The David Pakman Show - Trump is taking the Republican Party down with him

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

-- On the Show: -- House Democrats prepare to investigate Donald Trump’s private financial networks and foreign deals if they win the House in November -- Donald Trump undermines potential Republican successors because he prioritizes his popularity over the long-term survival of the party -- Congressional Democrats risk losing an advantageous midterm election by relying on vague affordability slogans instead of real change -- Donald Trump weakens the Republican Party's future by hoarding hundreds of millions in super PAC funds while forcing obedience -- Donald Trump uses obvious lies to test his political power and force his allies into publicly demonstrating their absolute compliance -- Vice President JD Vance interprets a basic household incident involving a falling glass as a supernatural message from God -- Political operatives across both major parties prepare to flood internet feeds with synthetic AI content ahead of the midterm elections -- On the Bonus Show: Trump signs an executive order spacing out childhood vaccines, voters back adding 150 new lawmakers to Congress, and much more... 💳 PDS Debt: Get your free assessment & find the best option for you at https://pdsdebt.com/pakman 📖 Bullies, Parasites & Slaves: Text PAKMAN to 511511 or go to https://bps.online 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman 👔 Southern Gents: Use code PAKMAN for 10% off your entire order at https://s-gents.com -- 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) House Dems plan to investigate Trump's finances (09:07) Trump undermines his potential successors (19:35) Democrats must capitalize if they win the midterms (27:06) Trump weakens the Republican Party's future (38:01) Why Trump lies about everything (47:31) JD Vance interprets a falling glass as a divine intervention (56:11) AI content is flooding the midterm elections Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I am not typically someone who takes pleasure at the pain of others. But I absolutely love this. Democrats are not necessarily planning to impeach Donald Trump immediately. They are planning something that is probably going to be even worse for Donald Trump, which is a broad investigation into the companies, the first. financial firms, the donors, contractors, and all of the foreign money surrounding Donald Trump and his administration. Now, I know some of you are saying, oh, this stuff again, it's not going to let's talk about what they're planning. Then let's set expectations about what it might actually do. So there's a Reuters report that senior House Democrats and committee aides are discussing

hearings, subpoenas, testimony, and demands for financial records. And the goal is figure out, Did Donald Trump use presidential power to enrich himself to enrich his family, his allies, or his donors? The answer is obviously he did, but are there actually going to be consequences? I think that this is a much smarter approach than just announcing another impeachment on day one, which would get short headlines, but then assuming Democrats don't take the Senate or even if they do, but don't have a majority, don't have a super majority. I don't think it'll really go anywhere in the long term. It'll generate short term headlines, but it won't go much further.

what Democrats would be able to do is to make Trump miserable for the full final two years of his political life. Now, Democrats did learn during the first Trump term that impeachment will take everything over. And Trump was impeached twice. He was acquitted twice by a Republican-controlled Senate. And then both of those proceedings were used to portray himself as the victim. And when I talked recently about the difference between Trump's first campaign and its third campaign, It was that in the first campaign, he was the powerful person who was going to fix everything. In the third campaign, it was, I need to be your retribution because they've treated me so unfairly.

I'm a victim, all of that stuff. This time, I like that Democrats are thinking about starting with the evidence. And if Democrats win the House, they get control of committees, they get power to issue subpoenas, which it sounds so technical, boring. The power to issue subpoenas is massive to compel testimony, to demand documents, to hold public hearings and pursue contempt proceedings. I've spoken off the record to a bunch of Democratic staffers from some of the highest ranking Democrats. This is not like we might figure out kind of what to do if we win the House. They're planning now. They're being really specific right now.

Now, of course, when Democrats do this, the White House is going to delay. They're going to resist. They'll ignore some requests. So they may go around the administration and seek records from private companies that can't hide behind executive privilege. And companies discussed as possible sources of info include Apple, Alphabet, Palantir, Blackstone, Black Rock, all the businesses owned by Elon Musk that have deals in business with the government. And there's no final target list here. And of course, nothing has started. Democrats don't have control of the House at this point in time. But these are all companies that are likely to be accused of some wrongdoing involving the Trump administration if this were to go forward, although nothing has been announced so far.

Now, that doesn't mean the companies will be brought down or that they have criminal liability. It's simply they were involved in some way, shape, or form, maybe even just looking the other way while Donald Trump did his stuff. The point of all of this is make Trump miserable, follow the money, reconstrable, reconstruct what happened using records that Trump can't control or manipulate and think about all the areas they can look at. We've got the Department of Homeland Security contracts. We have financing for the ballroom, corporate donations, pay to play, Trump linked investment

vehicles and scams, foreign sovereign wealth funds that are giving money to people in Trump's family like Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff's kids. of this stuff Democrats have already started laying the groundwork for and they're starting to request, make requests to companies and contractors to preserve and provide information. Good. Companies can absolutely ignore the requests for now. When Republicans control the House, Republicans and these companies can ignore those requests. Those become subpoenas if Democrats win and everything is going to change. Now, I know a lot of you, I understand, a lot of you are hearing this and you're going, David, this is the same old crap from the people who write and send strongly worded letters and

write op-eds. Who gives a damn? The point here is we are going to be in one of two scenarios in 2028. Either MAGA is dead, just dead and it dies as a political movement and they go bye-bye as Donald Trump goes and retires in Mar-a-Lago if he lives that long. Or Trump is able to continue MAGA. either through J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio or who knows at this point in time. We just don't know yet. And this 11-year national and really global nightmare, which by 2028 will be 13 years, and by

29 when that next president is sworn in, would be almost 14 years, continues, multi-decade. Whether this continues into the 20-year range or we can finally end it and kill it, sort of depends on how much of a tizzy Trump is thrown into during his final two years of the presidency. So this stuff really matters. Now, I need you to prepare you for something. When Trump ran in 24, he made it very clear, I'm going to seek revenge. We're going to lock people up absent due process or evidence. We're going to go after them.

