The David Pakman Show - The China trip did not go well, and it’s embarrassing

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Ground beef prices hit record highs above $7 per pound while families increasingly rely on credit cards for groceries -- Donald Trump publicly agrees with Xi Jinping, describing the US as a declining nation, then tries to blame Joe Biden while praising himself -- Donald Trump struggles climbing Air Force One stairs and delivers confusing remarks about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz -- Donald Trump sas he defends selling American farmland to Chinese buyers and supports keeping Chinese students in US universities -- A three-time Trump voter posts an emotional apology video saying he regrets attending MAGA rallies, wearing the hat, and supporting Trump -- Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett says slower immigration means the economy now needs fewer jobs each month -- Former FBI Director James Comey mocks Trump’s obsession with him and says his daughter was fired because of their family name -- The Friday Feedback segment 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get 27% OFF sitewide at https://helixsleep.com/pakman 💪 AG1 is offering you a free Flavor Sampler and free gift at https://drinkag1.com/pakman 🤖 Sponsored by Venice: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off a Pro Account at https://venice.ai/pakman 💻 Sponsored by Private Internet Access: 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/DavidP -- On the Bonus Show: Right-wing reactions to rising gas prices, Stephen Miller is out of the spotlight, and much more... -- 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 (01:44) Ground beef prices surge (08:34) Trump praises China, insults America (15:33) Trump stumbles getting on Air Force One (26:25) Trump backs down to China (35:21) Three-time Trump voter apologizes (44:29) Trump adviser admits immigration is good (50:25) James Comey criticizes his bogus criminal case (57:54) Friday Feedback Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Fortunately, Donald Trump's diplomatic trip to China is over. Very little diplomacy. Donald Trump publicly played like a fiddle by the Chinese president Xi. Trump publicly agreeing with Xi's description of America as a country in decline and then made it even worse on truth social after talking about Chinese food and visibly struggling to get up the steps to Air Force War.

The most globally embarrassing foreign trip for an American president in history, certainly in decades. That's for sure. Now, meanwhile, here at home, Americans are getting crushed at the grocery store. And we're going to take a closer look today at the very manly beef. Beef as the guidepost of food affordability and Americana. And it doesn't look good. We're also going to look at a three-time Trump voter who does a real mea culpa. This is not a, I apologize if people were offended.

It's I screwed up. This has been terrible for so many people. I regret it. I'm sorry. This is how you apologize. You know, we teach four-year-olds how to apologize. And a lot of adults in MAGA don't know how to do it. And finally, one of Donald Trump's.

own economic allies accidentally destroys years of anti-immigration rhetoric on live TV. We're going to look at all of it today. My friends, it is now more expensive than ever, ever. It is the most expensive in history. Another record price for beef, the manly meal of the carnivores and so on and so forth. We're told that this was going to be a guidepost of proof as to the declining food prices under Donald Trump and instead beef prices have never been higher than they are today. You might say, oh, well, how do they compare to last week?

How do they compare to last year? How do they compare to when I was a kid? How do they compare to when after my swim meet I went out and got a burger? It is more expensive today than ever. The Kobayisi letter, which tracks capital markets with a very detailed and interesting post on Twitter, which says, quote, the average price of ground beef in the U.S. is now up to a record 690 per pound. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, ground beef prices have exceeded $7 per pound for the first

time in history. Prices have surged 77 percent since January of 2020. 20 when they were 389 a pound. Furthermore, the average price of uncooked beef steaks is up to a record 1302 per pound. Surging 70% since January of 2020. Ground beef prices have now doubled since 2013. Food inflation is running hotter than ever. Now, this is not a segment about carnivore versus vegan. It's just, that's just not what this is about. This isn't about whether the impossible burger is so good or so bad. It's about the promises that were made and whether they were kept. You might like ketchup on your burger. Maybe I don't. You might like aoli and maybe I don't. Or maybe you're a mustard

gal or a sauerkraut kid. That's not the issue here. Let's not make this about burgers. This is about the promises. And why I believe this is so emotionally salient and relevant to the election that is forthcoming is that when you think about people voting, and we learn this during the Biden administration, people can be shown abstract inflation charts or told inflation has popped from 2.8 to 3.8, which by the way, it did. We just learned about that. When you go and you say, we're making burgers tonight, it's Taco Tuesday tonight. We want meat balls. The family dinner is more expensive. You know it because you paid for it. Now, also relevant when we think about ground beef is we're not talking about

filet mignon. We're not talking about a T-bone or luxury steakhouse cuts. There's this idea of ground beef as this cheap everyday protein. And it's supposed to be affordable. If you're making the case that you're the affordability president and ground beef isn't affordable. And people remember, wait a second, you said inflation was coming down. Doesn't that mean meat prices should also be down? People understand this. There's so much in American politics that is abstract. We promise to pay down the debt, but it went up instead. Okay, well, I don't really see that day to day in a way that confronts my checkbook every single time I go grocery shopping. If you go and buy a few things at the grocery store and you go, how is this $140?

People really notice that. Now, on top of this, I told you earlier this week that we have a number of other concerning data points. If you look at credit card delinquency, people that are just late on credit card payments more than 90 days, that's higher and higher and higher. You look at student loan delinquencies. Those are up. And maybe most critically and importantly, you look at car loan delinquency, people more than 90 days late on car loans.

And you see that it is higher than ever. So this is very dangerous politically because unlike the price of housing, which you might not really can listen. If you don't own a place, you might not confront the price of housing in a direct way when it comes to buying and selling properties. although you do indirectly pay for it through rent. Or if the stock market is up or down, you might not be directly confronting that. If you don't own stocks or if you own only a little in a retirement account that's far off in the distance, groceries are unavoidable. And the promise, which I believe we should hold them to, is immediate relief.

