Desperation peaks as 2026 isn't looking so good

**David Pakman** (0:00)
We are on the precipice of 2026 and it is looming very large for Republicans. We are going to talk about it. Donald Trump's attorney general, Pam Bondi, panic deleting a tweet after accidentally praising former President Joe Biden with her own chart. Really a revelation into how propaganda works in Trump world, which is vibe first, facts later. Dr. Oz went on TV and delivered dangerously bad medical advice, raising more questions as to whether this guy should be in charge of anything, never mind anything medically related. And we now see the Trump administration shaking down its own supporters for cash using fake headlines, using imaginary deadlines and completely fabricated economic ideas. It is pure panic and it's all happening during a cost of living crisis. We're also going to show you how Donald Trump, I guess accidentally reposted praise from these foreign troll accounts actually making our point for us. And then Caroline Sunshine is back and she says Trump is daddy and you'd better accept it. It is a cult, ladies and gentlemen, the last show of the year. Glad you're with me today.
The architecture of propaganda, something I've talked about for a while. We do a lot of media analysis and criticism on this program. We also like to look beyond a chart or headline and really explain how you can deceive with statistics, charts or graphic visualizations. But it all starts with Pam Bondi, Donald Trump's attorney general, who posted a tweet that accidentally praised Joe Biden. And then once she was called out for it, she quietly deleted the tweet. So let me explain to you what this is. Pam Bondi put out a tweet with a chart which was meant to be proof that Donald Trump has been extraordinarily successful in reducing the number of drug overdoses. And when you look closely at the data, you realize that that is not what the chart shows. So first and foremost, what did Pam write? She wrote, quote, Since day one, the Trump administration and this Department of Justice have been fighting to end the drug epidemic in our country. President Trump closed the border. DOJ agents have seized hundreds of millions of potentially lethal fentanyl doses. We are aggressively prosecuting blah, blah, blah. And there is a chart which looks like something goes up and then it comes down. And the implication is that down is good and down is because of Donald Trump. However, and I'm guessing many of you know exactly where this is going. Let's take a closer look at the chart. This is a chart of annual drug overdose deaths in the United States. Pam Bondi posted it to make Trump look good. We have chart go down at end, right? Just very it's like out of the Flintstones, very rudimentary chart go down.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:10)
Trump good.

**David Pakman** (3:12)
Good for Trump. Well, not really. If you look at the label, this is a chart that looks at the period October 2015 to October 2024 And if memory serves me correctly, President Joe Biden was in office in October of 2024 And would you look at that overdose deaths declined, maybe even more notable from 2017 to 2021, when Donald Trump was in office, overdose deaths went up. Now to be totally frank with you, I don't play politics with this stuff.
I just tell you about gas prices and what affects them. It doesn't matter who's in office. And this is kind of a nonsense way of praising or criticizing Trump or Biden. The reality is that overdose deaths just aren't tied that closely to the president in Washington, DC. And also the decline in November, in October and the last part of 2024 that's on the chart, which was, of course, under Joe Biden, only gets us down to the same elevated level of the first term of Donald Trump. So this is a very silly way to look at the issue. But the political stakes are what are very clear here, because Pam Bondi posted this for one reason and one reason alone, and that is to praise Donald Trump. And the chart that she posted fails to praise Trump because it doesn't include Trump's second term there. And once she realized it, she removed the tweet. And this is where it stops being like a silly oops kind of thing and becomes something that I think is far more important. Pam Bondi did not post this because she misunderstood the chart. She posted it because it looked like proof of what she was trying to argue. And this is how propaganda works in Trump world. You don't start with facts. You start with the conclusion.

**SPEAKER_3** (5:01)
Trump good.