The David Pakman Show - The house of lies is a house of cards

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Rep. Yassamin Ansari requests House Oversight Chairman James Comer investigate relationships between Andrew Tate and Barron Trump -- Donald Trump and Stephen Miller set systemic incentives that cause federal agency abuses across government -- Conservative commentators use misleading non-worker statistics to hide declining labor force participation under Donald Trump -- European soccer federations defeat a FIFA commercial proposal involving Joshua Kushner through boycott threats -- Donald Trump transitions his rally speeches over ten years from campaign promises to personal grievances -- Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. push debunked claims connecting childhood vaccines to autism diagnoses -- The Friday Feedback segment -- On the Bonus Show: The Friday Bonus Show with Producer Pat Ford 💳 PDS Debt: Get your free assessment & find the best option for you at https://pdsdebt.com/pakman 📖 Get your copy of “What We Carry Forward” by Aithal at https://davidpakman.com/carryforward 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Book: https://bit.ly/m/attention -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Congress targets Barron Trump over Tate connections (07:33) Bad decisions trace back to Trump (19:11) Labor participation rate declines under Trump (25:44) More Trump and FIFA corruption exposed (34:32) Trump's speeches have declined over the years (42:13) Trump and RFK Jr. push debunked vaccine claims (52:43) Friday Feedback segment Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump is losing his mind over investigations involving people far less important to him than Baron Trump. And now Baron could be dragged before Congress to answer questions about his reported relationship with Andrew Taint. And Trump would experience a spectacular explosion if that happened. Let me remind you what's going on because investigations are getting closer and closer to Donald Trump's youngest son. Remember, we looked not long ago at this demand from Congresswoman Yasim and Ansari saying,

listen, the investigation, the relationship between the Taint brothers and Baron Trump and Trump's family needs to be investigated. And Barron is not a kid. He's an adult. And he seems involved here. Absolutely. I could not agree more. Baron Trump is an adult.

He is a full blown adult and he is very influential in the Trump. White House orbit. I mean, we know from, you know, from the first administration and from this administration that the Trump children play a very big role in the administration and policies that are passed. They benefit financially from the way the Trump administration operates and the self-dealing and the corruption that takes place. We know, you know, very famously, Ivanka Trump, also who I think even as a, you know, as a grown woman, gets the same kind of treatment, right, because of her relationship with her father and the way Donald Trump talks about her. I think there are a lot of parallels to be drawn with the, you know, Donald Trump, Ivanka

relationship and the way he tries to, you know, let her get away with her actions. It's the same with Barron and Melania. All right. So you get the point here. She wants Barron to testify. Now what happened is that Andrew and Tristan Tate were recently arrested in Miami. There is an extradition fight going on. They're very serious charges.

They deny any wrongdoing. Fine. Congress wants to determine whether Trump's family or administration used political influence at any point to try to help them. And there are all of these reports would say, you know, Barron and Andrew Taint were communicating, dating all the way back to 2024. Donald Trump Jr. publicly supported the brothers. Two days before their arrests, they went to a party hosted by the Trump administration

special envoy Paolo Zampoly. So what they want answers to are what did Barron know was he involved? Barron has not been accused of committing the crimes alleged against the Tates to be clear. But he is an adult now. He is involved in business and politics. He's been involved in the Trump family crypto stuff. He's been involved in suggesting to Donald Trump. Here's the shows you should go on as part of your campaign in 2024.

And just because you're the president's son doesn't mean you're immune from scrutiny. Imagine now what happens. Just imagine for a second. Democrats win in 2026 and Barron gets a subpoena. Trump will flip out when an ordinary associate is investigated. He goes, it's treason. The prosecutors are deranged. The judges are corrupt. Barron is in a different category. Donald and Melania Trump have guarded Barron very intensely. And I told you about this a little while ago when a YouTube creator speculating when an autistic YouTube creator, important note, speculated back in 2016, you know, I'm autistic. I think Barron might be autistic. Melania Trump threatened legal action.

The video was removed and she later said that it caused irreparable damage. Now, to be clear, I have no knowledge that Baron Trump is autistic. I am not suggesting that he is. I am referencing documented statements and legal threats and making no claims whatsoever about Baron Trump's health or any diagnosis. Okay. The point is, when Barron attracts any public attention, this family flips out. Now, meanwhile, Iranian state-linked media distributed this propaganda video threatening Melania and ending with a direct threat against Baron. And the Secret Services, yeah, said, yeah, we're aware of that.

So threatening them, which, by the way, these aren't legitimate military targets, Baron Trump and Melania Trump, that nothing Trump has done would. justify militaries targeting Melania and Barron. It's not really the point of the story. But the point here is Trump is profoundly triggered when adversarial governments mentioned his son. Trump experiences any kind of political conflict as personal humiliation. And he goes maximal retaliation threat. A threat against Baron Trump, a subpoena against Baron Trump, would destabilize Trump in a way you can't even imagine. Now, what we have here are two pressures converging. On the one hand, Congress may say, we need answers from Barron. He seems to be involved in a bunch of different

stuff, the crypto stuff, but the stuff with Andrew and Tristan Taint. And meanwhile, Iran is issuing threats against Barron's life. Trump will probably treat all of it as a coordinated attack against his family. Of course, Barron shouldn't be bullied. He shouldn't be subjected to baseless speculation. But Barron can't be off limits now that he's an adult if he's participating in political or governmental matters. If Barron is subpoenaed, Trump will almost certainly say to Republicans, you got to shut this down right now. You have to portray this as an attack on a child. And the closer that the scrutiny gets to Barron, Trump is less and less able to separate his presidential responsibilities from the sort of uncontrolled rage that he's been known to suffer

from, which could send him into a tizzy, the likes of which we have never seen. Now, I got a few emails after I recently covered the whole thing about going after Barron. And a bunch of people wrote to me and they said, David, you're being way too deferential here. Why are you saying that it's not legitimate for Iran to target Barron? Trump targets the Iranian regime, which is also a family. Like, yeah, that's true, but they're in power. Barron is not in any kind of formal power situation, although by being Donald Trump's son, he's certainly taking advantage of that to wield soft power, that's for sure.

