Democrats have a serious problem, and it is not just polling or fundraising.

It is a mindset problem.

More specifically, it is a misunderstanding about what political communication actually looks like in 2026 and what it is going to require by 2028. Because from where I sit, too many Democrats are still operating like it is 2008.

And I say that not as some abstract media critic, but based on what I am personally experiencing over and over again.

We are still getting requests from Democratic offices asking us to submit interview questions in advance. Not broad topic areas, which is perfectly normal. They want actual questions, or at least they heavily pressure us in that direction. That is not how we do interviews.

We are happy to give a general sense of what might come up. Maybe we mention five broad topics we could touch on. Nothing surprising: immigration, the economy, campaign messaging, media strategy, whatever it may be. And then during the interview, I might spend more time on one or two of those areas depending on where the conversation goes.

But we do not provide questions in advance, we do not guarantee coverage of specific topics, and we are not conducting scripted interviews.

Because that is the entire point. A real conversation requires room for follow-ups, reactions, unpredictability, and actual engagement in the moment. Otherwise, you are not really doing an interview. You are producing a controlled media exercise.

And yet we continue to encounter situations where staffers are unhappy after the fact because an interview did not unfold exactly the way they hoped.

And to be clear, this is not every Democrat we speak to. There are plenty of elected officials and offices that are excellent to work with, confident in their message, comfortable with real conversations, and not trying to choreograph every minute of an interview.

But this pattern shows up often enough that it points to something bigger than just a few isolated staff decisions.

I am not naming names because embarrassing individual offices is not the point.

The point is that this keeps happening.

And the bigger problem is what it reveals.

The politics of over-control

Political communication teams often believe their job is to eliminate risk.

No surprises. No awkward moments. No difficult follow-ups. No clips that could go viral for the wrong reason. And from a purely defensive perspective, that logic makes sense.

But politics is not just risk management. It is persuasion. And persuasion depends heavily on authenticity. The more tightly controlled something feels, the less authentic it becomes.

Short interviews. Formulaic talking points. Nervous staff hovering in the background. Conversations that feel less like discussions and more like approved messaging exercises.

Audiences can feel that immediately.

Even if they cannot articulate exactly why, they know when something feels sanitized.

And sanitized political communication increasingly just does not work.

Republicans understood this faster

During White House Correspondents’ Weekend, I spoke with producers, staffers, and political operatives across the spectrum. One consistent theme came up.

Republicans are generally not approaching media this way.

They are not obsessively pre-negotiating interviews. They are often not even demanding topic approval. They are certainly not routinely circling back afterward to complain that the conversation took an unexpected turn.

Now, let’s be clear about something.

This does not mean Republicans are better communicators in some principled sense. Trump routinely lies. Conservative media ecosystems often reward spectacle over substance. But from a purely tactical standpoint, they grasp something Democrats too often miss.

A loose, conversational appearance can feel far more persuasive than a tightly managed one.

Trump sitting with Joe Rogan or Theo Von and casually talking, however dishonest the content may be, creates the impression of authenticity.

Politics is perception. Perception matters.

The consultant-industrial complex problem

Back in late 2024, when I met with White House communications staff and even President Biden, I made this exact argument.

You cannot keep trying to control every word.

Because part of what damaged Democrats was this communications culture built around over-management.

An ecosystem of consultants, staffers, messaging professionals, and party infrastructure all operating under the assumption that communication is something to be engineered rather than lived.

That may have worked better in an earlier media era. It works much less well now.

Independent media does not function like cable news booking from fifteen years ago. Audiences expect spontaneity. They expect some friction. They expect moments that feel unscripted. If every appearance feels polished within an inch of its life, the audience stops trusting it.

And trust is already in short supply.

There are exceptions

Not every Democrat operates this way.

My recent interview with Gavin Newsom is a useful contrast. Newsom’s team simply set the time, trusted the process, and let the conversation happen.

The result?

A more dynamic interview. A more relaxed exchange. Something that actually felt like a conversation rather than a hostage negotiation with scheduling software. That is not accidental. Trust tends to produce better content.

And better content tends to produce better audience engagement.

This is not because every unscripted interview will go well. Some will absolutely go sideways. That is the tradeoff.

But politics has always involved tradeoffs.

This alone will not save Democrats

None of this means communications style is the only Democratic problem.

Far from it. Policy clarity matters. Messaging on crime, immigration, economic anxiety, institutional trust, and affordability all matter enormously. Structural electoral dynamics matter too.

But communication culture is part of the larger picture because it reflects something deeper.

Does the party trust actual messengers?

Or does it trust only systems designed to minimize uncertainty?

Because if the answer remains the latter, Democrats may continue losing a communications war they do not fully understand.

The internet is not waiting for a polished memo.

What do you think: are Democrats still trying to win a media environment that no longer exists, or is tighter message discipline actually the smarter play?

We’re reaching over 150 million people every month across YouTube, podcasts, Substack, and beyond. But algorithms can change. Platforms can fold. And when that happens, this newsletter is how we stay connected.

