Piers Morgan Uncensored - “Gonna Be CHAOS!” Xi Jinping Meets Trump + Netanyahu vs Mamdani | With Jeffrey Sachs
Episode Date: September 23, 2026New York City is awash with VIP visitors this week as world leaders gather for the UN General Assembly - but two men in particular are commanding global attention. One is skipping the UN to receive a ...red-carpet welcome from President Donald Trump, while the other faces threats of arrest the moment he lands. China’s Xi Jinping receives full state visit honors ahead of high-stakes talks with Trump on everything from the AI war to the future of Taiwan. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lands under fire as NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani calls for his arrest under an ICC war crimes warrant. Netanyahu has rerouted to New Jersey - and in an explosive pre-speech video, he’s firing back. Piers Morgan speaks to Jeffrey Sachs before speaking to his panel; foreign policy expert and former US deputy assistant secretary of state Joel Rubin, geopolitical analyst and self-styled ‘China insider’ Cyrus Jansen, poltiical analyst Gordon Chang and US-Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani. (00:00:00) Introduction (00:02:00) Jeffrey Sachs (00:07:45) The rise of China and economic imperialism (00:12:49) Mamdani’s calls for Netanyahu’s arrest (00:18:35) Donald Trump at the UNGA threatening to wipe out Iran (00:23:06) Netanyahu and Trump facing crucial elections (00:24:45) A shift in power from America to China (00:29:38) Gordon Chang addresses Trump criticism (00:31:13) What will happen in the U.S. midterm elections? (00:33:15) What will happen when AI begins to think for itself? (00:36:46) Netanyahu to speak in New York against backdrop of Haaretz report Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Discussion (0)
But I have a big decision to make.
Will a deal be made with Iran?
Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic?
Never before at the podium of the General Assembly has certainly not a U.S. President or anyone else said we're going to annihilate another country.
Shame on you, Mr. Mundani.
I'm coming to the U.N. and I'm going to tell the truth about you.
Every single head of state should walk out when Netanyahu speaks.
This is actually the second time in almost three months.
The U.S. President Donald Trump has called out Forden Trump publicly to bash him.
Hilarious.
President Trump doesn't agree with me, but the world is falling apart.
New York City is awash with VIP visitors this week as world leaders line up at the UN General Assembly.
But two men in particular are commanding global attention.
One of them is skipping the UN to accept a red carpet welcome from President Trump.
And the other has been threatened with the rest of he dares land.
China's Xi Jinping is receiving the honour of a full state visit
as he heads into critical talks for Trump
on everything from the AI war to the future of Taiwan.
The president was said to be dazzled by the grandeur
of his own visit to China, even after his counterpart,
called the US an empire in decline.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
will not be expecting much grandeur in New York.
The mayor Zeram Mandani has called for him to be arrested
under a war crimes warrant from the Hague.
Netanyahu reportedly changed his travel plans
to land in New Jersey,
save from the mayor's clutches.
In an explosive video to trail his speech tomorrow,
he is threatened to take Mamdani down.
Shame on you, Mr. Mamdani.
Shame on you for supporting the Hamas terrorist monsters
who butchered our people.
Shame on you for inciting riots against New York Jews.
I'm coming to the UN.
I'm going to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers.
And I'm going to tell the truth about you.
Well, joining us from the sidelines of the UNGA in New York
is Professor Jeffrey Sachs,
international relations expert and senior UN official.
Jeffrey, great to have you back on uncensoreded.
All eyes are turning, of course, to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
coming into town.
You know, Mayor Mamdani says he should be arrested for war crimes.
He hasn't been arrested.
What is the mood in New York about this?
What are your thoughts on Netanyahu's arrival?
Well, the mood right now is still shock at Trump's remarks yesterday.
Never before at the podium of the General Assembly has certainly not a U.S. President or anyone else said we're going to annihilate another country, or it's a choice that I'm going to make. I'm going to make you great or I'm going to annihilate you. Then the Iranian president spoke today saying, well, I had to put away my speech after I heard Trump's threats. And just to say we will never surrender and we will
be as strong as we need to be to protect ourselves. So this was quite an amazing day from the
standards of diplomacy, maybe not from the standards of Trump's true social post, but standing at the
podium of the UN General Assembly in a room of global leaders to say, I have a hard choice to make.
Should I destroy the civilization and send them to hell, which is what he said, or should I
make them a great country. It was a most bizarre moment. I think Netanyahu will add another bizarre moment.
