Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/6/25: Markets Plummet Amid Tariffs, Trump Hamas Negotiations, AI General Intelligence & MORE!

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss markets plummeting amidst tariffs, fed predicts recession, AI superintelligence under Trump, Israel fumes as Trump negotiates with Hamas, Tate flees US, Trump plot to cook the books on econ data, viral leftist candidate takes on Cuomo return.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Many things to get to. Of course, as per usual, we got some updates on the tariff situation, what is on, what is off. We've got some more warning signs

with regards to the economy. Also, increasingly clear AGI, Artificial general intelligence, is really just around the corner, expected to be here during the Trump administration. Is anyone ready for that? I really don't think so. We're going to take a look at that. Also, some really contradictory signs about what Trump's approach is with regards to Gaza. So we'll give you all of the indications and all of the developments there.

Andrew Tate now saying, actually, I'm just like ready to leave America anyway, guys. I was just going to stay here for a couple of days and I'm out. So a lot going on there and some political, interesting sort of like political ramifications there as well. I'm taking a look at if Trump is going to cook the books on the economy, some pretty clear indications in that direction. And we have the socialist candidate for New York City mayor, who is going up against Andrew Cuomo, is gonna be on the show.

He actually was on with Emily and Ryan before. His campaign has come a long way since then. He's actually polling as the top sort of progressive candidate in the race, which is pretty surprising, kind of coming out of nowhere. So excited to talk to him as well. All right. So with all of, by the way, thank you to everybody who supports the show. We appreciate

it very much. Been a very busy week here at Breaking Points. So let's go ahead and get to the tariffs, the most important economic news. The White House announcing yesterday that there will be some tariff exclusion specifically for automakers. Let's take a listen. We spoke with the big three auto dealers. We are going to give a one month exemption on any autos coming through USMCA. Reciprocal tariffs will still go into effect on April 2nd. But at the request of the companies associated with USMCA, the president is giving them an exemption for one month so they are not at an economic disadvantage. So the three companies that he spoke to are Stellantis, Ford, and General Motors. One on the reprieve that is being granted

to these three automakers for one month on the tariffs on Canada and Mexico. How did the president settle on one month? The reciprocal tariffs will go into effect on April 2nd, and he feels strongly about that no matter what, no exemption. So that's where the one month comes from. So does he expect them to be able to shift production within a month? He told them that they should get on it, start investing, start moving, shift production here to the United States of America where they will pay no tariff. That's the ultimate goal. So there was some initial confusion there from that announcement. It initially appeared as if it only applied to the big three automakers, but the White House has since clarified that those tariff exemptions are for all automakers.

The reason why this is most significant is because part of USMCA and of NAFTA is that many of these car companies are vertically integrated across all three countries, and that many of these parts, Crystal, will move across the border some almost 40 or 50 times in the most extreme example. And so the idea was if it was going to get hit with a 25% tariff every single time that it crossed the border, you would famously have those examples of a car going from $50,000 to like $80,000 or $90,000, something like that. One month exclusion, though, as the question there was like, that's not exactly time. This seems to be part of the chaos blunt force strategy to try and see as much progress or announcements or whatever Trump can squeeze out of them. But the market reaction has been all over the place over the last couple of days. And so the pendulum continues to swing back and forth and back and forth.

Yeah, indeed. I mean, is it crazy for him to think that he saw that Fox News segment with the car dealer guy who was like, this same truck is going up $20K like right now, instantly. And Maria Bartiromo being like, oh my God, what is going on here? Like, I genuinely think that may have been part of the calculus going into this. I was a little bit surprised there wasn't more of a rollback of the tariffs that is just applying to the auto industry. The other part that was kind of funny to me is like the one group that came out and was like, actually, we like the tariffs was the United Auto Workers. And now

that's the one industry where it's being rolled back. The other thing that was surprising to me is you were alluding to the markets is how positively the markets responded to this news. Since you are just talking about one sector of the economy, granted, of course, it is a significant sector, but the plan is for them to go back in place in a month. All of the tariffs on Mexico are still there. The tariffs announced on China is still there. All of the rest of the tariffs on Canada is still there.

And Justin Trudeau in Canada is still talking pretty tough, saying, listen, unless all of the tariffs are rolled back, we are continuing with our retaliatory tariffs. So, you know, people should be really clear about what this means. It will have significant impact on a lot of produce coming from Mexico, you know, from Canada. The tariff on energy is lower, but still there, still expecting significant gas price increases, including I think in New England was the first place that you're likely to see gas prices go up some 20 to 40 cents pretty quickly here. New construction materials, a significant amount of that comes from Canada. And then depending on how long this lasts, 80% of the fertilizer that's used in the U.S. comes from

Canada as well. So even with the rollback of this one particular sector, which is, again, it's significant, you're still going to have quite significant and reverberating impacts across the economy if they continue to move forward with these. Yeah, there's been some crazy movement on this. So you referenced the markets. The markets were up yesterday. The S&P erased its one-day loss. And yet, as of this morning, you and I are talking, the S&P futures have now erased yesterday's gains. So we're basically back to where we were two days ago. So don't ask me. I'm not some stock analyst. I can only go off of what the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times and all of them are saying. They're saying that right

now the Dow future and all of that dropping is from a weakening dollar. And also, them are saying they're saying that right now the Dow future and all of that dropping is from a weakening dollar. And also they are saying that the indexes will reverse the rally of the partial rollback yesterday. Also, apparently in response to the German government and European bond market. So there's a lot going on right now. Actually, interestingly enough, almost all that comes back to Trump, both on the German side and on the tariff side. The Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary, by the way, is the person who is most in charge of the tariffs. Their responsibility under the current law is that they're the ones who write those justifications for them, implement the tariffs specifically. Let's take a listen to what Secretary Lutnick

had to say. The big three say they produce cars that are compliant under USMCA, which means they have sufficient US content in them to be part of the USMCA agreement. So I think that's part of our discussion. And and the president's really thinking about that. It's not really an exemption. Remember, it's we're trying to end fentanyl coming into the country. So we're trying to send a message that fentanyl has got to end coming in from Mexico and Canada. It just has to end. And they've done a reasonable job on the border, and they're going to do a better job on the border. But this is, remember, it's a key about fentanyl for this month. April 2nd, we can talk about the rest.

Deaths in America have not decreased in a way that is sufficient. Deaths of fentanyl in America. But yesterday, though, the president questioned the fairness of Canadian banks. So what is it about? Is it about Canada's banking system or is it really about fentanyl? So this month right now is about fentanyl. When we talk about April 2nd, we will talk about the bigger trade picture between our trading partners, Canada and our trading partners in Mexico. So just to reiterate here, they have to say fentanyl because it's the only way they can get that national security exemption through law, Because otherwise, you can't just say, oh, I don't agree with Canadian banking or whatever because we have a USMCA agreement that's been ratified by Congress.

This is the only way that you can actually get around that. We do, though, need to flag that the problem with all of this strategy is that Americans need to feel as if there's a big strategy behind it. And we flagged this in our pre-State of the Union coverage, but this is very important. Let's put this up there on the screen from the New York Times. Here is how Americans feel about tariffs. So you've got some 29% of Americans to 56% of Americans, depending on how the question is asked, who are in favor of tariffs. Now, the tariffs that have the highest support in the mid-50s are when you ask a question specifically about China. Now, if you mention Canada and Mexico, the support for the tariffs starts to fall. Now, the tariffs

hover almost at a 50% approval rating if they're to bring back American jobs. But if you add the caveat of even if price increases, then you drop down to 30%. And that's not a surprise to me at all. Americans are some of the most cost-conscious people literally on earth. We're a 70% consumer-based economy. And the real thing is,

is all of this would have to be communicated in a way as if people feel that there is a big strategy behind this. Because if you're going to jack the price of a car up or groceries or all of that, you need to have a reason. And look, I've spoken about Canada and Mexico. I do think our trade imbalances are ridiculous with those two countries. However, the problem is right now is that these people are, the American people, are not being sold a coherent vision on how this is all going to work. And that's evidenced by the constant roll in and roll back of the strategy, right? So the automaker is

the perfect example because out of all of the industries that most need and deserve tariffs, specifically from this bring back American jobs, it's the automaker specifically, that one industry where it should be most applicable and not say on groceries. We talked here about avocado. Berries is probably a better example. I don't think we grow any berries in the continental United States. So if you're giving an exemption to one, jacking the price up on another, rolling back something here, and people are also saying it's about fentanyl, people are just going to be like, okay, what the hell is this all about? And I think that's the biggest problem that the White House has right now. Totally. I do think we grow some berries in

California. I know that we grow some strawberries there and some other things. Yeah. But in any case, your point still stands. It's significant. And you know, there's certain things too that, okay, we can grow them here in one particular season, but we're all used to getting everything we want all the time in the grocery store whenever we want it, even when it is the dead of winter. Those are the sorts of things, products that are really going to have pressure put on them here. You know, at a time when people are particularly cost-conscious, obviously inflation has been one of the major political stories of the past several years, you know, towards the end of COVID and certainly post-COVID. So, you know, that's what

I've mentioned before is the economic landscape now and certainly post-COVID. So that's what I've mentioned before is the economic landscape now and the economic priority of Americans is also different from when Trump first came into office. So I think even if he was telling a coherent story about what these tariffs could deliver in terms of re-industrializing America or American jobs, and yes, we're gonna have some pain in the short term, but in the America or, you know, American jobs. And yes, we're going to

have some pain in the short term, but in the long term, it's all going to work out. I think even if he was telling that story, it would be a tough sell. And he's not telling that story. The messaging is completely confused. Even Mexico and Canada don't really know what the hell he's doing or what the hell he wants. His advisors, I saw Peter Navarro go on last night and be like, Canada's being taken over by Mexican cartels. So they're really pushing the fentanyl line, even though we all know that that's just a pretext for him to be able to have as much authority as he wants and do whatever he wants. And I think your point about the auto industry is a really important one. Like if you were going to make the case for these tariffs in any industry, the auto industry is the place where you have actually the most compelling case where you can say, OK, we want to have a really strong auto industry here.

