Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/15/26: Trump Panics On AI Slowdown, Bonds Hit 19 Year High, Trump 5k Checks

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

This Tuesday Krystal and Saagar are joined by author Garrison Lovely to discuss Trump rejecting an AI slowdown. Then they look at Trump flailing on Iran negotiations, promising 5k checks as his midterm chances plummet. Garrison Lovely: https://garrisonlovely.com/   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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Joining us now, as you talk about the very latest with Trump's AI crashout is Garrison lovely. He is a journalist and author of the still forthcoming book, although we've been talking about it for a while at this point, obsolete the AI industry's trillion dollar race to replace us and how to stop it in great front of the show. We're going to see a Garrison in person. Good to see you, man. Great to be here.

This is fun. Yeah, of course. So yesterday, Trump epic crashout on a number of fronts. We'll get to the Iran War piece of that later. But let's start with the AI focus. A bunch of true social posts. But also, he called into an all-in public event that was happening with the head of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, to say that the concerns over AI sort of existential risk are a, quote, hoax.

Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of that. I don't know who it is. Oh, no. Oh, it's Trump. Oh, shit. Mr. President. Yes, sir, I got to tell you something. If it wasn't because of you calling, I'm on stage with the besties.

Yeah. The Jensen can develop the most complex computers in the world and nobody can cap. And I'm a wealthy and it makes things wealthy and the oil of the next 20, 25 years. It's bigger than the internet and AI, you know, much more so. You're right. What do I want to happen, sir? It wins in the AI race in America. Every industry, every company, every state, every people. All right, a lot going on in that clip. You know, Jensen Huang deciding to take this call on the stage.

You've got all the all-in guys there. Trump saying it's a hoax. You know, what do you make of this moment and why Trump responded so vigorously yesterday to some of these concerns? Yeah, it's always risky to talk about what's happening inside Donald Trump's head. But I think you could see this as like maybe the February, March 2020 reaction from Trump to COVID, where he's sort of like, oh, it's a hoax, dismissing it. And then, you know, this could be cope from people who really want there to be action on AI, especially with China. But he might come around if the pressures continue. And I think there's a lot of worry that like he's going to polarize his base against AI regulations or against the concept of AI safety. But I think this issue has become salient enough.

And the base is, like, skeptical enough of the technology that it's going to be hard for him to really command, like, anyone but the most loyal followers. Very similar to the data center thing. Where, you know, you have a huge polarization against data centers. Trump comes out. He's actually, we can put the next one up here on the screen. He kind of links a lot of these things together in kind of the crash out that Crystal alluded to. So this was his longest post yesterday. Concerning AI, when in the history of business, did anyone see the leaders of an industry call for regulation that have strongly implemented will drive them into oblivion and,

bankruptcy. AI taking over the world, destroying humanity, and all other things bad is, quote, a hoax, no different than Russia, Russia, Russia, all the other hoaxes and scams. President Xi of China just announced China will be doing absolutely nothing to stand in the AI. That's not true. I'll get to that a little bit. Google has announced, stated that they want to build a massive plant in Finland, all because they're finding permitting too difficult. I'm not happy about this. I want them to change their thinking. AI and data centers will be the greatest economic development engine in the history, bigger than oil, gold, diamonds, or even the internet. It will not. be stopped by brilliantly run destructive forces during the term of President Donald J. Trump.

So this is what's kind of fascinating about this. Dario and Sam basically come out. They're begging for regulation, rhetorically. Now, lobbying in Washington is a different story. They're not actually lobbying for that. What to help us break this down, is this a regulatory capture scheme? Because I have a lot of skepticism around these people. They want regulatory capture. I think they want bailout. So they've set a lot of the stuff out in the open. I do think that there's a sincerity to some of their warnings, I do also think a lot of it is to preserve at least some of their monopoly, or at the very least let them be the people who are in charge of this. So you studied a lot longer than I have. There's a lot of dynamics to try to break it all

down. Yeah, I think that they genuinely do want to slow down because they're going so fast that they cannot actually keep their system safe. And they're barreling towards this very uncertain future. and they still want to build what they're trying to build, which is universal labor replacing machines. They call it artificial general intelligence. And even in Dario's post about pacing the frontier, he's like, we don't want to stop, right? Like, we just want to be more responsible

in how we're building this. And he'll have these subtle things where it's like, you know, we should have the public deciding how this technology is used. And it's like, well, the public should decide what technology is built in the first place. And they want to be the ones in control of this, ultimately. And they see themselves as like earning that right by virtue of being the most reckless and willing to build this technology that nobody asked for.

And everybody who's building it agrees is unsafe and has no plan of how to make it go well. And so I get the skepticism about like this being a cartel or some get out of antitrust jail free card. Which he said. Yes. Right. To be fair, he literally said that. Yeah. And like, I don't know. I think that there should be some way for their.

to coordinate to slow down the progress of frontier model development. But I think that it shouldn't be up to them. It should be up to the public. And if we had a responsive government, we could have just a pause and a reevaluation of which direction we want this technology to go. And I think it's pretty clear that the public does not want the direction the industry is trying to build. Yeah.

No doubt about it. And with bipartisan majorities based on the polling that we've seen, I mean, as close to 70% of the public that supports Bernie's bill to pause altogether. and to criminalize the creation of super intelligence. I mean, that's overwhelmingly where the public is. You know, with regard to Trump, to me, it's pretty clear what's going on here. Our entire economies is bet on AI. And yesterday, the market started to take a downturn.

At the same time, oil prices are growing up. Treasury bond yields are going up. Like, it's a very precarious time for the domestic and global economy. So, and that's the one thing he does actually care about. He watches the markets very closely. So I think yesterday's panicked truth social spree and calling into Jen San Hwang and all of that was a reaction to the fact that you could easily see a sell-off cycle that gains a momentum and truly triggers a crash based on these concerns. Yeah, I think that's right. I think he's trying to calm the markets. I think one of the few consistent traits Trump has had in this term has been chickening out when the markets start to react too strongly to something he's done. And this fear of like if we pause or stop frontier AI progress, then like the main engine of the American economy and the data center bill out being a big part of that as well just stops.

And I think this is a major problem for him, for any future president. And I'd love to see more work done on what that looks like. You know, what are the actual effects? Because if Trump tries to do anything, Jensen's going to be in his ear being like you're going to wreck the economy. Let's talk about that. So I did some background research. What I found out is that literally weeks ago, Trump was supposed to sign this executive order. This executive order would have proposed something like FINRA.

So this was a idea that was actually bubbled up by Scott Besson. Finra is a fine. Why, I forget the exact time. What is it? It's like financial, whatever. It's a regulatory authority, like a governing body, which, where you would submit models for testing, very similar actually to the Chinese system, where all the models have to go through pre-approval before they're allowed to be released into public,

by a open source. This was then floated around to the AI industry. Zuckerberg called Trump and was like, no, you can't do this. That's the real reason that it went down in addition to some lobbying by David Sachs. So just to be clear, like even in the administration from what I've been able to find out, is that there was an idea to propose some sort of like governing model authority, quasi-fda, but it would have been entirely done by the regulatory authority. But it's the Jensen Wang's and it's the Zuckerbergs who are on the other side of it. What's fascinating... Altman also, by the way, spoke to Trump at the GOP convention in Texas. And as much as he's out there, you know, out front of it, oh, I agree with Dario. We know they've been lobbying against

any regulation. So that's where they've actually been putting their money. There's an organization here in Washington. I think it's called Leading the Future, which all they do is lobby against some sort of a FINRA instead of... And so that's why, you know, trying to... I think there's so much public skepticism right now. The overwhelming sense I get, and I want you to break these two things down. So from the left, largely what we hear is this is all bullshit, is that this technology is fake. All they're trying to do is to stop model and frontier development to save their financials, because if they have to continue going forward, they're going to need to bail out. I don't know how true that. I personally don't think that's really true just based on what the researchers are saying.

