The David Pakman Show - Trump's 29% disaster grows as he's in love with Mamdani

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

-- On the Show: -- 📚 David's new book PAY ATTENTION is out TODAY! Order, read, rate, and review! https://bit.ly/m/attention -- A new poll shows Donald Trump's approval rating falling to 29% with only 26% approving of his handling of the economy -- Donald Trump visits New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion and calls him a great mayor with great potential -- Tulsi Gabbard's 2024 endorsement predicting Donald Trump would protect free speech and avoid war looks increasingly wrong -- Trump adviser Peter Navarro calls journalists treasonous for reporting that the Iran war is going badly -- An ethics complaint accuses Lauren Boebert of relationships with three subordinate staffers and a $200,000 hush payment, which she denies -- Democrat James Talarico's outspoken Christian faith may weaken the Republican Party's traditional hold on white evangelical voters in Texas -- Television networks refuse to provide White House pool coverage after Donald Trump bans CNN, leaving his own remarks barely audible -- Fox News joins ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC in suspending White House pool coverage after Donald Trump bans three news organizations -- On the Bonus Show: Logan and Jake Paul visit the Pentagon to motivate troops, Bill Gates publishes an essay warning about AI, and much more... 📜 Trust & Will: Save 20% on your estate planning at https://trustandwill.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman 🧠 Try Brain.fm totally free for a month at https://brain.fm/pakman -- Get David's Book: https://bit.ly/m/attention -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Send David a text: [phone] -- 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) Start (01:55) Trump's approval falls to 29 percent (10:24) Trump and Mamdani meet and exchange praise (25:37) Tulsi Gabbard's Trump endorsement backfires (33:32) Navarro calls critical war reporting treasonous (44:01) Ethics complaint accuses Boebert of misconduct (51:06) Talarico's faith may split evangelical voters (57:49) Trump's press ban backfires on him (01:06:12) Fox News joins press ban protest Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now that my book is out, just wanted to say, please review the book on Amazon. Rate the book on Amazon. This is so important for continuing to generate orders of the book. If you've already gotten it, thank you. It is now out in the world, which is crazy. But the best thing you can do is lever rating, leave a review on Amazon. I appreciate it so much. Thank you. Donald Trump has just hit a number we have never seen before in his presidency.

29% approval. And if you look underneath the number, the situation on the economy may be even worse. Now, meanwhile, love is in the air. Trump visiting New York City mayor Zoran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion. And Mamdani praises Trump's history as a builder. Trump says Mamdani has great potential. And they're getting along really well. So I want to explore who's playing whom here. Then Trump's war on the media takes a turn because a senior Trump official starts calling negative reporting treason. Trump bans major news organizations from the White House. And then Fox News joins CNN and other networks, which leaves Trump literally talking into no microphones and no one can hear him. We'll talk about Tulsi Gabbard's spectacularly ill-fated Trump endorsement.

There's a crazy Lauren Bobert ethics complaint. And I believe that Tala Rico v. Paxton in Texas could tell us way more than just who represents Texas for the next six years. It'll be about the Republican coalition. It's all today. My book is out. No more pre-order. Just order it, including I saw Amazon will deliver it to you by 5 p.m. today, if you can

imagine. All of that and more today. Donald Trump has just hit a number that we have never. seen in this presidency, that number starts with a two. It's 29% approval. This is the new number from American research group, not a left-leaning pollster. And of course, we never obsess under over one poll. We look at an average of polls. I do think this one deserves some attention because it's not just about 29%. It's the trajectory. This same poll a year ago, had Trump at 37% approval. And over the last 12 months, it dropped to 35 and then 34 and 32. And you understand how numbers work. 30, 30, 30, 30, 3 times in a row. And now for the first time in this series, 29% approval for Trump, a record low, 68% disapproval among registered voters. It's basically the same 30% approval, 68% disapproved. Now, there is some important context here.

This is a particularly bad poll for Trump. I respect you too much. We had a great talk about this actually yesterday with Don Lamon at the Upper West Side Barnes and Noble for my book talk. I try to give you all the information. And so it is notable and true that this is the lowest number Trump has ever had 29% in the AGR poll. But also a week ago, Reuters Zips hosts had Trump at 35.

There are other national polls that have Trump, you know, in the low 30. So I'm not going to tell you the true. and singular approval number is exactly 29%. There's margins of error, et cetera. It's not how polling works to say this is the number. But their trajectory is very clear. And there's no way to dismiss that multiple polls show Trump so far underwater. And what's interesting about the American Research Group poll is that there's maybe like 29 is bad. But if you look under the hood a little bit at the economic numbers, this may really spell disaster for Republican. in the midterms that are now just 40 something days away, Trump's approval on the economy is 26%.

71% disapprove of Trump's handling on the economy. Among independents, only 19% approve of his handling on the economy. 75% disapprove. And incredibly, 72% say the direction of the economy is getting worse. So teeny tiny shriveled, flaccid approval numbers on the economy. And almost three quarters of the country says, and the economy is going in the wrong direction. 70% say, I expect the economy will be even worse a year from now. 71% say, forget what I think about the economy out there.

My household's financial situation is getting worse. And this is a topic. This is the topic that historically, Republicans poll much better. than Democrats on. And right now the entire country is saying economy, not good. Now, maybe the most remarkable number of the entire poll, even among the people who approve of Trump, 56% expect that the economy is going to be worse a year from now. So think about that for a second. These are not Trump opponents. These are people telling pollsters, I do approve of the job that Trump is doing right now. And the majority say, I think the economy will be worse a year from now.

We are approaching the midterms. And so this is of huge consequence. Now, normally, the midterms are not a direct referendum on the president. They sort of indirectly are. Trump's name isn't on the ballot. You've got these individual House and Senate races, different candidates, different states. The dynamics are different. The issues are different.

