Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 2/19/26: Saagar Rips Trump Degeneracy, Dem Voter Revolt, Trump Voters Rail On AI

Transcript

2/19/26: Saagar Rips Trump Degeneracy, Dem Voter Revolt, Trump Voters Rail On AI · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 1: We need your help to build the future of independent
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Speaker 1: news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
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Speaker 1: dot com. There's a lot going on in the world.
0:32
Speaker 1: You might have missed this. The Trump administration is currently
0:34
Speaker 1: going to bat for the prediction markets masquerading as sports
0:38
Speaker 1: gambling companies to nationalize sports gambling to dramatically enrich not
0:42
Speaker 1: only the Trump family themselves, but also all of the
0:45
Speaker 1: most degenerate executives in the United States. So I want
0:49
Speaker 1: to go ahead and give a major shout out here
0:51
Speaker 1: to the chairman of the CFTC, the Commodities Future Trading Commission,
0:55
Speaker 1: which is responsible for regulating prediction markets, wo by the
0:59
Speaker 1: way is actually a former crypto executive and is now
1:02
Speaker 1: actually trying to preempt any state efforts to rein in
1:06
Speaker 1: prediction markets backdoor sports gambling across the nation, violating state
1:10
Speaker 1: sovereignty and their ability to regulate sports gambling internally. Here's
1:14
Speaker 1: the chairman of the CFDC, Mike Sellig. Let's take a
1:16
Speaker 1: listen to what he had to say.
1:18
Speaker 3: CFDC Chairman Mike saliing here. Over the past year, American
1:23
Speaker 3: prediction markets have been hit with an onslaught of state
1:27
Speaker 3: led litigation. In response, the CFDC has today filed a
1:33
Speaker 3: Friend of the Court brief to defend its exclusive jurisdiction
1:38
Speaker 3: over these derivative markets. Today, the CFDC is taking an
1:42
Speaker 3: important step to ensure that these markets have a place
1:46
Speaker 3: here in America and have the integrity and resilience and
1:50
Speaker 3: vibrancy that our derivatives' markets deserve. To those who seek
1:55
Speaker 3: to challenge our authority in this space, let me be clear,
2:00
Speaker 3: we will see you in court.
2:02
Speaker 1: So what he is saying there is that states do
2:05
Speaker 1: not have the right to regulate sports gambling, which goes
2:07
Speaker 1: directly against the Supreme Court decision. Now, let me also explain,
2:11
Speaker 1: because if you listen to that. You're like, oh, well,
2:13
Speaker 1: he's talking about derivative markets and financial work. No, that's
2:15
Speaker 1: not what this is about, literally at all. And don't
2:17
Speaker 1: get to that here in a second. Let's put up
2:19
Speaker 1: here Governor Spencer Cox of Utah's response. He says, Mike,
2:23
Speaker 1: I appreciate you attempting this with a straight face, but
2:25
Speaker 1: I don't remember the CFTC having authority over the derivative
2:29
Speaker 1: market of Lebron James rebounds. These prediction markets you are
2:33
Speaker 1: breathlessly defending are gambling, pure and simple. They are destroying
2:36
Speaker 1: the lives of families and countless Americans, especially young men.
2:39
Speaker 1: They have no place in Utah. Let me be clear,
2:42
Speaker 1: I will use every resource within my disposal as governor
2:46
Speaker 1: of the sovereign state of Utah and under the Constitution
2:48
Speaker 1: of the United States, to beat you in court. So
2:50
Speaker 1: that is a Republican governor. And this very much, Chrystal
2:53
Speaker 1: resembles what happened with AI. You have these companies, you
2:58
Speaker 1: have Calshi, you have Polymarket, you have DraftKings, FanDuel, all
3:02
Speaker 1: of the gambling companies rushing to get into the prediction
3:05
Speaker 1: market space. And let me explain this very clearly sports gambling,
3:08
Speaker 1: as you all know, which I am massively against the
3:10
Speaker 1: Fanduels and the DraftKings. They are more tightly regulated than
3:13
Speaker 1: these prediction markets. What the prediction markets are arguing is
3:16
Speaker 1: that because they are explicitly not gambling, that they are
3:19
Speaker 1: legalized in all fifty states. And as we have also seen,
3:23
Speaker 1: if go take a look at DraftKings stock and FanDuel stock,
3:25
Speaker 1: they're down forty to fifty percent. The reason why is
3:28
Speaker 1: they're bleeding money to these prediction markets. Vegas actually handled
3:31
Speaker 1: way less money for the Super Bowl this year than
3:33
Speaker 1: they did the year before. Why gambling is a loser
3:37
Speaker 1: take all market. And what I mean by that is
3:39
Speaker 1: whichever person is willing to offer the most degenerate bets,
3:43
Speaker 1: that's the person who wins. And even as bad as
3:47
Speaker 1: much as I hate DraftKings and FanDuel, you're not betting
3:51
Speaker 1: on dildo colors on the floors on the basketball courts
3:55
Speaker 1: of WNBA. Even they have a standard because they have
3:58
Speaker 1: state regulators that they have to deal with, right they have.
4:01
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about the different colors of gatorade.
4:04
Speaker 1: Like it's quoint to think about people in Vegas. Well,
4:07
Speaker 1: every year betting on heads and tails. That used to
4:10
Speaker 1: be the most the worst example of degenerous. No, like,
4:13
Speaker 1: we are in a ten to fifteen to twenty thirty
4:16
Speaker 1: times worse situation with the type of bets that are
4:19
Speaker 1: being offered on this rife for insider trading. Remember the
4:22
Speaker 1: Streaker one I told you about that literally happened. Somebody
4:24
Speaker 1: actually did bet on Streaker and then did it. It
4:26
Speaker 1: was an offshore book, to be clear, however, and his
4:28
Speaker 1: bet was avoided. But I'm giving you an example of
4:31
Speaker 1: exactly the type of things can happen. This is not
4:33
Speaker 1: even to mention all the insider trading possibilities from that.
4:37
Speaker 1: We saw the state of Israel just indicted multiple people
4:40
Speaker 1: who were in the military and arrested them for betting
4:44
Speaker 1: on operations that they knew was going to happen. You
4:47
Speaker 1: cannot allow bets life and death. Very recently, there was
4:50
Speaker 1: a market on whether a space booster was going to fail,
4:54
Speaker 1: and they were like, wow, it's really cool to bet
4:56
Speaker 1: on stuff which could literally result in the deaths of
4:59
Speaker 1: the crew are involved. And they're like, well, to be clear,
5:01
Speaker 1: it's just about a mechanical failure. It's like, yeah, mechanical
5:04
Speaker 1: failure that could literally lead to it.
5:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, what do you think is going to happen that
5:07
Speaker 4: mechanical Right, So.
5:08
Speaker 1: I'm just betting on whether Apollo thirteen is going to
5:11
Speaker 1: take off or not. Guys, Right, it's a come on.
5:13
Speaker 1: This is the nonsense, yeah, which has been This is
5:16
Speaker 1: this is literally like the clearest example of total free
5:21
Speaker 1: market capitalism, which is except as always in the American context,
5:27
Speaker 1: completely backed now by the power of the state. The
5:31
Speaker 1: United States federal government going to bat not just for
5:35
Speaker 1: betting markets, but for betting markets that offer the worst,
5:39
Speaker 1: most degenerate products that milk these people. You know, the
5:43
Speaker 1: advertising of these companies. They're telling children out there, eighteen
5:46
Speaker 1: nineteen year olds, guys, this is how you can make
5:49
Speaker 1: your life savings. This is how you can pay your tuition.
5:51
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm getting reels of guys who are betting
5:54
Speaker 1: on whether Trump is going to say the word low
5:56
Speaker 1: IQ and they're watching, you know, an entire weeks worth
5:59
Speaker 1: of news and then cheering and popping champagne whenever he
6:03
Speaker 1: finally says it for a five hundred to one payout work.
6:06
Speaker 1: This is insanity, like absolute insanity, and it's being backed
6:10
Speaker 1: by the government because these people are making money hand
6:13
Speaker 1: over fist. It's disgusting. This is gambling, pure and simple.
6:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, well the gas lighting put D four up on
6:19
Speaker 2: the screen of like this is a derivatives market where
6:22
Speaker 2: Americans can hedge their risk against changing weather or no,
6:27
Speaker 2: this is sports betting, okay, I mean the estimate here
6:29
Speaker 2: is that ninety percent of Calshi's bets are on our sports.
6:34
Speaker 2: Like that's that's primarily what these things are used for,
6:38
Speaker 2: and not that it really would make it better if
6:41
Speaker 2: it wasn't primarily sports. But you know, their dodge is factively, Oh,
6:45
Speaker 2: this isn't really sports gambling. It's the sophisticated derivatives and
6:48
Speaker 2: we're just democratizing the access to this technology. Blah blah blah.
6:51
Speaker 2: Like the whole thing is just complete gas lighting. And
6:55
Speaker 2: you know, I think to me, zooming out the two
7:00
Speaker 2: major underlying stories here, the two things that are really
7:03
Speaker 2: going on is number one, the corruption obviously, like you know,
7:06
Speaker 2: I mean Don Junior's on the COUCHI board, like it's
7:08
Speaker 2: you know, they're making tons of money, They're throughout the
7:11
Speaker 2: whole government, So they want this gravy train to the
7:15
Speaker 2: people in power are profiting off of this direct exploitation
7:19
Speaker 2: of you know, ordinary Americans, and they want that gravy
7:22
Speaker 2: train to keep going. We are at the stage in
7:24
Speaker 2: capitalism where like the level of just predatory behavior is
7:28
Speaker 2: completely brazen and completely overt. But I think the other
7:32
Speaker 2: thing that is going on here is, you know, we've
7:34
Speaker 2: always are Our national story has always had a bit
7:38
Speaker 2: of like a casino lottery element to it, of like
7:40
Speaker 2: you may not be rich today, but hey, here in America,
7:43
Speaker 2: anything's possible. The previous story was about if you work
7:47
Speaker 2: hard and you know, we have this grand meritocracy, and
7:50
Speaker 2: there was some level of truth to that, right, not completely,
7:54
Speaker 2: but there was some level, and people bought into it.
7:56
Speaker 4: So it was like, okay, if.
7:57
Speaker 2: We do the right and we go to school, we
7:58
Speaker 2: work hard, and we start a great busines. Since we
8:00
Speaker 2: make a great product, we too can join like the
8:03
Speaker 2: class of the millionaires, We too can become one of
8:06
Speaker 2: society's elites. Now that story has unraveled, So now the
8:12
Speaker 2: story is just complete casino capitalism.
8:15
Speaker 4: It's just complete. You know.
8:17
Speaker 2: We use the example before. Maybe you too can get
8:19
Speaker 2: cast as a plant in the Bad Bunny halftime show
8:22
Speaker 2: and have insider knowledge of whether Lady Gaga and Ricky
8:25
Speaker 2: Martin are going to be performing.
8:27
Speaker 4: And be able to cash in.
8:29
Speaker 2: That is, in the absence of, you know, a broader
8:32
Speaker 2: redistribution of wealth. They are wrapping this explicitly predatory scheme
8:39
Speaker 2: in a like promise of riches and wealth for ordinary
8:43
Speaker 2: people who have lost all hope that there is any
8:46
Speaker 2: other path to success, not even riches in wealth, but
8:49
Speaker 2: just to like escape an entirely precarious existence. So I
8:53
Speaker 2: think when you look at when you look at this
8:56
Speaker 2: in a certain ways, when you look at the AI development,
8:58
Speaker 2: certainly in the crypto space and the betting space, I
9:01
Speaker 2: think part of what is going on here is not
9:03
Speaker 2: just about the corruption. It's about selling a narrative to
9:06
Speaker 2: people that this is going to be the new way
9:09
Speaker 2: that you're able to make it big and.
9:11
Speaker 1: Let me, you know, bring it out even deeper, just
9:13
Speaker 1: show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. I wanted
9:16
Speaker 1: to cover this a few weeks ago, but we weren't
9:17
Speaker 1: able to put it in the show. Let's put C
9:19
Speaker 1: three or D three up there on the screen. The
9:22
Speaker 1: CFTC before this announcement, literally just a week before announced
9:25
Speaker 1: the Innovation Advisory Committee. Let me name you some of
9:28
Speaker 1: the people who are on there. The CEO of Coinbase,
9:31
Speaker 1: the CEO of Polymarket, the CEO of Ripple, the CEO
9:35
Speaker 1: of FanDuel, the CEO of Calshi, the CEO crypto dot Com,
9:39
Speaker 1: the CEO of DraftKings, the CEO of Blockchain, the CEO
9:43
Speaker 1: of Kraken, Gemini, Solana Labs, Robin Hood. I mean I
9:47
Speaker 1: just named some of the worst companies in the United States.
9:50
Speaker 1: Like these are the people who are getting phenomenally rich
9:53
Speaker 1: basically making gambling as widely available to the American public
9:58
Speaker 1: as they can using an buying In some cases the
10:01
Speaker 1: power now of the power of the federal government to
10:04
Speaker 1: basically enable their ability to legalize gambling across the nation.
10:09
Speaker 1: I never even thought I would be in the business
10:11
Speaker 1: of defending the DraftKings and the fan duels. But really
10:14
Speaker 1: this is about state sovereignty. I massively opposed sports gambling.
10:18
Speaker 1: I think we should make it completely illegal at the
10:20
Speaker 1: online level. If people want to have gambling in their states,
10:23
Speaker 1: they should have to go to a casino, and it
10:25
Speaker 1: should be very tightly regulated in terms of the number
10:28
Speaker 1: of bets to make sure that you know you can't
10:30
Speaker 1: do prop bets for insider trading. And all of that,
10:32
Speaker 1: et cetera. But at a sovereign level. From what the
10:35
Speaker 1: Supreme Court said, it's up to the states. You cannot
10:39
Speaker 1: allow the CFTC and the federal government to just say, hey, California,
10:43
Speaker 1: you know they had a whole referendum on this. They
10:46
Speaker 1: rejected it. They said, Nope, we're not going to do it.
10:48
Speaker 1: We're going to keep it in the whatever in the
10:50
Speaker 1: tribal casinos. Texas, same thing the gambling companies have taken
10:55
Speaker 1: l after l in Texas. Texas legislature is like, nope,
10:58
Speaker 1: we're not doing it, which cost Miriam Madlson all these
11:01
Speaker 1: people a hell of a lot of money. But this
11:04
Speaker 1: is how you get around it. It's literally making the
11:07
Speaker 1: worst possible types of bets with zero regulation or at
11:11
Speaker 1: least the least amount of regulation, taking it out of
11:14
Speaker 1: the hands of the state and saying no, we're going
11:16
Speaker 1: to make it widely available for all and none of
11:19
Speaker 1: the proper safeguards that are currently in place for insider trading.
11:22
Speaker 1: And these people are printing money. Remember the CALCI founder
11:25
Speaker 1: who's like, I'm one of the youngest female billionaires in
11:28
Speaker 1: the world. We should be ashamed of this. This is
11:30
Speaker 1: shameful to become a billionaire by propping up gambling, and
11:34
Speaker 1: you know everybody is like in the tech industry, everybody's
11:37
Speaker 1: getting bought off. I recently saw a story of a guy,
11:40
Speaker 1: a sports podcaster who criticized cal sheet. They reached out
11:43
Speaker 1: to him the next week for They reach out to
11:45
Speaker 1: him literally the week after to offer him a sponsorship.
