The David Pakman Show - Trump’s deeply strange night, plus the $5,000 he never delivered

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

On the Show: -- Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security advisor and Obama speechwriter, joins us to discuss his new book "ALL WE SAY: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches" -- Donald Trump responds to reports of a pneumonic plague case at a Siberian research institute while offering a vague scientific explanation -- Donald Trump dismisses dropping poll numbers among Latino voters and claims sole knowledge of Canadian trade tariffs -- Donald Trump tells a rally audience that foreign strikes on Los Angeles and San Diego are a small price to pay while criticizing TV programming -- Donald Trump brings executive assistant Natalie Harp on stage at a Nebraska rally while calling her the perfect person -- Donald Trump displays a forward-leaning posture, confuses state locations, and repeatedly taps his leg during a Nebraska rally appearance -- Donald Trump posts demands on social media that news outlets be arrested over reports of empty seats at his rallies -- On the Bonus Show: Student protests erupt in France, Trump orders the first firing squad execution since 1945, Trump says his super PAC will start paying for his taxpayer-funded ads, and much more... 💳 PDS Debt: Get your free assessment & find the best option for you at https://pdsdebt.com/pakman 😺 Smalls cat food: Use code PAKMAN for 60% off & free shipping at https://smalls.com 💻 Try Aura free for 14 days at https://aura.com/pakman 🛌 Helix Sleep mattresses: Get up to 27% OFF at https://helixsleep.com/pakman 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Book: https://bit.ly/m/attention -- 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 (01:27) Trump addresses Russian plague reports (08:35) Trump dismisses dropping poll numbers (20:32) Trump talks about strikes on California (28:00) Trump calls Natalie Harp "perfect" (34:00) Trump exhibits many signs of decline (44:14) Ben Rhodes interview (01:07:20) Trump demands reporters get arrested (01:14:23) Trump's cash payments never materialize Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coming up today, Donald Trump has a bizarre night, strange physical behavior, wandering around the stage, but most importantly, Trump welcomes Iran taking out Los Angeles and San Diego. That's 16 million people. Americans says it would be a small price to pay. And then things get really weird when he brings out Natalie Harp, calls her the perfect person, and then watch what he does when she walks away. We'll get to it. The suggestion that newspapers should be arrested.

What does it mean to arrest a newspaper over reporting about empty seats at Trump rallies? And remember the $5,000 doge checks that were promised, which of course never showed up? Well, now they're promising another five grand, but only if Republicans win the midterms. And they're trying to do revisionist history on that 5,000 that never happened from Doge. Later, Ben Rhodes will join me. It's a packed show today. Let's get right into it. And remember, if you have not yet reviewed my book pay attention on Amazon, please do.

The reviews really make a difference. It costs nothing to do it. David Pakman.com slash attention. Click the Amazon link and leave a review. We've got a show today. Let's do it. We have to start today with the possible plague situation. in Russia. I know it's 2026, but we are talking about plague. We are indeed. And Donald Trump has

now been asked about it. And somehow, I have to say, Trump's answer is simultaneously reassuring, but also completely bizarre. But rest assured, Trump is looking into plague very strongly. Oh, boy. What is the U.S. going to do about the risk of pneumonic plague coming from Russia? Well, we're looking at it very strongly. We just heard about it. And they call it pneumonia. And pneumonia, you know, years ago you can feed pneumonia easier. The microbes and the germs have gotten stronger disproportionately. But we'll help them.

Trump, of course, totally miss out. He's already misunderstanding what we're talking about. He goes, you know, it's pneumonia. Well, it's pneumonic plague. It's plague in the lungs. And the microbes getting stronger is not exactly the issue. We're talking about plague. Now, if Trump had knowledge that this was some kind of souped up for lack of a better term,

plague that Russia was researching as a bio weapon, that would really be something. We don't have evidence of that at this point in time. Now, you could kind of look at this two ways. You could go, well, Trump actually seems to be taking it seriously. As stupid as Trump sounds when he goes, we're looking at it very strongly. He is saying I'm taking it seriously. I'm worried about it. The problem is, you know, after everything we experienced during COVID, there is this universe where

Trump hears about a possible infectious disease situation and just goes, hey, we got it under control. It's an exaggeration, et cetera. He's not doing that. And so he's using his weird language of looking at it very strongly and monitoring and this and that. And frankly, the fact that Trump isn't dismissing this out of hand tells you this is worth. watching. The government is worried for Trump to even acknowledge that. But then Trump tries to explain

the science. It's pneumonia, the microbes and germs are stronger disproportionately. What does it mean? Now, Trump is vaguely, you never know whether he's doing it on purpose because he's so clueless, but he's alluding to some kind of antimicrobial resistance, which is a real phenomenon, but plague is not pneumonia. We are talking about the bacterium, you're talking about the bacterium, you're It is pneumonic plague caused by that in the lungs. And Trump's suggestion that things that used to work don't, the reality is, assuming this is not an atypical novel plague, pneumonic plague is pretty treatable with antibiotics if you identify it and if you start the antibiotics quickly.

This is what we talked about yesterday. Now, we have this 28-year-old lab worker, anti-plague researcher, supposedly, in Siberia, who has died after developing severe pneumonia. And the reports are raising the possibility that this is pneumonic plague. About 200 people were reportedly placed under medical observation. There was one report that a second person has died. It is not confirmed. And hopefully that is not true, because that would start to suggest spread. The important thing is plague hasn't been confirmed definitively. Russia has said there are no plague cases in Irkutsk. And you always wonder with Russia, being highly technical to make a statement that is narrowly true but misrepresents represents

the broader situation. But there is a reason that governments pay attention to this. Untreated pneumonic plague is almost always fatal. Historical estimates put untreated plague of pneumonic plague at the mortality is that basically 100%. So the problem with all of this bigger picture is we've seen this movie before with Donald Trump. And Trump involved in any kind of public health. response is pretty terrifying. I mean, remember this.

So I have so a question that probably some of you are thinking of if you're totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or the supposeding you brought, the light inside the body. In some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too.

Sounds interesting. Right. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets on the lungs and it does a tremendous number of the lungs. Clean the lungs with a pine-scented lice. Right. That was Trump publicly wondering during COVID, whether maybe by using an injection inside the body like a cleaning, you could deal with COVID. Yeah. So that was one of the defining

examples of why presidents shouldn't improvise medical theories during public health emergencies. And we're kind of added again. Trump asked about possible pneumonic plague. And he goes, listen, It's pneumonia. We used to be able to treat it, but the microbes have gotten stronger disproportionately. And it's like, yeah, none of that is really true. This is why we have infectious disease specialists. So if you, if I want to find the good news here, number one, we do not at this time have evidence of an uncontrolled plague outbreak heading towards the United States.

