The David Pakman Show - Trump’s latest money funneling scheme

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Donald Trump stumbles while explaining why he avoided Air Force One and struggles to walk straight to Marine One -- Declassified FBI documents reveal that agents investigated whether Donald Trump acted on behalf of Russia after Trump fired James Comey -- Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims he cannot vote after a New York judge rules that he submitted a fake address -- Executive assistant Natalie Harp influences media access for Donald Trump while writing him affectionate personal letters -- Donald Trump secretly uses public agency funds and National Park Service revenue for White House construction -- Donald Trump claims inflation victory after a Cyclospora parasite outbreak causes lettuce prices to drop -- The Friday Feedback segment (on Thursday) -- On the Bonus Show: David discusses his California trip, and much more... 🧽 Blueland: Get 15% OFF sustainable cleaning products at https://blueland.com/pakman 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code PAKMAN for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Book: https://bit.ly/m/attention -- 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) Trump struggles to walk in a straight line (07:54) The FBI investigated whether Trump was working for Russia (18:58) RFK says he can't vote in New York (27:09) Natalie Harp influences Trump's media access (35:42) Trump diverts public funds to his pet projects (44:20) Trump brags about falling lettuce prices (53:04) Friday Feedback on Thursday Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Could it actually be Donald Trump who stole an election? Bear with me here. Donald Trump has spent six years now insisting he really won in 2020. Joe Biden didn't win. Joe Biden stole it. Trump is actually the rightful winner in 2020. We are now in 26. And increasingly people are asking are asking, are asking,

the opposite question. Was it actually Donald Trump who stole an election back in 2016? Now, you might be saying that's 10 years ago, David. Wake up. Why is this coming up again? Let me explain why this is coming up again. The Trump White House recently released secret FBI documents about an investigation called Oxford comma. The documents show that after Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey in 2017, the The FBI investigated whether Trump was working for Russia, either knowingly the least likely scenario or without realizing it, the more likely scenario. That sounds maybe crazy, but it also sounds like there might be proof of something buried

in all of it. Let me slow down and explain this. What the documents that were released by Trump show is that the FBI. looked at the possibility that Trump was acting on the behalf of Russia, acting for Russia's benefit. Now, before people go, Russia gate, what we're talking about here is a guy who unknowingly is advocating for that which would benefit Russia. And there are a dozen or more reasons why he might end up doing that. It doesn't prove Trump is an overt Russian agent. It doesn't prove that Donald Trump personally stole the 2016 election. Let's talk.

about what we know. We know that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. Russian intelligence appears to have hacked democratic organizations and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The stolen emails were released through WikiLeaks. Russian operatives also pretended to be Americans online. They bought political ads. They pushed propaganda that was designed to divide the country and to hurt Hillary Clinton. Doesn't require any proactive, uh, involved by Donald Trump personally. But we do know that the Trump campaign expected to benefit. How do we know that?

Because Donald Trump Jr. agreed to a meeting after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. And Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared internal polling information with Constantine Kilimnik, who the Senate Intelligence Committee has identified as a Russian intelligence officer. And Trump repeatedly praised WikiLeaks while it was releasing the stolen information that was believed to be damaging to Hillary Clinton. And it was damaging to Hillary Clinton. Everything I've said so far happened. None of it is speculation. Interpretations may differ, but every single thing I just told you took place. Fact check me. Trust but verify, you will find

that I am telling you what took place. Here's the part that's not been proven, but is a growing topic of discussion. Robert Mueller's investigation did not establish. that Trump's campaign had a criminal agreement with the Russian government. There's no evidence that Russia changed votes, hacked voting machines. The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee said it found no evidence that vote totals were altered. So if the claim that Trump and Russia secretly changed the count and manufactured the victory is the one we're evaluating, there is no evidence for that.

And I hope every MAGA person who's hearing this segment is not going to come out of and go, David Pacman's pushing that Russia one of, oh my God, my lights turn. How embarrassing. My lights turned off while I'm talking to you about something so important. That's a lack of professionalism here. Those, they love to straw man and go, what, you think Russia changed votes? That's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about here is whether Russia's influence operation changed enough minds to

to put Donald Trump over the top. Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania by fewer than 78,000 votes combined. Combined. Russia's operation was designed to hurt Hillary Clinton and to help Trump. The WikiLeaks releases hurt Hillary Clinton. Comey's late announcement about Hillary's emails hurt Hillary Clinton. Could that have moved 78,000 votes? Of course it could have.

Can anyone prove that they did? No. And again, importantly, we are not saying that Hillary, that Trump rigged it against Hillary the way that Trump is saying Biden rigged it against him in 2020. We're talking about something totally different. It doesn't involve shadowy manipulation of votes or ham sandwiches being brought in on a van on the election day or it's none of that stuff. It's simply given what we know, even from documents Trump released, could all of that activity have shifted 78,000 votes? And it's completely plausible that it did. Now, these newly released documents are very important because they show that the FBI was really worried

Trump might be compromised by Russia. And it is not a smoking gun that Trump did the stuff. But what we can say is already far, far, it's bad enough. I guess is the phrase that I'm looking for. Trump won a legitimate vote count, a legitimate vote count after benefiting from an illegal Russian attack. His campaign welcomed the help. Remember Don Jr. going especially over the summer. I love it. And they used stolen material politically and lied about disturbing contacts with Russia. And then four years later, Trump genuinely lost an election and invented this super complicated vote stealing conspiracy without evidence.

