Latest / Balance of Power / Trump Sticks to Red-State Midterm Travel

Transcript

Trump Sticks to Red-State Midterm Travel · Balance of Power

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Podcasts.
• 0:05
  Speaker 3: Radio.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: News.
• 0:09
  Speaker 4: You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast. Catch
• 0:12
  Speaker 4: us live weekdays at noon and 5 p.m. Eastern on
• 0:15
  Speaker 4: Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.
• 0:19
  Speaker 4: Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch
• 0:22
  Speaker 4: us live on YouTube.
• 0:25
  Speaker 5: We are truly the fastest show in politics today. You
• 0:27
  Speaker 5: only get one hour right here on The Elephant because
• 0:30
  Speaker 5: we've got something special coming up at the top of
• 0:33
  Speaker 5: the hour. Screen time day and special coverage will begin
• 0:36
  Speaker 5: at 1 p.m. Eastern with my dear friends at Bloomberg
• 0:40
  Speaker 5: Businessweek Daily.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Are they out in Hollywood too, James? Are we the
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: only show not in Hollywood?
• 0:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we're here in what they like to call Hollywood
• 0:49
  Speaker 5: for ugly people. That's Washington, D.C., where we do have
• 0:53
  Speaker 5: news here. And boy, I'll tell you what, they saved
• 0:55
  Speaker 5: the best for last. President Trump outlining a massive steel
• 1:00
  Speaker 5: plant in Iowa to try to get votes cooking there,
• 1:02
  Speaker 5: outlining a massive LNG deal in Alaska, which we're going
• 1:06
  Speaker 5: to talk to Tyler about in a moment. And I
• 1:08
  Speaker 5: realize that these are important states to win. But the
• 1:11
  Speaker 5: one bipartisan thing that we've seen so far lands hard
• 1:14
  Speaker 5: this morning, impacting hard, as Drudge would say. The president's
• 1:18
  Speaker 5: latest purge in Washington, as we read in the Washington Post,
• 1:22
  Speaker 5: is targeting mosquitoes. And if you live around here, you
• 1:26
  Speaker 5: know how important this is. I see you on 99.1 FM.
• 1:30
  Speaker 5: The president giving the EPA fast-track approval authority for bioengineering
• 1:36
  Speaker 5: products aimed at Washington.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Projects to rid the swamp of insects. We do have
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of them around here.
• 1:46
  Speaker 5: You wake up in the morning, you realize you start
• 1:47
  Speaker 5: counting the bites from last night. The goal here in
• 1:51
  Speaker 5: consultation with the Department of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr.,
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: to reduce by 2028 Washington's invasive mosquito populations by at
• 1:59
  Speaker 5: least 90%. And that, my friends, is something we can
• 2:03
  Speaker 5: all enjoy together. Everything else we're going to talk about
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: this hour, no one agrees on. including the president's own
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: travel schedule. Where are we at here? I just said it,
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: 33 days until the election. We're making plans right now
• 2:17
  Speaker 5: for our own special coverage, and it's going to be
• 2:19
  Speaker 5: a doozy. Producer James is New York bound. So is
• 2:24
  Speaker 5: Tyler Kendall, myself, and Kaylee. looking at a month of
• 2:28
  Speaker 5: travel before we get that far that the president will conduct, right?
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: We've got 30 days to rip across the country on
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: Air Force One, and it starts today. The president gauging
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: the odds in the White House driveway when he was
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: surrounded by the AI executives this week.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Listen.
• 2:44
  Speaker 6: I won in a landslide. I won all seven swing states.
• 2:47
  Speaker 6: I won all the states that you talked about. I
• 2:49
  Speaker 6: think out of the 22 areas that we're talking about where.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: There's big contention, I won 21 of them. So, yeah, 21.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: And the other one was very close. In fact, a
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: lot of people think I won that, too. So just
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: so you understand. They all want me to go. I'm
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: one person. They all want me to go campaign. I'm
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: starting in about two days.
• 3:07
  Speaker 6: I'm starting a literally a 32 day tour going to all.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: I'm going to Texas. I'm going to Ohio. I'm going
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: to all different places.
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: They all want me to go is not what we've
• 3:19
  Speaker 5: been hearing. Isn't that why he's going to Oklahoma and Texas?
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: Tyler Kendall's been following the itinerary. She does this for
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: a living, covering the White House every day. And a
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: treat to have her with us in studio. Washington correspondent
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: Tyler Kendall. It is on to Denton, Texas and Durant, Oklahoma.
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: Deep red where typically the president wouldn't spend resources. Is
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: he needed there or is this keeping him away from
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: other places?
