ankle to hold myself rigid or do I use what do I, how do I shift my weight? All of these are possible things. But the kind the the sort of contrast is third physical in 13 months, perfect better than ever. And we have a new symptom or a new series of symptoms, which is Trump walking

in inability to walk in a straight line and standing at attention and having to catch himself as he goes forward and back. We're definitely not getting the full story. What the full story is we are left to speculate, but it's definitely not the story that we've been getting. What do you think? Leave a comment, send me an email, info at David Pakman.com, or is Trump healthier than ever? And if I'm just getting it wrong, then let me know. Most sweet snacks are either satisfying or sensible. Our sponsor Magic Spoon is both.

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As some of you know, Jessica Tarlov is the lone left winger on Fox News is the five. And she silenced her co-hosts whose brains at this point must be filled with diet mountain do or something like that. And she really conceptualized with a beautiful narrative arc, the embarrassing failures of the Iran war and she does it so extensively and so irrefutably that her co-hosts, even Jesse Waters, who seems to always have something to say, they all have nothing to say. I have a lot to say about the substance here. Let's take a look at the video. It'll come down to the details of whatever this is. You know, if they get a deal, is it going to be better the same or worse than the JCPOA?

That's what it's going to get compared to. By the way, it'll almost certainly be worse. I loved the cope from Jesse there about the money that would be released to the Iranians, that denying the fact that it was their money that was being held in Katari bank accounts when Obama did it, only $1.7 billion, not the huge numbers that people say versus what's going to happen this time when Donald Trump has to give them some of their money in order to get them to take a deal. And we'll see how it all unfolds. I'm fascinated by Iran saying we might not toll the strait anymore.

There's just going to be a fee that you pay for quote-unquote environmental protection, which sounds like you're continuing to toll the straight of Hormuz. And nobody has yet mentioned the importance of the domestic pressure right now on Donald Trump. The lack of fertilizer that is getting to our country, turn on any channel you'll see interviews with farmers who are saying that it is complete, dire streets at this point. We already have a record number of bankruptcies. And so it seems to me, and we'll see what the deal looks like if there is one to be had, Donald Trump needs a midterms deal more than he needs a nuclear deal at this point and is willing to make a deal and punt

some of the more complicated stuff down the road, continue the ceasefire in that respect so that we can deal with $4.50 gas, approval ratings in the tank, minus 52 on inflation, minus 24 on foreign policy. You want to say, oh, this is a great solution to all of this. There are a number of conservative supporters of the war who feel like you did in your initial statements, Jesse, that they want actually more firepower. They don't want us to walk away at this point and just have a diplomatic solution. And I'm not sure at this point that Iran actually does think that we are willing to come at them with missiles again, because we've been threatening, you know, nuclear plant day, bridge day, tunnel day, whatever it is.

is for a long time at this point. And I'm not saying that I want them necessarily to call our bluff, but I'm not sure that they're quaking in their proverbial booties as much as you might think. Yeah, the Iranians. They go from smirking and interrupting. It's, it's, there's usually an interruption every 20 seconds on that show when Jessica tries to talk. They go from smirking and interrupting to staring straight ahead like their mics aren't working all of a sudden. Jessica Tarloff increasingly plays a sort of strange role at Fox where I think Fox on one hand says, well, she's there to provide balance. But the way it ends up being is that sometimes she's the only person on that show who's willing

to acknowledge observable reality. And you have four other people there who won't even concede what is real in the world. And as soon as someone goes, well, hold on a second, here are the timelines, here are the outcomes. Here were the the predictions and the promises, the contradictions, the consequences. The vibe changes. I don't think they like it. And Jesse Waters has kind of perfected the cable news smirk where it's like, I don't really have much to say, uh, but I'm going to just smirk and hope that the audience sees that as you're not making any sense and I'm really smart. But the problem is that that smirk only works when nobody pushes back effectively. And there's a broader media point.