11:48
Speaker 1: And you know, nobody wants to talk about this because
11:50
Speaker 1: they're all taking money from the same thing. And you
11:52
Speaker 1: would think DraftKings and Fantool would be trying to do
11:55
Speaker 1: something about No DraftKings is now, Oh, we're going to
11:57
Speaker 1: get into the prediction business. This is a race to
12:00
Speaker 1: the bottom to make it as completely unregulated, open for
12:04
Speaker 1: insider trading, open for corruption as possible. But because they're
12:08
Speaker 1: all making so much money milking all of these people,
12:12
Speaker 1: regular sports fans, people who are losing hope, the bottom
12:17
Speaker 1: level of society, like we are turning everyday Americans, especially
12:22
Speaker 1: young men, into the same guys that you see at
12:24
Speaker 1: the gas station doing scratch off tickets. That's what we're
12:27
Speaker 1: doing for a whole nation, and it's like nobody wants
12:30
Speaker 1: to stand up for it. Luckily, at least some are
12:32
Speaker 1: let me put D five up here on the screen.
12:34
Speaker 1: I want to give credit to Elizabeth Warren. She says
12:38
Speaker 1: Trump's CFTC is trying to strip state authority to regulate
12:42
Speaker 1: gambling within their borders, protect Americans from getting ripped off.
12:45
Speaker 1: The CFTC should focus on ensuring our derivatives markets don't
12:48
Speaker 1: blow up the economy again, not helping corrupt political insiders
12:52
Speaker 1: cash in. Excellent, well said. And then finally D six,
12:55
Speaker 1: Just if you're wondering where this is all coming from,
12:58
Speaker 1: don't forget the Donald Trump's own truth Social company was
13:02
Speaker 1: supposed to launch a polymarket competitor, and Donald Trump Junior
13:06
Speaker 1: himself is literally a strategic advisor to both CALCI and
13:10
Speaker 1: to Polymarket. We're currently on the CFTC Advisory committee and
13:14
Speaker 1: who the new CFTC chairman is working on their behalf.
13:18
Speaker 1: And by the way, even before this, the CFTC advisor
13:21
Speaker 1: or the CFTC committee, he wasn't necessarily supposed to have
13:24
Speaker 1: all this authority. There were a lot of shenanigans in
13:26
Speaker 1: terms of making sure that nobody else was on the board,
13:29
Speaker 1: similar to what they did here with the FTC. So
13:31
Speaker 1: here we go. This is going to be a multi
13:33
Speaker 1: billion dollar bonanza. The amount of people who are going
13:38
Speaker 1: to lose money, it's astronomical, Like the amount of sports
13:41
Speaker 1: betters and other people were going to be lured in.
13:43
Speaker 1: There's no regulation for advertising, no regulation at the federal level.
13:48
Speaker 1: It's going to be I mean, this is going to
13:50
Speaker 1: be as close to a Rip and Roar eighteen ninety silver,
13:54
Speaker 1: you know, pedaling, what were the snake oil We're going back.
13:59
Speaker 1: This is what it's going to look like. And think
14:01
Speaker 1: about how comulated, how many people suffered from that. But
14:05
Speaker 1: I'm just glad that this tech executives are going to
14:07
Speaker 1: get filthy.
14:07
Speaker 2: Rich on steroids in the algorithm era too, where it's
14:10
Speaker 2: like all super supercharged. I wanted to shout out Pedro Gonzalez.
14:14
Speaker 2: I thought he had a good take on this, and
14:15
Speaker 2: shout out to you as well for being like principled
14:18
Speaker 2: and consistent in your position series. It's very funny that
14:20
Speaker 2: the New Right does this save the West LARP and
14:22
Speaker 2: then you look at its policy preferences and it's all
14:25
Speaker 2: just legalizing crime, crypto scams, normalizing gambling, et cetera. It's
14:28
Speaker 2: the movement of decline and profiting from decline. And I
14:30
Speaker 2: mean You've been making this point about, like, you know,
14:33
Speaker 2: the all of the quote unquote degenerate behavior is now
14:36
Speaker 2: just like embraced and fully deregulated, and no one bothers
14:39
Speaker 2: to pause and say, this seems a little inconsistent with
14:42
Speaker 2: some of the other things a lot of political project
14:44
Speaker 2: has been.
14:44
Speaker 1: A lot of right wingers were so mad at me
14:46
Speaker 1: yesterday for tweeting this, and I said that Trump is
14:49
Speaker 1: now the most pro vice president in American history. He
14:52
Speaker 1: in a single year, he is trying to deregulate and
14:54
Speaker 1: legalize gambling in all fifty states. He is rescheduling marijuana
14:59
Speaker 1: to enrich hit rich drug pedaling donors, and is now
15:02
Speaker 1: pressuring banks to maintain access for only fans models. So
15:05
Speaker 1: I mean, there you go. I mean, what else you have?
15:07
Speaker 1: The most pro porn, pro wed, pro gambling president in
15:11
Speaker 1: American history. Congratulations for many of us who you know,
15:15
Speaker 1: at the very least you know thought, Look, I knew
15:17
Speaker 1: the crypto thing was going to be a bonanza and whatever,
15:21
Speaker 1: like that's bad, but it's kind of separate to gambling,
15:24
Speaker 1: Like this is the most predatory industry with the highest
15:28
Speaker 1: suicide rate. I mean, they're one third of American young
15:32
Speaker 1: men have an open gambling account. The amount of addiction,
15:36
Speaker 1: it's if you talk to the gambling hotlines and others,
15:38
Speaker 1: it is horrible. And for those of you who think like, oh,
15:42
Speaker 1: I don't gamble, so it doesn't affect me. When a
15:44
Speaker 1: state legalizes online, a state legalizes gambling, the aggregate like
15:48
Speaker 1: amount of credit goes down. It actually affects everybody. The
15:52
Speaker 1: amount of domestic violence it goes up. The public resources
15:55
Speaker 1: are going to have to be dedicated to dealing with this.
15:58
Speaker 1: It's going to be like the cocaine crisis in the
16:00
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, when all of a sudden, we just said
16:02
Speaker 1: junkies everywhere, and we didn't know what to do. It's
16:04
Speaker 1: going to be very similar. Go to Vegas and you
16:06
Speaker 1: see the bums that are on the street begging for
16:08
Speaker 1: a dollar so they can get some food. That's going
16:11
Speaker 1: to be the whole nation, you know.
16:12
Speaker 4: And it's the adaption to pretend you're pro family.
16:16
Speaker 2: Well you know, yeah, yeah, nothing will blow up in regularly.
16:19
Speaker 1: Nothing will blow your life up like a gambling addiction.
16:22
Speaker 1: I can tell you a story after story, lawsuit after
16:24
Speaker 1: lawsuit after lawsuit, people who never placed a bet to
16:27
Speaker 1: fully bankrupt divorce and on the verge of suicide in
16:30
Speaker 1: the span of two or three years, gambling with their
16:32
Speaker 1: kids Christmas presents, life savings, five twenty nine accounts, and
16:36
Speaker 1: these people will take your money all day long. And
16:38
Speaker 1: now it's going to be even less regularly, and it's.
16:40
Speaker 4: Young men who will suffer the most.
16:42
Speaker 2: Your most you know, easily is sort of like have
16:45
Speaker 2: the psychology that's the most easily exploited by this stuff
16:48
Speaker 2: that are overwhelmingly the largest percentage.
16:50
Speaker 1: Of the bad. So bad, All right, let's get to
16:52
Speaker 1: the next one.
16:55
Speaker 2: So the New York Times had a very interesting focus
16:57
Speaker 2: group of Democratic voters, which I feel like we don't
17:00
Speaker 2: see that much. I feel like there's always because the
17:03
Speaker 2: liberal media is kind of like more in tune with Democrats.
17:06
Speaker 2: There's less curiosity about what's going on with the Democratic base.
17:10
Speaker 2: So it's usually either like swing voters or Trump voters.