It's going to be, I'm going to be a retribution and all of this. sort of stuff. We say something different on the left. We say if there's probable cause to investigate, it should be done. If the investigation terms of evidence that is criminal, then there should be charges. If there are convictions, there should be punishment in life. But the Republicans are going to say this is a revenge tour for Democrats. Every attempt to hold people accountable is actually a personal attack. It's motivated by individual animus. But we need to remember that we're talking about due process. And part of that due process is if Democrats take the House, they will have subpoena power.

And that is constitutionally afforded to them. They're not only allowed, they are expected to do that. It's a responsibility. It's a duty. They have a constitutional responsibility to oversee the executive branch. So just because Trump has been on a revenge tour for almost two years now doesn't mean that if and when Democrats take control of the House and start inventing. investigations, it will be Democrats doing revenge. It will be Democrats getting the power to do

what the House of Representatives is supposed to do. They will have subpoena power. They will have committee gavels. Trump has spent years avoiding accountability. And depending on what happens in November, in January, this ability to follow the money will finally give the ability to demand answers. And so when we think about, oh, I don't know if I like this candidate or that. Canada, every voter gets to decide how they want to vote in their individual races. But the potential to end Trump's presidency in practice simply by taking the house, which seems more likely than not, no matter what happens in the Senate, we don't know by what margin, but by some margin taking the house. This is going to send Trump for a loop. And by the way,

I've talked before and we will talk talk again. oversight gets to Trump's family, if it gets to Don Jr., a good kid, nearly 50 years old, if it gets to Barron, who Trump is very protective of, but Barron is increasingly involved in governmental affairs and the crypto scams and suggesting Trump's media tour during the 24 campaign, Trump is going to lose it. And when Trump loses it, he loses the ability to even do anything that the presidency would allow him to do. That's good. We want Trump furious in the residence of the Oval Office of the White House, throwing ketchup at the wall and doing nothing else because whenever Trump does stuff, legislation,

executive orders, whatever, it's bad for the country. So this is a big opportunity. We've got to make sure we don't waste it. I have news for you. Donald Trump does not want the next Republican president to succeed. Why wouldn't he? Well, I'm going to explain it. Donald Trump may want Republicans to keep winning while he is in charge. He's desperate about the midterms only because of how it affects him. But the moment that someone replaces him and someone becomes the next Republican nominee and potentially the next president in January of 2029, that person becomes a threat to the one thing that Donald Trump cares about the most, which is Trump's status as the most important

person in the room in the Republican Party in American politics. Now, right now, there is endless speculation about who is going to be the successor of Donald Trump. And we've talked about it. Will it be J.D. Vance, the vice president? Will it be Marco Rubio, the secretary of state? Does Donald Trump secretly prefer one over the other? Is he testing them?

Are they campaigning against each other? Although Marco Rubio reportedly has said to J.D. Vance, if you want the nomination in 28, I won't challenge you for it. Now, there is sort of interesting political gossip in all of this, but it distracts from the bigger reality that not a damn person is talking about. Trump wants subordinates. Trump wants people who are never as good as him, who are never as successful as him. In general, now this is before we get to 2028.

In general, who does Trump want around him? People who will praise him, people who will defend him, people who will carry on his legacy. But imagine that Trump leaves office and the next Republican president has a better approval rating than Trump, which is almost guaranteed because Trump has a record low approval rating. Imagine that the replacement to Trump accomplishes more and is less chaotic and is less ridiculed globally by our allies and just people abroad and gets broader support or wins by more than Trump won by and starts getting credit. for improving on Trumpism, either for doing Trumpism better than Trump or for if it's a different

type of Republican, in theory, bringing Republicans back to something else that is not Trumpism. Trump would hate that. Think about it. Can you seriously picture Trump sitting quietly in retirement while President Vance or President Rubio or whoever, President Lauren Bobert gets bigger crowds, higher. approval rating, better coverage from Republicans in right wing media? Of course not. Think of Trump's ego.

Think of Trump's narcissism. Trump does not build institutions that can function without him. His whole idea is let me build a personality cult that depends on me. And he demands this sort of cult style, total loyalty. But he doesn't return that loyalty. The moment one of his allies gets a little too much attention. shows that they're a little bit too much of an independent thinker, threatens to eclipse Trump in some way. Trump turns on that person. Think back to the VP sweepstakes or whatever it was,

which ultimately went to J.D. Vance. Trump's instinct was not to pick J.D. Vance. Trump's instinct, which Trump's sons wanted Trump to pick J.D. Vance. Trump's instinct was to pick Doug Bergam, a insanely boring, uninspiring, although somewhat smarter, I must admit, choice who couldn't possibly upstage Trump because he's like a picture on the wall. And that is not what Donald Trump or rather, it is what Donald Trump wants. He doesn't want someone who's going to eclipse him in any way. And look at how many times we've seen it happen. Think back to Mike Pence, Trump's first vice president.

