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

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

Krystal and Saagar discuss Saagar rails on Trump degeneracy, Dem voters revolt against their own party, Trump voters rail on AI schemes.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You might have missed this. The Trump administration is currently going to bat for the prediction markets masquerading as sports gambling companies to nationalize sports gambling, to dramatically enrich not only the Trump family themselves, but also all of the most degenerate executives in the United States. So I want to go ahead and give a major shout out here to the chairman of the CFTC, the Commodities Future Trading Commission, which is responsible for regulating prediction markets.

Wu, by the way, is actually a former crypto executive and is now actually trying to preempt any state efforts to rein in prediction markets, backdoor sports gambling across the nation, violating state sovereignty and their ability to regulate sports gambling internally. Here's the chairman of the CFTC, Mike Selig. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. CFTC Chairman Mike Sealing here. Over the past year, American prediction markets have been hit with an onslaught of state-led litigation. In response, the CFDC has today filed a friend of the court brief to defend its exclusive jurisdiction over these derivative markets. Today, the CFTC is taking an important step to ensure that these markets have a place here in America

and have the integrity and resilience and vibrancy that our derivatives markets deserve. To those who seek to challenge our authority in this space, let me be clear. We will see you in court. So what he is saying there is that states do not have the right to regulate sports gambling, which goes directly against the Supreme Court decision. Now, let me also explain because if you listen to that, you're like, oh, well, he's talking about derivative markets and financial market. No, that's not what this is about literally at all.

all. I don't get to that here in a second. Let's put up here, Governor Spencer Cox of Utah's response. He says, Mike, I appreciate you attempting this with a straight face. But I don't remember the CFTC having authority over the derivative market of LeBron James rebounds. These prediction markets you are breathlessly defending are gambling, pure and simple. They are destroying the lives of families and countless Americans, especially young men. They have no place in Utah. Let me be clear. I will use every resource within my disposal as governor of the sovereign state of Utah and under the Constitution of the United States to beat you in court. So that is a Republican governor. And this very much crystal resembles what happened with AI. You have these companies.

You have Kalshi. You have Polly Market. Now you have Draft Kings, Fandul, all of the gambling companies, rushing to get into the prediction market space. And let me explain this very clearly. Sports gambling, as you all know, which I am massively against, the fan duels and the draft kings, they are more tightly regulated than these prediction markets. What the prediction markets are arguing is that because they are explicitly not gambling, that they are legalized in all 50 states. And as we have also seen, if go take a look at Draft King's stock and Fanduel stock, they're down 40, 50%. The reason why is they're bleeding money to these prediction markets. Vegas actually handled way less money for the Super Bowl this year than they did the year before. Why? Gambling is

a loser take-all market. And what I mean by that is whichever person is willing to offer the most degenerate bets, that's the person who wins. And even as bad, as much as I hate, draft kings and fan duel, you're not betting on dildo colors on the, on the, on the, on the, basketball courts of WNBA. Even they have a standard because they have state regulators that they have to deal with. Right, they have, I mean, we're talking about the different colors of Gatorade. Like, it's quaint to think about people in Vegas. Well, every year betting on heads and tails. That used to be the worst example of degenerous? No, like we are in a 10 to 15 to 20, 30 times worse situation with the type of bets that are being

offered on this, rife for insider trading. Remember, the Streaker one I told you about. That literally happened. Somebody actually did bet him on Streaker and then did it. It was an offshore book, to be clear, however, and his bet was voided. But I'm giving you an example of exactly the type of things can happen. This is not even to mention all the insider trading possibilities from that we saw. the state of Israel just indicted multiple people who were in the military and arrested them for betting on operations that they knew was going to happen.

You cannot allow bets life and death. Very recently, there was a market on whether a space booster was going to fail. And they were like, wow, it's really cool to bet on stuff, which could literally result in the deaths of the crew that are involved. And they're like, well, to be clear, it's just about a mechanical failure. It's like, yeah, mechanical failure that could literally lead to it. Yeah, what do you think is going to happen in the event of that mechanical? Oh, right. I'm just betting on whether Apollo 13 is going to take off or not, guys. Right? It's like, come on. This is the nonsense. Yeah.

Which has been, this is literally like the clearest example of total free market capitalism, which is, except, as always in the American context, completely backed now by the power of the state. The United States federal government going to bat not just for betting markets, but for betting markets that offer the worst, most degenerate products that milk these people. You know, the advertising of these companies, they're telling children out there, 18, 19-year-olds, guys, this is how you can make your life savings. This is how you can pay your tuition. I mean, I'm getting reels of guys who are betting on whether Trump is going to say the word,

low IQ, and they're watching, you know, an entire week's worth of news, and then cheering and popping champagne whenever he finally says it for a 500 to 1 payout. Well, this is insanity. Like absolute insanity. And it's being backed by the government because these people are making money hand over fist. It's disgusting. This is gambling pure and simple.