here, I think, which is that modern political television is increasingly theatrical. It has been for a while, but especially now. And it's more of a role play. You've got the person in the role of the patriot, the person in the role of the elite liberal and then the common sense guy and the the concerned mom role. And every once in a while, the theater, everybody steps out of their roles and you've got a little bit of substance. And that's what I think makes Jessica effective on that show to the extent that, remember,

it's an audience that to a great degree doesn't really want to hear from her. She's effective on these panels, not so much because of ideology or principles, but she's often calmer than everybody else. And she's more grounded than everybody else. And they're all trying to generate a particular type of outrage. Now, notice also, and there's a lot of other clips we've looked at, typically, the other hosts don't really respond to Jessica Tarlov directly in terms of addressing her understanding her underlying points. Gutfeld, for example, who's a comedian and he says funny things. I know,

I know. Gutfeld often has paperwork where he just has his joke that he's going to tell. And it doesn't even address the substance of what Jessica Tarlov is saying. It's like there's a pivot or there's a terribly told joke or an interruption or maybe it's ad hominemes. And because if you address, If they try to directly address what she says, it wouldn't work well because she's right on a lot of the stuff. And these moments can resonate online because there's a discomfort there that nobody else is even on the same playing field with regard to an allegiance to the truth. Now, let me get back to the thing I said before because I think this is also interesting

from a media literacy kind of standpoint. I think it's ironic that Fox producers probably believe that having the Jessica there proves we're fair and balanced, although they don't use that slogan anymore. We're open ideologically. But the reason that clips like this often go viral is viewers realize that the panel is actually quite insulated from other ideas. Jessica's there to hopefully provide some balance to the audience. But it seems wasted on the other four hosts.

Final thought on this. Right winger have spent years. mocking safe spaces. But a lot of these panels are really designed to be safe spaces. And as soon as someone breaks the safe space with a different idea that's coherently and articulately placed forward, they malfunction. They don't know what to say. They go to ad hominemes, insults, etc. And I think Jessica's doing a really good job here. I don't know how many Fox News viewers are being convinced, But it's certainly interesting to at least confront some of these mountain dewbrained hosts, for lack of a better term.

Remember that J.D. Vance is not usually the smartest person in the room. And this is even when there's very few people in the room, I must say. J.D. Vance met with attorneys general yesterday. And I can only imagine that even Donald Trump cringed when he saw this. Here is, first of all, before we even get to the substance, here is J.D. Vance. entering the room and the crowd goes mild. Just nobody really seems to like JD. And by the way, there is audio playing here. It's just that this group of people is so quiet when Vance walks in that you might think the audio isn't working. Everybody's standing. Thank you all for being here.

Please take a seat. All right. So the crowd goes absolutely mild for J.D. Vance and then listen, And this is, this could be funny. J.D. sort of jokes about, is it attorneys general or attorney generals? It could be funny in some setting. But he's just so painfully uncharismatic that it just bombed. Kick it over to Andrew Ferguson. He's going to talk a little bit about how we're going to work with these state attorneys general. And it's attorney's general, right? Not attorney generals. That's, it's very counterintuitive. We got to change this. Maybe the group. peer together. We've got enough of a critical mass of attorneys generals to change it. But Andrew, attorneys general, I'm never going to be able to get that right. And the media, of course,

is going to make fun of me for it. Andrew, over to you. Well, it's more about your lack of charisma. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. And welcome to all the state attorney. And look at the grin on his face. The sort of, God, look at this look of the sort of, I just did a funny. Can we change grammar arbitrarily to my liking. Now, I don't, I don't want to make this show primarily about grammar. I'd rather make it about spelling if it were up to me. But here's the easy way to remember it. Are they attorneys or are they are they generals? Well, they're attorneys. So therefore, it's attorneys general. You might call it it. They, you think about it this way. They are general attorneys for the states they represent. They're, they're the most general attorney there is.

They're the overarching attorney. And there's many of these attorneys. Okay. Hey, I'm doing this not because I love grammar, but because the vice president is an embarrassment. Then we get to the substance. And this is where like, do they realize what they sound like? Here is JD doing his sanctimonious rant about how fraud is bad and we should want to get rid of it.

