The Bulwark Podcast - Chris Hayes: Trump Has Become 'The Establishment'

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

While Trump won the first time as an anti-status-quo hero, the low-trust podcast cranks like Rogan and Tim Dillon who put him back in the White House now see him as the establishment. And they’re ma...king Trump own the economy, the security state of masked marauders and bombing campaigns—and his close ties to the tech companies. The Democrats have not had a better moment to run against the status quo since 2008. Meanwhile, the insidious anti-semitism from Candace and Tucker has reached insane levels. Plus, the accusations that Schumer was behind the cavers, the filibuster already favors Republicans, and the risks and rewards of candidates pursuing a high-attention strategy. Chris Hayes joins Tim Miller. show notes "All In with Chris Hayes" on MS NOW "Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast" "The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource," Chris's latest book Marc Andreessen mocking the pope on Twitter Take advantage of Ridge’s Biggest Sale of the Year and GET UP TO 47% Off by going to https://www.Ridge.com/THEBULWARK #Ridgepod

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Happy Veterans Day. I'm delighted to welcome back to the show, the host of All In on MSNBC, which will be officially known as MS now starting on Saturday. He's also host to the podcast, Why Is This Happening? His latest book is The Sirens Call. It's Chris Hayes.
Starting point is 00:00:28 What's going on, man? how are you buddy i'm doing well are you do you feel compelled to do ms now like me or do you have a more or do you have a more comfortable you're like hitting the now hitting yeah i don't know i just like ms now like new york ms now yeah i don't know you know it's funny because for so long the shorthand that we would use for it is always ms who's like oh at ms at ms so i almost kind of want to just say ms because that's like anything's going to change um yeah i mean there's no change. Literally, there's no change for anyone except for us. Like, we're the one, we've got to move to a new building
Starting point is 00:01:00 and, like, you know, you're not going to have a new outfit on or anything. You're not the, you're not the, you're not breaking out the chain. In fact, the studio, the studio looks remarkable. It's a great studio actually, I was just over there, but, um, oh yeah, maybe I'll break out the chain. Maybe for the first day of MS now. Yeah, on MS now, I think you can be chain friendly. Okay, we'll talk
Starting point is 00:01:16 about it. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I'll be up there next week. Is it next week? I don't know. Times a flat circle. I'll be up there. I'll see you soon. The studio is really nice. And, yeah, the studio is great. We want to start with shutdown. I don't know if this is 100% true because I've done a full fisking of the entire internet, but I might very well be the most positive pundit in America on the Democrats cave.
Starting point is 00:01:35 I saw your take. It's fine with me. This is maybe some vestigial element of being like the establishment Republican when the Tea Party was making crazy demands and me just having to be like, really, guys, we're not going to repeal Obamacare over the shutdown. So maybe it's just that experience. But I also think the Democrats are obviously on much better turf politically they were when it started. And so that's a good thing. But I don't know. It seems like you maybe are not quite as positive. No, I'm actually broadly sympathetic your take. I mean, I think there's a few things to think through.
Starting point is 00:02:06 One is, was victory on the substance possible? And I don't think we really know that, right? The victory on the narrow substance of could you have gotten a deal on the subsidies? And I don't think we really know that. But I'm inclined to think no. I think what likely would have happened. is more and more pressure would have built for them to break the filibuster before you actually cut a deal on subsidies. That's my instinct. Because of the house. I mean, it's just like, Trump would have to go really all in on I really want to do
Starting point is 00:02:36 this. But that's tough for Trump because Obamacare is in the name. Like maybe if it was a different type of subsidy. And then he would have to be like whipping votes in the house for subsidy. Yeah, trying to get Chip Roy to vote for the Obamacare. It's just hard to imagine that happening. me. Right. I think it's hard to imagine that. I do think like it was interesting to me to watch pressure build on the Senate or Republican senators to kill the filibuster. And so to take a little
Starting point is 00:03:02 sideline here. Like, sure. I am opposed to the filibuster and have been for a long time. And I think nothing has told me that my opposition is genuinely good faith more than the fact that I was excited by the thought of the filibuster being killed under these circumstances. Right now. The argument that people always say is like, oh, well, you're saying it now and you're the Democrats have a narrow majority, but how would you? I'm like, you know what I would like? I would like Congress to reassert its constitutional role in our governance. And I would like to see the houses pass things. Like, if they, if Donald Trump wants to raise tariffs, the House and the Senate can pass a tariff bill. If he wants an authorization for the use of military force in Venezuela, you can pass
Starting point is 00:03:41 an authorization for the use of military force. Like, I think those are bad substantively. I would oppose both of those. But that is at least constitutional governance. Right. It's like that what has happened is the filibuster to me has been part of the process by which Congress has neutered itself and the vacuum has been filled by the executive. And we see it more and more and more. If you get both houses working again, I think you tip that balance a little bit. So what I think ended up happening was it came down to a question about the filibuster, which made people antsy. The third thing I'll say is this. There's an asymmetry that's always in all of these fights that I've experience, which is democratic politicians, if you talk to them, like, off the record,
Starting point is 00:04:25 behind closed doors, Tim Cain said this in public about, like, losing sleep. They genuinely, truly believe their job is to, like, deliver things to people to make the government work. And it freaks them out when, like, federal workers aren't getting paid. And Snap is cut off. It really does. Like, I talk to these people all the time. There's, this is not a thing they're, they're not disingenuous about it.
Starting point is 00:04:49 No, and they were also making a judgment, I think is real. Like, I got some of the negative feedback I got yesterday from people about my take was like, but I'm genuinely upset that my Obamacare subsidy is going to go up. Like, this was, like, I'm not a person who was performatively upset because of an online Twitter war. And I hear the people that say that. I guess what I'm saying, though, is that like, that was not going to get fixed by the Republicans. And everything flows from that first question in the flow. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:12 And then if you believe that, like Tim Kaine does, then you're like, well, no, there's also real suffering that's happening on the other side, right? all these people that are working that aren't getting paid, that people are on, you know, furlough, people got rift, people lost their jobs, people aren't getting their staff benefits. I mean, like, there was real harm having to people on the other side. And I, that was weighing on these centers. And it was weighing on many of the centers who didn't vote yes, because they didn't want to deal with the blowback from constituents, by the way.
Starting point is 00:05:36 And I've heard privately from some, not the centers themselves, but people in their order. Yeah. And in some ways, I was surprised and impressed they did it as long as they did, because of that, because that's usually the way the dynamics work. The last thing I'll just say on this is I do think the messaging has been really bad. And to me, the best message to the extent there is one is, look, we have a minority and we have a little bit of leverage. They are hurting so many people in so many directions that we have been trying to use this leverage to stop them from screwing people on the Obamacare exchanges.