This is the most fraught and divided world. Israel and the United States and a handful of other countries
stand on one side and all the rest of the world stands on the other side. There was actually an
extraordinary vote because the U.N. denied visas to President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority
and to the Palestinian delegation. And there was a vote in the General Assembly on this.
The vote was 157 saying, give the visas to three. That was the U.S., Israel, and Paraguay,
that said no. So this is an incredibly divided world.
right now. The United States is claiming to itself the power of life and death over other civilizations.
Israel is making its extraordinary claims. Almost all of the world is against what Israel is doing.
And incidentally, so is the American public strongly against Jews and non-Jews alike.
So we are in a very divided moment, peers, as you know.
And just to pour fuel onto the fire,
you've got the arrival of the President Xi, of course,
with the Chinese delegation coming in as well.
You've said Western dominance is over.
It's time to stop your fantasies of containing China
because history has passed that by.
And you say that China's rise is a natural restoration
of the status it held for 2,000 years,
and they've already overtaken the US economically
and technologically. Now, critics of you, Jeffrey, they'll say you're always
bigging up China and you're always talking down America. Why? I just want America to play in the
sandbox with the other countries sharing the toys and not trying to dominate the sandbox.
You know, we went through a period where the U.S. thought after the end of the social
Soviet Union, that history had ended with the U.S. on top. It was given a name, primacy.
And the idea in the 1990s was that U.S. foreign policy is entirely geared towards protecting
America's primacy. That was what Zvignaup Przinski called the strategic imperative.
I have nothing against my country. I live in it. I thrive in it. I just. I just
I just want it not to destroy other civilizations, provoke wars, support genocides, overthrow governments, murder foreign leaders.
I want it to behave like a normal country, not like one that thinks it dominates the world.
If it did that, peers, we'd have lower gas prices.
We would be in a happier mood.
We would be enjoying a lot of the advances of technology.
But Trump's mentality, unfortunately, he said it yesterday again after threatening the annihilation of Iran.
He said, whoever wins AI wins.
What does winning mean, actually?
And how do you say that when this is something for everybody?
Because it's basically some scientific and technological advances and discoveries that have been.
made that potentially could be very good or could destroy humanity as the UN Security Council
is considering today. But it's not a game of winning. And that's what I object to, the mentality
of it. I believe in thriving in peace, in cooperation, and watching your show and enjoying ourselves,
not in winning. Because if we aim at winning, we're going to blow up things.
But when you say, as you have, China's rise is not bad or
dangerous. I can think of a few Uyghur Muslims that would disagree with that statement. But also,
you know, I was with some pretty powerful people at a dinner party this week talking about the rise of
China, the kind of economic imperialism they've waged the, you know, significant increase in their
military spending and so on. And, you know, the general feeling is China's tentacles are pretty
well involved everywhere, whether it's Ukraine, whether it's Iran, the Strait of all moves,
where they're there, but they're kind of taking a step back,
but they're very influential in their own way.
And of course they're very powerful.
Of course they're getting ever richer.
Of course, they're making huge advancements.
Can you be entirely sure that their intentions
are not going to ultimately be bad or dangerous?
One of my wife's and my favorite cartoons from the New Yorker
in the last quarter century was of the little boy
who runs up to his mother, and he's crying,
Mommy, Mommy, Johnny, hit me back.
And this is how I feel about things that are said about China.
Some of the things you said, they're increasing their military spending.
Yes, because it's a tiny, not tiny anymore, but it's a fraction of the United States,
which has declared China to be an enemy.
China is only trying to regain its footing.
The United States has 750 military bases around the world in 80 countries, 750.
China has one in Djibouti, one.
It's argued, and probably true, maybe another in Cambodia.
So maybe two.
The United States 750.
The United States has been in nonstop war basically since I was born.
And China has not been in a war since a five-week war, which was kind of a skirmish,
but a war, let's call it, with Vietnam in 1979.
So it's been 47 years.
So I just want us to keep some balance in this, which is that,
We have had a kind of hegemonic idea.
It's been very explicit.
It's not something hidden.
It's the doctrine of the United States.
It's called primacy.
It's called full-spectrum dominance.
It's called liberal hegemony, whatever term you want.
Actually, Boris Johnson said last year, we fight.
We must win in Ukraine to preserve Western hegemony.
Well, that's an idea.
It's not an idea I share because I believe in a multipolar world.
I believe there's plenty to go around.
