Latest / The Fourcast / 'It's ripping MAGA apart': David Pakman on Trump, Epstein and Dems future

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'It's ripping MAGA apart': David Pakman on Trump, Epstein and Dems future · The Fourcast

• 0:00
  It's ripping MAGA apart in a way that nothing else has done.
• 0:03
  The left must exploit this for now.
• 0:06
  Letting Trump feverishly attempt to cover it up publicly seems to
• 0:10
  be doing enough self-inflicted damage.
• 0:12
  If Trump feels that throwing out the chaff, if you like, around
• 0:17
  Obama and and other scandals isn't working, he may have to do
• 0:21
  something more substantial. You know, he might have to do
• 0:23
  something quite outrageous to really make fear start talking
• 0:27
  about something else. That's the fear, an uninhibited
• 0:29
  Trump with true loyalists. They can do a lot of horrible
• 0:33
  things and they are doing a lot of them.
• 0:38
  Hello and welcome to the forecast.
• 0:40
  Donald Trump is under pressure again, this time over his
• 0:43
  alleged ties to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
• 0:47
  As the scandal grows, the Speaker of the House has shut
• 0:50
  down Congress, seemingly to avoid any further questions
• 0:53
  being raised on the floor. And now even Trump's usual
• 0:56
  allies in the alt right world of podcasts and influences are
• 1:00
  turning on him. So what happens when the support
• 1:03
  base that shielded Trump for years starts to crumble?
• 1:07
  David Pak Man, host of The David Pak Man Show and author of The
• 1:10
  Echo Machine, joins us to break it all down.
• 1:13
  David, thanks for joining us. My pleasure.
• 1:17
  Now, when you think about who Trump is worried about, I mean,
• 1:20
  obviously everyone who hates Trump is lapping up all the
• 1:24
  controversy, but he he's not going to care about them.
• 1:27
  Who is he really worried about? Well, I think Trump is
• 1:31
  increasingly worried about legacy as he is now in his final
• 1:34
  term as president. He's almost 80 years old, but we
• 1:38
  don't really know who else he might be worried about.
• 1:41
  You know, if there's been 1 theme of the last decade of
• 1:44
  Trump being politics, it's that Trump primarily worries about
• 1:48
  himself. To a lesser degree, he worries
• 1:50
  about his kids. And then it's sort of like
• 1:53
  everybody else. So where I think the most
• 1:57
  interesting aspect of this is, is that simply having hung out a
• 2:01
  little bit with Jeffrey Epstein 30 years ago doesn't necessarily
• 2:06
  mean that he is guilty of whatever it is that he's being
• 2:11
  accused of or there are fears he may have been involved in.
• 2:14
  But it's the behavior, the deliberate distracting tactics,
• 2:19
  the carefully worded requests for pertinent grand jury
• 2:24
  testimony to be released rather than just release all the files.
• 2:28
  The behavior is such that it doesn't project innocence.
• 2:33
  And it's interesting because it's not, as you say, just
• 2:35
  people on the political left. Half of Republicans in the
• 2:38
  United States believe he's covering something up.
• 2:42
  Yes, but the question is what what's he really worried about?
• 2:44
  Because you know, there have been so many awful stories about
• 2:48
  Trump and his history. He's been accused of sexual
• 2:52
  harassment, of sexual assault. He's been caught on tape
• 2:56
  admitting how he behaves. And, and none of us bothered the
• 3:01
  electorate that much. They still re elected him.
• 3:05
  So. So what is this about this
• 3:07
  Epstein story that is potentially so much more
• 3:11
  damaging? There are two critical
• 3:13
  differences. As bad as all of the previous
• 3:16
  allegations have been against Donald Trump.
• 3:19
  This at least potentially has to do with underage women, girls
• 3:24
  we're talking about here. And that is different than the
• 3:28
  bulk of what he has been dealing with over the last decade or so
• 3:32
  of his political career. So that's that's number one.
• 3:35
  Number two, this is now a concern because it's ripping
• 3:39
  MAGA apart in a way that nothing else has done.
