The David Pakman Show - Trump hit with 26 impeachment articles as election flips

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

-- On the Show: -- A preview of the potential 2028 Democratic primary candidates, including Gavin Newsom, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and Kamala Harris -- Prediction markets on Kalshi show Democrats hitting record high odds to control the House and Senate ahead of the midterms -- Representative Steve Cohen introduces 26 new impeachment articles against Donald Trump covering foreign policy and executive actions -- Donald Trump makes rambling statements about poverty statistics, oil prices, and his meeting length with Chinese President Xi Jinping -- Donald Trump responds to a question about artificial intelligence safety risks by highlighting the industry's economic value -- Donald Trump faces harsh heckling at the Presidents Cup in Chicago before returning to Marine One with presidential aide Natalie Harp -- Recent video clips posted online have fueled unconfirmed speculation regarding Donald Trump's breathing and potential use of leg braces -- On the Bonus Show: Trump refuses to spend money appropriated by Congress, Trump blocks CNN from Air Force One, the White House runs taxpayer-funded Trump propaganda ads, and much more... 📜 Trust & Will: Save 20% on your estate planning at https://trustandwill.com/pakman 📖 Get your copy of “What We Carry Forward” by Aithal at https://davidpakman.com/carryforward 💪 Get a FREE AG1 Pro Yeti Shaker in your Welcome Kit at https://drinkag1.com/pakman 💡 Outskill: Grab your free seat to the 2-Day AI Mastermind at https://link.outskill.com/PAKMANDEC1 ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🥄 Magic Spoon: Use code PAKMAN for $5 off at https://magicspoon.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 (01:20) Preview of the 2028 Democratic primary (19:12) Democrats soar in prediction markets (26:10) Congressman introduces 26 impeachment articles (35:36) Trump gives bizarre answers in weekend interviews (43:04) Trump struggles to address AI risks (51:48) Trump heckled at event outside MAGA bubble (58:25) Rumors circulate regarding Trump's health Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're richer than you think. Coming up on today's show, the 28 Democratic primary is going to be starting way sooner than I think a lot of people realize I will break down the potential candidates, the lanes, and why I think this could get very ugly, very quickly. Donald Trump has also been hit with 26 new articles of impeachment. And there is a major question being set up. What will Democrats do about this issue if they take back the House? Meanwhile, Donald Trump delivers another completely bizarre set of interviews.

The best poverty? What does that mean? Everything is going down. What does that mean? And then a meeting with she that if you think about it lasted two days. We also have Democrats suddenly hitting record highs in the prediction markets and brutal heckling of the president when he steps outside of his MAGA bubble. All of it and more coming up. The book promotion is over. But please remember to review the book. We have 75 reviews up on Amazon. We need a

thousand. Make sure that you are leaving a review. You can find the book at David Pakman.com slash attention. What a program today. Great to be back in the studio. I want to start today with the 28 Democratic primary. I know some of you are probably thinking, you know, David, it's September of 2026. We haven't even gotten through the midterm. Let's get through one election before we start talking about the next presidential election, which is a fair critique. But let me explain why I want to do this right now. This is going to start way earlier, way earlier than people are realizing. And before, Before you know it, in fact, the expectation is that as soon as November or December, there are going to be Democratic candidates saying, hey, I'm running in this thing.

It's basically just waiting for the midterms and that is it. Given all of that, I do think it makes sense to talk a little bit about this today because very quickly it is going to become an issue within the left and within the Democratic Party. And my expectation is that by February of 2027, this thing is going to be an active primary with announcements from multiple candidates, staff being hired, donors being lined up, candidates going to the early states, even potentially endorsements and importantly, people starting to attack each other. So to put it a different way, we're a few months from the beginning of a presidential primary

that is not going to choose its nominee until the middle or really the start of the second half of 2028. So I am not here to predict who is going to win. Most of the people we're talking about today are not close to announcing. Some of them insist that they're not running and any poll you see right now needs to be taken with some very specific grains of salt that I want to talk about. But the potential field is becoming clear enough that we can identify some of the dynamics that will be defining this race.

And this is going to be really important for the left independent media ecosystem that I inhabit and that many of you inhabit. And let's go through what some of the issues are going to be. First of all, what are the sort of lanes that are going to be a factor here? Because there are going to be some candidates. competing for the same voters? Who has a real constituency? Who's getting attention because they're famous or have name recognition? What will happen, importantly, when candidates start dropping out and their voters have to go somewhere else? And also we have to consider the new primary

calendar, which is going to completely shake things up. And could Democrats end up tearing each other apart before we even get to the general election. So think of this as like my very early map of the 2028 primary. The candidates I'm taking seriously, the ones I'm not, the fault lines that I think are going to matter. And the first thing to understand is really the lanes. Potential candidates, Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, J.B Pritzker and potentially Governor Wes Moore are obviously very different people. They have very different. experience, very different personalities. They are from different age brackets. But those candidates have a real possibility of ending up competing for a lot of the same voters. Now, there are a lot of

Democratic voters out there who are saying, you know, I would like an experienced governor, someone who seems presidential in their presentation, somebody who can make the argument. I have run a government and won an election. And I can beat Republicans. If three or four candidates are fighting over that electorate, who is going to consolidate it? Because I see that if they are all up on the stage, they are mostly fighting for the same candidates. I don't think that Newsom, Pritzker, Shapiro, and Wes Moore, who, by the way, Westmore has said he's not running. Others haven't talked about it like Shapiro and Pritzker. Newsom has said he is indeed thinking about it. If they're all fighting for the same candidates, what

What does that do to someone potentially like an AOC? Now, I actually think AOC probably doesn't end up running, but there are many people who believe she does. Of course, what happens when someone like an AOC is up there generating more excitement among the further left section of the electorate and you've got four or maybe five candidates fighting for the same slice of the electorate like Newsome Morse-Morship? So that's potentially a good situation for AOC, but there's an interesting wrinkle there as well because there are parts of the further left that have decided AOC isn't left wing enough.

