Morning Joe - Concerns over AI unite leaders on both sides of aisle

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

September 16, 2026: 7am — Concerns over AI unite leaders on both sides of aisle To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, some TV news following a massive leadership change, the new season of 60 Minutes just premiered to its smallest audience in more than 25 years. Yeah, for some reason, the image of a ticking pocket watch isn't resonating with younger viewers. What is that? Wow. That's not all. That's not all that is stopping viewers from watching. Let's bring in the conversation as you now contributor Mike Barnacle and former U.S. ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel. He served as White House Chief of Staff under President Obama and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee when they still won things. They won a lot of things.

John Hyman really quickly, we sent Lemire to the bullpen to sit down for a second because you have some stats. I didn't really dig in that deeply into the New York Times-Cyenne poll yesterday. I don't really get into news in my job. I don't have to, but you do it for me. And you don't care about polling as a general thing. But people know the New York Times-Cyna poll is. kind of one of the handful of like gold. It's an A plus. It is very strong. But it's taken, like came out two days ago.

It's finally got my head fully around because there's a just, it's like a Christmas tree of numbers that you look at and go, holy crap. The headline number was that the generic ballot now is almost nine points, almost a nine point which was surprised. And that was like, so the discussions of blue wave and all the rest of it. But when you dig down into these numbers a little bit more, on the, on the, the overall electorate, 31% approval rating of Trump on the war. That's not great.

Yeah. 28% approval rating for Trump on the cost of living. Horrible. And he's got out with a 52% not just disapproval, but strongly disapproving. He's over 50%. Again, very hard to do. Even ROM at his worst days as mayor of Chicago didn't got quite that. Okay, let's not fight this early.

But here's the thing. I'm not. I cannot wait for the rebuttal moment. I'm an enormous, I was never in the strongly disappointed. All right. Come on. Keep breathing. Stay.

So the independent vote, how important you're independent, how important to your independent voters? They're really important. Pretty important, right? Right now they're breaking 57 to 34. 57 for Democrats, 34 for Republicans. Trump's approval running with independence is 10% on the economy. I must say, I've never seen a number that level. 27% job approval among independence.

Never seen the number that. It's just, so Rob was just talking about Romney Republicans. At the beginning of this calendar year, 72% of Republicans overall said that the economy had gotten better in the previous year. That number is now 29%, which I believe is a 43% drop over the course of the first half of the year. Republicans, among Republicans. I just is just that there's so much bad news in this poll among for these regular Republicans who finally seem to really be done with Trump. the independent numbers are just wipe out numbers. And if it wasn't for the fact that this poll is so high,

essentially high credibility, you would say this is probably an outlier. But they're also consistent within their own poll. These numbers have been showing up in the times the Senate polls basically building throughout all the calendar year 2022ndi 6. And the other polls too. Hey, come to me. Okay. Who am I?

Little Bobby Cox. Bobby Cox going out. It's calling for Lemire. Thank you so much. I'm out of here, I appreciate it. Do what you will with those numbers in my absence. Thank you. You know, prior to John Heilman giving us the numbers, I asked Rahm Emanuel,

how, what's the average age of the Republicans who were coming out against Trump? And his answer was, older than Romney. Take it away. I think the bigger story in this election is you look across the country, governor of Arizona picked a Republican mayor to run as a running mate. You got in Florida, the Democratic nominee for governor, former Republican. Former Republican.

In Georgia, a former Republican ran in the Democratic primary for governor. Amy Acton in Ohio, worked for a Republican governor. You have Romney Republicans using that as a label who are now breaking away from the Republican Party. They're up for grabs. And when you look, go forward into 2028, seven states, 500,000 voters across those states, decide who the president is, 2016, 2020, 2024. And the biggest story is the breakup of the Republican Party. This is Donald Trump's party and Romney Republicans, McCain Republicans, whatever label you want to use, are breaking off.

They're open to the Democrats. They're starting to run under the label of Democrats, and they're going to vote. They're not going to show up in 2026 for Republican Senate, governors, and Congress. Right. And they're going to be open for a business in 2028. And the Republican Party is there stays on the track it is. Those voters are untethered, and they're open to Democrats. That's the story coming out of 2026.

It's a story coming out of 2026. and you bring up Florida, a state that I think most people thought was lost to Democrats for a very long time. But really, we've had David Jolly on the show before. Can you imagine? No.

You know, Democrats running ads going, David Jolly is a left-wing socialist where David Jolly goes, wait a second. I was a Republican when we balanced budgets. Now you Republicans, you MAGA Republicans, have the largest deficits,

the largest debt, the largest bloated budgets in the history of all times. I was against Forever Wars. You're fine. Like David Jolly can say, I'm the true conservative here. You all are the socialist. You've taken over 30 companies.

