The David Pakman Show - Trump allies consider martial law as White House implodes

Episode Date: October 19, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Trump allies openly discuss martial law and seizing election equipment if Republicans lose the midterm elections -- White House aides turn on each other and maneuver for power as internal polling signals Republican midterm losses -- Vladimir Putin floats a three-way summit with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping to negotiate Ukraine's future without Ukraine -- Donald Trump suspends bipartisan Russian sanctions just two days before they were set to take effect -- Ashley Hinson falsely claims her Democratic opponent Josh Turek supports secret school gender transitions for minors -- Mike Johnson claims a media conspiracy is dampening Republican enthusiasm as midterm polling worsens -- JD Vance faces scrutiny over awkward answers regarding inflation, administration corruption, and military casualties -- Footage shows Donald Trump once again veering while walking and repeatedly tapping his right thigh during public appearances -- On the Bonus Show: Protests and riots continue in France, Meta suspends the No Kings Instagram account, a military member dies at a football game after a fall, and much more... 🩳 Quince: Get free shipping & 365-day returns at https://quince.com/pakman 👂 MDHearing: Use code PAKMAN to get a pair for just $247 at https://shopmdhearing.com/ 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Book: https://bit.ly/m/attention -- Send David a text: [phone] -- 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 (01:22) Trump allies discuss martial law options (08:34) White House aides clash over midterms (18:31) Putin floats summit with Trump and Xi (26:02) Trump suspends bipartisan Russian sanctions (36:55) Ashley Hinson makes false gender claims (44:22) Mike Johnson blames media for low polling (51:55) JD Vance blamed Biden for high gas prices (1:02:11) Trump's veering off and thigh tapping continues Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Now, meanwhile, the Trump administration is descending into chaos. Aides are turning on each other. People are maneuvering for power. And they are right to be worried about what's coming in November. In an extraordinary development, Trump is now protecting Putin from sanctions while he abandons Ukraine. We are taking the side of the dictator, plus vice president, J.D. Vance, reminding us why they try to keep him out of the public light with a series of disastrous answers. And Mike Johnson seems

to realize he's about to get fired as Speaker of the House. Plus new video of Donald Trump wandering around in a way that raises even more questions about his physical and mental condition. Folks, we've got our one-day membership drive tomorrow. Make sure you're on my substack newsletter at substack. David Pakman.com. What a show we have. have for you today. They are talking about martial law. This is not a drill. This is not a practice.

This is the real thing. Donald Trump's allies are now openly discussing imposing martial law if they don't get the results they like in the forthcoming midterm election. We are talking about potentially putting the military in charge of civilian affairs, about suspending normal civilian authority. what martial law means and about using military force in circumstances where normally you would have civilian government and law enforcement. And the people talking about this are not just random anonymous accounts on Twitter.

These are people who have actually met with Donald Trump who have access to the White House. And they are now saying how do we respond if we don't like the results in November, which they almost certainly are not going to like. This is where the whole Trump's an authoritarian thing becomes very real. It's not bluster. It's not stuff he posts to troth central. It is the implementation of it. And authoritarianism, as we've talked about with experts over the last many years, it doesn't show up with a president announcing I am now the dictator and democracy is now over. It is a gradual process of normalizing things that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. Does that ring a bell for anybody as what we're experiencing right now?

And right now, we are normalizing discussions of martial law in response to an election. Axios has a new report titled Trump's MAGA allies openly discuss martial law. And the reporting says that there are election activists associated with MAGA who held a video conference on September 30th. And they talked about what they say is going to be widespread election fraud in November. We've still never had widespread election fraud in this country, but they're really sure it's going to happen this time. And of course, they're sure about it before the election has even taken place.

There's no evidence that it's going to be rigged unless they are rigging it. But regardless, they are preparing to claim that it was rigged. Now, look, one of the people on this call was Peter Tickton. He's a childhood friend of Trump's and an attorney for Tina Peters. Now, remember, Tina Peters is the former Colorado election official who was convicted of crimes connected to a breach of election equipment after 2020. She was involved in trying to steal Colorado. And the connection to Trump is that Peters and Tickton went and visited Trump at the White House in June.

Peters met with Trump again more recently. And during this video call on September 30th, Tickton said there would have to be martial law in the event of another supposedly rigged election. And he told Axios. ballots and election equipment might might need to be commandeered and seized. Now, there was another activist on the call, Gregory Stenstrom, who said, we may, we may want to. What if we pause the entire election over supposed security concerns or Trump could invoke emergency powers to force states to change election procedures, which by the way, actual election experts we've spoken to say,

Yeah, they can't really do that. So let's kind of summarize and understand what's being discussed here. An election will take place. Republicans won't like the outcome. And they might say there was fraud. And instead of accepting the results and pursuing legitimate legal challenges, which by the way, even if you're wrong, you can pursue a legitimate legal challenge like that we wouldn't go and say that's illegal.

Now, there are legitimate ways to challenge an election. And if they genuinely lost, then that will be the result. And if there was genuinely a problem, then we would figure it out. What they want to do is have Trump as president intervene using extraordinary powers. And Trump is not allowed to do that legally. The president as we've, no matter what they say, a president cannot unilaterally postpone congressional elections. States run those elections.

A president cannot declare martial law and use that to suddenly take over state election systems. We still have the constitution. emergency powers don't erase that. And it's important to understand that as of right now, Trump hasn't approved any of these proposals. They have just said, listen, we care about election security. We've got to count legal votes. But we know what they're up to. Now, look at the broader picture. Heather Honey, apparently her real name, promoted false claims about the 2020 election. She is now a senior election integrity specialist at Homeland Security.

That's terrifying. Peter Navarro keeps pushing these allegations of widespread fraud from 2020 inside Trump's administration. And now that we are two weeks from this election, people who have access to Trump are saying, what about martial law even though we are not even at the election yet? One of the central dangers of authoritarian politics is elections are only legitimate if you win them. If you lose them, suddenly, it's an emergency. The normal rules aren't good enough.

