Pod Save America - Impeach Pete Hegseth?

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

Senate Democrats signal they may be open to impeaching Pete Hegseth after the election if the House has the votes for it. Jon, Tommy, and Lovett discuss why that trial would be a great use of a new ...Democratic Senate majority, Trump saying that the American economy is "the best in the world" despite record-setting diesel prices and stunningly low consumer sentiment, and Mike Johnson's new claim that opposition to new data centers is "a Chinese psy-op." Plus, AI labs pause development of their most advanced models (over the president's objections), Ambassador to China David Perdue admits that Trump tried to sell weapons to Xi Jinping, the White House keeps running political ads with taxpayer money, and Fox News's Greg Gutfeld sounds off — on overweight sex workers.Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.To watch this episode with subtitles, click here and turn on closed captions (CC).You can request a transcript by emailing transcripts@crooked.com. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.

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Starting point is 00:01:06 in the How Did You Hear About Us Survey to let them know we sent you. Don't forget there's no safe like Simply Safe. Welcome to Podsafe America. I'm John Fabra. I'm John Lovett. Tommy Vitor. On today's show, we'll talk about Trump's last ditch effort to convince voters, Republicans care about the cost of living.
Starting point is 00:01:45 Democrats' big decision on a Republican Data Center bill, Pete Hegsafe facing GOP critics and a possible impeachment over the Iran War, and the White House spending your tax dollars on Trump campaign ads. All right, guys, we are five weeks out from Election Day, and the numbers that may end up being more predictive than any poll are these. $4.50 a gallon for gas, $6.50 for diesel. And consumer sentiment now at its second lowest level in history, lower even than the height of the pandemic or the 2008. financial crisis. And it isn't just Democrats, Republican consumer sentiment is now down 20%
Starting point is 00:02:27 since January, which does raise questions about whether this kind of messaging from Donald Trump is moving the needle. The best economy we've ever had, I've reduced the prices, but they like to say affordability, but they're the ones that cause the affordability problem. I don't have to know anything about you. Your 401K has doubled in a short period of time. You're twice as wealthy as you were a short time ago, every one of you, and that's because of me. Have a good time, everybody. You're twice as wealthy, and that's because of me, have a good time.
Starting point is 00:03:03 That's it. Yeah. That's the closing argument. So the White House is trying to limit the damage of what they've done in the last couple of years with an assortment of gimmicks now. Trump's reportedly still weighing an export ban on diesel, and in that appearance on the on Monday in the Oval, that was an announcement that a Minnesota company will spend $15 billion to build the new steel plant in Iowa that could create 1,700 jobs when it opens in 2030. You think that'll do it?
Starting point is 00:03:37 Well, I'll have the midterms in 2030, maybe. I think it's a smart idea in the short term in Iowa. I mean, I was talking to a friend in Iowa today who said, like, the Democratic reaction is, do you guys remember when Trump brought the CEO of Foxcon to the world? White House and announced they would open a plant for like 13,000 to make 13,000 new jobs in Wisconsin in 2017. They're going to make like LCD screens or something. Shocker, a decade later.
Starting point is 00:04:01 Didn't pan out. It's more like I think Microsoft now owns the land and it's just data centers. So it's kind of exactly what you'd expect. But my buddy and I was said that this was getting a lot of press, making headlines, like the public statements from people like Rob Sand or like, it's a promising idea. I want more details, stuff like that. So they're kind of welcoming it. But ultimately, I think the price of diesel is what people in Iowa are really focused on right now.
Starting point is 00:04:25 It's like $6.58. It's about double what it was this time last year. They're about to go into planting season. So Iowa farmers are really, really pissed about that. I don't think an announcement of one potential factory by 2030 is going to deal with that. Yeah, there's a poll about how many people believe they were going to get the $5,000 check. Turns out not many. Not many, right?
Starting point is 00:04:48 So you got to assume people aren't really idiots. Right. People can look and be like, hey, it's really cool that we're going to have a new steel plant in Iowa. What a great idea. But it's not until 2030. And also, why do I think that that's something I should thank Trump for? Right. And I think people don't believe Donald Trump anymore.
Starting point is 00:05:05 Even people that we would say, oh, like, we wish they'd been credulous for far less time. Like, it is happening. And so just, like, you can say that that's like the floor, right? Like, how many people are going to believe his promises at this point? and it's just sort of vanishingly few. So I'm sure people would appreciate a new steel plant, but it's a kind of believe it when I see it situation. It certainly doesn't change the fundamental economic conditions,
Starting point is 00:05:27 which are not just, by the way, like, proceed this election. Like Donald Trump promised not just to not just to kind of not have diesel prices go through the roof, but to address like, you know, decades of decline and years of rising prices. He's done the opposite. How excited do you think Ashley Hinson was to be standing right behind Donald Trump for when he said he gave her one of his famous out-of-touch sayings for the record books, Best Economy Ever, as she's running in a tight race against Josh Turrick and Iowa. Now she gets a video of her in the Oval behind him where he said,
Starting point is 00:06:00 Best Economy Ever, you're all richer. I think she said something funny, too, like, we support your agenda, sir. Thank you for your agenda, sir, or something like that. He also promised, I think, to go to Iowa to campaign for her, which she was like, white knuckling it. He's going out. Yeah, he's like, hey, everyone, this is Ashley. She's in a tough race.
Starting point is 00:06:18 She's awesome. Best economy ever. I'm going to go out and tell everyone in Iowa that when I came being with her. Donald Trump giving rally speeches at this point is the equivalent of like when a dog brings you a bird. You know, it's like for these Republicans. He's like, look, look, I'm here with that bird you want. It's like, fuck, I don't want that bird. Get out of the house.