This is important to our manufacturing base. It's certainly important in a number of key swing states. We're going to really invest in this industry. We're going to put some protective barriers around it. We're going to bring back, you know, all these supply chains into the U.S. that have gone over to Canada and Mexico since NAFTA was instituted. But instead, that's the one that is getting the break. So, yeah, I think, you know, politically, I think this is really a non-starter in terms of the way that it is. I mean, it's not being sold. You know, I don't think the policy makes sense anyway outside of, you know, there

are some theories of some sort of grand plan to weaken the dollar and for that to cause the re-industrialization. But again, if that's your goal, you need to be explaining that to people. And at the same time, you see you're really flirting with disaster economically, which we're going to talk about more in the next block as well. Yes, exactly. You really got to keep these things. You need to keep things such that they are explainable and understandable, especially if you're going to suffer. And part of the other problem is I've seen the secretary say things like, oh, well, we're not, it's not, and people aren't going to feel it because we're going to be taking in so

much money. And it's like, okay, well, you know, then you've got to have a pretty explicit redistribution program. Maybe people could get behind that. I don't see the Republican Congress going tomorrow yet for some sort of external revenue service that's constantly just cutting checks to Americans in terms of their tariff dividend. If you did that, yeah, maybe it'd be popular. But it'd be one of those where it actually, it would mean that you would have to dramatically change the entire system, of which I don't see a lot of congressional support for right now. So, you could have the worst of all worlds. You could have higher prices, and you could not have any redistribution. If not even that, you could actually have cuts there and or a diminishment

of services. And so, if you do feel like as a price is going to go down and your government services are also going to go, or price is going to go up and your government services go down, that's not a very good trade, is it? So So let's continue here on this front. There have definitely been some CEOs who are doing everything they can to get Trump's ear. Let's put this up there on the screen. The latest gambit is to meet one-on-one with the president. You've got to give $5 million to one of his organizations. Now, it doesn't directly go to him, but it goes to MAGA Inc or the Make America Great Again Inc. It's a super PAC that supports the Trump 2024 campaign, uh, somewhere between $1 million a piece to dine with him in a group setting, $5 million for a one-on-one. And so, uh, did the big three, uh, pony that up? Not sure.

I mean, they probably can get his ear anytime. But this has certainly been something that we have seen in the nearest future is that people, Mar-a-Lago members and others have beenhandedly most responsible for Trump's about face on that. We haven't talked a lot here about the crypto industry, but this is kind of, this is unprecedented to say the least, because what do you need the money for? You're not running for anything. It's like, what is all this money being funneled into your campaign or your super PAC for? And, you know, it's a little grotesque, especially to have basically pay for play with the president at his private club. Not saying it hasn't happened, you know, previously with Trump or I guess with other presidents. But this is just a little bit on the nose right now. Yeah, absolutely. No doubt about it.

And we also know the way that he's able to round trip some of that those funds out of the campaign account into his personal bank account by like, hey, we're going to rent Mar-a-Lago for this event for the Republican Party. Hey, we're going to use this or that vendor that actually is under the Trump family umbrella. So one of the things that is unprecedented about him in particular with his business interests is the ability to funnel that campaign cash actually directly into his bank account. And then the shitcoin is just something else entirely. I mean, we've talked before about this crypto dude who had a big SEC investigation going. He gives $75 million. Well, he, you know, buys $75 million worth of Trump crypto tokens. And lo and behold, SEC dropped the investigation. Huh? isn't that nice for him? I mean, it just, it truly is.

Like, listen, none of us are Pollyanna here. We know corruption in politics is nothing new. This is like on a truly another level that's hard to describe just how corrupt it is. And then also because you've had so much power consolidated with Trump and Elon in particular, it also becomes much more important to curry direct favor with him.

So Elon yesterday was meeting with the Republican caucus and saying like, oh, I'm going to set up a phone line so you guys can call directly if there are programs in your district, in your state that are important that are getting cut. Well, guess who's not going to have access to that phone line? Any blue state representative. So it truly is just like, if you're in the favored class, either because you gave money to Trump, you bought his shit coin, you happen to be a Republican,

especially a Republican of a state that matters to them politically, then you're going to get your favors, you're going to get your goodies, and everyone else is going to be screwed. So, you know, that's why you see the tech oligarchs lining up at the inauguration, why you see them bending the knee, why you see them donating millions of dollars to the inauguration fund, et cetera, because they want to make sure

their mergers go through. They want to make sure when the tariff regime gets put into place, they get their particular carve out and their interests are looked after. And, you know, that's very much the story of how this administration is being run. Let's go to the economy then in terms of the warning signs. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets.

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DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's

secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. So this all sort of ties in. Harry Anton did a great segment breaking down some of the polling numbers about how Americans feel Trump is doing on the economy and specifically whether they feel like he is focusing on economic issues enough.

Let's take a listen to what he had to say. The answer to the question is no. Trump and the economy. He should prioritize here on planet Earth, 82%. It's almost as if Trump is on planet Krypton. Look at this. He is prioritizing the economy just 36%. My goodness gracious.

I don't understand how this mathematical formula works, right? If the economy is the number one issue, if that's what Americans think you should be prioritizing and well less than half think that you are, no wonder Trump is having problems with the economy because simply put, he's not putting it to the top of his list the way Americans are. American adults who have a job currently, at least in January, were 61 percent. The percentage that own a stock either directly or indirectly, perhaps your 401k,

62 percent. So the stock market is as important to economic perceptions in my mind as is the unemployment number, given that it's about the same percentage of Americans. In fact, if you believe it, though, it's within the margin of error. One point more of the American folks actually own stock than actually have a job. I'm not sure about that last part. I'm not sure. I'm really buying that people are more concerned with the stock market than the employment. I mean, stock market ownership is still very, very skewed. But it is an important point that, look, a lot of people are paying attention to this. Trump himself has always paid very close attention to what the stock market says. In fact, there's some old tweet of his

that's like, you know, if the stock market drops this much two days in a row, that president should be impeached. That people have been circulating around here. You know, Sagar, it made me think back to his speech this week and what we talked about, that the front part was really front loaded with the, and that's the, you know, the first part is what most people will stick around and watch. And then you'll see the clips that circulate after the fact. But that first portion of the speech really front loaded with culture war. If anything, it feels much more like Elon is the mover and shaker on the pieces relevant, most directly relevant to the

economy. Now that sort of changes with Trump stepping up and instituting these tariffs, but changes in an even more negative way because the tariffs are pretty unpopular when you look at what people want him to be focusing on, which is getting prices down, not issuing tariffs that are very likely to raise prices even further than they already are. Yeah, and just again, like if it was part of a major strategy, then okay. Then people may be willing to put up with it. Although I'm not so sure because the real reaction that we've seen currently, I mean, that poll really tells the truth.

They go, even if prices increase, most Americans just don't want to put up with it. I can't say I blame them. You know, I get it. I would make a case for why it would be worth it and perhaps some ways to mitigate all of that pain. But the problem is, is that that's not what the White House is saying right now. And I've really become convinced that this is an existential problem for all of them, because without that message and without that FDR-like feeling of I am doing something for you, you were just going to end up like Joe Biden. And let's go ahead to the Atlanta Fed, because this was the most important actually indicator out of them all. Let's put it up there, please, on the screen, which is that their GDP

model now forecast has actually been revised for the first quarter of 2025 down to minus 2.8%. So that is one where economic contraction combined with consumer sentiment plunging over tariffs and of uncertainty, also combined with persistent high inflation, all three of those things, not to mention flat unemployment, which we're about to get to in a second, that is a recipe for disaster. And so as I have said here, you have some runway. America is listening. That's one of the more interesting things that you and I have seen is that the amount of interest in news left and right remains sky high right now. So it's not like people are not paying attention. And they're generally willing to give you the benefit of the doubt in the first hundred days or so. But you have a very, very short period before some serious stuff is about to start hitting you politically. And the biggest danger

I see for the Republicans is, let's say, things just continue down this road for the first hundred days. Well, Crystal, you and I know what is the first major thing they're going to do after the first hundred days. They're going to pass the Republican tax bill, that tax bill, which massively increases or the current tax cuts for large corporations and for rich people. Let's be honest here. Let's be honest, right? They made a case for it back in 2017 and they haven't really reduced from it. So that, as I always say, the lowest day of Donald Trump's presidency in terms of approval rating was the day that that tax bill passed. Well, if you combine that with persistent high inflation, with economic contraction, with unemployment, inflation, etc., well, plus the tax bill, that is a recipe really for a George W. Bush style pushback.

Even after you've won the popular vote, Bush basically nuked his presidency over trying to privatize Social Security and Iraq. And I haven't even mentioned any potential crisis. It's all just floating out there right now. Hurricane season, you know, it's not that far away. Could be right around the same time as the tax bill. The optics would be a disaster if anything like that. And you and I know the global system is very uncertain. Ukraine, obviously, but Gaza, I mean, that could start up any minute now. It already has escalated a bit with the Israelis cutting off aid. There could be any sort of terrorist attack, anything, some sort of major shock to the global system. So with all of this uncertainty right now and these economic problems,

people want to feel as if there's a steady hand on the wheel. I don't think that they're getting that right now. And I think that remains a big problem for Trump. Yeah. I mean, you have tariffs that are likely to spike prices. You have GDP growth dropping, potentially going negative. I mean, that is the definition of stagflation, which is the most disastrous economic situation that you can imagine. And then the GOP economic priorities are tax cuts for the rich

and cutting social safety net programs. There was a new report out from the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, that says what you and Einsteiger obviously already knew, which is that the amount of cuts that Republicans are pushing, there is no way to achieve them

without cutting Medicaid or Medicare. And we know Medicaid has been in their sights in particular. So you got the richest man on the planet who's consolidated all this power. You've got him giving himself contracts and goodies. There's more updates on that, on how he's finding more money for, and more contracts for Starlink seemingly every day.

