Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Trump Has “No Cards” in Iran as Deal Collapses and U.S. Continues Strikes

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov break down the latest developments in the fragile Iran negotiations, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivering an encouraging, but confusing, update. They discuss reports that the Trump administration is pursuing a framework involving a ceasefire extension, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, renewed Iranian oil sales, and separate talks over the fate of Tehran’s nuclear program.  Back home, Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) says he was pepper sprayed by federal agents during a protest outside an ICE detention facility in New Jersey, where detainees are reportedly on hunger strike over poor conditions and lack of medical care. Scott and Jessica check in on the latest public clash between ICE and protesters. Plus: In his much publicized first encyclical, Pope Leo XIV issued a stark warning against AI, urging that the technology shouldn’t be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy few, should not be considered morally neutral, and warning that it could create “new forms of slavery.” How does this square with the latest thinking on Wall Street, and in Silicon Valley? Raging Moderates community, join us at ProfG+ on Substack: https://ragingmoderates.profgmedia.com/ Get The Monday Rage newsletter: https://profgmedia.com/s/monday-rage/ Follow Raging Moderates on IG, Tiktok, and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/ragingmoderatespod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ragingmoderates https://www.facebook.com/ragingmoderates Follow Jessica Tarlov on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/jessicatarlov https://substack.com/@jessietarlov https://bsky.app/profile/jessicatarlov.bsky.social Follow Scott on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/profgalloway https://substack.com/@profgalloway https://bsky.app/profile/profgalloway.com Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for this show comes from Deal. Let's be honest, most HR platforms are stitched together. That's why AI barely helps. Deals different. It's a single AI native system for HR, IT, and payroll built from the ground up. That's why AI inside deal can actually run real work, onboarding, compliance, payroll, approvals, all under your rules, whether you're five people or 50,000. Deal scales with you.

See it in action at deal.com slash audio. That's d eel.com slash audio. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.

CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-F-Frey at O-D-O-O-D-O-O-O-com. Support for this show comes from O-D-U. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing O-Doo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-D-4-4.com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-D-O-com. Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarlov.

Before we jump in, tomorrow we're launching a new weekly substack live show, Raging Perspective. Jesse and friend of the pod, Aaron Parnas, will break down the biggest political stories of the week and take your questions live. It all happens Wednesdays at noon Eastern. You can subscribe now at RagingModerts.com. Again, that's RagingModerts.com. Again, that's RagingModerts. com. And if you happen to be in Los Angeles, on Thursday, we're doing our live PropG Markets Tour.

And we're sold out in San Francisco in New York, but we still have tickets in Los Angeles for Thursday and in Miami on Saturday and Chicago on Monday. Gosh, a lot there. Jess, how are you? I'm great. And I'm excited to see the Profti markets live tour Tuesday. I'll be there in New York. You'll be here in New York. Oh, good. Or they're in New York. I'm actually in Los Angeles right now. I know. Good early morning to you. Let's get into it. The U.S. says it's carried out overnight self-defense strikes in southern Iran as Tehran. Iran warns American bases in the region are no longer safe and is threatening retaliation. At the same time, the Trump administration insists diplomacy is still moving forward. The reported framework includes a ceasefire extension, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, Iran resuming oil sales, and separate talks over to Iran's nuclear program, including what happens to its enriched uranium.

Let's listen to Marco Rubia explaining the state of play this morning. Well, look, I think our position is well stated. The president had a very important, I think, historic call just a couple days ago with a number of leaders from the region. I think there's strong alignment and agreement on what a preliminary draft should look like. I think like anything with something like this, it's going to take a couple days to settle on even down to the disagreements over a word sentence. So we'll have to work through that. If there's going to be a deal, we're going to have to work through that. But this is, you know, it's either going to be a good deal or there isn't going to be one.

Jess? It was this all just to avoid going to Don Jr.'s second wedding? Like Brian was saying to me, we all know about the destination second wedding where we're like, get over yourself. I'm not going to that. So Trump was like, I want to stay home and shitposts Rokana and make a bunch of phone calls. Maybe we're going to get a second round of the Abraham Accords eventually. And we both agreed that that was a huge achievement of the first term.

But the idea that they're even pretending this is a nuclear deal, it's a midterms deal. He needs a midterms deal at this point. He's minus 52 on inflation, minus 24 on foreign policy. And because the fertilizer isn't getting through the Strait of Hormuz, economies across the world are going to starve. I mean, our problems are the high end of what's going on. We're in a good situation compared to other countries that are more dependent on the Strait of Hormuz. So they're just repackaging this.

You know, we're going to get the straight open. I love this, how they say there won't be a toll. But the Iranians are saying that they're going to charge for a quote unquote environmental protection measure, which has never existed before. So it's a toll by another name, I guess. And what do you make of this that the Iranians are still laying minds? And then we're saying that we're firing back in self-defense. I thought they were completely obliterated and had no capabilities. so I don't know how they would be able to be doing any of this anyway. But like they're not behaving as if we're about to have some sort of deal, even if it looks like the JCPOA 2.0. The Tehran Times is still posting with the same goals as they've had for decades. And, you know, death to America, death to Israel. I don't, it doesn't seem like the Supreme Leader is on board with this. There's talk of huge sums of money way more than Obama dealed with the.

