The David Pakman Show - They want critics SILENCED and it’s getting worse

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Melania Trump criticizes Jimmy Kimmel over his jokes about her, while Donald Trump calls on ABC and Disney to fire him -- Karoline Leavitt says Americans must tone down the rhetoric after an attempted assassination against Trump while blaming Democrats -- Karoline Leavitt, Mike Johnson, and Lindsey Graham promote a $400 million White House ballroom as a national security need -- Skeptics claim the assassination attempts against Trump were staged, but their observations do not support a broader conspiracy -- Donald Trump’s right hand appears swollen and discolored while meeting King Charles III, furthering questions about his health -- Gas prices remain high over the Iran war, despite reduced media coverage showing how economic issues often receive less attention -- The US Justice Department is reportedly scaling denaturalization cases from rare instances to hundreds, with unclear selection criteria -- On the Bonus Show: 8 in 10 of those Trump calls "low IQ" are people of color, Taylor Swift files trademark applications to protect against AI, schools debate getting rid of homework, and much more... 🖼️ Aura Frames: Use code PAKMAN for $25 off Carver Mat frames at https://auraframes.com/pakman 😺 Smalls cat food: Use code PAKMAN for 60% off & free shipping at https://smalls.com 🔊 Blinkist: Try it free for 7 days and get 30% OFF at https://blinkist.com/pakman 🥄 Magic Spoon: Use code PAKMAN for $5 off at https://magicspoon.com/pakman 🧠 Try Brain.fm totally free for a month at https://brain.fm/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start (01:29) Melania calls for Jimmy Kimmel to be canceled (09:58) Karoline calls on Democrats to tone down their rhetoric (21:07) Republicans back Trump’s ballroom following shooting (30:15) Skepticism continues over Trump assassination attempts (40:15) Trump’s hand looks even worse (47:29) Gas prices remain high two months into Trump’s Iran war (54:19) DOJ expands denaturalization case reviews Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruit Flies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. She knows.

How? Did you blouse? No. The Devil Wears Prada 2. He's the movie event 20 years in the making. Honestly, can't with the secrets anymore, so I think we just should tell her. Will you two please spit it out already? This Friday, be the first to experience it only in theaters.

In light of the recent scandal, I'm here to restore your credibility. Oh, because we're a team now. That's a nice story. The Devil Wears Prada 2 in Theaters Friday. We have a very disturbing theme running through today's show and it comes down to power and to who gets to speak and who doesn't. Because we're starting to see something that should raise alarms for anybody who cares about free speech. Melania Trump and Donald Trump are openly going after comedian and late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel demanding he be fired for jokes. Exactly free speech is it we then have white house press secretary Caroline Levitt coming back after two days of maternity leave to tell people it's time to tone down the rhetoric while she doesn't tone down the rhetoric and we are going to talk about the push to turn the white house ballroom project from a 400 million dollar donation project to a 400 million dollar taxpayer funded project.

And I'm also going to respond directly to some of the conspiracy theories floating around about the recent Trump shooting incidents where the reaction to yesterday's show is making me a little bit worried. And then later, by the way, very quietly, trickling out very quietly, gas prices are higher than ever. But nobody's talking about it. All of that and more today. We have a red alert, First Amendment, Constitution, free source. speech situation. And it is a real one. It is not another fake free speech issue, the likes of which Trump and MAGA and Republicans

have been crying wolf about for a long time. They are the problem. They are the people that want to limit the speech of others. And when that speech doesn't make them feel good, they get really, really angry. Melania is coming for free speech. Donald is coming for free speech. They want Jimmy Kimmel gone for telling jokes. It started with a post to X from Melania Trump, the platform formerly known as Twitter, where people

would put up tweets. Now it is X where people push out excretions, really nasty stuff from Melania where she says, quote, Kimmel's hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn't comedy. His words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn't have, uh-oh, the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate. A coward.

Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. is enough, declares the first lady. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC's leadership enable Kimmel's atrocious behavior at the expense of our community? Let me translate this for you. This didn't make me feel good. So he should be fired for what he said. Did he do anything illegal? Of course not. Did he incite violence? Of course not. This is comedy, which you might not find funny. Listen, a lot of what Jimmy Kimmel does, I don't find funny. But that's just an opinion. I don't have to watch if I don't want. The idea that we are going to start firing people on the say so of the first lady is dangerous. But the Magapitanians might say she is not officially part of

government. Well, I don't know. There's the office of the first lady. But let me grant that to you, hypothetically, theoretically, temporarily. Then in comes Donald Trump. And Donald Trump does the exact same thing, posting to his rancid platform truth social, quote, wow, Jimmy Kimmel, who is in no way funny as attested to by his terrible television ratings, made a statement on his show that is really shocking. He showed a fake video of the first lady Melania and our son Baron like they were actually sitting in his studio listening to him speak, which they weren't and never would be. When you explain comedy, it never goes that well.

Trump continues. He then stated, our first lady Melania is here. Look at Melania is so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow. A day later, a lunatic tried entering the ballroom of the White House correspondent's dinner, loaded up with a shotgun, handgun, and many knives. He was there for a very obvious and sinister reason. I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel's despicable call for violence and

normally would not be responsive to anything that he said. But this is something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. This is the classic authoritarian playbook. We have to be very careful about this. This is genuinely dangerous. Jimmy Kimmel telling jokes that you might like or you might not like isn't dangerous.