At the same time that you're pursuing this agenda that's great for rich people. That's great if you want you if you're wealthy, if you're a big corporation, you want your tax cut. And it's terrible for ordinary people who are already suffering and who many of whom voted in this election because they thought Trump as a businessman would do a better job managing the economy. And they remembered back to his first term and felt like they were personally doing better, especially because prices were lower at that time and their dollar was able to go further. We alluded to this. We've got another negative indicator here that's significant. This is the ADP jobs report. I can put this up on the screen. So companies added just 77,000 new workers

for the last month. This is the chart showing it, that last little blue bar there that's really quite low in comparison to the other blue bars on the chart. That's where we are. That's also a lot less than what January was, 186,000, and it was much below the estimate of 148,000 jobs added. So, you know, this is something Ryan's been talking about, how all of the federal government cuts, it doesn't just impact those particular people who get fired. You end up with universities freezing firing. You end up with the healthcare system freezing hiring. You end up with an economy that's just kind of on standstill as people wait and see what the reverberations and what the ripple effects are ultimately going to be.

You add to that consumer confidence is down. I know Target came out and said that their spending, their revenue was soft in the past month as well. So you've got a lot of indications that consumers are pulling back and getting really nervous as well. And when you ask consumers what their expectations are for both job losses and for inflation, they are expecting things to turn south this year as well. And to be honest with you, I feel like the American people have been better at understanding, predicting the economy than many of the analysts who do this for a living. Yeah, good point. I mean, because they feel it and you can just really look around. I will say, you know, thermostatic public opinion is also a hell of a drug. I was just looking the other day at approval for the economy and the day that Trump took office, Republicans went from net negative to net positive in their approval of the economy.

Democrats went from net positive to net negative. So there's a lot of vibes talk out there as well. If we're all being honest, let's all be honest. I remember looking at economic data in Arizona right before the election, where if people were asked, how is your state doing? They would be like, oh, plus 25%. Things are great. It's boom times here down in Arizona. They're like, how is America doing? They're like, oh, it's a disaster. And you're like, well, the moment that Trump gets elected, they're like, oh, it's just we're booming. America's back for business again. So just just saying partisanship is also a hell of a drug. Let's put this next one up here on the screen. This is about the stock market. This is something I've been warning about here for quite some time from the Financial Times. The U.S. has grown

to nearly two thirds of global equity market value, but they say analysts are seeing danger in the huge bet on AI. So they say, if you hold a global tracker, by definition then, two-thirds of that is the United States. And a lot of that is Silicon Valley specifically. That means you're very vulnerable to this huge bet on AI. Now, our economy has significantly benefited from the fact that these tech stocks have gone vertical since 2008. That's how a huge portion of Americans who do have assets, who are not asset-light individuals or persons inflicted with asset lightness, have been able to capture some value and actually be able to retire with these great year-over-year gains in the S&P 500. But the real issue is that over the last five years in particular, this huge explosion

of value in these technology stocks means that Americans are very exposed to any correction, even a modest 10%, 20% correction in the technology sector, which would have massive ramifications for the economy. It would mean unemployment. It would mean change to Federal Reserve. So it's not just something that would affect tech employees. It would affect all of us. There's no question about it. And really, that's what they're pointing to right now with the current stock market and with all of these bigger questions, too, about NVIDIA, which currently saw a huge reduction the other day. We didn't get a chance to talk about it, but it was really because there are indications of how much they are currently averting export controls to China. And so actually just enforcing US law,

huge impact there on NVIDIA. So you've got geopolitical tensions, you got the whole deep seek thing in terms of efficiency, and then you still have these companies just pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AI development every single quarter. Now, they're doing that for a reason, and we're about to get to that in a little bit. But, you know, if that comes up short, it could have serious problems. We could be in for a bad five years, is what I would say. Well, and it doesn't even have to come up short. It just can be that, you know, DeepSeek and other open platforms are able to suck up a lot of the value as well. So it could even be that it's not that they underperform in terms of their technological development. It's just that there's far more global competition than is anticipated. I mean, I'm quite convinced that we are in a bubble. It's just a question to me of whether or not that

bubble is going to pop and the lengths that politicians will certainly go to to make sure that the stock market continues to churn, because that's, you know, that's been a goal and a priority, obviously, for many years now. But we talk about the magnificent seven group of stocks, and you're talking about how dominant the tech sector is. That's Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. They hold almost a third of the S&P 500's market value. And this article points out that the price to earnings ratio of that index is at its highest level since the early 2000s. Yep. You guys remember what happened in the early 2000s. That's when you had the dotcom bubble and ultimate crash. So again, they're going to keep trying to do what they can to keep the stock market inflated. But I don't,

to me, it's pretty undeniable that we are in a fairly significant bubble. And the fact that these handful of companies comprises such a large portion of the stock index and that that stock index comprises such a large portion of the overall market activity is another just looming massive risk and exposure as we're looking at these things. And this is a good segue to into our next segment, which is specifically about AI and where we're headed with that, which is also kind of terrifying. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle

solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard,

a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to Boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what

are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yes, artificial general intelligence. So Ezra Klein over at the New York Times just had a really good interview with Ben Buchanan,

and he was a White House advisor on AI and a professor at Georgetown. And he has a prediction that AGI, artificial general intelligence, is coming in the Trump administration. I will say, if you watched our coverage during the inauguration, I'm pretty sure we were both talking about that and we're like, listen, you know, all of this doge, everything, it could be, could be a footnote to what the actual story of the entire Trump administration actually is, which is the development of artificial general intelligence. Just as when people go back and write the history of the first Trump term, it'll be the Trump revolution of 2016 and COVID. Those are the two things that probably the most important things that actually came out of those years in retrospect.

So let's take a listen here to some of Ben Buchanan's analysis on artificial general intelligence, his predictions, and also some of the major policy implications behind it. So I've sort of heard you beg off on this question a little bit by saying you're not a labor economist.

I will say- I am not a labor economist. I will promise you the labor economists do not know what to do about AI. Yeah. You were the top advisor for AI. Yeah. You were at the nerve center of the government's information about what is coming. If this is half as big as you seem to think it is, it's going to be the single most disruptive thing to hit labor markets ever, given how compressed the time period in which it will arrive is, right?

It took a long time to lay down electricity. It took a long time to build railroads. I think that is basically true, but I want to push back a little bit. So I do think we are going to see a dynamic in which it will hit parts of the economy first. It will hit certain firms first, but it will be an uneven distribution. I think it will be uneven.

And that's, I think, what will be destabilizing about it in part. Right. If it were just even, then you might just come up with an even policy to do something about it. Sure. You must have heard somebody think about this. You guys must have talked about this. We did talk to economists and try to texture this debate in 23 and 24. I think the trend line is even clearer now than it was then.

I think we knew this was not going to be a 23 and 24 question. Frankly, to do anything robust about this, it's going to require Congress. And that was just not in the cards at all. So it was more of an intellectual exercise than it was a policy exercise. Policies begin as intellectual exercises. Sure. Yeah. This is a kind of like the reason I'm pushing on this is that

we have been talking about this, seeing this coming for a while. And I will say that as I look around, I do not see a lot of useful thinking here. And I grant that we don't know the shape of it. At the very least, I would like to see some ideas on the shelf for if the disruptions are severe, what we should think

about doing. Does everybody move into the trades? What were the intellectual thought exercises that all these smart people at the White House who believe this was coming, you know, what were you saying? So I think, yes, we were thinking about this question. I think we knew it was not going to be a question we were going to confront in the president's term. I guess I'm trying to push, like, was this not being talked about? There were no meetings. There were no, you guys didn't have Claude write up a brief of options? Well, you know, we definitely didn't have Claude write up a brief

because we had to get over government use of AI. See, but that's like itself slightly damning. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, Ezra, I agree that the government has to be more forward-leaning on basically all of these dimensions. You sit down with somebody and you start the conversation and they're like, the most transformative technology,

perhaps in human history, is landing into human civilization in a two to three-year timeframe. And you say, wow, that seems like a really big deal. What should we do? And then things get a little hazy, right? Now, maybe we just don't know, but what I've heard you kind of say a bunch of times is like, look, we have done very little to hold this technology back.

Everything is voluntary. You know, the only thing we asked was a sharing of safety data. You know, now in come the accelerationists. You know, Mark Andreessen has criticized you guys extremely straightforwardly. Is this policy debate about anything? Is it just the sentiment of the rhetoric, right? Like, if it's so f***ing big, but nobody can quite explain what it is we need to do or talk about, except for maybe export chip controls, like, are we just not thinking creatively

enough? Is it just not time? So I thought that that was a very good exchange. Our producer, Griffin, cut that together because what Ezra keeps trying to get at is he's like, so did you guys think about this at all? And the answer was like, no, not really in terms of how it's all going to come. And here's the thing. I don't think very much has changed. Now, there are some great people who are working in the White House, people like Sri Ram Krishnan or a few others, but that's one person. I mean, is this being discussed at like the very highest levels? And beyond that, you know, it's not just up to the White House. This would be a whole of government Congress approach if we're going to even think about rules and guidelines for the future. And I think the biggest worry right now, and this is

actually fundamentally what's so crazy about AI, is that the breakthrough is most likely to come, at least in America, in a pre-existing technology monopoly. So if you look at all of these other breakthrough technologies, they come from an outside competitor. They don't necessarily come from – you know, everyone always famously says, like, oh, Kodak invented the digital camera. But, you know, they put it to the shelf because they want to disrupt themselves. These guys are all actually aware of that, and they're the ones who are pumping all the money into this tech. And it's not necessarily some new value capture startup or something that would be the break. I think that probably has to do more with AI economics. But I think that's part of why I'm so worried is that if you give these people who already have immense power, even more immense power, basically control

over the whole US labor market. I think that's the really terrifying part behind the development. There's a lot about this that like gives me panic attacks listening to that. I listen to that whole podcast and it confirms my terror, which is that, you know, even the people who are at the bleeding edge of this really don't know exactly what it's going to do to society and don't really have any answers about how to address it. And I think everyone really needs to wrap their head around the fact that the social contract is going to need to be completely rewritten. And I don't think that there is, I get that it is hard to fathom what this is going to mean.