Iranians the first time around, which was only $1.7 billion, even though you hear stuff about like $20 billion in pallets of cash. And Trump is, you know, posting through it that nuclear dust or bust. But that's not what Marco Rubio just said on the plane, right? There's going to be this high-stakes meeting at Camp David tomorrow. All the cabinet officials are going to be there because he needs to get buy-in from everybody. But that doesn't sound at all like what we were promised. And I don't even say promised on day one, right, when it was regime change. And, you know, getting rid of the nuclear program and the proxies and the ballistic missiles and all of that fantasy land. This doesn't even sound like a week ago what we were talking about. Right after when I,

I was at Morgan Stanley and I was going to do a third year, I called the MD at Morgan Stanley, who ran the LA office and said, I'm quitting. And I got a backpack and I went to Europe. And I was traveling around Europe and I met up. I tracked down this woman who I was just enormously in love with. And we spent about three weeks traveling around Europe. And we were in Vienna and we thought, let's go to Hungary. There is a point here, and I'll get to it in about two hours. I got all the time in the world for a backpacking love story. This is so much better than nuclear dust. This will date me, but I went to the American Express office and cashed travelers checks. I remember doing that with my parents. Yeah. And I had one of those fanny belts because we were also

worried about having money stolen from us from these evil Europeans. And I got, literally a stack, a brick of forrence, of Hungarian forrence. And so we're head to Pesh to Budapest. And I'd heard some sort of rumors or murmurs of needing a visa. But we got on the train anyways. And they stop at the Hungarian border. And they come and they say, visa? And I'm like, no. And she and I look at each other. I'm like, no. And they pull us off the train in the middle of the Hungarian forest and say, you're on your own. and there's one cab driver there driving a lotto, which is the Russian equivalent of a Yugo.

And because clearly this happens, there's always a couple of dumb Americans who don't get the visa. He's, we're in the middle of the forest and I'm thinking, okay, he's going to murder me and, you know, rape my girlfriend. One car. And the guy, and I say how much?

And he says, I don't know, whatever it was, like 100 bucks or something, and I'm like 90. And he looks at me and just smiles. Because he recognized at that point in the middle of the fucking Hungarian forest at 11 p.m. And there's one way out of the Hungarian forest. I have no leverage. Trump is me in the Hungarian forest right now.

There we go. Close the loop. There we go. Close the loop. Because he never bothered to consult Congress and offended them. Because he never even signed up or even briefed European allies. Because he did not in any way coordinate. anything around intelligence, around the Straits of Hormuz, getting expats out of the Gulf,

figuring out, putting in place the right defense mechanisms. He has no fucking cards. America wants him out. Iran knows America wants him out. It's like someone who's running from a fight and says, give me your wallet. Like, if someone attacks you, you punched them in the fucking face. Your attacker is running and screaming behind themselves. Give me your watch. It's like, this guy, and I'm going to sound like a war hawk and we might get some pushback on this, if you're not willing to go the distance, if you're not willing to continue military action, what leverage do you have? He has no leverage right now. The Iranians know this is a very unpopular war that he's leaving. He's basically already left and he's making demands. So they're

going to just, and I don't know how the embargo is going, against the Iranian ports. But this guy is such a terrible business person and has ignored his security apparatus and clearly has no one in the organization and the administration that understands actual game theory. The IRGC has no incentive other than just to grin fuck him, and that is pretend to have meetings. Because every day this goes on, he loses more and more support. it would be as if he said, I know, let's go back and start fighting the Vyakong again. There's about as much support right now for escalating the war in Iran because he has done such a terrible job building any semblance of support. He has no cards. So all that's going to happen now is he's going to pretend there was some sort of victory, change the objectives, and get out of Dodge.

And unfortunately, it looks like Iran is going to come back probably even stronger. He has, he is in a Hungarian forest with one Lada. But does he have a woman that he loves? There you go. Because Melania doesn't seem like she's that into it. No, she wants nothing to do with him. I wanted to ask you about the Israel element. So apparently they were surprised that Trump had a very tough talk conversation with BB towards the end of last week and was basically like, I'm in charge now.

Like this isn't a joint plan. But I saw that Ben Gavir, the horror, who's the national security minister, is saying that Israel, quote, not allow Trump to make a deal with Iran. Do you feel like if there is a chance even at this what we're calling a midterms deal, not a nuclear deal, that Israel will continue its assault on Iran? I mean, what they're doing in Lebanon is separate from this because we're not involved in that. But do you think there is a chance that they will essentially go behind our backs and continue this? Or you feel like Netanyahu knows that they have to fall in line with what we wanted if Trump wants out and has gotten Gulf partners to sign on to that, that that is the direction that we're going, even if the job isn't completed. And it's original casting. In the first administration or the first tenure, residency of Trump, he used to have someone else fire them.

