The David Pakman Show - We have to admit, America was warned

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

-- On the Show: -- Midterm voters will decide whether Donald Trump faces congressional oversight during the remaining two years of his presidency -- Donald Trump proudly displays a printout of an article to reporters without realizing it credits Joe Biden for lowering drug prices -- Donald Trump looks resentful as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt prepares to leave her position to focus on her young children -- Republican lawmakers and officials leave their positions while Donald Trump struggles with low public approval ratings -- Senator Jon Ossoff criticizes Donald Trump for golfing while sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln endure extended military deployments -- Trump issues an incoherent social media post announcing a reduction in joint military exercises with South Korea to appease North Korea -- Footage from a Long Island event reveals a large rectangular protrusion in Trump's trousers as he walks away from the podium -- Republicans act surprised by the corruption and institutional damage caused by Donald Trump after electing him -- On the Bonus Show: Stories from David's trip to Los Angeles, and much more... 📜 Trust & Will: Save 20% on your estate planning at https://trustandwill.com/pakman 👔 Southern Gents: Use code PAKMAN for 10% off your entire order at https://s-gents.com 😺 Smalls cat food: Use code PAKMAN for 60% off & free shipping at https://smalls.com 🥐 Wildgrain: Use code DAVID for $30 off & free croissants FOR LIFE at https://wildgrain.com/david ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/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) Start (01:22) Midterm voters can rein in Trump (08:37) Trump takes credit for Biden's drug prices (19:38) Trump appears upset with Karoline Leavitt (26:19) Republicans leave their posts over Trump (34:59) Jon Ossoff calls out for golfing during war (43:56) Trump appeases North Korea (51:27) Strange moment from Trump event (58:44) Republicans shouldn't be surprised Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We have a presidency here that is sort of like a loyalty cult that is separating at the seams as loyalties are troubled. And what we're seeing today are aides heading for the exits. Caroline Levitt choosing her kids over Trump. How dare she? And Trump seems very troubled by it. We're also going to hear from Senator John Assoff, who really is now just publicly connecting Donald Trump to the weird stuff going on with Natalie Harp and the Iran war.

And Donald Trump accidentally promotes an article which credits Joe Biden for falling prescription drug prices under Trump. And then a wildly incoherent announcement from the administration involving North Korea, South Korea, and Iran. And it is raising some major new questions. With the midterms approaching, I also want to speak directly to anybody considering staying home, which I hope is nobody in my audience. been warned about situations like this and the opportunity to impose some accountability is coming.

And I'm worried some people are going to stay home and they're not going to vote. So I want to speak directly to those folks. What a show. It is great to be back in the studio. If you are eligible to vote in 2026 and you are not planning to vote, I need to speak directly to you today. And the primary question is, why the F are you not planning to vote? The stakes are so high. And before anybody says, oh, David voting in 2026 is not going to remove Donald Trump from office.

I know that. I understand how presidential terms work. I've made it clear that unless Donald Trump dies, he is going to be president until January of 2029. He's not going to disappear the morning after the midterms. But that is just not the argument. Think of the 2026 election as the process of hiring the departure. committee for Donald Trump. You are choosing the people who are going to oversee the final two years

of Donald Trump's presidency. You are deciding who controls the committees. Who has investigative power to look into the corruption? Who has subpoena power? Who can block terrible legislation? Who can place limits on an administration that is demonstrating its contempt for limits on its power time and time again. And so what we have to understand is that if control of Congress changes or even just the House of Representatives, Trump is neutered politically. His agenda is dead and his officials can be forced to testify. His administration can be buried in investigations into misconduct and corruption and conflicts of interest and abuses of power. Will that remove Trump immediately? No, it's not going to remove Donald Trump immediately, but it can mire Trump in oversight for two years

and expose what his administration has been doing. It'll weaken MAGA. It'll make it way more difficult for Donald Trump to spend the remainder of his presidency operating without any meaningful resistance. And then it sets up 2028. And this is, you know, if you're in the camp of I don't care about midterms, I care about who's the next president, then you should still be voting in 2026, because what happens in November is going to set up circumstances for 2028. The people elected in 26 are going to be in office during the next presidential election. They may be responsible for protecting that election. They may be responsible for responding to another attempt from Republicans to undermine results.

And so we need to vote now to ensure that the next transfer of power happens. Now let me deal with another common excuse. My vote doesn't matter. When did an election come down to just one vote? Your vote feels insignificant because elections involve millions of people, but consider what happens if everybody who thinks exactly as you do stays home. I've explained this to people so many times. When one person goes, what are the odds my vote changes the result?

Well, the odds that your vote changes the result are low. But there are millions of people out there who say the same thing to themselves. They go, what are the odds my vote changes the result? If that group of people, if everyone who wonders about the power of their one vote stays home, collectively, that is more than enough votes to flip every single election result. The group that is worried about the power of a single vote together can flip an election. If 10,000 people in a competitive district each decide, oh, my vote is meaningless, that is no longer a meaningless vote as a group. That is 10,000 missing votes.

