The David Pakman Show - The warning signs are suddenly everywhere

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Dr. Zachary Rubin, allergist, immunologist, and author who reaches millions as a digital medical creator, joins us to discuss the public health fallout of RFK Jr.'s MAHA agenda --... Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes sues to block Donald Trump from imposing restrictive mail-in voting rules right before the midterm elections -- Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi and two officials are suspended as federal agents investigate leaks about Donald Trump -- Fox News host Laura Ingraham advises Republican candidates to scare voters with false claims about Democrats taking their cars and appliances -- Fox News host Will Cain abruptly cuts off former DNC chair Jaime Harrison after Harrison calls out a sudden topic change -- Donald Trump gives an incoherent interview featuring mixed-up oil metrics, threats against Canada, and calls for fewer meat inspections -- Donald Trump releases a video pointing at a map while threatening to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America to punish Canada -- On the Bonus Show: Closing arguments in the Lindsay Clancy trial, Buc-ee’s says it will only do business in conservative states, AOC reinstates her DSA membership, and much more... 💳 PDS Debt: Get your free assessment & find the best option for you at https://pdsdebt.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🧽 Blueland: Get 15% OFF sustainable cleaning products at https://blueland.com/pakman 🥄 Magic Spoon: Use code PAKMAN for $5 off at https://magicspoon.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Book: https://bit.ly/m/attention -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start (01:08) Trump sued over his midterm meddling (08:13) Secret Service officials suspended (17:56) Laura Ingraham advises fear mongering (25:24) Will Cain abruptly changes topics (36:27) Zachary Rubin interview (54:44) Trump interview with Glenn Beck (1:04:50) Trump points to "Lake America" on map Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up today, things are getting very weird, very quickly. Donald Trump is trying to change the rules for mail-in voting right before the midterms, but we now have state officials essentially telling him absolutely not. And one said, over my dead body. Meanwhile, something sort of mysterious is happening inside of Secret Service where three officials have suddenly been marched out. They had their security clearances suspended. Their devices were seized and we're trying to figure out what's going on.
Starting point is 00:00:28 Now, over at Fox News, Laura Ingram seems very worried about November, while another Fox host cuts off a guest to discover afterwards that the guest was right. And Trump is now giving interviews where he can barely get through a thought. He's confusing gallons with barrels and talking about getting rid of meat inspection. And it is all coming in this, in the middle of this bizarre campaign against Lake Ontario, Trump versus a lake. Plus, Dr. Zach Rubin will join me. We've got a show today.
Starting point is 00:01:01 All right, we talked yesterday about Donald Trump trying to impose these outrageous new restrictions on mail-in voting just a few weeks before the midterm elections. And there was some bad news. A federal judge cleared the way, at least for now, for the Trump administration to move forward. But I am here to remind you, as I said yesterday, this thing is absolutely not over. Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays, just for example, is suing to stop Trump's new restrictions. And she was asked about this new rule and gave about as direct an answer as you can possibly give.
Starting point is 00:01:45 The phrase over my dead body was part of her answer. Take a listen to this. And if it does, do you have any sense of how many Arizona's might not get early ballots delivered? Well, what I would say is over my dead body is that. rule going to go into effect. We are going to fight this tooth and nail in the courts. Yes. And I've got the best solicitor general in the country standing right there, who is going to make sure, along with the other attorneys general, who are fighting this case,
Starting point is 00:02:21 I think 25 states signed on to this lawsuit this morning. But yeah, I mean, you're right. There's, there is, so there is a second injunction, but that would these second injunction is on the executive order that what the Supreme Court actually did is they, they ruled that our first lawsuit was not ripe. And now it is ripe. So, you know, it became right. So we get into more of a legal explanation here. But this is the attitude we need.
Starting point is 00:02:53 What is Trump think he's going to do? Hell no. Over my dead body is Trump going to do. that. So Mays is now part of this bigger legal effort. As she said, a bunch 20-something states have signed onto it. And the whole point is we're going to stop this rule before the November election. This is an outrageous thing to be doing. So let me kind of explain where things actually stand because the headlines about the court ruling yesterday made it sound like Trump won and this is all over and it's happening. But that is not really what happened. The judge did lift the injunction that had
Starting point is 00:03:25 been blocking the administration. But the court did not rule Trump's mail-in voting restrictions are legal. The problem with the earlier lawsuit was essentially it was too early. The USPS hadn't finalized the rule. It's not completely clear how this would be implemented. Well, now they have finalized the rule. So now they're getting sued over the actual rule. And what Trump is trying to do here is pretty extraordinary. The new system, if it went into force, would require states to give the Service lists of voters who are getting mail-in ballots. Ballot envelopes would need special barcodes. And if a ballot doesn't comply with the new requirements, the postal service could simply say,
Starting point is 00:04:07 we are making the decision not to deliver it. Now, there is an argument that that is simply not the postal service is called to make. The Postal Service doesn't run elections. The Postal Service doesn't make determinations about voter eligibility. But take a step back. We are two months from the midterms. States have started election procedures. They're preparing ballots.
Starting point is 00:04:30 Election officials have been getting ready for this for months, if not years. And suddenly Trump comes in and goes, actually, we're going to change how election mail works right before people start voting. So it's understandable why states are freaking out. And Arizona's sort of particularly interesting as an example, because voting by mail is not a weird Democrats only kind of thing. thing there. This is how Arizona votes. More than three quarters of Arizona voters choose to use vote by mail. And of course, that includes Republicans, roughly to the same extent that it includes
Starting point is 00:05:04 Democrats as well as independents. Arizona has been doing this for years and in comes the Trump administration right before an election. And they want to impose this entirely new federal system on top of it, deputize the USPS to decide we will or won't deliver this one. And they're excused. which it's been for years, the administration says, oh, this is about election security. We have to make sure only eligible voters are voting. And the state suing Trump are basically saying, you don't get to do this because of the law and because of the Constitution, which you claim is almost like a sacred text to you. The Constitution, it's so quaint, right?
Starting point is 00:05:46 The Constitution. Who cared? Well, the Constitution gives states and Congress authority over federal elections. The president doesn't have that authority. The president can't wake up one morning and say, well, how about if I use the postal service to create my own set of voting rules? And so this is why the court decision is not the end of the story. And it may really be only the beginning of the legal fight.
Starting point is 00:06:11 Now, the ACLU is involved. Other voting rights groups are back in court. They're trying to block this. Arizona and roughly two, two dozen other states are. fighting it as well. And I can't help but go back to the issue of the timing here because ballots are going out really soon. Some of the latest primaries are happening over the next week. And then early ballots are starting for the general election. Now, Sophia Lakin of the ACLU says that this, the chaos that this is causing isn't a side effect. It's the point. The point is to make things
Starting point is 00:06:50 really chaotic. And we have to look at it this way. Even if the courts ultimately block Trump, think about what happens in the meantime. People wondering, do I need a different ballot? Is my ballot going to be delivered? Do I need to request a ballot again? Does my state need to change something? Is my vote going to count? What happens if the Postal Service rejects it? Will I be notified? Do I have to look somewhere? You introduce all of these questions just weeks before an election, and suddenly people truly don't know what the hell is going on. So yes, Trump got a favorable court development, but he did not get the final word. And it should be inspiring to all of us that there are people like Chris Mays saying, I'm going to
Starting point is 00:07:32 fight this over my dead body. And she and others are going to fight this every step of the way. Now, ultimately, we will see what the courts say. We know what they're trying to do. We know why they're trying to do it. We know why they're trying to do it right now. They're terrified. And we will, by the way, Another element of today's elements of voting. Another element of today's show is going to be the slow creeping realization for a lot of these people, the Fox News hosts and the clingers and the hangers on that they may well get crushed. And all of a sudden, the investigations are going to hit them. So we will see what the courts say.