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Here’s what we’re talking about today.

This is a quick rundown of the topics we’ll be covering on today’s show. You can hit play to listen, or read the transcript below if that’s more your style.

Transcript:

Something very strange happens psychologically at Trump rallies, and once you notice it, you’ll use a different framework to think about what it is you see going on behind Trump. We’re going to look at the people behind Trump during the speeches and why the rallies look like cult rituals.

Also today, the infamous Democratic autopsy of the 2024 election has leaked and it is a very weird political document. There’s contradictions, blame games, and they also are pointing the finger at Biden, but have also disavowed the report. It’s wild and we’re going to look at it.

Plus, the President, Trump, delivers one bizarre moment after another, falling asleep, contradicting himself about Iran, and talking about skipping his son’s wedding. It’s weird.

And we will look at new polling data that, if you are an observer of elections in the United States, should make you very worried about the economic situation if you are trying to get reelected in November.

And later, every time Trump goes overseas, somehow the United States ends up looking weaker, more performative, more easily manipulated. I will tell you why and what’s happening.

All of that and more today.

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Donald Trump spoke to reporters and delivered multiple confusing remarks, struggling through questions about JD Vance and incorrectly crediting Barack Obama for the Afghanistan withdrawal. He also argued AI proves economic strength because more Americans are working despite the population also continuing to grow.

CNN data shows Donald Trump losing massive support among disengaged voters who normally ignore politics. Rising credit card debt, expensive groceries, housing instability, and insurance costs are pushing financially stressed Americans toward frustration with the administration.

Stephanie Haridopolos appeared on Fox News after Donald Trump replaced his previous Surgeon General nominee. The administration is increasingly prioritizing loyalty over competence as multiple government appointments are collapsing.

Donald Trump delivered an erratic commencement speech directed at Coast Guard graduates. He joked about remaining president through 2032, struggled with pronunciation, and claimed Taiwan stole the American semiconductor industry.

James Comer struggled to justify anti-Cuba rhetoric during a Newsmax interview about rising gas prices and hypothetical drone threats. Meanwhile, Jay Clayton and Mike Lindell framed criticism of Trump allies and supporters as persecution, reinforcing the broader grievance politics and victimhood narratives that increasingly define Trumpworld.

Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities despite the economic messaging from the Trump administration. Rising credit card debt, auto loan delinquencies, expensive housing, and growing insurance costs are signs of widespread emotional and financial exhaustion.

Senator John Kennedy attacked the Cuban government by describing corruption, oppression, and political favoritism during a TV interview. Ironically, there are many similarities between Kennedy’s description of authoritarian systems abroad and concerns about concentrated power in Trump’s America.

Finally, Lanny Davis, political operative and attorney, joins us to discuss his new book, “Finding the Third Way: Lessons in the Politics of Civility From My Journey Through History.”

On today’s bonus show:

Former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank dies at 86, officers sue to block Trump's $1.8 billion slush fund, Trump says he doesn't need Congress to build his DC arch, and much more...

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Crime is bad, right?

That has been one of the defining rhetorical pillars of Trumpism for years. Law and order, tough on crime, no tolerance for corruption, and no sympathy for criminals. We have heard the messaging over and over again, always delivered with the implication that Democrats are soft, permissive, unserious, or somehow complicit in social decay.

That is the branding.

The reality looks a little different.

Donald Trump himself is a convicted felon, found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records. And now Trump has thrown his endorsement behind Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate Republican runoff, a man whose political career reads less like a law-and-order success story and more like a running case study in alleged misconduct.

So naturally, the endorsement makes perfect sense in Trumpworld.

Trump waited until the winner looked obvious

One of the more predictable parts of this story is the timing.

After the initial Texas Republican primary failed to produce a candidate with more than 50 percent, a runoff was scheduled between incumbent Senator John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Trump, naturally, teased an endorsement. He would decide soon, he said. Very soon. But not too soon.

Because Trump’s endorsement strategy has rarely been about conviction or principle. It is much more often about scoreboard management. He likes endorsements that become “wins,” which means waiting until the likely victor becomes clearer before planting the flag.

That appears to be exactly what happened here.

For weeks, the race looked competitive. Once Paxton increasingly appeared to have momentum, Trump finally made his move. Suddenly the endorsement arrived, wrapped in the usual language about loyalty, strength, and personal allegiance.

And that last part needs more attention.

Because if you strip away the branding, Trump’s political worldview remains remarkably simple: loyalty is the highest virtue. Not honesty. Not competence. Not ethics. Certainly not lawfulness.

Loyalty.

The “law and order” exception clause

Ken Paxton is not exactly an intuitive poster child for anti-corruption politics.

This is a man who was impeached by members of his own party over corruption allegations. Pause there for a second, because that is not normal. Republicans are not exactly known for eagerly purging their own over ethical concerns.

Paxton has faced felony securities fraud charges, whistleblower retaliation allegations, and additional scrutiny over other legal matters. The specifics almost become secondary to the larger pattern: this is not someone whose public image aligns with the supposedly uncompromising standards of “law and order” politics.

