The David Pakman Show - Trump sacrifices Vance to save failing presidency

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

-- On the Show -- Donald Trump moves to block the already constrained Strait of Hormuz while expanding United States control over Venezuelan oil -- A look back at 2018, when Donald Trump formally withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal, establishing the origins of the current conflict -- Donald Trump publicly undermines Vice President JD Vance while Vance attempts to negotiate peace talks with Iran -- Donald Trump issues a series of aggressive social media posts claiming total military victory over Iran despite ongoing conflict -- Donald Trump discusses issuing sweeping preemptive pardons for anyone within close physical proximity to the Oval Office -- The Trump administration fails to meet its self-imposed deadlines for resolving the ongoing conflict with Iran -- Donald Trump promotes misleading claims about tax cuts on tips while using an unsuspecting DoorDash driver as part of a political stunt -- On the Bonus Show: Trump upsets Christians with a Truth Social post, continues to attack the Pope, and much more... 📱 Cape: Get 33% off for 6 months with code PAKMAN at https://cape.co/pakman 🤖 Sponsored by Venice: Use code PAKMAN for 20% off a Pro Account at https://venice.ai/pakman 🔊 Blinkist: Read a nonfiction book in just 15 minutes! Try it FREE at https://blinkist.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- 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) The truth about Trump’s oil war(07:15) Revisiting 2018 when Trump left the Iran deal(16:58) Trump publicly criticizes JD Vance(22:48) Trump claims military victory in Iran(30:30) Trump considers sweeping preemptive pardons(38:50) Trump misses a self-imposed deadline for Iran(46:20) Trump tricks DoorDash driver in political stunt   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Plans start at just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. I want to walk through something with you that, I don't know, maybe it sounds a little out there, but the more you line it up, I think it's something we have to seriously consider. And it comes to the real reason that Trump would even consider closing the straight of Hormuz after saying that having it open is the most important thing.

And it relates to Venezuelan oil. Let me paint the picture and then you either tell me, wow, David, you're a conspiratorial nut job. please make no more videos ever again, which some people say every day anyway, by the way. But or you might say, oh, actually, I think that at least circumstantially there might be something there. So let me explain. We've got Trump suddenly moving to block the Strait of Hormuz. This is one of the most critical oil routes anywhere in the United States. Strait of Hormuz is responsible for a huge chunk of global oil flow. When you disrupt it, even if the United States

doesn't use oil that passes through there. When you disrupt that, it tells you. It, tightens supply globally and it's going to send prices up. It's going to mean more volatility. It will leave country scrambling to figure out where do we get oil from, but also what do we do about the higher prices as a result of the Strait of Hormuz being closed? Cool. Now here is where it gets interesting or dystopian. And we've already sort of explored this in the past.

But now with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, I think it's even more relevant. Trump is not talking about security or Iran or regional stability when he is doing this. He's also talking openly about boosting American oil exports. Trump said to Maria Bartaromo yesterday, listen, we don't get a lot of oil from there. And also, we've got oil that we can sell people. So even from just what's being admitted by Trump. publicly, you have a situation where cutting off that supply route directly bolsters the demand for other supply, supply from the United States.

Now, even if I didn't go any further than that, even if we had no additional information, no additional reason to be suspicious, right there you would say those are some conflicted economic incentives. That's all sounding a little bit weird. But then you layer in what just happened in Venezuela just a couple months ago. Remember that on Trump's orders, the United States military went in arrested slash kidnapped Nicholas Maduro in a case that doesn't really seem like it's going to be going too far here in the United States for global drug trafficking, I believe is what they're charging him with,

destabilized the Venezuelan government. But all of a sudden, Trump seized and now controls a bunch of a bunch of. of Venezuelan oil, you probably are starting to suspect where this is going. Trump bragged about the volume of oil from Venezuela that is now under American control, tens of millions of barrels or something like that. It's not a small detail. So take a step back and line it all up. You gain access to a major oil supply through Venezuela after arguably illegally kidnapping

the president and almost immediately after. You go into Iran for reasons that keep shifting, nuclear regime change, but but, but, but you disrupt one of the biggest competing oil supply routes. You've got the Venezuelan oil. You go in and you disrupt straight of Hormuz. And at the same time, you've got this oil that your cronies are now controlling and you tell countries, hey, you can buy American oil. And meanwhile, your actions in Iran have spiked the price of oil.