Starting point is 00:08:10 We are not going to give up. We have something very strange happening inside Donald Trump's Secret Service. Three officials, including the agency's top spokes. have been marched out of their offices. Their security clearances were suspended and their devices have been seized by the government. And here is where this gets very interesting. We don't even know yet what they're accused of doing. We, it seems they're accused of doing something pretty serious. But we don't know what. And this is happening while the Trump administration is trying to figure out very aggressively, I might add, who leaked the fact that this is going on? This,
Starting point is 00:08:50 sense is one of the, it's certainly one of the most bizarre, but it's one of the most apparently sensitive stories of Trump's presidency as well. The story of Trump secretly escaping turkey in a catering card. I'll explain what we know. The Daily Mail reports that Secret Service comms director Anthony Guglielmi and two other officials in the department were physically removed from their offices on Monday. Now, according to CNN, All three were placed on leave. They had their security clearances suspended. They had their work devices taken. So we already can see that this is apparently serious enough that it's involving the FBI and the CIA because of the sensitive nature of secret service. Now, an important caveat here
Starting point is 00:09:41 is that the secret service has not made any statement so far as to what is even alleged as far as the misconduct. And we don't know that these three officials are accused of leaking anything. The timing is what's interesting. You've got FBI director Cash Patel hunting for the source of a leak about what happened that day when Trump went to the NATO summit in Turkey and then was moved off of the president the normal presidential plane into this other plane, even though Marco Rubio was left on the main plane and Trump was in a catering truck with Natalie Harp, that entire thing.
Starting point is 00:10:18 It sounded like it was out of a movie. And all of it was because Trump was supposedly facing an Iranian assassination threat. And so they made the decision instead of leaving Turkey normally aboard Air Force One, we're going to clandestinely swap planes. Fine. Now, the operation was supposed to be secret. Somebody told the press about it. And Cash Patel is furious. And he wants to know who.
Starting point is 00:10:43 So the Washington Post's new reporting about the secret departure triggered. a separate investigation by Patel and FBI agents reportedly went to Secret Service and said, hey, what do you know about this? Is it possible that someone from Secret Service was the leaker? Now, we don't yet have proof that these two elements are connected, but we now have three people from the Secret Service communications operation kicked out of their offices, devices taken, and security clearance is stripped while the FBI was already looking for a Secret Service leak. Now, maybe the two things are ultimately not connected or maybe they are. We don't know yet, but there is clearly a big story unfolding inside this agency.
Starting point is 00:11:23 And this is an agency where often sometimes it does happen that the Secret Service is pulled into controversy and drama. But the idea at least is that Secret Service is there to protect people. They are above the political fray. They are above the gossip. They are above the drama of investigations. But now it's hitting them. Now there's another piece of context that I think is important here.
Starting point is 00:11:46 This guy, Googleyelmi, the comms director. He is not a water boy, an intern or some new employee. He's been running secret service communications since the Biden administration and was there through all of the fallout of the Butler assassination attempt against Donald Trump. And last month, Gugli elmi said an agent protecting J.D. Vance is being criminally investigated over a suspected media leak because agents complained to journalists about last minute travel requests from J.D. Vance and its family and how annoying that is. So there's clearly this massive sensitivity inside Secret Service about info getting out. And that creates two questions. The first is completely
Starting point is 00:12:30 legitimate. If Secret Service personnel are leaking genuinely sensitive info, which could compromise the security of a president. That's a big problem. Now, I don't care whether the president is Donald Trump, Joe Biden or anybody else. Objectively speaking, protective information can't be handed around because reporters ask questions about it and that can put people's lives at risk. That would be number one as far as Secret Service goes. But the second question is, is there something broader developing here? A Trump administration obsessed with finding and punishing people inside the government who are revealing information that is embarrassing to them because notice what we still don't know.
Starting point is 00:13:11 We don't know what the three Secret Service officials that were walked out allegedly did. We don't know why the CIA is reportedly involved. We don't know whether their removal is connected to Trump's bizarre, you know, catering cart escape. What we know is that the Secret Service officials, along with the top communications official, have been sidelined. They no longer have clearances. Their devices have been taken. That's very serious. And concurrent to that, Cash Patel at the FBI is looking to figure out who said stuff to journalists about the catering truck caper. There has to be more to the story. The question now is what exactly is the Trump administration trying to find and are they even looking in the right places? But the theme is that there is no institution under Trump,
Starting point is 00:14:07 no government agency under Trump that is immune from chaos when Trump is there. Is it because of Trump, well, that's a question we have to figure out. We're asking we're going to try to get an answer to it. But the chaos simply follows Trump absolutely everywhere. And it is even hitting the agency tasked with protecting not only Trump. And remember, you can say, well, I personally don't care what happens to Trump. Maybe that's your view. Fine. But Secret Service in chaos means that all of their their protectees, which include former officials, family of former officials, it includes Joe Biden, whoever the entire agency is thrown into chaos, and that imperils the security of all of those people. So this is not an agency that you want to see in such a chaotic
Starting point is 00:14:51 state, but under Trump, chaos is everywhere. It's following them and it is even here. So what do you think is going on? What do you think is actually at the root of this very strange situation? Three Secret Service people kicked out. Leave me a comment. Send me an email. Info at David Pacman.com. Debt has a way of turning. ordinary months into math problems that never seem to get solved. You pay what you can. You sort of like move money around. You keep up with different due dates. And the balances are sitting there and they cost more every day. Our sponsor, PDS debt, might be able to help you. What PDS debt does is work with people struggling with credit card personal loans, collections, medical bills. They review your
Starting point is 00:15:36 situation, they'll build a customized debt relief plan with options designed to reduce what you owe and move from juggling multiple payments to one lower monthly payment. They'll go beyond the numbers. They'll personalize the solution to your specific financial situation, not some generic formula. There's no minimum credit score required. Savings can start right when you complete the free 30 second assessment, PDFs, and you can PDS debt is the top rated company in the industry, thousands of five star reviews, a plus rating
Starting point is 00:16:12 from the Better Business Bureau. Lots of people in my audience use PDS debt. And we looked at the numbers for people coming just from my show. It turns out the average David Packman show viewer who uses PDS debt saves an average of $24,994. You get your free 30 second personalized assessment today at PDSdebt.com slash PacmanYT. The link is in the description. Sometimes the most important part of a political story is not what gets reported, but what gets placed in the center of the frame.
Starting point is 00:16:55 And that is why our sponsor ground news is so valuable. Take a look at Trump's Medicaid work requirement rule. The underlying story is that a lot of adults on Medicaid will have. to do 80 hours a month of work, school, or volunteering to keep their coverage. When our sponsor ground news lines up the sources, the framing really changes. On the left, the focus is human consequences. What happens if you're sick and you lose coverage? On the right, it's how much will it cost to implement these requirements?
