The Bulwark Podcast - Laura Rozen and Sonny Bunch: War and Dystopia

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Before the bombs and the missiles started falling on Iran, Trump sent Jared and Witkoff to try to cut a deal with Tehran. But his two favorite emissaries with no expertise in world affairs fundamentally misunderstood the Iranian mindset, and Trump grew impatient. Now, while Israel is likely trying to create a failed state in Iran, the U.S. seems to be looking for the quickest exit. Plus, the dystopia of “Robocop” may have arrived in real life, the Iran War’s potential impact on the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal, predictions for Sunday's Oscars ceremony, and Timothée Chalamet can do no wrong. Sonny Bunch and Laura Rozen join Tim MIller.show notes Laura's Substack Sonny on our dystopian parody Tickets for our LIVE show in Austin on March 19: TheBulwark.com/Events. Stay ready for anything with the American Giant Classic Full Zip. Go to https://www.american-giant.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code BULWARK. Thanks to American Giant for sponsoring the show! Learn a new Language and get up to 60% off your subscription at Babbel.com/BULWARK

Welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. We have a double header for you today in segment two. My colleague, Sunny Bontra, a newsletter about how every day we're inching closer to dystopian parody. So I want to chew that over with him and do a little pop culture and AI and tech and talk about the Ellisons. So stick around for that in segment two. Also, it's kind of a little bit of a preview of something else I've got cooking up for you guys. Starting tomorrow night, Wednesday night. Once a week, I'm going to pretend like I'm a live streamer. We're trying out the streaming platforms. You can still get us on Substack and YouTube wherever you get us, but it's just going to be me. I'm going to be taking your Q&A. We'll talk about politics. I'll talk about other shit that's on my mind too.

I'm going to try to copy the other streamers and take what they do well and then do some Tim stuff and we'll see how it goes. It's kind of like what we did on State of the Union night, but without having to watch Donald Trump. So it seems like you should like that. Come check us out. The first one's going to be Wednesday night. at like 7.30-ish my time, central time, 8.30 Eastern. So up first, we're going to get serious,

though. She's on Substack at Diplomatic, and she's a member of the editorial board of just security, long-time foreign policy writer. I've been following you on social media for like a decade now. Good to finally meet you. It's Laura Rosen. How you doing? So great to meet you. Maybe even longer. You're at Politico? Give us a little bit of your backstory. During the Bush administration, I was freelancing for like the American prospect, and I went to foreign policy during the Obama administration, then Politico, and then I was at I'll monitor for eight years covering the Iran negotiations. And then I've been at Substack for about four years. Okay. That's great. Yeah, I was following you back in the foreign policy day. So it's

been a minute. I wanted to grab you, get you because, you know, this is the nature of, you know, Donald Trump's, you know, Steve Bandon, Flood the Zone with shit element is that sometimes it's hard to figure out signal and noise and figure out what is happening and what matters and what's not. And I was following your reporting and like eyeing what was happening in Iran early this year and those negotiations were happening in January and February, but didn't really like have anybody on the podcast because there was a lot of other shit going on. You know, we're killing people in Minnesota. And there's other stuff to cover. And I was like, well, wait and see if this actually becomes a thing before we start to dial in on it. And so I went back and looked at your reporting. And I was like, I thought it'd be

valuable to just kind of take the lens back for people a little bit to where this started. I was looking at your substack. February 12th, Trump signals interest in an Iran deal. February 17th, Vance said Iran talks went well. February 24th. Iran wants to make a deal. How did we go from that period in February to bombing a girl school? Can you walk us through basically what happened? So I think one of the elements is that, you know, since the protests in January when Trump started to talk about sending the cavalry to help the Iranian protesters, you know, Israel called him, the Gulf States called him, Israel said, don't do it until you have more force in place to protect us. The Gulf states said, don't do it. So I think Trump was either keeping his options open while he moved the armada, you know, to Iran and was doing negotiations. It could have been a ploy to get the forces in place. Or he was trying to test out with Jared and Steve Whitcroft if he thought there was a good deal available.

I've been on a couple backgrounders with them since the war started. Backgrinders with Jared and Steve? Senior Trump administration officials. And they were describing the negotiations, the three rounds that they held before two Saturdays ago when Trump started bombing. And I was struck by two things. The senior Trump administration won said, you know, we came back to Trump after the last round two weeks ago and said we could probably get you a better deal than Obama got that it would take some time. It wouldn't be tomorrow. And secondly, by how much senior Trump administration official one and two misunderstood the Iranian positions. They, you know, are not experts on the nuclear issue. They did not

bring experts with them. One of the officials was describing things about the Iranian program that are not threatening. Maybe they not only could have gotten a deal, but they didn't understand sort of the Iranian position very well, which is not crazy because it takes time and they didn't have time. I have a couple of follow-ups on that. So initially the Arab states didn't want them to do it because that's something that's been hard for me to kind of tell because, you know, there's been some reporting that MBS was kind of backchanneling to him that he did want them to go after Iran. And it feels like U.A. East position is like different privately and publicly. Like, what's your sense? I don't know on MBS if he was privately lobbying.

I mean, all those countries except maybe except Oman and Qatar, I think they hate Iran and they don't like the Islamic Republic. And if it wasn't going to blow back on them, I think they're not sad to see Iran pounded. But it does blow back on them. They knew it was going to blow back on them. I think they've seen the U.S. intervene in the region before and then leave the region to clean up the mess. And I think there are also different outcomes that are not good for them that might be good for Israel. And I think they're very sensitive about that. Back to the negotiators, our pals, Steve and Jared. Jared isn't in the administration, right? What is Jared's role exactly? You know, it's interesting because you saw when Trump was trying to get the ceasefire on Gaza and get the hostages out.