Guys, I mean, is it all a coincidence in random? Maybe it is. I am, you know, those who have been listening to this show for a while know that I am not conspiratorial by nature. I, you know, you show me motive alone and I go, motive is not enough for me to believe in this conspiracy. You raise a question we don't yet know the answer to. And I go, listen, just because you don't.

don't have all the answers yet doesn't mean that there is a conspiracy here. Like I am naturally always skeptical of conspiracies. And yet, when I look at this, it's really strange how it's all starting to line up. The very resource that Trump just seized from one country is now spiking in value on the open market because of Trump's decisions in another country. I don't know. You tell me if I'm crazy. Now, the administration does have its official explanations. They say, well, you know, there were tensions with Iran that had nothing to do with the Venezuela thing and our control of oil. And we tried negotiations, but they didn't work. And there are security concerns about nuclear. That's all real, at least theoretically, how much Trump understands it or cares. I don't

know. But that doesn't cancel out the economic side, especially when the economic side is discussed openly by the same people making the decisions about Iran. And so any, I think, you know, basic human pattern recognition would have you look at the incentives and say, this is a little weird. Restrict global flow, increase prices, redirect demand to the very resource you just took from Venezuela and say, hey, you guys can get it from us. It's not subtle. It's not subtle. And historically, energy has always been kind of a quiet driver behind geopolitical decisions. And right now it seems to be not so quiet. It's rarely the official headline maker for why things are being done.

But it's been in the background of American foreign policy for at least 50 years. And here it's not even very quiet. The pieces are all there. Venezuelan oil, Hormuz blockade, buy American oil, which is now worth a lot more. Motive alone doesn't prove a conspiracy. We're looking at a pattern here. And I am struggling to dismiss it as a coincidence when I lay it out, even though I resist being conspiratorial by nature.

So I want to hear from you. What are the real priorities here? Is it security? Is it strategy? Is it the energy thing? Was there? Listen, I also resist the idea that this administration is competent enough to really think ahead in the way where they go, here's an idea.

Let's get Maduro arrested and then take his oil. And then two months later, we're going to go to war with Iran. And then that'll raise the value. I don't even know that they're that competent. I don't know. But it's overlapping so cleanly. So let me know what you think. Am I reading into this something that isn't there?

Am I seeing a conspiracy that doesn't exist? If that's the case, just tell me. Tell me in the comments, send me an email info at David Pakman.com. But if you think that there might be something to this, if you've thought about it yourself as well, I want to hear from you. Let me know. Let's take a look at the moment that Trump ended himself. Now, hold on.

I know you're probably thinking, oh, what did he do today? What did he do yesterday? Now, I'm going to show you a video of Donald Trump from 2018. And you might say, how did Trump end himself in 2018? We can only understand where we are today with regard to Iran, the mess that we are in today by looking at what Donald Trump did in 2018. Here is the video of Donald Trump announcing that the United States is bailing on the Iran nuclear deal. This was an Iran nuclear deal that wasn't perfect.

It didn't do everything we might have wanted, but it was signed under Barack Obama and it did some important things. And importantly, as far as we knew at the time, Iran was not violating the terms of the deal. Now, of course, after the U.S. backed out of it, Iran did go ahead and start enriching. uranium. That was wrong in the sense that the other countries that were signatories to the deal were still part of it. But from a game theory perspective, Iran did the logical thing. If the U.S. is out, let's start enriching uranium because the enriched uranium gives us leverage for future negotiations. I don't like the regime. I don't like theocratic authoritarian regimes, but they did what made sense. Donald Trump now has failed to secure a new deal. He now says he's shutting down the

of Hormuz. And I am going to go back to the moment that was optional where all of this started. Also important to note, look at how much more articulate and developed Donald Trump's speaking abilities are. This was just years ago. It's a reminder of how bad the decline cognitively has become. Let's take a look. I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. In a few moments, I will sign a presidential memorandum to begin reinstating U.S. nuclear sanctions on the Iranian regime. We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction. Any nation that helps Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons could also be strongly sanctioned by the United States. America will not be held hostage to nuclear black men.

So that's an important moment. That's the moment that Trump walked away from a deal that was constraining Iran's nuclear program. The deal that Trump is now struggling to recreate, this is the mental thing about it. And I went over this last week to some degree or the week before. A bunch of the points that Trump is now negotiating, which he says it would be nice to have this stuff. They were in the Iran nuclear deal from 2015 that Trump said the US is out. So in hindsight, and it was logically predictable at the time, everything we're dealing with right now is because of Donald Trump's decision back in 2018 to get out of this deal. You just saw the starting point of the situation he now claims to be fixing. And all of this is about fixing things that were not

broken until Trump broke them. Why is Iran enriching uranium and we have to go and bomb them in June of 2025 if you believe that? Why? Well, because Trump got out of the nuclear deal in 2018. Why is Trump now fighting to get the straight of Hormuz open? But now he's closing it. It was open before Trump started this war six point something weeks ago, which by the way, we were told it would be three weeks, four weeks, six weeks. We're in the start of week seven at this point in time. And so what What Trump now finds himself having to do, needing to do, is with less trust and with less credibility and a much more dangerous situation, a much more economically volatile situation, trying to get back into something that is like the Iran nuclear deal from 2015.