Pence spent years humiliating himself for Trump. And the second Pence, it's not even refused to steal an election. It's acknowledged he couldn't steal the election for Trump. Trump all of a sudden treats him as the enemy. And Ron DeSantis goes as soon as he questions some aspect of what Trump is doing. DeSantis goes from political creation of Trump to Ron DeSanctimonious. And then when he challenged Trump for the nomination, it was over between them. Almost everybody in Trump's orbit is valuable only as long as they serve Trump. So think about what happens when the entire Republican party has to move beyond Trump because after all, he can't be president again. Trump has every incentive to make that transition fail. If his successor loses, Trump can say, see, they did need me.

I was unique. I was the only one that can do it. If Trump's successor wins but struggles, Trump can say the country was better when I was president. And if the successor wins maybe by more than Trump won by and actually does okay as president, Trump can criticize and undermine and sabotage him before the Republican base transfers its loyalty. The safest outcome for the ego of Trump, which is even bigger than he is. is, if you can imagine that, the safest outcome for Trump's ego is a Republican party that can't

survive without Donald Trump so that he can go, see, I told you you needed me. I told you I was the only one who could do this and I was the best. And this is the sort of trap that Republicans have created for themselves where they have now allowed Maga Trumpism to hollow out their party from the inside for 11 years, roughly. And they've replaced what was a crap. political platform, but it was a political platform with one guy's personal grievances. It was rigged in 2020. I alone can fix it. The Obama Iran nuclear deal is bad because it has Obama's name on it, all this stuff.

And now they're going to need to explain why someone else should lead. So J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio can flatter Trump. They can imitate Trump. They can compete for Trump's blessing, which will probably happen. But the prize they are chasing, I don't think exists, because Trump's endorsement has a condition. Maybe you get to inherit the movement, but you can never outshine Trump. And Trump would prefer to be remembered as the last great Republican president than watch another Republican do better while he is alive and get more praise.

And if protecting the legacy means he's got to damage his own party, I don't think he hesitates for a second. There is one exception to this, one exception to this. It is called junior. I imagine that the only exception to this desire from Trump not to be outdone by any Republican president while he is still alive would take a backseat if it's Don Jr. Because there is something Trump loves and it's his own name. And if the next president is going to have Trump's name, Donald Trump Jr, that is the one

person that Trump could see actually do as well or better than he does and still be able to take credit. After all, he has the exact same name Donald Trump does. What do you think? Do you agree that Donald Trump would sabotage his own successor if it meant that he can say I was the best? Or do you disagree with me? Leave me a comment. Send me an email info at David Pakman.com. If you're in debt, before you decide another month of minimum payments is just the price of getting. getting by, take 30 seconds and find out what your options are. Our sponsor PDS debt gives people a free personalized assessment to show them a path forward instead of guessing.

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Get your free 30 second personalized assessment today at PDSdebt.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. One of our sponsors today is the new book by George Koch called Bullies Parasites and Slaves. Bullies take from others to benefit themselves and they pretend to be our only defenders as a ploy to get our support. And the instant a bully doesn't need us, we become their next victims. We need to wise up and see this. Parasites are the people hiding behind titles and offices, subsidizing their wealth by ruthlessly underpaying everybody below. them, like the CEO who makes more before lunch than you make in a year. And then there's the hybrid

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And Democrats could still blow it. Now, let me set the stage. Trump is unpopular. His Iran war has driven up prices of all kinds, gas prices, energy prices. His signature law, the big beautiful bill, the big rancid bill, the big nasty bill, whatever you want to call it. It's underwater. People don't believe it helps the average American. The administration is drowning in corruption. There's chaos. There's extremism. There's loyalty tests. And Republicans are out there openly panicking about the midterms. We've seen the clips. We've seen all of the panic and the

fear. That all seems like it would be great for Democrats. And indeed, If you look at the generic congressional ballot, Democrats are doing really well. The House map is favorable. The president's party usually loses seats in this midterm. Wonderful. That's all delightful. But we still have the elections for a reason. You still have to win the elections.

And if the worst team in the league turns over the ball 10 times, sets their locker room on fire and whatever, you don't automatically win. You play the game for a reason. You've got to put the points on the board. We still do the elections. We are now under 100 days from the midterms and Democrats have unveiled something called the fighting for an affordable America agenda. Now, affordability is the right issue.

People vote on housing healthcare groceries, childcare energy costs. People are getting crushed by housing health care groceries, child care energy costs. So that makes sense. But fighting for an affordable America kind of sounds like a nonprofit conference held that the airport Marriott in Cleveland Airport or something like that. I mentioned that because I was once that I don't know if it's a Marriott, but I once went to a conference at the airport hotel at Cleveland Airport. So what does that mean?

Well, what will Democrats actually do? What legislation is going to make America and their lives more affordable? How much money will a normal family save? Who made life more expensive? How will Democrats stop them if they take the house? Voters should at least be able to name, I don't know, like a couple things, two, three things Democrats will do if they win. Will you lower health care premiums? How will you reduce child care costs? How will you build more housing and punish corporate price gouging? How are you going to do that? Whatever the things are, pick them, attach numbers and repeat them endlessly. We are fighting for

afford affordability. It's a theme. It's a great theme. We are going to save you $500 a month is a message. Now, you need to be able to deliver on it. You need to be able to define how you're going to do it. The other thing I don't think is going very well right now is Democrats need to better define the opponent. Trump promised to lower prices immediately, which we knew he couldn't do, but he promised to lower prices immediately. And instead, he put blanket tariffs on everything which raised prices, launched a war, exploded the deficit, cut healthcare, and passed the big beautiful bill tilted towards wealthy people. Make every Republican candidate defend that.

