The David Pakman Show - What happens when nobody tells bullies “no”

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

-- On the Show: -- V Spehar, award-winning digital journalist, podcaster, and creator behind Under the Desk News, joins us to discuss how to stay informed without sacrificing your mental health -- South Carolina Senate candidate Darline Graham admits during a debate that she is not informed on national security issues -- Donald Trump threatens a 50% tariff on Canadian goods before retreating hours prior to implementation with a three-day pause -- Preston Harp describes his sister, White House aide Natalie Harp, as holding an unhealthy obsession with Donald Trump -- White House staff member Natalie Harp creates a closed information bubble for Trump by curating his media diet while seeking protection -- Trump shares Census Bureau graphics to claim 24,000 noncitizens voted in 2020, even though database matches fail to establish that -- Fox News broadcasts an on-air correction after using a graphic that misstated previous gas prices as $4.13 to hide Trump's price increases -- On the ⁠Bonus Show⁠: Takeaways from yesterday's primaries, Minnesota sues Texas over extradition of an ICE agent, Trump's support from Hispanic men drops 51%, and much more... 🎙️ Plaud: Use code PAKMAN for 10% off at https://plaud.ai/pakman or shop at https://amzn.to/4fMahxp 🧠 Try Brain.fm totally free for a month at https://brain.fm/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman 💻 Sponsored by Private Internet Access: 83% OFF + 4 months free at https://www.piavpn.com/Pakman -- Become a Member: ⁠https://davidpakman.com/membership⁠ -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: ⁠https://davidpakman.substack.com⁠ -- Get David's Book: ⁠https://bit.ly/m/attention⁠ -- TDPS Subreddit: ⁠http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow⁠ -- David on Bluesky: ⁠https://davidpakman.com/bluesky⁠ -- David on Facebook: ⁠http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow⁠ (00:00) Start (01:25) Darline Graham flops in Senate debate (08:29) Trump TACOs on 50% Canada tariff (18:07) Natalie Harp's brother warns about her (27:21) How Nathalie Harp controls Trump (37:21) V Spehar Substack Live (58:30) How Natalie Harp controls Trump (01:05:57) Fox News corrects gas price error Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what-if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Today the maga political operation is sort of losing contact with reality. Donald Trump has this handpicked Senate candidate, Lindsey Graham's sister, who did a debate

and the debate performance was so catastrophically uninformed that I guess you'll believe it. I was going to say you won't believe it, but I guess you will believe it, but it's really, really bad. Trump then backed down from these massive Canadian tariffs. I know. It's like, again, it was just out. before the deadline and he said, we won so I don't need to do the tariffs, but it's all completely made up. And we're going to examine the deeply strange relationship between Donald Trump and Natalie

Harp. Why is this all of a sudden becoming a big story? And there's a new report that she allegedly got in the trunk or the hatch of an SUV. They're like, there's no real trunk in an SUV. She got into the hatch of the SUV when there was no room for her to have an actual seat just to be close to. Trump. Plus, they are now using the Census Bureau to try to relitigate the 2020 election, except the evidence they're posting doesn't actually support their claim. And Fox News forced

to apologize and rightly so. All of that and more on today's program. We knew it was a disastrous idea to make Lindsay Graham's sister, Darlene Graham, the Senator representing South Carolina. And now she is running to actually be elected to be the full time, not just interim senator from South Carolina. She participated in a debate just hours ago and completely crashed and burned. One of the most embarrassing moments to come out of South Carolina since Miss South Carolina gave that viral answer. It's like a car crash that you can't look away from. Darlene Graham was asked. Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security threats to the United States?

And she goes, I don't know anything about national security, but I do support the troops. Take a listen to this stunning, stunning the debate moderators, and rightly so. Senator, are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States? If so, why? I'm sorry. Could you repeat the question? Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States? And if so, why or how? I'm just going to be honest here.

I'm not on national security. I'm not that informed on national security. So, but I do support the military. My brother was in the Air Force for 33 years. So I will do everything I can to support the military. My dad was in the Army. I'm not a polished politician up here. I'm not national security is not my thing, not my area of expertise, but I do support the military.

An answer that should truly disqualify her from the nomination. Now, I've been a big advocate of when you don't know something, you just say it. But if you don't know something relevant to a position you're interviewing for, we might go, well, it's good that you were honest, but you have no business in this point. position. It's sort of like, you know, if you've got a neurosurgeon, you're talking to and you go, by the way, like, where is the brain in the body? And they go, hey, you know what? The truth is like, I'm not really the expert on where in the body the brain is located. We will go, okay, awesome that you told us that we're not letting you do the surgery. And that is what we have here as a situation where they are

arguing that I guess she's qualified. Trump is arguing Trump endorsed her and. all of that, but it's an answer that shows she is completely unqualified. Is it the worst answer we've ever seen out of South Carolina? I don't know because it's basically competing with this classic clip of Miss South Carolina answering a question. Why do you think this is? I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have have bounce and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and the Iraq everywhere

like such the Iraq. Yes. And actually I stepped that. That's one of the most famous phrases everywhere like such as. And Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here and the US should help the US or should help South Africa and should help Iraq in the Asian country. So we will be able to build up our future for our job. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. So anyway, you tell me what's the worst answer that's ever come out of South Carolina. Now, let's go to the next rebuttal. Who cares if someone doesn't know about Taiwan? Who cares if someone doesn't know about the South China Sea? Well, hold on a second. Donald Trump cares. Here he is caring when it's related to AOC.

And of course, there is always hypocrisy. When it comes to war, you don't talk about your strategies. She could have done that very easily. She had no idea. I don't think you knew what Taiwan was. That was a problem. But you don't talk about military strategy. I'm going to take an easy pass on that one.

That was not a good answer. Could be death to find. There you go. So I guess it does matter when people aren't able to answer about Taiwan. This is a woman who has no business being in the Senate. And this is just exhibit A of why nepotism is such a disastrous and destructive force because she is only even in this position because she's the sister of Lindsey Graham. It doesn't matter that she has no experience. It doesn't matter that she has no subject matter knowledge. It doesn't

matter that she has no charisma, gravitas ability to connect with voters. Her last name is Graham and it's Lindsey Graham died and now she was selected and then she's running. That's it. And it's really putting a fine, it's underscoring the destructive influence of nepotism and cronyism. Here's one more gold mine from the debate last night. She casually says that there are 50 million people in South Carolina. Uh-oh, wait a second. 50 million people in South Carolina. Yeah, South Carolina's population is 5.5 million people.