17:13
Speaker 2: Let's go on safari and see what these strange creatures
17:15
Speaker 2: think about the world. So they decided to do that
17:18
Speaker 2: with the Democratic base, and you know, now, I think
17:21
Speaker 2: liberal media has become more disconnected from where the Democratic bases,
17:25
Speaker 2: and the Democratic party leadership certainly has become more disconnected
17:28
Speaker 2: from where the Democratic bases. So anyway we can put
17:30
Speaker 2: this F one up on the screen. This was the
17:33
Speaker 2: headline for their focus group. They said, show up for
17:35
Speaker 2: us thirteen Democratic voters on Trump Ice and their frustrations
17:40
Speaker 2: with the Democratic Party and the thing they sees on
17:42
Speaker 2: here at the top with these three voters is their
17:45
Speaker 2: description of the Democratic Party. One says paralyzed and the
17:48
Speaker 2: other says sold out, another says afraid. These are three
17:51
Speaker 2: very different people, very different you know, backgrounds. So and
17:55
Speaker 2: this was the conclusion across the board, let's go and
17:57
Speaker 2: put F two up on the screen. This is probably
18:00
Speaker 2: the slide that got the single most attention. Ryan, Emily
18:03
Speaker 2: and Emily mentioned this in their show yesterday, but we
18:05
Speaker 2: wanted to dig in a little bit more. They asked
18:07
Speaker 2: their thirteen focused group participants what type of candidates they're
18:12
Speaker 2: looking for, and they ask them, you know, would you
18:14
Speaker 2: prefer someone who's young or you don't really care? And overwhelmingly,
18:17
Speaker 2: of course, people say we like someone who's younger. What
18:19
Speaker 2: sort of class background there is major preference for, you know,
18:22
Speaker 2: middle or working class? They asked them, do you prefer
18:25
Speaker 2: a candidate who identifies as progressive or a candidate who
18:29
Speaker 2: identifies as moderate. Every single person said they prefer a
18:34
Speaker 2: progressive candidate for a moderate candidate. Literally, no one raised
18:40
Speaker 2: a hand. Okay, let me go ahead and put the
18:42
Speaker 2: next piece up on the screen of data here. That
18:45
Speaker 2: was also interesting. So this is where they're asking them. Okay, well,
18:49
Speaker 2: tell me what you think about the Democratic Party if
18:52
Speaker 2: you had to use one or two words to describe it,
18:54
Speaker 2: what words would you pick?
18:55
Speaker 4: Now?
18:55
Speaker 2: I remind you, these are all Democrats, okay, these are
18:59
Speaker 2: Democratic Party voters. Number one spineless, Number two, more complacent
19:04
Speaker 2: than I thought they would be. Number three paralyzed, afraid, incompetent.
19:08
Speaker 2: I guess suffocated or given up, sold out? Next one
19:13
Speaker 2: sellouts and suckers immobilized. Can I say no balls, no kahonas,
19:18
Speaker 2: I will say, there are a large number of young
19:19
Speaker 2: Democrats that are really starting to climb the ranks in
19:21
Speaker 2: the party, that are motivated. I'm hoping that that will
19:24
Speaker 2: start to take over a little bit more so when
19:27
Speaker 2: you see those numbers overall, of like the Democratic Party
19:30
Speaker 2: being at its lowest approval rating in history. These type
19:33
Speaker 2: of people are a big part of that story because
19:36
Speaker 2: obviously Republicans are going to hate Democrats. There's a significant
19:39
Speaker 2: number of independents who are obviously discussed with Democrats, but
19:42
Speaker 2: it's their own voters being so disgusted and frustrated with
19:45
Speaker 2: them that has really sent them to the lowest lows
19:48
Speaker 2: and then last one. Then we can get, you know,
19:50
Speaker 2: into our reaction to all of this. This is there
19:53
Speaker 2: was a question about, Okay, well, is there anyone out
19:55
Speaker 2: there that you think is you know, doing something good.
19:58
Speaker 2: Has anybody seen anything from Democrat, any candidate or public
20:01
Speaker 2: figure or someone locally that's made you say, oh.
20:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, we need more of this. This is what we
20:05
Speaker 4: should be doing.
20:06
Speaker 2: More of this, guy, says Mike thirty three, white Democrat,
20:10
Speaker 2: says Zoron Montani. Clear concise messaging. It's exactly what everybody wants.
20:14
Speaker 2: It helps everybody. It's the perfect messaging because it's clear
20:17
Speaker 2: and concise. Unlike Democrats, just like Bernie. Bernie has said
20:20
Speaker 2: the same thing since the eighties. You've got a tax
20:22
Speaker 2: of billionaires, you've got a tax upperclass. He's never changed.
20:25
Speaker 2: That's the messaging. You've just got to drill it into them.
20:27
Speaker 2: And Zoron did it. Man, it's beautiful. Diane seventy two
20:31
Speaker 2: said Mike said it pretty clearly, and I can't really
20:33
Speaker 2: think of anything to add to that. And there was
20:35
Speaker 2: another person further down the list who also was like, yeah,
20:38
Speaker 2: Mike said what I was going to say.
20:39
Speaker 4: Now, I will temper that.
20:41
Speaker 2: Zager with the fact that the other two names that
20:43
Speaker 2: came up organically in the course of the conversation as
20:46
Speaker 2: like democratic candidates that they were excited about were Jasmine
20:50
Speaker 2: Crockett and Pete Booter.
20:52
Speaker 1: I wanted everyone to know very careful because.
20:55
Speaker 4: So what a progressive is is very.
20:57
Speaker 1: Contested, as we have all discovered over the years of
21:00
Speaker 1: the show. And I have no hate for the average American,
21:03
Speaker 1: but it's not like people are very good at self identifying.
21:06
Speaker 1: Somebody will be like, I'm a conservative, but that means
21:08
Speaker 1: I want to tax billionaires and you're like, wait what
21:10
Speaker 1: You're like, what are you talking about? Right? And then somebody, Look,
21:13
Speaker 1: people are complicated. They don't think much about terms when
21:16
Speaker 1: they hear the I mean, when I say the word progressive,
21:19
Speaker 1: what do they think I want to move forward?
21:20
Speaker 3: Right?
21:20
Speaker 1: I mean can mean a lot of different things. Do
21:22
Speaker 1: the activist class to the leftist base, that's an actual identity.
21:25
Speaker 1: So like when I say I am a rightist. That's
21:28
Speaker 1: because I've read a lot about politics. I don't identify
21:32
Speaker 1: as a small C conservative. That's really not something that
21:35
Speaker 1: is like that doesn't encompass like a belief right like
21:38
Speaker 1: I would put myself much more in the vein of
21:41
Speaker 1: like a European rightist. But most people don't think about
21:43
Speaker 1: politics like. They don't read a lot about definitions. To them,
21:46
Speaker 1: progressive means going forward, great, awesome right.
21:50
Speaker 2: Just to add to that, at least one of them,
21:52
Speaker 2: but maybe a number of them, brought up Joe Manchin
21:54
Speaker 2: as why they do not want to moderate. And so
21:57
Speaker 2: I think the combination of him, Kirson cinem and maybe
22:00
Speaker 2: a handful of others, but those two being the primary villains,
22:03
Speaker 2: they really destroyed the moderate label within the Democratic Party
22:07
Speaker 2: because now moderate just seems like, oh, you're just gonna
22:10
Speaker 2: obstruct anything good happening. You're just going to sell out
22:13
Speaker 2: to like various corporate interests.
22:15
Speaker 4: So no, of course we don't want that.
22:17
Speaker 2: And then the other thing, and this is where you
22:18
Speaker 2: know where it's dangerous, is there is a the Democratic
22:23
Speaker 2: base is united in wanting to fight harder against Trump right.
22:26
Speaker 2: They want someone who's pushing back effectively and is out
22:30
Speaker 2: there and taking risks and is meeting the moment in
22:33
Speaker 2: terms of the threat that they perceive to the country.
22:36
Speaker 2: Sometimes though, that can be very amorphous. That's how you
22:39
Speaker 2: end up with someone like Jasmine Crockett being named as
22:41
Speaker 2: like she's a fighter will She is very rhetorically gifted,
22:44
Speaker 2: she's very sassy. You know, she gets out there, she's
22:47
Speaker 2: like quick with the quip, undeniably like talented and charismatic.
22:51
Speaker 2: But if you dig underneath the surface, there's some real
22:53
Speaker 2: problems there in terms of who she's taking money from
22:55
Speaker 2: and the positions, how far she's willing to go, and she's.
