Pirate Wires - Insane! Elon & Trump BREAK UP - Here's Why.. (ft. Bridget Phetasy)

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

EPISODE #95: We go a huge pod for you guys this week! We were reporting on the Trump Elon story during our Thursday recording, then all hell broke loose. Solana and producer Matt had to step in and record a Friday morning emergency pod. We break down the latest on the break up of the century. Then, we get into your regularly scheduled podcast! Bridget Phetasy and the PW crew join us to get into the Elon/Trump relationship, the downfall, and what exact is in the Big Beautiful Bill? Also on this episode: Nucleas released a new product that has cause controversy over eugenics, Palantir wants to steal your data? and Greta goes to Gaza while Dave Portnoy says that free speech is not allowed when discussing Jewish people.Featuring Mike Solana, Riley Nork, Blake Dodge, Matt Marlinski, Bridget Phetsay, We have partnered with AdQuick! They gave us a 'Moon Should Be A State' billboard in Times Square!https://www.adquick.com/Sign Up For The Pirate Wires Daily! 3 Takes Delivered To Your Inbox Every Morning:https://get.piratewires.com/pw/dailyPirate Wires On X: https://twitter.com/PirateWiresMike On X: https://twitter.com/micsolanaRiley On X: https://x.com/rylzdigitalMatt On X: https://x.com/mattmarlinskiBridget On X: https://x.com/BridgetPhetasyBlake On X: https://x.com/dodgeblakeTIMESTAMPS:0:00 - Welcome Back To The Pod!#podcast #technology #politics #culture

There's something breaking right now. Wait, wait, wait. What's going on? Someone just texted me that Elon tweeted, time to drop the really big bomb. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJ T. Who gets America in the divorce?

I want to know who gets Rogan in the divorce. There's so many questions. It was always a little bit of an uncomfortable and sort of unnerving fit. It's like every significant other I've ever had. Like, I like a lot of things about you. I'm just worried about your financial impact on me. I don't know how to break in here. This is me from the future. Obviously, maybe not obviously. While we were recording this podcast, the entire world went insane.

It was absolute madness. Obviously, Elon Musk waged nuclear war on Donald Trump, crashed out as the kids are saying, and we entered just an evening of absolute, crazy drama that I think will have absolutely long-term consequences for the relationship between the tech right right, and the entire tech industry and the populist, right. This podcast is about to happen. We kind of knew this fight was happening.

I've been writing about it all week. I've been worrying about this inevitable breakup on this podcast for, I don't know, ever. It just seemed like the only possible end point to me, knowing as I do how both of these guys are, just from writing about them. But certainly we didn't get most of the meat of last night's fight on the pod.

So this is now officially an emergency pod. We're gonna, Matt and I are gonna, at 7 a.m., I have to write a whole piece about this, which will probably, I hope, be coming out by the time this pod is released. Matt and I are gonna cover all of the most important beats of this story now, and then we're gonna get into the sort of rest of the pod after that,

where we discuss a lot of, I mean, all of it's relevant to this conversation, the relationship between the tech right and the president, as well as, I think importantly, my view on the bill, which I'll just save for the pod. And you guys can check it out there. Because I think that kind of weirdly, maybe the weirdest thing about this entire fight is I don't think anyone has read the bill, or even looked at the beats. No one's even GPT the

bill, which is strange to me. But um, yeah, we'll talk about that in a minute. But for now, Matt, why don't you break down what everyone is here for, which are the major beats of this massive disaster that happened last night. Yeah, after a week of everything kind of leading to this moment, we had the big one, which is, as even Elon said, the big bomb.

It says, Donald Trump, the big bomb. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the reason that they have not been made public. Have a nice day DJT. Which happened literally in the middle of our regular podcast recordings. So like we went to like the shock and awe of all of that. So I guess like first you could do is say there's a few responses by Trump that then led to Elon then counter-responsing with things related to tech and SpaceX. So the first one by Trump was Elon was quote wearing thin I asked him to leave I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted He knew for months that was gonna do and he just went crazy

Crazies in all caps the easiest way to save money in our budget Billions and billions of dollars is a terminate Elon's government subsidies and contracts I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it. And then Elon quote to then said, in light of the president's statement about cancellation of my government contracts, SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately. So we have like the nuclear bomb tweet from Elon.

Now we have the tech world being summoned. So where are we at right now? Well, so, and that, I mean, again, this has been coming, this has been a steady drip for a while. Elon's criticizing the bill, though I think there have been some signals before this, which maybe we can get into in a second, but Elon's definitely criticizing this bill, which we'll get into in a bit, in terms of just

what the bill is and what it actually means. Trump had been really trying to, I think, avert this public fight. Obviously, he's just a politician. I mean, he's a great one. He's a great politician that doesn't look like a politician, but he's a politician. He's trying to maintain a coalition here. It doesn't help him to have this massive public feud. So he was trying to kind of be cool about it. They had made a few comments about this. I saw the press secretary comment on the matter at one point and she said, you know, the president is aware of Elon's feelings about the bill and, you know, we value Elon's service.

It's always the two of those things. Thank you for everything you've done. We know how he feels by kind of stuff. So he keeps going, he keeps going. Um, it had been building by the time we recorded this pod, it was just obvious that there was, I thought almost no going back. I mean, he was really incensed about the bill. He had tweeted 20 or 30 times at that point. Uh, it was very clear that he was entering a kind of Elon Musk fugue state.

And this was the thing that he was obsessed with was, with was just this bill and he wanted it not passed. It was passed by Congress. Now it's waiting before the Senate. Then came everything that you mentioned. And I would say the one, there's a question of what is the point of no return. Is it the fact that he said the Epstein stuff, which maybe I'm too online. I genuinely thought we already knew that Trump was in the Epstein files. Like I fully was like, yeah, he's definitely in them.

At one point, also, Elon shared a video of Trump talking about Epstein, and Trump's just surrounded not by underage girls, but like hot women, maybe they're under, you know what, I better not say that. I have no idea. But they looked like beautiful women. And I just thought like, well, maybe they're, you know what? I better not say that. I have no idea. But they looked like beautiful women. And I just thought like, well, we know this about Trump.

I think actually a lot of people love this about Trump. This is not a victory on the Elon side, sharing that video. The thing for me that was, oh shit, was when Elon took credit in a post for Trump's victory. Without me, Trump would have lost the election. Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude.

Now, this is the thing. These are two men with healthy ego, shall we say. Some of the healthiest maybe in history. They, that's the end of the relationship, I think. So they have this massive fight. Everyone's obviously asking, and by massive, I mean, Trump says a few things, right? I mean, Trump is saying like, one, he threatens him.

And, or first he says whatever he said about, it's sad. Then he threatens him. And that's kind of all we hear about it until he's asked by reporters at the White House about it. And he says something along the lines of, while Elon is crashing out, he says, well, now we're gonna go have a little private chat. And he left presumably to call Elon.

Now a couple of hours after that online, you can see the fight is already calming down. So Elon in other responses, one to a totally anonymous user who had, I think, like 400 followers, her name is now Alaska, it wasn't last night when I looked, said something along the lines of like... So Alaska said, this is a shame this back and forth, you are both better than this, cool off and take and step back for a couple days. Elon, good advice

Okay, we won't decommission dragon. So this is a huge so now it's like Elon made his threat response to Trump's threat now He's walking it back. He also made a comment about pork so he someone said, you know, let's let's just cut some pork out of this thing and And move forward and Elon retweets this. And so to me that says, Elon is signaling, here's an escape hatch for us. Like we can publicly get out of this fight if you just do a couple things that make it look like

I have sway in the administration still and we can move forward. That might happen naturally. This is going to the Senate. I don't think there's that much pork in this bill, which again, we'll talk about a little bit later in the pod. I think that's like sort of a misunderstanding of what this bill is.

There's a reason that none of the Democrats support it, but he clearly wants this to end and whatever was said in that phone call has been instrumental in calming this down. But I do think it's irreparably damaged because of how much I would say animosity the leaders of the populist right have for the tech right. And so that brings us to Steve Bannon.

So at the height of the feud, before there had been, this is not yet a reconciliation, there's supposed to be some kind of statement later today. We might have it by the time the pod drops. But before there had even been an indication that the president was gonna call him and that Trump or an indication from Elon that things were gonna calm down,

Steve Bannon clip went massively viral when he was recording with Jack Posobich. Do you wanna just play the clip? Doge was, and for any fan voices still exist, while you're wrapping up in your cape tonight, understand on Doge, Do you want to just play the clip? be taking immediately, I think, when he threatens to take one of the big programs out of SpaceX, President Trump tonight should sign an executive order calling for the Defense to Production Act to be called in SpaceX and seize SpaceX tonight before midnight. Steve Bannon I've known had a problem with Elon from the very beginning and it makes perfect sense to me.

This is a man who used to feel like he was on the right hand of, of Trump. And so obviously Steve who went to prison for the man he thinks in his mind is going to have a huge problem, uh, you know, no matter what, and he's going to come back, he's going to come back swinging. He wants that, that top spot. This is a war of power in his, in his mind. I will say just like first thought on Steve. It's crazy to me. So at the furthest extremes of the far right, you will meet people who are further left than AOC. And he is

one of them. We are talking about the nationalization of SpaceX. This is a man who, you know what, I don't know him personally. So maybe I'm falling into the classic media trap here of, I don't know, making a bunch of crazy shit up about people who I don't necessarily like. But my read of him is that he genuinely is down for dictatorship. Like, I really do feel when I read and watch him that, like, that is where that is where his heart is at. And he's sort of a tyrannical person. Now, probably his friends will say like, no, he's just actually conservative.

He's like super emotionally conservative. He doesn't like the fact that Elon has all these kids and things like that. And I just don't think so. I see a strong man when I look at him and he makes me nervous. That is actually how the far right feels. The far sort of Maga, right?

Let's like the populace, right? Let's call them. And, uh, and I think you see in Jack's reaction there, a kind of, oh shit moment where he realizes he's going to have to choose between these two people. Eventually, Steve Bannon has been demanding that choice be made for months and months and months.