The one I am somewhat sympathetic to is that this is some sort of effective altruism cult, and that this cult believes that they themselves should be solely in charge of this technology, create the regulatory capture, like I said, and then from that point forward, that they can then write the regulations have no sort of democratic input. So sort through those things, what true fact, etc. And guys, you could throw A7 up on the screen here. This is the Department of War tweet about effective altruists, which I guarantee you 99% of Americans have no idea what that is. I think 99.9.9. Yeah, go ahead, Harrison.

Yeah, no, it is certainly strange to see their kind of beefs spilling out into the official Department of War accounts. Yes, indeed. And Pete Higgs-eth talked about defective altruism, I believe, during the Anthropic Showdown. And so, yeah, I think that the effective altruism community has been one of the earliest to taking AI seriously. And it's a group of people trying to do good with their time and money,

but they've been associated with, like, Sam Beckman-Fried was the most famous proponent of it and famously did a bunch of financial fraud. And it's been content by leaders in the community. But I think the kind of like maximalist, like maximize the amount of money you can make and then give away was like this mentality. Maximize money and power. Yes. Even though fraud, even though you did fraud, you made the amount of money. So that way you can spend it on the right stuff.

It can lead to a very end justify the means kind of a mentality and also prioritizing like theoretical future humans over human beings today. Yeah, yeah. And so a lot of EAs have been early to this AI thing. And there are a lot of people at Anthropic who are sympathetic to effective altruism. But there are a lot of effective altruism and AI safety who are like shut it down. We don't want. Yeah, we interviewed Nate Suarez yesterday. Yes. And Nate is not exactly an EA, but like he's, you know. Adjacent. Yeah. And he kind of proceeds. Like a lot of AI safety proceeds effective altruism. But yeah, I think there's just a lot of mixed opinions here. And I would guess the bulk of the opinion is on like stop. just don't build it. I do think the Anthropic model is, like, build it and be in control of it, and we are the ones who can do it safely. And I think this is incredibly naive, both because it's very difficult to build

smarter than human machines that will do what you want and not have unpredictable, undesirable outcomes for the world. And then also just the government is going to get control of the systems, and they're going to use it for whatever they want, which is not going to be compatible with, like, Anthropics worldview, right? Yeah. Like with Claude, you know, they're trying to get Claude to be useful for lethal autonomous weapons or mass surveillance. And there's this fight and Antropics sort of won, but the government can just get the models and then take the safeguards off and use it for whatever they want.

Yeah. And that's why I do think that Dario, as much as obviously all of their motivations should be suspect. And it matters what they're thinking, but it also doesn't. Like, yes, they're all cross-conflicted. And obviously, Jensen Huang being up there like, no, there's no concerns. Keep buying my chips. That's obviously also very self-interested. So we should put everybody's self-interest aside and just ask as a society, what do we want?

Right? Forget about what the tech oligarchs are hyping or not hyping? Like, what is it that we actually want from this technology? And I think that's a really important way to sort of sort through some of the noise from right now. I will say I was listening to Jacob Coxon, who was the whistleblower who left Anthropic and posted that long Twitter thread that kind of led to this moment and a lot of others coming forward. who were still at the labs being like, Jacob's right. And then obviously, Dario and Sam Altman and Elon Musk and Demas Asabas also coming on being basically like, yes, we agree. We need to do something here.

I was listening to Jacob this morning. And he was saying, you know, I decided to leave, but it wasn't clear to me that, and it's still not clear to me, that that was actually the right thing to do. Because so many people have already left and sounded the alarm. And it didn't matter at all. the technology, the technological progress just continued to march forward. And so there are people that are still in the labs who have made the other calculus of I share these deep concerns. And many of them obviously came forward and said that. But if I leave, I don't know that that matters. I think the technology just continues marching forward. It made me more sympathetic.

I don't think that's the right calculus, but it did make me more sympathetic to their position and even the position of Dario, who knows Sam very well. And Sam, by all accounts, is like a, you know, liar and a psychopath. And we can see that even though I disagree with, the biggest thing I disagree with with Dario is like his butt china, you know, hawkishness, et cetera. But we can see in the way that they lobby and spend money and the actions that they've taken in the real world, the Department of War, example being the prime one, they don't behave exactly the same.

So it gave me more sympathy. to Dario's position, even as I still think it's insane, that you genuinely believe you are building a tech that could destroy all of humanity, and yet you continue to build it. Yeah. I mean, the starting premise for these companies and for Dario and for Sam is that it's inevitable that somebody will build this.

So all of the action is in who builds it, how they do it when it happens. And I think that's just a view a lot of people share. They have to think AI is impossible or it's inevitable. Yeah. And I think it's this like narrow path. It's like, no, we can shape it. it, we can control it, we can stop it.

But it is actually possible for them to build these machines that can replace us fully. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month, price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year,

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You're like, I'm not that worried about AI will end humanity, but I'm actually worried that it will replace us because that's what they want to do. Like, that is the genuine, that's the bull case. And it's like, we spend so much time here talking about the kill humanity. And that's fine. You know, we talked to Nate. And he actually gave it very good. analogy. If you're a normal chess player, he's like, I'm not going to tell you how Magnus Carlson's going to beat you, but I can't tell you that he's going to beat you. I can't tell you exactly which piece he's going to use in order to put you in checkmate. Whereas we don't spend enough time nearly talking about the transhumanist freak future. Like Dario actually is a transhumanist freak. Most of the people who work at these companies, including, yeah, Altman, a literal conman who started Open AI as a nonprofit and turned it into one of the most profitable companies in the history of mankind with a pro, what is it, a total addressable market? that him and Sam are going around saying the entire U.S. economy, right? And so put it together

and what you find are this deeply untrustworthy system. And I have been thinking about this. I'm curious for your reaction is in the Manhattan Project View. It would be as if under Manhattan that we just went out and funded instead of directing a bunch of labs. And we're like, all of you guys sprint to the bomb. You know, go for it. There's no general groves. And no regulation. No, there's no regulation. We're not even going to come and look at the labs. There's no, there's no FBI, there's no security check, there's no direction, there's no public funding. It's literally like, you guys sprint for the bomb, let us know how you're getting there.

And, you know, it's actually fascinating, important in the story to have the government in charge very often telling these scientists be like, dude, shut up, all right? He's like, this is what we're going to do. We don't care what you're saying here, but in both directions. Both people who wanted to sprint towards it and people who didn't. And it feels like that is what's the most frustrating dynamic about this is the lack of democratic control. Yeah. Ultimately. So, yeah.

Yeah. No, I mean, it's wild that these people are building what are now super weapons, right? Like once Mythos was able to find vulnerabilities in every piece of software, basically, it checked, including hardened, classified servers at the NSA. It's like, wait, this private company that is basically not regulated at all is now able to find these vulnerabilities and get into these systems. everywhere. And we're just going to like let them keep building them and getting better and better. And then the systems themselves are our security threat. And yeah, if the Manhattan Project had been privatized and unregulated, that'd be insane.

And that's basically the situation we're in. But the stakes are actually higher if you buy the like full, you know, bulkcase for the technology, which is like that it could fully replicate human labor across the board and be scaled up to arbitrary numbers, which is the stated plan. And so this idea that, like, it was always going to be the government was going to step in and take control of this technology. And that is pretty concerning. In general, I think no one should have this tech. And we should be building it, if at all, under incredibly different circumstances, under a truly global democratic control.