Do you remember when he fired Omarosa and he pretended it wasn't him? And he's like, he called Omarosa and said, oh, I can't believe they fired you, Omar. I don't believe the Israelis. I think he's using Israel as, now granted, they're going to have different objectives. Netanyahu is on a permanent war footing. Some people would argue that it's strategic, taking out an enemy sworn to the death and eradication of Israel, and trying to push them or mow the lawn or trim the daisies, whatever metaphor you want to use. while they're weak and don't have their air defenses. A lot of people, I think, have real valid

concerns that Netanyahu is fighting for his political life and the way to get any sort of support is to be on a constant war footing. And it all comes back, I mean, it all comes down to a very basic thing. The world is going to be a much better, safer place when both Trump and Netanyahu leave the global stage. But I don't buy. I think that essentially Trump is using Netanyahu as his bad guy to do things that I think America is totally, not America, Trump. is on board with everything Israel is doing and can point to them and say, yeah, they're out of control, but, you know, wink, wink, have at it. But this is, the honest answer is I don't have a sense for whether or not Israel and Iran will be able to or how far Israel will go here.

You know, anti-Semitism is obviously increasing, and it feels like the diaspora is really paying a price for what is legitimate concern about. an overreaction, a propensity towards extreme warfare or violence on the part of Israel. But I, back to your original question, and I'll turn it back to you. I don't buy that the Trump hasn't signed off or agreed with everything that Israel is doing. I mean, considering the Kushner-Wick-Koff connection and the go-between there, I think that you're probably right. I do think that there is some validity to the argument that Trump has gotten more frustrated, even just based upon the press that he's getting and his approval ratings, because Bibi is a bit impervious to what's going on,

essentially internally, as long as he stays out of a courtroom, which, you know, to your point about the permanent war footing is how he's able to do that. But I think that Trump can see that there's a pretty direct line between going along with what Israel wants to do, which he agrees with, right, and wants to be the greatest quote unquote friend to Israel that we've ever had, which is what BB calls him and has the pressures coming from Kushner and Wittkoff and understanding then that the American people are just not here for it, that there was no case made to them, that they don't feel safer because of what's going on right now in Iran. I mean, we're on day 88 of this war and all of the winds that they were touting from the first,

I mean, it's kind of incredible actually that like after the first four weeks, weeks or something like that, we haven't had another big win. We've been doing this ridiculous game of, you know, it's a bridge and tunnel day and we're going to blow them all up. We're going to go after desalination plants. And it's just been a series of online threats, essentially, right? Like, it's been a long time since we took out their Navy and it was at the bottom of the sea or that we were destroying their missiles. And then as that's going on, Iran is rebuilding and we're frozen, stuck in the same cycle, essentially. And I think Trump just woke up and was like, I got to break it.

Like, enough Republicans have called him and said, we're going to lose our seats if something doesn't change. And we can't go into an election with $4.50 gas, which is we can't do it. So the general approach in corporate America was as a CEO to underpromise and overdelivered, to be measured and beat your earnings and not boasts. not promise things you couldn't deliver against. That changed with tech, where it was, we're going to be the biggest, best company in the world, we're going to have data centers in space, over promise, get cheap capital, and then pull the future forward with that cheap capital. That strategy actually has worked well for a number of people. The line between that and claiming that you're elevating the world's

consciousness when you're just renting desks and fraud has gotten increasingly blurred, but it's been the right strategy for big tech. It doesn't work in politics. is at some point, he keeps threatening and never, I mean, you know, taco, what's the new one? Nacho. Nacho. At this point, and also, and again, call me a warhawk, you don't go in unless you're willing, quite frankly, to stay and really punish. Otherwise, I mean, my attitude is there's a lot of people who I think understand about our

foreign adventures or what they would call misadventure. overseas. I think it's a really valid argument that the punishment that Iran has levied on its own people, safety and security in the Middle East, that a lot of people in America are like, look, it's just not our problem. Maybe it's a problem, but we have bigger problems here that require resources and attention. Fine. If that's the case, then let's cut our military budget down to the size of China's at $400 billion and take the additional trillion dollars and pay down the deficit. But if you're going to go in, quite frankly, you don't, you don't continue these hollow threats. as the IRGC realized this guy came in with no basis support and has already leaped, I mean,

they're essentially already leaving. And so all of these threats are just so ridiculous. They weaken the credibility of the United States. They weaken the credibility of our military. What's the point of spending $1.4 trillion if you're seen as you have a glass jaw? This is the problem. At some point, at some point intelligence needs to become in vogue again amongst our political leaders, not just charisma over competence, not just bluster over strategy, because the IRGC has this guy's card. And it's like, look, our populace is willing or we're willing to subject our populace to a lot more pain than your populace is willing to have pain subject on it. No one's talking. They're not releasing polls in Iran about inflation.