Now, as it happens, she's running against this guy, Ralph, I don't even remember his name now. Hold on. Ralph South Carolina candidate. Norman and Ralph Norman is also a disaster. He has marginally more subject matter knowledge than Tarlene Graham, certainly. But Ralph Norman is not a guy. This is a Republican primary debate where I go, we got to make sure Ralph Norman becomes the next governor or South Carolina next senator from South Carolina. These are these are disastrous candidates. And just another reminder of we really need to be more serious. And I love the idea of going beyond the typical

you know, lawyer, business person or family member of elite as the primary qualifications or sort of like feeder industries to being elected officials. Let's go broader than that. It would be great to have some scientists. It would be great to have some educators. And it is a pathetic display really of the worst of American politics and especially of Republican politics. That's where we are right now. That's what we're seeing in South Carolina. And if we're not careful, we will see this on a larger scale in the sense of Donald Trump choosing his replacement in the Democratic and the Republican Party rather.

And if that person wins, it will sort of be a cronyistic presidency. Once again, it's a very bad idea. This is why it's so important to vote these people out this November. take away at least some of the power that they will have to make these choices in the future. Donald Trump has chickened out again. What is he so afraid of? Well, on tariffs on Canada, they called Trump's bluff and Trump back down. Donald Trump, it was Tuesday after all. He got it in just an hour and 45 minutes before it became Wednesday. Donald Trump backing down from another huge tariff threat hours before it was going to take effect. And of course,

Trump is trying to transform this into such a strong victory. We won so I don't need the tariffs, even though that is completely fabricated. Let me explain what went on. Donald Trump threatened to put a 50% tariff on about $20 billion of Canadian goods. Canada, one of our most important allies, one of our most important trading partners. If those tariffs had gone into effect, they would have affected everything from wine, dairy, clothing to cement and hockey equipment. Well, just an hour and 45 minutes before these tariffs started very strongly, Trump took to truth social and says, no, quote, I have paused the 50% tariffs

against Canada that were scheduled to kick in tomorrow morning for a three day period. It's only a three day respite based on the fact that Canada and the USA subject to the finalization of documents, have a deal. The great Keystone Excel pipeline long ago killed by sleepy Joe Biden may be awoken from the grave. Thank you, President Trump, blah, blah, blah. Now, there are several layers of Trumpian contradiction packed into this announcement. It might be more accurate to simply call them lies. Number one, and this is the most important lie. Trump says, we've got a deal. The U.S. and Canada have a deal. He's got capital letters. He's got an exclamation point. And then in the same sentence, he says, well, the deal is subject to the finalization of documents.

So we don't have a deal. It is not, you can't both have a deal subject to the finalization of documents. You can say you're hopeful that a deal will be signed, but if significant terms remain unresolved and you don't have finalized documents, this is what happened with Iran. We had a beautiful letter saying we would negotiate for 60 days. And after 42 hours of negotiation, J.D. Vans left Switzerland, flew back to the United States and said, I've got stuff to do. And now that 60 day period has expired. So what we know is that frameworks, beautiful letters, preliminary agreements, they might eventually become a completed deal,

but Trump is once again announcing victory before the negotiation is finished. Now, uh, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is like, what is he talking about? What on earth is he talking about? Putting out a statement in which he says over the last number of weeks, Canada has engaged in in intensive discussions with the United States to address outstanding trade issues and deliver greater certainty and real benefits for Canadian businesses, workers, farmers, and families. Substantial progress has been made, although there is important work still to be done. As this work is ongoing, the U.S. has agreed to postpone the implementation of its 50% tariff on a range of Canadian goods under Section 338, et cetera, et cetera, until the end of the day,

August 21st. We'll continue this work. We want to build a stronger independent, et cetera, et cetera. So even Mark Carney is saying, we've got a ways to go. Three days may not be enough to figure out all that stuff that we're supposed to figure out. So why did Trump really pause the tariffs? He paused the tariffs because a 50% tariff on Canadian goods would be terrible for American businesses.

It would be terrible for American consumers. Remember that US importers pay the tariffs. It doesn't matter how many times Trump says it. We are not taking in money from foreign countries because of the tariffs. you import something from Canada with a tariff on it, you pay the Canadian company for it, and then you pay the US Treasury the tariff. The company doing the importing pays the tariff and passes roughly 85% of it along to the consumer as a higher price. When you see that happen, you start to realize, well, the other country might do something about it. And indeed,

Canada was preparing to retaliate. Trump created the threat. He established the deadline. And then hours before it started, he retreated. And maybe these negotiations will eventually get us a real agreement. I hope that they do. I don't think it's a good thing to put these huge tariffs on Canada. But right now, we have a three-day pause. We have unfinished documents. We have a pipeline that Trump says might be resurrected from the dead. And we do not have a deal. So there is no historic victory here. We have a Trump deadline that has arrived. And a. a Trump threat that has disappeared. Now, why is this so bad for American businesses, which was one of the claims to fame of Donald Trump, the businessman president, which is that he knows business,

and everything he does will be great for the business environment. One of the worst possible things for businesses, if what you want him to do is hire and expand and invest is uncertainty. If you are a business thinking of, as Trump likes to say, building a plant or a factory, one of the things that you account for when you think about your plans is by the time the factory is built, what is going to be the regulatory and economic framework in which we will be operating? We need to be confident there will or there won't be wacky tariffs on Canada. And by the way, especially if even to build the, forget about your product or service. If to build the factory, you are going to be needing imported materials.

It also affects what it's going to even cost to get this new factory up and running. So the point is if there is uncertainty as to what is going to be the level of tariff on a particular country or imagine that you're not worried about the tariff on Canada because of anything you need to import, but you sell to Canada, you export to Canada. We know that it is typical that there are retaliatory tariffs. So all of a sudden, if Canada retaliates with their own tariffs against American goods, now you're building a factory to sell something to Canada, demand for which will decline if there is a tariff on it because it'll just make it more expensive for the Canadian buyer.

