The David Pakman Show - When reality catches up to the illusion
Episode Date: July 24, 2026- On the Show: -- David explains his political views, advocating for universal healthcare and social programs while rejecting broad state ownership of industries -- Fox News releases a poll showing ...Donald Trump trailing Democrats on key issues like healthcare, inflation, and immigration -- The Pentagon lowers the official military casualty count for the Iran war from 18 to 14 service members following a ceasefire declaration -- Donald Trump boasts about purchasing a 10% stake in Intel while making false claims regarding California power grids and wind energy -- Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt faces intense questioning regarding a Saudi nuclear deal and domestic manufacturing job losses -- A three-time Donald Trump voter expresses public regret over her votes due to Trump's Iran war and other unkept presidential promises -- Recent outbreaks of cyclospora in lettuce, salmonella in eggs, and measles highlight the consequences of Trump's public health policy -- Conservative influencers and Republican donors launch a coordinated effort to undermine Vice President JD Vance prior to the 2028 cycle -- On the Bonus Show: Trump unveils a new round of tariffs, the White House admits it used keywords to cut research grants, the BBC can access Trump's financial records due to his lawsuit, and much more... 📞 QUO: Try it FREE and get 20% off for 6 months at https://quo.com/pakman 🛍️ Shopify: Sign up for $1/month trial and start selling today at https://shopify.com/pakman 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman 💳 PDS Debt: Get your free assessment & find the best option for you at https://pdsdebt.com/pakman 🛡️ Incogni lets you control your personal data! Get 60% off their annual plan: http://incogni.com/pakman -- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Book: https://bit.ly/m/attention -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow (00:00) Start (01:17) David explains why he's a social democrat (11:47) Fox News confirms Trump's polling disaster (20:56) Pentagon lowers Iran death count from 18 to 14 (28:12) Trump boasts about a 10% government stake in Intel (40:02) Karoline Leavitt answers for Saudi deal and job losses (48:23) Three-time Trump voter expresses regret (55:45) Multiple outbreaks under Trump and RFK (1:01:33) Republican donors try to end JD Vance's 2028 hopes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Today on the show, I will explain why I am not a socialist, why I'm not a communist.
We will also look at Fox News's own polling, delivering just brutal news for Republicans.
And it's also getting a lot harder to pretend voters are buying what Trump is selling.
We're going to look at some disturbing new questions about the Pentagon's handling of Iran war death numbers.
and we'll also have an honest conversation, always honest, about what to do with people who voted
for Donald Trump three times and are now admitting they were wrong.
Also, Donald Trump accidentally makes the most anti-capitalist argument, maybe of his political
career, while calling everybody else communists.
And then Caroline Leavitt is pressed on some uncomfortable questions as Republicans are turning
on J.D. Vance before Trump's press.
presidency is even over and we will wrap up with why America's growing public health problems
have a lot more to do with politics than a lot of people realize.
All of that today, if I have anything to say about it.
Well, I'm getting a ton of comments lately questions saying, David, why aren't you a socialist?
Why aren't you a communist?
You often mention it, but what about explaining the why?
And I've even gotten some suggestions that because I'm not a socialist or a communist, I must
be some kind of right winger. I must have had some political 180 where now I am on the political
right. But the question is, why do I not subscribe to those ideologies? I think that's a legitimate
question that I want to explore. Now, the real reason that I don't support those systems is very
simple. I don't believe either system is the best way to maximize human well-being and to organize
society. And as such, they are not systems that I can support. And I believe this looking at
empirical historical data and in applying a socioeconomic analysis to these theories. I am a social
Democrat. As a reminder, social Democrat and Democratic socialist are two completely different
things. Democratic socialists are socialists, whereas social Democrats are not. As a social Democrat,
I support getting everybody health care, strong unions in support of labor, affordable education
that is of high quality, progressive taxation where the wealthiest are taxed the most, serious
corporate regulation and a very strong social safety net.
I support those things.
I also support markets, private businesses, private ownership of property, and the ability
to make profit in private industry.
For a lot of goods and services, there is no good reason to eliminate markets.
We don't need government planners deciding, for example, which restaurants should open,
which laptops should be manufactured, what kind of furniture should be manufactured and sold.
It's completely fine to let companies compete there.
people start businesses and own them. Test ideas, succeed and fail within the context of a market.
I do believe that markets encourage innovation, but not because of the reason right wingers say they do.
Right wingers love to say, if you don't have markets, nobody will ever work hard if they don't
have the possibility of becoming a millionaire or a billionaire. I don't buy that stuff from the right.
People are also motivated by a lot of other things, curiosity and purpose, recognition, solving problems.
And we see publicly funded research produce extraordinary breakthroughs.
But it is also true, and we should recognize, that competition and financial rewards are also real motivators.
And if you remove them across the entire economy, you reduce experimentation.
You reduce innovation.
and also, I would argue, efficiency.
And so what social democracy recognizes, social democracy being a form of regulated capitalism,
social democracy recognizes markets are really useful tools.
But markets are not the moral authorities that the right wing believes them to be.
I do also believe that some things should be removed from the profit motive because market failure
would cause completely unacceptable harm that wealthy countries have no reason to accept.
If you don't like the available TVs, you can wait to buy one.
If you don't like the prices, you can wait for a sale or not buy one at all and hope that
the market adjusts.
That's TVs.
If you need insulin, you can't wait for the market to become more compassionate or adjust
so that you can afford your insulin.
And so in the areas of health care, education, infrastructure, law enforcement, law enforcement,
enforcement, military, and other essential services. We can't treat them like sneakers. We can't treat them
like video games. Their purpose must be universal access, not let's extract the maximum possible
profit from people who end up with nowhere else to go. That's the basic social democratic approach.
