The David Pakman Show - Trump is RUNNING SCARED

Episode Date: October 18, 2026

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for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Hey, thanks for tuning into the David Packman Show. You're listening to a free sample of the exclusive award-winning bonus show, which we produce every weekday for our members. unlock the whole lineup and support independent media at join packman.com. Welcome to the bonus show, ladies and gentlemen. Remember how I told you a little while ago that Donald Trump's lawsuit against the BBC might backfire because the BBC isn't backing down and the next step would be discovery and

discovery means that Trump gets deposed. That is exactly what is up next and Trump now is trying to figure out. How can I keep going with my $10 billion defamation suit against the BBC, but not have to sit down and be deposed? In fact, Trump was scheduled to sit for a deposition Friday, but his attorneys canceled it. And they said he's going to be unavailable for roughly the next two months, which is much longer than the discovery period in the case. He is no longer available because of matters of national importance.

We know that his lawyers would be crazy to let him sit down for a decision. deposition. And so more than likely, I don't know that this is going to be able to go forward, Pat, because of this inability or unwillingness rather to be deposed. I think that they're going to have to bring about an end to this case because Donald Trump didn't have a case to begin with. The thing that he was angry about didn't even air in the U.S. And he claimed that it cost him all these financial damages. That's really hard to believe, given that everyone knows who he is. So I don't think that this BBC documentary is going to change anyone's perceptions of him. So he was already facing this uphill battle.

And now the fact that he won't even testify, he won't appear for the deposition. I think this is easily going to get dismissed or Donald Trump's lawyers will just say, we're not going to do this anymore. One of the funniest things about this. And I mean, we'll find out whether it ends up being funny is the BBC is trying to get the entire thing thrown out anyway because they don't broadcast in the United States. and Trump has filed this lawsuit. I believe it's in Florida and just arguing like there is no jurisdiction here. There's just it's just completely irrelevant and it should be thrown out on that. So far that hasn't

worked, but it would be unbelievable, unbelievable if Trump's, and I know this isn't going to happen. If Trump got deposed, but then the case was thrown out anyway, uh, that would be like the cherry on top scenario. I don't anticipate that that's the way it's going to go. I don't think that there's any chance in hell he'll appear for this deposition and he'll keep using excuses like he's He's just so busy as the president, even though we see what he does day to day. And it's like checking up on the ballroom and cutting down a bunch of trees. So he'll be able to improve the golf course in DC. That's what he's focused on.

So he's going to claim that he's too busy to appear for a deposition because of those subjects. Almost certainly. And again, you know, Trump believes that he is the smartest person in the room. And he's so charismatic and so convincing and just nobody just sit him down in front of whoever. And they will walk away eating out of Trump's hands. But a lot of narcissistic people believe that about themselves and they're wrong. So there could be a battle between Trump wanting to be deposed and his lawyers saying no. I think in this case, Trump knows it's not a good idea to be deposed.

Like even Trump must know. I don't even want them asking about a whole bunch of stuff. Well, I feel like a deposition is the type of thing that White House counsel will try to avoid at all costs. And if they have to, then of course, we'll see it take place like Biden's deposition, for example, during the investigation into him. But if it's not over anything that could be criminal, if it's just a civil matter like this, the lawyers are going to make sure that this does not happen because it's an embarrassing thing. And the president is going to get caught in some lies and some video clips are going to come out of it where he doesn't look so good or she doesn't look so good. So under any circumstances, they're not going to allow this to happen, especially in Donald

Trump's case. Are we heading towards a real estate crash in the United States? We have 7% more mortgage rates once again. Home sales plunged 4% in September from the previous month. That's the biggest decline in more than three years. It's the lowest level in 12 years going all the way back to 2014, other than the early months of the pandemic during which everything just sort of stopped. I am seeing on the realtors subreddit doom and gloom and realtors saying I may be getting out of this business. This is very bad for a lot of people. And I'm I know that anytime real estate is discussed, some people react by going, oh, I don't care about private equity and hedge funds struggle.

That is really not what this is about. This affects everybody. If you are seeing higher mortgage rates, that trickles down to higher rent. If you are seeing a decline in the market, that means people who have to move or need to downsize or whatever may have to accept lower prices for their. home or remaining on market. And I know that private equity is very involved in real estate in the United States. This really affects a lot of people. And when rates are over 7 percent compared to, you know, under 3 percent at one point, this hinders people's ability to have access to homes that

would be truly appropriate and comfortable to them. Like I know about the private equity stuff, but this is bad for a lot of people. Yep. And I before I would argue that there was more of a roadmap for people who wanted to purchase homes and wanted to see interest rates go down because we knew what caused the spike in inflation. We knew that by raising rates, we could eventually get inflation under control and go back to normal. Maybe we wouldn't see those super low mortgage rates of two, three, four percent, but we could see five percent, for example. And maybe that would be the new normal people would get used to that. And we were heading in that direction for a long time. things were improving on this front. We are slowly but surely getting more supply as well in parts of the country.