Starting point is 00:06:13 Their response to that was to turn up the pain on everyone else. And at a certain point, we had to make a calculation. We're the only responsible party in this entire governance. Donald Trump's talking about how Snap is a Democrat program. Russ Votes, Darth Vader. They like hurting people. They like it when people suffer. We don't like that.
Starting point is 00:06:29 We're trying to minimize the amount of suffering and cruelty. And at a certain point, the calculation for eight of our members became that it was too much. And you can say that's the wrong calculation we could have won. Just say that. That is a defensible argument. I even go one step further than that, which is like, we, gave them 40 days to come to the table and help their own voters, help their own supporters who are going to suffer because we're going to pay higher health care prices who are losing
Starting point is 00:06:54 access to coverage. We gave them this opportunity. They refused to do it. We offered them a win. I mean, honestly, it would have been a win for them. A hundred percent. Yeah, they refused to do it. And so now we'll just have to take that to the voters again next year, just like we did last week and we won. We'll do it again next year. And I think that we're going to win again. You know what I mean, like, that's, that's, like, arguing from strength rather than, you know, Angus King, who is on MS now yesterday. They all sound insane. Like, who, Trump, Trump, we got to hand it to Mr. Trump on this one. He stood up to him.
Starting point is 00:07:23 If you were the communications director for a senator who's going to say that, please just get them some meetings all day for the rest of the week. Part of it, too, is that there's not a lot of coherence and, like, this sort of question of, like, was this really a Schumer, an off-book Schumer operation that he was. I don't think it was. I think it, he knew that they were doing it. It wasn't like he was surprised. This was coordinated by the people who coordinated it because they wanted the shutdown end. So that's part of it, too, because I think part of the messaging failure is the fact that it wasn't coordinated. All right, y'all, I was looking around for a new wallet.
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Starting point is 00:09:38 one last thing on the filibuster you know i have limited appetite you have a little bit more on all in and you did on your on the old weekend show used to have a lot of uh appetite to spend many multiple segments doing filibuster talk and talking about the arcane rules of congress i've kind of limited appetite for this but i do i think it's worth just exploring that point as well because i mean a just for starters i'm kind of it's frustrating to me when people are like well we could have got this win of them eliminating the filibuster i was like was that the point of the shutdown like nobody mentioned that until last week it's like we started the shutdown I didn't realize that was the goal.
Starting point is 00:10:09 But anyway, isn't the filibuster at this point really just a question of political will? Why do you need Mr. Trump to give you permission? And they've already did a carve out for judges. They already disregarded the filibuster rules on reconciliation earlier this year. Like there were certain Budget Act rules in order to get the 50 vote on the BVB. They ignored those. They just ignore Congress altogether all the time when they don't have the votes. I guess that the filibuster already dead.
Starting point is 00:10:34 I shouldn't the Democrats who are against to just like speak that into existence? Like, why would, in this case, let's say that John Thune would have said, well, according to the 1872 Act of whatever, you know, in a government shutdown situation, we have another carve out like we do for judges and for reconciliation. The problem is not everyone in the Democratic caucus is there on the filibuster. And so you need some forcing mechanism to get it there. Yes, you're right. And you were hoping this would be it, that like the scales would fall from the others of Dick Durbin. I think if the president and the Senate nuked it, it would alter the calculation. I mean, even if they game up with some, you know, face-saving, you know, citation to some 1872 precedent.
Starting point is 00:11:11 But to me, you know, you're right to point out, like, the thing that's so crazy about the modern villabuster is that you need a simple majority to put in lifetime judges who will rule for right-wing causes and a simple majority to cut taxes. And those are the two domestic priorities of the Republican Party. And everything else you want to do, which are the priorities of the Democratic Party, you need 60 votes. So, boy, what a cool system. It's like, so you've got these carve-outs that are like just happen to align with the priorities of right-wing governance legislatively. And that's a huge problem. So there's a partisan valence, but they're also, to me, there just is. And now we can do appointments by group, actually, too, that they decided to do this year.
Starting point is 00:11:51 Right. You know, so it's like it isn't even one at a time anymore. I understand the complaints about the Democratic senators on the filibuster question and what to do going forward. And maybe this is like a way to put pressure on them to be like, guys, if you ever get back in power, like business has to be different. Like, we need to, you know. Part of the thing I think that people are sensing that they're not wrong to sense is that there's a lot of politicians, most politicians, a lot of politicians don't want to do a lot of stuff. They want to do small stuff that they can, they don't want to do big stuff. Like they don't want to hurt people.
Starting point is 00:12:20 They don't want to hurt people, but they also don't want to do big stuff. And, you know, you saw this around. This is one of the reasons that on all the kind of writeups of Nancy Pelosi's career. that why that moment around the ACA was such a big deal, because it was like, after Scott Brown won, a lot of people were like, let's just not do it. It's just easier to not do it. Let's not do it. And she was like, no, we're going to do it. And I don't care if it's easier to not do it. And so what I think people are picking up in their rage at the Democrats is that they're seeing a party that isn't still quite there where the risk profile and the appetite to do stuff is commensurate to the moment. And I think that's a fair critique.
Starting point is 00:12:59 No, I think it's fair critique, too. And I share it sometimes. I just didn't share it in this case. It's kind of like, not all fighting is good fighting. Here's an example of good fighting. The redistricting thing has changed so much in the last three weeks. It's really wild. There was a court ruling this morning in Utah that the people of Salt Lake City now finally get a representative rather than the old map, which was just like a pizza out of Salt Lake City.
Starting point is 00:13:24 Like each red corner of Utah had its own representative, and Salt Lake City had no representative. We're calling it the reverse Chicago, because there's a little bit of that in Illinois. Yeah, there is. So now, now Salt Lake City gets a representative, thanks to a judge out there. Virginia, with the massive win, it's obviously going to redistrict and pick up a few more seats. I was looking at Dave Wasserman this morning who analyzed that basically right now, like, we're at about a draw, like the way that he sort of projects it out. Republicans have like a plus one advantage on like one more seat than they may have had been status quo, but that is before Virginia and Florida.
Starting point is 00:14:00 And so we'll kind of see how those shake out. But like it went from something that I literally on this podcast three weeks ago, I was like the Republicans might end up with like a plus 17 advantage on this if everything goes right. And to now being neutralized. I mean, big shout out to Gavin on that and to other Democrats. It's worth noting like how much has this changed over the last few weeks. Yes.