Starting point is 00:06:36 You know? What about this diesel ban? Pros, cons. And does it have any impact? Political impact, do you think, before the military? Maybe short term. I mean, it sounds like they're preparing or proposing a 90-day export ban, which in the short term would mean there's more supply, which presumably would bring down prices in the short term in the U.S. But long-term, it creates a bunch of challenges that could increase prices
Starting point is 00:07:04 permanently or not permanently for the long run. So I don't know. I think most of the industry hates it. People think it's kind of bullshit. Maybe it'll work and drop prices a little bit. But again, I was about to go into a month-long harvest season with diesel prices at 6.58 a gallon in Sioux City, Iowa. Like, if they were going to do this, why didn't they do it a month ago? Five weeks we got until the election. And like, I don't, I'm expert enough to know what the like short-term effects of a diesel export ban would be. But why are we in this mess? Well, because the president is a capricious buffoon who has introduced incredible instability in trade in the Middle East.
Starting point is 00:07:46 East, in the supply of oil, just adding one more layer of unpredictable market forces, long-term help, of course not. What it does in the short-term? Who knows? But it's all being swamped by the fact that there is an ongoing war in the Middle East he can't get us out of. So whatever gimmicks he tries to pull between the next five weeks, I can't imagine to making that much of a difference. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:08:10 I think, I mean, look, we've all been there. you're trying to solve a problem that people don't perceive that you've succeeded in fixing the economy or that you're fixing it fast enough. And so you go to the policy people and you're like, what can we do to sort of move the needle here? Perhaps with a phone and a pen. They throw a bunch of stuff. Well, yeah, ideally you'd start these things a year in advance of the election. And you'd also do something that maybe actually made a difference.
Starting point is 00:08:39 and at the very least, you do stuff where you're like, the way that you frame it is, you know, and we're not there yet, but we're fighting hard to bring down costs. We're going to take on these companies, their price got, or whatever you say. This message is so inconsistent that it's like, we're going to do this thing. We're going to a diesel ban and we're going to open up this thing. But also it's the best economy ever and you're all rich. It doesn't really make a lot of sense. Yeah, he's always selling. It's always marketing.
Starting point is 00:09:02 But, I mean, like a lot of people listening are like, why do I care about diesel? Like, diesel increases the price of everything. It's trucking. It's freight trains. its ships, like meaning like small boats, it's farming and tractors and construction, its home heating prices in the Northeast, it's military vehicles.
Starting point is 00:09:19 Like this is touching all these different parts of our economy. And we export like 1.25 million barrels a day, so you could, I guess, stop doing that, but it's not going to increase supply that much. No. Speaking of fuel, you know what powers crooked media? What powers crooked media, John? Our subscribers.
Starting point is 00:09:37 Oh, yeah. Yeah, which is, a good reason to head on to cricket.com slash friends to become a subscriber today you get ad-free episodes of all your favorite podcasts and you help support independent pro-democracy media of which we are one of the few
Starting point is 00:09:51 outlets left. And that engagement it's a renewable resource. Republicans in Congress are also hard at work at pretending they suddenly care about the cost of living. This week the Senate will vote on a bill that would direct states to quote consider consider requiring data centers to pay for their own energy costs.
Starting point is 00:10:13 Just think about it, you know. Ponder whether you might be willing to gently nudge AI companies to maybe possibly pay for the vast amount of electricity that they consume. That's what this bill does. It's brought to you by Ohio Republican John Hustead, who has been getting hammered by Sherrod Brown for giving $2.5 billion in tax breaks to data centers in Ohio alone, which the Republican Senate campaign committee has said
Starting point is 00:10:39 is an, quote, anchor hanging around Hughes-Head's neck. They said it's the biggest threat to his reelection in a very close campaign. I would love to hear what they think about this new data center soundbite. We just got from the Republican Speaker of the House. Let's listen. I've had several tech executives and lawmakers to be clear
Starting point is 00:10:57 say that the information against data centers, that pushback against data centers, that is coming from China. Yes. It is a Chinese sci-op. I really believe that. That's not a conspiracy theory. I think they're pushing those ideas.
Starting point is 00:11:08 It's not a conspiracy theory. How, like, someone unpacked this for me. If he sincerely believes that, what is, like, one of the pieces of evidence that this is a Chinese have? Where does this coming? This is just a guess. But I think what they would say is, so there's some people who are upset by data centers, but then, you know, the Chinese are pushing, like, fake accounts, Pup Sock Puppet accounts.
Starting point is 00:11:31 They're, like, making things go viral. I don't know. Maybe they're, they're... It's crazy. Like bot farms, I guess. I guess there's like, like, the word siap, like, we just got to, everyone stopped using it. It's like become just sort of like, just the things you don't like are all siops now,
Starting point is 00:11:47 fine, whatever. I think people got like, think people got bored using the word conspiracy and they just said it. Right. Yeah. So. Sounds cooler, I guess. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:54 Greg Abbott has shifted on this. We're just in Texas talking about this. A lot of Republicans realize, like, there's headwinds against it. Maybe it's true, right? That, uh, in the same way that Russia didn't invent America. political dysfunction, but took advantage of it by fanning the flames of it. Maybe China does see advantage in kind of drumming up antipathy towards AI in the United States. It wouldn't change the fact that these companies have gone about this in the most ham-fisted and kind of arrogant way that
Starting point is 00:12:23 dismissed the concerns of people and that they've tried to buy and sell politicians to get around persuading people that they might want these data centers in their communities. The objections are very real from people who, A, don't want these things in their backyard, and B, have come to expect that the benefits that accrue to the largest and most profitable corporations in the world do not kind of redound to the benefit of the broader community. And that is not something China could convince us of whatever he is seeing or claiming to see or wanting to believe is true. So Republicans, they have recognized that they have a data center problem. Many of them were championing, you know, data centers for years now and offering all kinds of tax breaks and
Starting point is 00:13:08 incentives also, to be honest, some Democrats too. And now everyone realizes there's a problem because all the polling has come back and it's unbelievably unpopular. And so they're deciding they're trying to do something belatedly. So the House passed a version of this Houston bill. And it passed almost unanimously, 417 to 3. But the Senate Democrats, then blocked John Thune's effort to pass it by unanimous consent. And Chuck Schumer called the bill of fraud, though as of now, we're recording Monday, the caucus still seems to be mulling over whether to try to deny Houston the points and open themselves up to being labeled obstructionists.