That's Cato. That's not some left-wing thing. That's Cato saying you all are behaving like socialist and communists. I mean, if you're David Jolly in Florida in a state that was never going to go Democratic again, you're immune to these attacks that you're some crazy left-wing or it won't work. Sounds like another former Florida Republican Congress, and I know. There you go. Making that exact case for years.

It's kind of impossible. Yeah. And by the way, that is a live election right now. I think with David Jolly even just a few weeks ago, when he first won that primary, they go, well, you know, he's a Democrat in Florida. I don't see it. Now all of a sudden you're hearing people say, this guy's got a real shot in Florida against Byron Donald.

We will see. So with that what you just set up, that Republicans are open. Now we know independents are really open to Democrats. And I know the message in every race and every state is different. I get that. But just as a core message, what should Democrats be talking about every day right now? Every day, one, make sure you're not talking about anything that distracts from where people live their lives. And that is the fact that everything they believed in has been taken away.

The ability now, first time you own a home, is 40, not 26. Your 401K backstop your paycheck because your paycheck can't get to the 31st of the month. And health care, that used to be really a peace of mind for all of us, is now. a nightmare because you're dealing with insurance companies that know one word in the English language no they never have yet approve anybody's medication or doctor I grew up my dad was a pediatrician my mom was a technician nurse the idea a second opinion was another medical person hey Ron look at this health care Democrats up 24 points one of the reasons are up 24 points is because when your dad was a doctor yeah and your dad said you need to get this treatment

then it was always approved now why do you even have it now doctors will say this This is what you need. And the health care companies will say no. I can't tell you how many times it travels all over the country. Every nurse, every doctor I talk to says today they're spending 40 to 50% of the time arguing with an insurance company. And that 24%? Instead of treating patients. That's advantage Democrats.

That's before they're going to get the premium increase this year is 10%. Inflation is running at 3.4. And it's going to be triple inflation is health care. and you get less coverage, pay more. So the system is fundamentally broken, and Republicans voted for that big, beautiful bill that literally put everybody's back against all. But from health care to everything,

but everything that you believe in. And the biggest other big story in this election is what I call the Downwardly Mobile College Educated. They played by the rules, did everything everybody expected. Borrowed went to college. They got a college degree, and the back is a lifetime invoice,

you owe $35,000, and they never get out of the site. Never get under it. That's right. And they are really angry because they played by the rules. This was what the ref said. Went to college. Mom sacrificed, dad sacrificed. Everybody worked extra hard. And now they're living in the basement. When the house gets sold, the kids in the laundry come with the house and they can't get out of the basement. And there is no possibility of mobility in the future. And the future is more bleak than today. And today is not a great day. And that is what's, I mean, I go all over the country. And people will tell you stories. They haven't given up, but they feel

Every door is getting shut on them, and they're closed in it. And they're living check to check, barely holding on, and one bill sends them right over the side. As you go around talking to people, do you get the sense that people know how much has been taken from them? Oh. See, no, this is a classic. I was in Western Michigan, suburban New Jersey, then out to Reno, just in the last 10 days. when the corruption gets discussed here, it gets discussed kind of like in the common cause, Harvard,

you know, kind of corruption, somebody on the take. Their sense of corruption, which works everywhere, is literally the system is rigged, heads-eye, wind, tails you lose. And they know who's winning, who's helping them win, and how they're getting the shaft on the whole deal. And they are struggling to barely hold on. So their concept of corruption is not the common cause kind of good, you know, pay to play type of thing, although that's a piece of it. Their sense of corruption is that the tax code, the winners already is before you start the game, before you start the opportunity, the system is rigged against them.

No matter how they're on a treadmill and it keeps going harder and harder, and they're getting farther and farther behind. And they're out of breath. You know, it sort of reminds of the issues that the J.D. Vance, who wrote Hillbilly, Elegy, used to talk about. It used to be sort of his brand. Well, coming up, Vanity Fair is out this morning with a new in-depth feature in Vice President J.D. Vance and his time at Yale Law School. Featuring revelations from members of Vance's inner circle at the university, and we'll talk about it now. Joining us now, the author of that new piece, contributing writer at Vance. Vanity Fair, Chris Whipple. Chris, good to have you back on the show.

Good to be with you. Tell us what you found. Tell us what you found about J.D. Well, you know, it's an amazing story. And it really begins with J.D. Vance arriving at Yale in 2010. You know, a hillbilly from Appalachia, a Marine right out of Iraq. He was, by all accounts, really a kind of lost soul at Yale Law School. but then he was befriended by someone who really helped to shape his trajectory. Her name was Amy Chua.