You use markets where they improve people's lives and you use public provision where markets,
predictably fail. So then why am I not a socialist or a communist? Why won't I go further? Let's deal
with each of them sort of one by one. Now, I don't want to make this a definitional game where people,
it's sort of like when you criticize Jordan Peterson and the Peterson people go, you're not
criticizing exactly what he meant. We have to have some kind of working definitions for socialism
and communism. Socialism and communism in turn usually want to replace private ownership of
major industries with worker, public, or state ownership, depending on whether we're talking about
a socialist or a communist model. Now, of course, there are many different kinds of socialism.
Democratic socialists are not communists, but I just don't see broad collective ownership
is the best way to organize an economy. This is a question to a degree of opinion. Some in the
audience might disagree. You may go, no, that is the best way to organize the economy. All right,
Well, we're having the conversation. I do support voluntary worker cooperatives. Let people create
them and finance them and demonstrate their advantages if that's what they want to do.
Nobody should be prevented from running a business as a co-op, but nobody should be required to run a business as a co-op either.
Requiring businesses to adopt collective ownership limits choices. It's authoritarian. It eliminates potentially useful forms of competition.
And I am an anti-authoritarian at my core.
This is why I'm opposed to both right-wing and left-wing authoritarianism, whether it's Kim Jong-un or Putin or Maduro or whatever.
I'm an anti-authoritarian.
Now, if a privately owned restaurant and a worker-owned factory and a publicly owned utility
each work well in their respective areas, I see no reason.
to force them into the same ownership model.
Now, communism goes further.
Communism usually wants state or government ownership of the businesses, the elimination
of economic classes and theoretically, depending on which flavor you're sort of talking
about, an eventual stateless society.
I just don't believe that eliminating private ownership and market forces throughout the economy
would maximize well-being.
And we've got a lot of examples from history of where it has.
destroyed well-being, it would create massive information problems. It weakens useful incentives.
And it'll end up concentrating economic decisions in institutions that are often completely
incapable of understanding local needs and individual preferences. And that's where we come back to
the sort of fundamental authoritarianism of it. What happens under socialism when owners refuse to
surrender their businesses to that socialized ownership model. And when people move their money,
when voters elect leaders promising to restore private enterprise in a socialist system,
if socialism can freely be voted out, I don't think it would last. And if you preserve socialism
against public resistance, you can end up with property seizures, capital controls, restrictions
on investment, limits on political opposition, it is a very serious authoritarian danger.
And that exists both in forcing a society into one of these models and in getting it to remain
there. Communism just intensifies that. And reaching the supposed stateless society requires an extraordinarily
powerful state, which sometimes seizes property, eliminates the capitalist class, reorganizes
production and usually suppresses resistance to that change as well.
And the state doesn't disappear.
What we've seen historically is that you end up with this new ruling class made up of often
corrupt, typically cronyistic and nepotistic party officials, bureaucrats, military leaders,
security agencies.
Now I know that some people will go, but David, those weren't real communism.
I think that avoids sort of the central question.
which is why have attempts to implement communism so consistently produced this one-party rule
filled with censorship and repression.
So for me, one of the key tenets of leftism is opposing domination.
That includes domination by corporations and billionaires on the one hand.
And it also includes opposing domination by governments or political parties or
these self-appointed revolutionaries who say, I speak for.
everybody. Social democracy, which I subscribe to, recognizes corporate power can become abusive
and state power can become abusive and both need democratic limits. So I want markets where
markets work. I want public provision where markets fail or distort society. And I want democracy
to protect people from both corporate and government power. Being not being a not being a socialist, not being a
communist doesn't make one right wing. My goal is not to reach the furthest left position imaginable.
My goal is let's support the system most likely to improve people's lives while preserving freedom.
And that is why I have the beliefs I have of social democracy. Many examples around the world
of social democracy successes. And that is how I have come to hold the beliefs that I hold.
People can disagree. People can email me. People can leave a comment. Info at David Pakman.com. But hopefully I've at least explained the origins or justification for my position. The funniest part about this next story isn't so much the numbers. It's that they came from Fox News. The network that spent years telling its audience, Republicans own the economy. They own immigration. They are the best on national security.
Democrats are in free fall and then Fox commissions its own poll, which by the way, Fox News polling
is quite good and accidentally tells a completely different story.
Take a look at this and then we will discuss it.
Fox polling shows voters want major changes on top issues.
Good morning, Lauren.
What changes?
Good morning.
Well, four in ten want revolutionary change.
That shows voters are unhappy and could register their discontent at the polls in November.
telling Fox that Democrats would do a better job on seven of nine major issues.
Pull it up and we'll go from the bottom up.
Voters favored Democrats by 22 points on income inequality. Dems are up 21 points on
health care. They're up 10 on inflation.
Uh-oh.
They're also leading on the economy, foreign policy, government spending, even immigration.
Republicans lead on crime and on national security. Both parties say they are motivated to vote,
But 68% of Democrats say they are extremely motivated versus 57 for Republicans.
Looks pretty bad, doesn't it?
Folks.
Looks pretty bad, doesn't it?
That's a brutal set of numbers if you're Trump or the Republican Party.
Democrats have had 21 points on health care, up 10 points on inflation, which maybe is the
most shocking result considering Republicans spent years saying Biden's a disaster on inflation.
Trump's going to be great.
We're going to dominate politically because we're going to be so good on inflation.
And then according to Fox's own polling, Democrats are ahead on the economy, which again, supposedly
Republicans are great on that.
They're ahead on foreign policy.
They're ahead on government spending.
They're ahead on immigration.
Immigration supposedly was Trump's signature issue.
He's kind of touted it as one of his signature issues for a decade.
And he always comes back to it.
And MAGA believes that is his strength.
And then Fox's own polling says Republicans aren't even winning they.
So that is like a big red warning sign.
Now, does one poll decide an election?
Of course it doesn't.
Polls bounce around and different firms get different results.
Nobody should overreact to any single survey.
But the who conducted this is fascinating.
When Fox, the network whose audience overwhelmingly supports Republicans, publishes numbers
this bad.
It's just tougher for Republicans to dismiss it as liberal propaganda.
