The David Pakman Show - Trumpworld spins out of control as conspiracies spiral

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

-- On the Show: -- After an attempted attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, people question how a gunman could get so close to Donald Trump -- Ex-Trump supporters Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene question the first assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania -- Trump angrily denies accusations in a 60 Minutes interview, mocks the gunman who tried to assassinate him, and contradicts video evidence -- Fox News host Jacqui Heinrich praises Trump during an interview while he criticizes NATO, and comments on Russia’s war with Ukraine -- Videos show Donald Trump stumbling during the evacuation at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and later denying it -- A CNN reporter links Democratic rhetoric to violence, and Jamie Raskin counters by showing that the example is simply calling Trump bad -- Some on the left treat overlap with Tucker Carlson's anti-war rhetoric as alignment despite his nationalist agenda conflicting with progressive goals -- On the Bonus Show: Stories from David's trip to Washington DC for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Michael Tracey and Jim Acosta nearly come to blows, and much more... 💦 Pocket Hose: Text PAKMAN to 64000 for two free gifts with purchase of Pocket Hose Ballistic 📄 UPDF: Supercharge your PDF workflow! Get an extra $10 off at https://davidpakman.com/updf 🖼️ Aura Frames: Use code PAKMAN for $25 off Carver Mat frames at https://auraframes.com/pakman 🔊 Blinkist: Try it free for 7 days and get 30% OFF at https://blinkist.com/pakman 📱 Cape: Get 33% off for 6 months with code PAKMAN at https://cape.co/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 Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- 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 (01:41) Attempted attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (10:21) Right-wingers question Trump assassination attempt (20:36) Trump's contentious 60 Minutes interview (31:52) Trump criticizes NATO during Fox interview (40:25) Trump denies stumbling during evacuation (48:07) Raskin challenges claims about Democrats' rhetoric (57:15) Don't fall for Tucker's anti-war rhetoric Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are millions of people claiming that the White House correspondence dinner shooting was staged. And at the exact same time, you have parts of Donald Trump's base saying the butler assassination attempt against Trump was also fake. That is not coming from the left. It's coming from MAGA. And we're going to break down why none of it really holds up. and what it tells you about how conspiratorial thinking spreads. By the way, I was in D.C. and went into lockdown at a nearby event when that shooting happened. I'll talk about that as well.

And in reaction, Donald Trump giving a series of interviews that are quite difficult to watch. And it's not just rambling answers and bizarre comments about war. Trump is also denying things that are clearly on video. We are going to look at that. And a Fox host turns interview into praise session. And when we talk about what do these MAGA people even want interviews to look like? This is what they want interviews to look like. Adulation, praise, almost just praying at the altar of Trump.

We also have a moment from CNN that shows how low the bar has gotten when it comes to political rhetoric. And then moving forward, we will talk about are we entering a system where citizenship can be taken away and revisited at scale. That's what the administration is now threatening to do. All of that and more today. Was the shooting at the White House correspondence dinner staged? That is what millions are saying on social media, including many on the political left.

I got emails like David. You're not falling for this, are you? No one believes the shooting was real. Well, I was in Washington, D.C. over the weekend. I was at the substack new media party just blocks away from the correspondence dinner when the shooting took place. They locked us down. No one in and no one out, which really just meant the party continued. I'll talk about that later or on the bonus show. But what I want to talk about today are the widespread claims and insinuations that it was staged. And I will tell you why people are saying

this, what the incentives would be. And I will also give you, my opinion. Now, some of the claims that are being made are things like the security should be airtight. So any kind of breach or attempted attack couldn't possibly be real, meaning it must have been staged. There is a focus on how could someone get close enough for this to happen? People assuming that access points and screening would prevent anything like this, even though a lot of these people don't really know how layered security works in practice. Another claim is that it's too convenient that the person caused chaos by shooting, but wasn't really able to get close to Trump and therefore it must have been set up.

Or Trump immediately said, this is why we need the ballroom. meaning Trump staged it to be able to say, see, if we had my ballroom instead of being at the Washington Hilton, this never would have happened. We're going to take it piece by piece by piece. And it is true that in this rapidly assembled press conference right after the shooting, Donald Trump did say, hey, listen, we need the ballroom because of this. I'll just remind you of that. And we looked at all of the conditions that took place tonight.

And I will say, you know, it's not a particularly secure building. And I didn't want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we're planning at the White House. It's actually a larger room and it's a much more secure. It's got it's drone proof. It's bulletproof. All right. You get it.

Trump goes, this is why we need the ballroom that I want to do. Now let's talk about a few different things. First of all, how tight was security? Well, I was in that building just a couple of hours before the shooting. Now, it is true that there was the veneer of security. I'll give you some examples. The entire block on which the Washington Hilton sits was blocked off. When I got picked up in an Uber, I had to walk several blocks away because the Uber couldn't

get close. There were dogs, beautiful dogs sniffing around, presumably. bomb and explosive sniffing dogs. You had secret service as well as capital police. And then there's this other, like they have the white cars and it says protective services. There were three, four. You had National Guard stalking around the area. So there was indeed the veneer of security. But at the same time, anybody could just walk into the lobby or other areas. Once the event started to get into the ballroom, which was on a different floor, Yes, security was very tight.