Voters were told the price of groceries will fall quickly. And instead, we have many staples at a record high. And when you look at the history of sustained food inflation, it is not only destabilized economies in the past. Sustained food inflation has destabilized governments where it was not recoverable from an approval standpoint because of how directly it impacts daily life. If ground beef becomes too expensive psychologically, that, becomes a sort of cultural tipping point that can really affect how people are ultimately going

to vote in November. Now, we have about, you know, three months, I guess is where I would put it, for the administration to try to fix some element of this. The idea is that the economic circumstances sort of at the middle of August is when it starts to directly affect voting because people start getting close to those early ballots. and any relief that you see between August and election day might be too small to change people's minds. So we could look at beef prices.

That would be one way to look at this. We could look at gas prices. We could look at electricity and oil prices. But there is basically, it's May 15th that we've got three months until August 15th, at which it is considered conventional wisdom that if the economy doesn't appear to be good, if people don't feel the economy is good, they're going to vote that way in November. Very dangerous for Republicans. Very dangerous for Trump.

But most importantly, it's almost quaint, but let's just hold people accountable for the promises that they made. And so far, the Trump administration is failing on those promises. Donald Trump is being accused of treason by some after he sided with President Xi against the United States of America. Xi attacked the United States during what was supposedly a very friendly diplomatic meeting in China and said the United States is a country in decline. It is an empire in decline.

And Donald Trump agreed with him and then realizing how politically radioactive it was to do that. Think of the imagery of Trump going to China and getting slapped around metaphorically. I don't think he slapped him around physically. Metaphorically by a foreign authoritarian. And then when the foreign authoritarian goes, America is in decline, you as the president of the United States, like a dog, go, yes, yes, yes, yes. Trump realized how insane it is to side with a foreign authoritarian on foreign land that the U.S. is in decline, that he then went onto truth social and tried to clean it up. And I've got to tell you, his cleanup attempt fails completely.

Donald Trump posting. Now, understand, this is a panic post. Quote, when President Xi very elegantly, what the F? When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden. and under the administration, Biden administration. And on that score, he was 100% correct. Guys, that's not what she meant.

Trump continues. Remember, this is under Biden. Our country suffered immeasurably with open borders, high taxes, transgender for everybody, men and women's sports, DEI, horrible trade deals, rampant crime, and much more. President Xi was not referring to the incredible rise that the United States has displayed to the world during the 16 spectacular months of the Trump administration, which includes all-time high stock markets and 401k's, military victory and thriving relationship with Venezuela, the military decimation of Iran to be continued, strongest military on earth by far, economic powerhouse again, with a record $18 trillion being invested into the U.S. by others, best U.S. job market in history, blah, blah, blah.

In fact, Trump says, she congratulated me on so many tremendous successes in such a short period of time. Two years ago, we were in fact a nation in decline on that I fully agree with President Xi. But now the U.S. is the hottest nation anywhere in the world. And hopefully our relationship with China will be stronger and better than ever before. Guys, that's not what she meant. Okay. A Chinese authoritarian leader insults the United States to Trump's face. Trump is too meek, feckless, and timid to say anything about it.

And then he runs to truth social and starts explaining why she is correct. It's true. We're declining. But not under me. It was under sleepy Joe Biden that we were declining. That is not what president she meant. And imagine for a second. Close your eyes.

Take a deep breath and envision Reagan agreeing with a Chinese president that the U.S. is in decline. Obama agreeing with a Chinese leader that the United States is in decline. Bush one, Bush two, Nixon, Biden. They would never publicly validate a Chinese leader that the United States is in decline. And Donald Trump does it because, number one, he probably doesn't really know how to contradict it other than going no no and number two Trump thinks he can spin it in his favor she calls the United States a declining empire to Trump's face and Trump's response is yes but don't blame me it's Biden's fault he met a few years ago

and Trump desperately tries to reinterpret the whole thing after he and his state realized that this is a disaster. This was not a compliment of Trump's leadership. This is an attack on Trump's leadership. And she is speaking in, you know, geopolitical terms and historic terms. And Trump responds with DEI and other campaign slogans about men and women's sports and the stock market. It is so pathetically emasculating. And these are the people that tell us there are there are no stronger men than them. And it's embarrassing. As I watch this happen, it is truly a humiliation for the United States. Previous presidents, and I'm not talking about only Democrats, many previous presidents would have projected strength internationally, even during domestic

problems. Trump personalizes everything. Do I look successful or not? He must have meant Biden, or at least that's what I'm going to try to say. And so when you read that truth, post that Trump wrote. It's like when you got kicked around at the playground and then later you go, but they were actually really scared of me. Yeah, you couldn't tell, but they were really scared of me. That's what that's what happened. And I hate to acknowledge it, but I'm not going to lie. She's got Trump over a barrel. She convinced Trump to allow Chinese nationals to buy American farmland, which would be terrible for farmers, but she convinced Trump. She, insulted the United States to Trump's face and Trump did nothing about it. And Trump praised

an authoritarian and said, we're such good friends and he's so cool. He's so dreamy. Trump is harsher towards our democratic allies, Canada, France, the UK, than he is towards Putin and Xi and Kim Zhangun and the whole lot of them. It's embarrassing. And so the world has seen this trip and they see she is walking away stronger, disciplined, strategic. And Trump sounds like someone trying to explain. You know, the scoreboard said we lost, but we really didn't because it was backwards day. And when it said that we only had 24 points, we actually had 42 points. We really won, even though the scoreboard didn't say it. That's the pathetic and embarrassing position Trump ended up in. And the most important part is to now zoom out and to really evaluate the trip in its totality.