Now, Trump has tried.
He'll go, well, we like Fox, but Fox's polling is not so good.
He tries to get people not to pay attention to this polling.
But Fox's polling is pretty good.
And it tells us something bigger, which is politics is much more than what politicians say.
It's do voters feel their lives are improving?
And one of the things that is a very fair criticism of the Biden administration.
And I talked about this with Governor Gavin Newsom on his podcast earlier this week.
And it was, I think, one of the big mistakes of Biden Harris.
You can't just tell people things are awesome and you can't just point to numbers.
People have to feel that things are good.
And Donald Trump's promises run directly counter to what people feel and what happened to be
the facts.
Trump promised we're going to bring prices down.
Prices have gone up.
Inflation has bounced around down up, but it's been positive, meaning prices continue
to go up.
And Trump promised that the certainty, the feeling of certainty with the economic situation would
increase. And instead, it's like tariffs are on, tariffs are off. Prices are higher. We've got a new war.
20% of oil that goes through the Strait of Hormuz is now held up. And the whole piece through
strength thing that he promised hasn't worked. And Americans watch and it's one international
crisis after another. And so people's lives aren't matching the promises that Donald Trump
successfully sold them during the campaign to a degree. And that branding of the economy
fixer is not sticking. That's what these numbers at some core level are picking up. Republicans
spent years assuming talking about inflation and immigration is going to make voters trust us.
And voters aren't trusting them. You're governing now and your slogans are being judged and
they're BS. And if Fox News is polling is even remotely close to correct, there are a lot of Americans
who just don't accept the results.
This is a bigger problem for Republicans than a bad news cycle.
We've got a midterm, a critical midterm just months from now.
And this is a warning that the sort of underlying political fundamentals are shifting.
And when Fox is delivering the message through their polling and with Stuart Varney going,
well, that doesn't sound so good, does it?
Republicans have a real problem.
This, I believe, is where a lot of people.
of Donald Trump's desperation is coming from. And this is why he's obsessed with passing the
Save America Act. This is why he is talking about, I might have to declare an emergency.
This is why he commandeered national television at 9 p.m. last week, I guess it was, to talk about
how they're finding all this evidence of rigging. This is rigged. That's rigged. Then we got to
prepare the public to accept invasive measures. He's panicking because he knows if they lose the
House, if Republicans lose the House, that's it for his presidency. And not only is that it for getting
any major legislation passed, it's also going to be two years of investigations and oversight and
subpoenas and possibly depositions. He's terrified of that. And in the middle of all this,
Republicans are realizing, damn, we don't want J.D. Vance to be the nominee. We'll get to that later.
Quick break back after this. If you run a business, you already know how much depends on answering the
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The David Packman Show continues to be funded directly by our audience.
Thank you to everyone who continues to pre-order my forthcoming book, pay attention at
David Pakman.com slash attention.
We don't have big media conglomerates.
pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into promoting this book. It's me talking to you about it
on the show. And I really appreciate everybody who's ordered it. Also, a massive thank you to
everybody who's signed up and gotten a new membership at join packman.com. And the newest members
who I'd like to recognize right now, if I may, are John Condon and Neil Bell. John and Neil,
Thank you so much for your support. I very much appreciate it. Join them. Get the daily bonus show and lots of other great perks by signing up at joinpacman.com. All right. If this story doesn't make your stomach turn, I don't know that anything will make your stomach turn. Imagine being the president, sending Americans into combat, watching them die because of your optional war, and then playing games with the numbers because the deaths are really politically inconvenient.
That is exactly what the Trump administration is doing.
There's reporting from CNBC in the New York Times that the Pentagon's official death toll
from the Iran War suddenly dropped from 18 to 14 in a single day.
We reported to you that it was at 16.
It then went up to 18.
Service members killed, thanks to Donald Trump's war.
And suddenly it goes from 18 to 14.
Now, was anybody brought back to life in some kind of incredible resurrection?
No.
The reason that the death toll was dropped from 18 to 14.
14 was because four service members who were killed in the last month reportedly were killed
the day after Trump said we have a ceasefire.
Think about how grotesque that is.
What they've done is essentially say because those deaths happened after Trump said we have
a ceasefire, we're just not going to count them as part of the war, even though they
obviously are. Now, by the way, Donald Trump knows that the number really is 18 because Trump
just said, you know, we, this is routine. He goes, we were in Vietnam for 20 years. We lost
hundreds of thousands, Afghanistan, blah, blah, blah. We only lost 18 this time so far. So he knows
that the number is 18. Take a look at this and then we'll talk more about what the administration
is doing. And here, you know, we were in Vietnam for 20 years, lost thousands and hundreds of thousands.
of lives, but thousands and thousands of lives. We were in Afghanistan for years. We were in all
these wars that you heard about for years and years. We were, you know, never, I called them
never any wars. Well, we're in for four months, and we, I had a very sad day yesterday. I went to
Dover. Four great American Patriots killed. That's 18 and two wars, and one is too many, but it's 18,
whereas in Vietnam we lost 200,000. We lost.
So Trump knows. Trump knows the real number is 18, but the Pentagon is playing games.
And technically four happened during a ceasefire, so they're not because of the Iran war.
It doesn't really change anything.
The families of those four Americans didn't lose someone less.
The troops are no less dead because Trump said, actually, that was during the ceasefire.
Now, the Pentagon later said, oh, we had a temporary data,
disruption with the casualty website.
I don't know about that.
And the bigger problem is that this is an administration that has earned serious skepticism
because they always choose politics over being transparent.
Members of Congress are complaining they're not getting complete casualty information.
And the Pentagon is giving very few detailed briefings about what's going on with this conflict,
particularly with the deaths.
And now suddenly they go from 18 to 14 and it just so happens to make the war look a little
bit less deadly.
So you don't, it doesn't require being a conspiracy theorist to understand why people are finding
this so suspicious.
