Welcome to this conversation on the Warning, and I am really pleased to be joined by my friend David Pacman of the David Pacman Show, one of the great independent media broadcasts and one of the first sizeable, at scale independent media broadcasts and substacks. And we're all following in David's footsteps in a lot of ways. I know I've learned a lot from him listening to them, and and have benefited a lot as we've built the Warning community. And so I'm really thrilled to welcome David here as
our audience grows a little bit tonight, David, welcome. I want to I wanted to ask you, as we come up on the one hundred and seventy five day mark of all of this, how you see things in the circus, the fight such as it is, the scale of wreckage such as it is, is how I imagine it to be. Just we'll keep expanding. And so this week today, when
you look out there, what what? What? What do you have your eye on as most worrisome in the moment, the thing that you look at And for me, even though I am not surprised by anything, I still look at it and I say wow, and experiencing it is different than anticipating it and feeling the anxiety and the worry and the dread is different than at It is different in its arrival and it's and it's feeling than anticipating it. So so what do you what do you see when you look at out there and well, what
do you have? You're kind of oh my god, eyes you know, drawn too right now?
So two categories, the authoritarianism and the economy and the economic stuff. I'll start with the economic stuff because it's sort of clearer cut.
In a way.
I've always been super honest with my audience, whether it's a Democrat or Republican in the White House, I'm just going to tell you what's GDP, what's unemployment? Where's the stock market? Inflation? These sort of metrics. There are a couple of concerning economic metrics, but a lot of them are actually okay ish. Now, the big one that's a concern is Q one GDP was down.
We are now in Q two.
Q two GDP may also end up being down, will know around July twentieth and two consecutive GDP decline quarters would be bad. But despite inflation fears inflation's actually been stable despite unemployment fears. Unemployment's actually been stable. Gas prices have been basically flat since Trump took over. So if I just do like an honest assessment of the metrics concerning signs, but some of the big indicators, okay for now, But this tariff impact is not even close to fully
felt yet. I mean, it's are they on, are they off? It depends on the day. What's the Okay, So the economic stuff is concerning trajectory, okay, ish for now. The authoritarianism bucket is extraordinarily disturbing. And there are so many different aspects to this, and we can focus in on
any of them. But of course there's the hostility and attacks on a free press, the ignoring of due process, the unilateral decisions, no matter what the judiciary says, no matter what it would mean to actually follow law and order, unilateral actions. Also internally within the federal government, the firings, the saying we're going to totally upend or even destroy your kneecap entire agencies, etc. I don't have to give you the full list, but sort of like bucket number
two is the authoritarianism bucket. I'm way more concerned there in the immediate than I am about the economic stuff. But that doesn't mean the economic stuff won't get much worse.
Do you have any doubt about the trajectory of where the economic stuff goes at this point? When you look ahead a year from now.
If the tariffs in their most extreme iteration are solidified and start to take effect, there's no doubt whatsoever it will be reduced hiring, higher prices, stagnant or declining, stock market continue, GDP declines. I mean, there's just no way you can do a blanket import tax and not have it trickle down the way the most basic economics, whether you follow you know, Richard Woolf for Thomas sol right, if you just put a blanket import tax on everything,
there's really only one way that that can go. Now, Trump and the people around him have crafted this sort of justification, which is that may happen in the short term, but as the supply chains are on reshort or on short everything's going to sort itself out. The problem with that is a lot of these industries require eight to twelve years to reshore. Until you actually build that capacity,
everything will still cost way more. And that's not also even feasible when it has to do with natural resources that just aren't necessarily found geographically within American borders. So you can't even really do that with all industries. So that's the theoretical justification. It's not a three and a half year possibility, which is what Trump has left, so we know the effect will be over the next three and a half years.
One of the things when I think about the economy and I think about all of the rhetoric and all of the empty promises around, really three things to me that stand out. It's that Trump will make declarations lively that I've landed a trillion dollar deal, seven trillion dollars from the Emiratis, eight trillion from the Kataris, and there won't be a dollar of this ever ever seen. I
don't think any of it is real. And when I conjecture ahead, well, what I see is a lot of impact that's coming, I think it's I think it's too late too. I think it's too late to stop it. But when Trump talks about the reshoring, the jobs and everything that that's coming back, I think this is all nonsense, right,
none of it's real, you know. But I think about one are the things that clearly drives Trump crazy psychologically, and like some of Trump's behaviors, right, it's not ungrounded in total delusion, right, I mean, it's not grounded in total delusion. Right. He has a reason for his peak, and it's about Air Force one. Right. So, and I think about this and I thank god, right, or we're in big trouble, right if this country has to fight a war. And I don't. I don't have an answer
to this question. Truthfully, I don't know why, right, things have gone off the rails like this in the country. But to some degree, I think it's why Trump has wound up as a demagogue in there. And it's that somebody obviously told him in twenty sixteen that there's a new Air Force one coming, right, And it's twenty twenty five, right, and there's no new Air Force one?