Elections are decided by those accumulated decisions. Nobody believes a single raindrop causes a flood, but the flood is made up of individual raindrops. Maybe you believe the Democratic Party has failed to meet the moment. And that's really why you're thinking about staying home. Or maybe you think the candidates are too cautious or too corporate or too old or too weak or too radical or terrible at communicating. Some of those criticisms are completely legitimate in individual cases. You have to look at each election, of course, but these are not, you know, Trump and his love letters to Kim Jong-un. These are not love letters. These are hiring decisions at the end of the day. And so you are choosing who gets power and refusing to choose won't

leave the position empty. It's going to let someone else fill it. And Donald Trump supporters understand this because they routinely vote for candidates. that they previously said they're a liar, they're a fraud, they're an idiot. Because a lot of these Trump supporters realize, well, I'd rather put in our fraud than let these Democrats get any power. And they know that the political power rests with the result of these elections. Now, meanwhile, there are some people on the left treating voting like a restaurant review. You know, if the candidate didn't provide a perfect experience, I'm going to leave one star and never come back. I think that that's a very dangerous way.

to think about power. The 2026 election is not going to instantly solve the problem of MAGA, but it is going to determine whether Trump spends his final two years with these compliant accomplices in the House and Senate or some actual oversight. And it's going to determine whether they enter 2028 strengthened where Trump has the ability to pick his replacement and that replacement has a good shot at becoming the next president or whether MAGA is going to MAGA is going to enter 2028 wounded with Trump increasingly unable to pick his successor and whoever the nominee is increasingly unlikely to win. So you don't need to be inspired.

We just need to think about the circumstances and the assignment. We're hiring Donald Trump's departure committee. And so we simply need to show up and vote. Now in different parts of the country, the stakes are different. You may be voting in elections. This could be House Senate, gubernatorial. It just applies to whatever is relevant to your specific situation. You might be choosing between an incumbent Democrat and a challenger Republican.

Or you might be choosing between a Republican and a Democrat in a race where the incumbent is retiring and the incumbent might be a Republican or it might be a Democrat. It might be a Democrat who's up for reelection. All of these different scenarios are there. It is always useful and important and empowering to make your vote one of the votes that decides who your representatives are going to be. And so I hope that there are not really people in my audience who are thinking about staying home and not voting.

If you are thinking about not voting or stay home, please leave a comment on this video, send me an email info at david packman.com and tell me, I. I am not going to vote because and I want to hear from you will feature if there are such people in my audience. I really hope there aren't many. But if there are such people in the audience, we'll feature some of the reasons you're thinking about not voting in an upcoming Friday feedback. But let's hope that that number is few and far between.

Donald Trump just staged an entire photo op to brag about an article that he apparently did not read because the article says Joe Biden deserves the credit. Look at this. Donald Trump walked up to reporters holding a printout. And in that printout, you can see that there is an article. And the article is of a Washington Post story. And the headline is prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years. And Donald Trump had it printed out by his human printer Natalie Harp.

He proudly displayed it. He asked reporters, hey, have you seen that? He made sure that the cameras would capture it. And he read aloud the headline and declared, I'm sorry. told you that this was going to happen. And then the White House took the image and blasted it all over social media with the caption, POV, you bring the receipts. Trump taking credit, but there was only one little problem. And this is why we read the articles. This is why we don't just stop with the headlines. This is why we don't allow Donald Trump and people like him to bamboozle us with printouts.

The receipt says it is thanks to Joe Biden. Had Donald Trump been able to read or had anybody working in the White House communications operation bothered to read the article, they would have noticed that the article is talking about a Biden-era policy as the explanation for the drop in prescription drug prices. You look at the article that Trump is bragging about and it says there is a policy in the inflation reduction act, of course, signed by President Biden back in 22. And what it did was give Medicare the authority you to negotiate prices for a bunch of expensive and widely used prescription drugs. And we covered this extensively. We gave you the list of the first drugs that were being negotiated, the most commonly

used drugs, most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States. And these first negotiated prices, which happened thanks to a Biden law and which were negotiated mostly while Biden was president, took effect at the start of this year. And so we now find a situation where even though the prices of almost everything are up under Donald Trump. Prescription drug prices were down about 3% compared to a year earlier. And it is true. That's the steepest decline in a single year in more than six decades. The only problem for Trump is that Biden's Medicare negotiations are the reason why those prices are down. It's not because of anything Donald Trump did. Now, this doesn't prove that every single penny of the decline is because of Joe Biden's law. It is out of course the case

that drug pricing is complex. Several forces can affect the numbers. But Trump wasn't making a nuanced argument about competing economic variables and complexity. He was waving around an article going, look, it's proof that I did it. But if you go and you read the article, which we're linking to, it says, well, the bulk of this is because of Joe Biden's policy, a policy which Trump, and MAGA and Republicans said was a bad idea, the inflation reduction act. It is difficult to imagine a more perfect encapsulation of Donald Trump. He sees a flattering headline and he stops reading if he is even the one reading the headline, maybe somebody is reading it to him.

And he assumes it's got to be about me. And so his staff goes and they turn it into propaganda. They posted everywhere on the White House accounts. And nobody stops for a second to go, wait a second. Our source contradicts the claim. The article says it's because of Biden. So it's not that Trump failed to disprove the Biden argument. He carried the Biden argument to the cameras and held it up and said, you have to take a picture

of this. Look at this. And when you look at it, you see that it says, this is thanks to Joe Biden. Now, there is sort of a deeper irony here, which is that Republicans spent years attacking the inflation reduction. Act. And one of Trump's priorities, in addition to dismantling everything that Barack Obama did as president, is dismantling the legacy of Joe Biden. It's one of sort of the organizing principles of Trump's second term is we have to undo as much as we can of Joe Biden's legacy. In this case, a Biden

policy gave Trump something he wanted to brag about. So now he goes, this was, it was all me. I'm the one who did it. And this is how the Trump operation of disinformation, works. The headline is the story. You brag and the image is circulated and there is no context. And I guess they don't assume that supporters of Trump are going to read any further. And they're probably right. But it is wild that Trump is bringing us the evidence that it's thanks to Biden. He walks onto the tarmac and proudly holds it up and goes, look at what I did. What else do I have to say? This is it. This is the proof. And the truth is Trump doesn't have to say anything else. He pointed us to the article. We looked at the article and it was thanks