And the part that that really gets me is Trump's, Trump has spent so long accusing everybody else
especially Democrats, but also even like George W. Bush of disrespecting the military.
And he says, Democrats hate the troops.
Bush shouldn't have gone to Iraq, even though at the time Trump told Howard Stern, yes, I would have
gone in. He says the media doesn't care about the troops. And he tries to wrap himself in the flag
every chance he gets. But his instinct when American service members die because of his decision
is to massage the statistics and make them look a little bit less bad politically. That's using the troops.
And as we covered yesterday, Donald Trump also has been using the troops by saying, you know,
these the some group a group of four service members that died they all loved the war they said we've got
to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon so the troops are being used by Donald Trump and the
military isn't supposed to be a PR department and the casualty count isn't supposed to be a talking
point these are human beings they have names they have families they have friends and their futures
were taken from them because of Donald Trump's choice to send
the sons of daughters of the country into war. I believe that the patriotic thing to do, the pro-trupe
thing to do and the pro-military thing to do, this is the bare minimum, we must really be sure
that we have no choice but to send troops into harm's way when we do it. When the Iraq war
was started by George W. Bush in 2003 based on faulty or downright fraudulent intelligence, it was not
patriotic to go, what a great mission, support the troops. This is a good. No, we would say,
we never should have put the troops in harm's way and thousands died. And the minimum you can do
once they die is tell us how many have really been killed. Tell us how many have really been
wounded. Tell us what the mission is. Tell us what the objectives are and don't move numbers
around because they make for better headlines or whatever. Now, one other thing, when Trump says
18 died. And then the administration goes, actually, it's not 18. It's 14. There are only a couple
possibilities. One is the, so there's the, the downright deception possibility that I already
talked about. The other is the administration doesn't know what the real number is or different
parts of the government are telling different stories. None of this is reassuring. And it's a reminder
that under Donald Trump, there is a combination of bureaucratic incompetence, political manipulation,
and downright malicious self-serving behavior.
We deserve the real numbers as Americans.
And when governments start treating the deaths of their own troops as a PR problem to be managed
instead of, hey, we've got to honor the lives and the sacrifice of these people,
who, by the way, we had no business sending into harm's way, something has good.
gone very, very wrong. And historically, this stuff is very, very ugly and it's associated with
terrible regimes when it happens. So they are playing games with the death numbers. And on some
fundamental level, they know that the American people aren't believing that this is worth it
for the economic costs. But they're also not believing this is worth it for the human costs.
And that is a real problem as they try to convince voters to reelect them in November.
Now, what about communism?
Well, Trump seems to like it.
I want to talk about that next.
Donald Trump had communism dribbling out of his open mouth as he attempted to answer questions and speak to people.
I'm going to warn you, this is pretty painful stuff to watch.
Now, before this rate payer protection pledge event even got started, there was a total cult performance.
And it's fascinating when this happens.
Trump often walks into a room.
The people know they're expected to clap like trained seals.
They never want to be the first ones to stop clapping.
And so this is the cult result.
Now, if you're only listening, there's a visual component, which is they're all standing there, grinning like doofuses and clapping like trained seals.
As Trump sways from side to side with everybody clapping and you'd better not be the, it's like in North Korea.
If you, we noticed that you stopped clapping before everybody else.
Wow.
I mean, how much of this do you?
We'll just stop it.
Okay.
They're clapping like circus seals.
Trump then, it just comes out of his mouth.
It's dribbling out.
The communism.
Okay.
Trump goes, hey, you know what?
We bought 10% of Intel and we're making money off of it.
And it's the Democrats that are the communists.
Tell me more about that, sir.
30% by the time this term is over, we're going to have probably 50% of the chip market.
A year ago, when we began, we had no chip market.
We had virtually none other than Intel.
We had Intel.
And we made a purchase of 10% of Intel.
We got it for the right price.
And we made approximately $72 billion on that deal.
Wow.
So it was good.
Do I get credit for that one?
No.
No one's giving me credit for my communism.
None.
State ownership of private industry, but it's the Democrats that are the communists.
They don't even understand anything.
They just don't know what they're talking about.
We make these deep analyses of.
social democracy and socialism and
properly regulated capital,
all this stuff.
And then Trump's like, communists are terrible.
And the government just bought 10% of Intel and now is profit sharing with Intel.
Give me a break, guys.
Come on.
Come on.
Trump just making stuff up as usual.
We don't know whether he's lying or demented.
He says California is suffering brownouts and blackouts every single weekend.
News to people in California, by the way.
100-year-old grid that's not the best in the world.
You look at some places.
You take a look at California.
You have brownouts and blackouts every weekend.
The last thing they're going to be able to do is supply electric.
Trump seems to be browning out.
You know where the real problem is with the grid?
It's Texas.
Texas has decided in its infinite display of strength and girth that they would not affiliate
their grid with the national grid.
And we've seen disaster after disaster.
Texas has had power disasters in the summer when it's really hot and AC uses high.
And they've had disasters in the winter during freezing temperatures.
In California, it's fine.
I was just in California.
Everybody I spoke to said, we have no utility problems here.
We're not having an issue with blackouts or brownouts.
It's just not happening.
Trump then decides to do something that it sometimes it's like he can't help himself.
Data centers are deeply unpopular with a large majority of.
of the American people. And Trump goes, listen, you just got to convince communities the data centers
are great. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. Now, to some degree, is it likely that
data centers are going to be built and they're going to go somewhere? Yes, probably. But once again,
Trump just taking the wrong side of extraordinarily unpopular issues. Because you have to convince
your community how great these things. You can't fight it. You have to go with it. And you're going to
have all that protection. And we're giving you automatic protection. But
You're going to make a tremendous amount of money.
You're going to reduce taxes.
And you're going to have something that if you don't have it, everybody else wants it.
Yeah.
Data centers are a thing.
There are going to be data centers built in the United States.
How, where, and who has a say are sort of the key elements of it.
But this is something that is uniting Democrats and Republicans.