Yeah. Well, the gas lighting put D4 up on the screen of like, this is a derivatives market where Americans can hedge their risk against changing weather or, no, this is sports betting, okay? I mean, the estimate here is that 90% of Calchese bets are on our sports. Like, that's primarily what these things, are used for. And not that it really would make it better if it wasn't primarily sports. But, you know,

their Dodge is the fact of, oh, this isn't really sports gambling. It's the sophisticated derivatives. We're just democratized in the access to this technology, blah, blah, blah. Like, the whole thing is just complete gaslighting. And, you know, I think to me, zooming out, the two major underlying stories here, the two things that are really going on is, number one, the corruption, obviously. Like, you know, I mean, Don Jr's on the couch board. Like, it's, you know, they're making tons of money. They're throughout the whole government. So they want this gravy train to, the people in power are profiting off of this direct

exploitation of, you know, ordinary Americans. And they want that gravy train to keep going. We are at the stage in capitalism where, like, the level of just predatory behavior is completely brazen and completely overt. But I think the other thing that is going on here is, you know, we've always, our, our national story has always had a bit of like a casino lottery element to it of like you may not be rich today but hey here in america anything's possible the previous story was about if you work hard and you know we have this grand meritocracy and there was some level of truth to that right not

completely true there was some level and people bought into it and so it was like okay if we do the right and we go to school we work hard and we start a great business we make a great product we too can join like the class of the the millionaires we too can become one of society's elites. Now that story has unraveled. So now the story is just complete casino capitalism. It's just complete. You know, we use the example before, maybe you too can get cast as a plant in the Bad Bunny halftime show and have insider knowledge of whether Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin are going to be performing and be able to cash in. That is, in the absence of, you know, a broader redistribution of wealth, they are wrapping this experience.

explicitly predatory scheme in a promise of riches and wealth for ordinary people who have lost all hope that there is any other path to success, not even riches and wealth, but just to, like, escape an entirely precarious existence. So I think when you look at, when you look at this, in a certain ways when you look at the AI development, certainly in the crypto space and in the betting space, I think part of what is going on here is not just about the corruption. It's about selling a narrative to people that this is going to be the new way that you're able to make it big. And let me bring it out even deeper just to show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. I wanted to cover this a few weeks ago, but we weren't able to put it in the show. Let's put C3 or D3 up there

on the screen. The CFTC, before this announcement, literally just a week before, announced the Innovation Advisory Committee. Let me name you some of the people who are on there. The CEO of Coinbase, the CEO of Polymarket, the CEO of Ripple, the CEO of Ripple, the CEO, the CEO, of Fanduel, the CEO of Kalshi, the CEO Crypto.com, the CEO of Draft Kings, the CEO of Blockchain, the CEO of Cracken, Gemini, Solana Labs, Robin Hood. I mean, I just named some of the worst companies in the United States. These are the people who are getting phenomenally rich, basically making gambling as widely available to the American public as they can, using and buying in some cases the power now of the power of the federal government to basically

enable their ability to legalize gambling across the nation. I never even thought I would be in the business of defending the draft kings and the fan duels. But really, this is about state sovereignty. I massively oppose sports gambling. I think we should make it completely illegal at the online level. If people want to have gambling in their states, they should have to go to a casino and it should be very tightly regulated in terms of the number of bets to make sure that, you know, you can't do prop bets for insider trading and all of that, etc. But at a sovereign level, from what the Supreme Court said. It's up to the states.

You cannot allow the CFTC and the federal government to just say, hey, California. You know, they had a whole referendum on this. They rejected it. They said, nope, we're not going to do it. We're going to keep it in the, whatever, in the tribal casinos.

Texas, same thing. The gambling companies have taken L after L in Texas. Texas legislature is like, nope, we're not doing it. We just cost Miriam Adelson and all these people, a hell of a lot of money.

But this is how you get get around it. It's literally making the worst possible types of bets with zero regulation, or at least the least amount of regulation, taking it out of the hands of the state and saying, no, we're going to make it widely available for all. And none of the proper safeguards that are currently in place for insider trading. And these people are printing money. Remember the Kalshi founder who's like, I'm one of the youngest female billionaires in the world. We should be ashamed of this. This is shameful to become a billionaire by propping up gambling. And everybody's like in the tech industry, everybody's getting bought off.

I recently saw a story of a guy sports podcaster who criticized Cal Sheet. They reached out to him the next week for a, for, they reach out to him literally the week after to offer him a sponsorship. And, you know, nobody wants to talk about this because they're all taking money from the same thing. And you would think draft Kings and Fan Tool would be trying to do something about, no, draft Kings is now, oh, we're going to get into the prediction business. This is a race to the bottom to make it as completely unregulated. open for insider trading, open for corruption as possible. But because they're all making so much money, milking all of these people, regular sports fans, people who are losing hope at the bottom level of society.