• 3:47
  Speaker 7: So I think there's two ways that you can look
• 3:49
  Speaker 7: at this. If you ask the White House, it's a
• 3:51
  Speaker 7: bid to help energize the base in places where he should,
• 3:55
  Speaker 7: in theory, be highly welcomed by the voters there.
• 3:58
  Speaker 8: These are Republican strongholds.
• 3:59
  Speaker 7: You heard the president, though, mention some of those other states, Ohio, Nebraska,
• 4:03
  Speaker 7: where we're now seeing perhaps some closer than expected rejuvenation.
• 4:06
  Speaker 7: Republican incumbents defending seats in terms of the Senate races there.
• 4:12
  Speaker 7: On the other hand, President Trump going to these historically
• 4:15
  Speaker 7: stronger red areas means that's less money and less time
• 4:19
  Speaker 7: in some of these competitive districts, though a White House
• 4:21
  Speaker 7: official does tell us here at Bloomberg News he's going
• 4:23
  Speaker 7: to hit some of the other historically battleground areas like Michigan.
• 4:27
  Speaker 8: And that also the Vice President, J.D.
• 4:29
  Speaker 7: Bantz, is expected to spread out across the country nearly
• 4:32
  Speaker 7: every day in the month of October. But some good
• 4:35
  Speaker 7: reporting by some of our colleagues, an administration official saying
• 4:39
  Speaker 7: that President Trump has become increasingly aware of the position
• 4:43
  Speaker 7: polls have put Republicans in, bolstered by issues like cost
• 4:47
  Speaker 7: of living. Though, if you ask President Trump, like he
• 4:49
  Speaker 7: did in a Time magazine interview released earlier today, he's.
• 4:52
  Speaker 8: Calling these fake numbers.
• 4:54
  Speaker 7: But we know— that some of these areas are getting
• 4:56
  Speaker 7: hit particularly hard when we talk about higher gasoline prices,
• 5:00
  Speaker 7: higher diesel prices.
• 5:02
  Speaker 8: Today, $ 6. 83 a gallon. That's hovering near.
• 5:05
  Speaker 7: The high that was set last week. But it hits
• 5:09
  Speaker 7: rural and red states harder.
• 5:10
  Speaker 9: Big time.
• 5:11
  Speaker 5: And just like that, Tyler, you see his first stop
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: in Denton, Texas, at a Peterbilt Motors company.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Is this just image burnishing? He wants to get in
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the truck and... Honk the horn.
• 5:23
  Speaker 5: Remember the whole did the garbage truck thing? That stuff
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: works well for him. The McDonald's trip, making the fries.
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: Or is this simply reminding everybody of how expensive diesel is?
• 5:32
  Speaker 7: I was actually there in Michigan when he did that
• 5:34
  Speaker 7: garbage truck stunt.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: You were at the garbage truck? I don't remember that.
• 5:37
  Speaker 7: I was leaving and I got stuck because all the
• 5:40
  Speaker 7: roads got shut down for it. But yes, part of
• 5:44
  Speaker 7: this is going to be the messaging, having President Trump
• 5:47
  Speaker 7: try to blanket the airwaves in some of these places
• 5:49
  Speaker 7: that may be more competitive than previously thought.
• 5:53
  Speaker 8: A few points on that.
• 5:54
  Speaker 7: One, you really have to look at the crosstabs, where
• 5:56
  Speaker 7: voters feel they may be unhappy with the economy, but
• 5:58
  Speaker 7: who do they trust more to steer the economy ahead
• 6:00
  Speaker 7: when it comes to Congress? And that's where you really
• 6:03
  Speaker 7: start to see concern with Republicans, that Democrats may have
• 6:06
  Speaker 7: more voter trust on this. But then look at other
• 6:08
  Speaker 7: issues like AI and the data center buildup. Polling is
• 6:11
  Speaker 7: telling us that voters feel Republicans are better on that issue.
• 6:14
  Speaker 7: So it's not to say that Democrats don't face their
• 6:16
  Speaker 7: own headwinds of their own, including intra-party fighting when it
• 6:19
  Speaker 7: comes to some of these races. But Republicans really seeming
• 6:23
  Speaker 7: to be on the defense here, given just how much
• 6:25
  Speaker 7: time and money in terms of an incredible war chest
• 6:28
  Speaker 7: that Republicans have amassed, have to be spent in some
• 6:31
  Speaker 7: of these really key places. The other part of going
• 6:35
  Speaker 7: to some of these states is that President Trump is
• 6:36
  Speaker 7: going to tout some investments that he's brought to them. Yesterday,
• 6:39
  Speaker 7: we got this announcement out of South Korea, including some
• 6:41
  Speaker 7: energy projects in Texas. I would expect that to be
• 6:44
  Speaker 7: front and center when the president touches down today.
