The David Pakman Show - The coverups and excuses aren’t working

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

-- On the Show: -- White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett attempts to reframe a missed growth forecast as an economic boom during a Fox interview -- Elaine Chao appears in identical clothing across two separate photographs released weeks apart following Mitch McConnell's absence -- New York gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman claims without evidence that Democrats plan to steal the upcoming midterm elections -- Republican officials fear potential Democratic midterm victories could trigger congressional investigations into White House misconduct -- Fox News hosts acknowledge that Donald Trump's signature tax legislation suffers from low public approval and poor messaging -- Federal employment data shows American manufacturing lost thousands of jobs despite Trump's campaign promises -- On the Bonus Show: About 60,000 migrants arrive in Ceuta, Spain in 24 hours, Republicans are far more willing to excuse scandals than Democrats, Elon Musk plans to spend $120 million on the midterms this year, and much more... 💳 PDS Debt: Get your free assessment & find the best option for you at https://pdsdebt.com/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Book: https://bit.ly/m/attention -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start (01:12) Trump official confronted on weak economy (08:58) Suspicions about McConnell's 2nd proof-of-life photo (18:55) Republican says Democrats will steal the midterms (26:08) Investigations will begin if Democrats win Congress (32:37) Fox admits Trump's tax policy is unpopular (40:02) US manufacturing is losing jobs under Trump (48:22) Friday Feedback segment Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump's top economic advisor got confronted on Fox News after predicting 4%, 5% or 6% GDP growth. We got 1.5. And he gave an excuse so absurd that I'm going to dive into it with you. We also have new details raising real questions about the timeline of Mitch McConnell's mysterious proof of life pictures. And the smoking gun maybe is weaker than advertised, but it's still not so good. I'll explain it. And Republicans are laying groundwork to reject the midterm results.

While behind the scenes, Donald Trump officials seem to be realizing if they lose the house, it will be two years of hell for them. Let's hope so. Fox News commits the unthinkable by admitting that Donald Trump's signature legislation is a toxic bomb for Republicans. And they keep talking about a manufacturing renaissance, but we're losing manufacturing jobs, not gaining them. is sort of catching up with them all at once.

And if you'll allow me, I plan to talk about all of it today. This is a good one. This is a Fox News meltdown. Top economic advisor to Donald Trump, Kevin Hassett, went on Fox business this morning. And listen, he was confronted by Maria Bartaromo about one of his predictions which aged like milk in a hot sun or something like that. Pass it. And actually, Howard Nutlick and Bessent, they've all been predicting we're going to have 4% GDP growth, 5% GDP growth, 6% GDP growth. Oh, the first half of the year wasn't so good. Well, it's going to get really good during the second half of the year. We now got the latest GDP number 1.5% well below expectations, slower than the previous quarter going in the wrong direction. So to her credit, Maria Barteromo says, what happened? You made this prediction. It didn't come true. Please explain it. And Hassett tries, he tries to take the

number like putty and shape it into something completely different and make us believe that everything is just going spectacularly. Well, let's see if he does a good job or a bad job of convincing anybody. Worries over inflation. Yesterday, the GDP was slower than expected. Last time we spoke, you told me you were expecting 4% growth in the second half of the year. We got a, growth number yesterday but it was way lower than people expected how would you assess the macro story today right well I think that what we are looking at when you and I talked last was the really surging domestic demand and so final sales within the US were about 4% actually almost exactly the number we talked

about 3.9% and the reason why the top line number was 1.5 was that we imported so many capital goods because we're building factories so fast that the number was different than we expected by a little bit. By a little bit. The bottom line though is that if you look at that, so the huge surge in capital spending, which means there's downward pressure on inflation because there's upward pressure on supply. Notice this guy's smirk when he delivers these lies. Plus CPI and PCE, those two reports were about as good as you could ever hope to see if you're

a Federal Reserve Governor, then it means that the economy is really running on all cylinders. It's just it's work. It's all working so well. It's a remarkable answer because first of all, HACET has been using the same excuse for months. When growth was 2%, he said it would have been four or five. That would be like the real rate of GDP growth. But companies are importing so much equipment to build these factories thanks to the dear Lord Emperor Trump.

But we're going to get to north of 4%, north of 5%. We could even be above 6% GDP growth. And I told you, that's not going to happen. And I explained why. And now growth falls even further to 1.5%. But somehow the fact that GDP is down is proof of this Trumpian economic explosion that's just right around the corner. Now, listen, I don't know what other shows do.

I'm always totally transparent with you about these economic numbers. There is a small kernel of truth buried inside of Hassett's propaganda. What is the kernel of truth? Well, imports are subtracted when GDP is calculated. You add exports and you subtract imports. And it is true that in the second quarter, imports weighed a little bit on that GDP number. The trade deficit knocked off about one percentage point from growth. And business investment in equipment was a part of the total number, but it's not a

because of manufacturing, as they have claimed many times, it's computers and equipment for AI infrastructure. That is where a lot of that business investment was. But even still, then you would be talking about 2.5% GDP growth, which is still well below what they promised. And it's still well below what they said is okay when it's a Democrat who is president. So the 1.5% headline, it understates some domestic demand. That's true. And if I want to to put the rosiest spin on this. Consumer spending grew final sales to private domestic purchasers, which is a it's an economic measure. That was up 3.9%. That's all true. But the big story from Hacet is we are building so many factories so fast because of Trump is always the implication. That's just

nonsense. And the construction data does not bear it out. One of the big negative stories about the economy has been that after all these promises about bringing manufacturing back home, building factories, building plants, as Trump likes to call them. Manufacturing construction is not accelerating. In fact, it's declining under Donald Trump. And the latest Census Bureau data shows that private manufacturing construction spending is down not 2.2 percent. It's down 22 percent.