We're just saying 78,000 votes could certainly have been changed by the influence operation that there was. We don't have the ability to say Trump stole it, but we can certainly say Russia tried to help him win. Trump was happy to accept the benefit and his concerns in 2020 and in 2024 and now heading into the midterm elections about so-called voter integrity, his concerns about voter integrity are limited to situations where he believes that he may lose or that he did lose. In 2016, when he won, it doesn't matter who helped whom.

None of it makes any damn difference. So it's really important that when these Russia gaiters, these are the people who go, the Russia hoax, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. We're not making any of the crazy allegations that Trump is making about 2020 without evidence. We're simply saying there was enough activity there to change the minds of 78,000 people with propaganda that came from a foreign country for the benefit of Donald Trump. No Mike Pillow cyber guys need to look into it. No fake slates of elected.

None of the stuff Trump actually alleged or did just could set. 78,000 boats have been changed. And it seems as a very plausible answer to say, yeah, they absolutely could have. Well, we finally figured out who is paying for the ballroom. It's not a list of companies that I'm going to be able to give you today. It's me. It's you. It's taxpayers.

Let me explain. Donald Trump has repeatedly, and for a long time now, been promising taxpayers that they are not going to pay for Donald Trump's ballroom. It would be a gift. It is going to be donors, corporate donors, big billionaires. They're all going to finance it just out of the goodness of their own hearts, which, if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. But it turns out that that's not true. New reporting indicates that the White House construction program surrounding the ballroom is being financed primarily by you and me, by taxpayers.

And the administration has been pulling money from other agencies, including the National Park Service, with no congressional appropriation for the work. This is not only deceptive. This is completely immoral. this is not the way government is supposed to work. Now, part of me would go, well, it's a crime. You know, I don't know. I don't know. And at this point, what does it even mean for something to be a crime?

If there is no political will or infrastructure that will prosecute a crime, what does it mean for something to be illegal? Take a look at this report and then we'll talk about it. So according to records reviewed by the Washington Post, they're planning to spend at least $900 million. Instead of going to Congress, they're relying right now on private donors and pulling funds from other agencies. And Midas Touch also has this report that more than $400 million have been diverted from the National Park Service to fund Trump's White House and D.C. special projects and obsessions.

I mean, that is a staggering number. So the Washington Post obtained a bunch of records, and they show at least $927 million in planned construction on the White House grounds. That includes the ballroom, underground construction, a visitor screening facility, upgrades around Lafayette Square, a helipad, all of this stuff. They did not go to Congress and say, we need $927 million. Did I say billion before? I meant million, to be clear. In case I said billion, now I'm doubting. What they did was they just assembled some money from the donors, and then they started pulling money from other government agencies.

If you did this in a corporate environment, you would be fired and may be prosecuted for white collar crime embezzlement fraud. Who the hell knows what they did with that money is they funneled it into a little known White House account that's normally used for maintenance, very benign maintenance. The National Park Service records reportedly show $423 million allotted for White House and National Mall projects. That is more than the combined funding this. year for Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Zion, Joshua Tree, Golden Gate, Mammoth

Cave, and the Statue of Liberty Complex. All of that combined. It is less money than what is being commandeered here. Now, I always try to be upfront. We don't have evidence that all 423 million is going to Trump's ballroom. It means the park service has become a funding vehicle for this network. of Washington projects surrounding Trump's remaking of the White House and the Capitol. Meanwhile, spending on parks projects outside Washington, D.C. is down by hundreds of millions

of dollars. More than 90 million in park entrance fees, including money collected at Yellowstone and Yosemite, some people call it Yosemite. 90 million was redirected towards D.C. project. So it's all, what does Trump want to spend money on personally? what it is. These are fees. So forget about the taxpayer money. It's, there's two parts to it. Taxpayer money for the parks is being redirected. And then entrance fees that we are paying in addition to tax money are being redirected to these projects. Trump should be, uh, restricted by appropriate institutions from doing this stuff. And instead, everybody is just kind of looking around and going out or no. Now, at the center of this,

story is the ballroom specifically. It was going to be privately financed through donations, 200 million bucks. Okay. Then it was 300, 350 million, 400 million. Then we had internal construction estimates that said this is going to be 600 million dollars and we don't have 600 million in donations from Trump's friends. We've got like half of that. And then as the price continues to go up, you and I are more and more on the hook for this. put aside the visually humiliating, you know, the East Wing has been demolished without any congressional approval to do that. Federal Appeals Court is trying to block elements of it, but it's unclear whether they're going

to be able to. All of that stuff is separate from the fact that we are paying for it even though we were told that we were not going to. So this really goes back, I believe, to Trump's obsession with legacy. This guy knows on some level he's a failed president. He knows that people don't really like him. He suspects that his legacy is not going to be a particularly strong one and that a lot of the things that he has done can be reversed just as easily as Trump tried to do it with the stroke of the patent. So what is he going to do? He's going to focus on the physical. It's much hard. You can do it, but it's much harder to undo construction changes, demolition and building and all this sort of stuff. It's more difficult to do to unlawful. undo if someone acquires land, whether it's Greenland or Venezuela.

Trump is obsessed with this stuff because he believes it's more irreversible and that it is going to cement his legacy in a more structured way. That's what this is really about. And it is, if you're not planning to vote, oh, boy, I, next week, I'm not going to say that I'm going to be like reading people the riot act, but next week, we're going to have a conversation about, I know a lot of people don't always vote in midterms. if you're not planning to vote this time around, what the hell is your explanation? So we're going to get to that next week.