You need extraordinary powers. And the remarkable thing is that they're open about this. We should distinguish between what Trump's allies want and what Trump has decided he's going to do. We don't know yet if Trump will try to impose martial law. But when you have people with access to Trump who is very easy to sway, right, Trump usually goes with whatever the last person said before he got a camera turned on in front of him and a mic stuffed in front of his mouth.

Trump is very swayable. And if the people around him are talking about this stuff, that is terrifying. The question is not, does Trump have the legal authority to do these things? He doesn't. The question is, if he attempts them, are there institutions out there responsible for enforcing limits? Are there states out there? Are there governors and attorneys general and secretaries of state who would say, hey,

you know what? Trump said we should do this. Let's try to do it, even if that is not. what the law allows. So we've got a big push on the left. Let's get people registered and make sure they know their plan for voting. Let's get lawyers in place. Should there be spurious legal challenges? Oh, we're doing all of that stuff. Genuinely, two weeks out, the best defense against any of this stuff is a victory so big that no rigging would be possible. It has to be so overwhelming that if they start going, well, well, 11,000 votes in this count, it wouldn't make a

difference because we won by hundreds of thousands of votes. We won by millions of votes. That is the best protection. The best protection is beating them very, very badly. And what is now happening in parallel to the plans around what may happen on November 3rd is that a power struggle is growing as MAGAs start to realize we might be about to lose and we should discuss that. New reporting is that inside Donald Trump's White House, there are implosions taking place and a massive power struggle. And the most incredible and kind of interesting part is they haven't even lost the midterms

yet. They're almost certainly going to lose the House. We'll see about the Senate. They're going to lose some governorships, I hope. But they are not even there yet. And they're already fighting over who gets to take over when things go badly. And you've got people maneuvering to replace Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles. the idea that Stephen Miller might take that role.

Trump is reportedly furious with all of his own advisors. He should be. And everybody seems to be trying to figure out who do we blame for the election. The election hasn't even happened yet. Now there's something almost comical about this because remember this was supposed to be Trump 2.0. This is a more disciplined Trump. Everyone knows their roles and what they're doing.

There won't be infighting. There won't be firings. There won't be constant chaos. That didn't last very long. Trump's new press secretary, Katie Zachariah, was fired after five days. We have people struggling for power in order to take new positions after what seemed like some inevitable losses coming on November 3rd. And the Washington Post has this report called power struggle erupts in the White House. They spoke to 20 people. They spoke to White House staffers and advisors, people close to

Trump. A Trump ally said it's the Wild Wild West in the White House. And Susie Wiles, Trump's current chief of staff is at the center of a lot of this. Now, there are different views about Susie. There are those who view Susie Wiles as bringing a degree of order to the Trump White House as chief of staff. Except as we all look around, we see that there is no order. So we say, well, maybe she's not doing that that effectively. But the speculation is after Republicans at least lose the house in November, she's going to be leaving. Now, she hasn't announced she's leaving. She hasn't been fired. Nothing like that. But the belief is she will be leaving. And who wants her to do. job. Stephen Miller reportedly wants it and is positioning himself for it. Lee Zeldon is another

person who seems to want it. Bill Pulte wants it. Now, I think the Bill Pulte part of this is remarkable. According to the Washington Post report, Pulte's been bringing giant poster boards onto Air Force 1 and Marine 1 and even onto the golf course to pitch Trump on ideas. And sometimes he puts pictures of Trump on the poster boards. So he seems to be. to know how to get Trump's attention. And apparently Trump has complained there are so many poster boards. The White House residence is now cluttered with them. Imagine that. You're trying to become chief of staff. You're trying to convince Trump that you're the guy to do it. So you bring in bigger and bigger pictures of Trump, absurd imagery. But there's a real power struggle that's happening

here. Trump reportedly brought in Katie Zachariah, the failed press secretary, without even talking to Susie Wiles. It's plausible that Susie Wiles would have said that's not a good idea. And it seems as though Trump not consulting Susie Wiles is him undermining her and suggesting he doesn't really care about her counsel anymore. And at the same time, Trump's been calling people outside of his circle because he's worried my circle may not be giving me the most accurate information. Why aren't people defending me aggressively enough. And he's reportedly been complaining about the people running his midterm strategy, which he should be because if they are saying go out and campaign for all these people in places you're unpopular, it's a very bad strategy. And so the people advising him are caught up in all

sorts of controversy. I won't even go into this tangential story, but the Serbian dominated part of Bosnia has some consulting work that is now tied up with people working for Trump. It's like a, crazy just corruption and these incestuous relationships. But it doesn't matter. The point is factions in the White House are maneuvering against others. You've got people feeding Trump negative stories about their adversaries. Everybody is trying to figure out what happens next. Now, why is all of this happening? It's happening because the internal Republican polling about the forthcoming elections looks really bad for Republicans. And because support for Republican candidates keeps declining, and you've got voters saying, Republicans aren't addressing my concerns. I have economic concerns.

I've, they're saying, I mean, they're going to stay home or vote for Democrats. And a lot of Trump advisors have come to believe they will lose the House. They're concerned about the Senate. And instead of them pulling together and saying, hey, let's figure out how to win this, they seem to have acknowledged it's not possible. And so what we're seeing is there's still starting to protect themselves. Now, the White House denies all of it. And Trump in public goes, this is the most united we've ever been. They say everybody's united. We're focused on winning. These are anonymous reports from people just causing trouble. But the timing of this is remarkable because the election hasn't happened yet. Susie Wiles hasn't resigned. The midterms haven't led to

anybody being fired yet, but they're already maneuvering. And it's a reminder of something we saw during Trump's first term, which is that as soon as his political operation faces any pressure, the struggle for influence becomes the story. And the struggle is becoming public because on the one hand, you've got people who don't want to end up on Trump's naughty list for having done the wrong thing. But on the other hand, the people that are seeing the writing on the wall are saying to themselves, I need a place to land. Stephen Miller says, Susie Wiles might be gone.