So the point is we markets like stability, businesses like stability. Consumers also like stability. If you see an environment, you're thinking about buying a house or a car and you see an environment which interest rates are going up or just staying where they are. Mortgage rates are still roughly 7%. That is going to dissuade you from taking the economic action that supposedly Donald Trump wants you to take, which is consumption and spending and all of it. The point is this is all wacky. It's all motivated by Trump's ego and emotional instability and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. If anything, his condition seems to be getting worse. Let's say you just finished a business call

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who's leaving him what are effectively love letters. And I don't say that as a joke there, they're with hearts and my heart is yours and all this wacky stuff that we're going to look at. So CNN's Aaron Burnett interviews Preston Harp. And Preston Harp is quite a character, I must say, an idiosyncratic figure who is what we might call him. And Preston Harp describes really a fixation with presidents that Natalie Harp has that started when she was a teenager. And it is incredible to see.

Let's take a listen to some of the things that Preston Harp said and then we'll talk about them. And it is really something else. So what what is your reaction to this? Does this sound like her, or the person that you knew well, your sister? Yeah. I mean, basically, I'd say since she was like 16, she's had an obsession with, gosh, how do I explain this?

She's written letters to other presidents. Let me put it that way. And so, like, her dream came true finally. Oh, interesting. So you're saying that she had, she actually was, was very aware of politics, right? And that she had written other presidents, other president's letters. Do you happen to know which, which ones or what they were about or anything, Preston, that you were able to be able to share here? I didn't see the letter, but George Bush, obviously, during the Iraq war. Now, that, by the way, I don't even know about that. That Natalie Hart would have been really

young during the Iraq war. I, I don't know if she would have been sending letters to George W. Bush. kind of a weird thing. And and did did anything ever come of that? I mean, did they have the White House ever respond or anything? Or she just sort of sent a letter. No, they never responded. All right. So anyway, it's it's quite an interesting family. And of course, Natalie Harp is very relevant to the state of American politics right now, as disturbing as it is, because she is not like the random White House employee. This is one of Donald Trump's closest states. She's at his side all the time. She's running his truth social account. She's acting like an accelerator, rather than a break pedal on Trump's worst instincts.

And they call her the human printer because she has a portable printer she uses to print out articles and social media posts that portray Trump positively or reinforce what he believes. And she has a massive amount of influence over what Trump says, what information gets to Trump. And if someone gets to Natalie Harp and goes, show Trump this and not that, she can effectively gate keep. and manipulate what Donald Trump is seeing and thus what he is doing. And so now her brother Preston is saying she has an unhealthy obsession with Donald Trump. And arguably, it goes even

beyond Trump himself. Now, writing letters to presidents is not inherently alarming. Teenagers do write to elected officials and politically engaged people contact the White House. That doesn't really prove anything. But what Preston is talking about here is this pattern where powerful political leaders are kind of becoming objects of personal devotion to Natalie Harp. And with Trump, it's become central to her life and central to her career. She got Trump's attention to begin with after crediting his right to try legislation with helping save her life during cancer treatment. And that is a disputed. There are articles disputing the accuracy of that story, but okay, she then went and worked at the far right wing one American news network OAN. She then became a member of Trump's staff.

And then she is just with him all the time right now. And she leaves these admiring notes for Trump, you're all that matters to me. And Trump has praised her also saying, she loves me, she'll never leave me. Everybody else is ultimately going to leave me to try to get money. Now, then CNN sort of mentions a story to Preston Harp that I guess he hadn't heard, which is that according to two sources, Natalie Harp was about to get in a car with Trump to go from Trump Tower to a courthouse back when he was in the middle of his criminal trial. And staffer said to Natalie, hey, there's no seats available in the motorcade. And so she then got in the trunk of the car. There are people trying to debunk this by going SUVs don't really have trunks.

And it is true. SUVs, it's sort of a hatch. It's open. But we all know that then she just got in the hatch. Like you're focusing on trunk at this point? Okay. So Aaron Burnett mentions this story to Preston Hart. And he's like, whoa, that's some weird stuff.

Do sources Preston are telling CNN that your sister was involved. Okay. Back in October 2023, right? The context here is Donald Trump's motorcade was going to leave Trump Tower for a court appearance. Okay. And they were all getting into the motorcade. There was sort of a screaming match about.

who was getting in what car, and it turned out that there wasn't room for Natalie. So she insisted, she said no. Trump had personally asked her to come to this court appearance, so she needed to be in the car. Now, according to these sources, the end result is that your sister jumped into the trunk of one of the motorcade vehicles to go to the court appearance in Lower Manhattan. That's really funny. I didn't even know about that.

I mean, what is your reaction to that? I mean, you're laughing, but I mean, is it funny or what? I mean, you know her. So that's why it's actually kind of that that's obsession. That's like an unhealthy obsession with someone if you're going to jump into the trunk of their car like. Do source. So this story really taking on a life of its own.

I should mention this brother Preston Harp is reportedly estranged from her. So even, you know, his whole interpretation of everything, his views, I don't know, you know, he may other motivations. Who the hell knows? But this is a story that is really getting into an institutional concern. That is, you know, maybe Trump's having an affair with her. Maybe he isn't. Maybe she's wacky and maybe. But the issue here is that she seems intensely devoted to Trump in a way that is almost like a smitten obsession. And she has extraordinary access to Trump. She's manipulating and controlling his private communications. She's a gatekeeper to the information he consumes. And she's playing up Trump's worst instincts to escalate and threaten escalation with Iran and this and that

gladly typing up the truth social posts. And she's curating Trump's media diet. She's transmitting messages between Trump and political figures. And so this is someone that makes she is more than an eccentric personality in Trump's entourage. Let's put it that way. She's shaping. Trump's understanding of events and filtering out information, she doesn't think Trump wants to hear. The trunk story is bizarre. It's, it's, you know, kind of a quirky story. We know that Donald Trump has always valued personal loyalty over traditional qualifications. And what he does is surround himself with people who praise him and validate his grievances and don't tell him anything that he's doing wrong. Natalie Harp has sort of combined that Trump's, Trump likes having young women around him,

unconditional loyalty with complete and total proximity and influence. And the suggestion from her brother, who's estranged and we can sort of, you know, take what he says with a grain of salt. The suggestion here is that the devotion to Trump predates getting the job. She has this pattern reaching years back of wanting to be attached to Trump in some way. Now, political enthusiasm is not a mental illness. Writing to presidents is not evidence of instability. Even the motorcade allegation, it might be like, listen, she needed to get to the courthouse.

