The David Pakman Show - The week from hell is only getting started

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

-- On the Show: -- FBI Director Kash Patel faces reports of heavy drinking and being too intoxicated for staff to wake him during critical moments -- Military advisers reportedly block Trump from the Situation Room during a rescue mission due to concerns about impulsive decisions -- House Democrats file impeachment articles against Pete Hegseth over alleged unauthorized war actions and mishandling classified information -- Reports describe Donald Trump privately expressing fear, anger, and concern about the political and military consequences of the Iran war -- Donald Trump speaks to Turning Point USA in an effort to emphasize his Christian credentials, which have recently come under scrutiny -- Donald Trump delivers a confusing speech with contradictory statements about religion, the Iran war, and his second-term policies -- Donald Trump signs an order to speed up psychedelic drug review while joined by Joe Rogan and makes unusual remarks -- Former Donald Trump supporters publicly criticize him as racist and corrupt while expressing regret for past support -- On the Bonus Show: Tariff refunds start being issued, MTG raises questions about the Trump assassination attempt, RFK Jr. once cut off a road-killed raccoon’s penis, and much more... 🛍️ Shopify: Sign up for $1/month trial and start selling today at ⁠https://shopify.com/pakman⁠ 💡 Outskill: Grab your free seat to the 2-Day AI Mastermind at ⁠https://link.outskill.com/PAKMANDEC1⁠ 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code DAVID for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at ⁠https://wildgrain.com/david⁠ 🔊 Blinkist: Read a nonfiction book in just 15 minutes! Try it FREE at ⁠https://blinkist.com/pakman⁠ -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start(01:23) Concerns raised about Kash Patel’s drinking(09:24) Advisers restrict Trump’s role in Iran mission(19:27) Democrats file impeachment against Hegseth(25:39) New details on Trump behind the scenes(33:56) Trump’s late-night posts draw attention(40:21) Trump's religion comments stun supporters(48:11) Joe Rogan joins Trump at psychedelics signing event(56:55) Former supporters criticize Trump Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I think today's episode makes that pretty clear. There's a new report saying that Donald Trump is privately terrified behind the scenes, even as he continues to project strength in public. And this is actually an important thing when you think about cult leaders, which we will discuss. At the same time, Cash Patel, the FBI director, is reportedly regularly missing, often unable to be roused by staffers due to. heavy drinking and cash says it's all made up and that he's going to be suing.

We then had another overnight meltdown from the president, dozens of posts, bizarre tangents, threats. Nobody is stepping in to take away grandpa's keys. And then it gets even stranger as Joe Rogan is in the Oval Office and Donald Trump brags to him about being able to sign his name and everybody in the room claps. That's the point we find ourselves at now. The president asking for applause for signing his name and the sycophants around him giving him that applause.

Plus, articles of impeachment filed against Defense Secretary Pete Heggseth. Every story today raises even bigger questions about what on earth is going on behind the scenes. Donald Trump's FBI director, Cash Patel, is reportedly so drunk at times that his own staff can't wake him up. This is based on new reporting from the Atlantic about Cash Patel. It includes multiple current and former officials as sources. Cash Patel says we're going to sue over it.

Well, we will see whether he does. Here are sort of the main points, main elements of this story. We already had allegations about heavy drinking for Cash Patel. Now, listen, alcoholism. is a medical issue. It should be treated as a medical issue. We don't want to stigmatize it. And we also want to recognize that if you're Pete Hegseth, a secretary of defense, or Cash Patel is the director of the FBI, we want to have you deal with your medical issue of alcoholism if you have that issue, but also consider whether it makes sense for you to be in such a sensitive and critically

important role while you are dealing with that medical issue. So it's not about how Aha, alcoholism. It's, wow, this is really serious. Should this person be the FBI director while they're working out their problems? Now, Cash Patel says there is no problem. The erratic behavior, the absences, the unable to be woken up. He says it's all made up. But the reports are that he has often been intoxicated enough that he didn't wake up when

staff tried to get him to wake up. There was an incident where they said to themselves, we might need to breach a door. might need to knock a door down because he's not responsive and we're starting to wonder, is this a medical emergency? He reportedly panicked over an IT glitch and thought that he had been fired by Trump. He hadn't been, although he may be still. And staff who spoke to the Atlantic also said he was often unavailable during critical moments where they needed the input of the director of the FBI. This is leading to delays. Agents are getting frustrated. They're working active cases. They need input from the FBI director. Do we do this or do we do that? And he is not reachable.

Now, at the same time that this is going on, there are concerns as to how this is affecting national security. For example, not only is he sometimes unreachable or unruisable from being too drunk, he's also been reportedly purging staff that he sees as disloyal to Donald Trump, staff that by all accounts is doing a good job, working their cases and doing what they have actually been hired to do. But if cash Patel perceives that they may not be fully on Trump's side or not totally loyal, they're getting fired. And this is leading to cases with national security implications remaining open and not worked. So you've got fewer experienced staffers left instability affecting the agency. And meanwhile, the White House is publicly saying, we defend cash Patel.

he's doing a good job. Now, this led to Cash Patel furiously appearing with Maria Bardo and saying that today they will be suing for defamation. And so that you know what, they can beat their drums and stand next to toxic waste all they want, but that doesn't make a toxic waste. And Maria, I'm happy to announce on your show that we're not going to take this laying down. You want to attack my character? Come at me. Bring it on. I'll see you in court. So you're going to sue them. Absolutely. It's coming tomorrow. Tomorrow you will be dropping a lawsuit against the Atlantic magazine.