What is dangerous is when criticism of public figures is redefined as violence so that then you can justify silencing it. So you can justify smashing it with a hammer and demanding that ABC fire him. And the criticism here from Melania isn't just Jimmy Kimmel. She is not substantively criticizing what he said. She's saying he shouldn't even be allowed on the air. And the key line is not this is offensive. I didn't like this.

I don't know that Jimmy cares how this affects my family, which would be all reasonable criticisms to which we would then have a debate. And we would say, well, on the one hand, these are public figures. On the other hand, it's Trump who's president, not Melania, but at the same time, she's part of it. Then what about Barron? He's a kid, but he's an adult. There would be a debate about the appropriate.

appropriateness, but not about the legality. That is a censorship argument that Melania Trump is making. And then Donald Trump takes it and escalates it as the president of the United States with all of the power that comes with that and says that ABC should fire Jimmy Kimmel. And of course, implicit in all of that. ABC knows we all know that Donald Trump has been using lawsuits to try to repress what is published and said in media. And so the tactic is really important to look at. There's a joke. You reinterpret it as a threat. You connect it to a real world incident with no evidence whatsoever. And then you create a moral panic. The speech caused violence. We must shut it down. So it's not a discussion of comedy standards. That would be a fine discussion to have.

I don't know where I would come down if you give me 10 instances of comedy. Maybe some of them I would say this is good. This isn't good. Who knows? But this is about control over who is allowed to speak critically about political power. And the double standard is disgusting. The same political movement that says we defend free speech, we want more speech. When it's when it's controversial or offensive in a way that they like, they defended as free speech. When it is controversial or maybe offensive, right? I mean, we humans can decide when it is directed at them all of them. a sudden it must be stopped. Late night comedy has been criticizing presidents for decades. Typically,

the presidents just ignore it. Typically, the presidents aren't as thin-skinned as is Donald Trump. But all of a sudden, satire and comedy are illegitimate and they're dangerous and the broader effect is a chilling effect, even if there isn't a firing here, which I hope there isn't. The message is criticize us. We will try to destroy your platform. We have gone after platforms legally when we haven't liked what they've said or how they reacted to what we said about what they said. And the larger pattern is labeling media and comedians and critics as enemies.

There is one profession protected by, specifically mentioned by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights And it's the press. You could say, well, Jimmy Kimmel's not doing journalism, but we're still talking about speech. We're still talking about media broadcasting and whether the government has the right or power to restrict that speech of others. If networks respond to this pressure, then we are going to shift dramatically into a mode of political compliance. And it is disgusting and it is dangerous. I don't believe the American people are going to stand for that. And I maybe I'm naive, but I think that there are enough people who oppose these attacks

on the First Amendment, even if they don't like Jimmy Kimmel. You don't have to like what this is it's such a trite cliche phrase. Free speech is about defending speech you don't like also. And you don't have to like what Kim Jimmy Kimmel said. to understand that it is a full frontal attack on the First Amendment on freedom of speech, freedom of the press. And I'm hoping, hoping that the American people, even some Trump supporters are going to say, no, this is absolutely too much.

Caroline Levitt resurfaced after announcing her maternity leave because it was just really important to show up and to say we're going to go after podcast hosts after the attempt to attempted shooting or the shooting, which didn't kill anybody, fortunately, on Saturday in Washington, D.C. Caroline Levitt reappears and goes, I was on maternity leave for like a day, but this is just too important. I had to be here to attack free speech, to go after the podcast hosts, to humiliate myself. Here she is explaining it. Take a listen. As I told many of you on Friday afternoon, I thought that would be my last time taking your questions until after my maternity leave. But given the attempted assassination of the president and, quote, top Trump administration officials, as the depraved shooter noted in his manifesto, at the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday evening, I felt it was prudent to be here today to answer your questions.

We really needed her to be here. We informed the American people about how the administration is. responding to yet another attempt on President Trump's life. I am really glad and reassured by Caroline's presence. I was worried. When the shooting happened, I was saying to myself, wait a second, Caroline Leavitt is on maternity leave. We might not get clear information, honest information, accurate information, unless she comes back.

And so she did. And one of the first things she says is she mentions podcasts. Folks, they are going to come for the podcasts. They are going to come for independent media. It is abundantly clear. Well, I think you heard it directly from the president on Saturday night, I showed that in his words, we need to recommit ourselves as a country to toning down the rhetoric and to unifying around what makes our country great.

That's true of everyone who works in this White House. But as I said, it's also true of everyone who has a voice and a platform across this country. whether you're on television, a podcast host, you know, people listen. A podcast host. And when you have mentally disturbed individuals across the country who are listening to this crazed rhetoric about the president day after day after day, it inspires them to do crazy things. And unfortunately, it's not just the media. It is the entire Democrat party has made their pitch to voters across the country that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy. that he is a fascist and that they compare him to Hitler. I mean, there you go.

What she is talking about, of course, is J.D. Vance comparing Trump to Hitler, right? Oh, no. That's not what she means. That doesn't count. That one's not relevant. They're making it very clear. They want to silence speech. I don't know of any administration that disrespected the First Amendment and the premise of free

speech, one of the important pillars on which this country was built. much as this administration disrespects the First Amendment. And they are making it abundantly clear. In the last 24 hours, we've seen Melania Trump demand that Jimmy Kim will be fired for jokes. We've seen Donald Trump demand that Jimmy Kim will be fired for jokes. And we have seen Caroline Levitt say, it is time for the podcast hosts and others to be really careful about what they are saying. And what they want us to interpret and to assimilate and to allow to affect our behavior is that criticism of Trump's policies is not going to be seen favorably. It's not going to be seen as protected speech.