Like, we are turning everyday Americans, especially young men, into the same guys that you see at the gas station doing scratch-off tickets. That's what we're doing for a whole nation. And it's like nobody wants to stand up for it. Luckily, at least some are, let me put D5 up here on this screen, I want to give credit to Elizabeth Warren. She says Trump's CFTC is trying to strip state's authority to regulate gambling within their borders, protect Americans from getting ripped off.

The CFTC should focus on ensuring our derivatives markets don't blow up the economy again, not helping corrupt political insiders cash in. Excellent, well said. And then finally, D6, just if you're wondering where this is all coming from, don't forget, the Donald Trump's own truth social company was supposed to launch a polymarket competitor. And Donald Trump Jr. himself is literally a strategic advisor to both Cal She and to Polymarket who are currently on the CFTC advisory committee and who the new CFTC chairman is working on their behalf. And by the way, even before this, the CFTC advisor or the CFTC committee,

he wasn't necessarily supposed to have all this authority. There were a lot of shenanigans in terms of making sure that nobody else was on the board similar to what they did here with the FTC. So here we go. This is going to be a multi-billion dollar bonanza. The amount of people who are going to lose money, it's astronomical. Like the amount of sports bettors and other people who are going to be lured in. There's no regulation for advertising, no regulation at the federal level. It's going to be, I mean, this is going to be as close to a rip and roar, 1890 silver, you know, peddling, what were the snake oil. Like, we're going back.

This is what it's going to look like. And think about how many people suffered from that. But I'm just glad that a bunch of tech executives are going to get filthy rich. On steroids in the algorithm era, too, where it's like all super, supercharged. Wanted to shout out Pedro Gonzalez. I thought he had a good take on this. And shout on to you as well for being like principled and consistent in your position series.

It's very funny that the new right does this save the West LARP. And then you look at its policy preferences and so just legalizing crime, crypto scams, normalizing gambling, et cetera. It's the movement of decline and profiting from, And I mean, you've been making this point about, like, you know, all of the, quote-unquote, degenerate behavior is now just like embraced and fully deregulated. And no one bothers to pause and say, this seems a little inconsistent with some of the other things that our political project has been pushing for.

A lot of right-wingers were so mad at me yesterday for tweeting this. And I said that Trump is now the most pro-vice president in American history. He, in a single year, he is trying to deregulate and legalize gambling in all 50 states. he is rescheduling marijuana to enrich his rich drug peddling donors and is now pressuring banks to maintain access for only fans models. So, I mean, there you go. I mean, what else? You have the most pro porn, pro weed, pro gambling president in American history. Congratulations for many of us who, you know, at the very least, you know, thought, look, I knew the crypto thing was going to be a bonanza and whatever.

Like, that's bad, but it's kind of separate to gambling. Like, this is the most predatory industry with the high. highest suicide rate. I mean, there one third of American young men have an open gambling account. The amount of addiction, if you talk to the gambling hotlines and others, it is horrible. And for those of you who think, like, oh, I don't gamble so it doesn't affect me, when a state legalizes online, state legalizes gambling, the aggregate, like amount of credit goes down. It actually affects everybody. The amount of domestic violence, it goes up. The public resources are going to have to be dedicated to dealing with this.

It's going to be like the cocaine crisis in the 1890s, when all of a sudden we just said junkies everywhere and we didn't know what to do. It's going to be very similar. Go to Vegas and you see the bums that are on the street begging for a dollar so they can get some food. That's going to be the whole nation, you know, and it's sick. The audacity of pretend you're pro-family while, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, nothing will blow up a life. Nothing will blow your life up like a gambling addiction. I can tell you story after story, lawsuit after lawsuit, after lawsuit. people who never placed a bet to fully bankrupt, divorce, and on the verge of suicide in the span of two or three years, gambling with their kids' Christmas presents, life savings, 529 accounts,

and these people will take your money all day long. And now it's going to be even less regulated. And it's young men who will suffer the most, who are the most easily sort of like have the psychology that's the most easily exploited by the stuff that are overwhelmingly the largest percentage of the others. So bad. So bad. All right, let's get to the next one.

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Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Minilick Lamouba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated. And Black America was out of breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia at Martin's Almermata, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King's senior, and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So the New York Times is a very interesting focus group of Democratic voters, which I feel like we don't see that much. I feel like there's always because the liberal media is kind of like more in tune with Democrats, there's less curiosity about what's going on with the Democratic base. So it's usually either like swing voters or Trump voters. Let's go on safari and see what these strange creatures think about the world. So they decided to do that with the Democratic base. And, you know, now I think liberal media has become more disconnected from where the Democratic. basis. And the Democratic Party leadership certainly has become more disconnected from where the

Democratic bases. So anyway, we can put this F1 up on the screen. This was the headline for their focus group. They said, show up for us, 13 Democratic voters on Trump, ICE, and their frustrations with the Democratic Party. And the thing they sees on here at the top with these three voters is their description of the Democratic Party. One says paralyzed, another says sold out, and other says afraid. These are three very different people, very different backgrounds. So, and this was the conclusion across the board. Let's go ahead and put F2 up on the screen. This is probably the slide that got the single most attention.