Starting point is 00:14:20 And I mean, we should say the one huge caveat, right? is pending both the timing and the result of SCOTUS's Voting Rights Act decision, right? Because if they basically kill the last remaining parts of the Voting Rights Act, the southern states can basically, like, redistrict out all their black reps. Literally. Just go back to like a fully all-white confederate, like all-white reps from the former competitor states. You have to laugh just because it's so... It's so dark. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:14:51 It's so awful. So pending that, like in terms of where we are, yes. And I think the nuisance thing, you've got to give them credit. Just really quick at the voting rights. So, I mean, I don't know, the folks I talk to feel like this is probably a 28 issue. That's why I said pending the outcome and the timing. Like the court rushes when it wants to rush and it's slow when it wants to slow. If they want to rush it, they can rush it and be like, yeah, and this is good for 2026 and here's our opinion.
Starting point is 00:15:15 Yeah. I think that's less likely. I think more likely it's a terrible decision, but they say it's for 28 in the decision. So, but pending that, you're right. And it's pretty amazing. I mean, the California thing is huge. The Virginia election, I mean, I know that we've like all talked about it, but like, I think just going, looking at those like house delegate races slaughter.
Starting point is 00:15:35 Like, Republicans got their asses kicked in Virginia. I mean, truly, I mean, everywhere on the map, like flipping seats, flipping Trump seats, not just seats that were, it wasn't just that this is a house delegate seat with a local Republican. right. These were seats that were in a presidential year were, you know, plus five plus six Trump. So yes. And I think Democrats, to the point that we were just making now about like not quite being there on the filibuster and not quite ready to sort of from a game theory perspective, like established deterrence and go tit for tat, that if that's not the case on sort of procedural hardball yet in Congress, it has been the case on procedural hardball with gerrymandering. All right, if you've been reading JVL's triad and you're thinking about the future and how things could be, well, stop for you after you sign up for the Bullwork Plus is to go to trustedwill.com slash bulwarks to get 20% off their simple, secure, and expert-backed estate planning services. Trustful.com. That stuff can feel intimidating, right? It feels like a pain in the ass. You don't know. What do you need? Do you need lawyers? Well, they got a website that is very simple to use process is quite straightforward. The end you have peace of mind, knowing that your assets and wishes are secure.
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Starting point is 00:17:29 I wonder, you know, a big part of the Chris Hayes theory of everything in the book, The Sirens Call is, as, you know, how the Democrats need to update their views on how to deal with the attention economy. It's something I agree with, generally speaking. I do wonder if, like, the overwhelming victories from Spanberger and Cheryl, who I think we can just be candid, did not exactly, I mean, ran like pretty conventional democratic campaigns. I mean, there certainly were some tactics, like messaging tactics, some things updated
Starting point is 00:17:56 that were better than what come, but I just meant like on the tactical side, didn't run that different. Does there kind of landslide victories change your priors on the attention theory at all? It's a great question. I've been thinking about this a lot, and I would say two things. One is that, like, structural factors are always the most important factors, you know? Right. Right. And in some ways, what's really interesting is take my sort of, you know, attention focus aside and just compare those two races. Everyone in politics and in the states, like when you talk to people, people in New Jersey and Virginia thought that Spamberger was running a really good race and her opponent sucked and that Cheryl was running a really bad race and her opponent was strong. Everyone said that. And everyone expected that New Jersey was going to be close and Spangor was going. And they were like the same outcome.
Starting point is 00:18:42 So it's not like, it's not just like my particular views on attention. It's that the structural factors in both places seem to just be so overwhelming that people are just the combination of the excitement of Democrats to vote, the fact that people do not like the way the country's going. The thing I will say, though, on attention is I think that attention stuff is the maximum, the place it's most important are in president. with the most marginal voters. So, like, you're still talking about, even in a high turnout off your election, you, on, like, the year after, you're still several concentric circles out from, like, the pool of people that vote in a presidential and just interpresidential. And that's the place that I think this attentional question is kind of the most urgent.
Starting point is 00:19:36 Because you're talking about people that, like, really don't pay attention to the news. Like, they are very insulated from the world of politics. politics. Even someone who's voting in an off-your gubernatorial in the grand scheme of Americans is like a pretty plugged in person. You just got to remember how many more people are voting in a presidential. And that outer concentric circle of people totally disinterested from politics was the worst for Democrats and is the place where I think they have to think the hardest about how to reach those people. Even the more outer was even the worst, the people that didn't vote. Didn't vote, yeah, which is a huge.
Starting point is 00:20:12 huge switch. Enormous. Like, the number one thing that I talk about when I talked to, you know, goody-tushes, democracy people. I'm just like, everybody has to update their priors about, like, where we are on the people that don't vote. Because in the Obama era, the people that didn't vote, if you got them to vote, they're probably going to vote for the Democrats.
Starting point is 00:20:30 And now it's the inverse. Or, I mean, maybe that won't be true in the future. I don't know. But, like, you have to at least think about it. I keep wondering at what point that reality. I mean, first of all, we should say these things are fickle, right? So, like, you know, 10 years ago, it was different than it is now. But at what point that reality starts to get into the heads of Republicans who want to restrict people's access to voting?
Starting point is 00:20:52 Like, now, they tend to be smart enough that's very targeted, right? It's like, we're going to take away polling prices on college campuses. Like, and they've run the numbers on this. And it's kind of like the black voters that didn't vote, you know, if you projected what they would look, if you modeled it out until if they voted, like they would vote more Republican than. And black voters have voted, but they still would vote for the Democrats. Exactly. Right. Yeah. So, so, you know, trying to tamp down voting is still a net positive, yeah, for Republicans. I do wonder what at what point this access question, which has been such a, a dogma for Republicans, starts to change.
Starting point is 00:21:28 I mean, you saw it with Vance's tweet afterwards about calling about low propensity voters. And he sounded like a progressive organizer, circa 2007, you know, 2007. Like, we got to register our people. I just want to go a little bit deeper on that question about the attention thing because I feel I always want to question it the most when I'm so susceptible to a theory like I'm with you very much like that the Democrats need to change their game. And we live in it. Yeah, we live in it. But again, you just look at this Stranberg show race. I look back at like the colonel red race in Texas right now, for example, like in last time. And he's so maligned right now. And he's like in this race right now. There's an open Texas Senate seat. And it's like people are excited about Tala Rico because he could go on Rogan and maybe Jansman Crockett can get in. She gets a lot of attention. And I don't know. I mean, you know, while the getting a lot of attention and being ostentatious and going everywhere, things like really worked for Trump, like you didn't work for Herschel Walker and Kerry Lake, right? Like it backfired. And not to compare Jasmine Crock and James Tyler, go to them.