22:57
Speaker 1: Procrypt, she's identity pauled, like she's calling James Tallerico racist.
23:02
Speaker 1: You know, she's the worst if you ask me. But
23:04
Speaker 1: that's the issue.
23:05
Speaker 4: But that's that's the challenge.
23:06
Speaker 2: That's the question mark to me is not do Democrats
23:09
Speaker 2: want to f They do, There's no doubt about it.
23:11
Speaker 2: You know that that argument has been one and I
23:14
Speaker 2: think the argument also has been one about like we're
23:16
Speaker 2: not listening to these establishment boys like Chuck Shumeranha King, Jeffries,
23:19
Speaker 2: go fuck yourself. We don't care what you have to say.
23:22
Speaker 2: Even liberal you know, media institutions. I think there's been
23:24
Speaker 2: a really breaking of the trust. But what it means
23:27
Speaker 2: is being a progressive. Is that Gavin Newsome being on
23:31
Speaker 2: Twitter and doing his like trolling routine, or is that,
23:34
Speaker 2: you know, a Zoran mom Donnie type of politician where
23:38
Speaker 2: not only do you have I mean Zora actually doesn't
23:40
Speaker 2: do a lot of the like trope clapback or whatever,
23:43
Speaker 2: but where you have an aggressive social media posture, but
23:45
Speaker 2: it's backed up by specific policies as well. And so
23:49
Speaker 2: that's the piece that you know, I think sort of
23:51
Speaker 2: remains to be determined, and we're going to see. I
23:54
Speaker 2: think we'll get a lot of indication of that from
23:56
Speaker 2: some of the primaries that are going to play out
23:59
Speaker 2: going to play out right now, and then certainly obviously
24:01
Speaker 2: the biggest test of that will be in twenty twenty
24:04
Speaker 2: eight whether someone like Gavin Newsom is going to be
24:07
Speaker 2: able to position themselves as a quote unquote progressive even
24:10
Speaker 2: as he is out there standing with billionaires to oppose
24:14
Speaker 2: a wealth tax in his state. I am personally actually
24:18
Speaker 2: hopeful that some of those things will be a problem,
24:20
Speaker 2: Like you can see them mention in you know, a
24:22
Speaker 2: bunch of the responses throughout this they talk about taxing
24:25
Speaker 2: the rich as it's kind of like a litmus test issue,
24:27
Speaker 2: and that would be a very hard one for a
24:30
Speaker 2: Gavin Newsom's style candidate to you know, obviously he's like
24:33
Speaker 2: already on the wrong side of that issue. So I
24:37
Speaker 2: am hopeful that there actually will be a substantive policy
24:41
Speaker 2: lens that the term progressive will be viewed for, But
24:45
Speaker 2: I fully acknowledge that that is still a question mark
24:47
Speaker 2: for sure.
24:48
Speaker 1: As I have learned over the years, and I've watched
24:51
Speaker 1: the words working class came to mean very different things.
24:54
Speaker 1: To remember, Ted Cruz used to say that we're a
24:57
Speaker 1: working class part. Ted Cruz called up a working class politician, okay,
25:00
Speaker 1: And if you were to ask people, some of the
25:02
Speaker 1: people who voted for him, they might even say, oh, yeah,
25:04
Speaker 1: you sports the work, like be honest, like is there
25:06
Speaker 1: a huge disconnect for all of it. I've seen the
25:08
Speaker 1: term bastardized about populism or working class now in the
25:13
Speaker 1: Republican Party, and it can be true at a rhetorical level,
25:15
Speaker 1: wrong at a policy level. Turns out, a lot of
25:18
Speaker 1: people don't care about the policy level. At the middle
25:20
Speaker 1: of an election, you could very easily see how it
25:23
Speaker 1: could be bastardized. And I mean for the people who
25:25
Speaker 1: watch our show, it's going to be tough because you know,
25:27
Speaker 1: you guys, if you're watching this, you're in the top
25:29
Speaker 1: two five percent of people consume politics. You got to
25:33
Speaker 1: think about your uncle or somebody who really doesn't pay
25:36
Speaker 1: that much attention is pissed off about Trump because of
25:38
Speaker 1: the White House lawn or something like that. You know
25:41
Speaker 1: somebody who's cranky about decorum. What does the term progressive
25:44
Speaker 1: mean to them? Probably nothing. And so when a Pete
25:47
Speaker 1: boodhaj Edge can say that famous Hillary line, I'm a
25:50
Speaker 1: progressive who likes to get things done, it might land
25:53
Speaker 1: same with Gavin Newsom. I nobody's done more on climate
25:56
Speaker 1: than me. The billionaire question. He's a very savvy political operator.
26:00
Speaker 1: Times I'll give you some hope. I'll give you some hope,
26:04
Speaker 1: which is for the Democratic base. Because the Democratic base
26:08
Speaker 1: is now more overwhelmingly college educated than everyone else. They
26:13
Speaker 1: are going to be a lot more well read and
26:16
Speaker 1: grammatic literally grammatically, uh, let's think about the best way
26:20
Speaker 1: to phrases. They're going to be a lot more educated
26:22
Speaker 1: and a lot more have much more of an ability
26:25
Speaker 1: to parse language and actually think about what these terms mean.
26:29
Speaker 1: As opposed to what the current existing Republican base is
26:32
Speaker 1: going to be, They're going to be way more heavier
26:36
Speaker 1: news consumers, much more well read whenever it comes to politics,
26:40
Speaker 1: probably care much more about policy. Richard Henania has the
26:43
Speaker 1: famous thing about how conservatives watch TV and liberals read
26:47
Speaker 1: that actually does matter whenever it comes to policy, prescription
26:50
Speaker 1: and other things. Is if you're going to read a
26:52
Speaker 1: policy position that already puts you pretty dramatically out of
26:55
Speaker 1: step with some of the other base that is voting,
26:57
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just being real here in terms of
26:59
Speaker 1: how that will look. So I think it will actually
27:01
Speaker 1: look quite different. But the other thing that I'm not
27:05
Speaker 1: I don't want to underestimate for a lot of the
27:06
Speaker 1: people who are also Democrats is you should forget don't forget.
27:10
Speaker 1: South Carolina could be the first state and that's a
27:12
Speaker 1: very different Democratic primary. And then if you have lower
27:16
Speaker 1: propensity voters who are upset at Trump who come out
27:20
Speaker 1: to vote.
27:20
Speaker 2: Although those people in South Carolina did not mess with
27:22
Speaker 2: Pete Boodage, so I'm not worried about him doing well there, they.
27:25
Speaker 1: Could mess with Crockett right, I could see that.
27:27
Speaker 4: I mean, you think, don't you think she's going to
27:29
Speaker 4: run for president?
27:30
Speaker 3: Maybe? Why not?
27:30
Speaker 4: I think he's not to win.
27:33
Speaker 2: You know Texas, like the war senator from Texas.
27:35
Speaker 1: Bato failed he ran for president.
27:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, but how did that work out?
27:38
Speaker 1: Sure he got two percent?
27:39
Speaker 4: But yeah, I don't know.
27:40
Speaker 1: What I need is Jim Clyburn to come in and
27:42
Speaker 1: make you a king. Remember there's no Iowa, there's no
27:45
Speaker 1: New Hampshire Clearinghouse this time.
27:47
Speaker 4: Well it's not.
27:47
Speaker 2: It's actually not clear what the order of the states
27:49
Speaker 2: is going to be. Some of that is still up
27:51
Speaker 2: for grounds. South Carolina will certainly be early and important
27:53
Speaker 2: in the process.
27:54
Speaker 4: But I mean, here's here's what I would say.