I'll try to take her job. A lot of other people are saying to themselves, well, hold on a second. Once this is over, how are we going to position ourselves for our next job if we were involved in an embarrassing law? So the interest of my interest is the more dysfunctional this White House is, the more poorly coordinated their attempts to rig the election will be. And so their distraction with the interpersonal problem. and the personality battles and all of it should be taken advantage of by Democrats.

Now, we are going to do everything we can and get out every single vote that we can count every vote. We're going to be doing all of it. I hope you'll join me for live results on November 3rd. I'll be live, live, live on YouTube, Twitch, all these different platforms. Hope you'll be with us. And tomorrow, we have our one-day membership special to gear up for these next two years. If you've been thinking of supporting the show. Tomorrow would be a great day to do it. Get on my newsletter at substack.davidpack.com. You'll get an email tomorrow with a beautiful discount code that you can use to get a membership on my website. We'll take a quick break. What a show today. You know those pieces in your closet you wear on repeat because the sweater fits perfectly or the

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Go to shopmdhearing.com. Use my promo code, Pacman. The link is in the description. Vladimir Putin wants a three-way with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. And I have to tell you when I first saw the headline, I thought, of course, he does. These are three authoritarian leaders or authoritarian minded leaders who would love nothing more than to get together and decide what's going to happen with Ukraine without even involving Ukraine in the discussion.

Let's decide about other people's lives without involving them. Now, the headline is funny. They want to have this three way. This is a very disturbing story. And I want to fight becoming accustomed to this insanity because this is really terrifying stuff. Reuters is reporting that the Kremlin is floating a three-way meeting between Russian President Putin, Trump, and Chinese President Xi Jinping next month in China. And the point of this would be, let's figure out how we end Russia's war in Ukraine.

Now, I want you to notice the most obvious thing about the meeting. Who is missing? Ukraine is missing. Let's talk about how to end the war in Ukraine. Let's not involve Ukraine in the conversation. It is extraordinary. Now, the Kremlin is saying we haven't agreed to the meeting yet. It's still hypothetical.

But the fact that this is even being floated tells you about how Putin views Trump. Trump is seen by Putin as someone that he can sit down, Putin can sit Trump down, bring in Xi Jinping, who we know Trump is completely enamored with, and push Trump over in the negotiation of the fate of another sovereign country that Putin has been attacking and invading. And why wouldn't Putin assume that he can do this? Well, it's obvious. Trump has spent 10 years now praising authoritarian strongmen, expressing deep admiration for their power, treating democratic allies as though they are merely these annoying obstacles standing in the way of Trump's personal relationships with dictators. And remember that it is Putin who invaded Ukraine.

Russia's the aggressor. Ukraine didn't invade Russia. Ukraine didn't launch a war of conquest against its neighbor. Ukraine is defending itself. And what they are scheming is that Putin, Trump, and Xi will get together and just figure out what is Ukraine's future? How much of the land that Russia has taken is it going to get to keep? Well, China and Trump are going to decide. And just imagine if somebody invaded the United States and the leaders of Russia, China, and the invading country got together and said, which, which U.S. states are, is the environment? invading force going to get to keep. Nobody would consider that legitimate.

And Ukraine's foreign minister is making the right point here, which is that, listen, if we can have a meeting involving Ukraine, Russia, and the United States, if you get Putin and Zelensky together or more likely it would be their delegates, if you get them together with with US diplomats, we might actually be able to end the war, at least potentially. But if it's Russia, China, and the United States, that's going to encourage. to continue because Putin will see I can create the appearance of negotiating without the other party even being involved. And this is sort of the fundamental issue.

Putin wants to be treated sort of as an equal partner in determining the outcome of this war. He wants to be seen as legitimate. He wants to be recognized. He wants the world to accept that, hey, powerful countries can negotiate over the heads of smaller countries. as opposed to other American presidents who would go, of course we're not doing that. That's completely inappropriate. Trump seems susceptible to that.

Trump loves the spectacle of sitting across from powerful men. Trump doesn't see Zelensky as powerful. He sees Putin as powerful. And he wants the imagery of the handshakes and the photographs and declarations that nobody else could have made this deal. But in reality, real diplomacy isn't about flattering Trump. It's can we get a durable peace deal here and get Russia the hell out of Ukraine? You can't have a legitimate peace deal for Ukraine without Ukraine being involved in the negotiations.

Now, I am not suggesting that maybe there are people out there going the US should never talk to Russia in any of this. No, I'm not saying. Of course it should. The whole point here is if we want to be an intermediary to peace, you've got to talk to the two parties involved, Russia and Ukraine. But meeting with Russia and China and allowing authoritarian leaders to carve up another country's future because they know that they can bully you and they can continue.

convince you and you're enamored with them is particularly disturbing. Now, the thing about Trump, Trump regularly treats America's democratic allies with a lot of contempt. You know, France and Spain he's all about. At one point, it was Denmark. And he just treats them with serious disdain. But then he kind of just defers to Putin. He defers to she.

And the countries that at least I thought shared our democratic values get last. lectured by Trump. They get threatened by Trump. But the dictators are admired and Trump goes, they run their country so strongly. And that is not the way it's supposed to be. It is a completely backwards understanding of American interest. So I'm not surprised Putin wants a three way. And I'm not surprised Trump is into the three way. The real question is, does Trump understand or care about the fact that Ukraine is an independent country rather than a bargaining chip that Trump can go, I might trade Ukraine to Putin for something else. That is the terrifying and disgusting part. And we are going to find out very quickly if there's any progress to be made here. Now, think back to the beginning.