Starting point is 00:22:25 But, you know, I just like the boring candidate. Yeah. Yeah. And the boring candidate, Colin Allred, like, he outperformed Harris by like eight points. Yeah. And like this year, if the Democrat Senate candidate outperforms the whatever the Democrat ballot. by eight points, they might be the senator from Texas, right? So, you know, I mean, maybe in some places and states, you know, it's a little bit more of a case-by-case basis. I think not for
Starting point is 00:22:51 the presidential year, but like thinking about these other races, like over-learning the lesson of the 2024 campaign about podcast appearances might be a mistake in certain situations. I agree with that. I think there's a few things to think about, right? So the thing that I stress is, part of my point is you need to have a theory about how you're going to get in front of the voters you need that isn't just, we'll raise a lot of money and run a lot of TV ads on local news. That's the place you start from, right? That's why it's on the most sympathetic because all those ad guys who are old friends of mine are all built beach houses and getting boats for nothing. Third beach houses, yeah, right? Yeah, for nothing. Like, literally nobody's watching
Starting point is 00:23:28 these ads anymore. Anyway, so that's the fundamental part that applies everywhere, right? Yeah. Again, this was a solved problem for 40 years in American politics. We're talking at races that are basically the congressional level and above. Statewide races and congressional races in like pretty saturated media markets. Below that, it's a whole different world. Like you're running for House delegate. That's just another category, right? So you have to have a theory of how you're getting known to people. And that attentional question is higher for people the further from being known entities. Right. So like Tala Rico, who is just a fairly random, he's a, state senator in Texas, he's pursued a kind of high attention strategy, which has been effective to get him from this tier to that tier. For sure. And again, this is an important thing to figure out because part of the point I'm trying to make is you actually do want to expand the universe of people that are trying to run and can run and they have to be more innovative.
Starting point is 00:24:26 But I think you're right that like not overlearning the lessons and that the point that I make consistently in the book and in the writing I've done is that like the high leverage approach often backfires, which is the notion of all attention is good attention, even if it's negative, was a disastrous approach for Blake Masters, Carrie Lake, Herschel Walker, Doug Masteriano, like on and on and on and on. Trump like figures, trolls, Mark Robinson is a great example, right? Like, you know, he underperformed the national ticket by, I think, 10 points in North Carolina. He was, you know, running for governor.
Starting point is 00:25:03 And then on the other side, you got Roy Cooper, who's like the most boring man on earth. But is like above water in a purple state and about to run for Senate and has got a good shot. So you can't just say, hey, be like Trump and that's going to work in every race. I wish authoritarianism wasn't on the line, you know, here. And it wasn't so important that the Democrats win these mid-year elections. because I would like to, like, run the main Senate race twice and just see what happens. Yeah, right, totally. Because I actually have no idea, which is a better option between.
Starting point is 00:25:36 And I think that they're both, it's like almost the caricature of both paths. You have like a geriatric establishment politician who is very safe on the one side. And like a guy who I had the, are we the baddies tattoo, like on the other side. And who's like very charismatic, very charismatic doing selfie videos about firing Chuck And I'm kind of open to any possible, like, potential outcome, but we won't be able to, we won't be able to know, you know, we don't know how one side works, I guess. Well, and that's the thing that makes, you know, it makes politics so both sort of enjoyable maddening is no one ever gets to run randomized control trials.
Starting point is 00:26:13 Like, we just, we don't, and we have very small sample sizes, you know, I mean, even you're talking about presidential elections, it's like, you know, they happen every four years. You know, even in baseball, it's like, you know, there's like 5,000 at bats, right? for a team this year, it's like you can actually draw some statistical conclusions. If you try to like look at presidential elections in the modern era, you're talking about what? What are you talking about? 16, like a sample size? There have been five since the internet, basically.
Starting point is 00:26:37 Right. Yeah, there's been five since the social internet. So like everyone, we're all just trying to work, work this stuff out. And in some ways, I think, you know, to go back to the question you were saying about attention is one of the things I think that's interesting about trying to theorize problems, right? So you're not just, you're trying to come over with a theory, right? This is, and that's what the sirens call. is, right? There's a theory of attention there. One of the things that's useful about theorizing is that theories can be clarifying frameworks even when they're wrong. You know, like, it's like there's a reason that everyone still reads Freud. And it's not because people
Starting point is 00:27:09 believe in psychoanalysis necessarily. It's that the theory of Freud is an incredibly useful framework, even for pointing out things about the way human psychology works that he was wrong about. I had Fukuyama on like two weeks ago. I think that's a perfect example. Great example. And so I think with politics, it's really useful for our understanding. Like, even having this sort of theory of attention, then you being like, well, wait, let's test the facts against the theory. And there's like, and you're right.
Starting point is 00:27:38 Like, there's some places where they don't match. It's like, okay, now we're thinking in a kind of rigorous fashion where we're sort of, we're taking a theory that would seem to have predictions. We're looking at outcomes and we're comparing them. And maybe that says something about the theory, like, or not. but we're not just doing the thing that everyone does, which is like, I like it when the people that have my politics win and everyone should have them, which is like, which I think it's just the way that too much political discourse happens. This is my view.
Starting point is 00:28:07 This is my example of we'll both patty ourselves on the back one time in this podcast. My version of this for you on The Filibuster is like, I look at those five elections in the internet era, and I'm like basically four out of the five, the person that won, like ran against the establishment and said that everything that was going was wrong. We need to change. It's a charismatic person running against the status quo, basically. Like, I mean, Trump won. They both won the election, but even still, it's like these outsider figures with
Starting point is 00:28:32 Obama and Trump. And like, to me, if it's just like there's one thing that a Democrats, like, I want to run in 2028, like, how should I position myself? It's like, as an outsider running against the system and it's running against the status quo. And that's like not me because I'm, I really sort of think things are like basically fine. Like, they're bad for a lot of people.
Starting point is 00:28:51 But, like, I just, I'm small, yeah, I'm small C conservative in the way that it's like, it could be a lot worse than the status quo. Here's a question I have. I don't mean to take us off into a tangent. But here's a question I've been like very obsessed of it. So I was looking the other day because Janet Mills has a very low approval rating in terms of governors. She basically break even. So I was looking at approval ratings for all 50 governors. And I think 47 have positive approval ratings.
Starting point is 00:29:20 I thought it was Kim Reynolds was the only one who had a negative. Who else has a negative? And she's really negative. And when you look at Iowa, which has had its GDP contract by 5.6 percent, you're like, okay, I can see a signal there, right? But if you look at the top, like there's no rhyme or reason, like some are liberal, some are conservative, some are in red state, summer and blue state, summer. Why is it? I think there is a structural question here that people are so overwhelmingly happy with their governor. and the incumbent president going back now multiple terms has been underwater for almost all of
Starting point is 00:29:55 their time in office. And Congress and just right track, like natural right track numbers. Right track, right track, wrong track. But it wasn't always like that. There used to be a lot more variability in the governors. And there used to be approval, like presidents, you know, Bill Clinton's second term, like had a positive approval rating. You know, George W. Bush was at 90% after 9-11.
