The David Pakman Show - Trump threatens to rename New Mexico "New America"

Episode Date: September 13, 2026

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Welcome to the bonus show. It's great to be back in the studio. It is another day and another new series of tariffs on our historical allies. This time, Canadian tariffs, however, on U.S. milk, perfume, golf clubs and other goods have taken effect. And as of this moment, the Dow Jones Industrial average is down 564 points and declining rapidly. More instability. Now, listen, Pat, I assume that like is the case with most of this stuff, at some point, maybe even today, because it is Tuesday, often it's Taco Tuesday, at some point, they're going to come to some temporary agreement again. And there will be a hiatus on some of these

tariffs and it might be temporary or it might be permanent. Like, you can never really keep track of exactly where we are. But I assume at some point we're going to see that again and the stock market will go back up a little bit and Trump will still say the policy's good. It's the same routine over and over again. That has been the pattern, right? And so it makes it so it's maybe not even worth it to follow the day to day because we know that whatever Trump does, he's just going to undo the next week.

and then the retaliatory tariffs that Canada put in place, they're probably going to undo those as well. And it's pretty predictable because we know that really the only option Trump has is to Taco, because if he decides to double down, if he continues to go down this road, it's going to make the economy even worse. It's going to drive up inflation. It's going to make the farmers, for example, even more angry with him. And consumers generally more angry with him. So he has to backtrack and you step away from it all and you think,

this must just be market manipulation, right? That must be the point of all this. It's the only, I mean, I hate to say logical, but it can't possibly be that Trump is still convinced that this sort of stuff gives him leverage or the upper hand because it's proven not to. So then the only other reason, I guess there's two possible explanations. It's market manipulation for his or for his friend's benefit or he believes that he has to save faith. And if he stopped doing this sort of thing, it would show that he knows it didn't work. And so he has to just continue arguing that it works. Those are really the only two explanations I can think of.

And of course, when he does taco, he claims that that's a big win as well. He was able to bring Canada to the negotiating table and come up with a deal, even though it's often worse than the deal that we had in the first place. Also, an interesting point to this is that Canada seems to be deliberately targeting industries that are going to affect Midwestern states and states that Trump historically has been able to do well in. So they're going after American milk, perfume, video game consoles, golf clubs, fishing rods, these sorts of things.

They were considering lobster, but then decided to back away from lobster. And I wonder if that's because, you know, that's a big industry here in the Northeast. Yeah. We, um, one of the things that Trump definitely doesn't understand about this conceptually is that American companies rely. on Canadian inputs for a lot of products, but also Canadian companies use American imports for a lot of products to inputs to finish products in Canada. And Canadian companies usually have a number of alternatives for those inputs, whereas many of the American companies do not, partially because

of how our supply chains are set up. And so this is once again, one of these things where Trump's lack of understanding doesn't diminish his confidence at all, but it can backfire in ways he doesn't even understand. Right. Even if you buy into Trump's framework that when he imposes tariffs, it's actually the foreign countries paying it, you still have to come up with some sort of game plan, right? You have to think, okay, well, if our competitors, if other countries do X, then I'm going to do Y. You have to make it so that they're all. other tools still at your disposal and that you're going to end up coming away from the entire exchange ahead, right?

Even if things don't go initially as planned. So Trump's not even capable of doing that. Obviously, he's not able to plan a few steps ahead because if he was thinking a few steps ahead, he would realize that, oh, this is actually going to backfire and not be so great for Americans. All right. Let's talk about another element of economics. And this is Social Security.

Security has now led to or the situation with Social Security has led at least some Republicans to say, hey, you know what we need to do? We need to raise the payroll tax cap. So people with higher incomes continue paying into Social Security above and beyond a certain level of income. For example, Republican Senator Bernie Marino has now said we should raise the payroll tax cap. Congressman Tom Cole, a Republican in the House of Representatives, has said that is something that we should look at. Now, this is typically something that Republicans

have been against. Now, let me remind people, and let me get the exact number, 26th, security cap. Okay. The way it works right now is that you pay into Social Security. You have money deducted from your income up to the first $184,500 that you earn in a year. If you earn $200,000, you only pay into Social Security for the first 184.5,000. If you make $2 million, you only pay into Social Security for the first $184,500. So the idea here is that in reality, this is a regressive tax, because as you make more and more money beyond $184,000, the percentage of your total income that is paid into Social Security goes down. Now, it is also the case that your benefits are limited. In other words, if you've made $184,500 or $384,500 or $500, you are paying in the max

and your benefit is going to be the same when you finally do retire and start receiving benefits. So one of the things that has been proposed is raise the cap. Make it so that people pay into the system for the first $300,000 that they make or $500,000 or uncap it altogether. Typically, Democrats have been in favor of that and Republicans have been against it. Republicans now increasingly convinced that something's got to give are starting to look at the most acceptable changes that could be made. And one of the most acceptable changes that could be made politically, especially if you're a