Starting point is 00:13:51 So what do you guys think? What do the Senate Democrats do here? So first of all, it's not clear that this would do anything for Ohio, right? Ohio has a different set of rules that already go beyond what these voluntary rules would be. So he's just trying to do a stunt messaging win that he can go campaign on. And I don't see why you would help a Republican fighting for his life in the final home stretch before an election get a fake victory that he can go run around the state pretending proves that he's some advocate. So like that's where I would start. If that's about trying to have an alternative bill,
Starting point is 00:14:26 about just voting this thing down and trying to tell the story. I actually like I don't know what the right thing to do is, but it is clear that the idea that you, like, whatever the vote in the House, because this bill doesn't do much, so it's an easy yes, whatever, like the question is what you do right now. And if sure, it certainly wouldn't be helpful to Sherer Brown. So I don't know why we do Houston's politics for him. I just find it hilarious that like the Houston campaign thinks that voters are ever going to learn about a procedural vote on a bill that does nothing in the Senate about a data center. It just feels like such a dated view of politics when you could really actually inform people about these issues or votes and make,
Starting point is 00:15:02 it's salient and care. I think people are really mad about the economy. They're really mad about data centers. They're pissed at the people in charge for allowing them to get there. And they know that some bullshit vote in Congress is probably not going to help them one way or the other. I think you're right. Democrats should not give him a win here. But like it's like it feels like a bit of a Hail Mary. Yeah, I guess I guess the argument would be if they pass it through the Senate, then Trump signs the bill. And then Trump does a big signing ceremony thing. And they all pretend that they did something, even though, again, it's requiring states to consider doing this. I think the Democrats should do it.
Starting point is 00:15:37 So there is an alternative bill. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, centered from New Mexico, has a competing bill that would create actual federal requirements for large load customers to bear the cost of infrastructure necessary to connect them to the grid. So it would actually make them pay for the electricity they use. and when Heinrich tried to pass his tougher bill by also unanimous consent, the person who blocked it was Bernie Moreno, also of Ohio. So I would just, I mean, I don't know how all the procedures work here, but Schumer should just, I assume at some point they'll get to try to put an amendment on the bill, and they should just amend the bill to be like, oh, no, no, no, instead of consider, you must require.
Starting point is 00:16:17 And then when they say no to that, say, well, Republicans voted against requiring data centers to pay for their electricity. And then it seems like the whole thing blows up in their faces, but I don't know. Potsave America is brought to you by Bowie. Electrolite drinks are all the rage these days, but most of them are just natural flavor and stevia mixed with table stall. Bowie is different. Bowie. We should bring some buoy in for the next time we do the adteries.
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Starting point is 00:18:04 It takes two minutes to apply. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. We're lucky to live in a time when seeking help for mental health struggles is no longer stigmatized, but it's still much more difficult to obtain than it should be. BetterHelp makes it easy to get started. Answer a few questions, get matched with a therapist based on your needs, and switch therapists at any time if it's not the right fit. Better Help therapists have at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience.
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Starting point is 00:18:49 It says we're lucky to live in a time when seeking help for mental health struggles is no longer stigmatized. Well, we also live in a time where you probably need therapy. I mean, everyone has forever, but these times, a lot happening out there. A lot happening. If you're reading the news, you're probably needing some therapy. Yeah, you got the AI chat bots maybe giving you some therapy. Yeah, how about some real bots? Yeah, I mean, some humans.
Starting point is 00:19:10 Some real humans, they're trained and educated, at BetterHelp, and all you have to do is you can do it from the comfort of your home, which is great. So, sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash PSA. That's BetterHELP.com slash PSA. Reminder that the reason AI companies keep racing to put data centers all over the place is so they can continue developing new AI models that according to the AI companies themselves may lead to human extinction. Real win-win type situation there. Axios reported over the weekend that OpenAI and Anthropic are now investigating tens of thousands of incidents where their AI models went rogue, bypassing guardrails, escaping sandboxes, and attempting to hack websites, including now we know
Starting point is 00:19:56 the Australian government's websites, and they tried to tamper with federal government websites in the United States. Both companies have now said that they've paused either the development or training of their latest models. And on Monday, Florida's Republican Attorney General asked a state court to force open AI to pause development. But Trump and most other Republicans are still against any kind of AI regulation whatsoever. Same with AI leaders like NVIDIA's Jensen Wong, who had this to say about dealing with runaway AI on Monday. We hope it's an engineering problem. I believe it's an engineering problem.
Starting point is 00:20:34 I know it's an engineering problem. And we all need to hope that it's an injury problem. It's not an injuring problem. It's not solvable. Oh, okay. Hope, need, I know. Pick aside there, buddy. Did you guys hear him on Ezra's podcast?
Starting point is 00:20:47 I have not listened yet. I am going to listen to it. It's troubling, frankly. It's really, he's like, he tries to be like the sunny office. But you're just like, wow, you're really out to lunch on this shit. Or you're just trying to fool us all. Yaddi, yada, y'all is around a lot of important factual points. He's like, well, if I were a, you know, open AI CEO, I would simply not deploy into the world unsafe technology.
Starting point is 00:21:09 It's like, well, actually the hugging face incident happened to the testing face dickhead. This is. That's the problem. Dude, they're all doing this. Like, this is the all in guys all do this too. They're like, just don't ship it. Don't ship it. But they hadn't shipped it.
Starting point is 00:21:20 But they hadn't shipped it. The big takeaway from me from like the hugging face in like this endless series of announcements about new hacks and websites. government is that like open AI is a totally irresponsible and reckless company and this is the kind of shit you'd expect from like a couple of research assistants at a university like messing around as grad students not the most valuable company in the world creating a technology they tell fundamentally reshape life as we know it so like hopefully that this current pause is actually going to be a real one and not two weeks like last time was supposed to be right we don't do we know how long they paused around hugging face i think it was two weeks yeah and it we don't even like
Starting point is 00:21:56 look, they keep putting out these announcements. We're pausing testing. We're pausing development. But all of this is just taking their fucking word for it, which is not what we should be doing. And the Jensen Wong comments there, they get at a pretty fundamental debate about AI. I was talking to Jason Goldman, who we used to work with at the White House of Tech Advisor to Obama. It's like, is AI a normal technology or is it something new and different? If it's a normal technology, you can use current skills to manage it and put guardrails around it,
Starting point is 00:22:22 even if it's transformational like electricity was. if it's not, we need new science and new scientific advances. And until we have those, it's not going to be safe. And for what it's worth, like Dean Ball, Stafford Open AI, who worked for Trump, tweeted, I think it's primarily a science problem and that it's possible to make progress in that science. But no, while there is engineering we can do today to improve AI safety, it is not fundamentally an engineering problem. So there's a lot of like, sometimes we treat it like a normal product. Sometimes we treat it like an abnormal product, as you're saying.