Starting point is 00:30:12 Like, obviously, that's an exogenous shock. I just want to get my head around this public opinion reality. Now, I'm trying to theorize it myself, but I don't quite have the theory for it. The internet. So that's the question, like the internet and nationalization of politics and the information environment is that all of the things that are wrong are on the guy in the White House. Yeah. And I haven't quite worked out exactly how this works. I'm just, we're doing this live.
Starting point is 00:30:33 But I do, I often think about the Sarah Longwell focus group of, I think it was of Florida. I forget, it must have been during the primary. I forget why we were doing Florida and Alabama. voters because it's a weird mix. But at some way, we were doing a combination of kind of Florida, Alabama was like Southern voters. And in the focus group, people were talking about, this was, I think
Starting point is 00:30:54 maybe before Ron DeSantis, like, got tanked and became Rhonda Sanctimonious. They're talking about Matt. And they're talking about what they like about Ron DeSantis in Florida. It's like, he did this thing, he got this thing done. I liked this bill. He's a conservative voters. And then in Congress, they're like, who do you like? And they're like, we like Matt Gates.
Starting point is 00:31:10 You know, and it's like, why? And it's like, well, who else do you like? It's like, Marjorie because they're actually doing something up there. Right. Right. And like there is some level of like the entertainmentification, the nationalization of politics that has made people feel like that the national political scene is about like winning some existential battle for the future of our culture and society and that like governor's job
Starting point is 00:31:35 is to make sure the schools are okay. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Right.
Starting point is 00:31:39 But it's also interesting to me too that like there was a period of. of time in like 2009, for instance, right, which was like, you know, wrong track numbers through the roof, when all the governors were unpopular too. Like, you know, they all got their butts kicked in that election. Now we're in the space of like things aren't as bad for people as they really say. And that's like something that you get in real trouble if you say that. Because like, again, some people are having, like at all times in all parts of society, there are people that are going through really bad things, really challenging things. Life is fucking hard. Life is hard. If even real things
Starting point is 00:32:13 are going well, life is up. Totally. But like, comparatively speaking, like, where are they going so bad that I'm mad, not just at this amorphous thing in D.C., but I'm mad at, like, the people that are supposed to make my life better narrowly, right? A good example of that is the consumer sentiment stuff, right? Where it's like, you keep seeing, like, consumer sentiment is lower than it was
Starting point is 00:32:31 in 2009. I was like, I was there in 2009. Like, the economy was so much worse in 2009. It's bad now, and there's, like, again, people are struggling. When you talk about this existential thing, I mean, I said this on John Stewart's podcast last week. Like, to me, the really useful thing in all of this is to come back to like starting at a whiteboard of like, well, what do you want? Like, and, and to me, it does come back
Starting point is 00:32:59 to like what people want. I think in the main is to like have a little bit of space, be able to buy a home, have a job they don't hate and doesn't crush them, send their kids to school, feel safe and take some vacations, go camping, have some friends over. And it is actually pretty hard to get that. It's harder than it should be in America to get that. And there are tens of millions of people for whom that just seems not possible. And that's too many. And then if you replace that with, okay, now what I want is the people that I don't like who I feel like are causing this, I want them to suffer. Right. That gets you to the national politics side of this, right? Where it's like, okay.
Starting point is 00:33:39 Okay. So if I don't have that, you know, and I'm on the left, right, then I want to see MAGA people losing and suffering. And so if they're winning, then I'm sad. If I'm MAGA, I want to see whatever. Like, you know, the, I don't know, the trans gal taken off the bud like can or whatever. I want to see more white people in the movie. I don't know. Whatever it is. You know what I mean? Then it becomes this other stuff. Right. Like I want to, I want to win this daily war on Facebook that I'm having. But the weird thing about that is, I think there's an argument, if you look at the data, that it's the more affluent people who have the more effective politics. Like, that it's like the people who have more money in education who are the more like, I want my enemies to suffer and the people who are more, like, you know what I mean? Like, I think that's more or less what the data shows, basically, that like the people were like, I really just need enough money that I can like get my car fix when it breaks down to get to my job. are actually less into national politics as kind of, you know, combat sport for, quote, the other side. Yeah. And I don't know. Again, all this stuff is, it's hard to sort of distinguish all this stuff.
Starting point is 00:34:46 But I do think, like, to me, there's a combination about the information environment that speaks to something that JVL is saying that I think is right. There's like a structural pessimism in the way we learn about the world that is pretty corrosive. and also there is a structural problem with the way American capitalism particularly functions such that way too many people in a very rich country just feel cut out of the deal. And this is where my admissions against interest come in. In some ways, that should be like somewhat optimistic for Democrats and that like a lot of the people they lost for folks in that second camp. That's why Tuesday night was that's why the election was so important for exactly that reason because it was like, It's very, every, this has been driving me crazy, so let me just rant on this. Yeah, around.
Starting point is 00:35:35 You're like, wow, the Democrats figure out an affordability message. They're not the incumbent party. It's, it is, it's not a symmetrical issue for the party that has the White House and doesn't. Inflation is out of control. I can't afford anything. Try running on that when you're the party associated with incumbency in the status quo. Like, like, wow, they really figured it out. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:35:59 Like, and Donald Trump, everyone's saying, Donald Trump really seems to have lost his mojo on this. Yes, because he's now responsible. Like, this is not rocket science. It's like, if people are upset with the economy or they think inflation's high, the incumbent party is into a rough shape and the challenging party is in better shape. Let's take to the other thing I wanted to talk to you about, which we were gabbing about in the hallway the other week, which is it's not just the economy. It's a bunch of other stuff Donald Trump owns now. And you and I both are sharing an obsession with like listening to like the, what I'm,
Starting point is 00:36:30 you want to call it conservative like maga comedian space but manosphere or whatever and kind of how that intersects with tech world and all this yep and a lot of those guys you know who are not the right wing ideologues and they have certainly cultural conservative views on certain things but they're not political ideologues right partisans yeah you hear them now you hear the tim dillan's world now i played his him a little bit yesterday and they start talking it's just like shit sucks like shit isn't getting better right so they're not fixing the economy part like they're not doing that So now he owns that. On top of that, a lot of those folks were, like, skeptical of the establishment in the sense of the security state, you know, of like the big government.
Starting point is 00:37:09 Palantir. Oh, right. Yeah, right. So now it's their own Palantir. They are the ones with the masks coming after people in their neighborhood. They're the ones bombing people, naming things, Department of War. And they're also in bed with the tech companies, which, like, I think there's a healthy skepticism about across the partisan divide, but certainly in this kind of space, right? And so now it's like all the sudden, like the ability for Democrats to take back the mantle of being anti-status quo, this is the best moment for them to do that in a decade and more.