And yet none of that appears to matter. Because the anti-crime messaging has always had an implied asterisk.

Crime is unacceptable when committed by political enemies.

Ethical violations are disqualifying when committed by Democrats.

Corruption is intolerable until one of your own is involved.

Suddenly, we are told to be nuanced. Context starts to matter.

Investigations become political.

Indictments become witch hunts.

Convictions somehow stop counting.

This pattern has become so familiar that it barely surprises anyone anymore.

What this actually reveals

The endorsement is revealing not because it is unusual, but because it is entirely consistent. Trump did not endorse the candidate with the cleanest record. He did not endorse based on some coherent ideological principle. He endorsed the person most likely to win and the person most loyal to him.

That tells you almost everything.

And there is something else happening here that may actually matter politically.

For a long time, Texas Senate races have been treated as effectively locked in for Republicans. But the conversation around the general election has become more competitive than many would have expected, which raises a broader question about whether even deeply entrenched assumptions are beginning to shift.

Whether that translates into reality is another question entirely, but the bigger issue remains the contradiction.

If “law and order” is a genuine principle, it should apply consistently. If it only applies selectively, then it is not really a principle at all. It is simply branding.

And voters eventually have to decide whether they are comfortable with that distinction.

So what do you think: Do you think voters see the contradiction here, or has selective outrage simply become normalized in modern politics?

We’re reaching over 150 million people every month across YouTube, podcasts, Substack, and beyond. But algorithms can change. Platforms can fold. And when that happens, this newsletter is how we stay connected.

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Here’s what we’re talking about today.

This is a quick rundown of the topics we’ll be covering on today’s show. You can hit play to listen, or read the transcript below if that’s more your style.

Transcript:

The President of the United States is unraveling in public again, and there are a lot of people still refusing to ask questions about what is happening. You’re ignoring reality at this point, and we’re going to talk about it.

We also have multiple clips that are genuinely difficult to explain. Trump confusing Obama with Biden on Afghanistan, rambling incoherently when speaking at the Coast Guard commencement, and making some very strange comments about freeing Cuba.

But then we also have new polling that shows Trump losing 54 points. Not a typo. Not a joke, as Biden would say. Losing 54 points in 18 months among the least politically engaged, which signals major problems for Republicans.

We’re also going to look at Donald Trump’s new acting surgeon general, who went on Fox News slurring badly, like, are they all high as a kite? What is happening? And making no sense whatsoever. Even Brian Kilmeade was taken aback.

And later, Senator John Kennedy, Republican, describes Trump’s America while trying to talk about Cuba. And it is a brutal irony that we’re going to talk about.

What a program today.

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Ed Gallrein defeated Representative Thomas Massie 55% to 45% in Kentucky’s Republican primary after Massie repeatedly criticized Trump and supported releasing the Epstein files. The expensive race sends a warning to Republicans that loyalty to Trump matters more than conservative ideology or legislative record.

Donald Trump’s administration has announced a nearly $2 billion fund for supporters claiming political targeting during the Biden years, including possible payouts connected to January 6 defendants. The agreement also reportedly reduces the pursuit of tax matters involving Trump and his family, presenting yet another example of open and obvious corruption.

JD Vance responded to criticism over Donald Trump publicly promoting companies while holding shares in them by saying Trump does not personally make the trades. However, Vance avoided directly denying that Trump financially benefits from the stock activity.

Donald Trump said earlier this month that he does not think about how conflict with Iran affects Americans financially, leading JD Vance to publicly deny and later reinterpret Trump’s remarks. This exposes growing tension inside the administration as Vance struggles to explain Trump’s comments, only for Trump to later repeat them himself.

Donald Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate runoff against incumbent Senator John Cornyn after waiting months while the race remained competitive. Trump’s focus on personal loyalty over traditional law-and-order messaging is underscored by Paxton’s impeachment, fraud settlement, and ongoing investigations.

A medical professional connected Donald Trump’s reported dental work, visible ankle swelling, bruising, and cognitive changes to possible cardiovascular issues common in older patients. These observations raise questions about medical transparency from the White House and whether aging presidents can fully meet the demands of office.

Donald Trump told Americans that rising gas prices are “peanuts” while discussing conflict with Iran, and later made unusual comments about a “waterproof” reflecting lake and ballroom drones. Trump also linked religion to reduced crime and defended his difficulty reading a short, scripted speech.

Finally, Trump struggled through several public remarks during a congressional picnic. The event included awkward interactions with Melania, comments about flagpoles, and Trump insisting Americans have not yet recognized how strong the economy is.

On today’s bonus show:

Colorado's Democratic governor faces backlash after freeing Tina Peters, Raul Castro is expected to be indicted today, Minnesota becomes the first state to ban prediction markets, and much more...

Already a website member? Watch the bonus show here | Want to become a member? Sign up here

Don’t miss the full show with these stories and others, plus all of our analysis.

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Calls for Donald Trump’s removal are suddenly coming from some unusual places.