But in general, presidents do create the national political environment. of a midterm, but that's like a normal midterm election. Trump is different. As I apologize, I hit my mic. The difference is that Trump has explicitly said to voters, pretend I'm on the ballot. Trump created this midterm convention thing, what was it, about two weeks ago, and put himself at the center of the midterm elections. And when your approval is as low as 29% in one poll, you've got a real price.

problem. And so when we look at the generic ballot polling for the midterms, Reuters Zipsoz last week found Democrats leading Republicans 44 to 37. That's crazy. We're just weeks out from this midterm. Now, that doesn't exactly tell us how many seats each party is going to end up with or win or how many will flip. You know, generic ballot polling doesn't directly translate into a House or Senate result. These are individual races. But if you consider it a measure of the national environment, you see that Republicans have a really difficult tension that they have to figure out how to navigate and what to do about. On the one hand, Trump is still the dominant figure in the Republican Party. As unlikable and as unpopular as he is, it's not like there's someone,

it's not J.D. Vance. It's not, you know, Rand Paul or Trump is the dominant figure in the Republican Party. Trump can motivate Republican voters, but to do what? He might motivate them to come out and vote for Republicans. He might motivate them to stay home. But the individual candidates still have to do the work of appealing to independence, appealing to less committed voters, people who may or may not vote in the midterm. And among independents, the American Research Group poll has Trump at 26%. Now, Reuters reported from the midterm convention, and we covered this two weeks ago,

that some Republican activists were already questioning, is it really a good idea to make Trump the centerpiece of a midterm campaign when he is so unpopular? And then there were some who said, listen, it's really all we got. He gets much more attention than some of these down ballot candidates. And at the end of the day, any media coverage is good media coverage. I'm not so sure. But the tension when you look at the numbers becomes much more significant. And maybe most importantly, this is not about some abstract Washington scandal that voters may or may not even care about. This is arguably the most tactically important element of an election. What do you perceive your financial situation to be?

And only 3% in the poll say, oh, I think my household's financial situation is getting better. 3%. 18% say their household finances are. are excellent, very good, or good. That's all three of those categories together. You take the ones who say, we're doing excellent, we're doing very good, we're good. Together, that's just 18% of the country. 75% say it's bad, very bad, or terrible.

That is insanely pessimistic as far as the electorate going into a midterm. Now, I still say there is time before election day, polls can change, economic perceptions can change. There could be some kind of October event that changes the political environment. That's all true. One poll doesn't determine how elections are going to go. But Republicans are heading towards midterms with a president who in this survey is below 30% overall, 26% on the economy, 19% on the economy from independence. So I don't think we need to, you know, I saw a bunch of debate online and people writing to me, David, is this poll exactly right? Whether Trump's approval is 29, 33, or 35. The pattern is it's been declining. It's been declining with

independence. It's been declining on the economy. And the generic ballot is very bad for Republicans. So I'm going to be watching over these last few weeks of this race. Do Republican candidates decide it's going to be useful to me to run alongside Donald Trump? Or do I need to create some distance? We looked at the video of Marie Lovirus Alizar, the Republican from Florida, creating distance and going, hey, she's a Republican. On immigration, this is not what we asked for. It'll be very interesting to see whether others do the same thing. Ah, smell that? Love is in the air.

I am going to show you why my ride up to my Barnes & Noble book event last night was a mess. Why the FDR was a complete and utter fiasco. on the east side of Manhattan. It turns out that Donald Trump was on his way to Gracie Mansion to meet with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. And people have very divergent opinions about this meeting. Should Mamdani be meeting with Trump? Isn't he giving Trump credibility?

Should Mamdani be praising Trump? Is this smart? Is he normalizing Trump? And on the other side, should Maga's asking, why is Trump? giving Mamdani the time of day. He's a socialist. He's a communist. He's an anarchist. Whatever. Okay. Let's look at what actually happened. And my question going in is who's playing who here. Or who's playing whom. Okay. Mom Dani starts by doing something pretty strategically obvious, which is playing to Trump's ego. And he goes, listen, Trump's the leader of the country,

but he's a builder. He's built a lot of housing in New York City. Take a look. Mr. President, Mr. Mayor, there aren't too many Democrats who would roll out the red carpet for Donald Trump. You did that today. What tangible results, achievements could you point to from your relationship with the president? You know, one of the focuses of the conversation the president and I have been having is about the possibility of building more housing here in New York City. We've spoken about Sunnyside Yard. And it's a real pleasure that just today we've agreed to set up a new level of that conversation between our housing and operations team at City Hall and the White House team, because what we're speaking about is 12,000 homes, 30,000 jobs, the prospect of an entire new neighborhood in a city where housing is the number one costs. And I appreciate the president his interest in this.

And we also know the president, not just as the leader of the country, but also as someone who has built quite a lot of housing here in our city. I don't know, Mr. President, more than that. Well, I can tell you that Sunnyside's a big job. I've been watching that for 35 years. Everybody's wanted to do something with Sunnyside Yards. Well, we met at the White House a couple of times, but we

met at the White House, the mayor brought that up, the possibility of doing Sunnyside Yards. It's a very I would say that was a very federal-oriented job. You're going to need a lot of federal approvals and probably some federal money to do it. But it's always been a

location. I owned a building in Sunnyside. It was a great building. I know it very well. So when he mentioned Sunnyside Yards, they've been talking about developing that for 50 years. So maybe they have a shot at doing it. All right. Now, of course, you can look at that and you can go, yes, but Mayor Mammdani, Trump's built a lot of housing. But he kind of has a reputation for being a slum lord and he has a reputation for not paying vendors who build the actual, who do the actual building. And all right, yeah, I mean, that's all true. But if you think about it as Mamdani being strategic, and sort of stroking Trump's ego. I don't really have a problem with this.

Mamdani wants federal cooperation on housing. If you've watched Trump for 10 minutes, you know that flattering him is one of the most reliable ways to get his attention and his favorable attention. Putin does it and Kim Jong-un and they've all figured out how to do it. And then Trump responds, I want him to be a great mayor and he has potential. Having him be a bad mayor or horrible mayor, I don't want that. I want him to be a great mayor. got potential, got great potential. All right. So Trump's sort of awkward. He had he has potential.

All right. Well, he's already the mayor. I don't know. Remember, though, Trump spent the entire mayoral campaign attacking this guy. And for him to now say he's got great potential, that's also very interesting. But if you're kind of wondering, is this new friendship going to lead to a restrained and focused and disciplined Donald Trump? No. Things went off the rails pretty quickly. started bragging about ending eight wars and then bragging about the war with Iran as Mamdani stands there. Take a look. My boycott me. So I wasn't very worried about that. Look at all that press. But no, I'm not, I'm only doing it because I think the press also is an obligation. And you know,

I won in a landslide. I won the election in a landslide. I've done great things. I've done a lot of great things. I've settled eight wars. We have the best economic numbers for the country in the history of our country. We have $21 trillion pouring in. The biggest number ever, any country was three. Nobody's ever done what we've done. I never get anything positive. It's always negative.

Even having to do with the war, we've done so well. We have total, look, they're not gonna have a nuclear weapon. Let me just put it that way. And they're not doing well. They're not doing it. In fact, I have meetings on it today. They're doing very poorly. You would think that an outlet would write

at least reasonably well, but never. If you look at CNN is fake news. If you look at MS now, I don't even know what MS now is. I guess it's the MSNBC, what it used to be, or MSDNC, as some people call it. That's Democrat National Committee. But it's just biased news. And I think that these outlets have an obligation to be fair. And if they're fake news, I really think I have an obligation not to allow them into another very special house.