She's better known as the Tiger Mother. After that book, she wrote about tough love parenting. She immediately spotted something in Vance. She thought he was going places. She helped to shape his book Hillbilly Elegie. It began as some musings. and she told him he had the makings of a book. She also befriended the star of the class at Yale,

and that was Usha Chilicori. And according to Amy, you know, they were on a moot court debate team together, and Vance fell head over heels for Usha. But Usha was 50 billion times better at moot court than J.D. Vance was. Anyway, it's a fascinating story, and I take it from there to, of course, to the 2016 campaign with Hillary Clinton and all the way to the present. Yeah, Chris, I want to pick up on that point. This is an extraordinary revelation in the piece about the 2016 campaign.

You quote a friend of J.D. Vance is saying, Vance called me, and he said, I hate Hillary, but I hate Trump more. Trump can't win. He can't win. Hillary's going to lose, but she doesn't have to. and then went on to offer some advice about how she ought to campaign in 2016. What did you find there? Yeah, really extraordinary, considering what Vance has said about the 2016 campaign. And what he said was that he was adamantly opposed to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. He was going to vote for a third-party candidate. Turns out, behind the scenes, he was giving advice to help Hillary win.

And he spoke to this intermediary. he said, look, she's got to get out of Miami hanging around with Beyonce and get to the Midwestern states. He was then put in touch with Jake Sullivan, who was a top aide to Hillary. This is six weeks before the election. It was right after Hillary's unforced error about deplorables. You remember that. And Vance was telling Sullivan, look, she's got to fix this deplorables thing. She's got to focus.

He was doing everything he could to help Hillary win. Wow. So he spoke directly with Jake Sullivan. So the campaign was aware that J.D. was providing advice to Hillary directly. Well, certainly Jake Sullivan was because he was in direct contact with Sullivan. And again, trying to give, this was right after the deplorables incident, Vance had written an op-ed, about it. He was hell bent on getting in touch with Sullivan. This intermediary told him, you know what, Jake's busy. He's trying to win a campaign. And Vance was determined to speak with

him. I mean, this is a guy, Rahm Emanuel, who called Trump Hitler in 16, gave advice to Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016. And then, maybe I was finding this fascinating his life. story, when he moved toward Trump and decided that he was wrong about Donald Trump, that Donald Trump wasn't Hitler, and that Christians shouldn't be ashamed to vote for Donald Trump, which he had said in 16, was after January the 6th, after he tried to overthrow an American election. After cops had the shit beat out of him, he at that point decided, oh, now I'm all in for Donald Trump. He went from calling him to being all in for Donald Trump.

I'm going to go out all in this table. I'll say for myself, I never went soft on Hitler. I kind of had an opinion. I've had it my whole life. So I've never kind of reevaluated and said, you know what, Gerbiltz and Himmler are just misunderstood in history. Okay? When you make that comparison, that's kind of a rock-solid opinion.

Number one. Number two, look, I think it's good to think and evaluate core principles, ideas on policies, et cetera. But if you come to the conclusion that somebody is like Hitler, which, you know, that's his words. His words, not ours. Yeah. And I'm not a fan of Donald Trump and all that. When you make that, you don't use, that's kind of like fundamental. Right. Okay? And, you know, I challenge and think about, you learn and you evaluate, but you don't go, in my view, soft on Hitler. It kind of has this place. Yeah. Once there's a comparison, that's That's locked and loaded for the rest of the thing.

So that may tell you something. As a former ballet dancer, J.D. Vance is the most flexible person I've ever seen. Well, I was going to ask Chris that question. Chris, I'm sure in studying this year, I've been tried to put J.D. on the couch. And we try to figure out what drives him. If a psychiatrist was going through all of this, what drives him? Because it's interesting. He goes from calling Trump Hitler to being for Trump.

He keeps moving. He keeps changing positions. He keeps changing worldviews. You talk to some of his closest supporters in Silicon Valley bring up his name. They kind of roll their eyes going, we don't know which JD we're going to get. So what is at the core of this guy? What did you find in studying? He's flexible.

But what does he believe in? Well, don't forget, Joe, what Susie Wiles famously told me in that Vanity Fair piece back in December. She said, you know, she was talking about his conversion from never trumper to MAGA acolyte. And she said, you know, with Marco Rubio, it was kind of principled, I'm paraphrasing now. But with JD, you know, it was sort of political. I mean, a pretty startling admission. What happened with Vance is that he, you know, he did a head-spinning 180-degree pivot, as Rom points out, from, you know, comparing Trump to Hitler to being all in on MAGA. And it began with his first meeting with Trump in which, by all accounts, J.D. was just charmed by Trump.