With, you know, a global effort to build it safely, but also with buy-in, that ensuring that people actually want it. But this government in particular is very concerning. They've demonstrated a strong interest in using it for lethal autonomous weapons for mass surveillance. And there's no such thing as like a safe super weapon. It's like it depends on what it's being pointed at and who's using it for what. It's not a property of the system. It's a property of the entire ecosystem and the world that it's coming into. Let's go ahead and put a six up on the screen.

this is the Bernie, Greg Khazar proposal. You've got Bernie and Steve Bannon attending the same event today to raise awareness and call for regulation. What do you make of some of the political coalitions here? Because it is very interesting. You know, I can tell you in terms of where I'm finding agreement online and finding some surprising places. There are some people that now I'm viscerously disagree with that I would have been surprised previously. So there is a lot of, I think, political. coalition scrambling that is happening here. But I also think there's a bit of a disconnect between the elite discourse around the concerns and the general public sense of just, we don't understand this, we don't want it, we didn't ask for it, we want to slow down, we don't want these data centers in our towns, like there feels to be a large, normy backlash that almost precedes the elite discourse now. Yeah, I think it's kind of populist versus elite, right? You've got the populist left and the populist right, opposing AI supporting regulations, opposing the preemption of state level regulations, which Congress was pushing under the Republican leadership.

And then the Republican leadership is just taking orders from like the industry. And the AI industry is the wealthiest industry of all time. And so it's very unpopular to try and nullify all state level AI regulations. But the Republicans did try to do this. And then Trump is, you know, taking his cues from that at political cost to himself and to his party. And I think this is just one of those issues where it really is like almost everybody against this tiny set of people who are trying to build this technology and the people like in the tech right who want to let it rip. And if you look at polling for this, it's like the least popular position you could have. It's just like no regulation for this technology.

I mean, it is weird. Because it's an objectively insane position. Yes. And I do want you to break down a little bit of the antitrust concern. Because Dario put this line in his essay about like, we may need an exemption in order to coordinate a slowdown. There are a lot of people that came out who know a lot more about this than I do. They were like, you actually don't need an exemption. There's a safety carve out.

You could do this already. But people, I listened to David Sachs interview this morning, sort of seized on that to say, oh, they just want to form a cartel, and that's what this is really all about. But there are a lot of other regulations that I think, again, would be common sense to people. You know, when you think of a bio lab, we have all kinds of inspections and monitoring. When you think of even, you know, large banks, you have embedded regulators who are deeply in mesh. Not that they always get it right, but at least there's some oversight. When you're testing new pharmaceutical products to come out, there's an oversight and there's a testing regime. Again, there can be problems with that, but it's certainly better than not.

having anything at all. And with these, what they insist on calling labs, there is none of that whatsoever. Yeah. I mean, I've seen experts on both sides saying it would be antitrust violation to coordinate in this way because you're like slowing down progress of this technology towards an undesirable end. But, you know, that is kind of classic cartel behavior. On the other side, it's like they could afford the fines. You know, the biggest fines ever for this are in the single digits billions of dollars, these companies are taking hundreds of billions in investment. And so if they really cared, if they thought it was existentially important, they could run that risk. And it's an excuse. It's a convenient excuse for the industry to avoid

doing the right thing and slowing down here. It's been interesting to see how people line up on this because a lot of people on the left are very skeptical of this Bernie-Kassar proposal to pause frontier development and to ban superintelligence. And they call it regulatory capture. like, you're on the same side as David Sacks. Yeah. Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Like, how is that regulatory capture? Because none of these guys want to stop. You know, even like Daria Zussi, he's not calling to stop.

He's telling slow the pace and we'll bring in our own internal auditors. And theoretically, we'd like some regulation, but this is what we're going to do right now. There's no one who has, you know, money at stake in the industry that is saying just shut it all down, which is what Bernie's proposal would do. The argument I've seen is that it would be unfalsifiable. the definition of superintelligence was unfalsifiable, and so it was like this get out of all regulation free card. And it's like...

I don't understand. Can you explain that argument? I don't understand that. Because the definition is like squishy and you can't really test it, then you can't prescribe what superintelligence is. And so it's like, I think this is pretty absurd because, one, it's a messaging bill.

You know, this particular bill is not going to pass as it is. If it actually got close to passing, there would be a lot of effort. put into defining what the thing is that you're criminalizing. And from a messaging perspective, it's pretty clear what they're trying to do. They're trying to criminalize the stated business goal of these companies. And the idea that that would be good for them is just like so topsy-trophy. Yeah, and this is something I think we should, you know, is that put this bill aside,

is what they're talking about is cartel-style behavior engaging on pacing, but ultimately trying to get to the goal. I think what the three of us are talking about is laying a floor for the whole industry. It doesn't matter whether it's Dario, Meta, NV. You know, any of the Microsoft, any of these other people, we're saying this is the groundwork. You got to build within these parameters. That's normal. That's like a normal setting the, you know, kind of parameters in which a market is allowed to operate. And then from there, go for it.

Do, you know, whatever you want. It's actually much more, I wouldn't say libertarian, but like a small business type. If anything, startup friendly, it's like these are the parameters, which we're all allowed to engage in. go ahead and engage, whereas what they're proposing actually does seem to be much more of, like, cartel-style behavior. So it is interesting from a regulatory perspective, but I want to come back to something what you said about global governance. And this is where, I don't know. I mean, you talked to here about our current government. Sure, I agree. You know, a lot of abuse, etc. It still seems to be somewhat more preferable to have our not just current government,

government have actual say over what it is, because ultimately that's somewhat answerable to democratic control. I mean, anthropophani. and open-Aid are not even public. I can't even buy a share and vote in their election. I can at least vote in my election coming up, specifically on the Bernie bill or whoever, like whoever they want to regulate. So talk through that a little bit more about, because you're warning about our current government. Sure, you're not wrong. You talked about mass surveillance. I mean, look, you know, I'm not saying the Chinese and all that aren't. They do a lot of things with the AI. I think they have a different model, but like to deny that they're not also going to use and are using this for

master balance is kind of ridiculous. So like to what extent when you talk about global democratic control, is that even feasible, possible in a world where, I mean, you know, one point something billion people don't live under a democracy. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the ideal. We're so far from that existing. And I just think this technology should not be built under anything like the current circumstances. But if it is built, you know, there are these proposals to like have the companies be owned by the government and then sharing the proceeds with Americans. And it's like most people are not Americans, right? And if they're put out of work by American AI,

and then American citizens are getting dividends from that. But then the 96% of the world that are not American citizens are getting put out of work, getting no access to new tax revenue from the technology, and no recourse, really. That seems like pretty concerning. That's going to create a very unstable world. Yeah, yeah.

And so I think it's more just like this ideal we can shoot for, where these AI models are built from the inheritance of humanity, the intellectual and creative inheritance from every human that's ever written any up down or created anything. And they're being enclosed and privatized by these companies. And I think even the boldest answers here are to bring those under public control and ownership of just one country, which happened to be at the forefront of building these systems.

And that's still just like so far from what we should want, aspirational. And my long-term vision for this is probably like a multi-decade's project to figure out how to get buy-in for this technology and how to build it safely and make sure that it benefits

truly everybody. Garrison, my last question for you is are you concerned? Because your book is primarily focused on what you call the obsolete project, which is the goal of replacing all humans, starting with probably white-collar workers,

with this technology, and that's where you've focused a lot of your advocacy. Are you concerned that this moment where a lot of the discussion is about what admittedly feels like these sort of bizarre sci-fi scenarios of existential risk, that that is detracting from some of the more immediate and concrete concerns that, frankly, I think, will probably land in a more absorbable way with the majority of the public? Yeah, it's interesting because I was very thoughtful about what arguments I presented in which order, and I take seriously these concerns about extinction, not on the same timelines that Jacob is talking about. But I think there's been this big mistake made by the classic

AI safety community, like the so-called Dumers, where they focus on like extinction superintelligence. And that's like the last stop on the train. Yeah. And then if you don't believe the train is going that direction, then you're like not so worried about the train. And to me, I'm like, plenty of people want to stop the train at labor replacement, at surveillance, at environmental concerns, at power and wealth concentration. And all of those things are like easier cases to make, and they're still true. And so I think we should be focusing on, you know, what is before that step, which is like AGI, universal labor replacing machines.