But what's the hinge point Trump posted and we're looking at it on today's show, that Iran is not coming to an agreement on the nuclear aspect of it? We had the agreement that is now causing Trump to say, I will close the straight of Hormuz. Think about that. And we now have, forget about creating your own problems. We have Trump in this administration confidently telling us we had to do this and we're better off because of it while failing to even get us back to where we were in 2015, 2016, 2017, up to the point in 2018 at which Trump exited the Iran nuclear deal. What he is now dealing with are the consequences of his actions in 2018, the consequences of his actions in June of 2025. And, you know, he said it in 2018 with much more complete sentences.

His vocabulary has been diminished. His ability to think has been diminished. All of that is true. But we are now getting a president saying out loud, I'm trying to get us back to where we were. He can barely speak now in comparison. fragmented sentences and all of it. And the reason I'm sort of referring to the cognitive stuff is if Trump wasn't even coherent enough to realize in 2018, this deal's not bad.

I shouldn't get out of this deal. Now with another eight years of decline behind eight years, yeah, seven and a half, eight years of decline behind us, it is even less likely that he is going to be able to put something together. So remember as the MAGA people continue to insest, We are getting really close to X. X was stuff that we had already before Trump ruined it. Now, bigger picture, I know that this isn't the sexiest thing to talk about.

But if you still believe in institutions and alliances, you have to be saying to yourself, wait a second, all of these allies are realizing not only will Trump back out of a deal if he doesn't like it for no real reason, Trump will also then fail. to even involve the global community in his hairbrained ideas. Now, if our allies say that's just a Trump thing, it will pass when Trump is gone. Well, that's better for us. But the real fear, and I would argue that it has happened to some degree on climate and in other areas, is that our allies or our historical allies will say, why even bother with the United States? They don't stick to their word. When the next person comes in, they might just go, eh, we're out for no good

reason. So as Trump tries to dissolve the problems that he created and solve issues that are of his own doing, allies around the world are saying that is not something we want to be a part of. And that's a real dangerous thing. Everything you do on your phone paints a picture of your life going back years. Cell phone carriers track sell and sometimes leak that data. But our sponsor, Cape offers an alternative. Cape is America's privacy-centered mobile carrier. You get unlimited call, text, and 5G coverage, just like with other carriers. But unlike other carriers, Cape keeps your data private. Cape only collects the bare minimum about subscribers, destroys call metadata after one day, and then they take it even further. Unlike any other mobile carrier, Cape rotates your network

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AI slash Pacman with the code Pacman. The link is in the description. Donald Trump is throwing J.D. Vance in the trash. Now, this is not really a surprise. Trump is doing what he does when things go poorly, when things go sideways. He looks for someone else to blame. And right now, the vice president is a good mark for him. Vance is in the middle of these high stakes peace talks with Iran. This is the moment you would have. expect Trump to show discipline and to say, I am united with JD and we have our strategy. And instead, Trump goes on truth social and he starts ranting. And he brags about wiping out Iran's military and saying their leadership is gone and throws in praise be to Allah for good

measure and ignores the fact that his own administration led by J.D. Vance was at that moment negotiating to try to end the war. And the key part is that he doesn't mention J.D. Vance even once here. Not only does Trump undermine J.D. Vance's negotiations with this post. He doesn't mention that Vance is out there trying to get something done here. And theoretically, was going to be the guy who was going to bring this together and try to turn Trump's very premature promises from Tuesday night into something approximating a reality. I'll remind you of the post. that Donald Trump made about this where he says, quote, the fake news media has lost total credibility, not that they had any to begin with. Because of their massive trump derangement syndrome,

they love saying that Iran is winning, when in fact, everyone knows they are losing and losing big. Their Navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Their anti-aircraft apparatus is non-existent. Radar is dead. Missile and drone factories have been largely obliterated. And importantly, their longtime leaders are no longer with us, praise be to Allah. The only thing they have going is the threat that a ship may bunk into one of their sea mines. All right. So you get it. We've looked at this post.

Look at what is taking place. Trump makes a bunch. Trump writes a bunch of checks on Tuesday to prevent this annihilation of Iran that he can't cash. Writes the checks can't cash him. Straight of Hormuz isn't open. A lot of his claims aren't true. He then appoints J.D. Vance to go and negotiate this thing.

And what does he do as J.D. Vans is negotiating? He undercuts Vance in real time, doesn't mention, by the way, the vice president is working on this and is going to get us over the line. And instead just goes, it's a mess. It's a complete mess out there. We crush this. We crush that.