• 3:42
  Even, you know, he ran as the anti war president and then we
• 3:46
  had what happened in Iran and there was equivocating.
• 3:50
  But for the most part, his constituents, his base didn't
• 3:53
  really care about the 180. This really seems to be ripping
• 3:57
  them apart where even prominent content creators and influencers
• 4:02
  who have been on his side are saying, I don't believe this.
• 4:06
  We were told the transparency would come from him.
• 4:09
  The current FBI director, Cash Patel for years said, if Trump
• 4:15
  wins, you're going to get the full truth about Epstein.
• 4:18
  The current deputy FBI director, Dan Bongino for years on his
• 4:22
  podcast said, if you want to get to the truth about Epstein, the
• 4:25
  full truth, you've got to elect Donald Trump.
• 4:28
  And then now they, as part of Trump's administration, are
• 4:31
  saying it's all the way you were told about the death of Epstein.
• 4:36
  There's no client list. There's no further prosecutions.
• 4:39
  There's nothing here. And so this is different because
• 4:42
  it's already ripping his base apart, and it has the potential
• 4:46
  for even people in his administration to potentially
• 4:49
  abandoned him. I think that those two reasons
• 4:51
  are why this is different. Yeah.
• 4:53
  And, and now that they've they've wrapped up Congress for
• 4:56
  the summer early, it seems, because they don't want any
• 5:01
  votes on this. What is it they're trying to
• 5:04
  avoid? I think they just want to
• 5:06
  postpone this and push this into the fall.
• 5:09
  They there's a division among Republicans in terms of are we
• 5:14
  sticking by what we said when Joe Biden was president, which
• 5:18
  is we need a vote about whether to release this and let's get on
• 5:21
  the record as to whether we really do or don't support the
• 5:24
  release of the files. This is going so poorly
• 5:27
  politically. I think the idea is it's sort of
• 5:30
  like a defendant who says if I can push my trial off, I'm
• 5:33
  always better off pushing the trial off.
• 5:36
  Witnesses forget some witnesses die, paperwork is misplaced,
• 5:40
  etcetera. I think it's the same idea.
• 5:42
  If they can at least postpone having to determine whether to
• 5:45
  vote on the release of these files until late August, early
• 5:49
  September, who knows what might be going on.
• 5:51
  Then there will be other stories, tariffs, etcetera.
• 5:55
  I think it's just a calculated play that maybe people people
• 5:58
  will forget, maybe people will move on, maybe there will be
• 6:00
  some different shiny object. Yeah, and obviously the the key
• 6:05
  witness, Ghilane Maxwell, is potentially back in play as
• 6:09
  there are talks about calling her before Congress and also for
• 6:14
  the Department of Justice to try and speak to her as well.
• 6:18
  Now, Trump has said that he he's not involved in any of that.
• 6:21
  He didn't know about that. And it and it's a strange one
• 6:24
  because she hasn't spoken in public before so there's very
• 6:29
  little reason to think that she would want to now unless there's
• 6:33
  a deal to get her out of that 20 year sentence she's serving.
• 6:38
  Yeah, I think there is a question of she certainly I
• 6:43
  assume sees 2 possible paths here to improving her situation.
• 6:49
  She has gone on the record and said prosecutors have not come
• 6:53
  to me and said, tell us all, you know, we now want to see who you
• 6:56
  might be able to get us. So she has said she's open to
• 7:00
  doing that if there's the possibility of a deal.
• 7:03
  But because it's Trump, there's the other side of the coin, so
• 7:07
  to speak, which is it's conceivable that she may put
• 7:11
  herself in a position to maybe earn a pardon in order to keep
• 7:16
  her silence. So this she is in a very
• 7:18
  interesting position because there are multiple parties who
• 7:21
  might be interested in making deals.
• 7:23
  Now, I think you're referring to a video where Trump was asked
• 7:26
  something along the lines of Jelaine Maxwell may testify or
• 7:31
  whatever, and Trump said the the what he did his thing where he
• 7:34
  didn't quite hear what I'm not who are you talking about?