It feels very like, oh, I use ChatGPT and it's fun to ask questions. It's just kind of like a better Google. But what is coming is something profoundly different. And the goal is to automate, to use AGI to basically make human intellectual labor irrelevant. So what does that do to a society? What does that do to the world when human beings are no longer the most intelligent species on the planet? So, you know, the Biden administration clearly didn't have any answers for that. And I don't know that anyone, I mean, at this point, there was these different factions in Silicon Valley thinking about AI development.

And you have people who are like, you know, the AI safety people and people who are doomers. I'm probably kind of in the doomer camp. And the accelerationists at this point have just completely won. And the idea is just like, we're in a race with China. We're going to throw as much money

and, you know, effort into this as we possibly can. We're going to develop it as quickly as possible, even though the problem of what they call alignment has not been solved. And alignment is like a really sort of sterilized word, antiseptic word for how do we make sure that this AI isn't just going to like decide

to destroy us all or have catastrophic consequences that we aren't envisioning. They haven't figured that out, but they're still pushing forward. And Sagar, you're mentioning, you know, this is going to come from likely from some big tech monopoly, unless China does get to AGI first, which I think is certainly a possibility at this point. But the other thing that's different there is that the previous major technological advances, like if you think about the internet, if you think about computers, like personal computers,

if you think about nuclear energy and weapons, all of that was developed within the government. So the government also, there was some ability to have a democratic check on what purposes this would be developed for and, you know, a sort of studied approach to it. Not that that is perfect in any way, but when you just are developing it in the private capitalist markets and where the goal is just like who can get there first and who can capture the most, the biggest profit margins, like the impacts are almost unfathomable. And, you know, I talk a lot about the labor market piece. The surveillance piece is also, I think, something we should all be pretty terrified about. And then the last thing I'll say before we get to the clip that

specifically talks about the race with China is I think one of the things that's happening with Doge, as best I can tell, is they want to use the federal government as kind of like a laboratory for how many human beings can be replaced right now by AI even before we get to AGI. So we're getting an announcement probably today that they're working to completely, you know, dismantle the Department of Education. We've already had indications that they're using AI to go through all sorts of data. And, you know, I've seen indications like, oh, maybe they're going to cut the social, they are cutting the Social Security Administration. Maybe those people on those hotlines are going to be replaced by AI.

I do think it is sort of a test lab for how many human beings can we get rid of and replace with machines and the basic functions still more or less work. So I think that is part of what's going on here too. Yeah. All right. Let's go to the next part here. As you said, that specific interview question on AGI and the race. Let's take a listen. There are a lot of arguments in America about AI. The one thing that seems not to get argued over, that seems almost universally agreed upon and is the dominant, in my view, controlling priority and policy is that we get to AGI, a term I've heard you don't like, before China does. Why? I do think there are profound economic and military and intelligence capabilities that would be downstream of getting to AGI

or transformative AI. And I do think it is fundamental for US national security that we continue to lead AI because we think AI could represent a fundamental shift in how we conduct cyber operations on offense and defense. And I would not want to live in a world in which China has that capability

on offense and defense and cyber and the United States does not. capability on offense and defense and cyber. And the United States does not. They want strength and dominance and to see the next era be a Chinese era. So maybe there's nothing you can do about this. But it is pretty damn antagonistic to try to choke off the chips for the central technology of the next era to the other biggest country. I don't know that it's pretty antagonistic to say we are not going to sell you the most advanced technology in the world.

That does not in itself, that's not a declaration of war. That is not even self-declaration of a Cold War. I think it is just saying this technology is incredibly important. Do you think that's how they understood it? Yeah, I thought it was interesting. I don't know.

To be honest, I think that Ezra question is incredibly stupid, like what people are just entitled all across the world to whatever product the United States produces. That's absurd. If you guys are so good that you could build it yourself, which they did. I mean, that's the other thing. It's not one thing that we always do in America is we underestimate the Chinese. I mean, look at BYD. Yeah, they were stealing our IP and there was all this, oh, they're stealing from us, et cetera. And then they were like, yeah, we stole it. And then we actually made it 10 times better than everything that you have in your market. They are already doing that with their chips. Whether we sell them to them or not, it's absurd to think that they're entitled to it. So in a way, it's almost like weirdly paternalistic. It's like,

oh no, it's all good. We have to sell them this brand new technology. I just think that's completely absurd. But, you know, look, the question that Ben raises, and this is one, too, that's kind of like nuclear weapons, is there just is a mutually disturbed destruction, Thucydides trap element to this. Like, it's nice to Pollyanna be like, oh, maybe we can all get along. It's like, no, we're not going to get along because they don't want to get along with us. And, you know, most Americans don't necessarily want to get along with them.

In terms of allowing total dominance or being subject to their economic or market control. That's something that we all are, you know, pretty wedded to, at least at a consumer level here in America. And if you look at Sputnik or any of these other moments, it's pretty much borne out in the population data. So I don't know. I have some mixed feelings on that one. Yeah. I was looking at, there's this Australian technology index that looks at which countries are most advanced across a number of different

technologies. It calls it Australian Strategic Policy Institute's Critical Technology Tracker. And we went from being number one in basically everything to now China, according to this index, leads in 37 out of 44 evaluated technologies, including things like defense, space, robotics, energy, biotech, AI, advanced materials, and quantum technology. I don't know if you saw this, Sagar. I mean, this is a different sort of quote-unquote technology. but McDonald's is no longer the largest fast food chain in the world. A Chinese brand that just went public in Hong Kong actually has the, I think it's called like Mixi or something like that. I think it's called Mixi. I might be wrong. But anyway, now has more locations than McDonald's and not a single one is in Europe or the United States of America. 90% of them are just within China themselves. So I think it's,

I mean, it's the chain. I know they sell ice cream and drinks. Is that what it is? I mean, and this is Arnaud had a tweet about this, Arnaud Bertrand, which is like, listen, this is going to be new for those of us in the West to have these brands that are like the largest brands and the new big thing that we don't have any idea. We've never heard of. They don't exist here. We don't know what they are. And so your point about, you know, being arrogant with regard to where China is and how far along they are in their development, I think people need to wrap their heads around the fact that actually in many technologies, they are quite advanced and they are right there along with us. And the innovations with regard to DeepSeek, you know, really pushed the boundaries in terms of efficiency and, you know, requires much less power usage than the models that were developed here. So,

yeah, that's, it's a very real dynamic, but that McDonald's thing kind of blew my mind. Absolutely. That's a good point. Sort of like a Sputnik moment in a weird way. Yeah, it's a good point. I'm not sure I would be care so much about the largest place being bubble tea, but I'll try it. Yeah, I'd be happy to try it. Apparently it's all over Asia. I would love to go. I'm not usually a bubble tea guy, but they have soft serve. So that sounds pretty good, but yes, no, you're absolutely right. And this is part of the chauvinism in the United States. I've recently started been looking back at the Soviet atomic bomb industry or the Soviet atomic bomb program.

Absolutely fascinating time. Everybody can tell you the story of the Manhattan Project or what Oppenheimer, et cetera. But nobody really thinks about, you know, that four year period where the Soviets went from not having an atomic bomb to be able to compete, and actually the hydrogen development, which sparked the arms race. And I think what was so fascinating about that time period of the early Soviet Union was a chauvinism here in the United States

of even in the early days of the Cold War, where they're like, we've got it. We don't really have to do all that much. And there's no way that these backward Soviets could be able to compete. And that's where Sputnik came in. DeepSeek, obviously, is a version of that. But part of the other issue is culturally right now is we don't appreciate the ability of alternative systems to deliver extraordinary results. We had

a foolish notion here in the West that by cutting Russia off from the international banking system, they would collapse. What we forgot is that countries are not stock markets. They are places that have natural resources. And the ability to produce guns, bullets, and pull oil out of the ground is actually all that really matters whenever you're in a time of war. Same with the Chinese. I mean, they have all of these minerals and factories, industries, and supply chains that are totally vertically integrated that have enabled these incredible breakthroughs in their car industry, in their battery technology, and now with AI. I have no doubt that in the next 10 years, they'll be on parity with us on the chips as well. And we have to grapple with that. Yeah, that's right. This is something that all Americans, I'm watching the Europeans do this right now.

They're having huge debates over, I saw a headline in the Financial Times. They're like, Europeans, we must slash our welfare states to compete on defense. And I was like, man, that'd be a bitter pill to swallow if I was a Frenchman or if I was a German and I've been used to a life of 75 years of universal healthcare. So I'm curious to see how that works out for them. But that's my point too,

is that everything is a tradeoff. And to just sit here and think that, you know, we are just naturally will inherit the earth is ludicrous. And you will find out very, very quickly. I do. I encourage. That's why I talk about those Chinese EVs all the time. Yeah. I don't think people know. Like, and you can just go on YouTube.