Um, but all of these people who have gotten a lot from Elon on Twitter, and this is really what it all comes down to retardedly is Twitter. They don't want this breakup to happen because of the immense power that Twitter has represented for the right. And they're going to have to choose, I think. I don't think there's any going back from this.

I think even if they sort of resolve their feelings here, Elon's not out of the White House. And Trump knows that he can't trust Elon not to have a meltdown publicly, which has potentially disastrous political consequences. He certainly can't tell him any secrets or confide in him. It doesn't matter that things are better now. The relationship is over. The MAGA people are this, let's say the populist right wing of the party is going to keep, you know, coming after the tech, right?

Not just Elon, who's now outside of the White House, but everybody around Trump and in Trump's orbit, they want it gone. They've never, ever trusted tech since, and understandably since they erased the right wing from the internet, famously, you know, with Donald Trump at the head back in the, at the end of his last term. Is all of these sort of goodwill and optimism from all the early, early days, this is a couple months ago, but like early days of tech now being entrenched in Washington, or is it so over?

I think that Donald Trump is always going to do what is helpful to him in any given moment. So he's really good at just making deals with anybody. People read his deal making with like, or his attempts to make deals with people like Putin or foreign dictators. He was out there in the Middle East taking pictures with the Saudis and I guess they're not, they're our allies technically, but a lot of people feel a certain way about that. The Kuwaiti plane, another Kuwaiti plane, the Qatari plane, he's gonna do him, right? But what he's gonna feel more of,

so that's to say, I don't think it's so over in his eyes, but he also needs the support of the populace and Congress. And if that turns against tech, which is very possible, as the sort of Steve Bannon's of the world become louder and louder and louder on the issue of the technology industry, then he's going to have tech's going to be in a hard place. So the real question is, is I think how the Democrats respond

to this. I think it's interesting that like, they're kind of absent. Like where, who even are they right now? Where are they? Which, which side could they possibly take in an Elon versus Trump? Like there's nothing, they have nothing to say. They just don't have an opinion. Like all they have is a reflexive knee-jerk opposition to these people. But like there's no, because they don't have an opinion. All they have is a reflexive knee-jerk opposition to these people, but there's no, because they don't have a self-identity right now, and there's this huge, I think, fight on the left to figure out who the Democrats even are, I don't think they have a grasp of where to go here.

Are they targeting the tech right, or technology industry generally? Are they targeting Trump? Which side are they on? Who are they rooting for? Are there alliances that could be made for them? They're not even thinking about that. I think it's so over.

That's my long-winded thinking. I think it's so over. I think that the tech industry has no natural allies right now. I think that Trump will actually do his best because the industry is valuable to America. So I think that he'll do, you know, he's not gonna go after anyone.

He's not gonna just mail the tech industry, but there are gonna be, this is like a generational, I think that the future of the right-wing party is gonna be super anti-progressive and tech is part of progress. So it doesn't matter how that you're a right-wing person, like what is the tech right? The tech right is like, we want high-speed rail,

but for that high-speed rail to be, I don't know, very well policed. That's the tech right. And the Steve Bannons of the world, I mean, they are one step away from dismantling the high-speed rail for scrap metal, like in South Africa. Like that's kind of where they're at.

It's, they're not into progress. They're not into the idea of a better, very different looking country. Um, they're conservative, which is super different than, uh, than the tech right. No tech right on, no one on the tech right is, is, is quote conservative. Um, I think right wing is different.

And so that yeah, it's gonna get worse and worse. And that's gonna have a ripple through Congress. And we'll see. I think Elon is probably, like I said, he's out. He's out. Even if it looks like he's in, he's out, he'll never have as much influence as he did a few months ago. I mean, you're describing actually, it's weirdly comforting. You're describing a Republican party I used to know, right?

The confusion so much has been everything has flipped. Like, why is, you know, the Republican Party pro tech, pro Bitcoin crypto, like all this stuff, like, wait, you were not supposed to be the party that was accepting all this stuff. And now the Democrat party is like this weird, all the popular people are now the real socialist ones I'm seeing here in New York City.

Like we're seeing like Bernie Sanders and AOC teaming up. So like, no one knows where the fuck to go. So weirdly, it does seem like, weird, all the popular people are now the real socialist ones I'm seeing here in New York City, like we're seeing like Bernie Sanders and AOC teaming up. So like, no one knows where the fuck to go. So weirdly, it does seem like, okay, we're returning to a weird normal. You know, the Democratic Party is so crazy. But I mean, do you think, you know, a lot of theories going around, like, do you just think like Trump played Elon the whole time, just so he can kind of get what he wants, which is like this massive bill with some tax cuts? No, I don't think so. I think that, well, first of all, the Republican Party is actually the natural party of business.

So there is a lot, there should be, historically, historically, before they started censoring, before the tech industry was censoring them, it would have been, they would have been natural allies. It was the recent history where it became a huge problem, where the Democrats were already reflexively opposed to business I used I wrote about this all the time in like 2020. I was saying folks You are going after your only allies like you you think that you're left-wing in tech you think that you're these lefties

They're gonna fucking eat you alive like they do not care they will come for you and And they did and tech had no no friends. And the Trump thing represented like, wow, we have something, there is something here. There's one person in politics who cares about the fact that Europe is cannibalizing our industries, for example. But in terms of what Trump was thinking and what Elon was thinking, I think that they're very different. They're very similar in many obvious ways, but I think they're very different in the way that they

maybe communicate and, and they navigate the world. Trump is always in dealmaker mode, he's always in coalition building mode, he's always very rarely is he speaking literally literally and, and he's always willing to kind of change things up to get to his end goal, which basically has to be. Intuit it, you know, like you, you have to kind of, which is always why the coverage of Trump is so bad is people are very rarely willing to try and think through where he might be going. And to do that, you have to look at what resources he's been building,

what allies he's been making, the general drift of things. And you have to kind of, I don't know, there's no easy answer with that. And you have to just kind of try and figure it out. Whereas Elon will just tell you shit, and I think he maybe expects that from people as well. While Trump is more maybe charismatic in a way and more emotional on stage, I think he's a much more sober person. He doesn't drink. I think he's very rational.

I think Elon is super rational in work, but in these kinds of moments, I think he feels very strongly and that leads to an explosion. I don't think either man was using the other man. I think Elon felt maybe loved by this like older father figure to a certain extent, and really believed in what Trump was offering for the country. And I think Trump has always wanted some kind of approval from the absolute best of American industry, you know, of business. Like he, I think, had a lot of respect for Elon, who is very just obviously the number one guy in American business, right?

Like Trump wants that stamp of approval. He wants approval from the elite, not this like, you know, the Vanity Fair elite, though he wants that too. He really wants the elites actual talent to love him and be like, yes, you're so smart, Trump. And, um, and so they both got just separate from politics. I think they both got a lot out of each other. I don't really believe there was a betrayal here.

I believe it was just a difference of, of personality. And, uh, and these are Titan men. These are enormous. They have enormous egos. They have enormous power. They are enormously capable. And so when they're together, it's terrifying to the Democrats. enormous, they have enormous egos, they have enormous power, they are enormously capable. And so when they're together, it's terrifying to the Democrats. And when they're apart,

it's like, it's going to be a war, it's going to be crazy, everyone's going to be drawn in just because they've they're they both command so much attention and power. All right, we got to get to the full pod because we have a banger, like we got to be a full hour and a half already for us. So it's gonna be good. But the last one I got to I got to ask, I got to ask for the JD Vance of it all. What's his role in this? He's doing Theo Vonn's podcast. All this. What the hell is that happening? But like, you know, JD Vance, I don't know if you saw that port.

There was a David Portnoy clip that blew up where it's like him and two guys who work for him. And he and this one guy who works for him are having this crazy fight over the question of whether or not jujoke should be made important always just, I mean, embarrassing himself. In my opinion, it's like really sad how woke he is after years of complaining about this. It's so bad. I get where he's coming from. I understand, you know, people are saying anti-Semitic shit to him.

I get that. People say nasty shit to me every day, but like he's embarrassing himself. He's also freaking out on one of his employees yelling at him, threatening to fire him. It's a really bad look. But there's a third guy in that clip. Who's just sitting there like this. And that's JD Vance right now.

In fact, you said, yeah, he was on the Theo Von pod. No idea. You know who looked even more uncomfortable than JD Vance was Theo Von. Next to him in the picture, he's like, fuck, I got to do a serious plug. We got to talk about something serious right now. Give me a nightmare. Yeah, I think JD's in a very difficult situation, because he

wants well, he's come from the tech side of things, but he is very much he is very much adopted, not adopted. He also comes. He was born in the in the in the sort of folk on the folk right out in Ohio. You know, Hillbilly Elegy is all about this. He needs both. The alliance of the two is kind of where he draws his strength. And what you're seeing also now, very interestingly, you saw Ron DeSantis come out not in support of Trump, but in support of

Elon, because everybody on the right is much as the left is wondering, you know, what happens in 2028? When Trump is gone, you know, what is next? And, and if Trump's gone, it's interesting that someone like Rhonda Santis is making the calculation of, I'm not going to need Trump as much as I'm going to need Elon, Elon will still be around, which is, of course, not what Steve Bannon said. Steve Bannon threatened to put him in jail, or deport him,

I think, and take his companies. But are you betting that we're going to descend into fascism or communism, really? I mean, think about Steve Bannon. It's like, I looked at that man and I thought, this is like, you're a fat communist, actually. He's literally like, this is a fat communist. This is, it is the horseshoe theory, a hundred percent. But, you know, I don't think he's going to win. So, and I think Ronda

Santis thinks that. I don't think anyone on the right wing thinks that. So they're all kind of making their bets right now. JD Vance uncomfortable, Ronda Santis making moves. You're gonna see this play out as the relationship continues to thaw. I think it's gonna look fixed moving forward, but it's not going to be. And I expect another crash out to be honest. A lot to look forward to. I agree.