If you like Jamie Raskin pointed out on CNN as we looked at yesterday say that you believe the president is bad for the United States, you're inciting violence now. What a pathetic special snowflake perspective on speech. The people who say just about all speech should be legal are now saying, well, if it's a podcast host speaking bad about the president, then at least there should be firings. There should be firings right away. Here is Caroline Levitt continuing into this comparing Trump to Hitler thing. I believe I have this cued correctly to pick up roughly from where we left off. This political violence stems from a systemic demonization of him and his supporters by commentators,

yes, by elected members of the Democrat Party and even some in the media. This hateful and constant and violent rhetoric directed at President Trump day after day after day for 11 years has helped legitimize this violence and bring us to this dark moment. Those who constantly falsely label and slander president as a fascist as a threat to democracy and compare him to Hitler to score political points are fueling this kind of violence. The left-wing cults of hatred against the president and all of those who support him and work. for him has gotten multiple people hurt and killed and it almost did so again this weekend. You know, I would be able to take this far more seriously if I didn't have that little bug in my brain,

a brain worm, you might call it, like RFK, that reminds me that J.D. Vance said Trump could be America's Hitler. So it's tough to take that seriously when Caroline Levitt says it because I do remember that. I do remember that Donald Trump has blamed Mexican immigrants and Muslims and minorities for poisoning the blood of America. And I remember that Donald Trump has referred to the media as the enemy of the people. It's hard to get that out of my head. I admit it. That's true. Finally, Caroline Levitt praising Donald Trump as only she can do and as only she is still willing to do at this point stage of the game, almost halfway through 2026, that thank goodness for Trump's calm in the face of chaos. Were it not for that, it could have been really different. It was.

As you know, I was seated next to President Trump and the first lady when the shots were fired before Secret Service swiftly moved us to safety backstage. The president's calm in the face of chaos while yet another individual was trying to take his life was really remarkable to witness. something I will never forget. President Trump is fearless because he loves this country. And he is willing to put his own life on the line to deliver on the promises that he made to the American public who elected him here into the highest office in the land. And while we are blessed to have a fearless president, we should not live in a country where such constant fear of political violence permeates our society every single day. Wow, really inspiring words from Caroline

I love it. By the way, Trump put his life on the line. What is she talking about? Trump was calm in the face of chaos. He didn't seem to know what was going on. We know Trump's hearing is very diminished. I actually think that there was a moment in that video where O's Pearlman is doing one of his stunts that Melania hears the shooting.

Other people hear the shooting. Trump doesn't even react because I don't think he hears it. His hearing seems totally shot as he's constantly telling people to speak up in any case. In any case, if you wanted a completely delusional revisionist history perspective on what happened Saturday, thank God that Caroline Levitt came out of maternity leave to deliver this press briefing. If you wanted one based in reality and on what actually took place, well, fortunately, there were other options available. A lot of people fall into the same pattern every year for Mother's Day, flowers, maybe brunch,

maybe a gift card. It's nice. It doesn't last very long. This is why I love aura frames as a different kind of gift. Our sponsor, Aura, makes digital picture frames that display your photos and videos in a way that looks like a real print. It's so easy. You can preload photos before the frame arrives. You can add a personal message. It shows up ready to go. I have two of these. I've given them to my mom. I've given them to my dad. when we travel like we are right now, I add pictures of the girls from my phone and they show up on all of the frames or only some of the frames if that's what you want. Instead of giving a gift that disappears after a few days, give something that will keep the memories alive.

Orra is giving my audience $25 off their best selling Carver mat frame. Go to auraframes.com. Use the code Pacman. Terms and conditions apply. The link is is in the description. I don't have a cat myself, but I have spent enough time around friends' cats to know that there are picky cats when it comes to food. They don't like it. They won't eat it. But one of my friends has had a ton of success switching to Smalls cat food.

Before Smalls, meal time was very hit or miss. The cat gets excited now. Our sponsor, Smalls, is fresh, human-grade cat food made with real ingredients, no fillers or artificial stuff, high protein, gently cooked, promotes digestion, delivered right to your door. My friend did a side by side with the old food and smalls. The cat went for smalls. Your cat deserves more than a bowl of processed shortcuts. Try smalls if your cat doesn't love smalls. You get a full refund for a limited time. My audience gets 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life. When you go to

smalls.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. We are doing more than just producing a podcast here. We are trying to participate in building this pro-democracy anti-corruption movement. And we can really only do that with your support. I want to thank everybody who has signed up on my website and gotten a membership, including our two newest members, C.C. Humphreys and Maya Fasta Bend. Thanks to both of you. We do an extra show every day for our members. You can sign up at join Pacman.com. And remember that we are working with your help to push towards four million YouTube subscribers, which is just a remarkable milestone. If you want us to get there, we will. It's really up to me. I only have 1,500 YouTube accounts I can subscribe from. So I can't

us all the way to 4 million, all right? That's a joke, by the way. Consider hitting that subscribe button on YouTube. I really do appreciate it. Let me talk to you about the latest Republican obsession. They smell blood in the water and they are going crazy. Ballroom, ballroom, ballroom, ballroom, ballroom, ballroom, ballroom. Kind of starts to get difficult to say it as many times as they've said it over the last 48 hours. Some of you wrote to me and said, David, the White House correspondence dinner shooting was clearly staged because immediately Republicans started saying, well, now we definitely need the ballroom. I don't think they're that coordinated.