Yes, yes I will. For defamation, and because you know what, Maria, we have to fight back against the fake news. It's one of the many things that President Trump is so successful at in leading out on, because no one is attacked as baselessly as he is and as much as he is. And our leaders that get attacked under his brilliant leadership must do the same. And I won't tell. All right. So he says it's all fake and that he will be suing, and indeed just minutes before I went to air with this story, Cash Patel has indeed sued the Atlantic for $250 million. My prediction, because it is abundantly clear that the Atlantic has real sources here, my prediction

is that that lawsuit goes nowhere. My prediction is that Cash Patel would be horrified about the Atlantic getting discovery and putting under oath and on the record, uh, um, They're sourcing for this story. And I believe that the lawsuit will go absolutely nowhere. And meanwhile, Cash Patel clearly panicked trying to save his job saying, we have finally found the evidence that the 2020 election was rigged in Stalin from Donald Trump. And of course, he and others have been saying this for years. All of a sudden, now that there's allegations that he's too drunk to be woken up, Cash is

about to give us the evidence. Let me ask you about the mission because every time I President Trump, he says this repeatedly that the election was rigged in 2020. I mean, he says it all the time. We all know that. And it's almost getting lost because he says it so much. You've been at the FBI now 14 months. Have you done anything about that? And do you have anything to tell us about that? Oh, yeah. Absolutely, Maria. Look, I've been with the president nearly since day one on this. As I told you earlier, I was the one that led the effort with folks like Trey Gowdy, Johnny Rathcliffe and Devin Nunes to expose the corruption that tried to thwart President Trump's

first presidential election run, and we saw the FISA abuses there. And I lived through it, and the media came at me then, too. That just shows you that when you're over the target, you keep pummeling the target because the media's going to try and pummel you. We are not going to take this and have not taken this laying down. We did already indict former director Comey, and that's going through the judicial process. But we also... That went nowhere, remember. This FBI, even though we uncovered what we uncovered back in the house Intel days. I had to come in here and find rooms that they hid from the world. I had to come in here and find access on our computer systems in restricted and prohibited case files that they purposely put in places for no one to see and find. We have

found all this information. We are working with their Department of Justice partners, and I am never going to let this go because they not only have personally attacked the presidency of the United States and President Trump, but they tried to thwart our elections and rigged the entire system. And that is not something that is going to stop on it. That is not something I'm going to allow on my watch. But you just have to remember, they built this disease temple over 20 and 30 years. We've got all the efforts. I can announce on your show that we've got all the information we need. We're working with our prosecutors, the Department of Justice and their Attorney General Todd Blanche. And we are going to be making arrest. And it's coming. And I promise you,

it's coming soon. Very soon, everybody who rigged the 2020 election, is going to be arrested. Anybody in my audience believe that? This is a desperate attempt from Cash Patel to signal to Donald Trump. Don't fire me. Don't fire me because they almost had to break a door down because they thought I was dead because I'm going to soon come out with the evidence that they rig the election against you. I don't even know if Trump believes at this point that the that the election was rigged against him. But Cash Patel wants us to believe he's got the evidence and it's coming out soon. That is a desperate plea.

Please don't fire me. I want to keep my job. I want to keep flying my girlfriend around on the planes. Cash Patel is desperate. He's got a real problem. And we should take very seriously this issue of alcoholism. It is not a laughing matter. And if you're the FBI director or anybody,

but especially if you're the FBI director and you're allegedly so drunk that they can't get you to wake up and think about using a battering ram. to break the door down. We've got a problem here, folks. And the problem is, Trump may not be the best at hiring people the way he's been telling us for decades. They are keeping Trump out of the room so that he won't ruin everything. This is an unbelievable report that Donald Trump was blocked from his own situation room

after throwing a multi-hour tantrum and becoming a distraction to sensitive, military operations. You know, there is a moment during a military crisis where the president, as the commander in chief of the military, is supposed to be there in the room, making decisions, presented with options, getting real-time updates, leading. It's called leadership, hello. That is not what happened here. We have a report from the Jerusalem Post or Shrewishlam, as Donald Trump would call it, military advisors made an incredible decision about Trump that I don't know has ever been made about any American president, which is they kept them out. They didn't delay him getting in there. They didn't. He wasn't unavailable. He was blocked from being in the situation

room during a high stakes rescue mission in Iran. The reason is the entire story. They were worried that Trump's temper and his impulsivity would totally derail the operation. Now, think about what that means. Active military extraction, highly sensitive, downed American pilot in hostile territory, and the decision was made, Trump in the room while we're rescuing him is a risk. Think about that. Trump was the risk. And so instead of getting minute by minute updates like you would expect, Aides filtered info and told him only what they decided he needed to know. They created a buffer between the president and reality in the middle of a war. And that is very far from standard procedure.

