The David Pakman Show - They’ve created a disaster they can’t control

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Two active-duty Army soldiers die during an expanding conflict with Iran that targets infrastructure and pushes gas prices near four dollars -- Fox News contrasts Donald Trump claiming big victories in Iran with new military casualties before he leaves for a private club event -- Iranian state media broadcasts a video mapping motorcade vulnerabilities near Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower -- Donald Trump empties the Election Assistance Commission while priming supporters to reject the midterm results -- Congressional Republicans face major political liabilities as Donald Trump shifts his campaign focus toward the expanding Iranian conflict -- Trump Media launches the Truth API, charging Wall Street trading firms $100,000 monthly for early access to presidential announcements -- The White House falsely accuses The David Pakman Show of receiving Chinese Communist Party funding -- The Trump administration plans foreign grants totaling $2 million to counter European Union technology regulations -- On the Bonus Show: David flies out to California, and much more... 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman 😺 Smalls cat food: Use code PAKMAN for 60% off & free shipping at https://smalls.com 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code DAVID for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.com/david -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Book: https://bit.ly/m/attention -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start (01:10) More US troops killed in Trump's Iran war (08:10) Fox News contrasts Trump's claims with reality (17:03) Iran threatens to assassinate Trump (23:39) Trump empties election integrity commission (31:15) Trump dooms congressional Republicans (38:26) Trump Media launches early access to Trump's posts (45:15) White House targets David again (55:02) Trump gets caught sending tax money overseas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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FX's The Shards, streaming August 5th on Hulu on Disney Plus. Sign up now at Disneyplus.com. The presidency is entering a danger zone. We have American. service members dead in Iran, hundreds wounded, and Iran is threatening to assassinate Donald Trump, and Fox News is now starting to hedge against this disaster. Republicans are realizing that the war, rising prices, the instability could completely destroy them in the midterms, exactly as Trump

is preparing his supporters to reject the results of the midterms if they lose. Meanwhile, monetizing the presidency, the administration is preparing to send taxpayer money, your money, my money overseas to support MAGA-aligned projects in other countries. And the White House's campaign against independent media is escalating with a new battle against this program, war, corruption, political retaliation, and a president preparing for an election defeat. All of that and much more today, if I can get through the show. Two American soldiers are dead.

Another service member is missing and more than 430 have been wounded in Donald Trump's optional, failing and expanding war with Iran. The president who promised to end Middle Eastern wars has created another one. That's already a violation of his campaign promises. And we now are getting to the point where not just all Americans are paying the price economically, but American military families are paying the price with death. Two active duty army soldiers were killed when Iranian ballistic missiles and drones hit an American air base in Jordan.

Four additional service members were hospitalized and a whole bunch of others have minor injuries. As of this exact moment, the names of the dead have not been released because of family notification. Now Iran carried out this attack. killed these soldiers. Criticizing Trump's decision to start and expand this war does not excuse the Iranian government. But this was a predictable retaliation. Once you start bombing another country, that country is going to try to strike your troops. They're going to try to strike your bases and your allies if they can and if they believe they can get away with it. And Donald Trump

has put thousands of Americans through the region into the line of fire, never really explaining what what would it look like to win? I know he's got talking points he shifts in and out of, but there's not really a clear vision of what it would mean to win this thing. And these deaths now bring the American toll to 16 service members killed and more than 430 wounded since this all started back on February 28th. Now, this is already a major war. The whole idea of it's a little incursion. Trump thought the word was excursion. His English isn't very good. But By the way, none of his other languages are good either. But the play was like, this is this small thing.

This is already a major war. And we now have seen seven consecutive nights of airstrikes. This is just recently after the supposed ceasefire and the letter and the beautiful deal. It is going beyond military targets. As Donald Trump told us, they have big plans to commit war crimes. They want to target bridges, roads, power infrastructure, water facilities. is retaliating against American bases in neighboring countries. Kuwait says that Iranian attacks struck an oil facility and a power and water desalination plant led to fires and injuries.

Iran has attempted to strike Saudi Arabia. So we have a situate by air raid sirens are going off in Bahrain. So we have a growing war. Jordan saying it shot down 10 Iranian ballistic missiles two nights ago. So this is now in the context of Trump last week saying, you know, you might need a little bit of ground troops in there, a ground war. And we have a senior Iranian advisor threatening a full scale offensive saying no political border will be safe. This is the cycle. Maybe Trump didn't understand when he decided to go to war. Maybe Trump didn't care about when deciding to go to war. He attacks Iran. They retaliate. Trump uses the retaliation to justify a larger attack attack. Iran responds with an even wider attack. And now we've got American soldiers dead.

And Trump then goes, well, now we're going to get revenge. And the entire cycle starts over again. Just compare this to Trump's promises during the campaign. He's the only real anti-war president. Hillary was going to start four wars. Biden was going to start wars. Kamala was going to start. wars if she became president. But it's Trump who started a new war. And the straight of Hormuz is blockaded again, carries one fifth of the world's crude oil. Shipping is basically at a standstill. Oil prices going back up. I guess I should take a look at where I didn't even, I should be more prepared. But where, what's going on with gas prices? Gas prices are now going back up, already up another up 40 cents from a from a sort of dip that they made now they're up 40 cents again.