Let's get back to the pod. Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast. What's up, guys? Welcome back to the podcast. We have the legendary Bridget Phetasy with us today. Yay, confetti like exploding sound effects, Matt, maybe a firework. We love it. She loves it.

We're all back in the family is back together. You guys remember Bridget from episodes past. She's gonna be joining us once a month for a few months where it's like, I don't know. I don't know if there's a sports analogy in this somewhere. I don't really watch sports. Probably there is and she's like a star in the world of, anyway.

I'm never leaving. The one thing you should check out for sure for Bridget today at least is her podcast, Dumps for fire. You can go check her out on YouTube backslash or is it forward slash fetishy P H E T A S Y. We've got a really amazing ad quick ad coming up in a little bit. Thank you ad quick for sponsoring the show. It's going to be riveting Shakespearean perhaps, but obviously we're talking about Elon Musk and Donald Trump. I mean, that's the main sort of meat of it. And I don't know, with World War III breaking out, I think we have to just get right into it. Riley, break this sort of sad, terrifying, exciting news down for us.

It's a sad day, yeah. So on the heels of his exit from Doge and in the wake of several tabloid articles about ketamine, about psychedelic mushrooms, about Stephen Miller's wife, Elon is just like declaring all out war now over the legislation known as the big beautiful bill. In a series of tweets, he called it a quote, disgusting abomination, and said that our current levels of spending will bankrupt America. More recently today, he took it to a whole another level. He was quote tweeting old tweets from Trump about the debt ceiling and spending levels, basically trying to like paint him as a hypocrite. Even went so far as to say Trump wouldn't have won the election if it weren't for him. To his point about spending, the Congressional Budget Office has projected that the BBB, which is different than a BBL

for those keeping score at home, I have since learned, will increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion, a figure that Republicans who back the bill are disputing saying it doesn't account for new growth. Meanwhile, others on the right who are supporting the BBB have speculated that another reason Elon might be upset about it is because it would phase out Biden's EV tax credits, which would of course have an impact on Tesla. Elon provided a ton of ammo on that front today with another tweet calling out the EV incentive cuts in the bill specifically. But it presents a real divide

between the administration and Elon. Is this the final nail in the coffin for the Trump-Elon breakup that everyone said would arrive eventually? Is it possible to heal this relationship? What do you guys think of the ongoing World War III? It's funny, just last week we were talking about this on Dumpster Fire when he was exiting

as in the context of like the parents are getting divorced. You know, we're like they're not they're they're whispering loudly in the bedroom. You know, marriage counseling has been brought up. And now we're at the screaming in the car with the kids in the backface where it's just like, you know what? The kids do need to hear this. America and we've been joking like who gets America in the divorce? I want to know who gets Rogan in the divorce. I want to know.

There's so many questions and it is it. I do feel like Elon's going scorched earth right now and I it's not long before Trump goes scorched earth and it's just going to be in great Elon. He was sleeping on the Lincoln floor peeing himself from the ketamine. You know, it's going to get ugly. Going straight to the ketamine. I guess there is a question of whether or not he ever goes after X's behavior in the White House, because we all did see that one clip where he seemed annoyed

but didn't say anything. I don't know. Yeah. We're about to find some crazy stuff out. I will say, I mean, this, we kind of all knew this was coming always from the moment. I think the moment the sort of binary stars started orbiting each other, it's like these men have very healthy egos, both of them.

And I think for very good reason, both of them. And they also don't, in the world of Elon Musk, he doesn't work with people. He doesn't even invest in companies that he's not really controlling. He does not work for people. I don't think he's done that for my entire life. It was always a little bit of an uncomfortable and sort of unnerving fit, the two of them together.

If the funny, if as he says, the the ironic thing will likely be the thing that happens, we're going to see Donald Trump get banned from X again. Oh, God, I'm mad that I did not predict that first. That is you're right. And I'm frustrated now. And I'm going to be thinking about it tonight. There is no way it doesn't happen. And also, does it not mean that Trump was pretty smart for not going all in back on X? I kind of always suspected also, like Trump was burned in a way that is no

president has ever been burned in the history of the country. And it was not a lesson that he was going to unlearn. He understands that the communication channels are all that matters, much as everybody in media today understands that and understands how vulnerable we are to the just random changes on the whims of whatever tech person is in charge of the platform today. I kind of, you guys have general thoughts, Blake or Riley, before we, because I want to talk about the bill a little bit,

because I have kind of my own journey there in navigating that and understanding that. Yeah, I mean, I guess I kind of view Elon and Trump as a microcosm in a way for the relationship between tech and the Republican Party. Maybe I shouldn't, because they're so their own thing, but like to continue Bridget's marriage metaphor, I feel like tech and the GOP started strong

with like good vibes, enemies, etc, etc and now the marriage is like suffering for a lack of commitment like between immigration tariffs EV tax credits stuff like that. There's been a lot of like Drama that's been produced for the tech industry in some ways since Trump took office. And sometimes it seems like the Republican appetite for really building stuff like stops

with like tax breaks and deregulation. Like right now it's a lot easier to get a permit for a nuclear reactor, but there's no plan for an energy renaissance or anything like that. And I feel like Elon with Doge was excited for this potential. It was a really big, beautiful idea to kind of leverage the skills of the technology industry to make the government work again. I don't know. And I think it's a little bit, the sadness is being like lost a little bit in all of this because it is sad.

He ran into the same old, same old, then I feel like he got disillusioned. And now I feel like he's just like visibly pissed. Right, well, it all starts with that tweet of his where he says, I no longer believe it's possible to affect change in the government. I have to just what, triple growth or something insane like that. And that is, I mean, what a better read of the entire government. I have to, it is easier to triple the growth of the country than it is to, I guess, make a few cuts to a spending bill. It reminds me, Elon, you know that scene in 30 Rock where he goes through the stages of

grief in like one second. There's a great scene where Alec Baldwin goes through all the stages of grief. That's like Elon publicly doing that right now. And now in some ways it is sad. I mean, I'm a kid of divorce, so I'm kind of used to this feeling. And I minimize it by making jokes about it. But in another way, he's kind of one of us. It's funny, like the richest man in the world is now politically homeless. He's now in the same camp that so many Americans have landed in, whether he meant to be there or not.

Yeah, like, as you were saying, like having the world's smartest engineer, like become disillusioned with the entire American political system in five months is a bit of a black pill. Like I can't lie there. Has it been five months or has it been? I think this has been brewing for quite a while. Why do you think it's a black pill, though? Just because it's like he has solved so many huge problems in the tech industry

and can launch rocket ships to Mars, but he can't, you know, figure out how to reduce spending or trim a little bit off of, you know, that or at least get something, you know, passed with regard to Doge without. In a way, though, he's kind of revealing what we all know, which is like these parties are kind of the same and they don't really affect change. I don't know. Maybe it's a black pill in the moment,

but maybe it actually does. Maybe Americans, because I think what Mag is realizing is that a lot of people agree with Elon, probably more than they think. Well, we're gonna find out. I don't necessarily think so. I think that people are waiting to turn on Elon Musk. A lot of right-wing people are.

I think there's a lot of hatred of the tech, right, among your rank and file MAGA person. There's a lot of people who just have never forgiven them for their behavior throughout the course of COVID and for what they did to Donald Trump. And they don't trust it. And they are like, who cares that he's showed up at the last five minutes.

So I think it's gonna be hard. I do wanna talk about the bill though, because just kind of, this is the big, beautiful, what is it? The big, beautiful what act, Riley? Did you call it the big, beautiful act? The official name is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That's the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

So not a spending bill, though there is spending involved. It's not a budget. It's a budget reconciliation bill, kind of. It functions like one. We're calling it that. But really, it's like a new bill that was passed in Congress and now it's waiting before the Senate. And while I was sort of watching the drama unfold earlier this week, when it first started kind of heating up, my assumption was this was a spending bill. And surprise, like, there's a lot of spending in a spending bill and you have to have a lot of weird pork in a spending bill for it to pass. And so no shit, the bill sucks. I don't even have to read it to know it sucks because that's how you get things

passed in Washington is by doing sucky things. The real story here is that Congress is broken irreparably. And I don't do see that story play out, by the way, not just here, but in every sort of conflict between the executive and the judicial branch where it's like, who is in charge here? Well, it can't be Congress passing laws because they don't do that unless it's this massive clusterfuck. And that's why we can't get anything done well. Well, shot my mouth off, tweeted about it, quickly thought, just I have this weird instinct, let me just very quickly start researching this, like racing to research it after I've tweeted. And within 60 seconds, I knew I was, I delete, I need to learn more.

I think this bill is not that bad, okay? Like red alert, very terrifying thing to say right now with the sort of Elon Musk eye floating around looking for, I don't know, bad opinions of squash or something. But when they say it's close to $5 trillion or something that we're adding to spending, the first strange thing I noticed,

kind of going into it assuming that it would be defense and welfare like it always is, and then random other shit was it's almost all tax cuts. That's what they mean by like spending here bizarrely. I mean, we're talking three plus trillion dollars, I think three and a half plus trillion dollars of this is just from cutting, I mean, a handful of things. It's an extension of the 2017 tax cuts.

There's a standard deduction increase. There's a child tax credit of $2,500 per child through 2028. Salt deduction cap, exempt per child through 2028. Salt deduction cap exemptions for tips and overtime. Remember that, that we all maybe discussed not too long ago. That's part of this. That's part of the spending that we're doing is just giving people their money back. And then they're adding some taxes there,

which again, there's like stuff in here I just think is funny. So the university endowment tax increases taxes on large private university endowments. There's a nonprofit tax exempt status, which they're playing around with. There's a ton of stuff in here about like work requirements now for SNAP benefits and for welfare recipients, which again, like music to my ear. And then, yeah, there's some stuff in there for defense and there's some stuff in there for like Pell grants and things like this, which I don't know, I could quibble with maybe, but it's, I don't know. It just didn't seem

that bad to me. And, uh, and I kind of walked away thinking, I understand conceptually where Elon's coming from the $37 trillion of debt that we have is just like, obviously a huge problem that explosion of debt is, and we could say maybe it just feels gut instinct. You're not supposed to be that much in debt, 37 trillion. Can you even conclude of that number? Probably not. But there's a practical reason, which is the interest that you're paying on that debt

is now what, a trillion dollars plus, like more than we're spending on defense almost, at least this year, that is not sustainable. And so like, obviously that's a problem. I just think that this is not, I just don't read this as really as like, I think it's, obviously, it's not helping. And that's a problem. And we should think about it. But I just think there's a distinction for me in my in my heart between giving people their money back and adding new things that we're gonna be spending for in perpetuity.