Construction of computer, electronic, and electrical manufacturing facilities. That's usually what we when we think of semiconductor manufacturing. That's those are the three areas we think of. That's down 46%. And to the extent that some factories are being built, that has nothing to do with Donald Trump. That's because of Biden. Factories take years to build.

The Chipson Science Act subsidized semiconductor manufacturing domestically. That's a good thing. That's a good thing the Biden administration did. The Inflation Reduction Act put in place a bunch of incentives for battery solar and clean energy production. That was what supported the little, relatively little increase in manufacturing that we are seeing. And that is Biden. The Trump people love to say all these factories being built are because of Trump. There are some factories being built.

That takes years to finance and get permits and to actually build. So if a facility is in construction in 2026, it's not because of anything Trump dreamed up. It's not because of Trump's tariffs or any of it. It's mostly because of things that happened under Joe Biden, even as we see construction spending decline. Hasse's prediction is the big failure. He said 4%, 5%, 6%. It was 1.5. He says, well, the real number would be higher.

It would probably be 2.5 if you consider the way that GDP is calculated based on what he's pointing out. But 2.5 is still half of what he promised. So the economy is not collapsing across every metric. It's true that consumer spending and equipment investment were legitimately happening. But growth slowed. Inflation accelerated. And Trump's own economic advisor missed his forecast by a mile. He should just acknowledge that, but they don't do that. They invent these imaginary Trump factory booms and contradict their own government's numbers. And Trump officials have sort of discovered the perfect economic theory. It doesn't depend on any charts or graphs. You don't need to understand supply and demand curves. If a number, number good, Trump, number bad, Biden.

And in fact, number bad secretly proves something really cool is about to happen. You just have to wait a little bit longer. And of course, you keep waiting and nothing happens. That's where we are right now. And I wish it were so obvious to everybody that nobody felt for this crap. People do. fall for this stuff. And all I can do is try to explain to you why it is so deceptive. A bizarre new detail is raising major questions about the pictures provided as proof of life of Senator Mitch McConnell. And somehow it's coming down to Elaine Chow's $12 shirt. Let me explain. And then I'll tell you what's being said. And I'll give you my opinion. And then I want to hear from you. As many of you know, Mitch McConnell has been out of the public view for about six weeks.

He supposedly fell down at home, briefly lost consciousness while recovering nicely in the hospital got mild pneumonia and has been released in the hospital. It's like within the hospital to rehab. And that's what we know. So far, no video has been released, no public statement where we can hear his voice has been released. We don't know if he even has the capacity to speak at this point in time. He hasn't appeared before his constituents. His staff is recycling the same vague statements. He appreciates everybody's support. He's in rehab.

He's very engaged in Senate business. He's working with staffers. What they have released are two photographs of McConnell with his wife, Elaine Chow. Now, here's the first proof of life picture from the first half of July. You see that Elaine Chow, his wife, is wearing a white shirt. Okay. Okay, here's the second picture released about two weeks later. Supposedly, this was July 26th.

And you can see Elaine Chao is wearing this other shirt with sea shells on it. Now, a ton of people have said something is off here. And in fact, there are kind of a lot of things we notice in the pictures, but what I want to focus in on is the following. Here is another picture of Elaine Chao on July 15th, walking around outside, 11 days before the second picture supposedly was taken and she is wearing the seashell shirt. And what is getting attention is that on July 15th, she is wearing the exact same clothes as what she is supposedly wearing on July 26th.

This same white button down shirt with the peach colored eggshells and the same eggshell white pants. Her hair also appears to be styled and colored similarly. And so the suggestion is that the second proof of life photo meant to be supposedly from July 26th may have actually been taken on July 15th, even though that's not what they're claiming. Now, I'm going to be very frank with you. I don't believe almost anything Mitch McConnell's team is telling us at this point. Their story has been vague. It's been evasive. It's unnecessarily secretive. I don't really think we are being told what's going on. But there is also potentially an easy explanation here, which is people do wear shirts and blouses

more than once. And Elaine Chao wearing the same outfit, what, 10, 11, 12 days apart, it wouldn't really be that remarkable. And, you know, if your husband's in dire health straits in the hospital, you're in and out of the hospital visiting, maybe she's wearing the same thing, just not to have to think about what she put on. Maybe it just came up again in the rotation 11 days later. You know, I don't know that that in and of it.

itself is that remarkable. The counter is, well, you know, Mitch and Elaine are worth more than $30 million. Does it really make sense that she'd be wearing the same supposedly $12 shirt from Chico's so often? I don't know. Now there's another detail that is generating some attention, which is that Elaine Chow was wearing this long trench coat that we're putting up on the screen over her outfit when she left the rehab facility, hospital.

And it's been really hot in Washington, D.C. So this is another thing where it's like, well, maybe she just runs cold, but on top of the kind of weird same shirt in two pictures and it's not clear whether the picture was posed or whether this reflects Mitch McConnell's real increasingly healthy state, trench coat when it's super hot in D.C. I don't know. Now, the responsible conclusion is the matching outfit gives us a plausible alternative. date for the picture. It's not proof that they lied, but maybe the pictures were taken on the same day and held and one was released later. What I find to be the most relevant detail is that Mitch

McConnell's office has really destroyed its credibility by being cagey this entire time and by not giving us the simplest evidence that would resolve all of this. A current video of Mitch McConnell. Let him say the date. Explain what happened. Tell Kentucky voters. Is he capable of representing them, show that he is capable of speaking at this point in time. We don't have that. We've got these carefully staged still images, timelines that are a question mark, even some Republican senators who said, I was told that these pictures are really old. And the same kind of canned statement from staffers who want to keep this whole thing going. So a picture only proves that McConnell was alive at the time the picture was taken. It doesn't establish

It doesn't establish when it was taken. It doesn't establish whether he can speak. Doesn't tell us whether Mitch McConnell knows what's going on or whether he can serve. And I think that there's Democrats have two different things going on. We we have to on the one hand push Democrats to demand transparency about what's going on. But we also recognize that Democrats shouldn't be in a rush to push Mitch McConnell out the door because Kentucky would almost certainly replace him with another Republican. And his absence is depriving Trump and the Republican leadership of a Senate vote.