And so we are like five months in February 28th and we're getting to the end of July. Yeah. So almost five months in and we really don't have our clear objectives. And by the way, this supposedly ended 40 times. So with this point, is it the straight has to be reopened? Is it that Iran's nuclear program has to be destroyed again for the who knows how many time. Is it real regime change where it's not a family member who takes over in Iran? What are the conditions that would allow Trump to really bring American forces home and end this thing? And the reason there's no clear answer is Trump doesn't have one.

If you ask him, he'll go, Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and now they never will. I guess. I mean, no deal has been signed. The enriched uranium is still geographically in Iran, even if it's not super accessible. But concurrent with that, parallel to that, Trump said he was going to be the anti-war president. And he mocked those who architected Iraq and Afghanistan. And he said, these quagmires in the Middle East, these, we are going to use our strength to deter our enemies.

we won't have to start any wars and it won't come at the cost of any American lives. Well, now we've got 16 service members dead, hundreds wounded, one missing. Diplomacy is collapsed. Civilian infrastructure is being targeted. And Iran seems to be getting ready for a regional war. Strength without a real strategy is just reckless. And sending more bombs will not explain how this is going to end. So the escalation is now going to be see.

It's seemingly inevitable. Trump was warned. There's widespread reporting before going in on February 28th. Trump was warned. If you do this, it could be a widening war, a much longer war that, remember, this was a two to three week war. We're in week 20 something. And it could become completely uncontrollable.

One of the things I said after two weeks was that it is no longer Trump's war to end. Trump could go, well, now I'm done, but that doesn't mean that Iran is done. And in fact, it's widening. Americans have been killed and there is no end in sight. Republicans are quickly learning that this is very bad for their chances in November. And even Fox News is starting to hedge and go, well, listen, this isn't exactly the way it was promised to us. And that is what I want to talk about next. Fox News, when Trump's most important propaganda network starts showing its audience the gap between here's what Trump said was going to happen and here's what is happening.

You know that they are preparing for the possibility that this goes very badly and they can go, we were always against this from the beginning. Fox News reporting two service members have been killed as we just discussed and actually playing a clip of Trump saying how big they are winning in Iran. is making the point that Trump's stories about what's happening there do not even remotely match reality. Hi, John. So President Trump is here in New Jersey for the weekend.

We have yet to hear from the president in the last couple hours respond to this breaking news that two service members have been killed. This is the first time the service members have been killed since the fighting resumed two weeks ago. So Central Command says that this happened Friday as these US service members in Jordan came under missile and drone attacks from Iran. One service member is missing and four others were evacuated to Jordanian hospitals. President Trump had said this just the day before. Uh-oh.

We are likewise winning big in Iran and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly. 13 service members have also been wounded in recent days and this. When we have Fox News doing the contrast between, hey, we're winning big and we have service members dying. When Fox News is doing it, you know they're realizing that a lot of their audience isn't buying this stuff. Normally Fox News works pretty hard to protect Trump from exactly these kinds of reality checks. And here they're sort of like, listen, we're just going to put out the facts and we're going to

put up Trump's words. And when you do that, Trump's words look completely detached from reality, just like not even in the universe of what's actually taking place. Now, does this mean Fox News has suddenly become anti-Trump? No, it doesn't. They've spent years protecting him. They promote his grievances. They play a huge role in inventing this alternate reality for their followers. But they seem to be hedging.

Fox is concerned primarily about two things. Profit and power. That's P and P. You could say Fox's number one priority is it's pee. Please, this is this is very simple. I know it sounds crass, but this is serious. If it doesn't help their pee, their profit and their power, they do not care. And this war might be starting to hurt both of those.

Fox knows its viewers were promised this would be in America first presidency. No more endless wars, no more Americans dying in the Middle East. Trump said he would be the guy who finally puts an end. to all of this. And now service members are dying and Trump's going, it's going so well, we're winning big. We're getting great marks. And it's we've won it 40 times. So Fox can sell the audience, the dramatic missile footage and, you know, put up retired

generals pointing at maps and stuff like that. But it gets really difficult when the Americans start coming home in coffins for something that is just making everything expensive for Americans with no clear benefit. And at that point, even your average Fox News viewer, or at least some of your Fox News viewers are going to start saying, what? exactly are we winning and why are we doing this? Fox News then reporting the following. And he had argued that this was for the future and we heard him last month during the ceasefire say that if service members were killed, it would end the ceasefire. Again, that ceasefire is no longer

in effect. So the White House has just called a lid, meaning we do not expect to see or hear the president make any public appearances for the rest of the day. However, I have met some people here in Bridgewater who say that they are attending a black tie summer bash at Bedminster. It's worth noting that the president does hold fundraisers throughout throughout different weekends at American troops killed in Trump's war. The White House goes Trump will not be appearing. He won't be making any public statements. But there's a nice little black tie fundraiser at Donald Trump's private club. Fox doesn't even need to add any commentary that that sequence is the story in and of itself. He wants the glory of being a wartime president. He wants to campaign