This is a special house, where does he mention? Well, the White House is the most special of all houses, I have to say. And I don't even think that mayor would argue with that. And I think I have an obligation not to let fake news. They're very bad for the country, very bad for national security. So I have that obligation. So we'll see how it works out. So this is classic Trump. Peace, I'm the best at peace. War. I'm also the best at war. And housing, I'm the best builder. And everything ultimately becomes about Donald Trump. Now, then we got arguably a more substantive moment. And I like this. A reporter smartly asked Mom Donnie about how Trump banned news outlets from the White House grounds and said, did you challenge Donald Trump about that? And Mamdani basically says he said to Trump, listen, all press is going to be welcome to this, including the people you may have banned them from the White House, but they're all welcome here. Thank you. Mary, to you first, what's your response to President Trump banning outlets from the White House grounds? Did you challenge him at all about this in your?

meeting with him, historians and legal scholars have called it textbook authoritarianism. And Mr. President, are you banning outlets like MSN, CNN, and Politico in order to distract from the Iran War and the high gas prices? You know, I told the president that we're going to have all the members of the press here on the lawn, and that is something that I believe in is everyone, no matter of the opinion or the critique, that we engage. Mr. President. interesting because they said they were going to boycott me, but they never boycott me. So I wasn't

very worried about that. Look at all that press. But no, I'm not, I'm only doing it because I think the press also is an obligation. And, you know, I won in a landslide. I won the election in a landslide. I've done great things. I've done a lot of great things. I've settled eight wars. We have the best economic numbers for the country in the history of our country. We have 21 trillion dollars pouring in the biggest number ever any country was three nobody's ever done what we've done i never get anything positive it's always negative uh even having to do with the war we've done so well we have told look they're not going to have a nuclear weapon let me just put it that way and they're not doing well they're not doing it in fact i have meetings on it today then they're

doing very poorly uh you would think that an outlet would write at least reasonably well but never if you interesting. You know, Mamdani doesn't refuse to meet with Trump, but he doesn't adopt Trump's positions either. And he does a little bit of flattery of Trump, but he's still getting his views out there. And he meets with the president because at the end of the day, the president does control these huge resources that affect New York City. But on this issue, Mamdani makes it clear that we simply don't agree. We then get more praise from Trump of Mom Donnie, who says, listen, you're off to a great start here. Do you want to have any remarks?

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. I've been at Gracie, Manchu, we were discussing quite a few times over the years, a lot. And it sort of feels like a home, and it's a special place, a very special, a beautiful place when you go inside. And I've seen it with numerous different mayors. And I said some great ones and some not so great ones. So hopefully you're going to be a great one. I'll be able to say you're going to be a great one. and you're off to a start. So I just want to thank the mayor for the invitation. I'm in New York

to do the United Nations tomorrow. I have a lot of meetings right now today. Very important meetings with head. So bottom line, I have zero problem, zero problem with Mamdani meeting with Trump. I know that they're, you know, it's so funny. This morning, I had a, I had a breakfast meeting this morning. And I heard the baristas while they were going over. We've got whole milk and we've got oat milk and we've got macadamia milk and we've got pistachio milk and we've got soy milk and we've I heard the baristas talking about the meeting between mom donnie and uh, Trump. And this is just two people, but they were sort of like, I don't really have a problem with it. I mean, it is the president at the end of the day. It's not an endorsement and mom don't

the mayor of the largest city in the United States. There is completely legitimate business to conduct. But I do think there's an interesting contrast that is worth mentioning. We were told by some for a while that when Kamala appeared with Liz Cheney because they had a shared goal defeating Trump that that was the work of the devil. That was a bad thing. Liz Cheney shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near to. But meanwhile, Mamdani's hosting Trump at Gracie Mansion and complimenting him as a builder and shaking his hand and trying to get things done. And that's okay. Now, I don't think these are exactly analogous, but I do think that we should consider what is the principle at play?

And if the principle at play is we may disagree on a lot, but when we have a shared goal, let's work together, there is an analogy between Mom Donnie and Trump disagree on a lot, but in terms of housing for New York City, there may be overlap. Cool. Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris disagree on a lot, but the shared goal of defeating Trump is something we should work together. And I do think there's an analogy there. And so that's, I think, my primary thing here, which is, are we being consistent about that

or not? Now, on the other side, there are some people in Maga World furious that Trump is meeting with and praising Mamdani. What I think this really illustrates is Trump's political relationships can be very transactional. Mamdani has not done the thing where he lays down like a. doormat and does the cult loyalty to Trump. He's been very clear that he doesn't do that. But even without that loyalty, there is still a transactional nature that sort of seems to be keeping this relationship at least functional. And someone can be an enemy when Trump is attacking

him and then have great potential when Trump is standing next to him and they want to do some stuff in New York City. So your enemies can become a great guy today. And it seemed as though love was in the air. And we know Trump is very taken with Mamdani's charisma. He's very taken with Mamdani's looks. And even if these are appeals among very sort of base visceral instincts, to the extent that it gets Trump to help build more housing in New York City, I think Mom Donnie is smart to take advantage of it. Folks, my book is out today. It's out to we finally made it. We're at the top of the hill. And now the boulder starts going all the way down the other side. If you've not ordered the book, it's available now. I saw Amazon has same day delivery

overnight at minimum. Local bookstores have it. I must have signed about 150 copies yesterday at Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side. I think they have about 20 left there. David Pakman.com slash attention. Let's get the book on some bestseller lists. Estate planning is one of those things that's easy to put off. Don't do it. I did my estate planning. It's really important to have a plan in place for the people that you care about. We have a sponsor trust and will. They do really affordable attorney designed estate plans. You can start creating one in as little as 30 minutes. Platforms super easy to use. You can explain what is important to you about guardians and asset distribution and

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personal info. They will follow up again and again until it's gone. My favorite feature is custom removals with the unlimited plan. You find your info anywhere. Strange directory obscure website, not on their master list of databases. You submit it, a link and a screenshot, and they will work to get it removed for you. Scammers and spammers can't bother you if they can't find you. And I am getting no spam calls anymore. And I've always been using incogny. I would recommend it to anybody, go to incogny.com slash Pacman. Use the code Pacman for 60% off the annual plan. The link is in the description. I want to take you back almost exactly two years because this might be one of the most spectacularly ill-fated political endorsements that I have ever seen. I'm talking about