And in its totality, it was really bad. Donald Trump got played like a fiddle by Chinese president Xi. And to add insult to injury as he was finally leaving, this trip couldn't have ended a minute too soon. Donald Trump visibly struggling to get up the stairs to Air Force One. Sort of a emblematic representation of the entire trip. Trump's bizarre gate gripping the handrail like his life depends on it and finally making it up to the door of Air Force One, I believe Trump knows it was completely humiliated. I think there is even even Trump as self-centered and egomaniacal as he is, I believe knows

that this trip was a complete and total humiliation. Donald Trump was desperate for she's approval. And this is one of the most submissive and embarrassing ways a president can behave. When they were walking through some gardens, the audio isn't great on this, but we're going to do what we can. Donald Trump asks the translator to ask she, does he bring other people here? Does he bring other prime ministers and presidents here? Or is it just me? Am I special to Xi or am I just like everybody else?

Now, understand that by this point of the trip, it had already gone completely bonkers. Trump globally laughed at for talking about Chinese food in the United States to President Xi. She convincing Donald Trump to open up farmland sales in the U.S. to Chinese nationals, screwing farmers again. It almost is beyond belief. And then Trump in his infinite, infinite wisdom and strength says, does he bring other people? And it looks like she sort of shakes his head saying, no, who knows if it's true or not? But she knows how to manage Trump.

I hate to admit it, but she knows how to manage Trump. So Trump just asked, does he bring other presidents and prime ministers here? The translator now asks she, and you'll see she shake his head. No, she shakes his head and goes, no, no, no, no. I bet you say this to all the girls, don't you? I bet you tell all of them that this is globally embarrassing. And I really hope that, you know, for me, I see strength differently than some of these maggots. I do.

For me, I see strength when I look at Barack Obama, meet with Putin and speak directly. hold the line and be willing to publicly say, that's not something that we can do right now. We're not going to agree to that. That's a, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to let you push me around. That to me is strength. Trump's bluster and then showing up all feckless and timid and subservient to these authoritarian. Putin said they didn't hack.

I don't know. He was very strong when he said it. That's not strength. And when you see Trump desperate for approval, tell me I'm special. Tell me I'm not like all the other girls. That's it's the movie trope that Trump is turning into his relationship dynamic with she. America's in decline, said she, but I'm so special because he brought me to his garden with the beautiful plants and trees. And he doesn't do that.

You think he brings Mark Carney to the special garden? Oh, no. And the subservience is just incredible. Trump's sitting with Xi, this was close to the end of this disastrous trip. And Trump just making no sense. You can tell Trump is just shell shocked by how he's been outmaneuvered. And he just started glitching. Like he was he was using words, but they weren't combining in any way that makes sense.

And the relationship is a very strong one. We've really done some wonderful things, I believe. We did discuss Iran. We feel very similar in Iran. We want that to end. We don't want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the straits open. We're closing it now.

They closed it and we closed it on top of them. We want it open. We're closing it now. They closed it and we closed it on top of them. What? But we want the streets open and we want them to get it ended because it's a crazy thing. They're a little bit crazy. And that's no good.

Can't have it. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. But we're saying. You know, I am as a generic principle. I consider myself anti-war and I see myself as someone who prefers to get along with other countries. I think humanity benefits as a general principle when we get along with other countries. I do. But I also am realistic.

And one of the things that I understand, and I know many of you understand, but Donald Trump and a lot of the people around them don't seem to understand, is that just because a meeting looks friendly and Trump gets there and they lay out the red carpet, literally and figuratively for Donald Trump. And they've got kids jumping and clapping for Trump and they serve him. You know, I guess there was lobster soup served and tiramisu and they, a nice dinner for Trump and all of it. That doesn't mean that it's a friendly meeting.

And she and other authoritarian understand this. She now has a decade of watching Trump get played like a fiddle by Putin and even by Kim Zhangun and others. And it's lovely to say, let's all get along. What, David, do you want to be fighting with China? Do you want to be fighting with Russia? No, I don't. But Trump isn't even remotely equipped to deal with the skill of people like Xi and Putin. Now, I'm not praising them in the sense that I don't respect authoritarianism. I don't respect theocracy when it comes to Iran. I These are not the systems of government that I respect and I think are good. But I have to also be honest that Putin and she are much smarter than Trump, much more skilled

than Trump at this sort of thing. And she made it very clear. We will go to war with the United States if you try anything with Taiwan that we don't like. We are going to start buying farmland in the United States. And in fact, they already have. But then Trump supposedly wasn't going to allow it. Now he says he is. We'll get to that later.

And he reduced Trump to a subservient, sputtering mess. It is embarrassing as an American citizen to see that this is how the president is conducting diplomacy, even though it's not really diplomatic around the world. And hopefully, at some point soon, we can go in a different direction. The right is doing everything, everything it can to save Trump, the right. Right wing podcasters are dumping insane amounts of money to try to artificially grow their podcasts so that they can come in and go, no, but don't believe your eyes and ears what you saw is great.

So today and over the weekend, we are really focused in on Apple podcasts. If you have Apple music, Apple podcasts on your phone, on your computer, I have a really simple ask. Just follow the David Pakman show on Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating. That's the ask. That's it. It's 15 seconds. It costs nothing. And it helps us to displace these artificially propped up right wing shows. I'll tell you Monday where we are on the charts. I appreciate everybody who's been helping there. Shopping for a mattress is one of those things where most people

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description. If you want to see what it looks like to see a full grown man completely debase himself, surrender, and give everything up to full. foreign powers, look no further than Donald Trump's thankfully now completed trip to China. Donald Trump was interviewed by Sean Hannity. I guess Hannity flew with Trump on Air Force One and Hannity was doing some sort of a propaganda interview with Trump. And as we know, propaganda interviews with Trump that are total softballs often go wrong. And Donald Trump makes horrible admissions.

