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Bernie vs. the Robots · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Ponce of America. I'm Jon Lovett. Today on
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the show, I had a great conversation with Senator Bernie
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Sanders on AI, super PACs, and his journey from a
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: kid on a kibbutz in Israel to a senator trying
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: to prevent weapon sales to Netanyahu and trying to save
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: humanity from robots at the same time. And then you'll
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: hear my conversation with our friend and journalist Peter Hamby,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: founding partner of Puck News and host of the Powers
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: That Be podcast on the Democratic shakeup in Maine, the
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: governor's race in California, some news on the DNC, and
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: how the left ought to confront political violence. But first,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: here's my conversation with Bernie. Senator Sanders, welcome back to
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: the show.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Good to be with you, John.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: So I watched your panel last night on the existential
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: risks of AI. You had researchers from North America and China.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: It was a bracing experience. Just for people that may
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: not have caught it, MIT's Max Tegmark says, we'll be
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: like animals in a zoo. And then another researcher named
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: David Kruger says, zoos, most of us won't be so lucky.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: What did you take away? Why did you want to
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: do this conversation?
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: Thank you, John, for asking me about that. I am
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: not a tech guy, but I'm sitting around and I
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: read and I listen to people. And it is clear
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: to me that AI and robotics are the most revolutionary
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: technologies in the history of humanity. They are going to
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: transform life for every man, woman, and child. certainly in
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: our country and around the world. How the hell do
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: we ignore that reality? Why is there not massive discussion
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: about the impact of AI? For example, all right, who
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: is pushing AI right now? Who's pushing AI and robotics?
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: The richest guys in the world, Musk, Bezos, Ellison, Zuckerberg.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: What do you think they want? Do you think they're
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: staying up nights worrying about your family? I doubt it.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: Number two, there are economists all over the place who estimate,
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: no one knows exactly, tens and tens of millions of
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: jobs are going to be lost. What happens to the
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: people who lose the jobs? Think they'll automatically go out
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: and get another job? That does not appear to be
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: the case. We got kids hooked to AI bots for
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: emotional support becoming increasingly isolated. Should we worry about that? Yeah,
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: we should. Politically, I won't get into what it will
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: mean to our democracy, in politics in America.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: It's a big deal.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: But what last night was about is having very knowledgeable
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: people talking about the real possibility that AI will escape
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: human control, become independent, do its own thing, and the
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: likelihood that that could lead to catastrophic implications, including extinction.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: So my job is not to fearmonger, but it's to say,
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: wait a second. You got Nobel Prize winners. Jeffrey Hinton
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: saying this. Do you think we might want to take
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: a deep breath and think about where we go from here?
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's this strange fatalism about it. And I think
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: about when we've gone through other big technological changes. You know,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: it wasn't assembly lines that put kids in factories. It
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: was people that own the factories that made that decision.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: It's not, you know, it's not the technology industry. itself
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: that's being unleashed and hitting our kids and affecting our media.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: It's the people who own those tools that are distributing
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: them and profiting off of them. There's this way in
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: which this technology, it seems like magic and we kind
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: of lose our senses. And one of the things that
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: came out of your discussion last night is treat what
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: this company's product like you would a Toyota or a
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: tortilla chip. So what kind of regulations would you like
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: to see if we sort of got our heads out
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: of our asses here?
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: What Dr.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: Tegmar from MIT said, look, you go to a sandwich shop, right?
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: You know what?
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: It is regulated. The health department comes in to make
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: sure the food you're eating is edible and not in the.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Shop is clean.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: And yet the AI guys want to go forward with
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: this revolutionary technology with no regulation. There is an enormous
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: amount of work that has to be done But John,
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: the first thing that has to be done is that
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: we have got to say, slow it down. Let us
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: get our hands around it. The AI safety element about
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: AI becoming independent of human control.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: You, Jisha, what do you do?
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Well, clearly, you bring people from all over the world.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: Last night, as you know, we had scientists from China.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: Bring them together to sit down, to advise governments around
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: the world about how we slow this down so we
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: don't lose control of the technology. In terms of economics,
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: if millions and millions of workers lose their jobs, what
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: do we do?
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Well, you know what?
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: Extending unemployment ain't going to be good enough. We're going
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: to have to be thinking about a whole new social contract,
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. This is all that I'm saying here.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: This is a big, big deal. Congress is way behind
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: where it should be. We need some serious discussion.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: So you had Chinese voices as part of this conversation.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary. posted a criticism of you
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: saying that the, that the real threat is letting any
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: nation other than the United States set the global standard. Uh,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: what's your response to that criticism?
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Right. Mr.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: Bassett, the billionaire and the Trump administration billionaires working with
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg, uh, Larry Ellison, and
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: a host of other billionaires who dominate AI.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: They're not a threat.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: Hey, we should all trust them because they have the
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: betterment of the American people. Well, forgive me, I don't
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: accept that at all. So I think in China, they
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: are smart enough. Look, this gets me thinking about the
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: nuclear arms race. You had a conservative Republican named Ronald
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: Reagan sitting down with Gorbachev, then the premier of the
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Soviet Union, talking about the reality that a nuclear war
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: would not be good for the Soviet Union, not be
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: good for the United States. They worked together on a
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: nuclear arms treaty.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: You know what?
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: The world, human race losing control over AI ain't good
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: for China, ain't good for America, ain't good for the world.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Of course, we've got to work together.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: So as part of this, you put forward You propose
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: a moratorium on new data centers until we have these
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: kinds of safeguards in place. Your colleague, Senator Mark Warner,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: who's a pretty, I think, mild-mannered guy, called it idiocy
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: because he's worried about losing this race to China. And
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I don't think he is, you know, he's not Trump.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: He's not Zuckerberg. What do you say to that criticism?
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: for people who both agree that there do need to
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: be safeguards, but also as much as we worry about
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: these billionaires having so much sway, it would be worse
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: if control of this technology by China surpassed us.
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: This is not a race with China. This is a
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: question of scientists sitting down and figuring out how we
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: can prevent this technology from escaping human control with calamitous impact.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: I cannot believe that any sane person would.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Be against that. That's my view.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: So this is not, you know, we got to get,
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: you can compete with China all you want, but we
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: have got to do everything that we can to prevent
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: what some scientists think is a very dangerous situation.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess I, I, I agree with that, but
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: it's almost like these are two separate questions, right? Because
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Because if we were to slow down and China didn't
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: slow down, it's not preventing this.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: The moratorium is not the end. All that I want
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: from the moratorium is.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: To give up. You know, maybe I'm crazy, John. Maybe
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: I am.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: I know one or two people have told me about it,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: including my wife. If scientists who are Nobel Prize winners,
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: guys who've gotten the Turing Award, which is the major
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: award given to people in computer science, if they say
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: to you that humanity is in danger, Do you think
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: you might want to do something about it? Or am
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: I missing something?
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: You tell me.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: So, no, the percentages are also someone's, oh, there's only
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: a 10% chance humanity is destroyed. Well, I don't like
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: those odds.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: Only a 10% chance. John!
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: I know. I'm with you.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: This is the point.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: The point is that, again, either I'm nuts or I'm
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: A 10% chance, yeah, that the whole world might be destroyed. Yeah,
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: I think we might want to get to work to
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: prevent that. And this is preventable, by the way. It's
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: nothing to do with competing against China. It's coming together
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: to prevent what might be a catastrophe. Right.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: It seems like that, like, you know, you mentioned this
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: in the past and last night, you know, President Trump
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: and the leader of China, Xi, they're going to meet
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: and AI may be part of what they're discussing. What
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: do you hope would come out of this? of that
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: kind of conversation?
