The David Pakman Show - The failures eventually catch up to you

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Democrat Brandon Dukes defeats Republican Scott Timko in Pennsylvania's 12th state House district, which Trump carried by 18 points -- Tetanus cases rise as childhood vaccination rates drop under Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- Economic data reveals slowing GDP growth, rising gas prices, and high mortgage rates, directly contradicting Trump's economic promises -- A letter shows White House aide Natalie Harp apologizing to Donald Trump for embarrassing him while admitting she forgets to eat and sleep -- Donald Trump threatens Oman and orders a journalist to be quiet after his deadline passes without resolving the conflict with Iran -- Donald Trump criticizes Texas Governor Greg Abbott for pausing AI data-center approvals despite polls showing strong local opposition -- The Friday Feedback segment -- On the Bonus Show: Scott Bessent can't understand why oil prices spiked, viral moments from Tim Pool's Jubilee appearance, and much more... 💳 PDS Debt: Get your free assessment & find the best option for you at https://pdsdebt.com/pakman 💪 Get a FREE AG1 Pro Yeti Shaker in your Welcome Kit at https://drinkag1.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 📖 Bullies, Parasites & Slaves: Text PAKMAN to 511511 or go to https://bps.online -- 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 (01:15) Democrats flip a Trump +18 district (07:49) Tetanus is back in Trump's America (16:06) Trump falls far short of economic promises (25:12) Letter shows Natalie Harp's dedication to Trump (32:34) Trump threatens Oman as Iran deadline passes (40:34) Trump criticizes Abbott for pausing data centers (49:23) Friday Feedback segment Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get deep insights on real-time market topics that may impact your investment portfolio. Listen to Fidelity Connects on Spotify today and power your next move tomorrow. Democrats just flipped a district that Donald Trump won by 18 points. This is a warning sign for Republicans. They dismiss the warning signs at their own peril. We're also going to look at numbers. that this administration does not want you to see. What has GDP growth been? What has inflation been? Manufacturing employment, debt, deficit. You'll see that there are broken promises littered

all throughout this economy. And meanwhile, the optional war with Iran is dragging on. Donald Trump's aides are reportedly admitting it never should have started. And there are more questions about whether or to what degree insiders have profited from the Iranian chaos and doctors are warning about the return of tetanus. Yes, vaccination rates are down and tetanus is back. Plus, Trump demanding more deeply unpopular data centers. And finally, David Packman is a liberal dweeb boy. I will explain much more coming up today. Democrats just flipped a Republican seat in a district. that Trump won by 18 points and it is not getting a lot of attention.

This was, it's just one low turnout special election for a state legislative seat. That's true. But the result here is a major warning sign for Republicans heading into the 2026 midterms. And it's a message to us about the opportunity that exists. Now here's what's going on. Democrat Brandon Dukes defeated Republican Scott Timco by just 88 votes in the 12th. state house district of Pennsylvania. This is Butler County. This is where the Trump assassination attempt took place. This is a seat that Republicans controlled for almost three decades,

and Trump won it by 18 points in 2024. The Republican state representative won it by 30 points in 2024, and they've elected a Democrat. So when you compare this result to Trump's performance, you see a shift of roughly 18 points towards Democrats. And compared with the previous state house result, it's a movement of almost 30 points. This is like an insane change in politics when you look at the same geographical area. The Democratic victory also now expands the Democratic majority in the Pennsylvania House to 103 to 100 at least temporarily. They are going to face each other again.

Dukes and Timco in November for the full two-year term. So Democrats are going to have to prove that they can do this again with a larger electorate. And Republicans are not wrong to point out that fewer than a third of registered voters actually participated in this special election. Turnouts going to be higher in November. We don't take it for granted. It's not a guarantee that it will stay blue. But the point here is this is not like, oh, it's a Democratic district and Democrats barely

held on. This is a seat Republicans controlled. for decades in a district that Trump won easily. And the pattern is Democrats are overperforming 2024 presidential margins in special elections. And if you look at state legislative special elections from earlier this year, what you find is that the median Democratic candidate is about 11.5 points ahead of where the Democratic Party performed back in 2024. That's insane. Now, the caveats, You might call them caveats or you might find them interesting, exciting things. Special elections are often, it's a smaller turnout, but they measure enthusiasm more than they predict the result in November. Highly engaged voters dominate when the turnout is low. And right now, there seems to be a lot more enthusiasm on the Democratic side. And the reason this matters is because of how close it is in the House of Representatives. Democrats need a net gain of only a few seats to. take control of the house. So it's not like we need to flip every district Trump won by 18 points.

It's like, hey, there needs to be a small number of flips in genuinely competitive congressional districts. And if Democrats are competitive in Trump territory, in Butler, Republicans are going to have to spend a bunch of money defending places they didn't think they were going to have to worry about. And the environment right now is pointing in that direction, a new Emerson poll of likely voters, gives Dems an eight point advantage on the generic ballot 51 to 43 and Trump has 40% approval. Now, we're going back into the phrase that was a very important phrase in 2020 and 2024. None of this guarantees anything. And Democrats might have weak candidates in some places or run bad campaigns or fail to turn people out. So the Pennsylvania candidates are going to have a rematch

under different conditions. And then we've got a whole bunch of different circumstances around the country, but Republicans would be very, it would be at their peril for Republicans to dismiss every single one of the growing list of Democratic overperformance as meaningless special elections when the same thing is happening every time. Dems flip the district Trump won by 18. They only need a few seats to stop Trump's agenda, take back the House and Meyer Trump in investigations for the rest of his political life. So it's a political environment that Republicans insisted was fine. It's not looking fine.

