The David Pakman Show - The firings will continue until the morale improves

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

-- On the Show -- Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and world leader in health policy and bioethics, joins us to discuss his new book "Eat Your Ice Cream: Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life" -- The Wall Street Journal editorial board calls Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown a moral and political debacle after federal agents kill ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis -- Donald Trump demotes Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino after agents under his leadership kill Alex Pretti, signaling damage control as the administration collapses -- Conservative figures and Second Amendment defenders publicly question the Trump administration after Alex Pretti is killed while legally armed, exposing fractures inside the MAGA coalition -- Donald Trump posts a conciliatory Truth Social message about Minnesota Governor Tim Walz while quietly reshuffling personnel, revealing a crisis response -- Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt struggles to defend shifting White House narratives as reporters repeatedly fact check claims about Alex Pretti, Stephen Miller, and the justification for lethal force -- Kash Patel contradicts himself across multiple interviews on gun rights and protests, creating legal and political confusion as the administration tries to justify the killing of Alex Pretti -- Megyn Kelly argues that Alex Pretti should have avoided federal agents entirely, effectively endorsing the idea that citizens must stay home to avoid being killed by the state -- On the Bonus Show: NRA calls for an investigation into the killing of Alex Pretti, House Democrats push impeachment of Kristi Noem, calls grow for a US World Cup boycott, and much more... 👕 American Giant: Get 20% off your first order with code PAKMAN at https://american-giant.com 💻 Sponsored by Private Internet Access: 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/DavidP 🧠 Try Brain.fm totally free for a month at https://brain.fm/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start(01:15) WSJ slams Trump immigration(06:57) Trump drops Bevino amid crisis(13:03) MAGA allies break ranks(21:11) Trump PR scramble in Minnesota(27:19) Leavitt struggles under scrutiny(38:06) Ezekiel Emanuel interview  (1:02:39) Kash Patel contradicts himself (1:08:06) Megyn Kelly’s shocking take Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Even the Wall Street Journal is now turning on the administration, calling the immigration crackdown a moral and political debacle after federal agents killed a nurse in Minneapolis. And they're basically saying that the administration's story doesn't add up. The administration is now scrambling. Trump has demoted his border patrol commander, his hype man, Greg Bovino. And they're pretending this is a calm and measured pivot, but this is damage control. The cracks are spreading inside of MAGA. Even conservative voices are starting to say, why is it that the government is shooting people simply because they were carrying guns? We're going to break down the chaos, the hypocrisy. I'm also going to speak to Dr. Zeke Emanuel about the Maha movement and his latest book. And,

of course, Megan Kelly's maybe most disgusting comments of all time, I thought she supported the First Amendment. I thought she supported the Second Amendment. Who knows? Clips, videos, and the podcast, of course, on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It's all happening today. We start today with the Wall Street Journal's bomb that they just dropped on Donald Trump, not MSNBC. So sorry, MS now, not the nation, not some left-wing thing. This is the Wall Street Journal editorial board. They aren't just criticizing Trump. They are calling the immigration crackdown a moral and political debacle. This is not the language you would typically expect from a conservative editorial board from a newspaper owned by News Corporation, which also owns Fox News. Now, here's what

happened. I know many of you already know the details. 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Preddy was shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Trump administration immediately goes on the offensive. Christy Noem says he showed up to inflict damage and killed. law enforcement. There's no evidence of that. Stephen Miller says Alex Prattie was a domestic terrorist. There's no evidence of that. And the problem is the video, quite frankly, the multiple videos. And according to the Wall Street Journal, the videos show Prattie trying to help a woman who had been pepper sprayed. He is a nurse after all. He gets tackled. He's on the ground with a phone in his hand. Agents find a concealed gun and disarm him and then they shoot him and then they shoot him again.

And again and again. And the Wall Street Journal says the Trump administration story just isn't believable. It is a right-wing paper saying the stink of Trump isn't passing the smell test. And then they go even further. The W, the Wall Street Journal says that this is the worst incident so far in what is becoming a broader disaster for Trump's presidency, a moral disaster, but also a political disaster and I think this is maybe the key part. Trump ran in 2024 as the strong man on immigration. He was going to dominate this issue. He might fail everywhere else, but he is going to be pleasing

the country when it comes to immigration. And not only is the country saying we don't approve of the job Trump is doing on immigration, even the Wall Street Journal is saying that this is an approach that's backfiring and they are saying it is time to pause ICE operations in Minneapolis altogether. It's time to rethink the strategy. We can't be targeting hotel maids and gardeners. And after all, Trump said he was going to focus on serious criminals anyway, not left wing activism. But you might be saying, oh, that must be that must be what some left winger said needs to happen. No, this is what the Wall Street Journal says needs to happen at this point in time. And it is effectively the right wing establishment saying, dude, you were screwing this up. Now, the other part of this

that I think is extraordinarily important is that I don't even necessarily know that the Wall Street Journal is doing this for moral reasons. Maybe they are. And it would be great if they were. But this is a political calculation primarily where Trump is not just losing the left. He's also losing the center right and the business conservatives and the people that often show up to clean up the messes of Donald Trump. what was supposed to be Trump's big accomplishment. You know, the tariffs might not be so good.

And getting men out of women's sports might not be something people are so, so concerned with. But immigration Trump is going to dominate. And it is a huge liability for Donald Trump right now. So the risk here is. And by the way, he's also firing Greg Bovino. We'll get to that later. There's a lot of damage control that is going on here. You are going to be in a situation if you were Trump where it is not just the Wall Street Journal editorial board turning on you, but you're going to start hearing from Republicans who are going to say, sir, you're big and strong and orange and all of that. But we are going to get crushed in November unless you turn this around and do something different. You promised law and order. Law and order looks different to our constituents than a

nurse on the ground getting shot 10 times. And when the Wall Street Journal starts to say it, you know that it is bad. So there's a bunch of different damage control elements that Trump is pushing forward here. One of them we will talk about later is the firing of Greg Bovino. It's a demotion. They're pretending it's no big deal, but Bovino is out. Stormtrooper Bovino is out. Um, in addition to that, Donald Trump has been bragging about how he had a great call with Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frye and Minnesota governor Tim Walls. They aren't actually changing their attitude. but Trump put out a couple of messages suggesting that now everybody is ready to work together. And what's going on here is nothing other than people are coming to Trump and saying they're turning on you.