You can go watch it for yourself. It's crazy. You would buy one, too, if we're all being honest. Every one of us would buy one if we're talking about the price. And so think about it and just say, like, how do you get there? Well, it's not that easy. And you need a government. You need a plan.

You need supply chain. You know, you need your Elon and you need the government to, like, come together like this. Otherwise, you're going to get left in the dust. Well, and China's got Elon too. Yeah, that's true. Good point. But there, Elon, the BYD guy, that guy is crazy. He is, like I said, Charlie Munger said he was the smartest guy that he's ever met in his entire life, which I think is extraordinary. Well, and last thing on this, part of the hubris is assuming that our version of capitalism is the one that is going to create the most innovation. You know, we just assume that that's the case. And part of what has happened

that, you know, is something that Matt Stoller certainly shines a light on is since we allow these giant tech monopolies to grow, oftentimes they focus more on, you know, financial tricks and games than innovation. They have few competitors because they're giant monopolies. And so it certainly has not been the best way to encourage innovation and keep us at the leading edge. China obviously has a very different economic system and, you know, parts of it are effectively socialist. And that has the way that

they've been able to marshal state resources in critical industries and, you know, create supply chains and actually, yes, efficiencies that have enabled this technological development. And have also, you know, made some intentional decisions to keep their society from going down the path of just everything being financialization and all of their top graduates going into, you know, the equivalent of Wall Street. You know, that's also a significant part of the story as well. And part of the hubris, because, you know, after we won the Cold War versus the Soviets, we're like, all right, our system's the best. This kind of capitalism is amazing. It's going to win forever. And here comes another

economic model that is, you know, rivaling or in a lot of ways out innovating and out competing us. I don't think a lot of people here have wrapped their heads around that or want to wrap their heads around what that means. Yep, you're right. Turns out just eating McDonald's all day, watching OnlyFans or Netflix or all that doesn't produce the best scientists. Shocking. Absolutely shocking. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that

enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships it's more than personal it's political it's societal and at times it's far from what i originally intended it to be these days i'm interested in expanding what it means to

be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room.

You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret?

Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get over to Gaza. Yeah, so we have some significant developments here. I want to go with the latest one first. So Trump put this message up on, I guess this was Truth Social to begin with. Let's put this up on the screen. So he writes, Shalom Hamas means hello and goodbye. You can choose. Release all of the hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered or it is over for you. Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted.

Unmentioned is the fact that Israel is holding hundreds of bodies, but we'll put that aside. I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job. Not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don't do as I say. I have just met with your former hostages whose lives you have destroyed. This is your last warning for the leadership. Now is the time to leave Gaza while you still have a chance. Also to the people of Gaza, a beautiful future awaits, but not if you hold hostages. If you do, you are dead. Make a smart decision. Release the hostages now or there will be hell to pay later. Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America. Now, this comes at the same time as, let's put this next piece up on the screen, the Trump administration is actually meeting

directly with Hamas. Now, to me, when you are engaged in negotiations, it is a no-brainer that you want to engage in those negotiations directly with the people who you are negotiating with. But this is not the way things are normally thought of in Washington, D.C. And of course, if the Biden administration had negotiated directly with Hamas, of course,

there would have been like massive breakouts all across the right, et cetera, about negotiating with terrorists. But the presidential envoy for hostage affairs, Adam Boulder, actually has been communicating directly with Hamas. And so, you know, that to me is the fact that you even have talks occurring in that way is certainly an encouraging sign. But then countervailing forces, you have that very belligerent Trump message on true social, and you have the fact that he seems still committed to his insane mess, you know, complete ethnic cleansing plan in the Gaza Strip.

And it all amounts to a like, I don't really know where things are and what is going to happen next. Also, last thing before I get your reaction, Saugers, to keep in mind, as we covered on Monday, that Israel has completely backed away from the ceasefire deal. You know, Bibi had always told his domestic fanatic partners that they were only going to do phase one and then they were going to go back to the war. Now what they're doing is they're reinstituting the complete siege, including considering cutting off water

to the Gaza Strip as well. So, you know, the situation is quite dire at this point. Yeah, it is. The signals are everywhere. So on the one hand, talking with Hamas is great. That's what we should be doing from day one. And of course, all these idiots in America, oh, we don't negotiate with terrorists or whatever. I'm like, well, Israel's tried to kill them for two years and they're still standing.

So what do you want to do? You know, and their answer is actually simple. They're like, oh, just kill them all. And you're like, OK, well, that didn't work. Or at the very least, I don't want any part of that. So this is the alternative option. How do you think you got out of Afghanistan? You do what Trump did. You sign a deal that says we are negotiating with the Taliban. It was an absurd, this idea that the United States is not going to negotiate with the Taliban over a 20-year occupation of that country and an insurgency. We have the same problem here. So let's just put that on the table. I do also, this is the problem with Trump. I've been thinking

about this. He already gave that ultimatum previously and nothing happened. He said they have to release all the hostages. They didn't do it. Or they'll be held to pay. Literally not a single thing happened. My guess is that this is part of trying to pressure the negotiations and the direct U.S. talks right now with Hamas. But in terms of the credibility that they will be received, that's a bit of an issue. I would also say at the very end there, he said people of Gaza release the hostages or you're all die. I'm like, OK, so America is going to do it now. We're not even going to let the Israelis do it. I mean, that's pretty insane. I think Jeremy Scahill has a official response now from Hamas that just came out.

Yeah, here we go. Just in the last hour, I can read it here. In response to Trump's statement directed at Hamas, only sick and twisted people keep bodies. On February 23rd, the Palestinian National Campaign for the Recovery of Martyrs' Bodies announced they're going through the bodies thing. They say, according to the bodies, they're among retained. They're talking what you said about Israeli bodies. And finally, they say the campaign noted these figures do not include bodies held in the Gaza Strip since the onset of aggression. However, Israeli sources have revealed the occupation is holding over 1,500 martyr bodies at the, what that Saad Tayyat, I forget exactly how to say it, where the rape

occurred in occupied southern Palestine. So you can see that they are hitting back on the body's claims, but they are not actually talking specifically about this claim over hell to pay. So there is an open question. I will also say it's funny that this is such a subversion end of the Israeli strategy because Israel's previous strategy was to kill all of the people who were reasonable-ish inside of Hamas so that there was nobody to negotiate with. And yet even still, as we can see here correctly, at this time there's still no bombing yet. And perhaps there is some path to some sort of phase two deal. This is how we would actually get there.

If it were to ever exist, is the United States as the big brother, just as in Ukraine, yes, you have to talk to Putin. Sorry, people. That's how it works. Same here in Hamas. No, they don't have a nuke, but they exist and they have at least some number of fighters in the Gaza Strip who are still able to mount a resistance. They have some support there. Nobody really knows how much, but yeah, you have to talk to them. So this is the duality, I guess, of Trump and the two directions where he's torn. His Israeli supporters want him to just blow them all away and basically bomb and give, that's the other thing. I will give Israel everything. They've already been given, what are they asking for that they're not getting? Is there any evidence? I have not seen one. And you and I both know if there's a weapon system they wanted that they weren't getting, they would leak it. They would have leaked it, you know, last week.

Oh, yeah. I can't think of a single thing that they're getting that they don't have other than a nuke, which they also have. So it's like, well, what do you want? Yeah. And they just rushed through a quote unquote emergency, you know, for like billions of dollars of weapons to Israel. So, yeah, we all know Israel is getting everything they want. Don't worry. Not a question.

Remember, there was like one shipment of 2,000 pound bombs that got held up and, you know, they were up in arms over it. How dare you withhold this one shipment that made no difference in terms of their ability to completely decimate the Gaza Strip. You know, the other thing that was not encouraging as we can put the next piece up on the screen

is that a bunch of Arab nations came together and put together, you know, a pretty reasonable plan for next steps in terms of Gaza. And Trump and Netanyahu immediately rejected it. Like, you know, this was a considered plan, multiple nations involved, you know, significant planning goes into this, and then it's just sort of rejected out of hand. They said this in Haaretz, they said it's just sort of rejected out of hand. They said this in Haaretz. They said it's the result of a months-long diplomatic effort to create an off-ramp that would end the war and let reconstruction begin. The plan contains hundreds of pages and appendices, yet the Trump administration seemed to have killed it with a single paragraph. current proposal does not address the reality that Gaza is currently uninhabitable and residents

cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordinance. Of course, that's consistent with Trump's plan of like, oh, we got to ethnically cleanse all of these people out of the Gaza Strip. And by the way, they're never allowed to return. This was a spokesman for the National Security Council adding that President Trump remains committed to his plan to forcibly evacuate the entire population of Gaza and claim the territory for the U.S. Netanyahu rejected that without even putting out a little paragraph saying why.

So, you know, this is the other piece is like, if that idea is a negotiating tactic, then okay, well, the Arab nations got together. They came up with the counterproposal. So let's negotiate. But the fact that they immediately stuck so hard to his just like both evil and absurd and preposterous notion of the U.S. is going to take over the Gaza Strip and push out every Palestinian and not allow them to return. That is obviously deeply troubling. And listen, maybe they'll come back. The Arab nation said, okay, well, we don't consider that to be a final answer.

So we're going to keep working on it. We'll see where it ultimately goes, but I'm not very there. My biggest signal was he didn't mention it at all at the State of the Union. He made one thing about the, he made one mention of the hostages. There was not nothing about ceasefire, about the Gaza plan, even though I do think he is serious. He did not mention it there. I don't know. I have no idea what to say. I just hope Steve Witkoff just keeps sending him there. He's got a good track record. Keep talking to Hamas. Let's get to some sort of phase two, whatever this Gaza moronic idea is. I don't even know about that.