• 7:37
  I have nothing to do with that. But we know from contemporaneous
• 7:41
  reporting that there is significant activity in the
• 7:44
  federal government right now to try to prevent that testimony,
• 7:47
  or at least to limit the scope or the potential damage that it
• 7:50
  might have. Yeah.
• 7:52
  I mean, how, how close is this White House to the Department of
• 7:57
  Justice? How broken down are the
• 8:02
  traditional separation of these powers and and how how important
• 8:08
  is that in how this is? Completely broken down.
• 8:12
  Completely broken down. I mean, listen, we, we were in
• 8:17
  the last 48 to 72 hours told that at an extraordinarily
• 8:23
  convenient moment. The director of National
• 8:27
  Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has stumbled across proof that
• 8:32
  former President Obama committed treason, Treason.
• 8:37
  And we were told by the attorney general that it is now time to
• 8:43
  release files related to the assassination of Martin Luther
• 8:47
  King Junior that his family did not want released.
• 8:50
  You know that it's extraordinarily clear that there
• 8:54
  is a hand in glove relationship here.
• 8:57
  And it's going even further where Donald Trump is now making
• 9:01
  posts about late night host Stephen Colbert has been fired
• 9:05
  and his show canceled. Trump gleefully saying, I
• 9:08
  believe I had a hand in that and actually sort of warning fellow
• 9:12
  hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon that that they are next.
• 9:16
  And Trump's pushing for it. All of this is yes, it's
• 9:19
  authoritarianism, but it's also attempts to distract.
• 9:24
  Yes, but, but I mean, can, does that work with his MAGA base,
• 9:29
  you know, who have been absolutely obsessed by this
• 9:32
  whole idea that he and his supporters stoked of the deep
• 9:36
  stays of these conspiracies that protect powerful people, that he
• 9:39
  was going to come in and drain the swamp, that he didn't drain
• 9:42
  the first time round and change everything?
• 9:44
  I mean, you know, can they be distracted with these
• 9:47
  extraordinary, wild allegations about Obama and God knows who
• 9:51
  else? Well, it depends on what you
• 9:53
  mean by by they being distracted it.
• 9:56
  It has distracted part of the base and it is not distracted
• 10:00
  another part of it. I mean, I think we have to look
• 10:02
  at really at the polling and as of last week, that's before, you
• 10:05
  know, the Obama treason allegations and some of these
• 10:08
  other things came out. Adam shifts mortgage fraud.
• 10:10
  I don't know if that's another one that you've been following,
• 10:12
  but it has succeeded in getting some in the base.
• 10:16
  There's an influencer, for example, named Charlie Kirk, who
• 10:20
  is completely standing by the president, unquestioning in
• 10:23
  every way. On the other hand, there are
• 10:26
  other prominent influencers like former Fox News host Tucker
• 10:29
  Carlson, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly and others who are
• 10:33
  saying we are not being distracted by this.
• 10:36
  We remember what we were promised.
• 10:38
  We have every right to continue demanding the transparency that
• 10:41
  that we were, we were promised. So I, I think to your question,
• 10:44
  will it trip Trump up in terms of will the MAGA base start
• 10:49
  demanding his resignation, for example?
• 10:51
  I I, I struggle to believe that it's going to get to that point.
• 10:55
  Yes, I mean, and and he's now also trying to say this is all
• 10:58
  the hoax and sort of marry it with the Russia, Russia, Russia
• 11:01
  hoax, as he calls it again. It's sort of it's how it's how
• 11:08
  susceptible are are that bunch of people who are holding out at
• 11:12
  the moment to giving up, you know, and saying, OK, let's
• 11:18
  let's fall into line because they must see.
• 11:20
  You know, I, I wish, as I said indelicately on my program, you
• 11:27
  really would have to have an IQ in the single digits to fall for
• 11:30
  this stuff. But, but, and I know that, that,
• 11:33
  you know, I'm being a little coarse in my language.
• 11:36
  There are 10s of millions of Americans who voted for this man
• 11:40
  three times in 2016 and 2020 and in 2024.