Democrats and Republicans in rural and suburban and urban areas have one.
growing issue on which they agree. We don't think we want data centers anywhere near where we live.
And Trump just keeps going with this issue.
Brian, both of you, there's no other thing. You can do 100 different deals, 100.
It is nothing close to what you've been able to do. And why? They put a big gorgeous new plant
in a certain location, big deal. It's so incredibly positive. Unfortunately, there are some who
would like to lead us down the opposite path.
And I call them the radical left communists.
They call them socialist, but these people are communist actually more, I think.
Remember, Trump bought 10% of Intel as the government.
Okay, and he's talking about other people being communist.
It's a much more accurate term.
Want to shut down all new development, kill our most successful industries, destroy hundreds
of thousands of jobs, and surrender the AI race to China.
And China, look, you know, I'm not blaming them.
I have a lot of respect for them.
We know.
A lot of respect for President Xi, but they represent China.
We represent the United States of America.
And they lobby against these things and they spend money on it.
And they want communities to reject them as much as possible because they'd like to be
leading the race.
But we're leading the race.
And unless we're very foolish and frankly, very stupid, we'll continue to lead the race.
We're, we have a nice lead.
A lot of people.
You get the point.
He just has these terrible instincts.
And a complete lack of awareness. Why let's put the data centers everywhere. We got to beat China.
Well, a lot of people care about their immediate communities. And a lot of people don't live at
Mara Lago, which is, you know, uh, uh, insulated by both geographic realities of water
and also zoning and politically from any of this stuff being built in Trump's backyard.
But he's like, why don't people just want to put these everywhere? Finally, Donald Trump
attacking wind power. I don't know. I mean, it's like at this point, who the hell knows,
saying wind, they say it's great, but you can't watch TV. What? With the green new scam.
And remember, the green new deal is not the law. So he keeps talking about it like it's a thing.
Also, he's been in power almost two years. We were scammed. The whole country was, I wasn't
scammed. I got it right from the beginning. I got it from the first minute when I heard this
crap, you know, they were saying wind was so wonderful, so wonderful, except.
You couldn't watch your television.
They wanted to watch the debate.
Donald Trump against sleepy Joe Biden.
Nobody could watch it because the wind wasn't blowing.
Remember that?
Now, of course, come, do you guys think Trump really doesn't get it?
Like, do people, at this point in time, wind is supplementing the grid?
And so if the wind's not blowing, you still have electricity.
Maybe Texas doesn't because they've isolated their grid.
But no, I'm sort of kidding, but also not.
And over time, we have technology called batteries where wind power can be stored and then used
when it's not windy.
Do you think Trump doesn't know that?
Like is he, is this about he assumes his followers don't know it?
Or does Donald Trump not know it?
Is he subject to one of the filter bubbles and echo chambers that I write about in my forthcoming
book, pay attention?
I don't know.
Let me know what you think.
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White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt is not doing a lot of press briefings lately, but she did do one a few
hours ago and she was confronted about a bunch of different things, which she very much doesn't like.
I have to tell you, I can sort of understand why Caroline Levitt is not doing a lot of these. They're
going worse and worse for her. But she was asked, is Donald Trump planning to intervene to save
the Taint brothers, Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate, who have recently been arrested again for a litany of
very serious charges? And Caroline Levitt seems to be saying, no, Donald Trump is not going to get
involved in this, which is similar to what Marco Rubio recently said. I think that they're just
realizing these guys are toxic. These guys are probably serious.
criminals, although of course, everyone is innocent and proven guilty. There's no question about that.
But they are realizing that the goose is cooked.
Dan, Dan, thank Caroline.
Is President Trump or the administration, do they have any plans to intervene in the extradition
process for the taped brothers? No, already answered that question. Elizabeth.
Trump does not want to get deep in the taint. That is absolutely for sure. And Marco Rubio also indicating, we want
nothing to do with that. Now, with that out of the way, a really important topic came up. This is
like this is, this is just of critical importance. Why does Saudi Arabia get a civilian
nuclear deal with Trump? But Iran doesn't. And Caroline Levitt, of course, gives an explanation
that makes it all sound based on the empirical realities of the situation and what's best for the
United States. But I think there's a better answer as to why Saudi Arabia gets a civilian,
nuclear nuke deal, but Iran isn't allowed to have one.
And I'll give you that answer in a moment.
Ask you one other question.
Sure.
Just plain devil's advocate, why does Saudi Arabia get a civilian nuclear deal, but Iran
doesn't get a civilian nuclear deal?
Well, again, this agreement is still being worked out.
It will eventually hopefully be these finalized with the condition that the president spoke
about this morning.
But this agreement in particular, as it's been discussed thus far, does give priority access
for American companies and the Saudi nuclear energy program, which will ultimately benefit
American industry workers and supply chain.
So the deal that has been discussed thus far and will continue to be discussed absolutely
puts America first and that's obviously very important to this president.
Ed.
Let me translate that for you, okay?
The Saudi deal is good for Trump and his cronies.
And an Iran deal with Iran having nukes wouldn't be.
Saudi Arabia is dumping and has dumped money.
into Jared Kushner's new fund, relatively new fund.
And there are personal reasons.
Remember, drain the swamp.
Well, the swamp has been filled.
That's what this is really about.
And Caroline Levitt, about that this is just wild.
She confirms that Donald Trump is unilaterally changing the terms of the Saudi nuclear deal
with truth social posts without even contacting Saudi officials.
Dear God, just to continue on the Saudi nuclear deal, do Saudis agree with this interpretation
since it wasn't part of the initial agreement and has the president talked to NBS since this new
condition? As you know, the president just put out this statement a few hours ago. I don't believe
he's had a call with MBS in the hour. Understand he put it out on truth social. He is announcing
policy and unilaterally changing policy with posts to truth social. What? Since, however, this is something
that he has raised in previous conversations and has also said many times in the past.
John in the back.
A typical Trump negotiation.
