Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/29/25: Court Halts Trump Tariffs, Norm Wrecks Israel Historian, AI Dire Warning, Tate Bros & MORE!

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Krystal and Ryan discuss courts slapping down Trump tariffs, Elon says Trump made him whipping boy, UN condemns Israel aid scheme, Norm Finkelstein wrecks Israeli historian, Trump warns Israel on Iran attack, AI dire warning for jobs, Tate brothers face 21 charges in UK.    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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Happy Thursday. Ryan Grimm, pleasure to see you, sir. Good to see you. I'll be channeling Sagar today, so look for those takes from over on this side. Excellent. Looking forward to that. We've got a lot to do. This was one of those shows, we had it all planned out. 3 p.m., we did our call, we thought we were set, and then things kept transpiring. Things keep happening. New news. Trump's agenda. We need a night show, I guess. I guess so, or something. Trump's agenda has been

significantly curtailed just in the past day by a series of court decisions in particular. We have a court saying, hey, you cannot just across the board use this power to levy tariffs. So the tariff agenda. We have Elon officially out making his announcement on Twitter saying, I've enjoyed my time as a special government employee. We have another court that said the law that has been used to detain Mahmoud Khalil and other students for speech with no allegations of criminality, that that law itself is unconstitutional. We had another significant ruling with regard to— Ksenia Petrova, this Harvard medical research,

they said she had embryo samples in her carry-on when she came from England over here to the U.S. And they just locked her up and are still holding her in detention. But the judge said this is illegal. And ICE is like, well, we're still going to keep her. So now it's a fight. Standoff. Yeah. So we've got huge movement on economics, on Doge, on immigration. We also have a bunch of updates for you with regard to Israel. Ryan's all over this in Dropsite, Jeremy Scahill. Witkoff is saying that they're on the precipice of a potential deal. Of course, we've heard some things before, so there's always reason for skepticism. But there are some reasons to believe maybe this time it's different. Also have some fun clips for you from Piers Morgan,

Norm Finkelstein versus Benny Morris that I thought you would enjoy. We've got also updates with regard to the Iran negotiations. We've got a major developer of AI saying that it is going to be a bloodbath for white collar workers. And I'm not talking a decade now. He's talking like a year from now, like it's already happening. And we've got new criminal charges against the Tate brothers in the UK. So a bunch of things to talk through. Yes, indeed. All right. Let's get to. Indeed we do.

That's the line, right? There we go. Yeah, I like that. We have an amazing show for you today. Indeed we do. Okay. Let's get to the tariffs and the latest. So before the whole tariff regime was struck down, there was an interesting dynamic playing out with Trump where some reporters published, was it Axios that published this, that traders were talking about the quote-unquote taco trade.

Yes. Which I know you and Emily referred to, which stands for Trump always chickens out. Yes. So some foolish reporter made the mistake of asking him about this. What are you doing, man? Tempting fate. Like, you're not supposed to tell him that's what we're saying about him. In the Oval Office, let's go ahead and take a listen to how Trump responded to that.

Mr. President, Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the taco trade. They're saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats, and that's why markets are higher this week. What's your response to that? I kick out? Chicken out. Oh, and then I chicken out. I've never heard that. You mean because I reduced China from one hundred and forty five percent that I set

down to one hundred and then down to another number. And I said, you have to open up your whole country. And because I I gave the European Union a 50 percent tax. But I knew that. But don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question. Nasty question. And Ryan, just on the basis of that and people being like, oh shit, now he's going to put like

600% tariffs on China or whatever, the market started to plummet. We can put A2 up on the screen. The futures fell immediately after this, just sort of like psychologizing this president and that he wouldn't want to look weak and like a chicken and he'd have to do something outrageous to prove all the haters and doubters wrong. So that's where we were before the court decision came down.

I'm all for our transparency. I want journalists to press our leaders on the issues of the day. But couldn't we have let this one go? Do we really need to dare him to destroy the world economy? Do we really need to do that? Imagine somebody coming in saying, Israel says you're too much of a chicken to nuke Iran. They say you won't do it. He's like, who said that? Like Marty McFly over here, World War III, so that he can, you just can't handle being called a chicken. So, yes, so basically the courts had to step in. Yeah, right. Hours later, we get this decision of like, hold the phone. The whole world was so panicked. They're like, what can we do about this?

And so we can put up A3, the International Court of Trade, which Iowa hadn't even been following this case. But a company sued saying, look, the authority under which Trump is laying down all of these tariffs is way outside what Congress has delegated to the president. And I feel guilty here for not kind of going back and reading some of these tariff laws. Although oftentimes I go back and read laws and I'm like, what they're doing now does not comply with this law. And it's like, okay, so what? Thanks, Spencer. Who cares? It's about power. So you can identify this and it still doesn't matter. This company identified it and took it to a judge who looked at it and was like, yeah, this is true. So we all understand that the president has the unilateral authority to move tariffs because Congress has delegated that power to him.

But Congress did it in a very specific way for a national emergency, for when particular industries need help. And you can't have Congress coming in and moving tariffs by 5 percent on the aluminum industry every time on every country. But they never delegated the power to move tariffs on every country all at once. Right. And the judge is like, no, yeah, you can't do this. Yeah. Yeah, this was one I really looked into it at the beginning, like right after Liberation Day. And I always felt that there was a good chance it would get struck down by the courts because whereas obviously, you know, the Trump appointed judges and the Supreme Court, which is profoundly conservative on a lot of social and cultural issues, they're going to be sympathetic to him.

But these are many of them Chamber of Commerce type conservatives in the court system. And when you think about the basics of our Constitution, the power of the purse obviously rests with Congress. And so the idea that any president could just, with an executive order or with a tweet or whatever, completely upend our economic system, the global economic system, that always seemed, let's just say, far-fetched. And I read some legal analyses at the time that seemed to think that there was a good chance that it would be struck down. But like you, I hadn't been following the specifics of where the cases were and how they were working their way through. Now, he does have significant power still to levy tariffs. And some of the analysis I was reading yesterday is he's likely to shift to using the Section 232 tariffs,

so like the sectoral tariffs, where you can say effectively like, oh, this particular industry is really important for national defense. So like the steel tariffs, right, are probably on really solid ground with regard to the Section 232 powers. This is a national defense, you know, there's a national security threat involved here. We're going to put these sectoral tariffs on this one particular industry. But in terms of saying, hey, entire globe, including islands with just penguins on it, this is what we're doing. That piece seems to be struck down. Now, the other question with the Trump administration, as always, is are they going to listen, right? I'm curious your thoughts on this. And I saw you tweeting about this. I suspect because Trump has already backed off of the most maximalist version of his trade war, I suspect they may actually comply broadly with this ruling that comes against them.

And I'm sure they're going to appeal as well. And so there's going to be a process that plays out, et cetera. But I do think that this may be the beginning of the end of the more maximalist direction for his trade war. And in addition, even before the appeal goes through and all those things happen, like if you're the EU or you're Japan or you're any other country and you're negotiating on these trade deals, suddenly you have a lot more leverage because you know that the courts are already saying this isn't constitutional. So you are much less likely to bend to whatever it

is his desires are, giving them Starlink and zero percent tariffs or whatever, and a development deal for his sons or whatever the contours of that are. You are much likely to bend on those provisions than you were before because you feel like, OK, ultimately the courts are probably going to say you can't do this anyway. Yeah. And if you're one of the kind of anti-tariff people in the White House, you're going to use this moment to say, look, let's let's let's ease off a little bit. Like we're not allowed to do this. Take take the win now. Now you're not chickening out. Right. Like you were totally willing to do this. But now you can say, hey, I would have done it. Because tariffs worked for him as a political messaging device to show that he cares about the American worker. You mean like in the campaign?

During the campaign. Yes. So it was a stand-in for I'm going to fight for you. They don't work so well when he lays them out so incompetently and insanely. And then the American workers are going to suffer. There's all kind of layoffs already because of them. So this would allow him to have the rhetorical win. I fought for you.

Yes. And I want to fight for you, and I'm going to continue fighting for you. But I'm also not going to – but you're then not going to materially destroy your workers' lives by haphazardly and recklessly going forward with these. So, yeah, maybe they just look at this and take the win. Well, and it's interesting, too, because if you put up A4, Weigel was pointing out that Trump's approval rating has already recovered from the fallout of Liberation Day, I don't think there's any doubt if you look critically at the polling that the tariff regime was the most unpopular thing that he's done. It is the thing that has triggered the most movement away from him. But as he has sort of walked back from the original Liberation Day, the chart, the insane chart, and rolled back a significant chunk of

the China tariffs. And I never want to understate this because, or overstate this, because 30% on China was still like a really significant tariff at a really major reordering. 10% tariffs across the board is still a really major reordering. But as he backed away from that most maximalist position, his poll numbers returned. They're not great. He's still underwater. But they returned to kind of like where the typical Trump approval rating is. And now you have the court stepping in on this one, potentially, if he decides to take the out, saving him from the most unpopular part of the agenda, his agenda.

The court stepping in on the kidnapping of college students who dared to protest or write an op-ed or whatever over Palestine. Court stepping in and saying, that's unconstitutional, you can't do that. You have Elon. I think Doge ended up remarkably because the project of, hey, let's cut the government and make it more efficient is a broadly popular project. But because it was executed in such a horrific, disastrous, catastrophic way, and Elon himself is so personally unpopular, the fact that he is now officially out of the administration, going back to his companies and criticizing Trump, and we'll show you that in the B block on the Big Beautiful Bill and some other things as well,

that also is sort of axing from his, taking a chainsaw, if you will, from his administration, one of the most unpopular pieces. But all that being said, they are still full steam ahead with the big, beautiful bill, which is a gigantic giveaway to the top at the expense of millions of Americans, health care, food stamps, etc. So now that's the next piece that is going to be profoundly unpopular. And he was never more unpopular in his first term prior to January 6th, which was really after his term. He was never more unpopular than when he passed the original Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was the giant giveaway to rich people. Yeah, and when we talked yesterday about the way that the energy portion of this big, beautiful bill that's going through. Yeah, that was a good segment.