She sold out. She's gone soft on Israel and she's gone soft on the Democratic leadership and other issues. So even the progressive lane, if AOC were to run, which I don't think she will, she might, but I don't think she will. I think even the progressive lane is not going to be as simple as AOC runs and she inherits the further left lane. So I think that that's a wrinkle as well. There are other potential candidates whose chances I just don't buy. For example, I've spoken to some donors and insiders who believe that Raphael Warnock,

Senator Raphael Warnock, is potentially going to run. He's been raising his national profile. he's been doing some travel. He's got a new book that he's promoting. Now, maybe I'm completely wrong. I see zero path, zero path to Raphael Warnock becoming the Democratic nominee. So you've got this other lane of, I have no shot, but I might do it anyway. Okay. That's where I would put someone like a Raphael Warnock. Then we come to somebody like the other Georgia senator, John Assoff. John Ossoff is very interesting to me. Now, Assoff says he has no interest in running. Take that for what it's worth. I don't know. I've spoken to some of his staffers. They don't seem to think he has

zero interest, but nobody is saying this guy is going to be running. But if Asoff did run, I think he ends up occupying a pretty interesting space. He's younger and less kind of establishment coded than someone like Gavin Newsom or Josh Shapiro. But he's also not left like AOC. He's he's stopping short of that. So is there a world in, is there a world in which John Assoff becomes kind of a compromise candidate between different factions of the party, the more center left establishment faction and the further left AOC wing. Maybe AOS off could do that. Now, my suspicion is that eventually people would come for Asoff as well. If the further left is coming for AOC at this point, I think they will come for John Assoff. Now, this gets us to the next issue. And

This is sort of an uncomfortable one. And I say this as a Jewish person myself. John Assoff is Jewish. Josh Shapiro is Jewish. J.B. Pritzker is Jewish. I don't think I can honestly tell you that I believe there's any real chance that the 2028 nominee is Jewish. I think it's an obstacle right now.

And I think it's an obstacle in the primary and in the general. We have more anti-Semitism. than I can remember from decades on both sides of the political aisle right now. So I'm not saying a Jewish candidate can't win. I'm not saying Jewish candidates shouldn't run. But given what we've seen over the last several years, it would be naive not to mention. Guys, I don't know that the environment points to a Jewish nominee for the Democratic Party today. So that's another issue.

Then let's get to the changing order. of the Democratic primary. The DNC, this is what I would call the South Carolina issue. This is an important change. The DNC has put South Carolina first in the 28 Democratic primary process. And that means that candidates aren't going to be spending weeks just trying to do okay in Iowa and New Hampshire before reaching a state with a larger black Democratic electorate. South Carolina is going to be that test right at the beginning. So this is highly relevant in a lot of different ways. Imagine that Kamala Harris runs. She enters with the most name recognition as the former vice president, maybe one of the best known candidates that there's been in a long

time at the start of a primary. If Kamala Harris loses South Carolina, I believe it is over politically for her. And this gets especially interesting if there are other non-white candidates. Like, for example, Wes Moore, if Wes Moore changes his mind and runs. Now, he says he's not running. Maybe he means it. I don't know. If he does run, suddenly South Carolina becomes an immediate test of whether the black candidates can build a coalition among black Democrats that could propel them nationally.

And so it puts South Carolina front and center in a particularly interesting way. Then we have to talk about polling. Now, I know that I'm getting emails from. people going, oh, hey, David, AOC is leading the polling or the betting markets. She's in. Or Kamala Harris is leading, but it's mostly name recognition at this point in time. One of the really important things to understand is that there are different people with a plurality of either the polling or betting market support, but not a majority.

And that is going to be a very important factor in 2028. If someone is leading with 17% because there are 12 people, that means 83% are going in a different direction. Now two different things can happen. Let's say someone is leading with 17% in a crowded field. One possibility is 17% is just the beginning. And as other candidates disappear, it'll be basically what happened to Trump. You've got 17, but someone with three drops out and you get most of that.

So now you've got 20. And then someone with six drops out and now you've got 26. And so the point is you start with a plurality. You end up with a majority. Basically that's what happened with Trump in 2016. But there is another possibility. 17 could be your ceiling. Everybody knows you.

Everybody has an opinion about you. You've got 17, but 83% of the party wants somebody else. That's another possible scenario. It's not even 2027. It's 2026. We have no way of knowing which of these two scenarios. as we're looking at this far out. And so this is why I'm much more interested in second choices. And where are there overlapping coalitions? That I think is more interesting than who's technically

leading with a plurality today. Who gets the Newsome vote if Newsome drops out? Does it all go to one candidate? Does it get divided up one point to a bunch? Where do AOC voters go? Who is everybody's acceptable second choice? And so that brings me. to what could be the ugliest part of this primary. We are already hearing stuff like I will never vote for this person or that person no matter what. This person said one thing three years ago. They are dead to me.