Right.
He can't comprehend, right, why over right? The ten years? Right? The planes not ready? Right, there's two planes and two seven forty sevens. They can't get them ready over a decade. And I think it's like he wants it, and I think he cares about the stuff he wants, but it does. But it's a legitimate question, right, White Boeing can't make these two planes right over the over the ten years. So when we talk about this reshoring business in the way that Howard Ludnik talks about it, I think it's
I think it's all madness. But we'll see how it plays out. People will feel it. The economy, as we've talked about before, is not something that you lecture to people. It's about how they feel about their security, about prices, about wages, about jobs, about opportunities. So really ominous signs
in the housing market across the board. I'm real worrisome things, but I have to I have to tell you there's there's nothing for me right now that is more troubling than the appearance of federal agents with night vision goggles on in the middle of the day on commercial airliners. Is their coast playing Navy Seal and Delta force when they're at the bottom of the federal law enforcement barrel
right the dregs of the pack, and it's unacceptable. The long rifles, the throwing of flash bangs in San Diego, the masks, the costumes in the United States of America. And when I say there's nothing more disturbing to it, the possible exception is the lack of outcry over it
by the leadership of the Democrats in Washington. I don't know if you think I'm on if I'm unfair on that, but but when you see these guys, and I mean guys, it's mostly guys heavily tattooed, mass up the blood type on the on the velcrode patch, which is, you know, standard operating procedure for a special operator in Iraq. They used to tape it around there, tape it around their boots, and so none of this is necessary if you're raiding restaurants in Washington, DC or suburban San Diego. But but
what do you make about it? It's it's so obvious to me, right that it's about instilling fear, and and that this is very deliberately uh moved to turn federal law enforcement into that proverbial jack booted government thugs, a storm trooper force. It's just unacceptable, And I don't know how you feel about it, but I'm real curious to hear you.
No, I feel the same way.
It's the sort of twentieth century authoritarian playbook of shock troops and making people afraid, and it's sadly, I wish it weren't a playbook that we were so familiar with and that had been studied so extensively during the twentieth century. I think the other thing that comes out to me to not repeat what you said, which I mostly agree with.
There's another aspect to this, which is I have a chapter in my book, and I talk extensively on my show about how I don't find that much value in engaging with this movement on their so called first principles and on the theoretical philosophical level, because as soon as it's inconvenient to their immediate goals, those principles are abandoned.
And you see that happening here. You limit the power of the federal government, well not when you have others that you want to achieve, and we've seen this so many times, right, keep the government out of business, regulation, keep the government out of people's lives. As soon as it becomes counter to their immediate goals and what they've been able to convince the core of their base that would be good for them, those principles immediately go out the window.
And so what was the.
Value in actually debating the principles with them? Because they don't even believe them beyond just having something to say as soon as it becomes inconvenient.
And this is just another reminder of that.
Because every aspect of this they claim to be the constitutional conservatives, they claim to be for law and order, they claim to be for limited federal power. All of these things go out the window because now they've got a new project, absent a serious policy approach where maybe we'll talk about the big beautiful bill, but that's the only real thing that is even on the table. So absent that, they go, let's abandon all of those stated principles.
Here's how we're going to execute this immigration, whatever you want to call it, and all those principles no longer matter.
When you look at the Republican Party. I mean, so when I hear you talking about the party, the Republican Party, to me, it's so far gone at this point. And I've talked about this for ten years, and the trajectory of this is just beyond dispute, and I just want to put myself in agreement with you. It's that the Republican Party became a hollow party, principal less, and as a principal less party, it became susceptible to MAGA and
to trump Ism. And there were a lot of conservatives, such as they were, but we now understand it was most performative group think that this is the lane I have to operate in or swim in, however you think about it, in order to advance myself. But but all of those people at whatever level have made accommodations to Trump into MAGA. And what happens in every instance when fascism comes to power, this is a fascist regime. There's
no dispute about that at this point. Is that it's conservatives who bring them to power and a coalition, and the first thing that happens is the fascist completely devour the conservatives, right, so there is no conservative party. I talk about this with with the warning audience you know from you know from time to time, is that it's really hard to understand what these numbers mean, right, A billion,
a million. And the best way that I've ever heard anyone explain it is that if I say to you, let's talk again in a million seconds, that's in twelve days. If that conversation goes bad and I say let's make it a billion seconds, that's thirty three years. A trillion seconds is thirty three thousand years from now. That's the difference between a billion and a trillion. And this big, beautiful bill monstrosity adds trillions of dollars to the debt.