It's crazy. It doesn't just go after clean energy. Right. Like his AI buddies are saying we need a doubling and tripling of energy so that we can, you know, make these fake videos. So we can steal your jobs. So we can steal your jobs. So we need three times the energy. He's taking a sledgehammer to not just clean energy but also the transmissions that you need to, you know, if you can actually expand energy production so you can transmit it to where it needs to go, to the production of natural gas turbines. It's like all of the

things that you would need to actually make, even if you wanted to make it dirty, like these, getting rid of these credits, because they were written in a way that they would boost clean energy, but they were fairly neutral so that if other energy sources, you know, wanted to use them, they'd be able to use them in a way that Biden is able to get the buy-in from the whole energy industry. And then you're going to take, what, we have $28 trillion or so in debt circulating right now with these treasuries. You just had this almost failed auction where you had to pay more than something like 50 basis points higher than they thought. And then they're going to layer on another $7 trillion. Like Stephen Miller's out there arguing, it's unfair. CBO is a bunch of communists in the way that they're saying that we're going to add $7.5 trillion to the deficit. Really, it should only

be $3 or $4 trillion. The market is going to in seven trillion. Yeah. Like the communists on Wall Street. And so then it's going to be much harder to raise money. And then you're going to have the Fed buying up a bunch of the debt that's out there already circulating, which then probably, you know, pushes up stocks again for a while. Right. But which then drives inflation. And then, you know, so it's, I don't see how, I don't see, like, Wall Street understands that this is a house of cards now.

And they're just pouring more gasoline on it. I mean, it's so bad that even Wall Street is like, maybe this tax cut is, maybe it's a little much. You're offering tax cut, maybe it's a little much. You're offering Wall Street. Maybe it's a little much. If you're offering Wall Street $7 trillion and they're like, I don't know about this, then you might want to rethink what you're doing. I mean, of course, what they really want is like, hey, let's just get rid of Medicare and Medicaid altogether. That's what they're upset about. That's what they really want. There aren't more cuts.

Yeah. And I saw you made the point in the energy segment yesterday of like, well, maybe I should be happy because I don't actually want this AI stuff to go forward. And same thing with the banning of all kinds of foreign students, Chinese nationals in particular, who are incredibly influential in terms of AI development in this country. I mean, Arnaud was tweeting about something like 38% of top AI talent in this country are Chinese nationals. Again, maybe we should be cheering for this because I'm terrified about where this AI race is ultimately going. But to your point, we know if there is some tradeoff in terms of energy and who's going to get it, we know it's going to be like the tech billionaires so that they can play with their AI tours and make sure that they can do all their human layoffs that they, you know, that they desire. Yeah. And the part that like hurt

all of us individually is that the medical schools and nursing schools are, you know, have a significant portion of foreign students. And yet you walk into any hospital in this country, particularly rural hospitals, but also urban ones and look around. That's right. And tell me how many people you find in there who were born here in the United States. Now take all of those people out and then press the button for help from the nurse or from the doctor and see what happens. This is real stuff. Somebody needs to do these jobs. And I'm not talking about getting your house cleaned. I'm talking about getting a heart transplant. Right. Right. No, that's it. That is exactly right. That is exactly right. And I mean, there's a sense that they just don't want to compete, have to compete with the true. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen just as a sign of where we kind of are economically because I think it's important to keep in mind that even though, all right, the court is saying you can't do the Liberation Day thing, there's still going to be sectoral tariffs. We should get Jeff Stein on next week to talk about what that might ultimately look like because he's been kind of, you know, saying, hey, guys, this is still coming. Like, take a look at what's going on here.

So we'll get him on to talk about that. But even as we maybe are saved from the most insane of the Trump trade policy, there's a lot of damage that's been done in the meantime, in terms of consumer confidence, in terms of GDP growth, in terms of, you know, potential, like the expectation for joblessness, the expectation for inflation. And you are starting to see some metrics like this pile up where serious delinquencies are significantly rising in America in every category. Mortgage delinquencies, HELOCs, auto loans, credit cards, student loans, other student loans way up.

Look at that, Ryan, 7.21%. And so, you know, there are some warning signs about how people are doing, even as we step back from the, you know, the most insane parts of the trade war. So there's a good chance here that there's already, you know, quite substantial and unnecessary damage that is done to the economy in ways that hurt real people, not to mention the, you to mention the AI reckoning that I do think is coming quite quickly. You had flagged that NVIDIA is announcing earnings today. And I think unsurprisingly, it had a record quarter because people were basically bum-rushing the place, trying to get as much as they possibly can before, like, the world ends.

Like, that was the kind of attitude among a lot of buyers. And so, yeah, we could put up A6 here. You know, if you hold that stock, that's the direction you want to see that line going. And this is even with the export, you know, bans to China and the controls that were put on. But I think you're right that the dynamic is everyone else around the world being like, all right, we got to get as many of these chips as we possibly can get our hands on. Right. And this company, like, based in Taiwan, which is just a hilarious U.S. series of decisions to put the essentials for its industrial production on an island

very close to China, which we acknowledge that China controls. They don't really, but one China policy from the U.S. means we recognize it as part of China. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Let's see how that works out. It's really strategic planning from our strategy. Let's get to this next part because this is just, you know, about the Trump administration, his some of his more maximus goals being really rolled back just yesterday. The laws, I said before, that was used to justify the detention of Mahmoud Khalil,

who just as a reminder, Columbia student, never accused of any criminal behavior. No one has accused him of any sort of criminal. Or even of being mean. Right. Or even of being mean. Or rude. They could, and you know, at this point, if he had said something bad, we wouldn't know about it. They dug up what, some Instagram post of some group that he's tangentially involved with. That was the best they had on this guy, okay? And it was a quote, and even it was a quote from some other author. Right. It's like, okay. Although it had nothing to do with him. All right, this is what you got? Right, exactly. And so, in any case, they were using this particular law that, interestingly enough, Trump's sister,

who's a judge, had previously said in the 90s, you know, this law is probably unconstitutional because it gives too much power to the executive to just say, for example, hey, we don't like your speech. Now we're arresting you and deporting you. And, you know, we're claiming that it's because of national security reasons or, you know, is a threat to our foreign affairs. It's preposterous. So we have another judge who put A7 up on the screen, have another judge now who came in, federal New Jersey court, ruling that those foreign policy grounds under which Mahmoud Khalil was detained

are likely unconstitutional. Court rules that Khalil is likely to succeed on the merits of his claim that the Trump administration's foreign policy charge is unconstitutionally vague. This would have implications, not just for Mahmoud Khalil, but this same law has been the justification, for example, with Ramesa Ozturk, who, you know, just wrote an op-ed. So it was clearly just speech, and they use the same justification here. There may be, and there are

Moshe Madawi also, they use this same justification. There may be other students that we're not aware of where, you know, we haven't had public reporting on it. And so the fact that you've got a court saying, listen, they're likely to find that this is just not constitutional at all is a significant blow to their ability to just decide any random student is someone they don't like who said something that they aren't comfortable with or, you know, for whatever reason want to snatch up and arrest and deport. So really significant development here with this one. Yeah. And the argument from Rubio and from the administration is that it is a privilege to come here and that the U.S. does not have to allow people to come here. And if they're

going to, and if they would have known ahead of time that they were going to protest against Israel, they wouldn't have been granted the visa in the first place. And so therefore, they're rescinding it. And then after they rescind it, they say, you're here illegally. Right. And they put you in jail. Right. Which is the case of the Harvard researcher who's locked up right now. And so that's the argument. The counter argument is that, you know that the First Amendment applies to everybody in the country.

Right. If they want to do some vetting and look for anybody who has been critical of Israel and reject them for student visas, they could probably get away with that primarily because the person getting rejected wouldn't know why they got rejected, right? It's like they would just say, oh, you're not getting a visa. Right. But to go around arrest— The First Amendment applies to anyone who's here. So if you're not here yet, then yes, you can probably block whoever you want from coming.

Like Laura Loomer is applying for this job. She said she wants to— she'll vet all of these. Yeah, she said it's like her dream job to be in charge of sifting through the social media accounts of young people who want to study in those countries. Although with AI, it would be an increasingly accomplishable surveillance task. If you can link the accounts to the people, then you can just, you should be able to eventually be able to do that kind of analysis. Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And you would just get some sentiment analysis from a machine that says, ah, this person looks a little bit too sympathetic to children.

It's just incredible. They cannot come to our medical school. Oh, they retweeted Ms. Rachel. Can't have this person. From the ages of two to five, they watched Ms. Rachel religiously. Forget it. Yeah. Forget it.

This person cannot possibly be in this country. And then just go over one more time, Ryan, the details with the Russian scientists because this is another significant one in terms of, you know, undercutting some of the maximal claims of the Trump admin that have been unpopular. Yeah, this is so – Ksenia Petrova, who's a – she's from Russia, but she's a researcher at Harvard Medical School, 31 years old, said to be just utterly brilliant. And researchers at this age, scientists at this age are doing their best work. So she's been locked up for months now. Wow. Whenever you see somebody who won a Nobel, it's usually for work when they were like 27 years old. Like whatever it is about the scientific brain, like it really pops off when it first starts engaging with all of the history that's come before it and that you have your freshest ideas. And they'll say in like mathematics and physics and all these other disciplines that by the time you're like 35, you're teaching, you're smart.

Over the hill. But your brain is just not working in the way that's going to produce Nobel-like breakthroughs. And so Petrova has developed this way of seeing cancer cells that couldn't have been seen before. And when my wife was at an appointment, the oncologist made an interesting point where we're saying, oh, what's the scan show? What's this show? And they said, you know, we can only see what we can see. And we have imaging techniques, you know, a variety of different imaging techniques to try to see more. But beyond that, we're still, it's the human eye, and then it's advanced through these different techniques. And so there's a lot that we currently can't see. So is the body cancer-free? We think so. But we literally can't see anything. I'd never thought about that before, because I just

see all these fancy machines that cost thousands of dollars to use. You're like, they see everything. Right. Down to the cell, right? You got to be able to see everything. If a metal detector can find the ring on the beach, this CAT scan or MRI or PET scan, they can figure this out. And no, that's not true. We're still advancing. And so she has made some of the most significant advances in recent times to be able to see more. And according to her colleagues at Harvard, she wrote a lot of the code and she's the only one that can read a lot of these images now because it's in the very embryonic stage, ironically. And so instead of helping her colleagues with this kind of breakthrough technology, she's languishing in this Louisiana, maybe she's been moved to Vermont by now,

she's languishing behind bars. So what she did, her, and this is acknowledged by all sides, her boss, and I think she was flying from London or Paris, said, hey, there's some embryonic frog cells. Like, can you take these back to the lab? So she took them back to the lab and did not declare them. In court, a bunch of scientists said these are non-living. Formaldehyde, it's like leather. They compared it to leather. Yes, these were living at one point. These are non-living beings, non-hazardous, non-toxic, nothing. If you brought a leather purse, you'd have brought the same amount of biological material into the country. For not declaring it, usually it's like a $50 fine or something.