We're not fighting for survival against other countries.
And we shouldn't villainize other countries.
We should understand they want their security.
We want our security.
So let's deal with it that way rather than saying you're evil, we're good.
everything you do in response to what we do, that's evil.
Because we can do it, we're great.
But if you do it in response, that proves how aggressive you are.
You know, we told China incredibly, if you think about it, Piers, in the 1950s,
John Foster Dulles, our foreign minister, our secretary of state, of course, said,
And we have a doctrine of what he called the first island chain, which is the chain of islands from Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and into the Indian Ocean, that our strategy is to prevent China's access to the Pacific Ocean, to the Blue Ocean.
Can you believe we say China doesn't have access to the Pacific Ocean?
our border is in West Asia, and we will control that island chain.
Well, you know, China sees this and says, we don't accept that kind of subordination to the United States.
And that's why we have all these tensions, because if we respected other countries,
red lines and their boundaries and not interfering in their affairs and not overthrowing other
governments and not launching wars of whim like the United States and Israel did on February 28th
against Iran, the world would be a lot quieter and a lot safer and we'd be able to get on
with our lives.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs, always great to have you on our sense.
Wonderful to be with you.
Thanks, Pearson.
Well, I'm joined now by my panel, Joel Rubin.
He's a foreign policy expert and former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State,
Cyrus Janssen, who's the geopolitical analyst and self-styled China insider.
Gordon Chang, the author and political analyst,
Nadine Kiswani, who's a Palestinian-American activist,
a co-founder of Within Our Lifetime.
So welcome back, I think, to all of you, actually.
I think you've all been on before.
Nadine, let me start with you,
because Mayor Mamdani's been giving it the big one
about arresting Netanyahu and Frog marching him off to a jail cell.
But actually, when push comes to shove,
Netanyahu will be walking around New York,
it appears, with impunity and immunity.
from said arrest. So, you know, words are a bit meaningless if they're not followed up with actions, are they?
I mean, I think it's absolutely disgusting as a New Yorker that Netanyahu not just comes to the United States,
but to New York City and to the United Nations when he should be at the Hague.
Mamdani did campaign on arresting Netanyahu, and he won his mayoral election off of that campaign, off of that promise.
Unfortunately, he punted it off to the federal government. I believe he met with Donald Trump yesterday,
And I hope that during that meeting, he reasserted the fact that he believes that Netanyahu needs to be arrested,
that there's a warrant for him at the ICC.
And yes, I'm disappointed in every single political leader that has not taken action.
Mamdani should not just be calling for Netanyahu's arrest.
He should be protesting for it.
He shouldn't just say that it's up to the federal government.
But, you know, it is disappointing on every single political leader from the governor of New York, Kathy Hokel,
to the president of the United States, Donald Trump,
that aren't honoring this ICC warrant.
Every single head of state should walk out when Netanyahu speaks.
Every single New Yorker should be camped out outside of the United Nations tonight,
and all throughout tomorrow morning, blocking him from coming into the building,
blocking him from being able, his motorcade, being able to drive on the streets of New York City.
This is a man who's responsible for the murder of over 21,000 Palestinian children,
probably thousands more that are not counted.
So yes, I'm disappointed in Mamdani and Donald Trump
and every single political leader that isn't taken care of the rest of the panel.
Do you feel the same way about the president of Iran who's just been there as well?
Well, I don't believe that the president of Iran is getting any sort of similar treatment.
The United States is literally bombing Iran right now.
Should he be arrested for his war crimes, as many people see?
exactly the same argument.
This is a false equivalency.
Is it?
This is a false equivalency.
The United States is literally killing Iranian leaders.
I don't believe the United States is bombing any Israeli political leader,
shooting or assassinating any Israeli political leader.
They're literally getting U.S. weapons being sent to them.
Okay.
Let me bring in Joel Rubin.
Joel, I mean, you know, many will listen to that and say,
well, why is it one rule for Netanyahu and another for the president of Iran?
Yeah, well, Pierce, first and foremost,
The United States is not a member of the ICC, so we have no standing to arrest Netanyahu anyways.
And let's be clear, the leader of Iran commandeered the massacre of tens of thousands of Iranian civilians in the streets in cold blood in January and February.
And we didn't hear boo from the folks like Nairdine who are attacking Prime Minister Netanyahu incessantly.
War crimes apparently are given a pass when it's Iran, when it's China, when it's Assad who's sitting in Moscow, you know, enjoying his life.