I don't think they're that smart. I think it's opportunism. And the truth is that the White House ballroom as designed wouldn't even be able to accommodate the White House correspondent's dinner crowd. It is quite literally a red herring. It is irrelevant because it wouldn't even be big enough. But they don't care. They are united because they smell blood and they go, let's strike and talk about the ballroom,

which Donald Trump hasn't even really explained why he wants. Here is Caroline Levitt and then we will look at others saying the ballroom. We don't have a room big enough here at the White House, which is another point to be made. And the president is absolutely right. It's why the White House Ballroom project is not just a fun project for President Trump, like you will read in the media. It is actually critical for our national security that a larger secure building on this complex, which is the most secure complex in the world, is built to accommodate not only large amounts

of guests, but also the president, the vice president, members of the cabinet, the line of secession in this country should be able to gather freely in safety without the fear of threats or political violence. And the White House ballroom will provide that. Yeah. The only little problem is the White House ballroom's design. not be able to accommodate the number of people at the White House Correspondents' dinner. As designed, which the design is bonkers, the White House ballroom would accommodate up to 1,000

people. And the White House Correspondents dinner was like 2,000 to 2,500. None of them are mentioning this. They're going, we need the ballroom because of what happened. Well, the ballroom wouldn't actually have helped unless you cut down the size of the dinner by more than 50%, which maybe they want. I don't know. Bober, even Lauren Bobard, who has been sort of a little skeptical of some of the things the Trump

administration has been doing, says, oh yeah, it's critical, critical. We need the ballroom. What do you have thought on some of the discussions about the ballroom and being included in the right? I'm working on legislation to ensure that we are getting the ballroom funded. Is there obviously a national security element to that and it needs to be done? I cannot believe that a judge allowed a woman to a woman. A woman, how could a woman? He approved her lawsuit because she walked by with her dog and thought it was ugly. Is there any better use for taxpayer dollars than a ballroom?

Are you kidding? There's like hardly any money here that is actually going to that. He has it funded. We just have to get it approved to get the lawsuit over with. Except the Trump funding is now being supplanted by a discussion of taxpayer funding for the ballroom. We'll get to that. Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, says, inch thick glass is going to be the solution here. Very safe. We got to do it. They've incited violence in my view. I mean, you have some of the most prominent figures in the House and the Senate on the Democrat side effectively, you know, calling for for war. I mean, they use that, those kinds of metaphors. And it incites violence because there are crazy people in society.

And they get radicalized online. And so we've got to recognize that. It's time to turn down the rhetoric. We've been saying this over and over. over and not use that kind of language. I hope that this will be a sobering reminder for everybody about that very important cause. I'm grateful to Federman. He's right. The ballroom will be a solution for this because it'll be on the most secure compound in the world. It won't have hotel rooms above it.

And it'll have seven inch thick glass, for example, on the window. That seven inch glass is really. So it'll be a very safe environment to do events like this. We need a place. We have needed a place like that. And the press, yeah, we've needed it. By the way, just I would I would love it if they said. And we would need to double the capacity of the ballroom to be able to accommodate the White House

correspondence dinner. Just a little tiny detail. Jesse Waters on Fox News says it is for national security, but maybe, maybe also for Kid Rock to do a show of his horrid music. Jesse, do we need the ballroom? I never understood the oppositions of the ballroom. I mean, all women love ballrooms and what do guys care. It's free.

The argument that it's a lavish vanity project, maybe, but it's mostly for national security. They're building a nerve center for the Defense Intelligence Agency underneath. And you can't get a drone through, a missile through is the safest place on planet Earth. We can have not only what house correspondence in there, we can have kid rock concerts in there. Right. And if you think about it, it's the... Oh, thank goodness.

How dare you. It's the people's house. Don't you want more people in the house? What are they can hold like a hundred right now? 150. Except it wouldn't have the capacity for White House correspondence dinner. Governor Jeff Landry from Louisiana is jumping in on this and saying the ballroom is a great idea. Trump's great.

Let's do it. A public hotel is attached to as well. Those are things. But look, one of the things that I put out that evening was this is why the president should get his ballroom. And remember, it's the media that doesn't, you know, the left that doesn't want him to build the ballroom. This is a great example of where you could have the White House corresponders didn't

not have to worry about these things. Except you couldn't. But again, I think the president is just a stand up of a fella. Here's the most American president we've had in so long way. He said, listen. Nothing more American in stand up than nearly 90 felony charges and 34 convictions. Nothing more stand up than pleading the fifth hundreds of times after saying that only people who are guilty plead the fifth.

Nothing more stand up than getting a note about his ankles to avoid getting drafted. Nothing more stand up than the indictments and the baby mamas and the entire thing. The most stand up guy give him his little $400 million ballroom and have taxpayers pay for it. Why not? Here is Congressman Fry telling, oh, by the way, telling our friend Pablo reports. I met Pablo reports in D.C. at White House correspondent's dinner. Turns out he's from Chile, the neighbor country to my birth country of Argentina. Anyway, Pablo's doing a great job.