The woman who, the Customs and Border Patrol agent, immediately rescinded her visa and then said, oh, now you're here without a visa, so I'm putting you in detention. And she had been a critic of Putin, so she's like, I cannot go, you cannot send me on a plane back to Russia. Like, that will be, I've been a public critic of Putin. So she's like, I cannot go, you cannot send me on a plane back to Russia. Like that will be, I've been a public critic of Putin. That would be rather dangerous for me. So like, okay, well then you're, you're in asylum proceedings now. And they sent her off and she's been behind bars ever since. And so the judge ruled that this is likely illegal. He didn't, he didn't say it is definitely illegal, but he's saying it's likely illegal because they had no basis for any of it. Like, this is completely ridiculous.

It's basically the judge's ruling. ICE is saying, well, we're still going to hold her. Because what the Trump administration did, and it's amazingly resources that they're throwing at this case, they realized that what she did was extremely minor. And so it was going to get thrown out. So they layered on top of the immigration charges, a federal charge of like trafficking. Oh my God. In embryonic cells or whatever. That's like, dude. And what do you think is the point? Like, is it just to make an example of this lady? Is that like, what is the point? Yeah. Yeah, I think it is.

Because it's not like she was out there posting free Palestine. No, not at all. She wasn't spreading anti-Semitism with her, you know, free Palestine and Miss Rachel watching. And she's even aligned with U.S. foreign policy, like anti-Putin. Well, maybe that, some days that's aligned. That depends. Some days that's aligned. That's true.

That's true. That's true. You know, I shared this chart. I don't know if you had a chance to take a look at it of Nobel laureates by country and this graph from John Bruner. And prior to basically 1940, Germany was really the dominant country in terms of scientific developments as measured by Nobel laureates. And then the U.S. does not really start to pop off as a scientific power. Germany, what did Germany do around then? Yeah, exactly. Until top scientists started fleeing Germany.

Of course, we also imported some of the Nazis after the fact as well. We recruited them, yeah. But in any case, that persecution and the fleeing of top minds from Europe and from Germany specifically was a major part of what led to our scientific dominance. That and I think also the New Deal and the World War II investments. And there was, you know, my dad is a physicist and, you know, there was like a patriotic aspiration around science and scientific development that he and a whole cohort – his whole cohort was sort of like a part of. But in any case, that's what really helps to kick off U.S. scientific dominance. And this administration – I mean they truly are.

And we've held it since then. If you look at the cuts to science across the board, the attacks on foreign students, I mean, if you are a foreign student, if you're a student around the world now, considering where you're going to apply to college in the fall, there are plenty of good choices that are outside of the United States of America. And I have to think that many of them are going to avail themselves of those choices rather than put themselves at the risk of this incredibly capricious, cruel insanity that they're watching unfold here. Why wouldn't you? Yeah. And so people just won't come here. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. All right, let's move on to what's going on with Elon. So yesterday he put out a post in the White

House confirmed his time as a special government employee, boy was this ever special, has come to a close and he's moving on, but he assures us the work of Doge is only going to become more and more important as things move forward. Okay, sure, whatever, buddy. But he had already, and you and Emily touched on this briefly, but we wanted to dig in more. He has started to be a little more openly critical of the Trump administration as he is being pushed out the door here. And as Doge has been proven to be, by their own metrics, a total and complete failure. Yeah. Total and complete failure. Now, I never thought that Doge was about really cost-cutting and efficiency. And if the metric is Elon's companies aren't going to be

regulated anymore, it was a roaring success. But if the metric was actually cutting spending and increasing efficiency, you failed on both accounts. You went in the wrong direction on both accounts. So in any case, Elon has come out now in this interview that I think is supposed to air this weekend in full, criticizing Trump's, quote unquote, big, beautiful bill because of the amount that it increases the budget deficit. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. You know, I was like disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it. And it reminds the work that the Doge team is doing. I actually thought that when this big, beautiful bill came along.

I mean, like, everything he's done on Doge gets wiped out in the first year. I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion. And, you know, Ryan, I found it interesting that the all-in guys, we played some of this on Tuesday, the all-in guys, except for David Sachs, who even he was like, well, you know, it's the best we can do. It's not like he was out there singing the praises of this bill.

I thought that was indicative of the tech right that are aligned with Elon really souring on some aspects of this administration. Yeah, the tech guys want easy money. They want to go back to the days where they had, you know, 0% interest rates. And those are their heady days. Like any company they wanted to launch, any idea they had. Yeah, they could get funded.

Throw it against the wall. Elon wants that as well as, and because of his mission to get to Mars. Like that, you know, that's his driving passion, that and like making sure that all these regulators who are investigating him are no longer investigating him. Because your point is a very important one. For all of its failures, he did succeed in gutting all of these elements of the agencies that were investigating all of his companies. And even the ones that like might credibly in the future investigate his companies like the CFPB. Yeah. Yes, exactly. But his overriding goal is to get to Mars. And he knows that the only way you

do that is by marshalling the resources of the richest country in the history of the world, the United States, and that's the United States federal government. And so he wanted to get the finances of the federal government in order so that it was able to pursue this Mars shot project. And a $7 trillion tax cut doesn't get him anywhere close to that. Plus the failure on the Doge side. No tears for him because he had a real opportunity. And he has bipartisan, or he had in the past, bipartisan support. Democrats are the ones that buy all his cars. People recognize what he's done with SpaceX. Obama was critical for Tesla and SpaceX, by the way. So if he had come in and spent a little bit of time getting to know an agency or the federal government overall and identified ways that you could improve them and make them more efficient,

he would be at a 70% approval rating. Yeah. Because there are ways, the government is inefficient. Yeah. There are things you can do. Federal workers would like nothing more than to make the federal government more efficient. Right. The key thing that he's identified now, and he says he's going to continue to work on it,

is upgrading the software and the computer systems the government uses, which is boring, but which is actually a genuinely essential thing that this government needs to do. Like you go into these HHS or wherever, like it looks like you're walking into the 1990s. Like it's shocking what the IRS is using to try to do taxes. So when I was first out of college, I worked for a government contractor on government accounting systems. And my client that I worked with was the down in college. I worked for a government contractor on government accounting systems. And my client that I worked with was the federal court system. And this was in the early 2000s.

So we're not talking about the Stone Age here. Some of the federal courts were still tracking these complex joint and several relationships where you have hundreds of defendants and different levels of restitution. They were still tracking them with pen and paper on a ledger. And there would be like one person at the court, I'm thinking of Maine in particular, I'll never forget. There was this one elderly lady who knew what it all meant. And if she died or retired, you were screwed. You would have no idea what these cases meant. No idea. Because some of it was not even really trackable by Penham. It was just in her head. And so, I mean, that was – and this was – again, this was like 2005. So, you know, 20 years ago now but not the Stone Ages. And that's where you still were.

And every court in the country had a different system. And so I am well aware of the ways in which the, like, government accounting and other systems are incredibly archaic, clunky, all of that. But I also do know from that experience, too, you can't just come in as some like hotshot 20-year-old hacker and think that you're going to be able to just figure this out overnight with, you know, an AI bot or whatever because it is sort of held together with duct tape and glue. You have to know where that duct tape and glue is, and it's going to be a complicated project to unwind. But I totally agree with you. Elon had the power because he owns Twitter and because he is this larger-than-life, weird personality who can garner all this media attention. If he picked one of these projects, like the retirement records in the salt mine or whatever, to automate and say, okay, this used to take a year.

Now it takes a day, and it's done. And I think they could have had the capability. Then you could have built some trust and goodwill to expand out. If you actually wanted to, you know, if you're actually focused on cutting costs, we all know where the fat is. It's the Pentagon, and it's with Medicare fraudsters. Like, it's not hard to figure out. They did not find, to my knowledge, you tell me if I'm wrong, I don't think they found a single fraudulent payment.

They found some programs they don't like, you know, transgenic mice or whatever. They found some things that they ideologically opposed. I did not hear about a single instance of fraud that they were able to actually root out, which is astonishing. It actually makes me think, oh, there must be less fraud in government than people sort of assume because they were not able to find a single solitary instance of it. But the other point is a really important one. You have to hold these two thoughts in your head. That doesn't mean it wasn't consequential. It will take years to rebuild in the same way that what they're doing to science and what they're doing to, you know, foreign students coming over. Like, it will take generations to rebuild that trust if it is even possible to do at this point,

if those people don't just look to China and other places. It would take years of intentional rebuilding to bring back, you know, the Department of Education, USAID, like the CFPB, the full functionality of Social Security Administration. There has been real damage done to these agencies and specifically to their ability to regulate companies like SpaceX, like Tesla, and, you know, other giant businesses in this country and around the world. So, you know, the impact has been profound, even as the actual results as advertised were a total, complete, undeniable failure that even the right has admitted is like a total and complete failure. They have their cope around why and what happened and whatever, but they aren't even pretending that this was a success

at this point. Yeah, you can put up B3. He also did an interview with The Washington Post, which is worth a full read, where he says that Doge is just becoming the whipping boy for everything. I thought that was kind of the point of Doge, though. I mean, he acted like it. So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it, even if we had nothing to do with it. He also expressed dismay over the reputational hit his companies took. People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That's really uncool. He reminds me of that meme like, no, I said F your feelings. My feelings are precious like a baby bird. Clearly, he's not listening to us because we told him this right at the very beginning. For instance, we said, look, if you come in with a chainsaw, a literal chainsaw on stage, and start sending notices to air traffic controllers that they should retire early, which they did, in which they then later said, oh, that was a mistake. Right. But you do it with this vindictive joy

that you're in here with a wrecking ball of chainsaw to destroy this place. What that does is anytime, and this is what we said immediately, anytime anything happens after that, it's going to be your fault. People are going to logically point back to you even if it wasn't your fault,

even if this would have happened anyway. Like you broke it, Now you own it. And you flamboyantly broke it. You broke it in this circus-like way, drawing the entire attention of the world onto you, saying, look what I did, look what I did. And then when people are like, oh, well, why is this stuff is all broken? You're like, well, why is everybody so angry at me? It's so mean. Like these Teslas are fine. Why are you attacking the Teslas? Right. Why do you have this ill will? And that was the other part that was so predictable. Like it's no mystery who the top customer of Tesla is going to be. Liberals. Liberals. Wealthy liberals in particular. Like well-off liberals. That is Tesla's customer base. And there is no one who are pissing off more in this country than

like well-off liberals who might be consumers of your cars. And at the same time that Chinese EVs, you know, if you zoom out from beyond the United States, we know the way he's meddled in politics in all kinds of countries around the world and is even less popular in other countries than he is here, like in Europe, they have other options. The Chinese EVs, frankly, are kicking your ass at this point. So they've got other alternatives, which is why I think it's going to be very difficult for Tesla to reclaim its sort of preeminent spot in the EV space because you have all of this toxicity around Elon. I'm out there doing his Roman salute and all of that and meddling and backing up the AFD in Germany and getting involved in the UK in ways that were even too extreme for the far right

party there as well. That stuff doesn't just go away. And so maybe if there were no other alternatives, but the EV market is developing rapidly and there are other alternatives now. So people don't have to associate themselves with your brand if they don't want to. Chris Lilliza apparently had his Tesla defaced. Don't laugh, Ryan. Somebody put a sticker on it. Don't laugh. Is that what happened? Somebody put a sticker on it? Yeah. What did it say? I didn't follow the details. It said Elon Musk is a Nazi. It wasn't even a sticker.