Ryan, Emily, and Emily mentioned this in their show yesterday, but we wanted to dig in a little bit more. They asked their 13 focus group participants what type of candidates they're looking for. And they ask them, you know, would you prefer someone who's young or you don't really care? And overwhelmingly, of course, people said we like someone who's younger. What sort of class background? There is major preference for, you know, middle or working class. they asked them, do you prefer a candidate who identifies as progressive or a candidate who identifies as moderate? Every single person said they prefer a progressive candidate. For a moderate candidate, literally no one raised a hand. Okay, let me go ahead and put the next piece up on the screen of data here that was also interesting. So this is where they're asking them, okay, well, tell me what you think about the Democratic Party. If you had to use one or two words,

to describe it, what words would you pick? Now, I remind you, these are all Democrats. Okay, these are Democratic Party voters. Number one, spineless. Number two, more complacent than I thought they would be. Number three, paralyzed, afraid, incompetent, I guess suffocated or given up, sold out. Next one. Sellouts and suckers, immobilized. Can I say no balls? No cahones. I will say there are a large number of young Democrats that are really starting to climb the ranks in the party that are motivated. I'm hoping that that will start to take over a little bit more. So when you see those numbers overall of like the Democratic Party being at its lowest approval rating in history, these type of people are a big part of that story. Because obviously, Republicans are going to hate Democrats.

There's a significant number of independents who are obviously discussed with Democrats, but it's their own voters being so disgusted and frustrated with them that has really sent them to the lowest lows. And then last one, then we can get, you know, into our reaction to all of this. This is, there was a question about, okay, well, is there anyone out there that you think is, you know, doing something good? Has anybody seen anything from a Democrat, any candidate or public figure or someone locally that's made you say, oh yeah, we need more of this. This is what we should be doing more of. This guy says, Mike 33, white Democrats, says, Zoran Mandani, clear, concise messaging. It's exactly what everybody wants. It helps everybody. It's the perfect messaging because it's clear and concise, unlike Democrats, just like Bernie. Bernie has said the same thing since the 80s. You've got to. taxed billionaires, you got a tax upper class, he's never changed. That's the messaging. You've just got to drill it into them, and Zoron did it. Man, it's beautiful. Diane, 72, said, Mike said it pretty clearly, and I can't really think of anything to add to that. And there was another person further down the list who also was like, yeah, Mike said what I was going to say.

Now, I will temper that soccer with the fact that the other two names that came up organically in the course of the conversation as, like, Democratic candidates that they were excited about were Jasmine Crockett and Pete Buttigieg. I wanted everyone to be very careful because. So what a progressive is is very contested, right? As we have all discovered over the years of this show, and I have no hate for the average American, but it's not like people are very good at self-identifying.

Somebody will be like, I'm a conservative, but that means I want to tax billionaires. You're like, wait, what? You're like, what are you talking about? Right. And then somebody, look, people are complicated. They don't think much about terms. When they hear the word, I mean, when I say the word,

What do they think? I want to move forward, right? I mean, it can mean a lot of different things. Through the activist class, to the leftist base, that's an actual identity. So like when I say, I am a rightist, that's because I've read a lot about politics. I don't identify as a small seat conservative. That's really not something that doesn't encompass like a belief, right? Like, I would put myself much more in the vein of like a European rightist. But most people don't think about politics like that. They don't read a lot about definitions. To them, progressive means going forward. Great. Awesome, right? Just to add to that, at least one of them, but maybe a number of them, brought up Joe Manchin as why they do not want a moderate. And so I think the combination of him, Kirsten Cinema, and maybe a handful of others, but those two being the primary villains, they really destroyed the moderate label within the Democratic Party. Because now moderate just seems like, oh, you're just going to obstruct anything good happening. You're just going to sell out to like various corporate interests. So no, of course we don't want that. And then the other thing, and this is where, you know, where it's dangerous is there is a, the

Democratic base is united in wanting to fight harder against Trump, right? They want someone who's pushing back effectively and is out there and is taking risks and is meeting the moment in terms of the threat that they perceive to the country. Sometimes, though, that can be very amorphous. That's how you end up with someone like Jasmine Crockett being named as like she's a fighter. Well, she is very rhetorically gifted. She's very sassy, you know, she's giv. gets out there. She's like quick with the quip, undeniably, like, talented and charismatic.