You know, Wickech was going and going and going. And I think that Kushner did play a successful role in helping organize an effort that, you know, when Israel finally hit Qatar, an opportunity that he could force Israel to accept a ceasefire, and they tried to get this 20-point plan. But I think that what Trump has misunderstood about Whitkoff and Kushner's success on that is that they speak for Trump, and Israel will ultimately do what Trump insists. And I think we've seen, as Kushner and Whitkoff have tried to apply their 20-point model to Russia, Ukraine, and And Iran, they don't have the same, you know, magic silver bullets, right? And so that it seems like Trump's not expanding his negotiating. There's only like five people involved in these decisions.

Even if you wanted to have Jared and Kushner and Witkoff do all the negotiations, you should have a small team of people they trust, you know, Iran expert, a nuclear expert, right? because you can't, no one could know it all. And particularly in the Iran situation, for example, Jared is business partners with MBS, who is hostile to Iran, right? And so it's like, you don't have expertise, but you also have conflicts. I took from Kushner's, the backgrounders, that they wanted to give Trump the option. Trump was looking for the option.

These guys, you know, were doing their best. They didn't totally understand the other side. They weren't bringing the team with that. who could help them. They were doing the Russia-Ukraine negotiations in the middle of the last Iran negotiations. They met with the Iranians, the Albanians. They did three hours meeting with the Ukrainians and their Kremlin friends, Kirol Demetriov in Geneva, and they went back. And then they went to Washington. It's a crazy way to do matters of war and peace. So when Vance was thinking that the talks went well, does it seem like there were misunderstandings inside the White House? Or,

that these guys, you know, Kushner and Wickech were coming out on their own, did the negotiation. We'll see what happens. Vance was, you know, more interested in that. And, like, meanwhile, the war planning was happening over here on a different side of the operation. I think all of the principles are always loath to say anything that would box Trump in. And you even see that. I go to the State Department gaggles. And, you know, there are experts in the department they could bring down to talk to people about Iran. them, but they're afraid to do it because those guys might say something that the president will

contradict the next day. So they never want to get out ahead of him. And you see even on the State Department tweets and stuff that they basically just retweet Trump statements, Trump speeches. And that was partly why you saw them be caught. So flat-footed on helping Americans get out of the Gulf when this war started. It was totally an afterthought. Because why? Because presumably nobody that for whom, you know, if you had an interagency system,

you had the State Department, you have the Assistant Secretary of the, like, traditional, you know, the Assistant Secretary of the State in the meeting saying like, well, if we're going to do this, we also got to remember we've got this, that, and the other thing in the region. And like, that wasn't happening or they didn't care. Cushner and Wickhoff come back from Geneva on the Thursday. Friday, we know Trump made the decision to do Operation Epic Fury. Saturday morning, you know, overnight, Israel killed Khomeini and the U.S. started bombing. They wanted an element of surprise maybe to give the Israelis the element of surprise. They were relying on the military to do all the planning.

And somehow it just got, it was an afterthought. You talked about how these guys didn't really understand the Iranian mindset. That continues to kind of be the case, it seems like, as we kind of now push to forward-looking. and what they might want to come to the table on. You know, you wrote that you think that there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the Iranian thinking. There was a Reuters report that the IRGC is firmly in control, and they intend to continue launching drones and missiles, and to cut out vital energy routes.

Meanwhile, Trump is trying to act like this thing could be over tomorrow. What's your sense of the Iranian thinking? You know, for instance, for those of us who were trying to figure out what Trump was doing a couple weeks ago, He kept saying the Iranians just have to say they never want a nuclear weapon, right? He kept saying they won't say the magic words. So the Iranians came to the last negotiation and their five-page proposal, had a cover letter that said, you know, Iran will never get a nuclear weapon. And they'd said it over and over again.

But somehow Trump doesn't hear it. But these senior Trump administration officials were then kind of mocking that Iran had put that declaration on the front of their five-page proposal. There's, you know, the Iranians were trying to understand this administration. These guys don't really understand the Iranians. The two negotiators misunderstood. You know, the last Iranian proposal, for instance, said we won't enrich for five years. And then they had various things they wanted to do after five years.

That's a really good deal. And they said that they would never accumulate enriched uranium again. And by the way, the Iranians thought they were going to negotiate. And these guys basically seemed to be under instructions to bring Trump back, take it or leave it deal, and which is a really hard way to reach a deal. And so you think that that Mr. Serafing was based on the fact that there was nobody in the room who, like, could really level with them, that it was a language barrier, history barrier, that they didn't actually care, they didn't really want a deal, that was all K-Fabe and Trump just wanted to bomb, like, you know, it was almost,

going to do whatever Bibi wanted. I think there's cultural differences. I think that they didn't have time. I think it takes time, you know, a few more rounds. I think they didn't bring experts who could have advised them, even though they have them in the U.S. government, if they wanted to, you know, avail themselves of them. And I think that, you know, Trump is listening to Netanyahu is listening to other voices. So maybe there wasn't a sincere interest on the U.S. side in getting a deal. And also, by the time you move in Armada, you know, to the region, it's maybe it becomes harder to just say, we got a good deal and we're going home. I think he's tempted. Well, and then you have Israel that maybe didn't want to deal at all, right?