Now you have a supposedly once conservative party's making the argument there should be no attention paid to any deficit, any debt spending. We should get rid of all limits on the debt spending. So it's not a conservative party. It's an extremist party. It's a radical party. And it's the greatest welfare party in American history with the amount of money that it's transferring regressively from the American people to the wealthiest human beings who have ever walked on
the face of the earth. And at the core right this bill can properly be described has never so much been taken by so many, by so few, for the benefit of even fewer. And it's an extraordinary it's an extraordinary moment. But the most disturbing one to me is the plain use of force that appears to be escalating on the orders of Stephen Miller, who's directing this from the White House. I think it's abore it that he be named he's unelected, he's extreme, he's belligerent, he's not
confirmed to anything. His policy is being directed out of the White House. He is wreck and cabinet secretaries that whole constitutional offices with statutory responsibilities for the execution of the laws within those offices that are that are routinely being broken. Uh. And so we have an enormous problem, uh, with with all of this right now? What what what are you looking for a Democratic leader or some governor or some somebody to go out and to say and
where should they say it? Well, in a perfect world, well, what what? What does? What? What do you see happen right for for somebody in this country to step forwarded and and call this out? Well, that's really the question to be and what needs to be said.
Yeah, you know, that's the question I've been bringing to that.
That's my concern too.
And just opposing Trump and trump Ism is not enough. That's clear that has failed as an approach for the Democratic Party. And so over the last month and a half two months, I've interviewed everybody from Senators Corey Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobashar, Governor's Kathy hokeel Phil Murphy from New Jersey Today, Gavin Newsom, I'm asking all of them some version of that question, and if I'm honest, I'm getting glimmers of things that sound interesting and make some sense.
But there is not a cohesive strategy right now, and so I am very worried about twenty twenty six and twenty twenty eight. I mean, I think certainly, if some portion of the tariffs become a reality, if some version of the big beautiful bill passes and it has the economic impact that we expect, there is going to be plenty to vote against in twenty twenty six, There's no doubt.
But it's just it's been shown to not really be enough.
And one of the great shortcomings of the Harris campaign last year, I believe, was that to take two issues, immigration and crime. My view as an individual is I think the immigration issue is real and distorted and overblown in the way that the right was talking about it. I think the crime issue is nationally crime has been
declining for thirty years, violent and nonviolent. But just telling people who see crimes in their community that doesn't make them feel like they're being heard, and they felt dismissed by Kamala Harris, and it's one of many reasons, but ultimately she lost. So my concern is I don't see a cohesive message right now beyond the obvious this is really bad. We've seen that this is really bad doesn't
necessarily win you elections it wanted in twenty twenty. I mean, this, this is really bad did win in twenty twenty because Trump was in power, Biden was going to swoop in and put a stop to it. Okay, so barely, but it did win. But it's not a winning strategy long term. So I don't know. I hope that there's some soul searching going on.
Who do you find really impressive in the Democratic Party right now from a potential leadership perspective.
So there's a few different ways to answer the questions.
So one category is.
Who is growing their notoriety in a positive way right now and is demonstrating they have some cachet by being able to get crowds going, right, So you've got these Bernie AOC events. Bernie has made it clear he's not
running AOC. I don't know if in twenty twenty eight AOC is the future of the Democratic Party, at least not yet, but she's certainly generating enthusiasm, which I think is really interesting, more pragmatically although less exciting certainly than AOC Bernie, who seemed to be able to generate the
most excitement in person. Right now, are people like Josh Shapiro, I think is super interesting, Gretchen Whitmer, although she's had some pr issues with these Trump photo ops, which I spoke to her about, and I think there's two sides to that. I think Gretchen Whitmer is interesting in terms of her political skill, but I don't know if it's the right sort of fit.
Somebody like a John ossaf is boota j.
Edge too much bane, capital consultant type to be the right guy, but I think he's extraordinarily intelligent. Gavin Newsome, I think, is someone whose name keeps coming up because he's so liked and disliked, which I think can be a real problem. Although I think he's very slick, and sometimes some ways he comes off as too slick and
too rehearsed and prepared. So there's lots of people that have elements that I think are interesting, but I don't know that there's like a necessarily obvious person right now.
If you could script what the Democratic leader comes out and says tomorrow, what do they say to the country.
You know, it's it's a little difficult to answer it because depending on what body they are is, whether it's a governor or someone who works in the House or Senate, or someone who's a former elected official, what an Obama can say tomorrow is very different than what like Hakeem Jeffries can say, or what Chuck Schumer can say.