But in the interim, you know, it's still better, at least for now. But if Trump does start to provide not only just weapons to Israel, that's par for the course. If he starts to directly intervene from the U.S. military, I think you would see a titanic pushback here in the United States. I genuinely don't think a lot of people would stand for that, about a direct military bombing campaign. In fact, it would be a nightmare for Israel and for a lot of their supporters because people would start asking all kinds of questions whenever it's actually U.S. military weapons, jets and others, that are directly being used inside of the Gaza Strip. So we'll see. Maybe they will catch their own tail because that will create a serious pushback, I think,

from the United States, also in terms of backlash against the United States. Very, very troubling situation. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that

camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024.

Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high.

And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father?

Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead. But I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time.

Oh, my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get over to the Tate brothers. And so I will, let me just say this at the top.

I have not had the time to explicitly parse every statement by Andrew Tate, every one of his human trafficking claims or all of that. I do know that he has definitely advocated some stuff that I definitely am against, of which I guess the Romanian authorities found and bear investigation. But the funniest thing that I have seen now so far is this civil war happening right now over Andrew Tate's basically what fleeing slash vacationing according to him back to the United States and a split overall in the conservative movement where many people we had Ali Betstucky on the show for example to be like hey actually no Andrew Tate is not

really a male model at all for anybody who is conservative or wants to see like family life or you know there's so I could go down the list in terms of so many of the different things that the guy has said. But the split now has opened up a fight legally here in America, where the attorney general of the state of Florida said he is going to pursue an investigation of Andrew Tate specifically around these human trafficking allegations. Let's take a listen. Yeah, look, these guys have themselves publicly admitted to participating in what very much appears to be soliciting, trafficking, preying upon women around the world. Many of these victims coming forward, some of them minors,

you know, people can spin or defend however they want. But in Florida, this type of behavior is viewed as atrocious. We're not going to accept it. They chose to come here and set their feet down in this state. And we're going to pursue every tool we have within our legal authority to hold them accountable. So we are in the process today. We have secured and executed subpoenas and warrants, and we're going to continue to move forward with full force of law. This is an ongoing criminal investigation, and we're going to use every tool we have to ensure that justice is served. Do you open a criminal investigation? There is an active criminal

investigation, yes. Do you believe that there could be any details of what? I can't comment on a pending investigation, but what I can tell you is if these guys did criminal activity here in Florida, we will go after them with the full force of law and hold them accountable. So the Florida attorney general saying there was an active criminal investigation. Andrew Tate then responded. Let's put this up there on the screen. He put out his tweet saying Ron DeSantis is attacking me because he was worried I would support Byron Donalds over his wife, knowing I have monumental political weight and trust our Commander-in-Chief,

President Trump's recommendations completely. They attacked me to prevent me from destroying his wife's political ambitions. Interestingly, I had no interest in Florida politics until I learned how communist the DeSantis administration is. Game on. Well, it might surprise everyone to learn that actually even Byron Donald's not really playing ball with all this. So guys, can we go ahead and play E3, please? Let's take a listen. Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan,

because in Romania, where they just came to Florida from, there were charges of rape, sex with minor and human trafficking. Do you support the attorney general's actions here? I do. I think those allegations have to be fully investigated, and then we go from there. The key thing is we don't tolerate the trafficking of women or, frankly, the abuse of women. We do not tolerate that. So if the attorney general finds cause under Florida law to investigate that, then I wish him the best, and I support whatever he's going to do on that matter. Are Andrew and Tristan Tate welcome in Florida? No, quite frankly not. Because if you listen to some of the dialogue, I find it to be

demeaning and disgusting. That's not about being an alpha male. It's not about being a strong man. What they stand for, in my view, is something totally different. All right. So Byron is actually backing up the attorney general here. So bit of a plot twist. And Andrew is now saying, Andrew Tate says, let's see, E4, can we put that on the screen, please? He is now claiming that his flight to the United States was just a vacation. It's a strange feeling to be so adored that when you go on a two-week holiday to Miami, the entire world talks about it. It's wild. I'm going back to Romania in a few days anyways. So there we go, Crystal, before I play the crazy Andrew Tate's reaction, but I wanted

to get yours first. Back to Romania is a surprise. I guess he feels like- Yeah, he's under investigation there. I wouldn't want to go back to Romania. I mean, maybe he feels like, because I mean, it looks very much like the Trump administration intervened directly with the Romanian government. So maybe he feels like he's got more protection in Romania at this point, courtesy of Trump and Rick Grinnell in particular,

than he does clearly in the state of Florida. I mean, I don't know if you guys have seen the videos floating around, both of things that he has said, which, you know, if true, if acted upon, certainly would constitute criminal behavior. Or some of the alleged videos that are floating out there of actual abuse. I mean, it truly is horrifying. So for a party that has any semblance of caring about family values, you can understand why there's some contingent that's like, you know, maybe this guy really isn't the role model that we want to embrace here.

And it is utterly disgusting that the Trump administration intervened on behalf of this dude. Like, whatever you think of him, that they spent their diplomatic resources getting this guy free is, I think, just absolutely disgraceful. With regard to the politics of it, it is kind of interesting because I'm curious how you read it, Sagar, but to me, it reads like, Ron DeSantis, first of all, I'm sure bitter about the presidential campaign and blah, blah, blah, and he wants his wife to get the Senate seat

and Senate seat, right? Or governor? Which one is it? Governor, governor. Governor, yeah, after he goes. And so there's that piece. But also I think he's positioning himself for a theoretical post-Trump

GOP, where, you know, in theory, at least, this is the last time Trump can run for president. And I think DeSantis, perhaps foolishly, is calculating that maybe after this term, there will be a desire for someone who showed a little bit of independence from Trump, had a little bit of principle on something somewhere that they can point to that was distinct from just being part of, you know, the Trump band of sycophants. But, you know, I'm not really sure that he's right about that. But I do think that that's kind of the calculus that he's that he's engaging in here. It could be. But then I don't know why Byron Donalds, who is like as MAGA and as Trump as it gets,

would back him up because, and that's actually the other thing too. I think that's political calculus. I mean, because most people are gonna look at this dude and be like, yeah, this is abhorrent. So if he wants to run, you know, if he's running in the state, which he is, I just read that as feeling some political pressure

to take a stance against something that would be wildly unpopular. I think it's possible. I will tell you that whole Trump thing is not confirmed 100 percent. It was according to the Financial Times. They claim Rick Grinnell. Grinnell denies it. So that that's the only thing that's come back to. Don't forget, I mean, he is an American citizen. He's a dual Romanian American national, has full entry rights to the United States. He can come and go as he please. Not in defense. I'm just saying he's got the U.S. passport, okay? So, like, he doesn't have to apply or whatever to be released.

It is, of course, noting that he was barred from leaving the country for almost two years while that continues. Like I said, you could spend 90 hours going back and forth, as you said, about there's things on video. There's things he said, claims never did them. There are people who have anonymously sued him. There are multiple people, I think, in the UK where they want and seek his extradition. I know there is an American unidentified woman who claims to have been a victim of the so-called human trafficking network, et cetera. You could even put all that criminal stuff aside and actually just focus purely on all this like demonization of family life, marriage,

you know, so many of the views that he has espoused in the past. Look, I think he has the right to say them, but you know, I don't think necessarily is a good thing or whatever to be celebrated. And that's part of the reason why I find it pretty annoying. It's also pretty, I had this discussion with Andrew Schultz. It's like, as much as this guy shits all over America

and he's like pushing his like weird quasi Sharia slash, it's like Islamic hedonism, whatever his brand is. Now, currently it's like, oh, you've come back to bid big, bad America, whatever it suits you now, doesn't it? As much shit, you can come back to big, bad America whenever it suits you. Now, doesn't it? As much shit have you talked now over the years? So even pinning down this guy's like personal views or whatever is like pretty difficult. I find it all like pretty abhorrent and gross. I understand why, you know, if you're a 14-year-old dude online, yeah, I get why it might resonate a little bit with you. But overall, politically, this from the DeSantis administration, I haven't seen much organic pushback against it. I could be wrong, but I do think that the dam has broken a little bit, at least on the conservative commentariat and all of that that are backing up DeSantis.

And I don't see like some grand army that's going to be going against, yeah, going against Byron Donalds and backing up DeSantis. And I don't see like some grand army that's gonna be going against, yeah, going against Byron Donalds and or Ron DeSantis for either accepting or pursuing this investigation against the Tate brothers. It is a fascinating saga though, in and of itself. Yeah, well, and he was on with Candace Owens and explaining his position and very upset and whatever let's take a listen to a little bit of that arrest me perp walk me put me on the news tell everyone

i'm a human trafficker you think i'm not verse you think i'm not ready i'm a navy seal in this shit fucking come get me raid my house take my stuff you think i sleep with a phone full of evidence you think i don't wipe my phone every night? You think I'm dumb? Come get me. Arrest me. Let's do this all over again. Why is he wiping his phone every night? I was going to say, actually, I do think you're kind of dumb

because if you're like, I don't sleep with a phone full of evidence. I wipe it every night. It's like, okay, well, what evidence was on there that you're trying to hide? So that's a little weird. Really the kind of thing

that people who are innocent of these said allegations typically do. But there you go. Innocent till proven guilty. Yeah. I mean, their tell to me was, oh, I'm going back to Romania because I'm like, OK, well, then you're a lot more. And by the way, you should be more afraid in Romania. Look, I'm only assuming no offense, Romania, but it seems like a place where you could probably buy your way out of some trouble.

You're here in the United States of America. You're going to need a few billion dollars to buy yourself out of trouble, not a few hundred million or whatever from your multilevel marketing schemes. So anyway, it's fascinating, fascinating story. We'll continue to keep everybody updated. I'm already sure that this will go extremely viral in terms of all this coverage and this fascination over the Tate brothers. I do recommend everybody go watch our Allie Bestucky interview about Andrew Tate. It made me from a year or two ago.