to Joe Biden that this took place. Now, I think that this is a bigger story also about voting. What I mean by that is one of the things that really influences who people choose to vote for is who they believe is responsible for different things. And so there was this unfortunate situation after Obamacare in 2010 where Obama, I'll just quickly remind you, Obamacare included a provision for expanding Medicaid, but it required governors to say, yes, we're going to do it. And there were a bunch of people in red states when Obamacare was passed who did not see the Medicaid expansion because their governors said we're not going to do it. And when it came time to vote in 2012 and they were, it was time to choose between Mitt Romney

and Barack Obama, a lot of these voters who should have been blaming their governor said, well, I'm voting for Romney over Obama because Obama supposedly. did Obamacare, but it didn't help me. And a big part of that reason was their Republican governor, not the Democratic president in Washington, D.C., who got Obamacare passed. It was the Republican governor who said, we're going to opt out of that Medicaid expansion. So who voters believe is responsible for things has a massive effect on how people vote. And it is another reason why it is really crucial that we get these stories out there and what is now, uh, I guess it must be about 13, 80, 85 days, I guess, roughly until these midterms.

Because we, not everything is about blame and credit. But when it comes to how are you going to vote for a lot of voters, it is about who do I believe is responsible for the status quo. And for the most part, we have seen a promise about all your prices are going to go down and affordability is going to be great that have been made by Donald Trump. For the most part, those promises have failed. Energy prices are up, housing prices are up, groceries are up, cost of living is up in general. We have this narrow decline in pharmaceutical prices and they want credit for it, but that's the

exception that proves the rule. Just about everything Trump has done has raised prices, but the one area where we're seeing prices decline is because of the Inflation Reduction Act and Medicare negotiations on prescription drugs put in place by Joe Biden, mostly negotiated by the Biden administration. This matters. People vote on this stuff. And so we are going to keep covering it, even if the White House would rather no one find out why this is actually taking place.

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The ordering is really straightforward. The shipping was super fast. Go to s dash gents.com and use the code. Packman for 10% off your entire order. The link is in the description. Unlike many other shows, the David Packman Show is an audience funded program. We are primarily directly funded by you through the membership program, which you can read about and sign up for at join packman.com. We do an extra show every single day for our members called The Bonus Show. Oh, the bonus show where you want to make money. Everybody else that makes money to fund themselves as bad.

Guilty is charged, Alex Jones. We do the bonus show. We've got a bunch of other great benefits. You can read about it at join packman.com. We are going to keep going. Listen, Trump administration is trying to shut down my new book. Trump administration has put me on a media offenders list, incredibly authoritarian and oppressive, but we're going to keep going. We're going to keep going. and I appreciate everybody's support in order to be able to do that. Join packman.com is the place to sign up. Donald Trump has discovered that outgoing White House press secretary Caroline Levitt is loyal to her own children over Donald Trump. How on earth could this possibly be? And even when Trump presents

this as sort of a joke, the joke reveals Trump's understanding of loyalty. Here is a Donald Trump being interviewed. And he goes, I'm concerned that Caroline likes her kids more than she likes me. But if you look at Donald Trump's expressions, if you look at Donald Trump's demeanor, you can tell that while this is couched as a joke, Trump doesn't really get it. Trump isn't happy. Trump is furious that Caroline Levitt is leaving. And he looks genuinely resentful. Take a look at this. Is Caroline Levitt replaceable? No, she's not. I, she really, isn't. She's standing right over there and she's done a great job. You have somebody in mind? She likes her children more than she likes Trump. I'm very concerned about that.

It's a lot to juggle, right? And you said you support that going back. Is there somebody have in mind that you'd like to see up at the podium to take over? You, how about you? She could do the job? I think so. What do you think, Carolyn? I like it. I've always liked you. That's why I'm doing this. I don't do this that often. I get off. I make a speech. Here I come off and we see Alexis. You have done a great. He gets off and he comes off. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Anything else that I didn't ask you, you wanted to make news in this interview. Yeah. Trump appears genuinely resentful. He, uh, the idea that someone might have priorities unrelated to Trump is crazy to him. Now, Caroline Leavitt recently said she's leaving

the press secretary position at the end of this month. She wants to spend more time with her young kids. Reasonable if that's the real reason. There are suggestions that she's sort of leaving a sinking ship and oftentimes it is the final press secretary who is remembered and maybe she's trying to get out of Dodge before it all goes really, really south in the midterms. But she came back from maternity leave after giving birth in May and she, I guess, is going to remain some kind of outside Trump advisor. And to the extent that that is the real explanation, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, it is a completely normal decision.

But Trump turns it into this question of who does she like more? Does she like me more or does she like her kids more? And the reason that the joke kind of works is because everybody understands the underlying reality, which is that there's an expectation from Donald Trump that the people around him will organize their identities around him. This is very common from cult leaders. It is the expectation about cult members. And many cult members do acquiesce to that.

Think about Mike Pence. Mike Pence defended him for three years, 11 months, and 15 days. whatever it worked out to be. But there was this final demand that Mike Pence refused because he couldn't do it constitutionally, which is, I'm not going to try to help you overturn an election. That's all he did. And immediately, Mike Pence becomes an enemy. Jeff Sessions was an early supporter. Feels like ancient history at this point. Follow Justice Department recusal rules as Trump's attorney general and said, I'm not going to get involved in this whole Russia investigation thing. and Donald Trump never forgave Jeff Sessions. And so what we come to learn is that loyalty for Trump

is a one-way deal. Caroline Levitt has been extraordinarily loyal. And I don't say this in the positive way. Like it's a disgusting sort of loyalty where she defends all of Trump lies, and she attacks journalists on Trump's behalf and insists whatever Trump said today is consistent with what he said yesterday. Even we know that that is not the case. And even her decision to leave while still supporting him is a referendum on whether she's sufficiently devoted to him. And we know, we know that Donald Trump is obsessed with sufficient loyalty. That is a big topic for Donald Trump. And it, what Trump really wants is the sort of loyalty, I guess, that he gets from Natalie

Harp, who just follows him around like a puppy dog printing out positive tweets about him or whatever. That's what Trump wants. Now we get to the replacement question. Who is it going to be? That replaces Caroline Leavitt. There were a bunch of rumors that Anna Kelly, the deputy press secretary, would be replacing Caroline Leavitt. That is not right now what is visible on the betting markets. So if you look at the Kalshi betting markets for who will be Trump's next press secretary, it is Alina Haba estimated to have a 34% chance, Anna Kelly at 24% percent. and Scott Jennings at 17%. So no real consensus right now as to who is the most likely person.