Number two, Trump is saying we are looking at it very strongly, which is Trump's vocabulary for communicating that, yes, this is a real thing. It's not nothing. And Russia is still insisting to the extent we can trust them that there are no confirmed cases of plague and that all of the contacts of the woman who died have reportedly tested negative. But there are strange circumstances here around this death. The involvement of a facility dedicated to studying plague is, of course, raising red flags. The quarantine and monitoring response makes us think they seem to think it's something very

serious. But you know, maybe the strain. If we want any reassurance as incompetent as Trump has proven himself to be in these situations, it's that he isn't saying this is nothing to worry about. He is saying we are looking at it very strongly. And we may or may not, you know, he's a misunderstanding pneumonia and microbes and all of the stuff. But he seems to be aware that. it could be a potentially dangerous situation. So with Trump, again, we're we're grading on a real

curve here and it's an embarrassing curve, but at least he's not saying there is nothing here to talk about. Donald Trump is really struggling. And we are now seeing it across multiple issues at exactly the moment that Republicans need him to be an asset in order to win in November rather than a liability if that's what they still believe that they can do and what they want to do. But maybe it's not. Donald Trump was asked about Canada and listened to his bizarre explanation saying there were secret tariffs. Canada had secret tariffs that were so secret only Trump knew about them. The companies being charged the tariffs didn't know. Nope, nobody knew other than Trump himself. Boy, oh boy. I don't know. Canada. Canada behaves very badly with the United States. And I don't know.

They caught them in the act. They charge us a lot of tariffs that nobody knew about except me. And it'll work out eventually. But I don't know about. I'm in no rush. You know, Canada is all their business with us. We do very little business with them. And all we ask of one thing in Canada, they have to be honest.

They are not honest with the United States. There were tariffs so secret that nobody on this planet. knew about them other than Donald Trump. One of the most basic publicly documented elements of international trade, but nobody knew. The economists didn't know and the businesses didn't know and customs officials had no idea and maybe the Canadian government didn't even know about these tariffs. But Trump figured it out. He dug through the documents that are stacked up around his gold-plated toilet and he figured

out there are secret tariffs and nobody else knew about it. This is increasingly the way that Trump talks about everything. The information doesn't exist until Donald Trump discovers it. And then he is the smartest person for having done so. And problems aren't real until he notices them. If there's any information that contradicts what he wants to believe, he just rejects it. And it's particularly interesting when we're getting into these midterms because Republicans have a real problem with Trump right now. And you've got people like Republican Senate candidate, Mike Rogers, who's running in Michigan, who was asked, are you going to campaign with Trump? And his campaign said, no comment. And you had Senator Susan Collins in Maine who was asked, would you be campaigning with Trump? And she

said, that is just not going to happen. So they seem to realize Trump is a drag. Trump is an anchor, weighing them down. But Trump yesterday goes, we're going to Michigan. And I think we're going to Michigan. Maine too. Do the candidates have any idea you're planning to do that, sir? You said that Michigan is also a state you're worried about. Are we going to see you campaigning there? I'll be a Michigan. What about Maine? I don't know about Maine. I think we're going to Maine too, but I'm going to Michigan in about a week and a half. This is a, you know, Democrats should pay to get Donald Trump out in Maine. The, the best thing that could happen for Democrats chances in Maine is for Trump to show up there. And it is amazing that you've got candidates sort

of oscillating between refusing to say whether they want Trump to, quote, help and explicitly saying, we do not want him anywhere near our races. And Trump's response is, I'm going. And remember, it's weeks until the midterms. It's 28, 29 days, something like that. If Republicans really believe that Donald Trump was going to help them win over the swing voters that they need, they would be begging him to show up. And instead, you've got candidates kind of going, yeah, we're not sure about that or in Susan Collins's case, definitely not. Now, Trump was asked about another disastrous political problem, which is Latino voters. And no matter how many times Trump goes, I love Hispanics, Latino voters who briefly shifted marginally towards Trump in 2024,

have swung completely away. Trump asked about it. He goes, that's fake news. The Hispanics love me. 27%. You're looking for a group reading with Latino voters that's dropped down to 27%. No, no. You got my poll, your fake news. You're CNN and your fake news. My poll numbers are great. And all you have to do is look at the crowds we're drawing. And every time I leave, that candidate will be losing. And by the time I leave, they're winning. The Hispanics are falling all over each other to come to my rallies and everybody is just going to be voting for Republicans. There's no explanation of, oh, what, why are the, your fake news CNN, that's it. Trump has no competing polls.

He has no analysis of the methodology explaining why the polls being cited by the reporter are no good. He has no argument that his policies will actually help anybody, quite frankly, never mind the Latino community. It's just I'm doing great. Your fake news CNN. And this is Trump's universal response now to bad information. If his approval rating is down, it's fake.

If the economic numbers are bad, it's fake or the person providing the numbers is a compromised in some way. If Republicans don't want you to don't want you campaigning with them, he just goes, I'm going. I'm going anyway. Canada, nobody understood Canadian tariffs. Trump had to find Canadian tariffs that not a single other person knew about. And then we get to vote by mail. And I love this. Trump votes by mail.

Remember that. But Trump insists that vote by mail is fraudulent. And Trump is then asked, why do you tell your supporters now go and vote by mail if you believe that it is fraud? And Trump goes, well, I'd rather them vote than not vote. Why are you telling your supporters to vote by mail if you think it's fraud? No, vote by mail or vote in person. I'd rather have a vote in person, but they can vote by mail if they want, because we seem to have no choice because a lot of people want to vote by mail, but a lot of very good people also want to vote in person. You can do either.

What we're concerned about is there seems to be a lot of cheat, not seems to be, there is a lot of cheating in vote by mail. A lot of cheating all over. I'll tell you what. Start off by taking a look at California. Take a look at, take a look at no evidence with millions and millions of ballots. You are fake news. I love that. His argument, it's a fascinating thing.

He's basically saying California has so many people. There must be fraud. Like the, the reporter goes, what evidence do you have a vote by a mail? He goes, well, look, California has millions of ballots. Yeah, but California has millions of people. Well, isn't California's population 33 million or something like that? California population 39 million. Look at that.

And that was 2025. California has about 40 million people. And Trump goes, they're sending millions of ballots around. It must be fraud. Well, they do have 40 million people. Of course, not all of them vote and that includes kids and fine. But the evidence is that there are millions of people voting in California. And you should still do it, though.

Vote by mail has a lot of cheating, but you should do it. I'd prefer you didn't, but if you're not going to vote otherwise, then absolutely do it. Republicans have spent years trying to clean up this mess that Trump created for them by convincing Republican voters, mail in voting is inherently corrupt. And then they realized, hold on a second. We need those votes. Democrats are banking all of these votes early and our voters think they're supposed to wait. And sometimes something comes up on election day and they don't go.

So now Trump is going, listen, vote by mail. Use the very system that I say we can't be trusted. And I think that that is the larger story here. This is a wholesale rejection of reality. Reject bad polls is fake. Show up anyway when candidates don't want you. If there's a contradiction on voting, just say both things. Tariffs don't exist until I discover them.