That's a good thing. Kentucky voters deserve the truth. If he's really recovering nicely and cognitively capable, just show us. If his condition is more serious, tell us that it's more serious. But only more questions are going to come up. And so my question to you is, what do you think of this picture controversy? What do you make of Elaine Chao wearing the same shirt as well as a trench coat in the middle of summer?

Do you think the pictures were actually staged much earlier in the month of July and one was held and it actually is even more divorced from whatever is the medical status and condition of Mitch McConnell? I don't know any more than you do. And notably, I've spoken to Kentucky officials off the record who say there's the assumption we know more. We really don't. We have no more idea of what's going on than anybody does. What do you think? Leave a comment or let me know by emailing in info at David Pakman.com and join the fight for 4 million YouTube subscribers. Did you know 47%? This is 82% of statistics are all made up, but I've got a real one for you.

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Get your free 30-second personalized assessment today at pdsdette.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. My one ask for you today, if you haven't pre-ordered my forthcoming book, pay attention. Please do. I'm giving away the first copy. printed. It's the one sitting on my shelf here behind me. Everybody who pre-orders the book in any format is eligible. If you get the signed copy at David Pakman.com slash attention, if you get the hardcover, if you get the e-book, if you get the Kindle, if you get the audio

book, you can submit your pre-order receipt to info at David Pakman.com and say, David, put me in that raffle. And on the day the book comes out, this specific copy will come down off the shelf. I will dedicate it along with the first new bestseller copy of my prior book, The Echo Machine, and I will dedicate it to one person and send these out. The pre-orders, the signed pre-orders are going to be wrapping soon to give me time to sign all of them. Davidpackman.com slash attention is the place to pre-order. Republicans are preparing to reject the 2026 election results. We are now within 100 days of the mid-term. We are now within 100 days of the midterms. Nobody's voted yet. And you've got MAGA candidates already declaring in advance that

Democrats will try to steal elections that they might legitimately win. Here is New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman speaking with Maria Bartaromo on Fox business. And here's what he has to say. Be careful. These dangerous Democrats will steal an election. Are you going to be facing that in New York? Well, we've, well, we budgeted. a significant amount of money for ballot security so we have money set aside for ballot security number one number two will have thousands of volunteers to make sure that there are no dirty tricks that they don't try to steal the election they

will try to steal the election just like they wouldn't let me speak the Dominican parade because they didn't want a republican to speak just like they tried to eliminate my ability to get matching funds but a court of five democrats said that that was cheating and they gave me back the matching funds yes they will try everything But listen, I'm not your typical Republican.

I'm a street fighter. I'm going to get in the game. I'm going to get in the fight. I'm going to go to every neighborhood. And we're going to make sure that we have a fair election. And I'm going to win this election because the people are on my side. Democrats come up to me every single day and say, I've never voted Republican before, but I'm voting for you because we need a change.

Our party is insane. I apologize for the disrespectful question, sir. But what specific plan has Blakeman uncovered by Democrats to steal the election? Who's involved? What laws are being broken? Has he notified law enforcement? Because he give us, can he give us a single piece of evidence? Of course, he can't.

He is planting the allegation so that if he loses in November, he can claim the result proves he was right. I told you they were going to steal it. And it's an unfalsifiable scam. If a Republican wins, the election was secure. If a Republican loses, Democrats must have stolen it. It's the Trump technique. No evidence can ever disprove the conspiracy because the result becomes the evidence.

It's same as I've talked a lot about with with these conspiracy theorists. If there is no evidence, they go, it's because they covered it up. They covered up the evidence. The fact that you can't find the evidence is the proof. And at some point, you just want to metaphorically slap these people and go, grow up. Losing an election doesn't mean it was stolen. And the projection is extraordinary because Trump and his allies are the people who actually tried to overturn an election and put Trump in power despite losing. Trump lost in 2020.

You don't have to look for esoteric definitions of lost. He just, he's straight up lost. His own election security officials said this election was really secure. His campaign filed 60 something legal challenges. They failed to produce any evidence that could have changed the result in even a single state. Trump flipped out, tried to get fake slates of electors to go. We declared for Donald Trump, our electoral votes. He tried to pressure Georgia's secretary of state to find him enough votes to reverse the laws.

The loss, he wanted Mike Pence to block certification, which he couldn't do. He sent an enraged mob toward the Capitol, a mob that wanted to hang Mike Pence. And that was a real attempted election theft. And Republicans have responded by spending six years accusing Democrats. of doing what Trump actually tried to do. And now they're doing the exact same thing for 2026. Trump gave this speech two weeks ago to announce they're going to rig it and they stole 2020 and all this stuff.

And now Blakeman goes, they have a plan. They have a plan to steal this thing. They're going to do it. And in the midst of this, they are taking real actions. If it were just this guy going, they're going to steal it. All right. Well, listen. It's one guy.

But Trump fired the remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission. He left that agency empty without commissioners. And his FBI seized 2020 ballots from Fulton County. They're considering using AI to examine signatures and Trump wants local county clerks to have the authority to say, I don't accept these results. They're doing everything to try to steal it. And in the middle of it, they also have asked the Supreme Court to revive an executive order that targets mail in voting before the midterms.