So we were making some progress on this, not nearly enough, of course, but things were going in the right direction. Then we got Trump's tariffs. We got the war. We got all these reasons to raise interest rates, totally predictable reasons. And I think what's frustrating now is with before us understanding, okay, this is because of COVID, things are going to slowly but surely improve. We don't really know where things are going at this point. Like this could be the type of thing that continues as a trend for a long time. It could reverse course of code of it could reverse course, of course, but we don't know exactly what's going to happen. We are now at the highest interest rates on mortgages in 26 years going back to the year 2000. And of course, I know people like to say,

you know, David, mortgage rates used to be much higher. And it's true. If you go back to 1994, which was 32 years ago, they were in the nines. And if you go back to 1984, they were 14%. And And if you go back to 1981, the famous peak, they were 18%. But the economy over time, and we're talking almost 50 years ago, over time, the economy has become sort of based on one of the engines of the economy, which fuels construction and service jobs and transportation. All of these different things has been we have this scaffolding of lower interest rates to make the entire home building process soup to nuts more affordable.

And so it's sort of like, yeah, okay. 30, 40, and almost 50 years ago, mortgage rates were higher. But think about how many things have changed since then. And a 7 plus percent mortgage interest rate is not going to be conducive to a whole bunch of industries. And the homes used to be a lot cheaper. So even if they had to pay 9% mortgage rates, if the home you're buying is less expensive overall, that's going to mean that you have a smaller monthly payment. So people were able to still purchase those homes. Now we have a situation where we're near the record highs in home values. Depends, of course, on where you're talking about in the country because there's all these different real estate

markets. But we have that coupled with these relatively high interest rates. And that makes it so that we have an environment now where it's just not feasible for people to buy homes. And speaking of different markets, Seattle apparently is suffering the most with pending sales in most metros, among all metros, down 24% from a year earlier. That is an insane decline. I haven't looked at what properties cost in Seattle.

But it seems as though for those who can come up with the capital at 7 plus percent interest rates, there are going to be some deals to be had in Seattle. That's an incredible decline. Yep. It's a market that's going to favor cash buyers. It's going to probably favor renting, at least for the foreseeable future, although I'm sure a lot of these costs will be passed on to renters as well. And again, it's hard to say what the timeline is on something like this.

But I think that this is going to be the new normal for a while. It's going to be the new normal. That's right. I mean, these rates, if I just look historically at the declines in rates, one of the biggest declines was like, let's see, when they went from five to 2.7, that took almost three years to go down 2.3 points. So it's like, you know, I think that that bookmark of like a quarter point a quarter one point per year is often the fastest that rates can decline.

I mean, there was this period between November of 23 and January of 24, which is two months, you saw a 1.1% decline. That's very rare. Like it could be years to even get back to 5%. Well, I guess you could argue as well that the circumstances now are policy-based because of Trump's tariffs, because of the war in Iran. So if those were undone, then we could slowly but surely. go back to where things were before. And maybe it wouldn't take years. It would take months. I guess

that's the best way to look at it. That's the most optimistic view. But we know that Trump, for example, is going to be an office for the next two years. At the very least, his Federal Reserve chairhead hasn't gone along with everything Trump wants to do and is acting a little bit more sensibly. But I think that overall, you take a look at the big picture and it's just not good. It's not good. Let's talk about that live streamed death by firing squad, execution by fire. Squad that was scheduled scheduled. So people may have heard. Pete Hegseth decided we are going to televise an execution.

And it is the execution of Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter. And it was going to be done by firing squad. And we talked last week about how firing squad is on the table because it's a military execution. He attacked Fort Hood, all of this different stuff. We talked about it's grotesque. We talked about we're against the death penalty. Okay. All of a sudden, there is a.

a detail that is making the Trump administration rethink whether they are going to live stream this. And it is that Nadal Hassan is paralyzed from the waist down. Apparently, a lot of the people involved in this decision didn't know that. And there is, I guess, the sense, Pat, that even though a normal death by firing squad would be a perfectly reasonable thing to televise, they're worried it might look bad because Hassan is paralyzed from the waist down. Because he was shot while carrying out his terrorist attack in 2009. Is terrorist attack the right word for this? I don't even know.