And the question heading into these midterms is, does Trump understand how politically vulnerable Republicans are. Increasingly, Trump seems to be operating inside a reality where every piece of bad news is spake. Every contradiction can be ignored. And Trump is always doing great. And I'm telling you right now, if Republicans get crushed in November, Trump is going to do the trifecta. He will say, number one, we are blaming the fraudulent voting. Number two, it's because Republicans didn't welcome me enough. into their campaigns. Trump will go, if I had been campaigning for everybody, they would have won, which of course doesn't at all seem to be based in reality. And number three, well, of course, we had the fake news media rallying against us. That will be how Trump explains potential brutal

losses this November. Will anybody fall for it? I hope not. Debt has a way of turning ordinary months into math problems that never seem to get solved. You pay what you can. You say, you sort of like move money around, you keep up with different due dates, and the balances are sitting there and they cost more every day. Our sponsor, PDS debt, might be able to help you. What PDS debt does is work with people struggling with credit card personal loans, collections, medical bills. They review your situation.

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The president of the United States just named two American cities and said, let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. It is a very small price to pay. He's talking about Iran. There are 16 million people living in the L.A. and San Diego metro areas. And here is Trump going, let them take out those cities. a president of the United States, one of the most disgusting clips I have covered in my entire podcasting and media production career. I want to see a tremendous victory. You want to see a tremendous victory because it verifies all the things we did.

And again, remember, with the word, just artificial, it's a little bit high. It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. him take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. That's, this is a very small price to pay. And he's going to be open very soon. It's essentially all. Listen to the cheering. Let them take out Los Angeles and let them take out San Diego. American cities. 10 million people in LA County. 10, 3 million people in San Diego County. 16 million total. If you consider the metro areas. And the idea, by the way, by the way,

The idea is these are just liberal areas. Everybody hates Trump, so just blow them up. There are more Republicans in L.A. County than in 24 different states. The president is standing at a political rally saying that these cities being taken out would be a small price to pay. And the crowd cheers. Cheers. Now, the mayor of San Diego, Todd Gloria, responded, we are not expendable.

Jim Desmond, who's the Trump endorsed Republican candidate for Congress in the San Diego area. rejected it completely. Said, wait a second, presidents are supposed to protect American cities and citizens. You don't go, well, L.A. has more Democrats than Tulsa. And so, no. Now, there's another theme running through the speech that I think is worth noticing. Trump increasingly talks about institutions that don't belong to him as though they belong to him. Okay.

Listen to him here. complain about my friend Jessica Tarlov being allowed on Fox News and Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Syad appearing on Fox News. And Trump goes, why are they on our network? See, and they fight and what they've done to this country is so bad. But you know, the more middle and right, they're always putting like El-Sahad was interviewed just a little while ago on a certain network. I won't tell you which one.

let this guy talk talk talk they hardly fight him at all why are they putting these people on our television networks our television networks what a defender of free speech huh they always have to put jessica tarloff another loser they put they put they put no they put these voices on and you know some of our guys defend a lot of our guys don't defend because they want to get on to the next question and it's really bad i think it's really bad i think there's no reason to do it it's not better Amen. Now you will also notice just as a complete aside that Donald Trump's eyes are almost completely swollen shut.

I don't even know how he can read his teleprompter, but that's not the issue here. Our television networks. This was Fox News. Abdul al-Said did go on Fox News and he argued with Martha McCallum about Iran and about gas prices. And Trump didn't like that he was even allowed there to make his argument. Then he's like, and why is Jessica Tarlov on TV? They should stop. Why should they stop?

Because Trump's conception of TV is that if a network is sympathetic to Trump, they shouldn't even expose their viewers to people who disagree with them. Now, I'll tell you, if you believe that those ideas are so bad that nobody could possibly convince anybody, if you believe that Jessica Tarlov and Abdul al-Said are so obviously wrong about everything that anybody would hear their ideas and go, that's so stupid, wouldn't you want them on there, embarrassing themselves. Of course, that that is not what Trump believes. Trump believes their ideas are compelling. They are convincing people. That's why he's so angry that they are there. The speech somehow gets even weirder because Trump went to his new favorite topic. No, not water

pressure or being able to flush full size towels down his toilet with extremely high, high power flushing. It is lawnmowers. Lawnmowers are Trump's big news. thing. You need to be a student at the top of your class at MIT to turn on a lawnmower nowadays, you know? But I got rid of all that stuff. Now you can have a lawnmower. There you go.

Put the three moments together. Trump complaining Fox allows people he disagrees with on their channel. He's taking credit for Americans having access to a lawnmower. But most incredibly, he very casually goes. goes, take out L.A., take out San Diego. It's a small price to pay. Imagine a Democratic president standing at a rally and saying, let them take out Dallas and Nashville and Oklahoma City. It's a small price to pay. It would be weeks of coverage on Fox News. If Republicans controlled the House or Senate, they would be doing full-blown investigations and hearings

and panels. And of course, the president's fundamental obligation is to the entire country. It's not just the states that voted for him, putting aside that even states that went blue often have 30, 40 or 49 percent of the voters who did vote for him. And it's more than just, I got to defend MAGA and the cities I like and whatever. Whatever Trump thought he was doing with that really weird hypothetical. No American city being taken out by a foreign adversary is a small price to pay. And it is just a reminder of the way that this guy doesn't give a damn about others. I'll even go further. Trump doesn't give a damn about his own voters except when they are useful to him. And we saw this in the aftermath of 2020. When they could no longer go and vote for him, Trump was like,

I got to suck them dry for as much money as I can. Donate so I can get the unfair electioned over. election overturned and I can put myself back in office. And a bunch of them fell for it. They donated what was their hard earned money. And it's not like I'm going, wow, wow, wow, we need to protect them. A fool in their money are eventually parted. But he only cares about what can I extract from these individuals. And before Trump became a political figure, when he was 67 and 66 and 65 years of, Trump spent

his whole life trying to be kept isolated from the very people that he then said. these are the people I care about. This is my political constituency. He grew up as a rich guy in Queens and New and Manhattan where he was like, don't get me anywhere near the very people that now I have to claim to like. So a disgusting moment. I have never seen anything like it, but wait until Natalie Harp walked on stage. The Donald Trump Natalie Harp situation is getting very weird. I don't really know how else to describe it. If you have no idea who Natalie Harp is, I will bring you up to speed. This has quietly become really the strangest relationship inside Trump's White House. At Trump's rally in Nebraska last night, he decides to bring Natalie Harp out in front of the crowd.

So there is Trump. He has Natalie bring it out. Notice by the way, how Natalie Harp has been very well conditioned to step to the side. You actually see her do this thing here where she, after handing Trump this document, she knows to get out of the camera shot because no one, no one must compete. with the dear leaders screen time. And so then Trump refers to Natalie after signing this thing. He refers to Natalie as a perfect person. And then as she walks away, Donald Trump can't help himself. He has to sort of look her over checking out what appears to be her legs.

God, this is so weird. This guy is so creepy. Look at this. Tosses the Sharpie into the crowd. Meanwhile, Natalie Harp is clapping like a trained seal. Hands her the document, pats her. And as she leaves, he looks back and he goes, hmm, hmm. Like the price is right.

Take you, Natalie. Come on. This perfect person comes up, hands it, walks up. We should go on television with this show, right? You know, just watch. There you go. Now ordinarily, you know, boss introduces employee, boss looks at employees direction, whatever. But we have all the back story.