• 6:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, let's talk about some energy projects because one of
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: them was aimed at Alaska.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: The president was in the Oval Office. That was just yesterday, right?
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: I've lost all concept of time because every day is
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: a week.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Behind him, the delegation from Alaska, the.
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: Governor came, tallest governor on planet Earth, I think, as
• 7:05
  Speaker 5: the president said, and a man named Dan Sullivan. Not
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: to be confused with a man named Dan Sullivan. This
• 7:10
  Speaker 5: is the Republican senator.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: This is a close one.
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: This is a tight race, and that's why the president's
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: Investing some attention here. He's running against there's another guy
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: in the ballot named Dan Sullivan. We've talked through this
• 7:21
  Speaker 5: and it is allowed. This went to court. The president
• 7:25
  Speaker 5: has an angle on this. The king of communication and
• 7:28
  Speaker 5: earned media. How come nobody came up with this yet?
• 7:31
  Speaker 5: Listen to President Trump on how to discern between the Sullivans.
• 7:35
  Speaker 6: Alaska Senator, as I said, Dan S. Sullivan, you know,
• 7:38
  Speaker 6: the Democrats put up another man in the race named
• 7:43
  Speaker 6: Dan Sullivan.
• 7:44
  Speaker 9: He's a fraud.
• 7:45
  Speaker 6: Dan Sullivan's a fraud. That Dan Sullivan is a disgraceful fraud.
• 7:51
  Speaker 9: They put it up for confusion and everything else.
• 7:54
  Speaker 6: And I believe he actually tried to get his initial,
• 7:58
  Speaker 6: because his initial, I think, was J.
• 8:01
  Speaker 9: And he said, no, I have nothing to do with this.
• 8:02
  Speaker 6: But despite saying he has nothing to do with it,
• 8:05
  Speaker 6: I believe he tried to get his initial made to
• 8:08
  Speaker 6: an S so it could be exact.
• 8:11
  Speaker 9: Because it was Dan S. Sullivan and Daniel J. Sullivan.
• 8:14
  Speaker 9: He tried to get it to be Daniel S. Daniel S.
• 8:17
  Speaker 9: is the good one. Let's see. How do you remember that? Super, right?
• 8:21
  Speaker 9: Super intelligence.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: And that is called the weave. Yeah, so vote for
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: the S. It's pretty simple.
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: Generating the headline that we've been all laughing about, Dan
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: Sullivan endorses Dan Sullivan to beat Dan Sullivan because the
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: former mayor of Anchorage is also named Dan Sullivan.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: But I digress.
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: I have to confess to Tyler and to you that
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: as interested I am as I am in this program,
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: and I have so much fun with producer James talking
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: about this every day, there's just a feeling.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Of Groundhog Day. And sometimes, yes, boredom.
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: But Tyler brought this whole meeting to life for us
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: as we learned that the massive LNG investment in Alaska
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: announced by the president from South Korea might not be
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: what he said.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Can we do this in a minute?
• 9:12
  Speaker 8: Pretty remarkable. I'll try really quickly.
• 9:14
  Speaker 7: Yesterday, Dan Sullivan in the Oval Office to help President
• 9:16
  Speaker 7: Trump announced $ 200 billion worth of energy projects from South Korea,
• 9:20
  Speaker 7: the first such firm commitments from the trade deal that,
• 9:23
  Speaker 7: to your point, we've been talking about for months and months.
• 9:26
  Speaker 7: But then South Korea this morning, out with a statement
• 9:28
  Speaker 7: basically saying that one of the key parts of this project,
• 9:31
  Speaker 7: the majority of this money, $ 54 billion for an LNG
• 9:34
  Speaker 7: project out of Alaska, is conditional on whether or not
• 9:38
  Speaker 7: this is an economically feasible project, which we wouldn't know
• 9:41
  Speaker 7: for years. And this is something that the administration says
• 9:46
  Speaker 7: that's not what we agreed to. So a back and
• 9:48
  Speaker 7: forth on the most pivotal investment announced yesterday by the
• 9:52
  Speaker 7: White House.
• 9:53
  Speaker 5: You won't hear about it anywhere else but Bloomberg with
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: the help of Tyler Kendall.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Tyler.
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: Nice to have her in studio. She's not on the
• 9:59
  Speaker 5: North Lawn. Stay with us on Balance of Power. We'll
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: have much more coming up after this.
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast. Catch
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: us live weekdays at noon and 5 p.m. Eastern on
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: flagship New York station. Just say Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130.