That's all fine. But Prime Minister Netanyahu, who waged a war, a very ugly war, and one where there should be accountability, and there will be in an election next month in Israel. That's too far. Now, I think what she's engaging in, quite frankly, is far, far, far beyond anything rational in our discourse. It's clearly anti-Semitic. It's clearly targeting Israel only. She's been calling this a genocide since 1948 since Israel. Was it not a war crime? Was it even exist? Was it not a
a war crime when the U.S. bombed a school full of little girls,
why aren't you calling for the U.S. leaders for Donald Trump to be take, to be the help for war crimes?
If Mayor Mondani's new best friend, Donald Trump, has committed a war crime, he should say so.
I don't know why you're not out there protesting that right now.
And frankly, the protest that's out there that's going to go out tomorrow night.
The process that's going to go out tomorrow of war criminal is the rise in anti-Semitism
and that you have helped to foster inside of New York, basically petrifying.
American citizens who are American Jews. Saying that kids shouldn't be killed isn't anti-Semitism.
That is not what you're doing. You've been harassing the American Jews for decades.
I haven't harassed. I'm actually shooing people for harassing me. I'm the target of a firebombing
incident. I haven't harassed anybody. People like me who have spent a career fighting for
Middle East peace, hear people like you, and we don't hear peace. You're not calling for peace.
You're not calling for a two-state solution. You're not calling for negotiations. You're not
demanding that the United States support the board of the right.
That was created, are you?
Are you, are you caused me the target of a firebombing plot?
Do you support the Board of Peace?
Do you support the fact that a Jewish activist tried to fire bomb my home for being
of Palestinian activists?
Did you can do that?
Okay, well, I haven't done that to anybody.
I'm the target of people.
Unlike you who's calling for solutions that are completely going to lead us to more war
in the region, not less.
Okay.
I want there to be peace in the Middle East.
You're calling for a endless war.
Let me bring in our own.
other two panelists. Cyrus, welcome to Unsense.
Thank you.
You know, this clip of Trump at the UNGA,
basically threatening to wipe out all of Iran again,
you know, I don't like it.
I don't think this kind of genocidal language helps anything.
If he did do what he said he's going to do multiple times
the last seven months of taking out all of Iran and so on,
it would be obviously genocide and a war crime.
So I don't see why it helps.
But why do you think he's still talking?
of this kind of apocalyptic language.
Let's take a look at it first.
But I have a big decision to make.
Will a deal be made with Iran
that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country
than it ever was before?
Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world.
Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic
and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill
and destroy people and countries again.
Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?
But I believe we'll make a deal right after the election.
They martyred, assassinated our scientists, our men, women, and children.
Innocent children whom in truth had committed no crimes, no sins.
Those who are terrorists and train and protect terrorists
describe us as such.
We have only defended ourselves.
We are not terrorists.
Our innocent people
have been the targets
of cowardly attacks and aggressions
imposed upon our country.
And we defended ourselves
With utmost strength, America and Israel attacked us,
equipped with the latest technology and weapon systems.
So sorry, if you had the Iranian president,
they're changing his speech to react pretty angrily,
obviously to what he'd heard from President Trump.
But what does it say about where we are with this Iran war seven months in,
that Trump is once again using this apocalyptic language?
Well, I think the simple reality appears is that Donald Trump is very frustrated
the fact that the United States cannot win this war in Iran. You know, how many times have we heard
Donald Trump say that he's going to annihilate Iran? And then what ends up happening is a manipulation
in the stock market. I mean, we've seen Donald Trump enrich himself and rich his family members
play the markets, you know, time and time again, you know, saying that, oh, you know, by the way,
I've now reached a deal. So now we don't have to, you know, we can call this off. The stock
market booms, but now we're going to bomb them again. You know, look at the strategic timing of this.
A lot of times this happens right before the market opens or right before it closes.
The reality is, is how many times has Donald Trump tacoed out of so many different things?
You know, I don't think there's any threat from Donald Trump annihilating because he knows that he's not going to do it.
He's not going to use a nuclear option.
He's not going to annihilate Iran.
And the simple thing is, is we're now seven months into this war.
The Strait of Hormuz is still under Iranian control.
The United States has hit them with a tremendous amount of power.
But what has Iran been able to do?
They've been able to survive.
They're still having control over the Strait of Hormuz.
The diesel crisis is an absolute out of control here in the United States.