Starting point is 00:17:26 What about states saying that's going to be really expensive? And what's revealing is only around 10% of the coverage is coming from right-leaning sources. ignoring the story. Ground news will flag gaps like this through its blind spot feed. So you can see when a major story is getting very little attention from one side of the media landscape. Go to ground. News slash Pacman for 40% off the same vantage plan I use. The link is in the description. Well, Laura Ingram is getting very nervous about what is going to happen to Republicans in November. And I think she recognizes to a degree she's been involved enough in the
Starting point is 00:18:06 Republican hijinks standing there behind Fauci when Fauci was testifying and standing up and demanding an apology. She's visible enough as an antagonist that she may be worried she could end up in the crosshairs of Democrats if and when they take control of the house. And she believes she has come up with a brilliant strategy for saving Republicans. And that strategy is just start lying to people. She's talking about the midterms. She admits Republicans could be headed for a brutal election. And then she says, here's what Republican candidates need to tell voters, take a listen, and it's basically all lies. Her big plan is just lie to voters. I disagree with the conventional wisdom. I think you have to hammer them every single day until November. Cannot wait. These
Starting point is 00:18:56 consultants drive me nuts. Okay. They fly around in private jets. They call them. They collect a huge amount of money. And I think they're lying to these Republican candidates. This is going to be a brutal cycle. Republicans might pull it out. We all hope they do. But they have got to hammer that they're coming for your money, your gas powered car, your air conditioner,
Starting point is 00:19:16 everything you love, your private health insurance, and they're going to take it from you. Period. End of story. I'm sorry, I'm getting mad, but I mean, I guess I should be a consultant or something. I don't know. Yeah, oh, I should be a consultant. This is such a good idea. Now, notice what she doesn't say.
Starting point is 00:19:30 She doesn't say, oh, Republicans simply need to convince voters that Trump's policies have improved their lives. And that's not true. So it'd be very hard thing to convince voters of. Republicans need to explain to voters how the economy is working so well for them. Well, it's not. So that wouldn't be true. Republicans need to show voters how they are going to lower their health care costs.
Starting point is 00:19:51 Well, they haven't and they're not going to. Instead, it's the same stupid lies that Trump was telling about Joe Biden in 2020. They're coming for your air condition. Trump tried that in 2020. It was stupid. Joe Biden won't be able to have indoor heating or cooling. Trump tried saying nobody believed it. It's ridiculous.
Starting point is 00:20:10 Democrats are going to take your house and they're going to take your money and they'll say you can only have an electric vehicle and they're going to rip out the air conditioner and cancel your health insurance on the way out. That's her big strategy. And what is fascinating about it is that it proves that what I've been saying for months is right. It's not like a pat on the back. It's just been so obvious. If Republicans had accomplishments to run on, they wouldn't need to run on concocted, fabricated fearmongering about what Democrats are supposedly going to do, even though they had a chance to do it already and they didn't do it.
Starting point is 00:20:47 Remember, Obama's going to take all the guns. More guns proliferated during Barack Obama's eight years in office. And even months before he was leaving was, Obama's going to take your guns. He had been there seven and three quarters. years and no guns were taken. So there is no case to be made about all of the great things Republicans have done for people because Republicans in the last two years haven't done a damn thing for people. They've done stuff, I guess, for big corporations and the very wealthy, but not nobody else. So instead she goes, just start hammering this stuff. And it is all lies. In other words, scare the hell out of people with things that we all know are never going to happen. And the reason
Starting point is 00:21:26 it's going on is they know they have a massive problem going into these midterms. And she admits it. And Maga Mike Johnson has alluded to it. They all kind of know it. She says this could be a brutal cycle. Gas prices, which Republicans spent years blaming on Joe Biden have gone up. And it's a big problem for Trump because he said they would come down. The latest government data simply don't support Trump's claims that they've fixed consumer prices and consumer prices are coming down. Health care is not exactly an obvious Republican strength. Republicans allowed those enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire. People they're paying more.
Starting point is 00:22:05 And they are now so worried about health care politically that Trump's operation has been telling Republican senators, you got to talk more about what we're doing on health care. The problem is they're not doing a damn thing. So what do you do when reality is politically difficult? According to Laura Ingraham, you just tell voters, Democrats are going to take your air, conditioners. They're going to be gone and they're going to take your pickup truck and it's going to be gone and all of that stuff. Now, there are legitimate policy disagreements. So what I mean by that is between Republicans and Democrats, Democrats generally are in favor of more aggressive climate policy
Starting point is 00:22:43 than Republican. That's true. Some Democrats want to move away from gasoline powered vehicles over time. I think at some point, we're going to look back at the idea of taking taking fossil fuels out of the ground, transporting them around the world, refining them into gasoline, putting them into cars, and then everybody's driving around with carcinogenic trash coming out of their exhaust pipes. We're going to look at that as crazy. At some point, that's going to be crazy. We're going to move away from gas powered vehicles, but Democrats aren't going to take your gas powered vehicles next year if they take control of the House and Senate. That's insane. You have people who support Medicare for all, and you have people who say, I have other reformed
Starting point is 00:23:24 other reform ideas that I would want to use to change private insurance. That's a debate. That is very different from telling tens of millions of people. Actually, that's not true. Telling maybe it's 500,000 people. I don't know how many are watching this crap, but there are people watching Fox. Telling people that Democrats are going to take everything you love. It's not an argument.
Starting point is 00:23:43 It's just propaganda. And what is revealing is the desperation behind it because they used these exact same lies before and they didn't work. And what Laura Ingraham is effectively acknowledging by reviving. these talking points is that the problem Republicans are facing is so serious that there is no positive case they can make about what they've accomplished to convince people to vote for them. So they go with the oldest political trick imaginable, which is instead of convincing people that we've made their lives better because we haven't, we're going to convince them that the other
Starting point is 00:24:13 side is going to completely destroy their lives and their money and their car and their air conditioner and their health insurance and everything that you love. She believes if they repeated again and again and again between now and November, voters will forget that the people in power have done nothing for them and they will put them back into power because they're so afraid of what Laura says Democrats would do. That tells you she has zero confidence in the other approach, which is judge Republicans on what they've done and vote accordingly. If Republicans had improved the lives of people, that's all you would need to do. You would say, we all know that you all know you're better off today than when Joe Biden left
Starting point is 00:24:59 office and Donald Trump came in. Just vote based on how your life is going. They know that that's risky because people's lives on average have gotten worse. So instead, they're going with this crap. Lie, make it up. We have to make sure that they wake up that Wednesday in November, miserable from the electoral beating that they took. Fox news host Will Kane invited former DNC chair, Jamie, Jamie Harrison onto his show, spent most of the interview interrogating him about something Harrison said, I was never booked to discuss that. And then as soon as Jamie Harrison calls him out for it, Will Kane ends the interview.
Starting point is 00:25:42 But the best part is what happened the next day because Will Kane went back and checked. And it turned out that Jamie Harrison was. Right. He wasn't booked to talk about DSA. He was booked to talk about the South Carolina primary. So take a look at how this fell apart. Then we'll get to the apology from Will King. Well, when Donald Trump literally sat down for dinner with Nick Fuentes, right, a white nationalist, anti-Semitic, Holocaust and are, do you believe that Nick Fuentes represents every Republican? Okay. Think that it's not the first time I've heard this analogy invokes, Jamie.