Trump said, you know, you said a lot of bad blank about me. And Vance said, yeah, let's talk about it. Well, the two of them hit it off. And beyond that, I mean, all I can tell you is that, you know, there are a couple of schools have thought about Vance. And one is that he is a craven opportunist, political opportunist. The other is that he's a true believer in a kind of post-Trump mega ideology, which is authoritarian, and it borders on Catholic theocracy. Anyway, it's a fascinating journey that he's taken.

The new piece is available online right now, contributing writer at Vanity Fair. Chris Whipple, thank you very much for coming on the show this morning. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Follow me on Substack. All right. All right.

All right. All right. Chris on Substack. I like that. Ron, can we switch to another topic, which is sort of the topic of the day right now, which is AI. And that we have seen in the last week or so these apocalyptic warnings from any AI leaders. We have seen some Republicans, some Democrats say, look, now is the time. We need to do something to slow down, some sort of regulations.

President Trump taking the other side of that. All in on data center still and all in and saying, no, no, no, no, nothing needs to slow down. We need to keep pushing forward. What are your thoughts on this, you know, as someone who's considering next political steps? How will you address it? Well, look, I mean, I think you got to get to the question, where are the American people? And right now, they feel AI were basically at night, no headlights on, wet pavement, 100 miles an hour, around the curves.

And nobody's in control something that for two years, the leaders of us said, well, it's going to wipe out half the jobs. The next thing they say, well, it's also going to wipe out half a civilization. Well, guess what? When you say that to people, they react. Okay, that's number one. Number two, I start with the approach that AI is both, it's going to be a double-edged sword. There's going to be some affirmative things that come out of it and some really bad risk and destruction that's kind of come of it.

And, you know, China that is catching up to us, they have heavy regulation. So the idea that regulation is bad, not only does the industry leaders want it, and we should establish it. So a couple things. One, there should be a pull trigger that you can stop it. Two, a lot of people talk about the national transportation, our NTRV action. There should be a task force immediately set up of industry, bipartisan, many of the layers of government that regulate it in real time, not the way SEC does it.

They put a rule out two years, evaluated ten years later. I'm talking about in the time in which the industry is changing. Third, it should be a charge on all the tokens that goes into an education fund for all Americans to keep them economically competitive and viable. And fourth, there should be on the data centers, there should be a pause in which we do this for 12 months. Get permitting reform done, start training a million electricians and pipe fitters and folks that we're going to need throughout the economy,

not just for data centers. And there should be a mandatory community benefits as it, you want to do a data center, you're going to have to do this on the infrastructure for the schools, et cetera. We're not giving you money. you're giving back to the community that would host these data centers. That to be finds a way to stay competitive, see the future, but also mitigate and make sure you have a down risk. Now, you guys were talking earlier, I would just say we were talking about this on the side.

You don't have to be a member to use AI. Members of Congress didn't use nuclear weapons, but they regulated them. Okay, you don't have to be, like I use Claude. You don't have to have access to it or use it on a daily basis. to know that there's a risk to this. And then therefore there should be guardrails protections that benefits society and the people. Now, the one thing that all the industry leaders are wrong,

in my view, they point to technology, electricity, railroad, internet, computers, that it destroys jobs but creates other industries and other jobs. Not wrong analogy except for one thing. None of those technologies self-improved on their own, own without human intervention. And those technologies required enhancements by human intervention. This is the only technology as we saw with Hugging Face and other things, where it will go on its own without human agency or intervention and do things that were never expected, knowing full

well that wasn't the direction. So in that sense, this is not electricity, the railroad, or the computer. This is something totally different and requires everybody to work together and find a solution that works for everybody. And you're not going to get it right. It's not going to be perfect. Look, international atomic and nonproliferation, you have breakouts like Iran, you have breakouts like North Korea. That doesn't, India, Pakistan, doesn't work perfectly, but it works over the arch of time. It works to the benefit of everybody. And that has to be. And those are my kind of, what are the things I want to see? And I think you could find consensus across the political perspective.

On the other hand, you have a president of the United States who literally is falling asleep at the process and doesn't want to do this. And you have in a meeting 24th of this month, eight days, he's sitting down with Xi. 95% of all AI is two countries. This is the time to do it before there's a breakout. Now China has a technology. They're breaking into everybody's cybersecurity. There is a great story about it that's out today.

They have it using our models, Claude, et cetera, and they're going into Taiwan, Philippines, everybody's governmental documents. Either regulate it, guardrails, protections, benefits for everybody, or games off because the American people will basically stop the machine. What's the chances that actually something will be done? Well, it's going to happen after this election. Still ahead on morning, Joe.