Our U.S. farmers are at a point of strategic weakness right now.
Costs of living is going up for every single day here in the United States for average Americans.
This has been an absolute disaster for Donald Trump, who was lied to by Netanyahu,
who basically said, this is the time to attack Iran.
Look at your success in Venezuela.
You can, you know, this is going to take a couple of weeks.
We can wipe Iran off.
But here we are, seven months later, peers, and we're having this show talking about it.
It's been a strategic failure for Donald Trump, and there is nothing he can do.
Yeah, and you know, Gordon Chang, welcome back to Unsensored.
I mean, I've been saying this from the first week, is that I did not think this was going to end quickly.
I thought he picked a fight with one of the biggest players in the Middle East, if not the biggest.
No way was Iran just going to roll over in the way that clearly Netanyahu had tried to spin to the President of the United States.
I think Trump made the call in the end.
He wasn't bullied into it.
but he was persuaded by Netanyahu that this was the time to do this.
And I do think he's now in a quagmire here.
And of course, Netanyahu and Trump are facing two crucial elections
in the next few weeks.
Netanyahu, the Israeli general election, Trump, the midterms in America.
This is a pivotal moment, you would say, politically for this war, isn't that?
It is a pivotal moment.
I don't think that we can say that the United States can't win this war.
And the reason is that President Trump throughout this has really prioritized his relationships with Beijing over winning this war.
So he's allowed Iran to sell oil to China.
The Kepler data is stunning, despite the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, you had China getting 1.2 million barrels of Iranian oil every day,
which is basically the same as it was in the same period last year.
So Trump has decided to let the Chinese have a free pass.
He's also not going off after the Chinese banks for laundering Iran's money.
And clearly Trump could invoke Section 311 of the USA Patriot Act and cut off those Chinese banks, but he won't do it.
So the question here is, yes, this is a stalemate.
One could even say that Trump is losing the war, but you can't say that we can't win it because we haven't really prioritized winning.
Right, Nadine, you know, I was at a very high-powered dinner this week in London with some very smart people
who were talking about how China, you know, hasn't been overt in attacking countries,
but it has got its tentacles pretty much everywhere where the action's going on.
That there are a kind of, you know, surreptitious partner in all sorts of stuff,
whether it's Ukraine or Iran or wherever it may be.
And that there's a shifting power going on here that the United States.
United States is being rapidly overtaken by China.
What is your reading of this as President Xi arrives in New York?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a totally valid take while China invests, while it works with partners.
The United States is just bringing down the hammer, just killing people, eroding its own legitimacy and power of not just the United States itself, but the concept of Western democracy.
While, you know, people see that that's a farce.
When you're, you know, you have things like human rights, you have these concepts that are espoused by Western states.
And then people see that being completely smashed by allowing child after child, women, mother, fathers, mosques, schools just speak absolutely decimated in Gaza, absolutely decimated in Iran.
You know, that just goes to show that the United States doesn't believe in any of these concepts.
It doesn't believe in humanitarianism.
It doesn't believe in democracy.
It undermines its own population.
You know, like one of the panelists was saying before me,
people don't have health care.
The cost of living is going up.
And for what?
So that we can kill more Palestinian schoolchildren,
so we can kill more Iranian schoolgirls.
I mean, this is when I hear Donald Trump talking about,
they're going to take Iran to hell,
they're going to make sure that Iran doesn't have this power in the future.
I feel like he's talking about the United States itself
because all he's doing is bringing this country down,
the United States down as well, with his attacks on Iran.
So I think that's a completely valid take.
And, you know, as we continue to witness more Palestinians be killed through this so-called ceasefire that the U.S. brokered, you know, that just goes to show that they don't have any standing or any power in the region to reign in Israel, one of its allies, that they continue to write checks to send these bombs, let alone being able to, you know, fight this war in Iran.
Josh Rubin, you know, it's a precarious time.
Job, but that's okay.
Sorry?
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
It happens all the time.
My apologies.
Sorry, Joel.
The polymarket have at the moment, when they ask the question,
who will be the next Israeli prime minister after the election?
Gaddi Elzenkot, a 59%, Netanyahu 29%, Natali Bennett, 11.
A clear lead there for Gaddi Elzingcott.
Could we be witnessing the beginning of the end of Netanyahu?
and if it is the case, would it be because of the way he's conducted this Iran conflict, as they put it, and pulled America into it?
Yeah, you know, look, these Israeli elections are very fluid, without a doubt.
