The David Pakman Show - Trump spending YOUR money on campaign ads

Episode Date: October 4, 2026

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Hey, thanks for tuning in to the David Packman Show. You're listening to a free sample of the exclusive award-winning bonus show, which we produce every weekday for, our members. Unlock the whole lineup and support independent media at join packman.com. Welcome to the bonus show. It is great to be back in the studio. It is a normal bonus show today. We are basically beyond all of the book stuff. I do hope to see people in Springfield, Massachusetts this Saturday, October 3rd for that event with Jessica Tarlov, but I am back in the studio and that is a great thing. Let's talk about things happening and stuff and all of that.

We start with the Trump administration canceling $810 million in spending. Now, every year, Congress passes laws which allocate money to programs. The government, the administration has things they want to do. And then Congress comes in and passes a law and says, okay, we're going to fund this stuff. And for the second year in a row, Donald Trump is refusing to send some of that money. that Congress says, hey, it's part of the budget and we've approved it. And this immediately becomes a political battle. Now, of the 810 million that Trump wants to withhold, a bunch of it, $567 million, comes from programs that, quote, provided services to refugees, assailees, and other

non-citizens. This is called a pocket rescission and it is illegal, according to the government accountability office, which watches a lot of these governmental comings and goings. Now, it's funny because we're talking about something very narrow, Pat, a pocket rescission, but the overarching framework that covers this is a little thing called the Constitution. Article 1 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to levy taxes and decide how federal funds are spent. This isn't really a power that the administration has. But when the president decides to cancel funds without actual time to reallocate or have Congress way in. It's called the pocket rescission. You've got the end of the fiscal year very close. And this means the money

won't be spent. Congress simply won't have time to respond. Surprised by any of this. Not surprised at all. This is yet another illegal action that Donald Trump is taking and another illegal action that he probably won't face any consequences for whatsoever. You'd like to think, well, maybe Congress could step in, but as you pointed out, the fiscal year is about to end. Also, Congress went home to start campaigning for the midterms, so things, they are not going to turn around any soon. And then when it comes to the courts, they drag their feet on these sorts of issues. They're not all that's willing to reverse Donald Trump's decisions urgently. So by the time they get around to this, it may end up being a moot point. And it's no surprise why Donald Trump

is doing it this year because he was able to get away with it last. year, why not do it again? There are some people who will understandably hear this and go, David, $810 million. It's not even a billion dollars in an economy of $17 trillion. Why do we care? We care because this is being done punitively and capriciously and it will hurt people in need because it is all stuff related to if it has asylum written on it. We don't want to fund it.

There was also another aspect. aspect of this, which was about cutting money for what was the other thing that they were cutting money for? DEI programs of various kinds. Yes. Anything related to diversity or inclusion, even when it is not like, listen, I'll be the first to say, if you give me an example of so-called DEI going too far, I'll condemn it. The truth is most of those examples aren't really DEI.

They are other crazy things that I'm against and I think the left shouldn't do. But I'm, these are really uncontroversial programs in most cases. And it is money that has been taken that is a, it's already been appropriated. That's absolutely right. And you make the best progressive argument against what Donald Trump is doing here. But you can also take a traditionally more right wing conservative approach and say that Donald Trump cannot do this because Congress has the power of the purse. Right.

And I'm wondering. I'm wondering. Absolutely. Where are these small government conservatives like Rand Paul and the others. criticizing Donald Trump for this because this is clearly an abuse of his executive power. Very clearly. So it's not like we'll see what happens. They're just not distributing the money. We will see if you can make good on it later by raising the budget some other way, but that it doesn't seem like it just does seem that Trump is ultimately going to get away with this. And it is so

pathetic in that we're talking about small amounts of money for a country this size. But the Trump administration doesn't care. They just they don't they just want to do this. No, they can view this as a win and in the sense that they probably won't get overturned and this will allow to stand and Congress in the future won't make good on the money they previously appropriated because the Republicans probably don't want these things anyway. Donald Trump will be able to get away with this. All right. The White House is blocking CNN from traveling aboard Air Force one with Trump as recently as Saturday.