Why is gas so expensive? Why did you vote for Medicaid cuts? Why does Trump's signature law that you voted for help high earners more than working families? And the danger is Democrats may assume that because shit's bad right now, voters will know the exact why and understand why voting for Democrats in a midterm is going to help that. And I don't think Democrats, I don't think voters know that right now. One of the things Republicans understand is repetition. They choose one really clear claim and they say it 50,000 times.

Democrats do a policy framework and we're scheduling round tables and then they go, why aren't people hearing about this? Why aren't people more enthusiastic? So the message needs some conflict. It probably needs a scapegoat. I write about this in my forthcoming book, pay attention. One of the things that is more natural to Republicans is villain scapegoat who's to blame and direct path to here's the alternative. And I am not suggesting Democrats lie or fabricate stuff, but you have to think about that

moral kind of framework. By the way, there's a chapter on this in my book. I hope you've preordered it at David Pakman.com. slash attention. There's a very limited number of signed copies available. Anyway, Trump made your life more expensive and Republicans helped them. And this is why I've expressed frustration at I understand running on the idea that Trump sucks. Okay, that's part. But Trump's not on ballot. And I understand running on the idea that I'm a better option than the Republican that currently

represents you. Fine. But there's something missing from this, which is even if you don't have a problem with your member of Congress or your senator, they, if they are a Republican, rubber stamped all of the crap that Trump did. They have to be held accountable. They are on the ballot. And then, okay, here's two or three areas where Democrats are going to make life less expensive. Now, this mostly applies to the House.

The Senate is more complicated. about a third of Senate seats are up for election each time. And the particular states that vote this year kind of matter more than the national environment. And Democrats could have a strong year in general. They can win the House, but you can still struggle in the Senate because there just might not be enough realistic pickups for them to make. That is what makes wasting favorable house races even less forgivable in my mind. Candidate quality matters. Democrats need people who can speak naturally, withstand attacks, explain the agenda. And the one of the things we learned in the 2024 election is that just talking about, you know,

threats to democracy and abortion rights and authoritarianism, I think these things are so important, but I also want to win elections. And so if you want to talk about democracy, authoritarianism, abortion rights, etc., you have to connect it to everyday life in an emotionally salient and direct way. Trump abuses power to enrich himself while you pay more. Republicans are ignoring corruption by Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff's kids and whatever while cutting your health care. Democrats have been given an opponent failing in just about every way, but that guarantees nothing. It gives you an opening. That's all it does. And the election is not going to sort of grade Democrats on how terrible.

Republicans are. It's going to ask, have Democrats offered a compelling reason to vote for them? And this vague slogan of this affordability thing, if that's the best they can do, they could end up getting crushed by a team that should be impossible to lose to. I hope it doesn't happen because it will be really embarrassing. If I were a Republican, Donald Trump's destruction of the Republican Party would be something I could never forgive the guy for. He did not. build a stronger conservative movement that now is going to be able to survive Trump and come back stronger or whatever. Donald Trump hollowed out one of the two major political parties of the United States.

He replaced its beliefs with personal loyalty and conspiracy theories. And Donald Trump has left Republicans completely unprepared for the day that he is finally gone. Now, if this show existed before Trump, you know if you've been following politics or this show since before Trump was president, that the Republican Party had serious, serious problems before Donald Trump. They had extremism. They had conspiracy theories. They had racial grievances. They had anti-democratic impulses. None of that just appeared out of nowhere in 2015. But what Donald Trump did is he took the absolute worst of all the forces within the Republican Party,

rewarded the absolute worst people who were promoting them. And then, said, this is going to be the party's identity. You either follow me into this or I will do whatever I can to ruin your political career. Now think back. This sounds almost crazy to think about. Republicans once said they believed in free trade. That was like an important principle. And then Trump came in and he promoted and then imposed global tariffs. And for the most part, the party has gone, yeah, I mean, listen, they're good. That's why we do it even if they can't really explain it. There was a period where they said we oppose foreign wars. We're getting more isolationists, not the neo-con wing, but some of the Republican Party. And then Trump comes in and he starts

a war with Iran. And I mean, listen, I guess like most of self-described MAGA supports it. Some Republicans do. Some Republicans don't. They spent years saying we must get the Epstein files. This is the most important thing. Elites are preventing us from finding out who these horrible pedophiles are and and Trump started to resist releasing them. And some of his most loyal followers all of a sudden said, hey, you know what? You're right. The files actually don't really matter. There's nothing there. Dan Bonjino said there's nothing there. And so did Cash Patel and Pam Bondi or whoever else. So the starting point is that while Republicans used to have an ideology, which I disagreed with, but they had one. MAGA has no stable ideology. It's whatever Trump is right. Whatever Trump is,

Whatever Trump says, that's what our ideology is. That can work and arguably it has been working, but it only works while Trump remains the unquestioned leader. When Republicans need somebody else, that becomes a total disaster. Now, J.D. Vance, I guess apparently wants to inherit MAGA. Marco Rubio may be an alternative. Rubio has said he wouldn't challenge Vance, but who knows what will happen. of the people right now, kind of in the ecosystem of we might try to be the next leader of MAGA,

none of them have what I call Trump's weird gravitas. It's a it is gravitas. It's weird. It's charisma, but it is weird. They don't have that and they also don't have the personal bond that Trump built with his supporters, a bond which is insane because Trump promised he's going to help people he doesn't give a damn about. So this is a real problem for Republicans after Trump. And Trump has zero interest in solving this program, uh, this, a problem that they've come into. Now, a normal party leader, um, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, right? Normal party members, party leaders. They want a successor that can kind of preserve the coalition that they built and keep winning. That's what a normal leader is.