I talked a little bit about that. I mean, one of the problems, I think, one of the potential issues is from my perspective, you tell me, is that on the surface level, Israel and Trump are really. aligned, like you said at the start, like they, you know, kind of want to do what the other wants. But now as we get into the more challenging kind of questions about how to go forward, it seems to me, based on my reading, that Israel would be happy with like a really desiccated Iranian state and that has infighting and whatever. And Trump would rather have a Delci Rodriguez-type Iranian come from. forth. And so part of the situation here might have been just kind of a lack of alignment on

what each side wants. I think that's right. I think that's, I think that's, I think that they probably were aligned on degrading Iran's missile capabilities. And, you know, Israeli analysts have been on Twitter and writing publicly that for Israel's realistic security needs, they want Iran to be so consumed with what's happening internally that they can't. export threats externally, right? So, you know, that means that a civil war inside Iran, using the Kurds, using the different ethnic groups to go after each other, bombing the oil facilities, having kind of tumult inside Iran might be an outcome for Israel that is better than the status quo before January. I think that Trump's Gulf allies remember Syria and how much, you know,

how many refugees, how many drugs, how much ISIS terrorism can come from a civil war. So I think that they're not going to want to see Iran descend into total failed states. And today you heard Defense Secretary Haguezat at the briefing. He started reasserting this kind of, we don't like democracy promotion, no more. He said, mission group. He was really walking it back to just, we're going to hit the missile. the defense stuff, and then we're done. So I think they're starting to signal that they're heading for the exes.

I guess, though, Trump sounds different. I mean, Trump is just all over the place. Like, within the same answer to a question, he'll be like, this is almost over. We're way ahead. We've already won, basically. And then he'll ramble. And then the end of the question, he'll be like, you know, but we do want to control the straight-of-form moves still.

And, you know, we want to see who we're going to put in power. I get to pick who's in power. And so it's, it's incoherent, right? It's like on the one hand, you've got Hegseth talking about how he doesn't want to do nation building. And then you've got Trump saying he gets to pick who the next leader is. How do you make those two things align? They've been all over the place they have.

But there was a line from what Trump said yesterday that stuck out to me. We want a system that can lead to many years of peace. And if we can't have that, we might as well get it over. with right now. And I think this may be wishful thinking on my part, but combined with some other things Hegzeth was saying and some other things Trump has said in the past 24 hours, I get a sense that they're going to finish this military mission and they might leave Iran to sort out its internal governance itself. The guy that Israel killed Khamene was 86 years old, this Supreme leader, very hard line. But his son, by all reports, is worse. And the one thing about Kamene,

the father, who's dead now, he was the one who said, we're not going to get nuclear weapons. It was like a fatwa, even if that's not good enough for the U.S., that was his public line. We don't know about much of a Kamene. So to have this intervention and you get a Supreme leader who has the same, you know, from the same family who's even more extreme, this is not Delci Rodriguez. This is not a softer regime. This is not what the Iranians who were on the streets in January wanted. But it doesn't sound from the recent statements from Trump that they're going to be the ones to try to bring a democratic regime to Iran. You know, just on a different pod with JVL and he's talking about how he relies on dependable clothes. He looks for a couple of items that he

knows are good and then he just buys a hundred of those. That's maybe the max. maximalist position on this, but in general, we all feel that way. We're looking for something dependable. And one thing that you can always depend upon is the clothes from our friends at American Giant, especially their full Zip hoodie, the greatest hoodie ever made. I've been loving American Giants since even before they were a sponsor. That greatest hoodie ever made back when we lived in California. My husband lived in that. It's hoodie weather all the time. Some people say it's perfect weather in the Bay Area because it's hoodie weather all the time. It drove me kind of insane. But If you're a hoodie person, you can't do better than the American Giant hoodie.

I also like their kind of staples, long sleeve teas. I got a fun little flannel button up I got from them. A lot to work from. Go check it out. American Giant makes staples that are anything but basic. They get the premium slub crew tea, no BS high-rise pant and slim roughneck pant. It's all born from a commitment to support the communities that create its products. Every American Giant piece is made in America and designed to last.

exception. Stay ready for anything with the American giant classic full zip and save 20% off your first order at American dash giant.com when you use code bulwark at checkout. That's 20% off your first order at American dash giant.com code bulwark. Like maybe Trump ends up just pulling the plug on this. I'm a little skeptical that Israel would want the younger hominy in there. And obviously Israel has a lot of intelligence assets. And I think it seems pretty likely that they'd be able to figure out how to kill them if they wanted to. And so that's a wildcard out there. Meanwhile, Israel is saying they expect to expand their offensive against Lebanon, even after the Iran war ends. I noticed that Lindsey Graham when he was mentioning on Fox that we were going to march through the world, getting rid of the bad guys.

He mentioned Cuba. He also threw Lebanon in there. So there is potentially something there. What do you see? Yeah, I mean, that's been a little bit lower on my radar. But, you know, Israel, because has when Israel started to attack Israel again, Israel used that as an opportunity to start attacking Lebanon again. And, you know, they told all of South Beirut to evacuate, you know, if you're on Zooms with Israelis for these think tank events in recent days, people are going to the shelters, sometimes from Iranian missiles, sometimes from, you know, missiles coming from Hezbollah and Lebanon. So I would be surprised if the U.S. gets directly involved. What do you think is happening with But Graham, I mean, I've been slightly confused about who Graham is speaking for.

Let's play a little Lindsey Graham. I've got some audio of him that we can listen to. We're going to blow the hell out of these people. This regime is in a death row now. It is going to be on its knees. It's going to fall. And when it falls, we're going to have peace like another time. But America First is to kill people who wish us ill with a.

record of trying to destroy us in the region to take them off the table. I mean, he seems like a rabid animal with blood in his mouth right now. I think he's very excited about his success in persuading slash manipulating Trump. There's another clip that's too long for me to play, but like where he talks about basically he treats Trump like a nine-year-old and he just like about the games that he was playing with him to try to manipulate him into wanting to do this stuff. But you hear in that last clip, how he's trying to redefine America first, I think he feels like as long as Trump thinks that he's winning in these situations, Venezuela, Iran, et cetera, that he can keep him focused and going on that and that that's going to appeal to him more than, you know, the boring J.D. Vance

pitch. I mean, and yesterday, I don't know if you saw that Graham was really lobbying the Saudis to start attacking Iran. And it was very very. strange because I happened to be on a Zoom with Saudi analyst at the same time, and it did not go over well. You know, they're defending them, they are defending themselves militarily from some incoming from Iran. And one, one analyst was very derisive about Graham, you know, sitting, aching them on, you know, 15 hours away. And the other thing is, I don't think the Pentagon needs Saudi Arabia to help that. They're having no difficulty finding things to bomb in Iran. And they have plenty of planes and munitions to do it.