and the IRGC and the Mullahs and the Ayatollah being, you know, losing seats at this upcoming election. We are a much more, our tolerance for pain, it's like I love that joke where men say, you know, now I know what it's like to give birth. I had a cold. Yeah. The Americans' tolerance, I mean, this all comes back to weak sauce, terrible strategy, terrible negotiation, terrible incompetence across our security forces and our defense secretary and cabinet members in decision making, sclerotic decision making, objectives of change overnight, such that we can't even

present a unified force. But some of it does come down to the fact that don't spend $1.4 trillion on the military and don't go in anywhere unless you're willing to stay until you have some bargaining power to get some sort of reasonable deal such that this thing doesn't diminish the full faith and credit, how seriously is anyone going to take military threats in the U.S. for the next 10 or 20 years when it's like, well, they'll come in. If we just kill 14 of their people, maybe take oil up, then they're going to back out and leave and make threats. It just, the whole thing has been a tremendous erosion in our negotiation power. And to the far left's credit, I would argue that moving forward, we should seriously consider a dramatic, dramatic decrease in

military spending to move towards asymmetric warfare. That's the big learning from Ukraine and Iran, is that $20,000 Shaheed drones or $2,000 Ukrainian drones are, quite frankly, 80% as good as a $4 million Tomahawk, and you can build a lot of them. So this is, this, again, is a total display of incompetence and basic game theory on the part of the Trump administration. I'm all for a Ukrainian approach to how we do warfare. And they're just incredible that they're now. Everybody admits that they're winning that war now. Isn't that amazing? I'm glad you brought that up. I think that is, if we're looking for a silver lining or good news here and it hasn't got enough reporting, Putin is basically in hiding right now. He's basically in hiding. He's worried. He's got body doubles.

He's sending all kinds of fake signals around where he's actually worried that Ukrainians have now penetrated so deeply into Russia in terms of counterattacks. It's just, it is arguably the greatest government or organizational feat of this millennia so far is the Ukrainian army's ability to repel Russia. And it's also a victory for the West and Europeans who've stepped up here and to a lesser extent the U.S. and the brave men and women of the Ukrainian army, but a small motivated fighting force with great technology. And quite frankly, that, again, lends itself to, I think we should seriously think. about taking our military budget down from $1.4 trillion to half a trillion dollars and potentially have a more lethal fighting force based on the learnings from Ukraine and Iran. Okay, let's take a quick

break. Stay with us. Support for the show comes from HIMS. You don't just want to lose weight. You want to look better and feel better. That's why weight loss by Hymns now offers access to the FDA-approved Wagovi pill and the FDA-approved Wagovi-Pen. Wagovi is designed to help you lose weight and keep it off so you can stay on track with your goals. With Wagovi at Hymns, you can lose up to 20% or more of your body weight, what combined with diet and exercise. It can help you regulate your appetite and eat less, so success is within reach. Plus, Wagovi is the first ever GLP1 pill for weight loss, so there are no needles needed. Plus HIMS has everything online.

You'll connect with a licensed provider who will determine if the treatment is right for you. Ready to reach your goals, visit HIMS.com slash moderates to get a personalized affordable plan that gets you. That's H-I-M-S-com slash moderates. Hymns.com slash moderates. Weight loss by Hymns is not available in all 50 states. Wagovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information,

Wagovi clinical study information and restrictions, visit HIMS.com. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-F-Free at O-D-O-O-O-O-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-O-C. Support for this show comes from O-D-U. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu.

It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's O-D-O-O-O-com.

Welcome back. Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Andy Kim says he was pepper sprayed by federal agents during a protest outside of New Jersey ICE detention facility where detainees are reportedly on a hunger strike over conditions and lack of medical care. Kim says he was trying to de-escalate a confrontation between protesters and immigration officers when agents moved in with batons and pepper spray. Jess, we haven't checked in on ice in a while in scenes like this or what the Trump Is this, does the Trump administration like seeing Democratic senators pepper spray?

Does this tickle the censors of Fox viewers? Check in with me on the five later this afternoon. I'll see the level of glee. But, you know, I think that this is an important reminder that even though immigration enforcement in this country is not on the front page anymore, that this shit is still going on, right? It's not as brazen as the tragedies with Renee Good or Alex Prattie. But there are still very real problems. And frankly, they're centered around the role of private prisons in this country and how poorly and inhumanely they are operated. This detention center in New Jersey, Delaney Hall, privately run.

And we should note as well that Governor Mikey Sherrill was also denied entry. To go there, there were four representatives, a senator and the governor. And none of them were allowed in. They say there's a hunger strike going on. Mark Wayne Mullen, our new DHS secretary, is out of the government. they're saying that the hunger strike is made up. Like, I don't know, I'm going to trust all of the Democratic caucus that showed up more than I'm going to trust DHS on this one. You know, reports are 100 men jammed into one room, no guards that will actually come in there, sharing maybe one or two filthy, backed up toilets.