27:56
Speaker 2: My own prediction is that there are going to be
27:58
Speaker 2: a few issues that are Lippus test issues. I think
28:00
Speaker 2: their money for maypack, I think they're taxing the rich,
28:04
Speaker 2: and I think it's abolishing nice. I think those three
28:07
Speaker 2: things are going to be actual litmus test issues, and
28:10
Speaker 2: candidates who can't give clear cut answers on that are
28:12
Speaker 2: going to struggle. And I think the testing ground for
28:15
Speaker 2: that has been that I've had at podcast where you've
28:16
Speaker 2: got you know, you've got lady, I mean, Jennifer and
28:20
Speaker 2: Pumps at this point have really shifted a lot to
28:23
Speaker 2: the left right. These were Hillary supporters who are now like,
28:25
Speaker 2: you know what, Bernie was right and we should have
28:26
Speaker 2: been there a lot. So they have shifted significantly. But
28:29
Speaker 2: you know, their audience is very reflective of kind of
28:32
Speaker 2: like the core liberal base of the Democratic Party. And
28:35
Speaker 2: they are not speak not having it. They have not
28:38
Speaker 2: having it with Corey Booker coming on and doing his
28:41
Speaker 2: little tap dance or Ram Emmanuel whoever.
28:43
Speaker 4: They are not having it with these people.
28:45
Speaker 2: And so you know, that tells me there is kind
28:48
Speaker 2: of a hard line and an expectation of we want
28:50
Speaker 2: to hear not just you, you know, with a bunch
28:53
Speaker 2: of word salad trying to massage an answer. We want
28:56
Speaker 2: to hear yes or no answers to these few questions.
28:58
Speaker 2: The other thing that gives me some hope, especially on
29:00
Speaker 2: the identity politics front.
29:02
Speaker 4: Is there is also the level of trickery that Hillary.
29:06
Speaker 2: Clinton was able to engage in in her campaign against Bernie,
29:09
Speaker 2: where she was positioning herself like using identity politics to
29:13
Speaker 2: pretend like she was the more progressive candidate. I think
29:16
Speaker 2: people see through that garbage entirely at this point, as
29:20
Speaker 2: evidenced by the fact that Hailey Stevens, who is a
29:23
Speaker 2: Michigan member of Congress, she's in the House right now
29:26
Speaker 2: and is running for Senate. It's like the conservative or
29:29
Speaker 2: moderate candidate in that race back by Tuck, Shoomer, etc.
29:32
Speaker 2: She went and toured an ICE facility and she tro
29:35
Speaker 2: When she came out, she was like, Oh, I felt
29:37
Speaker 2: better because we've got female ICE agents who are running
29:40
Speaker 2: the place, trying to do like a girl boss ice
29:43
Speaker 2: agent situation. And people were not buying this whatsoever.
29:46
Speaker 4: This is f five. Let's take aalism of noe.
29:49
Speaker 1: There are female female leadership.
29:52
Speaker 4: Here your female leadership, and there are women.
29:55
Speaker 5: Who who walked with us today and explained on the
30:00
Speaker 5: intake process how important it is to dream people with humanity,
30:04
Speaker 5: and that obviously really stuck out to me because some
30:07
Speaker 5: of the things that we are witnessing before our eyes
30:10
Speaker 5: in our neighborhoods, in our streets is really a lack
30:13
Speaker 5: of humanity.
30:14
Speaker 2: So people were you know, this one did not land.
30:18
Speaker 2: This did not land with the Democratic base whatsoever. I mean,
30:22
Speaker 2: it's the name, right, It's like you know they're bombing.
30:24
Speaker 1: But they're they're at least their female.
30:27
Speaker 2: Right, they're female, and they're flying the gay pride flags. No, no, no,
30:30
Speaker 2: where we see through that. Now, we're not doing this anymore.
30:33
Speaker 1: Listen, I would I would welcome nothing more. More. Recently,
30:36
Speaker 1: there's been a gay there's been a sassy gay ice
30:39
Speaker 1: agent who's gone viral on the road. Oh, I thought
30:41
Speaker 1: I saw that. I loved the same thing. If we
30:46
Speaker 1: could turn them against we can turn against identity politics,
30:50
Speaker 1: no one will be happier than me. Oh that was great.
30:55
Speaker 1: Let's get to the next one.
30:56
Speaker 4: Yeah. So this is an interesting story.
30:58
Speaker 2: It kind of dovetails with some of the you know,
31:00
Speaker 2: it's a cross coalitional I think backlash against the push
31:03
Speaker 2: towards gambling. But the most clear place where we've had
31:06
Speaker 2: this cross partisan backlash is in the fight against AI
31:10
Speaker 2: more broadly, but specifically on the front lines with regards
31:13
Speaker 2: to data centers. And we could put this up on
31:14
Speaker 2: the screen. This is a scene from Claremore, Oklahoma. This
31:18
Speaker 2: is like a local Oklahoma town meeting where this person
31:23
Speaker 2: who was in Oklahoma says people are being arrested for
31:26
Speaker 2: speaking out against AI data centers. Please keep standing up
31:28
Speaker 2: for your community. There's another video that's gone viral this
31:32
Speaker 2: morning that I saw you guys could take this down.
31:34
Speaker 2: That I saw of another place I'm not sure if
31:37
Speaker 2: it was a red state or not, but where there
31:38
Speaker 2: had been significant protests against the data center and ultimately
31:41
Speaker 2: the town backs down. The backlash against these places is
31:45
Speaker 2: really building. And I was just listening to The New
31:47
Speaker 2: York Times actually did a deep dive into a town
31:50
Speaker 2: in Indiana that has become a hot spot for a
31:52
Speaker 2: bunch of these data centers.
31:54
Speaker 4: And the first ones kind of got built and.
31:56
Speaker 2: People just like accepted it, and there wasn't they didn't
31:59
Speaker 2: need any zone owing approval, so the town council like
32:01
Speaker 2: it just kind of sailed through. And now people are
32:04
Speaker 2: experiencing all of this increased traffic and noise, and they're
32:07
Speaker 2: starting to research, Okay, what even is AI and what
32:10
Speaker 2: is this going to mean, and what's it going to
32:11
Speaker 2: mean long term? And how many jobs are even really created?
32:14
Speaker 2: What is this going to mean for our community? And
32:16
Speaker 2: now there was a huge backlash to this new data
32:20
Speaker 2: center that they were trying to place there that did
32:22
Speaker 2: require a zoning change, which meant that the town had
32:25
Speaker 2: a chance to weigh in, so they held meetings overnight
32:29
Speaker 2: and they first called for okay, who's in support of this?
32:32
Speaker 2: And people got up and they spoke for there were like,
32:35
Speaker 2: you know, enough to fill about twenty five minutes. Then
32:38
Speaker 2: they opened it up for the opponents. The opponents there
32:41
Speaker 2: were so many of them that the meeting went on
32:43
Speaker 2: into four am assult ultimately, and this is a small town,
32:47
Speaker 2: right and ultimately the town council is like, okay, yeah,
32:49
Speaker 2: we're not going to do this. And so you are
32:51
Speaker 2: seeing this huge backlash and a lot of these data
32:55
Speaker 2: centers are being located in red states and red areas
32:58
Speaker 2: because rural areas have more and rural areas tend to
33:01
Speaker 2: be more Republican. Let's go and put G two up
33:04
Speaker 2: on the screen. This was a fantastic report from the
33:07
Speaker 2: Financial Times. They say Donald Trump's AI push fuel's revolt
33:10
Speaker 2: in MAGA heartlands. On a cold Tuesday evening last week,
33:13
Speaker 2: about two hundred Missourians, Missouri being another hotbed of AI
33:17
Speaker 2: development and also backlash, crammed into a Methodist church to
33:20
Speaker 2: share a message. The AI revolution embraced by Trump's White
33:23
Speaker 2: House did not have their unqualified support.
33:26
Speaker 1: Quote.
33:26
Speaker 2: I voted for this administration and didn't really think about
33:29
Speaker 2: AI until it started to affect me, said Lisa Garrett,
33:32
Speaker 2: who lives beside the site of a rapidly greenlit six
33:35
Speaker 2: point six billion dollars four hundred acre data center development
33:39
Speaker 2: in the satellite city of Independence, just east of Kansas City.