You know, Natalie Harp is not a random White House staffer. She is Trump's executive assistant. She is the human printer because she follows Trump around with a portable printer supplying him with hard copies of articles and social media posts that make him look good and types up his truth social messages. She is one of Trump's most trusted aides, probably the most trusted aid. And the relationship is attracting attention because of the very. personal way that harp writes about Trump.

You, I want to bring you joy and we have a synergy and I will never leave you and nobody else understands you and all of this stuff. And Trump, meanwhile, is reportedly telling people that harp is different from other AIDS because the others are going to leave him. They're going to go and make money. But Natalie Harp is so devoted to him. She is never going to leave. And that is a really weird thing to say.

in fact is quoted as saying she's the only person who loves me as much as my wife and children, who by the way, I don't even know how much Trump's wife loves him at this point. That's a different story. But that is really weird for a president to say about an employee. And the other relationship and rather the other way in which this relationship has gotten attention has become a big, big issue this summer to a degree because people on the left and Democrats have started to pay attention to it. And we had Democratic Senator John Ossoff saying, Trump mostly, just wants to travel with Natalie, not do the job of president. And that triggered all of this speculation about their relationship. So really, really unusual and bizarre stuff. And Trump has been

giving her big cash gifts as well. Trump gave Natalie Hart a $45,000 holiday cash gift. That's like a third of her salary. Two other female aides also got the cash gifts from Trump. And then we find ourselves at a political rally and Trump brings her out, calls her the perfect person. And as she walks away, he seems to look her up and down. Now, everybody should make up their own mind about what they're seeing. Everybody should determine for themselves how relevant is this to Trump's governance abilities and priorities and all that. The interesting part to me isn't, you know, trying to invent a secret relationship between them when we have no evidence of that necessarily. It's Trump keeps emphasizing how special Natalie Harp is to him. And so she's his executive assistant.

She's the aide. Trump believes we'll never leave him. She's perfect. The, the aid following him around with a printer and controlling the information physically placed in front of him. And now whatever he means by the perfect person, it is a weird and unusual and odd relationship. And Trump seems to be, if, If Trump perceived or was worried about how this relationship was being perceived, he wouldn't bring her up on stage in this way and then kind of look her up and down. He would hide and maybe even you could say shield and protect her from the observation and critiques and criticisms. But Trump seems confidently interested in having her visibly there and something odd is going on here even if it is not a romantic relationship. Something else really weird happened at this

unusual rally last night in which, I mean, listen, it was just one speech. But look at the number of bizarre and disturbing behaviors from Donald Trump. Start with Trump's posture. Trump is standing there in what our friend Aaron Rupar described as standing like a centaur. This is Trump hinging forward in an almost gravity-defying position that we've seen him do before. Now, This alone doesn't tell us anything definitive about Trump, but there is a position that is common to people suffering with frontotemporal dementia in which they sort of lean forward exactly the way Trump is doing right now. Now, it is not the gravity defying lean of Michael Jackson's smooth criminal, but it's sort

of going in that direction and it's very weird. And Trump's upper body is forward. his legs seem to somehow be behind him. Does that prove Trump has frontot temporal dementia? No, you can't diagnose somebody just from them standing, but it's very weird. And Trump's gate, Trump's balance, the positioning of Trump's legs. It's all really, really weird. Then we get to the weirdness about Trump's speech. Now, Trump is in Grand Island, Nebraska. He's not in Omaha, Nebraska. He's in Grand Island, Nebraska. It is 140 miles west of Omaha. It is nowhere near Iowa. And Trump suddenly starts looking around and he's looking for the Republican candidate for governor

of Iowa. And it is another one of these weird moments where he seems to be losing it. If Biden did this, the right would be out. A lot of senators would not have been able to do that along with Iowa gubernatorial candidate, Zach Lane. Where's Zach? Where are you, Zach? I think he's here someplace and vice president j d vans has been fantastic so trump seems to think this person might be there and politicians travel a lot if trump were in omaha which is closer to iowa maybe you could i guess understand mixing up the state he's in but trump seems not to realize where he is once again it isn't happening in isolation he's traveling around the country doing these rallies he's giving long speeches he's moving from one state to another maybe he was confused for a moment but that's the

point we are documenting the confusion. He is confused again. Now, when the rally ends, YMCA comes on and we get a really weird scene in which Donald Trump starts doing his double jerk dance. At one point, he does some weird thing where he's like almost doing a fake golf swing like miming a golf swing. I don't know. And then he, I mean, listen, I'm not doing the, I'm not doing the thing they did to Biden, but he seems to kind of wander around unsure where he's supposed to exit. it. Take a look at this and you tell me what you think. All right. So Trump is doing his dancing and then you will see the confusion start to set in as Trump realizes it's probably time to get going here.

And he goes one way, more dancing while people brought their kids to this farce. That is really terrifying. Really, really, really terrifying. Those little kids in the audience. Trump wandering, starting to probably recognize it's not really clear where he's supposed to go. And you see them clapping like train seals at a performance. I mean, listen, just it's all very weird. Trump goes down off the stage.

A little more dancing. Continues moving off stage. Pointing at random people. Dear God. More dancing from Trump. We're in a war, folks. Gas and diesel are sky high. Energy's up.

Groceries are up. Trump's dancing around to a 1978 gay anthem. All right. So now Trump finally decides it is probably time for me to go. Tapping that right leg again, potential neurological issue, identified by numerous experts. Waves. A curtain.

opens for Trump to walk through and Trump ignores it completely. I love that. All right. So anyway, just eventually he finds his way off and it's all weird and it's all bizarre. He does that leg tapping. We've seen the leg like like tapping. A lot of speculation there. Is you checking a medical device?

What's going on? Is it in your neurological thing? And then finally, Donald Trump returns to Washington. And as usual, visibly. struggling to walk in a straight line, lumbering down the stairs, and again, off center with a lot of weaving. Whoa. Leg tapping comes back to the left, back over to the right.

Tapping, tapping, tapping, tapping. This is really weird guys. This is really weird. Why can't he just walk in a straight line? So put it all together. It's not conspiratorial to go. Okay, wait a second. Unusual forward leaning posture. Confused about what state he's in. Wondering around, unsure where the exit is, constantly slapping and tapping his legs, and then walking in a very, a curving line. I guess we would call it.

None of this gives us a coherent total diagnosis, but this is all really strange stuff. We know he's, He's 80. We know he's the oldest president ever. We know there's legitimate interest in knowing whether he has the capacity to do the job. And let's be very honest. If these clips were of Joe Biden, every single one would be slowed down, zoomed in, replayed on cable news like the Zapruder film and analyzed for days. So the standards shouldn't change because it's Trump.