Starting point is 00:26:18 And there's got to be. Jamie, Jamie, hold on. No, no, no, no. That's inflammatory, and I'm going to respond to it so this conversation stays honest. It's not the first time I've heard that analogy, and you have to have the intellectual consistency and honesty to distinguish a dinner from a Senate candidate. What is inflammatory is this? You invite somebody to come on your show to talk about the South Carolina Republican primary, and you don't even talk about the South Carolina Republican primary. This is the reason what you guys are disingenuous. No, there's no, there's no, there's no reason. Don't invite me to come on your show to talk about, well, listen. Jamie.
Starting point is 00:26:55 Don't invite me to come talk on your show about the South Carolina Republican Prime. Jamie, and you spend all your time talking about the DSA, listen to me for a second. Listen to me for a second. All right, I'm going to have to cut you off, Jamie. Well, I'm about to tell you if my staff told you that we were talking, Jamie, you can't hear me while you're talking. If my staff told you we were to talk.
Starting point is 00:27:18 about the Senate in Republican, the Republican primary, then I apologize. I was under no pretense that I'd be talking to you today about a Republican primary. I don't know why I would book a former Democratic. All right, I'm going to have to cut you off. We're talking the same time. It does nobody's service, not you, not me, or not the audience. But I would never be interested in hearing from a former DNC chair. Thank you, Jamie Harrison. I appreciate the time. I would hope for us to go better in the future. I would never book the former head of the DNC. All right. So he cuts it. Now, um, Jamie Harrison turns out had a point.
Starting point is 00:27:51 Harrison is not a member of DSA. His complaint was, you told me we were going to talk about the South Carolina Republican primary and instead you brought me on. You tried to turn me into a prop for a completely different segment about how radical the Democratic Party has become because 5% of DSA candidates have won their primaries. Now, Kane initially reacted as though what Harrison was saying made no sense whatsoever. And he said, if my staff told you that was the topic. then I will apologize. But I have no idea why anyone would book the former DNC chair to talk about
Starting point is 00:28:24 a Republican primary. He cuts him off and he ends the segment. Afterwards, Harrison went even further and he basically said like, lose my number will never call me again. But here's where this gets really good. Will Kane apparently decided to check. Good for him, right? He actually went and looked. He went back. He reviewed the communications between his producers and Jamie Harrison. And it turns out that Jamie Harrison was right. And Will Kane came back onto television. I apologize that this video is blurry. For some reason, I just wasn't able to find it in more than 480P. And Will Kane went on TV, and he did what I guess you can call an apology when you really don't want to admit the other guy was right. It's a sort of apology. Let's take a listen. I want to clean something up from yesterday,
Starting point is 00:29:09 my conversation with Jamie Harrison, the former chairman of the DNC. We had a contentious conversation about democratic socialism and its influence inside the Democratic Party. At the end, Jamie accused me of lying to him, of baiting, nasty accusation, and switching him. He said he'd been told he was coming on to talk about the South Carolina Republican primary, and he repeated that accusation afterward on X. Now, in the moment, I told him I had no idea what he was talking about, and I didn't. But I also told him that if we'd misled him, I would apologize. So I went back and reviewed the communication leading up to the interview.
Starting point is 00:29:47 Nobody explicitly promised Jamie that the South Carolina primary would be the subject of the interview. There was no intentional bait and switch. That's not who I am and that's not who we are as a show. But I can also see how Jamie came away believing that that would what we would be talking about. That was a... It's weird because it's like, why would he come away believing that if that was not part of the communication. It's really weird. Reasonable expectation based on the communication.
Starting point is 00:30:17 So, I reject the idea that anybody lied to Jamie or deliberately misled him. The truth is much more mundane. There was a breakdown in communication. Breakdown. I would never let a guest dictate what I can ask him. Had that been the deal, I would not have agreed to the interview. But that's separate from what Jamie, I think, reasonably believed. The communication failure came from my show.
Starting point is 00:30:40 And ultimately, I own it. So, Jamie, I understand why you felt misled. I know what it's like, what it feels like if you thought you were ambushed on TV and I understand why you were angry. And for that, I owe you an apology. It's funny because he kind of throws in this non sequitur about I would never tell anyone what the questions are ahead of time. We've dealt with this a lot on this program.
Starting point is 00:31:05 Occasionally, we are asked for the questions ahead of time. And we say, of course not. We have never sent the questions ahead of time. And only once, to be totally honest, years ago, did saying we're not going to give you the questions lead to the guests saying, well, then I'm not going to do the interview. I don't even remember who it was. It wasn't even a big name. It would be totally uninteresting, whoever it was.
Starting point is 00:31:25 It was like a producer of some kind or something. In any case, we do stick to the topics we say we are going to bring up. And I think that that's completely legitimate. And I expect the same when I'm invited on other shows. If I get invited on, you know, Pierce Morgan, and in fact, he's done this. If I get funnily enough, if I get invited onto Pierce Morgan to talk about, you know, the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. And then Pierce springs on me stuff about trans athletes, which he did to me multiple times
Starting point is 00:31:57 when I showed up to talk about other things. I would say that that's below the belt. That doesn't seem appropriate. And the way that you behave with integrity on this is you're just. honest with people about the topics you want to discuss, but you say that, listen, it's not even about giving you the questions ahead of time. And we often say the questions are really conversational. It's not like I have the questions written down per se. The questions will be dictated by the answers that are given. But if you're under the impression that the topic is the South Carolina primary
Starting point is 00:32:28 and the host has no idea about that whatsoever, there is a problem there. And this was a very cut and dry thing. Harrison says, you invited me to talk about X. You only spoke to me about why. Kane says, That's ridiculous. Why would we possibly invite you on to talk about X? You're a former Democratic chair. Why would you talk about a Republican primary? Maybe that makes sense. But then he checks the emails and he goes, listen, we didn't do anything deliberate. But I can understand why you thought that that's what you were coming on to discuss. Now, to Will Kane's credit, he's at least acknowledging the screw up because there are a lot of people in political media who would pretend it never happened, but that doesn't erase the original clips kind of revealing nature, which is that
Starting point is 00:33:12 Harrison wasn't refusing to answer difficult questions. He was saying this was not why I was supposedly here. The premise of the interview was different than what I was told. And then after the cameras were off, they checked the communications and they go, oh, I guess Jamie Harrison wasn't so crazy after all. Check the booking notes before cutting off the guest for mentioning them. We've dealt with this. I've dealt with it as a guest. If nothing else, at least Will Kane sort of said, I get why Jamie was confused. Plastic pollution demands systemic action. One big difference you can make is reducing single-use plastics in your household waste. Our sponsor, Blueland, makes it easy. They've got eco-friendly power-duo laundry tablets. These are pre-measured mess-free tablets,
Starting point is 00:34:04 no plastics, no micro-plastics. As is always the case with Blue Lands, eco-friendly cleaning products, you don't sacrifice results when you go green. Bluelands Power Duo laundry tablets have a dual-layer design. So you've got stained fighting enzymes and odor fighting technology. This is for those tougher loads of laundry, the sweaty workout clothes, the musty towels and food stains, kid messes also. Drop a tablet in your washer, wash as usual. It's also hypoallergenic and safe for sensitive skin. Check out Blue Land's lineup of sustainable dish, laundry, and household cleaning products,
Starting point is 00:34:43 which just they reduce single use plastic and use ingredients that are safer for the planet. Bluelands formulas are safer choice certified by the EPA, safety certified by cradle to cradle, and cruelty-free certified by Leaping Bunny. Blueland is a company that cares about our planet and your health. I love having them as a sponsor. My family uses Blue Land products at home. Get 15% off your first order at Blueland.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description.