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: I was glad to see that. The Wall Street Journal
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: reported that that will be part of their agenda. And
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: that's a very positive thing. And I hope that they
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: sit down and say, look, your scientists in the United States,
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: scientists in China agree this is a danger. It works
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: to nobody's advantage to allow this to happen, okay? Not China,
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: not the United States. Bring together the scientific community, develop
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: some protocols to prevent that. You don't want a technology
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: that can escape human control. Can we bring that about?
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: We can.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: But you're going to have to have people from China,
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: the United States, other countries working on something, which would
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: eventually then, I suspect, and a little bit over my
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: head here, you know, become something like an international treaty. Right.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: And then in between that, right, there's so there's the
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: kind of broader threat of this technology escaping our control.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: But in between there and now, there's the ways in
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: which kids are getting sucked into this technology. There's the
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: ways it's affecting our media. And it does seem as
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: though the industry would benefit from a set of regulations
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: that allow them to compete on non-evil, aspects of the
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: technology and continue to develop and grow and improve the
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: technology in ways that are beneficial to people rather than
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: these sort of toxic and parasitic implications.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: Let's get to another issue and to ask, you know,
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: this is not because members of Congress are dumb or
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: don't know what's going on. This has a lot to
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: do with the power and the financial resources of AI
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: and their super PACs.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: We're talking about.
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: Many, many, many hundreds of millions of dollars coming into
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: the midterm elections right now. So you're running for Congress, okay?
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: And you had a kid and you're worried about the
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: impact of AI. You think you're going to stand up
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: and say, well, you know, I think we need some
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: sensible regulations here. And then the AI industry says, really?
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Well, guess what?
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: I got a $ 10 million check going in to negative
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: ads against you, which takes us, John, from the dangers
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: of AI to a corrupt campaign finance system, which is
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: undermining American democracy.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: So I talked to Senator Chris Murphy about this recently,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: and he's worried about this too, that Democrats won't draw
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: an effective contrast with Republicans. You know, Trump and the Republicans,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: they forget sensible regulations. They even try to prevent state regulations.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: So they tried to take us in the other direction.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: But what Murphy was worried about is because there's this
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: sort of Damocles of all this cash hanging over Democrats'
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: heads that people will uh, uh, not take a strong stand. What,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: what do you say to Democrats who worried about that?
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: Well, Chris, what Chris told you was right. Um, but
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: it speaks to the need for us to be honest
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: about where we are as a country. Look, all of
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: us are concerned about Trump's pathological lying, his attempt to
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: undermine democracy in so many ways. I think every Democrat, um,
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: an independent caucuses with the Democrats agrees with that, but
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: there is another threat to democracy And that is the
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: power of big money over the political process.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: And that is why I.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: Circulated a letter with a number of my colleagues saying
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: that while we must work to overturn this disastrous Citizens
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: United Supreme Court decision, which allows billionaires to spend as
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: much money as they want to buy elections, at the
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: very least, Democrats within Democratic primaries, their presidential primaries, as
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: well as congressional and other primaries, got to get super
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: PAC money out of those primaries.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you sent that letter this week. It actually
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: follows a letter you sent about a year ago. This
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: was to Senator Schumer, to Ken Martin, the head of
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the DNC. Basically, you know, let's first wear super PACs
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: inside of our own primaries. And, you know, Ken Martin
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: responded by saying he's in spirit behind it, but that
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: his hands seem to be tide. What is the reluctance,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: do you think, of just fully embracing this kind of,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: and he's smiling.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: All right, John, let me throw in.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: What's happening? Tell me.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: This is not a very hard question to answer.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: What do you think the answer is?
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: What do you think the establishment, Democratic establishment, is doing
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: right now as we speak?
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: They're hustling this money.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, they're right. That's right.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: You know, they are hustling money from AI industry, they're
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: hustling money from APAC, they're hustling money from crypto and
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: from other special interests. All right, they got that money
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: and they use what they do with it, what they do.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: But this is really insidious. And I think progressives increasingly
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: understand that that money often, which comes, by the way,
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: from Trumpers, Republicans, is going to be used against progressives
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: and decent people who are running in primaries.
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  Speaker 1: to just, I'm glad we talked about the SuperPAC money
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: from AI, but I do want to talk about the
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: economic implications because that's the other part of this existential threat.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: You've talked about attacks on companies that get rid of
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: jobs for automation or for robots. But to the point
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: of the scale of this problem, if really 100 million
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: jobs could potentially be at risk, to your point, we'd
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: have to think about a much different social compact. Right now,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: if a company hires a worker, they pay payroll taxes.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: They are charged money for every worker on the books, right?
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: And we've actually shifted the burden of taxes towards income
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: and towards labor and away from corporate income. If a
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: company buys a machine to do that job, according to
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: our tax code, you can not only pay no taxes
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: on it, you get a depreciation, you get a credit.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: So the proposal you have is a sort of mitigation,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: but the whole code is tilted against human beings.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Look, I think, you know, we have not yet, although
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: our main thrust right now is to say, slow it
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: down so we can get our hands around all of this.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: And I just had a meeting today with my staff
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: to start working on what a sensible solution would be.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: And it ain't easy stuff because what we're dealing with
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: is unprecedented problems. But to your point, this, in my view,
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: goes beyond saying, oh, we got to extend unemployment benefits.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: Fine.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we need what's called a trade adjustment assistance. If
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: you lose your job to AI, we'll retrain you.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Fine.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: It goes a lot deeper than that because this technological
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: revolution is so sweeping that that what we need to
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: be talking about is a new social contract. It's not saying, hey,
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: you lose your job, you can get unemployment, great. We
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: need to go a lot deeper than that because you
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: may never get another job. You're a 50-year-old truck driver
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: today and you're replaced by a driverless vehicle. Where are
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: you going to go out and get a job? It's
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: not like you can walk down the street and get
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: another job. That job may not be there. So we
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: need to think really in new ways as to how
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: we address these crises.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'm talking to you in California. and
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: we live in a kind of signal example of this
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: because we are in the, what, the fifth, fourth largest
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: economy in the world, driven primarily from, you know, a
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: half dozen companies in Silicon Valley that are growing exponentially
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: but don't hire, you know, they're not hiring at a
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: rate to match the scale of their growth. And if
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: we have a tax code in which we've lowered the
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: corporate rate, right? We basically have said, our tax code
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: says we would rather a company be gigantic and employ
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: no one than be kind of profitable while employing hundreds
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: of thousands of people. That is what our tax code
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: currently prefers.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Let me throw something else out to you.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: And again, the truth is nobody knows exactly what is
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: going to happen. Honest people have differences of opinions It's
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: the nature of the job loss, how quickly it will occur,
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: et cetera. But if, underlined if, tens of millions of
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: people lose their jobs, they're not paying any taxes at all,
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: are they? How are you going to sustain programs like
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Et cetera, et cetera?
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: How are you going to sustain government?
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: You know, so, you know.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: These are profound questions that we've got to address. But
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: bottom line is, I think we're talking about a new
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: social compact. How do we make sure this revolutionary technology
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: improves human life economically, socially, psychologically, and of course, prevents
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: any kind of catastrophe?
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Switching gears, in April of last year, only 15 Democrats
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: voted with your resolution to block weapons sales to Israel. Now,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: two weeks ago, 40 Democrats. There is a profound shift happening. Obviously,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: that is driven by the ways in which Israel has
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: conducted its military campaign in Gaza, the way it has
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: been expanding settlements, its incursion into Lebanon. What are you
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: observing about this shift in democratic politics among your colleagues?
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: And what does it tell you about where we're heading?