We'll talk about this election. Our next guest is trying to answer life's big questions. like how to find purpose and what makes us human. The Atlantic's David Brooks joins us next. For more on that, you're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, two 17-year-old American teenagers say they were detained by ice agents in Alamo, Texas,

while on their way to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps. Wow. Is this the worst of the worst? TikTok. Future Marines? agents appear to be trying to keep one of the teens out of the car as he struggles to get back inside. He's eventually pulled from the vehicle and taken to the ground. The driver exits the car, appearing to have been pepper sprayed.

Once the teen is down, one agent appears to punch him in the face. The teens say they'd been recording an ICE operation when agents confronted them. They say they told the agents they were U.S. citizens. Both were held for more than eight hours before being released. Wait, I's has not publicly responded to the allegations. They punched two American kids. This is just a tiny slice of what happened every day. Going to enlist in the United States Marines.

And they punched them in the face because they were recording them from the distance. This is happening on the street. of America. Mike Mornicle, young men, young men who are going to enlist in the United States Marines are stopped and beaten

savagely on the streets of America. Yeah, I would estimate that a huge percentage of ICE employees, the people out there stopping cars like this and dragging kids like this out of their cars are totally ill-equipped, unprepared, untrained for the job that they're doing. They're afraid of.

people. We saw that in Minneapolis. You see that in other major cities. In Chicago, you see it, the young woman from Tuss taken off the street. And where's the accountability? And what do we know anything about the investigations into the killing of Alex Prattie and Renee Good? All we know, anything happened? That was a homicide. That should have reverted almost immediately to the Minneapolis Police Department. That's where homicides go. They took it from the Minneapolis Police Department, and you don't know what's happening. Rom, you know the thing is, there's so many people that act with complete impunity.

They think, and you've seen it in Washington, I've seen it in Washington. People think because one president's in the Oval Office right now, they will be there forever, and they are immune forever. They are not immune forever. Yeah. And these people that are going around beating up Americans, beating up future Marines,

killing fathers, killing beloved people in Texas, killing beloved people in Maine, is shooting Alex Preti it looked like execution style there will be justice justice will be done

there's no doubt about it I mean also take the Chicago case the U.S. Attorney had a judge and Monashville the U.S. Attorney's Office had to drop the entire case because it was not just the ICE agents the U.S. Attorney's Office

is totally without supervision and adult supervision and professionalism in Minneapolis case on the ice the officer had a prior record No police department. You take Boston? You're not back on the street. You're on a desk job until there's retraining, emotional, and psychological evaluation of you. These people are on the street with records of prior experiences with no oversight. So as you're right, A, it will come. B, there's going to be a real comeuppance to the department. And it's also not going to be the same department on another administration. This is totally more than just out of control. This is a disaster for America when it's not just ICE. It is an agent of the U.S. government attacking two young men who are out going to enlist, unlike corporal bone spurs in the top of the Oval Office there, who are going to actually execute America's national security interests.

Yeah, and you know, I've been warning, I've been warning these ICE agents, I will warn you again, Donald Trump's not going to be in the White House forever. He can't pardon you for the crimes that you're committing every day. Follow the law, follow the Constitution. Justice will be done. So you better get it right. You better get it right because a day of accounting, a day of justice under the law, under the Constitution will come. Be careful out there. Mika, we heard about what happened in Minneapolis.

What about the ICE agent up in Maine? Exactly. And his priors. Exactly. There are so many different questions here about not just the killings that have been happening at the hands of ICE agents. But the list goes on of where norms and our laws are being pushed to the limit or broken. Children defending themselves in court having to show up to court hearings and 19 months old.

Are you kidding me? People being sent to countries that they didn't even come from, being sent to Liberia, just dropped around the world where they've cut deals with these countries, these ice flights, these detention centers, where the conditions are abusive. People are sick and not getting the medical care they need, whether you're undocumented or documented. And you know, we'll say it every day. Whether you're undocumented or documented. No, we don't call them illegal aliens, but the White House likes to do that and likes to call them the worst of the worst. They're human beings on American soil. And they're being denied due process and abused.

And by the way, as Scalia said, let me keep reminding you, as Scalia said, if they're on American soil, they are protected by the United States Constitution. I know you don't really know a whole lot about the Constitution, but you should read into it sometime. Look what Scalia said about it. Our next guest has spent decades writing about politics, culture, and social issues. Now he's taking on the new project with the launch of a weekly video podcast engaging with thinkers, writers, and artists to tackle the fundamental questions of human life. With us now, staff writer at the Atlantic, David Brooks. His new video podcast is titled The Permanent Questions. David, you've been on a personal journey throughout your life and a spiritual journey throughout your life.