This has been confirmed by a CNN spokesperson just days after a federal judge said, hey, sir, you can't do that. You have to restore access to the White House for CNN along with Politico and MS now. CNN was scheduled to travel with Trump to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he was going to go to a college football game, which he ultimately did. And they were not allowed. They were left off of the White House's guidance for Saturday's trip the next day. By the way, this meant there was no TV pool for the trip. So there was not an independent video of events. You just had partisan video, share. by people who were there. And also some people in the venue took, took videos of Donald Trump. CNN, if I recall correctly, is next scheduled to run the pool feed on Thursday. Does that sound

right to you, Pat? And we will see what happens between now and then. Yeah, absolutely right. And one could wonder how Donald Trump is able to get away with doing this because the judge did restore access to the White House. But the administration says, well, Air Force One is not the White House. So they're doing everything they can to be petty in this situation. And likely, I'd imagine a judge will step in and say, you have to restore access to Air Force One as well. But Donald Trump, at least for a few days, can get away with this and feel like he's victorious over CNN. But we know that he's not going to be able to win this long term, not only because judges would probably continue striking him down, but also because he himself would taco. He himself would cave to this because we know that he loves the attention, even if it's more adversarial attention from places like CNN.

He wants the coverage. And so this goes back to a story we saw late last week where Donald Trump was complaining that CNN wasn't covering the welcoming ceremony at the White House for Xi Jinping after previously banning CNN. So, of course, he can't have it both ways. And I think that his instinct to want to be covered by the media will win out over his authoritarian instinct to ban them. You know what's funny.

When there are criticisms of Trump that he's spending too much time away and he's not working enough, one of the things that they're quick to say is, Air Force 1 basically is the White House. He has a full communication slate there. He can speak to any world leader. He has all of his advisors with him. It's basically like being at the White House. All of a sudden, when they're trying to deny CNN access, they go, it's just the plane, guys.

It's not the White House. We can deny you access to it. And it's just another. I know no one. Hypocracy, holding people accountable for double standards is dead as a topic. But like, it's another example of the hypocrisy. The White House, the Air Force one, the White House depends on what people are trying to get out of it. Yeah, absolutely.

It's like, is the Iran conflict a war? It depends. Is it Monday? Is it Tuesday? Is it the morning? It depends on whatever objective the White House is trying to achieve. Or with coronavirus in Donald Trump's first term, is it this huge threat to humanity that Donald Trump has to save us for? Or is it something that we can overlook so that business can go back as usual?

It depends on whatever they're trying to achieve at any given moment. Depends what you're trying to achieve. Depends on trying to try to couch things. I mean, with the war, it's been an excursion by which he meant incursion or just a little conflict or a war, depending on whether he wants to be seen as I'm a president at war at the end of the day or whether the illegality of the war becomes the issue. Then you go, well, it's not really a war. Why don't people care about this anymore, do you think, about these hypocrisies and double standards? I think for the most part, they've just gotten exhausted by them. They expect it from Donald Trump, even right when commentators don't try to defend his hypocrisy anymore.

They gave up on that a while ago. So they just started to treat him with a different standard than they do everyone else. And they think that that's acceptable somehow. And you know what? If you can get away with it in some sense, it's become acceptable by consensus, which I hate to acknowledge. It's a sad state of affairs. The White House has run another ad. These are government funded. These are not campaign ads. And this is really important to understand. There is an image of Trump walking down a hallway and audio plays of Trump going, this is the final battle. We will cast out the communists and the Marxists and the fascists and blah, blah, blah.

This aired during NFL games yesterday. And again, it was not this is funded by the Trump campaign, where it's campaign spending and underwritten by the campaign. This is being paid for by the administration. Strictly speaking, this is not allowed. Now, they are arguing these aren't really campaign ads. These are more like PSAs like about get your COVID vaccine. But anybody who watches this thing, Pat, can tell between the dramatic music and the dramatic

lighting and the editing. This is not a government PSA. Yeah. I'm okay with government's money going toward ads that promote aspects of the government or things that the government is doing. Sure. example, you want to get people to get their COVID shots, the government running ads during the football games, I think that makes sense. Or if you want to get people to enroll in the Affordable Care Act to make

sure they get health care coverage, I think that makes sense to run ads for. Even something like recruiting for the military, I know people are going to have different opinions when it comes to that, especially at a time like now when we're fighting this optional war in Iran, but, you know, recruiting for the military, I think some people view as an acceptable use of government funds. But this was a PSA to essentially promote Donald Trump and Republicans. That's what this was. And they're not even really trying to hide from that too much. Like they're saying it's a PSA, but you have to have an actual cause that the PSA is for in order for it to justify the spending of taxpayer dollars.