I have not found the emails about you should say it's open game on Barron. I've not really found them convincing. It does feel like an example of sort of going going low. But with regard to what he's been involved in, crypto, Tate's Trump's campaign, if there are questions there, then he is absolutely deserving and a valid target for scrutiny. I think that that's kind of where I am unless I am convinced otherwise, which so far I have not been. The point here is, if you think you've seen Trump flip out before, if you think you've seen Trump lose it before in a rage, imagine if Barron gets a subpoena. Just imagine.

You've got to hand it to Donald Trump. He has really developed a very effective scam. Whenever Trump's government does something that's completely indefensible, the administration will identify the lowest ranking person available and pretend that that's as far as the process. goes. Oh, ICE tried to hire a 600 pound disabled guy who's not cleared to do anything by his doctor. That's some issue with a hiring manager. A bureaucrat canceled the wrong grants and as a result, people died.

Well, that's just that bureaucrats fault. Forget that it was all enabled by Trump and Elon Musk's doge. There was a prosecution or an indictment. fell apart in humiliating fashion. That was a lone wolf prosecutor who did the wrong thing or somebody redacted the wrong part of an Epstein file or something like that. But we who are doing a broader analysis, we recognize when you see the same sorts of abuses everywhere in this federal government, you can't really believe that these are isolated mistakes. They're really a governing philosophy that goes all the way to the very top. Now, let me give you some examples.

Um, start with ICE. After an ICE officer fatally shot this, uh, Colombian man in Maine. The officer's relatives said, this guy has a serious history of mental health problems. He has a history of violent behavior. He shouldn't have been working with guns near guns. He shouldn't be anywhere near guns. And Trump's borders are Tom Homan comes out and goes, oh, you know what? He never should have passed ICE's vetting process.

It's a technical problem. It's like when HR forgives to give, forgets to give you the sociopath test or the Myers-Briggs or whatever. But then you dig deeper and you go, well, how did this guy pass? What factors influenced that this officer passed the hiring? Well, you've got to go back to the top. Donald Trump and Stephen Miller said we are going to do historically aggressive deportations and raids.

We're going to do 3,000 arrests a day of violent illegals. There aren't that many. It just doesn't make any sense. puts ice under this huge pressure to do 3,000 arrests. We need way more officers. We need to accelerate operations. We've got to do this. And that is what put the system in place that led to this guy being hired and the 600 pound guy almost being hired. Trump didn't personally hire the officer that did the shooting. Trump didn't order the shooting obviously, but the officer was hired, deputized and given a gun in a system created by the president who chooses leadership, sets the

incentives and says what behavior are we going to reward? And when you say, we need more officers, they need to be brutal, we're going to do mass arrests right away, forget about oversight. These are warriors and they should be given leeway to do basically whatever they want. Of course you're going to end up with these reckless, violent outcomes. It's predictable. Example number two. The administration's decision to cancel $7.5 billion in clean energy grants. The administration admitted in court that they selected the projects to cancel because they were in states that voted for Kamala Harris. So that's not a grant officer checked the wrong box.

It was an oversight. It was political retaliation. Let's look at blue states and just start canceling stuff. And Americans who voted against Trump were punished by the federal government. Now, remember that Donald Trump has spent years saying democratic, democratic cities and states, they should suffer because they opposed me. There's going to be punishment for them. So they figure that out.

Start canceling grants in blue states. I'll give you one more example, which is the Justice Department. We have new records that were newly released records. And they show Todd Blanche, Trump's acting AG, want to be AG, Todd Blanche organizing these recurring meetings of the so-called weaponization working group, assigning senior officials to these really politically charged cases just to see, are we doing what Trump wants us to do in terms of revenge? This is not an intern. This is not an unknown bureaucrat. He was Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer, elevated to run the Justice Department.

Trump comes out from the top down and he goes, we need investigations. My political enemies are going to be investigated. And his former lawyer supervises the people that are assigned to those investigations. And we're supposed to believe that when one of these investigations ends up being intimidatory or bogus or merely to scare or mire someone in legal expenses, that it's just a coincidence. It has nothing to do with what's going on at the top. So these are three, I think, really salient examples.

And then there's like this, this bigger one that's a little different, but I still think is related. Epstein files. Before it was obvious that Donald Trump was actually going to be in a position to release the Epstein files. He is the campaigner and the people around him said, if and when Trump wins, we're going to be releasing these Epstein files. And then over time, they backed off of that. Eventually, the Epstein Files Transparency Act was passed.