September 14th of 2024 when Tulsi Gabbard, former Democrat, former Democratic presidential candidate, former Democratic Congresswoman, endorsed Donald Trump. And she explained exactly why she endorsed Donald Trump. She posted this big video and posted a tweet that said, quote, I'm proud to endorse President Trump because I believe he will stop the censorship of free speech in America, stop the weaponization of our law enforcement and justice department against everyday Americans, and walk us back from the brink of nuclear Armageddon. So that was September 14, of 2024. So it is almost two years later. We can now check her predictions against the record. And the record is disgusting. Now, remember that Tulsi didn't just endorse Trump. She had a complete

political transformation around Trump. She left the Democratic Party. She endorsed MAGA. She was eventually made Donald Trump's Director of National Intelligence. And now she's out of the administration. Now, before we even get to what Trump did. to Tulsi. Consider what she told Americans Trump was going to do. Go back to that tweet we just looked at. Number one, stop the censorship of free speech in America. Trump hasn't merely failed to deliver the press freedom environment that Tulsi predicted. He has taken action after action against media organizations and journalists because he just doesn't like them. Now, I happen to know something about this personally. Whitehouse.gov, the effect, the effect,

official website of the U.S. government has a section now called media offenders. And I'm on the list. And this is a catalog, I guess you would call it, of commentators and journalists that the administration objects to. And there is me, David Packman. They have a page dedicated to me. I'm categorized as a media offender and a leftist influencer and all this stuff. You can go to Whitehouse.gov right now and see it. Extremely authoritarian. Trump has also repeatedly sued media organizations over coverage that he object to. ABC settled Trump's defamation lawsuit in late 2024. They agreed to give $15 million towards Trump's presidential library. In 2025, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million over the 60 minutes lawsuit over editing the Kamala Harris interview.

They said we don't believe, Paramount said, we don't believe the case has any merit, but could get unpredictable. And you never know. know what will happen. And now we have gone even further because just this weekend, Donald Trump announced that CNN and MS Now and Politico are banned from the White House because of fake news per Donald Trump. Their journalists showed up and were denied access. Their press passes were confiscated or disabled. Now, Trump has also threatened to extend the ban to additional outlets. Tulsi Gabbard didn't just endorse Trump. She completely reorganized her political career around him. She left the Democratic Party. She campaigned for Trump. She became his DNI. She said Trump is going to deliver all of this

stuff. And then at the end of it, Trump throws her out of the administration. He wasn't going to do wars and he did the wars and all of this stuff. We don't have to speculate about what Gabbard believed privately, by the way. We have what she said publicly. And now we have Trump's record. She said Trump would stop censorship. They are doing censorship. She said he would stop politicizing law enforcement. They're going after his adversaries. They are going after people that Trump publicly says go after this person.

And she also said Trump is going to pull us back from the brink of catastrophic war. And yesterday, Trump said, you know, or the day before yesterday, Trump said, oh, you know, I might blow up Iran. I might just take out the entire country. So Tulsi made three specific promises. We are testing them against the record and she was wrong about everything. And what is so insane is that after staking her whole career on Trump, she ended up out of his administration. Now, there was this thing where she said, you know, my husband has cancer and totally respectable. But the belief in the reporting is she was at odds with Trump.

Ultimately, they had a falling out. And part of this kind of started at the beginning of the Iran war where, and even last summer, actually, during some of the bombing that Donald Trump did to supposedly take out Iran's nuclear development facilities, where she said, we don't really have evidence or intelligence that matches what Donald Trump is publicly saying. And then she was reportedly sort of ostracized and not invited to Camp David. And the distance began. And it was all downhill from there. And I think the most, there's at least two very important lessons. here. Number one, when you are in your late 30s or early 40s and you claim to have a complete political awakening, either you were really uninformed up until that point and you were talking out

of your ass that you knew so little about your own values and morals that you might do such a 180. That's one possibility. Or two, it's a cash grab or an access grab where you go, the jig is kind of up. You know, and with Tulsi as a Democrat, most Democrats, some fell for it, but most Democrats figured out. She's not offering anything we believe in. This is not someone who should be representing Democrats. So she said, the jig is up. I'm going the other way. And it might be a cynical cash grab, access grab.

But my instinct when someone is in their 40s and they do a 180 politically is you were either really clueless before, which makes me doubt whether I should pay attention to you, now or this is all basically a character. It's a it's a play for power at the end of the day. And I think this applies to a lot of people who have these political 180s in their late 30s, early 40s or even later. It's really hard to believe. Have my views on certain issues changed over time? Of course. But I can point specifically to why. I used to assume GMO food was unhealthy for humans. I assumed it because it was sort of part of the orthodoxy of the left to a degree. And then I looked into it more. I said, oh, okay, the pesticides, those we do have to be concerned about.

Monoculture and its effect on the environment. We do have to be concerned about that. The study about rats and cancer arguing that GMOs are fundamentally unhealthy for humans to consume, that was a bad study. We don't really have evidence that GMOs are just bad for human health. I changed my view on that. My moral framework didn't change. What I think is the best system of government has not dramatically changed.

If I now did a 180, and he said, you know what, abortion is murder and it should be illegal. And we should cut taxes for the rich. And we should put the Ten Commandments in every school. It would be like, David, what the hell happened to you? Were you just clueless? Did you not even understand why you believe the things you claim to believe for your first 40 plus years on this planet? It would be really weird. So that was the red flag from the beginning.

And, you know, if you fly too close to the sun with wax wings, the wings can nell. and you can be grounded very quickly, I think is the takeaway. Trump demands a certain type of loyalty and it fell apart for Tulsi. All right, I need everybody to understand what just happened here because this has crossed yet another line. We have a top Trump administration official now using the word treasonous to describe journalists and media outlets who simply report negatively about Donald Trump, including simply saying, hey, you know what?

The Iran war isn't going well. They want that to be treason. Now, if you've watched this program, you know that's exactly the kind of reporting I've been doing. Peter Navarro, senior counselor to Trump, went on Steve's ban, Steve Bannon's show, and defended Trump's insanely authoritarian decision to ban CNNMS now and Politico from the White House and listen to exactly what he had to say. Recognized back then is that when they say what they say, it's both hurting our president, hurting our economy and are hurting our national security. Every time they get and say falsely that the economy's in trouble, that the tariffs are creating inflation, this or that and the other thing,

that weighs heavily on sentiment and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They want that to happen. They want a bad economy going into the election. And this security thing, these people are treasonous. I mean, this is like, oh, the war's going bad. Whatever you feel about the war, you don't say stuff that's going to be repeated instantaneously by the Iranian media to build a case for us to do something. If you don't have the facts.

If you don't have the facts. Yeah. I mean, the war is going. What do you, what did they know? You can take a second of the. So Navarro argues negative economic reporting can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and says journalists want the economy. economy to be bad so that going into elections, Republicans will do better and Democrats will do worse. And then he gets into national security.