Right-wing personalities, former allies, anti-Trump Republicans, and media figures are openly talking about the 25th Amendment, Trump’s instability, and the possibility of JD Vance replacing him. Figures like Candace Owens, Alex Jones, and Anthony Scaramucci are now part of that conversation. There are others who, for different reasons, have either orbited Trumpworld, benefited from it, or at least understood its incentives.

Now, let me be clear: I do not think Trump is likely to be removed.

Even the more optimistic scenarios floating around, including the one Robert Reich recently outlined, still amount to a long shot. The mechanics alone make it extraordinarily difficult, and there is no meaningful evidence at this point that Trump’s cabinet is preparing to turn on him.

But that may not actually be the most important part of this story.

The real shift is psychological.

For years, even people within Trump’s broader orbit who privately found him exhausting, unstable, or politically dangerous mostly stayed quiet. The calculation was simple: whatever the concerns, Trump was still the vehicle. He was still the path to power. So you swallowed your objections, got in line, and repeated the talking points.

That appears to be changing.

The post-Trump thought experiment has begun

What stands out here is not the plausibility of the 25th Amendment scenario itself. It is that more people on the right are now openly imagining a post-Trump future and, perhaps more notably, imagining that future as an improvement.

That is not nothing.

Because once people inside a political movement start publicly entertaining succession, you have already entered a different phase of the story.

The hypothetical Robert Reich scenario making the rounds is political fantasy more than an imminent roadmap. JD Vance decides Trump is no longer viable, recruits Marco Rubio by promising him the vice presidency, and together they trigger a cascade through Republican leadership. It reads more like political fiction than a serious near-term strategy.

But viral political fiction often reveals something real underneath.

In this case, what it reveals is that people are increasingly comfortable asking a question that used to be politically radioactive: what comes after Trump?

Trump as mascot, not manager

There is a fairly simple explanation for why this shift may be happening.

Trump increasingly functions less like an active governing president and more like a symbolic mascot for the movement. And if that is true, the incentives become much easier to understand.

If you are inside Trump’s cabinet, chaos may actually be useful.

A distracted, erratic president creates room for everyone else to expand their own influence. Cabinet members gain autonomy. Power flows downward. Decision-making becomes fragmented in ways that may actually benefit ambitious people operating nearby.

If the president is absorbed in spectacle, grievance, or self-created drama, others can quietly build their own empires. That creates a strange incentive structure where dysfunction is not necessarily a bug. It may be a feature. Which helps explain why cabinet revolt remains unlikely.

The outsiders have different incentives

But the people speaking out are not, for the most part, the ones directly benefiting from proximity to executive power. That matters.

Candace Owens and Alex Jones are useful examples, not because their politics are principled, but because their incentives are different. The further someone drifts from the center of Trump’s immediate power structure, the less appealing chaos becomes.

If you are no longer benefiting from the machinery, the instability stops looking strategic and starts looking costly. And that may be what we are seeing. Not necessarily a moral awakening. Not necessarily a constitutional crisis.

Just a recalculation.

The actual question

So the real question is not whether Trump is unstable enough for removal.

The real question is whether the people around him still find him useful.

If Trump remains valuable as a chaotic figurehead who absorbs attention while others pursue their own agendas, then there is very little reason for insiders to move against him. If, however, he becomes more of a liability than an asset, the conversation changes quickly.

That is how power movements tend to work. Loyalty often looks ideological from the outside. Internally, it is frequently transactional.

So maybe the question is this:

At what point does a political movement decide its mascot has become bad for business?

We’re reaching over 150 million people every month across YouTube, podcasts, Substack, and beyond. But algorithms can change. Platforms can fold. And when that happens, this newsletter is how we stay connected.

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—David

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Here’s what we’re talking about today.

This is a quick rundown of the topics we’ll be covering on today’s show. You can hit play to listen, or read the transcript below if that’s more your style.

Transcript:

Well, he did it. Donald Trump politically executed one of his Republican opponents, and he got him out of Congress, while his administration may have crossed the single most corrupt line that any modern president has crossed.

We’re going to talk about the IRS and DOJ creating what critics are calling a taxpayer-funded MAGA slush fund. And by the way, it also prevents the IRS from investigating Trump and his family.

Meanwhile, JD Vance may have accidentally, supposedly accidentally, implicated Trump in securities fraud while trying, I guess, to defend him.

We’re going to look at an incredible email I received from a nurse.

And then Melania Trump can’t believe the condition of her husband as he rants about knowing flagpoles better than anybody, and waterproof lakes and a “dispray.” You may be saying, David, what do you mean to “dispray?” You must mean a display. I don’t know. Trump called it a “dispray” and we will discuss all of it and more.

Plus, plus. Where does American leverage come from in 2026? Is it aircraft carriers? I’m going to argue that it is not, and that in fact we seem to be losing much of our leverage.

That’s all today if we can squeeze it in.