Starting point is 00:37:41 I don't know, since Obama, since 2008, maybe, because it's like Trump finally is owning some of this stuff. Finally. Yeah. And the second time in a way it was not during the first time. And that's partly because there was because the establishment, such as it exists, and there's always a fuzzy term, was kind of fighting him in his first term, and it rolled over. And folded this time. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:03 I totally agree with that. It's kind of like a gift. We were all pissed that all the tech CEOs went to the inauguration because F those guys, I wanted them to fight them for my own emotional needs. But like for the Democratic Party interests, it was this gift, actually, for them that they did. So I felt that, I felt that immediately. And the reason I felt it immediately is because I remembered the Bush years, watching this kind of cultural consensus form around the president that was like, well, we got to change everything.
Starting point is 00:38:28 and the, you know, that it's like Alex Jones, the first time I saw Alex Jones was in a Richard Linklater film, but the first time he really came across my sort of consciousness was him with a bull horn ranting outside of the R&C in 2004, right? And all the, all the low trust, skeptic, anti-establishan energy was all on the left in 5-06-07 relating into Obama. And there really was this flip that happened, particularly around COVID and particularly around, you know, and Biden and inflation, all this stuff. And I completely agree it's flipping back. And again, it relates to the exact same argument about inflation, which is like,
Starting point is 00:39:09 it's easier to be anti-status quo when you're the out party and harder when you're the in-party. But I also think Donald Trump, like the buddying up with the billionaires, knocking down the ballroom in the middle of the shutdown, throwing a great Gatsby party on the day that SNAP benefits are going to run out. Like, it was always the case. that this guy was going to be, is a billionaire, is friends with billionaires, and wants to hook them up.
Starting point is 00:39:33 That was always the case, and it was maddening that mess, how hard it felt to get that message through in 24. But it does feel now that has penetrated the consciousness of exactly the people you're talking about who are not like the obsessive politics nerds. And dearfoot, you said, you call it low trust and like there are a lot of other more, you know, pejorative words, the cranks, the conspiracist. But, like, there's something to be said that, like, the crank alignment around Trump, like, because this is your point, like, that crowd, whatever. The crank alignment won in the election, 100%.
Starting point is 00:40:05 Yeah, because there are more than than there are of me. Yeah. Like, let's just be real. Like, the number of, like, I'm a college-educated high trust suburban Republican, like, some of them voted for the Democrats. It was pretty important for Abigail Spanberger in Northern Virginia, right? But, like, nationwide, there's a lot more people who, for good reason, have not a lot of trust in the way the system has worked and they're pissed. and for a while they were Democrats for a while or maybe they're unaffiliated or not in touch
Starting point is 00:40:31 and now and like they're listening to these shows or anything from Alex Jones or Joe Rogan to like Barst or whatever right like that's a huge range but anybody in that range now is like wait a minute I'm pretty skeptical of the guy that is having a meeting in the gilded ballroom with the people that run the spyware for the government that's exactly what yeah you know I mean like the gay
Starting point is 00:40:55 guy who's obsessed with the Antichrist is running spyware on behalf of the government. I think it's pretty natural that you'd find some skepticism of that among the Alex Jones, Joe Rogan crowd. You even see it with Shane Gillis, who, by the way, whose politics I really find fascinating and, like, I'm constantly reading his tea leaves because, like, I think Sching Gillis is in his heart, he's a lib. Like, he, I think he votes, he, he said he votes. He's an heart of his lib, but he's annoyed by a lot of the liveship in his life.
Starting point is 00:41:21 And he's also very much of Trump world. And he talks about his dad watching Fox News all the time. But in his, you know, in his hard, that's my read of his politics. But I just been watching him recently and he's like on that podcast with Matt McGowan where he's like, he's like, I'm back on my lib shit. He's like, I'm back. He's like, he's like, and he started with Elon Musk. He was just like so annoyed be Elon Musk, you know. And so, but you see that everywhere.
Starting point is 00:41:46 The other part of this that we got to talk about, if you don't mind, I'm going to bring this up. No, please. I am just fascinated by the sort of anti-eastern. Semitism like thing happening in the right. And the reason it's connected is because there's a through line, right? Because I think in the kind of low trust, like right wing adjacent world, people are very critical of Israel who are in Gaza. They're very critical of the Israeli government. You had like Theo Vaughn coming out and being like, I have to speak what's in my heart. I think it's genocide. And you got Tim Dillon. And the people who are courting that same low trust audience
Starting point is 00:42:22 in the more hard right spaces, Tucker and Candace Owen specifically, Nick Fuentes, are like chasing that. And there has been historically a connection between like crank and cranks and anti-Semitism. It's like the place crank politics sort of always end up. It's like where every conspiracy theory ends up. Mark's called it the socialism of fools. It's a great, great phrase. So there's a relationship here to me because. The enduring power of the Jews as the secret puppet masters as a long-running thread in Western discourse and the kind of like up for grabs crank realignment polarity are colliding to me in this way.
Starting point is 00:43:12 I mean, I don't know how much Candace Owens you're watching right now. It is a ton. It is so. It's both like insane at a level where you're like, I think this. is like I think I need to call like for an intervention here with this individual. But it is all, I mean, partly it's performative. It's also so insidious. I mean, my God. We should have done a whole hour on this because I could do. I have like two separate thoughts. Just on the Candace. Here's the thing I worry about. Well, the thing I worry about first and then then kind of the watching it
Starting point is 00:43:40 collapse over there, which is the good part. The thing I worry about a little bit about how this stuff connects is like the way people are consuming information right now. That's one of my worry too. You know, so that I hear, like, I've done a bunch of college speaking recently, like, I hear from left kids that, like, are mad about Israel, that watch, whatever, watch Assad Piker, watch whatever, that have legitimate anger towards how Israel prosecuted that war. And so they're watching, you know, a lot of whatever material on their TikTok feed or Instagram feed that's from a lot of left activists, right, that are talking about the way Israel's bad. And then into their feed pops in Candace And then pops in Tucker And they're saying the same shit on this one issue And Nick Flintz
Starting point is 00:44:24 100% And they're saying the same shit on this one issue Maybe a little nastier You know what I mean? Like in certain cases If it's Flentis like way nastier right Like absolutely In my feed
Starting point is 00:44:33 In my feed personal Yeah you get it Like if you look at stuff That is critical of the war in Gaza If you look at stuff that's like Here's a report I'm like a horrible thing on having Gaza The algorithm will give you Candace Owens
Starting point is 00:44:44 Right And so then I've talked to kids I was literally arguing with a kid like three weeks ago, college kid, who was like, you know, starting to think that the Jews killed Charlie Kirk. And he's a left kid. Like, you know what I mean? It's like, maybe Mossad did the Charlie Kirk killing. And I don't, I'm starting to have questions about Emmanuel Macron's marriage. And I was like, is this a troll? And again, it's one person, whatever, like the world contains a lot of multitudes and weirdness. But like, to me, I just, I'm pretty worried that on the
Starting point is 00:45:11 one hand, the Democrats are going to benefit from this crack up on the right. But on the other hand, that there's going to be some young people that get kind of sucked into this pipeline of the Candace stuff because the entry point was this war. Yes. I mean, you have articulated exactly my fear and what I've been seeing happen. And there's a very cynical algorithm chasing by the people that are doing. They know exactly what they're doing. Yes.