People don't want that. And this question of like, could every single human be killed by the end of the decade It's just like distracting us from this question of like, do we want these machines to be built in our lifetimes under the conditions that they're currently being built? So what Jacob said in response to this question when I was listening to an interview with him is that it is entirely valid and he shares all of those concerns. However, with the labor replacement as bad as that will be, it's not like a one and done. Sure. It happens and game over. whereas the scenarios he's concerned about the truly existential, you know, humanity is over risk.

It is that sort of, if you get it wrong, you don't get a do-over. And so that's why he's particularly focused on that piece. And when we asked Nate about it yesterday, because I asked him a very similar question, he said, well, I don't think that you, you know, it has to be one or the other. I think we could be concerned about cybersecurity. I think we could be concerned about labor replacement. I think we could be concerned about deep fakes and societal destabilization. but also be concerned about these existential risks.

So how would you respond to those? Yeah, I agree with both of those things. And extinction is categorically the most worrying thing because we'd get no more shots at doing anything. Yes. But it's funny. Gary Tan, the head of Y Combinator, this venture capital fund,

was like, hey, we should stop talking, we should no longer talk about existential risk, we should focus on like near-term immediate harms, things like rogue agent swarms that are hacking into things autonomously, which is the type of thing that sounded like, sci-fi, you know, six months ago, and then it happened. True.

And so, yeah, I don't think we need to be picking necessarily, but I just worry that if people don't ride the train all the way, they think there's no problem, and we're just kind of confusing ourselves a bit by focusing on that. No, I totally agree with you. And I actually think you do need to be picky, because I think what's kind of frustrating, again, about this whole situation is this, like, they call it P-Dune, probability of extinction, more than 10%. That's a good headline.

I totally get it. but like you said, like, you know, the median case for this all works out is genuine replacement of the vast majority of white-collar work. Yeah. I'm like, that would be a road to building robots. Right, on the world to building humanoid robots. And, okay, let's say I'm even fine with technological progress, but I'm talking about, I'm looking at a world where Dario and Sam and Elon are literally

trillionaires who have more power and wealth than any individual in all of human history. and technology with zero democratic control that is all being ushered in on the back of our workforce. I'm like, I know, I don't know about extinction. I know what that looks like because it has many times, at least, resemble that in the past. That's a disaster.

That is a full-fledged, like industrial-style revolution, change in life, in my opinion, not for the better. And so I think that's where the discussion. Yeah, largely should come. The dream of capitalist for so long has been turning capital into labor without having to pay the workers. Right.

without having workers that can go on strike or use the bathroom. And this technology, the industry is trying to build is like close to delivering on that promise. And it's really strange to me that the left has not taking that prospect seriously because it's the most obvious thing in the world to organize against. And it's also now politically quite popular to do so. Yeah. And so I think there's a generational opportunity to realign our politics and to resist this race to replace us. which if we don't get it right,

like we're in a really bad, we're already in a really bad situation, but the inequality we're seeing, the wealth and power concentration, the just dystopia that's being built in real time will get so much worse if the industry's allowed

to keep doing what they're doing. The book is obsolete. It's going to be released on September 29th, available for pre-order now. Garrison, great to see you. Great to see you, man. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches,

There's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.com for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your for-you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought

daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. Someone says. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to pro society on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. See you between the pages. Turning now to the situation with Iran.

Oil markets reaching genuine crisis levels. Trump, of course, trying to do what he always does. Let's put it up here on the screen. He says, the failing nation of Iran wants to make a deal. Quickly, badly. I will determine whether or not the USA will choose to engage. The concept of which we are open to. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Came at the exact moment that Brent crude prices surged to some $109 per barrel. but it was accompanied with a series of other truths. So let's put these in quick success in, guys. Let's go to B2. At the very same time, he says, I've just received a report. The United States is producing more exquisite and elite weapons than at any time in our history.

They're being delivered on a daily basis to our forces in the Middle East and beyond our defense company factories are moving 24-7 while at the same time building four to five brand new plants. Each, a primary focus has been, Patriots, Dad, Systems, Tomahawks, and other missile systems,

of which we have large numbers in stock. Yeah, literally none of that is true. The timeline is probably going to take five to ten years to replace what's been already used, even at current levels. And then following it up with the next one, I hope everyone realizes price increases throughout America were caused by Biden, not by Trump. Even oil was higher under Biden than it is right now.

Actually, it was under Ukraine. And we prevented Iran from having a nuclear weapon, with the temporary exception of oil prices are coming out sharply. to burn. Oil will drop like a rock as soon as the military conflict with Iran is over, and that will not be long. Thank you for your attention to this matter. And so you may be wondering then about these prices. So, as of this morning, the national average price of gasoline is $4.32.

And the national average price of diesel is $6.27 a gallon. And it is on its way to seven. As we said, there is one. And we covered that yesterday, my favorite story, station in San Diego where it literally can't get worse because they don't know how to move the sign from $999 to $10 a gallon. So some solace. They're going to figure out how to like put some cardboard over that.

Like I said, they'll figure that fuck her out tomorrow. But in the meantime, it literally cannot get any worse for them. And yep, it doesn't look like there has been any movement whatsoever. In the Brent price, still around 105, 108, you have series of problems in the Babel Monday. Strait, Qatar warning this morning. It is a full-fledged disaster, the closure of what's happening. In addition, just to show you where shipping prices, I was telling you about before the show, the price per day of hiring the ships now to transport oil has surged to a million dollars a day, and it used to be 100,000 in terms of, what is it, 10 times the price of what it is,

just to operate and get oil, I think, from the United States all the way to Asia, Japan now largest customer is actually the United States in terms of what, just imagine the travel time of getting some of that stuff over there. So huge global race for the existing oil stocks, a lot of oil executives being like, this is it, this is the big one. To be fair, they've said that before. Yeah, very true. So we're in a bit of a wait and see with all of that. But I don't think there's any doubt the crash out yesterday from Trump on AI and on Iran has everything to do with the markets. Our entire economy is bet on the AI and data setter build out. So when that started to appear a little shaky, these companies for the economic

bubble to continue, for the good times to continue to flow, they have to keep building. Because if you slow down, then you don't need to build out all of these data centers. You know, a lot of the cost of Open AI, Anthropic and the other frontier labs, a lot of those costs are all about training the models. So he does not want them to slow down. So he made that very clear yesterday. And then if you look at oil prices going up, you look at treasury bond yields hitting 10 year, hitting 5%. These were a lot of dire signals. And then you also had the stock market taking a significant dip. So that is the reason why Trump was freaking out, posting all of these things and hoping to jawbone the market. It worked a little bit, you know, in the market. We're covering.