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Modern politics increasingly prioritizes viral clips and audience loyalty over policy expertise and effective governance. Congressional offices now operate more like content studios focused on short-form videos, while complicated debates about taxes, healthcare, and legislation get reduced into emotional tribal messaging.

Donald Trump posted a dramatic statement claiming leaders in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates begged him to delay a planned Iran attack while simultaneously threatening a “full large-scale assault” if negotiations fail. Fox News and the MAGA media ecosystem immediately framed the retreat from escalation as evidence of Trump’s strength.

YouTube impressions for left-leaning independent media have fallen from roughly 15 million to 10.7 million per day. Hundreds of subscribers report videos disappearing from their feeds and having to manually search for channels.

Donald Trump delivered rambling healthcare remarks, praised a taxpayer-funded settlement benefiting allies, and attacked voting by mail despite recently voting by mail himself. He also falsely suggested he was cheated out of winning Maryland, a state he lost by nearly 30 points.

Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Anthony Scaramucci, and other right-wing figures are openly discussing Donald Trump’s instability, the 25th Amendment, and the possibility of a President JD Vance. Even if Trump is unlikely to be removed, prominent MAGA personalities publicly imagining a post-Trump future signals a major psychological shift inside the movement.

Donald Trump reportedly bought Thermo Fisher, Micron, and Dell stock shortly before publicly praising the companies during speeches and television appearances. Financial disclosures show multiple unsolicited stock purchases tied to companies Trump later promoted.

JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, and other MAGA figures imitate Donald Trump’s speaking style, gestures, and fake populist rhetoric but fail to replicate the chaotic charisma supporters interpret as authenticity. Trump often sounds impulsive and unscripted while allies come across like politicians carefully rehearsing “working class” dialogue.

Finally, Don Lemon, journalist and host of The Don Lemon Show, joins us to discuss Trump’s political prosecution against him following his coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church.

On today’s bonus show:

Elon Musk loses the OpenAI lawsuit, Kamala Harris calls for court-packing and adding states, Trump's corrupt stock trades exposed, and much more...

Already a website member? Watch the bonus show here | Want to become a member? Sign up here

Don’t miss the full show with these stories and others, plus all of our analysis.

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There is a version of political disagreement that is perfectly normal in a democracy.

People can look at the same facts and arrive at different conclusions. One person might believe a policy is worth the tradeoff. Another might believe the costs are too high. That is politics.

But what happens when people are not even starting from the same factual baseline?

That is a very different problem.

And increasingly, it seems to be the actual problem in American politics.

When the facts themselves disappear

One of the more revealing realities of the Trump era is not simply that political divisions have deepened. It is that for many Americans, particularly within Trump’s political movement, the disagreement begins long before policy.

It begins at the level of basic factual understanding.

A recent NBC poll found that 85 percent of Republicans believe immigration causes crime. If that were true, then many of the policy positions they support would at least follow logically from that belief. If you genuinely believed more immigrants meant more crime, you would likely support harsher enforcement, broader deportation efforts, and more aggressive immigration restrictions.

The problem is that the underlying premise is false.

For years, data has consistently shown that immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans. That does not settle every immigration debate. It is not an argument for ignoring border policy or pretending immigration systems do not require management.

But it does matter whether the public is operating from reality.

Because once a false premise becomes emotionally accepted as truth, the policy outcomes become predictable.

Fear becomes political fuel.

And politicians who promise to solve the invented crisis become far more appealing.

The tariff illusion

The same dynamic shows up in economic policy.

Polling has found that many Republicans believe tariff-related economic pain is either justified or not especially concerning because tariffs will supposedly create long-term economic benefits that outweigh the short-term costs.

But tariffs are, functionally, import taxes.

They raise prices. That is not controversial economic theory. That is simply how the mechanism works. And yet if voters have been convinced tariffs are some kind of painless patriotic economic weapon, then support for those policies becomes easier to understand.

Not because the policy necessarily makes sense, but because the factual understanding underneath it is broken. This is where politics becomes especially difficult.

If voters believe a problem exists when it does not, they will support unnecessary or harmful solutions. If voters deny a real problem exists, they will resist solutions that might actually help. In both cases, governance becomes almost impossible.

Propaganda works

There is an uncomfortable reality embedded in all of this. The misinformation is not random.

It is working.

Beliefs about immigration and crime among Republicans did not emerge in a vacuum. They were cultivated through years of repetition, messaging, media reinforcement, and political rhetoric designed to create emotional certainty rather than factual understanding.

That is what propaganda does. Not necessarily through complexity. Often through repetition.

Say something enough times, frame it emotionally enough times, attach it to identity enough times, and eventually many people stop evaluating whether it is true at all. It simply becomes part of how they understand the world.

And once political identity becomes fused with factual misconceptions, changing minds becomes much harder because correcting the fact can feel, psychologically, like attacking the person.

The accountability paradox

There is a temptation to stop the analysis there. To simply conclude that Trump supporters do not know basic facts, laugh at the contradiction, and move on.

But that does not actually solve anything.