Watch the videos. Acknowledge there is such opacity that we don't really know what's going on. But we can't pretend we're not seeing what we're seeing because if you take it together, this is a really weird night, really, really weird night. And we will soon have a night that will set the stage for the next two years and that will be the elections of 2026. I hope that you will join me live on election night. And we are also doing a one day membership special on October 20th. I would love for you to join the ranks of membership on that day. All you need to do, all you need to do, all you need to do,

to get on my list to be notified about that membership special is get on my substack at substack. david packman.com or text me at 646 531 4333 333. You can be careful with your identity and still have it exposed by a company you've never heard of and that's what makes this breach so unsettling. 153 million American and Canadian driver's license scans were leaked to leaked to the dark web, mostly belonging to Americans. The scans came from IDscan.net. They process 21 million ID checks a month. The leak contains people's photos, names, birth dates, addresses, and also those infrared and ultraviolet layers that machines use to verify that a license is authentic. Think about how casually we hand over our IDs. I gave mine to a hotel clerk a few

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sitewide, exclusive for my audience. The link is in the description. Today we'll be speaking with Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security advisor and also Obama speech. speechwriter and author of the New York Times bestselling book, All We Say, The Battle for American Identity, a history in 15 speeches. Great to see you, Ben. You know, I'm really interested in presidential speeches because there was this kind of phase, maybe early in Trumpism, where they would still, they meaning Trump's communications team, would still do this thing of candidate Trump will be giving a major speech on.

economic policy today. And then, you know, it would be Trump ranting about people based on race or ethnicity and there were like no real economic ideas. And so I have this feeling that presidential speeches have diminished in importance. But I'm wondering if that's really only because of Trump and maybe the speech will come back in its importance after he's gone. Yeah. It's a great question.

You know, it has diminished importance. And it's not just because of Trump. He's part of the reason. I mean, first of all, if you think about presidential speeches, they can both be incredibly consequential in kind of redirecting the nation, right? LBJ to civil rights or FDR. I read about in my book, kind of taking us deeper into World War II. But they also, like, narrate what is happening in America.

You know, I remember when I was writing for Obama, I realized that a big part of that job is you're the kind of narrator for what's happening in the culture. like the president's going to speak if there's a national tragedy somewhere. The president's going to speak on a particular anniversary. We don't even have an expectation that Trump is going to do those things, you know, that he's going to go give the eulogy after a mass shooting or that he's going to somehow put into words a 250 anniversary of the United States. And I think it's both the way that technology and social media has, like, fractured

our attention span. Like, when's the last time you actually listened to a whole speech, right? We consume these little bite-sized clips of it. And then Trump comes along, he's kind of the perfect speaker for that era because he just goes off on Iran for an hour. But then the next day, you know, the algorithms do the work for him. It either triggers his opponents or really motivates his supporters. And so I, but part of why I think Americans feel so anxious and unmoored is there's no narrator anymore. There's no voice that is seeking to kind of put into context what has happened to us.

And we have the opposite. We have a voice that is seeking to make us more confused, more upset, more. angry at each other. One of the things I talk about extensively in my latest book is that the expectations and incentives of the algorithms and their preference for short form content inherently favors Republicans in so far as Republicans tend to communicate much more in absolutes on average and are much more emotionally salient in their communications in triggering fear or anger in implying or pointing to scapegoats and enemies, et cetera. So like I've, the argument is not that they've tailored their

communication in this way, but that it naturally does better in the short form sort of form, the bumper sticker slogans, et cetera. Do you think that that change is part of why, like you said, who has watched an entire speech? It's about the sound bites and slogans, et cetera. Has that change been a factor in the diminishing prominence of an entire speech? in cultural society? Yes. And but this happens each time as a new technology, right? Radio comes along and FDR figures that out.

Plain spoken explanation, I'm in your house. TV comes along and, you know, the Kennedys and King figure that out. It's about charisma and it's about magnetism, right? Well, social media comes along, you're exactly right. I don't even think the Republicans figure this out, but if the algorithm is designed to make you really, really, really really angry or really, really assured in your views, like obviously a more dogmatic, ideological, you know, us versus them politics is going to travel better in that form. I think that Democrats

have made a mistake, though, in the sense that, okay, I get it. You need to communicate in a age of virality. You need to, you know, get eyeballs on short videos. But the problem is for, like, the last decade, we've been kind of trying to chase the Republicans down these social media rabbit holes, which is partly necessary, but a speech is also kind of where you figure out what your story is. Like, I remember working for Obama in 2007, 2008 on the campaign. It took him like a year of a feedback loop of speaking of new audiences and figuring out what's working, what's resonating out in the country, incorporating the feedback from the audiences

and what are you saying, so that by the time he got the speech right, all of his other communications flowed from that, right? like the speech is kind of the trunk of the tree, and your social media, your interviews, everything else you're doing has to come and flow from that. Sometimes you watch Democrats communicate, and it seems kind of disembodied from a story. It's like, here's some talking points about health care, here's some outrage about Trump. Whereas if you look at like an Asov who's getting traction, it's because he's telling a story. Like the speech is the story he's telling.

We all consume clips off that speech. He can give interviews that repeat the messages in that speech. But, you know, just because speeches don't occupy the same place in our kind of cultural imagination, it doesn't mean it's still not an essential part of how you begin to communicate a story to the American people. The Asaf example is interesting because he does a couple of things differently than some of the other Democrats. And one is, I don't know exactly how it's being done, but from the finished product that his team will often send, it sort of looks like they're producing his speeches

in this cinematic way. They're using lenses with depth of field such that the background is blurred and they're cutting to these dramatic angles. And it's like a multi-camera shoot of a speech, which puts such a different spin on it than just like the head-on camera we're used to from Trump's rallies, for example. What do you make of that production style? Like, what does that bring? What does that do for them?

I think it's really smart because what it does for them is it not only kind of elevates his presentation, but it allows for the repackaging of that speech on social media in compelling ways, right? So you're not just looking at, you know, some standard cable news clip of a guy speaking, you know, that 90-second clip you're consuming, it's produced, right? And so in the same way, you know, a speech can be the kind of thing you draw from for all your other content. I think the other couple of interesting things about Alsop and what he's doing is oftentimes, I remember like David Axrad used to always tell us, like, you, you, you, you, you, you, you counter program the person who came before.

And you counter program what people didn't like about the person that came before. So like, you know, Bill Clinton, very wonky guy, like in a good way. But, you know, George Bush comes along and he's like the folksy, not wonky guy. Then Obama corrects Bush, right? Then Trump obviously corrects Obama. The point is that the way to beat Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans might not be to mimic their communication style. The ultimate counter-programming of Trump is what all stuff's doing. Hey, remember what it was like to have a politician who could string together coherent thoughts?

Remember what is like to have a politician who could stand up on a podium and look kind of presidential and deliver a message. And I think for Democrats, it's also remember who wins for us. It's always the younger reform-oriented outsiders. It's, you know, JFK, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama. We tend to not win with like the older establishment politicians. So, Aosoph is tapping into all those things, the counter-programming of Trump and the idea. of like, whether it's him or somebody else, I think there's a big sense that we need this kind of generational change in the party.