That's what you do if the president is the problem and you're trying to manage him. And at the exact same time that this was happening, Trump was reportedly in the west wing of the White House screaming for hours after the plane was shot down, obsessing over Jimmy Carter's legacy and screaming about elections and worried about how this would look if things went badly and the pilot wasn't recovered. And so while that was going on, you had Vice President J.D. Vance and other officials tracking the developments and Trump was being managed from the outside like a tantruming toddler. Now, it wasn't a simple mission. Believe what you believe about our presence in Iran, which I'm against. This was a situation where a rescue aircraft got stuck.

in desert sand, forces had to run distraction maneuvers. It really could have gone wrong at any moment. And so if you have a president who can provide sane and sober leadership, you would say, that's great. Let's have him in the room. But they knew that Trump couldn't do that. And so Trump was limited and he was not allowed in the room. Now look at the contrast with the public presence.

Trump is posting threats to people. He's talking about we're going to destroy Iran and he's projecting strength, acting. like he's in command of everything. And privately, the military is going, keep this guy out of here so he doesn't screw up our operation. That is a massive gap between projection and reality. And it tells you something very deep about how these operations are being run at the White House. It's far bigger than about this one mission. The pattern is the people around Trump try to manage his unpredictability and his impulsivity. They don't rely on Trump. They try to exclude Trump so he doesn't screw stuff up. And it goes directly counter to the image of the stable genius leader that Donald

Trump has tried to portray himself as being. But that is very much not what's going on in reality. The people who actually have to make tough decisions and have to be the sane, calm, rational voices know that Trump's presence actually hinders their ability. So this is an incredible extraordinary thing to do. You don't do this to the sitting president unless you're you know and there is agreement that he is a risk to the operation. And while it's happening, Trump is screaming and kind of oscillating between we're negotiating and it's all going to be solved soon and bomb them all and end the civilization, destroy the civilization. That's why he's being kept out. And so combine situations where advisors say we've got to limit his access with what Trump is

doing publicly and you get a picture of a guy who can only make things worse. Now, of course, Trump's decision to go into Iran is sort of the original sin that has generated all of this. And if you want to go back even further, you would say Trump getting out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, as I outlined last week for you, is really how we ended up here in the first place. At the micro level, that's macro, right? We're only in this situation because of Trump hating Obama and wanting to undo anything from Obama's legacy, including the Iran nuclear deal. That's how it started. Macro. At the micro level, we've got to rescue this downed airman. We need to keep Trump out in order to have the best shot at doing it. That is incredible. Now, if you zoom out a little bit, as we think

about Trump's role in presence in the midterms upcoming, Trump's role in presence in choosing the air apparent to the Republican Party in MAGA as we approach 2028. Will it be Vance? Will it be Rubio, will it be someone else? I believe that this is a sign of what's to come. And it wouldn't shock me at all if come late 2027, early 2028, whenever Republicans get together and start saying, who are we going to support here as Trump exits politics and someone else comes in? I would expect, and I would predict that Donald Trump is going to be increasingly excluded from those conversations as well, because as little as Trump has to add to a highly technical and risky military operation, I think Trump has even less to add about who should be the next leader of the Republican Party.

That's my expectation. Let me know what you think. Leave me a comment. Make sure to hit the subscribe button down below if you're watching on YouTube as we are, we can't quite literally. We cannot get to four million subscribers without you. It is if and only if I have your support. that we will get to those 4 million subscribers.

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We have an impeachment filing against Pete Hegsath. Sounds like something out of a different era, but this is happening right now in the United States. As House Democrats have filed formal articles, six of them against Pete Hegsef. These are not little technicalities or small. This is not the political equivalent of jaywalking. Okay. This is a serious allegation against Hegset of launching an unauthorized war, obstructing Congress, politicizing the military, violating the laws of armed conflict, endangering American troops, mishandling classified information.

It's a laundry list of criminality. And then maybe the part that cuts through everything, bombing. a girl's school in Iran that killed somewhere between 160 and 170 people based on our best estimates right now. An American assessment says the U.S. was likely responsible, did not intend to hit the school, which arguably makes the explanation even worse. You're no longer arguing intent. You're arguing competence. They didn't try to hit it, but they did anyway. And that raises questions about the Geneva Convention and violations. And so this is going far beyond the sort of thing where you put pundits together to argue.

We're talking about international law violations. You're talking about the sitting secretary of defense and formal impeachment documents. And then, of course, as if that all wasn't enough, there's the signal chat where all sorts of sensitive operational details were shared in a private group. And it's all kind of been normal. This is it, it, who even remembers the quaint days of the signal chat fiasco. So it's all being kind of wrapped together and I believe accurately portrayed as gross negligence with classified information. You stack it on top of everything else I listed for you.

And this looks like systemic incompetence in the administration of the orange president who said there is no one better than him at hiring people, hiring people. Now the effort is being led by Congresswoman Yasim and Ansari. The politics are not subtle. It is not only is Congresswoman Ansari directly connected to the fiasco in Iran in the sense that she is of Iranian descent from an Iranian family. But she has actively been following the numerous, copious violations that have been racked up by this administration as this hairbrained and ill-advised war has been pursued. So listen, there's a couple different aspects to this.