Starting point is 00:45:34 I mean, Tucker doing a 9-11 truth special. I mean, in the year of our Lord 2025 being like jet fuel can't melt steel beams. He did chem trails this morning. Just popped into my feed this morning. We're doing chem trails now. It's like he understands exactly where the bread is buttered. And Shapiro's critique of him was right on the Flintist thing, by the way. He had French on because he felt like he was loot because that's his audience.
Starting point is 00:45:57 And so I think this is one of these places where just the reason I bring this up because it throws this, it's a very complex other aspect in the crank reallignment. Because in the crank reallignment happening out, it's like it was like Vax and it's this. And then it was like, and then you saw it online generationally like no one on tick. Like the entire universe of Gen Z social media was basically against the Gaza War. I mean, not everyone. There was tons of content on the other side. But, but, you know, I think if you looked at the number, and this was something that a lot of people talked about, that has moved seamlessly into some really nasty stuff.
Starting point is 00:46:34 And that's sticky wicked of that, which is a thing you could do, you know, hours about, which is that, like, criticism of Israel is flypaper. for genuine anti-Semites, but they're also not the same thing. And like, on and on and on. But where we are right now is, and you see this in the polling, like, I have never seen like it's the Jews are the problem as consistently as a kind of like thing people are saying in the media sphere, not in the mainstream media, as I am right now. And I find it like unbelievably unnerving. Me too.
Starting point is 00:47:12 And I feel like this is an area where I have, I'm not as credible of a messenger, you know, as a former neocon. I'm like begging my left progressive friends who were speaking out on the war to be just, just brutal and mocking kids. Because I'm just like, the number of young people online that like really are like, I don't know, maybe Mossad was involved in the Charlie Kirk assassination. It's different than in the past. There are always people that believed in conspiracy theories about assassinations. Like this is that, like, that it's a specific thing. I mean, that's like, yeah. Yeah, the Jews did it.
Starting point is 00:47:42 And it's like, no, it was a Mormon kid from rural Utah. And, like, we have the text. Let me say this, too. Like, as someone who is, I think my politics are, I was incredibly critical of the Israel War in Gaza. I called overseas fire like seven days into that bombing campaign. I think everything that I warned about and predicted came to bear. You had a really great interview with the journalist.
Starting point is 00:48:02 I was in Gaza. I'm banking on the guy's name recently. Oh, in the West Bank. You're sorry, in the West Bank rather. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, and I can't speak. I'm not Jewish and I'm not like sort of part of the, you know, I'm definitely not part of like some ideological formation of sort of like Palestinian solidarity. I think people critical of Israel,
Starting point is 00:48:24 people critical even of Zionism as an ideology, which I think is a completely legitimate critique to have ideologically and is not anti-Semitic, you know, per se at all. I think those people have to do really intense line drawing right now. Honestly. And I think like, That's mockery of the right anti-Semites, actually. You've got to put fights with the right. They're not in. They are like, and I've seen people actually doing this who I really respect. Like, no, no, this is, this is anti-Semitic bullshit.
Starting point is 00:48:53 This is vile. This is insidious. This is calumny. This is libel. This is all the things that, again, have been overused by some of Israel's defenders to heap heap on people in a way that I think has also been not very productive in cheapening what the words mean. that the people who have been critical and who are on the left and progressive must, must draw this line here. I'm with you on anti-Sianism, not necessarily being anti-Semitism.
Starting point is 00:49:21 I also, I do think it's noteworthy when people only say Israel doesn't have a right to exist because of the way that minority religions are treated in the country. I'm like, well, I mean, basically every country in the region is a theocracy. And so I don't really, I mean, okay, that's fine. But then does Qatar have a right to exist? I don't know. The thing about right to exist to me is just like, it's such a weird phrasing. Like, it's like, what does that even mean? Like, so, right, so here's a question.
Starting point is 00:49:50 Like, does Kurdistan have a right to exist? Right. I mean, I think the Kurds probably are owed self-autonomy and should have their own state. No one's going around being like, wait, you don't think Kurdistan is right? It's like, the Kurdistan who's right to exist is not like an actually extant concept. It's like, right? I believe the Kurdistan has a right to exist. finally. Right. Yeah. Well, Joe Biden did too. Remember famously? Remember his partition plan?
Starting point is 00:50:15 Of course I do. Maybe decent in retrospect. Couldn't have been worse. The point being that, like, I do think the right to exist construction, and I'm not going to definitely not going to get into like Zionism and anti-Zionism. But I do think that like people who are critical for all these reasons. And again, I mean, the other thing to sort of think about the context here, which I think is brought to you at this point is like, and I try to say this to people who are not on social media and not an algorithm of social. media and people who are older. I truly can articulate to you the sheer level of horror that I have seen on this phone over the last two years. The worst things I have ever seen in my life as a journalist have been and not thick, not fabricated, like real images of a father holding his child's body parts in a bag. Like day after day, hour after hour. And so you've got this like insane emotional weight that's been packed into this thing. And And now the fuse is being lit on it. And I just think it's really scary.
Starting point is 00:51:16 Two other things that just had to get your take on this kind of vaguely in this space. Have you seen the Nikki Haley's son stuff lately? Have you been following Nailen Haley at all? I saw the profile of him. He's got some new book out. Yeah. So, he did an interview on Fox yesterday. I've been following him for a while because he was doing some pretty hot, like, anti-Dissant's tweets or something during the primary that I was like, oh, I'm intrigued by the family.
Starting point is 00:51:37 I worked for a couple candidates who had. family members who sent hot tweets that became a problem for me. I was like, I want to monitor this. But he did this interview yesterday, and I think it's destructive in this sense because he's Nikki Haley's son. He is against H1V visas. He wants to cut back on legal immigration. He thinks if you come, you have to fully assimilate.
Starting point is 00:51:59 He converted himself to Catholicism. He wants to de-naturalize Mediasan. So, right. I mean, I don't really want to pick a, I don't know how oldies. I don't really want to pick a fight with a 20-year-old kid of a politician. But I think it's an instructive thing. That's where it's going. That it's like the most prominent kind of of the neocon.