But if you dig underneath the surface, there's some real problems there in terms of who she's taking money from and the positions, how far she's willing to go. She's pro-crypto. She's identity politics. She's calling James Talleyico or racist. You know, she's the worst, if you ask me. But that's the issue. But that's the challenge, that's the question mark to me is not, do Democrats want to fly? They do. There's no doubt about it. You know, that argument has been one. And I think the argument also has been one about, like, we're not listening to these establishment boys. Like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, go fuck yourself.

We don't care what you have to say. Even liberal media institutions, I think there's been a really breaking of the trust. But what it means is being a progressive, is that Gavin Newsom being on Twitter and doing his like trolling routine? Or is that, you know, a Zoran Mamdani type of politician where not only do you have, I mean, Zoran actually doesn't do a lot of like Trump clapback or whatever, but where you have an aggressive of social media posture, but it's backed up by specific policies as well. And so that's the piece that, you know, I think sort of remains to be determined. And we're going to see. I think we'll get a

lot of indication of that from some of the primaries that are going to play out, going to play out right now. And then certainly, obviously, the biggest test of that will be in 2028, whether someone like Gavin Newsom is going to be able to position themselves as a quote unquote progressive, even as he is out there standing with billionaires to oppose a wealth tax in his state. I am personally actually hopeful that some of those things will be a problem. Like you can see them mention in, you know, a bunch of the responses throughout this. They talk about taxing the rich as it's kind of like a litmus test issue. And that would be a very hard one for a Gavin Newsom style candidate to, you know, obviously he's like already on the wrong side of that issue.

So I am hopeful that there actually will be a substantive policy lens that the term progressive will be viewed for. But I fully acknowledge that that is still a question mark for sure. As I have learned over the years, I have watched the words working class came to mean very different things to. But remember Ted Cruz used to say that we're a working class partner. Ted Cruz calls himself a working class politician. Okay. And if you were to ask people, some of the people who voted for him, they might even say, oh, yeah, he supports the working. Like, be honest, like, is there a huge disconnect for all of that?

I've seen the term bastardized about populism or working class now in the Republican Party. And it can be true at a rhetorical level, wrong at a policy level. Turns out a lot of people don't care about the policy level at the middle of an election. You could very easily see how it could be bastardized. And, I mean, for the people who watch our show, it's going to be tough. Because, you know, you guys, if you're watching this, you're in the top 2, 5% of people who consume politics. You've got to think about your uncle or somebody who really doesn't pay that much attention and is pissed off about Trump because of the White House lawn or something like that. You know, somebody who's cranky about decorum.

What does the term progressive mean to that? Probably nothing. And so when a Pete Buttigieg can say that famous Hillary line, I'm a progressive who likes to get things done, it might land. Same with Gavin Newsom. Nobody's done more on climate than me. The billionaire question, he's a very savvy political operator. Sometimes, but other times, but other times they fall on his face. I'll give you some hope. I'll give you some hope, which is for the Democratic base. Because the Democratic base is now more overwhelmingly college educated than everyone else, they are going to be a lot more well-read and grammatically, literally grammatically, let's think about the best way of phrases. They're going to be a lot more educated and a lot more, have much more of an ability to parse language and actually think about what these terms mean as opposed to what the current existing Republican base is.

going to be. Much heavier news consumers. They're going to be way more heavier news consumers, much more well-read whenever it comes to politics, probably care much more about policy. Richard Henania has the famous thing about how conservatives watch TV and liberals read. That actually does matter whenever it comes to policy prescription. And other things is if you're going to read a policy position that already puts you pretty dramatically out of step with some of the other base that is voting. I mean, I'm just being real here in terms of how that will look. So I think it will actually look quite different. But the other thing that I'm not, I don't want to underestimate for a lot of people who are also Democrats is you should forget, don't forget,

South Carolina could be the first state. And that's a very different Democratic primary. And then if you have lower propensity voters who are upset at Trump, who come out to vote. Although those people in South Carolina did not mess with Pete Buttigieg. So I'm not worried about him doing well there. They could mess with Jasmine Crockett, right? I could see that very simple. I mean, you think she's going to run for president? Maybe. Why not? I mean, you got to, I think she'd have to win, you know, Texas, like be a senator from Texas. Beto failed he ran for president. Yeah, but not of that work out.

Sure, he got 2%. But it's not nothing. All you need is Jim Clyburn to come in and make you a king. Remember, there's no Iowa. There's no New Hampshire clearinghouse this time. Well, it's actually not clear what the order of the states is going to be. Some of that is still up for grabs. So South Carolina will certainly be early and important in the process.