And we even see it in examples. Like, for example, when Maga Mike Johnson was asked, what is the argument that Republicans are going to make to voters? Why would anyone vote for you? Everything has gone haywire. The country is getting trash. The economy is a mess. Trump is a mess.

He's asleep all the time. And he's get to war. And he's more worried about granite and black onics for his construction projects than is about affordability. His answer was like, I don't really know, you know, we'll look at the video again. You can tell he is realizing. I can't say everything's fine because nobody believes that. And I can't say Trump screwed us because then Trump will come after me. What may change between now and November is that if Trump is more, if he's increasingly neutered politically, if his formerly rock hard endorsements become flaccid and pathetic and shriveled, you might start to see for

some Republicans go, I'm just going to denounce Trump because I don't think he can help me and I don't think he can hurt me if I denounce him. I've got to have something to bring to my constituents, which is I'm going to do different than Trump. It's very risky. I don't know how unpopular Trump would have to become in order for them to start doing that, but it is a decision that Republicans are going to have to try to make. So we are going to see a lot of different environments in different parts of the country. We're going to see a certain dynamic in blue states. We'll see a certain dynamic in red states, purple states. Whether there's a Democratic or Republican incumbent is going to change the dynamics of the race. Alaska has a wild Senate

race going on where they've got two people with the same name on the ballot along with Mary Peltola, who's the person I support and like and hope that our Alaskan viewers will vote for. All of these are different environments. They require slightly different campaigns. But the theme is that special elections and off-year elections have seen massive overperformance by Democrats and underperformance by Republicans, including in Trumpy areas. And that is a very bad sign for the Republican Party. We've talked a lot about the measles comeback. It's almost a bigger comeback than when the Red Sox went down 3-0 to the Yankees in 2004.

And after pulling out game four, one's one game's five. six and seven to ultimately go back to the World Series and win it ending the curse. Maybe it's not exactly like that, but measles is making a big comeback. Maybe not like the Red Sox in 2004. And the reason measles is making a comeback is because Donald Trump and RFK Jr. have turned basic vaccines into a huge culture war issue. Congratulations to the antivax movement. We now have another comeback. Tetanus is the next one that doctors are warning about. tetanus lock jaw, this horrible bacterial infection, it was reduced to a tiny number of cases because of the vaccine. In 1948, the U.S. had 601 cases of tetanus. Recently, the entire country

has had between 15 and 28 cases of tetanus. But in 2024, there were 32 and in 2025, there were 37. That's the most in a decade. Now, 37 cases is not. an epidemic. Tetanus is not spreading through the air. It's not spreading from person to person. But the rate of change is alarming because more than 75% of the places where there are these infections, we have seen the rate of childhood tetanus vaccination decline over the last seven years. Tetonus is not good. The bacteria live in soil and manure. This is why if you get a puncture wound or a minor cut, sometimes you're advised to go and get a tetanus shot. And the infection causes your jaw to lock, the back to arch muscles to contract in these spasms. Light can trigger the spasms.

Noises can trigger the spasms. You can lose your ability to swallow or even breathe. A nine-year-old who had not been vaccinated against tetanus in Florida spent 37 days sedated and intubated with tetanus in the hospital. A 16-year-old boy, not vaccinated in Kansas, stepped on something, got a puncture wound. The family treated it with burdock leaf and bread mold. Should that be criminal? The kid eventually spent 40 days in intensive care, got pneumonia, got bed sores, needed physical therapy, needed speech therapy. Guys, we have a vaccine. So we've covered the measles catastrophe already. We covered the unvaccinated children who died in Texas. We covered parents who lost a six-year-old daughter to measles and still said it was the right decision not to get the

vaccine. We've covered RFK kind of equivocating as the outbreak was exploding. We covered Trump babbling about 80 different vaccines with a gallon of liquid being injected and all of this stuff. And by July of 2026, the U.S. had 2,300 measles cases the most in 35 years. And 90, or more percent of the people who got it were not vaccinated. The anti-vaccine response is always just move the goalposts. Well, if nobody died, it's harmless. And when somebody does die, they go, well, they were obese or they had some other condition. They had diabetes or something else. When several people die, they go, well, these are personal choices. The reason these diseases have become rare is because of the vaccines. Before the measles vaccine,

means, three to four million Americans were getting measles every year, hundreds dying. After vaccination cases were down 99%. Same thing with tetanus. Having a tetanus vaccine transformed it from this thing that will kill you into something most people never even think about and some don't even know about. And so now we find ourselves in this ridiculous administration led by Trump and RFK, one of the most influential, I would argue, anti-vaccine activists running the Department of Health and Human Services.