That person is to establishment. This person said this thing about Gaza. I am never, ever, ever voting. So you can start to kind of see the outlines of this. Now, I think the best scenario is highly competitive. primary, real disagreements where candidates have to defend their records. But what can happen if every faction ends up deciding if you're outside of the one or two candidates that I support today, you're dead to me.

This could become a very, very toxic primary. And if this really does start in November, which is, it's like six weeks from now in December, January, February, we could be living with that internally toxic. dynamic for well over a year before there is a single vote that is cast. So these are the things that I'm watching. Not so much who's winning the polling or the betting markets in 2026. This is why I'm not even in this particular segment. I'm not even bringing up who is ahead in polling or betting markets.

It's the lanes, the consolidation, South Carolina second choices. Is there someone that can bridge some of these factions? And do Democrats or better said, can Democrats have? an ideological fight, a real fight over ideology without deciding everyone but my preferred candidate is unacceptable. And I'm either staying home or voting a Republican or third party if it's not my way, basically in my way or the highway point of view. So we are a long way from 2028. We may be only six weeks from the 2028 campaign actually starting, which is insane. This is what's on my mind. I want to hear from you. I want to remind you October 3rd this Saturday in Springfield, Massachusetts,

It's Jessica Tarlov and I will be doing a beautiful event at Springfield Symphony Hall. We will then both be signing books. It's free. It is completely free. I would love to see you there. Come out. Let's do something in real life. You can find out the information about this event at David Pakman.com slash attention.

And folks, please leave a review for my new book, pay attention on Amazon. We now are beyond the pre-order phase. The success of this book will depend to a great degree on reviews. So if you haven't left a review, please do. We'll take a break. We've got a phenomenal program today. Most of us understand estate planning is really important, but it's one of those things that we just put off. We just do. And our sponsored trust and will makes it a much more approachable process with affordable attorney designed estate plans that you can create in as little as a half hour. They'll walk you through creating a will or a trust. They will document the decisions around

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is happening with the midterms. The prediction markets have moved to levels, as Trump would say, that we have never seen before. We are at numbers that no one has ever even heard of, but they're bad numbers for Republicans. They're good numbers for Democrats. And I want to try to get to the sort of looking under the hood at what it is that is causing these numbers to reverse so brutally. You've got to see these numbers. So first and foremost on Cal she, the betting market, Democrats recently hit an all time high. Look at this. 91.1. 6% expectation that Democrats are going to take the House of Representatives. And then the part that this didn't seem very likely just a few months ago, Democrats have also

hit a record 62% just from this morning these numbers have gone up. 62% expectation that Democrats are going to take control of the Senate. Now remember where this started. If you go to January of 2026, there was a nearly 70% belief, roughly 2 to 1, 6733, that Republicans were going to hold the Senate. And now all of a sudden, it's almost 2 to 1 in favor of Democrats, which is a rapid, rapid reversal. And then finally, of the four scenarios, which would be Democrats take both, Republicans take both, a combination of the two, the most likely single scenario, not just a plurality, but a majority,

62% expectation in the betting markets that Democrats sweep and take both and a 30% chance that Democrats take only the House. That means that there is a combined 92% belief that Trump and Republicans are going to lose at least some power. Now, normal disclaimers. Prediction markets aren't polls. These numbers reflect what people are willing to buy and sell these contracts for. They can move dramatically. They can be wrong.

But the idea here is to look at the momentum. And this is another indicator pointing in the same direction as recent polling, which continues to improve for Democrats. So the obvious question from a political analysis standpoint is what the hell happened here? Well, consider what the country has experienced. We've had the Iran war, which we were promised this president would never start such a war. That is now dragged on. We are, oh, today, we have completed seven months.

As of today, we are entering the eighth month of this war. And every time Americans get an energy bill, every time Americans fill up their cars with that sweet, sweet gasoline, they remember, wait a second, we're getting screwed here. Gasoline nationally is now 460 a gallon. Diesel is, I don't even know where diesel is at this point. Hold on a second. Let me, let me make sure I even giving you the right numbers. AAA diesel chart.

I should have had this pulled up. Gasoline, sorry, it's not 460. It's like 4. 450. Okay, so I was basically right. And diesel is 652 a gallon. Reuters is reporting gas prices are up about 41% over the last year. Diesel up 76%.

This is about everything in your life. Diesel is moving everything. Diesel's moving food packages, construction materials, consumer goods. If it's on a truck, somebody is paying the higher fuel bill and that trickles down and eventually you pay more and I pay more. Now, meanwhile, Republicans have passed this massive tax and spending law extending trillions of dollars in tax cuts. Benefits are not distributed equally.

And you've got the nonpartisan congressional budget office saying households to the top of the income distribution are gaining resources from the law because of the tax changes, but households at the bottom are losing resources because of reductions to the social safety net. We are seeing reduced Medicaid spending. Fewer Medicaid enrollees snap spending has gone down. That's food stamps. Trump goes, we've lifted people off of food stamps. No, you've made it harder to get food stamps.

So some people aren't getting them anymore. But the political environment this creates is. popular war, higher prices, Medicaid cuts, snap cuts, tax changes that benefit the rich. And none of this is what you promise to do. Now, look back at the electoral numbers. Things didn't look nearly this good before Trump came in and did things that really messed up day to day life for a lot of people. And so you've got Democrats with big generic ballot leads, Republicans in competitive races starting to say, well, I'm not so much for the immigration policy. That's Elvira, I forget her full name, the Republican Congresswoman in Florida.