I believe that to some degree, this is deliberate. Now, it's not deliberate in the sense of Trump going, you know, I think I'm going to really cause a problem for J.D. Vance today. I don't think it's that. I think it's that Trump doesn't respect J.D. Vance. And for Trump, the fact that J.D. Vance is out there negotiating means nothing to him. He has no confidence J.D. Vance is going to achieve anything. Because if he did, as the negotiations were going south, he wouldn't go online and start posting

on truth social stuff that will only make those negotiations more difficult. Trump has already joked, by the way, that if these talks fail, he will blame J.D. Vance. That's a setup. That's how he's setting him up. This is how Trump operates. And if it works, he takes full credit. If it doesn't, he just blames somebody else. Someone gets thrown under the bus. Cabinet members, it happens with, advisors, the previous Vice President Mike Pence, and we

are watching it happen again. Think about the position Vance is in as this is going on. He's out there negotiating with a foreign government. They don't trust the United States. Obviously, we just invaded them. And his own president is publicly contradicting the press. of those negotiations. And the message to the world is very obvious. There was never really a plan. There's no unified strategy. Trump doesn't know what he's doing. There's Trump posting and hoping

that something develops. And as this all fell apart, which of course it did with Trump going, you know what? I'm going to close the straight of Hormuz. When it all falls apart, J.D. Vance is going to get blamed. Now, I am not a defender of Vance. Vance is deeply unlikable, horribly uncharismatic, beholden to the kind of techno-libertarian fantasies of supporters of his like Peter Thiel, not a particularly bright guy. I mean, Vance is terrible. But if you're going to give someone a job, you've got to put him in a position to at least potentially be able to execute it and then to actually think about what are the effects

of my actions going to be. Trump doesn't respect Vance. He doesn't like Vance. Reports are, and we've seen it publicly, that Trump is skeptical about Vance even being a viable heir apparent to MAGA as things go forward. We're leaning increasingly towards Marco Rubio, which, by the way, Trump's personnel decisions are mostly terrible. Marco Rubio is a better option than Vance. I'm not operating in a world where you say, hey, David, who would you want to be the president? And I go, oh, I'd like Marco Rubio. But if you say Rubio or Vance, Rubio is more intelligent. Rubio has more. more. Rubio's not particularly likable, but he's less unlikable than J.D. Vans. He's somewhat more

charismatic. He understands diplomacy a bit, a bit better. Thinks for himself marginally more than J.D. The point is, when Marco Rubio seems like a better option, you know you've chosen kind of a doofus. And all of the reporting, remember, is that Trump wanted Doug Bergam, but Don Jr. and Eric Trump convinced him to go with J.D. Vance. And it doesn't seem Trump is particularly happy with that. Ladies and gentlemen, it brings me zero pleasure to tell you that the United States is close to losing this war. Now, I know that J.D. Vance and Trump and the other dilettants and suckups are telling you, we've essentially won. But look at the strokeout that Donald Trump suffered on truth social over everything going wrong and you don't even really need to read between the lines to understand it.

Let's take a look. The fake news media has lost total credibility, not that they had any to begin with, because of their massive trumped arrangement syndrome, they love saying that Iran is winning when in fact everyone knows that they are losing and losing big. Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Their anti-aircraft apparatus is non-existent. radar is dead. Their missile and drone factories have been largely obliterated along with the missiles and drones

themselves. And most importantly, their longtime leaders are no longer with us. Praise be to Allah. That's Trump speaking. The only thing they have going is the threat that a ship may bunk into one of their sea mines, which by the way, all 28 of their mine dropper boats are also lying on the bottom of the sea. We're now starting the process. of clearing out the strait of Hormuz as a favor to countries all over the world, including China, Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, and others, they don't have the courage or will to do it themselves. Interestingly, however, empty oil carrying ships from many nations are all heading to the United States to load up with oil.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Missing from that are a few inconvenient facts, including that they have failed to secure a deal with Iran that Donald Trump treated as fate of comp Lee on Tuesday. And by the way, used that announcement to spike the markets and settle oil prices, which didn't last very long as everybody figured out that it was BS. And we now have only the initial explanations for this war to evaluate. Did we indeed achieve regime change? Well, the son of the Ayatollah at the head of the regime doesn't sound like regime change. Have we done away with their nuclear capabilities? Well, whether you believe we did or didn't,

Donald Trump says now that that is the sticking point in actually getting a deal done. So Iran is not certainly not agreeing on that point. Ballistic missiles, well, ballistic missiles, those couldn't reach the United States. That undercuts the idea of urgency. And so you go down the list and you realize, in what way have we won? Yes, there is no question that thousands of strikes have destroyed a ton of Iranian infrastructure. But the question is, what does that really do for the United States from the standpoint of the originally stated goals?