33:42
Speaker 2: A worker for a local ministry, Garrett's Onneyes extends beyond
33:45
Speaker 2: the project's demand on local water and electricity supplies, to
33:48
Speaker 2: the broader social impact of the industry it is being
33:51
Speaker 2: built to support. I have grandchildren. It does concern me
33:54
Speaker 2: that they're being drawn into a world that isn't real,
33:57
Speaker 2: she said. Her concerns, which pull after poll has shown
33:59
Speaker 2: her shared by much of Trump's space, are increasingly at
34:02
Speaker 2: odds with the posture and policies of his administration. And actually, Sager,
34:06
Speaker 2: I mean it is very like cross partisan the concerns
34:09
Speaker 2: here about data centers in particular. But the recent pulling
34:12
Speaker 2: that I saw show showed that the concerns were actually
34:14
Speaker 2: higher on the right for reasons that you can understand,
34:17
Speaker 2: because there tends to be more you know, more of
34:20
Speaker 2: a rural base, more concern about, okay, what is this
34:22
Speaker 2: community going to be, and more like sort of like
34:25
Speaker 2: this rootedness in a certain place and so and more
34:28
Speaker 2: quote unquote conservative views of like we aren't we are
34:31
Speaker 2: a little wary of change. We don't necessarily want the
34:33
Speaker 2: world to be turned upside down, not just in our
34:35
Speaker 2: local community, but by whatever this means. So, you know,
34:39
Speaker 2: I think this is one of the important fights as
34:41
Speaker 2: we contemplate what AI is going to mean for our
34:45
Speaker 2: social contract, and one of the places where you can
34:48
Speaker 2: sort of like you know, throw sand in the gears
34:51
Speaker 2: and at least slow the process down so that there
34:53
Speaker 2: is more of a chance for democracy to be able.
34:56
Speaker 1: To catch up.
34:56
Speaker 4: Yeah.
34:56
Speaker 1: I just think it's amazing, Like they're literally organic movements,
35:00
Speaker 1: people with their children, no data center, because again, everyone
35:03
Speaker 1: can feel this encroachment in their lives, especially if you
35:06
Speaker 1: have a child. So there's all these viral threads that
35:09
Speaker 1: are going around now about Spotify. For example, someone was like,
35:12
Speaker 1: you know, I'm so careful I don't allow video, and
35:15
Speaker 1: then what ended up happening is I gave my kids
35:18
Speaker 1: access to my Spotify account, but now Spotify is including
35:21
Speaker 1: music videos and it was like a workaround, and he's like,
35:23
Speaker 1: now I have to take Spotify away from it. It's
35:26
Speaker 1: like at every level you have parents who are bombarded
35:30
Speaker 1: doing everything they possibly can, having to pay attention to
35:33
Speaker 1: like every facet of modern life. More recently, you know
35:36
Speaker 1: how they would give out chromebooks or computers. You have
35:39
Speaker 1: teachers or you have parents who are turning them in.
35:41
Speaker 1: They're like, I can't have my children on this. They're
35:43
Speaker 1: using it as a workaround their screen time and all this.
35:46
Speaker 1: They're demanding that schools go back to paper because they're like,
35:49
Speaker 1: we have to just get rid of all this technology.
35:52
Speaker 1: Nothing's good coming from this is rotting my child's brain.
35:55
Speaker 1: And then you put the AI data center stuff into this,
35:59
Speaker 1: and then you have to look at the promise. What
36:00
Speaker 1: are we getting more claud agents that might like automate
36:05
Speaker 1: all the jobs, or more slop that children can watch
36:08
Speaker 1: on YouTube or YouTube shorts more. You know, now there's
36:13
Speaker 1: all these new AI movies that people are competing for.
36:16
Speaker 1: Everyone's like the bargain is not worth it. Higher electricity
36:19
Speaker 1: price and trying to take my job, which you increasingly
36:22
Speaker 1: brag about, and then general also just like propping up
36:24
Speaker 1: a sham stock market all at the same time, it's
36:27
Speaker 1: just is ridiculous. On top of corrupting a local community
36:31
Speaker 1: energy usage power bills it's all about control. And yeah,
36:34
Speaker 1: the most conservative impulse of all time is to like
36:37
Speaker 1: the famous line is like stand thwart history and yell stop,
36:40
Speaker 1: and like that's how a lot of people feel right now.
36:42
Speaker 4: I feel like the way right now.
36:43
Speaker 2: I feel that way because listen, you know, I think
36:46
Speaker 2: the technology is cool.
36:47
Speaker 4: Like I've been playing around with Claude.
36:50
Speaker 2: I think the advances over the past year, the more
36:54
Speaker 2: I dig into it, the more I realize is genuinely extraordinary.
36:57
Speaker 2: You know, the things you're able to feed in the
36:59
Speaker 2: hallucination have been diminished, the level the ability this part
37:03
Speaker 2: I haven't been able to figure out yet. But you know,
37:07
Speaker 2: you hear people who are not technical people or able
37:09
Speaker 2: to just go and like create an app and it
37:11
Speaker 2: doesn't even take very long and Claude spins it out
37:13
Speaker 2: in a few minutes.
37:14
Speaker 4: This is something. This is astonishing.
37:16
Speaker 2: And if it was, if the ownership was done correctly
37:20
Speaker 2: and the democratic control was done correctly, you can't imagine,
37:23
Speaker 2: you know, a society that was not structured like ours,
37:26
Speaker 2: where this would just be beneficial, where it would just
37:28
Speaker 2: be exciting and we would figure out how to manage
37:30
Speaker 2: the resources. I mean, the other risk that some of
37:34
Speaker 2: the community members in Indiana we're talking about is they're like,
37:37
Speaker 2: they're like, we looked into this and there are a
37:39
Speaker 2: lot of models coming out of China that are much
37:43
Speaker 2: less resource intensive. So you're going to build all of
37:45
Speaker 2: these data centers out are they even going to be
37:48
Speaker 2: needed in the future as these things become more and
37:50
Speaker 2: more efficient?
37:51
Speaker 4: So even that, you.
37:52
Speaker 2: Know, and then we're left with this big hulking, you know,
37:54
Speaker 2: decaying husk in our community.
37:56
Speaker 4: And what does that ultimately look like?
37:58
Speaker 2: So in any case, you know, we we would need
38:00
Speaker 2: to have massive democratic input on the resource usage, on
38:04
Speaker 2: the you know, capital expenditure, on how this is deployed,
38:07
Speaker 2: on how it is used, all on you know, how
38:10
Speaker 2: the how the fruits of this alleged productivity gains are
38:15
Speaker 2: going to be distributed. I mean, that's like the essential
38:18
Speaker 2: question in my view. But obviously we don't have any
38:21
Speaker 2: of that, which is why again I think these fights
38:23
Speaker 2: against data centers on a local basis, like that is
38:26
Speaker 2: the most likely place where you can have any sort
38:29
Speaker 2: of pushback, any sort of slow down in terms of
38:33
Speaker 2: this development, because in terms of you know, from this
38:35
Speaker 2: administration's perspective, it's just off to the races, and you know,
38:38
Speaker 2: the dystopian parts of this are becoming are increasingly here.
38:43
Speaker 4: Let's put G three up on the screen. We covered
38:45
Speaker 4: this before.
38:46
Speaker 2: There's this fight between Anthropic and the Pentagon where they're
38:49
Speaker 2: threatening to cut off Anthropic in what is being described
38:52
Speaker 2: here as an AI safeguards dispute, and the TLDR is
38:56
Speaker 2: that the Anthropic people got concerned about the way that
39:00
Speaker 2: Claude was used in the Venezuela rate. Now they have
39:04
Speaker 2: some sort of partnership with Palenteer and Claude and Anthropics
39:08
Speaker 2: products are generally more advanced in terms of government application,
39:12
Speaker 2: so they have a big contract with the Pentagon, and
39:15
Speaker 2: they're saying to the Pentagon, look, we have two red lines.
39:18
Speaker 2: Number one, we don't want Claude to be used in
39:20
Speaker 2: any sort of like autonomous killer robots, and number two,
39:24
Speaker 2: we don't want to be used for mass surveillance against
39:27
Speaker 2: American people. Now, I'm not sure why you have this
39:29
Speaker 2: tie up with Palenteer if you have these concerns, but
39:32
Speaker 2: that's where they're trying to draw a line. The other
39:35
Speaker 2: AI companies do not have such moral red lines, and
39:38
Speaker 2: I don't want to give Anthropic too much credit here.