It was a wacky situation. Jumping in a taxi wasn't going to get her there. So she got in the hatch of the SUV. But the totality of the story raises some real questions about judgment and boundaries and access to the highest levels of the American government. And the story is this aid controls what Trump sees, what he posts, who reaches him. And her unwavering personal devotion to Trump makes her really dangerous, but also what as far as Trump is concerned probably makes her the most qualified.

Now let's dig a little deeper psychologically as to what all of this may really be about. This is not primarily a show about psychoanalysis. I am not a mental health professional. I am not diagnosing Donald Trump. And I'm not diagnosing Natalie Harp here. But I have to tell you about some fascinating and frankly disturbing sort of psychological dynamics that I believe are worth discussing as informed speculation about this increasingly bizarre situation between Donald Trump and his executive assistant Natalie Harp.

Is it a work relationship? Is it a daddy daughter relationship? Is it a romantic relationship? Well, let me give you some of the interpretations that I think are worth considering here. There's a term called transference that may be relevant. Natalie Harp was reportedly really close to her father, Robert Harp. She was homeschooled in a super conservative evangelical family. She worked for her father during her adult life.

She treated their business as a Christian mission. Now, Robert Harp died by suicide a number of years ago. And right after that happened, this intense attack. to Donald Trump that Natalie Harp had got scaled up orders of magnitude. And you look at her notes and her notes reportedly described Trump as my guardian, my protector. We have reporting that she has said to Trump, you were all that matters to me. Trump has reportedly said she loves me like family and she will never leave me. And so when you see that, this is not like deep psychological analysis.

natural to go, oh, that's interesting. Did Trump become a substitute father figure after her dad lost his life? This older, powerful man, he can give her protection, he can give her purpose, he can give her approval after she had this very traumatic loss of her actual father. That is a realistic possibility. Now, there's also possible transference going in the other direction. You know, if you've watched this show, that Donald Trump. has repeatedly sexualized his own daughter Ivanka. I know this is nauseating. I know this is

vomitous. But remember this viral comment. If Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her. Stop there. Oh, it's so weird. You know what? You are. You're known for saying outrageous thing. Mr. Trump. Oh, yeah, y. So what might also be going on is has Donald Trou's, has Donald Trump transferred this instinct of some kind of attraction to his own daughter, dear God, onto Natalie Harp. Natalie Harp is a much younger blonde woman who offers absolute devotion and she emotionally reassures Trump and gives him all of her attention. So there's a psychological thing here

that is tough to ignore, but maybe everybody's getting what they want out of this. She gets a powerful powerful protector and a replacement father figure. He gets a younger woman who admires him unconditionally and in some generic way kind of is reminiscent of Ivanka. But unlike Ivanka who has her own life and her own family and her children, Natalie Harp is there to tend to trumps emotional needs and never challenges his preferred reality. Whereas Ivanka, you know, she's opted out of being involved politically in the second term because It was so damaging to her social life and all of this other stuff.

But the idea is harp and Trump give each other what they seem to need psychologically and it creates this close feedback loop of codependency. Harp curates Trump's information diet and prints the flattering articles and channels messages from allies and manages his social media posts. Her job is protect Trump's version of reality where everyone loves them and everything's awesome. And the more she validates Trump's beliefs, the more Trump wants her around. The more he trusts her, the more access she gets. Notice that none of this is about a romantic relationship.

There's speculation about it. Maybe there is one. Maybe there isn't. But the idea here is she gets more and more access because of her devotion to Trump and having her more and more around him makes him feel better as well. This is sometimes one of these situations where two people just reinforce each other's sealed worldview. Nothing can get in.

Again, these are not diagnoses. These are just ideas that we're talking about. Think about how this system would look from the outside. Trump makes a false claim. Natalie Harp gives him information of people who agree with the false claim and half-baked information that says, no, what you said was right. When Trump gets that, he goes, see what I said is true and all of the media fact-checking me are wrong.

And so he doubles down on it. And so the contradictory evidence never gets. to Trump because Natalie Harp is there protecting him for it. And Trump goes, she's so great, you get to be around me in a way other people don't. And remember that when a security threat led officials to move Trump onto this other aircraft in a catering truck, Natalie Harp was in that little group. Senior officials, journalists, cabinet members, they stayed on what was effectively the decoy plane. Now, this doesn't prove a sinister psychological pact. But at different. points in people's lives, different things become useful or interesting to them.

And that has led to the situation we find ourselves today. Now the danger, you could go, okay, well, they both have these kind of damaged personalities. That's it. No, no. There's a danger that extends beyond that because one person is the president of the United States. The other reportedly controls what the president of the United States reads, who he talks to, talks to and what he tells the world. If their relationship depends on Natalie Hart protecting Trump's delusions and Trump's

providing her protection and purpose, the consequences of that effect everybody. And the most terrifying possibility is that these sealed psychological operating systems inside the White House detach Trump from reality more and more as the stakes become bigger and bigger. So what started as like, who is this young woman around Trump? Here's some wacky clips of her when she was on OAN has become arguably one of the most important stories in terms of understanding how this president is being guided and guided into paranoia, propaganda and disinformation. It's terrifying stuff. And it does directly relate to these informational silos that people end up in that I write about

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not sacrificing performance for security or privacy. It's one of those things you turn on once and just forget. about it. Get an exclusive, 83% off. That is just 203 a month plus four months free at PIAVPN.com slash Pacman. The link is in the description. It is great to be joined once again by our friend V Spear from under the desk news, joining me for the first time as a parent, which is a whole different thing. So good to see you. So good to talk to you. Yeah, you too, David. When I was on my two. week paternity leave for my secret baby that I kept a secret for the entire pregnancy.

They were like, David's asking if you can come on the show. I was like, that's a perfect comeback to the world show to start with. So I'm glad to be here. You know, one of the interesting things, like, let's not make the whole show about diapers, but I think there is a specific interesting thing here, which is I do now have these things, especially when covering the Trump administration, where I just say to myself, how do I explain this to a kid? How do I explain this to my older daughter who's now starting to ask questions about stuff?