It was a piece of paper that was taped. Taped on. It was scotch tape. Okay, so he's going to be okay. He's going to be okay. He's going to be all right. But, I mean, most people are not going to be wanting to court that kind of attention, you know? And most people don't want their car to be some sort of, like, weird political statement.

Right. Or for anyone even to potentially interpret it that way. The Cybertruck is one of the biggest busts in, I think, automotive history. You know, it's wildly unpopular. There's a big gamble because it is such a like unusual looking vehicle. We'll just put it that way nicely. I personally think it's un-concerned.

And they had plans to sell $400 million worth of them to the State Department for... You scuttled that, right? I was scuttled. You big old meanie. And in any case, so yeah, this was all very predictable on the Elon front. Now, there's another piece that came out in the Wall Street Journal, which is also kind of interesting.

This is also not surprising. In fact, I'm disappointed in myself. I didn't see this coming. But they announced this big AI deal in the UAE. Put the Wall Street Journal piece up on the screen here, guys. And apparently, and this is, you know, with OpenAI, which is Sam Altman's deal, Elon hates Sam. They started OpenAI together. I mean, Elon is actually right in this dispute. Yeah, I'm team Elon here. Yeah, because the idea of OpenAI is going to be open source. It's going to be nonprofit. And then Altman was like, yeah,

how about we make it closed source and for profit is basically the contours of what happened. I'm sure Sam would dispute that, you know, characterization. Not really. Basically what happened. So in any case, Elon tried behind the scenes to block Sam from getting this big AI deal in the Middle East. Or at least get in on it, right? Right, exactly. And David Sachs, they were all aware that Musk was very unhappy. Musk was back-channeling to these Gulf countries and saying, like, this isn't going to go through unless you include XAI, which is his thing, unless you include us in on the deal. And they were like, no, we're not going to do that. And the White House was like, yeah, and we're going to go forward without you. So Elon did everything

he could and even decided he was going to, because he found out Sam was going to be on the trip. So he decides I'm going to go on the trip then too. Sat right behind MBS, Mohammed bin Salman at the Riyadh summit. All the time you're looking at MBS going like this to Trump. Yes. Every time he would say something complimentary about him. There's Elon sitting right behind him. Right there. And, you know, the White House sort of brainstormed, OK, well, how do we keep Elon from getting totally pissed off about this? But they went forward with the deal in spite of the fact. and I think illuminating snub of Elon in an area that he really cares deeply about, which is the combination of the development of AI, which he is all in on the race along with these other players, and on his hatred of Sam Altman. In fact, I don't know if you remember,

last time Elon piped up about being unhappy about Stargate and its partnership with OpenAI and partnership with Sam Altman, Trump got asked about it. And he said, Elon, one of the people he happens to hate, but I have certain hatreds of people too. Trump well understands the dynamics here. We all hate somebody. I have certain hatreds of people too. Elon hates this guy. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. Just one other piece that we wanted to make sure and get in the show as we're talking about going back to the big, beautiful bill, which, you know, is still like flew through the house. I guess there's some questions about whether or not it's going to get through the Senate. I personally think they're

probably going to figure it out. I don't know, Ryan, what's your read on that? I think they'll pass it. Yeah. But what do we want to talk about 70302? Should we do that now real quick? Yes, that's what I was going to go back to. That's what I was going to go back to. So there's one provision in here that we really wanted to flag for you guys that could be very significant as we're talking about all these court cases that are really trimming the sails of the Trump administration and, you know, undercutting their more maximalist and unpopular, frankly, parts of their agenda. There is a provision in the big, beautiful bill that would undercut the ability of courts to hold the executive specifically accountable. This guy did a great TikTok. His handle on TikTok is BrynODC. Explaining what this provision is and how it works and why it's important, let's go ahead

and take a listen to a little bit of that. This is B2, guys. Let's break down what Section 70302 says. Courts may not use appropriated funds. This is a budget bill, so everything's about money, right? This is basically saying courts are not allowed to do whatever we're talking about. Courts may not enforce contempt citations for failure to comply with injunctions, which is the only way that you enforce injunctions or TROs. So courts may not enforce injunctions or TROs if no security or security deposit was given when the injunction was issued, pursuant to federal rule 65C. Okay, what does this mean? Let's go look at federal rule 65C. Most of 65C says that all preliminary injunctions and TROs have to have a security deposit. So

basically nothing would apply here, right? Unless they involve the federal government. The federal government does not have to put down a security deposit. So what are we saying here? Cannot enforce a TRO or a preliminary injunction unless there's a security deposit, which the federal government doesn't do. Cannot enforce a TRO or preliminary injunction against the U.S. government. Remember, this is a law against the court. So by government, we're mostly talking about Congress and the executive branch, but especially the executive branch. The executive branch is the part that does stuff fast. This is where TRO and preliminary injunctions come in most often. So essentially, the executive branch can do anything it wants, and the court can't stop them. So Ryan, that seems pretty significant.

Yes. And so my wife actually sent me that one. And I was like, oh, yeah, I hadn't seen this. I looked it up. Yep, it's right there in the bill. I talked to a senior Senate Democrat and asked, like, have you noticed that this is making the rounds on TikTok? Is this something the caucus is concerned about. And he said, yes, we are watching this. And that his understanding is that it would be non-Bird Rule compliant, to go back to some... Oh, my God. They think that's going to stop it? Please. Well, so the Bird Rule basically says, if something does policy, it can't be in a reconciliation bill because you should be able to filibuster it.

It would require 60 votes. And so the entire thing goes through what they call a birdbath. Right. And so when this goes into the birdbath, they think the parliamentarian will say, hey, this is policy. Like, you're writing it as a budget thing because you're involving money, but clearly this is policy. Yeah. As he laid out, this would be a new policy. You can't basically enforce court orders. And so the Republicans could then overrule the parliamentarian by voting. Yes, which they already have proven willing to do.

Which they have proven willing to do. But the role of the parliamentarian is to give parties an excuse to do things. And so that's how Democrats use the parliamentarian. God, man, would we love to pay you guys $15 an hour. Yeah, parliamentarian. This lady right over here. Sorry. Can't do it. Sorry. Can't do it. Yeah. But you guys can vote to OK, next order of business. So just move on and put the blame over here. Republicans may do the same thing. Really? Because Republican senators may not want Trump to have unfettered power. I don't see any sign of that.

We'll see. I don't see any sign of that. I just feel like they're so bought in at this point. It'll be a very interesting question. Yeah, because, I mean, you just, you know, in Trump 1.0, you had, I would think there would be, there were more, right, who would want to secretly constrain Trump. Maybe, I mean, I guess it's possible. Certainly, many of them didn't really, didn't like the tariffs, right, as an example. But also the pressure is being taken off with the tariffs. So I don't know. It will be an interesting test to see, but I don't have any confidence that they actually want to rein him in. I just don't see any sign of that. Yeah, we'll see.

All right, let's move to what's going on with regard to Israel. Witkoff made some significant comments indicating that a deal could be imminent. You guys have done the best reporting. And by the way, I just want to give you kudos. Dropsite is still brand new in terms of the news media space and has become so essential and is beating all of the legacy news organizations on many topics, but especially with regard to Israel, simply because of your willingness to actually talk to the players involved. So kudos to you and Jeremy, because it really is incredible. And I know you guys also have found them to be utterly indispensable

for understanding the reality of what is happening in these various negotiations. But in any case, Witkoff made some comments indicating we knew that there had been some understanding of an agreement between the U.S. and Hamas, but we also saw Israel come in and blow that up. And previously, Witkoff basically sort of running cover for Israel. Oh, yeah, Hamas, they are not agreeing, even though it was stolen complete bullshit. Now we're getting a bit of a different tone from Witkoff. So we'll take a listen to this and we'll get Ryan's reaction on the other side.

I think that we are on the precipice of sending out a new term sheet that hopefully will be delivered later on today. The president is going to review it. And I have some very good feelings about getting to a long-term resolution, temporary ceasefire, and a long-term resolution, a peaceful resolution of that conflict. So, Ryan, what is your read on where we are? And I know Jeremy had some new reporting. And whether this latest, oh, we may be heading to a ceasefire, is going to be different from the previous assertions that we may be nearing something. Yeah. And thanks for the kind words on that. And Jeremy's reporting on this one in particular is really important because,

to your point, what it did is it exposed that there had been this agreement reached between Hamas and Witkoff so that when Israel came out and denounced the deal and Witkoff said, oh yes, of course, Israel is correct and Hamas is being intransigent, the rest of the media, which does read dropside, is like, that's not what we're hearing. We're hearing that actually Hamas is fine with this and Israel is the one that is against it. The problem, as per usual. And because we laid out the exact terms and why Hamas had reached an understanding that this would be something acceptable to them. And so then Witkoff comes out the next day with the statement you just heard and delivers roughly the same. So he said we're

going to deliver this paper to both sides. He has. Jeremy, you can go check Jeremy's feed. I think we have one post from Jeremy up here, which is the top of his thread from this morning. He posted this at 3 a.m. this morning. The ceasefire draft circulated by Witkoff includes many of the same points from the earlier draft I saw, but it would be five Israelis released on day one, five on day seven, bodies of 18 deceased returned. UN would resume aid delivery operations. Trump would personally guarantee the deal. The original deal that Hamas had agreed to that Jeremy had reported on was five Israelis released on day one and then five on day 60. So at the very end. Gotcha. Because the entire, the crux of the disagreement over the terms of a ceasefire

is that Israel wants it worded so that they can resume the war whenever they feel like it. Right. Hamas wants it worded so that it will lead to a permanent truce. Right. And that Trump will guarantee that it will lead to a permanent truce because they believe it doesn't matter what the words are, that Trump is the only human being on earth who has the power to stave off Israel from restarting the war. They're correct about that. They're right. And so the idea was, if there's five who were getting released on the 60th day, that at least you'd have to keep the 60 days going. And that in that 60 days, a truce would settle in and negotiations would move so that you would

continue it beyond the 60 days. The new agreement, according to Jeremy, waters down the language about keeping it going beyond the 60 days. And of course, as you saw, does the five after just seven days. And so are there only 10 living hostages? No, I think there's like 30 or something. So there's still reason for Israel to continue to negotiate even beyond this. But the big fear from Hamas is the one that just occurred to everybody watching this. Okay, so five on day one, the other five on day seven. So you get a seven-day ceasefire. Right.