And he goes, the security thing, these people are treasonous. And this example of saying the war isn't going well, there are multiple layers to this. Now, obviously, however you feel about the war, we don't say things here that will immediately get repeated by the Iranian media. Critiques of the war like mine that say, hey, you know what, we're against theocratic religious regimes. Iran is one of the few countries in the world that regularly threatens the existence of other countries, but also Trump's not really winning this war. That is not going to be repeated by the Iranian media to make Trump look bad. These critiques are too nuanced, but it actually doesn't matter. Regardless, critique of the wars that a country

gets into are one of the most patriotic things that there is. Think back to the Vietnam era where you had this growing feeling that it was a quagmire and there's no winning and why don't we get out. That is a key part of patriotism, I would argue, which is making sure that we're only deploying troops and sometimes they die, that we're only doing that when it really makes sense. But also, it's protected by the First Amendment. And what Peter Navarro is saying is, if the war is going badly, journalists shouldn't report that it's going badly because Iran might repeat it. And then we realize that that's not journalism. That's just saying, hey, the press should function like propaganda. And it really hits particularly close to home because I've been reporting critically on Donald

Trump's Iran war for a long time. We've covered American casualties and the economic consequences and energy prices and Trump's claims about how the war is going and how he said 50 times that it's basically over and they want to make a deal. Now, Peter Navarro is not naming anybody. by name. He's identifying the conduct. Clearly, the White House has also identified me because they put me on a list of media offenders at whitehouse.gov, but according to the formulation of Peter Navarro, it would be treason to report the war is going badly. And it's not happening in an isolated environment. Trump banned CNNMS now in Politico from the White House. Their reporters actually showed up and they were denied access after their credentials were deactivated. And Trump explained the decision by saying, well, they're fake news.

So we got to ban them. So it is an authoritarian sequence that is really like what we saw happen in 20th century authoritarian regimes. President or whoever decides certain news organizations aren't acceptable because of what they're saying. He removes their access. And then a senior advisor says, unfavorable reporting is treason. And Navarro even invoked Abraham Lincoln's treatment of the press during the civil war while defending what Trump is doing. And of course, treason isn't another word for biased or unfair reporting. You could actually make an argument that I would disagree with, but that wouldn't be a dangerous argument that there is some reporting that's biased. All right, well, let's figure that out. There's some reporting that is being unfair.

give me examples and we'll see if we agree. Treason's a crime. And the Constitution is deliberate in very narrowly defining treason, which is levying war against the United States or adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort. Reporting that a war is going poorly is not treason and criticizing a president during wartime is not treason. An adversarial government repeating American journalism if they did it wouldn't make it treason. and the implications of this argument. I mean, suppose American troops are dying, which they are.

Suppose military objectives aren't being achieved, which they're not. Suppose claims from the government aren't supported by the evidence, which they're not. What should journalists do? Should they hide it? Because, oh, Iran might quote CNN. If Trump's war is going well, just show us the evidence and we'll report it. And if it's going to report that. And if American casualties increase, they might be hiding it as I reported yesterday. but we're going to report that. And I believe that it is the responsibility of the media. I'm not a journalist. I'm really a commentator, a content creator, whatever, but I still believe it is my responsibility to tell you when an administration's claims are backed up by evidence or when an administration's claims are contradicted by evidence. That's one of the key parts of my job.

Now, I'm not going to change what I do because now they're saying this stuff is treason and I'm not going to change what I do because they've put me on this white house dot go list but there are people who will and even when you think about these lawsuits against CBS's 60 minutes and against George Stephanopoulos and others when they go and we've got a merger we're working on so we're going to give you 15 million or this could become expensive and be protracted and drag out and that would be good we're going to give you 16 million they are feeding the beast now I simultaneously understand if they go, we might spend 40 million in three years on litigation, let's give them 15 to go away and maybe we get our murder approved.

I understand the incentives. Don't get me wrong. But it only encourages the authoritarianism. And the media list, whitehouse.gov and all of that and putting me on it, it hasn't caused me to self-censor, but there are many creators who maybe are in positions where they go, if I was sued for defamation, it would be over. I am going to self-censor. These things have real effects and they are completely counter to the way that the First Amendment

was designed. It should be terrifying us. It should be infuriating. And we should be voting the people who support this stuff out of office. We can do it in 40 something days. Every political story has two parts. What happened and what different media outlets want you to think happened. And you can see the framing difference pretty clearly in this.

story about Donald Trump signing a $70 billion immigration bill after this long fight over ICE funding. On the left, the focus is what will the money fund? Billions for the next three years of Trump's mass deportation campaign. On the right, the emphasis is Trump taking future ice shutdowns off the table by signing the bill. One side is asking, what does this mean for immigration enforcement, for mass deportations? The other is framing it as Trump ending the threat of ice shutdowns. This is why our sponsor Ground News is so useful because it lets you compare coverage from the left, right and center in one place, along with factuality ratings and info about who owns the outlets. I've been using Ground News for years.

It can really help you see through the political spin that blinds a lot of news consumers. And right now you can get 40% off the same vantage plan I use. Go to ground. dot news slash Pacman. The link is in the description. Procrastination. Most people have some stuff that they avoid doing. It's not because the tasks are necessarily difficult, but because getting started just feels a little hard. The emails you need to answer or documents you need to read or write, projects you've been putting off. This is where our sponsor Brain FM can help. It's a music app designed to support focus,

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mode for people who will benefit from extra stimulation. If what is preventing you from getting in gear and staying there is you, try Brain FM. My audience can try Brain FM totally free for a whole month at brain.fm slash Pacman. The link is in the description. Congresswoman Lauren Bobert, she has a pretty hard problem on her hands because a complaint has been filed with the House Ethics Committee. And it alleges that Bobert had sexual relationships with three different congressional staffers who worked under her supervision.

All right. Now, before we go any further, these are allegations. Bobert denies them. And at least one of the people named in the complaint also denies them. And also, we don't yet have an official announcement that the ethics can. committee has opened an investigation. A complaint has been filed. That's what we know so far. But these are pretty remarkable allegations. And the complaints named former district director Clarice Navarro Ratzlaff, a woman, district chief of staff Raven Finnegan, and former chief of staff

Jeffrey Small. And what it says is that Bobert had relationships with all three of them, not necessarily at the same time, while they were working with Lauren Bowbert. And, you know, working under Bobert is a phrase that maybe is doing doing double duty at this point in time. I don't think it's really an ethics issue when someone in Congress might have sex, right? Like if that were banned, Capitol Hill would have been converted into condos or I don't know. The potential ethics issue here really is the power relationship because House rules say members are not allowed to be in sexual relationships with employees that are under their supervision. And the idea here is in places of work, there is this power imbalance.