• 11:44
  So when you say to me, could anyone really fall for this?
• 11:47
  I I think the evidence is that yes, people could.
• 11:51
  Well, I suppose it's not so much falling for it that I'm
• 11:54
  suggesting. I mean, I'm, I'm not, I'm not
• 11:56
  implying you have to have an IQ of seven.
• 12:00
  I'm, I'm, I'm suggesting that there are people who support
• 12:02
  Trump ultimately, no matter what, and that if they see that
• 12:06
  this is starting to damage him, that he is desperate, that he
• 12:09
  needs them to fall into line. Does the the cult of Trump and
• 12:14
  of Make America Great Again Trump everything for once with
• 12:18
  this phrase? Depends who you're talking
• 12:21
  about. If you're a big corporate CEO
• 12:24
  who just cashed in with a beautiful jackpot because of the
• 12:30
  recent tax bill, for example, do you care whether Trump's being
• 12:34
  honest or not about Jeffrey Epstein?
• 12:36
  Do you care about whether he went into the locker room at
• 12:39
  whatever pageant it was that he owned?
• 12:42
  Of course you don't. Of course you don't.
• 12:44
  I think the people that care or who are potentially swayable in
• 12:49
  terms of the public presence are the people who are on the record
• 12:56
  promising that this is the guy who will get us these documents.
• 13:00
  They are now in a position where they risk losing credibility
• 13:02
  with their audience. And that's starting to happen to
• 13:04
  a degree. And then I do think that there
• 13:06
  is some broader, if we zoom out a little and think about the
• 13:08
  midterm elections of 2026 or who might be the Republican
• 13:12
  candidate in 2028. There is definitely a contingent
• 13:16
  that might look around in October of next year, a month
• 13:19
  before voting and say, here's what Republicans promised me,
• 13:23
  here's what I got, which is no transparency on Epstein tax
• 13:27
  reform. That really doesn't help me.
• 13:29
  It helps the rich in corporations.
• 13:31
  I'm not really buying it. I'm going to look for something
• 13:34
  different. And how big that contingent is
• 13:36
  is really a question mark. But I do think it will it will
• 13:39
  be there. Now, how do you think the
• 13:41
  Democrats are playing it? Because obviously they're,
• 13:44
  they're the ones, you know, who had said there's nothing in
• 13:47
  this, he committed suicide. There's no great conspiracy and
• 13:52
  and now sort of enjoying this deep discomfort that Trump is
• 13:57
  going through. Well, listen, Democratic elected
• 14:01
  officials, it's a mixed bag in terms of how they are handling
• 14:05
  it. Might myself as a non member of
• 14:08
  the Democratic Party, but certainly a progressive content
• 14:12
  creator, I believe that the left must exploit this.
• 14:16
  And the reason that this has to be exploited is that for nearly
• 14:19
  a decade, hypocrisy hasn't really mattered to the
• 14:23
  electorate of Donald Trump. He said he would build a wall
• 14:27
  with Mexico that Mexico would pay for, and it didn't happen,
• 14:29
  but they excused it. And he said he was against
• 14:33
  regulating businesses and the government being too involved.
• 14:36
  But then all of a sudden, he wanted to force Facebook and
• 14:39
  Twitter to publish COVID disinformation, just to pick
• 14:42
  some examples. And pointing out this double
• 14:44
  standard, pointing out this hypocrisy didn't really do
• 14:46
  anything. It didn't really sway voters.
• 14:48
  We finally seem to have found something that really is swaying
• 14:54
  a part of his base to say, I was promised a, and I'm getting the
• 14:58
  opposite of a, I'm getting the opposite of what I was promised.
• 15:02
  So I think that the left should exploit it.
• 15:05
  As far as elected Democrats, it's sort of a mixed bag, but
• 15:09
  some of the ones I've spoken to do recognize that it is worthy
• 15:13
  of exploitation. Now, I think there's one other
• 15:15
  issue worth addressing that you mentioned, which is Democrats
• 15:19
  all along were saying there's nothing here.