I also think that because of all of these tax cuts to do another round of spending increases, you're gonna have to raise taxes, which will require whoever's in charge to own that politically. They're gonna have to go in and raise taxes to keep spending and people will feel that. Are they gonna go after tips?

What are they going to go after at that point? So I don't know. Slightly complicated. But on this specific issue, and there are more issues today that I'm not going to land on the side of Trump on. But on this one, I'm like, I don't think this bill is as bad as it could be, to be honest. What's with the AI thing that was going around,

that Marjorie Taylor Greene said she wouldn't have voted yes on the bill if she had seen it? This is what we talked about in Slack. It's like the prohibition on state level AI legislation. So like the California one that we so it's that that's in the bills. I think so. Yes, that's great. That is fantastic. See, this is like like again, like this is like that is someone in the administration who's in the industry going to Donald and saying,

I was just at a conference over the weekend that I actually throw myself for founders fund. And I can't say his name. I was talking to someone who's in the industry working on this stuff. And he revealed to me there are currently 44 states in this country that have passed or trying this country that are trying to pass some kind of AI legislation and over a thousand bills in play at the local level.

This massive cluster fuck that's being shoved into the country will effectively just ban AI work. There's almost no way that it can't happen. That's just the chaotic nature of this much legislation being passed at once by people who don't understand what they're doing. So to have one bit of federal regulation is something that I absolutely do like and something that I, that is a message I approve of.

Mago is not approving of it. No, they wouldn't. They wouldn't because they don't trust this stuff. They don't look at OpenAI or really any of the LLMs as this very interesting new piece of technology that whatever has some strange way of creating utopia and that's a whole other tech narrative that we could take apart and I'm not fully on board with that either, but they just see it in a way that I certainly don't think is correct as a woke propaganda machine. And they only think there's one, you know? It's like there's one and it's run by the woke tech.

And so there's just not a natural alliance there. There's just a natural distrust actually. And I guess, you know, it doesn't help. I mean, we've reported on this stuff when Google's Gemini released and you couldn't generate a white person. I mean, what does tech think is gonna happen? Like you see that as a white person who's not in tech

and you're like, oh, they fucking hate me and they're gonna do whatever they can to ruin my life. And so I'm gonna oppose them. And some days I wake up and I'm not even sure that they're wrong. I mean, I wanna believe that they're wrong, but you know, they're exercising caution and I can't really blame them.

To your point about liking a lot of the things in the bill, I tweeted something along the lines of it's like, it's like every significant other I've ever had To your point about liking a lot of the things in the bill, I tweeted something along the lines of, it's like every significant other I've ever had. Like, I like a lot of things about you. I'm just worried about your financial impact on me. But I saw Republicans also who were defending the bill, like framing it as like a matter of priorities to their credit as well, which is like, hey,

like we get that the national debt is a big problem. We're not denying that. We just think like illegal immigration is a bigger one. And there are a lot of provisions in the big, beautiful bill that, that deals with illegal immigration, expedites, deportations. So I thought that was an interesting framing because like, you know, on the one hand, while illegal immigration has gone down already under Trump, you did just have that dude in Colorado, like set fire to who is here illegally, like take Molotov cocktails to like a Holocaust survivor. So I can see how framing it as a matter of priorities would would be to their credit as well. And in hindsight, the fact that no Democrat voted for it is interesting. I got it even I kind of glazed over that. But while the drama was first

beginning, but that alone is is an indication that was then confirmed when I researched this further, that it wasn't a bunch of pet projects being funded, because of course, when that's happening, you're doing it to get people across the aisle interested in your bill. And they didn't do that in Congress. They didn't have to because they had a majority. And that that was a big signal. It's going to be ugly. You know, I don't think this gets, I don't know how it gets better because it does seem like,

and it would be funny if he's just going scorched earth, like you said, because he's burned out. He's just tired. And he's just not in his right mind. And he's like, you know what? Fuck it. Let's burn it all down. And I'm black-filled too.

And we've all had those moments in the in the culture wars. But yeah, his stuff is getting firebombed. People don't want to buy his cars anymore. He did put himself out there. And I do think there's a probably dad wound there not to go all like psych. But you have Trump being like, I'm disappointed in Elad. I'm like, oh, no, this is not going to go well. Yes, it is. It's pretty gnarly. And it's only going to get worse.

It may have 2028 presidential implications. Because let's say Elon, still feeling jaded about this sort of unceremonious exit, come 2028, you can maybe see a world where he holds that against, say, like a JD Vance and decides to endorse someone like a Ronda Santas instead, who interestingly has already spoken out against the big, beautiful bill in a big way. And if you remember, he was also Elon sort of like early choice in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, hosting that thing with him on X.

So just an interesting like smoke signal to be on the lookout for. He was everyone's early choice, I feel right. We all forget about this chapter of politics where everyone was like, who's oh, G. Santis, like this is amazing. Here we go. And then he just kind of collapsed during the during the race. I don't know about JD. JD's been trying to pivot towards sort of away from the tech right stuff for a while. More of a populist.

You know, Vivek also tried something like this, but it was much more cartoonish and nobody ever believed him. And then he tweeted out loud, something along the lines of like, we're better than you. We, like speaking of immigrants during the great H1B war of what Christmas 2024? Christmas! It was fucking Christmas. I was off.

I was like, this is not today, Satan. I didn't tweet one thing. People were emailing me and texting me, Solana, get in here, it's war. I'm like, I'm with my family, I'm drinking eggnog. I have had a long year and I'm not trying to fight about H1Bs right now. You guys can take care of it and I'll see you in the new year.

And now here we are in the new year and VEC has been vanished. You no longer exist in the public square. And Elon is next. That's the, that's the next great conflict. I do want to move on, however, to genetics and I promise there's a tie in here. So sit tight Riley. Yeah. Everyone's favorite, um, non-controversial topic. Um, a celebration of eugenics. Um, don't come after me. Um yeah, so key in of nucleus

genomics friend of the show, he's been on the pod before unveiled nucleus embryo this week, which is a gene optimization software that helps parents quote, give their children the best possible start in life long before they're ever born. Basically, for parents who are doing IVF, it allows them to get a closer look at the genetics of their potential offspring, so they can identify things like birth defects

or diseases before their child is born. But also apparently enables parents to select for other traits like intelligence or their height or their appearance, which prompted some controversy online. Liz Wolf, another friend of the show, gave a pretty measured, thoughtful critique. or their appearance, which prompted some controversy online. Liz Wolf, another friend of the show, gave a pretty measured, thoughtful critique. She tweeted, discarding embryos with traits you deem undesirable is not preventative medicine, unless preventative medicine means preventing certain people from ever coming into existence.

But you did have a broader critique online, some from the right, but kind of across the political spectrum, dismissing it as eugenics, like I mentioned, calling it evil, saying we're playing God, the usual critiques you would probably expect from something like this. I wrote a take this week on something similar, which was about using gene technology to eradicate mosquitoes potentially carrying deadly diseases like malaria, which the Washington Post framed as some big ethical debate. Seems like eradicating malaria might be not that big of a head scratcher.

But what did you guys make of this development and of eugenics in general? I did notice two interesting things. One is there's always a faction when this stuff comes out accusing the technology provider of literally murdering people almost. And there is like a philosophical distinction to be drawn between disvaluing or murdering like people with blindness versus like preventing blindness in the future.

The other interesting thing that happens is the tech company will do this apologist thing where they say we're not doing eugenics, we're preventing diseases and conditions that nobody likes and that isn't exactly true. Like the technology isn't precise enough to make that kind of distinction. Well, I would just say the bigger thing there is that that is eugenics. I think that our understanding of eugenics is the problem here.

We associate eugenics with Nazis killing people who don't fit a very specific phenotypical presentation and all this other shit. But when you go in to embryo selection and you say, I don't want my kid to have cystic fibrosis. I don't want my kid to have, I don't know, any Down syndrome. You know, we've been testing for Down syndrome for decades. That's fucking eugenics.

And maybe the uncomfortable thing here is, and maybe now I'm going to get demonetized and, Richard, you might just by extension by association with the pod. So if you want to dip out now, you might be able to. I think it's not that big of a deal, to be honest. I think it's okay to screen for things like Down syndrome. Sorry. And this will be a big divide. I mean, there are people who just, you know, against this, which I also understand. I'm not saying people are stupid for this. I think there's a moral thing here where some people just don't believe in that at all, you know?

And I remember my CCD teacher having a kid with Down syndrome and being like, she knew going into it. She did not care. You know, how dare someone suggest anything to the contrary, like this is the plan. All life is, there's a sanctity to all life. This is wrong. I would say that eugenics is not really about abortion.

Like eugenics is also about pairing people up together to procreate, so having a genetic test before you have kids or get married, where it's determined, hey, there's a one in four chance that you guys are gonna have a kid with cystic fibrosis and then you guys choose not to carry on, that's eugenics. Forcing people by law not to marry their cousins, something I'm highly in favor of.