Trump's promises during the presidential campaign were the day I become president elect this war ends. The day I become president again, the war ends. Within a month it'll end. Within a hundred days, it'll end. And then suddenly you had Marco Rubio going, yeah, you know, we might end up kind of walking away from this thing. And it seemed as though Trump has had lost interest. Why is Trump interested again? Two basic basic reasons. Reason number one, he's realizing that to a degree, a small degree in reality, but Trump wants to play up the degree to which the energy crisis is because of Russia and Ukraine, not because

of Iran. In reality, most of the energy crisis is because of Trump's decision to go into Iran. But Trump doesn't want to acknowledge that. So he likes the idea of appearing to make deals with Putin on energy to bring down the price of gas, et cetera, even though it's really mostly Iran. That imagery is useful to Trump. But number two, Trump is reinvigorated in his interest in Russia, Ukraine because he sees this opportunity to meet with the dictators that he admire so much and to play coy with

the fact that they're completely anti-democratic and just go, listen, we're the big boys here negotiating. And to portray himself or to kind of center himself as the big boy dealmaker on the level of Putin and she. and Putin and she know that if they sort of pretend to respect Trump, Trump will give him whatever he wants because Trump is enamored with dictators. That's why Trump is reinvigorated here, not because he genuinely cares about peace, not because all of a sudden he's interested in diplomacy. He thinks, I think we can position me to look strong. And this raises an even broader question. Has the United States effectively

switched sides? And I want to talk about what I mean by that next. We're apparently friends with Russia. now. And we seem to have abandoned Ukraine. We seem to have abandoned the defense of democracy. And Trump seems to have decided that the interests of Putin are more important than the interests of our own allies. And I want to talk about the most disturbing part here, which is that Trump supporters are going to defend this by asking, isn't it better to get along with Russia? And we've been dealing with this for a while all the way back to the beginning of the Trump Russia stuff during the first term. Every time concerned, were raised about manipulation and interests and Trump sort of being led around like a dog by

Putin. You had these magas going, what, you don't want us to get along with Russia? Isn't it nicer to get along with people as though that is some kind of brilliant insight into foreign policy? Now, it seems obvious, but it's worthy of discussing a little more deeply. Is it better than than not to get along with other countries. Yeah, sure. Of course. But you have to ask whether those countries have your best interest in mind, whether you're getting anything in return.

But more importantly, are you really getting along in a productive and useful way? Or have you been manipulated by people into thinking you're getting along and really you're just giving them things and getting nothing in return? In other words, is your president so damn gullible that a dictator can manipulate him with a few compliments so that you can check the box of we're getting along and it's so nice. And that is exactly what is happening here. And it happened with Kim Jong-un to a great degree during Donald Trump's first term. Now, there's a very good piece about this in the Atlantic that will link to. Tom Nichols wrote it.

It's called America is now an ally of Russia. And again, you might go, we should be more allies is better than fewer allies. But you've got to understand the details. Congress passed bipartisan legislation that put sanctions on Russia and the country's helping Russia to wage its war against Ukraine. Why? Because Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is defending itself.

Trump signed it. And just two days before those sanctions were going to take effect, Trump suspended the sanctions. So think about that. Congress correctly says Putin invaded a sovereign country. We're going to punish Putin. And Trump steps in and goes, no, I'm going to protect Putin from the consequences. And what is Trump's explanation? The explanation is, well, it's in America's national interest. How? Why? What, what are we getting? No one can explain it. And at the same time, as I told you about last week, Donald Trump is easing restrictions on Russian diesel sales so Russia

can make more money from diesel, which gives it money to fund this war. Now, Nichols in his article suggests part of the motivation might be that Trump is desperate to lower energy prices before the midterms. I concur. I mentioned that in the last segment. And of course, it's the war with Iran that has sent prices soaring. But Trump's like, maybe this will help a little bit. But I think that there's actually something even more disturbing here. Trump has essentially admitted he's afraid of upsetting Putin. He doesn't want to drive Russia away. And he said Putin could do a lot more to help Iran militarily than he's doing. If Putin and Russia really wanted to make him, make it harder for the U.S. in Iran, he could do it. So I'm scared and I don't want to provoke

Vladimir Putin. Think about how backwards that is. The president is effectively saying, we have to be careful not to upset Putin because Putin might retaliate by helping our enemies. Is that the super strong alpha male approach that Donald Trump promised us? It's not strength. It's not diplomacy. It's just letting Putin hold the United States as foreign policy hostage. That's not strengthen anyway. And this gets to the sort of deeper problem with Trump's worldview. Trump doesn't understand the difference between getting along personally with advancing American interests.

And we saw this in the Kim Jong-un summits. Oh, we got along so well. And I stepped into North Korea and we shook hands. And it was great. And we wrote each other love letters. But as it advanced American interests at all, if Putin smiles at him and compliments him and goes, you're a great leader and you had such a strong victory, sir, Trump is like, I'm winning.

I succeeded in the relationship. Putin doesn't care whether Trump feels respected. Putin wants to expand Russian influence. If tricking Trump into thinking Putin respects him helps him expand Russian influence, Putin's good with that. Or if it helps him weaken NATO or if it helps him subjugate Ukraine or undermine democratic alliances, he's willing Putin is to sort of lose a little bit of face. globally by flattering Trump because it lets him accomplish those goals. So of course he would do it.

Now, Nichols in his piece makes one other observation. Trump views international politics as relationships between powerful bosses rather than countries. For Trump, he applies his sort of New York City real estate bully approach to his relationships with the leaders of other countries. Either you got to boss them around to get what you want, which has been his perspective with our Democratic allies mostly, or we're going to make nice and give dictators respect because they're very strong. And that's what Trump has been doing with dictators and authoritarian. And what ends up happening is that it's humiliating for the United States. It's humiliating for our actual Democratic allies. And you end up with a country like Ukraine that is fighting for its survival against

an invading army being treated like this inconvenient mosquito you're trying to slap because its president refuses to surrender. If Zelensky just surrendered and gave up all the land, I could smack this mosquito and move on. Now, none of this says Russia can't be part of negotiations. Russia has to be part of the negotiations. They're involved. You need actual negotiations with the parties involved to get results. But they aren't supposed to consist of negotiating by giving a dictator everything he wants because you're terrified. He's going to stop being your friend. And that is what I wish the magas were asking what tell me a single thing that the United States has gained under this Trump doctrine of total deference to Putin. Has Russia withdrawn from Ukraine? Has Russia become more democratic? Has Putin

abandoned territorial ambitions? Has he stopped helping other adversaries of the United States? No. Putin gets sanctions relief. Ukraine gets abandoned. America's allies lose confidence in us. And Trump goes, let's negotiate the future of Ukraine with Russia and China. Give me a break. This is Putin first. And the terrible tragedy is that the U.S. is surrendering its democratic leadership without getting anything in return. If we could really point to something and say, look what we got, we made some sacrifices.