I was revisiting in preparation for this, you know, the reporting around the Dillie family facility in Texas. again, operated by a private prison group, Core Civic. It was opened up under Obama when there was that huge influx of families into the country. Then Biden shut it down in 2021. Trump reopened it. I'd encourage everyone to go back in February, that ProPublica piece, where the reporters were actually able to communicate with some of the kids that are in there. It's just harrowing stuff, what was going on, you know, food with mealworms in it. Kids aren't supposed to be held for more than 20 days. Kids are in there for months. verbal abuse from the guards, kids cutting themselves, attempting suicide, and they were writing

letters to these guards about what their lives were like and why they want to get out. And a lot of them losing faith in the United States as a result of this, right? Like, we came here for a better life. And now I'm living in this place. I don't know if you saw this, but Alligator Alcatraz and Florida is being shut down. Same were? Well, DeSantis had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for it. And guess what? The federal government stiffed them, just like Donald Trump did with all of his guys. government contractors. And they're like, we can't afford to keep operating this. The conditions there

were supposed to be completely abysmal that, you know, it's in the Everglades. It's stinking hot. There's no air conditioning. They didn't have enough bathrooms. They weren't getting the right medical care. I mean, all of these themes happening over and over again. And, you know, we can't lose sight of it. Stephen Miller has been sidelined. It seems quite clear that they have figured out whether it's Trump or just Susie Wiles was like, I'm doing this myself, that he is such a lightning rod, not only, you know, the image of him, you know, seeing him pop up on your television screen, but the kind of policies that he's trying to implement, which he's been dreaming about, you know, since he was killing squirrels or whatever he was doing as a youth in Santa Monica, that he's really harming the administration.

I mean, they took the, the immigration was their best issue. Now he's minus eight or minus 10, depending on the poll on immigration. even minus two on border security. The border is completely closed, right? And I don't hear Democrats complaining about it. I'm not complaining about it. I think net net, it's a good thing. I, you know, want the asylum system to work better.

But you can't have more people who are here illegally in Eagle Pass, Texas, than actual Americans. Like, that's an unsustainable situation for us. But they totally trashed the situation on immigration. It doesn't mean Democrats have picked it up on the other end. We should talk about that. that we need a plan ourselves. But, you know, I'm not glad it happened because I don't want Andy Kim to get pepper sprayed or any of that, but I've felt for the last month or two that it's not a good thing that this has fallen off the front page because there are still atrocities being

committed against people who are here illegally in this country and have committed no crimes. So a civil infraction when they came in here, yes, but committed no crimes once they were here. And I'm sure that there are tons of cases we don't even know about of things that are happening even to American citizens, like they were in Minnesota and in Chicago and in Portland. Yeah, it brings about host issues. So for the first time since COVID, tourism to the U.S. is down. And it's resulting in billions of dollars of lost business and restaurants and hotels will close down and Americans will lose jobs. People coming to the U.S. is down across the board, but it's really down from Canada. used to be the largest source of tourism. When you treat immigrants and generally you just come across as an asshole, America's brand has always been, we're loud and obnoxious, but we try eventually.

Eventually we get, after exhausting, as Churchill said, every other option, we do the right thing. We're generally a good people, and we like to have a good time, and Disneyland's great, and the Hollywood Bowl is amazing, and in and out burgers incredible. So, and driving up the one is the most beautiful drive in the world, and people said, yeah, okay, all that still exists, But if you're assholes, we'll go spend our money, you know, at Euro Disney or we'll, you know,

and we'll take my wife to see the Coliseum in Rome. And this is directly eroding our brand and our margin power and our ability to not only exert influence across the world and stop terrorist attacks from happening because people generally see us as the good people, but it absolutely hurts our reputation abroad and manifests in a number of ways, including tourism. The other big issue is that our government is all fucked up in the head in terms of what makes for good private enterprise and what should be government run. Maldani should not be opening what I believe are just going to be state-sponsored food lines. The grocery business should be a

private business. It is a cut-throw competitive business. It is about logistics, merchandising. 70% of the bodegas in New York are run by immigrants. They do a great job of trying to keep prices low. The same person who runs the DMV should not be selecting your produce. That should be a private business. Unfortunately, we have decided to take things that should be government run and not profitable. In other words, run at break-even, maybe even lose some money, such that the primary measurement, the primary metric is well-being of the citizenry not-profits. And unfortunately, we've decided to monetize for shareholders our health care system, in some instances, our education system, and our prison system. And the number one donors to campaigns to promote things like

three strikes, three shoplifting convictions, and you go to prison for life, are because we privatized prisons. And so your incentive is not to have bathrooms. Your incentive is not to have anything resembling conditions that don't result in violence or people who commit more crimes once they're out of prison. Some sort of reasonable humanity such that our brand abroad still maintains margin power. we are, what's the term, socializing certain companies and instances we should, the government has no fucking business in Intel. The government should not own a golden share in U.S. Steel. The government should not be talking about bail-in. We should not be in those businesses. That should be the full-body contact violence of profit and loss. At the same time, we should absolutely socialize and nationalize