I'm really interested in the role of grievance in both speeches, but also bigger picture. You know, one of the things that has been interesting to watch over the last, I don't know, 10 and a half, 11 years of Trump as a political figure is that one story the right has told is that the left is just obsessed with grievances and who wronged us when. But at the same time, Trump's basically been a grievement. grievance candidate. And from the beginning, it was, listen, you are right to have grievances against China, which only I understand and only I can fix. Okay, fine. But then in 2020 and into 2024, they've become much more personal. All of the media is against me. I've been treated more unfairly,

even than Lincoln. I, my family is the most victimized people. You know, they're coming after us, you know, even though we made two billion off of crypto or whatever, this idea of grievance, while criticizing it is something that they employ. Can you talk about that and your sense of how grievance stories are persuasive to the extent that they are if you agree that they are, but whether that always necessarily materially benefits the politics that might come with the grievance? Yeah. So I think it's interesting writing a book about history because you see that the grievances

that informed Trump have always been there. What's interesting is that the kind of white Christian nationalist strain of America. politics that Trump comes out of have been the people that have generally had most of the power in this country, but they've often been aggrieved, you know, and stirred up by a kind of anti-immigrant sentiment or, you know, anti-liberal elites sentiment. And particularly after the civil rights movement in the 60s, you know, I kind of traced the backlash that Reagan captured first, which is the backlash that led to Trump in some ways, because it was a backlash to the civil rights movement, It was a backlash to kind of the growth of government.

It was a backlash just the changing demography of the country, right? And that right-wing backlash has been present for decades, but Trump took it to like the umpteenth level, right? It's all grievance politics. It's because he can't tell people what he's doing for them. He can just tell them who to hate. And you see this with strong men around the world. This is what Putin does.

He doesn't need to convince you that he's telling the truth. He just has to make you hate somebody else. Now, I think the lesson, though, for us is, like, first of all, I think the grievances after a decade are becoming a little exhausting to people. But I also think that Democrats don't do as well having a politics that is single-mindedly bad grievance for a couple of reasons. One is the Republicans, because they are a pretty homogeneous white nationalist kind of party, they share all the same grievances. Like, you know, they have the same cast of people that they don't like. Democratic grievances kind of run a spectrum, right? Like different factions of the Democratic Party have different grievances.

So it's not just like we can throw out a few villains and say we all agree. Trump has been the one thing that has unified us, right, as a grievance. But underneath that, there's a lot of difference about the different things that people might be upset about in the Democratic coalition. I think the other more important thing, though, is even though Trump has been this kind of unifying grievance. We may disagree about it a lot, but we agree we don't like him. I don't think people from the center to the left do grievance politics like people on the right. In other words, I think you need a little joy. I think you need a little optimism.

Like the right wing throughout history can be motivated by grievance and anger in us versus them. Like if you look at kind of what has worked in America, like the Obama campaign, we'd a lot to be angry about with George Bush, but we tried to project a kind of joyful, inclusive, hey, come be a part of this. This is fun. And I feel like anti-Trump politics last decade has gotten really angry, you know, and it's kind of grim. It's not like a joyful exercise. In a bizarre way, Maga rallies look like a better time sometimes than just kind of a bunch of angry people, you know, protesting at Town Hall, which I think should happen. But I also think we shouldn't forget that we have to create our own movements that have our own, you know, positivity and joy in them,

too. One of the things that maybe stems from that, is I think in 2024, the degree, there was an there was an over assessment, a too optimistic assessment of the degree to which preventing authoritarianism was a motivating factor for voters. Now, that I don't mean to suggest voters don't care about that, but I do think that there was this maybe assumption, maybe more from Kamala Harris than from Joe Biden when he was. is the nominee, that just telling people about the risks of someone like Trump coming back would be enough to get people to go, I've got to vote and I've got to vote for Kamala Harris. And so one of the questions that that kind of leads to is there's been big attacks on institutions

by Republicans and authoritarian love to, you know, take control of institutions and be the ones who control. Okay. But it doesn't seem as though, hey, we will defend Democratic institutions and democratic values is maybe as motivating as necessary to defeat authoritarianism. What do you think about that and strategy and the language around this? I think it's a central question. And I think there's two big points I make. Like the first is Democrats have kind of split these issues, right? So we talk about kitchen table kind of economic issues or we're going to warn about dangers to democracy. And they're kind of treated as different things. Yes. I think, you know, to reference all stuff again, what do you, what do you

have to do is you have to connect the two. Like, the reason you're paying higher prices is because this corrupt autocratic leader is just enriching himself and his friends and he doesn't care about you. Like, these are not two different stories, right? The corruption, the authoritarianism is why things are so bad for you economically. It's why there's such gross inequality in this country. It's why your tax dollars aren't spent on things you care about. They're given away in tax cuts or they're spent on things that Trump cares about, right? So that's the first big point. And I've seen Nassaf do this, but anybody,

but like it's make it one story. So it's not like democracy in the abstract, like the good government crowd. It's the democracy that you need to get the outcomes you want so that you know that when you vote for someone, they're actually going to follow through, right? So that, to me, is the central thing. And the other thing is Democrats got stuck

kind of defending these institutions that people thought weren't working that well to begin, with. So when we're like defending the establishment, the status quo, the, you know, things I care about, like the federal bureaucracy or, you know, the intelligence agencies, like suddenly we start to feel like instead of being the reform party at a time when people want change, it feels like we're just trying to defend the way things have been. Our democracy message has to be about how the democracy needs to change, how we need to get money out of politics, how we need to change, I think, you know, how the Congress works and how the Supreme Court works, right?

So that we're defending democracy by reforming it, not just by saying like, hey, leave it alone. It's all working great. I guess it can be hard to figure out the right language on that in the sense of authoritarian often win by breeding cynicism and apathy. And so if you go, the postal service doesn't work and you can't trust the congressional budget office and the census is all screwed up and the people telling us the GDP and the jobs numbers, also the NIH and CDC, you can't trust them either. the FBI sucks. You do all of that. Then if it works to convince people, when Democrats are trying to

come back in, it sounds like you're saying it needs to be a vision not about just like, hey, we thought they always worked fine and we're going to go back to that. It has to be looking forward, if I hear you correctly. Yes. But it still has to say what, how you will fix those institutions and get people to trust them again. Yes. I think it has to be entirely about like we're we're here, to fix, we're here to fix these institutions, not just to restore them or keep them the way that they've been. Like, what unites people, if you look at polling to, is just this belief that whatever party it is, they only care about themselves.