Here he is and Congressman Fry says, it's like a parrot. National security, national security, ballroom, ballroom. Congressman, real quick, what do you make of efforts to include the ballroom in reconciliation? Look, the ballroom is a national security initiative. I think it's high time that it got done. So however we can get it done, we should get it done. Got it. Do you think that like the American people like what's a thing more than just ice something in a ballroom in the reconciliation?

In fact, it's Senator Kennedy saying that you guys only get one more right at the amp. Look, I think, I mean, to me personally as a conservative, I'd like to see as much as you possibly can do in the reconciliation product. A conservative wants to build a $400 million ballroom. Got it. And then finally, Lindsay Graham, he's got legislation. There is nothing more dangerous than a confused Republican with legislation. That is a red flag right away. And here's Lindsay.

We're going to introduce legislation that would authorize $400 million to be spent to secure the, to build the presidential ballroom. Underneath, there will be a lot of military stuff. There will be a secret service annex. Oh. And we've paid for it by offsetting it with custom fees. But the estimate is 300. So it's not donations, got it.

32 million. We're going to do 400 million because I think it's probably going to take more. Private donations can be used. But I think they should be used for buying China and stuff like that. Yeah. I have like really very specific plates and forks. We've got beautiful silver from South Carolina. And we can use the donations for that.

But we really need taxpayers to pay for this thing. A $400 million taxpayer funded ballroom while we see skyrocketing grocery prices, skyrocketing health care costs and gas prices that as we will come back to are again spiking, but nobody's talking about it. Now, there are people saying the obsession with the ballroom proves that it was staged. No. The obsession with the ballroom in the aftermath of the shooting proves that these are shameless, shameless,

opportunists. I read through a lot of your comments on yesterday's video about the Trump assassination attempts, meaning Butler and White House correspondence dinner. And I think it's important to kind of respond directly to some of these. A lot of you said similar things about the Butler incident. And now also about the second one that happened at the White House correspondence dinner over the weekend. And this includes things like Trump's ear healed too fast from the first one. There wasn't much blood. He didn't seem shaken up. Photographers were in position with the second one.

It's too convenient that he got in the building, but not actually near Trump. And there was so much security that he could only have gotten into the Washington Hilton lobby if he had been allowed in. and it's advantageous to Trump for the ballroom. All of these different things that people are putting together. And in a sense, it's important to go through them because the reasoning breaks down in a way that leads people towards these really confident but completely unsupported conclusions. If you look at the comments on yesterday's videos about this, people are really strongly convinced with essentially no evidence for their conclusions.

Now, I have said there's a lot that smells a little weird about the butler shooting, but I don't really have evidence to say that the thing was staged. And I question the Trump administration's ability to stage it. You know, the grazing wound to the ear, which can look dramatic, but then heal quickly. I don't know. I mean, it's like Trump doesn't seem that healthy. The perfect healing is a little strange, but also I, that doesn't mean the entire. thing was staged to me. There were people talking about the amount of blood from ear injuries. And

you know, the truth is that the amount of blood can vary, including based on where you're hit and also the age of the individual and a lot of different sort of things. Trump didn't seem that rattled. You know, Trump generally seems emotionally dampened in a lot of different ways. And people react differently to shock and Trump spent decades on camera. Maybe he defaults to this composed performative mode. I don't know. You know, it's important just to think through, do I really have evidence of anything here? So there's no doubt that we have a set of observations that might make us say that's unusual or something like that. But going from there's an unusual characteristic, or at least I don't have a perfect explanation to the entire thing.

was staged, that's a really big jump that I think we need to be careful about making. We now have the second incident, like I said, a shooting in the same building where Trump was, but on a different floor, different floor. Trump was not in the lobby. He was in the ballroom. And now the claim has grown into we have two staged assassination attempts, including one, where the shooter wasn't even on the same floor as Donald Trump. Now, as I said yesterday, if the idea was political gain, we have the evidence from the first shooting that it's not really that useful. Let me frame it up in a particular way for you.

The butler shooting was dramatic, highly visible, covered everywhere, involved Trump's ear being grazed by a bullet and it still moved Trump's polling by only half a point. Half a point. Are we really supposed to believe that staging another event on Saturday where Trump's not hit, which he was in the Butler incident and not even on the same floor as the shooter, It's going to be useful to Trump's approval rating. Getting shot in the ear, whether you believe it was fake or real, getting shot in the ear helped them by half a point. Why would anyone think the Saturday incident where Trump is on a different floor than the shooter and he's nowhere near him is going to help him more in terms of approval. It just doesn't make any sense. Now, what does

keep happening here is that there's an unusual. usual element to a story and everything else gets filled in with no evidence whatsoever. Intent is added. Coordination is assumed. Motive is added that doesn't even really make sense when you compare how the stuff actually works. And I think that at this point, this is no longer we're asking questions or looking for more information, which is perfectly fine to do.

And I think that we should do that. And I've done that. The conclusion was decided ahead of time on Saturday by a lot of people. If you want to question details, I think that's very reasonable. We should do that. But we need to bridge this gap from I'm noticing something and then jumping over a canyon and then going to this is staged. Once that middle step of let's actually assess the evidence and evaluate it is skipped.