some. Oil is not quite at the highs that it was at yesterday, but there is a deep concern that this could be the moment when the whole thing crumbles apart. As you're saying, Sager, you know, we've heard those warnings before, so we will see. But if you put B5 up on the screen, this is what oil executives are telling the Wall Street Journal. Oil executives say the great fuel crisis is here. Trump officials say the oil market disruption is temporary, but Chevron's Mike Worth and others warn global supplies are running, low with no respite in sight. The things that they point to here will be very familiar to watchers of this show, China reentering the market, the damage to the Saudi East-West pipeline, the Houthis

taking the Red Sea coastline, obviously Iran escalating and the continued blockade and issues in the Strait of Hormuz, the Ukraine and Russia war and Ukraine striking Russian refining capabilities. There was also a refinery here in the U.S. that is damaged and is not functioning. one of these things. And by the way, what I was looking at experts were saying is this is predictable because they're all being run. Yeah, they're running 100%. And there's no downtime in order to perform routine maintenance. So at some point, things will start to break down. And we're starting to get to that point. In addition, not only the U.S., but many other countries around the world, have run down their strategic petroleum reserve. So Trump's big play is, let's see if we can get

this Venezuelan oil online as soon as possible. But based, you know, no expert here, but based on what the experts are saying, that is going to take years. That is not a quick fix to, you know, spin up more Venezuelan oil production. That is going to be a long time frame. And they don't seem to have a lot of more rabbits in the hat that they can pull out here. But I guess, again, you never know. Yeah. And combining a couple of different things, actually, some of which are breaking this morning, this didn't end up in the show. But Trump finally woke up to the fact that one of the main reasons diesel is so high is because of Ukraine striking all of these refinements. in Russia. So Trump came out yesterday and was like, Ukraine has agreed, and so is Russia to no longer

strike each other's energy facilities. I remember it was like, oh, great, literally woke up this morning. Ukraine just struck a Russian oil facility. Oh, really? Literally last night, or last night, our time. So, yeah, it's like what? Of course they're not going to stop. Because it makes logical sense from their perspective. They're hurting the Russian economy. Ukraine doesn't care if we're paying more for gasoline. That's been their MO from the very beginning. So on the Russian side and on the Ironically, Ukraine, even though they're anti-Iran, really working on their behalf, you know, in some ways by tightening the global market for refined products. Other thing that's coming out in the China situation is it's very obvious, I mean, it makes sense. They were able to sustain off their own stockpiles for six months.

That's a long time. That's honestly admirable to be able to cut your imports to the levels that they were and still be able to run your economy. But you still need oil. And so, yep, you're starting to tick up in terms of it. and that's exactly what you see in the price, all of it now reflecting the general shortage. You will also begin to see a lot of propaganda from the West specifically about Strait of Hormuz. So it does appear that there has been a general uptick now, up to almost 10 million barrels per day, according to tanker trackers. It's a very good track record on this subject through the Strait of Hormuz.

A lot of these ship-to-ship transfers running the blockade convoy system that Sal had pointed out. However, what that doesn't take into account is the current closure for Saudi Arabia of the Babal-Mandab Strait. And so if you look at the totality of the amount of oil, Iran, by controlling Bab al-Mandab, even if they're losing a little bit of control in the Strait of Hormuz, those things work in conjunction and push the price of oil continue to go higher. And so I think what you're continuing to see, too, is that there is also something tracked very extensively by Rory, which is about dated Brent, which means. the physical spot price, like actual for the oil that it is right now. And according to him,

that was closed yesterday at $130 a barrel. So the Brent crude futures, but the future price, this is $130 a barrel for the actual physical price of the barrel today. And he says that is higher than all but a few days in 2008, 2022, and one or two days in April of 2026. So already historic levels, why does that matter? Because we're not really seeing a ton of of kinetic action. A few ships are getting struck, you know, a few things and all of that are happening. But by and large, like we're watching ships, actually a ship, by the way, hit a mine in the hormone moves yesterday. So thank you, President Trump, you know, for demining the entire straight. Yeah, what happened with that? Remember, you can look at all of this and just

see we're slow rolling. We're just crawling forward. And, you know, our media doesn't barely covers Iran now. They just cover the, they just cover the oil. And I totally understand that. But there's still the situation with Babamanda, who's. these seizure of the strait, this is all part of like a pincer movement that the Iranians are trying to use to choke hold the global oil market. And all we're looking at now is just one event, like another reigniting of fighting, and that would send things even higher. We could go to 115, 120 in terms of the future, which would put the physical price in around 150, 160. There are some indications that the Houthi offensive was directly coordinated with Iran. We don't

know that to be the case. But there's some indications. that that may be the case, it does make some sense for why the timing of that offensive was right now. We also learned that it was not the Houthis who hit the East-West pipeline. It was the Iraqi militias aligned with Iran. So when you look at all of those pieces together, it's very possible that Iran is behind those actions, not to say the Houthis don't have their own domestic priorities in their ongoing war, but, you know, it could be the case that these were, should be seen as moves by Iran to continue to tighten the news and should be anticipated that there may be more actions that they take between now in the midterm elections as they try to make things as difficult

as possible for the U.S., for the global economy, and for Trump and for his political prospects in particular. Last piece here, B6, we can put up on the screen. This will surprise literally no one. But Trump, of course, was claiming Iran, they're calling us. They're begging to negotiate as part of his jawboning up the market. Iran comes back and says, we have made no request to negotiate with the United States. And so you can take that for what you will. Yes, exactly. And also the bond market continues to go in a very bad direction. Let's put B4 up on the screen. This was from yesterday. The 10-year treasury yield topped 5%, they say, as oil surges. Diesel hits the all-time high, increasing borrowing costs. And don't forget, tomorrow is actually the federal. Reserve meeting where they will be what current expectations will be hiking interest rates for the

first time since 2023, the exact opposite of what Donald Trump had wanted. And so between the bond rates and the increase in the interest rate, the price of borrowing going up, they're trying to do some demand destruction. None of this is looking good for the American consumer. I can't even imagine what the interest, what the mortgage interest rates are going to be, you know, in a few weeks. Could be 7%, honestly, maybe even higher, especially with their current home prices. Where they are, you might as well just forget about it in terms of trying to buy a home in today's market. And so you put all these things together, especially the bond situation where Scott Besson, I mean, it is interesting. Like, there's not as much, there's discussion about this in the financial

press, but these two things are working in tandem, the oil market and the 10-year yield, which it is now the highest level since 2007. Like, we've, really are in almost 20 years in terms of a historic move in that direction. And overall, you know, it's putting pressure on the stock market futures on, you know, with the oil price, inflation, it all comes together. And just generally a bad situation and also just very obviously not a vote of confidence in the United States government, which is, you know, not really what you want. Yeah. Any one of these things would be a flash flashing red light. Yeah. And we've got all red lights flashing. Yes. Makes sense. Let's get to the next bar.

We had said many times here on the show, where is the pilot, the guy who got shot down and who was rescued? He did emerge on television on 60 minutes and gave an extensive interview very much reminiscent, in my opinion, of the War on Terror, where, you know, they roll it out. It's like a big, you know, splashy pre-released interview of the guy who's involved, Pete Hegsett, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and we'll get to some of the orchestration of all of that. But we did, of course, since we've said so many times, where is he? Well, here he is. Here he is in his own words. In terms of his survival and how he was rescued. Let's take a listen.

So how fast do you think you were going when you hit the ground? Professionals based on my description and the injuries that I had, the professionals think I hit the ground going somewhere between 70 and 100 miles an hour. How did you survive that? A modern day miracle. I believe that it's a testament God's provision in my life to bring me through that moment in a way that didn't prevent injuries, but prevented any catastrophic injuries that would have affected my ability to survive. Ravo told us the safest place for him to go was up. So he quickly made the decision, despite his broken bones, to hike and climb up a 7,000-foot ridge line. So you could see there, that's what his story is, is that he was hitting the,

ground at what, 70 to 100 miles per hour. It broken bones scaled a 7,000 foot bluff and then was rescued while there was an extensive search and rescue operation that was going on there. They did release some video and others. You can go and watch some of this for yourself. I do think it is worth noting, I think, you know, within this is that, look, I know there's a lot of skepticism about the story and I get it. You know, to me, you know, hitting the ground at 100 miles an hour, that seems crazy. But I guess crazier things have happened in terms of that. I do

somewhat believe, at the very least I believe this, that he went down in that plane and because of that, that's when initially led to the ceasefire. And since that time, there have not been aircraft over Iran. So that's why

everyone who's like, oh, this never happened. It was all stage. I'm like, well, there's one thing where you should take at least some of it seriously is that since that day, we have relied on standoff munitions, Tomahawk missiles and all of these other munitions to strike Iran, specifically in the Strait of Hormuz and others, or use these Black Hawk helicopters in the dead of night. But we have not done like large-scale bombing runs over the country largely out of fear of being shot down again. And so that's the one part where, again,

I understand, you know, with the story and any of these military stories, considering the track record of so many that bin Laden raid and all these other things that they've put out there, half of which just turned out to be total bullshit. Didn't Hollywood but I buy a script? Right. Yeah. I get it. I get where you're all coming from.