I thought she did an excellent job on that one. Yeah, and she really was kind of a leader on it because at that point, I think it was much harder for someone who's conservative to come out and say the things and be critical of him in the way that she was. So she was, you know, principled on that. And then the last thing I'll say in terms of just like investigations and charges, just keep in mind that if it was state charges that were filed against him, like Trump can't pardon him for those. So, you know, I think that would be another part of

the calculus of like, yo, I was just here on vacation. I'm just like, I'm leaving now, headed back to Romania. See you guys later. Was never really planning on staying. But yeah, some interesting pseudo divides in the MAGA coalition that remind me also of some of the discussion, which we also talked to Ali Bestekhi about, about Elon and Ashley St. Clair

and the whole baby mama drama situation there with him too. Yep, absolutely. So Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution.

But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator,

and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family.

I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father.

Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune

worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret even if that means destroying her husband's

family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, we've just received some new troubling economic news. According to ADP, private employers added just 77,000 jobs last month. That is far fewer than the 148,000 that they expected.

Now, this adds one more sign that the economy is teetering on the brink of a crash. But the Trump administration, they've got a solution. They're implementing a plan to cook the books and make it look like things are going better than they actually are. So it all started, as most things do in Trump 2.0, with Elon, who offered some significant cope on Twitter in response to a new projection from the Atlanta Fed that GDP was set to fall off a cliff.

So Elon tweeted this. A more accurate measure of GDP would exclude government spending. Otherwise, you can scale GDP artificially high by spending money on things that don't make people's lives better. For example, you could shift everyone who is building cars to working at the DMV.

That would result in no cars and a much worse standard of living, but GDP would appear to be the same. So as is often the case, his post was hit with a community note as users responded, Hey, we actually already have that metric that you're looking for. It's called value added by private industries. What's more, that metric has continued to rise as a percent of overall GDP, even under supposed big government Democrats

like Obama and Biden. But since Elon is our unelected CEO dictator king, his random Twitter musings are now rapidly becoming government policy. Days later, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took to Fox News to announce he was looking at changing how GDP is calculated in line with exactly what Elon just said.

Take a listen. How worried should we be about an economy that is slowing in line with exactly what Elon just said. Take a listen. How worried should we be about an economy that is slowing in all of this? We saw the GDP last week. There are new worries that the Wall Street Journal wrote about, worries mounting that the Trump agenda testing economy's resilience. The Lindsay Group out with a report, can Doge induce a recession? Are any of these moves worrying you that we're actually going to see it cut into growth over the near term negatively? No, no, no. So let's, you know, the Commerce Department runs the statistics of GDP. You know, the governments historically have messed with GDP. They count government spending as part of GDP. So I'm going to separate those

two and make it transparent. That lower government spending. It's one thing. It goes like this. If the government buys a tank, that's GDP. But paying a thousand people to think about buying a tank is not GDP. That is wasted inefficiency, wasted money. and cutting that while it shows in GDP. We're going to get rid of that. We're going to show you how that is. So let me just decode that for you. Since Republicans, led by Elon, are in the middle of destroying the government, mass firing workers, and attacking Medicaid, they don't really want the numbers to accurately reflect the way that their austerity for you, socialism for the rich agenda, is actually really bad for the entire economy. So instead, they're just gonna hide it.

But that's not all. The Trump administration just announced they're completely disbanding two different committees that both assist in producing accurate economic statistics. According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the committees was particularly important for tracking inflation, employment, economic growth. Seems pretty important to know about those things.

So GDP is being, quote, messed with. And committees that help to keep statistics accurate are being eliminated. They're asking you to not believe your lying bank accounts. Now, Lutnick and Elon's alliance is actually an important one to watch. It's kind of interesting. This isn't the first time they've been hand in glove with their ideological agenda, which mainly centers around austerity for you and billions for them and for their rich buddies. You might recall Elon backed Lutnick for treasury secretary, which is generally considered a more powerful position than commerce

secretary. He tweeted at the time that Lutnick would, quote, actually enact change over the, quote, business as usual Scott Besant. Now, Lutnick would, quote, actually enact change over the, quote, business as usual Scott Besson. Now, Lutnick also famously introduced Elon at that infamous Madison Square Garden rally, asking him how much he would rip out of Biden's wasted budget. Let's take a listen. For the greatest capitalist in the history of the United States of America, Elon Musk. All right, I've only got one question for you, then I'm getting out of here because this is your stage. But we set up Doge.

Yes. How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget? Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion. Yeah! Yes. $2 trillion. I mean, at the end of the day, you're being taxed. You're being taxed.

All government spending is taxation. So whether it's direct taxation or all government spending, it either becomes inflation or it's direct taxation. Your money is being wasted, and the Department of Government Efficiency is going to fix that. So I suspect Elon sees Lutnik as a pretty useful ally in advancing Elon's agenda, and that's, of course, to gut and defenestrate the government so it can't check the power of his own companies,

and also, of course, to loot the Treasury so he can become a trillionaire and make it to Mars. Two goals he must have realized were really pretty impossible without hijacking the whole of the U.S. federal government. This new scheme to cook the books on GDP also aligns with Elon's anarcho-capitalist ideology, which views all government activity as, quote, nonproductive, except, of course, for that government activity, which blows into the pockets of Elon himself personally and helps to finance and further his own ambitions. Changing GDP to ignore government inputs both backs up his tech feudalist ideology of mass privatization

and also is going to help cover up the damage that Doge is causing in real time. Now, listen, GDP is far from a perfect metric. It certainly shouldn't be used to judge general well-being if that's the only thing you're looking at. In fact, assuming GDP growth is the end-all be-all was one of the core failures of the neoliberal era. Who cares, after all, if GDP grows, if all the gains are ultimately flowing to the top. But as with most everything in the Trump administration, the proposal here would take something that is already bad and make it much worse. Do we really believe that government spending and investment is meaningless and contributes nothing to the economy? We're talking about infrastructure, research, electricity generation,

public schools, all meant to be ignored as drivers of real productive economic activity. It's insanity. it's stupidity. It also creates absurd situations like a private for-hire fire department being counted towards GDP and the traditional government-backed variety not, or private school teachers counting, but not public school teachers.

This new selective metric would do more to confuse and hide than to illuminate. But of course, that is exactly the point here. Now, the economy is turning sour fast. Not that it was really amazing before. Again, the theme of taking something bad and making it even worse. But consumer spending has dropped by the largest amount in years. Consumer confidence falling off a cliff. The housing market is truly paralyzed. The stock market, it's all over the place. Job creation is plummeting. And contrary to what Elon

and Lutnick want you to think, gutting government, firing workers, slashing social safety net programs, that is gonna be really bad for the economy overall and specifically for regular people and their experience of the economy. In fact, the oligarch agenda that has been rapidly implemented

is deeply destructive to the non-GDP metrics that actually really do matter for people's lives. The Wall Street Journal recently reported, a record-breaking amount of our economic activity now is just from rich people spending money, since increasingly, they're the only ones who actually have money to spend. The top 10% of all earners make up now half of all spending. Just three decades ago, back when I was a teenager, they only made up a third of all spending. That represents an extraordinary concentration of wealth and power among the few. A realignment of resources, a collapse of prosperity for ordinary people at a record-breaking pace. Now, the response to this new Gilded Age by the Trump admin is a cartoonishly pro-oligarch agenda. They'll hike prices through tariffs, massively regressive impact there,

gut the agencies that curb the scams that benefit the rich, destroy the threadbare programs that working class and poor Americans rely upon, and implement a $4 trillion tax cut that goes straight to the rich, all while opening new foreign opportunities for American billionaire plunder.

So how successful do I think these efforts to cover up economic reality will ultimately be? How will their cooking of the books go? Since people have their own personal experience of the economy, I kind of doubt that it's gonna be all that successful. You can ask Soviet Russia how these sorts of projects typically go,

or you could ask the Democrats who wanted to deny the reality that for ordinary people, the Biden economy was far from great. The fakery will be unable to fully mask economic reality. But I will say, Elon and Trump, they are both masters at concocting alternative realities with far greater talent at it than people like Biden and Schumer. They have hardcore cult followings who've proven willing to suspend reality in order to believe the pronouncements of their dear leaders. These manipulate economic statistics

will be one weapon of gaslighting to feed their fabricated fantasy lands. And further, their post-modernist project where facts and truth are discarded in favor of vibes and narratives. How successful this elaborate gaslighting is gonna be? Well, that depends on how undeniable the fact of economic and narratives. How successful this elaborate gaslighting is going to be? Well, that depends on how undeniable the fact of economic pain becomes.

All right, guys, we've got Zoran Mondami for us next. Let's take a listen. So you've really got a pretty interesting race shaping up for New York City mayor. You've got the scandal-plagued Eric Adams, who still is refusing to resign at this point. Andrew Cuomo has just entered the race, also sort of scandal-plagued Eric Adams, who still is refusing to resign at this point. Andrew Cuomo has just entered the race, also sort of scandal-plagued, but kind of a political juggernaut as well.

And leading the pack of the more progressive candidates right now is a really interesting upstart Democratic Socialist candidate. He's an assembly member named Zoran Mandami. Let's take a look at a little bit of his campaign ad. City Hall is engulfed in corruption. The cost of living is the real crisis. New Yorkers are being crushed by rent and childcare. The slowest buses in the nation are robbing us of our time and our sanity. Working people are being pushed out of the city they built. A mayor could change this. And that's why I'm running.

I'll make buses fast and free. So I can just get where I'm running. I'll make buses fast and free. So I can just get where I'm going. I'll make childcare available to all New Yorkers at no cost. I want to raise my kid in New York. And I'll freeze the rent for every single rent-stabilized tenant. These Eric Adams rent hikes are killing us. Life in this city doesn't need to be this hard. And Zoran Mandami joins us now.