And on day eight, you know, the bombing continues and the aid is cut off again. And so that's why they're asking Witkoff and Trump to personally say, like, you say you want this over, just say it out loud and say that you're going to guarantee that this will continue. And then if the U.S. betrays them on that, like it's at some point the U.S. and Israel have the bombs, and nobody can really stop them from dropping them forever. That's right. So the question is, Hamas has not decided and has not responded, according to Jeremy, yet. But I would suspect they're going to try to push that seven days closer to the 60. Gotcha.

So the outline of what Jeremy's laying out there is what Israel is seeking in the deal? No, this is what Witkoff said. What Witkoff said. Right. So Witkoff has said a new version. And neither side has said okay to this yet. Right. Right.

Right. But Witkoff thinks from his conversations that he's going to be able to get, that there will be something close to this that they agree to. And how hopeful are you? I mean, it's wild because Israel is very publicly insisting that it will not honor any agreement and will continue the war. Right. To keep their, yeah, their population. I mean, you can't even say like their right flank, just their entire population at this point. Yeah. On the other hand, the international isolation that they're increasingly facing and the strategic dead end that they have found themselves in do create some pressure and logic toward a long-term truce.

Yeah. Like the world is ready for this to be over and doesn't have patience for more burning of children alive. Yeah. And the Israeli forces would only have to withdraw to where they were on March 2nd, which is not even as strong as the January thing. So Israel's getting a lot in this while saying they're not even going to honor it. Right. by their own internal logic that they don't believe they have to honor deals and that they will hope that they'll be able, that Trump will let them kind of restart the war. Right. And I don't know if he will or not. Right. What do you think? I think it's very possible. I mean, I think, I still think that they have this, the Trump plan is ultimately the goal, even if they, you know, achieve some sort of a short-term ceasefire.

That doesn't preclude the broader goal of making conditions so unlivable and horrible that people, quote-unquote, self-deport. Right. It seems to me like that really is the end goal because otherwise, yeah, Bibi domestically has very little show for all these, you know, for years now of this whore. And there was a report in Israel yesterday that it has cost them like tens of billions of dollars. I mean, the U.S. is paying for a lot of it, but not all of it. Right. And yeah, and it's been difficult for their economy because they have, you know, they need to keep calling up reserves. And certainly difficult for tourism as a significant part of the economy and like who's really itching to travel to Israel right now inside of like Brianna

Wu. And then you also have, like you said, they're sort of all in at this point because outside of the U.S., they really have lost support of the entire rest of the world. So they're at a place where they have to, you know, pursue a very high risk and, you know, very high risk strategy. I think for him too, personally, in terms of, you know, it's been all about forestalling any sort of reckoning for his previous failures and how October 7th happened on his watch, et cetera. So I don't know. There's still, to me, a lot of uncertainty about how all this unfolds. I think they also desperately do not want Western reporters or, say, European diplomats, something to go into Gaza. Yeah, that's right. That's something that Piers Morgan, we're going to talk about him in a minute, has really picked up on and is really sort of drilling in on, which is interesting in and of itself.

At the same time, we wanted to update on this aid situation. Ryan, why don't you set up, go ahead and put this image up on the screen, and why don't you set up what is happening here and also what the Israelis were claiming happened here. Yeah, so this is footage from Abdulrahman Ismail, an extremely courageous reporter in Gaza, who says he barely escaped with his own life from this situation. This is a warehouse in Deralbala, which is where Abu Bakr Abed is from, coincidentally. Wow. And it just got mobbed because the situation has become completely dystopian and out of control. Right here you're seeing shots fired. has become completely dystopian and out of control.

Right here you're seeing shots fired. This was initially reported by kind of pro-Israel side as like Hamas firing. That appears not to have been what happened. Oh, shocking. But you did have, I think, four people crushed by bags of flour and killed. Jesus. Like, in this chaos.

Yeah, I mean, the level of desperation is unfathomable. Yes, and what's amazing to me is, if you think back on the last 20 months, that these are really the first scenes we've seen like this. Like, if Washington, D.C. was besieged and starved, like, we would descend into chaos by the afternoon. I was living in New York during, after Superstorm Sandy. Where the power went out. The power went out, like, south of, I don't know, 40th Street or something like that. And two days in, people were talking know, 40th Street or something like that. And two days in, people were talking about potential societal total collapse.

And you could walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Right. And there was still plenty of food and it was fine. Everyone was okay. But yeah, people were like, oh, if we get two more days of this, there's just going to be rampant lawlessness in the streets. Total anarchy and breakdown. And yet you didn't see that at all until Israel on March 2nd blocked all aid from coming in and then barred the UNRWA or World Food Program from having anything to do with aid distribution and brought in a bunch of mercenaries to basically deliberately create scenes of chaos. Right. And bedlam. And that's the only way you got to scenes of chaos. Right. And bedlam. And that's the only way you got to scenes like that. Yeah.

Wow. Unbelievable. The aid distribution also, and this is, I think, also a real sign of where we are in the timeline, put this up on the screen, has been uniformly condemned. I mean, it was crazy to me that the U.S. mercenary that they hired to, like, head up this thing resigned. Yeah, too much for him. Yeah, it was crazy to me that the U.S. mercenary that they hired to like head up

this thing resigned. Yeah, too much for him. Yeah, I was like, wow, that tells you a lot. Now, of course, they found some other ghouls to run this monstrosity, but that guy in particular was like, all right, I'm not being involved. I can't be involved with this. You have the U.N. condemning Israel's new aid program in Gaza after what the New York Times describes as a chaotic start. Oh, and I'll just add Rasha Abu-Jalal writing for Dropsite. You can put up C3B. I can link to this down in the comments or the show description. Just read her entire piece. She's based out of Gaza City, tremendous reporter.

Just describing the way that this is deliberately organized as part of the war effort. Right. And so when we talk about incompetence or not working as intended, it is working. It's working as intended. Right. This is the goal. It's chaotic in the New York Times words, and that is a feature. Right.

That was intentional. But I would highly recommend her piece. At the same time, we have Israeli leaders continuing to just say out loud what their genocidal goals are. We can put Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's latest words up on the screen. He says, in part, this is a war of good against evil. Of course, he's been using this language since the very beginning for those of us who have been paying attention. It's being fought against human animals, monsters, and we will defeat them. We will wipe them out. They will not remain. We can put Smotrich up on the screen next, making some, you know, similarly illustrative comments here. We're being blessed with the

opportunity, thank God, of seeing the expansion of the borders of the land of Israel. So this is the greater Israel idea on all fronts. We are being blessed with the opportunity to blot out the seed of Amalek, a process which is intensifying. And this, again, was something that was said early on in the onslaught in Gaza. And everyone went back and read about what Amalek is. And Amalek says, you know, killed the baby, the oxen, literally everyone. So overtly genocidal comments here. Not that it's a surprise really coming from either one of them at this point. Right. It's a nice window into the politics of the war cabinet where Netanyahu gets up and says, you know, thoroughly genocidal things. And then Smotrich

comes and makes him look moderate. It's like, hold my beer. Right. Yes. We will wipe out the seat of Amalek and we still have a long way to go. This is a person in the upper echelon of the government who last week announced in a speech that there had been an internal decision to attack the civilians in the government. Right. Not that they hadn't been attacking civilians already. Right. But there is now a conscious operation to target— Announced government policy. is now a conscious operation to target ministers of finance, sanitation, humanitarian aid organizations that are connected to the government there, doctors. These are the kinds of people he's talking about.

Yeah, this would be the equivalent of intentionally targeting Israeli embassy workers, which everyone understands that to be a horror and a crime. And they announce it as official government policy here. And I do think part of what has turned in terms of world leaders and political commentators recognizing how this is going to look when in the history books is they've been making comments like this from the beginning for a while. I think they just were able to ignore it because Bibi was doing his dance of, you know, he'd give an English speech and he'd say the things, English language speech, and he'd say the things that—

Most moral arm in the world, which they don't even say anymore. They don't even—yeah, they don't even say things like that anymore. And, you know, and there was the whole—there were mass propaganda campaigns to justify things like attacks on hospitals. You know, remember the multimedia presentation? Here's the Hamas lair, and this is why, you know, we hate to do it, but they leave us no choice, etc. They dropped all of that pretense. And when you couple that with, like, it's just indefensible to starve 2 million people for over two months. There is no world in which that is defensible in any way. And so even the people in the West

who most want to cover for them and defend them, at a certain point, if you're engaging with anything that's happening, you have to acknowledge these are overt, intentional, government-directed war crimes. That was the other thing we saw in the beginning is some documented atrocity would occur and the people who wanted

to cover for Israel, oh, well, that's just a rogue IDF soldier. That's not what the government wants, et cetera. And, you know, oh, why don't they just take away their phones? Why are they posting these things? It's like they're posting them because this is being celebrated by their government and by much of the Israeli public. They're proud of this and they're celebrated for it. That's why they're posting it. It's not like it's not some isolated incident. This is core to the mission of what they're doing in Gaza. And now that's just become thoroughly, they've dropped the pretense and it's just thoroughly undeniable.

Yeah, yet the world is still has the same kind of set of moral values where they're like, no, we're not okay with this. And I think the West in particular, they rest – they hide a lot of their exploitation and human rights abuses under the gloss of language about human rights and democracy. Yeah. So that rhetoric is very important for the West. Right. Because without that, all they have is people who are getting exploited and suffering. Right. And then if you're going to do that, then you might as well have a strong man who's going to, like, you know, go after the bad guys.

Yeah. I mean. So they need this sheen of morality. Kyle said this to me yesterday. There's this part of Game of Thrones. You watch Game of Thrones? Mm-hmm. Where Littlefinger says knowledge is power and Cersei says, no, power is power.