And we're just like walking backwards. We're going if modern medicine is that way. We've been walking towards it. We've turned around and we're walking the other way. Now, the promise of we're going to make America healthy again, health health, healthy again is not lost on me in its irony because we've got measles surging, vaccination rates falling and doctors saying, hey, we've got to be more prepared to deal with lockjaw in 2026 and during 2027. We've got to hold people accountable for this. When we go and we vote, we really have to think what were the promises and what have been the outcomes? Well, the promises on the economy, we're going to look at 11 of them, by the way. The promises on the economy have all failed. Do they deserve to be rewarded for that with a vote or do they need to be

voted out? What about on health? Well, they promise make America healthy again. We're going to get, we're going to fix autism and we're going to fix obesity and we're going to fix diabetes, all this different stuff. Measles is back. Tetnis is back. And it is an absolute and total disaster. Let's just hold them accountable to their promises. That's all I'm asking. A lot of people carrying debt don't think to themselves, I'm in trouble.

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supplies last. That's drinkag1.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. We need to have a very serious conversation about what's happening in the economy right now. And the reason we need to have that conversation is that when people go out to vote in November, they should know what are the parameters around which I'm thinking about who to vote for. Have I been? insufficiently taken seriously by my elected officials such that we have seen improvements in a bunch of different economic areas or have things gotten worse? Has Donald Trump's promises come to become reality or have they been ignored and are the Republicans in the House and Senate simply enabling him and allowing him to do it?

Well, let's take a look at a bunch of different indicators. Tell me if this is useful. There was a very good piece by finance guy, Stephen Ratner in the New York Times. And he looked at 11 different elements of the economy and use them to assess how things are going. Let's take a look. When you look at economic growth, we see that GDP is pretty crappy in 2025 and 2026, especially 2026 so far. Now, Donald Trump's promises and the promises of his economic advisors where we're going to see

4% growth, 5%, we could even see 6% growth. And we haven't seen it. We have seen positive but low GDP growth numbers. Well, that's not so good. Donald Trump has made numerous promises that we are going to stop running a deficit and it will eventually allow us to pay off the national debt. In fact, Donald Trump during his first term said the national debt will be gone by the time I leave.

And what we actually see when we look at the data is a widening of the deficit. And as you can see here as Donald Trump has come into power, the deficits are already getting worse. on screen the projected longer term impact of those deficits of that budgeting and it is only going to get worse. And as a result, we go on to our next example. If the deficits getting bigger, then we know that the debt will grow, but will it grow as a percentage of GDP? And the answer is, yes, it will. You see that the projections based on Donald Trump's spending are that federal debt as a share of GDP will go up all the way up to levels beyond those seen after World War

2 during an after World War 2. Well, what about manufacturing jobs? Because that was another big selling point. We are going to bring back patriotic manufacturing to the United States. Factories and plants and jobs will come roaring back. But look at the data. Manufacturing employment is down since Donald Trump came back to office. It's at roughly 12.6 million jobs right now. And that is well below the manufacturing employment of the Biden era. Importantly, and I know many of you know this because I've mentioned it, there are about half a million open manufacturing jobs right now.

They're available to people who want them. At the price being offered with the locations and responsibilities of those jobs, 500,000 of them are just sitting open. People don't want them. Well, what about tariff revenue? At least the country took in a lot of tariff money, right? Well, let's talk about that a little bit. First, American companies pay the tariffs. So we've got to ground this in the reality that while Trump says we're taking in billions from China, China's not paying the tariffs. The United States importers pay the tariffs. And about 85% of those tariff costs are passed on to you and to me through. higher prices. Trump said we are still putting a lot of that money into the treasury. The money is

coming in. Fine. It's coming from American companies, but at least it's coming in. But what we are seeing right now is that the windfall isn't happening. And what this chart shows is net customs revenue. And net customs revenue is plunging because the effect of the tariffs is simply stopping a lot of these imports and it is not being replaced in a wholesale way by American manufacturing. It's just not happening. Okay. Well, inflation may be up, but at least wages are exceeding inflation, right? Wage growth is higher. So people's purchasing power is going up. Wrong. Donald Trump's promise was we will end inflation and make things more affordable. But what we are now seeing is that prices are up more than wages year over year based on the last month. And when inflation

goes up more than wages, you lose purchasing power. The promise was you will be able to buy more because affordability relative to wages, it's going to be better. You will be able to get more stuff. And it turns out that people are able to afford less stuff. And I don't mean, you know, cheap chotchkes. I mean housing, I mean healthcare, I mean groceries. It's becoming less affordable. We go to gas prices where the promises were very, very big. Trump promised gasoline below two bucks a gallon, but the national average is above $4 a gallon still. And the Iran war is a big part of this. Regardless, the promise was gas prices would be weighed down and instead gas prices are up significantly since Donald Trump became president. What about housing? Donald Trump said housing is going to be

become more affordable, home ownership will be more affordable. Except then when he got into office and housing didn't get more affordable, he goes, well, you don't necessarily want housing prices to go down because think of all the people who already own houses. Their assets will be worth less. Needless to say, there's really been no improvement. The median home price has remained basically the same from the level that Trump inherited, not increasing housing afford affordability. And meanwhile, when we go to mortgage rates, Trump said, when we bring inflation down, mortgage rates will come down. So even if home prices stay the same, it'll be more affordable to buy a house because the rates of mortgages will be lower. Not really going on.

6.7% as of right now for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage historically elevated and a number that does not make housing more affordable for the average person. We then have Medicaid. Trump promised no, no, no, we're not going to cut Medicaid benefits, but we have CBO projections which show really big reductions to Medicaid if the current plans are allowed to remain in office. Hopefully this is something the next president will change. But as you can see, $17 billion being cut from Medicaid this year. It would be $47 billion next year.