Out of these choices, I think Alina Haba is kind of like the maximum combat choice. She's been visible. She's really aggressive. She's been personally loyal to Trump. So that would be a possibility. Anna Kelly would be the most, you know, she's the continuity choice. She knows the operation. She's the deputy press secretary.

That's probably the smoothest one. And then Jennings is kind of interesting because he's polished and combative and experienced. He has a big kind of more recent media presence. And he knows how to defend Trump before very skeptical audiences. My guess is Haba, if Trump wants this biggest spectacle, Kelly would be for stability. And Jennings, if Trump can persuade him to surrender his lucrative TV. work. I think that those are sort of the parameters here. There's also a chance that Donald Trump will just kind of rotate people through. That's another move Trump likes to do, which is going to

sort of set up a competition for who is going to be the most loyal. I am the one who most strongly needs to defend Trump. And there would be sort of a competition for that. Trump really likes effective communicators. He doesn't like other people becoming the story. And right now, Caroline Levitt's kids have defeated Trump in a sense in the battle for her. her attention. Trump doesn't like that. And there's another relevant question here, which is, is the departure of Caroline Levitt a one-off of sorts? Or is it part of a pattern of abandonment of Donald Trump? I believe the answer is that it is very clearly a pattern of abandonment. They're quitting and leaving Trump all alone. And that is what I want to talk about next. Trump is increasingly

surrounded by people leaving. They're leaving me all alone. alone, staffers are leaving. Loyalists are being discarded. Republicans are heading for the exits. Voters are abandoning Donald Trump. And to say that this is a chaotic second administration is a very serious understatement. Now, we already talked about the latest departure. It's White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt. She's leaving at the end of the month. She wants to spend more time with her kids. And Trump reacted exactly as one would expect. We looked at this clip before. I'll play it again just to include it here. Trump's sort of like, how could it be that she prefers her kids to me?

Is Caroline Levitt replaceable? No, she's not. She really isn't. She's standing right over there and she's done a great job. You have somebody in mind? She likes her children more than she likes Trump. I'm very concerned about that. It's a lot to juggle, right?

And you said you support that going back. Is there somebody have in mind that you'd like to see up at the podium to take over? You. How about you? She could do the job? I think so. What do you think, Caroline? I like it. I've always liked you. That's why I'm doing this. I don't do this at off and I get off.

All right. So we looked at that earlier. Trump talks about how he gets off and then he comes off and then the entire thing. But the point is, how could someone be more devoted to anybody other than me? And Caroline Levin has been loyal. She's defended as I said Trump's false claims. She attacks journalists. She cleans up lies. All of that different stuff. But she is not the one that is really notable in terms of her abandonment of Donald Trump. Assuming we believe her story, she chose her kids overstanding at a lectern defending Donald Trump every day. That's confusing to Trump. But there's a whole bunch of other problems for Trump in terms of abandonment. Deputy National Security Advisor, Andy Baker is leaving. He is, you might say, well, that's not really a very prominent

position. He has been very influential in Donald Trump's foreign policy, according to Brookings, 53% of the administration's senior A team positions have already turned over during Trump's first year back in office. That happened very quietly, but it is a big signal about the chaos in this administration. Now, some of those people resigned. Some were fired. Some were pushed out. Some departures were kind of predictable.

We should not pretend that every single person left because they suddenly were like, oh, my God, I can't work for Trump. There's a whole bunch of different reasons. But the cumulative picture is extraordinary. Turnover is kind of built into Trump's management system. The demand is absolute loyalty. Meanwhile, Trump creates constant chaos. He publicly humiliates his appointees.

And then he replaces them when they become inconvenient. And so people are at the same time indispensable and completely disposable. That is how Donald Trump sees everybody. That's how Trump sees his voters. Once they can't vote for him anymore or there's not a clear donation ask, they're kind of useless to him. And these exits go way beyond the White House. Look at what is happening in the House of Representatives.

40 House Republicans are not coming back next term. Now, so it's a mix. Some are retiring. Some are running for different offices. It's not 40 Republicans go, I can never work when Trump is, it's a party. a party with a difficult midterm, a really narrow House majority, and a lot of people are leaving and saying we cannot be involved in this anymore or I will not be involved in it anymore. And then we get to the voters.

There is a new Reuters Ipsos poll which finds Trump approval is at 35%. Another poll has him at 30%. Even Republican approval is down into the 70s, which is high. But that's a meaningful decline from a party that has treated support. for Trump is completely mandatory. Now, people are leaving Trump in different ways. Staffers, you know, they leave the building. Republican officials leave Congress.

Independent voters leave the coalition and maybe stay home or join Democrats. And even some Republicans now are going, yeah, I don't think that I can get behind this. So Trump will, of course, continue claiming everything's going beautifully. This is the most, the most successful everything ever. Anybody who leaves will be either irrelevant or disloyal or weak or we were secretly, we actually fired them. But as the exits accumulate, you can't really defend it. Caroline Levitt is leaving.