You've got to do something because they are turning on you. It's not coming out of a deep responsibility to what is right. It's not coming out of an inherent allegiance to the preservation of life and the adherence to law and order. It's just people are telling Trump you're in trouble and this. is a problem and we've got to figure out a way to fix it. So we are soon going to see the Republicans and swing states coming to him with their hat in their hand and saying, sir, please give us something. We need stop acting like a complete lunatic and stop having your goons kill nurses and mothers of three and they are going to have a political problem. And later, we are going, maybe not even today,

we will talk about the broad implications. The the inflection point that the November election, could be, I think it's the better way to say it. Trump has now fired. They are calling it a demotion. Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander at large, who has been touring blue cities like it's a MAGA road show, going to use the toilets in Target and getting yelled at, trying to get snacks at a speedway and getting kicked out, but doing massive damage up to and including not Bovino personally, but is goon.

killing people, killing unarmed people, killing people who are there to help. Now, there is a lot of framing creatively of this situation meant to make it look less bad. But we just need to be very honest about what is going on here. Bovino is not a random bureaucrat or a faceless paper pusher. He has been the face of Donald Trump's traveling immigration crackdown with the masked agents. He's been doing the press conferences, social media stunts. He's getting in constant fights with Democratic officials. There was recently a video of him struggling to deploy CS gas and throwing it at people and trying to be a big, big boy, but we all know he's a pathetic clown. He has turned

Border Patrol into a mere political performance. And now Bovino is out. Why is Bovino out? Well, what seems to have been the last straw is that agents under his command shot in killed a 37-year-old ICU nurse named Alex Predi in Minneapolis. The administration, of course, immediately jumped into action by saying, oh, Predi was about to massacre federal agents, except we've seen the video and that's not what was going to happen. Uh, Prattie was a domestic terrorist, except we've seen the video and it was not the behavior of a domestic terrorist. And so, Bevino repeated the lines and said the agents are the victims and all of this stuff, but Preddy didn't attack anybody and he didn't draw a weapon. An agent disarmed him and then another

shot him in the back multiple times. So the propaganda collapsed and all of a sudden, Bavino is gone. Classic Trump. You build a hype man. Look at what a great job Bavino's doing. You give him a title. Commander at large of the Border Patrol. You encourage the chaos and when it explodes, you throw the guy under the bus and pretend you're the adult in the room, except you're the one who did the entire thing and orchestrated it. Now, hilariously, they are kind of trying to deny that Bovino was fired. But if you read carefully, you realize that they aren't really denying anything. Here's a tweet from Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary to the Department of Homeland Security. She put out a tweet saying, quote, chief Gregory Bovino has not been relieved of his

duties. As press secretary Caroline Levitt stated from the White House podium, Bovino is a key. part of the president's team and a great American. Now, notice that that tweet doesn't deny that he is no longer going to be the commander. The tweet doesn't deny that any of the reporting is true. It simply says he is still employed and he's a great American. All right. Well, that is not exactly a denial. So Donald Trump is now talking about a tactical shift. He says he spoke to Tim Walls. He's sending Tom Homan to Minnesota to replace Greg Bovino. And Trump is pretending this is calm. It's measured.

I'm leading. But this is serious damage control. And the wild part is that sources say Christy Nome and Corey Lewandowski, who are the big backers of Bovino, they might also be getting fired. Cash Patel might be getting fired. Now the question, of course, is Trump going to fire them all? Maybe. But Trump is not going to fire them because he doesn't like the policy.

policy, he's just pissed off about the optics. This is what authoritarian do. You push aggressive tactics. When people get killed, you deny the reality of what happened. And then you reshuffle personnel to protect the narrative. Listen, we have made some changes at the top and we believe we have a great team in place. But is the policy changing? Not usually.

Is the chaos going away? Typically not. And then it starts to be accountability theater. And if you think Bovino is the last one, I don't think Bovino is going to be the last one. doesn't fire people because they're dangerous. He fires people when they're inconvenient. And Bovino now has become inconvenient. What is really funny, I was sort of laughing to myself as I was reading articles this morning. Trump for a long time, since he became a political figure, has said that one of his greatest strengths is hiring people. Anything he doesn't personally know

doesn't matter because he will hire the best people. Nobody hires better than me. And it's part of the myth of Trump, the brilliant executive able to assemble a dream team and all of this. If you look at the actual record, the pattern is the opposite. He hires people who implode. He hires people who becomes scandals that he has to clean up. And he then ends up firing the few people who actually are willing to say, hey, this might not be such a good idea. It's like you set your own house on fire and then you brag that you're great at partially putting fires out. And it's over and over and over again.

It's cabinet secretaries, it's advisors of border officials. national security staff, they leave in disgrace under investigation or in chaos. And Trump never admits he picked the wrong person. He says, I'm a decisive leader. I fired the losers or when I hired them, they were good, but they went bad, like the example of John Bolton that he often gives. If everyone you hire goes bad, maybe the problem is the hiring at the end of the day. And so So the cycle is you elevate a loyalist, you encourage reckless behavior. When it goes totally haywire, you deny reality, but then you go, yeah, I'm going to be replacing this person.

And the problem Trump is facing now is that even some of his most ardent, hardcore, long-time political loyalists are saying this is kind of not making sense. I have an example for you. Sean Spicer is unquestionably a long-term devotee of Donald Trump. Briefly, his press secretary, communications director during the first term, big Trump booster. And he is now proof of how this simply isn't working even for Donald Trump's own side. Something weird is happening right now. After the killing of Alex Preti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse in Minneapolis, there are people

and Maga World who are starting to turn on Trump. And when your own loyalists, your cult followers, when they break ranks on your signature issue, this is Trump's signature issue immigration deportation, you've got to start considering that you might have screwed up. Here is Sean Spicer, former Trump press secretary, saying the idea that merely carrying a gun legally near not near law enforcement makes you fair game, that doesn't make any sense. And it was only, a matter of time until some of them were going to say, hey, wait a second. This is kind of the opposite of what we've been arguing for years about guns. Listen to this. Real bad when you lose the NRA and the reddest state in the country on this. Yeah, look, I'm a concealed carry permit

kind of guy. I'm a huge defender of the Second Amendment. We've been talking about the ability for Americans to protect themselves for decades on the right. So to say that if you show up somewhere, with an armed, that you somehow vulnerable to getting attacked or approach is absolutely antithetical to everything the conservatives have stood for for decades. So I think the NRA is right on this. Governor Stitt was right on this. But you see is this is a right winger saying, wait a second, you don't just lose your rights to a gun.