But that's not where the shooter got. The shooter, in fact, ended up discharging the gun in the, in the lobby area. So, yes, security was sort of tight, but it also wasn't really that tight where the shooting took place. And remember that this was not in the room where the event was taking place. So that's number one. Number two, there were conflicting reports about whether the shooter was killed, which are fomenting the belief in some that this was staged.

Oh, the shooter was killed. Oh, no, they got the shooter. So the, but this stuff is always incomplete and messy at the beginning. The lack of clear, widely shared footage at one point was fueling conspiracy theories. Everybody expected everything to be captured super cleanly on video, but we have surveillance footage of the shooter running by. And so since there wasn't, I guess, the extensive footage that some expected, that is fueling conspiracy theories. There were claims about the suspect that the suspect was clearly a plant, fake in some way. But the truth is that we have a wide, a pretty extensive social media history for the suspect. And it does seem to have been an anti-Trump person on the left.

I mean, that's just what it seems to have been. And so a lot of this is getting filtered through the false flag frameworks where people already are predisposed to believe events like this are staged. And they immediately interpret the events in that way. Social media amplifies it. There's a general distrust of government, a general distrust of media. And so some people start saying it must have been staged. Now, I'm going to give you my view on this. And I know because I'm on social media, there are fellow leftists who are saying they believe that this was staged. I don't believe that it was staged. If the claim, there's a, we'll go through some of the claims.

Trump did this because his approval rating is in the toilet and he believed this would help his approval rating. Trump's polling moved half a point after the Butler assassination attempt in which the belief is Trump's ear was grazed by a bullet and he actually bled and someone died who was standing behind Trump. After all of that, Trump's polling budged half a point. So even the idea that this would help Trump's approval seems shaky at best to me. Number two, the ballroom. This was staged so that Trump could immediately say this is why we need the ballroom.

And Trump did say this is why we need the ballroom. And all sorts of MAGA social media accounts immediately started posting this is why we need the ballroom. Well, on the latter, we know that there is a coordination of MAGA influencers. They clearly got the message. Start saying this is why we need the ballroom. That's not proof that it was actually staged. And importantly, I don't believe that this shooting will help get the ballroom built even a single

day more quickly. It just doesn't make sense. There's no evidence that that's going to happen. Next. Why leave a Kamala supporting left-wing shooter alive if it was staged and a plant and he's a when you could have easily had him killed and it would have been considered justified as a killing by the standards that are applied in this country. Why allow him to live and now he is a liability who could potentially spill the beans doesn't make any sense. Now, when you tell the people who say

it was staged what I just said, they will often come back and go, no, no, no, no. Even the guy, The guy wasn't in on it. They used psychological tools and techniques to make him decide. The guy believes he did it on his own. Now we're going two layers deep into conspiracy. So case and point, I don't think that this was staged. The superficial incentives that are being presented as the evidence that it was likely staged, don't hold up.

It runs counter to the incentives of many of the people that are involved. And quite frankly, I still don't think that this administration is capable enough to actually pull it off. So absent actual evidence that this was staged or a plant, I don't believe it was. And this opens up a broader conversation about conspiracy theories that goes. back to Butler, which I now want to talk about. The story about the first assassination attempt of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, is now seeing even MAGA people suggesting that it was staged and fake.

It's a strange turn in a way. It's not coming from the left. It's coming from some of the people in Trump's base and formerly in his base. We are seeing supporters of Donald Trump's saying the whole thing was staged and the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania during the 2024 presidential campaign wasn't real. Now let's rewind for a second. This was the 2024 rally where Donald Trump's ear was reportedly grazed by a bullet and a supporter of Trump's in the crowd was killed.

Now, at the time, the reaction from Maga World was immediate. It was predictable. This is proof that leftists are violent. This is proof that Trump was chosen by God and protected by God and divinely spared, even though for some reason God directed the bullet to kill a completely innocent guy standing behind Donald Trump. We, of course, ultimately learned that the shooter was a Republican. Republicans didn't really care about that.

But now we are seeing cracks in the movement. we're seeing something different happen, which is that there are even MAGA people suggesting there are questions here. Tucker Carlson is raising questions about that shooting, not in a responsible evidence-based way, but in a something feels kind of off way. You've got former supporters, influencers, conspiracy figures openly suggesting the entire thing was staged or covered up or manipulated behind the scenes. You've got Marjorie Taylor Greer. tweeting, she doesn't come out and say straight up it was a hoax, but she says, quote, I'm not calling the Butler assassination a hoax, but there are a lot of questions that deserve public answers.

I'm asking why won't Trump release the information about Matthew Crooks? Did he actually act alone? If not, who's behind him and who helped him? Why the cover up? Now, I want to connect this to something else. When I talked last week or the week before about the fact that this was a growing sentiment on the right, I got a lot of messages from people in my own audience also expressing skepticism about the Butler assassination attempt.