Welcome. Great to have you. Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure. Yeah, of course. So it's been really exciting to see, you know, your polling numbers have taken off. Of course, Cuomo's jumped in the race. And like you said, he's kind of a political juggernaut.

But just talk to us a little bit about who you are, your platform, and why you think that it is resonating at this point with New Yorkers. Absolutely. I was born in Kampala, Uganda in East Africa. And I grew up here in New York City. I moved here when I was seven years old. And I am now in my third term as a state assembly member. And in my time in office, I have fought alongside taxi drivers to secure more than $450 million in debt relief for the working class drivers who were sold alive by the city. I have defeated the eighth largest carbon emitter in the country when they sought to build a frack gas power plant in Astoria and won more than $100 million in increased subway and bus service, as well as a reduction in the fare hike alongside a historic fare-free bus pilot in New York City.

And all of those things are driven by a politics whose North Star is the fight for working people. And that is ultimately what this campaign for mayor is about, making the city more affordable for the working class who built the city but are being priced out of it. I want to play a little bit of Cuomo's announcement video here, which was quite lengthy, I must say. But I just want to get your reaction to it and the way he's positioning himself. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. You feel it when you walk down the street and try not to make eye contact with a mentally ill homeless person. Or when the anxiety rises up in your chest as you're walking down into the subway. You see it in the empty storefronts, the graffiti, the grime, the migrant influx, the random violence.

The city just feels threatening, out of control, and in crisis. So what did you think of his video and the way that he is sort of situating himself in this race? Well, I'd be interested to know when the last time was that Governor Cuomo actually walked down the stairs and took the subway, because I can't recall that off the top of my head when it comes to him, given the fact that he hasn't lived in New York City for more than two decades. You know, he is trying to portray this as a city in chaos that requires someone like him to deliver a steady hand through that time. And the irony of it all is that he is the chaos. Many of the issues that he has identified are ones that are direct results of policies that he pursued as the governor of the state, whether it was shuttering hospital capacity across the city, whether it was cutting funding for New York City, whether it was stealing money from the MTA.

There is so much of what we are living through right now that is a direct result of his time in Albany as a disgraced governor. And I understand why Andrew Cuomo is running away from his record, because if that was my record, I would try to do the same as well. What do you think will be different for you

in this campaign versus other progressives who ran against Eric Adams last time? Because, I mean, I hear this Andrew Cuomo message. It sounds very similar. They're stylistically somewhat different, but very similar to the way Eric Adams positioned himself on being tough on crime. The chaos is going to be over.

We're going to deal with this issue of your personal safety, et cetera, and kind of a law and order approach. So he's very much trying to put himself into that lane at this point. And look, last time around, it was successful. So how do you sort of respond to that and reassure people that, you know, you're going to be serious about the issues that they're concerned about that led them to vote for Eric Adams in the first place. You know, to your point, Andrew Cuomo is running for Eric Adams a second term. It's the same agenda, the same donors, the same chaos, the same corruption. And I think a lot of New Yorkers can see through that. But to your point about 2021,

one of the things that I recall is Eric Adams running on a promise to New Yorkers that they need not choose between safety and justice. And I think it's easy for us to characterize him as a candidate then as if he was a full representation of him as a mayor now, when in fact he did run with messages beyond that of the mayor he has become. And that's why so many New Yorkers feel betrayed is that they did vote for him in the hopes that it was the son of the mayor he has become. And that's why so many New Yorkers feel betrayed is that they did vote for him in the hopes that it was the son of the working class to deliver the outer boroughs into City Hall. And yet he has been a mayor for the millionaires and billionaires of the city and described himself as real estate. And with the campaign we are running is a campaign laser focused on the cost of living crisis. It is a campaign that says, while we must tackle

the crisis of corruption in City Hall, that most New Yorkers cannot even afford to worry about that crisis because of the cost of living. Because if they can't afford their rent or their child care or their groceries or their MetroCard, they can't afford to worry about anything that's happening in local politics. And that also means being serious about safety. And I'm excited that in the next month, we're going to be putting forward a proposal that will be unveiling a new department within city government called the Department of Community Safety that will tackle these issues that Andrew Cuomo is pretending to address and actually deliver substantive solutions. Because ultimately what we're seeing, whether it's from Cuomo or Adams or a whole host of establishment politicians, are the same ideas to the same crisis that has pervaded for years

and is only going to deliver us the same results. And what New Yorkers deserve are outcomes. And what we're excited to present is data-driven proposals that are built off of the successes we've seen in cities across the country that New Yorkers finally deserve to call their own. You know, zooming out a little bit from your race and relevant to the comments you just made, you know, the knock on people like you and me who have very similar politics is that, oh, it only appeals to this like sort of small sliver. Sure, an AOC can win in New York City, but it doesn't have a broader appeal. It's these, you know, affluent, young, mostly white people in Brooklyn that are sympathetic to your style of politics. How do you get beyond that caricature? How do you build a truly working class base, you know, multiracial working class

coalition? And what also are the lessons for the broader Democratic Party about how to achieve that as, you know, those constituencies have been fleeing or just staying home or moving over to the right and voting for Republicans? You know, I think there's often a temptation in the Democratic Party to treat non-white constituencies purely through the prism of race, as opposed to also addressing the immense way in which class shapes every person's life in this country. And what we've found is an incredible amount of success in speaking to Black New Yorkers and Brown New Yorkers and every kind of New Yorker with that same focus on an economic agenda. Because when we look at the impacts of

this crisis of a cost of living, these impacts are racialized. And what I mean by that is they disproportionately push Black and brown New Yorkers out of New York City. From 2010 to 2019, we lost nearly 20% of the city's population of Black children and teenagers, nearly 20% because of how expensive the city had become and that their families had to leave. That is something that needs to be tackled head on at the source of it, which is the fact that rent is too expensive, child care is too expensive, even our Metro cards are becoming too expensive. And I think that the way that we actually build a message that resonates beyond, you know, one strip of the waterfront is by ensuring we're

taking this message to all five boroughs. And I was very heartened to see in the last fundraising period, we had the most donations from more than 100 different zip codes across New York City, that we raised more money than any other campaign, did so from more New Yorkers than every other campaign combined. And ultimately, an inspiration for this politics is also thinking about Bernie's runs for president, where even when he came to New York City, he managed to win more than 40 percent of the vote on Staten Island, which is often considered a place where Democrats are that simply in name only, when in fact, Staten Islanders are just like any other borough where people are feeling left behind by the economic policies of this mayor and of this party.

And it is an urgent moment for us to respond by putting forward an alternative path that actually speaks directly to working people. What has your reception been from the sort of mainstream Democratic Party. I've seen, you know, I've seen some people, Hakeem Jeffries unwilling to say like, hey, Eric Adams, maybe you should resign. Kirsten Gillibrand being sympathetic to Andrew Cuomo, even though, you know, she was at the forefront of the Me Too movement previously. But what have some of the, you know, what has the overall reception been?

Have people from the mainstream Democratic Party reached out to you? Because I think it's undeniable the way you've been communicating and certainly your grasp of social media and how to make viral content and how to understand the attention economy, like these are things that the Democratic Party really should be like trying to learn from. Do you get any sense of that? Or are they just afraid because you represent a different brand of politics that's not going to be beholden to the corporate and the billionaire class? I think there's definitely a little bit of that fear.

I think also there's been quite a bit of surprise. When we launched this campaign, there were many who treated it as an interesting idea at best. And it was discussed as if it was something that would come and go in the span of maybe a few weeks at best, maybe a few months. And now being the best place progressive challenger to the failed mayorality of Eric Adams and the disgraced governor of Andrew Cuomo,

that is something that many did not expect. Now, we always believed that there was a pathway for this kind of politics because ultimately, I think there's been a misreading of our political context in New York City, where people have thought that Trump winning more votes than a Republican nominee for president in many years in this city, a rightward shift across New York State, the most of any state in the country, is all indicative of a shift towards the right wing, when in fact, almost five times as many people who voted for Trump over Democrats as they had in 2020

instead stayed home. And what I think that speaks to is the need for a politics that is for something, that is fighting for working people, that requires no translation, that when I say the platform, you know what it means in your life. And that's freezing the rent, making buses fast and free, delivering universal child care, building 200,000 affordable homes. These are things that people understand because it's the very things that they're missing in their life. And I think that's what's created this pathway for us and will continue to do so over the next three and a half months. Last question for you. What is it going to take

to be able to defeat Andrew Cuomo? And how can people support you if they're so inclined? I would say there's two things. The first is money. Andrew Cuomo's allies are already setting up a super PAC with the goal to raise $15 million. We're lucky in New York City that we have a public matching fund system where the city matches a New Yorker's contribution eight to one. We've already raised $4 million. We can raise another $4 million through this program. And so I would ask anyone who's interested in supporting us and defeating disgraced New York executives, whether past or present, to visit Zahran4NYC.com. And the other thing I would say is that we are going to knock on a million doors across the city.

So if you would like to canvas, go to that same website and you will find many an opportunity to knock on your neighbor's doors and tell them that there is a city we can win and it's one that their neighbors can actually afford. Well, I know from my New Yorker friends that you have really captured people's imagination and generated tremendous energy. So congratulations on that to begin with and good luck to you as well. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure. Yeah, it's our pleasure. All right, guys, thank you so much for joining us.

You know, Crystal was at home, but everything will be all normal next week, at least for now. I'm going to say that now. Whatever that means in this era. Just wait, something's going to happen, you know. Emily's actually going to be in for me three days. I'm joking, I'm joking.

Well, all things systems normal. We are planning on doing some kind of mini show tomorrow as well. So keep your eyes out for that. And we will see you guys back here next week. See you guys later. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right.

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