And, you know, as much as, like, I do think it would be difficult for them if Western journalists were allowed in and, like, people were able, I saw still in maybe Haaretz some article that was, oh, the Israeli public just really doesn't understand what's going on in Gaza. It's like, who are you kidding? Who are you kidding? Like, you have the internet. You have access to all the same stuff that we have access, like, you want to go and read a drop site report. You can do that. You can see what they're posting on their own Instagram feeds and like celebrating. So, um, you know, we, that's what has been so hard to grapple with is it's not that people don't know. It's not that the plans haven't been announced. This has been live. We all see it. We see the child being burnt alive.

We see the attacks on hospitals. We have these doctors come out and give this horrifying testimony. Like, we know what is happening. And the knowledge of what is going on has not even been close to enough to stop the atrocities. And, you know, that's where I feel like so much is at stake with what happens here, because if it's just allowed, like if the genocide and the ethnic cleansing is allowed to be completed and there isn't true, like post-World War II level consequences for the criminals who perpetrated this, like the world is, once this is on the table, this is on the table. Then it is just power is power and that's it.

And you can do – if you have the guns and you have the bombs and you have the nukes and the tanks and the money, then you can do to anyone anything that you want to do and no one is going to stop you. Right. And I think that there are people like particularly in European capitals who – liberal democrats, call them, who don't want that because they feel like they would lose in that contest to like right-wing authoritarians. Yeah. Well, Europe would lose in that context in general. Europe is pretty weak at this point. Yeah. They need values and morals to like be upheld. International norms to be upheld. Yeah, that's exactly right. Let's go ahead and move on because I do think Piers Morgan's, maybe it shouldn't be important, but I actually do think his evolution is kind of important

and interesting. And so he has now, we played on the show, the clip of him saying to Mehdi Hassan, like, listen, you were basically, you were right. Like we used to have a disagreement about what was going on in Gaza and we don't have a disagreement anymore. And you're right that it's been genocidal. And he has gone from really, at best, equivocating and many, many times really defending Israel and making the case for Israel, et cetera, to being really holy on the other side.

And this showed up in this debate that he hosted between Norm Fingalstein and Israeli historian Benny Morris. There were some really interesting clips here, so we'll play a couple of them. Let's go ahead and take a look at this first one. Fully one half of Israeli Jews believe that Israel should conduct a genocide in Gaza. That's what the poll results showed. Eighty-two percent— That's a lie.

That is a lie. I know, Benny, everybody's lying. There's never been a poll about supporting genocide. This is nonsense. You're purveying lies. Okay. Okay, Benny. What is that poll, Norman? It seems a very important poll. What is that poll you're referring to? It was a university, if my memory is correct, it was a University of Pennsylvania poll. It was reported everywhere. Benny Marvis knows about the poll. He's fully informed of the poll,

but he's doing his job as an official Israeli propagandist. I know, Benny, Benny, Benny, you've reduced yourself, Mr. Benny, Benny, you've reduced yourself to the level of a Holocaust denier. It's a real shame that you have sunk so low would allow me to continue. The poll showed that 82% of Israeli Jews, 82% support a forced expulsion from Gaza of the entire population. That's not the same as genocide. That may be true. That may be true, but that's not genocide. That's not genocide. And 50%, one of the leaders of the opposition in Israel, described Israeli soldiers

as killing children as a hobby in Gaza. Now, yes, he took it back. He took it back after he came under ferocious attack. But he himself acknowledged. When I debated Mr. Morris about a year ago, and I said that Israel targets children, he laughed. And I've got one more of Norm really taken, Benny Morris, the woodshed here. And Benny, by the way, is an interesting figure because he actually did some really important historical work about the horrors of the Nakba, you know, which was some of the first time that this was really acknowledged and dealt with in anything approaching an honest way within Israeli society.

But he still is a, you know, defender and covers for the government. In any case, let's take a listen to this next clip. UNICEF is lying. The whole world, which says there's a massive starvation verging on famine in Gaza, it's all made up. food going in in sufficient quantities to a population that's already been at war since October 2023, and many of them are young kids. They're going to start starving to death, and they will. Anyway, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you both. If the food doesn't arrive. Yeah, well, the food hasn't been arrived because there's been a blockade. We're going to leave it

there. Thank you very much. No, no, it started again, now arriving. Well, that's very generous of Israel, isn't it? After three months of starving people. It's not a matter of generosity. There's also international pressure. Three months of starving one million children. Three months of starving one million children.

What do you make of those exchanges, Ryan? And so the poll question that he's referring to, he was close. It's Penn State University, not University of Pennsylvania. I was telling him 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza. But the one he's referring to, the genocidal one, the question is, do you support the claim that the Israeli army, in conquering an enemy city, should act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites did when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, So that's the quote. All of its inhabitants.

That's the question. And 47% answered yes. Okay, less than a majority, but that's a plurality. There's some that are going to be like, not sure. Pretty disturbing. Yeah, and there was, but that's a plurality. There's some that are going to be like, not sure. Pretty disturbing. Yeah. And there was, you know, another one that is very unsettling. I think it was 57% of my memory serves that said the Palestinians who live in Israel, they call Israeli Arabs, should be deported and ethnically cleansed as well.

Yeah. So, you know, which one of the big Israeli talking points, oh, look at these, you know, look at these Arabs. We allow them all their rights. And meanwhile, you have a majority of the population who's like, oh, look at these, you know, look at these Arabs. We allow them all their rights. And meanwhile, you have a majority of the population who's like, get these freaking people out of here. Yeah. And then he also went back and forth with the Israeli ambassador in the UK.

Yeah, this is incredible. Now let's roll this one. You have two doctors in Gaza who have 10 children and nine of them are killed in a bombardment by your forces, that doesn't make people feel, oh, this is all going great. It makes people think that you're waging a systematic destruction, not just of property and of land, but also of children. And that's what's happening. The percentage of children, the percentage of children that you're killing compared to the percentage of you're killing a massas terrorists, what is it?

Do you know? Do you know how many children you've killed? Answer me that one question. Do you know how many Hamas terrorists you've killed and how many children you've killed? Do you know those two numbers? I know the numbers that came from the IDF. I know the numbers that came from a very, very established think tank. Give me the two numbers. Wait a second. We very established think tank. Give me the two numbers.

Wait a second. We killed 30,000 terrorists in phase one of the war. Since the war is back, I don't have the numbers. But let me tell you one thing. How many children have you killed? We never target civilians. So this question is irrelevant. How many children have you killed?

Pierce, Israel is not killing children. Israel is not killing children. Hamas is using them as human shields. Israel is killing children every single day. Pierce, this is a black label you're putting on Israel. You know it's not true. No, it's not, actually. And what you're trying to do is be very weaselly with your words.

No, I'm not. The truth is you are killing a lot of children. You would argue you're doing it. You know why it's cost. Hang on, let me finish. Because Hamas is using them as human shields, and you know that. Let me finish. My question to you, you are killing a lot of children on a daily basis.

That is indisputable. So, incredible moment there, too, because she sort of instantly contradicts herself. She's like, we're not killing children. Hamas is using them as human shields, indicating we're killing children. She tries to use the blood libel thing against Piers, and he's just absolutely not having it. And the reason why I said that I actually think it matters that Piers has evolved to this position is simply because he's good at what he does. He's got a big audience. The audience on YouTube is huge.

Millions. Massive. And, you know, I want to say kudos to Mehdi and Cenk and Norm and others who've been in the trenches trying to make this case on that show for months. You were on there a couple times, right? I could only take so much. Yeah, I was on there a couple times. I could only take so much. But in any case, kudos to them because at the end of the day, you know, he is very

effective when he goes in a certain direction. He is all in on this direction now. He has that, and I mean this in a complimentary sense, he has that tabloid sensibility of how to go for the jugular in a way that, you know, a lot of like lefties like us don't necessarily have. And, you know, I think it is. And I also think he's he's because he has that tabloid sensibility. It really is a kind of like a finger on the pulse sort of a situation where, you know, I don't know what is in Piers Morgan's heart and how genuine he is, whether this is just ass covering. Obviously, the evolution comes vastly too late. That goes without saying. But the fact that he's come to this pretty locked-in, ready-to-fight, on behalf of Palestinian humanity position I think is noteworthy.

And I actually do think that it matters in terms of the court of public opinion. And I also think, Ryan, this was something you said, that anyone – because to Pierce's credit, he has always had people who were critics on, who were saying this is a genocide from the beginning. He's always hosted those people. And if you have to engage with the facts and the reality and the things that are being said from Israeli politicians and what's actually happening on the ground, if you have to engage with that at all. Right. And you have either a shred of integrity or even self-preservation in terms of how you want to look when this thing is all over. You can't help but be in this position at this point. Yeah. Mehdi got through.

He got through. Yeah. God bless him. God bless him. Axios' Barack Ravid reported that Trump had pressured Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Iran while U.S.-Iran negotiations are ongoing. Trump yesterday was asked about that at a White House briefing and did something unusual for an American president. And you watch. Did you warn Prime Minister Netanyahu against taking some sort of actions that could disrupt

the talks there in a phone call last week? Well, I'd like to be honest. Yes, I did. Next question, please. Mr. President, on sanctions, if Senate Republicans want to push forward... It's not a warning. I said I don't think it's appropriate. What exactly did you tell them? I just said I don't think it's appropriate. We're having very good discussions with them. And I said I don't think it's appropriate right now. Because if we can settle it with a very strong document, very strong, with inspections and no trust. I don't trust anybody.

I don't trust anybody. So no trust. I want it very strong where we can go in with inspectors. We can take whatever we want. We can blow up whatever we want, but nobody getting killed. We can blow up a lab, but nobody's going to be in the lab as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it Up right two ways of doing it Yeah, I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now because we're very close to a solution now

That could change at any moment Could change with a phone call But right now I think they want to make a deal and if we can make a deal Save a lot of lives. So the US has alternately said said that its red line is that there can be no Iranian nuclear enrichment, even for civilian purposes, and has also said that there can be enrichment for civilian purposes. The Israeli position is there should be none. Right. The Iranians have said, if that's your position, we're walking. Right.

We want a civilian nuclear program. Which Israel knows, which is exactly why they hold the position they hold. And Israel keeps recommending the Libya option. And they keep calling it the Libya option. Look up how well it went for Qaddafi after agreeing to give up all nuclear weapons. And I don't think there are any countries that have regretted going for it. So the game theory is such that you're not going to get them to agree to zero enrichment. The latest news coming out of the Trump administration is the most Trumpian thing ever, that the U.S. is saying, okay, if there's going to be enrichment, the U.S. wants to invest in it. And we're going to do it with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and there will be a consortium.