And some pointed to how quickly Trump's ear appeared to heal. Others said there didn't seem to be the amount of blood. that we would expect. Some mentioned, you know, photographers seemed to already be in position and they were escorted to get the dramatic images of Trump and Trump didn't appear particularly shaken up afterwards and really he never appeared particularly shaken up. I want to be really clear. None of that is proof of anything. They are observations. There are understandable questions, but they aren't evidence that this was staged or faced. Now, conspiracy theorists will sometimes then go back to a position that I've talked about

before, which is that the lack of evidence is proof that it was staged and baked because they've covered up the evidence. I am very hesitant to jump in on that sort of belief. And what you're watching right now is a movement that is in a way turning on itself using the same conspiracy logic that it used to defend Trump. It is now being used against Trump. It's like the boomerang effect of conspiratorial thinking. And as far as the MAGA movement is concerned, when you build a political movement on distrust of institutions and we distrust the media, we distrust that we are even being told what facts are,

that distrust will spread. And at first, it's the FBI is lying. Then it's the election was rigged. Then it's maybe even the assassination attempt wasn't real. And once you open that door, I don't think there's a mechanism to close it because when you throw standards of evidence out the window or flush them, everything is suspicion. What does it feel like? What do I trust in the moment? And not what can actually be proven. Now, there's one other thing that is happening that I think is worth mentioning, which is that some of the people that are now talking about the Butler assassination in these terms are trying to tie this into broader narratives of shadowy control, foreign influence, influence, sometimes it's anti-Semitic tropes.

It's all the stuff that always happens with conspiracy theorists. That's how these ecosystems evolve. They escalate to try to keep attention. They got to keep people engaged, keep the outrage machine going. And it creates a situation where even something as serious as an assassination attempt becomes another thing to reinterpret for clicks and loyalty tests. Now, what this has always been about is narrative control. Not what facts do we have and how can we connect facts.

It's when Trump looked strong, he survived because he's the chosen one. Now he's facing criticism and the story shifts to maybe it was fake. Same event, okay, different interpretation depending on what serves the moment. And eventually it just consumes everything. We're seeing this with the White House correspondence dinner shooting. We're still seeing it now with the Butler shooting. And what has been blown wide open at a political level is the instability of the MAGA movement, which doesn't know what to believe anymore.

It trained itself. Don't believe anything consistently. Every belief is subject to throwing the evidence out and coming up with a brand new interpretation absent any evidence. And it is destroying them from the inside. We have a piece we're putting up on my substance. about how the conspiratorial thinking festeres, generates, and then consumes everything. It's a really good piece about how all of this works and why it happens.

You can find it on my substack, Davidpack, david packman.com slash substack. I'm excited to tell you about the world's number one expanding garden hose and their brand new product, the pocket hose ballistic. I used to go through cheap hoses all the time because of the kinks and the leaks and the tangles. This is on another level. The pocket hose ballistic is tough, reinforced with a liquid crystal polymer used in bulletproof vests. So it'll handle wear and tear. It's also really lightweight.

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If you're dealing with a long report, research paper, dense documents, UPDF can summarize it, you can chat with the document, even turn the information into something clearer and easier to work with. UPDF works across Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, and in addition to working better than the big name PDF software, UPDF is only a fraction of the cost, and for a limited time, UPDF is giving my audience an extra $10 off until May 30th. Just go to Davidpachman.com slash UPDF. The link is in the description. One of the great things from being in D.C. this weekend. at the White House Correspondence dinner events, not the dinner, but ancillary events, is the recognition of how much independent media has grown, seeing so many independent media people

there who never would have gotten invited to anything when all of this started. It was inspiring. And it is all thanks to audience supported media. Remember that this show is audience supported. I would love for you to upgrade your first. free substack subscription to paid at David Pakman.com slash substack. And remember that we do an extra show every day for my website members. You can sign up on my website at joinpacman.com. Both are great ways to support the work that we do. We're going to keep building. We have

huge things planned for this year as well as we ramp up to the 2028 election. So thanks to everybody. Thanks to you, can we even do what we do? Donald Trump exploded in a rage. I'm not a rapist. I'm not a pedophile. He is now openly denying these things and he seems to have a very guilty conscience. He was interviewed by Nora O'Donnell just hours ago about the shooting Saturday night in Washington, D.C.

And Donald Trump reacting to the manifesto of the shooter and he did not like having to contend with the subject matter. Look at how angry Trump gets. He appears to reference a motive in it. He writes this quote, administration officials, they are targets. And he also wrote this. I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. What's your reaction? was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you're you're

horrible people. Can you imagine an interview about a shooting and quoting the shooter's manifesto makes you a horrible person? This is just called basics. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody. Oh, you know, do you think he was referring to you? Excuse me. I'm not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person. I got by the way, the genius of Nora O'Donnell going, oh, you thought he was talking about you because she doesn't actually say that. That is a fascinating move. Associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let's say Epstein or

other things. But I said to myself, you know, I'll do this. interview and they'll probably read the manifesto you know he's a sick person but you should be ashamed of yourself reading that because i'm not any of those things mr president these are the gunmen's excuse me excuse me you shouldn't be reading that on 60 minutes you're a disgrace but go ahead let's finish the interview the other thing that he wrote uh-huh donald trump now openly choosing to say i am not a rapist i am not a pedophile now The, uh, Trump was found liable for sexual assault that a judge indicated met the definition of rape in New York.