Starting point is 00:35:19 Most sweet snacks are either satisfying or sensible. Our sponsor Magic Spoon is both. Magic Spoon treats are crispy, airy snack bars with 12 grams of protein, 7 grams of fiber, zero grams of added sugar, and two to three grams of net carbs. They come in great flavors like marshmallow, chocolate, peanut butter, and double chocolate, my favorite. A perfect, sweet, light snack I can throw in the bag and take on the go. They remind me of cereal bars, same texture and flavor, but without the carbs.
Starting point is 00:35:54 and without the sugar. Magic Spoon is easy to find. Just look for Magic Spoon at your local grocery store. They also rolled out treats nationwide at 7-Eleven. And if you haven't tried them yet, check out Magic Spoon's new protein pastries, high-protein low-sugar takes on the classic toaster pastries I grew up with. You can get $5 off your next order, including the protein pastries at magicspoon.com Packman. The link is in the description. It's great to welcome back to the program, Dr. Zachary Rubin, double board certified pediatrician, allergist, immunologist, author who's reaching millions as a digital medical creator, and his second book, Think Like a Doctor is now available for pre-order. Good to see you. Glad to have you back. Yeah, thanks for having me back again. It's good
Starting point is 00:36:49 to see you. So we've got wacky, wacky things happening right now with regard to Maha, measles. We've got lockjaw making a return. We are talking about vaccines. I think maybe to to start with, talk a little bit about since we last spoke, it's been some months at this point. Are we seeing the concerning consequences of the RFK agenda? or is everything basically going fine, in your opinion? Well, we definitely have no outcomes showing that America is healthy again. Right. That's for certain.
Starting point is 00:37:29 Unfortunately, the fruits of 2025 are now coming to fruition in 2026. There are multiple issues that play. A lot of people's feeds are flooded with recalls related to various foods and different medical devices. we have had, I like to say, a wet, hot poopy summer with the cyclospora outbreak that's been ongoing, that we probably have well over 30,000 Americans who have had explosive diarrhea episodes and hundreds who have been hospitalized, and unfortunately some have passed away, which is very rare for that to happen. But it's a parasitic infection that was not properly traced. And we know that when RFK Jr. became sworn in as Health and Human Services Secretary,
Starting point is 00:38:17 in early 2025, he made it his mission, along with President Trump, to cut a lot of different positions throughout our federal public health agencies, whether that's the CDC, FDA, USDA, et cetera. And so when we look back at that specific outbreak, which is an unusually high record-breaking outbreak for a foodborne illness, the FDA took nine weeks to start to really figure out that Taylor Farms would be implicated, the last outbreak that occurred about 10 years ago took a few weeks less than that. And it does take time to figure out because it takes a while for people to show up to a doctor's office. They're sick. They have to get tested. It's a specialized test. But this was several weeks late. And then we know that this is likely from a farm in Mexico
Starting point is 00:39:04 of iceberg lettuce. And it took about a month for the FDA to actually have boots on the ground and investigate what's going on. By the time they get there, they're likely not going to learn anything that's going to help us prevent this from happening in the future. And there are just fewer people working these agencies. And oftentimes you hear people talk about ghost agencies within our federal public health system
Starting point is 00:39:27 where they have it existing in name, but there's really nobody working these agencies. It's highly, highly concerning. One of the things I've been noticing is that there seems to be an attitude of growing confidence from the people in the administration about some of the things they are suggesting, even when there's really no empirical reason to be confident about some of these things. I'll give you an example. Earlier on in this second term, Donald Trump and RFK Jr. were sort of like, well, listen,
Starting point is 00:39:55 we'd really love to get to the bottom of the autism thing. Right. And they kind of said, we think this Tylenol thing may be related. And we have this vague idea of separate the MMR vaccine into three independent shots, which, by the way, all my pediatricians friends friends say, parents are coming and asking for that and we're like, yeah, it's not available in the United States. That something that is not available to us is being recommended. But the confidence level, now in the last few days, Donald Trump said, I think you're going to
Starting point is 00:40:24 see autism rates decline once we start breaking these up. Really, just confidently saying this is a cause effect situation. And once people do this, we will see autism rates go down. What do you make of this entire separate the shots idea, which to me, aside from the fact that that product isn't available, we now have more appointments parents have to remember. More instances of injection, which while Lowe theoretically raises the risk of something happening with the shot at the injection site itself, it seems extraordinarily misguided to me. What do you think?
Starting point is 00:41:01 Well, a lot of these recommendations are of the trust me bro type, right? They're just saying these things without any sort of scientific evidence, yet they will deny the actual evidence if it's shown in front of their face. The reality is that the MMR vaccine has been one of the most studied vaccines that we have, and it's been around for decades, longer than you and I have been alive. And it has significantly dropped the number of cases of measles, mumps, and rubella. These are diseases that can not just be life-threatening. Let's be real. It's actually more about the disability that can come from these different infectious diseases. So as an example, if a mom while pregnant gets rebella, the baby will have permanent disabilities called congenital rubella syndrome.
Starting point is 00:41:47 Nobody wants their kid to have that. If you actually see what it looks like, which most people haven't seen a case of it because the vaccines have been so effective. Right. Where mom has been immune against rubella as an example. Measles, one in five, develop a complication. Some of it's rather benign like an ear infection or diarrhea, but some can be severe like having pneumonia, being hospitalized, permanent hearing loss, brain swelling called encephalitis, which can either happen during the beginning of the infection or years later. It's rare, but there are cases that are absolutely devastating where you get a mild case of measles, and then many years later, your brain essentially deteriorates. You have this progressive neurodegenerative. disorder called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis or SSPE. And these folks, there's no cure for it. You die.
Starting point is 00:42:37 It is a slow, painful death, kind of like ALS, essentially. It's really scary when something like that happens. And we have a vaccine that's not only safe, but 97% effective after two doses of preventing infection compared to if you are not vaccinated. So it's a highly safe, highly effective vaccine. Instead, we have a president who's saying crazy things like, oh, you know, the shot is like a soda bottles worth. They're just pumping these things into these little beautiful babies.