Sorry, Islamic world, not a big fan of the cousin marriage stuff. That's eugenics. Like this is all eugenics. There's a gradient, of course, and I don't want to be pedantic about it. Obviously there's a difference between saying, you know, a bunch of Pakistani immigrants in the UK can't marry their cousins and saying, I'm going to genetically, you know, engineer

this in such a way as every small child looks like Brigitte Bordeaux. Though, I'm not completely writing that off. There's a difference there. But I think there's a gradient, like when you break it down, the average person will agree, I think, that it's just a giant gray area. It's just a little complicated. I feel like you're drawing a distinction

between eugenic principles at the hands of like a government trying to control the way that populations grow, who's allowed to procreate, who's not. Whereas this kind of eugenics is do parents have the right to optimize for intelligence? Like do parents have the right to optimize for height? And it really is a fundamentally different question than whether or not certain people have the right to exist. Well, no, it's not really. I mean, because Liv is right that if you're I will just take it to the down

syndrome thing. If you're saying that. Well, maybe I'm misunderstanding your point. You would put the down syndrome thing in the you're saying that, well, maybe I'm misunderstanding your point. You're, you, you, you would put the down syndrome thing in the same bucket as the choosing hider intelligence bucket. Yeah. Like I feel like there's just a difference between governments using tools and racist principles to control populations. I feel like there's a

difference between that and parents using technology to choose in some sense the future of their embryos. Okay, that I totally agree with. Yeah. Yeah, it's almost like there's a libertarian kind of argument to make for eugenics. Yeah. They would make that argument, by the way. The libertarian case. They would, they do, they have, they will again. Bridget, what do you think about eugenics in favor, I'm sure?

It's really, this always felt inevitable to me. You know, once they started editing with like CRISPR and all this stuff and look, I've heard horrific stories from people who had children that were born with genetic malfunctions and died and like horrible things that could have been avoided by knowing. And then we're able to have children because they were to do this genetic testing. We heard about this child that had their, you know, now they're fixing kids with genetic disorders with a

lot of this technology. Is that bad? Are we going to be able to do stuff in real life? It's the weird thing about tech, but like the argument, the playing God argument is always interesting to me because the lines where people draw around playing God with tech, it's like we're playing God with this, but not when we get on a plane, which seems a little bit like you could make the argument that we're playing God flying. So those like technological distinctions of when we say we're playing God and when we're not, are we playing God when we put a feeding tube in or are we playing God

and we take it out? Those are those are always this is an ongoing discussion we've we take it out. Those are those are always this is an ongoing discussion we've had in our society as long as technology has been around to save lives, keep people alive that probably should have died. And the genetic testing thing has I mean, I saw Liz Wolff's quote and love Liz and I don't but I also don't understand that distinction and maybe I don't know her whole philosophy enough because is she saying you just shouldn't discard any embryos at all? Because we do that all the time with IVF.

People, they say here are the A embryos, you've got some B embryos, we'll try with the A embryos first and then we have these B ones that maybe aren't as healthy. So would she not discard those B embryos or not use those? I mean, that's already happening. Maybe it's not as specific as like, I don't want blue eyes. That's kind of where people seem to fall on.

I don't know, there are a lot of people who are just against IVF period because of this reason. And you see them, they're sort of more and more present online now that nobody's being censored. It's like the rise of the people who are just against IVF period because of this reason. And you see them, they're sort of more and more present online now that nobody's being censored. It's like the rise of the people who are like, no, no, no, we're pro-life all the way. And we do understand there are lots of embryos made and we're against that.

And like people who have used IVF to have kids, oh well, my argument is always like, these kids wouldn't exist if it wasn't for IVF. So actually your argument is going to conclude in less babies being born, actually. And that just doesn't pass the sniff test for me. I understand the sort of moral complexity. I just disagree. I think it's better to have the kid. And I'm in favor of that. But, you know, the eye color thing is maybe where people,

another sort of more moderate level will go and say, that's not the same as saying that this kid has a really terrible disease or the embryo is not healthy or something. You're just doing something that's really superficial and potentially dangerous. When you start playing around with things, I saw people say, well, they're gonna pick their IQ or something, and we definitely don't know how to do that yet.

We have a lot of different genes that are associated with intelligence. We do not have a way to predict actual intelligence. We don't fully even understand how intelligence works. We strongly suspect that it's genetic. There are some people who would disagree. They're wrong. But I don't know.

I think that's where something's getting lost in the debate here. A lot of people are coming at it from just maybe they're just agreeing with it for different reasons and then the dumbest reasons are being used to sort of beat back against. But probably there's some principal path in here. For example, just the disjennix of it all. We published a piece not too long ago by Niraja. It sort of argued like or questioned what happens in a world where we're actively helping all of these people who are having trouble having kids have kids, you know, with IVF a few generations down the road that's highly disjennic and just our population is much less capable of

having kids. Antonio Garcia Martinez offered an interesting critique today where not his critique on bagels, which is really ridiculous. And we'll have to bring it back up with him next time. He's out there saying that New York bagels are bad because he got a bad bagel and he can get a better one in San Francisco by ordering one off. It was just like really a mess, totally off base there,

rage bait, but he is smart. And he says some smart things sometimes when he's not talking about bagels. ordering one off. It was just like really a mess. Totally off base there. Rage bait. But he is smart and he says some smart things sometimes when he's not talking about bagels. He talked about the sort of chaos, the volatile game theory that takes place when some traits just become really temporarily popular. Like, I don't know, a big butt or like a certain kind of height or something. And then like everyone looks that way. And the population wildly changes because of this weird mass psychosis thing that happened temporarily. You know, what does that do to the human race? Doesn't seem great.

All this stuff is new. A lot of questions we don't have answers to. Yeah, to that to that point, like if you're selecting for things like intelligence and, you know, I think that's where this becomes a little bit more nuanced, because I wonder if it has the potential to create sort of like a haves and have not situation, where people who can afford to, you know, give their babies like high IQ or whatever, if we do eventually get to that point, technologically, we'll sort of be able to have super babies, but the rest of everybody else will

sort of get left behind. So it sort of creates like a world of like two classes of citizens where one have like super babies and the other have like normal human DNA. That seems like that could be a potential downstream effect as well on this. I just was thinking like, I want a super baby. You know, my instinct is like, this all sounds creepy, dystopian, horrific. And there is that creepy uncanny valley feeling that you get when you hear about this stuff. But then there also does has always felt like this is somewhat inevitable. And then there's just that gut instinct of like, I want a super baby.

Who wouldn't want a super baby? Any sentence that's like the ethics of super baby. And I'm just instinctively on the side of super baby. I'm thinking, OK, but you said super baby. You said that we can have super babies. Who would say no to that? I want to just point out, we haven't talked about the mosquito thing at all.

Super related. It's happening at the same time. You have the Washington Post interrogating the ethics of eradicating a species. Now, you could snap your fingers. Then I'll snap it. Out of existence, the mosquitoes. All mosquitoes on the planet. If you could snap your fingers, Thanos snap it out of existence, the mosquitoes, all mosquitoes on the planet.

If you could do that, would you do that? I wrote a whole piece on this called Dominion where I applied what we're talking about as the gene drive technology to the Burmese python, which is an invasive species that has devastated the entire Florida, the wetlands. What is it called again? The wetlands of Florida?

The Everglades. The Everglades. We're talking like 90 plus percent of all mammalian species gone because of these things. It's one of the greatest ecological disasters probably in American history and it's kind of happening live right now. I've got to stop it. I think this stuff is good. I think the technology is good.

I think the ethics of getting rid of something that carries disease and really just wreaks havoc across Africa It's just obviously a slam dunk the hang up for a lot of people When I tweeted a bit about this this week is this idea of the circle of life really? I mean, they're not calling it that but it's like the Lion King circle of life You know every animal has a purpose and if if one is gone, the entire ecosystem dies or something like this, that's not true. Even a biologist will, some, even like an environmentalist who is an ecologist, I mean, they're not gonna say that's true.

You're talking about keystone species specifically, where it's like this one species has this massive impact on an entire ecosystem. But even then, keystone species go extinct all the time and have, from the dawn of life, extinction 99 point whatever high percentage of all species who have ever existed have gone extinct. This is baked into nature.

Nature will be fine. It's going to find a way. This is not going to end anything, I don't think. And yeah, I'm against that. I'm against this sort of fake Disney world framing of how nature works and all this stuff is perfect. Nature is pristine. Humans are ruining it.

We're playing God. Nature wants to kill you. That's what nature wants to do. Nature has always wanted to kill you. You could not live anywhere with a winter on this planet if you were not beating back against nature with fire and shelter and clothing. The history of people surviving in difficult areas is people playing God, quote, playing God.

That's how we are surviving. That is the way we're going to survive forever unless you're living what? On the equator in a jungle somewhere where you can pick fruit, I guess. And then they do have to deal with the animals who are also trying to kill you. So I'm in favor of that stuff. Do you think the primitive people were like, when they figured out how to make fire, they were like, there was a group that's like, you're playing God. They might have thought it was demonic. They were like, don't touch it, it's cursed.

Like there's always those people. And listen, also, this is why I'm like so fucking schizophrenic on this shit. They're right sometimes. Like we make mistakes all the time with science. Like there are clearly things that were a mistake that we should not have done. We just went through the whole COVID question

where at this point in the debate, I'm not even sure I should have taken the vaccine. I don't know, you know, it goes in two different directions. I can see both sides, but I think that in our caution, we should not just get rid of the entire concept of progress. I think the progress is good and there's a safe way to do this and we have to push forward. I feel like there's a parallel to draw with the IVF thing. Like you can play God intelligently or dumbly. Like when it comes to... Intelligent design.

Yeah. Like when it comes to editing nature, there have been human introduced catastrophes for hundreds of years that never should have happened. Do you remember the, you guys might've heard about the cane toads that were introduced to Australia? No, but I saw the Simpsons episode and that is like everything I know about the toad situation in Australia

I got from the Simpsons. Well, they were introduced to control an out of control cane beetle population. They didn't eat any of the cane beetles. The toads are poisonous to anything that eats them. And so the toad population has gone completely out of control. And then you have genetic engineering type startups

wanting to make genetically engineered birds to eat the cane toads. And it's just like, when are we gonna learn our lesson here? But you can introduce species intelligently, like we saw with the wolves in Yellowstone National Park. I just, all of these situations depend on whether or not you're being an idiot.

