The David Pakman Show - Trump blocked as 2028 race erupts

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Donald Trump suffers a legal defeat as the Supreme Court denies his request to enforce Postal Service mail ballot rules for the midterms -- Mitch McConnell returns to the Senate chamber in a wheelchair after a multi-month medical absence following a serious fall and pneumonia -- Gavin Newsom announces that he would refrain from entering the 2028 Democratic presidential primary if Kamala Harris decides to run -- Donald Trump repeats an unsubstantiated story about firefighters carrying him away from Ground Zero after September 11 -- Donald Trump publishes a social media post assuring American adults that they will receive $5,000 dividend checks from accrued tariff revenue -- JD Vance advocates for continuous fraud investigations into executive branch operations regardless of which political party holds power -- JD Vance delivers a keynote speech before numerous empty venue seats during the Republican midterm convention -- Donald Trump dismisses artificial intelligence safeguards by claiming a simple gear stops rogue robots and calls existential risk concerns a hoax -- On the Bonus Show: Republicans are clueless about economics, Don Jr’s wife says a Russian oligarch paid for their wedding party, and much more... 🩳 Quince: Get free shipping & 365-day returns at https://quince.com/pakman 📄 UPDF: Get 5 apps in one seamless workflow for up to 52% off at https://davidpakman.com/updf 🧽 Blueland: Get 15% OFF sustainable cleaning products at https://blueland.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Book: https://bit.ly/m/attention -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start (01:24) SCOTUS denies Trump's election takeover (08:36) Mitch McConnell returns to the Senate (20:12) Gavin Newsom says he wouldn't challenge Kamala Harris (29:41) Trump repeats false September 11 story (38:48) "Trump repeats $5,000 checks promise" (46:16) JD Vance calls for fraud investigations (52:46) JD Vance lacks the charisma to win (59:10) Trump dismisses AI concerns Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coming up today, Donald Trump suffers a real legal setback at the Supreme Court over this effort to change mail-in voting rules before the midterms. We're also going to look at the recent comments from the administration on AI, including an answer about how humanity would supposedly stop a dangerous AI that is really difficult to believe. And then there is Mitch McConnell back in the Senate after months away in a return that is only raising even more questions about obviously age and health, but also power and when political institutions are willing to let people step aside. We're also going to dig into the 2028 Democratic

primary. I haven't been doing a lot of this. And by the way, we also have nobody officially running yet. But there are some calculations starting about who runs and who stays out and who supports whom that are already starting. And finally, a New York Times guest essay. which raises a really, really a broader question about Donald Trump's relationship with reality. And what starts to happen when a president just doesn't accept facts that contradict the story that he wants to tell? All of that and more today plus the bonus show if they will allow it. We start today with a major legal defeat for Donald Trump at the Supreme Court. This is actually good news for people who like elections, for people who like democracy,

see this is all about Donald Trump's desire to impose these new restrictions on mail in voting before the midterms. And really, this is about timing because we are now just weeks from these midterms. Remember that what Donald Trump wanted were new postal service rules for this election, which would require states to completely change how they send ballots through the mail. And the big aspect of the change was that ballot envelopes would need to need specific features, including a specialized barcode, but most importantly, states would have to provide certain voter information to the Postal Service. And if the states didn't do it, the Postal Service's rule that Trump wanted to put in place

would say that those ballots could be rejected and returned. In other words, the federal government wants to have a list of approved voters. And if a voter isn't on that list, the Postal Service can't deliver them a ballot. lower courts correctly blocked that rule from taking effect. So the Trump administration then went to the Supreme Court and they asked the justices to step in immediately and allow those restrictions to be implemented while the litigation continued, which is of course extraordinarily dangerous since we are just weeks, really days, but just weeks from these midterms. And now the Supreme Court has said no. The court denied Trump's request for an emergency stay. They have left the lower court.

injunction in place or to put it in a different way, these new restrictions are just not going to be in effect for these midterms. This is a really big deal, especially since a lot of the motivation for Trump to do this was that he and Republicans suspect that they are going to get just flogged in these elections. Now, the language that the court used in its decision is important. The majority, which said, we're not going to do it, said the government is, quote, unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the preliminary injunction and that there are other factors required for emergency relief and none of them fail the administration's demand or request that these new rules stay in place while it's litigated. Now, there is some important nuance here. This is not, I feel like I've

said this so many times about recent Supreme Court decisions. This is not necessarily the Supreme Court permanently declaring the Postal Service can never adopt rules like these. In fact, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately that he believes there is a possibility that the Postal Service does have the authority to create this rule. But even Kavanaugh said implementing it in this way for 2026 would be arbitrary and it would be capricious because election officials just don't have enough time to reasonably make the changes before voting is completed. Now, I disagree with Kavanaugh that maybe this should or could be put forward in the, the future, but I agree with Kavanaugh that the lack of time to make it, to put it together in a serious and carefully considered a manner this time around is not possible with just a few weeks remaining before the election.

And that really devastates Trump's immediate objective. Trump doesn't really care about the U.S. Postal Service's role in elections and the rule going forward in elections in 2030 or 2032. Trump cares about it for right now. Trump is the entire fight is to change the rules now before the midterms with the idea that maybe it can save Republicans. Now, vote by mail is getting going in parts of the country. Election officials have designed the ballots.

They've designed the envelopes. They've established procedures. The systems are in place. And you've got election officials in multiple states, including Republican officials, by the way, warning the Supreme Court, if you impose a completely new postal service system, this close to election day, we will have delays. We will have mistakes. We will have confusion. And what's, of course, ironic is that Trump and Republicans have been claiming all along these systems we have include delays and mistakes and confusion when really they mostly don't. But the system they're

trying to put in would absolutely cause that stuff. Now, the administration argued, no, no, no, no, we need these new requirements to improve the security of vote by mail, to improve, to improve, approve handling of mail-in ballots. And of course, we as opponents know that that's ridiculous. And also, the Postal Service would be going way beyond its authority. And this is where I disagree with Kavanaugh's suggestion that maybe at some other point with more time and done more carefully, this would be okay. The Postal Service does not have the authority to insert itself into the election, a state election administration. Remember, elections are run by the states. U.S. Postal Service is a pseudo-governmental authority, but it is federal, not state.