Once that step, the analysis step disappears, it becomes really easy to turn any event into a conspiracy. And a lot of people do. Mass shooting events that don't involve Trump are turned into conspiracies. The shooters are accused of being Patsies and all this different stuff. Now, let me say one other thing. I mentioned yesterday. I predicted yesterday that those who claims Saturday was staged were going to have to retreat

to a slightly different position about the shooter's involvement. Let me explain. Provide me a moment to explain. The shooter on Saturday, the alleged shooter. believed to be known, I would say now to be, a supporter of Democrats. And so the idea of it being staged got a lot of people to say, hold on a second. Why would an opponent of the president? Because we don't believe that his whole social media history and manifesto were staged. Certainly not the social media history. Why would an opponent of the president agree to participate in this,

to now likely spend the rest of his life in prison. Like what? What is the point? Why? And so I predicted that a lot of the it was staged people were going to retreat to. The shooter didn't even know that he was part of a staged event. And so I guess what you would have to believe is that Secret Service and authorities realized someone will probably try to shoot Trump at this event. Let's allow it to happen. And the shooter will be participating without even knowing that he's participating. We're going to allow him to get into the lobby. And then I guess fire five shots, but miss him and then capture.

So the point is, they've had to retreat to this next even less likely version of the shooter's involvement in a staged event. Okay. What happened consistently is you end up in a place where everything can be. explained away is staged, regardless of what actually occurred. I don't think that that's a great thing. Call me crazy. Many of us have running lists of the nonfiction books we want to read. My list has gotten a lot longer while I've been traveling. Maybe it's a book a friend recommended or one you keep hearing about on podcasts. And the problem isn't that you aren't interested in the book.

It's finding the time. And that's why using Blinkist makes so much sense. Our sponsor Blinkist is the that will distill down insights from nonfiction books into bite-sized summaries. You can read them or listen to them in 15 minutes. You'll get the main arguments and takeaways from important books without setting aside an entire week for each one. Blinkist has more than 9,000 titles covering politics, economics, history, science, business, and a lot more. And it'll fit into the time you have.

Maybe while you're commuting, walking, working out, doing chores at home. It's also a great way to decide if you like the book enough to buy it and read the entire thing. You can try Blinkist totally free for a week and get 30% off a subscription at Blinkist.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. It is not easy to find a sweet, satisfying snack that you won't feel guilty about eating. And that is why I love our sponsor, Magic Spoon. Magic Spoon treats are crispy, airy snack bars packed with 12 grams of protein and seven grams of fiber. Zero grams of added sugar, easy to throw in your bag.

I take Magic Spoon treats with me to the studio for a quick snack. They taste nothing like a boring protein bar, more like cereal bars, delicious. And they come in flavors like marshmallow, chocolate peanut butter, double chocolate. But also check out Magic Spoon's new protein pastries, which you pop in the toaster. Of course, their iconic breakfast cereals as well. Look for Magic Spoon at your local grocery store. They've also rolled out treats nationwide at 7-Eleven. But you will get $5 off when you go to magic spoon.com slash Pacman.

The link is in the description. There are shocking new images and videos of Donald Trump with King Charles during this visit by the British royal to the United States, where Donald Trump's hands looks swollen like balloons and he also now has visible bruising and cover-up attempts that have been made on the left hand. Remember, supposedly this is all from shaking hands. Donald Trump only shakes hands with his right hand, which has never been able to explain why Trump's left hand seems to be involved. It is now increasingly clear that it's getting worse because he's using makeup to cover it up. Now, we have video, uh, Donald Trump and Melania meeting a King Charles and his wife.

And Trump's hands just that they look like they're bursting out of his suit more swollen than ever. Very noticeable white. Not not white, but lighter makeup patches than the rest of his skin tone. And Trump's hands just look massively, massively swollen, uh, discolored. And we need to now separate, I believe, what we know and what we don't know. What we know is relatively simple. We now have a year of photos and videos of Trump's hands being bruised, covered up with makeup, covered up with bandages, swollen, increasingly swollen and with conflicting or at least not believable explanations. Like, for example, it's because of shenan. shaking hands when that's something he only does with his right hand.

We don't really know the cause. We've been given multiple explanations. There's handshaking. There's Trump got a cut because he nicked it on something. Trump takes an aspirin regimen and this makes him bruise easily. But the only bruises we see are on the backs of Trump's hands where there's, of course, speculation about IV therapy of some kind, although that's not anything that's been disclosed, it's all completely and totally speculative. But that's one of the things that keeps

coming up. Is it a procedure? Is it because of an IV? It can leave swelling and discoloration. If it's something Trump is regularly receiving and the speculation runs completely rampant. Is it an Alzheimer's medication? Is it a treatment for some other condition? We just have no idea. There's also the kind of more general possibilities, fluid retention. That's why his hands are swelling up like balloons. That can happen for a lot of reasons. He eats an insanely high salt diet, which can cause fluid retention. Could it be that? Is there a medication he's taking that hasn't been disclosed that would explain the fluid

retention? And then, of course, there are more serious possibilities. I don't think it's completely necessary to go through them, but you can sort of imagine that there are far more serious things that haven't been disclosed that explain why this is going on. On the one hand, diagnosing people based on photographs and short video clips is reliable. On the other hand, there's no transparency. And so people are left to speculate. It's the health of arguably the most powerful person in the world, certainly the most powerful person in the United