And one of the issues is that Donald Trump indicates. he's okay selling American farmland to Chinese nationals. And you might be saying, well, like, what's the big deal with that? Well, one of the elements of this, that's a big deal is that Donald Trump previously said, oh, no, no, no, we've got to stop Chinese nationals from buying farmland. We're not going to do that. That was years ago. But then Donald Trump goes to China for a few days. She just like leads them around like a dog on a leash. And all of a sudden, Trump goes, no, no, no, we've got to do we've got to allow that and I think Hannity realizes that Trump has no idea what he's doing take a listen to this I would assume I'm in Beijing if I wanted to buy property near one of their

military installations I don't think president she would let you I don't look it's not that I love it you want to see farm prices drop you want to see farmers lose a lot of money just take that out of the market, but they've had a lot of land for a long time. Obama did nothing about it. They bought a lot of it during the Obama administration. He did nothing about it. As Trump is open to selling farmland to China. He continues to insist, someone's got to do something about this. Someone must do something about this. But the whole idea of Trump's economic nationalist policies like tariffs as he presented them was to bring everything back to the United States. That's it. And one of the important distinctions here, because there's debate, like, is Trump saying they can or they can't? The important thing is Trump

previously said, we are banning them from buying farmland. And now Trump is immediately softening and going, listen, it's a controversial thing. We got to see. Maybe it's not ideal. We got some problems. But we might allow them to do it. That's a softening of his position. And it softened after he was pushed around, dog walked by President Xi. Another example, Trump defending 500,000 Chinese students in American universities saying it would be insulting to China if we banned them. Now, I am, I under, if you want to have a serious conversation about the influence of foreign investment and foreign nationals on the American university system, we can have that conversation. It's a complicated conversation.

It involves a lot of different players, a lot of different countries. But this is a reversal from the previous. We've got all of these foreign students coming in and taking over the universities. And now we'll, and remember, they love going, oh, you know, Asian students at Ivy Leagues and all of this different stuff. And now all of a sudden, it's a meek Trump. It's 500,000 students. They come, good students. I could tell them, I don't want any students is a very insulting thing to say to a country. She would be very insulted.

They would then immediately go out inside building universities all over China. But if you don't have those students, good students, by the way. And we do another thing. You know, if they're good and they want to stay in America, we won't give them a green card and things like that. You know, and not only them, but other countries. But if you want to see a university system die, take a half a million people out of it. You know, I don't disagree in general with the principle here. One of the things I've talked about for a long time is a lot of these birth rate truthers,

you know, the Elon Musk's and others who go, the birth rate is declining in the United States. People aren't having enough babies. They need to all have 12 kids like Elon Musk or whatever number he has. One of the things I've said to them is, you know, it doesn't really make sense that you guys are so concerned about a declining population and a low birth rate. And you don't want more immigration. We probably need to triple high skilled legal immigration to the United States if you have these sort of default neoclassical beliefs about economics that growth comes from population. And China is one place, but there's all sorts of countries from which we should be saying we

actually need to bring in more people. And usually they say no. The problem I have with this is that now Trump is going all flaccid on China because she got to him and she bamboozled him the same way that when he meets with putton Putin runs him up and down the stairs a million times puts him in a hamster wheel and says run until I say stop and it is so pathetic how easily Trump is swayed when he meets a an authoritarian who rolls out the red carpet and um sort of uh manipulates trump which is what these guys do now the cognitive decline was also in full effect during this interview with Hannity

Trump trying to play coy with wordplay. Any time Trump does wordplay, it doesn't go particularly well. Anyway, they're defective. I came up with a new name. I don't know if I should. I know which one of those. Democrats. Because they're dumb. They're dumb. It's D. You have am I got rid of the B. So you're only changing one letter, right? E goes and the U comes. You know you take up more space in people's heads. These are, uh, these are the Democrats, right? You only change one letter. He becomes you and then that's it. And then finally, Donald Trump so impressed with President Xi. And this is sort of like the climax of the entire trip where he goes, he's just unbelievable. This guy. He's tall. He's even tall. His physical stature. This is what it's like

when you just love dictators. And you want to be one yourself at the end of the day. Say about him that if you went to Hollywood, you look for a leader of China to play a role in a movie. Central casting. He's central casting. You couldn't find a guy like him. Even his physical features, you know, he's tall, very tall. And especially for this country,

because they tend to be a little bit shorter. You look at the military. I mean, the military today was incredible. That military marching was incredible. Trump loves authoritarian, plays of military power, we know. But no, if you went to Hollywood, you wouldn't find that, you're not going to find a guy to play the role who's good.

And he said, you know, I mean, I'll get criticized. They always criticize me when I say good things about certain leaders, but, and this one. But he's a leader for China. He's led almost 1.5 billion people for a long time. And he's just so dreamy. And he's respected. It says sort of interesting when the fake news said he said, they'll say President Trump said that

president she was a brilliant leader. Yeah, you know, the reason Trump gets criticized is that he favors autocracy over democracy. He's never impressed with how democratic leaders build consensus in their countries and win democratically. He's impressed with how people rule with an iron fist. He's impressed with how Lukashenko stays in power since. He goes, he's amazing. It's amazing what he's doing. Trump is impressed by authoritarianism. He goes, it's amazing how he keeps these people in line. Yes, when people are terrified,

then they stay in line. Now, it bears mentioning that it's only some authoritarian's that Trump is impressed by. When it's Maduro or Castro, these more sort of like left authoritarian regimes, Trump's not so impressed, but they are really all cut from the same cloth. So another failure for the United States, but at least we can say, thank God or thank the Chinese Communist Party or whatever you believe in. Thankfully, it's over. I'm going to show you what a real apology looks like. I'm going to show you what it looks like to realize that you screwed up big and you screwed other people because of how you voted. A three-time Trump voter called into C-SPAN and said, I was really wrong, really wrong, and people are suffering.