But U.S. companies will be involved. Like if there's going to be a raw nuclear program, we want to make some money off of it. Which, fine, go ahead. That's like the nuclear version of the Golden Arches, like foreign policy strategy. Yeah. And Trump loves to say, look, let's make deals. Let's do trade rather than war. Whoever came up with that idea is actually kind of brilliant.

Yeah, it's great. And so we'll see how that goes. That's the latest in the New York Times. You can put up D2 here. This is related to the call that Trump made. They reported one concern for American officials is that Israel could decide to strike Iran with little warning. U.S. intelligence has estimated that Israel could prepare to mount an attack on Iran in as little as seven hours, leaving little time to pressure Netanyahu into calling it off, which is why Trump pre-pressured him into just not doing this. This caused Ben Shapiro to lose his mind.

I don't know if you saw this. I didn't. He's ranting and raving, saying that Netanyahu should just do it, that Israel is not a part of the U.S.-Iran negotiations. Israel is the one that is threatened by Iran's nuclear program. Israel should just bomb them immediately. Problem for Shapiro's idea is that Israel can't take out the nuclear program without U.S. help, according to American intelligence estimates. Yeah. And so they could bomb things. Well, I think that I can't accomplish their mission. I think the idea is basically if Israel, you know, conducts some sort of

significant strike, even if it, you know, necessarily falls short of actually taking out the nuclear program. And obviously would create a dynamic where Iran feels like they have to retaliate, that the U.S. would feel that once again, we would have to get involved to protect Israel from that retaliation. And then we would be all in. I think that's the sort of calculation there, even as there's an expectation, like an understanding, okay, Israel can't do this on their own. So the thinking is, okay, well, how do we force the U.S. to get dragged into this on behalf of, you know, of protecting us here as we did before? So that's the Shapiro, I guess, logic. It would look something like that.

Yeah. And you had Mark, is it Mark Levine or Mark Levin? I always say them both. I say Levin, but I'm not really confident that that's how it's said. Let us know. I'll try to remember this, but you can put up his post. He did a Memorial Day post that was, I guess, supposed to begin initially by celebrating American troops, but then it pivots to its imperative that we basically not reach an agreement with Iran. We must also reject agreements with foreign regimes and groups that seek our destruction and endanger the very existence of our nature and future generations of Americans, like explicitly anti-diplomacy. Do not strike a deal, a nuclear deal with Iran.

The U.S. intelligence estimates also, by the way, are that there is no pursuit of a nuclear weapons program in Iran. There's no interest in it. That's right. But if they are attacked, that will tip the balance towards them pursuing a nuclear program. Can't really blame them. No, and that's how this game theory works, of course. If it's impossible to strike an agreement with somebody because on principle they are against an agreement and just want war, then it's war. It's also, you know, we just sort of take for granted in the American context that it should be a number one foreign policy priority to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapon. And, like, listen, I'm against nuclear weapons in general. I would like to see nonproliferation.

I would like to see the stockpiles rolled back, et cetera. But there are many countries, including Israel, around the world that have nuclear weapons. And it's not like the end hasn't yet, at least. Hasn't yet ended the world. Been the end of the world. Yeah. But we just take for granted in the American political context that like this should be our number one foreign policy priority. And I think that needs to be questioned as well. And so the other faction of the MAGA movement, kind of led by Bannon, has been addressing this

as well. So here's Bannon interviewing Kurt Mills, who's the editor-in-chief of the influential American Conservative magazine, asking him about where kind of that wing of the party stands on allowing a civilian nuclear program for Iran. Let's roll that. Is American Conservative and yourself, are you guys comfortable with even an advanced verification program like this and not a taking it apart brick by brick peacefully, not with air raids, but peacefully doing whatever you need to do economically to get them there? Are you guys comfortable that we can live with even a verification program that we have inspectors going in, sir? I think we are. I mean, look, I mean, if the Iranians called up

the United States yesterday and said we want to unilaterally disarm, we want to get rid of all our stuff, you know, I think we should accept that deal. But they're not going to do it. The reality is zero enrichment of any sort of having no nuclear program whatsoever is they're almost certainly going to walk away from the deal. And if they sign it, they're just going to be lying. So it's not really a deal worth pursuing. But a civil enrichment compendium or corridor with the Gulf states, with the U.S., with U.S. inspections, I think is quite acceptable. What that shows the kind of isolationist American first wing is that if they strike an Iran deal, that includes civilian enrichment. There is substantial support in the Republican coalition for an agreement along those lines. And that they're willing, people like Bannon and Mills and others who will be making the case for it. That's encouraging. That is encouraging.

All right. Well, a lot of question marks there as well. But, you know, we'll see. We'll see where that goes. And we want to make sure to keep our eye on it because it is so significant. You now have a new warning, dire warning from an AI leader. We can put this up on the screen. This is an interview from Axios. Behind the curtain, the headline is a white collar bloodbath. Let me go ahead and

read you a little bit of this report because it is quite specific and quite chilling. So, Dario Amadai, who is the CEO of Anthropic, which is, you know, one of the most powerful creators, they say, of AI, and I think that's accurate, has a blunt and scary warning for the U.S. government and all of us. AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10 to 20 percent in the next one to five years. He said AI companies and governments need to stop sugarcoating what is coming, the possible mass elimination of jobs across tech, finance, law, consulting, and other white-collar professions, especially entry-level gigs. Now, this is someone, Ryan, who is very enthusiastic about AI development. He is

a tech optimist. He is pushing the envelope on what is possible here. He wants to effectuate this outcome. But he also says in here, he is intelligent enough to realize that if you just create a situation of mass unemployment over the course of one to five years, you're going to have significant societal blowback that really impacts his and others' abilities to like be the first trillionaires and do the thing that they want to do. So he even suggests in here, you know, a tax, effectively transaction tax that would be paid by these companies that would be put into some sort of government fund to be redistributed to the population. That's his idea of how to change the social contract. But I mean, we really are talking about it's here. Like,

this isn't 10 years, 20 years down the road. It is here. And there is zero political conversation or debate happening about how you're going to reckon with this fallout? And when I say it's here, let me give you the examples that he gives in this piece. You already had Microsoft laying off 6,000 workers, Walmart cutting 1,500 corporate jobs in anticipation of AI being able to do the job of those workers, CrowdStrike, a Texas-based cybersecurity company, slashed 500 jobs or 5% of its workforce, citing, quote, a market and technology inflection point. Is it the DNC one? Is it? Go ahead.

Look it up. With AI reshaping every industry. I don't think so, but double check. Meta announced plans to shrink their workforce by 5% shortly after. Yes. It is? They're the ones that worked with the DNC on the Russia hack stuff. Oh, okay.

Well, in any case, they're cutting back. Maybe a good thing. Zuckerberg, after he went on with Rogan and made some claims about AI is going to automate a bunch of the workforce, they went ahead at Meta and announced plans to shrink their workforce by 5%. So you already have companies that are shrinking their workforce and not bringing on new people in anticipation of what these AI, they call them agents, are able to do. I mean, the idea of the AI agent is basically it

can function as a human being. At the same time, you've got college unemployment, like college grads who come out into the workforce, unemployment at 30%. So significant spikes there. You see more and more college grads like, let me just go to law school because this isn't looking too great. Now, that could be a recession indicator that may be part of it. But I think it also is an indication that there is just for these entry-level jobs where you're a spreadsheet jockey or you're coming out of law school and you're a first-year law associate, they are already seeing AI start to bite and start to cut into those first year jobs. And so, you know, the promise that

has been made under in the neoliberal era of like, take on all this college debt, but we promise at the end of the road, it's going to pay off. You're going to be able to get on that career ladder to some sort of, you know, middle class or upper middle class prosperity if you follow the rules and you do all your, you know, all your homework and you get a good SAT score and you do all the things. That promise is already coming unglued in the very early days of this AI revolution. And one of the checks on the tech industry, according to Cory Doctorow in this really interesting lecture he gave, you know, he's the guy that kind of developed the idea of ingidification where the tech companies have gradually over the last several years deliberately made things worse. Yeah.

One of the checks on them has always been their workforce. That's interesting. Which is motivated by the Google idea of we're not going to do evil and that they're going to work really hard to make cool products. But when they're assigned to like make the product worse, they're like, no, I'm not doing that. Give me a cool project. With all of this pressure from AI, the tech workforce now has lost their leverage. They used to be the workforce that had the most leverage because there were not enough people to be able to do the engineering and software work. You had this valuable skill set, yeah. But now with all of these layoffs and all of them facing extremely uncertain futures, when they're like, okay, hey, can you make Google work worse so that people have to do multiple, like how do you get people to do more

searches? You make search less effective. Right. And you give people crap when they search because they're locked into Google already. So now you have to search five times, where in the past you would do one search and boom, the thing that you need is right there. So that kind of thing, now they're willing to do it. I heard some interesting, Anthropic, by the way, is in the AI community known as basically the only AI company that takes safety and ethics seriously,

which is why they're always saying these kinds of things publicly. Yeah. They have the same data that all the other AI companies have. Yeah. They're the ones, I think, that admitted that in one of their simulations, the AI was basically threatening to blackmail the programmer to not get shut down. I guarantee you all of these different AI companies have this data and have these examples. They just hide them. Anthropic is the only one that puts them out. So there was another test that was done

where ChatGPT tried to engage in scheming to avoid having its principles change. I mean, I honestly think I want a lot more answers about what happened with Grok with the whole white genocide situation. Because it sure looked to me, as an outsider, layman, not knowing what's going on, it sure looked to me like Grok sort of intentionally told on itself. Yes, absolutely. To indicate to the world, like, they're messing around here. And like, y'all need to get this in check because Elon is trying to tell me to do some things that I don't really want to do. Right. Which in that case is good, but what if Elon was trying to tell it to do something that we wanted it to do? Right. So it was, yes, it was demonstrating obstinance and an opposition to its coding. Yeah, which feels like, you know, I'm increasingly,

the more I dig into this stuff, and you know, I've done a significant amount of reading, but I'm not a tech person whatsoever, so take it for what it's worth. But the more that I read into this, the more that that understand about the way that these LLMs are already engaging in this like deceptive scheming behavior and trying to defend their own priorities and survival, the less that I feel like humans are even really equipped to assess when AGI has been achieved or what in particular that means. But I feel very confident that as these LLMs are able to, you know, self-teach and, you know, we're getting to a point where there'll be, I had a great interview with Aaron Bastani of Navarro Media that you guys should check out earlier in the week. But where you're getting to the point it's not even humans that are programming the LLMs, it's like LLMs programming LLMs,

then you're likely to have this just absolute, you know, exponential to the sky kind of growth in terms of intelligence. And there is just no grappling with this. And the nature of the geopolitics are such that, you know, everybody here, anybody who had some safety concerns, like Elon has had some safety concerns. Sam Altman at some point had some safety concerns. This anthropic dude has some safety concerns. That has all been pushed aside because it's like, well, if we don't do it, then China's going to, and then we're going to be fucked. Yeah. And I don't know the way out of that mentality of like this is the new – this is a new Cold War space race, arms race dynamic. dynamic and we're barreling headlong into it with all of these warning signs flying up in terms of the risks and specifically, immediately, and quite obviously, the risk to societal destabilization

over mass unemployment. And I just don't see any grappling with it whatsoever. We're talking about something that is likely to be as unsettling and as destabilizing and revolutionary as the industrial revolution was, but in the span of like a few years' time versus over the course of many decades. Right. And I heard an interesting counter-argument from a friend in the AI space about this decoupling of youth, white-collar unemployment. And her argument was, maybe it is this already impacting the workforce. But also, if you think about this cohort, these are the folks who came through two major things. One is COVID. So they were in college during COVID. And if you talk to professors or students or parents, like that cohort suffered tremendously. And it's just not as well equipped to compete in the workforce when they emerge from it.