And the U.S. Postal Service just doesn't have the authority to insert itself into 50 different state elections. Now, another interesting aspect to the decision is that even among the conservative justices, there was some disagreement. Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented and said the administration should have been allowed to put the rule into effect. Alito saying the postal service does have. broad authority to regulate mail. And the challengers are ultimately unlikely to succeed on their

legal claims. I disagree with that, but it doesn't matter because they simply didn't have enough votes. And practically speaking, this is the ballgame for the election. Now, I don't mean it's the ballgame. Oh, Democrats take the House, Democrats take the Senate. I mean, this is the last chance to implement these rules for vote by mail for the November 2026 midterms. The Supreme Court has left the injunction in place. The Postal Service cannot do what Trump wants them to do. It has to operate under the existing system. And so Trump's attempt to impose these new mail and ballot requirements has run out of runway. It has failed.

Now the underlying battle will continue and it's important not to forget the day after the election that this stuff is still going on because a future court could confront broader questions about what sort of authority could the postal service have and all of this stuff. But Trump needed this and he didn't get it. The only chance Trump had left was for the Supreme Court to do an emergency intervention. He asked for it. The Supreme Court has refused even if we don't agree with all of the underlying reasoning, even if we don't agree with some of the predictions about what might be allowed in the future,

this was the right decision. We got it and it is one obstacle of many, one obstacle of many that could hurt Democrats in November that has been put aside. And that is something we can be happy about. And it is something Trump can hurl catch up at the walls till the cows come home. But it is not going to change it. Folks, I hate it when my predictions come true. And the reason I say that is that I'm not in the prediction game, much like I am not a betting

man. Most of you know that. I am also not in the prediction game. And so when I make a prediction, it has to be something really obvious. And this was obvious in a very bad way. They were clearly planning all along to find some way to wheel-mills. McConnell back into the Senate for some kind of final appearance or a final vote or two before his retirement when the new Senate is sworn in in January.

And it seems that this is exactly what is going on. Major news yesterday that 84 year old Senate, former Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, is ready to come back to work and go to the Senate, except it's not quite so simple. He looks like a disaster after being missing from the Senate for months. He suffered a fall. He was briefly unconscious. He then had a bout of pneumonia while recovering, went to rehab, all of it. Here is how they did it.

First, they wheeled Mitch from his home into a van while in a wheelchair. Take a look at that. Then we have a little bit. Then we have a little bit. video of Mitch after being wheeled into the van, not exactly looking coherent. Technically alive is the way that I heard it described. Let's look at that. Are you feeling good Mitch? Give us a thumbs up. And finally, after being wheeled from his house into a van and from a van into the U.S. Capitol and subsequently into the Senate, Mitch makes it into the Senate in a triumphant return rising like a Phoenix

over the horizon in his wheelchair. Take a look at this. Hi. So what is this really about? This is not a story about aging. This is not a story about one old guy. It's not a story about wheelchairs, mobility, scooters, or disability. There are many people in their 80s who are sharp and engaged and productive and fully capable of doing really demanding work. And obviously somebody might need a wheelchair, but that doesn't tell you anything about whether they are mentally capable of doing their job. The issue here, I believe, is what happens when political institutions become so desperate for one senator's vote that nothing else matters. Because look at what you're seeing. Mitch McConnell is a guy who's been absent for months after a serious

fall, loss of consciousness, pneumonia, hospitalization, and rehab. And the priority immediately becomes, can we physically get Mitch McConnell back in the building? Can we get him into the van? Can we get them through the doors? Can we get them on to the Senate floor? And ultimately, can we get a vote? And that is really the disturbing part of this because at some point, a U.S. Senator stops looking like, you know, an independently functioning elected representative of the people who voted for him and starts looking like a vote being physically transported around by other people. And I'm not making this as a partisan observation. We've seen versions of this with Democrats. We've seen versions of this with Republicans and every time it happens, the partisan

incentives are exactly the same. When somebody on your side becomes impaired, suddenly everybody discovers this incredibly expansive definition of what it means to be capable. The staff says everything's fine. The party says everything's fine. The families often say everything's fine. And remarkably, everybody reaches the conclusion that, oh, the senator must remain in office, especially if control of the Senate or important votes might depend on it. And I believe that there is something deeply unhealthy about such political systems where those are the incentives that are created because these are at the end of the day supposed to be representatives of their constituents. They're supposed to read legislation, question witnesses, understand policy, negotiate for their

constituents, make decisions, and independent judgment has to be exercised by them. And when you sort of do the weekend at Bernie's thing, you are kind of making the job into do you have an index finger that you can use to indicate yes or no or that somebody else can, you know, hold up to indicate yes or no when you were told how your caucus is going to be voting. Now, I want to be kind of careful here because I can't really diagnose Mitch McConnell from a handful of videos. I would question to what degree he's really even able to speak coherently. I don't know. We don't know what his doctors are saying right now. We don't know what his cognitive condition is right now. But we are allowed as people to look at what's happening publicly and say, is this what

democratic representation is supposed to look like? And I think the answer is obviously no. This also exposes one of Washington's kind of weirdest unwritten rules. There is almost no point at which the constitution, uh, with the institution of the Senate rather, uh, will tell an enormous. powerful person, you've done enough, but that's it. Mitch McConnell entered the Senate in 85. Ronald Reagan was president. The Soviet Union existed. The first commercial cell phones barely were available.

And now more than four decades later, you've got the machinery of government organized around making sure Mitch McConnell can be physically delivered like a package into the Senate chamber. And there should be something between we abandoning. We abandon elderly people because they're old, which of course is never something I would advocate for. There's got to be something between that and pretending that elected office must continue until you are literally incapable of even being wheeled into the building awake.