The Israeli people are overwhelmingly tired of Prime Minister Netanyahu.
He's very unpopular overall.
By the way the system works, he could still potentially cobble together a coalition if he gets enough votes.
But, you know, I was in Israel over the summer.
I got to tell you, there is seething anger at the fact that there has not yet been a commission of inquiry into what happened on October 7th.
No real deep understanding about the causes, both, of course, why the attack occurred.
And we can talk about that ad nauseum, but also the failures within the security apparatus and the failures of the prime minister in dealing with it in that day and the days after.
So there's a lot of frustration.
Gotti Eisencott is no left wing.
He's a centrist, but he would build a broad,
centrist-based coalition, I believe,
that could engage the Palestinians in a manner
that would get to some positive outcome,
ideally, between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
You know, that's what we should be talking about here,
Pierce. I got to say, back to the core argument
we had at the beginning.
You know, for those of us who want peace,
for those of us who believe that there should be Israel
and Palestine living side by side in peace next to each other,
we might have a muscle memory of,
of Yitzhak Rabin, who was killed by a Jewish extremist
for trying to make peace.
And you know, there's a lot of heart in Israel for peace still.
And I think we have to promote that rather than try to argue
that, oh, all Israelis are Netanyahu or their Benghivir,
and that's the end of it.
And that's how we get out of this morass.
And I think Eisenkot, he has a message
that the Israeli people are listening to.
Netanyahu has clearly worn out his welcome.
That doesn't mean he'll lose.
But I do think that he's very weak.
into this general election.
Yeah, and Gordon Chang, you know, the Chinese government is very keen to promote the idea
of cooperation rather than conflict and recently published a critical video of your views
on the U.S.-China relationship via the state-owned controlled Global Times outlet.
Let's take a look.
I listen to this, Gordon Chang, he has no idea what he's talking about.
He's always so negative.
It's like the world is falling down.
It's not true.
This is actually the second time in almost three months.
The U.S. President Donald Trump has called out Gordon-Chang publicly to bash him.
Corporation benefits both sides while conflict harms everyone.
President Trump's repeated public criticism of Gordon-Chang are no accident.
They signaled the business of making a living by patently extreme anti-China rhetoric all to shut down.
Did you find that funny, Gordon?
Hilarious, hilarious.
You know, President Trump doesn't agree with me.
me. But the world is falling apart, and his attempts to have this cooperation with China just
have failed. We saw this in May when Trump went to Beijing. Xi Jinping went out of his way
to humiliate not only President Trump, but the United States of America, with those references
to the Thucydides trap, which is a reference to a declining hegemon, dangerously challenging
a rising power. But even more insultingly, you know, Xi Jinping talked about New Era, which is his
phrase for when China rules the world. And then we saw on the second day of the summit in
Zhongnan High, the leadership compounds of the Communist Party, President Trump's chair was
noticeably lower to the ground than Xi Jinping's. So I don't know what Trump is trying to do.
I wish him well, of course. But at this point, I think that he's pursuing a policy that has
not worked for decades. And we really should try something new. With the midterms coming,
Gordon, what do you think is going to happen?
Because if Trump was to lose the House and Senate, for example, in the midterms,
you could very quickly see him getting paralyzed as a lame duck president with the Democrats
probably impeaching him and going after his family and everything else.
And the whole thing getting mired in a kind of legal quagmire.
And the big picture stuff may just get, you know, lost in the mix.
That's entirely possible.
I don't do domestic politics.
a Republican or a Democrat. I do think from what I hear that, yeah, the Republicans certainly
going to lose the House. It's going to be a landslide. They could very well lose the Senate.
There will be impeachment motions. But the thing we've seen in American politics is that when a party
out of power, you know, it wins in a midterm election, they probably will overdo it. The American
people don't want impeachment motions. So this could very well rebound to the, you know,
the benefit of the Republican Party in 2028 in the election that really does matter.
But yeah, there's going to be chaos for the final two years, and Trump is going to have a
hard time.
There are going to be a lot of corruption investigations.
There'll be impeachment.
This will not be good.
The only way we get out of this is if there is a conflict someplace, and it does unite the American
people, as we saw in 9-11.
But I'm not counting on that.
Cyrus, you know, the big elephant in the room is AI.
We're hearing ever more apocalyptic language
from people who you think may know
insiders at these big AI firms saying,
look, this could all be over in three years.
You know, I will repeat for the probably 500th time
that I did one of the last interviews
with Professor Stephen Hawking.