Fortunately, as I told you, federal courts blocked major provisions of that because Trump just doesn't have the power to do it. And they love the other thing that's just wacky is they love talking about how Democrats winning in blue areas is really suspicious. When Spencer Pratt failed miserably in the L.A. mayor's race, they went, it was fraud. A blue city is not voting for a Republican. That's not really surprising. With Steve Hilton in the California gubernatorial result, it's fraud.

Californians are voting for Democrats. What a surprise. And now with New York governor, a blue state, a reliably blue state might not vote for the Republican, it's going to be fraud. These are the people warning that Democrats are going to steal the election. And it's a three sort of step strategy. And we've seen it. But we've seen it for years.

Step one is you flood the country with these vague allegations before anybody votes. All right. Second step is you make really basic election procedures. Some people vote by mail. In some states, it takes a little longer to count. Sometimes when the race is really close, it takes a little longer to get a final result. They make that appear suspicious. They go, that's really weird. And then thirdly, if Republicans lose, they say it was fraud. We need officials to intervene. We need courts to intervene. We need federal agencies to intervene. And Blakeman here is doing step one. Very dangerous rhetoric because millions of Republican voters have been trained to believe that every

Democratic election is illegitimate and to threaten election workers and to pressure officials to discard results that they don't like. And I believe it would be easier to provoke another January 6th because they've already been told democracy failed even though nobody voted yet. Trump previewed it a little bit in 2020, but he really buckled down on it was rigged after he lost. This time, they're starting really early. And if Blakeman has evidence of election stealing operations, I want to know. I want to stop it. Give us the evidence. If he doesn't, which he's presenting none, he is undermining an election because he wants an excuse if voters reject him, which they almost certainly are going to do. These are dangerous people. And the greatest threat to the upcoming election is not the imaginary

Democratic conspiracy they keep promising to expose. It's the Republican movement, which is publicly saying we are not going to accept defeat because it will have been stolen from us if that happens. Dangerous people. Fortunately, we have people on our side doing everything they can to prevent this from happening. As we are now closing in on the midterms, you've got a lot of Republicans confronting a possibility that for them is really scary. Trump may have convinced them to commit political and potentially criminal suicide for him.

For a year and a half, Republicans during the second Trump term have behaved as though Trump's control of the government is going to last forever. He'll protect us forever. We can ignore courts. We can enable corruption. We'll weaponize federal agencies. But power is temporary. And if Democrats win the House, they are, these Trump officials are going to.

be facing subpoenas, they will be facing sworn testimony, they will have to deal with demands from and investigations led by people who want to know what happened. And there are some Republicans who seem to be starting to understand where that could lead for them. Now, to be clear, winning the House wouldn't allow Democrats to throw anybody in prison, nor do I as a respectful individual with regard to the rule of law want anybody thrown in prison absent due process. I don't advocate for that. We don't do lock them up stuff. What Congress does is investigate and expose misconduct and criminal charges can then be referred to prosecutors. They can look at evidence and there would be a normal legal process. But congressional investigations can be the

first step in that because they uncover evidence. They bring in witnesses who testify under oath and emails are made public. Um, coverups start to collapse. And most Trump officials do not have presidential immunity. Trump already admitted he's very worried about losing the House. He goes, I'm going to get impeached or worse. And at a Republican retreat, he said, we have to find some way to win because Democrats are determined to impeach me. Democrats wouldn't have to look very hard for reasons to impeach Trump, but I find more interesting what could really hurt down the line Republicans. Because when Democrats who are already preparing investigations into the anti-weaponization slush fund, the Justice Department's

targeting of Trump's enemies, foreign gifts, the Qatari airplane, the cryptocurrency stuff, the Epstein cover up, the misuse of pardons. All of that stuff is going to go beyond just Donald Trump. And our friend Jamie Raskin has said we would do hearings. We will take depositions. We're going to subpoena documents and testimony. And you've got former prosecutors already saying, How can I help? Imagine you are a Trump official who has sucked at the teed of Trump for however long they've been sucking on it. And you laid down and let Trump stomp all over you like a doormat. And you hear that. And Trump tells you to target an enemy. Stephen Miller tells you, ah, don't worry about the law. Somebody at the Justice Department says the law means whatever

Trump wants it to mean now. And you comply because you go, damn, if I say no, I'm screwed. And Trump controls the government. And then in November, Democrats take the House. And next thing, you know, your emails are under subpoena. Your text messages are obtained. Your subordinates are all higher lawyers to protect themselves. And you remember, damn, Trump's track record is making other people absorb the consequences of what he does.

Trump's lawyers have gone to prison. Campaign officials have gone to prison. January 6th defendants have gone to prison. And Trump sat there at Mar-a-Lago. is well done stakes with ketchup. So Trump eventually ruins everybody. And now Republicans are in the middle of it. And people who were, I mean, listen, maybe they were confident they were acting legally or maybe they just thought Trump would protect them. But if at the end of the day, you really believe you acted legally, you don't need the federal government to construct an escape hatch like the