Mockery might feel satisfying for five minutes. It does not rebuild civic reality. The harder question is what actually causes people to reconsider. Interestingly, some of that may already be happening.

Not necessarily because people are being persuaded by opposing arguments, but because reality has a way of eventually colliding with political promises. If someone was told tariffs would quickly improve their economic life and that never materializes, some will begin asking questions.

If sweeping promises about foreign threats, economic miracles, or national restoration never produce results, some people do begin reassessing.

Not everyone. But some. And that’s important.

Because if someone genuinely believed the false premise, their political choices become much easier to understand. That does not excuse those choices. But understanding the mechanism matters if the goal is actually changing outcomes.

America’s trust problem

This may ultimately be the deeper American crisis.

Not polarization. Not disagreement. Not even ideology.

Trust.

Trust in institutions. Trust in expertise. Trust in data. Trust that some facts remain true whether they are politically convenient or not. Because democracy cannot really function if every policy argument starts with entirely separate realities.

At that point, politics stops becoming persuasion.

It becomes tribal storytelling.

And once that happens, accountability becomes incredibly difficult because evidence itself no longer carries shared meaning.

So I’m curious what you think: can people be brought back once politics becomes part identity, part alternate reality, or are we already much deeper into that spiral than most of us want to admit?

We’re reaching over 150 million people every month across YouTube, podcasts, Substack, and beyond. But algorithms can change. Platforms can fold. And when that happens, this newsletter is how we stay connected.

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Here’s what we’re talking about today.

This is a quick rundown of the topics we’ll be covering on today’s show. You can hit play to listen, or read the transcript below if that’s more your style.

Transcript:

Today I’m going to talk to you about politics increasingly becoming content instead of actual governance and policy. And I want to explain why the internet may have fundamentally broken the incentives of democracy, where politicians are increasingly influencers and Congress is becoming a clip factory.

Then, TACO Trump strikes again. Trump resurfaces, saying Middle Eastern leaders this time begged him, he’s so strong. “Please don’t attack Iran.” And Fox News is spinning it to look like Trump is strong.

Also, today I’m going to show you the numbers behind a major YouTube problem hitting left-wing independent media where impressions have collapsed and something is going on.

Also, Mark Cuban shows up to the White House with Donald Trump for a bizarre health care infomercial, essentially, claiming Americans love his corruption. They just love it. They want more of it.

But people around MAGA are increasingly talking about a post-Trump future, and they’re talking about the 25th Amendment. Maybe Robert Reich’s idea last week about the 25th Amendment is the most likely way to remove Trump is right, after all.

And then in an unbelievable news story, new financial disclosures show that Donald Trump spent the last year publicly hyping stocks he had just bought. But he didn’t tell anybody until now.

All of the corruption and more on today’s show.

Don’t miss the full show with these stories and others, plus all of our analysis.

🎧 Tune in at 3:00 pm Eastern on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

👉 Consider becoming a paid Substack supporter to support extras like these news episodes. Thank you.

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Donald Trump traveled to China hoping Xi Jinping would help reopen the Strait of Hormuz and ease the economic fallout from the Iran conflict, but China publicly confirmed none of Trump’s claimed victories. With oil above $105 a barrel and economic approval collapsing, Trump responded by floating additional military action that could make fuel prices even worse.

Events like the Iraq War, the 2008 financial crisis, the opioid epidemic, and COVID confusion have led to rising distrust in government, media, and experts. Economic pain and political polarization now reinforce each other in a cycle that neither major party appears prepared to stop.

CNN analyst Harry Enten reported that Trump’s approval among Latino voters has collapsed after Republicans celebrated historic gains with Latino men in 2024. Many voters were reacting to frustration over the economy rather than forming a lasting ideological attachment to Trump or MAGA politics.

Trump appeared low-energy and struggled through a prerecorded video message tied to a national prayer celebration in Washington, D.C. The Rededicate 250 event mixed government with religion and reflects an alarmingly close connection between religion and politics.

Disillusioned Trump voters, including a three-time supporter from Hawaii, now call Trump a con man and compare his influence to authoritarian manipulation. Some former supporters are distancing themselves as Trump’s promises fail and his political movement loses momentum.

Maria Bartiromo delivered a dramatic Fox News monologue pushing claims about Russia investigations, the FBI, and Joe Biden’s health. The intensity of the defense reflects growing panic as Trump struggles politically.

Finally, polling shows most Republicans believe immigrants increase crime, despite data from national studies showing immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans. Oddly enough, tariff support remains high even as many Republican voters admit tariffs raise inflation and worsen household costs.

On today’s bonus show:

Trump drops his $10 billion IRS lawsuit, Trump's revenge tour in Republican primaries continues, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert enters its final week, and much more...

Already a website member? Watch the bonus show here | Want to become a member? Sign up here

Don’t miss the full show with these stories and others, plus all of our analysis.

This episode is available completely free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

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We often describe moments like this as political crises. A constitutional crisis. A democratic crisis. A governance crisis.

But I’m not sure that is actually the most accurate description of where the United States is right now.