You said when AI learns to self-design,
that's the biggest threat to mankind.
I'm getting a sense.
We're getting very close to that.
if we haven't already got there.
And if artificial intelligence,
or as I think Trump calls it,
superior intelligence,
begins to think for itself
and is very rapidly,
you know,
better than us in every capacity,
you could quite easily see a scenario
where they just view human beings
as utterly pointless and get rid of us.
How scared are you about this?
Because it is quite unnerving
when you hear the people inside places like anthropic
coming out and going,
guys, this is serious.
Oh, it definitely is. And I think all of us need to be, you know, very concerned about AI and the future of this. And I think really, you know, it comes back down to this meeting between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, because, you know, if you look at the top AI researchers around the world, about 50% of them are of Chinese origin. So even if we talk about this AI race between the United States and China, it really is Chinese people in China versus Chinese people inside the United States. So again, there's a great opportunity for both countries to really collaborate here and to figure out, you know, what the correct policy should.
be on this, you know, for AI in the future. Again, I think this is something that Donald Trump
and Xi Jinping will certainly talk about during this week's meeting. Again, I think it's very
important that these two leaders are coming together for the second time in about six months.
And I think it's any time that these two superpowers can meet and their leaders can meet,
I think it's good for the world. I think the United States needs a strong relationship with
China. You know, our economy is tied directly to the Chinese, vice versa as well. And, you know,
honestly, when the United States and China learn to work together, the entire world's going to win.
think it could be a great opportunity, you know, in the realm of AI as well.
I mean, Joel, you know, it seems to me we had a similar kind of debate about nuclear weapons
and eventually common sense prevailed. We had the non-proliferation treaties and so on.
Everyone kind of agreed, look, we can't go there because once it starts, that's it.
And I sort of feel like you hope common sense will prevail here.
The concern, of course, is whether commercial imperatives by the people that own these things
and no more about them than any of us,
override their desire to save the world.
And I'm not convinced I trust them.
Yeah, Pierce, you're totally right.
The analogy is imperfect, clearly,
in that nuclear weapons technology, when it was developed,
and in the early days there was concern about proliferation,
it was governments that had a monopoly on that technology
as opposed to AI, which is being developed by the private sector,
and it's not something that governments fully put up,
control. So negotiating can't just be a bilateral or multilateral diplomatic engagement,
although that is essential. It's also going to have to engage. It's going to have to incorporate,
that is, the private sector, it's going to have to incorporate civil society and others.
And that means we hear in the United States you need to get serious. Now, you know,
Congress is beginning to start to talk about it. That's great. But the president threw cold water
on this last week. And I think that's really dangerous because if we're going to talk to the
Chinese, and then, of course, talk to other countries and try to get the corporate sector on board.
We need to have our own house in order. And the president's not doing that yet. And so it's going to
make negotiation very hard. Ultimately, I'll just close with this. On the nuclear file, we ended up
getting an international agreement. We got the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. We had bilateral
engagements with the Soviets in particular. And we had the hotline. So we put in structures to prevent the
worst of the worst outcome from happening.
We need to think that way on AI.
We need to figure out a policy that is going to bring in all the key relevant actors
and make sure that we ultimately have control of this so it doesn't get to where
Hawking was envisioning.
Nadine, you know, Netanyahu will be speaking tomorrow evening, our time, in New York.
It's going to be a very incendiary speech for many reasons.
But, of course, it comes on the backdrop of this sensational report by Harets.
in Israel that he was personally warned by the president of the UAE
about the impending attacks by Hamas on October the 7th.
I mean, you know, that alone,
especially after what Joel said earlier
about what he's been sensing from Israelis,
that alone, it could be enough to bring him down, right?
I mean, I completely believe that he was aware,
and I remember on the early days when you brought me to speak on your show
after October 7, I said that a lot is going to come out to prove that,
you know, that Israel was complicit in many ways, that much of the damage that we saw that
occur on October 7 couldn't have even occurred through Hamas. We saw cars that were completely
burned up. That seems like that damage could only have been done by Israeli Apache helicopter.
So, I mean, we know that these wars are good for Netanyahu in terms of they're able to
keep him in power. They continue to win him elections. That's precisely also why he urged Donald Trump.
to pick a fight with Iran and to attack Iran.
This has been years and years in the making of him demanding this as well.
So, I mean, you know, we can only hope that people wake up, that people see that these wars are used to enrich these politicians.