leader of a party would want. Trump doesn't want that. Trump wants the party to fail once he's gone. If a leader ends up succeeding Trump and succeeding, like succeeding as in replacing him and succeeding as in doing well, Trump would see that as competition for legacy. Imagine for a second that Van Sir Rubio become the Republican nominee and they become president. And they're more popular than Trump. They have higher approval or maybe they even win the election by more.

they get problems, they get credit for fixing problems that Donald Trump created. Trump would hate that. You think Trump wants to sit at Mar-a-Lago, seeing his successor be more popular and more successful? Trump wants whoever replaces him to not do well so he can sit there and go, see, I was special. It wasn't just that the country changed. I was actually special. And so this is part of why he plays these games of, oh, should I pick J.D. or should I pick Marco Rubio? He wants to keep the would-be successors insecure and competing for his approval. He wants to be the sun at the center of the solar system and everybody else kind of orbits around him and look at the money. Trump has a super pack. This is not getting attention, by the way. Trump has a super pack

sitting on $400 million. 400. They've spent about two to three million dollars helping Republican candidates for the midterms. That is a fraction of 1% of the money that Trump controls. Republicans need help in the midterms. They're probably going to lose the House. A bunch of winnable Senate seats aren't looking so good. Trump has 400 million in super PAC cash, and he's hoarding it. He's hoarding it because, number one, he doesn't really give a damn about these people. He only cares to the extent that it's good or bad for him, what happens in November. Having the money gives them leverage, having the money gives him attention, people coming and groveling and going, please give me a little bit of the money. And Trump,

has also in the midst of this purged independent thinkers and just elevates the professional sycophants to fight back against what he sees as betrayal, meaning any compromise is betrayal. If you're a Republican trying to make the party more moderate after Trump, you risk being denounced as rhino scum. And this is the trap that Donald Trump has kind of set for the future of the Republican party. Now, I am not under the delusion that when Trump leaves MAGA disappears and the Republican party goes back to John McCain and Mitt Romney. I think that the anger is going to remain. The cruelty will stay. The conspiratorial thinking is all going to stay. But Trump won't be there

to hold it together. And the movement is likely to fracture into these factions. You might get one faction that does want to go back to McCain Romney-style republicanism. You'll get a faction that just wants to stick with what Maga-Trumpism has been. You'll get a faction if people like Peter Teal have influence that will go kind of techno-libertarian isolationist. That's more the direction, I think, is Vance's real politics right now when he doesn't have to just publicly defend whatever Trump does. And so what will end up happening is that in 2015, Republicans will have surrendered their party to one man's temporary power. And when he leaves, Trump doesn't give a damn that the party is likely to fracture into three, maybe four different.

kind of contingents. What Trump will care about is, do they miss me? Do they acknowledge that I was better than J.D. I was better than Marco. I was better than whoever comes next. That's what Trump cares about. And Trump would get the ego boost not from handing off a successful party to the next Republican candidate. Trump would get an ego boost from the next Republican failing so Trump can go, told you, I should have run again. I should have been allowed to do another term. That's what Trump's ego dictates that he wants. If you Google yourself, you are probably going to find things you would rather not have there like your addresses, past and present, phone numbers, relatives, jobs you've had,

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And sometimes the explanation probably is really simple. He lies because the truth is bad. And he wants to avoid responsibility of acknowledging a truth that is bad for him. And there's some accomplishment he wants to inflate or he wants to accuse someone else of doing something that he's been caught doing. So sometimes the answer to why Trump lies is kind of straightforward. But then you get to these lies that seem completely unnecessary that are so obvious that we hear them and we go, does Trump believe this? Or does he believe he's convincing people of this stuff? So I'll give you an example.

The inauguration crowd was the biggest ever and much bigger than Obama's. going all the way back now to 2017. We have the pictures. We know that the inauguration crowd was not bigger than Obama's. So then what was the point of lying about that? Or another example, Alabama is being threatened by this hurricane. Well, we looked at the weather map and the weather map says Alabama is not being threatened by the hurricane. So Trump takes a Sharpie and he draws on the map and goes, this is the real hurricane path that we should all believe. Or every election he loses is illegitimate. And even when he wins like he did in 2024, he goes, in reality, I won California, but it was rigged or something like that. So why is he telling those lies? I think that

there is something else that explains why Donald Trump lies. And this kind of came to me because I've recently, I read, I read a book about lying. I read a book about narcissism. And I also read a book about serial killers. And I'm going to weave this all together. I'm going to do the real weave here. Okay. The ability to say something everyone knows is false, right? Like the ability to start repeating over and over again, something that people don't believe. And then you see, damn, people are starting to repeat it. This gives Trump a massive sense of power.

Think about how it works. Trump lies. The Republican standing next to Trump knows Trump is lying. And Trump knows that that other. Republican knows. And yet that Republican then goes on TV for the next week, the next month, the next four years and repeats the lie anyway. Think about the amount of power that that fills Trump with.

