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IrelandTrump walks past a Marine One salute, and David Pakman replays Obama's 2013 slip
In a six-minute commentary, the host sets two presidents' helicopter exits side by side and argues that respect for the military gets used as a partisan tool.
David Pakman
Story of Why this story? One of the most watched videos since yesterday, with 875,199 views.
Trump's latest helicopter video is NOT GOOD
Things we can learn from the video
Press to jump
- 0:00Pakman recalls the Obama controversies over a tan suit and a salute given with a coffee cup in hand.
- 0:57Footage shows Trump leaving Marine One and walking past saluting Marines without returning the salute.
- 1:27Pakman notes that Trump was walking toward an aircraft provided by Qatar and questions the ethics of that flight.
- 1:53A May 2013 clip shows Obama missing a salute, then coming back out to shake the Marine's hand.
- 2:31Pakman contrasts the Republican criticism of Obama's etiquette slips with the reaction to Trump.
- 4:40He concludes that the same standard should apply to every president, not only to political opponents.
"Trump's latest helicopter video is NOT GOOD" is a short segment from The David Pakman Show, and its subject is a few seconds of footage. Donald Trump steps off Marine One and walks past saluting Marines without returning the gesture.
Pakman says the clip is less about the salute than about who notices it. "This is a story about hypocrisy," he tells viewers, before he even plays the footage. He opens with Barack Obama's smaller controversies: the tan suit and the salute he gave a Marine while holding a coffee cup.
Then comes the comparison. A clip from May 24, 2013, shows Obama walking past a Marine outside Marine One without saluting, then turning back to shake the Marine's hand. "When this happened to Barack Obama, he was absolutely crushed by Republicans," Pakman says. He argues that the same standard is not applied to Trump.
He also points to where Trump was heading: an aircraft provided by Qatar. Pakman raises ethical questions about that flight and returns to footage of Trump boarding it later in the segment.
His closing argument is aimed at partisans in either direction. Standards for presidents, he says, should apply to all of them, and "respect for the military should be more substantial than a political weapon."
The segment, first aired on October 23, has drawn about 875,000 views since yesterday. Its comment section in the first day moved more than three times faster than usual for the show. Many viewers bring up the coffee-cup salute, and some joke that a beige suit once counted as presidential scandal.
Published on Trari
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- Channel
- David Pakman
- Subscribers
- 3,680,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 25,072,924
- Channel views, pace per day
- 3,625,872 (on a normal day: 2,972,087)
- Video published
- October 24, 2026
- Video views so far
- 912,642 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 875,882
The numbers
A short commentary segment that drew a far larger and more talkative first-day audience than the show's regular uploads.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which president is widely credited with starting the custom of presidents returning military salutes?
Reagan began returning salutes from service members early in his presidency, and the presidents after him kept up the custom, although no rule requires it.