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: What it tells me, and by the way, it is
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: not just Democrats, it's Republicans as well, and I think
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: you're going to see movement in the direction you described
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: among Republicans in the not-too-distant future. Look, we have an
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: economy in which 60% of our people live in paycheck-to-paycheck.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: People are hurting, can't afford health care, housing, educating their kids,
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: child care, etc. Then they look up and they see
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: that President Trump wants to provide billions of dollars of
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: military aid to the extremist Netanyahu government in Israel.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: And they look and they say, really? But what has
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: this government done?
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: And we all know that Hamas is a terrorist organization
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: that attacked Israel in a horrible way, killing 1,200 people.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Israel had a right to respond. But they did not
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: have a right to go to war against the entire
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: Palestinian people. 2.2 million people in the area. Killed 72,000
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: of them. Mostly women, children, and the elderly. injured something
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: like 170,000. That's more than 10% of the population killed
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: or wounded, wiped out almost the entire infrastructure. And what people,
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: including myself, I think have concluded, this is a genocidal attack.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: So people are looking, then they say, well, that's bad.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: Why are we giving money to a government that does that?
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: And then we wake up a few months ago and
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: Israel has gotten Netanyahu, after 40 years of effort, Netanyahu,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: who finally found a president who is willing to go
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: to war against Iran, tax Iran in the middle of
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: the night.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: We're off in another war. Price of gas is now
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: going up. We're killing schoolchildren in Iran. Israel now is
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: in Lebanon, displacing over a million people, killing bombing civilian neighborhoods.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: As you indicated in the West Bank, like vigilantes now
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: killing Palestinians, destroying farms, destroying homes. Who in their right
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: mind wants to continue to fund a government that does that?
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: And the polls tell us that. And Democrats look at
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: the polls and they say, I go home. I hold
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: a town meeting. Everybody says, why the hell are you
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: funding Netanyahu's government? So they're beginning to catch on. And
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: as you indicated, more and more now we have 40
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: out of 47 members of the caucus who are saying
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: no more.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this has been an issue in primaries
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: across the country right now that are playing out today.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Janet Mill suspended. her campaign, which means that Graham Platner
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: will be the nominee. He's somebody that's been outspoken about this.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Did you have any reaction to what happened in Maine?
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: And I got to tell you, John, you know, I've
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: been all over the country. And you have to trust
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: me on this. But whenever I talk about what was
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: going on in Gaza, just people would stand up and,
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: you know, really express their feelings.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: This is a very.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: Emotional issue for people all over this country who do
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: not want to be complicit in killing women and children
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: and destroying all of Gaza. So I think, you know,
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: what Platner is doing, he has run a brilliant campaign
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: to my mind, not dissimilar. Maine is obviously a very
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: rural state, but not radically dissimilar from what Mamdani did
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: in New York City, which is clearly the largest city
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: in America.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: What do they do?
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: They both have taken, brought forth an agenda that is
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: prepared to take on the oligarchs and the big money interests. Nobody,
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: or very few people in America, think that it's okay
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: that the top 1% now owns more wealth than the
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: bottom 93%, or that Elon Musk himself owns more wealth
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: than the bottom 53% of American households. So it makes sense.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: So Vandani talked about it. That's what Plattner is talking about.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: And they have an agenda that speaks to the needs
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: of working people. Health care for all, education for all,
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. So I see that happening not
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: just in New York City and Maine. I see it
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: happening in communities all over this country. Tomorrow, as a
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: matter of fact, tomorrow night, I will be in Ohio.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: Then I'll be in Minnesota. Then I'll be in Detroit
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: with Abdul El-Sayed in Detroit, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, Mr. Poindexter,
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Brian Poindexter in Ohio. People now are raising these issues.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: Working class people are sick and tired of the greed.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: of the big money interests. They want a government that
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: represents all of us, not just a few.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: So you spent time in Israel as a young man
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: on a kibbutz. You've talked about being part of the
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Jewish tradition of social justice. A few years ago, you
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: wrote about this. You said your pride and admiration for
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Israel lives alongside your support for Palestinian freedom and independence.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: What do you say to people, especially younger Jewish people,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: who find it impossible to to feel any pride or
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: admiration for an Israel that does not uphold Jewish values?
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: Well, look, right now you have, you know, when you
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: talk about what I don't like, and Netanyahu pushes this
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: all of the time, that if you are critical of
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: the horrific policies of the Netanyahu government, you are somehow
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: an anti-Semite. And that is totally absurd. As it happens,
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: my father's family was kind of wiped out in Poland
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: by Hitler.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: I am not an anti-Semite.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: And in fact, anti-Semitism is a growing and serious problem
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: all over the world. What has gone on, for whatever
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: reason that I am not the most knowledgeable guy in
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: the world on, Israel over the last number of years
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: has become gone from being a moderate liberal type country
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: to a right-wing extremist country in which, by the way,
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: Netanyahu is not even the worst. I mean, you're talking
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: about guys that are really kind of racist, guys who
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: really want expansionism.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: So we have got to oppose that government.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: And hopefully the day will come when Israel will elect
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: people who understand that they need to be working with
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: their neighbors and not just simply trying to dominate them
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: in terrible ways.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: What do you say to younger people, especially younger Jews
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: who now feel, you know, they grew up... seeing an
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Israel led by Netanyahu. They've watched these atrocities unfold over
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: the last few years, and it's led them to believe
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: the problem just isn't Benjamin Netanyahu, that there's something fundamentally
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: wrong about the project of Israel.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: I don't have a magical answer to that right now,
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: but right now what I am trying to do is
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: to make sure that the United States government is not
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: complicit in the horrific acts of the Netanyahu government. We
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: can talk about, you know, where we go from there,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: but that's where I am right now.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: What do you think if you saw that 20-something Bernie
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Sanders on a kibbutz and you said, hey, 60 years
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: from now, I'm going to be fighting in the Senate
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: against the robots?
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: Well, it's kind of, and by the way, I will
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: tell you when I was, you know, I don't know
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: how much you know about the history of the kibbutzim
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: formed by, you know, Jews who left the anti-Semitism of Europe.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: These were very, very progressive entities.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Women, you know, it was democratically owned and controlled.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: Women had rights that they didn't have in the United States,
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: were leaders in a way that was not true. Older
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: people were playing an active role. It was an interesting
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: and novel model, which I happen to believe in. But obviously,
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: that is not what Israel is about today. And going
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: from where I was as a kid to being a
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: United States senator dealing with these issues, it's been a
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: long journey, to say the least.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Senator Sanders, thanks for your time. Good to talk to you.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Thank you, John.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Senator Sanders for joining us. When we come back,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: I talk to Peter Hamby.
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  Speaker 1: Mobile for details. Peter, welcome back to the pod. Good
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: to see you.
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: Good to see you, John.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: All right. So I want to start with your piece
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: on political violence. Uh, you wrote democratic elected and other
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: party leaders vehemently condemned political violence all the time, but
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: many on the left have become too comfortable celebrating violence
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: or bad luck that befalls their Trumpian enemies. They are
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: too loose with their language, too cozy with conspiracies that
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: can lead to a dark place. Now you're very clear
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: in this piece, which you wrote after the assassination attempt
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: at the white house correspondence center, uh, very clear about
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: the ways in which the right looks past Trump's calls
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: to violence, exploits tragedies to target the left.
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: Thank you for saying that.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: But even still, I am sure there are people hearing
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: this and thinking the most powerful person on the earth,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: encouraged an insurrection, seeks to jail his enemies, celebrates the
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: deaths of people like Robert Mueller and Rob Reiner, and
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: you're talking about random people on the internet. So what
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: are you seeing and why do you think it's important?