But in the interim, for all of these people, I had a friend on Facebook. I'm ranting now and I, if you don't like the rant, I apologize. I have a friend on Facebook, moderate Republican, okay, up from Massachusetts where the show started. And I saw him post this insane thing where he goes, listen, I have a to think that the ballroom is a good idea and we need it. But, and he takes some issue with some kind of minor thing. What are you talking about? What do you mean? Why? Now that I'm out here in California and I've spoken to people who work in so many different industries, one of the great things about California, by the way, you pull over on the side of the highway, more in like mid valley,

California. And it's like avocados, $1. And you buy them right from the, place where they are grown or chair beautiful cherries just swollen supple red cherries um two bucks a pound best cherries you'll ever have i spoke to people who work on the farms etc do you think anybody is like okay here's all the problems we have in the where we are working and all labor and but if we could get a better ballroom attached to the white house we give me a break come on so anyway This nominally friend of mine acquaintance got absolutely crushed. And everybody's like, what are you talking about that the ballroom is a good idea? You're completely out of your mind.

No one is the people are. There's probably more people in favor of the Iran war than there are in favor of the ballroom. So that's the latest in case there was any doubt. You're paying for the ballroom. I'm paying for the ballroom. Plastic pollution demands systemic action. One big difference you can make. is reducing single-use plastics in your household waste.

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Donald Trump has always lied. That's not news. That's not innovative. That's not interesting. But the answers that Donald Trump gave just hours ago when he did a press avail, a gaggle, for lack of a better term, are really alarming because Trump seems to be unable to construct lies that can even survive a single follow-up question. This is again another example of the deterioration, the decline. Trump asked, why was it too dangerous for you to fly on Air Force One, but not too dangerous for the press? to fly on Air Force One and Donald Trump spits out lie after lie after lie, incoherent to a degree that his lies didn't used to be. In other words, his lies are getting worse. Take a look at this.

Air Force One still flew out a person with press with white out officials on it. Well, this one went over to England where it was shown to the soldiers. But was it still at risk? No, I know, but this one went over to England because the soldiers wanted to see it. Right. And it stopped, and they showed it to the soldiers, and we did a switch over there. And it was really as for the military, and I just have to do what they say. They go for safety, and I have to do what they say. Why was it too dangerous for you to fly on Air Force One, but not too dangerous for the threat?

I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk. Why do you say that? Because that would be the plane, I think, that they would be, more likely to go for it. So Trump was asked, why was it supposedly too dangerous for you to fly on Air Force One when members of the press were allowed to do it? And his explanation is that the other plane, the one he did fly on after being secreted onto it by the catering truck, that one was really at greater risk because that's the plane

they would be more likely to target if they knew that Trump was on it. which they didn't, which was the entire point of the of the whole stunt. If indeed the more dangerous plane was the one they moved Trump to, then why did they move Trump to it? It defeats the entire rationale for the entire thing. Trump has lied all the time, but these are the sorts of lies that to any rational person, you go, this makes no sense. If Trump's plane was the obvious target, he's claiming that the safer option was the more dangerous option. And this is what happens when your lies are improvised without thinking even one sentence ahead. And this is what happened to liars when they are in decline. Now, it gets even worse.

Trump says Iran's going great. It's just, it's going fine. It's couldn't be going better. Take a look at this. Going fine. Going just absolutely fine. We totally control the straight of hormones. We have control over it. Nobody else. Only us. Our Navy is unbelievable. And things are going great for our country. Go ahead. Iran is going absolutely fine. It's not exactly the way I would think of to describe a war that you started on February 28th, which was going to take two to three weeks.

And we are in month, what? We're almost into, we're into the sixth month. It's almost been six full months of this war. How quickly these things become ongoing entanglements. And to suggest that this is going fine amidst, American people who are saying, get us out of there. I didn't vote for this. Whether they voted for Trump or not, most Americans saying this is not what I voted for. Donald Trump then claims that the United States is completely in control of the Strait of Hormuz. We know that that's not true.

He says, no one else has control over it. We know that that's not true. It is not a credible description of one of the world's most strategically contested waterways, even in times of peace. The real concern is that Donald Trump substitutes a declaration for an explanation. He says everything is fine. He declares it. America is in total control. Nothing else matters. Nobody else matters.

We are just always in charge here. And he takes repetition to mean or to be interpreted as truth. And just because you repeat something often enough doesn't make it true, but some people will come to believe that it does. Take a look at this clip. You've made this 228 several times in the last few weeks at the dinner you put on at 1220. Are you serious about seeking the third term? Everybody asked me that question, and you know that the law is very strong on that.

I'd love to run, but the law is very strong. I get asked by every, well, even tonight they're screaming at the event, 2028. Now, everybody wants me to do it, but the law is very strong. Thank you very much. The law is not merely strong when it comes to Trump and a third term. It is the Constitution. The 22nd Amendment makes it very clear. You can't be elected president more than twice.

Hilarious because Trump claims he was actually elected three times. Trump has insisted he won 2016, 2020 and 2024, but he's only gotten to serve two terms. Even by Donald Trump's delusional perspective on what he's one. and what he is lost, he would still be ineligible to run again. And it is much more than the law is strong. It's the Constitution. Trump continues entertaining the idea because it flatters him because it energizes his movement. But importantly, and this is the one of the other reasons that a lot of people won't talk

about, it's that Trump doesn't want the Republican Party to move on from him. Donald Trump would love it if the Republican Party failed after he leaves. so that he could finally prove to all of them, I told you I was special. I told you I was the only one who could do it. I told you I was the only one good enough to actually do this thing. He doesn't want J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio to succeed. He wants them to fail.