I'm sorry, you don't just lose your rights because you're carrying a gun. And this is the problem for Donald Trump, because a lot of the people in his administration, administration, Cash Patel and Pam Bondi and others have shifted into this. Well, Alex Prattie was armed at the end of the day. What do you expect? But that is the opposite of right wing ideology. And by the way, no matter what my opinion is about guns, it's also not what the law says. For years, these right wingers have said, carrying a gun is a constitutional right. Merely having it can't be used as evidence of anything. It's not justification for detention. It's not it's not justification for anything. The government should not infringe on that right.

law-abiding gun owners cannot be seen as a threat merely because they have a gun. And now they're saying, of course the government killed this legally armed citizen. He showed up to a protest with a gun. What do you expect? And so some right-wingers are realizing that this logic cuts both ways and it gets even worse. Here is Caroline Levitt asked, does the president believe that the killing of Preddy was a mistake? Notice that she doesn't say what they said after the killing. of Renee Good. It was perfect. It was unfortunate, but it's what had to happen. The agents are the

victims. Levitt says, we're reviewing it. This is a very different thing than awesome killing. Good job. Does the president believe that the killing though was a mistake? Has he expressed that at all? Again, the president has said, you know, we have to review it and this investigation needs to continue and he's letting the facts on the investigation lead itself. Wow. She does, she doesn't say of course the shooting was justified she doesn't say of course the shooting was necessary she doesn't say the agents acted perfectly she says well we have to review it review it i am interpreting that as bureaucratic speak for this is completely toxic politically and i have no idea how to defend this shit that that's my interpretation of what caroline levit is saying

and when your own press secretary won't enthusiastically defend your own enforcement operation, it's a signal. And this is the key political problem for Donald Trump. As we said earlier, immigration would be his signature issue, order, toughness, and decisive action. And what voters are seeing is chaos, lethal force in civilian spaces and a government that is completely out of control. And so some right-wing commentators are saying, are we okay with this? Right when commentators are saying legally carrying a gun as a justification to be shot, that's not sounding so good. And it is not a left-wing critique. It's a right-wing identity crisis. We've been the gun people for a long time. White guy with a legal gun deserves to be killed. I don't know about that.

And Caroline Levitt's point is very short of this was totally cool and very awesome. Let me know what you think they will eventually come up with on this shooting. Leave a comment wherever or send me an email. David Pakman.com. A good hoodie matters more than people think, especially this time of year when you're reaching for the same layer every single day. I've gone through a lot of hoodies that look fine at first, but they just don't feel like something I'm going to want to or even be able to keep wearing season after season. And this is why I love our sponsor, American Giant.

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The right is pushing to take over the podcast charts. Make sure, even if you watch on YouTube or watch clips, rate and subscribe. to this podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, it really makes a difference. And we cannot let these clowns take over the podcast charts. All right, this is how you know the administration is in a panic. They are trying to be calm and presidential and rational and diplomatic, but it's not working when we read between the lines. Here's what happened. Pollsters went to Trump. Advisors went to Trump over the last 24 to 48 hours. And they said, what is happening in Minnesota is blowing up. Your approval is taking a hit. Republicans are saying we need investigations. So Trump goes to

truth social to try to clean up the optics. And he says, I had a very good call with Minnesota governor Tim Walls. We're on the same wavelength. Everything's good. I'm going to read the post for you in a second. But the gist here is pretend everybody's in agreement, declare success and move on. But does anything actually changed? That's the question. Here is Donald Trump's post. Quote, Governor Tim Walls called me with the request to work together with respect to Minnesota. It was a very good call and we actually seem to be on a similar wavelength. I told Governor Walls that I would have Tom Homan call him and that we are looking for any and all criminals that they have in their possession. The governor very respectfully understood that and I will be

speaking to him in the near future. He was happy that Tom Homan was going to Minnesota, and so am I. We have had such tremendous success in Washington, D.C., Memphis, Tennessee, New Orleans, Louisiana, and virtually every other place that we have touched, and even in Minnesota, crime is way down, but both Governor Walls and I want to make it better. President Donald J. Trump. But here's an important but nothing changes. Nothing changes at all. A reporter asks, Caroline Levitt during her press conference yesterday. She's the White House press secretary. Can you explain the difference between your attack on Governor Tim Walls and Trump posting that Tim Walls is working with him and everything is great? And what she does is she says, Tim Walls is the reason we are

where we are today, blaming Tim Walls for everything that has happened in Minneapolis. But the truth of this is Trump's favorability on immigration is now below 40%. That's. That's, That's why this is happening. And now Caroline's got to try to clean it up. To the call with Governor Walls this morning, the president described it as respectful. He said we seem to be on a similar wavelength, but you had strong criticism for the governor and the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, just now. So could you explain the difference in tone between what the president had said in his true

social post and I think some of the criticisms that you just love you through the podium? Fran, I think the criticisms that I laid out, I'm painting the picture for all of you in this room, are what led to the moment that we are in today where Governor Walls and President Trump are having a conversation, a constructive and productive conversation to end the chaos and the lawlessness that has taken place in Governor Walts' state. Understand that. Her thing is, well, my criticism of Walls was legit because everything he did, the lawlessness, et cetera, got us to where Walls got on the phone with Trump and now Trump is fixing everything.

Or to put it a different way, we blamed Walls. now he's cooperating, so this is fine. And notice that she's blaming the governor for the shootings while saying Trump is now the calm adult in the room. The reality is the opposite. Trump is the one with the outrageous unhinged extreme deportation scheme. And it is Tim Walls and Jacob Fry's mayor of Minneapolis and other state and local officials who are now tasked with cleaning up this entire mess. And then comes the reshuffling. As I told you earlier, the administration is benching Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino and Levitt sort of throws Bovino under the bus and says, well, he's a wonderful guy, but Tom Homan is in. Bovino is out.