And it's so interesting because this thing came up recently where a congressman Max Miller in the middle of all these horrible allegations against him when he was interviewed by Jake Tapper and asked, are you going to drop out? He goes, listen, I mean, like Trump was accused of this stuff and he stayed in and won. And this reminds me of back when the whole grab them by the you know what tape came out during Trump's first run, there was this. feeling of like if this is okay and then he's elected president how do you explain to a kid that like this is not how we talk and this is certainly not what we do to people and so i'm definitely thinking more in these terms of like how do i explain this to a kid to whom i'm trying to explain the world it puts a different spin on things it certainly does the thing that i tell my now two week old daughter which is i i think she can hear me and understands is that

I will only surround her with safe people. There are unsafe people, but we're only going to have safe people around you. And the people that come into the house and that we're friends with were like, this is another safe person. This is a good person. And those are the expectations. When some people in my life knew that we were having the baby and when they found out it was a girl, they were like, oh, bringing a girl into this world. I was like, well, okay, well, she's already, I mean, yeah, Like, we're going to do it. So I can't just, like, give up and be like, the world is horrible. Sorry, you're a girl.

Everything's disappointing. And I just immediately had this commitment that, like, this little girl is very lucky that there are so many people in her parents' life that are defiant optimists, that are thoughtful people, that are still knocking doors for politicians they believe in, that are still, whether that's doing investigative journalism or uncovering corruption bravely, there are more of us out there that will be in her life. than the bad people. And it's good to know what the other side of the coin looks like while still trying to protect them from having to engage with it too much. But I was like, I feel really empowered

bringing a little girl into the world because the world needs little girls who grow up to be strong women. And I think that we have a really good shot with the people in our community to build some of those future leaders. And so I got like really pissed about it. First of all, that's like a parenting thing, I guess. Anytime you're happy, someone else will be like, well, just wait until And I'm like, okay. And then the just wait until it comes. And I'm like, this is great. Like, I still like it.

Yeah, the just wait until often works out to like, well, you just figure that out when it actually is the time to figure it out. You know? There's this interesting kind of thing where I remember years ago when Charles Barkley had this thing, the former basketball player, where some of, I don't remember what behavior he was accused of being involved. I don't remember if it was gambling or what it was. But there was like a, hey, you're a role model to people. And he was like, I'm a sports. person, I really shouldn't be a role model. And then we have all of these elected officials whose behavior is also disgusting. And some of them are Republicans and some of them are Democrats and we've seen

campaigns end over the last year because of behavior. So it's like, okay, these are elected officials. Maybe they shouldn't be role models either. And so maybe the role models need to be like in our communities. They need to be family members, teachers, local people. And like, we should should we not be looking nationally to role models? I don't know. Well, I think there are role models. And then there are warnings, right? There are warning signs. There are examples of villains throughout all of the Disney movies that she will watch and she will learn why you don't want to take that path. And I think we can apply that to the politics that we see on television or sports, because we're not going to be able to keep them from that. Even the bad behavior in the WMBA,

which my kid will grow up watching the WMBA. She's going to have times where she's like really awe-inspired by the women that are playing this sport and doing so well and getting the brand deals and probably will like watching them with their outfits when they walk in for the day and all of these different opportunities. And then she's also going to know that there were a couple of washed up former male NBA players that now want to play on the women's team to try and poke fun at trans people. And how silly and stupid and loser behavior is that? And that's icky.

And we would never treat people like that, right? I think there's a way to make an example of folks. And I don't think this applies only to children. One of the most effective things Tim Walls did while he was running for vice president with Kamala Harris was just call them weird. It was like, this isn't the societal compact that we have made with the world. And so we can know that other people choose differently than us. And this is the way that we manage that.

And I think that goes for kids and for adults. Like, we just choose differently. I don't want to feel like I have to keep her protected from all of the evils of the world. I think it's actually maybe more empowering for her to know that they're out there and how to navigate them if she encounters them. Speaking of weird, there's this whole Natalie Harp story that is in creases. getting oxygen and attention. You know, I'm curious your view on on this story. My view has been that, you know, maybe she's in a romantic relationship with Trump. Maybe she isn't. I don't know. That's not really the most important thing to me. To me, the big thing is that there is someone here

with radical beliefs and terrible instincts who rather than acting as a break pedal to Trump's worst instincts is acting as an accelerator pedal where all of his worst. are very quickly transmitted into truth social posts or he's insulated from the actual beliefs about his policies and only given positive reaction. That to me is the big story where someone who kind of has no business being there has massive influence over what the president of the United States is focused about and thinking about. What's your sense of like what matters about that story? So when I look at folks like Natalie Hart, I always try to go back and try and find the root of where something made her go on the path that she did. Like, what part in the woods did we get

to that she chose this way? And something I've been very interesting about her is she was raised by right-wing conservative Christian parents. Her father was a pastor. Her mother exemplified what tradwife was supposed to be, right? Her and her brother were homeschooled. And then they were put into Liberty University system. And one thing I learned from the show I do with Monty Mayter on Fridays is that Liberty University takes these homeschooled Christian soldiers. right and finds a role for them where they will be useful to the right-wing Christian, fascist, nationalist regime. Now, Natalie's role may have been to be this thin white woman who supports the aesthetic they're trying to put out for Donald Trump or tries to play a role that will

make Donald Trump more amenable to the American public. And if you go back, she graduated from Liberty University in 2015. Right around that time, she claims to have been been diagnosed with stage two bone cancer. She has not been able to really provide evidence towards what was going on there. And she claims that in 2017, Donald Trump's let them try legislation that allows for clinical trials for people who are given a terminal diagnosis saved her life and that she got some life-saving clinical trial for this bone cancer thing. No medical professional has been able to determine, yes, this was the process we used and it was because of that legislation. This is a story that she has told, and maybe it's true. Maybe it's not.

I think that remains to be seen. She was then invited in 2020 to be a speaker for the RNC. This is a girl who was trained as a child to keep sweet and obey, to uphold what the Christian nationalist regime needed her to be as a soldier. And that was, you know, to perpetuate that this other figure was doing good. When she got on stage in 2020, she, you remember, she was greeted with a kiss. This was the first sort of gaff when he went to shake hands and then she went to shake hands and then he went to kiss her and she sort of went to kiss him. And it was that awkward thing. But that was her first meeting with him. That meeting with that level of intimacy came just one month after her father killed himself. Yes.