And when you go through them, you see that the issue is none of them have actually been achieved. Now, Trump continuing on truth social, quote, I am watching fertilizer prices closely during our fight for freedom in Iran. The United States will not accept price gouging from the fertilizer monopoly. American farmers, we have your back. Now, there's sort of two important aspects to this. Number one, the farmers are just getting crushed six ways to Sunday. That's not an offensive phrase, is it? I hope not.

I hope it's not racist. The farmers are maybe the group that has suffered. I don't want to, not the most. The farmers are a group that has gotten crushed by Trump's first term and Trump's second term. And the farmers continually need to be bailed out because they are brutalized by Donald Trump. The reason Trump's talking about fertilizer, you might be saying, well, I know about oil.

I know about gasoline. prices are up 55 percent. I know about all that. Why is Trump talking about fertilizer? Because fertilizer prices go downstream to food prices. And Trump has argued any day now, groceries will come down. And they have, but they will. It's both past, present, future. It's all whacked out. And he knows that that's not true. And he knows that as fertilizer prices are up, food prices are going to go up even more. And so when Trump tells you something is going great and you go, that's weird. I wasn't even thinking of that. What he means is this thing isn't going well.

And I'm lying to you because I need it to go well. All right. Then Trump, the fake news media is crazy or just plain corrupt. The United States has completely destroyed Iran's military, including their entire Navy and Air Force. And everything else. Their leadership is dead. The Strait of Hormuz will soon be open. Will soon be open.

Wait. It was supposedly open last Tuesday. day and the empty ships are rushing to the U.S. to load up. But if you listen to the fake news, we're losing. Well, you don't have to listen to the fake news. Just read what is being reported by primary sources as to what's going on. When the Strait of Hormuz was supposedly open now six days ago, three ships instead of 135 got through. And as Donald Trump kept telling us, it was open. He insists it will be open. But now, and this is where we're going to, going to go next, Trump has shut down the straight of Hermuz himself. What? That's right. Shut down the

straight of Hormuz to open the straight of Hormuz. It's really evil genius, isn't it? Many of us have running lists of the nonfiction books we want to read. My list has gotten a lot longer while I've been traveling. Maybe it's a book a friend recommended or one you keep hearing about on podcasts. And the problem isn't that you aren't interested in the book. It's finding the time. And that's why using Blinkist makes so much sense. Our sponsor Blinkist is the app that will distill down insights from nonfiction books into bite-sized summaries. You can read them or listen to them in 15 minutes.

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been getting way fewer scam and spam calls and messages ever since I started using Incogni. You can accomplish a lot quickly with Incogny. Protect yourself before your data is used to against you, get 60% off when you go to incogny.com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman. The link is in the description. We have breaking new reporting that Donald Trump plans to pardon all of them. Anyone within a couple hundred feet of the Oval Office, he is going to pardon them on the way out of office. And this goes back to my anti-corruption platform.

We've got to do something about the pardon power. I'll get back to that a little bit later. So what is this about? There's a new report from the Wall Street Journal. The report says Trump has been telling everybody around him in the sort of core of the president's staff, he will issue sweeping pardons before leaving office. And he's describing it in a way that is completely unlimited and out of control. It won't be specific people or people who have worked on specific issues. He is just going to blanket pardon everybody. At one point, the reporting, as Trump said, if you work within 200, feet of the Oval Office, you are going to get a pardon. You get a pardon and you get a part. You get it. Okay. In another version of the same line, Trump said it's going to be within 10 feet of the Oval office. But the whole point here is if you have proximity to Trump, that the imagery of it is Trump is the center of the universe and your access to a pardon is going to depend on your physical proximity to the center of the universe. He is the sun. And if you're close enough, you'll get

some of that sweet, sweet sunlight if you're a planet orbiting Trump, I guess. Now, this is something that at one point Trump kind of joked about. And we had reason to think, well, maybe it's sort of like not really a real thing. But the reporting from the Wall Street Journal is that Trump has been bringing this up privately and bringing it up seriously. Now, think about what this means in practice. Because the pardon power of the president right now, is unlimited in the sense that the president can do whatever whatever they want with pardons, and we've talked about the problem with that. But if we think about the intent of pardon power, it was supposed to be used carefully. It was supposed to be, hey, here's a case.

Will the president consider a pardon after reviewing the facts? A level of judgment is applied, and you consider fairness and justice, which is like, of course, Trump doesn't operate that way. What we are talking about here is a broad preemptive disconnected from any particular wrongdoing pardon. And it's not about correcting injustice. That's another aspect. The pardon power, at least at its core, was about, hey, there may have been an injustice done. The president may study and analyze the facts of a case and say, I believe there was an injustice

committed here. And I'm going to do something about it. This is not about that. This is, hey, you all do what I tell you. I'm going to give you a pardon. Don't worry about it. It might be criminal. Don't say a word.