States, not a random private citizen. And he is currently the president. At one point, he was running for president and there was still no transparency there with decisions that affect. You could argue billions of people. And the selective and incomplete disclosure is completely unaccomplicated. acceptable. There's this vacuum of real information. And we're not getting clear explanations. We're not getting consistent explanations. We're not getting logical explanations. And so what do we have left? We look at pictures. We look at videos. We look at, you know, Donald Trump's ankles swollen like tree trunks. We look at Trump's hands swollen like a latex balloon that you've inflated. And so that's what we have. the takeaway doesn't have to be something very serious is completely wrong. It might be. We don't know

that because they won't tell us. The takeaway definitely shouldn't be this should be ignored by Americans and by legacy and corporate media. That's very much not the takeaway. And so what we are kind of having to contend with is that you can criticize speculation, but speculation is inevitable when there is no transparency. If you want to reduce speculation, don't shame people for asking questions. Don't tell people about Trump's MRI for two months and then disclose there was no MRI. It was a CT scan. Don't do that. Don't provide propaganda documents that read more like public relations pieces than medical reports. Because otherwise, everything we see, the swelling, the bruising, all of it, we are going to have to speculate. It's all we have left about arguably the most powerful person in the world.

bonus clip from this meeting with King Charles. Trump tried the whole tug of war handshake thing with King Charles. And King Charles didn't go for it. You can see Trump trying to pull him in. And King Charles just goes, you're not going to do it. You're not going to do it. And you've got to admit it's not really fair because King Charles is a much younger man than Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is going to be 80 years old in a few weeks. And King Charles has only said. So Trump shouldn't have tried it with someone so so many years his junior. Listen, what do you think explains the hand swelling and the bruising? Leave it in a comment. Send me an email info at Davidpackman.com. I'd love to hear from you. Some people assume focus is just about willpower.

But if you've sat down to work and you're checking your phone switching tabs in your browser, getting pulled into distraction, you know it's not that simple. I want to tell you about our sponsor, Brain FM. Brain FM is a music app designed to support focus. It's not the random playlists or ambient videos that people often will put on. It's music built from the ground up for cognitive performance. Brain.fm works with musicians and neuroscientists to create music that will interact with with your brain's natural rhythms. Their patented audio technology is designed to influence brain activity related to attention. This is why Brain.fm is the only music app funded by the National Science Foundation. The app includes a number of modes depending on what you're doing, deep work,

creative motivation. There's a dedicated ADHD mode for people whose brains may benefit from extra support. There's also been peer-reviewed research publish showing that their music is increased activity in attentional networks and also improve performance on attention-based tasks. Try it yourself with 30 days free at brain.fm slash Pacman. The link is in the description. Let's go back once more today to the concept of staged. Staged a word that is being thrown around a lot about Saturday's White House correspondent's dinner shooting.

If you want to talk about motive to stage an event or at least just a politically convenient situation, you do have to start by asking who benefits from people looking at one thing and away from another. Now, I've already told you we talked yesterday today about these claims floating around that the shooting attempt or incident on Saturday at the White House Correspondence dinner boosts Trump. It drives sympathy for Trump. They're trying to kill him. It rallies the base. It would bump approval numbers. That's the argument. And I've told you, I think it's a terrible argument because Donald Trump got half a point in polling gain after he was actually shot in the ear in Butler, Pennsylvania during the campaign. Do we really think that are they even dumb enough to think

that having someone shoot a gun on a different floor of the same building where Trump is without Trump being in any actual danger is going to help him in his approval. I don't think so. I don't think it doesn't make any sense. The, uh, there is another aspect to this that I think is actually more interesting. If you're actually looking for the kind of issue that politicians historically want people to stop paying attention to, it's the fact that gas prices are again as high as they have been. Now, you might be saying, wait a second, Trump announced the pause, the ceasefire, whatever you want to call it, and gas prices came down, oil prices came down. And that was true very briefly. But look at this. This isn't getting news coverage. Now, again, I am not saying

the thing on Saturday was staged. I don't believe it was. But when we talk about incentives, I don't even think people are looking at the right ones. The point here is to remind you, we are paying no attention to what is going on with gas prices. Gas prices have quietly gone back up again and have reached and surpassed by a penny per gallon the highest point of the entire Iran conflict. They started, they got to $4.00. You could, we have it on screen. They got to $4.16 cents about two and a half, three weeks ago. And then it was we're going to pause. We're negotiating. We're making progress. The straight of Hormuz is open. The straight of Hormuz is closed. Now we're opening the straight of vermouth and closing that and they started to come back down. And indeed,

gas prices came down from the high of 416 down to about 392, 393, something like that. But look at what's going on. We have a new high. Gas prices today are as high as they have been in 18 months. There is high as they have been in two years. There is high as they have been in three years, you have to go all the way back to when travel resumed as the pandemic waned to find a point with higher gas prices. But I bet you didn't hear about that. Not because Trump staged the White House shooting, but because the narrative was Trump dealt with Iran and the straight is open and blah, blah, blah. They're talking about ceasefires and all of that, except it's not really happening. And we are seeing record high gas prices directly contradicting the narrative that was pushed

just a couple of weeks ago. It's a simple narrative to say, we open the straight and gas prices are down. It's very useful politically to say Trump is done with that and gas prices are down. Trump applied pressure. There's a true surstability is back and prices are coming down. Except it didn't happen. And they're not talking about it on CNN. They're not talking about it on CNBC.

The reality is we have all of the same problems that we had. Supply is constrained. Global oil markets are tight. Oil prices are back up. And we are starting to see the downstream effect of that with really high gas prices. Now, here's where it gets interesting. If you rewind to just a short time ago, gas prices were everywhere in the news. Every single day, wall to wall coverage, every network, every panel, everywhere.