on, I won't do wars. He wants dramatic announcements. He wants displays of military power and declarations that were winning big. But then Americans die and he disappears from public view, but he's got to get his tuxedo ready for the black tie party at Bedminster. Fox is not doing this because all of a sudden they go, hey, we looked underneath a rock and we found journalistic integrity. Fox has detected a risk. Remember, it's about their peepee. What does this do to profit? And what is this due to their access to power? And so they're creating a little bit of a distance from Trump. And what that means is the network is worried, man, if we protect Trump through this one, it could be bad for our peepee. It could hurt our profit. It could hurt our power. When they are doing

this, you know they understand November could be a blood bath, but only if we in sure that it is an electoral bloodbath for them. They deserve to lose everything. Unless Trump dies, he'll be president the next two years. We can't change that. But we can take away power. We can mire them in investigations and oversight for two years. And we can set them up hopefully, right? I mean, this is aspirational. It's what we might be able to do. We can set them up for a massive, massive failure in 2028 and hopefully write the ship that is like that is, listing and listing more and more towards its side. I say we do it. Now, Iran has another plan for Trump. And it's pretty nasty. I'll tell you about it after this short break. Make sure you're

following me on any platform that you like. We are on every platform you can imagine. But importantly, we are pushing to 4 million subscribers on YouTube. If you're not yet subscribed, I would love it if you were. Hot weather we have has a way of exposing malfunctioning underwear. You take one long walk or commute in the humidity or you're in a studio like this one that's overheated one day. And suddenly it's the sweat and the friction and the readjusting. And this is where sheath underwear is a game changer. We have a sponsor. Sheath. They just make great underwear built around a pouch design that will separate and support. It'll reduce skin on skin contact. It'll eliminate the chafing when things get a little sticky. Their lineup includes five or eight inch boxer briefs. They've got

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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. They have a plan to kill Trump. I can't believe this is the way I have to explain it, but that this is what it is. Iranian state media is now publicly talking about where and how Donald Trump could be

assassinated. This is where Donald Trump's completely unnecessary war has taken us. We just talked about American soldiers are dead. Civilians are losing electricity and drinking water. And a foreign government is broadcasting what seems to be a blueprint for killing Donald Trump. The video titled, Where to Kill Trump, claims Iran has gathered and decoded Trump's movements between 2024 and 2026. They've identified supposed vulnerabilities along the routes to Mara Lago and Trump Tower. They said there's a particular location very suitable for an attack.

And it ends with the threat. Stay tuned. We are going to get even closer than this. Now, Trump seems aware of it. Trump several times in the last week has talked about, you know, I've had good luck with the assassinations, but luck doesn't necessarily last forever. And he talks about stuff like this. It's a very dangerous profession.

No, I'm number one on the kill list for. Iran. They're lovely people. I'm number one. So I don't know. I can't tell you that, but I don't really care because I'm doing my job and I'm doing it. I hope better than anybody's ever done it because we have a country that's hot and really, really successful. But I mentioned it only because it's on the list. I mean, it came out. There was another list came out yesterday and I'm number one on, I like being number one on TikTok better, but I'm number one on the list for killing. So Trump knows this.

Trump knows they want him dead. And it seems as though Iran is now being more belligerent in their desire to see Trump dead. Now, some of the information seems a little questionable. One of the routes that Iran is normally figured out doesn't seem to match any publicly available maps. So there's a propaganda element here as well, maybe to frighten Trump, maybe to convince Iranians.

Hey, listen, they might be really bombing us here. But we could reach the most protected person in the world. But I don't think you can dismiss this. Iran has previously attempted to organize assassinations on American soil back in 2024. The Justice Department charged an alleged revolutionary guard asset in a plot that was targeting Trump. There was another case where an Iranian operative, I guess you would say, was convicted after traveling to the U.S. to recruit hitmen to assassinate American officials.

And when you broadcast supposed security vulnerabilities, you might also inspire some proxy, some unstable individual to attempt an attack, sort of stochastic terrorism is what we call it. Now, I think just before the Secret Service visits me because of the titles of these videos, I want to be unequivocal. I oppose Donald Trump politically. I also condemn attempts to assassinate him. Political leaders should be removed through elections, through impeachment, or through the legal system. And a foreign government murdering an American president would be an attack on the whole country.

It would be an attack on our democratic system. But condemning Iran does not require me to pretend that this whole thing just appeared out of nowhere. Trump chose the war. He campaigned as the anti-war president. He promised to end pointless Middle Eastern conflicts in general. And then he launched another one without explaining the objective or the exit strategy or what victory would even mean. So now we've got American service members dead, hundreds wounded, bombs are striking Iranian infrastructure. Trump is gleefully talking about going after civilian infrastructure, which is a war crime.