So I don't understand Graham's obsession with getting the Saudis to declare that they're offensively going to attack Iran, except perhaps that Israel might see that as vindication for their strategy and their vision. You know, you do serious coverage. You know, you listen to diplomats. You read diplomatic cables. Can I offer the Everyone is 12 theory of politics? Lindsay Graham likes things to blow up.

Donald Trump likes to feel like he's winning in the game. And rebuilding the hollowed out cities in the industrial Midwest is a lot of work and challenging. Like helping the forgotten man find work again is challenging. Waiting for Jared, his son-in-law, to negotiate with Samaranian, takes time and patience, killing people and saying that you took out bad. guys is something that appeals to the inner 12-year-old. And I really think that it's kind of as simple as that. I think that's right.

And, you know, Graham's had to kind of suppress his inclinations with Trump on Russia, right? And Ukraine. He keeps talking about these sanctions on Russia. He's going to do. He's been talking about it forever. And Trump's not going to kill Putin. Right? Like, you know, he can't get him on board for that.

Well, just he's not even going to do sanctions on there. We've used their sanctions on them. Huge. This is better. Can you just talk. I've got every second. It's been a huge win for Russia, actually, this war. And a gas prices going up is helping them and release sanctions on them. I mean, they're in economic tough straits, and this is really helped them. Right. And then also the, you know, the West, you know, depleting their

supply of things they would have been giving Ukraine or under Trump selling to Europe to give to Ukraine. So there's a competition for patriots and air defense and interceptors. And it's all going to to the Middle East. And you could see that some of these Pentagon officials, Eldridge Colby's testifying last week, having to kind of... For people who don't know, Elbridge Colby is kind of like the, I would say, like the bureaucratic J.D. Vance of the administration. He's been representing, you know, the isolationist wing, you know, at a... Or the pivot to Asia wing. Yeah, at a staff level. Right. What is your sense for how he's processing, you know, bombing Iran? You know, you can see that this is probably not the policy they would have chosen,

but that, you know, they work for the person who is doing it. So they're the bottom. Yeah, no. I mean, it's a complete opposite of the policy. Now, J.D. Vance, I think, is a sociopath. So he's whatever. He'll figure it out. But Colby, it was a mission, right?

Colby basically was fighting for decades. And there are a couple other people in the administration that were fighting against the more interventionist, Lindsay Graham, Neo-Count, whatever you want to call it, wing at a staff level. and they felt like they had won that fight. Maybe that's Graham's exultation, you know, is that he won the internal pulse. For sure. Last thing, I was shout out my man, Sean McCreech at the New York Times, who was at the press conference yesterday that Trump had.

I don't love playing Trump's voice on the pot. I usually don't. But in this case, I think it's important to hear their back and forth on the attack on the girls' school. Let's listen. You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a tomahawk. and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war. But you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked,

standing over your shoulder on your plane on Saturday. Why are you the only person saying this? Because I just don't know enough about it. I think it's something that I was told is under investigation. But Tomahawks are used by others, as you know. Superb question. And, you know, do you remember when the Saudi then-crowned prince, Muhammad bin Salman had the Saudi journalist butchered Khashoggi.

And do you remember Trump saying, oh, you know, they told me they didn't do it? Yeah. You could kind of, there's a certain kind of lie he has when he knows that nobody believes him and he doesn't mean anyone to believe him. But this was in that category of lie. But you know, you saw John Kennedy, the senator from Louisiana, show how you can answer it. I don't know if you heard him, but he sort of said it's terrible. we didn't target it.

It was a mistake. And, you know, he was kind of modeling how you could own up to having done this thing that was a mistake. Yeah. Anything else out there that you're watching that we're not? Do you think people should keep their eye on as we monitor how this is going to develop? The one thing I was thinking about overnight is, do you remember when Greg Bovino got fired in Minneapolis and they sat Tom Holman?

They didn't say when they were doing that, that we're getting out. This was a mistake. But then you saw that, you know, we're taking out 200 people, we're taking out a thousand people. I kind of got the sense that that's the pivot that's happened in the last 24 hours on the Iran war. They've decided to, we're going to finish the going after the missiles, blah, blah, blah. And then we're going to wrap up the military part. That's the sense that I have here. That's Laura Rosen.

Her substack is diplomatic. She's been following this for a while and listening to the seniors. administration officials trying to decode the criminology of the Trump administration, and we appreciate it. Thanks for coming on the pod. Thanks for having me. Up next, Sunny Bunch. Why do most of us want to learn a new language? You know, it's probably not about maximizing your vocabre.

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your Babel subscription at babble.com forward slash bulwark. Get up to 60% off at babble.com forward slash bulwark spelled B-A-B-B-B-E-L.com forward-slash-B-Worke rules and restrictions may apply. All right, we are back. He is the culture editor here at the Bullwark. He's a man of culture. He also hosts the podcast across the movie aisle and the board. It goes to Hollywood.

It is Sunny Bunch. What's up, brother? Tim, thanks for having me on. I always loved me on the Tim Miller show. And we're going to get to see you. And Dallas will be together March 18th. We have a good show coming together. We also have a show in Austin, March 19th.

There's still tickets for that one. So go to theblerc.com slash events. You're going to come hang out with us in Austin. I wanted to chant with you about a couple of things. The first thing I came out was in your newsletter on Friday. It was it on Friday? You wrote, every day we inch closer to a dystopian parody. That's kind of something I've been feeling.