And this three-time Trump voter breaks down. It's really a maga cultist leaving the cult. And he doesn't do, I'm sorry if someone was offended. He goes, I apologize to all of America. There is a lot to learn from this. Cleveland, Ohio, Republican, you're on open forum. Well, I like to first say I apologize to all of America and all of Americans. I was a diehard Republican.

I cannot believe, I drank the Kool-Aid, okay? I am guilty. I drank the Kool-Aid of Donald J. Trump. In fact, I don't even know why we keep saying Donald J. Trump. This man is ruining the Constitution of the United States. What's going on in these southern states, Louisiana and Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama. They're taking away the vote from the black man, the fight from the black people that are part of our country. They're stealing their vote.

They're making it no and mean nothing. And we need to, I don't know what we need to do, but I don't know what we need to do, but I, I'm not going to vote for Donald Trump. I know that this country, if you see all the corruption, the billions of dollars that the Trump family is grabbing. And he says it's never about the money. It's all about the money. The lies, the lies, the lies that come out of this man's mouth. Everything he says is not true is exactly what is true.

And he just, it's just, I don't know what needs to be done, but the Democrats need to grab the helm and lead the people what we need to do. they are overwhelming the system of democracy. Robert, when you said you drank the Kool-Aid, what was it about President Trump that appealed to you initially, and what was it that made you break with him? I mean, just seeing the lies, just he put us in a war. All Donald Trump wants right now is for clean face. He wants the straight of Hormuz open.

Guess what? Before he went there, it was open. And the gas prices were being. Beautiful. I mean, everything. All right. Listen, I think you get it. I think this is a lot more than just one guy apologizing.

It of course matters that this guy regrets voting for Trump. Cool. Step one. Step two. He's publicly admitting it. That's good. Number three, he's actually apologizing and not one of these. I apologize if anyone was offended.

I apologize. That alone is a level of self-awareness and humility that is pretty rare in America. pretty rare in American politics. And especially when things are as polarized as they are today, you've got cults of personality around people like Donald Trump. He says, you know, the rally, the maga hat, all that stuff, drinking the Kool-Aid. It's huge that he is delivering an unequivocal apology, period. Great. Recognition is the first step. Most people never change politically. You first got to admit I was wrong about something and something important. For every, this is the important part. For every Republican voter,

willing to say stuff like this publicly. There are hundreds or thousands quietly thinking the exact same thing privately. But a lot of them are embarrassed and they defended Trump to friends, to family, to coworkers. They might have cut people out of their lives over politics. And admitting that you've been conned is very painful to the psyche, especially if you've been in it 10 years. It's your identity. It's your personality.

And so a lot of people stay trapped in these movements, cults or political movements, because they don't want to admit they were wrong. And that is the most humiliating thing they can imagine. Now the next layer is, okay, for every one of these guys, there's probably 100 or 1,000 voters. There are also Republican elected officials having the same thoughts privately. And publicly, they keep defending Donald Trump because they are afraid and because they're cowards.

And there are Republican politicians out there that no Trump's not. dangerous. They know what he's doing is unconstitutional. They know that he's generating economic and political instability. He's destructive, but they know there could be consequences to saying it out loud. So they don't. And one of the reasons that authoritarian movements can seem resilient, at least for a period of time, is that fear does keep people aligned. And you go back to, you know, East Germany. You go back to the former Soviet Union. You look at North Korea now. Fear keeps people in line. One other important point. People changing their minds should be encouraged and it should be welcomed. It shouldn't be mocked. I don't mock this guy. Otherwise, nobody will admit that they got it

wrong publicly. In addition to that, as I've said before, we don't forget everything that happened and we don't ignore that it was possible to have predicted this. And tens of millions of people did predicted. I recently taped an episode of the Mori Povich podcast and we talk about it. And Mori sort of asked me, isn't this like we told you so stuff that's like patting yourself on the back and it's not that. It's let's recognize that this was preventable so that we can try to prevent it the next time. If we insist, they're sorry, but there's no way they could have known, then it's just going to happen again. We need to remind them, hey, listen, you were convinced that you were right and eventually you realized you were wrong. A lot of us knew you were wrong.

It's knowable. So let's not fall for it again. This guy had the courage to say it. That should be admired. That should be encouraged. And let's remember that so many of these people were bamboozled so that we can prevent it from happening again. Think of how much personal information you put into your favorite AI chat bot. They track everything you say on the app. Many of them sell the data to add companies and they use your personal info to train the AI so your personal life lives inside the chat bot forever. Creepy stuff, which is why I recommend Venice. It's sort of like a VPN for AI. Our sponsor Venice gives you access to all the best and latest language models, chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Deepseek, as well as leading image, video, and music generation models

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85% off. That is just 203 a month plus four months free at PIA vpn.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. A top Trumpian argument just collapsed in real time on CNBC when Donald Trump's economic advisor Kevin Hassett showed up and kind of admitted to the entire thing. This is one of my favorite clips of the week. The argument, it's such a muddled argument that I'm going to give you like a one line explainer. We'll watch it and then I'll talk about it. The argument Kevin has it makes is that even if it seems like the job numbers suck, they don't really suck because since there are fewer undocumented immigrants coming in and getting jobs, the number of jobs the economy needs to create for unemployment not to go up is much smaller. Now, you might be saying, huh? I know, I know.