health care. Forty-five cents on the dollar of everything that goes to insurance for health insurance is for profits and administration, meaning even if you had government in all its waste, you would still be able to deliver better health care at a lower price, as evidenced by the fact that Japan pays $5,500 per consumer per capita for health care, we pay $13,000 because if you're forced to buy health insurance and your prescription company, the drug company, the hospital system, are all verticalized such that they can consolidate and then raise prices faster than inflation, that levies a tremendous tax on the well-being of Americans, and we result in 40% of American households with medical or dental debt, which takes a huge toll on the well-being of America's

well-being. So we have all, and this is just an example of it, prisons should not be for profit. We need to figure out, we're the most incarcerated nation in the world. Now, is that because we have more criminals? Is that because we're tougher on crime? There's probably some reasons we should be a highly incarcerated nation. I'm not arguing that. Should we be the most incarcerated nation in the world? No. And why is that? Because there's money in it. And there's money in incarcerating people that have no seat at the table because then the person that owns the prison can get $50, $60, $70,000 a year and then go about trying to figure out a way to make every prisoner as profitable as possible by not providing them with adequate care. So I think this

brings to the four a lot of different issues. And then before we even get to the depravity and the weirdness that is my ice, and let me just finish up here and I'll get your comments after this word salad. I also think that when Democrats talk about abolishing ice, that's really fucking stupid. Yep. We need, we need immigration and customs enforcement. We need it. We need to reform it, but not abolish it. That's about to become the new defund the police. It already is, at least where I work. Say more. I mean, they're like, oh, you don't say that anymore, but you say abolish ice. And then I have to be like, you know, the dork being like, well, actually when you go into the cross tabs, you see that it's more popular to reform ice rather than doing away with it overall, even though abolishing ice is at record high levels of support between 45 and 50%. But it's kind of, it's one of those things where you then, if you give people the option that we could reform it to make sure that we're still getting the folks in this country or here, illegally and committing crimes against Americans out of the country. They're like, actually that. I would like that to happen. And, well, two things I want to say on your, it wasn't a word salad.

I totally got all of it, though I do just like love salads. But Tom Holman and the $50,000 in the Kava bag, right? Like you have the guy who's been in charge of ICE, you know, undercover FBI agents posting as business executives to give him $50,000, which he never had to answer for in any of the hearings. Second of all, on the abolished ice front, I don't know if you caught any of, well, you didn't, and you shouldn't have. But Trump did a rally in Rockland County on Friday for Mike Lawler and Bruce Blakeman, who's running for governor against Kathy Hochle. And this is where all the controversy that Jackson Dart introduced him, the new quarterback for the giants and the other giants, like, freaked out. Like, why would you be introducing President Trump? Anyway, one of the speakers there was the family of Sheridan Gorman, who she was 18 years old, murdered by someone who's here illegally in a way of college in Chicago, a complete tragedy that the Democrats mishandled.

Certainly their initial response to it, like city council people, Pritzker was better than the city council people, then ended up being great about it eventually. but there's this resistance to admitting that something terrible has happened because of the politics of it, right? That it opens the door to criticism of sanctuary cities or our border policy under Joe Biden or whatever it is. And you listen to the sorrow in Jessica Gorman, Sheridan Gorman's mother's voice as she's talking about what happened to her baby. And she, they love President Trump because President Trump is all over them, right? Like that's his saying angel families. But she made a plea for politicians in general just to take this seriously, that policies have to reflect the fact that American citizens are dying at the hands of people who are here illegally who have prior criminal histories, like what happened to Lake and Riley in Georgia. and why you saw dozens of Democrats supporting the Lake and Riley Act that had poison pills in it, yes.

But still it was a symbolic acknowledgement of the fact that this is unacceptable and that you can't run a country that way. And you can't have a set of immigration policies that allow for Lake and Riley to die or Kate Steinley from San Francisco or Sheridan Gorman in Illinois. And I found it to be really powerful. And then for that to be met with abolish ice just makes you look. like you've lost the plot as much as we did in the Biden years, at least for me. Let's take one last quick break. This episode is brought to you by an espresso. Hear that? That's your next obsession.

Every coffee, a new world. Every sip, a new taste. This is the new espresso. One touch, endless possibilities. Iced, flavored, long, short. Because some days call for that espresso kick. And sometimes a smooth silky latte just wins. It's exceptional. but effortless, like actually effortless.

Simply press, brew, and explore. Nispresso, what else? Keep exploring at nespresso.com. Was the biggest cybersecurity risk in America built by software companies? Software manufacturers have been allowed to develop and deliver flawed, defective, insecure software because they've prioritized speed to market and convenience all over security. I'm John Feiner. And I'm Jake Sullivan.

and we're the hosts of The Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week, Jen Easterly, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, joins us on the podcast. The episode's out now. Search for and follow The Long Game, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Francis Lamb, host of the Splendid Table podcast. Every week on our show, we celebrate the intersection of food and life. And this month, we're highlighting some of those iconic people in the food world.