Starting point is 00:43:10 And I just don't understand why people are taking that even an ounce of seriousness. Because if you've ever gone to a pediatrician's office and seen the amount of fluid that's actually given, it's at most, what, a half an ML of fluid that's given with an injection. It's, it's minuscule. If you combine all of it together, it's about 20. 25 milliliters of fluid given over 18 years of life, that's not even close to a can of Coke. It's absolutely astounding to me. And so the amount of time it will take to actually study this where we would have a manufacturer create separate vaccines,
Starting point is 00:43:45 that's going to take several years and multimillion dollar effort to get that done, just to tell families, okay, well, these are all live attenuated vaccines. Therefore, in order for them to be as effective, you have to give each one individually spaced out about 28 to 30 days apart. So you're going to tell families they're going to have to pay additional co-pays and then take off of work additional times. Most vaccines are combined with different antigens, meaning, you know, proteins or polysaccharides that we want to train the immune system to understand so it can help either prevent infection or lessen the severity. And you can combine multiple ones and do at the same time safely. Now, that doesn't mean that there's never
Starting point is 00:44:26 risk with any medical intervention. But we always have to ask ourselves, what is the benefits and what are the risks? And we hope that the benefits for an entire population outweigh the known and potential risks. And with the current vaccine schedule, that has been answered time and time and time again. And RFK Jr. has been spouting this nonsense really since the early 2000s. Can you talk a little bit about that risk calculation aspect of this that you mentioned? Because one of the things I think is interesting about your your upcoming book, Think Like a Doctor, is you go through the process of explaining how physicians think about risk and uncertainty. And I interviewed a few years ago, an economist whose area of expertise is risk and how humans are good or not so good at thinking about
Starting point is 00:45:14 things where the risk is statistically low, but very serious if it happened. So like an example would be you get on an American, a U.S. based commercial flight. Right. The risk of an accident is really low. And if you are in an accident, the outcome is probably very bad. And in these scenarios, what he, this is Baruch Fischoff is his name. What he argued was, humans are really bad if you say, hey, there's a one in 10 million versus a one in 40 million risk of something happening. And we're just like, I don't know, that all kind of seems similar to me. Okay. When we talk about something like a vaccine where we say here are the. risks. Here's the odds of getting this condition if you're not vaccinated. Here are the likely
Starting point is 00:46:00 outcomes if you were to contract this disease. And here are the risks associated with the vaccine, which will protect you from the disease. We're pretty bad at assessing that at a fundamental math level, aren't we? Right. And so I don't always preach numbers when it comes to explaining risk to my patients. Okay. I talk about what is the common risks, the not so common, and what is considered rare, that you're not likely to see. And keep in mind that as a physician, I see patients every single day. And when you look at that over many years, I'm going to see thousands of people. So my ability to look at risk across the population is going to be different than the individual person. So being transparent about what's common, not so common,
Starting point is 00:46:47 and what's rare of that medical intervention of doing that versus not doing it has to be discussed. and be openly transparent. And then is there any alternatives to that particular medical intervention, whether it's about vaccines or not? And so in my clinical practice, especially in the beginning of the pandemic when the COVID vaccine was coming out,
Starting point is 00:47:07 I would see adverse reactions to vaccines on a fairly regular basis. Some of it we didn't understand initially. And then as time went on as we learned, I had a lot better understanding about it and I could explain to people, hey, this can happen with the vaccine. This is what I've actually seen with it.
Starting point is 00:47:23 And it's not always, rare some things are more rare than others but then let's compare that to what happens if you get infected and the risk based on your health the medical comorbidities whether you have diabetes or if you're older if you have chronic lung disease etc and and so comparing those two i think would help people and the problem is is that in a doctor's office you wait six to 12 months to get an appointment if not even longer depending on if it's a specialist and you may get 10 to 15 good minutes with them. That's not enough time to have these discussions, which is one of the big reasons why I wanted to write a book like this is the fact that we need to have a better understanding
Starting point is 00:48:05 of what that thought process is and how we can ask better questions so that those short visits are going to be more productive. If we think a little bit about the more nutritional side of Maha, taking a step back from vaccines for a moment, there seem to be some ideas in there that are not unique to RFK Jr., to be clear, that are pretty good ideas, which is it's better to have more movement during the day than less movement. Absolutely. Eating more whole foods and getting fewer calories from ultra-processed food, that's a good thing. Then we get into some of this other stuff like we're phasing out red dye.
Starting point is 00:48:42 And when I've spoken to nutritionists about this stuff, their consensus view sort of seems to be, listen, the die isn't doing anything good for you. But even if you have a whole bag of Skittles, the amount, which you shouldn't really be having regularly, the amount of dye is really quite small. And so this seems a little bit like we're getting into distraction science with the dyes specifically. Give us a sense of the nutritional protocols of Maha, if you will. Yeah. So I agree with you that there are certain aspects that I think everyone would agree upon, which
Starting point is 00:49:14 is really the true low hanging fruit when we think about it and where the evidence points towards that ultra-processed foods eaten on a regular basis are not healthy for people. However, we also live in a society where food is becoming more and more expensive. And we're having all these issues with tariffs, these issues with beef imports, a lot of food recalls are happening. And so people don't necessarily have access to nutritious whole foods. And so we have a real crossroads here where if you want to truly embrace a type of Maha movement, And you've got to invest in that, in giving people the opportunity to get access to fresh produce that is not only healthy but safe at this point, unfortunately, and helping really incentivize less ultra-processed foods.
Starting point is 00:50:06 However, that may be from an economical and political standpoint. The whole die issue is, as you say, is a distraction from the bigger issue where people will say this is toxic. and you hear that word a lot with seed oils as an example as well. When the reality is that's not true, it's overstating the evidence and cherry picking information. Everything in moderation is obviously a slogan that I think everybody could get behind, but oftentimes you hear on social media people demonizing these smaller issues and then over-exaggerating some of the claims. And now we're hearing a lot of people promoting eating a lot of red meat, which is not necessarily
Starting point is 00:50:46 healthy and we talk about the food pyramid which has been retired for over 10 years yet they keep saying that that was a part of our nutritional guidelines currently we've been past that for many years they just gloss over the Obama administration's my plate to say oh we're just going to flip the food pyramid and it's confusing when you look at it like what are we supposed to do with that that is interesting where on the one hand they are talking about more whole unprocessed foods and on the other hand, they say, hey, we've lifted millions of people off of food stamps when all they've really done is make them harder to get and restricted access to them. If you want people to be able to make better choices and have a broader diversity of choices, we've got to deal with food
Starting point is 00:51:28 deserts. But as you're talking about, we also have to deal with affordability, which if you take people's food stamps, they will be less positioned to be able to do. So there's some contradictions in these policies. Exactly. Exactly. So it's a big conundrum that a lot of what they're saying is not driven by the actual scientific evidence. But you know, when you hear RFK Jr. say you shouldn't eat anything that comes in a package but comes from the ground, that's awfully confusing because there are plenty of healthy options that are prepackaged, right? If you get frozen vegetables, they have a longer shelf life, they're still healthy for you.
Starting point is 00:52:02 Speaking of that, what do you think is the biggest incorrect piece of information around food and nutrition and grocery shopping that's become sort of accepted, even though it's really wrong at that at its core one of the one of the ones that immediately comes to mind is the idea that if you can't pronounce the ingle it must be bad for you yeah you know dihydrogen monoxide oh my gosh that's really scary if you have too much of it it's really toxic okay uh it's something that really scares a lot of people you know water right um escorbic acid oh my gosh vitamin c right so the scientific terms can sometimes scare people i mean even r fk junior can't pronounce pronounce riboflavin.