And so like, what does consent mean when it's your boss? What about workplace favoritism that can come up when one person controls the other's employment? But there's another really interesting part. And it's a little something I call $200,000 because the complaint says that after ratification Blatislav left Bobert's office. And remember, Ratslap is a woman. We're going to come back to that. And was thinking about filing her own ethics complaint. Lauren Bobert arranged $200,000 so that she wouldn't file a complaint. And that would take this from simply, hey, there was an inappropriate workplace relationship into something that is much worse. Now, there's a problem for the complaint. Ratslap says none of this ever happened. She says, we didn't have a relationship.

There's no hush money. It's all defamatory and false. And Lauren Bobert's office is also saying there's just no truth to this. It's a politically motivated stunt. It's to generate headlines and clickbait. It was fabricated from the ground up. Now, there's one other reason that some are saying, hey, we got to be a little careful with this.

The complaint comes from David Wheeler of American muckrakers, and it relies on what are being presented as anonymous sources. Now, presumably they're not anonymous to David Wheeler. They're just not being named. Wheeler's organization has made titillating allegations about Bobert before and has acknowledged that they were wrong. So I wouldn't touch these allegations as established, okay, but there is more to talk about here.

I think that this is primarily politically interesting because Bobert has an unusual relationship with stories about her personal life. Now, you might remember that back in 2023, she was famously escorted. sorted out of a movie theater where Beetlejuice was playing and surveillance footage showed her intimately attached to her date. And she later apologized. He said, oh, you know, I fell short of my values. Earlier this year, a Fox News reporter tried to ask her about a different allegation that

involved Thomas Massey and other congressman. And she cut him off and said, fuck you, first of all. And she said the question is sexist and then she walked away. So that's where I believe the analysis is a little more interesting. The fact that Lauren Bober had controversies before doesn't make these allegations true. It's not really how evidence works. But they create a situation where the allegations are hugely damaging unless someone can figure out what actually happened. What we have right now is an ethics complaint, no investigation yet.

It makes really specific allegations. You had an affair or a relationship with this person and then you gave him 200 grand 3. shut up. She says it's fabricated. One of the alleged participants says it's fabricated. It can't all be true. And so far, we don't have an investigation going on that could adjudicate any of it. So somebody is spectacularly wrong. And either a sitting member of Congress was in prohibited relationships with multiple subordinates arranging six-figure payments connected to preventing an ethics complaint. That's one possibility. Or someone filed a sworn complaint accusing a member of Congress of really serious conduct and it never happened. And that is a very different reality. And that's why

I think the next development matters so much more than the salacious allegations themselves. Does the Ethics Committee decide to investigate? Is there any documentation of the $200,000 hush money? Do the named witnesses corroborate any of the claims? Lauren Bobert for now is, and excuse the phrase, she's holding firm, but we are eventually going to get to a point where I think that there are real questions here for her constituents. Isn't this behavior, if any of it is true, plus the thing in the movie theater and the other allegations and being a 37, I think she was 37 or 38 when she became a grandmother. Isn't all of this the opposite of the moral framework you claim to support and that you claim to say is the right one? And are voters ever going to

hold her or anybody else in the Republican Party accountable for that? And it gets me back to what I think is a really important principle about principles. A lot of these right wingers, especially online and, you know, sometimes they come to my events and they want to ask questions. They want to ask sort of abstract questions about your values and your principles, which is not illegitimate. I think it's a great thing to talk about. But they ask about it as if they hold firm their values and principles. When in reality, what it really comes down to is hating Democrats and saying whatever is convenient at the time. And the greatest example is Trump. Remember when we're not going to vote for Trump. It's 2015. He enters the Republican primary. No, no, we're evangelical Christians. Trump has had affairs.

He has children with multiple lives, porn stars. He's for abortion, all this stuff. And then Trump goes, eh, I'm not actually for abortion anymore. And all of a sudden, what really matters, we realize is they hated Hillary Clinton. Affairs, children, hush money, abortion. grab them by the pussy. They just hate Hillary Clinton. And so let's not waste time arguing about principles and values for whom for whom those are just a matter of convenience to be abandoned as soon as they're inconvenient. There is something happening in Texas right now that could end up being so much bigger than just as James Talariko win. Now, just to catch you up, James Tallerico is the Democratic nominee in Texas for the Senate. He's running against Republican

Ken Paxton, Trump endorsed Paxton. Recent polling shows it's definitely competitive. It's definitely competitive. Now, obviously, there are the immediate implications of if Texas elects a Democratic senator for the first time in decades, it would make a huge difference for control of the Senate right now. But I want to go bigger than that. There's another possibility that I find a lot more interesting. What if James Talariko winning exposes a vulnerability in the modern Republican coalition that goes way further than 2026? Because for decades, one of the most reliable Republican constituencies has been white evangelical Christians. Pew found that about 85% of white evangelical Protestant registered voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.

In 2024, about 81% of white evangelical voters voted for Donald Trump, extraordinary numbers. And Amanda Marcotte makes a really interesting argument in a salon article, which is that Tala Rico is potentially threatening the relationship between the Republican Party and white evangelical Christians in a way that the typical Democrat never does. Tala Rico is a Democrat and he happens to be Christian, but it's more than just he happens to be Christian. He studied theology in seminary. His grandfather was a Baptist preacher. He's open about his Christian faith. He quotes scripture. He makes progressive political arguments through. Christianity. And you look at the reaction he's getting from some on the Christian right, because he's

not just being called wrong. They think he's demonic. We've got prominent evangelical figures who are going, this is a false teacher. That's a reference to scripture. They say he's demonic. His version of Christianity isn't real. He's not really even a Christian. And that's why I think this is so interesting. If Talariko is just another Democrat with policies people don't like, they wouldn't be focused so much on he's not really a Christian. And one explanation is that his very candidacy challenges the political identity that Republicans have benefited from, which is if you're an evangelical Christian, the natural thing is you're a Republican.

It's just like it's assumed you're a Republican and any other voting decision would be an anomaly. And Tala Rica was standing there going, no, no, no, I'm a Christian, I'm really Christian. I'm serious about my Christianity, but my political conclusions are completely different from the ones that you've reached. Now, that won't overnight make evangelical voters in the United States Democrats. They overwhelmingly are going to remain Republican. But political coalitions don't necessarily collapse because 80% of a group switches parties. Sometimes it's like, you know, if Republicans win a constituency 80, 20, and then over a few election cycles, it's 75, 25,

and then like 30% of evangelicals are voting for Democrats. And then maybe it's 33. In close elections, especially presidential, where it's often decided by really close races, a couple points one way or the other in five to seven states, that could be a big deal. And so that's why I think this Texas Senate race is really interesting. If Telariga wins while sort of putting in the foreground his Christian faith, the Senate seat matters, But there's this bigger question. Can Democrats compete for some more religious voters without those voters feeling, if I vote for a Democrat, I'm abandoning my religious identity. Many Catholics vote for Democrats and they don't feel they're abandoning their faith. Jews are the most Democratic voting group in the country.