Every single one of these stories, the details are 10 times lone survivor. You know, you can go and look into that one. If you want to, Bin Laden, you know, literally, like, look, you know, some of it's true, a lot of it's not. So every one of the big missions that turns into a movie, like, you know, or even zero dark 30, like half of it's literally just fiction, you know? So my point just remains that I get it where the, where all the skepticism comes from, and I think on the exact details, 10 years from now, we'll eventually learn the truth. But I am absolutely certain a plane went down

because of what has happened in the aftermath, is if we still had the ability to put planes over, we still would still would. Remember, it was only after the rescue. That's when the ceasefire happened. I think that's a coincidence. Oh, absolutely not. I mean, many people will find it an unbelievable story, that's fine. But let's just take it at face value to Saugher's point. It is very clear that because of this incident and whatever occurred here, that Trump got freaked down. It was right after this that you had the civilizational threat and then you had the biggest taco of the entire Iran war when he completely capitulates, signs what John Mearsheimer has described as a surrender document and moves forward with the memo of understanding that we

then went ahead and undermined because Trump just could not accept the reality. of the actual acknowledgement of loss that that would entail. But think if you take it at face value, think of how close we came to losing this man either to Iran or to death over Iran. I mean, if it really hit the ground at 100 miles per hour, okay, terminal velocity speed for a human is 120. Like, you do not serve. Like, your body just implodes at that speed.

100 is very close to there. very few documented instances of someone surviving a fall at that speed and from that height. So think of how close we were to, you know, something that could have been absolutely horrific, either in terms of his death. And so, look, this is very clearly, whether the story is completely true or completely false or somewhere in between, it's very clear that this is just blatant pro-war propaganda because, of course, people are going to look at this man and be inspired by the, tenacity by the fact that, you know, we wouldn't leave him behind and the level of the effort that was marshaled. But nowhere in the peace does it ask for what? Yes. Like, for what did this man

have his life wrist and almost ended and suffered catastrophic traumatic injuries that he may never recover from? I mean, literally broke his back during this fall. For what did we remember all the aircraft that we marshaled and then had to blow up because they got stuck in the sand? Like, for what did we do? For what is any of this happening? None of that enters. the peace. And so that's why it's very effective pro-war propaganda because you can just look at the individuals who are involved and say, look how brave and how noble they are without zooming out even like one mile to let alone to see the entire forest and think about what the hell are we doing any of this for to begin with. You'd be shocked to learn that 60 minutes didn't do any of that.

And instead, it was effectively a commercial for how awesome Pete Hegseth was, B-10, take a listen. It was a combination of factors of brave moves that Bravo made based on his training to make sure we knew that he was alive. It was incredible intelligence work. It was incredible satellite work. Combination of, again, exquisite capabilities that only America has that allowed us, when you look at the terrain of where they were, I mean, I don't know if the needle in the haystack does it justice. When you heard that an American fighter jet was down behind enemy lines in Iran, what went through your mind? Probably... You know, you always knew that was possible.

And so immediately it's to the next steps. Are they okay? Does Iran know that? And, you know, whether they're alive or not, we're going to go get them. Right. And so that was basically what this entire thing was. and you'll be even more shocked to learn. That was the plan.

Put the last piece up here on the screen. This was a CNN report. It's been backed up by a few others. We'll give them credit because they are the ones who broke the story. Pete Hegzeth and political appointees pushed for the two members of the F-15 to participate in the 60 Minutes report. Both Airmen initially expressed reservations about doing the interview, with one even raising the concern about the prospect of being potentially ordered to take part in the segment while military officials were also. weary of revealing classified details of the rescue effort. Political appointees were, quote, adamant that both crew sit for the interview. After the two survivors voiced concerns,

Hegset then privately met with them, asked whether they would participate rather than forcing their cooperation. As a result, one eventually agreed, dubbed Bravo, to sit for the on-camera interview while the other declined to take part in the report. I think that tells you a lot. by the way, Mr. Alpha, whoever you are, you're a real American hero. You know, you got shot down. You don't want to be famous. Hopefully you're not writing a book or obscuring your face in an interview and trying to sue the Pentagon so you can make millions of dollars and become a podcast, you know, hero.

It probably just had a horrific, you know, experience. As you said, you're probably really angry about how it all went down. Maybe I'm projecting. But you're like, you know what? I don't want to be a part of this. I don't want to be famous. I just want to live my life. I didn't sign up necessarily for this type of shit.

And so, look, as they say, it shows how Exet has played an unusual hands-on role in the planning process for the great 60-minute rollout that is more than typical for the defense secretary. By the way, the Pentagon denies this. They say that it's a complete lie, et cetera. But I think you can generally say, considering who 60 minutes is run by, the ratings, bonanza, and all of this, that they were expecting that from all. all of this that you can at least put some stock in the story. I will say, and this is part of how much our country has changed, lone survivor was one of the biggest stories in this country.

I remember it, you know, with this, the hunt for Latrell and all the bad details. And I mean, look, even people who oppose the war were like, wow, what an tremendous, you know, accomplishment about what has happened here. Same with Bin Laden. I mean, I was living here in Washington when that happened. It was like a spontaneous outbreak of joy and all of that just for, some sort of catharsis after 9-11. This one got not even the same amount of reaction, and it's because people oppose the war. Like you said, we're like, look, okay,

we'll take the story even on its face value. We're like, dude, yeah, like, you know, your back was broken, you were forcing into this. For what? So we could sign a ceasefire the next day? I mean, you know, so we can not accomplish our military objectives, so we could accomplish, have this horrific, you know, experience,

or this horrific disaster happened to our country. It's just, it doesn't hit the same way. No. And that's where the Hegsseth and all of them are trying so hard to remanufacture so much of what it looked like, because I remember what it was, even up until 2012, 2015. And that is just gone. Many of us also know people who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and came home and were never the same. I know. Many of us know, have seen what the fallout of that war has continued to be, even among the people who weren't on the casualty list, who came back physically intact.

and we're never the same and are haunted by for what I watched my buddies get blown up and you know and or their marriages fall apart or slip into depression or you know or potentially contemplate suicide or addiction for what taliban's back in charge in afghanistan what were we doing and so i think also because we have a very tangible visceral experience with what the aftermath of these wars actually looks like for the human beings who get sent into them. I think that's also the reason to your point saga that it doesn't hit the way that perhaps it once did. Yeah, that's right.

All right, let's get to midterms. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode eight

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This is kind of considered the gold standard poll very closely watched. So let's go and put this up on the screen in previous elections. This poll has been kind of early to observing some of the trends that have turned down to be consequential in terms of Trump's victory in 2020, some of the realignment that we've seen, especially among non-white groups towards Republicans. In this poll, they've asked the question, this is the so-called generic ballot. If the 26th general election for Congress were held today, which party's candidate would you be more likely to vote for in your district? Democrats, 51 Republicans 43. If that holds, that is certainly bloodbath territory. But there are other interesting numbers within here. They say Mr. Trump's approval continues to languish at 38% among likely voters essentially

unchanged from the lows it sank to after he went to war with Iran. You've also got voters saying they trust Democrats more than Republicans on not just health care and foreign wars, but also on the two issues that powered Trump's 2024 victory, immigration, and the economy. Further, they talk about how far independent voters have fallen from Mr. Trump. They say that they have soured on him. Just 10% of independent voters say the economy is better today than a year ago. Only 27% of independent voters approve of Trump's job performance overall in the fight for Congress.