Starting point is 00:52:44 Yes. You know, so that is such a weird myth that's been perpetuated that when people don't understand something, it becomes a conspiracy theory that if you can't pronounce these things, it must be bad. And I think that's one of the low-hanging fruits of, you know, myths that's easily debunkable, yet people still hang on to that as if, you know, oh my gosh, if we look at the scientific naming for egg, like ovalbumin, ovomucoid, it must be dangerous. but that's the list of the ingredients that makes up an egg.
Starting point is 00:53:16 So that's just very strange to me. That is a weird one. The second book of Dr. Zachary Rubin is now available for pre-order. It's Think Like a Doctor. You can follow him on a large variety of social media platforms. Always appreciate your time. And thanks for being here. Thanks for having me.
Starting point is 00:53:36 Let's say you just finished a business call or a meeting. You think you caught all of the important parts and an hour later your notes are scattered and you don't remember exactly what was said The plod note pro is designed exactly for that gap between I heard something I'm going to need to use it later It's about the size of a credit card thin enough to slide into a wallet attaches magnetically to the back of my phone for a call an interview a meeting talking through ideas out loud I can hit record once, stay focused. Plod will transcribe the audio, separate the speakers, summarize the key points, and then convert them into action items. I can also search and interact with everything later using the Ask Plod feature. Unlike my phone, Plod also has up to 50 hours of battery life. It has enterprise level privacy and security standards. So go to plod.aI slash Pacman
Starting point is 00:54:36 and use the code Pacman for 10% off all products. The link is in the description. Donald Trump just gave an interview where he seemed incapable of finishing a single thought without something going terribly wrong. And I don't mean, oh, Trump gave a weird answer and the conversation was mostly normal. I am talking about an interview where Donald Trump is confusing everything. He's threatening Canada. He's suggesting maybe we're inspecting me.
Starting point is 00:55:06 too much and he continues to make Dolly Parton's death about himself. And the whole time Glenn Beck, the interviewer, is sitting there giggling along with him. It is remarkable to watch because every time Trump starts answering a question, you just have no idea where he's going, what he's talking about. And it starts with Dolly Parton. Glenn Beck asked Donald Trump about the death of someone who is quite frankly one of the most beloved entertainers in American history. Everybody liked Dolly.
Starting point is 00:55:37 And Trump's response is, you know, the most important thing is she really liked me. And by the way, that doesn't seem to be true. Not only is Trump making it about himself, but it really doesn't seem that Trump's politics were anything that Dolly would like. But it's Trump. So he makes it about himself. We all knew her so well. I knew a little bit.
Starting point is 00:56:01 She wasn't a very political person. She really liked me. I will tell you. She also wanted to stay very, you know, she was of the opinion, you know, the 50% who needs to lose. I don't think it's 50. I think it's probably 20% of the fans, okay, not 50. But she was a great person and she was just a nice person. You know, I like her a lot.
Starting point is 00:56:24 And I thought it was a natural thing to lower the flags. And she liked me most importantly. Well, everything that I have ever seen Dolly Parton say about social, social issues, cultural issues, political issues, education issues, seems to run completely counter, just completely counter to everything that Donald Trump believes and stands for. And Dolly Parton dies. And Trump's big contribution to the national remembrance is, by the way, she really liked me. And this is so important, a reminder of the Trumpian theory of human existence. There are people who like Donald Trump and people who don't like Donald Trump and people who Trump simply hasn't figured out yet. Do they like me? Do they really
Starting point is 00:57:09 like me or do they just hate me? And it is the most important filter and prism through which Donald Trump evaluates everybody. Okay. We then get to the topic of the Strait of Hormuz and Trump makes an attempt to reassure everybody. It's all going completely beautiful. Prior to the war, prior to what we're doing with Iran, which I think we'll be ending fairly soon, you could really say, you know, because the strait is open. We take a lot of ships through the straight now. We're taking them in. The mines are gone.
Starting point is 00:57:41 You probably saw that we put it out yesterday, all the mines. We got rid of the mines. But the straight, it's functioning. It's a functioning straight. Yes, every once in a while, there'll be a drone or a rocket or something shot. Every once in a while, you'll get drone. But it is a very functioning straight. A lot of oil is pouring out a 10 million gallons, 10 million barrels yesterday.
Starting point is 00:58:03 Prior to gallons, barrels, who cares, right? First of all, every once in a while there will be a drone or rocket is an incredible way to describe a functioning, totally peaceful international shipping lane. It's working beautifully. Imagine your airline saying, listen, the airline is operating beautiful. Every once in a while, a rocket will come through the airport. But we are just, you know, you can go and get your $7 bottles of water and all of that stuff. It's all working great.
Starting point is 00:58:38 And then we get this confusion as to what is the oil supply? Are we talking about barrels or gallons? This is the president discussing one of the most strategically important waterways on the planet and the sentence barely survives until the end. Take a listen to this. Canada. I mean, it seems to me they had a really good deal, but this is all about the elections and throwing our elections. What is happening? Is there a way to end this? Look, I don't know how you feel about Canada. They are one of the worst countries in the world to deal with. And this has gone on for many years. Wait, wait, wait. Can we say this? I love Canadians and Canada. I do not.
Starting point is 00:59:25 not like their administration. Okay, well, the administrator, and the previous administration, too, is terrible. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But they have taken advantage of the United States for many decades, actually. They charge tariffs that are unbelievable, like on milk, 400 percent. And I just said, we're taking them on. And I took them on at the beginning, but we had so many other things to do because the country is a mess. but I said, we're going to take them on, we're going to stop it.
Starting point is 00:59:57 And you saw the Lake Ontario. You know, people thought I was kidding. Maybe it was because the last one you saw was the Gulf of Mexico's Gulf of the United. Now we have a Gulf and we have a lake, okay? You know, it's very simple. But look, I don't want to go into great detail because it may be boring to people. But to me it's something. They charge tariffs.
Starting point is 01:00:23 They take advantage of us as though they were a state and they're not a state. And they've taken our car industry and they've taken our agriculture industry. You know, the farmers can't sell anything in there because the tariffs are so enormous. Remember, it's Trump who has crushed the farmers and the ranchers. And yet they want to sell in us without any tax. So I had a deal. That was a pretty good deal, you know, quite good because they're afraid that I won't do any bit. In other words, we won't trade.
Starting point is 01:00:52 They don't have anything that we have to have. Okay, we can get by. I mean, there are a couple of things that... That is very much untrue. Make it a little inconvenient, but we can get them elsewhere. And it's time to teach Canada that you can't do this anymore. We lose $60 billion, and really more than that, $60 billion a year with Canada. I can't do that.
Starting point is 01:01:14 I can't believe I have to say this to you. I have a network break. You could hold on, but I know you're busy. I so appreciate your time. time, sir. I am sorry that we're on a network break. I have a network. Thank you for the painting. That was so beautiful. Listen, this whole premise is completely effed. Like put aside for a second, Glenn Beck giggling and the complete insanity of it all. Canada supplied close to 100% of U.S. imported natural gas last year. 98% of natural gas liquids, 85% of natural gas liquids, 85% of
Starting point is 01:01:52 Potash fertilizer potash potash. I never know how to pronounce that. 81% of the electricity we import is from Canada. 63% of the crude oil. Our largest aluminum supplier, our number one uranium supplier, this idea that we just are, we're fine without Canadian imports. Give me a break. And the whole renaming the lake thing, we're going to get back to that, but it is, we have a gulf and a lake now. Just pain. painfully, stupid. And what's insane is that Canada is probably going to have no choice but to capitulate after
Starting point is 01:02:31 finding out that Donald Trump has unlocked a body of water. Just kidding. I don't think that renaming with a Sharpie on a map, a body of water is going to get Canada to do anything that Trump wants them to do. And then finally, Trump starts talking about meat processors and says, you know, we might be doing a little too much inspection of meat. We might be doing a little too much regulation of me. For the country.