And we've got missiles from Iran killing American troops. This is a big war. It was going to be two to three weeks. We're in week 21 or something. of Hormuz is almost closed. Energy prices are going back up. Gas is up 40 cents in the last few days. And there's no diplomacy happening here. J.D. Vance went to negotiate and came back in less than 48 hours. So the war is very personal. Trump has described killing Iran's foreign supreme leader in terms of getting him before he got me. And now we've got Iran openly promising

revenge and publishing videos about Trump's motorcade. I mean, this is crazy. And Trump aware of the the danger. I'm on all their lists. So far I've been lucky. But maybe that luck won't last much longer, he said last week. Imagine how it also changes the decision-making process when the president is making decisions about bombing Iran, negotiating with Iran, diplomacy with Iran, knowing that they're actively looking to assassinate him. Extraordinarily dangerous. And every Iranian threat can become Trump's just. justification for another attack. And then every American attack becomes Iran's justification for another retaliation. And underneath it, we're learning that personal vengeance is driving national policy,

but it's the soldiers who are absorbing the consequences. It's the Iranian civilians. So Iran is responsible when they threaten to assassinate an American president. And Trump is responsible for dragging the United States into a war that's making all of us and his. him less secure and more economically unstable. It's a cycle of retaliation. Trump said my strength will bring peace, but instead his belligerence has brought a pretty big war, dead Americans, foreign government, publicly planning Trump's murder. This is insane.

And I listen to the Magas who voted for the anti-war Trump and Tulsi said he would never start another war. Are you ready to say you were duped? Are you ready to say that Trump never gave a damn and didn't mean a word about his whole anti-war thing? Are you, just, I would respect you more if you acknowledge that. We can still disagree on tax policy and abortion and whatever. But are you ready to say you were duped?

And meanwhile, meanwhile, do you realize what Donald Trump is planning for the election? He gave us a little bit of a preview last week, but there is a lot more. Donald Trump is telling us what he plans to do if Republicans lose the midterms. And rather than doing what some on the left and some on the right did three elections in a row, we just go, oh, it's bluster. Trump just talks about a lot of things, but he doesn't try to do them. Here's my suggestion. Let's believe Trump when he tells us what he's planning to do.

His speech last week about supposed election fraud was another deranged attempt to re-litigate 2020, yes, but Trump was doing something that I think is a lot more dangerous, which is he's preparing tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of Americans to say, hey, you know what? We've got to reject the results of that election. The election hasn't even happened yet, but he wants millions of Americans to go, I already don't trust the election results. Now, if you analyze the speech factually, of course, it's filled with lies. He makes claims about voting machines that aren't true. He makes claims about vote by mail that aren't true. He makes claims about non-citizen voting, foreign interference, dead people voting. You could just go listen. I'll

fact check. It's going to be a very cold, sober process. I fact check each claim. This was a lie. This was a lie. This was a lie. There's value to that. But if we spend all of our time correcting each lie individually, there's the risk that we miss what the lies are designed to accomplish together, which is Trump wants to build a narrative in advance where he declares that American election systems fundamentally are corrupt and untrustworthy. He removes the independent officials responsible for protecting those systems. We talked about that already. He's messing with it at the state level, but he also had this election commission that he completely cleared out last week. We reported that. A lot of people haven't been reporting that. And then number three,

wherever he can, he replaces all of these election officials with people, willing to support his version of reality. And finally, you impose these demands on states because remember, states are the ones that administer the elections. So having done all that, if Republicans appear to lose in November, meaning they lose, you can point to the distrust that Trump created as proof that this election was stolen right out from under you. We know that Trump would do this for two reasons.

He tried to do it in 2020 and failed to get away with it. But also, Reuters has been reporting extensively about this. And Reuters reports that the Trump administration spent more than a year scrutinizing the election assistance commission over how they handled 2020. And that just as a reminder, we talked about this a little last week. The EAC, the election assistance commission, it's this small, deliberately bipartisan federal agency. They help states administer secure elections.

It's seemingly boring stuff. We make standards for voting systems. We distribute funding. We provide resources to local election officials. Trump fired its two remaining Democratic commissioners. It's Republican commissioners resigned. And so the agency is empty before an election that we're worried about and you empty out the election commission.

Now the administration says we're considering replacements with other people. And lo and behold, those people would be completely aligned with Trump's election agenda, including putting people on the commission who promote Trump's lies about 2020. So what Trump is doing is yelling, we can't trust our elections, but at the same time, we have an agency designed to strengthen trust in our elections. And Trump's like, I'm going to dismantle that too. That combination really tells us a story. Now, I think it's also relevant to remember this doesn't mean Trump can personally change millions of votes. He can't order states to declare Republicans winners when Republicans lost. The election is still decentralized.

States run their elections, governors and courts and secretaries of state. Those local officials all have roles in the election. But the danger is Trump constructing this pretext where an unfavorable result is rejected. And we know from 2020 and the number of people that still believe that crap, he doesn't need to prove the election is stolen. He just needs to generate enough confusion and fear and get people really angry so that millions of supporters believe it and then put enough pressure on Republican officials so that they will be afraid to contradict Trump. The timing of all of this is so illuminating. Imagine a different scenario. Close your eyes.

Take a deep breath. Imagine a scenario where we had just discovered incontrovertible evidence of voter. fraud. And then the president comes out and says, we can never allow this to happen again. And here's the list of stuff I'm going to do. We might say, oh, all right. Well, listen, we've got the proof of the fraud. Something must be done. Trump is doing that, but with no proof of the fraud. And so it's a pretext. And that is how you prepare supporters to interpret only a single outcome as legitimate. If you won, it was a legitimate win. Anything else, it was fraud. And Trump learned this back from 2020 when there were officials back in 2020, Republican officials who rejected Trump lies. And some Republicans

eventually refused to help him overturn the result. Now, some were willing to. You had these fake slates of electors. But the point is Trump learned even some of these Republicans might get in my way. So he's just trying to get rid of those obstacles. And if we go back to that speech from a few days ago, At the end of the day, it wasn't about what happened six years ago. It was a warning about what Trump is preparing to do this November. Can we fix every single issue that Trump may try to create? I hope so. There's really good lawyers.