Let's listen to Kevin Hassett, try to make the argument. And then we'll talk about it. But the jobs numbers right now have been blockbuster, you know, more than double expectation. And the break-even job number is a lot lower than it used to be because we've tightened the border. And so 120, 130 this year is sort of like two or three years ago, a 200 number. because of the, you know, we don't have this massive inflow of immigrants that are working. And so these are really great job numbers. There's no sign in the data that AI is costing anybody a job right now. But we are studying the future of AI and what it means for the workforce.

So we've got a big task force on that. What he's arguing is that the, there's this concept of the break even jobs number. And what that means is you need some number of new jobs to prevent unemployment from rising because the population of the United States is going on. So if the population goes up in order to keep the unemployment rate steady, you've got to create some new jobs simply to maintain balance. And then beyond that, you're actually creating net new jobs. There is the tiniest kernel of truth to what has to say, but it's very deceptive.

The number of break-even jobs probably has fallen a little bit compared to years past because it's true that immigration has slowed and the labor force is growing more slowly. So it is true that a lower payroll number today can represent a similarly tight labor market compared to a higher payroll number at some point in the past when the labor force was growing quickly. The thing is, this is not the flex. This is not the gotcha that Kevin Hassett believes it to be. Now, the general idea is plausible, right? In 2022, 2020, we had more immigration and we had more labor force growth, which they normally say is a good thing. But in retrospect, they have to say it was bad.

And so you might believe, well, at that point in time, just to keep up with population growth, you needed somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 jobs a month to avoid rising unemployment because more people are entering the labor force through a number of means. Now there's less immigration. The population is aging. People are leaving the labor force. So it's conceptually true. The number of break even jobs you need is probably lower.

But he is wanting you to believe that that is objectively a good thing. And Kevin Hassett is arguing that therefore the jobs that are being created must be really good jobs. But that is not the case. A lower break even number might just mean there's fewer people entering the workforce. There's slower population growth for a variety of reasons which could be good or bad. And so the labor supply is tighter. But the big problem, and this is what he won't say, but he probably knows because he's not stupid, is that now that we have fewer immigrants, we have fewer

jobs. I know that that contradicts what they've spent a really long time telling you because they were like immigrants are taking your jobs. A lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric relies on what's called the lump of labor fallacy, which is the false idea that an economy has a fixed number of jobs. There's only X jobs in this economy. If someone comes in from outside the country, they've simply taken a job from someone who was born in the United States. It's one to one. But that's not true because we are a little more sophisticated, not a lot, but we're a little

more sophisticated. We understand that immigrants aren't just workers. Yes, they work, but they also then consume with their wages. They rent or buy apartments, houses. They might start a business. They pay taxes. They are customers of other businesses. And so yes, immigrants increase the labor supply by working, but they also increase demand for goods

and services, which means that other companies need to hire more people. If I come in as an immigrant, I now have a job in the United States. But when I go and spend my wages at the supermarket, in the aggregate, now the supermarket goes, well, we can hire more people because we have more customers. It's called demand side stimulus. And so the more economically coherent position for someone like Kevin has it to take would be, hey, you know, when we have more immigration, it leads to more workers in the country, but it also creates more jobs.

That's a good thing. And the problem that they're running up against is that when you have lower immigration, you have fewer workers, which they argue that's good because that leaves the jobs for the Americans. But there is less demand for those jobs because there are. fewer consumers. And so he almost gets it here, but he leaves out the critical part, which is actually more immigrants would be better for the economy within a system that can handle more productivity, more production and more consumption, which right now the United States can. He almost gets it,

but just not quite. Former FBI director James Comey showed up on MS now and wildly triggered Donald Trump into another one of these demented spirals. And I think Comey is really interesting to listen to with a reminder that this is a lifelong Republican. This is not some far left bomb thrower who has picked a fight with Trump because he's far left. This is a guy who has been sort of mainstream, center right, totally basic, obvious Republican for his entire life. And he is accurately describing Donald. Trump as something that infuriates Trump, which is an 80-year-old man who is obsessed with him, which doesn't sound very alpha, does it?

Well, now we're going to have to live with it. I'm going to have to live with it. When he calls you a dirty cop, what is he talking about? How does that make you feel? I do it. Honestly, it's crazy that I'm in a place where I'm 65 years old and I actually find a little bit humorous to have this obsession by this 80-year-old man with me. I don't know.

And I am an honest person. I am a person who was raised to stand up and speak out. I can't do any other. It is absolutely the case that what is dry. You know, what's interesting is it's sort of an offhanded comment. There's this 80 year old. I'm a 65 year old guy. There's this 80 year old man obsessed with me.

It's a very, it's almost a throwaway comment. But it does actually represent and embody so much of what is happening in terms of the indictments. And he's indicted again. He's indicted again. It is that Trump is obsessed with him. Trump believes or has come to believe that the entire investigation into Trump's overlaps with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign are bogus and that James Comey is the villain. He's the perpetrator.

And now he wants to make him the scapegoat. Now he wants to make him the person who is going to face consequences. And he has become personally obsessed with doing that. And in fact, I think. Comey gets it because when Nicole Wallace asks him, do you think that you're going to be indicted again? Comey goes, they'll probably find something else if this one falls apart. Yes. And I think Comey is absolutely spot on here. No way. You said this won't be the last. Do you think they're going to indict you again? Oh, I don't bet maybe. Yeah. I mean, I think it Donald Trump wakes up at three in

the morning thinking about me. I do not, the vice reverse does not happen. But I'm sure that if this case falls apart, they'll come with something else. I'm going to have to deal with this, as I've told my family, they're going to have to deal with this as long as Donald Trump is in the White House thinking about me in the middle of the night. Have you heard of other jurisdictions looking at trying to bring cases against you? I've read stuff in the media about it. I don't know whether it's accurate or not. Notice the precision with which he says, yes, in the media, making it clear he doesn't know anything that isn't public here. I think it's very obvious that if this next case falls apart, if it falls apart soon, that there's going to be another attempt.