We looked at. She's like, ah, we didn't really sign up for a lot of this immigration stuff. On the war, you've got some Republicans distancing. Now, none of this means Democrats are guaranteed anything. Polling is not election results. Prediction markets aren't election results. These are 435 individual House races. The Senate is coming down to, you know, a handful of contest.

We've got weeks until election day. The trajectory is stunning. And what once looked like in elections where, an election where, you know, Democrats can probably take the House, but the Senate is almost impossible, has now turned into the expectation as Democrats take everything. And for the first time this cycle, it's feeling like it is within our grasp as opposed to some hypothetical thing far off. So what we need to remember is there are key races.

which we will continue to talk about, that are the most likely hinge races that control, especially of the Senate, could depend on, could hinge on. These are the races that we need to disproportionately focus in on to try to make this a reality. And it is also important to remember that there is an inflection point nature to this election where it could set the orientation into 2020. And so what we spoke about earlier with regard to how is the Democratic primary going to go, what we spoke about last week with how is the Republican primary going to go and how much power will Trump even have to influence that. All of this depends on these elections that are now just 30 must be what, 35, something like that days away.

And in the midst of this, it's the I word, not, no, not incompetent. It is impeachment. discuss that. Donald Trump has just been hit, just pounded, pound, pound, hit with 26 new articles of impeachment. Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee, senior member of the House Judiciary Committee introduced this just huge impeachment resolution and it kind of covers the entire second Trump term. Now, remember clarifications. Trump has not been impeached for a third time yet. Remember that being impeached doesn't remove you. The House impeaches. The Senate then votes on whether to convict or acquit. But we have a member of Congress

that has introduced 26 articles. Now, I know that there are some Democrats out there, like Tammy Duckworth, who are saying Democrats shouldn't even be messing with this impeachment stuff. I'm going to come back to that for in in a moment. But of course, with Republicans controlling the House right now, there is not going to be. an actual impeachment of Donald Trump. But what Cohen has done is put down a marker for what could happen if Democrats take the House in November. Now, listen to some of what's going on here. We've got the war against Iran without congressional approval, impeachable, deploying military forces to American cities, impeachable, define court orders involving

immigration enforcement, impeachable, unlawfully withholding money appropriated by Congress, impeachable firing inspectors general alleged abuse of pardon power retaliation against law firms and universities attacks on press freedom alleged violations of the emoluments clause by personally profiting from the president from the pregnancy from the presidency these are cohen's allegations now of course filing an article doesn't establish that trump did it we though as people who can look around and identify what is going on out there in the world we can say well he did that stuff. And this brings us to what I think is the bigger debate happening inside the Democratic party right now. Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth recently said, you know, if Democrats do regain

power, they shouldn't be impeaching anybody. Let's just get back to work. She added, I'm not interested in being in a confrontation with Donald Trump. Now, can I understand some of the political instinct behind that? Yeah, I guess I can. I mean, it is true. People care about and need health care and they need affordable housing and we need wage growth and figuring out child care and the cost of living. Absolutely. Democrats need to work on all of those things. But there is a kind of weird premise buried in there that impeachment is the opposite of Congress doing its job. Impeachment is literally part of the work assigned to Congress by the Constitution. Article 1 gives the House the sole power of impeachment. No one else has that power.

Now, separately, the Senate has the sole power to conduct a trial and then to decide whether to convict conviction requiring two-thirds of the senators present. These are different constitutional decisions. The House asks, has the president committed conduct that warrants impeachment? The Senate then asks, should the impeached president be convicted? I think this argument about, you know, the Senate will never convict Trump, so why bother? It doesn't really, it's not responsive to the first question. I know the political reality.

There is not going to be a transformation of the Senate or of the Republican Party where you're going to get two-thirds of the Senate to convict Donald Trump, no matter what happens in November. I get that. But if a future House investigates the allegations against Trump, develops evidence, concludes he did do impeachable things. They must impeach. It is the responsibility of the House to determine, has a president done something? worthy of impeachment. And if the answer is yes, you don't make a political calculation. You just say, you've got to do it. Now, the framers did leave discretion to the House over whether impeachment proceedings are appropriate. There is a perfectly legitimate argument about process. Now, Democratic

leaders opposed Al Green's recent impeachment effort because they said, you know, formal investigations and hearings need to happen first. And earlier this month, 18 Democrats joined Republicans in tabling that resolution. Another 47 members voted present. That that is a different argument from saying forget impeachment. Let's get back to work. They must investigate. They should hold hearings. They must establish the facts and let Donald Trump respond and figure out, do any of these allegations rise to the constitutional standard of high crimes and misdemeanors? And then members of the House have to make a decision about what is assigned to them by the Constitution. I think that the political calculation is a complete and total distraction.

And I believe that the idea that there are other important things to work on also doesn't mean that the House should ignore one of its constitutionally delegated duties. We can work. If Democrats take control of the House and if they take control of the House and Senate, even better, they can work on healthcare at the same time that they evaluate the evidence against Donald Trump and decide whether impeachment is appropriate. They can try to figure out how do we get a lot of the people that have been, uh, uh, had taken from them food stamps.