Finally, Donald Trump is really struggling to walk in a straight line to his helicopter. After finishing, technically we could call these answers, but they're not really answers. After being done with fielding media questions, Donald Trump attempted to walk to his helicopter. And as you will see, this is not a guy who can walk in a straight line anymore. The issue is not just the lies. He's been lying for a long time.

It's that the lies increasingly seem to fail and fall apart even before he can finish explaining them. And it is a sort of cognitive decline that is coinciding with a guy who cannot walk in a straight line to his helicopter. What's wrong with them? We don't know. because after making health disclosures, the litmus test under Biden, we don't have the slightest idea what is going on with Donald Trump.

Rumors are exploding that Donald Trump may be having an affair with his 35-year-old assistant Natalie Harp. Now, I know that this may sound like the start of a gossip-type story. And I assure you that it is not and that this is not a show that does pointless gossip. There is a lot of highly, highly relevant high stakes stuff here. But let's start at the beginning. We do not have evidence at this point in time that Donald Trump is dating his 35-year-old assistant Natalie Harp. Remember, Natalie Harp is the individual who has a portable printer and she'll print out

tweets that Trump might like to see and leaves him little notes around the residence. And he has said something along the – this is in the regime change book by Maggie Hayward. and Jonathan Swan. She has said stuff about how she'll never, she won't abandon Trump. And Trump has said she's the only one who'll stick with me. So there's something kind of weird going on there. Fine. We now are in a situation where there are growing rumors that this may be more than simply a work relationship. Now, I am not alleging to have knowledge that that is the case, but I am reporting to you that these are topics that are being discussed. This would probably change nothing for Trump's most moralistic supporters who say, oh, I'm a Christian and I'm an evangelical and all this stuff.

They didn't care about his previous affairs. They didn't care about the fact that he was pro-choice for his first 68 years in life or that he never pretended to be religious until he went into politics. They don't care about it. That gets us to Natalie Harp. Natalie Harp, as Trump's executive assistant, it turns out when Trump was secretly moved from Air Force One in Turkey because of that Iranian assassination threat that I talked to you about yesterday, Harp was among the teeny tiny group of people that was taken with Donald Trump.

Cabinet officials, including the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, stayed on the plane that was believed to be a target of the Iranians. So that proves that Natalie Harp has access. It doesn't prove that there is romance, but she was chosen over Marco Rubio to go on the safe plane and to get Trump away from danger. But that's when my mind goes back to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's book, where they detail in regime change, a lot of information that only fuels the speculation. They say, well, you know, she leaves these adoring letters to Trump in his personal spaces. You are all that matters to me. Trump has told staff. She's the only person who loves me

as much as my wife and kids. All of you will go off and make money. But she's, is never going to leave me. Still not evidence of an affair, but this is sort of building into is something going on here. Now, what I believe is the most consequential issue. It's not whether Trump is having yet another affair. He's had who the hell knows how many at this point in time. The more consequential issue is Harp's influence. She is known as the human printer. As I told you, she gives Trump these flattering stories and tweets. She prints them out. And Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have talked about how she will sit nearby, fulfilling requests for Trump on a whim. And by late 2025, according to the book regime change, she had the most control over

Trump's truth social account, a truth social account that is affecting foreign policy and that is also moving markets. She also is controlling what information even gets to Donald Trump and what is published under his name. This is so important because Donald Trump, leads a political coalition that says, we represent Christianity. We represent marital fidelity and sexual morality and the sanctity of life, while evangelical Protestants backed him by eight to one in 2024. And yet Trump's life has no resemblance to any of that moral code. You know the list, right? I mean, married three times. liable for sexual abuse, convicted of 34 felony counts involving business records used to

conceal a hush money payment to a porn star, 40-something allegations of misconduct of various degrees. And Trump denies all of it, of course, but we know that at least a bunch of this stuff is completely true. He's the religious guy, but there is no evidence that religion guides anything that Donald Trump does. He has these transactional displays of faith. He can't really tell us anything about Bible verses he cares about or any of that. And yet he sort of presents himself as the protector of Christianity. Same thing with abortion. Trump has been pro-choice his entire life, decided to run

for office. And he goes, oh, I'm against abortion. And then he chooses Supreme Court justices who are ultimately involved in overturning Roe v. Wade, something which, by the way, are arguably was not particularly popular, but that's sort of a different story. So when evangelical leaders are confronted with this stuff, whether or not he's having an affair with Natalie Harp, evangelical leaders will go, listen, Trump is an imperfect vessel for our message, but isn't everyone imperfect to some degree? And they say, we still support imperfect people because he's right on policy. So the hypocrisy comes from presenting that bargain as sort of a crusade for personal morality.

If credible evidence emerged tomorrow that Trump was dating 35-year-old Natalie Harp harp while he is married, would these leaders abandon him? I believe the answer is absolutely not. They would first attack the source and then they would go, well, even if it's true that's private and what ultimately matters is policy and Trump is right on policy. Now, we don't have evidence right now that Trump is dating Natalie Harp. The documented reality is of an unusually devoted aid with extraordinary personal and informational access.