So I think it depends on who we're talking about to a degree.
Make it somebody in office today, Okay, if.
They're in office today, I think that the critique of what's being done needs to be made in a less technocratic and much more emotionally salient way as to the impact both of the authoritarianism and the economic policy. And at the same time, something tangible needs to be offered as to what Democrats can do right now. Now that's difficult because Democrats don't control anything right now, and so what they've been relegated to. You know, I've spoken to
some of the attorneys general and others. We've got lawsuits. Lawsuits are great, Lawsuits are slow, They're not emotionally salient, they don't directly connect with voters as to what these lawsuits, if they succeed, mean for me. So I think there needs to be something more immediate and tangible.
But one of the sort of.
Benefits of the fact that we're already six months into twenty twenty five is that the midterms are basically now. I mean, you know, we're a year and a few months from the midterms, and so sometimes that's the most effective thing to get people focused on something defined, because generally saying we're going to do everything we can to oppose what's going on, and the next thing they try for an indeterminate period of time, not emotionally salient, not tangible,
not tractable. We now have a specific scenario that is going to go one way or the other.
Here are the implications. Here's the date of this election.
It's sort of trite and stayed, but it's at least a date in the calendar that can start to become a catalyst for figuring out what needs to happen over these next seventeen months or however long exactly it is.
How do you process what's going on between him and Musk right now?
Well, I think the implosion was inevitable, and I predicted it would last at most six months.
And this was not like some incredible prediction. We might have talked about it. Yeah, I think we did.
I didn't have a particularly insightful prediction. I mean, I think it was obvious that at the most it had six because when you put billionaire egocentric maniacs together.
Rarely does it work out particularly well.
But I don't think the implosion is because Elon Musk is strongly ideologically opposed to what's in the Big Beautiful Bill. I think it's that Elon Musk sees the fact that he was involved with the bill and this is now what it looks like. I think he sees it as a liability to his businesses and to his reputation, and that that's really what he cares about. I don't think that he really gives it damn as to whether the bill comports to his philosophical beliefs about how governments should run,
and I just don't think it does. I think it's a problem. I think the bill is just a problem for him, and the association with Trump has become a problem for him.
There's so many people that are worried about this moment, and I think, rightfully, so and they get depressed and they get into a doom loop, and right they evaluate the reality, which is that Trump holds the power and he is applying to Congress and we're seeing the courts pushback, but they don't seem to be able to see that the pushback of the American people is also real, right, and that Trump is having difficulty doing things, and people
around Trump were getting really banged up, and nobody more so than Elon Musk, and so Elon Musk, drug addled, black guy, embittered is going back to Texas and he's being interviewed this week and he's like, no, no, no, right, I want to talk about space. You're never going to have an interview again, dude, where you're going to be talking about space ever? Fifty two? Right? This is this is gonna be living if you live to be one hundred and eleven. Right, this is this is it? Right
what you did? And YouTube guys, right, Trump and him are totally inseverable from one another, no matter what, forever and ever like truly they are they then right they have they are a conjoined person reading a force of one and it's definitional form. I think he's wrecked his companies. I think he's wrecked his brand, I think he's wrecked his reputation. I don't think he'll be a NASA contractor a defense contractor any of these things and in the
not too distant future. And I think that's why it's so important for Democrats to start outlining not necessarily a Project twenty twenty seven, but a Project twenty twenty nine, which is the plan for democratic restoration and for real restraints putting on the executive branch, real accountability. And there has to be a plan in twenty twenty seven that they articulate for oversight. And I think one of the
areas that most important is oversight on privacy. The accumulation of individual data by the government of the people, by the people for the people, in handing it to a contractor like Palenteer utterly unacceptable in a free society. For us to have a digital Stasi in the United States, completely unacceptable. I think that the breaking up of the Homeland Security Department is going to need to be a
legislative priority. The reform of these state security bureaus, every age and that has appeared with a mask on at some point in the near future, I see being asked a question by their superiors, did you participate in human seizure raids wearing a mask? And if you answer that question is yes, then leave your badge and your gun and the desk on your way out the fucking door, right And so there's gonna be an era of accountability
for this. And you know, after the wreckage is cleared, how government deliver services, we should imagine doing it better. Then it's that it's been done. But Trump's in to do a lot of damage, and the Democrats are going to have to, I think, step into the future with an agenda that says, at a at a very basic level, that we're the reform party in this country. We're the renewal party in this country. We're the freedom party in this country. And we hear the electorate loud and clear.