Starting point is 00:52:19 Oh, like if you have any hope left, it's like, oh, we're going to, the Republican Party is going to revert to some kind of normy, pluralistic, you know, type small L liberalism, you know, classical liberalism. It's like the son of the most prominent politician that would potentially conceivably lead that effort. Is it like Groyper or Jason. Yeah, it's Groyper a J. And I think that is like extremely instructive about how about this whole conversation and like where things are going on the right in that in that generation. So here's the only thing I'll say to inject a little hope. All right. There was a period where like corporate America was more performatively progressive than I'd ever seen it in my life.
Starting point is 00:52:59 And then as soon as the winds change, they stopped doing it because they were making basically a calculation about the market and business environment. Like literally the same people that had end races. and the football end zones did Charlie Kirk tributes like three years apart. Right. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, right. Exactly. Three years apart.
Starting point is 00:53:14 Exactly right. That's a perfect example. It takes all of us to me. I also want to end racism and believe that we should honor people who are assassinated politically. That said, it was pretty, in both cases, the degree to which you were speaking about both of those as a corporate, as a corporate entity was pretty aggressive. Exactly. And I think my point about this is just that when I read the Nikki Haley's son profile, And when you see it with Tucker, think about all the incarnations of Tucker, like bow tie William F. Buckley Jr. Tucker, Crossfire Tucker, MSNBC Tucker, Cable News, Tucker, 9-11 was an inside job, Tucker.
Starting point is 00:53:54 That's someone who is just figuring out where the zeitgeist is and where the audience is. And I think there's lots of people calculating about where the audience is and where it's going to be. right now. And I think they're being rewarded. But I also think that can really change. So I just don't want to extrapolate out too far. Because I think things, one of the things we saw, even to your point before about like who's on the right side or wrong side of anti-establishment stuff. Yeah. Things can change. And events are always the thing to remember is that events have a huge, we don't know what lies in front of us in the future, but things happen and people react to them. We don't know what lies in front of the future, but it seems like, The Republican Party is going to be a populist nationalist party for the for now, yes, for a bit.
Starting point is 00:54:43 Yeah, if that's where Nikki Haley's son has had it. Okay, last thing, I just want to ask you about really quick, because it kind of really saw this is the AI and the anti-establishment stuff related to AI leaders. And there's just one funny example that I had to get your response to. Did you see the Mark Andresen Pope tweets? Yes. Mark Andresen is the VC who was just a Normie Obama led, Norie Mitt Romney Republican, then went in with Trump. The Pope tweeted this. technological innovation can be a form of participation in the divine act of creation.
Starting point is 00:55:11 It carries an ethical and spiritual weight for every design choice expresses a vision of humanity. The church calls all builders of AI to cultivate moral discernment as a fundamental part of their work. I would think that that should be a pretty popular statement. Who can even disagree with that? We would want moral discernment for those that are creating supercomputers. One such investor in those computers, Mark Anderson, quote, tweeted him with a meme of a woman making like a skeptical face, we'll put it up for YouTube, just like a mocking face.
Starting point is 00:55:41 And he did receive a lot of pushback to that. And I do, I want to close to this because my final area of encouragement in the anti-establishment senses, I do think that maybe MAGA aired in bringing in all of these guys. And I think that there could possibly be a crank realignment against
Starting point is 00:55:59 them if they get so close to somebody who's like, I don't actually think that the creators of AI had to have any moral discern at all. And I'm going to mock the notion that we should have moral discernment. I can understand how there'd be a blowback to that. I totally agree with that. And to connect to the point I was just making, I don't know, you know, I'm not a trader. I don't make financial bets. But there's a really interesting and open question right now about this huge boom in AI CapEx investment, right? And it's bigger in real terms than even late 90s. And is it a bubble? Is it not? But let me just say that.
Starting point is 00:56:37 this. If the whole thing blows up, which is a possibility, I don't know if it's going to happen, the pitchforks are going to come out for these guys. Like you have not, like, they thought they had them because people had their pronouns and bios. Like, that's not nothing. Like, if the whole thing blows up and Trump is particularly associated with them, like, that will absolutely reorient politics around that. Occupy Atherton. Way beyond that. Occupy Wall Street outside of dude's house in Atherton. Yeah, it's not going to be good. All right, brother.
Starting point is 00:57:10 Knicks, how are you feeling about the Knicks? I'm a Bulls fan. Oh, right. The Bulls, this is a moment. This is the Bulls have had the best eight games. It's really fun. In a couple decades. Well, I mean, we're now down at 6 and 4.
Starting point is 00:57:20 We blew a game against Spurs last night. But they are really, you know what they are? All I asked for, all I asked for in my sports life. A competitive team that's fun to watch. Like, a playoff caliber team that for the whole season, I just hate being like, oh, there's 20 games under 500. I can't watch this team. I just want to watch.
Starting point is 00:57:37 I want to kill the voices in my head by watching a meaningless sports game where the ball goes back and forth. And all I ask for my teams is to be competitive enough that I can invest in enough of those games during a regular season to do that. Would you be able to watch last night? It was the way. Now that you mentioned, it was the Wembe last second shot, he did two threes in the last minute, right? Which, you know, he lives that way. He's an alien. He's an alien.
Starting point is 00:58:01 All right, let's do a special basketball podcast. All right, we'll do a basketball podcast and a Groyper podcast next. Chris Hayes. He's on MS Now. It's called MS Now starting on Saturday. So everybody go check him out. What time's your show on? 8 o'clock in the East? Yes, 8 o'clock. It's hard to keep track. It's only been on 8 o'clock for the last 12 years. Okay, 8 o'clock. I got it right. Yeah. I don't know. You know, at your zone. Is New Orleans Central? Central. I struggle with the time sometimes. 8 o'clock. All right, buddy. We'll see you on your show next time. Everybody else will see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the podcast. Peace.
Starting point is 00:58:37 Yeah Reading yesterday's headlines Nothing you said it's all this same Everywhere I'm the fool on the hill and I've been waiting 24 years of anticipating I said changes in my land How
Starting point is 00:59:03 People I'm here to tell you I've been around since we'll begin Hey Well, Mr. Politician Refund me if you can I've been empty Establish my man
Starting point is 00:59:26 I'm tired of your treating All of my children are saying Everywhere And then all that money On a stupid war In Vietnam When we needed at home
Starting point is 00:59:45 I'm the fool on the end I've been waiting 24 years of participate I set changes in my land People I'm here to tell you I think it's pop time The world began All over
Starting point is 01:00:07 Mr. politician reformed me if you can I'm an entity Establish for me And I'm thinking Yeah The Bullock podcast is produced by Katie Cooper
Starting point is 01:00:29 With audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown Thank you.

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