57% of independent voters say they plan to vote for a Democrat compared to only 34% for a Republican. A couple of other interesting notes here. There's a lot that was kind of fascinating from this poll. They say even with Mr. Trump's most loyal and durable Democrats, demographic base, white voters without college degrees. They now disapprove of his handling of the cost of living by a 21 percentage point margin. They also found those vulnerabilities for Republicans extend beyond Trump. Voters see Republicans broadly as more extreme, more elitist, and more corrupt than Democrats. Voters continue to have doubts about both parties, but they aligned more with

the Democratic Party on both cultural and economic matters than Republicans in the survey. And finally, Mr. Trump's approval rating among voters under 30 stands at just 18%. You will recall, of course, immediately in the wake of his election, re-election in 2024, that there was a lot of discourse about young men in particular and how much they'd shifted to the right. All of that has completely evaporated. 18% is a crazy low among that. It makes sense. You know, this part actually struck me, and this seems to be even more bullish, is don't even just pay

necessarily to party identification. Pay attention to what people say that they want out of voting. So they say, in general, would you rather vote for a candidate who supports Trump, wants to provide a check on Trump, or does it matter either way? Support Trump is 26%. Doesn't matter is 21. Wants a check is 49. I think that that overwhelming wants a check, because that's what a lot of people forget about 2016. And this was kind of the whole idea of like the hidden Trump voter is Trump won the election with a 30 something percent approval rating. People were like, how is that possible? It's like, well, a lot of people who don't think he's a good guy still voting for because they wanted a check on the Democrats or they supported the policy or they're evangelical, whatever.

You can actually put that in the same direction for Democratic Party identification. Many Democrats are upset at the Democratic Party, so they may not identify. That's number one. But two is you may even be someone who doesn't like the Democratic Party but would vote for it just to provide a check on Trump. That is extremely common midterm behavior and you drive it up all the way to 10, which is very common, I think, with the current situation. I mean, if you take a look at some of these polls, what I find is fascinating is that they say they voters see Republicans broadly as more extreme, more elitist, and more corrupt. Those were literally all flipped as of two years ago. Is that, I mean, empirically, the elites did vote Democrat. Empirically, or, okay, well, you could put it either way, people saw the Biden administration very corrupt.

And then more extreme, that was the knock is that these people are cultural extremists. So the flip on that, as you read about that, I mean, that's got to be one of the big flips, I would say, that you would be a lot more bullish on Democrats. The other thing, I think, the fascinating part, curious what you think. AI seems to be the one place where there are plus two. I know. What's going on with that? Yeah, I don't know.

I sort of attribute that to... It does have the biggest don't know number. It's Democrats 40, don't know 18, Republicans 40. Well, Republicans have done a better job of jumping on any time a Democrat says something like a little bit pro-data center. I think Republicans have done a good job of jumping on that. That's a good point. To me, it's very much up for grabs.

And Trump is doing everything in his power to make it clear that the Republican, are the party of unfettered data center and AI deregulation. So I think that one, we'll see where that shakes out. But it is very interesting that that's where it stands today. Yeah, Ryan Kuduski flagged this. He pulled the data center numbers out of their poll. Do you support or oppose construction? Overall, 34 supports 61% opposed. It holds for all demographics, except for current self-identified GOP, where it's 49-47. So after, Trump polarized on the data center issue. If you continue to support Republicans, then you're marginally going to be more supportive. Independence, though, it's still 3660. And obviously,

every other demographic, college Democrat, college degree, Latino, black, white, 65 plus, 18 to 29. It's overwhelmingly against for everybody. So that is, you know, a little bit. I mean, look, New York Times, Sienna, it's been off many times in the past. I'm trying to think, 2022, it was totally wrong. 2024, it was actually, by and large, pretty correct. Pretty much had all the swings within the margin-ish or not. I mean, if you could have easily gone off of the New York Times-Cena poll and said Trump is going to win all seven swing states.

And a lot of people did that and they were correct. So look, that's what I'm saying in terms of its track record. By and large, yeah, it was pretty okay in the last election. Before that, it whiffed hard. In 2020, it was totally wrong. So you take it with whatever grain of salt, you know, that exists. But everything's kind of lining in that direction. And I would put it together with the special elections that we saw.

There's no disparity. In 2022, the big disparity was the polls said there was going to be a red wave. But a lot of the special election Democrats were winning. So this time around, Democrats are winning big time. You know, you see the overperformance. Pay it with the poll. Generally, that's where you seem to things could go. But, you know, Trump and the Republicans, sometimes things can come out of nowhere.

One of the most important metrics I think we've seen is the primary in Alaska, because of the unusual nature of Alaska elections where they do this. They run everybody at once in what's called a jungle primary. And then I think it's the top four, actually, that go on to the next round. But in any case, Mary Peltella, the Democrat, came very close to 50% in that primary. And so that's not just people, whoever happens to get contacted by the pollster, whoever happens to not want to talk to the pollster. That's real voters coming to the polls.

and it shows that she had a significant edge over the Republican in the state of Alaska, which should be a massive, obviously, reach for Democrats. Now, Alaska's kind of a weird state and all of that. But to me, the big question is, is this going to be a sort of run-of-the-mill backlash election, which is very consistent with historical trends, which Democrats, shockingly kind of bucked in 2022, but traditionally, party in power, loses seats in the midterms, that's just the way it goes. Or is this going to be something different? where there is a larger reckoning for the party in power.

And one of the indications you might look at for whether or not that is going to be the case is the significant and rapid increase in gas prices. Harry Anton is tracking the numbers saying this has been a historic increase for a midterm election. Let's take a listen to that. Changing gas prices from January 1 to September 14th. The average for a midterm cycle this century is 18%. But look at this on the right side of the screen. 52% rise this year.

52% rise that said, up like a rocket, right? Look at that. My good, this gracious, by far the highest on record, the prior high was just 27%. And looking at 21st century midterm elections, went down all of them prior to 2026. This year, however, the gas prices have actually been going up, up, and away.

They have actually risen, willing to pay more because of the Iran war. Overall, 71% say they're unwilling compared to just 29% who say, well, look at this number among independents. 81%, 81%, 4 and 5 say they're unwilling to pay for higher gas prices because the war in the run. I think those numbers are extremely significant all the way around, both the number that says, no, I'm not willing to pay higher gas prices for this shit.

I don't support this whatsoever, which is different from the Ukraine war, actually. You know, we were skeptical of it at the time, and I think that skepticism bore out. But when the Ukraine war, when Ukraine was initially invaded, people said they were willing to suffer and pay more in order to stand with Ukraine. totally different for the Iran war from the beginning, especially with independents and certainly with Democratic voters. And then you look at that increase, he says it has never before happened in a midterm that those prices have gone up during this time period. And not only they've gone up, they've gone up by over 50%. You know, humans are not just creatures of absolute value. We look at the change. We feel that change of what it used to be just months ago and what it is now.

And Trump himself is acknowledging those prices are not coming back down anytime. I remember this with the Biden people. They would be like, well, this month, inflation. I was like, dude, you're not getting it. 2019, this was the price. 2023, this is the price. Whether it's plus or minus five in the last month doesn't matter if it's overall 20 to 25%. All I remember is what I paid for a paper towel compared to where it is today. So this stat actually down at the bottom was really interesting to me is remember one of the big shifts in 2024 was that Trump won people who made less and $50,000. That was like the biggest flip of the Republican and Democrats, Democrats won people making over $100,000. Republicans won under 50. So this time around, what they find is that

if you make under 50, the current break is 63% Democrat, 31% Republicans. So that is a complete flip from where things were. And they say almost all of that is ascribed to economic precarity and economic hardship. More than half of the voters said that they worry about Republicans in Congress allowing Trump to go too far on the economy and specifically a lot of it comes back to Iran. So if you really want to look at where Trump screwed himself, it was Iran. And there's a geopolitical sense. There's really also just a dollars and cents. Like, you know, I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Four dollars, 30 cents of gasoline is crazy. $6.26 gallon diesel is nuts. I mean, it's just going to continue showing up in everything.