You mentioned a few things. You start with only fans, 100 millionaires. I'm throwing on top AI MAGA girls that have millions of followers. You talked about AI George Washington. Glenn Beck is having a weird conversation with him. We can gamble on nuclear war now. There's a big government fight over whether SkyNet is okay. That's basically the fight.

Like, should we have a SkyNet or maybe not? No, it's even better than that, Tim. The government's like, we want SkyNet. We need SkyNet. And the AI people are like, I don't know about SkyNet. I'm not sure if that's great. Yeah. Can we maybe have like a SkyNet minus, you know,

something that can spy on people but doesn't have like total power over the entire populace. You know, talking about just living daily life, you know, the video scroll that is now being taken over by like AI slop and like people going through things here on this very, on YouTube now, I'm kind of offended. There hasn't been an AI Tim Miller yet that I've seen,

but there's AI George Conway, Rachel Maddow, George Will. And I've had real humans tell me that they've been tricked by this and you go to these YouTube feeds and some of them are getting more views than me. So anyway, a combination of a lot of things, but a lot there. But where are you on the dystopia beat?

The question here is, are we just getting older, right, Tim? Like, this is, like, do things just feel weird because we're getting into middle age? We've got kids. We're trying to figure out life and navigating it. What's it going to be like for them? But I think we're actually, we're pretty close. I, like, every time I see a Pulver-Ver-Hovan movie. Pretty close to the dystopia.

We're pretty close to the dystopia. So, like, every time I watch a Paul Verhoven movie, and he's the guy who made Robo-Cod. Starship Troopers, total recall are kind of the movies in those veins. He also made basic instinct

and showgirls, less relevant here. But every time I watch one of these things later in the episode, but we'll come back to show girls. Every time I see one of these movies,

there are things that happen in them that are patently absurd, for instance, just like the news reports in the Robocop movies about, you know, nuclear explosions in the Middle East

and South America or whatever, that could easily happen. The board games that these people are playing are like, nuclear war, I attacked your Kamchatka or whatever. Like it's just insane stuff, but it does feel very much like something that could happen today.

There are other things. I am a big booster of the Terry Gillian movie, Brazil, which is a movie about the ways in which faceless bureaucracies destroy the human spirit. I am a big squish on immigration. I have complicated thoughts, but one thing I really don't like

is the idea of masked government agents, grabbing people off the street and taking them to hidden prison camps and moving children around the country and not telling folks where they're going. Like shipping people overseas without telling it. And that is, that is dystopian shit, man. That is like, that is absolutely, you know, again, Brazil, 1984, whatever. That is, that is not, that's not the world I want to live. Yeah, I agree.

So there's two elements of this. I want to kind of tease out. Like the fact that like the Trump administration has some dystopian qualities, I think that can just be kind of stipulated. The masked men in the streets, as you mentioned, the weird adjut prop coming from DHS, you know, about about how families should act. I mean, there is some 1984 elements to it. Then there's also just kind of like the way that technology and society is going with AI and with the prediction market. and with the way that people are consuming information on their phones.

That side of it, you know, back to your point about whether or not we're just getting old or whether this is something that people should be deeply concerned about. That's something that I like have been trying to think a lot about. And I think about there's the Mad Men scene where the executive assistant dies and they're writing her obit. And the guy says she was born in 18 something in a barn and she died on the 37th floor. she was an astronaut. Like, we are not the first generation of 45-year-olds to go through like some dramatic

change. It was like, you know, in that person, if you were born 1898 or whatever, you like rode horses. Yeah. And the time you died, like there was television, you know, beaming stuff in from the other side of the world, right? You know, so other people have gone through dramatic change before and dramatic change that was net positive generally. I don't think anybody thinks we should go back to the 1890s, not even the.

the nagovanchists, right? And so, like, are we just going through that, like a particularly dramatic change in technology? Then we come out the other side and go, oh, man, look at all the human flourishing that's happening or or not. And I kind of fall on the side of not, but it's an interesting thing to noodle over. I honestly don't know. Because look, there is a, there's a counter argument to what I, all of my doom saying here, which is like, look at, look at the utopia in science fiction. Look at Star Trek, right? You know, they have all this technology and it leads to a society where nobody actually needs anything and, you know, they can travel to stars, whatever. Maybe that's where we're headed. Maybe that's where we're headed. But I think two things have happened kind of

simultaneously. One, everybody has a supercomputer in their pocket now. You know, you have access to all of the world's information. And they use that supercomputer to sit there and mindlessly scroll through Instagram watching sometimes just funny videos but oftentimes videos that are designed to trigger actual chemical responses in your brain that keep you angry,

addicted, going more and more. And this is my big theory of the moment is that putting a magical endorphin box in everybody's pocket and tying it to their news feeds, tying it to their bank accounts. We can

debate the nature of sports gambling and the prediction markets and whatever. But I think all of this, all of this is very bad. Having some friction would be, would be good. Yes. Like I'm for having the right to gamble on things, but having this friction, like versus being able to instantaneously, you know, make this sort of.

You and I and the rest of the bulwark people are very often accused of changing all of our beliefs on many things. And you, I mean, you have changed everything. You're big, me, I've changed nothing, Tim. I've changed nothing except for, no, I'm just, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But I, like, the one big thing I have changed on in the last five years is online gambling.

I used to be like, yes, people should be allowed to gamble on their phone. That's great. Do it. It's fun. People should have the right to do that. And now I'm kind of like, now I'm like, I don't know. This seems bad. All of the ads everywhere, the, again, just the addictive quality of it.