It's a new collection called Culinary Masters, and we revisit interviews with some of the people who have really changed how many of us cook and think about food. People like Martin Yan. When I was so small in the first few years, I can only work and help out to wash vegetables to cut up something and help to bone the chicken. So that's why now I can bone a chicken in 18 seconds. Dr. Jessica B. Harris? Well, you know, I now know that it was neither the iron pots nor the wooden spoons. but there were multiple unspoken and as yet still unheralded and in many cases unknown gifts that Africa gave to the cooking of not only this hemisphere but the world. And Claudia Rodin, to name a few.

Why is this dish here? Who was here before? What kind of life did the peasants have? That's why this dish is the way it is. Search for the Splendid Table in your podcast app to listen to the series now. Welcome back. All right. So let's move on to El Papa. So another warning on the impact of AI came in 42,000 words, courtesy of the first American Pope. I love this guy. Pope Leo released his first open letter to the public titled Magnifica Humanitas or Magnificent Humanity. I like that. Magnificent, I'm starting a boy band called Magnificent Humanity. I like that. The encyclical warning of new forms of slavery tied to the rise of artificial intelligence and called for the technology is disarming. Let's listen. Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences, and indicating paths forward for humanity. Disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion, and death. I love this guy.

Picked a good one. Yeah. So I've been thinking a lot about this. And around bioweapons and nuclear weapons, we coordinate with our enemies, our enemies, Russians and China. And suppose we have covert agencies to cooperate. And if someone is mixing up a bioweapon in their bathtub, we find them and we kill them. And we share intelligence around it because we realize we have a vested interest, a mutual interest, in ensuring that bioweapons don't get out of control or that enriched uranium doesn't end up.

up in the hands of a terrorist group. I'm beginning to believe that this is another example of, and I don't know if it should be socialized or whatever you want to call it, but AI, what I don't get is if you're the CEO of an AI company and after you've sold $100 or $200 million of your shares on the secondary market and then start claiming that AI is the most dangerous technology ever, if it's in fact, according to them, if we're to believe them that it's much more powerful the nuclear weapons, would we have nuclear weapons sold and developed by private companies? Would we have Jensen Huang going over to China giving money to the Trump administration or potentially donating money to a ballroom such that he could go to China because NVIDIA sold nuclear weapons?

So the total lack of government oversight here, and the notion that we're following it again, Dario Amoda is the new hero, right? He's a good man. He's a good man. He's, he's, he can do with this, and I don't doubt he's a good man, but the incentives for a private company Sierra to say whatever the fuck you need to to get the share price up a cent every day. That's your incentive. That's how capitalism works. And now my attitude is if, in fact, this technology is more threatening or dangerous nuclear weapons,

there's an argument that it should be nationalized and the government should oversee these companies or own these companies, or at least we need some sort of regulatory framework. And with such a disappointment from the Trump, and to a certain extent the Biden administration that had, you know, never really met with Xi is I do think that she and the president could come together to try and figure out at least some basic global frameworks for the use of AI to keep it out of the hands or to keep it from going haywire in terms of cyber attacks or shutting down hospitals. Because they're vulnerable, too.

The Chinese would not, like, would be honest about it, though. I feel like they just say, like, yeah, we'll do a signing ceremony and then just do whatever the fuck they want, no? I think it all comes down to incentives. And that is the biggest nations, I believe, have a vested mutual interest in cooperating with each other around certain amounts of AI. Because what AI does, unfortunately, is it levels the playing field and puts nuclear weapons potentially in the hands of much smaller organizations that are much less powerful who, quite frankly, have a lot less to live. lose. So I may be naive here, but if we had an actual diplomatic corps that hadn't been gutted and exchanged competence for fealty, look, we cooperate with the Russians on nuclear weapons. We hated each other, didn't trust each other, didn't like each other, lied to each other,

and we came to an agreement. We said, all right, nuclear proliferation, we have a mutual vested interest in not having 40,000 missiles pointed each other. So I do think it's getting to the point, think a real leader could come in and sit down with she and a lot of different Western leaders and potentially even Putin and say, okay, we need to get to a point of checks and balances where we can trust each other and ensure that this technology is not being used against any of us or shutting down our economies or our hospitals or launching our nuclear weapons without our knowledge. There is, I think, just with the same with bio-weapons and nuclear weapons. I do think there's an opportunity here if there was a little.

leader, if there was more leadership for multilateral cooperation. And Pope Leo, I think, he's turning out to be one of the better leaders. He's stepping into the void here of leadership globally. I think he's, I think what he said was very powerful. Your thoughts? I felt that way as well. And at this particular moment, it's important to have somebody that continues to take big swings, no matter the repercussions. He's not afraid of certainly the Trump administration or it seems like anybody in expressing his views. And they all seem to be so human-centric. Right. Like that's what he wants to spend his time, you know, talking to refugee kids. And he wants to talk about what AI may do to us in these new forms of slavery. Like that's about celebrating humans.