• 15:21
  We need a little more nuance on that.
• 15:25
  What I understand the left broadly to have been arguing is
• 15:29
  that there clearly is a client list for Epstein and we don't
• 15:34
  know the full scope of who's on that list.
• 15:36
  That is a question of revealing something that it's true and we
• 15:40
  just need the information on the death of Jeffrey Epstein being
• 15:45
  suicide or some kind of murder. That specific area is where the
• 15:50
  left, I believe, was saying we don't have evidence that it was
• 15:53
  anything other than a suicide at this point in time.
• 15:56
  And so I think it's important to distinguish in in what sense it
• 15:59
  was being said that there's nothing here.
• 16:01
  The Client List, which was not public, is something that all
• 16:04
  along I've heard Democrats say that should be released.
• 16:08
  Right, even though it's quite likely that I mean The Client
• 16:12
  List as it's called, which may just be a list of people who
• 16:15
  went to Epstein's parties and and island will almost certainly
• 16:21
  include high profile Democrats. It is extraordinarily likely
• 16:28
  that this is a non partisan list, and one of the things
• 16:31
  about these sort of financier influence peddler types is that
• 16:36
  they very often are willing to help whoever will help advance
• 16:39
  their interests and are willing to be helped by whoever will be
• 16:44
  able to advance their interests. So I have no doubt that it would
• 16:48
  be extraordinarily unsurprising for this to be a bipartisan
• 16:53
  client list. Doesn't it possibly fall into
• 16:56
  the the big trap though, which is that this goes after Trump
• 17:00
  personally for his personal behavior.
• 17:04
  And, you know, the the lesson of the last ten years or so is that
• 17:09
  Trump supporters on the whole, you know, don't really care
• 17:13
  about the criticism of Trump's character.
• 17:16
  In fact, they rather like it. And the thing that really has
• 17:19
  purchase on the American voting population is the economy and
• 17:24
  how they feel and how the countries doing.
• 17:27
  And if Democrats get caught up in another round of go after
• 17:31
  Trump personally on something which may which may or may not
• 17:35
  ever be conclusively proven, they will just fall into the
• 17:39
  same old trap. Yeah, I mean, This is why I I
• 17:42
  think what Democrats benefit from right now is that Democrats
• 17:46
  per SE don't really have to do much of anything.
• 17:49
  Right now. It's Republicans who are
• 17:52
  fighting with each other about whether to hold a vote to
• 17:55
  release the documents. It's Trump and the DOJ and the
• 17:59
  FBI sort of working together to try to calculate and limit and
• 18:04
  prepare for the impact of this. So I, I think your analysis is a
• 18:07
  good one. This circumstances of this
• 18:10
  situation are a little bit different in that it is less
• 18:14
  about what Democrats should should be doing or, or have done
• 18:17
  in the past successfully or unsuccessfully.
• 18:19
  And the other difference is what we talked about a few minutes
• 18:21
  ago, which is we are seeing a different amount of purchase or
• 18:24
  traction among the MAGA base. We have never seen that before.
• 18:28
  It didn't happen with the when you're rich, they let you do
• 18:32
  whatever infamous Access Hollywood tape before Trump was
• 18:35
  first elected. It didn't happen with the I'm
• 18:37
  the anti war president, but here I am bombing Iran.
• 18:40
  We just didn't see this level of division within the Republican
• 18:43
  Party in MAGA on any previous issue.
• 18:45
  And This is why even historians like Heather Cox Richardson, who
• 18:48
  I interviewed last week, are saying we should not understate
• 18:51
  the potential longer term impact of this Epstein thing.
• 18:54
  And for now, letting Trump feverishly attempt to cover it
• 18:58
  up publicly seems to be doing enough self-inflicted damage.
• 19:03
  I suppose the other potential outcome of this, though, is that
• 19:07
  if if Trump feels that throwing out the chaff, if you like,
• 19:11
  around Obama and and other scandals isn't working, he may
• 19:15
  have to do something more substantial to take people's
• 19:18
  minds off things. And and that's again, takes us
• 19:23
  into potentially new territory for, you know, this, you know,
• 19:29
  government that is pushing all the boundaries of democracy.