And the fact that you are playing against the house in ways that the house will take away your right to play if you win too much. Like, that drives me a little bit. bananas. Like, I want to check my priors on this. Like, I don't want to be a Dumer. I really don't. Like, my nature, I'm not a Dumer. I know people listen to this show that would, they find that hard to believe. Like, I was like really techno-optimist. I was an early adopter to a lot of stuff in the 2000s. And, like, thought it was all very cool and like was very excited for the future, you know, where we had have, you know, access to all these social tools. And I just, like, I've seen what has actually happened, you know. And, you know, if you read the science,

on this. Like people that are using chat GBT or Claude, their brain waves are not functioning at the same level as they are if they're actually, if they're, if they're reading or doing other things. So you can just kind of see people getting stupider over time as they rely on these things. And, you know, you tie that to the risk profile of the stuff that you have in your pocket. You tie that to the loneliness. Right. Like there's just a lot of things coming together right now. But like, I don't, I don't want to sound like the old guy that's like, don't use the new tool, but I do think that the evidence is pointing us towards a place. Like, this is very, this is damaging to the culture.

Look, I think objectively speaking, people are more isolated than ever, right? Like, every study shows fewer friends, less time out of the house, fewer, you know, interactions with large groups of people, belonging to fewer organizations. And they have kind of papered that over by being like, no, look, I'm friends with all of these people online. I, you know, I can, I think the, the real danger of. of the AI stuff, aside from the fact that we don't entirely understand how it works or why it is telling certain people that they should probably kill themselves and go on shooting rampages.

Like, what happens is you create an illusion of community and friendship with this thing that doesn't exist. And that is even worse than just being lonely and isolated. Yeah, it's creepy. You mentioned David Foster Wallace, the entertainment and the conflict. on that for a second. If I can go full lip row for a second, which is the thing that doesn't exist. That's not a thing. So David Foster Wallace writes this massive book in the mid-1990s called Infinite Just and lots of people, you know, buy it and then don't read it because it's very long. It is,

it took me like five months to read. It's a real project. You have to sit down and commit to it. But one of the elements of this book is a character in the book creates this thing called the entertainment, which is basically a movie that is so addicting that people watch. it compulsively to the exclusion of everything else. They stop eating. They stop working. They stop. And they,

they wither away and die because they're so obsessed with the entertainment. And this is, you know that joke? Tech company builds torment nexus from story. Don't build the torment nexus, right? Like that is kind of what it feels like the entertainment is. All of these companies are racing toward capturing people's attention fully all the time. This is the goal of TikTok.

It's the goal of Instagram Reels. It's the goal of all of the short video content that exists to capture attention all the time. I think the downsides of this are fairly obvious. And that's before you get into any of the misinformation, that's before you get into any of the, you know, agitation. Focusing people's attention on their phone all the time is bad. I'm convinced this is bad. You will not convince me it's not bad. That's my prior.

Your point that the downsides are pretty obvious are, I think it's interesting to look at polling on this because I feel like elite opinion is a little, particularly elite opinion in kind of DC, New York circles is a little bit more anti-technology and Luddite and anti-technology company than the general public, right? Like the opinion of Amazon and meta among like New York and D.C. journalists and commentators is like 2% support 98 to pose, right? I could just overwhelming opposition. Most people like Amazon. It's a useful product. for them, right? So there's this disconnect. That disconnect isn't showing on AI. There's an NBC news poll that came out that I wanted to grab. They tested what people's favorability is of a bunch of different

things, politicians and, you know, issues, topics, organizations. I want to read you the bottom four. ICE has a 38 approved 56% disapprove. So pretty bad for ICE. AI has a 26% approved, 46% disapprove. So a lot of people aren't sure yet. But of the people who have an opinion, 20% more disapproved. approve. Worse than ICE. The Democratic Party, 30% approved, 52% disapprove. So Democrats probably work on that. Iran, 8% approve, 61% disapprove. AI is really basically only more popular than Iran. And so, you know, to me, that is telling. There's some part of this that's like scary. There's this unknown. I don't want to take my job. I'm worried about that. But there's another part of it that people sense, they're looking at the product, they're seeing what they're getting, and

they're like, there's something or off about this. I think AI has some positive uses. I feel like the, you know, people who use it to, you know, vibe code, right, are, you know, doing interesting, some interesting stuff. I saw my buddy who's a lawyer yesterday, just over the weekend. And he does, he's like a white hat lawyer. It's like he's kind of like a more serious version of Better Call Saul. You know, he's going to the old folks home and he's like,

you people are getting screwed over by the management of the old folks home and we're going to get you a class action lawsuit. That's in short of it, his gig. AI is unbelievable for him, right? Because, like, you can grab all this information, you know, like where he would have had to go higher like for legal assistance. So sorry for those people. It didn't get those jobs. It would have taken them months to go through all the documents and the basement of the, you know, old folks home. So, you know, it can be used for good.

On the medical side, people say that right. Like, there's not, they're obviously good examples. Well, but let's drill down on that, right? So you have one guy who's like, yes, I love AI. It makes my job easier. But then you have three people who aren't getting a job. And you have 10,000 people who are getting harassed by AI, spam text, phone calls, emails, who are like, what am I getting this? I don't want to sign up for a lawsuit.

What am I doing? I think that is a lot of people's interactions with AI. And just consider, for instance, going to Google. If I go to Google and I type into Google, whatever information I'm looking for, the first thing at the top is an AI thing. And like, four out of ten times when I look at that and I know the subject and question, I'm kind of like, I don't think that's 100% right. I need that. What's the sourcing on this? Sometimes I'm wrong, but a lot of the times the AI is not right.