Tell us how much of that we're going to see in this, how much that has guided you to where you are right now, and how much will it influence your programming moving forward? You'll see all of it. I'm totally spilling my guts on this show. Good. You know, let's consider the two latest issues you guys just talked about up there. The first is ICE and the way human beings are being treated. Where is decency?

How do we get to a country where 75 million Americans took a look at Donald Trump? I thought, fine guy. Like, how did that happen? And then earlier, Ron was talking about AI. What do we know about AI? It's not only the effect it has on the outer world, it's the effect that has on us inside, which is first, it sucks you in, you wanted to do your thinking for you, and then it hollows you out.

It destroys your critical thinking skills. The second thing AI does, as you become more, admiring of your little bot there, of Claude, you become less admiring of human beings, and people become more dehumanizing. And so what's happening in America is not only the stuff of politics, which I care about, which we all cover, but it's the stuff deep down inside on the nature of your soul.

So I want to have conversations going deeper about what does a good person look like? Do people have souls? What's our place in the universe? And so I just want to get deeper into the stuff that I think really matter, in order, you know, to make us slightly better people. You know, I don't see Rahm Emanuel just as president of the United States. I see him as Pope. And I'm going to, with this podcast, I'm going to elevate Ram's soul so much.

He's going to be glowing with holiness. Amen. Elevate your soul. The good news is I have a soul. I didn't know that this morning. There it is. Right before the Jewish holidays, we discovered something. They're going to go there.

Hey, Alex, maybe we can get a breaking news banner. Rahm Emanuel, has sold, Willie. So, David, as you say, there are so many podcasts and conversation that are about the churn of daily politics and what Trump did today and all that debate. But yours is more existential, it seems, more philosophical. So take us inside, if you can, the first episode, what kind of questions you'll be asking? Yeah, I mean, the first episode is out. It's with a philosopher from Notre Dame named Megan Sullivan. And she teaches a course called God and the Good Life.

And she teaches that course to Notre Dame students, not only to give them better career prospects, but to change their souls. And for example, one of the things she does in that course is she asks all her students to write what she calls an apology, which is, this is who I am. This is my statement of what I believe in, what I care about. And so all students have to do this. And two of the students were international students, and they wrote this apology, five single-spaced pages. And they happened to write about how much they loved, one woman about how much she loved her brother, how much she loved her family. And those two students were killed in a drunk driving accident as they were walking across the street.

And so the families came in to South Bend for the memorial service. And Megan had a chance to offer this apology to give them the families, these documents, which showed what was inside their children's hearts at the moment when they were killed. and that's getting deeper into what people care about, what people represent, and what people value. And getting people have the chance to step back and take that opportunity to make those apologies to make, this is who I am, this is what I believe in. That's just something a lot of us don't do because we're so damn busy.

And so a lot of what we're trying to do on the podcast is say, step back, what is the core, what's your spiritual core? What do you believe in? What don't you believe in? the next conversation with an astrophysicist, what's our place in the universe? And so this is what we're trying to do. Rob. David, I mean, as I travel around the country and meet people in backyards, etc.

and living rooms, I think there's kind of like two questions that kind of rub people. One is, what keeps them up at night? What makes them anxious? And the other question is, what gets them out of bed in the morning? and makes them kind of energized. And in many ways, I mean, so I'd be interested in how the show's going to explore that because I tell you, when you get past the news or how you're going to do this on housing or whatever, people, there's kind of a thing, the two questions that kind of, when you distill it,

what keeps you up and what gets you up. And by the way, before you answer that, we do have a screenshot for you, Rom, that you can frame in your house, breaking news. You couldn't do the other screenshot, but there. Rob Manuel, right, so. All right. Thank you for that. You can take that down now. Yeah, so, David, what keeps you up and what gets you up in the morning? What keeps me up is the state of America's spiritual humanistic core. We're losing the things that matter most to us. So the rising suicide, the rising loneliness, the rising depression, a third of teenage girls thinking about committing suicide. There's just some sort of relational crisis. And then what keeps me up, what gets me up in the morning is the things I love. And we don't talk about, like, what do you love?

Like, I love America. I love God. I love my wife. I love my kids. I love Chicago for ROM. I love New York City. I love Bruce Springste's music. I love playing basketball in extremely low level. And these are the things I love. And somehow the word love is like gooey and woo-woo. But it is what we really organize our lives around. And so it's helpful to take back and think, what do I love and how do I love it? Do I love it well with a generous form of love? I just want to serve this thing. I just think it's so delightful. Or do I love with a greedy? What am I trying to get out of this thing? And so what you love is important because you become what you love. And then how you love it is also important because you can hollow yourself out of the side with a greedy form of love.