• 19:32
  You know, he might have to do something quite outrageous to
• 19:35
  really make people start talking about something else.
• 19:38
  Yeah, that's the fear. And this has been a Trump
• 19:41
  strategy for a long time. If you study 20th century
• 19:45
  authoritarians, one of the things you learn is that the
• 19:48
  more pressure there is on them, the more they are willing to
• 19:52
  sort of push the boundaries. And Trump's floated a lot of
• 19:54
  different things. He's floated shutting down media
• 19:57
  outlets adversarial to him or getting specific journalists or
• 20:01
  late night hosts fired. He's floated suspending habeas
• 20:04
  corpus. He's floated ignoring legal
• 20:07
  court orders. And so I think it is a
• 20:09
  completely a realistic fear because of Trump's personality
• 20:13
  and and his. Sort of desperate, wish to be
• 20:17
  like the strong men that he so admires.
• 20:19
  And that is an extraordinarily realistic possibility.
• 20:23
  Just on the media, I mean, what do you make of the the two very
• 20:26
  different responses from these two different media giants?
• 20:30
  You have paramount on one side who seem to have sort of caved
• 20:33
  in to a large degree and have ended up settling with the
• 20:38
  president over his allegations of of how they edited a a pre
• 20:42
  election interview. And yet you have Murdoch and the
• 20:45
  Wall Street Journal who are standing fast and are saying,
• 20:49
  OK, we'll see you in court. What, what does that tell us
• 20:53
  about the the media establishment and its appetite
• 20:57
  for ultimately taking Trump on? Well, I, I do think in order to
• 21:02
  know what ultimately will be news corporations handling of
• 21:06
  the Wall Street Journal lawsuit, we do need to wait a little bit.
• 21:08
  It's very common that in, in the first days of these things you
• 21:13
  hear will see you in court and that once more lawyers get
• 21:17
  involved and sort of lay out the possible outcomes.
• 21:20
  Sometimes the more sort of presumably risk averse path of a
• 21:24
  settlement becomes a little bit more appealing.
• 21:26
  But let's kind of think about it as we've heard it so far.
• 21:29
  You know, the the Paramount story is an interesting one
• 21:31
  because 60 Minutes did not agree with settling and CBS did not
• 21:36
  agree with settling. It was really a decision made at
• 21:38
  the absolute top. And it was a decision that was
• 21:41
  influenced significantly by the very authoritarianism of Donald
• 21:45
  Trump. Paramount is currently in talks
• 21:47
  for a merger with Skydance. And it was made very clear
• 21:52
  implicitly and explicitly by this administration that if this
• 21:55
  becomes an ugly fight down to the very end, the administration
• 21:59
  may prevent that merger from taking place.
• 22:02
  And so I don't say that to say, oh, it made a lot of sense for
• 22:05
  Paramount to settle. But it sort of gives you a
• 22:08
  picture of how the authoritarianism and the man who
• 22:13
  said I don't want government involved in business is willing
• 22:17
  to get very much involved when he has a personal stake in it or
• 22:20
  a personal outcome that affects his ego.
• 22:22
  On the other hand, with the Wall Street Journal, my instinct is,
• 22:26
  and I am not a supporter of Fox News, nor of Rupert Murdoch's or
• 22:30
  of News Corporation. My instinct is that the story at
• 22:33
  the core of this, which is that Trump sent a Christmas card to
• 22:36
  Jeffrey Epstein, They really must be extraordinarily
• 22:40
  confident that they have strong sources and that they have
• 22:43
  vetted it to the full ability and that it's true.
• 22:49
  And my guess would be that if it comes to the point at which they
• 22:53
  aren't going to settle, at some point Trump would need to sit
• 22:57
  for a deposition. I cannot imagine any
• 23:00
  circumstance in which Donald Trump does that.
• 23:03
  And I would expect at that point that the lawsuit will be
• 23:05
  dropped. I mean, ultimately, do you, do
• 23:08
  you think this is an administration that's going to
• 23:10
  plan or is it starting to come come apart a bit?