It just is like, I think people have enough experience with AI doing things wrong and also killing jobs that they're like, I don't like. this. This is bad. And maybe killing people in the case of the Iranian girl school to the last segment. We don't know that for sure, but it does seem like potentially could have been AI targeting on that. Okay, I want to move on to a couple of topics. We're going to go rapid fire through a couple of things in the, and what I consider the sunny Ove. Warner Brothers Discovery, getting bought by Paramount. Just a couple of things that in the news have caught my eye on that lately. Ellison said that he promised, quote, CNN will remain independent on a panel recently. I noticed that later in the panel, though, he talked about how it will reign independent in the same way that CBS is independent.

And so I think maybe his image in his head of what independent looks like is I'm going to hire a lot more MAGA people and then let them do whatever they want, you know, rather than I'm going to tell people what they have to report, which is, you know, that's a difference. It's a category difference, but it's still something worth being concerned about. China's back in the deal. Tencent is in the deal. And, you know, we have the Arab nations in the deal. Like, where are we at now on this? The Tencent and Arab kind of wealth-fund things is really interesting because Tencent and Paramount Skydance have kind of a weird fraught relationship.

Remember during the Top Gun Maverick rollout, there was this big fight about the Maverick's jacket doesn't have the Taiwan flag on it. They took it off to, you know, to placate the Chinese. And then there was such a backlash to this that they actually put the patch back on the jacket. They probably like CGIed it back on after CGI'd. buying it off. And then 10 cent pulled out of that deal. Like 10 cent stopped being a co-funder of that film, which probably cost them like $100 million. And they were, they were excluded from this deal because there were national security concerns. People didn't want 10 cent involved

in this deal, you know, on the paramount side of things. So if they're getting back in, that suggests that there is some real concern that the Arab wealth funds, which are, you know, obviously their money comes from oil, the price of which is skyrocketing right now, but might not be able to to get out because of the Strait of Hormuz. The Iran War torpedoing a large portion of the funding of the Paramount Skydance Warner Brothers deal would be one of those weird quirks of history, one of those weird

unintended consequences burning a MAGA supporter. Is this like a deal's not done but deals done situation? Or there's still major potential hurdles? As we have seen with the Ticketmaster Live DASAN thing, the Trump administration has no interest in fighting like real monopolies. Like Ticketmaster Live Nation, that's a real monopoly. They control 80% of the market there. They have, you know, vertical monopolies, horizontal monopoly. Like they are, and they don't want to break that up.

I don't think the antitrust division, even set aside all of the, you know, MAGA, Donald Trump doing favors for people's stuff. Like, I just don't think they have any stomach for trying to break it up. I don't think the state attorneys general will be able to do anything either. I get the sense that it's probably just going to go through. It may take a little while. It may take the beginning. of next year. But I don't think it's going to fall apart for regulatory reasons. And I don't think it's going to fall apart for money reasons because Larry Ellison has said he is backstopping the whole thing with his money and he's got a lot of it. And it's corruption all the way down.

I mean, there's corrupt finance and the ticket master deal, big donations happening to the Trump org. I'm particularly annoyed about the ticket master thing. I mean, I'm not like the hugest antitrust guy. I think sometimes, you know, we'd Lena Con on here. And it was interesting conversation because I was like, whenever Lena was talking about like small stuff. Like, hey, there's a little monopoly in this niche area and she's explaining it.

I was like, yeah, that's exactly right. You know, their antitrust is called for in this situation. It's obviously called for in the ticket master situation. People are getting screwed left and white on stupid fees as, you know, I know as a frequent concert goer. A lot of times sometimes in the big, there's like also then a utopian side of antitrust, which is just like, if we just break up meta into three smaller terrible companies and everything will be okay.

I'm like, I'm not really sure that's true. But anyway, that's for a longer day. One other, on the corruption thing. Do you see the story about how Trump bought Netflix bonds in December while all this was happening? I did. What is the deal with that? I did. I don't, I see, so I don't actually understand that story because I don't understand the difference between stocks and bonds.

That's a Catherine Rampel question. Okay. But, but, but like, it definitely, it's one of these things where, like, why is anybody involved in the administration buying these bonds? My favorite part was the quote, did you see the quote from the White House spokes who was like, No, no, Donald Trump did not buy this. It's a blind trust that his children run. His children run it.

So there couldn't be any corruption here. And I was just, my head exploded because I was like, these children are neck deep at all this shit. A couple more things in the news. People are upset about two different topics. I want to get your take on my social media feed. One is people are really mad about the great Timothy Chalemay. Yes.

I will brook no criticism of Timothy Chalemay on any topic. but particularly on this one. Let's listen. And I don't want to be working in ballet or opera or, you know, things where it's like, hey, keep this thing alive, even though it's like no one cares about this anymore. All respect to the ballet and opera people out there. I just lost 14 cents in viewership. But damn, I just took shots for no reason. That's not a shot. I hear what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So people are mad. Oh, he does a little opera singing there. I forgot about that part. People are mad to me about that. I was in my social media feeds, I saw influencers, I don't know, who seemed actually upset. Like one thing I promised to my viewers is I get upset about a lot of things. I don't ever pretend to be upset about anything. I don't pretend. So I don't know if these people were pretending to be upset or if they were genuinely upset.

We can just join together right now and say that Timothy Shalemay did nothing wrong, right? It's fine to make little jokes about the fact that people don't go to the opera anymore. It's just reality. Timothy innocent, 100%. I will say the outrage here is ridiculous because, everybody takes everything in the worst faith possible. It is very obvious what Timothy Shalame is saying in this interview,

which is I am a filmmaker. I act in movies. I like being in big movies, on big movie screens, in big movie theaters. And I do not want to be in an art form that is die. It's a worry for movie actors.