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: I think the phrase random people on the internet actually matters,
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: first of all. And I do want to say thank
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: you for saying that, acknowledging that part of the piece,
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: because I felt like I wrote 10 paragraphs about Caroline
• 34:21
  Speaker 5: Leavitt mischaracterizing or lying about how various people, Hakeem Jeffries,
• 34:26
  Speaker 5: used terms like warfare, quote unquote, to refer to redistricting,
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: redistricting wars. I mean, we've both been in politics for
• 34:34
  Speaker 5: a long time. People use terms like combat or murder,
• 34:37
  Speaker 5: suicide or Just violent martial terms. This comes up in
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: sports commentary all the time.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare was familiar with metaphor as well, I think. And
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: I consider Hakeem Jeffries the Shakespeare of people that do
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the alphabet.
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I do too. I consider him an awesome people
• 34:50
  Speaker 5: who do the alphabet. He would like that reference. I
• 34:54
  Speaker 5: think that the random people on the internet thing matters.
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: And I thought about this with John Favreau, other John,
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: who after Charlie Kirk was killed, noticed, yes, random people
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: on the internet, random TikTokers celebrating his death. Um, and
• 35:10
  Speaker 5: even as I was walking in here, uh, Taylor Lorenz
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: posted a tweet or maybe not a tweet, maybe a
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: blue sky or a thread that, uh, people are using
• 35:20
  Speaker 5: the sound of Charlie Kirk getting shot, the gunshot to
• 35:23
  Speaker 5: do quick cut edits of outfit changes. And that just, again, diminishes,
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: I think, what, what happened. And like, you don't have
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: to like Charlie Kirk. I don't, This is our thing, John.
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: I know coming in here, like this is a founding
• 35:38
  Speaker 5: principle of crooked media. And I feel like this came
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: from John Lovett brain, which is the DC media's tendency
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: to both sides thing. That is not me. And for
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: the people listening, I'm not that journalist. But I was
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: there in the ballroom. And part of it too is
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: I've read polls, right? Like in the first Trump term,
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: obviously in the Obama years, you know, people blamed Trump
• 36:01
  Speaker 5: and Republicans for the crazy. for the conspiracy theories. Voters did.
• 36:07
  Speaker 5: NPR had a poll, I think, in 2017 saying 70%
• 36:10
  Speaker 5: of voters blame Trump and Republicans for the toxicity in
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: our politics. And, you know, there was a moral and
• 36:17
  Speaker 5: intellectual high ground, I think, in the Democratic Party. There
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: hasn't been widespread political violence coming from the left since
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: the 70s with the Weather Underground, Black Panthers, etc. There's
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: obviously been anti-government violence. You've got like black bloc Antifa
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: types and whatever. But there has been an uptick in
• 36:34
  Speaker 5: partisan motivated, not just violence, but plots. There was somebody
• 36:39
  Speaker 5: who showed up at the Capitol last year wanting to
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: kill Pete Hegseth. That person was arrested. There's obviously two
• 36:46
  Speaker 5: of the three assassins, attempted assassins on Donald Trump sounded
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: like they had left leaning political views. And again, back
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: to the random people on the Internet thing. It's not
• 36:57
  Speaker 5: coming from Democratic politicians. It's not. It's really not. Now
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: there's like Jasmine Crockett posted a conspiracy theory the other
• 37:03
  Speaker 5: day that the attack on the Washington Hilton might've been
• 37:07
  Speaker 5: a false flag or whatever. The problem is the diminishing
• 37:10
  Speaker 5: power of people like me and the mainstream press and
• 37:13
  Speaker 5: the diminishing ability of normie politicians to get out there
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: in the information ecosystem and have people hear them. That
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: stuff is being replaced just by noise and slop on
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: the internet. And it does seem like to me, and
• 37:29
  Speaker 5: I think the evidence in the polling bears this out, that,
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: you know, liberals and progressives, and by the way, some
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: of these people might just be fake bots. They might be,
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: they might, you know, J.D. Vance likes to totally, and
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: the right, completely exploit, you know, even the fringiest thing
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: that you found on the internet and pretend it's like
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: the mainstream view of the Democratic Party. And I make
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: clear in the piece, as you read, Democrats aren't the
• 37:52
  Speaker 5: ones saying this. It is, though, kind of ambient on
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: the internet, And I think– I actually wanted to ask
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: you about this. The Michelle Obama, they– when they go low,
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: we go high thing. That feels dead and gone and
• 38:04
  Speaker 5: like millennial cringe at this point. In the second Trump term,
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: there has– it has been celebrated that like we're going
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: to fight dirty. And I'm not trying to be civility
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: police either, dude, at all. But like people just feel like, OK,
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: we're going to play on their terms, get in their sandbox.
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: We're going to throw punches, call names. And then maybe,
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: maybe– you end up with a guy who's got a
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: screw loose, who hears all this stuff on the internet
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: and thinks, I've got to go kill the rapist, fascist
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: pedophile in the White House. I just think that it's
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: easier to hear the crazy stuff that the algorithms have
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: poured gasoline on than it ever was. And you just
• 38:45
  Speaker 5: hear it more on the left than I think you
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: used to. Yeah.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: It's like, there's so many parts that you have to
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: tease out, right? And there's a big distinction. It isn't
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: coming from the vast majority of Democratic politicians, right? And
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: there is just a distinction between how responsible elected Republicans are,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: including the president, versus how responsible elected Democrats are. Even
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: this week, we saw what is obviously a ridiculous prosecution
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: of James Comey, the number of Republicans refusing to criticize
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: that or openly embracing that, members of Congress saying, well,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: look at all the other bad things Jim Comey did, right?
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: it is distinct from political violence, but embracing the jailing
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: of your political enemies on specious reasons is adjacent to
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: a politics in which people can celebrate political violence. But
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: the challenge is most Americans deplore political violence. All the
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: mainstream politicians on the left can deplore political violence. 95%
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: of people say the right thing. Then the next day,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: 100% of people spend the day talking about what the
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: 5% said and how heinous it is and how it's
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: actually justified in all the rest. You know, we at
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: crooked media, I, I feel like we take some flack
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: from all directions for this, but we obviously denounce Republicans
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: when they try to exploit political violence. We also, uh,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: try to, uh, go after what we see people when
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: we see people justifying it. John, John, as you mentioned, uh,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: did that as well in the piece. Uh, But if
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: everybody but a few are doing the right thing, but
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: we end up talking about what the wrong thing is, like,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the right thing, how do you
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: respond in a media environment like that, in which we
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: try to model best behavior, the Democrats say the right thing,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: but you have Republicans that are going to pull out
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: the worst comments from the internet, you have an algorithm
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: that's going to elevate the most exciting and morally depraved comments. Like,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: what do we do? Okay, I agree, there's a problem,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: what do we do?
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well, that's getting you to say that. I know,
• 40:44
  Speaker 5: I mean, you're, sophisticated thinker about this stuff. So it
• 40:47
  Speaker 5: is important to say that there was a problem. And
• 40:48
  Speaker 5: I want to say this isn't just my feelings. This
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: is me being a hack political journalist. I should point
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: out also in the piece, the Center for Strategic and
• 40:55
  Speaker 5: International Studies, which has measured this and has kept track
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: of incidents, 2025 was the first year ever that left-wing
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: violence and plots and or plots surpassed right-wing violence and
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: or plots. Say, that's only eight plots. That's only eight plots.
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: And this is another thing I need to say. Again,
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: like the left was– there was no violence, no plots
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: for like 30 years. Most of the actual deaths from
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: political violence in this country over the last 30 years
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: have come from right-wing political violence. And we're talking like
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: in the hundreds, OK? And so, yes, the baseline for
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: Democrats and the left, whatever the coalition is, was very low.
• 41:35
  Speaker 5: It just has ticked up. And– But I think you're though, right, John?