Trump saying, I'm not a pedophile. Really measured tone from Trump, isn't it? In attacking the media, what a message of unity that they said, oh, after this shooting, Trump really had a message of unity with the media because he treated, uh, Caitlin Collins a little bit more respectfully. That is not exactly a message of unity. That is not a measured tone. And remember, this is CBS now, one of the most increasingly Trump friendly major media outlets that

there is. O'Donnell talking about the element of the manifesto that addressed Secret Service security. And Trump goes, well, the shooter was more incompetent than Secret Service because the shooter didn't get me. The other thing in the manifesto that I think is. worth looking at in terms of determining his motive. He had been staying at the hotel since Friday. He checked in, he said he had cased the place,

and he wrote, what the hell is the Secret Service doing? And he wrote this quote, I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo. What I got is nothing. He wrote, like this level of incompetence is insane. Sir, you have already had two.

Well, he was pretty incompetent, too, because he got caught and he got caught pretty easily. So I'd say he was pretty incompetent. You know, I can take any event having to do with security or anything else. I can always find fault. Those guys did a good job last night. They did a really good job. You know, one of the things that we've learned about security at the event is that the White House, the administration did not put in place the highest protocol of security. It was high, but not the highest. And one of the things that I noticed while there was that there was this veneer of security

where the street was blocked. I had to walk several blocks away to my Uber, like I said earlier. They had bomb sniffing dogs. They had secret service. They were checking. You know, when the, I was actually waiting for my Uber when the like audio visual equipment was rolling in on these, these. Pelican cases and they had dogs sniffing them and Secret Service was looking each and every one

in each and every one. So that that's all great. But as we later learned, the hotel guests were just walking around and could get all all throughout the lobby. Now, they weren't able to get to Trump. That's true. But this, you know, the security story is really a complicated one because the White House did not put in place the top, top top security protocol. Now, in a weird moment, Trump said, the NFL should sign up the shooter because he was able to run so fast. It did. You can see the gunman running through the metal detectors and he fired off one or two rounds. His speed was rather incredible. Actually, it was, he was like a blur. How did he get that close with the place swarming with security? I will say, look, I say it

because I'm a big fan of the people of law enforcement. And, you know, some of these people, they may be crazy, but they're not stupid. And they figure things out. He ran 45 yards, they say. And he just went to it. And then boom, he popped through it. I mean, he ran like, I think the NFL should sign him up. He was fast.

When you look at it and tape, it's almost like a blur. Right. But it was amazing because as soon as they saw that, you could see them draw their guns. They were so professional, aimed their guns, and then they took them down immediately. Yeah. So anyway, super fast.

know what his 40 time would be in the NFL, but very, very good. One of the interesting things is that Donald Trump does seem to have an increasingly lackadaisical and kind of cavalier attitude in a way about these things. And he just kind of says to Nora O'Donnell, listen, people get assassinated, people get hurt, people get killed. I don't know, there's just, uh, it's just kind of a thing that happens. There's a lot of it. Also with the d- But by the way, Democrats are really the danger he throws- Last night was your secretary of Kennedy Jr.

His sister, Carrie Kennedy, was there. They've both witnessed their father and their uncle. He assassinated. Erica Kirk was there. The House Majority Leader, Steve Scalise, was there. Political violence has touched so many people in that room. Is there something that you as president can do?

What can be done to change the trajectory? You know, you go back 20 years, 40 years, 100 years, 200 years, 500 years, 500 years. It's always been there. People are assassinated. People are injured. People are hurt. And I'm not sure that it's any more now than there was. I do think that the hate speech of the Democrats, much more so, is very dangerous.

I really think it's very dangerous. It's the Democratic hate speech that is really the issue. here. But people get injured. People get hurt. Now, one of the major areas of controversy is that Trump fell down while being evacuated. And Trump could just go, yeah, it was chaotic. I tripped. And then we got out of there. It was crazy. But he can't do that because it's Trump. And here is Trump denying that he fell down saying he was asked to get closer to the ground. You see the security moving quickly within seconds grabbing the vice president by his coat, lifting him up, bringing him out. Then the counter assault comes in, took 10 seconds for them to flank

you, Mr. President, and then 20 seconds to get you out. It looked chaotic. At one point, you were down. What was happening? Well, what happened is it was a little bit of me. I wanted to see what was happening, and I wasn't making it that easy for him. I wanted to see what was going on. And by that time, we started to realize maybe it was a bad problem, different kind of a problem, bad one, and different than what would be normal noise from a ballroom, which you hear all the time. And I was surrounded by great people, and I probably made them act a little bit more slower. I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, let me see, wait a minute. So, you know, I'm telling guys.

Just at that moment where it looks like you go sort of down with the service, you were telling them to wait. Well, I know what happened is then I started walking. with them. I turned, I started walking and then said, please go down, please go down on the floor. So I went down and First Lady went down also, but we were asked to go down by the agents as I was walking. In other words, they wanted you almost to crawl out. I was standing up pretty much. I was standing up and then turned around the opposite direction and started pretty much walking out pretty tall, a little bent over because I, you know, I'm not looking at. couldn't be standing too tall. And, uh, but I was walking out. Listen, this just isn't what happened.

Okay. It's just that that that's not that's not what happened. And if you look at the video, uh, you can see that as they start getting Donald Trump out, he just falls down and then they've got to pick up. See, he just trips and he's down. They didn't say, sir, if you don't mind, would you please he falls down onto his knees. It's okay. It's okay. It's. It's not the most important thing in the world, but he's lying all the time about everything. Now, we're going to come back to that. Finally, Trump asked, were you worried that there were injuries? And Trump goes, nah, I wasn't worried.