They care about getting reelected. They care about rewarding their donors. And look, there's reason for that. I think that Republicans are much worse in that regard. But I think the Democrats have to go that extra step to saying, like, you know, we're just not, we're not going to take corporate PAC money. We're going to change, we're going to reform out government works. We're going to do anything we can to try to get money out of politics. We're going to pass sweeping new anti-corruption laws to make the kinds of grift that we've seen under Trump impossible and certainly illegal. And we're going to put real teeth behind that as well. You know, we're going to go after giant tracks that have been rewarded to kind of tech oligarchs at the Pentagon, right? We're going to make government feel more responsive to the things that's on people. those minds. Like we're, like, everything should be about making structural changes to how government

operates so that people can see, okay, these guys are trying to change the machinery of this. You know, they're trying to actually use government to help solve some of the problems I care about. Because like other, if you accept the premise that the Republicans run on that like government's some problem, well, then they're just going to vote for Republicans because those guys are the ones that are dismantling the government. I mean, you have to own the fact that we believe that the good can come out of this, but not if we're just going to keep it how it was. Like, we have to be seen to be changing the machinery so it works better for people. Last thing I want to ask you about, I am neither a speechwriter nor a political advisor

nor a pollster. But if I think about if indeed a Democrat wins in 2028 and Trump is sent off into the sunset in January of 29 and a Democrat is going to be giving a speech as they are sworn in to be the next president, how much of it should be a. about what just went on for the prior 14 years, I guess, since Donald Trump became a political figure and how much should just be about looking forward? And my guess is it probably should be about 80% about going forward, but a reminder, like 20% should be about what I consider to be a complete and total aberration over the last however many

years of Trump. That would be like the way I would balance it to remind people like some of us were warning. Like, that's my instinct as a political communicator, but it may be a terrible instinct in terms of thinking about what an incoming president should do. How do you think that that speech should sound in 2029 if a Democrat gives it? I think that that speech should contain like hard truth. And what I mean by that is when politicians get up and they say the same words that people expect to hear, you know, like tomorrow's going to be brighter and, you know, here's some platitudes

about how great America is. And I think people tune that out now because that's not how people feel. Like people feel like things are way off track. You know, they don't know what artificial intelligence is going to do. We've just seen our democracy implode. We're war everywhere. Inequality is out of control. I can't afford things.

If you show up with kind of the normal problem about moving forward, I think you're missing an opportunity. I think getting up there and telling some real hard truth, both about what's just happened in the last 10 years, without sugar-coding it, but also about the depth of the problems we face. I think people are ready to not have someone just kind of reassure them, oh, it's going to be fine, to say like, hey, this is, we've got some real shit to deal with here, you know. We need to get our arms around technology so it works for us instead of us working for it.

You know, we need to fundamentally remake an economy that has become so unfair and unequal. We need to reckon with the fact that we've just spent 12 years, you know, being, you know, literally manipulated into hating each other by Donald Trump and social media. Like, let's just put all this out there. And it doesn't mean you have to be vindictive. Part of what you got to say is like, let's figure out some way to, yes, isolate and go after the worst actors. Because frankly, I think there's a lot of criminal behavior taking place. But let's also find a way to like begin to show each other some grace here in this country. I think people are ready to kind of move on from this period. But that requires, like, when I went back and looked at the kind of speeches that are separated out in history, it's the ones where it's like, oh, this person is finally telling us the truth.

This person is finally leveling with us. And I don't think people have heard that message. You know, Biden's message was kind of reassuring, oh, don't bet against America. No, I think people want to be like, okay, like someone's finally leveling with me about how, you know, bad things are. But then it's also saying, but guess what, like, we can fix this. Like, we have agency to fix this. Like, because you mentioned the key thing, cynicism and apathy. Cynicism, nothing matters, apathy, nothing can change.

That speech has to make people believe that we can actually change all these things that have gone wrong and ask people to kind of join in that effort. So that what we've lacked in this country for a decade or more is like a sense of a common purpose. Well, I hope that it is indeed a Democrat giving that speech in January of 20. Jamie Vance probably won't get that speech. Yeah. Yeah. We've been speaking with Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security advisor and Obama speechwriter.

His New York Times bestselling book is All We Say, The Battle for American Identity, a History in 15 speeches. Great to talk to you, Ben. Really appreciate your time. Thanks. Good to see you. Guys in my audience, I know you're tired of the chafing with traditional underweigh. With traditional underwear, our sponsor, Sheath, makes the most comfortable boxer briefs I've

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The link is in the description. What does it mean to arrest a newspaper? I know at one point Mike Pillow wanted to come for all of the machines. I had to put my espresso machine into protective custody. But what does it mean to arrest a newspaper? Well, let me explain what's going on. Donald Trump is furious about coverage of his rally crowds. And now we're at a point where the president is suggesting that news organizations should be arrested for simply reporting there are empty seats at Trump's events. And the strangest part is Trump seems to be raging about the wrong long, the completely wrong rally. Let's start with what Trump posted to truth social. Quote, the Ohio arena was already full to the brim. And yet these people were still trying to get in. The New York

Times said there were empty seats when in fact there were none and thousands of people had to be turned away. The New York Times and many other artificial media outlets should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our country. When Bernie Sanders has 500 to 1,000 people, they make it sound like it's the biggest event that ever took place. When President Donald J. Trump has 50,000 people, they make it sound like nobody showed up. So Trump is saying, not we should criticize media outlets. We should sue them if they defame me or we should fact check them. He's saying they should be arrested. The president of the U.S. saying a media outlet should be arrested. By the way, I don't know what that means. Does that mean you arrest the employees?

Do you go and put handcuffs on a building? What do you do? But they should be arrested because he disputes their reporting about how many people were at his rallies. Now, before we even get to the obvious First Amendment problem here, which is the bigger problem. Trump is confused about what the New York Times even reported. The quote Trump is complaining about the place was not full. Some upper sections were almost completely empty. That was from a Times report about Trump's rally in Alabama. Trump says it was about his rally in Ohio.

It wasn't. Trump did the Alabama rally Friday. He went to Ohio on Saturday. And I guess he read a negative description of one rally, thought it was about another rally, demanded people be arrested for it. But Trump wasn't done. of then posts, quote, the fake news New York Times reported on my great packed rally in Ohio that the place was not full.

Some upper sections were almost completely empty. In actuality, thousands of people were unable to get in. The arena was totally maxed out, including upper sections. What does happen at all of my sold out rallies is that the people in the upper sections tend to migrate down to the main floor. The migration process always happens. The times know this, so does everybody else. never have empty seats, never have, never will because of their dishonesty. I have cinematographers

shooting the various arenas where I speak in that some of the fake news likes to dishonestly report lies and untruths. Blah, blah, blah, there are no empty seats ever, wall of text, etc. What's so funny is we all know that there are empty seats at Trump's rallies. It's not a big deal. Like, if you can fill the lower areas and the upper, you know, mezzanine or whatever balcony isn't full, still a bunch of people. The problem is Trump doesn't even know which rally he's talking about. The problem is that Donald Trump is kind of giving an explanation for why it looked empty, which is the people up top migrate down. Okay. Yeah, but so by definition, then it must not be full because if they migrate down and their seats available, there were seats out opened downstairs

rather than upset. None of it makes sense. But. This stuff is all visually debunkable. If there are no empty seats, but you're explaining why there were empty seats, well, what do you make of that? Those people must have migrated from or to somewhere. So none of this makes any sense. There's never an empty seat. There's currently no empty seats for all of eternity.

