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Unknown A
All right, let's get into Friday Feedback, also known as the Friday feed bag, where comments and emails and excretions are just pouring in. As we approach 3 million YouTube subscribers, I predict that the hate mail will go absolutely nuclear or even nuclear when we hit the 3 million subscriber mark. I think it will be extraordinarily triggerling to many of the people that are waiting for the show to evaporate and to go down the drain. So they are going to be very upset. But in the meantime, in the meantime, let's get to some emails that came in to info@davidpakkman.com we'll look at some subreddit posts and we will discuss emotional ant posted to the subreddit. Trump and Elon are putting people out of work. They're going to trigger a recession. It's not just federal employees losing jobs. Anyone in any sector that relies on grants or government regulations is at risk.
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Unknown A
I know people who work in labs for pharma and environmental. They're facing job losses. So are people in education. Even the threat of job losses as cause these people to tighten their budgets, which will have an impact on markets. This will eventually become everybody's problem. I agree completely. I have many friends who worked for nonprofits funded partially by usaid. Many of them are currently out of jobs, are looking for jobs and are being told we are being flooded with applicants for jobs because of everybody who has lost their jobs. I know people who are in industries that would be very much hurt by tariffs if and when the tariffs, you know, become a reality, a stable, fixed, semi permanent reality. This is what we call the opposite of demand side stimulus. This is such basic economics. When you give more people the means with which to buy things, it's better for the economy when fewer people are working, when people are making less money, when people are worried their source of money will dry up, they say I will wait to spend either by choice or by necessity.
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Unknown A
And I've explained how this affects this show. You know, the rich people can already afford a membership to my show. If you go and you give everybody who's rich a tax cut, they are not going to be more likely to get a subscription for seven bucks to my show or 350amonth if you use a coupon code. The rich people are not going to be influenced in their purchasing decisions by a tax cut. On the other hand, if all of a sudden a bunch of working people lose their jobs, people for whom the seven bucks a month they spend here and the however many bucks a month they spend with a different show that is meaningful and so they lose their jobs, they will tighten their budget. Similarly, if you do demand side stimulus, either by getting more people jobs or getting them raises, all of a sudden folks who were marginal, they had zero disposable income, they go, hey, you know what?
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Unknown A
I've got an extra hundred bucks a month. I'm going to save 70 of it. Because of course my viewers are extraordinarily fiscally smart and they're, they're, they say I'm in my extra hundred bucks, seventy dollars of it I'll put into my retirement account and then the other 30 I will go out and get myself a cappuccino one morning and then I'll get a membership to David Pakman and then I'll get a membership to Jimmy Dore. No, probably not do, but you get the point. When more people have money, it's better for the businesses that have something to sell, be it a service or product. So, yes, I do believe that taken into its full potential, the Trump Musk economic policy, which sounds great. What's the policy? It's them pointing at things in the dark. I think it will be very bad. On the topic of dead people.
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Unknown A
They're dead. Getting Social Security money. I heard from Cind Blank who said, when my parents died, Social Security couldn't wait to take their money back. The very month they died, they deducted that month's payment and shut down the account. I, I don't believe this accusation for one minute. Yeah, you know, they've still shown no proof that a single dead person is getting checks. Now, I will concede to you, with a country of 340 million people alive, there is no question that some number temporarily slipped through the cracks. States may not always report deaths on time. Hospitals. Right. There is a temporary period during which we estimate at its peak, 10 to 15,000 people received some Social Security money after dying. Typically it's one month, sometimes it's part of a month and it is ultimately corrected. The idea that tens of millions of people are getting paid Social Security money is a fabrication for which they have shown no proof because they don't have any.
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Unknown A
And it is all a pretext to justify cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. If they can convince you that there is endless fraud, then they can say, we must cut. We've got to do it. OK. Accordia 91 refers to Elon Musk as space Karen and says Musk didn't invent Tesla, he bought it. Musk didn't invent SpaceX he bought it. Musk didn't invent Starlink. He bought it. Musk didn't invent X. He bought it. Musk didn't invent Trump, he bought him. Yeah, the last one is sort of a tongue in cheek, but it is true that many of the businesses that Elon Musk is in charge of, he didn't create, he didn't buy. It's still nothing to sneeze at to be able to take an existing business and to increase revenue and make it a better business. He hasn't done that with X. Certainly Tesla has exploded since he bought it, but he hasn't done that with X.
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Unknown A
Bangkok Garrett asks who will ever accept federal government jobs in the future? One aspect of this destruction of the federal government that nobody seems to be considering is that even if sanity does return via change of power, who in their right mind is going to accept job offers for our important federal government positions? Not the best and the brightest, that's for sure. We're never again going to be able to attract competent people to the important jobs we need people to fill because of the lack of job security. Just another reason we're so screwed. You know, I'm not sure about that. If this antagonism and hostility towards federal government workers that we're seeing from Trump, Musk, if it's relatively short lived and reversed at the earliest convenience, I don't know that it's going to have impacts eight, 10 years down the line. The point is a good one though, which is this is going to make people who would be great at these jobs.
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Unknown A
You know, it's a vicious circle. It's sort of like the education stuff. They hate public education so they try to damage it. And when they damage it, the quality of it gets worse. The good teachers leave, et cetera, and then they go, look at how much this thing sucks. Let's just do charter schools and private schools. Well, it partially sucks because you're doing stuff to make it suck. And similarly, they love to say the government can't accomplish stuff. It's not efficient, it's not good. We don't have good people. We have slackers, we have fraudsters. But then they actively make it a hostile place for good people to work. And then they're going to be surprised and they'll go, it's not functioning that well. Well, it's not functioning that well because he decimated it. It's, it's a tale as old as Republicans have existed. OK, bright dreamer25, sent in a picture or a photograph of their cat watching the show and says, my cat likes watching.