They are determined in the Trump administration. They, Trump has sicked his attack dogs on James Comey. And he wants Comey to suffer. And unfortunately, and this is what kind of is a shame about our system. There's pros and cons to the system we have. Simply having to defend yourself against high profile federal charges, even. if you are completely innocent can ruin your life and it can ruin you reputational and it can ruin you financially and the trump administration knows that the justice department knows that they know they don't

need to get a conviction they don't need to put them in jail they don't even need to have a good case to really screw james combe and to be frank i don't even know what sorts of um financial resources james combe has if you google his net worth is supposedly like 14 million that may be true that may not be true but you can run through millions of dollars in legal fees if you have the full force of the federal government against you and they know that and that's the tool that they use to ruin a lot of these people sort of a funny moment Wallace was asked do you know Todd Blanche Todd Blanche's Trump's former lawyer who is now the acting attorney general who is leading this latest

indictment and Comey so he says this in a funny way he goes he might have been a paralegal And he realizes that Nicole Wallace thinks he's he's sort of like saying it as an insulting in an insulting way. He's like, no, he was quite literally a paralegal. That's a perfectly fine thing to be. With Donald Trump at the top. Do you know Todd Blanche? Did you ever run in the same STMI circles? I don't.

I think he might have been a paralegal when I was the U.S. attorney there, but I don't, I don't know. Not saying that to be facetious. He started out as a paralegal, which is an important role, but you don't have much to do with the U.S. attorney. All right. So he's being serious. He was quite literally a paralegal when Comey was there.

And then finally, James Comey's daughter was fired. She was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and she was fired because her last name is Comey and for political reasons. And James Comey actually says that was a crime he believes. You had other family members of serving in the department, your daughter and your son-in-law. Right. My daughter was a superstar prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and was fired only because she has my last name. That's stupid. That's immoral.

legal in my view and painful, she'll be okay. I mean, she got a job at a law firm and someday I hope she'll go back to the Department of Justice. My son-in-law, who was the deputy chief of national security at that Virginia U.S. Attorney's Office, quit the day they first indicted me. Also just a tragedy to have that apolitical talent leave the department. God willing, he'll be back someday, but it both tells you the quality of the people that this organization typically has and the cost with Donald Trump at the top. You know, I, for the most part, everybody I've met and I've never met James Comey, but everybody I've met, whether it's consultants, mayors, members of the House, members of the Senate,

presidential candidates, current VPs and presidents, former VP, Kamala Harris. For the most part, I just see everybody as flawed people as is everyone. There are areas where I agree with them, areas where I disagree with them. They mostly are trying to do the best, although sometimes you meet people where you go, I don't know if that was the nicest person. That person seemed sort of self-serving. But there's sort of like this normal range. I've never met James Comey, but from every indication, politically, he's a Republican.

I'm sure there would be a variety of issues on which we disagree. But he seems like a decent and honest individual. And to see Donald Trump now do what he is. doing to Comey is not only sickening, but it's a reminder that Trump truly seems to be a horrible and disgusting individual. The David Packman Show is an audience-supported program and the best, most direct way to support the show is by becoming a member at join packman.com. You'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show, and plenty of other great membership perks. Get the full experience

by signing up at join packman.com. What exactly are my political views? You know, AJ wrote in and said, hi, David, I'm fairly new to the show. So I don't know if you've touched on this before, but I was wondering where on the left spectrum you fall. I know you've mentioned far left and center left, but where would you say you are on that spectrum? You know, I'm going to answer this, but there's this funny thing related.

to this, which is that for as long as I've been doing this show, every single day, I either get a comment or an email that says, David, you've moved so far to the right. You used to be much further to the left and you've moved to the right. And every few years, I'll take a couple of these political tests, the political compass test, and the like seven scales one that ranks your politics. And they all indicate I have not moved to the right and usually have moved to the left. Now, I'll tell you what I think is actually underlying those claims in a moment. But the way I describe, if depending on who I'm talking to, I would say, listen, I'm,

I'm a progressive in the broad general sense. And if people were to say, where are you between center left and far left? I think I would say I'm between the two as a sort of Northern European social. Democrat. I'm not a socialist. I'm not a communist. I don't consider myself part of the far left. I consider my views just pretty mainstream. It's what you would expect in Denmark and Sweden and these sorts of places. Now, why do I suspect that people go, you've moved to the right? I think that what that's about is that over the last decade or 12 years that I've been doing this, there have been more and more and more accelerationists, people who exist really only to argue that the left is not really left.

And they often will say things like, we don't have a true left in this country until we really do away with capitalism. We will never really be on the left and all this sort of stuff. And I think that the fact that those people have gotten more attention may be as exposed or maybe illuminated is the right word. The fact that I'm not a socialist. I don't consider myself on the fringe left where I want to destroy institutions and destroy the economy and like rebuild it in some way. I want to fix the problems we have with the models of Northern Europe, which makes me a social Democrat kind of puts me between the center left and the furthest left. Those are my views. And those are my views. I don't know what else I would say about it. All right.

wrote in and says, hey, David, or whoever else is reading this, I just want to let you know, on YouTube, there is someone pretending to be you responding to comments and telling me to text them. All right. This happens all the time. People make YouTube accounts and they do it on Spotify. They do it on Reddit. They put my face in the profile picture and then they will write stuff like, hey, really interested in your insights on this. Can you contact me on WhatsApp? Can you contact me on Signal? Can you contact me on telegram so we can chat more? And then it's a financial scam. Okay.