And instead of just doing what it said, they, They exposed identifying information about victims, but they redacted identifying information about potential perpetrators. And Jelaine Maxwell in the middle of all of it gets transferred to a lower security facility after meeting with Todd Blanche, one that would never normally house anyone convicted of the crimes she was convicted of. Now, we don't have evidence that Trump personally said, put Jelaine Maxwell in a nicer place or what, we don't have that.

But the person controlling the process is Trump's former attorney. And he is out there doing what he can to prevent Donald Trump from negative information coming out about him and his immediate allies. So Trump doesn't need to go, Todd, go punish my enemies, protect my friends, ignore the law, and bribe whoever you need to bribe to make sure nothing negative comes out about me. And the theme here is that authoritarian systems usually don't need to give the explicit instructions. understands that. The leader establishes priorities. The loyalists learn what gets you praise and what

gets you promoted versus what gets you removed or attacked. And that's what you need. It's a structure of incentives. And by the way, in my book, pay attention. I talk a lot about incentives. And one of the things that we sometimes mix up in conversations that we have about a lot of different issues is we sometimes attribute personal agency when what we really have is a system of incentives. And so with social media, I'm making an analogy now, bear with me. In the book, I talk about how sometimes we have a tendency to see, for example, what Facebook recommends through the personal political beliefs of Mark Zuckerberg. Now, Mark Zuckerberg has political beliefs. And it's totally conceivable that he could go and say, hey, you know what?

Promote right-wing content and damage left-wing content on Facebook. He could do that. But the real reason that across all digital platforms certain content does well in the algorithm and certain content doesn't do well is actually the incentive structure that is in place. And I would apply that to the Trump administration. It's not that Trump has to go out and say, you better do this or you're going to get punished. Sometimes he does do that, but he sets the incentive structure, which is, here's the sort of behavior that gets you an add-a-boy and here's the sort of behavior that gets me to put out adjut trash on truth social about you and either force you to resign or fire you. you. The incentives structure how people behave. These agencies are not suffering from the moral

collapse that comes from the top, but they're adapting to who runs the government. And you follow each of these trails, Epstein and Eisen. It leads back to Trump and Stephen Miller and the loyalists. And that is maybe one of the most disturbing and depressing aspects of this. And if it turns out that Donald Trump at the end of the day, torpedoes Republicans for 26 and 28, they really have Trump to blame at the end of the day. A lot of people carrying debt don't think to themselves, I'm in trouble. They're not necessarily behind on payments. They're working.

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The link is in the description. One of our sponsors today is the book, What We Carry Forward by Aithal. It's a collection of connected stories about people trying to preserve truth, identity, family, and dignity as powerful institutions pressured them to conform. What really struck me is how the book turns those questions into just very human stories. The book looks at the fear and uncertainty of leaving a life behind, building another. As an immigrant to the United States myself, that really resonated with me. But it also asks this broader question, what does survival demand from us?

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of the current administration and the pressure to go along with just obvious political absurdity. Pick up your copy of what we carry forward by Aethol at Davidpacman.com slash carry forward. The link is in the description. MAGA is in a panic because their favorite economic talking point has just been devastated by the economic reality of this situation. MAGA used to love this talking point and now they're running away from it. If you don't know which one it is, let me explain. MAGA spent four years screaming that the labor force participation rate or number proved

that Biden's economy is a total disaster. And now participation is falling under Donald Trump. 720,000 people left the labor force in one month. suddenly what was the favorite statistic of the right has to be hidden completely for fear that they are going to destroy their own economic message. Now even the New York Post, the right leaning New York Post owned by News Corporation of Rupert Murdoch fame, the New York Post is even reporting that a record, 105.8 million Americans are not in the labor force.

That is more Americans not working than during the Great Reception. or even during COVID. This sounds very apocalyptic, but I'm going to be totally up front with you. It's very misleading. And I don't know what those other shows are doing. I try to be extremely honest about economic data. We can have different opinions about what we should do. We can have different opinions about social issues.

But I'm trying to be very upfront. And I was upfront with my audience about labor participation under Democratic president and the Republican presence. And it is a misleading statistic. But it's the one they have been relying on to talk about the economy being good or bad. When I say someone is not in the labor force, that doesn't mean I'm unemployed and desperately searching for work. That's not what it's limited to.

It includes anybody over 16 who is not working or seeking work. So if you've retired because you can afford to retire, if you're a full-time college student, if you're a stay-at-home parent, if you're a person with a disability that prevents them from working, or you just don't want a job, you show up. as being actively not in the labor force. And what the Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows is that only about six million, six of the 105 million say, I'm looking for a job right now. Half of the 105 million, so it's like 52, 53 million are just retired people.

And the most important thing, and I've been saying this now for two decades, the United States has more people living in it today than ever before. There's more people living in the US today than during the Great Recessions. And there are millions of baby boomers who have simply reached retirement age. Now, of course, because of that, the raw number of retired people, students, non-workers, it's always going to reach new records if your population keeps growing and growing. Now, if you compare today's total with 2009 and you don't announce, or rather you don't adjust for population. It's sort of like if I were to say to you, the United States has more drivers than ever today.

And maybe you think that means something about cars. But then you think for a second go, well, the United States has more people than ever. It's not that remarkable that there are more drivers than ever. And this is where the right loves to change the rules. When a Democrat is president, they like to talk about the percentage of Americans in the labor force. a Republican as president, they just look for whatever raw number gives them the headline. You could at most points in time, you could accurately say, we have more people than ever working right now.