Number one, we can't wait around for Heggseth to be fired. He may be fired. I don't know. Trump may fire him. There's constant rumor swirling. Is it Cash Patel who's going to be next to fly? Is it going to be Pete Hegset sent to a pot of coal at the end of a broken rainbow? We don't know.

But if you believe that we can't simply wait around for that, then you have to take action. Cool. The issue, of course, is because we've watched these maneuvers play out. impeachment is a correct and appropriate attempt at accountability, but we have a situation where Democrats do not control the House and Democrats do not control the Senate, never mind having a super majority in the Senate. So is it possible that we will see a successful impeachment of Pete Hexeth? Almost certainly not.

You would need 50% first even just to impeach and to start impeachment proceedings. And then you would need a super majority. That's two thirds in the Senate in order to convict. It's not going to happen. But at the same time, if you do nothing, then the possibility of accountability is zero. And we end up stuck in this extremely damaging cycle, especially damaging if you consider, well, the primary focus of our government, especially our federal government, should be to establish some basic scaffolding for the American people to improve the lives of the average

American. And it is impossible to look especially, I mean, listen, it's impossible to look at this administration broadly, but it is even more difficult to look at the administration in the context of the war in Iran and say this is good for the American people. People in pick the state, working people in Iowa, in Texas, in Arkansas, Connecticut, wherever, who are working. They know and they see that things cost more than they did a year ago, even though Trump said they would cost less. They see their energy prices going up. They wonder if they have kids who will eventually be going to college. How do we pay for that? They wonder, how would we afford an unexpected?

a car problem, a flat tire or whatever. And then they look around and they go, wow, we're spending billions in Iran, which has only further escalated gas prices. And by the way, it seems as though we are also carrying out this war in a completely incompetent and unhinged way. So I think that that's really the story, which is we have a political back. There's a background noise of none of this stuff is good for the average American. This is not, you know, the economic populism that Trump ran on, which we saw through as completely bogus from day one.

It's not really manifesting in policy. Yes, that's all true. But we also are trying to look for accountability here. And certainly Pete Higgseth is deserving of accountability, deserving of consequences. And so the impeachment articles make a lot of sense. They're not going to lead to the impeachment of Pete Hegseth, in terms of the, uh, uh, And I would argue even a 50% plus one vote in the house. But is it all going to make Trump look at Heggseth and say this guy is becoming more trouble

than he's worth? I think that's the play. Based on everything we've seen, it usually doesn't happen. But sometimes it does. And Trump goes, this person is more trouble than he's worse. The downside is even when Trump does finally say you've got to go, often people are replaced with somebody even worse. And of course, that is terrifying.

There is a version of Donald Trump you're not supposed to see and you're not even supposed to think about. And that is the Donald Trump that is afraid, cowering figuratively under a desk, literally throwing ketchup at the wall, figuratively part of it, literally part of it. There's a new report that Donald Trump is terrified. The report is from the Wall Street Journal owned by News Corporation, not a left wing rag, not some communist publication. And what this article really does is expose what is happening behind the scenes during the Iran

war. Now, if you look publicly, it's the same as always. Tough talk from Trump, belligerent, aggressive truth social posts, threats and language of dominance and I'm in control and I decide everything. Everything is completely fine no matter what. That's the public one. Okay. Privately, the reporting is that Trump is terrified, afraid, rattled, angry, worried about casualties

in terms of the effect that that will have on his political legacy, worried about gas prices and what that's going to do to his legacy and to Republicans in November, worried about broader political consequences and how he will be seen once he leaves office at office. And reportedly, he screams at AIDS after every single setback. Earlier in the show, we talked about Donald Trump being kept out of the situation room during this operation to rescue the downed pilot. And Donald Trump was reportedly screaming for hours in the West Wing about the fact that the pilot was lost in Iran.

So the story here is one of terror, fear. And the part people might misunderstand if they don't look closely at this is that fear is not the problem. I said two weeks ago, fear is often an adaptive reaction. When Trump and these, by the way, anyone who talks about alpha males is not an alpha male, okay? But these guys who are obsessed about alpha, strong behavior and all of it, they act as though fear is a sign of weakness. Fear is normal. Fear is adaptive.

Fear is what keeps leaders cautious when lives are on the line and decisions can't be undone once they are made. It goes back to, hey, listen, if you're not afraid when you catch movement in your periphery on the savannah, you might not notice the lion coming for your family. So we know the evolutionary value of fear. And fear is not something to make fun of. That's not the issue. Presidents dealing with war should feel the weight of the war. It's human. It's expected. We shouldn't mock or dismiss that Trump is afraid. The problem is everything built around it. The brain. and the persona, the entire political identity says fear is weakness and you must never show fear. And even better, you should never be afraid.

And that's the movement that is obsessed with alpha males and dominance and the manosphere and all of it. They claim that part of being a real man in society is that you're never afraid or if you are, you never show that fear. But behind closed doors, the same people projecting those images are worried about optics, worried about blame and being lame in the eyes of history. And I think that that contradiction is really the story here. Trump's afraid. Okay, he should be. I mean, it would make sense to be afraid based on what he's doing. Real confidence doesn't need constant performance. Real strength doesn't need to announce itself every day the way that Donald Trump attempts to do on truth social.