How do we get them food stamps back? And also determine is Donald Trump worthy of impeachment here? All of this stuff can happen at the same time. Believe me, these are adults. They can do it. They have the resources. They have staff. There's other staff as well.

So this idea of we have to get back to work rather than impeachment. No, you have a responsibility to evaluate whether the president has done, uh, done things. or engaged in behavior that is worthy of impeachment. And if the answer is yes, my view, if I were a member of the House, is I would make no calculation as to, well, we've got 52 people in the Senate and you need 67. So there's no, no, no, no. That's a problem for the Senate. The Senate is going to have to figure out whether they can defend whatever it is they decide to do. In the House, you look at the evidence. And if there is impeachment worthy activity, you impeach plain and simple. If you're in my audience and you disagree with me. Let me know. Info at David Pakman.com. Send, uh, leave a comment if you

want. And also remember that we now have a texting number. You can text me about this and get on my texting list 646. 531 4333. I would love to hear from you. AI tools are everywhere now, but most people aren't even aware how much AI can help their business and their daily workflow. Our sponsor, Outskill, is hosting a free two-day AI mastermind training this Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern, you don't need any coding or technical background. And over those two days, you're going to learn practical skills, how to use AI to automate repetitive tasks or building agents that can handle multi-step work, connecting it to sheets or notion or CRMs, so the information moves on its own. They are going to give you ready-made systems that you

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We have the best poverty. What? What does that mean? Everything is going down. Down in a good way. Down from the standpoint of good or down from the standpoint of bad. And apparently a meeting that lasted a few hours. If you think about it, which is what Trump likes to do is a deep thinker.

If you think about it, it was really a multiple day meeting. This is all from the same weekend. So let's start with Donald Trump. explaining, we have the best poverty. We have the best, I guess you could say poverty. They talk poverty. We have the best poverty numbers ever in the history of our country. In other words, there's less poverty now than at any time in the history of our country.

Other countries come up to me. They go, sir, how do we can, how, how could we possibly get our poverty to be so good like yours is? Okay. Now, buried inside that word salad is some data. The official census poverty rate fell to 10.2% in 2025, the lowest in the history of that particular series. As is often the case with Trump, it's not that he completely invented the underlying number. the president of the United States gets halfway through a sentence and he struggles to communicate,

poverty is at a record low. We have the best poverty is the way he's able to articulate it. It is not evidence of a well-functioning brain. Then we get this. Trump says everything is going down. Now, that can that can mean a lot of different things. He had a lot of good things are happening, including for our farmers. Thank you all very much. One thing I have to say, with the exception of oil, which is lower than the Biden administration. And we no longer have to worry about nuclear weapons with Iran because they're wiped out. But with the exception of oil, everything is going down.

We have it going down. We inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country, and it's going really down. 401Ks are at their all-time high. The stock markets are at their all-time high, and our country is doing really well. Thank you very much, everybody. No.

So everything is going down is not how prices work. I'm going to get back to that. But Trump's own sentence requires an exception. Everything is going down except oil, which even if it were true, which it's not, it's kind of an important exception when you're involved in a war with Iran that you chose to do. The strait of Hormuz is disrupted. Americans are paying so much more in terms of gas and energy. Now, Trump is acknowledging oil is still high, but it's going to fall.

As soon as this Iran war ends, it is going to fall. Now, there's another important slight of hand here. Crude oil and the price you pay for gas are of course related. Gas is refined from crude oil, but they're not the same thing. So you don't get to say, again, this is if all of this stuff were true, you don't get to say some measure of oil is lower than it was at some point under the Biden administration. Therefore, ignore the fact that I went to war in a way that has spiked gas prices and don't pay attention to the price of gas, only pay attention to the price of oil.

This is the strategy. Never talk about anything that seems bad for me and talk about some other number that sounds better, even if it's not true. Now then we get to like my favorite thing. Everything is going down. It is not going down. Now there are multiple layers, of course, to this. One option is that inflating.

has declined but is still positive. And that's the situation that they have sort of been claiming, which is prices are going up, but at a lower rate. But then prices are still going up. If the price of something goes from $100 to $120 one year and then from $120 to $110 the following year, the rate of change has slowed down. This is like basic calculus. The rate of change is slowed down, but the direction is still up. That's not even what's going on, though. In fact, we have seen inflation during many of the months of Donald Trump's second term be higher than it was when Donald Trump took over from Joe Biden in January of 2025.

But this, it's like, David, they don't care about these details. Everything is going down and we have the best poverty. All right. Final thing. Here is Trump going, I really had a two-day meeting with she. If you think about it, we had the biggest, strongest, longest meeting anyone's ever heard. Early in the morning and now I have a dinner with Anthropics, but that's okay. It's good stuff.

You know why it's good because our nation is winning. We had an incredible meeting with President Xi lasted for a long time. I mean, actually two days. You think about it. If you think, you have to think about it, but if you do, we made tremendous, we made tremendous progress. This last three days has been very amazing. That was a great meeting with President Xi and a lot of good things are happening, including for our farmers. Everything has to be exaggerated. Why can't it just be a few hour meeting? Like, why is it? It lasted two days if you think about it.