Going to Minnesota, is Gregory Bovino also going to remain in Minnesota overseeing these ice operations? Mr. Bovino is a wonderful man and he's a great professional. He is going to very much continue to lead Customs and Border Patrol. throughout and across the country. Mr. Holman will be the main point of contact on the ground in Minneapolis. Let me put it a different way. You will not hear from or see Bovino again once we get him out of Minneapolis and he will be put riding a desk or blah, blah, blah, basically trying to sound, trying to sound like this is a mere diploma of staffing change of no real political consequence. But of course, that is exactly what it is. But vino has

been an absolute fiasco. So listen, this is a real problem for the administration. This is quickly becoming an important scandal that is now, as we are just months from the midterm elections, potentially going to be part of Republicans losing the House of Representatives. And conservative media is starting to say this is a debacle. Even if they generally agree with the policy, they're saying the way it's being carried out is a problem. The polling is sliding. Republican lawmakers are saying this is going to screw us in November. And you've got tech leaders and business groups that are saying this is not good for our businesses, whatever they believe personally and ethically and morally, they are acknowledging that this is bad for business as well. So this is not the story Trump wanted

on immigration. He wanted strong man optics. He wanted to appear successful. Instead, he got protests, killings, lawsuits, and a complete and total public relations meltdown. And the Walls post shows the real Trump. There is no policy change. It is just a question of acting as though everybody's being deferential. Everybody respects Trump. Everybody's willing to work with Trump. He'll throw someone under the bus, say, Walls has come to the table and hope that the news cycle moves on. But I would be shocked if any of the policy changes.

And now even further, the daily or not daily, what we're supposed to be daily press briefings with Caroline Levitt. They are occasional press briefings are turning disastrous for her. And we should do a little bit of a deep dive there. Reporters seem to realize that Caroline Levitt is defending the indefensible or attempting to defend the indefensible. And so the questions that she was peppered with at her latest press briefing don't exactly make her look particularly good. Here is Caroline Levitt making a statement that the deaths in Minnesota of Renee Good and Alex

Pretti are because of Democrat leaders and sanctuary cities and the last person she's trying to blame here are the people who actually did the killing. Yet Democrat leaders in Minnesota with sanctuary city policies have actively defied federal immigration law and the will of the people. And as a result of that defiance, two Minnesotans have now tragically lost their lives on the streets of Tim Walts' state. Of course, we already know that the blame is not with Tim Walls. The blame is not with Jacob Fry. They're trying to clean up this mess.

Police in Minnesota, in Minneapolis specifically, have said we've had enough of ice. Ice needs to go out. And we were told that now they were going to turn the temperature down and they are going to work with authorities in Minnesota. But there is Caroline Levitt again blaming Tim walls and Jacob Fry and local officials for these deaths when they had nothing to do with them. Caroline Levitt was asked, will Stephen Miller be apologizing to the family of Alex Prattie for calling him an assassin given that he did nothing like that? And she says, we're investigating.

His top officials referring to him in that way, rushing to that judgment. Danny, go ahead. Thanks, Caroline. On Stephen Miller's comments, will Stephen Miller be apologizing to the family of Alex Pritty for calling him, uh, quotes, an assassin? who tried to murder federal agents despite the fact that, as you say, this is still under investigation. Look, again, this incident remains under investigation, and nobody here at the White House, including the President of the United States, wants to see Americans hurt or killed and losing their lives in American streets. And we mourn for the parents as a mother myself. Of course, I cannot imagine the loss of life, especially losing one's child.

And that same empathy from the president goes for the parents of angel families and parents of victims of illegal alien crime across our country as well. And that's exactly why the president continues to be wholeheartedly committed to deporting the worst of the worst criminals from our country. So will Stephen Miller be apologizing? Well, it's under investigation. The president remains empathetic. We're investigating.

We're still deporting. We're taking care of this. We're taking care of that. Notice what isn't being said, which is this was an awesome shooting we can all be proud of. They are not going with that this time because they know that that is not what the American people want to hear because the American people saw the video. Another reporter says why were conclusions jumped to before the investigation? And this is genius.

It's evil genius. Caroline Leavitt goes, well, the situation has been moving so quickly. But that's a double edge sword. That cuts both ways. I'll tell you why in a moment. Thank you, Caroline. Regarding Minnesota, on Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security posted that Predi looks like he wanted to do maximum damage in massacre law enforcement. Stephen Miller on Saturday posted that, or called Predi a would-be assassin. Why did administration officials jump to conclusions before an investigation

had even been conducted? Well, look, this has obviously been a very fluid and fast-moving situation throughout the weekend. As for President Trump, whom I speak for, he has said that he wants to let the investigation continue. Yeah. You know what's so funny about this or we're really sad? If it was too early to have known the facts when Stephen Miller made the assassin comment, then why did he make the assassin comment?

Like in other words, now she's being asked, what about the whole assassin thing? And she's like, well, the situation is very fast moving and fluid. So we're just not really sure right now. But then so why did he say that in the first place? Why were things said with no evidence before? But now we can't comment because it's fast moving. No apology, no walking back, no nothing. Trump, of course, had this situation where he started being adversarial to the First Amendment, talking about roughing up protesters, etc., which is, of course, a constitutionally protected action. The topic of the First Amendment and the Second Amendment came up.

And we have a lot of hedging from Caroline Levitt. She actually does the, of course we have a First Amendment. But and what comes after the but is very important. Caroline, isn't the White House's position that Americans have the right to show up to these ICE operations and film, document, or protest the law enforcement actions? All Americans have a First Amendment constitutional rights, of course. But Americans do. But you do not have a constitutional right to impede and obstruct lawful immigration enforcement

operations. That is actually a crime. And it's something that we've seen taking place in the streets of Minneapolis, which again is leading to these dangerous circumstances that these federal law enforcement officers have been forced to work within. The problem is that this impeding an investigation thing has become the new resisting arrest catch-all. We've talked before about how police claims.

claiming an individual was resisting has become an easy way to say, we've got to take you downtown and book you. And similarly, claiming that a, sometimes it's not even protesters at these ICE raids. Sometimes it's merely an observer. They're not protesting. They're just observing. Maybe they're filming from the sidewalk saying that their presence is impeding the investigation has become a way to short circuit their First Amendment rights. And sometimes they're not even speaking. Sometimes it's not even about the First Amendment. So then, okay, the First Amendment, yes, of course, but then we get to the Second Amendment. And Caroline Levitt says, gun owners know if you carry a weapon and you're confronted by law enforcement,

that raises the likelihood that force is used against you. Oops, except that's not what the Second Amendment people say. That's not what the ammo sexuals claim. Katz Patel said in a Sunday interview, quote, you cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest. Does the president believe the Second Amendment rights remain in effect even when protesting? The President supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens. Absolutely. There has been no greater supporter or defender of the right to bear arms than President Donald J. Trump. So while Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms,

Americans do not have a constitutional right to impede lawful immigration enforcement operations. And any gun owner knows that when you are carrying a weapon, when you are bearing arms and you are confronted by law enforcement, you are raising the assumption of risk and the risk of force being used against you. But that's not what they've been telling us for decades. For decades, they've been telling us if everyone were armed all the time, which of course includes when you encounter police. It would be all the time is all the time and people encounter police regularly. Then everybody is safer. Merely having a gun, they told us, should not.