It would be $63 billion the year after that. This will result to benefit cuts. And remember the promise was not one penny, not one penny. And what they're trying to now figure out how to say is they go, well, we're cutting, but we're cutting the waste. Benefits won't go down. But we've already seen the analyses. Benefits will go down.

And what about people not on Medicaid fortunate enough to either have an insurer sponsor plan or buy your own plan or whatever? Well, health insurance premiums, which Donald Trump. promised would come down have actually jumped significantly up to $625 a month in 2026. A big part of this was those enhanced tax credits expired. And what that left consumers with are significantly higher premium costs for health insurance. So think about the totality of this. And if you are going to call me or you're when I do a live stream or you're going to write in or leave a comment, going, David, the economy is better under Trump.

I want you to tell me which metrics you're looking at because there's even more that I have, you know, here we looked at health insurance premiums, Medicaid, mortgage rates, home prices, gas costs, wages relative to inflation, customs revenue related to the tariffs, manufacturing employment, debt, deficit, GDP, all it all looks terrible for Donald Trump. If you're going to argue that something looks good, tell me which metrics those are. I could have included in this that car loan delinquencies are rising and are at really high levels, which is a leading indicator that it's getting very tight for households. I could give you 10 more of these metrics.

If your argument is things are good and you're going to reward Republicans by voting for them in November, tell me which economic metrics look good. And if you're going to come to me and go, well, the stock market's good. Yeah. The stock market's good. I'm happy about that myself as someone who has a significant portion of my net worth. in equities and to a lesser degree in bonds. I'm happy about it. But we know that stock market increases and decreases disproportionately affect the wealthiest people who own the lion's share

of shares of stock. So that's not really the the win that some people believe it to be. So let me know which elements of this economy are looking good. Donald Trump's love affair with Natalie Harp is getting really, really weird. There's a newly revealed letter which shows that Donald Trump's 35-year-old aide apologized for embarrassing him, admitting I am not eating or sleeping because I am so devoted to you. And she signs off on this letter with all my heart, Natalie. This is according to the New York Times. Harp wrote she wanted things to always be right between us. She's talking like one of two things, a love interest or a cult follower. And if it's true that there is no romantic relationship, then it points to cult follower.

What she was apologizing for was that she might have embarrassed Trump when they were walking around Trump's golf course in Scotland. And there's this video of Natalie Harp sprinting next to Trump's golf cart. I guess there wasn't room in the cart. So she was sprinting after it. And then she said, you know, I was distracted. I forgot to eat. I forgot to sleep.

I'm surviving on only a couple hours of rest. And so it was a miscalculation that ended up maybe making Trump look silly. Now, I'm going to say, in fairness, if I had to be around Trump all day, especially with reports about how terribly he smells, I probably wouldn't have much of an appetite. But this is a much, much bigger story. And of course, the conclusion to the letter with all my heart, Natalie, this is not normal communication between a White House employee and the president of the United States. It's very personal in terms of the tone.

She appears obsessed with ensuring that emotionally everything is right between them. And the White House says this just demonstrates how loyal she is and how hard of a worker she is. And Caroline Levitt, who's leaving as press secretary, he said she is truly one of the hardest working people working for Donald Trump. You can work hard without apologizing for your physical presence on a golf course and without depriving yourself of food, without depriving yourself of sleep. And without signing letters to the president that go, with all my heart,

These are weird people. We just have to acknowledge, you know, Tim Walls was right. Cults are weird. One of the things, some of the things cults do. And we've studied cults extensively on this show because they're so relevant to Trumpism. Cults erase, erase normal boundaries. And they go beyond loyalty. It's devotion.

You teach your followers that they must sacrifice everything, their health, their identity, their independence to prove how committed they are to the dear leader. And that's what it sounds like when you read. read these letters. Now, earlier reports, including from the book regime change, explained that Harp leaves adoring notes for Trump in his personal spaces. You were all that matters to me, said one of these notes. And Trump has said to staff that Harp loves him as much as family, and she's the one who will never leave me. This is, if you're interested in that, it's in the regime change book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. But I would even argue that Natalie Harp goes further.

She holds influence. She stays up drafting truth social posts. She communicates with world leaders for Trump. She's operating outside the White House chain of command. She prints out stuff from her portable printer to give Trump adoring messages and social media posts and all of this stuff. And when you are there doing all of that and saying to Trump with all my heart, you determine what information reaches arguably the most powerful person in the world.

You determine what messages leave the White House under his name. And what she gets for this devotion that she expresses is access. And the access gives her influence. And she supplies Trump with the validation he wants, which makes her even more valuable to him. This is the governing structure of a cult. The most obsessed loyalists who never challenge him and never leave him and appear willing to neglect. their own basic needs, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. She's neglecting even the basic ones in service of Donald Trump. He's all that matters to her. That's how cults work. Those are the people

that succeed in cults. And these are really weird people in a very unhealthy relationship. If they were just doing it for Trump's real estate projects, have at it. Go have fun. But this is now the relationship that is mediating the center of American and arguably global power. It is completely and totally whacked out stuff. And this is what we're up again. If you Google yourself, you are probably going to find things you would rather not have there like your addresses, past and present, phone numbers, relatives, jobs you've had, maybe a profile on some site you've never heard of.