Senior officials are cycling through. Republicans are leaving Washington. Voters are checking out. And Trump's demand for a political movement based entirely around himself has really kind of flopped. And eventually he is discovering that there's a problem with that arrangement. And the problem is everybody leaves. There's only one person left to blame and it's Donald Trump. Now, this has led to Donald Trump's sort of risky idea of making these midterms about himself.

He's holding this midterm convention where it's going to be all about Trump, Trump, Trump. Trump's not even on the ballot. Is Trump a buoy or an anchor pulling them down from the surface if they are running in especially moderate, but not even moderate, even in some conservative areas? I don't know that Trump's name all over this midterm is a good thing for them. But it only will matter if we are able to take advantage of it. If everybody gets out there in votes, if people get engaged in the elections that they find to be important for them.

So yes, people are heading for the exits. Yes, there's a bunch of different reasons why all of that is completely true. But at the end of the day, we also need to consider what it's going to take to seize power back. Because if a bunch of Republicans leave and they're replaced with a bunch of other Republicans who are 2% less loyal to Trump or whatever, that is not. really going to change the dynamics of the next two years. What's going to change the dynamics of the next two years is taking back some power. And so this is an opportunity. We're going to be working to get out the boat. We've got 80 something, but days left for this. I'm glad that you're here.

We've got to do it. We need to set our path to 2028 through smooth waters rather than through rough waters. And the way we do that is getting these horrible people out of power. I don't have a cat myself, but I have spent enough time around friends' cats to know that there are picky cats when it comes to food. If they don't like it, they won't eat it. But one of my friends has had a ton of success switching to Smalls cat food. Before Smalls, meal time was very hit or miss. The cat gets excited now.

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40,000 five-star reviews. They were named USA Today's Best Food subscription box three years in a row. Plus, they've got award-winning croissants, which I love. Go to wildgrain.com slash Pacman to get $30 off your first box and free croissants for life. The link is in the description. Senator John Ossoff, who is very good at this, just delivered a brutal and personal attack against Donald Trump. He brought up Natalie Harp, his potential new love interest. He said, why have we been lied into yet another war? And this is, of course, going to extraordinarily trigger Donald Trump, who has already started

to attack John Ossoff. And he referred to him as Pinky Herman. And of course, in Trump's completely addled brain, he's trying to make. fun of John Ossoff by calling him peewee Herman. He can't remember that. So he called him Pinky Herman. Okay. What John Ossoff did at a speech is he sort of used Donald Trump's strange relationship with Natalie Harp to make a broader argument. And the argument is about war and it's about sacrifice. And it points out that Donald Trump is a president whose most important interest is just enjoying power. He doesn't want to do the job. He wants to have people cheer

for him and play the proud to be an American every time he's Every time he walks into a room, but he doesn't really want to govern. And here was John Ossoff speaking about the USS Abraham Lincoln. Their sailors are enduring a very long deployment to support Trump's Iran war. And we have now learned that not only is morale low, mental health is struggling on the USS Lincoln. Supplies are low. There's no real plan to get these troops home. People are saying conditions are better in some of our crappiest prisons than they are on

this vessel. And Trump said, oh, the deployment's not even long enough. So let's listen to John Ossoff here talking about a lot of important things, including what on earth is going on with Donald Trump's new love interest. And there's something uniquely despicable about lying a nation into war, treating citizens as fools and those who serve as pawns. Abort the USS Abraham Lincoln, they've now been at sea for 240 plus days without a port call. It's a Navy record. And still, and still, and still, they serve with excellence. And still they serve with excellence. God bless the sailors, Marines, aviators, and all aboard the United States ship, Abraham Lincoln. See, they don't expect luxury. They'll endure hardship. But they deserve competent leaders who send them

to combat only when necessary. And with decisive clarity of purpose, not fools who lie about the purpose and progress of war. And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn't want to do the job.

He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. Listen, Asoff knows exactly what he is doing with this whole travel with Natalie thing. We've been talking about the very close relationship with executive assistant Natalie Harp. According to the reporting in the book, Regime Change, Harp leaves Trump these personal notes, you're all that matters to me and follows Trump around with a portable printer feeding him flattering articles and social media posts and runs alongside his golf cart keeping him updated and has a lot of influence, by the way, over what Donald Trump does.

And Trump is reciprocating, reciprocating. He goes, oh, she'll never leave me. No one loves me as much as Natalie. Everyone else will leave for more money, but Natalie will never leave me. So it's a bizarre relationship. And it's highly relevant politically because, of course, presidents need staffers who will will deliver bad news or who might challenge terrible ideas that would say, hey, you know, sir, with tears in my eyes, the evidence contradicts what you're going out there and saying. But Donald

Trump doesn't want that. So he surrounds himself with people who compete to prove that they're devoted to him and they maintain this imaginary version of reality. And if we're in a war, that is very dangerous. Now, Assoff also talks about the Flying Palace. That is the 747, the luxury 747 that Qatar gave Trump and they had the security scare in Turkey where Natalie Harp and Trump were moved in a catering truck to a deco not no off of what became a decoy plane onto a different plane and Marco Rubio the Secretary of State was left behind and Scott Besant was left behind and the press corps were left behind. Why does Natalie Harp have this level of access? These are

really reasonable questions to be asking. And Asoff seems to know that the implication of a romantic relationship between Trump and Natalie Harp in the context of Trump's failed relationship with Melania are really going to send him for a loop. Now, Trump also, as As Asoff says, sent a nation to war with lies. And this is something that Donald Trump, told us he wasn't going to do anymore because Bush lied us into the Iraq war, even though at the time Trump said, yeah, I probably would have done the same thing. And he says that we get involved in these endless Middle East conflicts and sailors are still at sea carrying out Trump's orders after lying us into war and Trump is golfing and building a ballroom and deciding between onyx

and granite or whatever. And he's aboard his flying Qatari Palace and he's surrounded by Aides telling him he's you're just magnificent sir and he wants credit for being a wartime commander but he accepts zero responsibility for the consequences of that war I love what Asoff is doing here and the imagery that he is kind of calling up is an emperor enjoying the palace in this case it's a flying palace and enjoying the adulation from his younger staffers while people are out there fighting, sacrificing and paying the bill. And this includes both those who are fighting the war. And it includes just people who are home dealing with the increased cost of living as a result of the war. And when he brings