You're going to get a pardon. Don't worry about it. And when people believe that they are protected in advance, it changes how they behave in real time today. If you know no matter what I do, the orange guy promise me a pardon, you are going to behave differently than if you have to consider the consequences of your actions. There are even former justice department officials. warning that this sort of messaging introduces far more aggressive and legally questionable actions,

which is sort of like, of course, it does. That's obvious and that's what we're talking about here. Now the context is that Trump has already issued, I believe it's 1,600 clemency grants during this term, and a lot of them involve allies of Trump, donors to Trump, and, and and people connected to Donald Trump. So this is all cronyism and nepotism and corruption. Trump also reportedly has been raising these pardoned questions when AIDS express, I'm worried about an investigation about X or I'm worried about potential legal exposure because of why. And then Trump goes, I'm going to be pardoning everybody.

That's not a joke. That's really specific. Don't worry about it kind of thing. Now, the other thing they're worried about is something I've been talking about, which is that if Democrats take the House in November, which I believe they will, the question is by how much, they are going to embroil Republicans in appropriate and warranted oversight, which includes investigations and a bunch of different things. They know that. And that is another aspect of these blanket pardons that Trump is talking about. And I guess Trump is supposedly thinking about holding a press conference at some point before he leaves office.

Maybe it would be would happen quickly if Democrats win in in November where he will announce these large groups of pardons, which would take something that's already controversial and turn it into like this set complete side show. It'll be naked cronyism and corruption. Now, let me go back to something that I talked about two weeks ago when I said, I believe one of the most uniting forces. to get some of these MAGA people to say, hey, you know what? There's been enough corruption. I'm going to think about voting for Democrats in 26 or in 28 is a robust anti-corruption platform. And the feedback from all of you about that was, David, this is phenomenal. There were critiques that I might not be going far enough, but that it's a good idea.

Now, one of the things I included in that is the need to reform the pardon power. I didn't say remove it and I know that this is legally complicated because presidents have pardon power. I believe that this is a structural vulnerability if it's not dealt with when we think about anti-corruption. Now, we should put some guardrails around the pardon power. My idea was an independent review board and transparency before such a decision is finalized. And this isn't about saying, well, the president has an opinion and someone else gets to just

overrule that. It's about assessing whether the pardons are corrupt. So let me distinguish so I can really be specific here. Imagine a case about a violent crime in Oklahoma. You hear about these last minute requests. And it relates to federal crimes. The president gets to look at it and say, well, I believe that justice was done or I believe that there was a miscarriage of justice. And if the president believes there was a miscarriage of

justice, they can issue a pardon. Fine. That's not controversial in terms of how the pardon power was looked at. And if an independent review board looked at that, they're not looking at the facts of the case and going, well, what about the quality of the evidence or what about that's not what the independent review board would say. The independent review board would go and they would look at, is there some kind of clearly corrupt connection here? Does it appear that there was a quid pro quo for this pardon? That sort of thing. The standard has to go beyond how many feet of the Oval Office you worked. It has to go beyond that.

And this is the most naked admission from Trump, that this is what he plans to do. And I know that we may not be able to stop him from doing it. I understand that. But it's really important to remember that presidential pardons don't apply to state crimes. And much of what the House of Representatives might investigate if, Democrats take the House could lead to criminal referrals, not to federal crimes, but to state crime. So it is still an exercise worth doing. And I believe that, that, you know, I don't have a ton of faith in Democrats in a lot of areas. I think they will deliver on this.

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powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. The show is an audience supported program and the best, most direct way to support the show is by becoming a member at join packman.com. You'll get the daily bonus show, the daily commercial free show, plenty of other great membership perks, get the full experience by signing up at join packman.com. Are we going to be dealing with Donald Trump's Iran fiasco for months or maybe even for years? Now, I know that if we think back to the beginning, recall when this all started as bad of an idea

as it was and it was a terrible idea, the administration said it would be three to four weeks. Three to four weeks became four to six weeks. We are now in week seven. April 11th was the end of week six. We are now two, three days into week seven. Now here is Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, reminding us of this timeline at the start of this entire thing. From the very beginning of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump stated this would be a four to six week military operation to dismantle the military threat posed by the radical Islamic Iranian regime. Thanks to the unbelievable capabilities of America's war fighters, the United States has achieved and exceeded those core military objectives in just 38 days. Now, Trump just closed the Strait of Hormuz after saying Iran opened it, which they didn't.