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around the corner from success and Iran is ready to fold and negotiations are going so well. And then Iranian officials come out and go negotiations. We haven't spoken since J.D. Vance went home after one and a half days of the 60 days of negotiation. And then Trump comes back and goes, no, no, no, a deal is really close. And Iran's like, we're nowhere near a deal. And Trump says, We won. And then the conflict continues. And as we talked about on Monday, the 60 day negotiation deadline came and went with no deal, no victory, no real plan for getting out.

And now officials are leaking their own assessment, which is big surprise, we never should have started this war. Now Trump's response to all of this has been very predictable, which is he found another country to threaten. He said, you know what? If Oman gets in the way, we will bomb the shit out of them. Oh boy. He then lashed out at a female journalist telling her, be quiet.

Be quiet. We covered that on Tuesday. And Trump now saying on the issue of Iran, I like the idea of just saying that the strait of Hormuz is an American territory. We control the entire thing. Now, of course, this is absurd and ridiculous. the reality is that ships aren't going through the strait, how do we control it when it is once again a choke point?

Doesn't matter. One more. One more. Could you have last week you said that you would soon declare the straight of Hormuz to be a territory of the United States? Could you elaborate? Well, I just think it's a great idea. Yeah.

I mean, we control it. We control it with the blockade. We have a blockade. We control it with a blockade. And I like the idea of declaring it a territory. What did you do that? We have total control over the street. Now, they can be a nuisance. Now, this is just utter nonsense. This is his brain is mush. He is falling apart. None of that

is even remotely true. And if it were true, we would see a different energy price environment. We would have completely different circumstances with regard to who has leverage in these negotiations. Other countries would be behaving differently if we were really in control of the Strait of Hormuz and it was open. But it doesn't matter. Trump realizes he is losing this thing or he has lost it. And so he's just making stuff up. Trump then said, I get this was at one of his clubs a few days ago or who did he's always speaking with the golf shirt on and the red hat could could be anywhere. I believe this is one of his clubs. And he goes, oh, um, it's about to be awesome. Like it's, it's about to happen and it's just going to be great. They need to stop the fake news about what's going

on with Iran. Venezuela. We won that war in three one day actually 48 minutes, actually. And we have a great relationship. ship with Venezuela. We're taking out billions, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil, and Venezuela was great, and we're working beautifully with Venezuela, and we're doing the same thing now with relatively, it's larger, but we're doing a big thing on Iran. Oh, yeah. As you know, their currency is valueless. Their military is beat. The Navy is all sunk, 159 ships, and 159 ships. Every ship is underwater right now that's resting in the bottom of the

And there they clap like the train seals that they are. Yeah. Every airplane, there are 209 airplanes. They don't have any airplanes. They don't, and you know, it's amazing because you hear these, their radar is gone. All technology is gone. And yet somehow they're continuing to resist, huh? They have inflation at 350%.

Their cash is worthless. Their currency is absolutely worthless. And then you read the New York Times, they say, Iran is doing extremely well, you know, it's like, incredible. It's the only thing they have is fake news. It's all they have. It's not that Iran is doing extremely well. It's a country with massive problems led by an authoritarian, theocratic regime. But that's not Trump's problem in the sense of he's losing this war. And what Trump does when reality contradicts his fantasies is he just lies. And I say this in the most serious way. Trump is a loser. I mean that analytically. He sets his own terms for success and he doesn't meet them. He said

we would dominate them. He said we would we would get unconditional surrender. He said it five months ago. And we didn't get that. He sets a deadline and it expires. Iran's like we don't care. His officials can't even explain what winning is anymore. And it was an optional war. Trump chose this course And the instability has driven economic uncertainty and disrupted energy markets and threatened higher prices for Americans. It would, it seems to be going to, it seems like it will crush Republicans in November if voters decide, hey, we're tired of paying for this crap. And Trump doesn't seem to care. Now, there's also a serious question about how many people have profited from the volatility and how many people have profited from the war. Trump suggests the straight of

Hormuz is closed and oil prices rise. And then he says, an agreement, is closed and the straight, an agreement is close, rather, and the straight is going to reopen and prices fall. And every time that there's those swings, especially if you know what Trump plans to announce, which you can now pay for, if you want advance notice of his truth posts, you can trade on that stuff. You can make on godly amounts of money. Now, this doesn't mean Trump is personally illegally trading on information about the Iran

war. We would need evidence to make that claim. But it's a pattern where the people around him certainly seem to be trading on that information. And it's another area that Congress and financial regulators should investigate. Have people connected to the administration traded on announcements about Iran they knew were coming? They are making money off of the death of people. And if insiders are making money from the market swings that Trump is creating, that would give us a whole different understanding of the war.

Because if you're just an ordinary American, you see this war, you go, optional war, weird, all right. I'm paying more because of it. The economy is more unstable. Service members are in danger. Some are dying. Some are getting injured. If you have advanced knowledge, you're like, oh, wow, this is very profitable.

Now, maybe Trump considers that winning. The country loses. Americans pay. Republicans risk electoral disaster. But the insiders are cashing in. Trump will go, it's Oman's fault and it's Iran and the fake news media and all this stuff. But the person really responsible is Trump. And we have an opportunity to respond publicly.

in November. And if we get Democrats to take control of the House, we then demand that Democrats use every lawful investigative power available to figure out what happened, who made money, and did anybody break the law? Trump can declare victory 50 times, which he has, something 48 times, something like that. Repeating we won doesn't make it true. And it increasingly seems like Trump is straight up losing this war. Now, what's worse if you're a MAGA Republican?