If you're secure, you don't need to prove it constantly. If you're in control, you don't swing wildly between extremes in the way that Donald Trump does. And so the volatility that we are learning about through reporting is really the area of concern because you need a steady hand. You can be afraid that the fear is not the problem, but you need to be steady. And the impulsivity of Trump often ignoring advice from experts, national security advisors and others, that's where the danger is. And that's why there are these movements to keep Donald Trump out of the situation room. These instances of focusing on the ballroom construction that nobody asked for, going to fundraising events while there's a military conflict raging.

These are moments where Trump is sort of trying to separate from that which is the core that really has him afraid. And when you create a culture where being afraid is treated as a weakness, people do not stop feeling fear, they don't admit it. And then that becomes a problem in and of itself. They overcompensate because they can't admit fear. They posture and escalate and put out dozens of unhinged truth social posts the way that Donald Trump did over the weekend. Because if acknowledging the fear is off the table, the only option left is to act like nothing scares you. And the way to act as though nothing scares you is to be belligerently aggressive the way that Donald Trump is being. And it's

terrible for everybody. It doesn't make the military operations go well. It doesn't work well for global markets. Human lives are at stake. And that's why I've sort of come to believe in my opinion on this has shifted over time. The most dangerous leaders are not the ones who feel fear. Every leader should. The most dangerous leaders are the ones who feel fear, but build an entire persona around pretending that they don't. That's what Donald Trump is doing. It's extraordinarily dangerous. And And we're feeling the effects of it from a foreign policy perspective. We're feeling the effects of it up from an economic perspective. And it is one of the worst character traits that I can imagine in someone who we need to be

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Trump firing off dozens of unhinged, demented posts overnight again, raising new questions about what on earth is going on, about his ability to even be president. Hint, I've got the answer key. He shouldn't be president. He can't do it. And also some substantively very disturbing messages. So I'm just going to give you an overview. If you scroll down Trump's truth social, this is not behavior becoming of a president spending

the entire night posting stuff, reposting memes and tweets, conspiracy nonsense, AI edit stuff about Joe Biden, things that don't even make sense, as is often the case, Trump double posting a lot of this stuff multiple times, two, three times in many cases, posting memes of Adam Schiff being declared guilty, stuff referring to conspiracy theorists like Victor Davis Hansen. And as you scroll through this, you have to be saying to yourself, if you are someone who evaluates the presidency for what it should be, why is the president, you know, why is the president of the United States doing this. And I'm still scrolling as we're talking here and just endless conspiracy posts over and over AI images of himself and others. And it keeps going and

it's still going and posting and posting. Now, he posted a lot of other things during this series that are substantively very disturbing. We are back to the chaos related to the Iran war, where Donald Trump posted, quote, Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz, a total violation of our ceasefire agreement. Many of them were aimed at a French ship and a freighter from the United Kingdom. That wasn't nice, was it? My representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan. They will be there tomorrow evening for negotiations.

Iran recently announced that they were closing the strait, which is strange because our blockade has already closed it. They're helping us without knowing. And they're the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 million a day. The United States loses nothing. In fact, many ships are headed right now to the U.S. Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska to load up compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be the tough guy. We're offering a very fair and reasonable deal and I hope they take it. Because if they don't, the United States is going to not knock out every single power plant and every single bridge in Iran. No more Mr. Nice guy.

They'll come down real fast. They'll come down fast. They'll come down easy. And if they don't take the deal, it will be my honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran by other presidents for the last 47 years. It's time for the Iran killing machine to end. So we can analyze this line by line if we want to, but I don't really think we need to. The part I find myself wanting to focus in on is this idea that no one else did this for 47 years

and Trump had the courage to do so. Trump's default is that, which is if I'm willing to do something no one else was willing to do, it must be because I'm strong and they are weak. But as I've explained before, more thoughtful people would say, hey, you know, any president could have gone into Iran the way I did during this regime, but chose not to. Maybe they all knew something I didn't. Maybe I'm not the uniquely smart one and the uniquely tough one, but I don't have all the information that they had, which led them to make a different decision. That's not how Trump thinks. And that's terrifying because that is the sort of thinking you would want from a president.

Trump with another post targeting Spain. Has anybody looked at how badly the country of Spain is doing? Their financial numbers, despite contributing almost nothing to NATO and their military defense are absolutely horrendous, sad to watch. What Trump means in plain English is Spain won't lay down and do whatever I tell him to do. Trump does not like that. And that's why now Trump is targeting Spain with his ire, even though we all look at the situation we go, Spain, what is even the relevance of Spain?

And then a moment in this 14 hour crusade on social media that made a lot of people stop and say, wait a second, what's Trump alluding to? Is Trump posting a video of Frank Sinatra singing my way? And now the end is near. All right. I won't play. I won't play more of it, mostly for copyright reasons. The numerous myriad interpretations of that, Trump knows the end is near.

And that's why he's posting it. Or it's just Trump being Trump. I'm doing it my way whenever I want. Either way, this is not the behavior of a normal president of the United States. And the one thing that I think is probably good is that there are more and more three-time Trump voters who are saying, this is as far as I go with Donald Trump. I cannot go any further in my support of Trump. We're going to hear actually from some of those former Trump supporters later.