$1.8 billion slush fund, which is apparently debt. Now, Trump could protect all of these people by issuing pardons, but federal pardons don't erase state charges. They don't erase civil liability. They don't erase congressional exposure and they don't erase sworn testimony during which you may have lied. So Trump would have to decide somebody else being saved benefits him. Good luck with that. Good luck with that. And Republican lawmakers are in a political version of the same trap. Trump gives them orders. They cast votes. They defend Trump on TV. And when the consequences show up, Trump goes, well, I don't really even know this person. They are, they are no longer worried just about losing an election. They're worried about losing Trump's protection. And Trump

promised them we will get power. We will all get power. And temporarily they got it as long as you remained loyal. But what Trump may really have given them is an evidence trail that leads back to Trump is cushy and comfortable at Mar-a-Lago in retirement, and they're dealing with investigations, subpoenas, depositions, and maybe if it's appropriate, right, we don't go lock them up. If the evidence points that way, maybe criminal charges also. One thing I've noticed is when I don't have good food options at home, I end up ordering takeout or making unnecessary trips to the store. really good staples on hand makes a huge difference, which is why I like our sponsor,

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And for a limited time, Wild grain is offering my audience $30 off your first box plus free croissants for life. when you go to wildgrain.com slash Pacman or use the promo code Pacman at checkout. The link is in the description. They've betrayed Donald Trump. Fox News accidentally told its audience the truth about Donald Trump's signature legislation. The big beautiful bill you might remember, the big nasty bill, the big ugly bill, whatever you want to call it. It passed more than a year ago. Donald Trump has spent all of this time insisting that it was one of the greatest legislative accomplishments in the history of the United States. No bill has ever done more for the average American.

Okay. Republicans are now trying to run on it in the midterms. Hey, we did this thing. Or at least they're trying to figure out how to run on it without reminding voters what is actually in the bill. And Fox apparently forgot that its normal job is to say to its viewers, everything Trump does It's great. It's flawless. It's perfect. It may have even been dictated to Trump directly by God himself. And instead, instead, they said the following. Take a listen.

Concerns among the GOP, some in the GOP, that they're not going to get the turnout they need in November. But to Mark's point, it's, and yours maybe, it's really important that Trump went out there. He said he would really throw himself into the midterms. He needs to do that. And a poll that just came out shows why. The big, beautiful bill, which Trump is is talking about on the stump has a terrible reputation. People don't like it. Even Trump's base doesn't like it. In my view, partly because Congress has been in a defensive couch,

Crouch, refusing to tout the big beautiful bill, refusing to tout, you know, no taxes on overtime and all these things that these guys in Michigan, I think, are going to really applaud. So, you know, he needs to sell this because Congress sure isn't. We're going to talk about that this morning during the show, because you're right. Like, Americans don't understand the big beautiful bill. They don't realize what it did.

And that's messaging. We're gonna talk. Guys, you're supposed to shut up about this stuff. Trump's still out. I mean, Trump barely has anything to promote. The war is unpopular. The tariffs are unpopular. Trump is out there talking about the big beautiful bill when he remembers as this centerpiece

of an incredible domestic agenda. Republicans are supposed to be selling it as proof that, listen, we delivered for working people. We promised we were going to do this and we did it. And it's great. And Fox News just announced this bill has a terrible reputation. People don't like it. Even parts of Trump's base are simply not buying it. Now, they do say it's messaging. They've got to sell it better. But they're acknowledging people are not buying that this bill is great for them. And unfortunately for Donald Trump, the numbers are absolutely terrible. There's a political poll which found about half of Americans either know nothing about the big beautiful bill or they have heard of it, but they don't even

know what it does. Only 11% of Americans believe they understand the bill in detail. And quite frankly, probably half of those who believe they understand it don't. You know, you ask people, are you in the top or bottom of 50% of driver skill, like just at driving cars? Something like 80% of people believe they're in the top 50%. So the point is of the 11% who say they understand it, Probably half of those don't. This is a spectacular messaging failure for Trump. It is really his only. I mean, I don't know that I can think of any other alleged legislative achievement.

It's been more than a year. They had all this time to sell it, to rebrand it, to convince Americans it's transformed your lives. Most people can't explain what it is. And the voters who do have an opinion don't really think that it's good for them. them. 14% believe that the big, beautiful bill provides tax relief to working class Americans. 34% say that it provides some relief, but really is much larger tax cuts for the wealthy. And 35% of Republicans even say, yeah, it's mostly good for the wealthy. Finally, a third of Americans say the law has been bad for their finances and people earning over

100 grand say they are more than twice as likely to believe it helped them than people earning under 100 grand. So the public, to the extent that they have an opinion about the bill, believes that what Trump did is sign this tax and spend package. It gives the Trump's gold-plated lettering or whatever to wealthy Americans. And the average American isn't really getting much out of it. And so now that a year has passed, you might be saying, why aren't Republicans more actively running on it? It's because most Americans either don't really know much about what it did, or they have a negative opinion of what it did. This is very dangerous because what's happening in the economy doesn't make anyone think

Republicans must have done something good. When you look around and you go, gases up, energies up, inflation is up, wages or not, prices are rising, all this stuff. Trump's in an optional war. We've got these tariffs. That doesn't make you think Republicans must have done something great for me. It makes you think they must have done nothing. Or if you remember the bill, you're like, that bill, I guess, didn't really help.