You know, David, just talking about where we are spiritually as a nation, 9-11, the 25th anniversary, reminded me so much about what we learned that day about ourselves about America. And people like to think that they go, oh, those were the good old, no, no, no, no, I was in Congress. Like, we had government shutdowns. We had impeachments. We had the 2000 election. We had just really ugly political divides.

That day we all came together. And I know that this is a, this may be a minority position, but I travel all over America. It doesn't matter whether I'm in a Trump community or a manual community or, you know, Democratic community. I just, I have no doubt. I have no doubt still in the goodness of Americans. If, excuse my French, but if shit went down, Americans would come rushing, helping another. If somebody is heard on the street, they would do in any situation what Alex Pready did. If a woman's knocked down or a man's knocked down, they would run over and pick him up.

That's been what I've observed. But you have the shrillness and this sort of political divide that's just one part of the story. And I think that sometimes we overlook the rest of America and the goodness that's still out there. Yeah, our problems are cultural. It's in our values. It's in our ideas. It's the way we see each other. and the best, the good news is

the cultural, if you're going to have a problem, having a cultural problem, because you can change your culture really fast because culture is about attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, and those can change really fast. When I was a kid, God help me, I was a New York Jets fan.

And in Super Bowl three, there were two quarterbacks on the field at the end of the Super Bowl. One was Johnny Unitas. If you remember him, he was like a 1950s guy. He was crew cut, boring, high top sneakers. That was the 1950s.

50s. On my side of the field was a guy named Joe Namath, Broadway Joe Namath, long hair, swinger, total 60s guy. Joe Namath wrote a memoir called, I can't wait until tomorrow because I get better looking every day. And so what you saw from America in 1955 to America in 1970 was a dramatic change of culture and how we viewed individuals, how we viewed our purposes, what we wanted to do. And that kind of cultural pivot, I think will be nothing compared to what we're going to. we're going to see over the next five years because Americans are exhausted. They're tired of what we've been through since 2016. And so you have an extremely dark period, American carnage. It makes sense to me that it would be followed by a light period

where people are looking for hope. And when I travel a country as you do, what everybody is looking for is how does this get better? What's the cultural pivot that gets us better? And the good news in American history is this has happened, Again and again and again in the 1770s, the 1830s, the 1890s, the 1960s, we've had a cultural pivot and we've solved our problems, which are in our heads and in our hearts. And we've made another step forward. Episodes of the new video podcast, the Permanent Questions, will be released each Sunday, host and staff writer at the Atlantic, David Brooks.

Thank you, Rahm. I was going to say, when I was done being mayor, the next day I did a bike ride, nearly a thousand miles around Lake. Michigan. And my joke, but it was true, is that the worst the cell phone service was, the nicer people were. There was a direct correlation. And look, a guy comes up to me, I'm on the upper part of Michigan, sees me, which is what WGN would do to this month when you're mayor. And he has an NRA hat. And I'm like, oh my, and he starts walking over, my stomach tightens up. Pulls up a chair. We're having it. And he says, can I have a bear with you? Yeah. Now, we have a discussion about my passage of the,

the assault weapon ban, his opposition. Talk for 45 minutes. Now, he didn't convince me of the worthiness of A.R. 15s, and I didn't convince him of the worthiness of banning them. But it was a discussion, a whole evening. Respectful. And it also, we disagreed. Of course.

Yeah. He got up. He says, I'll take care of the bear. I said, I'll pay for the tip. Not a problem. But that happens, and I think the bigger thing is people are yearning, not bigger thing, but part of this, they're yearning for, again, the bonds to tie us together. They know they do, and the closer you get to the community, those bonds exist, and the farther away you get from it, the more this gets tribal.

Exactly. And the more it gets tribal. And people want that sense of comity and sense of community. And they have, and I agree with David, there's going to be a flip switch here because people are yearing for it. We're going to see David Brooks at the Atlantic Festival taking place this week in New York City, where Jonathan Lamere will also be running a panel discussion to me. Tomorrow. That's good, Jonathan. Very exciting. What, the last Yankees World Series? Yeah, I mean, that's ancient history. We brought a panel of historians into talking about it. Oh, that's going to be true. Let's make sure we show some of that. Former.