We had to, you know, take it on the chin when it comes to democratic values. But we got some real gains here. Some people's lives will now be better. We don't have any of that. It is shameful. And these alliances, I know that they're, you know, it's crazy because there was a time where for different reasons, the mainstream right and the mainstream left were basically united that for all of its flaws, democracy is the best system we've come up with.

And there are flaws. Socrates knew about a lot of the flaws of democracy. And they were, you know, you could end up with a Trump. But we understood that. And what you have now is a right that to a degree has been taken over by the authoritarian leanings of people like Trump. And you have a left that in the fringes, I don't think it's my audience, but in the fringes of the left, people who go, no, you know what?

Some of these autocrats are actually better than what we have in the United States, either because of their anti-capitalist leanings or for other reasons. And so you have now contingencies on both the left and right that are saying, maybe the authoritarian way is actually the way we should be going. It is terrifying. And the last 10 years of Trump's flirting with dictators should really be a reminder of that. Here's something people don't think about enough. There is not much of a line between online privacy and real world safety.

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When you try sheath, it will make sense. Go to sheathunderware.com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman for 20% off. The link is in the description. Republicans are now just casually claiming children are going to school, secretly changing their gender without their parents knowing. and then coming home as a different gender. And Trump has even suggested that these are secret surgeries that are going on. And apparently they must believe Republican voters are stupid enough to believe this crap

because I haven't heard from anybody on the left who believes it. So this is an example of what Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson is telling voters in Iowa about her Democratic opponent, Josh Turek. Josh Turek has been on this show and he's a great candidate and he is not. pushing any of this stuff, but Ashley Hinson says, oh, Josh Turek supports allowing kids to change their gender at schools and not tell their parents. Listen to what she had to say. Those are his real votes, allowing kids to change their gender at school and not tell the parents. He's not talking about that because he wants to run from his liberal record. He's too liberal for Iowa.

What are we talking about here? What are we doing here? Are we, do they want us to believe that children are going to school in the morning, getting an operation to change their genitalia between, you know, algebra and lunch and coming home without their parents knowing. Now, there is, there is a distinction here which they are deliberately not making. Now, if these Republicans genuinely believe that that's happening, I would love to have a single example. Give me a single example of a kid anywhere in the country who obtained a single, secret operation. I don't even know if I'm supposed to say sex change. I'm not trying to offend anybody. A gender reassignment surgery, gender affirming surgery. Is there a single example of that

that you can point to? Because if there is, they still haven't pointed to it. Now, let me tell you what is actually going on and how deceptive they're being. Josh Turek voted against an I. There's a state law. Josh Turek voted against an Iowa education law that requires schools to notify parents when a student requests to use a different name or different pronouns. That's it. Okay. No surgery.

No puberty blockers. No hormones. No testosterone. No vitamin C. No right. Like nothing, nothing happening secretly. just a law that would not require the school to go, hey, your kid whose name is Robert wants to go by Bobby or your kid says they want to go by she or they instead of he.

That's all that we're talking about. Now, you could be for or against that. Totally fine. There are arguments I've heard for why schools should or shouldn't make the decision to notify. It's a debate that we can have. But Ashley Henson's campaign is being completely dishonest in this. And they've made the same accusations in an ad that shows surgeons operating on somebody. Like it looks like a surgery is going on when they say it.

But all we're talking about is names and pronouns. Now, PolitiFact investigated this. They said it's a completely false claim. Give us one person, one person that had one of these secret surgeries, a boy. that went to school and came home with female genitalia. Give us a single example of this. Now, there's another important detail here, really important detail, which is that Josh Turek's campaign has taken a position on surgeries for minors. And Josh Turek's campaign has said he does not support gender affirming surgeries for minors. So it is not a complicated factual

dispute. They're taking a vote on school notification requirements about names or pronouns, and they want to make it into this terrifying fantasy about kids deciding on their own to go under the knife and having surgery without anybody having. By the way, how do the kids get to the hospital or the surgery center from the school? Like we, it doesn't matter. This is part of a much bigger pattern. Okay. Remember the obsession with transgender athletes? And how could you forget it's, They're still obsessed with it to a degree. And you would think listening to Republicans that every girl's basketball team in America has been taken over by trans athletes.

But remember, in its roughly 500,000 student athlete database in 2024, the NCAA identified fewer than 10 trans athletes across the entire country. That means most states have zero, one, or two. And we are talking about all openly trans athletes in the NCAA, not just trans women, right? There's also trans men and they don't even care about that because they don't find there to be any even hypothetical competitive issue there. Now again, should there be legitimate conversations about fairness and competitive athletics? Of course.

Of course. And as I and others have said before, different sports have different physical demands. I love inclusivity up until the point at which it creates a fairness issue. And people can debate eligibility rules. But the most important thing about it is there's no place for this in federal government. We don't need the federal government involved in something where there's 10 NCAA trans athletes. And by the way, the NCAA already changed its rules last year to ban athletes assigned male at birth from being on women's teams.