And the Democrats are going to have to leave some baggage behind because they have a national approval level of twenty five percent uh and they have a lot of dysfunction in in a lot of places, like for example, New York City in the country right now in this moment. But when when you think of everything that's going on Are you optimistic, are you are you pessimistic? Or are you kind of in the in the middle. Right now, my.
Nature is to naturally be optimistic. And this is not like some Stephen Pinker stuff. But there are large broad ways in which life has gotten better on average over the last however many years.
Now, that's a separate.
The trajectory on that can be pretty long, and so that's a very different question than am I optimistic about the next two years, the next four years, in the next eight And I do think that the answer there is it depends I do. I am still naturally optimistic about the longer term right if we're talking about decades or longer, But the next two, four and eight years are going to depend on some pretty nuts and bolt stuff.
It's not broadly theoretical.
It's as we were talking about, can the Democratic Party put together something more actionable and attractive than Trump's bad again? Let's get rid of him again. The pendulum. There is a sort of pendulum swing in American politics, and we see that based on what usually happens in the first
midterm after a new party takes the White House. So we know, like the math of that, the algebra of that, but that's just enough for the pendulum to swing back and forth, and it keeps swinging a little further and further to the right every time that it swings. So that's a question for the next two for six and eight years, right like the next four major elections. The technology and privacy issue that you brought up, I'm going to incline AI in that because it's so relevant right now.
That's another major question mark. It's socioculturally relevant, and I've been reading a ton of that. I have friends who are college professors who have said that their work right now, the dynamic in college right now is students using AI in ways they believe will be undetectable, with professors using AI to detect student use of AI. It's sort of like turtles all the way down, as Stephen Hawking used
to say. So that's like socioculturally, I think the AI question is really important, but also from a government perspective and what it means for facial recognition and pre crime, as Philip K. Dick wrote about in Minority Report, et cetera. So I think including that in one of these kind of big two to eight year considerations is hugely important as well.
The two other things that are that are going on. We have this month the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the US Army. It occurs on Flag Day, and this is also Trump's birthday, and we're going to have a Kim johng Un parade, probably the greatest desecration in the history of the armed forces. This is taking place over here. And then the other thing that we're seeing is the dismantling of America's science economy, the linkages between universities,
research institutions. And one thing that is hard for me to wrap my head around, but I accept this, and I wonder if you think I'm overstating this at all, is that I was really blown away by the web telescope when it was launched and the technology. When you think about that's it, that's the that's the that's the most sophisticated piece of technology that that human beings have ever made in all of human civilization. We launched it into space and it can literally see back to the
beginning of time. It's a it's an extraordinary scientific instrument of discovery. And this was never my thing. That's why I went into politics, right You know math and science, but having an appreciation for people that are curing diseases, that are fighting cancers, brilliant people that don't get famous doing this, most of them don't get rich doing this. But this upward trajectory of progress the clear notion. And
I know this, right, I'm fifty four. I know people that have died, for example, ten fifteen years ago of melanoma, that would have lived today, right, or would have lived
through some other type of type of cancer. And when you look at what Robert Kennedy's doing, and when you look at what his henchman calli Means is doing, Cally Means in the subject of a Vanity Fair profile where this is the architect of the Maha Report, and the Maha Report turns out to be written by artificial intelligence with all manner of fake reports and all manner of fake citations attached to it, and Calli Means in this Vanity Fair story is identified as almost having a completely
fraud joint background. He does he was my assistant back in the day. So all the things that he says he did, he didn't do. He's a fabulous, like a George Santos type character. And yet though it's been reported in Vanity Fair and this person is architecting health policy and he's a fraud. And The New York Times reported as fact two weeks ago in a profile that this guy did this, this, and that, and he didn't and
they haven't corrected it. He's deeply worrying that you realize that the forward progress of human civilization scientifically, at least in this country, has come to its forward apergy, right,
and it's falling back right. The science that's being wrecked, the studies being ended, the dismantling of all of these things by people who have no qualification whatsoever to do them, think require a democratic party that can speak to them and talk about the necessity of scientific progress, kind of that long arc of human progress, and to talk about it in a political context is a choice for the society because because when you have the number of rural
hospitals that are going to close and everything that's going to happen in the next in the next two years, it's going to get tough for a lot of people out there, including a lot of Trump voters, you know.
And one of the real tragedies of this also is that there are some characters that have gotten pulled into this whole Maha orbit who actually do have interesting things to say. I mean, I think Marty mcarey, for example, FDA Commissioner.
He wrote a book in which he brings.