And the hypocrisy is really the story. Trump may be dating her. He may not. The reaction is what exposes the truth, which is that for Trump's evangelical supporters, personal morality is not a standard applied to their leader. It's a weapon applied to everybody else. That is a feature of cults. We've talked about so many of the different features of cults that are visible in Trump's governance and his administration. And this includes that the leader is always right, that if anybody criticizes the leader, they must not understand him and all of these different

things. If you start to question the leader, you're pulled back in by other cult members. All of that stuff exists. But one of the real features of cults is that the very same standards that are applied to the followers are never applied to the leader. And that is exactly what is going on here. Identity theft usually does not start with some movie version of how hacking takes place. It's boring details that are easy to find. Your full name, current and former addresses, phone number, data birth, employment history. If you put a bunch of that stuff together, people can then start to figure out, do I know your security answers to security questions?

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get 60% off an annual plan at incogni.com slash Pacman with the code Pacman. The link is in the description. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he's no longer allowed to vote. This is just, I don't know why I find this story so damn funny, but I find it hilarious. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the Secretary of Health and Human Services. And he is somehow the first privileged, extremely wealthy cabinet secretary who I guess can't figure out where he lives. It's sort of like Tom Hanks in that movie Terminal where he's like stuck in an airport terminal and his country stops existing and he no longer is a citizen. of any country. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can't figure out where he lives, so he is not allowed to vote. He has been disenfranchised. Why do I find this so funny? Here he is saying a judge

declared he has no legal residence, so he can't vote anywhere. Take a look at this. Secretary Kennedy, homelessness continues to be the number one issue in the city of Los Angeles. We have a mayoral election. Just curious, if you're still registered to vote in the city of Los Angeles, if you've followed this debate between the incumbent mayor and a DSA candidate Nithia Rahman. And if you plan on voting and just tell us your thoughts about these elections. I'm in a very strange position because when I ran for president, the Democratic Party sued me first to get me off the ballot in 12 states, including New York and California. And then when I endorsed President Trump, they sued me to keep me on the ballot in those same

states. And in the course of one of those lawsuits, it was declared that I had no legal residence. And so I'm in a dilemma where I literally have no state where I can legally vote right now. I'm probably the only person in the country who's a legal citizen who has that dilemma. but I'm still trying to figure it out before the next election. Okay. So he says that a judge determined he is no legal residence, which means he can't legally vote anywhere.

And he believes he may be the only American who is trapped in this very strange predicament. It sort of sounds like RFK Jr's rights have been taken away, except, of course, that is not what has happened here. This goes back to Kennedy's independent. presidential campaign in 2024. And so it's all self-inflicted. He wanted to appear on the New York ballot. And he identified a house in Catona as his legal residence. The problem was he didn't really live there. The house belonged to a friend. And Kennedy said, well, I was renting a bedroom

for 500 bucks a month. That means that means I can legally say that that's my residence. But there was no lease and his wife didn't live there and his family didn't live there and his pets and his possessions were not there So all the evidence was he stayed there one time While actually living with his wife in California So when New York judge said the Katona property cannot be counted as a legitimate residence and It's both highly improbable if not preposterous that that's where he lives Nobody believes this is what the judge was ultimately saying. The judge didn't declare that he was legally forbidden from residing anywhere

in the United States, as he now claims. The court answered a very narrow question. Was the address that he put on his New York nominating papers his actual residence? And the answer was, no, it was not. He used a sham address to maintain that voter registration for his political interests. This is not the government stole RFK Jr.'s vote. This is RFK Jr. submitted an address where he didn't really live and you're not allowed to do that. Fine. That then gets to an even more absurd situation, which is that Kennedy revealed his supposed homelessness while appearing with the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development at an event about actual

homelessness in Los Angeles. RFK, I believe, has roughly a net worth of $20 to $25 million. And there's something very rich about going, I am homeless from the purposes of voting when you're at an event about actual homeless people. And what took place was that you had two cabinet officials talking about people who genuinely lack shelter, genuinely are homeless. And RFK, Kennedy family member, you know, multimillionaire, he is going, well, I'm kind of homeless too because I don't have a voter registration that I can submit, successfully. It is, if you want to take it seriously for a second, it's sort of an impossible legal dilemma, but the solution is really straightforward. Establish residency where you really live and register there. Pick the house, fill out the form problem solved. Now, he, I guess, wants to argue

because now he's in D.C. and he's here and he's there. He doesn't really live anywhere. You people with nothing managed to find a way to have illegal residence and sometimes they don't and this creates problems for applying to jobs and this sort of thing. That is not RFK Jr.'s situation. Now, what is the real hypocrisy here? I know you all know it. This is an administration that's constantly demanding stricter voting rules and we've got a, in a much more strict way, document and have aggressive enforcement against people who are using improper addresses. And now Trump's own secretary of health and human services was caught using a sham address. And he says he's unable to vote.

Interestingly, it seems the systems we have are working pretty damn well. Now, as a kind of like 30,000 foot reminder, RFK has not lost his citizenship. No judge has said his voting rights are revoked. He created a mess by lying about where he lived. And he wants to blame it on other people. And he is now a part of this movement that says personal responsibility above all else, and he is not taking responsibility and going, I shouldn't have selected that sham address. That's really the problem.

The guy that Trump placed in charge of American health can't figure out where he lives in order to simply become registered to vote. This is what we are dealing with. This is where we are operating. And meanwhile, of course, what he's actually doing in his role as Secretary of Health and Human Services is completely deplorable. I mean, you're supposed to be increasing the health of the country and you're doing the opposite. Final thing before I forget.