And we have more people than ever not working right now. The raw numbers don't mean much if the population of the United States keeps going up. So now let's get to the real bad news for Trump. The rate has fallen from 62 and a half to 61. a half. The labor force participation rate was 62.3. Now it's 61.5. So we also have the employment to population ratio that also fell to 59%. Now, these are different statistics, but they are sort of getting at what portion of Americans are in the labor market. The participation rate includes people who are working or people actively looking for work. If we focus only on what we focus only on what,

what we consider prime working age Americans. That's 25 to 54. I'm just the messenger. That's that that's what it is. You just look at prime working age Americans. We reduce the effects of retirement and people staying in school longer. Their participation rate was about 83% in June. And that shows a significant decline, particularly among men 25 to 54. But if you just say, David, let's depoliticize the entire thing. What's your honest conclusion? The honest conclusion is, The labor market under Trump has weakened. Participation has fallen. Employment has fallen and people left the labor force and not because the economy is so good

that a whole bunch of people can afford to retire early. Now, we don't need to go and pretend that retirees and college students are 105 million people standing in breadlines. But let's not let partisan media change the measurement whenever the government. the White House changes parties. This is a propaganda tool and it's really important to understand it. And part of this is understanding if people are leaving the labor force because they've decided I simply cannot find a job because the economy is so bad. We might go, well, that's bad. If people are leaving the labor force because they've decided the economy's been so good

that I can now afford to retire or stay home with my kids, that would be a reason to think, Oh, the labor force going down is a good thing. The point is they want to just play games with these numbers and the devil really is in the details. What we see right now is that the labor force participation rate is declining and it seems to mostly be declining for reasons that are negative about the economy, not positive about the economy. That's the sort of honest economic analysis right now of the Trump economy. Everything Trump touches turns to, you know, whatever you want to call it. And FIFA's World Cup and the Olympics are their next kind of targets.

Donald Trump and his family already turned FIFA into their kind of personal influence op. And now an investment group tied to Jared Kushner's brother is. close to acquiring part of the World Cup. They want to buy part of the World Cup, although it seems that the backlash is so explosive with every European national team threatening to walk away from future World Cups that it may not be happening. But when this news broke that Josh Kushner was going to try to buy part of the World Cup, Spain, France, England, Germany, and Portugal said, yeah, we're not going to go if you guys do that, which, I mean, listen, there's a lot of good teams.

But Spain, France, England, Germany, and Portugal are all good teams that a lot of people want to see. Is that really the World Cup without them? So FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who gave Donald Trump the world famous FIFA Peace Prize, before which, after which, rather, Donald Trump started a new war. What Gianni Infantino proposed was creating a company called FIFA Forward Enterprise, which would control the commercial rights associated with the, the World Cup and other competitions with FIFA. Now, FIFA's valued, FIFA valued it rather, at roughly $20 billion. And they said, listen, what we'll do is we'll sell up to 20% of this new

entity to private investors. And that'll help us raise around $4 billion. And who was expected to lead the investment group Joshua Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. What a surprise. Other people reportedly connected include private equity billionaire Mark Rowan and a guy named Greg Maffay, both linked to Donald Trump, of course. So you get a World Cup that really is defined by two things, Gianni Infantino's sycophantic relationship with Trump and Trump getting involved to coerce FIFA to reverse a red card, after which the United States got crushed by Belgium anyway. So it's like a complete disaster.

And then FIFA goes, you know what we'll do. Let's sell part of our most valuable competitions to an investment group led by someone in the Kushner family. What a coincidence. Now remember how we got here. Okay. Trump spent years saying, I brought the World Cup to the United States, despite it being Canada, USA, Mexico, World Cup. Fine. In Fantino, just goes, I'm just going to suck up to Trump. He visits the White House. He gives Trump a prize that they invented, which means nothing. The FIFA Peace Prize. Trump gets to be on the field handing the World Cup trophy to the Spanish team, all of this stuff. And then all of a sudden, you end up in this situation. Now, in the middle of this, I want to restate Trump called Infantino and said,

Nice World Cup you got here might be good to review the red card on flow balligan and then FIFA goes, you know what, sir? We've reviewed it. We were confused. It's not a good red card. We've gotten rid of it. And now flow balligan isn't suspended for the next game. Trump interfered in what is supposedly an independent disciplinary process.

FIFA gives him what he wants. And then by the way, the U.S. is subsequently obliterated by Belgium, 4 to 1. And the Trump's sports curse remains undefeated. Then at the final, Trump joins the trophy presentation. He refuses to leave. He stands beside the Spanish players during their celebration. They looked like they didn't want anything to do with Trump. And it really kind of captures the relationship.

Trump inserts himself. He goes, I'm not leaving. And he makes every sporting event he's involved with about himself. But then after all that, we get this investment. proposal and it really takes the corruption to a new level. UFA, UEFA, or WFA, and all 55 of its national associations said no European teams are going to participate if this proposal is live. Kankakaf's 41 members said, we reject it.