Is it your president lying to you that he wasn't going to start any wars and starting one? Okay, that's one problem. Hey, he told us no wars and he started one. Is that worse? Or is it worse that your big, strong president is losing a war that was optional? Dear God, I don't know the answer. There's any MAGA's left in my audience. Let me know which is worse.

Donald Trump and MAGA have found an issue that brings Democrats and Republicans together. Unfortunately, they're on the wrong side of it. Americans are increasingly against data centers in their communities. And Donald Trump and some of the people around him are going like, no, data centers are good. They're inevitable. People should get behind it. Now, we have a Gallup poll and the Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans are against AI data centers in their local areas.

Of that 71% of 48, not 48% of 71, but 48 of the 71% strongly of the 70% strongly, oppose data centers in their communities. And what is fascinating is there is opposition across party lines. These things are increasingly unpopular as neighbors figure out what it means for their community. And Democrats don't really like them and Republicans don't really like them. So Trump wants more of them and he wants more of them built more quickly. And Trump recently criticized Texas Governor Greg Abbott's pause on new data center approvals. And he says it's a mistake. These are important. There's going to be AI. It just is what it is. I saw Texas the other day sort of is against data centers. I think it's a mistake.

And I'm not taking positions or I'm just thinking it's a mistake because there are the community. That's a position. When a community wants it, it means a lot of money is going to come into that community. Unsightly, potentially. Well, I don't think they're unsightly. I mean, I'm looking at some of these data centers are the most incredible buildings I've ever seen. They go for two and a half, three miles. They're three miles by three miles. They're necessary for the technology. Well, but I think they are tremendously important for the economics.

I mean, this is for Texas to say no to data centers is a mistake. In the sense that it could be bigger than oil. I mean, data centers could be bigger than oil. You have to Texas oil. And there are a lot of communities that want them. But more importantly, and bad for us, they have a lot of countries that want them. Trump says data centers could be bigger than oil. and other countries want them. But it's important to understand that the underlying issue is AI.

The data centers themselves are not the competitive advantage. You need to provide compute for these new technologies. And of course, AI is here. I know there are still people out there going, we got to ban AI. Guys, it's not going to happen. And so we've got to figure out how to harness it. And as Neil Postman wrote about, harness as much good out of it as possible and regulate to prevent the bad. That's the framework I think makes more sense. But we've got to be honest about what's happening. Texas is not outlawing AI. Abbott pot, by the way, Abbott's a disaster. But he paused approvals while regulators audit the facility proposals that are seeking access

to the state's electrical grid to ensure that they are able to provide the power that's needed. Texas faces about 474 gigawatts of proposed new grid connections. That's five times its record peak demand. Texas has electrical problems, as many of you know, because they've isolated their grid from the rest of the country. 90% of peak demand is expected to be coming from data centers. So regulators are rightly saying, listen, I know it's Texas under a Republican, but they're rightly saying we need more info. Electricity use, water use.

What are the tax incentives? Who's going to own this stuff? What are the community effects? That is reasonable. You then have people like Congressman Ryan Zinke saying that data centers have been demonized by foreign adversaries who are afraid of American AI. So we need more of them. data centers have largely been demonized. You heard it. They take away your jobs, your water,

your children. And where is this rhetoric emanating from? Largely it's emanating from our adversaries that fear our development of AI. And look, AI is changing the way we conduct business, through the way we conduct our lives, the way we look at the research. AI is changing. and having the ability to use AI effectively and compete is part of a core economy. So data centers have been demonized. I think data centers as far as popularity goes. I think probably... Popularity.

Congress is the only group that's probably lower on the polls than data centers. Now, you might be saying, wait, what is he talking about? It's not foreign agents going to town meetings and complaining about electric bills. It's not China convincing Americans. You need to care about affordable water. Americans care about affordable water. They care about pollution and they care about noise in their communities. They are trying to confuse you between rejecting AI and questioning specific corporate-backed

industrial projects that consume massive amounts of electricity and water, make a ton of noise, require new infrastructure and often get tax incentives without producing. many permanent jobs after the facility is built. So you can, and I'm not telling anyone what their position should be, but you can support AI and not falling behind in AI without letting corporations build whatever they want. Now, are we going to need compute somewhere? Of course, you can use AI every day, but believe data centers should only go in places where communities want them. You can use AI and support AI while believing that when data centers are built, it's the corporations that should cover the infrastructure costs don't socialize it to the general population. You can say, of course, I want the United States to be competitive technologically, but it's not families who should be subsidizing these massive a trillion dollar companies through higher utility bills.

Now, if a community genuinely wants one of these projects, fine. You've got to give residents time to learn about what's going on. Many times residents are learning about this stuff when it's far too late. You've got to make sure residents understand the tradeoffs, negotiate protections, decide if the benefits are worthwhile. If communities want them, let them build a data center, please. But there are communities that would say, well, the water use and the noise and the energy demand and the limited employment at the end of this isn't worth it.