What we may be dealing with instead is something deeper: a trust crisis.

And if that diagnosis is correct, what comes next may be politically and economically uglier than many people are prepared for.

Part of the challenge is that this conversation makes some people uncomfortable, because it requires acknowledging two things at the same time. First, institutions are necessary. A country the size and complexity of the United States cannot function without them. Second, many of those same institutions have failed in visible and damaging ways over the last several decades.

Those two things are not contradictory.

Being a defender of institutions does not require pretending they have performed well.

The Iraq War was sold on false pretenses. The 2008 financial collapse was caused in significant part by the very systems that were supposed to prevent that kind of catastrophe. The opioid crisis was made dramatically worse by pharmaceutical companies, failures in the medical system, and weak regulatory oversight. The Trump administration’s handling of Covid during the first term was disastrous. Legacy media has repeatedly failed the public in meaningful ways. Government itself has often failed the people it was supposed to serve.

That does not mean every anti-establishment narrative is correct. It does not validate every conspiracy theory or every cynical right-wing talking point about institutional collapse. But it does help explain why so many Americans no longer trust that the people in charge know what they are doing, or even believe those institutions are operating in the public interest.

And once that kind of trust erodes, something rushes in to fill the vacuum.

Why conspiracy culture thrives

One of the easiest mistakes to make is assuming conspiracy culture is simply about ignorance or stupidity. Certainly, some of it is detached from reality in obvious ways. But I think there is something psychologically more complicated happening.

When enough systems fail, some people begin to prefer a sinister explanation over a chaotic one.

If everything is part of some hidden plan, then at least someone is in control. If events are staged, manipulated, or orchestrated by shadowy actors, then randomness becomes easier to emotionally process.

The alternative is accepting that institutions can fail, leaders can be incompetent, and genuinely bad things can happen without anyone being fully in control. That uncertainty is deeply uncomfortable. And so conspiracy culture becomes emotionally appealing.

The problem is that once this becomes the dominant framework, institutions lose the ability to recover credibility, even when they do something correctly. Evidence stops mattering. Corrections lose their impact. Accuracy becomes secondary to emotional engagement.

Digital platforms have made this exponentially worse.

The conspiracy ecosystem is now self-financing, algorithmically amplified, and largely immune to correction. It does not need to be accurate. It only needs to be compelling enough to keep people clicking, sharing, donating, and staying emotionally activated.

That ecosystem has become one of the forces fueling Trumpism.

The collapse of shared reality

A democracy does not require universal agreement.

It does require some shared understanding of reality.

And that may be one of the most troubling parts of where we are now.

A huge number of people have effectively checked out of news consumption altogether, not necessarily because they do not care, but because they no longer trust what they are seeing or do not understand how it connects to their lives. At the same time, people increasingly distrust anyone who gets their information from different sources than they do.

That means disagreement is no longer just about interpretation. It becomes disagreement about reality itself. When that happens, democratic persuasion becomes much harder.

Because persuasion assumes some shared set of facts. If those facts no longer exist, politics becomes much more about tribal loyalty and identity than about reasoned argument.

That is not a healthy place for a democracy to operate.

The economic consequences of distrust

Distrust does not remain neatly confined to politics. It has economic consequences too.

Confidence is not some abstract emotional metric. It is part of the infrastructure of a functioning economy. If people stop trusting financial institutions, markets become more fragile. If consumers distrust the system, behavior changes. Investment decisions shift. Borrowing patterns change. Participation in the broader economy becomes less predictable.

Researchers have described this dynamic as a kind of credibility recession. And you can see how it plays out in real time.

Take Donald Trump’s attacks on the Federal Reserve. There is obviously a political dimension to that story. But there is also an economic one.

Part of what gives the United States enormous economic leverage is trust in the relative independence of key financial institutions. Markets trust certain structures to operate above day-to-day political chaos. If that credibility erodes, the consequences are not theoretical.

Supply chains destabilize. Inflation risks grow. Investment becomes less predictable. Economic uncertainty deepens.

Trust is economic infrastructure, whether we describe it that way or not.

The right’s strategy and the left’s vacuum

The political right has recognized something useful about all of this.

Distrust can be monetized. Conspiracy can be monetized. Institutional collapse narratives can be turned into turnout tools and fundraising tools.

That machine has been remarkably effective, but it also creates its own long-term problem.

If you condition your political base to distrust everything, eventually they distrust governance itself. Compromise becomes betrayal. Expertise becomes suspect. Governing becomes dramatically harder because your own voters have been radicalized beyond the point of institutional legitimacy.

But it would be far too easy to tell this as a story where one side is broken and the other is prepared to step in with a compelling alternative.

The left has its own serious problems.

Part of the left wants an aggressive ideological transformation that many voters are simply not going to embrace. Another part offers a version of politics so cautious, incremental, and uninspiring that it is difficult to imagine it meaningfully addressing the scale of the problems facing the country.

And if I’m being honest, neither faction currently feels especially convincing.

I do not believe socialism is the answer.