The process is secretive. There's this artificially short deadline. There's been no review. And then they also asked what really is a very obvious question. Why does FIFA need private equity money? They just had one of the most, or I believe the most profitable World Cup ever. Why private equity money? And so they faced a European boycott. They faced a rebellion, international opposition. And for now, it seems as though this plan is not moving forward. Now, that's the good news. There is a bigger problem here. A FIFA president so close to

Trump develops a secret plan which could give private investors, including a firm tied to Trump's family, a financial stake in future World Cups. It's the private equity vacation. It's like a roll up of soccer. And it becomes another way for Trump or his family to make money. This time, at least for now, it appears as though it has been interrupted. And this is a perfect example of a story that Maga never hears about. And in fact, I would bet leave a comment if this is the first, you've heard of this going on because I would bet based on my understanding of these algorithms and what I write about in my book, pay attention about these algorithms. My bet is that for a bunch of different reasons, most people in my audience, unless you're independently a sports follower

or a soccer fan, I would bet a lot of my audience didn't even hear that this was on the table. Let me know in a comment, send me an email info at David Pakman.com. Did you hear about this private equity selloff of FIFA before I talk to you about it today. Let me know. Here's something people don't think about enough. There is not much of a line between online privacy and real world safety. If someone gets angry at you in traffic, at work, in a relationship, or in a comment section, it can be very easy for them to figure out your details, address, phone number, relatives. A lot of that information is just sitting on. public search databases right now. There is something you can do. Our sponsor Incogni helps protect you

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And when things change really slowly over time, you sometimes don't notice that they're changing a lot over the long term. So I went back and I watched a bunch of Donald Trump speeches from 2015 when he came down the escalator and said Mexicans are a lot of rapists. I watched from the 2020 campaign, the 2024 campaign in recent speeches. And when you watch Trump's speeches over time like this over 11 years back to back, the change is really, really striking. Now, this is not an analysis of like, oh, Trump used to be honest, but now he lies or I don't want to do any of that crap where I create like a fictional version of 2015 Trump where he was reasonable and he was completely sharp mentally. He wasn't, but he was very, very different.

And the early Trump seemed almost like he was present in the room. Stuff would happen and he would react to it in a normal way. He could tell a story that had a beginning, a middle, and an end, which he can't do anymore. The insults he would use a decade ago, they were cruel, but they were sort of like more creative. He delivered them with more energy. The comedic timing was like marginally better. And there was a degree to which, especially looking back, I get why people found it both entertaining and also saw him as kind of charismatic in a way that

might get them to consider voting for him if they fall for all the stuff that he was selling. And that gets me to my second point, which is 11 years ago, 10 and a half years ago, 11 years ago, Trump was selling something whose appeal I can understand, although I believe he was selling it with lies and incorrectly framing himself as the guy who can fix it. Like, for example, America is getting ripped off and Americans are getting ripped off. And we're getting ripped off because these politicians in power are idiots. And we need a brilliant outsider who will come in and fix it. And then you can see that the audience sort of started to train Trump as Trump trained the audience.

Trump would go, we're going to build that wall. And it would get this big response. And so he would sort of get energy from it and say it again. They had lock her up and eventually he started with the fake news and attacking immigrants was working. And what Trump was able to do earlier in his political career was figure out which buttons produce applause. And the speeches kind of became a collection of pressing all those different buttons.

This has kind of always been my view of Trump, which is that there's no deeply held political philosophy underneath any of it. If being pro war is good, he'll do that. being anti-war is good from the point of view of optics, he'll do that. What Trump has always responded to is attention, praise, grievance, whatever benefits him personally. So then we get to the 2020 election and the speeches were different. Before 2020, Trump was mostly telling supporters, I'm going to make you winners. After the 2020 election, the message changed to, I'm the victim here.

You need to protect me. You need to donate because they stole it from me. And every single subject after the 2020 loss kind of led back to what was done to Trump. 2016, Trump didn't have the I'm the biggest victim. I'm the biggest martyr kind of narrative. There was a little bit of like, I didn't have to do this. I was living a good life. But not like I'm the most unfairly treated person.

After he started claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him. and prosecutors are persecuting me and judges are corrupt and Republicans even aren't necessarily defending me and their traitors. He started this whole they're not just they are after me, but they're not just after me. They're also going after you. And what was really perfect about that is it turned Trump's personal problems into personal problems for his audience. So by the time that he got into this hole, I am your. retribution phase as we approach 2024 when I'm going to come back and I'm going to be your retribution. I feel like I have something very strange in my tooth. By that point, the movement

was really organized around these are his grievances, but we have to avenge those grievances. So now we're at today, 2026. How Trump looks and how Trump sounds today is completely different. And over the weekend, I looked through the speeches 11 years compressed into, you know, 30, 40 minutes of clips. He looks swollen more than ever, regularly sweaty and exhausted, low energy, low stamina, seems difficult for him to even stand as long as he used to stand. He can't do the more animated performances that would carry him through speeches and rallies before. the language is really difficult to follow. And here there has been a big change. The stuff he does now, he'll tell one story, drift into the teleprompter, but then get distracted, retell an imaginary conversation and then confuse a name and the timeline and then eventually land on something unrelated.