Make sense of that one. He said it's open, they didn't really open it, so now I'm going to close it. Totally bonkers. But what I want to talk about here is how long this is going to last. Well, maybe it doesn't matter if we missed deadlines. Maybe these are complicated matters dealing with Iran and it's unpredictable and but wait a second. Here is Donald Trump himself in 2015 saying Obama failed for missing his own deadline when it comes to Iran.

Quote, this is from Trump. Obama once again just missed a self-imposed deadline with Iran. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. the sanctions. So I guess it does matter, right? Well, when it's Barack Obama anyway. So think about where we are right now and where I want to go is how long do you believe this is going to last? We had the initial timeline of three to four weeks that became four to six weeks. We're now in week seven. We currently, as we stand today, just had, and this changes so quickly, who knows what it'll be in three hours. But as of right now, we had failed negotiations with Iran led by J.D.

advance, Donald Trump saying the straight which so desperately needed to be open, we are now going to close it. And no clear plan as to what even would mean victory at this point. Remember at one point it was about nuclear weapons, barely being talked about at this point in time, except when Trump goes, they won't agree on nuclear. And then we remind ourselves, well, if that was the big thing, you could have stayed in the Iran nuclear deal, which you exited in 2018. Well, that didn't really make a lot of sense.

And every single time they change what the guidelines are or they point to a different set of objectives, it raises more and more doubts that they even understood the scope of what they were getting into. Now, I don't believe Trump did understand the scope of what he was getting into. We had a couple of clips last week and the week before. We had Megan Kelly saying, Trump, who convinced Trump? Because Trump would never have done this had he known what it could have turned into. Wait a second. I thought Trump knew more than everybody.

It would have been so easy to fool Trump merely by giving him a bad briefing. I thought he was the all-knowing, all-powerful saint. Laura Ingram with the same idea. Was Trump actually briefed on the risks of this operation? Laura, I thought Trump knew everything. Now it's he wasn't briefed and so he made an insane mistake. Laura Ingram took that one back late last week as we covered. So as the confusion grows and the questions start spinning around about what did Trump know and did he consider and did he know, we quickly have what was supposed to be a very, very quick war in and out big win. We get oil. We just regime change and destroy the nukes and all of it. And then we move on. That three to four week temporary thing, which became four to six weeks is in week seven. So how long do you believe this?

is going to go. Will it go to the summer when the gas prices tend to go up anyway because of demand? Will it go into the fall when oil heating becomes more relevant in a lot of the United States? And by the way, there's an election. Trump already acknowledged to Maria Barteromo. Gas prices could be even higher in November for the election than they are today. Is it going to go into the final two years of Donald Trump's presidency? I want to hear from you. info at david packman.com but my best guess right now is that in a public facing way, Trump will say it's over sometime before the summer. Now already that would be another two months, maybe even more blows the original timeline completely out of the water. But I do think that

Trump is going to at some point realize this going on continually is bad for the economy and it's bad for the chances of Republicans. The problem with Trump announcing, now it's really over, even though he's kind of announced that a couple of times, when Trump announces that in, you know, it could be May, it could be June. I don't know. It's not only up to Donald Trump. And you could have Iran, especially if there's been no successful negotiation saying, well,

we're going to keep the straight of Hormuz closed. Or we're going to do this other thing. Are we going to do this third thing? We're going to keep enriching uranium because we don't have that as part of a deal. And so I think that while the administration knows enough about how toxic and disastrous this is for their election chances, and will say we've off ramped completely no later than midsummer, I think the reality is that this may very well be affecting the country's economy into the election. And we only have to look at Trump to get proof of that or at least evidence that that's what's going to happen because Trump did acknowledge when speaking to Maria Bartaroma as we looked at gas prices could be even higher than they are going into November. So as a political question, how will this affect voters? I think that it is going to be an absolute disaster.

You know, if you think about other issues, men in women's sports, for example, or even the Epstein files, I've said I don't think the Epstein files are going to be dispositive in determining the course of these forthcoming midterms. I think it's going to be primarily the economy. The Epstein files don't really touch the economy. They go to corruption. They go to cronyism. They go to a cover up that even half of Republicans believe Trump is involved in. But I don't see it as a voting issue in the same way. As wait a second, I was told Biden did everything wrong on the economy and you would fix it and get me lower prices and more stability and more manufacturing jobs and all of this stuff. And that didn't happen. I think that is far more likely to impact the elections in November

than any of these other issues, not that the Epstein files are not a big issue. I think Trump is going to be unable to fully exit even when he decides he wants to. Now I turn it over to you. Leave me a comment. Send me an email info at david packman.com. How long will the administration allow this to be active before they say it's over? And how long is it really going to last? I am going to expose to you right now one of the biggest scams of Donald Trump's second term. That scam is called no tax on tips, no tax on social security. Let me take you back to DoorDash Grandma. DoorDash Grandma did something very interesting when Donald Trump asked her,

do you think that men should play in women's sports? She said, I don't really have an opinion on that. I'm here for no tax on tips. Let me remind you of that discussion. Take a look at this. They want to have men playing in women's sport. Do you think that men should play in women's sports? I really don't have an opinion on that.