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: Thank you for spending part of your Thursday with us
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: here on Balance of Power on Bloomberg Radio. We're streaming
• 10:30
  Speaker 5: live on YouTube. Search Bloomberg Business News Live. If you're
• 10:33
  Speaker 5: in the car, you can always keep this lock on
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: your satellite radio channel 121. Back in the glory days
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: of satellite radio, my old friends at the POTUS channel,
• 10:44
  Speaker 5: just a couple of clicks from here, had this great
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: program in the old days called Polyoptics. The entire show,
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: hosted by a few practitioners today, At the White House,
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: a D and an R. The whole show is about
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: the amount of attention that goes behind presidential and political optics,
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: the backdrops, the rhetoric, the language, the communications behind each event.
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: That's also shared by members of Congress and politicians of
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: all walks of life.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: And of course, now, even corporate executives.
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: Optics are so important and frequently the only thing that
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: people even use.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: To make judgments.
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: So I kept thinking about that show the other day
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: when President Trump walked out into the driveway, unheard of.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: President strides through the briefing room. No warning.
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: We're at the sticks now at the stakeout location surrounded
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: by the wealthiest and most intelligent people arguably in the world.
• 11:43
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: Jensen Wong, Mark Zuckerberg, Dario Amadei. They were all out there.
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: Elon Musk, who incidentally is working for the government again.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: I digress.
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: These optics may not have been very good while the
• 11:59
  Speaker 5: president stood there with this incredible gaggle, the Mount Rushmore
• 12:03
  Speaker 5: of AI. We have great questions about how that was
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: interpreted on the other side of the screen. Look no
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: further than the latest poll from the folks at Quinnipiac.
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: We can make this real simple for you. Do you
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: support AI regulation? Yeah, by a lot. Do you oppose
• 12:23
  Speaker 5: local AI data centers? Yeah, by a lot. How much
• 12:27
  Speaker 5: do you trust AI leaders? Not by a lot. We
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: can put numbers on it. 86% support regulation. 72% oppose
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: data center. 3% say they trust the people who were
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: in that photo a lot. The president of the United States,
• 12:49
  Speaker 5: of course, saying just recently that this is the only
• 12:53
  Speaker 5: way to win the race with China, of course.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Here's how he put it. We're leading China by a lot.
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: And if we start doing what some people would like
• 13:02
  Speaker 6: us to do, I mean, Bernie Sanders said stop all
• 13:05
  Speaker 6: work immediately. Well, can't stop work. If you stop work,
• 13:08
  Speaker 6: somebody's going to do it. And whoever wins superintelligence wins.
• 13:15
  Speaker 6: That's it.
• 13:15
  Speaker 9: You know, I used to say whoever wins the other.
• 13:17
  Speaker 6: But whoever wins superintelligence wins.
• 13:21
  Speaker 9: And right now there are two players. It's us and China.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Us and China.
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: And of course, the players who are represented there, including OpenAI,
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: are leading the race. The American companies, the frontier companies,
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: if you're with us on YouTube, look at them now.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: That was something, wasn't it? The polyoptics in the driveway.
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: I can throw another iron on the fire, but before
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: we talk to Gotham, OpenAI, this just broke in the
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: Wall Street Journal, has parted ways with three researchers.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Parted ways.
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: For allegedly sharing confidential company information with a third-party AI
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: safety organization. The company recently told some employees it had
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: terminated the three who worked on the safety team.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: And you can't tell a lot from the statement.
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: For violating our policies on accessing and handling sensitive company
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: information is all we have. So this is starting to
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: get messy on whatever side of this you are. And again,
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: that might be the cost of winning if they who
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: win AI simply win. It's a story that we wanted
• 14:37
  Speaker 5: to spend some time talking to Gotham about. He's been
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: writing about it in his columns. And as a thinker,
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: when it comes to technology and politics. We thought we
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: would do this the right way. He's a lecturer at
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: the Yale School of Management, Bloomberg Opinion contributor, Gautam Mukunda,
• 14:52
  Speaker 5: with us live from our Boston bureau. And if you're
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: with us on YouTube, you can be like me and
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: be slightly jealous that you're not spending a day in
• 14:59
  Speaker 5: Boston comedy. He's got the best view of the hub
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: behind him, and it's good to see you, Gautam. What
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: do you think of the polyoptics behind that gathering this weekend?
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: What did it tell us about this moment?
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're so bad, you're starting to wonder if
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: the Trump administration has just stopped trying. This is a
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: country united basically by two issues, right? In our political discourse,
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: there are basically only two things that everybody agrees on.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: Almost everyone in the country hates the Iran war, and
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: almost everyone in the country hates data centers. And the
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: Trump administration, really almost miraculously, is on the wrong side
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: of both of those issues with regards to the public.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: That's not a great way to go into midterms. And
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: I can construct a theory as to what they're thinking,
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: but I don't think it's a good theory, and I
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: think it's a disastrous political error on their part.