He always had a tendency to that, but it used to be out of being hyperbolic, whereas now, It just seems like cognitive decline. Now, of course, I'm not diagnosing Trump. People who haven't examined him can't necessarily diagnose. There's some things you can diagnose or sort of evaluate just by looking at video. But what we can all do is compare Trump today with the Trump of 10 years ago. And there's been this remarkable decline. Even as we've talked about over the last couple of days and we'll continue to talk about, the bizarre AI generated images that he's constantly posting to truth social that fits into this too because a lot of those images straight up to pick Trump as a king a superhero the

Pope Jesus whatever and what seems to happen is that as he has less control over reality the fantasies he sort of has these proverbial wet dreams about become increasingly grandiose and outrageous. The early rallies really had some level of humor and what we might call more real excitement about the future, about whatever. Today, it's rage, self-pity. I'm the biggest victim and this desire for revenge. The beginning of this was Trump promising, I'm going to make all of you feel like winners. And now it's all about trying to convince the audience. He's never. actually lost. This is a big change. Our interest in all of this is, of course, getting him out of power, getting Republicans out of power in November and understanding this kind of evolution, for lack of a better

term, so that we are better prepared to deal with what's coming in 28. Do you agree with my analysis, the trajectory that I've kind of outlined? Do you disagree with it? Is it correct but not complete? Send me an email info at david packman.com or leave me a comment. All right, I'm going to do my, my impression of a MAGA talking about vaccines and autism. Why won't they let us study whether vaccines cause autism? Why aren't we allowed to talk about it? So that's all untrue.

That's what they love to say. Now let me give you some of the framework here. Autism diagnoses are going up. That's true. Diagnoses. Donald Trump and RFK Jr. are using that to try to drag the United States towards this vaccine hypothesis that has failed test after test. It's not we're not allowed to see whether vaccines cause us.

No, it's we have the data and the result of their insistence on this trash is a disaster. It's that parents are being scared away from life-saving. vaccines while RFK's Department of Health and Human Services, which is like a weird name for it when he's at the head of it because they're not doing much health or not providing many services to humans. They waste time going, we've got to study it. Well, we've studied it. We have really strong research already.

Now, the way it typically works is that these anti-vax activists whose goal is to just argue vaccines are bad. They don't really want the facts. They just want to go back. Vaccines are bad. Okay. They love to say nobody's willing or allowed to investigate vaccines. Scientists are too scared or too corrupt or too controlled by pharmaceutical companies or they're just fouchy and they should be in prison.

But the whole thing is just fabricated. Vaccines have been studied in millions of kids. And we also have decades of data showing what happened to autism diagnoses. vaccines were introduced, added, changed, and removed. So we should investigate why autism diagnoses have increased. And one of the questions whenever you diagnose something more is, are we getting better at diagnosing it or are we diagnosing it differently or is the underlying thing happening more? We've had autism experts on the show and we talked about this.

And of course, every explanation should be considered. We shouldn't just consider genetics and parental age and conditions during pregnant. and environmental exposures and screening and diagnostic rules and not vaccines. We should do all that stuff that I mentioned and then also consider whether vaccines are a factor, but we have. And considering everything doesn't mean we pretend every hypothesis fits the facts. Vaccines simply do not fit the facts with autism. And there's some pretty simple sort of logic tests, thought experiments that we can do. Let's start just with the timeline. Okay. The combined MMR vaccine, measles, mumps, Rubella, one vaccine for one shot for all three vaccines,

started in 1971. And at that point, routine childhood vaccination had already been normal for decades. And after MMR started in 71, there were some other vaccines that became normal in the late 80s and some during the 90s. We see no jump in autism diagnoses when these vaccines appeared. Now, I know that the anti-vax people love to say, well, over time, we've added more vaccines and over time, the autism diagnosis rate has gone up. And that's true. But you've got to think a little more. I've got my thinking, make truth great again hat on. And I'm going to be able to do a little more thinking. Each time you, it. If there was a relationship to vaccines, you wouldn't expect a steady increase in autism diagnosis.

You would see a jump when a new vaccine is added. And if you overlay the vaccine schedule and autism diagnoses, yes, autism diagnosis moves up over time, but they don't move together. So that should be our first sort of red flag. Now, let's look at some numbers. CDC monitoring found autism in about one in 150 eight year olds in the year 2000. And by 2022, it was about one in 31 across the communities that were studied. Now, that is a significant increase in diagnosis. But one of the things that has to be considered is that more diagnoses do not automatically

mean autism suddenly appeared at that rate. There was a time when autism was defined much more narrowly and much less well understood. And over time, we both got better at screening and the definition expanded. I've spoken with a lot of my friends from elementary school that I'm still in touch with. And we've kind of had this. And some of them are doctors now, by the way, physicians, I should say. And universally, we kind of have this realization, both my physician friends and pediatrician friends and just lay people, which is that there were kids who were maybe unfortunately

considered weird or different when we were in elementary school with no explanation given, who now in retrospect we realize were clearly autistic. They were on the autism spectrum. Nothing wrong with that. Just at the time between teachers and doctors and parents, there wasn't the awareness. This was the early 90s. There wasn't the awareness or tools to diagnose as early. And so over time, parents, teachers and doctors learned to recognize some of the signs. And for generations, this was missed. So there might have been kids at one point, as I said, they were just, you know, kind of unfortunately labeled weird or maybe they were they were considered cognitively delayed or something like that. And now we are seeing earlier and maybe more accurate autism diagnosis. So that's one factor. There's a study of Canadian kids, which found that more than half of the increase from 96 to 2004 was just kids moving into, uh,

from some other special ed category into, oh, we figured out that these kids actually are on the autism spectrum. That's half of the increase over that period of time. Then we can look at some direct vaccine studies. There is a Danish study that looked at about 650,000 kids. And what it found was that the MMR vaccine, which is the one that some people go vaccines in general might cause autism, but others say it's specifically the MMR vaccine. That study found that the The MMR vaccine did not increase autism risk. It didn't increase it overall. It didn't increase it among kids determined to be more vulnerable.