Up a lot of really interesting things about our healthcare system. One example, which was relevant to me as somebody who had my appendix out, is that in the US the er system loves appendectomies, and that the truth is eighty five percent of them you can treat with antibiotics and it doesn't come back. You're not at increased risk for ultimately ending up with the appendectomy anyway. That's like a
real tangible issue. Another one, American healthcare system loves c sections, and even though other countries have figured out even after one C section, most women are still candidates for a natural birth in the US. Very quick to see section like these are really good, interesting conversations based in building science up over periods of time that Marty McCarey wrote about.
And then now you know he's on.
With Margaret Brennan three minutes apart saying we can't trust CDC data and believe me because I'm using CDC data right in the same interview three minutes apart, and Margaret Brennan's head is spinning. It's the debasement even of people who actually do have interesting things to say, And as you're pointing out, also the elevation while experts are criticized experts with real expertise, the elevation to expert status of people who have no business actually making policy.
It's a disaster.
What do you say about it? How do you engage that issue?
I try to engage it with this approach.
If a thirty, forty, fifty sixty year old wants to dig in on a TikTok or YouTube stream with me about any one of these issues, I'll argue with them in the sense that I'll plead my case. I'll try to explain to them why my view is different, why I believe their view isn't informed by science. That's like the retail strategy. Though, how many people can I really argue with?
Right?
I tie it back more to a culture that is lacking a sort of reverence for critical thinking and epistemology and debate and discussing why do we believe the things we believe? And so there's a cultural aspect, but it's inextricably intertwined with education policy, where we really should be teaching basic media literacy and critical thinking in every school, probably starting at age eight. You could make a case for six. Some people say not to middle school, but
certainly in every school. And it's much harder to get people to think in this way once they've not been thinking this way for thirty forty fifty years. And so that's why I think it really is an educational issue.
And I'll say one other thing about it.
Sometimes when I say this, I'll hear from teachers or school administrators who say, David, you really shouldn't be blaming us, like we know what needs to happen. And I'm not blaming them because to a great degree they are construyi by the system that elected officials and sometimes on elected officials have put together.
So this is not a criticism of teachers. This is a criticism of a system.
That has stripped some of these building blocks of knowledge from public education.
Overwhelmingly. To me, the most impressive Democrat in the country when I when i'm when I kind of look at them is Jake Auchincloss, who is the thirty eight is thirty nine forty year old Democratic congressman from from Massachusetts, and.
I've had I've had him on and I find him very impressive.
He's very impressive, and he knows, he knows what he wants to do and where he wants the lead. I have no idea if he wants to run for president, but you know, he's somebody that should be in the category of thinking about it and saying a lot of interesting things. That's right of a of a new generation that has some vision on some of these issues that the country's going to have to reckon with over the next over the next decade, over the next twenty, over
the next twenty years. But I look at this through a bunch of different lenses, you know, and I wrestle with, you know, being pessimistic at times, you know, when I when I think about this, But I have a faith that the good guys win, and the good guys doesn't mean Chuck Schumer right. It means that the forces that support American liberty right, that we that we as a country make it through this era. But but but how does it end? Right? How does this? How does this
how does this fever break? How do you see it expiring? The decompression going on where people take a step back in the country from the madness.
So I'll give you my ninety percent vision, and then I'll give you my ten percent vision, less likely but probably still just as effective. So my ninety percent vision is that much the way that empires often fall or technology advances. When you're in the middle of the change, you often don't realize that the change is taking place. I think that there's examples of this for the bad.
If we think back to Trump, as he likes to say, coming down the Golden escalator in twenty twenty five, It's been almost a decade, and so much has happened in this decade, and also typically from week to week, it doesn't feel like that much change, although the last two months it does because we're seeing unprecedented thing after unprecedented thing. But the idea here is I think the fever is likely to break relatively slowly, and it will have a
lot of components. At some point, the Republican Party will move on from Trump. That doesn't necessarily mean they'll move on from trump Ism, and that sort of will depend on sort of what level of satisfaction the Republican Party has with Trump whenever his term ends. Either because it's been four years, or because he passes away, or whatever comes to be. So I think at some point the party will move on from Trump. They might stick with a MAGA type candidate or maybe not, but Trump himself
will be gone. I think that as we see, hopefully the recognition from voters of how their vote relates to the things that happen in their communities, either through the federal government directly or governorships, etc. I think that slowly, hopefully, as the country has seen for the last hundred years, it will continue moving in what someone with my political beliefs believes is the right direction.
Now, of course, there are people if.
Your political views are different, you may disagree with that. If we look back one hundred years on every serious question, should we tax the very rich to ensure that the poor don't fall below a certain standard of living?
Should abortion be legal?
In most cases we've seen not extreme left, but a sort of move steadily to the left. So I think as that continues, and then here's the maybe part of it.