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: Well, you're reaching immediately for the midterms, and I appreciate that.
• 15:49
  Speaker 5: We talk about it every day here. But just in
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: terms of the way we're looking at this industry, you
• 15:55
  Speaker 5: can talk about Donald Trump and his decision to surround
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: himself with these people, but how about these executives?
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: When they got on airplanes.
• 16:02
  Speaker 5: To come to Washington, did they think they were helping
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: their public relations, their image– maybe you can leave Dario
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: aside because he looked really uncomfortable– by standing there with
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: Donald Trump at that moment?
• 16:14
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: So I'm not sure if they thought they were helping
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: their public relations, their image, as much as they thought
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: that they were essentially solidifying their influence with the Trump administration.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: And I wonder to what extent that they've just kind
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: of stopped fighting that image battle and decided that they
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: have the financial resources and they're so economically important that
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: at least this administration is not going to crack down
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: on them no matter what happens, no matter how unhappy
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: the public is. In the short term, that is probably
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: a good bet. It's hard to imagine the Trump administration
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: going against them, given just how close its ties are
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: to the most aggressive AI deregulation people in the Valley.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: When the next administration rolls around, I think that might
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: be a catastrophically bad bet.
• 16:59
  Speaker 10: Wow.
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: You see this Wall Street Journal story that they all
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: kind of surrounded. Dario Amode, and it was Jensen Wong
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: questioning him in the Roosevelt Room when they met to
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: put the final touches on this AI constitution or the
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: AI accords, I guess we call it. They wanted to
• 17:16
  Speaker 5: know what his deal was with these existential warnings.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's the one who.
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: Really got this started, not just the most recent essay,
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: but months ago, talking about a white-collar job wipeout, never
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: mind the end of humanity.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Was he the one honest guy in the room, or
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: are they right?
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: He needs to pull it back a little bit here.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: So you could split that up, right?
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: You could both believe that Anthropic has sort of regulatory
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: reasons to say that government enforcement would help us. Like,
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: I think that might be true. And at the same
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: time say Anthropic's entire foundation story is these are people
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: who left OpenAI because they just didn't think OpenAI was
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: behaving in a safe way. So sometimes your interests and
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: your sincere beliefs line up, and this looks like one
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: of those cases. That doesn't mean they're right. It does
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: mean that the arguments discredit them saying, well, it's just
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: about their commercial interests. It doesn't make any sense. I mean,
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: Jensen Huang's commercial interests are selling more of these things
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: and driving this to forward. Does he not have commercial
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: interests that would drive him to say deregulation is a
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: good idea? Everybody's got money on the table. Let's evaluate
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: the arguments, not the motivations.
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: Everyone's got money on the table, including a lot of
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: people watching and listening to us Right now, this is
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: a huge underpinning of the market and a driver of
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: our economy. Gotham, I don't need to tell you that.
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: So how do we look back at what happened this week?
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: The big golden age event, the meeting at the White House,
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: the conversation that followed. We're showing the picture, this massive
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: Last Supper picture at the Putin table where they were
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: all lined up behind the president. Will we look back
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: at this was the moment they said regulation be damned?
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Pedal to the metal?
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: Or was this a moment that Americans actually found an
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: argument that went mainstream? Dario was on SNL last weekend
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: that could provoke a more deliberate debate now.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: I was wondering if you were going to mention the
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: SNL skit, which is just two and a half minutes
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: of perfection, right? And the fact that he's now reached
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: the point where SNL thinks it's worth their time to
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: parody him, do it that well, I kind of think
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: it's not going to be the last time they do it.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: It says a lot about where we are.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: And so, I mean, it is clear to me that
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: the industry believes, not the whole industry, clearly not Anthropic, right?
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: But the A16Z, OpenAI, the core of people who are like,
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: We're going to go full in on acceleration. We're going
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: to push this forward. They believe that they can use
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: their financial heft and their ties to the Trump administration
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: to forestall regulation. For two years, this may be right,
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: and the public argument that they are making is that
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: if we don't do this, the Chinese will catch up.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: I think it's really worth pushing that that argument does
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: not actually make sense. The Chinese open weights models, by
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: their own argument, they themselves have put out things saying, look,
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: the Chinese open weights models are distilled based on our work.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: They are sort of copying our work. If the Chinese
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: are copying your work, if you stop going forward, they
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: will also stop going forward. So they're making two incompatible arguments.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: One is we're being ripped off. The other is we
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: need to move as fast as possible to keep ahead
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: of them.
• 20:25
  Speaker 9: You can't say both.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: It's not possible.