People are worried that movies are dying. It's a real worry. Look, to go back to the Paramount Warner Brothers thing, the Paramount Warner Brothers deal is kind of contingent upon Paramount saying that they are going to continue to put 15 movies from each studio into the marketplace. And nobody actually believes that's going to happen. And cutting out another leg of the theatrical experience,

the content that goes into the theaters is going to be disastrous for people like Timothy Chalame. And he is right to worry about this. And he's right to say, I don't want to be part of a niche art form that has to beg for its own survival all the time. If you like opera and ballet, that's fine. I have niche interests that not everybody likes. He doesn't even say anything bad about opera. He's not like, I hate opera and ballet. I don't want to be like those losers doing their in their tights, doing their playets and stuff.

If you're really mad about the ballet, go to the ballet. Go to the ballet. Go support it. Tell me who your favorite ballerina is. Okay. Here's another outrage that was out there. And me and you are going to have a disagreement on this. I know from our private messaging.

The NBA canceled Magic City Night next week at the Atlanta Hawks game. For people don't know, Magic City is a strip club in Atlanta, does very well. It's doing good capitalism. A lot of people are going there of their own volition. Totally. A lot of people are working there of their own volition. It is a cultural touchstone in Atlanta. They wanted to have a basketball game where they gave out merch, Magic City merch,

would have made a lot of money. And the NBA came in and said, no, you can't do this. And I said this is in part because this was left-wing Puritanism. You know, we do plenty of attacking on right-wing Puritanism on the, this podcast. There's was left-wing puritism. The complaints did not come from the churches in Atlanta. It came from lefty activists who are like, this is marooned to women. I think that the women that work at Magic City are doing so of their own volition and should be honored for their art form. And I don't think that this is a big deal. I wasn't keen on canceling drag queen's

story hour if people wanted to take their kids to that. And I'm not keen on canceling Magic City Night at the Atlanta Hawks. Nancy Pelosi's daughter attacked me of this on social media. I saw that. I saw that. Sunny bunch is on the side of Nancy Pelosi's daughter. Where am I wrong? Well, Tim, I, as you know, I'm not really a right-wing Puritan, but I will say that I, you're insane. This is, I texted my, I texted my buddy who is a, who's the commissioner of my fantasy sports leagues. And I was like, hey, what do you think about Adam Silver doing this? He's like, it's the first thing that commissioner got right.

He is, you cannot have at a family sporting event a strip club night. I'm sorry, that's insane. That's just an insane thing to do. Why? The strippers aren't going to be stripping at the game. It's a sponsorship. What are the kids going to like wear? Magic City T-shirts and take them, wear them into school. Like, hey, look what I got at the game. Look what I got at the game, teacher. That's crazy. I'm sorry. I have a Mardi Gras. Come on. This is, well, this have been a problem in Europe now. That's fine. People are a little more comfortable. I think it would have been a problem in Europe.

You do? We, you know, we were talking earlier about friction. I think it's fine that strip clubs exist. I think, If people want to go to strip clubs and indulge their appetites, that is totally, that should be legal. As long as you're of legal age, that is totally fine. But, you know, I don't think having it kind of out, like in a public family setting, it's not ideal. That's where I come down on this. Whatever. Call me, you know, a decadent, I don't know, what would be your insult of me? Call me whatever insult you want.

That's a very New Orleans thing. I think that's a very laissez-faire. Yeah, La Montel Roulet. I let my child wear a Magic City sweatshirt as shown to it. It's fine. It's not a big deal. Who cares? Okay. Anyway, I thought we weren't doing cancellations anymore.

That's all I'm saying. I thought we weren't doing them, but apparently we're only doing cancellations when Sunny Bunch and Christine Pelosi and Luke Cornett, whatever his name was. Nobody's saying that they should shut down the strip club. You just don't do it in the basketball arena. Final topic, we're over. I need one hot take about the Oscars coming up.

And your newsletter today is about a perfect movie that you saw. I need 90 seconds or less on that. Hot take on the Oscars. I think sinners might pull off best picture. This would be a big upset. I don't think it's 100% for sure. And it comes Sunday night, I will probably be proven wrong here. There's a real sinner's momentum building.

I think a lot of people really like that movie. It's a lot of fun. The woke vampire movie set in the South. The woke anti-racist vampire movie will possibly win at the Oscars. I think it's entirely possible. It was my favorite of the movies nominated, so I'm pro this.

But yeah, I like to, you're one battle after another. Not Marty? Does Timmy, does Timmy get an Oscar? So I think Timothy Shalamee probably gets the Oscar for Marty Supreme. He's very good. We can do a whole bonus segment on this.

This is the thing about, I feel like this is about every big actor and actress that I care about. It's like you with AI, if you actually know about their career. It's always like, I feel like they always get the Oscar for like their fifth best performance, you know, because momentum builds over time. And it's like, why didn't he win for Call Me By Your Name? Why didn't he win for Bob Dylan?

Why didn't he win for this? And now it's like, okay, we're going to give it to him for their fourth best performance. Well, I don't, I think that does happen. That absolutely happens. Usually it happens with older actors. This happened with Al Pacino in Sen of a Woman, right? Kind of famously, he wins. Sent of a Woman was amazing. Well, it's fine. It's fine, but it's like his 10th best movie. Like, or it's his 10th best performance. This is my fault. I interrupt you. I already said we were over. Talk to the perfect movie. The perfect movie. Project Hail Mary, go see it.

You'll love it. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll be thrilled and exhilarated. Great movie. Go see it. Perfect popcorn entertainment. Project Hail Mary, that's good.

Get a break from your phone, from your doom scroll, from your dystopia. Sunny Bunch, that was great. It's a little preview of what people are going to get to see in Dallas, March 18th. I don't think we sell aftermarket tickets. So you might be bound, but we'll put it online. And March 19th, come see us in Austin. Theborg.com slash events.

Appreciate Sunny very much. We're going to have a little something different tomorrow. Okay, so everybody buckle your chin straps. And I think it's going to be enjoyable. We'll see you all then. Peace. The Bore podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.