I also do not believe tiny, carefully managed adjustments from establishment Democrats are enough. Which creates a different kind of vacuum.

Not necessarily a trust vacuum, but a leadership vacuum. A vision vacuum.

What happens next

That is why I think people may be underestimating how unstable the next phase of American politics could become.

As conversations shift toward what happens after Trump, what becomes of the Republican Party, what the midterms look like, or whether figures like Gavin Newsom or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez become central to 2028, there is a deeper structural issue underneath all of it.

Political systems do not recover neatly when trust has been eroding for years.

The uncomfortable possibility is that things get uglier before they get better. Politically. Economically. Institutionally.

So what do you think: are we actually living through a political crisis, or is the deeper problem that too many Americans no longer trust enough of the system for normal politics to function at all?

If topics like this are interesting to you, check out my book, The Echo Machine: How Right-Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America. In it, I examine how coordinated disinformation, media manipulation, and echo chambers have eroded shared facts and intellectual standards in modern US politics.

Get your copy at davidpakman.com/book

We’re reaching over 150 million people every month across YouTube, podcasts, Substack, and beyond. But algorithms can change. Platforms can fold. And when that happens, this newsletter is how we stay connected.

If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, please consider joining.
If you’re already paid on one platform, consider supporting us on both Substack and our website.

You can subscribe on our website and right here on Substack.

And if you’re really on fire, consider gifting a subscription—we’ve got thousands on our waiting list ready to read, watch, and fight back.

Let’s keep building.

—David

PS: Can’t contribute right now? No problem. You can support us for free by subscribing on YouTube, listening to our audio podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or become a free subscriber to this very Substack. Every bit counts.

Subscribe now

Here’s what we’re talking about today.

This is a quick rundown of the topics we’ll be covering on today’s show. You can hit play to listen, or read the transcript below if that’s more your style.

Transcript:

Trump flew to China trying to fix the Iran disaster and came back with absolutely nothing. Oil is exploding. Gas prices are crushing Americans. Trump is threatening even more war. Even though he said he would be the anti-war president.

And meanwhile, major polling collapses are happening with Latino voters. Even among the very Latino men who helped Donald Trump become president in 2024, they are bailing. We’re going to look at why and why it is surprising analysts.

And then Rededicate 250, a completely ridiculous, unconstitutional event held to rededicate the United States on its 250th birthday to being a formally religious Christian country. What on earth are they doing?

But there are more and more Trump voters regretting everything, and we’re hearing from them.

Plus, wait until I tell you about my MAGA stalker. Yes, leaving me angry voicemails for years without realizing no one was listening. We found out because of an accident. It is an insane story.

All of it today.

Don’t miss the full show with these stories and others, plus all of our analysis.

🎧 Tune in at 3:00 pm Eastern on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

👉 Consider becoming a paid Substack supporter to support extras like these news episodes. Thank you.

Leave a comment

Ground beef, one of the most common and affordable grocery staples in the United States, now costs more than ever as prices have surged roughly 77% since 2020. Meanwhile, credit card, auto loan, and student loan delinquencies are rising as voters feel inflation most directly at the supermarket every single week.

Chinese President Xi Jinping strategically insulted the United States during discussions with Donald Trump, while Trump appeared eager to reinterpret the exchange afterward. Trump’s response contrasts with previous presidents who would never publicly validate a Chinese leader and describe America as a declining nation.

During Donald Trump’s China trip, he appeared physically awkward while climbing the steps of Air Force One, overly flattering toward Xi Jinping, and verbally incoherent during public remarks. He later made confusing statements about the Iran war and the status of the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump contradicted years of nationalist rhetoric by defending Chinese investment in American farmland and warning universities would collapse without Chinese students. Trump praised Xi Jinping’s appearance and leadership style while mocking Democrats with childish wordplay during public remarks.

A three-time Trump voter called into C-SPAN to express deep regret over his previous support for the president. This sentiment likely resonates with a silent segment of Republican voters who harbor similar private concerns but are deterred from speaking out by fear of political reprisal or personal embarrassment.

Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett said slower immigration means the economy now needs fewer jobs each month. Anti-immigration rhetoric often relies on the false assumption that there is a fixed number of jobs while ignoring that immigrants also function as customers, renters, entrepreneurs, and taxpayers.

Finally, former FBI Director James Comey described Trump as an elderly man fixated on personal grudges while discussing the political prosecution against him. Comey also accused the administration of retaliating against his daughter, a former federal prosecutor, calling her firing immoral and potentially illegal.

On today’s bonus show:

Right-wing reactions to rising gas prices, Stephen Miller is out of the spotlight, and much more...

Already a website member? Watch the bonus show here | Want to become a member? Sign up here

Don’t miss the full show with these stories and others, plus all of our analysis.

This episode is available completely free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Leave a comment

Leave a comment

If you are receiving this via email, you are already a Substack paid subscriber and have full access to the content below. If not, now’s the time: become a paid subscriber.

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🎧 Full episodes are also available FREE with limited ads wherever you get your podcasts: Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more

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Read more