Starting point is 00:22:58 And if you just, like, put a box around it and just, like, call it. They've been trying to do that. Well, right. But, like, forget how it does what it does. That it's a large language model, that it's this new and genuinely novel, innovative technology. And just, like, think of it as just a tool or a utility that's been developed. Like, look, I don't know how software works when it's normal software. It just does stuff, right?
Starting point is 00:23:19 And you found out that this company made this software, and it is doing all of these crazy things. You'd say, well, you, that's irresponsible. You are responsible for what your software is doing. You've made this software. You clearly don't understand its risks, and you're allowing it to do all of these dangerous things. And then that quickly goes into the ways in which it's abnormal, which is, well, it's agentic and is it conscious?
Starting point is 00:23:40 Is it its own thing? Who is responsible? You are responsible, right? Like, we're not going to resolve the definition of consciousness and certainly this idea of a line. Like, I wish everyone was a little bit less confident about their opinions about, like, the nature of consciousness and what it means to be aligned. with humanity. That doesn't even matter. That has no bearing on this whole debate.
Starting point is 00:23:58 Just like, are, you are responsible for what you are programming. It is programming. It is, it is code, whatever else goes into it that makes it novel. You are responsible for it. You are aware of the risk. And what happens now, you are culpable in the same way that if you were shipping nuclear material across the country and slowly but sure, you're like, oh yeah, a little fell out in Detroit. Actually, it's been dropping off on all of Route 66 all the way or across the country. Whoopsie Daisy. we're going to take a two-week break from shipping nuclear material. But I think it's even a little more complicated because whether or not it's like conscious or alive or as feelings in that whole debate, there is like the critics of AI call it a stochastic
Starting point is 00:24:34 parent, which means it just like repeats back stuff we said, but in a randomized way. And like that has been proven wrong. That has been true for years. It's a very powerful stochastic parrot, but it's stochastic in that it involves like unpredictability in random variables in chance and probability. In other words, they create a thing. they create the large language model, and they don't really know how it works, and they don't know what the outputs are going to be, and all the weird things that's going to do. And so if that is kind of
Starting point is 00:25:01 the threshold situation, like how do you create safeguards for something that is so inherently unpredictable and that you don't really understand? This is why, and look, you get this from the right and you get this from some people on the left, which is like, these people should just be more careful and we have liability laws on the books and we should just be holding them responsible and they shouldn't ship the product and all the kind of stuff. It's like, no, no, no. First of all, it's not about shipping the product yet. They're trying to test these models and what they thought was a sandbox and they thought they were doing it, right? And they fucked up. And clearly, like, even when they have the sandbox right, it still get out of the sandbox
Starting point is 00:25:41 because some people were like, well, they didn't set up the sandbox correctly. It's like, no, no, no. On Hugging Face, they did set up the fucking sandbox correctly. and it's still fucking got out. So they don't, the problem is they think they're being careful, and then they do a test, and then they have the rogue agents that escape everywhere, and then it's mayhem. So, like, what do you do about that?
Starting point is 00:26:01 You can't just have companies be like, well, I'm going to try to do better next time. That's why you have independent regulators. You have people in the companies watching them, watching the testing. You slow it down even more. But you have to have everyone slow it down at the same time, because you can't just have a couple companies saying,
Starting point is 00:26:16 like, well, we're going to slow it down because we've said it voluntarily, but like Mark Zuckerberg's going to do whatever the fuck he wants and Elon Musk's going to do whatever the fuck he wants. Like, you can't have a situation like that either. Like, yeah, well, it's also like, why is all this happening? Well, because they're balancing safety against their aggressive need to win. And clearly they're, that is, that is, you know, too heavy on the scale. And by the way, like put aside the frontier models and what happened with Hugging Face and all
Starting point is 00:26:43 of this. That's what's happening with the actual deployment of the. the models for customers. They're having terrible consequences. You guys talked about this last week that a model was helping somebody plan a mass shooting. You have teachers like high school teachers across the country. Kids are turning in a slop. It is taking the teachers hours to figure out just what's real and what's not. It's like having these terrible downstream consequences, which they will claim to care about. But the reason they're pushing these models out anyways, is because they're trying to make money.
Starting point is 00:27:15 They're trying to prove that this is a viable business. So they're all weighing their own sort of corporate goals against the reckless and dangerous consequences of moving too quickly. And they are choosing to do this too quickly. And assuming that because the technology is novel, because they can claim it's agentic, because it's stochastic, whatever they're going to claim about it, that somehow they're not responsible.
Starting point is 00:27:38 And we just have to assert from the beginning that they are responsible for the consequences of the software that they are putting into the world, regardless of the philosophical rhetoric they put around it. Right, but it's, I've heard this a couple times. They're like, well, you know, airlines wouldn't just put planes in the sky that they know we're going to fall out of the sky because that wouldn't be economically advantageous for them.
Starting point is 00:28:02 It's like, right, it won't be economically advantageous for them if their planes fall out of the sky. But then the planes will have already fallen out of the sky and the people will be dead. So, like, you can say you must be responsible for your, things. Like that's, yes, of course it's important to have liability laws in place. But like, that doesn't alleviate you from, alleviate the rest of us from trying to regulate it on the fucking front end. Also, plane crashes aren't, you must be responsible for your model. Like,
Starting point is 00:28:26 yeah, okay. That's why we have regulations because we don't trust them to be responsible. And also plane crashes aren't catching. Right. You know, like the nuclear comparison, whatever, but like the idea, the idea that like, whatever the benefits that they, like, there is a serious and real small risk of something quite catastrophic. We all agree, like whether people want to be confident about denying it or confident about saying it will happen. It obviously exists. Whatever share you claim it exists, it exists. And the goal is to push that, to get away from that risk.