So why are they talking about it constantly? they don't want to talk about the economy. It's much more useful politically to scare people about trans surgeries in school or not even in school during the school day than it is about explaining, hey, Trump promised in 2015 we were going to get a beautiful health care plan. We still don't have it. What is going on? Why is housing so expensive? Trump said it would get cheaper. Why do I spend 100 bucks on groceries and get nothing? And that kind of brings me back to Josh Turek. I interviewed Josh recently. He's a phenomenal candidate. He's a Paralympic gold medalist. He's a state legislator. He cares about health care affordability,

corruption, improving people's lives. Go watch my interview with him. Okay. And compare Josh and the way he communicates and the ideas he's talking about to what Ashley Hinson is saying. The choice that is here is we can have a real conversation about the economy health care corruption in the future of the country. Josh Turek is the one who's doing that. Or you can spend another election cycle pretending elementary schools are performing secret sex changes and putting litter boxes for kids who think they're cats to poop in. That's where we are. If you are a Republican voter, you should be insulted that Trump and Hinson and your party thinks that they will get your vote by lying to you about this idiocy. You should be furious

with them. And Josh Turrick, great option, great option in Iowa. Mike Johnson is the Speaker of the House, but not for long. He may be about to lose his job as Speaker of the House. And rather than acknowledge, you know, Trump is really screwing us. We are being dragged down by Donald Trump. We need to separate from him. And this is going to be a disaster in November. And remember, Mike Johnson has come up with a conspiracy theory to explain why are Republicans doing so poorly? And I want you to really watch his face as he says it because I believe that we are watching someone who knows exactly how much trouble he's in here.

But he has an idea. It's the fault of everybody else that Republicans might not do so well in November. The mainstream media is advancing this narrative. I believe there's a concerted effort between the Democrats and the mainstream media. there are allies in the media that are by the way i believe is not i have evidence for openly biased in their favor they want to disparate the republican side they want to discourage turnout on the republican side and so it can come up become a self-fulfilling prophecy uh that they that they uh prevail in the election we cannot buy into it don't buy it i don't believe they're reliable

polls anymore even even some of our own candidates who are doing internal polling they even they have a hard time getting Republicans to respond to polls because Republicans don't trust pollsters anymore. And they can't discern when they get a call who's who's originating the call. And that is affecting the outcome of the polls. I see. Okay. So let me see if I understand here, Mike.

Republicans aren't doing badly because Trump is unpopular. They're not doing badly because people are furious that all of the promises that Trump made have failed to materialize. And the economy is going in the wrong direction. We still don't have a new health care plan. Trump is enriching himself to the tune of billions with his corrupt dealings. There's complete another chaos in the administration. We don't have any press briefings.

His newest press secretary lasted five days and lied about being a lawyer. No, no, no, no, no, no. The reason that Republicans might not do well is that there's a conspiracy between Democrats and the media to discourage Republican voters from voting. What is so, I mean, it sounds so stupid as I say it. What is so revealing about this is that Mike Johnson can't at least publicly entertain the possibility that Republicans might not like what Republicans are doing. Maybe you aren't going to win because voters don't like what you've done.

There's a level of arrogance required to believe that. Your party controls everything. The Republicans control Congress, House and Senate, Republican is in the White House. been in there for two years. Voters go, hey, we're unhappy. And your explanation is someone must be tricking them, which by the way, also means that your voters are all stupid. All these Republican voters, who we hear from who go, yeah, the promises didn't come true and I'm not happy in the economy's not. You're saying they're all so stupid that they've been tricked by the media conspiring with Democrats. No, they go to the grocery store and they go, geez, this is, this is really bad. They get their electric bill.

And they're like, what the F? I was told this would be something different. And notice what Johnson is doing. He's not offering any evidence of this conspiracy because he doesn't have any evidence of it. He's just going, okay, Republicans are struggling. It can't be that it's because Republicans haven't delivered for them. So I'm going to invent this whole other thing, which absolves us of responsibility. Now, just a reminder about how long Maga Mike Johnson has been worried about losing. This clip is from February. And Mike Johnson said, we covered it at the time. If we lose the midterms, God forbid, it's the end of Trump's presidency.

Don't threaten me with a good time, Mike. He needs all four years, not just to fix the mess. And that's what we need. If we lost the midterms, heaven forbid. If we lost the majority in the house, it would be the end of the Trump presidency in a real effect. So we've got to keep this going. And I think we're excited to put our candidates on the field to explain all this for the people.

Yeah. Well, that excitement seems to have diminished. finished a little bit, but we know, dude, we know it's the end of Trump's presidency if you all lose in November. That's why we're so excited. There's one other maybe even more outrageous thing about all this. If Mike Johnson wants to talk about efforts to discourage voters or to undermine elections, maybe he should look at what Republicans have been doing because Republican officials are the ones

supporting, you know, aggressive voter roll purges and using questionable data to remove voters. that are potentially eligible, they've been pushing vote by mail restrictions, closing polling places, widespread claims about fraud and all of this stuff. And Trump has attacked mail-in voting and tried to change the rules as to who the Postal Service can deliver a mail-in ballot to. And now we have a situation where they have probably dissuaded voters more than anybody on the left has. Of course, I mean, like, I don't know that I need to do these disclaimers, but like you want to make sure that you You have security, accuracy, access, all in place. But let's not pretend that the people that have spent years casting doubt on election results

are suddenly the victims of a sinister conspiracy to undermine voter confidence. And there's another reason that MAGA Mike Johnson is panicking. If Dems take control of the House, he loses his speakership, yes, but they also lose control of every single congressional committee. And they're all going to face oversight. their corruption will be investigated. There will be investigations into the conflicts of interest that we've seen and the conduct of administration officials. They will they will be subject to subpoenas. There will be hearings. There will be some accountability. So Johnson knows this. He

has spent almost a year, I guess it's been nine months or something, warning. These Dems will turn congressional committees into investigative bodies if they win. Damn right, we will. That's right, Mike. That is part of what Congress is supposed to do. And they're terrified. They are absolutely terrified. So let's make sure this happens. The polls look good, but the polls are not election results. Republicans could still win.

Democrats still have to persuade voters. They have to organize. They have to turn people out and all of that. But the reaction from Mike Johnson here tells you so much about their mentality. When they're winning, the elections are proof. The American people love Trump. If they're losing, it must be a conspiracy. It just must be.

They're rejecting your agenda. That's what's happening here. And let's hope. Let's hope. Let's make it a reality. Let's make at the end of Mike Johnson's speakership. And it will be not because anyone was tricked. Oh, he lost his speakership because the media and Democrats tricked Republicans.