People get injured. It's not that he says, no, I don't think anybody got injured. He's just like, people get injured. Not worried about it. I was in the room, not far from you, Mr. President. Could hear what sounded like gunshots or commotion. People nearby could smell the gunpowder. hit the floor. How worried were you that there were going to be injuries? I wasn't worried. I understand

life. We live in a crazy world. I wasn't worried. I understand life. We live in a crazy world. Incredible words from Donald Trump. We're going to come back to the falling down part because that is an important aspect to this. What would the why would the white, White House like interviews to be like with Donald Trump. Well, I have an example for you. Jackie Heinrich interviewed Donald Trump after the White House correspondence dinner shooting. And I'm going to play the end of the interview for you first and then we'll dig into some other aspects of it. This is what they want interviews to be like.

This adulation from Jackie Heinrich. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for the strength. This is how they want interviews to go. And Jackie, with that, I have to go. Okay. I want to thank you, Mr. President, for joining us today.

And I also want to say how grateful we were last night as a member of the board of the White House Correspondents Association and the incoming president of that association, we were very grateful to have you there taking part in a tradition that recognizes the role of a free press in our democracy. And we're all sad that it went the way that it did. We're all grateful that we get to come home to our loved ones. and be together afterward. And thank you for your leadership in the moments afterward

and for coming on and giving the country the strength to not let those who would wish to harm us stop us from our pursuit of our liberties. Well, Jackie, thank you very much. It's very nice. Very nice. Let's do it again. Let's not let people like this change the course of our country.

We're not going to let that happen. So hopefully you guys can get it on and get it together, and I'll be there, I promise. There you go. Trump loves that interview. Notice that? Trump wants that level of praise. That's not journalism.

That is just a puff piece. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for everything. That is insanity. But that is what they consider a good interview. And what Nora O'Donnell did, let me read what the Shooter's Manifesto said. You're nasty. You're terrible.

You should be ashamed to yourself. Journalism is disgusting, according to Donald Trump. Mr. President, thank you. Thank you for your strength and thank you for everything. Jackie, thank you so much. That's very nice. That's very great interview. Great interview. Let's do it again. So then when you see the level on which Trump was answering questions during this thing, you sort of have to then put two and two together and go, oh, he can't speak clearly and coherently about anything. No wonder he needs to be treated in this way. Listen to this. But what you're referring to is that when you have, you know, lines of vast amounts of oil pouring through your system, if for any reason that line is closed because you can't continue to put it into containers or ships, which has happened to them, they have no ships because of the blockade.

What happens is that line explodes from within, both mechanically and in the earth, it something happens where it just explodes. And they say they only have about three days left before that happens. And when it explodes, you can never, regardless, you can never rebuild it the way it was. In other words, it will always be, if you rebuild it, it's hard to rebuild it all, but it would only be about 50% of what it is right now. So it's a very powerful thing that takes place, sort of having to do with nature. But when that gets clogged at the end, in other words, when you have to turn it up because you have no place to store the soil,

either put it on chips or storage tanks, which it has to do with nature, folks. That incoherence is why he wants easy interviews because any serious questioning leads to Trump going, I'm not a rapist. I'm not a pedophile like he did in that other interview. Trump asked about Iran and he goes, we did everything great. And by the way, NATO sucks. We've wiped out, largely wiped out the opposition. If we ever had to. keep going would wipe them out very quickly, the rest of it, the remainder. And I hope we don't have to do that, but it may be possible that we do. You know, they have no cohesion. Their leadership is very, very strange. Sometimes you don't have any idea of how you're dealing with. But it's just,

you know, one of these things that we're going to get it, we're going to win, but NATO was not there for us. And I would ask, would you like to join us? And they said, sir, we don't want to get involved. And yeah, they said, we don't want to get involved. And frankly, when they said, we don't want to get involved, as you know, UK said that, oh, no, we'll send ships as soon as the war is over. And that's not good. That's not good. We just can't have that. So we are not happy. Let me put it this way. Just finish it up. We are not happy with NATO. We know. And Trump doesn't give a damn about institutions, that's a theme. But as soon as he wants help for his little war that he decided to start optionally, NATO sucks. Why won't they join my war? Finally, if anyone

is still holding out hope of Donald Trump as an effective arbiter to an end in the Russia-Ukraine war, which was going to end a day after he got elected and a day after this and a day after that, we are in month 16 of Trump's second term and it's still raging. Trump has essentially given up. You reference Ukraine. Have you spoken with President Putin at all recently? Where does that negotiation stand? We're trying to get something done, but the fighting continues.

And it's a very bloody war. It's a very bad. I settled eight wars. This is one that I thought I would have had the easiest time. The hatred between President Putin and President Zelensky is ridiculous. It's crazy. And hate is a bad thing. Hate is a bad thing when you're trying to settle something.

So there you go. So Trump basically saying we're out. And with that, we are out. We knew he wasn't going to resolve it. And he hasn't. And it's month 16. And he goes, well, if Putin and Zelensky just didn't dislike each other so much, we'd be in great shape.