I decided by myself and posted it to Truth Social.
This is not getting a lot of attention.
There's no like super hot headline here, but this is completely beyond the pale.
And it is counter to many of the promises that Donald Trump lined up when he became
a politician after coming down the old.
golden escalator and accusing many Mexicans of being rapists without evidence in 2015. It was about
drain the swamp. It's not going to be business as usual. It won't be cronyism. It won't be nepotism.
His family, meanwhile, is doing business with the Saudis. The Saudis are getting goodies. He's
announcing policy changes on truth social. And Caroline Levitt, God bless her, I'm kidding,
is in the position of relatively infrequently as it stands right now because she doesn't seem
to want to do too many of these press briefings, having to defend this stuff. The topic of
manufacturing came up while Caroline Levitt was doing this press briefing. And she comes up with the
whopper that the manufacturing industry is thriving like never before. Now, if you watch this show
and you have the facts, you know that manufacturing employment is down 73,000 jobs since Donald
Trump took office. He was going to, Trump said he would be the fertilization president. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm
sorry, that's disgusting.
Trump did say that though.
And he said he would be the manufacturing president.
And we have fewer manufacturing jobs today than when Trump came into office.
But Caroline doesn't care.
She says it's also good.
The Trump administration is setting up American manufacturers and workers to thrive like never before.
It's a very long, slow lead in.
He's setting them up to thrive when someone else is president, I guess.
And importantly, another another relevant.
detail with the whole manufacturing job thing is that for all of the talk of MAGA of bringing
the factories back home and bringing manufacturing back home, a lot of people don't want these jobs,
at least not at the salaries that are being offered. There's a report that there are hundreds
of thousands right now, open jobs, hundreds of thousands of open manufacturing and factory jobs
in the United States. One report said 500,000, another I think said 250,000. And they're just open.
People are not at the wage being offered interested in doing those jobs. And manufacturing
employment is down. Another promise. Now, I know the tariffs get a lot of headlines. I'm going to be
the peace president, but I started a war gets a lot of headlines. I'm going to end the Ukraine,
Russia conflict on day one gets a lot of headlines. Important promises that Trump has failed on.
But the manufacturing jobs is a really significant one because so much of the economic sort of
framework that a lot of Republicans are signing up for is if it weren't for these stupid
Democrats, we would have brought manufacturing and factories back back home already.
There's hundreds of thousands of jobs right now and they can't fill them.
So something else is going on here.
Finally, Caroline Levitt warns us.
Donald Trump is getting impatient.
You know what happens when he gets impatient.
The ketchup starts flying.
Trump wants the Save America Act passed right away before the House and Senate recess in August.
Uh-oh. Well, what's going to happen?
On, remind me.
Leader Moon, his patience is running out.
Look, the president spoke about this directly yesterday. His patience is running out.
He wants to see as much of the Save America passed as possible by the August recess.
He knows that's what the American people want to see past.
He was just traveling on the road yesterday, spoke about this.
And there was a very loud applause from the people in the audience, the everyday Americans,
because-
The train seals clapped like trained seals.
Voter ID is common sense.
They want proof of citizenship in our elections.
And the president feels very strongly about that on, remind me-
Well, you know what?
Even Republicans are realizing this is not a bill they want to support.
is losing patience with John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader.
Oh, no.
Well, to some degree, Republicans are realizing that bill is going to go over like a lead
balloon with a lot of people and is realistically only going to drag down Republicans in November.
They don't want anything to do with it, at least some of them.
But Trump is losing patience.
Well, I think Trump is simply going to have to wait.
All right.
Is she a hero or is she a moron?
I'm talking about this voter on your screens, interviewed on MS now, and we have this every single
election cycle.
And we have the same debate.
And I don't know that we've come to a conclusion on it.
A Trump voter comes forward and goes, listen, I voted for Trump once.
I voted for Trump twice.
I voted for Trump three times.
And I now regret my vote.
And there's different reactions to it.
I know that some of you in my audience when we see people like this, you celebrate it.
And you go, the tide is turning.
We're getting a lot of these people back.
They're abandoning Trump.
Others hear voters like this who will hear from in a second and say it's too little too late.
Now I think the truth is a little bit more complicated.
Let's take a look at the video first.
President Trump campaigned on no more foreign wars.
You've obviously supported him.
Three times.
Very disappointed.
My entire family is very disappointed.
I don't feel like it is our war to fight.
But here we are.
And I did not think when the war started that it was going to be a 12 day, a two week, a two
month.
I'm like, here we go.
And here we are.
And I don't see it ending anytime soon.
And I was a Trump supporter.
I'm very disappointed.
All right.
Now, I'm glad she's saying it.
Seriously.
Like I'm not, I'm glad she's saying it.
If someone changes their mind and admits they were wrong and is willing to say it publicly on
national TV. That's a good thing. And democracy depends on people being willing to update
beliefs when reality doesn't match what they expected. We should encourage that. We should.
We also shouldn't pretend this came out of nowhere and that she's such a victim. Nobody could have
predicted this. She was just, there was no way to know. Trump didn't suddenly become somebody
different. He didn't campaign as a peace candidate and then accidentally stumble into war because
of some unforeseeable event that he could do nothing about. Trump spent years warning that he,
not promising, better said, that he would be the peace president. And many of us spent years
warning, there is no coherent anti-war philosophy to Donald Trump. When Tulsi said, I believe
Trump is really the anti-war guy. We explained, Trump is guided by whatever he thinks will make
him look strong in the moment. And if that means criticizing a war, he'll do it. He, I, uh,
Bush never, he said during his first campaign, Bush was wrong to go to Iraq.
It was a disaster. Oh, he looks really strong because he's willing to call out a decision made by
another Republican, even though he's a Republican. It turned out it was a lie. But sometimes being
strong is threatening to bomb other countries in the view of Trump, of course. And sometimes
it means we're going to assassinate foreign military leaders. And sometimes it's saying you're
going to take over Greenland or threaten why can't we bomb Denmark or whatever. The point is,
we all saw the warning signs and we talked about them.