Prices are crushing families. Gas prices are out of control. Gas prices are an emergency. That started happening when prices were at 325 and at 350 and at 375 and as they climb, climb, climb, climb. That was the story. Well, they're even higher now. But the stories are gone. And the stories are obviously not gone because gas prices are low because I just showed you gas prices aren't low. They aren't gone because the issue is resolved. It stopped being politically useful to keep talking about it. When Republicans want gas prices to be the story, they are the story. And when they don't, it invariably fades away. And a lot of media follows more than they lead. And that's exactly what's been going on here. So we went from daily coverage of something that

affects tens of millions of people, arguably hundreds of millions, saturation coverage of that to zero coverage and saturation coverage of the latest. moment. Right now it's the White House correspondence dinner. Now again, there is no evidence of the shooting being staged. That's not the point. And throwing around staged, I think it's just kind of dumb. But if you're going to entertain that line of thinking for even a second, apply some logic. What actually moves voters? Trump getting shot in 2024 moved polling half a point. It doesn't seem like an appropriate or effective or reasonable reason to stage. something. But what changes how people feel and how they're going to vote relates to economics.

And very quietly, gas prices are as high as they have been in years. It is the slow uptake increase of the cost of living that people deal with every time they get their credit card bill, every time they leave their house that really affects how people vote. And so if you're asking what topic disappearing from the news might benefit someone politically, gas prices make a lot more sense than anything that's being thrown around about the supposed staged nature of the shooting on Saturday. To be clear, I don't believe that it was staged, but I don't even think they're doing a good job on what the motivation would be. Let me know what you think. Have you noticed that gas prices are higher than they've been in years? Certainly hasn't been in the news. Is it finally

happening is the Trump administration coming for my citizenship? Am I about to get a denaturalization notice? I want to remind you. I'm from Argentina. I was not born a citizen of the United States. I was naturalized when I was a teenager. And boy, what a naturalization it was. The message for years has been really simple on this issue. Come here legally, follow the process, become a citizen. You're going to be protected like anybody else. And now we're getting reports that the Trump Justice Department is actively working to strip citizenship from hundreds of naturalized citizens with a system built to scale that process up fast. I've told you before, denaturalization is a difficult process. It's a slow process. It mostly can't happen in just about all scenarios. We now have

news that roughly 300 people already have been identified and a pipeline has been designed to keep adding 100 to 200 denaturalization cases every single month. This is not how it is traditionally worked. And this is a key difference in what is going on. The process of taking away naturalized citizenship is not a new process. But it has been super rare. It's been used only in really specific cases where there was clear and probable, uh, uh, uh, clear

an obvious wrongdoing usually related to telling lies when you were in the process of obtaining that citizenship. You lied on your application. You had a criminal history in the country you came from and you covered it up. You were involved in war crimes and you didn't report that. You were involved in human rights violations and you hid that in your application process. That was basically the list. And even with those standards, we had tiny numbers. Trump's entire first term about 100 people were de naturalized. Why? Because this is really, really rare. This is basically something that almost doesn't happen. Now look at what's happening. 300 people already identified with the goal of finding another 100 to 200 every single month. The only way you can do that

is if you start going after people who are just politically inconvenient. They didn't do anything wrong. People like me. Now, I didn't make. any declarations when I was naturalized because I was a minor. My parents had obtained citizenship. They did that declarative process. And as a minor, I was able to just go to the post office, request a passport, boom, I'm a citizen. However, however, we are going far beyond speculation now when we think about what they would have to do in order to achieve this because there just aren't really that number of people who lied in the way that typically would be required. Now, the Justice Department, when asked, continues to say it's about fraud. It's about criminal

behavior. That's all this is. Well, then give us information about the cases. Give us the evidence that that's actually what's going on because now there is a growing concern and I have it personally that this is becoming about politically inconvenient people. That was something previously not part of denaturalization. And once you start looking at this scale of denaturalization, we are looking at the revisiting of citizenship for unclear criteria. And the concern is that it is for criteria of political inconvenience. I have not heard anything for now. And I have no reason to think I'm being targeted for now.

But I do host a political show where I criticize Trump. And I would be lying if I said the thought never crossed my mind. What would stop the Trump administration from? deciding that someone like me is worth taking a closer look at, not because of fraud, but just because I'm a visible critic. And by the way, I doubt they would even succeed at denaturalizing me. That's not the point. As we've said before, a lot of these lawsuits against opponents of the administration are about making people's lives a living hell. And it would certainly be a huge living hell if I were to have to deal with a denaturalization notice, even if

I'm not actually going to be removed. That is how these things work. That is how the scope starts to expand. And the standard should be really simple. If these are fraud cases, show them clearly and verify that these are clear fraud cases, not cases of political inconvenience. If there are serious crimes, they should be documented somewhere. If it's about national security, you should be able to make that case. Explain it transparently so that we understand what's happening. But if this turns into what a lot of us have suspected, which is this vague, scalable system with unclear reasoning, we've got to be asking bigger questions. Once citizenship is conditional subject to review, reinterpretation, it changes what citizenship

even means. It's not final. And that is terrifying. So I will let you know if I get a notice. And you know what? If they deport me to Argentina, we proved a couple weeks ago, I can do the show from there. I don't think it'll come to that. I don't think it will, but it is doable. We've got a great bonus show for you today. Sign up at join packman.com and for more in-depth coverage of the stories

from today's show, make sure you're on my free substack at David packman.com slash substack.