This is, we had that earlier report about how afraid Donald Trump is. Certainly the erraticism of this behavior points to fear. It points to anger. It points to grievances. All things that Donald Trump said are not part of how he operates. And then, and then, he went and spoke to Turning Point USA. And it was as bad as you can imagine. Donald Trump spoke to Turning Point USA. It was a humiliating and embarrassing speech. We're going to look at a little bit of it. Now, I want to contextualize this for you just a little bit. Donald Trump is now suddenly playing up his Christian credentials. He does it when he speaks to Turning Point USA.

It has been announced that tomorrow Donald Trump will be participating in a public Bible reading. Trump is really playing up his Christian credentials. And this is going to be relevant in a moment. But I want to remind you that Donald Trump previously when he spoke to turning point. acknowledged that he is not a Christian. So just remember, we all suspected Trump wasn't really a Christian. He didn't really find Jesus right when it was time to run for president. Here, I want to call you back to this former Trump speech.

Trump acknowledged the truth about his religiosity. Remember this? And again, Christians get out and vote just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It'll be fixed. fine. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I'm

my Christian. I love you. Get out. You got it. I love you. Christians. I'm not Christian. So remember that the entire framing of Donald Trump in general as a Christian is not only not credible or believable to the most superficial observer. Trump has occasionally let slip. He's not a Christian. Cool. Let's now go to his speech to turning point over the weekend, where Donald Trump said a number of different things, including the number of wars that he ended, which he says soon is going to be 10. To begin with, I ended eight wars.

And it may be a little early to say this, but if we add Iran and Lebanon, that will be 10 wars ended and many, many millions of lives saved. of how many lives we've saved. Now, a lot of you wrote to me correctly remarking on, look at how diminished Trump's vocabulary is. He's just, all he can say is stuff like really, really, very, very. He speaks like a fourth grader or a fifth grade or something like that. That's all true. My question is more with regard to foreign policy. If you start a war and then the war ends, Do you get credit for starting a war or for ending a war or for both? I think that if you start the war, you can't really get credit for ending it. It would sort of be

like giving the arsonist credit for putting a fire out. Even if they do put it out, you can't go around going, ladies and gentlemen, I'm here because you must praise me because I put out 10 fires today. Yeah, but you started all 10 of them. That doesn't really make sense. You're still an arsonist. We still arrest you and charge you with arson. This is the sort of trapeze artistry that Donald Trump wants us to fall for. I'm ending wars all over the place. Now, put aside for a second that Trump is sometimes confused about some of these conflicts. Some of the wars he ended weren't wars. Some of them were made up. It was, was it our Albania and Abberbaijan? Trump says he ended that one or I don't even remember. None of it made any sense. Donald Trump also confused

about what even were the goals of his deportation scheme. Because Trump bragged to the turning point audience, by the way, an audience that is increasingly skeptical of Donald Trump, Trump bragged to them that now we are seeing reverse migration, more people leaving the U.S. than coming in. But we've deported a record number of criminal aliens, a record. Nobody's ever seen the numbers like this. And for the first time in more than 50 years, we now have reverse migration. a beautiful thing, actually.

You know, what always gets me about this is that there's a prevailing view in the American right that the United States needs more people in order to become more prosperous. Now, this is not widely, it's not universally accepted economically, but there is a significant scholarship of economics that believes that in order to grow, you need more people. Now, there was a time where, for example, China, for a while believe the opposite. The China one child policy, which has now been done away with, but China's birth rate is still not recovering, at least for now. The China one child policy was based around the concept that, hey, the country is of a limited size. The fewer people we have,

the more there is for each person. Let's become prosperous by limiting families to one child. They realized that that didn't actually work for them. So then they reversed and they realized our our population is going to start declining. We've got to try to reverse this. So the belief from many of these right wingers is the United States does need more people in order to grow. And here is Trump bragging about more people leaving than coming in. Now, if you ask them, they could say, well, we can still grow through domestic births.

But Trump is also trying to challenge birthright citizenship. So it's all a complete and total mishmash. But the point is Elon Musk and others have been quite influential in right wing circles at convincing Republicans that we need to increase the birth rate. We need families having more kids. The goal being we need way more people in order to grow as an economy. Even those who don't necessarily subscribe to the have as many kids as possible policy still believe that to grow, the United States needs to bring in three times the number of legal immigrants

than are currently coming in. And then you've got Trump who claims to be the benefactor of, not the benefactor, but rather to be the person who is going to generate the action. economic growth that he campaigned on is bragging about more people leaving the country than coming in. By most economics belief, not all but most, and certainly by what Republicans believe, his own fellow Republicans, the U.S. needs more people, not fewer people. And Trump is bragging that more people are leaving than coming in.

It doesn't make any sense. And then finally, we are getting really close, folks, really close to passing a health care plan. We will pass the great healthcare plan. We call it the great health care plan to stop all payments to big insurance companies and give the money. What we want to do is this. We want the insurance companies to be cut out. We want our government not to pay trillions of dollars to insurance companies to pay that same amount of money directly to the people directly. And you go out and buy your own health care.