Going to win this year, though. U.S. Ambassador. Heavy favorite. Rahm Emanuel. Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. Good to have you. Thank you, Ron. Thank you, God. Still ahead on morning, Joe. Look at how AI is impacting the film industry. Can a movie fully generated by AI compete against traditional blockbusters. Plus, we'll discuss the decision from the New York State to stop its end-of-year exams for students, why critics are pushing back. We'll be right back. We wait. For what? For your father? Going to bring them back. And then, I don't need you to

tell me who I am. My name is nobody. All right, that's a look at the new. fully AI-generated film Odysseus, the fall, offering a new and unique interpretation of Homer's The Odyssey. It's also the first completely AI-generated film produced at the level of a big-budget Hollywood movie. Let's bring in the man behind the film creator, writer, and director, Ash Kusha. Also with us, CNBC founder, Tom Rogers. He's a senior advisor for Berson, MS Now's parent company, and is an executive producer on the film, which is the second from the new AI company, Fountain Zero, for which Ash is co-founder,

and Tom is executive chairman. Interesting. The focus here off air before we came back on here was the budget of this film. It is an incredible achievement that Ash has made here. This is one person by himself, with his laptop, working at night part-time for four months, and $25,000 is what it cost him to make a two-hour and 30-minute movie that is really equivalent to what a big-budget Hollywood production would be.

It's just an extraordinary achievement. Ash, walk us through it. How in the world did you do this at night, at home, on your computer for $25,000? Yeah, so thanks for having me, first of all. And I have a background of using a lot of AI tools. So I would say 10, 12 years of experience is the Kickstarter of this, as well as knowing the Odyssey and having read a few translations and a comic book that I like, actually. And over the years, I had developed my own understanding. So that really is the seed of making a project like this.

and basically using a bunch of different models as the core tools, video models, image models. Kling was the video model that was used to generate the film. But I took a stab at it almost like painting a picture or writing a book as pieces by pieces and pieces that didn't require physical production. And I think that's how it was possible to make this. Ash, first of all, good morning. Was this released as sort of a not a rebuttal, but just, a side-by-side comparison of Christopher Nolan's work, The Odyssey, which was the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time, $1.6 billion.

And is the hope that eventually, maybe not today or tomorrow, that audiences won't care about the distinction of having Matt Damon and Christopher Nolan and real people creating a work of art versus just computer-generated art, that people just don't care that much about the story behind how it was made? Yeah, so first and foremost, this is a story for me, right? I'm a storyteller. I want to tell a story. So that really is at sort of the top of the list of what is important about this.

But yes, I think it is important for people to look at both films and the methods of generation and see if they want to tell a story, now the barrier is almost zero. And I think we've achieved the technical level where you would watch a film that is fully AI generated and you feel there's something that it wants to tell you. story is being told through the film. So I think Christopher Nolan's film is still going to be a lot better. I think he's an incredible filmmaker, but this is the beginning of a new generation of filmmakers. And these tools going into the hands of millions of people to tell their stories and not feel like they have to sell 1.6 billion in tickets to be able to tell their story through

the medium of film. So, Tom, there, of course will be pushed back. these films, not just because there's a sense of like a, perhaps lack of humanity, because it's not actors, it's not a direct, you know, on stage we're seeing there on screen, but also the economic impact. That it's not just, I mean, it's a remarkable achievement what Ash could do with his laptop, but of Hollywood productions, hundreds upon hundreds of people, you know, with jobs, jobs that theoretically could be eliminated if the industry goes in this direction. Well, you're right, Jonathan. And film isn't going to be the only place where we're going to have major job disruption from AI. But there's another important economic story here, which is it is really hard for

independent producers today to get the kind of money to make their films. A small independent film could cost $10 to $20 million. To give these tools in the hands of writer-director teams, two people teams where human creativity is still at the very heart of what they're doing. We're not taking away the creative process at all. but giving them the tools so there are no financial constraints anymore. Only imagination is your constraint. And with that, we think we can have a fountain, so to speak, spouting a major new renaissance in independent filmmaking.

And some of the best movies ever made came from independent filmmakers. And now we're removing the financial constraints and allowing people to create anything they want, as long as the essence of their human creativity, is still there. Well, it's like I said, he's a storyteller. If you're a storyteller and you want to get a movie made, good luck. I mean, it's nonstop.

You know, and maybe, maybe if you're lucky, three, four, five years from now, you know, you'll actually see the product. So for storytellers, this is an exciting innovation. I promise if you watch this film, you will no longer think just because it's AI, it's slop. Yeah. People may not enjoy this as much as, Nolan's epic film, but watching the best in human production and then watching the best today

of AI production, you really get a sense of how far AI has come in terms of being a creative tool to allow independent producers to produce. Absolutely. Fascination. Some of the scenes are just extraordinary. Greatly appreciate you being here. The new, good to have you, sir. So good.

The new AI generated film Odysseus DeFal is available to watch now at Fountain Zero. dot com executive producer tom rogers and creator writer and director ash cusha thank you both very much for coming on the show this morning and up next we're going to dig into new analysis on the massive amount of stock trades president trump has made since returning to office morning joe we'll be right back you never count your button when you're sitting at the table there'll be time enough to come