The peacemaker president of the United States, truly pathetic stuff. One of the weird things about getting older is realizing how many photos never. go anywhere. They sit in your phone even when they are great pictures that matter. And this is why an Aura digital picture frame makes a great Mother's Day gift. Our sponsor, Aura, makes digital frames that turn photos into memories that can be enjoyed every day. I gave one to my mom years ago for Mother's Day. It's so easy. You can preload photos before the frame even arrives. You can keep adding pictures and so can other people. I can add pictures. I can add pictures. pictures of the baby anytime I want, even though we don't live that close to each other.

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The link is in the description. There can be a real gap between wanting to be informed and having the time to sit down and read full nonfiction books. That gap is what Blinkist is built for. Our sponsor, Blinkist, is an app that takes the most important ideas from nonfiction books and condenses them into short reads or listens that you can get through in about 15 minutes. What I like is that it's not just summaries for the sake of speed. It's really curated.

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in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. The questions are, was anybody hurt who did this, what happened? How do we keep people safe? And that makes sense. Now, as we are starting to debrief and kind of process everything that took place, it's impossible to ignore that the entire thing, again, is a reminder of the degree to which Donald Trump is declining. And we have a lot of this stuff on video. Donald Trump's denials of what is on video are only further raising questions as to what is wrong with this guy. And this is not about the politics of it so much as it is about, hey, we have the ability to look at what's going on. And then we have someone telling us what your eyes show you was not really what took place. Now, one of the things that you can tell is that you can tell is that

when Donald Trump is, there's an attempt to escort Trump out by Secret Service, there is some sensitivity to what is going on. Trump is not moving cleanly. Trump is not moving quickly. There's instability in his ability to move around. And he fell down. Okay. From every angle, Trump goes down very quickly and he has to be helped up.

sort of reacts and goes, whoa, what is going on here? And as you look at the video, you see that Trump is up and then he just trips. And Trump after the fact, we'll look at the video as we looked at earlier. Trump tried to say, no, secret service asked me to get closer to the ground. You can tell there that Trump trips. That's all. That's all that happened. And we'll play it again. And you can see trip. He just goes down. He is not. There's no conversation. They pick him up. He's moving. and then they falls down. His gate is unstable as he starts to walk away and then he falls down and everybody reacts and tries to pick him up. And the reason you know that this wasn't Trump told to be closer to the ground by Secret Service is that when he falls, they immediately pick him up.

Why would they immediately stand him up if they were telling him to get down? It's because he fell. Trump is not walking steadily. We know that. And then we. get to what is arguably the more serious part. Trump denies that he fell. He says it didn't happen. But the video is the video. He lost his balance. You see Secret Service reacting to a guy who fell. You see the assistance to get Trump back up. And the question here is, is Trump lying when he says, I didn't fall? Or does Trump not have any memory of the thing? Does Trump not really know what went on where we add cognitive issues onto physical issues. I'm going to replay the discussion about this from the 60 minutes interview.

You see the security moving quickly within seconds grabbing the vice president by his coat, lifting him up, bringing him out. Then the counter assault comes in, took 10 seconds for them to flank you, Mr. President, and then 20 seconds to get you out. It looked chaotic at one point. You were down. What was happening? Well, what happened is it was a little bit me. I wanted to see what was happening, and I wasn't making it that easy for him. I wanted to see what was going on.

And by that time, we started to realize maybe it was a bad problem, different kind of a problem, bad one, and different than what would be normal noise from a ballroom, which you hear all the time. And I was surrounded by great people, and I probably made them act a little bit a little bit more slower. I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let me see. Wait a minute. So, you know, I'm telling guys. Just at that moment where it looks like you go sort of down

with the service, you were telling them to wait. Well, I know what happened is then I started walking with him. I turned, I started walking. And then said, please go down. Please go down on the floor. So I went down and First Lady went down also. But we were asked to go down by the agents as I was walking. In other words, they wanted you almost to crawl out. I was standing up pretty much. So there's no real ambiguity here. It's not, oh, he might have fallen. He didn't.

Maybe there was a conversation about where they said was, sir, please what, why don't you get closer to the ground? That didn't happen. Trump fell down and then he says he didn't fall down. Now zoom out for a second. High stress situation. The expectation would be simple. The president moves quickly, follows direction and gets out.

We didn't see that. What we saw is agents guiding Trump in a way that is more. is more physical support than it is security protocol. And I think that that connects to the bigger issue that we are seeing here, which is that we've still never had real health transparency from Donald Trump. And you might be saying, well, but there's so much else going on. There's the shooting that. Yes.

But we still see the same theme. We have no comprehensive credible medical records. We have no consistent reporting and disclosure on Trump's health. We have no clear picture of his medical condition. The healthiest president ever and healthier than Obama was when Obama was in his 40s and was president doesn't make any sense. Presidents release detailed health information that's accessible to the public. It provides basic levels of trust and accountability.

And with Trump, transparency has never existed. So when something like this happens on camera, all of a sudden it's like, whoa, wait a second. That guy doesn't look nearly as healthy as the one they. describe whenever they talk about Donald Trump's health. And people are going to ask questions and they should. Is this a one-off stumble? Is this a pattern? Is this what it's like behind the scenes with Trump all the time? Is there an underlying issue we don't know about or is there an underlying issue we may know a little bit about but not the full story? And the reality is we all know if this were a Democratic president, it would be the story on right wing media. Can we really

be safe as a country if the president has to be handled as as if he can barely move around under his own power. We are at risk as a nation if the president can't simply move quickly out of the way with secret service, fitness for office and all of the stuff. So the standard has to be consistent. What we saw here was not normal movement under pressure. And the denial afterwards saying it didn't happen when it very clearly did that makes it much worse because now it's not just about the incident. It's credibility. We're going to show you the video and then deny what is in the video. What?