And that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have these huge technological advances. That's incredibly important, maybe not as much for his day-to-day life, but for us generally as a society. But I love how he's so grounded, like, in us, right? Like in our corporal form and the things that we need, that we need to be loved and to be cared for and to have access to food and somewhere to sleep. Like this return to the basics as we've turned into kind of zombies walking around, you know, counting every step, counting every calorie, counting every wink of sleep, et cetera. So that's kind of affirming for me in all of this. I, you know, anthropic, Dario Modi, like he just needs to look better than Sam Altman, which is not hard to do since Sam Altman doesn't really connect with people. Like even listening to him talk about his son, he has a baby.

and the way that he's optimizing for, you know, taking care of him and how he wouldn't be able to get through this without chat GPT. Like, that broke my heart a little bit. I'm not saying don't go to the internet for tips on like how to get your kid to fall asleep, but a little bit scared about what he and his chat bot are talking about when it comes to a six-month-old. But I think this is not a good thing. And I hope that, to your point, you know, the multilateral cooperation is hugely important. But there is an executive. order that was sitting on Trump's desk that he was supposed to sign about a cooperative relationship between the federal government and these AI companies and a role for the government

in regulating them. And Democrats should be out there, you know, maybe not your policy, you know, number one on day one that you're going to be regulating this. But the American people are asking for it. The only group that isn't is the 65 plus, right, because they just kind of think that this is fun. and they're on their way out the door. But, you know, everyone who's facing a job market that is incredibly uncertain, whether you're a blue-collar worker up to a white-collar worker, is concerned about this. We've been talking about all of those college graduation speeches where AI is getting booed. Wow. And they're not even thinking about the, you know, nuclear weapon capacity of this.

They're literally just thinking, I spent, you know, $300,000, $400,000, and I may not be able to be employed for the next. next two or three years because everyone's just going to throw my job into an LLM and, you know, I'll see you when I'm 25. And I don't want it all to be about politics, but I do like to win elections. And it would be really great if this was a focal point of the Democratic platform that you were talking about these concerns and had a plan for regulating them and take them up on their word, bring in Anthropic, whoever else wants to play ball, and get them. on some sort of commission where they pledge, you know, this level of regulation will be fine by us, right? These are the kind of cooperative relationships that we want to have with the federal government to make sure that AI, you know, doesn't go too fast and end up eating us all.

I don't really know what eating us all means, but part of me thinks that it's also just like robots and stuff like that will be coming for us too. We fall for it over and over. And the whole regulate us, I'm scared of this technology, we're open to regulation. That was the same lie that Cheryl Sandberg kept fomenting. That, oh, yeah, we absolutely agree that there should be some regulation in social media as they deploy hundreds of lawyers to overwhelm Senator Klobuchar staff and block anything resembling regulation or legislation. And I empathize with these guys that at some point, you know, there's such targets of so much. ship posting. And there's a there's a communications industrial complex and when it works is able to get cheap capital if the CEO seen as a leader or empathetic. So they have Cheryl do a book signing tour and talk about the very important role or discussion around gender equality in the workplace as she creates a business model to convince 14 year old girls to cut themselves. Too much? I don't think so. Anyways, I mean, as an elder millennial that grew up on lean in, it's been fascinating and very sad to see where this has all gone, especially when it comes to, you know,

what we know now about what Facebook was doing. But when Sam Aldman, I mean, at this point with Sam and after Bezos, I'm like, unfortunately, there's no money in the strategy. They should just stay quiet. That would be my advice if I were, you know, on their board. At this point, you are just so fucked. And quite frankly, the identity politics and the income inequality has created so much anger towards rich white men, you're kind of wrong before you open your mouth. So you should just not open your mouth. But unfortunately, no one's going to pay millions of dollars to a comms firm to tell them just don't say anything. When Sam Altman, who has been especially tone death in my view, and I think he's a smart guy, and he's probably a good man, when he says, I wouldn't know what to do with my kid without

chat, GBT. Okay, I find it cynical and ironic because the reason that Sam Altman had, the reason he can have a child is because of the progressive ideals and leadership of presidents and congresspeople who said, we need to bring gay people and non-whites into the wonderful rights of the rest of America, including prosperity, fair trials, and the ability to adopt children, and the ability to marry another man. And so when he sucks the cock of a bigot, President Trump, who will absolutely turn back the rights of people. outside of the mainstream, he is making it harder for other people to have children and the same rights that he enjoys. So if he, it's just so insane, these tech bros saying, whether it's Bezos saying

he's a more mature, disciplined person or Sam Altman showing up at the White House. I empathize with the fact they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, but the reason Sam Altman can marry someone and have children is because he is standing on the shoulders of people, who said no and risked personal and financial well-being and said no to bigots and said no to people that wanted to deny the rights of people who were disenfranchised or less powerful. So, Sam, the reason you have a kid is, thank God there were people much braver than you who used to run organizations in America. That's my indignance talk.

Now that we've gotten a bigot cock-sucking situation, I think we should have. wrap this baby up. All right, let's leave it there, Jess. That's off of this episode. Thank you so much for joining us today. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?

Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and mobile. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-4-Free at O-D-O-O-D-Com.

That's O-D-O-O-O-O-D-C. Support for this show comes from O-Doo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing O-Doo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a

fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-4-free at O-D-O-D-O-O-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-com.