It was on September 25th. They came out with some agreements. There's an extension of the trade ceasefire. Like, just tell what it really happened. Why do you have to make it a two day meeting? Like what if it was a four hour meeting physically, but spiritually it was 48 hours or it was a four hour meeting, but it felt like 48 hours. Does the meeting continue while Trump is dreaming about how powerful and dictatorial she is and how much he would like to do the same? That is what makes these clips so striking when you put them together. Are they riddled with inaccuracies, untruths, and what some may consider deliberate lies? Yes, politicians sometimes get things wrong. And you know, there's this bizarre relationship to language where everything is superlative.

We have the best poverty. Everything is going down. The meeting was really two days long. Everything has to be the biggest or the lowest or the greatest or the longest or the girtiest. And it all has to be incredible what happened. The words stop conveying information when you speak this way. They're just, here's the list of adjectives.

choose from it and attach it to whatever noun happens to walk by. Poverty, it's the best. Prices, they're down. The meeting was incredible. The length was two days if you think about it. And I have thought about it and it doesn't make any damn sense. But we have become desensitized to this way of presidential communication. And if we were not desensitized to it, we would be recognizing this is nuts. This is a crazy way to talk. But we've been so, desensitized to it that we get word salads like what I'm about to play for you about AI and we go, well, at least he's thinking about AI. Ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump's brain is mayonnaise and not the good kind of mayonnaise.

Listen to this answer about AI. And it is the type of mayo where you go, wow, it's a really hot day. And the mayo has been in the sun for hours. I don't think I'm putting it on my fries. I really don't think I am. And it's sort of the perfect Trump answer because he doesn't really answer the question. And it's clear he doesn't understand AI, but I think he suspects he might be able to make money from it. And that at the end of the day is what he cares about.

Is there any part of you that worries at all about AI going rogue? Well, I don't worry about it. I just, you know, it's a huge industry. It's really the Industrial Revolution may be bigger. You know, they actually say it could be bigger than the Industrial Revolution. Who would think that? And it is in fact bigger than the internet. And we're leading and we're building tremendous, you know, trillions of dollars worth of places. And why should we give that up? If something is bad, they have to fix it.

Is there any- It is the perfect Trumpian answer. Not only does he not answer the question. He doesn't understand the question. Guys, do, does anybody in my audience think that Trump even understands what it means for AI to go rogue. Of course, he's not answering the question. He doesn't know what we're talking about. And his answer essentially is, well, listen, it's a big industry. It's like the industrial revolution, we don't want to give that up. Now, nobody said anything about giving it up. And this is one

of the things that keeps coming up. We're going to, we're going to be doing more coverage of AI risk. And very often when anybody brings up risk, the reaction is, are you saying we should give it up? And I'm certainly not. You know, we've had people on this show like, L.E. Zer Yudkowski, who has taken an approach of like, we need to stop, shut the whole thing down. It is not going to happen. And even if the U.S. attempted to shut the whole thing down, other countries aren't going to do it. And it's not going to make a damn difference. So when we bring up risk, we're not saying shut the whole thing down.

We're saying let's have a holistic understanding of the technology, what sort of regulation should be in place. And Trump just, there's one element to this that Trump's, Trump understands. There's a lot of money involved here. And he likes that. And Trump's relationship with technology in general, you know, data centers, AI in this case, renewable energy, Trump's relationship with technology is he doesn't seem to understand how it works. And he doesn't really seem to care about that.

He doesn't seem particularly interested in complicated policy questions or what this is going to do to people and communities and localities. His instinct is, is this big? Truth essential. Exactly. Is it powerful? Is there potentially a lot of money here, maybe even for me? Are there companies that really don't want me to regulate that we might be able to get money

from? And can I say that the US is number one in something? And if the answers are yes, yes and yes, Trump's interested. You know, we've got AI trillions of dollars. Crypto, huge amounts of money that he's making money from billions. Data centers, you know, big buildings and big investments and electricity. He can't explain the technology. He doesn't care about the technology.

He doesn't care how the average person is going to be affected. He understands the language of size and money. Two of Trump's obsessions. Size and money. And sometimes that instinct points to something that happens to be real. AI is probably going to be massively important economically, maybe for the better or maybe for the worse. The US does have an interest in remaining competitive on AI.

Of course that's the case. There are potential benefits here. But this is why you need somebody who can engage with these second order questions. What about AI going rogue? What safeguards do we need? I was speaking with former president Bill Clinton last week. He wants a kill switch. I asked him who controls the switch.

And he goes, well, that's the tricky question. What does it do to jobs? What happens to electricity and water quality and noise and all of the stuff? And what if it starts to go into autonomous weapon systems handled or controlled by AI? What happens if these systems become capable enough that it becomes difficult to control them? You can go, well, you know, some of these concerns are exaggerated or the AI doomed scenarios are ridiculous. That's a debate we have.

But the reaction when you're asked, what about AI going rogue and you go, this industry is worth trillions of dollars, you're not answering anything. You're basically just saying I see the potential cash grab as a worthwhile reward for any of the risks. Sir, are you worried about the safety of this new nuclear technology? Well, listen, nuclear is a huge industry. Why would we give it up? Wasn't part of the question. And this is what I think sometimes people get confused about. They go, Trump is so pro technology. He's not pro technology. He's pro-spectical. He's pro-lining his pockets.

He loves making announcements about billions or trillions of dollars. If you can talk about we're building a thousand data centers, trillions of dollars, CEOs are coming to the White House. We're beating China. That's what Trump cares about. That's the language he understands. The actual technology and the tradeoffs and the risk, forget about it. Difficult regulatory questions when the answer is not just bigger, just keep doing it more. He doesn't give a damn about it.