Mark Elias's firm and others are working on it. But the best defense may be a good offense. And that offense is winning so big that it's too big to rig. We can control that. A lot of this other stuff is courts, lawyers, litigation. But we can go out and win it so bigly that they can't rig it. I think that that's the best solution here. One thing I've noticed is when I don't have good food options at home, I end up ordering takeout or making unnecessary trips to the store. Having really good staples

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audience $30 off your first box plus free croissants for life when you go to wildgrain.com slash Pacman or use the promo code Pacman at checkout. The link is in the description. Republicans are realizing that Donald Trump may have doomed them all and they are panicking because they want to get reelected, but Trump might have cost them everything, and I love it. Donald Trump has kind of trapped the Republican Party in a political nightmare, and there's not an easy way out for them right now. Every time an American is killed or there's another escalation in the Iran war, every time the cost of living goes up, it belongs to Republicans right now because they surrendered their party so completely and totally to Donald Trump that Trump's failures

are their failures. Trump is even going to hold a midterm convention in September to make the midterms even more about Donald Trump. This is terrible for your average Republican. Your average Republican wanted to run on. We're going to fix the border. We're going to deal with crime. By the way, crime has been declining for 30 years in the United States. We're going to, you know, to the extent that some of them care about it, trans athletes and campus protests. And they wanted to sort of play with the cultural controversy that Fox News can generate, blame Democrats for everything that's not going well, and just kind of say, are you better off with Republicans in charge? Of course you are. Trump has turned that on its head and has made that question, are you better off?

off right now than you were when Joe Biden left the office, a very dangerous question. Because instead of talking about their preferred issues or things that they might actually be able to run successfully on, Republicans are in the position of defending a disastrous expanding war with Iran, which now includes American casualties, energy costs that are up, gas prices that are up, and Trump giving national speeches obsessing about the 2020 election and trying to rig 2026 because he's worried they're going to lose. And so this is a real problem for Republicans. When Republicans have to go out there and talk to voters, and voters go, hey, you know,

Trump promised to end foreign wars, but he actually started a new one. And he promised to reduce prices, but prices are up and the tariffs increased prices and the war increased prices. And he said things would be stable again. But instead, we've got a war that's ended and restarted 40 times and Trump's threatening war crimes and now service members have been killed, how do Republicans deal with that? And when voters say at their town halls to their senator to their member of the house, hey, what's going on with making my groceries more affordable like you promised and making

housing more affordable or healthcare more affordable and Trump is giving primetime speeches about voting machines and conspiracy theories, what do the Republicans say to justify vote for me anyway? Now you look at polling. Polling has shown over and over again Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy. He's got 27% approval on the economy, often the strongest issue for Republicans. And Americans are not happy with what's going on in Iran. There's a newer than what I just cited, economist you gov poll, which says 63% of Americans

disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy. 68% want a deal to end the Iran war as quickly as possible, period. So Republicans are not going to be able to pretend Trump's some unrelated person. And it's important also for us to remember that these Republicans in the House and Senate mostly have rubber stamped 99, 97 to 100% of what Donald Trump has wanted. And so they are inextricably linked to Trump. So Republicans in Congress often are expected to defend Trump, to praise Trump. Trump demands total loyalty, most of them provided. But now they're going to have to answer for decisions they didn't make and can't control.

If Trump continues to push this war into August, into September, Republicans own it. And if energy prices remain high into October, Republicans own it. If Trump does another visibly incoherent appearance where he falls asleep and. says insane things and basically says, I don't really care about what's going on with affordability. It's a hoax. Republicans are going to have to deal with that when they talk to voters and their options are pretty terrible. I don't feel bad for them. This is they made their bed. They've got to lie in it, but they can just defend Trump to the death and inherit his unpopularity. Maybe they get voted out. They can criticize Trump and risk Trump going after them and saying, hey, you got to abandon

this person or they can say nothing and they just look really weak and Democrats get to define them as accomplices to Trump's agenda, which of course they are. Now, the thing about partisan polarization is that of course Republicans aren't going to disappear. There are tens of millions of Americans who will always vote Republican no matter what Trump does. Tens of millions of Americans who will always vote for Democrats no matter what a Democratic president does. That's a reality. But the Tricky thing about midterm elections is that they really get decided at the margins. And so a few points among independence, a few voters who decide, well, I won't necessarily vote against you, but I'm going to stay home. If you have a decline in Republican enthusiasm or

we're also seeing Democratic voters becoming more motivated to vote because they recognize that getting Republicans out of, at least controlling the House of Representatives would be a big deal. All of that can just torpedo Republicans. And so this is what Republicans have to contend with. They made one guy the entire identity of their party. They eliminated just about every internal check on him. They celebrated how unpredictable he is and all that stuff when they thought it was good for them. But now Trump's unpredictability has gotten us war, inflation, chaos, and liability.