Right. And they don't really seem to have one. And again, will there be any accountability? I have no idea. Is this an issue of high priority for the average American as opposed to like Republicans versus Democratic? I don't know, but this is part of the sort of corruption industrial complex, which the theme has as at its core, hey, we are spending taxpayer money in all sorts of ways it shouldn't be spent. Ads like this, the ballroom, et cetera. And I think that it is a uniting issue in general for the more reasonable Republican voters and Democrats.

But I'm not really seeing, I mean, like, Asoff is talking about it, but there's not as much talk about it as you would think. Maybe Democrats don't agree that this is a uniting issue. I don't know. You'd think that it would be Trump adding insult to injury, right? Because not only is he making all the economic conditions worse for people, he's also bragging about the achievements he has. And those achievements are things like the ballroom and slapping his name on a bunch of buildings

and stuff that people don't even really care about, even members of his own base who are trying to just make a living, right? They don't care about that stuff either. So one would think that if Donald Trump is talking about all this stuff and playing ads, promoting all this stuff during NFL games, that people would roll their eyes and be really upset over it. But I don't know if we're seeing that. We're seeing Donald Trump's numbers decline, though, so maybe there is some of that. Yeah. I mean, listen, something is dragging down Trump's approval. And it seems that the war is part of it. Prices are part of it. I don't know to what degree this corruption, self-dealing, profiting a billion from crypto.

And like, I don't know to what degree that is what's dragging Trump's approval down. A lot of different things together clearly are dragging it down. And now that Democrats are kind of favored to win everything, we will see if this can be the ultimate kind of send off for Trump. I don't know what else we can do, but vote these people out. I think the corruption alone and the billion off of crypto and everything, that alone would not bring down Donald Trump's approval numbers, but mixed with the fact that we have these horrible economic conditions and the war and everything else.

It just provides another layer that people can be upset with over everything that's going on right now. So I think that Donald Trump could get away with a lot of this stuff if not for these conditions we see. But right now he's not going to be able to. That may be. It may be the analysis may be it has all just built together such that it is finally starting to hurt Trump. By the way, there is a second ad which has Trump at Mount Rushmore. And his voiceover says never before has any nation celebrate. rated so magnificent to triumph as this one.

And very much, very much not educational and not a public service announcement of any kind. And even some Republicans said this, even if we agree with the message, it doesn't really seem like it's appropriate spending. Thomas Massey is one of the Republicans who said this is not okay. But Massey has already abandoned Trump. Right. And it sounds like if there is an objective to the PSA, it's to promote patriotism, which, you know, that's just not a good enough cause, I think, to spend taxpayer dollars on because you're essentially just admitting that you're putting

up propaganda for people. Yeah. And also patriotism as defined how and implicit in that is you can only be patriotic if you do support Trump. And that is not really a bipartisan patriotic or a nonpartisan patriotic message. No, absolutely not. And if Barack Obama did the same thing, I don't think that Republicans would accept it. Can you imagine a taxpayer-funded ad during football with Obama in black and white dramatically walking down a hallway with voiceover of this like they they would lose their minds. They would have called for impeachment yesterday by now. I think that's what would have happened. Obama would have been impeached, I think, at this point. Even if they controlled the, the house the way they do now, it would have been instant impeachment. All right. So listen,

that's what Trump is up to. I don't think it's going to save Republicans. I don't think it's going to work. And before we know it, 30 something days, we are going to shift into what will the final two years of this long global nightmare, 2015 to 2029, 14 years at the end of the day will be of the Trump era. We will shift into analyzing that. It's incredible that it's finally going to be coming to an end pat, I think, unless Don Jr. becomes the next president. It's nice to think that we know what the end date is. I think it's a fair assumption, right, that 2029 will be the end. But with things how they are now, I guess you never know for sure. You never know truly for sure. All right. It's good to be back in the studio.

We will be back tomorrow. New show, new bonus show. I'll see you then. Thanks for checking out this sneak peek of the bonus show. Our members get five of these extra paywalled episodes every single week. Unlock all of them and keep independent media thriving by going to join packman.com and becoming a member.