I don't know if it was determined to officially be a terrorist attack. Maybe that's the wrong word. He is in a wheelchair as a result of being shot while carrying out this shooting. And I guess they're thinking, man, maybe this looks a little too harsh. Right, which is crazy considering that everyone else in the world thought that it was harsh when you were going to publicly execute someone to begin with. It didn't matter this detail having to do with the person being in a wheelchair. I think that that is not a detail that's going to change my mind. I think

that I'm going to be against it no matter what. But it's just weird considering that the main argument against these public executions is the optics, right? And the fact that that can have on society. So all of a sudden, the same Trump administration that wanted to do this is worried about the optics because he's in a wheelchair. Like, how is that so persuasive to him? It's interesting because what we're really talking about is where you draw the line, right? In other words, For us, like, we're against the death penalty and the idea of televising it is just even more outrageous. For them, they do have a line. They just draw it in a different place.

And it's well, because the guy is in a wheelchair, maybe it would look bad and we should do it. But it's like, I guess they do have a line. Is that reassuring in some way? Well, the way that the Overton window is moving year after year, I'm sure by next year, they wouldn't care about whether he was in a wheelchair. And the other aspect of this story that is surprising to me is that it looks like Pete Hegset got out ahead of Donald Trump on this. Like, it wasn't clear that Trump knew that this was the plan or that they were thinking about this before Pete Hegseff announced this. So it's totally

possible that he didn't have clearance to do this. And now Donald Trump is debating whether to change their mind on it. Yeah, it's a completely crazy thing. We shouldn't be in this business to begin with. I mean, just every aspect of this is so crazy. But now it may all be held up because of the fact that he is in a, he is in a wheelchair. You know, know, the other thing about that do you think they envisioned? You know how like there's a state of the union? There's a master feed. And then every channel airs it and everybody suspends their program. Did they think it was going to be like a national event or did they imagine that this would be like on some government live stream somewhere? They would have to make their own

infrastructure, right? Because you can't put this on Twitch or some other streaming platform. It's so obviously going to violate their terms of service. True. You can't just live stream a death on any of these platforms. And certainly it would violate the FCC rules, I'd imagine, too. So you can't broadcast it on TV everywhere. They would have to set up their own infrastructure. I don't think it's going to get even to that point, though. I think that they're going to realize it's a bad idea.

They might like even they must ultimately. And they'll probably come out with some. They'll pin it on someone else and say like, listen, you know, because of like someone else, like not even the FCC because Brendan Carr is running it. But they'll come up with some reason why like they really wanted to do. do it, but they've decided not to, right? Like, I have to assume that's what they'll do to save face. Well, remember that thing about the government-run Trump ads that he said, okay, now is Super PACs going to pay for them, although we have to follow up on that because I saw that for a while

after he announced that the government was still paying for those ads. But with that one, he reversed course by saying that all these leftist lunatics want him to do it. So, therefore, he's going to go along with what they say. So with Trump, he can come up with any excuse, I guess. because if you're willing to say that you're seating ground to these crazy leftists on that issue, I'm sure he would be willing to do it on this issue too. I guess so. Yeah, it's a it's a, just a remarkably stupid environment that we find ourselves in. And I look forward to getting out of it. But it is going to take a while. Let's at least hope that they don't end up televising an execution. We have, one of the things I wanted to ask the audience about is who do you want to hear from in terms of

candidates between now and November 3rd? Because we're. we're getting a lot of requests and we're also ourselves doing outreach. Do you want to hear from only Senate and gubernatorial candidates, for example? Or do you want to hear only from Republican seats that could be flipped blue? Or do you, I want to hear from people because there's no shortage of these candidate interviews we could do, Pat. But in general, the audience isn't big on candidate interviews. So I think we want to try to have, you know, the right approach. Where can we maybe move the needle? I don't know. We only have a couple of weeks. left, right? So even for those who aren't crazy about the candidate interviews, there's only this

limited window where it makes sense to even do them. And we're in the works with booking a few more. It's difficult, of course, with these campaigns, especially so close to election day, they have such limited availability. But our plan is to do a few more at least, and we absolutely welcome the suggestions. Yep. So let us know who you want to hear from, how many of these we should be doing. We will be back tomorrow with a new show and a new bonus show. Thanks for checking out this sneak peek of the bonus show. Our members get five of these extra paywalled episodes every single week. Unlock all of them and keep independent media thriving by going to join Pacman.com and becoming a member.

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