Starting point is 00:28:57 And they are just not serious enough about what that requires and not honest enough about why some of these other, like, analogies don't apply. Because we don't get to go back and fix it. If we cross some threshold, we didn't realize we crossed. The companies aren't filled with perfectly rational economic actors. They're human beings that screw stuff up and make mistakes and are like venal and dishonest sometimes. I think what drives me a little crazy about all this is just it feels like we're going too fast for no good reason. Yeah. What is the downside to waiting six months?
Starting point is 00:29:30 There's not some, China, China. There's not some cancer cure right here that we're about to pull down. If only we can get to AGI, it is the gerbil, gerbil, China. bullshit. And then, you know, it's like, okay, so they beat us. They have a slightly better clause. No one even knows what they're beating us to. It just, it makes me crazy. Because no one can actually define what AGI is or superintel. Like, so it's just crazy, you know. Pod Save America is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter is everywhere these days. Why? Simple. That's where top tier candidates are. Just like you, your ideal hires are
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Starting point is 00:32:17 Trump very late. And so he was having dinner with Dario starting at 10 p.m. Oh, buddy. So Dario, you can't get me out of the house after six. 10 o'clock dinner. You're an old man. I ate dinner after eight. I feel weird for three days. But beyond that, don't you guys just, wouldn't you kill to be like a fly on the wall to this dinner with Dario, the biggest fucking nerd computer guy, right? And he's sitting there with Donald Trump at 10 o'clock at night having dinner at the White House? What did they talk about? The same garbage you hear at a rally.
Starting point is 00:32:48 I'm sure he was doing the weave ranting at this poor guy, just sitting there, sign silence. Apparently it works because now there's like an AI meeting at the White House this week, and Dario finally got invited, even though he's like been pursuing non grata there. I think there's a lunch with all the tech CEOs on Tuesday. I think you probably couldn't invite Amade to the China state dinner because there's a scheduling. Well, no, they also oppose. They're in favor of all these export controls on stuff to China,
Starting point is 00:33:12 the Chinese would probably hate him. Like, I think it's probably good that they're talking. Oh, yeah. There's not this like Cold War. It's also from Trump's point of view, it's an indication that the government really likes Anthropic and uses their code across the national security space and are probably pretty hooked on it. So it does seem like the Cold War maybe is ending between those two. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:31 I will say, like, what is China going to beat us to? Like, I do like, no, we don't want a Chinese authoritarian government to have the most advanced. surveillance technology to kind of surpass us in these technologies and kind of hit some kind of threshold of growth that we can't catch up to. Like I get that. Going to steal ours anyway. But then, but then it's like, I don't know. I've been thinking like more like, okay, there's actually, we're competing against two countries. One of them is China and the other is the artificial intelligence country that doesn't yet exist. And we're just trying to win against both of these countries. Speaking of philosophical arguments. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:06 That's how I think about it. So anyway, good luck to us. One thing the Senate's not voting on this week is the Pentagon funding that Pete Hegseth keeps pushing. He wants a budget increase of more than 40% plus another $88 billion to cover the Iran war so far. It's no longer just Democrats who are opposed to this funding. Here's the latest semaphor headline, quote, Republicans fuming at Hegsef as war costs build. They're also pissed at our Hegzhe's handling the war. NBC News broke the story on Sunday evening that eight Marines on an American ship were wounded by an Iranian missile strike earlier this month that the administration just didn't bother to tell anyone about. The anger at Hegsef is so intense that Democratic senators are now thinking that if their House counterparts
Starting point is 00:34:51 want to impeach Hegsef, a reminder that Thomas Massey is already forcing a vote on this, that the Democratic Senate will not stand in the way. Who's up for a Hexsaf impeachment, huh? Good use or bad use of a congressional majority? I'd say, first of all, if you have worth reading the Massey impeachment recommendations because, boy, are they persuasive. He makes a real good argument. I think there's a really, it is, it is the smartest to me version of an impeachment case to basically start with Hegset. First of all, he is been one of the biggest advocates for the war in Iran. He is like the face of whether it's the extraditional killings or this sort of idea of take no mercy and sort of violate the rules of war in Iran. I do think the war is incredible.
Starting point is 00:35:41 popular and to make him the avatar for it is a good idea. Like, I'm open to arguments against it, but I'm like, fuck yeah, impeach this asshole. Yeah, I mean, asking for $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon is wildly unpopular. I think 60% of the country thinks that's too much money in recent polls. So, you know, I'd like to highlight that. Nate Silver's polling average has the Iran war at 58% opposed, 33% are in support of it. But even that, I don't think gets to the extent of how unpopular are the war is because of the way it's driven up gas prices and diesel prices and like inflation everywhere.
Starting point is 00:36:16 So I hope Democrats do a ton of oversight hearings about the Iran war to drive attention to it. Because I think they're lying about the casualty count. I think the Pentagon is lying about the cost. I think they're lying about, or at least covering up the amount of damage to like bases in the region. Theoretically, impeachment is a better way to get like documents and subpoenas and stuff in practice. They'll just resist them every request. So like, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:36:40 I don't know whether that's better. than impeachment is better than just a straight kind of set of oversight hearings, but something. They should absolutely do something. It should be top of the list. Yeah, I guess the question is, so like, what's the ultimate goal? Ultimate goal is to end the war. And so say Democrats win the election take back Congress and now Trump does what he also said. There was reports over the weekend today, I think, too, that, you know, Trump has been telling people like, oh, maybe after after the election, he'll resume the war in Iran, right? He's been saying, by the way, he's been saying that repeatedly
Starting point is 00:37:14 and saying that he's going to get a deal with Iran after. Right, yeah, so he's going to keep bombing and get a deal. But so say Democrats win, and so then what are the options to try to end the war? Well, the first, the low-hanging fruit will be they'll all do the war powers resolution again, and then they'll pass the war powers resolution, and then Trump will say, fuck you, I don't care. I'm not going to abide by that. So then I guess the question is, can you do something,
Starting point is 00:37:39 with funding, cut the funding off for the war, or you have the Higgs-Seth impeachment. I guess those are your two options. And ideally you'd wanna sort of cut funding off, if you could, but like that's probably a hard vote too. But, you know, one of those two things I think that Democrats should probably pursue. Because if you run on, we should end this war,
Starting point is 00:37:57 then, you know, people are going to expect that you at least do everything within your power to try to end it, even though they will know that Trump is still president and you know, you don't have full control over it. Yeah, not to mention one of the reasons, one of the one part of the massy impeachment document is the fact that we went to war without congressional authorization and what these funding measures are are authorizations after the fact.