And a lot of the stuff is coming to me as I talk about it. There have been some voices on the left recently, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are saying, you know, a lot of the underlying instincts of the. about RFK's health ideas aren't wrong, but the execution is a problem. And AOC and others are getting absolutely crushed. I've spoken to nutritionists and doctors on this show. They agree with that. We just have to be careful about what we mean. In general, should we be going in a direction of exercise, time outside, less processed food? Of course we should be doing all that. Is there a lot of lifestyle stuff that is highly correlated with negative health outcomes among Americans. Of course that's true.

RFK is completely right about that. Where it goes off the rails is the anti-back stuff. Or saying seed oils are bad, but you got to be eating beef tallow, which by the way, all the evidence is seed oils are good. And the beef tallow is what is bad for heart health. We're going to solve problems by, for example, getting rid of food dyes and skittles when it's like how much food you have an entire bag of skittles. What is it? A gram of these food dies? That is where it goes off the rails. And it's wrapped up with this like Tylenol can cause autism stuff and all of this wacky stuff. That's the problem. The instinct that lifestyle is a factor and nutrition is a factor, 100% the execution is where the problem lies. Donald Trump finally found a way to make good on his promises to bring down

grocery prices, the problem is that the solution seems to be explosive diarrhea. I know some of you know what I'm talking about, about the news is what I mean. All it took to finally lower some prices was a cyclospora outbreak. Bloomberg chief political correspondent Anne-Marie Hordern flagged an interesting detail from the latest inflation report. Let's put the tweet. up full screen. Lettuce prices fell 16.4% on month. I don't know. I actually don't know the phrase on month. I thought she meant year over year, but maybe that's what on month means. I don't know. In any case, lettuce prices are down. Maybe that is in one month, which is even crazier. This is the steepest decline for lettuce prices on record. So Trump finally did it. Great news, right?

This is the affordability stuff that he's been talking about. The Trump administration is working for the average American and all of that stuff. Promises made, promises kept. Except there's one small problem, which is that lettuce prices are collapsing because thousands of people have been infected with a cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce in the environment of reduced food inspection of Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy's era. people are going, well, I'm not going to buy lettuce. The lettuce is spoiling, so everybody is dropping prices to try to get people to buy it. Now, as a reminder, cyclospora is this microscopic

parasite. It can cause frequent explosive diarrhea, stomach cramps, bloating, nausea, fatigue, weight loss, dehydration. Symptoms can last for weeks. Sometimes they go away. You think you're out of the woods and then they come back. So inflation has finally been defeated by an unlikely enemy explosive diarrhea. The CDC and the FDA have traced the outbreak to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms of Mexico. The recalled lettuce was distributed to restaurants and retailers in a bunch of different states. Some Walmart stores got some, some Taco Bell location. got some. And by the end of last month, there were 2,000 laboratory confirmed cases, at least 98 hospitalizations. The real number is, of course, way higher. A lot of people don't go and get tested

and there's no confirmation. So the real number is obviously significantly higher. The economic mechanism is really simple. That's kind of the less interesting part. I think the political is more interesting, but the economic mechanism is people here lettuce may contain cyclosporiasis. So then they're less enthusiastic about buying and eating the lettuce. Demand falls. This is a perishable item. Prices falls fall to try to sell some of it before it goes bad. Now, technically, you have reduced prices.

Practically, people stopped buying salad because they were worried that it would turn their digestive system into a fire hose. and that it would go interactive. So it illustrates a real problem with how politicians talk about inflation. That I think is the underlying real message here. When a price goes down, Trump takes credit. If eggs go down or in this case, it's lettuce, the White House will present it as proof that the economic program is succeeding.

It's working. It's helping people. Prices can change for a lot of reasons. And sometimes it's because supply has gone up. Sometimes the weather changes. Sometimes consumers run out of money and sometimes thousands get explosive diarrhea. So the point is a falling price doesn't indicate a healthy economy or a successful policy. If demand collapses because consumers are scared or because they don't have money for something or they are unemployed, the lower price is not necessarily a success. It's actually the symptom of a new problem.

Now, none of this means that the entire inflation report was bad. There was a grocery decline of one-tenth, one-tenth of one-percentage point in July. Overall food prices went up by one-tenth of a percent. So groceries down a tick, food prices overall up a tick. Food prices remain 3 percent higher than a year ago. Lettuce's decline is kind of distorting this, and it's pulling down the number. making it seem as though things are actually improving when really you've got diarrhea link to one specific food. Now, if Trump had instead said, you know, well, not said, if Trump had negotiated

with the lettuce industry and had found some revolutionary salad initiative, which would, that would be different. But consumers found a parasite in lettuce. They don't want it. They're not buying it. Not exactly worthy of congratulations, but on some level, Trump said prices would come down. And here is a price that is coming down. Now, the bigger picture goes back to, and we're going to dive deep into this next week, we need to hold these people accountable for the promises they made. And a couple of the promises Trump made were energy prices will be down 50 percent, gas will be down, oil will be down, groceries will be down, housing is going to get cheap.

None of this stuff is happening. And there are people out there now who are doing the revisionist. history and they're going, well, those were stretch goals to begin with. Well, you know, they weren't necessarily the most realistic promise. That's what we were saying all along. And when I was telling people, you know, presidents don't really have a lot of control over this stuff. And by the way, when there is deflation, it's usually because the economy is really struggling. The magus didn't want to hear it. Oh, David, get the hell out of here. Well, now they're coming back and they're going, it turns out that it's actually difficult to get. My only request.