And so that's what makes it difficult where we go, you know, this isn't someone who voted
for Trump in 2016 when maybe we really had no idea.
I guess.
There's at least some plausible deniability.
And it ended up being a disaster and then said, well, I'm not voting for him again.
This is someone who voted for him three separate times.
By the third vote, he was a convicted felon.
And there was a massive amount of evidence about who Trump was.
how he governed and how often the promises collided with reality. So we don't have to be mean
to this woman, but we shouldn't pretend that this was just impossible to see coming and everybody
was tricked because tens of millions of us were not tricked. So here's where I kind of disagree
with the people. I disagree with the people who want to mock the regretful Trump voters and I disagree
with the people who say that there should be no accounting for the fact that they fell for something
very obvious. What are the alternatives? Okay. If someone says,
I was wrong and we reply, get lost. Why would anyone admit that they were wrong? We don't want to do that.
You're kind of rewarding tribalism because you're teaching people once you pick aside, never leave it because
you will be rejected by everybody else. That creates political cults. We don't want that.
So I think the balance is people should be held accountable for the choices they made.
Voting as consequences. Millions of people were warning. I was one of them about exactly these
kinds of outcomes. And we were told, oh, it's bluster. You guys are hysterical.
Trump's never going to do any of this crap. It's okay to acknowledge that. And if someone genuinely
changes their mind, they're not our enemy. The goal isn't we punish people forever. The goal is let's build
a coalition of people who favor democracy and who say we need competent government and we need
people in government who are attached to reality. If she got there late, I'd still rather she get there
than never arrive at all. But we don't erase history and we don't pretend that the warning signs
weren't obvious. And we don't stop asking hard questions about why the hell did it take or three
elections. That's a very reasonable question. But it does mean if our objective is to improve the
country rather than win arguments, we have to leave the door open for people who are willing to come
through the door. And if you change your mind after overwhelming evidence, we don't go, what a hero.
Now, all the evidence is pointing this way. But we also don't want to refuse people the ability
to change their minds and say, all right, you're acknowledging your mistake. That should be.
acknowledged and it should be supported. So that's my view on this. And I know that it's often,
it doesn't make for good clicks to be sort of on the one hand, on the other hand, either this is a
hero, hero voter, abandons Trump. Well, abandons Trump after 11 years. And it shouldn't be,
look at this horrible person who deserves to be relegated to, you know, a penal colony or whatever.
No, it's like, listen, this was predictable. You were bamboozled. You should have been smarter about it.
But I still am glad that you figured it out eventually.
It's not a very good clickbait headline, but it is really what I believe the reality to be.
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Use the code Pacman. The link is in the description. Have you noticed that the United States is
suddenly having one public health disaster after another. We had the nationwide outbreak of
explosive diarrhea linked initially believed to be contaminated lettuce, although now it seems it may
even go further than that. We now have 1.6 million eggs recalled because they might be contaminated
with salmonella. And this is happening in the middle, as I already told you earlier this week,
of the worst outbreak of measles in the United States in 35 years. And so,
So maybe you're wondering, is this like bad luck or something? Or did something change here?
And the FDA announcing this recall of nearly 1.6 million eggs in multiple states because they may
contain salmonella, which is a bacteria that can also cause severe diarrhea, vomiting, fever,
nausea, hospitalization, especially for young kids and for older adults and people with
weakened immune systems. Now, do food recalls happen under every presidential administration?
Of course. Can presidents promise no outbreaks? No. This is not just one recall. We are also dealing
with this massive cyclospora outbreak linked to lettuce and maybe more vegetables. That's causing
explosive diarrhea in thousands of people in more than 40 states. And the worst measles outbreak
in decades, which we've talked about connected to, quite frankly, anti-vaccine sentiment,
90% of the cases are people who have not been vaccinated.
What is the common thread if we weave all of this together?
And it's it's not that every single one of these problems has the exact same cause.
They all do depend on strong public health institutions that can detect problems early,
that can investigate them, make announcements about what's going on, and then stop them before they spread.
That's what this administration has spent the last year and whatever they've been in power,
weakening.
RFK Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services has built this whole movement around the idea
that Americans shouldn't trust public health institutions. Vaccines, you probably shouldn't trust,
but the FDA, the CDC, regulatory agencies responsible for keeping food and medicine safe,
you got it, you shouldn't trust them. And the philosophy has become government regulators
are the problem. If that's your philosophy, you shouldn't be surprised when you end up with fewer
regulators and problems as a result of that. If you tell people, scientists are corrupt,
then don't be surprised when some scientists leave, and that leads to more problems. And if you
slash agencies in order to get more efficient, like Doge said we were going to be, don't be
surprise when the agencies are less effective. And a lot of people are missing this. And I've been
trying to make this connection every time I talk to people who go, I don't really care about
politics. Politics isn't just arguing on cable news. That is a part of what corporate media
wants to make politics. But politics determines is your food inspected? Are there outbreaks
that we can catch before they spread? Politics determines does the FDA have the staffing level
to investigate contamination.
Does the CDC have the resources to track dangerous diseases?
And people love to say, I'm just not that into politics.
Politics affects what your groceries cost, whether your kid is more or less likely to be
exposed to measles, whether the eggs in your refrigerator are safe to eat.
And nobody votes thinking, let's see, which vote is likely to lead to more explosive diarrhea?
That's not how people are necessarily thinking.
Nobody votes hoping.
I hope there are more salmonella recalls.
But the truth is that when you elect leaders who believe that regulation is the enemy and
they undermine scientific expertise and they gut institutions that are there to protect
the public, those are the risks that you're taking.
And because public health doesn't work by magic, it works by having people doing the work.
If you have fewer people doing the work, you're going to have a problem.
Fewer scientists and inspectors and epidemiologists and all of it.
When they aren't doing their jobs, the tragedy is we all of a sudden realize they were actually
pretty damn important.