39:40
Speaker 2: Because I think it's incredibly, incredibly naive to think that
39:44
Speaker 2: you would be able to hold the line on these
39:46
Speaker 2: things and you as individual like business owner or capitalists,
39:51
Speaker 2: are going to be able to tell the Department of
39:53
Speaker 2: War and the United States government how your technology gets deployed. Like,
39:57
Speaker 2: I think that was a very fanciful notion, but you
40:00
Speaker 2: can see how already the Pentagon's like, no, we're not
40:03
Speaker 2: going to listen to you. Not only are we not
40:05
Speaker 2: going to abide by your little, your little moral red
40:08
Speaker 2: lines against killer robots and mass surveillance, but we are
40:12
Speaker 2: going to punish any company that does work with you
40:15
Speaker 2: because you have the audacity to even try to put
40:18
Speaker 2: any sort of red line on how your technology can
40:21
Speaker 2: be deployed. So you know, there was Eric Schmidt, former
40:26
Speaker 2: CEO of Google. He was talking about a year ago
40:29
Speaker 2: saying that, you know, one of the things that all
40:32
Speaker 2: the AI CEOs were basically in agreement with is if
40:35
Speaker 2: this starts getting deployed and killer robots, they would pull
40:38
Speaker 2: the plug. But what you realize is like you don't
40:40
Speaker 2: actually have the ability to pull the plug even if
40:42
Speaker 2: you wanted to then, and already they've all abandoned that
40:45
Speaker 2: and like eh, well maybe killer Robert robots or okay,
40:47
Speaker 2: maybe it's fine, no big deal, we could work around it.
40:50
Speaker 2: But even if they did hold to their moral standards,
40:54
Speaker 2: once that technology gets out, once the Pentagon has access
40:57
Speaker 2: to it, like you're so cute to think that you're
40:59
Speaker 2: going to be the one in charge to be able
41:01
Speaker 2: to pull the plug on.
41:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's always been like that. Is that once you
41:04
Speaker 1: unleash the technology, once people get normalized, so we can
41:06
Speaker 1: get open source, they can work from it, the government
41:08
Speaker 1: can use however they want. This is the big danger
41:12
Speaker 1: in all of this for defense technology. And ultimately, like
41:16
Speaker 1: maybe you know, it's never really solvable, Like once the
41:19
Speaker 1: tech exists, it will always be used for the lowest
41:21
Speaker 1: common denominator, Like there's just no really way around it.
41:24
Speaker 1: It's basically always been that way war often like blood,
41:27
Speaker 1: is that the only thing that moves the wheels of history.
41:30
Speaker 1: Let's put G four up there on the screen just
41:33
Speaker 1: to give an example here. SpaceX is now going to
41:36
Speaker 1: compete in the contest for autonomous drone technology and this
41:41
Speaker 1: is the next frontier, you know, drone swarms and competition
41:46
Speaker 1: for AI targeting and then who will build the targeting software,
41:51
Speaker 1: and there's always one company that's going to be willing
41:53
Speaker 1: to play ball and to make money. So there's really
41:55
Speaker 1: no way around this. And also there's a competitor aspect.
41:58
Speaker 1: China has been heavily invested in drones and drone swarms,
42:01
Speaker 1: and it's often been like one of the dangers you know,
42:04
Speaker 1: for some of these bigger US carriers and US Navy
42:07
Speaker 1: destroyers or US Navy, US Navy vessels, that one of
42:13
Speaker 1: the pain points that they see. And so then the
42:15
Speaker 1: US says, well, well, now we need to create our
42:17
Speaker 1: own drone technology, our own counter drone technology. This is
42:21
Speaker 1: the danger, this in this entire thing, and we know this.
42:24
Speaker 1: It will be used to some effect. They already used
42:27
Speaker 1: Claude with Venezuela. We may be going to a major
42:30
Speaker 1: war with Iran. There's going to be a ton of
42:31
Speaker 1: AI whenever it comes in.
42:33
Speaker 2: And we know how it was deployed in Gaza in
42:36
Speaker 2: Palestine and the way it is deployed, you know, also
42:38
Speaker 2: in the West Bank and a lot of ways. Gaza
42:41
Speaker 2: is the testing ground for mass surveillance. You Palenteer, Microsoft,
42:46
Speaker 2: like a bunch of these companies been caught involved in
42:48
Speaker 2: the Gaza genocide. And so that has been the testing ground.
42:52
Speaker 2: I think that helped you accelerate the incredibly dystopian place
42:55
Speaker 2: that we're in. The last thing I'll say I was
42:57
Speaker 2: Novar Media had a good, a good piece on this,
42:59
Speaker 2: and they were saying, you know, when when scientists were
43:01
Speaker 2: building the you know, we're developing nuclear weapons, like you
43:05
Speaker 2: know Oppenheimer, they were not so foolish as to think
43:09
Speaker 2: that they, as the developers and creators of this technology,
43:13
Speaker 2: we're then going to get to tell the government how
43:14
Speaker 2: it gets deployed.
43:15
Speaker 1: Well, actually Oppenheimer was foolish enough.
43:17
Speaker 4: To think that, but a lot of the well take
43:19
Speaker 4: it out.
43:19
Speaker 2: But I mean he I think he knew at the
43:21
Speaker 2: end of the day, the President of the United States
43:22
Speaker 2: is going to say how this is used, not me, right,
43:24
Speaker 2: and so he made his case. But you know, I
43:27
Speaker 2: don't think they they thought that, like, oh, we're going
43:29
Speaker 2: to get to control how this is, how and when
43:31
Speaker 2: and wherever. Now, many of them organized afterwards to try
43:35
Speaker 2: to you know, check nuclear proliferation and try to check
43:39
Speaker 2: the use and spread in advance of this technology, but
43:41
Speaker 2: there was a much clearer understanding of like, no, we're
43:44
Speaker 2: developing this for the US government, and they're going to
43:47
Speaker 2: get to have to say over what comes. And I
43:51
Speaker 2: you know, because we've lived in this like free market
43:55
Speaker 2: capitalists sort of like delusion where government just cedes control
43:59
Speaker 2: to listen too markets. I think these guys did delude
44:02
Speaker 2: themselves into thinking like we're going to get to figure
44:06
Speaker 2: out how this is deployed, and it's like it doesn't
44:08
Speaker 2: work that way. So you know, when you did your
44:11
Speaker 2: tie up with the Pentagon, and now you want to
44:14
Speaker 2: set a moral red line, and I think they did
44:16
Speaker 2: have that red line from the beginning. You know, you're
44:18
Speaker 2: a fool if you think that they're going to abide
44:21
Speaker 2: by what you want. They see themselves as in this
44:23
Speaker 2: race with China and they're going to win at all costs,
44:25
Speaker 2: at all costs.
44:27
Speaker 1: And I'm look, war with Iran. Who knows how it's
44:29
Speaker 1: going to go con spiral. It could go into this,
44:32
Speaker 1: go into that next thing. You know, these things are
44:33
Speaker 1: going to get nationalized, the Defense Production Act, your data
44:36
Speaker 1: centers and all that will be seized and be put
44:38
Speaker 1: to ford. I mean that can happen like this. You
44:40
Speaker 1: know in wartime, go read a book about World War two.
44:43
Speaker 1: Look how quickly you went from private industry to literally
44:47
Speaker 1: the War production board managing with the Ford Factory is
44:50
Speaker 1: plumbing out what you think? They're not going to do
44:51
Speaker 1: that with AI and with everything else. If things get
44:54
Speaker 1: truly existential, the laws already on the books. They have
44:57
Speaker 1: monarchical powers if they want to. You're right, this is
45:00
Speaker 1: deeply naive. All right, Thank you guys so much for watching.
45:03
Speaker 1: We appreciate it. Please support us if you can. If not,
45:06
Speaker 1: Friday show tomorrow. See you all then,