And remember, they tell you, we are the source of truth. We will tell you what to believe. What I'm telling you is go evaluate the promises that were made. Consider whether the promises have been made into a reality for you and decide whether these are people worthy of your votes again. And as a final reminder, I hear from people in the audience. I talked with Brian Tyler Cohen about this on our interview a couple days ago. There are people moderate Republicans who go, I'm with you, David, on the Trump sucks stuff.

But I have no problem with my member of Congress. My senator's cool. My member of the house is cool. Well, they've been rubber stamping 92 to 99 percent, even 100 percent of what Donald Trump has wanted to do. So if you don't agree with what Donald Trump has been doing, you've got to get the enablers out. And your member of Congress, if they are a Republican, is an enabler. Don't let people forget that. Don't let people skate by on, yes, I'm not for Trump, but I do still like normal Republicans and I'm going to vote for my member of that. Well, they are part of the problem. They are part of why Donald Trump has been able to get away with all of the stuff. And we even have John Cornyn on video going, well, we don't really have any way to rein them in. You're choosing not to.

If Republicans got together and if they had gotten together years ago, they could have stopped Trump dead in its tracks and said, you will get nothing done. unless you come to the table and negotiate in the way that we want to negotiate. None of them had the audacity, the strength. They were too afraid to do it. They deserve to be voted out in November just the same as everybody else who has been enabling this guy. Hey, if you're hearing this, that means you're listening to our podcast on one of the many

podcast networks that we stream to. And first, I just want to say, thank you for being a listener of this show. It really means a lot that you're tuning in here. I would love to ask you for a quick favor. We are so close to reaching 4 million subscribers on YouTube. YouTube is where we post everything you get through the audio podcast and a lot more stuff. It would mean a lot to me if you took a quick second to pop over to YouTube, search up the David Packman Show and hit subscribe.

Every bit helps. I would love to have you as a subscriber there. Why are people so loyal to Donald Trump when he really isn't loyal to them? I got an interesting YouTube comment about this from Sharon, who said, I will never understand why these people have so much loyalty to Trump. He has no loyalty to anyone. I think it's a good observation. Loyalty to Donald Trump is really a one-way street.

And we've seen it now for this decade that he has been a political figure. He demands that you be absolutely devoted. Everyone around him must be willing to lay down and let Trump walk all over you. But the moment someone becomes inconvenient, they are discarded without a second thought. And somehow his most loyal followers keep believing they are going to be the exception. And what we've learned is that there really are no exceptions. Like, I guess he likes Don Jr. enough, sort of, that he's ultimately going to be, with Don Jr. on Don Jr.'s side or whatever. And maybe even that isn't necessarily the case.

But that is the way that it is for Donald Trump. And this is why when we talk about the, the, time-limited loyalty, ultimately people like Trump, these sort of egomaniacal narcissists, they demand more and more and more. And when you're an authoritarian, you also impose more outrageous and ridiculous beliefs on people over time to the point that they can't even really go with all of it for because it'll embarrass them personally it'll cause a problem for them and then trump just throws you in the trash that's the way it is it's nothing new uh but charon's absolutely right about it from facebook dominic said fun fact no one that has ever won a war has paid 300 billion dollars to the country that it defeated. Yeah, I like that. This is something that, you know,

if you, if you look, this isn't necessarily true in that way. There actually have been post-war payments in a lot of different situations. And I don't think that this is the right analysis of the situation in Iran. The reason that, by the way, the way, the deal is dead as of right now. The reason that the framework of the Iran deal that Trump was looking at was a bad deal was that the context was that Obama's Iran nuclear deal was so bad and so dangerous to the country that Trump had to get us out of it. But then after this completely failed war, he comes around and goes, here's what we're negotiating. We all look at it and we go, this has all of the supposed problems of the Obama deal and not nearly as many of the good things.

The hypocrisy is the problem. I don't actually have an issue with the idea of a payment because we've seen reparations, tribute, indemnities, and post-war payments over a long period of time. So I think the commenter is just wrong. The reason that in this particular case, it's pathetic is that if what Trump wanted was that deal that he was kind of saying, I think we're going to be able to get this. He didn't have to even get into this war to do that. He could have just stayed out of this war to begin with.

And we never would have found ourselves in this situation if he had just stayed in the Iran nuclear deal. That's the problem I have with it. The payments themselves, there could be payments that make sense or payments that don't make sense. Post-war payments are not a rare thing. All right. From Instagram, Admiral Whit the width says, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. David, try, try, try, try, but fail every time.

Sorry, folks, David lost at it again. This is a longtime antagonist of the show. And I have a funny story about this guy. I actually don't know that it's a guy, but I assume. For years, that guy has been writing in and commenting everywhere going, David, this is the end for your show. Like, this is it when we hit 2 million YouTube subscribers, he was like, you'd better enjoy them while you've got them because your show is circling the drain and it's going to disappear. And then we got to 3 million subscribers. And now we're approaching four.

There have been these, I call them clingers. They're sort of hangers on. We're here for the show finally failing. And I get a bunch of them where it's like, David, I know that you don't get any views anymore. The biggest delight is seeing messages like these and those that I described and then going and looking and saying, wow, we've got more subscribers than we've ever had. We've got more views than we've ever had. We have a bigger footprint than we've ever had. And they just have spent all this time building nothing, writing in going, David, you're going to fail and I can't wait to be.