If we can do something about how our politics is funded and how elections are run, which is a big ask, and we can go into detail about it or not hopefully elected officials will more closely reflect the political beliefs of the country because one of the things that we see time and time again due to a combination of how you raise money and Jerry maandering, if you place the American electorate on the political spectrum, the elected officials
are to the right. And so if we can get elected officials more aligned with where people are through the reforms that I talk about, I think it will slowly break the fever.
Now that's my ninety percent explanation.
My ten percent is if Trump drops dead in like nine months, I think there's a chance that they go, that was really crazy, let's do something different here.
And then jd.
Vance is pushed to be like not really Trumpian that I don't believe that's the most likely outcome, but it is sort of like in the back of my mind as a possibility.
I think that I think that one of the things that is going to have to happen is for there to be a lot of economic pain. Unfortunately that is both coming and is going to be help in order to in order to break the madness. But nobody who's gotten in business with Trump has ever come out of the deal happy and you know, So that's that's one aspect of it.
But Steve, just on that one question, do you think the voters would blame the right people for that? And the reason I asked that is when Obama did Obamacare and offered these medicaid expansions to the states and some Republican governors didn't take the expansion, voters in those states often believed it's Obama's fault even though it was their governor's fault. So my only question on that is will people blame the right parties for that economic pain?
I don't know. Right there's been such a disenfranchisement of so many places, so many states by the National Democratic Party. But at the end of the day, I don't think people will countenance the corruption and the craziness. Though I think that there's a lot of rope left to be uh let out on the tolerance piece, I don't I don't think people are consuming news like we are. I think that there's a lot of things that they're seeing that they don't like. The you know, polling reflects that.
But you know, in the in the end, I think that uh, this has to play out now in a way that gets to a pretty unhappy result for a lot of people. You know, I think I think Trump is Trump is a world class demagogue. None of this is on the none of this is on the level. And he's going to break the economy and you will just have to see how people people react to it. But I but I think that Democrats have to understand
that they have a lot of work to do. That's for sure, a lot of they have a lot of work to do, and that and that work is about kind of facing the reforms that are necessary. Right, So if you're if you're running against the corrupt party, you got to be the anti corruption party. You can't be the party that holds the position it's only corruption if Trump does it right without a doubt, I mean, and that's the that's the that's the key, that's the key to getting out of this. Have to be better.
I do think that if Democrats can at least just take the House in November of twenty six, that would be a pretty solid potential bulwark for the last two years of Trump's presidency, and it could create enough of a springboard towards figuring some things out, as you're pointing out, and momentum into twenty twenty eight, but I don't think that's a guarantee by any means.
You know. I listen, I think Democrats will take the House, and I think that they will that they will potentially take the Senate, and I don't think there's necessarily going to be a safe seat in the country. But I think that a lot of the electoral energy is going to be against the Democratic leadership and the Democratic status quo.
Right.
I think that the DSCC is recruiting candidates to go out and to support Chuck Schumer to be leader for two more years. And I think the candidates that are going to matter in this election cycle are the ones that have the guts and the integrity Democratic side to say, listen, he's not a dishonorable guy, but he's not the right leader for this moment. He's been weak and inteffectual, and he appeased Trump for the first months of the term.
And that's a reason we have all these crazy cabinet secretaries. And we would have been much better off if we fought. Schumer made a catastrophic decision and earlier in the deal. And no right my state, whether it's in Texas, whether it's a Volcana wherever the state is that know, the people there, my Democrats in our state, we want to change and and I think that driving that change energy
with a real agenda. You know, for example, all of these oligarchs, and they are of the biggest tech companies in the world, have concentrated too much power and wealth. Right, There's been a concentration of power and wealth and a cruel that happens, you know every you know generational cycle I suppose, or several generational in America, maybe every eighty years or so in the history of the country. It's
got to be broken up. And it's occurred before in the same philosophies that broke it up have to have to confront this accumulation of power again. And that's what Democrats have to be for. Can't be a party of platitudes. It's got to be a party of policy and fierceness in defending Americanism and so like the allergy of the American flag and raising it high and saying what we share in common, right is not racial identities. It's an
American identity that's open to all of us. And I think Democrats have to get into that space as quickly as they as they can in order to be successful again as a national party.