Retirement shouldn't be humiliation, leaving office because of your health deteriorating is not a moral failure. And, you know, political parties shouldn't treat human beings as pieces of equipment that You've got to keep operational. Change the oil one more time and see if we can get can extract another mile out of it. Because underneath all of the partisan strategy, there's something really sad about this. Like, this is a person. We are watching an obviously frail 84 year old man be moved from house to vehicle to wheelchair

to the Senate. As DC obsessively calculates, can we get a vote out of him while he still has the ability to, I guess, raise his hand? This is not dignified. And so the lesson here isn't, oh, Mitch McConnell is old and therefore he's bad. There are endless substantive reasons to criticize Mitch McConnell's political career. The lesson is our political system has become really bad at allowing powerful people to leave. And it's become very good at convincing everybody around them one more vote, one more appearance, one more month in office.

And I'm not naive to the fact that there were similar mechanisms at play with Joe Biden and getting him to run for reelection in 2024. Eventually, someone has to be willing to say enough, not because Mitch McConnell is 84, but because elected representation should require more than just, we got him in the room with a pulse and he raised his hand. Now, one final thought on this. Mitch McConnell had three months of paid leave while he was recovering with taxpayer subsidized health care. Why does he get it?

And hundreds of millions of others don't. That's also a big underlying story here with Mitch McConnell. He made it back and he will end up doing exactly what we predicted. A lot of men's clothing forces the same bad trade-off. If the material feels good and the fit is decent, the price is ridiculous. If the price is reasonable, the quality is usually not there. Our sponsor, Quince has that solved. makes high quality wardrobe staples. They use premium materials. They don't mark them up like the

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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash Pacman for free shipping and 365-day returns. The link is in the description. If you deal with PDFs, you know how quickly a simple task becomes a headache. Edit one thing, convert the file, reorganize a few pages, and then you're fighting clunky software that makes everything slower. That's why I love UPDF. Our sponsor, UPDF is a PDF editor that actually solves the common issues people have with PDFs day to day. You can edit text, edit images directly, convert PDFs to Word, PowerPoint, or Excel without destroying the formatting and use OCR to turn scans into editable, searchable text. What also makes UPDF valuable is its AIF.

tools. If you're dealing with a long report, research paper, dense documents, UPDF can summarize it. You can chat with the document, even turn the information into something clearer and easier to work with. UPDF works across Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, and in addition to working better than the big name PDF software, UPDF is only a fraction of the cost. And for a limited time, UPDF is giving my audience an extra $10 off. until May 30th, just go to David Pakman.com slash UPDF. The link is in the description. Do people realize what is happening with the 2028 Democratic primary? Now, of course, we are still in 2026. The midterms have not even happened yet. We're weeks away. But the 28 Democratic presidential

primary is organizing itself in a very interesting way. Now, you might be saying, David, did I miss some kind of official campaign launch? You didn't. Did I miss? someone formally declaring for 2028. No, you didn't miss that. But what we have are potential candidates looking around and asking who else is actually going to run. And I have some personal knowledge of this because I've spoken to some of the potential candidates. Now, increasingly, the question that seems to be really important right now is who should not run if somebody else does. Let me explain. Look at what's already happening. There are polls. There are predictions. markets, there are people traveling around the country doing things that look suspiciously

like presidential campaigns. And you now have prospective candidate's openly talking about. Is there even room for all of us? Now, start with the polling. The current real clear politics democratic primary averages have Kamala Harris leading at 24.5. Gavin Newsom at 13.5. Pete Buttigieg at 12.8. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 11, John Ossoff at 8.8, and Mark Kelly at 6.8.

Now, do I believe those numbers will tell us who the nominee will be? No, I don't. We are years away. What the polling numbers tell us is something much simpler. There is no single universally accepted democratic successor sitting there waiting to inherit the nomination. Even Kamala Harris, who is polling the highest, I believe is mostly polling the highest because of name recognition and because she was last, the most recent nominee. And the prediction markets also illustrate serious levels of uncertainty, but from a different angle. Here is recent Kalshi pricing on these primaries. It has AOC, John

Ossoff and Gavin Newsom kind of clustered near the top rather than any overwhelming favorite. And there's a whole bunch of other people down to line. And again, betting markets are not polls. Betting markets are not prophecy. Now, the interesting thing is how wide open, this really seems to be. And now Gavin Newsome has basically said out loud what I suspect a lot of these folks are privately thinking. Gavin Newsom was asked by Jake Tapper during a recent interview they did while fly fishing in Montana or deep sea fishing. I don't even know what this is. Not deep, not deep sea, but deep river. I don't know. I don't fish. I find it boring. Newsome was asked, would you run if Kamala runs? And he said, no, I wouldn't take a look at this. Yeah, it's a lot of Democrat.

31 flavors and you're not even the only california no right yeah you got rocana yeah Kamala yeah i don't know she runs but we'll see i know she's called around yeah but i wouldn't run as she ran you if she runs you won't you will not of course not why would i i wouldn't do that to her i wouldn't do it to me why would i wouldn't do that to you i wouldn't waste everyone's time who needs that what do you mean that doesn't even make sense to i just i wouldn't no i wouldn't before First of all, electorally, it's a gift from God for everybody else. They enjoy the hell out of it. Mutual assured destruction, it services no great or good.

I mean, you do whatever you want. I don't care, but like counterargument would be like, you know, she had a shot. Yeah. And you've never run and she's run twice. Yeah. I mean, that would be the approach to the campaign, certainly. That would be the case you'd make.