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: I remember when I worked at CNN back when you
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: were in the White House in the 2010s, there was
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: this like, do you remember watching like cable news in
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: that era? And CNN, where I worked or wherever, like
• 41:53
  Speaker 5: a random Republican state legislator in Missouri would say something
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: loony about abortion or something racist about Obama. And we
• 42:03
  Speaker 5: would all elevate it and be like, this is an
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: example of the Republican Party being nuts. And while the
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: Republican Party does have a tendency to accommodate– and by
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: the way, this is just history, the Birchers and the
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: conspiracy theorists and whatever. You'd hear from someone on Capitol Hill,
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: like someone from like John Thune's office, like why the
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: fuck are you talking about this random guy in Missouri?
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: And so that is a absolute attentional problem that the
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: press has and kind of always has. By the way,
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: since then, that random– State Senator in Missouri is now
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: like probably on Capitol Hill in the mainstream of the
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: Republican Party. I just think it is what you guys do.
• 42:48
  Speaker 5: It's that you have to call it out and say
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: there's no room for it. And the other thing we're
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: talking about isn't just violence. It is the conspiracy theorizing.
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: And those two are not the same, but they are connected.
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: You know, the people who I think tend to commit
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: acts of violence in the name of politics like seize
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: on conspiracy theories. They do. And I noticed this on
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: Snapchat when I put I work at Snap and like
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: posted on Snap. I had a bunch of people in
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: my comments being like fake stage, whatever. It's not we
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: don't know that those people are even Democrats. They could
• 43:22
  Speaker 5: just be some teenager like on like sitting in their
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: basement somewhere. But there this has been happening again. This
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: gets to the higher intellectual standard that I think Democrats
• 43:32
  Speaker 5: used to hold themselves to, you know, in Obama's term
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: at some point, some press conference. in the tan suit era,
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: it might've been like Ed Henry. It was like in
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: the White House briefing room. And there was the latest
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: outrage of the day, whatever somebody wanted Obama to be
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: outraged about. I think it was Ed Henry said, you know, Mr. President,
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: why are you more outraged? And I tried to look
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: this up before coming and I couldn't find it. Someone listening,
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: please find it. It's probably in Favreau's encyclopedic brain, but
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: Obama looks at him and goes, because I haven't read
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: the briefs. And that was Obama being a lawyer. But
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: it was also just a smart person who hewed closely
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: to facts and didn't want to like spout off on
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: something where he didn't like know the baseline information. And
• 44:17
  Speaker 5: we've come a long way on the internet since then.
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: Like social media has rampantly changed how people's instincts when
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: it comes to responding, gathering facts. And, you know, I
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: think that's hurt everybody. It's hurt everybody across the board.
• 44:32
  Speaker 5: And- You know, I just think that you see it
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: more now on the left than you used to. I
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: sting out that article with a quote from Isaac Asimov,
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: who became a big Democrat later in his life, hated Nixon,
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: like just a raging Democrat. And he said like the
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: anti-intellectual strain in this country was always on the right
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: and liberals would fight ignorance with knowledge and conservatives would
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: fight knowledge with ignorance. There's a lot more ignorance out there, man,
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: on the left now. I'm sorry. There just is. And
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: like maybe I'm just being idealistic about, you know, the
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: great thinkers of the American left and what they cared
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: about compared to the right. But it just feels like
• 45:16
  Speaker 5: the fever swamps of the Internet are just grabbing otherwise
• 45:19
  Speaker 5: normal people and yanking them in. And it's depressing to me.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know. It's hard to be nostalgic for
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: how we used to have information. Look, I see it too.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: And I do think it's more than just a few
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: random people. There is something that has happened and it
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: isn't coming from the politicians. I do think there's a
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: bigger shift. And I think it's important, as you pointed out,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: political violence in our country still is very, very rare.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: And so I feel like there's these two ideas you
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: have to have in your mind at the same time.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: One being... that we can't allow acts of violence by
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: individuals who are united regardless of ideology by a willingness
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: to do violence, right? That's the most important thing about
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: a mass shooter, about the person that shot Charlie Kirk,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: this person, the person that shot at Gabby Giffords, right?
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: that they are willing to go to this extreme and
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: do violence. And sometimes their rationales are cogent. Sometimes their
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: rationales are nonsense. It's the act of violence that unites them.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: And there's something rising, whether it's people willing to shoot
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: up a school, people wanting to go out a blaze
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: of glory. And we cannot arrange our society around that.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: We can't allow that to warp our politics too much
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: because it is so rare in our society. But at
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: the same time, like it does seem to be like,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: an emergent property of the amount of vitriol, hate, lack
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: of empathy, cruelty on the internet and beyond, I think
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: that Trump is both a cause of and a symptom of.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: And I struggle with how you think about those two things,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: but the comfort that people have, right? Whether it's the
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: shooting of the United Healthcare CEO or the.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: The killing of Charlie Kirk, that is morally wrong before
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: you even get to whether it will encourage future violence.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: It said something really ugly about our politics and our culture.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: And I do think that that is real. So that's
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: the thing I struggle with.
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: There's something else interesting. This is an obvious thought, but
• 47:29
  Speaker 5: I just thought about it. When you think about Luigi,
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: you think about the butler shooter. We don't know his politics.
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: And the guy from the Hilton. all these people and
• 47:42
  Speaker 5: the Charlie Kirk shooter are young. And, like, obviously there's
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: the idea of the school shooter and the serial killer
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: and the lone wolf killer out there. You tend to
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: be white men. But all of these examples are people
• 47:56
  Speaker 5: who grew up online. We grew up online. But, like,
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: in middle school and high school, I just said AOL. But, like,
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: these people grew up with phones in their pockets. And
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: so they have so many more touch points to dark
• 48:09
  Speaker 5: places on the internet or but in dark places that's
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: sort of what i'm talking about it's that you know
• 48:14
  Speaker 5: like jennifer welch on the i've had a podcast the
• 48:17
  Speaker 5: other day was entertaining these conspiracy theories about how trump
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: was like this was a false flag so he could
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: develop ballroom i'm not saying she's spreading hate speech but
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: like that's one of the ascendant podcasters on the left
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: like i just there aren't any real epistemological boundaries, I
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: feel like, at this point. And, you know, you can
• 48:37
  Speaker 5: be a liberal and listen to Jennifer Welch or this
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: or go on a Twitch stream or whatever. But all
• 48:44
  Speaker 5: of those young people, like you said, I'm not being
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: nostalgic for an old media time necessarily. I'm just like,
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: I call myself a student of media history. But they
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: don't know a time of like monoculture, Walter Cronkite, anything.
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: There's no shared facts. And like, you know, it just
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: That depresses me.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: The conspiracy theory embrace that we see across the board,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: I do think there's something about.
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: Some people think it's just fun, by the way. I
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: have friends who are like, conspiracy theories are fun.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's something about the way in which the internet
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: encourages you that that we're all being encouraged to embrace
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: easy and quick comfort in across our lives. And social
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: media does that, right? Like you don't have to have
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: any discipline of attention whatsoever. You can just get, get
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: a jolt of something fun, something funny, something outrageous, whatever,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: get a quick like hit of an endorphin or an emotion. Uh,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: You don't have to leave the house to see a movie.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: You can just stay in bed, whatever. You can have
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: food come to your house. We're easy to satisfy, uncomfortable
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: with any kind of discomfort. And when there's something horrible
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: that happens, like the killing of Charlie Kirk, in which you,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: I think, morally are called to denounce the killing of
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: someone you found reprehensible, that tiny bit of friction, that
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: tiny bit of discomfort, there's a whole algorithm that's telling you,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: you don't have to feel that anymore. And the same
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: thing with someone trying to assassinate Donald Trump because of
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: views you might agree with. Wouldn't it be nice if
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: there were a way you didn't have to sit with
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: that for even a moment? Well, guess what there is?