• 23:15
  Whose plan, I guess, is the question.
• 23:16
  I mean, listen, I'll kind of give you a couple.
• 23:18
  There's a few interesting things to say about that.
• 23:20
  I'm often asked, is this as bad as I expected it to be?
• 23:25
  And it's sort of more or less is.
• 23:27
  I mean, we we knew that an uninhibited Trump who in his
• 23:32
  first term at least, made a sort of shadow boxing game of
• 23:36
  installing some mildly competent people.
• 23:39
  You know, I wasn't a fan of of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of
• 23:43
  State, right? If you say to me, do you want an
• 23:45
  oil man as Secretary of State, I would say no.
• 23:47
  But Tillerson at least had some instincts that still were
• 23:50
  responsive to the sort of norms of what that office is supposed
• 23:54
  to represent. You know, in this second term,
• 23:56
  you've got people like Cash Patel, Dan Bongino, Pam Bondi
• 24:00
  and others. And that is exactly what I
• 24:02
  expected, an uninhibited Trump with true loyalists.
• 24:06
  They can do a lot of horrible things and they are doing a lot
• 24:09
  of them. So, so to my view, it's going to
• 24:11
  plan and that it's just as bad as as I expected in terms of is
• 24:15
  it going to plan for the people who supported Trump.
• 24:18
  I don't believe that it is. I mean, you know, we the tariff
• 24:21
  story was he's going to dump these tariffs.
• 24:24
  Everyone will be afraid and come crawling to him and say, please,
• 24:27
  Sir, make us a deal. That's not happening.
• 24:30
  He was going to be the anti war president.
• 24:32
  He's already been embroiled in in this bombing of Iran and in
• 24:37
  in just about every way. It's not really going to the
• 24:40
  plan that he laid out. Deportation would be the other
• 24:43
  one. By selling the lie that there
• 24:46
  are significantly more undocumented immigrants in the
• 24:49
  United States than than there are, they set this target as
• 24:53
  inhumane as it is a target of deporting 3000 people a day.
• 24:57
  It turns out there really aren't that many people to deport.
• 25:01
  And now they're sweeping up workers.
• 25:02
  They're sweeping up employees of different kinds.
• 25:06
  And so that's also not going to plan.
• 25:07
  So by by Trump's promises, I would say it is not going to
• 25:10
  plan. Right.
• 25:12
  OK. So.
• 25:13
  So what does that mean for the Democrats in terms of their pre
• 25:16
  election planning for the midterms?
• 25:19
  Sadly, I, I don't know that it means that much.
• 25:21
  And so I'll kind of just be candid in this.
• 25:23
  Over the last two months, I've interviewed probably 15
• 25:28
  Democratic elected officials. That includes governors,
• 25:31
  senators, members of the House of Representatives.
• 25:35
  And I don't, I can't tell you with confidence right now that
• 25:40
  there's a coherent and cohesive way to argue in next year's
• 25:45
  midterms that, OK, Trump's doing all of these terrible things,
• 25:49
  but here's why you should really vote for Democrats.
• 25:53
  I'm just not really seeing that right now.
• 25:55
  And I've been up front with the senators, members of the House
• 25:57
  and and governors that I've spoken to about that.
• 26:00
  And so there's a sort of to be determined aspect to that.
• 26:03
  Can Democrats learn from the mistakes of 2024 and find some
• 26:09
  credible and coherent argument for why voters should vote for
• 26:12
  them? And remember, the US is a
• 26:14
  country where, especially in midterms, often half of the
• 26:16
  electorate does not vote. And so motivating people to say,
• 26:21
  forget about who I'm going to vote for, I'm going to vote
• 26:24
  rather than staying home, even that is something that there's
• 26:27
  an uphill battle on right now. David Pak, man, we'll leave it
• 26:29
  there. Thank you very much indeed.
• 26:31
  That's it for this episode of THE FORECAST.
• 26:33
  Until next time, bye. Bye.