Starting point is 00:38:18 So like you have to interrogate that. And part of that is, yes, put the Secretary of Defense on trial to find out what was going on behind the scenes with these extraditional killings. What was going on when they decided to launch this war? Why did their justifications change so much? Like all of this is a tool to unlock a lot of the kind of. information that to Tommy's point, we just haven't had access to, including their deliberations and the fucking 15 reasons they used to justify the war in the opening days and since.
Starting point is 00:38:47 I was thinking about how, you know, 2006, obviously the last midterm that Republicans got absolutely crushed because of, you know, Iraq and George WBooch was war in Iraq. And then after that election, Don Rumsfeld was out. That was, that weekend after. So you know, it is, now for- And all the Republicans were so mad. They were like, you couldn't have done this six weeks ago? Right. Yeah. Now, for Trump, it's like, you know, it's Pete Hegseth. That's his boy, right? It's not like a, not like a Christyneum situation or a Pambandi situation. But you would think that'd be the easiest move for him, right?
Starting point is 00:39:21 Well, yeah, but the other part of this is get Hegseth in front of a Senate committee. He's going to think he's such hot shit. He's going to be so cocky and arrogant about it. And it is going to be so revealing. And he's going to be such a bad witness. Yeah, I think impeaching him probably does galvan. Nagas support for Hegsseth and probably emboldened him to run for president. So, you know, that's the political world we live in. But I agree. Cut off funding. End the war. Do everything you possibly can to end the war. If it's impeachment, do it.
Starting point is 00:39:48 If it's funding votes, do it. Whatever it takes. It's a disaster. On the subject of Trump's mastery of foreign policy, his ambassador to China, David Perdue, made this eye-opening claim over the weekend. But President Trump continues to say, hey, we sell arms to other people around the world. He actually asked President C, would he like to buy some? at one point.
Starting point is 00:40:08 I'm sorry, what? What? It seems like a big deal, Tommy. Trump kind of, Trump basically was like, oh, I didn't, I haven't heard about that when I was asked about it in the Oval today. Which made it all even weirder. Like, when I first saw the headline, I thought, that's weird and crazy, but it has to be a joke, right?
Starting point is 00:40:26 Like, maybe he's kidding around. But then you figure out the sources, Purdue, who's in the meeting and the ambassador. And he doesn't talk about it like he was kidding. And then Trump, when he was asked, he wasn't like, I was messing around. or saying to the Chinese, well, if you abide by the world, the international order, maybe one day we could be partners on things. He just was like, no, maybe he thought I meant Taiwan. And like the context is the Chinese are, sorry, the Iranians are using Chinese satellite imagery
Starting point is 00:40:55 to blow up our bases in the Gulf. They're keeping these articles about the Chinese intercepting and stealing F-35 component parts to figure out how to use like the stealth technology. you or whatever. Trump's like, don't steal it. Just ask nicely. I'll get it to you. The Chinese are hacking into all of our networks and all of our classified networks.
Starting point is 00:41:14 I guess she's probably thinking like, buddy, I got your weapons for free. Don't worry. We're good. But it was a baffling thing to say. It's also, so it's illegal, right? The State Department said it's illegal that can't happen that we, that we're not. Yeah. We're not going to give them weapons to even Taiwan.
Starting point is 00:41:28 It's crazy. Meanwhile, we're like, you know, the Trump administration is still like holding up weapon shipments to Taiwan. Yes. So imagine that signal. It's like he's offering weapons to she, but he's not even sending weapons to Taiwan. Poor Taiwanese are like, what? Man, they cannot believe their luck with Trump.
Starting point is 00:41:47 That's if you're, you're heading back to, you're heading back to China. You're on that plane. You're like, I have all the things that could have gone right for us. This fucking guy, I cannot. You know, it's like we have a thousand year plan. And in these four years, we've gotten so much fucking business done. Unbelievable. He's like, also that granite was beautiful.
Starting point is 00:42:03 You're debriefing your staff. And the staff was like, sir, I just, I think. I think you misspoke. You said that he offered to sell you American weapons? You almost, you almost, you got to assume that they're on the movie like, are we getting snowed? Is he that stupid? Are we, like, is it, are we missing something here? I don't know what's going on with this.
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Starting point is 00:43:17 I got a shipment yesterday. Just give it a shot. I had a few drinks last night and I forgot. Oof. And I don't, I've just been dragging it. That is the worst. I'm really mad. Don't be like John.
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Starting point is 00:43:52 It is, let's see, it's Monday, September 28th for recording this. That is late. We are almost in October. And this week, Trump will be in the well-known swing states of Oklahoma and Alabama before heading to Ohio on Saturday for an event with John Hustead. This is after a weekend when he traveled to Tennessee for college football and Illinois. for a golf tournament while also using our tax dollars to broadcast these quote unquote public service announcements all across the country. This is the final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the war mongers from our government.
Starting point is 00:44:29 We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxist and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media. And we will. liberate America from these villains once and for all. So that appears to be an exact copy of a spot the Trump campaign ran in 2024. The only thing that changed is the disclaimer at the end, which now reads paid for by the U.S. government. White House put out a statement saying that these are, quote, clearly not campaign ads, but, quote, a reminder for Americans to love their country.