We are the ones who have been saying you introduce more guns into a situation. It's just worse. If the country had 50 million guns instead of 400 million guns, just generically, statistically, it would be safer. If you think of a movie theater shooting, like the one that took place in Aurora Colorado where afterwards, a lot of people said if more people in there had had guns, everybody would have been safer. We would, we said, wait a second, so you're saying it would have been better if instead of one firearm inside of the place there were 50 and now all of a sudden you can't tell who's the shooter versus who's trying to stop the shooter. They said no, no, no, no, no. It's always better to have more guns. What if the police show up and they can't tell who the shooter is? No, no, no, it's

always better to have more guns, except now they're saying actually having guns around law and enforcement does increase the chances that you end up getting shot. It does increase the increase the chances of violence and force being used. Finally, Caroline Leavitt asked about the claim that Alex Prattie is a domestic terrorist. And Caroline Levitt, notably, she does not say Trump stands behind that. To follow on Gabe's question, the secretary Nome said Alex Prattie committed an act of domestic terrorism. Stephen Miller labeled Prattie a domestic terrorist. Does the president agree with them. Look, as I've said, I have not heard the president characterize Mr. Prady in that way.

However, I have heard the president say he wants to let the facts and the investigation lead itself. Was the alarmed to hear his time? Notice that she does not say, of course the president agrees with those comments. When the fascist talking points are too fascist, even for Trump, you know that they are off the deep end. Leave me a comment. How much longer does Caroline have in her job? If you care about accessing the full internet, like content not normally available where you live, private internet access is the best tool for it. Our sponsor PIA is the only VPN fully optimized for fast downloads and streaming even in 4K. Choose from high speed servers in all 50 U.S. states and 91 countries so you can access content

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You can run it on unlimited devices with a single subscription. Get 83% off just 203 a month plus four extra months free at PIAVPN.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. It's great to be joined today by Zeke Emanuel, Oncologist, World Leader in Health Policy and Bioethics. And his new book is Eat Your Ice Cream, Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life. life. You know, it's so great to have you on for a couple of reasons. One, in this world of wellness and morning routines and supplements and seed oil optimization and all of this stuff, your book really takes what I call like an 80-20 approach, which is that there's a lot of

big things that we know are really significant in determining health span. And we should really kind of focus on those. And that's where I want to start. But then also this kind of interface with what we're hearing from the current secretary of home, or rather, health and human services. Homeland security is a different problem we're having right now. Health and human services in terms of what matters and what doesn't. So maybe just give us the philosophy about where it is that we should focus our attention with regard to health and the things that maybe are more on the margins. Yeah, it's a great question.

First of all, I think it's very important not to be obsessed by wellness. And I think a lot of what I call the wellness industrial complex tries to make people obsessed. Like it's really important to focus on wellness and focus your whole being on wellness. And that is wrong. Wellness is a means to an end. It's not the end itself. And you have bigger things in life to do. I certainly hope than focus on wellness.

So that's the first point. The second point is there are, you know, just a handful of things that you need to do and you don't need to do them perfectly to get the benefits of wellness. As I say in the book, I'm a professor, 90% or more is an A and don't try to be perfect. It's just going to make you, you know, obsess and waste a lot of mental and physical energy. And I think the real fact of the matter is if you're going to do wellness, to live a long time, to live a healthy life, to get a maximal health span. You're going to have to do it for decades. So you better enjoy it. And you better not make it so onerous that either there's a lot of self-denial

or there's a lot of self-monitoring that just takes up so much mental space. You're not doing the things you actually enjoy. Remember, you know, if you're going to do a good diet or you're going to exercise, you're going to have to do it, you know, every week for years and years and years. And that better be something that you really like. Otherwise, you're not going to stick to it. There's just not enough willpower in your being. What are the top lines? Like, it would strike me that, for example, not smoking is a major, major thing. Are you walking eight to 10,000 steps a day? Seems to be a proxy to don't be sedentary. If you're getting the right amount of fiber seems to be a good proxy to, aside from seed oils or ice cream or this, if you're getting the right amount of fiber,

it's harder to eat unhealthy because the really unhealthy stuff has zero fiber. Like, give us some of the top lines that you would suggest. Yes. So I suggest six things. The first one goes to your smoking example, which is don't be stupid. Don't take unreasonable risk. Smoking, vaping, those are definitely unreasonable risks. So is banging your head against the wall, whether you do it in boxing or other sports. And there's plenty of other risks like not taking your vaccines or not taking cancer screening tests. And I have a whole discussion of which ones you should do and which ones you shouldn't. But probably the single most important one that is often ignored is social activity and engaging in rich social relationships, whether with family, friends, acquaintances. We tend not to

include that in the wellness category. And, you know, the medical profession tends not to include that in, you know, it's worries about health. But it turns out to be probably the single most important thing you can do for your wellness. Millions of people have actually been studied on this. And those people who have rich social relationships, you know, enjoy dinners with other people, are much healthier, live longer, and in fact, are happier. And the data are pretty substantial. You look at studies from Sweden and China and Australia and the United States, and you come to a similar conclusion. Those people with close family ties, close friendships, they're 22 to 30, 33 percent, less likely to die over the next six to eight to 10 years. On the other hand, if you're lone,

socially isolated, you don't have or have zero to one close friends. It's like smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It is really deadly. Now, people think, oh, these social relationships, they're psychologically good, but the fact is they're physiologically good. They're good for your body. They're good for your brain. They increase dopamine. They decrease the stress hormone, cortisol. So there are a lot of physiological changes that happen because you interact with people. And the last thing I would say is it's not just close relationships. One of the things I think we undervalue is the casual interactions that boost our mood. The talking to your car driver, the talking to the person serving you in a grocery store or waiting on your table and finding out something about them. These

casual interactions actually turn out to be very, very important. And they actually boost our mood as well. In the aftermath of the pandemic, when everything went to Zoom, a lot of it has gone back to in person, but not everything. And I'm curious what kind of data we have as to the social component that you're talking about. How important is it that it be physically in person versus the degree to which the Zoom stuff is a suitable replacement?