Republican is to say, well, let's raise the cap a little bit. Let's allow a little more of people's incomes to flow into deductions for Social Security. And that is a pretty significant political change. It is a significant political change because Republicans used to pretend that this proposed solution didn't even exist. They would never entertain this. They would love to fearmonger about how Social Security is going to go bankrupt in a few years, even though that's not true, by the way, we just would have to make some adjustments or it wouldn't pay out as much. But they make it seem like, okay, it's these Democrats who were in charge that are leading us down this road and they're the reason why we have this problem, even though, of course, we know it has to do with

like the baby boomer population and other factors. It's not like democratic spending. But now I think because Trump is an office and Republicans still do have control of Congress, they have to come up with something more reasonable. They know that they're not going to be able to get away politically with saying, we're going to cut your social security benefits. So this is probably the best option that they think they have to go along with raising the cap, especially because it's not going to affect most Americans because most Americans make far less than the $185,000 a year where this cap would is now. That's exactly right. Now, one of the things that I think is also missing from the conversation, and I want to be clear that I'm not saying this is okay. A lot of the discussions around the trust

fund is going to run out of money. They make people think that from one day to the next, Social Security won't be able to pay anybody anything, but even making no changes, it would still be able to meet most obligations. Now, I'm not saying it's okay. If you've paid in on a schedule where you're expecting $3,400 at age 70 when you retire, it wouldn't be okay to say, well, instead of $3,400, all we can do is afford to give you $3,000. That wouldn't be okay. People should get what they are entitled to from what they paid in. But there are people out there who make you want to think that what you're going to get is zero instead of $3,400 if nothing has changed. When if nothing has changed, you could still get $3,000. I'm making the numbers up.

What that reveals is not that that's okay, but that the tweaks that are required to make it fully solvent are not about finding $3,400 a month per person. It's about finding $400 a month person. Just so people understand what it means to say that it starts to run dry. Right. And I think that Republicans used to use a lot more of that fear-mongering rhetoric. And now because they realize they have to address the problem, they're backing away from that. And that's why we're starting to see these proposed solutions. But there still are plenty of Republicans who will not be willing to raise taxes, even if it is on more wealthy individuals because they signed the Grover Norquist pledge. And they said that under no circumstances ever are we going to vote to raise taxes. And they would rather see Social Security pay out less or even fail. as a program than raise taxes on people. That's exactly right. So I don't ultimately know where this is going to land. If I had to predict Pat, I do think that before Social Security starts paying diminished benefits, something will be done. And the reason I say that is social security having to pay diminished benefits would be such a self-inflicted disaster, probably for both parties,

certainly for whoever's in power, but probably for both parties, that I do. think that at the end of the day, they will find some way to prevent that from happening. What do you think? That's probably the case. And I don't think that there are too many levers that they have, right? They can raise the cap. They can cut the benefits. But outside of that, like, what other mechanisms that they have to control things? I don't know. Yeah. Well, so the one of the ones Republicans like is they go, let's start investing the trust fund in riskier stuff as part of privatizing it, arguing we'll make much better return.

But of course, then the big financial corporations start getting fees. Republicans love that solution. Oh, yeah. Let's put it all in Trump and Melania coin and then see how that works. I think we'll run out of our nation's retirement in a few years. I think we will. So that's where things stand right now. And the tide seemingly turning at least to some degree on raising that raising that cap. Donald Trump has another renaming idea. He shared a map on Troth Central, which renames New Mexico as New America. It's painfully stupid. I think it is important to remember that Donald Trump does have the power to rename some landmarks, but not all.

He doesn't have the constitutional ability to rename states. Of course, only states can decide to rename themselves. Trump in addition to, oh, I'm wearing my Lake Ontario t-shirt, by the way. Yes. In addition to renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America, I got, we, this is our t-shirt. We sell these on the shop. It's Lake Ontario, damn it. That's the message I'm sending with my t-shirt.

He has also announced previously that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the Gulf of America. I have to tell you, Pat, the thing that pisses me off the most about this other than like the main thing, which is Trump doing it, is that a lot of the mapping companies have capitulated. And so Google Maps has gone along with these renamings. Apple Maps, I believe has. Is MapQuest the only one that's holding out still? If I look that up, that would be the first time I go to the MapQuest website in 20 years. Yeah, I know.