Trump isn't getting away with a lie when that happens. He's getting people to participate in the lie. And the question that's implicit in this is, am I so powerful that I can make you You publicly reject what you know to be true and accept and parrot my version instead. And what has been shown over and over again is that Republicans are willing to say, yeah, I'm willing to replace what I know to be the truth with what you tell me I'm supposed to say. It reminded me of Trump's Access Hollywood tape. When you're a star, they let you grab them by the pussy.

They let you do it. And the larger idea here and serial killers have this, cult leaders have this, the larger idea is rules are for other people. And if you're famous enough or you're powerful enough, the fact that you can get away with it is reason enough to do it. Now, I want to be really clear about this next comparison. I'm talking about a psychological mechanism here. I'm not saying the underlying acts are equivalent.

When you read about serial killers, I recently read about this serial killing. Dr. Michael Swango. It's an incredible. Actually, do I have the book here? Yes. It's actually, I think it's on the shelf. Anyway, I think it's on the shelf behind me somewhere. Is it this red book here? No, it's not. Anyway, I recently finished this book about Dr. Michael Swango was a serial killer killed people in his role as a doctor. What sometimes drives the escalation where they go, I'm going to kill more people. I'm going to kill them in more extreme or, or bizarre ways. Is this? that they got away with it.

They know what they did. Nobody else can prove it. Nobody's caught them. And there's this like intoxicating feeling of control. And eventually getting away with the offense or getting away with the lie is the reward. Because they go, man, I'm so much smarter than everybody else. I can lie and they just accept it. They don't realize I'm lying to them.

Over time, at least with serial killers, they often get sop sloppier and more brazen and belligerent and then they get caught. But I wonder whether something similar is happening with Donald Trump's lie where he gets away with one lie that he sees us good for him. Listen, I don't really think I won in 2020, but I said it and now everybody's repeating it. So then he tells a bigger and more obvious lie. If the votes had been counted honestly, I would have won all 50 states. He's testing the boundaries. How ridiculous a claim can I make? And despite all the evidence contradicting me, How many people can I convince to start repeating it? Now, this also explains why private loyalty isn't good enough for Trump.

It has to be public. And this has caused Trump to butt heads with people where not everybody is willing to publicly go with the BS. A Republican may know perfectly well what they believe in their heart of hearts. Joe Biden won in 2020. That's it. But when you publicly say it was stolen, it proves that loyalty. to Trump matters more than the truth. And to some of these Republicans, it matters even more than their

personal dignity. The humiliation is kind of part of the test. Trump, in a sense, gets off on, I'm getting these people to say stuff they don't even really believe because they're scared of me or they know I'll go after them or I'll primary them or whatever the hell. Now, I don't think every Trump supporter literally believes. So you both have people who do fall for this stuff and repeat it because they've been convinced and people who repeat the lies, not because they believe it, because they know that that's how you signal that you're on Trump's side. The the facts don't have authority over me. And so this is why when you fact check Trump, it's often kind of inadequate because the correction assumes Trump tried to convey accurate information. He's not trying to

convey accurate information in general. And he's often actually doing the opposite. He's demonstrating, look at me. I can lie. Everybody can know I'm lying deep down, but they're going to submit anyway. They're going to say that I'm right. And he can keeps testing, how far can he go with it? So the answer Trump keeps getting from the people who start repeating his lies is you can go as far as you want and we are still going to repeat the lie for you. I remember when I was a teenager, there was this girl I worked with and she was what I would colloquially call a pathological liar.

Maybe that's not the right clinical term. But what I experienced was that she would lie unprovoked. about stuff that just really didn't make a difference and doesn't change my opinion of her. Like I remember there was when she goes, my, you know, my glasses were $550. And this was in the 90s. So at that point, $550 for glasses was even more than it would be today. And it's like year 14 and I know that those aren't $550 glasses. What was it about it?

She had the sort of personality where a lot of people would just believe these lies. And I think she liked the feeling of power of getting people to believe stuff that she knew she was making up. I don't think she believed the lies. I don't think it was one of those things where she convinced herself of an alternate reality or anything like that. But I've seen this and experienced it personally. One other aspect to this. This is all jacked up like on roids. It's tea.

They're on tea injections. Testosterone replacement. What jacks this up is the fact that social media puts. puts us into these completely alternate realities. This I do address in my book. By the way, I have over here. I have even more galley copies of my forthcoming book. We're going to figure out what to do with these.

The book is hardcover. Like this original copy behind me is hardcover. These are floppy. They're completely flaccid and flimsy. These aren't even for sale. We're going to figure out something to do with them. But the point here is the way that the social media platforms will reinforce, listen, I'm seeing online says the vaccines killed millions of people. It must be true. The platforms

are a big part of this. And if you're interested in how that works, please do pre-order my book. Limited number of signed copies available, David Pakman.com slash attention. And of course, if you want this specific copy, the one on my shelf, the first ever printed hardcover copy of the book, submit your pre-order receipt to info at David Pakman.com, bookwrecked. can be the subject. The day the book comes out, I'll dedicate this specific copy to one lucky or unlucky person, depending on how you see it. J.D. Vance had a religious experience and sort of like good for him, I guess, but I want to hear about it and see what this guy's talking about. JD said on a show that he has experienced the presence of God personally. And the evidence is

that there was this one time, not not at band camp. There was this one time when he and a friend were talking about Christianity and a glass fell off the wall, a glass fell. And J.D. Vance realized this this has to be Jesus. This must be a message from God. Let's hear it from J.D. And then we will talk about it. It was very incremental. I've never had an epiphany, Kaley, though I've certainly had these moments where I felt the presence of God. You know, I talk, for example, about this, you know, moment that I had at a conference where a friend and I, were talking about Christianity and talking about Catholicism. And there was this moment where a glass fell off the wall at the point of our conversation