Pretty good one, actually. That's objectively true. I just, but I know what that means. I know her base of supporters. I know her friends. The Zen diagram on that is just pure crossover. It's not I wouldn't do that to I wouldn't do that. Now, his explanation is really interesting. He said, we have a political base that overlaps and our political bases overlap so much that if we both go in, it's mutually assured destruction. So what Gavin Newsom is basically saying is, why would we do it to each other? Now, I actually understand this.

instinct on a smaller scale. I've had conversations over the last year and a half off the record, you know, I've talked to you about these round tables or whatever with different elected officials, etc. And many of them are in the sort of assumed to be thinking about it category for the Democrats. And the sense I get in talking to people is they are all kind of trying to feel out what would the creator space look like if I ran but also if I ran, B, C, and D ran. Now I get the instinct. I've talked to you guys about how people have occasionally asked me, hey, David, would you

be interested in maybe like running for this house seat or that house seat? And I'm not interested in doing that in general. But whenever I've been brought these hypotheticals, my immediate reaction has been I would really only contemplate something like that if none of my friends or acquaintances were running against me. I don't, uh, uh, why would I want somebody I like and brought. oddly agree with to suddenly become my opponent. Now we're attacking each other. We're dividing the same supporters. We're calling the same donors and competing for the same endorsements and trying to get the same creators and media people behind us and probably damaging each other,

even though we likely agree on 90% of the issues. So it makes intuitive sense to me what Gavin Newsom is saying here. Now, multiply that dynamic by a hundred for a presidential primary. So what I find interesting about this is that this is not merely Gavin Newsom asking himself, what I like to be president. He's sort of calculating the board. Who runs, who states stays out? Do donors overlap? Do voters overlap? Whose political relationships overlap? And who her, who damages somebody else simply by entering? Now, Pete Buttigieg is very clearly keeping his options open as well. And he was recently asked about becoming president. And he said, of course, I believe that the country is ready for a gay president, but he did not announce anything for 2028. And he rightly said Democrats should be focusing

on the midterms right now. He's also mentioned that he has traveled to 35 states since leaving the administration. Now, that doesn't prove he's running, but everybody understands why people notice that. And I think that there are a lot of calculations being made. And some, you know, they're generically speaking. It's easy to say, the brink. broadest primary leads to the best candidate. If 15 people run, great. We'll figure out who is the best from the 15. If 30 people run great. But that doesn't mean that you might not have specific situations where like, well, if these three run, that actually might end up counterproductive. Now, there's another calculation here that I think is going to end up being important.

There are a bunch of people out there that I think are competing broadly for the same kind of slice of the electorate. And I would consider Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, J.B. Pritzker, Wes Moore, in a sense, although he has said he's not running, but things can change. Pete Buttigieg to a lesser degree. Certainly Kamala Harris, although she's even more establishment. The point is, if all the people I just named are up on the stage, I think a lot of them are competing for the same slice of the electorate. And I think what that contingent might also be worried about is do we just split the vote four to six percent for each of us and allow someone who we really disagree with to have a better shot? I think that's something that they're thinking

about as well. So this is going to be a very interesting primary. I don't think we will have seen anything like it. We are going to see the creator community involved in this primary. more than in any previous primary, you know, YouTube channels and creators, newsletters, et cetera. We are reaching millions of Democratic voters every single day. So what's going on is that publicly, the official story is it's way too early to think about or talk about 28. Focus on 26.

Nobody has decided anything. Fine. But the calculations are going on. And one of the most interesting calculations may be who decides not to run. And I think that there will be some folks in that this is totally hypothetical. I haven't had any conversations with these people privately about it. Imagine that Newsom and Shapiro do decide to run. I think it's logical then for somebody like J.B. Pritzker and Wes Moore to look and go,

I'm going to wait. I think that it's going to be just too much noise and too many of us competing for the same voters on the stage. It'll be counterproductive. If I have these instincts, I am going to wait. and the decision not to run in 2028, especially if it starts to look like the Republican will ultimately win, which I hope is not the case. That I have no reason to think that right now. The decision not to run might end up being one of the most interesting and impactful

decisions of the election cycle. Let me know what you think. Leave a comment, send me an email info at david packman.com. Something is happening with Donald Trump that I think people are getting too used to. He says something completely absurd and extraordinary. There's little to no evidence for it. The evidence that does exist points to the opposite of what Trump is saying. And instead of backing up and backing off, Trump doubles down and he starts to treat what he said

as reality even though there's no evidence for it. Now you might go, yeah, David, that's called lying. No, no, no, no. I believe that this is bigger than lying. Politicians lie and exaggerate and spin. The more serious issue is what happens when the the president appears unwilling to distinguish or unable to distinguish between what actually happened and what he wants to have happened or to put it another way. When the president cannot distinguish

reality from his imagination. Now, the latest example is this bizarre 9-11 story. Trump says that after the attacks, we covered this earlier this week or last week. Trump says after the attacks, two firefighters grabbed him, lifted him up out of the rubble and carried. him away from ground zero because they were worried a building was going to collapse on Donald Trump who was busy aiding recovery efforts. There is zero public evidence establishing that. CNN's Daniel Dale investigated it, found that Trump was not near ground zero on September 11th. Now, Trump later said, oh, I meant that that incident happened later. There is also no evidence that Trump was inside the building that he described as maybe being about to collapse. CNN was in a lot of,

able to find no evidence of the broader claim that Trump personally brought, you know, a crew of one to 200 of his construction workers to assist at ground zero. Now, maybe some piece of this happened. We can't definitively prove there isn't some kernel somewhere in there that might represent reality. But this is exactly the point I'm making. Trump tells these stories as established history. And somehow, once again, he makes himself the protagonist, but nearly 3,000 people. were killed and there really were people behaving bravely on 9-11, first responders and others. And when Trump retells it, it's a story about firefighters heroically carrying out the real heroically Donald Trump.