Republicans are going to have to figure out how to talk about it. They tied their future to Trump. And if Trump goes down as he is with this war. and everything else, he may take all of them down with him. Now, can Republicans still find some way to sort of turn it around? Never say never. Of course they can. And I can imagine a scenario where, I mean, listen, it seems increasingly unlikely, but maybe the Iran war really does end by August 15th. And then Republicans have something a little more positive to spin for their midterm convention after which the early and mail-in ballots will start being returned.

I don't know. Like maybe they can do it, but it's looking very bad. And this is why, as I've said before, a coroner animal can get very dangerous. It is increasingly looking like a blue wave bloodbath for Republicans in November. The more they come to believe they're going to lose, the more willing they are going to be to push election restrictions, the likes of which Trump was talking about last week. So we've got to be ready for that. But this is potentially a disaster for them, but we have to make it so.

Donald Trump is putting the presidency up for sale. And Wall Street firms willing to pay $100,000 a month may get to cut the line. Let me explain this. Trump can announce a tariff. He can announce a sanction or a war. And it instantly moves financial markets. And now a company benefiting his family wants to sell traders earlier access to the announcements. Listen to this grift and corruption.

Trump media, which owns Truth Social, has unveiled something called the Truth API. And what it'll do is deliver posts from 10 influential truth social accounts, including potentially Donald Trump's, to banks and trading firms faster than that. than ordinary users get them. And according to Reuters, the company is looking at charging $100,000 a month. If that seems steep, they've got a special offer. If you do a three-year deal, they'll do it for $60,000 a month. Now, you might say, David, there's almost no one on truth social.

It's such a stupid platform. Why would anyone pay more than a million dollars a year to see Trump's posts a little bit early? Because for high-frequency traders, milliseconds can mean millions. of dollars because these firms are using computers. Everything is computer, as Trump says. These firms are using computers to execute massive trades almost instantly. And so if their computers learn about a market moving announcement, even a fraction of a second before anybody else, they could buy or sell whatever is going to be affected before the price reflects everyone knowing that. Trump regularly

announces real government policy on truth social. He'll post the truth social about tariff, sanctions, wars, and negotiations. And that's the That's the first place we find out about it before everything else catches up. Go back to April of 25. Trump announced on truth social he would pause many of his tariffs for 90 days. Stocks immediately shot higher. If you had that information a little bit earlier, that's an insanely valuable trading advantage. So think about the arrangement Trump media is creating here.

Trump makes a decision as president that could move. move trillions through global markets. He announces the decision on truth social and then a company benefiting Trump and his family collects as much as $100,000 a month from Wall Street firms that want to get that information first. Trump's rep. Remember, I put everything in trust. Yeah, but you know you own it, right?

Trump's revocable trust owns 41% of Trump media. These kids oversee the trust and Trump is the beneficiary. So Trump by being president, it's not just that he accesses valuable information. Trump can create valuable information. Trump's company sells speed advantages to that information and then Trump and his family profit from his own decisions as president. Trump media says they're going to launch this August 1st. It says we've got customers already.

They haven't identified them though. We need to know who is paying and understand that these customers could also be lobbying the administration. They could be seeking government contracts. They could be trying to influence relations. And that firm would be sending money to Trump's company while getting preferential access to presidential announcements. And the craziest part, I know many of you are probably thinking has to be against the law. Couldn't possibly be legal.

Donald Sherman of citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington. says, yes, it's unethical, but it may not violate any existing law. Because insider trading laws involve material information not available to the public. And what Trump media could claim is that this information is broadly available to anybody willing to pay. And if there are other federal conflict of interest restrictions, they don't fully apply to presidents. So this is one of those things where there was this, um,

There was this moment where when it came to explicit sexual images of children in New York State, we covered this like a decade ago, the way the law was written about downloading images, there was like some technicality where like if you only looked at them in a browser, but you didn't download them, you didn't break the law. That was an example where the law didn't anticipate exactly what reality would turn out to be. And similarly, it seems as though what I'm describing to you today is wildly unethical. The law might not have anticipated that a president would turn his own policy announcements into a financial product to sell faster access to.

So presidential decisions about war tariffs in the economy could be monetized. Now, all of that information should be public information. It shouldn't be sold as a, as a, as a, assailable issue. There shouldn't be a fee that you can pay to have faster access to it. And remember that Trump promised to fight the corrupt financial elite and drain the swamp. And he is inviting that very elite to pay $100,000 a month for faster access to the presidency. We at some point have to make some decisions. And one of the decisions here is do we want to focus on how this absolutely should be illegal

and be outraged that it isn't? Or does the focus need to be to neuter Trump's presidency as quickly as possible? I'm not saying we ignore that like it might be nice to have some laws that prevent Trump from doing this. But when Republicans control everything, it's not going to happen. So I believe our focus has to be anything we can do, anything we can do to neuter Trump's power as president. And certainly taking at least the House, if not the House and Senate and putting Trump and everybody

under two years of oversight and investigations is something we can do. Let's work on the law stuff as well, but let's hamper and hamstring this presidency as much as we can and as quickly as possible. The David Packman Show is an audience supported program and the best most direct way to support the show is by becoming a member at joinpackman.com. You'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show, and plenty of other great membership perks. the full experience by signing up at join packman.com. Well, they put my name on another damn list.