And everybody knows they even quoted a woman inside of. who said, I was so excited to get my new job. And now every single bill that I have has gone up. I mean, I know this has happened. If you need housework done or something, oh my God, you get these quotes. You're like, I'm, you know, time to fire up YouTube. Try and do it myself. Do a shitty job. It's better than paying some guy, you know, 90% of what you think it should cost. That has happened with everything. And it just, you know, it's just the most basic political instinct in the world. Yeah. Let me put this next piece up on the screen here from David Dayan over at American Prospect, because I think this really gets to it. It cuts through what are the Republicans say? What are the Democrats saying? What are the polls publicly available polls saying? Follow the money. Where are Republicans actually spending money? And so of the 49 seats, he says, that have received at least some cash from top GOP aligned super PACs. Only six were one. by Kamala Harris in 2024.

So of the 49 seats they're targeting, only six are ones that Kamala Harris won. 20, and that doesn't even mean their flips. That just means that's places where they, you know, feel like they may have a shot at winning on Kamala Harris territory. 21 of them were won by Trump by nine points or more. Eight of them were won by over 13 points. Let me say that again. Republicans are having to spend money in congressional districts Trump won by

double digits. 13 points or more. Those are the sort of seats that any normal GOPian incumbent would be, oh, I'm in a safe seat. Trump won my district by 15 points. I am not in jeopardy whatsoever. Not so fast. Republicans are having to spend money to defend in deep red territory. He goes on to say the contested districts include 10 in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, where Trump's allies deliberately redrew maps to hand Republicans more districts. If Republicans lose every district receiving some spending in Texas, it would result in Democrats picking up one seat in that state. So even in the states that were gerrymandered to try to forestall any sort of democratic gains, it is possible that Democrats will still gain seats even with

those rigged maps. So I thought that was a really clever way to look at what is actually going on here, because if you see where they're spending money, you can see how they actually feel that this election is going to go. You know, Trump is hoping that this, a desperate ploy of offering a $5,000 check if Republicans win that I don't think anyone has any confidence is actually going to happen, nor should you. He posted this on true social yesterday. The $5,000 Trump dividend to be given to all adults in the U.S. due to the fact our country is taking in trillions of dollars of economic development investment. And pure success is being criticized by Democrats who are hoping it never happens. But it will. As an example, the Democrats

said the great big, beautiful bill, one of the largest ever approved by Congress or signed in a law by president happened, despite the Democrats saying it would be impossible to get improved. I don't think anyone ever said that anyway. Or the gift of $1,776 that I gave last year to our military was an almost guaranteed non-starter. Everyone said it couldn't be done, but it was. Our military patriots got the money and loved it. When I say something, I mean it.

Okay. The $5,000 dividend will happen because the people of our country deserve it. Vote Republican make America great again. So he's still pushing this sort of like desperate attempt to once again offer a check to the American people. You know, we had the Doge refunds, we had the tariff rebates, none of which happened.

And if he wanted to do this so badly, he's got his Republicans in the House and the Senate. He could certainly do it right now. And I support him moving in that direction. It's pretty funny. One thing I do think is actually interesting around all of this is how it will shake out in the,

in like you said, in the Alaska's, in the Mains. Because ever since the Tea Party wave, there just hasn't been that many of these types of places left, which buck the trends and have the so-called Mavericks. Susan Collins has been one of those people, Murkowski or Alaska generally, has been kind of one of those places. And that's what makes that, you know, West Virginia, you had Joe Manchin. But by and large, it just didn't really exist. This does seem like it could be a turning point in the other direction where for the first time ever people do buck partisanship,

or people actually just go straight partisan or like, I'm sorry. I no longer believe in the so-called maverick, like Susan Collins. And that's the one place where, like with Joe Manchin, for example, let's put C8 up on the screen. He's come out and endorsed Susan Collins. He says, you lose Susan Collins. And he endorsed Mike Rogers too. Right. And Mike Rogers. You're losing the soul of the Senate. Susan is always in there, always in the trenches. It just seems like it's one of those where it doesn't seem tenable. Again, I could be wrong. I was totally wrong. I remember in 2020. I thought she was going to go down, there was a poll that or down by 13 points or something obviously she won her election.

But it does seem that the trends are shifting very much against her type of politician and especially with if there's a real wave like this guy robbed sand in Iowa, you know, I mean, if things like that happen, it really does rewrite the rules of what is actually possible. Yeah, I mean, you may end up with a few prairie populists. It's possible. You got Josh, well, Josh Turk is the Senate candidate who has a real shot in Iowa. I think Sands will win the Iowa governor's race, but, you know, the governor's races are a little bit different. That wouldn't be as crazy as winning Senate races.

I think Iowa's in play. I think Nebraska with Dan Osborne is in play. I think Kansas is in play. You have to look at the polling at this point and say, it's not crazy to imagine those things. Texas with James Taurico being truly, truly contested. Actually, I think we have this. One of the ratings agencies put C6 up on the screen has shifted Texas from a toss-up to lean D, well, tilt D, I should say.

This is Vote Hub. They say their model gives James Tala Rico a 55% chance of defeating Ken Paxton. Tala RICO's consistently led in polling. His advantage remains within the margin of error. The race is still extremely close. I saw a number of analysts, I can't remember if it was Nate Silver or not, but I think it was, saying that his model also has Tala RICO in the lead on just the polling. But it's the fundamentals that keeps in that toss-up zone.

The closer you get to election day, the more that the polling begins to. count and weigh into those models. So you were likely to see other models shift that race away from Republicans, away from toss up and towards Tilt D, which is crazy. It's Texas. Now, people actually have to go and vote. And Texas, of course, the White Whale is Democratic Party, but put C3 up on the screen. Nebraska, another place that we have our eye on Dan Osborne, we've had on the show, a few times running as an independent. I think you can really act as a union leader, you know, very populace. That's really what his focus is. Ricketts is meanwhile like a billionaire, but at least a multi-multe millionaire. And this new poll has Osborne, and this is not the only one, up by four points.

So that one, too, I think, is in range and a possibility for Democrats. So that's where I say, you know, really the question at this point is, is this going to be a normal backlash election? Are you going to see some crazy shit like Democrats winning a Kansas? Are you going to see some really wild swings where now you have Democrats winning states that no one would have thought were in range for them whatsoever. Last little update for you guys. Mitch McConnell is back in the Senate. He's alive. Let's see five up. Returns to the Senate casting his first vote. I can't say he's looking great. Oh, it looks awful. But he is alive. And so maybe he'll be the great, maybe he will turn things around for Republicans here down the stretch.

So he's so inspired by his return to the Senate that they'll show up and droves to vote for more Republican leadership. I am pretty annoyed that they all took photos of him, even though he allegedly spoke, and they quoted him. I think he spoke in a part of the Capitol where you're not allowed to record. I'm pretty sure. And that would be very in touch to him on his part. Of course.

Of course. Yeah. And so he only appeared in public in a place where he's not, he's literally not speaking. I mean, the videos of him. leaving his house and stuff are wild, like in terms of not just his wheelchair, but like full on having to be buckled into his own car seat, you know? Yes. Look, why anyone goes, I'm ready to get back to work and doesn't just retire when you

literally can't even buckle your own seatbelt, that is beyond me. But that is the narcissism of the people currently exist in our Congress. Yeah, true. Hey, what's up? I'm Tony Gonzalez. And I'm October Gonzalez, but you can call me Tilby. We want you to join us on our new podcast, No Safe Words with October and Tony Gonzalez. We get real about marriage, parenthood, sex, divorce, and all the nitty-gritty stuff we all think about, but just don't say out loud. You're probably just going to be some rich guy and he's going to whisk you away.

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