• 20:30
  Speaker 5: They didn't vote to approve the Ratepayer Protection Act last night.
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: Senate went home. We knew that would probably happen. Democrats
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: didn't want to give Republicans a win on this. But
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: will there be any other swing legislatively if particularly Democrats
• 20:46
  Speaker 5: take the majority?
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: If Democrats take the majority, I think they'll certainly try
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: to let it be passed. I mean, they would be
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: mad not to pass, right? How many 75-25 issues are
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: there in American politics?
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: The president's not going to sign it, though.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: That's the thing, right? And that, of course, as an issue,
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: that makes it better for Democrats because then they can
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: hang it around him like an albatross for the next
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: two years, and that's what they'll do. You don't have
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: to believe the Democrats are geniuses to say that anybody
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: would take that opportunity.
• 21:16
  Speaker 9: From the industry's.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Perspective, though, right, what would then is the more Trump
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: drops in the polls and, you know, second term presidents drop, right?
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: They just keep dropping. I see nothing in the behavior
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: of this administration that suggests that they're capable of reversing
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: that slide. Republicans are going to want to find someone
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: to blame for the political catastrophes that are about to
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: hit them. They're not going to blame Donald Trump because
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump can make no mistakes. It seems to me
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: like the logical people for them to go after are
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: the AI industry. And that was really, really soft for
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: the industry.
• 21:50
  Speaker 5: Like Joe Pesci being walked into the room to become
• 21:52
  Speaker 5: a made man. Gautam Mukunda, great to see you. Say
• 21:55
  Speaker 5: hey to the folks downstairs at Falafel King. Stay with
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: us on Balance of Power. We'll have much more coming
• 22:01
  Speaker 5: up after this.
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast. Catch
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: us live weekdays at noon and 5 p.m. Eastern on
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: us live on YouTube.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: So how about it? They're all done.
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: Everybody's gone. You can park wherever you want. Tumbleweeds rolling
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: across Capitol Hill. The Senate finished its work, even though
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: it didn't actually accomplish much of anything yesterday. They just
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: decided to leave, joining House members at home in their
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: district where they're all running for reelection or being yelled
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: at in town halls. That's it till after Election Day.
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: So when I say there's 33 days left to go,
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: the attention is not going to be here in Washington
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: unless we're talking about the White House.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Everybody's at home running.
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: And each poll is going to be ever more important
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: as we get closer to that line. But we wanted
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: to take a look at what was accomplished here.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: We just spent the.
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: Last many days talking about some pretty important initiatives, right?
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: The Ratepayer Protection Act, finally answering voter concerns about costs
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: stemming from data centers. We had a stock trading ban.
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: That's an 80-20 issue, if there ever was, right? There
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: was something else. Oh, yeah, permitting reform. Wasn't there a deal, finally,
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: a grand bargain on permitting reform?
• 23:25
  Speaker 9: Guess what?
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: None of it got done. None of it got done.
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: Everyone just packed their bags and went home because votes failed.
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: But if you're Chuck Schumer, you're leaving town with wind
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: in your sails. That was actually the phrase he used,
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: feeling confident that Democrats can win the Senate. Important moment
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: here that we share with our friend Mike Dorning. It's
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: been too long. Of course, helps us cover the Capitol
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: and is our Bloomberg News Capitol influence deputy team leader.
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: Nice to see you. Wasn't a very ambitious agenda and
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: they still fell short of that.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: No, no, they really didn't do much.
• 24:06
  Speaker 10: The most important thing, you know, a physician will always say,
• 24:09
  Speaker 10: first do no harm. And they didn't have a government shutdown.
• 24:14
  Speaker 10: They didn't have, like, chaos coming out of Washington. So
• 24:18
  Speaker 10: at least they've checked that box, which I think was
• 24:21
  Speaker 10: the main thing they were hoping for.
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: Well, you make an important point, and I guess we
• 24:24
  Speaker 5: should have been talking about this yesterday on what was
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: September 30th. That would have been the day the government
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: shut down. Last day of the quarter, in this case,
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: last day of the fiscal year.
• 24:34
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: They kicked the can to what, December 11, if I
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: remember correctly?
• 24:37
  Speaker 8: Mid-December.
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: So when they come back, are we counting down to
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: another shutdown, or do we kick it again in the
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: spirit of the new Congress?
• 24:46
  Speaker 10: It's less likely that they would actually have a shutdown
• 24:49
  Speaker 10: in December because a lot of what the shutdown has
• 24:53
  Speaker 10: been about has been moving up issues and having confrontations.
• 24:59
  Speaker 10: to highlight issues. The likely thing is Congress does one
• 25:05
  Speaker 10: of two things in these scenarios. kick the can down
• 25:08
  Speaker 10: the road till after the election, then they make a deal,
• 25:12
  Speaker 10: or then they kick it further into the new Congress.