Republicans are saying we put money in your pockets. People are checking their pockets and they're like, I'm not, I'm not finding anything in there. So now they've shifted their messaging from big, beautiful bill to the working families tax cuts. They're referring to the same law. They're just trying to call it something else. And of course, what we've seen is when legislation is popular, you don't rename it, right? Imagine if Coca-Cola said, we are the manufacturers of the working families brown fuzzy beverage, fizzy, fuzzy or fizzy, I don't know, fizzy. You would go, oh, something must have really damaged the reputation of the phrase Coca-Cola because you're calling it something else. But the rebrand is sort of an admission that this is completely toxic. And Fox is just acknowledging that. Now, this is not Fox, I've issued these disclaimers before. Fox hasn't developed journalistic integrity. Fox just sees what's going on. And they look around and they go, man, a lot of these Republicans are putting the president and his party in a really difficult reelection midterm environment. And it's Trump's, I guess,

crowning achievement, but it's becoming a liability. What do we do? And so Fox is sending a warning flare. Don't assume voters love this just because Trump says they love it. And the strategy of MAGA is keep repeating stuff until it just overpowers reality. say the economy is great, say prices are down even if they're up, say everybody loves it even if people don't. At some point, even Fox News can't hide the gap between what Trump claims and what the average American believes about it. And if you can't run on the tariffs have been awesome, although Trump is trying, if you can't

run on this war is super popular because it's not, you, I guess, try to run on your one legislative achievement. It's a problem when most people have forgotten about it, don't know much about it, those that do think it hurt them, and they look around and they go, it doesn't really seem like anything is happening to improve the economy for me. That's a real problem. They made their bed. They're going to have to lie in it.

Let's talk about the nightmare manufacturing numbers. I sort of talked about this earlier in our story about GDP, but I want to delve more into this manufacturing situation. One of the central promises of Donald Trump in his campaign has been, I will bring back American manufacturing. We are going to see a roaring back of making stuff in the United States. The numbers are the following. The U.S. has lost 75,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump came back to office the second time. The construction of new factories is barely happening. It's mostly because of Biden legislation. Take a look at this video, which explains a lot of what's going on. The reality is that manufacturing, obviously, you had COVID and all the stuff going on,

but it got as high as 12.9 million jobs back here. And then it started to decline. And it simply continued to decline under Trump. So in fact, rather than gaining any manufacturing jobs, we've lost 75,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump arrived. He also likes to talk about the building boom. I think on the show yesterday, he talked about 19 trillion. of new investment in America. Remember, which is completely made up. That is obviously a crazy number. But in any event, when you look at something like factory building,

you can see that the factory building went up sharply under Biden. A lot of this had to do with the Chips Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, incentives for clean energy, companies were out building stuff. Then they peaked, and now it has just been going down under Trump, down to $175 billion rate from a peak of $250 billion. Trump also likes to talk about. talk about data centers and how much they're going to help this manufacturing boom, so to speak.

And in fact, you can see data center construction has gone up a bit. It's up to $43 billion, but not nearly enough to compensate for how much actual factory loss has been achieved. And, of course, data centers employ not so many people, factories employ a lot of people. So again, no manufacturing boom, no manufacturing renaissance evident in any of the numbers. And tariffs played a role in this. They have they raised the cost of steel and aluminum and discouraged businesses from building manufacturing facilities. That's the numbers. That's really what's going on. And manufacturing was going to be Trump's thing. This is devastating. This is just death. You spend years saying, I'm the blue collar jobs president. And then you come in, you slap blanket tariffs on everything.

You threaten American companies. You claim you got 19 trillion in cash from, your friends in the Middle East, which you didn't. And then you go, factories are just going to pop up everywhere like weeds. But the jobs are disappearing. We've lost factory jobs. And again, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in June, manufacturing employment was 75,000 jobs short of where it was when Trump took over in January of 25. We have lost factory jobs under the factory job presence. in Trump will point to like one month where maybe the number went up or he'll point to one company that says they're building a new plant. And then Caroline Levitt will do her dog and pony show and she'll come out and go, it's

the golden age of American manufacturing under Trump. But just look at the numbers. 75,000 manufacturing jobs are gone. And then there's also factory construction because remember, there's two parts to this. It takes work workers to build the factory. And then the factory employs people, which are manufacturing jobs. If you look under Biden, annualized manufacturing construction spending got up to $250 billion. Under Trump, it's down to 175.

So under Trump, that type of construction spending has declined by $75 billion. Now, we should be honest about something that neither Trump nor the kind of nostalgia obsessive. right wing wants to admit. Bringing back millions of old fashioned factory jobs, I don't even think is the right goal, nor is it realistic. And we've talked about this as well. And I would rather elected officials just be honest about it. We have an economy in the United States that has changed over time.

And it's moved towards services. It's moved towards tech. It's moved towards advanced manufacturing. Automation lets factories produce more with fewer workers anyway. So with to some degree, if you brought back some of these. factories, they would employ far fewer people than they used to. And a lot of the labor intensive jobs have moved to countries where wages are lower and regulations are laxer. No president can wave a magic wand, whether it's a tariff wand or whatever, and recreate American manufacturing

in the style of 1955. It's just not going to happen. I don't, I'd rather they just not even promise it. But the part that makes Trump's fantasy even weirder is we have hundreds of thousands of unfilled manufacturing jobs without building any new factories. Okay. Trump, whoever, whoever is president, you could boost by 500,000 manufacturing jobs simply by getting people hired in the jobs that are open right now. There's over half a million open manufacturing jobs right now. So before promising millions of imaginary future jobs, ask why do companies have these jobs they can't fill? And the answer, isn't Americans are lazy. The answer isn't nobody wants to work anymore. A lot of those jobs are physically demanding. Some of them require specialized skills. Some of them may be located far from

where the workers are and the wages may not be high enough to persuade people to completely reorganize their lives and maybe relocate to work those jobs over others. So when a business says we can't find workers, compensation is part of that. You can't find workers at the salary. you're offering, offer more money or training or stability or good working conditions and you're going to interest a lot more people. So I'm not suggesting we abandon manufacturing jobs. There are certain products which have huge national security benefits to manufacturing here. Semiconductors is one of them. Medicine is another. Energy tech. Essential military equipment. There's strategic relevance to manufacturing those domestically. We should secure domestic supply chains, make sure those

jobs are here that they pay well. Biden's Chips and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, it tried to do that and it's done it to a little bit of a degree. Trump came in and replaced that with tariffs on, tariffs off, tariffs changed, threats. Now there's no tariff. It's liberation day. It's imprisonment day, whatever it is. And the attacks on clean energy projects are hurting a lot of the companies and the demands that are being placed on businesses. It's a complete and total mess. Businesses do not like uncertainty. A company isn't going to say, let's spend billions on a factory if today the president's policies seem beneficial to what we want to do. And the next week, all of a sudden, they would be terrible because of something he posted to truth social.