Well, there are some studies about people who do remote work versus people who work in the office and look at their mental health and not surprisingly, it's worse. So there is some pretty good data that actually face-to-face interactions are really important. And, you know, it's no surprise if you, again, look at people's brains when they're interacting with a person face-to-face versus interaction. with that same person over the screen, it turns out that more of their brain is actually activated when they're interacting in person. And that seems logical and intuitive in a sense. I mean, even as you and I are talking here, I can only read your body language from chest up. I only see what's behind you a couple of feet. I don't have the context of the room that you're in. I'm in a completely different room, which I assume kind of predisposes me a little bit differently emotionally.

like it seems intuitive that that would be the case. It's 100%. And I think the other thing is, you know, over tens of thousands of years of evolution, humans have been trained on human-to-human interaction, right? Screen interaction is really new. I mean, we're talking about 20 years. And we actually, our brain is set for interacting with people in person. And that's a really important.

factor, which I think we dismiss. Now, once you and I establish a relationship or we have close friends, then Zoom can augment our relationship. But it's not a substitute, first of all, establishing a close personal relationship over the screen is not going to be possible. And it might be possible to augment that relationship when, you know, I have a very dear friend who lives in L.A. My brother lives in LA, hard to be there constantly, you know, every week. So Zoom helps with that or the telephone helps with that. But you can't establish those relationships. They have to be preexisting. And that takes simply a lot of time being together. If we talk a little bit about diet, right now under this Make America Healthy Again movement, there are a number of different areas that are receiving a lot of

focus, just to name a couple, raw milk promotion, seed oils being bad and saturated fats, like beef tallow actually being good, removing food dyes. You know, I think there's like a couple of layers to all of these conversations. Like for example, the seed oil saturated fat thing. To the extent I've looked into it as a non-doctor and spoken to doctors, it seems we have pretty good evidence that seed oils in humans are not, quote, in full. inflammatory, whatever that means. But what I wonder is, is that even the right conversation? Because if we look at the calories a day that we should even be getting from oils, shouldn't it be

a relatively small portion of our calories such that this is not like a make or break topic anyway? I think you hit on all or many of the right points. So the first thing is we really need to think through. And here I do agree. with the RFK junior approach, ultra-process foods. Right. Package cakes, cookies, pretzels, frozen, burritos, whatever you want to have. Yeah.

We have way too much of them in the American diet. 60% of the calories consumed by an adult per day is ultra-processed. That's just way too much, no matter what you think. Too much sugar. So, you know, drinking those sodas, that's 140 calories, 10 teaspoons of sugar. sugar, zero nutritional content. We got to get rid of them. Fortunately, they're dropping. And so the public is doing the right thing. And then, you know, their obsession with more beef, more saturated fat, more protein, wrong direction. We know that saturated fats actually lead to increased heart

disease, increased mortality. They are not a good thing. And we do know that there are There's important things we can't have in our diet. You mentioned fiber. Ninety-three percent of Americans don't get enough fiber. We don't eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables that have a variety of fibers. Those are basically prebiotics and they're really good for the gut microbiome. And we need more of them and more Americans need to eat fruits and vegetables on a regular basis, which means multiple times a day. So I regularly have berries for breakfast and a salad for dinner just to start the game without, that's not comprehensive. The second thing I think that we really should focus on are fermented foods like yogurt, like kimchi, like kefir or cottage cheese.

Those are really good for the microbiome, the diversity of the microbiome. And it's really important. And again, things we don't have enough of in the average American diet. Those changes, decrease ultra-processed foods, decrease sodas, increase fruits and vegetables, increase fermented foods would make a huge difference. Are there more things we can do? Absolutely. But those would take us very far to a much better diet. And I agree with you. Seed oils, not the thing we should talk about.

best oil you can eat is olive oil. We've got a lot of good data on that, but it's expensive. And if you can't afford it, canola oil or Suttonflower oil, very good. And you're right, they're relatively small elements of our diet and over obsessing about them is wrong. Stick to the general thing. Less ultra-processed foods, more fruit, and vegetables and more fermented foods, more dairy, those would be good things. The food dye thing is interesting to me because if we put aside for a second that RFK's achievement is not legally binding, it's sort of like, hey, companies have told us they're not going to do this. If we put aside for a second that some of these supposedly banned in Europe dyes exist

under different names, right? Like we're putting aside all of these kind of tangential issues. The food dies really are in ultra-processed food. And while, of course, getting rid of them sounds fine. I don't know that skittles are necessarily good for you if they're all white, right? Like they would taste the same. They wouldn't have the colors. But it seems to kind of be tangential really to the issue. Yes, I think that's 100% right. Is it a good thing to get rid of them? Yes. Is it where you ought to put your energy and focus and worry? No. There are many bigger issues. And ultra processed food is the number one issue. We're the number one country in terms of consumption of ultra-processed foods.

And just to give people a comparison, you know, the Italians, the Greeks, they're down in the 20% range. We also know, by the way, that ultra-processed foods just are bad, not only physically, but they're also bad for the brain, that the more ultra-processed foods you eat, the higher or the more rapid you get cognitive decline as you age. So it's they're not good for brain function. And I think people think, okay, they they might affect my longevity. But no, they affect probably the thing you care about the most, how your brain is working. On the topic of cancer screenings, you mentioned there are some that make a lot of sense and then maybe some that that make less sense, you know, about a month ago because the the guidelines on colonoscopy changed, even though I'm far too young to normally be doing this, I went and got because my dad had had a pre-cancerous polyp, which now means I should be screened early.

I had a absolutely perfect score on it. You will be pleased to know. Even Trump's doctors would have signed off on this one. And all the research I did is that that actually is a great screening test, not only because it tells you what is going on, but you can actually deal with things in the moment and get rid of any polyps. Agree on colonoscopy and what other sorts of screenings maybe are less worthwhile. So we have really five different cancer screening tests that are important.

Mammograms for women, really important to begin 40, 45. The exact cutoff is under debate. Colonoscopies, as you point out, and that's becoming more important for younger people because of the rise, probably because of changes in the microbiome, but we're not sure why. There's lung cancer screening for former smokers, which is important. There's cervical cancer screening and getting the HPV vaccine, which is important. And the one that I have the most trouble with and why I say most of the vaccine recommendations is the prostate-specific antigen for men, PSA testing. And I go through in the book, a detailed reason why I'm against it.