I'm listening, but you said, you said genetically modified bird that can eat the cane toad. And I said Tell me more Listening like then it's just gonna be a different kind of cane toad Then you'd no no, no you just introduce a genetically modified wolf that goes after the birds and you're good to go Right like ad infinitum until we ruin

the entire continent of Australia. Maybe. Well, fortunately, it's on an island. We just give it a shot and see. Aren't they trying to bring back dinosaurs and stuff? Again, I'm in favor of this. Everyone says, look at Jurassic Park. I learned nothing from Jurassic Park.

All I learned was, here's what I learned about Jurassic Park. I saw that movie and I said, well, it seems like it would have worked if you didn't put one giant, press this button and the entire world ends, switch inside of the park and put the fat sociopath in charge of that. And it's like, if you don't do that, everything's fine. But it seems to me like we should just fucking

do that without the switch. Like, it's just like that simple. There's a way we can do it. We're bringing back the woolly mammoth. Why wouldn't we do that? And I just think, at least let me do it on like an island or something, some like Arctic Island, we could start there. And I mean, these things were around

when the Egyptians were at the height of, I think it might have even been later than that. I think we had wooly mammoths. You know, there were the early Europeans were around during, I'm pretty sure, at the time of the wooly mammoth. It's it's there's they're closer to humans than we realize. I think that not much would change other than. I guess there's no this one is like, well, what's the reason?

Why are we doing this? I love every conversation of eugenics just ends with some discussion about Jurassic Park almost always. There is it is like the Rorschach test to like you see that movie. And what was your takeaway? And mine was just like, don't put that idiot in charge of stuff and it'll be fine. Mine was like, we use that that, you know,, nature always finds a way and it's just like, all right, well, nature's finding a way

to bring the dinosaurs back. You can make that argument. Right, people forget that we are a part of nature. We are a part of nature. We're natural, this shit's all natural. This is inevitable. That nature, mother earth called us forth and she said, go do weird science experiments.

Make this shit crazy, go ham. Like our brains she said, go do weird science experiments. Make this shit crazy. Go ham. Like our brains are natural. They're not unnatural. Everything we do is natural. The only thing we unnatural is like, if aliens came down and experimented with monkeys

and turned them into like a primitive new species that built the pier, I don't know. Maybe we're not that natural. Wait a minute. Yeah, I mean, there is an archer there. There really is. I know we all I mean, I listen, I go back and forth. I'm like, are we from here?

Are we Martian? Like, I don't know. That would be I would take things back at that point if we were truly an alien species. But there's no proof for that. Bridget, last thoughts on on on on the IVF drama, the Superbabies, the mosquitoes before we move on. The IVF stuff is interesting because it's a lot of the people who are against it are also like, the population is collapsing. It's like, well, which one is it, guys?

Oh my God. Yes. Just make up your minds. Do we want babies or not? We found a way to do this. And but yeah, I mean, the designer babies, again, creepy, also feels inevitable. I see a waymo and get a chill down my spine. Does that mean I'm gonna torch the Waymo and Literally a Waymo next to one of those delivery things yesterday in Austin and I was like, oh, I'm living in the future like Yes, it's creepy seeing a car driving around no one in it But it won't be creepy to my daughter, who will probably never need to learn how to drive.

I love the Waymo. The Waymo feels to me, what's cool about the self-driving car stuff is it reminds me a lot of- The Jetsons. Yes, but like, it seems like, it seems an unambiguous good, where a lot of this technology that was developed

over the course of the last 15 years, which is also fueling this entire conversation, didn't make our lives better. Social media did not make our lives better. I don't think anyone can argue that it's a net positive. It's like deeply, I think it has made us deeply unwell as a society. We know the keeping up with the Joneses

on steroids or something. I think Twitter crazily is actually the best form of them all right now, because it's not just like this image sharing, this viral video sharing. It's at least ideas, but that's changing too rapidly as they introduce the short form video stuff. But that stuff's all, I don't know, you're so ambivalent about it and it doesn't seem that good, mobile technology especially. But Uber feels great to me.

Yeah, maybe there's more traffic, but people can get a ride now and go anywhere and they don't feel locked into their homes. And I don't know, I look at that and I think that's great. I think Amazon's great. And self-driving car feels something like, wow, that's cool. That's some technology that I can say, this is going to help the world. It's so weird to think, though though that my kid could be just like, I want a tall basketball plant, you know, hitting buttons

like boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. If you look at the dashboard for this new company, it's literally like a menu of options including exactly this. High eye color intelligence with points to the decimal place being marketed. I just don't know what y'all want though, because we just had a whole discourse with women not wanting to date any man under six feet tall. And it's like, oh, that's really like totally fine.

And they're allowed to date whoever they want and blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, well, can a man live? We're trying to make them tall now. And you're like, excuse me, this is unethical. So what should all the shorties just like persist into sadness forever? Like you just want men to, I think that you all just want men to be miserable

is what I think. I'm calling up Candace Owens. I've said that I think this is creepy but inevitable technology. That is where I stand on it. I think it's like either you got to let women genetically engineer their men to be six feet or taller, or there's got to be a law that no woman is allowed to date a man more than two inches taller than herself.

I think those you got to... Like what are you talking about? No. I'm trying to bring balance to society right now. I think those, you gotta, girl, you gotta. What are you talking about? No. I'm trying to bring balance to society right now. Okay, my thing. You have to pick. No.

I love that you think that men are gonna be genetically engineering women to their design either. Like, they're, like, guys aren't gonna be like, big busted idiots. Who don't, who are mute. Men disproportionately value tall men also. I feel like women get the brunt of criticism for this,

but men also, including straight men, have outsized crushes on men who are over six feet tall. Well, what does that tell you? Because what that says to me, maybe, and I'm saying this as a man who's six two, perhaps there is a link between our tall kings and, I don't know, intelligence. Is there a gene for leadership? Like, maybe we are just superior and we should just... Is there a gene for leadership? Like maybe we are just superior and we should just. Like maybe we've learned through evolution to trust the tall kings because like

they know what's going on, right? Let it be known that the eugenics debate turned into a gender war in 53 minutes. That's a not take one. I think there might be an evolutionary thing to valuing men who can grab stuff from tall shelves. Either that or the cultural programming is just so deeply entrenched in everyone's psyches.

I mean, I think the most obvious thing would just be, we just came out of a world of savagery and bigger people could be more protective. And so everyone is sort of biologically like trained at this point to look around for the tallest person and be like, help us, we'll follow you. But then I think, does it makes, I mean, I have very sort of complicated like thoughts about this where, like, and we're all okay with that one, that one makes sense. But then it's like, but it takes more than height to lead a tribe, is it something, is height linked to something else?

We don't understand any of this stuff, which is kind of my argument against the genetic stuff, where I don't think that I would do this with my children because I don't think that we understand how any of these genes, most of these genes work together. Eye color we understand pretty well, it's like a basic planet square, right? I mean, there's some complexity there, but it's much more obvious. Something like intelligence, leadership skills, creativity, it's really complex,

and we don't fully know. And there's all sorts of stuff that the link between autism and, and genius, for example example is clearly there and we clearly don't understand it. So I would exercise caution personally. Right, like we don't actually know what necessarily causes depression. And this getting rid of depression, ADHD, other kinds of mental health conditions are on.

Many conditions, yeah, it's a red flag for me to be like we're getting rid of ADD. I'm like, well, that's not even real. So what are we talking about? What gene did you just delete? Right. But it's also how many deeply thoughtful, intellectually inclined, depressed people do you know?

Like we don't actually know. Yeah, all of them? Yeah. It's like, is intelligence and depression just basically correlated almost exactly? Yeah. I mean, it's the ignorance is bliss. So yeah, you're going to get rid of a lot of you're going to raise. And also, if you raise intelligence, are you now raising more and more depressed people?

Like if everyone's selecting for intelligence, do we now just have a population of massively suicidal smart people? And then also with with intelligence and success even, you can look what we know for sure is that people over a certain IQ way more successful that by far than people over under that threshold. And I think it's like 130 or something like that is where we're like peeking out. But if you were to just look at the IQ of, I don't know, like the top 1% wealthiest people in the country, would they be the top 1% smartest?

I don't think so. I think a lot of the top 1% smartest end up as like these silly academics who no one even listens to and they don't have that much money. And they tend to be really bitter because of it because they know correctly that they're smarter, but they're just not rewarded. And I don't think that much money. And they tend to be really bitter because of it, because they know correctly that they're smarter, but they're just not rewarded. And I don't think that is really even necessarily

about our society so much as it is about risk taking, perhaps I think really, really smart people see risk everywhere and they're correct about it, but that inhibits them from doing stuff. Man, we could talk about this all day, but we have to get to the Palantir stuff and move on to the ad reads. So Riley, Palantir stuff so we can wrap this segment.

Yes. The New York Times, they came out with an article this week on the Trump administration's plan to use Palantir to share data across federal agencies. Though their framing was interesting. They said, quote, Trump taps Palantir to compile data on Americans. That was the headline. And they added that apparently some current and former Palantir employees have been, quote, unnerved by the work.

This prompted a wave of backlash from the left. The author of the Times article talks about how Democrats are warning of Trump using Palantir to, quote, police immigrants and punish critics, but also push back from the right, concerned about like civil liberties, calling this all one big like deep state operation, sharing spooky edited graphics of Peter Thiel, of course,

the whole nine yards Palantir for their part is taking issue with the framing. In a great piece of marketing, they launched a contest where anyone who finds the most technical errors with the Times article gets a one-on-one interview with Alex Karp. So if anyone is interested in participating. Joe Lonsdale, Palantir co-founder, also said, quote,

Palantir is not a database, it's a platform created by thousands of the most talented patriotic Americans. And new PirateWire's intern, Jay, shout out Jay, also wrote a take on this echoing a similar note saying software doesn't kill people, people kill people. What did you guys make of the Palantir partnership? I still have no idea what Palantir is.