And this is part of a broader pattern. Now, there is a really good op-ed in the New York Times. I guess they called it a guest essay by Thomas Edsel. And Edsel calls the essay, or the New York Times called the essay at least, Trump has lost contact with reality. We will link to it because Edsel pulls together. There are a lot of examples that I think are really worth reading. And his argument is basically Trump has built this fictionalized version of himself where he's always

the hero or the victim or the conqueror, whichever is convenient or he's the person who knew better than everybody else. AI has made this almost absurdly visible because when Trump posts these images of himself as the warrior, the doctor, Jesus, the conqueror, a younger, strong. version of himself. He's bombing enemies. He's dominating other countries. He's towering over political opponents. If this were like weird memes, all right, whatever. But the problem is that the same pattern appears when the topic matters. And it's the 2020 election. It's economic data, wars, diplomacy, public health, the success and failure of Trump's own policies. Trump repeatedly states

things as facts that are completely fabricated. And when Congress, The contrary evidence appears, he has an answer for that as well, which is these are fake polls or the media is lying or the judges are corrupt or the election is rigged or these critics are really my enemies. And so we have an information system in which Trump can almost never be wrong. And because of the informational silos that I write about in my forthcoming book pay attention, a lot of the people that most need to hear, hey, guys, this stuff he's telling you is completely made up. people never hear it. Now, there is no way for a leader to function well in a system like that. And this is also why the people around Donald Trump matter so much. Powerful people desperately need advisors who will tell them things they don't want to hear. Sir, your policy failed. I'm crying, but your policy failed. The numbers aren't good. You pushed a fake story. You misunderstood what happened. Putin is only flattering you. He's not really respect. you. But Trump's political ecosystem is designed to do the opposite. When he makes a false statement,

Natalie Harp goes, that was so good. And allies try to find ways to validate some element of it. And when Trump changes the story, the explanations also change. And so the danger here isn't, you know, does Trump have some psychiatric diagnosis yet probably? But I'm not making that claim as relevant to this story. Edsel does cite medical professionals in the article who will go a lot further. You can read their arguments in the piece, I don't think we need to diagnose Trump psychiatrically through TV because the facts are enough. Did Trump say something? Is there evidence for it?

Does the evidence contradict it? What happens when the evidence contradicts it? You can ask those questions about any president regardless of how well we think his brain is functioning. And so this is not really about did firefighters carry Donald Trump out of the rubble on 9-11? It's about a president who is making decisions involving election. and markets and wars and nuclear weapons. Is he doing it with accurate information? Is he accepting reality when reality is inconvenient? So, you know, a fantasy about 9-11 can sound ridiculous,

but a fantasy about an election can destabilize a country. Look what Trump is trying to do based on the false claim that 2020 was rigged. A fantasy about the economy of how tariffs work can lead to these insane blanket tariffs that are crushing Americans. And I'm a I should mention, a complete and total fantasy about war and Iran can get people killed. And it is getting people killed. So this stuff really matters. And Trump has lost touch with reality. Plastic pollution demands systemic action.

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The link is in the description. Every political story has two parts. What happened and what different media outlets want you to think happened. And you can see the framing difference pretty clearly in this story about Donald Trump signing a $70 billion immigration bill after this long fight over ICE funding. On the left, the focus is what will the money fund billions for the next three years of Trump's mass deportation campaign. On the right, the emphasis is Trump taking future ice shutdowns off the table by signing the bill. One side is asking, what does this mean for immigration enforcement for mass deportations? The other is framing it as Trump ending the threat of ice shutdowns. This is why our sponsor Ground News is so useful because it lets you compare coverage from the left,

right and center in one place, along with factuality ratings and info about who owns the outlets. I've been using Ground News for years. It can really help you see through the political spin that blinds a lot of news consumers. And right now you can get 40% off the same vantage plan I use. Go to ground.news slash Pacman. The link is in the description. Donald Trump appeared to lose control of bodily functions in a series of deranged truth social post that can really only be described as stroking out. If a lot of people spoke this way, you would send them for a psychiatric evaluation. Take a look at this and let's see if we can find

any truth here. Trump posting about his supposed $5,000 checks, which are coming, Right after the election, if Republicans win. Quote, the $5,000 Trump dividend to be given to all adults in the United States, due to the fact that our country is taking in trillions of dollars of economic development, investment, and pure success is being criticized by Democrats who are hoping that it never happens, but it will. As an example, the Democrats said the great big, beautiful bill, one of the largest ever approved by Congress or signed into law by a president, happened, despite the Democrats saying it would be impossible to get approved. Or the gift of $1776 that I gave last year to our military was an

almost guaranteed non-starter. Everyone said it could not be done, but it was. Our military patriots got the money and loved it. When I say something, I mean it. The $5,000 dividend will happen because the people of our country deserve it. Vote Republican, make America great again. Now, Trump talks about the dividend as if it's a thing that exists. It does not currently exist and it would require congressional approval. Trump cannot simply send every adult five grand. Now, to the point of where the money comes from, Trump keeps talking about how there are trillions available. There's private investment and economic development, except none of that is federal revenue. And if you are going to argue as he did last week, although the justification seems to change every every day.

If you're going to fund this from tariff revenue, put aside for a moment that the tariff revenue comes from American companies, not foreign countries. The available tariff revenue is nowhere near the $1.2 or $1.3 trillion that it would cost to fund $5 grand for every adult. Now, this whole concept of Democrats stopping it. First of all, Trump said that Trump said if Democrats win in November, there would be no money for this. So it's not really about Democrats stopping it according to Trump. It's that if Democrats win, somehow there wouldn't be money for it.

But it's also not really about Democrats because Republicans are also really skeptical about this proposal. So it's not Democrats will block it. First of all, Trump said he wouldn't even do it if Democrats win. So it's this like it's a it's a completely closed loop. We will only do it if Republicans win and otherwise Democrats will try to stop it. Well, Democrats would only be in a position to stop it if they win and you said that if Democrats win, you won't do it anyway. So it's idiocy all the way down. Now Donald Trump has, I believe, made a mistake, although it's not really going to be a mistake in the end and I'll explain how, which is Trump has guaranteed that this will get done.