Natalie Harp into it, he knows that that's going to get under Donald Trump's skin. And he knows exactly why he is bringing that up. So at some point, we need an accounting of, hey, we've got the policy proposals that the candidate is bringing. Fine. We've got the expertise or lack thereof. that the candidate is bringing fine. Do they even want to do the damn job? Because Trump is simply not interested. And according to Maggie Haberman, who is one of the co-authors of the book regime change, she recently said she estimates from her conversations with Trump and people around him. 70% of Trump's time is focused on his pet projects, the ballroom construction, the retrofit of the Qatari flying palace, the slit in his rubber.

that someone supposedly made with a box cutter in the reflecting pool. This is the stuff that Trump is spending 70% of his time in. So it's totally important to think about, oh, what would this person do as policy if we elected them? That matters. Does this person have the experience or the know-how to be president? That matters. But does this person even want to do the work of being president?

Or do they want to hang out DJing at Mar-a-Lago while J.D. Vance and who knows who else is saddled with the actual work, taking credit, Trump trying to take credit for anything good that happens and trying to lay blame on anything bad that happens elsewhere if he even accepts that something bad happened. Usually Trump goes, no, we solved affordability. We won the Iran war. I will mention to you, we are in week 26 of Donald Trump's two to three week war with Iran. And if there's any upside, I guess it's that the war has gone on so long that Donald Trump

has now claimed to have won it something like 45 times. And if you think that what's going on with Iran is wacky, just wait till you see what's going on with the two Koreas. Donald Trump posted a deeply incoherent message announcing a really important change to American military policy. And once again, when Donald Trump is given the choice between an allied liberal democracy and another hostile dictator, Trump chooses the dictator. He loves dictators. Donald Trump posted the following message. to truth social. Truth essential. Yeah, to that thing. And it is such a confused message that once again we're left wondering about Donald Trump's cognitive condition. Here is what Donald Trump said. Quote, based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, I am not happy with the

fact that the United States has long ago agreed to participate in joint military exercises with South Korea. These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America, as usual, but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile to a country that as long as Donald J. Trump has been president has been unthreatening and respectful. Therefore, and based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War Pete Hagseth to substantially reduce the joint military exercises, while somewhat unreligious. I recently asked the president of South Korea if they would like to join us in the denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

And they said, no thanks. Thank you for your attention to this matter. If you had a preteen kid and you saw that this was the sort of stuff they were posting to social media this incoherent, you'd be worried about them and you would be right to be worried. First of all, the United States did not randomly agree long ago to attend somebody else's event. We are involved in recurring exercises with a lot of our military allies. And the idea is let's maintain readiness. That's what the be prepared, which seems to be

kryptonite to this administration. Pandemic response plan, throw it in the trash. They don't seem to like being prepared. And Trump goes, oh, we're just like randomly doing this. We do this with a lot of our allies. And there's the idea that there should be military readiness against North Korea should to be necessary. Trump then goes, well, the exercises would signal hostility to North Korea. And North Korea has been very respectful. North Korea possesses nuclear weapons, continues developing missiles, strengthened its relationship with Russia, interesting, and regularly condemns these exercises and threatens to escalate militarily. So I don't want to go to war with North Korea. I am not a hawk. I'm against war. But doing exactly what North Korea wants. And,

Trump is describing Kim Jong-un as respectful, but all that happens is Kim Jong-un flatters Trump personally. That's how Trump always falls for it. If they flatter him personally, he goes, they're being very respectful. And then he goes, well, it's just so late to cancel this thing. Let's reduce the exercises to as little as possible. These are drills that have been scheduled for 11 days. They involve 18,000 South Korean troops. And they began as a plan.

And now all of a sudden, Trump goes, it was randomly scheduled. Now, Trump also doesn't even seem to understand the relationship between a lot of these different subject in his own statement. When he when he says, join us in the denuclearization of Iran. What does he mean? What did he want South Korea to do? Did he want South Korea to get involved in military action or participate in negotiations or place sanctions on Iran?

I guess Trump asked South Korea to do something. They said no. And Trump is now mentioning that the refusal may or may not be related. So is what's going on here that Donald Trump is trying to placate North Korea, which is increasingly aligned with Russia? Maybe Trump loves aligning with dictators. That may be the main thing. Or is Donald Trump angry with South Korea because South Korea said, we're not getting involved in this Iran stuff with you. And so Trump is trying to do anything to signal, Maybe we aren't as friendly with South Korea as South Korea thinks we are. Now, Trump's defenders will say that it's obvious what Trump is doing. He's being fiscally conservative.

The exercises cost too much. We want diplomacy with North Korea. That is it. But that would be a different sort of argument. Trump is implicitly threatening South Korea going, you didn't agree to join the Iran war. Now we're not going to participate in these exercises to maintain military readiness with North Korea. And by the way, I'm going to placate a dictator combining my personal relationship with resentment towards an ally and this unrelated conflict in Iran. And it is all just a mess. It's a verbal.

It's like Trump regurgitated a bunch of ink onto a piece of paper. And we're left trying to figure out what on earth is that? Nothing has been resolved here. Now, did Donald Trump suffer a stroke before posting this? I can't responsibly claim that. I certainly cannot say that. What I can tell you is this is a confused, strategically reckless statement. It's unbecoming of anyone controlling the world's most powerful military.