Use tariffs to protect certain industries or to make certain industries incentivize to move to onshore. I've talked about that. But this is not a plan that is going to boost manufacturing jobs in the United States. They had their, you know, made in America signs ready. They have nowhere to put them. And the few factories that are being built are being built because of Biden legislation. There is no coherent plan. The manufacturing jobs aren't coming. Trump either lied or was clueless about what was possible. And as often is the case with Trump, why not both? The David Packman show is an audience supported program. And the best moment. 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. It's time for the most ugly, disgusting bottom feeding of American society and also some of the most beautiful messages you will ever see from people. It's the messages I get from you, from people in the audience. Just deplorable nasty, anti-social stuff and messages of inspiration and a lot of other great stuff. Let's go through a bunch of them. Remember, you can email info at David pacman.com. If you have anything to say to me, good, bad, or otherwise will also sometimes feature comments from our various platforms, posts from the subreddit, et cetera. We start with paradox frequency.

who says, Pacman, I have always aligned with you, but your messaging lately has earned my subscription. I don't know what specifically I might have said to get this lovely person to subscribe to this show. I don't even know if they mean they got a paid subscription or what the deal is. In any case, thank you. I appreciate it. It looks like I have a piece of lint on my shirt.

Oh, boy. And as embarrassing as that it actually seems stuck. Oh, boy. As in despite that, paradox frequency decided that they were going to subscribe to the show. I appreciate that and I love it. Not everybody being so nice. As many of you know, we're in the pre-order campaign for my book, pay attention. And as it turns out, some people don't like the book already, including blank blank,

who wrote in and said, I bought it just to throw it like a fris. be. You know, from a sustainability standpoint, I don't love that. Going through the carbon footprint of getting the book shipped to you, maybe you got it at a local bookstore, I don't know, to then just toss it. I don't love that. But if you're buying the book, you're buying the book. And as I've explained, pre-orders are how stores determine are they going to stock the book or not. And so given that, I appreciate blank blank. A copy is a copy. Jared says, One thing I noticed as my politics changed is that there's one group of people who think that historically we have been the good guys because of what we do or refuse to do.

And this guides their choices for the future. But there's another group that seems to think that we're the good guys because we're us and no other reason. I love this message because, you know, one of the things that I think differentiates, you know, differentiates people on the left like me and these right wingers that we're often dealing with is that they would come forward and say, we support the troops in whatever mission the president sends them on if it's a Republican because that's simply what we do. Whereas we take a more thoughtful approach and we go, well, sometimes the patriotic thing

to do is to support the mission of the troops when it makes sense. Like for example, fighting against Nazi Germany, even though we were kind of late getting involved and really only did so because of Pearl Harbor. But step back, right? That made sense to support on the merits. On the other hand, when George W. Bush sent troops into harm's way in Iraq in 2003 based on faulty or even worse, fraudulent intelligence, it wasn't patriotic to support the troops and their mission.

It was patriotic to say, let's not send people into harm's way for such disastrous and silly reasons. Let's support the troops by saying there's no reason to see thousands of troop lives lost, never mind the lives lost in Iraq over that. That was the patriotic thing to do. That is my politics. Let's decide whether we're doing the right or wrong thing, not based on simply we're America, but on what we're doing.

And are we leading or are we not leading? Trump, we are certainly not leading. And the missions that he has for our troops are certainly not ones that we can look at and go, that's great. That makes a lot of sense. All right. Next from Just just says the substack is great, but doesn't include the award winning bonus show. It actually does. We now have two ways for paid subscribers on different platforms to get the daily bonus show. Number one is become a member at join Pacman.com. Number two has become a substack premium subscriber at substack. David Pakman.com. You can get the bonus show either way. And it's important for people to know that, for people to understand because the fake news media is, maybe I don't need

to do the whole rant, but no, the, um, the substack does now include the bonus show. Um, all right, a lot of angry people this week. Stevie says this podcast is a load of bullshit. Um, you know, it's, it's a free country like they used to say in elementary school. Uh, if you don't the podcast, you don't have to listen to it. You don't have to watch it. I mean, listen, you're not, you're not here with a gun to your head. If you don't like it, find a different podcast. I never understand. One of the things, maybe I'm different. I don't know. But number one, it has never occurred to me to write nasty messages to people whose shows I either deliberately watch or accidentally came across. If I were to see an episode on Fox News of something I don't like,

It would never occur to me, never to start writing to the host nasty things, insulting his family, insulting his ethnicity or the kind of crap I get. I would just change the channel and move on with my life and find something I like. But for some reason, there are people out there. They must lead sad lives, I can only imagine, who do this kind of thing. Just move on. Watch something else. Listen to something else. Okay. Rated ARG in response to Donald Trump recently saying or being, it was suggested to Trump, you should make the official language of the United States American, not English, not that sissy British crap. American is the, it should be the official language. And rated Args said American language, which one? Cherokee, Navajo, Creek, Ute, Choctaw, and makes a good point,

which is that even though English is the predominantly spoken language today in the United States, English is an imported language to these lands that came in later than these native languages. Now, Arguably, even these native languages were imported at a certain point also, but earlier than English. Anyway, Trump and them don't, they don't care about that. They just really hate it when people speak Spanish. How much would you estimate on a percentage basis of the discussions about making English the official language are about we don't like it when people speak Spanish? We don't like it when we hear Spanish spoken when we go to places. I would say 80% is probably related to that.