Starting point is 01:02:54 That would be good. No, I've been hearing only bad about it's four places and it's a monopoly. It is. And who's controlling those regulations? Department of Agriculture. Yes. An FDA. And the FDA.
Starting point is 01:03:12 Or is it USDA? I can't remember which one of them. But it's the federal regulation. It's all the. Neither of them have any idea. Inspections. It's all the inspections. This is where the incoherence, if the incoherence was funny to you before, this is where it stops
Starting point is 01:03:28 being funny. Meat inspections and food safety regulations are not bureaucratic abstractions. They exist because contaminated meat can make people really sick. It can even kill them. And there is a legitimate conversation to have about if we have redundant regulations, let's look at getting rid of them or if we can make government more efficient in some way, Let's do that. But maybe we don't need so much inspection of the meat is not where I want the president giving us his hairbrained ideas. And when you take it all together, Dolly Parton dies.
Starting point is 01:04:01 She liked me. The Strait of Hormuz. It's fine. Every once in a while there are just drones and rockets. Canada. We're going to teach him a lesson by renaming the lake. Meat inspection. Maybe we just do fewer inspections.
Starting point is 01:04:16 This is a nightmare. And Glenn Beck is. sitting there laughing along as though this resembles a normal conversation with the president of the United States. We have to recognize we have become accustomed to Trump speaking this way so that the individual moments barely register anymore. But you put four of them next to each other and compare it to how we used to see presidents speak. And you remember, this is profoundly bizarre.
Starting point is 01:04:40 This is profoundly embarrassing. This is humiliating. This is a disaster. But Glenn Beck just chuckles along and we're all supposed to go. Isn't this all so funny? Donald Trump is now sitting around the White House playing with maps and talking about renaming Lake Ontario because he's mad. He's big mad at Canada.
Starting point is 01:04:58 They were mean to me. And somehow seeing Trump explain this idea makes it a lot weirder. Donald Trump posted this video to his TikTok, insisting look at this map. We might rename Lake Ontario to Lake America. a look at this. So this is Lake Ontario in Canada and in the United States, but we're going to make a little change. We're going to call it something different than Lake Ontario. We're going to call it Lake America. And all it takes is a good pen and some intelligence. So Lake Ontario, that's gone. Lake America. So now we have a lake, and now we have a lake, and now we have
Starting point is 01:05:53 a gulf because we have the Gulf of America and now we have Lake America without the of. Thank you very much, everybody. Enjoy Lake America. So there he is looking at a map, pointing at the lake, explaining because Lake Ontario is partially in the United States, maybe it should be Lake America. And it comes a day after Trump announced on Truth Social that the U.S. is seriously considering changing the name of Lake Ontario. Now, I want to remind you of the sentence the president actually wrote, quote, the United States is giving
Starting point is 01:06:28 serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don't expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer. We have progressed from barely coherent social media posts to Trump sitting with a map and a sharpie and explaining lakes to us. And the ostensible reason for all of this is another stupid trade war optional that Donald Trump has chosen to escalate with Canada. U.S. Canada trade negotiations broke down last week. Trump said we're doing 50% tariffs on 20 billion worth of Canadian goods.
Starting point is 01:07:08 Canada says that we'll do tariffs on you as well. And Trump goes, well, I know you are, but what am I? And threatened to put even more tariffs on Canadian cars and auto parts and steel, which are very much from the Ontario province that they are imported to the United States. And the whole response after all of it is we're trading partners, we're having a problem, we're having a conflict. What if I rename the lake? Now, there are a number of problems here.
Starting point is 01:07:36 First Lake Ontario is an international body of water. The US-Canada border runs through Lake Ontario. 53% of the lake is in Canada. 47% of the lake is in the United States. Trump, I guess, could direct the federal government to call it something else. Like he says, oh, we don't call it the Gulf of Mexico. We call it the Gulf of America. But he can't force Canada to change it.
Starting point is 01:07:58 He can't force anybody to call it the Lake of America, Lake America. Now, number two, and this is maybe my favorite part. The lake isn't even named after the Canadian province. Trump's ideas, well, they don't get to name it after their province. It should be named after us. But that's not the way it happened. The name Ontario comes from an indigenous word, which translates. translates as Lake of Shining Waters. And the name of the lake predates both the United States
Starting point is 01:08:25 and Canada. Ontario, the province was named after the lake. So Trump is angry at a lake. He is a guy yelling at a cloud personified. And we are going to punish the lake by changing its name. It's a lake, The lake isn't criticizing Trump. It's not imposing tariffs on anybody. It's not involved in trade negotiations. But somehow this is where the feud has gone. And it is not a random joke Trump made once and moved on from. He's now posting about it.
Starting point is 01:08:56 He's doing doctored maps. He's crossing out Lake Ontario and writing Lake America. He's recording videos taking time on this to say, maybe I'm kidding, maybe I'm not. And then the White House gets involved. And they post a cartoon map celebrating Lake America, except their map. Puts Washington, D.C. in the wrong place. Their map put Washington, D.C. in North Carolina. Maybe it was AI generated.
Starting point is 01:09:20 They can't even make a map correctly. Now, there is a lot of obvious comedy in this entire thing. I acknowledge that. This is genuinely embarrassing. If you are someone who respects the office of the presidency and believes that whether it's a Republican or a Democrat, there should be a certain level of respect for the office, and that is part of what makes the United States whatever. it is, which is our foreign, our allies also respect the office, even if they don't necessarily
Starting point is 01:09:48 agree with everything the president does. That goes out the window when Trump behaves like this. It is genuinely embarrassing to see a president of the United States devote his time to this. And it's not even devote his time to this while nothing important is going on. He's devoting his time to this while American consumers and businesses are seeing a cost of living crisis. We are damaging really important relationships with some of our closest neighbors. And he's sitting there pointing at a lake trying to come up with a new name for it.
Starting point is 01:10:17 This is where we are. Trump is angry at a body of water. And now that body of water is going to pay. We're going to suck it dry. All right. We will talk about what is going on with the Lindsay Clancy trial. I haven't spoken about this much on the bonus show today. Buckees says it will prioritize.
Starting point is 01:10:38 conservative business friendly states. Oh boy. What does that mean? And AOC rejoins DSA after allowing her membership to lapse for seven years. All of that and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join packman.com to get instant access. And just days remain. Next week, I'm signing all the signed preorders of my book.
Starting point is 01:11:06 If you want to get a signed copy of the book, this is it, folks. We are days away from the book's release and you can get signed copies or not signed copies or the audio book or the Kindle, whatever you want at David Pakman.com slash attention. Thank you to everyone who has done it. Thank you for everyone who will do it today.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.