It will be because voters looked at what Republicans did with all of the power. over the last two years and they will go, that wasn't good. We've had enough. Let's get at least some of these people out of power. 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 join packman.com. You'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show and plenty of other great membership perks.

Get the full experience by signing up at Join packman.com. Vice President J.D. Vance might be the least charismatic politician in America. And somehow I don't even find that to be the most disturbing thing about him because underneath that awkwardness and his robotic answers and his complete inability to connect with people as a normal human being, despite all of that, there is something pretty dangerous going on. And I think we should talk about it because he is a heartbeat away from the presidency and sort of considered to be one of the frontrunners.

be the nominee in 2028 for the Republican Party, although I do not believe that that's going to work out for him. And I have three clips for you here that really tell the story. Now, first, so he did a town hall, I guess they're calling it over the weekend with Tony DeCopal. It was quite contentious at times. And he was asked about high gas prices. And his explanation, of course, was, oh, it's Joe Biden's fault. America, that's actually the biggest reason why gas prices are so high is because when When Joe Biden was president, we had about 20% of American refining capacity that went offline. We're slowly bringing that online, but it does take a little bit of time.

And because we shut down so much refining capacity, we were more susceptible to the shock that we've seen in the Middle Eastern energy prices. So there's a lot that we are doing. It's just we also are working against an Iranian regime that's shooting at commercial shipping. But my friend, advanced, go ahead. If I may, Kishan's talking about this increase. in gas prices, just since you guys took office, it's almost been two years. At a certain point, it becomes your economy, not Joe Biden's economy. Also, back in March, right here in Michigan, you said it was just a temporary blip in gas prices. How long is temporary?

Well, look, I don't think that when this conflict is over, we are going to see gas prices come down. Oh, my God, these people, I mean, it's just, he's so pathetic. He's so, we're almost two years into this presidency, And they are still blaming Joe Biden. And by the way, he's lying. We lost 20% of our refining capacity under Biden. The net decline was tiny. Significant closures were from Trump's first term, not when Biden was president. But it's the war with Iran that has driven up energy prices.

Vance can't acknowledge any of that. And what you need to understand about JD is he is not an authentic working class populist. JD has been created of the Silicon Valley billionaire political ecosystem, particularly Peter Teal, who financed his political career. And this is the techno-libertarian world of billionaires who love to talk about freedom, but they embrace the idea that democracy itself is really a problem. Democracy is getting in the way of us doing what we want. And they believe they should be in charge.

And they are coming to believe that J.D. Vance is their vehicle. So we need to be very careful about the future of Vance here because Vance is essentially a venture capitalist, pretending to be a working class populist. And unlike Trump, who at least has some bizarre, undeniable ability to connect with his audience, Trump has a certain type of charisma that some people like. Vance has none of it. Now, the second clip is maybe even more revealing. Vance was asked about Trump's corruption. Okay.

Listen to his answer. The issue that voters see and that gets on their mind and that I hear what I'm out, there is the president is making a lot of money off of crypto. His own IRS has barred itself from looking into his tax returns. You have this recent issue with the ambassador to Greece, seeming to sell access to the White House. That's why people are concerned. And if there's nothing to hide, you say you've seen nothing. First of all, somebody's selling access to the White House. That's disgusting and despicable when they should suffer consequences. That's a big if, huh? I'm saying is, I want to make those judgments based on the fact.

and not based on a random news media report that I read. Fair enough. So when the facts are being investigated, let's say in January, if there's a Democratic-controlled Congress, will you comply and honor subpoenas? Of course. Of course I will. Look, I mean, we follow the law.

I follow the law. I'm a law-abiding guy outside of speeding, which luckily, thanks to the Secret Service and the generosity of the American people, I don't drive anymore. Probably good for the insurance rates in southwestern Ohio. But look, man, I...

I think that I've seen these media reports, and I have the same reaction I imagine a lot of people in this room have, which it makes me uneasy when I read about my public officials potentially getting wealthy off of my public trust. And I'm telling you that while, yes, DC is a corrupt town, Tony, you know this as well as anybody. Donald Trump, I have not seen a single shred of evidence

that he participates or sanctions in that corruption. By the way, what? What? This guy was a billionaire before we ever got into politics. He made a lot of money before he got into politics. Would anybody look at what happened to him from 2016 to 2021? They tried to throw him in jail for like 900 years and say that Donald Trump has personally enriched himself.

You can make all kinds of criticism. He has. He has. ... our policies and decisions, but I don't see a single... I've not once seen evidence that Donald Trump has enriched himself. Trump's businesses, his family's crypto venture, the foreign financial investments, the extraordinary conference. of interest.

There's no evidence here. What are you talking about? I believe this is a massive opportunity for Dems. People are furious about corruption and they're furious that billionaires seem to control everything. They're furious that politicians get rich. Trump making billions last year from crypto while Americans struggle. And Vance is incapable of speaking credibly about any of it because he is joined at the hip to Trump.

And he owes his political rise to billionaire. money at the end of the day. Trump's billionaire money, Peter Thiel's billionaire money. Now here's a third clip. This really captures how fundamentally unfit Vance's. Vance was confronted by a grieving husband of an American service member who was killed in the Iran war. The war that's going on right now.

Okay. The man wants to know how will leadership be held accountable for these deaths? And Vance seems to have no idea what's going on or what the guy's talking about. I'll always with us in the audience tonight is Joey Amor, whose wife, a U.S. soldier, master Sergeant Nicole Amor was killed in March in an Iranian air strike. Joe, your floor is yours. God bless you, Joey, and thank you for your service. Thank you, sir.

And her. Mr. Vice President, my wife, Master's Art, Nicole Amor, gave her life on March 1st, 2026. I am damn proud of my wife. As you should be. And the five soldiers that stood next to her had died alongside with her. Excuse me. Take your time, man. Take your time.

they raised their right hand and they gave an oath they understood what they were doing he understood the sacrifice that they were potentially giving you understand that oath I understand that oath there are now six families

living in a nightmare that is it is a hard price to pay though the Iranian drone was the weapon that killed my wife there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of fundamental failures that led up to that. I believe CBS is reported on that.