You know what? The day may be coming when the show finally fails. I hope that that doesn't happen. It may be happening. But I'm glad to report to you as sort of mini state of the show that for the time being, everything's going in the right direction. All right. Debleen Callie, Debleen, Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb, Lynn Callie wrote on Instagram. The last few months, my mother was able to effectively communicate went like that, referring to Trump.

People thought she was drunk all the time. Dementia is a slow but steady process. He's losing more and more language skills. He's about two years away from becoming completely incoherent or limiting his words down to how a two-year-old speaks. Not a far stretch for him. It's why he's gone this many years without being called out for it. He's in year 10 of dementia. Yeah, listen, you know, the personal experiences that people write to me about, usually about parents or grandparents suffering from dementia, they, I find extremely relevant.

They require genuine sympathy, empathy. But it is also the case that the trajectory of other people is not necessarily the trajectory of Donald Trump. And this is why I've hesitated to diagnose him definitively with anything, not only because it's outside my area of expertise, but because health problems, especially cognitive ones, can present themselves in many different ways. And so I prefer the factual observations. Donald Trump's vocabulary diversity has diminished dramatically.

Donald Trump is experiencing three, four, or five specific verbal phenomena, including these glitches, as they were described in more detail by a speech language pathologist last week or the week before. Let's do what we can quantify saying Trump is in year 10 of dementia. I just don't think I have the information to say that that's a definitive thing. Delcrest Bay says, where is that awesomely funny Alex Jones bonus show ran? Yeah, so when I play on the show, the clip of Alex Jones going, oh, the bonus show where you want to make money and everybody else that makes money is bad.

That is some people write in and they go, that must be AI. That's got to be a fake Alex Jones. That is a real Alex Jones. At some point in his mania when he still had his Info Wars show, somehow, Alex Jones, became fixated with me for like an episode. And he just ranted and raved about me. How dare I have a bonus show? Thank you're lucky stars. You're not Dave Packman. All this different stuff. And it came and went. And those are all legitimate Alex Jones quotes. And incredible that we have outlasted Info wars, info wars, which is no more, despite all of Alex's attacks against me. We have outlasted

that. And I think for that, we can be very glad. Okay. Gladys Ferreira weighing in on Donald Trump, strange phrase, killing them like candy. Gladys wrote, that phrase, killing them like candy, was his inability to find words and absolutely ridiculous. The delusional, malignant narcissist is despicable. Well, it's an example of exactly what Hillary Shea, the speech language pathologist we interviewed described. Killing them like candy is certainly a bizarre and disturbing phrase. We should scrutinize it and we should really look at what is happening to Trump's vocabulary. The other recent example was when Donald Trump was trying to say the word video, video, you know, moving pictures, moving images.

And he couldn't find the word. And you actually see him point to the camera in the Oval Office. And he goes, you know, we have pictures and we have, you know, moving pictures. That is exactly an example of what Hillary Shea described as, Donald Trump's increasing vocabulary problems. And they do seem to be serious. Whatever they mean from a health standpoint, they seem to be very serious. On the topic of social democracy, many messages like these, Lori wrote in and said, I greatly

appreciate this. I have been using the wrong term. I am a social Democrat too. And Gene said, I am a social Democrat also. Thanks for letting me know, including no monopolies. Two viewers, think about, you know, when we talk about labels, young people are turning to socialism and you've got right-wingers who believe that unregulated capitalism. So many people don't really know what these terms mean and what systems they describe. And in this case,

two viewers now realized, oh, I thought maybe I was a socialist, but I'm actually a social Democrat. That's a type of capitalist. They discovered, I'm not what. I believed that I was. And also, interestingly, they find common ground with the framework that I laid out. It's a small exchange, but look at the importance of understanding the words that we are using, such that two viewers, and of course, if two people wrote about it, it's happening to many more. Two viewers were able to say, now that I understand definitions a little bit better, I realized that I actually am more lined up with you than I thought I was.

Okay, a subreddit post from O.C. Kings fan who says, when David laid out the policy priorities of social Democrats the other day, it was pretty much a word for word articulation of my political beliefs for the last 20 years. But of course, most traditional capital D Democrats do not hit on most of those policy points. So I usually reluctantly vote for a meh version of what I'd actually like to see because the alternative is horrible. So my question is, is there an organized social Democrat Party with which to get involved or to donate money. I'd love to see some momentum for candidates aligned with this philosophy on local or national ballots, even if it's still ostensibly under the established umbrella of the Democratic Party in the near term. This captures the central

challenge for American social Democrats. The voters and the policy appetite are there, but the organizational home is is not really there. an independent party, join an existing group, fight for influence inside the Democratic Party. One thing I will say, and you can be a social Democrat of any religion, just to put that out there. I have heard from people that they have found common ground as social Democrats with secular humanists. And if you look at the guiding principles of secular humanism and social democracy, different vocabulary and language usually, but there can be some overlap. Check that out and see if that appeals

to you. This doesn't mean that if you're a more religious Christian or Catholic or Muslim or or Jew or Buddhist or whatever, that social democracy is not for you. But there are people who find that their moral home under socially democratic beliefs overlays pretty significantly with secular humanism. So something to look at. Get your emails in, whether it's questions, concerns, trolling criticisms, whatever. Send them to info at David Pakman.com. And remember that the bonus show continues after this. Get instant access to the bonus show by signing up at join packman.com. And remember to pre-order my forthcoming book, including a limited number of signed copies at Davidpackman.com slash attention.