At any age, no matter the age of the person. I point out why others like the United States Preventive Services Task Force and other groups are for it. The main data are that it is true that the PSA test will catch and decrease your chance of dying of prostate cancer. What is also true is that the PSA will not change your overall mortality. So yes, you will less likely to die prostate cancer, but not less likely to die. a minute later. And the reason is that most prostate cancer is an older man who have competing comorbidities, whether it's from heart disease, maybe potentially some other cancer or strokes or what have you. And so I'm not one of those people who cares what the sentence on my death certificate

says that I died of. If the test isn't going to improve my longevity, it's not actually that good a test in my opinion. Plus, PSA often gets you false positives, lots of false positives. So you get a lot of people who get a positive PSA, have to go through testing, maybe even have their prostate remove. And let me just assure people, there is no medical test ever created that doesn't have complications. And so the complications inevitably arise, whether it's, um, um, um, um, um, impotence or incontinence or other problems. So I'm not a wild fan of that. Other people weigh it differently.

So I go through that in the book, and I think it's important to be frank. There are various opinions that I am, I might be out of step with others. I am very much more pro-dairy than some nutrition experts like Walt Willett, one of my professors at Harvard, who is more hesitant, but dairy decreases your chance of type 2 diabetes, decreases your chance of colorectal cancer, increases your height if you consume it early. It's, of course, important to have dairy that isn't sweetened with, say, chocolate milk or all those fruit additives for yogurt. Right.

But dairy itself is pretty good, which is why you should have ice cream, too. Last thing I want to ask you about, we hear often that we are getting better at treating cancer based on the fact that people are living longer from the point at which they are diagnosed. Now, what I want to talk that there's the, also there's on the other hand, the longer you live for other reasons, the more years you have during which you might be diagnosed with cancer. And then in addition to this, if you are diagnosed earlier, you spend more years after diagnosis alive, but have we really improved treatment? So I don't know if I'm making all of the different kind of elements of this clear, but are we getting better at treating cancer?

The answer to that is yes, we are. We have better drugs. Certainly, you know, I trained 35 years ago now. and our drugs are way better. A lot of them are oral as opposed to injected, our ability to manage side effects like nausea and vomiting are way better. We have immunotherapies, which we had almost none of when I trained. Many cancers now are chronic diseases.

So just take, I give you one example. Chronic myelogynist leukemia is a disease that tends to, occur when people are older. When I was training, we would, so this is a case where the white cells go up in the blood. We would mostly treat it by giving people a drug called hydroxyurea that would drop the white cells. But we knew that at some point they would do what we call blast off. They would convert into an acute leukemia and no matter what we threw at them in chemotherapy, no difference. And then in the late 19th, 1990s, Gleevec, a new drug was developed. People take Gleevac and they live a normal life. The disease

doesn't come back. It's amazing. You took this deadly disease. Similarly, we've developed T therapy at the University of Pennsylvania where I'm a faculty member. And literally people who've been through all the chemotherapies on death store, they get this T-cell infusion that attacks their cancer and they're, you know, cured. It is totally amazing. And we have seen the rate of decline in cancers when people have cancer go down. Your skepticism, well, does that mean we're diagnosing more cancers that wouldn't have killed people? That's partially true. But we also are people who diagnosed. We've got better treatments for them in a number of cancers, breast cancer being one of them. We've come a long way in treating things like melanoma and lung cancer, which was

uniformly terminal when I was training, no longer are uniformly terminal, or we've extended the life expectancy of those patients substantially from a few months to years now. So I would say overall, better. Now, there are problems and there are challenges. As you point out, the old the population gets, the more cancers people are going to have. It's what happens. You know, you get DNA damage, doesn't get repaired, and after multiple damages, you get cancer, or your immune system doesn't do the right surveillance, and cancer that has cropped up, flourishes and metastasizes. We also know that cancer treatments have become inordinately expensive, that the opening, you know, routine cancer chemotherapy now are, you know, $10,000 a month. That's a serious problem. That is a huge

problem for society and for people because they have co-pays and deductibles that they can't afford. Yes, they're cured of their cancer, but they're also now impoverished or bankrupt. That is not a place our society should be. And it's a serious health policy problem that one I work on. We have a lot to be optimistic about and a lot of problems to be solved, I think is the conclusion. The book is excellent. We've been speaking with Zika Manuel, oncologist, world leader on health policy and bioethics. The book is Eat Your Ice Cream, Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life. I really appreciate your time today.

Thank you. Thank you, David. It's been great. And there's so much more in the book that we haven't talked about, sleep and exercise. Of course. Staying focused while your work can be difficult, especially for folks with ADHD. Maybe you've tried listening to music on YouTube or ambient videos, background noise, but the sounds and the music weren't designed for focus and they end up distracting you.

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on attention-based tasks, especially among people with ADHD symptoms. If you're looking for a science-backed alternative to generic focus music, Brain FM is worth trying. You can get 30 days free at brain.fm slash Pacman. It is getting worse and worse and worse for FBI director Cash Patel. And there are growing predictions that Trump will have to fire him and that his latest round of public appearances and statements have the real potential. to cost him his job. What is the latest that Cash Patel said? Well, it continues to go to this whole concept of, are you allowed to have guns when you

go places or aren't you? The first thing Patel said when interviewed by Sean Hannity just hours ago was that they're not going around and infringing on people's freedom of speech and they're definitely not going around infringing on people's right to bear arms. Let's listen carefully to what he says. says and then compare it to what he said yesterday. And if anyone broke the law and incited violence, remember, that's the key here. We are not going after people and infringing on their freedom of speech to peacefully

protest. We are definitely not going after people in their Second Amendment right to bear arms. Only if you incite violence and or threaten to do harm to law enforcement officials and break the law in any other way, does it become an investigatory matter. So this signal chat is something that we, the FBI, are looking at and spearheading. The problem is that Renee Good. was killed and Alex Prattie was killed for their exercising of the first and second amendments, just the first for Renee Good and the first and second for Alex Prattie.

And the problem with Cash Patel now saying this is that just hours prior, as I showed you yesterday, he said to Maria Bartaromo, we are concerned with people who show up with a gun to a protest. You can't just show up wherever you want with guns, except that's kind of exactly what the law says. I mean, thousands of people are marching through Minneapolis. They are targeting the Border Patrol. I mean, it feels like the rhetoric and the protesting is only ramping up. What is your advice to the people right now who are outraged that this is a second killing at the hands of Border Patrol in two weeks?

As Christy said, you cannot bring a five-year-old. arm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. You can't. That's simple. You don't have that right to break the law and incite violence. We will of course always protect your First Amendment speech. And if you peacefully protest, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But you have seen a trend here, not just in Minnesota, but across the country in these protests turning into violent scenarios and people attacking law enforcement. The problem with what Cash Patel is saying. And this is not some random yokel.