So of course we're asking the obvious questions and whether people like it or not. This goes to the basic ability of the president to function in exactly these kinds of moments. And based on what we saw falling down and then saying, no, they said, sir, would you mind if it's not too much of a problem, getting a little bit closer to the ground, come on, guys. The decline is clear and it is a second order story with this entire shooting fiasco. We've got to look at an exchange that took place on CNN because it encapsulates a massive problem in political media right now. N reporter Dana Bash tries to tee up the idea that democratic rhetoric is somehow responsible for

violence against Donald Trump. And the way it falls apart is almost immediate. She's interviewing our friend Congressman Jamie Raskin and Jamie Raskin is ready for this. And Jamie Raskin says, what rhetoric are you talking about, Dana? Let's look at the video and then there is a lot to discuss here. Yeah, and you have, as many of your fellow Democrats, have you some heated rhetoric against the president. And do you think twice about that when something like this happens? What rhetoric do you have in mind?

Just talking about some of the fact that he, you know, is terrible for this country and so on and so forth. I understand that that's your Democratic right. But overall, do you have a responsibility? I have no personal problem with Donald Trump at all. I mean, I talk about the policies of this administration. administration, the authoritarianism like we saw on display in Minneapolis where two of our citizens were gunned down in the streets simply for exercising their First Amendment rights, Renee Good, Alex Prattie, and others have died in custody.

I'm talking about policies. I don't personalize it. And I certainly have never called the press the enemy of the people. I think the press are the people's best friend. And that's why it's written right there into the First Amendment. All right. So Jamie Raskin gets like 99% of the people. this right. I'm going to tell you the part that I don't agree with as much in a moment. But he does

something very simple. He goes, what rhetoric are you talking about? And Dana Bash goes, well, that he's terrible for this country. That's kind of a big part of the job of being a voter and an elected official. Are the people in power good for the country or bad for the country? That can't count as inflammatory rhetoric. Now, it's important to contrast it and compare it with things Donald Trump has said that the leftist scum, lunatics, vermin, radical, demonic, the enemy within. He said it about the press. What about all of that rhetoric? Well, I think Trump is terrible for the country.

You just caused the shooting. Give me a break, guys. Saying a politician is bad for the country is being floated as contributing to violence. That is where we are right now, apparently. And it cannot be that substantive political criticism is treated as incitement. That is not how a functioning political system works. If you remove the ability to say this person's bad for the country, you quite literally can't have debates anymore.

You would have to have silence. You would have to weigh in about people's clothing and hair if we're not allowed to talk about that. Now, the analogy here is really simple. Imagine that you say to a friend, I think you're handling the situation poorly and they punch you in the face. That's not your fault. The responsibility is on the person who chose violence. Same thing here.

If someone commits an act of violence, if you're directly inciting, right, if Democrats were going around saying, you know what, I believe that someone should shoot Trump, that's different. That's different. If you say, as Trump has, let's rough up the protesters, let's not be too gentle with the protesters. You're saying, go and do this thing. But that's not even what Dana Bash is suggesting. She goes, well, you said he's terrible for the country. Come on. Come on. We have to look at those who are committing the act of violence. And what's frustrating about this exchange is how low the bar has

gotten because it's not they're not even threats. They're not calls to violence. It's saying, Political figure harmful to the country. Basic political speech. That's why we have elections to figure out who's good for the country, who's bad, who's terrible. Now, to Jamie Raskin's credit, he didn't take the bait. He forces it into the open by saying what rhetoric. However, however, and this is where I disagree with Jamie Raskin. When Raskin goes, I don't have a personal problem with Trump.

I kind of disagree with that. Why wouldn't you? I don't know if Jamie Raskin. felt sort of pushed around and forced to say, I don't have a, it's not even a personal thing with Trump. I just think his policies are bad. If you believe someone is damaging democratic institutions, undermining elections, pushing policies that hurt the country, why wouldn't you have a personal problem with that guy? I certainly would and I do. It's the logical conclusion. The idea we have to sanitize criticism.

I don't have a problem with them personally, but that is arguably part of the problem because it creates this false equivalence. On the one side, you have people making arguments about policy governance and the direction of this country. On the other side, you have actual incitement to violence. Rough up the protesters, don't be too nice, all of this stuff. They're vermin, they're scump. And the conversation becomes, is the criticism too harsh?

It's backwards. The criticism is part of democracy. The violence is a breakdown of democracy. We shouldn't confuse the two things. So Jamie Raskin does a very good job of not taking the bait, but I wouldn't even have gone to. I don't have a personal problem. He's terrible for the country.

He's hurt so many people, including many of my constituents. I have a real problem with this guy. He doesn't respect the Constitution. He doesn't respect the Bill of Rights. We're fundamentally talking here. about whether Americans, including those in the media, are allowed to criticize power. It's in the Constitution, folks. And so Dana Bash with a disastrously framed question.