And while there are conservative, like there's conservative Judaism, but I mean politically conservative Jews, there are some. overwhelmingly Jewish people feel that the values of the Democratic Party are more compatible with their beliefs than the Republican Party. And it's possible that maybe instead of 20, it's 2530 or 33 percent of evangelicals who would go, actually, the Democrats better represent my views. Now, we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. It would just be one election. If Tala Rico wins, we have to figure out why.

Maybe it's about Tala Rico specifically. Maybe Ken Paxton is such a disastrous candidate or Trump's approval is so low that that's what brought people. We, you'd have to actually do the work of figuring it out. But the Republican Party has changed a lot. They went from Reagan to Bush to Trump. They had the Tea Party in 2010 come in and they've survived all of the transformation. So I don't think the Republican Party disappears if Tala Rico wins.

But what I'm interested in is, is this a test of whether one of the relationships that has held the Republican coalition together is a little bit of an automatic. It's like, yeah, probably they're going to. But it's a little. little bit less automatic. So I think we need to watch Texas very closely. And the biggest consequence of the election, that seat could decide who controls the Senate. It could. It'll decide who represents Texas for six years, for sure. But it might be what it tells us about, is Christian identity going to be linked to Republican identity to the degree it has been for a long time? Or is there going to be

a little bit of a separation there. And I know it's not news to a lot of the liberal Christians in my audience that it is a completely, I don't know if I want to use the word normal. It's a completely compatible set of beliefs to go, no, the teachings of Jesus obviously align far more with Democrats than with Republicans. To the extent that I'm familiar with the teachings, I would, I would agree with you that there's a good case to be made of that. But from the political coalition standpoint, it's basically been automatic. 80 or more percent, 85 percent of white evangelical Christians vote for Republicans. If that starts to change, it could be very bad news for Republicans in 28. I would love to see it. Hey, it's David here just recording a quick video. My book is now out.

If you've already ordered it, please review the book on Amazon. This is so important. And after the book is out other than orders. Reviews are what determine whether it succeeds. So please leave a review, leave a rating. I really appreciate it. We'll be back with more shows, clips, et cetera, soon. After banning CNN MS now in Politico from the White House and a whole bunch of other media outlets saying, well, we're not going to participate in the pool either, Trump held an event at the White House. But there was no audio because the press pool wasn't there. The Newsmax hosts that you're going to hear in this little clip says, you know, this might be an example of Donald Trump's attacks on the press backfiring.

Just a little tiny wee bit. The punchlines really do right themselves. Take a look at this video. Yeah. Okay. So there is no microphone because there's no microphone because the pool cameras aren't there. So maybe Tim, this is one example of it backfiring just a little bit.

pick up on or some of things Michael was saying. And obviously, the ramifications are right here. Can't hear what the president's saying. It's like old man yells at cloud. Nobody can hear him. You know, Trump decided he was going to punish news organizations when he doesn't like the coverage. And we talked yesterday about how this is so authoritarian. This is reminiscent of 20th century authoritarians and dictators who say, you're allowed to have a media out. Nice media outlet you have here would be a shame if you said anything negative about me. All of a sudden, you might not have a media outlet anymore. Within days of Trump's decision, one of the consequences was that Trump held an event where people were watching TV.

Trump was talking. You couldn't hear a word of it. Normally, there would be boom mics. There's a pool feed. There's cameras that are close by and you can hear everybody more or less well, assuming Trump's helicopter isn't spinning up in the background. And you couldn't hear a damn thing. Trump was participating in a ribbon cutting ceremony for, by the way, gag, the new White House helipad. And as much as I would have liked to have heard, oh, sir, what kind of granite did you use? And how about the rebar and how did you become such an expert in concrete? And we weren't able to hear it. We simply weren't able to hear it. And by the way, Marine One, the helicopter was sitting nearby, making a lot.

a lot of noise and Trump starts speaking. And normally you have professional audio. You have a press pool that has boom mics and they're right on Trump and you can hear him. But there was no TV pool. And so as a result of Donald Trump saying, you're out of here and you're out of here and you're out of here, viewers got helicopter noises only and no audio from Donald Trump. And it is Trump's own decision why that happened. When he made the decision, that because CNN doesn't say what he wants them to say and MS now doesn't and Politico doesn't, they're fake news, he said, and he banned them. This is the result.

CNN happened to be the network scheduled to handle television pool duties on Monday. Now, for people who don't know how the pool works, it would be too much equipment and too chaotic for when Trump does an event, for 30 media outlets to be there filming it. And so there's an agreement where one network or outlet handles what's called the pool feed and everybody else picks it up. So when you watch like the state of the union address, it's the exact. That may not be a good example because that's the House of Representatives controls that. But there are debates sometimes where the debate is on a whole bunch of different channels, primary debates or presidential debates rather. And what you notice when you flip from channel to channel is it's not a slightly different angle.

It's the exact same shot. And that's because it is a pooled shot. Someone is designated we are running the pool. CNN was supposed to run the pool yesterday, but CNN was banned. And all the other networks said, we're not going to replace CNN. We're not going to pretend that our colleagues haven't been kicked out. And so ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News all joined CNN in saying we are suspending presidential pool coverage. And the network said, we have a public in the United States with a vital.

interest in independent information about what the government is doing. The administration shouldn't restrict news organizations because they object to the specifics of our reporting. And so here is one result, a very tangible result. Trump tries to silence the press and he makes it harder for the public to hear what he is saying. And even Newsmax points out on air, this is really backfiring. Now, obviously, the microphone issue is the funny part of the story. It's not the important part of the story. The important part is the principle underneath. The president doesn't have to like CNN or Politico. He doesn't have to like MS now. Presidents have complained about journalists forever. George W. Bush joked this would be easier if it were a dictatorship. But Trump is the one

who has connected the removal of these organizations access to his personal objections about their reporting. The three organizations, by the way, have sued the administration. They're saying this violates a First Amendment and it violates due process. And there is some important relevant history here. Remember when our friend of the show now, Jim Acosta, former CNN reporter Jim Acosta during Trump's first administration had his press pass revoked. And since he was then at CNN, CNN sued. And a federal judge ordered the administration to restore Acosta's credentials. And the ruling was basically about due process. And interestingly, the judge assigned to this new case, Timothy Kelly, is the same Trump appointed judge who handled that earlier dispute with