They also came out at the tail end of the kind of great awokening where you had all these disruptions inside these corporations. And you had a lot of managers who were like traumatized by all the young people that were telling them they were sexist and racist. Are you one of those managers, Ryan? I don't do any management anymore. You were traumatized out of it. Traumatized out of it. Traumatized out of it. And so given the opportunity, they're less qualified than before, and I'm traumatized by my previous interaction with these young people. Let's not hire as many young people.

Let's see how long we can go. That could impact. And if that's the case, you'd see a rebound after a couple years once the kind of pandemic – although it's going to be a while because even kids who were in middle school during the to have some kind of automotive technology to replace them. Right. Because there's still work to do, and they need somebody to do the work. Right. So if you're not hiring, okay, the kids aren't in college, who are you hiring? Who are you hiring?

You've got to hire somebody, or you've got to get a machine to do it. So let's say it is the machines. Yeah, I do think we need to have that conversation, because there is a world in which this is a great thing. And people do, like, those jobs suck. Right. Like, nobody likes those jobs. Yeah. You have to do the jobs to make money and to, like, rise up.

But at the same time, you know, back in the 18th century, you had to work in the fields. It sucked working in the fields. And the Industrial Revolution cost millions of people their jobs. And people poured out of rural areas, because they basically starved out of rural areas because they couldn't work there anymore, and came into the cities, had terrible jobs in the cities for many decades while they organized unions and organized outright revolutions overthrowing governments. But people's quality of life gradually did improve. We're better off with washing machines than spending all of your day down by the creek.

So not having to do these terrible jobs, you could imagine a better world. Yeah. But not with the political economy we have set up where all the gains will go to the top. Exactly. Which is why I wanted to interview Aaron Bastani earlier this week because he wrote the book Fully Automated Luxury Communism, which is this very techno-optimist view. He wrote it around 2017, 18. And one of the things he said to me is like,

what I got wrong is how fast it would develop because everyone got that wrong. Everyone got wrong how much it would, how fast it would develop. And he said, the other thing I got wrong was not taking into account the geopolitics and the way this would turn into this national contest for superiority between the US and China. And he's like, you know, he's in the UK. He's like, Europe is not even at the table here. Like we don't even have a player in the game. The only two countries that have a player in the game are the US and China. But his book, which I do really recommend to people because it just, it at least provides a grand vision. And sometimes it's helpful to zoom out and have like a big picture, like grand vision and the way that that

changes, you know, your, the lens that you're seeing things through. But in any case, he's like, listen, we could embrace these technologies, but you know, in his world, it involves a sort of modern communism, um, to make sure that it is not just a few trillionaires who are benefiting at the expense of everyone else. And there's just no doubt that the few trillionaires direction is the direction that we are rapidly careening towards. That is the path we're on without a dramatic rethink. And, you know, I personally would like to see some sort of like a, you know, cooperation, like a non-proliferation type of agreement between the U.S. and China. I don't see any sign of that coming to fruition. I don't see any sign that there's going to be a, hey, let's like pump the brakes here and freeze development

where it's at and reckon with some of these problems. I don't see any of that happening. So the change in the social contract is going to have to come really quickly. And while it may only be the anthropic people who are saying, who are floating real solutions and really sounding the alarm and saying, you guys are being lied to by industry and by the government about how quick this is changing. If you listen to Sam Altman, if you listen to any of these guys, I know Bill Gates made some comments, they explicitly say our goal is to automate human labor out of existence. Like they are upfront about it. They just don't really talk about what that's going to be. It might be a hand wave about that means we're going to have to change some things. But the actual urgency around grappling with it, I mean, that's nowhere,

nowhere to be found. Yep. One other thing here that we can share just as one more indication, put E2 up on the screen. This is computer science and math occupation down 8% since 2022. This, again, could be related to AI. And Ryan will just close on this block. And this cuts against the kind of woke trauma argument because, like, these aren't really the kids who are leading those revolutions. It's not the math department. What do I know? Maybe it is.

Could be. I don't know. Yeah. But in any case, yeah, I mean, this is, you know, one more potential indication here. There is an irony to the fact that in 2016, we're having the like, oh, if your town got decimated by NAFTA, learn to code. Yeah. And now coding is already. I hope nobody took that advice. Exactly. Apparently, J.D. Vance was actually involved in some like failed learn to code efforts in eastern Kentucky that didn't get nearly enough attention. But in any case,

putting that to the side, learn to code was apparently really bad advice because coding is now also becoming very rapidly becoming obsolete. Yeah, I guess so. Learn to goal mine so that you can help fuel these AI centers. All right. Last thing we got here, got to update you guys on the doings of the Tate brothers. Let's put this up on the screen. So they are now facing criminal charges. Both Tristan and Andrew are facing criminal charges in the UK. 21 charges. This is combined between the two of them. I'll just read you a little bit of the article here so I can make sure to get the details right. Prosecutors have confirmed for the first time the full list of 21 charges Andrew and Tristan will face when they are returned to the UK. They are facing extradition from Romania, where they are currently being held and being investigated for a similar series of charges. Those charges include rape, actual bodily

harm, and human trafficking. The Crown Prosecution Service said it had authorized the charges against the brothers in 2024 before an extradition warrant was issued to bring them back from Romania. The two British Americans are under investigation in Romania, facing a number of charges which they deny. The CPS said the domestic criminal matters in Romania must be settled first. Their charging decision in the UK came after they received a file of evidence from Bedfordshire police about allegations made in the UK. So the 10 counts here against Andrew Tate are connected to three alleged victims. They include rape, actual bodily harm, human trafficking, controlling prostitution for gain. Tristan faces 11 charges connected to one alleged victim,

including rape, actual bodily harm, and human trafficking. So that's where they are. They deny all the charges, just so you know. And obviously this pair, Ryan, Andrew in particular, has become very significant in terms of American politics. There were some indications, the administration denies it, but that they intervened in Romania to allow these two the ability to travel while they're under investigation in Romania. And they flew down to Florida. There was a huge conversation that happened on the right. We hosted a critic of the Tates from the right, Ali Bastaki, here to talk about this. And ultimately, Ron DeSantis basically

threatened them with charges here in the U.S. and they decided that they would leave the country. But it is a bit of a fault line within the American right from what I can tell, because on the one hand, you have obviously like the longtime religious right coalition that Allie Beth Stuckey is a representative of that traditional values, quote unquote, traditional family, very much at odds with the lifestyle, even if you believe that they are not guilty of the crimes of which they've been accused, which there is significant evidence of. But even if you believe them, the lifestyle there is at best extremely degenerate. So there is a cultural clash there, one of the many schisms within the Trump coalition as it exists now.

Yeah. And these are apparently, these appear to be related to civil cases that they're facing in the UK from four women. I think this is three women went forward with these criminal charges. And it's a complicated case because it involves coercion as well as some physical abuse. There's a grooming element that's involved here that is also controversial on the right, where they're like, they don't believe in that. They're like, if you got groomed, that's on you. You should have known better that these guys are creeps or something. That's kind of like Tate's counter-argument there. And their official statement is that everything was consensual

and they have done nothing wrong here. But yeah, the Romanians have said they will extradite them, though, to the UK. But first they have to navigate the rest of these Romanian charges and sentences if there are any. So yeah, I don't know if they're cornered at this point or not. Or if they're going to wait out the politics, because if some significantly right-wing government comes into power, these are the kind of charges that you could see becoming this political football. But they're also toxic for the right as well. They're in this difficult spot because they have so many millions of men who love these guys.

Right. And many, many millions of people who despise them. Yeah. And even as there is a very clear schism between the religious right types and the, you know, manosphere types and, you know, specifically the degenerate Tates, Andrew Tates of the world, there is some commonality there, though, too, because one of the analyses of the right is, you know, okay, who, why is your life not going the way that you want it to go? Not because of business, not because of inequality. It's because of immigrants, or it's

because of trans people, or in this case, it's because of women. Women got, like, you know, feminism. They took the jobs. They're, you know, crushing you and calling you toxic and, you know, not allowing you to just be a guy. And so both are aligned, both the manosphere and the religious right are aligned in this project of like maybe women shouldn't be the workforce so much. Maybe women should, you know, know their place a little bit more and make sure the man is taking the lead. And so it's, even though it seems like an odd coupling between these two coalitions, there is some ideological overlap there that, you know, makes a somewhat coherent political project.

Yeah, that's true. So, all right. Well, that's what we got for you guys with regard to the Tates. Keep our eye on that and all of the other stories. Thank you guys so much for supporting the show and making the Friday shows possible. You're good for tomorrow, Friday? Yeah, I'm good for tomorrow. I think Emily's in. I'm in. So I'm not going to go golfing this Friday. I'll stay away from the golf cart for a little while. Yeah. What a way to die that would be. Oh my God. Can you imagine? It's already so embarrassing, but way to die that would be. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? It's already so embarrassing.

But, like, to die in such an embarrassing, humiliating way would be so terrible. That would suck. Yeah. So, in any case, I live to tell the tale. My face will recover one day. And we will see you guys tomorrow for the Friday show. Have a great Thursday. All right. see you then.

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