And so this is how you end up asking the president of the United States about one of the most probably consequential technology issues of the last and future 20, 30 years. Could it become dangerous in ways we can't control? And Trump goes, but have you seen how much money is wrapped up in this? I've got the CEO of Anthropic come into the White House to beg me for who the hell knows what. He doesn't understand it, guys. He doesn't have the capacity. He doesn't have the interest in understanding it. He doesn't have the concern.

If there's maybe money in it for him and he can go, we're beating China, that's good enough for him. And that is terrifying. Sometimes the most important part of a political story is not what gets reported, but what gets placed in the center of the frame. And that is why our sponsor ground news is so valuable. Take a look at Trump's Medicaid work requirement rule. The underlying story is that a lot of adults on mediation.

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Magic Spoon's new protein pastries, high-protein low-sugar takes on the classic toaster pastries I grew up with. You can get $5 off your next order, including the protein pastries at magicspoon.com Packman. The link is in the description. Donald Trump was just reminded of something that is going to be a much bigger problem for him after the midterms, assuming that Democrats take at least the House, if not both the House and Senate. And it's the following. You can control the White House press corps to some degree. He's done it. You can surround yourself with friendly media. He's done it. You can hold rallies packed with your supporters who will just cheer every crazy thing you say. But,

Every once in a while, unless you're just going to lock yourself up in the White House residence or at Mara Lago, which he may do, you sometimes have to step outside the bubble. And what can happen can get very ugly. Donald Trump arrives at the president's cup in, just outside Chicago. He starts talking about he's getting a great reception and it's all going well. And then you hear someone scream, you're an effing pedophile. And it's about at the eight second mark. take a listen and then there is a sort of broader story here that we want to discuss.

Okay, I don't know how clearly you hear it. I'll play it once more for you. Okay, you're an effing pedophile. What's funny about this is the timing. Trump had just predicted that the fake news media would say he got a bad reception and then you actually get you're an effing pedophile. Now, some people were cheering for Trump. There were some USA chance. It was a mixed reaction. It wasn't 30,000 people booing Donald Trump. But that's what makes this so interesting. Trump is increasingly putting himself in environments where you can minimize this sort of thing.

Don't expose me to that in the Oval Office, for example, at MAGA rallies, friendly interviews, Mar-a-Lago, Doral, Bedminster, all these places. The audience is handpicked. It's curated. It's overwhelmingly supportive. But the second you put Trump in front of a more diverse. cross-section of people, people are not playing the game. And they are yelling things up to and including this. Now, I think politically this is going to be very relevant. Trump's approval

rating is 32 in the last Reuters-Zipso's poll. It's 29% in the latest American research group poll. Democrats led Republicans by eight points on the congressional ballot in the same poll. Trump is underwater on cost of living. He's underwater on Iran. And look at where Trump is sort of campaigning. He promised Republicans he was going to go into dozens of competitive races and help them win. But his rallies that are upcoming are in Oklahoma, in Alabama, two of the most Republican states in the U.S. They are going to give Trump something that he loves, which is adoring crowds with no dissent, no critique, and nothing else that he might be uncomfortable as a result of. Now, you could go, well, it's a smart strategy. Republicans are saying, oh, you know,

will reach media markets beyond the states and he's going to do more campaigning in October. I think there's another possibility worth watching here, which is what happens to Trump's public world if Republicans have the disastrous midterms we think they might have. And we've seen this happen before. When you have a political environment that becomes hostile, there can be this big temptation to retreat to those who love you. And Trump has built an entire political ecosystem where that's really easy. Easy. Friendly TV, friendly podcasters, friendly rallies, friendly states, friendly country clubs,

and a small group of really loyal people surrounding him. And that brings us to the second clip. Trump leaves Chicago. He gets back on Marine One. And there is Natalie Harp right next to Trump. Take a look at this video. This surfaced yesterday. And it has gone very viral. And what you see is Donald Trump sitting there sort of, you know, let's get out of here. I've had enough of this. What's going on? And then you will see that in comes that was a different guy as they are getting ready to depart. In comes Trump's presidential aide, Natalie Harp. And she sits right there with Donald Trump. Now, there is nothing suspicious about a presidential aid traveling with the president. There's, of course, speculation that they are in a romantic relationship, but that's not

and proven. It is part of the job for a presidential aid to travel with the president. The interesting thing isn't the speculation about the relationship that may or may not be going on. It is the access. Natalie Harp is this extraordinarily consistent presence around Donald Trump. She travels with them. She's managing a social media operation. She's part of this really shrinking small universe of people who have direct access to Trump. And the contrast is an interesting. one. Outside the bubble, you've got an uncontrolled crowd where somebody screams an absolutely brutal insult, quite frankly, at you on live television. Inside the bubble, it's Air Force 1, it's Marine 1, it's your staff, it's your closest dates, it's people you've selected,

and someone in Natalie Harp who leaves Trump these little notes, notes with sweet nothings on them. He controls the environment. And if Republicans get crushed in November, I want to see what what happens to that bubble. Does Trump respond by spending more time confronting the political reality outside the bubble, campaigning in difficult places, sitting down with hostile interviewers, exposing himself to people that might critique what he does? I don't think so. I think the world gets smaller. I think it's more rallies in Alabama and Oklahoma, more friendly interviews and time at the clubs and time surrounded by the same people who go everything's going so well. You're so smart. That, I believe, is the more important story. The heckle lasted five seconds. Trump is building