It's unbecoming of anyone who has access to nuclear weapons as Donald Trump does. The medical explanation, I don't know. The incoherence is right there on the screen. And Donald Trump needs to start making some sense quickly here or this is going to get even uglier. And next thing you know, Trump is going to be faced with being completely out of power in the sense of the House, at least if not also the Senate. He's going to be mired in investigations and this sort of stuff. Is this a revenge post? What are you saying? Are you threatening South Korea?

This is exactly the sort of stuff that should be investigated and I believe Democrats are going to investigate. One thing that drives me nuts about political media is how two outlets can cover the same story and make it feel like two different events took place, not because any of the facts have changed, but because the emphasis of the stories is different. This is why I use ground news because ground news pulls together reporting from across the political spectrum and you can compare the headlines side by side and see how different outlets are framing the exact same issue. You can look at the bias distribution.

You can look at factuality ratings. You can see who owns the outlets behind the reporting, which makes it easier to separate the substance from the spin. For example, Trump's EPA recently decided to remove limits on those forever chemicals in drinking water. Ground news shows how outlets like PBS and Raw Story are getting it right and right-wing outlets put this anti-Biden spin on it, or they just stay very vague to avoid implicating Donald Trump. Ground News also has a blind spot feed. This is for stories that are underreported by one side. And you can also get a personalized feed based on your interests. Go to ground dot news slash Pacman or scan my QR code to get 40% off the ground news vantage plan. The link is in the

description. Bizarre video of something crazy inside of Donald Trump's pants is out. And I know what a bunch of people are going to say, okay, I can't anticipate it now. There are wars. There's inflation. There are immigration raids. Collapsing approval numbers. Staffers are abandoning the White House. Midterm elections are approaching. We're covering all of that. But there is an urgent question of national importance. What is in Trump's pants? And is it related to some kind of new medical situation? Here is video from a recent appearance of Donald Trump. What you will see? as he gets off the stage and he turns is that there is something really weird creating an unusual bulge out of Donald Trump's pants and suit jacket.

Caroline Levitt posted this video and what is in there? It just it doesn't really make any sense. We'll show it again as Donald Trump comes off the stage. There is something in there and nobody can figure out what is. is, it seems rigid, it's, it's rectangular, it's protruding out from his suit. What is it? Now immediately questions as to, is it part of the suit? Is it protective equipment?

Is it a medical device? Did somebody leave a throw pillow in Trump's trousers? We don't know. Now, a bunch of different reporting, including some from The Daily Beast, says whatever whatever it is is remaining fixed as Donald Trump walks to the crowd and then comes back, comes back to the podium. There's a moment where it almost looks. You can almost see like a horizontal.

There it is. There's a horizontal line right above Trump's. I guess we would call them his cheeks. I don't even know how else to describe it. And it is really bizarre. And the conversation on social media has, of course. been wacky. A lot of people saying these are diapers. Some saying it's a full diaper. I mean, that we're starting to get a little bit crass. But there's speculation about medical equipment.

There's speculation about colostomy bag, a Brazilian butt lift, like just, just wacky stuff. And by the way, we don't have any evidence that Trump got a Brazilian buttlift or anything like that. The most frequently repeated thing that were. hearing is about the adult diapers because there are previous claims, including from people who claim to have knowledge from their work with Donald Trump on the apprentice that Donald Trump wears adult diapers. It's not been proven. It's not been disclosed.

The White House has as of now not given any kind of explanation. We have not been told, oh, it's a clothing malfunction or we just have no idea what it is. Now, could it be something completely mundane? folds weirdly and, you know, video angles can create, I guess what we would call a weird shape. Maybe Trump was carrying a piece of equipment, but what piece of equipment would that be? I don't know. There would be no shame in using a medical device. There would be no shame in wearing some kind of protective undergarment of sorts.

Millions of people do that for legitimate health reasons. The relevant issue is, once again, is the White House. being honest about the health of the oldest president in history. It's not, oh, older person requires some assistance. That's not a big deal. Okay. That we're all adults. We can deal with that.

And there have been growing questions about Trump's health. It's the visible bruising. It's the swollen ankles. It's the drowsiness, the verbal confusion. And Trump at this very same event where this thing is in his pants, he couldn't remember the name of the New York Attorney General candidate that he had just endorsed. And he's regular the other day, I don't remember he was in one state and he said, your governor should be this person who's running in a different state.

Like just the brain's not working. And so when you get an unexplained image like this, which will play again as Donald Trump comes off of the podium and you see that something is just holding his suit jacket in the strangest position, that makes this generate more curiosity than it otherwise might. Now, can I tell you I know what's going on? No, I, that's the problem. I can't tell you. Has Trump hired a tailor who has a very unusual sense of humor? Is Trump stuffing? Did Trump stuff his pants with classified documents? We just don't know. Documents he later planned to flush. I don't know. But the White House really should provide some kind of explanation. And it is a protrusion

that is a big mystery. Now, there's one other angle, I think, that's important to mention. You might be able to see that this video says from Caroline Levitt at the bottom. This was meant to be sort of a behind the scenes peak at what Trump is up to and hugging real people and meeting real people and all of this sort of stuff. So there is this other layer where, as you all know, if you listen to the earlier part of the show, Caroline Levitt is quitting. She's leaving her position as White House press secretary. And there have been so many speculations as to what she pushed out. Is she the one who's upset with Trump for some reason or whatever? There was the idea that there is now anger because she posted this where it seems as though Donald Trump has something in his

pants. The timing does not really match up with that. And the decision for her to was made, I believe, if I have the timing right, before this video was released. And so I don't, whatever is going on with Trump's pants, whatever is going on with Caroline Levitt leaving, I believe that these are unrelated things, at least as far as this moment in time. So listen, a lot of people ask me, oh, what would you ask Trump if you sat down with him? I think that political questions he's really unlikely to answer and he's unlikely to answer. he's unlikely to answer in a way that will not really give us any information.