I love the audience. I do not have the time or where with all to be texting with individual audience members. So if you ever see someone saying, hey, love your comments, hit me up on WhatsApp and we can talk more. It's not me. It's not me. And when people learn that, they go, why aren't you doing more to stop it? We report every single one of the accounts. accounts that we see.

We just have nothing to do with them. And we can't, it's like whack a mole. We're like just bagging, whack, whack, whack. And then they just pop back up. Okay. I'm not trying to contact anybody. If you email info at David Pakman.com, that is the only official means of communication. Aiden wrote in and said about new factory construction jobs.

Good evening, David, just want to put in my two cents regarding the claim Kevin Hassett made about new construction jobs for factories. If I add an anecdote, I would mention my company is looking for 25 new drivers to work on the Micron factory construction in Syracuse, hauling dirt and concrete to and fro. According to the has to Hasett's worldview, these would be attributed to Donny Boy, when in reality the only reason Micron is being built is because of the Chips and Science Act passed into law by Sleepy Joe Brandon. Insert Trump grunting.

Ha, ha, ha. Ah. Ah, ladies and gentlemen. Yes. Last week when I addressed this issue of all of the construction jobs which don't exist, I should have also mentioned that many of the few new factories that are being built are actually thanks to the Chipson Science Act and the infrastructure bill of the Biden administration. The few factories being built that Trump is taking credit for, mostly we should be thanking

Joe Biden for. Think about that. Bambino 714, all this guy does is post Obama or versions of it on Spotify. On nomna, et cetera. There's really nothing to respond to here other than this is a lot. This is a lot. And I would love to know more about what's going on in Bambino's life that he just posts. Obama on all my shows. All right, S. Daga wrote on Reddit about the Michael Wolf interview,

calling it David interrupted. Yes, Michael Wolf did interrupt me a lot. And he writes, the Michael Wolf interview was ridiculous. Wolf is a blowhard in love with the sound of his own voice. Regardless of his personal politics, his present journalism is motivated by the same transactional self-interest as Trump. He's got a bunch more Trump books in the wings before he's done. the final days of King Trump, the end of Trumpism, America after Trump, the Trump legacy, how I met Trump's mother, et cetera. Yeah, a lot of people did not like the Michael Wolf interview. I found him interesting, albeit a little bit unruly, but a lot of people wrote to me and said,

David, he didn't treat you well. He treated you almost as poorly as Rahm Emanuel, some people wrote in. Yikes. G.A. Vanos wrote on Facebook, if enough Democrats. Democrats in red states would strategically register as Republicans, this could neutralize gerrymandering efforts. I don't think it would, but I don't totally understand what she means. But here's my take on this.

And I've said this for a really long time. I believe that the way to win is to win appropriately is offer policies that would be good for people, communicate those policies to people and motivate them to go and vote. sort of like messing with I'm really on the left, but I'm going to register as a Republican and then vote in the primary. I don't believe that that's the way to win. Maybe obscurely in some instance it could help, but I kind of don't think so. And I don't believe in winning in that way.

If you know, I'm I'm an independent and thus I'm not registered as a Democrat or as a Republican and I vote for the best candidate. And I it's just not my thing to go and say. Here's how we're going to trick the system by all of us going and registering as Republicans. Greg wrote in on Spotify about the ballroom and said my guess is the donors donated $150 million as forecast by Trump. But when the budget blew up, they withdrew their support. Now he's sitting on a pile of rubble with no funding to build his ballroom, which is why he is now demanding the taxpayers cover the bill. That's certainly a possibility. You know, it's I think it's worse than that, though,

because the budget went from 150 to 200, 253, 400. And then now Trump's going, well, we need a billion in taxpayer money. But it's for security. It's not for the ballroom itself. And it'll also cover some other stuff. I don't think it's as clean as he got the 150. But now he's got a problem because he knocked it down. As little forethought as that implies, I think it still implies more forethought from Trump.

I think they are panicked and scrambling. that's that. Ryder Kurtz rode in and said, David, how can you talk about the Trump administration lying to you about his health when the Biden administration lied to us to a much greater extent? So two things. Number one, Biden is no longer the president. And I pointed out as soon as the truth about Biden's decline became clear that Biden should drop out of the race for reelection. And he did. And that in a sense. sense is a closed chapter. Yes, there was an effort to cover up the extent of Biden's decline. I don't believe that there were specific medical conditions that were being covered up. I mean,

we still haven't learned of any. I know some say, well, the prostate cancer was covered. I have no reason to believe the prostate cancer was covered up. There was an effort to hide the decline. That was wrong. I believed Biden shouldn't have ever run again. Once it became clear, he couldn't do it. I immediately said he's going to have to get out and he did. But Trump is president right now. So why would I still be talking about Biden now? Like it doesn't really make sense. I think that emails like this are coming from people who quite frankly just don't want

anybody talking about Trump's obvious decline. So they go, hey, talk about Biden's decline instead. Well, Biden's gone now. So I don't know why I would keep talking about it. Trump's currently the president. Finally, friendly drummers said, what does the ballroom have to do with the assassination attempt? This makes zero sense to me.

What is the angle? I know the bar is low for stupidity in their excuses, but there is no correlation. Let me explain to you the correlation. As soon as the White House correspondence dinner assassination attempt took place, they opportunistically said if we had the ballroom, we could have the correspondence dinner there and it would be much safer. That's it's opportunistic. It's also wrong because the ballroom as designed would only seat a thousand people and And the White House correspondence dinner needs space for 2,000 to 2,500 people.

So it is stupid. It makes no sense. But that's how they're trying to connect it. We've got a phenomenal bonus show for you today. Sign up. Don't miss it at join packman.com.