But, I mean, here's what I would say. My own prediction is that there are going to be a few issues that are lipist test issues. I think they're money for. for Maypack. I think they're taxing the rich. And I think it's abolishing ice. I think those three things are going to be actual litmus test issues. And candidates who can't give clear-cut answers on that are going to struggle. And I think the testing ground for that has been that I've had a podcast where you've got, you know, you've got lady, I mean, Jennifer and pumps at this point have really shifted a lot to the left, right? These were Hillary supporters who were now like,

you know what, Bernie was right and we should have been there. So they have shifted significantly. But, you know, their audience is very reflective of kind of like the core liberal base of the Democratic Party. And they are not, speaking of not having it, they have not having it with Cory Booker coming on and doing his little tap dance or Rahm Emanuel, whoever, they are not having it with these people. And so, you know, that tells me there is kind of a hard line and an expectation of we want to hear not just you, you know, with a bunch of word salad trying to massage and answer. We want to hear yes or no answers to these few questions. The other thing that gives me some hope, especially on the identity politics front, is there is also the level of trickery that Hillary Clinton was able to engage in in her campaign against Bernie, where she was positioning herself, like, using identity politics to pretend like she was the more progressive candidate. I think people see through that garbage entirely at this point, as evidenced by the fact that Haley Stevens, who is a Michigan member of Congress, she's in the House right now and is running for Senate. It's like the, you know, conservative or moderate candidate in that race, back by Chuck Schumer, et cetera.

She went toward an ice facility. And she trot, when she came out and she was like, oh, I felt better because we've got female ice agents who are running the place trying to do like a girl boss ice agent situation. And people were not buying this whatsoever. This is F5. Let's take a listen. Of note, there are female leadership here. There's female leadership. And there are women who walked with us today and explained on the intake process how important it is to treat people with humanity. And that obviously really stuck out to me because some of the things that we are witnessing before our eyes in our neighborhoods and our streets is really a lack of humanity.

So people were, you know, this did not land. This did not land with the democratic base whatsoever. I mean, it's the meme, right? It's like, you know, they're bombing, but they're... But at least they're female violence. Right. They're female and they're flying the gay pride flag. It's like, no, no, no.

We see through that now. We're not doing this anymore. Hey, listen, I would welcome nothing more. More recently, there's been a gay... There's been a sassy gay ice agent who's gone viral on the road. Oh, I saw that guy. Which I loved. Same thing.

If we could turn them against identity politics, no one will be happier than me. Oh, that was great. Canadian women are looking for more. More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark.

And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Manilic Lamouba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

Have both been assassinated. And Black America was out of breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's Almemata, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King's senior and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. to be in what we really thought was a revolution.

I mean, people would die. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A-building on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What do you do in the headlines Don't explain what's happening inside of you?

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radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts let's get to the next one yeah so this is an interesting story. It kind of dovetails with some of the, you know, some of the cross-coolitional, I think, backlash against the push towards gambling. But the most clear place where we've had this cross-partisan backlash is in the fight against AI more broadly, but specifically on the front lines with regards to data centers. And we can put this up on the screen. This is a scene from Claremore, Oklahoma. This is like a local Oklahoma town meeting where this person who is in Oklahoma says people are being arrested for speaking out against AI data centers, keep standing up for your community.

There's another video that's gone viral this morning that I saw. You guys could take this down that I saw of another place. I'm not sure if it was a red state or not, but where there had been significant protests against the data center and ultimately the town backs down. The backlash against these places is really building. And I was just listening to, the New York Times actually did a deep dive into a town in Indiana that has become a hot spot for a bunch of these data centers. And the first ones kind of got built and people just like accepted it.

and there wasn't, they didn't need any zoning approval. So the town council, like it just kind of sailed through. And now people are experiencing all of this increased traffic and noise and they're starting to research, okay, what even is AI and what is this going to mean? And what's it going to mean long term? And how many jobs are even really created? And what is this going to mean for our community? And now there was a huge backlash to this new data center that they were trying to place

there that did require a zoning change, which meant that the town had a chance to weigh in. So they held meetings overnight, and they first called for, okay, who's in support of this? And people got up and they spoke for, there were like, you know, enough to fill about 25 minutes. Then they opened it up for the opponents. The opponents, there were so many of them that the meeting went on until 4 a.m. That's awesome. Ultimately, and this is a small town, right? And ultimately, the town council is like, okay, yeah, we're not going to do this.

And so you are seeing this huge backlash. And a lot of these data centers are being located in Redsend, States and red areas because rural areas have more space and rural areas tend to be more Republican. Let's go and put G2 up on the screen. This was a fantastic report from the Financial Times. They say Donald Trump's AI pushed fuels revolt in Maga Heartlands on a cold Tuesday evening last week. About 200 Missourians, Missouri being another hotbed of AI development and also backlash, crammed into a Methodist Church to share a message. The AI revolution embraced by Trump's White House did not have their unqualified support.

quote, I voted for this administration and didn't really think about AI until it started to affect me, said Lisa Garrett, who lives beside the site of a rapidly greenlit $6.6 billion 400-acre data center development in the satellite city of Independence just east of Kansas City. A worker for a local ministry, Garrett's unease, extends beyond the project's demand on local water and electricity supplies to the broader social impact of the industry it is being built to support. I have grandchildren. It does concern me that they're being drawn into a world that isn't real, she said. Her concerns, which poll after poll, is shown or shared by much of Trump's base, are increasingly at odds with the posture and policies of his administration.