Starting point is 00:45:08 Thoughts, Tom? If you're going to steal my money and use that in the illegal campaign, ad could at least be like a good spot, you know? That's not an effective ad. You know, now that you say that, just an old man walking down the hallway. If you're going to take my money, go ahead, put it behind that. That's Donald Trump saying, I'm going to kick out the communists and the Marxists.
Starting point is 00:45:26 It's like, well, you've had a couple of years. What are you been doing, buddy? Yeah, they're not pretty helpful campaign ads, so go for it. He's sitting on, what, $400 million that he won't spend, except on ads that kind of puff himself up. This is what he's using tax dollars for illegally. nobody willing to say no to him on that
Starting point is 00:45:43 so that he gets to see it on television I assume while he's watching They spent more than government spent already more than $300,000 just on this version there's a couple of these floating around according to Add Impact and that one aired on
Starting point is 00:45:57 during SNL, Fox News Sunday and college and NFL games You guys see it on the plane when we were on our way back He was on all the football games Yeah, I didn't see it I didn't see it Yeah
Starting point is 00:46:06 And that's yeah like I said That's on top of the earlier Trump the government-funded Trump ads. It's just very illegal. I'm just quite confused as to how they think they can get away. I mean, I guess because Republicans don't care, but it's just sort of a shocking decision. It is a shocking decision.
Starting point is 00:46:21 It's, I guess I should be focused on the illegality of it. It's also just wild to me that they think that putting paid for by the U.S. government on that ad is going to do anything at all to help Republicans. Like it's just, go ahead, air that everywhere, and then put paid for by, They should just pay for it by you, the taxpayer. Yeah, it's actually pretty baffling, right?
Starting point is 00:46:44 Because not an ad's going to move the needle. They have a huge financial advantage. They don't need to do this. It just seems brazen and silly. They're just cheap now? Right. Yeah, just trying to save a few dollars on ads. You're going to end the election with hundreds of millions of dollars unspent.
Starting point is 00:47:00 You're not running for anything. By charging the rest of us for an ad by saying that you're going to kick out the Marxists and the communists from government and that's it. That's all it says? It just seems like a little, like, kind of, I don't know. just a little small petulant act of dominance just to stick it to us. It's just strange. It's nuts. So we've wondered aloud why more Republicans in tough races, which is a list that's growing by the day,
Starting point is 00:47:21 haven't done anything to criticize this historically unpopular president who may cost them their jobs. One of the few Republicans who has, Florida Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, we talked about this before, who she cut an ad gently, I would say, criticizing Trump's deportation campaign. She found herself over the weekend on the wrong end of about a dozen truth social reposts from Donald Trump himself. This was on Saturday night. This is what he was doing on Saturday night. He also had additional posts talking about Morning Joe's ratings. He's complaining about that as well.
Starting point is 00:47:57 But one of his reposts on Salazar read, quote, We need a new Republican to replace Salazar. Again, the election is in five weeks. That's how elections work. She is a front line. Republican. You guys think Salazar and her campaign expected that kind of response from Trump? And how much do you think they care? It had to have expected it. I mean, you just can't cross him. He doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about his majority. He just cares about himself and
Starting point is 00:48:23 his own ego. So they must have known this was coming. Maybe they think it's helpful. A little brushback. Maybe he thinks it's helpful, by the way. It's hard to tell. It's hard to tell. Because his ad, the thing, her ad is so, like, look, in the list of Republicans willing to to criticize Trump, it stands out. because they're such like feckless little weenies. But the ad itself is very much like, if only someone would tell Donald Trump that he's being let down by his viziers, you know?
Starting point is 00:48:48 It's like he could do such a, he's so amazing. And yet he's failing in this one small way. We better let him know. So it's very, very neutered. And so, yes, like he can go off on her. Maybe it helps her politics a little bit to get in a fight with Donald Trump. Maybe he's aware of that.
Starting point is 00:49:03 I don't know. Well, here's the interesting thing where I was thinking about, like maybe he didn't do it because he thinks it helps her, maybe he do it because he's just a pissy asshole. Mike Rogers, Ashley Hinson, a couple other Republicans, have broken with him on the war now. Mike Rogers has also said, like, oh, we should have AI safety regulations, which is funny because he's never been for those before. Broke with the president on that.
Starting point is 00:49:26 And he hasn't done anything to brush back or to attack Hinson, Rogers, anyone else who's broken with them. I kind of wonder if it's just like, because this is around immigration and that's his pet issue, or maybe like Stephen Miller got him going on this one. Maybe that's what, I don't know. You could always break with him on foreign policy in the first term. Even Lindsey Graham would like constantly fight with him about like keeping troops in Syria or whatever it was. And he just tell he didn't care.
Starting point is 00:49:51 He's like invade here, invade there, whatever. It's like Lindsay like do what you want to do. But yeah, immigration. Like that's his passion project. The interesting about Houston is that Houston was one of the few Republicans willing to go to that midterm convention. He's now having Trump come to Ohio. So whatever they're seeing, they are clearly desperate to try to get, whatever harm it does to be associated with Trump, they're clearly very worried about just getting the base to turn out for John Houston. Yeah, I mean, and it makes sense, right?
Starting point is 00:50:18 Like, in 2018, it's a midterm electorate. Sherrod wins. In 24, it's a presidential electorate. Sherrod loses. And so you get more voters in Ohio, which is now redder state. You get more voters out that usually vote in those elections that have voted for Trump in the past. and John Hughes said wins. You don't, then shared ones.
Starting point is 00:50:37 So they probably think they could, I'm sure he's in a like ex-serban rural area that he's going to sort of get people going there. All right, there was another White House video making the rounds that wasn't paid for with our tax dollars as far as we know anyway. Let's play the clip. This is from the Deputy Chief of Staff of the White House,
Starting point is 00:50:55 Dan Skavino. And his former golf caddy, Dan Skavino, now the Deputy Chief of Staff of White House. that's an AI-generated video of Scavino, his wife, Eric and Lara Trump, writing a gold luggage cart through the White House while popping champagne, a little Trump cameo at the very end there. What do you guys think? Was that like the Pit Bull, like 2000s Club song?