We don't want it. And you've got to give them time to be heard on that and to understand. Now, for better or worse, right or wrong, resistance is becoming bipartisan. Democrats oppose these projects. Republican oppose them. Independence oppose them. Even Greg Abbott, who's not a progressive environmental activist, is sort of saying like, let's hit pause and just make sure we know what we're doing.

Trump is just going, oh, we need these things. People are stupid if they don't want them. That is a massive political risk because you're telling voters essentially your concerns don't matter. You're wrong about your concerns. Corporations and foreign countries want more data centers. And that's what really matters here. And the corporate strategy is to present every local objection as hostility to innovation.

And to say, if there's oversight, you're some kind of Luddite. No, you're not a Luddite because you say, hey, I understand where the technology is going. But we don't want corporations to come in and make us pay to build them a data center in our community, which will then screw up our water, make our utilities more expensive and generate absolutely unbearable noise. That is something that communities should demand. Communities are not demanding. Let's stop AI. They're saying we're not going to let corporations treat our homes and water supplies as corporate property, which then they make us pay for. Trump is on the wrong side of this. And once again, this could screw them in November and it would be the, it would be the right outcome

if it did. One of our sponsors today is the new book by George Koch called Bullies Parasites and Slash. slaves. Bullies take from others to benefit themselves and they pretend to be our only defenders as a ploy to get our support. And the instant a bully doesn't need us, we become their next victims. We need to wise up and see this. Parasites are the people hiding behind titles and offices subsidizing their wealth by ruthlessly underpaying everybody below them, like the CEO who makes more before lunch than you make in a year. And then there's the hybrid bullies. parasite king who sends the port of war to conquer, to kill, to enrich himself and his friends. That's what this book exposes and it really nails it, replacing exploitation with mutual care.

You can get bullies, parasites, and slaves in paperback, ebook or audio. You can even get it for free if you need. Go to BPS.online or text my last name, Pacman to 511, 511. 11, the link is in the description. Well, let's get right into the thick of it. James Germino wrote in and said, David Packman, misspelled, of course, is a liberal dweeb boy. You know, sometimes I get emails that are really angry with me or comments that are really angry

with me and they contain insults, but they contain some explanation as to why, why are you so angry? What is the bad thing I've done? And then I might have to explain myself or answer a question or something like that. When someone just goes, you're a liberal dweeb boy, you're, it sounds like you just mean I'm on the political left and you don't like that, which is a pretty low energy criticism. You're not telling me where I'm wrong. You're not telling me where my policy ideas are bad. You're not telling me where my criticisms of Republicans or of this administration have gone

wrong or have gone astray. I'm a liberal dweeb boy. Oh, boy. You really got me there, James. And then I actually step back for a second and go, damn, these people's lives must be really sad. Like how terrible must your life be that you spend your time insulting random content creators on the internet?

Because most people I know who are fulfilled and what they're doing, they'll either participate productively an online discussion, or they're just not participating in it at all. They'll go, hey, I like this video. And now I'm moving on with my life. And so I end up feeling bad for people like James. Like stuff must really suck for James that he's choosing to take his anger out on me. And you know what? If it makes him feel better, I'm a big boy.

I can take it. Keep it coming, James. I appreciate you. All right. Barry Johnson wrote on YouTube, it's apparent that Natalie Harp is controlling Trump. My question is who is controlling Natalie Harp. Good question. Natalie Harp is the 35-year-old assistant to Donald Trump who leaves Trump little notes sweet

nothings around his personal residence at the White House. Trump seemingly is more in touch with Natalie Harp than he is with his own wife, Melania Trump. He seems to have no relationship with Melania other than some minimum number of required events that she attends with him. Natalie Harp has a portable printer on which he prints out positive. of headlines and tweets for Donald Trump, yada, yada, yada. And there are questions as to whether there is a romantic relationship there.

But the question brought up here is an interesting one. Natalie Harp increasingly controls and direct Trump. And I say that not in the conspiratorial way. It's just he's spending so much time with her. She is working on a lot of his social media posts. She's reportedly involved in high level foreign policy discussions in that she is there and will sometimes provide feedback when asked by Donald Trump. So she's in a position of power all of a sudden.

Who is controlling her? I don't know that anyone in particular is controlling Natalie Hart. And this is one of those situations where can we get all conspiratorial and go, well, I wonder if Peter Thiel in his effort to get JD elected in 2028 is having Natalie Hart make Trump. We could do that that sort of conspiracy theorizing. I just don't think we really need to do it. It may simply be, you know, you can look up that. Natalie Harp was formerly a right wing media person.

I don't remember if it was O-A-N or Newsmax. She was on those. It may simply be the sort of collective extremism that Natalie Harp picked up in her time as a right-wing propagandist. That is what is directing her in her influence over Donald Trump. We don't have to get conspiratorial with it, although we certainly can. Terriaki 61 writes about Donald Trump's inability to walk in a straight line. We've seen Trump walking on red carpets that are relatively narrow.