And actually, Sagar, I mean, it is very, like, cross-partisan, the concerns here about data centers in particular. But the recent polling that I saw showed, showed that the concerns were actually higher on the right for reasons that you can understand, because there tends to be more, you know, more of a rural base, more concern about, okay, what is this community going to be? and more like sort of like this rootedness in a certain place. And so and more quote unquote conservative views of like we aren't, we are a little wary of change. We don't necessarily want the world to be turned upside down, not just in our local community,

but by whatever this means. So, you know, I think this is one of the important fights as we contemplate what AI is going to mean for our social contract. And one of the places where you can sort of like, you know, throw sand in the gears and at least slow the process down so that there are. is more of a chance for democracy to be able to catch up. Yeah, I just think it's amazing. Like, they're literally organic movements, people with their children, no data center.

Because, again, everyone can feel this encroachment in their lives, especially if you have a child. So there's all these viral threads that are going around now about Spotify, for example. Someone was like, you know, I'm so careful. I don't allow video. And then what ended up happening is I gave my kids access to my Spotify account. But now Spotify is including music videos. And it was like a workaround.

He's like, now I have to take Spotify away from, it's like at every level you have parents who are bombarded, doing everything they possibly can, having to pay attention to like every facet of modern life. More recently, you know how they would give out Chromebooks or computers? You have teachers or you have parents who are turning them in. They're like, I can't have my children on this. They're using it as a workaround. They're screen time and all this. They're demanding that schools go back to paper because they're like, we have to just get rid of all this technology. Nothing's good coming from.

This is rotting my child's brain. And then you put the AI data center stuff into this. And then you have to look at the promise. What are we getting? More Claude agents that might like automate all of the jobs or more slop that children can watch on YouTube or YouTube shorts. More, you know, now there's all these new AI movies that people are competing for. Everyone's like the bargain is not worth it. Higher electricity price, trying to take my job, which you increasingly brag about.

And then general, also just like propping up a sham stock market all at the same time. It's just, it's ridiculous. On top of corrupting a local community, energy usage, power bills, it's all about control. And yeah, the most conservative impulse of all time is to like the famous line is like Stanthwart history and yell stop. And like that's how a lot people feel right now. I feel that way right now. I feel that way because, listen, I, you know, I think the technology is cool.

Like I've been playing around with quad. I think the advances over the past year, the more I dig into it, the more I realize is genuinely extraordinary. You know, the things you're able to feed in, the hallucinations have been diminished, the level, the ability, this part I haven't been able to figure out yet. But, you know, you hear people who are not technical people who are able to just go and, like, create an app and it doesn't even take very long. And Claude spins it out in a few minutes. I mean, this is something. This is astonishing. And if it was, if the ownership was done correctly and the Democratic control was done correctly, you can't imagine, you know, a society that was not structured like ours where this would

just be beneficial, where it would just be exciting. And we would figure out how to manage the resources. I mean, the other risk that some of the community members in Indiana were talking about is they're like, they're like, we looked into this and there are a lot of models coming out of China that are much less resource intensive. So you're going to build all of these data centers out, are they even going to be needed in the future as these things become more and more efficient? So even that, you know, and then we're left with this big hulking, you know, decaying husk in our community. And what does that ultimately look like? So in any case, you know, we would need to have massive democratic input on the resource usage, on the, you know, capital expenditure, on how this is

deployed, on how it is used, all on, you know, how the fruits of this alleged productivity gains are going to be distributed. I mean, that's like the essential question in my view. But obviously, we don't have any of that, which is why, again, I think these fights against data centers on a local basis, like that is the most likely place where you can have any sort of pushback, any sort of slowdown in terms of this development, because in terms of, you know, from this administration's perspective, it's just off to the races. And, you know, the dystopian parts of this are becoming, are increasingly here. Let's put G3 up on the screen. We covered this before.

There's this fight between Anthropic and the Pentagon where they're threatening to cut off Anthropic in what is being described here as an AI safeguards dispute. And the TLDR is that the anthropic people got concerned about the way that Claude was used in the Venezuela rate. Now, they have some sort of partnership with Palantir. And Claude and Anthropics products are generally more advanced in terms of government application. So they have a big contract with the Pentagon. And they're saying to the Pentagon, look, we have two red lines. Number one, we don't want claw to be used in any sort of like

autonomous killer robots. And number two, we don't want it to be used for mass surveillance against American people. Now, I'm not sure why you have this tie up with Palantir if you have these concerns, but that's where they're trying to draw a line. The other AI companies do not have such moral red lines. And I don't want to give Anthropic too much credit here because I I think is incredibly, incredibly naive to think that you would be able to hold the line on these things and you as individual, like, business owner or capitalists are going to be able to tell the Department of War and the United States government how your technology gets deployed. Like, I think that was a very fanciful notion.