My wife has told me things before she passed. There are other soldiers that know things that are being quiet about certain aspects of this. There's a failure in the leadership, and I want to know how this administration is going to start holding those leaders accountable for the actions and the deaths of the soldiers that we honor and that we love.

So, Joey, first of all, look, I owe and the whole country owes your family a debt of gratitude that is quite literally impossible to repay. I won't pretend that anything that I say is going to make it better or easier, but I hope it helps a little bit to know that your wife was a precious human being who served her country honorably, and I'm never going to forget about her. I'm never going to forget this conversation, and I want to continue this conversation offline because that raises the second point.

When you talk about failures that were, that we were implicated, the administration, the Department of War, whoever you want to say was implicated in, I want to know about that stuff. Because if there were failures, and I don't doubt there were, I just, this literally the first time I've heard of this is this conversation. What? What? What is wrong with this guy? You're standing in front of somebody whose spouse was killed in a war and there's this weird defensive bureaucratic non-answer. And he seems to have no idea that this even took place.

Has he ever interacted with an actual human being experiencing grief? And the problem is, I mean, listen, he completely lacks all charisma and gravitas. Okay, but that's not the fundamental problem. He is ideologically out to lunch. He's billionaire backed by these techno libertarian. Okay. All of that stuff. But then he's confronted with this person who says, hey, this is what we experienced.

And he's like, if there were failures, this is the first time hearing it. What are you talking to me about right now? And we have to be very careful about the effort that J.D. What J.D. Vance represents at the end of the day. an effort to turn Trumpism into something more permanent, more ideological, and definitely more dangerous. And Trump's getting a lot of attention. But this guy's waiting in the wings.

And J.D. Vance without the charisma is still Trumpism. And it could even be worse. And that is absolutely terrifying. Donald Trump is increasingly looking like a man who can no longer walk from one. place to another. And there is a new video that I want you to see because at this point, the strange walking and the wandering and the repeated tapping of his right thigh, it is a pattern so recurring that we must scrutinize it. This is the guy who spent years mocking Joe Biden for supposedly being too old and too physically incapable and too mentally incapable to serve as

president. Look at this. And by the way, I did not add the music to this, but you're going to hear some music. I didn't add the music to it. You will see Trump unable to trace a straight line. that right thigh endlessly and also struggling again, there's suspicion that he's wearing leg braces of some kind. Look at this. It's like what what exactly do his legs do right there? That is really strange guys. Really, really strange. All right. You get the picture. Um, listen, I save this to the end of the show because there's so many important policy issues going on and an election and people struggling. But like, come on, guys. What's going on here?

Look at the way he's walking. He's veering from side to side. He can't just walk straight. His right hand and his right leg, he's just slapping and slapping. We've documented this. We've spoken to experts who say this may be a sort of bracing thing to remind him, hey, you're about to need to do something with your body. And what's interesting is that it often seems like when he's navigating surroundings, he's having this issue. We don't know why he does this. There's neurological conditions that could explain it. They affect gate balance and coordination. We can't really know from this video. There is discomfort.

There's stiffness. There's arthritis habit being 80 years old. We don't know because they won't tell us. But we have a recurring pattern here that's worth asking about. This isn't the only recent incident. Trump coming down aircraft stairs slowly, gripping the railing, slapping his leg, looking down at his feet. It's weird.

We've seen footage where he is walking in a sort of, it's like a sign wave. He just can't walk a straight line. We have videos of him really struggling to navigate relatively straightforward routes. Everybody sometimes stumbles or changes direction or looks uncomfortable, but it's reasonable to ask especially when it's the president what on earth is going on here. And this is where I believe the White House has a credibility problem. Remember that the administration disclosed last year when they could resist it any longer that Trump has chronic venous insufficiency. That can cause swelling in the legs. That's a real condition. Okay.

It doesn't explain all of the unusual movements. And Trump's physicians say he's in great health. He had one guy say he's healthier than Obama was when Obama became president in his 40s. So we just don't know what's going on. We're left in a situation of absence of information. The official medical assessments sound reassuring if you believe them, but they sound like propaganda documents. And every video we see raises more questions.

And he's up half the night posting messages to social media. So it's not like, oh, that's part. It's a neurological disorder. We don't know. Oldest president ever, extraordinarily demanding job, made his own physical and cognitive superiority a central part of why he's the right choice for president. And remember how he treated Biden where every stumble was definitive proof Biden couldn't do it. Every awkward step was proof Biden couldn't do it.

And Trump encouraged that. If walking slowly means you can't be president, I don't think Trump. can be president. If appearing disoriented means you can't be president, Biden can't be president. But Trump, if it meant it about Biden when Biden walked slowly, it should mean the same thing about Trump when Trump walks slowly. Why don't we have the same standard? Now, ultimately, does Trump have a specific undiagnosed disease? I have no idea. I have no idea. What we do know is the letters about his perfect health are in stark contrast to the videos of his unusual physical. physical movements, unusual speech, and we as the American people should get answers to this

with transparency. This isn't can Trump win a walking competition? Obviously he can. It's are we as the American people getting a complete and accurate picture of the health of the most powerful person in the country and maybe the world? And they weaponize these concerns against Joe Biden. We're not trying to weaponize them. We want transparency.

We want to understand what's going on. And right now I have no idea what is going on. On the bonus show today, we will talk about the massive riots in France and looting. We will talk about fears of big tech censorship growing after meta has suspended the No King's Instagram account and an airman was killed during a college football stunt on Saturday. Pete Hegseth is being blamed. All of those stories and more on today's bonus show. Sign up at join packman.com and get instant access when you do so.

Finally, tomorrow, one day membership special, I would love for you to participate in it. Get on my substack newsletter at substack.davidpacman.com and you will hear from us in the morning. Unlock unlimited free grocery delivery with PC Express Pass. Shop online and get the same low, no frills prices delivered. first year of PC Express Pass for just $2.50 a month. Learn more at no-frills.ca. My teammate says he plays

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