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Because it turns out maybe it was staged. And we
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: live in a crazy world in which there were legitimate
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: news stories that in Hungary, Trump's ally, there was a
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: plan to stage an assassination attempt to help Victor Orban
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: in the final days of the election. That is real
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: reporting about something real that very well could have happened
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: in the world.
• 50:44
  Speaker 5: There's also a conspiracy theory that Trump wouldn't leave office
• 50:47
  Speaker 5: if he lost.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Of course, of course. And there was a conspiracy theory
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: that a powerful cabal of abusers were protecting Jeffrey Epstein.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: Like a lot of people have come to believe that
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theories had some merit. And the truth is the
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: great conspiracy theories always do begin with a kernel of
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: truth in them or a lot of the great ones do.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: So I understand like where that impulse comes from and
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: I understand how the internet feeds it.
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: I just think that it is incumbent upon democratic politicians
• 51:24
  Speaker 5: to try so hard to keep the, what was Ernie
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: in the trash can? Like whatever, just like push it down.
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: Like Mark Kelly came out with the, was that Ernie?
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Oscar was the great.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: Oscar.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Or Bert and Ernie. They're just a happy gay couple.
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 51:40
  Speaker 5: No offense to the happy gay couple. Mark Kelly put out,
• 51:43
  Speaker 5: I mean, who cares what Mark Kelly thinks, but like
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: a sub-stat.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: I care.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 51:47
  Speaker 5: I care.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: I care what Mark Kelly thinks. I care.
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: And I think you said the other day on this podcast,
• 51:53
  Speaker 5: referencing Chris Murphy talking after the UnitedHealthcare murder. I forget
• 51:59
  Speaker 5: the anecdote. Why did this come up? I think like
• 52:01
  Speaker 5: Nate Silver wrote about it, that he sort of said like,
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: I acknowledge why people like hate insurance companies? What did
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: Chris Murphy say?
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: I don't, I don't remember. I was referencing people who had,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: I was referencing that someone, I think like a prominent
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: conservative had said that the shooter at the White House
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: Correspondents Dinner, his rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of Chris Murphy,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: as if that's an indictment of Chris Murphy. That's what
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: I was referring to, I believe.
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: I think, I don't want to pair like miscast what
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: Chris Murphy said. He's probably listening. But again, the press
• 52:29
  Speaker 5: certainly has less power than we used to. And, you know,
• 52:34
  Speaker 5: maybe wrongly the press was the arbiter of common decency
• 52:38
  Speaker 5: for many decades in this country. Um, but you know,
• 52:43
  Speaker 5: politicians are akin to where people get a lot of news. Now, influencers, creators,
• 52:48
  Speaker 5: they're famous people on the internet. That's who they are. And, uh,
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: they have a responsibility to call it out when it happens.
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: It's just really hard. Like, again, this is in a
• 52:58
  Speaker 5: leaderless party. No one like attention matters. Getting attention matters.
• 53:02
  Speaker 5: This is one of my beats. Like, Ro Khanna can
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: call it out. Chuck Schumer can call it out. Alyssa
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: Slotkin can call it out. But, you know, which random
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: normie in Ohio is listening to any.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: Of those people?
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: Well, look, I think sometimes in our politics, we treat
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Democrats like the protagonists with agency and Republicans are the
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: villains who will do what villains do. I sometimes think
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: we do the same thing with people on the Internet
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: now that, of course, Democratic politicians are going to say
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: the same thing, but there's nothing we can do about
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: the the influencers but i influencers have responsibility and i
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: think part of this is i think there are.
• 53:37
  Speaker 5: Some insane youtube tiles out there man there are.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: Some for sure but but the i don't know i
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: i think sometimes we have to if the people who
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: are going to be helping to shape what people view
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: as the kind of bounds of appropriate political discourse if
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: that's not going to be coming from politicians or mainstream
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: media if it's going to become from people on the internet,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: then that comes with responsibility. In 2024, I think a
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: lot of people felt like you had people in the
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: kind of manosphere, the kind of independent, kind of right
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: adjacent podcast world, embracing their power, but not their responsibility, right?
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Their power to influence, their power to get big people on,
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: their power to reach tens of millions of people, but
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: not their responsibility to- Yeah.
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: They're just an unfrozen caveman lawyer. They don't know what's
• 54:26
  Speaker 5: going on. Right, yeah, yeah.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: I'm just a big chicken. You know, I'm just a
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: big chicken.
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: Uh, but, uh, you know, what's funny about that? I
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: have some data on this this week. The AP came
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: out with a poll about media habits and it's a
• 54:36
  Speaker 5: really interesting poll cause they also pull teenagers, but, um,
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: all the elite sort of things that we, we do
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: as former DC years and political junkies, listen to podcasts,
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: subscribe to newsletters. Um, I'm trying to think of some
• 54:51
  Speaker 5: other ones. Oh, pay for new subscribe to news. Um,
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: Vast majorities of Americans don't do those things. They really don't.
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: And by the way, podcasts are a little different because
• 54:59
  Speaker 5: they'll also watch it on YouTube or whatever. But the
• 55:04
  Speaker 5: one thing that has really popped is influencers and creators.
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: For a long time in these polls, could be Pew,
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: could be AP that asked people how they got their news.
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: Social media was just sort of an umbrella term. That
• 55:14
  Speaker 5: could be Snap, it could be YouTube, it could be Meta, whatever.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: It could be clips of mainstream content, by the way,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: as well. Totally.
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: But they actually asked specifically about influencers and creators. And
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: near majorities of Americans say they get news from influencers
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: and creators now. And that's a huge shift in just
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: a few years. And so that gets to what you're
• 55:33
  Speaker 5: saying about responsibility. Influencers and creators are now on par with,
• 55:37
  Speaker 5: according to this poll, local TV news. Radio, terrestrial radio
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: still matters. Search engines still matter way more than like AI.
• 55:47
  Speaker 5: And like television. And so like that's just really, really
• 55:51
  Speaker 5: taken off. And I agree with you. You've seen that
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: with the O'Vaughn and Andrew Schultz after the election when,
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: you know, they're deporting, rounding up and deporting people and
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: separating mothers from their children or whatever.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: Doge.
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: I didn't vote for this because I was just playing
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: the humble unfrozen caveman lawyer. But they have to. I
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: think they're becoming more responsible, actually, at least in terms
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: of acknowledging their power. These people were at the inauguration
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: for the president of the United States.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: But and I and. I do think that we're due
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: for a similar turn on the left of people with
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: big platforms who reach a big audience viewing a responsibility.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: And we're here and we try to have honest conversations,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: but part of being having, I think part of what
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: being responsible is, is you try to be honest, critical
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: where you think it's helpful, critical maybe where you think
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: it's unhelpful, but needs to be said at times. But
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: view what you're trying to do as, as more than
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: just saying what you happen to think or feel in
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: that moment, right? Like that's what I think the difference
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: is between what Obama did in that press conference you're
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: talking about and what a lot of members of Congress
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: do every time a camera comes in front of their faces,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: which is just take a moment and say, you know what?
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna take a beat and make sure that I'm
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: sharing good information or like interrogating a bias for one moment.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Or knowing that even if I feel something in the
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: moment that I believe is true, I know that I
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: have a responsibility to my audience to not become a
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: tool of the right.
• 57:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah. I also think I really want to pay you
• 57:29
  Speaker 5: guys a sincere compliment. And I'm friends with you. We
• 57:31
  Speaker 5: live in the same city. We socialize. I get that.
• 57:34
  Speaker 5: I still listen to this podcast despite knowing how personally
• 57:36
  Speaker 5: annoying each and every one.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: Of you is.
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: Because you are willing to interrogate collective assumptions on the left.