And of course, it's not going to get done. I don't think it's getting done even if Republicans win in November. But the most important aspect of this is it is so unlikely Republicans win everything in November. They may indeed hold the Senate. It's about a coin flip right now, 50-50. But unless something completely unpredictable happens, something completely unusual based on the data, Democrats are going to take the House and that's Trump's get out of jail

free card because he said only if Democrats win the House and the Senate will, Only if Republicans win the House in the Senate will we do this thing. Now, comparing it to the big, beautiful bill, you know, that bill became the law precisely because Congress passed it. So the fact that Congress passed a law doesn't demonstrate that Trump's checks will happen because they require Congress to do something. It can't just be Trump doing it. And then he mentions, well, I did do the $1,776 gift.

those payments came from money Congress had already appropriated for military housing. It wasn't, oh, we've got tariff money or we have this new source of money. And maybe the funniest thing Trump mentions is when I say something, I mean it. Trump floated $5,000 doge checks, $2,000 tariff dividends. None of that happened. So when Trump goes, it will happen. Trump doesn't have the authority to do it. and Trump has failed or not done many times before things that he promised to do.

All right. Then Trump posted the following. Quote, I hope everyone realizes that price increases throughout America were caused by, take a guess, sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden administration, not by Trump. Even oil was higher under Biden than it is right now. And we prevented Iran from having a nuclear weapon. With the temporary exception of oil, prices are coming down sharply. and oil will drop like a rock as soon as the military conflict with Iran is over, and that will not be long.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Prices have continued rising under Trump. We have seen prices not go down, which was the promise Trump made, but go up. Now, have they gone up for periods a little more slowly and then more quickly? Sure. But overall, the year over year inflation rate is higher now than where it was when Biden left. Now, Trump says oil was higher under Biden. It's the same thing as when he goes, gas was $5 under Biden.

There was a period in, I believe, 2022, where there were global reasons why gas and oil hit a peak. But that obscures that that had nothing to do with Biden. And the reason gas and diesel setting another record, the reason these are so high is because of Donald Trump's optional war with Iran. Now, on his claim that Iran was prevented from having a nuclear weapon. We don't really know that to be true. First of all, we don't really know that they were that close to having one before this war because supposedly last year, Trump destroyed their capabilities.

And of course, if you start bombing stuff, you might damage a nuclear program. You might delay a nuclear program. But that doesn't permanently prevent Iran from doing it. And in fact, what we really need is some kind of agreement. And we had an agreement. Trump got out of it. Finally, prices are coming down sharply. Complete and total lie.

Prices are up, not down. prices only go down if you have deflation. We haven't had deflation. So this is all completely made up. And of course, Trump's saying the Iran conflict isn't going to last that much longer. We are in month seven of what he promised would be a two to three week war. Just about everything he said in these posts is incorrect. And a lot of the people that see his posts and take them seriously never get a fact check. They just see Trump's post on truth social and they hit the like button or whatever truth social has the equivalent and they move on and they think Trump has done all of this stuff. It is up to us to a degree to break these people out of these toxic informational silos.

Hey, this is very, very interesting. J.D. Vance is already talking about what happens if Democrats take the White House in 2029 and specifically. specifically about what happens with fraud investigations. Watch this. Because look, whoever the president is in 2029, if it is a Democrat, I want the anti-fraud effort to continue because we can't allow it to be normalized that the American people get stolen by or stolen from by fraudsters. I laughed when I saw this because you guys are the fraudsters. You are the people who are going to be held accountable if you lose the House of Representatives

in November, you know, sure, J.D. Keep investigating fraud no matter who controls the government. It sounds fantastic. But the hilarious part is you guys control the government right now. You control the House. You control the Senate. You control the executive branch. As a result, you control the Justice Department. They have prosecutors. They have investigators. They had Doge. I don't know what the state of Doge is right now. They have an entire national fraud enforcement division. So where are the damn prosecutions? They said we found so much months they spent saying we have astronomical waste fraud and abuse that Doge found. Okay, fraud's a crime.

So did you prosecute anybody? Has anybody been indicted? Well, they started checking the receipts. The government accountability office couldn't verify 96% of the savings that Doge claimed to have found. Thousands of contracts associated with claimed savings were never actually terminated. Two-thirds of the supposed savings that the government accountability office examined couldn't be verified or didn't comport with Doge's own methodology, which is wild from the people lecturing us about how they want to get rid of fraud.

Now then Attorney General Todd Blanche jumps in. Listen to what he said. President Trump is very focused on eliminating fraud and waste in this country. There has never been a president in American history more serious about stopping fraud and protecting the American taxpayer than President Trump. He said the rip-off of this country was over. And we're delivering on that promise, and the results we're going to talk about now, speak for themselves.

Really? That's sort of interesting because while Doge was screaming fraud, fraud, Trump's Justice Department declined more than 900 federal program and procurement fraud cases because prosecutors were told no, no, no, no, focus on immigration. And meanwhile, look at their record with taxpayer accountability. Trump's White House ballroom in a secretive, you know, $500 million no bid contract at this point. got the reflecting pool, $15 million no bid contract.

By the way, I'm in DC for book stuff right now. I went to look at the reflecting pool yesterday. It looks like shit. The liner failed. Trump said vandals used the box cutter to put a slit in his rubber. Come on, guys. And then documents show that the contractor acknowledged installation and design problems and all of a sudden prosecutors start dropping cases against the people accused of damaging it.

So this is what makes J.D. Vance's comments so incredible. He says, whoever controls government next should really investigate fraud. Great. Do it. Investigate government contracts. Investigate procurement. Investigate these doge claims about taxpayer savings and where did the money go. I'm with you.