We will pass the great... It's coming very soon. It's just going to be a couple more weeks until Trump's new health care plan is made law. We've only been waiting since July of 2020. When Trump said two weeks from now, we will have a brand new health care law that will replace Obamacare. We've been waiting a long time. Does anyone believe that it's coming soon?

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and the best most direct way to support the show is by becoming a member at join packman.com. You'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show, and plenty of other great membership perks. Get the full experience by signing up at join packman.com. The president is now in such decline that he is bragging about being able to write his name on a piece of paper. And what is unbelievable is that the people around him are enabling this behavior by clapping for the fact that he is able to sign his name. Donald Trump held an event in the Oval Office over the weekend.

Joe Rogan was there. We will get to that in a moment. The event was legalizing some research and study into the use of Ibogaine for treating PTSD and veterans. A great idea, by the way, with some caveats, which we will talk about. Here is Donald Trump signing his name and going, how about that? Joe Biden couldn't do it and then people clap. That's a good one.

Oh, I wanted this work. Do you think Biden can do that? Right. Think about the level of decline for a president to say, this is a great signature on this one. This is really the other presidents couldn't sign papers like this, but I did sign it. That is terrifying. And it is a level of humiliation for the office of the presidency that is almost beyond words. Now we get to the story of how did we get here in the first place?

And Trump says, well, Joe Rogan called me about this issue. You know, the suicide rate, we have it down a little bit, but they are having a hard time. And I got a call from a number of people, including the great Joe Rogan. And he said, we have to do something about this. And I looked into it. I called Bobby, I called Oz, I called Marty and Jay, and it was really, it was uniform support. And I said, so why would we wait three or four years

to get it done, or 10 years, frankly? Let's get it done immediately, and that's what happened. This has probably never been anything, happened so quickly. Everybody is so strongly in favor of this. It's for a lot of people, but it's for our military in particular. The suicide epidemic among veterans is a national tragedy And then Joe Rogan sort of explains how this all came to be.

I want to tell everybody how this happened. I sent President Trump some information. We have a gigantic opiate problem in this country, obviously. In 2024, more than 80,000 people died of overdoses. It's a horrible number. And there's more than 5 million people that are addicted to opiates right now in this country. With one dose of Ibegain, more than 80% of people are free of that addiction. With two doses, it's more than 90%.

I sent him that information. The text message came back, sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let's do it. Literally that quick. Now, this is being presented as Trump is so responsive, but Trump sent that back without really knowing anything about it going, yeah, let's get it FDA approved. Why?

Because Joe Rogan texted him. Now, I'm going to get to the merits of Ibegain. a moment. Drugs are illegal not because they're harmful. They're illegal because of the 1970 controlled substances act that was passed by the Richard Nixon administration. They did it to target the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. It's not because these drugs harm people. And for 56 years, we've lived under those terrible conditions. We're free of that now. We're free of that now. Thanks to all these people that we see next to me and thanks to President Trump.

Right. So Rogan said, let's do it. And then they went ahead and did it. Now, what's the truth about Ibegain? It is very interesting. And in fact, we do need to do some decriminalization of it for it to be studied because it seems to have major promise. It's a psychedelic compound from a West African plant and you take it.

You have like a 12 to 36 hour. I don't, I guess you would call it a trip. I don't know if that's the appropriate word, but it would take you on a journey of 12 to 36 hours. And in small studies, not randomized controlled trials in small studies, it does seem to be working quite well over the short term for people with PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Now, there are questions as to the long term. There are also real concerns about cardiac risk from Ibogaine. All of this stuff has to be studied.

And it should be studied. And it should be said the point here is Trump doesn't really know any of this stuff. Now, before we get into Trump's view on the specifics of this, Trump used this line that I always find really weird, that there are people walking around with no legs. When you see soldiers or others, but soldiers generally walk around with no legs with no arms, a face that's been smashed. It was salamane. It was a random. I know that people who lose a leg can get a prosthetic. I understand that.

Or they could have crutches. I get that. But every time Trump says you see all of these people walking around with no legs, I'm always like, does Trump even really know what he's talking about? Trump then gets into a story that is very tangential to what is actually being discussed, which is about OZempic. And Trump loves telling this story. And actually a friend of mine called me up and he said, you know, he's a very rich guy.

And he happens to be on this OZEPIC, I guess, at the time. And it had it was not working by the way. You guys extremely successful, but highly neurotic. Got a lot of problems. I will not mention his name. He's begging me not to mention it because he's become quite famous. He's a big factor here. But he's very smart, very rich guy, very, very successful guy.

And he said, hey president, he used to call me Donnie. Now he calls me president, sign of respect. He said, I'm in London. I bought this stuff for 87 bucks. New York, I pay, I pay $1,300. What's going on? I said, well, that's the way it is. We pay the highest prices in the world. And it sort of hit. There you go. So Trump loves telling that story and then getting back to Ibegain. And Trump sort of raising eyebrows when he talked about why he's not depressed. In 2024 study from Stanford University, 30 special operation veterans with traumatic brain injuries

underwent it's called i. Bogain. I. Bogane. Treatment. I. Bogane. Remember the name. Is that pronounced relatively properly? What you said? I don't want to get it wrong. I Bogane, because it's so important and experienced an 80 to 90% reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety within one month.