I didn't even know they were still out there. Let's see. Okay. So if I go to it, let's check these one by one. On Apple Maps, if I zoom out. I've seen it on Apple Maps. I know they've changed the names. They have, right?

Yes. But I know it with Google, with Google Maps. Initially, some people were getting the Gulf of America and some people were getting Gulf of Mexico. So Apple Maps says Lake America and Gulf of America. Gulf of America. Okay, that's Apple Maps. Google Maps says Lake America and Gulf of America. Dear God. MapQuah, here we go, Pat. Here's the, here's the moment of truth. MapQuest says, Lake Ontario very strongly. Nice. And Gulf of Mexico. So MapQuest has, they've gone woke. Or maybe they just haven't updated in forever. No, I think maybe this tells me.

Quest is no longer updated. That's a good point. No, it's, it is. This tells me I got to start using MapQuest because why am I using Google Maps and Apple Maps when I can use MapQuest, which accurately is labeling things? If only it integrated with, you know, anything that people use. I don't know that MapQuest integrates with anything. That's unfortunate. Do you think that there's any chance that Google and Apple could change the New Mexico state name to New America Trump signs and executive order or something like that? I don't think so. I don't think so because it's outside of presidential authority even bigger picture? Like I just don't think that that's going to happen. It would be a bigger stretch than the other name changes because when it came to the other name

changes, it was Congress that was supposed to do them. But because Trump controls the executive apparatus behind like where these names go and the data and all these things that private companies use, it was like a justified explanation for Google and Apple to go along with the name changes. But with something like a state name, I think it is a higher bar. So I don't think that they're going to be so willing to do it. And maybe Trump will drop this idea. But I will say that it doesn't mean that we can't sell New Mexico shirts as our new merch item. What do you think is the bigger picture here? And we will do New Mexico shirts if it comes to it. To me, this is part of Trump's obsession with legacy, his recognition that he's getting old, wanting to change things and be able to say, this is going

to survive me. And I did it as President Trump, even if it's stuff people don't like. That's what I think it's all about. It's absolutely that. But it's the type of thing that's not going to play well for Trump now, even among his base. Like if he had a high approval rating, if he was at 50% approval, which for him, of course, would be very high. And he was doing things that he could argue were to the benefit of the country and the economic numbers looked good. And he was out there talking about all these name changes and he's going to take over Canada

and all these things. I think that there could be some advantage to him on his side, like for his base. But I think even his own base is rolling their collective eyes at this point because they know that there are other things he should be focusing on. and this just comes across as cringy. It absolutely seems to be that way. 100%. I will remind folks, I've got two events coming up where you can come and say hello.

On Monday, September 21st, I will be at the Upper West Side Barnes & Noble in Manhattan. 7 p.m. still with a moderator to be determined. We will be doing about, I think it's like a half hour or an hour talk related to the book. And then I think I'm going to be signing copies. That all is what I've been told. And then on October 3rd, I will be at the infamous and famous Springfield Symphony Hall in Springfield, Massachusetts with Jessica Tarlov, nasty woman, according to Trump, that is. She's always been very, very nice to me. We will be doing a conversation at 6 p.m. on October 3rd at the Springfield Book Forum.

And I think we will also be signing books afterwards. As with all of these things, I have no involvement in the logistics. It's just like other people are managing it. And this is tough for me because I'm usually managing everything and I know exactly what's going on. So I don't know whether it's going to be ticketed. There certainly is a capacity. I think these are only good for about 100 people each. So I have no idea.

If you have any questions as to whether tickets are necessary or whatnot, call, call the Springfield Book Forum or call the Upper West Side Barnes & Noble. And they will tell you. And my actually, I heard that Pat, you were planning to get all 100 tickets and have me sign 100 books. Well, then I can resell the tickets on third-party site to make a little profit. Of course. Yeah, and the books, too. That sounds like a two for one. Look for a lot of used book listings from producer Pat on on Amazon soon. So anyway, those are the two events. If you've not pre-orded the book yet, please do it. We're trying to knock Ted Cruz down a slot from his pathetic

book that he wrote. Just great. I mean, what is Ted Cruz doing? About Clarence Thomas, too. I know. It just doesn't seem interesting at all. We should be. to beat him, I think. We got to beat him. We got to beat him back. David Pakman.com slash attention. I'm going and signing a bunch of these books in the next few days. So get those signed copy orders in. And more info on more events soon. And we will be back tomorrow. That does it for today's bonus show preview. Remember, this is paywalled content that our members get five days a week to stop missing out and get every single episode delivered directly. Sign up now at join packman.com.