And it didn't increase in a tract community after vaccination. Another analysis looked at a million and a quarter kids. And it found no connection between autism and vaccines, MMR or thimerosol, which is sometimes a sort of more specific allegation. And the thomerosol test is very clear. Thamarisol was removed from just about it's an it's an adjuvant. I believe it's called. RFK loves to talk about it.

The marisol was removed from just about every childhood vaccine around 2001. If it was having an effect on autism, you might have expected that the rate of autism diagnosis might have gone down after you remove this thing or that the rate of increase in diagnosis might have just angled down, but it didn't. Autism diagnoses kept going up even when thamarasol was removed from just about every vaccine. So a year ago, about last year, the World Health Organization looked at all the evidence again and they said we just don't find any causal link even with vaccines that contained the marisol or aluminum. And yet, what did RFK do? He directed the CDC to weaken its messages about vaccines not causing autism. Trump's HHS is using federal

authority to revive a failed scare campaign and start confusing parents again. And my pediatrician friends say I've got parents coming in going, I want to delay the vaccines, which they can do. Or I'd like to separate out MMR into just the measles, just the mumps and just the Rubella, which isn't available in the United States. This is something that the Trump administration has suggested the parents just do measles and then the other. That's not available in the United States. It's just not something pediatricians have access to. So families deserve to know the honest research.

They deserve better services. Obviously, we need to be supporting families. But we don't need this obsession that keeps demanding. We're not allowed to investigate. They want to investigate, by which they usually mean looking at Facebook links, until they get the answer they want. And for as long as the facts don't give them the answer they want, we're not allowed. I talk about this, not vaccine specifically, but I talk about the health disinformation silos in my forthcoming book, pay attention. If you haven't ordered it yet,

as if there's another reason the Trump administration is going to try to destroy this book. I talk about how people end up in these environments where they can't get out of a disinformation cycle. Pre-order the book, David Pakman.com slash attention. Very limited number of signed copies remaining. The audio book is available. The e-book is available. It's all happening. Hey, if you're hearing this, that means you're listening to our podcast on one of the many podcast networks that we stream to. And first, I just want to say, thank you for being a listener of this show. It really means a lot that you're tuning in here. I would love to ask you for a quick favor. We are so close to reaching 4 million subscribers on YouTube. YouTube is where we post everything

you get through the audio podcast and a lot more stuff. It would mean a lot to me if you took a quick second to pop over to YouTube, search up the David Pacman show and hit subscribe. Every bit helps. I would love to have you as a subscriber there. Well, another day and once again, someone isn't happy with me. Regular double wrote in a post on my subreddit, which you can find at Davidpackman.com slash Reddit, I believe. David is in the never wrong camp. He says he wants affordable housing, but downplays discussions of how to get it. He calls zoning and tax reforms minor issues, for example. He says he's a social Democrat in the style of Northern European countries, ignoring that they have expensive housing as well. I grew up listening to David, but since I started

listening to UCLA Housing Voice, a podcast about housing research, listening to David seems all culture war and no substance. What's more important? The culture war or what to do to achieve cheap rents. Well, a couple things. You know, some people just want to be angry with me and that's fine. I can be your punching bag if that's what you want. I'm this is the worst podcast. I get everything wrong. I talk about all the wrong stuff. It's just terrible. All right. Well, maybe that's the case. But the factual assertions about what I've said about housing are completely wrong here. I do talk about housing and I am very clear that the number one issue is you need to significantly increase the supply. And when I talk about how to do that, I talk about restrictive zoning.

I talk about tax reforms, especially for vacant land, vacant buildings. I talk about all this stuff. Now, do I talk about it as much as a podcast that is only about housing? No, we deal with a lot of issues on this show. We deal with the federal government, state governments, elections. We deal with economics, tax reform, health care, all of this different stuff. But if the expectation is I will talk about housing as much as a show that is only about housing, guilty is charged, I'm certainly not doing that. But even the factual assertions here are just completely wrong. Maybe this just isn't the right show if housing is your big thing. All right, Catherine Johnson wrote in on Facebook's and says,

Thank you for the explanation. I've had conversations with quite a few people confusing socialism, communism, and social democracy. As you've explained, they are very different things. Hopefully understanding this will calm the situation. You know, I appreciate this message. But unfortunately, one of the things that happens anytime I want to talk about social democracy, socialism, communism is people start writing in or commenting and they go, you're completely wrong about the definitions.

And in fact, social democracy is communism or socialism or it's basically the same or it was intended to be. If what we, what often happens is when I want to have a substantive discussion about these different frameworks, 2% of the audience. focuses on how I'm getting the names of these things wrong. And that really prevents the substantive discussion. Now, there are some people who write in and they go, you know, David, so that the social democracy haters don't get confused.

Maybe instead of calling it social democracy, you should call it social capitalism. I have no problem labeling stuff whatever as long as it's clear what I'm trying to communicate. And the problem with referring to social democracy as social capitalism is that most people haven't heard that term. So sometimes by introducing new terms to clarify, you actually make things more complicated. So the point here is hopefully I outlined three different frameworks, which I called social democracy, which is a highly regulated form of capitalism, socialism, which socializes ownership of the means of production, and communism where the means of production are owned by the state. That those were the three frameworks I was attempting to explain. And, and

And to the extent that I was able to do that, good. Tech Izzy wrote in about weekends and says, are Saturdays and Sundays kind of sad because there is no pack pack episode? And Leah said, yes, I think that every weekend. You know, we have, we have toyed with a lot of different ideas for weekend programming. And the ideas have included we'll publish one bonus show every weekend to the podcast feed. will publish two old interviews, one Saturday, one Sunday, like a refresh type of thing. We're open to ideas for putting content out on the podcast feed on weekends.