Well, you're in good company, many people do not. When I first joined Founders Fund many, like 15 years ago, now 14, 15 years ago, that was, I mean, most people in tech didn't really know. They just knew it was cool and like kind of secretive and elite. And back then it was a super popular company to be a part of. Listen, I think it's like- You still haven't told me what it is. I think people misunderstand B2B SaaS.

Your average readership doesn't know anything about this class of companies selling software to other companies. And within that category, government contractors are even more obscure and under the radar. So I think that people have anxiety over this company. They've never heard of collecting data about them. If you compare that to the relationship with Google, a consumer facing company, like there's some level of awareness. If I use Google Chrome, it's going to have my data. Whereas with Palantir, there isn't that same choice or relationship. So I do agree that the

New York Times piece framed stuff in a little bit of a spooky way, but I think for a general audience, Palantir's whole thing is a little bit of a spooky way. But I think for a general audience, Palantir's whole thing is a little bit spooky. But the general audience doesn't know or care about Palantir at all. It's the media that is perpetuating this myth of spookiness and they do know better or should, or they shouldn't be writing about tech. So what Palantir is a tool for making sense of vast amounts of data. Home Depot uses it, trying to figure out like which fertilizer to buy in which location and things like this.

The European government early on used it to help find child sex predators. And right now, our government is going to be using it to make sense of the data in the various siloed off places. We have everything from what the tax one to the healthcare stuff. It's like, like what the tax one to the healthcare stuff, it's like, this is the government's data and they're using a tool to make sense of it all, to like help navigate the hundreds of millions of names. And so if you have a principled opposition to the government collecting any data at all,

I'd be like, okay, I used to be an anarchist, I get it. But that's not what this is because you can make the exact same argument against Palantir that against like Excel or something. Oh, is Excel compiling the data of Americans or, you know, is Gmail a tool for spying because the CIA uses it or something or whatever email client they're using. It's like, of course not. The real reason they're going after Palantir, there are two reasons. One is the Peter Thiel Association slash Alex Karp Association,

and he's associated with the right, and so they want to fucking kill him. And number two, because it actually is very useful. It's a tool that's very good, and it's going to help the government do its job. So again, I feel like the correct criticism that I would accept is a criticism of the government itself, you know, and that's just a libertarian critique.

I didn't see in the story, like an argument that Palantir shouldn't be doing this. The framing is that this spooky company is compiling your data. It's like, of course they lie in the same way. It's not like an overt lie. It's a lie by, it's like, you just frame things in a certain way as to lead people to be upset. And you can just look at the reaction to know if they succeeded or not. Everybody is currently terrified about this brand

new thing that's happening. Why? It's because of the news. To your point, the word could was doing a lot of work in this article. Actually when it counted, there were six coulds and there was one could potentially. Anytime you see a could could potentially that is a sign that I think the reporter knows that they're making stuff up

I'm guilty of this myself But I think that it's not a kind of anti Government or anti-tech agenda I think that Maybe what's happening is there's a misplaced sense on the New York Times part of being a watchdog to tech in general. And in this case, Palantir does have my birthday, my first and last name, social security number, home address.

By the way, Bridget, they probably have yours too. They have. Who doesn't have that information? Yeah. I assume people on the dark web have it. I assume that. How do I get all these frickin' robo calls? Somebody was like, oh, if you get this,

it means your information's on the dark web. The telecom companies when after like the Black Lives Matter protests, they were releasing all this data about who was at these protests just based on the the companies that aggregate all the information from the telecom companies about who whose cell phone was there. Like I assume everybody has this. I mean, what hasn't been hacked at this point either in terms of like, it's not a great argument,

but I guess the fear that someone's collecting my data is like, okay, are we Uncle Ted in like the 90s right now? What is happening? This is- They're also not centrally like collecting this at Palantir HQ, it's being used. I just, for me, the, I don't think this even, none of this, this is just another example of the media going after

a tech company, whatever. The interesting thing to me about it is that where it became most controversial was not the left, but the right. That is for me, the main takeaway here, me about it is that where it became most controversial was not the left, but the right. That is for me, the main takeaway here that you have a lot of right-wingers who do not trust any associations with tech. And this was the story all across X. It was like these tech people want to control your

information, shut it down, like, oh, the deep state persists, and now Texan in the seat and all of this. And this is just the theme of the day, right? Obviously, this is the story, as Blake, you noted at the top of the show, where this is, the Trump and Elon are just, they represent both sides of this. Throughout the entire genetic conversation, we saw conservative people mostly

being super opposed to this. I mean, who knows what they're saying on Blue Sky, haven't been there in a while. They mostly being super opposed to this. I mean, who knows what they're saying on Blue Sky? I haven't been there in a while. They're probably also opposed to it because they're opposed to everything, but there is no support for this on the hard right. They just are naturally suspicious of tech people doing tech things. It's the progressive thing. I mean, that's what we're having a discussion about here.

And then Palantir is the exact same thing. It's across the board. You have a rejection of the tech, right? And I think that that's heating up. And I think that's gonna be the story over the next six months as, you know, all, there's a spotlight now on all of the tech appointed people. I wouldn't be surprised if they went after David Sacks next.

There is clearly a struggle inside of Washington that is reflecting this broader conversation that we're seeing. You have the Steve Bannon piece of this, which we've talked about previously where he's been against Elon from the very, very start. Why? You could say it's values things. And Steve talks about the fact that Elon has all these kids and whatnot. It's just as simple as power. Elon had a lot of it for a second, or certainly it seemed so, and Steve Bannon wanted it. The populist right wanted it. And I think maybe you could tell just by the way

that people pivot, for example, Vivek tried to pivot himself into populism. It seems like the populist right is the strength here, not the tech right. So probably tech's going to lose. I think Bannon also frames it as like on the Elon point, specifically on the EVs, like China produces all the EVs. So he's sort of been taking an anti-China position there.

But we just did a whole segment on government spending. Like you think, in the right being mad about government spending, you think having a massive data source that the government can use to like streamline data so that government employees don't have to go through like dusty binders anymore, you think that's going to maybe help with like clearing out some government waste? I would think so. So like to any right critics of this Palantir being used, like, hey, this could clean up a lot with the national debt. I mean, it also does though, in their defense, if we're gonna discount the stupid sort of like,

every software company is complicit, whatever, just ignore that, the sort of media left critique. The idea of making the government more powerful and more competent is a little bit frightening. You know what the New York Times is not gonna be complaining about? They're not gonna be complaining when the next Democratic president with the Democratic Congress

and Senate uses this technology to go after tax evasion and overnight every single person with even a slight error is nabbed. I mean, there are a million ways for sure that a more competent government is scary. And I think that for me is the conversation here that is worth having less so than like, is this some novel scary thing? Like it's only as scary as the government is scary. So then it's only as scary as the government is scary. So then it's very scary. So then it's actually terrifying. Shut it down, shut it down.

The tech ride has gone too far. We're all in danger. We gotta move on. We're not gonna read the ad today. We're gonna cut in my last ad because I wanna make sure that we have enough time to cover Greta Thunberg. Ad quick, we love you.

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The first is David Portnoy, our pizza expert, America's foremost pizza expert, and sort of his journey with the word Jew, and I guess bigotry. And the other one, of course, of course, is Greta Thunberg. Riley, take it away. Yeah, we have to frame this on the right light because we just did a whole segment on eugenics too. So, but Barstool Sports founder. Oh my God.

Yeah, I mean, right. Like we're in dangerous territory here to set this all up. He has been on the receiving end of some antisemitism. Someone at his bar in Philadelphia ordered one of those like cocktail waitress signs and had it say, F the Jews. That prompted a whole spat between Portnoy and the kid who ordered it. And now Portnoy has like, he does have like random kids coming up to him and saying, F the Jews. It's not a great look whatsoever.

But nonetheless, Portnoy had a bit of a bizarre, as the kids say, crash out in an interview recently with one of his own Barstool employees, where he like took things a step further, basically implied that all Jew jokes are like off limits while threatening to fire said Barstool employee. We can play the clip briefly. When does freedom of speech and that was your question? No, that was your question. Answer it. How many deaths? Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't have a good, I don't have an answer. Like how in America, American citizens. What's your answer to that question?

Now, now, now. We're there. So now what? So now what do we do? So maybe, maybe you stop with the fucking Jew jokes and act like it's not a big deal when someone does fuck the Jews in a bar. But then, meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum. And by that, I don't mean to say she's on the spectrum, although I think she's a you know, anyway, Greta Thunberg, the former climate activist turned Palestinian activist, has apparently set sail for a war zone, literally taking off on a boat off the coast of Gaza,

where her and her crew apparently planned to visit. Israel has said they plan to act accordingly, whatever that means. What do you guys make of either the day, Portnoy or the Greta Thunberg grand voyage? Yeah, I wanted to tee it up this way because the two stories are sort of like the two genders of the Israel-Palestine

Debate as it is spreading through American culture on the one hand you really have what looks like on the port in case I'm sorry just a lot of woke bullshit and telling people what they can and cannot say obviously it sucks What was said to him? I think it's really messed up. I have awful things that are said to me constantly and That is just the price of admission. When you are a public figure, I'm sorry. Like you don't get to decide what is a joke and what is not a joke and what can and cannot. Well, maybe you can say what's a joke, but you can't stop people from saying it.

Then on the other side, you have, I think like somewhat sociopathic behavior. I think there's like a blood lust on the side of the Ye Hamas people that I kind of can't get over and And then a kind of core clownishness like why is this girl on a boat? Why is she sailing to Gaza? What does she think that she's going to do? Obviously nothing. It's obviously not about Palestine It's obviously about her and that truly defines I think like the American leftist obsession with Palestine But yeah, both terrible kind of can't stand them

left his obsession with Palestine. But yeah, both terrible, kind of can't stand them. Don't even trust the Portnoy's Pizza recommendations, honestly, because he went to a place in my hometown and it was not that good. And my mom had a lot to say about it and I agreed. And that's what I have to say about that. Bridget, what do you think? Oh, Greta.