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: You are willing to tangle with those ideas internally. You know,
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: we saw it this week with the Ken Martin interview,
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: but you guys frequently will have people on. And I
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: think this a lot about a variety of left-leaning media.
• 58:03
  Speaker 5: You don't just tell people what they want to hear.
• 58:06
  Speaker 5: You tell people sometimes, sometimes, maybe not as much as
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: other news organizations, what they need to hear. And I
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: think that's really important because I do think that maybe
• 58:15
  Speaker 5: this is the Obama, you know, example, but like, wrestling
• 58:19
  Speaker 5: with ideas is like really good. It's really good and
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: healthy and not, there's just such blind partisanship now. And
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: this is where I will say on both sides that,
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: you know, the battle for ideas is hard. It's hard
• 58:34
  Speaker 5: to inhabit, not the middle, but it's hard to present
• 58:39
  Speaker 5: nuance to people. That's why I wrote 10 paragraphs in
• 58:41
  Speaker 5: that freaking Puck article before I could get to the
• 58:44
  Speaker 5: point because I had to say over and over again,
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: Trump inspired January 6th. Trump inspired mail bombers. The Trump
• 58:51
  Speaker 5: Republican Party welcomed Nazis and liars and mainstreamed this poison. But,
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: you know, social media has taken it to another level
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: and other people are getting yanked into it.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: I think what we're talking about, and that's very nice
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: of you to say, it's not... is not my experience
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: that there's a lot of blind partisanship on the left.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: My view of where we're at right now is actually.
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: But sorry, blind negative partisanship.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Blind negative partisanship, that's for sure. No, I agree with that.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: But what I was going to say only is I
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: think like what we're circling, which I think relates to
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: the conspiracy theories, the willingness to celebrate or kind of
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: tolerate or kind of uh um even just sort of
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: minimize political violence like it's forbearance which is just the
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: idea of restraint and being um like kind of willing
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: to lose and willing to um take a shot to
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: your ego at times in politics.
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: This is why us old millennials are the best generation.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: We are.
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: You know what?
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: We are the best generation.
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: We are the best generation because- We were.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: Vaccinated against Republicans by George W.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: Bush.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: Continue.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: We had debates in our dorms. At Georgetown, we had
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: something called Red Square, which was a free speech zone.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: I know that sounds anathema now, but you could have
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: debates and interrogate things. You didn't have social media poisoning it.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 5: You know, I don't know. Maybe that's an elite view, but.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: Baby boomers went to the right. Gen X is the
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: last redoubt of Donald Trump right now.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 5: Well, boomers, by the way, boomers are I wrote about
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 5: this last year. Boomers are drifted to the left because
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: boomers now are hippies. Boomers are our parents. But they
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 5: still still hold on to some, you know, pluralistic values.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 5: Gen X is the bad one because they were Alex P. Keaton.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: Like the thing that happens is your politics in your 20s.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: Like that's what it generally is later in life. And
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 5: so the Gen X folks, you know, put aside all
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: the rock music and pop culture. Like those are the
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 5: Alex P.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: Keith. So, yeah, the Gen X has really kind of
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: moved to the right. But then also some of the
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: Gen Z has moved a bit to the right. And
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: millennials are actually not moving to the right at the
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: same degree over time as previous generations have. The millennials
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: are holding out greatest generation. All right.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: Hear that, Brokaw?
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, whatever. What happened to him?
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:01:11
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  Speaker 4: slash crooked. All right, let's hit some more topics. Platner,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: Janet Mills out.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: Politico reported yesterday on calls from Democrats for Schumer to
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: drop his involvement in the Iowa and Michigan primaries. What
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: was your reaction to the Mills news and the general
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: state of play in these primaries?
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 5: Surprised but not surprised. I think Mills got in late.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 5: Plattner got in, what, last August, September, went super vile,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: raised a lot of money. Great vibes for the moment
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 5: nationally for Democrats, you know, raging against the establishment. I
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 5: am more looking forward than thinking about the surprise because
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: he was up 33, 40 points in the most recent.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 5: I think Emerson had him up 33 at the end
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 5: of April. This is a jump ball race. Like, it's
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 5: going to be very hard. And Graham Plattner does have baggage.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 5: And it's not even the Totem Conf tattoo or whatever.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: It's the Reddit post. I think we saw an article
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 5: in the Free Beacon today, which is an oppo dump
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: for Republicans, showing that Plattner paid for his house with
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 5: a loan from his wealthy father, not the VA, like
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 5: he said. I just think there's lots of stuff there.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 5: And by the way, all this is to say he
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: can still win. Trump's at like 33, 34 percent approval.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: I think Maine is tougher than certain states. And here's why.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 5: And again, he can win. A lot of times you
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 5: win with a pure contrast. And she's unpopular, Susan Collins.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 5: I think her own faves are like 57 percent. They
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 5: got to win there. They got to win Alaska. They
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 5: got to win Ohio and Iowa and all these places.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 5: Maine is the oldest electorate in the country. So it's
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 5: also not very partisan. You've got a third of the
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 5: state is independent, John. So, you know, that helps someone
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 5: like Plattner, I think. Like, I'm not from the system
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 5: that could appeal. You've got that Maine 2nd Congressional District,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: which was represented by Jared Golden for a while, who's
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 5: a moderate and different. Like, Plattner's a lib. Golden was
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 5: a moderate. Both have tattoos. But he won in Maine 2,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 5: which is a district Trump has won in the last
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 5: two presidential elections by being just a purebred moderate, Jared Golden.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: So....
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 5: You know, putting on Reddit that black people don't tip,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 5: that women shouldn't get so drunk that they get sexually assaulted. Honestly,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 5: I love this episode that I forget which content it
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 5: was from Crooked Media, but Pfeiffer and Alex Wagner did
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 5: a piece on this a couple weeks ago. And it
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 5: was really interesting listening to Alex. And I thought she
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 5: was very sharp because I think a lot of the
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 5: initial commentary supporting Plattner when he jumped in the race
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: was coming from men. And when these posts came out,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 5: not that Alex Wagner wouldn't vote for Graham Plattner or
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 5: Susan Collins. But like, I think women might be a
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 5: little squeamish about this, about him in a race against
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 5: a woman that, you know, has successfully won over and
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 5: over and over again. Also brought some reporting to the show.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 5: I learned from some Republican pollsters that they had 12
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 5: to 13% of Susan, past Susan Collins voters going for
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 5: Janet Mills in this election. So that plays to what
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: Schumer was, probably thinking about. Like, this is an independent,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 5: older state, and we need someone safe to run against
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 5: someone who's been reliably reelected. So Plattner's got some work
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 5: to do, I think, to reissue. He's a young millennial
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 5: with tattoos, a history of inflammatory Reddit posts. We don't, clearly,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 5: I think Republicans are sitting on more stuff. That's why
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 5: I brought up the free beacon example. And he's got
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 5: to convince voters in a state. It's like an old state.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 5: And that's, it's going to be tough for him. But
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 5: in this environment, Trump's approval ratings are absolute dog shit.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 5: that's why we're talking about Alaska. That's why we're talking
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 5: about Maine. That's why we're talking about even Ohio and Iowa.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: We're in the homestretch here of the California governor's race.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: The two highest vote getters will move on to the general. Post-Smallville,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: we've seen polls that show Becerra rising. CBS poll this
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: week had Steve Hilton leading with 16, then Steyer at 15,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Becerra at 13. Other polls have Becerra higher. Where's your
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: head at on this race right now?