where, you know, I think an atheist would dismiss that as, oh, who cares? A glass fell off the wall. But at that moment, it felt like God was trying to send me a message. You have these little moments like this, but I never had an epiphany. What I did is have this slow realization. I want to be careful here. You know, this is, I don't want to make fun. of anybody that considers themselves religious. Like, you know, I have an understanding. A lot of people

go through this like hardcore atheism phase. We've got to ridicule. And the truth is that there are billions of people that have sincere religious beliefs. And even if I don't believe or agree that it is as they describe, there's meaning that people get from prayer or scripture or the community that their religion brings them or acts of service or just even the traditions. That is all completely legitimate as a topic for thoughtful discussion. A glass falling off a wall is not something I would interpret as a sign from God. Sometimes a glass falls off the wall because the shelf is crooked. Sometimes the mounting hardware is loose. The screws could be rusted out. Somebody installed it incorrectly. You've got to investigate all of these possibilities before you conclude. The creator of the universe

has abandoned every available means of communication and is expressing him. himself very vaguely through a minor household accident. Now, J.D. Vance says that atheists would dismiss such an event by saying, who cares a glass fell off the wall? You know, in this particular case, the atheist has made what I would consider a pretty compelling argument. If God wants to deliver a message to the vice president of the United States, I would assume that God has options and God has a vision and a dream of what he wants to communicate and can

articulate the moral insight that he wants to transmit to J.D. Vance. Maybe a sudden conviction that, you know what, J.D., this policy of separating families and demonizing immigrants and defending everything Donald Trump does, I'm against that. That would be a reasonable thing for God or Jesus or whoever to want to communicate that these are grotesque acts that are wrong. But instead, a glass fell off the wall. And I'm not like big on this whole interpreting these these vague events. But if God is knocking glasses off of JD's walls, the message might not be you're my chosen political vessel.

The message might be JD. You're screwing something up here. You really got to rethink this one. Now maybe this is actually less about divine endorsement and more sort of heckling. like God is watching people like J.D. Vance. And I'm serious here. Contort Christianity into a political permission slip for being cruel. And somewhere in the celestial control room above us, a glass is launched across the room to try to prove a point. So listen, respect for people for whom their faith or the traditions associated with it are meaningful and valuable.

But I don't believe that faith requires pretending every coincidence is supernatural and a telegram from God of some kind. A person might believe in God, but also recognize gravity exists and loose fixtures exist. And we have this tendency as humans to assign meaning to what can be random events. What makes this particularly revealing for me politically is just how confident J.D. is. in his interpretation. The event tells us nothing. A glass fell off the wall. It didn't spell out a message. It's not a Ouija board. It didn't point towards a Bible verse. A glass fell. And J.D. Vance supplies the entire meaning. And conveniently, the meaning made him feel noticed by God. I see it less as an instance of divine communication. I see it as a demonstration of confirmation bias.

If you go back to my sort of like a mini series that we did on critical thinking, one of the things that's in there is confirmation bias. If a glass falls while I'm talking about politics, I don't assume that the Department of Transportation is trying to reach out to me. I go and look at the shelf and go, why did the glass fall? But J.D. Vance says he was talking about Christianity and the glass fell. So it must be heaven sending him a signal. There might be a more modern interpretation here.

Hire a handyman or something like that. And one of the things that I think is really important when, you know, that there's people who go, religion is a private thing or others who go, no, we need to know exactly what your religious beliefs are, especially if you're in elected office. So we know whether your particular position on an issue is rooted in scripture, which we might not like. Both are sort of like legitimate questions or approaches that people can take. What really I find sick is those who use their religious beliefs to justify policy.

Should the policy of the United States on abortion be one thing or another because some religions have a particular view about abortion, but others have a very different view. For example, in Judaism, abortion is much more related to the life of the mother. And most Judaism other than the most Orthodox, which is a relatively small percentage of Jewish people, is pro choice. And why would it be that because some Pentecostal pastor or Baptist pastor or whatever says, no abortion, that should be put above the beliefs of other religions. What they will often come back with is, well, this is fundamentally a Christian nation, not

insofar as the laws must be based around Christianity, but it's mostly Christians. But that's not what's in the Constitution. And so we can't let them get away with this sort of crap. JD isn't doing it in this segment, but it's God is speaking to me. There was a specific message here. And then the way they transition is we should actually be making law based on the messages we believe we've gotten from deities. It's unconstitutional and we really don't want to let them get away with it.

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All right. I've spoken with political staffers working for both Democrats and Republicans, and I want to tell you something that they both believe and they believe that you are all going to fall for it. Right now, there is a belief that everybody is ultimately going to fall for the AI slop. Now let me explain what I mean by this. I've spoken to mostly Democratic, but also some of the people. Republican staffers, just about like the outlook on campaigns and politics and what's coming,

they mostly unanimously believe that campaigns are going to manufacture synthetic audio and video and even potentially like just completely synthetic events that never took place and that enough voters are either going to believe the content or they're going to stop caring whether it's even real. Now, Democrats and Republicans are arriving at that conclusion for different reasons, but this is like, there's a lot about the coming AI wave in my book, pay attention, but it's really important to understand the dynamics of this. There are Republicans who see an audience that has been conditioned to distrust legitimate information.