Investigate everybody. But Vance seems to be imagining, you know, fraud investigations as something that is just directed outwards at other people. If Democrats control the executive branch in 2029, they're. will inherit the same Justice Department and the same investigative machinery that Republicans control today. So I'm sort of in agreement with JD, as absurd as the whole thing is. Let's establish the principle right now when there is credible evidence of fraud involving

taxpayer money, go and investigate it regardless of party, administration, whose name is on the building. But you guys are the people that need to be investigated and they seem to be living in this fantasy world. So it's just a reminder again about the importance of taking at least the House. I know there are people in my audience who are really bummed out that the Senate might not go the Democrats way. Now, it might. It's looking roughly 50-50, 51-49, 52-48.

But put that aside for a second. Taking the House alone is enough to bury these people in oversight and investigations for the last two years of Trump's term. There will never be a lamer duck than Trump during these final two years. of his term. So even if we only take the house away from Republicans, I can't even explain to you the degree to which that is valuable and important. Let's make sure that we do it. Here's something people don't think about enough. There is not much of a line between online privacy and real world safety. If someone gets angry at you in traffic, at work, in a relationship, or in a comment section, it can be very easy for them to figure out your details, address, phone

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directory or an obscure business database or some new people search site, I just paste the link into Incogni, their privacy experts, work to get it removed. Removing your information from these online databases is critical to protect yourself and your loved ones. Get 60% off when you go to incogny.com slash Pacman, use the code Pacman. The link is in the description. There's something very strange about watching the vice president of the United States campaign as though somebody else has been running the country for the last two years. J.D. Vance stood before a Republican convention and warned about radicals and if these people take over and the attack Democrats and talked about Christianity and did all this other stuff.

And then you look at the room and then you realize, wait a second, they've been in. charge of everything all along. And then J.D. Vance gave another speech. And whatever you think about the substance of this speech, the visual contrast is really difficult to miss. Now, there of course, you'll notice huge sections of empty seats. The whole idea here is for JD to show how energized he and everybody is. But there are a whole bunch of empty seats everywhere. But J.D. Vance talks about Christianity and he talks about left-wing radicalism and he says, we've got to send this stuff packing in November. Packing from where? You guys are in charge. Take a look at this clip.

So let's refue Democrat pastor Adam Hamilton thinks it's a sin to be white and a sin to raise cattle and eat meat. But he's okay with supporting groups that spit on God-fearing Americans and mock everything that we hold dear. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not Christianity. That is left-wing radicalism dressed in the skin suit of our religion. Let's send it packet in November. So there's a broader theme here that I think is worth separating from whether you agree with J.D. Vance politically. I happen not to agree with him politically, but maybe you do. I don't know. J.D. Vance is the sitting vice president. Donald Trump is the president. Republicans are campaigning in these midterms while controlling everything. They control the House. They control the Senate. It's their DOJ. It's

It's everything. And yet they're using the rhetoric of someone who is saying, the people in power are wronging you. Take them out of power and give us power. They have this message about we need to defeat them and we need to stop them and drive them out of the country. But they are the ones that are in power. If all of this stuff has been going wrong, if things haven't been going well for the last

two years, you all control everything. Now the other thing you may have noticed recently is that JD's. Vance is incorporating more explicitly religious language into his politics. And at the midterm convention last week, he quoted scripture when he was describing the stakes of the election and he talks about he did a podcast interview where he said, hey, you know, if my job if my job as vice president ushers in the end times, I'm okay with that. And so there's this increasingly religious component to J.D. Vance as well, which I think is worth talking about. Now, J.D. Vance during the speech also complained, Hey, I haven't gotten a raise since I became vice president.

In a year and a half, he has worked his tail off, resulting in his promotion to lead and a 50% raise in just a year and a half, Braden, that's not too bad. I have not gotten a 50% raise in the last year and a half. So I'm not doing as well as Braden has, but now this is sort of an unusual political complaint for a pretty obvious reason. The vice president is one of the highest ranking public offices in the United States. The federal law establishes compensation for the position. Now, whatever point Vance wanted to make with this joke, complaining about your compensation creates this really awkward contrast when voters are

thinking about, oh man, I haven't gotten a raise, my grocery bills are up, housing isn't getting any cheaper, my insurance renewals were expensive, my household budget doesn't make it to the end of the month, and JD is going, I haven't gotten a raise. Well, you make $253,000. thousand dollars a year and you have millions of dollars in benefits if you consider not only his housing security detail motorcade transportation private jet this is a guy whose total compensation for lack of a better term is worth millions of dollars a year he has a staff of who knows how many every personal need is taken care of i haven't gotten a raise from my 253 000 salary come on guys give me a break and then we have this final clip watch the people be

behind J.D. while he delivers culture war material and jokes. They don't seem like they like it. And you know this very summer what Adam Hamilton did, he made sure that his church was a key financial sponsor of something called Pride Fest in Kansas City. He took, he took, that was our little protester friend, he was actually a representative of that organization. That's why he was unhappy. He took the donations from his congregants from people who show up and try to support the gospel of Jesus Christ. And you know what he did? You know where those dollars went to events at this festival that were led by strippers and drag queens? Adam Hamilton sent his...

The useful thing about a shot like that is you don't need to speculate about what each person there is thinking. You can just watch their reactions. And they seem subdued and they seem bored. And it reaffirms that J.D. Vance is a completely unlikable figure. And it was a friendly audience, not a hostile audience. And these clips all together, I think give us a really interesting snapshot of J.D.'s Political persona where religion is increasingly central. Culture war issues are central.

everybody is described as radicals who need to be removed, even though J.D. is the one in power. But most importantly, when I see this, I don't see a guy who has president written all over him. I don't, I really don't know how even with Trump's endorsement, J.D. Vance wins a Republican primary. And the midterm convention gave us a look at this. And this other speech from J.D. gave us a look at this. I just don't think he can do it. And I don't think. he will do it. Guys, I'm starting to think that Donald Trump might not know anything about AI. And this is not like a ha ha story.