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Unknown A
David thought we could all use something a little light later. You know, even though I'm really a dog guy, they're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs. You know, even though I'm really a dog guy, dogs don't like the show nearly as much as cats. I don't know if it's that the show is too pedantic and anodyne for dogs, but there is something about this show where cats love it. Dogs, not so much. Dogs not so much. Dave CC asks why is it that the usual suspects in the right wing media, The Republican Congress, YouTube commentators, don't mind living in a dictatorship and they even promote it? I have an answer. Ok, but this is a good issue that Dave raises. Dave says, so as we march into an authoritarian dictatorship under Trump, all of his media enablers and congressme members continue to help him succeed.
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Unknown A
Why would they want to live in a dictatorship themselves? The Congress could stop this by voting down all of Trump's terrible cabinet picks. If push came to shove, even the GOP controlled Congress could impeach and remove Trump as having a king would be too much even for them. They all have families and they are dooming themselves as well as the rest of us by aiding him. Do they all plan to leave when the shit hits the fan? Do they think they will be exempt? Yes. So let me explain to you how this is working. The doormat loyalists of Trump, I call them doormat loyalists because they just lay down like a doormat and Trump walks all over them. They believe that the dictatorship that Trump would love to have, we'll call it an authoritarian presidency. They believe it'll never come for them. It's that simple.
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Unknown A
The this is it always is the case in cults and dictatorships and in authoritarian environments. Those allied with the dictator, the cult leader, the authoritarian strongmeman, they believe it will never be turned against them. But as we've learned from history, particularly looking at 20th century, 20th century authoritarians, the cults of the 1950s through the 2000s, eventually they turn on you. They turn on you either because you've been replaced by even more sycophantic followers. They turn on you because they are cornered and they'going to try to blame someone else. They turn on you. And so what Dave is bringing up is so important. And the answer is yes, they believe they will be exempt. That is exactly what they believe. Shaz on Facebook says, not jokingly, elon is a national treasure, a man working for free just to save our country for corruption. He doesn't need the money.
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Unknown A
He is just trying to bring back efficiency and transparently transparency in government. Let me explain something about this whoe he's doing it for free. Oh, Trump is such a humanitarian. He's not taking a presidential salary. Well, Trump stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, from the way that he will direct policy and run scams and grifts. The $400,000 salary is meaningless compared to what he can make by lining his pockets through policy and through enriching his friends. And similarly, Elon Musk doesn't need. You know, I, from what I read, I think if Musk were a government, a paid government employee, his salary would be 180. There's sort of like these, these levels of staffing in the federal government and a bunch of the positions pay 180. I don't know if that went up in 2025, inflation adjusted. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't.
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Unknown A
But it was like in 2024, it was a standard $180,000 salary. That is nothing to the guy whose net worth fluctuates by billions every week because of the movement of the stock market. And if you believe he doesn't stand to gain personally from his involvement in Doge, I have a bridge to sell you. CJ Makes videos said on the subreddit. I feel like I'm slowly starting to see slightly more criticism of Trump from Republicans, but they still support him regardless. It's bizarre to me. They will say, well, yeah, the leopards ate my face, and I'm still not happy about that. But at least Trump isn't as woke as Biden. I don't even really get what most American conservatives believe in anymore. They will get to a point they have to acknowledge something severely bad Trump did, but explain how DEI is a bigger problem. Yeah, so here's the bottom line with this.
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Unknown A
You are not going to see serious criticism from Republicans who have something to lose. That's the critical thing. The ones that are out of government or retiring or independently wealthy with no connection to the administration. You'll anecdotally see people like Mitt Romney, Adam Kininger, Liz Cheney, Jeff Flake back during the first Trump administration, some media people, the only people on the right who seem willing to really criticize Trump, not in a caveatd way, are those who have nothing left to lose. And to some degree I get it. Because if I knew, as I'm sure they do, that the second they express doubt about Trump, Trump will turn against them, potentially turn social media against them. Potentially turn the DOJ against them. I would also be worried if I were them. I actually, I actually do get it. But of course it would be nice if they didn't get themselves into this pathetic situation in the first place by looking the other way when Trump first ran info davidpakman.com Send me an email if you have anything to say.
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Unknown A
I would love to hear from you. And of course we are approaching 3 million, 3 million YouTube subscribers. I would love for you to be one of them. Sign up on the YouTube channel for free. You can pre order signed copies of my book for just a few more days@davidpakkman.com booksmith and of course Kindle and audiobook widely available everywhere that books are sold. I'll see you on the bonus show. Well, I wrote a book. After a long journey and a ton of work, I am really thrilled with how it turned out and I hope you'll read it. The book is called the Echo Machine and in a nutshell, it looks at how American politics got so broken, who has already figured out solutions and how we can try to fix it and stop the terror of Trump for the next four years. With Trump winning this election, the Echo Machine couldn't be more relevant.
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Not only a warning about how we got here, but also about what might be coming and how to prevent the worst outcomes. We've got to stay engaged. We need a plan and that's what the book is about. There's a belief out there that unless you have corporate media behind you, you can't have a successful political book launch that it's not possible. I think we can prove that wrong. Order the Echo machine today@davidpakkman.com Echo on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Audible, Kindle, anywhere that books, ebooks and audio books are sold. You can also call any local bookstore and say please order me the Echo Machine by David Pakman. Wherever you get the book, you'll get the free pre order perks, including the signed book. Platate head to davidpakman.com free bookstuff after ordering.