It's just I don't want to do something, which then some people will be confused by and then maybe unsubscribe from the podcast feed. Audiences can be unpredictable. Audiences can be fickle, changes to routine, sometimes throw people off. So we're up for thinking about what to do on the weekends, but we just need to figure out like what, what is it that people actually want? Christopher Blake wrote in and says, Pacman is becoming diet maga like I'm some kind of right winger. You know, one of the really funny things about this claim is that for as long as I've been doing

this show, but you can find segments about this over a decade ago for as long as I've been doing this show. Every year, there's a period of the year where emails come in and they go, David, you've become much more right wing over the years. And I go back and I do my political compass test. I do my the one with like seven. There's another one where it like kind of grades you on seven different dimensions as to your politics. Every single time I do this, what we reveal is that my politics since I've started doing this show have either stated. the same or have moved further to the left, depending on when I do the poll, the tests, the studies. And yet, I still keep getting these messages. David, you've moved to the right. You've moved to the

right. Give me an issue, a specific issue on which my views have moved to the right. And then I would be better able to address it. A Merri Lee Williamson. wrote in on Facebook and said, as a former teacher of children with learning disabilities, I found this report. This is the one with the speech language pathologist last week. I found this report one of the best studies of Trump's disabilities and declining cognitive and processing skills. Yeah, last week I interviewed speech language pathologist Hillary Shea.

And she was really specific about exactly what we are observing with Donald Trump's speech. She's an expert in that. She's not claiming to know what an MRI would show for Trump, but she deals with speech and she administers the Moka cognitive assessment, the Montreal cognitive assessment. She spoke specifically to that. She gave us incredibly valuable information as to what we're observing. She talked about Mitch McConnell. I thought it was a phenomenal interview.

If you haven't seen it yet, you can find it on our YouTube channel. You can find it on the podcast. Hillary Shea, S-H-A-E is her name. Scott White wrote in about my disclaimer on Baron Trump's alleged autism last week and says, Backtrack, David. Did you mean to say Donald around the 250 mark or was it a slip of the tongue and you meant to say Baron? Yeah, I screwed up. One of the things I did last week is I gave a disclaimer because the Trump family is so triggered

and litigious anytime anyone talks about Baron Trump and autism allegations. I gave a disclaimer where I said, I am not making any diagnosis here, nor do I have any reason to believe independently that Barron Trump is autistic. I glitched and I said Donald Trump. And I got hundreds of emails from people saying, hey, I think you might have invalidated your disclaimer and whatever. Thank you for catching it. Thank you for the legal concern. I did mean, Barron, not Donald. And I believe that if I were to be sued, it would be clear from the totality of that segment that I was talking about Barron. I'm only saying other people have said Barron is autistic. It is not something I can independently weigh in on. Jedi Jack Curanton

commented on YouTube about the Fauci hearings last week. But nobody asked for Fauci's diary. Where the F are the Epstein files? Great question. But you know, this is something Republicans are good at. Republicans trumped up this entire. We got Fauci's diary. We're going to hold hearings. We're going to drag them in to testify. They created a political spectacle out of it. And this is something that they are good at. And Democrats, unfortunately, are not very good at this. They did it with the Benghazi hearings. the Republicans did. They've done it with so many different things. And it's bogus. What about the Epstein files? Forget Fauci's diary. The Epstein files. But you got to hand it to them. They sort of seem to know what they're doing as far as creating these public events. Beverly Hatley commented

about my my video regarding when they go after Barron. I think the fact that Iran thinks Trump values his wife or son's life more than his own is laughable. Listen, Trump primarily cares about himself. So it is true. If you said to him, who's it going to be? You were Melania. You were barren. I think Trump goes, no, no, no, no, no, save me. I think Trump says that every time. That's true. But here's what is the important thing. Donald Trump cares about being respected and being seen as strong. A foreign country saying they will target or actually targeting his, wife and kid shows a disrespect to Donald Trump. And so even though Trump's number one is himself, he cares about himself more than anybody else, of course, the whole issue here is that he sees it

as disrespectful. It's an affront to Trump for anybody to try to go after his wife and kid. That's really what he cares about. Beverly's instinct is right. Trump mostly cares about himself. All right, we are approaching 4,000 pre-orders for my forthcoming book pay attention. In addition to the number one printed hardcover copy that I have on my shelf, I now have with me two paperback copies. See, these are soft. I can fold them. These are uncorrected proofs not for sale. We call them galleys in the industry, a nasty term. I'll also give these away. Okay. So I've been saying if you pre-order this book in any format, you get a signed copy, you just

get the regular hardcover, you get an audio book, you get a Kindle book, whatever. Send your pre-order receipt to info at David Pakman.com. And on the day the book comes out, we will pick one person who submitted their receipt, and I will dedicate this specific copy, the first ever printed hardcover copy and send it to you. I'll do the same with these two uncorrected proofs. This is like the number one prize is the hardcover book. And then I've got two flaccid and floppy paperbacks, which we will also give away.

Send all receipts if you want to be entered in the raffle to info at David pacman.com. We've got a bonus show coming up. We're doing it all.