Now remember the infamous argument all the way at the beginning of this very long national nightmare, global nightmare of whether Donald Trump's was bigger than Barack Obama. We're talking about inauguration crowds, of course. We are now almost 10 years beyond that. And we're still doing the same damn thing, except now it's gone from complaining about media outlets to saying media outlets should be arrested. And I think it's really important that we not lose that in the absurdity of these posts. The government doesn't get to arrest journalists because the president's opinion is they're

They made an inaccurate statement about the size of Trump's crowd. We are seeing a bigger confrontation right now between the White House and the press. And recently the White House blocked Politico from traveling on Air Force One. A federal judge previously intervened and said, you know, you can't ban Politico, CNN, and MS now. So when Trump comes out and says media outlets should be arrested, we should take those words seriously, even while we recognize how bizarre these. grievances are. And maybe the most revealing sentences, there are no empty seats and there haven't

been for years. Just at the midterm convention, there were endless empty seats. And if Trump came in and said, you know, sometimes the New York Times underestimates my size, the size of my crowds, or here's the verified attendance number or, you know, whatever. It's there has never been a single empty seat. There will never be a single empty seat. And if you say, anything differently in the media, you should be arrested. This is because Donald Trump encountered reporting that he doesn't like about the wrong rally. If we are to eventually recover from what will, if Trump makes it to January of 2029, basically be a 14-year national nightmare. If we are really going to recover as a country, one of the areas we need a total psychological paradigm

shift on is we have to go back to revering and valuing the importance of a free independent press, the degree to which it has become acceptable as a result of this president to not only denigrate, but also actually try to damage or suppress journalism and reporting and opinion content, all of it. I mean, they put me on a damn list at whitehouse.gov, me. David Packman, they put me out. There's a page about me at whitehouse.gov. It's become normalized. And even many people who go, it's bad, are still not acknowledging just how bad it is. And so we are going to need a long rehabilitation process to remind ourselves, there's one profession

that's singled out as being worthy of protection in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. And it is a free press. But we may not even get to that point, depending on what happens next. And I want to talk about the rats leaving the ship. I believe the rats are leaving the sinking ship. And one of the clearest signs that things are getting desperate for Donald Trump is that his supporters are now being forced to explain what happened to all of these promises about checks that Donald Trump was going to be sending out.

Remember the Doge dividend? This was a big story in early 2025. And what we were told was Elon Musk is going to uncover unimaginable amounts of government waste through Doge. And we are going to save so much money that we will then send five grand to each American. And if do the idea was if Doge saves two trillion dollars, this guy James Fishback calculated that 79 million households could get five grand each. And Trump loved it. And Trump is now saying, we are going to get people five grand if you vote for Republicans in November. So let's play Trump's

recent promise again from last night about how easily it'll be to get everybody five grand. No, just to show you that I'll produce, I'll produce the 5,000. Easy. Actually, easy. The Trump dividend as an example is approximately what think of that. We'll call this a dividends. It's a dividend to the people of our country for putting up with these morons and horrible four years of horror. You put up with four years of stupidity and horror. All right. So I'm going to get you the five grand very easily, blah, blah, blah. Well, we are now getting explanations. like this at Trump's rally last night. Here is, I guess, a new reporter for right side broadcasting network, this wacky right wing network that travels around with Trump and broadcasts his propaganda

rallies. They are saying, you know, if you're wondering, where are the doge checks? When they talked about those last year, they were coming at the end of the term. This is the way they are trying to disabuse people of the notion that Trump constantly promises money that people never get. Take a listen. And for everybody who is wondering where their checks are from Doge, I believe that when those checks were discussed, they said that those were going to come at the end of Trump's term. That is what I recall. You can see if that's true or not, but that's what I remember. It is not true. And in fact, Twitter community noted this as false. The proposal said that when Doge terminates in July of 2026, people will get their five grand. And James Fishback even said, February of 25 that if Congress passed legislation sooner, Americans might even get checks earlier. None of that happened. Now they're saying no, no, no, all along the Doge money was reelect Trump in 24, wait four years. And by the end, maybe January 15th of 2029, if Donald Trump is still alive, you will get your Doge check. And we passed 2025. We have passed July 26. And Doge has not generated

anything remotely approaching the $2 trillion in savings necessary to give every family five grand. Congress never enacted the Doge dividend. There were no doge checks for any amount, $5, $50, $5,000. So what's Trump doing now? He's going, we're going to get you a $5,000 check. It's the Trump dividend. But we have one little condition. Republicans must win the House and Republicans must us win the Senate. And if we do that, for me, your favorite orange president, every adult will get $5,000. And the price tag would be roughly $1.3 trillion. Trump says it'll come from tariff money. But the tariff money, first of all, the tariff money was not collected from other countries. It was collected from American companies. The tariff money wouldn't be nearly

enough to cover it. So then Trump goes, well, it'll be funded by economic growth, except economic growth has been pretty soft. Then we've got a massive national debt. I thought we had to pay that off. Okay, well, the money will be from the big investments Trump has secured from other countries. He goes, I got 15 trillion. I got 20 trillion from other countries, except we don't really have any of that money. When the UAE says to Trump, yeah, you know, bring us some investment ideas.

If we like them, we might invest 600 billion over the next 10 years. They haven't actually given us anything. They've said, bring us something we're interested in and we'll invest. And by the way, investing means they are trading the money for things of value. So you don't just have the free money. And so now we have reporters going well all along. It was not meant to come until the end of Trump's term. And first it was Doge will find two trillion.

And then it's we will give you five grand from the savings. And then it's you're not getting anything. And here it's all right. We have a new idea for five grand. But you've got to vote Republican first. And when people go, but what happened to that first five grand that we never got? The defenders go, well, that wasn't coming until the end of Trump's term. So I guess what they're saying is you'll get 10 grand if Trump gets Republicans elected in November and survives to the end of his term. You will finally get your $5,000 doge dividend.

And then you will get your $5,000 Trump dividends. So it'll be 10 grand. This is how political promises become unfalsifiable. There's always another date. There's always another condition. There's always another explanation. And this is one of Trump's many disappearing direct payment proposals. You might remember that in 2025, we didn't just have the $5,000 doge dividend. We had the $2,000 tariff dividend. That also didn't happen. Nobody's talking about it anymore. And now we're back to five grand again. And you know, maybe Congress someday will authorize a payment of some kind. Trump has said, 100% this is going to happen. Now, I think we will never find out. I think Trump is going to get out of having to do this because Republicans aren't going to win anything in. They aren't going to

win everything in November. I think there is essentially no way Republicans win the House. And as a result, that will excuse Trump for having to deliver on this, but he was never going to deliver on it. And what is fascinating is that nobody seems to be falling for it. Offering people five grand, especially in this economy, you would think would really motivate you would really motivate. them to go and vote for Republicans. They don't seem to be doing it either because they don't care or they don't believe that Trump is going to hold through, hold up the promise. And I don't think he is.

On the bonus show today, student protests are rocking France. We will talk about why they are protesting. Donald Trump has ordered the first US military execution by firing squad since 1945. We'll talk about why. And Trump's super pack will start paying for taxpayer. funded ads after a lot of drama, which we talked about. All of that and more on today's bonus show, sign up at join packman.com. And remember that on October 20th, we are doing a big one day membership drive, hoping to set

a record for new members in a single day. If you would like to be notified on the 20th of how to sign up, either get on my newsletter at substack. david pagman.com or get on my exclusive texting list by texting 646 531 4333. I'll see you on the bonus show.