It's a little bit ironic coming from a guy in this administration. And as I've said repeatedly, this is not need to be. This should not be a partisan effort. Everybody should care about fraud. Everybody should care about rooting out fraud. Everybody should care about saving the American taxpayers money. And importantly, everybody should care about actually protecting the programs that only work and are only properly funded if it's not, if the money funding those programs isn't being stolen by fraudsters. So, well, we do care about fraud. That's why we want you out. That's why we want Trump and J.D. Van's gone. We're against the ballroom. because we care about fraud. We are against Doge because we care about fraud. We're against Trump's cell phone scam because we care about fraud. We're against. And listen, we're even talking about but the slush fund Trump's getting money from other countries, billions and trillions. We do care about fraud. The problem is we have people in power who are perpetrating it rather than rooting it out. Finally, uh, the Prince of Darkness, Stephen Miller was there. and he makes completely unhinged claims about social welfare programs.

Now, let me concede something to you because this has a long, dark history in American politics. This type of thing that he says goes back 40, 50 years. If social welfare programs really did work the way he claims, it would make a lot more sense to be against them. Listen to what he says. The points that Andrew hit on his remarks, all of the systems in our country, whether you're talking about voting, whether you're talking about entitlements, whether you're talking about welfare benefits, were set up based on the honor system. They're set up based on the idea that you could trust the average person through their own morality to abide by the rules and comply with the law.

And so the way most welfare works in most states and most places is we take your word for it. If you thought a piece of paper and you say your kids are hungry, you are going to get food stamps. We don't check as a country if you even have kids. The fact as basic as that. We don't even check if you even have children. You will just start getting the checks. And so what's happened to our country is we became a society, as you've seen with the Somali refugee problem in Minnesota, where you have a large number of people that are not following the honor system. So this is completely untrue.

There is no honor system. It's just that it's just not the case. Now, he's talking about food stamps. Food stamps require verifying household composition and the identities of the members. You need to provide birth certificates, school records, social security cards, et cetera. It's not the honor system. None of what he's saying is true. We recently with our kids, my partner takes the, has them as dependence and immediately,

upon filing her taxes, she got a thing saying, hey, we got to verify the identities of these kids. We need social security cards, send in records if they are enrolled in any kind of daycare. It is so untrue. Now, if it were true that the way it worked is you sign up for whatever, food stamps, free health insurance, but there's no verification, child tax credits, all of it. And you just get, you just get the money. it would make a lot more sense to go, man, I'm skeptical of this program. I don't know if this is being run in the right way.

Should there be more oversight? Sure. I love more oversight. With any program, you have a free rider program. You have to free rider problem. You've got to figure out what's the right amount of enforcement. And this is not unique to the United States. It's not unique to Somalis and whatever he's talking about in Minnesota with food stamps.

With any program, you need to find the right amount of enforcement that is going to get the the largest number of people to be honest and do enough sort of trust but verify to catch people that are not being honest. And this is, this is a global problem with any kind of social welfare program and it's been figured out. But he wants you to believe it's just the honor system. Everybody's lying about it, all this stuff. Well, I guess we should get rid of these programs shouldn't we? Part of the lie is lying about what the programs even are to get people to be opposed to them. Part of why we're doing a one day membership drive on June 9 is because we must build

independent media to beat back and resist exactly these types of corrosive lies, which if believed, get people to go, maybe we should get rid of food stamps. That's dangerous. So I would love for you to join us for this one day membership special on June 9th. It'll be basically funding the David Packman show into and beyond the 2026 elections and giving us a good start into 2028 on the 9th. An email will go out explaining how to get the one day membership discount. All you need to do today is get on my newsletter so that then you'll get that email on June 9.

Go to David Pakman.com slash substack. We've got a great bonus show for you today. Joe Biden has filed a loss. Who is he suing and why? And so much more, including the White House UFC fight. I know. I know. All of that and more on today's bonus show.