Remember that they tried to get my book removed from Amazon, someone around Trump trying to get my book removed from Amazon. Amazon didn't do it. They kept the book. Great. Then the White House put me on an official enemy's list. Donald Trump creating the media offender list. at whitehouse.gov official list of the federal government. And then Donald Trump Jr. and Caroline Levitt have retweeted attacks against me and we braved it. We braved it all. And now I'm being accused of working for a hostile foreign government. And of course, there is no evidence of this because it isn't true. But this is how authoritarian movements prepare their followers for retaliation. Before you start the formal retaliation, you've got to get your critics on enemies

lists and you've got to claim that journalism and commentary is propaganda and disagreement with the dear leader is treason. So this viral image may look laughably stupid, but I believe what it represents is very dangerous. Look at this thing. American podcasters who work for the Chinese Communist Party. Leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China with an image of the leadership of the CCP. And then it says there, these are the leading seven Chinese Communist Party funded anti-American propaganda podcast machines in America.

And your favorite left-handed Jewish Argentinian American podcaster David Pacman, me, is number five. It also lists Midas Touch, the bulwark, the Daily Beast. Harry Sisson, Prof G, and the Luke Beasley show. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, we are now in a situation where, of course, there is no financial relationship between me and the Chinese Communist Party. There's no communication I've ever had. There's no source for this stuff.

There's no explanation of what I or any of us supposedly did for China. And in fact, you all know, but I'll mention it, that I oppose authoritarianism and I oppose state communism and I am against everything China is for. Someone put seven Trump critics beneath the picture of Xi Jinping, put a bunch of exclamation points on it and said investigation. Now, I will, it's crazy I even have to do this, but I will state it unambiguously. I do not work for the Chinese Communist Party. I don't like the Chinese Communist Party.

I've never received money from the Chinese government. The David Pakman Show has zero financial or organizational relationship with China, the Chinese Communist Party or the Chinese government. But the really wacky part is that ideologically, this makes no sense. because my values are fundamentally anti-authoritarian. I support liberal democracy, political pluralism, social democracy, free expression, competitive elections, individual civil liberties. The Chinese Communist Party is an authoritarian one-party regime that suppresses political opposition,

restricts media, and controls speech. As a social Democrat, I combine a regulated market economy and a strong social. safety net with liberal democratic institutions, free elections, and civil rights. That's completely at odds with the CCP's authoritarian one party rule. Now, there are left of center people who love these authoritarian regimes. There are commentators out there dressing like Mao, okay? There are commentators out there who love Kim, Jim. Zhangun, Xi, Orban, Putin, they love these people.

Okay. Now, the tactic of calling every left of center person a communist in bed with China, maybe it works with an audience that has no idea what political ideologies mean. But anyone who understands what being a social Democrat is would not confuse that with this person might like the Chinese Communist Party. If the creator of this image has evidence, I want it shown. Find something. But until then, I know my audience will understand that this is a fabrication.

But I think there's a more important aspect to this. Did this, because you might be saying, well, what is this really about? There's a reason that MAGA and the Trump defenders are suddenly inventing Chinese funding for left-wing anti-Trump media figures. It's the classic, I know you are, but what am I? Because when you have actual evidence that this we have, what I'm about to tell you we have, we know that there was covert funneling of millions of dollars through a company called tenant into major right wing influencers in the United States.

We have a federal indictment. We know that employees of the Russian state controlled outlet RT were using shell companies and fake identities to finance and direct a company based in Tennessee called Tenet Media to funnel money to people like Tim Poole, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, Lauren, Southern, and those sorts of folks. And the indictment included evidence, communications, financial transactions, examples of operatives involved in figuring all of this out. Now, the influencers have said we didn't know that that's where the funding came from. I have no idea one way or the other. But we have the evidence that it was happening. So MAGA took a real scandal involving covert

Russian funding of right wing media and they go, oh, the leftists are doing it for China without any evidence. Well, Russia secretly funded a company featuring right wing influencers. So I must be working for China. Now, it would be comical if this was in isolation, but it's not because there's a very increasingly well-organized campaign of targeting me in this program. Someone, in the Trump administration tried to persuade Amazon to delist my first book. And then Don Jr. and Caroline Levitt retweet attacks against me. And then I'm on the media offenders list. And think about how this has escalated. In the first Trump term, there were random MAGA accounts insulting me. Okay. And now we have members of the president's family, the press secretary, the White House,

singling me out. Now, the viral propaganda image says, I'm really working for China. The objective here is to transform my disagreements into disloyalty and treason. Once Trump becomes synonymous with America, if you criticize Trump, you're clearly anti-American. You must support China or someone. And so this is how authoritarian movements condition their supporters to accept attacks on free speech. Discredit the speaker, invent sinister motives, claim that the criticism is secretly funded by a foreign enemy. And then eventually when they do the censorship, when they do the retaliation, when they punish me economically, people will go, well, listen, I mean, he was

supporting China after all. And when the White House is identifying supposed media enemies, it's not internet trolling anymore. This is meant to have a chilling effect. And there is a dark irony here. MAGA is falsely accusing an outspoken opponent of authoritarianism, me, of serving an authoritarian government, which of course, I wouldn't do. And so listen, this is why independent media matters. The David Pakman show is not funded by China. It's funded by you. And if you all go and cancel your memberships, the show will end.