This is the director of the FBI. The problem is that he's describing legal activity. Under the Second Amendment and Minnesota law, if you legally have a gun, you can carry it in public. That includes protests. Having it cannot be interpreted as you being a threat. We know many of the people who carry the guns around are trying to intimidate, but that is not the situation we saw on video regarding Alex Prattie.

And so that's it they are trying to suppress people's first and second amendment rights. Now back to the Hannity interview, Patel more of this. We support the Second Amendment. But but. And I've also told stories that, you know, in situations, if I knew I was on camera and I could get away from a confrontation knowing that I had the ability to defend myself, I would turn and high tail it and run rather than ever have to pull out a weapon. If you have a weapon, do you belong in an environment?

that is as contentious as this weekend. Do you bear responsibility knowing that you have a firearm with you, what that could do to a situation? Well, Sean, like you said, we truly fully support the Second Amendment people's right to bear arms. But when you enter into a situation, a volatile situation like Minnesota, where there were riots on the streets and people attacking federal law enforcement officers and ramming them with vehicles and continued criminality

and burning down and literally destroying federal law. vehicles and stealing information. We have to, we have to ask people, what's prudential? What's smart? And it's not smart to go out there with a fully loaded weapon. We're just saying, be careful. And yeah, the weapon might have been fully loaded, fully loaded. These people are truly pathetic. And I am not a second amendment guy who goes around. Let's put more guns in more places. I think the guns are a problem. But these folks have staked their political careers on that. Okay, fine. Just one more clip of this equivocation. This one's completely incoherent. Just saying be careful. careful and be reasonable like you've outlined. If you have a right to a permit for a firearm,

that's okay. But you cannot incite violence and you cannot break the law and attack federal law enforcement officers. Yeah. Anyway, so that part of it, it's you can or you can't because Alex Prattie wasn't wasn't doing any of that stuff. He didn't break the law by being there. He didn't break the law by having the gun. He didn't attack law enforcement officers. He was attempting to to defend this woman who was sprayed and then got into the scrum. He was disarmed. He was on the ground facing away from a guy who shot him multiple times. They really don't care about the First Amendment, even though they say they do. They really don't even care about the Second Amendment, depending on who it is that has the guns. And if you think this is disgusting, I have two words

for you. Megan Kelly. Megan Kelly's most disgusting take ever seems to be stay home or get shot. Megan, what about that First Amendment you claim to worship? Megan, what about that Second Amendment you claim to worship? This is one of the most revealing and frankly, grotesque reactions to the killing of Alex Prattie in Minneapolis. Megan Kelly says she doesn't feel sorry for Alex Prattie. And the reason she didn't get shot was because she stayed home. That is the logic. Don't get killed by the government.

Just stay inside. Not journalism. This is authoritarianism with a microphone. Listen to this. I know I'm supposed to feel sorry for Alex Pruddy, but I don't. I don't. Do you know why I wasn't shot by border patrol this weekend? Because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations. It's very simple. If I felt strongly enough about something the government was doing that I would go out and protest, I would do it peacefully on the sidewalk without interfering via a whistle, via shouting, via my body, via any other way. I would make my objections known by standing there without interfering because interfering is where you

goes south and laying hands on a police officer trying to or border patrol officer or ICE officer trying to conduct a law enforcement operation is a felony. And now you are going to get arrested. And if you do anything, anything that resembles resisting, you're in serious trouble. What a courageous take from Megan Kelly. She, you wouldn't know it, but she's a constitutional conservative. Now, first of all, Alex Pruddy was not there to attack people. He wasn't rioting.

He wasn't assaulting. He wasn't trying to kill officers. We've got multiple videos and witnesses that show that he was filming, number one, constitutionally protected. And number two, trying to help a woman who had been shoved to the ground. He was tackled, pinned, disarmed, and then shot. And even if he had been protesting, that is the First Amendment. You don't lose your right to life because you were near a government. operation. Now, Megan is right about one thing because there is a total disrespect for the First

Amendment from the ICE officers and Border Patrol agents carrying out these operations. You probably should stay home. And that is the self-censorship that I talked about last week that is a restriction on the First Amendment. Sure, the first you can still, if you go and look up the Bill of Rights, you'll still see that there's a First Amendment. But if you come out in protest, anything could happen to you. And that is true. She is right. Unfortunately, there is huge risk to exercising your First Amendment rights right now. Number two, he was legally carrying a gun. He had a valid permit. He didn't have it on him, which they're saying, oh my God, it's a crime. It's a $25 ticket. He had a valid permit. He's a lawful gun owner. He wasn't brandishing the gun.

And the hypocrisy is that Megan Kelly has spent her career defending gun rights. She defends open carry. She defends Second Amendment sacredness. She rails against the government overreaching. But suddenly the government kills a legally armed citizen and they say he had a gun. He was dangerous. He didn't brandish it and he was legally carrying it. Her position now is shouldn't have been there.

Shouldn't have been there. So the second amendment applies unless the state decides that it does. doesn't. That's not conservatism. It's not libertarian. It's not even consistent. It's just the state can kill you and you should have stayed home. Third, her argument is basically, if you don't want to get shot by federal agents, you've got to avoid federal agents. Are they so poorly trained that that's the only way to avoid getting shot by them? And of course, that's not how democracy works. That is how authoritarian states work. That's how people. We don't even want to be seen by the Stasi in East Germany. Because even if we're doing nothing wrong,

They might be in a bad mood. They might kill us. Imagine the logic elsewhere. The only way to avoid being beaten by police is don't leave your house. Hold on. It's the way to avoid being arrested for speech is by staying quiet. It's the logic of submission. It's not the logic of freedom.

And the most disturbing part is that this is coming from someone who has, for decades, said that she's pro civil liberties, that she is pro-free speech, that she's pro-second amendment. Alex Prattie didn't deserve to die because he was present. He didn't decide he didn't deserve to die because he was trying to help someone. He didn't deserve to die because he had a legal firearm. He didn't deserve to die because he was filming police. And if your political ideology ends the moment that the state kills the wrong person, then you never really believed those principles in the first place.

And maybe Megan Kelly never believed those principles. Now on the bonus show, we will talk about the NRA and pro gun. saying, oh, there needs to be an investigation into the killing of Alex Pruddy because after all, he was legally carrying his gun. An investigation into Christie Noem has started. And also the calls to boycott the World Cup are growing. We are going to talk about all of that on the bonus show. Get my full podcast on Spotify for Apple Podcasts.

Remember to leave a rating, hopefully five stars, but whatever rating you believe is appropriate. And you can sign up for the bonus show at Join hackman.com.