Maybe she was trying to generate controversy. But Jamie Raskin doing a good job there of saying, what rhetoric criticizing the president? That is not an incitement to violence. Everything you do on your phone paints a picture of your life going back years. Cell phone carriers track, sell, and sometimes leak that data. But our sponsor, CAPE, offers an alternative. Cape is America's privacy-centered mobile carrier. You get unlimited call, text, and 5G coverage, just like with other carriers.

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You can get 60% off when you go to incogny.com slash Pacman and use the code Pacman. The link is in the description. There are people on the left about to get played and I want to prevent it from happening. That's why I want to talk about this today. There is something happening on parts of the political left right now that is more than just wrong. It is so naive and it is going to have real consequences if we don't put a stop to it right now. The idea is that Tucker Carlson has now apologized for helping to support Donald Trump. He has said some things that sound anti-war and there are people on the left naively falling for

it and saying, look, maybe there's an opportunity here to work with some of these people. Maybe we can make a coalition with Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Green. I saw a couple of posts from Jenk Uger, who I've known for a very long time. I just saw him in Washington, D.C., where he posted something along these lines. Listen, Tucker apologize and that sort of thing. This is a very bad idea. And this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how politics actually works and what these people believe what these people want and it's confusing rhetoric with an actual alignment on policy and on values and on long-term goals. I've said before that populist rhetoric can be very deceptive. And it is designed to do exactly this policy. I'm sorry, a populist rhetoric flattens very

complicated issues into emotional, easy to agree with statements that feel like common ground when they really aren't. I've talked about this before. You hear the system is corrupt. We should stop funding this war. We must make sure that the average person isn't crushed by the desires of the elites. Now, who the elites are? Is it? Is it big corporations? Is it the Jews? Is it we must stop the elite? Okay. That rhetoric is designed to trigger agreement without any deep existence. examination of what comes next. What comes next is the most important thing. I've said before that you might hear a couple of sentences from Bernie Sanders and a couple of sentences from Tucker Carlson and they will be very similar because they are employing populist rhetoric.

But when you ask Tucker, what is the solution here? It is an atrocity. And that that is the whole trick. That's where the differences matter. We'll talk about Tucker. Tucker's criticisms are not rooted in consistent principled frameworks that align with progressive or center left policies. He is not an ally of the progressives or of the center left. He comes to this populist sounding rhetoric from a nationalist world view that prioritizes very different outcomes, completely at odds with democratic norms, completely at odds with global stability and completely at odds with basic pluralism, which I as a person of the left certainly value and want. So the rhetoric will overlap on an issue on two only in a very

narrow context. The underlying project that these people are pushing is completely different. You've got to see that. If you don't see that, you are not engaging with politics at a serious level, you're being naive. You are reacting to tone, but we've got to react to substance and to ideology here. This is why most people on the center left and in the progressive sphere are not going to fall for this. And I'm glad about that. They recognize the pattern. We saw this before. When you had some of these same people nominally on the left before the 2024 election going, Trump's outflanking Kamala on the left. Trump's the real anti-war guy.

Trump is actually the person who's going to deal with Gaza in a more humane way. So naive. And I said it at the time and we've been proven correct. This falling for this crap leads to disastrous political decisions and empowering the worst possible people. And if you start believing that when the rhetoric sounds kind of similar, the policy alignment is also there, you're going to completely misread who is going to advance your goals and who is going to undermine your goals. Over time, that confusion is going to weaken movements and it will fracture coalitions and it will

create openings for really bad people with terrible ideas to come to power. Now, there's an attention component here that people also are ignoring. When you praise figures like Tucker because he apologized, even in a limited way, you're amplifying them and you're exposing audiences to their broader messaging. Now, when I covered Tucker's maya culpa, I pointed out it's completely cynical. It lacks real self-reflection and it should not make anybody think that Tucker is now an ally. I was very clear about that. That is different from what we are seeing some of these people do.

Now, none of this means you can't acknowledge when someone lands on a position you agree with. Of course you can. Sometimes it's worth pointing out. Hey, here's an issue. I've pointed out. Rand Paul, if you care about the constitution and the Bill of Rights, Rand Paul is a relatively reliable person there. We have overlap.

He is at odds with the entire MAGA movement. But that doesn't mean that Rand Paul is actually. an ally. It doesn't mean that we're going to build a movement here by adding Rand Paul to it because he just doesn't, not because I wouldn't if he actually had the right policy views, but because he doesn't. And so it's important to realize that these are simply not not allies. Oh, but David, aren't you being in some way exclusionary? No, I'm saying they're simply not allies on policy. If they were, I would include them. They're not allies on policy. And so you've got to make sure you're not substituting a narrow rhetorical overlap with thinking that these are actually

political allies. Politics is not about who says the thing that sounds good in a clip. Unfortunately, it has become a proxy for what politics is about. But the real question is who do you consistently support in power? And when you look at that, the idea that these figures are allies collapses instantly. And what's left is a warning sign. So don't fall for it. My friends on the left, don't fall for it. On the bonus show, I was there for the Jim Acosta, Julie K. Brown, Michael Tracy fight in Washington, D.C. There is extensive reporting about it. And I'm going to tell you what I saw. And then we will judge for ourselves. I'll have more stories from Washington, D.C., much more about the growth of independent media and

so many great things. All of that today on the bonus show. Sign up at join packman.com and get all of my deep dives, including one into conspiracy theories and how they work, why they appeal to people on my substaff at David packman.com slash subsdap.