Maybe we shouldn't have done that.
So this is now a reality.
And I know that online there's a lot of aggressive debate about, wait, are you blaming Trump
for the diarrhea?
Trump's diarrhea is not necessarily Trump's fault.
The it's more of a stochastic point big just top level less of a budget for inspection tracing,
etc increases the probability that stuff like this gets more out of control rather than being
controlled early.
This shouldn't surprise anybody.
Get going back to the voter who said, well, I voted for him once, fool me once, fool me twice,
fool me three times.
I finally figured it out.
We knew that this sort of thing was up Trump's alley.
because he disbanded the pandemic response team and completely threw into the trash figuratively
and literally the pandemic response plan that was left behind by the Obama administration during
his first term when COVID hit.
And thus, the American COVID response was a disaster relative to many other countries.
So it was predictable.
And now with RFK supercharging this stuff and Lee Zeldin and whoever else, oversight is really not,
it's sort of been relegated to an unimportant backwater.
So this is what's going on. Is Trump personally responsible? Well, not really, but was this attitude
towards regulation something we knew about and completely predictable? Yes, of course it was.
Absolutely. Donald Trump has not even reached the midterms of this second term. And Republicans are
ready to destroy the guy. A lot of people assume is going to be Donald Trump's political air.
I'm talking about J.D. Vance. I know that there's talk about Marco Rubio as well. And we'll get to
that. But think about how bizarre the situation is right now. Normally, a vice president gets
criticized by the opposing party. What's happening with J.D. Vance right now is that there is a
coordinated campaign inside the Republican coalition. And if you've been paying attention,
this is not coming out of nowhere. We've been talking about it for a while. There's a very
interesting new report in the Washington Post where the allies of J.D. Vance say that there are
Republican influencers, donors, and activists engaged in an organized effort to poison JD's
chances of becoming the 2028 nominee. And they are saying that there is an organized campaign of
never Vance messaging, attacks that are portraying him as unfit to serve, and accusations that he
is drifting away from Trump. Now, I want to be clear about a couple things in my analysis. I disagree
with J.D. Vance on just about everything. His views on immigration, democracy, executive power,
he has dangerous views about a lot of issues. You don't have to like the guy to recognize what's
happening. This is not primarily about J.D.'s domestic agenda. I think that this is about foreign
policy. Vance has consistently been a lot more skeptical of military intervention than many traditional
Republican Hawks. And he's been noticeably less enthusiastic than others about what's going on in Iran.
And Trump has even acknowledged Vance is different on this issue. He supports me, but J.D. has a bit
of a different view. Publicly, J.D. Vance, of course, has kind of gotten in line. And this is what's
making the situation very interesting. After Vance went on Joe Rogan, I guess it was last week,
he complained about what he described as coordinated attacks from pro-Israel influencers.
And almost immediately afterwards, criticism of Vance exploded in right-wing media, according to the analysis of the Washington Post.
Now, this doesn't prove a conspiracy.
Political factions coordinate all the time.
They coordinate messaging.
People on the left do it.
People on the right do it.
Campaigns do it.
Interest groups do it.
The important point is we are seeing the Republican Party start now with its post-Trump succession fight years before Trump is gone, before the midterms even happen.
And we have this old establishment wing that is more interventionist, you know, the donor class, the neo-conservatives.
They never really embraced Vance in the first place.
And they were reportedly against picking him as VP.
And they wanted someone like a Marco Rubio instead or maybe like a Doug Bergam.
And for years, MAGA told us, we are totally united with the Republican Party behind America first.
And they really aren't.
Because the second there's any uncertainty about who comes after Trump, the knives are out.
And these foreign policy fractures reopen.
The donors really don't seem to like JD.
Influencers are discovering, you know, the guy who was just our hero can very quickly become a traitor.
And the irony is I don't really know that this is going to work.
Because for now, J.D. Vance's favorability among Republican voters is basically the same as Trump's.
Now, you could go, well, Trump's favorability is terrible and you'd be right.
But the point is if Vance had a bigger problem within the Republican Party than Trump does, you would see him having lower favorability than Trump.
So what does this tell us?
Well, number one, elite right-wing influencers don't seem to be able to control what the voters think, which is interesting.
And whether Vance ultimately wins or loses is less the point than there's a Republican civil war that's already going on.
And they're fighting over who will inherit this movement.
and Trump's presidency is still ongoing.
If you look at history, when movements become centered around one personality like Trump
instead of durable principles, that is exactly what happens.
You have a succession battle that starts very early.
You start seeing factions turn on each other in very ugly fashion.
And suddenly the loudest attacks aren't even coming from Democrats right now who are sort
of standing aside and going, let these Republicans figure out who they're going to put forward.
It's Republicans who want to make sure J.D. Vance doesn't become the next Donald Trump.
and that the neocons can take back the Republican Party.
What's our interest in it as people of the left?
Well, we want, there's a belief that a robust primary will spit out the best candidate to face off in the general election.
And that is often true.
But this has the potential to get so ugly that it'll leave the supporters of those candidates who don't ultimately become the nominee so.
so furious and so vengeful that they may stay home. Or maybe they'll consider voting for the Democratic
nominee or who knows what. And that is in our interest because it will help the Republican
ultimately lose. Now on the bonus show today, speaking of Republicans being upset,
Donald Trump is again unveiling new tariffs expected to cost Americans 100 billion a year.
And he is again saying that there's going to be big strikes against Iran. So we're right back in
all of it. Meanwhile, the House admits that it used keywords to kill billions of dollars of California
research grants. Control F, that's what they're doing. And the BBC is going to be able to access
Donald Trump's financial records as a very dubious lawsuit starts to backfire. All of those
stories are on today's bonus show, which you can get by signing up at join packman.com.
And remember, my forthcoming book pay attention is now available for pre-order at David
hackman.com slash attention. Get those pre-orders in. I'll have updated numbers, probably Monday.