I think that's right, and I also I always caveat this by saying I don't bring this up because I think it's the most serious thing, and I think sometimes it's a problem when we pretend it is. But I think that the Democratic Party also needs to figure out how to not be republican light which has not worked, but also not to really appear to be placating the fringe left. And I call it fringe rather than extreme,
because I think it is really a minority. It's a very loud minority if you spend time, especially on social media platforms. And one of the problems within the Democratic Party it's not really it's both a feature and a bug in the sense that people are doing it because they're engaged, but also it can be an electoral problem. Is the purity testing of there's one idea that's too center. I'm staying Homer voting third party, there's one idea that's
too left. I'm staying Homer voting third party the Maga Party. Once they win, it's a mess. But to win elections you have a hesitation about a Democrat, come on in, you're welcomed with open arms. And if you've got a big Twitter following, you're invited to mar A Lago. And that instinct I think would be really good to develop.
On the left, there's you know when you talk about the fringe left, and it's exactly that's exactly it. In the reality of it is there's no chance the fringe left could ever take political power in America, but they're loud enough to drive demand for an extreme right. And so America was never susceptible to a dictatorship of the left. It's always been susceptible to a dictatorship of the right.
And that's why that old apocryphal quote about if fascism comes to America, it'll be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross, and it's an important element to understand. And so, you know, I would make the argument that, for example, the new mayor of San Francisco is doing a terrific job, and the last mayor and the last district attorney did a lot to help Donald Trump. And you had pro crime district attorneys in some of the biggest cities in the in the country who were off
the wall, and people don't want it. The open air drug markets, the sense of disorder, and so they become easily picked off by demagogic candidate like Trump. And you know, at the end of the day, you know, there's a cohort of Democrats that are terrific at giving lectures telling people what they can think about, what they could say, what words they can use, what phrases can be used. And it may it may have an appeal to somebody out there, but there's a lot of people it just
triggers their fuck you response. And the person who's capitalized on that has been Trump, And so you know, to me, it's depressingly you read stories about Democrats just commissioned a twenty million dollar study to learn how to talk to men, right, who are fifty percent of the human population, And so you just hope the party gets gets in touch and you know, can find its way to normalcy, right because there's scores of tens of millions of normal people in
this country right who can look at issues authentically and honestly and clearly that range a spectrum from your moderate Democrat to your progressive Democrat that can relate to real life, real people, real situations, and look in the praise this moment in time, and I think address it with the utmost seriousness, and there's lots of examples out there, but it just hasn't coagulated into a coherence for the party
as a whole, as a unit, as a leadership. You know, for instance, I have no idea why there's not a daily news conference where people go out and respond across the broad spectrum that use some humor to tell some jokes, but participate in the theater that is necessary to participate in, because at the core, we're fighting an information war, and that's what is a huge deficit I think and comprehension by a lot of the Democrats facing off against Trump
is an appreciation for the nature of the fight they're in, and a lot of people are frustrated about it. I know a lot of people in my audience.
Are, yeah, I know, I was same with mine, and you know, I was sort of chuckling to myself sadly when I started seeing these instances of people like Schumer and others introducing swear words in a completely very obviously calculated and contrived way, as if that might be a communication tactic to use, you know, But on the on
the speaking too, men thing. I don't know how many people in your audience are familiar with Scott Galloway, but I think the way that he's been communicating is nothing's perfect, nothing's an exact model, but I think it serves a lot to just point to. Here is how someone who unquestionably fits into the MAGA definition of what it means to be alpha right, the wealth and the confidence. And I think he's tall, you know, like checking out the boxes.
But he's articulating in a way that is both respectful but emotionally salient ideas of the center left. I guess we would call it, and doing so extraordinarily effectively with a disproportionately male audience, I think that that should be looked at.
Yeah, no doubt. Well let me we're at our hour. We've had a good crowd here, so let me give it over to you to wrap it up, to observe any last observations that you have for the night about what's happening in the country, and to gain real pleasure to get a chance to spend an hour with you.
Always the always a pleasure, you know.
One just little note of what I've been hearing from my audience over the last week the whole. If X wins, I'm going to move to Canada that we started hearing back in the George W. Bush days, which doesn't actually happen that often for a number of reasons, including that it's not that easy for Americans to move to Canada necessarily.
I've heard from hundreds of my viewers who during I'm not going to say it's not over the last six months, but since Trump won the first time, have moved out of the United States, and they all it's self selection biased. The ones that aren't happy don't write to me, but they all articulate the ways in which they just feel better, are more positive, and feel more stable in terms of the basic building blocks of life, even if their income isn't necessarily as high on paper having moved to fill
in the blanks Latin America, You're a Asia. Heard from a couple people in Africa, and it's been interesting just to hear those stories from people about people who aren't they're not threatening, they've done it, and sort of hearing what that's been like.
Unbelievable time. David Pacman, thank you very much for yours Thanks for having me.
I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning. I invite you to join this community, where I promise to be honest, blunt and direct about what is happening in this country. America is in crisis. Follow and subscribe to this channel and on substack.
Thank you.