a political bubble that is apparently enduring for years. And if these people get crushed in November, which we've got to do every damn thing to make sure that they do, we are going to put Trump in a really uncomfortable situation. And our interest in it is the more Trump retreats into this. I'm just watching TV with Natalie kind of world. The less. he's doing stuff that is bad for Americans. And that's my primary sort of interest. Get this guy away from legislating. That's the last thing we need him doing. All right. Something weird is happening around the president. And before we go any further, let me issue some disclaimers about what I am saying and what I am not saying. We now have multiple videos circulating with people claiming Trump is

struggling to breathe. He's wearing a leg brace. These. Tapping movements are getting worse. Is he checking a medical device? None of this stuff is confirmed. Two random people on Twitter can't diagnose Trump. I cannot diagnose Trump. But I do think the videos are worth looking at for a very different reason. This is what happens when there is a vacuum of credible information about the health of an 80-year-old president.

Now, I want to show you the first video here and you are likely to notice what many others have noticed. It seems as though Donald Trump is struggling to breathe. When you see him from the side, you see his chest visibly heaving. And this is a theme with Trump. And for those who believe that Trump is experiencing heart failure, this would be something notable to watch. And you see Trump from the side here. And it appears as though he is really struggling just to talk.

because of these big, deep breaths that he is struggling to take. Now, there are many reasons somebody might look like that on video. Trump's physicians, this is me being thorough, right? Trump's physicians say he's super healthy. He has such strong pulmonary and cardiac function. And maybe he does And the video is an outlier for some reason. But then we continue to see new speculation. We have video of Donald Trump walking here. And what people are fixating on is what seemed to be rigid lower legs, something unusual there, suggestive of Trump wearing some kind of brace to maintain rigidity.

Now again, I don't know. I don't think you know. He's not wearing see-through pants. What we do know is Trump has had documented swelling in his lower legs. It's been chalked up as just a little chronic venous insufficiency, benign, common and older people, although Trump's not older, of course, but if it's useful to the narrative, common and older people. And it's getting much better. Now, that is very different from a video where it seems like something weird is going on with Trump's legs. We already know there is some issue with his legs. It seems that he's

walking in an unusual manner. And then we have another video. Trump is being noticed doing this more and more tapping with his right hand on his upper right leg. We have now seen many videos and you see there Trump is getting ready to walk very strongly and he does the taps. Now there is growing speculation about this. One question that has come up is, does Donald Trump have some medical device that he is checking for? Is he tapping to check for a medical device? Others continue to insist. Donald Trump does the right leg tapping when he is getting ready to use that leg, either to climb or to descend stairs or to do something that is a little more cardiovascularly challenging.

Now, we have no basis for any of this stuff. And that is really the bigger story. Trump went to Walter Reed three times in 13 months. He had this evaluation involving 22 specialists. We weren't told who those specialists are or what they do. It's just we're being comprehensive. We're being preventive. Trump's doctor says, no, no, no, he's in great health.

Now, maybe everything we are seeing is deceptive and Trump really is an incredible health. But we still don't have his medical records. Presidents aren't legally required to release them. We are getting total opacity on what is going on with Trump's health. And so that's why we have this environment, the swollen ankles, the bruised hands. We haven't talked about this stuff for a while, but it's still going on. And he's falling asleep multiple times a week. and he looked strange and he's walking weirdly and his breathing is unusual. Now, maybe some of these

theories, and I use that term colloquially, maybe some of these theories are nonsense. But that's the problem. Because we lack objective information about Trump, speculation fills the vacuum. And we've been through this before. You know, Democrats spent years getting angry when people scrutinized Joe Biden's age and physical presentation. And eventually questions about Biden's condition became this huge story. And the lesson from that shouldn't be now we can diagnose Trump from Twitter videos because it's hard to. The lesson should be, hey, this guy's 80 and we don't have enough objective medical information to know what's going on. And he's the most powerful person in the country. Now, if he's really healthy, great. Release information that shows that that establishes it.

If he has normal health issues for an 80 year old, that doesn't necessarily disqualify you, but we should know about it. The problem is the public. is getting selective summaries saying this guy's healthier than Obama was when he became president at like, was Obama 48 or something like that, 47? Even though you see bruising and leg swelling and medical visits and struggling to breathe and walking weirdly and falling asleep, he's healthier than Obama was somehow. So do these videos prove Trump can't breathe or he's wearing leg braces or he's wearing a medical device?

No, they don't prove it. But the fact that every clip immediately generates more speculation because something looks weird combined with obvious lies about Trump's health relative to Obama's health, this is going to allow a vacuum to fill with dramatic explanations. And that is exactly what is going on. I wish I knew what was really going on with Trump's health. I don't, but this stuff is looking really weird. Now, we are going to look on the bonus show today at nearly a billion dollars in spending canceled by Trump in very weird ways. I will explain. explain. The White House has blocked CNN from traveling with Trump on Air Force One. And the White House has aired another government-funded ad that arguably is illegal. When has the law stopped this administration? All of that and more on today's bonus show. Get instant access by signing up at join packman.com. And remember to leave a review for my new book, pay attention on Amazon. We'll be raffling off this book. I think tomorrow we're doing it. In the meantime, it's.

It's free to leave a rating and a review. Please do so. You'll find a link at David Packman.com slash attention. I will see you on the bonus show.