80, 85%. Margaret Dimmick wrote in and says, I got pulled over today by the local PD for a brake light. The officer wasn't wearing mask, didn't ram my car, didn't smash my window, and didn't drag me out of my car. He was clearly identified with a clearly marked vehicle and had a body cam. He was professional. He handed me a fix-it ticket and sent me on my way. There's no reason ICE can't operate the same way.

Well, actually there is, Margaret. There actually is a reason why ICE is seemingly unable to operate with the same level of just basic professionalism. ICE recruiting is hitting the bottom of the barrel. One of the people that was recruited by ICE and ultimately killed a guy, by the way, not even the guy they were looking for. Not that it would make it right, but it wasn't even the guy they were looking for. even have been allowed to work around guns because of his history of domestic violence and other violence.

There was a guy who weighed nearly five or 600 pounds who was completely disabled per his doctor, not able to do any kind of job. And he was moving ahead in the recruitment process with ice. And by the way, because of what ICE is up to, a lot of sort of sane, normal people wouldn't want to have anything to do with that job. And so they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Not that police always act perfectly. Not that police training is as extensive as we would like it to be, especially when it comes to de-escalation, etc. But compared to what's going on with ICE, there is a reason why those types of interactions seem more difficult and more unlikely to happen with ICE. Swimming panic posted to the subreddit.

I think it's perfectly fine to celebrate the death of bad people. and writes, I know David has talked about this on a show, how you shouldn't celebrate the death of somebody or wish it. I disagree. I think if somebody lived their life on earth as a bad person, we should be able to talk about it when they finally leave us. Whatever you do in life, people are going to react to it, the good, bad, and ugly. Live half decently and people won't celebrate.

The living shouldn't be censored because the dead was a bad person. Rather, it should be talked about how terrible. they were and let that be a warning to those remaining. You will not be remembered kindly. We will not say kind words about you. People will celebrate. You know, I get the point of this email. And there are some really horrible people on this planet. Or at least we could say people who do horrible things. Maybe they're not deep down, rancid, but they've behaved in a rancid way. Would it be morally justified if you've identified someone who in life was such a negative influence on the world that we should be happy that they are no longer going to be able to have that negative influence.

Yes, it is morally defensible. But I ask a different question, which is do we want to be seen as the movement that celebrates the deaths of people? And I think this was a big debate after the killing of Charlie Kirk, where many of us recognize that his influence on the country in the world was a negative influence. And his ideas were bad ideas. the spread of those ideas was a negative influence. And yet we also, as humans living on the one planet that for now is the one planet we have to live on, can acknowledge that celebrating

or wishing for people's deaths is in a sense a kind of antisocial behavior. And that taken to scale, it wouldn't make the world a better place. That's my view on it. It's not about, listen, you should be glad if someone who was a terrible influence on this planet is gone. It's not about that. Do we want to be the movement that celebrates and wishes for the deaths of people? I don't really care about Trump dying. I want him out of power. That's my concern. And that's my view. Disagree with me, let me know. Mark wrote in about the ongoing issues with YouTube and says subscription issues on YouTube. Chiming in with my own recent experiences, David has described about what's happening on YouTube with subscriptions. I went through my list of progressive channels and I am indeed still subscribed and

signed up for alerts of new content. What's disconcerting is I'm getting no alerts in addition to my home screen when I opened the app, not containing any of the progressive channels I follow being suggested for viewing. I have trained my algorithm plenty to have this be front and center. If I scroll a bit, maybe there's a John Stewart clip, but otherwise nothing. I have to search for that channel to see recent content. Listen, there is no one size fits all solution right now to the YouTube fiasco. Now, for those who don't know. For years, I'm getting notifications from viewers saying, David, I know I was subscribed. And I found myself unsubscribe. And when I tell YouTube about this, they go, can't happen. Your viewers are confused. They were never really subscribed or they might have unsubscribe,

but forgotten about it or whatever. And I mention it. And I get 100 emails. So then I talk about it on the Friday feedback segment. And then I get a thousand emails from people going, no, that happened to me. At this point, I don't know what to believe other than we need to basically third. three-pronged approach to deal with this issue. Number one, just double check if you're subscribed and make sure you are. Number two, if you aren't seeing the videos despite being subscribed, search for them, go into them and like or comment on them. And then number three, check, check whether you are getting notifications if they are turned on. More than that, listen, this is Google we're up against. I wish I could do more, but sadly, I have nothing else.

that I can suggest. Send in your emails info at David Pakman.com. Next week will be an interesting one. I'll talk to you about it on Monday. And remember only for a few more weeks signed copies available for pre-order of my forthcoming book, pay attention. It is always an uphill battle as an independent author and an independent creator. I don't have the New York Times or Fox News or whoever advertising my book. I have this, me just telling you, I'd love it. I'd be humbled. I'd be flattered if you pre-ordered my book. If you want it signed, that's available. If you want the audiobook, that's available. All versions are available at David Pakman.com slash attention. And in addition to that, on the day of the books release, September 22nd, one person who has pre-ordered the book

is going to get this specific copy that's on my shelf. It's the first ever printed copy of pay attention and the first printed bestseller copy of my first book the echo machine. I will dedicate these to one person and send them. How do you enter that raffle? It's simple. When you've preordered the book any version, audio, Kindle, paper, hardcover, signed hardcover, send your preorder screenshot to info at david packman.com and say, David, put me in that raffle, sir, and then we will make it happen. Bonus show coming up weekend back on Monday.