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 5: I think someone smartly framed it this way to me
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 5: And look, nationally, like you might not care about a
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: governor's race. California matters. Like Gavin Newsom will set a
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 5: tailpipe emission regulation and the rest of the country will follow.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: Like that's what California is. So yes, these candidates are underwhelming.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 5: Someone compared it to the 2020 presidential primary where you've
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 5: got not just Tom Steyer once again spending a lot
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 5: of money, but you've got all these candidates who fail
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 5: to catch fire. They pop in certain moments and fade.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 5: Javier Becerra is just sort of emerging. The last four polls,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 5: two independent, I think, and two sort of partisan, have
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 5: showed him climbing and having clear momentum. Steyer and Katie
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 5: Porter are having a very hard time connecting with high
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 5: information voters. Their negatives are very high. For all the
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 5: money that Tom Steyer is spending, they're kind of hitting
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 5: a ceiling. Becerra has kind of come from behind to
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 5: go to the front. I didn't quite get it either.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 5: It kind of came out of nowhere organically. He hasn't
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 5: spent a lot of money on television.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: I believe he spent– the money he has, I think
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: he spent.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 5: He went up on TV like three or four weeks ago.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: At a key moment when he had– Swallow dropped.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: Well, I think as Swallow was dropping, before Swallow dropped,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: he's up on the air.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: And so he's up on the air at a moment
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: where all of a sudden there's all these Swalwell voters saying, whoops. Yes.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 5: And Javier Becerra is a boring person. Javier Becerra, I
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: talked to someone in the Biden administration about this Saturday,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 5: kind of aloof as HHS secretary. Not incompetent, but just
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: sort of like he's not lighting the world on fire. Okay.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 5: But he does have two things going for him right
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 5: now in this governor's race, which is, but the primary
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 5: is in June. Um, he, there's a lot of confusion
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: among voters. People don't like the choices and they're just
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 5: kind of falling back on him, which is sort of
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: similar to the Biden experience in 2020.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 5: He just, you can win the primary at 23% of
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 5: the vote, 25% of the vote. Um, I'm not saying
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 5: it's totally the same. Um, and he's Latino. I mean,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 5: a third of the state is Latino. And I think
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 5: the first part of that spot that went on TV
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 5: about a month ago, it wasn't like Prop 50. It
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 5: wasn't like Adam Schiff versus Katie Porter, like, we got
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: to stop Donald Trump. It wasn't like Swalwell. It was
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 5: my parents were immigrants. And it leads with bio, and
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 5: then it gets into working class, affordability issues, healthcare, prescription drugs.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 5: And so for all of the, forgive my term, lib
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 5: slop that you see in some of these TV ads
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 5: and campaigns, like just raging against Trump and trying to
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 5: go after the hardcore college-educated white MSNBC viewer voter. He
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 5: reaches a different kind of voter than just that. And
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 5: that's the thing, like Porter, Steyer, Swalwell, there was no
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 5: data suggesting they had any numbers of people of color
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 5: in this state. And so Becerra is just emerging as
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 5: like a safe choice right now. Steyer's going after him already.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 5: He's not a great debater. There's two debates coming up
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 5: this coming week, I think CNN and NBC. Um, so
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 5: we'll see if he can make it all the way
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 5: to June, but he, he is the one with momentum
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 5: right now, but it's sort of like boring momentum.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: I don't, I watched for it.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: I watched the last debate. I didn't watch. There was
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: another debate.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 5: Oh, it was terrible.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: The first debate. And there's a moment where they were
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: all asked if they would support a per mile tax
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: for electric vehicles, because California has a very high gas tax.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: I think it's like 60 or, or some onsets a gallon,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: maybe a little more now. Uh, and, uh, So there's
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: this idea that while we switch to electric vehicles, then
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: no one's going to be paying for the roads, even
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: though California has the worst roads in the country and
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: we pay the highest gas tax in the country. And
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: so the question is, would you support a per mile
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: tax for electric vehicles? And it got to Becerra and
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: Becerra said, well, it's definitely something we ought to perhaps
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: take a look at. If that's something the voters are
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: interested in, then I could get behind it. And then
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: you go to, I think it was one of the
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: Republicans and they're like, You're going to make everybody log
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: all their miles? Hell fucking no. And I was like,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: that makes it like there's like the passion on that stage.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: I was I talked to Katie Porter about this in
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: my conversation with her that that California is in an emergency. Yes,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: we are losing people. We are losing our industries. And
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: the only people up there that seem to have fire
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: about it were the Republicans.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 5: The right wing sheriff guy was like talking about the
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 5: the humanitarian crisis of homeless people. And like, again, his
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 5: ideas are probably not great, but like he had passions.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 5: And you nailed it. I wasn't meant to say this
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 5: about Becerra, actually. None of these people have big ideas.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 5: Steyer's like, we'll break up the utilities, pass a billionaire's tax, whatever. Like,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 5: there was a question, this was a moderator issue, actually,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 5: in the CBS debate, where they said, what are the
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 5: first things you would do in the event of an earthquake? Like,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 5: as governor, you're governor, you're in that seat. What are
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 5: the three things you're going to do? You know, the
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 5: thoughtful political leader would have said, well, like, Let's think bigger.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 5: How do we not get in that position in the
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 5: first place? But they were all very content to be like,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 5: Becerra included, well, we'll call in the first responders and
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 5: I'll call the federal government and then we'll figure it out.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 5: That's the other thing. Beyond all the charisma and the
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 5: horse race stuff that has characterized this race, nothing exciting,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 5: big ideas are powerful. I mean, I know Bernie's on
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 5: this episode too. Steyer's trying to sort of be in
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 5: that lane a little bit, but everyone else is just
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 5: sort of like.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: Katie Porter is a bit too.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 5: We'll figure it out.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: Well, this is where I press Katie Porter on as
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: well because she's talking about this plan to exempt $ 100, 000 from...
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: Or people making up to $ 100, 000 from the state income tax.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: And she has a way to pay for it. And fine,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: help people. California is very unaffordable. But the problems are
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: so upriver from that. The reason California is unaffordable... when
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: it has like the income tax rate hasn't gone up
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: with what's gone up is the cost of housing. What's
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: gone up is the, is the cost of living in
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: our state. What's gone up is, and what's gone down
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: is the availability of jobs for in Hollywood and other industries. And,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: and you know, I talked to Bernie.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 5: By the way, the housing conversation, at least in the
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 5: CBS debate I watched was infuriating. I mean, Matt Mahan
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 5: at least was like, here's what he did in San Jose.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 5: I want to build this many units. Tom Steyer said
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 5: the same thing with people housing, but like the people
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 5: just say like Villaraigosa, we need to build more housing.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: No shit.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 5: Like, I don't know. There just weren't a lot of
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 5: compelling ideas there.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's been pretty frustrating, but I had a good
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: conversation with Porter. I hope we get to talk to Becerra.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: And so I think I'm going to talk to Steyer
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: next week. So we're going to talk to all those candidates.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: Last question. Why, hey, why'd they call it Puck? Is
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: it after the Midsummer Night's Dream?
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: So it's a Puck-ish, it's a Puck-ish organization.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 5: It's a mischievous literary organization. inspiration. But I think John Kelly,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 5: who created Puck, very literate man and thought Puck would
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 5: be an inspiration because we like to be a little mischievous,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 5: I guess, in what we do.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're puckish.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 5: Please subscribe.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 5: You as a person, I would have called you- How
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 5: would you describe puckish, the adjective? How would you define that?
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: Mischievous is a very good word for it. I would
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: say mischievous with a joyful quality.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 5: Oh, okay.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: Is what I would say.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 5: I like that. My wife would like that.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: Thanks, John.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: You're, you know, a little stinker, you know, kind of energy.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: Peter Hamby, thank you so much. Good to talk to you.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 5: Good to see you, man.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: And that's our show. Thank you to Senator Sanders. Thank
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: you to Peter Hamby. We will see you with a
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: new episode on Tuesday.
• 1:15:19
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