I mean, it's really that simple. That's who's keeping the show afloat, not Xi Jinping or the Chinese Communist Party. And if this is intended to frighten me into silence, not going to work. I am going to resist. But of course, we need an audience that refuses to be intimidated as well. So make sure you're following the show. That's my ask. It's free.

Subscribe on YouTube. The bigger we are on every platform, including YouTube, the more difficult it will be for them to silence me. Make sure you've pre-ordered my new book, pay attention, which by the way, every sign is pointing to they're going to try to get the book delisted. You can get signed copies at David Pakman.com slash attention. You can become a member at join packman.com. You can support on substack, substack.

David Pakman.com. This is really important. They can put me on their lists and Don Jr. and Caroline can retweet the stuff and they can say I work for China or Mars or the Galactic Empire or whatever. I will keep telling you what is happening. And what is happening right now is a coordinated, authoritarian attempt to make criticizing Trump professionally and personally and economically dangerous. We are going to keep going.

And by the way, as this happened, look at what we just learned about what the Trump administration is doing. Donald Trump told Americans that sending taxpayer money overseas is dangerous, wasteful, corrupt, unacceptable, and he will be America first. And we have learned that the Trump administration is now getting ready to send your money overseas. sees for one purpose, which is spreading MAGA around the world. A report from the Financial Times and Reuters finds that the Trump administration has found a bunch of MAGA aligned initiatives in Europe and elsewhere. And they are going to be sending them some beautiful grants. One would send

$2 million to countercensorship by the European Union's tech regulators. Roiders, has not independently verified every element of the Financial Times report, but they cite a State Department notice sent to members of Congress. And this is, look at what America first has become. Trump and Elon Musk spend months portraying regular foreign aid as one of the greatest scams in government. They shut down USAID. They say taxpayers are being robbed for social projects in other countries and so they froze all of it dismantled agencies. So many people lost their jobs and there were really good humanitarian operations, which were just they provided food, medicine, they helped prevent disease around the world thrown

into chaos. And they had a very simple argument, which is why would the US spend American money trying to influence what happens in other countries? We're America first. Let's get out of that business. Except we knew all along it was just about what they are paying for in other countries. And now Trump does want to spend American money in other countries as long as it helps his political movement.

And they have found these MAGA groups that he believes helps help his movement. It's not isolationism. It is foreign intervention of a sort. And there's a really important distinction to make. Foreign assistance can serve legitimate American interests. Like for example, if you support independent journalism in authoritarian government. governments overseas and you support election monitoring and fighting infectious disease and providing emergency food.

You can stabilize the planet, save lives, and it's better for the United States in the long term. Reasonable people can debate which programs work, how much should they cost, should they be supervised more closely or whatever. But using taxpayer money in those ways is arguably good for everybody in the United States. Taxpayer money to advance Trump's partisan political movement abroad is completely different. And MAGA sees itself. It's terrifying, but they see themselves as an international movement more and more. And Trump allies have built relationships with nationalist parties in Europe. They promote a lot of the

same hostility to immigrants and attacking the press, opposition to international institutions, saying that political opposition is like censoring me and this sort of stuff. And now, Now the Trump administration wants American taxpayers to finance that. Once this starts, where the hell does it end? Will grants go to organizations campaigning against governments Trump dislikes? Will the money go to media outlets that are aligned with the candidates Trump supports in other countries? The answer is almost certainly yes.

Now, in a sane world, before a single damn dollar was sent to this trash, we would have answers to all of these questions, we would have accountability. Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot for a second. If a Democratic president used the State Department to fund progressive ideological groups across Europe, they would be, Republicans would be saying it's election interference, the president is using tax money to build a national international political machine, and they would be right to object, Because I think American foreign assistance should advance broad national interests. It can't be a slush fund for the president's political brand. So go back to the promises.

Trump's first promise was America first. What he's building is MAGA everywhere paid for by you and me. And it's disgusting. It has to be stopped. Is it illegal? You know, as is often the case with this stuff. It's probably not illegal. And we had, you know, the founding fathers accounted for a lot of possibilities, but they never really accounted for someone like Trump getting into power for a decade. And it seems as though it may be legal, although disgusting, and a complete misuse of taxpayer money. We've got to get them out. On the bonus show today, I'm going to tell you about what I'll be up to the next couple of days. I think you will find it very interesting. And some of you may find it titillating, I would even say. Get instant access to the bonus show at

Joinpackman.com. And a limited number of signed copies of my new book pay attention are available now at David Pakman.com slash attention. Whether you get the signed copy, the not signed copy, the audio book, the Kindle, any version, you can email your receipt to info at David Pakman.com and say, David, put me in the raffle. What's the raffle for? The raffle is for this specific. This is the first copy. This is a numbered copy.

The first ever copy printed of the book. And the first copy of my first book, The Echo Machine. One person who enters the raffle will get both of these books together, sort of care package, VIP care package. I'll dedicate it to you. All you need to do is pre-order any version of pay attention and send your receipt to info at david packman dot com bonus show today high-stakes stuff that i will tell you about