Can I have some, please? I'll take it. I'll take whatever it takes. I don't have time to be depressed. You know, if you stay busy enough, maybe that works too. There you go. Trump suggesting that being busy as a treatment for depression, and you can tell Trump really knows exactly what he's doing, as he calls it, I-Bogain. And then finally, after this entire event, reporters try to ask Trump questions about how everything

is going wrong in Iran, and Trump goes out. All my face. Well, I want to thank everybody. And it's going to be. Thank you very much. If you didn't watch, you might have missed Trump signaling with his thumb pointing out and saying out. Thank you guys.

So listen, this is one of those things where I actually agree with working with Ibegain. It needs to be studied. there is significant promise. But this entire story of how it came to be is a reminder of how insiders get what they want. Rogan can text Trump and go, how about this? And Trump goes, sure, I'll push it through for FDA approval. What? I thought FDA approval was an entire process that was supposed to be untainted from political pressure. No, if Rogan wants it, I'll just push it through. A real reminder of how politics works in the United States. Three-time Trump voters, are turning on Trump. And even using the words racist and corrupt to describe him, there is a

contingent of longtime Republican voters, decades-long Republican voters who are saying no more. Here is one who called into C-SPAN. I have a registered Republican. My dad was the president of American Pipelowners Association, so I came by it rather naturally. Voter for the president, supported him, but I really want to apologize. I mean, I'm looking at this awful picture of the Obama's. What an embarrassment to our country. All this man does is tell lies. He is not worthy of the presidency. He takes bribes blatantly, and now he's being a racist. Blatently. They were supposed to deport the dangerous criminals.

They were not supposed to go after small children, storm schools, bring terror upon, you know, the little kids and the women and children, not just the immigrants in the school. All the children are scared. This is not a decent man. This is not an honest man. He openly takes bribes. He's pathetic. president and I just want to apologize to everybody in the country for supporting this rotten

rotten man. John, did you vote for him in all three elections? I did. I was sucked into the stupidity of creating jobs and and there are no more jobs in New Mexico things are worse than they were before you cannot find a primary care position. That is a person taking responsibility for and acknowledging I screwed up, I screwed up, which is refreshing to see. You really don't normally see that. Now, as I've said before, we don't shame them for coming to these conclusions. We tell them, it's awesome you figured this out at all. And the information was available to figure it out before voting for him three times.

But it's better late than never. Another caller on the issue of Trump attacking Catholics says this is very stupid. Trump should not be doing this. I don't think it helps the president at all. I think it's colossally stupid. And I say that as a Catholic and as a person who voted for Trump, but I think that it's just not the battle to pick. I think it's just an uncomfortable moment.

And I think there's better ways to address dialogue. And, you know, I would rather see him try to come to some accord. with the Holy Father and and with the church's position. You know, I do think that things needed to be done in Iran. We are seeing Trump hitting nerves. And of course, the question is whether these people are going to come out and vote in November. Sadly, turnout tends to be low in midterms. And it wouldn't surprise me that a lot of these people end up saying, well, yeah, I'm just not really sure about that.

You've got a three-time Trump voter here. This is, it makes the criticism more powerful. When a three-time Trump voter says he's being racist and he's being corrupt, those are no longer policy disagreements. That is a moral break with Donald Trump. The fact that that guy goes, I'm sorry I did it. He regrets what he did. He believes he has made a mistake.

And so this frustration has reached a breaking point for a lot of people. Now, the religious criticism from the Catholic woman shows that there's even a crack within Trump's faith-based support. And everything old is new again or everything is a reminder of something that's happened. Remember at the beginning of Donald Trump's political career, the evangelicals were not with him. The evangelicals were like, we were with Ted Cruz or where with somebody else? And eventually they fell in line.

Now, we're talking about Catholics today, not evangelicals. But it has sort of come full circle. And this goes back to the clip I played earlier in the show of Trump going, I'm not a Christian, but Christians vote for me, but I'm not a Christian. How true is that? And the entire bamboozling of the religious community is also something that you can only do for so long. I guess it lasted a decade. And calling Trump's attacks on the Pope colossally stupid point to supporters that are embarrassed to have ever participated in that. Now, again, the key question is, are they going to show up to vote? A lot of them will stay home instead of coming out

and voting differently. But the public regret hopefully encourages others to speak out and more importantly to go out and vote differently. And more of these moments are only going to foment that even further. Will this sort of breaking with Trump after voting for him once, twice, three times? Will that become a trend that will have electoral consequences? Or is it just going to be kind of an isolated thing? Well, we have to work to make it the former and say, great, come out and vote. vote with us in November. There is a tariff refund site launching. We will talk about it on today's bonus show. We also are hearing from Marjorie Taylor Green, who says that there is an attempt that there is a cover up over the attempted Trump assassination. Why would someone cover that up?

She is asking. We will discuss. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says that he once cut the penis off of a road killed raccoon. Why would he do that? Well, maybe the book in which it's written will tell us. All of that and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join packman.com.