You don't. I'll bet you do. No, I'm here about. Pizza tax on tips. Yeah. So you've probably heard two big claims about Trump's 2025 tax bill. No tax on tips, no tax on social security. Sounds great.

I mean, it's simple. You make tips, you don't pay tax. You get social security income, you don't pay tax. That's cool. That's easy to understand. The problem is that it's not true. The way that it is being sold is completely fake and false. Now, they also interviewed DoorDash Grandma later and spoke to her about no tax on tips.

Take a look at this. $11,000. You know, my, my tips were over. half of my income from last year. Wow. I mean, that's a life changer. Yes, it is, it is. And when, you know, like I said,

when you're dealing with someone that has gone through cancer and, you know, you love them, you don't want to lose them, so you do everything that you can and, you know, you go through your life savings, but this no tax on tips and the help from DoorDash is life changing. Do you think this is the world's most famous DoorDash delivery? Maybe. I don't know that I would ever be able to say that I've delivered to anybody else that's been more high profile.

How was President Trump? Very, very kind. Do you like the Oval? Oh, it was beautiful. Is your first time meeting with president? Yes. First time in D.C. Did you vote for him?

I have. Yeah. in the last election? Well, I was actually moved, so I hadn't had a chance to change my voter registration. But, you know, again, this is about no tax on tips, and that's really what I'm here for. Where do you leave now?

I leave tomorrow night. No, where do you leave? Oh, I live in Arkansas. Okay. Final question for you, you've been very kind, thank you. What do you think this policy, no tax on tips? We've heard so many stories, people getting thousands of dollars back that they weren't planning on.

How is this changing your economic economy in your opinion? Well, I believe that, you know, with the no tax on tips and I do believe with the no tax on tips, you know, that it is putting more money into. All right. So let's dig into it. Let's start with the claim. The claim is, thanks to Trump's tax bill, no tax on tips. That's not what the law says.

The law creates a deduction. Now, bear with me on this. It's all going to make sense. The law creates a deduction of up to $25,000 in tip income, which can be deducted from federal income tax. That is not eliminating taxes on tips. You report your tips. You pay payroll taxes on tips. You may pay state taxes on tips. And then later, depending on the standard deduction, you might get some additional benefit from being able to deduct tips. Now, the unfortunate reality, and it is unfortunate for people who were who believed this and who were accounting on it, is that most tipped workers already pay little to no federal income tax. Why is that? Because of something called the standard deduction. In the American tax code, regardless of what itemized deductions you have, even if you

have zero actual itemized deductions, you can take a roughly $14,000 standard deduction if you're single. So if you're making, say, $25,000 a year as a server, a big chunk of your income is already not taxed at the federal level because that standard deduction cuts your taxable income from $25,000 to $11,000. Now, yes, you can add the tip deduction on top of that. And in some cases, depending on how much you make, you might see no change at all in your tax liability or a a small tax cut. Now, I don't want to belittle that, but we should call it what it is. It might be a couple hundred bucks a year for the typical tipped worker in tax savings. Is that nothing? No, it's not nothing, but is it this huge life-changing thing that Donald Trump wants you to believe it is? No, it isn't.

For low-income workers, the benefit is often zero because they weren't paying federal tax to begin with. Now let's talk about no tax on Social Security. And it's the exact same story. The claim is Trump got rid of tax on social security, it is not in the bill. Trump repeats it over and over again, but it's not in the bill. There is no repeal of taxes on social security benefits. What the bill does is increase the standard deduction for seniors. There's some targeted tax relief in there. And so some retirees already don't pay taxes on social security. Higher income retirees will still pay taxes on Social Security. The tax still exists, but there is this little sliver of people who earn a certain amount and are receiving Social Security benefits who will see a tiny little reduction.

Great for them. It is not no tax on Social Security. Now imagine that instead of selling it the way they did, no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, they sold it as what it was. We are offering a limited, temporary tax deduction on tips that. may save some workers a couple hundred bucks and a mild, modest reduction for some seniors depending on their income. It would be the same thing. It would actually describe accurately what it is. It wouldn't go viral.

And so they knew they were lying, those who wrote the bill. I don't know if Trump knows it's a lie. He keeps repeating it. They did an entire stunt with DoorDash Grandma based around this concept. And it is all fake. and fabricated. If these explainers about the tax code are interesting to you, make sure to like this video and hit the subscribe button. That tells us this video is something you're interested in seeing more of and we will do more of it.