Now, I'm not a psychotherapist, but I've been around long enough to kind of be able to put together pictures of what's going on with a person. You have this figure that trained you to be a tool for Christian nationalism. You were put into this position by Liberty University to tell this story to be a part of the regime in this way, perform this role. Your father, who controlled your entire life and reality, kills himself, which is a mortal sin, not something that they expected. Your mother's reaction to it is to say he died in his sleep and nobody should ever say that he killed himself because that would ruin the facade. That would ruin that maybe his life wasn't as perfect as we portrayed it to be. you see the brother break away from the family at this time and go towards his like california dreams he was recently interviewed on cnn very opposite figure of natalie harp but you get kind of two kids

out of this situation and this is what the two sides of that coin look like and then she clings to donald trump as the person who saved her life who has become the new father figure to her who is the person who won't abandon her won't kill himself if she can he is all that matters to her so much so that she's willing to ride in the trunk of an SUV to be close to him She's willing to sleep in a locker room to be close to him. This is her new profit. And that is what I think of the Natalie Harp situation. It's so interesting because we haven't published this yet, but I just finished recording

a commentary about this that will be part of the episode we're participating in right now, where I make a very similar analogy. And this is something called transference. And again, this is not a psychology show. Okay. But what we're talking about, and there's actually two potential elements of transference. There's what you described, which is Trump. as the new sort of strict father figure of sorts replacing her biological father in what was

I'm sure of a tragic and terrible situation. There's also the transference potentially, and this is very, this is, this is gritty stuff. Trump has talked about if she weren't my daughter, I would probably be dating her about Ivanka, but Ivanka has kind of gone out on her own and she's opted not to be involved politically in the second term. It was very socially damaging to her and Jared Kushner's life. style and all this stuff. And is there some transference there where Trump is like here is a version of Ivanka, a younger blonde woman, right? And that's about as far as it goes in terms of similar

similarities, I guess, who is devoted to me and isn't going to leave and go off and do her own thing. I don't know. It seems very complicated. But for us as voters, I think the really scary part is Trump's worst foreign policy instincts that a lot of people might think but never actually put out there. She types it up and puts it out on true social. and now it's moving markets and it's affecting foreign policy. I think you're totally right to say that there is a mutual benefit in their facade of a relationship, that the people really behind the scenes are able to keep up. Secret Service said that this woman was a danger to him, probably a stalker,

probably not in the best mental health to be this close to the president. And he wanted to keep her and Susie Wiles or whoever it is up there is like, let him keep his teddy bear, let him keep his comfort blanket. They keep each other occupied while the real puppet masters are at. out there rifting off this administration and, you know, doing stuff that they're doing with the military manipulating markets. I think you could tell when John Ossoff said, well, Trump would rather be riding around with Natalie and doing whatever than he would legislating. That, I watched that narcissistic injury cut Trump in his face. The way that he reacted wasn't his normal. That was

true. That was true. He was, his fantasy, his dream life was exposed in that moment. And the weakness because that blows apart that Melania cares about him or anything else. I think it's dangerous. I think that's why we're starting to see some more of the mainstream media even start to cover this because she is not a comfort blanket. She has a danger. Just like Stephen Chung, the other person in his administration that will put out massive propaganda and lies

constantly. I don't know what. Has attacked me actually. Chung has attacked me on Twitter. Yeah. Sort of a badge of honor, I think. Oh, you know what? I might be one step closer to getting on that.

list that you and Brian are on now. Now when I'm on your show, I might be on the leftist terrorist watch list. I hope so. It's a badge of honor now, you know. Well, it isn't, you know, that kind of gets to this broader situation where I, it seems that 2028 will be the first presidential election, especially for the left side of the political spectrum, where the creator space is going to play a bigger role. And we are on the radars, so to speak, of a lot of these right wingers, which I just, you know, It was starting to happen in 24. Definitely was not the case in 2020. So these are going to be different dynamics, I think, for this presidential election involving

the creator space that will be unlike any previous one. Do you agree with that? Well, we get it two ways. And I keep a close track on my comments and, like, trying to find trends of like what's about what's a potential campaign coming against one or the other of us. And for months, I've been saying the way that they will play dirty in this election and especially in 2020 is trying to make you think that anyone that you trust, you found safe or intelligent is actually an op and was lying to you the whole time and destroy you.

They do it with Ms. Rachel. They're going to do it with me. They do it with you. Anybody that you think you can relax around and just enjoy conversation with or learn from, the anti-intellectual side of the world is going to knock that out. And that will not be just the right-wing provocateurs. It is people posing as leftist bots or leftist tankies in my comments and things also being like, you're not a real leftist.

You're not a real Democrat. You're not actually for the people. You're a capitalist shill. You're a neoliberal op. You're all these different types of things. The right wing is creating left wing accounts to make it seem like there's all this division on the left side of the party when, in fact, I think we are more coalesced than we've been in a very long time. I think that's exemplified by those primaries.

I have a couple thoughts on that. One, I do think there are some important divisions on the right and the left right now. But they are mostly theoretical with regard to the next stop on the bus, so to speak, because there are communists out there, like genuine, like we want, but they're not about to take over American government or the U.S. Senate or anything. So my argument has been like, hey, I'm not a communist, but we can have that debate, but let's not get confused what we're debating. Communism is not about to take over the United States government. That's number one. Yeah. As AOC said, we can't even get. the minimum wage up from 725 in the last 20 years. Communism is not coming anytime soon. That's right. So I think that that's one aspect to this. I think the other aspect to this, and I write about this to a degree in my new book, is that the stuff that does really well in the algorithms is what generates an emotional response, ideally fear or anger, and very clearly delineates villains or scapegoats that you can point to. And the,

The reason that the right, a lot of the rights messages lend themselves better than that, because when you go, abortion is murder and everyone should be in jail, you're immediately creating, it's a simple message. It gets people afraid or angry and you're creating a whole bunch of villains that you could go, these are the people. We on the left tend to talk a little less in those terms. And what these kind of like bots and astroturf conversations do is they try to apply that emotional language to the left to get people triggered in that same way. So my view is the only defense

against this is understanding that it's going on. Yes, it's definitely part of it. And then also something we talked about on the Friday show with Monty is this lack of deconstruction that's happened with the last 20 years of Christian nationalist education, homeschooling, and the sort of preparations that the right has made with their youth to become moral police, to become people who are constantly contrarian. And there was a creator at Only Petty who said, the far left is desperate for their own rush limba because that's what their parents listened to when they were growing up and they are just as susceptible to the brainwashing. So I think we have to be careful across the board when it comes to whether it's radio hosts, streamers, TikTokers, whatever it's going to be, that it's not an all or nothing game and that accountability is not, if we're constantly always only holding each other accountable through call out content and dog piling online, that is not translating to votes. That's not translating to power in the real world.