But at the same time, you know, we've also seen great support for the genocide in Gaza by Israelis.
We've seen many Israelis also support the war in Iran.
So, you know, we've seen extremists continue to grow within Israel as well.
And here in New York, I mean, I mentioned earlier, an Israeli activist or a pro-Israel activist was caught by the FBI trying to firebomb my home.
So, you know, just because this information is coming out, it doesn't guarantee that that's going to bring him down.
I think for many people, they'll double down and support him.
And that's why politicians like Ben-Gavir have also gained support and following in Israel.
because many people continue, you know, to support this extremism.
And at some level, they are complicit with it because it's not just Netanyahu getting into those bomber jets and, you know, bombing everyone and killing everyone himself.
But also Israeli soldiers doing that as well.
Netanyahu critic over here is not going to stand for the blood libels,
where now you're essentially excusing Hamas' decision to jump the defense.
Is there anything wrong?
Yeah, you exactly said that the Israelis were the ones responsible for October.
7th. It was Hamas. It was Hamas. And it was Hamas. Now, those murders and killings in
Israel by Hamas. Let me repeat that again. Why was it extended until October 7th? And it was Hamas.
Israelis will definitely have and do having should have, just like we did. After September 11th,
1947. After September 11th, we have. Okay. So this is exactly. So this is where this is where you
want to go. And I know this is where you want to go. No Jew is it should live in the land of Israel is what you
essentially believe. There should not be a state of Israel is what you essentially believe. No, Jews lived in
in Palestine prior to the creation of the state of Israel. My family used to buy kosher meat from Jewish
people from the kosher butchers. Only if the Jews are living under domination by another community.
If Jews have a state of their own, the only state, mind you, there are dozens of Arab states,
dozens of Muslim states, and I love that, and I've traveled to many. But the idea that there should only be
zero Jewish states is to me deliberately anti-semitic.
Muslims of all people go into states.
That's absolutely not true.
There's no Christian state where it's like only Christians of all over the world can go and live in that Christian state.
Have you ever heard of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Afghanistan?
Have you ever seen, have you ever heard of the Vatican?
I mean, you know what you're doing?
So any Christian can go claim citizenship and live in the Vatican?
I want to have the ability to engage in blood libel.
And you have to, you want to be able to say blood libel about October 7.
These are the same terms that you've been using.
They've lost all meaning, very clearly.
The October 7th.
So NERDEN doesn't like,
NERDEN doesn't, I let NERDien speak for three minutes.
She won't let me speak for three seconds because she has no arguments.
So you're addressing me.
I'm responding to you.
No, no, no.
No, no.
No, no.
You spoke for three minutes.
I'm responding to you and you're not allowing it.
All right.
So listen.
Hold on and let me.
explain something. When one says October 7th was told to Netanyahu by the Emirates that
intact was coming, that is not this, that, if it's true, that may very well be in confidence and
malfeasance, that is not the same as Israel committed the crimes of October 7th. The Israeli public
is a public that was attacked. Are they supposed to sit back and say, oh, well, we were attacked?
We're not going to respond. You have 250 of our hostages under the tunnels. We're not going to
really worry about that. No. Any modern country, any modern, any modern, any modern, any, any, any, any,
you were, okay, I'm sorry, I need to get involved to be run out of time. What I would say is that I
I think the journey I've gone on with all this is probably how a lot of people feel, which is
what happened on October the 7th was absolutely appalling one of the worst terror attacks of modern
times. Clearly, Netanyahu's government dropped the ball with security, and there's been no proper inquiry
as to how that happened.
How does Mossat, the Mossad,
the number one intelligence agency
of the world that can blow up 3,000 pages
at the push of a button belonging to Hezbollah,
had no idea 3,000 terrorists
were pouring over the border
and why weren't they dealt with for many hours?
All these are unanswered questions,
which obviously fuel conspiracy theories.
And then you have the whole issue of the money
that Netanyahu encouraged to be funneled through
to Hamas in the first place,
that they clearly spent on just expanding
a tunnel system and terror,
and so on. So all these are huge questions.
But I do think that most people feel, and this is reflected in the polls,
particularly in America, which I never thought I'd see this,
where the vast majority now of Americans have a negative view of Israel
because they feel the reaction from the Israeli government to what happened
has been massively disproportionate.
And I just think this is how most people feel about this.
But anyway, I've got to leave you there.
Thank you all for coming on today. I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
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