This is scary because he is confidently making declarations about AI and he doesn't know a damn thing about it. Now, there is a very specific way that Donald Trump talks when he doesn't seem to understand the subject he's being asked about. Everything becomes vague. There are things and there are ways and somebody will do something. and everything is just going to be tremendous. Watch what happens when Trump is asked a really consequential question about AI. Trump is, this is Trump's commentary on AI from this week all put

together. Trump asked, do we have guardrails on AI? And Trump just goes, you just go, boom, we have a little gear. I don't like that robot. I, I, you didn't just have a stroke. And neither did I. I don't think. That's what Trump said. Take a look. Some people say the worst case scenario with AI is that the robots, the machinery learns to, obviously it thinks for itself. That's what it does. And that could turn against humanity. I just, do we have the guardrails? It's going to be fine. We'll always have something to stop them, right? We'll have a little gear. I really don't like that. I really don't like that robot. We'll stop. A little gear. Boom. We don't like the robot. This would be funny if we were talking about robot vacuums. If this was a bit, your Roomba? If you don't like how it's cleaning your carpeted bathroom, sir, you just, you do a little gear, we don't like this robot. This is the president of the United States talking about how humanity would maintain control over potentially superhuman artificial intelligence. And his answer is basically there's a little gear. I don't like that robot. And it is so

striking because some of the people who actually built these systems are asking governments, Hey, we need stronger safeguards. It could be self-serving. I'm open to that, but you've got open AI and Anthropic and others who are saying we need independent evaluations. We need a national AI safety council and all of this stuff. Google DeepMinds leadership called for a global AI watchdog. And Trump's responses, little gear, boom, I don't like that robot.

Now, this was not an isolated moment. Yesterday, Trump was asked whether he personally uses AI. Remember this? Take a look at it. We take it a lot of their cars, car tariffs. This week, again, there's been so much concern about AI. Have you heard directly from any of these AI tech leaders? And you seem to downplay some of the concerns that we heard.

But it's going to be more good than bad, but by a lot. And I've said it from any of them. Whoever wins AI and we're leading by a lot. Whoever wins, AI wins. Have you ever used it yourself or have you been? How do you use AI? But I would say, you know, for the most, you can use AI for a lot of things. Speaking of AI,

Maybe Trump has the most incredible chat GPT history and human history. You know, he's asking it to explain tariffs and he's generating pictures of himself winning golf tournaments. I just have no idea. But the problem isn't Trump gave a goofy answer. that immediately after demonstrating he has no understanding of AI whatsoever, he makes these huge policy declarations. And then this is like the cherry on top, the rotten cherry on top of the rancid cake. He comes out with this truth social post where he says, quote, concerning AI, when in the history of business, did anyone see the leaders of an industry call for regulation that

if strongly implemented will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy? AI is taking over the world destroying humanity and all other things bad is a hoax. No different from Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two, and all of the other hoaxes and scams that America was forced to endure through the destructionists and deviance foul play and illegal conduct. President Xi of China just announced that China will be doing absolutely nothing to stand in the way of AI or its future. Google has recently stated that, They want to build a massive plant in Finland, all because they're finding permitting too difficult in the United States.

I'm not happy about this and want them to change their thinking. AI and data centers will be the greatest economic development engine in history, bigger than oil, gold, diamonds, or even the internet. It will not be stopped by brilliantly run destructive forces during the term of Trump. And now Trump takes the confidence he has over things he doesn't understand and turns it into policy. And his argument is basically why would AI companies ask for regulation if regulation could hurt them? But that is not evidence that AI risks are a hoax.

It might just be evidence that open AI, anthropic and Google deep mind all realize, even though we're competing with each other, we are realizing we need some safeguards here. Now, maybe that's not why. Maybe they are really self-serving in their calculation of demanding this. But that's a different question. Trump then jumps into it's all a hoax. destroying humanity, it's all a hoax. Nobody knows whether the destroying humanity outcomes will happen. But if you have researchers studying real risks involving cybersecurity, biological misuse, autonomous systems and all of that, and they are telling you, hey, this is an issue.

Who is Trump to dismiss it? And Trump, of course, then pivots to China. And this is informing a lot of his view on this stuff, which is like, hey, listen, China's going full steam ahead. we got to do better than them. The pattern here is that Trump doesn't understand AI. He's asked, how do you use it? And he's just like, oh, I don't know. I don't really want to tell you. And then when it becomes about policy, regulation and safety, he goes, it's all completely a hoax. A guy with no understanding of how the system works, what risks exist, what are appropriate safeguards, who should be doing the regulation? What should it look like? What should it look like? He just, substitutes this incredible confidence about stuff he doesn't understand at all. And Trump doesn't

understand far simpler things than AI. This is something technically complicated and potentially consequential. And Trump has the complete and total confidence that he has always had when he goes, I know better than the generals and I know better than the doctors and I know better than this, that and the other thing. This guy's dangerous. And if for no other reason, even though there were many other reasons. If for no other reason than to rain in a little bit of this belligerence, we've got to take power away from Republicans in November, at least in the House, if not the House and Senate. Now, I have multiple book events coming up. I hope you will join me in person. Monday, just days from now, Monday, the 21st, in the Upper West Side Barnes and Noble, 7 p.m. Eastern.

Don Lemon will be interviewing me about my book. We will take questions. I will sign books. If you would like to go, check out the event details at David Pakman.com slash attention. You've got to RSVP. The link is there. October 3rd, I will be with Jessica Tarlov in Springfield, Massachusetts at 6 p.m. We will talk about both of our books. We will then sign books if you want to go to that one. The information is also at David Pakman.com slash attention.

Please RSVP when possible so that the venues know whether we need to open up more seating or what's going on. Okay. So please do RSVP, especially to the Barnes & Noble event. Send me an email, by the way, if you're going. I would love to hear from you. And we will have a great bonus show for you today. It's me on the bonus show. I'll tell you what I'm up to in D.C. And then we will go from there onward and upward, soon to be beyond the release of the book. It's been exhausting. So as exhausted as you might be about hearing about the book, I'm exhausted from from doing book stuff for months now. So we're almost there. If you haven't preordered it, get it at Davidpackman.com slash attention.