Starting point is 00:51:28 Feels like. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very cool, very topical. There's a loneliness to it. That about like, oh, this is what life is. This is the life I'm imagining. Look at how good things are when we're on our carts, popping our bottles.
Starting point is 00:51:42 Just an incredible closing argument. It's just my question with all these things is why? You wake up, it's September 26th. You post a weird AI video of yourself with like two of the Trump wives and Eric pushing you on a cart. Well, also, you don't just post it. I assume someone had to create that with AI, right? We're not quite at the moment where you just speak to the AI and be like, hey, I want a cool. You're spraying your famous.
Starting point is 00:52:08 T-totaler boss with champagne? Is that what you do at work, Danz? You know, you hose down Donald Trump. Why are you on the luggage car? Did he just win the Stanley Cup? What are we doing here? What are we possibly celebrating? It is sort of this dreamlike AI fantasy.
Starting point is 00:52:23 Like, there's something, it's like, you know, popping champagne is a celebratory image. It's ultimately an unpleasant act, right? You know, you're like, at key moments, you know, you're celebrating with your boys at the, at the Olympics, whatever you spray fine. But like in daily life, you drink the champagne and have a nice time, I would say. It's just sort of this strange, like kind of, I don't know what. There's such a sadness and underneath the evil of what it is to be part of this organization that's always popping through. That's how I take it.
Starting point is 00:52:50 I wonder if he's thinking like, this will get the base going, right? This will troll those libs. And then our people will get excited. It's like, do you think your people will get excited? Do you think people are laughing at this anymore? Did it? When they're like paying fucking, you know, $5 for gas? You're paying like five bucks for gas and you wake up and you see a video of the golf catty hosing down Donald Trump with champagne with your tax dollars.
Starting point is 00:53:15 This is the kind of stuff that if it happened in real life would like lead to the guillotine's getting constructed on the South Lawn. You're like, French Revolution started for less than this stuff. Yeah, you guys won. You're in power. You're in charge. You're supposed to be working on kicking out the communists and the Marxists and the deep state. That's what the ad just said.
Starting point is 00:53:32 The other ad. It's very short. It's very stupid. but it's so tone-deaf that you just have to wonder why and how did this happen? I'm going to retweet it every day. He's very defensive about it. Is he? Well, he tweeted some other ones.
Starting point is 00:53:46 Some other, like, they did like a, the hangover style. Oh, great. Like all these dumb things that happened at the, the she state dinner that includes keg stands and like pulling out Marco Rubio's teeth. It's supposed to be like a shot for shot rip off of the hangover. But again, it's like no one wants their president doing these things at a state dinner. I mean, maybe it's just for yucks, but people are mostly pissed in this country. I thought from that other ad that we're kicking out the communists, but instead we're just
Starting point is 00:54:12 partying with them at the state dinner. And potentially arming them. What did Trump do? Well, he started arming the communists, which was, again, a surprise. He rolled out the red carpet for them, offered them some guns, showed them his granite. Yeah, showed them the granite. And then they popped champagne, and then they posted an AI generated video about them, which of course, you know, we're sharing the technology. And like one of these, one of these, one of these, one of these, one of these, images in this other video that like someone posted then Skavino also reposted is like Trump and she looking hung over with their tuxes undone at like the at the Lincoln Memorial and it just maybe people would think that's funny but Donald Trump famously does not drink and does
Starting point is 00:54:50 not think it's funny or cool if you drink remember when he yelled at cash Patel for chugging beers at the Olympics I just think if you're using AI to prove how good of a time you're having right maybe you're not having all the house you know yeah are we having fun yet kind of a thing Okay. Oh, actually, one last clip. This is some breaking news from our friends over at the Five. It's an important story. The Chiron, for those who are just listening, is sex workers thriving under Zoran.
Starting point is 00:55:17 With the prostitution. Well, it's something that a lot of people aren't talking about in terms of quality of life issue, and I don't know if we have photos of what's going on in that area, but how overweight the hookers have become. Have you noticed that? It's insane. It's like I worry.
Starting point is 00:55:35 I worry. I mean, I'm not a big fan of the sex trade, but it does seem that if you're going to sell your body, you should make it appealing for the customer. You don't understand the capitalistic tendency. I mean, come on. It's something to look into. I find it, you know, kind of sad. If I lived in that neighborhood, I wanted to look as nice as possible. Sounds like you have looked into it, Craig. Yeah, it seems like he was backpedaling a little. It was a little too much there. You went deep on this issue. Are you guys all noticing this? No, my friend. We are not. Seems like you've gone pretty deep on the song.
Starting point is 00:56:09 He's like, I'm not a fan of the sex trade, but I'm just, it's something I'm noticing, and I've heard from people. What a bizarre. Jesse jumped in there, he was like, I have, I have. And then he, like, wisely was just like, now I'm not going to say anything more. It's like, Gutfeld lives in this space between comedy and angry guy that's just really hard to suss out. Yeah. Doesn't land with me. And he also, well, it's like all of his, his bits on the five are all very prepared.
Starting point is 00:56:39 Yes, he's so scripted. Like to the last word of it, you know, and he's like trying to, he's like doing the whole thing and then. He's working out his material for the later episode, I assume, which I respect. Which I respect. Got to try some stuff out. I forget there's just gutfill. Yeah, no, that's, yeah, that's what's. Anyway.
Starting point is 00:56:56 At their late night show, man, they're a little, they're struggling for topics over there at the five. Because Trump is unpopular. Jesse, even Jesse is sick of doing the culture war stuff. He's bored of it. He can't get his dander up anymore for trans swimmers anymore. He's sick of that. Well, right. And these guys are charged with going after Zoran, but then every time Donald Trump gets within like five miles of the guy, he tries to bang him.
Starting point is 00:57:20 So like, they're confused about their marching orders, right? Trump's at Gracie Manson. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of overweight prostities or presidents. Perfect. Well, that's all we got for today, guys. That's our show.
Starting point is 00:57:37 Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Everyone have a good week. Padsave America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed Jirlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroote, Ben Heathcote, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis,
Starting point is 00:57:51 David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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