And you can tell that he can't walk straight. He goes to one side and then the other. And he's increasingly being helped to walk by people like the Indian prime minister and others. Terriaki says that's why he has someone walking with him now to keep him semi in a straight line. idea. And it is true that we see more and more that Donald Trump is being walked with people. There's a very interesting video where he's walking with Melania off of his helicopter. And he actually bumps into her

and sort of knocks her off her path. And something is going on with his inability to keep a straight line. And maybe maybe staffers are noticing and they're trying to have a guide. Nigel commented about one of my California shows last week. At 46. 630, you can hear David's kids in the background. So cute. Yeah, it is true. Normally in the home, like at home studio, not when traveling studio. Um, there's no, there's no kids anywhere nearby. But it is true during the California media trip in promotion of my forthcoming book pay attention, which I hope you've preordered. You've preordered it, right? I did not have, the same equipment, which removes background noise, nor did I have the same buffer, nor were my

kids in school when I was taping. So I was acutely aware when that was taking place that my microphone was picking it up. Glad at least one person found it cute. Tony Kay with a critique. Tony Kay says this is so dumbed down. It's like politics for teens speaking about, I guess, I guess, this show, although maybe Tony was talking about a Trump speech. I really don't know whether Tony was talking about something I played or the show. Let's imagine each scenario. Number one, it would be wrong to say that Trump's speeches are politics for teens because he's actually speaking on a fourth grade level. So it's really like politics for nine year olds or 10 year olds. It's too much to say that Donald Trump is doing politics for teens. He's speaking at a much

simpler level than that. Now, if your critique is this show is dumbed down, it's politics for teens. One of the things that I believe is really important when we have half the country that doesn't vote, half the country doesn't vote, is I want to be as inclusive as I can be with the presentation of the show. And very often, you know, I'll use a word that is not a particularly rare word, but it'll be maybe slightly less common. Like I'll say a panoply, for example, people will write in and they will say, David, please give it a rest with using complicated words. And then other people will write in and they'll go, oh, David, you're acting like the audience doesn't understand.

So I think if you're getting criticized on both fronts, maybe you're sort of striking the balance. But one of the things that I do try to do and I think it's so important is to make the subject matter we're talking about accessible to people. And I could do a show that uses academic language and feels, you know, has a totally different stiff upper lip kind of feel to it. And I think it would be a turn off to a lot of people. And the most important thing to me is to be understood.

And so this is why sometimes people write in and like, oh, you know, David, maybe instead of social democracy, you should say that you're a social capitalist. And my thought process is that's not a really commonly known term. And I think I would actually end up being less understood rather than more if I use the term people aren't familiar with it. So anyway, the point is we want more people engaged. The best way to get people engaged in the political process is to show them how their everyday experiences are linked to the people we vote for.

And sometimes that requires speaking plainly, respectfully of course, not talking down to people, but plainly and in a way that is accessible. And that's my goal. more people involved in the process rather than using a language and a delivery that is more likely to feel exclusionary and to get people to say, eh, this is not something I care about. So to the extent that the criticism was of me, hopefully I've explained the why. Christine Alexander wrote in on Spotify and says about the story Trump told as to, Trump told the story last week where he says, I split up the MMR shot for my kids. Now, we researched whether that was likely based on when

his kids were born and the answer is probably not. But Christine has a different take, which is no one believes Trump took his children to the doctor for anything. That was women's work or the people who worked for him to do. And don't you just love how the amount of vaccines he describes has jumped from cups to soda bottles to a gallon's worth. He has no clue. He only knows how to exaggerate and build upon his last exaggeration.

I think it's a very fair point that I missed last week. Do any of us believe that in 1981? when was Ivanka born in 1981? I guess I should verify that. Ivanka Trump born in 1981, true. Do any of us think that when Ivanka was born in 1981, Trump was taking her to the pediatrician and going, hey, instead of giving her the MMR, could you get a standalone measles vaccine and a standalone Mumps vaccine and a standalone Rubella vaccine? Almost certainly not. And I think Christine's point is a good one, which is forget about the fact that there were no individual vaccines at the time. Forget about the fact

fact that this is a whole anti-vax identity that Trump has developed only recently in order to help him in in the political space. None of us believe that Trump was the one taking his kids to the pediatrician in 1981. And that is a really good reason to suspect that Donald Trump is lying. Stevie Glover says, wait, wait, wait, wait. Does David have a book coming out? He should have said. And then also, Citrine says, David, I'm begging you. Please limit your book promotions. to two per episode. I have mine pre-ordered and I have your first book also signed. But for us people who listen to your show every day, it's getting really, really repetitive. All right, listen, point taken, I want people to really understand what's going on with the book. You spend a really

long time writing a proposal. When the proposal is finally accepted after meetings with editors and publishers, you have to write the whole thing. After writing the entire. entire thing, you have to go through copy editing. After that's done, if you're recording your own audio book, you have to record the audio book. And that, I think we did 10 sessions of recording. Once that is all said and done, you don't want to feel like you didn't adequately promote the book. Now, I, the point is taken. I understand. If you go overboard, you end up hurting yourself. I would not want a situation where the first week comes and goes and the book makes it on no bestseller lists. And I feel like, you know, could I have done one extra interview? Could I have

come up with one extra promotion? So just understand these are like such massive works and I don't want to leave anything out there. But the point is taken this week. We have paired down the book promotion. I hope people have preordered it. And you know what? The more people that preorder the book, the less I will talk about it because I won't be so concerned about let's make sure this thing is a success. So point taken from Citrine. I appreciate. it. I will take that into account. I'll try to focus on the promotion in the interviews that I'm doing on other shows and all this sort of thing. On the bonus show today, I promise you, no book promotion. No book promotion. You can get access to the bonus show instantly by signing up at

join packman.com.