Questions about this stuff, I would be very interesting saying, listen, here's a picture of you. What's in your pants? Like what? There's something rigid in there. What, what is this? And see what he says. Put it to him and just ask him what it is. And you know what?

It would be nice if a reporter just asked because this really is not TMZ style gossip. This goes to the core of is this guy even remotely healthy enough to be the president of the United States, which gets me to, a lot of people are acting shocked that this presidency has become what it has become. But when you elect degenerates, what do you expect to see happen? And I want to deal with that next. There is this tendency every time Donald Trump or the Republican Party do something grotesque or corrupt or cruel or spectacularly incompetent to react.

to react as though this is a shocking development. I can't believe they'd. How did they do this? Well, yeah, we can believe it. First of all, most of the stuff they're doing, they told us they would do. Most of the things Trump is doing, he said that he was going to do. They told us who they were and tens of millions of people voted for it anyway. Trump didn't sneak into American politics disguised as a sober and ethical public servant.

He was a compulsive liar from day one. He was a shameless con man from day one. He was a malignant narcissist from day one. And he's a guy whose understanding of government goes only as far as what would be good for me personally. That's all that he cares about. Republican officials looked at that and they made a choice. And some enthusiastically embraced him.

Others privately said he is dangerous and unfit and contemptible, but I'm going to support him publicly because I'm scared that he's going to come out against me or because of the other. I want his tax cuts or I want to get a judge in there or I would like to get a TV appearance or just even being protected for my primary challenger. These were decisions that were made. It wasn't like they fell into it by accident. So then the corruption arrives. Trump replaces qualified people with loyalists and he makes cruelty the policy of the government

and democratic institutions become mere obstacles rather than checks and balances. You blame every failure on an immigrant or a Democrat or a minority. or a communist or an anarchist or whatever. And then people go, I'm shocked that he's doing this. Why are you shocked? This was the platform. And the strongest counter argument is many voters were not explicitly voting for corruption or authoritarianism.

They simply said inflation has to be dealt with. Let's try Trump. Immigration has to be dealt with. Let's try Trump. Or it was about cultural resentment or abortion. or taxes or whatever else the case may be. And that could certainly be true in a lot of individual cases. There were people who maybe weren't thrilled with Trump, but they really didn't like Hillary

or they really didn't like Kamala Harris. But if you are an adult and you believe in personal responsibility, you have to be held responsible for what are the foreseeable consequences of your choices. If you hire an arsonist knowing he's an arsonist because you like his position on property taxes, You can't go, I'm shocked that he burned a building down. Your preferred justification for why you supported this guy doesn't erase all the warnings and evidence and the results that we get. The warnings were everywhere.

He tried to overturn an election he lost. He praised political violence. He caused political violence. He demanded personal loyalty from public officials and surrounded himself with this cadre of criminals and conspiracy theorists and extremists and opportunist and described the presidency as an instrument of revenge. I will be your retribution. Dear God, what about doing something on affordability? No, I will be your retribution. And what Republican politicians did and it trickled down to a lot of the voters is excuse him or protect him or go, it's just bluster or submit to him and make submission to Trump

a condition of remaining in the party. And then voters said, let's give these people power. The depressing reality is that democratic systems don't automatically produce decent outcomes. And if you go back to, you know, Socrates critique of democracy, it is true. The democratic systems produce outcomes based on the choices people make. And if you can convince enough voters to make a choice to reward being a liar, being cruel, being corrupt, being a grifter, then all of a sudden, that is what you get. The politicians become worse because being worse worked. Now, that doesn't mean that we give up. We just have to be honest about what happened.

The country was not deceived by a carefully hidden agenda. Trump didn't run on one set of ideas and then govern in a completely different way. Trump screamed out the agenda at rallies and he repeated it in interviews and he posted it online and he demonstrated it. And Americans were shown, listen, here's a degenerate. Here's a bunch of degenerates. You can vote for them. Here it is in high definition. It's not blurry.

And they said, yeah, we're going to vote for that. So we've got to condemn every abuse. We have to resist every illegal act. We have to document every lie and prepare ourselves to be back in power and hold these people accountable. But spare me the surprise. Okay. You voted for overt degenerates.

What did you expect was going to happen? Now, this doesn't mean, and I've talked about this before as well, and it's worth mentioning. This doesn't mean that when people change their minds, we go, you are never allowed back. No, we go, hey, better late than never. You're welcome to come back and join the people trying to think a little more clearly about who should be leading us. But we're not going to pretend that this wasn't predictable because we all predicted it. It's not pat ourselves on the back. We were smart enough to see it. No, it was it was so damn obvious, but somehow tens of millions of people either because of personal loyalty, a desire for revenge, hating Democrats, whatever,

they went for it. So once you make the 180 and you realize you were screwed, you know, I get emails from people going, David, I, I'm a Republican, but I can't support this. But I did for two or three elections. It's great that you're figuring it out. But we're not going to pretend that it was unknowable that when you elect degenerates, degeneracy is the outcome. We all expected it. And we've got to deal with the fact that tens of millions of people said this is what I want. On the bonus show today, they thought I was Macaulay Culkin. I'm not kidding. I'm going to tell you probably the wackiest story from my LA trip. They believed I was McCauley Culkin. And it created a whole hub of also tell you what else I was up to. Upcoming interviews I'm going to be doing.

And so much more on today's bonus show. How do you have you? access the bonus show it's it's very easy quite frankly simply sign up at join packman dot that is it i'll see you on the bonus show