In the two-week paternity leave that I took, which is all I could do, being offline, I was like, wow, all of this stuff that I concerned myself with during the day, the threads, conversations, the comments, the streams, the TikTok scrolls, quite literally none of this is showing up in my daily life. And I had a meeting with my local state senator, Jeremy Cooney, who had no idea what I was talking about with half the stuff that I was saying. We talked to Amanda. she was on tour doing the y'all vote in the south stuff,

the people who are showing up to the town halls and to the y'all vote trainings have no idea what I'm talking about when I say, like, this, that, and the other about a streamer. And so I was like, I have to relieve myself of the discourse of what's happening on the internet and try to constantly re-centered myself every day to what is the truth, what is an actual critical feedback

I can take about the work I'm doing to improve it, where do we need to be showing up in real life, how much of this is AI-generated opinion and manufactured consensus, and what is going to translate to votes that put Democrats into office so that we can reign in this president and our march towards fascism. We can either do two more years of Trump, or we could do until November. And then some of these progressives who are getting voted in and younger members of Congress are saying, we'll go for impeachments, we'll go for trials, we'll go for getting money out of politics. But we have to be able to

separate the ego, like I call it, having ego resilience. I have to have ego resilience. I have to have ego resilience in the work I do online to actually be able to show up in person and not be super nervous that like, oh my God, do all these people know that I was getting canceled the other day for not supporting North Korea by some campaign? And I'm like, they're like, I have no idea what you're talking about. They don't know what a Fed is. I'm like, well, I got called a Fed for not supporting North Korea. They're like, what are you even? What normy people out in the world trying to pay their bills have no idea what's going on online. And so sometimes that's really, this manifested in a lot of ways. I mean, you know, thinking back to 2020, if you only looked online,

you would have thought, oh, my God, Bernie Sanders has got this nomination in the bag. I'd say that as a supporter of Bernie Sanders. But the reality was that there were a lot of just not bots, real people who are going to work in Michigan and going to work wherever where they were like, yeah, I'm more of like a Biden guy. And, and, you know, I think it's really important to sometimes take a step back from the online spaces we occupy, which can feel so real. And I think that that is an important, an important message. We've been speaking with V. Speer from Under the Desk News. Always good to talk to you.

Congratulations on becoming a parent. And it's only starting. Just you just wait until you see what's six months ahead. I feel really excited about it and optimistic about it. Not to be all tradwife about it, but having a baby is really cool. It's been quite fulfilling and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. So yay for working moms. All right.

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

Every bit helps. I would love to have you as a subscriber there. The Trump administration is spending your money to try to convince the Census Bureau to prove that he really won the 2020 election. I know it's been almost six years. I know it's been widely debunked. know we've had dozens of court cases, but folks, he's obsessed and he will stop at nothing to try to prove he really won.

Trump putting out the following message on truth social. The Census Bureau has begun checking the voter records from 2020 against their citizenship records. On the first 128 million voters, the Census Bureau proves that over 24,000 non-citizens voted illegally. The Census Bureau is going to analyze the next 32 million voters and this number will explode. I won the election. We must pass the Save America Act.

Now of course, even if what Trump has published is true, which is a big if, even if what Trump published is true, the images don't really prove what Trump is saying. Now let's look at the images one by one. The first one says, okay, 160 million ballots were cast, 120,000. 28 million voter records were successfully linked to citizens. More than 24,000 though were linked to non-citizens and approximately 32 million remain to be analyzed. Now the crucial phrase here that's doing a lot of work is linked to what the Census Bureau did

is they took a commercial voter database from data clear and they compared it to federal administrative records. Now potentially unlawful votes in specific votes. is an individual who voted and isn't a citizen. You got to investigate that. But that is not what the Bureau did. If you believe that they investigated 24,000 incidents of voting and determined that those 24,000 votes were conducted by non-citizen, that is not what they did.

What they did is have a database match. And a database match can take place for a bunch of different reasons. And all it means is here are 24,000 votes that maybe should be looked at if the parameters for the match were even correct. Now, the data clear file reportedly contains a vote history flag, which indicates whether the voter participated in the 2020 election or not. It doesn't contain secret ballot info or say, you know, which candidate these individuals supposedly voted for. Trump assumes the 24,000 flag ballots were all fraudulent and they were all for Biden. Nothing in the report says anything about that. Even if we accept there really are 24,000

non-citizens who voted. We have no reason to believe that they all voted for Joe Biden. And even if they did, it is such a small number that there would be no evidence that it actually flipped the results in any particular state. Because remember, these weren't from any one race. The 32 million records waiting analysis are also not suspicious votes. They're just unresolved records. And so Trump goes, the number of illegal votes will explode. We don't know that that's going to happen at all. But the most important thing is as wacky as all of these claims are, the figures would not overturn the election. The report lists, for example, 1,100 of the 24,000 preliminary matches were in Arizona. Biden won by over 10,000 votes there.

Okay. Even if you go all 1,100 matches were fraudulent votes for Biden. Biden still wins by 9,400. Not that it would be okay, but I'm saying even if we accept all of their very weak claims, Biden still would have won. Georgia, there are supposedly 400 of these matches that should be looked at. Biden won Georgia by almost 12,000. There are 500 of these concerning matches in Wisconsin.

Biden won Wisconsin by 20,000. So even if every match is accurate and indicative of a fraudulent vote, unlawful people voting for Biden, all of them, it wouldn't reverse a single state. Okay. Second image explains how did we find these records? And basically what happened is someone entered the non-citizen pool through an affirmative indicator, either a green card, a visa, DACA, foreign student, immigration enforcement, some kind of record. And then the Bureau looked, is there evidence that the person became a citizen

before the election? If so, we remove them from the list. But if we don't find a citizenship record, then we put them on this list. But there's a problem with that. Not finding a citizenship record in an automated search of a few databases doesn't mean this is a proven non-citizen. So of the 24,000, some of those are almost certainly citizens. Like aside from whether the list is about but but but but some of that 24,000 will disappear because they actually are citizens. A lot of government databases have missing information, incorrect information, outdated information.