• 25:15
  Speaker 10: They don't tend to have a shutdown just.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: As Congress is going out of office.
• 25:21
  Speaker 10: That's a rare scenario.
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: That would be a riot, although we wouldn't put it
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: past them. I'm just seeing a headline from the Associated Press.
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: John Thune met with President Trump this morning at the
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: White House. I don't know what's planned here for the
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: lame duck, but they could come back around to the
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: things that I mentioned. Ratepayer Protection Act. Democrats didn't want
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: to give John Huston a win there, I realize. Does
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: it stand maybe for another vote in the lame duck?
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: And does permitting reform finally see its day?
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: So these are possibilities.
• 25:50
  Speaker 10: I would not bet a lot of money on the
• 25:52
  Speaker 10: permitting reform, though it's possible. Because the political dynamics may
• 25:59
  Speaker 10: change after the elections. It may be that the Democrats
• 26:02
  Speaker 10: have a majority and they're like, maybe we should get more.
• 26:05
  Speaker 10: Because all these negotiations are based on a shared understanding
• 26:11
  Speaker 10: of how much power you have to get your way.
• 26:15
  Speaker 10: And if that power dynamic changes, then the outcome would change.
• 26:20
  Speaker 10: That said, there is a possibility if the Republicans can
• 26:24
  Speaker 10: hold their party together that they can do a lot
• 26:28
  Speaker 10: in this session after the election. You don't have to
• 26:31
  Speaker 10: worry about the voters and what they think so much.
• 26:34
  Speaker 10: The election's past you. You can make some hard choices.
• 26:38
  Speaker 10: And they have a clock. potentially if there were to
• 26:42
  Speaker 10: be Democrats winning one house or the other, where they
• 26:46
  Speaker 10: can get their partisan goals done one more time, potentially
• 26:52
  Speaker 10: the last time in a while. So they could try
• 26:54
  Speaker 10: to do a lot if they can hold themselves together.
• 26:57
  Speaker 10: And that's the big thing about this whole Congress since
• 27:01
  Speaker 10: the tax law was passed. They basically have not been
• 27:05
  Speaker 10: moving the ball forward for these big Republican agenda items.
• 27:09
  Speaker 10: The president's been doing them solely by unilateral action. If
• 27:13
  Speaker 10: you want to do stuff that Congress can do, you
• 27:15
  Speaker 10: got this one last shot after the election, unless they
• 27:19
  Speaker 10: win both houses and then you have more shots.
• 27:22
  Speaker 9: Interesting.
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: We've got two lawmakers, Sherrod Brown, and then we've got
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: the race in Florida. We talked to Angie Nixon the
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: other day. The winners of these two races do not
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: need to, these two Senate races, do not need to
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: wait until January because they're specials. They'd be replacing people
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: who were already moved like J.D. Vance in Ohio. So
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: they're special. They'd come right to Washington and be sworn in.
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: That means it's an even potentially smaller margin for Republicans
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: in the lame duck, making this ever more complex.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 27:54
  Speaker 10: And that's been the whole thing. On the House side,
• 27:58
  Speaker 10: We've seen that more than on the Republican side, on
• 28:01
  Speaker 10: the Senate side so far.
• 28:03
  Speaker 9: Just a few votes.
• 28:04
  Speaker 10: And you have some people who are true fiscal conservatives
• 28:07
  Speaker 10: that don't want to be adding a lot of extra
• 28:10
  Speaker 10: money to the debt and want to cut spending. Other
• 28:13
  Speaker 10: people have different priorities. You have people who are more
• 28:16
  Speaker 10: moderate representing competitive districts in the Northeast. And you can't
• 28:23
  Speaker 10: ram stuff through on party line votes unless you can
• 28:26
  Speaker 10: hold your own party together.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: It's good to have you back with us.
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: I guess we'll meet when everybody comes back here, although
• 28:32
  Speaker 5: we've got a lot to learn in the midterm elections.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, that'll be fascinating. It certainly is.
• 28:36
  Speaker 10: And that'll set the stage for a very consequential 2028 campaign.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Don't be a stranger. It's good to have you back.
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: That's Mike Dorning, of course, Bloomberg News, deputy team leader
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: of our Capitol influence team. These are the sharpest guys
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: when it comes to Capitol Hill and the legislative agenda.
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: As we watch Wall Street ahead of our turn to Hollywood,
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: we're going to bring you to screen time momentarily for
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: a conversation with Dana Walden from Disney Corporation. The Dow
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: Jones Industrial Average has turned negative. It's down 68. All
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: the indexes are negative now. NASDAQ is down 40. The
• 29:08
  Speaker 5: S & P down three. And we're watching interest rates here.