And if an embarrassing video of Donald Trump appears, they've already been going, no, it's AI. If a fake video of a Democrat appears, they'll share it a million times because they wanted it to be true. So on the Republican side, by saying you can't trust the media, you can't trust institutions, don't believe what your eyes and ears are telling you, just believe what Trump says. They have set up an environment where if AI stuff that Republicans like shows up, they will just go, it's real, we're spreading it. And if anything shows up that they don't like, which is real, they'll just go, it must be AI. Oh, Trump was falling asleep four times in a week on camera. It just must be fake. So that's Republicans. The Democrats, I've switched.

I've spoken to. CAI really is inevitable, which I see I see it as inevitable as well. Cheap fast and scalable. And they worry that if Democrats don't use it, it will be unilateral unilateral disarmament. While Republicans are just going to flood the internet with synthetic content that helps them and hurts Democrats, Democrats are going to go, we're going to not going to touch that stuff. So where both sides are landing for different reasons is that eventually I'm going to accept that this is going to take over our political world and that you were ultimately going to accept it. Now, is the technology

close enough for that to really be something to talk about? It really is. In my book, I write about tests that we've done. I hope you get the book, by the way. I put so much work into it and I really wanted to succeed. You can pre-order it at David Pakman.com slash attention. We've done tests at the David Pakman show where we did AI generated versions of my voice. And my own team, right, people who hear me every day, they can't reliably identify the AI voice, David Packman. If they can't identify the fake, what chance does somebody scrolling past a 30 second clip have of determining this is the real David or not or this is the real J.D. Vance or not or this is

the real John Ossif or not? So that's like that technology is there. It's already good enough to trick you. Video is maybe 60, 70% of the way there. We did some tests to see like how good is the technology for duplicating me in an AI avatar. My face kind of looked weird and I was like moving in a herky jerky. I was almost like Trump glitching. But 60, 70% of the way there, you know, it gets a little better.

People watch on small screens. They're distracted. These things don't have to survive forensic analysis. They just need to look good enough for a few seconds and then somebody shares it. Somebody likes it and that's it. So this goes way beyond just fake video of candidates because think about what campaigns are going to be able to do. Campaigns could create synthetic supporters describing experiences they never had.

They could manufacture protests that never happened. They can generate, you know, thousands of personalized attack ads targeting each voter's fears or, you know, you could have a candidate appearing to tell gun owners, confiscation is coming and telling Jewish voters that rampant violent anti-Semitism is going to be allowed. And Latino voters are going to be told your community is going to be blamed for crimes you didn't commit whatever, right? You can scale all of this stuff and none of it has to be real. The worst part of all of this is that it will make the real evidence harder to, easier rather

to deny. If you get a politician caught on an authentic video, they can go, oh, that was a deep fake. And this is the liar's dividend is what it's called. AI produces convincing lies and it gives dishonest people and you escape from accountability because they can go, oh, yeah, that's not real. I write about this in the book. And the central question is not really like, is AI going to be good enough to trick people? I'm telling you the audio stuff is already good enough.

That ship has sailed. It's going to be good enough. The bigger question is what regulatory infrastructure do we need? What will audiences tolerate either in terms of stuff they know is AI or not knowing whether stuff is AI? And I mean, will political ads have to disclose synthetic content clearly? We've already seen the Trump administration put stuff out that contains AI or even like video game sequences, all this stuff.

what will be the disclosure requirements? Can you flash it microscopically at the end after people have already fallen for it? And then are we going to have a system that is reliable enough to show where did this originate? How is it altered? What's real about it and what's fake? When a fake video gets 40 million views in 36 hours right before an election and then the day after the election, it gets debunked, what do you do? Does that invalidate the election? I don't think so, not by the laws as I understand them about elections. So we have political and legal systems that move really slowly. It reminds me of this thing where I, this was like a decade ago, I believe that there was a period of time where in New York state for you to be considered to be in possession of

child sexual abuse material. I hate this term, but some people know it as kitty porn. I think that that's just, it's such a minimizing term. It's child sexual abuse material. There was a state law, I think it was New York, which said, if you look at it. in your browser, you haven't downloaded it. And therefore, the law doesn't apply to you. You have to like right click, save target as have it on it on your hard drive. Even though it's in the browser cache, there was this weird technicality about the law. And until that loophole was closed, there were people who were getting out of trouble because of that. Our political and legal systems move really slowly. And this synthetic content can spread instantly around the world.

And I don't think that the legal system is set up to deal with that. Now, if I, if I, I ask myself, what do most viewers want? I don't think most viewers or voters want campaigns that are done by fake candidates speaking to fake supporters about fake events. I think they want genuine people. They want to know the person asking for my vote actually said the words coming from their mouth. The creator talking to me about candidates really said this stuff. Maybe I disagree with the creator. Maybe I disagree with the candidate. But I want to know what people are really saying. The question is who is going to enforce that? Because if campaign When campaigns learn the AI slop is effective and it's cheap and most people don't know that it's fake,

they have the ability to produce unlimited amounts of it given enough compute power. And so some kind of enforceable, enforceable disclosure needs to be there. Platforms need to be able to act before the election altering fabrications get millions of views and maybe affect campaigns. And regardless, the technology is going to advance. The undecided part is, will we allow political operations? to turn reality into another campaign variable. Maybe you get reality and you get a fake version of reality and how likely are people to fall for

it and how are they going to react if and when they learn that they fell for it? These are really the key questions.