But you can see how already the Pentagon's like, no, we're not going to listen to you. Not only are we not going to abide by your little moral red lines against killer robots and mass surveillance, but we are going to punish any company that does work with you because you have the audacity to even try to put any sort of red line on how your technology can be deployed. So, you know, there was Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google. He was talking about a year ago saying that, you know, one of the things that all the AI CEOs were basically in agreement with is if this starts getting deployed in killer robots,

they would pull the plug. But what you realize is like, you don't actually have the ability to pull the plug, even if you wanted to. And already they've all abandoned that and like, hey, well, maybe kill a robot. Or let's. Okay, maybe it's fine. No big deal. We can work around it. But even if they did hold to their moral standards, once that technology gets out, once the Pentagon has access to it, like you're so cute to think that you're going to be the one in charge to be able to pull the plug on it.

Yeah, it's always been like that. It's always been like that. the technology, once people get normalized, so it can get open source, they can work from it, the government can use, however they want. This is the big danger in all of this for defense technology. And ultimately, like, maybe, you know, it's never really solvable. Like, once the tech exists, it will always be used for the lowest common denominator. Like, there's just no really way around it. It's basically always been that way. War, often, like, blood is the only thing that moves the wheels of history. Let's put G4 up there on the screen, just to give an example here,

SpaceX is now going to compete in the contest for autonomous drone technology. And this is the next frontier, you know, drone swarms and competition for AI targeting. And then who will build the targeting software? And there's always one company that's going to be willing to play ball and to make money. So there's really no way around this. And also, there's a competitor aspect. China has been heavily invested in drones and drone swarms. And it's often been like one of the dangers, you know,

for some of these bigger U.S. carriers and U.S. Navy destroyers or U.S. Navy vessels that one of the pain points that they see. And so then the U.S. says, well, now we need to create our own drone technology, our own counter drone technology. This is the danger in this entire thing. And we know this. It will be used to some effect. They already used Claude with Venezuela. We may be going to a major war with Iran. There's going to be a ton of AI whenever it comes to.

And we know how it was deployed. in Gaza in Palestine and the way it is deployed, you know, also in the West Bank. And in a lot of ways, Gaza is the testing ground for mass surveillance, you know, Palantir, Microsoft, like a bunch of these companies, been caught involved in the Gaza genocide. And so that has been the testing ground. I think that helped to accelerate the incredibly dystopian place that we're in. The last thing I'll say, I was, Novara Media had a good piece on this. And they were saying, you know, when scientists were building the, you know, were developing nuclear

weapons, like, you know, Oppenheimer, they were not so foolish as to think that they, as the developers and creators of this technology, were then going to get to tell the government how it gets deployed. Well, actually, Oppenheimer was foolish enough to think that. But, yeah, a lot of the other people. But, I mean, he, I think he knew at the end of the day, the president of the United States is going to say how this is used, not me, right? And so he made his case.

But, you know, I don't think they thought that, like, oh, we're going to get to control how and when and wherever. Now, many of them organized afterwards to try to, you know, check nuclear proliferation and try to check the use and spread in advance of this technology. But there was a much clearer understanding of like, no, we're developing this for the U.S. government. And they're going to get to have the say over what comes. And I, you know, because we've lived in this like free market capitalist sort of like delusion where government just seeds control to capitalists into markets, I think these guys did delirited. themselves into thinking, like, oh, we're going to get to figure out how this is deployed. And it's like, it doesn't work that way. So, you know, when you did your tie up with the Pentagon and now you want

to set a moral red line, and I think they did have that red line from the beginning, you know, you're a fool if you think that they're going to abide by what you want. They see themselves as in this race with China, and they're going to win at all costs, at all cost. And that's where they are. Look, war with Iran, who knows how it's going to go. Could spiral, it could go into this, go, go into that. Next thing you know, these things are going to get nationalized. The Defense Production Act, your data centers and all of that will be seized and be put to Ford. I mean, that can happen like this, you know, in wartime. Go read a book about World War II. Look how quickly you went from private industry to literally the war production board managing what the Ford factory is pumping.

What, you think they're not going to do that with AI and with everything else? If things get truly existential, the law's already on the books, they have monarchial powers if they want to. So you're right. This is deeply naive. All right. Thank you. you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. Please support us if you can. If not, Friday show tomorrow. See you all then. Over the last couple years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by black people because of what happened in Alabama? This Black History Month, the podcast, Selective Ignorance with Mandy B. Unpacks Black History and Culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The Crown Act in New York

was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hairstyles associated with race. To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandy B from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between.

Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers. Most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to if you can hear me on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King, Sr.

It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Minalick Lamumba. Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.