Jim Acosta. And there is something important about the response from the rest of the media. The easiest thing would have been for Fox or NBC to say, CNN's problem is CNN's problem. CNN being gone means more access for us. And that's not what happened. And the network stood together. Now, I am not naive. I'm not like, oh, it's all kumbaya and they're all defending each other. And it's bringing a tear to my eye. Fox is part of the coalition, and that's notable, but I don't believe that that means Fox has transformed politically, where now they are prioritizing constitutional goods over what Trump wants. I think that there are probably institutional interests here that just go beyond ideological differences. And Fox is probably making the calculation that if there is a standard

where the government excludes news organizations because the president doesn't like what they say, Fox News could be next. And so today it's CNN, but tomorrow it could be Fox News. And by the way, it doesn't even have to be under a Democrat. Trump has repeatedly attacked Fox when he dislikes their coverage. The helicopter, no audio clip, also demonstrates something very basic. The White House press pool is not a favor for journalists. It exists because every news organization can't send a complete camera crew everywhere the president goes. And so part of the, of one network handling the cameras and microphones and giving the access and the footage to everybody else is about getting information to more people on all of these outlets. So even if you are a member

of the outlets that Trump doesn't have a problem with and you're a viewer of those outlets, if CNN is supposed to do the pool coverage, all the other networks' audiences also suffer. And Trump is suddenly standing outside and nobody can hear him. And it illustrates this broader issue. The goal here was I only want to punish the news organizations I don't like. And in this case, it was Politico, CNN, and MS now. But the first visible results of it are that no one can hear him. On every outlet, nobody could hear it. Even Newsmax, which Trump likes, I guess, as of right now, because he was targeting only the ones he doesn't like, but we have this pool feed. So a complete and total backfire, humiliating, yes, embarrassing, yes, authoritarian yes, as I almost dropped my mouse.

But it ends up completely backfiring on Donald Trump. And now let's dig more into Fox News's decision. Last week, we covered Donald Trump making a pretty extraordinary move against Fox News. And now just days later, we have almost the reverse. Now last week we did this segment. We're putting it up on the screen. Trump makes shock move against Fox News. This week, it's Fox News making a movement against Trump, but what I want to ask is, like, are they really?

Now, Fox News, as I mentioned earlier, joined ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC in suspending the pooled television coverage of Trump after he banned CNN, MS Now, and Politico from the White House. Trump announced the bans on Friday. He said these three media outlets do what I call, what he calls fake news. And therefore, they are out. Now, CNN, MS Now and Politico have sued the administration. And they are saying this violates our First Amendment rights. This violates due process rights.

And then came a really interesting development. Fox and the other television networks said, if you're kicking CNN out, we're just not going to replace them and play along as if nothing happened. And the five networks put out a joint statement that they said, there's a vital interest in independent information in this country and it's information about our government. And the administration should not be restricting news organizations because of objections to their reporting. Fox is not a passive participant here. The Washington Post reports that the memo announcing the suspension came from Brian Botton, whose Fox News is Washington Bureau Chief,

who also chairs the TV pool. Monday was CNN's data provide the pool coverage as we talked about. There was no replacement. There was no audio. So the question many of you wrote to me about is, is Fox News finally turning against Donald Trump? And I don't think we can, go anywhere near that far. I mentioned this idea of an institutional interest. Fox News has an institutional interest that goes beyond Trump. If presidents establish that they decide which news organizations get access based on do I like their coverage or don't I like the coverage, Fox has a lot of reason to worry. Fox would have reason to worry if a future Democratic administration goes, we're just getting rid of Fox. And even when Trump has one of his tantrums about Fox News, they would have reason to worry.

Now, Fox contributor Jonathan Turley actually raised precisely the broader precedent issue on Fox News Sunday. Now, Turley is not a guy that I particularly respect. In fact, he's really fallen off over the last five years. But he did bring up this issue of precedent on Fox News Sunday. But I think that there's another issue here that's worth considering. We're weeks away from the midterm elections. Trump is very politically vulnerable. His party is in a really difficult environment. Reuters-Ipsos poll had Trump approval at 35, Democrats plus seven in a generic ballot. We have the American Research Group poll from yesterday where Trump is at 29% approval. There are some Republican candidates starting to take distance from Trump on policies.

So I don't believe, nor am I suggesting that Fox executives sat around a table and said, oh, Trump's unpopular, let's distance ourselves. We have no evidence of that. That's not what I think that happened. But media organizations understand their audiences and the political environment that they're operating in. And Fox is in an unusual position. It has an audience with huge overlap with Trump space. It was the only major news network to carry Trump's entire two-hour Republican midterm convention speech earlier this month. So what I'm watching is, is this simply Fox defending an institutional press principle. I don't really think so. Or are we starting to see more signs of greater distance between parts of Fox and Trump as the midterms get closer?

This is one event, Fox joining and going, we're not going to do the pool feed. This does not yet establish a trend. Right now, Trump is defending the bands by saying, I'm not attacking the press. I still respect a free press. I'm attacking fake news. The band organization say, no, we're being punished because we're doing journalism. And the practical consequence of this is very significant. As we talked about earlier, the TV pool lets one network record everything and distribute it. If you don't have that, you're going to end up with news organizations who simply

don't have any of the footage. They're going to rely on what they got yesterday, which is footage with no audio. So last week, Trump made a move against Fox News. this week, Fox is making a move against Donald Trump. Now, maybe this is simply, maybe this is simply five competing networks recognizing we have one fundamental interest. Presidents shouldn't get to choose which independent news organizations are legitimate. It may be that. Maybe there are broader political calculations developing as Trump's numbers continue to decline, decline, decline and the midterms get closer. I don't have evidence for that second explanation,

but Fox joining CNN against the Trump White House's decision is unusual enough that I'm very interested in seeing what happens next. We have a phenomenal bonus show for you today. If you're not yet a member, sign up at join packman.com. My new book, pay attention is out today. It is release day. We made it. I know many in the audience are rejoicing that we will soon never have to hear again about the book. All sales until Saturday at midnight count towards the first week's numbers, which are how we get on a bestsellers list. So if you haven't yet ordered the book, there are about 20 signed copies available from Brookline Booksmith at David Pakman.com slash attention.

There are about, I think, 20 signed copies at the Upper West Side, Barnes and Noble in New York City. I signed them personally last night. We had a beautiful event. About 100 people showed up. Don Lemon moderated a talk. I answered questions. I signed books. I will be in Austin on Friday signing books.

I will be in Springfield, Massachusetts, the following Saturday signing books. All of this information, event details, links to buy all of this stuff at Davidpackman. dot com slash attention. It is finally the day. We are getting beyond it. Bonus show. I'll be back tomorrow with a new show.