No, Greta. I just think she really likes sailing. I think that she's, I really have decided that, aside from Israel, Palestine, it really seems like she's found a way to combine the two things she loves, activism and sailing. And she sailed for the environment

and now she's sailing to Gaza. And I don't think you would find her digging out that city in Switzerland that was buried when the glacier collapsed because there's no body of water nearby. I think she's just it's also the most wealthy white girl way to protest. Anything is like you get on a boat and sail. Yeah, like the sail team, like what college even had a sail team? Yeah, you had'd be fucking rich.

You have to be like, that's Ivy League shit. Totally. It's such a like wealthy way to protest. What do you do? How are you protesting? Oh, I'm sailing. I'm just taking my yacht out. We're going on a boat trip. I mean, like she's an activist. She was like. This is her. This is her job now. And it's funny, the horseshoe theory around all,

so aside from that, jokes aside, the Israel-Palestine Gazette, everybody with a brain knew October 7th was gonna kind of break everything. I think if you had been paying attention long enough and we see this weird horseshoe theory where you have Andrew Tate being like, I support Greta Thunberg.

Like the only woman he's ever come out in support of, by the way, is Greta. And it's because she's sailing to a place where they would probably objectively, you know, throw her under a burka and like beat her up if she was she's not going to just be some like free Western woman. It's it is like too mind breaking for me because the horseshoe theory of like people. How is the left going to justify that to? Or they're like, yeah, I mean, Andrew Tate supports this person. And the anti-Semitism is weird and horrific, but then I also don't think that it does. And the people who are pro-Israel or Jewish, any favors to suddenly behave like this is a protected class that you cannot make fun of and is precious coming on the heels of 10 years of woke, which everybody is exiting. So that like the barstool thing, you're like, okay, so suddenly you who's been raging against identity politics for a decade is in favor of identity politics?

That's not gonna fly. It's just too obvious and too bad and no one's gonna stand for it. I think that on the Greta side, this tweet always comes up whenever she says anything stupid, which is often. It was when she predicted the destruction of the planet within five years and I believe it was posted in 2018.

And this is, she deleted it, and that's when it became news in 2023. So she deletes the tweet, it blows up, it's on the Daily Mail, it's like everyone is like, you idiot. And we could talk about how stupid that was. It was very stupid to share a quote like that and say that and believe that, and it was very stupid of us to all give her a stage when she was a child and put her in the UN and not have a serious conversation

about this and to create this puppet, this basically this like talking head for the NGOs that could not be attacked because of her age and her gender. Sure. But there is this thing about just attention in the modern age and being this like young activist. What if the environmental stuff is just not kicking anymore? There's like a really, it's kind of,

unfortunately quite cynical read of all of this, which is like, she had to delete that tweet. Like she knows that this stuff is not hitting anymore. And that shit that's really gonna work, it's the Palestine conflict. Like that's the thing that's landing. And that pivot, if you step back and kind of just wonder, like, I don't know, maybe she never really cared

about this stuff as much as she said, or maybe she does think that, maybe she believes that she did. Maybe she really believes that she cared about it. But the thing that was actually driving her was the attention. She hadn't been getting a hit of attention in a long time. People were not so excited about hearing about the melting ice caps when they were gaining ice. Like that is something that maybe drives someone in this economy. And by

that, I mean the attention economy to get on a boat and sail to Gaza and beg, you know, for some, for some new hit of attention, which here I am giving it to her. And honestly, like I'm going to be glued to this story. Israel threatened, I think, sink her ship. Like, I, I'm, you're not tearing me away from the TV. It's, it is current thingism, you know, the, the, this is the current thing. And it has been for a while, but you're right.

I do think a lot of these kids, I mean, that were forged in this fire of activism and attention, of course they're gonna, we see it with David Hogg too, just constantly trying to get attention. I don't understand the degree of negative attention on people like Greta and David. Are we like assuming that she doesn't care about either? No, I never thought that until she switched and started doing the current thing as the environmental discourse was dying down.

I never thought that she was gonna pivot and be a random activist for left-wing causes for the rest of her life. She's been a devoted, like obsessed environmentalist autist for the last last 10 years. And then she just changes once people stop talking about that. That's-

But it's not like she's flying to Gaza. Part of the whole sailing thing is because she doesn't believe in gas guzzling planes. They have not sailed once, by the way. I think they've used a motor most of the way there. The sails weren't even up in the interview. Where are the sales, Blake? Show me the sales.

That bitch is on a speedboat. Get out of here. I refuse. To side with Blake for a minute, I do think she cares. And if you are looking at this from kind of a leftist perspective, they look at Palestine as the thing that sits in the Venn diagram of they'll be like, you idiot, you fool. This is also environmentalism. Palestine represents colonialism. It represents occupation. It represents racism. It represents it is the thing. It is the keystone of all of the problems that they fight. And so they would argue that this is also part of,

like, her, she hasn't pivoted from environmentalism. Palestine is just a part of that. Well, and it's still, Greta's sort of an apologist for, like, Western society. So she's still doing that here. No, no, no, no. Her earliest stuff on the environment was not apologizing for the Western world. She was accusing the older generation

of going after the younger generation. She was very much framing herself as a victim and that was how all the news hit. I don't think so. I don't think that that's correct. I also don't think that it's not like, David Hogg is such a good person to bring up in the context of also Greta and be like,

why does everyone give him a hard time? It's not because of what they're saying. There are plenty of it. No one is going after Al Gore every single day. Part of that is just like he's not out there begging for attention every day. But a bigger part of it is like both Greta and David were created because we couldn't criticize them. David was the victim of a school shooting. And so for years he got a free pass and he could go out there and say whatever he wanted about politics and no one was allowed to challenge him. Because if you did, he got a free pass and he could go out there and say whatever he wanted about politics and no one was allowed to challenge him. Because if you did, he was a teenager who was a shooting victim.

How dare you? And then Greta was the exact same thing up until she turned whatever to 18 or 21, whenever that happened. Like, and even now it's like there's this weird pushback where you're not supposed to go after her for we're supposed to believe like she's one uniquely, uniquely persuasive and important to this activist cause. And two, she's beyond criticism. Like, why are we defending? Why can't we criticize her?

Isn't she patently not protected from negative criticism? She's gotten all kinds of negative criticism. Not now. But here you are saying, why are you criticizing her? Like, why is that? I'm not saying she shouldn't be criticized or she should be immune from criticism. I was wondering why there's no benefit of the doubt in the sense of maybe she does actually care about her activities.

Oh, well, who knows? Maybe she does. I'm saying it seems suspicious that she pivoted in the way that she did as the other conversation was dying to this new cause. When she hasn't done that for 10 years, she's been like really focused on the environment. But yeah, we just don't know.

I mean, she might care too. She, and believe that she cares. You know, this is part of just, I don't wanna like take her agency away. The problem I have with these arguments too, with David Hogg and with even Greta right now, is they're always kind of framed in this way of, like you were saying Mike, she was young,

David he was young, he was in school shooting and then you either supported him or you didn't care about dead kids. And this is the same like, oh, you obviously like dead kids. And this is the same argument that gets used a lot with Gaza. And I just resent it from activists. It's like no, no one likes dead kids. Like, that's not the binary that we have to. This is a toddler's framing of an argument.

And this is and I feel like even though Greta is not a kid anymore, they will often now use that framing even because now she's on her way to Gaza. So they still get to be like, well, obviously you don't care about that. Because I'm like, why this isn't you? You guys, this is not

it's like a toddler's response to to a conflict. I think in order to clear up some of the confusion here, we have to hear it straight from the horse's mouth and get Greta on the pod. I think that's the only way out of this debate. I mean, she's got a star link on her yacht. She's live streaming from her boat. Yeah.

She should hit me up. I'm here, Greta. I would love to know. The first question I have for you is how long have you been using those sails? Where are they? I don't see them. We were joking on, remember when she and Leo were photographed together for their environmentalism,

and we were joking on Dumpster Fire that Leo looked at her and was like, you figured it out too, huh? Like, I don't be on boats all the time and be pro environment. But also we were wondering about Greta's age and the fact that Leo was looking at her, that's how we know she's still under 26. I was curious until just now and we now know the answer to that. Well, guys, last thoughts on the sort of the two genders of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

My phone is blowing up, you guys. My phone is blowing up and it has been for like 10 minutes. And it's Elon Musk is tweeting, time to drop the really big bomb. Real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. This is a real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT. Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.

And Trump is tweeting that Elon is, he is, oh wow, it's a lot. He's tweeting, I don't know, there's a lot going on, guys. This is, this got real messy. In literally the time that we shot this, and you know how we opened and we were like, hey, this is going to get messy. It got exponentially messier. And he knew it.

Oh, no. What's that? Times live feed off top. Everyone, it is the clash of the Titans. We've all been waiting from the moment they got together. We knew there would be a breakup and the breakup will be scarier and louder than the sort of the wedding. This is gonna divide everything. And I can't wait to see how this turns out.

This is in RuPaul. They always do like these little monocle things. This is like, imagine me having a little pair of, what are they? Little binoculars at an opera. This is like, imagine me having a little pair of, what are they, little binoculars at an opera. This is me watching. What team are you guys? What team?

I'm Team America, baby. Oh, good answer. I'm team, let's get another dossier. I wanna start saying that word again. I'm Team America too, actually. That's what we were joking about on Dumpster Fire last week, we were like, you know, they're like, you're gonna wake up America, shh.

And now they're like, America needs to hear this. I think I have to go and look at Twitter. So it's been real folks. We'll catch you back here next week, where I am sure we will have, I don't know, hours more worth of drama to unpack. It might just be an entire Elon Trump episode. There's no way this doesn't alter the entire universe,

especially in tech. Everyone's gonna be targeted. Trump's not just gonna go down going after Elon. This is gonna affect Google. This is gonna affect Facebook. This is gonna affect every single venture capitalist associated with Elon. This will affect probably people in the administration

who are associated with Elon. So much for Doge. We'll catch you back here next week. Go touch grass. Goodbye. Thank you, Bridget, for joining. Thank you for having me. I love how you're like, go touch grass while we're all about to go refresh our screens obsessively. True.