They people with the same name, but they are different people were matched. So you've got to establish that they really voted illegally. And in order to do that, you have to establish their actual identity and their citizenship status. These matches certainly don't do that. It might give us 24,000 leads to look at, but it does not tell us 24,000 non-citizens voted. Okay. And then finally, the third image breaks down the number of these records by country of origin.

Now, of the 24,000 records, they say a plurality, 3,800 are from Mexico. Then you've got some from Canada, some from the Philippines, Jamaica, Germany, okay, etc. But look at the arithmetic. The 10 countries displayed do not add up to 20. In fact, it's less than half of that. What about the other 15,000 records? Well, the report says about 7,000 had no available country of birth information. Uh-oh.

And then another 3,900 were just grouped as all other countries. So the underlying report doesn't give you the evidence that these 24,000 people were even necessarily born in other countries. Some of that unexplained missing number might have been born in the United States. And also country of birth doesn't tell you whether someone is a citizen or not. There are millions of American citizens born in Mexico, Canada, Jamaica, and they are eligible voters. But that is a separate part of the database.

So they're flagging this in a very deceptive way. Trump looks at this and he goes, proof, I won the election. Thinking people look at it and they go, matches aren't evidence of crimes. are incomplete. Some of these people didn't actually vote. Some of them are actually citizens. And then we go, we should strive for perfection. But even if we grant all of the unproven claims, it still wouldn't even have flipped the election to Biden. It wouldn't even have flipped a single state to Biden. That doesn't mean we don't care, but it does mean that Trump's conclusion that he actually won is, of course, completely and totally bogus. Fox News.

has been forced to issue a humiliating on-air correction after telling viewers completely incorrect gas price numbers, which by the way, happened to favor Donald Trump. What Fox did is they added an entire dollar to last year's price, which makes it look like Donald Trump's record on gas prices. It's much better than it actually is. From the original video that aired on Fox News, we are putting up on the screen here, they said today gas prices are 406 and a year ago they were 413. Well, that looks pretty good. It looks like gas prices have gone down under Donald Trump. But the only problem is that a year ago, gas prices were not 4.13 a gallon.

They were 3.13 a gallon. Now, that's not like, oh, we rounded incorrectly. No, you added a dollar and you transformed a huge gas price increase under Donald Trump into what looks like gas prices went down slightly. They then issued an apology. They aired the following video where they said, we made a boo-boo. Take a listen to this. Does it sound sincere?

I don't know. And before I toss back to you, yesterday we aired a graphic that showed gas prices incorrectly last year were $4.13 a gallon. They are in fact, $4.13, $3 and $13 a gallon. That's 90 cents more in the past year. The Trump administration says those gas prices will fall quickly once the operations in Iran end. Now back to you. Just an honest mistake, right?

Could have been. I don't know. I mean, television graphics sometimes have errors. We have no evidence proving someone was deliberately lying about gas prices, but notice that it's a very politically useful mistake because Fox didn't report, oh, the gas prices were 2.13, which would make Trump look a lot worse. It basically produced almost the exact number you need to conceal the fact that gas prices have gone way up under Donald Trump.

Now, that doesn't prove intent, but it does demonstrate an editorial failure involving one of the couple of numbers on the graphic. Now, Fox's defense of Trump isn't going to be constrained by the fact that they lied about that number or got it wrong. The network is explaining why Americans should accept high gas prices. So like one thing would be just lie to people about gas prices. But there's another aspect to this, which is, hey, you know what? it is a worthy endeavor what we're doing in Iran. And so Americans should just go, even though we're paying more, it's very good because this Iran war is so awesome.

There's been sanctions and there's been agreements and there's been harsh words, but he's the only one to take them on directly after 47 years. And they want to do anything they can to make sure he's not present or if he is president, make sure he does not have as much power. So that's what I worry about. they'll be able to dictate our elections unless we take them down before they can. That's why we have to make it a national security issue. We cannot, it's not being elitist.

It's not saying that it doesn't matter. Of course gas prices matter. It impacts not just people on the day-to-day basis, but everything is controlled by oil and gas. But when you tell the American people this is a national security, what could happen if we don't get about? No one would have ever suggested when they attacked 9-11, our twin towers, and the gas prices, whatever, we were in combat operations. This is not exactly 9-11 that Trump is dealing with in Iran. That should impact our response to that.

We don't forget, these are people that want to wipe America off the face of the map. They want to wipe Israel off the face of the map. They say death to America. So if they got a nuclear weapon, we won't even have cars to put gas in, right? Right. How about that? What an analysis, but it basically boils down to you are paying more at the pump. I guess we can't deny that even though we tried with the fake graphic.

But don't complain because Iran gets a nuclear weapon. Suddenly, we're not going to have any cars in the United States. And that will be much, much worse. Now, there is a serious discussion to be had about Iran, about nuclear proliferation, about the economic consequences of war. We won't even have cars. Goes a little bit beyond that conversation. And it is a spectacular double standard because remember when gas prices went up under

Biden after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Fox treated every little increase as Joe Biden's personal failure. Now, under Donald Trump, the complexity of geopolitics has to be considered and it's a national sacrifice that we're making. And if you object, you're unpatriotic and what, you don't want us to have cars. Presidents do not set gas prices. That's true. Global oil markets and supply disruptions and wars. All of these things impact gas prices. That was true under Biden. It's true under Donald Trump. But Fox's standard changes depending on who's president. Under Biden, it was proof of incompetence when gas prices went up.

Under Trump, first they put up a false number that minimizes the increase and then they go, we're protecting America with these higher gas prices. Maybe the extra dollar was an innocent typo. Maybe not. But when the numbers make Trump look bad, they've changed the number. And when they get caught, they change the subject and go, it is patriotism. It is a form of national sacrifice that we are paying higher gas prices. Thank you, sir.

May I have another slap to the face. That's what they want people to say. And I just don't think it's going to work for this upcoming election because people aren't standing for it. We have a phenomenal bonus show for you today. We will talk about the primary results from last night in Alaska, in Florida, in a bunch of different states. is suing Texas to force the extradition of an ICE agent accused of lying about a shooting.

Very interesting story. And a 51 point shift away from Trump among a key voting group. We will read and talk about that. All of it and more on today's bonus show. Sign up instantly at join packman.com. I will see you then.