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: You wouldn't know that Micron knocked the cover off the
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: ball last night. But we are once again, 10-year yields
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: saw their highest since 2002. When you're talking about decades
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: of history, it's not good when we're talking treasury yields.
• 29:29
  Speaker 5: And Eric Wiener is with us right now from World
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: Headquarters in New York. We've got a couple of minutes, Eric,
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: before screen time starts. And I just wanted to check
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: in with you to see how you were feeling yesterday.
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: If Micron and a blowout report like that doesn't lift spirits,
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: is this market just exhausted in the face of rising
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: interest rates?
• 29:51
  Speaker 11: Exhausted is an interesting way to put it. It's just
• 29:54
  Speaker 11: been kind of like a tennis match, back and forth,
• 29:57
  Speaker 11: back and forth. If you look at it over the
• 30:00
  Speaker 11: last three months, yesterday the quarter ended and the S &
• 30:04
  Speaker 11: P was up around 2%. We've really gone nowhere in
• 30:08
  Speaker 11: the last few months. And that's what happens in these
• 30:12
  Speaker 11: high interest rate environments where nobody really knows exactly where
• 30:17
  Speaker 11: everything is going to go. You, you talked about micron
• 30:20
  Speaker 11: and they did blow it out, but then there were
• 30:23
  Speaker 11: really high expectations. And the question is how long can
• 30:27
  Speaker 11: this spending keep them going? Uh, and if interest rates
• 30:31
  Speaker 11: are going to be high, then at some point you
• 30:34
  Speaker 11: have to think that the companies that are spending so
• 30:36
  Speaker 11: much on AI, which is, you know, creating the demand
• 30:39
  Speaker 11: for these chip makers, uh, is going to Slack. So
• 30:43
  Speaker 11: they went up on expectations and then are getting hit
• 30:46
  Speaker 11: after the results. Accenture is a really interesting one too.
• 30:53
  Speaker 11: They blew it out yesterday and they're showing that actually
• 30:56
  Speaker 11: people can survive, companies can survive outside AI.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: What a concept.
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: We were talking earlier about the optics behind the whole
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: AI movement here, politically speaking, Eric. And I know that's
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: not your bag. Thank God, I'm sure, from your view.
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: But is this a stock moving or an investor-related event
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: when you see all of these folks from Jensen Wong
• 31:26
  Speaker 5: to Mark Zuckerberg at the White House? Does that bring
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: political risk to the shares of Or does this mainstreaming
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: of AI play in Wall Street's favor?
• 31:36
  Speaker 11: It absolutely does bring risk. I actually have to plead guilty.
• 31:39
  Speaker 11: I did start my career in politics. So I just
• 31:41
  Speaker 11: do actually have it.
• 31:42
  Speaker 7: Nice. All right.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Let's do this. I do have a general interest in this.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: We're pulling you back in. There we go. But in
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: all seriousness.
• 31:48
  Speaker 11: You know, when you have a lot of questions and
• 31:52
  Speaker 11: really it's it's not just the politicians, it's what's going
• 31:56
  Speaker 11: on in the district. So you look at like places
• 31:58
  Speaker 11: like Pennsylvania or Texas or whatnot, and they're running races
• 32:02
  Speaker 11: where the people are literally saying, I don't want this
• 32:06
  Speaker 11: in my backyard and I don't care where the jobs
• 32:09
  Speaker 11: are going to go. I just don't want this here.
• 32:12
  Speaker 11: I don't trust that it's going to not raise my
• 32:15
  Speaker 11: electricity bill. It's going to affect my water bill. It's
• 32:18
  Speaker 11: going to affect our environmental outlook. So I don't want it.
• 32:22
  Speaker 11: And if the technology is reliant upon that kind of building, yeah,
• 32:28
  Speaker 11: this has real, real ramifications. And then you have part
• 32:32
  Speaker 11: of the industry saying, Wait, let's slow down. And another
• 32:34
  Speaker 11: part of the industry saying, we need to keep going, go, go, go,
• 32:38
  Speaker 11: just like the president. And voters are saying, hold on, stop. Eventually,
• 32:44
  Speaker 11: you have to listen to them.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Glad you could jump on for a minute, Eric. Let's
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: do this again with some more time.
• 32:50
  Speaker 5: Eric Wiener is live in New York. He is a
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: Bloomberg News senior editor for Equities. Thanks for listening to
• 32:59
  Speaker 5: the Balance of Power podcast. Make sure to subscribe if
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: you haven't already at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: your podcasts. And you can find us live every weekday
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: from Washington, D.C. at noontime Eastern at Bloomberg.com.